Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast

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The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing EdgeWelcome to Episode 251 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…

Successful MSPs simplify EVERYTHING: Focus on simplifying and removing things you don’t really need to do. This can increase profitability and ease of management while reducing unnecessary complexity.
The link between what you do each day, and achieving goals: If you have a clear vision for where you want your life to go, you can use that to affect the actions that you take within your MSP every day.
Why PR is a valid marketing tool for MSPs in 2024: Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases, shares insights on how MSPs can effectively generate free publicity through strategic press releases, offering tips on how to capture the attention of journalists and boost credibility and visibility in the media.
Paul’s Personal Peer Group: Martin, who runs an MSP in Arizona, wants to know the best way to hold a team meeting when you have some staff who are a little disruptive.

Successful MSPs simplify EVERYTHINGThe business that you chose to be in, Managed Services, is already one of the most complex kinds of businesses on the planet. Just stop and think about everything that you have to support – all the different clients, the different setups, the different technologies. And yet I see loads of MSPs making their lives even harder by overcomplicating things in their business that could and should be simple. So let’s talk about how you can make your business easier to run and more profitable by simplifying everything.

I’m on a bit of a simplification mission right now. We’ve had some fairly major development projects in our business over the last 12 months, and while I was focusing on those and constantly reducing complication within those projects and just making everything simpler, I realised we could do this across the business. Because we’ve been going for eight years and what happens is when you’ve been going that long, you kind of hold onto legacy stuff. Things that we’re just doing because, or something that worked really well six years ago but there’s now a better way of doing it. And for me, it’s a really exciting thing to just go through the business like a tornado and just simplify everything. So I’ve given myself a new job title. I am Head of Simplification, and I’m using this as an opportunity to review everything we do in the business asking this big question, how can we make this simpler? Because that’s actually a very powerful question to ask. Is this a question you ask yourself in your MSP regularly?

Just because you can handle high levels of complication doesn’t mean that you should put up with high levels of complication.

In fact, I truly believe that the simpler business is, the more fun it is to run and the more profitable it can be. And I guess there are two main places where you can simplify your business. The first is your operations and what you do now. At the risk of starting you down the road of looking at your tech stack, because I’m always hesitant to suggest an MSP reviews their tech stack in case it becomes a bad case of tech stack fiddling where you’re attracted to the shiny thing. Maybe you should just be asking yourself, does my PSA allow me to run the business as simply as possible? Is my RMM easy to use but also powerful enough to do all the things we need it to do? Look at your standard operating procedures, these are the manuals for how you run your business. So what kind of business are they encouraging you to run in their complexity? Now, I’m sure you are all over automation, which surely must be the ultimate way of simplifying something because you are removing the humans from it.

But other suggestions include removing steps where you can, asking yourself why something is done and whether it’s just for heritage reasons, like I was saying earlier, rather than because it’s useful today. And I think the most useful thing to do is to talk to your team; the people who are actually running these processes, who are following your standard operating procedures, and ask them what needs to be simplified. Ask them what is surplus to requirements, what job do they hate doing every single week? And then focus your attention on reducing or removing those jobs.

So the first main place where you can simplify everything is operations, but what’s the second main place? Well, surely that’s the clients, and by that I mean can you simplify their technology setups? Now, I appreciate your immediate knee jerk reaction to this might be, no, I can’t Paul, and you are mad, but hear me out because I’ve worked with a few MSPs over the years who insist on a standard setup for a client. When a new client joins them, they must migrate all of their technology to the MSP’s preferred way doing things. For example, that might be having a standard router in every single client. Now the exact same router made by the exact same manufacturer in every single client. Can you see the huge benefits of that as a business? You and your technicians become utter experts on that specific type of router. If you pick up an error with one of the routers that you’re looking after, then you can proactively go and prevent that error or check for that error in other client’s bases, which is great. And as you know, I’m not a tech person, but this has always made sense to me as a way of reducing down the complications within an MSP.

I appreciate it probably reduces your options a little bit in the sense that if a client won’t change their technology, they’re never going to switch over to you. But I suspect that’s more than made up for in the increase in profit and customer service from having a single type of technology to support. Tell me, is this something you do in your MSP? If you could wave a magic wand and simplify anything tomorrow, what would that be?

The link between what you do each day, and achieving goalsLet me tell you how your vision for how you want your life to be directly affects the goals that you set for your MSP. Which directly affects the strategies that you choose. Which directly affects the tactics that you choose to deliver those strategies. Which of course directly influences what you actually do on a day-to-day basis.

Let’s start at the very top of that again. So everyone has a vision for their future life, whether they’ve written it down or not. I write mine down and I read it every morning, but I know that I’m the minority in this. If you do have a vision for your life, by the way, write it down. For most people, this vision for a future life involves spending more time doing the things they love outside of work with the people that they love. That’s probably your other half, your kids, your family. And of course the vision often is about generating more cash to make it easier to do those things or to allow you to buy back your time.

Now, some people turn that vision into hard smart goals for the business. SMART is an acronym. It stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant,and time bound. And you can use those smart goals to define the correct strategy for growth. Once you’ve got a clear strategy, the specific tactics actually become crystal clear. And the question of, let’s say for example, should I use LinkedIn, which is a common question I get from MSPs, that becomes really easy to answer when you understand the goal that the business is working towards and the strategy that’s been set to deliver that goal. The choice of tactics then leads on to your daily activities.

And this is the thing I really want to talk about the things you do every day. Because I want to help you make a mental connection here. Your ability to change your life in the future – which by the way, anybody in any situation can do – is directly affected by what you do in your business, in your life every single day. Let’s take a non MSP example.

If you want to be a muscle ripped Adonis, then you expect to have to lift weights every day and eat protein and all of that stuff, right? It’s no different within your business.

If you want an MSP that onboards a new client every month, at least every month, then you need to build a marketing machine. And just like getting ripped, that’s an ongoing process with tiny actions every day that really add up over time. You wouldn’t expect to turn into Adonis just by going to the gym once.

So how do you expect to onboard a new client every month just doing a piece of marketing once. You’ve got to build a marketing machine and then every day you need to do something within that marketing machine that either wins you more new clients, get those clients to buy from you more often, or get those clients to choose to spend more. That’s how you connect your daily activities to the amazing future life that you’re going to have.

Why PR is a valid marketing tool for MSPs in 2024Featured guest: Mickie Kennedy, founded eReleases 25 years ago to help small businesses, authors, and startups increase their visibility and credibility through tier-1 press release distribution.

Mickie lives in Baltimore and has created a free video Master Class on how to create a winning PR strategy, based on the PR campaigns of his most successful clients.

Maybe you’ve seen a competitor featured in a local newspaper, radio station or TV station and you’ve wondered, Hey, how do I get my MSP free publicity like that? Well, my guest today is at the very heart of generating PR results, public relations free publicity, and he’s going to tell you exactly how to do it. Today’s special guest will tell you why press releases are still a valid tool for MSPs in 2024 and also how to cut through and get in front of the journalists you most want to reach.

Hi, I am Mickie Kennedy and I’m the president and founder of eReleases press release distribution. I specialise in helping people get earned media through press releases, and I’ve been doing this for a little over 25 years

And that makes you royalty in the terms of PR and media I think Mickie. I had a PR company, which I started seven years after you started yours, and I’m pretty sure we used eReleases back in the day to get some press releases out. So it’s awesome to actually be speaking to you all this time. For those people listening to the podcast on audio only, you have to check out this interview on YouTube as well because Mickie has quite frankly the wildest pair of glasses I’ve ever seen. Can you describe them Mickie.

Sort of like intense rainbow glasses? I got them for pride three years ago and I happened to get headshots then, and so every time I showed up to a podcast after June, people would be like, oh, you don’t have the glasses. So I had to start putting them back on and I just realised now it’s my thing.

It is, it is. You’ll be a 95-year-old man in a care home somewhere and people will still expect you to have the rainbow glasses back from 2021. So let’s start at the beginning Mickie, and let’s talk about what are press releases, what’s a press release distribution company, what do you do? And when a business owner like an MSP is sending out a press release, what is it that they’re hoping to achieve from that?

Basically a press release is an announcement written usually in the third person, you can have a quote where you could talk in the first person and it’s an announcement that you’re sending to the media. You can actually physically send it to the media by email or mail, but predominantly to get the maximum amount of coverage you use a news wire. And here in the United States there’s two major Newswires, PR Newswire and Business Wire. They probably control like 90 something percent of the marketplace. And we partnered with PR Newswire about I think around 15 years ago. So all the releases that go out through us go out through PR Newswire nationally with PR Newswire, it’s about $1,800 approximately to move a 600 word press release. And through us it’s about 25% to 30% of that cost, mostly because our audience are smaller companies that Pure Newswire doesn’t spend time reaching out to because their budgets are too small.

But in aggregate, we were able to drive a lot of sales to them because we do like 10,000 to 12,000 releases a year. So it gives us an advantage for being able to purchase at a really good rate with them. And as far as what the goal of this is is to get earned media and that’s to get actual articles written about you based on what you’re announcing, examples of types of releases that people generally do or when you have a new product or a refresh of a product or service. Basically if you have a big milestone in your business, you’ve reached a certain milestone of number of customers or an anniversary or things along those lines. And the ultimate goal of sending this out is to see yourself in print or online and generally it results in eyeballs looking at you, potential leads, potential sales, and even more importantly, you can take that earned media that link to an article and share it with your own leads and share it with your own audience. Because the thing that happens with the earned media is it’s a huge credibility boost.

It’s like third party corroboration when a journalist writes about you. It’s a huge signal of trust and as a result, it really makes you look good and it makes people want to work with you.

That’s a really comprehensive answer and thank you. And I think you’re right. It’s the credibility these days that’s really more important certainly for an MSP. If you can get your local newspaper, your local radio, maybe even your local TV station to talk about something that your business has done, is that going to generate leads? Maybe not, but is it going to get people talking? Yes, your existing clients may see or hear it and say, Hey, we heard you on the radio. You can also take that coverage and you can use it again and again and again across all of your marketing for massive credibility because even today in 2024 where let’s be honest, anybody can get any message to any person, quite unlike how it was back in 1998, even today, the media has a certain amount of credibility and people still perceive that journalists pick the very best experts, the very best stories for people to consume.

Let’s examine that change in the media. So you started in 1998. Back at that time, I was working at a radio station in the UK, Mickie, and I remember if you go back to then there was no Google. I don’t think Google itself had even launched in 98. Certainly Google AdWords didn’t exist. There were no real social media networks. So it was, as we said, the media and what made the media rich in the 20th century was they controlled the distribution of messages. Now, obviously come forward 26 years, that’s completely changed. Distribution is easy. Everybody can reach everybody. So what value does a service like yours still have for reaching those journalists?

Right. So the thing that happened is when I launched my business, I just did email distribution to journalists that I had reached out to an established relationship when they said I could send them releases. What has changed at that time is media databases have come out and people are buying or licensing these databases, and a yearly subscription can be anywhere from $8,000 to $25,000 depending on the database and the size of your company. And as a result, when a golf club company buys access to this database and then realises only 2,700 journalists are interested in golf products, they’re like, well, there’s like tens of thousands of financial analysts and banking people and business editors, let’s send it to them. Because business owners and people in banking, they like to play golf. And as a result, there’s so many off targeted press releases and pitching going on through email, that journalists’ email are just terrible. They have a hard time wading through it.

PR firms, which usually rely on pitching through email and phone have found that email is just hard to get through. Often they’re having to call and tell them how to find a pitch they sent via email or just pitch over the phone because their email is just out of sorts. And the great thing about the wire is that they can log in with their journalist credentials and look at their industry feed and they can actually even customise it. So if I’m someone who covers electronics, I can exclude certain keywords. I’m not interested in anything that mentions like stereos or consumer retail outlets like Best Buy and things like that. I can basically customise it so the feed I’m seeing is very targeted, so it’s becoming more and more the main place that journalists are going and looking for stories because it’s the main place that’s not crammed with spam and off targeted stuff.

So it really is great for that reason. And the fact that there’s only two in the US, it makes it very easy for journalist to just fish in two ponds. It does make it difficult for new players to come in because a journalist is like, I don’t really want to go to a third place and look, I like being able to see two. And as a result of basically being a duopoly in the US market, you do pay a premium, like I said, not unusual to pay between $1,600 and $2,000 for a national press release of 5, 6, 700 words. And so it can be very expensive as a result of that.

Yeah, I can imagine the irony that as the world has opened up and communication, as I said, from anyone to anyone, is possible that what has happened is the journalists have become completely overwhelmed and they’re focusing their attention on essentially a filtering, a relevance filtering, which is what these wire services offer. And for those of those listeners and viewers outside of the US, there are versions of this in many countries. I’m sure I’m a bit out of date with the media in the UK. I left that in 2005, but I’m sure that there’ll be a different version of this, and I’m sure there’ll be a business like Mickie’s business in the UK and in other western countries as well. Let’s turn and look at specific story suggestions that MSPs should be placing, Mickie. So you know about MSPs, obviously they’re trying to reach typically local or niche or vertical business owners, decision makers in the kind of people that they want to work with. And one of the most common questions that I get from MSPs when we’re talking about publicity and PR is what kind of story suggestions should I be sending out? You mentioned earlier a couple of good ideas like product releases and big milestones. What other kind of B2B story ideas do you see that work well?

I think ones where you have data generally work very well, for example, doing a survey or study within your industry is a great way to position yourself as a thought leader, an expert in your industry because you authored the survey. And I recommend that for clients who just feel like, I don’t know what we can do, I don’t feel important enough. And I always tell them that this is one type of press release that generally always gets earned media. You want to ask some meaningful, timely questions that people in your industry would want to know right now. What are people’s positions on AI in your industry or what are the threats to your industry? What are things around that? What are the challenges of MSP owners right now in your industry? You could look at trade publications to get a sense of that. You could also get a sense of what you would ask people if you were at a trade show or conference like, Hey, have you noticed lately that it seems like this?

That could potentially be a question to ask because the reason you’re asking it is you have seen it in print yet and you’re not sure if this is just affecting your company or if it’s something that could be industry-wide or regional. And as a result, these are all questions that are right for asking. And once you put together the survey, reach out to a smaller independent trade association in your industry, and they exist in every vertical and every fraction of verticals, even in PR. Everybody knows the big guy, but there’s 470 some last time I checked public relations, trade associations in the United States that are not the big one that everyone knows. And so you do want to see how if their membership sort of fits you, and then also you want to see what the size of them is. I usually like 700 members or more because the goal is to get a hundred people to complete the survey.

I then approach that association and say, Hey, could you send this link? I use SurveyMonkey. And I said, could you send this link to your members, in exchange I’ll mention you in a press release I’ll be issuing over the wire through PR Newswire. The smaller associations, not a lot of people know about them. They don’t get media attention. They often see this as a win-win. You incorporating them in the press release. If they seem a little hesitant sometimes you can enhance it by co-branding the survey, as long as they don’t want to get involved and start rewriting questions and all of that. And they’re usually not. They’re usually small and lean and they’re easy to work with. And I do tell them the goal is to get at least a hundred responses. So if we don’t, I go back to them and see if they could push that link on social media, maybe do another email send.

But generally, I find that a lot of people are willing to do a survey for an association they belong to when they don’t normally do surveys. And I then look at the results, figure out what the aha moments are, what’s the most shocking or surprising thing here, and I generally focus the press release on that. Maybe one other question. I do believe in building out a page on your website where you put all the questions and answers and include that link in your press release because a really good journalist will go through and see if there’s other questions that they might be able to build a story on around as well. And generally when we send that out, you have an amazing quote by you as to why you felt the numbers skewed a particular way, putting a little analysis on you. Generally, we’re looking at four articles, but sometimes as many as 14 articles from one survey.

And that’s something that anybody can do. It’s a great way to position yourself. It generally always works, just making sure that you ask meaningful questions. And it is one of the ways to really stand out and grab some of that media attention and that authority so that as you put that on your website, these articles, as you share the links to these articles with your leads and your clients, it’s going to greatly increase your authority. That signal of trust that comes from being in the media is really going to get out there, and you’re going to find that your churn rate will go down because people are less likely to shop around if they realise I’m with the right company and the people that you normally don’t convert, whatever that percentage is, you’re going to find that you’re going to move some of those over into customers just because of that earned media and putting that in front of them.

Yeah, I absolutely agree. Even existing clients are happy to see you as the MSP owner or the manager appearing in the media and being a thought leader and being an expert because it reinforces that they made a smart choice to join you in the first place. I mean, even from just the idea you’ve been talking about there, my mind was racing thinking, hang on a second here. There’s just so much content we can create out of one activity. So if you take the PR stuff and put to one side just the survey, so you’ve got the survey itself, could become a blog article, could be also be something you put on LinkedIn, even though very few people will respond, it’s another piece of content. Then you’ve got the actual results. It’s another blog article, it’s another piece on LinkedIn, the actual press release. It’s another blog article, it’s another piece on LinkedIn.

And then of course, once you’ve been in, even if you’re just in one media title, you can then do a blog post and a LinkedIn article or a newsletter about how stories you’ve been featured in relevant media recently. So just what’s that four or five different pieces of content just from one piece of activity. And that I think is what makes PR really, really sexy. So thank you so much for that idea, Mickie. That’s a really cracking idea. Just tell us very briefly, again, you did mention at the beginning, but tell us briefly what’s the pitch for eReleases and also what’s the best way for people to get in touch with you?

The website’s, ereleases.com. You can contact us through chat, phone, or email. You’ll only talk to editors. We have no salespeople, no commissions. All of our social media is on the lower right. I do have a free masterclass where I go through about a video of about an hour of the strategic types of releases people should focus on, because I will be honest with you, the biggest criticism of press releases is they don’t work. And I will agree that 97% of press releases do not work. And so what I’ve done is I’ve condensed the 3% that do regularly work, and that’s in that masterclass of less than an hour long video. I know that people aren’t going to be watching 12 and 20 hour courses anymore. So it’s available@ereleases.com/plan. Again, completely free and a great place for someone to start because if you go through that and brainstorm half a dozen strategic ideas for a press release, you’ll be able to build a PR campaign of meaningful releases and you’ll have more hits than misses. And so you’re not with that 97% of press releases that fail, but you’re focusing on the 3% that do succeed and that you will have good outcomes as a result.

Paul’s Personal Peer GroupThis week we have a question from Martin who owns and runs his MSP in Arizona, and he says that his business is actually fairly successful, but the thing that’s keeping him up at night is his team. His question is, what’s the best way to hold a team meeting when you have some staff who are a little disruptive?

Yeah. Well, it’s really important in my view that you don’t use team meetings to try to change the behaviour of individuals, because typically the worst performing staff listen the least at team meetings, don’t they? So I would use one-to-ones to tackle your problem staff and to change behaviour over time. In my view, team meetings should be saved for things like just passing on information or training on new technologies or updating your team on the progress of the business, or just generating ideas and encouraging enthusiasm. The best kind of meetings really involve your team actually doing something because it is really boring for them to listen to you just droning on for half an hour or even longer. So here’s an idea, present them with a problem, break them into small groups if your team is big enough to do that and let them brainstorm ideas.

Now, you don’t have to act on those ideas, although trust me, they will come up with some brilliant ones, but it will help them feel involved and therefore just more engaged with the business. That’s a good thing.

Mentioned links* This podcast is in conjunction with the MSP Marketing Edge, the world’s leading white label content marketing and growth training subscription * Join me in MSP Marketing Facebook group. * Connect with me on LinkedIn * Connect with my guest Mickie Kennedy on LinkedIn and check out the eReleases website. * Got a question about your MSP’s marketing? Submit one here for Paul’s Personal Peer Group.

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The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing EdgeWelcome to this SPECIAL EDITION marking 250 episodes of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green.

This week I have a very special guest – Brad Martineau. Brad helps people transform from being a business owner to truly being an entrepreneur. And as you can imagine, it’s about the way that you think and the action that you take. I think you are going to find him a huge inspiration.

Here are three big ideas from him:

Make it easy: Business is easy but we make it hard for ourselves. Brad uses the acronym, ELF – Easy, Lucrative, Fun.
Remember the business is there to feed your life (not the other way round): Don’t let the business dictate how you live your life.
We have 3 currencies in life: Time, energy and money. Be careful where you invest these. A great business returns these currencies to you.

Meet Brad Martineau.* Brad helps entrepreneurs build Smooth Scaling businesses through coaching and software tools.*

Brad has been married for 23 years, has 5 kids, 1 son-in-law and a granddaughter on the way. He loves fitted hats and playing and coaching basketball.

Hi, I’m Brad Martineau and I help entrepreneurs build businesses that they actually want rather than the ones that they just wake up one day and accidentally have.

And what a great positioning statement that is. Brad, thank you so much for joining us, not just on the podcast, but on this very special episode as well. 250 episodes has taken quite a long time to get here, nearly five years, and I’m going to admit I’m a little bit of a fanboy of yours. You’ve been in my marketing journey and my entrepreneurial journey for getting on for about 18 years or so, and we’re going to talk a little bit about that in this podcast. When the opportunity came up to have you on, I had to jump on it and get you on and with this amazing episode coming up, this seemed the right thing to do. So what we’re going to do over the next 20 minutes or so is we’re going to explore what you’ve done in your entrepreneurial journey. You were involved really heavily with a popular CRM, which is still around today, which is actually the one that I use.

We’re going to talk about that. We’re going to talk about different business things you’ve done, but where we’re getting to and the bulk of the interview is exactly as you just said, is about helping people have the business and the life that they really want because far too many MSPs, as we know, are completely driven by the business rather than the other way around. And obviously I know that as well that the MSP market very well. You’ve worked with quite a lot of the big players in this market and I’m sure you’re going to deliver a ton of value and drop some value bombs within this. Could I sound any more American as I’m doing this podcast? I don’t think I could. So Brad, tell us about your early career and what you got into it and the thing that got you onto this amazing entrepreneurial journey in the first place.

Oh, that’s a really interesting question. So I was what I would call either an unwilling or an unknowing entrepreneur. So my working career started, I went and got a job, got married, got a job, and I was working as an admissions counsellor for an online university. And I didn’t recognise that I had entrepreneurial blood in me. And anyway, I was there. Everyone should have a job they hate, right? That’s like one of the best things you can do because you realise what you don’t want. I was there for two and a half years, it was two and a half years, two long, and then my brothers and my brother-in-law were like, yo, we’re doing this thing over here. We need some help. And it was the beginning of the company now called Keap, at that point it wasn’t even called that, it was called Infusionsoft before. And then before that it was even called something else, like Hey, we’re doing this thing.

It was called managed Pro CRM and Mortgage Pro CRM, and there were six of us, but our support rep just left and we need somebody to come help. And I’m like, C R who? What are you talking about? But I knew I didn’t want to be where I was, and so I walked away from, I dunno, I think I was making I 35 grand a year with benefits and I was married and had a kid at the time and I left to make 25 or 28 or something with no benefit. So it didn’t actually make sense financially, but I came over and I got introduced to the world of entrepreneurship, to the world of automation, to the world of strategies that get people to convert. And I fell in love with it. So that was my introduction into this whole world of client journey and entrepreneurship.

And as I was there, I got to work with a lot of entrepreneurs. I was in the middle of the support and dealing with clients that they’re trying to figure out this tool and they’re trying to make it work so they can get more clients and do all those things. So I was there for probably about six years or so, and that’s really where I cut my teeth. But even then I was an employee, so I hadn’t unlocked entrepreneur. I didn’t even really know what that meant. Looking back, I’m like, oh bro, you should never have spent your time doing that. You should have been an entrepreneur. And then probably, so I was the sixth employee there. They grew to about 150 and then they had to do a round of layoffs. Every business has ebbs and flows. They did around to layoffs and I was in, they laid off 10% of the company and I was in it. I like to make it more dramatic and say that they fired me. It was my two brothers that had to come over at two 30 in the morning and tell me that I was fired.

And then at that point, so by the time that happened, I had, it was six weeks after my fifth kid was born, my fifth child. So I have two girls, three boys. So I’ve got five kids under the age of eight at my house. I just got laid off. I’m looking at jobs thinking, oh, I’m going to go get jobs and there’s no job that’s like, well, this is going to work for what I’m trying to do with my family. I’m like, I guess I’m just going to start a company helping people with this tool in Infusionsoft that I’ve been working at. And so I started a company and it was interesting because at first I didn’t want to do it. I did it because it was the only thing that I had, but I was actively trying to figure out how to get out of it.

I would tell myself, oh, I didn’t grow up hoping that I could be this solo contractor helping people with automation and technology in their business. And then one day, and I think this, it came from Joe Polish, I don’t know anyone if they know who Joe Polish is, but if you know who Joe Polish is, really good marketing guy. He has podcasts and everything and he’s like, look, business is really easy, but people make it too hard. He’s like, I have this acronym, he’s registered trademark – ELF.

As long as your business is Easy, it’s Lucrative and it’s Fun – that’s all you need.

That’s all we’re looking for. And I was like, when I stopped, I was like, that’s actually exactly what I have. And so I stopped trying to run away from my business and I just accepted we could be really good at this and we could be really impactful and we could lead and help a lot of people.

That was probably a couple years into me being an entrepreneur. And that was when I was like, okay, I’m in. Let’s go do this. And I actually leaned into entrepreneurship. So that would be when I started as an entrepreneur I think because actually a couple of years into running my own business and that’s when things we had had some success in the business, but even then it was like, man, as soon as I can get out of this, I’m going to get out of this. It was about two and a half years in or so when I would say I actually, I would feel comfortable calling that version of me actually an entrepreneur.

Yeah, there is a big difference between being a business owner and being an entrepreneur and a lot of it is mindset and then that manifest as the things you do or don’t do, which I think we’re going to come on to later on. That’s a really interesting story, and I didn’t know that bit about Joe Polish for our listeners on the podcast and viewers on YouTube, if you’ve not heard of Joe, go and look him up. Is he particularly active anymore? Joe? I remember seeing his stuff years ago. I haven’t seen it for a while.

Yeah, he’s still running his mastermind thing and they’ve got an I love marketing podcast. They’ve got some other podcast stuff. If you go search for him, you’ll find him. He’s got good stuff. And that was just one of those, everybody has those things that people say that for whatever reason, they come at the right time and they do a whole lens perspective shift, and then they shift the future. And that one for me was important to recognise that there didn’t have to be some more big life like eternal purpose to what I was doing. It’s like, look, are you good at it? Can you make money? And do you have fun? And I was like, yes, yes, and yes. And then it just unlocked a whole bunch of opportunities moving forward and a whole bunch of what I could see because I stopped being afraid of it.

Yeah, no, I understand that. And I do love that ELF. I won’t steal it because obviously it belongs to someone else, but I’m going to work that into my pattern in some way. Let’s just go back and look at Infusionsoft, and that was where I first came across you. So I’ve been watching your videos probably for 17 years. It would’ve been some point in the middle of your time at Infusionsoft and I bought the software and back then, so we’re talking what, 2007 I say bought it, obviously you subscribe, but about 2007 I got serious about marketing. This was in a previous business. We then exited that business in 2016 as a result of a whole series of things that we put in place. The first of which was building a massive database of prospective clients, which was done in Infusionsoft. And we worked it.

We used that software every possible way. We automated what we could, we did all sorts of things. And I would say 10 years ago, that was the cutting edge. That software these days, it’s called Keap. It’s been through. They’ve had VC money coming in and I say, this is still a customer. I’m still a happy customer. I might pay my five, $600 a month. We use all the automation, we have all the APIs and stuff. And does it have the tool set of HubSpots or go high level, maybe not, but does it still do at its job a really good job? Yes, it does. Do you still use No, I know that you still use Keap yourself, because I just joined your mailing list like five minutes before our interview and it went straight to an Infusionsoft URL and then went to your thank you page. So even though they fired you about 14 years ago, you’re still a big fan of the product I presume.

That has been resolved. I mean, it wasn’t required. It got laid off and it was fine. We didn’t really have any problems, so that was totally fine. But yeah, we use it for parts of our business and we used other tools for other parts of other businesses. There’s a couple of different businesses we have going on, so we definitely use it. We have a lot of clients that use it and we have clients that use other tools. So I started there, what are we in July? It was June of 2004. That was 20 years ago. And for the first five or six years, it wasn’t that it was the best, there was no other option for the small business entrepreneur, there was nothing out there. And then inevitably is going to happen. You get competition that comes in and there are lots of really good tools and they all sort of have their pros and their cons. But yeah, so we use all sorts of different tools. Keap is still one of the ones that we use inside several of our businesses.

So let’s return back to that entrepreneurial awakening that you had. So you’re a business owner now, you’re a couple of years into that, and suddenly you’ve realised that there’s more to life than just running a business and doing this day to day. What changed next? So from that realisation, what different path did you go down?

So we stayed on the same path as far as if we say path and we’re talking in terms of what we’re selling, what were we trying to deliver, who are we trying to serve? We stayed on the same path. What changed was I wasn’t waking up every day trying to get out of it. I wasn’t waking up thinking, okay, well how do I turn this thing into something that I can just leave? Or how do I find this other thing that I want to do? And so with that change, what happened is I just started to pay attention to other ways that we could help our clients. And as clients started to come through, people would come through and it’s like, okay, I’m just running this little, we were at seven multiple seven figures, whatever, but I’m running this low multiple seven figure business. And you got clients that come through and they’re doing high seven figures, they’re doing eight figures or whatever.

It’s like, oh, they must have everything figured out and they had a lot of stuff figured out. But then I started to realise there were a lot of things that they didn’t have figured out and they were making more money, but they didn’t necessarily have the business that gave them the life necessarily that they wanted. So for me, I started to shift more to the primary thing that we sell is we’ll help you initially, we’ll help you with Keap or Infusionsoft. I love the fact before we hopped on here, you’re like, I don’t call it, I called it Infusionsoft because that’s what it was when I got it and I love that. So we were selling like, Hey, come work with us and we’ll make Infusionsoft hum and work and do all those amazing things. But then what happened is I started to put my brain on, I’m very much a systematic thinker and I look at how things relate to each other.

And so I started to put my brain on what are the elements that you have to wrap your head around in order to have a business that runs the way that you want it to? For two reasons. One, I recognise that entrepreneurs that are coming in didn’t seem to have it all figured out, and I just assumed that they did. It was like, oh, you’re running an eight figure business. Then you would know all the answers. Then you sit down and talk to ’em and they are really good at creating revenue, but they don’t necessarily have some prebuilt formula. So in my head I’m like, if other people that have bigger revenue companies don’t have it figured out, I wonder if I can go put together literally the manual of here’s how to think about a business. And by the way, I needed it for my own sanity because I had Sixth Division running, which is a coaching company, and we working with our clients and it was a multiple seven figure company.

We had spun out a software company that had grown to seven figures and eventually got to multiple seven figures. And I don’t know if you remember, but I had five kids, but now they’re all older and they’re all getting into competitive sports and I like to play basketball. And then I started coaching high school basketball.

I was like, all right, if I’m going to manage all of this, I have to have a better system and approach to how I think about the business to make sure that the business actually serves the life that I want.

And there was one specific pivotal point that I think for me, it set me on a course that would’ve either had me be a lot of people where the business controls them or what it actually is. It set me on a course, no, I’m going to be in control of my business.

And it was this. So after our first year at Sixth Division, we did seven figures in our first year and we did our annual planning at the end of the year, every good business should do, and I sat down with my business partner and we’re like, all right, what do we want to do? And obviously the answer is we want to grow. And so we had this whole plan, we spent, it was like I think two days of planning on how we were going to grow, when we were going to double or whatever we were going to do for the year. We get to the very end and it was literally in the last 15 minutes of the second day we’re about to leave. I had my backpack on and I looked at him and I was like, Dave, what if we didn’t try to do that?

Because I’m looking at it, I’m like, man, that first year we did seven figures. And a lot of people are like, oh, that’s amazing. I’m like, yeah, it also sucked. Seven figures in your first year was crazy heavy services business. I was gone all the time. My wife is talking to her family about why I’m gone, all this stuff. I’m like, what if we just didn’t? And in 15 minutes we changed our whole plan and the new goal was to make one more penny than we made the year before, but to cut our time in half. And then that set us on a course to, okay, well now how do we do that? What do we have to have in place in order to pull that off? And it completely shifted the perspective of rather than just chasing top line revenue or even just chasing profit, it expanded what I viewed as profit from just monetary profit to a thing that now I call life profit, which is more than just money.

And so that really shifted my approach to now I got to build a business that I actually care about and that I actually want to run and that I want to build a game. My buddy Dan, Dan Martel wrote a book and in it he has a line that says Smart entrepreneurs build a game that they want to play starting now, I forget the exact quote, but it’s something like regular entrepreneurs just hope that one day they’ll be able to be successful and have the life they want. Smart entrepreneurs are like, no, I’m going to start right now. I’m going to build a game and build a business that led me play the game that I want to right now. So it set us on that path, which was really pivotal and has led to a lot of the things now that I’m doing. A lot of things that I focus on with my clients is what do you actually want the outcome to be? That’s the first thing to start with.

Yeah, I love that. Now in a minute, I’m going to ask you about specific things that you think the average MSP owner could do that’s coming up in just a few seconds. Let’s talk a little bit more first about life profits. So I’ve been a business owner 19 years, similar kind of time to you. And let’s be honest, most of those years, and this will be the same for all business owners, the worldwide over, you’re focused on cash, you’re focused on client retention, you are focused on net profit because if the business doesn’t make profit, it’s very hard for you to feed your kids and pay your mortgage and stuff like that. So profit becomes the thing that you’re working towards. And I know loads of business owners the same as you were back then where you are, yeah, you’re making loads of money, but you are working 60, 70, 80 hours a week to do so. And obviously that balance is out. Is the concept of life profit not just being the money, but having the money and having the balance as well? Or is it something different?

Yeah, so the concept of life profit is recognised that we have three currencies in life that we can spend – time, energy, and money.

So time, if we put it in the context of the business, I think every entrepreneur with every business they build should have a very clear documented statement that says, this is what this business’s job is to return to me. I call it the return. I’ve got a video on my YouTube channel if you want to link to it that talks about how to fill this out and it’s first time, meaning how much time can the business take and then how much time should it give me? The second is energy, meaning when I spend that time, what am I doing in the business? So energy is about what my role is in the business.

And then the third one is money. And obviously you have to make money, but to have a business that really maximises life profit, gives you all three of those. And what I found is most people start by defining money. And if you start by defining money, what ends up happening is you will compromise on time and energy because money becomes the top standard. But if you start by defining time and then energy and then you get to money, then you’re like, all right, this is what I’m willing to put in the business. And this is not about being unrealistic. Everything about this is practical real world. So this isn’t, oh, life profit means that I work for an hour a week and then I’m on the beach the whole time. No, I actually like to work. So life profit is about defining what does this business look like where I could just do it for the next 20 or 30 years or whatever the timetable is, but let’s define a business that actually gives me what I want.

Maybe it’s six hours a day, maybe it’s just not 12 hours a day, but it’s eight hours a day and that’s the first milestone and then we might progress from there, but life profit is having a very clear target across those three currencies, time, energy, and money so that when I go to make decisions in the business, I make decisions that will actually align to what I want out of the business rather than just making decisions based on whatever info I have inside the business. The business’s first and most important job is to deliver the return to the business owner that the business owner wants. The second job is to go get clients and make them happy and deliver value so that the business can do the first job, which is to deliver the return to the business owner. But most entrepreneurs are so fixated and focused on their clients, which is not a bad thing. I’m making it sound like it’s a bad thing. It’s not. It’s just secondary to the fact that the business has a job which is to return value to the business owner. And if it’s not, it’s a failing business. No matter how much money you’re making or how happy your clients are, it’s a failing business because it’s not doing its intended purpose.

Yeah, I love that. I think you and I are in complete agreement about this, and actually in my own personal situation, something I don’t talk about a lot on this podcast is that I’m a sole parent. So unfortunately my wife left the planet a few years ago, if you understand what I mean by that. And I knew it was going to happen. She was quite badly ill for a while. And so I knew for a long time I was going to be a sole parent to my daughter who’s now 14, and actually I’m a better business owner today because of that. Because I looked and it was the very early days of the business hub now and looked at it and said, right, how much money do I need to live a lifestyle I want? But how many hours do I want to work?

And I work 20 to 30 hours a week, and it’s around this week. We’re recording this in July, although it’s not going out till later in the year and this week it’s been the end of school. So I’ve been to a sports event, a concert, an award ceremony, another award ceremony for an acting class. There was something else, and the business hasn’t fallen over. I haven’t worked evenings. I’m not going to have to work weekends because actually it was designed that way from the very beginning, which is easy if you can design it that way. But here’s my next question for you, Brad. For the vast majority of people listening to this or watching this, they’re trapped. And there’s a great phrase, and I think it’s in the four hour work week, which is an interesting book to read by Tim Ferris. I say interesting because there’s some crazy stuff in there, but there’s some good stuff in there as well.

And I think it was Tim Ferris who came up with the phrase that most business owners create a prison of their own design and lock themselves inside. And it is just an interesting way of saying the exact same concept you were talking about there. If you are in that position right now, so you are working 60, 70, 80 hour weeks, and this will be lots of MSPs because it’s a very reactive type of business and your job is to be there and fix other people’s problems. So if you’re working all those hours and there’s not quite enough money for you to hire even more resource, and you might have maybe a couple of technicians, but we all know that you hire someone for 40 hours, you don’t get 40 hours, you get 30 hours and you have to spend some time on that. And if it just feels like everything is difficult and hearing you talking about what you do with your business and I do with mine, seems like something cool for the future, but how would I do that now? What are the first steps that you would take to get going on that right path?

Yeah, I think that’s a great question. So the very first thing is you have to get really clear on the baseline currencies that you actually need. The reason why we feel trapped is because we look at okay, time. I’m already putting in X amount of time and I have to have this much money, and so if I go hire somebody else, I’m not going to have this much money, which I’m telling myself I have to have. And that might be the case. A lot of times it’s not the case. You’re actually making more money than you need, and so you can make an investment. And then the other thing that we don’t consider is, well, if I went and got somebody else, we don’t consider the investment that’s going to become available because I’m actually going to free up my time to be able to go do something more.

So the fact of the matter is at the end of the day, what nobody can escape is the only currencies we have are time, energy, and money. And so if I’m in a position where I’ve got a 70 or 80 hour work week and I’m barely making enough money for things to go along and I’m doing things in the business, I don’t want the first thing I’m going to do, so I’m clear on what the problem is, is I’m going to make a list of all the things that I’m doing that I don’t want to do, that I don’t need to do, that I could probably find somebody else to do so that I have a target, I have a target of target of the problem of what I’m trying to get rid of. I’m going to look at those things and the first thing I’m going to ask is, do I even need to be doing them?

Because a lot of times there’s stuff that’s like, Hey, I’m doing this, but if it’s not moving the needle for then you can just stop doing it. Kind of like when me and my business partner are like, what if we just didn’t try to double our business? There will inevitably be things that you are spending time on that are not actually moving you toward what your goal is. You got to stop those. And so that should give you some time back. The next thing that I’m going to be looking at is what are things not that I’m just going to stop doing, but what are things that I can give to either somebody else on my team or I can actually hire an outsourced assistant or I can hire somebody because if I take some of that money and I give it to somebody else to do these things and take it off my plate, it gives me back time.

It doesn’t mean now that I’m not working, it means that I’m going to work that time in a way that it produces a greater investment of income and revenue so that I can pay for the people, I can do higher value activities inside the business. So I’m going to look at activities that are taking on my time and I’m going to figure out which ones just need to be cut, period, which ones can I start to shift over so that my time starts to balance out on the money side, if your entire team is so strapped and you’re so strapped that you can barely get by based on the things that you’re selling, then we might need to look at some pricing or we might need to upgrade some sales skills so that we can close more. Either your capacity is tapped. So I’m just going through what are the elements that are going to free up time, energy, or money?

And at the end of the day, if you’ve created a business model, so this is where we start to get into the business, but if you’ve created a business model where there is literally no extra time and there’s no way you can charge more money for the thing that you do and you’re tapped out in terms of everything, then your business model is broken. You have chosen to sell something at a price point that you can’t actually staff to deliver in a way that that business will give you the life that you want. Other people have figured out how to do your same business differently. So we’ve got to go look at the different elements of the different pieces. So as I start to look at it, it would be first, what’s the target of what I want to get to That would be an acceptable next step.

Time, energy, money. I want a clear target and I want to make sure that I’m being realistic in those so that I’m not telling myself I need to make $250,000 where if I need to step back to rearrange this business, I could actually trim down to a hundred grand so that I could reorganise my business. And it might mean that temporarily I changed some of my living conditions or I changed some of my lifestyle because I went down a path and that path is a dead end, so I’ve got to come back so that I can go down a path that I want. Quick story to illustrate this, I’ve done this by the way multiple times in my businesses, but one of them, we got to a point where we were doing about $3 million in our coaching business a year and it sucked. I hated it because I was traveling two or three times a week to speak.

I wasn’t around for my family. When I went to travel, I would get people to sign up and buy stuff from us. I didn’t make any more money of that. It was just going to cover the cost of the team. I’m literally spending crazy amounts of time doing all this stuff. How do we shift this? I got a team of, I dunno, probably 12 or 15, and essentially the P and L’s like, Hey, we made 3 million and then we spent 3 million. That’s basically what it ended up being. And I had this epiphany, which was I think I was driving to or from work at this epiphany was like, you know what I’m doing right now? It’s like I’m wearing a large T-shirt, actually like an extra large T-shirt, but really I should be wearing a medium sized t-shirt, and my solution is I’m going to go to the gym and I’m going to work out four times a day and I’m going to pound a bunch of calories so I can get swell to fit into this extra large and what I actually needed to do, just click like, or you could just go buy a medium sized another option and then it immediately fits.

And in that business, this was a tough decision. However, in that business, we went from $250,000, like $246,000 in one month in expenses to 90 days later it was 86.6. I was like, all right, we are trimming. We are cutting this thing down because it doesn’t matter what the revenue number is if this business is not giving me the return that I want and if it’s running me ragged. So I would rather sacrifice the extra $2 million in revenue that I’m not actually getting any benefit from to come back down to our business works at a million dollars in revenue and we take out all these expenses, we get trimmed right here, and then we can rebuild it the right way. So something will have to give. If you have no time and there’s nothing else you can sell and you can’t charge more money and nobody has any more time to take out more clients, then the hard truth is your business model is broken and it needs to be re-engineered. And we have to go back and look at how do we make the math work so that we can make enough money and have enough time in order to actually have this business be something that we want.

I love the T-shirts story. I think that’s such a great thing. And what we’re talking about here is making the step and it’s not a leap. I was about to say leap, but it’s not a leap. It’s the step from being a business owner to being an entrepreneur and rolling backwards in order to go forwards is it’s something that feels wrong. And I think society and just general expectations of you and your business expect you to be constantly growing and moving forward, but actually sometimes taking that backward step is the right thing to do.

I did a whole presentation that was called How to Scale Back to Scale Up, and it was basically my story. It’s like, this is my story of when I sucked. And then I was like, all right, we’re just going to back up and then we will go at it again. And I think being comfortable with that is a huge thing. There are going to be times where it’s like, I think we’re going to go here. Nope, we’re not going to go here, but I can’t jump from here to the next growth step. I got to come back and then I got to go. Then I keep going up. It’s really, really, it’s an important skillset to develop. It’s like, all right, that’s fine, then that’s what I got to go do.

Even though it hurts. It’s the thing you have to do. Brandon, we’re going to wrap this up, which is such a shame. I could talk to you for hours and hours, but let’s talk about what you’re doing now. And obviously you’ve talked about all these things, all these problems that people have within their business, and obviously we know you’re not doing a coaching company anymore, or certainly not the straight coaching because you rolled that back and you changed it, but what do you do now to help MSPs to become entrepreneurs and not just business owners and what’s the best way for us to get in touch with you?

From a content, the thing that I’m chewing on and creating content and stuff around is this concept I call “smooth scaling”. So I’ve got a YouTube channel where I’m posting stuff and smooth scaling is about how do I manage all the pieces of business that get thrown at me and do it in an organised fashion so that I can build a business that I want rather than just a business that I wake up like, well, crap, this is the one that I have. So if you go find search for Brad Martineau on YouTube, you’ll find the YouTube channel, and then I also have an email newsletter around that, so it’s at smoothscaling.co. That’s the one that you went and signed up for. And what I anticipate will happen in the future is we’ll actually build out some coaching and services around the entire smooth scaling.

Right now, the primary thing we have at Sixth Division is we’re still helping people with one piece of the smooth scaling business, which is their client journey and getting clear on their strategy and then the technology and making their experiences good enough, they convert. So we do a lot of work on that. I imagine that over time we’ll also add in then coaching around the rest of the smooth scaling framework and then also have a software company plus this. So if you’re using any sort of automation tool or platform or CRM or whatever, that’s an add-on software that helps you do a bunch of stuff. Then we’ve started to spin out some other tools. We got one called Tag Genie for you in Infusionsoft. If you want a tool to help organise, keep your tax clean tag genius, like stupid simple tool to do that.

And then we’ve got a couple other things coming out around how to protect your email list and just some different software tools that are coming out. So easiest way to get in contact I would say is go to smoothscaling.co. If you want to get on the email newsletter. If you’re like, I don’t know if I want that yet, then go to the YouTube channel, check some of that stuff out. If you like it, then go get on the email list. And that’s like it’s my entrepreneurial journal of where I dump the things that I’m working on and then how I organise them into systems that are easy to follow is essentially what I’m working on there.

Mentioned links* This podcast is in conjunction with the MSP Marketing Edge, the world’s leading white label content marketing and growth training subscription * Join me in MSP Marketing Facebook group. * Connect with me on LinkedIn * Connect with my guest Brad Martineau on LinkedIn and check out the SmoothScaling website. * Got a question about your MSP’s marketing? Submit one here for Paul’s Personal Peer Group. * Find Brad’s book recommendation here – Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell

Buy Back Your Time: Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire

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The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing EdgeWelcome to Episode 249 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…

How to grade the quality of your MSP’s leads: I encourage you to prioritise leads to focus on prospects truly worth your time. (jump to)

If I suggested you spent 80% of your time marketing your MSP, would you think I was nuts? I believe that to grow your MSP and secure its future, you need to shift your focus from operations to marketing, making it your top priority to attract and convert new clients. (jump to)

Pay per click CAN work for MSPs if it’s part of an overall marketing strategy: My guest this week, Corey Zieman – owner of Guaranteed PPC, explains how effective pay per click advertising can turn your MSP into a powerful client magnet in an evolving digital landscape. (jump to)

The perfect heading for your MSPs website: Lastly, I answer a question from Greg in Melbourne, Australia. He wants advice on what headline to use on his website for maximum impact. (jump to)

Join me as we unpack these topics and learn from some triumphs and trials in the MSP world. Oh, and don’t forget to join me in the MSP Marketing Facebook group.

READ FULL TRANSCRIPT

How to grade the quality of your MSP’s leadsWhen it comes to generating leads for your MSP, not all leads are created equal. It’s easy to get excited about a new prospect, but before you dive in, take a moment to assess whether they’re truly a good fit for your business. Here are three crucial criteria to grade every lead.

1. Opportunity and Urgency: A prospect’s urgency can be a game-changer. Are they locked into a contract with another MSP, or are they desperate for a solution right now? The more urgent their needs, the higher quality the lead. Always ask about their current IT situation and pressing issues – they’ll tell you if they’re ready to move.

2. Fit: Evaluate whether they’re your ideal client. This isn’t just about budget, it’s about working with businesses that align with your strengths and preferences. If you’ve learned anything from experience, it’s that compromising on this leads to regret.

3. Engagement: A prospect who actively engages with you is far more likely to become a valuable client. If you’re doing all the chasing, it’s a red flag. A genuine partnership starts with mutual interest – don’t hesitate to walk away if that’s missing.

Prioritise these factors, and you’ll focus your energy on leads that are truly worth your time.

If I suggested you spent 80% of your time marketing your MSP, would you think I was nuts?Many MSP owners share a common origin story: leaving an unsatisfying job to start their own business, driven by a desire for control over their work, time, and income.

In the early days, you likely faced the struggle of balancing quality with growth, hiring staff, and dealing with the inevitable drop in standards and the relentless demands on your time. As your business matured, the leads that once flowed naturally began to dry up, leaving you wondering where the next client will come from.

The solution? Transform yourself once more – this time from the owner of an MSP to its chief marketer.

Dedicate the majority of your working time to generating new leads, nurturing prospects, and closing deals. Remember, the MSPs that dominate their markets are the ones whose owners prioritise marketing, turning themselves into client magnets. This shift is essential not just for growth, but for achieving the lifestyle and financial rewards you envisioned when you first started your business.

Pay per click CAN work for MSPs if it’s part of an overall marketing strategyMany MSPs have a love-hate relationship with pay per click (PPC) advertising. The allure of paying to get your message in front of potential clients who need help right now is strong, but the reality can be disappointing. Too often, MSPs spend a fortune on PPC campaigns only to see little return. However, as the digital landscape evolves, particularly with AI’s influence, PPC can play a pivotal role in your marketing strategy.

My guest on this episode, Corey Zieman, owner of Guaranteed PPC, argues that PPC, when done correctly, can be the backbone of your lead generation efforts. He emphasises the importance of focusing on the right keywords – those that attract serious business inquiries rather than tyre kickers. Corey also highlights the potential of YouTube as a platform, where creating niche content and leveraging remarketing can keep your MSP top of mind when prospects are ready to switch providers.

For MSPs to succeed with PPC, it’s about more than just setting up ads – it requires ongoing optimisation, smart targeting, and a comprehensive strategy that integrates PPC with broader marketing efforts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz2zpUK2Y2E

FEATURED GUEST:

Corey Zieman, Owner CEO and Senior Strategist at Guaranteed PPC, is a 12-year veteran in the direct response marketing field.

Corey has built and successfully exited multiple eCommerce companies in the aftermarket autoparts market before becoming the VP of Marketing at GetRanked1st marketing agency in Toronto, Canada.

He has also managed over 10 million in paid search spend and generated over 1 million new leads for hundreds of different brands in his career.

Connect with Corey on LinkedIn and check out his website GuaranteedPPC.com

The perfect heading for your MSPs websiteGreg’s MSP in Melbourne, Australia, is facing a common challenge: finding the perfect headline for his website.

The headline on your homepage is crucial – it’s the first thing visitors see, and it only has a couple of seconds to hook them before they bounce away. When done right, it can significantly increase engagement, encouraging potential clients to explore your site and, ultimately, inquire about your services.

For MSPs that have been around for a few years and already have a solid client base, here’s a headline that works wonders: “558 Melbourne Businesses Already Trust Us With Their Technology. You Should Too.”

This headline leverages social proof, showcasing the number of users you currently support. It’s an effective way to convey credibility and trustworthiness right from the start. While that figure might represent users spread across multiple clients, it paints a powerful picture of your reliability and expertise. Just remember to update the number a couple of times a year to keep it accurate.

This simple, yet impactful headline can quickly transform your website’s effectiveness, helping to draw in more potential clients by emphasising the trust others have already placed in your MSP.

Got a question about your MSP’s marketing? Submit one here for Paul’s Personal Peer Group.

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The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing EdgeWelcome to episode 248 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…

3 smart ways to recruit techs: Recruiting top-notch technicians for your MSP can be achieved through building long-term relationships on LinkedIn, creating standout job adverts, and using bold mobile billboard advertising. (jump to)
Worrying kills business owners: Overcome business-related worry by adopting an action-oriented mindset, eliminating negative influences, embracing recurring revenue, systemising marketing, and maintaining work-life balance. (jump to)
The client retention opportunity around email deliverability: My guest, Ben Fielding, and I discuss the significant changes in email deliverability this year and the opportunities for MSPs to enhance client retention and service quality. (jump to)
Plus Paul’s Personal Peer group: There’s a question from Brian from Montreal, who wants to know whether he should take on an apprentice for his MSP. The answer is a resounding yes – find out why… (jump to)

Join me as we unpack these topics and learn from some triumphs and trials in the MSP world. Oh, and don’t forget to join me in the MSP Marketing Facebook group.

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3 smart ways to recruit techsRecruiting top-notch technicians is a common challenge for MSPs, especially in the early stages. The quality of your technicians directly impacts the service you deliver, but finding and hiring them can be daunting. Here are three smart strategies to help you recruit the best talent:

Leverage LinkedIn for long-term recruitment. Spend 10-20 minutes weekly connecting with potential technicians from local companies. Instead of outright job offers, build relationships by sending simple connection requests like, “I run a local MSP and I’m always looking to connect with great technicians in the area.” Over time, nurture these connections through casual conversations, building a network of potential hires.
Stand out with creative job adverts. In a sea of similar postings, making your ad unique is crucial. An unconventional approach like reverse psychology can be effective. Craft a headline such as “You don’t want to work for us,” and list reasons someone might not want the job. This intriguing approach can attract candidates who appreciate your company’s culture and challenges.
Lastly, go bold with mobile billboard advertising. Hire a truck with a giant poster targeting technicians at a big local company. A message like, “If you’re not happy working at [Company], we are hiring technicians right now,” can catch the eye of a dissatisfied employee looking for a change.

These strategies, though unconventional, can help you build a pipeline of talented technicians, ensuring your MSP continues to grow and provide top-tier service.

Worrying kills business ownersLying awake at night worrying about your business is a familiar scenario for many MSP owners. Whether it’s concerns about clients, cash flow, or staff, worry can be a silent killer. I know this first-hand. Back in 2005, when I ran a healthcare marketing agency, worry dominated my nights.

Every client complaint became a personal crisis, and the birth of my daughter in 2010 only intensified my anxiety. Reaching a breaking point, I made a conscious decision to change my mindset and overcome my worries. Here are five strategies that worked for me and might help you too.

Adopt an action-oriented mindset. Address issues promptly and decisively to prevent them from lingering and causing stress.
Say goodbye to troublesome clients, suppliers, or team members. Life’s too short to deal with constant negativity.
Embrace recurring revenue for predictable cash flow and peace of mind.
Refine your marketing skills and systemise your efforts to create a stable and predictable business environment.
Finally, introduce balance and rest into your life. Stop working weekends, take proper breaks, and enjoy simple pleasures.

Mental health is crucial, and it’s encouraging that more people are discussing its impact on business owners. If you’re worried about your MSP, know that you’re not alone. Implement these strategies to reduce worry and sleep better at night.

The client retention opportunity around email deliverabilityThis year, significant changes in email deliverability present a dual opportunity for MSPs: a new service offering and a chance to enhance client retention and service quality.

I spoke with Ben Fielding, an email delivery expert, to explore these opportunities. Ben’s journey from graphic design to running an MSP, and now focusing on email deliverability, underscores his deep understanding of the field.

Ben explains that recent changes by Yahoo and Google have shifted their approach to enforcing long-standing email standards like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Many MSPs are addressing these changes by implementing DMARC monitoring tools and securing their clients’ emails. However, merely setting up DMARC without thorough analysis can cause unforeseen issues for clients, such as blocking legitimate emails from less obvious sources like marketing tools or third-party apps.

Ben emphasises the importance of analysing DMARC reports comprehensively, considering all email-sending sources, and transitioning from a purely technical service to a true business partnership with clients. This proactive approach not only secures email deliverability but also strengthens client relationships.

FEATURED GUEST:

Ben Fielding is a seasoned technology strategist and email delivery expert with over three decades of experience in email systems and two decades as an IT leader.

As the Director of Quinset and the Head of Client Solutions at Nxt Gen IT, Ben leverages his extensive knowledge to help businesses thrive through long-term IT strategies.

A former MSP owner, Ben’s hands-on approach and deep industry insights make him a trusted advisor for companies seeking to optimise their technology infrastructure and achieve sustainable growth.

As a self-confessed “email geek”, Ben has stayed at the bleeding edge of email deliverability for several years.

Connect with Ben on LinkedIn and check out his website https://nxtgenit.co.uk/

Should MSPs consider hiring an apprentice?Brian from Montreal is at a crossroads with his new MSP and reached out with a pressing question: should he take on an apprentice? The answer is a resounding yes, 1000%. Here’s why.

In the UK, apprenticeships allow businesses to legally hire at lower wages while offering on-the-job training. It’s not just cheap labour, it’s a legitimate and beneficial scheme. Many MSPs find value in this approach, moulding young technicians into ideal team members without the baggage of previous employment.

Hiring an apprentice offers an extended job interview, spanning one to two years. This period lets you evaluate their fit for your company without any long-term commitment unless you choose to keep them. Even if your region doesn’t have a formal apprenticeship scheme, any similar program can be incredibly advantageous. So Brian, dive in and bring on an apprentice. It’s a move that promises substantial rewards for your growing business.

Got a question about your MSP’s marketing? Submit one here for Paul’s Personal Peer Group.

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The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing EdgeWelcome to episode 247 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP.

In this episode I share how successful MSP owners debunk the 60-hour work week myth, proving that working around 30 hours per week promotes better health, stronger relationships, and strategic business growth. (jump to)

I also discuss why taking a proper break to reflect on key strategic questions can provide clarity and focus, enabling you to achieve your business goals for the rest of 2024. (jump to)

My guest this week, Jane Matthews of World Cat Careers, highlights the importance of strong employee branding for MSPs, emphasising that a well-crafted employee value proposition is key to attracting and retaining top tech talent. (jump to)

Lastly, I answer a question from Chris who runs an MSP in the south of England. He wants to know how to reward a high performing team member so they feel appreciated. Personalised rewards that are tailored to employees’ interests and needs are often more impactful than cash bonuses, enhancing motivation and loyalty. (jump to)

Join me as we unpack these topics and learn from some triumphs and trials in the MSP world. Oh, and don’t forget to join me in the MSP Marketing Facebook group.

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The 60 hour work myth kills MSPsIf you’re ending your work week exhausted, barely able to crack open a beer and stare at the TV, it’s time for a change. This relentless pace isn’t sustainable. Contrary to popular belief, the most successful MSP owners don’t work 60-hour weeks. In fact, they work significantly less.

The 60-hour myth suggests that to be a successful business owner, one must work these gruelling hours indefinitely. While it’s true that the early stages of starting a business often require extra hours, this should not be a permanent state.

Starting your MSP is exhilarating. You’re taking control of your income, your time, and the type of work you do. In the beginning, putting in 60 hours a week might be necessary and even enjoyable. However, when this habit extends into years, it becomes detrimental. Many MSPs, even with million-dollar turnovers, continue to grind out these hours, believing it’s the hallmark of success. It’s not.

Successful business owners actually work around 30 hours a week. Constantly working 60-hour weeks poses significant risks to your health, your family life and your relationships with loved ones. Additionally, overworking negatively impacts your staff, clients, and the business itself. It stifles strategic thinking and decision-making, which require time and mental space.

Shifting to a 30-hour work week allows you to make more thoughtful decisions, delegate effectively, and focus on growth. Successful MSP owners I’ve interviewed consistently work fewer hours and achieve more. Embracing this approach will help you work smarter, not harder, and drive your business forward.

3 simple questions to max out the rest of 2024Taking a real break is something we all need. Imagine stepping away from the daily grind, basking in the sun, and genuinely recharging. It’s more than a luxury; it’s a necessity.

A proper break allows you to escape the minutiae that gradually wear you down, giving your mind the space to ponder strategic questions.

During your time off, consider these three pivotal questions:

What do you want more than anything else from your MSP in the rest of 2024?
To achieve that, what must you do less of?
And lastly, what must you do more of?

These questions are simple but profoundly powerful. Reflect on them every few months to gain clarity on your goals and the steps to achieve them.Once your break ends and you return to the office, don’t just let these insights gather dust. Spend your first 48 hours back clearing up clutter and catching up. Then, shift your focus to implementing the actions necessary to grow your business.

With the right focus and dedication, no matter how ambitious your goals are for the rest of the year, you can achieve them. Remember, clarity and action are your best allies.

Why techs don’t want to work for you – and how to fix thatI’m joined by Jane Matthews, the managing director of World Cat Careers, an award-winning specialist in MSP technical recruitment.

Jane enlightens us on the crucial concept of employee branding and its profound impact on attracting and retaining top tech talent. She explains that a strong employee value proposition (EVP) encompasses compensation, work-life balance, job stability, location, and respect within the company culture.

Jane emphasises that MSPs, especially smaller ones, must effectively market themselves to prospective employees. This involves showcasing their unique values and benefits through career sites and social media, creating an appealing narrative about the work environment.

The recruitment process is akin to marketing – it’s about selling the company’s culture and benefits to attract not only active job seekers but also passive talent. In today’s competitive market, flexibility, personal development opportunities, and health insurance are key elements tech professionals seek.

Jane’s insights provide a comprehensive checklist for MSPs to enhance their employee branding and, consequently, their recruitment success. For those struggling to navigate these waters, partnering with knowledgeable recruiters can be a game-changer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYfoeHyuJcQ

FEATURED GUEST:

Jane Matthews, the Managing Director of Wildcat Careers, a leading specialist in MSP technical recruitment and career consultancy.

Under Jane’s leadership, Wildcat Careers has achieved remarkable success, winning several prestigious awards over the last two and a half years, including the title of Best IT and Cyber Recruitment Firm 2024.

Jane brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in helping MSPs build high-performing teams through strategic recruitment solutions.

Connect with Jane on LinkedIn and check out Wildcat Careers website.

How to effectively reward a high-performing team memberChris who runs an MSP in the south of England wants to know how to effectively reward a high-performing team member whose performance has started to dip.

While cash bonuses are a straightforward option, they often lack long-term impact. Instead, consider more personalised rewards.

For example, in a previous role, I gifted a luxury bottle of vodka to a young writer who appreciated it but later switched to home-goods gift cards as her needs changed.

Another creative example came from a business owner who rewarded a Formula One fan with Grand Prix tickets, resulting in the employee’s best performance yet.

Personalised rewards not only show genuine appreciation but also strengthen employee loyalty and motivation. The key is to make the reward memorable and meaningful, making your team members feel truly valued and understood.

Got a question about your MSP’s marketing? Submit one here for Paul’s Personal Peer Group.

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The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing EdgeWelcome to this week’s episode of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP.

In this episode I explain why it’s so important to lead by example in your MSP, as your team’s behaviour will mirror your actions more than your words. (jump to)

I also share a story of an MSP owner who successfully took a three-week break by properly resourcing his team, implementing clear systems, and maintaining visibility, proving his business could thrive without his constant presence. (jump to)

My guest this week, Alex Harvey – an MSP owner in Norwich, England – shared that he wished he had outsourced tasks, hired sooner, and set client minimums earlier to better focus on growth and profitability. (jump to)

Lastly, I take on a question from Jerome in NYC. He wants to know how to effectively break into a vertical. The answer – start with a dedicated page on your existing website to show your expertise and then create a separate site once you gain traction. (jump to)

Join me as we unpack these topics and learn from some triumphs and trials in the MSP world. Oh, and don’t forget to join me in the MSP Marketing Facebook group.

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As the MSP leader, actions beat wordsHave you ever noticed how children imitate what you do more than what you say? It’s an interesting quirk of parenting, and it’s the same with your staff. The culture of your MSP is shaped far more by your actions than your words.

Take my friend Dave, for instance. He spent hours venting about his boss’s contradictory behaviour. His boss insisted on cutting costs and being frugal but then flaunted a brand-new boat he bought over the weekend. This sent the wrong message to the team. Instead of feeling appreciated, they saw their cost-saving efforts as a means for the boss’s personal luxury. This not only demoralised the team but also sparked resentment.

Another example involves an MSP owner, Boris, who was eager to grow his business but found marketing dull. His lack of enthusiasm showed during meetings, where he’d often check his phone or get distracted. His marketing coordinator felt undervalued and demotivated because Boris’s actions didn’t align with his words about the importance of marketing.

These stories highlight a crucial lesson: if you want your team to embody certain values, you must lead by example. Whether it’s handling help desk tickets promptly or keeping the office tidy, your actions set the standard. Remember, your team, like your kids, are always watching and learning from you. Show them the behaviours you want to see, and you’ll cultivate a positive and productive culture.

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How to take a 3 week vacation with ZERO CALLS from your MSP’s officeA few years ago, an MSP Marketing Edge member shared his impressive approach to taking a three-week break without being bogged down by work. His trip was both a holiday and a working retreat, yet he only checked emails once a day, avoiding disruptive calls entirely.

Like many MSP owners, he worked hard to free himself from day-to-day clutter, delegating first-line support and administrative tasks to focus on growth. He prepared his business for his absence with three key strategies:

Proper Resourcing: Understanding the weekly workload, he ensured his team had enough resources, including senior technical advice from a non-competing partner MSP.

Clear Systems: Implementing systems, checklists, and standard operating procedures, he minimised chaos and stress. As the saying goes, “SYSTEM: Saves You Stress, Time, Energy, and Money.” Recommended reads: The E-Myth Revisited and The Checklist Manifesto.

Visibility: He maintained peace of mind by checking in via his PSA, avoiding the anxiety that comes with a lack of information.

This experience taught him that his business could thrive without his constant presence, a crucial mindset shift. This approach has helped him create a more enjoyable business, giving him space to think and focus on growth, ultimately retaining his passion and achieving a healthier work-life balance.

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This MSP wishes he’d done these 3 things differentlyI had the pleasure to sit down with Alex Harvey, a young and dynamic MSP owner of Snap IT in Norwich, England. We explored his journey, particularly focusing on three key mistakes he wished he had avoided early in his business.

Firstly, Alex emphasised the importance of outsourcing tasks sooner. Initially, he clung to tasks like bookkeeping and admin, thinking it would save money. However, he realised that delegating these tasks would have allowed him to concentrate on acquiring and serving clients better.

Secondly, he wished he had hired sooner. The fear of financial instability held him back, but hiring early would have pushed him to grow his business more aggressively. The addition of his first hire was a pivotal moment that propelled the business forward.

Lastly, Alex discussed the importance of setting client minimums from the start. Taking on any client with a wallet led to unprofitable and demanding relationships. Establishing minimum spending thresholds would have aligned his client base with his business goals, ensuring growth and profitability.

Alex’s insights are invaluable for any MSP owner, highlighting the importance of strategic delegation, timely hiring, and selective client acquisition to foster a thriving and sustainable business.

For helpful reading on getting ahead with running your MSP, check out 10x Is Easier Than 2x and Who Not How both by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy.

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FEATURED GUEST:

Alex Harvey is a Senior Consultant at Snap IT, an MSP based in Norwich, England. He began his journey as a contractor for the NHS (National Health Service) in the UK doing network management and moved onto a variety of IT manager roles before starting his MSP in 2019.

Alex prides himself on helping a lot of people not launch their computers out the window He also works as a third party consultant for Halo PSA and helps other MSP get the most out of their PSA investment.

Connect with Alex on LinkedIn

Do I need a new website to break into a vertical?This week I was asked a fantastic question by Jerome in New York City. His MSP is six years old, and he’s curious if he needs a new website to break into a vertical.

The short answer is yes, and the long answer is no.

If you’re serious about breaking into a vertical, your marketing must demonstrate a deep understanding of that sector’s needs, wants, and fears. They need to see you as a specialist in their field, and a dedicated website can achieve this. It allows you to tailor your content, showcase relevant social proof, and make everything highly relevant to their business, leading to better marketing results.

However, don’t let the lack of a new website delay your plans. If it takes months to create a new site, start with a vertical-specific page on your existing website. This way, you can begin targeting the vertical immediately. Once you see traction, then you can invest in a dedicated vertical website. In fact, in my previous business, I ran three separate websites for different verticals, which established us as experts without diluting our marketing message.

Got a question about your MSP’s marketing? Submit one here for Paul’s Personal Peer Group.

Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork

10x Is Easier Than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less

The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

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The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge

Welcome to this week’s episode of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP.

In this episode I encourage you to assess your prospects to ensure they are the right fit for your MSP. Assess their value appreciation, willingness to follow advice and pay fairly, dependence on technology, and timely payment habits. (jump to)

I also explain why effectively converting leads into loyal clients requires persistent follow-up, strategic long-term engagement, and thoughtful touches. Follow up until they buy, die, or say bye-bye. (jump to)

I’m joined by Damien Harrison, Director of Operations at Bondgate IT. We discuss how hiring an operations director and prioritising relationship-building over immediate sales can significantly elevate your MSP’s growth and client satisfaction. (jump to)

Lastly, I answer a question from Alex who runs an MSP in Georgia. He wants to know how to maintain client trust and growth when outsourcing his MSP’s help desk overseas. (jump to)

Join me as we unpack these topics and learn from some triumphs and trials in the MSP world. Oh, and don’t forget to join me in the MSP Marketing Facebook group.

READ FULL TRANSCRIPT

You sure that prospect’s a great fit for your MSP?Turning a lead into a prospect is exciting, but how do you know if they’re truly a great fit for your MSP? Here are five ways to measure their potential:

Value Appreciation: top prospects understand the value of your services. They see you as an investment in their business, not just a fixer of problems. They know you’re essential for their growth.

Willingness to Follow Advice: good clients follow your strategic advice. If they see your value, they’ll be more inclined to trust and implement your recommendations.

Willingness to Pay: quality clients are happy to pay a fair price for your services. They understand that good service costs money and they don’t haggle. This reflects their understanding of the value you provide.

Dependence on Technology: ideal clients rely heavily on technology. They recognise it as a growth lever and are willing to invest in IT to enhance their business.

Timely Payments: reliable clients pay their bills on time. This shows respect for your services and a commitment to maintaining a strong relationship.

Assess prospects using these criteria to ensure a strong, productive partnership.

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A new lead has tons of value until one of these 3 things happensLead generation can be challenging for MSPs, but treating leads as disposable is a mistake. Understanding the journey from suspects to leads, then prospects, opportunities, and finally, clients, helps tailor your approach.

Follow-up. Follow-up. Follow up. A robust sales system ensures you reconnect, especially when prospects aren’t ready immediately. Long-term engagement ensures leads don’t expire quickly. Persistence pays off, sometimes after many years. Follow up until they buy, die, or say bye-bye.

Use LinkedIn to connect and engage regularly by posting content, commenting on their posts, and sharing relevant information. Add leads to your email and snail mail lists – send weekly educational emails and monthly newsletters. Call biannually, run targeted marketing campaigns, host events, and remember to send unique touches like Christmas cards in March.

By embedding these strategies into your MSP, you ensure that no lead is wasted, transforming potential clients into loyal, long-term partners. Remember, persistence and thoughtful engagement are key to converting leads.

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Removing your worries about hiring an operations person, to free up your personal timeRunning an MSP is a juggling act – balancing business growth, client satisfaction, and employee retention. Once you surpass a handful of staff, consider hiring an operations director to handle daily details, freeing you to focus on strategic growth.

Damien Harrison, Director of Operations at Bondgate IT, highlights the crucial role of operations directors in MSPs. An operations director manages the customer journey from sales to support, ensuring seamless transitions and high-quality service. This role allows the business leader to concentrate on strategic objectives and enjoy more personal time.

Damien also stressed the importance of nurturing relationships before selling. Many MSPs make the mistake of rushing to close deals without building trust. He suggests attending networking events consistently, engaging with prospects, and valuing personal interactions over digital ones.

To sum up, integrating an operations director can elevate your business, and prioritising relationship-building over immediate sales can lead to long-term success.

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FEATURED GUEST:

Damien Harrison is a seasoned IT professional with over two decades of experience in the industry. As the Director of Operations and overseer of the Technical Support team at Bondgate IT, Damien is known for his strategic vision and hands-on approach.

He has a rich background working in the public sector and as Head of IT for a major third sector charity. His expertise lies in ensuring compliance, enhancing client satisfaction, and fulfilling unique support requirements.

Damien’s leadership style is characterised by his commitment to fostering innovation, maintaining robust cybersecurity, and building resilient IT infrastructures. Passionate about continuous improvement and community engagement, Damien is dedicated to helping organisations navigate the complexities of modern IT landscapes.

Connect with Damien on LinkedIn

How do I tell my clients we’re outsourcing the helpdesk overseas?This week we have a combined marketing and business growth question from Alex who runs an MSP in Georgia. He is concerned about the impact on his client relationships when he outsources the help desk overseas.

When outsourcing your MSP’s help desk overseas, it’s crucial to handle client communications thoughtfully to maintain trust and growth potential. Here are three strategies:

Selective Disclosure: if you’re only outsourcing ticket handling and live chat, while keeping phone support local, you might opt not to inform clients. This minimises potential concerns as most clients won’t notice the change.

New Client Transparency: be upfront with new clients about your outsourcing from the start. This sets clear expectations and avoids any surprises, maintaining trust from the outset.

Use Analogies: explain outsourcing with relatable comparisons. For instance, liken it to a car mechanic. Just as a master mechanic focuses on complex repairs rather than routine tasks like spark plug changes, your skilled technicians are freed up for crucial work by outsourcing basic help desk tasks. This approach highlights efficiency and dedication to quality service, reassuring clients about the benefits of your decision.

Got a question about your MSP’s marketing? Submit one here for Paul’s Personal Peer Group.

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The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing EdgeWelcome to this week’s episode of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP.

In this episode I urge MSPs to collect social proof promptly when clients are most satisfied, as its impact diminishes over time. (jump to)

I also explain how you can generate endless marketing content ideas by engaging in relevant conversations – jotting down quick, digestible topics, and spreading them out over the year for varied and engaging material. (jump to)

My guest, Ryan Robinett, shares his innovative sales approach for MSPs, which involves presenting your business first to build credibility and differentiate yourself before asking questions, ensuring a structured and engaging conversation with prospects. (jump to)

Lastly, I answer a question from Seb, an MSP owner in Colorado, who struggles to find the time to do marketing. Prioritising marketing is essential for business growth and achieving the lifestyle benefits that inspired you to start your business. (jump to)

Join me as we unpack these topics and learn from some triumphs and trials in the MSP world. Oh, and don’t forget to join me in the MSP Marketing Facebook group.

READ FULL TRANSCRIPT

The 3 perfect times to ask for a reviewSocial proof, in the form of case studies, testimonials, and reviews, is one of your most potent marketing tools. Nothing sways leads and prospects quite like the experiences of people similar to them. Therefore, consistently gathering social proof is crucial. This process needs urgency because social proof loses its effectiveness over time.

Here’s a real-life example: over the past 18 months, I experienced a major house refurbishment, culminating just before last Christmas. This period was filled with frustrations, especially with the builders who left small but essential details unfinished. Recently, I had to hire handymen to address these lingering issues.

One significant task was ensuring the safety of our log burner, which the builders had reinstalled. I had an expert assess and correct the installation, making it safe and more energy-efficient. The work was excellent, and I offered to leave a positive review. However, the contractor never sent the review link, and my enthusiasm waned over four weeks. Minor issues, like a mark on the rug and a tiny scratch on the fireplace, further diminished my satisfaction.

This highlights why you must collect testimonials or reviews when clients are happiest. For MSPs, optimal times include immediately after solving a longstanding issue, completing a major project, or during the honeymoon phase with a new client. Systemising this process ensures you capture fresh and powerful social proof, maximising its impact before it degrades.

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How to generate more marketing content ideas than you could ever useMarketing content ideas can sometimes feel elusive, especially for MSPs new to serious marketing efforts. I’ve got a straightforward method to generate a limitless supply of ideas, perfect for blog articles, social media posts, or short videos.

First, remember that when it comes to content, less is more. While there’s value in comprehensive guides for SEO, the ideas we’re focusing on are small, digestible topics. These can be explained in ways that are easy for anyone to understand.

Here’s a practical example: last summer, during a Zoom call with John, an MSP I regularly chat with, I mentioned my laptop had been stolen in a bar. That conversation sparked a wealth of content ideas like, “Top tips for keeping your laptop safe while traveling” and “Can you wipe your laptop remotely?”.

These ideas emerged from a brief chat, showing the power of relevant conversations in sparking content ideas. Always jot down these ideas and spread them throughout the year to keep your content varied and engaging. This habit ensures a steady flow of fresh content ideas, ready to boost your marketing efforts.

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How to create a repeatable sales processLet’s dive into the world of systemising sales with my podcast guest, Ryan Robinett, founder of askmultiply.com. Ryan’s unconventional approach, which involves telling prospects about your business before asking questions about theirs, stands in stark contrast to traditional sales advice.

Ryan emphasises that sales should be systematic and repeatable. His approach involves building a structured sales message that highlights your company’s strengths and addresses common customer problems before asking questions. This method ensures prospects understand who you are and what you offer, making them more likely to engage meaningfully.

By eliminating assumptions and controlling the conversation, Ryan’s method makes it easier for MSPs to differentiate themselves and build credibility. This structured approach not only simplifies the sales process but also ensures consistent, intentional interactions with prospects. These insights offer a fresh perspective on sales, particularly for MSPs looking to streamline their processes and enhance their sales effectiveness.

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FEATURED GUEST:

Ryan Robinett, is a “career consultant” with experience at global and regional companies, founded askmultiply.com in 2018. After graduating from Auburn University, Ryan joined Accenture and later moved to a Birmingham-based IT professional services firm. There, he helped establish processes for predictable project outcomes, technical staff development, and revenue generation, leading to the company’s acquisition by a global player.

Driven by his passion for building, Ryan founded Multiply, which formalised these processes into a comprehensive playbook and SaaS platform. Multiply’s approach has salespeople driving conversations with predefined messages, ensuring predictable responses and outcomes, moving away from traditional sales dependency on personality and spontaneous questions.

Connect with Ryan on LinkedIn

Prioritising marketing is the key to business growthSeb, an MSP owner in Colorado, finds himself in a common dilemma. Despite running a well-established business for seven years, his growth has plateaued, and he recognises that marketing is essential. His question: “How do I find the time to do marketing when I’m too busy?”

The solution isn’t about finding time; it’s about prioritising marketing. Reflect on why you started your business – likely for control over your work and personal income, and to enjoy a better lifestyle. To achieve this, you need both cash and time. As your business grows, invest in resources to handle tasks, freeing you up to focus on high-impact activities like marketing.

When you say you don’t have time for marketing, you’re essentially saying you don’t have time to grow your business or improve your lifestyle. The most successful entrepreneurs cut through the clutter and prioritise essential tasks. Remember the acronym DOA: Delegate, Outsource, Automate. Apply this to your marketing efforts and reclaim your time.

Got a question about your MSP’s marketing? Submit one here for Paul’s Personal Peer Group.

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The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing EdgeWelcome to this week’s episode of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP.

In this episode I share how you can boost your hardware sales by offering a free second monitor to a visible employee, sparking office-wide interest and demand for upgrades. (jump to)

I also question whether your MSP’s marketing machine generates leads effectively. It’s helpful to track key metrics like LinkedIn connections, email CRM additions, open rates, follow-up calls, and sales appointments to identify and fix any issues in the process. (jump to)

My guest this week is search engine optimisation (SEO) expert, Raj Khera. He explains that mastering SEO for MSPs involves focusing on local search terms, leveraging AI tools for content creation, and staying updated with trends to boost visibility and attract targeted traffic. (jump to)

Lastly, I answer a question from Adam, who runs an MSP in London. He wants to know how to define his MSP’s target audience. My advice is to define your current client base, consider who you don’t want to work with, and trust your instincts to attract clients that align with your expertise and business goals. (jump to)

Join me as we unpack these topics and learn from some triumphs and trials in the MSP world. Oh, and don’t forget to join me in the MSP Marketing Facebook group.

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Sacrifice one monitor to sell more hardwareI’ve discovered a clever sales tactic that can have your existing clients clamouring for new hardware. All it takes is a spare monitor and a little ingenuity. Credit for this idea goes to an ingenious MSP I work with, who has seen a significant increase in hardware sales using this method. Here’s how it works:

When visiting a client site, bring a spare monitor along. Identify a highly visible employee, like the receptionist, who everyone in the office interacts with daily. Engage them in conversation, inquire about any tech issues (without fixing them yourself), and then introduce the concept of dual monitors. Highlight the productivity benefits and offer to set up the second monitor for free.

Once the receptionist starts using two monitors, it won’t take long for other employees to notice and envy the setup. The sight of the receptionist’s dual monitors will spark conversations and interest across the office. Soon, the decision-makers will be calling, eager to equip their team with the same setup.

This free trial not only promotes the benefits of dual monitors but also opens the door for selling additional hardware like docking stations, keyboards, and new laptops. Remember, people are more likely to buy when they want something, not just when they need it. Give it a try and watch your hardware sales soar.

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How to fix a marketing machine that’s not producing leadsOne major theme of my MSP marketing podcast and YouTube videos is the importance of building a marketing machine that consistently generates leads. But what do you do if your machine isn’t delivering the leads you need?

Let’s dive into a recent story: an MSP had built a fully functioning marketing machine, complete with multiple audience engagement, content from MSP Marketing Edge, and follow-up calls. Despite all this, he wasn’t getting appointments. I advised him to check every “production station” of his marketing machine and start tracking key weekly stats.

Here are the essential stats to monitor: connection requests on LinkedIn, connection rates, additions to the email CRM, email open rates (aim for at least 20%), follow-up call attempts, decision maker contacts, 15-minute discovery video calls, and full sales appointments. Tracking these will reveal where the process is failing and how to fix it.

Understanding these metrics helps you know exactly how many people you need to engage to secure a sales appointment and ultimately, new clients. It’s about having a strategic, data-driven approach to marketing that ensures every cog in your machine turns smoothly. Do you have a marketing machine for your MSP? If not, it’s time to build one and keep a close eye on these crucial stats to ensure it’s running efficiently.

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Why you’ll never get good traffic for a search term like data backup… until you make one specific tweakSearch engine optimisation (SEO) often feels like a complex and costly venture, especially for MSPs. My guest, Raj Khera, offers some practical advice to demystify SEO.

According to Raj, ranking for broad terms like “data backup” is almost impossible for MSPs due to competition from major vendors. Instead, he suggests focusing on local terms, such as “data backup services” paired with your city or suburb, to increase visibility and attract targeted traffic.

Raj shares insights from his journey from electrical engineering to SEO mastery, where he successfully built and sold three companies through effective SEO strategies. He emphasises the importance of quality content and backlinks, and how AI tools like ChatGPT can simplify content creation. By using ChatGPT to draft articles or even conduct interviews, MSPs can produce engaging content that ranks well on search engines.

Raj highlights the need to stay updated with SEO trends, as Google frequently changes its algorithms. He recommends adding a Google Map to your website’s footer to boost local SEO and using tools for keyword research.

For those seeking deeper knowledge, Raj offers an SEO course tailored specifically for MSPs.

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FEATURED GUEST:

Raj Khera is a 3x Founder and CEO of several SaaS businesses, growing them from start-ups to successful multi-million dollar exits to public companies. He now serves as an SEO and Executive Coach to MSPs and B2B SaaS companies. He is also the publisher of MoreBusiness.com.

Raj is a proven leader for go-to-market strategy and execution, including mapping the customer journey, product research to establish product-market fit, demand generation, and sales and partner enablement to drive revenue and growth.

He is a bestselling author, prolific writer, and frequent guest on podcasts and livestreams. Raj holds M.S. and B.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park and serves on the boards of several companies and non-profits.

He lives in suburban Washington, D.C. where he enjoys his favourite activities of being a dad followed by playing the drums.

Connect with Raj on LinkedIn and check out his website www.morebusiness.com

Defining Your Target AudienceAdam from London asked about defining his MSP’s target audience. This is crucial for creating relevant marketing messages and attracting the right clients. Here’s how to get started:

First, evaluate your current client base. Identify the businesses you enjoy working with and those that are the most profitable. This can give you a clear idea of the types of clients you should target.

Next, consider who you don’t want to work with. For example, avoid industries that demand extensive after-hours support or have complex, outdated systems if those are not your strengths. This helps in refining your focus and ensuring your business aligns with clients that match your expertise and work preferences.

Ultimately, there’s no exact science – trust your instincts. Reflect on your business goals, client interactions, and industry experiences to shape your ideal client profile. Remember, owning a business is challenging enough; aim to work with clients you enjoy and who contribute positively to your business and lifestyle.

Got a question about your MSP’s marketing? Submit one here for Paul’s Personal Peer Group.

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The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing EdgeWelcome to this week’s episode of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP.

In this episode I explain why MSPs should focus on strategic marketing – building long-term relationships with potential clients through consistent, valuable content, rather than relying on ineffective, one-off tactical efforts. (jump to)

I also address the need to look at your marketing from a prospect’s point of view. Focus on understanding and addressing their specific fears, as fear of pain often outweighs the pursuit of gain in their decision-making process. (jump to)

I chat with marketing strategist Ruthie Sterrett, who emphasises the critical role of strategic content marketing for MSPs in building trust and driving sales by addressing audience needs at every stage of the lead-to-client process. (jump to)

Lastly, I tackle a question from Gary, who runs a well-established MSP in South Carolina. He wants to know when and how to raise prices without losing clients. I explain the importance of testing and adjusting prices for new clients regularly, and being transparent with existing clients when raising prices. (jump to)

Join me as we unpack these topics and learn from some triumphs and trials in the MSP world. Oh, and don’t forget to join me in the MSP Marketing Facebook group.

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MSPs who do this kind of marketing will ALWAYS struggleMany MSPs fall into the trap of tactical marketing, which rarely brings the desired results. Let me explain what this is, help you recognise if you’re doing it, and suggest a better approach.

Recently, an MSP owner reached out to me – he’d posted a three-minute video on LinkedIn expecting great engagement but was disappointed with the results. He’d also started sending cold emails to prospective clients. Here’s the problem: tactical marketing like this often fails because it lacks strategy. A single video or cold email is unlikely to engage or convince potential clients, especially when the service you’re offering is complex and critical to their business.

Instead, what I recommend is strategic marketing. This involves building a relationship with your audience over time. Engage with them through consistent, valuable content – be that social media posts, educational emails, or direct mail. Your goal is to stay on their radar until they are ready to buy.

Ask yourself, are you just copying what others do, or do you have a strategic plan? A solid strategy will help you build a lasting relationship with your audience, ensuring you’re the first MSP they think of when they’re ready to make a switch.

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Look at what you sell from the prospect’s point of viewOne of the most powerful marketing superpowers you can develop is seeing your services from the prospect’s point of view. Fear is a surprisingly strong driver for your prospects. They’re more motivated by avoiding pain than seeking gains.

Always keep this in mind when talking to potential clients. Their fears vary based on their roles. Business owners fear mistakes because they hinder progress. Managers fear looking foolish to their bosses. Internal IT managers fear you’ll expose their incompetence or make them look bad.

Tailor your message to your audience’s fears. It’s more complex when factoring in decision makers versus influencers. An internal IT manager might not decide on co-managed IT, but they can block you if their fears aren’t addressed.

Ask open questions to understand three things: what they need, want, and fear. Needs are less critical as they’re brain decisions. Wants are heart decisions, so your marketing should appeal emotionally, showing safety and partnership. Address fears directly to prevent them from blocking a positive buying decision.

Remember, objections are verbal expressions of fear. Welcome them as chances to alleviate those fears. Always answer objections emotionally, because while the brain influences, the heart decides.

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My guest reveals how MSPs can use content to warm up prospectsI had the pleasure of chatting with Ruthie Sterrett, a seasoned marketing strategist and founder of The Consistency Corner. We delve deep into the crucial role of content marketing for MSPs.

Ruthie highlights why content marketing is indispensable, emphasising that creating the right content at each stage of the lead-to-client process can significantly warm up prospects. She shares insights on how MSPs can use content to build relationships, trust, and ultimately drive sales.

For MSPs new to content marketing, she recommends focusing on social media to test and refine messaging before expanding to other channels like email marketing and long-form content. This approach helps avoid the overwhelm often associated with marketing efforts.

Ruthie also points out common mistakes, such as relying too heavily on AI without a clear understanding of the audience’s needs or the importance of the human touch to ensure authenticity and relevance. If you’re an MSP owner looking to enhance your marketing strategy, Ruthie’s insights are invaluable.

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FEATURED GUEST:

Ruthie Sterrett is the Founder and CEO of The Consistency Corner, a full service marketing agency that provides CMO level strategy and done-for-you implementation for service based businesses.

With 15+ years of experience and wins like taking a $20M retail brand to $100M, Ruthie is uniquely qualified to help CEOs take off the marketing hat and get back to leading their company and serving their clients.

She is known for her optimistic and upbeat personality paired with a solution finding growth mindset. In her spare time, Ruthie loves cheering on the Purdue Boilermakers while raising her family in sunny Florida.

Connect with Ruthie on LinkedIn and check out her website https://www.theconsistencycorner.com/

When is the right time to raise your prices?This week’s question comes from Gary, who runs a well-established MSP in South Carolina. Despite being in business for 12 years, Gary asks, “How do I know it’s the right time to put up my prices? I don’t want to lose clients.”

Firstly, pricing for new clients should be flexible. Regularly test and nudge up prices to see what the market can bear. Often, clients are willing to pay more than you think for trustworthy and reliable service.

For existing clients, be cautious. There are two approaches:

Overt Price Increases: Directly raise your prices by a set percentage each year. This is transparent and honest, which clients appreciate.
Covert Price Increases: Introduce additional services with a higher margin. This effectively raises prices without changing the base service cost, as clients see it as added value.

In my opinion, overt price increases are preferable due to their transparency. Clients value honesty and clear communication, which helps maintain trust and loyalty.

Balancing profitability with client retention is crucial. By carefully adjusting prices and maintaining transparency, you can successfully navigate this challenge.

Do you have a question about your MSP’s marketing? Submit one here for Paul’s Personal Peer Group.

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The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing EdgeWelcome to this week’s episode of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP.

In this episode I advise where to focus your MSP’s social media efforts to make the biggest impact. LinkedIn and Facebook will help you reach key decision-makers, while platforms like Instagram and Twitter may only be useful if you’re targeting a niche. (jump to)

I also explain why MSPs should focus on strategic, long-term hiring, and seek short-term solutions for immediate needs. This helps to ensure sustained growth and efficiency. (jump to)

I’m joined by Michael Crean, Senior Vice President of Managed Security Services at SonicWall. We discuss how MSPs can authentically sell more cyber security by educating clients with relatable analogies, emphasising proactive measures, and fostering a partnership focused on long-term protection. (jump to)

Lastly, I answer a question from Graham, an MSP owner in Canada, who wants to know the best website contact option for optimal client engagement. (jump to)

Join me as we unpack these topics and learn from some triumphs and trials in the MSP world. Oh, and don’t forget to join me in the MSP Marketing Facebook group.

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Which are the best social platforms for MSPs?Should your MSP have a presence on TikTok, Instagram, Threads, Twitter (X), and other social platforms? My advice is simple: for most, it’s a big fat no. Stay focused on LinkedIn instead.

Why LinkedIn? It’s where you’ll find business owners and managers – the decision-makers you want to reach. LinkedIn should be your MSP’s primary social media platform. Use your personal profile rather than a business page, aim for at least ten new connection requests daily, post content daily, and engage with others’ posts. And don’t forget your weekly LinkedIn newsletter.

Facebook is a good secondary platform, especially for reaching decision-makers during their downtime and for remarketing ads. Use a personal profile and keep your content more personal than business-focused.

Instagram is useful if you’re targeting consumer-focused businesses like retail or hospitality, as the decision-makers are likely using this platform for their marketing. Other platforms like Twitter (X), TikTok, Threads, Reddit, Discord, Pinterest, and Tumblr have limited value for MSPs, unless you’re targeting a specific niche that uses them heavily.

In essence, don’t spread yourself too thin. Focus your efforts where it counts: LinkedIn and maybe Facebook. Have questions or think I missed something? Drop me an email!

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Why you can’t fly with average staffOne of the biggest challenges for MSPs is finding and retaining the right staff. Hiring the wrong people can significantly limit your business’s growth. It’s essential to focus on finding and keeping the right people to build a thriving business.

Many MSPs make the mistake of hiring quickly to solve immediate problems, only to face long-term issues. You might feel the pressure to fill a position fast, but hasty hiring often leads to bringing on average or subpar team members. This approach limits your business’s potential and adds to your workload.

Instead, slow down your hiring process. Use short-term solutions like freelancers or contractors for immediate needs, allowing you to focus on strategic, long-term hires. This method ensures you hire A-team players who align with your long-term goals and can drive your business forward.

Strategic hiring requires thinking ahead. Consider where you want your business to be in a few years and hire based on those future needs. This approach not only frees up your time but also leads to a more efficient, profitable, and client-satisfying business.

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How to make more money selling security in the most authentic wayMSPs often fear coming across as salesy when offering cyber security services. The challenge is to be seen as a genuine expert rather than just another salesperson. While we understand the critical need for top-tier cyber security, most business owners and managers do not.

My guest today, Michael Crean, shares how to authentically sell more cyber security without resorting to fear, uncertainty, and doubt. He emphasises the importance of educating clients using relatable analogies, like comparing cyber security to proactive safety measures in cars.

Michael suggests viewing cyber security as insurance – not just a purchase, but an essential investment for when things go wrong. The key is to make clients active participants in their own security, much like a doctor advises a patient to take steps for better health.

Michael advises against letting clients opt out of essential security measures. Instead, inspire confidence and trust by demonstrating commitment to their safety. Ultimately, it’s about creating a partnership where both parties work together towards a secure, thriving business environment. By focusing on long-term security and continuous education, MSPs can effectively protect their clients and grow their business authentically.

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FEATURED GUEST:

Michael Crean is Senior Vice President Managed Security Services at SonicWall.

As a results-driven technology leader with a successful background in Networking, infrastructure architecture, design, technical support and cyber resilience, Michael specialises in the development of innovative solutions and services through deep technical understanding and customer empathy.

Michael focuses on building strong relationships to drive success across an organisation and deliver business results for all stakeholders.

Connect with Michael on LinkedIn

Optimising your MSP website contact optionsGot a question about your MSP’s marketing? Submit one here for Paul’s Personal Peer Group.

Graham, an MSP owner in Canada, has posed a vital question: should you use a contact form or provide an email address on your website?

Both options have their drawbacks. Contact forms can leave potential clients wondering if their message was received, while emails can also cause uncertainty about response times.

In 2024, while some clients will call for urgent issues, many prefer other methods like live chat or video calls. The best approach is to offer multiple contact options. Ensure your website includes a contact form, email address, and phone number prominently displayed.

The top recommendation is to integrate a live calendar on your site. This allows potential clients to book an appointment at their convenience, ensuring they know when you’re available. Offering various contact methods ensures clients can choose the one that suits them best, improving their experience and increasing your chances of securing their business.

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The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing EdgeWelcome to this week’s episode of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP.

In this episode I suggest that instead of cold calling, you could approach hot prospects by offering to interview them, creating an easier, more engaging conversation that can lead to valuable business opportunities. (jump to)

I also explain how identifying website visitors allows you to target marketing efforts more effectively and maximise every lead’s potential. (jump to)

My guest this week, Kyle Mealy, helped an MSP achieve a 500% increase in sales efficiency with significantly reduced expenses by focusing on streamlined systems, customer-centric messaging, and optimised resource allocation. (jump to)

Lastly, I tackle a question from Mark in Dallas, who wants to know if SEO (search engine optimisation) is worthwhile for his MSP. (jump to)

Join me as we unpack these topics and learn from some triumphs and trials in the MSP world. Oh, and don’t forget to join me in the MSP Marketing Facebook group.

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How to reach hot prospects other MSPs can’tAre you struggling to reach your hot prospects? Stop trying as an MSP salesperson and use this technique instead.

Back in 2005 when I started my first business, I was cold calling and quickly discovered something disheartening… no one wanted to take my call. Is this your experience with outbound calls? The constant stream of “no” was nightmarish. Just months earlier, as a radio presenter, people were eager to hear from me. What changed? The context.

As a radio presenter, calling people was exciting – they welcomed my calls because I could help them. But as a business owner looking for clients, the reception was cold. This led to a genius idea for reaching dream prospects, which several members of my MSP Marketing Edge program have successfully implemented.

Instead of approaching as a salesperson, ask if you can interview them. This makes the conversation easier. Gatekeepers are less suspicious, decision-makers more willing, and you get quality time talking to your dream prospect about their favourite subject – themselves and their business.

You might wonder, “What am I interviewing them for?” Today, anyone can create content. You could interview them for a LinkedIn newsletter, a blog, a podcast, or a YouTube channel about local business leaders. The audience size doesn’t matter, the showbiz of being interviewed is often exciting enough.

The goal isn’t a great interview but spending quality time with a hot prospect. Afterward, they might say, “That was fun. Let’s talk about our technology needs,” opening the door to engagement. Pretty clever, right? Are you going to try this in your MSP?

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How to know the names of prospects visiting your websiteIf you knew who was visiting your website, you could target marketing efforts more effectively, right?

Many services promise to identify site visitors, but my experience over the years has been underwhelming… until recently. About a decade ago, I got locked into a pricey contract which didn’t deliver. But a few months ago, I decided to revisit these services, and I was pleasantly surprised.

I tried three services and settled on Leadinfo, which I now pay for. It’s worth noting that this is more beneficial if your site gets decent traffic. Leadinfo identifies visitors and shows details like which pages they visited and how often they return. This helps you understand their interests – known as intent data.

You can tag visitors, such as clients, former clients, vendors, irrelevant visitors, and prospects. Currently, my marketing and sales teams can target around 70-80 MSPs who have visited our site but haven’t bought from us yet. Leadinfo provides visitor details, including business names, key players, LinkedIn profiles, and sometimes even financials.

The service integrates with CRMs, allowing you to automate actions like sending emails without seeming intrusive. At around $149 (£120) a month, it’s a small investment for maximising every lead’s potential, especially considering the significant lifetime revenue a hot prospect could bring. Give it a try and let me know how it works for you.

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The MSP that increased sales by 500% at a fifth of the costToday’s big interview is with Kyle Mealy, a small business Chief Revenue Officer, who’s podcast pitch cut through the noise immediately. He promised to share a revenue formula that increased an MSP’s efficiency by 500%, with drastically reduced marketing and sales expenses. Naturally, I was hooked.

Kyle’s journey started in a small business, where he doubled revenue in three years sparking his passion for marketing and sales. At a marketing agency, he helped raise revenue from $3 million to $7 million, working with many small businesses, including MSPs.

He noticed that many B2B businesses, especially MSPs, were overly technical and couldn’t afford full-time marketing and sales leaders. This led to the creation of Next Level, a small business Chief Revenue Officer role, to streamline efforts and drive growth.

In working with an MSP, Kyle introduced the ROASS metric—Return on All Sales and marketing Spend. Initially, their ratio was a poor 1.17. By addressing inefficiencies and reallocating resources, they improved their efficiency to nearly 7.2. This involved cutting underperforming sales team members, revising commission structures, and focusing on customer-centric messaging.

Kyle emphasised thinking like a business owner: focusing on costs, headaches, and safety. They revamped their marketing using email campaigns, LinkedIn outreach, webinars, and updated websites for lead generation. The results? An impressive 500% increase in efficiency and a significant revenue boost.

For MSPs seeking similar growth, Kyle advises understanding and optimising sales and marketing efforts.

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FEATURED GUEST:

A dynamic leader, teacher, and speaker, Kyle Mealy leaps out of bed everyday to unlock the trapped potential in entrepreneurial businesses and their leaders.

Wherever Kyle aims his energy, businesses and people breakthrough to their next level. Kyle’s passion for teaching and speaking allows him to easily hold the attention of thousands while making it feel like it’s just a small circle of friends.

His infectious love of life, self deprecating humour, and gifted storytelling moves his audience to action! His speaking topics are practical lessons and methodologies extracted from helping entrepreneurial businesses and their leaders turn visions into reality.

As a small business Fractional Chief Revenue Officer, Kyle has helped entrepreneurs increase year over year profits by 10x. Over the course of his career, businesses leveraging his knowledge achieve an average of 35% year over year top-line revenue growth.

Kyle lives in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin with his beautiful family including his wife, six-year old daughter and three-year old son. When he’s not being a mad marketing scientist and whiteboarding strategies, he loves to cook for his family and teach his little ones karate. He also runs a non-profit called Second Gear Group.

Connect with Kyle on LinkedIn or visit his website: Next Level Coaching

Is SEO (search engine optimisation) worth it for your MSP’s website?Got a question about your MSP’s marketing? Submit one here for Paul’s Personal Peer Group.

Mark from Dallas, Texas, is approaching the five-year mark with his MSP and is eager to grow efficiently without wasting time. His question: Is SEO worth it for his website?

Great question, Mark. The goal of SEO is to get your MSP to rank higher in search results, ideally on page one, putting you in front of people searching for solutions you offer. While important, SEO is complex and technical. So, yes, you should do some SEO, but it’s not an early priority.

Instead, focus on my three-step marketing system for faster leads in your business’s early years:

Build multiple audiences on platforms like LinkedIn and your email database.
Develop relationships with them through content marketing.
Convert those relationships with outbound calls to find prospects ready to switch MSPs.

Consider SEO as your business matures. Start with improving your Google Business profile, using tools like Semrush to identify issues, and creating original content. If time and expertise are constraints, hiring a trusted expert might be necessary, but be prepared for the investment of time and resources.

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The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing EdgeWelcome to this week’s episode of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP.

In this episode I explain why LinkedIn Newsletters are an essential tool for MSPs to effortlessly engage with a wide audience, build lasting relationships, and keep your services top of mind for potential clients. (jump to)

Balancing urgent client issues with important business growth tasks is crucial for MSPs, and I encourage the use of the Eisenhower Matrix to help prioritise effectively to ensure long-term success. (jump to)

My guest this week, Jon Wright, runs a successful MSP where he has systemised the hiring and managing of Sales Development Reps, to effectively drive new business – click here to find out more. (jump to)

Lastly, I tackle a question from Chloe in Sydney, Australia – she asks whether she should be using the “good, better, best” pricing strategy? This model effectively attracts clients by offering tiered options, making the middle choice seem like the safest and most appealing decision. What are your thoughts? (jump to)

Join me as we unpack these topics and learn from some triumphs and trials in the MSP world. Oh, and don’t forget to join me in the MSP Marketing Facebook group.

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Why you must do a weekly LinkedIn NewsletterLinkedIn is the premier platform for MSPs, and LinkedIn Newsletters are a powerful tool to reach a vast audience with minimal effort. Over the past two years, I’ve found newsletters to be an excellent way to build an audience, engage with people, and drive new business.

LinkedIn heavily promotes newsletters, giving them significant algorithmic attention. When you publish an article, it appears in your subscribers’ newsfeeds and their email inboxes.

To start, navigate to the publishing menu in LinkedIn’s article view, write your article, and once published, it automatically becomes part of your newsletter. This isn’t a traditional newsletter with multiple pieces of content; it’s essentially your article distributed more broadly.

Regularly sending out a newsletter helps keep your MSP top of mind. It won’t instantly land new clients, but it builds a relationship with your audience, so when they’re ready to switch MSPs, your name will be the first they consider.

Though setup might seem complex initially, a quick Google search can guide you through the steps. Start leveraging LinkedIn newsletters today to enhance your outreach and engagement.

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Here’s how to stop the tech work interrupting growing the businessMSPs are frequently overwhelmed by urgent tasks, more so than any other business owners I’ve encountered. The nature of your work demands immediate attention to clients’ problems, but how do you balance these urgencies with the important tasks needed to grow your business?

I have the answer. In 1954, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower highlighted a common dilemma: “I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” This is particularly relevant to MSPs, who are often trapped between urgent client issues and important business growth activities.

To manage this conflict, Eisenhower created the Eisenhower Matrix. This simple four-square grid helps you prioritise tasks by urgency and importance. If a task is important and urgent, do it immediately. If it’s important but not urgent, schedule it. For tasks that are urgent but not important, delegate them. And finally, if a task is neither important nor urgent, delete it.

Focus on what truly matters, even if it means letting some tasks fall into what I call the “black hole” – a list of things you acknowledge you’ll never get around to doing. By prioritising effectively, you can ensure that the important work that grows your business doesn’t get overshadowed by the urgent demands of daily operations.

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The MSP that figured out how to get the best from its sales repsThis week I’m joined by Jon Wright, an MSP who’s mastered hiring Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) to drive leads through outbound phone calls. Many MSPs struggle with this, but Jon’s approach has been notably successful.

Jon’s MSP journey began 13 years ago, growing from two to 30 employees organically. Early on, he realised he needed to focus on business growth rather than technical tasks, so he hired a tech on day one. Initially, growth was fuelled by referrals and relationships, but as leads dried up, John knew he needed a more scalable approach.

Their first step was hiring an outsourced vendor for sales calls, which led to a few sales but ultimately lacked quality. They then switched to a vendor who found and managed their first SDR in-house, leading to better results. Inspired by this success, Jon decided to master sales management in-house, hiring an SDR who didn’t perform well initially but learned valuable lessons.

Today, Jon tracks his SDRs’ performance through HubSpot, monitoring call numbers, durations, and discovery appointments. He emphasises hiring experienced, money-motivated individuals and maintains their motivation through regular meetings and upfront commissions.

Jon’s systemised approach ensures consistent results, proving that with the right strategies and tools, MSPs can effectively manage outbound sales and drive new business.

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FEATURED GUEST:

Jon Wright is the CEO of Core Managed, a leading Managed IT Services Provider that specialises in providing IT and Cybersecurity solutions for businesses. With over 20 years of experience in the tech industry, Jon has a wealth of knowledge and expertise in managing complex projects and driving business growth. He has a proven track record of successfully managing large teams and spearheading innovative initiatives that have led to significant growth for his clients.

As CEO of Core Managed, Jon is responsible for setting the overall direction and strategy of the company. He works closely with his team to develop new solutions and services that meet the evolving needs of their clients. He also ensures that Core Managed stays at the forefront of technology advancements by constantly seeking out new opportunities for growth and development. Core Managed was recently recognised as one of the 25 fastest-growing private companies in the area.

In addition to his role at Core Managed, Jon is a sought-after speaker and mentor in the tech industry. He is dedicated to sharing his knowledge and experiences with others and often participates in conferences and workshops to educate business leaders.

Outside of work, Jon enjoys spending time with his family, traveling, and playing golf. He also actively supports the charitable work of Hannah’s Wish, an organisation that provides support to families suffering from infertility, miscarriage, stillborn and infant loss.

Connect with Jon on LinkedIn

Should I use good, better, best pricing?Got a question about your MSP’s marketing? Submit one here for Paul’s Personal Peer Group.

This week, Chloe from an MSP in Sydney, Australia, asks about using the good, better, best pricing model for sales. Surprisingly, this is a hotly debated topic among MSPs. So, what is good, better, best pricing? It offers clients three package options, for example: good at $30/user/month, better at $40, and best at $50, each with increasing benefits. This model, common in SaaS pricing, is psychologically powerful because it provides the illusion of choice.

Despite some MSPs’ reservations, I believe in doing whatever it takes to win clients, even if it means offering a lower-priced option initially and then upselling. Good, better, best pricing lets clients compare packages and choose what they think suits them best. Typically, most opt for the middle package, seeing it as the safest choice. This strategy not only helps clients make decisions but also makes you more competitive. Why is this model controversial? I’m not sure, but I’d love to hear your thoughts at mspmarketingedge.com

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The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing EdgeWelcome to this week’s episode of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP.

In this episode I explain why a level of boredom in your MSP business indicates success, and allows you to focus on growth and improvement. (jump to)

I also tell you why email remains the powerhouse communication tool for MSPs, essential for owning client data and building strong relationships through consistent, engaging content. (jump to)

Megan Killian is my guest this week and emphasises why MSPs must view marketing from the prospects’ perspective. She highlights the importance of a strong online presence, transparent pricing, and aligning services with their needs and values to build trust and attract more clients. (jump to)

Lastly, I answer a question from Gordan, who owns and runs an MSP in the UK. He wants to know whether Instagram is a worthwhile marketing platform or is he running the risk of marketing overload. (jump to)

Join me as we unpack these topics and learn from some triumphs and trials in the MSP world. Oh, and don’t forget to join me in the MSP Marketing Facebook group.

READ FULL TRANSCRIPT

Growing your MSP should be… boring???Believe it or not, the key indicator that your MSP business is on the right track might just be boredom. Yes, you read that right. If your business bores you, it’s a sign that you’ve achieved a level of stability and efficiency most entrepreneurs only dream of.

Reflect on your business journey. Are you in the hectic start-up phase, managing your first employees, or at the enviable stage where your business runs smoothly without your constant oversight? Over my 19 years in entrepreneurship, I’ve experienced all these stages with various ventures. Reflecting on those early days, I don’t miss the chaos of creating systems from scratch and firefighting daily crises.

The start-up phase is stressful because every aspect of the business needs to be invented and refined – from customer experience to marketing strategies. What’s alarming is how many business owners get stuck here.

Here’s some wisdom… if you’re slightly bored with your business, it means you’ve built robust systems that run smoothly without constant intervention. No crises to manage, no fires to put out – just seamless operations. This boredom isn’t a negative, it’s a testament to your success.

Achieving this level of systemisation frees up your time, allowing you to focus on growth and improvement. Each step towards eliminating daily problems brings you closer to a well-oiled, self-sufficient business. When you reach that point, you’ll find the luxury of a little boredom incredibly liberating – a true sign that you’re on the path to long-term success.

Watch on YouTube – How to grow your MSP in your SLEEP!

What’s your email marketing spam rate?Email marketing has transformed significantly in recent years, yet it remains one of the most effective tools for MSPs. Recent changes in B2B email rules, shouldn’t deter you from utilising email marketing. Despite Gmail’s low spam complaint threshold of 0.3%, it’s crucial to keep engaging your audience through emails.

Email is unique because you own the data. Unlike platforms like LinkedIn or Facebook, where you risk losing access, your email list remains yours, even if you switch CRMs. Email is still central to business communications and logins, making it indispensable. For MSPs, weekly emails – focused on edutainment – covering topics like productivity, security, and profitability, are ideal. Avoid overly technical content and instead, address subjects that resonate with business owners and managers.

For instance, my CRM (Keap) reports a 0.4% complaint rate, slightly above Gmail’s limit, but manageable given the volume of emails sent. Remember, consistent email engagement fosters relationships with potential clients. While MSPs may not see immediate new clients from emails, this consistent communication keeps your services top of mind, ready for the day prospects decide to switch providers. Email marketing is still a powerful strategy for MSPs and will remain so for years to come.

Watch on YouTube – Avoid the SPAM folder when marketing your MSP

How to look at your marketing as a prospect doesOne of the greatest marketing skills you can develop is viewing your marketing through the eyes of your prospects. My guest today, Megan Killian, excels at this. She shares how prospects choose new MSPs, the importance of reviews, and why displaying pricing on your website is essential.

Prospects often conduct extensive research before engaging, making a strong online presence crucial. They check websites, LinkedIn, and reviews on platforms like Google and Clutch. Including pricing on your website, even a range, builds trust and transparency. Prospects care more about your service’s practical benefits than technical jargon.

Megan emphasises defining your ideal client profile and aligning your services with clients’ needs and values. This foundational work is key to effective marketing and sales strategies. Megan advises MSPs to focus on their website as it’s the face of their business. A distinctive, professional website can significantly impact prospects’ perceptions and set you apart from competitors.

By refining these aspects, MSPs can build trust and attract more clients, ensuring long-term success in the competitive tech landscape.

Watch on YouTube – How to look at your marketing as a prospect does

FEATURED GUEST:

Megan Killion, a distinguished B2B Sales and Marketing Leader, is the powerhouse behind MKC Agency. Her prowess in tech consultation, community engagement, and sales team training has been pivotal in escalating numerous brands from the $1-5 million range to $15 million and beyond. Megan’s decade-long experience in B2B technology marketing has enabled her to generate over $500 million in pipeline across diverse sectors such as CDN, Telecommunications, Managed Services, and more. Beyond being a business virtuoso, Megan is a neurodivergent Ravenclaw and a devoted mother, masterfully juggling a demanding career with the joyful chaos of a household of five boys.

Connect with Megan on LinkedIn

Should you use Instagram in your marketing?Got a question about your MSP’s marketing? Submit one here for Paul’s Personal Peer Group.

Gordon, an MSP owner in the UK, asked if he should use Instagram in his marketing strategy. The key rule with Instagram is to use it only if your target businesses are active on it. Instagram excels for retail or hospitality businesses aiming to reach consumers – for example, if your niche is targeting restaurant owners who frequently market on Instagram, then it makes sense for you to be there. However, for traditional B2B sectors like lawyers and CPAs, Instagram isn’t typically worthwhile. Focus your efforts where your target audience spends their time for the most effective results.

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The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing EdgeWelcome to this week’s episode of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP.

In this episode I reflect on what it really means when a prospect says “no”. Often it actually means “not yet”. Building trust over time through multiple touchpoints can transform rejections into future opportunities. (jump to)

I also face the truth that I’ve lived over half my life – this has sparked an urgency in my business practices. What if you had just one year to achieve your goals? This motivates me to act decisively, how about you? (jump to)

In my chat with Brian Gillette, we explore how lunch and learn events effectively turn attendees into clients by focusing on relationship building over direct sales. Have you tried these events for your MSP? They’re challenging but worth it. (jump to)

Lastly, I tackle a question from Ryan, who owns a fairly new and fairly small MSP in Chicago, about valuing employees when budgets are tight. I suggest non-monetary ways to value employees, like recognising efforts, providing personalised rewards, and offering growth opportunities – enhancing team morale and loyalty. (jump to)

Join me as we unpack these topics and learn from some triumphs and trials in the MSP world. Oh, and don’t forget to join me in the MSP Marketing Facebook group.

READ FULL TRANSCRIPT

What it really means when a prospect says noIn the competitive world of business, especially in sales, a “no” from a prospect often stings, feeling like a personal rejection. This reaction isn’t just common among entrepreneurs – it’s practically universal, and understandably so. Many of us see our businesses as extensions of ourselves, so a refusal can feel deeply personal. However, in my experience, a “no” often means “not now – I don’t trust you yet,” rather than a flat-out rejection.

Trust is the linchpin in the relationship between clients and MSPs. Prospective clients are acutely aware that a wrong choice in MSP can lead to catastrophic outcomes for their business, which makes them extremely cautious. They often stick with underperforming MSPs simply because of familiarity, which feels safer than venturing into unknown territory.

To turn a “no” into a future “yes,” it’s essential to build trust long before the sales pitch. This means engaging with potential clients through multiple touchpoints – social media, newsletters, emails, and more. Each interaction is a step towards building a relationship that fosters trust.

Consider a prospect who has interacted with your brand 30 to 40 times before seriously considering your services. They’ve consumed your content and know your ethos. By the time they’re ready to switch MSPs, you’re not just another option; you’re a familiar, trusted entity. This doesn’t guarantee conversion, but it significantly enhances your chances.

Ultimately, every decline – whether due to concerns about cost, service suitability, or company size – boils down to a lack of trust. Effective MSPs must focus on becoming known and reliable long before the decision point, ensuring they are the trusted choice when prospects are ready to make a change.

Why 83% of MSPs fail when given a “NO”

The need for urgency in your marketingReflecting on the finite nature of life can be a sobering, sometimes startling exercise. Consider the average lifespan: roughly 76 years, or about 4,000 weeks. Plugging my own numbers into this stark timeline, I’ve clocked 2,592 weeks thus far. That leaves me with just 1,408 weeks if I reach the average – only 35% of my life potentially remains. It’s a perspective that adds gravity to each day and decision, especially as my 50th birthday approaches.

Facing these figures, it’s clear that traditional retirement isn’t on my horizon. I envisage shifting gears rather than stopping – perhaps moving into consulting, an avenue many deem an easier path. Yet, humour aside, the crunch of time is palpable when thinking about professional life and goals. If all goes to plan, I might exit my current business by 60 or 65, leaving me with 520 to 780 weeks to make significant strides. This timeline isn’t just a thought experiment; it’s a motivational force.

This urgency grows when you entertain a hypothetical… what if you had only one year left to grow your business, with the results dictating your lifelong income? The intensity and focus you’d bring to that single year would be unmatched. Such a scenario strips away trivial concerns and injects a potent dose of determination into our actions.

Why don’t we operate with this mindset consistently? Perhaps it’s because a timeline of 1,408 weeks feels expansive compared to a mere 52. But this is a luxury that blunts ambition and fosters procrastination. Whether you’re nearing your fifth decade like me, or enjoying the vigour of your thirties, the lesson remains the same. We should all engage with our goals and business growth with a sharpened sense of urgency.

I suggest taking a long walk to ponder these reflections – borrow a dog if you must. Let this mental and physical journey reshape your thinking. How could you accelerate your one-year goals to achieve them in six months? Upon returning, it’s crucial to transition these accelerated thoughts into swift actions. Every business owner, myself included, should be propelling our ventures forward with unrelenting drive, leveraging every week as though it’s our last.

Why your MSP MUST grow faster… and how

How to do successful lunch & learnsLunch and learn events are pivotal for MSPs to connect with potential clients, but many hesitate due to fears of low attendance or ineffective presentations. Brian Gillette, a seasoned sales veteran with over 15 years in MSP sales and founder of Feel-Good MSP, offers strategic insights on hosting successful sessions.

Brian suggests that the key to a successful lunch and learn lies in addressing specific needs with practical solutions. For instance, focusing on tailored productivity hacks can transform the session from a general presentation into a valuable learning experience. This approach not only educates but also builds the crucial trust and relationships necessary for converting attendees into clients.

Moreover, Brian advises leveraging vendor partnerships to enhance these events while ensuring the MSP remains the focal point. Utilising vendor resources, such as marketing development funds, can amplify the event’s appeal without overshadowing the MSP’s expertise.

Ultimately, a successful lunch and learn should engage attendees with empathetic communication and actionable insights, turning a simple meeting into a powerful tool for business growth. By strategically using vendor support and focusing on relevant, practical content, MSPs can maximise the impact of these events, making them a cornerstone of client acquisition and retention strategies.

REVEALED: the secret to Lunch & Learn success!

FEATURED GUEST:

Brian Gillette is an empathy driven MSP coach focusing on understanding clients’ needs and selling with trust and authenticity allowing him to handle objections seamlessly.

The priority he places on transparency throughout the entire sales process is what makes him invaluable to the MSP community.

Connect with Brian on LinkedIn and check out his website feelgoodmsp.com

How to keep staff happy on a tight budgetGot a question about your MSP’s marketing? Submit one here for Paul’s Personal Peer Group.

Navigating financial constraints within a small business, particularly within the tech industry, can be challenging, especially when it comes to employee satisfaction and retention. Ryan, a Chicago-based MSP owner, encapsulates this struggle perfectly, asking how he can make his team feel valued without the option of a pay rise.

Ryan’s concern is legitimate, after all, financial compensation is often the most straightforward form of employee recognition. However, when the budget is tight, there are creative ways to express appreciation that can resonate just as powerfully with employees.

Firstly, recognising and alleviating the day-to-day pressures your techs face can make a significant impact. Simple gestures like making coffee, offering a free lunch, or letting staff leave early on a busy week are acts of kindness that demonstrate empathy and gratitude for their hard work.

Investing in personal growth is another avenue. If funds are low, consider dedicating time for one-on-one coaching or providing personalised feedback. This not only helps in skill development but also shows a commitment to their career progression.

Lastly, tailored rewards can create memorable experiences. For instance, gifting sports tickets or unique experiences based on individual interests can make employees feel genuinely valued, often more so than cash bonuses.

These strategies not only foster a positive work environment but also strengthen loyalty and team morale, proving that thoughtfulness can indeed be as valuable as a pay raise.

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The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing EdgeWelcome to this week’s episode of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP.

In this episode I weigh up the relevance of the traditional break/fix model versus managed services. Is break/fix just an outdated concept, or can it still serve as a valuable marketing tool in our contract-driven market? (jump to)

I also investigate what truly measures success for business owners. Drawing from my 19 years of experience, we’ll explore how consistent marketing actions can transform ambitious plans into tangible achievements. (jump to)

Jeff Newton from REDiTECH joins me as this week’s guest and shares his unique experience of overwhelming marketing success. Jeff’s insights highlight the importance of robust processes and the need for perseverance and adaptability in marketing strategies after setbacks. (jump to)

Lastly, I’ve introduced a brand new element to the Podcast – Paul’s Personal Peer Group – where I endeavour to answer your personal MSP marketing questions. This week we hear from Scott in Florida who is considering the viability of Facebook advertising but is concerned about the return on investment. Find out whether this could be right for you. (jump to)

Join me as we unpack these topics and learn from some triumphs and trials in the MSP world. Oh, and don’t forget to join me in the MSP Marketing Facebook group.

READ FULL TRANSCRIPT

Is break/fix outdated… or a valid marketing tactic?Once the go-to strategy, the break/fix business model, where MSPs fix tech issues as they arise, now shares the stage with the managed services model, which emphasises ongoing support and monthly recurring revenue (MRR).

Despite its old-school vibe, some MSPs still cling to break/fix as a crucial marketing tactic. They argue it’s a way to introduce their services, offering a taste that could potentially convert to more stable, contractual relationships.

But how does this strategy hold up in the modern MSP landscape? I reached out to the 2,300 members of my MSP Marketing Facebook group to get their take, and the responses were eye-opening. For some, offering small break/fix services is a proven method to win clients over in the early growth stages, to a tipping point where only MRR makes sense. Others have moved away from break/fix unless it’s part of a broader security audit or leads directly to an MRR contract.

This diverse range of strategies highlights a critical decision point for MSPs: is break/fix a smart business lever to pull for sampling services, or is it a relic best left in the past? Your strategy might just shape the future of your business in the ever-evolving MSP market.

Is break/fix outdated… or an MSP marketing tactic?

You’re measured by what you get done, not by what you say you’re doingWe often dream big about our business ambitions but it’s not the plans that impress people—it’s the results. In the world of MSPs, like in all business, actions speak louder than words. Whether you’re chasing new clients or aiming to hit ambitious revenue targets, it’s what you actually accomplish that counts, not just what you intend to do.

A commitment to action is what turns average, slow-growing businesses into market leaders. Every successful MSP owner I’ve interviewed shares a similar story… their growth accelerated when they invested seriously in sales and marketing, committing to continuous, decisive actions that drive the business forward.

For anyone looking to transform their business, remember—actions are your most powerful marketing tool. It’s about doing, not just dreaming. Take bold steps, apply that great strategy you learned, and watch as your business success reaches new heights. This isn’t just good advice, it’s the only way to make those big business dreams a reality.

You may be measuring your MSP’s success the wrong way

My guest won too many clients and broke his MSP’s operations!Here’s a scenario that many MSPs fear but rarely encounter: what happens when your marketing and sales efforts are too successful? Jeff Newton from REDiTECH is my guest this week, and he shares how his killer marketing strategies ended up swamping his company’s operations with too many clients. Jeff, who has flipped hats from operations to sales over his 18-year career, explained that understanding both sides has been key to his success.

He also touches on why some marketing efforts flop and stressed that giving up after one failure is a common mistake. Like Thomas Edison’s relentless pursuit to perfect the light bulb, Jeff believes in tweaking and testing until you find what works. His journey highlights the importance of a solid process and using the right language in marketing to connect with prospects effectively. Thank you to Jeff for joining me.

My guest won too many clients and broke his MSP’s operations!

FEATURED GUEST: Jeffrey S. Newton, VP of Sales & Marketing of REDiTECH is a recovering MSP operations guy turned Sales Revenue Renegade. Over the last 18 years, Jeff has worked across 5 MSPs, donned 11 hats, and built sales teams that crushed goals – generating over $500k in new MRR in just 5 years. But he also built an engine so successful, it literally broke operations… talk about learning the hard way!

Today, he uses his wealth of experience to help MSP owners and sales leaders ditch failed marketing, convert leads, and boost MRR. He’s still an active “in-the-business” sales leader with an MSP who understands current challenges and delivers actionable strategies (that actually work.). Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn.

Should MSPs run Facebook ads?Got a question about your MSP’s marketing? Submit one here for Paul’s Personal Peer Group. This week Scott, who owns an MSP in Florida, brings up a crucial query about diving into paid advertising on social media, specifically questioning the viability of Facebook ads given the concerns about return on investment and his own inexperience.

Here’s the lowdown, Facebook advertising for MSPs can indeed be tricky, particularly due to the precise targeting required and the often limited size of your specific audience. The challenge is crafting an ad campaign that reaches enough people to be effective without diluting the message.

If you’re considering Facebook ads, start small. Risk a bit of your marketing budget to test the waters. Design an eye-catching ad that directs potential clients to a well-crafted landing page that echoes the ad’s message. This consistency is key to converting visits to actions.

If direct advertising doesn’t yield results, pivot to remarketing. This technique targets ads at people who’ve visited your website but haven’t engaged further. By installing a Facebook pixel on your site, you can track these visitors and re-engage them with tailored ads, enhancing the likelihood of converting them into clients.

So, should you run Facebook ads? Absolutely, but start small, refine your strategy based on initial outcomes, and consider remarketing as a potent tool to boost your online engagement.

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Episode 235Welcome to a special episode of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP.In this Special Episode I’m joined by Lyle Kirshenbaum, owner of Toronto-based MSP Wired for the Future, to talk about how he has used events and trade shows to market his business and generate leads and prospects. We also discuss a number of practical ways that MSPs can level up and get the most bang for their buck and secure the most valuable leads and data from these events.Featured guest:Lyle was always involved in the technology arena as he began his career in digital print production. He found his interests lay more in the hardware side of technology though and quickly turned his sights in that direction. Originally, Lyle focused on whole home theatre systems but again saw his interests lay elsewhere. It was for this reason, that in 2001, Lyle became what is commonly known as a trunk slammer; helping and supporting clients as he traveled from site to site. Over the years, Lyle developed, fostered, and maintained these initial connections and grew Wired for the Future to the success it is today. Lyle is no longer found traveling from site to site in his car but can be found behind his desk ensuring that the same support with the same personal connection he always prided himself on remains intact. No matter how large Wired for the Future becomes it is Lyle’s dream this level of service remains. He devotes his days to just that.

Connect with Lyle on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/wired-lylekirshenbaum/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + http://mspmarketingedge.com/about/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Connect with me on LinkedIn: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.

Speaker 1 (00:00):Fresh every Tuesday

Speaker 2 (00:02):For MSPs around the world, around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast. Podcast.

Speaker 3 (00:09):Hello and welcome to our special episode. Now have you ever wondered whether or not trade shows are a good way for you to grow your MSP in our special? Today we are going to talk to an MSP owner who did a trade show last year. The results were pretty good this year. He wants more. He’s booked a bigger booth and he wants to 10 x the return he gets from the trade show.

Speaker 2 (00:32):Paul Green’s

Speaker 1 (00:33):MSP Marketing

Speaker 3 (00:34):Podcast

Speaker 2 (00:35):Special.

Speaker 4 (00:39):Hi, my name is Lyle Kirshenbaum. I’m owner of Wired for the Future. We are a Toronto based MSP in Canada. We are 15 people deep, two different locations, and we service about 3000 endpoint on a monthly basis.

Speaker 3 (00:55):It’s great having you on the show, Lyle, if only for your amazing Lego collection. Now most of our audience are listening to this on an audio only platform, so can’t see your background, but if you do want to see just nip onto YouTube. Go to youtube.com/msp marketing and you’ll see that Lyle has basically invested in some of the greatest creations that Lego has ever made. And let’s be honest, Lego is making some good stuff right now and they’re all in his background. Maybe we should do a YouTube extra and actually explore your Lego and all the cool toys that you have for your staff. But anyway, that’s for another day. Lyle, thanks for joining us on the show. Now we’re going to talk about events and we’re going to talk about how you can make events really profitable for your MSP, for any MSP. Got some really clever ideas that we’re going to throw around in the next 10 minutes or so. Before we do, let’s add a little bit more context. So you’ve given us a good idea about your MSP there, where you’re based and how many endpoints and clients you’re looking after. How did you get into this in the first place? How long have you been doing it for?

Speaker 4 (01:51):So we’ve been around since 2001 for a long time. I was the one guy trunk slamming kind of guy. One of our clients at the time said, you’re really good. We’re going to give you a little bit of extra money. We need you to hire somebody so that when you go on vacation we have some backup. And that worked really well. They did it then again and they said, we’re going to give you a little bit more money. Do us a favor, grab another person. And we’ve kept growing since then. And like I said, we’re now 15 people deep. We just opened our newest office or our only secondary office in Ottawa just so that we can concentrate on the clients that we had already up there. And then we’re going after a whole bunch more and one of our bigger clients is based up, has a bunch of offices up there that they want us to take care of.

Speaker 3 (02:44):Cool. So essentially you’re expanding into areas where you’re already looking after people and that’s of course given you a footprint to go and get even more new clients, which is absolutely fantastic. So events you and I were chatting about events and how can you get the most out of events and that’s when you very kindly offered to jump onto the podcast and have the discussion in public, which is brilliant. Thank you for that. So what kind of events are you doing? Tell us the kind of events, the type of business owners that go and it’s an obvious question, but it needs to be asked. What do you hope to get out of doing those kind of events?

Speaker 4 (03:15):So we’ve done a couple of events. The one that we’re talking about today is a vertical specific event. So it’s one of our verticals that we end up having a lot of clients in. We did their show last year. We had a 10 foot by 10 foot booth. We did some pretty, I guess interesting stuff for some stuff that kind of goes towards our logo, our brand. So we have orange and black, so the orange card that’s up there. So a lot of things are orange and black. So we ended up doing okay, we will be the orange popcorn company for this one. So the purple cow, I’ve heard it mentioned on your podcast, another podcast. So we basically gave away Orange Gourmet popcorn to everybody who came into the booth. And basically we had the conversation. We had about 600 bags of popcorn. They were like three cups worth of popcorn each. They had an offer on it and we tried to do it that way. We had pens and we had flyers and stuff like that. It was okay and maybe it was because the booth wasn’t big enough to bring in enough people. So we’ve doubled down this year and are looking for maybe that little bit of help on what would be the next, how to bring more people in. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (04:35):Yeah, sure. And that show you did last year with your 10 foot by 10 foot booth, about 600 bags of popcorn given away. So we consume that’s probably around about 550 people because obviously some people will have taken a second bag, your staff will have eaten some. Yep. How many leads did you generate out of that and did actually generate any clients?

Speaker 4 (04:53):So we generated about 400 ish leads. We ended up closing on about three or four of them. Out of that, we had more discussions, but the ones that we ended up closing were about three or four different clients. Did it pay for itself? We broke even, let’s call it that. And my big trick was it didn’t make a difference if we broke even or not. I look at marketing as at least our name is out there and they saw our faces and hopefully they remember us as that orange company.

Speaker 3 (05:24):Yeah, absolutely. And what’s your definition of a lead that you got from that show?

Speaker 4 (05:28):So in this case it was a dental show. So we were talking to either the dentists themselves or their office managers and stuff like that, or their supplementary staff that said, oh yeah, we have a big huge problem. Can you try coming and fixing it? We’d take down the notes, then we’d reach back out and see how that kind of progressed. But it was more of, I was happy just having the conversations because we were there, our largest client was there, so they were coming by. So it was a win-win. Anyways, the trick is this year we’re literally doubling and or probably tripling the amount of spend. So how do we benefit from triple the spend? I don’t think we’ll get double the people.

Speaker 3 (06:11):No. Okay, well we’ll come onto that. I have another question about that. Let me ask my last question again, but I’m going to ask it slightly differently. I wasn’t clear with my own language, that was my fault. When you say a lead, what do you define as a lead? So is it a case of oh, this is Dr Drill and here’s his website and here’s his number. Or is it a case of someone’s given you a business card or have they said, oh man, we need to speak to you guys, give us a call on Monday. So what sort of level of engagement have you had with these leads?

Speaker 4 (06:38):All of that and more. So we had a stack of business cards. We had basically with the trade show they had given us, not given us, we had to pay for it, but a way to scan somebody’s tag so that we would get their info and then we could actually write in the note. After that, there were two customers that we ended up getting. We literally had the conversation there. The trade show ended on Friday, on Saturday. We were literally doing work for them.

Speaker 3 (07:06):So the fact you can set their budgets, that’s great and we are going to come on to how we can see if we can maximize that a little bit. And by the way, the reason I have all of these questions will become clear in a second and it is to do with events that I’ve done in the past. And actually a lot of them were dental events as well, which is really interesting. So we’ll talk about that in a second. When you zap someone’s badge, what level of detail do you get? Typically

Speaker 4 (07:29):We get everything that they had to put in to get their badge. So whether they were accredited or not accredited their email address. Now whether that was a real email address or somebody’s throwaway email address, because we all know as you always want those emails, but we got the majority of the information that we needed to continue the conversation.

Speaker 3 (07:52):Okay, this is really cool because there’s a number of different areas that I think we can look at with this. The reason I’ve been asking you all these questions, as I said, is because I’ve been there and done trade shows. I had a business which I started in 2005, which seems like a very long time ago. I’ve only just clocked, that’s 19 years ago, which is making me feel very old. But I run that business and it went through different iterations. It wasn’t in the MSP space, it was just a general marketing business. And then over time we discovered niching or niching depending where you are in the world. And we moved into working with optometrists or opticians and then veterinarians and then dentists. Didn’t like dentists, I’ll be honest, I never really enjoyed dentists. So you are welcome to stick with a dentist.

Speaker 4 (08:37):No problem. I grew up, my dad was a dentist, so I kind of lovely people. It makes almost sense.

Speaker 3 (08:43):Lovely, lovely people, dentists, they’re the best people in the world. Anyway, so we had these three verticals and I sold that business in 2016. So from around about 2013 to 2016, we hit the trade shows like hard. That was our core marketing strategy. We went to all the big shows. So obviously I’m in the uk, you are in Canada, they’re going to be very similar shows. They’ll have similar exhibitors. I bet I could reel off a load of dental names and you’ll be like, yep, they’re here. They own the software here, they have the x-ray machines here or whatsoever. It’s all been globalized, all of this kind of stuff. But even though the people are different, the way they buy is slightly different from country to country. People are people and they respond to the same kind of cues. So what we did, and we did a round about 15 to 20 shows over a period of time, we got really good, seriously good at hoovering up as many leads and as many prospects as we could. And I’m going to explain in a second what I see as the difference between the leads and the prospects. Lemme just first of all ask you one more question, Lyle, you said you got around about 400 leads. How many people attended the show do you think?

Speaker 4 (09:52):So what was stated by the producer of the show versus what actually walked through the door? Two separate things. We were told there were about 14,000 people coming through the door. About 8,000 of those would be dentists. I think maybe the amount of people that came through the trade show area was probably about two to 3000, so a lot less.

Speaker 3 (10:17):Okay, I see. So they’re there for lectures,

Speaker 4 (10:20):They had professional services and stuff like that going on. Most were told to go through because they were all doing deals anyways, whether they were buying masks or drills and stuff like that, they should have been going through. Some do, some don’t.

Speaker 3 (10:36):Yeah, side note, if you get a chance to talk to the organizers, one of the very best shows that we ever went to is called the London Vet Show for veterinarians. And they got through that problem by having the lecture halls either side of the trade show, the other side, and they deliberately did it. So you had to walk through the trade to go and access the next lecture, which was really smart. They also had all the hospitality in the middle of the trade show as well. So if you wanted your free food and your coffee, again, you had to go through the trade thing. And that was the, I think still is the fastest growing.

Speaker 4 (11:04):Yeah, we were given no free food. It was free popcorn,

Speaker 3 (11:08):But the dentist didn’t know that, did they? Versus if the exhibitors have put all the food in the middle of the trade show and the dentists have been told to do that. Okay. I’m going to ask you another set of just random questions and because what you’ve described there is it sounds like a great trade show. So you’ve got, even if only 2000 of them walk through, that’s still a really good audience. And obviously not all of them are going to become clients of yours. Not all of them are going to become leads and prospects. And I will explain the difference between the two in a second, but there’s so much opportunity there. And I think obviously what I did in my last business and that was selling marketing to dentists, what I did, I think some of the ideas you’ll be able to pick up because even though we were selling completely separate things to what you sell, it’s a very similar start of a conversation, which is, it is all about starting that conversation, reeling them in, getting them engaged, but also making sure you’ve got plenty of resource and plenty of follow-up, which is one of the things that I want to dip into.

(12:08)So let’s start there actually with the follow-up. So those 400 people that you got last year, what did you do with all of their contact details?

Speaker 4 (12:16):So we put it into our CRM at the time and then we didn’t email blast because I absolutely hate that. It was more of a, we would reach out personally saying thank you for coming to the booth, wanted to discuss such and such and such, whatever it was from our notes. And then we kind of followed that up with a couple of phone calls. I didn’t want to be the pushy salesperson because look, at some point you’ll either come or you won’t come. It’s not a big deal. We all know that the buying timeline is long in MSPs or sometimes it’s absolutely short. We literally closed the deal on a Saturday because the trade show ended on Friday. We were working on the first client on Saturday because they literally were up a creek without a paddle. But it wasn’t, did we follow up again? No. Should we? A hundred percent. And again, it’s all on that follow up side of things.

Speaker 3 (13:17):Yeah, absolutely. So actually this is quite exciting because just even if, forget the trade show you were about to do, if we look at last year’s trade show, there’s 400 or well 397 potential clients already sat there and most of them are still going to be active. Even if they’ve given you a fake email address, you can go and Google their website and find out a new email address. I do think with all of these trade show things, you’ve got to have a pretty good level of follow up on there. And I know what you just said, you don’t want to be that guy that emails people, but the thing is, you’ve got to get the right message in front of the right person at the right time. So a dentist that went to that show last year, maybe woke up in November, December last year.

(14:01)At that point they were tearing their hair out. They’d had enough of their it, they weren’t happy with their existing MSP and the problem is that you were not in front of them and they will not have remembered you just from a five minute meeting and having some orange popcorn at the trade show six months prior. So I would say the number one thing that you can, and you can start doing this today with that old data because you own that data. You essentially, when you paid at that trade show and you blipped someone’s badge, you acquired a piece of data. And even today, even after having done nothing with it for 10, 11 months, it doesn’t matter. You can start doing that today and you can start emailing them. I know you send out, or I dunno if you send out regular emails, but it’s fairly easy for you to get hold of.

Speaker 4 (14:47):I send out a couple of things once a month.

Speaker 3 (14:50):Okay. Okay, cool. So I think emailing them on a regular basis and sending out edutainment emails, emails that are a mix of education, entertainment. The beautiful thing you’ve got Lyle, is that you are talking to a very specific niche. You’re talking to a vertical and when you’re talking to a vertical, you make the content seem more relevant to them. So let’s as an example, and I can give you a dentist one because obviously I know dentists a little bit not as well as you do, but dentists typically, I dunno if this is the same in Canada, but here in the UK they use a piece of software to run their business called a practice. What is it called? A practice management system?

Speaker 4 (15:27):Practice management software. Practice

Speaker 3 (15:28):Management software. Yeah. So it’s exactly the same. And let me guess that the number one piece of software in the Canada is run by Henry Schein, which is a dental company.

Speaker 4 (15:38):Yeah,

Speaker 3 (15:39):Dentrix. Dentrix. There we go. So here it’s called Software of Excellence. They just bought software all over the world so that they could dominate the entire planet for dentistry software, which is a smart strategy.

Speaker 4 (15:49):It’s not excellent.

Speaker 3 (15:52):We can’t say that on a public podcast. You can’t say that. Yeah, I know, sorry. But even there, there’s an example. So if you sent out an email that was about software and speed of software, you can just drop in the phrase practice management software, right? Because you don’t even need to mention Dentrix or any of the hundreds of other software packages they choose. But just you saying practice management software makes you a dental insider Now because from the dentist point of view, that’s a phrase that they use all the time. It’s the same as me saying PSA or RMM, I don’t even need to spell it out. In fact, it’s better if I just use the acronyms what MSPs use, they use those acronyms. And so as someone being in that market who’s not actually a dentist, you’ve kind of just got to pick up the lingo and there’s only actually four or five things to use. How do the dentist, I always got this wrong with dentists, but veterinarians for example, they called here in the uk, they called their business the practice, whereas I think dentists called it the clinic and it was same thing. Same thing. Well

Speaker 4 (16:54):Same, almost the same. You can go either way. It flip flops depending on the dentist.

Speaker 3 (16:58):Yeah, that makes sense. And actually again, dentists here in the uk, they talk about chair time. I dunno if dentists in Canada, it’s the same thing. And for them it’s all about chair time, putting bits of metal into people so they can make money and anything else that they’re not doing that they’re not making money. So I think that follow up, whatever your level you are comfortable with, you’ve got to do more follow up. You cannot, you said earlier you don’t want to be that pushy salesman. You could not be a pushy salesman if you tried, right? If he was down to me, if I was running your MSP, I’d be emailing them twice a week, all of them they can unsubscribe, that’s fine. But then I’ll still send them stuff in the post. We’ll phone them every six months because I know that people buy when they’re ready to buy, you’ve got to get the right message in front of the right person at the right time.

(17:41)So if you think you are being too aggressive, you’re probably getting it right. Someone like me if I’m being too aggressive to dial it back a bit, right? But I am a marketer, that’s what I do. I don’t think you could be too aggressive if you tried. So the job number one then is to start emailing or start communicating more regularly with last year’s people. The cool thing is then this year’s people you are then you’ve got a system just to dump more people into. I would say that one of your goals, and I know you’ve got, or I think you mentioned you have two or three verticals, but one of your goals should be to create your own database of every single dental business in Canada that you could do business with. So within your areas of Toronto and Ottawa and any other area you want. And actually because this is another one of the beauties of being in a specific vertical is there’s not that many of them, right? There’s probably, I don’t know, 2000, 3000, something like that.

Speaker 4 (18:36):Keep going. So you guys have Starbucks, we have Tim Horton’s and as they say in Canada and people who are listening in Canada will joke at this. There’s usually a Tim Horton’s on at least one or three or four corners. There are probably five or six dentists on all of those corners as well. There are more dentists than there are coffee shops in Canada.

Speaker 3 (18:58):That’s a fact. I didn’t know. You learn something new every day, don’t you?

Speaker 4 (19:02):Sorry, I kind of messed myself up because now just everybody who’s going to be in Canada can go after a dental.

Speaker 3 (19:09):No, I think what you’re saying, Lyle, is that there are no dentists. It’s a terrible sector. They’re awful people to

Speaker 4 (19:14):Work with. Horrible one or two and they’re all horrible to deal with.

Speaker 3 (19:17):But the reality is you couldn’t have 10,000 clients anyway. So there’s just as is in every vertical, there’s the plenty business for everyone. But the point is you can, and this should be a major mission for you, is we are going to build our own database of a clean database, well-maintained of every single viable dentist in our areas. And we’re going to maintain that. We’re going to keep in touch with them and we’re going to make sure that they know we are the dental experts. Which brings me back to the trade show. Now let me tell you very briefly what I did with my last business and then you can tell me which of these bits you’re a already doing or B you think actually that’s quite cool. So I’m going to gloss over some of the details because they’re not quite relevant to our conversation.

(19:57)But essentially whenever we went to a trade show, we took the completely opposite approach to most people. So most people, they go and hire a stand and they get it all professionally done up and they have all the AV and it always looks nice and they spend a fortune on it and then they bring over their sales staff and the first couple of hours everyone stands around and looks a bit bored and they’re always complaining to the other stand holders. Oh, there aren’t many more other people here. And they all go off and go coffees and they’ll be trying to do deals and generally there’s almost like a them and an us isn’t there. And any trade show as it goes on, the them and us, by them and us, I mean the delegates and the exhibitors, there’s always seems like the wedge gets bigger between them and the exhibitors get more and more exasperated with the delegates.

(20:39)The delegates are like, I’ve passed you 15 times already, don’t talk to me. There’s that real wedge that comes between us. So we took a completely different approach where we said, right, we are going to the show to do two things. Number one, our single biggest goal is we’re here for data collection. So we are going to zap so many badges and I’ll tell you how we did it in a second, but we are going to zap so many badges and then we’re going to take that data, we’re going to put it into our system, our follow-up systems, that system I was just talking about. So that was primary goal number one. Primary goal number two is then anyone who lingers who wants to have a proper conversation is we are going to hand them off to someone who knows what they’re talking about. And the reason we did that is I actually hired promo people, promotional people to be, I almost treated it like support.

(21:23)So I had first line people who were just attractive people in their twenties. I hate to say it, but they were mostly women because not all, but most of the audience we were talking to was men. And that’s just a sensible thing to do. Please don’t write in accuse me of being of sexist. This was just good marketing. So we hired good intelligent, young promotional people, but they were supervised. So I had a member of my team supervising. So we’d have five of these people and I’m talking the stand the same size as yours, 10 foot by 10 foot and we dot them all the way around the stand. And their number one job was actually getting people to the stand. So anyone that walked past, they would ask them a qualifying question and it wasn’t a case of they would just stand there and wait for someone to approach them like most people do.

(22:08)We were on it, we always got complained about at every show. And if I said to my team, if we didn’t get complained about, we weren’t being aggressive enough. That’s what I mean by being aggressive. So the qualifying question they would ask would be something like, excuse me, are you the owner of the business? Or something like that. And we had different questions for different shows because sometimes like this trade show, they say they’ve got X thousand dentists, but actually you find that the dentist never come in, it’s the practice manager. So in which case your question might be, excuse me, are you a practice manager or do you own the business? You’ll know that kind of question. But the point of that is you don’t want to be talking to the dental nurses, you don’t want to be talking to the people who are not either the decision maker or the influencer.

(22:50)So in a dental practice, the dentist that is the owner is the decision maker, but the practice manager is probably the influencer who is saying to them, I think you should go with this solution. I think that may be how it is in most businesses. So essentially your promo person is qualifying, are they someone we should be talking to If they are, and this is the cheeky bit what we used to do. So we used to give away a free book. And I know Lyle, you have loads of printed materials, so we didn’t have them there. What we said was, oh, we’ve got a free book on growing your dental business. And yours might be, Hey, we’ve got a free book about, it’d be something technology based around dentists and we can talk about that in a second if we need to. But literally my team would say, oh, we’ve got this free book blip.

(23:31)They would blip their badge at that point and they’d say, I’m going to send one of these to you in the post, it should reach you next week. And then one in 20 people would get offended and we’d apologize and we’d say, oh, we’ll zap you, we didn’t. And then one in 50 would say, oh, can I have my book now? And we’d say, oh actually we don’t have them here, we don’t have storage space. And also do you know what if we give it to you now it’s going to go in that bag with all those pens and mouse mats and all that other junk that you’re just going to chuck when you get home, it’s going to go in the garbage. So actually we’ll post it to you in a week’s time. So we were blip and we did have real books and we did thousands of post outs after all these trade shows.

(24:08)But the point being that that was the number one goal, blip, blip, blip, blip. If I went to a trade show with 14,000 people, well let’s say 2000 people coming through, I would expect at least a thousand from my team over a two day event. And if they didn’t get a thousand, then Paul would be angry. That would be the official thing. And we’d have little tally ups every hour we’d look and see, we’d log in or look on the counter depending on what system they were using and see what are we up to. And I was actually setting targets and of course I made it fun. It was a case of right guys, if you can get another 30, another 30, you get to go on a tea break, you get to go out and have a vape or whatever you do, you get to have an hour off and go and get as many freebies and we just turn it into games.

(24:46)So that was job number one. Job number two then was hooking people into decent conversations. So the reason you’re hiring other people to do this stuff for you is because you and your senior techs who probably were on the trade stand last year, your two valuable for data capture, which is what those guys are doing. So instead you guys are kind of hanging back a little bit waiting to have quality conversations. And the way that you hook people into quality conversations is this, and this may require, I dunno how many weeks it is till the show, but you may need to do a little bit of adjusting to your visuals. What you want is you want a massive photo of one of your clients, like a big head of someone who looks like a dentist and underneath it says Dr. Drill a dentist in whichever town.

(25:29)And then you’d have a speech bubble. And this is done in a non cheesy way, but a speech bubble coming out of him. And then there’s a one line quote from him and he would say something like, and not that we’re trying to put words in your client’s mouths, but it would say something like, I wish I’d switched to Wired for the future, which is your business name years ago. Our technology just works now. It’s amazing. And obviously it’s got to be real words that they say, but if you could ring up one of your dentist clients and say, Hey, I want to put a massive photo review on the side of my stand. I want to turn you into a star. Are you cool with that? And dentists have egos. So one of them somewhere will say yes. And then you say, Hey, I’d like to say a quote like this, would you be cool with something like that?

(26:13)And again, some dentists will be absolutely fine with that. Now the reason that’s there is let’s think this through from the visitor’s point of view, they’re walking along, they’ve been stopped by one of your beautiful team. They’ve had their badge blipped, they look up and there’s a massive photo of a dentist and it says, Mr, so-and-so the dentist here, and then they can take in that quote in a quarter of a second of I wish I’d switched years ago, my technology just works. And that little thing at the back of their head says, yeah, my technology doesn’t work. And so what they do, they say to your first line person, they kind of go, so what do you guys do? And that’s the cue for you. And that’s literally where you are all looking for that. And you come in and you grab them and you take them off for a conversation.

Speaker 4 (26:55):Social proof exactly for them. Bingo period, end story,

Speaker 3 (26:58):Exactly that. And if you have other verticals that you work in, and this was the thing we did so well, to the extent we would do three trade shows back to back over three weekends and you wouldn’t know it was the same stuff. All of our, we always put the same size stand and we always had the same visuals and we had one panel which changed. And the panel that changed was we had one that was a vet, one that was a dentist, one that was an optician. And so as far as they were concerned, that was the one that was most relevant to them. So if you have other verticals, you could do exactly the same approach, which is really smart at its essence. That’s it. There are some other details that can go in there, but all we’re really trying to do, and the real gold there is actually the blipping is actually the data collecting, the conversations that you have.

(27:44)I’m hoping you’d still have another 400 conversations, but I’m hoping you’d have a thousand. Well, I said earlier I differentiate between leads and prospects that should differentiation. Anyone that gets blipped is a lead. A lead is anyone whose contact details. You’ve got a prospect is where you’ve actually started to have a conversation and you’re looking to have hundreds of conversations with prospects. That’s where the immediate follow-up comes from. As you say, a couple of phone calls, a couple of emails, A lot of them is just people go to trade shows and they just talk and they don’t really mean it and that’s fine, but you’ve now got a bunch of prospects and you’ve got even more leads and that’s what goes into your follow-up system and just gets worked and worked and worked and worked. So tell us roughly what you’re doing from that and what you’re not doing from that. Which of those things you think you could adopt?

Speaker 4 (28:31):So we just hired a client, and I’m going to get it wrong and she’s going to yell at me, but we hired a CSR person for our company and it was something that we’ve been lacking for years and years and years. We got called to the table, so we put that person in place and literally all she’s been doing is reaching out to clients and it was, hi, this is who I am, this is what I’m taking over. Just so that there’s a little bit of a buffer between Lyle and the rest of the company. And we either got, oh my god, you guys are amazing, or hey, can you take care of this job and this job and this job? So it worked perfectly and she’s brought in what she was hired to do and we’re only just basically scratching the surface. We’re going down that road even more. But yeah, we’re going down that road. We did have some, I don’t know if we had enough social proof, let’s go with that. My goal for 2024 is to get to a hundred Google reviews because we’re seriously lacking on that. So it says my SEO guy and then put that social proof in place with our social media side of things.

Speaker 3 (29:41):And I think you can’t have too much social proof and at a trade show your brand is important to you, but to everyone else at the start of a relationship, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all. Doesn matter. So you want your existing clients to be able to find you because they like to come and just check in. But that’s three, isn’t it? There’s three people it’s going to be at that show or whatever the number is. It’s not a huge number. So yeah, the social proof is the biggest thing. And in fact, if I was doing a booth from scratch today and I remember thinking about this 10 years ago and we didn’t do it for whatever reason, probably because we were using it across multiple shows, I would have all the branding would just be social proof, it would be Google reviews, it would be Trustpilot, which I think is just a UK one. It would be testimonials, it would be photos of people. I’d have a video running on a tv. And so that conversation of what do you guys do would be a much easier thing to have because immediately they can see you are used by other people like them. And that’s the beauty of social proof. We are more influenced by people like us than by strangers. And dentists consider other dentists opinions more important than my opinion or your opinion. So

Speaker 4 (30:46):Yeah, no, agreed. That was the big trick is how do we spin that and do that so that we can get a better engagement from the people walking by or hopping into the booth.

Speaker 3 (30:57):Well, I mean I think that’s going to make a big difference. I’m going to say something that you might find slightly controversial, which is once you’ve done this trade show, and if you can pull off some of the stuff we’ve just talked about there, you may have so many leads that you may not need to do next year’s trade show. I mean you may choose to because you want to be seen in that vertical, but back in the day we did our multiple trade shows and then we stopped because they’re expensive. I think that’s the one thing you and I have glossed over here, but they are, I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me you’d invested tens of thousands of Canadian dollars into this because trade shows are stupidly expensive, but they’re not expensive. If you say, actually the data we got from 2024 now the data we got from 23, from 24 from 25, that’s given us 3000 leads, that’s enough for our CSR to keep calling. Just keep calling and keep calling, keep calling and keep emailing because you only need, what do you want? One new client a month for the next three years, something

Speaker 4 (31:53):Like that. Yeah, one or two would be perfect.

Speaker 3 (31:56):Yeah, exactly. And most MSPs are exactly the same. It would be overwhelming for you to win five clients this month. And the reality is it wouldn’t happen. It just doesn’t work like that. No. So one client a month is great and maybe you need a database of 2000, 3000, 4,000 to do that, but as you said, you’ve got other verticals as well, which is this exact same strategy you can pull off with other verticals on that. And this should probably be our final point and we should wrap up here. Lyle is on your website, I haven’t looked at your website recently, I haven looked at it in the past, but on your website, if I went on there off the back of seeing your listing in the magazine of the trade show or something like that, would I go onto there and look at that and immediately think this is a guy for dentists or would I see a kind of a generic one?

Speaker 4 (32:40):There is a dental specific page, it needs a little bit of work and we’re working on that. Cool. Okay, we’ll take that as homework.

Speaker 3 (32:48):Okay. Yeah, definitely homework. And what might be worth doing is the URL, the website domain that you promote at the show that’s on your branding. And again, it might be too late to do this year, but you could do it for next year. It might be worth buying something like dental. I’ll give you the suggestion after the interview. If I put it in the interview, that’s fine. Hundreds of other MSPs are going to go and buy it. But you buy a specific domain and all that does is that points to your dentists page on your main website. So anyone typing in this new domain, they instantly go to your dentist page and yeah, they can see that you do other businesses and other generics, but it takes ’em straight to the information they want. The other beauty of that is if you put in place some tracking, you’ll be able to see how many people have come off that URL.

(33:34)So it’ll give you another measure of, hey, how many people have seen our URL? We used to buy adverts in the show guides and we did the same thing. We put a tracking URL in and when they came next year and they said, Hey, do you want to spend another thousand on the advert like you did last year? And we say no, because we got three visitors off the back of that advert. It just wasn’t worth it. I’d rather take that money and put it into something else. So it’s always good to do stuff like that. Lyle, thank you so much for your time. Are there any other questions about events? Thank you, sir, that I can help you with just brief things before we finish off today.

Speaker 4 (34:06):I think we’re good. I think I’ve got a lot to unpack and yeah, it’s been an absolute pleasure. I listen all the time and it’s truly a pleasure to be on. So thank you.

Speaker 2 (34:17):Coming up. Coming up next week,

Speaker 3 (34:20):We’re going to be looking at such an important subject that you get measured in life by what you achieve, what you get done, not by what you say you are doing. I’ll explain it fully next week. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP made

Speaker 2 (34:37):In the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green’s marketing podcast.

View Details

Episode 234Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week’s show includes:* 00:00 How to market your MSP to a vertical * 10:14 This productivity hack will help you Get Things Done * 18:56 Engender happier, more productive staff

Featured guest:Thank you to Dr. Kevin Gazzara, leadership coach and Senior Partner of Magna Leadership Solutions, for joining me to talk about how MSP owners can keep their staff happy, make them feel valued, and increase their productivity – without spending a penny.

Dr. Kevin Gazzara is the Senior Partner of Magna Leadership Solutions established in 2007, and the coauthor of the acclaimed books “The Leader of OZ” and “Ready, Set, Get Hired”. He is an ICF certified coach, and a certified Positive Intelligence (PQ) Mental Fitness coach and founder of CoachSultants.com. Kevin has taught and developed Management and Leadership career-changing programs in the corporate world during his 18 years at Intel Corporation and as a University professor at 6 Universities over the last 28 years. Dr. Gazzara’s work has been recognized for his international leadership development programs by Workforce Magazine, https://magnaleader.co/LTP. Kevin’s passion is in helping individuals find the leader within themselves.

Connect with Kevin on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevingazzara/

Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + http://mspmarketingedge.com/about/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Connect with me on LinkedIn: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Grab yourself a copy of this week’s recommended book, Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Built-Sell-Warrillow-28-Feb-2013-Paperback/dp/B011T6SNA2/

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.

Speaker 1 (00:00):Fresh every Tuesday

Speaker 2 (00:02):For MSPs around the world, around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:09):Hey, welcome back to the show. Here’s what I got in store for you this week.

Speaker 3 (00:13):Hi, I’m Dr. Kevin Gazzara and I have found a way quantitatively to identify how to keep your people, how to retain them, and it won’t cost you a dime. Listen to Paul’s podcast to figure out how to do that.

Speaker 1 (00:28):And on top of that fascinating interview with Kevin. We’re also going to be looking at

Speaker 2 (00:31):The power

Speaker 1 (00:32):Of deadlines to get things done.

Speaker 2 (00:36):Paul Green’s MSP marketing podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:40):Let’s talk about marketing to different verticals such as CPAs or accountants or lawyers or veterinarians or dentists or something like that. Now maybe you have a couple of verticals already in your MSP. Maybe you are completely vertically focused or more likely you have a general client base, but you’ve got a couple of verticals. You fell into a vertical almost by accident because you picked up two lawyers. And so for you, lawyers is your vertical. Now having a vertical is a very, very powerful thing to do for a number of reasons. Firstly, it’s so much easier for you to know who the leads are. So let’s say you are based in, I don’t know, Los Angeles and you want lawyers in Los Angeles and we’ve all watched the Lincoln Lawyer on Netflix, right? Or we’ve read the book so we know there are lots of lawyers in Los Angeles.

(01:32)My point is it’s a lot easier to know who they are. You can find a directory or a Google listing or just go out there and get lists of who these people are. And so verticals make it very easy for you to know it’s a finite market. Very easy for you to know who are those people, where are they? What are their contact details? So it’s easy to know who the leads are. It’s a lot easier to reach them because you’ve got their contact details. You can direct market to them. You can send them stuff in the mail, you can email them, you can reach out to them on LinkedIn. You probably know that they’re going to specific events. There must be networking meetings for lawyers in Los Angeles. I bet that’s an interesting meeting, but you get the idea. The most exciting thing about having a vertical is that you can make your marketing message highly relevant to them.

(02:18)And that’s the thing that makes verticalization. To use a made up word verticalization is the best because it’s relevant. So if I’m a lawyer in LA and I see some marketing from an MSP that says something about my legal practice in California, then that is incredibly, or it feels incredibly relevant to me. And that’s the trick that we’re trying to pull off with our vertical marketing. Now the other thing to bear in mind with marketing to a vertical is that the best clients prefer to buy the highest quality. And if you can demonstrate that you understand their world and that you are relevant to them, they will perceive that you are a higher quality. So if they’re looking at two MSPs, one of them just deals with any business, that’s what their marketing says. And the other one just deals with lawyers in Los Angeles.

(03:09)They will perceive that the MSP who just deals with lawyers in Los Angeles is an expert at them and what they do and therefore is better quality. And they will basically, well, they’re more likely to choose you. And once they’ve chosen you, they’re more likely to pay you more as well. Because when we find something we perceive is of a higher quality, we are happy to pay more for it. So relevance is a big part of this. And what I really wanted to talk about in this bit was how you need to demonstrate that in your marketing. So a lot of MSPs, their approach to verticalization is just to have a page on the website. You’ve got a page for lawyers, a page for dentists, a page for manufacturers, whatever. I think if you are really going to go after a vertical, it is worth you investing more, spending more time, and really going for it.

(04:01)For example, rather than just having a page on your website, you have a whole website, and that might just be a one page website, but it has its very specific domain. So it could be it for lawyers la.com for example, and that’s just a one page website. And a one page website still has navigation at the top. But what happens is when you click on, let’s say the about us button up at the top, it kind of jumps down to a piece of anchor text. Further down you get the idea. So you haven’t got three, four pages, you’ve got just one page, but you definitely have a website just for your vertical. You might choose to have two or three different LinkedIn profiles. You might have one that’s for your general audience, and then you might have a LinkedIn profile just for your vertical. I’ll let you into a secret.

(04:43)I have two active LinkedIns. So if you and I are connected on LinkedIn, and if we are not just go and Google Paul Green, MSP marketing LinkedIn and you’ll find me. But if we are connected on LinkedIn, that’s my MSP specific LinkedIn. Now I started that in 2016, intending it just to be the audience of people I wanted to speak to within the channel. So it’s just vendors and it’s just MSPs. I do have a second LinkedIn, which you are probably not fine, but that’s for my general stuff. So that’s my LinkedIn I’ve had for like 15 years. It’s just my general connections. I don’t use it for marketing, if that makes sense. So I have a very vertical specific LinkedIn. It’s good marketing to do that. What else would you have? You’d have your email list as well. Now, this is easy. You don’t need to have a separate CRM if you’ve got a vertical within your existing CRM, you just segment the data.

(05:33)So you might have lots of general email addresses, but you would then have a load of let’s say lawyer addresses and you just segment those within a list or a collection or by tag or however it works in your CRM. And that means that you can send an email just to the lawyers if you want to. And then you can send a separate version of that email to your general list. And of course, within your CRM, you can set up a little safety guard as well so that if you’ve emailed the lawyers, you exclude them from the list of the general businesses that you send. That would be a smart thing to do. Now, there are a couple of other things if you really wanted to go for the vertical that you would do, one of them is this, you would do a podcast. Doing a podcast to your vertical is super smart marketing because again, it tells them that you are an expert at their world.

(06:23)So within their world, obviously it allows you to talk to them and broadcast a very relevant message. The other smart thing that you can do with the podcast, and I don’t do this just so you are clear, but what some MSPs do, and this is a smart thing to do, is you invite potential future clients on as guests of your podcast. So let’s say you had a podcast and it was IT or technology for lawyers in la, you would then contact some lawyers in LA and invite them to come and be guests. So you’d say to them, Hey, if you’re not chasing ambulances tomorrow, would you like to come and be a guest on my podcast? It’s about technology for lawyers in la. I’d love to have you on. And the reason for you connecting with them, and ideally you’d meet up and physically record it with them.

(07:07)The reason for doing that is not to fill up your podcast with content. It’s because you then get an hour quality time with someone that could one day become a client. Do you see the smarts of that? Right? So it’s like an intense sales meeting dressed up as a podcast, and obviously you do put the podcast out with their interview, but they will, well, they will perceive you to be a very important expert at what you do because experts do podcasts, experts do videos, experts write experts produce content. And if you could do, even if you did a podcast once every two or three weeks, do that for a couple of years and not only will that in itself start to bring you business, but as I say, you can get some really good guests on there and some of those guests will choose you because you’re the smart choice.

(07:54)And you can do the similar kind of thing with YouTube. And obviously YouTube is a little bit more, you’ve got to put more resources into it because these days you can start just doing a YouTube video with your phone, but once you start bringing in guests, you need to mic people up properly. You need to do lighting properly, you need to do video properly. But that could be as simple as someone with a video camera filming you and a lawyer walking along a street in LA talking about technology and their life and all of that kind of stuff. And as long as you’ve got wireless mics and a half decent camera, that will be all right. And doing it outside sort of gets past all the lighting problems. But YouTube obviously the bigger investment to those and audio podcasts are very easy to do. Now, what’s exciting, because what we’re talking about here is marketing to a vertical and doing it really well, what’s exciting is you can do this to multiple verticals at the same time.

(08:42)I actually pulled off this trick in my last business. So this was a marketing agency. I started in 2005. I sold it in 2016, and we worked with three verticals. We worked with veterinarians, dentists and opticians or optometrists. We had three websites actually we had nine websites. We had a general website, we had a website, and then we had two other websites that sold a specific service. And we did that for each vertical. So we had nine websites, we had three LinkedIns, we had three Facebook groups, and we didn’t do podcasts, but we were just starting to dip our toes into YouTube. And that was a lot of work, but the veterinarians didn’t know about the dentists who didn’t know about the opticians. So as far as they were concerned, even though all the work was just being done by the same team as far as they were concerned based on our marketing, we were experts and specialists in what they did.

(09:33)And don’t get me wrong, we knew their markets very, very well, and we didn’t just do the same stuff for each of them. We did some specific work for the vets and some specific work for the dentists, et cetera. But from a marketing point of view, it seemed like we only worked with them right down to we had three separate phone numbers. So our VoIP system, when they called in, it told us whether it was a veterinarian or a dentist or an optician that was calling in. So you can do this, you can have multiple verticals, but I challenge you to do more than just have a vertical page on your website to really look at your vertical and say, right, I want to make my marketing message relevant to them. How am I going to make them feel that they are the biggest thing in my world?

Speaker 4 (10:15):Here’s this week’s clever idea.

Speaker 1 (10:18):So if you are really struggling to get things done, let’s talk about the power of deadlines. And when I say get things done, I don’t necessarily mean getting client work done. I’m going to assume that as a business, you are organized very well around doing the client work. I mean getting the more important stuff done, which is the stuff working on the business, improving your marketing, doing some more sales. It’s only when you’re working on the business that you actually start to move the business forward and start to grow it. And most MSP owners that I speak to, they really struggle to do this. They struggle to get things done. So a couple of weeks ago, I took a week away on my own. So I’m a sole parent. There’s just me and my beautiful child who’s 13 and a teenager. So she’s beautiful, but also difficult in the way that only 13 year olds can be, but there’s just me and her in the house and it means I don’t get a huge amount of time on my own to go off and be Paul and not be a parent.

(11:16)And a couple of weeks ago she went away with the school, she went on a school trip abroad. So I had the most amazing week. I just put myself into a hotel in London, here in the uk, and I had no plans. It was amazing. I had no plans deliberately because as you’ll know yourself, if you’re a parent, there’s always, you’ve got to be somewhere on time. You’re always being a taxi driver, there’s always getting food ready, there’s always routine in things. And I wanted to enjoy being an adult and being a human and not have routines. And I just walk. I love walking. I walk like 50 miles that week and I just ate and had a few beers and went to a casino. I don’t gamble. I like watching other gamble, et cetera, et cetera. And what was really interesting was leading up to that week, so in the week when I was working leading up to when I knew I’d have that vacation, that holiday that week off, I got five times more stuff done in that week.

(12:09)And you’ll have had exactly the same thing when you are going on some kind of vacation and maybe you’ve never really looked back at that and thought about the superpower of that, why do you get more done the week before a vacation? It’s simply because of deadlines. Because you know the following week you are going to be wherever you are and you don’t want to be doing any work. No one wants to be that person sat at the airport at the gate when they’re calling your name, where you’re sat there typing furiously on your laptop to try and get something done to get it finished before you go on vacation, right? No one wants to be that person. So what happens is the week before when we have this immovable deadline is we just work to a greater capacity. We do more things, we do them faster, we are more organized, we know what we need to do and we become better at saying no.

(13:02)So when someone wants to have a chat, we say, no, I’m sorry, that’s not core focus to me. It’s not something I need to get done this week. This is the power of deadlines. Now, since coming back from that holiday, I’ve been asking myself, how can I introduce artificial deadlines? Because you can pretend to work as if you are going on holiday next week, but the reality is you are not. So your brain kind of knows that’s not real. So you don’t work at the same kind of frenetic pace, you’re not the same kind of no, no person, you’re not as organized. So how can you introduce those deadlines into a regular working week? Well, I’ve got some ideas and they’re things that I’m going to try out. So the first of them is to base your work around events that cannot be moved. So for example, let’s say your kids have a sports day.

(13:49)Let’s say you need to be at school at, I dunno, 10:00 AM for sports day, and you’re going to be there for four hours. So there’ll be nothing happening, and it’s a really core value to you to be a parent and be there at sports day and for your kids when they look up to see that you are watching them lose their race and you’re not on your phone talking to someone from the office or whatsoever. So that’s a really good example and certainly where you want your kids to see you and you want your kids to see that you are engaged even though actually we are bored. That’s a secret that all kids never know. We are bored at their sports day or their theater show some of the time. But that thing that morning, that’s an immovable deadline. That would be a good way.

(14:28)I appreciate that. Doesn’t come up very often, that kind of thing, unless I guess if you have a regular sports club or a sports, like my child does lots of acting schools and drama clubs, so sometimes I have to just kind of sit there and watch them do a performance and that can be a good deadline for me. Here’s something you could do two, three times a week, take a train journey. So I live about 40 minutes from London, so I live in the UK just outside a city called Milton Keynes. It’s about 40 minutes on the train to London. And I figured out that in that 40 minutes, so long as I can get on the wifi, I can get a ton of work done. And again, I work to a frenzy. I’m not looking at my emails or my WhatsApps, I’m getting things done because I want to have it done before I get off the train because that’s an interruption.

(15:11)And then obviously also then waiting for a train. So if I know, let’s say I’ve got to pick up my child at four in the afternoon, which means I’ve got to get on a train at three in London. So I might be sitting there at two 30 in the train station furiously typing on my laptop doing work because I know I’ve got an immovable deadline if I cannot miss that train, it has occurred to me and I might try this next week. What if I was to go to London just to be productive? So I get onto the train to give me a short journey to be productive, and then in London for a couple of hours again with that deadline. And then I’ve obviously got another train journey back to be productive. I’ll try that out and I’ll let you know how that goes.

(15:50)Another idea is you could sort yourself out a deadline based around fun. So let’s say you were going to the cinema, and that’s going to happen at 3:00 PM today. It is cool going to the cinema during a working day. I don’t do it very often, but it’s a fun thing to do. So at 3:00 PM you’re going to the cinema. That’s when the film starts at 3:00 PM It’s an immovable deadline. And actually because it’s something fun just like a vacation or a holiday, it’s something you’re not going to want to interrupt. In fact, as I’m doing that, I’m thinking you’ve got even more things on a day-to-day thing that you could do, like parking. If you go and park somewhere and you have to buy a parking ticket and there’s only let’s say 90 minutes or two hours on that parking ticket, it’s a deadline, isn’t it?

(16:31)As you look around you on a daily basis, you can start to see deadlines. And these are not artificial deadlines. They’re real deadlines that have consequences. If you’re late back to your car, you get a parking ticket. If you’re late to the cinema, you miss the start of the film. If you miss the train journey, you don’t pick up your kids from school and they hate you. All of these things are real deadlines that are really important to you. And actually getting up to that deadline, you can be so much more efficient. I’m going to try some of this out over the next few weeks. I’d love to hear from you if you do the same.

Speaker 4 (17:03):Paul pulls blatant plug

Speaker 1 (17:05):Plug. It’s funny, we spend a lot of time in this podcast talking about improving your marketing and how to win new clients, and sometimes it’s easy to lose track of why we’re trying to do that. It all comes down to improving your life. I’m assuming that you are the owner of the business. If your business is bigger with more resources, more clients, more cash, more cash coming in and more cash generated as profit, that changes your life. The goal of being a business owner is not to work 60 hour weeks, sweating yourself into an early grave in order that people will just forget you. That’s not the point of the business at all. The point of the business is to give you a great life. And don’t get me wrong, you’ve got to look after the clients. You’ve got to look after your staff. All of that’s important.

(17:52)Quality is really important if you want a long-term business. But the ultimate goal of this is to give you plenty of time and plenty of cash to do the things that are important to you. Like going to your kids sports days, like going on bigger and better vacations with your family. And this is why we put together the MSP Marketing Edge. We work with you assuming that you are not very good at marketing. We work with you to help you do all the marketing that you need to do. We give you a ton of marketing content. We give you a very, very simple plan to follow. But we’re not just there to help you do marketing. We understand there is that context that if you improve the business through marketing, you improve your life and you improve your life, you improve your other half’s life, you improve your kids’ life, you improve your staff’s life. That’s what we’re really in the business of doing here. Now we only work with one MSP per area. So the first thing for you to do is check to see if your area is available. You can do this@mspmarketingedge.com,

Speaker 4 (18:56):The big

Speaker 3 (18:57):Big interview. Hi, I’m Dr. Kevin Gazzara, and I am the founder of Magna Leadership Solutions.

Speaker 1 (19:05):And thank you so much for joining us on this podcast. Kevin, you won your place on this show by saying to me, you have a way to improve staff retention and for us to have happier staff. And I’m not sure how familiar you are with the MSP employment market right now, but it is so difficult and so expensive to find really good people. Recruitment is a nightmare for most MSPs, and the only nightmare that’s bigger than recruitment is when a trusted member of your team comes to you and says, I’m really sorry, but I’ve decided to leave and I’m going over to X-Y-Z-M-S-P or moving onto something different, whether that’s for more money or whether it’s for other reasons. So anything that we can do to improve the retention of our staff is very, very welcome. So you and I are going to talk about that in just a minute or so’s time. Let’s first of all just go back a little bit and learn about you. So tell us what your backstory is, Kevin, what have you done with your career? What is it that gives you the right to be on a podcast like this, talking about how to retain your staff better?

Speaker 3 (20:11):Alright, well thanks Paul for having me on the podcast. And here’s my quick backstory. Born and raised in Pennsylvania area in Philadelphia, did my undergrad in engineering and business MBA. And then I went off and did all my doctoral work in organizational leadership and management. And during that time I did all my doctoral research and my dissertation on creating and understanding to see if there was a correlation with task types for motivation, engagement and productivity and getting people flow. And what I found is, yes, there is, and that’s what we’re going to talk about today. So I spent 30 years in corporate world, retired in 2007, started at my own firm, magnet Leadership Solutions. We’ve been helping small organizations develop their leaders either through coaching or through our leading forward academy for the last 17 years. Every year has been better than the last. Life is great and I’m so glad to be able to help individuals and we work a lot with IT organizations as well.

Speaker 1 (21:24):Yeah, no, that’s great to hear. And I’m not surprised that you’ve had 17 great years in a row and I’m sure 2024 will be no different for you. Clearly someone that gives a lot back. So talk to us then about what your findings were, and by the sound of it, that doctoral work was some time ago, but then you had 30 years in that corporate environment and your 17 years consulting to really hone down into what is it that keeps people staying with us or what is it that drives them out to new employers or new opportunities?

Speaker 3 (21:54):Well, first of all, there’s lots and lots of things that keep people in their jobs. And the key is to create a motivating environment. A lot of HR people will tell you you need to go out and you motivate individuals and you really can’t motivate people. What you can do is you can create a motivating environment and the key is to tailor the environment to them. And since we work with a lot of IT organizations, a lot of them like to work individually. They’re not overly people. So you have to create that environment where they can go off and do the heavy duty work and at the same time, you don’t want to forget them to make sure that they feel part of the team. So I think the biggest thing, Paul, that we found is that they don’t do a great job of hiring the right people.

(22:44)That they hire people generally for skill and they really should be hiring for talent. And if you look at the number one reason people leave is people leave usually because of managers. It’s not because they’re going to get another $5,000 or whatever, but they feel like the environment that they’re at doesn’t meet their kind of autonomy, mastery or purpose as Daniel Pink talks about in his book and drive. And if you can create that environment for them when they get a better offer, a financial offer, they’re more likely to stay. But it starts with hiring the right people. You want to hire for talent, train for skill. And the biggest reason I’d say people leave in addition to the manager is that they just don’t fit with the team. And the good news is there’s lots and lots of assessments. We use a lot of different assessments for this to try to figure out are they going to be a good fit.

(23:43)And so that’s kind of the foundational types of things. Pay attention to your people. We find that communicating with them on a more frequent basis is better than a large communication like meeting once a month. If you can meet with them in small intervals, it really shows that you’re interested. And we encourage all the people that I do executive coaching for is take an interest in the individual as well. Even though you say leave all your baggage at home, people bring that into the office. And particularly now in a virtual environment, it’s more prevalent. So if you can pay attention, find out what their interests are, show an interest, figure out how it relates to your work, they’re going to really think hard before they make that jump.

Speaker 1 (24:29):Yeah. So nothing you’ve said there is particularly rocket science. Is it really? No. If you look at it, no, not at all. Getting the right people in, making them feel comfortable, showing an interest in them so that they become part of something. They’re not just working for you but they actually belong. So even though it’s not rocket science, many, many, many business owners, even people with just two or three staff let alone when you start getting up to 2030 or more, they really struggle with this kind of stuff. So why do we struggle?

Speaker 3 (24:58):I think it’s really quite simple. I think if you look at most organizations particularly today is that they’re under-resourced, particularly smaller organizations never say no. And they keep adding stuff to their plates. And what they don’t realize is we had something when I spent 18 years or 17 years at Intel and right before I left, I wanted to make sure that I could go and help other organizations that didn’t have $10 million budgets when I was managing Intel’s management leadership development for the world. And I think one of the things that we found is, is that people really don’t have a great understanding of what we used to call keeping the business running, that we keep adding additional projects and things and people want to be good team players and employees want to be good team players. But as managers we do a really terrible job.

(25:56)That’s what we’ve seen. They do a terrible job of really allocating sufficient amount of time and resources for the individuals to do a good job. And then you end up with people working 80 hour weeks and on the weekends and the evenings and it destroys their family life and they want to be good, they’re doing it with good intent, but most people have not figured out what’s your normal day, your normal week, what does it take out of that 40 or 50 hours that you’re working to really just keep the business running? And then if you look at that and you do an inventory, that’s one of the first things that we do is when we’re looking at doing the task rebalance that we’ll talk about, I’m sure in a little bit is identify where all your time is going, resources going, what’s important, what is it important, being able to get rid of this stuff or delegate the stuff that is really you shouldn’t be doing if you’re making $120,000 as an IT administrator or whatever the number is.

(27:00)If you’re doing lots and lots of administrative work that could be outsourced, that’s usually a really good low hanging fruit of things that you could do. So once you figure out how much time you have, and I would encourage all the small business owners to have their people doing inventory, we have a process and anybody that wants to contact me at the end, I’ll glad to send the process to them to be able to do that. Then you’ll get an idea of how much more work you can take. And I’d say that’s probably the number one reason that people are leaving is just because you get that slow scope creep and eventually it gets too much. And like I said, people want to be good team players, so they don’t want to say no. And it usually gets overwhelming. And the best way to, or the easiest way for people, particularly since most people are non-confrontational to be able to address it is just to pull the plug and move on and start over.

Speaker 1 (27:59):Yeah, no, absolutely. And thank you for that offer. We will share your contact details at the end of this interview, but that’s something really, really interesting. It’s never occurred to me and I’ve owned a business since 2005, that was when I started my first one. It’s never occurred to me to actually stop and create a baseline level of how many hours does it take me? Does it take each member of my team just to keep the business running? Sure. Most MSPs listening to this like yourself, Kevin, we’ve got projects on, we’ve always got a project. There’s always something that we’re doing to develop or improve or grow or close something down or try something new. And yeah, I think that’s something maybe my team and I might go and do in the next week or so is figure out where’s the baseline. Now you mentioned a specific process there, I think it was task rebalancing I think you mentioned. Tell us a little bit about that.

Speaker 3 (28:50):Yeah, so as I mentioned Paul earlier just previously is that there’s lots and lots of ways to keep people motivated and engaged. So I had created as a part of my doctoral dissertation when I was doing all my research, I noticed that each one of us does different tasks. And the way it turned out was I was managing at Intel. I did my doctorate around in 2000. So I was still working at Intel and finishing all my doctoral work while I was still working there. And one of the things that I found is as I was managing my team at a team of about 20, one of the things I noticed was they were all very similar personalities almost. They had master’s degrees, usually in HR or business, all about the same age or so, and same experience. And what I noticed was I’d walk into the first person’s office to check in and see how they were doing, and I would notice they would say, Hey, I love working on task A, but I don’t like B and C as much.

(29:58)And then I would walk into the second office, same kind of person, and they’d say, Hey, I like working on B, but I don’t like A and C. And third person would be is I like working on C, but I don’t like A and BI thought this is really kind of perplexing for me. It’s like why is that? We’ve tried to align them with the work that they would love to do and there’s these different preferences. So I did some research, worked with a gentleman by the name of Bill Daniels, wrote a great book if anybody wants to read a fantastic book called Breakthrough Performance Bill’s a Behavioral Psychologist. And what Bill noticed was that each one of us has that we do three types of tasks on a daily basis. So on a regular basis we do routine tasks. And as you can imagine like routine tasks might be doing email or deleting 10 spam messages or getting 10 checkoffs done to call people or whatever it is.

(30:57)So routine work is highly predictable and at the same time really needs to get done in the moment. So that’s a routine work. The second task type is what bill calls is problem solving or troubleshooting called it troubleshooting. And that type of task is highly unpredictable and it has to get done in the moment. So you get a client call the server’s down, the code’s not working, my webpage is going all funky with characters. You have to do it in the moment. So that’s the troubleshooting or the problem solving type of task. And then the third type of task that we do is what bill calls project tasks. These are highly predictable and they don’t have to get done in the moment. So it’s like working in your taxes or finishing a new design or whatever. And what we found was that if you look at those three tasks as a pie, which equals a hundred percent, there are 496 discrete mixtures of tasks that people have that they like to do.

(32:08)And what we found or what I found through my doctoral research was that each one of us has a preference of a balance of one of those 496 different variations. And if I can identify that variation for your ideal task balance, I’ve proven statistically that I can raise your level of job satisfaction, motivation and engagement. There’s some additional work that was done by Dr. Holly Martin for her dissertation where she took my dissertation and she found out that you can actually expand empowerment where you feel empowered once you start doing this or even being aware of that. So the idea is find the mixture and then create the job structure to be able for you to get that mixture. So as an example for me at a very high level, just round the numbers off is I like 50% project work. I like 30% problem solving work and I have about a 20% tolerance for routine work.

(33:12)So what I do each day, and this is the thing that we do for organizations, in fact, we did this for a big IT organization, and there’s actually a case study that I’m sure I can give you the link at the end of this session is once you know that you can start structuring your day. So I found that I have a certain cadence and we all have a different cadence for once we know the splits, you want to figure out what your cadence is. So for my cadence for project work, it’s about two hours and for troubleshooting is about an hour and a half or so. Your routine work typically half hour to 45 minutes. So what I try to do each day is I try to schedule my day so that I block my time and I vary the test type that I do rather than just going from project to project to project where there’s variety of different things I’m working on.

(34:11)But what our brain wants is our brain wants that feedback of that we’re accomplishing things at different levels. When you finish a project piece, then it’s a very high intensity of feedback, but the frequency is a much, much lower troubleshooting is about a medium piece of feedback as well as it happens a little bit more than project work. And of course your routine work has a lower impact of the feedback, but it’s much, much more frequent. And each one of us has a different frequency that we need in order to stay motivated and engaged. And what I’ll tell the listeners here is the way you can tell. So once you know your mix, so you’ve got that project mix for me, it’s about 50 and I can do two hours in a row, is the way you can tell that you need to do a different task type is when you start thinking about other things.

(35:09)When you’re not in that flow and you’re not in that zone where you want to get up, you want to get a drink, you want to go pick up the phone and make a phone call or you want to go answer some emails, that’s the trigger. And the trigger says I need to switch my task type. So if I move from a project, then what I’m going to do is I’m going to go to the email and I’m going to read two dozen emails and I’m going to delete half of ’em and I’m going to feel like, oh, I have accomplished something. And after I’ve kind of done that for a while, when I start thinking about, oh, I should probably work on this or make that phone call, that’s the trigger. And then from there you want to jump into a different task type, either whether it’s project or troubleshooting, and if you can manage that and you have that ability to schedule block your time to be able to do that. At the end of the day, you’re going to be tired, but you’re not going to be exhausted, you’re not going to be mentally exhausted and you’ll want to come back and do it again. Now this process that I developed for the doctoral work, I call the task quotient or tq, and there’s an assessment once again that we’ll give to the listeners at the end so they don’t have to buy it normally we charge for this. I’m going to give your listeners a gift of that at the end.

Speaker 1 (36:27):Okay, well, we are at the end. We are there already and I’m so glad. My final question to you is going to be the practical question of how do we figure out which of these 496 different types we are? And you’ve given the answer there, which is essentially it’s to listen to yourself. So I will just throw in one practical question before we go to some of those links. And thank you very much for your very kind offer, Kevin, from a practical tracking point of view, should you journal throughout the day, should you do time tracking? Because we all have moments during the day, don’t we, where we are distracted. For me, it’s going on social media. I know if I’m sitting down to do something and then I’m like, oh, just check Facebook on my phone. It’s a massive red flag. I don’t like Facebook. So it’s a massive red flag for me that I’m trying to find anything to do. And in fact, actually since working from home, if I find myself thinking I might just go and empty the dishwasher, that’s also another red flag. It means I’m distracting myself from the thing that I don’t really want to do. So from a practical point of view, how do you think the average person, not just the business owner, but their team, how can they figure out what their mix is?

Speaker 3 (37:35):Well, the first thing is take the assessment that’ll tell you what your mix is of the 496 different mixes that there are, we have a tracking sheet that we ask, we give to all of our execs or the people that go through our programs and say, here, just track the things that you’re doing. You want track it in. If you could track it in 15 to 30 minute increments, great. Certainly each hour just kind of writing down what you do that’ll give you an idea. And then the process in order, once you get your task quo to identify what are the project routine and troubleshooting tasks, then you can just do a quick inventory of what you got. And then I think you’re be incredibly surprised with two things. One that you’re doing a lot more of. Usually execs are doing a lot more administrative work than they should be, and two, you’re getting a lot less of what you to stay motivated and engaged. And then we have a whole other process of how do you fix that.

Speaker 1 (38:41):Yeah, yeah, that makes perfect sense. Okay, we’ve got to the point of the giveaways and you’ve made a very generous, in fact, let me sound the giveaway horn. So thank you for this. Make it nice and easy for us, Kevin, because we could always stick really complicated links on our show page, which is on the website. Tell us where to go and get these amazing things that you’ve said you’d give away. And also how can we best get in touch with you?

Speaker 3 (39:05):So I created a Bitly link, so it’s a short link. If anyone goes to Magna leader, MAGA, leader.co com, co slash and in all caps, gift GIFT, it’ll take you right to our site for you to be able to take the assessment and you’ll takes about less than five minutes to take the answer, the 15 questions. You’ll get your report instantaneously and it’ll identify your ideal mixture of how to stay motivated and engaged. If you want to get in touch with me, kevin@magnaleadership.com, send me an email. I’d love to talk about this. I can send you templates or walk you through things or give you insight on your report. Be glad to do that. And my promise to anybody that calls us absolutely no sales pitch, you’re not going to get a sales pitch from me. We have plenty of clients. I want to be helpful to you. And if I can do that, then I’m kind of fulfilling my kind of role in life.

Speaker 2 (40:08):Paul Green’s MSP marketing podcast, this week’s recommended book.

Speaker 5 (40:14):Hi, I’m Trevor W Goodchild Facebook ad policy specialist, and I recommend Built to Sell by John Waro because it gives you a really good insight, not only in how to build your business to sell, but also what are some good checks and balances to make sure that your business is operating sustainably for years to come.

Speaker 2 (40:33):Coming up, coming up next week,

Speaker 1 (40:35):We’ve got a special episode for you next week. MSP owner, Lyle Kirshenbaum, he’s doing a big trade show now. He did the same trade show last year. It was pretty good, good results. This year he wants more, so he’s got a bigger booth and he wants to really 10 x his return. So in our special next week, we are going to delve into what he’s doing and how to get better returns from it. If you’ve ever wondered if trade shows are a good way for you to grow your business, we’ll answer that question next week. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP

Speaker 2 (41:08):Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Greens Marketing podcast.

Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You by John Warrillow (28-Feb-2013) Paperback

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Episode 233Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week’s show includes:* 00:00 Why you need Big Mo in your business * 08:01 Systemize your ability to under-promise and over-deliver * 15:41 This expert can help you grow your MSP business

Featured guest:Thank you to MSP Coach Brian Hoppe, for joining me to talk about his experience of scaling MSP businesses, and how he uses that experience to coach other MSPs in how to scale their own businesses.

Brian has been part of the Managed Services industry since the early 2000s. He earned both his Bachelor’s and MBA from Baylor University. For over 20 years, Brian has worked in multiple MSPs and has bought and sold multiple MSPs. He’s been everything from a technician to Ops Manager to CFO to CEO. He has grown multiple MSPs to over $5 million in revenue and managed MSPs in excess of $15 million in revenue. Brian has a thorough understanding of all the ins and outs of running a highly successful MSP. But more importantly, he understands how to help MSP leaders get the most from their business. His expertise in leadership and coaching can help any MSP owner or CEO achieve the results they want in both business and life. He is passionate about finding the right clients for his coaching practice to help take their business and leadership to the next level.

Connect with Brian on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianhoppe/

Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + http://mspmarketingedge.com/about/ * Connect with me on LinkedIn: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * I mentioned the book The Compound Effect, if you’re interested in reading more you can find it here: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Compound-Effect-Darren-Hardy-LLC/dp/1399805789/ * Grab yourself a copy of this week’s recommended book, The Obstacle is the Way: The Ancient Art of Turning Adversity to Advantage: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Obstacle-Way-Ancient-Adversity-Advantage/dp/1781251495/

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.

Speaker 1 (00:00):Fresh every Tuesday

Speaker 2 (00:02):For MSPs around the world, around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast. Podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:09):Hi there and welcome back to the show. Here’s what I’ve got in store for you this week.

Speaker 3 (00:14):Hi, I’m Brian Hoppe. I have built an MSP up to 45 staff and also built and sold a second MSP. Join me on Paul’s podcast where we talk about how to scale your MSP.

Speaker 1 (00:25):We’re also going to talk about how to guarantee that you delight every single one of your clients by systemizing how to underpromise and over deliver

Speaker 2 (00:35):Paul Green’s MSP marketing podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:39):Let’s talk about a key member of your team who might actually be missing. You haven’t got him yet, but you do need him if you’re ever going to get anywhere with your marketing. In fact, his very appearance within your MSP shows that you are getting it right. His name is Big Mo, and he brings with himself big momentum. Now, I first heard the concept of big, big momentum, whatever you call it, reading a book called The Compound Effect. It’s an amazing book. If you haven’t read it or listen to it because it is on audible, please go and get it. Obviously, it’s not about MSPs, but it could be because it’s talking about productivity and talking about getting into a flow and repeat things. In fact, one of the other key phrases I remember from that is the secret of success is not about doing 5,000 things really well, it’s about finding a tiny number of things and doing them 5,000 times.

(01:35)And that is so the case with marketing because marketing your MSP, it’s a long game and it’s like rolling a stone down a hill. In fact, it’s not really a stone. It’s a massive rock. Think of a rock that’s bigger than you and you’ve got to get that started and get it going down the hill. So first of all, you’ve got to put your shoulder into it. It takes a lot of effort, a lot of work to start to push that stone, and you’re rocking back and forth and the stone’s rocking back and forth, and then eventually the stone reaches that tipping point and it starts to go down the hill, but it’s a shallow hill and it’s a very, very slow roll of the stone. In fact, you have to keep pushing it and keep pushing it to keep it going. But what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to get it to that point where it reaches big momentum or achieves big momentum and the hill gets steeper and the stone, the rock starts to turn and turn and turn.

(02:26)It gets faster and faster. And believe me, at that point, no one is stopping it. Now, obviously, I’m not really talking there about a rock down a mountain. I’m talking about your MSP’s marketing. It takes a lot of effort to get things going. You’ve got to really put your shoulder into it and push and push and you won’t see results at first, but eventually you reach the tipping point where you start to see some momentum, you start to see some things happening, and then you have to keep pushing and pushing and pushing and making sure the marketing continues. The rock continues because eventually it builds up big, big momentum. The problem is that too many MSPs, they give up way too soon. They start doing some marketing, they’ll throw themselves into LinkedIn and then two minutes later they’ll stop. Perhaps they’ll take a vacation or a break or something, or maybe they’ll just skip a week because they’ve just got out of the habit of it and the momentum goes because then that week becomes two weeks, three weeks, and suddenly LinkedIn didn’t work for me or insert this marketing tactic here, didn’t work for me.

(03:28)Whenever someone says to me, oh, I tried that. It didn’t work for me with one or two minor exceptions like paid ads for example, pay-per-click ads, there are in many instances times where that’s not right for you. The same with SEO search engine optimization. It’s not right for every MSP in every marketplace, but other marketing tactics, they do work if you do them long enough. I mean, look at this podcast. We are about four and a half years into this podcast, so we have put this podcast out every single week since November, 2019, and I know that no one listened for the first year they have now, because what happens is people discover the podcast and then they go back and they start at the beginning. Some people do not. Everyone does. So now we have lots of views on our first five 10 episodes, but when we first put them out in 2019, no one was listening.

(04:17)There was zero feedback, no one cared. But you know what? Me and my production team, it was just a guy called James at the beginning, and now it’s James and Simon and Laura, and there’s a whole team of us working on this podcast and we all turn up every single week and we’ve systemized doing this podcast. I record it ahead of time. I record guests ahead of time, and we’re talking weeks ahead of time. We’ve got a great production process, we’ve got a marketing process, and we’ve got Big Mo on the big momentum on the podcast, and that’s deliberate because it’s a really important marketing channel for us, and we don’t ever want to trip up and get it wrong. But that first year there was literally tumbleweed. There was no one out there. We’re having a similar thing right now with YouTube. So we have put an massive amount of effort.

(04:58)It’s the same team. We work on podcasters, work on YouTube, and at the moment we will put out a video that perhaps takes two hours of filming time for me and either James or Simon who direct me remotely. I hear in my studio, I’ll put on props. We’ll write scripts. We spend, I’d say it’s two hours of filming. It must be at least three to four hours of scripting and probably another four hours or so of editing. So we’re investing 10, maybe 12 hours into a YouTube video that’s getting 60 views and we’ve got like 800 subscribers. These are tiny, tiny little figures. But here’s the thing, I’m not worried about it because I know if we keep putting out a video and we’re working up to doing it every single week, we will grow that channel. That 800 subscribers will become thousands of subscribers, all MSPs.

(05:45)Those 60 views per video will become 600 views per video, 6,000 views. Eventually it will grow because we will get big mo on it. LinkedIn, I’m very active on LinkedIn just as I recommend that you should be. And right now I’ve got 9,000 followers on LinkedIn and those are people who are, some of them are connected to me as well, and some of them will be getting my LinkedIn newsletter, but some of them are just following me. So on LinkedIn, if you’re a content creator, so you’ve switched on content creator in the settings, then people can just follow you and see the content that you put out there. 9,000 MSPs, that’s pretty impressive, right? But that comes from Big Mo because we’ve been working on that since roundabout 2017. We’ve got big momentum on it. So what I suggest to you within your SP, if you set the right marketing strategy, you then commit to it for years and years and years, and let me give you the right marketing strategy to make it really simple.

(06:42)It’s a super simple three-step marketing strategy we’ve built as service. The MSP marketing edge around this very simple step. Number one is to build multiple audiences, typically LinkedIn and your email database. Step number two is then to build a relationship with those audiences, and you do that through content marketing. So putting out social media daily, sending out an email once a week and sending out a printed newsletter once a month. And then the third step is you then convert those relationships into clients, and that’s done by phoning those people up and just seeing how they’re going well, is now the right time for you to have a chat with them? That is a great marketing strategy, but only if you commit yourself to it for the next five years. And once you get big mo, by the way, be very, very careful not to accidentally show in the door, as I said to you with our podcast, with YouTube, with our LinkedIn, not with YouTube yet, but with those things we’ve got Big Mo and we work very, very hard to make sure that we never, ever accidentally kill that momentum. For us, that means working ahead. Well, it means resourcing it well, it means communicating well. If I’m going around on holiday, someone is going to do the jobs that I normally do and vice versa. When my team are away, we work very, very hard to make sure that once Big Mo is in the building, we never let him out of the door. And you need to do exactly the same thing.

Speaker 4 (08:02):Here’s this week’s clever

Speaker 1 (08:03):Idea. One of the smartest ways to always make sure your clients are always happy is to underpromise and over deliver, but you need to build that into a system because if you’re kind of hoping that it happens or constantly having to chase your technicians to make sure it happens, well it’s not going to happen. Whereas if you’ve built it into a system, then it just happens. So what are some examples of how you would underpromise and overdeliver? Let’s take for example, a project. Let’s say you’re doing a migration project. Well, let’s go with that. We’re going with a migration project. So for example, it takes, let’s say eight days, eight working days to do this. So you would tell your client, this takes 10 working days, and you would give them a project map or whatever it is that you give them that shows them 10 days.

(08:53)Now, there’s two benefits for you of working those extra two days into that schedule. The first benefit is that if something goes wrong, I’m not a technical person, but I’m sure that things go wrong all the time In migrations when you stumble across things you didn’t know that you were going to be involved in migrating, well, you’ve just bought yourself two extra days so you can actually deliver on schedule, but still take an extra two days because it’s eight days, the client thinks it’s 10 days, there’s two day spare. It’s good. But the other thing, and what we really want to do here is for you to be able to go back to the client after eight days and say, good news, we had spare resource within the business, so we threw them onto your migration at no cost to you. The upside of this is we’ve delivered it a day early or we’ve delivered it two days early.

(09:38)And imagine if you are able to do that with every single project that you scheduled. That’s really cool, right? Isn’t it? Another thing that you could do to under promise and over deliver is to give your clients more than you promised. So just as an example, let’s say you bought them a new laptop or they’ve asked you to buy them some new laptops. What you do at the same time is you buy them some monitors and you find a way to subsidize those external monitors. So it might be that you say to or, well, no, I’m just thinking that’s probably a big cost. Let’s say they buy laptops and they buy some external monitors. You go and buy some laptop docks. I dunno how much those cost. Let’s say that’s like a hundred dollars or a hundred pounds per laptop dock. So obviously you are losing a bit of margin, but you just build it in and for you to turn up and say to them, right, here’s your new laptop, it’s all set up for you.

(10:26)Here’s your external monitor. Hey, we just wanted to make your lives easy, so I hope you don’t mind, we are not charging you for this. It’s a free gift from us. We’ve got some laptop docs for you. Look, you just slide it in Bing and it comes up on the monitor, right? That would be really cool. I mean, I know I would as an end user, as a client, I will be delighted with that. And you know, don’t even have to go out of your way spending hundreds on kit for them. You can just find very simple ways to surprise your clients, and this is another way to underpromise and over-deliver. For example, what if a Friday afternoon you just dropped in to a client with cakes, right? With donuts or with cakes, nice fresh ones, not cheap, nasty shop bought ones, but lovely fresh cakes, fresh cupcakes, fresh donuts that you’ve just picked up from somewhere.

(11:15)What if someone has been put in a ticket yesterday to say their mouse was a bit sticky, they spilt something on it, their mouse is sticking and you just turn up or or someone turns up at the office and you make a big thing of, hi everyone, sorry to bother you. Obviously you go with this. If this is your personality to do this, sorry to bother you, but Dave, do you know that Dave’s spelled some Dr. Pepper on his mouse this week? I’ve got a new one. And you hold the new one up and you say, Dave, here we go. It’s on us because there’s nothing worse than a sticky mass, right? Something like that. And imagine, in fact, could you imagine systemizing every Friday you go round one of your clients and they don’t know that you do this every Friday. They think you’ve just dropped in on your way home with cakes or pizza or whatever it is that you’re just dropping.

(11:59)Is cakes probably better than pizza? Can you see how really cool this would be? I tell you something else that you could do to under promise. I know you said under-deliver and over promise, there under promise and overdeliver is to deal with small tickets really, really quickly. My doctor surgery did this here in the uk we have a thing called the NHS, the National Health Service, which is both amazing and terrible at the same time because basically the demand on it has grown so fast and the funding hasn’t grown as fast. So the whole system is creaking and we have long delays. It’s great. It costs us nothing. We pay a little tax for it, but it costs us nothing. Anybody can just turn up for any level of healthcare in theory. But the downside is you wait a long time and typically the smaller the item, the longer it takes.

(12:46)My local doctors has hired a paramedic. So a paramedic obviously is not a doctor, but he’s someone who’s quite experienced, and this is an experienced paramedic, and his job is to be that kind of first line, what’s the word I’m looking for? Triaging. He’s triaging people and dealing with small queries first, and they’re getting through a ton of patients really quickly because now instead of a doctor, a qualified general practitioner, having to see everyone as triage, they’ve put in a triage before the triage really smart. And this paramedic, I’m guessing they’ve got safeguards in place to make sure he doesn’t muck up. So they’re now able to deal with quick things. Like my daughter had a clicky knee. When you click, you bend your knee and it goes click, click, click, click. And we went in and we saw the paramedic and it was all dealt with very quickly.

(13:29)And he said, well, we could do this, we could do this, or I could feed you to the doctor, or you wait X number of months and come back to us. It’s brilliant. And now the customer satisfaction with that doctor has gone up because they’re just dealing with small things really fast. So whether you do that or whether you, and of course by the way, the MSP equivalent of that is hiring, I can’t remember what it’s called now, but hiring someone who’s not a technician to answer the phones a dispatcher. You hire a dispatcher to answer the phones and to deal with all of those small queries. Anybody can be trained to do password resets, add new users, basic stuff. So this is actually how you build capacity into your technicians by having a non technician dealing with the small stuff that’s the paramedic equivalent.

(14:13)So whether you do that or you drop off cakes on a Friday or whatever you do, you have to systemize it. And when you systemize it, it takes the stress out of it. If you’ve got a dispatcher sitting there, that’s the system. The dispatcher answers the phone, the dispatcher triages it, that’s the system. If you take cakes to clients every Friday, I go to a different client or every other Friday or something like that until you run out of clients and then you maybe go and see prospects and do something like that, it becomes a system. You don’t have to think about it. It just automatically happens. This, by the way, is why the word system is actually an acronym and it stands for saves you stress, time, energy and money. Let the system take the strain for you.

Speaker 4 (14:57):Paul’s blatant plug. Blatant

Speaker 1 (14:59):Plug. I mentioned LinkedIn earlier and the fact that I’ve got around about 9,000 followers on LinkedIn, if you are not one of them and you’d like to connect to me or just follow me or get my LinkedIn newsletter, then you can easily find me. Just go into LinkedIn, type in Paul Green, MSP marketing, because sadly there are lots of Paul Greens in the world. In fact, there’s a Paul Green shoes. Did you know that? It’s like a shoe designer. There’s a famous musician as well called Paul Green. In fact, I think School of Rock that Jack Black film, I think it is. The original one is called the Paul Green School of Rock. Anyway, regardless, you don’t want to connect with those people on LinkedIn. Type into search Paul Green, MSP marketing. You’ll find me. Let’s connect on LinkedIn,

Speaker 4 (15:42):The big, big, big interview.

Speaker 3 (15:44):Hi, I’m Brian Hoppe, and I am a CEO coach for MSPs.

Speaker 1 (15:49):And thank you so much for joining me on the show, Brian. So you are really one of those people who has been there and done that, and now you are taking that experience and helping other MSP owners to go where you went with your business. Tell us about your story. So how did you get into the tech world in the first place and what have you done over the last, I guess it must be a couple of decades for you now. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (16:10):Absolutely. Yes. So I’m one of the rare people who actually went to school for it. So I got a business degree in IT concentration, so I knew what I wanted to do and one of the rare people it seems that actually used their education. So I got started in the early two thousands in just like a two man shop, and we were pretty quickly after that acquired by a family office, Forbes billionaire who wanted to grow an IT company. So we grew that IT company for a number of years up until about 2015 up to around 45 employees. And then it kind of became like, Hey, I’d like to maybe do this for myself as opposed to for somebody else. So I’ve bought a small company, grew that for a little while, purchased another company, MSPs, specifically targeted towards banking and credit union industry. So built kind of a financial services MSP, and then sold that back in 2021. I had planned to do that for a longer period of time, but circumstances were just right at that point. And so decided to make the sale, worked for the buyer for a little bit over a year after that, and now have been just working one-on-one with MSP CEOs for the last about a year.

Speaker 1 (17:28):Fantastic. I mean, that’s a heck of a journey. Now, the time that you spent running or working in an MSP for someone else, when you actually came out of that and you thought, right, I’d like to do this myself, talk us through why you bought a company as opposed to just starting your own place.

Speaker 3 (17:44):Oh, that’s a great question. Yeah, I think I decided I just didn’t want to start from scratch. I consider on the StrengthsFinder, I’m a maximizer, so starting from scratch is not necessarily in my strength. And so I decided, hey, I’m going to buy something that’s in place. It’s pretty small. It was about five techs or so at the time. And so I’ve just felt like that was the right path for me as I kind of embarked on my journey on my own.

Speaker 1 (18:14):And when you bought the other MSPs, did you sort of merge them all into one entity?

Speaker 3 (18:18):We did, yes. We took the best of both worlds and merged them together, got on all the same systems, processes and all of that, and really use that for some cost savings and that kind of a thing as you do. And yeah, merge the operations together.

Speaker 1 (18:37):Okay. So in a second, you and I are going to talk about scaling up any MSP, and I know you have an absolute ton of advice and information and structure that you would add to that. Before we do, let me ask you one last question about your own MSP that you owned. What would you say, well, let me ask you two. What would you say is was your biggest mistake that you made while you were growing that business, and B, what was the thing that you think you got, which most other MSPs get wrong?

Speaker 3 (19:04):So starting with the biggest mistake, I think one of the things that, especially after purchasing the second company, we did not do a good job of cultivating the relationships with the customers on the front end of the company that we acquired. And so we had some issues in there with customer retention. I definitely take responsibility for that, but learned the lesson in that process that the customer relationship is absolutely the most important thing. And then the second part of that being a success, I think one of the big things that we did is that we really focused in on an industry and we made that kind of the center of what we did. So for me, that was the financial services, and that really enables you to know your customer and the software they use, all of their needs, all of those kinds of things really, really well. And it really simplifies marketing. Also, I know most MSPs are very broad. They’re not industry specific, and that can be okay too, but it did simplify a lot of things and really helped us grow and scale very well.

Speaker 1 (20:27):Yeah, no, I can imagine, and you’re right, a lot of MSPs, they’ll talk about having a vertical, and often it’s the same verticals, isn’t it? It’s CPAs or accountants, lawyers, manufacturers, everyone seems to be going after the same verticals, but very often it’s a toe dipped into the water and someone will look at their business and say, Hey, I’ve got three lawyers already, so we’ve got a vertical, let’s go after that vertical. And they do a page on their website and put it in the navigation, and that makes it a vertical. And the reality is when you go all in on something, it’s a completely different thing. And I’ve actually pulled this trick off myself. Obviously I only work with MSPs, and I only do a very small narrow piece of the marketing puzzle for MSPs, but I had a previous business, which I sold in 2016 where we worked with veterinarians and opticians or optometrists and dentists here in the uk.

(21:17)And that was really cool because the actual work we were doing was identical for each of them, but we had three separate websites, we had three separate teams, we had three separate ways of talking to these people, but then all the work was flowing into one delivery team, and that was a really cool, that was a great lesson in how to get verticals. I would love to see more MSPs really, really marry a market. And I know of a few that have, and those that know me well, who are doing this, who are listening to this right now, they know who I’m talking about, but it’s very much the exception rather than the rule. Right. Let’s talk about scaling an MSP. So you’ve gone, as you say, I think you said you’ve got about 20, 24, 23 years experience building someone else’s business for them, building your own business, and now you are coaching MSPs.

(22:04)And I think that does give you such a broad depth of, or what’s the phrase I’m trying to say here, Brian, A broad overview of what MSPs do and also allows you to go deep into specific subjects. So what do you think are the most critical things that, let’s say if you’re an average MSP owner and you’re at the sort of two, three tech stage right now, but you’re ambitious and you really want to go for it and you really want to get up there to 5, 10, 15 techs, create a business that runs without you, that thrives without you and free yourself just to be leading that business and working on that business, what would you say are the critical things to put in place along the way?

Speaker 3 (22:49):Yeah, there’s so many. There’s so many, and it is really unique for each MSP. So I’ll start by talking about, one of the things that I go through with my clients a lot is figuring out what is in your unique ability. So as the owner, are you spending the time on the things that you’re best at and the things that are going to push your business forward the most? We know most everybody kind of starts as a technical person, right? A technician. And it’s that process of moving from doing work that other people can also do to doing the things that only you can do. And I talk to so many owners who are really stuck in the day-to-day, putting out fires, all of those kinds of things. And it takes stepping back a little bit and saying, okay, what am I uniquely suited for as the owner? What’s my highest and best use inside the company? And how do I free up my time, generally speaking, by finding good people to help in key areas in order to do those things that are the most important. I think that’s a big piece.

Speaker 1 (24:00):Yeah, no, I think it’s a huge piece, but do you sometimes find that a, the MSP owner is, even though they acknowledge they’ve got to change, they’re really reluctant to actually make that change happen when they’re caught up doing everything, and B, do you sometimes find that the MSP owner actually realizes what they’re best at is third line support and they’re going to have to find someone else to essentially help them grow the business?

Speaker 3 (24:21):Yeah, absolutely. And that’s the big thing. It’s as owners, we see certain things and we also have a lot of blind spots, and most of the time it is the fact that it’s a blind spot as the owner, I don’t know what really should I be doing or what’s really sucking up my time to keep me from doing the strategic things that I need to do to grow the company. And so absolutely, I think part of it is having some help with that, right? Having somebody to be like, Hey, let’s reflect on where the time is going, what you’re doing and where you need to bring in that help to really get you on track.

Speaker 1 (24:59):Yeah, I think it’s one of the hardest things for any business owner. I remember doing it in my first business. It was so hard. It was easy in the second business because I’d already done it, just as I’m sure you found when you were growing your own MSP as you hit situations that you’d already dealt with in the previous MSP, you’re like, oh, I know what to do. Well, it’s not in knowing what to do. I know what to do. I’ve done it and I know what the pitfalls are and I know what success looks like, so it’s so much easier. So what are some of the other critical success factors do you think make a big difference?

Speaker 3 (25:30):You’d be surprised to hear how many MSP owners I talk to that have no idea where they want to go. They’re like, I want to grow my business. And that’s about it. So I start with vision. Where do we want to go? Let’s look at a big hairy, audacious goal. Let’s look 10 years out, the BHAG, what do you want things to look like in 10 years? How do we crystallize that vision and really help you as the owner have a really crystal clear picture of what that looks like? So starting off with vision, and we also even look at things like, Hey, what do you want your personal wealth to look like? What do you want your business valuation to look like in that 10 year or so period? And then that gives us a starting point that gives us the north star for, Hey, here is where I want to go. And it just changes things going from, yeah, I want to grow the business to, I’m really crystal clear about here’s where we’re going to be 10 years from now, and then that gives us the ability to say, okay, great, so now we can put together the strategy to actually get there. I think that’s a big piece of the puzzle and something that a lot of people don’t do.

Speaker 1 (26:46):No, I agree completely. It’s just struck me, Brian, as we’re talking there that you and I are talking about really basic stuff here. We talking, well, lemme give a caveat. We’re talking about really basic stuff that most people find it really hard to do. Something as simple as knowing where you want to go. If you’ve got a destination, you can plan a route to the destination, right? Yes. And freeing yourself so that you do what only you can do. These are actually really basic things, and yet, and it’s not just MSPs, all business owners, the world over really struggle with these things and you go and read books like the E Myth Revisited and Built to Sell, both of which are exceptionally good books on this very subject. They’re slightly different takes of the same potential solution to the problem. And this is a massive, massive thing. Let’s talk about what you do to help MSPs then. So you obviously have this incredible expansive experience. What do you do when you are working with MSP owners? Now, coaching is a very big word. It can involve lots of different things. So how do you typically help people?

Speaker 3 (27:50):Certainly, yes. So typically it’s one-on-one with the owner of the MSP. And what’s a little bit unique is that when you hear about coaches in the MSP ecosystem, most everybody has, they’re maybe an ops coach or a sales coach or those kinds of things, and they have a program for you to follow. And mine is much more bespoke. I work exactly with the owner on what they need right now. I dive deep with them into not only the business, but also how does your business affect your personal life? Are you working to live or living to work? And a lot more of those kinds of things. And so it’s really tailored for exactly what you as the owner need right now. Where do you need to grow in your leadership? Where do you need to grow or what do you need to do in your company in order to set that vision Then?

(28:48)So we look at vision, we look at strategy to get there, and then we look at execution day in, day out. What I find a lot is that as you’re moving from that 3, 5, 7 employees up to 10 or 10, 12, 15, is that you move from technologist to leader. And if you want to scale your company, you have to make that transition from being the guru, the tech guru, to being an amazing recruiter and an amazing leader and amazing vision caster and somebody who can get people on the same page as you and where your company is going and somebody who can inspire and all those kinds of things. So I help owners also make that transition as well into really what they need in order to be able to scale their business. So those are just some of the high level things that we go through.

Speaker 1 (29:43):That’s really cool. Thank you. So tell us about the resource that you’ve got available and what’s the best way for MSPs to get in touch with you?

Speaker 3 (29:49):Yeah, absolutely. So I have a free resource. It’s the MSP Momentum Quick Start Guide, and really it actually starts by talking a lot about what we’ve been talking about here. So thinking through your vision strategy execution, and goes into some more details, kind of a framework that I’ve picked up over the years. So if you want to download that, you can just go to discovery dot brian hoppe.com and that’s available there. And then I’m also very active on LinkedIn, so if you look me up on LinkedIn, just search Brian Hoppe should show up right there in the front. And also Brian hoppe.com if people can reach me there as well.

Speaker 2 (30:31):Paul Green’s MSP marketing podcast, this week’s recommended

Speaker 5 (30:36):Book. I’m Chad Lauterbach, founder and CEO of B structured technology group. The book I would recommend is The Obstacles The Way by my favorite author Ryan Holiday. It’s been used by NFL teams, all sorts of sports athletes and businesses around the world. It is not a business book. I’m an amateur philosopher and he is a philosopher as well. Stoic philosophy has really helped me manage the stress of business, but specifically as it relates to marketing and the obstacles, the way we had a lot of failed opportunities and viewing those failures and obstacles as opportunities as the way forward, not a block, was really a key for me to open up finding the right thing that worked for me in marketing.

Speaker 2 (31:20):Coming up next

Speaker 6 (31:21):Week. Hi, I’m Dr. Kevin Gazzara and I have found a way quantitatively to identify how to keep your people, how to retain them, and it won’t cost you a dime. Listen to Paul’s podcast to figure out how to do that.

Speaker 1 (31:37):On top of that interview with Kevin, we are going to talk about the best way that you can market to a vertical. I’ll tell you exactly what you need and exactly how to implement it. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP made

Speaker 2 (31:52):In the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green’s.

The Obstacle is the Way: The Ancient Art of Turning Adversity to Advantage

View Details

Episode 232Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week’s show includes:* 00:00 Build trust by doing a small thing well * 08:04 Have you heard of Feedback Donuts? * 10:51 Harnessing Intent Data to convert leads into prospects

Featured guest:Thank you to Paul Franklin, founder of Koala B2B, for joining me to talk about ‘intent data’, and how MSPs can track and use intent data to identify and engage warm leads at the point that they’re already interested in your services.

Paul Franklin is founder of Koala B2B, an intent data lead gen company. Paul has overseen millions of pounds worth of lead generation campaigns across the Tech B2B division he ran as Publisher for Dennis Publishing. The division included IT end user, cloud , and MSP/CSP/Reseller audiences specifically. He also ran the UK Cloud Awards for 6 years, a recognition and celebration of all cloud innovation in the country.

Connect with Paul on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-franklin-8922236/

Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + http://mspmarketingedge.com/about/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Connect with me on LinkedIn: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Grab yourself a copy of this week’s recommended book, Marketing Made Simple: A Step-by-Step StoryBrand Guide for Any Business: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Marketing-Made-Simple-Step-Step/dp/1400217644/

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.

Speaker 1 (00:00):Fresh every Tuesday

Speaker 2 (00:02):For MSPs around the world, around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast. Podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:09):Hi there and welcome back to the show. Here’s what we’ve got coming up up for you this week.

Speaker 3 (00:13):Hi, my name’s Paul Franklin. I’m the guy who can tell you when companies are particularly interested in your products and services. I’m going to be talking about this and how you can tap into intent data on Paul’s show.

Speaker 1 (00:26):That’s my special guest, Paul Franklin. He’s joining me later on to talk about something called intent data marketing. It’s where you use data to find people who are clearly looking for an MSP right now. I’m also going to tell you about how to get better feedback from clients who’ve declined your offer and picked another MSP. How dare they

Speaker 2 (00:47):Paul Green’s MSP marketing podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:51):Can you hook a new client into managed services by selling them a lower value item? Well, I believe you can, and let me tell you why and give you some specific examples that you can use. So the idea about selling them something kind of lower priced is because the jump from being a prospect to signing a managed services contract, it’s a massive leap if you think about it from their point of view. And especially if they don’t know you and most people who are buying from you, they don’t know you. So they have maybe been referred into you, maybe they’ve done some Google searching, maybe they saw something that you did on LinkedIn, whatever it is. The point being is that going from that point of they’ve just met you to signing that contract, it’s huge. It’s a chasm. It’s a massive chasm in between the point they start and the point at which they finish.

(01:42)And I know that people do do this, and indeed many of the clients that you have signed up have done it, but it’s a big, big, big leap. So anything that we can do to reduce that down is better. What we have to do to take someone from being actually, they don’t just start as a prospect, they start as a suspect. They’re suspicious when they first find you. So to take someone from being a suspect, to being a prospect, to being an opportunity to becoming a client, to becoming a bonded client and a bonded client is where they stay with you for 10 years or more. To do that, we have to build trust. All of this, the entire journey is about building them trust, building trust with them. So this is where the concept of selling them something small, something one off and delivering it really well can help you to build trust.

(02:31)So the goal here is not really to make a great deal of margin. The goal here is simply to impress them. The best way that you can build trust with someone is to sell them something relatively low cost and deliver it really, really well. So for example, I’ll give you a couple actually backups, right? You might advertise something or you might find someone and say to them, Hey, let me have a look at your backups. What you are doing right now. I’ll be honest, it leaves you a little open. You’ve got one backup. It’s only in one site. Actually that should be mirrored elsewhere. It should be happening continuously. It shouldn’t just be a daily thing. Why don’t we get all of that set up for you? It will be X cost, whatever it will cost. You could do the same with password managers. You could sell someone a password manager for them and for their team.

(03:16)Relatively low cost. I appreciate actually, there’s an ongoing cost to that. It’s a subscription, but that’s okay as well. It’s a low cost, but you and I both know that you implement password managers properly for a business. Not only are yet, they’re safer, but actually they’re more productive as well, right? Password managers use properly by staff instantly removes a whole load of productivity hassles for a business. So these are perfect things that you could just sell someone as a startup. Now, let me give you a third one, and this is my favorite and it’s a little off the chart. It’s actually to sell something like a perfect video call setup. So if you imagine you put together, let’s say it’s a decent camera, it’s a USB microphone, there might be some LED lights, you might even link it all up to Alexa or something like that.

(04:07)And the point is that you have this perfect video call setup, which you sell as a one-off thing and you sell it and you go and install it for someone. And you could offer to do that for the owner of the business. You could then when you’re talking to them, you could say, well look, we’ve set you up this video call setup in your office. Why don’t we do the same for your home office as well? And then what about the rest of your management team? And then what about your salespeople and who else is doing video calls on a regular basis? Because actually the more professional you can appear to be on a video call, the better you will communicate and the better you’ll come across. You could even look at optimizing their teams or whatever platform they’re using. So can you see that?

(04:48)That’s actually a perfect sort of one-off not too high price. I appreciate there’s a lot of kit in there. So it’s going to be some investment, but it’s a beautiful thing to do because also when you are setting it up, if you’re setting up for the boss that buys you and your time, you and your team some time with the boss, and it might be that you and one of your technicians goes along to the office to set it up and while your technician is literally setting it all up and optimizing it to the boss’s height and all of that kind of stuff, then you are having a chat to them about their business and asking them open questions about their favorite subject themselves and their business. In fact, we could take this even further. If I owned an MSP and I had some proof that people bought that kind of video call setup, then I would set up actually a front offer.

(05:35)I would put together a lead magnet on this. So a lead magnet is something you give to someone in return for their contact details. So I might offer on LinkedIn or even through paid advertising, the ultimate video call setup guide. And this would be a PDF guide, which they can get by putting in their name and their email address in my website. So I’m driving traffic to a landing page on my website. People who are interested in a better video call setup, they enter their email, their contact details, I then send them that PDF. But the purpose of that PDF is to make it seem more complicated and difficult than it actually is because what I really want to do is to sell them that setup myself. So I send them through that guide. I perhaps have some kind of email sequence follow up to it.

(06:18)I would definitely do a follow up phone call. I’d just give them a call, maybe not me, maybe someone in my office give them a call and say, Hey, did you get the guide? Is this something you’ve thought about? Tell me what kind of video call setup have you got right now? Oh, you’re just using your webcam. Are you, what lights have you got? Oh, you’re sitting in front of a window, are you? But with your back to the window. So actually you’re in silhouette and you can sort of talk people through all of this and then of course you sell them that setup and then you go on to sell it through them to all of the other senior people and it gets repeated around all of their staff. And as I say it, then you are then buying yourself some time with talking to them.

(06:56)By the way, if you are thinking, but Paul, we are not experts at video call setups. Yes, you are compared to the ordinary business owners and managers that you are dealing with. You are an expert because you can spend the time and make a decision on which is the best camera, which is the best USB microphone, which are the best LED lights. How do I get all of this set up with things like sight lines? So their eyes are exactly at the point that the camera’s looking at them. How do we set up the lights to be correct? Let’s be honest, if you don’t actually know this stuff, it’s an hour’s worth of researching, right? It’s really not difficult, this kind of stuff. So you can set yourself up as that expert and you can deliver this very, very easily and by yourself, that 2030 minutes of quality questioning time with the owner or with the manager of the business. Now, if you like the sound of this, please don’t overthink it. Just do a test. Get a video call set up, created something that you know can sell. Just try and sell it to two or three prospects and see if actually that time talking to them while it’s being installed is valuable sales time. It’s all something you can just test.

Speaker 4 (08:04):Here’s this week’s clever

Speaker 1 (08:06):Idea. I’m sure this has happened to your MSP. You’ve submitted a proposal, but you didn’t get the clients and they haven’t really told you why. Well, here’s an idea that you can try for better feedback. Such a simple idea. You deliver a box of quality donuts to the decision maker. And when I say quality donuts, I don’t mean something where you walk into like a gas station or petrol station or just a store and buy a small box of slightly stale donuts. I mean expensive, spend 20, 30 pounds or dollars on there’s band to be a bakery or someone near you that does donuts or cupcakes or something like that. The point is, they must be quality and nice. And then in that box, when you deliver it, you include a short note and the short note says something like, could you give me 30 seconds please to tell me why we didn’t get your IT business?

(08:56)Thank you. And then you put your email address at the bottom. Lemme say that again because that note is actually the critical thing. Could you give me 30 seconds to tell me why we didn’t get your IT business? Thank you email address. Now, most reasonable people, they will email you back and you can always call them to just say, Hey, hope you got my donuts, my cake, or something like that. And would you be able to tell me why we didn’t get the business? Why would they respond? Because you are essentially buying their feedback. That 20, 30 pounds or dollars you spent on decent donuts or decent cakes is you buying that little bit of feedback. What’s really interesting as well is that in doing this, it will demonstrate that you are a mature business owner just because you didn’t get the business, you didn’t drop off and sulk and fold your arms and say, well, I’m not talking to you if you are not talking to me.

(09:48)So this going to behavior, asking for quality feedback in this way, I really believe it works in your favor because you never know they might a few weeks or months down the line, they might develop buyer’s remorse on the MSP that they chose instead of you. And you want to make it as easy and as pleasant for them to be able to come back to you and say, guys, we made a mistake. Can we talk again? So you showing maturity in the way that you are asking for feedback, that’s a very smart thing to do.

Speaker 5 (10:17):Paul’s,

Speaker 4 (10:18):Paul’s blatant plug

Speaker 1 (10:20):Plug. Smart business owners make smart marketing decisions and 700 MSPs are now part of the MSP Marketing edge. If you want new clients and an awesome life for you and your family, but you’re feeling stuck, well, you can get the answers you need Inside the MSP Marketing Edge, my online portal gives you a simple plan to follow and white label marketing content to help you get new clients and make more money. Join the MSP marketing edge@mspmarketingedge.com,

Speaker 4 (10:51):The big, big,

Speaker 5 (10:52):Big interview.

Speaker 3 (10:54):Hi, I’m Paul Franklin. I’m a intent demand generation owner and I’ve got a great deal of experience with MSPs marketing from the publisher perspective.

Speaker 1 (11:07):And thank you so much for joining me on the podcast, Paul. And we’re going to talk about what exactly intent means in a second and how MSPs can use that within their marketing. But first of all, tell us about your publishing background. So although you are not, as you were telling me just before the interview, you’re not a technical person yourself, you’re not an SP owner. You obviously know MSPs inside and out because you’ve actually been serving them as a publisher of websites. Tell us what you did.

Speaker 3 (11:32):Yeah, absolutely. So I was publishing director at Denis Publishing for a number of years, ran the p and l for the IT B2B and it B2C divisions. From the B2B perspective, we had IT pro cloud, pro channel Pro where we had audiences that were targeting or we were speaking to audiences that were technical end users, business decision makers, but also very much the channel MSPs, CSPs, all of those sort of managed service providers. And we tracked through Channel Pro especially, we tracked the sort of evolution of MSPs from when, I guess originally it was the reseller wholesaler dynamic all the way through to the modern offering and service provision that the MSPs and CSPs offer right now. So I manage those brands. We spoke to MSPs and end user entities and the tech partners on a very regular basis. We also ran the UK cloud awards when cloud became or before cloud became ubiquitous and it was really important for cloud and managed service providers to really help people understand the offerings that they were bringing to market.

Speaker 1 (12:50):So that’s quite some CV there. And for our international audience, you may or may not have heard of Denis Publishing. It’s a fairly sizable operation here in the uk and the founder was a guy called Felix Dennis who passed away quite a few number of years ago now, but he was definitely one of those highly eccentric billionaires or multimillionaires, and he wrote a fantastic book called How to Get Rich, which is worth reading. In fact, if you get it, get a copy of the hardback version, which is the edition I’ve got. It’s just on my bookshelf just over here. And the pictures on the inside of the hardback are pictures of checks that he’s written to the UK Tax Authority, which was called Inland Revenue back in the day. And we are talking checks more than you will ever earn in your career, and that would just be one of his checks that he wrote, but really eccentric guy and it’s a really interesting book. So let’s talk about this intent marketing. Can you explain for us and assume that I’m seven years old as you’re explaining this, what exactly is intent marketing

Speaker 3 (13:51):Intent data and the idea of intent is a concept that there are signals around interest in products and services that can be captured. And there are a number of what can be described as intent data platforms out in the market that capture a level of interest. And it might be based on keywords, it might be based on ip, it might be based on cookie data, and they can capture levels of interest in particular themes or subject matters or products or services keywords. And they can identify which companies are showing a particular level of interest in those keywords and products and services and things like that.

Speaker 1 (14:36):Got it. So we could assume that at the point that a business is nearly ready, willing and able to let’s say switch from their incumbent MSP over to new one, they have a pattern of behavior, which because of our digital world, we can track that or certain platforms can track that pattern of behavior. Would that be a correct way of putting it?

Speaker 3 (14:56):Yeah, that’s absolutely right. They can track interest in very particular things or broader sort of general themes. And this is very much international, so you can identify companies across any different geo what they’re interested in. And some of these platforms give you that sort of score so you can sort of see which are really, really interested, which are moderately interested and which are just very averagely interested in particular things. So yeah, absolutely. If somebody was to be thinking about different products and services that an MSP might be offering that could be picked up, that level of interest, that level of engagement, that sort of level of research really can be identified and picked up.

Speaker 1 (15:38):Okay, so in a second at the end of the interview, we’ll of course talk about what you do, Paul, because you have a business I know that takes that intent data and you turn it into leads or you help to turn it into leads for MSPs. But before we get there, just tell us a little bit about these platforms because intent data and intent marketing isn’t something we’ve talked about on the podcast before. So what kind of platforms are out there? Give us some names if you can, and are they any good? Are the good ones, bad ones? What kind of money are we going to be shelling out?

Speaker 3 (16:05):Yeah, there’s a number of them. Probably the most, well-known is Bombora, and that’s a very solid platform that uses intense signals from a number of different websites and platforms internationally that it sort of puts its tags on or these individual publishers allow for a BOMBO tag to be there so it can pick up interest around certain keywords and topics. That’s a fairly robust system, probably the most commonly known, most widely known. There are others like Six Sense is a very good offering that is actually sort a bombo partner as well, but has its own sort of intent data around keywords. There are others like Expanding Group as well, which has got its own sort of marketing cloud. Yeah, there’s a number of others and some of the additional ones tap into the likes of Bombo as well. So there’s a whole sort of ecosystem around intent.

(17:12)They are expensive, they are a significant level of investment, but they will hopefully enable you to identify genuine interest in particular keywords. So you can really drill down into security or cloud or whatever it might be, and you can identify via Geo. And also a lot of these providers will enable you to identify not just those companies that are really interested, but maybe some contacts within those companies as well that you might want to speak to. So there are sort of, I guess a database of provision, a little bit like ZoomInfo, where you can actually identify some people within those companies that are demonstrating and showing this level of intent.

Speaker 1 (17:55):I love it. This is really smart. Well, it’s really smart if it works. And that leads onto my next question is, it’s one thing to know that there is some kind of intent within a company, but what in your opinion is the best way to actually capitalize on that? So to take the intel that’s coming out from this platform and then to approach the company in a way which doesn’t seem creepy or doesn’t seem kind of weird that you seem to have approached them at exactly the right moment.

Speaker 3 (18:20):The Intel platforms can help spit out a Target account list or help you build your A BM, your account-based marketing strategies, but they’re still cold. They haven’t engaged with you. So I would always, always recommend that you are still warming these potential contacts and leads and you’re engaging these companies from a starting point of a cold position or a top of funnel position. You still want to be engaging them with relevant content. You want to be speaking to them consultatively, just because people have shown levels of intent, doesn’t mean they’ve got the credit cards out and they’re willing to buy there and then they still need development from a sort of sales perspective.

Speaker 1 (19:02):So let’s talk about what you do within your business then. I’m assuming that you use exactly this kind of engine to gather together that intent data and then you manage campaigns to help to generate leads off the back of it.

Speaker 3 (19:14):Yeah, absolutely. We plug into a number of different intent data platforms. We identify the keywords our customers believe their own clients are interested in, and then we engage those people directly. So against your ideal customer profile, if you want to reach the IT director and the CEO, we’ll identify those people within the companies that are showing greater levels of intent, greater signals of interest. We’ll engage those people. It might be through content syndication, it might be through social, it might be through telemarketing. We will engage them and gather consent, and then we’ll patch the leads through to you as an MSP, whether by Excel sheet or we can patch directly into your CRM. And that’s the whole solution that we offer. So we engage and we take care of the whole campaign. And the real reason we launch and the whole point of it is that we hope we can provide warmer leads so we understand, and we know they’re not necessarily going to have their credit cards out immediately ready to buy, but we also really believe that they are much warmer than if you’re just starting from the very top because they’ve gone through that intent, that content syndication and that consent process.

Speaker 1 (20:32):And as we know about all marketing, it’s often just a case of getting the timing right, isn’t it? Someone will only, well, people will only buy when they’re ready to buy. And what this is doing hopefully is showing you, hey, these people are nearly in a position where they are ready, willing, and able to buy, which is just Paul, thank you so much for joining us on the show. Tell us what your business is called and what’s the best way to get in touch with you.

Speaker 3 (20:53):Thanks, Paul. The company is koala b2b.com. It’s international, and you can reach us at Koala B2B to the number that’s the website, and we look forward to hearing from you.

Speaker 2 (21:05):Paul Green’s MSP marketing podcast, this week’s recommended book.

Speaker 6 (21:11):Hi, my name is Matt Tompkins of Two Brothers creative@thecontentbox.com. My book recommendation is Donald Miller’s Marketing Made Simple. Now, Donald Miller has written a series of books from StoryBrand through his latest business, made Simple all great books, but Marketing Made Simple I think is really, it is a great entry-level book for any business owner who is trying to get their hands wrapped around their own marketing and it breaks down things in very simple terms. As the book says, marketing Made Simple. It’s a great place to start to understand your marketing if you’re doing it yourself, or understand your marketing if you’re hiring someone to do it for you. So that, let’s face it, you don’t get ripped off or taken advantage of Marketing Made Simple by Donald Miller. My book Recommendation of the Day

Speaker 2 (21:54):Coming up, coming up next week.

Speaker 7 (21:57):Hi, I’m Brian Hoppe. I have built an MSP up to 45 staff and also built and sold a second MSP. Join me on Paul’s podcast where we talk about how to scale your MSP.

Speaker 1 (22:09):On top of that interview with Brian, we are going to talk about how to guarantee you delight every single client by systemizing a way to underpromise and over deliver. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP

Speaker 2 (22:24):Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green’s Marketing podcast.

Marketing Made Simple: A Step-by-Step StoryBrand Guide for Any Business

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Episode 231Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week’s show includes:* 00:00 Don’t sell the FEATURES, sell the BENEFITS * 03:20 3 KILLER offers to stand out from the MSP crowd * 11:17 How to hire and integrate the best remote employees into your MSP

Featured guest:Thank you to Michael Nelson, Co-founder of Scaled, for joining me to talk about why MSP owners should embrace remote working, how he was able to successfully integrate remote staff into his team within his own MSP business, and how he found himself perfectly positioned to help other MSPs do the same.

Michael Nelson is a founder of Scaled, a staff-augmentation firm that deploys L2 & L3 Technical Talent for MSPs from South Africa and the owner of a successful & growth-oriented MSP in California

He started TLC Tech, a Sacramento based MSP in 2004 serving all types of clients. In 2008 the company made the transition to fully managed services. Averaging 20-30% year over year growth, the company consistently maintains best in class EBITDA. Currently with a staff of 28, the company has transitioned to being a fully remote MSP, with 30% of the staff working remotely from South Africa.

After recognizing the benefits and the market need, Michael started Scaled with Jason Knight (also a former MSP owner) to place L2 & L3 techs with MSPs

Connect with Michael on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelnelsonca/

Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + http://mspmarketingedge.com/about/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Connect with me on LinkedIn: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week’s recommended book, The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sales-Acceleration-Formula-Technology-Inbound/dp/1119047072/

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.

Speaker 1 (00:00):Fresh every Tuesday

Speaker 2 (00:02):For MSPs around the world, around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:09):Hello and welcome to episode 2 3, 1 of the podcast. Here’s what we’ve got coming up for you this week.

Speaker 3 (00:16):Hi, my name is Michael Nelson and I’m the founder of Scaled a staff augmentation firm that places South African talent with MSPs across the world. We’re going to help you understand how to successfully pull remote techs into your culture to make sure that they represent you, your company, and your culture well.

Speaker 1 (00:33):And on top of that interview with Michael, I’m also going to tell you about three killer offers that will make you stand out from every single other MSP out there.

Speaker 2 (00:44):Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:48):Don’t sell cybersecurity instead, sell your sleep better at night. What we’re talking about here are features versus benefits. Cybersecurity is a feature. Sleeping better at night is a benefit. And ordinary business owners and managers, they don’t really buy the services you sell. They buy what these services can do for them. Side note, the exception to this rule is when you’re selling co-managed it, and here you are selling to people who understand and know about the technology concepts that are foreign to normal decision makers. And this is why co-managed. It needs a completely different marketing and sales approach based more around building trust and credibility and a working relationship. But let’s come back to selling to ordinary people. And let’s put this another way. They, as I said, they buy the benefits and not the features. So the features are what something does the benefits describe why this matters to them.

(01:49)Now, understanding this and looking at the world from their point of view will change your marketing and sales forever and ever. And I can give you some specific examples. So for example, like I mentioned at the beginning, they don’t buy cybersecurity. They buy, you can sleep better at night knowing that your data is safe. They don’t buy password managers, they buy, you never have to think about passwords ever again. The software does everything so that you don’t have to, they don’t buy network monitoring. They buy if something goes wrong, we’ll know and fix it before it affects you. They don’t buy the cloud, they buy work anywhere on anything at any time without any hassle. They don’t buy backups they buy, you’ll never have that sick feeling of not being able to find that critical file. They don’t buy email signatures, they buy. You can promote your core message in every single email everyone sends and they don’t buy managed services. They buy someone else’s doing everything for you. So you don’t have, think about it. If there is a problem, help is seconds away and it’s a fixed cost every month. So there’s nothing to ever worry about. Look at your website, look at your marketing materials. What are the phrases you often say in sales meetings? How often are you too focused on the feature and not on the benefit?

Speaker 4 (03:21):Here’s this week’s clever idea.

Speaker 1 (03:24):Let me give you three killer offers that will make you stand out from every single other MSP out there. Now your offer is your basic business proposition and it’s one of the most important elements in your entire marketing. It’s the thing that makes you different and it makes it easy for ordinary business owners and managers to choose you. You must have heard of the USP rights, the unique selling proposition. Well, your offer is kind of the same thing. Sometimes it’s too easy to overthink your offer as business owners. We’re so close to the business that we stop seeing it as strangers see it. And you know that you are great at what you do, right? You do know that don’t. You are great at what you do and you assume that everyone else sees that you are great at what you do. But the reality is that they don’t by default.

(04:17)You have to tell them. And the offer is a great tool to do that. So I want to encourage you to think bigger because the best offers directly address the pain points of the prospects. Let’s think what those are. So they hate losing time. They hate losing productivity to tech problems. They hate their staff moaning and they’re concerned that their tech will go wrong and it will affect their whole business. So if we address those pain points, here are three killer offers that directly do that. And these are not things that you can just pick up directly and use. They’re kind of overarching themes just to push you in the right direction. And the first of those, well, I’ll tell you what all three are and then we’ll go through them. So we’ve got risk reversal is the first one. The second one is timeframes.

(05:04)And the third one is making your offer benefit driven. So let’s look at that first one, risk reversal. When someone buys from you, the risk of it going wrong is on them because if it doesn’t work out, they’re screwed, right? Because their business is so dependent upon technology, I realize it does feel like you are taking on the risk because there’s a cashflow issue if they leave you. But really from their point of view, they are the ones taking on the risk. So the smart thing to do in your offer is to reverse that risk. What if you guaranteed your work or better still you guaranteed their happiness, you’ll be 1000% happy with us or we will pay your bill until you are, that would probably scare you actually, wouldn’t it? That kind of guarantee around money like that. So you can dilute it down, it will always be.

(05:55)Or maybe something like you will always be 1000% happy with us or we’ll release you from your contract and give you a thousand dollars or a thousand pounds to say sorry. So that’s the same thing. But you’ve limited your downside for you by the way, that kind of guarantee there where you are guaranteeing utter delight and satisfaction, which is what the vast majority of your clients experience, but you are guaranteeing it and with something to back it up. So if they are not insert whatever you’re guaranteeing here, then we will. And it is either release ’em from their contract, give them money back or something like that, having a guarantee that will attract you a ton of new clients and only one of them will go on to claim on the guarantee probably because they’re an idiot and they disrespect all of their suppliers and don’t worry too much about that because karma will get them back for you.

(06:49)So the second kind of killer offer you can make is about timeframes. So what if another prospect pain point is the fear of how long it will take to switch from you? And no one enjoys that kind of switching process. The old MSP doesn’t, you really don’t. Maybe you do, but certainly the client, they just want to get back to our technology working. So in which case your offer might be something like a fully painless switch to us in 28 days or less guaranteed. And being very specific about the timeframes there within 28 days, which is four weeks, our brains understand what that means and telling them what you will achieve in that timeframe that helps to understand what they’re getting into. And not only that, it helps you to stay focused on delivering the highest quality. If you said to someone this will happen in 28 days, then it’s less likely the projects that the migration project is going to shift it internally.

(07:47)I know how it can be and I know that things shift very, very easily. Whereas if you know we’d had 16 days and with three days behind, then you are going to put greater emphasis on that internally. And I know you might be worried about meeting a deadline like 28 days or whatever it is that you do. So the answer of course to that is to only onboard one client at a time. And in fact, that in itself creates some scarcity. You can say to the clients, Hey look, if you want to join us, sign the contract. We can onboard you starting a week on Monday, but after that we can’t onboard you for two months because we’ve got other clients coming on board, they’re already booked him and we only onboard one client at a time because we have that guarantee. We guarantee it will take no more than 21 days, 28 days, whatever it takes.

(08:35)And we can’t do that for two people at a time. So if you want to start with this, we can do it a week on Monday, otherwise it’s going to be a two months time. And actually having that kind of scarcity, that can be a very powerful marketing thing. And then the final killer offer is to have something that’s benefit driven. And again, you’ve got to look at the world from their point of view. What do they most want from you? What is it? What’s the thing they want more than anything else? And then build your offer around that. The fastest support you ever enjoyed. You’ll never have to listen to your staff complaining about technology again, not just IT support a strategic partner to help you grow. When you look at everything and I mean everything through the eyes of your prospect and not through your own eyes, suddenly marketing becomes really easy.

(09:26)You can only influence what John Smith buys when you look through John Smith’s eyes. So putting an offer together is simply about looking through their eyes, understanding them, understanding their world, and then reflecting that back in your marketing. From a psychology point of view, that’s a very, very powerful thing to do, to tell people you would deliver exactly what it is that they want. They may not be able to put into words what they want, but they know deep down at an emotional level that they want it. This is such a good marketing trick to pull off if you can get this right. In fact, what we’re talking about here is world class marketing,

Speaker 4 (10:09):Blatant plug, blatant

Speaker 1 (10:10):Plug. We are constantly creating edutainment videos where I’m trying to educate you about some important MSP marketing stuff through entertainment. I have a lovely home studio at my home and every week we do some filming. It’s really cool actually, we’ll have remote direction. So my director who’s about a hundred miles away from me, he directs me over Zoom and they send props to my house and then they send me the script. And we have a lot of fun with that. It’s really cool. But it’s all there to help you improve your marketing education and ultimately get more clients for your MSP just by watching YouTube videos. Of course you’ve got to go and take action, but watching those YouTube videos is a good place to start. So you can access our channel at youtube.com/msp marketing,

Speaker 4 (10:58):The big,

Speaker 3 (10:59):Big interview. Hi, I’m Michael Nelson and I’m one of the co-founders of Scaled a staff augmentation company.

Speaker 1 (11:05):And thank you so much for joining me on this podcast, Michael. So we are going to talk about how you can hire people around the world and successfully embed them as part of your team regardless of where your actual team is based. And I know that from lots of MSPs that I speak to that that’s one of the hardest things for them. It’s a bit of a mind barrier for them of if I hire someone who’s based a thousand miles away, how do I actually integrate them as part of my team and not just have them as a resource outside? So we’re going to come onto that and I think we should probably answer the question of why you would do this as well. Before we do this, let’s just talk a little bit about you. So tell us about your background and for those people who are like, Hey, I know this guy, I know this guy’s name, where have I seen him before? Tell us a little bit about you.

Speaker 3 (11:49):So I own an MSP in California that I started 20 years ago. Ironically, I was adamantly against having any remote employees that changed about five years ago. And then it really escalated obviously with covid and we really learned how to navigate it well. We ended up starting another company to help people get remote staff. What we’ve learned over the years is how to integrate them really well. You talked a lot about it, that fear of bringing people in remotely and that’s whether they’re in your state and your country or overseas in another country.

Speaker 1 (12:24):Yeah. So if we go back to that trigger five years ago, what was the thing that made you, so you are based in the US and we have listeners and viewers all over the world. We have loads in the us, loads in the uk, Australia, all the sort of the main western countries. So this is a global thing. This isn’t just a US thing, but what was the trigger for you five years ago that actually made you look outside of the us?

Speaker 3 (12:48):So we were really having problems finding good qualified staff. The other thing that happened is I promoted somebody to operations manager that asked if he had hiring and firing abilities. And I said yes. And he asked if I had veto power and I had to say yes. And he said, good, I’m firing this person. I’m hiring two people from South Africa. Scared me to know him because it was absolutely against what I believed in these guys turned out to be phenomenal. And then that was about a year before Covid hit added another one. And then by the time covid hit, we kind of understood well how to work remotely and just double down. So that’s how we came to it is honestly, I came to it kicking and screaming,

Speaker 1 (13:33):But it clearly worked out for you. And what’s the fear if you were to summarize the fear that perhaps you had as the owner of MSP that other MSP owners would have? Is it that you scared that your clients are going to be on the phone with someone that they think, Hey, this isn’t someone down the road from me, this isn’t someone in California. Is it a fear of data not being as safe as it could be? What are the fears that stop MSPs hiring someone outside of the country?

Speaker 3 (14:00):For me and what I hear from a lot of our clients are the same things that they’re really afraid, how am I going to integrate them into my culture? How am I going to make sure that they represent my company the way I can’t hear what they’re saying from across the room? That’s probably one of the biggest. The other is productivity. How am I going to make sure that they stay productive? How do I guarantee that they’re working as hard as I think they should? And then pulling them into how do I pull them into my internal culture? And quite honestly in my MSP, we had tried a remote resource quite a few years earlier that was kind of back office and we did everything wrong. And that’s part of the evolution is we learn how to do this right. And by doing so, we were able to have a bench of people. It widened. I mean it’s kind of like dating. If you can only date from your own city, that pool’s a little bit smaller than if you can go farther out in another city, in another state, in another country.

Speaker 1 (15:01):Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Although with dating, there are some practical issues, aren’t there? Flying 2000 miles exactly. To go for a coffee with someone isn’t going to work. So what are some of the things that you’ve learned over the years then to help make this remote worker really be part of the team and use the same language and have the same kind of culture that’s so important?

Speaker 3 (15:23):So it’s interesting you started with using the same language. So we strongly encourage getting obviously native English speaking texts, but one of the things that we encourage is don’t shy away from a slightly different accent. It actually has turned out to be a really good thing. But probably the most important thing when you’re pulling somebody in remote, again, whether they’re overseas or just in a different state, is never having an us versus them. Back to my story of having that remote tech, I own the building that we worked out of and we would have a morning daily huddle. All of us would go into the conference room beyond one camera, and this poor tech that we had remote would be on another camera. So it was all of us and him. It’s just the little subtle things like that that really really matter. Making sure that they’re absolutely an equal part of the team.

(16:20)One of our clients has 30 out employees. Most all of them are in the office. Every single employee has a camera on their desk and for their morning huddle, everybody is at their desk on camera even though 90% of them are in the office because it’s that important to make sure that they remain part of the team. That’s just a little sample. Having a mentor, all of us have people that our techs are reporting to and that’s great, that’s necessary, but give them a mentor, give them somebody that really represents your culture. So many times we give the person that has the time, not necessarily that has the best skills. It’s critically important that one person that just represents your culture the way you want with your techs and your clients. Have that person be the mentor that’s not their supervisor so that they have somebody that they can go to ask what they might have or they might call the stupid questions, how do I deal with this? They don’t want to look bad in front of the supervisor, but they really want to be able to do it right. So have that cultural mentor available to them as well.

Speaker 1 (17:35):And obviously since covid and remote working has become a more normal thing, I mean I love the separate camera thing that seems so obvious and yet I can see that you had to go through some pain to actually figure that one out. Absolutely, everyone is equal if they’re all on their own individual camera, regardless of the fact they’re all in the building or not. But then some of your techs who may be working from home or they’ve got a doctor’s appointment so they can do a few hours at home, do the doctor’s appointments and come in, it doesn’t really matter, does it Suddenly everyone’s equal. What are some of the ways that you keep track of the quality of the work that your remote techs are doing? And is it a case that actually the answer is Paul exactly the same way as you keep track of how your other techs are doing?

Speaker 3 (18:17):It is, and this is one of the things, the same guy who’s running the MSP now put in real time ticket entry. You have to account for what you’re doing. You have to do the tickets, you have to enter them, you have to update them well, and you have to do it in real time. When you have that built in and you have that expectation, that makes it super easy to be able to track what the tech is doing. Also, quite frankly, it’s on your csat, making sure that you have a way on every ticket that gets closed. In my MSP, we have a CSAT that goes out and it’s a simple little, how did we do? That’s a really easy way. What we hear anecdotally from our clients is that our guys are getting really, really high CSAT scores. Another, before I lose the thought also about how to integrate them well into your team, one of the things that happened during Covid that was completely accidental, we set up a Netflix room in teams that every Friday we’d watch part of a movie over lunch.

(19:20)So that we just kind of had that comradery. And what happened was our lead tech said, Hey, I’m going to pop into the flix room. He was the escalation engineer on Monday. He said, I’m going to be in the flix room for a couple of hours if anybody has any questions. And he just got in there and he kept his camera on and he just hung out. He was working, doing his day. Well, the tech would just pop in with a quick question and then more and more this room became its own thing that it is utilized all throughout the day so that it’s not just you have a meeting and you’re on video, but in between clients or when you’re working on a project that you just want to hang out with others and you’re not even necessarily talking. It became this really awesome place that the techs could go into eventually they kicked me out of it because apparently owners can change the way that it feels, but I’ll go into the office sometimes we’ve got one or two guys that still work in the office. There’ll be 10 guys on the channel and nobody’s talking. But the biggest thing that came out of that besides the cultural alignment was that the lower texts could pop in and say, Hey, I got a quick question. This is the issue. This is how I’m trying to solve it. Any other advice? So what we found is we had techs stop going down rabbit holes because it was super easy to just pop in and ask a question and not feel like you were bugging anybody while you were doing it.

Speaker 1 (20:53):I think that alone is possibly the coolest idea that has come out of the podcast today. The idea of just having a place for the technicians to hang out without the owner being there, as you say, it just encourages them to ask questions. The kind of questions that I guess when everyone was in the office that they would interrupt each other with those questions. But yeah, remotely that’s kind of gone

Speaker 3 (21:13):And having your escalation engineer in there and also having people that really get your culture, have a couple of your people really buy into that and kind of feed that. Because let’s face it, techs don’t necessarily like being on video. It’s a little challenging. We’ve all got that tech that leave me in a dark room, slide a pizza under the door once a day and I’m good. Get the people that are open to this and really represent your culture and the others will follow.

Speaker 1 (21:42):Yeah, I completely get that. And actually fast forward two or three years to when everyone’s got the Apple Vision Pro or whatever is your equivalent headset, and if you saw the demo from when it came out a couple of months ago, you can really believe that technicians will in a couple of years, be able to sit in their house in whichever country put this on, and there’s their house, but there’s also their teammates and they’ll be able to look around and see their teammates, which is really cool. Although I have to say the most miraculous thing that you’ve said here is that everyone agrees on which movie that they’re going to watch. I mean, I dunno how you get a whole bunch of texts to agree on which movie it is. That’s very smart.

Speaker 3 (22:17):Oh, come on. It’s the office space. Oh

Speaker 1 (22:20):Yes, of course. Yeah, of course. So what was the trigger then that obviously you were doing this for your MSP and what was the trigger that started you doing this for other MSPs?

Speaker 3 (22:31):So I was in E Evolve. I had been in e Evolve the peer group for quite a few years. I’d been in about 14 years At that time. Everybody was struggling with finding good talent. Everybody was kind of feeling this, people showing up that’s like, Hey, I went to a technical college and I know how to troubleshoot and install windows, so I should get 70,000 a year. Getting that balance between expectations and reality. And quite frankly, once Covid hit and everybody was able to work remote, it really, I mean in the United States, the unemployment rate for techs was almost zero. It was shocking how low it was. So being able to find good talent was really, really challenging. And that’s when after hiring a couple of these guys from South Africa, we just doubled down and kept doing it. I had been slowly building myself out of the company.

(23:22)I actually retired completely out of it over a year ago that it’s now an investment. But in this Evolve peer group, I was hearing from my own group and from a lot of other people in that group that they were having the same problem. As I had gotten out of the company, I was trying to figure out am I going to retire? And then I hit upon this idea and have a business partner. He and I kind of fleshed it out and started doing it, and it’s just worked out to be an incredible new business.

Speaker 1 (23:52):That’s fantastic. So tell us, what do you do? So do you help to just source tech professionals in other countries or do you help to embed them into existing teams? What do you guys actually do?

Speaker 3 (24:04):So we do what’s called staff augmentation. We have a bench of techs that are always available that are level two, level three, and we call ’em kind of level four, but really high level three engineers that are technically vetted, culturally vetted. We go through a lot of pieces, that whole nightmare that all of us who own MSPs hated that. You have to start with that funnel of 200 people that applied and funnel it down. We take care of all of that and we have a bench of candidates that are ready to go. The final interview is always done by myself or the other founder, both of us, former MSP owners. He’s formalized alone one with a final question of would I place them in my own MSP? And that’s kind of the bellwether for us. If we cannot say a resounding yes to that, they don’t make it onto our bench. So we basically present level two and level three in staff augmentation, and at that point we truly become the HR partner. We place them, we help, we help, we coach, and we help the owners figure out how to integrate them well also.

Speaker 1 (25:10):I love it. Thank you. Michael. Thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. Just tell us what’s the website address where we can go and look at the details. And for those MSPs who are listening right now who might want to just reach out to you personally, what’s the best way to get in touch with you?

Speaker 3 (25:23):Website is at www.scaleyourmsp.com out there on LinkedIn. We do a lot of things on LinkedIn and my email isMichael@scaleyourmsp.com. Paul

Speaker 5 (25:35):Green’s

Speaker 1 (25:36):MSP marketing podcast, this week’s recommended book.

Speaker 5 (25:41):Hi, my name is Derek Marin, president Simple Selling and the book I recommend by Mark Robert. The Sales Acceleration formula is a great story about how HubSpot went from a small startup, scrappy software company to the large multi-billion dollar public company that they are today. And all of it had to do with the sales process. So as an MSP, you’re going to get a lot of value from it. So check it out.

Speaker 6 (26:04):Coming up. Coming up next week.

Speaker 7 (26:07):Hi, my name’s Paul Franklin. I’m the guy who can tell you when companies are particularly interested in your products and services. I’m going to be talking about this and how you can tap into intent data on Paul’s show.

Speaker 1 (26:19):On top of that interview with Paul, I’ve got a smart strategy for you to get more comprehensive feedback from prospects who decide not to go with you, but to choose another MSP because sometimes the reason they give you is no use at all to improving your marketing. So this strategy will help you uncover the real reason and help you fine tune your offer and your marketing. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP

Speaker 2 (26:47):Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green’s marketing podcast.

The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million

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Episode 230Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week’s show includes:* 00:00 How to attach Monthly Recurring Revenue to hardware & project sales * 07:33 5 quick wins to improve your net profit margin * 11:45 Attract your ideal clients with strategic content marketing

Featured guest:Thank you to Kristi Mitchell, Founder of Marketing Uncomplicated, for joining me to talk about how MSPs can use content marketing to target and attract, nurture and convert their ideal clients.

Kristi Mitchell is a Marketing Strategist specializing in helping service-based small business owners who have relied on referrals and word-of-mouth to build their businesses. They know in order to reach more clients with their services, they need to finally think more strategically about their marketing.

Kristi brings an MBA, over ten years of corporate marketing experience, and a drive for continual learning to the work she does with her clients. Kristi offers 1:1 strategic consulting, fractional CMO services, workshops, and group implementation support.

Connect with Kristi on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristimitchell/

Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + http://mspmarketingedge.com/about/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Connect with me on LinkedIn: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Grab yourself a copy of this week’s recommended book, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Coaching-Habit-Less-Change-Forever/dp/0978440749

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world, this Paul. Paul Paul Greens MSP Marketing podcast.[00:00:09] Speaker B: And welcome to episode 230 of the podcast.[00:00:13] Speaker C: Here’s what we got in store for you this week.[00:00:15] Speaker D: I’m Kristi Mitchell. Come join me on Paul’s podcast, where we talk all about using strategic content marketing to help you attract, nurture, and convert your ideal clients.[00:00:25] Speaker C: And on top of that interview with Kristi, we’ve also got five quick wins to help you improve your net profit margins.[00:00:33] Speaker A: Paul. Paul Paul Greens MSP Marketing podcast of.[00:00:38] Speaker B: The best things about being an MSP is the monthly recurring revenue, right?[00:00:43] Speaker C: Because MRR is everything. It is absolutely the Holy Grail. The more monthly recurring revenue that you have, the better your cash flow, the more predictable your growth is, and ultimately, the more valuable your MSP will be.[00:00:59] Speaker B: When you sell it.[00:01:00] Speaker C: So let me set you a challenge in today’s podcast. How can you attach monthly recurring revenue.[00:01:08] Speaker B: To every piece of hardware that you.[00:01:10] Speaker C: Sell and every project that you deliver? Now, this is a heck of a challenge, but I do think with some creative thinking, it really can be done. And I was kind of inspired to.[00:01:21] Speaker B: Talk about this on the podcast today by an MSP that I worked with years ago.[00:01:25] Speaker C: I haven’t spoken to him for ages. His name is Darren.[00:01:28] Speaker B: He’s based here in the UK.[00:01:29] Speaker C: Hi, Darren.[00:01:30] Speaker B: If you are watching this on YouTube or listening to this on the podcast.[00:01:33] Speaker C: Now, Darren, when I met him, was.[00:01:35] Speaker B: Very, very focused on only generating streams of monthly recurring revenue.[00:01:41] Speaker C: That was his entire focus for the business.[00:01:44] Speaker B: And he was always asking himself, how.[00:01:47] Speaker C: Could I create a new stream of MRR? If I go and sell a project.[00:01:53] Speaker B: Or I deliver some hardware to someone.[00:01:55] Speaker C: How can I attach some MRR to that?[00:01:58] Speaker B: And he opened up new revenue streams offering marketing services. Some of them he was doing in house. Some of them he was buying them.[00:02:04] Speaker C: In, putting a margin on and selling.[00:02:06] Speaker B: Them on, which is fine, because obviously his clients, you may have done this yourself. You have your clients saying to you, hey, you guys do computer things.[00:02:15] Speaker C: Can you build me a website? Because that’s a computer thing.[00:02:18] Speaker B: You and I know that websites aren’t computer things, but sometimes your clients think that. So Darren saw that as a revenue stream, and he started creating websites and selling those for monthly recurring revenue, not.[00:02:29] Speaker C: As a one off project, but as.[00:02:30] Speaker B: A monthly recurring revenue. But he was very, very focused. And Darren’s goal was to get to.[00:02:35] Speaker C: 80, I think it was 85 and a half thousand pounds a month, which.[00:02:40] Speaker B: Is a million pounds a year of recurring revenue. So every month he’d have done 85,000 pounds over the year. That’s a million of recurring revenue. And all the rest of his sort of turnover, his one off turnover, in.[00:02:51] Speaker C: His mind, that didn’t count.[00:02:53] Speaker B: It all had to be monthly recurring revenue.[00:02:55] Speaker C: Now that is focused, and that’s the.[00:02:58] Speaker B: Kind of focus that I think if.[00:02:59] Speaker C: You are really serious about building up the business and staying completely focused on.[00:03:06] Speaker B: Getting somewhere that you’ve never been before, that’s an incredible kind of goal.[00:03:12] Speaker C: So let’s look at then the hardware.[00:03:14] Speaker B: And the projects, and how do you attach monthly recurring revenue to something like that?[00:03:19] Speaker C: So I’m not quite sure about laptops and desktops, but certainly when you add in other hardware, you can add in.[00:03:27] Speaker B: Potential revenue, monthly recurring revenue streams.[00:03:30] Speaker C: For example, if you sold a router.[00:03:32] Speaker B: I know some MSPs that well, first of all, I know some MSPs that don’t sell hardware. They only lease hardware. And I know that sometimes you can lease it through some of your suppliers, but other MSPs, they will go and buy the laptop for 1000 pounds or $1,000 or whatsoever, and then they will lease it to their clients on a three year deal. I appreciate that there are some financial.[00:03:55] Speaker C: Risks that you’re taking on with that.[00:03:56] Speaker B: You’re putting out the big outlay at the front and then obviously you’ve got that revenue coming in. But typically after, I don’t know what, 1215 months you are in profit. You need to sort the figures out from that.[00:04:07] Speaker C: Or maybe it’s easier or less risk.[00:04:10] Speaker B: For you to lease it from your supplier and then put some margin on top and send it out. But that’s one way you could turn, I guess, a laptop or a desktop into some recurring revenue. Some other MSPs that I know, they.[00:04:23] Speaker C: For example, will take something like a router, they won’t sell the router again.[00:04:27] Speaker B: They will lease it.[00:04:28] Speaker C: They may only buy this router for.[00:04:30] Speaker B: A few hundred pounds, but they’ll lease that out for 50 pounds or $50 a month.[00:04:33] Speaker C: Or another way of doing it is.[00:04:35] Speaker B: You do sell the, you sell the router onto the clients, but then you.[00:04:40] Speaker C: Charge them a fee every month to manage that router.[00:04:43] Speaker B: And managing that router, of course, means monitoring it. It means making sure the updates are done. It means, I don’t know, maybe you do a speed test every day or something like that. You know the kind of things that you can do. And obviously you want to make all of these automated as well, don’t you? So there’s no actual work for you to do, but you’re getting a fee every single month to manage something.[00:05:04] Speaker C: In fact, I think when it comes to projects or hardware, adding on some kind of recurring management fee is the.[00:05:11] Speaker B: Right thing to do.[00:05:12] Speaker C: And we’ve got to strike the right balance here because we’re not trying to wash the clients. We’re not trying to wash them and ring them and get every single drop.[00:05:20] Speaker B: Of revenue out of them.[00:05:22] Speaker C: Some MSPs do do that, but that does create a sort of a retention tension. I’ve just invented that phrase. I’m going to use that phrase again in the future. I like that one. So we don’t want to ring them too much, but at the same time we want to charge them good fees in order to do a good job. Right. So if you are genuinely managing their router and you’re genuinely monitoring it and updating it and watching the speeds, and you can automate all of this in some way, I don’t know how you do that.[00:05:49] Speaker B: I guess you’d know that. But if you can do all of that and it’s all automated and you.[00:05:53] Speaker C: Get an alert once or twice a month that your text can then go in, fix whatever the problem is with.[00:05:58] Speaker B: The router and it’s all done.[00:06:00] Speaker C: Fantastic, right? Someone somewhere. Well, the right clients with the right mindset will pay for that because they understand that not having to lose an hour or 2 hours of their life.[00:06:13] Speaker B: Resetting things, listening to their staff moan, just coming in in the morning, everything works, we can get on with business.[00:06:19] Speaker C: Boom. The right kind of clients with the.[00:06:22] Speaker B: Right mindset, they completely understand that.[00:06:24] Speaker C: And to go with that, as well.[00:06:26] Speaker B: As having the right clients, you have got to have the right positioning as well. You’ve got to have the right positioning for what it is that you do.[00:06:33] Speaker C: If you say to someone, look, we.[00:06:35] Speaker B: Can supply you with this new router.[00:06:36] Speaker C: In fact, we would prefer that we.[00:06:39] Speaker B: Supply you with the router. This is the one that we recommend because of ABC, we’re going to sell that to you.[00:06:44] Speaker C: It’s going to cost you this much. It will last at least three years.[00:06:48] Speaker B: But we hope to get a five to six year life out of it. And there is a fee of, I don’t know, $50, $100 a month. And that’s for us to manage it.[00:06:56] Speaker C: I can tell you the details of.[00:06:57] Speaker B: What we do when we manage it.[00:06:58] Speaker C: But essentially what we do is make.[00:07:00] Speaker B: Sure that everything just works. That’s what you’re paying that fee for.[00:07:05] Speaker C: And that’s really good positioning. If you say that and you genuinely mean it and you know that you can add value. Why wouldn’t you add that kind of.[00:07:13] Speaker B: Monthly recurring revenue onto a hardware or a project like that?[00:07:17] Speaker C: That’s my challenge to you. In the next couple of weeks, every time someone says to you, hey, can I get a quote for this? Or you find yourself specking out a project for someone, just have something at the back of your mind that constantly asks you, how do I add monthly recurring revenue to this?[00:07:34] Speaker A: Here’s this week’s clever idea.[00:07:37] Speaker C: Let’s talk about five quick wins to improve your net profit margin. And first, to define what I mean by net profits, we’re all talking about the same thing. If you take your accounts, and obviously.[00:07:48] Speaker B: I’m in the UK, but I assume that accounts, although they have their differences, they’re pretty much fundamentally the same the world over.[00:07:54] Speaker C: So you’ve got your top line revenue.[00:07:57] Speaker B: That’S your money that you’ve brought into the business, and then you take off your fixed costs and that gives you your gross profit. So your fixed costs are things like your office, your staff, stuff like that. That’s your gross profit, and then you.[00:08:10] Speaker C: Take off the cost of sale. So, for example, if you sell a laptop and you sell that for $1,000.[00:08:16] Speaker B: But it’s cost you $700, then your cost of sale, of that, you wouldn’t.[00:08:21] Speaker C: Have had to have paid that 700.[00:08:22] Speaker B: If you hadn’t sold it.[00:08:23] Speaker C: So that cost of sale, and with.[00:08:25] Speaker B: The same for all of your services that you buy in as well, that all comes off from the gross profit. So you’ve got top line revenue, then you’ve got gross profit, then you take off the cost of sale and that’s what you’ve got then, is net profit. Net profit is typically. Well, certainly in the UK, it’s the figure at the bottom of the PNL.[00:08:41] Speaker C: The profit and loss sheet. Oh, my goodness. I just did account stuff.[00:08:45] Speaker B: I’m really bad at numbers.[00:08:47] Speaker C: I’m great with words.[00:08:48] Speaker B: But numbers, even though I’ve been a business owner for 19 years, I still struggle today with PNL and balance sheets and stuff like that.[00:08:54] Speaker C: And I just explain net profit to you.[00:08:56] Speaker B: I know you know what it is, but I thought I’d mention it anyway.[00:08:59] Speaker C: So, five ways that you can improve your net profit margin, and the first.[00:09:04] Speaker B: Of those is the easiest one to do. You put up your prices for new clients.[00:09:08] Speaker C: Now, if you reduced your prices by 10%, you’d need to sell 33% more just to make the same amount of profit. Do you get that? It’s kind of crazy, isn’t it? But the good news is it works the other way around. So if you put your prices up for 10%, and so long as your cost of delivery doesn’t change, then you will make the same profit on less volume of work. Or if the volume of work stays the same, you will make more profit. Now, I’d advise you not to put.[00:09:38] Speaker B: Up prices for existing clients.[00:09:40] Speaker C: That needs to be done very carefully so as not to affect your retention.[00:09:43] Speaker B: And that subject is another podcast subject for another day.[00:09:48] Speaker C: But for new clients, you should be constantly nudging up your per user or per device charge until you discover the.[00:09:55] Speaker B: Limit of what your local market will buy.[00:09:58] Speaker C: So someone who buys at, let’s say, $35 per user today, and then tomorrow.[00:10:03] Speaker B: The price, if they sign up is.[00:10:05] Speaker C: $37 a user and that sells, and you could nudge that up to $39 a unit. Does that make sense? But if you find that at 39 it doesn’t sell, we hit the barrier.[00:10:16] Speaker B: Then you can return back to $37 a user.[00:10:20] Speaker C: But price testing should be sort of.[00:10:21] Speaker B: A permanent thing that you’re doing within.[00:10:23] Speaker C: Your business, and price is only one component of your offering that potential clients consider. In fact, I believe that they’re actually persuaded to buy or not buy by the four p’s, which is pricing, positioning, packaging, and promotion. So pricing really is only part of the overall story. And actually, you’ve got to remember that clients who buy on price alone are.[00:10:46] Speaker B: Not necessarily the right clients that you want.[00:10:49] Speaker C: Okay, number two, win higher quality clients. Exactly what we were just talking about. Because higher quality means they pay more, they buy more, they moan less, and.[00:10:58] Speaker B: They respect you and your staff’s time.[00:11:00] Speaker C: This is like the nirvana of clients. So where do you find these people? Well, I’ll tell you where not to look. The very bottom of the market. And this is where far too many MSPs hunt for clients. People at the bottom are buying on price alone and they’re making distressed purchase decisions. These are the people who will sort of suck the profit out of your business, along with sucking out your very life spirit.[00:11:25] Speaker B: Look again at that list of the four p’s that I just spoke about.[00:11:28] Speaker C: And ask yourself if your positioning, your packaging, and your promotion is talking to the best possible potential clients at the top of your market. Because if it’s not, well, you’ve got to remember that like attracts like. Yeah, so crap marketing attracts crap clients. Number three, then sell more to your existing clients.[00:11:48] Speaker B: Now, that’s the other reason that you.[00:11:50] Speaker C: Want better quality clients, because it is a lot easier and more profitable to sell something else to an existing client than it is to sell something to a new client, to your existing clients. They all want, or they need something else from you. It’s just that they don’t know what it is yet. This is why I recommend you take your clients to lunch for a strategic review every year.[00:12:10] Speaker B: It’s a great chance to talk about.[00:12:11] Speaker C: What they’re trying to do with their.[00:12:13] Speaker B: Business, and then you can suggest things.[00:12:15] Speaker C: That would help them get there faster. And they may need those things, or.[00:12:19] Speaker B: Better still, they may want them.[00:12:21] Speaker C: Number four is to improve retention. Now this is the other benefit of a strategic review.[00:12:26] Speaker B: It’s the impact that it has on retention, and it’s how you can share.[00:12:29] Speaker C: Out the most senior resource in the business, which is probably you, in a way that has the maximum impact on the greatest number of clients without burdening you down with a greater workload. So once you’ve worked out something called the average lifetime value of a client, that’s you take their monthly recurring revenue and you multiply it by the number.[00:12:49] Speaker B: Of months they stay with your MSP.[00:12:51] Speaker C: So, for example, if they’re spending $1,000 a month and they stay for five years, which is 60 months, then they’re worth $60,000, right? That’s their average lifetime value. And you can work this out across all of your clients. Once you’ve worked that out, your goal should be to constantly grow that figure by systematically selling more to clients and retaining them longer. Those are the two things that you.[00:13:13] Speaker B: Want to be working on.[00:13:14] Speaker C: And retention isn’t just about doing a great job and great customer support. In the highly competitive world of managed services, that kind of goes without saying. The question to ask you and your staff is, what else can you be doing that has minimum profit impact on the business and minimum impact on your time, but offers the greatest value for your clients? For example, with my core service, the MSP marketing edge, I make myself personally available every day in a members only Facebook group. And I have a trusted colleague called Amy who is available for one to one marketing calls on Zoom. So this doesn’t take up a huge.[00:13:49] Speaker B: Amount of our time and it certainly.[00:13:50] Speaker C: Doesn’T cost us a great deal of money. It’s a very simple addition, but it’s immense value because all of our members.[00:13:57] Speaker B: They know that they can access me on a daily basis and they can.[00:14:00] Speaker C: Literally jump on a zoom with someone.[00:14:02] Speaker B: Who knows exactly what they’re talking about.[00:14:04] Speaker C: And they can have that one on.[00:14:05] Speaker B: One conversation and say, right, hang on, what would I do with this. Can you help me with my marketing?[00:14:09] Speaker C: Any marketing question is something that will.[00:14:11] Speaker B: Help with so what are the easy.[00:14:13] Speaker C: Value adds in your MSP? Okay, and we are on to the fifth one, which is to reduce overheads.[00:14:20] Speaker B: If you buy a commodity product, then someone somewhere will sell it to you for less.[00:14:26] Speaker C: And a commodity is where the exact same product can be bought somewhere else for less. This, by the way, is why you’ve seen hardware sales go down dramatically over the last decade, because clients have learned that they can buy their kit cheaper elsewhere. And you’ve now got to apply that.[00:14:41] Speaker B: Thinking to your business.[00:14:42] Speaker C: So look for reductions in hardware. Compare your suppliers, software, insurance, utilities. Now, I appreciate often with software, you’re not comparing like for like. So the PSA that you’ve got today is not necessarily the same as the.[00:14:56] Speaker B: Other PSA that you’re looking at that’s cheaper.[00:14:58] Speaker C: But you got to ask yourself, what are we paying for with this complicated PSA with all the bells and whistles?[00:15:04] Speaker B: Do we really use those?[00:15:05] Speaker C: Or could we save $200 a month.[00:15:07] Speaker B: Moving to this lower cost PSA where perhaps there’s less bells and whistles, but.[00:15:12] Speaker C: The core functionality, which is mostly what.[00:15:14] Speaker B: We use, is better, and we’ll save some money on that.[00:15:17] Speaker C: Every penny that can be stripped from your overheads will be another penny of net profit. And assuming that you are the owner of the MSP, ultimately that penny is going to fall into your pocket.[00:15:33] Speaker B: You know how I just mentioned that my MSP marketing edge members have a members only Facebook group where they can access me?[00:15:39] Speaker C: Well, I spend a lot of time in that and I get quite in.[00:15:42] Speaker B: Depth into a lot of marketing discussions and there’s always ideas and new things in there.[00:15:47] Speaker C: I do have a second Facebook group, and this is for any MSP. So if you want to join that and you want to come and chat marketing with me, I don’t go into it in quite as much detail as.[00:15:58] Speaker B: I do with my members. Of course not that kind of makes sense.[00:16:01] Speaker C: But it’s a great place for you.[00:16:02] Speaker B: And me to talk about your MSP’s marketing, and it sits very, very nicely with this podcast.[00:16:08] Speaker C: Just go into Facebook, go into the search bar and type in MSP marketing, then go to groups. And you should see me up at the top. It’s Paul Green’s MSP marketing. That’s the Facebook group. Now apply to join. It is a vendor free zone.[00:16:21] Speaker B: So I’m so sorry if you are a vendor, unfortunately, you won’t be able to join the group and we do ask some qualifying questions to check. Please don’t try and sneak in because it’s just embarrassing for everyone. But it’s just MSPs in there and me. So if you want to join me.[00:16:34] Speaker C: In there and compliment your listening to.[00:16:36] Speaker B: This podcast, get on that Facebook group.[00:16:39] Speaker C: It’s just for MSPs to talk about improving your marketing.[00:16:46] Speaker D: Hi, I’m Kristi Mitchell and I’m a marketing strategist for small business owners.[00:16:50] Speaker B: And thank you for joining me on this podcast, Kristi, because we want to talk about the work you’ve been doing.[00:16:55] Speaker C: Over the last couple of years with MSPs.[00:16:57] Speaker B: We were connected when you said you’d been helping some MSPs review the work that they’ve done, their marketing work, and of course improve it and make it better to generate more leads.[00:17:08] Speaker C: That’s what everyone wants.[00:17:09] Speaker B: So I thought it would be really good to get you on here talking about kind of the things you discovered.[00:17:14] Speaker C: We’re not going to name any names.[00:17:16] Speaker B: So you can talk really openly about what you’ve discovered in people’s marketing. I thought other MSPs would find that quite an insight to have an expert in a view of looking at someone’s marketing, taking it apart and making it better. Before we do that, let’s just talk a little bit about you. So tell us the brief version of your story. How did you get to where you are today?[00:17:35] Speaker D: Brief story is I spent over ten years in the corporate space. I had a young child at the time. He’s getting older now, and I just decided I couldn’t do the corporate thing anymore. I really wanted to have the freedom and flexibility to structure my work around my son. And so I set out to start my own business. So I’ll be celebrating five years in.[00:17:56] Speaker C: Just a few months here, and congratulations.[00:17:59] Speaker B: For doing five years. I’ve always said that running your own business is both the best job in.[00:18:03] Speaker C: The world and the worst job at.[00:18:05] Speaker B: The world at exactly the same time. But I think if you can get to five years, then you’re definitely going to do this for the rest of time.I think that’s how it tends to work. Those who really aren’t cut out to be business owners, I think, tend to crash out in the first two or three years. So you’ve been working with lots and lots of different businesses, and I know you kind of stumbled into the MSP space and you’ve been working with some MSPs. Now, as you and I both know, a lot of MSPs, the ones that come to you and the ones that talk to me, they often by their own admission, they’re not very good at marketing. They don’t really know what they’re doing. They’ve never really done it with a strategy. They’ve just sort of built a website and done some stuff and kind of kept their fingers crossed and hoped for the best.

[00:18:46] Speaker C: Talk us through what common problems you see. I tell you what might be easier.[00:18:51] Speaker B: Kristi, is if we take your most recent MSP client, don’t name them whatever you do, because that way we can talk in big terms about everything you’ve looked at.[00:19:01] Speaker C: If you were to think about their.[00:19:03] Speaker B: Website and their marketing and their general.[00:19:06] Speaker C: Approach to lead generation and how to turn those leads into clients, what were some of the things that you saw that they were doing well and what were some of the opportunities to improve.[00:19:15] Speaker B: That you came across?[00:19:16] Speaker D: Yeah, what I really liked about them is that they were already doing content marketing. And that’s really what I believe very strongly in is creating content that’s helpful, relevant, solves problems for your target audience. And they were already doing that, which was great. The challenge was really that they weren’t speaking in terms that were really going to resonate with their audience. And so a lot of the work that we did was around content strategy. I took a look at their website, I did a full audit and assessment, including their website, their email marketing, their social media, kind of taking a look at everything they’re doing, looking at the data and the content, and using those findings to really drive a strategic path forward so that they could have better luck resonating with their target audience, generating those high quality leads for their business and gaining new, new clients out of it.[00:20:01] Speaker B: Okay, so I’m going to ask you to explain some of those things that you were just talking about there. So first of all, it’s easy for all of us to think we know what we’re talking about when we say content marketing, but you give us the explanation of what exactly content marketing is.[00:20:13] Speaker D: So content marketing is putting out helpful, relevant content that solves problems for your audience. It’s valuable. It’s not salesy messages. It’s not, hey, come work with us, we’re so great. It’s not, hey, here’s a testimonial of our clients saying why we’re so great. It’s really rooted in what are the problems that your target audience has and how can you create content that’s helpful for them. So an example of that could be if you are an MFP and your target audience is small business owners who don’t have enough financial backing to be able to have their own in house tech team. Right? So you are speaking to the chances are the business owner of that small business and you want to think about ok, where do they sit in their business? What are the challenges that they have? Oh, I have a marketing team who wants to be on Macs and I have my services team who would prefer to be on Windows and we don’t have a tech team to help manage this. And so how could I create a piece of content? Because I as the MFP could provide the service to them. How could I show them an easy path forward to have both Mac users and Windows users and make everybody happy at your really about, it’s about showing rather than telling, I think.[00:21:25] Speaker B: So when you say show rather than tell, you don’t actually mean sort of talk them through all the different solutions. How would you go about turning that into a piece of content? And the follow up question to that is what would you then do with that content? So I presume it goes on the website and you distribute it on different channels.[00:21:39] Speaker D: Yeah. So maybe it’s a blog saying yes, it is possible to have Mac users and Windows users all under the same roof getting along something along those lines, showing them through a blog. Let’s say it’s a blog that you start with, a blog that walks you through. Like here’s how both of these can coexist and how you can meet the needs and how it’s not going to cost you any more or it’s not going to create additional headaches for you as the business owner. So if you start with a blog piece that goes up on your website, that helps with things like SEO, people finding you, right. Going to Google, searching for the services that they’re looking for, finding you through your blog, and then you distribute that. So that can go through one blog could be broken up into multiple social media posts that go out on the channels that you’re on, that blog could be featured in an email campaign to everybody who’s on your list. So you’re nurturing them, letting them know, hey, this is a resource that might be helpful for you too.I’m glad you brought that up because it’s a matter of the strategic approach of coming up with a piece of content that’s showing rather than telling a solution for them. And then it’s the distribution. How do you get that message out?

[00:22:46] Speaker B: Yeah, and you have to have both of them, don’t you? There’s no point creating content and not having a way of pushing it out there just in the same way that there’s no point having a great distribution network and no original content to push out there. I do find that making sure both of those are in place is really important, as clearly do you. So you mentioned that the work that you’d done with this MSP was also about strategically focusing in on who is the client and how are we going to reach them. And I guess as part of that, why would they want to work with you guys? Did you go as far as putting together like a buyer Persona with them?[00:23:17] Speaker D: Yeah. So that’s part of my content strategy process. So the first thing we do well, I do the audit and assessment, and then we sit down, we set up a meeting to go through buyer personas. So we usually craft out three ideal buyer personas for this particular client. We did five because they had very specific niche audiences that they already had in mind that they’re working with. And so we crafted those out. And then that feeds into a content strategy exercise that I take clients through, which focuses on the jobs to be done theory. Some people are familiar with it, some aren’t. It comes from the product innovation space.So then we do that process and then we also do a content pillars exercise so that we kind of have this guide to move forward for any future content that’s created. Whether it’s a webinar series you’re doing, or a blog or a social media post or whatever it is, it all needs to kind of filter through these content pillars that we’ve created to make sure that you’re staying with the strategy. Because a lot of times I’m sure you see it too. Business owners get really excited about this idea. They’re like, everyone needs to know about this, we need to tell them. But if it’s not framed in a way that makes it relevant and important to your audience, it’s not going to hit the mark, it’s not going to resonate.

[00:24:29] Speaker C: Yeah, you’re right.[00:24:30] Speaker D: Like a good guide to follow going forward for any content creation.[00:24:34] Speaker B: So you and I have just done what MSPs do to ordinary business owners, which is we’ve just dumped a whole load of marketing jargon on our audience and some of them will be thinking.[00:24:45] Speaker C: What are these things they’re talking about?[00:24:46] Speaker B: So I’m going to get you to do the hard work on this. So you need to explain for us, please, what a buyer Persona is. You need to explain what content pillars are and then we can explore the jobs to be done framework. It’s something I am familiar with because we’re actually going through a product review with our MSP marketing edge. And we’ve got a UX expert, like a user experience expert, who keeps using that exact framework, the jobs to be done framework. It’s good to hear someone else banging on about it, but if you can explain those three things, that would be great.[00:25:11] Speaker D: They’ll thank me for me bringing it up with you. Right?[00:25:14] Speaker B: Yeah.[00:25:15] Speaker D: Right. So buyer personas are fictionalized representations of your ideal client. So it’s really getting a very clear vision. So a lot of times, the clients that I work with will have a specific person in mind, which is fine. We can use them as long as they have the understanding right. It’s specific enough so you can visualize, okay, this is the type of person we want to attract with this content we’re going to create. But it’s generalized enough that you’re like, okay, well, typically it’s female, but maybe sometimes it’s male. So obviously there’s going to be a little give and take with it, but it’s meant to give you a very clear vision. I get all the way down in the weeds with my clients. It’s like, okay, what type of job do they have? What type of business are they in? Are they married? Do they have kids? What age range are they in? What type of area do they live in? And then we get into the root of, like, okay, what are the challenges that they have, and what are the goals that they’re trying to achieve? And that’s really, like, the root of what then feeds into the content strategy exercises, understanding the challenges, the pain points, whatever you want to call them, and the goals is really key, because that’s where you, as the business owner, creating your company, creating content to solve for those challenges, those pain points, is really where the gold is. And so the buyer personas are getting that fictionalized representation of those ideal clients you’re trying to attract. That’s first. And then the jobs to be done framework that I use as applied to content marketing is really taking those pain points, reframing it. So the common example for jobs to be done is people don’t want to buy a quarter inch drill, they want a quarter inch hole. So the idea is your audience kind of knows what their problem is, and they know what they’re trying to do, but they don’t necessarily know that you’re the solution to help them get there. And so that kind of gets to the core of the process that I take clients through, using that jobs to be done theory to shape your future content. The result is a laundry list of content ideas that could take the form of blogs or webinars or downloadable resources. Right? Freebies, lead magnets that can go up on your website behind a form to help you generate those leads. It could be social media posts. The type of content at that point doesn’t necessarily matter. It’s just all of the ideas that we generate. And then from there, when I talk about content pillars, I say, when we do that content strategy exercise, it’s like in the weeds, right? We have this long laundry list now, and it’s exciting usually for them because they’re like, these are really great ideas. I can’t wait to go write this or get my team to write this. But then it’s like, okay, it’s a lot to handle. So I say that the content pillars exercise is where you come out of the weeds and kind of look down at everything that 1000 foot view, like, okay, let’s look at all of the pieces and say, how do we start to categorize these things? What are the three main buckets or core topics that all of these things kind of fall under so that we have that guidepost as we move forward? So the way that I typically do it is there’s three core, main topics and then we fit subtopics underneath them. So it’s just a nice way to kind of organize everything. So like I said, when you do go to create future content, it’s your guidepost. Anything you create should relate back to this document because that shows that it’s rooted in strategy and not just the fancy new shiny object that came up that someone wants to do.[00:28:37] Speaker B: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Kristi, final question for you, and again, just thinking about that MSP that you dealt with most recently, if you could wave a magic wand and improve one other area of their marketing that perhaps you didn’t get time to look at or they didn’t ask you to look at, what would that be? What would you change and why would you change it?[00:28:56] Speaker D: So for them specifically, the one thing I really would do, and I’m not sure that they, it’s a recommendation I gave. I don’t know if they’re going to do it, they really need to repair their email reputation. Their email open rates are very low. They have a very large list. And clearly it’s not a very current and valuable list from the standpoint of the open rates and click rates showing the engagement. And so they specifically are on HubSpot. And it’s a platform that actually gives you, they call it an email repair plan. It kind of tells you step by step what to do to repair that email reputation. Because from what I’m seeing, it seems like a lot of their emails just aren’t even making it to inboxes. And so if I could wave a magic wand for them, it would be to fix their email issue because they do have a lot of great content they’re putting out and they’re sending a lot of emails, but I think that they’re not going to see that big of a return for what they’re doing because for whatever reason, their email reputation has just gone down over time.[00:29:59] Speaker B: Yeah, this is fascinating, isn’t it? And you and I are marketers, we’re doing different things, but ultimately we’re trying to help MSPs generate leads and close new clients. And it sometimes is so frustrating when, as you’ve clearly got a client here who’s invested money and time in you and other resources to create great content, and then it’s like they’ve got a van for distribution, but the van can only drive within the same two streets. They can’t get out to new streets or even go and reach clients of where it’s delivered before. That was the worst possible analogy I could come up with. But yeah, fixing that email reputation, especially if HubSpot actually gives them a plan to do it, because that’s often the hardest thing, isn’t it? Is where do I start with something like this? But yeah, and I’ve seen email deliverability within our business and within some of our MSP marketing edge members businesses that’s got harder and harder and harder in the years, in the last few years. It’s certainly not something that’s getting easier. So yeah, hopefully you can wave that magic wand or get out the magic hammer and do some bashing and actually help your MSP client to go and improve that.[00:31:08] Speaker C: Kristi, tell us just finally a little.[00:31:10] Speaker B: Bit about what you do to help.[00:31:12] Speaker C: MSPs and what’s the best way to get in touch with you.[00:31:14] Speaker D: You can find me on LinkedIn. I’m really active there. I think my spelling of my name, Kristi Mitchell, if you type it in, I think I’m one of the first, if not the first result that shows up on LinkedIn. So you can find me there and you can certainly go to my website, kristimitchell.com. There’s a bunch of free resources there. I practice what I preach when it comes to content marketing. And yeah, I enjoy working with MSPs. I enjoy being that outsider looking in, assessing all of those pieces, doing that audit and assessment like I said, kind of diving in as an extension of your team, evaluating everything that you have going and really giving you that strategic plan to say, okay, this is how we move forward. This is the type of content we need to be creating and this is how we distribute it through all these channels so that we can attract and nurture and convert our ideal clients.[00:32:02] Speaker A: Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast this week’s.[00:32:06] Speaker E: Recommended book hi, I’m Tom Andrulis and the book I recommend is called the coaching habit. After reading hundreds of books, this book is one of the top five best books that I’ve read. Definitely one of the top three business books that I’ve read. And the book will really help you, help you with coaching people in general. So when someone comes to you with an issue, how do you get yourself out of fixing the problem for them and helping empower them to fix the problem for themselves?[00:32:34] Speaker A: Coming up next week.[00:32:35] Speaker F: Hi, my name is Michael Nelson and I’m the founder of Scaled, a staff augmentation firm that places South African talent with MSPs across the world. We’re going to help you understand how to successfully pull remote techs into your culture to make sure that they represent you, your company and your culture well.[00:32:53] Speaker C: And on top of that interview next week we’re going to look at the difference between features and benefits. People don’t want MFA, but they do want security so good they don’t have to lose sleep at night. In fact, we’re going to turn some features into benefits together. We’re also looking at three killer offers that will make you stand out from every single other MSP out there. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.[00:33:21] Speaker A: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, Paul Green’s MSP marketing podcast.

The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

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Episode 229Welcome to a special episode of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP.In this Special Easter Episode I’m joined by Kevin Clune, who I like to describe as the Marketing R&D department of the entire MSP channel.Kevin and I talk about the present and future of MSP marketing tools, including AI tools and GPTs, and how advancements in AI technology could revolutionize how MSPs market to their leads, prospects and clients.Featured guest:Kevin Clune is the Founder of MSP Growth Hacks, Co-Founder of Zest, and a Growth Advisor for MSPs. After growing and exiting an MSP business in 2018, he went on to publish his first book “The MSP Growth Funnel” to help others do the same. This spawned his career as a serial entrepreneur and vocal figure in the IT industry, as he continues to deliver valuable research and actionable advice to MSPs of all sizes.

Connect with Kevin on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-clune/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + http://mspmarketingedge.com/about/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Connect with me on LinkedIn: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP marketing podcast.[00:00:09] Speaker B: Hello and happy Easter to you. Welcome to a very special episode of the podcast just for Easter 2024. We have dumped our usual format because this week I have a very special guest on. He’s kind of like the marketing r and D department of the entire channel. The guest I’m going to introduce you to in a second is constantly trying new things. I learn from him all the time. I consider him to be a very good friend, and it’s always worth having a conversation with him, whether that’s on email or WhatsApp or doing something like this. Because every time I’m scribbling down things, he says and thinking, I like that. That’s a really good idea. I’ll take that away.[00:00:46] Speaker A: Paul Green’s MSD marketing podcast special.[00:00:52] Speaker B: So we’re going to talk about in the next 20 minutes or so some very cool AI marketing tools that we have seen sort of being launched over the last couple of weeks. We’re going to talk about something called GPTs, which is something that’s come out of chat, GPT, and how you could use that in your MSP. It’s far too many acronyms there. And we’re also going to talk about why you would launch a brand new PSA in 2024. What’s that I hear you say? Do we need another one? Well, maybe we do. We will find out later on in this special episode. So let me introduce you to this week’s special guest.[00:01:27] Speaker C: Hi, I’m Kevin Clune. I’m a co founder of MSP Growth Hacks and recently of Zest, a new PSA.[00:01:35] Speaker B: That brand new PSA we are going to talk about later. So welcome back onto the show, Kevin. It’s great to have you here. I think this is your third or fourth appearance, which is pretty good. At some point, you’re going to become the most appeared upon person on the podcast. Is that even a thing? Did I say that properly? It’s a thing. Now we’ll get you a trophy. So tell us a little bit about you and your background. Assume that whoever’s listening to this right now or watching us on YouTube doesn’t know who you are, where have you come from and what do you do?[00:02:02] Speaker C: Yeah, so I was an MSP, I guess back in 2018, we had an exit, and after the exit, we just sort of figured, trying to figure out what do we do now? And so I thought, hey, why don’t we just start a blog and just start sort of dumping everything that we learned. And so that’s how MSP growth hacks was born. We’ve been writing articles pretty much since then. So we’re coming on, I guess five years or so of this journey, and it’s kind of taking us in a lot of different directions, working directly with MSPs, whether it’s on marketing or growth.More recently, I think we’re getting more into software and solutions that can directly benefit in a far more scalable way. But over the years, like you said, we pretty much have stayed on the forefront of just like what’s new, what’s different, and what changes around the corner that maybe people aren’t paying attention to yet.

[00:03:03] Speaker B: Yeah, and I love getting your newsletter. I have noticed they’re not as consistent as they used to be. Just scolding you there with that one, Kevin. But whenever you get marketing has to be consistent, right?[00:03:13] Speaker C: Of course.[00:03:13] Speaker B: Whenever I get your newsletter, I always keep it. I’m actually subscribed twice. I’m subscribed in my work email and my home email because one of them, I want to make sure I just have some time to sit and absorb and read what you’ve written. And as I said at the beginning, it feels like you’re the marketing r D for the entire channel. So you can’t stop this. You have to keep going with this, even if your new PSA takes off for our audience, if you haven’t been to MSP, it’s mspgrowthacks.com, isn’t it?[00:03:40] Speaker C: Correct?[00:03:40] Speaker B: Yeah. So if you haven’t, if it’s a website you haven’t been to, I mean, I kid you, is as Kevin says, there’s five years of content there. But this is not just one of those blogs where someone’s filling up the blog for the sake of filling up the blog. Right? Kevin’s not doing this for Google. Kevin’s doing this with the content is insanely good. And I know a lot of very, very smart people who subscribe to it for free, it doesn’t cost anything, but who subscribe to it and listen to what you have to say. And that’s what’s made you a pretty influential person, Kevin. So thank you. On behalf of the entire channel, I’m going to thank you for MSP Growth hacks. Now let’s talk about AI tools. And before we do, I have to give a caveat that we are recording this in the middle of February, which I know seems kind of insane when you consider where Easter sits this year. But we work really far ahead on this show. I don’t like to get behind. The reason I give you that caveat is because Kevin and I are about to talk about AI, and as we all know, you can talk about AI on Monday, and then you wake up on Tuesday and it has completely changed again. So if we talk about anything now and you think, oh, everyone knows about that, or, oh, that’s been superseded by this, you now know that actually, we recorded this in the distant past. So let’s start by talking about cool AI marketing tools. Kevin, I’m going to start with one, if that’s okay, because we’ve just started testing one actually within our business, and I’m going to give you very early, like a day zero five review of it. So it’s a very cool tool called Voxia. V o Xia AI. I think it’s voxia. If you just Google Voxia, it’ll come up, and it’s come out of Israel. And I saw it written about in a marketing newsletter about a month ago, and I reached out to them and said, we want to be not quite a beta tester, but we want to be one of your early clients. And I think we’re like client number seven or something. But what it is is it’s an AI automated outbound calling. So we have, I wonder if I should give her name now. I probably shouldn’t, but it’s called an agent. It’s an AI agent, and her name is Laurie. And we are feeding in numbers of MSPs around the world, and Laurie is calling those MSPs on our behalf. And what she’s trying to do is she’s trying to book a 15 minutes zoom with the human who works for me called Ben. That’s her goal. So we have worked with Voxia to set up an entire script.It’s clever, it’s AI, so it listens to what you say. So if it asks you a question and you go off track, or you say, sorry, what was that? It picks that up and it reacts like a human does, it’ll say, oh, I’m sorry I asked you, and it’s really scarily good. So I’ve tested it on a number of people and said, oh, I’ve got a new telesalesperson. Can I get them to call you? And haven’t told them it was AI. And apart from there being a kind of a slight gap in the conversation, the conversation doesn’t quite flow so well. It’s really good. And the day it all changed and the day that we committed was the day they integrated it with calendly. So when they first launched their first version, where basically the agent with whatever voice or saying whatever you wanted, she would say, oh, I’m going to get you booked in. I’m going to text you, I’m going to send you over a live calendar, which as we all know, very few people ever then actually booked in. But as we’re recording this here in mid February, like a week ago, they finally got calendar integration, and that’s been a complete game changer. So we are in very early days testing this right now. I really hope it works. I’m not going to talk about pricing because that’s not unfair to them because they’re trying to find out their pricing model. But it’s not cheap, it’s not expensive, it’s kind of somewhere in the middle. And as I say, fingers crossed, if this works for us, this could actually be a really good solution for MSPs because it’s exactly the use case. The use case for us is the same as it is for MSPs, which is calling people to find out if now is a good time to talk and if it is booking a 15 minutes appointment with a human. So that’s my cool AI marketing tool. What’s something cool that you’ve come across recently?

[00:07:29] Speaker C: Kevin in yeah, so just to add to that, I have seen some of these outbound prospecting tools, especially the sort of outbound calling tools I know in the US, the FCC is already jumping all over this, and I think there’s going to be regulation very quickly on because when you start to stack robocalling, which was already a problem now with like, oh, and the computers can talk now, that takes it to a whole different level.And this is the problem, right, with AI is the advancements are huge and abundant, but then everybody’s scrambling on the back end to sort of clean up the messes that it’s creating. So you can also burn a lot of time. I’ve been experimenting with all kinds of tools that I’m finding, but I guess recently I keep coming back to sort of just the basics of chat, GPT, copilot, custom gpts, and what I’ve been doing recently, I published an article last week on essentially like creating a case study, right? And so in that article, we walked through the process of, okay, let’s publish a questionnaire that you can fill out for a case study and then a prompt that you can use to generate the case study and then a design brief that you can then take once you have your case study and get it designed. And so what that really is, is it’s a turnkey process that regardless of whether you want to use chat GBT, you want to use copilot, you want to use Gemini, whatever, something else, you can just kind of apply that. And so this is what I’ve, after all these kind of experiments, and what I keep coming back to is how can we really build more so, like, processes around this to where I can repeat a result over and over?

And it’s not going to just all come crumbling down in the next few weeks or months when a tool changes.

Maybe that’s not the popular tool this is, or they lost funding, you know what I mean? It’s going to start to really be a rat race as things pick up. And I think most of these things will fail, and not because they’re not incredible, but just because the race is on and things will change over time. So I think that’s what, as exciting as it all has been, I think what’s exciting to me now more recently is being able to repeat results just using the know. And so that’s kind of what our focus has been on recently.

[00:10:14] Speaker B: Okay, so let’s talk about custom gpTs. And before we do, I’m hereby officially making you, Kevin, our FCC monitor. Because obviously my business is based in the UK, but we’re calling to the US. So if the FCC puts regulation on this, you personally have to WhatsApp me and tell me just to switch off voxia. Do we have that agreement in public right now? That’s good. I don’t want to get fined, right? I don’t want to break any laws. So let’s talk about custom gpTs. So can you explain, let’s not assume our audience knows everything. I know lots of MSPs are very up to date on this stuff, but there are also sometimes people I speak to aren’t. So can you first of all, just explain what a custom GPT is? And then let’s talk about some of the experiments you’ve been doing with it recently.[00:10:58] Speaker C: Yeah, so GPT stands for generative, pre trained transformer, which doesn’t really tell you anything about what it actually know. The way that I like to explain it is basically just, it’s a version of, let’s say, Chat GPT that you can essentially upload your own data to, and you can also change the behavior of it. So you can make it answer things a certain way, or you can have it sort of ask you questions and do sort of like a role playing, and however you essentially build it, that’s sort of how it behaves. And so the GPT that we created is called MSP growth bot. And essentially what we did is we took all of our years of content, whether it’s articles, videos, we have a bunch of PDF guides that we’ve created. My book, the MSP growth funnel that I published back in 2020. So everything’s in there.And now, since the data set is limited, you can have conversations with it and you know that you’re getting answers that are sourced from genuine experience, right? So this is sort of the problem with chat GBT, sort of proper, I guess, or in general, is that when you ask it a question related to a very specific topic, you’re going to get like a million different ideas and this and that, like every possible outcome. But every possible outcome isn’t always that useful. Sometimes you just need to know, like, okay, this is the outcome that’s most likely based on a limited amount of ideas and sort of execution steps. So that’s, I think, difference right now for us. So we encourage all of our readers to use MSP growthpot when they’re trying to kind of ask questions related to growing their business. Because essentially what it does is it looks at our content, it formulates responses, and it really does a great job of stitching these things together. It might be some knowledge from three different articles, which at their surface have very little relevance to each other, but it’s able to give you whole answers that really kind of COVID it in a way that personally we never could. And so currently you can visit the GPT store and on Chat GPT, and you can see all of these different GPTs that are now really useful. And so essentially, to boil it down, it’s just a Chat GPT. That’s for a very specific use case.

[00:13:34] Speaker B: So just before we talk about how an MSP could use a GPT, how do we access your growthbot?[00:13:40] Speaker C: So currently you can just go to msptowax.com, go to tools, and then you’ll see the link to the GPT. There’s also a banner on the side.[00:13:48] Speaker B: Okay, really simple. And I love that. In fact, I could imagine that growthbot, of course, makes connections and remembers things that you can’t because your inefficient organic brain forgets the article that you wrote three and a half years ago about XYZ subject, and perhaps wouldn’t make that mental link immediately, whereas of course the software would, because it’s holding all of that information. So I think that’s a really smart way of using that. So the tough question then is how would an MSP use a GPT? What are some of the use cases that you think are either going to become standard or are certainly worth exploring, even if there are some risks attached to that?[00:14:26] Speaker C: Yeah. So there is obviously a lot that you can do with training your data. Right. But again, there’s a lot of sensitivities there. So it’s not sure if that’s a great idea at this moment. But what I think where this is leaning more so is for a behavioral thing. So a good example is I actually helped an MSP who has an outbound sales team, and he wanted to basically train his salespeople on their script. Right. So they have all these scripts, they’ve got all this documentation, and this was actually provided to them from an outsourced partner that they have that is providing these materials. And so they were actually able to create, like, a little internal GPT that is really just as essentially like a copilot for their salespeople. So if they’re getting a certain response now, they want to say, like, oh, how should I answer this question? Or what should I do? So that’s a really simple sort of sales and marketing focus. Doesn’t really require proprietary data that would have any sort of harmful impact, but it’s just a way that you can use the GPT in a simple way that can have some sort of benefit long term and that you can build on as you learn. And as that becomes more useful, you can train it with more and more data. So this is like, what’s great about our GPT is that every time I publish a new article, it then gets loaded into the knowledge base. So, like that article that I mentioned that we published last week on case studies, now that GPT has just gotten smarter, and it’s just because every time it provides an answer, it’s doing a live look at the content that we have.[00:16:17] Speaker B: Yeah, got it. That makes sense. And when you were talking about content that I can’t remember the exact same thing you said, but you said about it being harmful. What you were essentially talking about is, how should we put this politely? If the data gets out of the GPT in some way, it doesn’t matter if that’s just sales queries, is that what you’re saying? Versus you wouldn’t put. So you could do that with technical data, for example, but you wouldn’t do it with client technical data? Is that the kind of thing that you meant when you talked about that kind of data.[00:16:49] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. And basically what’s happening recently is that even though they have chat GBT, for example, has sort of like the team and enterprise versions, it seems like there’s a lack of control over what information gets leaked after it’s been uploaded and where it’s getting leaked to. And so that’s why it’s sort of best practice at this point. Even though two weeks ago this wasn’t the case, is that really no proprietary data related to any sort of technical or customer information should really be uploaded at this point. There might be ways that you could do that locally with a spreadsheet and, like copilot or something. I’m not really that familiar with that, but for sure, I think that currently in today’s state, possibly will change. Is maybe not the safest thing.[00:17:42] Speaker B: No, that makes perfect sense.Well, let’s be honest, any data safety, if there’s any hint of your data not being safe, you’ve obviously got to err on the side of caution. I think that’s a default for absolutely everyone right now. It’s really exciting, and we’re going to wrap up talking about AI and just briefly talk about your new PSA. It’s really exciting for me at this stage to see how Chat GPT is evolving so quickly, and then we’re starting to get. And you’ll tell me what this is called, because I can’t remember, but I’ve preordered a rabbit r one, which is the gadget that will actually do things for you. So Chat GPT is just organizing information. Can you remember what that’s called?

The overall descriptor of action?

[00:18:23] Speaker C: I believe it’s RPA. Right. Robotic process automation is what it uses. It remembers sort of like paths.[00:18:29] Speaker B: Yeah, that’s it. And that’s the next step, isn’t it? So it’s one thing to have your information organized and cross referenced and search and predicted and generated, and then the next level is doing it for you. And I think this is. We’re almost getting to that point of being. Do you remember when Siri came in in 1842, or whatever it was? It seems like that long ago. And everyone was like, oh, Siri is going to be great. And then you launched Siri, and it couldn’t do anything. It couldn’t even remember what it had just said to you on the previous answer. And so very few of us use Siri. And of course, Alexa came along, was a bit better, a lot better, but it’s still not exactly the same. And it feels like we’re right on the precipice of that point where not that far in the future we will have a safe way to put proprietary data into some kind of custom AI engine. And for an MSP to be able to take 1015 years of PSA data and have an AI analyze that and suggest answers and look for connections and look for problems and look for upsells, and I find that all of that exciting. And then actually maybe even trigger email campaigns automatically or notify salespeople. And the marketing opportunities of this alone, they just blow my mind and it feels like we’re on minute one of hour, one of day one, and we’ve got obviously potentially years and decades of development to come on that. Anyway, that’s all of AI. I know you and I could talk about that for hours and hours, but I do want to talk about your new PSA before we finish our Easter special. So there are lots of psas around. I guess this is a question you hear a lot, Kevin, why do we need a new PSA? Tell us what you’ve, you know, I.[00:20:10] Speaker C: Don’T want to take too much of the know. One of the benefits of MSP growth hacks is we tend to attract some really sort of innovative and forward thinking MSPs. And these are MSPs that sort of become part of our community. And I love talking to them and helping them really in any way. And so I guess it was two and a half years ago or so, one of the MSPs called Lime tree labs out of Boise, Idaho, reached out and they had a really great. I had already known them and they had read my book, but they had a really interesting idea for a PSA. And the idea was really simple. It was that the PSA is too complicated.Everybody’s trying to push out the ten and under crowd, meaning like ten technicians or fewer. There’s a ton of barriers for that right now is like onboarding fees, there’s minimum license counts, there’s giant contracts, you name it. And so what if we just had a PSA that was ready to go out of the box? It was built for an MSP specifically. It required very little customization, and you could use it with essentially like no contract and no minimum seat requirements. So from the beginning, I sort of helped them through a wireframe, just sort of thinking around what they had, but they really didn’t need much of my help at all. They went out and built this thing. And then once I saw it, I’d say a year and a half ago, I was really excited to see how I could get involved. So I became an advisor and a shareholder and now I’ve sort of been helping in more capacity as a co founder. And so it’s called Zest. Zestmsp.com. And the point of this PSA is know it’s simple, it’s simplicity. It’s about just getting up and running as fast as possible.

If you have a huge team and you require all these automations and complexities and whatever, there’s far better tools for you. But if you’re just looking for a simple way to operate your cervix desk ready to go, you don’t want to spend a ton of time tinkering because it’s already built for you and how you should be running an MSP, then I think zest is the way to go.

[00:22:35] Speaker D: Coming up next week hi, I’m Christy Mitchell. Come join me on Paul’s podcast, where we’re going to talk all about strategic content marketing for MSPs to help you attract, nurture and convert your ideal clients.[00:22:48] Speaker B: I’m going to set you a challenge next week. Every time you sell a project or a piece of hardware, how can you attach a stream of monthly recurring revenue to it? I’ve also got for you five quick wins to instantly improve your MSP’s net profit margin. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.[00:23:09] Speaker A: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world Paul Green’s MSP marketing podcast.

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Episode 228Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week’s show includes:* 00:00 Be more relatable in your marketing by being more human * 06:22 Are LinkedIn hashtags still relevant? * 12:34 Driving ROI from customer success stories

Featured guest:Thank you to Joel Klettke, Founder of Case Study Buddy, for joining me to talk about how MSPs can use customer success stories to generate more leads and convert more prospects into clients, and how to repurpose a single case study story into a range of assets to serve different functions across the whole of your sales cycle.

Joel Klettke is the Founder of Case Study Buddy, a boutique agency that helps clients like HubSpot and Loom capture, share, and drive ROI from customer stories. He’s also a sought-after conversion copywriter, Dad of three, and proud Canadian.

Connect with Joel on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelklettke/

Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + http://mspmarketingedge.com/about/ * Connect with me on LinkedIn: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Grab yourself a copy of this week’s recommended book, The Gap and the Gain: The High Achievers’ Guide to Happiness, Confidence, and Success: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gap-Gain-Achievers-Happiness-Confidence/dp/1401964362/

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world, this Paul. Paul. Paul Greens MSP Marketing podcast.[00:00:09] Speaker B: And welcome back to the podcast. Next week, it’s an Easter special. I’ll give you more details of that later on, but here’s what we’ve got coming up this week.[00:00:17] Speaker C: Hey, it’s Joel Klettke from case Study buddy. Join me on Paul’s podcast, where I’ll be talking about customer success stories, how you can get started using them on your marketing, and see some really great ROI from the great relationships you’ve built.[00:00:29] Speaker B: And on top of that interview with Joel, we’re also going to be asking our hashtags, still valid on LinkedIn.[00:00:37] Speaker A: Paul Green, MSP Marketing Podcast let’s start.[00:00:41] Speaker B: With a provocative question this week. Should you admit your faults and mistakes in order to be more relatable with your marketing? And I realize, having said that, that how can you? Because you don’t have faults, do you? You don’t make mistakes. You’re perfect just as I’m perfect. Yeah, come on. We all know humans. We’re fallible. We make mistakes. We get things wrong. You should see some of the outtakes of this podcast. You should hear some of the horrendous words that I say when I get it wrong. I don’t know if you can hear in the back of my head today.[00:01:12] Speaker D: I can hear it, but I’ve got man flu.[00:01:15] Speaker B: I’ve got a man cold. My voice feels all different, and I’m all stuffed up and my brain’s all foggy. And I’m a real trooper. So I’m plowing on and recording the podcast anyway. But producer Simon will tell you that I’ve made some horrendous mistakes. Know, just doing this week’s podcast, never mind the normal podcasts, but all of that gets edited out because we just want you to have the good stuff, right? And that’s what we all do with our know. I have lots and lots of faults. There are lots of marketing things that I’m really not good at, because no one human can be good at all of marketing. It’s too big. That’s like one human being good at all of technology, right? You can code Facebook in the morning, and then you can fix a server in the afternoon. It doesn’t exist. No one has all of those skill sets. And if you think you do, then you’re actually not a master of all of those things at the same time. But then we do our marketing, and our marketing makes us out to be perfect. We talk about all the perfect things. And we never reveal our faults. Well, I think we should. I think, actually, the more you talk about your mistakes and the more you talk about your faults, and not incessantly, if that’s all you talk about, you’re missing a trick. But if you weave it in to the stories you’re telling, then I think that can make you seem a very real person, a very authentic person. And actually, in this age of AI generated content, that’s a very, very good thing. You see, humans like to buy from other humans. People like to buy from people. And one of the ways that we can make other people feel connected to us is by telling stories. Human brains love stories. If you put a human into what’s called a functional MRI machine. MRI. That’s a mistake. We won’t cut out the podcast. A functional MRI machine. An MRI. You know what MRI is? It’s the big magnetic thing that goes boom, boom, boom, boom when it takes pictures of you. But a functional one can sort of scan what’s happening in your brain in real time. And if you put someone into one of those things and you tell them a story, all sorts of parts of the brain light up, lots of different parts of the brain. You break down that same story into facts, and only two or three parts of the brain light up. So our brains are literally hardwired for stories, but they need to be compelling stories, right? And the trick is, on your website, on the emails you send, on the guides you write on everything, is to tell compelling stories. One of the most compelling stories you can tell is of mistakes that you’ve made and then how you’ve overcome them. It is a basic story. In fact, you think about Hollywood movies, right? Hollywood movies are full of people making mistakes and then overcoming those mistakes, and often then going on to learn how to fly, use a lightsaber, or something else like that. So what if you talked about a mistake that you made, which then set you off down a different path, and you became better at that? Now, the conflict in my head at this point is that there is a line at which an MSP shouldn’t be talking about their mistakes. And by that, I mean breaches, data, security, incidents, anything which could be dangerous. It would be horrendous for your business and its marketing. If you said, I really learned about data breaches two years ago when a client got hacked and went bust, that would be horrendous. That’s not a lesson to learn from. That’s something that you should just know. Right? So there is very much a line of acceptability. That would be like, what’s an example I can give of a dentist saying the day I realized I was causing my patient’s pain was when one of them ran out screaming during the middle of a procedure and I never saw them again. You wouldn’t visit a dentist like that, and no dentist would admit to that, even if it’s happened. So there is a line of, a credibility line. But I think you can talk about mistakes that you’ve made, perhaps in things that aren’t so important. Let’s take something like a video call setup, right? So you might have a really good video call setup today with a USB camera and led lights and a USB microphone, and you might be using zoom or teams in a very specific way, and that might be the result of you doing some research and figuring out a great way of doing video calls. That really zing, right? And it’s okay for you, in your marketing, to talk about how back in 2020, you, like everyone else, was doing really average, rubbishy video calls, poorly lit, terrible camera, and the sound wasn’t great either. And over time, you’ve improved your game, and then you’ve helped your clients up their game. And now one of the things that you do, one of your services for your clients, is you give all of them the perfect video call setter, both at their work desk and at their home office desk, which, by the way, can be a great product to sell. Can you see how take something like that where I made a mistake, I got it wrong, I was making the same mistakes as everyone. But then I’ve transformed it and I’ve done something different. That would be a very, very compelling thing to do. And the more real you can make yourself, the better. The more human you can make yourself, the better. You’ve got to be careful of that credibility gap. But ultimately, people buy from people, and people make mistakes. Tell us about those mistakes. Tell us how you’ve overcome them.[00:06:22] Speaker A: Here’s this week’s clever idea.[00:06:25] Speaker B: I’m hoping you use LinkedIn quite dramatically. I’m hoping that you’re on it every day, or if not you personally, then someone is working LinkedIn on your behalf. Because as an MSP, LinkedIn is beautiful, right? Everyone you could ever possibly want to do business with in the future, they’re on LinkedIn, the vast majority of them, and it’s a great place to go farming. LinkedIn very much is about farming, not hunting. Hunting is where you dart in and grab something. LinkedIn is about farming. It’s about nurturing growing connections. All of that kind of stuff. And a question that I’m often asked is about hashtags on LinkedIn, because LinkedIn is constantly changing things. And one of the things that’s changing quite a lot at the moment is the role of hashtags. You know what I mean by hashtags. So someone will write a post. And for example, when I write a post, I always put a hashtag underneath hashtag MSP marketing. And I’ll explain in about 3 minutes time why I do that on every single post and how you can do something similar to dominate a hashtag in your area. So if we go back, I guess a number of years, five, six, seven years or so ago, then hashtags were considered totally essential for kind of increasing your reach and discoverability on LinkedIn. Because the theory was that if someone, let’s say you did have hashtag your town, that someone would click on hashtag your town and there would be lots of posts written by people in your town or written by people who wanted to reach people in your town. But I think what we’ve been seeing over the last six months or so is we’ve seen a bit of a shift in hashtags and a bit of a shift in how LinkedIn itself is viewing them. And they are always doing experiments and trying things. So it’s easy to look back and say, I think if you go back around about ten years ago, I remember reading some research ten years ago saying that if you put on three to ten hashtags, it would just give you a boost.[00:08:25] Speaker D: I don’t know, it would be like.[00:08:26] Speaker B: A 1020 percent boost or something like that. And the more specific the hashtags matched up to your content, the more of the boost you got, because literally people clicked the hashtag and it took them straight to content that they were interested in. The reality is, I think, how many people actually act that way? Do you do that? Do you click on hashtags to find things? Maybe you do on Twitter. Do you remember Twitter used to be called Twitter x? I don’t know if anyone ever uses that anymore, but x Twitter. Twitter x like spacex. But maybe people do that on Twitter to follow specific things they’re interested in. But do they do it on LinkedIn? Certainly LinkedIn itself has decided within recent years that hashtags don’t really significantly impact. Well, the addition of hashtags don’t significantly impact the post reach. So if you put on hashtags now, compared to a number of years ago, it doesn’t automatically drive more traffic to your site. So we’ve been doing some very minor experiments. As I said to you, I’ve been putting hashtags on my posts for years, and I did some experiments where I didn’t. And what I was trying to do was to figure know, is the hashtag making any difference? Am I seeing any kind of engagement? I’ve done a little bit of research. Most of my research has been done on Google or looking up LinkedIn experts and what LinkedIn themselves are saying. And it’s certain that from what we can see, that LinkedIn themselves have been running some experiments. And one of those experiments involves them reducing the importance of hashtags. And they seem to be possibly even moving towards making them just less important and less used within the LinkedIn experience to use what LinkedIn talk about. So I think the bigger picture from this is that hashtags on LinkedIn, I think they’re going to stay, from what you can see, that there doesn’t seem to be any reason for them to take them away, but they’re not as important as they used to be. So my final thoughts on this is going to be less of use to you because of that context, but it’s still something that you can do. And I’ve said to you a couple of times that every single post I put, I post, I put hashtag MSP marketing, and I do that to try and own the hashtag MSP marketing. I’m sure there are other people that use it, but when you click on the hashtag MSP marketing, you see a lot of my posts, and it’s also part of my authority, right? So if you go into my profile, it says, paul talks about MSP marketing.[00:10:58] Speaker D: Because it uses that hashtag, because I.[00:11:00] Speaker B: Use it often in my posts. So I think you can do exactly the same thing with a hashtag of support your town. So you can own and dominate a hashtag, it support your town. Does that make sense? But you need to use it on every single post. So from this point forward, every single post that you post, on every single post you use, add on that hashtag, it support your town, and over a period of time, you will come to own that. Is it going to drive more traffic from LinkedIn? Is it going to drive more inquiries? Probably not. Is it good positioning for something that takes a fraction of a second every time? Yes, it is. And I always believe with marketing, if you can have a tiny little win with something like that, why wouldn’t you do it?Talking of LinkedIn, then you and I connected on LinkedIn yet, if we’re not, the easiest way to find me on LinkedIn is actually through Google. If you Google LinkedIn. Paul Green, MSP marketing I guess you can go into LinkedIn and type in Paul Green, MSP marketing, but either of those are a great way to find me. Please do connect to me. I’ve got around about, it’s about 8000 connections now. The vast majority are MSPs, and it would be delightful to be connected to you. But also make sure you subscribe to my LinkedIn newsletter. It comes out every single Thursday. I’ll send that over to you. Brand new, fresh content every Thursday. When you connect to me on LinkedIn, it will automatically suggest that you subscribe to my newsletter, LinkedIn. Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul Paul Paul Greens, MSP Marketing podcast send you a message when we connect. It’d be great to talk to you.

[00:12:37] Speaker C: Hey, I’m Joel Klettke. I’m an expert on case studies, and I run the team at case study.[00:12:42] Speaker D: Buddy, and that’s got to be one of the best company names that we’ve ever had on this podcast. It just trips off the tongue. Case study buddy, we’ll talk to you later on about exactly what you do and how you can help MSPs, because I know you have worked with a growing number of MSPs already, but let’s talk about case studies, because that’s what your business sells. That’s what it delivers.When we talk about case studies, what exactly are we talking about here? Are we talking about enhanced testimonials? Are we talking about influencing reviews? What exactly do we mean?

[00:13:10] Speaker B: Joel?[00:13:11] Speaker C: Yeah, it’s actually a shame that case study buddy flows so well, because what I wish we could call ourselves is customer success story buddy, which is nowhere near as nice to say. But that’s really what we’re talking about, is taking customer success story. Someone who’s had a great experience with you, achieved success with you, be that relational, be that metrics based, something you’ve actually helped them lift or grow. We’re talking about more than just a testimonial, though. That can be a byproduct of the work that we do and an output of the work that we do. But to boil it down, we’re talking about stories with a narrative arc that start in one place, there’s a transformational journey, and then they wind up in another and showcasing that relationship, the work that you’ve done, but making them the hero in that story. So we’re talking about both written, we’re talking about capturing that in video, and then as we’ll maybe get into later, repurposing that into all kinds of little smaller pieces that you can use across your marketing in different ways.[00:14:06] Speaker D: Yeah, that sounds great. We’ll definitely talk about that in a few minutes. But let’s first of all talk about that transformational story that you just mentioned there. So if you imagine the average business owner client of an MSP, what kind of transformational story would you want to highlight in some kind of case study?[00:14:24] Speaker C: I think for a lot of MSP owners and their clients, a lot of clients come in in a state of overwhelm or in a state of panic. There’s something, especially when you think of things like cybersecurity or a system that is not working or a very big decision that needs to be made about a migration or a software, many, many different things. There’s often a state of overwhelm. There’s a state of panic or urgency. There’s a state of going from not knowing to knowing. And there’s also, I think, a lot of skepticism. There’s also people who have tried to dip their toe into this market and been burned before, or they don’t know where to start. So when we talk about transformational journeys specific to MSPs, those are often the things that we’re keying into. Yes, there are things like when you talk about cybersecurity, well, we went from unsecure to secure in the number of instances, users and things like that. But it’s often just going from not knowing to knowing, from a lack of confidence to confidence in a partner, from feeling unprepared to feeling now prepared, from being underserved on the software side to now having the right tools to do the job. So those are some of the narrative arcs that you can pull. And the really exciting thing is, depending on your personal strategy and your focus for the coming quarter or year, you can really key into specific stories that will help you sell a particular part of your offering or differentiator, what makes you unique. So it can be any number of things, but those are some of the common ones for MSPs especially.[00:15:48] Speaker D: Yeah. And what is it about case studies that gives them their influential power?[00:15:52] Speaker C: I think because it’s not just claims that you’re making, it’s the ultimate sort of substantiation of all the claims you’ll make on your website or all the things you’ll say. Every company can say, for example, oh, we put customers first, or we really know this stack. But it’s different when it’s a client saying they really know this or they really looked after us. It’s different when it’s someone else essentially vouching for you in an authentic way by sharing their story. And I think that’s the other thing, is it’s not just a claim. It’s not a bullet on a landing page. It’s an actual transformational journey that someone outside of your company is kind of saying, I’ve been there. I’ve faced the decision that you’re facing or the challenge that you’re facing. I made the choice that you’re debating and now I’ve gotten the outcome that you want. So it’s that third party kind of vouching, that focus on the customer, that substantiation of the things that you may be already saying in your marketing that really makes this a powerful asset for you.[00:16:52] Speaker D: Yes, it’s almost like saying, hey, here’s someone like you and here’s an experience that they had with us and look at the transformation that it’s made to their business. And for people who are buying something that they don’t really know about, which is more or less all decision makers buying managed services, that’s exactly that situation. Now, Joel, earlier on you mentioned making the client the hero of the case study. And that and your use of the words transformational journeys makes me think that clearly you’re familiar with Donald Miller and his series of books about story brand. And for MSPs, watching this and listening to this right now, if you’ve never read building a story brand by Donald Miller, it’s a great book because it equates your marketing and particularly how you tell stories within your marketing. Back to movies. And a lot of movies follow a very, very similar story of transformation where you’ve got a hero who meets a guide who sets out a plan, and that plan ends in ultimate defeat of the enemy or success for the hero, which is exactly.That’s the technology story, isn’t it? Which is the hero, the client meets you, the guide who has a plan, which is your technology strategy for them to grow their business or whatever that is. Is that the kind of thing that.

[00:18:01] Speaker B: You typically try to come across with.[00:18:03] Speaker D: Case study videos and with sort of case studies you do for MSPs, or do you have different types of stories that you go for?[00:18:11] Speaker C: Yeah, there are many different types of stories, but I think before I get into those, the thing that is integral to all of this is don’t make your customer look like a hapless idiot. There’s a real tendency you want to trump up the work that you’ve done the knowledge that you bring, but that will be self evident if you tell the story through their lens. So rather than making them some hapless idiot in need of rescuing, you want to make them look and sound like someone who’s smart with agency, venturing into the unknown and needing exactly what you said, that guide. Now, that being said, there are different types of stories that we can key into. So for example, in some cases, you can transform that story into a bit of a playbook. So here’s the starting point. Here’s where they were coming from, here’s the goals they had, and then, almost like a recipe, here’s exactly how it looked. And here’s how you can replicate, with our help, that success. Or you can tell skeptic stories where the focus is really on the objections they had during the sales process and how they were ultimately won over and how that played out. Or you can tell switcher stories. So maybe not as common in msps, but still some. If they were coming from another provider that let them down, making that the core of the story, why did they change? What was it about you that helped them see this bigger, brighter future or aspirational stories? So rather than focusing just on kind of the work that was done, if you have a client who is well known in their space or well respected, making this almost more about, you could be like this person or you could be like this company, you aspire to be kind of similar to them. You can take that tacker angle as well. So there’s many different ways to kind of tell that story. There’s also many ways to format that story depending on how you want to use it.[00:19:52] Speaker D: It’s interesting you talk about the switcher videos. I’m working closely at the moment with an MSP who’s part of my MSP marketing edge program and in his city, a super MSP, which is like a business that grows by acquiring lots of other MSPs in lots of other areas. They bought one of his main competitors. The super MSP has changed everything. So the service levels have gone down, prices have gone up, and the clients are just coming out the door as quick as anything and say, my client that I’m working with almost can’t pick up the clients fast enough. And it strikes me that actually in a situation like that, a switcher case study would be a fantastic marketing tool that hadn’t occurred to me. So thank you. Thank you very much. I’ve learned as much from this interview as anyone else has, which is just fantastic. Now, you mentioned earlier the idea of repurposing content as well. And traditionally, when we think of case studies, especially if we’re coming at it from like a video point of view, we’d think, hey, let’s do a video. We’ve got a video case study. Maybe we’d repurpose it into something written. But you’re saying that actually you can repurpose it in lots of different ways.[00:20:51] Speaker C: Yeah, I think there’s a lot of bias. Even if you’re newer to marketing or it’s not your specialty, a lot of people think of case studies as something you only give to a client at the end of the journey. So they’ve come in, they’re evaluating, they need some proof, and oh, here’s a story. And maybe that gets you over the line, but that’s not the only way to use these. So, for example, you can use them in lead generation. So let’s say that you are doing cold outreach. Well, you probably don’t want to drop a 2000 word story on somebody’s head. You don’t have that kind of buy in, but you might be able to send them just a quick little sound bite, maybe a 15 to 32nd video that leads to a longer story or maybe a one sheet, a simple one pager that has some high level bullets. Again, that’s tailored to that cold outreach or that advertisement, something more bite sized for them. But beyond that, let’s say you do a lot of in person pitching. You like to be face to face. Well, translating that story again from its core format, be that video or a longer form written piece to a simple slide deck, something you can speak through, same story presented slightly different, now serves a different function. Let’s say that you have long standing clients and you’re now rolling out a new part of your offering. You’re excited to be able to service them in this new way. You’ve successfully done it for just a handful of people, but you want more. Well, now maybe you have that sort of longer form written piece or that longer form video about the experience of that and with some more details. So now they can key into that. Or let’s say that you’ve done an interview, but unfortunately the person wasn’t willing to go on camera and you still want to have a multimedia asset. Well, if you’ve got the audio, you can translate in the same way that people do with podcasts. Turn it into an audiogram or an audio based video, where again, you’ve got a headshot, maybe the waveform, some captions, and now you’ve got something? Again, you can test out in ads, or you can test out embedded on your written stories, or just adding that multimedia layer. So there are many different ways to repurpose. And if you want a super simple framework that I think anyone can pick up. Nibble, bite, snack, meal. How hungry is your audience? Like how much information are they hungry for right now? If it’s early on and you’re doing cold outreach, maybe just a nibble is all they have an appetite for. If they’re a long standing client considering taking on another area of focus, maybe it’s a longer form piece. So having correlating kind of formats that fit that mold, something shorter for the less aware, less hungry they are, and something longer when it’s a more involved decision, gives you a ton of utility from these stories.[00:23:18] Speaker D: I love it. Joel, a second. We’re going to talk about what you do and how you help MSPs by just either guiding them through this or just doing it for them. I guess we’ll talk about that in a second. But if you were an MSP yourself and you were going to diy this.[00:23:31] Speaker B: You were going to do it yourself, where would you get started?[00:23:34] Speaker D: What would be the first things that you would do?[00:23:36] Speaker C: I love this question because most people leap right to production, and that’s not the answer. Don’t just start bashing a keyboard or making requests. I think importantly, you want to focus on what are the types of stories that are actually going to drive an ROI for us in the first place. Because yes, you can just go to your biggest and best clients and make a request, or the low hanging fruit. But think about your business goals. Is there a particular focus area you’re trying to grow into, or a market you’re trying to serve better, or an industry that you’re really going after? Are there a particular type of buyer that you’re trying to appeal to? So before you start creating anything, just take one afternoon, sit down and kind of map out. Here’s the type of buyer we’re going after, and here are our goals for the coming quarter or year. And then think what types of stories would grease the wheels on a sales conversation? And who in our client base do we have that might fit the bill? Who might have a story like this? Start there, then keep it super simple. Make a simple and specific ask of someone, so don’t come in and send them ten paragraphs. Just send them a simple request. Hey, we’re working on building out our library of social proof. We’d love to talk to you because x and bring in that specific what is it about your relationship that makes it a good fit? We’d love to cover Y. So take out the fear of their request by just saying, this is what we’d like to focus on. We’d love to publish it by Z so that they have some sense of timeline. Would you be open to taking part? So start first with strategy. Make a simple ask, and then if you’re only going to produce one thing and you want to kind of just dip your toes into the water, get them on a Zoom call, record the conversation so you have that video footage, if they’re willing to be featured, turn it into a one sheet just as a starter, because that’s something that’s pretty simple to DIY versus more complex things, which might take a little bit more lift. And now you’ve got, hey, a short written piece you can use in different environments, some video footage that you can maybe pay someone to edit up for you. And that’s a great inroads just to getting your feet wet. And because you’ve got that strategy behind you, you’re already ahead of some multi billion dollar companies who never stop to think about, hey, do these stories actually do anything for us on the business then?[00:25:46] Speaker D: Yeah, I love that. Absolutely love it.[00:25:48] Speaker B: Joel, tell us what you do to.[00:25:49] Speaker D: Help MSPs and what’s the best way to get in touch with you.[00:25:53] Speaker C: Yeah, so case study buddy exists to basically take care of this process end to end for MSPs and for other b, two b clients. The only things we don’t do are make the initial ask and handle legal release. But we have heaps of advice and resources in terms of that. But we come in, we get to know your business, your goals. We help you kind of identify for yourselves what types of stories might make the most sense for you. We can give you templates for making the ask. Once you have someone who’s willing to take part, we have a handoff template. And from there we take care of everything. All of the capture, all of the editing, all of the navigating approvals of the assets, all the way through to final design. So you essentially make a warm introduction to a willing customer. We take care of the rest, deliver it in the formats that you’re actually going to go and use in your branding to your standard. And it’s about as turnkey as it gets for video and written types of components. So we’ve been at it for almost eight years now and working with all kinds of clients in all kinds of complex spaces, and that’s us that’s kind of how we come at it.[00:26:54] Speaker D: Cool. And the best way to get in touch with you?[00:26:56] Speaker C: Yeah, check out casestudybuddy.com. There’s a blog full of resources if you decide to DIY or come at it, lots of just try this, go do this how we think about this and there’s a contact form if you look and I go, I don’t got time for that, I’d love to just have a conversation. So lots there that you can learn and it’s a really easy way to kind of see our formats, examples, pricing and get in touch if it’s something that might make sense or is a priority for you for the coming year.[00:27:22] Speaker A: Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast this week’s.[00:27:26] Speaker E: Recommended book hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing. The book I recommend is the gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy. Fantastic book that really digs deep into why so many of us as entrepreneurs are unhappy because we’re looking at where we’re at and comparing it to an ideal rather than looking at where we’ve come from and where we are. Fantastic book. Highly recommend it.[00:27:56] Speaker B: Coming up next week next week it’s an Easter special. Join me and MSP growth expert Kevin Klune as we discuss how AI can unlock hidden data in your PSA. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.[00:28:14] Speaker A: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world Paul Green’s MSP marketing podcast.

The Gap and The Gain: The High Achievers' Guide to Happiness, Confidence, and Success

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Episode 227Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week’s show includes:* 00:00 Can you generate leads by literally knocking on doors? * 05:20 Achieve INSANE engagement with a 48 hour LinkedIn frenzy * 16:35 How to avoid ‘spammy’ marketing

Featured guest:Thank you to Fractional CTO & CPO Mark Herschberg, for joining me to talk about his experience of being on the receiving end of spammy, untargeted ‘cold’ marketing, and for offering alternatives to MSPs to engage with their leads and prospects in a more meaningful way.

Mark Herschberg is the author of The Career Toolkit: Essential Skills for Success That No One Taught You and creator of the Brain Bump app. From tracking criminals and terrorists on the dark web to creating marketplaces and new authentication systems, Mark has spent his career launching and developing new ventures at startups and Fortune 500s and in academia, with over a dozen patents to his name. He helped to start the Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program, dubbed MIT’s “career success accelerator,” where he teaches annually. At MIT, he received a B.S. in physics, a B.S. in electrical engineering & computer science, and a M.Eng. in electrical engineering & computer science, focusing on cryptography. At Harvard Business School, Mark helped create a platform used to teach finance at prominent business schools. He also works with many non-profits, currently serving on the board of Plant A Million Corals. He was one of the top-ranked ballroom dancers in the country and now lives in New York City, where he is known for his social gatherings, including his annual Halloween party, as well as his diverse cufflink collection.

Connect with Mark on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hershey/

Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + http://mspmarketingedge.com/about/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Connect with me on LinkedIn: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * In case you missed last week’s episode where I spoke to Craig Fulton about mergers and acquisitions, you can listen to Episode 222 here: + http://mspmarketingedge.com/podcast/episode222/ * Grab yourself a copy of this week’s recommended book, ReWork: Change the Way You Work Forever: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/ReWork-Change-Way-Work-Forever/dp/0091929784

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world, this Paul Paul Paul Greens MSP Marketing podcast and welcome back to the podcast. Here’s what I got in store for you this week.[00:00:14] Speaker B: Hi, I’m Mark Herschberg. I’m a fractional CTO and I am sick of all the sales spam I get from MSPs. Join me on Paul’s podcast to learn better way.[00:00:25] Speaker A: And on top of that interview with Mark later in the show, we’re going to talk about LinkedIn and how I got 408 comments on a single post. I’ll tell you how you can do exactly the same thing.Paul. Paul Greens MSP Marketing podcast let’s talk about whether you can generate leads by physically knocking on doors. One MSP is doing just this and has two super hot prospects. So I work very closely with about 20 MSPs and we jump on a Zoom every other week and we discuss their marketing in detail. And one of them told me something totally shocking a few weeks ago. You see those MSPs with me? We’ve been working to implement my three step marketing strategy. You may have heard me talk about this in the podcast before. It is the absolute cornerstone, the bedrock of everything I do with MSPs. Three steps. Step one is you build multiple audiences. Step two is you build a relationship with them. And step three is you commercialize that relationship. So that means growing your LinkedIn and your email and other audiences. It means putting out content on a regular basis, at the very least daily on social media and weekly on email. And then that third step is commercializing the audience. And typically that involves, well, what I suggest is you go and get a back to work mum to pick up the phone on your behalf and to call people so that you personally don’t have to. And these phone calls that she’s making, they’re not sales calls, they are relationship building calls. The idea is to find out where someone is with their existing relationship with their incumbent MSP and see if they’re ready to switch today, or whether we should just do some more relationship building with them or whatsoever. So I’m working with an MSP who has done their own version of this. And sometimes it makes me really excited when people take advice and they tweak it and change it and go off and do something different. And this instance is definitely exciting. Listen to this. The MSP I’m working with isn’t phoning people. Instead, he’s getting in the car for a couple of hours a day and he is going out there and essentially calling on businesses in fact, his target is seven calls a day. So when he first started he literally did the other businesses in his building and then the next day he did the businesses in the next building and then he was going down the street. And as the days go on, he’s working further and further away from his office. But every day he literally goes and knocks on seven doors. How cool is that? Right? And he’s very motivated to do this because of those seven knocks he will typically get to speak to and you’ll be shocked by this two or three decision makers. So let’s just put that in perspective. If you were to make seven outbound calls, I would expect you to speak to zero decision makers, right. It can take 10, 15, 20, even more outbound calls, unsolicited outbound calls before you get hold of a decision maker. And yet this guy is going and knocking on seven doors. And on average, and it is an average. Some days it’s more, some days it’s less. But it balances out. On average he’ll knock on seven doors, talk to seven receptionists and end up speaking to a couple of decision makers. So as you can imagine, he is very very motivated to do this because the second he’s having a one on one conversation with the business owner, he’s bought a couple of hours of their time, right? And he takes along some printed materials with him. He’s got some stuff that we put in the MSP marketing edge, particularly our IT services buyers guide. And out of this and talking to these decision makers, he’s actually got a couple of genuine hot prospects. People who are really, really upset and unhappy with their incumbent. They’re happy to talk to him. He’s moving it forward to having an engagement, moving towards putting in a proposal and that’s fantastic, right? In fact, in fact, if he can win a client off the back of this activity, that becomes then his activity, right? Because here’s the thing, it doesn’t really matter what you hear me telling you to do, what you hear other marketing people telling you to do, what you read on the Internet. What I think you have to do is you have to find the activities that work the best for you in your business. And when you find those activities and if you’re comfortable with it, many people would not be comfortable knocking on doors. But this guy is, right, good for him. He’s found something that works for him and the return on investment is actually pretty good. 2 hours out on average, having two conversations, generating some good prospects every week or every other week, that’s a fantastic return for him. You find the things that work for you and then you stick with those things, but you keep doing them. That’s critical. If you find something that works, you can’t do it for a few weeks and stop. You need to turn it into a system. Here’s a question for you. What do you do in your business that other MSPs don’t do? What marketing really works for you, that you love, that you just don’t see other MSPs doing? Here’s this week’s clever idea.

Now let’s talk about how to achieve an insane amount of engagement on one LinkedIn post. In fact, this is so effective, I gave it a name. I call it a 48 hours LinkedIn frenzy. So let me tell you what I did, how you can copy it and how you can use it to generate leads for your MSP. Now, let me first of all tell you the stats of what I achieved with this LinkedIn post. I’ve got the stats here on a little bit of paper. So this one post, which I call it a 48 hours LinkedIn frenzy, this particular post actually ran for nearly two weeks until suddenly the algorithm stopped putting it in front of people. Now, let me just give you some context of the size of my LinkedIn Network. So I have around about 8000 people. I’m connected to most of them MSPs. There’s some vendors in there as well. And then I’ve got around about 9000 people who are following me. So there will be some crossover between those two figures. If you don’t know what followers are on LinkedIn, by the way, it means I’m a content creator. So at some point in the past, I’ve switched on. I’ve literally flicked a switch in LinkedIn that says I’m a content creator. And that means I can put videos on there, I can do a LinkedIn newsletter, I could go live if I wanted to. But I tell you this so that you know I’m coming at this from quite a big network. However, the results are still replicable by you, regardless of the size of your network. So the post that I put on this one single post, it got a total of 16,093 impressions. So that means it’s come up in front of people 16,000 times. Now, I don’t believe that that’s 16,000 people. I think it has just come up in the feeds of people 16,000 times. There’s no real way of knowing how many people have actually seen that, just as there’s no real way of knowing how many of them paused on that. How many of them just flicked past it? But that’s still the highest number of impressions I’ve ever had on a post. To give you some context, my second best was around about 1800 impressions. So that gives you an idea. Just that’s nearly a ten times improvement, isn’t it? Just on this one post. Now, this is where it’s really exciting. These posts generated 408 comments. 408. Which again is by far the most number of comments I’ve ever had. In fact, normally I’ll get like six or seven comments. Now, I must be honest, half of those comments are from me. And in fact, one of the things I’m about to tell you that will sort of help you to make this happen for your MSP is that I replied to every single comment I got. So 204 people commented on this post, and I replied to them 204 times over a two week period. How cool is that? I didn’t realize I’d done quite that much work on it. And then this got as well, then 89 connection requests. So that’s 89 people who connected with me. And that’s a mix of me connection requesting them and them connection requesting me. 89 people directly off the back of this post. So let me tell you exactly what I did and why it works and what the psychology is. And as I’m telling you this, write this down because you can copy exactly this. So I put a post on LinkedIn, and it was a very specific kind of post offering a very specific thing. I offered a free guide, so I put together this guide and it was called your MSP’s ATM, or if you’re british, cash machine, automatic telemachine ATM. I think the rest of the world knows what that is. And it was a little guide about how to grow the monthly recurring revenue within your business. Quick spoiler alert on that, if you want to know, is three things you do a profit matrix, which is where you have a grid of who’s buying what. Then you do strategic reviews, which is a better name for quarterly business reviews. So you sit down with every client and talk about their business, and then ideally you lock them into a technology roadmap, which is like a three year strategic plan for where their technology is going to go. And all of that was in my 40 page guide. So I was giving this away for free. And I said to everyone in my network, if you want to get a copy of this, you’ve just got to comment below. Now, the commenting below is deliberate. This is strategic because I could have just put a link to the PDF there, right? But it would not have had 16,000 impressions and generated 400 comments. I wanted the engagement, and the reason I wanted the engagement is because when LinkedIn can see that lots of people are engaging on something, it shows it to other people like them. And this was exactly what I was hoping to do. Those 89 connection requests that I got are all new MSPs people that I’ve never spoken to before, who presumably maybe if they knew me, but they were never connected to me. So this is brilliant. So I posted this and I said, comment below and I will send this guide to you. So they commented below and every single comment. I then did two things. First of all, I replied to the comment to say, oh, thanks very much, David, I’ve just DM’d that to you. And then I actually dm it to them. Actually, I did it the other way around. I sent the dms first, then I replied to the comment. So what I’d do is I would sort of open it up. And if you do this on a desktop, it’s kind of easy. Let’s say you’ve got 20 new comments and you click the name of the 20 people, but you hold down whatever the button is on your keyboard that opens it as a new tab, right? So you’ve got 20 new tabs, and then you can go along and you literally, if you’re already connected to them, you just copy and paste your message, change their name. Hi David, thanks very much for commenting on my post. Here’s the guide to creating or to turning your MSP into an ATM, as promised. And then there’s a link to a PDF which I’ve got hosted on my website. And then if I’m not connected to them, I do a connection request and I put the same message in the connection request. So you know when you connection request someone and you can put your message in? Well, that’s exactly the message that I put in. But I then, as I say, replied to every single comment so that they knew that that was coming. But also, of course, from LinkedIn’s point of view, that then is more engagement. So let’s just stop for a second and look at this. Just what have we got so far? We’ve got a post that’s gone on LinkedIn offering a guide, and the guide is something that the audience really wants. There’s not a single MSP who doesn’t want to turn their business into a cash machine, right? So then to get it, they comment. I then send them a message with the guide and reply to their comment. So I’ve now got more engagement on my post and I’ve got a direct message into their inbox. This is all good so far. Now, the next thing that I did is when I did connection request someone brand new, I used a very specific phrase in my reply, so the phrase was connection request. So every new connection on that post I can track, because I use the words connection request. And when I was just putting those stats together just now, just before this recording, I literally went through the post and I searched for the words connection request as a phrase and it appeared 89 times. So that’s how I know I got 89 new connections out of it. Do you see how smart that is? And the reason I did that is I’d hoped this would be as popular as it turned out to be, which is great. And I now know not only have I had massive engagement, but also I’ve had 89 brand new contacts out of it. So that’s the methodology. That’s pretty much it, but it’s what you could do next that’s really exciting. You see, even if you’ve only got, I don’t know, what, 501,000 in your network, you probably wouldn’t get 408 comments, but you might get ten or 20 comments, which might be more than you would normally get on a LinkedIn post. And once you’ve got these new connections and you’ve direct messaged someone, you’ve sent them a DM. You can then do an outreach follow up. You could follow them up again by direct message, or you could send them an email. A lot of people’s emails are in their contact details on LinkedIn, or you can just go and google it or use a plugin like Lusher. It’s really easy to find someone’s email once you have their LinkedIn profile and you’re connected to them. And obviously, once you found their email, you can find their website, you can find their phone. The whole beauty of this is you get a bit of engagement within LinkedIn, but very few people are going to come back off the back of that and buy from you. Although I say that we got, I think it was four new members to the MSP marketing edge directly off the back of that post, which is really cool. And thank you if you are one of the people that joined. But for an MSP, it’s not quite as simple as that. I’m selling a very simple marketing subscription that helps you with your marketing. You’re selling a very difficult, complicated and complex bespoke service that they are going to commit to and hopefully stay for ten years. Needs a little bit more selling for that. So you would definitely do some kind of outreach. Essentially, you use this as an opportunity to message them, to email them, and definitely to phone them. The magic is absolutely done on the phone. Like I was talking about earlier in the podcast. Now, something really important if you’re going to do this, is to get the timing right. Don’t put your post out on like a Friday because that will kill it, because LinkedIn usage is massively down at the weekends. Don’t do it on a Monday because Mondays suck. Do it on a Tuesday or a Wednesday. That’s a great day to do your 48 hours LinkedIn frenzy, which may go on for even longer anyway. But also it means that when you come around to next Monday or Tuesday, you can actually then pick up the phone and start to call people. There’s no point calling them six weeks after that post went out. You’ve got to call them in a timely manner. And when you call them, you can say, oh, hi, I’m calling about our conversation on LinkedIn. And you can say, hey, Dave, my name’s Paul, we were just chatting on LinkedIn. In fact, you asked for my free guide about whatever it is, and I sent that over to you, just checking, have you received that? And of course they say yes or no, whichever it is. Some people will say they haven’t, even though they have doesn’t matter. And then of course, you follow it up with the killer question, a question which gets them engaged, because it’s getting them talking about their favorite subject. And that killer question is, so tell me about your business. What is it you guys do all being? Well, 15 minutes later you’ll be able to be pushing them and talking about, well, if it’s someone calling on your behalf, then you’re talking about booking them a 15 minutes zoom with you, which is the next step in the sales process. If it’s you yourself that’s done these calls, then obviously you’re talking about pushing them into either a paid consultation or actually having a sales meeting. And that would only happen if they were unhappy with their incumbent. But you know what? You phone enough people, and especially if they’ve engaged with you on LinkedIn, and eventually you’ll find someone who’s nearly, nearly ready, willing and able to buy from you.

Look, this is really, really simple. If you want to have a better life, you need more clients, because more clients means more cash coming into the business. The cash can be used to buy resources. The resources can service the clients better, but also free you personally up from having to do all of the work. And that means that you can spend more time at home, have a better relationship with your partner, and be a better, more present parent for your kids. It really is a direct correlation. That’s how it works for business owner parents like you and me. So how do you get new clients? Well, you need to up your marketing game. I have a simple marketing plan for you to follow, and I have all the white label marketing content that you could possibly need to implement that plan. And I only work with one MSP per area. Go and see the full details of what I do and how you and I could possibly work together. MSP Marketing edge big interview.

[00:16:38] Speaker B: Hi, I’m Mark Herschberg and I am a fractional CTO.[00:16:42] Speaker A: A fractional CTO. What a fantastic job title that is. I think to a whole load of people outside of our world, they wouldn’t have a clue what that is. But of course, we know exactly what that is. And thank you for joining me on the podcast. Mark, you and I got chatting, and we were chatting about how awful it is to be at the other end of the spammy emails and the cold calls and all of the terrible marketing that lots and lots of MSPs do. And we’re going to get today your experience of what it’s like to be on the other end, which I think will be quite eye opening for any MSP who’s doing any kind of cold marketing. Before we get on to that, let’s talk about you and your background and what you do now. Because actually, although you’re a fractional CTO, you’re involved in quite a lot of things, including cybersecurity.[00:17:29] Speaker B: I do a number of things, and you’re right that my graduate work at MIT was in cybersecurity. I have built a lot of tech startups, from classic early stage startups to helping Fortune 500s play startup. And I’ve done a lot of cybersecurity, but also ad tech and other areas independent of that. So I have that one path doing tech. I have another path where I’ve been teaching for over 20 years at MIT, professional skills to our students. Things like leadership, networking, negotiating. And I put all that in my book, the career toolkit, essential skills for success that no one taught you because we don’t teach people these skills. And so now I have this parallel career where I teach these skills to businesses and I speak all over the world about. And related to that, I created the brain bump app to help people retain these professional skills.[00:18:20] Speaker A: Okay, so we will come back round to the book and to your brain bump app towards the end of the interview. Let’s first of all, just take a little side diversion into cybersecurity and how that’s changed. So you said you’ve been teaching at MIT for 20 years, when you were involved in cybersecurity, back when you were a student, which I’m guessing is more than 20 years ago. How different was cybersecurity back then compared to what you see now with ransomware, phishing and all of the rest of it?[00:18:47] Speaker B: Cybersecurity back in the 90s when I was doing my graduate work, and then first out of school, it just meant, can we get HTTPs? Can we encrypt all those important bits going over the Internet? Can we encrypt your password on the database so when they break into it, it’s not just easy for them to get. We were really doing encryption 101. And of course, today we’re in a very different world. Things are encrypted. We won that battle. But of course, we’re facing challenges with things like ransomware, with things like people are not using passwords. Well, we’re seeing social engineering as a primary form of attack. And so we’re recording this in 2023. The challenge today is how do we move away from passwords, whether it’s adding two fa, which we’re making progress there. But there’s, of course, the cost, the human, the time cost that people don’t like. So can we find alternatives? In fact, one of my companies, Averon, we had a passwordless authentication system, and of course, I think that’s going to be the trend in the future, moving to passwordless, but also the zero trust that we’ve been talking about in the cybersecurity realm for a while, and it’s just starting to really percolate and get into those end user devices.[00:20:06] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And it is fascinating to see pass keys come in over the last six, nine months or so. And I don’t think they’re going to, my personal opinion, as a non tech, I don’t think they’re going to be the final iteration of the passwordless future, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction. And at the same time, of course, AI is making cybersecurity even more terrifying. I was reading some stats. I think it was just a couple of weeks ago that we’re playing this out in 2024 and last summer. So summer 2023, the number of attacks in July and August went up, whereas normally in July and August, they go down. And that’s because the cybercriminals go and have a vacation in July and August, but not when they’ve got AI and they’re using AI, as you say, to try and do more social engineering. And, well, any MSP listening to this or watching this on YouTube would be able to tell us just how terrifying that’s getting. So, yeah, cybersecurity, let’s pop that one back in its box. And let’s talk about cold spammy outreach. So you are a fractional CTO, and that means you’ve clearly ended up on a whole bunch of databases somewhere. Are you inundated with cold marketing, or is it just the odd approach now and again?[00:21:19] Speaker B: I literally get about four to six inbound requests a day. Now, these vary. I’d say the number one type of inbound request I get is from an Offshore development shop. That’s probably number one. Hey, we’ve got engineers and we can build things for you. I also would say recruiters are up there. We’ve got engineers and you should hire them. But I get quite a few MSPs, and then I also get direct vendors as well. And so I’ll typically get a few MSPs a week and maybe about two or three vendors a week, and they’ll just hit me up and they just look and say, oh, he’s a CTO, so what do we know? We know he has authority. We know he has a budget. And so then it’s just timing and need. We talk about bant qualified budget, authority, need and timing. They don’t know whether I have a need. They don’t know whether I have timing. And their philosophy is, well, why should I bother spending my time researching? I just want to waste his, because, hey, I’m only wasting 1015 seconds of his. But happens over and over every day and it drives me nuts. One of the things I’ve done to counteract this is I maintain a blacklist. When I get that spam, I put people on the blacklist and this blacklist is shared with other ctos and they share theirs with mine with me. So, great. You want to keep emailing me, you’re going to be hurting yourself, because this is the best counterattack I have for all the spam I’ve been getting.[00:22:51] Speaker A: I love that. Absolutely love it. So we are talking here about completely cold. So these aren’t people that have connected to you on LinkedIn, they’re not people who you’ve met somewhere or there’s no relationship at all, it’s literally someone somewhere has bought a list and has sent you an email, whether an MSP, a recruiter, a vendor, or whatsoever. And they’re just trying to. Almost trying to get you to reply as if you’re going to reply with, yes, I need 22 engineers. Please send me this now, or please will you come in and pitch for my 400 seat business that I’m looking after? And I assume that they’re completely cold and there’s no relationship then 100% cold.[00:23:27] Speaker B: I didn’t register for a webinar or anything. Even worse, being a fractional CTO, now people can guess my email address. Sometimes I’m getting pitches on LinkedIn. Otherwise it’s not that hard to guess an email address. I will even get an email to one of my addresses, but they’re talking about one of my other clients because I’ll have list on LinkedIn, multiple titles. And you can tell this is pretty much automated in some way, or they probably. I don’t think they’re quite using AI yet, but we’re getting there. They probably have some very low cost laborers and just saying, here’s a bunch of people, you figure out where they’re working and guess their email and just take this template and send it to them. So I get that multiple times a day. Some of them do tend to be from. A few of them are from a list where I see the unsubscribe and others do tend to be just one off. There’s no unsubscribe, so I assume it’s not a mailing list.[00:24:23] Speaker A: Yeah, but it’s still irritating. And obviously it’s doing some damage because it’s going on to that blacklist. What for you would be a more authentic way of trying to reach someone like you. So you are clearly a decision maker that people want to speak to because, as you say, using your bant methodology, you’re someone who potentially unlocks access to business. What for you would be a much more authentic way of reaching out to you.[00:24:46] Speaker B: When I talked to these folks, I don’t do it much these days, but their philosophy was always, well, you never know. Maybe this could be helpful to you. That would be like me just going through the phone book and saying, hi, Alice, are you there? Listen, I’ve got a used 2005 Toyota. Well, I was just calling because maybe you are in the market for one. No. Okay, great. Hey, Bob. Hi, my name is Mark. Listen, are you in the market for a used 2005 Toyota? And just going down the list because, hey, maybe someone out there needs it. That’s their philosophy of, well, I might be helping someone, and that’s utter.I don’t swear very often, but that’s really where we are, because you’re really putting your needs in front of the needs of the other person, and you need to reverse that. You need to start out by saying, how can I offer you value? I know your time is busy, I know you have lots of people. I’m probably not even hitting you at the right time. I want to do something that is helpful to you. So you say, hey, he was great, I’ll keep him in mind. So start by offering value. Now. The value could be, here’s a free report on the state of the industry. Here’s some information that might be helpful to you. Even then, it’s still spam. I’m still not happy to get it. But at least you’re trying to say, here’s something that could be useful to you that has nothing to do with trying to earn me more money in this first outreach.

[00:26:08] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. So putting the other person first before you think about yourself. And here’s the crazy thing. The average MSP, when they win a client, they’re getting a good amount of profitable monthly recurring revenue that will keep coming in for, I don’t know, seven years, ten years, 15 years. So the stakes are kind of really high. And I’ve never been a fan of cold, real, hardcore cold marketing. I’ve recommended it a few times to MSPs in the recent years. I haven’t. Partly because email deliverability has got harder, partly, as you say, mark, is because people’s tolerance for it has just been going down and down and down. And it’s not a strategy we recommend anymore. The strategy we recommend is attempting to build low level relationships with audiences. So you build an audience of people on LinkedIn, you build an audience of email, people whose email you got permission to email. And there’s a way of linking the LinkedIn and the email. Not technically, I mean, but getting information from people’s LinkedIn into email, but building a relationship with people so that at the moment, someone like you is looking for someone like an MSP. Actually, there’s a very low level relationship, and it always will be low level. But half the battle of marketing is getting the timing right, and you’ve got to get the right message in front of the right person at the right time. And obviously getting someone’s backup on day one, five, six months before they’re ready to make that, even start thinking about that buying decision is obviously the wrong way of doing it. Now we’re going to talk about your book and what you do, and you’ve made an interesting switch somewhere mid career. So you’ve got this very tech career, and then you’ve moved into non tech stuff. What was it that made you make that switch and move over to write the book and create the app?[00:27:52] Speaker B: Now, I do have both careers going in parallel. Early in my career, I knew I was a software engineer, and I knew I wanted to be a CTO. What I recognized is that to be a CTO, it’s not just about being the best engineer. It’s not just writing lots of code and being good at. There were all these other skills that I needed. Leadership, networking, negotiation, team building, communication. Just like if you’re running your own business, you do need to understand how the business operates, but you need to know how to sell, you need to know how to build a network, you need to know how to communicate with your clients. And these are not skills we teach in school. So I had to learn those skills on my own. Quickly realized I want my whole team to have these skills. So I began to upskill my team. And then MIT got similar feedback from companies saying they’re looking for these skills. They’re putting together a program. So I reached out to MIT and said, I’ve got some content. I’m happy to give it to you. Maybe this will help in your program. What I thought would be a one and done meeting turned into, can you help create more content and can you help us teach? And there is an example. I reached out to MIT. Now, I wasn’t trying to sell anything, but I reached out to say, let me give you something. Here’s something that might be of value to you. And it turned out we then built this long term relationship where I said, come teach for us, which obviously gave me a lot of value because I have credibility of now being an instructor for over 20 years at MIT, which.[00:29:15] Speaker A: Is a fantastic thing, I think, to go on any cv. So tell us what the book is about and tell us what the app is about.[00:29:21] Speaker B: The book has ten skills. The ten skills that we see in surveys over and over, and you might see it list as five skills or 50 skills. It’s just where you draw the lines. So the ten key skills, I’ll run through them quickly, how to create and execute a career plan. And even if you’re an owner, by the way, you need a career plan. Your title might not change, but your career needs to develop how to work effectively. Things like corporate culture, and that might be your client’s corporate culture as well as your own. How to interview there’s lots of information on interviewing, but many of us have to interview other people to hire them and we’ve had no training. Then there are chapters on leadership, people management, process management. And the final section, four chapters, communication, networking, negotiations and ethics. And these are the skills. Again, we see over and over companies want they’re skills we need to be successful as an entrepreneur, as an employee. So the book has these ten chapters. Each one has a mental shift, how to think about and then concrete things you can do to be better in that particular category.[00:30:26] Speaker A: And the app that fits alongside the book. Is that a way of supporting people who are working their way through that book?[00:30:32] Speaker B: Absolutely. One thing I have found from years of teaching and from learning is that we quickly forget things. How often do we read a business book or self help book, or listen to a great podcast like this, only to forget the key ideas weeks or even days later? I didn’t write the book to sell copies. I wrote books, the book to help people. So brain bump takes the key ideas from my book as well as other books, blogs, podcasts, classes and talks, puts it into the app. So it’s like these little flashcards with categories, but you don’t use like a normal flashcard where you just sit there and read through it either. You get it just in time. So if you’re going into a conference, you’re thinking, what were those negotiation tips? You pull it up, then open it up and flip through it two minutes before you walk in the room. Or if you’re trying to remember things from that book you read, or you’re learning to be a better manager or salesperson, you might set up. So you get like a daily affirmation. But it’s one of the tips from the source that you’ve been learning from that’s going to help keep it top of mind and help reinforce it. And it’s all hyperlinked so you can go back to the original source when you want to go deeper. And so it’s a completely free app that just helps you retain information and use it when and where you need it.[00:31:46] Speaker A: That’s so smart. It really is. So, Mark, thank you for being on the podcast. Just tell us. I know it’s probably kind of obvious with an app, but tell us where we can get the app, where we can get the book. And for those people listening or watching right now that want to have a chat with you, what’s the best way to get in touch.[00:32:00] Speaker B: You can get in touch with me three places. First on LinkedIn and it’s do not pitch me anything.[00:32:09] Speaker A: Please do not no cold emails, no cold nothing cold.[00:32:13] Speaker B: And my two websites. For the book it’s thecareertoolkitbook.com. You can also get in touch with me there and you can learn more about the book. There’s a bunch of free resources as well. And for the app, which is free on the Android and iPhone stores, you can also go to brainbumpapp.com and there you can follow links to the stores or you can watch the 92nd video to learn more about it.[00:32:35] Speaker A: Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast this week’s.[00:32:40] Speaker C: Recommended book hi, my name is Ryan Sherrer and I recommend the book rework. One of the reasons why I love this book is even back when it was written and up to today, the message still holds strong that as we move into a technical age, there’s a lot of ways that you can reevaluate your standard business practices, not only to save money, but to be more efficient, to claim back some of that time, for your family to claim back some of that income that maybe you’re spending on things that you’ve just been led to believe in the business world you need. And it’s structured with such a success story, you won’t ever do business again the same way after you read this book.[00:33:18] Speaker A: Coming up next week.[00:33:20] Speaker C: Hey, it’s Joel Klettke from Case Study buddy.[00:33:22] Speaker A: Join me on Paul’s podcast, where I’ll.[00:33:24] Speaker C: Be talking about customer success stories, how you can get started using them in your marketing, and see some really great ROI from the great relationships you’ve built.[00:33:32] Speaker A: On top of that interview with Joel, we’re going to ask whether hashtags are still valid on LinkedIn. If they are, could you own your local hashtags such as hashtag it? Support your town. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP. Made in the UK for MSPs around the world Paul Green’s MSP marketing podcast.

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Episode 226Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week’s show includes:* 00:00 Is your website good enough? * 07:59 The simplest way to maximize retention * 15:07 How this MSP grew a million pound business…TWICE

Featured guest:Thank you to Joe Burns, co-founder and CEO of Reformed IT, for joining me to talk about how he achieved over a million pounds in turnover in 11 years for his MSP business… then co-founded another MSP and did it all over again, this time hitting the million pound mark in just three years.

Joe Burns, a prominent figure in the Managed IT Services (MSP) industry, is the co-founder and CEO of Reformed IT, a company renowned for providing top-tier Managed IT and Cyber Security services to businesses in the East Midlands, UK. With an impressive track record, Reformed IT, under Joe’s leadership, has grown to achieve over £1.3m in annual revenue with a dedicated team of 12 professionals since its inception in October 2019.

Prior to establishing Reformed IT, Joe co-founded Pyranet in 2005, where he began his journey in the IT services sector. Through this venture, he gained invaluable experience and insights, learning from the challenges and triumphs of scaling and eventually exiting a successful MSP business through acquisition. This journey was not just about business growth but also about personal development and understanding the intricacies of the MSP world.

Having gained a comprehensive experience within the MSP industry, Joe now shares many of the mistakes he made, and lessons learned with the wider community.

Connect with Joe on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cyber-security-speaker-joe/

Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Connect with me on LinkedIn: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week’s recommended book, Buy Back Your Time: Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Buy-Back-Your-Time-Unstuck/dp/059342297X/

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world, this Paul. Paul Paul Greens MSP Marketing podcast to the podcast. This is episode two, two, six, and here’s what I got in store for you this week.[00:00:15] Speaker B: Hi, I’m Joe Burns and I built an MSP back in 2005 and scaled that to over a million pounds. If you want to find out how I’ve then build an MSP in three years to the same size, join us on Paul Green’s podcast.[00:00:31] Speaker A: And on top of that interview with Joe later on in the show, we’re going to be talking about customer retention. I have an idea for you. It’s the simplest idea you will ever hear, but I bet it’s one of the most powerful things you could do to improve your retention.Paul. Paul. Paul. Paul Greens MSP Marketing podcast wonderful things about the work that I do with MSPs is now and again I get to sort of be very close to some MSPs and get involved directly with their business. For example, in my MSP marketing edge service, we have a very small number of groups of what we call the MRR revolution. MRR, of course, being monthly recurring revenue. And I get to jump on some regular zooms with some MSPs that I’m working with over 18 months. And we get really into the nuts and bolts of their marketing. We make sure they’ve got a robust marketing system set up to not only win new clients, but also to retain and to upsell those clients as well. And I really do get involved in detailed stuff because I don’t get to do this with, I work with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of MSPs, so I don’t get to do it at a level of detail with everyone. So when I do work with someone closely, I like to really drill into the details. And a couple of weeks ago, me and one of the other MSPs were having a, I wouldn’t call it an argument. It was a vigorous debate about their website, because they’ve hired a website copywriter, which is a good thing to do, right, to get a professional to write your website for you. But the content that this website copywriter output was, how can I say it? It was flowery, it was waffly, it was using lots of words when small numbers of words are actually what’s needed. And the MSP in particular, who I work with, who I have a great relationship with. And that’s why I felt able to challenge them on this. I’d said to them, what was the brief? What did you tell this website copywriter? And they said, we wanted our website to be sexy. That’s actually the word they use. They wanted their website to be sexy. And we’re just talking here about the content, the words, which is what copywriters call copy. Copy is content. It’s the words. And I think the idea of having your website being sexy is great, right? You want your website to zing. You want it to stand out, you want it to be you, right? You want all of those things. But, and this is where it gets really hard. You also want it to be really, really simple because you have to understand how ordinary people use websites to be able to put the best possible website in place. And the way that people look at websites is when they’re at that very initial stage of they’re thinking of switching MSPs or picking their first MSP and they’re typing in it, support your town and they land on your website, they’re only going to spend a few seconds on your website. In fact, you’ve got literally two or 3 seconds to grab their attention, hook them in, get them interested. And the way to do that is not by talking about you, it’s by talking about them and by talking about them, but in a very simple way. You see, we don’t sit and read websites like we do books, right? We don’t read every single line and take in every single piece of information. We scan over it, literally, our eyes jump from bit to bit to bit. We’ll look at the headline, we’ll look at the image, we’ll scan through some of the text. People do go back and read things properly at later stages of research. And of course there are different personality types. You might be someone who does read all the detail all the time, but the vast majority of people tend not to do that on the initial thing, they will scan around. And here’s where the problem of having waffly, overly long, long winded content on your website. People will jump over that website content. And this has been the case for the last 25 years. And it will be the case for the next 25 years, I’m sure, right to the point where websites have been replaced by holograms or whatever replaces them. Websites have to be short and snappy. And this is the challenge. You can still be sexy with a website, but you’ve got to be simple, short and snappy. You’ve got to use short sentences. Short phrases immediately grab people’s attention. You can’t be ambiguous.

You’ve got to give them immediate context. It’s got to make sense. If 100 strangers who don’t know you and don’t know what you do. If 100 strangers go and look at your website, do they instantly understand what you do and more importantly, why you should do it for them? And if they don’t, then your website content isn’t simple enough. There’s a really good test for this, which I’m pretty sure we put on the podcast a couple of years ago, but it’s worth repeating again now. Go to a networking meeting, not one that you regularly go to. Go to a new networking meeting where no one really knows you, and you’re going there not to generate leads. You’re going there to get a bit of market research. Go along with your website on your phone, and you go up to strangers and you introduce yourself, but don’t say what you do. You just say, hi, my name’s Paul. How are you? Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Terrible coffee. Yeah, isn’t it? Et cetera, et cetera. And then you say to them, can I ask you a huge favor either? I’m really curious to know what real decision makers people like you make of our website. If you kind of understand what we do. Can I just show you my website? Would you just sort of tell me what we do as a business and what the benefits are of working with us just from our website? And you just hand them your phone. And the average reasonable person is going to do this because this is cool, isn’t it? Who gets to do this? So they’ll grab your phone, they’ll have a look at it, and you’re kind of looking here for the opinions of, I don’t know, four, five, six different people, but not in a group, just literally doing it on an individual basis. Only give them ten or 15 seconds to look at your website. Don’t let them look at it. And keep scrolling and keep scrolling and keep thinking about it and tell you sort of iterate what they think about you and your business because that’s not normal, right? People don’t do that in a real environment. They go to your website, they’re either hooked into it and they stay for a bit and they do something, or they just hit the back button, which is called a bounce. So you want to kind of replicate that. Give them five to 10 seconds and then just say to them, what do we do? What’s the benefit of working with us? And if they hit you with, oh, you’re an IT support company. The benefits are you’re in our town, you’ve got a personal service, and you are the face of the business. So I know that I’m dealing with you, that’s the kind of thing you want. Whereas if they say, oh, you do something security wise and they’re all a bit vague and you can tell from their body language and the way they’re speaking that they don’t know the answer. If this is the case, don’t get depressed, don’t be miserable, don’t smash your phone in anger, don’t go home with your head in your hands and think it’s all over. It’s not at all. This is actually the response that you would get to the vast majority of MSP’s websites, because the vast majority are really bad and that’s good for you, because that kind of feedback gives you the opportunity to go and improve your website and to make it zing, to make it super, super simple, short and snappy, so that strangers who are looking at your website know exactly what you do and know exactly why they would buy from you, it’s actually a huge opportunity. Isn’t that exciting?

Here’s this week’s clever idea.

One of the best things about the MSP business model is the insane amount of retention that you just benefit from all the time. It’s baked in for a number of different reasons. Partly it’s just you looking after your customers well, but partly, of course, it’s something called inertia loyalty, where it feels safer and easier to stay with you than to move over to someone new that they don’t know. This is also known as better the devil you know. The other thing that keeps customers with you is that they just don’t understand technology when they actually start to think about switching to someone else. And there’s server things and cloud things and security things. All of these things are quite scary for them. And again, that feeds into that inertia loyalty. So retention for the average MSP is really good. Most MSPs only lose a client if the client goes bust or the client is bought out by another company that consolidates its it. And obviously, now and again, you do lose a client to another MSP or a different solution. Don’t you just love it when someone says, oh, we’ve got a friend of a friend who’s going to look after us. You kind of wash your hands of that one, don’t you? I believe that even when you have excellent retention, you should still have a process in place to just guarantee that that retention is as good as it possibly could be. And there’s something that one of those MSPs I was just talking about the ones that I work with on the calls. There’s something that one of those has started doing over the last few months. And I think this is beautiful. In fact, it’s beautiful and it’s simple and it’s something that you could easily take on board. Put it in place in your MSP and just try it out for a few months. Do it as an experiment, see what happens. Here’s what they do. They have a service desk manager. Now, you may not have one of these yourself, in which case you would do this or you would get one of your senior techs to do it. But the point is that the person who does this needs to be someone who a is able to have a good, in depth conversation with humans and also someone who has the ability and the motivation to take feedback and to go and change, improve things or report back to someone. So there’s no point you getting one of your texts to do this if they’re just going to do the phone call. Put the phone down and that’s the end of it. Nothing ever happens. It needs to be you or really, you’re a service desk manager, and what you do is every week you just call two clients for a chat. It’s as simple as that. And it’s an impromptu chat, it’s just a quick phone call through to the decision maker. It doesn’t have to be off the back of a ticket, doesn’t have to be off the back of an issue. It’s genuinely just random. And obviously you don’t call every client on a regular basis. It’s maybe once a year, once every six months, and then you just ask them some very simple questions. So you just say, hi, this is Matt, whoever, I’m the services manager here at so and so business. And just calling really just to just have a chat with you and see how things are going. So could you sort of tell me, if you think about what we’ve done for you for the last few weeks, what have we done? Well, and then there’s a follow up question to that is, what have we done that’s not been so good? And you could say, you put this in your own words, don’t you? So what have we done that’s good? What have we done that’s not so good? Or what’s not gone so well in the last couple of weeks or last couple of months? And that’s kind of setting a. Well, that’s partly setting context, but also partly getting good feedback out of them. When you ask people for feedback and you literally say, hey, can I have some feedback? They give you the wrong feedback. They don’t tell you what you really need to know. So the best kind of feedback is actually structured feedback. What have we done well? What have we not done so well? That’s great feedback. And it pulls off stuff off the top of their mind. And as they’re talking, they may think of other stuff that’s a little bit deeper, which is great feedback. Now, the third and final part of this is the most important question because this is the opportunities question. This could actually not only improve the retention, but could also actually set up an upsell opportunity as well. Here is the third and final question.

What can we do to make your life easier? Let me say that again, because it’s such an important question. What can we do to make your life easier? Now, notice there, we’re not talking about what can we do to improve your technology. We’re not saying what can we do to help your productivity or anything like that. What can we do to make your life easier? And remember, you’re talking to the decision maker, the person who is ultimately the one who signs off the next contract or doesn’t. Obviously, they’re going to take on feedback from their staff and from influencers in their business. But isn’t that the best possible question you could ever ask a decision maker? What can we do to make your life easier? But it’s really critical that whatever they say, you act on it. And it could be them asking you to communicate in a different way or to pick something up and help them with something or to solve a problem for them. Or they might say, actually, there’s nothing. We love what you do. We’re really happy with you. Thank you so much for the call. And actually, that call in itself, even though there’s no actions from it, there’s nothing that you could do. Wasn’t that an amazing call? They’re going to feel really good about you putting the phone down and for a number of weeks after that. And it’s all about the feelings. Good customer retention is not what they think. It’s not really about service levels, it’s about how people feel about you. The more you can do to influence how they feel, the even better your retention will be. Paul’s. Paul’s blatant plug. Blatant plug. Sometimes of an evening, I miss out on another 30 or 40 minutes worth of sleep because of YouTube. Do you do this? So I’ll watch something on Netflix or Prime or Disney, and it gets to about 10:00 and I think, right, I should really go to bed because I get up quite early ish and instead I think I’ll just come to YouTube just for five minutes and then 40 minutes later I’ve gone down the rabbit hole. I’ve missed out on sleep. I’m a bit grumpy the next day and what have I been watching? It’s just nonsense. Well, we are on a mission to make sure that you don’t ever waste any of your YouTube time however you use YouTube. So we are pumping out some really high quality edutainment videos about MSP marketing. I want you to be able to learn and discover how to improve your MSP’s marketing while having fun at the same time. So go and check out our channel. It’s YouTube.com slash MSP marketing. And while you’re there, please do subscribe and do the little Bell notification thing. I know everyone says that on YouTube. The reason is it’s really good for the algorithm. If YouTube can see that you’ve subscribed to my channel and you’ve allowed notifications which only really come up on YouTube anyway, then that actually helps me, which helps us to produce more content and I really do appreciate it. So go and have a look now and subscribe@YouTube.com. Slash MSP Marketing.

[00:15:10] Speaker B: Hi, I’m Joe Burns. I’m the co founder and CEO of reformed it, based in Nottinghamshire in East.[00:15:18] Speaker A: Midlands, which of course is here in the UK. We do have a very international audience for this podcast. Now, I had the delight, Joe, of sitting next to you at a tech tribe dinner that Nigel Moore hosted in London back in, I think it was back in October last year. And it was fascinating sitting, talking to you and learning all about your business because you’ve not just built up one MSP, you’ve kind of built up one, sold it and then you’re doing it again. And there are a number of really fascinating lessons for me from the things that you were talking about, which I’d like to explore on the podcast today. So let’s go back, first of all, right, back to the very beginning of your story. So how did you get into it and how did you get that first MSP started?[00:16:00] Speaker B: Oh, wow. So right back to the start. And getting into it goes back to my school days and sitting in a classroom where the careers advisor comes into school and asks everybody what they want to do in the future. And of course, as a 14 year old, you have no idea what you want to do as a future career. The irony is that someone was sat in front of me in class, I was in an re class, and he turned to me and says, I’m going to become a systems analyst. And I said to him, what does a systems analyst do? And he says, you just play with computers all day and get paid lots of money for it.So I went down to the careers advisor and said, I want to become a systems analyst, knowing absolutely nothing about that as a career. So that’s what was the seed, ironically, the seed of the idea that got me into the idea of getting into IT services in general, and that weirdly carried on. So when I left school, I thought, well, what am I going to do? And I went to do an IT course in college. My whole vision was then starting a job in it as an IT technician. Essentially. I got my first break working for a company called Pendragon Motor Group, quite one of the largest dealers, motor dealers in the UK.

That started me off, and then subsequently that then led to me co founding a business with one of my colleagues in the IT department from Pendragon, a guy called Rory, Rory Perkins. That was a business called Pyrenet, which was established back in 2005, so predates the terminology MSP even. That was our first IT services business.

[00:17:35] Speaker A: And presumably you started out doing break fix like everyone did back in 2005.[00:17:39] Speaker B: Strangely, no. We did it as a per device back then, a per device, fixed price kind of contract. So it wasn’t necessarily a break fix. We had a support contract, in essence, and that was what we started with. Obviously, back then, the blend of services was different to how it is now, but we did start with a routine IT services contract even back then.[00:18:03] Speaker A: Okay, so 2005, you started that business. What year did you sell it?[00:18:07] Speaker B: It was sold in 2016.[00:18:10] Speaker A: 2016. So that’s. What’s that? Eleven years? Yes. Actually, your original business journey dates match up to mine as well. So I started my very first business in 2005 and also sold that in 2016, which is fascinating. I think that was one of the things we talked about at the dinner, wasn’t it, how those are lined up? So tell us about that eleven years, because for, I would say the vast majority of MSPs listening to this or watching it on YouTube, they’re still in that first business. And it might be that that first business is two, three years in. It might be it’s 2030 years in, but you don’t often meet someone who’s done it once and then does it again. There are a handful of people that do that, but they’re very much the exception than the rule. So talk us through that original journey, how did you grow? What were the big mistakes you made? What were the breakthroughs? And what made you sell it in 2016?[00:18:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. So obviously, starting any business, I was a technician, I was an IT guy, essentially, like many of the MSPs that have come to be. It starts with that element of, you understand the tech, you understand what it is to be in it services. And that was me and my business partner, Rory, back in the day, back in 2005. And we had this idea to start this business because we knew the corporate world, we knew how to look after really critical high end systems for a public company. And we thought, well, if we’ve got the knowledge and the skills to do this, we could do it for smaller businesses and charge each of them, and that’s how we could start the business. So, very similar, I would expect, to a lot of startup journeys for it services businesses. The thing is that when you start that business, you don’t really know anything about running a business. You don’t know sales, you don’t know marketing, you don’t know negotiating, you don’t know suppliers and how to deal with a lot of that. So everything that you do once you started a business, besides the tech piece, which should be pretty comfortable to most, is that you don’t understand any of it. So you’re learning all of this as you’re going. And I think that was one of the biggest things. Is that. Yes, because it’s tough.You’re juggling a lot of balls. You’re trying to pick up skills that you don’t really know how to do, and you’re kind of having to learn on your feet, pretty fast paced. So my memories back for 2005, 2006 was constant learning, constantly trying to pick up things that I didn’t know how to do and trying to become better at those things. So that’s what I remember from that. So moving that journey forwards all the way to the point where we’d done quite well out of that business in terms of from 2005 to 2016, it was growing every year. We always saw growth year on year all the way through. And we got to a point in 2016 where prior to 2016, where myself and my business partner, who’d been doing so well at running this business and growing this business together, had got to a point where we realized that our growth ambitions and what we wanted out of the business differed. So we were a bit of a crossroads, and we had different opinion on what we wanted out of the business. And that ultimately was what led us to the position where we wanted to exit the business and sell the business, which happened in 2016. But it took us eleven years to get to a million pound turnover in that business, which is just a relevant metric for anyone that’s listening.

[00:21:33] Speaker A: Yeah, no, absolutely. I think hitting that million, I did exactly the same. This is bizarre how in different industries, you and I have a very similar story, but I did exactly the same. Eleven years. I was changing business models quite a lot and hitting that million, which for our us audience is 1.21.3 mil. Million dollars. Hitting that. It’s a psychological thing, I think. And any business owner who, once they’ve sort of realized, oh, I can run a business and I can actually make a living out of it, and, oh, I can get staff and I can be an employer. And all those things that you quite rightly said you have to make up as you’re going along. Then you suddenly realize one day that you’re sat on 600,000 of turnover and you think, hang on a second, we could do a million off this. And once that thought comes into your head, it becomes the target. And I think sometimes it becomes the target for the sake of it, because you want to almost sit around a dinner table with colleagues from old and people you used to work with and say to them, well, we’re a million pound business, because that is cool. I think that there’s very few people that wouldn’t want to do something like that. And obviously, that was gone to then be a three mil business, a five mil business, and you take it as far as you can take it if that’s something you want to do. So you sold that business in 2016, and obviously you sold it because you and Rory had these different ideas of what you wanted to do with that business. So I’m guessing that because you’ve gone to do it again, I’m guessing that you wanted to take it up to that next level and push it somewhere. How long did it take you to start your second MSP? The one that you’re running now?[00:23:04] Speaker B: Yeah. So, after the acquisition in 2016, so we was acquired by a national telecoms business, and I didn’t exit the business straight away. I stayed in that business and became essentially the group managing director to the business that had acquired us. So I was helping to grow all of the businesses within that group, not just the pyramid business that we’d established. Rory had moved on from the business because that was kind of what we wanted out of it when we sold the business was for him to have an exit strategy. And for me, I was still passionate about scaling the business. So I was still interested in growing a company. And so I stayed in that business for a further three years. One year was contracted as part of the deal. Two years was just my choice to continue within the business. But in those three years, we took it from a million to 1.51.6 million by the time I actually exited that business. So that period of time was still fast paced growth, still looking at what I was doing with that business. And then after I actually exited, which was completely amicable with the owners, the new owners of the business, it was a nice, easy exit where I made sure everything was handed over. After that, I’d been in touch with one of the senior management team within the previous business. He’d approached me and said that a guy called Scott, who’s now a co founder and reformed, he wanted to start his own it business. And he kind of said to me, would you be willing to help me to get this off the ground? So Scott, a guy called Joe Miller, who also worked for that business, and they were good friends for a long time, and me, decided to have another go at it. And I think part of the reason for wanting to have another go at it and start from scratch, even though some people may think I’m, like, crazy for even thinking about it, is the fact that I felt a little bit unfulfilled with the growth of the pyramid business. I thought it could be done better, faster, more ambitious. I wanted to see results which were beyond what we’d done with the pyramid business.[00:25:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Which makes perfect sense. So what were the things going into your new business? Reformed it, that you said, right, this is what we’re going to do differently on day one, based on this prior experience? Well, actually two prior experiences, that of owning the business yourself and then obviously running it as part of a larger group.[00:25:25] Speaker B: Yeah. So one of the things, the things that we were trying to do towards the end of the time at Pyramid and the things that I was putting in place after acquisition were things that became de facto in the new business. So, for example, having a very, very clear, and I’m sure you’ll love this, Paul, but having a very clear and defined target audience. Right. Who is it that we’re serving and why we’re serving that audience? What can we do to impress and have real value to that particular audience that became almost stage one in terms of our strategy for the reformed it business. The other thing that we did, not necessarily differently, but we had a more ambitious growth plan from day one when we sat down and thought, what do we want to achieve in three years time? In five years time? And we mapped out a very ambitious growth strategy for that. Rather than just starting the business and seeing how it would go, we designed what we wanted the business to become. And so because we designed the business from day one, that also means that instead of thinking, you hear this phrase all the time, and I’m listening at the moment on audible to the Emyth revisited. But the whole working on the business, not in the business. So we were strategically thinking, right, what hires do we need, when do we need them, what positions are we going to put people into? And things like that. We were thinking and mapping that out from day one when we sat with the business idea. Not like I see most businesses. You start working and then when you get too busy, you go, I need to hire somebody, and then you get too busy again, you need to hire somebody else. We mapped it all out from day one, essentially.[00:27:01] Speaker A: I love that. Let me ask you if you had the same experience I did with your second business. So I sold mine in first one in 2016, started my second one in 2016 about eight weeks apart because I got bored very quickly. And from day one, I went into it with the mindset of what you were just talking about there, which is right. I know what I want to be different. I know what I want to do that I couldn’t do in the last business because of legacy clients or legacy whatever. And within two years, that had gone completely off the ball, primarily because I didn’t really know when I started this new business what it would be. I knew I was going to work with these things called MSPs. I’d just discovered that was going to be fun, but I didn’t really know what I was going to do with them. And so it kind of took us three years to find a really good business model, which has become our MSP marketing edge, which is sort of pretty much all we do now. But along the way, I’ve found myself tackling the same problems that I had last time. The difference is this time I know what works or what has worked and what hasn’t worked in the past. And I’ve found myself overcoming big challenges a hell of a lot quicker because they just don’t seem that big, having done them once. Has that been a very similar experience for you?[00:28:16] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. It makes you way more prepared the second time around. You’re way more prepared. You’ve seen these things before. You know how a lot of them play out. So that element of experience just gives you the ability to deal with these things with more confidence, go at them with a bit more ease. So, yeah, I definitely agree that the lessons that you learned from the first one makes it easier to approach things, especially because most businesses do suffer with the same challenges.Every business journey tends to go through the same challenges that every other business goes through. Particularly we talk about sales marketing all the time, which is a very big challenge for a lot of businesses, particularly in the MSP sector, where people are going, we need clients, but how do we get them? How do we get seen those kind of things? So I think a lot of businesses have very similar challenges. Having been through those challenges once before, it makes it so much easier to know how to deal with them next time around.

[00:29:12] Speaker A: Absolutely, yeah. And the growth, it took you eleven years to get to a million pounds turnover in the first business. What’s the growth been like comparatively in the second business?[00:29:21] Speaker B: This is a great example because it just shows the difference with that previous experience. So we did in three years. Well, it was actually three and a half, three financial years. We did a million pound turnover in reformed it. So we did in three what took eleven in pyramid and then subsequently. That was last year. That was last financial year. This year we’re on course to do between 1.4 and 1.5 million. So the growth is currently tracking at around 40% to 50% year on year. And after we do 1.4 million this year or 1.5, it will land somewhere between. The plan is to then do 2.1 million next year. So it’s this continual growth that is a lot would see as fairly ambitious towards. It’s just part of the plan. The strategy is there, we know exactly how to do it. It’s all mapped out and it’s just following that course, really.[00:30:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I bet. And you personally, in terms of the work that you do, I’m guessing that from day one you made sure that you were spending the vast majority of your time working on the business and not being dragged into that business.[00:30:25] Speaker B: Absolutely, yeah. I mean, it was a conversation we had. There is a little bit of a disparity with the fact there’s three co founders in this business. Day one, I said, I’m not a techie, even though I can do that role, I am not going from where I am today back to day one of the pyramid days and being on a help desk and taking calls from customers as a support technician, it’s not in my plan. So, yeah, absolutely. Obviously I’m still involved with some day to day pieces of the business. My main focus is strategic. So the strategic plan of the business and seeing that through. So I get involved in business development, understanding how to. I have conversations about the marketing strategy in the business and the sales strategy in the business and the operational strategy in the business. But I then get people to do those pieces rather than me doing any of them. My main role in the business right now, still to this day, is very much a business development role. So I’m still attracting and speaking to new prospects and new opportunities.[00:31:27] Speaker A: Joe, thank you so much for joining me on this podcast. It’s already been a fascinating journey that you’ve had, and I can just imagine in the years ahead we’re going to see some amazing things from you. I would love to get you back on this podcast, maybe at the back end of this year or early next year. That would be absolutely fantastic. But for now, just tell us a little bit more about what you do to help other MSPs, because I know that you’re not just focused on growing your own business, you do help some other MSPs. So tell us a little bit about what you do there and tell us the best way to get in touch with you.[00:31:56] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that back in my previous business, I was always really guarded and competitive when it came to information. I always used to think of every other MSP as a competitor, and I wouldn’t tell them anything that we’re doing. Keep everything secret. I’ve learned a lot over the years, and I’ve realized that it’s so much easier to be collaborative and friendly with everybody in our sector. And people who already know me and have come across me either on LinkedIn or events in the past will know that I’m pretty open with these things. I also help and mentor and coach a few MSP business owners as well. I only have a limited number that I do of that, but it is something that I have been doing as well. So generally the best way to keep in touch with my journey and keep in touch with me is through my LinkedIn. So feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I have loads of people in the MSP community already connected to me, but I’m always willing to talk to other people in the community.[00:32:49] Speaker A: And what’s the easiest way to find you on LinkedIn, Joe?[00:32:51] Speaker B: If you can search for Joe Burns, and if you’re struggling to find me, then use reformed it or cybersecurity, and you’ll find my profile amongst those.[00:33:02] Speaker A: Paul Paul Greens MSP Marketing podcast Week’s.[00:33:06] Speaker C: Recommended book hi, I’m Damian Stevens, and the book I recommend for your MSP is buy back your time by Dan Martel. And the reason I recommend it is it is super practical. To help you buy back your time. I put myself in a prison where I spent too much time working in my business and not on it and worked countless hours. This taught me, step by step how to buy back my time, exactly when to do it, when I can even afford to do it, and exactly how to do it. And lastly, as the business grows, I will have designed my business to give me more freedom of time. So if that sounds like something that’s interesting to you, check out the book buy back your time by Dan Martel.[00:33:54] Speaker A: Coming up next week. Hi, I’m Mark Hirschberg. I’m a fractional CTO and I am sick of all the sales spam I get from MSPs. Join me on Paul’s podcast to learn a better way. On top of that interview with Mark next week, we’re going to talk about LinkedIn. I put one post on LinkedIn that generated 15,000 impressions. I got over 400 comments on it and getting on for around about 100 new connections, all from that one post. It’s called a 48 Hours LinkedIn frenzy, and I’ll tell you next week exactly what it is and how you can replicate this for your MSP. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP. Made in the UK for MSPs around the world Paul Green’s MSP marketing podcast.

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Episode 225Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week’s show includes:* 00:00 Say goodbye to distractions * 04:54 Send your prospects a Christmas card in MARCH * 11:45 Close more deals by improving your communication with non-technical people

Featured guest:Thank you to David Duffett, Speaker and Trainer at Let The Geek Speak, for joining me to talk about how to improve your communications with non-technical people (ie prospects), and help you get more deals over the line.

David is a Geek that has been publicly Speaking and teaching for more than 20 years, from London to Los Angeles, Berlin to Beirut, Kingston to Kuala Lumpur, Mumbai to Melbourne, and many other places too! He loves communications technology and was the longest serving Worldwide Community Director for the Asterisk® project – the ‘Daddy’ of all Open Source communications projects.

David has always been grateful to the Geeks that build the various technologies he speaks about, and he wants to give back – by helping Geeks to Speak, Nerds to be Heard and Techies to Teach!

He is achieving this by inspiring Geeks to speak by giving speeches at conferences and Sales Kickoffs, and equipping them to do it through teaching his Geek Speaker System – 7 Power Presenting Protocols …for Nerds

Connect with David on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidduffett/

Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Connect with me on LinkedIn: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Here’s the episode I mentioned during my interview with David, where Andy Edwards talks about personality types: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode2/ * Grab yourself a copy of this week’s recommended book, SPIN Selling: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/SPIN%C2%AE-Selling-Neil-Rackham/dp/0566076896/

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world, this Paul.[00:00:06] Speaker B: Paul.[00:00:06] Speaker A: Paul Greens MSP Marketing podcast. And welcome to this first podcast of March 2024. Here’s what’s coming up this week.[00:00:16] Speaker B: Hi there, it’s David Duffett. And if you want to get more deals over the line or you simply want your communications to land even better, especially with, with non technical people, then join me on Paul’s podcast.[00:00:29] Speaker A: And on top of that interview with David, I’ve also got an insane idea for you. What if you sent Christmas cards to your prospects now Paul Green’s MSP marketing podcast.So in this first bit of the show, I wanted to. Sorry, hang on a second. I’ve just got a notification on my.

Yeah, okay. Actually, sorry, another one’s just come in. Hang on 2 seconds. Don’t go anywhere.

Okay? Right. Sorry. What was I saying? Oh, yes. So this first bit. Oh, hang on. Sorry, another notification. Hang on a second. Yeah, you get the idea, right? Frustrating, isn’t it? Notifications constantly grabbing your attention. Maybe your other half has said something to you or children. Children are the ultimate weapon against notifications because certainly when they’re younger, they will say to you, come on, daddy, put your phone down. Play with me as they get older. Of course, they don’t do that. Why? Because they’ve got their own notifications coming up on their own phones, and so we lose them to that. I truly believe that notifications are the bane of our life. They are the number one killer of productivity. And actually, I kind of fib to you just then because I don’t have many notifications on my phone at all. I sometimes allow WhatsApp notifications if I’m in the middle of a conversation with someone, and I want to see that. Otherwise, I will go into WhatsApp when I am ready to go into WhatsApp. And there are very few other apps that are allowed to send notifications to my phone. I’ll tell you how many apps can send notifications to me on my computer.

Zero. I don’t allow any notifications at all because when I’m sitting down to do some work, I want to do that work right. I don’t want my mind being distracted. Life is distracting enough as it is, especially if we work from home. You’ve got the postman, you’ve got the washing machine. Children come home from school, all of that kind of stuff. So you got enough distractions. You don’t need teams going ping, ping, ping or whatever noise teams make. I don’t personally use teams. I can’t stand it. But you don’t need those notifications. I’ve sat with MSPs and we’ve had one on one consulting conversations that they have paid a four figure sum for. And we’ve sat there with them online with their computer and their PSA and teams and slack and whatever else they’re using is just constantly ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. And they’re sitting there. They’ve paid me thousands for my advice, and I’ve got my full attention on them. And they’re constantly looking away at their screen so that they can see a notification from one of their first line texts about a new user or whatever it is. Something that just isn’t important compared to looking at their marketing strategy, the future of their business. Kind of crazy, isn’t it? People say that one of your greatest assets is time, and I kind of agree with that. But I think these days, especially in 2024, a greater asset than time is your attention. And our attention is so difficult to keep our attention on something. Our phones are the worst things we can possibly have. In fact, wouldn’t you agree that your phone is the best thing that you own and the worst thing that you own? It’s great for full communication and knowing where you are and being able to do. I mean, you can do everything on your phone, but it’s the apps and the lack of attention that you pay to your real life that is just horrendous. Let me give you a challenge. What if you turned off more of your notifications? What if you killed them completely on your laptop, knowing that if it really was that important, a member of your team will pick up the phone and they will call you? That’s a notification. That’s okay, isn’t it? The phone interrupting you? We’ve had that for what, 60, 70 years in business? That’s all right. And it’s certainly a lot less disruptive than all those pings coming up on your laptop. So what if you switched off all those notifications? What if you killed all of them on your computer? So the only notification you had was your phone or maybe your family texting you or whatsapping you or something like that? What if you decided to go and look at your PSA three or four times a day? So rather than it interrupting your work and destroying your attention span, you’re choosing to do a piece of work, working on your business, or doing a client project, or whatever you’re doing, and then you have 20 minutes to look at your PSA and get up to speed, and then you go and do a piece of work. And then you check your PSA and then you check your messages. If it’s really that urgent, someone will phone you for all the rest of it. It’s a distraction. Switch it off. Attention is your most precious commodity.

Here’s this week’s clever idea.

Let me drop an idea on you that you might consider to be utterly insane. Because this podcast has been published on the 5 March 2024. And the idea that I have is that you should send Christmas cards and Christmas gifts to your prospects, like now. Not wait till November, December. But do it now. Why would I suggest something as crazy as that? There’s a very good reason for it. Whatever you see, or whenever you see a whole bunch of people doing something at the same time, you should do the complete opposite. And that goes against what we feel is right. I know when you’re not very good at marketing, and perhaps you’re just starting out, your inclination is to look at what everyone else is doing with their marketing and just copy that. Right. It’s why things like cybersecurity week exist. And you can look at things like Valentine’s Day and Thanksgiving and Christmas and say, ah, other MSPs do these marketing activities around those dates. So I should. I want to do what everyone else is doing. However, if you really want to stand out and have huge made up word coming up, standout ability, then you can’t do stuff at the same time that everyone is doing something. Take cybersecurity week, or in fact, any kind of tech promotion. If everyone, I’ll put that in speech marks. If a lot of people are doing a chunk of activity around a week like cybersecurity week, there’s no point you bothering because you just become part of the noise. You want to do your own cybersecurity week, like six months later, do it sometime that they’re not. If a lot of MSPs do a piece of activity around Thanksgiving, let’s say Black Friday sales, I’m not a big fan of Black Friday sales for MSPs. I think it’s completely the wrong positioning. But let’s say you see MSPs do Black Friday deals and you think, oh, I should do a no, no, no. Just because everyone is jumping on it doesn’t mean that you should do it for. Amazon is a great example of this. Amazon does. I mean, I’m sure they do Black Friday, but they have created their own event, which is Prime Day, which is what, about a month and a half before Black Friday, something like that. And actually, Prime Day has become prime week, hasn’t it? Or prime two or three days. So Amazon there is proving that rather than just do what everyone else is doing and they still take part in Black Friday, they’ve created their own thing. Back to why I think you should send a Christmas card to your prospects now. Think about a prospect. Think about a hot lead, someone that you really want to talk to this year because you think they may choose you and leave their incumbent MSP. Imagine if you sent them a Christmas card this week or next week, and the Christmas card said, dear Dave, whoever, I wanted to become the first person to wish you a happy Christmas 2024. Tell me, have I succeeded? Question mark from Paul or whoever. And imagine if you just sent that card, or maybe you’d put your email address on the bottom or way for them to feed back. So let’s just recap from the point of view of the prospect. They’re sat at their desk, incomes, the posts. No one gets much posts these days. There’s a few things and there’s a card in it. And we all know when we get a card and you think, oh, what’s this? And particularly if you’ve handwritten the envelope, by the way. So if you print it out, it will have less impact than a handwritten, a card that turns up with handwritten and a real stamp on it, not some kind of franked mail. So they look at this and they go, what’s this?

[00:08:20] Speaker B: Then?[00:08:20] Speaker A: It’s not my birthday. And they open it up and inside it says, dear Dave, I wanted to be the very first person to wish you happy Christmas 2024. Make sure you put the year in. Otherwise they’ll just think it’s a Christmas card that’s been delayed in the post for a couple of months. So I wanted to be the first to wish you happy Christmas 2024. Tell me, have I succeeded? Question mark? And then you put your email address or your LinkedIn or whatsoever. Now a proportion of people, not many, but a proportion of people, will email you back to say, ha, thank you very much for the card. Yes, you were the first one. Congratulations. Thank you. That is opening a line of engagement. You can then reply with, brilliant.I was really hoping to catch your attention or something. I’m never very good at making these things up on the I can write this stuff better than I can speak it, but you get the idea, right? You can reply to their email and you can ultimately lead it into, how’s everything going with your technology? Hey, the last time we spoke, you were talking about switching contracts in July. Is that still something that you’re looking at or. You told me how unhappy you were with your incumbent. Are you still thinking of leaving them in the summer? What’s the best date for you and me to have a chat? Can you see how that would get some engagement going? So that’s easy for the ones who reply. What about the ones who don’t reply? You send off the card and nothing. That was the kind of the tumbleweed sound effect. You get the idea. Yeah, it’s from old spaghetti westerns. Anyway, you get nothing. Well, I still think you can pick up the phone and just give those people a call and that might be you or it might be someone phoning on their behalf. But literally just pick up the call, pick up the call, pick up the phone, give them a call and just say, hey. Hi, Dave, my name’s Paul from so and so. It tell me this is a bit weird and a bit random, but I sent you a Christmas card because I wanted to be the first person to send you a Christmas card in 2024. Did I succeed? What a great engagement. In fact, what a great way to even get past the gatekeeper. Hi, can I speak to Dave, please? Yes, he’s calling.

[00:10:15] Speaker B: Thanks.[00:10:16] Speaker A: My name’s Paul. It’s about the Christmas card I sent him. Sorry, what? What? Oh, I sent him a Christmas card and I’m just calling about that. The gatekeeper hasn’t heard that before, have they? They’ve heard loads of can I speak to Dave? It’s about his it. They hear that every day, but they’ve never heard in March someone saying it’s about the Christmas card. So go on, give it a try. I’d love to know how this works. In fact, if you do try this and it does get you through to a prospect and you start an engagement, because that’s what this is all about, is having a conversation and getting them engaged. Will you drop me an email and let me know? My email address is hello, MSP Marketing edge.Never mind emailing me. Another great resource to get direct input from me into your marketing is my free Facebook group. We’ve got around about, I think it’s about 3000 members in there. They’re all MSPs because it is a vendor free zone and you can join completely free. And I’m there every single day talking about growing your MSP. So grab your phone right now, fire up the Facebook app, type in MSP marketing at the top, and then just make sure you go to groups you don’t want to. Like my page pages are so 2021 we’re going for the 2024 group. So MSP marketing, go for groups and then you just have to apply to join. A couple of basic questions to check you are really an MSP and not a vendor trying to sneak in. And I look forward to speaking to you in the MSP marketing Facebook group.

[00:11:48] Speaker B: Hello there. My name is David Duffett and I help geeks to speak, nerds to be heard, and techies to talk. In other words, I help technical people get more sales over the line through making powerful presentations.[00:12:02] Speaker A: And that’s a very polished introduction, that is, David, I absolutely love that. Give us those three things again that you said at the beginning. Was it geeks to speak?[00:12:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I help geeks to speak, nerds to be heard, and techies to talk. In fact, in America, I even help propeller heads propel ahead with their public speaking opportunities.[00:12:20] Speaker A: I love that. Bravo. You’ve clearly spent many years perfecting that, which is absolutely brilliant. You are very welcome on this podcast. You’re exactly the kind of guests that we love here because you are going to help our audience, MSPs to talk to ordinary people, particularly to talk to ordinary people about technical things that those ordinary people don’t particularly care about. So let’s start right at the beginning. And I’m not a technical person, so I think anyone who’s been listening to this podcast for a while will know. I’m a marketing guy who works with MSPs and I love MSPs, but I don’t really talk tech.Are you a technical person yourself, David?

[00:12:58] Speaker B: I am a chartered engineer. I have a bachelor of engineering honors degree, and I’ve also been chartered since I think 2004. And my background is technical telecoms.[00:13:10] Speaker A: Okay, so we’ll take that as a yes, you are a technical person. So when you’ve got technical people such as yourself, such as MSPs, and they’re talking to ordinary people like me, even if they’re ordinary people who are the decision makers of the business we’re trying to hook in and sell to. Why is there that mismatch if you’re not working very hard to change the way they communicate things?Let me put it this way. Why can’t ordinary people understand technical conversations?

[00:13:37] Speaker B: Well, the thing is, of course, there’s so many details inside technical conversations. And it’s not just the technicalities, it’s the names of the technicalities as well, all the three letter acronyms and stuff like that. And in the technical world, it is our technical skills and abilities that are the know inside an MSP. You might hear Jim really knows his stuff. Or Mary, she’s particularly switched on about that particular technology. But the difficulty is when, of course, you’re outside and you’re talking to normal people, then that needs to be kind of decoded for them. And there’s a great saying by an american speaker called Zig Ziglar, and it’s, people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care about them. And of course, the way you show that you care about people is actually by revealing the appropriate part of your technical knowledge in an understandable way so that they really get.[00:14:35] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I love that quote from Zig Ziglar. That’s an absolutely beautiful quote. So give us some examples of things that MSPs do that just destroy that communication, that make it difficult for that person that they’re talking to to understand what the hell’s going on.[00:14:50] Speaker B: Yeah, of course, one of the things that, in the tech world, we all love the tech. Everybody loves the tech. And the temptation is to talk about the tech. And one of the terrible things that can happen is that the technical person who’s going to do the explaining doesn’t get properly briefed by the salesperson. And then what they do is they kind of stick in their comfort zone, which is all that technical stuff. But what they can do to mitigate that and to make it better is to just get to know that customer a little bit more and understand where they are. And then when it comes to explaining things using appropriate analogies, that the customer is going to understand will help them get the detail of the tech without necessarily getting into the technical detail.[00:15:34] Speaker A: So can you give us an example of an appropriate analogy?[00:15:38] Speaker B: Yeah, at a very top level. Let’s imagine, and this is going to be one about electronics. Imagine if we wanted to talk to somebody about electronics and Ohm’s law, the relationship between volts, amps and ohms, that could be a daunting thing for the average person. And yet, if we said, imagine the hose pipe in your garden that you use to water your plants, and the concept of treading on the hose pipe to restrict the flow of the water, then most people are going to understand that, and we can use that as an analogy to explain the flow of current in a circuit.[00:16:14] Speaker A: No, I love that. I absolutely love that. So what we’re talking about here, exactly as you said, zig Ziglar said in his famous quote, is we’re talking about positioning things because we know that people aren’t interested in the technology per se. We’re talking about taking really important concepts that they need to understand, like cybersecurity, like data, distribution of data through the cloud, and all these other concepts, and we’re talking about trying to find ways of communicating them in ways that they understand. Can you give some other examples? And it could be from within the MSP world or from outside of other analogies or other ways that you can make your life easier to communicate those things?[00:16:53] Speaker B: Yeah, very much so. I mean, I spend a lot of my time teaching technical people to speak to non technical people. And one of the things that I do is I pop up a picture of a YouTube screen with that little circle for buffering, you know, the one I mean, where things aren’t going well. And I asked the audience, what does that mean? And of course, everybody knows it’s a bad connection. And I go, aha. Exactly. And that’s what happens when technical people not talk to nontechnical people. There’s generally a bad connection. They don’t spend time making the bandwidth between themselves and the audience. And of course, the bandwidth is rapport. It’s establishing the communications channel with an audience so that not only can they receive what you’re saying, but they can also, or you can also receive what they’re saying, which might be in a nonverbal way, it might be their facial expressions or their body language. And so to talk about the bandwidth of your connection with an audience rather than talking about the rapport and the ways you do that, is a way to kind of land that with a technical audience.[00:17:57] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes sense. So how do you train text to gain these skills, to know how to read someone’s body language and to be able to adapt what they’re saying and how they’re communicating to the person they’re communicating with.[00:18:10] Speaker B: Yeah, that’s a challenge that I’ve risen to. And so just like programmers, like a syntax, or people designing electronic circuits, like the rules of electronics, or people like to work within certain frameworks. I’ve created seven power presenting protocols for nerds, which deliver kind of presentation skills in a way that’s easy for technical people to digest and to understand and therefore to implement. And they all begin with p. So they’re easy to remember, seven power presenting protocols. And the first one is purpose. So it’s talking about the purpose. And this is another place where people fall down is that they get so tuned into the small presentation they’re going to make that they forget. And of course, if they’ve done discovery properly, they wouldn’t forget this because they’d understand the broader context in which their solution is going to work. And so that first peer purpose is all about looking at the macro level objectives that the customer is trying to achieve, not just the narrow field of the presentation.[00:19:08] Speaker A: Go on, give us another one. You can’t just go on.[00:19:10] Speaker B: Then the next one is plan. What tends to happen is very often in technical circles, in MSP circles, people have never been taught to present properly to groups and so they’ve just picked it up from somebody else they’ve seen. And that might be, to coin a phrase, suboptimal. And so the plan protocol is all about using an understanding of the way people’s attention spans work to fit all of your great information in the most appropriate parts where it’s most likely to get remembered, and then also to use understanding of recall in order to, throughout the presentation, pepper it with other things that are going to get people’s attention, not just the prime time areas.[00:19:53] Speaker A: Third one. Just a third one. You’re not doing all seven.[00:19:55] Speaker B: Go on.[00:19:55] Speaker A: Then we’ll take the third one.[00:19:57] Speaker B: Yeah, the third one, Paul, is preferences. Now we all have preferences of one sort or another, and I often start my presentations with what looks like a trivial game of getting people to pick a colored shape, but it just goes to show that we all have different preferences. And in giving presentations, well, let me use a little simple explainer here.Let me ask you, Paul, if you’ve got a brand new trendy coffee machine for home, are you the kind of person that’s going to rip it all out of the packaging, plug it in and get going with it? Or are you the kind of person that would carefully take out the manual and then sit in your comfortable chair and spend time reading the manual before you ever plugged it in?

[00:20:38] Speaker A: Definitely the first one.I’d then go after the manual when I figured out I couldn’t operate the coffee machine.

[00:20:44] Speaker B: Exactly.And actually that third one is what we call reflector. That’s when you reflect on the fact that you haven’t been able to get it to do everything you want it to do, and then you’re prepared to take a little bit of input from the manual. Imagine if you’re an action orientated person like you, and you’re going to talk to a customer about what your MSP does and you think, oh, well, I love getting stuck into stuff. So actually I’ll put the mouse in the hand of the customer and let them drive a demo. But imagine if the person that you’re presenting to or the people that you’re presenting to are the manual reading type, that would prefer to take a bit of input. And so the preferences protocol is all about understanding your audience, taking a little walk in their shoes, and doing things the way that they would like it, rather than way that you would like it.

[00:21:30] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. How do you read people in that sense, though? Because I remember doing a podcast interview. It was possibly our second ever episode back in 2019 with a friend of mine called Andy Edwards, who talks about different, how different colors can different sort of symbolize different types of people. So, for example, he talks about, and this may be a concept you’re familiar with, but he talks about red people being like myself, quick action takers. They’re more likely to jump in and then go back afterwards and look for the documentation if they get stuck back, versus, let’s say, blue people, who, as you say, are more likely to be reflective and more likely to sit and look at something and say, right, what do I think is the best way to approach this? I’m going to do this slowly. I’m going to do it by the book. And there was yellow and green as well. And I’m sure if you go back to, for our listeners, if you go back to episode two, you could find that exact analogy that Andy used in his training. Do you have something similar, David, that you use in terms of helping MSPs to actually read the type of person that they’re talking to?[00:22:33] Speaker B: Well, one of the biggies is in the purpose protocol, when we’re establishing the reason why we’re doing things is to talk to the audience ahead of time. There’s no presentation police that says you’re not allowed to talk to your audience before you meet them. And in order to make sure that what you’re going to do for them and what they need kind of overlap properly, it’s always good to talk to them. And actually, you could just use a good old fashioned question and ask, how do your people like to learn best? Now, if you want to be more subtle than that, of course you can ask other questions to say the last time that you successfully purchased something that really did you a lot of good, how did that go? And you can let people explain to you a little bit, or like you say, you can use profiling if you really wanted to get into details to find out whether they’re red people or blue people or yellow people. But I tend to stick with just questions and suggestions to see how they land. And the purpose protocol actually gives rise to a little bit of an iterative cycle where you’ll send people an email with just two or three lines of what you’re going to do and how you plan to do it, and let them comment on it so that by the time you actually come to meet them to do the demo or to give the pitch or however or positioning it, you not only are going to hit what they want to hit, but you’re going to hit it in the way that they’d like you to hit it too.[00:23:52] Speaker A: I love that. So you’re actually essentially pre qualifying, almost asking the client, or, excuse me, the prospect, what’s the best way for us to sell to you without using those exact words, but what’s the best way for us to communicate with you?[00:24:05] Speaker B: Exactly. And just coming back to that original quote about people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. That’s one of the ways you’re showing how you care, by asking them how they want this instead of doing what I call a drive by presentation where there’s no real consultation ahead of it, you come in, you hit it, and then you rattle off and there’s not proper follow up afterwards. And of course, sometimes that can be because there’s more than one person involved on the vendor side, on the MSP side, maybe there’s a sales and a pre salesperson.[00:24:36] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It strikes me as you’re speaking there, David, that this isn’t just useful from a sales point of view, but actually from a service desk point of view, this is incredibly useful because if we could teach all technicians to be able to ascertain. Right, what kind of person is this? How do they prefer having information, then that’s going to help them with the information that they give them about the problems that they’re fixing or the proactive work that they’re doing. That could be a very useful thing as well. I imagine you can use this kind of framework in absolutely any scenario where you’ve got technical people talking to non technical people.[00:25:08] Speaker B: Yeah, it’s funny you should say that, Paul, because I hit it from a presentational angle, because in a previous role I had, I used to travel the world speaking at conferences and I saw that there were a lot of very well meaning and nice technical people that didn’t always do the best job at making presentations. So that’s the angle I had. But I was speaking recently to a very large company, specifically to the HR director for 8700 engineers, and she said to me, you’ve come along with seven power presenting protocols, but actually there are seven principles of communication that you can apply to any interaction. So as an example for a team meeting, that would be a way you could use these. And as you said, any interaction between technical and non technical people will be enhanced. If the technical person just took a little step back and thought about the way the communications would go and would flow instead of just jumping in.[00:26:05] Speaker A: Yeah, I love it. But of course, this requires training, and that’s a nice little loop, David, to how you actually make money, which is an important thing to talk about. So you train technical people how to do exactly this, don’t you?[00:26:18] Speaker B: Yes, indeed. And I tend to hit it again as presentations, maybe because that’s my background to what I like talking about. But actually, if you were to say to the average bunch of technical people, HR have arranged for you to do two days of communication skills training, they might run in the opposite direction.But if you said, we’ve got a chartered engineer coming in who’s got these seven power presenting protocols, that’s going to help you get more customers over the line when you talk to them, then that’s a different idea. But actually inherently you’ll get the communication skills as part of it, because what people learn in presenting rubs off into many other areas of their lives.

[00:26:59] Speaker A: Oh, I completely agree with that, yes. David, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. What’s the best way just to learn a little bit more about what you do and actually get in touch with you?[00:27:08] Speaker B: Ok, well, there’s a couple of ways. Geekspeakhq.com is the website. I’ll say that again, geekspeakhq.com and also my LinkedIn profile. I’m blessed to have a reasonably unusual name, David Duffett, which is D-U-F for Freddie, e t for telephone. And if you search on LinkedIn, I’m pretty sure I’ll come up as the top one for you.[00:27:32] Speaker A: Paul Green’s MSP marketing podcast, this week’s recommended book.[00:27:38] Speaker C: Hi, I’m Robert Gillette with the MSP dojo, and one of the books that I would recommend is an oldie but a goodie. It’s called spin selling. I love it for a couple different reasons. One is because it teaches us a way to ask open ended questions that help direct a prospect to the line of thinking we want. So we’re asking instead of telling. It teaches you to shut up and just let them talk so you can actually learn something. And then it really exemplifies the power and necessity of practice, because if you’re not practicing on someone that knows all your tricks, then you’re just practicing on your prospect and they’re never going to give you the feedback you need to get better. They’ll just know what’s weird and they won’t buy from you.[00:28:20] Speaker A: Coming up next week. Hi, I’m Joe Burns and I built an MSP back in 2005 and scaled that to over a million pounds.[00:28:29] Speaker B: If you want to find out how I’ve then scaled an MSP in three years to the same size, join us on Paul Green’s podcast.[00:28:37] Speaker A: On top of that fantastic interview with Joe next week, we’ll be talking about the best customer retention tool that you can possibly use. There’s no software involved, there’s nothing difficult involved. It’s so, so simple. But it’s incredibly rewarding, both for retention and for selling more to clients. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP. Made in the UK for MSPs around the world Paul Green’s MSP marketing podcast.

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Episode 224Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week’s show includes:* 00:00 Looking after yourself IS looking after your business * 08:45 A ‘no’ today isn’t a ‘no’ forever * 16:01 Could YouTube Ads help grow your MSP?

Featured guest:Thank you to YouTube Ads specialist Ben Jones, for joining me to talk about how MSPs can use YouTube ads to grow their businesses.

Benjamin is a serial entrepreneur and international keynote speaker. He’s the co-founder of Titan Marketer, which has helped a wide range of businesses generate millions of dollars in sales with YouTube Advertising. He also founded Youth In Business, which helps kids start and scale businesses that make sales in less than a week. Benjamin’s passion is enhancing youth entrepreneurship and helping businesses scale with YouTube Ads.

Connect with Ben on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben09/

Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Connect with me on LinkedIn: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Grab yourself a copy of this week’s recommended book, Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Feel-Fear-Anyway-Vermilion-Essentials/dp/1785042653/

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world, this Paul.[00:00:06] Speaker B: Paul.[00:00:06] Speaker A: Paul Greens, MSP Marketing podcast my friend. And welcome to another episode of the podcast. Here’s what’s coming up this week.[00:00:14] Speaker B: Hi, my name is Ben Jones, and I’m a YouTube ads expert that’s created millions of dollars in sales across a wide range of industries. And I’m going to be showing you how you can grow and scale your MSP with YouTube ads.[00:00:24] Speaker A: And on top of fascinating interview with Ben later in the show, we’ll also talk about why you mustn’t become despondent when you ask someone to buy from you. And they say, Paul.Paul. Paul Greens, MSP Marketing podcast going to start this week by talking about something which affects a surprising number of MSP owners. And although there is a little bit of talk about it within the channel, it’s not something that really is as high priority as it should be. And that is, of course, how we are doing. And I mean our mental health, I mean our physical health and just how we’re doing as people. You think about it, the world that we’re in, and I don’t mean the big world, I mean the channel. It’s a very male, heavy sector. There’s lots and lots of men, and men are typically, not always, but often they’re not very good talking about their feelings. They’re not very good talking about when they’re not doing so well or when they’re exhausted or when they’re tired. There’s still a bit of a macho I can power through. There’s blood coming out my ears, but I can power through. So there’s that. And then there’s just the very nature of tech, and tech itself is unbelievably busy. And there’s so much change and there’s just huge amounts of activity. And I know you as an MSP, you’re used to huge amounts of information being dumped on you every single day, right? There’s just so much coming in and so much that you have to do. And I think you get to kind of this time of the year where it’s been a couple of months since Christmas. So you may have just thrown yourself into 2024, and you may not have realized that actually you probably need a break because it has been a couple of months and maybe you’re starting to feel a little bit stressed. The problem is, the real issue is actually recognizing that stress in the first place. At what point do you realize that actually you’re feeling anxious a lot of the time do you ever do this? Do you ever sort of stop or maybe lay in bed at night and just think about your mental state and lie there and analyze, how am I feeling? That sounds a bit hippie, but actually, the older I get, the more cool this stuff is to me. Do you ever lie there and think, how am I feeling? How was today? Was today a good day? Was it a bad day? Do I feel okay? Do I feel good? Do I feel anxious? How do I feel? And it’s not just that kind of feeling. We can actually spot, if we’re aware of it, we can spot symptoms of stress by the very behaviors that we are exhibiting. For example, I’ll give you a common one for me, too much coffee. Now, I love my coffee. I have black Americanos. I love most coffees, apart from those really bitter little espressoes. And on a normal day, I’ll have two or three coffees. And then in the afternoon, I’ll move on to sort of herbal teas and hippie stuff like that. And I know I am a little more stressed than normal. If I find myself drinking coffee in the afternoon, guess what? When I’m drinking coffee in the afternoon, that then affects my sleep, and then that lack of sleep causes me to have more coffee the next day. So it’s kind of an evil loop of feedback like that. And you have to be very careful of that. Another one. For me, as well as coffee, is alcohol. Now, I don’t drink a huge amount of alcohol. I have, well, I was about to say a reasonable and normal amount of alcohol. What’s normal? It’s certainly not what you tell your doctor, is it? We all tell our doctor we drink a little bit less than we actually do. But again, if I’m a little bit stressed, if I’m more tired than usual, if my body or my mind are not quite as good as they could be, I will find myself drinking more alcohol. It’s the same as the coffee. Well, I guess I’m trying to counteract the two maybe, and I will just find it’s easier to have just another glass of wine. Or maybe I’ll just have a beer on a Tuesday night. Well, that’s not how it should be. Certainly that’s not how I choose for it to be for me. So for me, it’s a warning sign that I need a break, that I’m stressed, that I’m tired. And then you can kind of go into the more obvious symptoms, such as paranoia, just thinking bad things, catching yourself having bad thoughts, or your sleep being disrupted. In some way, and even getting up to go to the toilet two or three times in the night, unless that is normal for you. For me, that’s not normal. I might get up once in the night some nights not quite of that age yet where I have to be up every night. But I know if I wake up two or three times or I can’t go to sleep or I can’t wake up in the morning, that kind of bad quality of sleep, or if I wake up tired, all of that, that bad quality of sleep is actually indicative of stuff that’s happened during the day. And if that happens two or three nights in a row, I recognize that as a symptom, a symptom of stress. And I think you can throw another one in there, which is just poor judgment. If you find yourself either not able to make a decision or making decisions that you later reverse, or you’re second guessing yourself or your team say to you, that’s not quite, we don’t think you’ve quite made the right call there, boss. All of these can be symptoms that you need a break, that you’re stressed, that you’re not looking after yourself. And this is a key thing that we’ve got to look after ourselves. We’re not getting any younger, you and me. I hit 50 this year. In the summer, I’m going to be 50 now. That’s terrifying, right? Because my 40s have gone just like that. And my 40s have been quite a challenging decade for a number of different reasons that I’ll tell you about in the podcast at some point in the future when I’m ready to talk about some of the stuff, some of the cool things and not so cool things that have happened in my 40s. Maybe I’ll have a 50th birthday special for that, maybe not, we’ll see. But the point is, you have to look after yourself, because the older you get, yeah, sure, the wiser you get, the more experience you get, but the more tired you get. This gets fatigued, this being your brain, your body gets fatigued more. And you have to remember, core fundamental of being a business owner is that the business is there for you and not the other way around. Let me say that again, because that’s kind of stupidly important. The business is there for you and not the other way around. And at the beginning, when we first become business owners, we forget this, don’t we? Well, or we place it to one side, because actually the business needs everything we have to give ourselves to the business in order to make sure the business gets through those first difficult couple of years. And the problem is we get into a mindset and a way of working that is not healthy at all. And so month after month after month after month, we are there for the business rather than the business being there for us. Well, that’s not a very sustainable situation. That’s a situation that ends in a stroke or a heart attack. And I don’t say that flippantly. That’s a genuine threat to you as a business owner is to be found slumped over your desk one morning by your team. And you’re not coming back from that if you get the idea. So we’ve got to look after ourselves. There’s a number of things that we have to do. First of all, you have to watch out for those kind of symptoms. You need to be hyper aware of your own body and of your own mind. And you kind of already probably are aware when things aren’t quite right. But the difference is, and maybe today is a line, and you can draw a line and do this differently after today, but the difference is you need to act on that. If you know your brain is tired or your body is tired or you find yourself procrastinating, that was another symptom. I meant to mention procrastination. For me, massive procrastination is a symptom of tiredness, that I need a break. So if you’ve got some symptoms and you know you’re mentally or physically tired, take a break, right? I know you’ve got that migration and I know you’ve got those new users and you need to onboard that new client and you’ve got the new staff. But you know what? Take a break. Just take a few hours off, go for a walk, go to the cinema are, go and hang out with some friends, buy a dog, steal a dog, take your dog for a walk, go and hang out with the other half for a bit, play with your kids for a few hours. You can always do that job that things needs to be done tomorrow. It’s very hard for us as business owners to be realistic about what we can do, but we’ve got to do that, especially as we get older and we get more tired. We’ve got to prioritize, we’ve got to be realistic. And the number one thing that you need to do is you need to look after yourself. This is not the job of your other half. This is not the job of your business partner. This is not the job of your staff or your kids. The number one job of you is to look after yourself. And you know what? Actually, your business will thrive better in the long term the more that you look after yourself. Because without you, how can the business rely on you? It can’t. You’ve got to look after yourself before you look after the business.

Here’s this week’s clever idea.

Here’s a little sales scenario that I bet you have been through, and I bet that you have experienced the exact emotions that I’m about to talk about. So you’ve got this lead, and this lead turns into a prospect. You start having a conversation with them. Every single question that you ask them, the answers are amazing. They’ve got the right number of users, they’ve got the right attitude to technology, they’re the kind of business that you want to work with. You like your principal contact, you put together a proposal. The package seems right, the price seems right, everything seems right. You’re going to do this. You and your new clients are going to get together and you’re going to stay together for 20 years.

And then they call you one day and they say, yeah, so we’ve decided to. And it’s either stay with their incumbent or it’s go with someone else. And you’re genuinely gobsmacked. I mean, like, properly, utterly. What? How? You know, like when you met that girl or that boy, whichever it was back in the day, and you utterly fell in love and you were convinced that you guys were going to get married and then one day they ended it. And it’s that similar kind of. It’s like being punched in the face repeatedly by Rocky in the 1980s. And Rambo. Rocky and Rambo both having a go at you and you genuinely. You’re shocked by it. It’s a complete shock. It’s that exact same thing.

Have you experienced this? If you haven’t experienced this yet, I promise you it will happen to you. Not necessarily in love, but definitely in business. Sometimes we meet people that seem to be the perfect match for us. They are the ones, the ones to come and join us, to be our new flagship clients. And for some reason they say no. Here’s the thing. I want you to get it really clear in your head, well, partly in your head, but more in your heart, that just because someone says no today, they don’t mean no forever. That this is not dating advice, but it is business sales advice. You see that super hot prospect that you’ve formed that great relationship with. You feel so close to them, it feels like it could happen. They say no to you today. The thing is, in a couple of years time, they could be back. Because what if they have stayed with their incumbent? People stay with their incumbent MSP through fear. They don’t know what they don’t know about technology and all of the world that we live in, the technology world we live in. So sometimes it feels safer for them to stay with their incumbent than to move over to someone new. They may dislike their incumbent and not be satisfied and have noticed the service levels have dropped and the prices have gone up and they’re unhappy. But at least they know them. They know that the incumbent haven’t and probably won’t do damage to their business and to their technology. And they may like you better and the price may be right and the package may be right, but you’re still a devil they don’t know. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t, right? This is how people think. Or actually, it’s more how they act. So they stay with their incumbent. They have massive trauma about it, but they stay with their incumbent. Now, you and I both know they are going to leave that incumbent at some point, right? So unless that incumbent completely changes their business and essentially rewinds that client, they are going to leave at the end of the next contract or the one after that. We’ll come back onto how you can make sure you’re there in a second. What about if someone says no and goes with one of your competitors? Maybe they’ve made the right choice. Maybe one of your competitors is a better fit. Maybe they’ve made the wrong choice. You’re good at what you do, right? By the way, this is the point. You should be Hail marrying at the podcast. You should be like, hell yeah. We are brilliant at what we do. You’re good at what you do, right? Yes. Then don’t you owe it to the business owners of your town or your vertical or your niche? Don’t you owe it to them to make sure they pick you and they don’t make a mistake and they pick a competitor? Yes, you do. You owe it to them. You mustn’t let them go off and make the wrong choice. But sometimes they will. So in each of these scenarios, and any other scenario where a really hot prospect that you thought was yours has gone off to somewhere else, you must never take no as no forever. It is simply no. Today we get a bit wounded, don’t we? As business owners, we take it personally when someone doesn’t pick our business or when someone leaves us, whether that’s staff or whether that’s clients.

We do we see it as not just them doing business, we see it that they’ve rejected us. And particularly if you’re male, the fragile male ego doesn’t like that, doesn’t like rejection, doesn’t like the thought that someone might leave you. It’s horrible when your staff do it, unless you want that staff member to leave. But it’s kind of worse when a client does it because it’s the ultimate rejection, especially if you’ve been doing what you think is a good job. And it’s the same when a prospect says no. The inclination is to push them away and say, well, screw you then. If you don’t want to work with us, we don’t want to work with you. That’s the wrong attitude. Here’s what you want to do. You want to look at that person as someone who has made a terrible mistake. They have stayed with their incumbent, or they have moved to one of your competitors or whatever they have done. And now it is your job to rescue them from that bad mistake. And the way you rescue them is through the power of marketing. You keep following them up. You keep them on your email newsletter to you, stay in touch with them through LinkedIn. You drop them emails now and again. You might just pick up the phone now and again just to have a chat. You send them stuff in the post. It could be your printed newsletter, which is a really cool thing. Or you could just now and again find something that you think, oh, XYz prospect who nearly signed up with me would find that interesting. I’m going to print that off, write a little handwritten note on it and send it to them in the post. Because that, believe me, is going to stand out more than anything else. You find out when they are next going to be doing a review. And if you don’t know, it’s probably 1224 or 36 months after the last time you spoke to them or the last time they started that process. You stay in touch with them and you make sure that when that review comes up, you have such a good relationship. In fact, your relationship has got even stronger over the last couple of years. The relationship is so strong that you get yourself a place at the table again. Will you win that sale? Maybe. Maybe not. Will all of them come over to you? Of course they won’t. You can’t win all of the prospects over all of the time. But you know what? You will win more of them by being mature, having a mature relationship, and never, ever stopping with your follow up. Making sure you keep marketing to these people until they make the smart choice eventually to choose you. Paul’s Paul’s blatant plug latent plug. I’m just wondering, are you and I connected on LinkedIn? Because if we’re not, let’s connect. I’m connected to about 8000 MSPs right now. I’ve got just under 9000 that are following me and I put out all sorts of useful content on there. Stuff that enhances the podcast. Do a particularly good LinkedIn newsletter every single Thursday. If you want to connect, you can actually kind of google it. Just Google LinkedIn. Paul Green, MSP Marketing edge and it’s me that comes up as the first result. Google LinkedIn. Paul Green, MSP Marketing Edge big interview.

[00:16:04] Speaker B: Hi, I’m Ben Jones. I have MSPs grow and scale with YouTube ads.[00:16:08] Speaker A: Thank you so much for joining me on the show, Ben, because we all know that YouTube is massive and it’s getting bigger and bigger and bigger every year. We all spend more and more of our time on it, consuming great content. And then we see the adverts come up and the adverts have been popping up again and again and again in the videos, and sometimes you skip over them and sometimes you don’t. But I’m sure every MSP, it has occurred to them at some point of I wonder if I could use YouTube to get business for my business. And that’s something we’re going to explore in this interview. Let’s do a quick credibility check, first of all. So what do you do with businesses to help them with YouTube? And how did you get to this position?[00:16:43] Speaker B: Yeah, cool. Look, I’ve been in marketing for well over seven or eight years now. We’ve helped lots of businesses grow and scale to over seven figures with YouTube advertising. We personally spent over a million dollars on YouTube ads in the last year with a lot of our clients actually are doing over 100k in their first hundred days, just starting with YouTube advertising. So I guess if I was to sum it up in a sentence, we’ve helped businesses in a wide variety of niches grow and scale using YouTube advertising.[00:17:07] Speaker A: Fantastic. Now, as I say, YouTube is massive. And I find myself watching YouTube every day. Obviously, I do searches for how do you do something? Or I’m looking for information on something, and then in the evening I’ll watch one thing on Netflix or Disney or something and then just flick over to YouTube for ten minutes, which we all know becomes 40 minutes as you go down the YouTube rabbit hole.YouTube has just been a phenomenal growth story. It’s only been around was it 19 years this year. So how have you seen in the years you’ve been working on YouTube, how have you seen it grow and change and adapt?

[00:17:40] Speaker B: Yeah, look, I think YouTube is massive, and at the moment, we’ve all heard about the war for attention, and YouTube basically has taken over pretty much everyone’s devices. The big one that’s taking out is cable companies like Netflix and Hulu and all of those. And I think as far as attention goes, YouTube is really good at getting attention because YouTube’s on tvs and it’s just absolutely everywhere. What’s really exciting, though, is only about less than 10% of business owners actually advertising on YouTube at the moment. So it’s kind of, at the moment, really positioned as an opportunity of a lifetime. I mean, if you go back a decade, Facebook was the thing. Right now, it’s oversaturated. You go back two decades, it was Google Search, and that was amazing. But then it got really expensive, and all these platforms go through what I call an adoption curve. And YouTube at the moment is pretty much positioned to say where Facebook was a decade ago. Search was probably two decades ago. Email was in the 90s. So it’s a really awesome opportunity to get in and be rewarded as an early adopter.[00:18:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Which is kind of strange for us, talking about something, being an early adopter of something when the service has been around since 2005. That was when YouTube has started. Of course, YouTube was independently owned for, what was it, a year before Google bought it. And someone at Google has either had an incredible vision or they’ve just been very patient, plowing money and resources and creating the world’s biggest, by far biggest video site. My gut feel on why YouTube is so big is because you get kind of like you do with most social networks. You get a very personalized feed for you. But the YouTube algorithm and the YouTube feed seems especially personalized to you. And I say this because in my house, there’s just me and there’s my 13 year old daughter, and we’re both logged into YouTube on the tv. And when I go into my. Well, when I go into her YouTube, I see musical theater stuff, I see TikTok stuff, which, weirdly, is on YouTube, and it’s kind of like 13 year old stuff. And then I go into my feed and it’s astonishingly different. It’s Star Trek. Last night, I watched a guy who’s digging a tunnel under his house in the UK to create, like, a bat cave, which doesn’t seem legal, but it was a fascinating 20 minutes video and it’s all the kind of stuff that I’m interested in. And this is the clever trick that YouTube has pulled off, isn’t it? This is what makes it seem relevant to every single person.[00:19:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. And the cool thing with Google, particularly, that owns YouTube, which is a good side issue, is it has all your history of not only what you’re watching on YouTube, but what you’re browsing online, what websites are visiting. It knows what your interests are, kind of before you even go there. It’s got your browser history, it knows what apps are on your phone, it knows exactly what searches you’re putting into Google. So for it to be able to give you relevant content and also what you can use in the ad targeting is really, really cool. And I think that’s how they pull it off. And I mean, YouTube is literally very similar size to Facebook in terms of daily users. In Covid, it was actually more. And the fun thing is it’s the second largest search engine behind Google. So if you got yahoo, bing, IOL, asta, vista and combined all those together, YouTube is still bigger than all of them. Right? So it’s just a massive platform, anything from search to content in terms of the user experience.[00:20:43] Speaker A: Yeah. No, that’s really interesting. The idea that Google is using your other search history to affect what you see on YouTube and the adverts you see on YouTube, that’s particularly of interest. Let’s part that because we’ll come back to that in a second. Let’s first of all talk about adverts. So obviously, the average MSP, they’re looking for more b to b clients. They’re not interested in residential, they’re not interested in consumers with cracked iPad screens. They want 10, 20, 30 user businesses who are looking for a strategist, a technology strategist. They’re looking for someone to proactively maintain their technology. And of course, cybersecurity is bigger than ever these days. Can we reach those decision makers on, you know, traditionally, as we said, it’s cat videos, it’s people tunneling under houses and doing stuff like that. Why is it so easy for us still to reach those decision makers?[00:21:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I think particularly with YouTube, the targeting on YouTube that you can do is unparalleled to pretty much anything else out there. For example, we call it like a credit card out targeting approach. So the first thing that you want to do is target people who are genuinely interested. In this case, it’s going to be like business owners who basically need tech support and help, right? And then our next layer would be like, can they afford our services? And this is revolutionary. So the cool thing you can do on YouTube here is you can actually target people who are based in income level. So you might pick a certain suburb zip code postcode, and you can basically say, look, I want the top 30% of business owners in this area. So that way you’re only talking to people who actually can afford your products or services, which is a big deal, right? And then from there, we want to really like, are these people looking to buy right now? And what you can do with YouTube, which you just can’t do anywhere else, is a couple of really cool things. One is you can actually just target people who are searching for, hey, I need cybersecurity help, or I need this tech help in my business. Right? Like whatever it is your specialty that you might do within your business, you can search people looking for that or provider for this thing in your local area, and then when they go to YouTube, you can show them ads. So, I mean, that’s basically as good as intent as you’re going to find anywhere. The other really cool thing that you can do is actually target your competitors’websites, which is really fun. So go find all your bigger competitors and stuff like that. And you can literally target people who are visiting websites like that or looking at services that you provide and then show them your ad. So if you combine them together, like, hey, look, this is a business owner who’s interested in having tech services or cybersecurity supplied for me. And then from there it’s like, yes, they can afford my product. So we want to only target people with a certain income bracket. And then from there it’s like, of all of those, I want to only target people who are literally searching for my product or service, then show me an ad. And that’s why the leads on YouTube are pretty much unparalleled to anywhere else in terms of being able to target that exact business owner, if that makes sense.[00:23:27] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. Now, one of the issues that MSPs have with Google Ads is that they’re very, very expensive.There might be, let’s say, 50 MSPs in a small city trying to attract the same kind of business. There’s plenty of business for everyone. But in terms of Google searches, obviously there’s only two or three ads that appear. The cost per click is huge, and you have to deal with a lot of noise. A lot of people with cracked iPad screens who just aren’t reading the advert, but they’re clicking on the link costing you 20 $30 US dollars and then sort of inquiring to you and wasting your time. So with YouTube, is that a similar position that you’re going to be paying a very high price per click or do the targeting tools make it actually easier to avoid the wastage?

[00:24:15] Speaker B: Yeah, we’ll compare apples to apples. So basically, if we want to target someone who’s searching for best MSP in my area, for example, versus best service provider or whatever it might be on Google Search now, if we go to Google search, you’re going to get like 15 to 30 characters, you’re going to pop up the top, you’re going to compete with everyone. That’s horrible, right? It’s the most expensive click that you’re going to pay on the Internet. Compare that with YouTube, you can target that same person because Google owns YouTube. So target that same person searching, but you can show them a YouTube ad. Now, the way YouTube ads are charged are different, they’re usually free. So the YouTube ads I’m talking about here, there’s lots of different types, are what’s called a pre roll ad. So you know when you’re watching your content, you’re like 5 seconds to skip and you’re waiting to skip. They’re the ads I’m talking about. Right. So we want those ads and you’re actually not charged for the first 30 seconds. The first 30 seconds of that ad is free. If they watch more than that, you get charged or if they skip your ad, that’s free too, right? So basically instead of 30 characters or 15 to 30 characters, you get in a search ad, you now get 30 seconds of video. Now you can say a lot in 30 seconds of video, right? So in terms of how much it costs on average, depending, because we work with a lot of companies who are doing, particularly software companies as well, that are doing cost per click, sorry, Google CPC search keywords, which is really expensive. Usually if you compare like what’s that’s costing on YouTube for exactly the same click, they’re usually about half to a third of the price. So you get to get in front of the same person for a half to a third of the price than say, everyone who’s doing search ads. And you’ve been able to have a video on the front end which is free for the first 30 seconds. So the feed you get from that is obviously way better than search anyway because you’ve been able to usually help someone in your ad. If you’ve got a value based ad, which I’d recommend. So I guess that’s the big difference. To answer your question, how do you overcome everyone who’s in search? Well, by using YouTube, because around 10% of people who are doing cost per click advertising are on YouTube ads, and they’re half to a third of the price cheaper than what you’re going to spend in search.[00:26:13] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that makes sense. So let’s talk about the actual ad itself. And you just mentioned something called a value based ad. Can you explain what that is and what kind of ads work best in your experience on YouTube?[00:26:23] Speaker B: Yeah. So look, the ad needs to be broken down into four parts. This is what we find works really well. So before we get into the four parts, you want to have an ad that entertains or educates people in some way, basically give people value, help them in some way.So, for example, you might say, hey, look, have you got a cybersecurity issue? Here’s two or three things that you could probably do that would help. And if you’d like to know more, click here. That might be the overall or here’s three cybersecurity risks you didn’t know that you had. You could probably do that one a bit better, or whatever the thing is that people need help with. So once you found out, what’s your ad going to be about, the first thing that you want to do is the hook. So that’s the first part of your ad. Now that covers the first 5 seconds. So if I’m watching YouTube and I’ve got 5 seconds to skip, that’s exactly where your hook wants to go. So best type of hook that we found is a rhetorical question where people say, yes. Okay, so, for example, are you sick of burning money on Facebook ads?

[00:27:17] Speaker A: Yes.[00:27:18] Speaker B: That would be a good hook, right? That’s one we use now. The other one would be, the next bit is your elevator pitch. So in here, before the 30 seconds you want to pitch, tell people what’s in the video and how you’re going to help them. So usually I would say something like, hey, my name is Ben Jones. I’ve helped multiple business owners generate millions of dollars online with YouTube ads. If you hang around this video, I’ll show you the three things you do know about YouTube ads that can help you grow and scale your business. Something like that. Right? And then you do the story. Now, the story part is the third part of your four parts. And in here, you’re going to actually tell them, well, what are the three secrets? What are the three hacks? Or what are the three things I need to avoid know it doesn’t have to. Here’s a case study of someone else I’ve helped or whatever it might be, but of tell them or teach them or help them in some way. If you can be funny, then that’s great too. Be funny. A lot of business owners we meet are usually better at helping people than be funny. But hey, it’s up to you. And then at the end, that’s your close. Okay, that’s part four. So in part four, we want to have probably about a 15 second close. It’ll go something like, hey, if you’re interested in getting x solution, all you need to do is click on the link and we look forward to seeing you on the other side. And then at the end, you want to have a little end screen with arrows to click. Right. So that’s pretty much how you would do a really good ad.And you probably want two types. You probably want the next person that gets how long. So probably about two and a half minutes is a good place to start testing. Once you’ve got your messaging and an ad that works, you can probably shoot like a vertical ad and do like an under a minute ad in YouTube shorts and stuff. But I would just start with a horizontal ad, about two and a half minutes in that format and you’ll be good to go.

[00:28:49] Speaker A: Easy. You make it sound so easy. I guess. Is this where you find a lot of business owners get stuck? Is actually creating that ad? So coming up with the idea, you say two and a half minutes, that’s hours. That’s hours and hours and hours of work. Because you can do two and a half crap minutes on a phone, or you can put a lot of effort into it. And you don’t often see a lot of crap adverts on YouTube.[00:29:10] Speaker B: No. And this is where YouTube ads are different to Facebook ads. Okay? What you can’t do is go get some salesy ad from Facebook that’s like a minute long or something crazy, and it’s like, hey, rugs a million discount, bargain, 50% off. All that doesn’t work on YouTube, right? Because people go to YouTube for a different reason than Facebook. People go to YouTube for entertainment. They want to be entertained or educated in some way. And it’s not congruent. If you’re scrolling through, looking at what people had for breakfast and cats and stuff, then that’s why that other type of ad format works, right? So what you want to do here is when you’re shooting your ad, just keep it really simple and try and be as authentic and genuine as possible. Because here’s the thing. Don’t create studio based ads. Just create something really simple. Like 90% of our clients literally shoot their ads off their phone and like a gimbal or something like that. Because the content on YouTube, for example, is exactly like this. It’s a guy sitting at his desk with his podcast mask, right? So you don’t need to have big, expensive ads. Just have something that actually helps people and be genuine about it in terms of writing the script. Look, we do have some script templates that I’m happy to give anyone who’s listening to this that you can use with AI and Chat GPT and that sort of thing. But even without those, just get started with that four framework. Like if you went to Chat GPT and you’re like, hey, look, this is the four part framework that I want to use with my script. You could probably get a whole script knocked out in ten minutes, right? So don’t make it harder than it has to be. Just get the script, get it shot, and get it done.[00:30:41] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes sense. I think getting the ads right is very hard. And I say this as someone I try not to get involved with adverts. My approach is more a direct marketing approach, which is about building audiences and proactively building a relationship with them and then phoning people and direct mailing them. I look at ads, and often I’ll be like, I’m not quite sure what I would do there, but like every other human on the planet, I know a bad advert when I see it. The pre roll for me on YouTube at the moment are two sets of adverts.And we’re recording this interview in November last year just to set some context, because I’m sure it had been replaced by now. But I keep seeing one for a Pixel phone on Google, like the new Pixel eight or something, and it’s got like a face replace where if you take a photo of someone and they’re looking like that, it actually takes several photos and you can replace their face. And that’s okay. Except I see all the time, it seems to come up before every single video. And I know that Google’s essentially getting free advertising because it’s advertising its own phone on its own platform. But that just annoys me because I’d like to see different versions of that advert. I’m seeing the same advert every single night. But the other one that really annoys me is an advert for a company called Gong. And I know that Gong is like Monday. So it’s like a project management collaboration type software. The only reason I know this is because I had to google it to see what they do because the advert is a bunch of people’s backs hitting gongs. That’s it. And it’s like a four or five second pre roll advert and it’s like Gong, gong, gong Gong Gong IO or Gong.com or whatever it is. And I must have watched the advert four or five times before thinking, what the hell is this?

What is this service? What am I watching? Versus. I remember the adverts I used to see for Monday probably about a year ago, which as I say, is a competitor, very well funded VC backed competitor. And they went jump straight into if work is complicated, we make it simple, or whatever their value message was. And the two approaches couldn’t be completely different.

I understand how business owners, or how even advertising agencies get lost in that because they get so caught up in all the things we’re trying to say and standing out and doing something amazing visually. Do you find that business owners find it very hard to create adverts for their own business because they’re too close to it? Or actually, is that just a bad example? That happened to be on my YouTube, yeah.

[00:33:07] Speaker B: So there’s two things there. One is the type of ad that’s being run. So a lot of big corporates and vcs funded people will actually do non skippable ads and they’ll go for like 15 seconds or something and they’ll be really annoying. And they’re basically for brand awareness. Right? So they’re not for direct marketing. Like, hey, we want to lead and we want to call them up. We want to make sales. Right? So those type of ads are no good here.The ad that we’re looking for here is a skippable ad. So if you don’t like it, you can skip it in 5 seconds. So that’s an important difference.

And I think the problem that a lot of big corporates have is they try and treat YouTube like tv and it’s not, and they haven’t figured that out. Um, anyway, so that’s one, the other thing would be in terms of the messaging, I think Monday you can go have a look at some of those ads. That’s a really great example. They have some really cool ads. They are a bit more studio like, top end, but the messaging and the way they do their scripting is quite clever. Right. And you’ll find if you sort of dissect their ads a little, they’ll have a similar format, they’ll have a hook, like you said at the beginning, and then they’ll go into a value proposition of how they can help them, what their software does. And if you’re interested, click here to find out more. Right. So it’s the same deal, like have an ad that actually helps people who are experiencing a problem and deliver them value in the ad. And your ad, they’re going to convert way better than some guy just hitting a gong all day long. Right?

And that just comes back to having that four parts that I spoke about earlier. So if you can nail that, like have a value based ad, you’re going to do way better than someone who just has some ridiculous, stupid corporate ad.

[00:34:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. No, you’re absolutely right. That’s great guidance. And of course, you don’t need to go and look up Monday. Com’s adverts on YouTube. You can just visit Monday in your browser where you’re logged into Google. And inevitably that Monday advert is going to appear on your YouTube in a couple of days’time if they’ve got an advertising campaign running at the moment. Ben, thank you so much for sharing with us your insights into YouTube advertising. So tell us what you do for MSPs. How can we get your help and what’s the best way to get in touch with you?[00:35:06] Speaker B: Yeah, look, we offer a bunch of free training. We want to help as many people as we can get started with YouTube and we have some free training, a whole bunch of stuff like that, just to get people set up and get going. And I guess that’s really the big part. Just go out there and start to take some action. Like at the moment, YouTube ads are really primed for probably the best opportunity of paid ads out there at moment. So just get out there and get started. Look, if you get started with $100 a day, or even if it’s like $30 or $10 a day, that’s way better than just not doing anything right. So get out there, get amongst it. Like I said, if you’re interested in some free training and stuff, you can check us out@tidemarketer.com. So that’s tidemarketer with an ER.com. If you’re interested in connecting with me, just Ben or Benjamin Jones on LinkedIn and type in YouTube, I’ll pop up. Other than that, guys, hopefully I’ve been able to help you guys in some way. Thank you so much, Paul, for having me. Best of luck to all the MSPs out there. Hopefully you guys can grow and scale your business with YouTube ads, and I’ve helped you along the journey to do that.[00:35:59] Speaker A: Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast this week’s.[00:36:04] Speaker B: Recommended book hi, I’m Michelle from I’m your PA, and the book that I recommend is Susan Jeffers. Feel the fear and do it anyway. And the reason I recommend that is sometimes we doubt ourselves completely, but you should just get on and do it. Feel the fear and do it anyway.[00:36:26] Speaker A: Coming up next week. Hi there, it’s David Duffett, and if you want to get more deals over.[00:36:32] Speaker B: The line or you simply want your communications to land even better, especially with non technical people, then join me on Paul’s podcast.[00:36:41] Speaker A: On top of that interview with David next week, I have the most insane idea for you. Even though next week it’s only going to be March, I’m going to suggest that you send some Christmas cards and Christmas presents to your prospects. I’ll explain why next week. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP for MSPs around the world. Paul Green’s MS MS MSP Marketing podcast.

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Episode 223Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week’s show includes:* 00:00 Could you grow your MSP business by buying another one? * 08:39 How everybody benefits from cause related marketing * 12:49 Using social proof to increase sales

Featured guest:Thank you to branding & marketing strategist Chaya Glatt, for joining me to talk about how he MSPs can use social proof to improve the impact of their websites, and convert more leads into clients.

Chaya Glatt is a brand strategist, messaging specialist and copywriter who helps high-performing businesses transform into big-league brands. She’s the creator of the MAD brand strategy formula, international speaker, and developer of Brand Authority, a training program for marketing creatives. Chaya is passionate about creating larger-than-life brands that have a strong emotional bond with their audiences. She has little to no tolerance for creative nonsense and is a strong advocate for goal-focused, data-driven branding and marketing.

Connect with Chaya on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/chaya-glatt-copywriter/

Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Connect with me on LinkedIn: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * In case you missed last week’s episode where I spoke to Craig Fulton about mergers and acquisitions, you can listen to Episode 222 here: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode222/ * Grab yourself a copy of this week’s recommended book, Hack the Buyer Brain: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hack-Buyer-Brain-Kenda-Macdonald/dp/1912713950/

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world, this Paul. Paul. Paul Greens MSP Marketing podcast.[00:00:10] Speaker B: And hello and welcome to another fine podcast. This is what I’ve got lined up for you this week.[00:00:15] Speaker C: Hi, I’m Chaya Glatt. I am the copywriter and brand messaging specialist. I’m going to talk to you about how important it is for MSPs to build credibility on their website. And we’ll talk about how to use social proof to do just that.[00:00:32] Speaker B: And on top of that interview with Chaya later in the show, we’re also going to look at community engagement. Can it be a useful tool to drive new business into your Paul?[00:00:43] Speaker A: Paul Greens MSP marketing podcast.[00:00:47] Speaker B: Let’s start this week by asking a really big question. Could you, should you, would you grow your business by acquiring another MSP? Now, if you listen to last week’s episode, episode two, two, we had a guest, Craig Fulton, and that’s exactly what he was talking about, growing an MSP through acquisition. But I figured we should follow that up this week with asking whether or not that’s really something that you could or should or would do. Have you even thought about acquiring another MSP? Have you perhaps decided? Yeah, this is something I want to do this year. But you’re not quite sure where to go or how to get started. Is it even the right thing for you? Now, I have a tiny, tiny bit of experience in what they call m and a mergers and acquisitions. I sold a business in 2016 and I started to try and buy a number of businesses because I’m not doing it now. But if you go back to some of the early episodes of the podcast, I talk about how I was trying to buy. Well, I think it was last year or the two years ago, I was trying to buy security companies like home burglar alarm companies, that kind of things. I’d previously looked at doing what’s called a roll up. A roll up is where you buy lots of types of businesses and you put them together into one company. I was doing that with veterinary surgeries. And for one reason or another, a lot of these m and a schemes of mine have never actually come off. So I’ve sold one business, but I’ve never actually yet bought something I say yet because that’s kind of my retirement plan now in 1015 years time is to buy a business and to own that business, but not to run it. I think that will be something to do in my sort of late 60s, late sixty s. Yeah, sixty s, seventy s. That’ll see me through to the end, I think something like that, because I don’t want to actually retire. Who wants to retire? Right. You want to keep your old noggin going. Anyway, I’m getting off subject, so it’s something I have looked into. I’ve done a ton of training on it, I’ve spent a ton of money on it. We got as far with some of those deals as actually commissioning lawyers, and then all those deals fell through for a number of different reasons. But one thing I do know from friends who have bought businesses and from just talking to M A experts and people like Craig, is that one of the easier acquisitions to do is when you’re buying something where the company does what you already do, so you buying another MSP is an easier purchase than me going and buying a business that I’ve never been in before, like veterinarians or like security companies. I was trying to do something strategic, whereas what you’re potentially able to do if you buy a competitor is just double the size of your business. Now, there are huge advantages for you doing this, of course, the principal one being is that when you buy another business that does what you do, you have the opportunity for some cost savings. So you might have two psas and you can go down to one psa. You would have a number of other software stuff in your stack. Right. You could just. What’s the word? Put it all down into one thing. Standardize. That’s the word I’m looking for. Thank you. Standardize down into one set of things and potentially get out of some contracts, you might say. Right, well, we’ve got five techs and we’ve just bought four more techs, but we don’t need nine techs across the whole business. So maybe we’d either lose a couple of texts or we’d just wait through natural wastage. We wouldn’t replace a couple of texts. We’ve now got two account managers, we don’t need two account managers, et cetera, et cetera. Right down to. You can close down offices, you can get rid of buildings and whatsoever. So there are lots of efficiencies of scale when you go and buy other MSPs. The process itself is difficult. Now, if you’ve ever sold a business, which obviously you will do one day, it’s kind of like buying or selling a house, but ten times worse. And buying or selling a house is difficult. I don’t know what it’s like where you are, but here in the UK, it’s a very fraught process with lots of legals, and we have like a chain where if you’re buying a house and the person you’re buying, they’re buying a house, and the person they’re buying from is buying a house, and everyone has to exchange on the same day, and everyone has to sort of move on the same day. It’s horrendous, right. And buying a business obviously doesn’t have that kind of chain, but there’s a lot more effort and difficulty involved in something like that. The thing is, I don’t think you should let this put you off. I think as an MSP owner, you’re already used to a high level of hassle. Right? You’re used to complexity, you’re used to a high level of hassle. And I think what you’ve got to look at it is say, right, we’ve got an opportunity here to double the size of our business in one transaction. And that transaction might be a difficult one that takes us ages to do, but it could be a complete game changer for the business. It could be a complete game changer for your life.Suddenly you can go from having 40 clients to having 80 or 100 clients. You don’t have to buy an MSP the same size as you. You could buy something a bit bigger and actually go from like, 40 clients and, I don’t know, 400 users and just suddenly hit 1000 endpoints or something just like that. And that might be your idea of hell, or that might be something that you really want to achieve this year or next year or the year after or whatever is the case. So I think it’s something you certainly should think about. And if it’s ever been there at the back of your mind, the easy way to know whether or not it’s an option now is actually to just go and talk to your competitors. You could send everyone in your city and maybe the next city along, or the next area where you’d like to expand into. It’d be a lot easier to buy a business there than it would to expand. Just send them a message, send them an email, send them a letter in the post. Doesn’t have to be anything difficult. It could literally be just, hi, I’m Paul. I run an MSP like yours in this city. Maybe you’ve heard of me. Maybe you haven’t. Just wanted to let you know, if ever you were thinking of selling up, retiring, or moving on and doing something different, I’d love to buy your business. Please let me know so we can go and have a beer and just discuss it. And you might send out all those messages, you might send out 20 or 30 of those and get nothing. But then another day, like six months time, you could send out the same message again and you get something. People tend to, well, it’s like marketing. I think finding a business to buy is just like marketing. And certainly when I was looking for businesses to buy, I approached it as a marketing exercise. We had no problem finding businesses where the owners were willing to sell. Our problem was actually making the deals happen. That was the problem I came across. I think it would be a lot easier for you. So this time of year is pretty good. People come back in January, a few weeks ago, and some people will have come back and thought, I can’t do another year of this, or I don’t want to do another year of this. Some people will be in a distressed position that they’re just not making enough money from their business and they’re ready to get out of it. You’d be surprised why people sell. Illness, illness and ill health is another reason. And that doesn’t necessarily have to be the owner. It can be someone in the owner’s family as well. And actually, you could be helping someone by buying their business and doing it without any drama and doing it quickly and maybe even employing them as part of that. So they’ve still got an income. There’s all sorts of different reasons that people sell a business, but it all starts with just reaching out to them and saying, hey, if you’re ever thinking of selling, please just give me a call. By the way, I don’t think you need a business broker to do this. I don’t like business brokers. My friend, who buys and sells businesses all the time, actively avoids them because what they do is they’re like estate agents or real estate agents. They whisper things in people’s ears and they tell them their business is worth millions, and it’s not. It’s worth five figures.

They just mess things up. So I wouldn’t use a broker yourself, and I would not bother going to look for listings of businesses for sale. I would just write a note, just message the people that are in your town or the next town that you think might one day sell their business. Remember, it’s not about what you think about their business, about whether they’re willing to sell or not. It’s all about what’s happening in their life and where they are in their stage of growth. If, by the way, you are considering doing this, I would love to hear from you just because I’d love to track your journey. You can email me anytime. And it’s the realme at the end of this. Hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

[00:08:40] Speaker A: Here’s this week’s clever idea.[00:08:43] Speaker B: Here’s something I don’t think we’ve talked about in the podcast before. Could your MSP get involved with some community stuff in a way that not only benefits other people, but actually potentially brings some business into you as well? Actually generates potentially a new client for you? This has a name, it’s called cause related marketing. And you kind of see, I mean, thousands, millions of companies really donate billions to charity every year. And partly they do it to do good, partly they do it to reduce their corporate tax bills, but partly as well, they do it for marketing reasons, cause related marketing. I think there are a number of activities that you can do as an MSP to really benefit your local community that will give you or could potentially give you a good return on investment. And I’m going to highlight three of them in today’s podcast. The first of those is to do some mentoring. Now if you’ve only been in business for like twelve minutes, that’s not really something you can do yet, but it’s perhaps something you could aim to do in the future. But if you’ve been in business a little while longer, then mentoring other people could be a fantastic way of giving back. Actually thinking about it, I suppose your mentoring doesn’t just have to be on being a business owner and running a business, you could mentor people on their tech career as well. So even if you have been in business for twelve years, twelve years, twelve minutes. I assume you’ve been in tech for longer than twelve minutes. So you could mentor other technicians, perhaps involved in charities, people who are supporting charities or something like that. Or as I say, if you’ve been a business owner for a while, why not mentor new people? Setting out in business, that can be an incredibly rewarding thing to do. A second activity you can do is of course to just donate. You can donate old equipment, you can donate things like cables, projectors, old, I’m sure you’ve got tons of old stuff just knocking around, right? I’m involved in the community, in my village, and I was talking to our local vicar the other day who runs the local church, and she was saying they desperately need a projector and a screen and just to sort of bring the technology up to date in the church. And I’ve been able to put her in touch with, well, hoping to put her in touch with some people to get that sorted out. But someone’s three year old tech that they no longer need or want. How many old laptops do you get from your clients that you take away to dispose? And I know that there’s a security element, and I’m sure you’re on top of that. But what if you could then find places, homes for that old tech and donate it in that way so donations don’t have to cost you a lot of money. But remember, you’re touching a lot of old equipment that other people don’t get a chance to get hold of. And then the final thing I think you can do as a cause related marketing activity is actually to go out and speak in the community. And it might be that you go and speak to local know. I don’t know what groups you’d have in your area, but here in the mean outside of the pure business groups like BNI, which is networking, you’d have things like Rotary Club and the table. I think Rotary might be an international thing, but these are clubs that tend to be people who come together to do good. They work to raise money. They work to make projects happen. There are loads of community groups available, right? And you could go and talk to them about tech. Now, the reason that that might give you some return is that you never know who’s in that room. So even though you’re going to talk to a charity or an organization that’s made up of people to help, you never quite know who’s connected to who. And it’s just a great way of expanding. Well, you’re expanding your network at the same time as actually doing some good in your community. To me, that’s an absolute win win.Look, if you want new clients and to create an awesome life for you and for your family, but you’re feeling stuck with your marketing. I have all the answers. In fact, I have all the answers. A simple plan for you to follow with your marketing and a whole ton of white label marketing content, you can see the details of how I can help you directly@mspmarketingedge.com. That’s mspmarketingedge.com.

[00:12:49] Speaker A: Big interview.[00:12:51] Speaker C: Hi, I’m Chaya Glatt, and I’m a copywriter and a brand messaging specialist, which means that I help MSPs like you write the website copy that brings them warm leads who are really close to buying.[00:13:08] Speaker B: Come on, Chaya. We’re like 5 seconds into the interview, and already you’ve given yourself a big, healthy plug there. We do that at the end of the know. So thank you for joining me. On the podcast, I want to talk to you about building trust because building trust with leads and with prospects is so, so essential to, well, develop those prospects, to turn them into actually really good, solid sales appointments and of course, clients that stick with you for 510 15 years. But building trust is also one of the hardest things that you can do within marketing. Tell us a little bit about your background and what you do with business owners to help them build trust.[00:13:45] Speaker C: So my background is on the messaging and the website side of things. So when you think about what your prospects are doing before they even reach out to you is they’re poking around online and they’re looking at your company, they’re looking at your competitors and they’re like, okay, I don’t know what I need. I think I need it. Show me it. Sometimes your customers are not very educated. They don’t even know what they’re looking for. They maybe know that they have a problem that needs fixing and they’re trying to figure out if your company can solve it. So I guess what I do is I bridge that great divide between what your customer is looking for and what you have to offer.[00:14:32] Speaker B: Yeah. And in terms of building trust, what are the sort of the main tools that someone like you or someone else who does exactly what you do? What are the main tools that you would use?[00:14:42] Speaker C: So one of the biggest things that you want to do is make sure you look credible because people judge a book by its cover and you’re in the technology space. So if you have a website that looks like it’s from 30 years ago, then that is going to drain your credibility within the first few seconds that somebody lands on your website. So one of the first things that I would say is take a look at your website right now.Does it look fresh and modern because you are in the technology space and people are judging your innovation, your ability to innovate and to move with technology by how your website looks. So if you look like you’re from 30 years ago, people are going to expect your practices to be from 30 years ago. And that’s not a good look. So take a look at your website, make sure it looks credible, make sure it looks modern day. And that would be number one. And then the second thing would be to look at the messaging like what you’re actually saying on your website.

[00:15:50] Speaker B: So let’s come back to the messaging in a second. Just a note. On websites, you can go and look at 1020 30 MSP websites and they all look very, very similar. They all have. You said it yourself earlier that it’s very hard for the people who are buying from you to look and to see a differentiation and to think that one, I’ve got to speak to that one. You talk about what’s on the website and a lot of technology people make the mistake of thinking they need to put technology onto their website. So we see software screens, we see network cables, we see switching boxes, basically a lot of tech stuff. And this is completely the wrong kind of imaging and the wrong kind of message to send, isn’t it?[00:16:30] Speaker C: Well, it can be. I always say that people look for other people, and images of people convert better than images of technology. So you want to look like an MSP. You don’t want someone to land on your website and think, what do these guys even do? Like, what do they sell? You want that to be clear, so you want to aim for a healthy balance where there’s images of technology and it’s clear that you are an MSP, that this is what you do. But there should also be images that depict the benefit of that technology you want to show and tell a story with the images of these are businesses that are getting work done, that are beating their own competition, that are achieving their own goals because they have all these services in place and they have checked all those boxes and they’re doing it so well. So you want to make sure that your images are telling the story of, yes, we do technology, we set up the hardware, we do everything we need to do, but here’s what’s going to happen because of that. This is who you guys are going to be because you’ve worked with us.[00:17:37] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly that. So it’s almost like we’re powering our clients, aren’t we? We, the MSP are powering them to achieve amazing things because we’re taking hold of their technology and looking after it so they don’t have to. Now, if we come and look at the messaging again, a place where MSPs often get stuck, is that at the big picture level, they do exactly the same thing as all their direct competitors. And all MSPs do really do the same thing. Now, they do it in different ways and they use different text acts and they have different nuances to it. But from the prospect’s point of view, from the leads point of view, they all do things the same way. How do you tackle the messaging for an MSP when you know that broadly you’re doing the same thing as everyone else?[00:18:18] Speaker C: So there’s two different ways that, and you should use both of them that you’re going to stand out in your messaging. One is just tell the message better than everyone else is doing it and say it more clearly and say it more directly and provide that education right there on your website so that by the time the prospect comes to you, they understand exactly what they need and why they need you to do it. Right. So even if you’re doing the same thing as everybody else, you can do a better job talking about it, using the language that your customer understands, using the voice of your customer, and finding those key pain points that they talk about, that they care about, that they think about, and not necessarily just jumping right into your services. Here’s the things we do. Your customers might not be looking for those three big packages that you’re selling because they don’t know that yet. All they know is we are not doing things as efficiently as we should be or our team has grown and our technology hasn’t been able to keep up. So make sure that you’re addressing those pain points on your website before you start pitching those services which your customer may not yet understand. That’s the telling the story better part of things.[00:19:45] Speaker B: And essentially you’re taking what you do and you’re finding ways to make it more relevant to people who don’t understand what it is that you do. That makes perfect sense to me. Let’s talk finally, Kaya, about social proof. So could you just explain for us what social proof is and what the main forms are that we demonstrate? Social proof?[00:20:03] Speaker C: Yes. Okay. Social proof is huge. Big, enormous. So social proof means here’s how we prove that we can do what we promise we’re going to do, right? So if we say that we can help businesses from 100 to 200 employees, you’re thinking, prove it. How do I know it’s true? Right? Social proof proves it. So by saying things like, we are trusted by name drop, right. This big company of 300 to 400 employees, then, now you believe me if I tell you I can help companies of 100 to 200 employees. So that’s in a nutshell what social proof is.[00:20:48] Speaker B: And that name drop, what would be the best way to do that? Would you do that as a testimonial, as a review, or perhaps as a case study? Or all three.[00:20:56] Speaker C: Oh, good one. Okay, so what people tend to think of when they hear social proof is testimonials, right? Let’s just slap a couple of testimonials on the website. We’ll put them all together in tiny words in a carousel that flashes across the screen so quickly that you can’t even read them.That’s the traditional social proof that you’re seeing being used. But what really happens is that social proof is not doing anything for you because first of all, nobody’s reading it. Second of all, people tend not to believe testimonials. Unfortunately, there are some companies that make them up. So what you want to do is when you use testimonials, make them credible. Include a headshot of the person who said it, include the person’s name and their business name and make it readable. Keep it static on the page instead of in a carousel that’s just zooming past so no one can even read it. Make it specific. Instead of having three paragraphs about how happy they were with your managed service providers, how happy they were with the services, how happy they were with everything, keep it to one to three sentences on one really specific point that you know is important to your customers. So, for example, if you know your customers are worried, what if we have a problem and how fast is someone going to come out to help us? Right? That’s something that comes up all the time with your customers and you want to make sure that they see the answer to that question on your website. So what you’re going to do is you’re going to have a testimonial from John Hancock, from ABC company with a picture of him saying, we had a question and the team was here within 20 minutes. Right. That one to three sentence testimonial is much more powerful than a three paragraph testimonial about nothing.

So you want to be strategic with how you’re using those testimonials.

[00:23:10] Speaker B: So this is great. And this is actually really simple. If we boil this entire interview down to something you’re saying here, which is find out the people you want to sell to find out what their fears are, what their wants are, what their needs are, and then make all the messages directly. Talk to those fears, those needs and those wants.[00:23:29] Speaker C: Absolutely.In a really strong website that’s focused on converting the reader into a customer, you’re going to see all the messaging is layered with social proof. So every time you say something or make claim, you talk about your selling points. There’s going to be social proof right afterwards, backing up that point and making it credible. And like you just said before, paul, it’s not just testimonials. You can also use the name dropping, right, those logos in a trusted buy section. You can also use case studies. So telling little stories, mini case studies. It doesn’t have to be like a four page document. It can be a short story about a customer. Here’s what their problem was, here’s why they reached out to us. Here’s what we did for them, and here’s the cool stuff that happened afterward. So just a short success story that helps build your credibility and also helps the customer imagine themselves in that situation. Like, hey, we can have this fixed in a week from now with these guys. Why wouldn’t we do that?

[00:24:38] Speaker B: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Look, thank you so much for your time. I know you gave yourself a cheeky little advert at the beginning, but let’s do the proper plug that all our guests get at the end of their interview. So tell us again what you do for MSPs and what’s the best way to get in touch with you.[00:24:53] Speaker C: So what I do is I actually help you figure out exactly what needs to be on your website. And I talk to your customers and I interview them. I get inside their heads. I pull out those juicy tidbits that make amazing testimonials that we can use for credibility on your website. And then I write the copy that increases those conversions. You can get in touch with me on my website. It’s kayaglass.com, Paul Green’s MSP marketing podcast.[00:25:22] Speaker A: This week’s recommended book.[00:25:24] Speaker D: Hi everyone. I’m Jim Haney, vice president of marketing at Novatech. And the book that I recommend checking out is hack the buyer brain by Kenda McDonald. So what’s really neat about this book is Kenda has a background in forensic psychology and she shows us how to apply psychology to the buyer journey so you can get very strategic about your buyer journey creation and as you map it out for your different personas, coming up next week.[00:25:51] Speaker E: Hi, my name is Ben Jones and I’m a YouTube ad expert that’s created millions of dollars in sales across a wide range of industries. And I’m going to be talking on Paul’s podcast, showing you how you can grow and scale your MSP with YouTube ads.[00:26:02] Speaker B: And on top of that interview with Ben, we’re going to talk about fixing your follow up failure. When a prospect says no today, they absolutely do not mean no forever. Join me, meet next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.[00:26:19] Speaker A: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world Paul Green’s MSP marketing podcast.

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Episode 222Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 Staff 'red flags' you need to address * 14:50 3 ways to make your staff feel special * 23:07 Making the most of M&A

Featured guest:Thank you to Craig Fulton, Advisor at Evergreen, for joining me to talk about mergers and acquisitions in the MSP ecosystem.As Advisor, Evergreen Services Group, Craig Fulton aims to help MSP’s succeed in growing their businesses and exceed their goals. He credits his 30 years in the technology sector, including time spent as an engineer and ConnectWise leader, with helping him understand what IT service providers want and need to be successful.A prior 16-year ConnectWise veteran, he held a number of positions during his tenure with the company, including Chief Product Officer and Chief Customer Officer. He also co-created ConnectWise CloudConsole and authored Path to Success, a best practices guide about how to run a successful IT service provider business. Before that, he worked for Accenture as a technology consultant and served five years in the U.S. Marine Corps.Craig is widely recognized for his contributions to the technology industry. He was named a Channel Partners Top Gun 51 channel executive in 2019, a 4x CRN Channel Chief, and a member of the MSPMentor 250 list in 2014. Craig also holds a number of patents related to business management technology. He earned his bachelor’s degree in business management from the University of South Florida and an Executive Certificate from UC Berkeley Haas School of Business.The Ohio native now lives in Clearwater, FL, with his wife Jillian and three sons. When he’s not at work, Craig is spending time with his family, traveling, or working on cars.Connect with Craig on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigmfulton/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Connect with me on LinkedIn: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, On Recruitment: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Recruitment-Mitch-Sullivan/dp/1999929306/

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast. Look at that. We have reached episode 222. Here's what I got in store for you this week.[00:00:15] Speaker B: Hi, I'm Craig Fulton with Evergreen, and we're a holding company focused on MNA in the MSP market. If you want to hear more details on that, get tuned in.[00:00:24] Speaker A: And on top of that interview with Craig later on in the show, we've got a bit of a staff special going off this week. We're going to be talking about three ways you can help your staff feel special working for you.Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast. But let's kick off this kind of mini staff special this week by talking about some nasty surprises that your staff can kind of drop on you. Now, I don't know if you have staff yet or not, but it is inevitable, unfortunately, if you want to build a real business, that you have to have staff at some point. And my definition of a real business is a business that lets you take a four week holiday, a four week vacation, without actually having to switch on your laptop or deal with anything. No emails, no messages, no calls, nothing. Four weeks away and you come back and the business has not just survived, it has thrived without you. And you can achieve much of that through outsourcing. There are many great outsourced help desks out there, but it's just inevitable. Any business, or the vast majority of businesses, and the vast majority of MSP businesses, you need to have some level of staff, because you can't do all of this yourself. And anyone that has staff knows that staff are a bit of a double edged sword. I remember being a busy 80 hours a week business owner back in, like, 2006, which is when I took on my first member of staff. Right. My first year, when I did everything on my own, sat in my spare bedroom, I made like, 80 grand profit. So it's about $95,000 profit because I had no costs. I was sat at home and I had no staff, but I was working 80 hours a week. And obviously that's how you have a stroke. So that couldn't continue. So my second year in business back then, I took on a member of staff, which required taking on an office. So that second year, we made virtually nothing. And I naively thought, oh, hang on, I'm buying 40 hours of someone's time, therefore that's going to free up 40 hours of my time. And we all know it does not work like that, because first of all, you don't get 40 hours from your staff, do you? You get like 25 hours from them. And then, of course, you've got to invest every time you bring someone else on board. You've got to invest your own time in training them, in managing them, in sorting out their problems. We could do a whole year of podcasts on staff, but we're not going to. We're just going to talk about it today. So let's talk about some of the kind of the most common staff bombs that get dropped on employers. This isn't just within the MSP world, this is universal to all businesses. But let's just talk about some of the most common ones and what you can do about them. The first of them is coming in late often. So a member of your team who is late now and again, it doesn't matter. In fact, they will beat themselves up about it more. My daughter, we were late to school yesterday, so I take her to school every morning. We pick a friend up and we were late, and it was my fault because I forgot a bag. And we were halfway there when she suddenly said, did you pick up that bag? I didn't. So we had to come back and she was more bothered about being late than I was, which I thought, this is a great attitude. She's a teenager and there are many, many things that are wrong right now. In fact, from her point of view, everything is wrong with the world. But to see her genuinely getting annoyed and upset because she was going to be five minutes late for school, I thought that was good, because that's a good work ethic, right? So someone being late now and again doesn't really matter. It's if they're late on a regular basis, and it could be that they're late every Monday morning. It could be because people who throw sickies are often late on a Monday morning when we'll talk in a second about the cause of that. But you know, that's a red flag, right? It could be that they do it two, three days in a row, or that they always just.We start at 09:00 a.m. I want you guys ready to go at 09:00 a.m. We have a meeting at nine, two. And they always walk in like 10 seconds, just 1 minute past nine or 10 seconds before the meeting or whatsoever. So coming in late often is a. It's a sign of disrespect. And that may be an old fashioned attitude. I know I'm nearly 50 and I do feel old fashioned, as I'm now talking to sort of 25 and 30 year old business owners, that makes me feel old, but I try and have a young attitude. But I genuinely believe that coming in late is disrespectful. And that's not just coming into the office. I think dialing in late to meetings is also disrespectful. I try very hard to be on time for everything all the time, technology problems aside. And by that I mean the video call not working. But when someone does that on a regular basis, and no one on my team does that, because I would address this with them, even joining a video call late regularly is disrespectful. It's disrespectful of everyone else's time. Your technician, who walks in at nine, two in the morning, is disrespecting you, and they are disrespecting the other people, the other members of the team. And here's the thing. Like all the things we're just about to talk about, the rest of your team will be aware of this problem. They will talk privately, in private chats and in the kitchen, if you've got an office, about that person being late. And just as with all of these things, you need to deal with this, because it's not just a problem about that person who's committing the crime or committing the disrespect, it's actually about the whole team. And they have to see that you take positive action and you pick up and do something when something is not quite right. Does that make sense? Yeah. So I think with this coming in late problem, you just have to talk to someone. It's when you spot the pattern, when it becomes regular or when you're suddenly aware. Hang on a second. That person is always late and you have to sit them down and you have to make them realize this is a big deal without being too heavy. But often it's about drilling down into why. Why? And in fact, that can be the opening question. Why are you always late? I'm not late. I'm here just in time for the meeting. Everyone else is here, ready to start work at 09:00 a.m. You wander in just before nine and your computer isn't even switched on, you're not even logged on, you haven't even checked teams before our meeting at two and it's past nine. That is late. Why? And you want to get down to what are the reasons? If it's, oh, it's traffic. Well, that's not the reason, isn't it? Is it that once a month or once every six month. Massive traffic jam. That's unavoidable. But if they're always late because of traffic, the real problem is they're not leaving home early enough. It's like people who are always late on a Monday or take Mondays, throw sickies on Mondays. That's gaming, isn't it? That's they're having too much fun on a Sunday or they don't want the weekend to end. And for me, that's a massive, massive red flag. Which again, I don't have anything like that with my team, but if I did, I would address it, because you have to address that early on. So someone coming in late, often, the way you fix it is you sit with them, you talk with them and you say, why? And you ask them to commit to doing better. And if they commit to doing better and don't do better, I do believe you have to escalate it. It's the kind of what's known as broken windows theory. Broken windows theory. And I can't remember where I read this. I have a memory that it was used in New York in the reduce crime. But broken windows theory is where if you've got an empty building at some point and it's just sat empty, it's a perfectly good building, it's sat empty. At some point, some kids are going to come along and be like, oh, there's no one around, grab some stones, smash some windows, right? Cycle off quickly, come back the next day, the windows are still broken. So they'll smash a few more windows, come back the next day, all the windows are still broken. No one is checking the building, right? And what happens is the amount of crime escalates on that building. So it goes from broken windows to the door being broken in to, I guess, people going to sleep in there, like, I guess, homeless people, drug users, and inevitably, eventually the building burns down, right?This actually happened to an old house, an old abandoned house that's in a village near here, about ten minutes away. And exactly that, we watched it deteriorate over a six month period and then it was burnt down one day. Anyway, the thing they did in New York with this was they cracked down on people not paying for the subway. So they had all of New York police, all of them. It was jaywalking and subway crimes, really minor crimes. And the theory was that if people see that we are all over the minor crimes, then the number of major crimes will drop. And I'm pretty sure that that's what happened. I'd have to go and google that to check anyway. But it's exactly the same broken windows theory on coming in late. Often it potentially will lead to other things, especially if your team see that you're not dealing with it right. Another one. Then another problem that your staff will drop on you is too many private phone calls or these days, I guess it's too much excessive messaging.You know, when they're messaging personally because they're on their phone, unless you allow them to put like WhatsApp and the other messaging apps they use on their work computer, I guess you wouldn't be too keen with that. But it's one thing, isn't it? If they're messaging their colleagues on teams versus they're doing their own WhatsApp. And we all talk to our people, don't we? Our friends, our family throughout the day. That's just how it is. It's not like the 90s, when I started work, when you couldn't take a phone call from your mum. When you're at work because you're supposed to be working these days, your mum can WhatsApp you or whatever. It's when it becomes excessive. And I think it's at the point that you notice it because remember, you're the boss. And even if you sit there with them, you don't notice things before the rest of your team do. So at the point that you notice it's an excessive problem, it's a massively excessive problem and you have to do something about it. And the solution for that is the same, which is talking to them. Why is it that they've just met someone and they're messaging them all day? Is it that there's a problem?Is it that they're just disrespecting everyone else and they're not sort of keeping their end of it? And obviously you have different things. If there's a problem, there's a house move that they're trying to arrange. That's a short term thing, isn't it? You can help them with that. You can say, let me give you some time during the day to go and do that. I think those one off events, you can actually be a better boss and really help them by helping them through problems, short term, temporary problems. But obviously, when it's that long term thing, you've got to deal with it. Next we've got pilfering and theft. Now, these are two different things. Pilfering is when the postit notes accidentally go, hang on, let me put that in. Speech marks. The postit notes accidentally go home. We've all done it. You've raided the stationery cupboard. Right? When you work for someone. I did. Everyone does it. That's probably why not having an office, because we are a completely remote business now. Not having an office is probably why our profits aren't hit by postit note theft. But there is a massive difference between pilfering and theft. And you know where your line will be for that? I guess for you it's around equipment.If a Bluetooth keyboard goes missing, and that's 40 pounds, $40, is that pilfering or is that theft? To me, that's theft, because that's a piece of hardware that could be sold to a client, obviously. Computer, that's theft. A cable, if they take a. I nearly said an RS two three two cable there. Why would that even pop in my head? How do I even know what an RS two three two cable is anyway? If they take a USB cable home, is that pilfering? Probably, yes, because it's like a $3 item. But what's the difference between the two?[00:11:32] Speaker B: Pilfering?[00:11:32] Speaker A: I think happens in every business. But again, you've just got to keep a check on it. And that, to me, is where you talk to the group and you make light of it. You say, postit notes consumption in this business has gone up by 247% this year, and yet I never see postits around the office. So please, can you just all just bring it down a little bit with the random stealing of things? Make it funny, make it a joke. But you get the message across. Theft, of course, has to be dealt with one on one. And I genuinely believe if someone pinches a $40 item, you give them a warning.Again, this is all about setting boundaries, isn't it? Isn't this.It's the same with children as it is with your life partner, as it is with your staff. It's people. You have to set boundaries with people. And I think people need to understand where they are. If someone nicks a computer, then that's a police matter. I do believe that. But obviously you'll have your own line for that. Just remember, what's the phrase I'm looking for here? The behavior you tolerate is the behavior that will be returned to you. If someone nicks a computer and you find out, even six months down the line and you do nothing about it, guess what? You're tolerating theft from your business. And they're not just stealing a computer, they're stealing money from you. If they put their hand in a till, if you had a cash register and they put their hand in it and took out $1,000 and took that home. You wouldn't accept that, right? Because that's cash. Well, a computer is cash as well. It's just cash that's been turned into plastic and metal and stuff. Final one, then. Final common problem that employees will drop on you. Body odor. And this is a horrendous one. I've talked to so many MSPs about this, where they have a technician with a body odor problem. It's a really hard one to tackle, and I don't have a definitive answer on that. I think there are lots of different ways you can do it, and it depends on the dynamic in your business. Sometimes a trusted person talking to them can be the best way to do it. Like, a lot of MSPs I know have an office mom. So it's an older woman who comes in to do like an admin role or some kind of marketing role, but they are a bit older, so they take on that kind of mom role. They're just looking out for some of the younger staff. And that kind of person can very, very easily just take someone aside, just kind of in the kitchen, they're making a coffee together and just say to them, have a little chat and say, well, this thing, I wouldn't even know the words they would use because that's not me. That's not the thing I'm comfortable with. But a business mom, an office mom, would know how to do something like that. Or maybe you can have a word, but you just need to be really careful not to offend someone because no one wants to be told you stink, which, by the way, are the words you wouldn't use. But no one wants to hear that, right? Because we don't know. We smell.So having a sniff there just to check, but I wouldn't know, right? Because I'm smelling my own body odor all the time. And this is the problem. The other thing I think is you can just use peer pressure. I mean, you read things, don't you? Like, let's leave cans of deodorant on their desk. I think that's horrendous. I think, however it's dealt with, whether it is just colleagues mentioning it, or having a business mum mention it, or even doing a health drive and talking to everyone about exercise and personal hygiene and stuff, you've got to do it in a way where the person who's got that problem has an opportunity to go and fix that problem personally and privately. Nothing is worse than being publicly identified and shamed for something you weren't even aware of. Here's this week's clever idea.Right now we've done the bad things that staff will drop on you. Let's do three ways to help your staff feel special working for you. And there's no gimmicks in this. I'm not going to talk about you giving them free stuff or having a slide to go from the second floor down to the first floor. Nothing like that. Because I think those things are just gimmicks. I really do. I'm talking about the things that actually make a difference to them. And it starts with looking at your staff and understanding, why do they work for you? They do not work for you just for money. That is an important part of it. Don't pay them for three months and see how many of them turn up. Tip. It won't be many. So money is an important thing, but very, very few staff just work for you just for the money alone. What they're actually looking for is development. They're looking for their skills to grow. They're looking to have fun, right? So I think the three things that you can do to make them feel special working for you are these. And I'll go into them in more detail in a second. But it's. Number one is some form of appraisal, and I don't mean a formal appraisal, but appraisals. Number two is training, and number three is to celebrate stuff. So let's look at appraisals. So by appraisals, I don't mean those horrendous formal sitting down. There's all sorts of formats, aren't there? There's the 360 degree appraisals where someone above you and someone below you and colleagues at the same level of you, appraise you horrendous. There's the formal appraisals that are done, where you sit down with someone and you talk about things. Those are all tools used by corporations where someone, a vice president of something, somewhere, needs 200 scores to present to the board to show that they've improved their staff, whatever level, by 17.4% this year. It's all nonsense. It's not real. When I say real, I mean real for businesses like ours, where it's you and me and a bunch of people and we work with. Right. For that kind of stuff, formal appraisals are pointless. They really are. No one enjoys them.In fact, if you're the rare person who enjoys them, maybe you should be in HR instead of it. That was a joke. But most people don't enjoy them. They're a pain for you, they're a pain for the staff member versus having a chat. But a structured chat, a structured chat with three questions, such as, what's going well right now, what's not going so well? What should you do differently? Imagine taking all of your team out for a beer. Like you and them go out for a beer, depending how many people you've got, this could be bad for your liver. But you and them go out for a beer once every two, three months, or a coffee or somewhere out of the building. You just go for a walk, right? Go for a walk together. That's cool. And it's not a formal appraisal. You don't call it that at all. It's just a chat. But the chat is very much structured. Let me say those three things again, because this is the world's most effective structure for finding out what's happening with your team. What's going well right now, what's not going so well, what should you be doing differently? That's it. And obviously, you don't have to use those same words all the time, but what an amazing framework for you talking to a member of your team, because it gets them talking about what they're proud about, gets them talking about things that aren't so good, and then you kind of set a bit of an action. What should you do differently? Well, actually, I'd like to do this and this. Great. Why don't you do it? Come back to me, email me in the next two days to tell me how that's going to happen. Something like that would be great. So appraisals are great, training is definitely great. And now we're talking primarily about your techs here. But this does apply to all of your team. Everyone should have an opportunity for training. And training has lots of different kind of formats, doesn't it? So we don't do a lot of formal training here in our business, but we do educate ourselves and learn and develop on things. For example, at the beginning of last year, at the beginning of 2023, I was saying we, as a business, we want to get better at YouTube. And we spent, I think it was about $4,000 on a YouTube training course. And me and Simon and James, the three of us, we work on our podcasts and all of our videos and our YouTube, and we did this training together. And I'll be honest, they did the work. I just kind of jumped in and reviewed the notes on it. But then we had some meetings and we'd sit into discussions and it has led to us changing what we do with our YouTube. And it's early days and we've got to get better at it, because everything is a constant school lesson, isn't it? Everything you've got to get better at. But that wasn't formal training, that was a really fun course that we did, which then triggered us off down a different direction. And we're still learning. Every single time we do a video we learn something new off it. It's brilliant. But that's training. That's actually fun training. People think of training as sitting doing an online course or sitting in a classroom. I can't think of anything worse. Maybe that's a personality thing. I don't like sitting in formal education settings. I like interesting training that engages me. I like going to seminars and I like big raw stuff, or working in a group and watching some videos and discussing it. That works for me. You've got to find what works best for your team. And of course each individual person is going to have a different thing. One of the really cool ideas, an MSP I was working with years ago and I can't remember if this was, I think this was either Ben Schneider or Ollie Denhard. I think that's your surname, Ollie. I just know you as Ollie.And if it was one of you guys, just reach out to me and let me know. Or if I'm talking about something here and you gave me the idea and I haven't mentioned you, reach out to me and I'll give you the credit in the podcast because you deserve it. They did a really cool thing where they set a budget for their staff every year, and the budget was, they might say to them, right, you've got $1,000 for training this year. So you can choose, you get to choose what technical training you do, up to the value of $1,000.But you must spend that money and do that training this year. And if you don't, you don't get a pay rise next year. So let's think about that. So you give someone a budget, you let them pick the training, so they're picking the things they're most interested in and they must spend the money or they don't get the pay rise, so they must do the training because you want all your techs to be regularly doing training, right? If they choose that training and then don't do it, that's a problem. So they've got to get sign off from you on the training skills they pick. And the reason for that is you don't want them going and training on a skill that you would never use in the MSP, but would allow them to get a new, better job elsewhere next year. Right? So you might not touch servers. They want to train on servers and do some server skills course. Obviously you would put a kibosh on that. You would say no to that. But you get the idea. And I think it's such a wonderful thing. Essentially this creates a culture of training within the business where they have to tell you, this is where I'm going to invest my cash, your cash. This is where I'm going to invest into the training and this is the training I did. And they have to give you kind of a summary afterwards. Maybe they have to make a five minute presentation back to the team when they've done some training.It kind of turns the whole culture of the place into a culture of training, which is great. Then the final one is celebration. Celebration is easy. You celebrate everything. You celebrate birthdays, you celebrate anniversaries, you celebrate wins. You commiserate losses. If a client comes on board, you celebrate. If you lose a client, you commiserate. But you turn everything into a celebration and just do a variety of different things. One day it could be pizzas, another day it could be, let's all go to that mexican restaurant. Another day it could be, you guys get to go home at three today. I'm going to cover the help desk. It could be. Why doesn't everyone take Monday off? There's all sorts of different ways you can celebrate. And never forget that the tiny little things can have the biggest impact. Something as simple as Friday afternoon, 03:00 p.m. Hey guys, it's been a great week. Phones are really quiet. Everyone go home. By the way, I bought you all a four pack of beer. Or for those of you that don't drink, here's some ginger beer. Whatever. Here's some seven up. What an amazing boss you would be. What would that cost you? $20. Right? And 2 hours on the phone hoping and praying that no one calls up with a ransomware attack. But you get the idea. Yeah, that would make you the world's best boss if you did something as simple as that. Paul's. Paul's blatant plug. Latent plug. You know, I just mentioned that YouTube course right there. If you want to see the latest kind of YouTube videos we're putting out, which we are deliberately making edutainment, we're trying to entertain you while educate you about growing your MSP. Just go on to YouTube.com slash MSP marketing.[00:23:09] Speaker B: Hello, I'm Craig Fulton. I'm an advisor at Evergreen, and my job is to make sure that MSPs get the most value out of their business.[00:23:17] Speaker A: Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. Craig. You are on a list of people who keep getting recommended to me, and it's been great to finally get you onto the show because you are someone with a very long reach back into the world of MSPs, and I know you're doing some very exciting stuff going forward with the MSP. You're currently working with Evergreen and particularly m a activity, mergers and acquisition within the sphere in the US. So we'll talk about that in a little bit. Let's, first of all, start by looking back at what you have done. So for those MSPs who are thinking, hey, I know this guy's name. I remember this guy. Tell us a bit about your background and why someone would know you.[00:23:56] Speaker B: Yeah, they probably know me from my time at Connectwise. But what people may not know is I did get my start in tech in the mid 90s, took the similar path that a lot of people took, got certifications. I called it pay my dues at a big help desk for eight years, and then landed at an MSP called Connectwise in Tampa. Was working there a couple years, met Arnie Bellini, and the fun began.I started implementing the software, supporting it, became chief product officer at Connectwise for a few years, managing the product development and go to market. And then the last four years of the company was the chief customer officer, running support, customer success, implementation. And people may have seen me from the big stage at it nation, too.[00:24:42] Speaker A: Well, that's just crazy. Absolutely crazy. So you were right there at the very beginning. That must have been a hell of a ride for you.[00:24:48] Speaker B: Yeah, it was. When I started, I think there was about 30 people at the company. And then when I switched to the software side with Arnie, we had about 400, 500 partner companies. And now when I left, I think it was probably over 20,000. So it was quite a ride. I loved it.[00:25:07] Speaker A: That's great. And what's your sort of favorite thing as you look back on that journey? What's the thing that you're either most proud of or was the most fun for you?[00:25:15] Speaker B: Yeah. The community. I learned a lot from working with IT service companies, helping them transition and manage services.I owe all the success I have to all of those MSP owners and technicians and finance people that educated me while I and then gave the education back. So the community was probably my most noteworthy.[00:25:38] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And do you think that's the thing that a lot of people still remember you? And I'm talking about you as if you're dead, which is awful because obviously you're not.[00:25:46] Speaker B: You're live here on the podcast.[00:25:48] Speaker A: But you know what I mean, though, when people look back, because sometimes when you vanish from a big name like Connectwise, and we'll talk about why you left and what you moved on to do in a second, but when you disappear and people are like, oh, that guy's moved on. We love dealing with him. We love seeing him on stage. And then you kind of do get forgotten, don't you, quite quickly. People's minds are very fickle for that kind of thing.As you look back. Is that the thing that you think people are most likely to remember you for?[00:26:14] Speaker B: I think a lot of people would remember me as someone that just delivered on what I said.They could rely on me to pick up the phone, to answer the emails. My mother was a librarian growing up in the library. I just had that service oriented coaching the most influential years of my life. So when I got into tech, I've just always been a servant to people and want to help, and I think I'm known for that. Right. And when people see me at conferences, they're like, that's the guy you can go to to get things done. So I'm pretty proud of that.[00:26:47] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's such a cool positioning to have to be that guy.And I'm kind of looking more for your opinions on this. And let's label this clearly as just an opinion. As that business grew and became the force that we know it as today, how did it change? Because I'm guessing businesses like that that become something bigger than I guess anyone ever thought they would become. How does it change and how does that sort of affect you on a day to day basis?[00:27:17] Speaker B: Yeah. The change was really around the business transformation we were doing for companies.We never really saw ourselves as a software company. We saw ourselves as a company that does business transformation, get into it services, help them scale, help them convert to managed services if that's their path. And we just had a tremendous trajectory. Right. The escape velocity took off. And I think one of the biggest challenges during that is growth. Right.You're trying to keep up with the demand that's coming in, which is a great thing, but it does make it hard to scale when the numbers are accelerating like that. And my advice to anyone, whether they have a SaaS company or an MSP is be ahead of that. Do the best you can. I just led a session at a conference this week. It build it about operational sustainability, because I've lived through a lot of those pains and learned some things there. But the biggest challenge is just keeping up with that. Right. And making sure that people always feel like they're getting a great experience.[00:28:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I can imagine. And there aren't many people who get to be part of something like that, so it must have been a hell of an experience for you. So tell us why you left Connectwise and what the plan was when you did that.[00:28:34] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm pretty open about this. It's very personal, but mental health is something that we hear about in the news and people talk about. I had been struggling for a couple of years with, I think Covid kind of knocked me back. I had grown at Connectwise to feel that my value was in leading people and being present and in front of people. And when we all started going home, I was really challenged with, what is my purpose every day? Where am I adding value anymore? And I'd kind of slipped into a dark place. And as I evaluated that with my thought, you know, it's probably time to take a little bit of a break. And Jason McGee, the CEO of Connectwise, phenomenal person to work with, he was always supportive of me. And when I made the decision, like, hey, I think I just need a change. 16 years is a long time. I think a lot of people agree. Like, that's pretty admirable. And, yeah, it makes sense that to try something else. So I took some time off to figure out what that was. Yeah.[00:29:36] Speaker A: And Bravo to you, and thank you for being so open about that on the podcast. I know you've spoken about it elsewhere. You're right.Let's be honest. We've got an industry here that's very, very heavily skewed towards men, often, sometimes sort of more middle aged men and the kind of people that don't like to talk about mental health. And even in the seven years that I've been here, I've seen that the subject of mental health come up more and more. But I still feel there's so much further we can go, and there's so much more that we can all do to support all of everyone's mental health. There's always someone, you know, suffering. It's just, you don't know that they're in trouble.[00:30:15] Speaker B: Right. And sometimes it's just a simple thing of just talk about it a lot of people want to hold it in, and I did because I was a little embarrassed. But then when I finally started talking about it with my team and peers and friends, like, hey, man, I just see the negative in everything anymore.I don't know what to do to get out of this.So, yeah, that's why anybody struggling right now, that's what I'd say, is just don't be afraid to be vulnerable.[00:30:41] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. You and I need a virtual hug right now. We need to do some virtual backslapping. Right.I would do the actual movements because I'm worried my camera focus is going to go.There we go. Consider yourself virtual hugged. Thank you.Post connect wise, then, you've had this insane 16 year journey. It's been a hell of a joyride for you, I can see. And how do you follow that up? What do you do next?[00:31:12] Speaker B: Right? Yeah.I love stories. I consider myself a storyteller, and I always love hearing someone's story. And for my story, I thought, this feels great. I got into tech. I worked on a help desk. I tried to do my own thing, found myself in an MSP, helped others become MSPs. And now it just felt like I've seen so many people work so hard on their business, provide great jobs for their friends and people in their community, enable businesses in their communities. I want to make sure they get the financial payout they deserve. And it just feels like the natural progression of the next thing for me was okay. I've met thousands of MSPs, hundreds I have very close relationships with. And I laugh because I just think of all the stories of mountain climbing with people sleeping in tents and snowboarding. And I just felt like, yeah, I want to help them get that big payout. Right. And more than just money, financial freedom, it does help.There's so many options out there. And I felt like I want people to know what those are.[00:32:26] Speaker A: And so what did you do with that?[00:32:28] Speaker B: Yeah, someone I met along the way, I was really close with. He had sold his company to Evergreen, and he said, you should check them out. And I was like, I don't know. We'll see. I have some ideas of Christmas tree farming, and I don't know if I want to do tech. So I did reach out to Ramsey Sayyun at Evergreen. He's a co founder and started talking to him. And as we talked over the months, it started to feel like a good fit and something I got excited about. And so I joined the company in May to get the word out.[00:32:59] Speaker A: Fantastic. So tell us what Evergreen is, let's assume that everyone listening to this hasn't heard that name before.[00:33:06] Speaker B: Yeah, Evergreen is a holding company. So think about the Berkshire Hathaway model of doing business right, acquiring companies to hold them forever. And I think that's what differentiates it from a lot of the other models that are out there. And I'm not saying it's the only one, but I think it's a great option for MSPs. We acquire businesses, again, hold forever. Right. Long term planning, so people don't make short term decisions that may harm the business. We retain the brand, we retain the leadership. We really get focused on the customers. We keep the tools and the processes, everything in place. But we work together to help that business grow.And it's a very unique way that it's set up. Some owners decide to leave when they sell, some decide, I'm going to stay on for a year or two, some longer. So there's a lot of options and what we can do here. But what really resonates with me, my personality and everything I've done is just preservation of that business that so much effort has gone in to build. I think that's important. And I feel like that's what a lot of people are looking for.[00:34:13] Speaker A: Yeah. So when the owner joins Evergreen, whether they choose to stay or leave, the business keeps its name, it keeps its staff, it keeps its premises, but it's now part of something bigger. Is that how it works?[00:34:24] Speaker B: That's right.And a lot of people ask, like, wait, how do you manage all that? Because we have over 70 MSPs now globally and growing, and we put them into regional groups and think of them as like mega peer groups. This industry is very familiar with a peer group model.So in North America, we've got an eastern peer group that includes Canada. We have a southern and a western with like 20 MSPs in each group. And there's a small operating team there with a CEO, a CFO, a growth vp, some analysts, some talent people, and they all work together. It's an opt in kind of thing. Nothing is forced. They work together. Some examples of some things they do is build marketing engines that benefit their group work together on cross selling services from one MSP to another. It's really fascinating to watch and I'm just thrilled to be a part of it.[00:35:20] Speaker A: Yeah, I bet. I mean, that's a beautifully unique model. And I sold a business, it was outside of the channel. I sold a marketing business back in 2016. And actually within six months, the name of that business had gone and the staff that I'd spent years building up and protecting had been decimated. And as a business owner, you do have more of a vested interest in the longevity of your baby than it's nice to get the money, it's nice to get the payday. But there's also six months down the line. If you can't look your old clients in the face because what you built over a decade has been taken apart in front of you, that's actually kind of a very sad thing. So I think this is a wonderful model. So what's your job? Obviously, your role is getting word out. Do you go and meet with MSP owners who are thinking of exiting, or do you just get to do cool stuff like appear on podcasts?[00:36:15] Speaker B: I get to do cool stuff like, I actually love my job. They say if you love your job, you'll never work a day in your life. It really just feels like me with a good work life balance too. So what I get to do is get the brand of Evergreen out, get the word out.I never saw myself as a networker until I got this position realizing, wait. I actually do know a lot of people and I've been reaching out to some long term relationships and I do my best to make sure it doesn't come across as salesy. I really just want to present the option to people and let them know it's there and see where they're at on their journey. So building the brand, evangelizing what we're doing, opening the door for the M A team into some MSPs I know are fantastic. And there's plenty of, you know, a lot of in person. So I'm back on the road full time. Just wrapped up an event this week. I was in London last week doing some things and there's a lot going on in October, so a lot of people are going to see me out there. And if they do, I hope they stop and say hi.[00:37:22] Speaker A: Fantastic. I'm sure they will. Let's just talk briefly about MNA, some mergers and acquisition. And just to make clear for you, Craig, our audience, this podcast is completely worldwide. So we have a ton of listeners in the US, we have a ton of listeners in the UK, Australia as well. And then probably about last time I looked at the stats, it was about 30 other countries. So you can assume that if English is a predominant language in that country, that there's MSPs listening. So I realize you and I are going to have to talk mostly about the US and the UK because that's where your experience is. But we've seen over the last few years, a couple of things change, haven't we? Or certainly I have. And it'd be interesting to get your perspective. I've seen the rise of what is called the super MSP. So maybe it feels like Evergreen doesn't fit into that, but the super MSP is a big company to start with. That goes and then acquires large size MSPs in different cities. So that that's how it's sort of growing across an entire area. And then the other thing we're seeing is an absolute flood of private equity money. So what is essentially cheap money coming in to fund these kind of mergers, build up these large groups? Is that what you're seeing? Is that your experience? And where does evergreen sort of fit into that?[00:38:40] Speaker B: Yeah, that is what I've seen. I'd say first you saw private equity money come into the vendor space in this market, right, looking at SaaS companies, because it's a juicy place to be, right. There's a lot of recurring revenue in SaaS. So you see that start there, and then private equity firms are saying, wait, hold on, do the customers of these businesses have recurring revenue as well?So you saw that about ten years ago, really start to go in before private equity got in, you just saw MSPs acquiring other MSPs and their geographic areas. But then you see private equity come in and I think where there were some mistakes made at first was acquire MSPs, and let's put the SaaS playbook on them, right? And then that's when you saw the erosion of customers and staff, and then you almost saw a rewind on that. And then these platform roll up. There's a lot of different terms for it. Companies really start to emerge and start acquiring other MSPs, bring them into the fold, almost franchise them under a brand. And then you saw this third wave where, okay, we're going to acquire the companies, but keep them the same, but they're under our ownership. And that's where I put Evergreen. But we do, at Evergreen, at the holding company level, we do see ourselves as one big global MSP, but the operations are still very decentralized.[00:40:09] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I realize what I'm about to say here is a bit of a finger in the air answer in that. Who knows? Because it's a crystal ball question. But you're involved in an organization that is heavily into M A. So I'm guessing you must have seen research, you must have spoken to consultants. How do you think it's going to change over the next few years.[00:40:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I think what we're seeing is just sort of a plateau in the valuations, right. They're not climbing like they used to. And that's pretty much being pushed by macroeconomic conditions, the rise in interest rates, a lot of companies will debt leverage businesses. So with an increase in the interest rate and what it costs to borrow money, you're seeing the valuations kind of even out. Right. Because five years ago someone would have. Five plus years ago, you would have seen someone getting maybe three or four X EBITDA. And then as we went into 2020 and things got hot, those numbers started to double, in some cases triple. You've seen that kind of even out now and then, aside from the financial side of things, I think you're going to see more movement because you have a whole generation that I would put myself in of people that got started in tech in the. They say for an entrepreneur, 17 to 20 years is that magic number where it's like, okay, I've gone as far as I'm going to go and I think there's a lot of companies in that, so we're going to see it. Even though we've been saying, oh, MNA is heating up, it's heating up. I think we're going to see something more explosive happening, especially for know we're going global. Our first acquisition in the UK just closed it a couple of weeks ago.We're pretty heavy in there and moving in there and we're looking at other geographies as well. So I think you're going to see more start to do that.[00:42:02] Speaker A: Yeah, it's exciting. And I think I've been in sectors before which was consolidated around me, particularly veterinary, in the UK. I was heavily into that sector when a flood of american money came in and just changed the whole sector in a number of years. And it's kind of scary for the owners who are there at the time, but what it creates is massive opportunities. As you say, people who are done, they've had their business time and they want to get out. And I think having three or four different options, we could sell to the MSP down the road, or we could sell to the super MSP, or we could become part of a group and retain our identity. I think having all of those options is only good. I think, so long as the end customers end up looked after as well as they're looked after by the individual MSPs, then maybe, just maybe, this drive of acquisitions and this drive of consolidation will be a good thing. Ok, Craig, let's pause what we're talking about there. Thank you so much for your time. It'll be great to get you back on in a couple of years time, maybe even next year, certainly the year after. Let's track what's happening. Let's track what's doing. What we might even do is perhaps get on some of the MSPs who've been part of that group. This is something we've done before. We did it with a company in the UK that's acquiring MSPs. We got on two or three of the owners that they'd acquired a few years post acquisition, and it was really interesting to hear the stories of the owners and how from memories some time ago. But one of them had left and had loved getting out immediately, and one of them had stayed in and enjoyed running the business without having to worry about all the stupid things that keep business owners up at night. So let's get you back on the podcast again. Just finally tell us what's the best way to get in touch with you. So obviously you're going to be at so many events, but how can we reach you digitally as well?[00:43:56] Speaker B: Yeah, email is wide open. I'm pretty responsive. C. Fulton@evergreensg.com you can also check out our website, evergreensg.com as well. And I'd love to hear from you if you're tuned in and you have any questions, again, even if it's how can I add value my business. We love to share what we've learned to help companies.[00:44:19] Speaker A: Paul Paul Paul Greens, MSP Marketing podcast week's recommended book hi, I'm Josh.[00:44:28] Speaker B: I'm a technical recruiter from Beaumont. I'm a specialist MSP recruiter. My business book recommendation is on recruitment by Mitch Sullivan, which will help you learn some of the lessons that I have over the last nine years of my career. That breaks down some of the biases you have with recruitment.[00:44:44] Speaker A: It also helps you sort of rethink.[00:44:46] Speaker B: The way that you advertise your MSP to prospective hires and new candidates that.[00:44:50] Speaker A: You would like to join your business coming up next week.[00:44:55] Speaker C: Hi, I'm Chaya Glatt. I am a copywriter and brand messaging specialist. If you're an MSP, you know that trust and credibility are the biggest drivers in bringing you your next customer. Building credibility with social proof on your website is going to be so important. I'm going to talk about exactly how to do that using social proof in multiple forms. So join me on Paul's podcast and we will dive into it it.[00:45:25] Speaker A: And on top of that interview next week, let's follow up on what Craig was talking about just a few minutes ago. Next week, let's ask you if you could buy another MSP. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP. Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

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Episode 221Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 The power of taking rapid action * 09:17 Improve your website by eliminating THIS word * 15:21 Work smarter to work less and grow your MSP

Featured guest:Thank you to Josh Fonger, CEO of WTS Enterprises, for joining me to talk about how systemisation and documentation of your MSP business can lead to better efficiency, help you grow by working smarter not harder, and free up more of your time for the things that are important to you.Josh Fonger is the CEO of WTS Enterprises. He is an international business consultant, coach, and speaker. He has the unique experience of personally helping hundreds of businesses grow simply, using the WTS method. His specialty is taking stressed-out entrepreneurs from working in their business to working on their business using systems so that profit and freedom can become a consistent mechanical reality.Connect with Josh on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshfonger/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Connect with me on LinkedIn: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, 10x Is Easier Than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/10x-Easier-Than-World-Class-Entrepreneurs/dp/140196995X/

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Episode 220Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 Five marketing myths that are holding you back * 06:18 This tool sells more to your clients * 13:33 The secrets of successful Facebook marketing

Featured guest:Thank you to Trevor W. Goodchild, Facebook Ad Policy Specialist, for joining me to talk about how he helps businesses to navigate the sometimes complicated and mysterious world of Facebook advertising, and how MSPs can use Facebook to reach their target audience.Trevor W. Goodchild is a Facebook ad policy expert who's worked at Facebook in ads, tech and project management. Mark Zuckerberg announced his last project internally. He's a public speaker, high ranked blogger & best selling sci-fi author. Goodchild helped launch the Xbox 360 at Microsoft, the iPod nano at Apple before beginning Facebook ad policy consulting. His clients have included ad agencies of Tony Robbins, Harv Eker & Dean Graziosi, who he has helped de-mystify Facebook bans and get ads live again.Connect with Trevor on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-goodchild/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Connect with me on LinkedIn: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Grab yourself a copy of either of this week's recommended books: + The Power Of Positive Thinking: - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Power-Positive-Thinking-Norman-Vincent/dp/0749307153/ + Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points that Challenge Every Company and Career - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Only-Paranoid-Survive-Exploit-Challenge/dp/1800810628/

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.This is episode 220. You are very welcome. And this is what I've got for you this week.[00:00:15] Speaker B: I'm Trevor W. Goodchild, Facebook ad policy specialist. I've worked at Facebook in ads, tech, and project management. And on Paul's podcast, I'm going to tell you about the one, one thing that you do not want to do to get your business shut down on Facebook.[00:00:29] Speaker A: And on top of that fascinating interview with Trevor later in the show, we're also going to talk about a very cool tool that you can use to sell more to your existing clients.Paul. Paul Greens, MSP Marketing Podcast want to start this week by talking about some marketing myths. They're things that hold back MSPs fears and worries and frankly, untruths about marketing. And I'm going to whizz through them really, really quickly because I want to just show you that actually marketing is a lot simpler than you think it is. In fact, isn't that really the theme of everything we talk about on this podcast? Marketing is simpler than you think it is. And that leads on to myth number one, that marketing is a dark art and not at all logical, absolute nonsense. Marketing is really, really easy. I know it feels difficult to you because you're a tech person looking at marketing, but trust me, as a marketing person looking at tech, which looks difficult, right? To me you would say, but Paul, it's easy. It's just logic and it's just checklists and it's just processes. That's exactly the same with marketing. If you look at marketing and it's just big and unknown and fluffy and difficult, you're looking at it completely wrong. Instead, you need to look at it as how do I boil it down to checklists? How do I boil it down to processes and systems? Good marketing is always based around repeatable systems. Myth number two is that you need lots of cash to do good marketing. Now, don't get me wrong. Having lots of cash allows you to buy resources, right? It allows you to buy some time. It allows you to buy other people to do stuff. Cash is good. That pretty much goes for everything. But you don't need lots of cash to do marketing. In fact, if I look at the weekly marketing system that we suggest to our MSP marketing edge members doesn't require any cash whatsoever to actually use it. There's a little bit of cash needed to buy into our system, of course, but we keep that super low. But you don't need a lot of cash to go and implement it. Cash just makes stuff easier for you. If you don't have cash, you can use your own time, which isn't ideal. But if that's all you've got, you've got no cash, you've just got time. Then you can use that and you can have very good marketing with just a little bit of your time. Myth number three is that you need to hire a marketing agency. And don't get me wrong again, there's some good agencies out there. It will speed things up. But you don't need an agency. You can do great marketing on your own if you find a good strategy, a good system. Again, this is what we teach to our MSP marketing edge members that actually you don't need an agency. Agencies are great for building websites or doing really complicated marketing things. But for a simple marketing system that builds audiences, builds a relationship with those audiences and just generates leads into the business, you just need a simple marketing system. Now, myth number four is that marketing is all about the digital stuff. Digital stuff is important. It's LinkedIn, isn't it? It's your website, it's all of that kind of stuff. But the problem with digital stuff is everyone's doing it. And when everyone's doing something, it's very hard for you to stand out. So the way to stand out often is to use some non digital stuff. I love print stuff. Sorry to keep banging on about the MSP marketing edge, but I plow like 99% of my work energy into that. We have in there a printed newsletter that we give people every single month. There's an IT services buyer's guide. There's a book on business, email compromise. There are physical marketing campaigns where you send stuff to people. All of these sit alongside the digital stuff. There's loads of digital stuff, but there's loads of nondigital stuff, too, because the standout ability comes from the non digital stuff. So if you're not doing any non digital stuff, if you're not doing real life stuff, printed books, printed guides, printed physical campaigns you mail to people, then just have a look at that because I can almost guarantee your competitors are not doing this stuff. Which leads me on to myth number five, that you have to beat all of your competitors in order to win. You don't have to beat all of them. You just got to beat some of them. How many competitors have you got? 10, 20, 30, something like that. Maybe there's more, maybe there's less. But you don't have to beat all of those people, you just got to make sure that you're beating a few of them. And I'll tell you how to beat a few of them. It's by doing a little bit of marketing consistently. It's by having a marketing system where you do daily activities, weekly activities, and monthly activities. You do, for example, social media every day. Then every week you send out a promotional email or an educational email will be better. And then every month you send out a physical, printed newsletter. That system will always outperform a more aggressive, bigger, better funded competitor who does a big campaign once or twice a year. Because the problem with a big campaign once or twice a year is it's a huge amount of work. It's a huge amount of activity. But when that campaign has ended, they're not marketing as much, whereas you are, because you're doing daily, weekly and monthly activities. Marketing systems that you do from today until the day you sell the business, those are always going to outperform bursts of activity now and again. And you don't need to beat all of your competitors, you just need to beat two or three of them because you don't need that many new clients. Right. If I offered you two highly qualified leads a month, that would be more than enough for you, wouldn't it? Because you only need, well, you probably close, what, 50% of the sales that you do. Essentially, I'm offering you a brand new client every month. And for most MSPs, that's all it takes. You don't need to beat all of your competitors to get that. Just a few of them, which makes MSP marketing very, very exciting indeed. Here's this week's clever idea.A very, very long time ago, I used to work in radio stations and I was one of the people on the air doing the talking in between the songs. And I read the news at one point and it was all very cool. But as my radio career progressed and I became more interested in just how businesses operated, I got involved in sales and I kind of dipped my toe into that. And one of the things that I found fascinating was how those radio stations at the time managed the sales. So what they were selling was advertising, and they treated the advertising as inventory in that they had time to sell and once that time had expired. So if they've got an advert today and they don't sell it, you kind of get that back, right? It doesn't sit in a warehouse. So they used to treat it as a commodity product, as something which would expire. And they had these targets that they had to hit each month. And what was really cool, and this was the tool that I want to recommend to you, was they used a tool called gap analysis. So gap analysis was where, let's say they had a target of 100,000 a month, but right now they're sat on 80,000. So they've got a gap of 20,000. And that's what the gap is in gap analysis. And we're going to refer this back to or turn this back into something for you in a second. So they would then look at that and say, right, we're halfway through the month, so we've lost half of our product. We've got half a month's worth of product left. How do we sell whatever product we've got left over to hit that 20,000 to fill our gap? And this is where the analysis used to come in. And there was some really clever stuff, and I worked with some very clever sales managers over the time who would actually get towards the end of the month, and they would use urgency and deadlines to get the clients to pay more for this sort of urgent airtime, because the sales manager knew that that would expire, and that's how they hit their gap. Now, I think a gap analysis as a tool can be used by you, but in a completely different way. You see, I think, for you, the gap analysis tool should be used on your existing clients to see what they're buying and what they're not buying. Now, previously on this podcast, we've talked about a tool called the profit matrix, which is a great way of doing this. In fact, it's a constant way of displaying on a board on your wall who's buying what and who's not buying what. And that makes that a very powerful tool. But if you wanted to just get started and say, right, what can I do today to have a look at this? A gap analysis is a fantastic way of doing this. So, a gap analysis, you literally look at, right, I've got this client. Let's say you've got three clients, and let's say you've got ten services. You literally look and sit in your psa and look and say, right, client a buys services one, three and five. Client b buys services two, four and six. Client C by service one. We can instantly see the gaps there, can't we? And that's really for you what gap analysis is. It's looking at it and saying, which of my clients are not buying what? And then you use that information to trigger one of two actions. You see, there's one of two different ways that you can go and close those gaps. Fill in the gaps. Make sure that each client is buying as many services from you as they can. And by services, of course, I mean monthly recurring revenue services. There is almost always a ton more profit to be made selling an extra service to an existing client than bringing on board a new client. New clients are expensive. You got all that marketing costs, that onboarding cost, versus just saying to an existing client, would you like to buy this service?[00:09:57] Speaker B: Yes, please.[00:09:57] Speaker A: Okay. That's going to be x a month, and much of that is going to fall straight to the bottom line. So two approaches that you've got to approach that gap analysis and fill those gaps. The first of them is the least effective, I believe, but it's quicker. And that is to take a service driven approach to fill in the gaps. So, for example, you may have VoIP as one of your services, but let's say it's a new service for you. So you've got 20, 30, 40 clients, and they're not buying VoIP from you. And, you know, you just know some of them have got really old systems. We're talking like 2015 phone systems, 1997 phone systems. So you know that they should be upgrading because there's so much better functionality. They don't physically need to have handsets anymore if they don't want it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And you know that there are some clients you can go and target with that. So that's where you can take a service based approach, where you take that service and you either go out to all of your clients or you target it to some of your clients where you know from previous experience they should be buying this. I say should because just because you can now do something or you introduce a new service doesn't mean they're necessarily going to buy it. But it's one way of doing it, and that's the quicker way of doing it. The longer way, but the more robust way of doing it is through strategic reviews and technology roadmaps. And this is where you don't treat your client like a kind of like a piggy bank. You don't treat them like a commodity that's there to sell stuff to. Because actually, the downside of that first approach is that people say, I never hear from you, insert your name here until you've got something to sell. And that's not the relationship you want with someone, right? That's not how you build a 20 year relationship with someone versus doing strategic reviews and technology roadmaps. So strategic reviews, also known as quarterly business reviews, you sit down with your client, once a year will do it, unless they're a super fast, massively fast growing business, which the vast majority of your clients won't be. Once a year is enough. You sit down, you ask them about their plans, their future, where they're going, all of that kind of stuff. You take all the cool stuff that they want to talk about their business and their future, and you get them telling you about it. The power of this being they bond with you, they see you as a strategic advisor and you help them. Well, you help them build that strategy. You may also then take that a step further and you actually build a technology roadmap for them. And this is literally a document laying out right, in the next twelve months, you're going to invest in this. In 2025, you're going to invest in this in 26, in this, et cetera, et cetera. And you kind of get their commitment to investing in their business's technology.How cool is that? That's exactly what we want. So that's another way of doing it. That's a longer term, bigger commitment. You will do strategic reviews and build technology roadmaps that do not result in extra revenue. But that's only today. The revenue will be there next year or the year after, I promise you. Because when you build a proper strategic relationship with a client, you become literally an integral part of their business. To me, that's the most robust way of doing it. But you can do that first method as well, particularly if you need some more money. Now, it's a great way for you to take a gap analysis to see that there's money left on the table and for you to go and collect that money right now.Paul's blatant plug hey, are you and I connected on LinkedIn yet? Look, if we're not, come and give me a connection request. It's actually easier to find me on Google than it is on LinkedIn. So just go onto Google and type in LinkedIn.[00:13:26] Speaker B: Paul.[00:13:26] Speaker A: Paul Paul Greens MSP Marketing podcast to me. I look forward to chatting to you on LinkedIn.[00:13:35] Speaker B: Hi, I'm Trevor W. Goodchild, Facebook ad policy specialist, helping ad agencies get compliant with Facebook when they stop answering.[00:13:43] Speaker A: And thank you so much for joining me on the show, Trevor. Now, shortly we are going to talk about running Facebook ads and why MSPs should be doing this, but importantly, how not to get it wrong, because that's what you're an expert at. You're an expert in helping people get unbanned when Facebook bans them. And we know that sometimes issues around technology, especially computer repairs, can result in. Well, I know that Google doesn't like those kind of ads, and it'd be interesting to hear from you if Facebook is exactly the same. But before we get there, you've had a very, very interesting career because you did actually work at Facebook itself, didn't you?[00:14:17] Speaker B: Yes, I've worked at Facebook in three different departments. I started working out in advertising, supporting Fortune 500 companies like Jamba Juice or Toyota, getting their ads compliant, and then I moved on to get promoted to tech, supporting Facebook servers and remote access tools. So if Nike ran 50,000 ads in Black Friday in 30 seconds and Facebook servers couldn't handle it, and it starts to crash, you're seeing a white screen on ads manager. I'm getting the phone call at 03:00 a.m. In the morning. Hey, the servers are down. Facebook's lost $10 million in 60 seconds that global ads have not been live. I'd have to get in somehow, figure out a way to fix that. And then more recently, project manager over creator monetization program, working with influencers on Instagram and Facebook, testing out new products like stars on reels or digital collectibles, connecting nfts to profiles.[00:15:03] Speaker A: Some people wouldn't understand half of the things you just said there, but I'm sure our audience understands a lot more than most. So what's it like working somewhere like Facebook?For those of us that aren't sat in Silicon Valley trying to get those engineering jobs, I think we have a different relationship with Facebook. It's just the thing on our phone, or it's the thing that annoys us or whatever is the case. What's it actually like to be there in the building and actually working there?[00:15:29] Speaker B: Well, you know, it's kind of funny because I never applied to work at Facebook. What happened is they found my profile on indeed or some other resume lister, and they saw some of my previous social media experience and they called me up and I'm walking downtown in Austin, Texas, where I'm based out of, and I get this phone call and it's like, this is Facebook. We'd like, you know, potentially come work for Facebook doesn't call people like, what the hell is this? It wasn't until I walked into the skyscraper in downtown Austin, Texas, that said, literally Facebook across the doors. And I was like, oh, this is literally Facebook. I mean, it's nice. I would say it's like any startup that you'd find where they have the foosball tables and the fancy cafeterias and the beer tap sometimes that you can do on Fridays or whatever, and the full gourmet cafeteria. It's nice when it comes to that. It really depends on where you're working. When I was working in ads, it was a nightmare. I had to even follow a restraining order on one of my coworkers because he was was. It was mean, it was informative. I love learning about how the automations worked, but oh God, socially it was horrible. When I moved into tech, I was so much better supporting Facebook servers. You don't have those teeth grating interactions with end users that are upset about something happening. It was more along that b two b line because I'm working with stakeholders in other parts of Facebook and different departments to make sure that everything's working correctly.[00:17:01] Speaker A: In more than four and a bit years of this podcast, you've just won an award for being the first guest who actually had to take a restraining order out against a colleague. So congratulations on that one, Trevor. It's quite a strange one. So in terms of obviously you weren't then based in California, sort of at the heart of engineering, but you're obviously part of a big center that they've got in or were part of a big center they had in Austin, Texas. And the sort of the culture and the vibe of Facebook. Again, as someone who never will work for a company like that, you look at it and you think, well, surely there must be a big focus on innovation, but also a massive focus on we've got to get the engagement, we've got to get the figures up, we've got to get the revenue. Do you kind of feel that pressure internally or do you tend to be shielded from it?[00:17:46] Speaker B: It depends on which role we're talking about. The pressures that I had as a project manager were more on deliverables for testing out if something was viable for a go to market strategy. For instance, one of the things that I tested out was a way to connect membership only sites to Facebook groups for kind of a pay gated Facebook group. It was really fascinating. So the pressure was different. In that sense. It was, test this out, can this be viable? Show us the numbers. And then the problem with that is that you have the layoffs that went down starting November of last year of over 40,000 people. Now you have a smaller workforce having to do just as much, if not more work. And so that has additional pressures beyond just pressures of the market. When I was working in advertising, there wasn't any pressure because the goalpost had moved. It wasn't the same thing. We weren't really responsible for a quota or anything like that. It was just really supporting advertisers. And then when I worked in tech, the pressure was more about the backlog of just how many different things were going on. Because one of the insights I gained from working inside Facebook is that it literally is still working like a startup company back in four, whenever it first debuted, and it hasn't changed. So you have multiple departments not communicating with each other, making huge decisions. One engineer writes a piece of code, now the whole platform's crashed because he didn't look at how it integrates with the mainframe, with the rest of the tools. I was like, oh, my bad. Facebook's lost millions of dollars. My bad. I was like, wow, it looks like a show from the outside. And the inside. I was like, oh, can confirm this is true. Show has entered the chat.[00:19:25] Speaker A: That's brilliant. And you know what? I think anyone who uses Facebook regularly, and I use it more for business now than I have some Facebook groups, more than I do personally. But that's so pleasing to hear from someone on the inside.Literally, this hand isn't talking to the other hand because that explains a lot of the inconsistencies with the Facebook experience. And by the by, and just for context, we're recording this at the beginning of November 2023 because it will be going out early in 2024. But could you imagine what it's like at Twitter right now? Or X? And in fact, if you've read the recently released book about Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, which is an eye opener, you should really should read it out. Oh, my goodness. The last third of the book is almost a blow by blow account of what was happening at Twitter after he took control of it. Anyway, by the bike, one of the.[00:20:14] Speaker B: Engineers at Twitter actually hit me up to ask for some help with Facebook issues, and she told me that she could tell me a lot of stories about Elon Musk.[00:20:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I bet there's a whole ton of stories waiting to come out there, right? We're going to put Facebook on hold just for a few more minutes because we are going to come back to the subject of using Facebook to advertise your MSP and the problems that you can come across that I just want to. Just as a side note, you told me just before the interview that not only have you worked at Facebook, but you've worked at Apple and Microsoft as well.[00:20:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I actually helped launch the first ipod nano at Apple back in it was, I think, 2005. And then even before that, or around. Yeah, within a five year period, I believe from there, I helped Microsoft launch the first Xbox 360. That was insane. I was doing tech support for Xbox Live. And before Xbox Live, we didn't have online streaming gaming platforms where you could game with anyone, anywhere across the world. It was a whole different landscape. I'm from the era of the Sonic the hedgehog, Mortal Kombat, Mario Brothers era. Like, that's, that's my era. And I'm still about that. I'm not about this first person shooter type games. My son is. He loves that stuff. But it was fascinating to watch this debut of this new platform that had never existed before and having to help gamers figure out, okay, these are the ports you want to open so your firewalls aren't blocking the system. And this one gamer tried to ask, is peanut butter shoved inside the Xbox covered under the warranty? And I'm like, is there a warranty anywhere for any device that covers peanut butter shoved inside? I don't think so. But it was fascinating being part of that kind of early phase. Now, of course, as well as tablet, you've got platforms everywhere that do the online games. And with iPod nanos, that's old school to think of, the pest, because everyone's on the smartphones. But I remember when the ipod touch came out, everyone was like, oh, it's amazing you can get the Internet on it.And we've come so far since then. But, yeah, it was really exciting being part of these companies, right when they're launching some products that are household names now.[00:22:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I bet the ipod nano, was that the little square one that was just. Yeah, I remember that. I think I might have had one. I had three or four ipods. My very first ipod actually had a spinning hard drive in it. You could feel it moving, which is like, I wish I still had that. That's probably worth a fortune now. But anyway, we are distracting ourselves with retro tech. Let's talk instead about Facebook ads. So the vast majority of MSPs don't really embrace Facebook as a, a platform to reach decision makers, and b, they don't use it for advertising. And I say that that's a kind of a finger in the air thing. Obviously, I don't know all MSPs, but I speak to so many, and we're working with over 700. You kind of get a feel for what people are doing.Some MSPs don't like Facebook at all because of the privacy issues. And then when it comes to the advertising, they find. Although the platform is, I've used all the advertising platforms in my time, and Facebook, I think, is one of the easier ones. But it's still an intimidating platform if you've never done it before.For MSPs that want to, because I believe it can be a viable advertising platform. It can certainly be great for remarketing, which would be interesting to hear your thoughts on that. And you'll need to explain what remarketing is for our audience, for anyone that doesn't know, but what are your thoughts on the difficulties that MSPs would have using Facebook as an advertising platform?[00:23:42] Speaker B: Well, I think a lot of companies that are on that b to b Sphere would be better served on LinkedIn. I love LinkedIn. I am doing LinkedIn marketing right now for the first time, and I love it. It's amazing. It's a whole different world. It's like Facebook without the toxic social stuff. Not that there aren't women that get dms from guys on LinkedIn, as we all know, which is not. I never understood that logic. I don't go to LinkedIn to find babes like it's not my thing, but from the women business owners in the startup world that I know, they get that a lot. I'm like, wow, okay. But I can see it on Facebook. On LinkedIn. Like, really, LinkedIn would be probably my gut recommendation, even as someone who's worked at Facebook for people that are more b to B. But Facebook is still a powerhouse as far as the targeting abilities, as far as the audience goes with something like that, I would start with brand awareness campaigns, page likes, boosted posts with conversation starters, inviting the people who's liked and commented on those to like your page. That helps you get more of a captive audience. But really, the way a simple funnel works is that usually you want to give away something for free that is of value to your target audience. Now you'd want to, of course, research who your target audience is with whoever MSPs are targeting the most. What is their pain points? What kind of magazines do they read? Who are the authority figures in their sphere? What are the top books in there? You get a profile based on these things, and then what you can do is you can say, hey, here's a short pdf with top ten tips on solving XYZ on this pain point. Give it away for free, and then you can retarget those same people. If you have the Facebook pixel, a piece of javascript that's installed between the headers of your website to track the traffic from Facebook to your website and then send retargeting ads to people who maybe they reached a book appointment page but they didn't book an appointment or a buy page and they got to the checkout page but didn't complete it. You can install different events based on the page and the action being taken and then retarget people. So hey, you almost got to the checkout page. Did you forget something in your cart? Or by the way, here's another free item, a lead magnet that maybe you'll find beneficial. And then based on that, you build reciprocity with your target audience by giving something away that's valuable. The automatic sales machine book by Chet. God, I forget his last name.[00:26:02] Speaker A: Chet Holmes.[00:26:03] Speaker B: Chet Holmes. Yeah. I met his daughter Amanda recently. She came to present in Austin and we were chatting and I bought the book after meeting her. That's what it took to get me to buy your book. I have to meet the daughter's office. But one of the things that it talks about that I do already, that is I think really huge in any field for any industry is edutainment. Being able to present education on a specific topic automatically you're seen as an authority figure to your audience. You build that reciprocity in and then at the very end, if you're doing it correctly, you make it clear that you're the only choice to choose for solving that pain point after you've educated your audience on that further. And so using that with Facebook will still be very successful.[00:26:43] Speaker A: Oh, I love, love that. That, that book you mentioned, by the way, the ultimate sales machine is an absolute claim. Well, it is the book on selling and every MSP should absolutely go and get a copy of it. It's on audible. I know. I think Chet passed away fairly young. I think he was in his fifty s. I think it was leukemia. And his daughter stepped up to run the business and has just taken it onto the next level.[00:27:05] Speaker B: Done a great job.[00:27:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I'd love to meet her. I'm going to have to come and hang out in Texas. Clearly that's what I'm going to have to do.So Facebook then has this value, as you say. It's got some great targeting. I love the retargeting, the idea of reaching people that way.Let's talk about the do's and don'ts.Well, first of all, before we do that, I mentioned earlier that Google with Google Ads has a particular dislike of computer repair firms. So obviously MSPs are not really computer repair firms, but it is a part of what they do. Google doesn't like it, I guess, because it's a high scammer activity. So they seem to just hate ads that in any way involve computer repair. Is that the same with Facebook or is that different on Facebook?[00:27:48] Speaker B: That's interesting. Well, I'll be completely transparent. I've actually never seen an ad for computer repair on Facebook. It's not something I've come across. What I've seen more often than not is people that are running ads and they'll give away a piece of technology, like a free iPhone or something like that. And a lot of those are scams. A lot of those are these giveaway ads. First of all, it's hard to do a giveaway ad because as nice as that is, if you're giving away, like a raffle to win an iPhone or iPad or something like that, the thing is that you get the people that only want the freebies, not actual customers. So that's a challenge to that. But the other challenge is that Facebook's going to think, you're not really giving this away, are you? So that's the closest I can think of electronically now. I'm not a Google Ads person. In fact, I'm looking to hire someone in that field because I'm a Facebook guy and not a Google guy. And so SEO I'm great at. But the Google Ads, it's not my zone of genius, being a Facebook guy, but what I can definitely think about when it comes to that is if someone's got a problem and you're promising to fix it. One of the pitfalls for do's and don'ts of Facebook ads is not overreaching either. Kicking the pain point too hard and being too negative because your ad can get flagged if you're sounding too tired pregnant alone.The whole PPS formula, the problem pain solution, where you talk about the problem, you kick the pain point and you provide your services as the solution. That doesn't work as well on Facebook. Facebook operates more in a fomo where if you're saying, hey, this is so great, you're going to miss out on the benefits. That's a better template when it comes to policy and compliance than kicking the pain points. But if you're making an ad for, let's say, computer repair, if you're going a little too far by saying your whole computer system is down, your dog died, your wife left you, it's like a country song.There's nowhere else to go, we can help you out that's probably going to be an issue. Anything that looks spammy. If you're trying to over promise something and you're trying to say, we will fix all the problems, we're the best in the world, no one else is as good as us. Well, that's hard to prove that you're the best in the world. So there's a flag that Facebook has called unrealistic claims or misleading business practices. And where you get flagged for those is usually, if you're coming off the cuff, just a little too braggy. When I was working with. What's his name, Harve Ecker, he was the author of the Good Millionaire, and he's a celebrity. One of the things he would get in trouble a lot that I'd had to help his marketing team with is he would know he'd make these outlandish promises about the results that he could guarantee with income. And here's kind of the formula for mlms. Pyramid schemes, multilevel marketers, which are not allowed on Facebook. They're really terrible because it's one bad apple wins it for the bunch, so they're the spammers. The problem is if the way you phrase your computer repair ads has qualities of an MLM, even if you're not the machines, because it's not humans that are flagging, you may mistakenly flag as an MLM. Here's the formula.Low effort, giant result, specific amount of time. So if you're saying, I'll just use an MLM model, make $100,000 in seven days with little to no effort, just stuffing envelopes like that's an MLM formula. But businesses, MSPs, can fall in that trap if they're saying with little effort at all, we can repair the worst problems that you have in your computers with only a few minutes.You got to be careful about how you're sounding as far as what the claims and the results and deliverables are that you're promising.[00:31:33] Speaker A: Yeah. No, that makes perfect sense. And look at you dropping another name in there. T halve ecker. That's a name from the online marketing past in my head. And just for anyone listening who is not sure what MLM is, it's multilevel marketing. So exactly as Trevor said there, that whole do ten minutes of work, earn a $1,000. We all know that's not how the world works. Exactly. Yeah. Doing whatever. Okay, let's finish off Trevor with just give us two or three other mistakes for an MSP that's going to start playing with Facebook ads give us two or three other mistakes that they're most commonly likely to make, which could get the wrong kind of attention from Facebook, or as you said earlier, just have them automatically banned by the algorithm without a human even looking at it.[00:32:17] Speaker B: Well, I think most of the time humans don't look at ads. And that's the problem, is that people feel when they're running ads that, oh, no, Facebook hates me, it's personal. And then as a result of that, they react in a specific way. Right. And that's not very helpful. One of the things that I see a lot is when people have an ad that's rejected, instead of looking at the ad, they assume that Facebook's wrong and they're correct, and they immediately appeal the ad. But what if the ad actually has flags in them? There's something called micro flags. These are smaller flags that may not be enough by themselves to shut you down, but after a threshold is reached, they will kind of like points on your car insurance after accidents, raising the rates eventually. It's like that with the automations because they work based on SQL logic. If this, then that. So as a result, if you're immediately appealing an ad that got rejected without finding out first why that ad was rejected, and then what you can do to change to make it compliant, you're basically losing chances that you have in appeals to get that reactivated again, and possibly you can endanger your ad account becoming disabled. If you're immediately appealing an ad that's already against Facebook's policies, they might not be transparent about which policies your ad violated, which is on Facebook's fault for that. But if you're appealing an ad that actually has flags in it, and then you're expecting Facebook to approve it because you feel like they made a mistake, the problem is you're asking Facebook, hey, Benjamin, make an exception to the rules that you've applied for your own private know, and make sure that you allow us this exception. And it doesn't work that way. It's better if you find out first of the flag is remove it, make a new ad that is compliant and learn based on those experiences. So that's one thing. And I would say the second thing really just comes to a philosophy. I think a lot of people go to Facebook when they're thinking of marketing as just buy, buy, sell, sell. How can really, I mean, this goes with Facebook policy as well as just being a good marketer for your business. People are tired of being made to feel bad about the problems they have. Ad fatigue is huge. Right now amongst millennials and Gen Zs, which are the next up and coming markets we need to target. And so as a result, this whole old formula of trying to sell as much as possible and not build that loyalty first, not build that reciprocity first, you're going to run into a lot of problems where your ads may come across as spammy, as too salesy when you look at it as more of building the brand as a Persona instead of a faceless corporate entity. Look at flow from progressive, look at the gecko from Geico. Right? It's cute. It's funny. People now associate those feelings with the brand. But this whole pushing to just for conversions, what that does is it makes advertisers on Facebook, whether they're MSPs or other industries, just focus on the sales instead of looking at the ecosystem you exist in within Facebook. What does Facebook want? They want people to stay on Facebook because they get more money from the ads those people see. And if your ads, because they're too negative, too spammy, too salesy, are pushing people off of Facebook to rivals like TikTok or Twitter, Facebook loses money a lot. So thinking about what is Facebook interested in? Connections, keeping people on the platform, engagement, community builders. When you have that in mind, when you're creating ads and your Facebook pages, that will put you leagues beyond people that are still on that clickbait. One weird trick tip.[00:35:43] Speaker A: Yeah, perfect. Thank you. Thank you, Trevor. I have to go and look for my ipod nano now.Get up in the loft, the attic. Before we go, just tell us very briefly, what do you do to help businesses like MSPs and what's the best way to get in touch with you?[00:35:57] Speaker B: So what I do is I provide a series of services that offer help for identifying specifically what in your marketing funnel got Facebook to flag you? Because I've worked with the engineers that created these automations, I'm not guessing. It's not a Reddit search, Google Search, LinkedIn Search. This is from the source. I can tell you specifically what ad copy, creative or privacy policy in your landing page or your ad that triggered Facebook to shut you down and how to get compliant again. And the best way to reach me is either email at Trevor@trevorwgoodchild.com. Searching LinkedIn for Trevor W. Goodchild. You'll see me with my Facebook background real easy. And then, of course, you can go to my website for free tips and articles and guidelines on Facebook policy, way beyond what Facebook provides@jetskyshaman.com. And that's just like it sounds like jet ski like you're on the lake. Shaman like you're a magical witch doctor of Facebook policy. So Jet skisaman.com Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.[00:36:58] Speaker A: This week's recommended book.[00:37:00] Speaker C: Hey, I'm Scott McCrady with SolCyber question I get asked all the time. What's my favorite book? Well, I've got two for you. One, The Power of Positive Thinking. Two, Only the Paranoid Survive.[00:37:11] Speaker A: Why?[00:37:11] Speaker C: Because as a business owner, you sort of have to live in these two states of mind. You got to be super positive that you can make a difference and your company's successful on the other side. You got to keep your head on a swivel and see what's happening in the market and make sure you're not missing anything that's important to your customers.[00:37:26] Speaker A: Coming up next week.[00:37:27] Speaker C: Hi, this is Josh Fonger, and if you are stuck in your business, working long hours with no end in sight, you have a systems problem. Why don't you join me on Paul's podcast and you can find a solution to your systems problem.[00:37:39] Speaker A: Oh, and that is going to be such a fun interview next week. We're also going to be talking about failing. I think you should fail more, and you should definitely fail faster. I'll explain it all in next week's show. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MS MS MSP marketing podcast.

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Episode 219Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 What is remarketing, and how can it help your MSP? * 08:22 Five more common website mistakes * 19:47 How this MSP grew from 0 to 25 staff

Featured guest:Thank you to Chad Lauterbach, CEO of Be Structured Technology Group, for joining me to talk about how he grew his MSP business, from working alone out of his one-bedroom apartment to managing 25 staff.Chad’s passion for helping small to medium-size companies meet their IT and security needs fueled his decision in 2007 to create Be Structured Technology Group. Under Chad’s leadership, Be Structured continues to exceed the expectations of their clients’ outlooks on what an IT department provides. He is an avid learner who actively works to stay on top of the latest trends and security requirements in this fast-paced tech world. Chad is constantly pursuing knowledge, making him someone who will always be ahead of the curve. When Chad is not working, you can find him reading, running, listening to podcasts, hiking, camping, or backpacking.Connect with Chad on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/chadl2/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Connect with me on LinkedIn: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * In case you missed last week's episode where I gave you the first five common website mistakes, you can watch or listen to Episode 218 here: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode218/ * During my conversation with Chad, I mentioned my interview with Marcus Sheridan, you can listen back to that episode here: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode164/ * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jocko-Willink-Extreme-Ownership-Paperback/dp/B09XR1LQNN/

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast. Hello and welcome, my lovely friends, to another fantastic podcast. Here's what we got coming up for you this week.[00:00:15] Speaker B: I'm Chad Lauterbach, founder and CEO of Be Structured Technology Group. And from 2007 to date, I grew my MSP from just me in my one bedroom apartment in Los Angeles to 25 people in downtown LA. And you can hear my story on Paul's podcast.[00:00:32] Speaker A: And on top of that fascinating interview with Chad later on, we'll also talk about five more mistakes that you're probably making with your website.Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast. Let's kick off this week talking about something called remarketing, also known as retargeting. Now, last week I asked you the question, is Facebook a viable promotional tool for MSPs? And one of the things I didn't talk about last week because I knew I was going to do it this week was this thing called remarketing. So what is remarketing? Well, have you ever had that experience where let's say you want to go and buy think of something interesting. Let's say it's a Darth Vader helmet. Just go with me on this one. So you've seen this amazing replica Darth Vader helmet. It fits over your real head. These kind of products exist and it's got like the special breathing sound box, the I am your father, that kind of thing. And I may have one of these in my loft, by the way. Anyway, so let's say you go to look at one of these and you find it on a specialist site, and you get all excited and you think, I want to be dark labor. And you look at it, but then you think, I'm not quite ready to buy it. Now it's a couple of hundred pounds, dollars, whatever. So you think, right, you know what? I'm going to park that. I'm just going to forget about it and see if I think about it in a few days time until you go off and you do something else. And then later on that day, you are on your favorite news website. And on the right hand side of the news website, there's an advert for the Darth Vader helmet. And your eye kind of looks over it and you don't click on it, but you think, that helmet's looking good, man, I want to get that helmet. And then you go off and you go onto another website, completely unrelated, it could be some kind of channel site. And there's that advert again. And it's an advert for the exact product that you were looking at on the site that you were looking at the product on, if that makes sense. And of course, inevitably, there comes a point where you think, right, I give in. This is fate telling me I should spend the 200 pounds or the $200 on the Darth Vader replica helmet. So you go and buy it, you wear it at home, and your kids think you're cool. Your wife leaves you, but your kids think you're cool.It's not face that decided that you needed to get divorced. It's actually remarketing. So remarketing is where you show adverts to people who have done one thing but not done another thing. So in e commerce stakes, this is really cool, because, in fact, that exact scenario stands. I go to look at a product and then when I go and look at. But if I don't buy that product, when I go onto other sites in Google's sort of display network, I see adverts for that product. And the way it works is there's a bit of code that's within the website which tells either Google or Facebook or whoever you're doing the remarketing ads on it tells them, please show an advert to this person so it knows that me, Paul Green, I have been onto this site, I've looked at this product, but I haven't bought it. Because if I'd bought it, I'd end up on the purchase success page, which tells the adverts not to display. So we don't want to display an advert to someone that's already bought the item. Right. So I've been on the page, I haven't bought it. Those ads are going to be shown to me on lots of different websites that I go to. And this is what's called remarketing. Now, here's the really cool thing about remarketing, apart from the fact that you can set an off tag so you can stop it from being shown, remarketing doesn't cost you anything until you click on the advert, depending on how it is set up and on which platform you're using. But typically, certainly with Google, remarketing doesn't cost you anything until someone clicks on the advert. So let's take this away from Star wars and let's put this back in terms that you could use. Someone comes onto your website and let's say they go to look at one of your service pages, let's just say VoIP. For the sake of making it easy. So they come onto your VoIP page and they have a look at that, and that sets a tag. And you now sell Google or Facebook or whichever platform you're using for remarketing you, or the automation behind it tells them, start showing adverts to that person.We can now make an assumption about someone who's visited your VoIP page. The assumption we can make is that they might not be 100% satisfied with their existing telecom solution. So that's what we'd put in the advert. The advert creative could say something as simple as, are you still looking for a new phone system? Are you unhappy with your existing phone system? Are you thinking of replacing your phone system with a new 2024 VoIP system? Now, don't pick those messages up and go and use them as adverts. Those are just example messages. So you understand the kind of advert we put in the psychology of the buyer, and we have to guess this, don't we? But the psychology of the buyer is they've been onto a page and looked at something we think they might be interested in buying. So those adverts, now that we're showing them, are almost reminding them that they are interested in the same way that the Darth Vader adverts are reminding people that they were interested in buying a Darth Vader helmet. It's exactly the same thing. You're selling services, not products, but it's the same thing, and it's really cool. Now, remarketing, as I say, you don't pay until they click on it. And obviously, once they click on the advert, you don't just want to take them back to the same old page again, you want to take them through to a different page, which perhaps, and this is best practice for adverts, you would repeat the message that's been in the advert. So if the advert says, are you still fed up with your old clunky phone system? When they click on that, it takes them through to a new VoIP page, and the headline at the top is exactly the same and it says, are you still fed up with your old clunky phone system? And then there'd be a little bit about VoIP, but importantly, there'd be a call to action. The call to action might be call us now, or it might be book a 15 minutes appointment, and here's my live calendar. Something like that. The reason we want to really go heavy on the call to action is we know that someone who's clicking on the remarketing ad has already seen the page. Even if they just flick through it, we don't want to take them back to that same page. We want to take them through to something new. And that, in an essence, is remarketing. Now, there are some small limitations. So with Google, I think you have to have something like at least 100 unique visitors visiting your site every month. I think you can google that because the range does change, but it's not a massive number, is it? And let's be honest, if you don't have 100 people coming to your site every month, then you could just do some pay per click or something just to drive that traffic up. But Google is a great way to do that kind of remarketing. It can be done in Facebook as well. You should experiment on both of those to see which is best for you. And you can do it around services. You can just do it around people who are just generally visiting your site. You can do it, I believe, and I'm not a technical expert at setting these things up, it's been years since I've physically, personally set one up. But in the back of my head there's something telling me that you can do it. That only triggers if someone visits your site twice, for example, which would be a smart thing. If someone's come back twice, that means they're interested, right? Well, they're either a competitor or a vendor, or they're potentially interested because they've come back again. That would be really cool. You could also do it off specific pages. It might be that you send out an email to someone and that is getting them to click through to a specific page. Could be a blog page, could be a services page. It doesn't really matter. But you can trigger the remarketing adverts of specific pages as well as just general site visits. Do you know, I would love to know if you're doing remarketing, particularly, actually, if you're doing remarketing for your MSP and it's working really well, I would love to get you on this podcast talking about this kind of like a case study. Just drop me an email, will you? Hello at Paul Greengreens, mspmarketing.com. Here's this week's clever idea.Public service announcement. If you haven't yet heard last week's episode, go and check out episode 2118 right now because I talk about five typical mistakes made by MSPs on their website. And today I have five more for you. I do love a series at the start of a year, so let's call this mistake number six, mistake number six is moving too fast towards a sale. Now what I mean by that is you assuming that someone who is on your website today is really, really interested in talking to you about taking over their managed services. And the reality is they may or not be. In fact, if they've landed on your site because they've got an immediate and urgent problem. The server's down, this computer is broken, the that won't print, then yes, they are interested in immediate help, but that's a kind of a break fix scenario, isn't it? And I appreciate that that break fix scenario can lead into managed services and many MSPs. That's their marketing strategy. They use pay per click to reach people at a crisis point, and then they convert them into a proactive managed services client. Nothing wrong with that strategy at all. But for the vast majority of people who are visiting your website, they are in the research phase. They are unhappy with their incumbent MSP, but not yet able to take action. Maybe they're in a contract for another three months. Maybe they're scared of moving, maybe they're just looking around. Maybe they're thinking of doing a tire kicking exercise. So the vast majority of people who are coming onto your site are just kind of researching you. They're checking you out. They may not even have any intention to buy from you at all. They may just have clicked on a link on an email that you sent them or seen your profile in LinkedIn and just gone to check you out. So don't be too quick to work towards a sale. The best thing to do is always to have a very clear call to action. And that call to action, as I just mentioned earlier on in the podcast, it's your live calendar embedded into your website. Ask them for a 15 minutes video call. You see the people who book that are typically apart from the people trying to sell you stuff at vendors, the people who book into that, if they're leads or if they're prospects, they're people who are ready to invest some time into talking about this stuff. And if they're nearly ready to invest some time into it, then they're a lot closer to the point of actually making a buying decision. Mistake number seven then, is using old, stale content on your website. So I often go and look at MSPs websites. When I start working with someone new, I'll go and look at their site just out of interest. I'm always interested. Or if I'm talking to an MSP or I come across someone on LinkedIn again, I'll just go and check out their site because that's what people do. And the vast majority, if they've got a blog, the last blog was like may last year, or the little copyright at the bottom says Copyright 2023 or older, or they've pulled in a Twitter or an X feed or something from Facebook. And again, their last post was like six months ago. And the problem with old, stale content is it sends a message, which is we are not active.It's almost like we can't be bothered to put content out there. We are not active people now. In fact, this is so bad. That just was it last week. Yeah, last week I went to order something from, this is outside of the channel. I went to order something from a company I bought from two years ago. And I looked on their website and they hadn't done a blog for a year, and I looked on their Facebook and hadn't been in an update for a year. And so I live chatted them and just said, are you active? Because I want to order one of these things. And by the time I'd heard back from them 24 hours later saying, yeah, we're active. I'd already bought from a competitor. And I know that was a sort of a small like $20 purchase, it wasn't much. But the point was, when I looked at their site and we're talking a small business with two or three people in it, I kind of got the feeling they weren't there anymore. And so they lost out on my repeat purchase, which is a bit of a shame. So if you have old, stale content, if your blog hasn't had a lot of content added recently, just turn it off. Honestly, no blog is better than an old blog. It really is. By the way, if you are stuck in that problem, we have the answer for you. Our MSP marketing edge service just answers exactly this, because we have, well, at the core of it, and this is just one of the things we do. At the core of it, we have a weekly marketing system which includes a blog and a video and social media content and a LinkedIn newsletter. And it's all integrated and works together and it means that you never, ever, ever have old, stale content. MSP Marketing edge did I just give myself a very cheeky extra plug? I think I did. I won't do that again. Number three then, or number eight, I should say, is not measuring the performance of your website.People get their website done, they spend thousands of dollars on it, and then they ignore it for months and for years, and then they come back to it a few years down the line and go, oh, website's not very good, we should do it again.It's like a habit, isn't it, of every two, three years getting the website done because you're not happy with it. What about some performance issues? Put in Google Analytics at the very basics and don't obsess over your analytics, but just go and have a look. How much traffic are you getting on the website? If you're not driving traffic, proactively driving traffic, no one's seeing the website. Go and have a look and see. How many pages is the average person looking at? It's probably no more than two and a half, maybe three. If you're doing anything more than that, you're doing well. Don't obsess over it. It's just an interesting thing to know. I'll tell you what you can obsess over is what do people actually do when they're in the website? You'll get a better way of looking at that if you install something called Lucky Orange or hotjar. And what this does is this videos people using your site. It doesn't physically video their face, of course. It just videos their session and anonymizes it. So any information they enter is completely anonymized. But you can sit and watch videos of people actually using your website and it is terrifying. It's terrifying because people don't do what you think they're going to do. They don't scroll as far down, they don't click as much, they don't go onto as many pages. And I have learned more about web design and ux usability or user experience from watching videos of ordinary people using the website than I have from anything else. So mistake number nine then is kind of related to that. And it's about you trying out new things. So the mistake is not split testing. There are loads and loads of different ways to split test. You can go and use a service called Optimize league. Just go and Google that. Google Optimize is a free one where you can do it. So you take a page and in both of these services, you create an exact copy of that page without you having to do it. In your website, they create the copy for you and then you change one element of that. So, for example, the most common element to change is the headline and or the image. But you just do one thing at a time, because split testing is where you test one thing at a time. So you've got page a and you've got page b. They are identical, except page b has a different headline to page a. And what Google optimizer optimizely will do is they will split the traffic between those two pages until they figure out which of those pages performs better. Now, this is really easy for high traffic sites and it's kind of really easy for e commerce sites, because the split test result is down to what sells more of this item. In fact, if you've ever wondered why Amazon pages look the way they do, it's because of split testing. In fact, Amazon and all the big tech giants take it a whole step further. They do what's called multivariate testing. So they will have, because you think how much traffic Amazon gets to its pages, right? They will have tested many, many times over millions of visits. The difference in headlines, images, social proof, all these different things. And that's why Amazon pages are the way they are through testing. So you can do this at a much lower level, just testing different elements. The problem you have is that you don't have a lot of traffic. So your split tests will take some time. We're talking like months. And also, it's very hard for you to measure an outcome. You're not selling a widget, are you? Your outcome is someone booking an appointment, but you can at least measure, for example, engagement. What keeps more people on the page, what gets them to go further down, what gets them to request a report or go into a data capture or something like that. Even if you only do two or three split tests a year, you might as well do them right, because they can just sit there in the back end. And I could come up with some great headline suggestions for you. You could come up with some, but what would be better is to pick the headline that real people who visit your website are most inspired by, and the same with the image and other elements on the page. And then we come on to the 10th mistake, which is not obsessing over the speed of your website. So speed is an important thing. And I say this knowing that our website is a bit too slow. As our traffic has grown, our site has slowed down. We've got a lot in the background. So I know, as I'm saying this, I know we need to go and do some work on this. No site is ever perfect, but it's been a number of years since Google decided that the speed of your site is a ranking factor. It's trying to speed the whole world's websites up. And if you go on to on your phone or on a laptop, you go onto someone's site. And it's like a one, two, three second wait. That's too long. And Google knows that it's a three second wait. So there are all sorts of tools out there. Just google them to go and give you a snapshot of how fast your website is and whether or not you need to do something. If your website is too slow, do something about it. And again, I'm not a technical expert at speeding up a site, but I know it's things like good super fast hosting. It's about tidying up a lot of stuff in the back end. It's often about requests. You can have all sorts of cool tools. In fact, actually, here's an irony thing. Those tools I mentioned earlier, lucky, orange and hotjar, they are notorious for slowing down sites, right? So you put them in your site for like a month to test it, to watch what people are doing, and then you get rid of them. And the reason they're so slow is because they're sending so much information off to their servers and making so many requests of your servers. And that just slows everything down.I've always wanted to do that effect in the podcast anyway. You should be obsessed over your site speed. It's one of those very small things that can actually make a big impact on your performance. There you have it from this week and from last ten common mistakes you're most likely to make on your website. Paul's Paul's blatant plug. Blatant plug. Seeing as I was really naughty and gave myself a blatant plug in the last bit, let me make this blatant plug more about value for you. We have a YouTube channel and we are doing so much cool stuff right now. We've moved away from just sort of doing the short educational videos. Here's how to do some marketing stuff. Here's that. We have really thrown ourselves into entertainment or edutainment and trying to teach you and show you how to improve your MSP's marketing with some fun videos, right? They are so much fun to film. I have a wonderful team, Simon and James, who edit this podcast as well. And we are just enjoying ourselves making YouTube videos that we would want to watch. And hopefully you want to watch them as well. So go and check them out. They're all@YouTube.com slash MSP marketing big interview.[00:19:49] Speaker B: I'm Chad Lauterbach, founder and CEO of be Structured technology group, managed service provider and managed security service provider in Los Angeles, California.[00:19:59] Speaker A: And thank you for joining me on the podcast, Chad. There is nothing better than getting successful MSPs to talk about their journey, what they've done, the mistakes they've made, what's working right now, and what they're struggling with, because that is such an inspiration for the thousands of MSPs who listen to this podcast. So give us, before we talk about your backstory, let's just get some context of you now. So tell us a little bit about your business. How many technicians do you have? You said you're in LA, so what kind of clients do you serve? Just give us that context to get us started.[00:20:31] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah, we're 25 people, not including. We do have a few overseas people on the knock, and two of them are dedicated to us. But we really make a big focus, and I feel like it's one of our winning characteristics that we're an LA based team. So our overseas technicians are working on other internal projects or projects for customers in a tangential way. They're not interacting with the customers directly, which we feel like is important for our audience.The LA market can be a little bit finicky, and I think they like being able to talk to somebody on the phone, and then if they come out to the site, they see the same person they talk to on the phone. Right. And if you're outsourcing everything, you're not going to have that. So we're based in Ontana, LA, 15 grand. We service all of LA County, a little bit of Orange county, although you will find the counties definitely have their own service providers. So San Bernardino county and Ventura County, San Diego County, Orange county, they all tend to have kind of their own set of MSPs, and people kind of like to work within that realm. So we mostly are focused on Los Angeles county, and the variety of clients varies. We definitely are b to b focused, so don't really do business to consumer, that's a totally different wheelhouse. Oftentimes, weekends, late hours, some different things, hotels and things like that can be 02:00 a.m.. Cetera. So we're focused on b to b. That can be wealth management, can be attorneys, can be tax accountants, can be food manufacturing. We actually have quite a few of those. There's actually a lot of food manufacturing that happens here, as you might imagine, with the port of Long beach and Los Angeles being the largest ports in the United States on the west coast.A lot of logistics, so we have quite a few logistics clients moving freight throughout the country. So those are probably our biggest verticals. Although we don't have a vertical focus, we're a pretty horizontal organization. There's a lot of unique businesses in Los Angeles because of its position with LAX, the ports, the railroads. There's just a lot of stuff happening here, coming in from China, getting assembled, moving around, et cetera. So we find all sorts of interesting businesses. Custom light manufacturers, bulk light manufacturers. I mean, you name the business you've never thought of, and it's probably here in Los Angeles.[00:23:05] Speaker A: Yes, that wouldn't surprise me, because LA has got to be. Surely, after New York, LA has to be the second most famous city in the US. And everyone, when they think of LA, I mean, you're talking about all those different businesses there, but we all just think know, we think entertainment. LA is the home of entertainment. And I will admit to something sad, which I don't think I've confessed to on the podcast before, but last time we were in LA, I went out of my way to visit the filming location of one of my favorite films from when I was a teenager. You've seen Terminator two, right?[00:23:37] Speaker B: Yeah, of course.[00:23:39] Speaker A: You know the scene where the lorry crashes sort of down off a bridge and into what you guys call the La river, but which is just basically a massive flood thing. We went to that location, the exact point where that happened, because they did that crash for real. This was pre cg. And, yeah, to me, that's Hollywood, that kind of stuff. But, yeah, it sounds like a fun place to be. So let's get in the time machine, let's get in the DeLorean. Never mind the Terminator. I suppose we could get in the Terminator time machine, couldn't we? Go back in the day and tell us how you got into this. So what got you into it in the first place, and what made you start up your first it business? Whether it was a break fix, or indeed an.[00:24:22] Speaker B: So, you know, similar to the famous stories about kind of being in the right place in the right time with, like, Bill gates, Steve Jobs, those kind of guys having access to the right technology at the right time. And yeah, sure, it was skill and persistence, but there's an aspect of luck, right? If they were born in a different place or different time, they might not be who they were, right? I think kind of the same for me. Not suggesting I'm anywhere near as famous or wealthy as Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, but I grew up with the Internet in its infancy and really personal computing in its infancy, right. I was very young when the Mac classic came out, when IBM XT came out, and I found those things to be really fascinating and really everything was kind of going digital things were moving from cassette to CD and I just got interested in all of it, right? I would like disassemble disc men and all the kind of goofy things that kids do, right? We're just like, how does this work getting in there? And what does that do? And I did the same thing with computers, right? If I could pick up an old Commodore pet computer, whatever, I'd like, pull it apart and figure out how it worked and figure out what was going on inside.Learned a little basic programming and things like that. Had a lot of interests, like anybody, I liked to run, I liked photography, I liked a bunch of different hobbies, music. But for me, I really saw it as the future, and I didn't know what that meant at the time, right?I saw technology, computers, and it as being just a critical piece of what was happening in the future. So when I was really young, I had like a small web development company and a small computer building company. But I decided it was important to go get a regular job and learn the ropes. So I had a job. I built an it department from the ground up for a logistics company here in LA, and then a healthcare company in Scottsdale, Arizona. Actually grew up in Scottsdale, so that was where I had the connection there, and then decided that I really wanted to be in LA. So I moved back to LA and started my own thing in 2007 in my one bedroom apartment here. It's grown from then until now to a 25 person operation in downtown LA. And we continue to grow. I mean, we're getting, honestly more prospects than we can almost are. We're very picky about who we take on, given the number of prospects there are out there looking for.[00:26:55] Speaker A: When someone, when anyone says, especially an MSP, says I'm attracting more prospects than I can possibly take on, I know that's possibly the headline of this entire podcast, because that's not something you hear very often from the average MSP. So it leads on to the question of what do you guys do? And I don't want you to give away any kind of secret sauce or anything that your many, many competitors, because I know, I think there are more MSPs in the LA county area than any other sort of couple of square miles of the planet. But without giving anything secret away, just tell us some stuff you've tried that didn't work and tell us what is working for you right now.[00:27:29] Speaker B: I mean, I think what didn't work was everything that seemed probably, again, this probably plays into the LA market being so competitive. I kind of joked with you earlier like what might work in St. Louis or Minneapolis, it just doesn't work here. Hiring a cold calling firm, hiring an outbound mailing firm, blanketing buildings, canvassing buildings, just knocking on doors.People won't even let you in, they don't want to talk to you. People don't pick up the phone, they just hang up the phone. They block your emails, et cetera, et cetera. Email. Drip marketing is really hard and we really wanted to outsource stuff, right? Especially when we were small. The idea of having somebody right now, me and one of my colleagues, splits the marketing duties here, but it probably equates nearly to a full time person now. And like, that wasn't really feasible when we were really small, right? So we were trying really hard to outsource, like what can we get for two, three, $4,000 a month?And we tried all those things that I mentioned and probably more chambers of commerce, you name the thing, and it just didn't work for us.Nothing brought return on investment, I shouldn't say it's not that we landed zero clients from any of those initiatives, but nothing returned on the investment we put into those things. So I felt like we were finally left with two options, and that was search engine marketing or search engine optimization. And the keywords, as you might imagine for LA, for search engine marketing, are insanely expensive. I mean, the really good ones can be $40 a click. I mean, it's crazy. So I decided to go the search engine optimization route. And this is mostly based on my own behavior. I tend not to click on the ads, I tend to look for the organic results, ads being a reinforcement. So if I see somebody in the ads and in the organic search, that's interesting to me. But if somebody's only in the ads and not in the organic, I know they're just buying it. And to me it's more interesting to see the organic result. I feel like Google's going to deliver a better organic result than a paid result.So it was years of really hard work, blogging, reaching out to get press releases on stuff, reaching out to get on podcasts like this one, really working on our LinkedIn profiles, really working on the website, completely redoing the website with the keyword focus. Twice now we've redone it. We've now gotten into video.So it's really all been search engine optimization focused. And it's not a one stop shop either. And it's not a game you play for just a small period of time.Google is constantly updating their algorithms and we're constantly having to change what we do. So we're monitoring something like 400 keywords that we want to rank for.The estimated value of the traffic that we bring in is about $8,000 a month. So it would be the equivalent of spending $8,000 a month on Google search engine marketing. But now we don't have to spend anything for it. Right, but I mean, time and energy, but not direct cost. But we found that to be highly successful. Anytime we bring on a new business line, we just build a brand new webpage, content laden with that keyword that we want to focus on. And because our domain authority and domain ranking and other Google sources are good, we tend to rank for more obscure keywords very quickly. So, I mean, that's how we've done.[00:31:15] Speaker A: So, yeah, that's really interesting. So it's really interesting to talk to someone who's doing very well at SEO search engine optimization in a very busy marketplace, because obviously the more people are competing for the same amount of, the amount of traffic doesn't change. So the more people competing for it, the harder it becomes. And as you say, with what you call search engine marketing, which we would also know as pay per click, where you pay, it's the Google Ads you pay when someone clicks on it. That's what drives the prices up, is huge competition. But yeah, I'm not surprised you've had to do an insane amount of work. Let me plug an episode of the podcast that appeared about a year ago at the beginning of 2023. It was with Marcus Sheridan, the author of they ask, you answer. And a lot of what Chad has just been talking about there is covered off in that book. They ask, you answer. So it's very much a content marketing driven approach. Now, Marcus didn't write that book about SEO, about search engine optimization, but it could be about it. And in fact, you do see a lot of organic traffic coming in from optimizing your pages and writing good content that answers questions that normal people have. So if you haven't checked that out from memory, it was the first show of 2023. It was a special with Marcus Sheridan, the author of they ask, you answer. Let's talk about not giving up. So you mentioned there that you tried lots and lots of different things, and you then mentioned that you did SEO and you had an SEO approach, but you said again that it took a long time to see results. So a lot of, an enormous number of people, and not just MSPs, but all business owners, I know if they don't see a return within a couple of months, they stop. Which is so frustrating, particularly within MSP marketing, because as you and I both know very well, Chad, it takes a long time. People buy when they're ready to buy. There can be an exceedingly long sales cycle. You're attracting lots of prospects now because you're getting in front of people at the point they're searching and they're searching because they're ready to switch, right? So that kind of long tail of SEO is paying off for you. But back when it wasn't working, when you were putting in an insane amount of work creating content and optimizing the content and you weren't yet getting the traffic, what kept you going? What kept you focused on knowing that this would work for you one day?[00:33:29] Speaker B: That is a really good question. I think for me, I feel like I tried everything else.We'd done lunch and learns canvases, et cetera. And again I go to these conferences and I hear people like, oh my gosh, we do these lunch and learns. We get five prospects every lunch and learn we do. You know what, in LA, nobody wants to drive 30 minutes for lunch. They don't care how nice it is or how free it is.And 30 minutes is being generous, right? Like 45 minutes to an hour each way plus a $45 valet. Am I going to comp that? Am I going to pay for that? It's just like LA is just not that kind of city, right? It's not like New York where you walk five blocks to a lunch and learn. It's just not so. I really, really dug into, I think buyer personas are really important and I really dug into our buyer personas. Our buyer Persona is one of two people generally. I mean, of course there's an exception to every rule, but generally speaking, it's one of two people. Either it's a C suite member. So CEO, CFO, COO, usually that is searching specifically for an IT service provider or MSP, right? They either have one and don't like them or they want to outsource their in house it department. They know exactly what they want and they're looking. And when they see that we've won awards and we have a website that ranks for the keywords they're looking for, they give us a chance. And usually they're getting three bids and we don't win all of them, but we win a lot of them.And this will tie back to, I think, where we were going. Secondarily, it's the assistance of those people. So executive assistance of those people where the COO says, hey, get me five quotes for MSP services, right? And they're just getting quotes, right? Which is fine. Ideally, we get to the gatekeeper directly, but if we can't, we provide the quote and we still win those sometimes. Or at least get in for the meeting with the C suite.So, that being said, I've lived in LA since 2000, right? So I have a sense of the culture here. And I just realized people, I mean, I look at our web traffic, and it's unusual, right? Like, 93% of our traffic comes from desktop web browsers, not mobile. It's like, I know what's going on, right? I have a sense of what is happening. It's, people don't want my phone calls, they don't want my emails, they don't want lunch. And learns they don't want anything. When they have a felt need, they go online and they google. That is what they do. And I can see it in the rankings. 65% of our traffic is organic search. Now, I can see that that's what people are doing. So given that buyer Persona, I just believed. I'm like, I tried all this other stuff. None of it worked. And I just believed, like, I think search engine marketing could have worked as well or could have worked in conjunction. At the time, it was a bit out of our budget, but I just believed. And even though I was focused on the hard keywords, like, it support Los Angeles and things like that at the same time. And this is where I think I got maybe not a full ROI, but saw success quickly, which made me think I was on the right track, is I focused on the fringe keywords, right? So I made a bunch of blogs and landing pages for, like, gmail to office 365 migrations, and the inverse office 365 to Gmail migrations. And guess what? We started to get some of those, and then those became MSP clients, and they were still somewhat challenging, but they were much easier keywords to get than IC support Los Angeles. So I kept focusing on the fringe words while I was focused on the big ones. And eventually, we did get the big ones. I can't tell you exactly where we rank right this second, because it does move around, but we're on page one for, like, it support Los Angeles. It services Los Angeles. Computer server support Los Angeles. I mean, all those kind of really difficult keywords. We've made it to page one, and we've been there for the past couple of years, but that's because we rank for, like, 300 other words that are more fringey.[00:37:37] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. Final question, Chad. We do have a little chat before the interview, and you were telling me that you sell some services that a lot of MSPs don't sell. And I was quite surprised by the list. So just give us an insight into some of the other things that you sell which, as you say, are not a traditional MSP offering, and tell us how you got into those things.[00:37:58] Speaker B: I think for all companies, having a unique value proposition or unique selling proposition is really important. Right. So for us, we were like, ok, what is that? And for me it's two things. Number one is we are almost entirely an LA based staff, and everyone that one of our customers would talk to is based in Los Angeles. So any back office staff we have that's overseas, our customers would never talk to them. And to me, that's a value proposition. When we tell that to clients and they're like, well, your bids higher? And we're like, well, yeah, what do you think we have to pay?We literally will say, ask your competing bids if they have in house Los Angeles based people. And when they answer no, it gives the business owner pause. Right. They have to think, okay, do I want to spend less and be talking to Malaysia, the Philippines, India, whatever, or do I want to spend a little more with, be structured and know that if I'm talking to Ryan and then I need somebody to come out, Ryan's going to drive his car out to my like, that's a different thing. Right? We literally have a neighbor just caddy corner across the street, and they outsource everything. They have two guys that run around Los Angeles. Everybody else is overseas. Is that bad?[00:39:11] Speaker A: No.[00:39:11] Speaker B: They can offer cheaper prices than us, right, and potentially better margins. But that was a unique selling proposition for us that I think was really important. Number two is we really tried to be as much to our clients as possible. So that means the biggest growth area for us right now is cybersecurity. That's just the no brainer. Everybody's calling and asking about cybersecurity. We're pushing that really hard. We're getting a lot of business for cyber and we're getting a lot of upsells with our existing clients for cyber. But some of the services that have been really interesting, that have allowed us to cross sell MSP services into other markets is a lot of MSPs don't want to do office moves, they don't want to do cabling, they don't want to do surveillance, they don't want to do access control, et cetera. And so we've landed deals because like, hey, our existing MSP said they won't move our office or do our cabling, will you? And we're like, sure, no problem. And then they love us. And then they're like, we don't like our MSP that much anyway.What do you cost? Right? And then it's like, oh, you guys are 15% more. And we can go right back to like, yeah, well, everybody's based in LA and you just saw like eight of our staff people. So what do you think? Right? It becomes less about the price. And we're justifying the price not by like, oh, we're making so much more money. We're saying like, look, the price is higher because we have LA based people with medical, dental, vision, 401K, blah, blah, blah, all the stuff. Of course our rates are going to have to be higher and owners understand that and they just have to make a decision of who they want to talk to. And we win a lot of deals because of that, because people like that, we're not outsourcing in the traditional way that you might think of.So yeah, we really try to be everything that we can to our clients and we really try to keep as strong of an LA presence as we can, which I think are our two unique factors as an MSP.[00:41:05] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. And that's actually known as a Trojan horse in marketing terms, where of course you're selling a service. It's not really your core service, but it's easier for you to sell that. I mean, for a pure MSP, backups, just focusing on selling backups and talking to people about backups, and you use that to get them in and then ask the question and say, hey, we noticed that you guys are using Windows seven machines. We noticed that you're doing this. We noticed you're doing that. And it's a way of starting a relationship with someone. I think that's a really smart thing to do.[00:41:35] Speaker B: Exactly.[00:41:35] Speaker A: Chad, thank you so much for your time. You've been so generous with telling us what you do to grow your business. And I do love getting, nothing is more exciting for me than getting actual MSP owners on to talk about what they've done and how they're growing their business. For people who are listening, watching us right now that want to get in touch with you, what's the best way to get in touch?[00:41:55] Speaker B: LinkedIn is great. You can find me on LinkedIn. My username is Chad L two. So I think that's LinkedIn.com. In Chad L. Two. I'm Chad L. Two everywhere, actually. So to Twitter, you're welcome to email me. That's Chad l at BSTg Co. Or you could even fill out the sales form. I see all of them. So if you just were like, hey, I want to talk to Chad. I'm an MSP owner. You can reach me that way as well. So there's a lot of different ways to reach me. X, formerly known as Twitter Chad L two again. And be structured, of course, has its own landing pages as well. So Zoe or me will see those and she'll pass them along.[00:42:35] Speaker A: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast this week's.[00:42:39] Speaker B: Recommended book hi, I'm Jake Gregorich, and the book I recommend is extreme ownership by Jaco Willink. The book goes into his Navy SEAL experiences and then ties them to real life business experiences. They're about taking ownership as a leader and pushing down decision making to the front lines to empower people to make those decisions without having to ask for permission and impact the end customers on creating a great experience coming up next week. I'm Trevor W. Goodchild, Facebook ad policy specialist. I've worked at Facebook in ads, tech, and project management. And on Paul's podcast, I'm going to tell you about the one thing that.[00:43:18] Speaker A: You do not want to do to.[00:43:19] Speaker B: Get your business shut down on Facebook.[00:43:21] Speaker A: And you really are going to love that interview next week. I've also got for you some myths, in fact, five myths about MSP marketing, things that might be holding you back. Let's do some mythbusting next week and get you moving forward. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MS MSP Marketing podcast.

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Episode 218Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 Is Facebook a viable promotional tool for an MSP? * 05:44 Five common website mistakes * 19:22 How 'emotional content' can help you connect with prospects

Featured guest:Thank you to Matt Tompkins, President of Two Brothers Creative, for joining me to talk about how MSPs can build trust and connect with leads and prospects by using 'emotional content' in their marketing.Matt Tompkins has hosted and produced shows on 8 different stations in the midwest, including hosting a nationally syndicated program for SiriusXM. He created, produced, and hosted a midwest-based sketch comedy television show which followed Saturday Night Live for 7 seasons and 103 episodes, becoming the highest-rated TV show in the market at the time. Matt founded his production company with his brother Ben Tompkins in 2014 and they produce podcasts for businesses and clients, specializing in video podcasting - which they leverage to meet all of the marketing needs for any business from SEO to social media, digital and content creation.Connect with Matt on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/twobrotherscreative/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Connect with me on LinkedIn: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * I talked about Seth Godin's Purple Cow - if that's something you want to follow up on, here's a link: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Purple-Cow-Transform-Business-Remarkable/dp/014101640X/ * I also mentioned Marcus Sheridan's They Ask, You Answer, you can find a copy of that here: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/They-Ask-You-Answer-Revolutionary/dp/1119610141 * And you can listen to my podcast episode where I talked to Marcus here: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode164/ * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, The Slight Edge: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Slight-Edge-Jeff-Olson/dp/1935944312/

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.[00:00:09] Speaker B: Welcome, my friend, to another fantastic podcast. Here's what I got coming up for you this week.[00:00:14] Speaker A: I'm Matt Tompkins of Two Brothers Creative. And on Paul's podcast, we're going to talk about emotional marketing and why this matters more than facts. It is the ultimate showdown of facts versus feelings. Turns out people aren't making their decisions based on the facts. They're basing it on emotional marketing. And we're going to teach you how you can leverage this to get more customers and keep those customers happy.[00:00:37] Speaker B: And on top of that fantastic interview with Matt, later on, we're going to be looking at your website in particular. I have five common website mistakes. How many of them are you making on yours?[00:00:50] Speaker A: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.[00:00:54] Speaker B: Let's start this week with a very interesting question. This is the question, is Facebook a viable marketing platform for msps? And my answer to this is yes. But you can imagine a dot, dot, dot after that. So yes, comma, but dot, dot, dot. Let me explain. Now, Facebook in general is a viable marketing platform for almost any business. Whether you're targeting other businesses as you are, or you were a restaurant looking to reach consumers, there are better platforms for each of those businesses. But Facebook is kind of like the everything platform. Facebook is one of those platforms that, and I'm going to put this in speech marks that everyone is on. And I say this as my 13 year old daughter has just joined Facebook with my permission and with my blessing. It was actually pretty much one of the only social platforms she wasn't already illegally on as a twelve year old, he says, rolling his eyes. But Instagram, Snapchat, all of that, of course she went on those because all her friends did Facebook. She didn't. Primarily because Facebook is seen by 13 year olds as the old person's platform. Because I'm on it, right? No one wants to be on a platform their parents are on. But she has joined it because there are various groups she's a member of Facebook groups for drama, things that she does. And she's discovered that of the 10 million Facebook groups out there, some of them are really things that she's interested in. And she's realized there are communities on Facebook that she wants to be part of, which is cool. And that's the beauty of Facebook, I think it has, as a product, it has transcended almost all generations. I talk to my elderly relatives on Facebook. I now have messages from and interactions with my 13 year old on Facebook. A lot of my other friends are on Facebook. In fact, it's become the place where I have my friends, I have my clients, I'm connected to all sorts of people on Facebook. And I realize that not everyone uses Facebook, but it is. I would say if there was one universal platform, it would be Facebook. Whatever your views of it, whether you love it or hate it, you kind of have to look at it as what's the average person doing with this platform? Compared to something like Instagram, which does tend to skew a little bit younger and tends to skew a bit more female, compared with something like Snapchat, which is for the kids, isn't it? Compared with LinkedIn, which is very much a b to B platform and is not really used by consumers, and certainly compared to something like TikTok. So TikTok is huge, and TikTok is increasingly being used for search, and being used for news and being used for entertainment. But again, skewing young, you may be in your forty s and getting down on TikTok, man, how old do I stand saying that? But that's not the universal thing.You don't get 70 year olds on TikTok getting down to those videos. That's just not the platform for them. So that's the power to me, of Facebook. It is the universal social media tool. And that's why it could be a viable platform for you. Now, I say could. And we go back to what I said at the beginning, where I said, yes, it's a viable platform, but dot, dot, dot. The but is that there are other platforms that are more powerful to you than Facebook. So if you are like the average MSP, where you have a very small amount of time, a very low level of time for marketing, and you want to make sure you get the best bang for your buck, you want to focus on the things that are going to give you the best return, then I would recommend that you look at LinkedIn number one, because LinkedIn is where all of your future clients are. It's where all of your prospects are. That's the place to start. The second place I would recommend you look is your email database. So building up email addresses, you can actually do this from LinkedIn. You can build connections on LinkedIn and then get their email addresses and put them into your CRM, your customer relationship manager, your mailchimp or your mailer Lite, whatever you're using. And I think those two platforms have a greater payoff for the average MSP. Than Facebook. So Facebook should be almost like the third platform, maybe even the fourth platform if you kind of look at YouTube as well. What I'm saying is if you have a very small amount of marketing time, Facebook is not the right thing for you. But if you have more marketing time and you've got lots of resources, and let's say you've repositioned yourself, start of a new year, doing it a new way, and you want to spend a couple of hours a day on marketing, then yes, Facebook can be a very, very viable thing for you to use. Now, one of the things that Facebook is really good for is something called remarketing. Remarketing is where you put adverts in front of people who've already had some kind of interaction with you. It's an incredibly effective and powerful thing to do. So powerful, so effective that we're going to look at it properly in next week's episode.[00:05:44] Speaker A: Here's this week's clever idea.[00:05:47] Speaker B: So I know we're a couple of weeks into January itself, but this is our first normal podcast of 2024 and I fancy starting a miniseries. I'm going to do this for at least two weeks. I might get a third week, I'm not quite sure, but we're going to talk about common mistakes you make on your website. I got five for you today, another five next week. Maybe we'll have a few more the week after that. We will see. But what we're going to talk about are the things that many msps get completely wrong on their website. Really, I could turn this into a 20 week series because so many msps websites just don't hit the spot. They're just not there. You think of your website. It's your number one marketing tool, the most important piece of marketing collateral you could ever have. That's your website. And I know many people. In fact, you may have put hours and hours and hours and thousands and thousands of pounds or dollars into your website, and yet it may still just fall short. And that's not your fault. Most msps are in exactly the same boat. Partly it's not really understanding who we're trying to reach, partly it's not really understanding why they would pick you over your competitor. And partly it's just the complexity. These things are difficult. Websites are difficult. So let's run through five common mistakes today, and the first of them is having a website which looks and feels exactly the same as your competitors. And that may have come out of the fact that you use the same kind of web firms or you're just pulling the same kind of template out of WordPress, or you're just kind of looking at your competitors. And sometimes when you don't know what to do, it feels easy to copy or be inspired by what other people are doing. The problem with this, and by the way, this isn't just a design thing, this is a feeling thing where your website seems to be the same as your competitors. There's nothing about it that makes it stand out. The big problem with this is when the average business owner or manager, that ordinary decision maker that you want to reach, when they are ready to think about switching MSP and they go and google it, support your town or whatever they Google, and they click on five websites, your website and four of your competitors. If all of those websites look exactly the same and feel exactly the same, then it's very hard for them to know who to speak to. If they, all of them have a weak headline and a stock image of unreal looking people, or computers or cables, and then boxes of services and a little bit of blurb about your business, but not very much about their business. If they're all that kind of the same. And that's what we mean by the samey. That's what we mean by the same. They can all have different designs, but essentially come across the same. We're actually making it harder and harder and harder for that ordinary decision maker to pick someone. How do they pick someone when everyone seems to be the same? The goal for you is to be what we in marketing call the purple cow. Now this is actually a book by an author called Seth Godin. It came out, I think, in like the mid to late ninety s. And it's very much about standing out. If you imagine a field full of cows, they're all black and white, apart from one of them, the purple cow. Which cow is going to stand out? Well, obviously it's going to be the purple one because it's unusual. So you want your website and your marketing to be the purple cow. You want it to stand out ahead of the crowd, out of the herd, as it were. It's quite a short read, by the way. Seth Godin. G-O-D-I-N. It's probably on audible, but it's definitely on Amazon or at a bookshop. Go and look up purple cow. So that's the first one. Is looking feeling the same as your competitors? The second mistake that many msps make is believing that the prospect cares about you. Now, there is a point at which they care about you, but it's quite late on in the buying journey at the point that they are going to look at your website. So they're doing some google or a friend has said, oh, you should talk to my it people or however they get to your website at this stage. They don't care about you. They only care about you in terms of what you can do for them. That's the thing that they care most about. Now there does come a point, as I say, down the sales journey. It's when they're nearly ready to pick you and they're nearly ready to say, you are the ones that I want to go for. That's the point at which they start to care about you and they start to say, right, is this a solid business? Who's leading this? Who are the people I'm going to be dealing with? What's the culture? What are the values? We all pick suppliers that match up to us. Well, we attempt to, don't we? And certainly something like an MSP, I mean, that's a massive thing. They know that they are picking you for a number of years. No one wants to pick an MSP and have to change it down the line. That's a nightmare for them. So they know they're making a multi year commitment to you, even if they're only signing a twelve month contract. So yeah, at that point they care about you. But early on in the journey, when they're first visiting your website, it's about them and not you. And this is why more of your website should be focused on them than it should about you. Now, I know you know, on your website you should have your home page and your about us page. And if you've listened to this podcast for a while, you'll have heard me say that the home pages and the about us pages are the two most important pages on the website. But here's the thing. That about us page is not really about us, about you. It should be about the customer. You can write an about us page so that it attracts and appeals to the people that you are trying to talk to. So rather than just talking about your history and what you do and your team, you talk about how a number of local businesses benefit from the team. You can talk about how this amount of history means that we understand how to strategize it for people, et cetera, et cetera. So you're always writing it from the point of view or for anything on your website is written from the point of view of the one person who's reading it. Right now, websites just like a podcast, just like radio, just like any marketing, unless you've physically got a bunch of people sat together, all marketing should talk to one person at a time. This podcast has many, many, many listeners and many viewers. But right now I'm just talking to you because it's just you and me, right? And it's exactly the same with your website. Your website talks to that one person that's reading that page. Right now, there may actually be ten people on your site, but they don't know that because they're not in a room together. So it's always a one on one. And that one on one is very much about them and not about you. So third common website mistake. And that is distracting people from the customer journey. You've kind of got to get yourself in the head and the hearts of the people who are on your website and ask yourself, why are they here? What do they want and what's the journey they're going on now? There will be some vendors that are on your website, ignore them, they don't matter. There will be some tire kickers on your website. Ignore them, they definitely don't matter. But what we are doing or what we need to do is to make sure your website talks directly to the people who in two months time are going to sign a contract with you and are going to join you as your latest client. What's the journey they go on from here where they're just doing some research and just going onto your site? What's the journey from here to that point where they are physically signing that contract? That's what we call the customer journey. And you need to make sure you don't get in the way of that customer journey. Ways that you would get in the way of that customer journey is trying too hard to collect their data. Pop ups. I hate pop ups on websites. I've used pop ups on my sites in the past. Of course I have. Everyone's done pop ups, but it's 2024 now. We don't use pop ups these days because pop ups are just a distraction. What we've got to do is ask in that journey, what are they doing? What are the research? What's the research they're doing right now?What's the information they need to gather? What's the next step for them? I always think the next step from anyone that's on your website is booking a 15 minutes zoom with you. And it needs to be 15 minutes because that's a very low commitment for them. It needs to be Zoom or Google Meet preferably zoom, though, because Zoom is the standard tool that people use, not teams. Teams is horrible. For people who use teams, teams is fine, but for people who don't use teams, teams is a real pain to get set up. Whereas Zoom is actually relatively easy if you've never used it before. And who hasn't used Zoom before? Right? We're talking ordinary people here, not text. So that's the customer journey. And this is why your website has got to have an utter focus on the next step. The next step. That book a 15 minutes call with me. Here's my live calendar. Book it in when you're free and when I'm free. And you've got to keep your whole website focused on that next step, because that next step is the next step in their journey. That leads on to mistake number four, which is directly related to this, which is not answering their questions. Of course they're going to have questions. They're going to have some questions about you, but those are down the line questions. Remember, the questions they've got right now are, should we do this in our business? Is this safe in our business? We weren't happy with our last people because of XYZ. XYZ. How do you overcome those things? Which could be as simple as we weren't happy with the level of support we got with them, or we weren't happy with how long it took to answer the phone, or we weren't happy with how they looked after us. How would you do that differently? You've got to make sure your website answers their questions. And the easiest way to do that is to have an FAQ section, a frequently asked questions section, and stroke. Or you take the they ask, you answer approach. So they ask, you answer. In fact, we did an amazing interview with Marcus Sheridan, the author of that book. They ask, you answer. We did that about a year ago. If you go back to, I think off the top of my head, it's something like episode 168 of the podcast, but it was January 2023. And they ask, you answer is an amazing book about your content marketing, but especially your website, where you anticipate the things that people ask you based on hearing the same questions again and again and again during sales meetings. And you answer those questions in your marketing, on your website, in your emails, and in your presales, literature and videos, and go and read or listen to. They ask, you answer to get the lowdown on that. And then we have the fifth most common mistake, which is not connecting one human to another human. People buy from people. And if you forget that and you consider that they are buying from a brand. They're buying from your MSP's brand name, which they're not, by the way. You could be the biggest MSP on the planet. And unless you're literally a household name like Microsoft, they're not buying from your brand. They're buying from people. They're buying from you, or they're buying from whoever's on the website, who's the face of the business, which may be you. Or they're buying from the salesperson that sits in front of them. And they really do buy from that person. We as humans, we think that we're making logical brain decisions based on facts and evidence, but we're not. We really aren't even something as important and big as buying MSP services. We are doing it with our hearts and we're justifying it with our head. And that's why you've got to make sure that your website and in fact, all of your marketing is so full of emotions and connection and your heart connecting to their heart and building trust with them and showing that you are a likable character that they can trust. All of this is so important. And it's the thing that makes the difference between a website that generates leads and a website that just simply doesn't generate leads. But listen, I have five more common mistakes for you that you may be making on your website, and I'll bring those to you in next week's episode.One of the most powerful ways to learn anything is to use the world's favorite video platform. What's that called? Yeah, of course, it's called YouTube. And there's so much great stuff on YouTube. There's a lot of crap as well, but there's a lot of very, very good stuff on YouTube. And we have recently completely changed our YouTube strategy. We've gone away from sort of putting small clips of how to grow your MSp because that's okay. But we wanted to go a little bit different and really make some impactful content. So we have started producing longer YouTube videos that have a lot more entertainment baked into them. The idea being that you can learn about growing your MSP and how to get more new clients while actually having some fun as well. And here's just a short example of something we've done recently. Has anyone ever told you how to turn prospects into clients with lasagna?Let's set the scene. You need a new client. You've developed a promising lead, you've had some positive conversations with stakeholders, and you're invited to pitch, but then for some reason they go cold and you lose them. How do you stop this from happening again with these three lasagnas? And I don't mean you need to invite your prospects round to dinner. I mean you can if you want to, but I'll let someone else explain. Hi, this is Jamie Warner from Envirosoft. I built my MSP organically to $10 million in revenue. So if you want more content like that and you want to learn while you laugh, hopefully while you laugh anyway, then just head over to our channel. It's YouTube.com slash MSP marketing.[00:19:20] Speaker A: Big interview. Hi, my name is Matt Tompkins. I'm the co founder of a content marketing agency, two brothers creative, based out of Omaha, Nebraska, USA.[00:19:30] Speaker B: And welcome to the show, Matt. Now you've got a great company name and we're going to explore where that comes from in a second. I think we can guess where it might come from, but we will go there in a second if you, for our audience, if you listen to the podcast on one of the many audio platforms and you often wonder what our guests look like or where are they? This is one of those that, particularly if you're an MCU fan, you want to be getting onto YouTube and just looking at the podcast because Matt has one of those classic sort know YouTube studio setups and he's got Iron Man's mask at the back. And earlier on, just before the interview, he was showing me all of his toys. He's got like Groot and Spider man and Batman and all sorts of stuff hiding in the background. So you definitely win the geekiest, coolest home video setup. That's for sure.[00:20:14] Speaker A: Everybody seems to love it. And I love it too, because I am a Marvel nerd and I have no shame about that at all. I could say that out loud, proudly.[00:20:21] Speaker B: Okay, so post interview then we need to go down the MCU route, but we won't do it now because it can be boring for non MCU people, particularly as it's got so complicated since the Disney plus stuff came along. Anyway, let's talk about your business. So you're called two brothers. Is it as simple as it's you and it's your brother?[00:20:38] Speaker A: It is as simple as that. It started as my brother and I. We had the opportunity in 2014 to produce the first ever sketch comedy television show. It was a half hour show in the midwest here in the United States that followed Saturday Night Live. Every week we signed on thinking, oh, this will be easy. We've done YouTube sketches before. And we found out real fast how hard it is to produce a weekly comedy show. Especially when our budget, our gross budget was $500 us dollars per episode. That was all we had to work with. That actually is what created this company, because we found all of these workarounds and ways to produce content, both written, video, audio, to deliver that to small business owners who didn't have a massive budget and needed that help. And so that's kind of where we cut our teeth. We both came from about 17 years working together in radio as well, and broadcasting. So a lot of experience on radio and television, and it led us to where we are today, where we're doing the thing I never thought I'd be doing, which is being an owner of a business, an entrepreneur, and loving every minute of it, because it's really just as simple as we love helping people, we love learning, really, and then using that to help people, that's really what our passion is.[00:21:47] Speaker B: That's so cool. And of course, I'm a former radio guy as well. I did ten years in radio back mid ninety s to mid noughties. So look at us, the two x radio guys, talking about video now and running our own businesses. Let's be honest, this is much better than working in radio, isn't it?Radio is fun at the time, but like any job, when you've had enough of it, you've had enough of it. So what did you do? Were you a presenter, a dj?[00:22:09] Speaker A: Yeah. So I hosted a variety of shows. My brother and I had a show called the Mat and Ben show. It was an afternoon FM radio show, so music station, we did that on a few different stations. And then I hosted news talk shows, like a three hour talk show Monday through Friday, did some morning show radio. After that, I even hosted a nationally syndicated talk show on Sirius XM for a while, which was kind of a fun experience. That's actually what gave me the funds, to be honest. I had the actual money to build my own first studio in my house. So that was kind of cool. But yeah. So variety about just about every format from like top 40 to country music stations. I mean, we got to meet all the big stars before they were stars. Like Taylor Swift, I'll never forget, played her song in our studio and there was only like five people that showed up because nobody knew who she was at the time.[00:22:54] Speaker B: Wow, that's an insane story. That is. That's the kind of story you can dine out on for the rest of your life, isn't it? Something like that.[00:23:00] Speaker A: And I do. And I do.[00:23:01] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I'm sure you do. You got that celebrity dropping just as quickly as you possibly could. So we're talking about videos, and we will come on to talk about exactly what you guys do and how you can help msps with the videos. But the subject I really want to drill in to is emotions and putting emotional content out there. Now, the reason I think this is of great interest is I know, because I talk to lots of msps all the time. I'll talk to five or ten different msps a week. I've got Facebook groups, LinkedIn, I'm constantly talking to msps because it's how you have to keep in touch with what people are asking and talking about. Right. And I know that one of the things that msps fear the most, not just in video, or especially in video, but in all of their marketing, is emotional content. And you look at the average MSP's website and it's very dry and it's very factual and it's about, this is what we do, these are the services, this is what we can buy, and there's no emotional stuff to it. And I feel like I've spent the last four and a bit years on this podcast hitting a big drum that says, be emotional, be a person, be a real person. Connect to other people, because people buy from people. And I think this is an ongoing mission. What's your experience of msps that you've worked with and other kind of business owners and their kind of attitude towards being more emotional in their marketing?[00:24:20] Speaker A: I think emotional marketing, it is universal. And I think that's hard to understand because MSPs, especially a lot in the IT world, you're looking at facts and numbers and figures. It's really easy to look at this and say, oh, this is a no brainer decision. Obviously, if you compare the facts I have, the better service. They're going to choose me. That really doesn't matter. Facts don't matter in marketing. Marketing is all about perception. It is all about how you're making someone feel. A great example of this is both in the UK and the United States. Look at our politics. You can't change someone's mind based on the facts. It is impossible. It is all based on the emotional connection. And there's three distinct emotional connections you can make or reasons that people make a decision to purchase. And we can get into those in a second. But the overarching theme here is you have to disconnect from the facts. The facts are just a part of it. They don't mean everything. And so business owners, MSPs, if you're looking for that new client, you have to understand they are looking for someone that they know, like and trust. And trust is that key component. So the reason you have to invest in emotions in your marketing and marketing, when I say invest in emotions, I mean you need to build an emotional connection of some kind that is so that you can establish trust. When people trust you, they will fill in the blanks. It's almost, we have clients where they trust us. I keep continuing to do my sales pitch, and they're like, no, Matt, stop. Listen. We trust you. We don't need to hear the rest. And it's as simple as that when it comes to your marketing. It is as simple as perception is everything. Trust is how you build that new client, that new relationship.[00:25:58] Speaker B: Yeah. So what is it then that makes it so difficult to do that? Emotional marketing? Is it fear of, I don't know, fear of coming across as a fraud or in fact, you know what, I wonder if it's this. Is it the fear that you will look unprofessional? Do you think MSP owners are scared that they will come across as unprofessional if they're emotive in their marketing?[00:26:20] Speaker A: Well, and I think you hit on something there that I think is important. And that is we think of emotions and we think of emotional marketing and we think, okay, I got to go cry on camera. Or what's that mean? I have to wear my heart on my sleeve? No, that's not what that means. There are so many different emotions, like trusting someone. How do you build trust with someone? Right? You're going to show that you're calm, you're rational, you're reliable, that they can count on you. That is connecting with their emotions, with your marketing. And so it doesn't mean necessarily you have to reveal more yourself. You don't want to be something that you're not naturally right. You don't want to try and fake it. And I think the musician pink said everybody should have one good cry per day. And you don't have to start crying on camera every single day. Right. You don't have to follow Pink's advice, be yourself. But an easy way to frame this is, and this is a hard kind of hard thing to swallow for myself, for any business owner, for any MSP, is people don't care about your business. They care about what your business can do for them. So think about your ideal customer and what is it that drives them? What is it that moves them? That really impacts their life with what they're doing as your customer, focus on that emotional side of it. So how can you bring out the emotion of they're looking for someone that they can trust and rely on, so how can you convey that to them? How can you show that you are the person behind the company that they can invest in? That's the type of emotions you want to focus on. So I think that we initially think it's all about just revealing more of our own emotions. It's really figuring out what are the emotions of your ideal customer. Focus on that and then present yourself in a way that's going to build on that emotional connection.[00:27:58] Speaker B: Yeah, that makes sense. And in a second, I'm going to ask you some practical actions that we can take to actually implement that. As you were talking there, it occurred to me that this is kind of like dating, isn't it?[00:28:09] Speaker A: Oh, God, yes.[00:28:10] Speaker B: And I've been single for a horrendously long time. Not because I'm a nutter or anything like that. It's just sort of circumstance of my life. But recently met someone. She's nice. She seems to like me, I like her. But it's kind of like we've got our fourth date this week, so it's very slow, and it's like a getting to know you thing. In fact, as I'm talking about this, I'm thinking this is a future podcast subject relating the dating to the marketing. She may not be so happy about that, but maybe she'll never know you're.[00:28:38] Speaker A: Hitting on this is actually 100% true. So there are three stages of any relationship. It doesn't matter if it's a business relationship, relationship with a client, or a personal relationship with somebody. And this is really important. So I'm glad you brought this up because your analogy of dating is perfect for this, for anybody. Any MSP listening, first you're going to get their attention. So think of it as, let's say you're walking down the beach and this new friend that you've met, that you're dating, she saw you. She saw, obviously, I'm sure you have like a six pack, abs and everything. So she saw you. She said, look at this good looking guy here walking on the beach. Right? You got her attention. Then you want to inform them that you're something more. All right? So you want to show that you're something more. So you want to show, okay, you're a dad, you're a great father, you care about family. It's a priority to you, maybe. You're really smart. You have a degree, you've done this, you've done that. You donate to these causes, you're passionate about this. And they say this is someone is more than just this good looking thing I saw that got my attention. There is something more, and then there's the commitment, which is the final stage. And sometimes people can jump right in, they can run to Las Vegas, Nevada, and get married that night, and they jump from meeting someone to getting married. But most people, it's an evolution. And so that enlightenment phase, which is that second phase, that is important. And that's where all this marketing comes in. So you've gotten their attention through a piece of content or your marketing that you put out there. Now, how are you going to back that up? How are you going to enlighten them? Is it through nurture email campaigns that you send out? Is it informational content and blog articles that you're posting on your website? Is it content you're sharing on social media? How are you going to enlighten them to get them to that commitment phase? So your analogy you brought up is perfect for marketing because it's just as accurate, just as true in marketing as it is with a personal relationship.[00:30:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm thinking of side business here. The MSP, dating experts. That could be it. Well, you could do that, Matt, I.[00:30:26] Speaker A: Think you just hit on something big. Yes. Yeah. Let's swipe right on that idea.[00:30:30] Speaker B: Yes. I like that. While we're on that, don't ever do Tinder. I don't know if you're married, if you have someone important in your life, but keep that person. Tinder is a nightmare. All of the apps are a nightmare. I met this one off apps, and that's a big thing in the old person dating world, which is the world I'm in, is when you're introduced by an actual human to another human, you cling on. Not cling on because that makes you sound clingy, but you go for that. That's a big deal. Anyway, dating stuff to one side, marketing stuff coming back in. Let's talk about practical actions. So imagine you're an MSP owner. You're a technical person at heart. You like fixing things. You like logical problems, you like helping people. That's 80% of the MSPs that I've met. And then marketing is a dark art. It's a confusing, dark art. You know, you've got to do more of it because you want more of those clients. But that whole where to start what to do in what order is the most confusing thing. Hence listening to a podcast like this. So if you were in that situation, or if you were advising someone in that situation, in the context of emotional marketing, what kind of things could they do to get started?[00:31:32] Speaker A: Well, I think there's three problems here that you need to look at, and you need to understand how your ideal customer, your target market, is going to make that purchase decision. And this spans across any industry, any company, whatever product or service you're selling. So, MSPs, this rings true with you just as much as someone selling homemade socks or candles on a website, right? So the three problems are, there are an external problem, an internal problem, and a philosophical problem. So the external problem is, let's use a car analogy. All right? So I need to buy a car because I need to get from point a to point b. I need a vehicle, right? That's the external problem. So for an MSP, it's a service you're providing. It solves this problem for you. The mistake that people make is we try and list think of that only that problem is the reason why they're going to make the decision to hire us or contract us. The second problem is how they actually make the decision, and that is the internal problem. Okay, so the internal problem is, yes, I need a vehicle, but I want a vehicle that shows my neighbor Todd up because Todd, he has this brand new know hybrid. I'm going to get myself a Tesla and I'm really going to show off my status and feel good about myself and feel proud. So the internal problem is what is motivating them emotionally. So the external problem is kind of the fact based problem that you're solving. The internal problem is the emotional problem that you're solving. And then the philosophical problem is feeling as if you belong to something bigger than you. So by buying that Tesla, I am saving my carbon emissions, I'm not contributing to polluting the environment. So I feel like I'm contributing something positive to something bigger than myself. So if you hit all three of those, if you can solve all three of those problems, you have hit a grand slam, you have hit a home run. You are going to land that ideal customer if you only focus on the external problem. If you only focus on just that one problem you're solving, you're really going to struggle to land those new clients. Because most 99% of people don't base a purchase decision off of just that external problem. Most people base the decision on the internal problem, which is, why should I make this for me, like, how does this make my life better? How does this move myself forward or drive me where I'm wanting to go? And then that philosophical. So try and hit all three. But if you're focusing your efforts on one problem in particular, really focus on the internal problem versus that external problem.[00:33:57] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that and completely agree with you on that. Okay, final kind of subject, which, let's bring video into this. So is video the main thing that you guys do now?[00:34:06] Speaker A: Yeah. So we started in the world of audio with radio. When we did the television show, we cut our teeth and learned really quick about video production. And today it's important to understand that every social media platform is now a video platform. And every platform, from Google to YouTube to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, they are all rewarding video content the highest, above all other forms of content that you put out there. So some things to consider, like, let's say you write some content for your website, well, do a video version of that and put it on the same page or the same blog, it is going to help. Oftentimes what we see with clients, we'll apply the same. We do organic SEO and things like search engine optimization for clients to help them rank higher. What we see is we could do a written blog, but if we do a video version of that blog, it's going to show up faster because there are a lot of people, a lot of business owners that just aren't thinking in this mindset. That really rings true today more than ever. And that is everything needs to be in video. I mean, I think it's about 75% or customers are 75% more likely to make a purchase if there's a video that accompanies that product, they're more likely to watch a video than they are to read a bunch of copy. And so I think the important thing for any MSP listening now is that everything needs to include video. Video needs to be incorporated in your marketing efforts, even if it's you behind the scenes. It doesn't have to be as nice as either of our sets that we have here, behind us here today. Even if it's just you on your phone using the world's most powerful device today to just capture that content and connect with people, because that is how people are consuming content today in video. So I believe it's a standard requirement now. And kudos to you for investing in the video side of podcasting, because a lot of people, you say, hey, I listen to a podcast, they don't even think audio. They think it's oh, that's a video on YouTube. That's what they think it is. So you want to be sure that you're putting your content out there and your marketing efforts in the different formats. People are actually consuming and people actually prefer.[00:36:09] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. And actually, this podcast is a great example of how you don't need to be super professional. Early on when this started, it was literally me with a microphone at my desk, audio only. And then when we went down the video, it was just me using my webcam. And then I got an old digital SLR. And if you're watching this on YouTube now, I've got this lovely virtual studio behind me, and we've got a green screen set up. And all of that's only happened in the last few months. And yet this podcast is four plus years old. So, yeah, I agree. You don't have to. And msps especially like to think, right, video kit. I'm going to go and get Kit because msps are good at Kit, whereas the rest of us think, oh my God, we've got to go and buy some kit. Msps are rubbing their thighs because they get to buy kit. But I think that's the wrong place to start. I think you're right, Matt. The right place to start is actually, it goes back actually to those problems that you were talking about earlier, that the right place to start is, what am I going to talk about? What are we going to present and how is that going to be received by the other person? Okay, tell us what you do with videos. How do you help msps and what's the best way to get in touch with you?[00:37:16] Speaker A: Yeah, so our company, we created what is now called the content in a box. And content in a box is really taking all of those baseline, basic marketing, foundational things every business needs and just taking it off your plate. Because we discovered really quickly that when we were doing video with podcasting, and we discovered pretty fast a lot of our friends and people we'd known over the years who own businesses in many different industries, from super high tech stuff to just people who are serving customers kind of b to c format, they were coming to us saying, this is overwhelming. My marketing is daunting. I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't have time to figure this out. And if they hired a marketing agency, it would cost them tens of thousands of dollars and they'd get the same lackluster results. And so content in a box is based off of you. Give us 30 minutes of your time. Each month and we deliver 30 days of content. And that content comes in a box that we also schedule and post to your social media platforms of choice. But it is video. It is a video long form video. It is the audio podcast. It is video shorts, the vertical format shorts like you see on Facebook and Instagram, Reels, TikTok and YouTube shorts which are really the highest value commodity as far as video goes today in how people consume content. We write an SEO focused blog article in this box that's delivered for your website with the images and everything for you. And then we create social media graphics and gifs to accompany. So you basically have 30 days worth of a variety of content to post. And all you have to do is just show up because we want you in the video. That's important. We want to demonstrate you as an authority, as a subject matter expert, as a leader in your field. But you show up to do the recording, we handle the rest for you. So that's kind of our passion project, if you will, that we've developed over the last several years. And then beyond that, we also serve as a full service content marketing agency. So we have big clients who we do full service SEO and kind of layering on different services, video production as they're needed. But that content in a box is kind of our bread and butter entry package that we offer that any business of any size can really leverage and take advantage of.[00:39:19] Speaker B: I love it. Thank you so much. And Matt, what's the best way to get in touch with you?[00:39:22] Speaker A: Yeah, so our website is thecontententbox.com and that's the easiest way to get a hold of us. You can learn more about us and if you like emotional marketing, we got a blog article that I know you've kind of pointed out as far as this would be good to talk about today, all about emotional marketing that is up on the website. And you can read through our main page because we're big believers in Donald Miller's story brand structure, which would be my book recommendation as well. Marketing made simple because it really just takes you through the journey of what you're experiencing now and how we can help solve those real problems. For Paul Paul Paul Greens MSP Marketing podcast Week's recommended book hey everyone.[00:40:01] Speaker C: My name is Braith Bamkin. I'm the executive director of BNI here in Melbourne, Australia, and my book recommendation is the slight Edge by Jeff Olsen. I love this book. My business mentor got me onto it about seven or eight years ago, and it's really changed the way I do things on a daily basis. So the principle is really simple stuff, and I love simple. Effectively, the idea is that the decisions that we make on a daily basis don't have a massive impact on us today or tomorrow or even the next day. But cumulatively, they have a massive effect over time. So let me give you an example. If you don't go to the gym tomorrow, you're not going to be a heart attack waiting to happen the day after. But if you consistently don't exercise for the next three or four years, your health probably won't be as good as it could possibly be. Likewise, if you eat a healthy meal today, you're not going to notice anything tomorrow. But you do that over the next couple of years, every meal, and you're going to see a massive difference. But it's very easy to get discouraged because you don't see results today. So you've got to stick with the course. And the slight edge really helps you to understand the little tiny decisions we make every single day cumulatively have a massive impact. It's kind of like interest in the bank account. You don't see it for a long time, then all of a sudden you seem to have a massive account balance growing and growing. So that is the slight edge. By Jeff Olsen. I love it. Read it. He talks about seven principles. You will love the book. It's been a founding light for me.[00:41:41] Speaker B: Coming up next week, I'm Chad Lauderbach.[00:41:44] Speaker A: Founder and CEO of be Structured Technology Group. And from 2007 to date, I grew my MSP from just me in my one bedroom apartment in Los Angeles to 25 people in downtown LA. And you can hear my story on Paul's podcast.[00:41:58] Speaker B: And on top of that interview with Chad, we're going to be talking next week about remarketing. I've mentioned it earlier. It's a fantastic way to get a message in front of someone when they've already been on your website. It can be a very, very powerful way of following someone up to make sure you get the sale. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.[00:42:21] Speaker A: Made in the UK for msps around the world Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

They Ask, You Answer: A Revolutionary Approach to Inbound Sales, Content Marketing, and Today's Digital Consumer

Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable

The Slight Edge: Turning Simple Disciplines into Massive Success and Happiness

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Episode 217Welcome to a special episode of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP.In the third and final of our series of Special Episodes, I'm joined by cold-calling expert Derek Marin.Derek shares some of the advice and tips he's learnt from cold-calling, and offers me live feedback when I try cold-calling for myself.Featured guest:Derek Marin is President of Simple Selling. Since 2019, his team has implemented outbound sales exclusively for MSPs. They have generated hundreds of first-time appointments that have converted into new managed and co-managed services agreements. If your calendar is all tumbleweed and beat-up trucks, then the answer is simple: call Simple Selling.Connect with Derek on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/marinderek/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Connect with me on LinkedIn: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.[00:00:00] Speaker A: You.[00:00:00] Speaker B: Hello and welcome to the third and final of our three holiday specials. I know it's the 9 January. It's not the holidays anymore, but we do still have this final special episode for you. And you are going to love this one today because I'm going to do something that I recommend all MSPs do, but they hate it. And you know what? I hate it, too. In this special episode, I'm going to make a ton of cold calls. Paul?[00:00:27] Speaker C: Paul?[00:00:28] Speaker B: PaUL Greens, MSP Marketing.[00:00:33] Speaker D: PodCast hi, I'm Derek Marin, President of Simple Selling. And we help MSPs grow with outbound sales because they got much better things to worry about. So that's what we do.[00:00:42] Speaker B: And normally, Derek, I welcome our guests on with enthusiasm and joy and say thank you very much for joining me on the podcast. I've got to be honest, I haven't been looking forward to interviewing you at all. And you know why? You know that what we are about to do is stupid and terrifying. So let me set a bit of a backstory. So Derek and I were connected. I can't remember who connected us now, but there are various people connecting me to other people in the MSP world all the time, and I really appreciate it. And we were sat talking about this podcast, and what could you bring to this podcast that would be new because we've had loads of great people on talking about selling over the phone and selling in general. And then you suggested to me, you said, Paul, how about if on your podcast, I coached you through doing a live call? And I stupidly said, yes, you're brave. You're a brave man.Do you know what? Okay, what we're going to do is you're going to give me some basic advice. I'm going to make a call. You're going to tell me why it was so horrendous.I feel I should set some. Well, I'll set some context to my calling in a second.[00:01:53] Speaker D: Sure.[00:01:53] Speaker B: Let's, first of all, explore who you are. So tell us about you. What's your background? What makes you the guy that's here coaching me how to do a sales call?[00:02:03] Speaker D: This is crazy. I don't even know how I ended up here. So I've been running this little company for about five years now, and I was fortunate enough to get introduced to an MSP when I was just starting my marketing agency back then. And I didn't have, and I still don't have an MSP background or an IT service background or anything of the sort. And I have to admit that the first year of working with this MSP that's based in Connecticut with lead generation, it was a huge struggle. I tried to do what you do, Paul, with the market, the digital marketing and the content. And boy, I got my butt handed to me, let's just put it that way. And so almost out of desperation, I started picking up the phone and Tom, you know, I know the types of companies and organizations in Connecticut that you want to work with. Let me try to give some of these folks a call and the rest is history.I still got my butt handed to me for the first couple of thousand calls probably, but I eventually figured some things out. And fast forward to today. We're working with many MSPs, not nearly at the scale as Paul Green, but with MSPs that want to grow by directly reaching those organizations that they want to sell managed and co managed services to. So we're primarily an outbound implementation and I consider myself very lucky to be doing what we do.[00:03:25] Speaker B: So you make the outbound calls on behalf of MSPs, that's what you do?[00:03:30] Speaker D: Exactly. We are considering some coaching services, but we're still very early in discovering whether that's an option some MSPs might like.[00:03:38] Speaker B: Okay, well, that's certainly. Well, I guess off the back of this podcast, someone hearing this and thinking, I could do some help with this. We'll give you your contact details at the end, as we always do. So some context then. So I have this marketing strategy that I bang a drum about and talk about a lot, especially with my MSP marketing edge members. But to all MSPs, whenever I do webinars or on this podcast, and if you're a long term listener to this podcast, you'll have heard this before. I talk about a three step strategy. The first step is you build multiple audiences. So like your linkEdin, your email database, the second step is you build a relationship with them. And that's done through content marketing. So posting content onto social media and then sending out educational, entertainment, edutainment emails. And then the third step. The third step is pretty much the one that I have the least experience of because the third step is commercializing the audience. And when we say commercializing, what we mean is taking this relationship you've built up with people and turning it into an appointment. And the methodology I recommend is that you go and get a back to work mum or someone. It could be your business, Derek. It could be any kind of business doing outbound calls. And you get someone else to make outbound calls on your behalf. And the goal is to just ring all of these people that you're connected with on LinkedIn and that are in your database and you're trying to basically find out, is now the right moment? Because we all know that the thing that makes the MSP sales cycle so very long and so painful is that people only buy when they're ready to buy. And it can be years. They could be with an MSP right now that they are going to stay with for the next five years. But then at the end of that five years, for whatever reason, they've become dissatisfied. And that's the moment. The moment that they wake up one morning and think, right, going to do this, we're going to switch it company. That's the day that you want to get in front of them. And the only way we know to do that reliably is either go and pay, do pay per click on Google because you're putting yourself in front of the search they're already doing. Many MSPs struggle with that. So the other thing is that you build a relationship over the phone. Now, it's all very well me talking about this and saying, hey, pick up the phone and do it. I haven't personally picked up the phone and made a sales call since about 2008 because I hate it. And I know I am the same as most MSPs I've spoken to, with the exception of Kevin Ackland. I know KeVin listens to this podcast. Kevin loves picking up the phone. He's not normal. Anthony Thackeray, these are both MSPs I've worked with in the UK. Anthony loves picking up the phone. He's not normal either. And I love you both guys, but every single other MSP on the planet absolutely hates picking up the phone. And I'm going to lump myself in with that. So, Derek, why? Why are we so scared of picking up the phone and calling people? Because we don't know these people, right? If they tell us to get screwed, it's not like your parents telling you to get screwed. These are strangers. Why is it so mean?[00:06:32] Speaker D: I think we're just not used know. Objection. We're not used to interrupting people. And especially nowadays, I feel like most of us just, we're so busy with our work and if we're not doing that, we're looking at our phones and our devices. And so interacting with people, especially strangers, is just not something we're as accustomed to.I think that's a huge part of the challenge of making this work is getting over having the right positive mindset and just knowing that, look, the majority of people that you speak with are not going to be interested in having another conversation, and that's totally normal. So trusting that the process will eventually reap rewards, but that it may not be on one call, it may not be ten, it may not even be 100 calls. It takes many, many attempts, often to get some progress.[00:07:23] Speaker B: And actually that persistence is such a valuable thing, not just in marketing, but in selling as well. And far too many people give up too early. Okay, so I'm going to make an attempted call.[00:07:36] Speaker D: Sure.[00:07:36] Speaker B: What we're going to do, we're going to use the magic of editing to. I'm going to start dialing. Well, in a second, I'm going to ask you to pick a vertical and I'm going to Google that vertical in the city where I live in the UK, which is Milton Keynes. And I'm just going to dial, I'm not going to click on any paid ads, I'm just going to click on map listings and just dial. And through the magic of editing, we're going to jump over the eight or ten dials where I don't get a hold. Well, where no one answers the phone or whatever, and we're going to jump straight to where I have a conversation with someone. Yeah, got it. First things first. The scenario I'm setting myself is I'm calling on behalf of an MSP. I don't know anything about it, which is not far wrong.And my goal, my outcome, is to see if they've got an IT company, if they're happy with them, and whether or not they're willing to have a 15 minutes Zoom with my boss, who I'm going to call Derek, you're going to be my boss for the benefit of this. Okay?[00:08:29] Speaker D: Sure.[00:08:30] Speaker B: So the first thing then is, what's your recommendation to get past the gatekeeper? So let's assume the person who answers the phone is not necessarily the decision maker. Tell me how to get past that gatekeeper.[00:08:41] Speaker D: Your context is a little bit different, just given our time and constraints, but under a normal circumstance for us anyway, is we'll have a list of companies and the different decision makers done that research before and imported into our CRM or our MSP CRM. We're doing it on their behalf. So we'll have names to drop. So we'll say, hi, Mary, or hi, good morning, or good afternoon. Is Tom there, please? So that's a very super straightforward. You already know who you're asking for. You're not necessarily giving away who you are. The company that you're with necessarily, we recommend at least our approach to start as simple, as straightforward as possible.In this case, though, since you don't really know, you could ask for the person who's in charge or involved with the technology over there. Something as simple as that. More often than not, they're going to say that person's not available, in which case there's different ways that you can respond. But try to follow up with something along the lines of, oh, no problem.When might be a better time for me to reach him or her and maybe just try to gather some information of whether or not they're working with another MSP or something along those lines. So we try to just approach it that way.[00:09:57] Speaker B: Right. Let's do this, Derek. Let's do this. Let's do it. You got it.You have the best voice.[00:10:04] Speaker D: So which vertical are you most?[00:10:05] Speaker B: Oh, yes.[00:10:06] Speaker D: Do you feel most comfortable dialing?[00:10:09] Speaker B: I don't know.I've worked with verticals before, but I think you suggest a random one so we can really randomize this.[00:10:18] Speaker D: Let's see. Well, you said in your area, I'm not sure what is a big industry that is predominant in your city.[00:10:28] Speaker B: There isn't one.[00:10:30] Speaker D: All the above.[00:10:31] Speaker B: You pick one.[00:10:32] Speaker E: Yeah.[00:10:32] Speaker B: Okay. Go on, you do it.[00:10:34] Speaker D: Okay, sure. I guess. Is there manufacturing?[00:10:39] Speaker B: There we go.[00:10:40] Speaker D: Could you search for something along those lines?[00:10:42] Speaker B: Sure. Okay. So I'm typing into Google. You've heard of that? Manufacturers, Milton Keynes. And we have some manufacturers. So here we go. I'm going to do the first call. By the way, if you're watching this on YouTube and you're wondering why I'm holding my phone sort of weirdly next to me. So my microphone is up above. Oh, my phone's actually ringing. So I normally switch my phone off when I'm on doing a podcast interview. So let me just kill that call. That's weird, isn't it? It's all going wrong today, right? I'm not going to tell you the name of the company. We're going to blank out the name because obviously we're not asking their permission. They're never going to listen to this podcast anyway. We hope not. So here we go. Derek, get ready. We are making our first call.Oh, hi there. Can I speak to the person who does your it, please?[00:11:40] Speaker E: Could you repeat? Who do you want to talk to? Speak?[00:11:43] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. So who's the person who makes the decisions about your IT support?[00:11:50] Speaker E: We have our IT department. Thank you very much.[00:11:52] Speaker B: Oh, is that an internal department, is it?[00:11:54] Speaker E: Yeah, it is.[00:11:56] Speaker B: Okay. Thank you very much. For your time.[00:11:57] Speaker E: Thank you.[00:11:57] Speaker B: Thank you.[00:11:58] Speaker E: Bye bye.[00:11:59] Speaker B: Did you hear in her voice when she realized it was a sales call?[00:12:04] Speaker D: Yeah.[00:12:06] Speaker B: You did great.[00:12:07] Speaker D: Yeah.[00:12:07] Speaker B: Thank you.[00:12:08] Speaker D: My only other suggestion would be, that's fantastic. That's actually why I called. And would that person be try to get a name? Because so many of our MSPs are loving the co managed opportunity. But that was great, man. You're natural. I mean, hey, you want to join us? Anytime. Anytime.[00:12:25] Speaker B: There's sweat dripping down me. There's like a cold shiver going down my spine.[00:12:29] Speaker D: The hardest part, actually, is all the music and the waiting. That is. I think one of the biggest challenges for folks is just not connecting all day. You're lucky if you get four or five actual conversations a day. Just think about that. The hardest part is not the objection for many of them, it's the burnout of just not talking to real people.[00:12:49] Speaker B: Okay. Right. Let's do another one. Here we go.Oh, good afternoon. Could I speak to the person who looks after your it, please?[00:13:06] Speaker A: Oh, they're not based on site at all. They come from head office at Runcorn.[00:13:11] Speaker B: Oh, in Runcorn. Okay. And who's the best person to speak to in Runcorn?Okay, that's lovely. Thank you. And I'll give him a call at your plant there. Thanks for your help.[00:13:23] Speaker A: Thank you.[00:13:23] Speaker B: Cheers. Bye. I got a name.[00:13:27] Speaker D: You got a name? Yeah.[00:13:29] Speaker B: We can't put the name on the podcast, but that's amazing. I got a name. Yeah.[00:13:32] Speaker D: And then we have tools like LinkedIn, and there's a lot you can do. And you can even say, this person pointed me in your direction. I mean, in this case, it was a receptionist, so maybe not the best use case, but, yeah. Great job.[00:13:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. Right, let's do another one.Industrial equipment supplier, this one.[00:13:49] Speaker A: Welcome to. At any time, press zero for reception, or press one if you know your party's extension. Alternatively.[00:14:01] Speaker D: Oh, there's the other music again. A good beat.[00:14:05] Speaker A: Good afternoon. Speaking. How can I help?[00:14:08] Speaker B: Hello, could you put me through to the person who handles your it, please?[00:14:11] Speaker A: Yes, certainly. One moment, please.[00:14:14] Speaker B: What was the easiest gatekeeper ever?A few moments later.[00:14:24] Speaker E: Record your message and press hash, or press start to contact the operator.[00:14:29] Speaker B: A voicemail. How frustrating. I'm starting to see how difficult this is and not in someone who runs a business doing this. It must drive you crazy.[00:14:37] Speaker D: Yeah. One of the biggest challenges, just connecting. And I wasn't surprised that, and we were going to run into this because I know the volume it takes. It'd be very surprising if you got connected with someone in a short period of time like this.[00:14:48] Speaker B: Okay, so I'll tell you what we're going to do. We're going to switch Tac. So as we're recording this interview, it's approaching 05:00 p.m. In the UK, which is probably the time that all the manufacturers stop work. So we're going to switch Tac, switch to a different vertical. Let's pick everyone's favorite vertical. Lawyers. Everyone loves lawyers.No, they don't. So we're going to call a firm of lawyers. Let's go for this one. They're open for another hour and they're a family law firm, so hopefully that means they won't be too big and have lots and lots of offices. Right. Let's give these guys a call.[00:15:29] Speaker D: Good evening.[00:15:31] Speaker E: So, can I help you?[00:15:32] Speaker B: Oh, hello there. Could you put me through to the person who handles your it, please?[00:15:39] Speaker E: Let me just hear. The team is just unavailable at this moment in time. There. Would you like to take a message? I can get someone to give you a call back.[00:15:47] Speaker B: Oh, that's very kind of you, thank you, but no, I'm going to give them a call, if that's okay. Who's the best person to speak to?[00:15:53] Speaker E: I just work in reception. I know someone does it, but I'm not sure who it is. I think they work remotely, but yeah, you're welcome to chat later when management is in the office. They'll be able to provide more information.[00:16:07] Speaker B: Perfect. Thank you. And by the way, there is no just working in reception. You are making everything happen at that place.[00:16:14] Speaker E: We are making what?[00:16:15] Speaker B: Sorry, no, you personally, you're making all of this happen. You're making the magic happen. You mustn't ever say, I just work in reception.[00:16:24] Speaker E: Yeah, I don't give myself much what I deserve.[00:16:31] Speaker B: I hope so too. What was your name, please?[00:16:34] Speaker E: You're speaking to.[00:16:35] Speaker B: You're an absolute star. Thank you. I'll give him a call tomorrow.[00:16:38] Speaker E: Not to worry. Take care.[00:16:40] Speaker B: Cheers.[00:16:40] Speaker E: Bye bye.[00:16:42] Speaker B: A bit of flirting with.[00:16:43] Speaker D: Yeah, great job.[00:16:45] Speaker B: Is that a good thing?[00:16:46] Speaker D: That's fantastic. Because more than likely, because when we're setting things up, it's many calls, 5678 and you might be talking to several times. So to get him on your side or her on your side is great. It's awesome.[00:17:00] Speaker B: Okay, that's fantastic.And this is the happiest thing I've ever said on the podcast ever. We're going to stop making phone calls because what you've seen and heard on the podcast is just a fraction of what me and Derek have just been through. We just had dial after dial after dial.People didn't answer the phone or the IVR just went on forever, or it was just a nightmare. And I can see that this is clearly an issue for you, Derek, for you and your team, and of course for MSPs who are phony. But that also makes me think that's an opportunity because everyone's going to have the same problem. Right. So every MSP doing outbound phone calls is going to have to sit through the nonsense, the waiting, the whole music. And that means, like we were saying earlier, the persistence is the important thing. Right?[00:17:42] Speaker D: Yeah, the volume and persistence. And it also matters to use other channels. Right. I mean, email is super important, working different. When I say working, I mean pursuing. Right. The outbound, working different contacts. So that could be the president, it could be the director of operations. It could be the one leading finance. Right. And looking for those little signals that you might get back, that there's interest when you start seeing all those opens that can kind of help you prioritize because you might have thousands of calls to make, but you have to pick and choose.But it's volume.A big part of this is volume.[00:18:20] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay, Derek, thank you so much for joining us on the show and putting me through hell. Your reward for this is just to tell us a little bit more about what do you do for MSPs and how can we get in touch with.[00:18:31] Speaker D: So, you know, ultimately, we're working with MSPs that want to grow by directly targeting a certain group of accounts. And typically, these MSPs, they have a pretty well oiled, or at least they're beginning to oil their sales process. They're ready to go from, say, word of mouth or referrals, or maybe they're getting some great inbound traction with organization or content like yours, Paul, but they want that extra sniper, direct approach. So to get in touch with us, you can find us at Simpleselling Co. Co. And our contact information is right.[00:19:08] Speaker B: There, coming up next week.[00:19:11] Speaker C: I'm Matt Tompkins of two brothers Creative. And on Paul's podcast, we're going to talk about emotional marketing and why this matters more than facts. It is the ultimate showdown of facts versus feelings. Turns out people aren't making their decisions based on the facts. They're basing it on emotional marketing. We're going to teach you how you can leverage this to get more customers and keep those customers happy.[00:19:34] Speaker B: So we are back to our normal format next week. And on top of that interview, I'm going to be giving you five common website mistakes that many MSPs make. Are you making these mistakes on your website? Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP. Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

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Episode 216Welcome to a special episode of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP.For this second of our series of Special Episodes, I wanted to do something a little different, and a little special. I'll be taking you for a walk around one of my favourite places, Willen Lake, and sharing some of the thinking that will help you achieve your business goals for 2024.I explore five key considerations that you will need to address to help you achieve your business and lifestyle goals for 2024.* 00:00 Vision * 07:11 Goals * 11:23 Strategy * 17:57 Tactics * 22:13 Daily Actions

Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Connect with me on LinkedIn: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.[00:00:00] You. Hello and welcome to our second special for Christmas and our first podcast of 2024. Welcome to a brand New Year. I am delighted to have you here with me. I don't know about you, but I'm going to have a cracking year this year. I've made that decision, and I hope that you're going to make the decision too, to make 2024 a fantastic year for your MSP. Now, this week's podcast is a very, very different and special episode. We've never done anything like this before, so it's a bit of an experiment. See if you like it. I am taking you out on a walk.[00:00:35] It's winter here in the UK and it's cold, and I'm going out for a nice crisp walk around one of my favorite lakes. I'll tell you about the lake in a second, but I'm taking you with me. This is also an audio only podcast. We've been doing video versions for the last couple of years, but just this one because it is just you and me. I thought you'd like to come out with me on a walk. What I want to do in this podcast is I want to help you make a link between the things that you do on a daily basis. So literally, the actions that you take on a daily basis and the results that you get. In fact, more than just the results you get, the lifestyle you get. I want you to understand that every single thing you choose to do or choose not to do this year, and it's always a choice whether you do something or whether you don't do something. I want you to see the direct connection between that and the house you have, the car you have, the lifestyle you have, what you do with your family. So that's why I've brought you. Paul. Paul. Paul. Paul. Paul. Paul. Paul.[00:01:39] Paul. Paul. Paul. Paul Greens MSP Marketing podcast in a city called Milton Keynes in the UK. It's a fantastic city. It was built from scratch sort of about 60 years ago. And one of the things they did, they planned it very, very well. And it's based around a whole series of very, very beautiful lakes. They're actually sort of water balancing lakes, so they stop the place from flooding in theory, but they're also just great for leisure as well. And it's nice and early in the morning and I'm just wandering around the lake. In fact, this lake has a. I don't know, it's always been a very special lake to me. I've come here many, many times with my family, my daughter, where I'm standing right now. My daughter, literally on this spot, learnt to ride her bike. It's like that kind of lake. And I'm looking out across the lake, there are swans. If you're outside of the UK, you won't know what a swan is, but they all belong to the King. I'll tell you about swans another day. And I can also see the Peace Pagoda. The Peace Pagoda is a very famous part of Milton Keynes. It was, I believe, the first Buddhist peace pagoda in the west in the 1980s, something like that. So I like to come here and I like to walk and I like to think. And in fact, every single year, normally around about September time, not quite as late as this, but I come for very long walks around lakes like Willem Lake, and I just think about what do I want to do? What do I want to achieve, what do I want my lifestyle to be next year? And you and I together, we are going to go through a set of things that we're going to think about along those lines. In fact, what we're going to do is we're going to talk about the vision for your future life. Then we're going to talk about the goals that you need to set in order to achieve that vision. Then we're going to talk about the strategy to achieve those goals. Because I'm making the assumption those goals are goals for your MSP. So when the one we should set a strategy, we'll then talk about the tactics that you need to implement in order to achieve the strategy. And then we'll talk about the daily actions that you need to take in order to make those tactics happen. So vision, goals, strategy, tactics and daily actions. And as we're going through this podcast, I'm going to give you some points where I might say to you, hey, just pause the podcast, particularly if you're out for a walk yourself. Great at this time of year to do that before you get back into the rough and tumble of work.[00:03:56] But yeah, so it'd be great for you to just sort of pause and think along. As I give you examples of things in my life, it would be great for you to do some thinking about what you want to achieve with your life. This is an MSP Marketing podcast special.[00:04:11] So let's talk about vision then. And as I say, I come round this lake when I'm setting out what I want to achieve in 2024. So I did this a few months ago and I was primarily thinking lifestyle things. So when I think about vision, I think, what's the lifestyle I'd like to make this year? What's the change I'd like to make this year? And lifestyle. Some people see lifestyle as things, as stuff. And sure, the house that you live in and the car you drive and the holidays you take, the vacations you take, all of those are part of your lifestyle. But I do think that actually, lifestyle is more to do with what you do with your time. And certainly as I'm getting older, and I'll give you a confession, I'm going to turn 50 this year. Slightly terrifying. The more, the older I get, the more I think, what do I want to do with that time? And as business owners, you and I, we have the ability to affect what we do with our time based on the amount of cash that we can generate. So I have things I want to do with my time this year. I want to spend more time with my daughter. She's going to turn 14 this year. She still likes me a bit, so I want to spend more time with her because soon she won't like me. So I'm thinking about what vacation, what big holiday we're going to take this year. I'm thinking about more trips that we can do. She's really into her musical theater, so let's go and see more musical theater this year, all of that kind of stuff. And that's the kind of lifestyle things I've been thinking about. This isn't a big shift year for me. That will be a few years time when she leaves home, but this year, it's just about spending more time with her. So as I'm thinking about that, I'm thinking, right, I need two things. I need time and I need cash.[00:05:45] I need cash to do the things I want to do, which obviously churns up cash, burns up cash, and I need the time to go and enjoy it. And that, for me, that's my lifestyle. That's my vision. So if I was to think about my vision for this year, it's to generate even more cash. And it's to do so in a way which doesn't tie up all of my time. It's no fun. In fact, I have friends who are cash rich and time poor, and that's not fun. Just as it's also not fun to be time rich and cash poor. That's not fun at all. Having lots of time but no money to do anything with it, that's not fun, is it? So the goal for you and me as business owners is we want to be cash rich and time rich. We want to have enough cash and enough time to do exactly the things that we want to do. And that's my vision for this year. I kind of did my whole big change vision a few years ago, and I moved house to Village I've always wanted to live in, and a part of that village, the specific location, almost a specific street that I wanted to live in, which is where I now live. I have the car I want, I live the lifestyle I want. I have enough time, et cetera. This year. I just want a little bit more of the same. And that's my vision for 2024. Take this moment now, if you want to, to pause this podcast and just have a think as you're out on your walk or on your drive or whatever you're doing right now, and just think for this year, what's your vision? What's the thing that you most want this year? This is an MSP Marketing podcast special, and we're back. So, from your vision, once you realize exactly what it is that you want to achieve this year, we've next got to make the business actually do that for you. And I say that because the beauty of this podcast is it is aimed at business owners. I know we have so many listeners who aren't business owners, and hi to you if that's you. But primarily we're talking to the owners of MSPS here. And even if you're not a business owner, you can still go through this exact process. It's just you perhaps don't have the amount of control that business owners do. Being a business owner is a double edged sword. It really is. It's both the best thing and the worst thing in the world. Wouldn't you agree? It's exactly those two things. Because it's the best thing. Because you do have control and you can generate good cash and you have a relative amount of freedom. And it's the worst thing because often you have no cash and you have no freedom and you work 60 hours a week desperately trying to keep everything together. And I think it's certainly very hard in your first few years. But it does get easier as someone who's been going since 2005. That's when I started my first business. So it does get easier as time goes on. And I can't ever imagine having a job, that's for sure. Anyway, I digress. So, as a business owner, when we set out a vision for our life, we can then use the business and set goals for the business to help to fulfill that vision. So I was saying to you that I want a little bit more cash and I want a little bit more time to enjoy that cash so I can do the things I want to do with my daughter. Well, that means that my business has got to generate some more net profit. Net profit, of course, being the money that's left over after you've brought in all the money, all the money for the things you've sold and paid all of the bills. The net profit that's left over, that's yours, you pay some tax on it, but it's your money. Right?[00:08:57] So I want a little bit more net profit, but also I want to just knock my hours down a couple of hours. Again, I don't work massive hours. I perhaps work 30 hours a week, but when I work, I work. I'm very hardcore on that work and I will work some odd hours, I'll work late in the evenings because obviously I'm in the UK and I do loads of webinars for across the world and I don't mind doing that. But there are probably still two or 3 hours a week I'm doing stuff I probably shouldn't be doing. So one of my business goals this year is exactly that. It's to look at ways that I can make the business more efficient, try and reduce my own work a couple of hours, and also actually looking for my team. I've got a fantastic team and I think across the board, everyone's just wasting a couple of hours a week doing stuff we really don't need to do. And maybe we don't realize that we're doing it for no reason. So that would be a pretty good efficiency drive. And a good goal for this year is let's see if we can make a little bit more money and let's see if we can just free up everyone's time because everyone wins then, don't we? If everyone gets two, 3 hours a week back to go and enjoy their life, then that to me is a massive, massive win. So that's our goal for the year. And that's not, not just a very tangible, very specific goal, but it's a. Oh, and by the way, we do have massive growth goals as well as a business. We have some very, very specific growth goals for this year, but that's kind of relevant more to the business in terms of helping the business or making sure the business fulfills my vision for my life. Those are the things that matter more, is actually clawing back a little bit more time and that's kind of like a sub goal that I've got running underneath the very ambitious growth goals that we've got. So, a pause moment for you again. What does your MSP need to do this year? What's the performance that you need this year? It could be money. It could be that you need the MSP to churn out more money. Or it could be that your goal this year is to remove yourself from technical work, for example. That's a fantastic goal. Or when I say remove yourself, it's having the option. It's having the option to say, yeah, I'll choose to jump in and do third line tech work if I want to, but actually, most of the time I'm going to choose not to because I've got a better set of things I want to do. And actually, after however many years you've been doing it, maybe you're bored of the technical work now. So let's have a pause point. Pause this podcast if you want to, and just have a think to achieve the vision, the thing you most want to achieve with your lifestyle this year, what does your business need to achieve? This is an MSP Marketing podcast special.[00:11:26] Okay, so we've talked about Vision, the vision for your future life, and we've talked a little bit about goals. Let's talk now about strategy. So the strategy is kind of like the Satnav. The goal is the destination. It's the thing that you want to achieve. It's a very tangible thing. You either achieve it or you don't. I have a very specific figure in mind for the extra net profit I'd like us to make, and I have. Well, I think I said to you 2 hours, isn't it? I'd like to knock off 2 hours a week of my work. Still have the same output, but doing 2 hours a week less work, that's a tangible thing. So I'll know when I've achieved that or not, and you can do exactly the same in your MSP. But then we come to the strategy, the Satnav. The how do we get there? We know where the destination is. We just got to plug it into our Satnav, and that gives us a strategy. Now, strategy and tactics, people often confuse the two and get a know. They're not quite sure what's the difference between the two. The strategy is if you like the big plan. So let's take the Sat nav analogy. Here in the UK, we have big roads called motorways. They're sort of smaller versions of what you would know as freeways in the US, much, much smaller versions. Having driven on some of the Los Angeles freeways, which are about 700 lanes each way. They're terrifying. So anyway, we have those motorways, but those are the big, big roads that we use to sort of move places in the UK. And then once we're off the motorways, we then come onto a roads, which are also big roads, but not quite the same standards. So the traffic doesn't tend to flow as well, but they're still big roads. And then you come down to B roads and B roads are smaller roads, the kind of road that if a car breaks down, all of the traffic is going to get backed up. And we've got a very simple road system in that respect. And if my strategy to reach my Satnav destination was just to use motorways, then obviously I would be traveling faster.[00:13:16] I would probably get there quicker, but I would do more miles along the way. Because the thing with the motorways is, although you're going faster and you get there faster, you tend to do more mileage. So I guess that's not quite as fuel efficient compared to using the A roads. But if my strategy was to use A roads, I'd do physically less miles, but it might take me a little longer to get there. But it might be more pleasant, I might pass more. You don't see a lot of visual treats from motorways, but you do from a roads and definitely from B roads. But that's what we mean by strategy. So the strategy might be get there as fast as we can, use the motorways. Speed, speed, speed. That's the strategy. And then the tactics would be the specific roads that we pick. Let's bring this back to a business analogy or a business thing. So let's say for you, your goal was to generate another 50,000 in net profit this year. Let's just pick that one out as a goal. Just say. And you'd say, well, what's my strategy going to be for that? And what are the tactics? So if your strategy is to generate more net profit this year, then you might, for example, set out a strategy. We say, right, well, we want to bring on board six new clients. Or maybe you do it by number of users, actually, because obviously six clients of two users is a lot of work for not a great deal of profit. But you might aim to say, right, this year I want to bring out bring on board, let's say 200 users, 300 users, 400 users in no more than five clients. So we want to bring on board five or six clients this year. And in total we want to onboard another X 100 users. So that would be the first part of your strategy, and that's about new clients. That's about bringing on new people. The second part of that strategy might be about selling more to your existing clients. And the strategy might be that, let's say you're generating revenue of, I don't know, 30 or 40 Pounds or dollars per user per month, say. So it might be that your strategy is to increase that by five pounds or $5 or whatsoever. So strategy number one, let's just recap that. Strategy number one would be to bring on board X hundred new users split across no more than X clients. That's our first strategy. And the second strategy is to grow our average spend per user by X amount. Can you see how those are very, very Specific and actually very, very easy to follow strategies? And that's the beauty of a really good strategy. A good strategy is as simple as two lines, which is what we've just talked about there. Two very, very simple lines. And the more complicated you make it, the less likely people are to actually follow it. Because when you have a strategy like that, it's Something that can inspire the whole team. You can say to your team, it's your choice to tell them about the goal or not. Remember, your team aren't particularly motivated to make you more Money, but they are motivated to follow a really good strategy. A Simple thing like, hey Guys, right? This year we're going to bring on board 200 new users. In order to do that, at Some point we're going to have to take on a new first line tech or we're going to have to do this or invest in this software or whatever. So that's Our first thing. And our Second strategy is we are going to grow our average revenue per user per month. And the reason we're going to do that Is Because Overall, at the end of the year that will Help us grow the business by 20%. And one of the reasons I want to do this is so I can give you guys more Money, because Right now we cannot really justify another huge bunch of pay rises, but we Can, if there's A Chunk more Money coming in. Can you See the Power of that? Can you See the focusing Power? Imagine if you typed out your Strategy and you had it very, very clearly on a big bit of paper on the wall above your desk, and It Said, these Are the two things we're doing this year. We're adding X hundred new users across x new clients and we're increasing average revenue per client by this amount. That's it. That's all we're doing every single thing we do is about that. That's what a powerful strategy is. I've just come to a very beautiful part of the lake where I'm going to pause, and you're going to pause in a second as well, if you want to. I can see parts of Milton Keynes, the city. I can see Xgate, which is this huge, domed building, contains, like, a ski slope. It's a bit of a leisure destination for Milton Keynes. And I can see there's a very posh, nice hotel as well, as well there. I've had a few dates there recently, which has been quite nice. Anyway, I'm going to pause here and just look out on this beautiful view and watch a swan flying across the lake. And then why don't you pause and just have a think? What's the best strategy for your MSP? What's the simplest way for you to achieve the things you want to achieve this year? This is an MSP Marketing podcast special.[00:18:00] Right. Okay. Clearing your strategy. Yeah, of course, you're not. You're not going to get a whole strategy done just in pausing a podcast for a couple of minutes. But it's something to go think about and remember, it's almost impossible to figure out what your strategy for growth for the year will be before you know what the goal is going to be. And kind of, it's almost impossible to know what the goal is going to be before you know exactly what lifestyle you want the goal to feed. If that makes sense. You almost can't do this backwards. You have to start with the vision. You have to start with the goal before you can start thinking about the strategy. And it's only when you've got the strategy that you can start to come up with the right tactics. The tactics are the small things we do. So in the Satnav analogy, it's the specific roads that you take. And in growing your business, it's about the things that you do. So if your strategy was to bring on board X new clients and X 100 new users, well, instantly we've got to change the buyer persona, the type of business that you are targeting. We've got to make sure that they're businesses that have got enough users. If we know we want, let's say, 300 users across, no more than six clients or whatever your figure is, then you can't onboard a ten user client. It's to be a 2030 40 user. So you've got to change your buyer persona. You got to make sure all of your marketing is targeted at that person, you've got to make sure as a business you can actually onboard that many people, because if you're looking for 50 user clients, there's no point doing that unless you know you can onboard them without creating utter chaos in the business every couple of months. So you've got to kind of get geared up for that and get focused on that, especially with your marketing as well. It's different marketing that talks to bigger businesses than it talks to smaller businesses. But then you'd look at it and you'd say, right, if I need to reach these people that are 2030 users, where are they? Where are they and how can I find them and how can I reach them and how do I get talking to them? And what's the reason they would pick us? Why would they pick us as opposed to any of the other many MSPs that are around? Which, by the way, is a very, very core and key question to ask. If your strategy was to grow your average spend, your per user spend every month, then you'd say to yourself, right, how do we do this? What's the most robust and authentic way to talk to our existing clients and try to sell them more stuff? And the answer to that, by the way, is what I call the holy trinity of selling more to clients. You've got strategic reviews, you've got your profit matrix, and you've got technology roadmaps. So strategic reviews are where you sit down with your clients, and once a year you have a strategic review. You look ahead what's coming up in their business, what their plans are, and you set yourself up as the technology strategist in between them and their future, which locks them into your business. It's beautiful. You then use something called the profit Matrix, which you can find this in an old podcast, but it's just a grid with clients down one side and services down another with little marks so you can see who's buying what, and more critically, who's not buying what. And that will guide what you talk about in the strategic reviews. And then you've got technology roadmaps. And technology roadmaps work very well with strategic reviews. It's literally a plan. It's a plan of the next X years, three years, four years, maybe longer, probably three years is about right. And it's you and your clients together creating a plan of what technology they are going to invest in, what are they going to do with their business's technology over the next two to three years. And the beauty of having a plan is you have essentially got them to commit to three years of spend. They know what's coming up, so they know what needs to go into a budget. And again, it locks clients and MSPs together. I love technology roadmaps. I love strategic reviews. It's a ton of work. But the reward is that you grow your per user revenue, which is maybe one of the big strategies that you want. So, as I say, tactics. There's a million tactics. A great deal of the things that we talk about in this podcast throughout the year are tactical things, things that you can do that work, things that you can do that can try. And please do. Keep listening, and thank you for listening, but please keep listening, because we almost will never, ever run out of tactics and things that we can talk about. But it's really important that you have a very clear strategy to achieve that goal. This is an MSP Marketing podcast special.[00:22:15] Okay, we're onto the final one. Just got some joggers coming past.[00:22:19] Hello.[00:22:21] I miss running, by the way. I don't know if you know, I've talked about this on the podcast in the past. I've been a runner for about five years, but about a year ago, I tore my knee quite badly, and I need surgery, which is actually coming up in about ten days time. So I'm looking forward to that. But yeah. And then I'll be back out doing my running around the lake. Although it's been really nice, I've actually taken you on a very slow walk this morning, and it's been lovely. Just looking at the visual, it's just so beautiful, especially in wintertime. Don't get me wrong, I prefer the spring and summer, but wintertime, it is utterly beautiful. Anyway, I digress. We are talking, finally, about daily actions. What I said to you at the beginning of this podcast is that I wanted to help you make the mental connection between the lifestyle you want to lead, the vision for your life, and the daily actions, the things you do every day. So you now, whether you've got it clear in your head now, or whether you need to go and do some thinking about it down the line, you will have a very specific goal for your MSP. You'll have a strategy for how you achieve that goal, and you'll know what tactics you need to implement to do it. Now, we get down into daily actions. The things that you do that you choose to do on a daily basis, or the things that you choose not to do because you choose to do something else. And yes, even being interrupted by a client with a ransomware attack, that's a choice. The choice is I'm going to go and save my client, which is of course is the right choice. Right. But when that happens on a regular basis and you're constantly being dragged away from working on the business, that's where you have to make a choice. To do something about that, to do it differently, that's a discussion for another day. But the things that you do every day or the things that you don't do every day directly get you closer to the lifestyle you want or move you further away from the lifestyle you want, it really does come down to that. There is no other secret, no other silver bullet to grow your business other than just getting things done. It's as simple as that. The most successful people I have ever met in my life, and I don't just mean within the world of technology. I know a lot of. I'm lucky to have a lot of very successful friendS. I'll say lucky. I've probably. Well, I know I've chosen to surround myself with them over the years, but the most successful people I know, they get things done. If that means waking at six in the morning and working two to 3 hours before they drive off to the airport with their family, that's what they do, because it's what has to be done. The most successful people get things done and they do this on a daily basis. One of the best habits I ever had in my life, which I'm now out of, sadly. But I used to get up at five every single morning and work at least an hour, if not 2 hours or 90 minutes was about the right length of time, but I'd work for 90 minutes on my business every single day. Now I'm out of that habit. Now I'm a bit older. Getting up to hurtly hurts too much. But also I spend much of my working day, probably about 80% of my working day, working on my business rather than in my business. On of course is doing these tasks. We're talking about implementing your strategy, implementing the tactics, actually physically working to grow the business. If I didn't have, if it all went wrong tomorrow and I had to start a new business again, I would get back into that 05:00 a.m.. Habit. In fact, that's the first thing I would do. I would immediately get back into the 05:00 a.m. Habit of working 90 minutes a day to grow the business. And as I say today, I've got a mature business. I'm fortunate I don't have to do that, but I've actually engineered my entire working existence to work on the business or to spend 80% of my time working on the business. That, by the way, should be a goal for you. You should be. Something you're working towards is spending more time working on the business than working in the business, doing technical work or whatever work you do. So daily actions, the things you do every day, they do directly affect how quickly you get where you want to be or how long you spend in the situation you're in right now. You can change everything, absolutely everything in a matter of a year, and certainly in two years, and absolutely in three years, it doesn't matter where you are today. And whatever your situation is. And I appreciate some people listening to this will be in a very dire position, wondering even if their business will survive this year. And we've all been there, and it's horrendous. And lots of people pull through. Most people pull through. And if you're in that position right now, I genuinely give you my best wishes for the year. But know that whatever happens, you will pull through. It always works out all right in the end. But there are other people who entering this year will be listening to this, thinking, is this going to be another year of just the same, of doing okay, of making an all right income from my business, but working bloody hard for it? Can I do another year like that? Do I want to do another year like that? As I say, you can change everything in a year, definitely in two and absolutely in three. But it all comes down to what you do on a daily basis. If you wake up in March and you're still doing 60 hours weeks and 58 of those hours are doing technical work, that leaves you no time to grow the business. There's no quality time to grow the business. And that's the thing that makes the difference. There is a direct link between what you do each day and the speed at which you get to the lifestyle that you most want to have.[00:27:49] So I've pretty much finished my walk here at Willen Lake in Milton Keynes. Thank you for joining me on this walk. Thank you for being part of this podcast. I'd love to get your feedback, by the way, just to see what you think. We're not planning to do this very often, this kind of more personal, more intimate, really kind of podcast format, but it's fun to do, and I might do it on an annual basis. Maybe we'll have like an annual Christmas one. So if you like this, or if you hated it, would you just drop me an email and let me know. Hello, Paul. Paul. Paul. Paul Greens MSP Marketing Podcast Just love to hear from you. If anything I've talked about in this week's podcast has particularly resonated with you, then it would be really, really cool just to get your feedback and just to hear what stage you're at with your business and what you are trying to achieve this year. Now, next week we return to a bit more of our normal format, but it is our final special for Christmas and for the new year. And I'm actually going to be doing something which I hate. I hate making cold calls, calling people who don't know me to try and book an appointment with them, like a sales appointment. I haven't done this for many, many years, and yet, next week I'm going to be doing it. In fact, I'm going to be pretending to be an MSP and I'm going to be making some cold calls with a sales expert, Derek Marin. He's going to be there guiding me and coaching me as I make some of those cold calls so you can learn from my mistakes. I'm not looking forward to next week's show at all. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP. Made in the UK for MSPs around the World Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

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Episode 215Welcome to a special episode of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP.In the first of our series of Special Episodes heading into 2024, I'm joined by Intelligent Technical Solutions CEO Tom Andrulis.Tom and I discuss the hot topic of mergers & acquisitions. Tom also shares some of the stories and secrets, and tells the tale of how he grew his business from nothing to having $40 million in revenue in just 20 years.Featured guest:Tom Andrulis is the Chief Executive Officer of Intelligent Technical Solutions and has been at the helm for nearly two decades. A hands-on CEO, Tom directs the operational aspects of ITS and is involved in its day-to-day business decisions. He is also primarily responsible for top-down value alignment, as well as steering the company towards its vision. Tom founded ITS back in 2003, after working and finding success with several business owners who had issues with their technology. He knew right then and there that he wanted to help businesses improve their efficiencies. As a business owner himself, he understood well enough that technology is a critical component to his clients’ success. Tom has a genuine passion not just for working with new and innovative technologies, but also with many kinds of people. Perhaps it’s no surprise that ITS is a people-oriented organization. Tom is driven by the fact that he can make a difference in people’s lives, including entrepreneurs who need help in solving their problems. Despite his dedication and zeal for his role, Tom is a family man first. He loves spending time with his family, especially watching his son play soccer. He also enjoys sports and the great outdoors: He loves working out, snowboarding, and mountain biking. Connect with Tom on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomandrulis/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Connect with me on LinkedIn: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.[00:00:00] Speaker A: You.[00:00:00] Speaker B: Merry Christmas. I hope you had a fantastic day yesterday. But today I have a real Boxing Day treat for you. I'm going to introduce you to a guy who grew his business from a one man band in 2003. Just 20 years later, he's doing $40 million in revenue. And today he's going to tell you how he did it and how you can use what he's learned to grow your paul.[00:00:26] Speaker A: Paul.[00:00:26] Speaker B: Paul. Paul greens, MSP marketing.[00:00:32] Speaker A: Podcast. My name is Tom Andrulis. I'm the CEO of Intelligent Technical Solutions.[00:00:37] Speaker B: And thank you so much for joining me on this podcast. Tom. You have a fascinating story of how you have grown your MSP and come together with a number of other MSPs. It's a story we're going to explore on today's podcast. And we're also going to look at a very hot topic right now, which we know is going to continue to be an even hotter topic next year, and that is M. A mergers and acquisitions. Something that you are involved with right now and something I think most MSPs can see is becoming a bigger and bigger, bigger thing. So let's start at the very beginning. Take us back to the very start of your business, Tom. What did you start? When did you start it? Tell us the early days of your story.[00:01:15] Speaker A: Yeah, so if we go way back, I used to work at EA Sports as a network engineer, and they closed our studio in Las Vegas. And I was trying to figure out what I was going to do, either move to La, work for EA Sports again, or do something different. I decided to stay in Las Vegas, and through a couple of friends of mine, I got basically introduced to It Consulting. And so I went through and consulted with a few different businesses, realized that I loved helping people, I loved fixing technology. I just loved everything about it. So in 2003, I started Intelligent Technical Solutions. So as a one man band, basically back then, in 2003, had to figure out everything. I think technically I felt like I knew what I was doing, but I didn't know how to do accounting. I didn't know how to do HR, marketing, sales, any of that, and actually much less manage people either. So it's been an adventure. And I went through and figured out through trial and error and a lot of books that I've read, just better ways to do things, continually improving the process along the way. We had some success in 2013. We ended up doubling more than doubling the company. And a couple of years later, I had a friend of mine in one of our peer groups ask me if we could partner up somehow, because he really wanted to focus on client account management. And he said, hey, maybe you guys can run operations and accounting and all that stuff on the back end. So we figured out a way to partner up and that was the catalyst of really what has skyrocketed its in the last few years. So back when we did that, it was 2016.We integrated for a while, for about a year or so and realized like, this is working really well. He's able to focus on what he loves to do, we were able to do what we did well, and we said, we got to do this again. So we end up doing additional partnerships. 2018 1920 obviously COVID hit, so things kind of slowed down a bit, but then we end up doing a big merger with a couple more MSPs in 2021. So at that point we put together about eight MSPs, all organically, no cash out of our pockets, just really kind of bootstrapped it and got real creative with bringing the companies together.We got to a size though, that I'm sure everybody's getting private equity calls every day, every week, emails all the time. We were getting those same things and we said, is it the right time for us to become a platform company, a company that a private equity company would invest in to then allow us to roll up or add additional MSPs to us to get to a bigger size and eventually grow the value of the company? So we sort of went back and forth on the idea and we were either going to keep doing it ourselves or try to get private equity. We had five more MSPs that we were looking to merge in and partner with. One of them wanted to get cashed out completely. So we had to make a decision internally of like, hey, do we want to scrape together all the funds that we had by that MSP or do we bring private equity in and use their funding to buy the MSP and to buy the additional ones? So we ended up going down the PE route, brought private equity on in May of 2022 last year, and completed all five sales or all five purchases or partnerships with the MSPs since then. And we've even added one more after that and then another one's an Loi right now. So it's been a crazy journey. Yeah, it's been an insane ride, honestly, over the last 20 years or so.[00:05:03] Speaker B: Well, you've just given me so much to unpack there talk about when I do these interviews and people sort of tell me their story and in my head I'm mentally tracking where I want to go and what I want to talk about. And you've given me at least 30 things I want to talk about there, so I'll try not to forget them.Let's go right back. And that is an insane journey and in just 20 years as well. And I definitely want to explore, and we will explore later on how you start to put two or three MSPs together when you don't have lots of cash. I definitely want to explore the PE and obviously the future. I think its clearly you're positioning yourselves for a very big acquisitive. Is that the word? Acquisitive future. So we'll come on to all of that. Let's go back 20 years. First of all, so EA moves away. Was it Vegas to La is about 3 hours. I think I know this because I drove it the other way around. I drove from La to Vegas 4 hours exactly. Yes. It's not a commutable distance. You definitely have to move there. So were you a technician or were you involved in the software side when you had that decision?[00:06:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I was an engineer, network engineer. So I helped run gaming servers and the network, the rendering servers. So in day to day support we dealt with all kinds of things there. Kind of like what I do now honestly.Or what its does now.[00:06:26] Speaker B: Yes. Just perhaps at a slightly different MSPs. A lot of MSP owners, they start their business because they have what's known as the entrepreneurial seizure. And you said yourself that you've read loads of books. You've probably read The Myth Revisited, which is the Michael Gerber classic from I think it's like 1984. And he says that once that idea is in your head that you should start your own business, it's very hard to just carry on working for someone else. And I think the most miserable people in the world are those who've had that seizure and you haven't yet acted on it. So it sounds like you had a slightly different origin story and that you weren't the one that was driving it.Was it the case that that opportunity was there and you thought, you know what, I don't want to move, I'm going to go and try this myself? Or was it sat there at the back of your head and EA relocating was just the catalyst that made it happen?[00:07:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I think deep down I always wanted to have my own business and it was just a matter of trying to figure it out.One of the challenges I had at EA was that it was an easy job. It was so easy. I was complacent and I'd roll in and everything was kind of working the way it should be working. We had budget to buy equipment and make sure everything's up to date. It was a fun place, a lot of creative people, super fun atmosphere. And it was hard to quit that job and say I'm going to go do something on my own because it was just so satisfying. And so when they shut the studio down in Las Vegas, then I had to make a decision and they know you can go to La, you got a job there or you can take a severance package, know, do whatever. So I thought all is this is the moment I got to figure out what I'm going to do. I know I don't want to go to La. Or I didn't at the time. And I said, all right, give me the severance package. Let's see what happens. And even at that point, I didn't know what I was going to do. It wasn't until probably a few months later trying to figure it out to where I kind of fell into this whole It consulting business.[00:08:29] Speaker B: And that must have been quite a culture shock for you to go from being part of I mean, even 20 years ago, EA was a massive, massive company.It certainly is today. And to then suddenly being this one man band sole It contractor, lots of people listening to this podcast often listen, and they discover it at the start of their journey. So I think it's fascinating to hear from someone who 20 years on from that. How did you cope in those early days? How did you make that transition from being part of something, a part of a big team that was part of something even bigger, to just being you?[00:09:04] Speaker A: The interesting thing was that EA owned a studio called Westwood Studios, and that was the studio I worked at in Las Vegas. And in our studio, we had about probably the height of it was like 300 employees, which it's a fair amount of employees I joined, I think, when it was 90. So there's a lot of got to figure it out, got to do it yourself. We did have a team of people in the It department, but I ended up touching a lot of different technologies, and I had a good understanding of a lot of different things. So when I got out of there, it was a little scary. Right. Walk into a network, there's no backup.There's no support, I should say, of how's this thing laid out, who designed it, what's the equipment, all that. It's just, hey, I got a client that's saying, this thing's broken. Now I got to figure it out. So, yeah, that was a little nerve wracking until I went through probably ten different clients, and it kind of got to be like, okay, this is kind of the similar stuff that's happening, and now I have a good understanding of how I could help these people.[00:10:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I can imagine. And how long did it take you to get your first member of staff? Because I think that point at which you actually take someone on, there's a big difference from going from one person to two and then obviously two very quickly leads onto three or can lead quickly onto three. What was your kind of progression through to getting staff and actually starting to build it into let's be honest, what is a proper business when you've got a team?[00:10:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I think I got lucky. So initially I had five clients, and I had a friend of mine that had these clients, and he couldn't figure out all the problems. So we went and fixed all this stuff and we said, okay, we start working with these five clients. Then joined a bunch of different leads groups, trying to figure out how do I get more business, how does this things scale, how do I pay my bills? Right? That was the biggest issue then. How do I make it consistent so I can rely on the money that's coming in? But I think I got to a point where my schedule was filling up. I had some additional requests, and I said, okay, I need to bring another person on. So I had a friend of mine who also worked at EA, also decided to stay in Las Vegas. I think he was doing some It consulting on the side as, hey, you know, maybe we could partner up somehow. I can just pay you to go do some of these jobs, and we can work together in that way. And then we got more and more clients and more business to the point where I said, okay, why don't we just hire you on and then we can just work under its I think it was about a year into it where I would consider myself pretty lucky, actually. One of the guys that worked at EA got a job at a big architectural firm out here in Las Vegas. And when he got the job, he was there for two months, and he's like, this place is such a disaster. We got to fix it. He reached out to me to help him out, and so that became one of our biggest clients. It was definitely our biggest client back then. It's still one of our larger clients now, 20 years later. But that one year of just building, having maybe a part time person here, a part time admin to help with invoicing answering the phone, that kind of thing turned into probably two or three people after the first year. And it's a bit of a culture shock. If you're not used to managing people, how do you manage somebody? And I've learned a lot of things along the way, but, yeah, it's a different scenario, for sure.[00:12:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I did it.2005 was when I started my first business. I'm getting so old now, I can't remember when it was. And that first employee, which was about nine months in, for me, it was a culture shock because actually that meant an office as well, and it meant doing things properly. And suddenly you need to do HR and you need to do payroll, and that means you have all these extra expenses which just come out of nowhere. But it is, it's the only way to turn what is otherwise a well paid or badly paid job into a proper business. Okay, so I think you said you were scaling up for about ten years before you did your first merger. I think it was roundabout, those numbers. So tell us, what was your path of organic growth? So tell us the marketing stuff that you did that worked the best for you in that first decade?[00:13:20] Speaker A: Yeah, the first decade. I would say some of the leads groups initially were decent. It was something we don't do the same leads groups that I did back then now, but when I was just starting out, every dollar mattered so much that anything was good. Then I got to the point where I had some extra money and I was able to do some direct mail campaigns or advertise in the phone book back then. That was the thing. Right. Of course, you got the little website that didn't really produce much, but it was a lot of just who do I know? Who knows me? I did actually get a few calls out of the phone book, oddly enough, and then some of the direct mail worked quite well back then. It was pretty effective as far as getting some decent leads in. Of course, 99% of it probably was just thrown in the trash, but that 1% that responded was valuable.[00:14:16] Speaker B: Yeah. And sometimes you have to just sort of edge your way through it, don't you, and just try some things. And people sometimes say to me, what's the best marketing I can use right now? And it's like, right, I've got 200 things you could use. And this seems to be working really well for a bunch of MSPs. But you do have differences. And I work with lots of MSPs in different parts of the world. And what might work in Nevada las Vegas is Nevada, isn't it?[00:14:39] Speaker A: Yes.[00:14:40] Speaker B: See, I've got that right. Probably wouldn't work in Montana because they're completely different. They might be physically part of the same country, but they're completely different areas, completely different people, different businesses. And I think trying different things and seeing what works for you in your area is often a really smart plan. So you said you were part of a peer group with another MSP. Talk us through then. How does that conversation get broached where two people look at putting their business together?[00:15:10] Speaker A: I think that maybe they had an idea that they were going to move away from La. Was our first partnership they were going to move from.So, you know, they were thinking that, hey, how do I keep this business going? How do I sustain this thing if I'm not in? Like, who could help know, I'm making a lot of assumptions there, but that's what it seemed because it seemed to transpire that way. So when this part of ours approached me and said, hey, is there some way we could partner up? I thought, all right, well, this is a good opportunity. I think it's a matter of at least in the peer group, showing that I don't know, maybe having dedication to the business, showing success over time. It builds a lot of confidence. I mean, obviously internally for us, but also with other people. So they look at us and say, all right, well, hey, Tom and its they seem to know what they're doing over. You know, if they were in a position where they were either going to knowingly move out of the area or they're burned out or they just wanted to not do every job under the sun right. In the business, that would be the kind of broaching the conversation. That would be the catalyst to getting that conversation going. Yeah.[00:16:22] Speaker B: So it's almost like I'm speculating now, but you were someone else's exit plan. Essentially you were their exit strategy because did they stay in the business when the two of you came together?[00:16:35] Speaker A: Yeah, they stayed in the business. The interesting thing was they stayed in the business and then six months later they ended up moving across the country to Connecticut. So they moved their family to Connecticut. And that was a big shock for me because I didn't know that was going to, you know, I was like, all right, well, we're going to make the best of know, kind of just figuring things like being a creator is one of our core values. So we just look at things as challenges like, okay, how do we overcome this? What do we have to do? And we just kept it going. And even though he was in Connecticut, he was still involved in the business, still involved with the clients. He'd fly back on a regular basis and our teams just came together to make it happen. And that worked for years and years and years. So it turned out to be okay.[00:17:19] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that sounds fantastic. And then what was the route that sort of brought in some of those other MSPs? Just give us a little bit more detail on the story you were telling us earlier.[00:17:28] Speaker A: Sure, yeah. So the second partnership that we did was an MSP that the first partner knew in Orange County. And this guy, he loved technology.He had about three people in his company. One of the people had a severe illness, had to quit. The other one had the I think they were on a visa or something that ended. They had to leave the country. So this three person company was condensed down into a one person company. And that guy, while he loved technology, he didn't want to work 20 hours a day trying to make up for the other two people. He's like, I don't really need to work this hard. I just want to keep kind of stay in the game a little bit. And that was his catalyst to wanting to join us, is, hey, you guys do all the stuff that I don't have time for and I'll just keep working with the clients that I really love. So that was the second deal, right? The month after that, while we were trying to find another partnership, we were looking into Phoenix, Arizona, and so we sent out some direct mails. We called some different people, and somebody responded and said, hey, I'm interested.I'm looking to have a partner, and what can we work out? So that month, it was February 2018, we did the third partnership out in Phoenix, Arizona. So they had a company. I think the catalyst for them, if I had to just guess, was they were sick of running the company alone and they wanted to have someone they could bounce ideas off of. Interestingly enough, he wasn't in any peer group, so he didn't really have that same forum of people to bounce ideas off of and use as a sounding board. So he was looking for a partner to come in and be that person for him. So he had about, I want to say five employees, five or six employees at the time. And that worked out pretty well because we were able to share information, experience, and it allowed us to expand into the Phoenix, Arizona market.[00:19:28] Speaker B: So what you're describing there, which obviously worked for you because it's led on to bigger and better things, there is a parallel universe somewhere where you've got a bunch of companies coming together where the owners stay in the business and they don't get on. They have different ideas, different ways of operating. They can't agree on a PSA, they can't agree on standard things that you would need to standardize as you start to bring together lots of different companies. Did you have an element of that where there was conflict, or did you manage to work around that? Because in my eyes, putting a bunch of business owners together and then taking away let's be honest, the best thing about being a business owner is full autonomy, right? We can do exactly what we want to do, whether it's the right thing or not. And then suddenly when we have a business partner of any kind, there's a limit placed on that. So was that ever an issue or did it just sort of seem to work itself out or did you just assume that the natural leadership position?[00:20:23] Speaker A: I think initially because we built out a leadership team on our end, and before the first partnership, I think we were running about four or 5 million in revenue. And so we had a sales manager, we had a service manager controller.I'm not sure we had an HR manager at the point, but we had some bit of HR department going on and so we had these different roles sort of already built out. So when people looked at our company, we're like, oh well, hey, I'm doing everything myself. You guys have a team of people that can help out. So they just naturally just came into the company and just assumed most of the tools and processes that we had now, definitely we didn't have it all figured out. I don't think we have it figured out 100% now even. We're still continuously improving every day, every month.But the foundation that we had was pretty solid, and we were able to bring people on, say, okay, hey, we're using the ConnectWise PSA, or we're using Kaseya RMM or whatever it was, right. And most people were using a similar tool set. It was either going to be on Kaseya or Automate, or you're going to be on likewise Manage or you're on Autotask. And the tools are familiar enough to similar enough I should say to one another that it didn't really matter, and it was just like, okay, hey, what's the platform? All right, great. I'll come in. There is a huge integration process. Our integration process is about nine to twelve months, and it goes through hundreds and hundreds of tasks. And in part, some of those tasks are, hey, we got to move from your RMM over to our RMM, or your ticketing system to our ticketing system. So there's still a lot of moving parts people like, to your point, your question, how do you get people to all agree? Some of it is sort of like, okay, hey, we believe ConnectWise manages a decent ticketing system. Great, we'll use that. Or we're good with automate. Great, we'll use that. And if we need to change it, we can change it. Initially we would say, hey, just use the stuff that we have right now, and then we can modify it later. But the biggest thing was actually getting the integration going and getting on the same platform so the team could be working together.[00:22:37] Speaker B: Got it. So as those people were sort of coming in, then I guess it became easier and easier with each integration because you could say to them, well, this is how we run things. This is the stack we use. This is the direction we're going with that. And obviously if you've already got those resources sorted out, that's easier. You make an interesting point there about that. As a business, you still haven't got it perfect. Is there anything such as a perfect business? Does it even exist? I don't think it does, because at the point you think you've got things figured out, something else is breaking, right?[00:23:07] Speaker A: Yeah, totally. The perfect business. Somebody joked around. It was like, the perfect business is one that you don't have any clients and no employees, and then somehow the money just flows in. You're like, this is magic. Yeah. So I wanted to kind of go back on my point about where we had this foundation of tools. I think that worked really well, I guess tools and processes that worked really well for smaller MSPs that were joining when we got to 2021, and we merged three MSPs together. So we had Intibix out of San Francisco and we had PC Miracles out of Detroit, and then we had Its, which had four locations at the time from different MSPs that joined Its, PC Miracles and Tivix. We all merged together in 2021, and that was probably the biggest bit of complexity to deal with because each MSP was sizable in its own right. And we all had our processes and our way of doing things and things that worked well to get us past the 5 million mark, the 7 million mark, the 10 million mark. And so bringing those companies together, there was a lot of conversations. It was sort of, okay, let's take a step back. What are you doing? How's it working? Is it working for you? Is it not okay? What are we doing? What does that look like? Which one do we want to go with? What process do we want to use? And even now, two years later, a lot of that's been worked out. But there's still some things that are still being worked out between those companies that came together to make sure that we're providing the most value we can to our clients.[00:24:44] Speaker B: So if you don't mind, can we just touch on the money side? So I think I remember you saying right at the beginning that those early mergers were done pretty much without cash, huge amounts of cash changing hands. Now, everyone always feels a bit awkward. Well, I'm British, but the British are the most awkward in the world at asking about money. But how did you do those early mergers? Was it a case of everyone sort of took new ownership stakes? How did that change as you brought new players in? And how far did that get you to the point you realized, like you said earlier, that we were going to need some kind of private equity to continue doing bigger and bigger deals.[00:25:19] Speaker A: Yeah, so I'll start with the easier, more simplistic to the more complex. So the most simple way was to just say, hey, listen, let's create a promissory note and I'm going to buy your business for X amount of dollars and I'll pay you over a certain amount of time, or I'll pay you a certain percentage of the revenue that's coming in. So if the clients stay, you get paid. If they don't, hey, there's no risk to me as the buyer that worked for a couple of deals. Next step up that's a little bit easier to understand would be just straight merger. Hey, your company is worth X amount of dollars. Ours is worth another Y amount of dollars. We put them together. Now we have z amount of dollars, let's say. And that's just some way to come together without actually spending money.The third way, which is more complex, that we did basically three different times, was a very unique partnership structure where we had our corporation and they had their corporation, but we formed another third corporation together and let's say it was just 50 50. And in that corporation they had put all their clients from their original one into the new entity. And that entity would give them sort of a preference or think of it as like. A promise or not necessarily a promissory note, but like a promise to pay the value of those clients when we go and sell this entire thing. So let's say that you and I were going to go into partnership. We'd form another company. You and I are 50 50. You put the clients in that company. Let's say they're worth a million dollars. You'd have a promise. For a million dollars you get the first million dollars payment if and when we sell everything together. And then anything that is above and beyond that million dollars, we just split 50 50 based on our ownership levels. Now day to day we would just split the profits 50 50 and there'd be also another payment from that company back to our company. Its to do all the service. So we would hire all the employees as well from the original company. So their company kind of turned into this shell investor based company. The third company really just contained the clients and brought in the revenue and paid expenses. And then its became the place where we housed all the employees.We had all the processes and tool sets internally. So definitely more complex than most people have probably ever heard of. That worked well for us because it allowed people to say, okay, hey, you're going to give me a million dollars. The first million dollars somewhere down the road when this thing sells. Up until then we're still getting cash distributions based on our ownership level.Our goal was to put a bunch of companies together to become more valuable so that that million dollars is worth 1.52 million, 3 million and so forth.If that happens then let's say me or its would get some payout. But if it doesn't happen then they get all the money in the end. So it kind of worked on multiple levels. Even though it's really complex, I tend to have to explain it and draw it out. If I had a whiteboard here I could draw out the thing and make more sense. But that way worked pretty well. People go, I get it, I like it and I want to join based on that.[00:28:52] Speaker B: Yeah, you've clearly kept a lot of lawyers very busy over the years coming up with very complex schemes, which is not a bad thing. So let's talk about that private equity money. So remind us again what size you were at and how many MSPs you'd pulled together when you made that decision to go off in a different direction. And what was it that sent you off instead of doing these clever deal structures? Which, ultimately, I guess, that you're taking on all the risk and you're sort of spreading your resources every time you do one. What made you decide to go in that different direction?[00:29:24] Speaker A: Yeah, so when we took private equity on last year, we were running about 22 million revenue and maybe about 4.3 million EBITDA or net profit that size, like four or 5 million. EBITDA is about the size that private equity companies want to look at to create a platform company that they can invest in.We were doing these different partnerships that were working pretty well. We had about eight of them at the time. Before we took private equity, we had five more MSPs that we had signed Lois with at that time as well. And so we had to make a decision. The first MSP that we had to sign Loi on was to purchase one based in Phoenix. That owner had his business for 32 years. He's like, hey, I had a good run. I just want to do something different. So we said, all right, how are we going to come up with the money? I think it was like it was a few million dollars. So how are we going to come up with a few million dollars to purchase this business? And collectively, inside we were saying, okay, well, we could probably pull some funds together, and we were doing $4 million in net profit, but a lot of us were getting distributions off that as well. So sort of, how do we make this work?Then we were talking to private equity for that entire time as well, and they know we came in. We could buy the company, obviously, and you could use our funding, our debt providers.We could try to go get a debt provider on our own, which we did. Look at that. It's funny. Chase is our main banking relationship. And Chase came in and said, hey, I like what you guys are doing. I think we can help you. The only problem is we only do deals that are more than $5 million in value. And our deal was like, call it $3 million or whatever. It was lower than the 5 million. So we're like, that's weird, right? This bank only wants to give us $5 million or more. So we went to another one, another company that provides a lot of debt funding in this market. And they said, we can only do $8 million deals and above.This is crazy, right? So how do you get the money for less than 5 million or less than 8 million and you can get SBA loans? We didn't want to leverage our entire lives to do that. So we were trying to figure it out and kind of got to the point I was like, okay, if we go private equity, we could definitely get this deal done quickly and efficiently. The other four deals behind that, they could help out with as well. And then at that point in time, we could also take some money off the table. As private equity comes in, the owners basically are selling a portion of the business to the private equity firm and then in turn taking the cash off the table or getting some value out of the business. So I think that Liquidity Event was helpful. We looked at and said, okay, well, Liquidity Event would be great. Being able to use their funding would be great. I thought the culture of the private equity firm seemed very similar to our culture internally. So we said, okay, could we work with these people? How would it look? And then also to get the other deals done, they had a deal team. They had a team of people that all they do is work on deals. So they do all the analysis, they do the financials and the due diligence, they do the whole thing. So that took a lot of pressure off of us. So we felt at the time that going down the private equity road was our best bet. And as we went down that private equity road, I think it was beneficial because the four deals that we did afterwards, a couple of them were pretty smooth. It wouldn't have been an issue, but there were one or two that were more complex based on their corporate structure, rather than being like an LLC or an S Corp.And that would have caused us some issues. So the private equity firm helped out greatly in that.[00:33:17] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, I can imagine. And it clearly sounds like you found a good partner. If they have a similar culture to you, then you can see that that would be a good thing going forward. On the subject of culture, actually, I'll come back to that in 2 seconds. You mentioned something called Loi earlier, which stands for Letter of Intent. I just want to explain that for our listeners. In case you wondered what an Loi was, it's where you essentially signed something saying, I'm going to buy your business. We're talking about culture.What do you do now? Because the business has obviously exploded completely. It's obviously totally different. It was different in 2013 than it was when you started it in 2003. But what you've got today, you could probably argue, is so vastly different to what you had ten years ago. You've got all these different companies that have come together. We've all read that mergers are very difficult to make work, and you've brought lots of different things together. As the leader, what do you do to try to keep the cultures of the various units working as they were? Do you keep them as separate units? Do you have local managers? What's your sort of approach to that?[00:34:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I think there's a philosophical, maybe difference or approach to it. So for us, we wanted to have one team which gave us one culture and one group of people to rely on. And so we decided early on, let's integrate everything. Let's have one brand name, let's have one platform of Ticketing and RMM and all these things. Let's have it all on the same table.It's not always done like that. There's a lot of different ways that private equity firms come in and say, hey, we'll bind your company. Just keep your name, keep everything. We're just going to own a portion of it and just keep doing your thing. And there's other ones that are sort of hybrid where you say, well, keep your name, keep doing your thing, but we're going to take over the accounting side so we can kind of keep track of all the money. And then our method up to this point has been, hey, let's integrate everything because we want to be one company. And I think from a culture standpoint, that's the best. I mean, obviously, that's the road that we chose to go down. We tend to keep the culture up by leaning on our core values. So we talk about our core values all the time. Every single day in our daily huddle, we talk about core values. One thing early on, when I was learning about core values, I'm reading these books. I'm like, oh, what's core value? I got to come up with this thing. We all have core values. Whether we have defined them or not is the question. And so when we took a step back and said, okay, well, what are our core values? And we wrote a list of ten, and we felt all great about it, right? It was amazing. And then a couple of months later, we were on our daily huddle, and I was like, hey, guys, so who could name off all ten core values? Nobody could do it. Not at all, right? And then I came in the next day. I was like, I got $100 for somebody that could read off all the core values, and somebody got eight out of ten. I was like, okay, well, we're still not there. It got me thinking that it was just too much. And so we pared it down to five, and we had five for a while, and then I got to the point of, like, some of these are a little bit similar. Can we pare it down more? Can we simplify it even more? And so now we've simplified it to three core values, and we talk about them every day. We encourage people to tell a core value story in our daily huddle. So that's the way that we figured out how to get people to remember the core value. So if I was in a situation where I had some challenge I had overcome, or say, Paul, you're in a situation where you overcame a challenge, and I saw that and noticed it, I wanted to highlight you in the daily huddle and say, hey, Paul was really being a creator because he overcame XYZ scenario that was in front of him. That was an awesome thing to do. Or maybe doing the right thing is another one of our core values used to be integrity. People used to say, well, they kind of get confused with integrity. We just distilled it down to doing the right thing, which is what's the right thing for you as a person and the client and the company? And so imagine there's a Venn diagram where you're overlapping those three different interests. The center of that is the right thing. And we tell people, hey, we're not going to be there every second of the day. We don't want to micromanage people, right? We need to rely on you to make a decision. So just weigh it out. Like, what's the right thing for this client, for you, the company, its what is it? And just make a decision. If it's a mistake, great. We learned something, right? We learned something new. But if it's not, then we all moved on, and we saved a lot of time. So then the third core value is having an open mind. Because I think in this business, we tend to deal with problems all the time. It's just a problem based business, right? Clients are calling, this is broken, that's broken. This is know, whatever. And so it's easy to kind of get into this negative mindset. And while people love to get positive feedback, if I say, hey, Paul, you're doing a great know, keep it up, that's great. You love to hear that. But how do you react when I say, hey, Paul, I got a problem, you didn't fix the problem, or you worked on this, but you made something worse. How do we react to that? And having an open mind is all about really, how do I deal with the negative feedback that's coming in? Can I unwrap the negativity from it, see what the message is, and then learn and grow from that message? And so if we stay open and have an open mind, then we're actually going to help ourselves. We'll help the client as well, but we'll grow as a person or as a team because of it.[00:38:46] Speaker B: I love that.[00:38:47] Speaker A: I love it.[00:38:48] Speaker B: And I love the fact that you've just made it as simple as you can. I think far too often we overcomplicate things. We as business leaders, we have all these things that we want to do and all these directions we want to go in, and so we end up overcomplicating. And for you to go down from ten to three is absolutely perfect. Okay, Tom, final question. I'm going to ask you to put your crystal ball or get your crystal ball out and use your future sightseeing skills. We're right on the verge of 2024 right now. Now, you're quite heavily involved, obviously, in M and A, mergers and acquisitions. What do you think is going to happen? And this is obviously just pure speculation because no one really knows, but we're seeing loads of M and A within the channel. Obviously, we've seen the massive vendors. There's been huge amounts of M A there in the last couple of years. We're now starting to see more companies like yours come together. It's happening here in the UK. I know it's happening in other countries as well as in the US. What do you think is going to happen in the MSP M A world in the next two to three years?[00:39:47] Speaker A: I think it's going to keep going, so it's heating up. I think it's going to continue.I see from all the conferences that I go to, that M A is one of the hottest topics. We're either talking about M A or we're talking about cybersecurity. That's just the only two things people want to talk about at these conferences, it seems like. And so individual MSP owners are trying to figure out, how do I do this? How do I do this to grow my business? We all know how difficult it is to grow organically, figure out how to market and sell properly. That's a challenge in its own right. But then could I grow my company 50%, 100% or even more through mergers and acquisitions? That's the question that people are really contending with right now. And I've seen a bunch of different MSPs go down that road and have some success. It's not always successful, right? There's a lot of complexity to it to try to figure out. I've also seen a ton of MSPs say, hey, I've grown to a certain size, I'd rather sell to a private equity firm, get some money off the table, and then keep growing the business through M and A. So 2024, I think it's just going to keep going, even with the market being kind of crazy and interest rates rising, it puts pressure on doing different deals, but I don't think that's going to slow down in this industry.[00:41:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I guess a lot of it depends on the hunger that the private equity brings in, because I used to work in do marketing for veterinarians in the UK, and that was probably about ten years ago when this huge wash of money came into the sector. And in fact, it was actually a lot of it was driven from the US, and the money was relatively cheap and it allowed some very, very big groups to be very aggressive with their acquisition and go and buy lots and lots of different veterinarian practices and build a set of groups. And then Mars came in and sort of bought up some of those. And it was fascinating to watch because the whole thing was being driven by essentially cheap money, money that was coming from big investors. And it was being used to consolidate on the hope, of course, that there would be a lot more money to be made down the line. So, yeah, I think I agree with you. I think we're going to see more and more. It would be fascinating, Tom, to get you back on the podcast. Perhaps next year or the year, sure. You know, your business will continue to acquire and will continue to go on to other things, and it'd be lovely to fascinating to track your progress and also to see what's happening in the M A world as we go forward. For anyone that's listening to this today and wants to get in touch with you, just perhaps have a pick your brains on something or just have a chat about their MSP, what's the best way to get in touch with you?[00:42:24] Speaker A: Yeah, probably LinkedIn is the easiest. So my LinkedIn profile name is Tom Andrews. So T-O-M-A-N-D-R-U-L-I-S so just short and sweet. Tom Andrulis. Reach out via LinkedIn. I guess you could also email me too, if you like it's TomA@itsasap.com. So either of those two methods would work.[00:42:47] Speaker B: Coming up next week we've never done anything like this before, so it's a bit of an experiment. I am taking you out on a walk. I want to help you make a link between the things that you do on a daily basis and the results that you get. In fact, more than just the results you get, the lifestyle you get. And that is going to be a truly inspirational way for us to start 2024. So join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP. Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Greens, MSP Marketing Podcast. Podcast.

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Episode 214Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 Add value to your business in 60 minutes * 08:02 For how long should you ask a client to commit to you? * 13:40 Focus your marketing by defining your target market

Featured guest:Thank you to Tim Fitzpatrick, podcaster and President of Rialto Marketing, for joining me to talk about how MSPs should focus on a defined target market, and reflect that in their marketing activities, to make the most of their resources.Tim is an entrepreneur/business owner with marketing and growth expertise. He has 25+ years of entrepreneurial experience with a passion for developing and growing businesses. That passion served him well in operating and managing a wholesale distribution company he co-owned for nine years before being acquired in 2005.Since then, he’s had failures and successes. He started Rialto Marketing in 2013 and has been helping MSPs that need the help of a marketing leader to accelerate growth without the full-time cost. He believes marketing shouldn’t be difficult. But, you must remove your revenue roadblocks to grow consistently and predictably.Connect with Tim on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/timpfitzpatrick/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Connect with me on LinkedIn: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Here's the podcast episode where I talked about Timeular: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode41/ * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, How to Be a Great Boss: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Great-Boss-Gino-Wickman/dp/1942952848/

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world. This Paul.[00:00:06] Speaker B: Paul.[00:00:06] Speaker A: Paul. Paul Greens, MSP Marketing Podcast welcome to.[00:00:10] Speaker C: Our final normal episode of 2023.[00:00:14] Speaker D: I'll tell you about our Christmas specials in a second, but here's what we.[00:00:17] Speaker C: Got coming up for you this week.[00:00:19] Speaker B: Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick, and I am an MSP. Marketing Expert. We're going to talk about your target market and why it is so important to hone in and really focus in on a specific target market. Because if you don't, as an MSP, you are bound to waste time, money and effort on marketing that doesn't work.[00:00:38] Speaker C: And on top of that fantastic interview with Tim later on in the show, we'll also be talking about how long you ask new clients to commit to you and whether or not you should be charging them a fee if they don't commit for as long as you want them to commit.[00:00:54] Speaker A: Paul Green's, MSP Marketing Podcast let's start.[00:00:58] Speaker D: First of all with a question that.[00:01:00] Speaker C: On the surface might seem a little bizarre, but actually it's something that I'm kind of pushing you to think about as we get near a holiday, with.[00:01:09] Speaker D: Christmas, of course, being just a few days away. Okay?[00:01:12] Speaker C: Imagine if over Christmas, something happens to you. Let's say you catch a sneezing bug. And that sneezing bug, as bizarre as it sounds, means that from January onwards, you can only work for 60 minutes every day at 61 minutes at work, you start sneezing, just sneezing all day long. In fact, that sounds horrendous. Why would I burden you with such a horrendous disease? Okay, forget the whole sneezing thing, but imagine this. From January, for whatever reason, you can only work for 60 minutes every single day. Now, the real reason I'm asking you this is I want you to think.[00:01:54] Speaker D: Over Christmas whether you well, maybe you'll.[00:01:55] Speaker C: Pause the podcast now and have a think about it.[00:01:57] Speaker D: But really, this is one of those pop it in the back of your.[00:01:59] Speaker C: Head and think about it over Christmas. What can you do? You as the MSP owner, what can you do in 60 minutes every single day from January onwards that will deliver the greatest amount of value to your business? Let me ask that again. It's such an important question. As the business owner, what can you do in 60 minutes every day to add the greatest amount of value to your business? Now, the chances are it's not the things that you're spending most of your time on now.[00:02:30] Speaker D: So maybe you're spending most of your.[00:02:32] Speaker C: Time now on admin, on management, maybe even on tech work, third level work.[00:02:37] Speaker D: Or if goodness help you, if you're.[00:02:39] Speaker C: Doing lower level work, I guess you kind of have to until you've got the cash or the resources to bring other people on board. But as the business owner, there's a series of activities, a set of things that you could and should be doing, which add the greatest value to your business. And the challenge for you is to find ways to remove everything else so.[00:02:57] Speaker D: That that's all you're focused on.[00:02:58] Speaker C: You're focused on the things that add the greatest value.[00:03:01] Speaker D: Now, what are those activities likely to be?[00:03:02] Speaker C: Well, for example, it will be doing new business, so generating leads, warming those leads up, turning those leads into prospects.[00:03:10] Speaker D: Getting those prospects on a 15 minutes.[00:03:12] Speaker C: Video call, and then, of course, having a proper sales meeting with them, actually turning them into a client. Other value that you'll be adding is servicing your existing clients. And by servicing, I mean more account management than actually doing the work. So talking to them about their strategy.[00:03:28] Speaker D: Helping them to pull together perhaps a.[00:03:31] Speaker C: Technology roadmap, going through what their plans are for the next couple of years. Because we all know that the more you know about your client, the easier it is to make suggestions to them of things that they should be doing. Either a technology direction that they should.[00:03:45] Speaker D: Be going in, or new investments that.[00:03:47] Speaker C: They should be making, or of course, maybe even security investments they should be making to help themselves be safer. What other kind of things could you be doing to invest in your business? Well, coaching your staff. And coaching doesn't have to be any more difficult than a ten minute conversation you have with someone every month. But just asking them these three questions, what's going well right now? What's not going so well? And what do you need to do differently? And asking particularly your senior people, or if you're a very small business, then all of your people asking them those questions in an informal setting, on a semiregular basis can be incredibly powerful at coaching them, at helping them to remove the barriers that are stopping them from doing great work. You see, just from those three activities I was talking about there, these are things that only you can do these things right, because they're the things that only the owner of the business can do. And sure, down the line, when you're 2030, 40, 50 strong, there are many other people you can hire to do these things for you. You can hire salespeople to bring a new business. You can hire account managers to look after the existing clients. You can definitely have people to coach your existing team, or you can teach your managers to coach their direct reports. But right now, assuming you're like a three, five, seven person business, which is the vast majority of people listening to this podcast, not everyone, but the vast majority. From the research that we've done, the best thing that you can do with your time is to spend it on bringing a new business, growing your existing business, and getting the most out of your team. And the question for you, the thing to think about over Christmas is what's stopping me from doing that because I know that you're not spending a great.[00:05:22] Speaker D: Deal of time doing that or the.[00:05:23] Speaker C: Chances are high that you're not spending.[00:05:25] Speaker D: A great deal of time doing that.[00:05:26] Speaker C: So why, what's the block? Let's find the block and let's get rid of that block. There's an idea, there's something we talked about in the podcast about two and.[00:05:36] Speaker D: A half years ago and that's to.[00:05:38] Speaker C: Take a week of your time and track everything that you do. If you go and search on my website for the word timeula, T-I-M-E-U-L-A-R it's a little device that I used and I talked about it in the podcast.[00:05:51] Speaker D: In fact, I had someone on from.[00:05:53] Speaker C: Timeula as a guest because I was in love with timeula for about six months and then the love affair ended because timeula helped me to fix my problem. Timeula is just like a time tracking dice. It's got, I think it's eight sides and you allocate each side to a task that you're doing and then as you're doing your work during the day, you just flick the dice round to represent the task that you're doing.[00:06:14] Speaker D: And then at the end of the.[00:06:14] Speaker C: Week you can see what proportion of your time has been spent on which tasks. Right, I think you can actually simplify.[00:06:19] Speaker D: It right down to what am I.[00:06:21] Speaker C: Doing that are red tasks, what am I doing that are yellow tasks and what am I doing that are green tasks? So red tasks are things you should not be doing any admin, anything that is less than third line tech, anything like that, anything that someone else could be paid to do for you, those are red tasks and the chances are that right now you're doing too many of them. What are yellow tasks? There things that kind of you should be doing but you don't want to do too much of. So third line technical work, for example, would be a yellow task and then green tasks are things that you should be doing as much of as possible. So green tasks should be talking to existing clients, bringing on board new business, developing your staff.[00:07:00] Speaker D: Those three things we were just talking.[00:07:02] Speaker C: About, maybe it's worth I wouldn't do it this week because this is a weird week going into Christmas, but maybe your second or third week in January you'd get a time alert. Or use Toggle or one of the thousands of other time tracking applications out there just to see. What are you actually spending your time on? That was so powerful for me, actually it must have been about three years.[00:07:23] Speaker D: Ago, three or four years ago to.[00:07:24] Speaker C: Go through that exercise to figure what I was spending my time on and then to eliminate as much of the red tasks as possible. And these days I spend my time mostly on green tasks. Doing this podcast is a green task, taking part in a webinar, that's a green task. Chatting to vendors and to strategic partners, that's a green task. And I get to do more of that. Well, all the red tasks are done by my team and that's by design.[00:07:47] Speaker D: And that started with knowing what I.[00:07:48] Speaker C: Was doing with my time. So back to the ultimate question, the question I want you to think about over Christmas. What can you do in 60 minutes every day that adds the greatest amount of value to your business?[00:08:02] Speaker A: Here's this week's. Clever idea.[00:08:05] Speaker C: Here's another idea to pop in your.[00:08:06] Speaker D: Head and think about over Christmas.[00:08:08] Speaker C: When you do get a new client, how long do you ask them to commit to you?[00:08:14] Speaker D: So do you do them on like.[00:08:16] Speaker C: A monthly rolling contract basis? And there's nothing wrong with that. There are many good strategic reasons why you would do that.[00:08:22] Speaker D: The only downside of that is when.[00:08:23] Speaker C: You come to sell the MSP, which you will eventually, it might be 20 years away, but potentially your MSP will be worth less. If all your clients are on rolling.[00:08:32] Speaker D: Contracts, they can cancel anytime, as opposed.[00:08:35] Speaker C: To making a longer commitment, just something.[00:08:37] Speaker D: To bear in mind for the future.[00:08:38] Speaker C: So maybe you do it on a monthly rolling basis. Maybe you ask them for a twelve month commitment. Maybe you're a bit braver and you ask for 24. I know MSPs who ask for a 36 month commitment. They ask for a three year commitment.[00:08:50] Speaker D: Some do.[00:08:51] Speaker C: Kind of like a hybrid.[00:08:52] Speaker D: So they say, hey, we ask you.[00:08:54] Speaker C: For a twelve month commitment initially, and then if you renew and you're happy with us at the end of the twelve months, then we ask for a three year commitment. Which actually is a very smart thing to do. I think however you do this, you need to be prepared to answer the question, the inevitable question that someone is.[00:09:10] Speaker D: Going to push back on at some.[00:09:11] Speaker C: Point when they say, look, we want to work with you, but we're not happy with your initial commitment. And let's say you've asked them for a three year commitment and they push.[00:09:22] Speaker D: Back and they say, well, we don't.[00:09:23] Speaker C: Want to make a three year commitment.[00:09:24] Speaker D: We'Ll make a one year commitment or.[00:09:26] Speaker C: A two year commitment. You need to kind of know in advance how are you going to handle that?[00:09:30] Speaker D: I know some MSPs, in fact, I took part in a discussion with some.[00:09:33] Speaker C: MSPs recently where fact, same question came up. They had a new client, they were asking them for a three year commitment.[00:09:40] Speaker D: And the client said, actually I'm not comfortable with that. I'd like to go for twelve.[00:09:43] Speaker C: And we came up with two options.[00:09:45] Speaker D: For the MSP to look at. Number one was to do the twelve.[00:09:47] Speaker C: Months and then three year option so the client knows going into it okay, because you're a new client twelve months now, and then we will be asking.[00:09:54] Speaker D: You for a three year commitment.[00:09:55] Speaker C: So if you want to carry on working with us post the first year, you have to make a three year commitment. The other idea that we came up with, which was I think this is the one they're going to go for, is if the client won't make a three year commitment, then you charge them an onboarding fee. So you say to them, fine, we don't have to do three years, we.[00:10:14] Speaker D: Can do twelve months.[00:10:16] Speaker C: However, one of the reasons we ask for three years is because actually we.[00:10:22] Speaker D: Have to invest a huge amount of.[00:10:23] Speaker C: Time and energy and resources at the very beginning of our relationship, and obviously the profit comes to us over time. Another way of looking at this is you spend a lot of money or you invest a lot of your time and resources in what's known as the front end. So the start of the relationship and you make the profits in the back end. The back end is down the line. I mean, let's be honest, you know, your client that you've had for seven years is more profitable today than they were seven years ago, right?[00:10:49] Speaker D: Not only because you've maybe nudged the.[00:10:51] Speaker C: Pricing and the margins up, but also because they just need less work. Because now you've completely changed all of their tech stack, right? So you've got complete control over their technology. So that means less support requests.[00:11:03] Speaker D: So inevitably they're more profitable.[00:11:05] Speaker C: So I don't think it's wrong at all to explain this to a client and to say, well, we're in this to make profit as well as to do good.[00:11:14] Speaker D: Sorry, you wouldn't say that.[00:11:15] Speaker C: You'd say, look, we're in this because we love looking after people. But we're also in this to make.[00:11:19] Speaker D: A profit because I have to pay.[00:11:20] Speaker C: My staff, I have to pay my mortgage, I have to send my children.[00:11:24] Speaker D: Off to that very expensive school and.[00:11:26] Speaker C: Drive a nice car. And profit is an important, healthy part of doing business. I'm sure you would agree, Mr. Or.[00:11:32] Speaker D: Mrs. Business Owner, because that's why you do it as well.[00:11:35] Speaker C: The problem is that we make less profit in the first year than we.[00:11:38] Speaker D: Do the second and third years because.[00:11:40] Speaker C: Of all the reasons we just talked about. So we are going to charge you an onboarding fee. Yes, you can have a twelve month contract, but we're going to charge you.[00:11:47] Speaker D: XYZ XYZ fee, whatever that fee is.[00:11:50] Speaker C: And it should just be, I guess a couple of thousand shouldn't be greedy. But the idea is to show them why you're asking for the three year contract. Now, I don't know whether or not they're going to go for this onboarding fee or whether they'll just say, fine, let's do the three year contract. My gut feel says they'll go for.[00:12:05] Speaker D: The onboarding fee, or maybe they'll up.[00:12:07] Speaker C: It to a two year contract, I don't know. But the point is that these are the kind of things that you need to think about in advance, particularly if you're starting to ask for longer and longer terms on your contract, which I really do believe that you should be doing. So which of these sounds right to you? Which of them do you think you're going to do? In fact? Are you going to change anything in 2024 with your contract lengths or with.[00:12:28] Speaker D: Onboarding fees or something like that?[00:12:30] Speaker C: Let's have a discussion about this. We have a Facebook group that is exactly for this thing, and I'm going to tell you about it right now.Let me tell you how to get.[00:12:43] Speaker D: Into that Facebook group, which, by the.[00:12:44] Speaker C: Way, is for MSPs only. There's no vendors in there, and all we do is talk about marketing and growing your business. I'm there every single day. It's literally the easiest way to engage with me. So bring up Facebook on your phone. Go to the little search bar at the top. Type in Paul Green's, MSP.[00:13:03] Speaker D: Marketing.[00:13:04] Speaker C: I'm just doing it now on my phone. Paul Green's MSP Marketing. And do a little search for it. Now, the first thing that will come up is it will come up with my page. Don't click on the page. No one uses Facebook pages these days, but you want to go to groups. So on the little thing at the.[00:13:21] Speaker D: Top, you go to groups and you'll.[00:13:22] Speaker C: Find paul Green's MSP Marketing as a group. It might have my face on, even just tap on my face to join. There's a couple of questions to prove you are an MSP and not a vendor trying to sneak in. And once you're inside, I'm looking forward to talking to you there and helping you to grow your business in 2024.[00:13:40] Speaker A: The big interview.[00:13:43] Speaker B: Hi, I'm Tim Fitzpatrick. I am a B, two B Revenue accelerator and excited to be here today.[00:13:50] Speaker D: A B. Two B. Revenue accelerator. What a fantastic job title. That is certainly better than saying, like, I do marketing for MSPs or something like that. Tim, it is a delight to have.[00:13:59] Speaker C: You on my podcast.[00:14:01] Speaker D: You very graciously had me as a live guest on yours a few months ago, and it was one of those where all the technical things were going wrong, weren't they? Like 30 seconds before we were due to go live? But we did it. We did a great broadcast. So thank you so much and thank you for coming on here.[00:14:15] Speaker C: Tell us a little bit more about you. So what's your background? How did you get to where you.[00:14:20] Speaker D: Are now and what do you do for businesses like MSPs?[00:14:24] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate thanks for having me. Paul, I'm excited to dig into this with you, so I'll give you the Cliff Note version of me professionally. When I graduated from college, I was a math major. I had no idea what the hell I wanted to do, but my dad had been an entrepreneur for a long time. He was a manufacturer's rep, which is basically a middleman. And he had started a distribution company that was related to his rep business, and he had no full time employees at that point. I knew he needed some help, and I was like, hey, let me help you for three months while I figure out what I'm going to do.Well, that was it, man. I started, and I was hooked. And we were selling consumer electronics, so we were selling home theater equipment and distributed audio. It was just toys. And I learned more doing that in six months than I did in four years of college.I was just soaking information up like a sponge. And I ended up I became a partner. We had multiple partners in the business, but I ran the distribution company day to day, all the day to day operations. We grew 60% a year for nine years, and we sold it after that. I stayed with the company for three years, and I got laid off from the company that bought us, right? This was in 2008, 2009 time frame, which in the US.Huge meltdown.And we got bought by a public company. And so I got laid off from there. I transitioned into real estate. I had always been interested in real estate, so I became a residential realtor. And Paul, I hated it. It was such a stark contrast from what I was doing in just I started to wake up every day. You've heard of the Sunday Evening Effect where you're like, oh, my God, I got to go to work tomorrow. I had the freaking Sunday evening effect every damn day. And so I was like, this is stupid. I got to shift gears and do something different. And that's when I decided to shift gears and get into marketing. And I would tell you my road with marketing, it has not been a straight path. It's been a winding road. Like most entrepreneurial journeys, it's taken me a while to really find what I love doing and what I'm great at.But that's where I am today. I focus on strategy, planning, and leadership when it comes to marketing. So I act like a general contractor and the architect, but I am not the HVAC person. So I get involved and help clients who need a marketing leader, but they're not ready to pay for a full time marketing executive. And I fill that.So that's that's the short of it. If you can call that a short.[00:17:07] Speaker D: That's a that's a that's a pretty great story. And you and I were actually introduced by Justin Esgar, who's an MSP he's in New York, and he's been on this show, in fact, for a while. Justin had the honor of having the most listened to episode, which he's since been beaten by what's his name, the guy that wrote they Ask, you answer, marcus Sheridan, who is our special episode at the beginning of this year. And I know that Justin will be listening to this and that it will be annoying him that he's been beaten for the most listened to episode.[00:17:38] Speaker C: I also know from the conversations you.[00:17:40] Speaker D: And I have had that you and I could talk for hours about stuff. I think we're both very much in the same head space and emotional space when it comes to marketing and how it frees business owners from their world. But what I want to do is focus you in on something I know you're very, very good at, which is targeting. So talking about target markets and buyer personas and that kind of stuff. Now, you and I both work with enough MSPs to know that MSPs marketing is enough of a distress activity to start getting into theory and difficult stuff like buyer personas and target markets and stuff like that.[00:18:14] Speaker C: Do you want to just tell us.[00:18:15] Speaker D: Why it's so important to have a very clear idea of who you're trying to target before you ever start doing any marketing at all?[00:18:23] Speaker B: Yeah.God, this is something so many people struggle with.Everything from a marketing standpoint starts with who you're targeting. Right. So if we don't have that narrowed down, we have no idea who we're attempting to reach. Right. What most MSPs do is target broadly. And when we target broadly, the target is so big we can't see it. Right. And we can't hit a target that we can't see.Now, there are a lot of byproducts from that that end up impacting your marketing results as well. But when we focus, things become so much simpler. I'm never going to say marketing is easy because there is no easy button. You got to do the work. But marketing can be simple, and when we focus, things become much simpler.[00:19:18] Speaker C: So give us an example of how.[00:19:19] Speaker D: That would actually work in real life then. So let's say I know you do work with MSPs. Let's say you start work with a new MSP today and they say to you probably what you hear all the time, which is, well, we've done bits of marketing. We've tried a few campaigns that vendors gave us. We've never really got any traction with anything. Where should we get started? Talk us through what process you would go through to try to figure out who they should be targeting and then define that market.[00:19:45] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm going to keep this super tactical, right? Because there are multiple ways you can approach this. But one of the easiest ways to start, especially for an MSP that has been in business for a while, is most of the time we don't need to reinvent the wheel.We just need to look at who have we been working with and what are we finding when we start to dig deeper in that? So, Paul, I call it the Three Power Questions. Who do you love working with. And usually if you love working with them, they love working with you, which is what we want.Two, who are your most profitable clients?Oftentimes people default to profit thinking, oh, my largest clients, the ones that are driving the most top line revenue, oftentimes your top line revenue drivers are not your most profitable clients because they just eat up time, right? They ask you to do all kinds of things that you don't normally do. So we want to look at profitability, gross profit, who's really driving profit, and then who are you getting great results for? If you ask yourself those three questions? First off, if you're an MSP and you could work with somebody that checks all of those boxes day in, day out, how much better is your business going to be? You're going to be happy. Your team is going to be happy. You're going to be making money, and you're going to be working with people that you're getting great results for. Which means what?They're going to stay with you even longer, and they're going to want to talk to you about everybody that they know. So ask yourself those three questions with your existing and past client base.Take that group, and it's that group that you start to look at.Where are the commonalities and the similarities? So, Paul, I actually just interviewed an MSP on my podcast. The podcast is not live yet. Who went through this process? I didn't go through this process with him, but it was fascinating to hear it because it's just nice to hear that somebody else is going through this same process. About three years ago, he went through this process. He had been in business 15 years at the time.And he went through this process with a marketing provider that he engaged. And they started looking at it, and they were like, did you realize that half of your clients are in the healthcare space?And they were like, we never even stopped to really think about it. And as they started to think about it, they're like, well, half of your clients are in the healthcare space.Then we start to look like, do you like working with them? Right? Are they profitable?Are you getting good results for them? Yes. Well, maybe we should actually start focusing on healthcare rather than trying to target super broadly. And that's exactly what they did, was they chose to focus on the healthcare space. And he said to me, look, in six months, six months after we decided to do that, we had generated more leads than we had the prior three years.And when I go into a competitive situation with another MSP, I win nine times out of ten because I specialize in healthcare and they don't.So there are a lot of other I think there are some efficiencies from a system standpoint which can help boost profitability as well, right? You can create consistencies in your tech stack and how you're serving that particular market. But it becomes so much easier. So we don't need to reinvent the wheel. But look at your existing customers, clients, and who are we actually working with and what do they look like.It's the easiest place to start.[00:23:50] Speaker D: It is. And it's interesting you talk about efficiencies, because I think MSPs in particular have to be very careful which, if they do pick a sector or I mean, healthcare is a fairly broad is a fairly broad description of a marketplace, but it's still more refined than everybody.But you've got to be careful to pick something that is efficient. I quite often have conversations with MSPs who have manufacturers, and they say to me, oh, we love manufacturers. We want more manufacturers. And I'm very skeptical that manufacturers make great clients en masse. I think you can have one or two who make great clients, but if you've got 1020, 30, 40, you will not typically find that manufacturers will have well, healthcare providers will typically have a version of the same software, right. There'll be three or four big packages. They'll have one of those. They will all be regulated, which means they've got to buy high levels of cybersecurity protection. There will be other efficiencies. You'll be able to understand them if you've got a dentist and a doctor's surgery. They might do different things to people, but they're still running the same way. There's still a practice manager who is the influencer or the decision maker. There'll be some kind of standards. There'll be a corporate owner somewhere, or insurance needs or whatsoever. Whereas manufacturers, they can be completely different.[00:25:10] Speaker C: Even manufacturers of making the same things.[00:25:13] Speaker D: Will have different techniques, different machines. You always hear about someone who's running.[00:25:17] Speaker C: The most critical machine, the $10 million.[00:25:20] Speaker D: Machine, and it runs on a Windows XP machine that hasn't been powered down for 17 years. And you think, why would you want to support that? That's just hell. So anyway, I think you're right. The deficiencies, it's almost like the fourth of the three things that you were talking about.[00:25:36] Speaker C: What is it about having that? Well, actually, let me ask you two questions in one.[00:25:42] Speaker D: The first one is, does it have to be a sector? Does it have to be a gathering, like saying healthcare? Or could it be, actually, I want people with 20 staff? Or could it be, I want to have businesses just in this town?And then tell us why, when you.[00:26:00] Speaker C: Get down to the tactical marketing, why does it get so much easier when.[00:26:03] Speaker D: You'Ve got a very clearly defined audience?[00:26:06] Speaker B: Yeah, so I don't think it has to be a specific vertical. I think for MSPs, if you can buy into that and jump into it with both feet, I do think that it makes things much simpler. I mean, there are multiple ways you can differentiate, right. Focusing on a specific industry vertical. Is one.But the reality is, for most MSPs, they're not looking to bring on 200 new clients this year. They don't need that many new clients. And when you don't need that many new clients, narrowing in on a specific industry, I just think makes things much simpler. Because when you narrow down on a specific industry, and as you pointed out, look, manufacturing super broad, healthcare super broad, you can go even deeper than that within those because you can find manufacturers that do use specific types of manufacturers right. Or specific types of healthcare providers. But when you do that, it becomes much easier to create. I call it an ideal client GPS. It's the list of where those freaking people are. And this is not once you hone in on who it is, it is not difficult to create that list.It's very difficult to create that list when it's we focus on small business owners because they're freaking everywhere right now. It's also difficult when you target broadly to create a really good message that's going to resonate with those people. When it's narrow, it becomes much easier. But so, for example, you and I are focusing on the MSP space. When you choose to focus on the MSP space and you're going to create your list, where the heck are they? Right? Like, what are the associations?What are the events? Well, they go to It Nation or Datacon or they're part of the MSP alliance, or what influencers do they follow? Right there's. Gary Pika or Carl Palachak. Right. All those people and all those events go on that list. And now I know if I want to market to MSPs, these are the places I can go. I'm not casting a line out in the middle of the ocean. I know that I'm fishing. If I'm fishing for trout, I'm going to the local trout farm. And when I stick a line out in there, I'm catching a trout.[00:28:37] Speaker D: I love that. I'm going to steal that line. When I'm fishing for trout, I go to the local trout farm. I love that.[00:28:42] Speaker B: There you go. Right? So it becomes much easier, I think, when you focus by industry, but you don't have to. But I do think it becomes much easier to differentiate as well, because a lot of MSPs struggle with differentiation. You go to five MSP websites, the message is generic, it's varying shades of yellow. But it's really that boils down to the same message. And when that happens, the client, they can't differentiate, right? And when they can't differentiate, they default to price, and you compete on price. And that is a lousy place to be.[00:29:23] Speaker D: Yeah, exactly. And in fact, actually, even if your only differentiation is we only work with CPAs, or we only work accountants, we only work with lawyers, we only work with dentists, we only work with this or whatever is the case. Even if you have no other differentiation and you immediately stand out because all of the other MSPs are very generic. It's really interesting. I work with 700 MSPs on our MSP. You work on a Lot program? Yeah, and obviously I don't have a one on one relationship with all of those people because I'd have no life. But I try to talk to at least one member a day. Well, we have a Facebook group and I have Zooms, and we have drop in Zooms and all sorts of stuff where lots of engagement and I do talk to lots of different there's always someone new to talk to. And it's often surprising to me when you find someone who's got that they've got that kind of that differentiation through targeting. And then you go and look on their website and it's like, where is it?[00:30:24] Speaker C: It's like, Right, well, we're really good at CPAs.[00:30:26] Speaker D: We understand their software, understand this, we understand how they think and act. And you go on their website and it's like, I'm not seeing CPAs. I'm not seeing that.[00:30:33] Speaker C: It should be everywhere, right? It should be the number one message.[00:30:37] Speaker D: Because actually what we're talking about here.[00:30:39] Speaker C: Is making it relevant to them.[00:30:41] Speaker D: And that's the real power of this, isn't it, Tim?[00:30:43] Speaker C: It's taking that target market, and the more you can define down who they are, the easier it is to make.[00:30:51] Speaker D: Things relevant to them. And as you say, that's what we're doing here for MSPs. And we've both of us spent enough time playing with MSPs, talking to MSPs, learning about them, to make what we're saying utterly relevant to them. And actually, when an MSP is marketing to a business owner, you don't have.[00:31:07] Speaker C: To do that much work.[00:31:08] Speaker D: It just needs to seem relevant.[00:31:09] Speaker C: For example, talk to a lawyer. You don't call a lawyer's.[00:31:13] Speaker D: Well, I don't know about in the US. But certainly here in the UK, lawyers don't have businesses. They have a practice, like dentists.[00:31:20] Speaker C: Dentists have a practice, right? So if you're an insider, a true.[00:31:24] Speaker D: Insider working let's go with the dentist one. If you're a true insider working with dentists, you don't talk about their business, you talk about their practice. When you're talking to MSPs, you talk about their PSA or their RMM in the same way that you're talking to lawyers. You talk about their case management software or whatever. I don't know about lawyers. Whatever it is that they use.[00:31:40] Speaker C: And it's often making your message seem.[00:31:43] Speaker D: Relevant is down to those little things, isn't it? Just the tiny things that stand out to them.[00:31:50] Speaker B: It's a small nuance, right? But do you talk about practice?Do they have patients or do they have clients? Right? It's just those little things that make your message that much more relevant and specific. One of my mentors always said, specificity sells. The more specific we can get, the easier it's going to be for that message to resonate and then actually want people to actually do business with us.It's a loaded question when you're like, do I have to absolutely do this? No, you don't have to absolutely do it. But gosh, it makes things a lot simpler if you, you know, even within like, I was talking to an MSP about a month ago who's in greater Los Angeles, right? Which the greater Los Angeles market is huge. I mean, there's like 13 million plus people in the greater Los Angeles market. So focusing on the greater Los Angeles market geographically is still too big. Like, you could focus in that market on a specific industry and still have plenty of clients. Right. So it's a tough concept for people to want to go all in on, but if you can do it, it makes things much, much simpler.[00:33:14] Speaker D: Yeah, I agree. Okay, Tim, I could talk to you for hours, but we're going to have.[00:33:18] Speaker B: To wrap this up.[00:33:18] Speaker D: I've got three quick things to ask you. The first one is you just used a phrase which I absolutely adore. Specificity sells. Have you ever tried saying that after you've had three beers?[00:33:30] Speaker B: No, I haven't. Well, I don't drink that much, so it's very rare for me to drink three beers at one time. But that would be tough to say if I had too much to drink, right?[00:33:40] Speaker D: It is, trust me, I've tried that one after more than three beers as well. You cannot say that.[00:33:45] Speaker C: Second thing is, so when I appeared.[00:33:46] Speaker D: On your live podcast a couple of months ago, you do like a quick fire question thing and one of the questions you asked me was, what was something surprising that people wouldn't know about you?[00:33:57] Speaker C: Now, we don't normally do that kind.[00:33:59] Speaker D: Of thing on this podcast when you asked me, but I'm going to do it for you. When you asked me that question, I said that I was a massive fan of a British TV show called Doctor Who, which this year has celebrated its 60th anniversary. But we're not going to talk about that. I want to know, Tim, something surprising that people wouldn't know about you?[00:34:17] Speaker B: Something surprising about me? I would say I tend to be more of an introvert. Right. I've got a podcast, I do a ton of guest podcasting, but I recharge my batteries in solitude. I can get out there and interact with people, but I do not mind being by myself to recharge my batteries. So that's something that people might find surprising.[00:34:46] Speaker D: See, it's funny, actually, as a former radio presenter, I can relate to that. So although I'm extrovert through and through, most of the people I used to work with in radio back in the day were introverts. And no one really understood why radio presenters were so weird in real life. Because hear them on the radio and they think, oh, this person's the life and soul of the party. And actually you meet them in real life and they're very, very introverted people.[00:35:11] Speaker C: Not all of them, but most of.[00:35:12] Speaker D: Them, which is kind of interesting. So I get that completely. Okay, final question, Tim, and then we are done, which is how do we find out more about you? And I know that you have a really cool is it like a course or a guide that you would like to offer to our audience as well?[00:35:29] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So best place to connect with me is our website, which is@rialtomarketing.com that's rialto Marketing. You can also find me on LinkedIn. I think I'm one of a few. Tim Fitzpatrick search for tim P. Fitzpatrick what I have for your audience is over at Revenue Roadblockscorecard.com. So when we work with clients, we help them remove the revenue roadblocks that are in their way so that they can accelerate growth. There are nine revenue roadblocks that we focus on.If your MSPs want to know which of the nine roadblocks are slowing down their growth, they can do that over@revenueroadblockscorecard.com. So it takes less than five minutes. It's a self assessment, and you'll get really specific advice on which roadblocks are slowing down your growth. So hopefully they'll find that helpful.[00:36:21] Speaker A: Paul Green's, MFP marketing podcast. This week's recommended book.[00:36:27] Speaker E: Hey, how's it going? My name is Steve Spiegel. I'm the founder and CEO of Crewhu. I want to talk to you about one of my books that I read this year with my team. It's how to be a great boss, and it really teaches you how to create accountability and also let go of the vine and let your guys do what they need to do so you could grow your business. Check it out.[00:36:52] Speaker A: Coming up next week boom.[00:36:55] Speaker C: Just like that, 2023 is over. Well, as far as normal podcast episodes.[00:37:00] Speaker D: Are concerned, because starting next week, we've.[00:37:02] Speaker C: Got the first of three festive specials for you going right through into January. And next week's, the first one. Oh, what a treat it is for.[00:37:10] Speaker D: You, because I managed to secure a.[00:37:12] Speaker C: Very interesting interview with this guy.[00:37:14] Speaker F: Hi, I'm Tom Andrulis. I grew my MSP from a one band band in 2003 to a $40 million plus 300 plus employee MSP in 20 years through a lot of hard work and some mergers and acquisitions. So I'm excited to share what M A can do for your business in this podcast.[00:37:32] Speaker C: You're going to love everything that Tom has to say about growing your MSP. So join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.[00:37:42] Speaker A: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's, MSP Marketing podcast.

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Episode 213Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week’s show includes:* 00:00 What elements of value will make someone buy from YOU? * 08:48 Use THIS trick to get past the ‘gatekeeper’ * 13:41 The value and power of using your personal brand in your marketing

Featured guest:Thank you to Ryan Sherrer, Director of Marketing and Special Projects for Titan Digital, for joining me to talk about why he believes that MSP owners can differentiate themselves in the market, and appeal to potential clients, by developing their personal brand and using that in their marketing.

Ryan is a seasoned Director of Marketing and Special Projects. Originating from the Midwest, he’s journeyed from stand-up comedy stages to factory floors, and from bartending to boardroom discussions. It’s within the realm of marketing where Ryan truly harnesses his diverse background, offering unique insights and impactful strategies. With a story rooted in adaptability and resilience, Ryan exemplifies the essence of leveraging one’s varied strengths in a professional setting.

Connect with Ryan on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-sherrer-822682206/

Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + http://mspmarketingedge.com/about/ * Connect with me on LinkedIn: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week’s recommended book, Enterprise Architecture As Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Enterprise-Architecture-Strategy-Foundation-Execution/dp/1591398398/

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world, this Paul.[00:00:06] Speaker B: Paul.[00:00:06] Speaker A: PAUL Greens MSP Marketing Podcast hello.[00:00:10] Speaker C: And here we go. Here’s what’s in the show this week.[00:00:13] Speaker B: Hi, my name is Ryan Sherrer. I’m a marketing expert and personality means everything to your business. And if you’re struggling on how to put your personality into your business, let me tell you how.[00:00:23] Speaker C: And on top of that fantastic interview with Ryan later on in the show, we’re going to be talking about some words you can say to get past the gatekeeper when you phone any lead or prospect.[00:00:35] Speaker A: Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast.[00:00:39] Speaker C: We’re going to start this week by asking you to compare yourself to your direct competitors, if only so you can figure out why someone should buy from you. Because isn’t that the hardest question? Isn’t that the hardest thing that anyone could ask you? Why would I buy from you and not from your direct competitors? And the easy answer for that is that they’re buying you. I mean, literally, they’re buying your personality. I know we’re going to talk about that later in the show, but they’re buying you and your unique personage. It’s why I always recommend to every MSP that they become the face of the business. Because the laziest and easiest marketing to do is you make yourself the face of the business and you just promote yourself, says the man who named his business, Paul Green’s MSP Marketing. You get the idea, right? I don’t know about laziest, but it’s certainly the easiest way to promote yourself. But there comes a point where you’ve got to answer the question from a services point of view, from a delivery, from a customer service point of view, why would someone buy from you? And there’s an exercise that you can do, and this is something that you could spend hundreds of hours on, or you could just spend an hour on it with a colleague or your other half, or a trusted business owner friend, and you compare the elements of value between you and your competitors. So what are elements of value? What’s this jargon, Paul, that you’ve just hit me with? Elements of value are something that other people will perceive exists, buying from you. So, for example, if I buy from an MSP, an element of value is that I have to do less it work, right? I have to touch less it stuff. So it’s going to save me time. Does that make sense? It’s an element of value is it saves me time and I hire you. Now, if I compare that to let’s say if I compared you to doing my it myself, right, you’re going to score really highly on the saving you time because that’s what you do. That’s one of the big benefits of buying from you. So let’s say if we took it like a one to ten score, I buy from you, you’re going to be scoring like eight or nine, maybe even ten, because there’s very little work for me to do. Whereas if I do my it myself, I’m going to be scoring like a zero because it doesn’t save me any time. Whereas if I have a break fix company that might be like a five because the break fix, you and I know more things are going to go wrong, but I have to do some work. The brake fix company has to do some work. So that’s what I mean by an element of value. If you look at the cost of that, then. So you would score very low on the cost score because actually an MSP should be expensive. And if you’re not expensive, put your price up, right. So your score on a one to ten scale will be low on price.But for DIY, I would score ten because DIY cost me nothing. We could argue that DIY, it costs you everything because you’re going to get breached at some point. But that’s a discussion for another day. Break fix, obviously would score very highly on a six or a seven as an element of value because it’s costing me less money because I don’t have to pay for any of that proactive stuff that you’re doing for me because I’m an uneducated business owner. Now, that’s just price. Of course, people don’t just look at price, they look at value. I would argue the value of an MSP is off the chart. Right, it’s ten. If you’re doing all the proactive work and you’re stopping things from going wrong before they go wrong and you fix things before they even know they’re wrong, you are earning the big bucks, you’re delivering massive value. So again, on a scale of one to ten, MSP, high value, DIY, again, high value, maybe because you’re not spending a lot of money. Brake fix, I would argue much lower value because there’s no proactive work. These are what I mean by the elements of value and there’s no real sort of fixed elements of value. But what you kind of want to do is you want to look at it and say, what are the elements of value where we can compete very well with our competitors. So, for example, convenience, let’s take that as an element of value. So can I ring you? If I’m a business owner and I get into work early, I get into work at seven in the morning, say, can I phone you if there’s a problem? 07:00 a.m. Monday morning, get into work, no Internet. Can I phone you? And if the answer is no, then for convenience, you’re a lower score than another MSP, a competing MSP, who perhaps has an outsourced help desk for out of hours calls. Does that make sense? So, outsourced help desk for out of hours calls. Convenience ranks very, very high. What’s another one that we could look at? We could look at, will you come to me? Is that an element of value? I guess it would be. Will you come to me? So essentially, will you send someone on site? Now, your entire business model could and probably should be based around never going to their site, because it’s incredibly unprofitable to go to sites. Or you could say to me, but Paul, you’re wrong, we send an engineer to site every X or on demand, because that’s our USP, that’s our unique selling proposition. So again, elements of value. Will you come to me? And it won’t cost me anything extra? If you do that and it’s a ten, bingo. If you do it reluctantly and you charge them for it, it’s very much lower down and you can go through a whole host of things. The question to ask yourself is, why do people buy from an MSP in the first place? What are all these different elements of value? And then how do we rank against our competitors? On things like price, on value, on convenience, On how easy we make it, on how simple we make it, on our strategic advice, on how well we protect them. Now, you could compare yourself to the local brake fix, you could compare yourself to DIY. That’s almost pointless, I think. But what you should do is pick out three or four MSPs. Who are the three or four names that you find yourself coming up against? Don’t do it for everyone in your marketplace, because that’s soul destroying. Just do the three or four that you most come up against, and it could be there’s a big MSP in town that you come up against, and maybe there’s like a one two person band that you come up against, but who are the names that you come up most against? Or who are you most worried about? And you can plot on a spreadsheet, you can plot your elements of value for your competitors. And how do you find out?

How do you know if they’ve got an outsourced help desk? Well, they will be shouting about it on their website. So you kind of do it from what’s on your website and what’s on their website. Now you almost know too much about your own business, so you have to be careful just to do it from your own marketing. But what you end up with, which is really cool, is you can start to see which of the areas that you are better at that they are not, and that can start to influence your marketing. And this is starting to answer that exciting question of, why should I buy from you? Why should I buy from you? Well, we have a 24 hours help desk. You can get into the details of that later down the line.

We fix 94.7% of problems before our clients even notice them. So we’re highly proactive. And these two become your differentiators. Because then when they go to talk to one of your competitors that you’ve compared yourself to, and they ask them, so, oh, the people we’re looking at down the road, you, we can bring their help desk 24 hours a day. Can we do that with you? And one of the problems with marketing and sales is where the prospects, the clients are comparing apples and orange. You’re the apple. Your competing MSP is the orange. What we’re trying to do here is to get them to compare apples to apples. We take the things that you’re really good at and we make that the conversation. We change their conversation, and we make them ask those things, the things that you know that you are good at. But it all starts, as I say, with looking at people’s websites, your competitors websites, and figuring out what elements of value you are better at delivering than your competitors are. Now, if this sounds a little bit baffling to you, I’m here to help you. In fact, I have a Facebook group that is just for you. It’s just for MSPs. And to answer questions like, you know, that thing you were talking about on the podcast, Paul, how would we actually do that again? Tell me more about that. If you want to join, just grab your phone, go to Facebook, type in MSP Marketing, go to groups. You’ll see me tap your finger on my face. Come and join our MSP Marketing Facebook group, and we will happily answer this and all of your other marketing questions.

[00:08:48] Speaker A: Here’s this week’s clever idea.[00:08:51] Speaker C: Let’s say you’ve decided to start phoning your leads and your prospects, which is a very smart thing to do side note. You personally shouldn’t be phoning them. The business owner shouldn’t be making these calls. Either outsource it or find someone to do it for you. Like a back to work mum picking up the phone two to 3 hours a day, two to three days a week, phoning your leads for you. But that’s a side note. So you’ve decided to start phoning leads and prospects. This is a really smart move because it moves the relationship forward. You get to learn more about these business owners, these decision makers, how happy or unhappy they are with their incumbent MSP, and ultimately, when they may or may not be ready to sign another contract. That’s the kind of information we want. So let’s say you or someone picks up the phone on your behalf, they dial a number and they get through to someone. Let’s call this person the Gatekeeper. And the gatekeeper says, good afternoon, so and so company, probably in that exact home. And you say, hello. And then you say one of either two things. You say, hi, can I ask who’s responsible for your it, please? Or you say, can I speak to the person responsible for your it? And at this point, the gatekeeper is going to start repeatedly banging their head on the table. Bang, bang, bang. Because they’ve heard this question like 17 times already today. Not necessarily the it one, but they’ve heard, can I speak to the person who’s responsible for your. I was going to say photocopier. Does anyone have a photocopier anymore? I suppose people do. Who’s responsible for your photocopier? Can I speak to the person who’s responsible for your accounting? Basically everyone who phones up all these cold calls and warm calls and people selling. It’s almost like when someone’s selling something, they declare themselves to be a salesperson inadvertently in the way they ask to speak to someone else. It’s kind of a crazy thing. Now what I’m going to suggest to you instead, and I have a couple of MSPs I know who are doing this is actually using the same terminology, but inserting something that’s a bit of a. Wait, what? I haven’t heard that one before. And it’s this.Can I speak to the person who’s responsible for your cybersecurity? So you ring them up, you get the gatekeeper and you say, can I speak to. Or could you tell me who is responsible for your cybersecurity? Now I know that that’s the same question, but it’s actually asking them about something that they haven’t been asked 17 times before. In fact, the chances are pretty high that very few, if any, people have ever called up and asked that question, who’s responsible for their cybersecurity? And what that’s going to do is it’s going to make them just pause for a second and go, wait, what?

Cyber what? Cybersecurity. So who’s responsible for the security of your business’s data and making sure that you don’t get breached? And that’s going to get them thinking, and this is brilliant, because we have an opportunity, and in fact, it’s very desirable, to turn the gatekeeper into your secret weapon. See, gatekeepers aren’t really there most of the time to stop you from getting to the decision maker. They’re just there to do efficient routing or routing. They are there to get you to where you need to go. And actually, if you can turn the gatekeeper into your friend, this may take a couple of calls to do it. That can be a very, very smart thing to do. Hi there. Let’s start by the beginning of the call. Good afternoon. So and so company. How can I help? Oh, hi there. Can I speak to the person who’s responsible for your cybersecurity? Please? Say what? Can I speak to the person who’s responsible for your cybersecurity? Cybersecurity? Yeah. Like keeping your data safe, making sure that your network can’t be breached, that kind of thing. Oh, I’m not quite sure who that would be. We can ask, do you have like an IT director or someone who oversees it in the business? Well, no, not really. I mean, we have a company we use. Oh, you do? What a great way to start a conversation. And then we can build a bit of rapport with that gatekeeper. We can just get involved, have a pretty decent conversation with them, and it will probably turn out to be the CEO, or whoever’s running the business will be responsible, or whoever’s in charge of finance. They often get lumbered with it stuff as well, don’t they? The second you can then start a conversation with them and they realize that actually they may be responsible for it, but no one’s actually in charge of their cybersecurity. That’s a great conversation to have. So, listen, why don’t you try this?

It’s a really fun thing to try and making calls to leads and prospects is not fun, but trying something new and different like that, where you can actually, you’ve got a better chance of having a conversation. That seems a little bit more fun to me.

Hey, you and mE, we’re connected on LinkedIn, right? Are we? Could you just double check just in case we’re not. And it would be quite cool to be connected. Just go into LinkedIn, go to the search box, type in Paul. Paul. Paul. Paul.

[00:13:35] Speaker B: Paul.[00:13:35] Speaker C: Paul Greens MSP Marketing podcast. Connected or not? If we’re not, send me a connection request. I’d love to be connected to you.[00:13:41] Speaker A: The big interview.[00:13:44] Speaker B: Hi, my name is Ryan Sherrer and I’m director of marketing and special projects for an Ink 5000 marketing company here in the US.[00:13:51] Speaker C: And what an intro that is. It’s so wonderful to have you here on the podcast, Ryan. I want a bit of a mission as we get towards the end of the year to collect interesting people, get them on the show and talk about their stories. And I know that later on in just a few short minutes, you’ve got some really interesting stuff to share with us about personal branding and how regardless of the size of your MSP, it’s the personal branding that can really pull people in. But let’s rewind. First of all, tell us a little bit about you because you’re not someone who put himself through college doing a marketing degree. That’s not how you got into this.[00:14:25] Speaker B: No, my filthy mouth is what got me into this. Actually.I don’t know how far you want to go back. I was that guy. You couldn’t tell me anything. So at 16, I left school and I started working labor jobs, stuff like that. How about every blue collar job you could get? But I wanted to be a comedian, so I started doing that and it transitioned into a podcast. That podcast kind of took off from there. I went to terrestrial radio and I noticed that there was a lot of marketing because at small radio stations you do your own marketing. If there’s marketing to be done, the DJ, the hosts, the back end staff does it. And I really liked the production part. So over the course of the next ten years, I taught myself marketing through YouTube and networking and finding people that were way better at it than me and taking their advice and also just trying to be not that guy anymore and changing the way that I viewed the world and how I took on information to just be a better person.

[00:15:24] Speaker C: That’s fascinating. So in a small number of respects, you and I have a slightly similar background. I did one stand up comedy gig and died. I mean, died the death of death. It was so bad it put me off stand up comedy for life. So you’ve beaten me on that. I did do radio as well. I did ten years in radio and I’m also self taught on marketing. It was YouTube, books, and as you say, which was such a great thing, find people who are better at it than you and learn from them, which is exactly that. So what kind of business do you do now? So I know you have your own marketing agency. What kind of businesses do you work with?[00:15:58] Speaker B: We work with pretty much everything right now. Our major contributor is insurance, independent insurance companies, small business, independent run business, tech companies, you name it. We’re a pretty decent sized marketing service, so we like the challenge of if you come to us, we’re going to try to figure out how to market you because the principles of marketing are pretty simple and you just have to rearrange that for the business that you’re in.[00:16:21] Speaker C: Yeah, and you’re absolutely right. But of course, it’s the implementation that makes all the difference. And many of the MSPs that are watching this or listening to this right now, it’s that implementation that they get stuck with. Because to you and me, people who’ve been studying marketing for a long time, marketing is a known quantity, isn’t it? We know what you do when we know why you want to do it and where it fits in. But obviously MSPs. But yet certainly I know very little about technology and I’m sure you don’t know huge amounts. MSPs obviously completely the other way around. So we could talk for hours about just general marketing. I think you and I have very similar views on things, which doesn’t make for a lot of conflict in a podcast, which is a shame because conflict can be a great driver of story. But instead I want to narrow down to something I know that you’re very good at and that’s personal branding. So can you first of all give us an idea? When we talk about personal branding, what do you actually mean by that?[00:17:12] Speaker B: When it comes to personal brand, I’m not necessarily talking about your face and I’m not necessarily talking about you being in front of that. Not everybody’s built for camera. I got a face for radio, but here we are. But you have to get out there and you have to give your message. If you only got a staff of a handful of people, your personality, of how you created that company, the decisions you make, the things you do ring through that company. When you get on LinkedIn or you get in a lot of the email and email world, everything in life is so just soulless and plain. It’s not hard to stand out, but people don’t want to stand out. So you have to find that personal connection you have with your company and that personal connection you have with your clients and figure out a way to transition that into 2D marketing. Whether it be ads, YouTube, copy, websites, you got to figure that. And that’s what I mean by personal branding, not necessarily your face.[00:18:04] Speaker C: So it’s more about being connecting to the people that you want to sell to, rather than saying, hey, here’s the name of our MSP, here’s our logo. It’s actually using you as a person. I mean, this is a theme that’s come up on this podcast probably every two to three weeks for the last four years or so. It’s the implementation of that where it gets hard. So give us some of the examples. And people listening will be from one person bands up to $20 million businesses. I know we have those extremes and everything in between. Give us some examples of how you actually get started with something like this.[00:18:39] Speaker B: One is you got to be a little bit fearless because anytime you do anything personal and putting your personality out there, not everybody’s going to like it. A friend of mine told me one time, if you cast a wide net, a wide head nut has big holes and you’re going to lose a lot of people. So you need to find a niche down who your client is and know how to niche to them. I’ll tell you this story. So we just took on a client and they are a rubbish removal service.But the name of it is we grab junk. And they literally do videos of going, but my junk is small, we’ll still grab it. My junk is big, we’ll still grab it. My junk is tiny. It doesn’t matter because they found the client they wanted to communicate with. And they said, you know what, people that are a little uptight, they’re just not going to have our services. So the first step that you have to find is who is your client? And that’s marketing 101. That is a very marketing 101. If you’re a small time band, you’re looking for bar owners. If you’re an insurance company, you’re looking life insurance, you’re looking for people that are, I don’t know, responsible.

So you have to niche down and figure that out of who you’re looking for. And then you have to go, all right, what are these people like? It’s generalized marketing. But don’t be afraid to act the way that you would in a private meeting with that person. But just transition that into marketing. If you curse, if you drink, if you smoke cigars, if you do whatever be you and pull your personality out into your marketing. Because you know what? More people are going to relate with you than hate you. The whole judgment thing goes on more in your head than theirs.

[00:20:12] Speaker C: I love that. Let’s just recap that sentence again.Take how you would act, I’m going to paraphrase, take how you would act in a one to one meeting with that person and be like that in your marketing. So I’m going to slightly edit the answer that you gave there of swearing and drinking in your marketing. I suspect when it comes to technology strategies, we just want to bring that one back a little bit. But the basic concept, essentially what you’re saying, Ryan, is be yourself, right? Don’t try and be someone else, but be yourself. Okay, so how do we do that? And again, I’m sorry to keep drilling this down into the practical level, but it’s so easy for us to talk about this. But how do we actually do it? How do we be ourselves? Do we need to do this? Get onto YouTube videos, be on podcasts? Do we need to write? Do we need to stand up and talk? What happens if we’re scared of all these things?

[00:21:00] Speaker B: One, you’re just going to have to get over it. We’ll work backwards if you’re scared of it. Inaction brings you nothing in marketing. And when people get that inaction and they get hung up. Podcasts, let’s go that way. Yes, podcasts, YouTube video, get out there. It’s scary, but the more you do it, the better you are at it because you’re going to go on this podcast and you’re going to be all in your head that the host, he’s got a really cool set up and I’m in a small office with a microphone. Or maybe you feel like they’re going to be more technical than you, but the more interviews you do, the better you’re going to get at it. And then you can take that piece because we’re making content not only for you, but for me too. We’re making content for both sides. So that’ll broaden your audience and get it out and put that personal touch onto it. And writing, yes, write all the time. You see the slogans, you see slogans, you see content. We live in a world where AI is just trashing personal writing. But that’s a plus side for people that want to put their personality out there because as the market gets flooded with more and more AI writing, more and more AI content, more and more AI made emails that your personal touch and your personal emails in there and your personal brand is going to rise up. The more you try to be like AI, be solace or be very business and be very flat, the more you’re just going to sink into all that noise. So podcasts, YouTube videos, social media that you’re comfortable with, the other way is that if you’re an expert or something, own it and come be an expert in that. People love learning things. So the writing, the podcast, the YouTube is just a general way to get out there and be an educator as well.[00:22:35] Speaker C: I love this. I love everything in your message. And I think about, I know a lot of MSPs very closely because we work quite closely with our MSP marketing edge program. And you spend a number of years talking to people and you really get a sense for their personality, don’t you? You get to know that the guy that’s always funny or the guy that is very, very serious and so often that I then go and look at their marketing and the marketing does not reflect them. If you’ve got someone who’s running a business with ten staff and that guy’s a good humid person, always ready to have a laugh, serious about the business, but the business is fun, right? And then you go and look at their website and their website is the same as all of the other MSPs. And it drives me absolutely crazy because that’s a complete lack of personality cutting through.[00:23:25] Speaker B: Absolutely. And the whole point of marketing and the practicality is cutting through that noise is being where your customers need you to be and being the MSP that they need you to be. That’s what it’s all about.That’s the whole crux of marketing. And we get lost in, should I take out this ad? Should I do this? Should I do that? That’s for a professional marketer to understand. But what we need from you is just to be you and let us bring your personality out and let us take your personality and work with it and talk with it. And if you’re doing your own marketing, let that thing shine. That’s what got you through life, right? That’s what got you married. That’s what got you your gig. That’s what got you hired. So why wouldn’t that get you business as well?

[00:24:07] Speaker C: Yeah, it’s crazy, isn’t it? Probably because you don’t get consultants with all of those other things. Who hires a consultant or goes and joins a program to get married? Or maybe some people do, I don’t know. This is the single guy giving dating advice here. So clearly don’t listen to me on that. Now, you said something earlier and it was about fear or people not being comfortable putting themselves out there. Let’s imagine you’ve just won an MSP as a new client and you’ve got them to sign off on the contract, and it’s squillions of dollars a month and you’re happy. And now your job is to make them happy. And you look at their marketing and it’s as we were describing, it’s bland, it’s average.It doesn’t stand for anything.

It’s Aaron Burr. If you’re familiar with Hamilton, and those people who’ve never watched the Hamilton on Disney plus are thinking, what the hell is he talking about? But for those who have, it’s the Aaron Burr of website. It doesn’t stand for anything. What’s the process that Ryan, that you would take that MSP, that new MSP client of yours through to start to get that personality out of them?

[00:25:09] Speaker B: Honestly, you may or may not like my answer. I’m going to ask them what their favorite color is and we’re going to start from there. The thing is that we tend to separate our business from our personality. And we created it just like we created our children. Just like it’s sculpture, just like it’s artwork. So our blood, sweat and tears and MSPs, blood and sweat and tears go into their business. So just starting from that basic question, what’s your favorite color? What design do you like? Do you like retro? Do you like Art Deco? Do you like modern design? Do you like whatever? Because we can always evolve those things. You have to start. Everybody tries to get a finished product. They try to think about the finished product, but nobody wants to take the process to get to it. So they give me a gazillion dollars. We’re going to go out for drinks and I’m going to get to know this person and know what is it about their personality? Is it their drive? Do they have a business that is driven? Is it by money? Is it by people? Is it by culture? What is their drive? And then we’re going to find those people and connect with them through those little differences because that’s what marketing is, is if your favorite color is red, you’re going to be more inclined to drink coke. If your favorite color is blue, you’re going to be more inclined to drink Pepsi. So we’re going to locate that and we’re going to brand you and building your brand, which is a separate, whole subject we could go on, has to throw your personality in there. So if you say you like Art Deco and gold and all this stuff, then we’re going to start working logos because as soon as I present that logo or I present that marketing plan and the MSP owner connects with that, then it’s game on and you just see their personality pour out.[00:26:40] Speaker C: My favorite color is blue and I like Pepsi Max.[00:26:43] Speaker B: Right.[00:26:44] Speaker C: It’s like you know me in my soul.[00:26:45] Speaker B: That’s right.[00:26:47] Speaker C: Are we going for Sprite for green?[00:26:49] Speaker B: Yes.[00:26:49] Speaker C: I’m trying to think of a yellow. Is there a yellow drink? Lips and iced tea, maybe?[00:26:53] Speaker B: Anyway, I was just going to go with American beers because you got rolling rock. That’s green.Tells you about what I do in my spare time.

[00:27:00] Speaker C: Exactly. Yes. Study beers on a professional basis.[00:27:03] Speaker B: Very much.[00:27:04] Speaker C: Ryan, tell us a little bit about your marketing agency and what’s the best way for us to get in touch with you.[00:27:09] Speaker B: Our marketing agency is Titan Digital. We’re a full service marketing agency and recently we’ve developed podcasts. A lot of business owners need to get out there and need to start doing that, but they don’t know the technicals of it. They don’t know how to stream, they don’t know how to do whatever. So we’ve added podcasting, kind of like podcasting in a box to our services, which is why I’m kind of out here talking to people, because it’s one of the biggest networking events that you can do. I would have never met you. You’re in a totally other country if we hadn’t went on Podbean and if we hadn’t have done the things we did to get connected. So we really want to focus on the MSP owner, getting their brand out there, the digital marketing, the technicals in the background. We take all of that, but we really want to focus on getting people’s faces out there and businesses out there and emotionally connecting with people.[00:28:00] Speaker A: Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast. This week’s recommended book.[00:28:07] Speaker D: Hi, I’m Jeff Ton, author, speaker and business Explorer. The book that I’d like to recommend today is enterprise Architecture as strategy by Jeannie Ross. This book has become the Bible for guiding IT departments. It enables you to take a look at your business first and understand how your business operates. What’s the business operating model, and then what are the impacts on you, your organization, and the technology that you provide to the business, coming up next week.[00:28:45] Speaker E: Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick and I am an MSP marketing expert. We’re going to talk about your target market and why it is so important to hone in and really focus in on a specific target market, because if you don’t as an MSP, you are bound to waste time, money and effort on marketing that doesn’t work.[00:29:05] Speaker C: It’s the last regular show of 2023 next week, and on top of interview, we’re also going to be looking at when you should be charging an onboarding fee to new clients and why. Actually, that onboarding fee is a psychology tool more than anything else. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.[00:29:26] Speaker A: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast.

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Episode 212Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 Should your MSP do pay-per-click Google ads? * 09:50 How switching off can power up your business * 16:36 The secret to sustainable business growth

Featured guest:Thank you to Damien Stevens, Founder & CEO at Servosity, for joining me to talk about how he learned the hard way how NOT to grow his business. Damien also shares how he turned his IT support business into an MSP before the term 'MSP' was widely used.Damien has always been driven by a passion for learning and filling voids. At 14, he dismantled his first computer to understand its inner workings. Raised by a single mother, he dropped out of high school at 15 to work full-time and contribute to his family’s needs. Despite his limited formal education, he passed the GED and enrolled in Spartanburg Technical College.Stevens worked various jobs while attending college, demonstrating his drive and impatience for growth. At 19, he dropped out to start his own business, Utopia Net, with his best friend. They ventured into website development despite having yet to gain prior knowledge in the field. Utopia Net grew into a successful website development company over seven years.Driven by a desire to fill another void, Stevens founded Servosity in 2005 to address their clients’ backup and disaster recovery needs. Through networking, mentorship, and relationships, he continued to grow and strengthen his businesses. Stevens emphasized the importance of mentorship and sought guidance from successful entrepreneurs.He values his personal life, emphasizing that his marriage, family, and relationships are his most important things. Despite attracting investment capital and acquisition offers for Servosity, Stevens remains focused on his goal of making the world’s servers uncrashable. He sees himself as a bettor on himself and his team rather than a gambler in the traditional sense. Stevens is determined to achieve his goals and believes success will follow if they do an excellent job.Connect with Damien on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/dstevens/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Connect with me on LinkedIn: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, Principles: Life and Work: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Principles-Life-Work-Ray-Dalio/dp/1501124021/

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast. Hello, my friend, and welcome back to the show. How is it December already? Here's what we got coming up for you this week.[00:00:17] Speaker B: Hi, this is Damien Stevens, and I grew my MSP from four full time employees to 17 in one year, and it was utter chaos. If you want to learn how to do that and how to not do most of the things that I did, join us on the show.[00:00:33] Speaker A: And you are going to love that interview with Damien later on in the show. We're also going to be talking about the power of stopping and thinking about what you really want to do with your business.Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast. Now, let's start this week with a question I'm going to answer, which is inevitably going to create a little bit of controversy on LinkedIn. And I know I'll get some emails about it as well. The question is this, should your MSP be doing pay per click Ads on Google in 2024? So let's just establish exactly what we mean there. You know what, pay per click adverts. Aren't you not pay per click with a piece of paper. I have heard people think it's that even today, but it's pay per click. So you have an advert on Google that comes up when someone searches for something like it, support your town, and you click on that advert, or they click on that advert. And that's the point. You pay. And of course, pay per click is what makes Google one of the world's most valuable companies. Yeah, they're very innovative and they've got lots of different revenue streams. But let's be honest, Google at its heart, its core business, is it is a very, very good advertising agency that puts people who have something to sell in front of people who are looking to buy that thing. And that is what makes Google the big, rich, dominant company that it is. And it's the same for all the other pay per click on Bing, LinkedIn, Facebook, all of the rest of it. It's all essentially based on that Google model. I don't know if they invented it or whether they just adapted it, but they've certainly done it better than anyone else. So the question then is, should you advertise your MSP on Google? Should you buy Google Ads in 2024? Now, my general recommendation for this to most MSPs is no.And let me qualify, that's no. The reason I say it should probably be no is for a number of different reasons. First of all, most MSPs don't have the time or the resources or the patience to get really good at Google Pay per click. Now, I must qualify my responses and my answers to this by saying I am not a technical expert at pay per click. I could probably get an advert set up. In fact, I'm sure I've done it in the past, but I'm not an expert at that specific function. I'm kind of okay at the overall strategy of Google Ads. But I couldn't set you up an advert. I couldn't optimize it. I certainly couldn't sit and do all the little adjustments you need to do every day. Don't get me wrong, I could put myself through a course for it. Of course I could. And there are some amazing courses on Udemy which I know a few MSPs have done. But I tell you this, and the reason I don't have those skills is because I believe for the vast majority of MSPs, it's not something you need to do. So as I say, most MSPs, they don't have the time or the effort to do this. To be really good at pay per click, any pay per click, but especially something as hotly competed as managed services, you need to be on it every day. You have to be looking at your performance every day. You have to be tweaking your keywords, things like your negative keywords. So keywords are the things that if, for example, your keyword was it support your town, that's something your advert would show up. But you might have a negative keyword of iPad, for example, because you don't want someone typing in iPad screen repair your town and seeing your advert and clicking on it and wasting your 40, $50 or however much you pay for that click and wasting your money when actually they're not a real qualified customer for you. Someone with a broken iPad is not what you want, right? You want a business with ten plus staff who are looking for someone to give them a strategic it direction. So you have those keywords, you have those negative keywords, you have all sorts of other little things. The amount of money that you'll bid, the reach, the geographical reach, different placements for adverts. Then of course you've got to test the adverts themselves, the actual creative that's in the adverts. Then you've got to look at what your competitors are doing. And there's a lot of work. There's an awful lot of work. And there are a few MSPs around the world who are very good at this. You can go into almost any group or any forum and there'll be someone there who will say, yes, you should be doing pay per click. It's actually quite easy once you've done a 20 hours course on it. And if you just put 30 minutes in a day, and I think for those people who get really, really good at pay per click, absolutely, that's the right thing to do. So this is my caveat with any marketing. If you're good at that marketing thing and it works for you, then don't change it. Why would you ever change that? You wouldn't. But for the vast majority of MSPs, what they want to do is they want to set something at once and then they want to not have to think about it for the next two years. And that's normal human behavior, right? So if that's you, pay per click is probably not for you. Now, you could hire someone to do this on your behalf, and there's nothing wrong with that. Always find other people that you can get to do something so that you don't have to. But again, you've got to find someone who's going to do that for you every single day. And it really is a daily task. And where someone's got to do something every day and it's 20 to 30 to 60 minutes a day, I guess the optimization comes down over time, but that's going to cost you money. And that's sort of another reason why really pay per click isn't right for most MSPs. It's a lot of money out before you have money in. Now the MSP business model is brilliant. It's actually kind of perfect for pay per click because you might be spending, I don't know how much, $50 a day, $60 a day, maybe more. I don't really know how much a cost per click is. I guess it depends on the marketplace and how hotly it's an auction at its basis. So if lots of people want it, it's going to be a lot more expensive. But Google did put the prices up a few years ago and they did limit the amount of advertising, which again drives the prices up. So the MSP model makes it okay to spend 50, $60 a day on marketing on pay per click, because eventually you could and should win a client that will come and spend 1000 or $2,000 a month every month for the next ten years. So from a pure cash replacement point of view, that can work. And actually if you sell them a $10,000 or pound project up front, right, that $10,000 project upfront project that could replace the cash you've just spent on pay per click and then you get the bonus of the monthly recurring revenue down the line. So in theory, the MSP model makes it potentially highly profitable for you to do pay per click. The reality is that a lot of MSPs just haven't got that spare cash. If I said to you, hey, it could take 60 to 90 days where you're paying for clicks every day for clicks from the wrong people every 60 to 90 days, or time wasters or tire kickers, and it takes some time to get to that point of actually getting in front of real people. Would you have the cash to fund that? And if the answer is no, that's another reason why you shouldn't be doing pay per click. I think that the final no, the final reason why you shouldn't do it is exactly that is noise. So I know two or three MSPs quite closely and I followed their journey of setting up their pay per click. And what they've all told me is there's a lot of noise, you get a lot of clicks, even as much as you disqualify people as much as possible, you get a lot of noise, get a lot of clicks from the wrong people. You get inquiries from the wrong people.But you have to plow through that noise. You've got to be highly responsive when someone's on your website, on Live chat or they've filled in a form, there's none of this we'll get back to you in 24 hours nonsense. It's now. You got to do it now. And that's a drain on resources, isn't it? That's a drain on your own personal resource. If you're sat at home at 930 at night and you're having a beer and you're watching TV and your phone pings up with a live chat request, but it's someone who absolutely wants to talk to you now and you've got to pre qualify immediately. Is this an iPad repair or is this a proper lead for us? So there is a lot of noise and the few I know that do it and do it well, they're quite happy to get through the noise because they win the clients. The beauty of pay per click let's talk about what it's good for. The beauty of pay per click, and especially on Google, is it puts you in front of people at the exact moment they are ready to buy. That's what in fact, if you go back 20 years ago, I know some people who got rich, like stupidly stinking rich off cheap Google Ads, like the 2002, 2003 time, because we were talking, it was a few cents, it was a few pence per click, and they would spend thousands of pounds, thousands of dollars on adverts and were getting a huge return because there wasn't a lot of competition, it was a few pence per click. They didn't have to sit and optimize it every day. But that's not how it is today, right? There's a lot of noise, there's a lot of hassle. So those MSPs I know that work it, they're happy to go through it, they're happy to go through the noise. They don't have a huge amount of competition and it works for them because it puts you in front of the right person at exactly the right time. That was really cool 15 years ago today. There's an awful lot of noise to get through. Listen, I'd love to know what you think about this. And seeing as I'm going to get comments anyway, comments on LinkedIn and emails, I might as well solicit them. I'd love to know, do you do pay per click? Are you an MSP who uses pay per click and it works for you? If so, I'd love to get you on this podcast and perhaps later, at some point next year, we can have the exact reverse of this. All you've got to do is drop me an email. Hello, Paul Green, Mspmarketing.com. Here's this week's clever idea.Let me tell you about something epic that happened to me a few months ago. About the end of September, my beautiful, wonderful child Sam went off to Spain for a week with the school. So it was like a school trip. Going abroad. Signed her up for it, I don't know, six months ago, something like that. And I'm a sole parent, so there's just me and her in the house and I have to do all the parenting things, right? Everything. Absolutely. Every single lift, every single thing that needs to be done, it's down on me. And I don't mind that. I'm quite happy. I'll go with that. It's been a number of years it's been like that and I don't mind it, but it does mean that I don't really get a great deal of time to myself. And there's a massive downside to that, which is what we're going to talk about, because I'm going to challenge you to do something that I got to do at the end of September. So there I was, end of September. She'd gone off to Spain. I was on my own for a week. So I did what any self respecting parent who doesn't have a lot of time to themselves did. I book myself into a hotel. I had a crazy night out, having a few beers, I went to some shows, I went to the cinema, I met up with some friends and I basically lived like a child free adult for a week. And it was epic. It was just an epic week. Now, I'm not going to tell you everything I got up to in that week. Email me if you want the details. I'm kidding. But something really cool happened towards the end of the week and it was something that I knew would happen and it was something that, because I knew it would happen because it's happened to me before, I didn't push it. So don't remind the context of I'm not away with my child going on holiday with kids, you tend to be full on, don't you? You're still a parent, you're still making sure that they're not falling off bridges and electrocuting themselves and they're eating properly and all of that kind of stuff. So my mind was on our holiday and making sure everyone was occupied and all of that stuff. Whereas this week, when I was on my own, my mind was just on fun, right? And my mind was just on, let's do this. I'm going to go for a 25 miles walk today, which is one of the things I did. And what happened is towards the end of the holiday, my mind delivered to me the results of some intense thinking it had been doing during the day and during the night when I wasn't aware of it. And it was intense thinking about the business. So we have issues in our business. We have problems. Everyone does. If you don't have issues and problems in your business, then you do. It's just you're not aware what the issues and the problems are. We're ambitious. We want to grow, we want more. We want to change our own marketing and improve our product for our clients of our MSP marketing edge clients. And all of this is swirling around in the background. And I have a team that I work with and I deliberately loaded all the problems and the challenges and the issues and then I promptly forgot about them. I didn't write them down. They were just swirling around. And I think it was the third or the fourth day I went for another long walk, really long walk. I think it was like a ten mile walk that day. And things just kept coming into my head, and I was grabbing my phone every five minutes and leaving little voice notes for myself, things I needed to look into. And I started compiling a hit list, and it was a hit list of really, really good ideas which were being delivered to me by my brain. And that was what I really bought with my week off by sending my child away on a really expensive school trip to Spain, which she did enjoy, by the way. What I'd really bought myself, apart from being a free adult for a few days, was I bought myself quality thinking on the business. And in fact, a lot of the things that came out of that week, we are now implementing ahead of like a big change session to a lot of stuff that we're doing just in January, just in a few weeks time. And that's really cool, because if it wasn't for that week away, I wouldn't have had that. Don't get me wrong, I get a version of that on holidays when I'm not thinking about work and I'm not trapped in the daily intricacies of my business. But it is only a version.I think we've only had one other weekend where I was completely on my own with no child, and you get a version of that. Anyway, the point I'm saying all of this is, I guess the challenge is for you. How can you replicate this? I mean, maybe you don't have kids, but maybe you've got a partner and you're always with your partner. Maybe there's an opportunity for you, whether it is going away or, I don't know, locking yourself in a cave or just switching off your computer, or maybe it's just going for like a two, three hour walk once or having a weekend away, or even maybe you can do it in like, 30 minutes walks. My challenge to you is this.Sometimes we need to get away from our business and get away from our family and our life in order to let our brain really, really deep process the things that are bothering us, the problems that we've got, the things that just don't work in our business, and actually sometimes in our personal lives as well. This exact same process can be used for everything that's affecting you, whether it's positively or negatively. So my challenge to you is this, how can you get away? How can you buy yourself some quality time and let your brain do the hard processing work of figuring out potential answers so it can then deliver those to you at the end of that time? Away. I know it might be hassle to leave your other half and your kids for a few days. It might be hassle to just go and lock yourself in a hotel and not work and divorce yourself not from your other half, but divorce yourself from your laptop. That could be a hard thing to do, but my goodness, it's worth it. And you know what? Not only did my child enjoy her trip so much to Spain, but I enjoy that time away that we've already booked the next one, which is coming up in a few months. I can't wait. Primarily because I'm going to get more business answers, but also because I'm going to get to drink more beer.That MSP marketing edge that I just mentioned there, that's how I make my money. I know that sounds like a stupid thing to say, but people quite often say to me, Paul, we listen to your podcast. We read your blog, we're in your Facebook group. How do you make money? My team and I? Because I have ten on my team. It's not just me. Here we are utterly focused on making marketing easy and giving all the marketing answers to the members, our members of the MSP Marketing Edge. And that's what we do to make money. Now, we only work with one per area, because what we do wouldn't work if we worked with you and a direct competitor. So the very first thing for you to do to go to see if this is available for you is to head over MSP Marketing Edge. You can put in your postal code or your Zip code if you're in the UK, the US, Canada, or Australia, and we will tell you instantly if your area is available or not. And we do this without you even having to put your name or your email address in. If you're in one of the other 191 countries in the world, I think it's 195 countries in the world. I think I've got that right. But if you are, you can just email us and we'll tell you if your area is available. We're in about 1516 different countries already. But it all just starts with seeing if we can even work with you. Is your area available? Can you get the marketing answers? Go and find MSP Marketing Edge.[00:16:39] Speaker B: Hi, I'm Damien Stevens, founder and CEO of Servosity and host of MSP Mindset.[00:16:44] Speaker A: And it's an exceptionally good podcast. You had a guest a few months ago, some bloke to do with marketing. I can't remember what it was to do with. He was a good guest. Anyway, you should get more on, like him. Thank you for joining me, Damien, on my podcast. After I appeared on your podcast, there aren't many podcasts that I go on where I think the host has so much to say. I've got to get them on mine. But you are one of those people. So thank you for joining us. Now we'll find out a little bit more about your podcast and what you actually do to make money. Towards the end of the interview, let's first of all look back a little bit, because we're going to be talking about processes today and how every MSP needs to set up a whole series of processes and essentially systemize every aspect of the business, which most people know they should be doing, but for some reason, they never get round to it. Let's look at your background. Tell us a little bit about you and the MSP that you used to own.[00:17:35] Speaker B: Yeah, so I had an MSP. I made all the classic MSP mistakes. I feel like being a technical, not marketing or sales or business first. So being tech first, I thought I would find the ultimate tech tool, the silver bullet that would solve especially things like process or sales or marketing. Surely if I just get the right CRM tool or the right social media posting tool, marketing, I won't have to spend any more time on it or something like that. Leads will just flow in. So, yeah, I made the classic mistakes. And then, of note, we were particularly blessed. In one year, I grew from four to 17 full time employees, which was both exhilarating and utter chaos, if anybody's ever experienced growth anywhere near that.[00:18:22] Speaker A: So tell us how that growth came about. What were the circumstances? Did you just get exceptionally good at winning new clients or did you win a whale client?[00:18:29] Speaker B: No, it was mostly right time, right place. We were at just a particular boom. And one of those is we were really at the beginning of managed services. When I see the beginning, when we started, it was kind of like PC anywhere, dial up or dial into. And then it was early, like Team viewer. So this was not your connectwise or your auto tasks or the sophisticated RMMs.It wasn't Synchro. This was just basic. We'll do remote. And so what resonated was this recurring revenue. We now call it managed services. Like later, somebody was like, you were a managed service provider? I was like, really?And so I was the last to know. But recurring revenue was amazing. It was way better than just your break fix. I love that. And it resonated with the business owners and it resonated with me because I never been one of those guys that could just promise the moon. And so it's like, look, here's a flat fee, it fits within your budget, we'll look after you proactively. And that really resonated with both my team and the clients, especially if they refused it, inevitably, give it two, three, four months and they'd have a massive bill, five times what they're. If we'd say $1,000 a month for your managed services bill, give it three months and they'll have a $5,000 bill from us when something would break. And so if they didn't buy it at first, then they bought it, because then they said, oh, here's my big bill, and now I get it. And so we were just at the very beginning of that, and as far as I know, the first in our city to offer essentially a flat rate, if you will, recurring. We didn't know it was managed services, but it was managed services way back then, and that's what got us going. And we just were signing people up. A lot of it was referral based. It was not anything to do with great sales or marketing. And so the most prospecting I did was either a networking event or the occasional cold call. And I used to make cold calls on the phone, but when I say cold call, I mean dropping by in person. So if anybody can relate to dropping by in person, that's a different kind of cold call.[00:20:45] Speaker A: Yeah, I bet. And actually you say it wasn't down to any great marketing or sales. Sometimes all you need is that lucky break of getting the timing right. Right. So you caught the wave of, and it's weird, I was thinking about this the other day, how ideas and concepts, they just have their time. And we've had many, many people on this show who, because we have loads of MSP owners on this show, or former MSP owners, which is great, they're my favorite kind of guests to get on because you get the real how I did it. And we had people on the show who were essentially delivering managed services on a monthly recurring revenue basis, like years before it became a thing.And they didn't struggle with it, but it didn't spread like a virus. It wasn't its time where it sounds like you were there at that exact moment and people could instantly see, oh, I like this, this is for me, I see the benefit here, budgeting, et cetera, et cetera. And now we're so many more years into the subscription economies, who knows what the next thing is going to be? Okay, so I forget the numbers now. So you went from how many staff to how many staff?[00:21:47] Speaker B: One year? We went from four to 17.[00:21:50] Speaker A: Okay, so tell me. That is insane. Tell me, what chaos did that create within the business?[00:21:57] Speaker B: It was all sorts of chaos because the business was. It was old enough that it was a computer.This is going to make me sound old, but this is where we built computers, right? Like, you could come in and we would build you a computer. And then it evolved to a lot of breakfast and more and more business. And so we had residential, we had business. We would build either an individual or a know, a whole set of computers because we weren't really like, Dell was just the beginning or not a thing quite yet. And so we weren't ordering them, we were building them. And then we layered on kind of this flat rate because people didn't like the unpredictability.And technology was so new then, and so it was great, but it was literally utter chaos because we didn't have a lot of processes, we had a lot of people, and we kept finding smart people. And towards the end of the 17, it got like, you know how to spell it? That's awesome. Come on in and we'll find a place for you. If anybody's been in that kind of hiring crunch, it's a real challenge. And so we didn't have a hiring process, we didn't have an onboarding process, we didn't have a technical support process.We barely documented the logins to remote into things. So we literally, a couple of times it was easier to drive across town than find the credentials sometimes. So we would just have people driving around. So fast growth, loose documentation at best. And then we had different businesses again. We had some folks like building computers. We had some folks troubleshooting and fixing computers. We had others doing some residential, we had others doing business. And that's one of the times I learned that people and process and also lack of focus, that is a bad combination to be in.[00:23:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I can imagine. And I bet as the owner of the business and driving that business, I bet your personal workload went up as you gained more staff. It's never supposed to be this way, but actually, most of us find it is this way. The more people you take on, especially when you don't have those systems and processes in places, you end up fighting more fires. You become the glue, the glue that sits at the middle of it. And actually, I always, always can forget where I know where most things have come from, but I read this concept in a book once, and I can never remember the book and I mention it in interviews about five times a year, and every single time the same people email me and say it was this book. So thank you. For those of you that are about to email me, it's the concept that the business owner builds a prison of their own design and then locks themselves inside, which is what you did. And isn't it fascinating that it's the growth and the success of the business that creates that prison cell?Was there a crunch point? Let me ask you two questions. Was there a crunch point which made you think, I've had enough, I've got to do something about this? And how did you get started? Because you've gone from four to 17 people in a year, which is insane.You've got an express train doing 200 miles an hour and trying to systemize how that express train works While it's running and while you're fixing all the fires, it's just getting harder and harder. So what was the moment you decided you had to fix it, and how did you start to fix it?[00:25:07] Speaker B: It was really before we got to 17 because it was painful. Going from four to eight was painful 910. Eleven. But just like you said, you feel like you're doing 200 miles an hour. So now didn't feel like the best time to start doing additional things that I'd never done, like creating process. And that's one of the things I always wrestled with because process to me, was this thing that you had to hit pause on the business and go take a week or two and design something very deliberate and that would pay off in the long term. But how the heck do you even start, especially when you're doing 200 miles an hour? So that was the breaking point because I just was working all the time. And then on the personal level, I just felt like I wasn't enough. I couldn't be enough to my staff, I couldn't be enough to my clients.At that point, there was not enough hiring that could be done, so there was no more sustaining growth.And every day ended with not only emails and things like that that we're all used to now, but just more of our staff with questions that were very reasonable questions, like when I run into this, what should I do? And sometimes I could answer them. And I don't just mean technically, just sometimes there was enough of those. It was like when I say the end of day, like midnight or one or 02:00 a.m. And I still haven't answered all of those and I'm doing something else. So, yeah, that led me to realize I had to start with a people process. And what I mean is hiring culture, because we'd hired too quickly. So we hired some amazing people, and we hired some amazingly painful people, and the great people didn't really want the other people.And what I found over time, unfortunately, was the great people left and the horrible people stayed.And that was the worst of both. So that is what the cool part is. We went from four to 17. ThE nod as sexy part of it is we went from 17 back down to about eleven over the next about six or eight months. And that was really painful because we're still trying to deliver. We're dropping the ball for clients now. We have less staff.And when it started happening, I couldn't put my finger on why. Like I'm telling you now, the key people left. I didn't understand why. It's because other people weren't putting in the same effort, didn't care as much, and they weren't willing to do 80% of the work when others were doing 20% of it, or similar things like that. So in hindsight, now I understand what was going on. But at that point, I had no idea. And we were just kind of throwing people at it. And the straw that broke kind of the camel's back was as fast as we were growing. Again, we now process. So I didn't hand off even tasks that were critical, like backup. And so that was one of the ones. I was like, I can't hand this off to anybody, and I'm the only one that feels like I can do it. So here I am, working 100 hours a week, trying to answer their questions. And then in my spare time, check everyone's email, see if the backups are completed or not. Go fix them. Like you said, I very much had a prison of my own design. And if you're there now or you've been there, I won't speak for you. But I felt so worthless. I felt so low. I didn't feel successful. I felt like I'd created, literally, a prison cell. And I was like, man, these people that go and work nine to five somewhere else, they are smarter than I am. They really have it figured out. That sounds like a wonderful place to be right now.[00:28:37] Speaker A: When you find yourself sitting there looking at wage slaves, thinking they've got a better life than me, you know it's gone wrong. So you started with the process for recruitment and talk us through how that then went throughout the business, because I understand you essentially systemized the whole business from that point.[00:28:56] Speaker B: Yeah. So I've always held the belief that the people are the business. The people make the business. They're the differentiator. They're the reason the business exists. They are what it ends with and begins with, because you're going to interact with them, the quality of support. And while we've got to service the client and this and that, it's the people, it's who we're going to spend most of our time with. I'm going to spend most of my time with them, most of my waking hours.I care very much about that. So I had said that before, but none of that was put into action.And frankly, I really found the normal recruiting process didn't resonate with me. Frankly, I felt it was worthless because what I had been shown by others that were more knowledgeable was you really look at these resumes and all the bullet points, and at the time, are you an MCSE? Okay, well, that's what I need. And so maybe that can help you look for certifications or whatnot. But it didn't tell me anything about your personality, your work ethic, what drives you, your passion, any of those things.So we started with that because we were losing people and we had no idea why. We didn't know why the good were leaving and the bad were staying. We didn't really know how to differentiate between those. When I say that I didn't like that person, the person that left, I loved. And then the person that stayed, I didn't like him as much. But there was no language to quantify that. We couldn't identify what culture really meant. It was just a buzzword. So that's where I said, okay, we've got to figure out what that means and turn this into a process that's since evolved over so many years to a very deliberate multistep process. And so to kind of wrap this up in a vote, we're looking for kind of the diamond in the rough, or really what we call the unicorn. And so a lot of our folks do have the normal four year degree or three to five years experience, but at least half of them do not. And so we've deliberately designed an interview process that we don't even look at the resume until you're about 75% through the recruiting process. And so we're looking to avoid only looking in one place or building a monoculture, or just people that think the way I do or act the way I do. And so we've gone outside of that to ask questions about, what are you looking to do? Why are you trying to do it along the way? There's other tests. We'll ask them to write about this. One of the questions is write some. Tell me what you're really passionate about, and if you can't find anything that you're passionate about, that tells me enough right there. If you can't put together a coherent sentence, I don't want you interacting with my clients. So you don't have to be a published author in order to write great responses to the knowledge base or to a ticket, but you still need to be able to put together a coherent sentence. So a whole host of what seemed like little things at the time, but that's what started triggering the difference. And I guess last thing on that is, again, I copied other people because I didn't know I'm learning. And so I went and did what other people did. I looked at bigger companies and MSPs and other companies and looked at their job descriptions, and I thought, well, if it works for them, it'll work for me, which was one of my first mistakes. So I literally copied their job description and made sure our benefits or HR or whatever said something different. But other than that, it was verbatim. And I realized I was getting what they were getting, which was just a bunch of resumes, non differentiated. And so I resisted putting in the hard work, what I felt like was hard work to write good job descriptions. And now our job descriptions are unique per role, but they also have our culture kind of shine through. And the difference is night and day. Like, we just had a whole bunch of people that had no real interest in working here. They just wanted to work somewhere. And the job description we craft today really kind of disqualifies a lot of you, because not in a four year degree way, but in a way that you're just like, well, that doesn't sound like where I really want to be. And it pulls in the rest. So now we're already starting with a kind of pool of talent that is maybe underlooked, maybe not what the traditional process would yield, but exactly who we're looking for.[00:33:23] Speaker A: That sounds amazing. Just amazing. Okay, final question for you, Damien, and then we'll just briefly talk about what you're doing right now. That MSP owner that you were speaking to earlier, who is in that situation where they're working stupid hours, holding the business together, they're entering the prison cell, and they can see the door shutting behind them.If you had to give them one piece of advice, what would that piece of advice be?[00:33:47] Speaker B: Get help. Right? What I needed to hear then is you're not alone.Somebody listening to this needs to hear you're not alone. And what I mean is there's not just one MSP working stupid hours. There's a lot of us doing it and a lot of us that did it, and you're not alone. And so whether it's a peer group, whether it's a forum, whether it's Paul Green's group, whatever that group is, you can get help.And I don't just mean get better at a skill. That's wonderful. What I mean is you can realize. And that was kind of the strain for me. I wasn't the only one struggling. And so it not only helped me and said, well, what do you do in recruiting? What do you do to build process? And I could learn from others going through it, but what I also realized is the 50 or 100 million dollar company that I was often copying their job description or the other things, they had nothing to do with what we do, right? They had entire departments, entire full time recruiters, all my peers. And when I say that they were two or three, four times the revenue, they didn't have recruiting departments they could understand, they could resonate. So you're not alone. Get help is what I would say, because they will unlock things for me. I found that I could not only learn very practical things, but it was just as valuable to realize I'm not alone. I'm not the only one to take myself into this corner and have this self designed prison cell.[00:35:17] Speaker A: Yeah. And there will be thousands of MSP owners that make the same mistakes in the future because this is what we do as business owners, but we work our way out of it. So thank you. Damien, tell us briefly, what was the conclusion of your MSP story and what are you doing right now?[00:35:32] Speaker B: Yes. The reason I'm not an MSP today is because as I was growing, we went from four to 17 employees. I kept backup to myself because I didn't want to burden my team with managing all of that, with all the new things they were also learning. And I felt like I needed to keep control. I felt like a tight ring. Control as I grew was the right thing. And despite fixing every backup, as soon as the green turned red, I had a client call me and all five of their. This is back when they had physical servers were down. And I thought, this will be a long night. Turned out the backups were utterly useless. And so after too much time with tech support, by the way, top tier vendor we've all heard of, I had to go and stand in front of my client and tell them the thing you trust me with, the thing you've hired me to do, to watch after you, I can't do. I've lost your data.And if anybody's ever been there or anywhere close, that's not why I got into this business. That's not who I am. That's not my values. That's not what I stand for. And so to relate it back to the earlier point, Paul, I felt like giving up until I started talking to other MSPs and I realized I wasn't know. That sort of thing is unfortunately more common than anybody in this business would like to admit. You're not going to put that on your website and tell your clients that we nearly lost your data, but when you talk in pure groups, you'll find out that's really common. So now I have started servosity, and we do two things differently. It's the only two things we do. One, we manage the backups so you don't have to. You can focus on what differentiates your MSP. Spend time on that, not on the undifferentiated heavy lifting. And number two, we test your backups for you daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly. You can get any tool to do any of those things. And those are the only two things that we do that are really different at the end of the day.[00:37:28] Speaker A: And what's the best way to learn a little bit more about servosity and get in touch with you?[00:37:32] Speaker B: Yeah, visit Servosity.com. You can reach out there. I'll be happy to have a call one on one with you if you would like. If you'd like to learn more about what we do there or join me@mspmindset.com. If you'd like to join as I interview others and learn more about business.[00:37:49] Speaker A: Oh, yes, and I forgot MSP Mindset. How could I forget when that was the very reason that brought us together. So just briefly tell us what MSP mindset is and where we can listen to it.[00:37:58] Speaker B: Yeah, MSP Mindset is the handle YouTube and LinkedIn and wherever you social or@mspmindset.com and I get the distinct pleasure of interviewing amazing people about business. So culture, sales, operations, exit, whatever it is that's going on. And so some of the most fascinating people, from the fastest growing MSP in the nation to the titans of the industry, to some of the best selling authors this year, I've gotten the pleasure, or soon, in upcoming episodes, have the pleasure of interviewing. So yeah, join me@msPmindset.com or just MSP Mindset on YouTube or LinkedIn.[00:38:43] Speaker A: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast this week's.[00:38:47] Speaker C: Recommended book hi, My Name is Manuj Aggarwal, a global thought leader in AI. I recommend this book from Ray Dalio, Principles of Life and Work, which basically lays out a foundation on understanding human beings, how to become better collaborators, how to get the best from your team members, your customers, your partners. Basically, it's a wonderful book that combines human psychology, business principles, technology and whole bunch of other learnings from an amazing person. Ray Dalio Coming up next week.[00:39:28] Speaker B: Hi, my name is Ryan Sherrer. I'm a marketing expert and personality means everything to your business. And if you're struggling on how to put your personality into your business, let.[00:39:37] Speaker A: Me tell you how, on top of that fantastic interview next week, I've got a great way for you to get past the gatekeeper when you're phoning up leads and prospects. And unbelievably, it's using two words that are really exciting to you and dull for normal people to hear. Those two words are cybersecurity. Join me next Tuesday at have a very profitable week in your MSP made in the UK for MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MS MSP Marketing podcast.

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Episode 211Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 Client doesn't pay? Take the service away! * 06:49 New starter to superstar in 50 weeks * 14:33 Practice your sales technique - but NOT on your prospects

Featured guest:Thank you to Robert Gillette, founder of MSP Dojo, for joining me to talk about why MSPs should hone their sales technique by practising with other MSPs, not on their leads or prospects.Robert is a California native who’s been selling MSP services in the middle of the Silicon Valley since 2015. After selling Millions of dollars of recurring revenue, and helping a local MSP grow from $10mm to $30mm in revenue he set out to help other MSP’s reach their revenue goals. In 2023 he founded the MSP Dojo, a community where MSP owners and sales people can intentionally practice their sales craft together, so they're never practicing on a prospect.Connect with Robert on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwgillette/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Connect with me on LinkedIn: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-Conversations-Tools-Talking-Stakes/dp/1260474216/

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world, this Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul Greens.[00:00:10] Speaker B: MSP Marketing podcast show. Here's what I got in store for you this week.[00:00:14] Speaker C: Hi, I'm Robert Gillette with the MSP dojo. I've talked to hundreds of MSPs in the last year. All of them want one thing more, better leads. But unfortunately, what a lot of them need is to eat their vegetables and just get better at sales. I'm going to be talking about how to practice your sales craft so you're never practicing on a prospect.[00:00:32] Speaker B: And on top of that fascinating interview with Robert later on in the show, we're also going to talk about how you can take your low level staff, take someone from no knowledge to actually being a superstar in just 52 weeks.[00:00:46] Speaker A: Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.[00:00:50] Speaker B: Tell me, do you keep notes of meetings that you've had in the past?[00:00:54] Speaker D: Maybe you use Onenote for this and you can access all sorts of meeting notes that you've had for years and years in the past. Just the other day, I was looking back through some old notes of mine. I used to meet up with a.[00:01:04] Speaker B: Whole bunch of MSPs.[00:01:05] Speaker D: We would physically sit in a room.[00:01:07] Speaker B: And sort of talk about their businesses.[00:01:09] Speaker D: And I did that for years and years.[00:01:11] Speaker B: Stopped that earlier this year.[00:01:13] Speaker D: But the other day I came across.[00:01:14] Speaker B: My notes all filed away in Onenote.[00:01:16] Speaker D: It's one of the few Microsoft applications that I do actually use. And I was going back through some of these old notes and I found an amazing sentence. And it's a sentence I want to give to you. And then if you're not based in the UK and you don't understand part of it, I'll see if I can make it relevant to you as well.[00:01:32] Speaker B: The sentence was this, if you're not on DD, you're not a customer for me.[00:01:38] Speaker D: Now, let me explain what DD is. Here in the UK, we have something called Direct debit.[00:01:43] Speaker B: I'm aware that direct debit does exist.[00:01:45] Speaker D: In other countries around the world, but I think I'm right in saying that in the UK, direct debit is a phenomenon. It's huge.Everyone in inverted commas and speechmarks uses it. So direct debit is where a company.[00:01:58] Speaker B: Can take money out of your bank account.[00:02:00] Speaker D: So, for example, I have, like my gas company.[00:02:04] Speaker B: I don't sit and pay the bill. They just take the money for the.[00:02:08] Speaker D: Bill out of my bank account.[00:02:09] Speaker B: Right.[00:02:10] Speaker D: And this has been the case in the UK for decades. Just decades. It's a really big thing here.[00:02:17] Speaker B: All of the money that we take.[00:02:18] Speaker D: From MSPs that we work with in the UK, that comes out by direct debit as well. And we'll come on to how that would be relevant to other countries in a second.[00:02:26] Speaker B: But the principle of if you're not on DD, you're not a client. For me, the principle of that is if we're going to do business, Mr. Or Mrs. Client, and this is you, the MSP, talking. If we're going to do business, it has to be on my basis. If you want to work with me.[00:02:43] Speaker D: That MSP that I was talking to.[00:02:44] Speaker B: Was saying, if you want to work with me, then you have to sign a direct debit form so that I can take the money from you at the beginning of the month before I deliver the service.[00:02:55] Speaker D: And the conversation that we were having back in the day, back in that room, was about making sure that clients paid.[00:03:01] Speaker B: Why would you have a business model where you deliver something that cannot be taken back, which is your service, and then you send out an invoice and.[00:03:12] Speaker D: You give them 30 or 60 or.[00:03:13] Speaker B: 90 days to pay it? Why would you do that? That's the most insanely bad business model ever. And yet that's what a large number.[00:03:21] Speaker D: Of MSPs still do.[00:03:22] Speaker B: So instead of delivering something that can't.[00:03:24] Speaker D: Be returned and then hoping they pay for it, because hope is never a good strategy, instead, you make them pay.[00:03:30] Speaker B: For it at the beginning of the month. Hence, if you're not on DD, you're not a customer for me. And a lot of the MSPs that I work with, not all by any counts, but a lot of them now.[00:03:40] Speaker D: Will decline a client who says, actually, we will not enter into a direct debit upfront.[00:03:46] Speaker B: And quite right too, because someone who won't pay by direct debit in advance of receiving the work is likely to end up being a nightmare or a bad debt. Not always, and I know we need.[00:03:55] Speaker D: To give people the benefit of the.[00:03:56] Speaker B: Doubt, but the chances are that at.[00:03:58] Speaker D: Some point they will default.[00:04:00] Speaker B: You are not a bank. It's not your job to subsidize their cash flow. It's their job as your customer to subsidize your cash flow. The equivalent, I guess, in the US.[00:04:11] Speaker D: And in other countries.[00:04:12] Speaker B: I know there is direct debit in the US, but I don't think many people use it.[00:04:16] Speaker D: So the equivalent would be to say, if we don't hold a card, then you are fired. That doesn't work, does it? But we can take the basis of it. The equivalent is that you must pay up front. You have to keep an active card.[00:04:31] Speaker B: Or an active payment method and we will take payment up front.[00:04:35] Speaker D: So on the first of every month.[00:04:37] Speaker B: Or whatever the date is, you take the payment, but it's in front of the work being delivered. And critically, if their payment falls over, you do not provide the service. Right. I know this sounds really hardball, and I know that you have to take each case as it comes, but if you have a client who regularly their card payment falls over and they do not pay, then you need to be tougher about that, I believe.[00:05:01] Speaker D: Anyway, you need to ring them up.[00:05:02] Speaker B: And say, hey, your payment fell through.[00:05:04] Speaker D: We're happy to keep the service going for a week, but it will end in a week's time. How did you want to get up to date on your payment schedule?[00:05:10] Speaker B: Because I've spoken to MSPs in the.[00:05:12] Speaker D: Past who have let clients go 2345.[00:05:16] Speaker B: Months in arrears and they're still providing the service. And the most insane thing is that they are paying for the 365 licenses.So it's actually costing the money. It's not just them providing the service, but it's actually costing the money in.[00:05:29] Speaker D: Licenses and seats that they're paying out. And of course, if you're paying someone's 365 license, you can stop them getting their 365, right. That's the quickest way to get the.[00:05:40] Speaker B: Money back that you're owed. I think far too many MSPs look.[00:05:43] Speaker D: At it, that actually it's good customer service to let people get away with.[00:05:47] Speaker B: The odd bad payment or slow payment. And I agree, it's good customer service if you have a conversation about it, if they ring you up, if any.[00:05:55] Speaker D: Of your clients rang you up and said, oh, hi, yeah, look, we're having a really tough month. We've got a ton of money coming in in a couple of months time. Could we please pay this one on a 90 day term instead of a 30 day term?[00:06:07] Speaker B: You'd say yes, right? Because they've rung you, they've had the conversation, they've engaged with you, but if they haven't, if they've just not paid it, then why should you continue to provide the service? And I know that you don't want to lose the client because you keep the client for five years or however long you keep them, but actually, don't we just want to keep the good.[00:06:26] Speaker D: Clients and not the bad clients? So back to that phrase, if you're.[00:06:29] Speaker B: Not on DD, if you're not on.[00:06:31] Speaker D: Credit card, then you're not a client.[00:06:32] Speaker B: For me, do you apply that within your MSP? How difficult would it be?[00:06:36] Speaker D: Or how easy would it be even.[00:06:38] Speaker B: If you just started applying it from this point forward? Any new clients that join you from.[00:06:42] Speaker D: Today onwards, if they're not on DD, they're not a customer for you. I know that doesn't rhyme, but it makes sense.[00:06:49] Speaker A: Here's this week's clever idea.[00:06:52] Speaker D: Here's something else that I read in those old notes of mine from when I used to meet with those MSPs.[00:06:57] Speaker B: How do you take someone with a very, very low knowledge and knowledge area and skill set, and how do you turn them into a superstar as quickly as possible? So let's say, for example, you took on an apprentice.[00:07:10] Speaker D: Now, again, I know there are different schemes around the world, but here in the UK, you can take on an apprentice, typically a younger person, typically with fewer qualifications.[00:07:20] Speaker B: Legally you can pay them less, but you have to train them. So it's like a training contract. You take them on for a year, they go off to college, they do.[00:07:28] Speaker D: Some training, and then at the end.[00:07:29] Speaker B: Of that, what they're hoping is that you are so happy with them that.[00:07:34] Speaker D: You take them on full time. Obviously you start paying them a proper wage at this point and essentially you've eased yourself into a new member of staff.[00:07:41] Speaker B: But it hasn't.[00:07:42] Speaker D: Well, if you don't want them, you don't have to take them on and it hasn't cost you a lot of money. So apprentices can be a great way for MSPs to bring on board new sort of first line technicians.[00:07:52] Speaker B: The problem with that is the training that they are having when they're going.[00:07:56] Speaker D: Out to college and getting training.[00:07:57] Speaker B: That's not necessarily the training, the exact training that you would want them to have, because actually you want them to be trained up on your systems and on customer service, on how to answer.[00:08:07] Speaker D: The phone properly, on how to fill.[00:08:08] Speaker B: In tickets properly, on how to chase things, on how to be an adult, right?[00:08:13] Speaker D: If an 1819 year old comes into.[00:08:15] Speaker B: Your business, you have to teach them how to be an adult, how to be a team player, all of these kind of things. Do they teach these things at colleges? I suspect they don't. So here's what we were discussing.[00:08:25] Speaker D: What I was discussing with those MSPs I sat in a room with.[00:08:28] Speaker B: What if when someone low level, someone new to the business, someone you're going to have to train up, what if when they join you, regardless of the training they're getting at college, what if you put together a 50 week training plan for them and that sounds like a lot of work, but it's not. All you've got to do is identify. And you might do this at the start, or you might do it as you go along. You identify 50 very, very small things that you want them to get better at. And then each week you train them just on that thing and you want.[00:08:59] Speaker D: To be as granular as possible with this list.[00:09:01] Speaker B: So for example, let's say you've got an 1819 year old who has joined.[00:09:05] Speaker D: The business and their job is literally level zero five tech, right? They're level one, they're as low level as they can get. So one of their jobs is to answer the phone.[00:09:15] Speaker B: So you might have, as eight weeks training, is answering the phone with confidence.[00:09:20] Speaker D: Now that sounds like, well, surely we could do that in four minutes.[00:09:23] Speaker B: Well, yeah, you could tell them that in four minutes, but they're not going to learn that in four minutes.[00:09:27] Speaker D: They've got to learn that through a feedback loop, right? They've got to learn.[00:09:32] Speaker B: Well, I don't know about you, but.[00:09:33] Speaker D: I remember being, I got my first job.[00:09:36] Speaker B: How old was I?[00:09:37] Speaker D: 18.[00:09:38] Speaker B: My first ever job where I was.[00:09:39] Speaker D: On the phone in front of other people.[00:09:40] Speaker B: I failed an A level.[00:09:42] Speaker D: That's like a higher qualification here in the UK. So I couldn't go to university until I repeated the A level. Spoiler alert, I never ended up going to university, but that's by the by.[00:09:50] Speaker B: So while I was repeating the A level, I got a job in like a grocery store.[00:09:54] Speaker D: And then that led onto a job.[00:09:55] Speaker B: Selling advertising on a newspaper and I.[00:09:57] Speaker D: Wanted to be a journalist, so that was a good step for me. And I remember being, whatever I was.[00:10:01] Speaker B: 19 day one, turning up at this office.[00:10:04] Speaker D: There's adults, right?[00:10:05] Speaker B: There's adults and there's me.[00:10:06] Speaker D: And I was a very young 19 year old. I'm dressed in a 90s big baggy shirt, go and watch, look at Chandler on early friends, that kind of shirt and tie. And I had to sit there and make my first outbound phone call, like selling advertising. And it was terrifying because everyone else.[00:10:21] Speaker B: Was pretending to be on the phone so they could listen to me to.[00:10:24] Speaker D: See if I was any good or not, right?[00:10:25] Speaker B: So just that, just having an 1819.[00:10:28] Speaker D: Year old in your business who has to pick up the phone and say.[00:10:31] Speaker B: Hello, it company, can I help?That in itself is terrifying for them. So to have a module, a week's module, of where you teach them this week how to answer the phone confidently.[00:10:44] Speaker D: That would be an amazing contribution to their skill set, because you could do some role play. You could give them some words to say, some scripts, you could give them some breathing exercises, you could tell them to go into a room and answer.[00:10:55] Speaker B: The phone 100 times on their own.[00:10:57] Speaker D: Where no one will hear them.[00:10:59] Speaker B: You get the idea. Yeah. And you can really work on that skill for a whole week. Doesn't have to be a huge amount of your own personal time. We're talking ten minutes a day here. Or someone. Someone on your behalf invests ten minutes a day helping this lower level member.[00:11:13] Speaker D: Of staff get better at that one skill.[00:11:15] Speaker B: And then next week, the skill might be correctly filling in a tickEt. And that's all you work on for a week. So, yeah, they do their work, they go off to college, but you or whoever is doing their ten minute training.[00:11:26] Speaker D: Every day, how to fill in a ticket properly.[00:11:28] Speaker B: In fact, you may break even that.[00:11:30] Speaker D: Down into how to capture the client's details.[00:11:33] Speaker B: That might be one week, and then another week might be how to capture the problem, and then another week might.[00:11:38] Speaker D: Be how to triage.[00:11:39] Speaker B: You get the idea, right? So you break down all the things you want.[00:11:42] Speaker D: This.[00:11:42] Speaker B: It's almost like if this person was to be the perfect member of staff.[00:11:46] Speaker D: At that level, at that pay grade, how would they act? How would they behave?[00:11:51] Speaker B: What would they do? What would they not do? You take all of those things and.[00:11:55] Speaker D: You put them together, and that's how.[00:11:57] Speaker B: You figure out what your training is for this person. But the secret to this, and the reason it needs to take 50 plus weeks, is you have to break it.[00:12:05] Speaker D: Down and be as granular as possible.[00:12:07] Speaker B: If you think on day one, you.[00:12:09] Speaker D: Can teach them to be confident on.[00:12:10] Speaker B: The phone, fill in a ticket properly.[00:12:12] Speaker D: Be an adult in the room, be a nice, smiley person, and actually start to deal with password changes and new user requests. No, it's far too.[00:12:22] Speaker B: Your level ones with experience might be.[00:12:24] Speaker D: Able to do that. Your level twos obviously can. But someone who, this is their first.[00:12:28] Speaker B: Adult job and they were in school.[00:12:30] Speaker D: Two minutes ago, it's just not going to work. A small set of actions, one action.[00:12:35] Speaker B: Per week for 50 weeks will take someone from being a terrified new person.[00:12:40] Speaker D: In the business to being an absolute.[00:12:41] Speaker B: Superstar in just 50 weeks.[00:12:44] Speaker A: Paul's. Paul's blatant plug. Blatant plug.[00:12:47] Speaker B: You know how people develop patterns.[00:12:49] Speaker D: Do you have a pattern for your evening entertainment? So I do.[00:12:53] Speaker B: Weekday evenings, I'll typically work a little bit late because obviously we have lots of members of our MSP marketing edge that are in the US.[00:13:01] Speaker D: So, time zones, it's just easier for me to work a bit late, and I don't mind. During the weekdays, I'll work a little bit late.[00:13:06] Speaker B: I'll eat with my daughter.[00:13:08] Speaker D: She goes off to bed, and then I typically watch one TV show. So at the moment, I'm, like, finishing off the Mandalorian just a little bit boring. And I'm watching as well.[00:13:18] Speaker B: Gen V on Prime.[00:13:20] Speaker D: You've heard of the Boys, right? On Prime. If you've never heard of the boys, you have to go and watch it. It's very good. It's like superheroes. The kind of realistic superheroes where they abuse their powers. And Gen Z is a spin off from that. Anyway, I digress. So I'll watch one episode of something.[00:13:35] Speaker B: And then normally I'll sort of fill 20 minutes before bed on YouTube.[00:13:41] Speaker D: And I've got all sorts of YouTube channels. I've been training my YouTube algorithm to show me stuff. Well, for years, I suppose. And it shows me every time. It shows me, in fact, the problem is I stay up longer. I end up doing 40 or 50 minutes on YouTube because it keeps putting good content in front of me.[00:13:57] Speaker B: Now, this is why we have been.[00:13:58] Speaker D: Focusing a lot of our efforts onto filming YouTube content for you, because maybe.[00:14:03] Speaker B: You have a similar pattern of watching.[00:14:05] Speaker D: A cool TV show and then just going onto YouTube. So we've started to film some brand new YouTube videos that are edutainment we're.[00:14:14] Speaker B: Teaching you and helping you discover how.[00:14:16] Speaker D: To improve the marketing of your MSP while entertaining you at the same time.[00:14:21] Speaker B: Why don't you go and have a look? Because the first couple are just starting.[00:14:24] Speaker D: To filter onto the channel now, and we're going to be adding them every two weeks or so from this point forward.[00:14:29] Speaker B: Go have a look@Youtube.com. Slash MSP Marketing.[00:14:37] Speaker C: Hi, I'm Robert Chalette. I'm the creator of the MSP Dojo. Come practice with us. Never on your prospects.[00:14:43] Speaker D: And thank you so much for joining me on the show, Robert. We were connected by a mutual friend, Kevin Klun, lovely guy of MSP Growth hacks. And it was really good of him to send you my way because you've built something unique that I've never seen before, and it's one of those things that I know MSPs need. I'm not being paid to say that we met like, four minutes ago for the first time properly on this call. So this is not a commercial endorsement, but what I think you've put Together here is absolutely insane and clever. So let's, first of all, because now.[00:15:16] Speaker B: I've given that tease, I think we.[00:15:17] Speaker D: Kind of need to say what you've built before we delve into a bit about you and your background. So just give us the 32nd summary of what you've built.[00:15:25] Speaker B: Don't tell us why you built it.[00:15:26] Speaker D: Yet, but what is it that you've actually created?[00:15:29] Speaker C: So I've created a place for people who own MSPs or sell MSP services, but whoever is responsible for meeting that first time potential client and practice the 52 most common sales scenarios you're going to experience in that meeting, so that when it happens to you, you're not making it up on the spot. You have a couple at bats with those scenarios in a real life environment, well, close to real life environment, where you're selling against people that also sell MSP services. So you're getting a realistic example.[00:16:03] Speaker D: I love it, and it's the practice element that makes it the most interesting to me, because we all know the cliches, don't we? Practice makes perfect. You've got to do something. What is it 10,000 times to be a master at it? And actually, most MSP owners, the only time they get to practice sales is when they're doing sales, which isn't very often, so they're not getting much practice at it.[00:16:25] Speaker B: And actually, that would be like being.[00:16:27] Speaker D: In the Super bowl and only practicing. Is it football? Yeah, it's football, isn't it? I'm not very good at American football.[00:16:32] Speaker C: Yeah, that's good.[00:16:34] Speaker D: It'd be like practicing football for the first time when you played at the Super bowl, which, of course, we know is ridiculous. You wouldn't do that. So let's rewind a little bit and.[00:16:43] Speaker B: Tell us a little bit about you.[00:16:44] Speaker D: What's your background and what got you to this point of creating this service?[00:16:48] Speaker C: Yeah, so it's a pretty interesting story. I ran from sales my whole life. Grandpa did it, dad did it. I never wanted to do it. And I found myself 33 years old trying to figure out who I was going to be when I grew up. And I ended up joining a company called Endsight, which is about a $10 million at the time MSP in the San Francisco Bay Area. I didn't want to take a Sales Role there. I didn't want a job there. But I absolutely was enamored with the CEO, Mike Chapit. He was Just like, I could tell within Minutes. I'm like, this is the smartest man I've met probably in a very Long time, if not my whole life. And so I said, I'll give it six months. We'll try it out. I'll do the cold calling thing. And he was able to show me how. I've been in sales my whole life. I just didn't call it that. And I had this strange understanding and discontinuity between what a salesperson was and what it should be, what it really was, and what we see on the Movies. And so I worked for him for seven years. I helped him grow his MSP from Ten to $30 million in revenue. Obviously, that wasn't all me, but I think I still hold the distinction of closing the largest deal they've ever had. And I just loved it. It made me a better person all the way around, family, work, everything. And then when it was time to leave, because I wasn't a partner there or anything, it was time to go. At some point, I ended up, Within a month, being hired by four of our local competitors. They said, hey, you've been beating us up for a while. Show us how to do what you're doing. And then I immediately, within three months, had the same problem my Jujitsu coach used to have with me, which was, I started Jujitsu when I was 37. And I said, hey, I'm not going to go to the classes because I don't need to get a black eye and broken Fingers because some 24 year old Wants to make state championships. I'm just not going to do it. So I'll take private classes. And I took those private classes. And after three months, he said, you can't do this anymore. Perplexed? Why not? He says, because you're not learning Jiu Jitsu. You're learning something. But here's the problem. I could kill you and you couldn't stop me. But I'm not going to do that because you're my student and I don't want to go to jail and all that. But you're also never going to surprise me because everything you know is something I taught you. You need to go wrestle with a 24 year old who's going to try and break your fingers, and you need to figure out how to surprise him. Otherwise you're not going to experience real martial arts. So I had that problem with my clients. I could teach them all day and we could practice together, but it wasn't real, it wasn't realistic. There was no pressure. I'm not going to hurt them and they're never going to surprise me. So I took those four clients and stuck them in our Zoom room together, and I made them fight with each other. And the results were almost immediate. Like within weeks, they're like, this is what was missing. So then I scooped up a dozen other people that I wasn't coaching, and I brought them into what I was calling them, the MSP dojo so that my clients could beat up on them. And it turned out they were getting a lot of experience out of it, too. Everyone was kind know, like a rising tide lifts all ships. And so I spent a bunch of money, built a platform, and now it's welcome to anyone that sells MSP services. The kind of hook line, if you will, from the marketing is everybody needs a black belt. Who's going to sell for them? Because it's not the best MSP that wins. It's the best salesperson. In a competitive environment, your MSP might be the best, but if your salesperson can't communicate that to the prospective client, they'll never pay you. And so whether you're a business owner who sales, or you have a sales team, or you're a sales manager, someone has to be in that competitive environment, not fighting with the prospect, but fighting against each other. And it's the one that has the most practice, the best training, the best mentorship that's going to win. You can buy mentorship fewer places, but you can find it. You can get a sales coach. There's countless MSP programs that will teach you how to sell, but almost nobody was giving you a place to go practice that. And when I sold MSP services, there were five of us on a team, and we practiced constantly. So that's how the MSP dojo came to be, if you will.[00:20:44] Speaker D: That is an insane story. And there's so much to unpack, starting with who starts to learn jujitsu in their late 30s. Who does that?[00:20:52] Speaker C: So crazy. A crazy man, realistically. But I needed to hijack my limbic system. I would go into these sales meetings and I would just be sweating. Someone would say something that would stump me and I would just get terrified. And you'd feel the adrenaline hit your system. And if you do 100 sales meetings, that'll go away. But I needed it to go away, like right now. And because I didn't have the MSP dojo, where I could go have that same adrenaline rush. I started taking jujitsu because I figured if a guy tried to kill me in the morning, a sales meeting isn't that scary in the afternoon. And that did prove to be true. It really was helpful for me. It doesn't work for everybody, but it worked for me.[00:21:30] Speaker D: So I'm 49 and there's no way I'm going anywhere near martial arts.[00:21:34] Speaker B: I value my back too much.[00:21:36] Speaker C: You got other things you're working on.[00:21:37] Speaker A: It's cool.[00:21:38] Speaker D: I like working fingers. So the fact that you did seven years on the ground doing the job again, it's just insane. I've met loads of sales trainers. We've had some great sales trainers on this show and all of the best sales trainers I've ever met in my career. People like Fiona Chalice, Brian Gillette, I think comes from an MSP. All of these people have been on the ground doing sales in the same way that I got into this, by doing marketing. I'm not just someone who sells marketing, I do marketing and have done marketing for a very long time and I think it's really, really important that you do that. So the final thing I want to unpack just from that first answer, and I want to give you a genuine Bravo and a round of applause, is for grasping that concept of practice. I've never heard of this before. There may be other people doing it already that are not on my radar. But the fact that you've actually not just had the idea, but created the platform and put this together, because the easy thing to have done would be to have left that seven year job, been hired by some competitors and coached them and trained them, right, to put together a training course and to show them exactly what you do and coach them. But as you very well explained, that that's not as good as getting beaten up, as beating each other up, which is just brilliant. And maybe, just maybe, you have stumbled across the future of coaching. Maybe there are lots of good coaches out there, there are many more bad coaches. And maybe the future of coaching is.[00:23:03] Speaker B: Actually doing coaching in the way that it's done in sports.[00:23:08] Speaker D: Certainly I did a coaching diploma in the year 2000 to help me to coach radio presenters because I was a radio presenter myself and I was in charge and they're very hard to coach, but we coached them on their performance. So we listened to a bit of something they'd done on the radio and then we took it apart and then they did it again. And that was what was taught to me because I was on a sports coaching diploma and I don't do sports, but I saw the value of that coaching. Well, a lot of coaching these days that I see is talking about stuff and setting an action and then coming back and doing that action. You've approached it from a completely different environment. So let's talk about how it actually works in practice, and I don't want you to give away any commercial secrets or any secret sauce. That's not what we're about. But do you do it all over Zoom? Does it mean if I joined a group and I was an MSP owner, do I have to take some time beating up some of the other guys before the other guys beat me up?[00:24:00] Speaker B: How does it actually work?[00:24:01] Speaker C: So I'm a big fan of the deep end philosophy. So the way that works right now is you sign up for the platform, you're required to take a short onboarding course that walks you through the tools and the rules and how it works in general. So you're not completely lost when you first show up to your weekly exercise, which we call the drill. But once you've been through that onboarding course and you get the rough grasp of it, it's pretty simple. On Thursday you get an email and the email tells you, hey, the new scenario is up.Navigate to a members only page where it walks through, hey, here's the time and date and the Zoom link. Here's the scenario that we're going to be practicing. All the information you need, what your objectives are, what the first line is, so we all know how to start. And then there's a video, about a 15 to 20 minutes video of me or some other, what I call black belts falling in the mud and showing you how we would do it. They don't get any preparation. They get less preparation than you do. But the problem is, no one really likes gurus anymore, at least not me. I see a guy that like, I see a 45 minutes clip on LinkedIn that clearly took 45, 2nd clip, that's 45 minutes to record. And I go, that's just the perfect version. And I don't need the perfect version. That's not helpful to me. So we take some of those people, we put them in the dojo as black belts, and we say, like, if you were the salesperson in the seat, how would you do it? Go and we record that. And that's the example we present to our members. There's a couple of tools on that page that help you functionally go through the drill, but that's what you get every week. There's some open office hours on Friday, so that if you want to practice before you practice or you're really nervous or you've got some other stuff you want to talk about, come meet with the black belts. And then that next Wednesday, Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time, which is the only time we do it right now, you show up to a Zoom room, you go into some breakout rooms with a couple of other MSPs, and you duke it out for 20 minutes. We come back, we have a quick little pow wow. What's working, what's not, make some adjustments, go right back into the breakout rooms again and do it again with new people. And that rhythm is what really matters. It's not even the first practice that's the most valuable. It's the second one. And if we really have time, because people are efficient, it's the third one. It's those multiple iterations where you get to not just try it for the first time, but you get to get some correction, see an idea, and then try it again. And that way, even if you never revisit it by the third time, you're doing it with your prospect. You're at least warm, you've at least done this before. It's not your first barbecue.[00:26:27] Speaker D: And I love every little bit of that. That is just perfection. I love it. Right.[00:26:33] Speaker B: I want to hear a scenario. Can you give us a recent scenario.[00:26:36] Speaker D: That you and your students have run through?[00:26:38] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, there's the common ones, but honestly, the one we just practiced, literally an hour ago was getting a cold call from someone who found you on your website. So they googled it support your area, and they're on the phone and they say something along the lines of, hey, I got this quote for a server for my current it provider. Can you tell me if it's a good price?And this is something that absolutely should have happened to you. If not, then you need better marketing, because you should get this like all the time, a couple of times a year, minimum. But what happens is you have to respond in a way that helps them feel like they're being helped and heard. But you also have to understand, is this a real opportunity? Let's unpack this a little bit. Because the very first thing I would always, in that scenario when I was coaching people through and what we were practicing is, why are you calling a stranger for business advice?Yes, maybe I can give you a good price for the server. Maybe I can give you a better price. Maybe it's a reason to start working with you. Maybe I can even shoehorn this into a great MSP agreement or MSA or something like that. A managed services. But realistically, why are you calling a stranger for business advice? And how do you turn meeting their need into a sniff out? Is there an opportunity? Are they really just cheap and they really just want to get the cheapest price possible, and there's not someone anybody ever want to work With. They might be the best client you've ever had if you can dig and figure out the real reason why they're calling around. And so that's the scenario. We put four minutes up on the board. What would you do?[00:28:10] Speaker B: Go, oh, God, are you asking me?[00:28:14] Speaker C: No, thank God.But that's essentially what we do in the dojo. We got 52 of those that are curated from my own sales experience and the sales experience people have had that are in the dojo. Every year we put together that list, we shuffle it, and then we throw it up there. Here's the calendar for the year. You don't get to see it because I need it to be a surprise, but we have that. And then around Christmas time, I re aggregate the list, I shuffle it again, and we post it up for the year. And you get one week at a time to consider those 52 common scenarios and then practice them.[00:28:48] Speaker D: I love it. Did you see the look of complete fear that rent over my eyes when. No. You're asking me to do it. Thing is, I haven't done any sales since 2014. My mind is not in that area. And do you know what? For 4 seconds then I suddenly felt like one of your MSP students. And that's the power of this, isn't it?[00:29:07] Speaker B: Because that adrenaline rush.[00:29:09] Speaker D: Yeah, exactly.[00:29:10] Speaker B: You should have made me do it.[00:29:10] Speaker D: But you can't now because it's my podcast and I'm not going to do it. Robert, thank you so much. I think you've explained that so very, very well. Normally we try and make these interviews that are not just massive adverts for a service. But the second that Kevin introduced us and I realized this is insane, everybody needs to do this, I wanted to get you on and get you talking about the actual service. So just remind us what the website address is and for anyone listening that.[00:29:35] Speaker B: Wants to reach out to you in particular and perhaps ask you a question or just chat to you, what's the.[00:29:40] Speaker D: Best way to get in touch with you?[00:29:41] Speaker C: For sure, it's MSPtojo. Net. You go there, I'll tell you everything you need. You can sign up if you want. We offer a couple different ways to engage for those that are nervous.We try and make it easy if we can. You can also reach out. LinkedIn is the only social media platform I'm really in. RW Gillette will lead you right to me, and I'm pretty responsive on that still. So if you want reach out reach out through the website. I like talking to people. It's what I do for a living.[00:30:09] Speaker A: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast this week's.[00:30:13] Speaker E: Recommended book hey, this is Don Colliver, former Blue man and professional touring clown and current technical public speaking trainer at Google and professional speaker at Cybersecurity events. What I do is I help technical folks like you communicate with non technical people in an engaging way. And the book I recommend is crucial Conversations tools for talking when the stakes are high by a bunch of authors. But the first author is Patterson, and I love this book because I love models and frameworks and it gives a very simple framework of handling when a discussion becomes contentious or antagonistic. It gives a great way of navigating through that conversation in a way that's safe for everybody involved and ends up benefiting everybody. This works not only in presentations when you start to get antagonistic questions, but also in one on one business conversations. So check it out coming up next week.[00:31:20] Speaker F: Hi, this is Damien Stevens, and I grew my MSP from four full time employees to 17 in one year, and it was utter chaos. If you want to learn how to do that and how to not do most of the things that I did, join us on the show.[00:31:37] Speaker B: That's going to be a fascinating interview.[00:31:38] Speaker D: With Damien for you next week.[00:31:40] Speaker B: We're also going to be asking the question, should your MSP be doing Google Ads? Pay per click in 2024? Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.[00:31:53] Speaker A: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world Paul Green's MS MS MSP Marketing podcast.

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, Third Edition

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Episode 210Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 Can you make your marketing as compelling as Star Wars? * 06:59 The psychology of three-tier pricing * 13:12 Free yourself from time-suck activities with a Virtual Assistant

Featured guest:Thank you to Michele Ibbs, owner of I’m Your P.A., for joining me to talk about how MSPs can save time, reduce distraction, and better meet the needs of clients by using a Virtual Assistant (VA). Michele also shares some of her top tips to make the most out of networking (the one with people, not cables).Michele Ibbs has been known as “The Networking Queen” for some years now. Having first started networking back in 2007 when she founded the virtual assistant company, I’m Your P.A.Michele has networked nationally with BNI, UKNC, BOB Club, Property Investment Network and 4 Networking. Previously Michele has worked as a Managing Area Director with BNI, an Area Leader with 4N and a team member of the Property Investors Network.Networking is an art Michele has a real passion for, when used correctly networking can give a massive return on investment. Networking should be fun, it is net WORK, not net-sit or net-eat and effort has to be put into it to build those all-important, profitable relationships.Michele loves to share contacts, support fellow networkers and teach those essential networking skills that have helped her to develop I’m Your P.A.Guidance from The Networking Queen could make a massive difference in your networking experience. www.thenetworkingqueen.co.uk or email michele@imyourpa.co.ukConnect with Michele on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/micheleibbs/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Connect with me on LinkedIn: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Here's a link to the book I mentioned, Building a Story Brand: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Building-StoryBrand-Miller-Donald/dp/1400201837/ * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, Grinding It Out: The Making Of McDonald's: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Grinding-Out-McDonalds-Ray-Kroc/

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world. This paul. Paul. Paul Greens, MSP marketing Podcast.[00:00:09] Speaker B: My friend. And welcome back to the podcast. This is Episode 210 and here's what we got coming up for you this week.[00:00:16] Speaker C: Hi, I'm Michele Ibbs from I'm Your PA. And I will be joining Paul to tell you how we support many SPS to get more work done whilst working less in their business.[00:00:31] Speaker B: And on top of that, interview with Michele later on in the show, we're going to be talking about the psychology of three tier pricing, what happens in people's minds and their hearts when you offer them three options.[00:00:44] Speaker A: Paul Greens MSP Marketing Podcast let's start.[00:00:49] Speaker B: This week with a very exciting idea. What if you could make your MSP's marketing as compelling as Star Wars? And I mean like proper seventy s eighty s star wars. Not the prequels, not the sequels, and certainly not the mandalorian, which has gone off the boil in the last couple of seasons. But what if you could make your marketing as compelling as classic, original, fantastic Star Wars? Well, maybe you can. You see, I've been reading this book. It's a book called Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller. And I highly recommend that you get hold of it on Audible or you get hold of the paper copy. I read loads of books. In fact, you know the bit at the end of the podcast where one of our old guests kind of pops up and recommends a book? If I haven't heard of the book often, I'll go and buy that book and it sits on a bookshelf in my bedroom. There's about 40 to 50 books in there that I will get round to reading at some point. I have a whole load more on Audible as well. But this one I bought a couple of years ago. And so many people have been recommending to me, buy story brand, buy it by read story brand. And eventually I did get round to reading it. And what's clever about this book and I like hoovered this up in 48 hours. What's clever about it is it takes marketing, which, let's be honest, is a bit boring, and it makes marketing more interesting by turning it into a story. And human brains love stories. I mean, we respond really, really well to stories. Because if you think about it in caveman times, that was the only way we had to pass on information, wasn't it? We couldn't write things down. It took too long to sort of chip away at stone to do pictures. And so we passed information from generation to generation by telling stories. And all of the movies that we watch, well, the good movies and the good TV is based around great stories. And there's one story in particular which is very, very popular in movies, and that's called the monomyth, also known as the hero's journey. And that was first put together by a man called well, I believe it was first captured of course it wasn't put together, it's been around for thousands of years. But it was first captured by a guy called Joseph Campbell, who wrote a book called something like The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which I've half read. It's on a bookshelf somewhere. It's quite hard work, that book. But the basic principle of the hero's journey is it takes someone who's got a problem, it introduces them to a guide who sets out the plan. They then go and use the plan to overcome the villain and they reach success. And if you think of Star Wars, that's the plot of Star Wars. So Luke Skywalker is the hero, has the problem. Evil galactic empire meets a guide, which is Obi Wan Kenobi, and then it's Yoda. In future films, Obi Wan Kenobi lays out a plan and then Luke goes down, follows that course of plan and it ultimately ends in success, which is the destruction of the Death Star. Woohoo. It's exactly the same film. Well, all of the three classic Star Wars films are the same film. They are versions of the same film. The Matrix, you've got Neo is the hero. He's got a problem which is convinced this world is not real, meets a guide, which is Morpheus. Morpheus shows him a plan and then they implement the plan to success. And again, Matrix Two and Three and probably even Matrix Four, of which only about seven people have seen that you get the idea they're all the same film, all the same story. The hero's journey. And what Donald Miller does in the story brand is he does exactly this and he wraps that story around your marketing so that your marketing becomes an interesting story to the people you're trying to reach. So if you imagine, for example, the villain, the problem they have, and he does explain this in the book, I mean, it's quite hard to summarize a 230 odd page book in a four minute podcast piece, but people typically have two or three problems that makes up their villain. So, like, their external problem might be, for example, getting their technology to work, but the internal problem. So the result of that external problem is that their staff complain a lot and they don't seem to be able to do things fast enough. They will also have a philosophical problem. You can read the book to understand what that is, but that's the villain. Think of that as the Darth Vader that's wrapped up. And essentially, if your future client is the hero, the problem, the Darth Vader is technology. You can look at it like that. Now, along comes the guide that's you. You are the guide in this journey, you're not the hero. That's a big part of the start of this book, is that you and your business are the supplier of the solution. You're not the hero. The customer is the hero. You are the guide. You have to come along, you have to demonstrate authority, but you also have to demonstrate empathy for their problem. Well, that's what you do, isn't it? Right? That's what you do in real life. But what do you do in your marketing? How is that reflected on your website? And then you as the guide, you give them a plan. And of course the plan is to, I don't know, migrate them to the cloud. It's to allow for remote working, it's to stop them getting ransomware, all of that kind of stuff. But you fill in the gaps and you come up with a plan. And ideally your plan is based around some kind of audit or some kind of procedure where you've got a number of steps. Maybe it's even got some kind of name to it as well. So it's the 90 day technology transformation or something like that. And then you have a call to action. And the call to action is for them to go and do something. And again, if you think about Star Wars and the Matrix, there's a call to action, isn't there? In Star Wars, Obiwan Kenobi is murdered in front of Luke's eyes and that's the call to action. That's what forces him down that path, trying to think what it is in the Matrix. Isn't Morpheus kidnapped or something like that. And that's what makes Neo forces him to go to action. Now, your call to action is for them to do something about their technology and not to have another year where technology is controlling them rather than their controlling technology. But you'll get the idea from that. Now, look, I recommend a lot of books. This is one of the best. This has earned itself a place on my best marketing books. Bookshelf which is here in my office where I'm filming. Absolutely love it. I know I'm going to read this again and again in the future because it's so, so simple. And it does lay out a very simple process for you to wrap all of your marketing and to tell the story of your MSP in a story format in a way that other people will find really interesting. And they'll act on it.[00:06:59] Speaker A: Here's this week's clever idea.[00:07:02] Speaker B: Tell me, have you heard before about three tier pricing, also known as Good, Better, best? It's a way of packaging together and bundling what you do as an MSP so that it's so much easier for people to make a decision and to feel in control of what it is that they're buying from you. Now, let me start with a quick caveat, which is I've spoken to lots of MSPs about this and the vast majority of them have decided not to go down this route. And that's absolutely fine. But what I wanted to do in this week's podcast is talk about the psychology. How it affects the way that people make decisions when you use three tier, when you make a good, better, best offering. So let's first of all, just look at what that offering could and would be. And then we'll go into the psychology of why it's so important. Now, I don't want to get too hung up in what goes in those three packages. The basic idea is you have a package which is good, and then you have a package which is better than the good option, and then you have a best package which is better than the previous two. So it's almost like you've got a bunch of stuff and then you got a bunch more stuff, and then in the top layer you've got an even more bunch of stuff and the price goes up accordingly. And again, I'm not going to recommend a package to you, but it might be for example, you have basic support and you have 365 and you have some basic cybersecurity and that might be your good package. And then your better one might include enhanced 365, it might include enhanced security. You might bundle something else in there. And then your best one, again, might just have the very best. It might have all the cybersecurity.You might throw in things like email signatures, a whole bunch of optional stuff. And again, don't take this pricing as this is an example, not suggested pricing, but your good might go for, let's say $45 per user per month. You're better for 55 or 65 and you're best for 75, 85. So the idea is that they look at the packages and they can say, right, we've got something that's good at $45, something that's better at $55, and something that's absolutely the best at $65. This is the question they then ask themselves, which of these is right for me? Now, that's not a cognitive decision. They don't actually ask themselves that in the head. But they are essentially asking this which of these is right for me? Which is the right package for me? And that is the beauty of good, better best. Because what we're doing is we are offering people a choice or the perception of a choice. The reality is, 80% of people offered a three tier package will go for the middle tier. Assuming you've got the pricing right and the positioning right and the package itself right, 80% a majority, let's say, will go for the middle package. And that's really exciting because what you do is you take the middle package, the thing you most want to sell, and you put that in the middle, and then you strip some stuff out of it to create that sort of early tier, that good part of it, and you add some stuff in to make the best one. But you know that the vast majority of people are going to look at that and they will say, well, I see we've got here the cheapest option. But I don't like to buy the cheapest because my business deserves better. And then we've got here the most expensive option. But I don't want to buy the most expensive because times are tight. We've got to keep an eye on costs. I'll go for the safe option. I'll go for the middle option. That is the sweet spot that we want them to hit. We want them to look at the middle option and to think it looks like great value for money because they've got something worse and something better to compare it against. And that is the pure psychological beauty of Good, Better Best. It allows them to make a comparison and emotionally to justify why that is the right level for them to buy into. So now you understand the psychology, which by the way, is incredibly, incredibly powerful. We are actively looking right now at whether our MSP marketing edge will move to a Good, Better, best pricing model from early 2024. At the moment, we just have one single price. But we understand the psychology of that is so powerful, we're looking at should we bring in some kind of choice? Maybe it's just worth. You looking at what your stack option is. If you go to a client prospect and you present to them and you say, look, this is the price, this is the package we recommend, it's our better package. However, if things are tough right now, you can have a look at our good package, which is a little bit less. Or actually, if you want to push the boat out and really invest in your technology, you can have a look at our best package. So imagine the power if every single prospect was given three prices. Now, you might think that a lot of them will just automatically go to the cheaper pricing and you'll lose out. That's not the case at all. The people who only buy on price, well, of course they will buy the lower price package, but actually they were going to do that anyway. They were never going to buy from you at your normal price because someone else would be cheaper. So actually, this Good, Better, best approach gives you the ability to not just win normal clients, but to win the cheapskate clients as well if you want them, but also to win the top end clients. Because there are people that will spend anything on cybersecurity, on their telecoms, on their support, because actually they know it's so business critical. So next time you come to sell to a client, why not just experiment, have a play with it. You could make it up on the spot. Pull together three packages, a good one, a better one, and a best one and see which one they plump for.Things like story brand and positioning, your marketing, and certainly things like pricing and the psychology of how people buy. All of that is the kind of stuff we discuss in my Facebook group. It's completely free it's for all MSPs and actually no vendors. It's a vendor free zone. And if you aren't a member already, come and join me. And around about 2000 other MSPs, all you have to do is grab your phone, go onto Facebook, type in MSP Marketing at the top, and then just make sure you go to groups, because it's not a page, it is a group. Go to groups. We ask you a couple of questions to check you really are an MSP, and if you are, we will let you in. And I look forward to speaking to you in the MSP Marketing Facebook group.[00:13:12] Speaker A: The big interview.[00:13:14] Speaker C: Hi, my name is Michele Ibbs. I'm the owner of I'm Your PA, which is a virtual assistant company set up in 2007, which supports over 260 different businesses around the world.[00:13:29] Speaker B: And I know that you support a ton of MSPs as well because a couple of them have mentioned you to me, and it is a delight to get you onto the show. Thank you so much for joining me, Michele. We're going to talk about two things today. The first thing we're going to talk about is outsourcing work to a virtual assistant. And we're actually going to look at it partly from your point of view of what it's like to take on work from an MSP and then look at how MSPs can get stuff off their desk. And then we will finish up later on talking about networking. Not the cables, but the one where you go out and you have breakfast with people, because I have heard on the grapevine that you are very, very good at networking, and in your area of the country, you are known as the queen of networking. So we will come back onto that. Let's just, first of all, hear a little bit more about you. So you set up the business in 2007, which seems pretty early for a virtual assistant company. Tell us briefly about your journey and how you got there and what kind of business you sell you have now.[00:14:24] Speaker C: So for many years I've worked in sales, medical sales, steel industry, all sorts of sales. And then working with my ex husband, we ended up falling out, getting divorced, and I found myself out of work. And at the time, I had all the phones diverted to my mobile in the event that nobody answered the phone at work, which obviously I needed to stop. Spoke to the telecoms guy and he said, so what are you going to do? And I said, I have no idea. He said, have you ever thought of being a virtual assistant? I said no. What do they do? And then I downloaded everything I could find, which in those days, Paul, wasn't a lot because, as you say, 2007 was early on for virtual assistants, especially in the UK. Took it all out to Antigua, lay on a beach, read up about it, and set up. I'm your PA. The rest is history.[00:15:15] Speaker B: Fantastic. And you were telling me just before our interview that many virtual assistants, it's just them or one or two people, but you've actually built this into a business and you've got a team of people sat in an office.[00:15:27] Speaker C: That's right. So we employ all our staff to be office based. We have one member of staff who was a senior, who does work remotely, but is set up with the same level of security as I'm sure that all your listeners will appreciate, security is absolutely top priority when you're dealing with other people's data. So, yes, we set everything up. Cyber, essential, standard, and they are office based to ensure that we can support them as well. So we have a team of 15 that are all office based in Wolverhampton.[00:16:01] Speaker B: Which is Wolverhampton being roughly in the middle of the UK. And it's quite unusual for virtual assistants to do this. When I recommend to MSPs that they get a VA, then quite often it's a one woman band, typically working from home. So refreshing to speak to the expert. You are now the expert on virtual assistant services. So what is it you think that stops MSPs from outsourcing more? Because, you know they're busy. You're working with plenty of MSPs. I know they're busy. And often they get trapped on low value tasks. Perhaps you can give us an example of the kind of tasks that MSPs delegate to you, but also tell us why it's so difficult. What's the mind block that stops them handing a low level task over to someone else?[00:16:47] Speaker C: I think they assume that we won't know what we're talking about.That is a big one to overcome. One of our very first MSPs that joined us said, yeah, but you won't understand my business. And it's like, I don't need to be an It expert to understand your business, because that's your job. What I need to do is to be able to deal with the clients that have a problem to give you the information.So some, they will just say, can you take new inquiries and book them in for an appointment for me to have a follow up call with them, and we'll deal with their diaries, and we can do that. Others, we have MSPs that actually even get us to book straight into autotask and then follow the things through on autotask. So we'll be checking all their emails. If they've had an email inquiry or an email issue that's come through, we'll add that to autotask. We've even got where we have teams of MSPs.And so you've got an MSP who's actually got a team of people working with them. We will chase up to say, this ticket is not being claimed. Who's doing it?It's been sat there an hour. Who's doing it?Which has reduced the number of unclaimed tickets and the number of times where they go outside their service level agreements. It's almost taken that to zero. But we understand Autotask, so we don't need to be able to fix computers. We need to understand the tools that we're working with. And that's what we do.[00:18:24] Speaker B: I love it. Absolutely love it. So essentially for those MSPs, you act in the dispatcher role. The dispatcher role, of course, being that person that picks up that ticket and makes sure that someone somewhere is on top of that. Do you call yourselves the ticket police?You should do.[00:18:39] Speaker C: I think we should, yes. No, we haven't yet, but I may actually put that forward as something that we could do.It does mean that we do stay on top of it. But the thing is, if they were to employ somebody, if you think about it, when they employ somebody, and a lot of VAS will work on a package, so they have to buy X number of hours. A lot of them won't do call handling because that ties them to a desk. But that is predominantly core business, is the call handling. So we become the personable person at the end of the phone, so there's no voicemails, but they only pay us for the seconds that we're on the phone or the minutes that we're actually working on. Admin tasks, emails, auto tasks, whatever. So we might check their emails every hour, 1 minute. Okay, that's 50 p.They can't get a member of staff for that money, so they use us if it's suddenly very busy, it might be that we've had four minutes on there. So it's now two pounds, but they can't get somebody to sit there from 08:00 A.m. To 06:00 P.m., monday to Friday, nine to one on a Saturday, and only pay them for the minutes or seconds that they've got them working. So that's why it works out for them. Works out cost effective.[00:20:08] Speaker B: So just for our US listeners, the British money that Michele was talking about there range from sixty five cents at that bottom level up to what she said, two pounds. That's around about $2, $62.70, something like that. So just to give you some context, you can see it's really cheap. Here's the thing though, Michele, I think was before our interview we talked about building up levels of trust and how when an MSP hands over tasks to someone, there is that fear, that worry that it won't be done properly or you don't understand my business, something like that. Being a ticket police officer in Autotask, I would say is a fairly deep level task. As in there's got to be a level of trust before they'll let you loose into Autotask or any other PSA. So what are some of the typical tasks that MSP owners delegate first? Is it things like accounts, basic admin, sort of just checking that everything's how it should be?[00:21:05] Speaker C: Yeah, checking, following up on invoices. Because if they're not on direct debit, which is the easiest way of dealing with it, but sometimes direct debits bounce. So if they're not on direct debit, they will get us to follow up on the invoices, chase the invoices, so they may actually get us to log into their Xero or QuickBooks or whichever accounts package they use. A lot of them will start with just the calls. Can you take a message?Because they know when they've got their head deep in focus on what they're doing, they're solving a problem. Right now, the last thing they want is somebody phoning up saying, oh, my screen's upside down, how do I fix it?And I've just lost exactly where I was.So it gives them that time, and quite often there's the turn it on and turn it off again.Turn it off and turn it on again, rather. But it gives them that barrier to stop those constant interruptions, because an interruption, I'm sure you're aware, every single interruption in business will probably cost that person 15 minutes of time before they're back into the zone of where they were. Well, you get four phone calls an hour. You've just lost your hour. So how do you focus? You can make much more money if you can focus, then drop out for half an hour, follow up on those calls and then focus back in again.[00:22:41] Speaker B: Yeah, completely agree. And as someone who works at home with a 13 year old in the house, that whole interruptions and losing where you are is a perpetual problem. More so, I think, for MSPs Who, the very nature of the job is to be reactive. So I think that buffer that barrier is such a great idea. Right, final question on outsourcing, then we're going to talk briefly about networking. It's the question I've always wanted to ask a VA, and I have lots of VAS in my business, and I don't want to ask them this because they won't give me the correct answer. What's the worst task that can be delegated out to you? So the task that when it comes in, you or your team, you've got your head in your hands and you're thinking, oh, we hate doing this job.[00:23:20] Speaker C: I think the only job that we hate, and it's not a job that gets delegated to us, it's when we have and it doesn't happen very often, we have a client that doesn't do what they say they're going to do and we then get the repeated calls because they've not done what they said.We're not just a punch bag for people not doing their jobs. We like to work with people to make sure that we can support them. We're not there because they don't want to do what they're supposed to be doing or what they've promised to do. So those tend to be a little bit sort of, please don't make us your punch bag.But I can't say that there's anything that I mean, I've had things from booking helicopters, booking twin engine helicopters. Did you know you cannot fly a helicopter unless it's got two engines within the M 25?[00:24:26] Speaker B: I didn't know that.[00:24:28] Speaker C: No, I learned that.[00:24:29] Speaker B: Yeah. The M 25 is a massive motorway which goes around London. So I guess that's a safety thing, isn't it? That if one fails, the other one picks up. Well, it's amazing what you learn in the course of a day.[00:24:40] Speaker C: Years ago, I had to book the Queen's reserve helicopter for a client to get them down to Wimbledon, which is the big tennis tournament.Yeah, I had to book her reserve helicopter and I'm thinking, I hope she doesn't need it.[00:24:58] Speaker B: I'm sure she had access to more. No, I bet there's not. I bet there's not. Okay, Michele, let's very briefly look at networking. So you do a lot of networking. I know it's how you generate a lot of your business, and you've seen a lot of MSPs turn up to networking sessions and just not be very good. What are some of the things that MSPs typically do at networking that just holds them back and stops them from properly connecting with people?[00:25:22] Speaker C: Jargon MSPs are the world's worst. Sorry, guys, you're the world's worst for Jargon. There is nobody in that room is going to know what a DKIM, an Akim and SPF record is. You can tell us all you like, but we're still not going to be any the wiser. But if you turn around and say, if your emails aren't getting through, these are the things that need sorting, come and speak to me and I'll make sure that your emails get through properly, that makes sense to us. So Jargon is really something where we have to sort of bring them into line.And the other side is telling stories, getting them to tell stories.With networking, you always need to speak in the language of the people that you want to reach, because they're not selling to other MSPs, they're here to speak to other business owners who require an MSP. So they're going to have to speak in the language of those business owners and with the best will in the world. Most business owners don't know all that.[00:26:32] Speaker B: Jargon oh, completely. I've worked with MSPs since 2016, and I know that DKIM and SPF are something to do with email deliverability. Couldn't tell you what SPF stands for. Maybe framework something. Spam pork Framework, something like that. I don't know. I could take what you said about networking and say that when you're networking, you need to use the language of the people you're talking to. I would argue that's all of marketing and networking, of course, just being a pretty powerful form of that. Let's just finish, Michele, you gave me just before we spoke, you gave me an example of an MSP that, you know, who goes to networking events that you go to, and in fact, he was the one who. Introduced us, so thank you. Shall I name him? Yeah. Shall I name him? Shall I not name him? All right. Thank you, Tristan, for introducing us. We do appreciate that. And he did a fantastic 22nd pitch. You know when you go to a networking meeting and you have a short space of time with which to talk, can you just do for us Tristan's 22nd pitch? Because I think this is genius and MSPs around the world can use this.[00:27:30] Speaker C: Yeah. So the problem is, he came back to me and said, I cannot do anything about it in 20 seconds. And I said, yeah, of course you can. So we gave him this one to do. He put a bowl prior to the meeting on every table and he stood up and said, good evening, I'm Tristan from Name of Company. Please take all your credit cards out of your wallets and purses and pop them in the bowls on the centre of the table for distribution later. Not happy to do that. Well, a non encrypted laptop will do that for you. I'm Tristan from name of company.And we encrypt laptops.[00:28:09] Speaker B: Bravo. Absolutely brilliant. And that is the perfect example of how to take something techie and turn it into something that's relevant to other people. And I love the idea of give me your credit cards. What an attention grabber that is. Michele, you've been very kind with your time. Thank you very much. Just briefly, tell us again what you can do to help MSPs and what's the best way to get in touch with you.[00:28:28] Speaker C: With MSPs? We can do the call handling, we can do the tasks, whatever best way of getting in touch is through our website, imyourpa co UK. That's imyourpa co UK. And if anybody wants any support on networking, then you can find me at the Networking Queen. And we do support with short videos and everything to help them get more business, because that's all we're interested in. Everybody needs to get more business. Paul.[00:29:03] Speaker A: Paul Green's, MSP marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.[00:29:09] Speaker D: Hello, I'm Jacob Prime. I'm the CEO and co founder of Ploy. The book I recommend to you is Grinding It Out by Ray Crock. He's the man who bought us the double cheeseburger, but along that, he bought a fantastic attitude. Later in life, he really did grind it out in terms of selling milkshakes door to door. And it's a great story about how McDonald's was founded, all the challenges along the way, and I think it's going to be really relevant, know, on those hard days, really digging deep and getting on with it.[00:29:38] Speaker E: Coming up next week hi, I'm Robert Gillette with the MSP Dojo. I've talked to hundreds of MSPs in the last year. All of them want one thing more, better leads. But unfortunately, what a lot of them need is to eat their vegetables and just get better at sales. I'm going to be talking about how to practice your sales craft, so you're never practicing on a prospect.[00:29:58] Speaker B: You're going to love that interview with Robert next week, and we're also going to be talking about how to train up your very lowest level staff. What do you do when you're taking someone from absolute scratch? And how do you turn them into a superstar in just 52 weeks? I've got a clever technique to tell you about next week. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.[00:30:21] Speaker A: Made in the UK. For MSPs. Around the World.[00:30:25] Speaker C: Paul Green's.[00:30:26] Speaker A: Ms ms MSP. Marketing podcast.

Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen

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Episode 209Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 How understanding personality types can help shape your sales and marketing * 07:36 Could this 'secret' LinkedIn tool give you the edge * 12:52 Use your marketing to improve your relevance to potential clients

Featured guest:Thank you to Jim Haney, Vice President of Marketing at Novatech, for joining me to discuss marketing best practices for MSPs, and how getting your marketing right can help increase your relevance to your target audience.Jim brings over 25 years of experience in the MSP, VAR, and IT Services sectors. Focused on trust-based marketing, he specializes in SEO, lead generation, and marketing automation. His dedication to transparency and results-oriented strategies consistently propels business growth and bolsters customer engagement.Connect with Jim on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimhaneyExtra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Connect with me on LinkedIn: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * I mentioned my episode with Andy Edwards, here's a link: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode2/ * I talked to Jim about my special episode with Marcus Sheridan, you can listen to that here: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode164/ * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, Influence: Science and Practice: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Influence-Practice-Robert-B-Cialdini/dp/0205609996/

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world. This Paul. Paul. Paul Greens, MSP Marketing Podcast we go with a brand new show and this is what I've got for you this week.[00:00:14] Speaker B: Hey everyone. I'm Jim Haney, vice president of marketing at Novatech. We're going to dive into some marketing best practices for MSPs to really propel you and be relevant to your target audience.[00:00:24] Speaker A: And on about that interview with Jim. Later on in the show, we're going to talk about a very cool and clever thing that you can do within LinkedIn messaging. Now, no one is really using this right now, which gives you a massive opportunity to stand out to your prospects.Paul Green's, MSP Marketing Podcast I have this great friend called Andy Edwards who frankly, I don't get to spend enough time with. Andy was actually my second ever guest. So if you go back to episode two from November 2019, he was my guest. And it was a bit of a cheat because I knew I was going to be starting a podcast. And I happened to go to see him. He's about 3 hours drive away from me in a place called Bournemouth in the UK. And we were sat in his garden enjoying just a chat and some food. And I kind of grabbed my phone and said, hey, I'm going to be doing this podcast soon. Can I record you for the podcast? And that was how he ended up on episode two. But Andy and I, because we're sort of three odd hours drive apart, we never really spend enough quality time. And you know how COVID changed all of that. And you see people differently these days, don't you? One of the things I like about Andy and I met him when we were both speakers. So over the last 20 years, I've gone and talked at marketing conferences and talked about various marketing things, not so much within the MSP world, but sort of just within the UK. And that's how I met Andy. And one of the things that I used to love doing was when I'd done my talk about marketing stuff, I would sit in the audience and hear him talk about people stuff. And this is what makes Andy so great. He's very much the kind of guy who the kind of person who understands how other people tick. And his talk from memory was called something like, why isn't everyone like me? Or something like that. Now, Andy teaches how to assess other people through a four color system. And you can kind of Google this if you Google personality colors, it comes up with where people can be sort of categorized, whether they're red, yellow, green or blue. And actually this links directly into the disk system. So you might not have heard of the color way of sort of putting people into a box, but you may have heard of the disk system dis. And we'll talk about that in a second. Now, the reason I'm talking about this, and the reason I love listening to Andy talking about this is because it's all about creating better sort of harmony within your business and also figuring out why clients don't buy the way that you do. So for example, I am a red and I'm going to describe what these colors are in a second, but I'm a red. I'm a fast decision maker. I'm like, come on, let's do it, let's go for it. I don't need to sit and think about it. You tell me something. The switch inside my head says, Yep, let's do it. As far as I'm concerned, that's the end of the conversation. I say, yes, we do it. That's it. Whereas someone who is a blue, which is blue, is kind of like the direct opposite of that. Someone who needs to hear lots of stuff about it, they need to think about it a lot more. They will then have lots of information, lots of pondering.They can't make a decision without a ton of information and time to process that information. And as you're out selling and you're marketing and selling to these different kind of people, you need to understand how these different personalities work. Someone like me when I used to do my own sales, which is like in 1872, and I didn't enjoy it, as most business owners don't enjoy it. But when I was out selling and I didn't really understand that different people bought in different ways, I couldn't understand why people weren't listening to me for five minutes and then going, Yep, let's do it. And I thought perhaps I was doing a bad job until I met Andy and he taught me about different personality types. So let me run through the four colors and then I'll link them up to the disc profile that you may be more familiar with and you may even use. So you start off with red and the typical traits of reds is they're extroverts, they're very ambitious, they're confident, they're thrill seekers, hard workers, and they're innovative. And as I say, I am absolutely 100% red. Although Andy tells me that everyone sort of has a primary color and then a more secondary color as well. And you can go back and listen to his interview in episode two if you want to listen to that. So you've got your reds and then you've got your yellows. And your yellows are kind of like diluted down reds. So they're still extroverted.They're very optimistic, but they're a lot more social. I'm not as social as I could be and that's why I know I'm not a yellow. So given the choice, I will stay on my own and have my own company rather than go out and go to an event or go to something. So yellows are a lot more social. They're very persuasive, they're very entertaining and they're very idealistic. It's almost like yellows are better versions of red. That's my words. And as a red I feel I can say that. Then we go into the sort of the introverted colors. So green and red are both introverts. Greens are very helpful. They're very easy going, very cooperative but very regimented and very patient. And blue again almost a more extreme version of green where again they're introverted but they're much more obedient still very organized, very meticulous, very cautious and very private. And you can see why it would take. I will make friends with someone in seconds.Blue, which is obviously the direct opposite takes a lot longer to build up some kind of trust. Do you see how that would directly affect any kind of marketing and sales that you're doing? Isn't that interesting? It's fascinating, isn't it when you sort of put all these things together? Let me link this to disk for you because you can go and get free disk profiles on the interweb disk dis dominant is the D of disk and that typically relates to red. So they're very much driven by the desire to dominate or lead others. Don't know if I like that.As someone who fits within that then you've got the I which is inspiring. That matches up with yellow. Inspiring is driven by the desire to inspire or influence others. The S of disk is stable and this is green. This links up to green which is driven by the desire for stability. So routine security is really important to these people. And then you've got C which is compliant. Again, this is blue driven by the desire to comply or do things as they are meant to be done. Now you and I don't have to spend tons of time studying this. Not in the way that Andy andy is an expert at this. His whole life is this and teaching people how to influence other people by understanding their personality. We don't need to spend all that time says Mr. Red who wants to get things done and move on. Maybe you want to spend more time looking at this. My point is all we need is a basic understanding that all people even though we're so diverse and we're so many different types of people we can ultimately all be categorized not fully but in a certain number of ways we will fit into certain boxes. And here we've got just two ways of doing that. If we can take some time to understand other people are not always like us and therefore we need to communicate and influence them in different ways then ultimately that's going to help us get a better sales and marketing result.Here's this week's clever idea.It's not very often that something marketing wise happens to me and completely blows me away and makes me think how did I not know that? But that did happen to me a couple of months ago when I received a LinkedIn message from someone who works for an MSP called Elena and she'd messaged me to ask a question. We're not working together yet, but she'd messaged me just to ask a question about something to do with marketing. And I saw that I'd got another LinkedIn message from her. So I went to look at that message and I was genuinely gobsmacked when I realized the message was this.[00:08:15] Speaker C: Hi, Paul, so thanks for connecting with me here on LinkedIn. I've been a long term fan of yours and just wanted to tell you a little bit more about us.[00:08:26] Speaker A: So, as you can hear there, it was a voice memo from Elena and that completely blew my mind. The reason that completely blew my mind is because I didn't know up till that point that you could send a voice message via LinkedIn. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not as green as I'm cabbage looking. I know that in your phone, you can send voice notes here in the UK. WhatsApp is the biggest messaging app? It's pretty much the default messaging app in the UK. And I know I send voice messages and voice memos to my friends all the time. I'm sure you do it in your messaging app of choice, but I didn't know you could do it in LinkedIn. Do you know what? I hear something that's really embarrassing as well. It's embarrassing for me is this functionality was introduced in 2018. So for five years now, you've been able to send a voice message in a LinkedIn message and I didn't know about this. I'm going to go easy on myself. I can't be expected to know absolutely everything. So, anyway, thank you, Elena, for sending that voice message to me. I didn't actually specifically ask your permission to play it out on the podcast. I know that you listen, so I hope you don't mind. You know, that whole thing of it's better to seek forgiveness than it is to ask permission. So thank you very much for letting me play that out. Now, let me tell you how exciting this is, because the main reason I didn't know this, apart from the fact I missed the announcement in 2018, was Elena was the first person ever to send me a voice message on LinkedIn. And I get a lot of LinkedIn messages, like, a lot of LinkedIn messages, as I'm sure you do. So if that was the first one I've received in five years, to me, this is an opportunity, right? This is something that you can use to stand out to the leads and prospects that you're working on LinkedIn. So the cool thing is, it's so easy to send a voice memo, a voice note within LinkedIn. You have to do it on your phone. That's the only thing you can't do it off your laptop. It has to be done on the phone, but it's super easy to use. So now that you know you could do this. Why don't you become the only MSP that actually, while you're chatting with leads and prospects on LinkedIn, you become the only MSP to just send them a quick voice note. And it could be something as simple as, oh, hi, Paul. This is Dave here. I know we've just been chatting about this. I'm fascinated to hear more about your accountancy business and it would be great to have a chat with you, blah, blah, blah. And I would do it like that. I would do it like a personal voice note that you send to someone. Because if you did this to, like, two or three people a day, that's not a great deal of work, is it? Right for you? And actually, you've got an opportunity to cut through the clutter, the digital clutter, because until everyone's sending voice notes on LinkedIn, which they're not, the opportunity is there for you to be one of the few people doing it. So here's how you do it. Grab your phone. I'll talk you through it. It's so easy. It's embarrassingly easy. So the first thing you do is, obviously you create a new message, or obviously, if you're in the thread with an existing message, then you just go into that message. But on your phone, there is a voice messaging icon at the bottom of the phone, at the bottom of the thread. And obviously, the first time that you click that, depending on your device, you might be prompted to allow LinkedIn to connect to the device microphone. Certainly on iPhones, they do that, don't they? And then you just simply hold down the microphone image to record your message, right? And when you finish recording it, you release it to stop the recording. And then you just either cancel it or you send it. And it's as simple as that. It really is as simple as that. So why don't you give this a try for the next week? Work your LinkedIn contacts. Why not drop three people a day, a personalized voice message via LinkedIn just to see what happens? And by the way, if you do do that, I would love to know what the results have been. Could you send me a voice message on LinkedIn with an update? That would be so cool.Do you know what? Talking of LinkedIn, it would be super cool if you and me were to connect on LinkedIn. If we're not already connected, then please go and find me, and I will accept your connection requests. So long as you are an MSP or you work within the channel. Just go into LinkedIn and search for paul Green, MSP marketing.[00:12:54] Speaker B: Hi, everyone. I'm Jim Haney. I'm the vice president of marketing at Novatech.[00:12:58] Speaker A: And Novatech, I believe, is based in Nashville in Tennessee. Is that correct?[00:13:02] Speaker B: That's right, yeah. We're headquartered here in Nashville. We also have a sub headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.[00:13:07] Speaker A: Okay. And the fact you're in Nashville, if I go and tell my 13 year old that I'm interviewing someone in Nashville, she will go crazy. You're probably aware there's a TV show called Nashville, which ran for about six seasons, and she discovered it about three weeks ago and is currently just about to hit season three. And we've just found that the platform, it's on here in the UK, there's only ten days left to watch it before it comes off the platform. And that's been a bit of a crisis in our house today. So thank you so much for joining me, Jim. And I am going to go and tell her about the Nashville connection in a second. I'm sure she thinks that you'll be a country singer of some kind, because that's what that show is about. Jim, I've got you on to talk about marketing and how you market your MSP and what you do that works well and what you found that doesn't work well. Because there is nothing more fascinating than getting on someone whose job is to market their MSP day in, day out. And that's something I know that you are overseeing. So let's just get a little bit more context from us. So tell us a little bit more about the business. What kind of clients do you serve? What kind of size are you? Just so we get context to add that into the marketing that you're doing.[00:14:11] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So, Novatech was founded in 1998.We are a nationwide MSP, so we do everything we service coast to coast. Our offering, we like to call it the managed office. And Paul, that's not usually a known term, but we do everything from managed It services right. Managed print, as well as the hardware aspect of It as well. So copiers and printers, cloud integration and technologies. And then everything we do, everything we do has a security element to it. So we like to call that managed security. So there's really four pillars of our business, and we service nationwide. Like I said, it's primarily enterprise accounts, small, medium sized businesses and so forth. And there's not one cookie cutter solution for a business. Every business has its own unique needs and business problems. So we're really sitting down with them and finding out how we can be of best service to them.[00:15:08] Speaker A: Sure. And do you have a sales team that's active on the ground, or are you doing all the selling remotely, seeing as you're covering a vast, huge country?[00:15:18] Speaker B: Yeah, no, we do. We have sales reps, business technology advisors spread out throughout the country.[00:15:26] Speaker A: See, that in itself. I love that there's a moment of genius just there a Business Technology Advisor, because no normal business owner or manager wants to talk to an It salesperson business Technology advisor. It's the same thing, but it's positioning in It, and that shows that's a smart piece of positioning there. So let's talk about your overall marketing strategy, because in the four years this podcast has been running. We've talked about so many different things and we could do this podcast till the end of time, till humanity wipes itself out because there are so many facets to marketing and so many different strategies. There comes a point where as a business, you have to pick something and you have to commit to that. So without giving away any secret sauce or commercial secrets, what's your broad marketing strategy for generating leads for the, you.[00:16:16] Speaker B: Know, the number one goal of my team is generating know, obviously there's a lot of levers that we're pulling to accomplish that. But the main thing on that, Paul, is producing content and that is relevant to the persona and the buyer that you're out there for. And that starts with the website. That starts with your blogs, your social media, everything that you're putting out there, making sure that you're answering the questions that customers are actually asking. I know you have on your resource of books, one of the books that we love and I use as a cornerstone and foundation is they Ask, You Answer. Right? It's a great book, but using that philosophy and making sure that the content that we're putting out there is relevant and actually answering those key questions that people are coming to the site for. So we're doing a lot of that. We're very active online, very active on social, a lot of blogging, making sure that the website is optimized. We're doing a lot of strategic outreach to customers, both in email, direct mail, webinars, live events.It's a full breadth of strategies that we're out there approaching the marketplace with.[00:17:29] Speaker A: And I'm going to come back and ask you for a little more detail about those in just a second. But you mentioned something called buyer persona. Now obviously I know what that is, but could you explain for the benefit of our audience, what is a buyer persona? Why did you put it together in the first place? And actually, practically, how does it guide you on a daily basis with your marketing?[00:17:47] Speaker B: Yeah, so a buyer persona, that's who are you trying to market to right within a company? Who is the typical individual that is buying your service or interacting with you on a day to day? So that might be a CIO. A CEO, a marketing director, an It director. It just depends on the industry and the vertical and then understanding what messaging resonates with that type of individual. So what we do is we identify those personas, understand the vernacular that they're using and the key phrases that they're searching for online. And a lot of that is grassroots. We're asking these individuals, what are you Googling? What are you searching for? And then we're building buyer journeys for those personas. And each journey is a little bit different based on the persona.Again, that's relevant to them and it's giving them some gated content, free content. And all along the way, we're nurturing them along the buyer journey with information that's relevant, that's useful, and we're kind of nurturing them along throughout the cycle till they get to the point to where they want to engage.[00:18:58] Speaker A: And that buyer journey, have you planned all of that out in advance, or was that a case of getting something basic set up and then you've added to it and added it to it as you figured out what works and what doesn't work for that persona?[00:19:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't think it's ever a one and done. I think marketing is always learning, right? So we set up these personas, we see how they engage, we do some A B testing on what's relevant, what's actually converting, what are they downloading, what are they not downloading, and then we go back and continue to massage it. We listen to voice of customers, so we're reaching out to them, hey, is this content worth relevant to you? Is it useful? And then if it's not, we're updating and modifying it along the way.[00:19:39] Speaker A: Yeah, there's a truism there about all marketing, isn't there? Which is it's not one and done. It's a constant thing, which I know is distressing for many MSPs because they want to just do marketing, tick it off and say, we've done marketing. But unfortunately, things change. And as you said, there's always an opportunity to improve it. What we typically find is that it's not that your marketing performance degrades, it's typically that your competitors are getting better. And certainly in SEO in search engine optimization, that's very much the case, which we're going to come on to later on. Now you mentioned as well. They ask, you answer, which is an amazing book by Marcus Sheridan. Jim, did you actually know that Marcus Sheridan has been on this podcast?[00:20:17] Speaker B: I did not know that. That's amazing.[00:20:19] Speaker A: Yeah. So if you go and find there's an episode from early January this year, it was a special episode because I've been a fan of they Ask, You Answer. Actually, only for a few years, because I only read it a few years ago, and I knew I had to get Marcus on this show. And it took some time, but he's so generous with his time, and he tailored all of his answers to MSPs. And in fact, the answer he gave about why you need to put your prices on your website is something I'm using with my MSP Marketing Edge members all of the time, because it's such a powerful and very personalized thing. So for you, Jim, if you say, go back to I can't remember the episode number, but it was early January 2023 as of today, as of this recording, it's our most listened to and most watched episode still. And for everyone else, if you haven't yet read they Ask, You Answer, you must read it, even if you can't implement it, because it's a big thing to implement. It guides you and pushes you down a specific route, and it's a route of really understanding your customer. I mean, you've obviously read it. I'm guessing you've got your team to have read it.[00:21:22] Speaker B: Yes.[00:21:22] Speaker A: What changes have you made as a result of reading that book that have benefited you?[00:21:28] Speaker B: There's so many, right?And like you said, there's a lot to implement, but you don't have to boil the ocean. You don't have to do it all to get started down the path. I would say the number one thing is actually understanding what your target market is, asking what are those questions, and making sure that your content is about answering those questions, not about you. I think a lot of times, and it's not just MSPs, any industry, right? You go to a website, you read an article, it's a lot of me, me, jargon, jargon, Jargon. And you got to get rid of that, man. It's got to be about listening and answering those questions that your customers are asking. That's the key thing.[00:22:14] Speaker A: Yeah. And what have you found? What's your experience been of the type of content that normal people want to read? Because I appreciate that you're heading more at the sort of the enterprise level, but these are still human beings, right? These are still people who find things interesting or not interesting. And we all know that technology is a little bit of a turn off to ordinary people, so I'm excluding It directors. That's an audience very much within the sphere of if you're an MSP, if you're an It director, you've got a common language. But for a CFO, for a CEO, for an operations person, these people, they know technology is important, but they find it a turn off. So what kind of content have you found works best for that audience?[00:22:55] Speaker B: Well, it's a combination, really, because we all relate to different things, right? So we are incorporating a lot of blogging. So we're blogging quite a bit. We're doing video. Video is huge, right? And small snippets. Not real long form, just snippets, little educational bites. You mentioned different personas, right? CMO or CFO. A CEO.What is important to those individuals and what's the language or vernacular that they're using and making sure that your content is hitting those key points.But I think the biggest thing, Paul, that I would say is just understanding. Try to demystify the tech. Don't try to be I think sometimes we almost like to sound so important because we can use some really big words, make it sound ultra fancy, demystify it, simplify it. At the end of the day, what customers are wanting is their stuff to just work. Right?We don't need to impress them with big fancy words. I mean, obviously we know the vernacular, we have strong acumen, but just talking to them as if we were two CEOs or two CFOs or whatever, sitting at a table talking and what's going to be relevant to them and a lot of that stems from reaching out and asking them what's important to them. So when we're in a conversation with someone that's asking, hey, what's keeping you up at night? What are the things that you're looking for from a managed services provider? And then weaving those type of answers into your content?[00:24:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I absolutely love that. There's a saying which I read in a book, I can never remember which book it is, even though every time I say this on the podcast, I get five or six emails telling me what the book is. And for some reason it's never in my head, but the phrase is great. It's to influence what John Smith buys. You must look through John Smith's eyes, which is exactly what you have just described there. And it's so difficult to do. I feel very lucky because I trained to be a journalist at the age of 19, to be a newspaper reporter. And literally on day one, the very first thing they taught us was how to write content. So a 19 year old and I was a very young 19 year old, but a 19 year old could write for the 60 year old typical reader of the newspaper at that point of time. And that was such a power. I didn't realize I was learning such a powerful marketing and life lesson. The ability to think about something from someone else's point of view. And I think for many MSPs, when their marketing is so off, it's because they've just missed that. They don't understand the buyer. They don't understand what the buyer wants and needs and fears, and they don't understand, therefore, how to communicate with them. Okay, final couple of questions and I wanted to relate back into. You were saying earlier you do a mix of well, I'm going to give it a slightly different name, but you do a mix of push and pull. So push is where you're putting stuff out there. So you talked about doing webinars and you talked about doing essentially like proactive things where you are the ones that are pushing out, but you also do a set of pull stuff. So actually that kind of they'd ask, you answer content. We were just talking about a lot of that content is quite harder in the managed services market, but a lot of that content can become really good. Search engine optimization, SEO content. And certainly in the book, Marcus Sheridan saved his first business and arguably his house and his marriage by creating great SEO content accidentally while he was just trying to deliver content that his target customers would find of interest. So, do you see, obviously you're doing both, which is great. Do you see a distinct difference in the quality of the leads generated from push versus pull? Or do you not quite measure it at that level?[00:26:47] Speaker B: No, we measure it.The key is engaging with that customer or that prospect at that moment. Of truth, right? When they're thinking, hey, I need to find an answer, or hey, I need to get this solved today. And sometimes for It services, it's when things are broke specifically that I need someone. Right? And the sky is so I would say from a pull perspective, when we're getting companies coming to us and we're pulling them into an event or whatever the case may know. Honestly, Paul, I would say it's a mixed bag. As far as quality, I think they're both providing strong quality. It just depends on where the buyer is in the journey, which is exactly.[00:27:31] Speaker A: The answer I thought that you were going to give was, it depends on where they are in the journey. Because let's be honest, if they're in a very early research phase, but they're still 1218 months even further out from actually even sitting down with people, then sure, we can get them into our system, we can work with them, we can build up more touch points, we can learn a bit more about them. But ultimately, people buy when they're ready to buy. And I don't know if you find this, but most MSPs find that getting that timing right is always the hardest thing to do, right?[00:28:00] Speaker B: No, absolutely. And that's why it's important to get those buyer journeys established and using a great marketing automation tool. So we use HubSpot here.I'll give you another book that I'll recommend to the audience that I didn't see on your list that might be a new one. It's called Hack the Buyer Brain by Kenda McDonald. And Kenda actually used to be in forensic psychology, and she got a real passion for marketing and it shows how psychology works in the buying process. And you can really use some of those practices in that book coupled with they ask, you answer to really put together a really nice strategic buyer journey. And it's automated so you can use that marketing automation tool to keep it going and put a nice relevant process in place for your prospective buyers.[00:28:48] Speaker A: I love that. Thank you. Not only have you been a great guest, but you've now recommended another great guest that I need to get onto the show. So thank you. I will grab that book as well and have a listen to that book. Very, very final question, Jim, which is if you were talking to another MSP, an owner or a manager of an MSP, and they said to you with a sigh and a heavy heart, yeah, we don't do much marketing. We're not very good at marketing. Where would you recommend they get started?[00:29:14] Speaker B: So I'll break it down into three core elements, three key tips that I always like to give. And it's not rocket science, but when you're talking about your website, there's three things that you can do to really help yourself kind of adopt that they ask, you answer philosophy and help with that organic SEO. So first just make sure your website is technically sound. Spend the time and get the bones right. Use a good CMS, make sure you have your Meta tags correct, make sure it's optimized for mobile and so forth. There's a lot of things you can do. It doesn't have to be months to build it out, but just make sure it's technically sound. The second one is content, which we've talked about today, right? Just making sure you have good quality content that's answering the questions that your customers are asking or that your prospects are asking.Do blogging.Marcus in his book talks about some great ways to get blog content, and he's a real big advocate for that. So blogging is good, and then video content, right, and stuff like that. But whatever you're going to do, whatever your content form or format is, just make sure it's consistent, right? Whether it's every week or every two weeks, just be consistent with your stuff. And then the third one is linking, right? Leverage internal links and backlinks. So, internal links, as I'm sure you, you know, if you have a sub page on your website that's talking about managed It services, and then you wrote a blog about managed It services, make sure those two are linking in between each other, right? And that's going to help build relevance as Google's searching. And then backlinking is when you have a relevant publication or partner that you're partnering with, and they reference your website and your brand, and it goes back and forth, and you're sharing a little bit of that Google juice. The fourth one, if I were to give you a bonus tip, would be citations. Just make sure your citations are correct. So for the audience who doesn't know what a citation is, that's your name, address, and phone number as it lives on online directories. So you'd be surprised how many bad citations there are where they have your name right, they have your address right, but they have your phone number wrong, or one element is wrong. So just making sure those are correct and updated. If you follow that process, even as basic as it sounds, over time, you'll start to rise up on the organic search, and that's going to help your business.[00:31:37] Speaker A: And a lovely bonus tip there. So thank you very much for that. Tell us how we can get in touch with you, Jim.[00:31:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, if you'd like to learn more about Novatech, be sure to visit us@novatech.net and love to connect with anyone on LinkedIn so you can find me on LinkedIn. And besides that, always happy to connect and collaborate with anyone out there.[00:32:00] Speaker A: Paul Green's, MSP Marketing Podcast this week's recommended book.[00:32:07] Speaker C: Hi, I'm Merit Khan. I'm the CEO of Select Sales Development. We work with people who sell something complex, creative or custom. And the book that I'd like to recommend is Influence by Dr. Robert Cialdini. It's a really great book to understand about the powers and the principles of influence that are working their magic on you as a consumer. And when you understand them, you have a lot more opportunity to be effective in using these same principles to grow your own business.Coming up next week hi, I'm Michele Ibbs from I'm Your PA and I will be joining Paul to tell you how we support many MSPs to get more work done whilst working less in their business.[00:32:57] Speaker A: And on top of that fantastic interview next week, we're going to be talking about the psychology of three tier pricing. You've probably heard about good, Better, best. Maybe you use it in your MSP, maybe you're scared to use it because you want to keep it simple. I'm going to explain to you the psychology and why Good, Better, Best ultimately will drive more sales than having just one single tier alone. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP. Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's, MSP Marketing podcast.

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Episode 208Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 Four awesome verticals you should target * 09:10 Make it EASY for buyers to choose you * 15:59 How to improve your recruitment to find the best techs for your MSP

Featured guest:Thank you to Josh Wood, Recruitment Consultant at beaumont IT, for joining me to talk about how MSPs can find staff with 'the right fit' for their business by thinking of their recruitment process more like a marketing campaign.Josh is an MSP specialist technical recruiter at Beaumont with 8 years’ experience in recruitment. He’s spent the last two years’ working with growing MSPs to help them to find and retain technical talent.Having worked in the only market with more acronyms than tech (Medical) the transition to tech was a jump into more familiar territory.Josh works with MSPs in the North of England and consults with business owners not only to find them new staff but around general hiring strategy as well as all things brand and talent attraction.Connect with Josh on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshlmw/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, Blue Team Handbook: SOC, SIEM, and Threat Hunting (V1.02): A Condensed Guide for the Security Operations Team and Threat Hunter: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blue-Team-Handbook-Condensed-Operations/dp/1091493898/

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.[00:00:09] Speaker B: Back to another amazing episode of the podcast. Here's what we've got coming up for you this week.[00:00:15] Speaker C: Hi, I'm Josh. I'm a technical recruiter at Beaumont. I'm going to tell you all the problems that you have with finding and retaining technical stuff and how to fix them.[00:00:23] Speaker B: And on top of that interview with Josh later on in the show, we're going to be talking about making things easy. How can you make it easier and easier and easier for new clients to pick you and choose to stay with?[00:00:36] Speaker D: Paul.[00:00:38] Speaker A: Paul. Paul. Paul. Paul. Paul.[00:00:42] Speaker B: Paul.[00:00:42] Speaker C: Paul.[00:00:42] Speaker B: Paul.[00:00:42] Speaker A: Paul.[00:00:42] Speaker D: Paul Greens, MSP Marketing Podcast to get.[00:00:45] Speaker B: On a one to one call with an MSP. And it could be someone I'm working.[00:00:49] Speaker D: With as part of my MSP marketing.[00:00:51] Speaker B: Edge, or it might be someone we've just connected on LinkedIn and we're having a chat. But every single time I chat one on one with an MSP, I get as much out of the conversation as they do. So I'm always happy to give my marketing advice, but also I like asking questions and I like asking what they're doing. And quite often someone will say something and I'll say, Ah, that'll be a.[00:01:12] Speaker D: Good subject for the podcast.[00:01:13] Speaker B: In fact, much of this podcast comes.[00:01:15] Speaker D: Out of conversations that I have with MSPs. So if you've contributed something over the years, thank you very much.[00:01:21] Speaker B: About two weeks ago, I had a conversation with an MSP about Niching niching picking a vertical, and the conversation was along.[00:01:30] Speaker D: You may have heard me talk about this on the podcast before, but I'm.[00:01:33] Speaker B: A big fan of you picking a vertical, of you picking a kind of very small and specific audience for you to target, primarily because it makes the marketing easier. So if you are targeting a very specific type of person who does a very specific job within a very specific sector, then it's so much easier to A find who those people are, b actually go and get the data for them and C make the messaging relevant to them. All marketing is made better when the message appears to be relevant. And I talking here as someone who targets and talks to MSPs. It's very easy for me to make my marketing relevant because I understand your marketplace, your needs, your wants, your fears, what keeps you up at night. I understand all of that. And I can make sure that my marketing is relevant to an MSP. And you can do exactly the same with your marketing. So the question that this MSP had for me was what are some good sectors to get into?[00:02:34] Speaker D: And we actually sat and did a.[00:02:35] Speaker B: Mini two minute brainstorm and we came up with four really good sectors that if you are struggling to find a sector, maybe you should have a look at these. Now I'm going to tell you what.[00:02:47] Speaker D: The sectors are, what the four sectors.[00:02:48] Speaker B: Are, and I want you, as I'm telling you, to think, what have these all got in common? What is it that binds all of these together?[00:02:57] Speaker D: And I'll tell you at the end, because it's kind of obvious when you realize it.[00:03:00] Speaker B: So these are the four sectors. The first of them is accountants, or.[00:03:05] Speaker D: CPAs, as I know they're called in the US.[00:03:08] Speaker B: So accountants are an amazingly good sector, primarily because the technology that they have.[00:03:16] Speaker D: To use is well, it's mission critical, isn't it? I know technology is mission critical for most businesses these days, but an accountant.[00:03:22] Speaker B: Cannot do their work without a computer.[00:03:24] Speaker D: To do that work on.[00:03:25] Speaker B: And the other beautiful thing about learning a sector and really getting heavily into a sector is that actually it makes.[00:03:32] Speaker D: The delivery easier as well. So accountants are probably using I don't.[00:03:36] Speaker B: Know what, QuickBooks Xero. There's probably some specific accountancy software that they use. The point being is that if you're working with 3510 2030 accountants, you'll get to know what that software is and you'll see that I don't know, 80% of them use the same packages or.[00:03:54] Speaker D: The same types of software. So you and your business can become experts at that kind of software.[00:03:59] Speaker B: So accountants is the first one now, related to accountants, but less pleasant is lawyers.[00:04:05] Speaker D: I don't like lawyers. Who does like lawyers?[00:04:07] Speaker B: Well, other lawyers, I guess, or lawyers husbands and wives. But lawyers are they may not be.[00:04:13] Speaker D: Wonderful people, I know some of them are, but many of them aren't. They may not be wonderful people, but they are a wonderful sector to get.[00:04:19] Speaker B: Into if you can cope with them. The thing I don't like about lawyers.[00:04:23] Speaker D: And my exposure to lawyers is not huge, it's just down to some property stuff. And when I sold my business, there are lots of lawyers involved then, and.[00:04:31] Speaker B: They got paid a lot of money for creating a lot of noise.[00:04:36] Speaker D: That's where my dislike of lawyers really came from.[00:04:38] Speaker B: But the good thing about lawyers is if you can cope with them, again, the computer is mission critical. The vast majority of lawyers who aren't going into a courtroom setting, they're doing their work on a phone, on a.[00:04:49] Speaker D: VoIP phone, and they're doing it on a computer. So the computer is pretty mission critical for them.[00:04:56] Speaker B: And of course, a lot of lawyers are just taking templates and adapting templates and they're looking things up all the time. So they need that instant information. Without that computer, they cannot be charging. What do they do? They do like six minute units or something like that. Side note, a good friend of mine.[00:05:12] Speaker D: Is a lawyer and he has to do every hour, he has to do.[00:05:15] Speaker B: Ten units of six minutes. So if this is a this is.[00:05:19] Speaker D: A bit of a funny story, but.[00:05:20] Speaker B: If he needs a Wii and he doesn't want to lose a couple of.[00:05:25] Speaker D: Units, doesn't want to lose a six minute unit in an hour.[00:05:29] Speaker B: Then he will ask himself which of my current clients has annoyed me the most today? And that client will be charged the.[00:05:36] Speaker D: Unit for him to go for a wee. So if you do have a lawyer.[00:05:40] Speaker B: Who'S charging you a number of units, if you've been an annoying client yourself, maybe, just maybe, you are paying for.[00:05:46] Speaker D: Them to go to the toilet. Anyway, that was a side note.[00:05:48] Speaker B: So we've got accountants, we've got lawyers. A third great sector is financial. Anything to do with financial. So here in the UK, we have what are known as IFAs independent financial advisors. And you have to be licensed, you have to go through 70,000 years of training. There are rules, really strict rules, what.[00:06:06] Speaker D: You can and can't do.[00:06:07] Speaker B: And I have no doubt that there are varying levels of that in your.[00:06:11] Speaker D: Country or in your city or town or state, or wherever you are as well.[00:06:15] Speaker B: And again, the computer tends to be not quite as mission critical as for accountants and lawyers, but it's very, very important.The fourth one, and have you figured out what connects all of these yet? The fourth one is healthcare. Now, here in the UK, healthcare, there's.[00:06:31] Speaker D: Not a lot of healthcare. It available.[00:06:33] Speaker B: You've got independent dentists, you've got veterinarians.[00:06:36] Speaker D: You'Ve got maybe optometrists opticians as well.[00:06:38] Speaker B: But obviously, we have the principal. Healthcare for humans in this country is owned by the government. It's called the National Health Service.[00:06:47] Speaker D: And they tend not to go and hire sort of local MSPs. I'm sure they probably have their own tech department. But of course, worldwide healthcare is a fantastic sector. I know loads of MSPs who look after doctors, they look up like MDS, they look after small hospitals, they look.[00:07:05] Speaker B: After all sorts of healthcare clinics.[00:07:07] Speaker D: Now, what makes healthcare really good, it's actually kind of similar to financial, is that protecting that data within the financial world, the data has to be protected.[00:07:16] Speaker B: Because the end user, the client, has to be protected. Not more so or non more so than in healthcare.[00:07:22] Speaker D: And of course, you've got various rules, haven't you? Like the HIPAA rule in the US.[00:07:25] Speaker B: So we've got accountants, we've got lawyers, we've got financial people and we've got healthcare. What's the kind of the common thread with all four of these that makes them great sectors? It is that they are regulated, all of these sectors. If they have some kind of data breach, there is a regulator there with a massive baseball bat to smack them on the head quite dramatically. And that's what makes them potentially great clients for you, because you can go to your accountant, your lawyer, your finance person, your healthcare person, and you can say to them, here are the cybersecurity tools and services that we are going to buy and we are going to implement on your behalf to protect you. And we are going to put in place a gold standard of data protection and cybersecurity. The reason we're going to do this is you are regulated and we do not want you to be at any kind of risk from your regulator who has got teeth. So we are going to protect you from yourself. We're going to put in place procedures, we're going to put in place processes, we're going to put in place all sorts of security tools and services to protect you and your staff from all the bad things are happening there because we have your back. And I appreciate that.[00:08:40] Speaker D: There are going to be some lawyers, some accountants, some of the other sectors.[00:08:43] Speaker B: Who choose not to have that protection.[00:08:46] Speaker D: And make sure you get them to sign a disclaimer because ultimately they're putting themselves at risk.[00:08:51] Speaker B: But the vast majority of them, they.[00:08:52] Speaker D: Are concerned about the regulator, they don't.[00:08:54] Speaker B: Want to breach the rules and they will buy every cybersecurity protection that you put in place. They will hopefully go with every single piece of best practice that you put in front of them. Could that possibly make these some of the best clients you could possibly have here's this week's?[00:09:11] Speaker A: Clever idea.[00:09:13] Speaker B: One of the most important marketing questions that you can ask yourself is what makes you different from all the other MSPs? In fact, let's change that question a bit. Let's look at it from the point.[00:09:25] Speaker D: Of view of the buyer.[00:09:26] Speaker B: From the buyer's point of view, what makes you a better choice than all the other MSPs? And there are lots and lots of potential answers to that. But let me throw a word in.[00:09:37] Speaker D: That I think we should discuss today.[00:09:39] Speaker B: That word is easy.What if you went out of your way and I mean, like dramatically out of your way, to make it easy for someone to buy from you, to make it easy for someone to deal with you, to make it easy for them to get support, to make it easy for them to stay with you.[00:09:59] Speaker D: For the next 510, 15 years?[00:10:02] Speaker B: I think easy is a massive potential competitive advantage for any MSP, including you. Did I say MSP.[00:10:09] Speaker E: There?[00:10:09] Speaker B: I think I did. Any MSP, including you. Easy, how can we make it Mspz? Do you see what I did there?[00:10:17] Speaker D: That's not going to stick. I'm not going to use that one again.[00:10:19] Speaker B: Easy is a competitive advantage because as humans, our brains are very heavily driven to find the easy solution. Now, this is not us being lazy, it is simply that the cognitive load of doing difficult things is such that we will actively avoid it. And you could look at this in your normal life. Do you have a dishwasher? Of course you do. Do you have a washing machine and a tumble dryer and a vacuum cleaner? Of course you do. And you will think well, I've got.[00:10:49] Speaker D: All these things because it's 2023 and everyone's got one of those things.[00:10:53] Speaker B: But the principal reason we have one of those things is because it's easy. We throw our clothes in the washing machine, we select the same wash cycle.[00:11:01] Speaker D: That we always select.[00:11:02] Speaker B: We press go and like 2 hours later our clothes are clean. And then we stick them in the tumble dryer and they're dry. It's as simple as that. It's easy. It's a lot easier than washing was 30, 40, 50 years ago. As humans, we are driven to make everything easy. You think about doing a DIY job in your house, unless you're like the best DIY person ever.[00:11:22] Speaker D: If you're like me, well, actually, I'm a DIY dunce.[00:11:24] Speaker B: But if you're like most people, we'll take the easy option right down to if we're doing some decorating, maybe we won't take the shelf off the wall. Maybe we'll paint around the shelf. Try not to get paint on the shelf itself, because that's easy right? Now, I'm not saying that this is the right approach, and it's certainly not the most thorough approach, and it's certainly.[00:11:43] Speaker D: Not the approach that would make you.[00:11:44] Speaker B: Feel best at the end of the day or unless you get the results you want. And it's easy. Our brains love easy. So what I want you to do, or what I recommend you do, maybe this is a job to do. This weekend, when you're having some time away from the business, ask yourself, how easy is it for someone to get to know you and your team? If someone wants to buy from you, if they landed on your website today, they're a complete stranger. They've never looked at you before. How easy is it for them to know what you can do for them? How easy is it for them to know about you, about whether or not you're the right match for them? How easy is it for them to talk to you, to have a chat with you, to just inquire and start that conversation? How easy is it for them to actually buy from you? Is it as easy as it could possibly be? Or is the friction there? If there's friction, remove the friction.What about your existing clients? Is it easy for them to put in a support request? Have you gone out of your way to make it easier for them, perhaps at the expense of your own technicians? If they prefer instant chat, is that an easy thing to do? If they just want to pick up the phone, is that an easy thing for them to do? If they can just press a button on their computer?Well, what's that thing? Help desk buttons.[00:12:58] Speaker C: Is it?[00:12:58] Speaker A: Help.[00:12:58] Speaker B: Desk buttons. I talked about this in the podcast years ago. It's a physical button that you attach to a PC and when they need help, they press the Help Desk button. And that makes it easy for them because all they have to do, they don't have to think, what's the number to ring? What do I do? They press the emergency button, right? It's the most easy thing in the world. You press the button, but from your point of view, it makes it easy for you because it captures a series like the last series of actions that they've performed.[00:13:26] Speaker D: So it tells you all about the setup of the computer and the whole series of previous actions.[00:13:30] Speaker B: So I mean that as an example is just something that makes it super easy for everyone. So why not this weekend look at especially from the new client point of view. But even for your existing clients, where is their friction? Where is there something that slows things down? Really look at it. Work your way through. You may even choose to get someone to mystery shop. You don't have to pay someone to do this. You could just get a trusted friend who no one in your business knows. Get them to look at the website, get them to ring up, get them to try and book an appointment, get them to see how easy it is to get a sales thing going, get them to put in a support request. Is it easy? It's probably quite easy. But could you make it easier? The easier you can make it to select, buy from and stick with your MSP?[00:14:13] Speaker D: Well, guess what?[00:14:14] Speaker B: The more clients you'll win and the longer you'll keep them talking about making it easy, we are doing almost anything in our powers to make marketing easy for MSPs. So we have this thing, it's a huge thing, it's called the MSP Marketing Edge and it is there to make your marketing easy for you. Because I know that marketing is a bit of a distress activity, maybe for you, but certainly it is for many MSPs. So the easier we can make it, the better. We've set up this wonderful weekly marketing system which does everything you need to go and build audiences of people to listen to you, then to build a relationship with them. And then we tell you how to.[00:14:58] Speaker D: Commercialize that relationship as well.[00:15:01] Speaker B: Here's the thing. We can only work with one MSP per area. And again, the reason we do that is because it makes it easy for that MSP. You see, we give all of our marketing help to all of our members at the same time. And if we gave that to two members in the same area, then marketing gets harder for both of them because they've got the same marketing, right? So as part of making marketing easy.[00:15:21] Speaker D: We only work with one MSP per area.[00:15:24] Speaker B: Now, what you can do is check to see whether or not we're already working with someone in your area or not. And we've made that super easy as well. All the friction has gone. Just MSP marketing Edge You can click on your country got the flags there.[00:15:39] Speaker D: Making it nice and easy. And then you just put in like your zip code, your postcode, your postal code, depending which country you're in, and.[00:15:45] Speaker B: It will tell you instantly, no data capture required, instantly.[00:15:48] Speaker D: It'll tell you just really easy whether or not we're already working with someone in your area or whether your area is free. So go on.[00:15:55] Speaker B: Go and have MSP. Marketing Edge big interview.[00:16:01] Speaker C: Hi. I'm Josh Wood. I've been in technical recruiter for the last two years at Beaumont and more widely about the last eight years in various markets.[00:16:11] Speaker D: And even though this is a marketing podcast, we all know that marketing your MSP and growing your MSP is almost impossible if you can't get the right people. And that's why I'm delighted to have.[00:16:22] Speaker B: You on the show today. Josh, you reached out to me on.[00:16:25] Speaker D: LinkedIn after I think you said you'd Binged, was it? 3 hours worth of podcasts on a drive. It doesn't sound like a very fun way to pass the day, it really doesn't. But thank you for reaching out and it's always good to hear. In fact, if you're listening to this right now and you're thinking, I'd love to be a guest on this show, just find me on LinkedIn, reach out to me and if there's something you can talk about that I think will be interesting to our audience, then you're welcome on this show.[00:16:48] Speaker B: So let's talk about recruitment.[00:16:50] Speaker D: And before we talk about how recruiting techs has changed over the last couple of years, and I know you're going to tell us as well how most MSPs hold themselves back with recruitment, just give us an idea of your career history. So you were telling me before the interview that very few people set out to be recruiters, they just fall into recruitment. Is that what happened to you?[00:17:10] Speaker C: Yes, exactly.Left university without much of a plan and in fact, my first job out of university was working in a warehouse, packing metal tiles into a box, which is a great use of my degree.And through a friend, introduced me to what recruitment was. Says you like to talk, you like the sound of your own voice, so you might find recruitment a viable career for you. So spent best part of six years recruiting doctors, nurses in the kind of the medical field before transitioning into private medical, sort of occupational health, that side of stuff, just after COVID arrived. And then two years ago, I'd fallen out of love with what I thought was recruitment at the time. It turns out I just did medical recruitment and joined Beaumont, where I kind of found that actually it wasn't recruitment that I wasn't a big fan of it, but actually the people, the types of people I was recruiting.[00:18:06] Speaker D: Yeah, who wants to deal with doctors and nurses all day when you can deal with technicians, right?[00:18:11] Speaker C: Yeah, they're straight talking.That's quite nice.[00:18:15] Speaker D: Yeah, no, I can understand that. I mean, as an aside, my last marketing business, we work with veterinarians, so vets, as we call them in the UK, dentists and opticians. And I loved the vets and the opticians I quite loved, but I could not click with the dentists.There was a certain level of arrogance that dentists have, which I think they have to have, because they call it the God in the room syndrome, which is if they're that one person in the room and they get stuck, they have to get themselves out of trouble, whereas veterinary is a lot more collaborative. Anyway, by the by, I much prefer working with MSPs now, so you've been able to sit and watch the market change. And I think most MSPs who have tried to recruit any point this year, really, right down to the back end of last year, have known that things have changed and recruitment is difficult. And you've got a lot of people out there who are not really job.[00:19:04] Speaker B: Hunting, they're just trying to increase their.[00:19:05] Speaker D: Salary where they are or get better benefits where they are.It seems to be very much a job seeker's market right now, rather than a recruiter's or an employer's market. Talk to us what you've seen this year and how that is different to what you've seen from previous years.[00:19:25] Speaker C: So this year there's certainly been a lot less movement in terms of people looking for a new job, whether that be salary reasons or what have you, as a sort of opposed to last year, when it was very much a lot of people moving, people making quite large salary jumps. So we almost joked about it, it was quite extreme. People would put a CV on CV library or what have you, and would walk away with a 10,000 pound, or probably in the States, significantly more salary jump just from interviewing at a new place, just because of how scarce things were.What that kind of created last year was a lot of people willing to move, a lot of people jumping before they thought and yeah, just a lot of sort of instability. People were in three, four, five different interview processes. And oftentimes it wasn't a case of finding the right fit for the person, it was about who's going to offer me the most first, as compared to this year, where it's still equally as tough to find the right people, especially because there are less of them looking to move just for salary jumps. The kind of the market has relaxed in the inflation of salaries and it's sort of settled into a rough estimation of kind of where people should be again, and therefore it means that a lot of people are moving for the right reasons, whether that be moving or change of circumstances sort of progression. There's a whole host of different reasons, but someone might choose to move. But it means that you, as a recruiter, we have to be a little bit more cautious about where people are interviewing. Is the fit right for them? Are they moving for the right reasons as well?Because people are not just looking for a pay bump oftentimes they're looking for another place that's going to offer them more opportunities and more I'm really struggling.[00:21:30] Speaker B: For the word no.[00:21:31] Speaker D: I think you're making perfect sense.Money is one thing, but actually they're looking for all of the other factors development, moving on, growing as a person and as a tech. And we'll come back onto that later on because I think that's I suspect that's one of the things you're going to tell us of how MSPs hold themselves back, that they're not forward enough about how they're going to grow their teams or they don't have a plan in place. But let's come back to that. Before we do, I want you to get your shiny crystal ball out and look at 2024. And I know this is finger in the air and you could just make this up, but you're a professional recruiter, you've been doing this for some time. What do you think it's going to change next year? What's the 2024 market going to be like?[00:22:13] Speaker C: It's difficult. I think there's quite a few technologies that are kind of being branded about as the next savior of MSP or tech in general. We can't go 4 seconds without someone saying something about AI on LinkedIn.But more importantly, robotic process automation is kind of starting to bubble up in a lot of MSP circles as being a particular area of interest that's gone untapped. So like a lot of technical recruiting is almost six months behind, a year behind a lot of innovations within tech. Hiring certainly changed massively when Azure started to become a lot more widespread, when it wasn't just the enterprise level businesses with big wallets and deep pockets looking to sort of make that change, but actually it's your smaller businesses that were willing to look at cloud. You all of a sudden found that the kind of the skills that employers, specifically MSPs, were looking for really changed. And I suspect we might see something like that happen. We might see some sort of disruption or the next trend which again will change the skills that employees be looking out for or looking to add to sort of their product portfolio, as it were. Economic instability always makes things a little bit interesting, to put it lightly.MSPs often tend to fare better than internal It people in an economic slowdown.Partly it's because internal businesses get rid of their It people and are hiring MSPs on.So if things slow down, it's going to become incredibly difficult to find good people, but very easy to find.Average is probably a little bit cruel, but to find people who don't quite fit the bill, which usually means as a hiring manager, you're trawling through hundreds more CVS finding that actually, when you're putting a job advert out, the percentages that come back that are strong are so much smaller because you just see a volume of applicants at the same time. If things go better, it tends to mean that more businesses have money to invest in projects, which means that kind of the internal workforce as a large gets more skilled up, which means that actually they become more viable. In terms of people who are candidates to kind of work in MSP, there is a bit of a divide. There's always almost that sort of MSP thought of, oh, we're better than the internal people. And to some extent there is. You're busier, you work with more varied tech and what is a one in 100 problem is a Tuesday for an MSP.There is certainly a different type of person that likes the MSP and thrives in the MSP, but actually a lot of that does come to hiring managers being a little bit inflexible about skill sets and hiring for technical skill rather than attitude or competency.[00:25:10] Speaker D: In a lot of cases, yeah, that makes perfect sense. And would you say that that's one of the problems that MSPs have that holds them back, that makes that inadvertently they make their recruitment harder for themselves?[00:25:22] Speaker C: It can do. I mean, it's very hard to sort of tire everyone with the same brush.There are a lot of good MSPs who are hiring for capability and will look for someone to train and kind of bring on. But at the same time, especially if you're a smaller business, oftentimes you just don't have the time to do that. You've got all the customers screaming at you, you've got everything else that kind of forms part of that job. And then to have to sit and hold somebody's hand is difficult, especially early on, because whenever you bring someone who needs training in early on, you really are just causing days and days of can I bother you about this? Can I ask you a question about that, please? Can you verify what I already know, but I'm just a bit scared.But there are a lot of hiring managers who will look at a CV and go, well, they haven't got every single one of the technologies we support. It doesn't matter that actually let's pick one out the air. You only have one client who has Nutanix on there, and you have two engineers who know it well enough.Oftentimes that we're so focused on those kind of lists of certifications or technologies on a CV, we forget that actually you're cutting out sometimes a better fit for you and your business, because you're not being open minded in the kind of people that you want to see.[00:26:43] Speaker D: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And in your experience, what other things do MSPs do that hold themselves back?[00:26:51] Speaker C: It's funny because it's something you talk about quite a lot when you're talking about going. Out to new customers, but how you position yourself to prospective candidates. Job adverts are a real sore spot for me, probably is the best way of putting things. Most MSPs will write a job description and post it on Indeed and actually, most companies across the UK, it's very easy because it's like all admin, it's boring, it's easy to just throw something up there and see what comes in. But actually, your job advert is your sales pitch. Why do you want to come and work for us? So spending 100 words explaining to a qualified It technician what an It technician does is a bit of a waste of breath. So actually, putting a little bit of effort into the kind of the copy that you put out there and actually isolating what's good about working for you and what your employees like about working for you. And they need to be honest, but not too honest, let's be fair on that side of the things. But that's the first stumbling block.Loads of hiring managers that I talk to say, oh, I've tried, indeed, I've done this, I've done that, and the response is always relatively poor. But actually you've done nothing to persuade or convince anybody that your job or working with you is any different to any of the other ones and where you then become lowest common denominator. Who's going to pay me the most? Who's got the largest list of benefits? Which actually lets most people, when it comes to sort of making a decision between two jobs, is not, oh, they've got a ping pong table and nice coffee. It tends to be, I'm working with a team that's going to put time into me, it's going to develop me. The environment is really good, people are really happy to sort of in work, but also they're supported. I can see that there's a plan for me kind of moving forward within the business and so I'm going to join here, but there is room for me to grow.[00:28:48] Speaker D: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So the golden question is, what we've been working all the way up towards is, let's imagine tomorrow you bought an MSP, or you started an MSP, and one of your core jobs as the.[00:29:02] Speaker B: Owner, because you're not a tech, so.[00:29:03] Speaker D: You'Re no good actually doing the work. So one of your core jobs as the owner is to now go and hire some fantastic staff.[00:29:10] Speaker B: What would you do? And I say this with the caveat.[00:29:12] Speaker D: Josh, that you cannot use any of your clever recruiter tricks, because obviously, as a full time recruiter, you will have access to tools and you'll buy software, I'm sure, and there's little tips and tricks. So what I'm asking essentially is what can an ordinary business owner who doesn't have advanced access to things like Indeed and stats and all of that, what can they do to stand out? You've already given us one golden nugget, which is essentially to treat recruitment like a marketing exercise. So don't just do what everyone else is doing, do something positions you and stands out. What else would you do to hire great techs?[00:29:46] Speaker C: So social media is a good free tool. Again, a lot of what works in recruitment works in marketing. Social media is a great tool.You have to sort of adapt some of your content to what you do and what it's like to work there. As opposed to a lot of MSP facing content tends to be client facing. This is what we solve, these are the issues that we do. But actually occasionally, once a week or once every if you don't post that often, once every month or so, a post that you drop in there where you are celebrating wins of the people that work for you or talking about some of the sort of incentives do we go out and do company days? There are companies that I work with that would go out and do go to Silverstone for example.Some of those kind of intangible cultural things that everybody you work for knows about the business. But actually if you were to stand outside the office, you'd have no idea. So having that kind of conversation online, it will feel really braggy, as I think any marketing exercise does, where you have to talk about you or your business, but the ability to illustrate to people what it's like to work from you above and beyond. Just the kind of the normal conversation that you would have with someone in an interview is invaluable, I think the third one in terms of what can you do to secure the best people. So you've got the best CVS or you've got a couple of CVS of people that you really like is actually to be really quite lean with your interview process especially. I know it's very much a bigger thing in the States, but it does happen in the UK. Through two, three, four rounds of interviews you have to meet every stakeholder and person who has any sort of investment within the business. All you're doing is annoying the candidate oftentimes. But also the longer that process takes on, the more opportunity that other recruiters like myself or other businesses have to contact that person and tap them up to come and work with them.I normally say two interviews, two weeks should be the maximum time that you have someone in that process. Any longer and you're risking them going elsewhere or losing hope.[00:32:02] Speaker D: Yeah, that makes sense, doesn't it? Essentially it's difficult though, because the advice we read is to hire slow and fire fast, isn't it? And actually all business owners do exactly the opposite. We're really slow with our hiring because we're afraid of making a mistake and then we're slow at firing as well.Or we hire too fast and we just take the first person who comes along because all we're thinking about is the immediate problem. I think recruitment, like marketing, is going to be one of those nightmare subjects for all business owners for all time.[00:32:34] Speaker B: Josh, seeing as you like the sound.[00:32:35] Speaker D: Of your own voice as a recruiter, maybe you can like the sound of your own voice as a podcast. The MSP recruitment podcast sounds like a great plan. You should set it up.[00:32:43] Speaker B: I'll come on as a guest. It'll be fantastic.Tell us what you do.[00:32:48] Speaker D: Now, you obviously just work with MSPs here in the UK, or presumably just mostly in the UK, but tell us what you do for MSPs and how can someone get in touch with you?[00:32:58] Speaker C: Okay, so I typically work with MSPs in the north of England. I have a bit of a specialism with sort of smaller businesses. So kind of ten people up to 100 and 5200 people.I like to say, and I believe it's true that I tend to consult more than I do recruit. So there are quite a few businesses that I work with that we still maintain that relationship even when they're not recruiting. And I'm advising on the next hires. A big one is salespeople. When do I need to bring on a salesperson? It's those conversations that are helpful to a lot of businesses. But some of this advice, it's telling them when the processes are taking too long. Having honest conversations with candidates throughout the process to make sure that they aren't just sort of seeing the process through, just to see what happens, is actually making sure that the people that they're speaking to are committed and interested in working with the business so that when it comes to the okay, it was time to hire. They're much more likely to get someone who is invested and interested and kind of has plans to be with them for more than the standard one and a half to two years that we normally see throughout the MSP side of things.[00:34:11] Speaker D: That's so cool. Thank you. And how do we get in touch with you, Josh?[00:34:14] Speaker C: Easiest way at LinkedIn. All my contact details are there, or you can find our agency's website, beaumont Technology.[00:34:22] Speaker A: Paul Green's, MSP marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.[00:34:28] Speaker C: Hi, I'm John Douglas.[00:34:30] Speaker F: I'm the Technical Director and Head of Incident Response at First Response. The book I'm recommending is the Blue Team Handbook for Incident Response. The reason I love this book is it's a recipe book. It's not a book you read from COVID to cover. It's a recipe book that you dive into to remember the particular parameters for individual commands that you might use during an incident. So if you can't remember how TCP dump works and what you need it for, what it's good for using in your incident, then that's the book to.[00:35:04] Speaker A: Grab coming up next week.[00:35:08] Speaker D: Hey, everyone.[00:35:08] Speaker E: I'm Jim Haney, vice president of marketing at Novatech. I'm excited about the upcoming episode with Paul. Where we're going to dive into some marketing best practices for MSPs to really propel you and be relevant to your target audience.[00:35:20] Speaker B: That is going to be such a great interview next week. And we're also going to be looking at something cool you can do in LinkedIn. Did you know you can send voice notes in LinkedIn? It's been there for a while, that functionality, but we've never talked about it.[00:35:34] Speaker D: We're going to address that next week.[00:35:36] Speaker B: Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.[00:35:41] Speaker A: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's, MSP Marketing podcast.

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Episode 207Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 An MSP horror story you'll want to avoid * 05:14 The advice that could save your marriage * 10:05 Creating a brand video to win new clients

Featured guest:Thank you to filmmaker Mariana Henninger, for joining me to talk about how MSPs can use a brand video to appeal to prospects and get the edge over their local competition.Mariana is a seasoned EMMY® Award winning documentary filmmaker who has taken her passion and experience in intimate and emotion-driven personal storytelling to help coaches, course creators, speakers and authors hone in on their story and create ONE single video that will revolutionize their sales process.Connect with Mariana on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/marianahenninger/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, The Phoenix Project: A Novel About It, Devops, And Helping Your Business Win: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Phoenix-Project-Devops-Helping-Business/dp/1942788290

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world. This is Paul Green's, MSP Marketing podcast. Happy Halloween. This is Vampire Paul. And welcome to the Shawl here's. Vatviv. I can't keep doing that. Here's what we've got coming up for you this week.[00:00:18] Speaker B: Hey everyone. I'm Mariana Henninger. I am obsessed with brand videos and the most amazing, powerful things that they can do for your business and building that emotional connection with your customer. So join me on the podcast to hear all about brand videos.[00:00:33] Speaker A: And on top of that fantastic interview later on, I've also got a piece of advice for you in today's show that's so important it could save your marriage.Paul Green's, MFP marketing podcast. Now let me start this week with a very funny story to tell you, told to me by a very good friend of mine called Darren. Now, it's important you know before I tell you this story that Darren is not a tech. He doesn't know about your world at all. In fact, he's from my world. He's a marketing guy, someone I used to work with in radio a long time ago. And now he works for some marketing agency somewhere doing something with video. I have no idea what he actually does. That's kind of not relevant to the story. He sent me a voice note a couple of weeks ago. And the voice note was about the experience that him and his colleagues had when they called their It support company. So their agency that they work for, they have an MSP. Of course, I'm not going to tell you the name, not going to tell you the name of the agency either. Because imagine if the MSP owner was listening to this podcast and realized it was their business. That would be horrendous. Anyway, they have a thing in the office that whenever there is a technical problem, they try themselves to fix it so that they don't have to call their It support company. So just think about that here. They have such little respect and such little love for their MSP that whenever someone's computer is broken, they all crowd around the computer and try and fix it themselves. And Darren said to me that it's a big thing if someone has to call it support. They all get a little bit kind of like the whole energy comes down. And I said to him, well, why is it we had a back and forth on this? And I said, why is that? And he said, essentially because it just seems to take them so long to respond to the request. Seems to take them so long to actually do anything. Everything just takes so long. And they would rather just try and fix it themselves. Isn't this interesting? Now, they also then had a technician come round. So once a year, a technician comes into the office and kind of does around all the desks and says to them, what problems have you got? And Darren has an issue with his printer, which is that when he goes to print stuff, it won't come out on the office printer. He can only connect to the boss's printer. So he reluctantly said to the guy, actually, do you think you could fix that? And him and a colleague were sort of sat the opposite side of the room having a little private conversation saying, please don't let him mess up my computer. Please don't let him mess up my computer. They have no respect for the MSP whatsoever. Now, I tell you this because it's actually quite an interesting insight into how ordinary people think and act, isn't it? Because we never really know what the conversations that are happening amongst the users and you could say, well, does it really matter what the users think? Yes, it really matters because I'll tell you what's going to happen at some point in the future. The boss of that business, and there's about 25 people in that business, the boss of the business is going to come out of their office one day and he's going to look around and say, where is everyone? What are they all doing? And then find them all crowded around someone's computer and will say, what's going on here? And they'll, you know, Dave's got an issue with his whatever. And the boss will just say, we'll ring it support. And the look on their faces and their response will tell him that something is up with it support. And this is how it starts. Someone switches from one MSP to another MSP, not because they're thinking with their brain. Well, most of the time they're not thinking with their brain. I need to save money or I need to do this. Most of the time it's down to an emotional response. My staff don't trust them. I am losing time and productivity because my staff don't trust it support people. So do you know what? Perhaps it's time to switch. This is why the world's best, simplest and yet most powerful marketing strategy is the right one for you. Because what we're really talking about here is getting the right message in front of the right person at the right time. My friend Darren's Boss isn't ready to switch MSP today, but he might be next week, or the week after, or the week after that. So here's what we need to do. We need to build multiple audiences of people to listen to us, at the very least, your LinkedIn and your email. Then we need to build a relationship with them. And we do this through content marketing. Send out an email once a week, an educational email, and post onto social media every day. And then the third step is we commercialize that relationship and we do that by making outbound phone calls. Not cold calls, not selling it's someone on your behalf calling up people like my friends. Darren's boss and just building the relationship, moving the relationship forward, trying to find that exact moment where their heart says it's time to switch from my incumbent to someone new. And hopefully that someone new will be you here's this week's. Clever idea.Now, this is pretty exciting for me because I get to do something and say something here which genuinely could save your marriage in 2024. It could improve your relationship with your children next year, and it could certainly make your business better, make it more robust, make it easier to grow it, and even make your staff happier. What is this thing that I've got, this miracle cure all thing? It's actually something very, very simple. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to grab your calendar right now. Pause this podcast if you need to go and grab your calendar. And I want you to look ahead to 2024, which remember, today at time of broadcast is only two months away. Then what I want you to do is I want you to look at all 52 weeks next year and decide which of those weeks you want to be on holiday. Now, if you have kids, it kind of makes sense that those holiday weeks should be when your kids are off school. If you have someone important in your life again, it kind of makes sense that you pick some holiday time when they can also have some holiday time. But here's what I want you to do. Whether you can do it now or whether it's something that has to be done tomorrow, I want you to find those holiday weeks and I want you to block them out in your calendar, and then I want you to block them out in your MSPs, like company calendar, whatever tool you use to coordinate who has leave. The thing I want you to do is I want you to pick two, three, four, whatever is appropriate, however many weeks next year for your holidays. And I want you to lock that into your diary now. And then I want you to tell your spouse, I want you to tell your kids and certainly tell your colleagues, this is when I am off next year. Nothing is going to change this. These are my holiday weeks. And particularly if you've allowed yourself a generous holiday and look, you know, I'm assuming you're the owner or the manager of the MSP, you should allow yourself a generous holiday. And what I want you to do is to lock those holidays in and schedule everything else around those holidays and not just do that next year, do that in 25, do it in 26, do it in 2027. I kind of wasn't exaggerating when I said that this could save your marriage or build your relationship with your kids. And I certainly wasn't exaggerating wasn't exaggerating when I said that this will improve your business. Because the stuff we're talking about here is you taking time for the really important things, which is family, which is thinking about your business, not just doing stuff in your business, but thinking about it, that having time off is absolutely critical. And yet it's so easy for us to forget this. It's so easy for us to get to March or April and think, oh yeah, we need to book some holiday time, we must get round to that. And then you discover that your service desk manager is booked off the first two weeks of August, so you can't do it then. And then someone else is off in September and suddenly the owner of the business, the person who, let's be honest, in terms of driving growth, is the most important person in the business, can't go and take the holiday that they need to do. So yet again, it's another year where you don't get a proper family holiday, or worse still, you have a family holiday, but you're doing some help desk stuff or doing some work stuff in the morning. So it's not a holiday.I know working holidays are all the rage, but for me, a proper holiday is where you have a complete break and that's it. There's no work whatsoever. It's really, really healthy. Do you know what? As well, you will last longer. Not just physically because you're more rested, but mentally because you're more rested. And actually you'll stay a business owner for longer as well. My first few years as a business owner, back in sort of 2005 to about 2008, I was working like 80 hours weeks. I was taking barely a few days off a year. And I wouldn't still be a business owner today here in 2023. If I'd carried on at that pace, I would have burned out so quickly. But I learned from a mentor of mine very quickly the power of doing this. Take some holidays that you want to have, lock them in your calendar. Everything else works around those holidays. Can you do this?Perhaps towards the end of this week, you're going to slump down on the couch, on the sofa at the end of the day, crack open a beer and do a little bit of a YouTube rabbit warren. Do you do know you just put on YouTube, you think just for five minutes and then 3 hours later you've watched all sorts of really cool videos because YouTube knows more about what you want to watch than you do. Well, if you're doing this and you don't want to have that guilty feeling at the end, then why not go on to my YouTube channel? Because we are trying very hard to make it as entertaining as we can. But you will also learn about marketing your business, discover some ways to grow your business while you're having a beer on the sofa, on the couch. Go on to Youtube.com. Slash MSP. Marketing.[00:10:08] Speaker B: Hi, I'm Mariana Henninger and I help businesses like MSPs build trust faster and sell more quickly with a two to four minute brand video and building trust quickly.[00:10:18] Speaker A: And certainly selling more quickly is something every MSP wants because the sales cycle is so long. And you're going to explain for us exactly what a brand video is later on in the interview. But thank you very much for joining us, Mariana. I do appreciate you having on the show. Very amusing. Just before we started the recording that I'm in my usual spiel I do with my guests of explaining how I've got a clapper board and how we're doing video. And then you said to me, so very politely, you said, paul, I'm a video producer. I know why you're doing all of these things. So thank you for being kind with me, because I'm not a video producer. I'm just a guy that stands in front of a camera. Let's talk a little bit about you before we talk about brand videos and building trust. Give us an idea of your background and how you got yourself to this point with your own business, producing videos for businesses.[00:11:02] Speaker B: For sure. I love it. So I'm a documentary filmmaker. I've been in the journalism sort of documentary world for about 15 years. I have an Emmy, another nomination for another emmy, and I'm absolutely obsessed, Paul, with passionate, intimate, beautiful, personal storytelling. And I believe that's how humans connect with humans. People do business with other people. MSPs do business with other it's, at the end of the day, the focus on how you're interacting with another person who's providing a service, who's solving a problem in your life or in your business, that human interaction is incredibly valuable. And so my entire work as a documentary filmmaker has been focused on really understanding what the emotional touch points, what the emotional connections between people are. And to me, the reason I love documentary filmmaking is because a good documentary film has the power to transform the way that you see the world and to help you see the world in a different way because you've connected with what that other person is going through and you feel something. So that is like the biggest objective to any video that I make. And now I'm focused on making brand videos. And the idea is, what do you want your customer, the person that you're serving, to feel at the end of watching this?[00:12:29] Speaker A: So you've actually got a real Emmy.[00:12:32] Speaker B: Yes, I do. It's right there. Wow.[00:12:34] Speaker A: And it sits on your desk. That's so cool.[00:12:37] Speaker B: I know. I need to reshuffle things around. So it's kind of in the background right now. You have a gold lamp, but not my Emmy.[00:12:43] Speaker A: But anyway no, you absolutely do.If you're just listening to this, go and watch this on YouTube.I think you're the first emmy award winner that we've ever had on the show. What was the project that you won the emmy for?[00:12:56] Speaker B: That was a story about a man whose mother was dying of dementia. And when we think of diseases, terrible diseases like dementia, obviously the person who is suffering from it is kind of the center of the story. And this man, he essentially decided to document what that meant, what that meant to have his young mom diagnosed with dementia. He didn't know what to expect, and so that's what drove him to start to pull out a GoPro and start kind of filming his interactions with his mom and posting them on YouTube. And all of a sudden, he kind of went viral when one day he would take his mom for a milkshake every time he saw her, and one time they're having a milkshake and she forgets who he is. And obviously that's heartbreaking to experience that. Long story short, the story kind of focuses on him and the idea that caretakers have this massive toll that's not always talked about.And so it's a really touching story. I had to cram it into ten minutes because my boss at the time thought it should be super short. I had enough for a feature film, I think, and people are like, is this the trailer? But at the end of the day, sometimes less is more, and it's very impactful.I don't recommend you watch it unless you have a box of tissues.[00:14:18] Speaker A: So it's not like a barbenheimer thing, maybe, where you have something happy to watch. After you've watched this, I think you.[00:14:25] Speaker B: Go back and you appreciate the family that you have, perhaps is kind of.[00:14:29] Speaker A: The yeah, I can imagine that. So you talk about producing pieces of filmed I don't want to say the word entertainment after you've just described that, but what you won your Emmy for was essentially entertainment. I guess it was educational, but it was at a heart entertainment. You talk about moving people and affecting them emotionally, and obviously this is something you're now doing with businesses rather than actually creating filmed entertainment. So how did you make that leap? Where was that natural jump for you?[00:15:00] Speaker B: Yeah, so I'd been in the journalism documentary world for so long, about 15 years, and traveled all over the world. I've been to Afghanistan and Haiti and Israel, and I've lived in different continents, and that was my entire life. I loved it, and I really could have kept doing that my whole life, but I had been at NBC at that point for about five years in this position, and a couple of things were happening. One, I had sort of reached the sort of salary ceiling that I could get without becoming a manager, which I didn't want to do. I still wanted to be in the field, meeting people, being a filmmaker. And then the second thing is, I've kind of been a closeted entrepreneur my whole life. I started my first business when I was six years old in my neighbor's garden shed, that I asked them to empty out so I could build a little school and would charge students $0.25 apiece to come and learn how to read before they went to first grade. It was just like a business. I've always wanted to make my own money, and so I've always found ways to do that. And it was kind of at a point where I had to ask myself, if not now, when?If I don't kind of pause on this career that I've built and this amazing journey that I've had and start a business and kind of see how I can take all of this knowledge and experience that I had gained at that point and combine my two passions. Because the entire time I'd been passionate about business and marketing and sales and growth and making money, all these things really excite me. But I had never really worked with them or been involved in them. And I decided it was time to combine these really two big passions of mine. And that's how know formed brand magnetic.[00:16:40] Speaker A: And of course, that's something that Michael Gerber talks about in his book The E myth Revisited. He calls it the entrepreneurial seizure, doesn't he? Which is where once you've got that idea in your head that I should do this thing, I should do it for myself, if you don't let it out, then you remain a very unhappy person. I'm sure there are many unhappy colleagues of yours. Is it 30 Rockefeller Place? Is that where NBC is? It rings a bell from 30 Rock, which is a sitcom I vaguely watch for a while. Anyway. Less showbiz stuff, more brand videos. Explain to us what a brand video is, because we talk a lot about video on this podcast, and videos are so important for MSPs, even though few of them ever really embrace it. But what specifically is a brand video?[00:17:22] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. A brand video is probably something you've not seen before. So it's a two to four minute video that is focused on the parts of your story that, you know, resonate emotionally with your audience, and it's filled with compelling visuals. The two kind of most important questions that you need to ask is, what do I want my audience to feel after watching this? Which is, how does my audience feel right after engaging with me in business, right after hiring my services as an MSP, for example? And then the second question is, what do I know resonates with my audience? So whatever journey I've been on as the founder of my business, as the person who is hopefully passionate about being an MSP, what is it about my story that I know my audience will connect with and will understand?For most businesses, you want your audience. For most MSPs, you would probably want your audience to think, oh, I can trust this person. Like, wow, look how driven they are. Look how obsessed they are about what they do. Look how organized they are. Look how much they've done. Which I kind of try to stay away from accomplishments and awards and other things that we might use for marketing purposes and really focus on your story. As a human, we think about the know, like, and trust factor in marketing. And I'm sure you've talked to your audiences about, you know, the no is obviously awareness. People have a problem they need to solve, so they come to an MSP, or they're looking for one. So let's say they become aware of you and we want them to get to trust, which is when they're ready to buy. Right? But we kind of skip over the like so what makes you likable as an MSP? What makes you likable as a human? And that's what your brand video is going to focus on in, like, two to four minutes.[00:19:12] Speaker A: I love this. I love this so much. Because the average MSP doesn't know much about marketing. They're fantastic at what they do with the technology and looking after clients and helping people. But when it comes to marketing, they don't know what to do. So without any help, the average MSP will just chuck themselves together. A website, which is about accreditations, it's about qualifications, it's about what we can do. And look, we've got a partnership with Cisco or whoever brands that most people haven't heard of these days. And a constant drum for me that I'm beating is exactly what you've just said. Actually. Prospects pick you or don't pick you based on their ability to get to know you, to like you, and to trust you. So I'm hearing nothing but good things here. So a four minute video, this is the one thing that would concern me a little bit. And I know that I will sit and happily watch and or the Star Wars show on Disney Plus, which is 48 minutes an episode, and I'll happily sit and watch that. But I know that they've probably spent $10 million filming that. And no MSP has $10 million or even a million dollars to film a four minute video. So how do you stop that four minute video being boring? Because I often find with videos that the shorter the video, the better. Unless you've got the ability to really tell that good story, which most of us don't have.[00:20:27] Speaker B: Yeah, no, absolutely.I won't sugarcoat it, Paul. It's actually kind of hard to tell your own story on your own. It's much easier when you're working with somebody who has the expertise and who kind of can guide you along the way. So with my students, I've created frameworks for them to do a lot of this sort of starting work yourself, but in order to get to that story that's very well crafted and is a conversion tool for your business. It's not just your origin story. It's not just the story that you tell about yourself. It really is thinking about the intersection of who you are with what your audience resonates with. That is the golden sort of roadmap for a brand video that works like it should. And so if four minutes makes your story boring, then don't do four minutes, do two. Do half of that. The idea for a great video is usually that less is more. So we call it in the filmmaking business, trimming the fat. So it requires sometimes a lot of massaging and processing your story. It's not something that you just kind of throw together, although I will say so that's kind of my official answer.But I will say if you're not ready for a brand video yet, or if this is just the first time you've even heard of it, whatever the case may be, just the idea that you're coming on and sharing keep it short, but sharing a little bit about who you are, who the person is behind the MSP, is already going to do wonders for your business. It's already going to differentiate you from everyone else. And one other point that I want to make, based on something that you've said, I think there are still businesses who are kind know MSPs, other businesses. There are a lot of folks making this mistake where their website is basically all about them, their credentials, their experience. These are the clients we've worked with. This is what we can do. Look how awesome we are. Pick us.If you read Story Brand by Donald Miller, which you might have spoken to folks about, your audience, your customer is your hero, and they're the person who you should address your website to. So depending on who I work with, they're either in one end of the spectrum or the other, where they're either only talking about themselves or they're only talking about what we can do for you. And here's how amazing your life will be when you work with us. And what I try to do is kind of think about how can we meet in the middle where you are focusing your messaging on your customer and what the transformation in their business, the amazing results that they can have by working with you. So it is about them, but ultimately they still want to know. It's still so important to know who that person is behind that business. So what makes you different from the MSP that's competing with you in the same market or whatever the case may be?How are you differentiating yourself? Because messages tend to sound the same after a while. And the thing that really will set you apart is who you are as the MSP behind your business.[00:23:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I completely agree. This is awful when you have a guest on and you agree with everything that you say, but I agree completely with you there. There's no conflict here because actually your average prospect, someone that's a normal business owner that's looking to switch from their incumbent, that they're not happy with anymore for emotional reasons. They'll switch over to someone new. They'll do a beauty parade of, let's say, three or four or five MSPs. And if all of those MSPs will say the same thing and what you're saying here is you've got even if you only go slightly down this route, you've got an opportunity to stand out and be different by I love that mix of talking about them and talking about yourself.Let's just as a final exploration and this is putting you on the spot a little bit, but let's say you did start working with an MSP. We'll give him a name. His name is Dave. And Dave which state should we have Dave in? Let's have Dave in South Carolina. And Dave's been running his MSP for five years. There's him and five of his staff. He's married. He's got two kids. He goes to church every Sunday. He supports the local baseball team. Don't ask me what that is, but that's Dave, and he's just a regular guy, right, who happens to be an It owner. He loves what he does, but he wants more clients. Now, I'm not asking you to tell us exactly what you would do with Dave, because I'm sure that's a very long process, which we can't do in the three minutes left of this interview. But what's the kind of approach that you would take in a situation like that? How would you start to delve into what someone's story is, and how do you get that out?[00:25:08] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So I start with those two really important questions is, first of all, hopefully Dave knows so much about his audience that is the one thing that you should do for your business. No matter what you're doing in business, you should understand your audience, understand their pain points as if they were your own. Understand. But adding to that layer of understanding them is understanding again, how do they need to feel right before they buy from you? So 95% of purchasing decisions are based on subconscious. A study by Harvard Business School kind of revealed that. And what is the subconscious? It's how you feel. It's not how you're thinking logistically and logically about price point and what exactly you're getting those things. You can diminish that part of your brain by tapping into the emotional state of that person. Trust is an emotion, right? And we know that trust leads to buying. And so for Dave, I would want to know more about his audience, and I would want to know, are most of the folks that he speaks with, are they dads as, like, maybe the literal league coaching is something that what personality traits of Dave do we learn by the things that he does? And in that universe, of all of Dave's personality traits, which ones will resonate with his audience the most? Which ones will they identify with and start to see Dave as that friend? Start. To see Dave. Like, man, I want to work with Dave. He's a cool. Like I like him. His values are similar to mine. So that's what I would tap into first. As we're thinking about Dave's core story, and then the additional layer to the brand video is just thinking about compelling already. I was like watching that brand video as you were describing it in my head, because I'm thinking about all of the things that can kind of illustrate Dave when he's not on his computer doing work. We don't need to see that because we're all doing that.That's not a compelling visual, but we want to think about the things that sort of are supporting aspects of Dave's story that not only very literally kind of illustrate what he does, but sort of bring us in that emotional journey. And that's what a good movie will do, right? When you're just carried along, it's called narrative transportation. When the part of your brain that's thinking, can I afford this? How difficult will this be? Yada, yada, yada. Boring, boring, boring. Numbers on a page. And instead we're thinking about, like, of course I'm going to work with Dave. He's awesome.I don't care how much it costs, he's my guy.[00:27:42] Speaker A: I love that phrase, narrative transportation. And I'm laughing as well, because it sounds like the least interesting thing about Dave is all the technology stuff. And the most interesting thing is everything else, his actual life. And actually, if you think about how we used to buy back in the 1960s so I know you live just outside New York City. One of my favorite in fact, probably my number one favorite TV show of all time is Mad Men, which maybe you've seen. It's about the advertising world on Madison Avenue in the 1960s. And it's so much more than just about advertising. It's just a snapshot of America at the time. It's an utterly compelling show. And one of the things that's interesting is how difficult it is to get messages to people. When you're buying from someone, you have to physically meet with them because it's the you can pick up the phone, but even the phone is difficult and the technology that we have today isn't there. And I think about how did people buy 50, 60 years ago? They met with each other, they had a drink with each other. They shook hands, they met each other's. Families go back 100 years ago, we were trading out of our houses, weren't we? It's almost like we've come full circle. 150 years ago, shops were people's houses. What we have here in the UK of pubs, bars in the US, they were people's houses. You stayed in people's houses. And now we work from home. We don't quite trade from home. But anyway, it's very similar. So what we're looking at doing here is using video to try to replace that, because we've lost that from the we lost that actual physical connecting with people, and it's really cool that we now have the technology to replace it. Anyway, I love that we're going to let Dave get back on with his computer stuff. I'm sure Dave is not looking forward to his filming session, but it'll be worth it, Dave, when you get lots of new clients. Mariana, thank you so much for sharing with us. Tell us a little bit more about what you can do to help MSPs and how can we get in touch with you?[00:29:32] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I think the best place to send folks is Brandmagnetic.com. I've got a Brand video starter guide that is a great place for you to kind of start thinking about what your story would be, how would you craft that core story, what visuals would be involved there, and it's a great sort of starter place for folks. Brandmagnetic.com.[00:29:52] Speaker A: Paul Green's, MFP Marketing Podcast this week's recommended book.[00:29:58] Speaker C: Hi. My name is Henry Duncombe. I'm the managing director of Lanware, a specialist MSP to the UK financial services sector. My book recommendation is the Phoenix project. It's the story of Bill, an It manager at a manufacturing company. It's tuesday morning, on his drive to work, Bill gets a call from the CEO. The company's new It initiative, codenamed the Phoenix Project, is critical to the future of the company, but the project is massively over budget, very late, and in complete chaos. The CEO wants Bill to report directly to him, fix the mess in 90 days or Bill's going to lose his job and his entire It department will be outsourced. It's a race against the clock. It's the journey that Bill then goes on is one that I think anyone who's been tasked with growing an It function or building an It business will totally relate to. It's full of moments that will make you smile and cringe at the same time when you recall some of your own similar experiences coming up next week.[00:31:00] Speaker A: Hi, I'm Josh. I'm a technical recruiter at Beaumont. I'm going to tell you all the problems that you have with finding and retaining technical stuff and how to fix them. And on top of that fantastic interview next week, we're going to look at how to make things easier. Easier for new clients to choose you, easier for them to deal with you on a daily basis, and certainly easier for them to spend more with you. We want to remove as much friction within your MSP as possible, so everything dealing with you seems easy. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP. Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's. Ms MSP marketing podcast.

The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win

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Episode 206Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 Improve your networking game to win more clients * 10:17 How to raise your prices and take your clients with you * 19:31 Securing investment for your new business

Featured guest:Thank you to Scott McCrady, CEO of SolCyber, for joining me to talk about setting up a brand new MSSP, and how he raised $20 million of investment to get the business off the ground.With 25 years of experience working in the networking, telecommunications, and information security space, Scott is currently serving as the CEO of SolCyber Managed Security Services. Scott has worked with large companies and start-ups, among them IBM and EDS, where he held Security Engineer and Team Leader positions (US and London).Previous to SolCyber, McCrady built the Asia-Pacific-Japan business at Symantec; he ran the global Managed Security Service, and the Symantec and Accenture Joint Venture. He then transitioned to FireEye pre-IPO to create their global MSS and System Integrator, and traveled to Singapore to help build their APJ business. After a successful run with FireEye, Scott helped spin out SonicWall from Dell to private equity and reconstitute the business into a profitable, cash flow-positive entity.Connect with Scott on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottmccrady/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Here's a link to Episode 179, where I covered networking in detail: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode179/ * Check out this week's recommended business author, Jay Abraham: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jay-Abraham/e/B001IR1EXG/

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world. This is Paul Green's, MSP Marketing podcast. Hello, my friend, and welcome back to the show. Here's what we got in store for you this week.[00:00:14] Speaker B: Hey, I'm Scott McCrady with SolCyber. Can't wait to be on Paul's podcast to talk about how we raised $20 million to bring a new security service to the market.[00:00:23] Speaker A: And on top of that, fascinating interview with Scott, later on in the show, we'll be talking about hidden price rises. Is there an opportunity coming up for you to put your prices up in the new year?Paul Green's, MSP Marketing Podcast let's start this week's show talking about networking. And I'll avoid my usual joke of networking, saying, I mean the one with people and not cables. But I do mean the one with people and not cables. Because networking events, depending on your experience of them and whether you've ever done them before, networking events are either fantastic places for you to go and meet potential new leads, or they are sheer hell. The idea of them is torture. It's a torment for you, the thought of having to go out and do them. I've done my fair share of networking over the years. When I started my very first business in 2005, it was like a general marketing business. And I used to go out to all the networking events in a county called Northamptonshire in the middle of the UK. And I went to literally every event that I could find. And then I joined BNI, which was great for a couple of years until it wasn't anymore. And over the years, I've had so many badly cooked breakfasts, got up at 05:00 A.m. To go to meetings, gone to evening meetings. It did win business. But then I found really good marketing, and I got really good at marketing, and particularly B to B marketing. And suddenly, networking was just one little thing that we did. It was no longer the thing that we relied on, but for many MSPs, networking is a big thing. And we did a whole subject on this back in episode 179. So if you want to dive into networking and why you should be doing it, go and relisten right now, or listen for the first time to episode 179. Now, the reason I want to mention it here in this episode is because I was recently talking to an MSP, happened to be here in the UK. It's someone I'm working closely with, but I've only known closely for about six months. And they have utterly gone for networking, almost as if there was nothing else. And there is actually lots of other marketing that they're doing, but they have a full time marketing resource in the business. And that person has decided, if I'm going to do networking, I'm going to do networking properly. And I've got some stats that they gave me just a few weeks ago when we had a catch up call. So they attended, they did eight separate events. So they are in London, here in the UK, and there are a lot of networking events and I think eight events was actually a fairly small number, but that was across a two week period. So for two weeks, they went to eight separate events. And I'm not quite sure if they are figuring on doing that regularly. That seems like a hell of a cadence, doesn't it, to go to? I guess that works out at four events a week. Maybe that's overkill, maybe you wouldn't find that many events in your area. But that's what they did initially. They went to eight different events and their goal was to go there and meet as many new people as possible, have some kind of meaningful conversation with them. So they went to these eight events. Out of these eight events, they got three hot leads. And I pushed them and said, Right, what does that mean? That three hot leads. Three hot leads is where they've had a conversation with someone which has ended with an exchange of business cards and diarizing. Hey, great, I'm going to give you a call tomorrow morning, 945, or whatever is the case. So that hot lead is someone that could go on to do business with them. There's an opportunity there and crucially, it's in the diary. There's not just that vague, give me a call. Oh, I hate that, don't you? Give me a call. What does that mean? Give me a call? It's a way of fobbing people off, isn't it? Give me a call next week, see if we're ready to talk to you. Well, guess what? Spoilers, we're probably not, because it's a way of fobbing someone off. If they're serious about talking to you, they will book something in their calendar there and then. And if they won't do that, the chances are high that they are not serious. So, eight networking events, lots of breakfasts, lots of talking to people, three hot leads and they have generated a brand new client. Out of those three hot leads, worth 7000 pounds of monthly recurring revenue in US money, that's around about, let's say, about nine k $9,000 of monthly recurring revenue. Was that a useful use of their time? I would say so, yes. Wouldn't you? Eight meetings, three hot leads, one new client. Now, what I don't want is for you to say, oh, there's the magic formula. All I got to do is go to eight meetings, all I got to do is talk to get three hot leads and I'll get a really juicy client out of it. ISIS bet it's not going to be quite as easy as that for you. I say this not to give you an idea of numbers, because of course, we don't know the type of events they went to, we don't know what kind of businesses were there, we don't know how much work they had to do to actually reel in. That 8000 excuse me, that 7000 pounds of monthly recurring revenue, I suspect quite a lot of work. My point was this networking, like any type of marketing, can work really, really well for you. Really well if you throw yourself at it. And I see so many MSPs doing little bits of marketing here. I'll do a little bit of email, a little bit of LinkedIn, a little bit of something else. I'll go to one networking event, oh, I didn't meet anyone interesting there. And actually marketing doesn't work like that. Especially B. Two B marketing and especially MSP. Marketing. MSP marketing has a very long sales cycle. The kinds of people who are one day going to become your clients are currently sat with your competitors, fearful of leaving them because better the devil you know, they know technology is important, but they don't understand that technology. Therefore they're scared to switch to someone they don't know and that might include you. It's a very, very slow sales cycle for this and a number of other reasons. Networking is a great way to meet new people, but it is only the start of that. You've got to throw yourself into it. If you're going to do it, try it and give it a good long term push. Now, as you can imagine, my client is very, very happy to keep doing networking. And I'm sure that over a period of time that networking will become less efficient. But they've certainly had a good start from it to win one new client like that. And I would encourage them to get going. By the way, while we are talking about this, there is a side conversation which came up about getting stuck, stuck talking to the same person. Well, actually it was two subjects. One was how to work a room, and the other was how to avoid getting stuck talking to the same person. And if you've been networking yourself, you may know that this is a problem. Particularly if you're nervous and you're not a particularly confident person. And you walk into this networking room and there's someone you meet the very first time and you shake hands and you've not met them before and they're nervous and you're nervous and you say hi, hi, how are you? And 3 hours later you're stills talking to each other, you're stuck with each other, it's just you and that other person. And you're looking at all these other people thinking I missed out on these people, what do I do? Well, actually, we've got one thing that we can do which combines both of these things and it's very, very simple. You spend ten minutes talking to the person that you've met, but you talk exclusively about them. You see there's a number of things that happen when you talk exclusively about someone else. So you go to a networking meeting, you shake their hand. Hi. I'm Paul. What's your name? You're Dave? Hi, Dave. Nice to meet you. What do you do, Dave? Dave tells you what he does, and it's either a good explanation of what he does that he's bringing to life, or he bores you for five minutes telling you something. I'm an accountant, and I like to do numbers and figures or whatever it is he says. But whatever it is he says, you then follow that up with a series of open questions about him and his business. And the more you ask about him and his business, the more fascinating you will be to him. It's kind of weird how that works. It's the opposite of how it should be. It should be that the more we talk about us, the more fascinating we should be. But actually, that's not how it works. Brains are not wired that way. It's completely the opposite way. The more you talk about him and his business and ask him interesting questions, the more fascinating you become. And that is the challenge that is open to you. So you ask him about his business. Of course you tell him what you do. But anytime he starts swinging the conversation back to him, back to you sorry. You swing it back to him, and then you make a decision after ten minutes, is Dave, is this person I'm talking to worth continuing the conversation, or is it time for me to move on? And if it is time for you to move on, here's what you can do. You can say, Dave, I've really enjoyed talking to you today. It's been fascinating. Shake my hand. Shake, shake, shake. It's good to have the little sound effect there. Shake, shake, shake. And you say, I'm going to go and meet someone new here, and I'm sure that you want to do the same as well. Let's just swap business cards, and perhaps we can keep in touch. The point is, by talking to Dave about him and his business for so much, you have earned the right to terminate the conversation. Essentially, you've controlled the entire interaction here. Now I'm talking about people that you meet for the first time. When you meet them the second, 3rd, fourth time, it's not so easy to do this. But that first time, you can be completely in control of that interaction, because you know, the goal for you being here tonight is to meet ten or 15 or 20 people, and you're not going to do that when you're stuck talking to Dave. So you kind of blitz Dave, learn as much as you can about him, and then you have earned the right to shake his hand. Say, you're a fascinating guy, Dave. I'm so glad I bumped into you. So I'm going to go and meet some new people, and I'm sure you want to do the same. Always make it seem aligned, like you're there for the same reason. Look forward to seeing you again soon. And that's it, you're off. Simple as that. So is networking a big thing for your MSP? I'd love to know your experiences of it. Why don't you go into our Facebook group and let me and a whole load of other MSPs know what networking is like for you? It's the Facebook group. It's called MSP Marketing and I'd love to hear your experiences in there. Here's this week's. Clever idea.Don't hate me, but I'm going to be one of the first to say it. Christmas is nearly here. I know, I know. We're only at the end of October, more or less, and it does seem like we've got two months, but we haven't. We've got about six and a half weeks, something like that. It's kind of crazy when you look at how fast Christmas sneaks up on you once you get to this time of year. Christmas is good because it leads on to New Year and January a new year. And January presents you an opportunity to do something very cool, specifically to put your prices up for your existing clients. Now I love price rises. Ironically, not with my MSP Marketing Edge service. It is still the same price today as it was when we launched it in 2016. It's 99 pounds a month, plus VAT in the UK and $129 everywhere else in the world. Bit of a warning. We can sign a claxon warning in January. February, we are going to increase the prices for new members. So if you want to lock that price in now, go and have a look. MSP. MSP marketing edge. Just sneaked in a sneaky advert there. You didn't even know that I'd done it. Anyway, I might not love price Rises for my service. We're playing a bigger game. We're playing a subscription. Not a bigger game, a different game. We're playing a subscription game where we have I mean, we've got 700 plus MSPs. It's a little bit different to the MSP game that you're playing where you might only have ten or 20 or 30 clients and actually you've got to grow their revenue in order to grow your own revenue. So January gives us a massive opportunity to do this, and one of the opportunities in January is to do kind of like a hidden price rise. Now, there are a number of different ways that you might do this. Here's one that I like. You can email your clients or write to them on some dead tree or talk to them in person, whichever you feel most comfortable with. Some MSPs prefer email, some MSPs prefer to have this conversation in real life. And you can say to them, well, you can either just say, we're putting our prices up because it's another year and it's our annual price rise. But I think sometimes you need to be a bit smarter with that, especially now where we're still in this kind of cost of living crisis. Everything is so expensive. The economy is still a bit yeah, it's not like we are full on in good times, like we will be again in about three, four years time because everything is cyclical. The economy is a permanent cycle of up and down and up and down. No, instead, what we could do right now is we could just do a sneaky price rise, a clever hidden price rise. And the easiest way to do that is just to tell your existing clients that you are upgrading them to the 2024 plan. Now, there is a certain amount of fluff and packaging to this, but let me explain what I'm thinking. So you've got your current 2023 plan, and what I mean by plan is actually stack, except we're not going to use the word stack with clients because they don't know what a stack is. To them, a stack is for pancakes. They don't understand what it is to have a stack, whatever it is. Stack, you've got your security stack or you're just your stack stack. I've said the word stack too many times now. So we're going to use the word plan and you can write to your clients and you can say, we are automatically upgrading you to our 2024 plan. Dear client, for the last three months or so, you've been benefiting from our very latest protection and our very latest plan at no cost to you. We've upgraded you to this for your own protection and for our own protection, because it includes the latest security products. As of the 10 February or whatever date you pick, we will now be shifting your pricing over to that 2024 plan. And all you're doing with this is you're putting your prices up. You're not saying to them it's going up by a percentage, as we say. It's like an upgrade to their plan. And we'll talk about what happens if they don't want to upgrade. In a second, we will come back to that. But you say to them and you need to kind of put some justification in. So you might say to them, without getting too much into detail, and certainly not naming vendors, that's never a good idea. And they don't know who they are anyway. But you might say to them, in the last year with the rise of AI, we've seen a huge proliferation, that's a good word, huge proliferation in the amount of AI spam. So we've upgraded your email filters. We've also seen more AI driven phishing attempts. You explain what phishing is to them. So we've upgraded your protection on that. Essentially, as you buy in new things in your security stack and you add those in, which you're probably just doing anyway, there comes a point where you need to catch up, isn't there, where the clients need to start paying for these services that you've bought over the last year. That's the opportunity that's coming up and that's what you do to them. So you say to them, you've been on the 2024 plan for a few months, enjoying that while we get it all settled down, and your pricing will increase on the 10 February to reflect that and to reflect the enhanced investment that we have made into your business. So some of them, well, many of them will just go, okay with this. They just see a price rise. They understand that a price rise is coming. You've actually linked the price rise to an increase in performance, to an enhancement to their plan. That's fine. Everything's cool. It's all good in the hood. But there will always be some who don't want to have that price rise. And you do give them the option to opt out. And what you say to them is, if you don't want to upgrade to the 2024 plan, please can you book a ten minute call with me where we can just talk through the security implications of that and we can discuss what's best for your business? Rest assured, if you want to stay on your current plan, your current price point, then you can do that and you give them your link to your calendar. Now, the reason you give them a link to a calendar and don't just say to them, Hit reply or something like that, is we want to give them a hoop to jump through.We're not talking here about raising prices for the sake of it. We're talking about them paying you back for the stack that you've improved. You may put a bit of a hidden price rise in there and actually increase your prices as well. But essentially, we're talking about getting your clients to pay for the extra protection that you have gone out and got for them. So let's not make it too easy for them to hit reply and go, no thanks. And as far as they're concerned, that's the end of it. Let's get them on a call, and when you get them on that call, you need to talk them through all the different things, why you've put things in place, how it benefits them, what the downsides are of not improving it. At this point, most people will just go, yeah, okay, you've got my back. I get that. I completely understand that. Thank you.It's annoying. Things are tough at the moment, but we'll take the price hit, and that's what you're kind of looking for. But you will now and again get some people who still say no. And this is the point where you can ask them to sign a disclaimer. Now, this disclaimer we're going to ask them to sign has no legal power. It's not something you would ever use in court. But what it is is a psychological tool that will show them they're about to make a big mistake. That's very exciting. So this disclaimer, and we actually give one to our MSP Marketing Edge members, I've just got another advert in this disclaimer. It's something which you put in front of them and you talk it through with them and you say, right, please, can we just run through this? And I'm going to record this call. So I've got your acceptance of it, and then I'm going to ask you to esign it. So do you accept that by not coming onto the 2024 plan, you're leaving your email, you've got less than advanced security for your email, less than advanced phishing protection, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you just take them through all these things and then you send it to them. And this is critical. This is the most important bit with a disclaimer. You ask them to esign it, or if you're physically in front of them, you ask them to sign it. Why? Because that is the point. Their brain goes, whoa there, horsey. What's he asking me to or what's she asking me to sign? And anytime someone's asked to sign something, they are committing to something. And that's the point. Their brain kind of goes, whoa, hang on, stop. What is this? Read this through. What are the implications of this? I am signing, particularly if you had a little bit of text at the bottom that says, by signing here, I confirm that I have denied an upgrade to the 2024 security plan and I accept all of the risks to my business, as detailed above. As I say, no legal ramifications of that whatsoever. A lawyer would probably laugh that out of court. I don't know, I'm not a lawyer. Don't get on well with lawyers, but you get the idea. It's a psychological tool to make them look at this and say, do you know what, maybe these guys are right. Maybe because we're serious about business, maybe we should just go with that 2024 plan. Paul's, paul's. Blatant plug. Blatant plug. Do I deserve another Blatant plug? Do I really? I've already mentioned the MSP marketing edge. And I've already mentioned the Facebook group. But let me tell you a little bit more about that because it is a free resource for you. You can hang out with a thousand or so other MSPs people just like you who are interested in growing and marketing their business. And it's completely free. It's a vendor free zone as well. There's just me and MSPs there, and we just talk about marketing and growing your business. If you want to get in, grab your phone, tap on Facebook, go to the search bar, type in MSP marketing, go to groups, and you're looking for the MSP Marketing Group on Facebook, join that. And I look forward to having a talk to you there and helping you grow your business.[00:19:34] Speaker B: Hey, Paul, thanks for having me. Scott McCrady, CEO, Founder of SolCyber I've been in the security space for almost my entire career, was an engineer by trade, but has spent most of my time in managed security services.[00:19:47] Speaker A: And I'm so excited to have you on the show, Scott, because I'm always looking for unusual guests. I should probably say interesting guests. Interesting and unusual guests who have done cool things that ordinary people like myself, the owners of MSPs, haven't done. And you've had a pretty amazing career. And then the last few years, you've been very focused on building your own business, but not in the bootstrap way that many of us build our businesses. You've gone out and you've done some serious fundraising, and we're going to explore that later on in the interview. Let's first of all just talk about your career. So give us sort of a brief history of what you've done, some of the cool businesses that you've worked for, and some of the stuff that you've learned along the way.[00:20:29] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. As I mentioned, I was an engineer by trade, so when I came out of university, I was setting up networks and security infrastructure. And at the time there wasn't clarity on what to do with the information coming out of the new security component. So these were back in the days of early firewalls and early intrusion detection systems. And so I had a job at Eds and I started building what would become a sock, but at the time, it was just a place to consume the data and we'd put it into the NOC. I then got hired by a company that ended up becoming semantics MSSP business. And at the time, it was about the only MSSP company out there. There were a couple others that came on soon after, and I just got super lucky. I got the opportunity to get sent to Sydney to build out the Asia Pacific and Japan business, build a stock in Sydney, one in Tokyo, and then we had one in India as well. Spent four years in Sydney, and as everyone likes to tell me, it was a very rough assignment. But somehow I managed to fight my way through living in Australia and then went back and ran the global MSSP business out of DC and then went to a pre IPO FireEye, pre Mandian acquisition. Then the Mandian acquisition happened and built their MSSP business. And it's been a great career, and it's really been interesting to see both the changes, but also the fact that in a way, there also hasn't been that much change since the original models that we set up 20 years ago.[00:21:53] Speaker A: And what do you mean by that? Because obviously I've only been in the MSP world since 2016, and even I've seen huge amounts of change in the threat landscape and how much activity there is. Those models that you put in pace 20 years ago, are they broadly still the same models now? Could you explain that a bit more?[00:22:11] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. So the model that we had 20 years ago was something along the lines of and at the time it was only large companies that cared. Is they would go out and pick out their security technologies. They would test them, implement them, buy them, and then take the data feeds from them and ship them off to somebody like us at Symantec. And so it was a very alerting focus model, which was we see data, we correlate the data, we look for when something nefarious is happening, and then we'd send these alerts to the customers that would say, this is really bad. We think this is bad. We're not sure this is informational. And the customer would have to work their way through these alerts. Believe it or not, that model has not changed that much in 20 years. And that's part of the problem is if you're anybody besides a super large bank, it's really hard to work your way through all these security alerts. And so you've got 4500 vendors out there, 1000 seat company has to figure out which ones to buy, purchase, ship those pieces of data off to the MSSP and the MSSP sends alerts back. And then that customer has to consume those alerts and do something with them. And that model is still basically in place 20 years later. And part of the reason why we're doing what we're doing is we think that model is probably going to change a lot over the next five years.[00:23:28] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So there's three things I want to talk about from this point on, and what your product is and what it does is the final thing we're going to talk about, if that's okay, because I know a lot of MSPs. Listening will be very interested and also almost slightly cautious of, oh, my goodness. Is there really another product? But I know that that's actually you're hoping that to be the answer to that problem. So we're going to leave that till the end. Before that, I want to talk about the decision that you made to start your own business, to create your own solution, and then I want to talk about the funding of it. So where were you working and what were you doing when you first had this idea and how did that idea come up and how did you start to flesh it out?[00:24:11] Speaker B: Yeah, so the idea we call ourselves a security program subscription, and it has MSSP and MDR, it has all these pieces. We can talk about that here in a bit. But the idea actually started way back at Symantec because at the time we couldn't do much to help the customer. So when there was a problem, it would be on the customer to really go out and try to validate it and then hunt it down and then solve it. And this was back in the day of what we just like AV and there was no tool in AV that the msfp could use to impact the customer in a positive manner. And so when we went to know we were starting. To get into the EDRs, which had the capability to at least do something if there was a problem versus just relying on the AV to solve a problem. And that was the whole reason for leaving, semantic, was this idea was how do we build the next generation MSSP that would allow for an easier time by customers to solve the problem when there was something bad happening. And that's really where the germination of the idea then if you fast forward it five or six years to what we're doing now, the tooling and the technology in the market now enables us to actually build and deploy a security program that allows for this sort of 360 capability of both deployment detecting the problem and then solving the problem for the customer. So it's much less alerting and much less, hey, we fixed this problem. We kick the bad guys out. Go about your day.[00:25:45] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. I also love the fact we can hear is it one of your dogs in the background that's chewing a squeaky toy.[00:25:53] Speaker B: It's funny because he has been passed out all day long and he's very quiet 90% of the time. But lo and behold, when you get on a podcast, that's when he decides.[00:26:01] Speaker A: That, I love it.[00:26:02] Speaker B: His chew toy is very important to him.[00:26:04] Speaker A: I love it. Come on, Daddy. It's time for walkies. Stop talking to boring people. Let's get on with it.[00:26:09] Speaker B: That's exactly it.[00:26:10] Speaker A: So in his classic book, The E Myth Revisited, which I'm sure you've read, michael Gerber describes something called the entrepreneurial seizure, which is where you're working for someone else and you suddenly realize you've got to start your own business. And from that point on, it's an obsession. And the vast majority of people listening to this have acted on that obsession as you did. So for you, you've explained that obviously it was a germ of an idea. It was there for a number of years. Had you reached the end of something and this was the right moment to flesh it out, or did you end up leaving something to go and explore this new idea?[00:26:45] Speaker B: It's one of those things for me, anyways. It was a very serendipitous type situation. So our primary investors, a company called ForgePoint Capital, they were looking to invest and build an MSSP. I had this idea of the security program subscription, of which the MSSP is the central piece, but there's all these other components, and so their desire to build one and my desire to bring one to market was really just great timing. So they were willing to step in earlier than what you would traditionally see inside of a fundraising, almost like an incubation type model, because they were really bought in on the idea that this services led motion was going to be wildly different over the coming five or six or seven years. Of which, of course, I was in agreement on that as well. And if you could find the right model, you really had a chance to transform the industry and obviously have some good business success along the way.[00:27:38] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So you mentioned the funding, obviously it doesn't sound like you were out there doing what everyone in Silicon Valley seems to do, which is go out there and do presentation after presentation and raise a ton of money. Was it still quite a stressful experience for you? I guess you have essentially put your entire ownership of the business on the line in order to raise the money to build the business in the first place.[00:28:03] Speaker B: It is. And I've actually done some fundraising with a previous company as well. And so this whole standard process of building out the business pitch, selling it really a high level of due diligence by the VC community is not a trivial. It's a lot of work and it's pretty daunting. And there's this weird mix where it's hard right up until enough people get interested or you get enough momentum. Then it becomes easy.[00:28:27] Speaker A: Right?[00:28:27] Speaker B: It's like nobody wants to be the first but no one wants to be the last either. And so with SolCyber, obviously an easier process for sure, but you're still giving up a lot for the opportunity because you can always go work when you've been around the block for a long time. You can always go work for a big company and they'll compensate you well and so you're always having this trade off but on the other side.[00:28:52] Speaker A: You.[00:28:53] Speaker B: Sort of live in this mental state of excitement on one day and just like terror the next day that it's going to fall apart. And so obviously business has been good but this up and down motion is definitely different than in a traditional job. That being said, you also can't really beat it, right? I mean, the chance to build something from scratch and make your own and put your thumbprint on it is an opportunity that's just fantastic. So I've loved it, but it has been a challenge, there is no doubt about that. Yeah.[00:29:23] Speaker A: And I have to say, as a small business owner, where this is my second business that I've built from an idea in a spare bedroom to not massive business, but certainly a nice profitable business that gives me a nice lifestyle. Even I, and I'm sure every MSP, every business owner listening to this, has days where you think the whole thing is going to collapse, it's all going to go wrong and you have other days where you're absolutely on a high and it's the roller coaster of business ownership. I think you just have probably higher stakes than we do. So let's talk about the product then. Tell us about SolCyber.You mentioned earlier that you started to create it because there were too many security solutions out there. So what's the pitch for SolCyber and what are you hoping that you'll be able to do with it.[00:30:10] Speaker B: So if you think about a security program for a company, and this is we support companies at 100 employees and we support companies in the tens of thousands, but the tricky bit is three actual pieces.And this is super boring. Like nobody really wants to talk about this next thing, which is the concept of operations, which is how do you run a dang security operations consistently, repeatably and effectively. So you have to have this concept of operations on how you run the business. Then you have to have the right tools in the right locations to detect all the different threat types. So you need to be able to detect like if something malicious is put on a machine, but you also need to be able to detect if somebody hacks Scott McCrady's username and password and is just logged in as me and hasn't done anything malicious yet. They're just roaming the network as me. And then the third thing is you actually have to have smart people that can actually put all that information together when something bad is happening, recognize it, and then respond. Like actually fix the problem, kick the bad actors out. And that three step process isn't in place. We call it a security program, and the customers have two choices. They either build it all themselves, they go through and buy all the tools themselves, and then they get an MSSP that sends them alerts. That's this traditional model. Or there's something that we think that almost everybody's going to end up probably doing in the future, which is a security program subscription. And we use all the tools that anybody else uses. So it's not like Scott McCrady's endpoint tool. So what we've done is we've taken the tools that we've used in Fortune 500 companies when we've integrated them all together into an integrated hung together stack.We sell that with the MSSP and the MDR capabilities and the response and the detection, and we sell that all per user, per month. And so as a customer, they can either work their way through the 4500 vendors, pick out the ones they think they need, they maybe are right, maybe they're wrong, go get an MSSP and then pay up front for each of those pieces, or they can use us. And the easiest analogy is like cloud migration. Ten years ago, everybody had like 1000 Dell servers and you have a data center and you have bandwidth and you got a bunch of engineers that run it, and you got software and you have an orchestration layer. And now obviously most people use the cloud and then you just manage the cloud. It's a very similar concept to us, which is you can go build a security program yourself. But why? Right? It's not core to what you do as a company, outsource that get an outcome and move on to get back to making the Widget or the service that is important and supporting your customers. And that's really what SolCyber is. And we work great with MSPs, which.[00:32:49] Speaker A: Is exactly what we want to hear. So, Scott, thank you so much for your time on this, for sharing the story about the terrifying idea of raising so much money to build a business. Just tell us how we can learn a little bit more about the business and how can we get in touch with you?[00:33:03] Speaker B: Easy, Scott@solcyber.com. Solcyber.com is the website. And for your MSP audience out there, we love partnering with MSPs. We have a lot of them. We're very partner friendly. We've built channels. So we're very familiar with what you all want and what you don't want. And so if anybody's looking for a really great security partner, we have lots of deals that we send to our MSP partners. We'd love to have a conversation.[00:33:28] Speaker A: Paul Green's, MSP Marketing Podcast this Week's.[00:33:33] Speaker B: Recommended Book I'm Emmanuel Rose, author of Authenticity Marketing to Gen Z. And since Paul won't let me recommend my own book, I'm going to recommend anything by Jay Abraham because he will show you how to take your existing customer base and triple your net profit in a very short amount of time.[00:33:55] Speaker A: Coming up next week.[00:33:56] Speaker B: Hey everyone. I'm Mariana Henninger. I am obsessed with brand videos and the most amazing, powerful things that they can do for your business and building that emotional connection with your customer. So join me on the podcast to hear all about brand videos.[00:34:11] Speaker A: And on top of that interview next week, we're going to be talking about holidays and how important it is for you, the owner or the manager of the MSP to take proper holidays. In fact, I believe you need to put the holidays in your calendar for next year and then protect those holidays from everything. In fact, this is critical for both you and for the health of the business as well. I'll tell you more next week. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP

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Episode 205Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 Finding the ideal regular cadence for your marketing system * 07:28 Generate more leads with LinkedIn lead magnets * 18:01 Get new clients and grow your MSP

Featured guest:Thank you to Jake Gregorich, VP of Growth at Lyra Technology Group, for joining me to talk about how to bring on new clients and grow your MSP business.Jake oversees revenue generation for one of the largest and fastest growing IT service companies in the country, Lyra Technology Group, An Evergreen Services Group Company.

In just five years, he went from an entry-level copier and IT salesperson to head of sales of an enterprise size MSP which is on pace to double in size in 2023. He shares his experiences and learnings from that journey with his team and partner companies to help them achieve their growth goals.Connect with Jake on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jake-gregorich-47b27948/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to the MSP Marketing Action Monthly magazine: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Here's a link to Episode 204 that I referenced regarding breaking down your marketing activities into manageable chunks: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode204/ * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, Measure What Matters: The Simple Idea that Drives 10x Growth: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Measure-What-Matters-Simple-Drives/dp/024134848X/

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world. This paul paul. Paul Greens MSP.[00:00:08] Speaker B: Marketing podcast are rolling right into episode 205. Welcome to the show. Here's what's in store for you this week.[00:00:16] Speaker C: Hi, I'm Jake Gregorich, and I'm going to talk about what the biggest challenge is in the MSP industry, which in my opinion, is new logo growth and how to address those challenges to help grow your MSP business.[00:00:28] Speaker B: And Jake will be joining me later on in the show. That is a fascinating interview. We're also going to be talking about something called Lead Magnets. I'll explain exactly what they are and how you can combine them with LinkedIn messaging to generate new prospects.[00:00:44] Speaker A: Paul Green's, MSP Marketing Podcast now this.[00:00:49] Speaker B: First bit of the podcast goes very nicely with something I was talking about last week. If you haven't yet listened to Episode 204, do consider spinning back and having a quick listen to that. Because I was talking about how if you're going to grow your business and throw yourself into working on the business more than you work in it, it's much more powerful to do that in little chunks every day, 60 to 90 minutes every day, rather than just put a big single day aside because it's too easy to lose that entire day. What we're going to talk about today is a natural extension of that. And it is about the cadence of your marketing tasks, of your business growth tasks, and in fact, anything that's important to you, it needs a regular cadence. We have a weekly marketing system. I've talked about it on the podcast before. It's something we give to our MSP Marketing Edge members, and we recommend that they do this system every single week. So they publish a blog and a video on their website every week. Then they send an email, which drives traffic back to that blog. Then they publish a social media post, which drives traffic back to their blog again. And then they use the blog as a LinkedIn newsletter. By the way, we give them all of those materials and plenty of support to do that. But can you see the cadence of that? There's a set of activities there, many or most of which can be automated, which just need to be done on a weekly basis. That's why we call it the weekly marketing system. And actually, if you look at all of your marketing, I don't believe at all in campaigns. I think campaigns, they're one off campaigns. I mean, they have their place, they have their purpose, and they are things I recommend to MSPs. But if the only marketing you do is campaigns, that's not the right marketing for you. For most MSPs that are doing very low levels of marketing, getting into a regular system, a regular cadence is so much more powerful. You want to be doing daily activities, weekly activities and monthly activities. And I'm going to suggest some of those activities to you in a second. Why do you want to get into that cadence? Because one of the things that makes marketing an MSP so difficult is the fact you've got to get your timing right. It takes so long for a lead, for a prospect to get to the point where they're so fed up of either doing their technology themselves or their incumbent MSP that they are actually willing, ready, willing and able to have a conversation with someone new which might include you. In fact, we want it to include you. So they can put up with a bad MSP with a bad relationship for years and years and years and then suddenly they'll just wake up one morning and they'll think, you know what? I've had enough. I'm fed up of our technology being behind. I'm fed up that they never seem to pick up the phone. I'm fed up of the service levels dropping. People leave MSPs for all these reasons. It's all emotional, perceptual reasons. But they wake up one morning and right, it's time. I'm going to do it. This is the day we're going to go and talk and think about switching to a new provider. And the challenge for you is being in front of them on that day. If you do some marketing on a Monday and Monday is not the day they're ready, that's fine. The marketing is done, you move on. You do some marketing on Tuesday and Tuesday is not quite the day they're ready either. That's fine, we move on. On Wednesday, you take a break from the marketing. The problem is that Wednesday morning was the morning they woke up and they were ready to take some action, but you didn't do any marketing to them and they don't remember you and they don't remember your brand. And they don't remember the company name because that kind of stuff does not stay top of mind for the average human being unless we're talking the brands that have spent billions of pounds and dollars over the years making themselves brands that are top of mind. Like Coca Cola, like Ford, like Ferrari, like Apple, like Microsoft, etc. Etc. Your MSP is ever, ever going to be in that position and you don't want it to. It's far too difficult. So what you can do instead is get into a regular cadence. Now, these tasks I'm just about to talk about you personally, assuming you are the owner or the manager of the MSP, because that's who this podcast is for. Although everyone is welcome to listen to it. Of course, assuming you are the owner or manager of the MSP, you personally should not be doing these tasks on a regular basis. There are other people who can do these tasks for you and that includes virtual assistants, that includes members of your own team. It includes well, there's plenty of people out there who can implement stuff because the jobs I'm about to give you the cadence I'm about to suggest. None of it's difficult. Frankly, it really isn't difficult. And I know I say that as a marketing person, but I've been doing this for a number of years. I've worked with a lot of MSPs to do it. The hardest thing turns out to be making it happen on a regular basis. So let's look at some daily, weekly and monthly tasks that you would set up as a system within your MSP. The daily ones are pretty simple. I've mentioned some of them already. Social media, for example. So if we take LinkedIn and we assume that LinkedIn is an incredibly powerful platform, it's one of the main core audiences you should be building, then on a daily basis, you should be attempting to connect to more people. In fact, every day, attempt to connect with ten more people on LinkedIn. Only one or two of them will accept that connection. That's all right. That'll do. You're building your database by two people a day. So attempt ten connections a day and post a piece of content onto LinkedIn every day. Those are just some basic daily tasks that you can do. There something else that you can do on a weekly basis is send out educational emails. So if you've got an email database once a week, you send them out an educational email. Remember how I mentioned earlier that a cool thing is to put a blog and a video on your website? And then the email, when people click for more details, it drives them back. Basically, they click on it and it opens your website. That's a very, very smart, integrated way to do it. But that's just one example of a weekly task that you can set yourself. And then there's a monthly one, which is to send them printed newsletter. I love printed newsletters. Anything physical has, like, ten times the marketing power of digital stuff. Because digital is relatively so easy and it's relatively so low cost, it just has so much power if you can get printed stuff into people's hands. So there are just a few things, there are many more things that you could add in. But could you see the power of just setting up a system within your MSP that on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, you're just powering this stuff out that has more power and makes it so much more likely that you're going to be there in front of the right person at exactly the right time than if you just do a series of one off events.[00:07:28] Speaker A: Here's this week's. Clever idea.[00:07:31] Speaker B: I want to take two completely separate marketing concepts and put them together to create something new. And it's a way for you to take a new connection on LinkedIn and turn them a little bit faster into a prospect. Let me tell you what the two things are, and I will explain what they are as well. The first is something called a lead magnet, and the second is LinkedIn messaging. You know all about that one. So let's talk about lead magnets. What is a lead magnet? Well, you may have heard the term banded around. If you've ever read anything about marketing on the Internet, and particularly internet style marketing, you'll have heard of lead magnets. I used to call them ethical bribes back in the day. It's the same thing. It's something that you give to someone in return for something. So traditionally, a lead magnet would be something, let's say something you put onto your website and you said to people, hey, you can get this. You just got to fill in your email address and we'll give it to you. And that still has a value within business. In fact, we have a great lead magnet, which we use on our website. If you go.[00:08:34] Speaker C: Paul. Paul.[00:08:35] Speaker B: Paul. Paul Greens, MSP Marketing Podcast. Paul Greens, MSP Marketing Podcast. There's a bit in there. I think it's on the homepage. You can look for a free magazine. So our lead magnet is a physical free magazine which will post to you. We'll actually send you a physical copy if you're in the UK or the US. Anyway. The rest of the world, it's just a PDF, but that's a lead magnet and we get, I don't know, five to ten MSPs a week. So not massive numbers, but a constant trickle of people filling in their contact details and joining my email list through filling in that form. So that's an example of what a lead magnet actually is. Now, I don't recommend it to most MSPs just because it's hard work. You think about the amount of time and effort and expense that we have to go through in our business. Just know we've had to write that magazine, design it, we have it printed, we have a fulfillment center in the UK and in the US. And obviously there's a cost to that. I'm happy to pay that cost to start a relationship with you, because obviously, if you join my email list, then we can start talking about other things. And you never know, you may go on to spend some money with me at some point, or not, it makes no difference to me whatsoever. But the point is that for most MSPs, it's kind of overkill until you start using lead magnets in a very targeted way. And this is where LinkedIn can come in. Now, the beauty of LinkedIn is you can message your connections and know 100% that your message will be delivered. So people don't often log into LinkedIn. If you go into LinkedIn more than like once or twice a month, or once or twice a week, then you're unusual. Many people log into LinkedIn now and again and pick up their messages. It's not like email, is it? In fact, LinkedIn messaging is almost the opposite of email. With email, you guarantee that they're reading it on a regular basis, but you can't guarantee the deliverability. And LinkedIn the complete opposite. We have an opportunity with LinkedIn to use lead magnets to warm up, to accelerate the relationships with certain types of people. And actually, you can do it across a range of verticals. Let me give you an example. And we'll use for this a CPA or an accountant. It's what we call them here in the UK. Elsewhere. They're called CPAs. Does that sound for Certified or Chartered Professional Accountant or something like that? Write to the usual address and let me know. I think it's something like that. So let's imagine that you want to do business with CPAs. You like the idea of CPAs. You like the idea that they're regulated. That the fact that the computer, the technology is mission critical. And you like the fact that they're b to b services and it's a fairly standardized stack that you can use with them. So you want more of them. So you go onto LinkedIn and you look for as many CPAs, particularly managing partners or owners of businesses, as you can in your area and in the surrounding areas, and you connect to them on LinkedIn. Now, it might be that you have a general business, like many MSPs, so you will accept pretty much any business type that comes in. But actually, right now, CPAs is where your marketing focus is at. So let's say you connect to well, you do some connection requests. We were just talking about it, weren't we, in the last bit? You make ten connection requests a day to CPAs and two or three will connect to you. One pro tip, actually, if at the point you are going after a specific vertical, change the description in your LinkedIn to match that vertical. So let's say just this week you were targeting CPAs, you would change in the description in your LinkedIn to say, I'm a technology expert working with accountants in the so and so area, in your area. And the next week, when you're going after lawyers, you change it to lawyers. I know that's a little bit sneaky and it's not the most transparent thing to do, but something that you could do. You'll get more connection requests or you get more people accepting your connection request when you do that, because they'll look at it and perceive that you are more relevant to them. Something that seems more relevant to us is something that's more attractive to us. And that's one thing that you can do. As I say, it's not utterly ethical and transparent, but it's something you can do. So let's say you're connecting to more CPAs this week, and then you can drop them a message and in the message, you can get them to engage with you by offering them something in return for engagement. So this is half the battle on LinkedIn, is getting people to engage with you. So if we can message them and get them to do something, that's a good thing. I mean, in terms of when you email people, if you can email people and get them to engage, that's great for deliverability. And just getting them to respond to your emails on LinkedIn, there's no algorithmic well, there's little algorithmic benefit actually thinking about it. There's bound to be some algorithmic benefit of them engaging with you. But primarily we want them to engage with you because it could lead onto a sales opportunity. So imagine you've connected to a CPA and then you email them, sorry, no you don't. You message them on LinkedIn and you say to them, hey, thank you very much for connecting. I have a guide here which I've put together for accountants in geographical area, it's called. And then you pick some kind of attractive title and it might be something people are more motivated by the fear of loss than they are the opportunity to gain. So it might be something like the five ways that technology slows down accountants and costs them valuable fees. Something like that. So you might say to them, look, we've put this guide together. Would you like me to send you a copy? Question mark, and that's it. And so you don't send it to them. There's no link for them to download it as a PDF. You don't add it as an attachment or anything like that. You literally just say to them, hey, thanks for connecting, I've written this guide. Would you like me to send you a copy? And what we're trying to do is to get your new connections, those very focused connections, to hit reply at some point. It might be now, it might be tomorrow, it might be next week, it might be three months down the line. It depends how quickly they a, how quickly they review their LinkedIn messages, but B, also how often they log into LinkedIn. So what we are trying to get them to do is to hit reply and go, yes please, or could you post me a copy or can you email it to me? Or yes, I'd love a PDF or whatever. And the beauty of that is they are engaging with you. Now, this doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean they're going to go and buy with you, but there is some engagement, it's a very low level engagement, but it's there. And actually what you could do is you could send them that PDF and quite rightfully then two days later, you could phone them up, try to get through their gatekeeper and just say, hey, it's Paul here. I spoke to you a couple of days ago on LinkedIn. Do you remember I was offering you that guide on the Seven ways you could just wanted to double check that you got it in LinkedIn. And essentially what we are doing by sending them that lead magnet through LinkedIn or offering it to them and then sending it to them. We are creating an opportunity to phone them and the phone is where the magic really happens. Now, if you send them the message and they don't respond to it, you've still got an opportunity to phone them, right, because they haven't responded to the message. So you could just phone them. In fact, you've got a reason to get past the gatekeeper as well. Oh, hi. Can I speak to Dave? He's not in right now or no, hang on, that wouldn't help. Sorry, he's busy right now. Can I help? Yeah, actually, my name's Paul and I've been chatting to him on LinkedIn. Simple as that. It doesn't matter that Dave hasn't actually seen the conversation yet. We're giving ourselves reason to phone people here. So let's recap what we're doing here. So we're reconnecting to, or we're connecting to people on LinkedIn within a specific vertical. That's important. Has to be a vertical. Then we're offering them a lead magnet that seems to be about their business.This is why the vertical is so important. And you can do many different verticals in your area. So you could do CPAs this week, lawyers next week, manufacturers the week after. It doesn't really matter as long as the guide the lead magnet, the thing you're offering seems relevant to them. If it doesn't seem relevant, you won't get much of a response to this, but an accountant will look at this and think, oh, I would quite like to read that. It will trigger them to take more action. So we're offering them the lead magnet, then we're sending it out to them and then we're using that as an opportunity to follow them up by phone. This is very, very exciting and actually relatively easy to do. And listen, if you would like some support putting this together, I can't help you on a one on one basis, but I'm happy if you get stuck with this to just have a chat with you on email. Please do drop me an email and let me know how you get on with it. My email address is hello@paulgreensmsmarketing.com, Paul's.[00:17:03] Speaker A: Paul's. Blatant Plug.[00:17:04] Speaker B: Blatant Plug. If you wanted more direct support from me, then please have a look at my core service. It's called the MSP Marketing Edge. For just $129 a month, or 99 pounds a month, if you're in the UK, then we give you everything that you need to market your MSP. All the tools, all the content, and a ton of help from me as well. I am there every single day helping our 700 members around the world. It is an absolute delight to do so and I know loads of them listen to this podcast as well. So thank you. If you are a member, if you're not yet a member, here's the thing. We only work with one MSP per area, which is important, so there's no kind of clash. And we've got a self service tool for you to find out if your area is available. So just MSP Marketing Edge, doesn't matter which country you're in, you can self service and double check to see if your area is still available. MSP marketing.[00:18:04] Speaker C: Edge. I'm Jake Gregorich. I work with Evergreen Services Group and Lyra Technology Partners as a vice president of Growth.[00:18:11] Speaker B: Oh, what a great job title. Vice President of Growth. Although, talk about pressure because everyone wants to grow their business and your company has literally got someone in that role and that's you doing that. So thank you very much for joining us, Jake. I know you are going to blow some minds today as we talk about the hardest challenge for every MSP around the world, and that is bringing on brand new clients. Before we start talking about that, let's set some really important context because you are a real expert at doing this, because you've been doing it for a number of years. Tell us about your career and how you've got to where you are now.[00:18:45] Speaker C: Yeah, I think what's most important, Paul, is that we coordinated before this and made sure that we were wearing matching shirts. But in terms of my background, I've been kind of in the MSP industry for six or seven years now, and I've kind of always had this competitive edge and thing that has driven me towards sales. I was actually a door to door salesman when I was in high school, and I was selling doors door to door, literally, which is an interesting combination.After I went to college, I soon after joined a managed service provider out of Chicago, a company called Impact Networking, and they had kind of a world class sales training program. And since then, it's kind of been thinking about the MSP industry. In that one, I'd say the quality of revenue and the deep customer relationships are just so attractive that it's an industry I'll never leave.And two, just how hard it is to get qualified first appointments and close new customers. It seems uniquely challenging in this business, and I think we'll probably get into that a little bit later. Since that company, I've worked inside of two MSPs. I've been inside a company that was acquired. I've been on the acquiring side doing ten plus acquisitions, now consulted to eight MSPs as an independent consultant on the sales and marketing side. And today with Liver Technology Group and Evergreen Services, I lead sales and marketing for 20 best in class MSPs. So we kind of have a family of best in class It services companies and we run them in a decentralized manner. So I should use quotes when I say lead sales and marketing, as none of those companies report to me, but I'm kind of a shared service and helping them unlock growth in their business.[00:20:36] Speaker B: Got it. But actually what you're doing is harder when it's decentralized because you have to not just tell people what to do. You have to inspire the leaders of these 20 businesses that you're working with to take action and then do the right kind of action in the right way. That must be quite a tough gig.[00:20:51] Speaker C: Yeah, you could see it as a challenge. I kind of see it as forcing us to do business the right way, in that we have to really believe in any initiative that we're pushing so much so that we're able to sell our companies. They have to opt in to any program, any growth initiative that is happening at a central level. And once they opt in, we have their buy in. And so that's kind of the right place you want to start. When you launch an initiative, it's everyone buys into the mission.[00:21:17] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. So let's talk about why it's so hard. And this is a recurring theme across this podcast. And it's great to have a guest such as yourself repeat exactly things that hundreds of other guests have said that I've said myself, which is that new sales, brand new sales for MSPs is not easy. It's one of the hardest things that you can do. What's your definition of why this is so hard?[00:21:40] Speaker C: Yeah, Paul, I think it comes down to really three things. It's noisy, I'm in the US. In the US, there's 40,000 managed service providers. If you only count MSPs with over five employees, there's about 10,000 of them. So still a lot. And they're all creating sales and marketing campaigns. They're all creating content. AI is lowering the barrier to do this type of content and push it out to mass numbers of people. And so you just have a lot of noise. And that leads to kind of the second thing, which is a lot of noise with a general lack of differentiation in these companies.It's not all that sexy, what we do, right? It's the plumbing of it.If we're doing a good job, if we install the thing correctly, we do some maintenance on it. You don't really want to call us that's when things are going wrong, is when you're calling us a lot and you have a lot of issues. And so in plumbing and in managed it, we want to do a really good job up front, and then we want to do proactive maintenance. And so the client doesn't have to think about their technology not working in their business.That message to business owners, they understand that they need this thing, and so they don't really want to take a meeting with several MSPs to understand what they're doing because they kind of hear the same story, fastest response time, best people, all those kinds of things that were proactive, one fee, one monthly fee. So you have this fixed fee that you don't have to think about it anymore. And the pitch has become kind of the same for everyone. And so that lack of differentiation really makes it difficult to get your foot in the door to even have that first conversation. And then I think the third thing is really a fundamental misunderstanding about how buyers buy. We treat everyone like they're in the market to buy today, but in actuality, there's 3% of our prospects are in market ready to buy. And so we have to think about treating these buckets differently and how we're engaging with them from a sales and marketing perspective to be able to get in front of them and to sell to them properly.I'm happy to kind of get into how I think about addressing these different areas or have an open discussion in more detail about those three areas that I think are the biggest challenge.[00:24:09] Speaker B: Yeah, well, let's do that. Let's get into some detail about those because I think what I like what you're doing here is you're systematically breaking down what the challenges are and then we can move on to how you guys are addressing those. So yeah, jump into some more detail for us.[00:24:23] Speaker C: I think the lack of differentiation is pretty clear, the noise is pretty clear.Maybe where I can get into a little bit more detail is this misunderstanding of how buyers buy. I think there's two things to address in this department. There's one, how do we get insight into the trigger events that pull someone from the 97% of people that aren't ready to buy today into the 3%? That's a very insightful and useful thing to do because now we can sell to them today if we're able to get in front of them. And then to really understand how a buyer buys, they do it in three ways. Primarily, let's take a random prospect, a prospect that's not in market today and some trigger event happens that could be a breach downtime, internal It turnover, change of control, failed project. They're getting billed from their It provider and they don't really know why. We can track those events. Maybe use some buyer intent, track some keywords, look at job boards for when they post a job, they've had someone that's turned over, track LinkedIn for that kind of thing. But how they're buying when that trigger event happens, you already need to be in there with the customer. And that's because they're buying from people they already know, they're buying from people they're referred to, or they're buying from brands that they trust. And I think everyone inherently knows that our businesses are driven by referrals and by their own personal network. So those first two things are not all that complicated in understanding what they mean in getting more of those things. That there is some nuance certainly. But in terms of the third category of how buyers buy from brands that they trust, it's usually someone that makes them problem aware or someone that makes them solution aware. And so this would be kind of the SaaS playbook, right? Like you have some software tool. And it solves some specific problem.We could use AP automation, for example.People in a business might not know that they're three way checks with their highlighters and they have two full time resources administrators doing these three way checks to process invoices and you can show a little video making them aware of this problem and making them aware of the solution. In managed it. Because of this general lack of differentiation, things get a little bit trickier. And so how I think about this is I like to call it consulting as the tip of the spear. And so what MSPs do is we become trusted technology advisors to small to medium sized businesses. And really when I think about what are the major things hot topics of the day that we can generate one of those two buckets which is making them problem or solution aware is cybersecurity.People are aware that there are threats but they might not be aware of the specific threats in their business. There's personally identifiable information out there. There are dark web scans. You can use assessment or vulnerability scan tools to make people aware of what's going on in their business. Cybersecurity questionnaires, making sure people are in compliance. These are all ways to make people aware of either a problem that they have this is the cybersecurity risk or a solution and how you're going to help them kind of close those cyber gaps.The second really hot topic of the day that you can use to generate some of these first appointments in doing it in a way that is in line with how buyers buy is AI. And so everyone's thinking and talking about AI everywhere. And so can you package and productize AI or AI enablement, bring it to your small to medium sized businesses and show them how to leverage the different tools and then they view you as a trusted Technology advisor. And once you kind of achieve that status as trusted Technology Advisor, the managed It work just comes along with it. They're like hey, I want this vCIO or I want this company in my business because I view them as strategic. We don't even need to talk about help desk. That's your business now. Those are I think two of the ways to get over that hump of problem and solution aware in our business. Maybe Paul, we could shift gears here into solving some of the big issues around differentiation, around becoming someone they know, becoming a referral in a more systematic way rather than just kind of going out and building relationships.[00:29:08] Speaker B: You're the perfect guest. I don't even have to ask the questions. So yeah, let's do that. I'm just going to go and have a cup of tea while you finish the interview off.[00:29:16] Speaker C: Yeah. I apologize. I've been thinking about this too much for too long. So it's a pleasure to get to talk to you and your audience here. If we think about addressing these three issues around kind of noise, lack of differentiation, and the misunderstanding of how buyers buy.I like to think about how do we kind of specialize our business to be differentiated and cut through the noise and address some of the challenges of generating qualified first appointment activity. And I don't like, particularly in sales and marketing, a fair fight. So I would highly recommend starting with your current accounts, understanding what originated those deals. Where do you already have traction today? If you go through and you look at your current clients, what industries they're in, what problems they have, what verticals they have, what relationships you have to those businesses, you're going to start identifying some trends around, like, hey. Maybe it was just a handful of people that made all these referrals and they happen to be in some industry. And we're doing something unique to that industry and we got to uncover what it is.I would say kind of the next step is after you identify a trend and you kind of formulate a market segment around that trend, you should look for market segments where you have ambassadors, you have some specialization already. You have current happy clients, and then people talk about the ideal customer profile or the ICP. And I think it goes a step further than the ICP in the age of noise, which is, I think, what we're in, and I call it kind of the ideal audience profile. And that, yes, includes your ICP, but it also includes strategic partners, current clients, ambassadors, clubs, associations, peer groups, podcasts like the one we're on, right? Like, we're getting to talk about trends in a business, and then we get to go to our current clients or to our prospective clients, and they see us as a source of authority because we were on their industry podcast, for example. And I think about targeting all of those areas and building relationships in each of them because they're going to lend their credibility to you, their authority to you. They're going to make more referrals to you, and those referrals will be more powerful because you're specialized in the market segment that you choose to address.[00:31:40] Speaker B: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. If you don't mind, I'm going to take us off in a slightly different direction, and I want to talk about practical. And I think with all of the interviews I do on this podcast, I always try and bring it down to a practical level of what can you do? So let's imagine I run an MSP. You've just acquired me. So your business has acquired me. You've just flown over to the UK to get me started on the difficult process of winning more new clients. What are some of the first things? Not the things that we've necessarily talked about, like working out the profile of the kind of client you want to reach, but what are some of the first practical steps that you would recommend that I put into place?[00:32:19] Speaker C: Yeah, I really do think it starts with the current account research and I would identify those trends and I would find where we are special and then at that point kind of layer in the more traditional sales and marketing tools. So once you have a tight ICP, can we leverage LinkedIn Bots, for example, to go after all of those categories that you see in your kind of audience profile of strategic partners, current clients and ambassadors? The automation as it's layered on and amplified can be really useful. I recommend doing Voice of the Customer interviews, so again, starting with the happy customers and in those Voice of the Customer interviews, finding out what makes your relationship special and then asking for referrals in a strategic way.To bring this down to the practical level, when I talk about asking for referrals in a strategic way, maybe I'm identifying those referrals that I want introductions to prior to the meeting I have with my client where I'm going to make the ask. And so can I use buyer intent data to find someone that is in market today that's connected to my client and then ask specifically for an introduction to that person? The challenge with asking for referrals is that people don't know what their network is like, if they need It services at the moment or not. So you can ask and they'll be like, I don't think about selling managed It services, so I don't really know. So if you do that first legwork for them and then you ask for the referral to a specific person at a specific business with a specific problem, your chances of actually getting that referral are going to go up dramatically.[00:34:00] Speaker B: Yeah, massively. I completely agree with that. And in terms of online presence, obviously all of the MSPs you work with, I'm guessing they all have websites, they all have your standard digital footprint, your social media accounts. What do you recommend that they do in terms of content? Because you made a very good point earlier on in the interview about noise and there's a lot of noise out there. So do you recommend that they don't actively do stuff and they focus more on that strategy or do you have a sort of an overall well, we need to have a presence, a strategy that you recommend?[00:34:32] Speaker C: Yeah, I like to create a content schedule and it kind of keeps coming back to where it starts, which is with that ideal audience profile. And so we're creating content that is specific to that profile and that's usually like an industry specific vertical that we would go after as a market segment. And then when you create the content schedule, you're assigning your subject matter experts within your business to either help the marketing team write the articles or actually creating a schedule to have them write the entire articles themselves.The content becomes valuable because you get the subject matter expert to write it, and it's about a specific person that you're going to try to target, and then it's, do I read an article about generically speaking, like time management, or do I read an article about time management for financial services businesses? And the more specific you kind of get, the more chance that your ideal customer is going to actually pick it up and read it and find value in it.[00:35:39] Speaker B: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Thank you so much for your time, and you've been very generous sharing with us some of the marketing strategy and advice that you disseminate to the people you're working with. I imagine you're always looking for MSPs to join the group. So tell me a little bit more about what makes a good MSP for you and how can we get in touch with you?[00:35:59] Speaker C: I think our business model is kind of the antithesis to what the rest of private equity in the MSP industry does. We partner with companies, they continue to own their P L statements. We bring some of the things that big companies can do centrally to the table, like cost reductions and strategic partnerships to generate leads, but we leave them with autonomy at the local level. And so people that are good fits for us are the people that really care about their business and what happens after they exit it, because we're going to keep their brand intact. We're going to keep their people intact. And so if you deeply care about your kind of customer, after you leave your business, after you leave the MSP world and go off on your yacht or wherever you're going to go, we're going to kind of create a permanent home for your company.[00:36:46] Speaker B: That does sound like a great model. It really does. And just tell us how we can get in touch with you.[00:36:50] Speaker C: You can reach me on LinkedIn at jake Gregorich and shoot me a DM.[00:36:55] Speaker A: Paul Green's, MSP. Marketing Podcast this week's recommended book.[00:37:01] Speaker C: Hi, I'm Doug Kreitzberg. I'm a cyber insurance expert, and the book that I recommend is Measure What Matters by John Dor, where you learn the techniques and the tools that organizations such as Google, intel and others have used to dramatically transform and exponentially grow their business.[00:37:24] Speaker A: Coming up next week.[00:37:26] Speaker C: Hey, I'm Scott McCrady with SolCyber. Can't wait to be on Paul's podcast to talk about how we raised $20 million to bring a new security service to the market.[00:37:35] Speaker B: And on top of my interview with Scott next week, we're going to be talking about networking. No, not the one with cables. I mean the one where you go to a hotel room and you meet strangers and you try and get some sales. In fact, I've got a very inspirational story to share with you about an MSP who has been so focused on networking that they've already generated 7000 pounds of monthly recurring revenue. That's around about $9,000 of monthly recurring revenue. All of it just from networking. Let's explore how to work a room and how not to get stuck talking to the most boring person. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.[00:38:16] Speaker A: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's, ms. Ms. MSP. Marketing podcast.

Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs

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Episode 204Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 Working ON your business little and often * 05:45 Why you should ask new clients for a three-year contract * 15:15 Grow your business through referral marketing

Featured guest:Thank you to Braith Bamkin, Executive Director of BNI Melbourne Central, for joining me to talk about how MSPs can use their existing relationships with their customers and suppliers to find new clients via referrals.Some years ago, Braith's personal journey took an unexpected turn when faced with a health crisis that nearly brought his business to its knees. However, he discovered breathwork and laughter yoga, embarking on a powerful path of self-discovery and resilience.This profound experience fuelled his passion to help others and led him to write the book “Breathe Easy – Simple Ways to Be Well Connected,” a practical guide for business professionals seeking balance and well-being.As the Executive Director of BNI Melbourne Central, Braith has guided countless business owners to success, cracking the code of what it truly takes to thrive in the entrepreneurial world. With a seamless application of this knowledge to his own ventures, he walks the talk and inspires others with his proven strategies.Braith’s expertise extends beyond speaking engagements. He imparts his wisdom through online courses in referrals and marketing and shares much of his knowledge freely to the public.Connect with Braith on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/braithbamkin/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to the MSP Marketing Action Monthly magazine: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Predictably-Irrational-Hidden-Forces-Decisions/dp/0007256531

Transcription:NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.Welcome back to the show. We have an absolute cracker for you this week and this is what's coming up.[00:00:14] Speaker B: Hey, I'm Braith Bamkin, and if you've ever wondered about how you get referrals into your MSP, join me in the podcast where I'm going to share some tips and tricks on how to get your referral ready.[00:00:28] Speaker A: And on top of that interview with Braith, we're also going to be talking about contract length. I believe every new client should be joining you on a three year contract. What do you think? Let's find out later on.Paul Green's, MSP Marketing Podcast so you finally reach that point where you're ready to start investing time, working on the business rather than in the business. Of course, working in the business is doing technical Work, it's doing admin, it's doing accounts, anything that kind of just stuff that keeps the business running or keeps the delivery going. And we all work in the business to a certain extent at the beginning of our business ownership careers, we spend more time working in the business than on the business. But if you want to get serious about growing it, you've got to work on it. So on it is activities that get you more new Clients, get those clients to spend more, and get them to choose to buy more from you. Now, let's say you've made that decision that yes, right, I'm going to do it. I'm going to spend more time working on the business in future. Sometimes when I'm talking to MSPs, and I talk to MSPs all the time, almost every single day, sometimes they say to me, right, I'm going to start working more on the business. I've put aside Thursdays or some other day. And there's always a little part of me inside that goes, oh no, really? Because here's the thing. If you put aside an entire day to work on your business, that feels good to you, it's something you can block out in your calendar. It feels like you're really giving it some substantial resources. And your mindset is very much a case of, right, I'm going to do this all day Thursday. We're going to do nothing but grow the business. Grow the business. RA the problem with having a massive chunk of time once a week is that that time can far too easily be stolen by other things, like the big client problem that comes in on a Wednesday afternoon. And quite rightly, you'd get to Thursday morning and the problem hasn't been fixed and you'd think, well, actually we need to or I need to jump in and fix that problem with my team. That's understandable. Everyone else would do exactly the same thing. Or maybe if you're not feeling too well on that Thursday and you're not 100%. And as business owners, we try to power through, don't we? But even we have times where we should just R and R rather than try and power ourselves through. And then of course there's staff crises, family crises, your kids sports day, there's a hundred different things which can come along and steal your time. And the biggest problem with just having a day a week when you're working on the business is if something steals that day from you, you've skipped an entire week and you're not doing any work on the business for that entire week versus the other way of doing it. And this is my preferred option. My preferred option is that you find a chunk of time every day and I mean every weekday. I don't expect you to work on your business at the weekends. It's more important that you get a rest at the weekend. But what if you could find, let's say 60 to 90 minutes every single weekday to work on your business? Of course you're going to lose some of those 60 to 90 minutes sessions. Of course you are. All those things I was just talking about are going to come and steal those 60 to 90 minutes sessions from you. But here's the thing. If you lose today's session you can pick up again tomorrow. If you lose tomorrow's session, you can pick up again the day after. Do you see how exciting that is? You can take the same amount of time. Well, what would it be? I'm going to try and do some on the fly maths here. Let's say it was 60 minutes. You do 60 minutes a day, that's 5 hours in a week, right? So that's pretty much what, a half a day? A half a day in one go? Far too easily wiped out. And you are not as productive working 5 hours in a block as you think you are. We all kind of become less productive and less efficient the longer the day goes on and the older we get, says the aging graying 49 year old. But actually that 60 to 90 minutes today. You can start that fresh today and fresh tomorrow and fresh the day after. Why 60 to 90 minutes? Because actually that's a peak amount of time to do a set of activities if you're very focused with that time. So you hide yourself away from your staff and your family and your clients or maybe do early in the morning or find a place to hide or turn off your phone. Disable teams have no notifications from your PSA. It's surprising what you can get done in that time, particularly if that 90 minutes is a maximum. You say to yourself, I'm only going to do 90 minutes and then I'm going to stop. And the beauty of that is you've got a deadline. And when you've got a deadline you work up towards that deadline. It's like when you go on holiday or on vacation, isn't it? And the day before you go the last working day. You get like six days worth of work done in that day. I know you're exhausted, but the reason you do it is because you've got an immovable deadline, which is, hey, I've got to switch off at 07:00 tonight. Got to pack a suitcase and drive to the airport. And very rarely do we miss that kind of deadline. So if and when, as you're starting to plan working on your business more, please, please tackle that in small chunks. And those small chunks, 60 to 90 minutes every day. It's a much more robust way of doing it than trying to do it all in one big day a week. Here's this week's clever idea.Amazing news. You have got a brand new client. You've done all the hard work. You've generated the lead. The lead turned into a prospect. You had a zoom call with them. You went out and did a sales meeting. You did an in person proposal and you had a scheduled follow up. That, by the way, being an ideal sales sequence. And you just got the call or the email from your brand new client saying, yes, we're in. The price is good. We like you guys. We think we're a good fit. Let's do it. Amazing. Right? Here's the question. How long are you going to ask them to commit to you? How long is your contract length? Do you ask for twelve months? Do you ask for longer? Do you even have a specified contract length or do you just do it on a month by month basis? Now, before I start talking in this bit, let me first of all say there is no right or wrong way to do this. There is only the way that's best for you. However, saying that if I was advising you, I would always advise you to ask for a fixed length contract and ideally you would ask for at least two years, possibly even three years. And yes, MSPs. Do this. I know of a number of MSPs that do ask for three year contracts. Now, let's look at the pros and cons of this. Let's look at the psychology of this from your point of view. If you ask someone to make a three year commitment to you, you are saying to them, we are so good at what we do that we are very happy being committed to you for three years. And here's the thing, Mr. Or Mrs. New Client, we want you to make a commitment back to us for an equal period of time. Because when the two parties, when the two of us agree that we're going to have a long term marriage, a long term agreement together, long term relationship, then we're going to take a long view on everything. We're not going to do silly short term stuff. We're going to have very much a long term view. Now, you may be recoiling in horror at the moment from the thought of asking your clients from a three year contract. Maybe because that's fear. Maybe because you don't want to be committed to them at any point. Or maybe you think, well, no one's going to sign up for a three year contract. Sometimes you don't know until you ask. And if you ask with confidence you'd be surprised what you can get away with. Here's an idea for you if the idea of a three year contract is not really for you. Well actually I'll give you two ideas. The first idea is this if you're not confident asking a new client for a three year contract, ask them for a standard year or month by month, whatever you do right now. But when you get your existing clients renewing, ask them for a three year contract. Because let's say you've got someone who's been with you for let's say it's two or three years already. So every year they sign a new contract and you say to them, hey, we would like you to sign a three year contract, please to commit us to you, to commit you to us. And also it fixes in your price for three years. And I know you need to think through the economics of that. Or maybe the contract has a price rise every twelve months. So just that the fact they're in a three year contract doesn't make any difference to the actual money coming in. It's going to go up every year. In fact that would be a smart way to do it. So that's the first idea is to just make it easy on yourself by asking someone you already have a relationship with to try that easy. Idea number two is if you want to try this with brand new clients, insert a get out of jail free card for them. Or this is sometimes called a we hate you clause. So this could be as simple as you have it written into the contract that at any point in their 1st 90 days, maybe even 180 days, which is six months, if at any point they feel that the relationship isn't right or maybe it's a two way thing. In fact I think it's always very smart to make this a two way thing. If at any point in the first, however many days, 90 days, 180 days, we don't feel that we're the right fit for you, or we feel that we've become mismatched, or you feel that we've become mismatched, we can walk away with a reasonable notice period, which might be a month notice, say, just so that you can undo what has been done. And this is that get out of jail free card or the we hate you clause. Essentially what you're going to do is you're going to guarantee that your new client is so satisfied with you that if they're not you will release them from the contract at any point. In fact, you could argue that even on a three year contract, you could say to them, although this is a three year contract, you've got to get out of jail free card at any point during that contract. If you're unhappy, you can terminate the contract with a three month notice period. And I know that goes against the point of having a three year contract, and I'm sure any lawyer listening to this would have a complete meltdown and seizure. But what I'm talking about here is the psychology of getting people to commit to you. We are derisking it for the clients. We're asking them to make a three year commitment. But we're saying to them, if it doesn't work out, for whatever reason, you can walk away with a reasonable notice period for such a long contract. Because here's the thing. If you had a client and they'd signed a long contract and a year in, they said to you guys, you're just not the right people for us. We're not very happy with you. The service levels aren't right, your strategic advice isn't good. This wouldn't be a surprise to you, would it? It's a 99% chance that you would know that there was a problem, right, because the work that we do with people, particularly when we're close working them and what you do, you pick up when there's a level of dissatisfaction. And actually the chances are that a client that isn't happy with you is probably a bit of a nightmare client anyway, right? So if a nightmare client, someone came to you and said they weren't happy, even if you were in the middle of a contract, what would you do? You'd release them from that contract, right? Of course you would. Most businesses would. And this is why well, most businesses would unless they were going through a process of selling the business, right? Those companies that are locking you into three year contracts or locking people in three year contracts and absolutely they must be honored, whatever. There's a different strategic reason for that. But for the average MSP like yours, if you lock someone into a three year contract and they're unhappy, of course you'd let them go because you don't want to have the hassle and the hell of servicing an unhappy client for the remainder of their contract. So if you're willing to do that anyway, we call that a hidden guarantee. It's a silent hidden guarantee that if they're unhappy, you would make them happy by letting them go. So therefore, you might as well make that a reason to join your MSP. Do you know what? You could take on 100 clients on that basis. One of them will trigger that unhappiness guarantee, the other 99 won't. Because they have walked into the relationship thinking, actually, these people are so reasonable, let's try these people, let's go with them. We can always walk away from it if it doesn't work. So what length contract do you ask for now and more importantly, are you brave enough to ask for a three year contract? Paul's? Paul's Blatant Plug would you like to see something sneaky kind of behind the scenes? Now, if you're listening to this podcast, and it's audio only, the next 5 seconds is going to mean nothing to you. But if you are watching this on YouTube right now, let me reveal some magic. Producer Simon Show. The green screen. Ta DA. Yes. I'm actually filming this in front of a green screen. It's a brand new studio setup that we've had put in place in my house here in Milton Keynes in the UK. And it's pretty dominant. It dominates my office. I've got these amazing lights and a green screen behind me and a microphone up there. And we've taken a lot of time throughout this year to get this setup absolutely spot on. The reason we've done that is we are tripling down on our YouTube content. We've got some pretty good content on there right now, but we've been on some training courses, we've learnt about storytelling, we've got some great new resources coming in and we've doing some amazing things with our editing. And the reason we're doing that is to produce better YouTube videos for you to keep you entertained. So when you're kicking back with a beer on a Friday night and you don't want to read a magazine or scroll through something on your phone, you can watch me on YouTube. That sounds like fun, doesn't it? Yeah, many of my friends wouldn't think so. But hey, if you want to see what content we've got right now, we haven't released any of the new stuff yet. The new stuff is coming very soon. But if you want to see what we've got for you right now, you can kill hours while learning about out to grow your business@youtube.com slash MSP Marketing big Interview hey, everyone.[00:14:19] Speaker B: My name is Braith Bamkin. I'm super excited to be on the podcast today. My background is in small business and I'm currently the Executive director of B. I here in Central Australia, mate.[00:14:31] Speaker A: Welcome, welcome. We scour the globe to find the very, very best experts. And we found you, Braith, because we want you to talk today about getting referrals. Now, we're going to talk about BNI later in the interview because it can be a very powerful tool, particularly for MSPs. But the big picture, the big reason we want you here is to talk about referrals. How do you get more referrals? How do you qualify them? How do you get people to refer you in the right way? Before we get on to that, let's hear a little bit of background about you. So you're not an MSP, but you now, as you say, you own, I think it was the biggest BNI franchise in Australia. You were telling me before the interview, so how did you get to this point? What's your background?[00:15:11] Speaker B: Well, I started out in the telco world. So I do have a little bit of a techie understanding, but I was in the sales and marketing area of that, and I was actually around with Nokia before nokia was cool. I was there when the first little tiny phones came out, the three series. I don't know if your guests may remember this. There was a little game called snake. We had a three hour training session in the late 90s on how to use snake. So that's how old I am in the tech world. But I moved from telco, I got a redundancy, and I went overseas and went to the UK, went to Europe, traveled, came back, applied for a job to be the national sales and marketing manager for a mattress company, of all things. It was a franchising thing, so I ended up buying one of their franchises, and that's how I got myself into BNI. And one thing led to another. And like the gillette guy, I loved the business so much, I bought it.[00:16:05] Speaker A: Fantastic. Yes. It wasn't the gillette guy, it was the Remington guy.[00:16:08] Speaker B: I'm Remington. Okay.[00:16:12] Speaker A: Victor. Oh, it'll come to me. I've got his book. I've got his somewhere on one of these bookshelves near me. I've got his books. Anyway, I'll come back to me in a second, but yeah. So you bought the business. Fantastic. And you operate, is it now 22 chapters across Melbourne?[00:16:26] Speaker B: Yeah, 22 chapters across Melbourne. It's great. Yeah.[00:16:29] Speaker A: So you must be attending a lot of early morning meetings and eating a lot of breakfasts.[00:16:34] Speaker B: I have to say, I have a really great team, so I'm pretty good. I don't go to more than two or three a week, and these days I actually don't eat breakfast because I think I've eaten more cooked breakfast than anyone on the planet. So these days I just give it a miss.[00:16:48] Speaker A: Yeah. No, I can imagine. I guess it's one of the hazards of the job with a job like yours. So referrals, so everyone loves referrals, and I think most MSPs, if they could get enough referrals, they would happily just sit back and make that their main marketing channel. Because, of course, a referral is work that turns up, or potential work that turns up. That's yours to lose. So if I'm looking for, well, as we're speaking now, Braith and around me in the house, I'm having work done.I've got a guy out in front of me fixing my drive. There's a guy out in my garage right now putting some plaster boards up. There's some people in my office putting some soundproofing up. And a lot of those people have come to me through referrals where I've said to one builder, hey, I need someone who can do XYZ. Can you find me someone? And they'll say, oh yeah, go and speak to Jim. And suddenly, in my mind, because I'm not an expert in buying these things, in my mind, if one person has said to me, oh, I bought from Jim and he's a safe guy to use. The price and all of the other factors are less important to me than trust. And I think that's what makes referrals so powerful. It's where someone you trust or someone you have trust in recommends the person that they are already buying from. Now in your experience, what is it that stops most MSPs from getting more and more referrals?[00:18:11] Speaker B: Well, can we take a step back, if you don't mind, and let's just explain what a referral is because I think if people understand this, it might make wanting to get more of them a little bit more attractive. So a lot of people think don't know the difference between leads and referrals. So a lead is, I say, Mate, go and call this guy because he needs his computer fixed. You call up my mate. My mate goes, Braith, I don't know him, why is he giving you my number? And it's just a cold call and we don't want to be doing cold calls in our life. And if you want to do cold calls, there's a lot easier ways to do it. But if it's a referral, I've referred somebody to a colleague who has said I have a problem, my tech at work is not working, my emails are slow, I can't download files, my staff are losing information there. I really need somebody to help with that. And I say, hey, look, I know somebody who's an MSP who can come in and support you to get the problems that you have solved. So my mate's really happy because he hears problems solved and I've told him to expect a call from my mate the MSP. My mate the MSP calls up and goes, oh, Braith gave me your details, great. I've been expecting your call blurt. This is my problem. So instantly you've got a warm introduction, they're expecting your call and they want to do business with you. It's a triangle. And if you think about the sides of a triangle, if I'm up the top, I have trust with my mate, with the problem computer and my mate the MSP supplier. And when I give a referral, there is a closure of the bottom of that triangle and that's the trust transfer. So you talked about it a bit before you trust somebody once you've been given their details. When I close that triangle, we have a triangle of trust and a triangle is pretty hard to break, right? So that's how referrals work. So in answer to your question, there was a very long way to get there. If you can solve people's problems and that's all a referral is, solving someone's problems. And you have been given a warm introduction, you don't have to sell anymore. It is simply, how do I help you to get your problems solved? It's a really nice way to do business.[00:20:16] Speaker A: It is. It's a beautiful way to do business. And what's wonderful about the answer you've just given is I can ask the same question again, which is, now you've explained to us why referrals are so powerful. And I love the concept of the triangle of trust. I will be stealing that one. Thank you. Adapting it. Anyway, what stops MSPs from getting more referrals?[00:20:36] Speaker B: Well, firstly, they don't know who to ask for. So a lot of times, if I don't know how to help you because you haven't explained it to me, I can't introduce you to somebody. So I've got to have a relationship with an MSP, and that MSP has to be training me effectively on how to introduce them. So that takes time. Trust takes time, and you need to invest in the relationship. So a lot of people think that, I meet you once for lunch and you're going to open up your little black book and off we go. You're going to have all your connections. But I don't know about you, but I know a lot of people, and I'm really tight with my network because if I refer you and you don't do a good job, they don't care about you, they care about me. It's me that's done the bad thing. So our reputation and our relationship has been diminished. So really it is about investing the time to build the relationships, which will increase trust, which affords you the right to teach me how you would like to be introduced. Because then you say to me, hey, if you hear people say, I have this problem, I know MSPs usually are helping people who have problems with emails, slow emails, files not downloading, malware, all the stuff that people who aren't technical just we don't want to know about. We just want it fixed. So if you teach me what to listen for, because I'm sure there are lots of technical terms that your MSPs are going, well, this is, this is that. I don't know what they are, I don't need to know what they are, but I need to know what the problem is that people are facing. And if you tell me a story on how you have solved someone's problems, I'm going to remember that story. Because our brain can latch on to a story and we can repeat it. And if I trust you, I'm going to tell you, hey, this bloke knows what he's talking about because and I share the story, I love this.[00:22:32] Speaker A: I love it because what you're talking about here is turning other people into your unwitting but willing salesforce. Right? And you're absolutely right. It's not about technical. Ordinary business owners and managers do not pick an MSP based on technical things.They pick them based on how they feel emotionally, whether they can trust them, whether they seem to click it's, all of those kind of things. And that's why you can unleash a salesforce on the world. Now, putting BNI to one side, because that's an obvious solution, which we are going to talk about in a second. What other practical things can MSP owners do to start to get more referrals? So how do they build that relationship of trust with other people who know the kind of prospects they want to reach? And how do they get those stories out there?[00:23:23] Speaker B: That's a great question. I think a lot of people look at the end user as the person they want to be connected to. So I hear often people say, I want to be connected to legal service firms who have 100 seats or more and that's great, and you will get introduced to them. But think about who in the buying cycle is hanging out with those dream customers and engaging with them before they have the problem that you are going to solve. So, for example, in the legal services firm, it might be business coaches, it might be accountants. I don't know who's going to be in the sales cycle beforehand because I don't know the industry of MSPs as well as you guys do. But you've got to know where the sales cycle is and who's speaking to your client before there is a problem that they need to have solved. And understanding that sales cycle means that you can get in before the decision is made. Because ultimately, once the decision is made, you're out of the picture. Right? So if somebody's already decided to use MSP Bloke down the road, even if I've got a great relationship with you, that job is over. So you need to get ahead of the curve. So tell me who are great referral partners and then build relationships with those referral partners and MSPs? It might be office fit out people businesses, it might be hardware suppliers, it might be software suppliers, it could even be web designers or software people who are working within businesses and they identify problems in that business once they've got in there and worked with them.We've all had the experience where you've had this fabulous new website built, but it's going like a snail in the office and you've obviously got a problem. So you need somebody to come in and solve that. Even though you've got, I don't know if you have broadband in the UK, but broadband or whatever the service is, you've got a problem, you need somebody to come in there and fix it. So those guys know the clients before you do. So build relationships with those.[00:25:27] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Just just of interest, here in the UK, we have dial up, so we have to dial a number and put the phone sort of into a receiver and it goes like that. I am joking.[00:25:40] Speaker B: Yes, we have a smart comment to make, but I don't think I will.You might be way ahead of us. You might have something even more no.[00:25:51] Speaker A: Oh, no. This is a vaguely monopolized national. Quasi national telecoms network that you ask any UK MSP well, UK MSPs will get this. The word they fear the most is the word openreach. Openreach is the national company that looks after all the telecoms infrastructure. So you ask them for a new line, and eight weeks down the line, they'll reply. It's that kind of thing.[00:26:16] Speaker B: I think we have that in Australia, too.[00:26:19] Speaker A: You always think countries like Australia and the US. Would be so much further ahead, but hey, there we go. You're actually right. Find other people who know that there's likely to be a change or a problem coming. So you're right to say web design agencies. Web design agencies are an amazing source of referrals because someone will say to their web design agency, hey, you guys do computers. Can you help us with ours? We've got this problem. And of course, web design agencies, they don't even know how to do email properly, right? So how would they know to do anything else?[00:26:49] Speaker B: So, you know what makes that really powerful is if you help those people to solve their clients problems, it makes them more sticky. So if they have a client saying, hey, we need this problem solved, and you can be introduced really quickly to solve that problem, everyone is a winner. So often people think, well, why would they refer me? Well, the reason they will refer you is because they want to help their clients make them look good as well.[00:27:12] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly that. In fact, you're making their lives easier. And the reward that you get for that is they will push work your way, and that can work both ways as well, which is pretty exciting. Okay. Let's talk about BNI. So you loved it so much. Victor Kayam. That was the name that's the Remington guy. If you don't know this story, there's a series of adverts which you can find on YouTube from the 1980s, starring this guy called Victor Kayam, who's using a Remington shaver. And he said, I love the company so much, I bought it. Which is true. He actually did buy the company. And his autobiography, which came out in the 80s, I've got a copy of it somewhere. You can get it for it's about 50, $60 on ebay. And it's an amazing story of how he basically risks everything.He was just a kind of a mid level executive in a normal corporation and leveraged every possible cent he could to buy this failing Remington company and then turned it around. It's a great story, but yeah. So you bought the franchise. You're obviously b and I, through and through, cut you, you bleed b and I now, I did a couple of years in BNI in 2005, and that was with a different you make it.[00:28:24] Speaker B: Sound like a sentence.[00:28:27] Speaker A: Not a sentence at all.I enjoyed my years. So when I was looking for general marketing business, it worked very well for me, and then I discovered the power of verticals and niching, and I went off down a separate route, and I went down the care route. And at the time, I was looking for veterinarians and opticians or optometrists and dentists, and they weren't in BNI, so I didn't reach them. But I deal with lots of MSPs. I talk to lots of MSPs, and those who are in BNI for a number of years sing its praises. And it seems to be that the trick is getting into the right kind of group. So can you explain what would be a good group for an MSP and what would be a bad group or a group that isn't quite as a good sure, sure.[00:29:11] Speaker B: Well, first of all, I would say that no matter where you go in the BNI world, if you come with the right mindset, you're already ahead of the game. So I think a lot of people come to b. I. And they expect things to fall in their lap straight away. But B I Is a long, slow burn. So wherever you go in the b. I. World, you've got to think about this as a two to three year.Think of it like an apprenticeship. You will get business along the way, but it takes time for that pipeline to fill up. What you're looking for is people in a chapter that are natural referral partners. So we talked before about the software people, the web people, the accountants, the business coaches, people who are speaking to your clients before they need your product or service. So we call them in BNI contact spheres. So they're groups of people that share the same client but don't compete and are on the same side of the buying cycle. So that's where you go. But what I will tell you about any BNI chapter, if you walk in the room and you feel comfortable with the people that are in the room, it doesn't matter whether or not you've got your natural referral partners in there, because you're trying to tap into the people in the room. Whose networks do you want to access? And if you feel comfortable with the culture, you're always going to be ahead of the curve, because every BNI chapter around the world, in every language is the same agenda and process. But they're all different because human beings come together in groups, and they create a culture. So you want to be in a room where you feel the right cultural fit for yourself.[00:30:47] Speaker A: Yes. So I guess that would mean a group where you've got a CPA, you've got a lawyer, you've got other people who are talking to b, two b clients. Whereas if you've got a group that's perhaps more based around trades, so where you've got a plumber, a builder, a carpenter, you can see that there's. I don't know if this is a concept within BNI or just in my head, but almost like affinity groups so carpenters and builders and carpet fitters, they're all dealing with the same kind of people who are looking for people like them, and the same with accountants, web designers, all of that kind of stuff. A lot of MSPs struggle to find an empty chapter because the It seat has been filled. So I guess with that, you have to just get to know the chapter director of the local area and look for new chapters opening up in the future.[00:31:34] Speaker B: Well, there's always opportunity. People come and people go. Like things happen in their businesses, their lives. They get married, they move house, they sell their businesses, all sorts of stuff. So there's always opportunity to join A-B-I chapter. So I'd make myself aware of what's around you and make myself aware of who you need to speak to to get in there.[00:31:59] Speaker A: Simple as that.[00:32:00] Speaker B: Simple as that.[00:32:01] Speaker A: So essentially, play the long game and you'll find a way.[00:32:04] Speaker B: Yes?[00:32:05] Speaker A: Yes. Okay. Braith. Thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. I've had a blast with you today. It's been absolutely great fun. Now, I know that you have a ton of resources on your website as well to help business owners, not just people involved with B I, but business owners around the world and MSPs. Tell us what you've got available and how can we access it?[00:32:24] Speaker B: Look, I've got a really cool free course. It'll take you about just over an hour, plus a bit of time to invest in filling out the documents. It's called three steps to get your business referral ready today. So if you're brand new on the networking referral game, this will give you a really easy way to collect your thoughts and help you to prepare for the journey of generating referrals in your business. And even if you don't go down the referral pathway, it will help you get clear about how to communicate what it is that you want in your business, because that's ultimately what will set you apart from your competitors.[00:32:59] Speaker A: Awesome. And give us the website address.[00:33:01] Speaker B: So it's Braith Bamkin. That's braithbamkin.com.[00:33:07] Speaker A: Paul Green's, MSP Marketing Podcast this week's recommended book.[00:33:13] Speaker B: Hi, I'm Craig Andrews. I'm a marketing consultant that specializes in building rapid trust for high ticket sales. And the book that we recommend has been so transformative for me. It's called Predictably Irrational by Dan Arielli, and what he talks about are predictable ways that we make irrational decisions and how you can use those to benefit your marketing.[00:33:38] Speaker A: Coming up next week. Hi, I'm Jake Gregorich and I'm going.[00:33:42] Speaker B: To be on Paul Green's Marketing Podcast.[00:33:45] Speaker A: To talk about what the biggest challenge is in the MSP industry, which in.[00:33:48] Speaker B: My opinion is new logo growth and.[00:33:51] Speaker A: How to address those challenges to help grow your MSP business. That's going to be such a great interview with Jake next week. And we're also going to be talking about something called Lead Magnets. I'll explain what a lead magnet is and why you would use LinkedIn messaging to reach new prospects using this thing called a lead magnet. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's, MSP marketing Podcast.

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

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Episode 203Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 What are YOU using AI tools for? * 05:21 Creating engaging content for LinkedIn * 14:47 Improving your employee and client satisfaction and retention rates

Featured guest:Thank you to Stephen Spiegel, Founder and CEO of Crewhu, for joining me to talk about how keeping your employees happy has a positive effect on client satisfaction, which can help MSPs improve retention rates, increasing your ability to sell more.Stephen Spiegel has over 15 years experience as an entrepreneur. His success comes from supporting the needs of employees keeping turnover uncharacteristically low, productivity high, and placing a premium on employee recognition and growth. In 2003 he was one of the first entrepreneurs to bring the Cold Stone Creamery brand to South Florida. In 2013 he created Crewhu, an employee recognition and rewards platform, making it easier for businesses to reward employees for outstanding service. Stephen continues to focus on creating a culture of appreciation and collaboration knowing a company's competitive advantage comes from building a strong team.Connect with Steve on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenspiegel/ Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to the MSP Marketing Action Monthly magazine: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, Switch: How to change things when change is hard: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Switch-change-things-when-hard/dp/1847940323/

Transcription:Voiceover:Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Hello my friend and welcome to the show. Here's what we've got coming up for you this week.Steve Spiegel:Hey, I'm Steve Spiegel, founder and CEO of CrewHu. Everyone wants to grow their MSP, and to do that, you need to keep your clients happy. But newsflash, keep your clients happy is really hard if you aren't keeping your employees happy. I'm going to tell you how you're going to make sure that you have the happiest staff.Paul Green:And on top of that, fascinating interview with Steve. Later on, I've got three great ideas for you for better engagement on LinkedIn.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Question for you, what are you using AI tools for right now? Predominantly, when I talk about AI tools, I mean, ChatGPT and Bard and all the other tools that have had this huge overnight success this year. We obviously know they've been years in the making, but they suddenly burst into the mainstream at the beginning of this year. What are you doing with ChatGPT, et cetera, that's really interesting right now? I've been asking a load of MSPs this over the last few weeks, and I'm seeing tons and tons of different things come in.For example, some people are using it to rewrite marketing content or even generate marketing content. Obviously there's a massive caveat with that, that AI generated text isn't quite ready for consumption by humans, so you do need to have somebody editing it, reviewing it, fact-checking it especially. But AI tools can be a great way to take pre-written content and to create your own version of it, to create your own spin on it. I know of people using it to create SEO, search engine optimization, content for their websites.Again, you just need to make sure that humans are looking for that. But then we've got a whole bunch of other things that MSPs are using AI tools for. Here's a really interesting one that someone suggested to me a couple of weeks ago. They're using AI to help them explain difficult concepts to their prospects and to their clients. It all comes down to a specific prompt, and that prompt is please explain insert subject as if you were teaching it to a 12-year-old. Because you know that ChatGPT, et cetera, their power lies in the prompts and you have to get the prompts right.There's a huge amount of information out there about how you can do it. It's got a name even. They're calling it prompt hacking. Everything's hacking these days, isn't it? But prompt hacking, and it's all about the context and the prompts that you give to these AI tools. The one that seems to work particularly well is explain insert subject to a 12-year-old. If you took something like phishing, for example, and you asked an AI tool... I mean, you could even give it some more context.You could say, "I am explaining phishing, or I want to explain phishing to someone who does not understand what phishing is or even how to spell it. Please, can you explain this to a 12-year-old in no more than four paragraphs?" You are expert enough on phishing and any other cybersecurity problem that you would be able to take what ChatGPT spews out and to be able to look at it and understand whether or not that's right, which is pretty exciting. You're the human that you can filter the AI content through.Here's the thing, these AI tools have the ability to explain really difficult concepts in ways that do make sense to people. Of course, they're going to strip out some information. It's not going to be a perfect explanation, but it's a great place to get started, right? Certainly, I find from talking to lots of MSPs that one of the most difficult things for any MSP to do is to explain a difficult concept in a way that anyone can understand. The curse that you have is your intellect, your ability, your technical knowledge.You understand phishing at a much higher level than ordinary people do, and I count myself in the ordinary people there. I've listened to conversations about phishing and cybersecurity and just tech between MSPs and it's all just gone a little bit over my head. Using the AI tools to bring yourself I'm going to say down, that's not really the right, but bring yourself to the level of the average business owner or manager can be a very, very smart thing to do.Because here's the thing, when you are marketing and educating and talking to ordinary business owners and managers who do not know as much about technology as you do, if you talk to tech, to high level, if it's too complicated, if you can't explain it quickly and easily to them, then you will lose them. You'll see it in their eyes. They mentally switch off. They emotionally check out.Once they do that, they're not engaging with you and with what you've got to say, which means they're very unlikely to ever go and buy from you. ChatGPT, et cetera, can be amazing tools to help you explain very, very difficult concepts in a way that even a 12-year-old could understand.Voiceover:Here's this week's clever idea.Paul Green:Let's talk about LinkedIn. And like all social media platforms, LinkedIn is all about engagement. If you post content that people engage with more, that they like, that they share, or that they comment on, then that sends a message to LinkedIn's algorithm. Don't forget, all of these social media platforms are driven by the algorithm. You see, those clever people sat in those big buildings in California have figured out over the years that if someone likes something, shares something, or generally engages with it, comments on it, then it means that it's good content.The more that people do that, it's like a virtuous circle, the more that people do it, the more people see it. If you post a piece of content on LinkedIn, or indeed any platform, and very quickly it's picked up and people do stuff with it, they start commenting on it, writing it, writing it, liking it, et cetera, et cetera, then more people see it. All social media platforms at varying different levels work in exactly this way. The goal for you then is to add content that is particularly engaging. Now, we've talked before on this podcast about the different levels of content.The very best kind of content you can put on LinkedIn or any platform is content that you yourself have created. Engaging content, I've got three examples to give you in a second. If you don't have the time to do that, the next best alternative is canned content. Canned content is content that's been written by someone else on your behalf. For example, we provide a full seven days worth of social media every single week in the MSP Marketing Edge, and that is canned content that is never going to be as good.Don't get me wrong, it's very good, but it's never going to be as good as your own personal content that you've put together. But for the 700 plus MSPs that we serve and work with who don't have time to create their own content, our canned content is better for them than the third level of content, which is nothing and not posting anything on LinkedIn at all. Let me give you three ideas right now of types of content that you could put onto LinkedIn. The first of those is... And these, by the way, are all designed for engagement.This isn't just content. This is content that is designed from scratch to be engaging, and not all of it's going to work. You could take some of these and you could do different iterations of it and some will work better than others will, but it gives you three ideas of formats, of type of content that you can try on LinkedIn to get better engagement. The first of those is to do a short video of something that's real. For example, here's a great example, you could grab your phone, go and sit in your car and prop your phone up against the dashboard and the window and record.Don't record it straight into LinkedIn. Record it as a video you're going to upload to LinkedIn. You could sit there. You could have your coat on. Your seatbelt on even. It's pretty obvious that you're in your car, and this is what makes it real. Even if you're sat in your own car park deliberately doing this, it seems more real. You can say, "Hey, hi, this is Paul." In fact, what would be really cool is looking away from the camera at this point as if you haven't planned what you're going to say.You could say, "I've just had this call from a client, and actually it's the kind of call that I wish I had more of these kind of calls. Often the calls I get are the other way, but these clients, they were ringing me to say that they'd had this email and it didn't feel right. There was a link in there and everything about the email was trying to get them to click a link and log into something. We have a name for this. We call it phishing. It's phishing with a P." You get the idea, right? Then you then explain what a phishing link is.Actually what makes that video real is your client didn't click the phishing link. Woo-hoo! Happy times, right? Now, that's actually more real, your joy and your relief that your client didn't click the phishing link than you saying, "Oh, we've had another client click a phishing link." Because you can talk about the fact you've just avoided three or four hours of work from your team and a great deal of effort and hassle and heartbreak, and you could then talk about how software solutions could help them to avoid this problem in the future, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.You know the technicalities of that more than I do. But the concept, the format here of this engaging piece of LinkedIn content is a short video that is real. It's not you with light and camera and your shine and whatsoever. It's you in the real world, in your car, in a restaurant, taking a walk, and it's almost like you've had a thought about something and you've grabbed your phone and you've just recorded yourself. And that could be a very engaging type of content. That's number one.Number two is another video format, but this is a little more pre-produced. It's a bit more produced as it were. You may for this use a proper webcam and lights and whatsoever, but what you do is you create a short video giving a tip. For example, one that I've just picked completely off the top of my head because I thought everyone knew about this and it seems that they don't, tab groups. I use Chrome, and I believe Edge is exactly the same that you can group tabs into groups.I've been using this, in fact, since it was a beater thing in Chrome because I have about 4,000 tabs open, but all neatly in a small number of groups, which makes it okay, right? I know. But you could literally do a 30 second video. It could just be a screen share and you could be like, "Hi, it's Paul here. Right. Let me show you something that if you use Chrome or Edge browser every day, this is going to blow your mind. You've got all these tabs open here, and it's very hard to know which ones which and to find the one you're looking for. Did you know you can group them together?"And then you literally show them, select, select, select, right click group, whatever it is that you do, and you show them in that video. You are doing like a... I guess you'd call it like a tech tip, and you're doing it there and then to show them what they can do. That's the second idea. Now, that, by the way, I don't think is as powerful as that real video concept that I talked about before, but you can't just keep doing those real videos. Part of the fun of LinkedIn is doing a different variety of things.You can do a real video and then you can do these short tech tip videos. And then the final suggested piece of content to drive more engagement on LinkedIn is what we call a one line question, and it is literally that. There's no context to it. It's a single line. This looks better in Facebook than it does in LinkedIn, because in Facebook under a certain number of characters, it makes it big. You can put a color behind it and it really stands out. But you can still do this on LinkedIn.For example, one of the one line questions you could be, you could simply ask, what are you doing that works really well right now to build your LinkedIn connections? Or what's the most frustrating thing about technology in your life? Or what's the technology or what's the thing that your staff moan about the most in the office? Do you see what I mean? It's like a one line question, and what you're hoping to do is to hook someone that sees that as you post it and they immediately can respond, and they respond with a comment very quickly.They do that because you've asked a very short open question and they instantly jump in with a short answer. As I said earlier, you'll have some hits with that and you'll have some misses, but that can be a very smart third type of engaging content. Now, if you want to get an idea of some single line questions that you can ask, I have a free resource for you with a bunch of clever suggestions.Voiceover:Paul's blatant plug.Paul Green:And that free resource is the MSP Marketing Facebook Group. You see, a couple of months ago, we switched from posting articles and help videos and stuff like that and we switched over to exactly this format. About probably 80% of the content I put in there now is single questions, single line questions. There's an absolute ton of them in there. If you join that Facebook group, you can go through and look at the questions that I've posted.Now, bearing in mind, I'm posting them to engage with MSPs, but you could take many of those questions, make some of them slightly less technical and you could reuse them. In fact, you have my blessing and my permission to reuse my questions on your LinkedIn for you to engage with ordinary business owners and managers. But to do that, of course, you've got to be a member of the group. Now, it is a free group. It's only for MSPs, so it's a vendor free zone. I'm there every day advising you on how to improve your marketing.All you have to do is go to Facebook on your phone, type in MSP Marketing at the top, but go to groups. We've got a page that we don't really do anything with, but we've got a group. The group is very active, so go to groups. You'll see my pretty little face, stab your finger onto my face, and you just have to apply to join. We do ask you a few questions to check that you are a real MSP and not a vendor trying to sneak in, but I look forward to seeing you and, in fact, helping you with resources like these one line questions in the MSP Marketing Facebook Group.Voiceover:The big interview.Steve Spiegel:Hey, I'm Steve Spiegel. I'm the CEO and founder of CrewHu. We are the customer satisfaction and employee recognition platforms made specifically for MSPs.Paul Green:Thank you so much for joining me on this podcast, Steve. Now, we all know that growing your MSP isn't just about winning new clients, it's about retaining your existing clients as well. And that's something that a lot of MSPs just sleepwalk their way through because the average MSP retention is really, really good. I've spoken about this at length on the podcast before. I perceive that partly it's inertia loyalty. It's just too difficult. Well, that's the perception anyway to move off to another MSP, but also because the clients don't understand.They see technology as this big scary thing. It's a massive thing for them to switch from one MSP to another, so it's easier to stay. I guess you could throw in there that actually also they're very happy. We've got mixtures of people who are very happy and mixtures of people who feel it's too difficult to move. Now, I know that you have a very interesting view of how to improve and build on customer retention, and that's by not actually working on your customer retention at all.Steve Spiegel:Yeah, I believe it all has to do with your team, your processes, and your company culture. A lot of MSPs go about it by building this really amazing tech stack. But the truth is, that tech stack can be duplicated in months, if not weeks, and all of a sudden you look like the next guy down the street. You're right, churn is very low within this space. The opportunity is bringing on new business that doesn't have an MSP.Co-managed is a very big trend right now, and what's going on in the economy, which is good for the MSP industry, is IT services are actually declining in-house and they're partnering with MSPs. You want to be that MSP that they partner with. You mentioned about churn, but the big opportunity now for MSPs is not just churn, it's your existing client base. There's so much opportunity.And for the most part, they're just doing a fraction of the business that they should be doing with you. If they're not happy, even if they're not going to churn, they're not going to do that extra business with you.Paul Green:Yes, completely. Unhappy clients don't buy more things from you and vice versa. Tell us a little bit about your background then, Steve. What got you into the MSP space and what makes you an expert at dealing with happy employees and happy customers?Steve Spiegel:Got it. Actually before this and before CrewHu, I was building this franchise concept called Coldstone. I was one of the early franchisee groups and we were bringing this brand to South Florida. It's an ice cream concept, so we're selling ice cream in South Florida. It was retail, and it was a high transactional business. I was actually trying to solve my own problem. I was building a lot of stores. We had over 100 employees and our turnover was over 100%. I was pulling my hair out.You ever been at the dinner table with your family and you're like staring out in space and your wife goes, "Honey, did you hear what I said?" And then you're like, "No." That was happening a lot. I was thinking about business. It wasn't a good time for me, and I needed to get to the bottom of why employee turnover was so high, why customer satisfaction wasn't great in the stores. We actually built CrewHu at that point to survey all of our customers. But the difference is we wanted to, if it was good, recognize the employee for delivering great services.The thing that was happening is people were walking into the stores and they had to click 20 times to leave a review, which means that they were pretty (beep) if they actually did that. We got one per store per month. We put this into place and we ended up getting 100 pieces of review per store per month. 96 of them were positive, four were negative. We were able to celebrate 96 times with our team. The four times when something went wrong, we were able to train them.We had a great relationship because we're always celebrating that they're open to receiving feedback and improving our processes. Some MSPs came to us during this time and they're like, "Ooh, we really like what you're doing. I didn't know what an MSP was at the time. I became friends with these guys, the early adopters, and they told me to walk shows like IT Nation and I learned all about it.I really saw the parallels between retail, which is very service oriented, very, very high customer service oriented, and the MSP space, which this is where you differentiate your MSP by being high customer service oriented. I'm like, this is great. We could really make a difference here. At that point, these guys happened to be... You ever hear Gary Pica and TruMethods?Paul Green:Yes. Yeah, yeah.Steve Spiegel:These guys were in a TruMethod peer group, and it's now called TruPeer. I'm like, well, how do I get in front of more of you? They're like, "Oh, you got to look at Gary." I got on the phone with Gary and I'm like, "Can I come out?" He's like, "Well, you could sponsor this event called Schnizzfest that we're going to start to put on." They're getting ready for the inaugural event. I'm like, "I don't have a lot of money right now. We've been burning money for a while. Is there any way I could come out just to speak to your peer groups?"He's like, "Yeah, sure, if you don't mind picking up the bar tab." At that point, I didn't realize how much MSPs, the guys that work there or own it, like to go out and have a drink after work. The barter was pretty high, but I ended up making a lot of friends. We ended up closing a couple of dozen new deals, and all of a sudden I was in the MSP space and we haven't looked back. We now only focus on the MSP customer. When they come in, they'll know this is made for them. This integrates with everything that we use.It's real easy to use because of that. Because a lot of people also say, "You could do this everywhere. Why aren't you going everywhere?" Even our clients are saying that because they want to sell it. I simply say, "Listen, right now I want to really focus on this vertical, hit all the pain points, try to serve you guys as best as I can, and then we could go out, but we haven't yet. We're focused truly on this vertical very hard."Paul Green:Before we carry on and talk more about CrewHu and employee satisfaction, client satisfaction, what happened to the franchise business?Steve Spiegel:Oh, I still have it. I'm an investor. When we put it into place, the turnover actually went down to 40%, which is pretty unheard of in this space. We have a metric that's really important in the business called same-store sales, and same-store sales was negative year over year, which is the biggest health metric that I followed, so I knew I needed to change something.Ever since we started to focus on the employee to deliver customer satisfaction, same-store sales went from negative to positive, and we were hitting 9% year over year for the next three or four years, which in retail is unsustainable, but getting that for four years straight is really unheard of. We were able to really grow the business and increase the valuation of the company.Paul Green:And briefly, because I appreciate we're slightly going off track from MSPs here, just briefly explain what same-store sales is so we can understand what that metric was.Steve Spiegel:Got it. In food, you're normally seasonal wherever we are. For us, it's not always great to compare this week to last week or this month to last month. The best way to compare is, for example, January of this year to January of last year, and you can really see how you're truly doing.Paul Green:Got it. Year-on-year, essentially. Why is it that you see an improvement in customer satisfaction when you see an improvement in employee satisfaction?Steve Spiegel:Well, just like in retail, in the MSP space, you're measured on the satisfaction that you provide. You mentioned that churn isn't high in the MSP space, but when people do leave and they do leave. I've seen it, and I've seen MRR companies that were billing 25,000 a month leave and it's put a hole in their growth for the next year because of that, because now they have to replace it.The reason they leave, one of the biggest reasons anyway, is response time. Even if you have a high CSAT, but they're rating your response time, that was Hurley, my dog, you're relating your response time low, they can be at risk. So he doesn't keep on singing, I'm going to bring him in so he can hang out with us.Paul Green:Well, this has never happened before. Just talk amongst yourselves while Hurley comes in.Steve Spiegel:Customer satisfaction I think is really important to the MSP. You're reducing risk by measuring the satisfaction, seeing where you're not meeting expectations. I take customer satisfaction. I break it up into a few categories. One is empathy, and that is simply customer service training. Is the tech emailing back and forth too many times before they actually pick up the phone? Are they talking down to the customer because they don't know the technology as well as the tech? Of course, they don't, but sometimes just the tone of your email or how you're speaking can come across badly.Empathy is really important. You want to capture that somehow. A process is really important. I'll take a simple example. When you bring on moves, adds and changes, which are very, very common in this industry, you bring on a new user and they're meant to have this specific software and it's not there. When they get their computer, they can't do their work, and now there's a problem. It's a simple change in the process, add that software to that checklist. That's an example of a process problem.You want to capture that, if it's empathy or process. The biggest thing though that I see is expectation, that we have SLAs, don't know if they're clear all the time. The customer has an expectation and the MSP has an expectation for their service. However, if that's not aligned, even if you're delivering great service, the customer could still be unhappy and you could fix that by simply communicating what the proper expectation.Your computer goes down and your email's not working and your SLA is four hours for that and you fix it in an hour, but they're angry because it didn't take a half an hour, that's something that you need to resolve with your customer or maybe all of your customers just to let them know clearly what the SLAs are. I think those are the three things that covers all issues with transactional customer satisfaction.Paul Green:Obviously you've built CrewHu around the needs and wants and what works best for MSPs. How does the software directly help to address those issues?Steve Spiegel:Well, we integrate with the MSP's PSA. Whenever a ticket is replied to or a ticket is closed, the customer has an opportunity to rate how the transaction is going or how it went. We also capture things such as empathy, such as things as response time. One of the things that we capture are things that you would not necessarily see. You could have a 99% CSAT, but now you're looking that, oh, empathy, we have 100% on. Response time, we have a 50% on. Proactiveness, we have a 90% on. Resolution time, we have a 90% on."You could see that based on that, response time is an issue, even though you have a 90% CSAT. You get to see that by say you have 1,000 pieces of feedback and you only get 20 pieces of feedback regarding response time, that shines a light on things that they don't see you doing, and that's an opportunity to improve. That's just to reduce the risk. Now, to help grow your business, you want to also take that positive feedback and you want to shout it from the rooftops. Get more Google Reviews.Show people proof points outside of you just saying, "Hey, we have better service." This is probably the most important thing to do as an MSP. It's hard to sell something that looks like something else down the street. You have to sell you. You have to sell what you deliver. How best to sell what you deliver is to have your customers talking about what you do. We actually go to trade shows all over the country, sometimes all over the world. We've been to the UK, Australia.The reason why we do well in trade shows is not because of me or my sales force, it's because our customers are bringing their friends, their peers that they met to show and say, "You have to try these guys out. They've changed our business." The owners of MSPs, the marketing managers, need to think about how they could make that happen for themselves too, because we're really selling services, we're selling trust. Finally, we talked about how I look inward to the employee.It's really important to celebrate the small wins on a daily basis with your team, not just that big sale that gets brought in, not that big release that you have coming out, but every day there's tickets being answered. There's automation is being done. There's the heroes. Just like in my retail business, the heroes in the MSP are on the front line talking to the customers every day. It could be a thankless job, because they're not calling to order flowers. They're not calling for a special occasion that makes you feel great.They're calling because they have a fire, they have a problem, their day is not going their way today, and you're there to help them. If your team on the front line doesn't fully believe in this, no matter what you say or what you do or what you push, you're not going to be able to deliver that amazing customer satisfaction.Paul Green:Yeah, that makes perfect sense. My final question for you, before you tell us about CrewHu, and the answer to this, Steve, is not install CrewHu and get started with it. My question is this, what's a good place to get started? If you're a busy MSP owner, you're spending way too much time already working in the business compared to on it, you hear this and you're nodding along thinking, "Yep, yep, this guy's talking absolute sense, but where do I start," what's your answer to that?Steve Spiegel:It depends where you are. If you have a customer service process in place and you're not happy with what it's measuring or how it's working, then you want to start to look to how do I optimize this, how do I make this successful? If you don't have anything in place right now, get started right away. Whether you're a one person shop or a 50 person shop, this is something that you need to measure, not only to help you improve your business, but also to prove to new clients that this is how you take care of your existing customer base, and this is why you should trust us.Paul Green:Excellent. Right. Tell us a little bit more about CrewHu and what's the best way to get in touch with you or with the business?Steve Spiegel:You could go to CrewHu.com, and it's C-R-E-W-H-U.com. Crew, those are your people. Those are the guys you go into the foxhole with. Hu, the H-U, stands for human. We're trying to help you bring the human into the workplace or back into the workplace. I meet so many owners of MSPs, large and small, meet so many managers and one thing everybody has in common is that they care. They care about the business. They're truly passionate about the technology and how they can transform their customer's lives.They care about their employees. They want them to be successful. They want them to train. A lot of them are just frustrated that they're not doing what they think they should be doing. We want to try to help them bridge that gap and create strong relationships with their teams and customers. We help with the customer satisfaction process, but we also help engage the employees in the customer satisfaction process, which is the key to making it work.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.Dana Mantilia:Hi, my name is Dana Matilya, and the book that I would recommend you read is called Switch, and it is by Dan and Chip Heath. It is a great book that talks about cultural changes, and I think it's fabulous for people in the cybersecurity industry to read because it really talks about how that's a cultural shift that needs to happen, and the book Switch is all about how that's happening in all different areas of the world.Voiceover:Coming up next week.Braith Bamkin:Hi, I'm Braith Bamkin. If you've ever wondered about how you get referrals into your MSP, join me in the podcast where I'm going to share some tips and tricks on how to get you referral ready.Paul Green:Wherever you are listening to me right now, or indeed maybe even watching me, please subscribe and you will never miss an episode. Because on top of that fascinating interview next week, we're also talking about why you should be locking your clients into a three-year contract, but making sure you give them a get out of jail free I hate you break clause. What exactly is that? I'll explain it next week. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.Voiceover:Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

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Episode 202Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 How to encourage 'ghost' prospects to re-engage * 07:45 Grow your LinkedIn connections and email database at the same time * 20:36 Leadership, true client partnerships and the voice of the CIO

Featured guest:Thank you to professional speaker and author Jeff Ton, for joining me to talk about the value of true MSP/client partnerships, and the importance of establishing a relationship of trust, transparency and respect with CIO clients and prospects. Keynote speaker, frequent podcast guest and best-selling author, Jeff Ton has been amplifying audiences around the world for two decades. With deep experience as a technology and business executive, he draws on his background to educate, inspire, and entertain audiences large and small. Jeff authored Amplify Your Job Search - Strategies for Finding Your Dream Job (2020) and Amplify Your Value - Leading IT with Strategic Vision (2018). His insights have been featured in Forbes, Huffington Post, Information Week, among others.

When his teenage dreams of becoming a rockstar collided with reality, he traded his guitar for a computer keyboard and became a rockstar of a different kind. After launching his career as a software developer, Jeff became an industry-recognized leader and business executive, building teams and leading organizations in the banking, consumer electronics, real estate development, non-profit, and technology sectors.

Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jtonindy/ Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to the MSP Marketing Action Monthly magazine: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, The Robert Collier Letter Book: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Robert-Collier-Letter-Book/dp/1607964562/

Transcription:Voiceover:Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Hello and welcome back to the show. It's episode 202 and this is what we have for you this week.Jeff S. Ton:Hi, I'm Jeff S. Ton. I have spent 40 years in information technology and I have become an expert in how to relate to chief information officers. I advise companies all over the world on how to build stronger, more strategic relationships with their clients through these concepts.Paul Green:And on top of that fascinating interview with Jeff later in the show, I've got a clever idea for you. It's a way that you can build your LinkedIn connections and your email database at the same time.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:I'm pretty sure that the first time I heard the word ghosting was watching Spider-Man: Far From Home a few years ago. You know the bit where right at the beginning of the film that, I think it's Nick Fury, is ringing Spider-Man, and he presses red and basically ignored him. And Aunt May said, if you've never seen this film, you'll think it's the most boring sounding film, but Aunt May says, "You've ghosted Nick Fury. You can't do that." Something like that happened anyway, and I realized, oh, so that's the word for what happens to me on dating apps. I'm single and every now and again I have a three-month madness where I go on all the apps, which is by the way, the most depressing experience. If you are not single, try not to be single. It's just horrendous. Well, dating apps are horrendous anyway.Anyway, this concept of ghosting, I think we all understand this. It's where someone just goes quiet. So you are in the middle of a conversation or you're in the middle of something, and the other party goes quiet. And I guess it's been happening forever. It's just these days it has a word. And technology makes it so much easier. So you're chatting away on your dating app and the next morning you say to someone, "Hey, how are you today?" And they don't reply. It's just horrendous because it just triggers off this whole thing of uncertainty and doubt and you second guess yourself, and it's awful.And the thing is, prospects do it too. In fact, I was talking to an MSP just yesterday and he said three prospects in a row have said yes to him and then ghosted him. And we delved a little bit into that. I've heard of the odd one now and again, but three in a row? In fact, I set him a task to go and look for patterns, patterns in them or patterns in his behavior or his business's behavior. What's changed? What have you done differently? Because if three somethings in a row has happened, then something somewhere has changed. People don't just start doing that. So that's something he's gone to do.But his prospects, they've said yes to him, they've said, "Yes, we want to go ahead." He's put together the contract, and then nothing. Radio silence. He hasn't heard from them, and he hasn't been able to get hold of them to find out what happened. I mean, it would drive you crazy. I know I joke about doing it in dating terms, but let's get serious. In business terms, that's awful. When someone has said to you, yes, I want to do this, it's like someone saying that they will marry you, and then you can't get hold of them to arrange is it going to be a church or a register office or Vegas?So anyway, there is a way around ghosting. Because the thing about ghosting is it's more about them than it is about you. It's very easy for those of us on the receiving end of ghosting to take it personally, to think its something that we have done. But what you've got to remember, and this is not dating advice, this is business advice, marketing advice, what you've got to remember is it's about them and something that's happening in their world or their life. Maybe they've got a big project, maybe they've got an interruption. Maybe there's something happening in their personal life or in their business life, which is perceptually more important to them than switching MSPs or signing up with a new tech support firm. I know that seems crazy because to us it's the biggest thing in the world. We know that they need to get someone on and get their cybersecurity sorted and get those projects started, but they just don't see it with the urgency that you see it.So as with a lot of marketing, you've got to take yourself out of your head and put yourself in their head and in their heart and ask yourself, what do I think has caused this? What is causing this complete breakdown of communication? And you need to do this before you become desperate. And I don't mean that you would ever be desperate, but you can appear to be desperate if you keep sending texts and keep WhatsApping them and you keep phoning them. This is dating advice now. This is dating and marketing advice. No one wants to be that person where it's a constant one-way stream of communication, because that is just depressing.So what do you do if you think someone has ghosted you? Well, there are a couple of communications and types of communication that seem to cut through more than anything else. For example, writing a letter. So in the digital world that we are in, where everything is digital, physically writing, and I mean handwriting a letter, licking a stamp and putting a stamp on an envelope... Are there any stamps left that you can lick? Certainly here in the UK they're all self-adhesive. Anyway, writing a handwritten letter and sending that to them in the mail, that cuts through. Because it requires a modicum of effort. Anything that requires a modicum of effort cuts through.Sending them a box, what we call an impact box, which we've talked about on this podcast very early days I think, right back in 2019 or 2020, that cuts through. Because it's a box that has some merch, some gifts, some candy, whatever. And again, you could put a handwritten letter in that. In fact, the impact box cuts through 10 times more than a handwritten letter does. A letter sits on their desk, an impact box has the staff going, "What's this? You weren't expecting something? Do you know what it is?"So those kind of methods of communication cut through, but there's also ways of asking questions of them that can really cut through. So for example, there's an amazing book, it's called Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. He's the former FBI chief hostage negotiator, and he has an amazing email if you are being ghosted. The email subject line is this, have you given up on this project? So you send them an email, or in fact you could put this in a written letter as well. Have you given up on this project? And the body's very simple. Hi Dave, it's been a few weeks since we spoke about your technology or moving your technology. Is this something you still want to do?And we've used that email ourselves when we want to get through to someone and we've essentially been ghosted. And that's not just in sales. That could be just in setting things up, building partnerships. 99 times out of a hundred when you do that email and they respond, it's nothing to do with you, it's to do with them. They've had something come up. There was a personal crisis, somebody left, the budget's gone and they're too embarrassed to tell you. There's a whole number of different reasons, but what it does is it's the last attempt at shaking them and waking them so that you get something out of them.An MSP I work with called Mitch also recommended another way of putting that, thank you for this Mitch. Mitch suggests, where do we go from here? Which is another way of saying the same thing. Where do we go from here? And that particular phrase works really well for him.So I hope that you don't get ghosted by prospects or dates, but if you do, try one of those emails or try some other method of cutting through you. Remember, it's never about you. It's always, always about them.Voiceover:Here's this week's clever idea.Paul Green:One of the core marketing principles that I teach to MSPs all around the world is to use a very simple three-step marketing strategy. These are the three steps. You build multiple audiences of people to listen to you; then you build a relationship with them, and that's typically done through content marketing, and then you commercialize that relationship. And that commercialization is typically done by someone making outbound phone calls on your behalf. Not cold calling; it's warm calling because they're calling the audiences that you have built a relationship with through content.Now, if we go right up to the top step, that's where it all starts and that's where you have to do the hard work of building multiple audiences. And you could, if you had the time and resources, build as many audiences as you could. For example, we have this audience, so by listening to my podcast, you're in an audience there. Thank you very much for listening. We have a YouTube audience. We have an audience of people who read our blog on our website, which gets a fair amount of traffic. We have a Facebook group, which is just for MSPs, the MSP Marketing Facebook group. I have about 8,000 connections on LinkedIn and I do a LinkedIn newsletter every Thursday. So you get the idea. We have lots and lots of audiences, and there are lots more that you could build. For MSPs, typically, the two audiences you should be building is your LinkedIn connections and your email database. And I have an idea for you today, very, very simple idea which will actually build both of those audiences at the same time. It's very simple.Here's what you do. First of all, you set yourself a daily task. Or better still, you don't do it, because as the owner or manager of the business, you've got more important things to do, which is growing the business. So you get a virtual assistant or an admin person to do this for you. Everyday, and you make this a daily task so that anything that's daily happens on a regular basis or is more likely to keep happening; every day you go and you attempt seven to 10 connections on LinkedIn. So you find between seven and 10 business owners, business leaders, people that you would like to do business with, and you connection requests to them. And that's it. That's the LinkedIn part.Now, let's assume you get two to three new connections a day. So of those seven to 10, two to three people accept your connections. You're with me so far on this? Here's the clever bit. What you then do is you acquire their email address and you add them to your email database. We'll talk about the legals of that in a second, and then we will talk about the specifics of how you do it and what you send them.First of all, let's talk about acquiring their email address. There are two ways that you can do this. So you can either just pay and have it done easily or you can do it in a way which takes a little bit more time, but it costs you nothing. And you could argue it's a more robust way of doing it. So the easy and less cost-effective way of doing it, so the easy way that costs money, is you go buy a plugin for something like Lusha, L-U-S-H-A, Lusha, and there are alternatives to it, just Google for that. What that does is that gives you information on someone. So when you're on their LinkedIn profile, it'll display what information it knows about someone.Now, I haven't used it myself, actually, my team has, I personally haven't, but I believe from the MSPs I work with, I believe it costs around about one US dollar per email address. So if you're looking at someone's LinkedIn and you click the show me the email address button, that's going to cost you a dollar or a credit, which costs you a dollar, but you get the idea. So you're essentially paying a dollar. Now, if you're only doing two or three of these a day and you've got that cash for speed, that might be a way of doing it.But there is another way to find someone's email address. So let's say you've got a lawyer and his name is Derek Smith, and he works for sueeveryone.com, that's the name of these lawyers firm. And you can go into Google and put this in speech marks; so you're looking for an exact match. What did we say his name? Derek Smith. You put in derek.smith@sueeveryone.com. So that's his website, sueeveryone.com. His name is Derek Smith. So you put in derek.smith@sueeveryone.com in speech marks and you search for that. And if nothing comes up or Google suggests an alternative search, or maybe even shows you results for an alternative search if it's found nothing, that tells you his email address is not Derek.Smith. So then you try dSmith@sueeveryone.com, then you try DerekS, then you try Derek. There's probably about five or six different variations of someone's email. But most people in most businesses, they have either first name dot last name or first name, last name, or just first name or first letter of the first name, surname. There's a number of variations you can work through.And what you typically find is when you come across the right one, suddenly you get a page of results. And it might not be lots of results, but you'll find that there's the odd webpage with their email address on, or there'll be some other listings somewhere. When you Google an email address in speech marks, then it's very obvious when you've come across that person's email. So obviously you are not doing this, someone's doing this on your behalf. So you do that. You've now acquired that email address. Now that took maybe three minutes to do, but you didn't have to spend any cash doing it, other than the time of the person who's doing that.Let's recap where we are. We've got two or three new LinkedIn connections each day. And those people, we are finding their email address and we're adding it into your CRM. The legals of this are technically they have not opted in. However, and I say this, this is not legal advice, this is just Paul advice, which will not work in a court, often it's better to seek forgiveness than it is to ask permission. If you're adding two to three email addresses to your CRM, you are not going to trigger off many spam filters. The reality is when you email them the first time, and I'm going to tell you what email to send to them, the vast majority of people are just going to ignore it or read it and undo it or maybe unsubscribe.The thing we want to avoid more than anything is someone hitting the spam button. I've worked with lots of MSPs doing this, and the proportion of people that hit the spam button is lower than you think. So you might hit the spam button a lot, but then you are an M P. You don't operate with technology how ordinary people do, and they are maybe not as vigilant as you are at whitelisting, blacklisting, spam reporting. And they probably don't report phishing attempts either, that's just because they've got other things to do. So I think adding two or three addresses a day that you have acquired is fine.I know there are anti-spam laws, and particularly in Canada there's some very aggressive anti-spam laws. Those anti-spam laws are typically aimed at the big spammers that will email a million people about whatever today's scam is. That's not what you are doing. You have, what's the phrase that we use? Is it just cause? I can't remember. There's a specific phrase which came out of GDPR, which is a data protection act here in the UK and in Europe. I can't remember the exact phrase, but essentially you are emailing them about technology that can help their business. You are not a spammer and they can unsubscribe because you are using a proper CRM with an unsubscription link.So as I say, not legal advice. The one CRM you don't do this with right now is mailer light. So all the other CRMs, absolutely fine behavior; MailerLite is not. MailerLite a number of months ago has set its you are a crook settings very, very high. It's got a very, very sensitive trigger. So you could send out a hundred emails and get one spam complaint, which is not the end of the world on any other CRM, and Mailer Lite, based on a set of other circumstances, will just shut down your account. So essentially there's no mucking about it. I think it's because for years people have been using MailerLite for spammy activity and they're fighting back against it. So for now, don't do this in MailerLite, but other CRMs are fine.Now what email do we send them? The email we send them, the first email we send them is something to acknowledge what we've done. We don't tell them that we've acquired their email address, but you will say something like this. So you might set this up as an automated canned email that goes when you first add someone to your list, it says something like this. "Hi Dave. We've just connected on LinkedIn. I hope you don't mind that I've added you to my email list." So we acknowledge what you've done. This is what makes this not spammy behavior. "Hi Dave. We've just connected on LinkedIn. I hope you don't mind that I've added you to my email list." And then you say something like, "I'm going to send you occasional emails." Or better, "I'm going to send you one email a week with technology advice that many other," insert industry, "find of interest. With technology advice that many other lawyers, dentists, chiropractors find of interest."The idea being, we want this person to open this email, see a word that's relevant to them, which is lawyers, CPA, accountant, whatever it is they do, and go, "Okay", and just click back. Or they make a conscious decision to unsubscribe, because that's fine too. If they don't want the emails, we want them to unsubscribe. There's nothing worse than emailing people who don't want your emails. Why don't more people unsubscribe? They just don't. So we send them that email. "We've connected on LinkedIn, hope you don't mind I've added to my list. Lots of advices of interest to other lawyers. If you don't want to get these emails, there's an unsubscription link below. Thanks very much. I hope we get a chance to speak in the future. Yours, Paul."That's it. Simple as that. And then you add them to your normal weekly email that goes out. So for example, if you use a service like our MSP Marketing Edge, we give you every week a weekly email. In fact, we give you an entire weekly marketing system where an email is just part of it, all about driving traffic back to fresh block content and video on your website. But there you have a very, very simple system that you can start using literally today to grow your LinkedIn connections and your email database at exactly the same time.Voiceover:Vols pulls blatant plug.Paul Green:I just glossed over that weekly marketing system that we do in the MSP Marketing Edge. Let me tell you what that is, because it's actually something you could replicate yourself. So every week we give our members a brand new syndicated blog. It's a blog they can put on their website and a video. We have a UK presenter, a lady called Annie. We have a US presenter, a lady called Laura, and then we have an Australian voiced version. So there's no presenter on screen for the Australian version, but... What's her name? I can't remember her name. I pay her invoices, but I can't remember her name. Anyway, we have three different versions of that video. The idea is that you take the blog and the video and you put that on your website. So you've now got a blog article about something that's of interest to ordinary business owners and managers, and there's a video on the same subject. And the two things go on the same page. That's the first step of the weekly marketing system.Next, you send out an email to your email database, and the email is about the blog or the video and you're sending the traffic back to your site. That's the second step.The third step is you then schedule a week's worth of social media on LinkedIn and any other platforms you use. We deliver long forms of social media content for LinkedIn and Facebook and short forms for Twitter threads, any short form that you use. Does anyone still use Twitter? Apparently. And that's the third step. And one of those social media posts drives traffic back to your blog. So you see how this is a system, this is about integrating everything.The final step is, you take that blog and you turn it into a LinkedIn newsletter. Because LinkedIn newsletters algorithmically are still very, very important.That weekly marketing system is the crux. I mean, if you were to do that and implement that in your business, we're talking a few hours work; and my team literally hold your hand while you're doing it. If you do that, you've got a marketing system that 80% of other MSPs don't have. It's so powerful. And there are so many other things as part of the MSP Marketing Edge, it's not just that weekly marketing system. We have tools, videos, things that can go on your website, guides, press releases. There's training, you have direct access to me, there's an unlimited number of things.The thing is, we only work with one MSP per area. So the thing to do first is to see whether or not your area is available. Go to mspmarketingedge.com. You can pick your country and then put in your postal code or your zip code and it'll tell you whether or not we're working with one of your competitors or not. It won't name your competitor, but you'll see if your area is free. If your area isn't free, please do join the waiting list. Every now and again someone gives up their membership and we will be in touch and give you, if you like, first refusal on it before we start marketing to other MSPs. So you can check that now at mspmarketingedge.com.Voiceover:The big interview.Jeff S. Ton:Hi, I'm Jeff S. Ton. I'm a speaker and author and I like to say an explorer, an explorer of leadership.Paul Green:And especially an explorer of leadership within the MSP space, because I know you're going to talk to us today about the voice of the CIO. Thank you very much for joining me on this podcast, Jeff.Let's talk about your career first of all. What gives you the right to come on to this podcast and be an authority on the voice of the CIO? Tell us about your background.Jeff S. Ton:40 years in technology. I guess that's what gives me the authority. I started in tech 40 years ago as a programmer. That's what we called ourselves back then. Now you would call them a developer or maybe even a dev. But I spent most of that career on the practitioner side of the desk, growing through the ranks of management, working for various companies, various industries, but became chief information officer for two separate companies here in the US where I'm from; I'm in Indianapolis, Indiana. And was privileged to lead a couple of organizations as their CIO.And then I like to joke and say, I moved to the dark side. I became a vendor and moved to a cloud services provider, a managed service provider, here in the US as their head of product. One of the things that I was able to bring to them was that perspective, that view from the seat of the CIO? What are they thinking about? What are they worried about? How do you approach them? And I was able to provide that guidance. So fast-forward towards this stage in my career, I launched my own business about three years ago doing just that; speaking, writing, doing leadership development, but always with this idea of changing the face of IT, developing the next generation of IT leader and helping MSPs understand what's on the mind of the CIO.Paul Green:Yeah, so I mean, what I'm about to say by the way, is a joke. It's not considered to be offensive in any way. But if you've been doing this for 40 years, when you first started, were you sort of feeding ticket tape into machines to program them?Jeff S. Ton:Just about. Just about. We had our job control language on the mainframe, were still punch cards.Paul Green:Wow.Jeff S. Ton:So yeah, we were still doing punch cards at that point. But our software, our programs were actually typed into a 32x70 screen, for those of you that are old enough to remember those. And it was pretty slow-going. I can remember joking that, hey, we programmed in color. We had both amber and green for our screen. So it was quite a thing when the graphical user interface came about in the, what, nineties.Paul Green:Yeah, no, I bet it was. I bet it was. Here in the UK I live about 10 miles from something called Bletchley Park. I'm not sure if that's something you've heard of, but here in the UK it's where during World War II, all of the code breaking efforts were. So it was super top secret actually until the nineties. It stayed a secret for 50 years after the end of the war. And it's now home to the most amazing interactive museum that shows you about code breaking. It's also home to the UK's National Museum of Computing. Which is fascinating, because it has technology from the sixties up till pretty much 10 years ago. And you see those massive, you talk about mainframes, which even to someone like me, I'm only 48, don't really know what a mainframe is other than a big computer. And you see them working in these massive rooms and you realize that your mobile phone that you've got in your pocket has 3 million times more computing power than something that's taken up this room.Jeff S. Ton:Yes.Paul Green:It's a pretty awesome thing, especially an awesome thing to take your kids to see.Anyway, we digress. Let's come back to chief information officer. Just so everyone listening is absolutely clear what that is, what would you describe as a chief information officer? What's their role and what do they do, and how is that relevant to MSPs?Jeff S. Ton:A CIO, chief information officer, is the senior leader of technology for an organization. They may not have the title of chief Information officer; they might be a VP of IT in smaller organizations, they might be a Director of IT, but they are the top level person that is responsible for managing and directing the strategy on how the organization leverages technology to deliver their goods or services. So they have this complex role of they have to understand technology, most certainly, but they also have to understand the business and how the business provides value to its customers so that they can always bring solutions with that technology lens in their mind as they're working with their business peers.Paul Green:So from an MSP point of view, we are talking about a very high level strategic relationship.Jeff S. Ton:Yes. From an MSP perspective, it's your customer. Most of the time, even if you're dealing with a vice president or director and you're selling MSP services, most of the time because you're asking your client to outsource some of their services to you, the CIO is going to be involved in that decision, whether they're right there at the table with you or whether they're behind the scenes making a decision. But that decision to partner with an MSP, and I don't throw that word around loosely; partner, really when it comes to MSP, you become an extension of their technology team no matter what service you're providing. It might be help desk, it might be managed network, it might be managed security. Whatever it is, you're becoming a partner to that. And because of that, CIO is going to want to make sure that you are the right partner to solve the problems that he or she is trying to solve.Paul Green:It's interesting you throw that word partner out there because it's probably one of the most abused words in the channel right now. Any vendor gets a new client at let's say an MSP, and immediately they're a partner. And as you said there, you are not a real partner until you are in bed together and you're having every meal together and everything is the same.Jeff S. Ton:I talk about that a lot, Paul, about this concept of partnership. Every vendor that walks into a CIO's office says, "I want to be your partner." It got me thinking as a CIO, what does that mean, partner? So I started thinking about, well, if I want my vendor partner, my MSP to treat me as a partner, I needed to treat them as a partner. And I boiled it down to three words; trust, transparency, and respect. And if our relationship is based on mutual trust, mutual transparency, and mutual respect, I feel like we have a partnership. And then we can do business together.Paul Green:So here's the interesting question then, and I love the three letters you've got there. The interesting question is, if you assume the average MSP isn't truly partnering with its clients; so it's early clients, yes, it may have partnered with just through over-servicing because the new keen business owner was so keen to make an impact on their clients. But as they get busier and as they take staff on, that service level has normalized and they aren't true partnerships, it's a service provided. How do you, as an MSP owner, how do you move from doing a good job to being a genuine partner, a genuine CIO to your clients?Jeff S. Ton:Well, I think one of the first steps is you have to have senior level people on your staff who can sit down and have a conversation with the CIO, with those senior IT leaders about what are their business challenges. I always told my vendors I would know we have a good relationship when you do two things. Thing number one, you tell me when I'm wrong. Because I don't know everything and I don't need people just saying yes all the time. I need to know when I'm making a mistake. And the other one was, to tell me when you can't do something. Because you're not good at everything. Where are your specialties? What things are you, to use Jim Collins, what are you best in the world at? And those are the things I need to know and understand. The rest of it I'll use a different partner for, and that's okay. We'll be stronger because of it.So I think that's the key is you have to elevate those conversations to find out what's on the mind of the CIO. Probably it's not your call volume if you're doing help desk services, but more than likely it's what kind of customer experience are you giving to my end users? And if my customers, my end customers are calling in to that help desk, what experience are you giving them? That's what I'm going to care about more than the number of tickets that you're closing for me.Paul Green:Yeah. So what you're talking about there is a true partnership, isn't it? It's putting yourself into the mind and the feelings and the mindset of the other person and trying to figure out by asking them what it is that they want and they need. So what keeps them awake at night and what will allow them to sleep more soundly?Why do you think it's so difficult to ask those questions though and to develop that relationship?Jeff S. Ton:Well, first of all, a lot of CIOs, they're in that position and they don't always trust their vendor. And I go back to the words that I used at the beginning there, the trust, transparency and respect. We start these relationships very cautiously. And I'm not going to show you behind the scenes because gosh, Paul, I just know you just want to sell me some more stuff. So that's going to be my approach. And so we're kind of dancing this tenuous dance with each other. And what I found as CIO was it took me opening up about my business and my department before I really got that mutual communication going with my vendors.What I would do is I'd do an annual summit, an annual planning summit. Where I'd take my team offsite. And I started inviting my vendor partners, the partners, not everybody. If you sold me paperclips, you probably weren't going to be there. But if you were a true partner with me, you would be at this summit and you would see my budgets, you would see my business plans, you would see my strategy, what we've been successful at and what we haven't been successful at. And that opened me up to, "Hey, Jeff, I can help you solve that problem." And many, many times they could. Because I took the time to open up. So I think it's a two-way street, which is not always what you want to hear when you're on the MSP side of the desk. It's like, how do I break down that barrier?And I really think it begins with having conversations about what are the struggles? Know your CIO, know your clients. And this takes a lot of time. But if they're posting on social media, what are they posting about? What's on their mind? Are they posting about generative AI? It seems like everybody is these days. What can you do to help them understand how to use generative AI? That may not even be anything that your company does, but it's something that's on the mind of the CIO. And if you can help them solve a problem, you're going to become a trusted advisor.Paul Green:Yeah. Even if that problem is that, let's say they're bored or people above them are hitting the drum of, "We've got to be using AI." And they can't see an application for it, but it becomes a discussion between the two of you. "Well, hey, did you know you are already using AI because it's built into teams and it's built into this. Let's find a way to communicate that back to your board and to explore other things." Yeah, I like that. I like that approach.Jeff, let's talk about things that you do to help MSPs. Now, I heard a rumor that you too have a podcast. Is this true?Jeff S. Ton:I do. I do. I host a podcast called Status Go. It's actually published by an MSP here in the United States, Intervision Systems. Intervision Systems was, when I went to the vendor side of the desk, I joined a company called Blue Lock, which eventually was acquired by Intervision Systems, so they were my previous employer and now they are one of my clients. I host a podcast for them. It's a weekly podcast targeted at the technology professional who wants to break out of the status quo. I would say we lean mostly to the practitioner side of the desk, but I know from the listeners that I talk to that we also have a lot of MSPs that listen to us as well, to really unpack what's in the mind of the CIO or the technology professional.Paul Green:And for those people who perhaps don't listen to podcasts, he says on a podcast, which is a bizarre thing to say.Jeff S. Ton:Is there anybody that doesn't?Paul Green:I don't think there are. Even in the UK, podcast listening isn't anywhere near as high as it is in the US. To this podcast, we have way more listeners in the US than we do in the UK. I don't know if that's a cultural thing or people in the UK just don't like my voice. Who knows? Who knows? It's a weird thing.But you have a book as well. Tell us about your book.Jeff S. Ton:Yeah, so I have a couple of books. The first one is Amplify Your Value: Leading IT with Strategic Vision. And it talks about as a CIO, how do you lead your organization strategically? We have a lot of CIOs who can lead tactically. I think leading strategically is incredibly important. For those that are MSPs out there, and I know your audience is predominantly MSPs, Paul, think about it as amplify their value. You could read the book and understand how you could help them amplify their value. I've done some keynote presentations to MSPs using that spin on it.The other book that I've written is called Amplify Your Job Search. I wrote this really at the beginning of the pandemic when so many people were losing their jobs. It's a combination of strategies that I have learned throughout my career and strategies that I have coached other people to use to find their dream job, to find their next job. And both of those are available through our friends at amazon.com and also there in Europe as well.Paul Green:Fantastic.And for those people who just want to get in touch with you and just say hi, perhaps pick your brains, what's the best way to contact you?Jeff S. Ton:LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a fabulous way. I am on there constantly throughout the day. It's always a tab that's open. So you can reach me on LinkedIn or my website is www.jeffreyston.com. Pretty straightforward. It's my name. Would love to hear from you.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.Scott Bywater:Hi, I'm Scott Bywater. I'm an email copywriter, and the book I recommend is The Robert Collier Letter Book. Now, this was written decades ago. I mean, my book is all tattered. But the reason I recommend it is it gives real examples of letters which work, which you can send out. Either you can use as your email copy, and you can also send out in any format. You can send out a sales letters to your existing clients, you get new clients, all of that sort of thing. And it's just a treasure trove of letters which have been proven to work. As the old saying is, everything old is new again. So if you want to want to new idea, something I learned from Perry Marshall, if you want a new idea, read an old book.Voiceover:Coming up next week.Steve Spiegel:Hey, I'm Steve Spiegel, founder and CEO of CrewHu. Everyone wants to grow their MSP. And to do that, you need to keep your clients happy. But newsflash, keeping your clients happy is really hard if you aren't keeping your employees happy. And I'm going to tell you how you're going to make sure that you have the happiest staff.Paul Green:Right now, whichever platform you are listening to or watching this podcast on, please do subscribe. If there's a notification bell, click that as well and then you'll never miss an episode. Because next week we're returning back to LinkedIn again. And in fact, I've got three specific content ideas for you. Three things that you can try on LinkedIn to get more engagement from your existing connections. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.Voiceover:Made in the UK. For MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

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Episode 201Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 How do you balance users with tech recruitment? * 06:12 Save time and improve consistency with shortcut apps * 13:00 Help your clients get ahead by taking advantage of AI

Featured guest:Thank you to Manuj Aggarwal, Founder and Chief Innovation Officer of TetraNoodle Technologies, for joining me to talk about the future of AI, and how MSPs can help their clients understand and utilise AI in their own businesses.Manuj Aggarwal is the founder and Chief Innovation Officer of TetraNoodle Technologies, an elite AI consulting company. With a remarkable track record of driving transformative change, Manuj, through TetraNoodle, has touched at least 10 million lives and generated over $500M in value through his expertise in technology and AI. He has shared his insights at the United Nations alongside distinguished figures like the Secretary-General and Nobel Peace Prize winners, while President Obama and Bill Gates have recognized his work. With four AI patents to his name, Manuj is the perfect mentor to guide you through the transformative potential of AI and its benefits for businesses. Join us and discover the limitless possibilities of AI under the guidance of this visionary industry influencer.

Connect with Manuj on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/manujaggarwal Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to the MSP Marketing Action Monthly magazine: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * I mentioned my conversation with Jason Kemsley where he shared some data that might impact your hiring and growth, here's a link to that episode: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode169/ * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, The Power of One More: The Ultimate Guide to Happiness and Success: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Power-One-More-Ed-Mylett/dp/1119815363/

Transcription:Voiceover:Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Hello and welcome back to the show. Here's what we've got in store for you this week.Manuj Aggarwal:Hi, my name is Manuj Aggarwal, a global thought leader in AI. AI is going to revolutionize the world and create one of the biggest wealth transfers in the human history. If you want to be part of this wealth transfer and take advantage of AI to grow your business, then listen to the podcast episode.Paul Green:And on top of that fascinating interview about AI later on, I've got a trick for you to give to your technicians. It's kind of an obvious trick, a really simple one, but it's something that could save your business a ton of time.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:We're talking a lot about technicians in this week's show because my first question for you today is, how many users away are you from your next hire? What I mean from that is how many more users would it take being added into your business before you need to hire another technician?I was having this exact debate a couple of weeks ago with an MSP I'm working closely with, and he's at that point it's sort of a seven, eight person business and they're slightly too busy for the resource that they've got, but not quite busy enough to justify a new hire. And my client, my MSP, is enjoying the spare cash.Because you know how it is when it comes to having another hire, don't you? You want to sweat your assets, sweat your people. You want to get the most out of them, because often that's where you see the best cash returns. But it is that juggling act, that balance of hiring... Well, do you wait until you're too busy and then hire, or do you sort of hire before you become too busy so you've got the extra resource on tap?Actually, the answer to that depends on the circumstances. So if it's you and one other person, that's where you wait till you're too busy, then you hire in those kind of early stages of the business. Typically, because cash is more of a problem there.But if you're a seven, eight person business, typically you would hire ahead. And often there's an impact. Well, there's a cash impact, but there's a time impact and an opportunity impact, but also it's a lot slower to recruit people when you're a seven, eight person business.So my client is going to use a recruiter so he knows there's going to be a fees impact. It's going to take two to three months. And actually, he's looking ahead and looking at what's in his prospect pipeline, and the conclusion we reached is actually, yes, unfortunately, you need to spend the cash and he needs to go away and hire that person.One of the things that we used to help him to come to that conclusion was some stats we had in this here show back in February this year. In fact, it's Episode 169. If you want to go and dig out the original interview, I had a special guest called Jason Kemsley from Uptime Solutions. So they're like an outsourced help desk and they work with a lot of MSPs and they've got a very data-driven scientific approach to the way that they recruit new techs and the way that they take on new clients.So Jason told us, for example, and these are typical figures for him, but I think they could be fairly universal figures across the board, and it's worth you just going back and listening to that interview to double-check them. But he says the average first-line technician will be able to handle 10 to 14 tickets a day, the average second-line will handle 8 to 12 tickets a day, and the average third line will handle 1 to 4 tickets a day. So that's the number of outputs. In terms of inputs, he said the average user sets up or submits 1.45 tickets per month.So if you take those stats, you can see, based on the resources you've got now, how many tickets you are able to manage. But you can also work out from that, right, if we've got three businesses in our pipeline, this is a 20 user business, this is a 40 user business, and this is a five person band. If I win this, I'm going to need this capacity at this stage.Now, I appreciate that's a very black and white way of looking at it. And actually, there are other factors to come into consideration, such as projects. If you bring on board that new 40, 50 user client, what's the project impact on you and how does that affect your technician's abilities to do other tickets? Because again, smaller businesses, it's typically the same people doing everything, isn't it? Bigger businesses, you might have specific people just to do projects.But there's also... I think you have to look at the opportunity cost on you personally. So your job is to grow the business. And I'm assuming you own or manage the MSP, but your job is to drive the business, it's to bring in new clients, it's to keep your team happy, it's to be the glue that just holds everything together. That's your job. Only you can do that. And if onboarding a new 50 user client, which is highly desirable, but if doing that knocks you personally out of action for three to four weeks... And by out of action, I mean you're so focused on onboarding that new client and of course all your existing other jobs that you have to do. If that means you're not developing the business, then that's potentially a problem, based on what your goals are.If you've got a huge growth target and you want to generate more cash to buy a nicer house, a better car, and a gravel driveway to park the car on, then you're at some point going to have to get yourself away from the doing, away from the technical work. That's the only way, unfortunately.What you actually do is you set yourself up the choice. You set yourself up the choice of getting involved in technical work or not. So it may feel a little bit sad to you now, the thought of never having to do technical work, or it might make you feel quite happy. Whichever way. You set it up so that you've got a choice. You can jump back in and do technical work if you want want to. But the rest of the time, your real job is driving progress within the business.So if you're in that situation where you're slightly too busy, not quite busy enough for someone else, what would you do? Would you hire someone now or would you wait until the work is absolutely piling up?Voiceover:Here's this week's clever idea.Paul Green:How'd you fancy a little look behind the scenes of how we make this podcast? So I do a series of interviews. I set up all the interviews myself because I want to make sure that the guests are the kind of people that you would be interested in. So I choose our guests, I vet them, and then I arrange a recording time. And often the guests are in another time zone, so the easiest thing to do is just to send a calendar invite. So far, so simple, right?Here's the thing. When I talk to a guest and when I set up an interview, I give them a very specific set of instructions. So I tell them about the podcast, the fact that this isn't one of those podcasts that's just the guest interview, because I find those lazy. I think that you could do a lot more work. Well, we do, as you see.So I tell them that their bit's going to be around about 10, 12 minutes, that I'll need about 30 minutes of their time to record it. I give them the recording link, I tell them about the audience, because sometimes we have people on who don't necessarily know the MSP world very well. So there's a little bit of texts that I can insert about that. And then there's just some of the housekeeping things like you know how we do a recommended book? So obviously we record those at the time of interview, and then we just sort of play them out a number of weeks after their initial interview.So all of that information sits there. And a number of years ago, I invested in a piece of software which allows me to paste all of that in a calendar invite with literally the press of... I think it's like three buttons. So I type on my keyboard, Z-I-N-T. INT for interview. What that does is that triggers... That code triggers a piece of software called TextExpander, which is some software I use on my Mac, and that pre-fills in that calendar invite, but then it sort of pops up a little field, like a box with some fields that I have to fill in.So one of the fields is the recording link, because we have a bespoke recording link for each interview for security reasons. And then I have to decide whether or not I need to tell them about the MSP audience. And there's a couple of other fields as well.So literally, for me to send a calendar invite is put in their email address, done, and it takes seconds. It takes literally seconds.Now, this may not be a new thing to you. The concept of software... And I use TextExpander. There are many, many, many alternatives available. So find one you like and stick with it.But the concept of using short keys, sort of hot keys or shortcuts like this, may not be a new thing to you, but it completely changed everything for me when I discovered that. And I use now TextExpander. I use it on my phone, I use it on everything. If I find myself typing any phrase, even down to my address, right? I know it sounds silly, but you think how many times you pop your address, you populate your address into some kind of eCommerce thing. So I have that now. If my 1Password doesn't pick it up, then I've got it now, put in my TextExpander, and it just saves me seconds. So I must be saving hours across the year, which is worth the $20, $30 or whatever I spend on it. So A, if you're not already doing that in your life, go get TextExpander or something and try that out.But what I really wanted to talk about with it is how you can use that to make your business more efficient, and specifically your technicians. You see, it occurred to me the other day that probably, what, 70, 80% of the tickets that you handle are the same kind of problems all the time, right? So you must have password resets, you must have new users. There must be a series of things. I've never run an MSP. You tell me what the common things are. For all of those things, what if you used regular templates? What if like TextExpander?Now, you may already have this built into your PSA, you may be using something like TextExpander, which has a group's version so you can have one template for all of your team. Maybe you've got this functionality, but you've never set it up.To me, that's an absolute no-brainer. And I think the key to it is to set those templates up in a way which doesn't remove the personality of your team. It doesn't seem like a canned response, and yet actually it is.What would I mean by that? Well, let's take something like a new password. So let's say you have a standard template. It doesn't matter how you do it. I know you'll figure that bit out. But let's say you've got a technician and they know that the standard template is, I don't know, Z1 or Zpass for password. So they type that in and it pulls up the current template for password changes.Now, what you mustn't do is do some kind of corporate committee speak of, "Dear user, thank you very much for requesting a password reset, which will be commenced in approximately 4.38 seconds." That's how corporations talk, and we want to talk like humans, humans to other humans. "Hey, insert name. Thanks for letting me know about your... Sorry that you're having problems with your password. Good news, I can get that fixed for you in a matter of seconds. I'm going to hit a button now which will send you an email, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."Now, the cool thing about using these canned responses is you can write these. So you know how if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you'll have heard me say that you should be the face of the business, right? You are the face of the business as the owner or manager. Well, you can also be the personality of the business. The way that you do that and the way that you make the business's communications authentic is by just using your personality and you write everything yourself.And when you think about it, if it's a case that you are just doing the template, then that's easy, right? So your staff can still add in their personality. You might even include a line for them to put their own note on or something like that, or you might decide actually the safe thing is just to use my personality.And then here's the key thing on this. Once you've set up all of those templates, you review them every three months. So set yourself a recurring task to just go in and look at those templates on a regular basis. We do this, we have a number of automated emails that go out when people do various things within our service, the MSP Marketing Edge. And every three months or so, I'll just go and check them.And most of the time, there's no changes, there's nothing I'll change. But sometimes I'll look at an email and I'll think, "We changed that. That's not quite how it works anymore." We changed it and we forgot there's an automated email that goes out, because it's quite easy to forget all the different automations that happen. So I think putting in place a regular check is a key thing.But if you're not doing this already, go and have a look at your PSA, see if there are templates involved. If not, get yourself something like TextExpander. It could just save so much of your technicians' time and be a better way to communicate with your lovely clients.Voiceover:Paul's blatant plug.Paul Green:Lights, camera, action. We have a YouTube channel. If you want to spend more time learning how to grow your MSP and getting some top-notch marketing advice, just go to youtube.com/mspmarketing.Voiceover:The big interview.Manuj Aggarwal:Yeah, hi, my name is Manuj Aggarwal. I'm the founder and chief innovation officer of TetraNoodle Technologies. So I'm a global thought leader in artificial intelligence, and we serve our clients, implement AI, and grow their business using technology.Paul Green:Yes, and thank you so much for joining me on the show. We are going to be talking about AI in just a few minutes time because I know that you have some amazing ideas of where it can go and how this technology can be used, not just by MSPs, but by ordinary people as well.Let's first of all just have a little bit look back at your backstory. So a little bit behind the scenes here. Often before these interviews, I will get to read up on people that I'm going to interview, just find out a little bit about them. And you have the most astonishing story. Give us a brief overview of where you started and how you got to where you are today.Manuj Aggarwal:Yeah, it has been quite an interesting journey. Basically, my professional life started at 15, working in a factory in India, and I was making $2 a day there, doing some backbreaking work. That experience taught me a lot, but it also triggered some ambition in me to improve my life and do something better with my life.And in that quest of improving my life, I wanted to acquire new skills that can help me build more value and earn more money and become better at what I'm doing. That led me to find my passion for technology and software, and I just fell in love with technology. And I was amazed how with simple clicks of a button or some code that I write on the computer, I can help tens of thousands of people. So that was the beginning of my career in technology.And then my quest to use technology to solve some more complex problems, staying on the cutting edge of technology using anything that is new and exciting, like artificial intelligence or blockchain or cloud computing or mobile apps. Anything of that nature helped me to get into projects which have been globally impactful. The work that we have delivered, it has impacted over 10 million lives and generated over $500 million in value.So it has been quite an interesting journey coming from where I used to be and now being seen as a thought leader in AI, working with some of the biggest names in the world. So it's almost surreal. It's almost unbelievable.Paul Green:No, I can imagine. I bet there are some days that you... Because we all do sometimes, don't we? Sit back and look at where we've come from and what we're doing and what potentially is in our future. I mean, that's quite an astonishing story, so thank you so much for sharing that.So let's talk about AI, because that's the thing that's-Manuj Aggarwal:Absolutely.Paul Green:... most of interest. Certainly when I talk to MSPs, it's one of the biggest subjects that they're interested in. I must start with a caveat, which is that you and I are recording this interview on the 19th of June 2023. Because we work so far ahead, I'm conscious this episode isn't going out till some point in September. So if there's anything you hear in this interview and you think, "Well, that's been superseded," then that's just because of the time delay in getting this interview out to you.So AI obviously to the rest of the world, ChatGPT seemingly came out of nowhere at the beginning of this year. Obviously for MSPs, for experts such as yourself, that ChatGPT is just one element of AI. Give us a little bit of an idea of your credentials about AI. I believe you have some AI patents, don't you?Manuj Aggarwal:Yeah, so my patents are related to two fields majorly. One is education. So there's a patent. Basically what it does is the invention was about a personalized curriculum. Because today, typically in a classroom, every student gets the same curriculum, and we know as human beings, we are not all equal. Some students may be advanced in a particular topic, some students may be a little bit laggard and they may need additional help. So the invention that we did was to take a particular curriculum and personalize it for each student. So as a student shows more competency in a particular topic, they may be able to skip ahead. And if a student needs more help, they are provided more additional information or curriculum to help them gain proficiency in that topic. So that was one.Another one is a series of patents in the healthcare domain where the invention was to help people with joint pains. So a lot of people experience joint pains because of the way their feet are constructed, their anatomy of the feet. So we created a computer vision and 3D printing based industrial pipeline, which can take some photos from your mobile phone of your feet, construct a 3D model of your feet, and then print a personalized and custom orthotic device which is 3D printed and it fits into your shoe and then helps you with joint pains.So these were some of the patents. And then another one, a significant one that I worked on was helping students not drop out of their university programs. Because approximately 30% of the students drop out in the first two years of their degree programs because they find the courses that they have enrolled in, they are of no interest or they are very difficult. So we created algorithms to match the students with the right courses, just like Netflix recommends shows to us based on our interests, based on our past history and things like that. This program was actually mentioned by Obama in his speech and Bill Gates as well, and Bill Gates Foundation invested in that project.Paul Green:You name dropper you. That's exactly what I was talking about, that while AI may have seemingly come out of nowhere for the ordinary person, for people such as yourself, for MSPs, AI has been building up and up and up over a number of years. I mean, if you'd said to someone 20 years ago, the turn of the century, "Hey, in just 22, 23 years time, you'll be able to take a photo of your foot with your phone, send that off somewhere, and a piece of software will intelligently 3D print a personalized thing to help you. Something to go in your shoe to help reduce your pain." That would've genuinely sounded like science fiction 20-odd years ago. And now you hear something like that and you think, "Yeah, I can see how that would be done."What other ways have you seen AI change everything? Before we look forward, if you look back, in what other ways have you seen AI start to creep in? We've seen it coming into search, we've seen it coming into 365. What other things have you seen?Manuj Aggarwal:The interesting thing is that AI has been around since the '70s. And definitely since the year 2000, it has already taken over a majority of the life around us. So if people take out their smartphone, they will realize pretty much everything on that device is running using AI. This recording that we're doing, we are probably thousands of miles apart, but the traffic between your computer and my computer is being optimized using AI. If we use GPS to find directions to somewhere, that's AI.The other aspect that people don't realize is in the past 20 years, the major advancements, the major wealth that has been created, it is a result of AI. So when people talk about the richest people in the world like Elon Musk. Tesla is actually an AI and data company. It is not a car manufacturing company, just like Amazon is not an online shopping mall, it is an AI company. Facebook is an AI platform. So if you look around you and see what kind of platforms you're using, what kind of devices you're using, AI is already everywhere, right?So now what has happened with ChatGPT is that AI has been democratized and people who are not from the technology field, now they can also leverage AI, they can use it, they can touch it, feel it, and see what kind of impact AI can make on their business or on their life. So this is the first step in sort of the exponential hockey stick growth of AI, because now everybody will be able to use it and the use cases and how we see it manifesting in our life will just exponentially grow. There is no industry or economy or country which will be left untouched by AI.Paul Green:It's so funny you talking about Elon Musk because I drive a Tesla and on Friday evenings, every Friday evening, we go to a specific destination for my daughter's theater school. It's the only time we go there is a Friday evening. And every Friday evening, I pick her up from school and I tap on the sat nav in the Tesla and it comes up with kind of recommended destinations. And every Friday evening, it's that destination, but it doesn't do it any other day. And in fact, it was just last week or the week before, she said to me, "How does it know that we're going there? Is it reading it in your calendar?" And I said, "No, it's not in my calendar." I said, "This is AI." And it sparked a fantastic conversation about the fact the car has learned that we go there on a Friday evening.So let's take where we are now, and I think that's a really interesting observation that AI is everywhere. We're all interacting with it right now. It's just that, as you say, it's been democratized. That's a wonder. I've not heard that described in that way before, and as a non-tech myself, I love that.Let's look forward, and I appreciate... I mean, I have to give a caveat, three months before we broadcast this, that the technology we're discussing maybe out of date by the time we broadcast it in September. But asking you as an expert to look ahead the next X number of years, where do you see this going? You mentioned the hockey stick. How fast are we going to see things changing?Manuj Aggarwal:I mean, the hockey stick is already happening right now. Approximately a thousand new AI startups are coming out every day already today, right? So the impact has been huge. But moving forward, I think every industry will start to see hyper-personalization, because what has happened with Industrial Revolution, we were given the gift of mass manufacturing, so everything became affordable and standardized. But with mass manufacturing, we lost personalization.So let's say you are wearing this blue shirt. You can maybe buy that shirt in five sizes and maybe three different colors, and that is a result of mass manufacturing. And with AI and automation and all of these technologies coming together, you will be able to go to a store and say, "Okay, I want this shirt in four different colors all at the same time, and I want it in my specific size," and AI will be able to scan your body and then source the fabric and stitch the shirt right there and then deliver it to you.And the evidence of this, you can see. When you go to places like Amazon or other online retailers, they know exactly what you want. As you said, it has studied your life patterns, and then based on that, it already knows exactly what you're looking for, it has the right recommendations and things of that nature. So this is not going to be limited to only smart cars or smartphones or online malls, it will be everywhere, in brick and mortar stores, in schools and universities, in doctor's offices and dentist offices. All of these things, you'll start to see transform using AI and automation.Paul Green:I want to take that a step further. You see, my phone is connected to my smart scale, so it can see that the pounds are starting to creep back on again. I want my phone to tell the store that makes my shirts for me to make them a size bigger so I don't have to actually tell them, because that's less embarrassing for me. When you talk about it that way, what we're really talking about is AI making people's lives easier.So something like that, you're right. I'm particularly fond of this shirt, can't remember where I bought it, can't remember what size it is, but wouldn't it be great if... I've worn this, I don't know, 30 times. It's starting to wear a bit thin. Wouldn't it be great if a new one just turned up at my door and someone or some computer somewhere has made the decision, "Paul loves that shirt because he's worn it 30 times."?I mean, actually, I guess we're well on the way to that. What was I reading about somewhere? I think it was in one of the books about Amazon and how they developed Alexa and how they were starting to... And I don't know if this is still a route they're going down, but for example, having an Amazon-branded microwave which talked to Alexa. And again, it was that whole thing of you don't need to tell Amazon how many minutes to microwave something. You just throw your meal in, it knows what the meal is because it could detect it through an RFID chip, and it just does it all automatically and then it adds it to your next food order because it knows you've eaten it and you like eating these. And to me, that's common sense, right? That's just customer service. It's amazing.Let's bring this back to MSPs. So MSPs obviously are the interface between AI geniuses, such as yourself, and the ordinary decision-makers, business owners and managers. And I know that sometimes MSPs feel they have to pull their clients kicking and screaming into technological revolutions like cybersecurity and protecting themselves from themselves. What advice would you give to MSPs to try and make AI a bigger deal for their end clients?Manuj Aggarwal:All you need to do is, as I said, look at the evidence, because there's no better substitute to convince somebody and get buy-in than showing them evidence of what is happening. So as I said, the richest people became richest people in the last 20 years just because of AI.Walmart was the biggest retailer in the world, and they existed for about a hundred years before Amazon came on the scene. They were so big that in the retail industry, people said there is no way you can beat Walmart at retail. And Amazon became the number one retailer in the world within 20 years. The reason is because they use AI and data everywhere, right?Tesla. We were talking about Tesla. It is now bigger than GM, Ford, and Chrysler combined as a car company. The reason is, again, they use AI and data heavily.So this is what has happened in the last 20 years. So if somebody needs evidence why AI is so important, they can look at this evidence.Now, in the future, what is happening in the future is... The CEO of IBM, he's a very prominent personality in the world of business and technology. He has said that AI is going to add $10 trillion to the world economy by 2030. So currently, the world economy is $96 trillion. So that means 10% or more than 10% of the world economy will be added to the world GDP in seven years.One more stat I will share with you is Peter Diamond. He's a prominent scientist and entrepreneur. He has said by the turn of this decade, there's going to be two types of businesses, one who are using AI fully and the second who are out of business.So when we look at this landscape, this evidence, these really smart people talking about how the future is going to unfold, there is no doubt that if we don't start right now using AI and understanding and incorporating it, it is going to be a very, very big problem because we'll have to play catch up to other competitors who have started using AI, because their cost will come down, their customer service is going to be awesome, their supply chain is going to be fully integrated. It is going to be very difficult to compete as a non-AI company competing with people who are using AI.So all of these arguments, all of these stats should be enough to really wake up the business owners and say, "Hey, even if you take baby steps today, start. Start somewhere."Paul Green:Yeah. And what a great position for an MSP to be in, to be able to strategically guide them on that and advance them. And I think almost every single MSP listening to this right now, by the very nature that you've sat through an interview like this and that you read up on AI, you know more than your clients about this subject. You don't have to be a complete expert in order to do this.So Manuj, thank you so much for your time on this and for sharing some insights on AI. Tell us what you do to help MSPs and what's the best way to get in touch with you.Manuj Aggarwal:Well, what we do is we work with business owners and decision-makers to understand what are the first steps they can take to embrace AI, and then we help them implement a complete AI strategy, complete AI systems to automate their business, make it more functional, make it more operationally efficient. That's what my company does as an AI consulting company. And if anybody's interested in learning more, connect with me on LinkedIn. Tell us a little bit about your business and how you are thinking about AI and how we can help you accelerate your growth.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.Nicky Ballou:Hi, I'm Nicky Ballou, and the book I recommend is The Power of One More by Ed Mylett. Here is why I recommend it. Ed really is a big proponent of you taking one more action in all the major areas of your life. So for example, if you're in sales in your business and you're somebody who quits after five calls, Ed will tell you to make six. If you're a husband who is wanting to do something wonderful for his wife and he says, "Okay, today I'm going to do five things that I know she's going to love," he's going to tell you to do an extra one, a sixth one. The power of one more is a very powerful attitude to have about life, because it has you step out of your comfort zone and do more and serve more and reach more and impact more.Voiceover:Coming up next week.Jeff Ton:Hi, I'm Jeff Ton. I have spent 40 years in information technology, and I have become an expert in how to relate to chief information officers. And I advise companies all over the world on how to build stronger, more strategic relationships with their clients through these concepts.Paul Green:Please do subscribe on whichever platform you're listening to or watching this podcast right now, because on top of that interview next week, we're going to be talking about prospects who ghost you. They say yes, they're all keen, and then nothing. You don't hear from them again. What happens? What's going through their minds? What are their emotions? And more importantly, what can you do about it? Join me next Tuesday, and have a very profitable week in your MSP.Voiceover:Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

The Power of One More: The Ultimate Guide to Happiness and Success

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Episode 200 Welcome to a special episode of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. One of the things I get asked most often is what other successful MSPs are doing, so in this episode I'll be sharing the stories of some of the MSPs I've worked with over the years, and I've raided the vaults for the guests that truly inspired them or helped them think about things in a new way, and finding out what a difference it's made to their businesses, and to their lives. This week's show includes: * 00:00 The MSP who grew revenue with stories * 07:21 The MSP who won a client from cold calling * 12:08 The MSP who quit a habit and never looked back * 17:28 The MSP who makes money by sending emails * 25:41 The MSP who created the best website

Extra show notes: * Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/

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Episode 199Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 Improve your productivity by eliminating 'noise' * 07:00 Sell more by uncovering prospects' pain points * 13:40 Communicate effectively with your non-technical prospects

Featured guest:Thank you to professional speaker and communications expert Don Colliver, for joining me to talk about how MSPs can sell more by communicating their knowledge and expertise more effectively with non-technical people.Don Colliver writes and delivers technical presentations at technology conferences including CES, RSA, Black Hat, and Dreamforce for companies including Adobe, Cisco, DisplayLink, and Varonis. He teaches technical public speaking internally at Google and around the world. He will be speaking at the 2023 Toastmasters International Convention in the Bahamas.

Don toured internationally as a theatrical Clown for contemporary circus company Spiegelworld (producer of Absinthe) and performed with the Blue Man Group. Don won the 2017 Toastmasters International District One Tall Tales Speech Championship and he recently released the #1 bestselling book Wink: Transforming Public Speaking with Clown Presence.

Don graduated from Boston University and holds certificates in Cybersecurity, Design Thinking, and Instructional Design.

Connect with Don on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/doncolliver/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to the MSP Marketing Action Monthly magazine: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, The Road Less Stupid: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Road-Less-Stupid-Keith-Cunningham/dp/0984659269

Transcription:Voiceover:Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world, this is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Good day and greetings to you. Here's what we got coming up in this week's show.Don Colliver:Hey, my name is Don Colliver, former Blue Man and touring professional clown, but now I'm a technical public speaking trainer at Google and professional speaker at various cybersecurity events. And if you're wondering about how to keep your non-technical audience or person you're speaking to, prospect, engaged, when you're delivering a technical solution, listen up.Paul Green:That's my special guest this week, Don Colliver. Now you've heard of the Blue Man Group, right? Well, he used to be in that and he was a professional clown, and now he teaches technical people like you how to give presentations to non-technical people.We're also going to be looking at smart questions and different levels of questioning, ways that you can get better answers, answers to help you sell more to your prospects.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.Paul Green:But we're going to kick off this week by talking about ... Oh, sorry, hang on a second. I've just got a notification on my phone. I just need to just deal with. Hang ... Don't go away. Two sec. Yeah. Okay, right. Yeah, that's all dealt with. Sorry. The thing we're going to start talking about ... Okay, hang on. Sorry. There's just a knock at the door. Hang. Don't go anywhere. Hang on. Yes? Yeah. What? Oh. All right, we'll just sort it out. All right. It's okay. Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry about that. Sorry. Oh, hang on. I've just got another notification. I'm just going to deal with the ...You get the idea, right? What we're talking about here is noise. Noise versus real work. Notifications, knock at the doors, the telephone ringing, your PSA pinging away Teams, Teams notifications, about all notifications. All of this is noise.And the problem is, business owners like you and me, business managers, we have a much more important job to do than dealing with noise. Don't get me wrong. Someone's got to deal with the tickets, right? And they've got to answer the phones and deal with the problems. "We haven't got any milk. How are we going to have a cup of tea?" I know someone somewhere has got to deal with that, but why should it be you? Because you are the most capable person in the business, right?You are. If you started the business or if you're running that business today, you are the most capable person in the business. So why is it? And this isn't just MSPs, this is all businesses. Why is the most capable person being constantly dragged down to deal with the smallest jobs?Because as the business owner, you have to deal with all levels of problems. So you've got to placate the unhappy client that represents 27% of your revenue. And then 10 minutes later, you've got to fix the fact that there's no toilet paper in the building, right? Maybe you're loving along with this because this is your life, but actually it's quite serious because this stuff is noise.Notifications are almost the easiest noise to deal with. You've got do not disturbs. You've got various notification things. I was actually faking my phone have notifications because I have very few notifications on my phone. I have an iPhone and the vast majority of my apps are set to not be allowed to notify, including WhatsApp. So most of my WhatsApp notifications, I love WhatsApp. I'm on WhatsApp. When I'm on WhatsApp, I'm on WhatsApp. I use it a lot. But the vast majority of people who WhatsApp me, I don't see their notifications. There's just two or three of my key members of my team.And the reason for that is I'm happy for a key member of my team to interrupt my day because we've set boundaries of what that is. And it's where normally a big project requires my input. But if it's my mother messaging me about something minor like, "Please, can I have a birthday list for child's birthday?" It's like, okay, fine. That's not important. If I'm in the middle of something, that's not important. That can wait until I'm ready to go and get that message.It's the same with my Uber Eats notifications. I want that on when there's a delivery coming my way, but the rest of the time I don't want their promotional nonsense.So notifications are kind of the easy noise to deal with. But there's other noise. There's client noise. There's family noise. There's definitely staff noise. Your challenge is to take all of your noise and put it into a box. And what I mean by that is partitioning it away, taking all of the noise and collecting it and putting it away.Now, I don't believe I am the world's most productive person. There's always more things you can do, but I consider myself to be quite productive. And one of the things I do very well is partition noise away. So my emails, my WhatsApps, my general, I just need to check on notifications and messages, I'll do that perhaps first thing in the morning, definitely last thing at the end of the day, just to check I haven't missed anything, and then maybe two, depending on what I'm doing, two or three times during the day where I'll check in.And actually you might look at it and say, "Well, if there's 25 emails there, Paul, surely there's a lot to do." But the reality is, of those 25 emails, there's probably only three that have some substance to them, something that you've got to do. All the rest of them are just noise. And if you delete them as they come in or read them and delete them as they come in, that's actually less efficient than doing it all in one go because that noise is kind wearing you down. You've got a finite amount of energy each day and that noise is wearing you down.It's the same with staff interruptions. I remember working with an MSP called Murray a number of months ago, and we were talking about the fact that he sits in an office and his staff can see him and they come and they're knocking on the door and they're saying to him, "Murray," and insert minor thing that doesn't really matter here.So he introduced something called Murray time, M time, and Murray time was where they would have access to him for 30 minutes, I think it was like two or three sessions a day of 30 minutes. And the rest of the time they couldn't interrupt him. So he had a sign on his door saying probably something rude, please go away. Do not interrupt unless the building is on fire. So he could get on with the things that he had to do, which were much more important things, things like quotes, proposals, selling, building his marketing, building the business. But there were 30 minutes a day.So what he was doing, he was gathering all of their nonsense, and Murray did have to deal with a lot of nonsense from his team. He was gathering it into, here's 30 minutes here, here's 30 minutes here, here's 30 minutes here. And just gathering all the noise together.There were lots of other different things that you could do, but I think the key thing is you as the business owner must never allow the noise to dictate when you can get on with the real work. It should be the other way round. The real work should dictate when you stop and deal with the noise.How do you do it in your MSP? I would love to know. Either go into our Facebook group and let us know. It's the MSP Marketing Facebook group, or you can always drop me an email, hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.Voiceover:Here's this week's clever idea.Paul Green:One of the easiest ways to both bring on board brand new clients and also to sell more to your existing clients is to really understand them and to understand what pain they are in. Now, everyone is in some level of pain in some way all the time, and I hope that's not physical pain for you. Well, I don't really mean physical pain that we're feeling ow, but I mean pain within the business.So if you think about your business right now, what are your pain points? What's hurting you right now? What's causing you distress? If you could wave a magic wand and change something in your business right now, what would that thing be and how would you change it? What would you change it into? If you wake at four in the morning because you need a wee and you get back into bed and you can't go to sleep, what work things are preying on your mind at four in the morning?All the questions I was just asking you there are great questions to ask of your prospects and of your existing clients because what we're trying to do with those kinds of questions is we're trying to find out what their pains are.You will make more money and you'll have a much happier client set who stay with you for longer, which that's the goal, right? You will make more money if you can spend your life uncovering people's pains and then finding ways to get rid of their pains for them.In fact, people are much more motivated to spend money and to invest time and resource to make a pain go away than they are to gain something of pleasure. Let me put that another way. It's easier to get someone to part with their money and to make a commitment to remove a pain versus them adding some extra pleasure to their life.And that's great news for MSPs because that's essentially what you do. I know that you are here for all the positive reasons to make them more productive and help them achieve their goals and all of that. But actually there's a lot of pain removal in there as well. You make sure that they never have the pain of losing data, they never have the pain of ransomware, they never have all of those other pains and things that can completely destroy their business or just even hold them back and make their staff complain.Staff complaining all the time is pain. And we were just talking about that, weren't we? It's noise and that noise is pain. So you've got kind of an opportunity to you to really explore with prospects and with existing clients, their pain points. Take some of those open questions I was asking earlier, and that's the key to this, is open questions.So you know the difference between open questions and closed questions, right? I'll just recap it just so we're all on the same level. A closed question is where there's a finite number of answers. Are you ... No, here we go. Did you have breakfast this morning? Did you have breakfast this morning? It's yes or no. So that's a closed question because there's just two options. But then if I say to you, what did you have for breakfast? That's an open question. You could have absolutely any answer in there.And the trick to uncovering pain points, well, there's two tricks to it. One is asking open questions. The second thing is asking open questions about the answers. So for example, if I said, "If you could wave a magic wand and change anything about your business, what would that be and what would you change?" So let's say they say, "Oh, I'm fed up with my staff complaining. It just drives me mad. I'd wave a magic wand, I wouldn't have staff, and all the problems would go," and you and your prospect or your client would laugh because it's a shared thing amongst business owners that we'd much rather clone ourselves in a laboratory than take staff on.But that science doesn't exist yet. So you have a laugh about it, and then you ask a follow-up question, another open question. Can you give me an example of something a member of your team has done that's frustrated you? Can you give me an example of something a member of your team has done that's frustrated you? It's a deeper level of question on the same subject. And then they give you an example. It doesn't really matter what it is. And then you ask them a follow-up question on that and you say, "So how did that impact you?" Again, it's another open question. The answer could be anything. How did that impact you?And you could then take that even further. What do you think would stop that pain from happening again? Or what do you think would stop that problem from happening again? And this is what I mean by deeper levels of questions.This was something I was taught at journalism school in the mid-90s when I became a newspaper reporter. They taught me to ask a question, but then always dive into deeper levels. So take the answer someone gave and explore it and push and open it up and ask always, always open questions because you tended to get the better answers, the deeper the level of questions.Now, you don't have to be trained to do this. You can take exactly what I was talking about there and just whenever someone gives you an answer, you just explore the answer more. But you've got to remember you're doing it in the context of trying to find their pain.Pain is everything. Pain is an amazing sales tool because you more than anyone else on this planet have the ability to take their pain away, and they will give you great, huge amounts of money if you can do that.Voiceover:Paul's blatant plug.Paul Green:I mentioned earlier that we have this Facebook group. It's for all MSPs. It's the MSP Marketing Facebook group, vendor-free zone by the way. Good place to go and discuss your marketing with like-minded individuals and me because I'm in that group every single day. I've actually got it up here on my phone. Yeah, it's a little bit of noise, but I'm looking at it right now just to give you an idea of some of the content you can get in there.So we've got here an off-topic thread. What are you most looking forward to doing this weekend? That's a good one. Give an example of how you build trust with your leads and prospects. That was a good conversation. We got something about, what's that? It's about one thing for you to think about. Oh, it's about exercise. Yeah, it was something I saw in a promotional email that was sent to me about the value of exercise. We've got a vendor love thread here. We've got something about webcams and improving them. Here's something about Facebook jail. Have you heard of that? It's where you get Facebook slapped for doing content. We're talking about KPIs for marketing activities, Google Ads for MSPs. Thumbs up or thumbs down on that? There's absolutely ... Oh, here we go. It's a make money Monday in this post. What's your most important marketing activity this week to grow your MSP?Look, if you are not yet a member, it's completely free. As I say, there are no vendors so you can talk quite openly about your marketing and get advice from me. And there's around about, I think nearly 2000 other MSPs around the world.So grab your phone, go into Facebook, type in MSP marketing at the top, make sure you go to groups and you'll see it there. A couple of easy questions to answer. My team will just check you are really an MSP and let you in. And I look forward to talking to you in the Facebook group.Voiceover:The big interview.Don Colliver:Hey everybody. I am Don Colliver. I'm a professional speaker and trainer and I'm passionate about helping technical folks connect with their audiences.Paul Green:And isn't that something that every MSP should be absolutely throwing themselves into? How do technical people connect to ordinary folk, ordinary business owners and managers who hopefully will go on to buy from you at some point? Tell us a little bit about your background, Don, because you've done some really interesting things over the years.Don Colliver:Yeah. Well, first of all, thanks so much for having me here. It's great to be on the podcast. Yeah, right now I teach public speaking and technical public speaking at Google. I'm in Silicon Valley, I'm in Redwood City up the street from Mountain View, and I also speak at a lot of cybersecurity conferences. I just wrapped up RSA and then I'm heading to Black Hat in a couple months.But prior to that, I was a professional clown and a Blue Man, and I was a clown for a company called Spiegelworld. They have a show called Absinthe at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. If you've been to any Vegas trade shows, you may have been to Absinthe. It's a little Absinthe, it's a little bit racy, kind of a burlesque type show.The clown work I've done is not your typical red nose. It's a little bit more provocative. But I think the crossover, what I'm passionate about is the work I've done in my performance and as well as what I'm doing now, it's all about how can I connect and engage better with audiences and how can I help folks engage better with their audiences.Paul Green:Yes. And before we talk about any of that, we've got to talk about Blue Man Group. So how long does it take to ... Well, for anyone that doesn't know what Blue Group is, Blue Man Group is, you've got to go and google it. I mean, I can't imagine there's many people who haven't heard of it, but how long does it take to get ready for a show?Don Colliver:It doesn't take that long. It's just a big tub of grease paint. You just put a bald head wig on and then slop it on and you get pretty good at it after a few times.Paul Green:I guess the question then is, how long does it take to get it off before you can go home afterwards?Don Colliver:Well, I guess the answer is it never really completely comes off. There's always little edges of it around.Paul Green:Yeah. And how long did you do that for?Don Colliver:Not very long. I was just in New York for a few months, but I had trained for over a year. It's a very selective process. I was in an audition of hundreds in Los Angeles and I was just one of two that made it through that. Then they send only five or six people to New York every year to train. And of those five or six, only a couple make it through.I went out to ... I was training all year in what they call drum school, because if you've seen the Blue Man show, there's a lot of drumming and very fast drumming and they play these tube instruments. I've never done that stuff before. So I spent a long time in drum school training, learning how to drum, and then I had to learn those tube instruments. And that's even just to get there and begin to learn the show and the character. So there's quite a bit of preparation to get ready.Paul Green:Yes, yes. I can imagine there is. Okay, back to technical presentations then. So what's the issue? What's the risk that, and I should declare, I'm not a technical person. I'm a marketer who now is very happy inside a technical world, the channel, the world of managed service providers. But the vast majority of people that I speak to on a day-to-day basis are technical people who've started their own business and have realized at some point with utter horror that they need to get good at sales and marketing. And that's pretty much my niche, my niche in a sentence there. So what's the issue with talking technically to non-technical people?Don Colliver:Well, first of all, we're birds of the same feather. I also am leaning more towards the marketing side, but I will say I've never worked in IT, but I'm a long time, I guess we can call ourselves nerds now back in the Apple IIe days. I was just talking with a friend the other day. This must be the nerdiest fight ever. I once got into a fight in high school over which was better, the Apple IIe or the Commodore 128. We had a literal fist fight. That's the level of nerd we're talking about, but-Paul Green:That is quite impressive.Don Colliver:Yes, very impressive. The biggest challenge I think for technical folks, especially MSP owners who maybe in the past had been IT folks that were working running lines and fixing problems and stuff like that, when you're communicating to someone without your technical background, there can be a breakdown in communication because it's hard. They call it the curse of knowledge. It's hard to remember what it feels like to not know something. And it's hard to speak from that point of view.And you need to be able to do that if you are marketing to a non-technical person. You need to be able to shift into their shoes and explain in that way, rather than speaking over their head and getting frustrated that they don't understand. Or like when my parents call with computer problems, sometimes I get really frustrated, and that's because I'm not seeing it from their perspective. It takes a little work to be able to do that.Paul Green:But we, all of us by default, assume that other people have the same knowledge that we have.Don Colliver:Exactly. Exactly. And unfortunately, there's a not necessarily true stereotype of the technical person who's like, "Come on, did you reboot it? Geez. You got to ... " We have to surmount that point of view.Paul Green:Yeah, yeah, completely. Now, I can't remember which book I read this in, and it was possibly The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes. There's a wonderful sentence that stayed in my head all these years, and I think I'm summarizing what you do with this sentence, which is to influence what John Smith buys, you must look through John Smith's eyes. Is that essentially what you teach technical people to do?Don Colliver:Look at that. It's got a rhyme in it and everything. Of course, that's a perfect little marketing. Yeah, that's exactly what we're talking about. And there's a lot of different methods to do that, but that's the basic goal.Paul Green:Okay, so talk us through, and let's set some context for this. I know you teach how to speak or how to present, and for some of the bigger clients like Google that you work with, I can see how that will be relevant. I think for the average MSP, they're not doing a lot of public speaking, but they are talking, the vast majority of the time they're talking to non-technical people and their technicians are talking to non-technical people. So talk us through some of the techniques that you use to help people come out of their own point of view and moving to that other person's point of view.Don Colliver:I think it all starts with three questions. And I think if you start with these questions and really, really answer them, you're going to be okay. The first question is, who are you talking to? And under that, I mean, what is their level of expertise? What definitions do you have to provide? How into the weeds can you go? So first question, who are you talking to?Second question, simple, what do you want them to do? If it's to purchase something, some kind of binary sentence of like, "This is how I will know if my communication is successful." And then if you can hold that sentence up to every part of your sales demo or webinar or whatever, you can quickly find out if something needs to be in there, if it's not directly helping you get them to do what you want them to do.And lastly, the most important one, this is what we've been talking about, is what's in it for them? Meaning what's the context for them? What problem of theirs is your solution solving? It's not how clever your solution is or how hard you worked on it. It's what problem of theirs is it solving?And I like that you used the word context a minute ago because people throw around storytelling, people throw around narrative, people throw around context. And I'm really curious about what does that mean in terms of a technical person or in terms of a business owner. Am I really going to tell the hero's journey about Luke Skywalker leaving Tatooine? Is that really helpful for me?And I think sometimes the word context is a little bit more appropriate for what we're talking about for MSP owners. And for me, context means defining the person's problem, defining the drivers of that problem, and then defining the impacts of that problem, but all from the customer or prospect's point of view, and spending some time on that before you get into that meeting of what are the things driving this problem for this person? Because if you're not on the same page about the drivers, the problem and the impact, they're not going to be listening to what you have to say.Paul Green:Yes, completely. And I think what's exciting is as an MSP, once you've figured that out once, every single conversation you have with non-technical people it's a variety of exactly the same conversation. So you sit down with three businesses, A, B, and C. Business A could have 200 employees, 200 users, business B could have 50, and business C could have 5. But they'll all have variations of exactly the same problems.And interestingly, none of those are really technical problems. And I think from the MSP's point of view, it's really easy to listen to someone say, "Oh, it's really difficult for us to work from home," or, "It's really difficult to find where we've put files or share things effectively." And immediately the MSP is thinking, "Oh, you need a SharePoint solution," or you need this solution or that solution. And actually the challenge is to jump away from thinking what's the technical solution to thinking into why is this person having this problem? What's a better workflow? And then, only then, how are we actually going to enable that workflow?What kind of work do you do to help people get into that mindset and to start to add that kind of context and think about that?Don Colliver:Well, it's funny, I'm actually working on a curriculum right now for a company that we're going to do an in-person training, and I actually do it in class in a very fun way because my background is comedy improv clown, and I set up small groups to build these. I also use something called Barbara Minto's Pyramid Principle. It's a McKinsey consulting way for businesses to present solutions to problems. And it's a very logical way. It's not a sales type of thing. It's more just a very clear way of presenting a problem. And that's the way we structure it and present the problem. And then we also get into context.But the way I teach it is I have say, a group present to ... They're selling, trying to get a group onboard with internet connected computer, but the class is all vampires. Okay? So they need to think through, the small group needs to think that what are the vampires' problems? What are the drivers of those problems? What are the impacts of those problems? How can this internet connected computer fit into their perspective? And then they need to present a three-minute demo or pitch, not a demo, to get the rest of us vampires on board. And then of course, we get to ask questions and give them a bunch of trouble. But I think it really kind of makes the rubber hit the road for some of these questions.Paul Green:Yeah, yeah. I love that. I guess the biggest problem for a vampire is how do they get their Fangbook profile set up?Don Colliver:Oh, come on, Paul.Paul Green:I know.Don Colliver:Oh my God. Come on.Paul Green:It's my podcast.Don Colliver:I'm stealing that. That's brilliant.Paul Green:I can do the dad jokes. I can do the dad jokes.Don Colliver:Heck yeah.Paul Green:Tell us a little bit about specifically what you can do to help smaller businesses with this kind of context. So for people listening right now who are thinking, "Hey, this guy could help me," what can you do to help and how can we get in touch with you?Don Colliver:Well, what I can do to help is small group classes, virtual classes. It's very much experiential, hands-on, just kind of like that vampire exercise. I give you the framework, and then we do it. That's I think the most important thing, because as you know from this podcast, could there be more books on this stuff? No. There's endless books, endless perspectives of saying the same thing. But I think doing it and getting peer feedback is invaluable.This has been the game changer for me at Google for my students at Google, simply not just for me, who I'm less of a person telling you what's right and wrong. I'm more of a facilitator of what's in the way of your messaging right now. And I'm reaching out to the other folks in the class, the peers to be like, "This isn't going to work in front of a VP or a C-Suite."So yes, small group classes. I do coaching, one-on-one coaching. Yeah, I'm uncomfortable pitching myself to be honest. I just enjoy doing this stuff. So if somebody wants to tune up their getting over that curse of knowledge, just check out winktechtalks.com and reach out to me and happy to help.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.Grant Baldwin:Hey, this is Grant Baldwin, founder of the Speak Lab, host of the Speak Lab podcast. Hey, the book I'd encourage you to check out is called The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham. Now, it is a broken up in a bunch of different chapters that it's easy to kind of bounce around, choose your own adventure, easy to digest. The thing that I like about the book though is there is a lot of questions, a dozen questions at the end of each chapter that just gives you time to think. And so as entrepreneurs, it's helpful to just stop and to reflect, and Keith shared some really, really practical wisdom and business advice. So definitely check it out, The Road Less Stupid.Voiceover:Coming up next week.Paul Green:Amazingly, we have reached 200 episodes, and next week we're going to look at five times that this podcast has changed an MSP's life. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.Voiceover:Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

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Episode 198 Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes: * 00:00 Keep your foot on the marketing gas pedal * 07:19 The huge impact of using personalised video in your prospect and client communications * 15:35 Protect your clients from their staff and themselves

Featured guest:

Thank you to Jacob Prime, CEO & Co-founder of Ploy, for joining me to talk about how his new business is already helping MSPs and other businesses protect themselves and save money by enabling them to better understand the apps they are using and the licenses they're paying for. Jacob Prime is the CEO & Co-founder of Ploy, a brand new and exciting SaaS security startup that is helping MSPs generate a new revenue stream through SaaS security.

Jacob has worked in the security world for over 5 years, spanning hardware, email and data security. In 2021 he built the commercial function over two and a half years at a London based security startup taking the business from $0 in revenue to their Series A investment round. Connect with Jacob on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-prime/ Extra show notes: * Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to the MSP Marketing Action Monthly magazine: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, Seven Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seven-Stories-Every-Salesperson-Must/dp/1925648699

Transcription:

Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday.

For MSPs around the world.

Around the world.

This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Podcast.

Paul Green:

You made it. You are here at episode 198, and this is what we've got coming up for you this week.

Jacob Prime:

Hello, I'm Jacob Prime. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Ploy, and your client's staff will be signing up to SaaS applications that they're not aware of, and I can help you find those risks and make money on the way.

Paul Green:

And on top of that fascinating interview with Jacob, we're also talking about a better and more emotional way to send messages to both your prospects and your existing clients.

Voiceover:

Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

Paul Green:

Tell me, what car do you drive? I asked that because I'm lucky enough to have a Tesla. I've had a model three for about 20 months or so, so I'm very used to it now, and there are lots of things I don't like about it. It's a bit rattly, if I'm honest. As in the build quality isn't so good. But there are also many things I love about it. And if I had to change tomorrow, I'm on a three year lease so I don't have to, if I had to change tomorrow, I'd get exactly the same model again.

Well, there are two things I love the most about it. One is it's like a phone. The software is constantly updating, so it's really cool to get in of a morning and there are new things, new features and new toys, which is cool. So I like that.

But the thing I love more than anything is the acceleration. I can't describe it because I've never really had a performance car before. I'm not really a car person, but the acceleration in this, it's insane. I can see why they called it ludicrous. And I don't even have the performance model. I've got the sort of the middle one, which is the long range. But you put your foot down and unlike a petrol or a diesel car, there's no lag, there's no going up and down the gears, even with an automatic, it's just pure accelerating power.

And I may a couple of times, not on public roads, obviously officer, but I may have gone from a standing start to a hundred miles an hour. Just for fun, which takes about 2.6, 2.7 seconds, maybe a bit longer. I don't know. You can Google it and see what it will do.

The point is it's terrifyingly quick, and you get near a hundred and it's like the acceleration doesn't stop. Again, in a fuel car you get to that point, don't you, where you hit higher speeds and the acceleration starts to drop off, but not in an electric car. Maybe all electric cars are like this to varying degrees. Not the Nissan Leaf, that's for sure. I don't think that does above 10 miles an hour.

Anyway. I sound like I know about cars now, and I really don't. The reason I mention this is I was having a conversation with a friend the other day about when he bought his first car with a turbo. Now, I didn't really know what a turbo is, but apparently it's a thing in the engine that spins. And I know if you're into cars, you're sitting there now with your head in your hands thinking, "Paul, why don't you know these things?" I don't know these things. Don't really care, to be honest.

But anyway, so that turbo is a thing that spins round. And what my friend was telling me, he got some 1980s Ford things, Ford performance car that we had here in the UK, probably like a Sierra or something, which are just hilariously bad cars. And he was saying to me that the early turbos had a massive lag. So you would floor the accelerator, the gas pedal, and basically nothing would happen for two seconds. Because what was happening was the engine was sucking in air or whatever powers the turbo. Anyway, the point is it took time for the turbo to kick in. And modern cars are a bit different because they're modern. They've got electronics and stuff. But these older cars were like that.

So he said to me, he said it was really weird, you hit the gas pedal and nothing happened. There was a lag. And then suddenly the acceleration started, and it would just go and go and go and go. As he was telling me this, because I'm dull, instead of listening to the conversation, I was thinking that's like marketing. That's exactly what it's like to market an MSP. You put your foot on the gas pedal and there's a lag, nothing happens for a little while. And then what happens is you start to build up momentum.

Because, well, it all comes down to the way that people buy managed services, the way they look for an IT company, and especially how good the retention is for your kind of business. Take an area, take your town. Let's say there are a thousand businesses. Right now, today, one, maybe two of those businesses are unhappy with their incumbent IT support firm, or they've got a problem and maybe they don't have IT support or they're just looking.

Say there's two in the market today. Tomorrow there'll be another two, is a different two. The day after there'll be another two that are available. But once they have found themselves a managed service provider, once they are kind of locked into a contract, they don't leave. And you may have looked at your retention and thought, yeah, are we really good at keeping clients? I hate to break it to you, you probably are good at keeping clients, but so are most MSPs.

Part of that is down to good customer service, but a big part of that is also what we call inertia loyalty, where ordinary business owners and managers perceive it's too hard to leave you and go over to someone else. And this is why the opposite effect of this is if you've ever met a prospect and it seems the right match, you seem good for them, they seem good for you, and then at the last minute they sign another contract with their incumbent that they don't really like, that they've spent the last six weeks criticizing. And you don't understand that and you wonder what you've done wrong.

You've done nothing wrong. It's just for them, the perceived pain of switching IT suppliers is greater than the perceived benefits of moving over to you. Keep on them, they will come over to you at some point. They'll certainly switch over to someone at some point. But this is what causes the lag. So when you start doing the marketing, putting in place like a weekly marketing system say where you are putting out a blog and a video every week onto your website. Where you're sending out an email that drives traffic back to that blog, putting on social media content, some of which is driving traffic back to that blog, and sending out a weekly LinkedIn newsletter.

That, by the way, is the weekly marketing system that we base the MSP Marketing Edge around. Go and have a look at mspmarketingedge.com for details of that. Did I just do a naughty blatant plug? I think I did.

Anyway, when you do something like that, it takes time. You can start doing perfect marketing today, but there will be a lag. It will take time to generate leads. It will take time to get those leads warmed up. It will take time to turn them into actual prospects and meetings for you.

And the trick for you is not to lose faith while you've got the gas pedal down, but nothing seems to be happening. It's the turbo. Your marketing is the turbo that's firing up with whatever it does and getting ready to give you a massive, massive boost. You've got to keep your pedal down. People only buy when they are ready to buy. And the trick for you and how you can beat all the other MSPs in your area is to be there with your gas on the pedal. So at the point the turbo kicks in, no one else will ever be able to catch you.

Voiceover:

Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green:

I love being alive and being in marketing in this day and age in 2023. And the reason I love it is there are so many cool tools that you can use. You probably feel the same way about IT. Let's be honest, there's what, 20 new vendors launched in the last five seconds, and they're all offering really cool things to help you do your job, to help you service your clients better, to protect your clients. We are truly in a very blessed age when there are so many tools around.

And I was just looking the other day, you know when you're just looking through some of the tools that you use on a regular basis, asking yourself, is there a better tool to do this? Can I save a little bit of money, or can I get some better functionality? Or actually, are we all right with what we've got?

And even a marketer like me can fall prey to stack fiddling. My stack is marketing tools, your stack of course is your PSA, your RMM, all those other tools. And stack fiddling is never a good thing, but it is a good thing to review what you're using on a regular basis.

One of my favorite communication tools right now is something called Vidyard. And there are many alternatives. There's Loom. Loom is a very popular one. is Bonjoro another one? Just Google alternatives to Vidyard. But what Vidyard allows you to do is it allows you to create a personalized video, send it to someone really easily, like so easy where you can embed the video into an email, and then track whether or not they have opened that video. And we use it for all sorts of things.

I use it for briefing my team, I use it for welcomes to our clients. When we get new members of the MSP Marketing Edge, I send them a personalized video just to say hi and thank you very much for joining. We use it in a whole variety of different ways.

If I ran an MSP, I would equally use that tool a great deal. Because sending a video answer to something, although there's a time burden for you to create that video and a time burden for the person who's got to watch that video, it's 2023. We consume video at a greater rate than we've ever done. And if you think about it from a human psychology point of view, video is a much more natural way of communicating than typing some words on a screen.

So we still have the same basic caveman brains or cave woman brains that we had a hundred thousand years ago. And a hundred thousand years ago we didn't have emails or indeed any kind of written language. What we had was faces, and speaking and gesturing and all this kind of stuff. So our brains are optimized for that.

And in the last 50, 70 years or so, I guess with emails and memos and typing, we've moved away from that and we've moved to written communications. A couple hundred years I suppose since the printing press was invented. But you get the idea. It's kind of an unnatural communication method for us, and it's why sometimes we can misinterpret what someone means in an email.

So I think if you've got a client and you're trying to explain something to them, do them a Loom, do them a Vidyard. In fact, if you are really smart, let's say you had a series of... Well, I'm sure you do, I'm sure you've used the 80/20 rule to analyze the kind of tickets that you have, and you've realized that 80% of your tickets, it's the same problems over and over again.

So sometimes you need to fix those problems, yeah, and sometimes it's just advising the client how to do something or what the instructions are. You could be very smart and create a series of Looms for those. And I don't mean professionally filmed, "Hello, thank you so much for telling us you want to reset your password. Here's what you need to do." I don't mean that. I mean literally you on your phone or you or your senior tech on a camera being like, "Hi, thanks very much. Look, resetting your password's really easy. I'm just going to talk you through. Let me just do a quick screen share." Kind of rough and ready, as if you've just done it, but actually you could prerecord a whole load of those and then just send them out every time you get a ticket in asking, "Hey, how do I do this?" That would be a smart way to do it.

You might feel it a smart idea to give Vidyard or Loom or whatever to all of your techs so they can just do their own video replies to someone. So if it is not something that's templated, template video, then they can just record one. Now, that's just delivery. The real power of these videos comes in prospecting.

So for example, if you are sending a proposal through to someone, you send it through with a personalized video, particularly if you're using one of the tools that allows you to track whether or not they're opening it. I know some of the proposals tools allow you to attach a video and track whether they've watched it, but it's a very powerful thing to do.

You could do exactly the same with follow-ups. You could do exactly the same if you were asking a client for a quarterly business review, or a strategic business review as I prefer to call them because quarterly is overkill.

The point being, once you've got a tool like this, and the one we use is I think $30 a month, which is nothing. As you are creating an email reply to someone or a communication, you find yourself looking at the icon embedded into your browser and you think maybe I should just do that as a video, as a quick video. And that's actually exactly the right way to think. These kind of video emails, video communications are so, so powerful.

Just one thought on that, if you are going to do that, do invest properly in kit. You want a decent camera, you want a decent microphone, and of course decent lighting as well. And that doesn't mean you need to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on all of your team. You might just want to make sure that everyone's just got a basic ring light and an HD webcam and a half decent microphone.

Sometimes those ones on the earpieces that come down next to your mouth, sometimes they're pretty rubbish. So it's just worth doing some test recordings. You might just be better off with a desk USB mic. That's all I use. Same ones I'm using for this podcast.

Anyway, however you do it, whichever software you pick, try it, experiment with it. Video communication is such a powerful thing. It talks directly to their emotions. And remember, people make buying decisions whether to buy from you or not based on what their emotions say. The more you can influence their emotions, the better.

Voiceover:

Paul's blatant plug.

Blatant plug.

Paul Green:

I'm very naughty, because twice already in this podcast I've mentioned the MSP Marketing Edge. So now we are actually in the blatant plug bit. Let me tell you what it is.

It is a weekly marketing system like I mentioned earlier, where all of the elements that you need are done for you. My team have done them so you don't need them. You put a blog and a video on your website. The video is done. We have UK, US, and Australian versions. The blog is written for you. We can even put it onto your website for you using our auto blog plugin on WordPress websites.

Then you send out an email to your email list, and that sends traffic back to the blog. So you're driving traffic back to your website. Then you post a week's worth of social media, again, including a post that drives them back to your website. And then you do a LinkedIn newsletter. And the LinkedIn newsletter is the exact same content as the blog.

Now that is the MSP Marketing Edge Weekly marketing system, and that's kind of just the start, but it's a very good start. Because if you get that system set up, you are doing marketing on a regular basis. And remember what we were saying earlier about the turbo. You put that in place, you keep doing it week in, week out, and after a delay, you'll start to get more leads, more engagement, and you'll start to get some prospect meetings, which is exciting.

But there's so much more. That's kind of like 10% of what we offer. We have tools for your website. There are guides, there are even more videos, there are books, there's an IT services buyer's guide, there are some very cool web tools. There's an almost unlimited number of marketing things that you can use, plus an exclusive members only community, plus direct one-on-one support from me and my team. Plus you are the only MSP in your area that can use it.

We only work with one MSP per area. So the first step is to go and see whether or not your area is still free, or whether one of your competitors beat you to it. You can put your postal code or your zip code into our website at mspmarketingedge.com.

Voiceover:

The big-

Big interview.

Jacob Prime:

Hey, I'm Jacob Prime and I'm the founder of the SaaS security company Ploy.

Paul Green:

And thank you so much for joining us, Jacob. A bit of an unusual interview for the end of August here, because normally when I get guests on the show, I'm very specific and I say to them, "No adverts, we're not interested in your business. We're not interested in what you do and how you can do it." But you are a little bit different. So you were introduced to me by one of my MSP Marketing Edge members. Tom, thank you very much, Tom, for that introduction and putting us together.

And what piqued my interest when I spoke to you, Jacob, is the fact that you are only, what, four, four and a half months into your journey setting up as a vendor. And I was really shocked by this because your website is really mature, it's a really nice website. It fooled me. It made me think that you'd been around for a long time. And the more you and I taught, the more I realize actually this is a fascinating story of how does a vendor get started from scratch. So that's what we're going to explain in today's interview.

Now, before we get into the story, just give us a 15 second overview of what Ploy is and what it does, just because that sets some context to the conversation we're about to have.

Jacob Prime:

Yeah, absolutely. So Ploy is essentially a platform that finds what applications your employees are using, simply put. So if they're signing up to Calendly, they're logging into Facebook. We've had people who have signed up to Tinder using their work email, rather thoughtlessly. Ploy's going to show you all those apps that are being used and all the risks that are associated with them.

Paul Green:

Cool. And as we're talking about this as an MSP, I want you to look at this as, A, another way for you to protect your clients from themselves. I think the Tinder example is a great example there. But B, also to look at this as it's potentially another revenue stream. I think anytime you have a new security service, you'll immediately have some clients that jump into your head, and you think, oh, actually this client who's regulated or this client who needs to have a higher than normal security level, they need to buy something like this.

So Jacob, take us back however long you need to take us back and tell us how this came about. Because you are not the normal entrepreneurial spark story of where someone's sitting doing something and thinks, "Oh, I can do this a better way." How did all of this get started?

Jacob Prime:

Yeah, it's a good question. I don't know how far to go back. I did computer science at university and somehow ended up in sales, but we won't go that far back. But my co-founder and I, Harry, we both previously worked at another security company right at a very early stage before that company had any product. So we kind of had experience of taking something from nothing to a larger company that raised rounds of funding.

One thing led to another and the time became right for us to have a go at our own thing. It's always something we wanted to do. And we kind of left that business with two ideas, both in the security space. One was around the shadow IT and the problem of SaaS sprawl, and employees signing up to hundreds of apps without people knowing. And the other was more around education and employee training and things like that.

After the first 40 calls, we kind of realized how big a problem this was. Harry's great at building things really quickly, so within four weeks we'd had 10 companies signing up to the platform using it, and getting this complete visibility into what their employees were using.

And going back to when we first started at Metomic, I think we went to the pub maybe a month after I'd met Harry, had one too many drinks and I kind of said to Harry, "We're going to be co-founders one day," offhand. But you know when you have that feeling and you get on with someone, you're really aligned. So I think what made us take the jump as well was just having that confidence in each other of how we work together and how aligned you were with what kind of business you wanted to build. And yeah, that's how we started probably back in April.

Paul Green:

That's so cool. And that was just a few months ago, as you say, back in April. How old are you, if you don't mind me asking, Jacob?

Jacob Prime:

I am. Have to think about that. 28.

Paul Green:

So for those watching on YouTube, you can see that Jacob is just like a spring chicken. You're a very young looking 28, which I was at 28, and it all started to go wrong when I had children. Let me tell you that as a warning.

Jacob Prime:

I think I've aged over the last four months.

Paul Green:

Well, that was going to be my next question, but I'll come onto that one in a second. Back when you and Harry were sat in the pub, because it's easy to sit in a pub in your late twenties when actually it's quite unusual to have your life together in your late twenties, let alone know what you want to do with business and stuff.

And it's easy to sit in the pub, have a few beers and say, "Oh, we should build something like that. We should go and do it." What was the thing that actually got you to do it? I appreciate you'd already done this kind of thing, but you left salaries, and I presume you gave up perks and share options and all sorts of stuff like that. What was the trigger that actually drove that?

Jacob Prime:

I think there's a lot of different factors there. I think, one, we were in a position financially where we could afford to have a go at this. I mean, we're trying to bootstrap this business without any external funding, and having a bit of savings to be able to do that for a year, that was the first thing that if we didn't have that we weren't going to be able to do it.

Like I said before, the founder fit and knowing each other I think is the number one most important thing. And that was kind of a box ticked. And then we had such conviction in this problem area. You know when you're working a job and you're doing things on the side and in the evenings, and you're thinking about on the weekend and your girlfriend's getting angry at you because you're not really listening to the conversation because you're thinking about this. We were just taken over by this idea and this problem space that we really wanted to address.

And like I said, it was a load of different factors all coming together that just seemed like the right time for us to do this. And yeah, we went for it.

Paul Green:

Fantastic. And you've answered my next question, which was funding. So you are bootstrapping this from scratch. And from what you said, Harry is the coding genius.

Jacob Prime:

Yeah.

Paul Green:

And does that make you the marketing and the sales genius?

Jacob Prime:

I don't know about that, but yeah, I am on the marketing and sales side, which we're still obviously figuring out. But yeah, we're trying to bootstrap it, trying to keep control for as long as we can.

Like I said, I've been in sales for a while, so I feel like I've gone back a couple of years in terms of doing cold calling and all the outbound, but we got the confidence from our previous business to say we have major roles in taking it from nothing to something, and if we've got an idea that we've got conviction with, why can't we do that again but on our own terms?

Paul Green:

Yeah. Let's talk about the practicalities of actually building something for MSPs. So I've had the privilege over the last couple of years of following some MSPs that I've been working with who've developed their own service.

So MSP Easy Tools is perhaps the best well known of those. Andrew and Jean, lovely people, I've known them for years and they were sat in a room with me, I remember having a conversation with them about this app, this thing they'd created for their MSPs clients where they could just press a button and get help and it logged all sorts of information. And over a number of years that developed into, oh, I know another MSP who'd like that, and another one and another one. And then actually they said, "Well, let's create something," which became MSP Easy Tools.

And very quickly they discovered that what works really well as an internal application just for your MSP has to be completely remade in a totally different way when you're dealing with other MSPs. Obviously they've done that and it's now a huge success.

MSP Dark Web, Tony Capewell's product is another one that I've followed over the years. So I've been quite lucky to watch the development of these services, and I know that often having the idea of, oh, we should do this and we know how to do that, is actually I think 20% of the work. And maybe you'll tell me if I'm wrong here, but it feels like 80% of the work is making it safe, making it secure, making it scalable. Are these the kind of headaches that you've had to be dealing with?

Jacob Prime:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, obviously being a security company, straight away you have to take your own security seriously with things like SOC 2 and ISO and all these cyber essentials, different certifications.

I think what what's easy to forget at the start is these people that you're speaking to at the start, they're the ones that are essentially building the product, even though they're not writing the codes, they are the ones that are going to make sure you are building a product that's going to be suitable for the vast majority of MSPs or the market that you're going after.

Harry and I will find ourselves normally on a Friday afternoon thinking up product ideas, or going, "Oh, this will be great." And they're the really dangerous situations, because you're essentially trying to make these decisions off your gut and not off what other people are telling you.

So normally when you're having those kind of conversations, they should be cut and you should go and get on the phones, book more meetings, speak with more MSPs, and really understand, okay, we know this is a broad pain point, but what specifically should we be building? What's going to save you the most time? What's going to help you educate your clients on this?

So a perfect example was we had MSPs who loved it, but there's that classic period of how do I get my clients to understand the risks of this and why it's important? So that led to us building out a downloadable PDF where MSPs can plug in completely free of charge, get a fully branded PDF report, and then take it to their clients to say, "Did you know you've got 20 employees and actually there's 400 SaaS apps being used?" So without us talking or listening to those and trying to think of things ourselves, we wouldn't come up with those product features that really make a difference.

Paul Green:

Presumably your product can even save the MSP clients money. So if they're paying for 20 licenses and they've only got seven people using them in a SaaS application, then it kind of pays for itself, doesn't it?

Jacob Prime:

Exactly. And that's literally something we released the other week. Gartner say 40% of licenses aren't used. So if an MSP can go and sort of say, "Look, you've got all of these licenses, we can save you this much money," without having to have anything more than access to Office 365, it's a really, really effective way for them to save time, for them to save money, for them to look good to their clients. Yeah, it's a win-win all round.

Paul Green:

Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Let's talk about how MSPs would benefit from selling this. And before I do, you said two words earlier, which I'd like you to give me a clarification on, which may be helpful for my audience as well. Shadow IT, tell me exactly what shadow IT is.

Jacob Prime:

Yes. So if we think, I don't know, 20 years ago, shadow IT would've been someone bringing in their own USB stick or their own floppy discs to put in, and that was the risk of shadow IT. What shadow IT is essentially is anything that employees are using that the central IT team or the central security team don't know about.

And obviously we've seen thanks to Salesforce SaaS become staple, and everyone's spinning up SaaS applications. We've done that with Ploy. And it's so easy for people to build it. And it's also so easy for people to use it now. So yeah, shadow IT in short is anything that your employees are using, they might be granting permissions, they might be putting sensitive data in there, that you don't know about. It's in the shadows.

Paul Green:

Jacob, you are 28. Have you ever even seen a floppy disc, let alone held one?

Jacob Prime:

No. Well, I think I may have seen one in primary school, but I don't know what they're for.

Paul Green:

Don't. Just don't. Someone of my age, I'm 20 years older than you, floppy discs were a big part of my life back in the day. Anyway. Anyway, okay. Thank you. Thank you. I understand what shadow IT is now. So I guess, as you say, the opportunities for an MSP then is you either invest in this tool as a business yourself in order to increase the protection for your clients and to save them money, which is great customer service, which helps retention, which is the bigger picture, or you sell it onto your clients as an add-on.

I appreciate it's early days, you're four and a half odd months into this, but from the MSPs that are already buying into this, what's the mix between those giving it away versus those selling it?

Jacob Prime:

It's a really good question and it is a bit of a mix at the moment. So I would say the MSPs that are adopting us now are kind of at the forefront. There's a big shift I think in MSPs moving towards cybersecurity, starting with cyber essentials, trying to include more of it. Like vulnerability scanning and dark web monitoring has been in for a while, but everyone's always trying to fatten up their offering and reduce the risk of all those kind of things that are happening.

So what we've seen is initially MSPs are taking us on because they want the visibility and they want to reduce their liability, but then it gets passed on to the client after a number of months. When new clients are being signed with that MSP, it's going into their initial security bundle, like an insignificant cost in terms of going into that bundle. So it's easy for them to pass it on with new clients as well.

Paul Green:

Yeah, yeah, that makes perfect sense. Well look, Jacob, best of luck to you, not you need luck, I think. You and Harry-

Jacob Prime:

I think we do.

Paul Green:

Well, everyone needs luck in the early days, but I think you and Harry are doing things the right way. Certainly as I said to you before our interview, your marketing's really good. It's a really mature looking website. You come across professionally. The fact that an MSP that we both know is really, really happy to introduce us with an endorsement as well, that says a lot about what you and Harry are doing. So best of luck to you. Tell us what your website is and tell us if we want to have a chat with you personally, what's the best way to get in touch with you.

Jacob Prime:

So the website is joinploy.com, and you can email me at jacob@joinploy.com, or you can drop a message in the Contact Us platform on LinkedIn anywhere. We'll respond instantly as long as it's not in the middle of the night. But that's how to get in touch.

Voiceover:

Paul Green's-

MSP Marketing-

Podcast.

This week's-

Recommended book.

Paul Katzoff:

I'm Paul Katzoff and I recommend the Seven Stories Every Sales Person Must Tell by Mike Adams. This book is amazing because it teaches you as an MSP how you need to present yourself and your stories to your clients so they can see how you're going to win and solve their headaches on their side.

Voiceover:

Coming up.

Coming up next week.

Don Colliver:

Hey, my name is Don Colliver, former Blue Man and touring professional clown, but now I am a technical public speaking trainer at Google, and professional speaker at various cybersecurity events. And if you're wondering about how to keep your non-technical audience or person you're speaking to, prospect, engaged when you're delivering a technical solution, listen up.

Paul Green:

Right now, hit subscribe on your podcast platform and if they've got a notification bell, hit that as well. You'll never miss an episode. Because on top of that interview next week, we're also talking about real work versus noise. There is a lot of noise around notifications, phone calls, emails, staff, clients, all of it. And you have to quieten it all down so you can focus on real work.

I'll explain what real work is next week, as well as telling you how to quieten down that noise. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.

Voiceover:

Made in the UK.

For MSPs around the world.

Paul Green's-

MSP Marketing Podcast.

Seven Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell

View Details

Episode 197 Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes: * 00:00 Protect yourself from LinkedIn prospect poachers * 05:42 Help techs triage tickets properly * 13:00 How consultative selling can improve your MSP income

Featured guest:

Thank you to Merit Kahn, CEO of SELLect Sales Development, for joining me to talk about how MSPs can improve sales without using pushy sales tactics, by changing approach from selling TO a prospect to being selected BY a prospect because of your expert knowledge, experience and expertise. Merit Kahn is a professional keynote speaker, CEO of SELLect Sales Development, author of Myth Shift: Challenging The Truths That Sabotage Success, co-host of The Smarter Sales Show podcast, a Certified Emotional Intelligence Coach, a Certified Speaking Professional, a mom and she wrote, produced and performs a one woman comedy show in the comedy club she built in her basement.

Connect with Merit on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meritkahn/ Extra show notes: * Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to the MSP Marketing Action Monthly magazine: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, Work by Referral: Live the Good Life! Proven Strategies for Success and Happiness in the Real Estate Business: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Work-Referral-Strategies-Happiness-Business/dp/0982026005

Transcription:

Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Greetings pop pickers and welcome to another exciting episode of the podcast. Here's what we got for you this week.

Merit Kahn:

Hi, I'm Merit Kahn. And the ABCs about me, I'm an author, a business owner, and a consultant and comedian, and we're going to be talking about the open for business framework, three pieces of the puzzle that every business owner and MSP needs to know to be successful in business for the long term.

Paul Green:

And as well as that fascinating interview with Merit, we're also talking about triaging tickets. If your technicians don't triage tickets properly, I've got something for you that could help you to retrain them.

Voiceover:

Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

One of the recurring themes in this podcast is LinkedIn, as it should be, because LinkedIn is the number one place for you to be prospecting for your MSP right now. There is literally nothing but benefits of being in LinkedIn. To save you going back and finding my advice on this in previous episodes, you've got kind of four Cs of LinkedIn, four Cs you should be focusing your attention on. You've got obviously connections, that's building up new connections. You've got content, that's posting content seven days a week. You've got then contact, which is messaging people. And you've also got comments, which is commenting on other people's posts because that's a great way to get exposure to their networks.

If you could find, I don't know, 60 minutes every day to work on LinkedIn or maybe not you personally, but someone working on LinkedIn on your behalf because I'm a big fan of not doing jobs yourself, just finding other people to do those jobs and that would make a massive difference to the pool of people that you're talking to. You have a bigger audience, you generate more leads, more of those people would turn into prospects. Right now, and I don't see this changing for a number of years, right now, LinkedIn is the place to be.

But of course there are some interesting questions that come up about LinkedIn and I had an email a couple of weeks ago from an MSP that I've dealt with loads in the past. We haven't spoken for ages. His name is Paul, great name, and he sent me this email a few months ago. He said, "Hi, Paul. Hope all is well with you. Long time no speak, but I do check your weekly updates. I have a question which you may be able to help with. We have a business development person," which in itself is awesome, by the way, "and the business pays him to build relationships and create leads mainly via LinkedIn." Also awesome. Paul then continues, "Recently a client of ours had one of their sales guys leave to a competitor. They went on to then poach the client and divert the funnel he's been nurturing to the new company with some success."

So this is a client of the MSP, so it's an ordinary business and one of their sales guys left, went to a competitor and has then been trying to poach the clients. You with me on this so far? So he had a contract saying he could not approach any clients, but there was nothing about potential clients. Plus technically he was not approaching them. He was simply posting on his personal LinkedIn. The argument was that the previous business paid for his time to nurture those contacts. And of course all of that time he's now invested, is now benefiting a competitor.

"The debate I currently have is that with our new business development person, do we create a new LinkedIn account that is linked only to our business, our business email, et cetera. And when that person leaves, we can cancel that account or at least disable access. That means if existing clients or potentials are approached using a different profile, it's a breach of that contract and more provable. I wanted to get your thoughts and maybe this will be a good talking point for one of your weekly podcasts." Well, yes it is, Paul, because doing it right now. So I have a very clear opinion on this and we had that email conversation. I think you can guess where I'm going to go with this.

Have a separate LinkedIn profile for any salesperson you have working for you. So someone comes to work for you, if they're going to use LinkedIn as a tool, they should either be using your LinkedIn, so I'm assuming you're the business owner or the business manager. They should either have access to your LinkedIn, so all the next... Let's say, they work for you for three years, then they go somewhere else. For the next three years they're spending their time building up your connections, building up your audience, building up your relationships with these people to generate leads for you from your own LinkedIn. Yes, they're not quite using your tone of voice, but it is a risk worth taking. So that's one approach.

Or the other approach is exactly as the other Paul suggested, which is to set them up their own company LinkedIn account. So they would have two LinkedIns, they'd have their own personal private LinkedIn and then they'd have the LinkedIn that you have put together for them. That is the right approach to do this. Go and get them their own LinkedIn. The number of reasons why, the main benefit being, if they do spend three years building up an audience for you, they can't take that across the road. It doesn't belong to them.

In fact, how much easier to just cut their access to that LinkedIn? No one wants to be worrying about contracts and, "You did this and you did that and I'm going to sue you," because it's very hard to sue an ex-member of staff who goes to work for someone else anyway. You just don't want the hassle of that. You really don't. But what you do want, which is much easier, is very simply set them up their own LinkedIn. It might be a bit of extra hassle, it might be a faff, but it really is worth it just to protect your business in the long run.

Voiceover:

Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green:

So you must have experienced this at some point in your life. You've injured yourself or maybe even worse, one of your kids has been injured or isn't well in some way. It's horrible, but we've all been there and you end up in hospital, you end up in what I guess in the US you call the emergency room. Here we call it A&E for accident and emergency and you end up waiting. In fact, you end up waiting sort of three or four hours just to see a proper doctor to be assessed, let alone the treatment happening. It's an awful thing, isn't it? Because in your world right now you're ill or your child is ill or whoever's ill, and as far as you're concerned, that's the most important thing and the hospital should be dropping everything and every single human being in that hospital should be there right now to deal with that.

Of course what we don't see is the fact that they're probably dealing with someone who, I don't know, had a heart attack or been in a car crash or something like that. Hospitals, doctors, the whole medical world is very good at this process called triage. And I've got here sort of a basic triage that medical personnel will do and you've got, I'm sure there are many different systems they use, but this basic one that I found here on Google, so it must be correct, this has a five level triage where you've got level five, non-urgent injury or non-urgent illness, needs treatment when time permits. So level five is the least urgent going up to level four, which is semi-urgent but not life-threatening. Level three is urgent but not life-threatening. I guess that's like a child that's broken an arm.

Certainly when my daughter jumped off a swing when she was up at the top, clever thing to do, and fractured her wrist, that was a few years ago, the triage nurse was very honest and said, "Look, this is urgent, but it's not life-threatening. It's urgent because she's in pain, it's urgent because we need to set the wrist, but it's not life-threatening. She won't die if we don't deal with this. She didn't say those words, but that was essentially what she meant. Then you go to level two, emergency, could soon become life-threatening, as in they're going to destabilize quickly. And then you've got level one, which is immediate and life-threatening. And I think as difficult as it is when we're in that situation, we understand that there are people in a worse situation than us.

Unfortunately, the same principle is applied to tech support. When someone's printer doesn't work and they're not printing anything of importance, it's just a thing they need to print and the printer won't work, to that person, that's the most important thing in the world. And they want you and every single other person who works at your MSP to drop everything and to get on that right now because it's the most urgent thing. It's no different. And I'm sure that you do some form of triage. Certainly if you are a busy business you will have to do some form of triage, but maybe you get kind of annoyed and frustrated with your technicians when they don't triage very well.

Now again, obviously I'm not a technician. I've never run an MSP, this of course being an advantage, not a disadvantage, because I'm not caught up in these kind of things in my mind. But I did another Google search. I've been operating the Google machine today and I found there's number of different ways that you can triage tickets, but here's one which is based on the severity and impact matrix and it's not as simple as that five level one that we were just looking at. But, for example, if you look at the severity, is the entire company affected, are large groups of users affected, or is it small groups or just the individual that's affected? That's the severity. And then of course you've got the impact. You've got from sort of more of an irritation than a stoppage to business is degraded, but there's a work around, major business processes are stopped. And you can have different levels for the different triage there.

I think the important thing though, and by the way, I'd love to know your triage system just because I'm interested in these kind of things. So do drop me an email, hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com. But I think whatever triage system you use in your business, do you have moments, times where you look at a ticket and you think, "Yeah, that's not being triaged properly. My technicians didn't do a great job at triaging this." Maybe your issue is that they placed something too high up in the priority list. My printer's not working, we're just trying to print off the weekly report. Kind of a low impact item, isn't it? Well, if the technicians jump on that or if they have the shiny new ticket problem of new ticket, jump on it, new ticket, jump on it, new ticket, jump on it. Oh, we've got 32 open tickets from today for our four clients. I can see that that would be a major issue.

One of the things that some MSPs I speak to do to help their technicians triage better is to do a weekly ticket review. Sometimes this is a sort of lunch and pizza thing. Sometimes this is an end of the day thing, but you do whatever works best for you. But you have a little huddle, you and your technicians, and you pull some tickets at random. So the temptation is for you to target tickets. You know that that ticket that came in on Wednesday afternoon from your whale client wasn't looked after well, and I guess you may choose to do that, but it's fairer, I think, just to pull some at random.

Let's say you've done 100 tickets this week. Do a random number generator, have it up on a screen, put in one to 100 or whatever the ticket numbers are. Boom, it comes up with number 58, great. You grab that ticket and you look at it and as a team... You agree the rules before. You say, "Look, if this was you that triaged this, no one's going to get fired. No one's getting in trouble. This is not a finger pointing blame exercise. This is all of us getting better and all of us learning triage." And you pull a ticket out and you ask the questions, you run it through the triage system.

I mean, you can take this approach to anything. If you systemize anything in your MSP, to make those systems work well, you've got to take people through the systems on a regular basis and certainly ticket triaging, if you want... You may set a series of rules, and to you it's very obvious that they're done that way. But to your technicians, it may not be so obvious and each of your technicians may have a very different interpretation of what you think those very clear rules are. The only way that you can sort of look at that and see what their interpretations are is either by doing one-on-one coaching with them or some kind of fun end of the week ticket triage review. If you do try this, do let me know because I'd love to know if it has the impact on your business that it's had on many others. My email address, again, is hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover:

Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green:

Stop. Don't go on YouTube, don't watch those cute cat videos. Don't watch those very interesting videos where someone takes a song that's been a remix of 20 other songs and shows you where the clips have come from. It's actually my favorite kind of video that is. Don't waste your time on YouTube with all of this nonsense. Spend your time, invest your time on YouTube, learning how to grow your MSP. We have a YouTube channel and it is stuffed full of useful videos that are all for you. They're to help you get more new clients and sell more to your existing clients. Go to youtube.com/mspmarketing.

Voiceover:

The big interview.

Merit Kahn:

Hi, I'm Merit Kahn and I work with people who sell something complex, creative or custom, and they need to be really succinct and powerful with their language.

Paul Green:

Sells something complex. What was it? Complicated, complex and custom. Who do I know that sells stuff like that? Oh, hang on. All MSPs. Yes, exactly.

Merit Kahn:

Yes, exactly.

Paul Green:

That's what makes you the perfect guest for us. So thank you very much for joining us on this week's podcast, Merit. So tell us before we talk about how to sell complex and complicated things in a way that ordinary people can understand, which is managed services, tell us a little bit about you. What's your background and what gets you to this point in your life?

Merit Kahn:

My background was business development. Radio advertising sales was how I started my career. And then I began my own sales management training, coaching consulting practice. And what I somehow gravitated to was people that were in very technical businesses. So I've ended up working with a lot of engineers and technology professionals and MSPs, so people who are really skilled in an area, in a particular discipline and then they have to talk to other people who may or may not have that level of knowledge and really transfer to them why they would want to use their services, why they need them even more than they thought.

Somehow I just became known in those circles because my brand of training and coaching is not pushy or aggressive. In fact, my company is called SELLect Sales Development and we spell it S-E-L-L-E-C-T, not because we don't know how to spell the word select, Paul, but because we really want people to stop selling and we really want you to get selected. We want people to recognize your expertise because of the good questions that you ask that help them think deeper about their situation so that they recognize that you're an expert, that they really need you on their team and they don't want to go to anyone else.

Paul Green:

Yes, yes. And that's exactly the kind of sale that you want because obviously most MSPs enjoy insane retention, but we need to encourage that from the start. And being a hard pushy salesperson is not the way to do that. There's a lot of talk of partnerships within the channel, and the only way to have a true partnership is to do that right from the beginning. And I love that idea of being selected rather than being the salesperson. Interestingly, you say you used to work in radio sales. I used to work in radio programming.

Merit Kahn:

There you go.

Paul Green:

I was the UK equivalent of the person who said, "No, Merit, you can't do that." Which I know radio salespeople absolutely hate, so I apologize for that. It's funny how there are completely different sides of radio depending on which side that you are sitting.

Anyway, so what is it about, I mean, look, we talk about complicated and complex sales. The vast majority of MSPs who end up with their own business and go out selling never wanted to do that in the first place. They wanted their own business, sure, and they wanted to look after clients and protect them from themselves, but they never intended to become salespeople and they've inadvertently become salespeople in one of the most difficult potential sales arenas. What is it about complex and complex... Complex and complicated, I can't even say it, there's too many Cs in there. What is it about difficult things to deliver that makes them so hard to sell?

Merit Kahn:

Well, first of all, you nailed it. I mean, the thing is, when you're good at what you do, you suddenly look around and go, why am I doing it for this other guy? I should just open up my own business. I'm the best at doing this. And so you open up your own business and what you don't realize is it's no longer good enough to be good at what you do. That's the ticket to entry. Now you have to be great at marketing and sales because otherwise the guy down the hall is going to get the business that you might be better at delivering, but he's better at sales and marketing.

And then it doesn't matter that you're the best in the field, you're not going to be successful. So that's the rub. That's where a lot of times people who are really good at what they do sometimes end up going out of business and it's not because they're not highly skilled, it's because they haven't had the luxury of putting the time and effort into getting good at sales and marketing because they've been getting good at what they do. So that's the first piece.

The second piece is what is it about complex and custom and creative? Well, because there's a very big difference between a sale that you make where it's, "Click here, buy now," and it's more of a transaction. You don't need a coach or a consultant or a trainer to help you sell something that's click here, buy now. That should be very easy. But if you're selling something complex, creative or custom, it requires a consultation. It requires that you know how to turn your expertise into the right questions that help people understand that you are an expert, that they do need to work with you. That's the distinction. That's a science, but it's also a bit of an art. And it's not that difficult.

There are definitely steps and there's a process. I teach a framework so that people can understand when to use their expertise, when to drop that in, because if you push it too soon in the process, it's overwhelming for people. And that's probably the biggest danger that I see with MSPs and other types of technically skilled people is they think they want to dazzle someone with their brilliance and all the stuff that they know, but that's the part that would make somebody else overwhelmed and that can actually prolong the sales process, which is exactly what you don't want to do.

Paul Green:

Yes, exactly. I 100% agree with you that selling is not about showing how clever you are, your accreditations, your qualifications, your capabilities, it's completely an emotional thing. And the more you talk about technical stuff, the quicker you lose your audience. You were saying earlier about how technical people often struggle to, or they go out of business because they struggle to sell. I think what has saved the vast majority of MSPs who are going through that process in the early days learning how to sell is monthly recurring revenue. And it's one of the things that has changed this industry for good. It's created genuine partnerships, it's allowed the cash flow to be there for businesses while they're trying to figure out how do we do this, how do we deliver, how do we sell? And it's absolutely been a lifesaver.

Now you mentioned your framework, which is the Open for Business Framework. Take us through what that framework is and how it puts in place, something to allow MSPs to sort of relax into their consultative selling.

Merit Kahn:

So the Open for Business Framework is really something that developed over the last 20 plus years that I've been working with professionals who sell custom, creative and complex things because there's a very big difference between being open for business in the sense of you're available to conduct a transaction. You have open business hours, you're available for the conversation, that's one thing. But when you're truly open for business in a sense of it being more of a mindset, it's the way you move in the world, it's the way that everything about how you interact with people and present your business really is inviting, it allows people to freely select to work with you. That's a very different thing than just being available to do a transaction.

So that's kind of the overarching theme of why I call it the Open for Business Framework. And there's three parts to it. There's mindset, what you think, there's the mechanics, what you say, and then there's being in motion, that's what you do. So if you think of mindset, a lot of times when I'm doing a keynote for a large conference or something like that, I'll ask the group, "What do you think is the most important, mindset, mechanics or motion?" And usually there'll be somebody in the room that says, "All three of them. They're all three important." Most people agree that mindset is the number one thing. That's generally what I see is people really appreciate that.

I was listening to a previous episode where you were talking about the secret from that book from 20 years ago or the movie, and you and I share a common philosophy. I don't think the law of attraction means you're thinking about chocolate cake and then chocolate cake shows up at your doorstep. I think it means, you want to manifest a piece of chocolate cake. And then you think to yourself, well, how can I do that? Well, I might have to drive to the grocery store and buy the chocolate cake mix and then go and make the cake. There's stuff to do.

So my philosophy is that when you look at mindset, there's really three different parts of that. There's your internal mind, what you say to yourself, there's your behavioral mind, that's what your actions say to other people. And then there's your emotional mind and that's how well you understand your own emotions and the impact you have on other people. And so that gives you three different ways to start to work on shifting your mindset. And it doesn't have to be a big giant shift, but it may be one thing that you uncover like, "Oh, I think..." I'm just making up numbers here, and we'll use the American Dollar if you'll forgive me and let me do that because I can't do the conversion in my head.

But let's say you grew up thinking $100,000 was a lot of money, and maybe it was to you when you were just out of university, but then you have a family and now you want a luxury vacation or a house in Portugal or something. And now you need to adjust your thinking about what that is, otherwise you're going to line up your life, your lifestyle and your business around a belief that you came up with in your earlier years that doesn't match the lifestyle that you have mapped out on your vision board. So that's a little bit about mindset. Does that make sense?

Paul Green:

That one makes perfect sense. Yes, it really does. And that also explains why no matter how much you earn, you always need more. I'm sure billionaires with amazing personal income and cashflow still have exactly the same thing of, "If only I had another 200 million a month, I could get the 600-foot yacht instead of the 500-foot yacht."

Merit Kahn:

That's so funny.

Paul Green:

You never run out of things to upgrade to.

Merit Kahn:

I have a mentor and he once told me, he's like, "There's always a bigger boat. Someone's always got a bigger boat. You're always going to want the bigger boat."

Paul Green:

Space rockets. That's the new thing, isn't it? I was just thinking of Jeff Bezos who has the biggest personal boat or yacht, and I'm thinking, how do you up that? That's right, you build an entire space complex and you fire rockets into space.

Merit Kahn:

Obviously.

Paul Green:

There's always something else to do.

Merit Kahn:

So that's mindset. The second part of the framework is mechanics. And if you think of mechanics is the nuts and bolts of what you say, it's really your skills. So for MSPs, it's going to be your technical skills, all the things that you know to do the work. But when you think about it from an owner perspective, it's also your communication skills and your sales skills. And one of the things that I'm always talking about, because generally I'm speaking to a large audience that's very mixed in terms of the types of roles that they play within an organization, and so questions are really something universal that we could all get better at.

The main message there is don't act as if you have all the answers to every single problem, like you've got the solution for everything. Ask as if you really want to understand what is the right solution. So don't act as if, ask as if. And there's different things like that when I teach the mechanics of communications or selling or whatever it is to help people really use what they've learned in ways that help other people gravitate toward them. So that's the mechanics part.

And then motion is pretty simple. It's really about just setting a goal and then tracking and measuring the actual behaviors that you're doing to reach the goal. But it's also about having a plan to get back up when Murphy's law kicks in and things don't go as planned and you're not going to get every deal. You're going to face rejection. You have to have a strategy to get back in the game before all of that happens, otherwise it takes you too long to get back in and you start to internalize it. And then that shifts your mindset. And then it doesn't matter how well your mechanics are or what you're saying, because now you've sabotaged yourself.

And that's why all three of those pieces are integral together because you can't just throw a lot of stuff against the wall. You're going to be exhausted. You can't just try to manifest the business, you've got to be in action. You can't just know what to say and not be out there talking to people or you can't know what to say and have a sabotaging mindset. You've got to work on all three of those, and that's why the framework works together to really help someone build the right business.

Paul Green:

Yes, that makes perfect sense. I'm going to be one of those annoying podcast interviewers that says, "Hey, thanks very much for that framework, which is the result of your lifetime's work. Now, can you give us one thing that..." Merit, can you give us something that if you could get every MSP to do this, you know it would improve their sales apart from implementing your framework of course, but one thing from your experience that non-professional salespeople don't do enough or don't do well enough?

Merit Kahn:

I would say the one piece of advice I got when I was early in my career was learn everything you can about other people. And the idea there was if I could understand your buying motives, then I could speak to that. And I think that was good advice, but it really only got me to a certain point. And what I learned probably later in my career than I would've liked was that the advice was just a little bit off. And the better thing is to learn everything that you can about yourself because of course you're going to be in every communication that you have with everybody else. So it is helpful and useful to understand other people's behavioral styles. But if you do that without first understanding as much as you can about how you are wired, then you're doing yourself a disservice.

So I would say the most impactful thing that I've found over the course of my career is to really understand your emotional mind. Because buying is absolutely an emotional process and if you're trying to impact the buying cycle from strictly an intellectual perspective, which most MSPs are wired to do, you're missing out on a really big reason that people are going to finally pull the trigger. Because from MSPs I've worked with, those are long-term contracts. You've got two opportunities. You either catch someone right when their contract is about to end before they renew, and you've got to get them to be open to making a shift to working with you, or you've got to catch them at a time when they're open to making a change, even though they're in the contract, they might have to wait until it is complete, but you've got to start to build that relationship and find out what's not perfect yet in that relationship so that you can then present yourself as an opportunity to be selected as somebody who can solve a problem that's not currently being solved.

So you've got only a couple of opportunities, and that's why if you understand how you're wired, do you have impulse control or are you going to blurt out the answers too soon? Are you optimistic or do you see the glass is always half empty? There are certain things we can assess in your own emotional mind that once we know what that pattern looks like, then you can learn to strengthen that from the inside out. And every single one of your communications is going to be more effective because you have a better understanding of yourself.

Paul Green:

Yes. That makes perfect sense. Merit, tell us a little bit more about your business. So what do you actually do to help MSPs and what's the best way for us to get in touch with you?

Merit Kahn:

The best way to think of me is I'm like the JumpStart Girl. So you're sitting there, you've got a decent business, everything's fine, you're making money, but you want to amp it up. And so you want a fresh set of prospects, you want a fresh way of communicating with them. You want to make sure you're asking the right questions. That's a good time to think of me. Other scenarios would be, let's say, you're newer to the business, or you're newer to the sales and business development aspect of it. That's a great time to use me.

So I have a JumpStart program that I developed, and it's really 10 things that every highly technical, skilled professional needs to know and be able to do and have in place to really jumpstart sales in the next 90 days. And it's a finite program, but it's also, it's one on one or it's a small group. So it's not an online course, do it yourself. You get me, you get experienced eyes to make sure that the way that you're introducing who you are and what you do really makes a difference, will really make an impact. And you'll learn all the things that you need to learn about how you're wired and all of that. It's a pretty complete process. And at the end of it, you have 100 prospects that you know that you're going to go after and you have a good campaign to do so.

The best way to get ahold of me is really my website. That's the hub of all things. And it's my name, meritkahn.com. There's a Let's Talk button. So don't be afraid, click the Let's Talk button. Book some time on my calendar. Let's have a conversation. That's the best way to do it.

Voiceover:

Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.

Steve Buzogany:

Hi, I'm Steve Buzogany from The Appreciation Advocate. The book I recommend is Work by Referral by Brian Buffini. The reason I recommend this book is because it talks about working by referral versus word of mouth advertising, which is a passive way of generating referrals, whereas working by referral is a more active, intentional, purposeful way of actually building relationships and getting more income because of it.

Voiceover:

Coming up next week.

Jacob Prime:

Hello, I'm Jacob Prime. I'm the CEO and Co-founder of Ploy, and your client staff will be signing up to SaaS applications that they're not aware of, and I can help you find those risks and make money on the way.

Paul Green:

Hit subscribe right now on whichever platform you love listening to podcasts or even watching them on YouTube. And that way you'll never miss an episode because on top of that interview next week, we are also looking at an amazing idea to really bring every proposal and, in fact, every communication with a prospect or a client dramatically and colorfully to life. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.

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Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Work by Referral: Live the Good Life! Proven Strategies for Success and Happiness in the Real Estate Business

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Episode 196 Welcome to a special episode of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. In the third and final 2023 Summer Special podcast, I'm joined by MSP Founder and industry expert Scott Riley. Scott discusses his remarkable journey to founding a successful MSP, including the time he worked with The Hoff, how he established his business to be truly client-first, and what happened after he burned through $50,000 of marketing budget and ended up with nothing to show for it. Featured guest: Scott Riley is a tech strategy professional who has worked in the technology industry for over 20 years. In leadership roles at some of the UK’s largest IT service providers, Scott has helped hundreds of clients on a digital journey away from rubbish IT solutions.

In his last position, Scott ran the Cloud Services division of a major UK provider, where he started from zero. Over the course of the next few years, cloud services would become a £34M annual revenue stream.

Following a successful exit to PE, Scott started up a Microsoft 365 and Azure consultancy firm in Leeds. Quickly growing to become a Microsoft Gold Partner, the firm has gone through huge growth during the pandemic as they helped businesses rapidly adapt to remote and hybrid working.

Scott now partners with clients and IT organisations around the world. Providing advice, guidance, and strategic input on areas from business, technology, people management and service profitability.

Connect with Scott on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottriley76/ Extra show notes: * Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription

Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday.

Voiceover:

For MSPs around the world, this is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Don't be too sad, but it's the final of our three summer specials this week, and we have an incredible interview to finish with. I want to introduce you to a big thinker who has so many good ideas about how to grow your MSP.

Voiceover:

Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Scott Riley:

Hey, everyone. I'm Scott Riley. I'm the founder of Cloud Nexus. We're a very niche and bespoke MSP that focuses around Microsoft 365 and Azure Services. We've made it our very special little niche.

Paul Green:

And what a great niche to be in. Thank you for joining me on the podcast, Scott. It's taken us so many months to get you on. Your calendar, my calendar. We first met at the Super Ops Super Conference back in earlier this year in London, which was a great event. And you were on stage and I was on stage at separate times, which meant we got to sit and watch each other talk, which was pretty cool. And normally when I get a guest onto the podcast, it's because there's a specific subject to talk about. With you, I think you are just one of those MSP owners who is up for trying things, who's looking at different ways to run the business, to try different things, and I thought it would just be worth getting you on talking about some of the things that you've done to build your business, some of the mistakes you've made, and just to explore some of the ways that you're operating right now, because you are operating a little bit different from the average MSP that I speak to.

So first of all, just give us a little bit of background. So what's your story? How did you get started? Bring us up to date of what you did to get through to 2023.

Scott Riley:

Oh, sure thing. So I'll give you the real potted history, because I figured out the other day I've been in what we would call IT services or MSP for about 24 years.

Paul Green:

Whoa.

Scott Riley:

So it's been a while. Yeah, absolutely. And I still look terribly young and fresh. I understand. But it's a simple thing. I started in very technical roles a long time ago, and what they figured out very quickly was I was actually quite good at chatting to people. And so they started to move me around and put me into positions like pre-sales, and then pre-sales also needed an engineering management role, so I ran pre-sales and engineering. And back in the day, that was for big telco, so we were doing lease lines and DSL when it came along. I used to run Freeserve, if anyone remembers that. The old dial-in internet that we had here in the UK. It was free internet. It was unheard of, with dial-up modems. But I did very technical roles for quite a while and then eventually worked my way up into the management and pre-sales type things, dealing with clients and really getting to see, what did they want out of technology and what were we doing as a business?

And part of that was exciting in that you got to then work on the productization. What could we make that would be really interesting for customers? So I floated around with some of the big MSPs here in the UK, so some of the brands, pretty much all of them have been bought by Daisy by this stage. But people like Phoenix, people like GCI, people like GX Networks. Finaltus was probably one of the most popular brands. It used to be called Pipex. We got David Hasselhoff to advertise for us on television, which I thought was absolutely incredible, so going through all of those for quite a while.

The bigger thing I did most recently before this was I worked for an MSP where we grew their cloud business from zero to a £34 million revenue stream, so call that about 40, $43 million revenue stream from nothing. And we basically borrowed half a million from the board, went out, bought all the equipment, hired some staff, started getting contracts in, train the sales team, teach everyone what this cloud thing was, and compete a bit with Microsoft 365. And we did that for seven years before we eventually sold that business on to a PE firm for about 265 million. So again, call it about $300 million. Pretty significant at that stage. I had a teeny tiny shareholding in that business and I'd been there for seven years. And when we sold, I thought, do you know what? Now's the time. And it was mostly spurred on by the fact that the main person who owned our business, he was only going to get £99 million out of this deal.

And right towards the end, he got very grumpy and upset because, "It's only 99 million and I want 100 million." And would go round to try and encourage people, and I'm using air quotes, encourage people to give back some of their shares so that he could get to that number. Now at that stage, I genuinely just thought, do you know what? If I'm going to work for someone and that someone's going to be a bit of a birk, it may as well be me, so let's go do this. And I'd had the idea for Cloud Nexus back in 2012. This was now 2019, and it was just about time. Financially we were stable, the family were good, we were in a good place. It was the right time to start a business. And the big thing that I'd learned is that we shouldn't be competing with Microsoft 365, is that we should actually be embracing it, and that was where Cloud Nexus was born.

Paul Green:

Okay, pause there. As the host of a podcast, you have to remember things you want to go back and talk about while not losing the track of where we're going. Talk about a bomb of things to delve into there. Okay.

Scott Riley:

This is what I do. I'm sorry.

Paul Green:

That's okay. Yeah, this is what makes you fun. So first things first, Freeserve. So MSPs outside the UK probably won't know the name, but here in the UK, I guess it was our British equivalent of AOL, wasn't it? Because you-

Scott Riley:

It really was.

Paul Green:

... had a gazillion Freeserve CDs going out all the time. And wasn't Freeserve bought by Dixon's? Am I right in saying that as well?

Scott Riley:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was ultimately owned by those guys. Yeah.

Paul Green:

And obviously it's vanished now. It's absolutely nothing now. But yeah, there was a period of time where you couldn't open any magazine ever without a Freeserve CD falling out, similar to AOL in the States. That's the first thing. Second thing, you hired the Hoff? You hired David Hasselhoff? So have you met him? That's the big question.

Scott Riley:

No, I missed him. He came to our office and I was up in one of the other offices at the time, but he came and he did a whole photo shoot. He was lovely. He met everybody. But it was weird because we had giant Hoff-sized cardboard cutouts of him in every office after that. And I actually know one of the ladies I work with took one of them home because she loved the Hoff so much. But yeah, we sponsored the release of a single, Get In My Car-

Paul Green:

I remember that.

Scott Riley:

... with him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you're welcome, or not. But yeah, so we had these crazy adverts advertising our internet services. As I say, this was right at the start of DSL and getting that out to the majority of the users here and replacing old dial-ups, so it was a while back, but yeah. Wow. Great to have the Hoff on board.

Paul Green:

So this is so sad that I know this, but I was a radio presenter I think around about the same time that song came out, or if the timing wasn't quite right, this is certainly a fact I've learned since, which was that... Because obviously David Hasselhoff, our younger listeners and viewers are thinking, who are these two old guys and who the hell are they talking about? So David Hasselhoff was the legend of the eighties. He was Night Rider, Baywatch.

Scott Riley:

Yeah.

Paul Green:

That was pretty much it, I think. And-

Scott Riley:

That was [inaudible 00:07:23]. Yeah.

Paul Green:

But the fact I know about that song Get In Your Car was it was the first time he'd sat in a TransAm like Kit, Kit being the car from Night Rider, for about seven years. It was a bit of a reunion for him doing the video for that. I seem to remember that was a fact that I picked up somewhere.

Scott Riley:

Yeah, yeah. Well, that would've been us because we hired a Kit lookalike for him to jump into as part of the whole campaign.

Paul Green:

Do you hear that sound? It's my mind-blowing. Final thing I wanted to pick up, and this does lead directly back into some business and marketing stuff, which apparently is what we're talking about. So you took part in a business which went from a half a million pound loan to-

Scott Riley:

Yes.

Paul Green:

... did you say it was...

Scott Riley:

Well, it was 34 million. Yeah.

Paul Green:

34 million. And it sold for?

Scott Riley:

Well, the entire business sold for 265 million. So cloud wasn't the only thing that we did. They had a well established network business, a bit of data center business, and some small IT services. But what they didn't have was any cloud capability at that time.

Paul Green:

But you were there from a not massive amount of debt turning into a £38 million a year business, which is insane over a seven-year period.

Scott Riley:

Yes.

Paul Green:

And I think anyone would look at that and say, "Well, that's impressive," even if your former boss was just 1 million short of his six-figure sum that he wanted to crow about. And I can understand why he would want to do that. That's a very different origin story to most MSPs. So most MSPs, they are a tech or have come at it from a service delivery point of view and then have that entrepreneurial seizure and decide, "I want to do this my own way." Obviously, you've come at it from having watched how a business has orientated itself around building value, which is a completely different way of doing it. So you only started Cloud Nexus I think you said 2019, so it's only four years ago.

Scott Riley:

Yeah.

Paul Green:

How has that changed the way that you have approached building your business?

Scott Riley:

Oh, it's everything. Everything I've learned in those previous businesses is what we're pouring into Cloud Nexus. Simple things. I say simple. It sounds simple to me because I've been through the experience I suppose, but you are absolutely right. When I moved from what was Phoenix at the time. Again, now Daisy. And I moved across to GCI, now Star, I want to say. Apologies to our American audience for these UK MSPs. But as I moved, I was currently responsible for looking after the cloud platform, the revenue streams, the products and services inside Phoenix for cloud. I was hired to move into this new MSP because they had zero cloud and they wanted to know what should they be doing, what should they be buying, what should they be selling, how to package it up and how to market it.

And so I essentially just brought along that entire knowledge of, well, I know what the products and services are that do sell in this area. I know what the customers are looking for. I know what the staff are that we need to make this go, and I know how to position it because I ran the pre-sales team in that previous business as well. So I know what the questions are, I know what the marketing is, I know what the salespeople need in terms of enablement and collateral. And so all of this stuff was sort of baked into that launch of cloud services. And the very first contract that we picked up was for, I want to say about £365,000 in total. Now, that almost completely paid for our hardware investment in one contract.

And what we then went on to do was to revolutionize the services that we were doing on-premise. So hosted desktop was a really easy one. We built out a hosted desktop platform. We marketed it as bronze, silver, gold. There was a 29 or 49 and a 79 per user per month package. Pretty much there was nothing in the 29 one, everything that was in 79 was a bit too much, so funnily enough, everyone just huddled down to the Goldilocks zone of 49 a user a month, and that sold like absolute hotcakes. So we made a huge revenue stream doing that. We then shifted to doing host exchange mailboxes, still competing with 365 at the time. It was early, and Azure really wasn't quite there yet.

But the big thing that we did was we took Skype for Business, which was an on-premise deployment of about I'm going to say six to eight physical servers. I might not be remembering it entirely correctly, but we virtualized that process and we said, "Look, we're not going to put these physical servers on-premise anymore. We're just going to spin them up on our cloud. We will connect to you with a lease line or some kind of gigabit connectivity and all your phones will be in your office, but all of your phone calls will happen in our data center." And obviously this is something that everyone gets that now with VoIP and teams of course, but this was when Skype for Business was on-premise. And so again, one of the first big projects we did was about a million-pound contract, and that was to host all of the phone system for University of London. So it was a thousand endpoints or 1200 endpoints I want to say, and it was absolutely fantastic.

We took out all this old legacy equipment out of their office and built it on our cloud platform. And it was beautiful, absolutely beautiful. But again, we were challenging people at that time. The techs were going, "No, no, no, it has to be on-premise latency." And I'm like, "I don't think it does. I think it's going to work just fine. Let's do this." So taking that, I'm sorry, coming screaming back to my point, taking that learning, what we also did at GCI was over the time I was there, 17 mergers and acquisitions.

Paul Green:

Whoa.

Scott Riley:

So we acquired 17 other brands whilst I was there, and so ultimately I became part of the executive team that would do some of the P&L assessment to decide whether we were or weren't buying a business. When we were, we were always looking for what are we going to strip out of it in order to make it more profitable. I'm sorry, but we were PE-backed, and so that's what we were doing. So we were looking at the people, the property, the products that they were using. Can we shorten the team? Can we close down offices and can we consolidate the platforms, whether it's Autotask or Kasaya or any of those things, and simplify everything so it's all on less cost? Because money was all that mattered. It was PE, EBITDA, those were the numbers we heard every single day.

But having been through that process, and one of the most interesting things there was we actually bought a business out of administration, which was a company called Outsourcery, which was very, very big in the UK at the time. Had a fantastic reputation. Was run by one of the stars of Dragon's Den. Well, he went on to be on Dragon's Den anyway. We took that out of administration. Part of my personal really good feeling there is that we saved 120 jobs when we did that. It was a huge undertaking within about a six-week window to decide if we were going to do it or not. Did it save 120 jobs? Absolutely. Smashed it in terms of looking after those people and also the customers and the service that came along with it. All of that learning has kind of led me to where I am today with Cloud Nexus, where we are a very small team. We're five people and we are good at what we're good at. We're very good at 365. We're very good at Azure.

We don't do managed IT services, or rather we do, but we don't do them. We outsource them to someone who's absolutely fantastic at IT services. And so what we've chosen to do really is really stay in our lane at what we can hand on heart every time say we are amazing at. And that's just where we pour all of our energy and our enthusiasm and effort into staying up to date. That one little niche that I've identified is absolutely enormous. As I'm sure anyone listening knows, it's so hard to keep up. This is all we do and we find it hard to keep up some days.

But doing that, it's made it very clear for us. I've learned from the M&A side of things, let's lay out all of our accounts from minute one. Here's the line item that we're selling. Here's the cost of sale directly associated with that. And so we can quickly see at a glance which services of ours are profitable, which ones are making money, which ones are dwindling, whether that revenue's climbing month on month or whether it's in decline. And so we can very quickly and easily decide, should we push more on these? Do we need to retire any of these things? What's working for the business? And it gives us a real clear trajectory on what to do next. I've learned very much to value people.

As I said, we came from PE-backed, EBITDA was all we cared about. Money, money, money. People were just the collateral. They were just the cost of doing business. And so wherever they could cut people out of the organization, lose people and not replace them and just dump that workload onto someone else, they absolutely would, because they had promised things to their investors, they'd promised things to the board. And if they weren't hitting it with sales targets, well, the margin still had to be there. So the only other way if you're not bringing the sales in, is to cut costs. Well, the easy thing to cut on costs is people. And so we just consistently kept cutting people out and cutting people out. And it just made me realize that people weren't valued by that stage. We'd grown to a point where alls we had was the money meant to please and we didn't care about people anymore. We didn't really care about customers anymore, if I'm very honest. It was all just about margin. So we would sell things that weren't best for the client.

So again, right now, I always look at things and say, "Well, Office 365 is a great product and a great service." At the end of my run there, we would always be selling our private cloud because our private cloud made 80% margin. If we sold some Office 365 licenses, we'd maybe make 10 or 15%. Even though this was the best thing for the client and what they needed to grow and move forward, we would sell this because that was best for us. And I promised myself, when we run this business, we'll always be really honest. We'll be very transparent. We will sell what's right for the customer or we'll advise what's right for the customer even if we don't sell it.

Even if they need to go and speak to someone else, we'll just go, "Hey, do you know what? You don't need this. What you actually need is this, and here's some great people I can plug you into hopefully. And they're going to go and do a great job." We don't try and mark it up and sell it through and pretend it's us. "Yes. Yeah, we do Power BI, absolutely," and then hide it off to someone else. We don't do that. We just kind of go, "Hey, here's a Power BI bunch. They're really good. I think you're going to get on with them really well," and we introduce them.

So I've learned a lot, I think, just around people, around money, and that has kind of poured into everything we do with Cloud Nexus, keeping it really lean, keeping it a really small, friendly environment, really trying to value people as much as possible. And I admit we don't always get that right, but our big passion is our people come first, then it's the customers, and then the money comes after that. Because I know if we look after the people, they'll look after the customers. And if the customers are happy, the money keeps coming in. And that just, again, seems really simple, but it's just something that I know works for us as a good approach.

Paul Green:

Yeah. And you've been able to do this because from day one, you've been in a leadership position. And to differentiate that from, again, that average MSP journey I was talking about earlier, the average MSP jumps into a doing position, don't they? They're right from day one winning the first client, servicing the first client and trying to win the second client, and it's often they're playing catch up. They're adding in staff and resources as they need them. And you can spend five years like that and you wake up five years later, a little chubbier, a little grayer, and yeah, you've got a viable business that pays your mortgage and your bills, but it's almost like the jigsaw puzzle, but you don't actually know what the picture is. Oh, I've just invented a new analogy. I've got to use that again. So you're trying to build a jigsaw puzzle, but you don't know how many pieces there are and you don't know what the picture looks like.

Now, you, by the sound of it, because of your experience being involved in building a very much larger business from scratch and seeing huge mistakes like focusing on cash, focusing on the margin, not people, which we all know is not the long-term way to grow a business, you were able to come into this I guess with a more conscious model in your head of how you wanted it to be. How has that affected the growth of the business? Because you were never... Well, hang on, Paul. Don't put any self-limiting beliefs out there. It was unlikely you were going to grow a multi, multimillion-pound business in just a couple of years. But how has the business grown in the four years that you've been running it?

Scott Riley:

Yeah, so it's a really great question. And I would also credit some of that work to a couple of interesting books that I read at the outset. So as I started the business, the E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. I'm sure everyone's read it. If you haven't read it, go and read it because you're absolutely missing out. Especially if you're a one man band MSP, go and bloody read it very quickly. Because in that book, I love it, it makes it really clear that when you start a business and you're a technical expert at something, you have to plan out the whole organization chart of the business and realize that you need people in sales and marketing and legal and finance and, yes, support and operations and technical. But day one, you occupy every single seat on that org chart. And if you carry on like that, it is very difficult to be sustainable.

And I'm very much an advocate for strong mental health, taking as much time as you can as a business owner so that you can take holidays, you can have weekends, you can have enjoyable time. And really trying to remove yourself from working in the business to working on the business. I know we talk about that a lot, but it's been my entire mantra, my current mantra, and it has been for a couple of years now: make myself useless in my own business. Because if I can do that, the first part of it was, well, if I want to make a saleable business and I've bought businesses like this, if it's owner operated and owner managed and that owner's in the day-to-day and he's got the relationships with all the clients, when you buy that business, it falls apart. I know that because I've seen it done twice where we'd spent £13 million on a business and it just completely crumbled because the owner wasn't there anymore.

So making myself useless was a strategy to say, if I do that, then actually I might have a saleable business. And who knows, maybe it will be worth a few hundreds of millions. Who knows? It won't. But the other side of that was, if I can truly make myself useless and the business runs and it does a great job and the people are happy and it pays me some money and I'm not doing anything day to day, why would I sell it? Because I've got something I love. I've got a team I love, and actually maybe I've got some other interests that I can run on the side or in parallel. Who knows? But making myself useless was a huge part of my decision-making process as part of starting this business. Now, I've been speaking to some MSP owners in the last couple of weeks, and some of them have been in business for 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, and they're still on their own.

It's getting really bright and sunny in here, so I hope that's okay for the video because the sun's just come right around that corner there. But to your point, the people who are starting from a tech perspective, they do need to get a handle on where can I outsource? Where can I partner? Where can I delegate? Because otherwise you don't get to have a holiday and you don't get to have time away. You'd spend time with your family, but you've got your eye on the phone or on your emails. And I remember being at a conference recently with a good friend of mine now, Tim Kidney over at Funky Mouse, and we sat through the conference and you could see he was on the phone, tap, tap, tap, tap on the phone or just respond to another email. And I hadn't looked at my phone once and we had this great conversation about making yourself useless.

And I'm proud to say I've been working with Tim recently to try and see how can we make him more useless in his own business. And the next conference I came to, he was so much more chill. And I think that's something that owner-operated player managers, small MSPs, have really got to get to grips with it in that management team. How can you make yourself useless? It's my big challenge at the moment.

Paul Green:

Yeah, yeah, it's a great challenge. And The E-Myth Revisited is an amazing book. It's a book I read very early in my business journey. The modern equivalent is Built to Sell by John Warrillow, which is more or less the same book, but with a focus right on the get go of, "One day I'm going to sell this business," which I think we should all have that approach. Although as you say, Scott, quite rightly, if the business is paying you not to be there, why would you want to sell a business like that? I guess because you wanted your hundred million and you wanted your yacht, obviously.

Scott Riley:

Yeah, I've got to go and buy the Lambo or something.

Paul Green:

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. These are just things. I know that it's nice to have a 700-foot floating thing, but it's still just a thing. Okay. Two more subjects I want to ask you about before we wrap up.

Scott Riley:

Yeah.

Paul Green:

The first of them is that question of outsourcing. Now, I got into MSPs for the first time in 2016 and I'd just sold a healthcare marketing agency. I had a five-year noncompete, so I couldn't work with all the sectors I'd spent literally 10 years building up a reputation in. And it was so frustrating because I had to start from scratch. So I've discovered IT support people, enjoyed it immensely, discovered what managed services were. And then one day someone said to me, "Oh, I'm thinking outsourcing to..." And I'm sure they said, "To Continuum," and I said, "Oh, what's this Continuum thing?" And they said, "Oh, it's all these people sat in, I guess, America and the Philippines or wherever the Continuum operations used to be based, and they handle your help desk for you and they do all the proactive server updates and stuff for you." And the more they talked about this, and bearing in mind this is 2016, so this is before outsourcing really matured.

And I remember saying to this MSP in the UK, I said, "Are you nuts? We've just had a conversation about how difficult it is to hire and keep staff, how much you hate your staff, how lazy you think they are. And then you are telling me that there's a company out there that will do all of this for you." And of course where we got stuck was the owner, his belief of the quality he needed to deliver to his clients was higher than what he believed Continuum could deliver. Now, I appreciate Continuum is now is ConnectWise, isn't it? So it's still there, but different. And that was not me passing a judgment on the quality. The point I was making here is, yes, there was a quality gap.

The point I was trying to make, inexperienced Paul at that point, making that point, but I would make the same point today, is if there's someone out there that will take all of this away from you to allow you to focus on the most important things, which is customer service, stepping back and making sure the customers are happy because it's better to step back and make sure the customer's happy than to sit there and reset a password for them yourself and then go out and get more customers, and make sure those customers are buying more things from you so that everyone's happy. That to me sounds like a much more E-Myth way of running the business. And it sounds like that was a decision that you made from day one. Was that a hard decision or was it as simple as we've made it sound there, like a no-brainer?

Scott Riley:

No, it was a hundred percent a simple decision. Day one, we do not want to do end user support. Having run help desks and having tiers of engineers, I know how hard it is to maintain a good quality first line service desk and then second line and escalation. I also know the challenges of the rotating staff that come in. They'll get in the role, they'll get some experience under their belt at first line, and then immediately they can go up the road and get another 10,000 a year at a different IT provider. And so it's really challenging to keep people in those roles, keep them entertained and keep them interested, especially when they get to second and third line. It's such a challenge. I wanted to bring them into a business where we could focus on 365 and Azure and I didn't want them to get distracted by day-to-day, printers not printing, words not wording, whatever it is.

And so Continuum was on my hit list. It was pre-acquisition, so I went to look at them. My criteria was very interesting because I wanted a UK-based help desk. That was important to me because our target clients were in the UK and I didn't want offshore. Offshore was something that had a bit of a negative connotation to it with all the banking that had been off-shored and all the customer service that had been off-shored. And we'd seen some of that experience be absolutely fantastic and some of it be dreadful. And it was a concern to me enough that I said, "I actually want something that's in this country." And so there were only a handful of providers who could do that for us. Uptime, the people that we ultimately chose, being one of them. And the big draw with them was they were in the UK, they were MSP-focused, and they ran, I think it's six till six or seven till seven UK hours.

Outside of those hours, they had a whole other team working in New Zealand doing the exact opposite set of hours from seven till seven. And I thought, okay, so either you're talking to someone in the UK or you're talking to a Kiwi and who doesn't like to talk to a bloody Kiwi? That's just brilliant. So that was immediately a great benefit. That service comes with a PSA system, an RMM system. It comes with IT Glue, three things we didn't have because we just started out, and I really didn't want to pay what would've been $8-10,000 of onboarding fees to work with ConnectWise. I didn't have it, if I'm really honest. So having a partner relationship like that where we could bring in all those tools was just a no-brainer straight away.

Where we're lucky, I suppose, is we were starting greenfield. So as we then went out to those clients and said, "Hey, this is the service desk, this is how it works," every one of those clients knows that it's an outsourced service desk. And we've been transparent and we've told them, and the reason that we've told them is that we've said, "This is the stuff that we're absolutely amazing at. This is what they're amazing at. They run a service desk, they're absolutely fantastic at running first, second, third line. They answer all the calls within 60 seconds. They've got these SLAs, they've got ISO accreditations, all of this stuff, and you get that through us." And only one person ever said, "Well, can't we just buy it off them?" I'm like, "Well, no, you can't because they only sell to people like us. So you could probably find another person like us to buy it from," but the value that we add is the time spent with the client on the stuff that's important.

What are you trying to get out of technology? What are you doing with your business? Where are you going? What support do you think you'll need? How can we just advise and guide? Or we're buying a new office or we're buying it another company. Okay, great. Well, here are some things you need to think about. That's the valuable stuff that we can add versus resetting a password, fixing a printer, installing software, deploying a new laptop. All that stuff gets handled by the support desk. And I'm not saying that's not valuable. What I'm saying is that is day-to-day operations. That doesn't necessarily turn the dial on a client relationship.

It can make or break one if the service is absolutely awful, but the team that we picked, when we took a reference calls with their existing clients, they're absolutely amazing. They do service desk better than we could ever hope to do service desk, and that makes them a perfect partner. Now, I've had this conversation with MSPs where they just go, "We can't outsource service desk because it's the first point of contact for our clients. It's the most important part of the way that they experience us. It's this, it's this." Okay, I can understand that, but I'd also challenge it, because when they're phoning service desk, it's because something's gone wrong. They need it fixed as quickly as possible, and as lovely and friendly as Johnny is on the first line service desk, they just need their problem fixed so they can get on with their day.

The real relationships are built with the management team and supporting the business, not supporting the technology. And so I think that's a good way to look at it if you are wondering whether outsourcing service desk is good for you. Also, we did the maths. We figured out what size of a team we would need to hire to look after a certain number of endpoints every month. And if we scaled to those endpoints, how much would that cost using our outsource service? It was the same cost. It was the same cost, except now I don't have a headache of another 10 staff to deal with.

Paul Green:

It's a complete no-brainer, isn't it? Okay.

Scott Riley:

Yeah.

Paul Green:

Your final question, Scott. You've been so generous with your time, but I'm afraid I have to prove that Scott Riley is fallible-

Scott Riley:

Yes.

Paul Green:

... because I want to talk about marketing. And in fact, when you and I met and shook hands for the very first time, and I'd seen you on stage, and one of the first things you admitted to me that you'd spent a not inconsiderable amount of money on marketing and got absolutely zero return. So tell us what you did that didn't work, and then tell us what you're doing now that hopefully is working better for you.

Scott Riley:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So yeah, let me tell you what didn't work. So I think the figure we touted was about £40,000 and I've been doing the maths and we're not far off that. So let's call that $50,000, just to help our US chums. $50,000. Not a single lead. Not one. Okay. Let's tell you some things that didn't work. So I worked with a Facebook Ads expert who was recommended. They work with MSPs all the time, and they craft Facebook ads and they guarantee leads. It sounded amazing. We started working with them. We ran for four months. Now, I appreciate you might say to me, "Scott, you didn't give it long enough." Oh, I will take that feedback. However, the adverts that we were getting were things like... Ooh, I'm looking at one now. "We made a list of 23 Android apps that could be spying on your kids. Find out if your family is at risk. Click here to download." Okay.

"More than 300 Android apps have been identified and they're used by hackers putting dangerous new malware on your phone. Find out if your phone is affected." And I was like, this is some real clickbaity crap. I would not click on this stuff, but this was the quality of stuff that they were putting out. Now, we spent, let's do it in dollars. We spent $8,100 with that agency just for them to do the consultancy and build the ads, run the ads. We then spent another $4,000 on Facebook ad spend. So in total, we spent $12,000 and got absolutely zero leads. My feedback, I wrote to them and I just said, "Look, I just need to check in.

These adverts are really clickbaity." I won't swear, but I did swear in the email. "I don't feel this is representative of our brand or our culture, so these need to stop. Happy to AB test." And my whole thing was, I want to see us as offering value. Not, "Hey, we've got all the secrets. If only you click this button and download our PDF, then we'll share them with you." That wasn't us, so I didn't want those clickbaity schemes, but they just couldn't get it. That was how they worked. $12,300 down the drain. Next, we partnered up with people who wrote blogs for us on our website, lovely people, MSP-focused. We spent $2,000 having them write blogs because we thought it would help with our SEO and ranking and all that kind of stuff. It really didn't. They wrote some wonderful blogs, but once again, they were super generic and they did not represent our brand. This is not in any way trying to put any scathing remarks on Paul or MSP Marketing Edge. That's not what this is about.

Paul Green:

It wasn't us. We didn't do it.

Scott Riley:

It wasn't you. Let's be really clear it. It was not Marketing Edge, but it was something that we wanted to do, we wanted to scale, and we wanted to get quality content on the website, but it wasn't us and it didn't sound like us. And I think because of that, it didn't work. And this was all leading that lesson of, this just doesn't sound like us. $2,000 gone. We worked with a LinkedIn lead generation expert, someone who's in the MSP community, very well-known in the MSP community, very well-connected, and their idea was they'll go on LinkedIn and they'll connect with people. They'll look for people who may be looking for our type of services, and they would recommend us in. We spent $4,000 for no leads. We sponsored an eSports event for $2,200, which was an absolute shambles, and we barely even got to see anybody. We hired a PR firm. That seems like a really sensible thing to do. We spent $15,000.

Paul Green:

Wow.

Scott Riley:

We did appear in Forbes online magazine. I managed to get four lines commenting on Windows 11 updates. That wasn't a great use of time. So yeah, so I think I've already blown past $50,000 just talking about those things. I don't want to harp on too much, but here's my takeaway. We were desperate for leads, and many people had what looked like a great promise. It looked like the quick answer. It looked like they could turn things around if we threw enough money at it, and it was the throwing enough money at it that seemed really convincing. This guy's charging $8,000 for his consultancy, and we can put Facebook Ads on top, but just to get his knowledge, it's $8,000. Wow, this guy must be amazing. He works with MSPs all the time. He's got a proven track record of lead generation. This must be the answer. We're dumb if we don't take $8,000 and immediately throw it at him.

We weren't dumb. We completely misjudged that situation, and we ended up with a load of things that didn't represent us or our brand. We did exactly the same thing with the blogs. We did exactly the same thing with the lead gen, and we did the same thing with the PR. A lot of that stuff just wasn't us. Do we really care about Windows patching updates and making comments? I think we ended up writing an article for someone on how to mirror your screen to a second screen. Okay. None of that stuff was the right audience. It wasn't representative of our brand, and it was far too much money.

So I would wholeheartedly encourage you, on the one hand I'm saying, "Hey, go and partner and outsource with people who can do your service desk if they align with your values and if they align with your company and they're going to treat your customers the way you want them to be treated. If you're going to outsource marketing, you have to work with people who know you, know your business, and will represent your brand really well." Now, ultimately, and this is a benefit because we're in the UK, and I'm really sorry for US and other people all around the world, but we have a wonderful apprenticeship scheme here in the UK, so we hired a digital marketing apprentice. What that basically means is that we get the first year of someone at absolutely hardly any salary whatsoever. It costs us buttons, and they are fully trained by the government on a series of funded courses.

We hired a young girl called Kaylee, who turned out to be the best thing that we ever did. In the first year, her salary was £13,000. Let's go again. Call it $15,000. So reasonable. Significantly less than even one of those marketing tactics that we tried, but now we had a hundred percent full-time focus, someone that we could, I was going to say indoctrinate, but that's not what I mean. Someone that we could really bring into the brand and bring the brand to life and live our culture and our values, and then find the best way to represent those online for us. And so, yes, we bought a fancy Apple Mac. Yes, we bought cameras and lighting and all kinds of stuff like that. We've probably spent about $20,000, including that first-year salary. The returns have been phenomenal.

We've made YouTube videos, LinkedIn videos. We are constantly on LinkedIn or you will see us on socials all the time. I always walk up to people at events that I've never met before and they go, "Oh my God, I've heard your podcast. I've seen your videos. I watched that stupid thing you did with Darth Vader the other day." That's the power that it's having because we're just staying top of mind and really being present, and that is a powerful thing. It's a slow burn, but it does pay off. I can point to one video that we made. It was a six-minute video. It's the most boring video we've ever made, but it was about how much does Teams Voice cost, really. That one video has brought in over £90,000 worth of consultancy, and that's just one. We've made hundreds. We've launched our own training course now, which is our little masterclass program. There's 120 videos in there that we've made, and all of this stuff has been thanks to us having someone in our business who can genuinely, really align with us and do a fantastic job.

Paul Green:

Amazing. I could continue talking to you for hours, Scott, but sadly, we've run out of time. I know. On a podcast, even there, you run out of time. So tell us why you are here. What do you do to help other MSPs? Because I know you are the kind of guy that loves to help other people. What can you do to help MSPs and how can we get in touch with you?

Scott Riley:

Yeah, absolutely. We do a huge amount of work with MSPs as an organization, but me personally, I love to just help and provide advice and guidance wherever I can. So if anyone's interested, if anything I've said so far today has resonated or you'd just like to chat and laugh about some more of my mistakes, I'm always happy for that. You can find me on LinkedIn. You can email me, scott@cloudnexus.co.uk. I'm very easy to find, I would say, on LinkedIn, but I just love to share any of the pain and hassle and challenges that we've been through. If it helps one person not make that mistake, I'm always happy to share and provide guidance.

Voiceover:

Coming up next week.

Merit Khan:

Hi, I'm Merit Khan and the ABCs about me, I'm an author, business owner and a consultant and comedian, and we're going to be talking about the Open For Business Framework. Three pieces of the puzzle that every business owner and MSP needs to know to be successful in business for the long term.

Paul Green:

Right. We're back to our usual format next week, and on top of that interview with Merit Kahn, we'll be discussing why it's so dangerous to let your salespeople use their own personal LinkedIn accounts when they are pursuing new leads. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.

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Made in the UK.

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For MSPs around the world.

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Paul Green's-

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MSP Marketing Podcast.

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Episode 195 Welcome to a special episode of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. In the second 2023 Summer Special podcast, I'm joined by MSSP Technical Director and cyber security expert John Douglas. John discusses the ever-evolving issue of cyber security, as well as recounting his amazing career journey, taking in Japanese motorcycle factories, stock trading floors, and international police investigations into organised criminal networks. Featured guest: John Douglas heads up the Incident Response function at First Response, a role which sees him engage with multi-national clients at Board level to create cyber defence strategies and incident response frameworks. He specialises in cases involving server and systems breaches resulting in data theft. He holds a master’s degree in forensic science from Cranfield University. He also holds a current UK national security vetting to SC level.

John brings over 20 years of computer experience and programming skills to the cases he works on. He worked as a computer forensic scientist for the Metropolitan Police for 10 years as a contractor, assisting in investigations of murder, people trafficking, terrorism and child protection, amongst many others and he regularly gives expert evidence at Court.

John is currently involved in managing a dedicated Security Operations Centre (SOC) as part of a Managed Detection & Response (MDR) function for selected clients in EMEA. This provides an effective blend of threat awareness, incident response and digital investigations to clients who may lack a dedicated capability in-house.

John has written and teaches First Response training courses in advanced forensics and data investigations, including incident response strategies and forensic readiness planning for corporate clients, law enforcement and various government agencies in the UK and across Europe.

Connect with John on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jodouglas/ Extra show notes: * Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription

Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green:

We're talking cybersecurity in this week's Summer Special, and I have a true expert for you on all the things that you really need to know about right now.

Voiceover:

Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

John Douglas:

Hi there. I'm John Douglas. I'm the Technical Director and Head of Incident Response at First Response.

Paul Green:

And you were one of the wonderful people that I met at the SuperOps SuperSummit, which was a conference in London in the UK several months ago now. And I was introduced to you after the event. And I can't remember the exact words that someone said, but it was something along the lines of, "This guy here, John, he's the MSSP that MSPs turn to when they have a major cybersecurity problem." That's just a fascinating way to be introduced to anybody.

Tell us a bit about your career, John. Before you talk about what you do now and how you help MSPs, what's your background? How did you get into this kind of position?

John Douglas:

That goes back a very long way. So originally I'm from New Zealand and I was studying IT at university when IBM released the very first IBM PC, the one everybody remembers with the Charlie Chaplin ads and so on. I worked on VAX-11/780s and other sort of large mainframe systems and things in New Zealand. I moved to Japan working for Yamaha as a programmer after I finished my degree in New Zealand and I was designing computer software for designing motorcycles for Yamaha. I spent a bit of time working for a translation company in Nagoya in Japan. Then moved to Tokyo where I started working for a French investment bank doing basic IT support across the trading floor in Japanese, English and in French.

After a little while there I discovered a way of reorganizing our network that meant that we could get data into the traders two milliseconds faster than the guys down the road, which in investment banking makes a huge difference. So the architecture team in London transferred me to London on a two-year secondment 25 years ago, and I've kind of been here ever since.

I worked for the bank for another six years in London designing Active Directory security architectures and structures. And after a very nasty merger where it became an unpleasant place to be, I left and I started working for the Metropolitan Police as a forensic scientist. I did a master's degree at Cranfield in forensic science and then spent the next 10 years chasing pedophiles around the internet, doing human trafficking investigations and murders, rapes, drug investigations, all kinds of stuff that involved computer forensics.

And then in 2012 with austerity and so on, I left and with some like-minded colleagues, we formed First Response, primarily to do digital forensics and litigation support for civil cases. But we very quickly got pulled sideways into doing incident response and helping companies that had been the victim of a cyber attack and how to respond to that and remediating and recover back. And that kind of brings us up to date.

Paul Green:

What an amazing career. And I definitely want to come back onto First Response and the work that you're doing now in cybersecurity, but I have to delve back into some of that career. So first of all, what was it like working in Japan? I've actually been to Japan. There are very few westerners that I know that have been to Japan. You are about the third or fourth person that I've spoken to. But what was it like living there and working there?

John Douglas:

Well, to begin with, it was pretty tough. So I was working for Yamaha and the Yamaha factory is out in the middle of nowhere. It's kind of out in the fields, miles away from Tokyo. And I spoke no Japanese whatsoever. So on day one, they took me to the factory and took me to the line and I thought, "Oh, excellent, I'm going to get a tour of the factory" 'cause I'm into bikes and I rebuilt engines and so I know my way around. And I thought, "I'm going to get a factory tour." Anyway, they put me on a position in the line and then said, "Today, Douglas san, please put clutch in engine." And I thought, "What? Hang on. Me putting clutches in engines? That's not right."

Anyway, long story short, after a quick conversation with a translator, it turns out that everybody that joins Yamaha and pretty much any of the big makers in Japan, you spend the first three months of your career regardless of whether you're in graphics design or accountancy or whatever, you work for three months on the line, kind of like army basic training. So that was a huge interesting experience and that's pretty much where I learned to speak Japanese in that day-to-day interaction. And that became really helpful in the time that followed.

Paul Green:

I bet. And I bet you could also change a clutch on a motorcycle as well, which I'm sure would come in handy at some point. Let's look at the digital forensic part of your career. So you were with the Metropolitan Police, which is the police force in London, here in the UK. I mean that must have been an insane job because we're talking fairly recently. I think you said you left in 2012, so less than a decade ago that you left that. And I imagine that was when the internet was really evolving fast, so you must've been constantly trying to keep up with how criminals were hiding things from the police.

John Douglas:

Yeah, indeed. And forensics is an arms race, very much so, a technological one. We spent probably a good 40% of our time researching technologies. And not that we were going out looking at technologies and pulling them apart to see what they could be used for, but it was more that a case would turn up on the desk where a particular organized criminal network or just an ordinary person who had decided to do something dodgy had utilized a piece of software. And one that I remember from the early days was Google Hello. The pedophile community sort of landed on that and started using Google Hello to transmit indecent material of children between each other completely under the radar. And it worked out quite effectively for them.

But we had some good connections in with Microsoft and with Google and others. And so they gave us access to diagnostic tools that allows us to reverse engineer some of the data structures so we could actually generate evidential material to take to court and give evidence.

But what was really interesting for me about the whole forensic process was more the diversity of locations where artifacts could be found. So for example, I had a case, I was working on a murder investigation and I was working with the police officer and we'd come to a really good point where I had everything that he needed and he said to me, "Oh, I wish you could help me with my other case." And I said, "Well, what's your other case?" He said, "Oh, it was a drugs case. We arrested this drugs dealer in his car and just before we were able to arrest him, he ripped a lanyard, a USB stick off a lanyard around his neck and threw it into the river. I've been unable to recover it, and we're pretty sure that had all the details of all of his drug deals on it." I said, "Okay." And he was in his car. "What car was he driving?" It turns out he was in a Bentley.

Anyway, again, long story short, I contacted Bentley. The vehicle had been impounded and with some diagnostic tools that Bentley gave us we were able to download all of the GPS data, all of the chat logs and all of the SMS messaging, call history and everything else that had transferred from his iPhone across Bluetooth and had been stored in the car. So whilst he'd got rid of a lot of the data on his mobile phone and on this USB memory stick, we were able to pull back a huge tranche of data from the car itself.

And of course, when you sort of superimpose the GPS data with the call dates and times and some of the message information in the chat logs, you're able to immediately unravel a whole lot of coded text and start to associate that with some of the other people that he was working with.

That kind of technology and being able to think outside the box and grab stuff, keeping in mind this is 20 years ago, so it was pretty cool stuff. I mean, that's fairly trivial to do these days because mobile phones and so on have got GPS units and everything. It's all in one box. So if you've got access to that mobile phone, you've got everything.

Paul Green:

Yeah. There's a message here for criminals, which is if you're going to do crime, then leave your phone at home and drive a 1980s car, which isn't connected and doesn't collect any information whatsoever.

Let's come straight up to date then, John, and let's look at what you're doing within First Response. So you formed this business back in 2012, and as you said earlier, your aim was to help with litigation and forensics, but you then diverted off into this amazing cybersecurity world that we're in here.

So what caused that shift? Was it literally demand, business turning up at the door or was there something else that caused you to go off in a different direction?

John Douglas:

It was business turning up at the door, but came from an unexpected direction, and that was law firms that we were already working with and supporting them in civil litigation where perhaps one of their clients was suing an ex-employee for stealing data or something, taking it to a competitor. But often the law firm would get involved in say, a ransomware incident that one of their clients had suffered. And so they would call us and say, "Hey, what can you do to assist us? We'd like to try and figure out who the attackers were." But very quickly it became more around, "Actually we don't care who the attackers are because they're outside the UK, they're outside of our jurisdiction and we're not going to be able to do anything with them, but can you help us get the data back?"

And so we've been doing an awful lot of that. And certainly through the Pandemic, UK organizations, and I'm sure most of your audience will also click with this, that organizations absolutely struggled to make that transition from on-prem to working remotely.

A lot of organizations managed to make that transition, but they didn't do so securely. And so we saw countless incidents of organizations that were publishing RDP directly to the internet, which is just a recipe for disaster, and they were getting hit with ransomware. In sort of the peak of the pandemic we were probably dealing with four or five cases of ransomware every week. It was just crazy.

Paul Green:

And how have you seen cybersecurity change? I mean, you mentioned the pandemic, which is obviously three odd years ago now that it started. But over the last three, four, five years, how have you seen the kind of attacks change and what kind of new, I mean we all know what the new threats are, but as someone who's actually dealing with it day to day, how have you seen it change?

John Douglas:

I think probably it's become more organized. Cyber threats are no longer some guy in a hoodie in his basement who's just out for grins and giggles. This is organized criminal networks and nation state threat actors that are doing this either to obtain intelligence for economic, military, or health and academic data that they're stealing, or in the case of organized criminal networks, it's purely financial. They're doing everything for financial gain.

And they're hugely organized. I mean, ransomware attacks now, typically you'll see a ransomware author who will be a pretty intelligent guy and experienced programmer writing in C++ who will create a very cool piece of ransomware, and he will then market that on the dark web to organized criminal networks under a franchise scheme where the original author gets 20% of whatever ransoms the organized criminal networks are able to generate, all paid in Bitcoin.

And the organized criminal networks themselves have set this up entirely as a business enterprise. They have help desks being run internally and sometimes they're outsourced to Southeast Asia. We've got large groups of people sitting there waiting to answer the phone to help companies navigate the process of buying Bitcoin or decrypting their data. If they're having struggles to run the decryptor and decrypt the data, having paid the ransom, the help desk is there to support them. It's a really slick professional business now. It's not the chaotic script kiddie that probably the media is still portraying them to be.

Paul Green:

Yeah. Which then begs the question, what do you think it's ... I mean, this is very much a crystal ball question, but you're at the cutting edge here. What do you think is going to change in the next two to three years?

John Douglas:

Well, everybody's talking about AI, and I have to agree with one of the speakers at the conference that we were at in London recently, that AI is neither artificial, nor intelligent. It's just neurological language processing. It's nothing particularly clever. And we can see from some deeper analysis of ChatGPT that it looks pretty amazing on the surface, but when you start to dig into the detail of it, it's actually quite inaccurate. It's giving misleading and false reports.

Because I do malware reverse engineering as an ex-programmer myself, I'm always interested in some of the, not just hacker forums, but also some of the hacking YouTube channels and so on that describe how they're using ChatGPT to help them write code and in some cases, code that could be used maliciously. And in every single instance they're saying there's huge functions and sections of code here that are either wrong or simply missing and the code will not operate as requested.

Now, it might be that either the ChatGPT is not clever enough to do it properly or that somebody's coded it in such a way to not provide those results. I think it's more likely to be the former than the latter.

The one thing that we can guarantee with cyber crime and with the threat online is that it will continue to evolve, that law enforcement are doing an enormous job to try and keep up with the technological change but it is definitely an arms race. And I even see it in my field of digital forensics. When we're trying to analyze artifacts, we're always one step behind the criminal. So a new tool would become available on GitHub or will be released by a third party developer, and they'll start using it for criminal purposes. We then have to take that tool, reverse engineer it using tests and test data to try and figure out what it's doing and how it's working in order to determine where the artifacts will lie that we can then use in our investigations. So there's always a delay. And even the large companies that make forensic tools for law enforcement around the world struggle with exactly the same problem.

You've got UK government at the moment trying to put through legislation that will weaken encryption such that law enforcement is more easily able to understand what would-be terrorists and other subversive people are communicating about. But there's a huge conversation there just on itself really. It's not a good look either for the government or for personal privacy. But the evolution of cyber crime and the way that threats against the UK evolve will continue unabated.

We've already seen that with the Ukraine War almost within weeks of the UK pledging support for Ukraine in quite loud terms, that attacks went up from around 300 to 350 attacks per day to now well over 3000, almost 4,000 attacks per day in a 24-hour period. And those are all just from the territory of Russia. In the last few days the NCSC and GCHQ, the primary intelligence gathering organizations for electronic communications in the UK and the NCSC, which is kind of a cyber advisory group as part of GCHQ, have warned that UK national critical infrastructure organizations like the power grid, national rail, gas and water suppliers and so on, that national critical infrastructure are being targeted actively by Russian threat actors and that we need to pay attention to that.

Paul Green:

Yes, yes. I'm going to date this interview, John, because we never normally, we record these interviews quite far in advance of the podcast, but you and I are speaking towards the end of April. So whenever this is is broadcast, I just want to put that date on there because I have a feeling that cybersecurity is going to move on in just the two, three months between time of recording and broadcast.

One final question for you, and then we'll talk about what you do with MSPs. What's the phone call that you dread getting? What's the piece of information that you know is going to keep you awake tonight?

John Douglas:

There are varied and many. The biggest one is when a company calls us to say that they've been the victim of a ransomware attack, that all of their backups have been trashed and that they've got no logs. It gives us almost no scope for remediation, and it gives us very little scope for making any determination as to who's responsible.

Paul Green:

And I'm sure that there are many MSPs that would perhaps give a very similar answer. But we did open this interview by saying that you are the guy that MSPs call when they're in trouble. So tell us what you do with MSPs. How do you help people? What's a typical case for you, like a case scenario?

John Douglas:

Again, it's typically some kind of, it's an incident of some sort. And it can be anything from a disgruntled employee who's decided to sabotage the internal systems because he has some knowledge or she has some knowledge of them. It may also be the case that a sexual harassment claim has been raised to HR in a client of the MSP, and they've been asked to go in and have a quick look and see is there any data there that substantiates the claim.

Now, the wise and wily of the MSPs will understand that the moment you start getting involved in those kinds of investigations, you're putting your neck on the chopping block, so to speak, evidentially, because everything that you do at that point can potentially be called to. If that process winds up at a tribunal or at court, if it becomes serious enough, then the MSP can be compelled to give evidence at court about what they did and how they did it. And if you don't have a forensics background and don't understand the implications of what you've done, for example, just powering on a Windows PC will change 600 dates and times, so that's 600 pieces of evidence that are now lost forever. Digital evidence is quite fragile, so knowing how to deal with it is important.

We work with a number of MSPs where in the event that they have some kind of incident that potentially could get sensitive either for internal political reasons or just because it may potentially involve some criminal action, then at that point they'll say, "Hey, listen, can you guys have a look at this for us?" And that gives a sort of at arm's length third party independence to the entire process, which makes life much easier. And obviously everything that we do, we handle data evidentially and we're able to give evidence of court as expert witnesses. We've done that for many, many years. I'm really comfortable in that process.

Paul Green:

Yeah, no, I can imagine. John, thank you so much for your time on the podcast today. Just finally, tell us what's the best way to get in touch with you and what's your website address?

John Douglas:

Probably the easiest way is simply to go to our website, which is www.first-response.co.uk. There's a contact form there. There's phone number at the top, and pretty easy to find us.

Voiceover:

Coming up. Coming up next week.

Scott Riley:

Hey, I'm Scott Riley from Cloud Nexus. Join me on Paul's podcast where we're going to be talking about how I managed to run one of the fastest growing MSPs in the UK without having a single help desk technician, and I get to sleep at night and get weekends off too.

Paul Green:

Scott's genuinely so funny, and he has such great stories to tell as well about how to grow your MSP. He is a big thinker and that's why he's the subject of our final Summer Special next week. Join me next Tuesday, and have a very profitable week in your MSP.

Voiceover:

Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

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Episode 194 Welcome to a special episode of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. In the first 2023 Summer Special podcast, I'm joined by MSP Managing Director Henry Duncombe. Henry shares with me his fascinating and inspiring story, from joining the business as an engineer to becoming its MD, including the measures he took to ensure the survival of his MSP following the loss of a £4.5 MILLION client. Featured guest: For the last eighteen years Henry has had one simple goal, for Lanware to be the number one, privately owned, IT Managed Service Provider (MSP) 100% focused on the UK mid-market financial services industry. As Lanware’s Managing Director his very client-focused approach and technical background has enabled the company to build long term relationships with its financial services clients. Henry’s key objective with all Lanware clients is to always deliver service excellence and then earn the reputation as a trusted IT partner. This trust sits within the core values of Lanware and the many clients who’ve been with the company for two decades demonstrate this. Henry’s experience stretches 30 years’ starting as a graduate trainee within a world-class engineering & computing environment at Rolls-Royce Aerospace, through to working on major EDS government and finance industry outsourcing contracts. Henry has a 1st class BSc (Hons) in Industrial Management and in his spare time is a keen golfer.

Connect with Henry on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/henry-duncombe-ba06351/ Extra show notes: * Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription

Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world, this is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Imagine the horror of losing nearly half of your MSP's revenue. What would happen to your business? How would your staff react and feel? How would you feel? Could you imagine how you'd feel waking up the day after knowing that you were going to lose your whale client who represented 50% of everything that you do? It's a horrendous scenario. And today, we have a very inspirational interview with someone who not only went through that but has got through it and has rebuilt their business. In fact, today, the business is thriving.

It's August. Yay! Welcome to Summer and this is the first of our summer specials.

Voiceover:

Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Henry Duncombe:

Hi, yeah. My name's Henry Duncombe. I'm the Managing Director of Lanware. We're a MSP based in the City of London. We work exclusively with clients in the financial services sector. We've been operating for 30 years and we employ about 50 staff.

Paul Green:

And welcome on the show, Henry. You are one of a whole bunch of very cool people that I met at the SuperOps Super Conference earlier on this year in London, here in the UK. And the second you started telling me about your story, I thought I've got to get you on this show, so thank you very much for coming on.

There are two big things that we're going to talk about today. The first of them is the impact of losing a whale. We'll define exactly what a whale means. It's a very big client. We'll define what that is and what happened to you in your business when you lost your whale. I'm interested in how you managed to recover from that and turn the business around. And then as you said in your intro, you have a super niche, which for you is financial services. I want to explore that, or I should say a super niche, so that everyone everywhere can understand what a niche or a niche is. We're going to explore exactly what niche you're in. I'm going to have to stick with niche, aren't I? What niche you are in, and what drove you to pick a niche? And we'll get your advice and what you've done to help you to dominate a niche.

But all of that is coming up in the next 10, 15 minutes or so. Let's just start, first of all, just explore a little bit more about Lanware today. You said the business has been going for about 30 years. How long have you yourself been there because you don't look old enough to have been there 30 years ago?

Henry Duncombe:

No, I mean, it was founded in 1993 by an entrepreneur called Connor Cassidy. He identified an opportunity back then to start a London-based IT consultancy just when the internet started to revolutionize business, and for the first five years, it was just Connor and he started to hire a small team. He'd literally gone through the Yellow Pages and phoned up the whole of Central London. And we were providing remote help desk, had a couple of engineers roaming around different client sites, fixing issues.

I joined the business 18 years ago in 2004. I was looking for my next step. I responded to an advert for an engineer role. And being in my twenties, I didn't do my due diligence. The founder, being a typical entrepreneur, completely oversold it to me, told me the company was much larger than it was and had twice as many clients, but there was something about Lanware and the ideas and the vision that I really bought into. And actually coincidentally, I had a couple of personal contacts that used Lanware for their IT support, so that was the extent of my due diligence at the time, and it was a complete coincidence that they were using Lanware because they really were that small.

But yeah, so then I joined back then as an engineer and it went from there. Back then, it was, as IT was back in the day, it was pretty chaotic. There was none of the processes and tooling and things that we have today, and the support phone would ring constantly, a lot of firefighting, lurching from one problem to the next, limited structure, and everyone did everything. But there was no shortage of strong technical skills and certainly ideas from our founder who had this vision, which really resonated with me, and again, why I joined the business, and that was to create a fully managed service, which would take all of the customers' infrastructure and servers out of the office, host them in a data center, package them up and virtualize them, and deliver them as this all-encompassing service that they'd pay for on a per-user basis and that service would be accessible to all their users all around the world.

And I'd never understood why the servers were in the office in the first place. Back then, it was quite typical for clients to have their servers hosted in a cupboard in their office with the backup tapes going home in the PA's handbag if he or she remembered.

So, that was the idea. And what happened next was the journey that we were about to embark on really takes us up to where we are today. We went in and effectively pitched this new idea, this all-encompassing, hosted managed service to a couple of the financial services clients that we had and they knew we hadn't done it before. They kind of believed in us because we'd been supporting them and they were willing to be the early adopters of that. And so on a bit of a whim, we went about leading with this whole new service. It was a fantastic success. And then from that point, that's where we started to really think about then focusing on financial services as a niche.

Paul Green:

I mean, you're talking about this amazing concept of moving everything out of the office. When are we talking, what sort of time period are we talking?

Henry Duncombe:

It was literally just after I'd arrived was that's when we went off, and like I say, pitched this new service and had to set about creating relationships with data center providers and beefing up our partnership with other providers.

Paul Green:

And was this why you ended up with financial services because they saw the benefits of this and they were able to and willing to invest in it?

Henry Duncombe:

Yeah, absolutely. It really resonated with them and our link to financial services really became apparent. They were looking for then a robust, highly available, secure service as possible and they wanted to focus on their core business. So taking the infrastructure out of the office and packaging it up and allowing them to do that, that was really music to their ears. It was there that we realized, look, this is where we should focus. Clearly also, they had bigger budgets, they're willing to pay for it.

And yeah, there were other little examples I remember back in the day around just simple things like challenges, trying to stop users having admin rights on all their machines, and you know what it's like. Back in the day, people were just thinking we were being typical awkward IT people trying to take away their admin rights. But the financial services clients completely understood that we were trying to take responsibility for their security and stop them getting hacked and stop them having issues with the regulators. So, we just clicked.

And it was that point that I kind of convinced the founder to go one step further, not just to lead with this all-encompassing, hosted, managed, private cloud as it's now known today, but to really just to work only within the financial services space, and particularly, small, independent, boutique investment management firms.

Paul Green:

Yeah, yeah. I want to come back to that niche, that vertical shortly. Let's first of all talk about your whale. So first of all, let's define what a whale is for us, Henry. You tell me what you define a whale as.

Henry Duncombe:

Well, a whale is obviously a huge client who make up a significant portion of your revenue essentially. And it's not unusual. Certainly when you're starting a business and you don't have lots and lots of clients, there's going to be a whale in there from just looking at a percentage basis. No, I mean this was obviously a very large client and I can explain how they arrived and to what size they grew.

They came through a referral. They're an insurance firm, so within the sweet spot of financial services. Great. They were a new startup and this was over 15 years ago. And they had the backing of a large banking institution with very ambitious growth plans and they had a vision to be one of the first Japanese Lloyd's of London underwriters. And when we met them, they were about 20 users, but technology was critical to them and their strategy was to develop their own underwriting insurance platform to be able to transact business directly through the Lloyd's insurance market.And this resulted in a story where they had more IT people than general staff. I remember a time they had 80 software developments.

And the upshot for us was the IT leadership and focus was more on the development of those bespoke systems and not so much the day-to-day keeping the lights on, the desktop support, the infrastructure, and the security. So the timing was great for us, going back to how we got into re-architecting this managed service. And it was great timing because we were developing all that and we were building out our data center capability and all that kind of stuff. So our businesses grew alongside each other and they constantly pushed us to think at a different level and increase our ranges of services to help them grow. They had a dedicated team on site and a lot of the hardware was leased by us too and it drove up the value of the service.

And at its peak, it got to about £4.5 million per annum, which was about half our revenue. So there's the whale at its absolute peak.

Paul Green:

Yeah, that's not just a whale. That's like a mega whale, a super whale. But you had a nickname for it, didn't you?

Henry Duncombe:

I think so. I think they were bordering on becoming a megalodon, I think is the pre-historic shark, isn't it?

Paul Green:

Yeah.

Henry Duncombe:

But yeah, that's certainly where they ended up. But at that time, yeah, they were definitely a whale.

Paul Green:

Any whale that's 50% of your revenue is a massive threat when that represents £4.5 million worth of billable revenue. I mean, that's a business killer. And I guess without going too much into the detail because it must have been a horrendous and very traumatic time that there was a point when that contract came to an end.

Henry Duncombe:

Yeah, we had a bit of a perfect storm, sadly. So it wasn't just that contract coming to end. Sadly our founder, he passed away from cancer. He had been ill for a few years and this left a number of challenges, normal challenges, probate and ownership structure, and it created some uncertainty. And I had kind of stepped up, and this was the best part of 10 years ago, I stepped up at that point in running the business because remember, I joined as an engineer. And the clients were supportive, but we still had a lot of that going on is when things started to go in the wrong direction with the whale client. And we received the news that they were going to merge with a much larger business and it was more of a reverse takeover situation, but it was very clear that our client was the smaller entity and was to be absorbed into the bigger business.

So from the start, we could just see that this was going to be a challenge too great for us, trying to scale up, again to position, to support a combined organization that was potentially 4,000 global users around the world, and especially some of our key stakeholders and relationships, they were leaving the business. It was just too much risk. So that's where they definitely have gone from being a whale to that megalodon that we were talking about. And the client knew this too. As the integrations with the two companies started, the final scenario for us became clear. And we had had a hell of a ride for 10, 14 years or whatever it was. But the immediate assessment of the impact to our business was serious, it was very serious, the amount of cost-cutting and downsizing we had to do. And there was a lot of fixed commitments in there, such as the data center capacity and so on and so forth, which it painted a very challenging picture.

Paul Green:

Were there points where you thought, "I'm not going to be able to do this. There's no way we're going to be able to reduce the costs and keep people"? Because that's the thing, isn't it? If you've ever been in a business that's had to lose people and lose contracts quickly, it just creates this unbelievable feeling of uncertainty within everyone and you find that the very best people are the first people to leave.

Was there a point where you sat head in hands and thought, "How am I going to do this?"

Henry Duncombe:

Of course, of course. Yeah. I mean, there was a lot of things that we learned, and looking back, obviously I'm here today and we're doing well and how did we turn this around?

Well, first of all, and this is easier said than done, Paul, is we didn't panic. Yes, the head was in the hands. In most cases, when a client goes in our world as an MSP, you do have an amount of time on your side, and the bigger they are, the more complex their technology, there's always going to be a significant transition period for them to move away. It gives you an amount of time to make changes and get your head around this.

We had to confront the brutal facts and not kid ourselves as well that this wasn't going to happen, if that makes sense. It's quite easy to think perhaps there's going to be residual opportunity and so on and so forth. You had to plan for the worst case scenario. You couldn't proceed with any other mindset really, whilst still obviously being confident about the future and where you might end up. So we treated them with the same level of service and professionalism right up until the end, and in turn, created huge amount of long-lasting relationships and referenceability after they exited.

The second thing that we did, which is something many might not do, is we didn't try and hide the situation from the other clients, and we told them all and we told them early, and that was incredibly difficult to do that. And the response was one I didn't expect. It was one of support.

Many of these clients are professional investors and we opened up our books to them and they were understandably nervous about our future and how, if we were to fail, how that might impact them, but they started to realize that the business had been run prudently. Obviously, the founder passed away and nobody was taking lots of cash out the business in bonus. And if anything, I started to put money to one side because I knew this ultimately may happen at some point. And so they kind of recognized that and that really helped, I suppose. That really helped build that trust.

And again, I'm always one for trying to find the positives. We look back and the feedback that came out of that exercise with other clients, they pointed out some really painful truths around our business, some of the stuff that you talk around the podcast around understanding your profitability and your pricing and all this good stuff. They pointed a lot of that out and said, look, they were there willing to support us and maybe even go further to a financial safety net, but we had to change a lot of things. And they gave us a lot of free advice around ownership structure, to your point, about key staff, incentivizing key staff with shares so they would not leave the business and all that. So they gave us great advice around that.

And another thing that we'd done prior was get an FD on board, a part-time FD, and we'd been muddling through a little bit with an in-house bookkeeper and a bit of advice from the accountants and that wasn't appropriate for a business that had grown so quickly of our size and with that key client risk. So when things went south, having an experienced FD on board who had a grip of the numbers, could play out various scenarios, that gave the other clients a huge amount of confidence that whilst the forecast looked difficult, we understood the impact and we could make those difficult decisions with some level of some confidence in that.

And I think the other thing was about everything had to change, particularly in terms of the product because we had become prisoners to our own experiences. We felt the entire market was made up of clients like this with massive budgets, wanted to be on the forefront of technology, and this made us expensive, it made us inflexible. We became too wedded to one enterprise technology stack, which didn't resonate with the wider market.

A simple example of this was the adoption of Office 365. Because we were so wedded to our data centers, a lot of the team just weren't on board with the public cloud, and the sad fact is that the market was already shifting back then to the public cloud and Office 365 and we were going out there trying to sell to new prospects. We didn't have enough experience in it at that time and we had to change all that. And the headline was, we totally re-architected our flagship managed service to be exclusively delivered from 365 and Azure after that as a result of those experiences with that key client and realizing that we'd become kind of prisoners to our own experience with them.

Paul Green:

Yeah, this is an astonishing display of leadership, Henry, I have to say. Because the decisions you've made, and I appreciate we are hearing a 10-minute version of what was probably two or three difficult years of your life, but I think every single business owner that hears that story can put themselves in that situation.

So most of us wouldn't be on a turnover of £9 million, which is about $10, $11, $12 million. But even if you multiply that down or divide that down to a factor of 10, if you are sat on a turnover of £900,000, £90,000 and someone takes half of that away, you have to make some very, very difficult decisions. And everything you've said there shows to me tremendous leadership. "Dear other clients, this is the problem we are in. This is why we're in that problem. Here are our books. Here is transparency," just saying to your staff and showing to your staff that you believed in the future of the business so much that you are willing to give them a little slice of it, that truly is astonishing.

So I'm sure you don't need to hear it, but congratulations.

Henry Duncombe:

Thank you.

Paul Green:

And maybe people don't say it to you very often because you did it and it's done and the business has picked up and carried on growing from there. But yeah, I think everyone listening right now is giving you a high-five, a welcomed high-five on that one.

Henry Duncombe:

Well, cheers. I appreciate that. And as you say, you talked about the team and the staff and you had to be very open and honest with them because in a small business like an MSP, it's communication. It occurs very quickly and that can be a great asset. It could also be a great liability if you don't communicate because people make up their own version of events of what you are facing. And I would spend endless time doing company updates and confronting the issue head on, not shying away from it, but whilst at the same time, trying to paint that longer-term future.

And it is really interesting because you talked about when people moved on. One of the things that I found out was that because of some of the good recruitment that we had done, within our ranks, there was a huge amount of potential, if that makes sense. So as some of the more senior people moved on, you had the slightly less experienced ones who were really hungry and wanted to step up and they cared less around things like the private cloud and they wanted to embrace the public cloud, and so they became then our future leaders. And I think the key thing is that, is I'm always trying to recruit on potential as much as the skills they have when you meet them.

Paul Green:

I love it. I love it. And there was a great, I'm going to paraphrase what you said there, but something along the lines of if you don't give people the information, they will fill in the gaps.

Henry Duncombe:

Yeah, they'll fill in the gaps.

Paul Green:

Yeah, that in itself is a fantastic people leadership thing.

Okay, let's finish off looking at your vertical. So right from your early days and from the point you joined the business 18 years ago, you've had this vertical, and yours is a nice cash-spending, very focused, highly regulated vertical, which makes it very desirable. Now obviously, you haven't just sat back on your laurels because the easy thing in a vertical is once you're in a vertical, you tend to get other businesses in that vertical just finding you, but you can still be very proactive with your marketing and go out looking for business.

So talk us through what you do as a business now to be present in that vertical, to be dominant in it, to be the authority, and ultimately, to get the leads coming in.

Henry Duncombe:

Yeah. So I'm going to explain how we ended up in this vertical and the fit that we have for financial services, and I think we sort of fell into it a little bit. And one thing I would say is for others considering going down this road is to proceed a little bit of caution. It's not a small decision and I think to be truly successful, you have to go all in. There's no half-measures. It's tempting to think of financial services as a massive industry, but the addressable market for an MSP, when you are looking at those in those UK, those small boutique firms who are mainly London-based and they're all very demanding and quite hard to penetrate, and they all want to use a specialist MSP, and that's part of the attraction, if that makes sense.

And so believe it or not, it goes deeper. There's like the niche within the niche within the niche. It's like the super niche. I'll give you example. There's not a huge amount of MSPs playing in this space and the barriers to entry are significant. I mean, a lot of the times, you'll have some of the other competitors, they may have a lot of hedge fund clients and other ones might have a lot of private equity clients. Do you see? So there are actual, within the vertical, there are these sub-niches, if that makes sense. And a prospect will be looking for heavy weighting within your client base of organizations similar to them. So actually, as you get into it, it seems to go deeper and deeper.

So to this day, it's taken a long time to get into where we are, and I had to turn down a lot of other opportunity outside the vertical, which is not easy.

So I suppose, how do we find new business and market ourselves? We brand everything we do around financial services. I'm sure you'd appreciate. One example of that is our flagship managed service. That's called Finance Forward 365. And by giving them the product a financial name, you're offering something that others aren't. It never ceases to amaze me how other MSPs don't give their service a name. And it's a bit easier for us because we can obviously name it within our vertical. That's just a simple example of how we go to market and brand ourselves.

Clearly, we form close partnerships with other complementary service providers who will focus on the same space as us, whether that be software providers, compliance brokers, legal firms, all the way through to office fit out companies. We hold regular meetups with them, we share intel, we share leads, opportunities, we support each other's businesses. We like each other's stuff on social media, if that makes sense. Clearly, we attend all the different events and awards and all that.

We put out content. I mean, you talk about answering the questions from clients, which is fantastic advice. It makes all that content creation process a lot easier because you're answering those questions anyway. So a recent example might be something that, again, going back to regulation, the regulator's getting really hot on these financial firms not recording what their staff do over WhatsApp for business purposes, for example. And it's created a lot of issues so they're looking for solutions around that. That's an example, do you see, about something that client's are really grappling with that you can put out great content around and then position yourself as an industry expert.

Yeah, the other interesting thing we see business, and again, it goes to the niche, it's just an unusual one, is that a lot of time when our kind of competitors get acquired by non-specialist MSPs or they take private equity backing and they get really aggressive in terms of their targets, they lose that white-glove service and that industry focus. The clients will vote with their feet a little bit and then we pick up a lot of customers there.

We talk about this white-glove service, that's this term, but I always laugh that it's when it turns into the rubber glove, you know there's something wrong. But also, just again, we often try and hire people who have worked with the competition. It's good to befriend them, maybe have them on your board as a non-exec or who've got the connections and all the experience, et cetera and so on and so forth.

But then on the marketing front, Paul, yes, no, we do everything that you preach on your podcast in terms of building up audiences, et cetera, and the email marketing, and LinkedIn is huge for us and newsletters and everything else. And I don't think that everyone is really dominating on that, like you say, even in our niche.

Paul Green:

Yeah, well, I think you could say this with most verticals and there's two or three MSPs that I'm working with who are utterly dominant in their vertical. I'm not going to name the verticals, but they are. And there's one guy in particular and he'll be listening to this and thinking, "Yeah, he's talking about me." He literally, he's only been in the vertical a couple of years, but he walked in and dominated it and that was partly timing, it was partly drive, and it was partly being the right person at the right place at the right time.

There's another MSP I'm working with in Australia who, again, has dominated the vertical, but most people... It was really interesting what you said earlier about going all in. Most people, they dip their toe into a vertical. And this is how I see it tends to go. You have an MSP that's got general business, they've been going for 10 years, they hear me banging or you, someone banging on about, "Oh, marketing through vertical is easier," which it is and it is easier to build up momentum and keep the momentum going, but the more you commit to it, the more you get out of it.

And they do, they dip their toe in or they say, "Oh, I've got a dentist. We'll go and get some more dentists," and they end up with five, 10 dentists and there's nothing wrong with that at all, using a vertical sat on the side of your general business, but the people who truly dominate their verticals, as you said, they go all i. It is the vertical or nothing. And it is a very scary thing to do because if you marry... We call this marrying a market. If you marry the wrong market, then you have to divorce that market and go and find a new market and that in itself is a three-year set of pain as it is.

Henry Duncombe:

Absolutely.

Paul Green:

Here we go. Henry, you have been utterly, utterly wonderful. Thank you for sharing something that many MSP owners would hide, which is we lost the whale, and okay, it didn't kill the business, but it was difficult. So, thank you for that. There's been some amazing lessons in there and it's just been a pleasure to have you on. We'll put your LinkedIn into the show notes for those people that want to connect with you.

And I will give you, I never do this or I will very rarely, give you the final word. If you could give any MSP listening to this one piece of advice, something that perhaps you wish you had known when you took over the business, when was it, 18 years ago, what would that advice be?

Henry Duncombe:

It's something that everyone else has said and one of the reasons I'm on this podcast, it is getting out there into the wider community and really trying to build out those connections and that network and spending time with other MSPs. It's something that I didn't do really, and actually, what happened with us being prisoners of our own experience, does that make sense?

Paul Green:

It does.

Henry Duncombe:

And the whale client, it forced me really just to get out and actually seek help, talk to people. It's a combination of, I think, getting advice and a bit of therapy as well because running an MSP, you do question whether it's this hard for everyone. It really is. It's a very demanding and operational business and so we all need the support that we can get, so go get it.

Voiceover:

Coming up next week.

John Douglas:

Hi, I'm John Douglas. I'm the Technical Director and Head of Incident Response at First Response. We're going to be talking about incident response, how MSSPs can support MSPs in the work that you do, the current threat landscape, what cyber attacks look like, and how to deal with ransomware.

Paul Green:

Now, this is saying something when a non-tech like me says it, that I found that discussion with John to be absolutely fascinating. He knows so much about cybersecurity and what we need to do to protect people out there, and I'm sure that you will love next week's summer special as well. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.

Voiceover:

Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

View Details

Episode 193 Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes: * 00:00 The things you love and hate about your MSP * 04:10 The power of in-person proposals and scheduled follow-ups * 13:46 The importance of authenticity when hiring or marketing to Gen Z

Featured guest:

Thank you to Emanuel Rose, Founder and CEO of Strategic eMarketing, for joining me to talk about the most effective ways to communicate with Gen z, whether we're marketing to them, or hiring them.

Emanuel Rose has spent over three decades earning a reputation in cutting edge marketing. As an author and expert in the field, Emanuel specializes in direct response advertising, and content marketing at his digital agency, Strategic eMarketing. His passion lies in helping companies achieve business success with authentic storytelling. Emanuel’s unique approach to marketing strategies has resulted in countless clients reaching their goals. As the Founder and CEO of Strategic eMarketing, a digital marketing agency located in Ashland, OR, he serves clients with one to 25 million dollars in sales. Emanuel manages prospecting, sales, client service, and a team of six creatives and support staff. He is also responsible for developing strategies and tracking the progress of marketing campaigns. With over 14 years of experience in the agency, he has established himself as a reputable expert in lead generation, branding, advertising, and digital agency operations.

Connect with Emanuel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/b2b-leadgeneration/ Extra show notes: * Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Subscribe to the MSP Marketing Action Monthly magazine: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * This episode features the final part of my three-part series on how to be more successful with your sales appointments. You can listen to the first two parts here: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode191/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode192/ * I also mentioned the episode where I talked about 'impact boxes' - I've remembered it was way back in Episode 12: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode12/ * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Happiness-Hypothesis-Finding-Modern-Ancient/dp/0465028020

Transcription:

Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday.

For MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Hello my friend, and welcome to the show. Here's what we got coming up for you this week.

Emanuel Rose:

I'm Emanuel Rose. I'll be talking about Authenticity: Marketing to Gen Z, and why if your business is going to be valuable and relevant, you need to pay attention to them.

Paul Green:

And on top of that fascinating interview with our Gen Z expert this week, we are going to finish off our short series about improving your sales meetings. Let's see if we can put in place a better follow-up system.

Voiceover:

Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green:

Let's start this week with an intriguing question. What do you most love and what do you most hate about your MSP? It's a good one, isn't it? Have a think about that. Some of the things you might love might include the money that your business generates. It might be that you are in control, that everything is done your way. It might be that you have control over your time, control over the work. It might be that you love helping people, that you love making a difference, that you love the fact that you are supporting all of these staff, or maybe some of those things actually go in the category of the thing you hate. I know some MSPs find having staff to be a distress activity. Some MSPs, I wouldn't say hate, but they dislike some of their clients. They've got to a point where they dislike technology.

I asked this exact same question a few weeks ago in my MSP Marketing Facebook group. If you're not a member, go into Facebook, type in "MSP Marketing" in the search bar, go to Groups, and you can join there. But you're only welcome if you are indeed an MSP. It's a vendor-free zone. So we had 17 comments on this one. Herman said, "I love running my own business. It's like competing in sports and it gives me so much drive to give it my all. It also gives me the freedom to manage my own time, and even though I work way more hours per month right now, I managed to spend way more time with my family." That's a bonus. But then Herman says, "But I absolutely hate being the sales guy as well as the sysadmin. Completely get that one. And my reply to that was, "Yeah, everyone hates selling, but they like the outcome of selling," which is so true.

Oh, actually, Brian says he loves selling. His frustration is he's not independent enough to get out and sell, which is interesting. Stewart says, "The staff," and the staff, I assume he means he loves the staff and he hates the staff in equal measure, which is good. James says, "Dealing with bloody employees." Is that just a British minor swear word? He said bloody, the word bloody. It feels very Hugh Grant, doesn't it? In British films of the '90s, I say "Bloody" a lot. I don't don't know. Will you email me and let me know if you use "Bloody" in your territory? Do you say, "Oh, that's a bloody shame." And I'm really hoping this doesn't turn out to be some very rude insult in some countries somewhere. This whole podcast is designed to be safe listening. So if your kids are in the back of the car listening, "Dad, do I have to listen to the MSP podcast again? It's boring," but if they are there, there's, there's nothing offensive for them.

So James says, "Dealing with bloody employees. Oh, the drama." Victor says he hates paperwork. Who enjoys paperwork, really? Keith, he's one of our top contributors to this Facebook group. He says, "Serious answer, 99% of what I think I hate turns out to be self-inflicted grief." Accounting, don't do it. Find a professional, as an example. "Most of the grief is due to bad planning, documentation or process. Once you find-tune those, you can focus on the core." We all love securely enhancing our customer's business with technology, which is just a great answer. And I'm going to give the final answer to Andy Dawson, very positive answer from Dan... From Dandy? Who's Dandy? From Andy Dawson. I love Andy, and he says, "I love monthly recurring revenue and clients for life. There is nothing to hate about my business."

What do you love and what do you hate about your MSP? Drop me an email and let me know. It's hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover:

Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green:

So we are finishing off a little miniseries this week. For the last couple of weeks, we've been looking at how you can be more successful with your sales appointments. So if you haven't yet listened to the last couple of episodes, go back two weeks to hear what we were talking about with what was called pre-appointment pre-suasion. It was about setting up a higher chance of success by presuading. It's the process of persuading someone before you do something. And then last week we talked about having a meeting environment for success and the prep that you need to do for success.

We're going to finish off today looking at proposals and follow up, and we'll start with the proposals. Now, I believe that proposals have more power if they are in person than if you just send something out. In fact, you've got to this point, this point of where you've generated a lead and you've got them into a meeting and you've had a meeting with them. And it could be that you are, if you like, you're throwing away the sale if you just send them an email with your proposal. Even with all the cool software that's out there, I know you can get things like better proposals, and in fact, some of the PSAs, a lot of the sales tools, you can send a proposal and track whether or not they've opened it and how many times they open it and all of that kind of stuff.

Because it's not like you get so many sales meetings, is it? We're talking, what, 5, 6, 7 sales meetings a year at most? Certainly good sales meetings. So I believe it will be more powerful for you to book in another meeting for you to take them through every aspect of what you've put together for the proposal and why you've put it together. And this is how to guarantee that they understand everything and they can see the value in what it is that you're offering before you tell them what their investment will be. Now, many people, many of your prospects, they're going to fight the need for a meeting. They're going to say, "No, no, no, we don't want to meet. Thank you."

The meeting is now emails through the proposal. In fact, they may feel that this second meeting is a bit of a time suck, but the thing you have to say to them is, "Look, here's the thing. What we do is very, very complicated. Of course, I can put it down in a proposal, but it would be more beneficial to you and to me if you could just give me 15 minutes of your time where I can explain it to you properly in a way that no document ever can." You could even use an analogy for this. I mean, you could use the analogy of the video call, couldn't you? A video call is good, but nothing beats an actual meeting physically sitting down someone. It's your way of showing that you are completely committed to them.

So an in-person presentation of the proposal, and then obviously I would give them a physical paper copy of it, and the higher quality you can make that proposal, the better. By that I mean the printing. Nice quality paper, high quality print. I know a couple of MSPs who bind theirs, and we're talking like proper binding, not just one of those machines that you go and put spiral bindings in, but one that sends it out to a printer and has it actually bound into a book. How cool is that? So of course, you physically leave that with them, but you would still email over a copy of the proposal as well because you can track how often then that they go and look at that. Sometimes it'll be easier for some people to look at that. Some people prefer to look at the paper one. It doesn't really matter.

Now, something else that you may consider going in with your proposal, really your proposal goes in with this, is something called an impact box. Now, an impact box is there if you really want to differentiate yourself from all of the other MSPs that they might be seeing as part of this sales process. An impact box, which we talked about really early in the podcast. I meant to check before recording and I forgot. We're talking in the first five or 10 episodes, I'm sure we talked about impact boxes like three years ago. And what it is is a crate of stuff that you give to them.

And in fact, you can either ship it to them, send it to them as part of the pre-suasion. So that thing we were talking about two weeks ago. If you're sending across a case studies book for example, you could send that as part of an impact box, or you may choose to do it when you send the printed proposal because you want to stand out. And you could send it perhaps in place of doing an in-person meeting. Maybe if they refuse the in-person meeting, that's when you send the impact box, or maybe you just take it with you. And when you are going to meet them to talk them through that proposal, you say, "Hey, here's some stuff we brought you."

And inside the impact box, you'd put printed materials such as any book that you've written, things like the IT Services Buyer's Guide, case studies. We deliver a whole bunch of stuff to the members of our MSP Marketing Edge program that they can put into an impact box. You might also throw in some merch, merchandise. Get me getting down with the kids saying merch. Things like a printed mug, a pen, some candy, something edible. And if you are sending it and not going with it yourself, then put a handwritten note in there as well. Because a handwritten note, it really stands out. It shows that you really care. And if your writing is as bad as my handwriting, then just get someone in your office to do that for you. Also, just make sure that however you package up that impact box as well reflects the quality of what's inside but can also be fully recycled. That recycling is so important for so many people right now. Quite right so.

The one other thing that I wanted to talk about in this whole process, and then this is the final thing, is scheduled follow-up. So you've had your sales meeting, you've done your in-person proposal. Now, there's nothing worse than being that person who calls the prospect five times in a row, five days in a row or whatever to get their thoughts on the proposal, but because they don't answer your calls and they ignore your voicemails, what do you do? At what point do you cross the line between being keen to talk to them and being really annoying? There is a line and it's very hard to know where that line is.

So I believe you can eliminate this by actually scheduling a follow-up with your prospect. So at the point you either put the proposal into them or you email it across to them, or maybe if you can't swing that proposal meeting, at the point at which you are having the proper sales meeting, you say to them, "Look, how long do you need to consider your proposal?" And let's say they say, "Well, we need two weeks." You say, "Brilliant, okay. Let's schedule a specific day and time for me to call you to answer your final questions and to get your decision on whether you're going to go with us or whether you're going to go with someone else." And so you might literally pull out your live calendar and say to them, "Go into your calendar now, two weeks time. So it's Thursday, it's the 15th today. So two week's time is going to be the 29th. What's what works well for you? 3:00 PM? 3:00 PM? Perfect. Brilliant. Yep, that's good for you? That's good for you. Great. Everyone put 3:00 PM on the 29th into your calendar."

And then once you get back to the office, you of course would still send a calendar invitation through or confirm it by email. You could even, if you know you're not going to be physically seeing them again, send them a letter in the post, mail a letter to them. Why? Because it's physical. It's real. Even though they've put it in their calendar there and then, we want them to respect this meeting. We want them to take it seriously. And when you can get them to take it seriously, you'd be surprised how many people will not only agree to this, but they will turn up to that call.

Or if they can't make that call, they will proactively reschedule it. There's a number of reasons why they'll do this. By proactively reschedule, I mean they'll do that if they can't make it. People do this because they hate the follow-up as well. They detest those chasing phone calls as much as you detest them. And actually it makes it very clear for everyone if there is a scheduled follow-up time. And as I say, if they choose to reschedule it, that's good news. That shows that they respect your time and they respect what you are doing.

So we have done it. We have done a whole series looking at how you can improve your sales meetings and stack the odds in your favor. If you haven't listened to these in full, go back over all three of these and take a series of actions. They're all very, very small things, but they're things that could make a dramatic difference to the sales performance of your MSP.

Voiceover:

Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green:

Are you sitting, rocking back and forth, back and forth, not sure how you're going to fix your MSP's marketing? You know you've got to do something, but you're not quite sure what to do and where to get started. I have the answer for you. It's a zero-risk, low-commitment way for you to immerse yourself in the actions that you need to take to improve your marketing.

It's this. It's my printed newsletter, the MSP Marketing Action Monthly. Every month we ship this to MSPs all around the world and it is packed with practical actions, things that you can do today to make a dramatic difference to your MSP's marketing. You can go and check out a sample copy and get one posted to you completely free. Just go to Paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action. Get your free copy of the MSP Marketing Action Monthly at paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action.

Voiceover:

The big interview.

Emanuel Rose:

Hi, I'm Emanuel Rose. I'm the CEO of Strategic eMarketing and author of Authenticity: Marketing to Generation Z.

Paul Green:

And Gen Z is an interesting audience to look into because I have a 12-year-old daughter, and when you first hear someone say Gen Z, you think of the 12-year olds lying on the couch all day, watching TikToks, you know, "Renegade, Renegade, Renegade." That's TikTok of two years ago. But you think of Gen Z like that, but actually Gen Z is a much wider generation, isn't it? What kind of age does Gen Z go up to right now?

Emanuel Rose:

Yeah, so your daughter's at the back end of Gen Z at that 11 to 12 year old, and then 26, 27 is the oldest portion of that cohort.

Paul Green:

Okay. So that's why I wanted to get you onto the show because it strikes me that older Gen Z cohort are going to be decision makers in just a few years time. In fact, some of them may already be decision makers if they're running their own business. We're going to delve into that generation's work ethic in a second. So for MSPs, they need to start thinking, if not now, then in the next couple of years of how do we persuade these people? How do we influence Gen Zs?

So you are an expert in these people. Give us down the download. What's the insight into the Gen Z work ethic, their mindset? How are they different to crusty old Gen Xers like me?

Emanuel Rose:

Oh yeah. Well, the biggest difference, and we probably know this, is that they are digital first. Their whole life they've known about technology and smartphone and doing internet research and looking at user-generated content to make decisions. So as marketing people, that's what we have to pay attention to first. And so they may not be making decisions right now, but they're definitely looking for work.

So that's an important distinction for MSPs to make is that, hey, maybe they're not signing the dotted line for a contract, but they're certainly needing to be enticed to come to work because they are so technologically savvy. They are hard workers, they value making money and being engaged in business. They're super ethical. So that's really the thing that we have to understand as marketing people, is that the things that we're used to keeping our private lives private versus putting it all out on TikTok or Instagram, is that they want to know what a company stands for so they can hook into that and participate and know that the company believes in the same sorts of things they believe in.

Paul Green:

That makes perfect sense. And I made a joke about me being a Gen Xer, but I am a Gen X. I was born in 1974. I'm 50 next year. That's terrifying. Crept up on me.

Emanuel Rose:

Congratulations.

Paul Green:

And for me... Yes. Oh no, no, believe me. Keep those congratulations. For me to look at just marketing to Millennials, which obviously is the Generation Y. It's the generation between my generation and Gen Z, even Millennials, I mean, I don't know, five, 10 years ago, my generation would joke, wouldn't they, about Millennials as they were entering the workforce, how they were the snowflake generation, how they had way high expectations. They weren't prepared to do the hard work. And a lot of that has calmed down because obviously that generation's got older, they've proven their value in the marketplace. Do you see it hard for generations to market to other generations because things are changing? Is that speeding up?

Emanuel Rose:

Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, it is challenging. I'm a Gen X also, and then the Boomers who are a little bit older, like 60 instead of 50, I think they're the ones that are having the hardest time understanding how to engage in social media, how to care about social media, how to present themselves on social media.

So I think that's the challenge is finding the new learning about how do I talk about that I donate to the Deschutes River Alliance and show my interest in fly-fishing and the environment in a way that's public enough for people to understand that that's something I believe in, but not so public that I feel like there's nothing left for me. So I think that's the challenge that we have in this intergenerational process.

Paul Green:

Yeah. So you've talked a couple of times there about being ethical, about demonstrating that you are involved in a community or involved in a cause. What are some of the other things that MSPs need to start to look at over the next few years in order to be more appealing to Gen Zed? Gen Zed? Gen Z. I was doing the British version there.

Emanuel Rose:

Well, yeah, you guys say Zed, we say Z. The most critical thing, I think, for an MSP to understand is that this is the most racially-diverse group of humans in the United States ever. And so almost half are mixed race, and so that's why this equality around a race is so important because if they're not mixed race, they have friends and family who are. And so it's a certain kind of awareness in advertising, for instance, in the way that you showcase your staff and your client base, that there's an awareness of mixed race in your company and that you're aware of that.

Paul Green:

Something that's just struck me is we're talking about marketing to Gen Z as future clients, but actually we're also marketing to Gen Z to come and work for us now. These guys are smack bang in that first line, getting towards second line technician status.

Emanuel Rose:

Absolutely.

Paul Green:

So I guess, do the same rules apply for an MSP to be attractive to a Gen Z employee?

Emanuel Rose:

100%. And we've seen that in the studies around the Social CEO. It's one of the concepts I talk about in the book, but the Social CEO and the employee advocacy where the employees are posting to their social media platforms about the company, those activities do a much better job of attracting talent and retaining talent. And so those are critical activities now that 10 years ago, you and I never even thought about. I don't post about my company, my company's where I go and work. But now it's critical that we tap those networks of our employees in order to attract additional employees that are similar.

Paul Green:

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. You mentioned a book. I'm guessing you're an author with a book to sell. There's always a commercial angle to it. Tell us the story about the book. So you're welcome to talk about the book itself, but I want to know what drives someone like you to sit down and write about a generation that's two generations removed from him.

Emanuel Rose:

Well, it was a process where I just had the inspiration of it. I'm like, "Well, what's going on with the Gen Z? Who are they? What are they doing?" I have my nephews who are kind of the top end age of those guys. They're a little bit different than I am. They didn't get their driver's license as soon as they turned 16, and they're still living at home at age 18. I have a psychology background and so that's where I started, was I wanted to dig in and understand who these guys were and what I could do to trigger them and mentor them.

And through that research then I was doing some Amazon research for books, of course, and there weren't any books about marketing to Gen Z. I'm like, "How can that be possible? How could I be the guy that figures this out first?" So it was really organic in that way. I wanted to solve a problem for my family, and then I'm like, "Oh, well, here's a gap," and the solutions, the activities that I talk about in the book are very straightforward. They're not just focused on Gen Z, but they work for the current marketing landscape. This idea of the Social CEO, employee advocacy, digital first, and e-commerce, and that even as a B2B business, that MSPs need to look and see how they can transactionalize everything online so that it can happen from a smartphone and make it super easy, not just for the Zs, but for all of us because we're all in motion constantly.

Paul Green:

Yeah, yeah, that's very true. Tell us the title of the book and where can we get hold of it?

Emanuel Rose:

It's called Authenticity: Marketing Generation Z, and if you go to emanuelrose.com, that'll take you right to it.

The concept is that we can't just tell these stories of diversity or environmental awareness. We can't tell greenwashing stories. We have to really tell the story of the person who's running the business, the CEO, the CMO, and be somewhat transparent, way more transparent than we're comfortable with from our training as older business people.

Paul Green:

Yeah. This sounds like exactly the kind of book that we need. Can I just ask, because something's just occurred to me. If my daughter at 12 is the sort of backend of Gen Z, what's the next generation? Sounds a bit Star Trek, doesn't it? But what's the generation of babies that are being born right now?

Emanuel Rose:

Oh, I think they're calling them... Not zero, but it's like a reset generation. And I can tell you, I hope my career's over by the time we have to sell those kids because it is going to be a brave new world, to borrow a Huxley quote, how different our worlds will be. All the retail will be done online, we'll be probably computing on an embed in our wrist instead of a watch. I mean, it is a crazy future that we're looking at.

Paul Green:

It is, it is. But you are not going to write that book, but maybe I will.

Emanuel Rose:

No.

Paul Green:

So I'll get my AI hologram to talk to your AI hologram, yeah?

Emanuel Rose:

Maybe you and I could partner up with ChatGPT and we'll write that book in the future.

Paul Green:

Yeah, in our nursing homes. Sounds like a great idea.

Voiceover:

Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.

Alexander Abney-King:

Hello everyone. My name is Alexander Abney-King. I'm with Omni Global and I'm a workplace psychologist. My book recommendation this week is The Happiness Hypothesis. This is a book that'll help you understand to manage your relationships and to really get the best happiness out of life. This is done by a social psychologist and is one of my top picks.

Voiceover:

Coming up next week.

Henry Duncan:

My name's Henry Duncan. I'm the managing director of Lanware. We're an MSP based in the City of London that works exclusively with the financial services sector. I'm going to tell you about how we overcame some serious challenges in our business. In particular, how we lost almost half of our revenue to one client and how we turned it round to be who we are today.

Paul Green:

It's actually August next week, and that makes it proper summer. So we are kicking off a short series of summer specials.

I have found three fascinating people with amazing stories to tell from within our world, and we're starting next week with Henry's story. When you hear about how much revenue they lost and how it could have killed the business, but how they turned it around and how they're now thriving, it will be a truly inspirational story for you. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.

Voiceover:

Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Happiness Hypothesis. Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

View Details

Episode 192 Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes: * 00:00 How a 'stop doing' list can supercharge your productivity * 04:40 Set yourself up for sales success by taking control of the meeting environment * 15:27 Understanding the implications of cyber insurance

Featured guest:

Thank you to Doug Kreitzberg, Founder & CEO of SeedPod Cyber, for joining me to talk about cyber insurance, and helping MSPs understand and protect against cyber risk. In 2018, Doug founded a cybersecurity and data privacy risk consulting firm. It was through his consulting practice that he learned the value that Managed Service Providers bring to small and medium sized businesses.

That insight formed the basis for SeedPod Cyber, a cyber insurance managing general agency Kreitzberg founded in 2021 which partners with Managed Service Providers to provide cyber insurance to their clients.

Connect with Doug on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dougkreitzberg/ Extra show notes: * Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to the MSP Marketing Action Monthly magazine: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * You can listen to my interview with Brian Gillette about improving your sales here: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode133/ * And here's my interview with Fiona Challis, talking about breaking your sales process down to a set of step-by-step instructions: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode146/ * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? How to drive your career and create a remarkable future: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Linchpin-Indispensable-career-create-remarkable/dp/0749953659/

Transcription:

Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world, this is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Hey, hello, and welcome back to the show. This is what we've got in store for you this week.

Doug Kreitzberg:

Hi, I'm Doug Kreitzberg. I'm a cyber insurance expert and I'll teach you enough about cyber insurance to know how to integrate it with the solutions that you're providing your clients so that you can be successful and your clients can be better insured.

Paul Green:

And on top of that interview with Doug, we're also going to be talking about sales meetings. We started a short series last week and looked at how to influence your prospects before you even meet them. Today, we're looking at making the meeting itself so much more successful.

Voiceover:

Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

We're all busy people, aren't we? I'm busy, you're busy, everyone's busy. We've always got things that we're doing. We're always multitasking. Even now, you are probably listening to this podcast while weeding the garden or running or walking the dog or driving somewhere or you're doing something else, and in fact, audio like this, it's designed to be listened to in the background. That's okay, but actually, when it comes to doing our work, and especially for you, I know that for you, the temptation to do six things at once is massive because actually, while you're setting up a new user and you've got to delay here.

You can switch to another task and you can do this and then you can pick up a sales call, and so you've got 25 things that you do, and in fact, maybe you are overly reliant on a particular productivity app. I am. I know. I use Todoist. I love Todoist. I would marry Todoist. I would not just marry Todoist. I would take it on a really expensive honeymoon that I could not afford. That's how much I love it. So I use and have used Todoist for well over a decade and I use it all day, every day as my list of things to do. I am a slave to Todoist. If my account was wiped, was hacked and wiped, I literally wouldn't know what to do. I wouldn't know how to get out of bed in the morning.

That's how much I love it, and you probably have an app similar to that. Here's the thing though, maybe, just maybe you and I, as productive as we may feel, maybe instead of having a to-do list or a to-do app, maybe we should have a stop doing list. Let me explain what I mean by this. There are probably a series of things that you do in your business that really, you personally shouldn't do. I know I have those things as well. There are things that we shouldn't be doing like admin, any form of admin, and I know it's easy for you as an MSP to try and hang on to some level of the admin because it makes you feel like you've got some level of control, particularly invoicing.

If you haven't yet completely automated all of your invoicing, and I know it's hard when licenses go up and down and things change and you sell projects and unsell them, but if you find yourself in QuickBooks or Xero making adjustments yourself, that's a mistake. That's something you shouldn't be doing. If you find yourself doing any kind of level one work, first line work, there's plenty of other people that can do that for you. In fact, there's a whole ton of things that you and I should not be doing. Maybe unless you're driving right now, you could make a list, or maybe just as you're going through today, through the next week, make a list.

Keep a list on your phone or on a good old-fashioned pad, writing down the things that you know you really shouldn't be doing. As you do a task and you think, yeah, I'm the highest, most capable, highest paid maybe, most capable person in the business definitely, why am I doing these particular tasks? As that thought occurs to you, write those tasks down and actually, that then becomes your stop doing list. This is then the most exciting list in the whole business because now your mission as the leader and the person who should be spending most of their time driving the business.

Your mission now is to find someone else to do all of those tasks so that you don't have to. You may have heard me say this before if you're a longtime listener, but if not, take this sentence I'm about to say, get it tattooed on your head in mirror writing, reverse writing so when you look in a mirror, it will make sense. This is the sentence: you should only do what only you can do. You should only do what only you can do, and for everything else, there's someone within your business or some outsourced person or freelancer out there that can do it for you.

Voiceover:

Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green:

Last week, we started a little miniseries all about sales meeting we're doing before the meeting, during the meeting, that's today, and then next week, we're going to do after the meeting, the follow-up and the proposal. So if you haven't heard last week's show yet, please do go back and have a listen to that. I talked about something called pre-suasion, which is where you attempt to influence your prospect, the person you're meeting before you actually meet them, and we also talked about some practical elements of preparing for the meeting. Now today, I want to talk about the meeting itself and I'm going to give a caveat with this, which is I'm not a salesperson, I'm not a sales trainer.

There are some great people out there, people like Brian Gillette who has been on the show within the last year or so. There's Fiona Challis. There's loads of really great sales trainers out there who will give you so much more information and advice than I will, but one of the things that I can talk about just based off the selling that I've done myself over the last couple of decades, makes me feel old, and just talking to MSPs as well, what can you do? How can you set up a meeting environment for success? Well, the very first thing is to try to choose and influence exactly where you're going to meet with someone.

The last place that you want to have a sales meeting is their office, literally, the place where they have a desk and a computer because there are too many distractions surrounding them in their office. It is their environment. I once had a sales meeting, what was the guy's name? I can't remember. It was back when I had a general marketing and PR business, and I was sat talking to this guy and we were sat either side of his desk. Well, actually, I was sat at the side. So he was sat behind his desk and I was sat at the side, and I knew that sales was about asking questions more than it was talking, so I was asking him questions about his business and he was just distracted.

He kept looking at his computer and tapping on things, and you know when someone's answering, but their mind, they're on kind of autopilot answer and his answers didn't really make sense, and I shuffled in my seat and managed to just catch a glimpse of what he was looking at because I thought, I'm going to have to address this. This is ridiculous. I've driven an hour for this meeting and this guy's basically being rude, and he was betting, he was gambling. He was actually, he had open the William Hill website, which is like a gambling shop here in the UK and he was betting on horses, and as I looked and saw that he was doing it, he clocked me looking and he realized that I knew, and as you can imagine, he didn't become a client.

Anyway, I'm sure there was some kind of issue going off there, but that's not the only reason that you don't want them sat behind their desk. The desk in itself is actually a barrier between the two of you. If you think about it, if you're sitting one side of a desk and they're sitting the other side with their arms folded and there's this big expansive, compressed, medium fiber, wood, metal, whatever their desk is made of, there's this big expanse between you. We're trying to start a 20-year partnership here. We're trying to start something that's going to be lovely, that's going to involve them giving you hundreds of thousands of dollars or pounds to you over a number of years.

And we can't start that when we're sat opposite each other like opponents. So we've got to make sure that that meeting happens in a more neutral environment. Now, a meeting room at their building is fine so long as it is a place where people go to meet. If a meeting room doesn't work, then maybe you would go for a hotel lounge or some other environment. You don't want it to be cheap and cheerful, you don't want it to be too expensive, but you've got to try to find that right place that would suit you where you would feel comfortable and where they would feel comfortable, but it is critical to get them out of their own environment.

I have to say I prefer meeting, I don't do sales meetings myself having them for many years, but when I did, I preferred to meet people away from their building because when they're in the building, their staff will knock on the door and interrupt your sales meeting to give them an unimportant message. The most important thing they can do while they're talking to you is to listen to you, to open up about their business, and mentally and emotionally commit to buying from your MSP, and they can't do that if there's a little knock at the door. I'm sorry to bother you. It's just, there's a phone call from a client who's 1% unhappy and we don't know what to do, or we've run out of milk or whatever it is, that you can't sell in that kind of environment.

So if you can, get them out of your building. Now the other thing to remember is when you sit with them, do you remember I was saying about not sitting opposite them with a desk? I think you should try and sit next to them. Now I know that sounds a little bit weird, but we are trying here to form a relationship. We're trying to bond with this person emotionally. We want them to feel like you are the people to trust, and when you sit next to someone, then that can help to form a connection because that's a natural thing to do. I don't mean, of course, literally the two of you sat thigh to thigh and you're twisting round and looking at them because that's weird.

But particularly, if you're in a hotel lobby and you get there early, which you should do if you're going to a neutral meeting place, you get there early, you pick exactly where you're going to sit. You pick out the little chair cluster and you arrange the chairs. So maybe there's a sofa and there's a little table and a chair, and you'd put the chair next to the sofa and you'd move the table around and don't let the hotel staff come up and say, "Please don't move the furniture," because actually, you can say to them, "Well, we're going to buy at least two coffees here today. That's your reward for letting us sit here." You get the idea, but just move it. You can be in control of that environment. Couple of other practical things.

Whenever you start any meeting, you need to check for any time limitations they may have. I've made this mistake, I bet you have as well, that you have started a meeting with someone. It's going really well. You're about 45 minutes, 50 minutes in. They're really engaged, they're really open to you, and then suddenly, they look at their watch and they say, "Oh my God, I've got another meeting. I need to go," and they're gone. They're two minutes out and it's like you've not finished. It's like you've done the shopping in the store and you've got a shopping trolley full of stuff, but you abandoned the trolley and you never get to the checkout.

Is that a good analogy? No, that's a terrible analogy, but you get the idea. Always check for time and limitations. First thing you say in the meeting is, "Can I just check? I've got an hour aside for this. We may go a little bit over. If we really get on and have a good conversation, can I just check, is there a hard time that you need to walk out of here?" Beware that they will lie because they want to give themselves an out. So they'll say, "Well, I've got an hour," and you'll say, "Great. What time is your next appointment after?" You can, without going too far, you can ask follow up questions on that because you need to establish, is it a hard I have to be out of here in an hour.

Or is it actually they're going to lunch or they need to do some shopping on the way back or whatever. Other practical things, make sure you put your phone on do not disturb. Literally, take out your phone, grab it and say, "I'm just going to put this on do not disturb," and then put it face down on the table and you perhaps invite them to do the same if they haven't done, and my final thoughts on having a successful meeting is not to use a laptop, and ideally, you wouldn't even use an iPad. In an ideal world, you would take handwritten notes, and I know you might be listening to that thinking, well, that's weird. Why would we take handwritten notes in 2023?

Because actually, well, first of all, if you've got a laptop with you, that laptop is a barrier. It's not only a barrier, that screen is literally a barrier between the two of you. It's not only that, but you will possibly be tempted to go online on that laptop and you could possibly be distracted by notifications. I know I don't use Teams, I choose not to use Teams, but I know you probably do and I know those little notifications just keep on coming and I know you can put your laptop on do not disturb and I know you could even just not connect to the internet, but it's a distraction. All of it's a distraction.

In fact, your laptop is your environment. We've just talked about getting them out of their environment. If you open up your laptop, there is a risk they'll open up theirs and we don't want them doing that. So definitely don't use a laptop. You could use a tablet, I guess, like an iPad. Again, there's the risk of being online with it. There's a few MSPs I know, Kevin in particular has something called a reMarkable, which it's like a tablet, but it's all you can do is write and draw on it. So you can't really access the internet. It's deliberately, it's just a very expensive pad. I did have one a few years ago and I didn't really get on with it so I sold it, but they are a great bit of kit.

They're expensive, but they are worth having, but really, nothing beats just having a good old legal pad, just a notepad and just writing notes, and do you know what? I think sometimes when you're reviewing and writing up those handwritten notes, you never know what gold dust information you're going to find in there, and of course, you should do this on the day of the meeting itself so you don't miss anything, you don't forget the context with which something was discussed. All of that gold dust could then help you to put together a better sales proposal, and that's one of the things that we'll be talking about next week when we close and finish off this little miniseries on improving your sales meetings.

Voiceover:

Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green:

So you're listening to this podcast and you've got loads of inspiration, loads of great ideas and things that you want to do to improve your marketing, but you also have questions, concerns, worries. How do I do this? What's the best way to do this? I have good news. You see, I can help you. Me and a bunch of other MSPs, we can help you with your marketing, and best of all, it's completely free. We have a Facebook group, I believe it's the biggest MSP marketing only focused Facebook group because there's no vendors in there.

There's no one in there except MSPs and me and a couple of very handpicked experts and guests and friends of mine, but I believe it's the biggest Facebook of its kind that's just purely about MSP marketing. Right to the usual address, if I'm wrong on that. Either way, you should come and join it. Go into your Facebook app, type in MSP marketing, go to groups. It's a critical thing. This isn't a page, it's a group. Go to groups. You'll see my little face, squash your finger onto my face, and that's the group. You just have to answer a few questions, prove you really are an MSP and not a naughty vendor trying to sneak in, and we will let you in and you and I can discuss improving your marketing right there.

Voiceover:

The big interview.

Doug Kreitzberg:

Hi, I'm Doug Kreitzberg, CEO of SeedPod Cyber.

Paul Green:

And thank you for joining me to talk about the very prickly subject of cyber insurance. Now we will, towards the end of the interview, talk about specifically what your company does, Doug, and how you can help our US audience that's listening right now, but let's talk in general principles about cyber insurance because obviously, this has been around for a number of years. How long would you say cyber insurance has been around? Is it longer than we think, or is it a relatively new product?

Doug Kreitzberg:

Well, it's relatively new from an insurance standpoint, but it's been around for almost 30 years now, really starting out in the mid-nineties more to focus on media liability and then it evolved into other aspects of cyber coverage.

Paul Green:

I wasn't expecting you to say that. I thought you were going to say six years or seven years, not 30 years because it's a very specialist insurance and I think everyone listening to this right now completely understands why such an insurance would exist. Let's be honest, insurance companies are really good at spotting risk anywhere in the world and finding a way to make profit from it. Do you think the average business owner or manager is even aware that this kind of insurance exists?

Doug Kreitzberg:

I think the short answer is no. There's still, there's a lot of debate and attempts at statistics and how many small and medium-sized businesses really understand cyber. I've heard anywhere from 60% have cyber in place to as little as 17%. My own experience has been it's probably more towards that 17% range in that most of the businesses don't understand cyber risk and they certainly don't understand cyber insurance at this point. We still have a ways to go.

Paul Green:

No, I can imagine there's a huge way to go because isn't that exactly the same with just cybersecurity in general, that the ordinary people that we want to reach, they don't understand why it's such... Well, they don't understand what a big deal it is and they don't understand why it's a big deal. Do you think that insurance can play a part in helping to educate them about why this is so important?

Doug Kreitzberg:

I do, and it's just beginning to start, I think, helping educate the businesses because what's happening now is that a lot of clients of businesses are now beginning to ask for proof of cyber insurance and that's requiring the businesses themselves to then inquire about the insurance, and now given the underwriting that's going on these days, they're realizing what type of controls they need to have in place in order to be insured, which by the way, helps them be secure too.

Paul Green:

Yes. Well, which was actually one of the big questions I wanted to pick up from this, which is underwriting is a word that everyone loves, isn't it? For you, you're probably rubbing your thighs thinking, underwriting, how exciting, and for the rest of us, it's a distress word because no one really likes buying insurance. It's something we either have to buy or something we buy to just so we can sleep better at night. I've heard it said by MSPs that the underwriting of cyber insurance almost negates the ability for someone to claim. Is that a fair thing to say, or do you think the cyber insurance market is changing and evolving?

Doug Kreitzberg:

I think it's changing and evolving. I think the underwriting process has certainly gotten tighter over the past three to four years. Four years ago, if you had firewall and you could write a check, not necessarily in that order, you could get cyber insurance. Today, you have to have a lot more controls in place in order to get the cyber insurance.

The carriers are paying out on the claims, but they also are looking at what are you really answering on those applications. So you really do have to be careful that you're being truthful and accurate of what you're putting on the applications and businesses do have to pay more attention to the type of controls that they have in place. What was once nice to have a few years ago is really now table stakes in terms of multifactor authentication, EDR, backup solutions, et cetera.

Paul Green:

I guess it's like ensuring your house and getting really good insurance for your house, but then you leave the doors and the windows physically open all day every day, whether you're there or not, and eventually, you get burglarized and you go to your insurance company and say, "Hey, we've had all of our stuff nicked and stolen." Nicked, I think, is probably a UK term. We've had all of our stuff stolen, and the insurance company says, "Okay, how did they get in?"

And you say, "Well, we left our doors open." The insurance company will just laugh, won't they, and put the phone down because it's there in black and white that you've got to take reasonable steps to assist your security. With the MSPs that you work with when you're helping them to sell this insurance and supply it to their clients, do you find that actually, the requirements of the insurance help the MSPs to sell more security services and ultimately, to protect the clients from themselves?

Doug Kreitzberg:

Yeah. So I think right now, the MSP is in a great position in terms of helping their clients be insurable, which obviously leads then to increased products and solutions that their clients will need to have in order to do that. As the carriers have been asking more and more questions, the businesses are getting these 20 page applications. After page one, they don't understand the rest of the 19. They give that to the MSP and ask the MSP to fill it out. So the MSPs in this position of really being the cyber risk manager for businesses, and there's some areas that the MSPs need to take care of to manage their own liability in that regard, but it does create an opportunity for them really to provide more value added solutions to their customers and create more of a long-lasting relationship as well.

Paul Green:

Yeah, and tell us what those liabilities are that MSPs need to be on top of? I guess it's the obvious ones that if they filled in a form on behalf of the client, they are inherently taking on some of the liability.

Doug Kreitzberg:

That has been raised actually a number of times and there is going to be some liability there. The business, at the end of the day, is signing the application. They have to really understand what it is. Where the issues will come in is making sure that the MSP, whether they're helping to fill out the application or just telling the customer, which we recommend, here's what you have in the environment and guiding them through the application is to be specific.

Sometimes the questions that the underwriters ask are framed in yes or no, to respond yes or no, and oftentimes, there's something in between that actually exists such as multifactor authentication. You may have it in certain assets or applications. You may not have it in others. You need to be, whether you're the MSP or the business, you need to be careful in really describing what actually exists in the environment. That way, the underwriter knows what they're writing, and when claim time comes, the business will be in a great position to have the insurance policy respond the way it should.

Paul Green:

Yeah. Although, of course, we don't really want any of businesses to have to put in a claim in the first place, but you're right.

Doug Kreitzberg:

Exactly.

Paul Green:

Making sure you've got it ready. Final question for me, Doug. How do you think this is going to roll out in the years ahead, and I appreciate this is a crystal ball question, but you're a guy who's involved with cyber insurance every single day of the week so you've seen how it's changed already over a number of years. What do you think is going to happen in the years ahead?

Doug Kreitzberg:

I think there's going to be more and more requirements from the carrier to have increased security controls in place. So we're talking about the need for EDR solutions as an example now. Down the road, and probably not too far down the road, I could see XDR, MDR, SOC solutions almost now then be required to be in place. I think you'll also see the MSP as providing a source of truth with regards to the security controls in place of those clients through a more automated mechanisms agents that are deployed.

Obviously, with the client's sign-off, and then globally or structurally, I think that you'll see the need for governments to play some type of role in terms of managing and helping to manage systemic risk, which is the type of an attack on a major cloud provider as an example. It could take down large swaths of the community where the business or the MSP or even the carrier wouldn't really be in a position to respond as well as a government entity.

Paul Green:

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Okay. Thank you so much for coming onto the show, Doug. Tell us a little bit more about what you do with MSPs, and obviously, this has the caveat that you're based in the US and you only work with US MSPs. Such is the wonder of insurance. We all have our own little insurance schemes country by country, and we do have a worldwide audience to this podcast, but tell us what you do with MSPs and what's the best way to get in touch with you.

Doug Kreitzberg:

Sure. What we do is we embed our underwriting criteria in the tech stacks that MSPs are offering their clients, and to the extent that the clients are on that tech stack, they're pre-approved for coverage from a technical standpoint and eligible to save on their cyber insurance premiums. We also work with our MSP partners to help them grow their own business as well, and we also work with them to be insured themselves with the right tech E&O and cyber insurance. For any MSP that's interested in learning more, as you mentioned, we are US based currently. You can reach us at info@seedpodcyber.com. That's S-E-E-D-C-Y-B-E-R.com. Info@seedpodcyber.com. Thank you.

Voiceover:

Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast, this week's recommended book.

David Newman:

This is David Newman. I am the author of Do It! Marketing and Do It! Selling, but Paul said I can't recommend my own book so forget about those. The book I'm recommending that you read as soon as humanly possible is Linchpin by Seth Godin. Seth Godin, of course, famous marketing author, Purple Cow, et cetera. Linchpin is one of his lesser known books. I think it's a hidden gem. It's going to change the way that you think about yourself, it's going to change the way that you think about your clients, it's going to change the way that you think about your role in the world when you're running your MSP and how important and how vital your day-to-day work is to your clients and to their success. Linchpin by Seth Godin, pick it up. You'll thank me later.

Voiceover:

Coming up next week.

Emanuel Rose:

I'm Emanuel Rose. I'll be talking about authenticity marketing in gen Z and why if your business is going to be valuable and relevant, you need to pay attention to them.

Paul Green:

So if you're listening in your favorite podcast platform right now, go on, subscribe to this podcast. Maybe even hit that little notification bell so you never miss an episode because on top of that interview next week, we're finishing off our series about improving your sales meetings, and also, I've asked a ton of MSPs what they love and hate about their business and it'll be fascinating to compare that to your list. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.

Voiceover:

Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?. Seth Godin

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Episode 191 Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes: * 00:00 Why the right time is always NOW * 05:57 'Pre-suading' your leads * 14:45 The secret to progressing from coffee date to closing the deal

Featured guest:

Thank you to Craig Andrews, Founder and Principal Ally at allies4me, for joining me to talk about how relationship-building and creating mutual trust early in the sales cycle can improve your conversions and increase sales.

Craig is the Principal Ally and founder of marketing agency allies4me. Using a proven method that mimics the stages of courtship, allies4me helps companies find strangers and convert them into high-paying customers. An eight-stage Customer Value Journey is the framework that leads someone from first contact to post purchase.

Add value at each and every stage of the journey. A First-Time Offer (FTO) is like a coffee date. It’s a low-commitment and low-risk way to test the relationship. When you do this well, your prospect starts asking you to “close the deal.” This relational framework builds trust faster. It drives revenue faster. And it strengthens customer loyalty after the purchase. Craig and the allies4me team are consummate students of psychology and use these insights to supercharge sales engines for clients.

Connect with Craig on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craig-andrews/ Extra show notes: * Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to the MSP Marketing Action Monthly magazine: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Here's a link to my interview with Marcus Sheridan: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode164/ * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Goal-Process-Ongoing-Improvement/dp/0566086654/

Transcription:

Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Greetings and salutations. Welcome back to the show. Here's what's coming up this week.

Craig Andrews:

Hi, I'm Craig Andrews and we specialize in building rapid trust for high ticket items, especially MSPs. We're going to be talking about how you can build trust with your prospects to close more business, but more importantly, not just more business, the business you want to work with while avoiding the businesses you don't want to work with.

Paul Green:

And on top of that interview with Craig, we're also going to be starting a short series about sales meetings. Later on, we'll be discussing how you can pre-suade your prospects before you even get into a room with them.

Voiceover:

Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Kicking off this week, I've got a bit of a bizarre subject that I want to speak about. Quite often, I'll come up with ideas for this podcast from things that I see or stuff that happens to be in my life, or particularly from books that I read. And I've just listened to an audiobook called Die With Zero. Now bear with me, don't switch off yet.

The whole point of this book is to make you realize just how, if you like, temporary and how short our life is and how running our business for the pursuit of wealth only is not really a great way to live your life. And in fact, the concept of Die With Zero is that you should enjoy your wealth as you're building it up. And there's lots of good advice in there about making sure that your children are well looked after, but not making your children wait till you die to get the big chunk of money from you. Not making charities wait till you die to get good contributions from you. It addresses all of those kind of issues.

And one of the concepts in the book which has really stayed in my head is the concept of delayed gratification. What is delayed gratification? It's where we put off something, things that we really want to do. And in fact, I was having a conversation with an MSP this morning just about this very thing. He really enjoys gardening. He enjoys growing fruits and vegetables and he has an allotment. I don't know if an allotment is just a UK thing, it's kind of a separate patch to your garden where you have a piece of land just to grow vegetables. I think that's just a UK thing. I think it goes back to wartime Britain back in the 1940s, but they're still around today and lots of people enjoy having allotments just as a place to grow things to eat rather than in their garden, it's just sort of beautiful flowers and plants and stuff.

And this MSP I was talking to this morning was saying, well, when I asked him what he enjoyed doing in his spare time, not that he has a great deal of it, he kind of came to life as he was talking about, "Oh, I love planting tomatoes and doing this and nurturing this and I want to build a greenhouse and I want to do this and this and this." And of course, one of his core problems is he doesn't have enough time to go and do all of these things because he's working, I don't know what, 50, 60 hours in his MSP. And to a certain extent, he's delaying the gratification of the enjoyment, the enjoyment of doing his allotments. I know lots of MSPs who are delaying their gratification. I myself am delaying gratification on travel, on other things that I want to do, and partly that's to do with school-aged child, partly it's to do with other issues and just being focused on building the business.

This book has a really good message about the dangers of delayed gratification. Take for example, let's say you wanted to do a parachute jump. Let's say that was your thing, to chuck yourself out of a perfectly good plane, strapped to a bit of cotton. I'm not judging those who do that. Jack, you know I'm talking to you, but there's nothing wrong with that. But let's say you wanted to do a parachute jump, and I've never done a parachute jump, but at the age of 48, as I think about it now, I'm thinking, well, I've dislocated my shoulder a couple of times in the past, don't want that to come out. I've currently got a fairly major knee injury, can't run at the moment, so I've sort of got a big tear in my cartilage and there's all sorts of knee problems going off. And I'm thinking about it and I'm thinking, "Yeah, I just don't think I'll bother."

And that's at 48. What am I going to be like at 58 or 68 or 78? My mother for her 75th birthday has said she's going to do a parachute jump. Is she nuts? Why would you do that? Because surely doing something like a parachute jump at 25 or 35 is a much better experience than when you're 75 or certainly even 48, which is what I am. Because doing the parachute jump as you're a lot older, you've got a lot more things to break, right? There are a lot more things that can go wrong with you and the recovery from that is greater.

And this book talks about things like travel. One of the author's regrets of his 20s was not that he... Well, he spent his 20s building up his career, building up an asset base and whereas one of his best friends took six months off. It is a US author. Took six months off, went to Europe, had an amazing backpacking, staying in hostels experiences, the kind of experience you couldn't have in your 30s or 40s because I don't know about you, but you'll never catch me in a hostel or backpacking, not at this age. Maybe at 22 I might have done that. Do you see what we mean here by delayed gratification?

Go and listen to this book, Die With Zero, or go and read it, because I think in there is a really good core message of balance. Sure, building the business is really important. I mean, that's why we're here, right? That's why I'm doing this podcast and it's why you are listening to it or watching it on YouTube, but the big picture here is getting that balance. Building the business but also enjoying your life. Doing the things you want to do as quickly as you can do them at the same time as growing the business. I think that is the balance that you and me and every other MSP has got to work towards.

Voiceover:

Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green:

We are going to start a short three-week series today and it's all about sales meetings. Today, we're going to talk about things that you can do before your sales meeting to improve your odds, increase your odds of actually converting them at the meeting. That's what we'll do today. Next week, we'll talk about things that you can do at the meeting and then in two weeks' time we'll talk about things you do in the follow-up, so after the meeting. Essentially we're doing before, during and after the meeting.

And there are two things that I want to talk about today. The first of them is something called pre-appointment pre-suasion. Have you ever heard that word before? Pre-suasion? It's where you persuade someone before you ask them to do something. And it's actually a book. It's the title of a book. Pre-Suasion, written by the amazing Robert Cialdini. He's a psychology professor who focuses just on marketing and has done for many decades now. He wrote the book on influencing people and psychologically influencing people with marketing and that's called Influence. And then he wrote Pre-Suasion around about six, seven years ago. Got to be honest, don't tell Cialdini that I said this, but whereas Influence is an epic read and everyone should read it at least once a week... That's a joke. You should read it once a month. Pre-Suasion felt like a lot of writing for a small number of ideas, if I'm honest. Don't shoot me for having that opinion, but there we go.

And anyway, I've read the book so you don't have to, and I've pretty much described it. Pre-suasion is persuading someone before you ask them to do something. So when we talk about pre-suasion, we're talking about... Let's say we've done some marketing. You've done some marketing and you've got this lead and you have got this lead onto a video call and you've had a 15, 20, 25 minute conversation with them on a video call. And at this point you have gotten to agree to what you and I would know is a proper sales meeting. You are going to go and sit down with them and try to sell them your stuff.

So at this point we assume that marketing has done its job and sales take over, and this is the point now where many MSPs say, "Oh yeah, yeah, brilliant. I'm really good at this bit. You give me the appointments and I will turn them into clients." But no matter how good you are at sales, there are always systems that you can build to, as I said earlier, swing the odds, increase the odds of you winning more business, and you want to swing that to be dramatically in your favor. I don't see any point in leaving anything to chance with any part of your marketing or your sales.

So we're going to start then with this pre-suasion, and this is about persuading them before the sales meeting. Here's what I suggest, because these are practical actions I'm going to suggest. I think before you go to meet them, you send them something in the mail. Not digital, nothing in the digital realm, nothing on email. You physically send this to them. What you do is you get a professionally written and designed case study or case studies book and you get it printed in a high-quality booklet. So you might, for example, go out and do some case study videos with some of your favorite clients. Case study videos are always the best place to start because once you've done the video, you can then repurpose that into something written like a booklet. Of course, you can't take a written case study and repurpose that into a video, or at least not a video that ha is particularly persuasive.

So I would recommend get some videos done for your website, which is professional case studies of your clients talking about how their lives are better as a result of working with you. And then you repurpose their words. You get their words transcribed, not just from the finished edited video, but you take everything they said across their interview and you get a writer to repurpose that into a case study. So you're still telling a story. You're still talking about their journey with you, but you repurpose it into the written word. And it would be a little bit different in a video than it would the written word. You get that designed as a booklet professionally and you get it printed professionally. We're not talking on thin tissue paper here. We're talking thick paper, proper design, proper printer. It's got to look absolutely professional because you are going to increase the chances of winning the work or decrease your chances of winning the work based on what's in that case study booklet.

So you post that to them and you tell them, when you book the sales meeting, you say, "I'm going to send this to you in the mail. Please, can I ask for your commitment to read this before we meet?" And you do actually go and ask them to do this. Remember, you're doing this over the video call when you're actually booking the appointment. You say to them, "I'm going to send you a case study booklet so you can see the experience that other business owners like you have had working with us. Please, will you agree, will you commit to reading that case study book before we meet?"

And of course everyone says yes. And many of those people will go on to do that thing. They will go on to make that commitment. This is actually another Cialdini... What do you call it? Weapon of influence, where if someone says they're going to do something, they typically will go ahead and do that. Commitment and consistency, that's what it's called. We like to be consistent with the commitments we hear coming out of our mouth. Now you may be aware of Marcus Sheridan, They Ask You Answer, who joined me in an early episode in January this year, which is actually now our most popular episode ever so far to date. And he talked about the concept of They Ask You Answer. If you go and read that book, one of the things he talks about is exactly this, sending social proof before a meeting.

And actually, he has got to the point with his businesses now that they send videos. They send YouTube videos, which is fine. I just think something in the mail stands out more. But they send YouTube videos and they've got to the point now where they will not go to the sales meeting if the prospect has not watched the YouTube video. And that's pretty hardcore. But I like that. That's what I like about Marcus, is everything he does is designed to increase and improve his chances of winning the sale. So that's a little bit of pre-suasion. One thing, you can see, it's a one-off job. Prepare your case study booklet and then a small number of those need to be sent out, one to each decision maker and influencer at the prospect you're going to see before the meeting.

There's one other thing that I recommend you do before your appointments, and that's do some practical planning. So you need to fully research your prospect before the meeting. That means, of course, studying their website, pretty much looking at their overall digital footprint. What I mean by that is you Google them but you kind of look... You don't really have pages anymore, do you, on Google, but you just keep looking and keep looking and keep looking until it's about someone else and it's nothing to do with them. Find out who you are meeting. Who are the people you are meeting? Look them up on LinkedIn, each individual person. In fact, while you're there, why don't you connect to them on LinkedIn as well?

And you can also research basics for the actual meetings such as where wherever you are going, where can you park? What does their building look like? Go on to Street View on Google and look at it. Ring up reception and ask reception. Tell them you've got a sales meeting and say, "How do people usually dress?" Because if you turn up in jeans and a shirt and they're in suits, that's not a great start, and vice versa if you turn up in a suit and they're all sitting there in jeans and tatty t-shirts. All of that kind of research really, really pays off when you actually get to that meeting. And that is what we are going to cover off in next week's show.

Voiceover:

Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green:

There was me jabbering on there about sales meetings and actually most MSPs get stuck a little bit before then. Lead generation. How do you find more leads and turn them into prospects and turn them into meetings? Well, we have a solution. It's called the MSP Marketing Edge, and it is the only marketing solution out there that is based around a weekly marketing system.

We have four simple steps that you just need to put into place with your MSP and we literally talk you through it every single step, step by step by step by step. We could not make it easier to take your hand and lead you through setting up a weekly marketing system. And once you've done that, you suddenly have consistent and persistent marketing that no one else in your area can have because we only supply this to one MSP per area. So the first thing for you to do is check to see whether or not your area is still available. You can do this at mspmarketingedge.com.

Voiceover:

The big interview.

Craig Andrews:

Hi, I'm Craig Andrews. I run a marketing consultancy out of Austin, Texas.

Paul Green:

And I am delighted to have you on the show Craig, because I think the kind of marketing that you specialize in is exactly what MSPs need to win more sales. Because in this interview we are going to talk about trust, how important trust is, why it's so important to build it up. And I know that you've got for us later on a framework that MSPs can use to actually build that trust quickly.

Before we get into that, tell us a little bit about you. What's your background and what brings you being on a podcast like this?

Craig Andrews:

Well, when I graduated high school, I was not what you would call a model student and I would not get into any university that anybody had ever heard of. So I went in the Marine Corps for six years, had a very good recruiter, great salesman, and he got me for six years. And when I got out of the Marines I thought, "Well, let me go into engineering," because I had a desire to create and build things. And I got into engineering and unfortunately I got an undergraduate and a graduate degree before I figured out it's not the place to be creative. It's very, very restrictive.

And so I went from that to marketing semiconductors for mobile phones. And I've been in the buildings of the world's largest mobile phone makers. That's changed a little bit over time, but that was a great run. The margins in those industry had been eroding. We had a 20% down slope on price per year, and I knew the day was coming when they would ask me to fly to Asia in coach. I used to go four or five times a year, and the thought of flying to Asia in coach four or five times a year was not my idea of fun. And when that day hit, sure enough, I got out of that industry and I decided that I would start doing more general marketing for more typical companies.

And I started that a little over 10 years ago. And it's funny, I run across some of my buddies from the semiconductor world and they ask me what I've been doing and I tell them, I say, "I've spent the last 10 years learning how little I knew about marketing," because it's just been such an explosion of methods that are just grossly under-tapped in that industry. And so that's kind of how I got to where I'm doing this.

Paul Green:

And the main reason I wanted to get you on the show today is because of your thinking and your experience and your ability to help a business develop trust with a prospect. Why is trust so important for MSPs?

Craig Andrews:

When I think about opening up a relationship... And we'll go back to this model a lot. We look at business relationships much like courtship relationships. You start off with a introduction and then you have conversation. If conversation goes well, you don't get married, you go out on a coffee date. It's a very safe date. From what I understand, what the ladies tell me, they have a girlfriend call in 15, 20 minutes into the date to see if they need a rescue and they drive themselves there. You drive yourself there. There's a lot of safeguards that keep you from jumping into a huge commitment that won't pan out.

And so that's really where a lot of trust is built. And the hopes of that coffee date is that it evolves into a dinner date and then eventually commitment. That's the trajectory you're on, but you have to have a safe stop. And for some reason, businesses just consistently want to jump from the conversation all the way to the commitment. We kind of liken it as someone walking into a bar, they see somebody cute on the other side of the bar and they say, "Hey, you know what? You're kind of cute. Can I get your phone number? Why don't we just get married?" That's inappropriate. We know it's inappropriate, so we don't do it there. But for some reason when it comes to business, that's precisely what we do. And when it fails, we sit around wondering why.

Paul Green:

Yeah, so I think that kind of dating only works in Vegas, doesn't it? It certainly doesn't work anywhere else.

Craig Andrews:

Well, and when you try that sort of dating, you always have to question the character of the person that you're dating. And I would say the same thing. If you're an MSP and you're looking to bring in new clients, think about the character of the client that you're bringing in. Do you want somebody who would just immediately sign up for a large commitment where they now have access or where you have access to their deepest darkest secrets, their financial records, their HR records? Do you want somebody that would immediately jump in that bed with no questions, no relationship, no trust?

Paul Green:

Yeah, essentially if someone will marry you on the first date, they're not worth marrying is the message I think you're trying to send there. In fact, you're quite right that MSPs need to build triple trust because actually, when someone picks an MSP, let's say if they pick a CPA, an accountant, and it's the wrong accountant. The very worst thing that happens is they have a year's worth of accounts that aren't quite right. Their numbers are all over the place. Perhaps they pay too much tax or too little tax, but then they can fire that CPA, bring in another new CPA who can fix all of those problems because ultimately it's just numbers in some software. It's not really important in the grand scheme of things unless you run out of cash, then it becomes important.

But if you hire an MSP and that MSP leaves you vulnerable to a cyber attack, you get ransomware, it turns out your backups fell over three months ago, your VoIP system stops working one morning and no one's quite sure why, these are all business killing items. And I think business owners, they may not know the specifics of how their business could be killed by their IT support company, but they know deep down that it can absolutely happen because their technology is mission-critical. So I think you're right. We need to build triple trust with prospects.

Let's start to move on to... Well, actually before we move on to the framework, I know that you had a kind of scary epiphany moment about trust, didn't you?

Craig Andrews:

I did. So about 18 months ago, I went into the hospital with COVID and I ended up not leaving for three months later. And about 11 days into it, they called my wife in the middle of the night and said they wanted permission to put me on the ventilator. And so for me it was lights out for about six weeks. And by the way, that's where I got this interesting little scar across the lip. It was the kind treatment of my doctors. But six weeks later I woke up and something bizarre happened. My trust in the doctors had absolutely plummeted to near zero, and my trust in my wife had gone through the roof.

And this is going to sound weird, this was actually the best thing that ever happened to my marriage. Just how it brought my wife and I together is amazing, and very honestly, I've told her this. I said, "It's worth the price." The price of everything I had to go through, still recovering now, it's worth the price for what it's done in our relationship. It built that much trust. And when I was first coming to, things were kind of hazy. The doctors kept asking me to do something. Now in a clear-headed situation, I probably would've followed the doctors, but my trust in them had just completely evaporated. And my wife comes up to me and say, "Hey, they want to do this." And I couldn't talk at the time, I had trach, but I could whisper, and I said, "Is it safe?" And she said, "Yeah, absolutely." And because I trusted her, we did it.

Paul Green:

That's fascinating, isn't it? Because if you study Robert Cialdini, I'm sure you've read his book Influence, and one of the things they talk about... I'm going to misquote it here, but it's the white coat thing. So there's a famous psychological experiment where people went way further than they would've done because it was actually actors posing as scientist, wearing a white coat, holding a clipboard, and people put trust in them. And maybe that has changed over a number of years or maybe because as you say, you were in quite an extreme situation where you no longer trusted the strangers who you're surrounded by, but you did trust this person that you had built a relationship up with over a number of years.

I think also, I mean, obviously amazing that you've strengthened your relationship, but you've got to look at that situation, Craig, and tell yourself that not only have you improved your relationship with your wife, but you now have an epic story to tell on podcasts, interviews, dinner parties. You've literally got the "I nearly died," story, "And this is how it improved my marketing."

Craig Andrews:

Right.

Paul Green:

Is that a tad too far to say that?

Craig Andrews:

No. I mean as a matter of fact, for a solid month they told my wife that I was going to die. They had her meeting with hospice to plan the day they were going to pull the plug. It was a dire situation. And to your point, for years, I've always started a presentation with some type of story that makes the point. And I have an experience that has just given me applications for any presentation I could ever imagine using.

And it's been hard. I mean, I've had to learn how to walk again. Everything that people take for granted, I've had to see through a different light. I've had to fight a bathroom door from a wheelchair to try to get the door to keep from blocking me from getting in. And there's so many things that came from that that are just powerful and broader lessons than just what I went through. Broader lessons for life.

Paul Green:

It sounds like a hell of an experience. I'm glad you're healthy now and I'm sure these kind of recoveries take many years to be fully back to speed, but it sounds like you're doing a great job.

Let's move on to that framework. This is the big tease of this whole interview. You've got a framework for MSPs to build trust with suspicious prospects. Where do we start?

Craig Andrews:

Yeah, so let's go back to the five stages of courtship. You have an introduction, you need some form of introduction. It can be referrals, it could be paid ads, it could be a variety of things. Then you need to have a conversation. Now, a lot of people in marketing call these things lead magnets. I hate that term. It's so mercenary. It makes me think about the prospect and the way that I don't want to think about them. So we call them conversation starters. That's actually the goal of that, is to actually start a conversation where you can get somebody on the phone, help equip them with information, help build their trust. That's the first step in building trust. But when you get them on the phone, instead of trying to sell them your MSP package, do this coffee date. Solve a much smaller problem quickly. And that's what we call a first time offer.

And quick run through, if you think about the ingredients of it, a first time offer is a impulse purchase. That means the coins in the cushion of your couch, the money in your wallet, or the B2B equivalent of that. It has to be an amount of money that's so small, nobody will ever be held accountable for how that money is spent. The next thing is it has to deliver a disproportionate amount value to price. We typically target a 10 X return, 10 X the value for what they pay. And it has to solve a problem because if it's not solving a problem, it's not delivering value, it's a gimmick. Actually solve a problem for them. Small problem. And that's the thing, you want to leave the big problems unsolved and you want it to naturally lead to the next step.

And so when you do those things, that actually gets you in a place where you're building trust by solving a small problem. It shows them how you're going to work with them. It is the coffee date where they are making a judgment about you. But guess what? You're making a judgment about them. So if you're dealing with somebody who is still running Windows 7 and in this coffee date, you say, "You know, you really need to get rid of Windows 7," and they're saying, "Well no, we're not." That's your sign. This is not a good match. You're going to be constantly trying to maintain equipment that's obsolete or near obsolete. They're not going to upgrade things. They're going to make your job harder and they're going to raise your margin. So this coffee date goes two ways. It's a chance for you to evaluate them and it's their chance to evaluate you.

And a couple more things to say about that. When you're putting it to together, it should have a minimum of three deliverables, no more than five. When you get less than three, it feels underwhelming. When you get over five, it becomes overwhelming, overwhelms the brain, makes it hard for them to make a decision. One of the deliverables should be the product of a co-working session where they contribute to the deliverables. It gives them a sense of ownership, it triggers a couple cognitive biases, the IKEA effect, the endowment effect. But also when you get to the end of it and you present, "Here are the next steps," for them to reject that would require that they reject their own work, which they're unlikely to do.

And then the last thing, and hang with me because this will sound complicated first, but I'll make it super simple immediately. The last deliverable has to solve a problem that is created by the successful delivery of the preceding deliverables. Okay, let's make that a lot more simple. If you buy a boat, you have a new problem that's created by the successful delivery of the boat. You need now need a place to dock your boat. And so if I were selling boats when somebody came into my boat yard, I would say, "We're going to find the perfect boat for you that's going to meet exactly your needs. Once that happens, you're going to have a new problem. You're going to want to know where to dock it. Well guess what? We have relationships with all the marinas, all the yacht clubs in the area, and we know their pricing. We will make introductions. We will find just the perfect place for you. As a matter of fact, we can have the boat delivered there."

And what that does for them is that puts them in a success mindset where they start visualizing themself experiencing the joys of being on the boat. And that's so essential in selling, it's they have to picture themselves actually buying what you're selling. And so that's the last step. The final deliverable has to solve a problem that's created by the successful delivery of the preceding deliverables.

Paul Green:

I love it. I'm going to try and put some practical examples onto that because I know that's what most MSPs would want. So when you talked about the... I'm going to forget the exact words you used, but the coffee date. Let's talk about the coffee date. So some kind of early low-level commitment. The only thing I can think of right now, and I'll bet you the second we finish this interview, I think of something better. But there there's a tool that MSPs have used for years which has kind of gone out of fashion so much these days, which is an IT audit.

So you take any MSP into any business and they'll do an audit and there are various different levels. You know can just do a software audit, you can do a hardware audit, you can do everything. You can look at some sort of low level of penetration testing, security audits, right down to walking around an office and seeing a post-it note with passwords written on it. That kind of level of checking something. And there's an old-fashioned marketing method, which as I say, it doesn't seem that popular these days, but it strikes me that you could sell that audit for a few hundred dollars. So you may cost you $1,000 to actually deliver it, but it's a low level item. Do you think that kind of thing, Craig, would work or would we need to find something more tangible than an audit?

Craig Andrews:

Well, we used to offer that in our own marketing and we discovered there's a limited supply of people that want us to come in and tell them wrong with them. And so one, we banished the term audit. We use a term called gap analysis. That would appropriately be one of the deliverables, but you would still need another three or four, what I would recommend. And again, the essential thing is solving a problem. And to understand that, you actually have to start with the pains that they're experiencing.

Paul Green:

So actually, the audit could just be the entry point into that because as I say, you put any IT professional in any organization and they will find things that could be improved or need to be fixed urgently because they're dangerous. And I guess that's where some of those other deliverables come from. Do you know what? Each MSP listening to this, it's food for thought to start thinking, "I wonder if we could do that," and different MSPs have different comfort levels or depends how much time they've got or how much spare resource they've got to do marketing. But it sounds like something that you could certainly start to look at something down that direction. And I love the idea of calling it the gap analysis. That's brilliant.

Now the boat example, the boat one for me is a lot easier. If you, for example, set up a business for proper true remote working where they genuinely can access any file at any time on any device, but it's safe and it's secure. And that's genuine remote working with VPNs and all of that technical stuff, and that creates the problem then that you've got your team working at home on their seven-year-old laptop that their kids use for homework in the evenings, and that's not a secure thing. So that then, the sort of boat birth, where do I mow the boat example for the MSPs to say, "Well hey, why don't we get new secure laptops for all of your team? Why don't we get new secure mobile devices?" Right down to, "Should we give them all a work from home setup? We'll get them set up with a proper webcam, with lights, with a USB microphone, with everything they need from work from home, and you can almost pick up the internet and speeds and all sorts of routers and all kind of stuff like that."

So I think within the world of technology, there are so many different things. In fact, there's an almost never ending supply of things that you can do to that. But I love that concept of if you sell them the boat, you've got to sell them or help them find somewhere to park the boat as well. And of course you sell more boats along the way.

Craig, tell us a little bit more about what you do to help MSPs. And I know that you practice what you preach and you have a very, very early kind of coffee date. It's more a bit of Tinder flirting really, isn't it? But tell us how we can access that.

Craig Andrews:

Yeah, so for any of the MSPs that are interested in learning more, we have two things. One is a guide to building a first-time offer. And just for reference it, I spent 18 months fumbling around, screwing it up. My first first-time offer nobody wanted, nobody understood what it was. Nobody bought it. It was a complete failure. But I kept trying and about 18 months later they started hitting and then we've obviously over the years learned so much more. So I have a guide that will let you avoid all the mistakes that I made, and we made a lot, and so hopefully it'll help guide you.

We also have a course, a 23-day course. Well, we give 23 days access and I'll tell you why we do that in a second. But it's a self-paced course to help you build your own first time offer. And the reason we're limiting it to 23 days is not because we want to be stingy. We're in the business of changing lives. We want to see lives changed in powerful ways. And I know that if you sign up for the course, you'll say, "I'll get to this next month," and then next month it won't happen. Month after that, it won't happen, month after that, it won't happen.

So when we put a limitation on that, it improves the probability that you will actually put this to work because I believe the MSP space is ripe for change. I talk to MSPs and they keep struggling to say, "Look, we're either their MSP or they're not." And I say, "Look, you can build a first time offer that will actually bring you in and just powerfully bond you to them," and you can evaluate them. You can avoid the problem clients. I've had MSPs tell me about the bad clients that literally are still using Windows 7, which is just nuts. You probably don't want to work with those. And so anyway, you'll have access to that. There is a link, go to alliesforme.com/mspmarketing, all lowercase, and that will take you into that offer.

Voiceover:

Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast. This week's recommended book.

Leahanne Hobson:

Hi, I'm Leahanne Hobson, CEO and founder of Alinea Partners, and I'm excited to recommend The Goal by Eli Goldratt and Jeff Cox. This is a fast-moving thriller of a book. It's written in that style, but it's all around crisis management and change management. And it actually walks through in story format how a project manager turned their business around from almost going out of business to thriving in 100 days.

Voiceover:

Coming up next week.

Doug Kreitzberg:

Hi, I'm Doug Kreitzberg. I'm a cyber insurance expert, and I'll teach you enough about cyber insurance to know how to integrate it with the solutions that you're providing your clients so that you can be successful and your clients can be better insured.

Paul Green:

Hey, that platform that you are listening to this podcast on right now, go on, subscribe. Hit the subscribe button, do the same if you're watching me on YouTube and then you will never miss an episode of the show.

Because on top of that interview next week, we are continuing our series, our short series about improving your sales meetings. And I'm also going to challenge you to stop having a to-do list and instead have a stop doing list. I'll explain that fully next week.

Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.

Voiceover:

Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement - Third Edition

View Details

Episode 190 Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes: * 00:00 The ONE nugget of advice new MSPs need * 07:09 The benefits of operating your MSP on a four-day working week * 15:49 Marketing cyber security without leaning on fear, uncertainty and doubt

Featured guest:

Thank you to Dana Mantilia, CEO of Cyber Dana, for joining me to talk about cyber security marketing, and how you can do that without resorting to FUD - Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Dana is an international cybersecurity speaker and social media professional. She has over 4 million LinkedIn content views and over 1 million YouTube video views.

She now takes that knowledge and assists MSPs and MSPs with creating personalized social media content and marketing strategies to "Future Proof" their businesses. Dana's YouTube channel she interviews cyber professionals and discusses cybersecurity best practices and specific elements of CMMC ( the DoDs new cybersecurity requirement).

Connect with Dana on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dana-mantilia/ Extra show notes: * Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to the MSP Marketing Action Monthly magazine: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works - A True Story: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/10-Happier-Reduced-Self-Help-Actually/dp/1444799053/

Transcription:

Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday.

For MSPs around the world.

Around the world.

This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Podcast.

Paul Green:

Hi. Hello, and welcome back to the podcast. Here's what we got coming up for you this week.

Dana Mantilia:

Hey, my name is Dana Mantilia and I work with MSPs to help them take technical messaging and translate it into messages that your non-technical audience and hopefully future prospects will be able to understand and put to good use.

Paul Green:

And on top of that interview with Dana, we are also going to be asking the question, can your MSP truly operate on a four-day working week?

Voiceover:

Paul Green's.

MSP Marketing-

Podcast.

Paul Green:

Let's say you were at some kind of social occasion and a friend comes along and it's someone who also works in IT, but he's a wage slave. And he comes up to you and he says, "Do you know what I've been thinking, I'm kind of done with the corporate life. I don't want to do that anymore. I was thinking of starting my own MSP. What's the most important piece of advice that you could give me?" Now, your initial knee-jerk reaction might be, "Don't." But actually, this is a question that I posed to a whole bunch of MSPs recently in my MSP marketing Facebook group. And they've given some really, really good answers that I would like to read out to you today and I'll be interested to hear what your answer is as well. So if a friend was starting an MSP today, what would be the most important piece of advice that you would give to them?

Lucas says, "Be prepared for long days until it's established." I think that can go for absolutely any business, isn't it? In fact, Aaron then replied and saying, "Be prepared for long days. Well, after it's established." Matthew says, this is a good one and this got a ton of engagement and comments on this. Matthew said, "Don't give out your cell number, your mobile number, and don't undervalue your time, charge your worth." In fact, charging. There are lots and lots of comments on charging what you are worth, but that's an interesting one, isn't it? Not giving out your cell number. I am completely a fan of that. I don't believe that you should let your clients have your cell number, your mobile number, because that's fine in the first couple of years when it is you, the business is you. But as you start to scale that business and bring on board other texts, the problem you've got is those early clients, it's far too easy for them to just pick up the phone and call you or text you or WhatsApp you because they know that you are going to respond to them.

And the issue is, if you are paying other technicians to do that help desk work, you don't want to be handling it yourself. In fact, I know of some MSPs who despite having four, five, six technical people, they are still handling all the relationships themselves with most of their early clients because they're just not brave enough to say to them, stop calling me or change changing their phone number and saying to them, you need to call the help desk now because this business isn't just me. Christian agrees saying, "Yes, the mobile is the worst you can do." Andy here says, and this is a few weeks ago, he commented saying, "I'm in Thailand for a month at the moment on a vacation. My phone has rung a few times, but I don't answer it. There'll be a few grumpy people and I return to the office, but I'll send all of our clients our PDF on how to get support. Again, my mobile number is not an option for support." That is exactly how it should be in my opinion.

So more advice here. Here's another one from Jason. Jason says, "If you were to start an MSP tomorrow, automate and outsource as much of the mundane admin stuff as possible." Great advice that John says, "Set out contract terms and then stick to them. Don't do little favors now and again as those will come and bite you down the line." Steve Brand says, "Sign up to the MSP Marketing Edge." Thank you, Steve, I appreciate that. Joe Watkins has a great piece of advice here. He says, "Don't think of yourself as an MSP. Think of yourself as a marketing company that sells IT services." That is such great advice. It really is. So basically, don't think like a tech, think like a marketer who just happens to sell managed services.

Of course, lots of tech really struggle with that kind of approach. Lots of MSP owners struggle with that, but that is exactly the right approach. Darren says, "Focus on the customer, which is absolutely great." Oh, and Darren also says, "Enjoys listening to the podcast. This is Darren Clark." So thank you Darren. Thank you for listening to this. Aaron, go from Darren to Aaron. Aaron says, "I don't need competition and you suck, anyway." That's a funny one. Jason says, "Managed only to open the don't..." What he say? "Managed..." Oh yeah, do managed services only. Don't ever do break/fix. I agree. If you are starting in 2023, don't even open the door on break/fix only. Nick says, "Be ready to be time poor and financially poor for a couple of years at least." I agree. It's good advice to any business owner. Jeff says, "Make sure you spend time setting up great reporting. Know your numbers and know what makes you successful."

Another Jeff, Jeff Waits. Different Jeff says, "Focus on what you're good at. Don't let customers talk you into one-offs." James Stratton says, "Focus on your team. Hire the best you can. Train, develop, create a positive culture." Aaron says, "Expect to make less as an owner for the first five years. You need to reinvest over and over to build a business at a brand. I made 50,000 Canadian dollars for the first five or six years." Douglass says, "Focus on marketing, sales, systems and processes completely." Francois says... Oh, this is a good one. "Reverse engineer the process, build the systems and processes first because it's more difficult to change it later." In fact, Francois has more good suggestions. Go after recurring monthly, monthly recurring revenue turnover from the word go partner with people that share your vision, which is great.

And he also says, "Make sure you listen to this podcast." So thank you very much. Sheldon Livingston says, "Don't try and do it all yourself." Ernest Murray always has good advice. He says he's got three pieces of, in fact, he's got tons of advice. I'll give you his first three. Number one, price for where you'll be, not where you are at. That's so true, isn't it? You need, and you have to be brave to do that, especially when you're first starting out because you look at something and you think, "Oh, that would be expensive if I bought it." But of course, you are not buying it. You're selling it to business owners who've been in the game a lot longer than you have. Ernest. Second piece of advice is for years one and two, marketing and sales are critical. Stack is more fun but also unimportant in the early days.

And his third piece of advice is be selfish. Include things in your stack that make you more efficient. This is a byproduct of making the clients have less issues and thus be happier. There's even more comments that I could put in there that was an amazing thread in our MSP marketing Facebook group. So here's the question for you. If you were advising someone are starting their first MSP, what would your most important piece of advice be? I would love to hear it. You can email me, hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover:

Here's this week's-

Clever idea.

Paul Green:

Can an MSP operate on a for day working week because there's certainly a movement right now, isn't there? You're seeing lots of experiments across the globe and certainly where we are here in the UK, lots of companies are moving to official four-day working weeks. Lots of others are doing more general flexible working in our business. We don't have a very specific four-day working week model, but everyone on my team has complete 100% flexibility. If they want to do their work at two in the morning, that's their choice to do that. If they want to do their work in four days and not work a fifth, that's generally their choice to do it. It's like, almost like we don't ask, everyone can just do what is right for them because they're adults. But I appreciate our business model allows that. And the big question for this with an MSP is if you are offering five-day support, how would you operate a four-day working week?

So I've been looking up some of the pros and cons, the benefits and the downsides of operating a four-day working week, and it's certainly something that's worth you looking at and trying to apply to your business because there are a ton of benefits. The first benefit is that there can be reduced costs if it means that the office is closed for a day. Now again, because of the MSP model, you would argue that there's going to have to be someone in the office on that fifth day. So maybe you won't benefit from those reduced costs, but the big benefit for you, which actually will help your employee retention is that your team will be happier. A lot of the studies, most of the studies have shown that if people work the hours, they need to work in a week across four days, they are generally more happy because they benefit from those three-day weekends on a permanent basis.

They have more time, they have a better work life balance, and that means they have better relationships with their other half and with their kids and their dog, and that makes people happy. You get very few people complaining that they've got three days off. It's also according to a lot of research, it's much better for their health. People are better with their mental health and their physical health when they are not working all of the time. And that kind of makes sense, doesn't it? You think about it. You can have a little bit of an extra lying, a bit more sleep, do a bit more of the things that you enjoy. If you like pressing buttons on an Xbox and killing aliens or whatever you, I don't game, but you know what I mean. If that's your thing, and it means that every week you can have a good old overnight, 12-hour gaming session without it affecting your work, and if that makes you happy, great.

If it means that you can go for a day's hiking or kayaking or whatever it is that you do without affecting your family time at the weekend, great. This can only be a benefit for people. What's really interesting as well is that despite all of this talk of work-life balance and giving people time back to enjoy their lives and then as if we were Victorian business owners, we'd be sitting here with a whip beating our staff saying get back to work. Actually, what the research has shown is that discontented staff, unhappy staff are less productive. It's kind of obvious when you think about it like that, but they're less productive in their own work and they are more likely to distract their colleagues. Unhappy people live out their unhappiness at work. So the more happy we can help people to be, and we are not responsible for our team's happiness, but we can set the environment and we can set the rules to encourage happiness to make it easier for them to be happier.

Some research I'm reading here about a firm in New Zealand called Perpetual Guardian and they trialed a four-day week and what they found was that 78% of their staff could more effectively balance their home and work life compared to 54% prior to the experiment, but they were more productive, they got more work done in less time. I like the sound of that, as I say with the caveat, which is to a certain extent, the MSP business model requires you to be there for a certain number of support hours. We are going to come to that. I've got a suggestion, an area, it's kind of an obvious suggestion, but for you to look at down the line with that in just a few minutes. The other advantage of course of a four-day working week is, as I said at the beginning, it's retention and its recruitment to be able to say to your team, "Well, look, we work hard here but we don't work long."

So we work 35, 40 hours, whatever it is you work, but we do it in four days. Everyone does a four-day working week. So we encourage you to just focus and be highly productive and we are going to do everything we can to get everything out of your way because we do not want to see you on the three days that you are off. And I think that will make your recruitment. In fact, well, put it like this, if it was between you and another MSP and a whole bunch of factors are the same, including salary, you are willing to pay them the same as this other company, but you are asking them to sit in an office or to work for four days a week, they're asking them to work for five, which one would you choose? Obviously, you would choose the four-day working week.

And so I do think, and in fact if you've got a bunch of very experienced talented people right now, you will find your retention. You will keep those people longer by introducing this policy. Just be warned, this is literally like, is it Pandora's box or the genie out the bottle? I can't remember my analogy. Basically, once you've done four-hour week, even if you do it as a trial, I think it would be very hard to go back genies at the bottle. Once you've done that, how would you go? How would you say to your team, "Right, everyone, we've done a three-month trial of working four days a week, productivity's up, you guys are happier, but we're going to go back to five day a week." That then this is one of the disadvantages that if you're going to do it, you've got to do it right.

You've got to do it and you've got to stick with it and there is no going back from it. And that's something that you need to be aware of. Obviously, some of the other disadvantages, you are asking people to do their 40 hours in four days, so that is going to mean longer working hours. Some people thrive on this, some people don't. Me, I've always enjoyed quite long days at the beginning of the week and then having shorter days, and there was a period of time where I also didn't work Fridays. Now I do, but I try and just do three, four hours of highly productive time on a Friday, and that to me is better than just doing hours for the sake of it. You also have to look at how does it affect holiday entitlement, some all sorts of issues and stress, and you can Google for advice on that, but the biggest problem is your business model.

You see for until the world is working on a four-day week model, which isn't going to happen in the next few years. It may happen eventually, but not for now. So as long as you have clients working five days a week, they're not going to accept that, "From next week we can't give you support on Friday. Sorry about that." It's not going to rub, is it? So this is where if you are a larger MSP with more resources, you can just have different teams. You can have a Monday to Thursday team, and you can have a Tuesday to Friday team or however you organize that. That's easy. But it's not easy if there's you and two technicians and you may not ever want just one of your technicians sitting in the office on their own on a Friday because everyone else is off, because that's demoralizing.

That's actually depressing. Even if that person then doesn't have to come in and work on Mondays, it's depressing to sit in the office on your own at either end of the week. So I appreciate this is not an easy thing for a smaller MSP to do. Maybe it's worth if you really wanted to do it, thinking it through, talking to your team and maybe even just having a discussion with other MSPs, asking them what they could do. And you could always have discussions like that in something I mentioned earlier on in the podcast. It's our Facebook group. It's just for MSPs and it's about MSP marketing, but really we talk about anything to help you grow your business. Just go onto Facebook, look up MSP marketing, look into groups, and if you are an MSP, I look forward to meeting you in that group.

Voiceover:

Paul's-

Paul's latent plug.

Latent plug.

Paul Green:

I'll tell you somewhere else you can go for help and advice on growing your MSP and that's our YouTube channel because we are always adding new content, advice, information and also fun kind of edutainment. I want to make it easy for you to enjoy yourself while you're actually growing your business and making more money. Why not? You can check it all out at youtube.com/mspmarketing.

Voiceover:

The big-

Big-

Big interview.

Dana Mantilia:

Hello, my name is Dana Mantilia and I work with MSPs and MSSPs to help them with their social media marketing very specific to their specific needs. And I am here to help if anybody needs me.

Paul Green:

And in fact, you're here to talk about cybersecurity marketing because the challenge for you tonight is to help everyone listening to this right now understand how to use cybersecurity in their marketing in a way that doesn't rely upon FUD. FUD being an acronym, standing for fear, uncertainty and doubt. Because when you're doing cybersecurity marketing, that's the easy default marketing to drop down, to talk about something that ordinary people don't understand and does scare them when they come across. But I believe that actually that's the wrong kind of marketing you should be using around cybersecurity. And I wouldn't be surprised if you have exactly the same feelings about that. Before we get started, tell us a little bit about your background and how you ended up working with MSPs on their marketing.

Dana Mantilia:

Sure. Yeah. So I have been in the cybersecurity non-technical world with helping people with non-technical training. And because I am not a technical person, I don't try to trick anybody that I am because I'm not. And then I started a YouTube channel where I interviewed some cybersecurity professionals. Some of them are very specific to CMMC, which is the US Department of Defense's cybersecurity requirements. And some of them are just people that speak in general about cybersecurity. And the channel really started doing well. So folks started asking, "Oh, could they do a commercial or could they do some kind of sponsorship for the channel?" And so I came up with a couple of varieties and then one thing led to the next, I started helping individuals with some of their social media marketing. And then I came up with a program that's very specific and just step by step. And it really is very helpful for somebody who may not be very comfortable with social media marketing.

Paul Green:

Which is most MSPs, let's be honest. So we'll talk more about your program towards the end of the interview and you'll get a free plug for it, I promise. But when you are approaching cybersecurity, because obviously that challenge of MSPs explaining something difficult to an audience that doesn't really believe it's relevant to them, do you find that that's the biggest issue?

Dana Mantilia:

No question. That is definitely the biggest issue because obviously MSPs, MSSP, they're very smart people, but they understand things on a level that most non-technical people have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. So them even trying to break it down to what they think is really a basic level is still 10 levels ahead of what somebody normally under understands or doesn't understand. So what I try to do is help them really break it down and then break it down and break it down again so that it's really someone who is a 10-year-old or a non-technical person is going to completely understand what they're saying because when they're speaking techie they're not getting any ground with somebody who they're talking to. So it's not benefiting them in any way, and they have a lot of really great stuff that they are trying to help people with. But if you're trying to help somebody but they don't understand what you're saying, we're really not getting anywhere.

Paul Green:

Yeah, exactly. And in fact, let's have some fun with this because you, I'm going to put you on the spot here just to give you a 10-second warning.

Dana Mantilia:

Okay.

Paul Green:

So you are not a technical person. I'm not a technical person, but we both understand marketing MSPs and marketing cybersecurity services. Let's take something, let's take a ransomware attack. You explain it to me. I'm a 10-year-old because most MSPs listening here would be able to describe a ransomware attack and explain it perhaps at a high technical level. Now, you and I, we both, in our day jobs, we have to, as you say, try and break it down so the ordinary people understand it. Let's do a before and after. So give me before example of how an MSP that you work with would describe a ransomware attack, and then give me the after version of a better way to describe it.

Dana Mantilia:

Well, I don't even know if I would be able to use all their technical mumbo jumbo that they would say, but basically, they would say something along the lines that nobody has access to their endpoints and the network is down and all this stuff. And people wouldn't really understand what, so what does that mean? Nobody can do what, what can they not do? So that would be one thing that they would say. And what I say to them is I say, "You need to prepare everybody for ransomware attacks, just like we would prepare people for a fire drill." Because it's the same kind of thing is that if you're preparing somebody for a fire drill, when we were kids, everybody knew what to do, but nobody really knows what to do if there's a ransomware attack and because there's not a lot of discussion around it.

So I would explain to them, a ransomware attack is going to be like this to a business owner. I would say it's going to be the Wild West when all of your employees are doing whatever they think they should be doing because their computer's not working. Some are going to be unplugging it, plugging it back in. Some are going to be trying to call their coworker. Some are going to be on social media, "Hey, we're at work and we're getting hacked right now." And it's going to be a complete hot mess. And when you say that to a business owner, they're like, "Ooh, I don't want that to happen. I don't even know what you're talking about, I don't want that to happen."

So I just say that if you talk to somebody about something that they can relate because they can relate to, "Oh, I know which employee would be on social media." "Oh, I know which employee would be trying to unplug and plug the machine, and all that kind of thing." So even if you don't really understand exactly what you're talking about when you say things like that to another non-tech person, they understand what you mean.

Paul Green:

Yeah. I just love that it's such a good way of doing it. And as you say, bringing it down to a level that anyone can understand when they're talking about, "Hey, I know at the level of I know which of my staff is going to do this." Do you find that the amount of cybersecurity news and information and change coming out is just so overwhelming that MSPs are, and MSPs themselves are struggling to keep up with it, let alone actually translate it for their audiences?

Dana Mantilia:

Well, one of the things that I have definitely found with speaking to MSPs, especially ones that are very IT focused and which I think it's a natural progression to be growing into cybersecurity, as do your clients. I always say to them, your client thinks if you're dealing with taking care of their computer, that you're taking care of their cybersecurity too, even though we know that that is two completely different animals. But they don't really believe themselves sometimes that they are cybersecurity professionals. I've seen a lot of them that they don't want to give themselves credit, and I'm thinking, you should absolutely be giving yourself credit this stuff you really, really do. But they don't really, they don't. So they get overwhelmed by the information and the non-technical people. I think the problem is that even though the tsunami of information is coming upon them, they're all saying the same thing.

This isn't going to happen to me. I don't need to worry about this. This doesn't happen to me. I'm too small. I don't really have valuable information. And it's one justification after the next. And I think that's the problem right now. However, I do think over the next three to five years, the need for cybersecurity is going to explode because the problem's not going to go away. And people are going to have to wake up to this and realize, "Yeah, I am vulnerable, and my customers would care if their data was exposed all over the place." So yes, I do think it's overwhelming for them, and I do think it's overwhelming for the people, but they're not paying attention to it right now.

Paul Green:

Yeah, I think if MSPs, sometimes as burglar alarm companies and they're sometimes walking into really nice streets with nice houses where people leave the doors unlocked and the windows unlocked and they leave their valuables on display and the MSPs can see all of these entry points for a burglar and they're saying, "Hey, not only should you lock the door, but you should fit a burglar alarm as well." And that's easier when one of the houses in the street has been burglarized or burgled. And of course, it's harder when no one's been burgled.

I actually got very close to buying a security alarms company here in the UK last year, and we learned so much about that exact effect that if someone's been burgled in a street, you hit that street, you go into that street and you can sell alarms to three out of five houses in that street because it's now real, because Dave down the road actually got burgled. Whereas when no one that has been burgled it's very, very hard. And do you think that's going to change with business owners that it can never happen to me thing? Or do you think it will have to change because of the sheer amount of cybersecurity attacks that are happening?

Dana Mantilia:

Well, my gut is that there's going to be two things. Compliance is definitely starting to crack down. We see over here, the government is really starting to crack down on certain things as well as when something does happen and your client says, "What were you doing beforehand to protect my stuff?" You can't just say, "Whoa, we thought it was okay." So the demand is going to be because there is going to be compliance requirements as well as there's going to be your competitors are going to go out of business because as you know, these ransomware attacks are so expensive and insurance is starting to maybe not cover as much. The premiums are going up there. It's almost going to be an unaffordable option just to say, "Well, we're just going to get insurance for that." So I do think it's going to be that people are going to go out of business and compliance is going to be forced upon people to start paying attention to this.

Paul Green:

And actually, those two things, they're kind of work in people's favor because they're much more likely to turn to their MSP and actually ask for help. So yeah, that's not a bad thing. Thank you so much for your time on the podcast today. Just tell us a little bit what you actually do to help MSPs in terms of what's your service and direct us towards your YouTube channel.

Dana Mantilia:

Sure. Yeah. So I think where I really help them is with breaking down the messaging into something that can be very helpful and some of the stuff that they don't really think is much value. If you put that into some kind of an email campaign or just stay in front of your clients, but it has a LinkedIn post or something, it's just helpful content. And you have to remember, everybody has a family. Everybody maybe has a business or people are people, they have older parents, they have kids, they have people that are affected by cyber criminals. So the more we can start talking about this stuff, the better off we are all going to be.

So anything that you're offering your clients is going to be helpful in one way or another. Maybe not as a business, but maybe as, "Oh, that's right. I got to tell my mom not to do that. I got to tell my kid not to be doing that on their phone." That kind of a thing. And I think that really resonates with people when you just treat them as humans. So check out my website is cyber dana.com and my YouTube channel is if you just do Cyber Dana over on YouTube, you'll find me over there.

Voiceover:

Paul Green's-

MSP Marketing-

Podcast.

This week's-

Recommended book.

Justin Esgar:

What's up everybody? This is Justin Esgar from the Virtual Consulting Group, and my book recommendation for you is 10% Happier by Dan Harris. Look, we all understand what stress is like when we run our own business, but wouldn't you like to just be 10% happier? Think meditation, give me an, om. Now, go read that book.

Voiceover:

Coming up.

Coming up next week.

Craig Andrews:

Paul Green:

So, hey, you know that platform that you are listening to or watching this podcast on right now, click on the subscribe button if it's got one. So you'll get notified every single Tuesday when a brand-new episode is released because on top of that interview with Craig next week we're going to be talking about delayed gratification. This is where we put off enjoying ourselves and doing fun things because we're so focused on building the business. But I've been listening to this new book, and it's really opened my eyes about the risks of delayed gratification. I will explain all next week. Plus, we are starting a brand-new miniseries all about improving the sales in your MSP. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.

Voiceover:

Made in the UK.

For MSPs around the world.

Paul Green's-

MS-

MSP Marketing Podcast.

10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works--A True Story

View Details

Episode 189 Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes: * 00:00 Your views on the value (or otherwise) of SLAs * 05:22 Avoid FUD when marketing cyber security * 13:08 The impact of AI on marketing

Featured guest:

Thank you to Scott Bywater, Direct Response Copywriter, for joining me to talk about how to use AI effectively in your emails and marketing.

Scott Bywater is one of the most sought after marketing copywriters in Australia, who runs what many regard as the highest level private marketing group in Australia, Elite Marketers.

He is the creator of the online ‘Simple Email ROI System’ course and over the past 21 years has written for gurus and leading companies including Kerwin Rae, Jay Conrad Levinson (of ‘Guerilla Marketing’ fame), Mercola.com and The Learning Annex.

He’s an in-demand speaker who has presented at James Schramko’s SuperFast Business, Dale Beaumont and Ben Simkin’s masterminds - and is on a mission to help coaches, consultants and course creators leverage their most undervalued asset (their email list) without being pushy or salesy.

Connect with Scott on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottbywatercopywriter/ Extra show notes: * Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Subscribe to the MSP Marketing Action Monthly magazine: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of General Electric: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Power-Failure-Rise-General-Electric/dp/0141991224/

Transcription:

Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Greetings and welcome to Episode 189 of the show. Here's what we got coming up for you this week.

Scott Bywater:

Hi, I'm Scott Bywater and I'm going to be talking about how to use AI in your copywriting, in your marketing, and particularly in your email marketing.

Paul Green:

And on top of that interview with Scott later on in the show, we'll also be talking about the use of FUD in marketing cybersecurity. FUD of course stands for fear, uncertainty and doubt, and I don't think you should be using it at all.

Voiceover:

Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

I run this Facebook group called MSP Marketing and we've got roundabout 2000 MSPs in there. It's free to join and it's a great place to just talk about growing your business. One of the things that I like to do sometimes is just chuck in kind of hand grenades, discussions, things that are slightly controversial to see what MSPs think. And here's something that had 32 different comments. I asked this question just a few weeks ago. SLAs, as in service level agreements, are they a valuable marketing tool or a weapon you hand to your client to beat you with?

Now, I must give you my opinion on SLAs to start with. I don't think you should be using them. I don't see them as a valuable marketing tool, and I do appreciate there is a thin sort of sub-sector of people who want SLAs, and I'm guessing that's going to be more regulated industries, maybe more medical, governmental, those kind of bigger businesses, maybe enterprise business level if you support any of those. But for your average business owner or manager, and let's be honest, this podcast and the vast majority of the work that I do with MSPs, it's all about winning over ordinary business owners and managers. We don't really concentrate on that corporate market. Regulated, yeah, we do because that's a nice profitable thing, but I'm not a big fan of SLAs at all.

I think that when you run your business well, then you can exceed what you would give as an SLA anyway just by the... You'd want to because that's how you get pride in the job, right? You do a great job and your clients notice it and they stay with you for 100 years as a result. I think the problem with having an SLA is when you have that once a month moment where you are going to breach it because three major things have happened at the same time to three different clients. And I know this does happen now and again, I know you have days where nothing happens and even the other days where everything goes wrong for everyone, and that's the point I think SLAs can become a weapon.

So I'm going to read you some of the comments from this hand grenade that I lobbed into the MSP group. John says, "An essential part of business," he means SLAs, "if you don't have them, don't complain when you lose clients." To which I asked him then, "What do you find the average new client asks for them, John?" And John jumped straight in with, "Yes, approximately 20% of the leads I see a company's tired of a slow responding existing IT partner. We have stats to prove response rates," which is interesting.

Then Luca then says, "We have just a response time. So a client raises a ticket, we respond in 15 minutes. Doesn't mean we fix it in 15 minutes, but we respond in 15 minutes." Clever. And he's using a ConnectWise stack for that. So Luca essentially has an SLA that's based on response. We acknowledge your problem within 15 minutes. That's actually a smart way of doing that.

Then we've got Riley who says, "I've never been asked for an SLA, I've never marketed it, but if I did, I'm worried they'd be constantly trying to get their money back, which I have seen. SLAs create conflict and are not necessary. Keep them internal, not external." I love that. That's absolutely fantastic.

Steve then says, "It depends on your ambitions for size of contract," as we mentioned at the beginning. If you're dealing with CIOs, chief information officers, 500 plus users, they will ask for it since it'll be part of the procurement stack. In truth, I would take the trade-off between a bit of reporting and SLAs, dealing with a professional IT team and not having them because I'm dealing with a small business any time. Really interesting.

Then we've got Mark who says, "We have them internally, but we never advertise it. Clients hardly ever ask about them, but when they do, we tell them what they are." Andy's never been asked about SLAs in 13 years. Adam says he'd be happy to put in an SLA if they paid two or three times more per user. James says he thinks SLAs are a powerful service management tool to help you manage your service desk. That's interesting. So you use the SLA to force you internally to be better. They help to surface the tickets that need priority in a busy ticketing system. It's hard to see where the priorities are without them. Quintin says, "They're a quality of doing business with us, but we don't lead conversations with it, nor market, nor advertise them. We prefer to discuss prospect's pain points and how we're going to help the clients to remain productive."

So what do you think about SLAs? Do you know? You can drop me an email, hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com or if you're a member of that MSP Marketing Facebook group, and if you're not, just go and join, just go and search for it in Facebook, then why not join that discussion there? And there are many other discussions like it as well.

Voiceover:

Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green:

Cybersecurity is such a massive part of your world, and let's be honest, it should be a massive part of the world of all the people that you're protecting, all those business owners and managers out there and yet they don't get it as much as you do, do they? I mean, you're talking to these people on a day-to-day basis. I'm sure there is not a day that goes by where you're not terrified at how little emphasis they are putting on cybersecurity. And I think the temptation at those times is to use FUD to educate them, to motivate them to buy more cybersecurity.

What is FUD? It's an acronym for fear, uncertainty, and doubt. And I truly believe that FUD is completely the wrong way to try and sell cybersecurity because the ordinary business owners and managers that you talk to, they don't understand cybersecurity. That's why they don't place an importance on it because they don't understand it. They don't see how it's relevant to them. They don't believe that they are a target. They think that it's still 22 year old or 12 year old hackers hacking away on their own, just targeting big companies, liking war games. I'm sure there are many of them that still think that way. I'm sure there are some that don't, but I'm sure there are many that are. They don't understand that it's automated attacks that are looking for opportunities in every business all the time, that it's just relentless, that it never stops, that it's getting worse and worse and worse. They don't understand why cybersecurity should be literally 1000 times higher up in their list of things that are important.

So I don't believe that scaring them works. I think it's very... I'm kind of conflicted about this because I know that scaring them doesn't work. But at the same time, I know that bad news gets more of our attention. It's why the media, the traditional media, your newspapers, your radio, your TV is full of bad news. I'm a former journalist myself. I made my living for 13 years at the start of my career as a journalist creating bad news. And the reason we did it was because we saw that the listening figures went up, we sold more newspapers when we put bad news. I remember distinct, this was a split test in like the early '90s before people did split tests, my newspaper editor, one week he had a headline that was a very negative headline, and the following week he had a follow-up on the same story with a very positive headline, and we sold fewer copies with the positive headline.

Our brain is constantly looking for threats because we still have this very primitive cave dwelling brain from 5,000 years ago, and it's constantly looking out for threats to us. And that's what it perceives bad news to be. It perceives bad news to be a threat to you. That's why bad news gets more of your attention than good news does. It's why bad news seems to get more eyeballs. But just because this is the case, I really don't believe, it doesn't mean that we should be using bad news. We shouldn't be using scare tactics, fear, uncertainty, doubt to educate these ordinary people about cybersecurity. I think a better approach is to educate people. And the way to educate them is to tell stories to them. Because just as there's a part of our brain that's looking out for bad things that could happen to us, there's another part of our brain that responds very, very well to stories.

You see, if we go back again, 5,000 years to when we were cave dwellers, not only were we looking out for things that could kill us, we were passing information down from generation to generation in the wrapper of a story. So even today, we love stories, don't we? We go to the movies because we love a story. We read a book because we love a story. Everyone loves a story. And it's our brain actually, well, if you put someone in a functioning MEI, which is kind of like a live view of what's happening in the brain, and when you tell someone some facts, "Here are some interesting facts," there's about sort of two areas of the brain light up. You take the same content, those interesting facts, and you wrap them up in a big story and it becomes warm and lovely, and so many more parts of the brain light up because we are really into stories.

So here is the opportunity for you with your cybersecurity. We have a service called the MSP Marketing Edge. We only work with one MSP per area. One of the things that we give them, I mean, we give them dozens, well, hundreds of tools to get new clients and grow their business. And one of those tools is a story-driven approach to cybersecurity. It's a book called Email Hijack. And our members, they can take that book and put their name on the cover, they can customize it, they can print it off, and they can be the author of their own book on cybersecurity. And it's targeted at ordinary business owners and managers.

Here's the interesting thing, it's not a book of facts or scare stories. We have created a fictional story of a business owner who goes on vacation and while they're away, their email is compromised, the payment details are changed on a PDF invoice. You've seen this, I've seen this, we've all seen this, and they end up paying, I think it's about $10,000 to the wrong supplier. So in total, it costs them $20,000 because they paid 10,000 to the cyber criminals and, of course, they still have to pay their original supplier. There's a whole fictional story about how that goes down. It uses tactics that you would recognize every single day, but ordinary business owners and managers don't.

Now, that book, Email Hijack, which as I say, it's only available to our MSP Marketing Edge members, it's a way, it's an attempt to make cybersecurity relevant to ordinary people through a story, educating them with a story. And certainly many of the MSPs I work with that have used it have found that even if people just flick through it, it starts a conversation about cybersecurity. And isn't that the goal? We just want to get people, business owners and managers talking about their cybersecurity so that then you can best advise them. That's the goal here. They don't really need to understand it. All they need to do is believe that they can trust you to protect them from themselves.

So try that. Try an educational approach. You could write a book, you could write blog articles, you could write a piece of fiction. It doesn't really matter what you do, but if you can tell stories about cybersecurity and educate ordinary people that way you are dramatically more likely to get them engaged with it and ultimately buying you to help them be protected from it.

Voiceover:

Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green:

I have a number of different ways that I work with MSPs to help them generate new revenue streams and ultimately to win new clients. I just mentioned my MSP Marketing Edge service, but if you wanted to dip your toe in, this is a good place to start. So it's a printed newsletter. It's called the MSP Marketing Action Monthly. And we ship this out. We post this around the world to MSPs all over the world, every single month, 16 pages, packed with actions, things that you can do to improve your marketing. I made it very easy for you to try one out. You can start a free trial, and if you do, go on to be a subscriber, and thank you if you are, or if you do try it, it's cancel anytime. There's no contract or anything like that. Go and have a look at all the details at paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action.

Voiceover:

The big interview.

Scott Bywater:

Hi, I'm Scott Bywater and I'm a direct response copywriter who helps MSPs generate more leads.

Voiceover:

And thank you so much for joining me on the show, Scott. As we can hear, you are based in Australia, and I do love interviewing Australians because it means I've had to stay up very late and you've had to get up very early, but it's worth it because we have a lot to talk about today about marketing and particularly email marketing in the age of AI. We all know that the AI tools have exploded over the last couple of years and no more than in the last six months or so, everyone seems to be talking about them. How does that directly affect our marketing and particularly email marketing? Scott, let's start with a bit of a biog from you. So tell us briefly about your career and your history. What have you done with your working time so far?

Scott Bywater:

I started off way back when I was about 17 in hardcore selling, and eventually when I hit about 24, 25, I made that transition to actual copywriting because copywriting is basically salesmanship in print, and that's what I've been doing for the last 19 years or so. And I've worked with some of the biggest players all over the world and biggest marketers. And yeah, that's what I do today.

Voiceover:

That's so cool. And you're absolutely right. Salesmanship in print is such a great way to describe copywriting. So over the last 20 years, what have you seen change? Because we're talking there about almost the maturity of technology. If you think back to 20 years ago, Google, it wasn't the first place you went to find information. Your mind was kind of elsewhere, and then there was that Google thing, wasn't there, and we were just starting to do that. But our relationship with email was different, our relationship with the internet was different. We didn't have smartphones. So as that's changed over the last 20 years, how have you seen that change the type of copy content that you've had to write?

Scott Bywater:

Yeah, I mean it's been massive, Paul. If we look at, when I started out, I was writing page three ads in the Sunday newspapers that companies were paying $20,000 or something to run. I had clients who would obsess over the Yellow Pages ads for months to get them just right. Obviously, I mean, Dan Kennedy who's a famous marketer has this saying, "Everything old is new again." So things have changed, but human psychology hasn't.

So for instance, trust is the number one, but now what people are doing is rather than meeting with three salespeople to decide who they're going to choose, they'll do that research online to generate the trust. So having lots of content out there to build trust is really critical. Likewise, the way people are searching is different. So that client who obsessed over his Yellow Pages ads several years ago, he was in a home services business, but he created 500 different landing pages for individual suburbs within Sydney.

So it's got a lot more granular in that way. And it's even the playing field, meaning if you're good at what you do, it's not like years ago where you place an ad in the Yellow Pages, then no one could get in. Now everyone can get in, but it is harder to have the skills to do it. And one of the advantages to MSPs is you're naturally technical. And I think that's a real advantage with marketing today.

Voiceover:

Yeah, I completely agree. What's really interesting is you talk about trust there. And in fact, you and I met after you listened to Marcus Sheridan, the author of They Ask You Answer, who was on our show right at the beginning of this year talking about content marketing and building trust and relationships with people through content. So if we were to look forward now the next 20 years, which I don't know about you, that's going to see me to the end of my career because I'll be approaching my 70s by then. That's just aged me. Scott, I'm sure you're nowhere near that kind of age.

Scott Bywater:

No, I'll be in my 60s by then.

Voiceover:

I'm so jealous. I'm so jealous. But we know obviously about the AI tools. We know that ChatGPT is good, if not great. We know that there's a tool called Jasper, which is based on similar technology, which a lot of people use to generate content. Now that has completely changed the game quite quickly because those tools have gone from being okay to being actually really very good in a very short space of time. Get your crystal ball out, Scott, have a look at the next 5, 10, 20 years. How do you think those AI tools are going to change the way that we do our marketing?

Scott Bywater:

Yeah, it's going to be an interesting exercise. I think the big advantage, I mean, the big edge that any marketer, anyone can have in marketing is that critical thinking ability and that strategic thinking ability, because I think that's the thing that can't be replicated. But what I'm seeing with AI in terms of at the moment is it's an incredibly powerful tool. But having said that, it's like anything, if I started to drive a crane today and I've never driven a crane in my life, I could cause a lot of damage. But if I'm trained in it, I can do some incredible things. Same with any power tool. So I think the way we need to look at AI is it's a bit like a power tool.

In terms of where it will go in 20 years, I mean, AI, it's only going to get better. It's not going to get worse. So I think it's really critical that we stay on top of it. And at the moment I look at it, it's almost like having this, like what AI does really well currently, from a copy perspective, it's an incredible brainstormer. If you want to come up with 50 ideas on email topics, if you program it correctly, it will give you that information back. The same with writing emails. If you don't know how to program it, it's just going to come up with generic nonsense most likely. But if you know how to program it, it can really give you what you're looking for and then you bring the human touch in to personalize it.

And I think that's going to be one of the critical things, Paul, because like anything, when something becomes where everyone can use it, so if everyone's just going out there and doing the AI with the copy, well, how do you differentiate yourself? You've still got to find ways with whatever you're doing to differentiate yourself and to differentiate your company. And that's all about knowing how to use the AI is really, really critical.

Voiceover:

It's fascinating. I was reading something in The Tech Tribe the other day, which I'm a very happy member of, and I think it was Nigel Moore himself who's the founder of The Tech Tribe, was saying he can see a point no more than four, five years away, maybe even less than that, where the AI tools are so good that you could decide, right, I want to dominate YouTube on the subject of cheese. I'm inventing cheese. That wasn't Nigel's word. And you could can get an AI text generator to write 5,000 YouTube scripts about cheeses, and without you knowing anything about cheese, it'll do that for you. Some of them won't be right, but they will still write about cheeses. And then of course there are tools that will generate videos for you. You could feed those 5,000 scripts into the tool and suddenly you've got 5,000 videos on cheese.

Now we could guess that maybe YouTube will have algorithms looking out for this kind of thing, but anytime there's a way of cheating, people find a way of getting through. I mean my own personal feeling on that is, that's kind of exciting because if everyone's outputting 5,000 videos or 5,000 pieces of content about how to pick an MSP or which is the best cheese, then someone somewhere is going to create a new opportunity to differentiate, as you say. And as a marketer myself, it doesn't scare me because I think what it does is it challenges us. We've got to get better and adapt and change and find the different ways.

And I'm sure you've seen this, well, tell me if you agree with this or not. Over your career, as the technology in your career has changed from writing a Yellow Pages advert to writing emails, to writing web copy, which we'll come and talk about emails in a second, but 20 years ago there were people that were maxing out their yellow pages. They were spending weeks and weeks in designing it and applying all sorts of principles and maybe even doing testing. And then everyone else was just doing whatever they could think of. And you could certainly see, it's exactly the same now, you have people ultra maxing out their websites and testing every element and making every single thing work, and then a whole bulk of people just throwing it out. Do you think it's going to be the same with those kind of AI tools in the future?

Scott Bywater:

Yeah, and I think the big question is how do you differentiate yourself? And that's really what it boils down to. And how do you use the tools? And I think where MSPs have a real advantage is you're naturally technical. So right now we could hand 10 people, let's say, the same building tools. So you could hand me a set of building tools that you could use to build a house. We'd hand you a set of building tools that you could use to build a house. And we would hand a professional builder, a set of building tools that he could use to build a house. And it's pretty obvious who's going to build the best house.

So the tools is not what actually makes the house, it's the ability to apply the tools, which is a really, really critical thing. And I think it's going to be the same with AI because AI is, from a copy perspective, I know there's a lot of different types of AI, but when it comes to copy, it is an incredibly powerful tool. If you hand me a chainsaw, I might cut my hand off with it. Do you know what I mean? Whereas someone else will chop up three trees worth of wood sort of thing.

Voiceover:

Yeah, doesn't bear thinking about. It really doesn't. Okay, just for the final question, we're going to completely change subject, and we're going to talk about one of your specialties, which is email marketing. I love email marketing. It distresses me that it's getting harder and harder to get people's email addresses, to get them to opt into your database. But I still do two emails a week because literally every time I send out a broadcast email to my, I think I've only got about 4,000 on my list because we've really cleaned the list. Every time I send an email, we get a new member, we get someone joining the MSP Marketing Edge, or someone subscribing to my MSP Marketing Action Monthly, at least twice a week, and that's just one channel twice a week, we make money by sending out good educational, entertaining, edutainment emails. Now I know you have a very good spin on the kind of email content that MSPs can be using. Tell us a little bit about that.

Scott Bywater:

Yeah, so the real key, I mean emails is probably the most underrated tool out there. The social's really sexy, you put stuff on there, you get likes, all of that sort of thing. Litmus.com did a study and they found that there's a 36 to one ROI for every dollar spent on email marketing, yet most people aren't leveraging it. So that's where it's so valuable. And what I would be doing as an MSP with an email list, the first thing that I would do is I would go out to my email list and I'd say, "Listen, what are the number one challenges that you're struggling with right now regarding your IT?" And another question I'd ask is, "If you could ask me any two questions, what would they be?"

And then what you do is you get all of those responses back, and then within your email you start replying to them. And you can use the AI to really help you structure and create those emails. And what I would also recommend doing is talking like you write. So you're putting very much of yourself in there. Because often, Paul, people think, you might be sitting there as an MSP and going, "My business is so boring. Who wants to know about what I've got to talk about?" Because you do it all day every day. But I can guarantee you if someone has taken the effort to join your list or they've got an interest in your service, they want to know that because that's why you're getting asked those questions all day every day, and they will be interested in what you've got to share.

Voiceover:

Yeah, I love it. And when we first spoke, you were talking about the concept of writing emails like film scripts, so where you actually end the email on a cliffhanger, which makes them kind of more interested in opening your next email. Is that still something you use now?

Scott Bywater:

Yeah, so a cliffhanger's incredibly powerful, and what this is is you want to make your emails a bit story-like, a bit interesting. People don't want a boring, bland email. So you can start to tell stories and they can come from your life. If you think of what you did yesterday, there's probably an interesting story. I talked to a client, he asked me this question, then I had a coffee and then I did this, and you tell it. But then at the end of that story, what you can do, so you give some valuable content and then you could even do an open loop to, let's say, another piece of content you've got, or you could end on a cliffhanger and go, "Listen, stay tuned for tomorrow, because tomorrow I'm going to be sharing something about my discussion with Peter, and this is a real eyeopener because you're also going to find out about the big green frog that was in the meeting and what I learned from it," or something like that.

So it's like, it grabs their interest because you want to apply the same philosophy that the TV morning shows and every TV show really ends on. It's like, "Come back after the break and you'll find out how Sam learned to do double somersaults in two seconds with a coffee in his hand. You've got to stay till after the break to find out how Sam did it." That's a very similar philosophy, which you want to apply to your marketing. Again, everything old is new again. We're applying the same principles with email as has been done with the TV media for decades.

Voiceover:

You just sound old and cynical now, Scott. Tell us what you do to help MSP owners. What kind of services do you offer people and what's the best way for us to get in touch with you?

Scott Bywater:

So there's a couple of ways I can help. Number one is you go to my website, it's my copywriting website, copywritingthatsells.com.au and www.simpleemailroi.com if you want to learn about the AI email copywriting, or you can just shoot me an email. Shoot an email to scott@copywritingthatsells.com.au.

Voiceover:

Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.

Brian Davidson:

Hi, I'm Brian Davidson. I'm the owner of Matchnode, a digital marketing agency, and my book recommendation is Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon. It's about the rise and fall of GE starting back in the days of Thomas Edison up until it being the world's most valuable company under Jack Welch and now to its current state of being broken up. A fascinating read about the changes in business and America over that time.

Voiceover:

Coming up next week.

Dana Mantilia:

Hey, my name is Dana Mantilia and I work with MSPs to help them take technical messaging and translate it into messages that your nontechnical audience and hopefully future prospects will be able to understand and put to good use.

Paul Green:

This podcast platform that you're listening on right now, or if you're watching on YouTube, you have subscribed, right? Please do subscribe and allow the notifications, and then every single Tuesday when a brand new episode comes out, bing, something comes up on your phone so you never miss an episode. On top of that interview in next week's show, we're going to be talking about four-day working weeks. Is it practical or even desirable for you and your team to only work four days a week? We'll explore that next week. We've also got a ton of content at youtube.com/mspmarketing. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.

Voiceover:

Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

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Episode 188 Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes: * 00:00 How to explain the cloud to prospects * 04:39 Getting over you fear of being on camera * 13:22 Growing yourself to grow your business

Featured guest:

Thank you to Nicky Billou, author, podcaster and Millionaire Maker, for joining me to talk about how business owners can achieve their goals by changing the way they think, and by investing in both professional and personal growth. Nicky Billou, aka The Millionaire Maker, is the #1 International Best Selling Author of 8 books, including: Finish Line ThinkingTM: How to Think and Win Like a Champion, The Thought Leader’s Journey: A Fable of Life, The Power Of Connecting: How To Activate Profitable Relationships By Serving Your Network (with Kai Bjorn), and How To Create A Million Dollar A Year Income: The Priceless Guide For Insurance Agents, Professional Sale People, And Anyone With A Big Dream (with Perry Wong). He has read over 4000 books, in genres from biography, history, fictional literature, self-help, health and fitness, poetry business, sales, spirituality and religion. Nicky is the host of the #1 podcast in the world for thought leadership, The Thought Leader Revolution, featuring guests like Dr. Ken Blanchard, John Maxwell, and Jack Canfield.

He is an in-demand and highly inspirational speaker to corporate audiences such as RBC, Lululemon, Royal LePage, and TorStar Media. He is an advisor and confidante to some of the most successful and dynamic entrepreneurs in Canada. He is the founder of eCircle Academy (www.eCircleAcademy.com) where he runs a yearlong Mastermind & Educational program working with Coaches, Consultants, Corporate Trainers, Clinic Owners, Realtors, Mortgage Brokers and other service-based Entrepreneurs, positioning them as authorities in their niche. He is the creator of the Thought Leader/Heart LeaderTM Designation. He and his team have helped over 80 entrepreneurs add 6 to 8 figures to their annual income.

Connect with Nicky on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickybillou/ Extra show notes: * Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to the MSP Marketing Action Monthly magazine: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to this pod

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Episode 187 Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes: * 00:00 Persuading clients to accept MFA * 05:23 The benefits of posting real photos on your MSP website * 12:43 The value of public speaking to your business

Featured guest:

Thank you to Grant Baldwin, Founder and CEO at The Speaker Lab, for joining me to talk about how people can promote themselves and their businesses by making speaking appearances at conferences or business events.

As founder and CEO of The Speaker Lab, Grant Baldwin has helped thousands of people build successful and sustainable speaking businesses. Over the last 15 years Grant has become a sought after speaker, podcaster, author, and accomplished entrepreneur.

Featured on the Inc. 5000 list, Forbes, Entrepreneur, and the Huffington Post, he has committed his expertise and insight to equipping others to share their meaningful message with the masses.

With a mission to motivate other leaders and entrepreneurs, The Speaker Lab has worked with students in all 50 US states and in over 45 countries around the world.

Connect with Grant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grant-baldwin/ Extra show notes: * Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to the MSP Marketing Action Monthly magazine: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa

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Episode 186Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 Marketing & Business Growth AMA - your questions answered * 08:22 A crazy idea to generate clients from LinkedIn TODAY * 13:00 Secure your MSP's future through differentiation

Featured guest:Thank you to Paul Katzoff, VP Sales & Managing Partner of UV Networks, for joining me to talk about the importance of differentiation and specialisation in the MSP marketplace.Paul Katzoff is a self-described tech addict and loves to discover and test new tools, technology, and processes. Having accidentally discovered software sales fifteen years ago, Paul loves the technical side of the sale combined with the social aspect of providing a solution that results in a fit for both parties.

The best part of Paul’s job is working with the same clients year after year and developing long term friendships, trust, and respect. When Paul isn't hard at work at UV Networks, he spends his free time with his wife and five kids watching surf videos and baseball.

Connect with Paul on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulkatzoff/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to the MSP Marketing Action Monthly magazine: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, Marketing Rebellion: The Most Human Company Wins: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Marketing-Rebellion-Most-Human-Company/dp/0578419866/

Transcription:Voiceover:Fresh every Tuesday, for MSPs around the world, this is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Hello, my friend and welcome to another fantastic podcast. We have got so much coming up for you this week.Paul Katzoff:Hi, I'm Paul Katzoff, and this week we're going to be talking about how as an MSP you can differentiate yourselves from others out there, win business and grow to the size that you deserve to be.Paul Green:And on top of that interview with Paul later on, I've got a couple of crazy ideas for you. I've got something you can try on LinkedIn to win yourself new clients, and also an idea to throw towards your existing clients that may just generate you some new revenue.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:But let's get started this week with an AMA or ask me anything. I put something in my MSP marketing Facebook group a few weeks ago, did a post saying, "What marketing or business growth questions have you got for me?" And I have three or four that I'm going to answer for you today.So the first of these is from John Bye. Thank you John. And John asked, "Have you seen an impact from Google's core update?" Now, my reply for this is I'm not really into hardcore SEO or search engine optimization, so I haven't really heard a huge amount about this core update. I do read a lot of marketing stuff and people aren't jumping up and down and shouting about it. I'm not an expert at a technical level, so we'll have to kind of make an assumption that no, there isn't a massive, massive impact from that. But generally, when there's an update that impacts millions of businesses, there is a lot of buzz about it in just general marketing. So great question, John, but at the moment, no, it's not something that us as average business owners that don't run e-commerce sites, not something that we need to be aware of.Next question from David, and David I'm going to inevitably pronounce your name wrong, David Varokrytonlane. I think that's how I say your name. Please do email me if I've got that wrong. Now, David asks, "If I use Chat GPT," and this is such a good topical question, "If I use Chat GPT to fix the spelling mistakes on my website and expand content, will future Google hate me?" This is such a great question because the current thinking on this, which kind of feels like it changes every hour, is if you curate and edit the content, then you should be fine. Because what you're doing is you're using Chat GPT to enhance content, but you're not pulling the wool over Google's eyes. Does that make sense? So it's pulling the wool over Google's eyes is the kind of behavior that's always risky in the long term.So I think the safe thing to do right now is to use Chat GPT to shape your content. Either to originate it so a human can polish it and make it better, or to use Chat GPT to polish your content, to change it, to reshape it, to add some packaging to it. And I think if you've got genuinely original content that humans have been involved in... And this isn't an expert opinion, this is just my gut feel. We're using Chat GPT a little bit with our own content, not the content we write for our members of the MSP Marketing Edge, but certainly for our own content, we're using it just for that sort of 10% of just, can you phrase this in a different way? Can you expand on this? Can you compress that? And that's the right way to use Chat GPT right now.Another question from Paige Murray Galley page says, "Last week I pitched the idea to do a lunch and learn like the one suggested in your podcast." And thank you for that Paige. "Now, the sales team disagreed. They didn't think that business owners would find much value in a dark web analysis. "However," Paige continues, "they felt there would be more of a draw to give away concert tickets or something to that effect. How can I explain the value to them or are they right about concert tickets being more of a draw?" And you know what, I had to sit and think about this one because actually, what if the sales team are right? Or what if I'm right?Well, there's only one way to find out, let's do a test. Let's do two events, not at the same time, but they've got different attractions. So one of them is offering that dark web kind of thing. So it's more of a cybersecurity thing. The other one, you have a prize, be that concert tickets, technology, something that's not necessarily about security, but it's a more attractive prize. You literally do two different events and you see which of those events is better. But you've got to measure the success of the event on the quality of the prospect and any sales that result, not the number of people that attend the event. So I would rather do a lunch and learn with three people that result in one new client, than do a lunch and learn with 20 people, but results in no new clients. Does that make sense?Okay. Another question here from David Avenir. "Paul, what are your thoughts on a formal referral program which incentivizes clients to refer to you? Have you come across MSPs doing this well?" And that is such a great question as well. We've had some really good questions for this AMA. Referrals are great to get, but your existing clients will sometimes refer people in the wrong way. They'll say things like, "Here's Daniel's mobile number. Give him a call any Sunday evening if your home printer doesn't work." That's exactly the opposite of the kind of referral that you want. So you've got to be careful with this. Now, the best book I've ever read on this subject, and I've mentioned it in the podcast before, it's called Unstoppable Referrals by an author called Steve Gordon, and it explains why you don't get many referrals. It's that people fear their friends won't get the positive experience that they get. Essentially, there's an element of social risk involved.If I refer you and my friend doesn't get the great experience, the social risk on that comes back on me. So Steve Gordon suggests that instead of looking for direct referrals, you put together a referral kit such as a book. It's why we give a book called Email Hijack to all of the members of our MSP Marketing Edge so they can use that for a referral kit. They can personalize it, print it, and use it as an incentive. So you ask your clients to tell their friends and contacts only that you have a free book available. And you might even print business cards on with the free book URL for them to give to their friends. I think the only other thing to consider with referrals is what kind of prospect education or qualification process you have in place.So when you get a referral, do you have a standard process to take them through, for example, to show them why you don't do break fix work? You've got to take control of the messaging. And this may actually mean telling them right from the first inquiry, "Hey, look, before we start talking, this is how we can work together. If this is not for you, then thank you very much for your interest, but we are not a good fit for each other."Okay, final question and then I will tell you how you can submit and ask me anything question. Mike Haywood has asked a great question, "How do I improve my marketing emails when I get zero interest or response to them?" Another good question, I do expect that most MSPs won't actually get a response to emails because emails are kind of part of a strategy to build a relationship with prospects. People only buy when they're ready to buy, and you have to be in front of them at that exact moment. So Michael, guess what I'm saying is don't worry too much about lack of response. Instead, look at your deliverability, check your open rate percentage, you could check your click through percentage. However, do not obsess over these figures. Emails are not there to get a reaction today, they're there to build a relationship with people who could go on to become clients of yours in the future.So if you've got a marketing question, feel free to ask it in that marketing group. Just go to Facebook, look for groups and look for MSP Marketing Group. It's free to join, but it is a vendor free zone. So please only join if you are indeed an MSP. You can also just email me and it is the real me at the end. As long as you're not rude to me, I will definitely reply. My email address, hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.Voiceover:Here's this week's clever idea.Paul Green:Right, bear with me on this one because I have a couple of kind of crazy, slightly untested ideas that I want to just throw out to you to see if actually it grabs your attention, it makes you think, "I wonder if that would work for us." The first idea is to generate some new clients, and the second idea is to sell more to your existing clients. And when I say they're untested, the principles of them are sound, I just haven't specifically tested these exact techniques yet. If you do use these and they work for you, please do drop me an email with the email address that I just gave to you.So here's the first one. You go onto LinkedIn, this is to win new clients. You go onto LinkedIn and you see which of your prospects are currently active. Because you know when someone's active on LinkedIn, there's that little green dot just over their profile photo. So you find 10 active connections and you drop all 10 of those a LinkedIn message and the message would say something along the lines of, "Hey Dave," let's say you're doing it today. Let's assume you're listening to this podcast on Tuesday. So, "Hey Dave, crazy question for a Tuesday afternoon, but on a scale of one to 10 where 10 is highest, how much would you recommend your IT support company?" Let me go over that again. So, "Hey Dave, crazy question for a Tuesday afternoon, but on a scale of one to 10, where 10 is the highest, how much would you recommend your IT support company?"So you message this to 10 people, 10 of your connections. Now, most of them are going to ignore you, and that's okay. The ones that message you back, they're obviously so happy with their MSP that they want to boast about it or they're not happy and you've really touched a nerve. Most people just won't respond, but the ones that do respond, as I say, they're either showing off or actually they do want to have a vague conversation. With those people, the next trick is to engage them. Don't go straight in for the, "Let's meet." Ask them a couple of questions, open questions, qualify them essentially. And then you kind of say to them, "Well, hey, look, do you want to meet for a coffee some point next week? We could explore your pain and just see if it's worth meeting."Now, as I say, this is untested. This may not really turn into anything at all. If you did this every day, tried it for a week and ended up having a couple of coffees and one of those coffees actually turned into a sales meeting, that would be a result, I believe. It all depends on the quality of the person you're reaching.So that's an idea to win new clients. Let me give you crazy idea numero two and this one is to generate more revenue from your existing clients. Here's what you do, you ring three of your favorite clients later on today. Well, let's say you call them on a Thursday or a Thursday afternoon or a Friday morning, and you say to them, "Hey, how's it going? I'm just winding down for the weekend. How's your week been?" And then you ask the killer question, this is an absolute killer question. "Is there anything that we could have done or that we could have helped you with this week to make your life easier?" "Is there anything that we could have helped you with this week to make your life easier?"Now, many of them will just say no. They just want to get you off the phone, get back on with their work. But you never know what a great conversation starter that could be. Because for some people, it will trigger something at the back of their head that makes them think, "Actually, yeah, if only we'd had the ability to talk about this, or if only we could have talked to you about that or we had this problem. Is that something that you could help with?" It gets your existing clients talking. And engagement, both of these crazy ideas are all about engagement. People buy when they're ready to buy, whether they are currently a prospect or currently a client. If we can get them engaged and if we can get them talking, we can try to figure out if today is that day that they are indeed ready to buy.Voiceover:Paul's blatant plug.Paul Green:I feel like I'm full of good ideas today, and if you want even more of them, we have a ton of them on our YouTube channel. Couple of times a week, we are uploading new videos all about helping YouTube market and grow your MSP. And you can find all those videos at youtube.com/mspmarketing. Please do subscribe and also hit that little notification bell thing. This actually helps us to reach more MSPs because it tells YouTube what kind of content you are interested in, and so we can reach more great people like you. Youtube.com/mspmarketing.Voiceover:The big interview.Paul Katzoff:Hi everyone, I'm Paul Katzoff. I am the VP of sales and managing partner at UVnetworks, and I focus on global sales and partnerships for our organization, which is really finding MSPs and helping them on their side simplify their process.Paul Green:And we are all about helping MSPs here on this podcast. This is why I wanted to get you on and get info out of your head, Paul, about marketing advantages and differentiation in particular. Now, I know one of the big challenges that MSPs have in the marketplace is differentiating themselves from their competitors. Now, the true differentiation has nothing to do with your tech stack at all, primarily because the audience that you're trying to reach, they don't really understand what a tech stack is, and they don't know the difference between Product A, Product B, Product Z, none of that matters. You work with lots of MSPs, you advise them on lots of different things, not just in your product, but in growing their business. How do you think the average MSP should tackle that problem of marketing differentiation?Paul Katzoff:That's a long and deep question because marketing can be so many different things for different MSPs. Now, typical MSPs like you and I both know, are owned and ran by the owner, manager, director. So it's pretty much a single person organization. Now, those MSPs need to focus on what their core attributes are, where their talents lie, and who they are as a person and as a marketing body. Because when you're talking to clients, you need to present with them what you're going to provide to them. You are going to be their expert going forward. So on your side, you need to understand who you are, how your clients see and view you as an MSP, and also focus on your strengths, focus on what you do well, and they will see that, that will ring true to them and they'll jump into it. They'll do it as well. They'll see it and say, "Hey, this is what we have to have. This is our need. He fits it, let's take him on. This is going to be the perfect MSP for our organization."Paul Green:But it strikes me that sometimes half the problem is the fact that you are trying to fix, or as an MSP owner, you're trying to fix something that you don't understand. I'm a non-tech person, so when I have tech challenges, I can't really step back and look at it in a way and say, "Right, what am I doing wrong here? What are the challenges?" I'm just get lost in the problem because it's unfamiliar with me, and it's almost a bit scary for me. And I think for MSP owners, it's the other way around. A tech challenge is a known quantity. There's a methodology for going about that. But a marketing challenge, that's unknown and that's scary. So do you think it's quite hard for MSP owners to step back and look at their business sometimes?Paul Katzoff:It could be difficult. I think on their side, they need to focus on who they're going to be or who they're going to focus on as a customer, as a client. So as an MSP, if you're going to focus regionally, you got to look regionally. If you're going to focus nationally, you got to focus nationally. So if you're a small MSP and you want to focus regionally, you want to focus on your city, your county, your local area and your state. And on your side, you need to go through and learn about all the different industries, potential clients on your side that need MSPs, your expertise, your functionality to come in and help their business. Now, you can't spread yourself across the board and say, "Hey, we do everything." Well, you could, but all of a sudden you're going to have farms contacting you, you're going to have ad agencies contact you, all these different people with MSP issues contact you. Are you ready to jump into their business and attack what their issues are and resolve those for each one of those industries?So on your side, if you're familiar with the IT space, or let's say you're familiar with retail, focus on retail first and say, "Hey, we're a retail first MSP." You're going to have others come in and say, "Hey, you do retail, but we all would also like you to help us with our dentist's office. Can you help us on the dental side?" You'll build that business across the board and other industries. But start first with one industry that matters to you that you're very familiar with, you know who the decision maker is, what they're looking for, what their needs are, what their weaknesses are. Do they have cloud? Do they not have cloud? What's their tech stack? On your side where their pain points are as an MSP or as an individual, and you can take your MSP out there and say, "Hey, these are your issues. I know who you are. I've dealt with you over my career. I know what you need. I'm here to solve that issue for you."And after you win one or two of those deals, you're going to turn around and say, "Hey, who else in this space needs our help?" Maybe not competitors of yours, but your friends, your associates. Who else needs help in this retail space? I can step in and help them, you'll get some referrals. Or maybe you go to a convention, a local retail convention. You go in there, you say, hi, you meet and greet, shake hands, give out your business card or QR code, whatever there is nowadays. And on your side, you're able to meet others that have that same specific in needs that you can speak to. And you'll build your client profile or portfolio slowly over time, 3, 4, 10. And then you'll have others kind of come to you as well in different industries. Don't worry about those yet, focus on one initially. And that will grow over time as you help those customers solve their issues and really become an expert on providing an MSP service for that one industry.Paul Green:So what we're really talking about here is building up momentum. And in fact, Paul, if you've ever read or listened to the book, Good to Greats by Jim Collins, which is a fantastic listen.Paul Katzoff:Yes.Paul Green:One of the things he talks about, one of the concepts throughout that book is the concept of the flywheel that everything the business does must be about getting as many of the right hands onto the flywheel and giving it a shove. Because the more you keep shoving it, the faster it goes and the faster it goes, which is just a really smart way of talking about momentum. Do you think MSPs or some MSPs make their lives deliberately hard by going off on a path and then zig-zaging and changing direction and going off to a different industry, almost perhaps because they're, I'm not going to use the word desperate, but they're so keen to win new revenue that they just go chasing absolutely anything that comes out of anywhere without having that disciplined focus on building up momentum down one path?Paul Katzoff:Well, first off, the Flywheel notion by Jim Collins is one of the most amazing notions in the past 15, 20 years, to have you as an organization, as an MSP focus on what you do great. We've heard about that forever. What do I do great? But in the Flywheel Concept, what he's saying is there's this momentum or circle that goes around in the circle. If you aren't familiar with the Flywheel, check it out, it's a small little book by Jim Collins. It's available on Amazon for like $9 or $10, maybe $12.But what he does in this monograph is he goes through and he says, "Okay, on your side, what you need to do is figure out what drives your business fully through the circle, which is capturing clients, potential clients, selling to those clients, having those clients purchase your product. And then also have that client stay on as a client and refer others to you or that full process for you as an MSP. To get them coming in around happy, not churning out, not complaining, but solving their issues, keeping them satisfied as a client, and then turning around at the end and..." The other part of the flywheel is finding more customers. How do you do that? Where do you go? Who are you as an MSP?And this Flywheel notion, it's one of the most difficult ideas as an MSP to kind of get through because like you said, it's very easy to just shock and shoot the market. I mean, you have the ability nowadays to reach every industry, to do Facebook ads, do LinkedIn ads, Twitter ads. You can blast everyone you want and you can spend a whole bunch of money doing that if you do it that way. But the key here, and the key that Jim Collins was referring to is get to know what you do really well and do it over and over again.Now, if you're tight for cash, if you're short on your war chest, it's going to be difficult because you're going to be tempted to go to the left field. You're going to be tempted to go to right field. But what he's saying is if you keep that flywheel going, the momentum will pick up, and in 5 years, 7 years, 10 years, when there's a retail organization looking for an MSP, everyone in the market's going to say, "Hey, use RJ's. They're the best MSP out there for retailers."Paul Green:Yeah, completely.Paul Katzoff:You'll become known as an expert in that space, and that's where that full competitive advantage comes in. That's where full profits are found. That's where the whole market... As an individual, that's where the success is bred or arrives from.Paul Green:Yeah, completely agree with you Paul. I'm so glad you mentioned that Jim had an extra book. I didn't know. It just goes to show you can... I try and read a business book every single week, and I didn't know that Jim Collins had actually done a book called Turning the Flywheel: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great, which I've just found on Amazon now. I know I shouldn't really be looking up stuff on Amazon while a guest is speaking, but hey, I did it. So that one's gone into my basket. Thank you very much for that one, Paul.Let's just finally talk about size of business. So I talk to loads of MSPs, I know you do the same and everyone looks to grow, but we've all got to start from a position somewhere. And sometimes I hear one man, two man, three man band MSPs almost look at the size of the competition that's surrounding them and say, "Well, we're never going to compete with those guys because they've got 50 people. They've been around for 20 years, they've got 50 people, they charge twice what we charge. We simply cannot compete with them and against them." You could argue that sure, for a 500 user business, there's no way you're going to compete with an MSP that's got 50 staff. But there aren't that many 500 user businesses around. There tends to be a hell of a lot more 10 user, 20 user businesses, which let's be honest, pretty much any MSP can look after. What are your thoughts on differentiation and how to differentiate your small MSP against your bigger rivals?Paul Katzoff:Well, first off, let's start with the basic, which is the future. As an MSP, you have made the right choice to start an MSP or be running an MSP organization right now. You don't need to be concerned about all the competitors out there, whether there's a 50 person MSP to your left or a 10 man MSP to your right. Right now, as far as the future goes for MSPs, they're looking at what 25% growth annual over the next decade. What's happening is organizations have a need for managed service providers to come in and take over their IT work, their IT headaches, their whole systems that are complicated and really a mess. To be honest with you, they're really a mess. And so MSPs are going to grow. So you're in the right space as an MSP. For the 500 user shops or 500 employee shops, usually if they get to that size, they already have an IT department, they're already set on that. They'll use an MSP for here and there to kind of have a backup and expertise on hand if they need it.But overall, your target market, your potential market is that small 10 person shop to a 100 person shop. That's what's going to need the MSP services come in and take over what... They can't afford an IT guy or an experienced IT guy. Nowadays, just with the tech stack you have to manage, it's a headache. So all of these organizations are saying, "Hey, we want to outsource this to an MSP." This is where it's coming from. And on your side, you're in the right space.Now, how do you differentiate yourselves from others? It can go many different ways, there's a lot of different things that you can do to differentiate yourself, but overall, what you need to do is focus on, like I said earlier, an industry that you do very well, that you understand who they are. Maybe you have friends that are decision makers or business owners in that area, and you can step in and win one client and solve their headaches, solve their issues, and then go from there and build up your clientele from that side. And I assure you, it's going to continue to build. This MSP phase is not a fad. You're looking at a decade to two decades of growth and you're in the right space at the right time if you're looking at this right now.Paul Green:Love it. Love it. Great message of positivity to end on there, Paul. Thank you very much. Just briefly tell us a little bit about you and your business. What do you guys do for MSPs and how can we get in touch with you?Paul Katzoff:Yeah, absolutely. So I'm with UVexplorer UVnetworks. We provide a network mapping system, a network management system for MSPs. So what we provide is for you to have our agent or our install on each of your clients' networks. We can then provide you with that visual network map to the UVexplorer server that's on-premise, on your location. So you can click through and find network issues, network management problems all throughout your client's areas very quickly, very fast. We are a third the price of Off-Ex. You're not going to be diving into your pocketbook for our tool. And we provide all that solutions for you wherever you are globally, in the US, we support you, and we provide you this great tool to use on your network management side.Paul Green:And what's the best way to get in touch with you, Paul?Paul Katzoff:Yep. You can reach out to us at sales@uvexplorer.com or find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, happy to help you or reach out to you and connect with you on any of those spaces or platforms.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.Jeff Felten:My name is Jeff Felten from contentremedy.co. The book that I recommend you read next is Marketing Rebellion by Mark Schaefer. The reason that I really love this book is because I genuinely think that most people are tired of being sold to, they're tired of being advertised to all the time. I mean, we see thousands of advertisements a day, and I truly believe that the most human companies are the ones that are winning in the marketplace or the ones that absolutely will win in the future. So Mark Schaefer's book, Marketing Rebellion, is all about how to be more human in your copy, in your positioning, in your messaging, in everything. Really how to position yourself more as a human brand than some company or department. It's just a really good take, a fresh take on how to position yourself a little bit differently in the market in the coming decade.Voiceover:Coming up next week.Grant Baldwin:Hey, this is Grant Baldwin, founder of the Speaker Lab, and we're going to be talking about how you can find and book paid speaking engagements. How you can use speaking to build and grow your business. And even if you were someone who's like, "I hate the idea of speaking and it traumatizes me," that's all right, we're going to talk through how you can make sure that you can minimize those nerves, those anxieties, those fears, and still use speaking to the best of your ability.Paul Green:Wherever you listen to this podcast, please do subscribe both on audio platforms and especially on YouTube, subscribe and hit the little bell notification thing. Because on top of that interview next week we're going to be talking about putting photos of you and your team, especially your team on your website. What are the dangers of doing this? What are the things, the fears you have that stop you putting photos of your team on your website? And let's see if we can overcome them. We have a ton more content for you on YouTube at youtube.com/mspmarketing. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.Voiceover:Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Marketing Rebellion: The Most Human Company Wins

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Episode 185Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 Upgrade your marketing and sales approach from Passive to Active * 07:06 Seven MSP website headlines to swipe & adapt * 16:47 Building fruitful long-term relationships with systemised relationship marketing

Featured guest:Thank you to Steve Buzogany, CEO of The Appreciation Advocate, for joining me to talk about systemised relationship marketing, and how thoughtful gift-giving (as opposed to mailing out branded freebies) to prospects and clients can help build long-term relationships and move the sales cycle forward.Steve is a recognized expert in strategic appreciation and is an author, speaker, and consultant. He has worked with nationally ranked sales leaders and teams at companies like Berkshire Hathaway, Keller Williams, and RE/MAX. Steve is best-known for his ability to leave unique, long-lasting, & positive impressions on people.

Connect with Steve on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-buzogany/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Subscribe to the MSP Marketing Action Monthly magazine: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * This video explains why I think a back to work mum is a great fit for an outbound calls role in your MSP: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/a-back-to-work-mom-your-msps-secret-weapon/ * And you can revisit my chat with Andy Edwards on the subject of the four different personality types here: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode2/ * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, Value Merchants: Demonstrating and Documenting Superior Value in Business Markets: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Value-Merchants-Demonstrating-Documenting-Superior/dp/1422103358/

Transcription:Voiceover:Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:At the end of the day, you're another day older, and that's all you can say for the life of the MSP. If you recognize that reference, email me. Hello, welcome to the show. Here's what we got coming up for you this week.Steve Buzogany:Hi, I'm Steve Baney from The Appreciation Advocate, and we're going to be talking about how most MSPs are poisoning their best relationships, and doing so unintentionally, and how to correct it.Paul Green:And on top of that interview with Steve, later on in the show, we're going to look at how to improve your MSP's website's homepage just by changing the headline.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:So I'm going to start you off this week with a tiny, tiny little mini audit of your marketing and your sales. And I want you to answer one question, just one question; is your marketing and sales passive or is it active? I guess with your approach to it, do you have an active approach or do you have a passive approach? Now, let me explain. And to explain, we're going to take my favorite marketing strategy, it's the strategy that you should be following. It's a three-step strategy, you've heard this before, right? You build multiple audiences of people to listen to you, you build a relationship with those audiences and then you commercialize that relationship. Now, an active marketer and a passive marketer can have very similar approaches to this strategy, but the active marketer, which spoiler alert, they get better results, they just take it to the next step. Not far, just take it a little bit further than the passive marketer. So let me explain. You could, for example, have a number of different audiences that you are currently servicing.So you might have your LinkedIn connections, but also have a list of subscribers to your LinkedIn newsletter because those are two separate things, you might have a YouTube channel with subscribers on there, you might have an email list. These are all standard audiences that an MSP would have. And you might be putting content in front of them on a regular basis. These are the first two steps of that strategy. So the relationship building is done through content; putting social media content onto LinkedIn, sending out a LinkedIn newsletter every week, and of course, sending out a promotional or an educational email. And that in itself is good work, but it's still quite a passive approach to marketing because you see, the reason that we have this three-step strategy and we suggest that you do it this way is because people only buy when they're ready to buy. And one of the hardest things in marketing is knowing when the right time is; is this the right time, or is it not the right time? It's very difficult to know that.And that's why we have to do all of this activity so that on the day that someone wakes up and they are ready to have a conversation about moving from their incumbent MSP to a new MSP, you are in front of them. So herein comes the difference between passive marketers and active marketers. Active marketers just take a little step more, just add a little bit on, a little bit extra on. So for example, instead of just building two or three audiences, they'll build even more audiences. Perhaps they will go out and do networking events in real life because that's an audience of people, perhaps they will do webinars or seminars because actually real-life seminars, actually having people in a room, lunch and learns, I love lunch and learns, these are all extra audiences. And the active marketers, just even just one more thing can make a difference.The active marketers are also actively trying to get people in one audience to join another audience because if you've got someone that sees your stuff on LinkedIn, gets your LinkedIn newsletter, has your videos in front of them and meets you at a networking meeting, as you can imagine, the chances of that person buying from you when the time is right are dramatically higher than if they're only just connected to you on LinkedIn. So active marketers are constantly trying to push people between those audiences. You want people to be in as many audiences as possible. Now, when it comes to putting out content, the active marketers, again, just take it an extra step. So maybe they will put out seven days worth of social media content on LinkedIn as passive marketers might, but maybe they'd go the extra step. For example, if they noticed that someone commented a couple of times on their posts, then they would actually reach out to that person.So let's imagine you've got a LinkedIn post and Justin, let's say Justin, Justin comments on your post, and you think, "Oh, that's the second time in a month that Justin has commented on my post, I'm going to reach out to him." Well, LinkedIn has a tool to allow you to do that, doesn't it? LinkedIn Messages. So you'd go into messages, you'd find Justin, you'd send him a message just to say, "Hi, Justin. I don't think we've ever met him real life, but I just wanted to say thank you for engaging with my content. Tell me a little bit about you." And essentially, it's a conversation starter. Now, that's, what, 10 seconds of extra work. In fact, you could even template that message so that everyone who comments on you gets that kind of direct message. And let's be honest, the vast majority of people you send that message to are going to ignore that message. But there is a great example of just taking it an extra step. The differences between passive marketing and active marketing are absolutely tiny, but I guess it's more about a mindset than anything else.Passive is doing these activities, sitting back, and waiting for the leads to come in. Whereas being more active about it is doing all of these activities and then saying, "Right, well the leads aren't coming in, so I'm going to push it another 5%, another 10%. What's one extra thing I can do that can find those people who are nearly ready, willing and able to have a conversation about switching from their incumbent MSP over to me?" All these tiny little things, they do add up. And it's worth you experimenting with just different things to see what works and what doesn't work in your area. I will give you one massive, massive bonus tip. The number one thing that will make the difference, nevermind all these little things like messaging people and cross-pollinating audiences, the number one active thing that will make the biggest difference is to get someone to phone these people. It's a subject we've covered many times in this podcast and it's worth you looking back through some of the previous episodes where we've talked about hiring a phone person. But that is possibly the number one activity you can do.If you can find someone on your behalf to phone all of your audiences for you, the chances of you getting lucky and finding someone on the very right day, the day that they're ready to talk about switching, your chances of getting lucky go up dramatically.Voiceover:Here's this week's clever idea.Paul Green:If you're not happy with the headline on the homepage of your website, good news, I have seven replacement headlines to suggest to you in the next couple of minutes, and you're welcome to swipe any of them and use them to replace your headline. Now, the reason the headline is so important is because of an old marketing formula called AIDA, A-I-D-A, and it stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. Fun fact, I knew this was quite an old model for marketing, I didn't know it was as old as this. I've just Googled it, and AIDA was actually invented in 1898. That's insane. That's like 100 and lots of years ago. And it was invented by an advertising strategist called Elmo Lewis. He initially intended it as a multi-stage model for the perfect sales talk. And it kind of is if you think about it, because you grab someone's attention, then you build up their interest in the thing you're talking about, then you build up their desire to have it, and then you tell them to take action.Now, on a website, the attention grabbing is done by equally really by the headline and by the image or the video that go on there. So you want an image of you or you and your team or of your clients, or preferably a video of your clients talking about you, that's an important element. But then what about the headline itself? So most MSPs' websites have pretty weak headlines, they'll say things like "IT support for 'Town'", or just say things like "You found your perfect IT support partner." And the problem with a weak headline is it's kind of like imagine if you're a top athlete or a racing driver and you're at the most important race of your life. You've got one go at it. If you screw this up, you're not going to win the race. And then as the firing gun goes or as the red lights go out, your car stalls or you don't get off the blocks fast. That's essentially what you are doing to yourself. You're hobbling your chances of winning the race if you don't have a really good headline right there on your website.So I have for you seven different headlines. They may not be quite right for you, but you are more than welcome to swipe and adapt these, tweak them, change them, pop them on your website. And even if they're not what you end up sticking with, if it starts you down a road, a process of just playing with different words, changing things, then I think that's a great thing. There is no perfect one website headline for all MSPs to use. And actually, we wouldn't want all MSPs to use the same headline because then we've immediately got no differentiation at all. So let me just give you these seven alternatives to swipe and adapt. So if we start with one that it's kind of a bread and butter, is that a British term, bread and butter? I suspect it is. So bread and butter is the everyday thing, "IT support for fast-growing businesses in 'Town Name'," because that literally, it's one of those, it says what you do and it says who you do it for and it says where you do. "IT support for fast-growing businesses in 'Town Name'."Now, you may argue that there aren't that many true fast-growing businesses, but this isn't about what's actually happening in reality, it's about what the business owner or manager perceives they want to get to. So they may be a sluggish, slow, slow-growing business, but they're thinking, "We want to grow fast, we want more. We want to be up there with the big guys." And so they will seek out people that can help them to get there, even if they never actually do get there. So saying that you work with fast-growing businesses is always a good idea. Now, another approach is to tell them what the benefits are of working with you. So something like, and this is the headline, "The end of staff complaints about frustrating IT problems," or you could reword that like, "Your staff will never again complain about frustrating IT problems".So that's more of a benefit-led approach. And actually, I don't know what your clients are like, but the average business owner or manager is more likely to be motivated to talk to you, to end staff winging, staff complaints than they are to increase their cybersecurity. Unless they've been breached or they have a very close friend who's been breached and they know what the hell is of having a ransomware attack, it's not as real to them as the reality of Doris moaning every day that her computer takes 22 minutes to switch on, and I'm sure we've moved on from Windows 7. That winging, it grinds you down eventually. Here's another one. Now, this one you're telling them what they'll be able to do with your support. "Focus on growing your 'Town Name' business without any technology hassles ever, Guaranteed." If you don't like the guaranteed bit, just take that off at the end. "Focus on growing your 'Town Name' business without any technology hassles ever." So this is about, it's now more about them than it is about you. And that's where a good headline starts.In fact, the whole website should be more about them than it is about you. Now, we've got another one here. This is a bold statement headline, "Make your business's technology better. Instantly." I've put little full stop after better. "Make your business's technology better. Instantly." And that's a bold statement because that's you saying, "This is us, this is what we can do." Here's another version of that. "Technology strategy and support designed to make your business easier." Technology strategy and support designed to make your business easier." Deliberate use there of the word strategy because we want you to be their strategic partner, not just a supplier. And also a deliberate use of the word easier. I think a lot of people, yes, they want to grow their business, they want to make more money, they want to be more productive, they want their staff to whinge less. But you encapsulate that into one concept. They just want things to be easier.I want my business to be easier. Do you want your business to be easier? Everyone wants their business to be easier. So that headline works really well with that. Right, how many have we done? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Oh, no, we've got two more, we've done five. So I'm going to give you my favorite website headline. There are actually quite a few MSPs around the world that are using this, which is cool. And if you see one, you'll know that it came from me. And the number I'm about to give you is the number of users that you support. But we don't use the word users because users is a particularly unfriendly word to use for users, for people. "1,058 'Town Name' people already trust us with their business, you should join them. So let's say you've got 702 users, you'd say, "702 'Town Name' people already trust us with Their Business, You Should Join Them. And again, if you're not comfortable with the boldness of that statement at the end, you just take it off.The whole point of these is not to use them verbatim. You take them, you swipe them, you adapt them. And then the final one, and this is a version of this, but which is aimed more at decision makers, "Technology Support trusted by 36 'Town Name' businesses. Join them." So as you can see, it's a similar thing. And obviously that wouldn't be so powerful if you had 4 clients. "Technology support trusted by 4 'Town Name' businesses." In that instance, you would use perhaps one of those other examples. But all of these could be great headlines and maybe better headlines than what you're using right now or maybe not. In fact, if you are really proud of your headline, would you drop me an email and let me know because I love seeing great headlines. I'm not going to debate it with you, I just want to see if you've got a headline that you are proud of. I'd just like to see it, just for interest. And also, it's always great to chat to people who listen to or watch this podcast. My email address is hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.Voiceover:Paul's blatant plug.Paul Green:Now, this is going to sound really weird, but bear with me on this. You see, I want to invade your toilet time. Not me personally, but I do want to send in a copy of this, my 16-page printed newsletter that's called MSP Marketing Action Monthly. Now, why do I want to get this newsletter into your hands? I'll tell you why. If I can find some of your downtime, maybe it's when you're reading in bed or you're lying on the couch or you're drinking a beer or you're in the toilet just chilling, that's cool, we all do it, no one's judging. If I can get this into your hands in your downtime, when you can spend a little bit more time reading about different aspects of your marketing and looking at the specific actions that I recommend, I reckon you're dramatically more likely to take action. And we all know it's only when you take action on your marketing that you actually start to see improvements. So that's why I've created this printed newsletter.Now, it is a paid newsletter. I send it out to MSPs all around the world every single month, and it is completely risk-free. There is a free trial and you can cancel any time. So why not just give this a go? Perhaps leave a copy next to your bed, perhaps leave a copy on your couch indefinitely, leave one in the bathroom. You can see all the details and start your free trial right now at paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action.Voiceover:The big interview.Steve Buzogany:My name's Steve Buzogany, I'm a former real estate agent turned business owner. What I do today is I help small business owners and MSPs get more referrals into their business by using gift-giving as a strategy.Paul Green:And you have the dubious honor of being the first former real estate agent ever to appear on this podcast. So I don't know if we should give you a round of applause. Aren't real estate agents up there with lawyers, CPAs, and bankers as some of the most hated professions? I can see why you got out of that. But instead, you're here to give us gold. And I know you have gold to give us because we're going to talk about gift-giving today as a way of attracting and retaining your prospects within your MSP. We're going to look at referrals as well. You've got some awesome stuff to tell us about referrals and the idea of systemized relationship marketing. So tons and tons of stuff to get out of your brain, Steve. Let's start by looking at you. Tell us a little bit about your background and your history. What enables you to come onto a podcast like this and talk about these kind of things?Steve Buzogany:So for me, I started with real estate. And so because of that, real estate is basically a relationship business. So for me, I started working really hard and then a mentor of mine said, "Hey, stop working so hard, you're being very transactional. If you focus on the relationship, you won't have to work as hard and then it'll be easier to close, you don't have to do the pitch, and then they'll want to refer you to their family members and friends." I was like, "Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Let's do that." So I did that, I ended up doing 10 deals within six months and I was like, "Okay, there's some definitely something to this." And then I started building from there. I got 73% of my business by referrals. I was able to take one to two months a year off, and I was making really, really good money, high six-figure numbers. So it was really good. So for me, I didn't have to do anything. But what I became known as around the real estate office was I was the referral guy.They're like, "Oh, Steve, you get referrals all the time. What are you doing?" So I tell them, I'm like, "I'm giving people gifts and I'm appreciating them and I'm loving on them." And they're like, "Well, what are you doing?" And I tell them again and then they're like, "Oh, I don't have time for that." And then constantly it was like, "I don't have time for that. I don't know how to do that, I'm a bad gift giver," all the other things. And then after hearing it so many times I was like, "There's a market for that." And then I created The Appreciation Advocate, which is now where we just do it for them and now they can focus on doing the moneymaking activities of their business and I'll do the referral building part of the business. And now it's a big system that works simultaneously.Paul Green:Oh, I love it. Absolutely love that. So we'll talk about your business at the end of the interview because I want to know exactly what you do and who you do it for. But obviously our audience is B2B, so primarily after other businesses to give them lots of monthly recurring revenue. You started this in real estate, I appreciate it's been a number of years ago, but this gift-giving to get more referrals, does that work with business decision makers as well?Steve Buzogany:Yeah, it works with any kind of operation that has people in it. So basically, it doesn't matter whether you're going B2B or if you're going... It's really, my definition of business is actually human to human. So when you think about it, at the end of the day, every business is really just a large or a small collection of people. So if you're trying to get access to somebody, you're trying to get to the CEO or the CMO or whatever, just you can use gifts to get there. And if you're trying to duplicate clients or you're trying to expand your database and go from one client to another, and this is really important, have a similar client, meaning if you have A plus client you really, really like and they're obsessed with you, they bought into you the way you've bought into them and you're trying to duplicate that client, focus on those relationships versus as business owners, we all have those clients that are people we absolutely hate to deal with.And obviously don't focus your referral efforts on those because if they duplicate, you're going to get another jerk, to put it lightly. So you don't want that. So focus on the A's and the A pluses. And then, if you have time, then move to the B's and C's, but make sure the A's and the A pluses get touched first. Does that all make sense?Paul Green:What you're saying is, it does make sense, and what you're saying is that like attracts like.Steve Buzogany:Yeah, basically. So just duplicate the ones you like and don't duplicate the ones you don't. Let's keep this nice and simple.Paul Green:But why is that? I mean, I've seen that before and I'm sure many, many people listening to this right now have seen exactly the same. But why is that? Why do, let's use your word jerks, why do jerks seem to hang out with other jerks and seem to refer other jerks? Why is that the case?Steve Buzogany:I think, for me, at least for me, it's not always that they're jerks, it's just that their compatibility with and their personality versus when I was in real estate or even with Appreciation Advocate now, it's just their personality doesn't mesh with mine. And just for me, I struggle a lot with extremely, extremely, extremely nitty-gritty people. That's why I have a business partner who loves that stuff and he can talk to clients that do that kind of stuff, that they like the details and stuff, like, "Good, you're going to talk to Luke," because I'm going to deal with the people who are ready to move at 100 miles an hour right now and not ask a ton of questions and do the action right now. The people that want to ask more questions, get into the details, you're going to go with Luke and he's going to get you there. So that's that. We just do it differently that way. So it's not really a jerk thing, it's a compatibility thing.Paul Green:No, it's just different personalities, yeah. And you've probably heard of the four-color system that lots of experts used to describe different personalities. And in fact, a friend of mine, Andy Edwards, was on, I think it was the second episode of this show back in November 2019. And he was describing, it was a long time ago, but I'm sure he was describing the four different personality types. So for example, I'm a red, but I'm a high red, so I'm exactly as you described there, Steve. It's like you start telling me about your solution, and I'm like, "Right, that's it, I want it, let's do that." And as far as I'm concerned, the conversation's over. Just I'm sold, I want to buy it. And then the complete opposite of that is a deep blue, who will have 25 questions and they'll need full comprehensive answers to each of those and then a week to process it. And that's just the way that different people are.Steve Buzogany:Correct.Paul Green:Of course the hardest thing for us as marketers is understanding someone else's buying process there, the speed that they move out or the information they need.Steve Buzogany:Yes.Paul Green:So let's bring this down into practical things then. So you call this systemized relationship marketing. What exactly is that? And I love the idea of turning any kind of marketing into a system, because that means that it happens. So how do you turn relationship building into a system without just spending a ton of cash and seeming that you've wasted a ton of cash?Steve Buzogany:Basically, it's all rooted in gratitude. And gratitude is the greatest of all virtues and the parent of all others. So what happens is, the only thing is with gratitude, it is a virtue, it's not something that's solid, concrete, that you can implement. Now, gratitude just needs a little help. And what we do is we create a plan and you attach it to gratitude, and then you have now what we call relationship marketing. And then I just built a system for doing it, where we do all the gifting and things like that. But we actually have criteria too. So for relationship marketing, when we do give gifts, our gifts have to meet six criteria in order to be a good gift. We have our bad gift list that we can go through as well. We have ranking your database and how to pick what criteria makes a good person for your database. And then we actually have to be very careful in terms of the system, making sure that it's not a promotion, that it's an actual gift.Because the gift is about the receiver and the promotion would be more about the recipient. So if you're trying to win someone over in a referral manner, you want it to be about them. You want them to remember you. The number one thing about relationship marketing is making impressions and impressions that last. So as marketers we're always like, "How many impressions do I get for the number of dollars I spend?" One of our bad gifts on our list is experiences and events. Taking someone to dinner, to the Super Bowl, anything like that, you don't want to do that because that's one impression. So if you take someone to the Super Bowl, that is a $6,000 to $10,000 expense for one impression. So that's not going to last. And after two or three weeks, they're just going to forget, they're not going to forget, but you're going to move from top of mind to subconscious mind. When it comes to referrals, that's not where you want to be because you want to be top of mind as much as possible.Maybe give them something, we call it attacking the kitchen. So whether they're the CEO or the CFO or whatever they are for their business and whatever kind of operation they're running, again, consumer or business owner, doesn't matter, or even an MSP. What I would say is your main thing is they're people; they still go home, they all have families, they have spouses and they have kitchens. And when we attack the kitchen, we're filling their kitchen with things that they're going to use, like a high-quality kitchen knife from like Cutco is one of our products that we use a lot, or some wine bottle opener or that's specific and engraved with their name on it or something like that. Anything that fits. And obviously, you cater it to who the receiver is too. So those are things we focus on to get those referrals.Now, that, what we call is that's proactive referral marketing, where we call that working by referral, which is the other way of doing things is the passive way about it, which is word-of-mouth advertising where you really just hope that someone tells other people about you, and that's not really what you wanted. Hope is never a business strategy. Actually, if you're proactive about creating referrals, that's called working by referral versus word-of-mouth advertising.Paul Green:Okay. I have so many questions, so many follow-up questions. So let me plow through them. Give me short answers to these and then we want to come back onto to the subject of referral marketing. So you gave a great example there of a bad gift and a good gift. So bad gift being a one-off expensive experience, a good gift being a knife, a kitchen knife with someone's name on. Give me a couple of more examples of bad gifts and good gifts.Steve Buzogany:Yeah, so bad gifts. Some people even just give people the thank you email and it's part of their appreciation, they're sending them a thank you, which that's terrible because that's just supposed to be the last step in any kind of purchase transaction, not actually a thank you gesture. A bottle of champagne or a food item, anything that's consumable, it's just one impression and then it's gone. And then, like I said, in vendor experience, then we have flowers, edible arrangements, anything like that. They last longer than food but they're dead in a week. And again, you move from top of mind to subconscious mind and that's no good. And then last, we have swag bags, like swag, S-W-A-G, I would say those, that stands for stuff we all get because that's what SWAG stands for. So when it's stuff we all get, there's no value in it.It's just going to get trashed, given to goodwill or forgotten about. So basically, gift cards are flat out lazy gifts, especially e-gift cards. Nothing communicates more that you don't care about the relationship than that. So think of it this way, a gift is a symbol of how you see the relationship with the other person. If you give them a cheap gift or a lazy gift, you're telling that person, whether you think it or not, it's going to be received that way, that you don't really care about the relationship that much and that you're like, "Okay, well, you didn't require enough of my time and you weren't worth enough of my time for me to actually go out and put some effort into this, so here's a gift card." Or worse, an e-gift card. Think about it yourself; when was the last time you got a really bad gift? What did you think of the person who gave it to you?Paul Green:Absolutely. Well, I dumped her actually. That was a joke. Okay, next question. You mentioned the kitchen knife and engraving someone's name onto it. I can see the value in personalizing the gift for the recipient, but should you, and I suspect the answer is going to be, "No, absolutely no way," should you put your own brand, your MSP's brand on the gift as well?Steve Buzogany:No, you should never put your MSP's brand on the gift because if you're putting your own brand on something, it's now we're moving from gift to promotion. And promotional items, all right, let's put it this way, let's go back to my real estate example when I was back in real estate. If I gave someone a cutting board with this big ass Remax brand on it, would you use it or would it be more special if I had your last name engraved on it with the address on there and the date you bought the home? Which gift do you think they would probably keep or find more valuable?Paul Green:Yeah. So the marketer's eye here is twitching because of course the marketer wants to make sure that the brand's in front of people at all times. So talk us through the psychology of every time they pull out that kitchen knife and they're chopping up a tomato with it. Talk us through the psychology of how that relates back to your business.Steve Buzogany:Sure. So for me, when I first got into real estate, I was 20 years old. And I called a marketing company up that does gifting of this sort, and I wanted to work with them, but they cost way too much. And that's one of the reasons I do what I do because it's more affordable. But I called them up, and even though I didn't end up doing business with them, they sent me a Cutco pair of scissors with my last name engraved on it. This was like eight years ago. And I still have them to this day, I know exactly who gave them to me, I'm sitting here on a podcast telling you and everybody else listening about this thing because that's the kind of impression it makes. So you can use me as an example of just getting a pair of scissors. I mean, I looked up how much the scissors cost, they're $125.Paul Green:Wow.Steve Buzogany:So think about that. $125 for an impression in my mind every day for eight years.Paul Green:Yeah.Steve Buzogany:You ain't buying that market anywhere else.Paul Green:No.Steve Buzogany:Most people are like, "Oh, you know what? I'll take you out to dinner with you and your family and pay $200, $300 a night for just one dinner, get one impression," when you could just pay $125 for one impression and make your MSP think about you forever. Makes more sense, right?Paul Green:I love that, I absolutely love that. Do you know, as you were mentioning this, I remembered, and I still have this, in 1991, my recently divorced mother was on the market for boyfriends and we lived in this little village in Oxfordshire, so near Oxford in the UK. And as you can imagine, the village was a buzz. It was a small village, there weren't a lot of single people. And I remember a guy called Ron, and Ron was very smart because he tried to endear himself to my mother through her sons, so through me and my brother. And I still have the Leatherman, which is one of those multi-tool things, this goes back to '91, this is, what, 32 years ago. But he engraved it with my name and I've carried that Leatherman from house to house to house.Steve Buzogany:That's awesome.Paul Green:I know exactly where it is. It's in my tools drawer. I use it now and again, I'm quite protective over it, because it's so old I don't want it to snap or anything like that. And the second you started mentioning that and I thought, "Ah, I've got that thing." And it was from Ron. Well, apart from the guy that became my stepdad, that my mother actually married, I can't remember the many other boyfriends from '91 to '94.Steve Buzogany:Yep, see that.Paul Green:Well done, go Ron. Yeah, it didn't get in the sale in this opportunity, in this instance, but it certainly kept him front of mind. Okay, so let's establish where we are. We've got give people gifts that they will perceive are of high value for a long time, personalized to them so they become special to them. Now, you've mentioned a couple of times it's got to be a gift and not a promotional drive. It's sounds like there's a very fine line between the two.Steve Buzogany:Yeah, and I can give this to your audience, I'll send you the link for this, but basically I have this thing called The Appreciation Six-Pack, which is a PDF of six different pages that'll tell you exactly how to gift and not to gift. But one of the pages is Promotion versus Gift. And basically the promotion is a focus on the giver, the marketing professional and us always wants to put our logo on something as big as possible. The focus is on the giver, not the recipient. Gifts, the focus is on the recipient. Promotions are typically bought in bulk and they are of less quality, maybe buying a bunch of pens or a bunch of wristbands or bracelets or whatever, anything that has your logo on it versus what we were just talking about, gifts themselves are usually unique and of higher quality and then they're personalized and they have deep emotional impact.Whereas the promotions, they're usually flash-on-the-pan impact, make the impression, move on and get to the next promotion, spinning a lot of wheels, to be completely honest. And then lastly, promotions don't usually have a ton of staying power. They're usually, like we were just saying, flash-on-the-pan, because their purpose is to advertise, whereas with a gift they have staying power, they're very visible, they're kept, they're close to the heart, like you were saying with your Leatherman. And the whole purpose is not to advertise. With a gift, it's actually the purpose of a gift is to build upon or establish a connection with another person. So there's a totally different function there.Paul Green:Okay, let's finally just talk about leveraging this into referrals. So that's the goal, and many MSPs, their only marketing is referrals. It's their lifeblood. But as you alluded to earlier, it was sitting by the computer, sitting by the phone, hoping it will ring kind of referral scheme rather than actually proactively doing something. How would you suggest to an MSP that they put in place some of the things that we've talked about in this interview to actually formally drive active referrals?Steve Buzogany:Yeah, sure. So I'll give you six quick things I can tell you right now to increase some referrals. So one, you want to rank your database, that's the first thing, where you pick your best people and focus on them. So I'd say pick your top 5 to 20%, whatever fits that ranking system. And then picture of it like a target. There's the A's and A pluses in the middle. And as you move outside the target, they become less valuable and the bullseye would be your best people. So you want to rank them. Make sure the A's are with the A's and the B's with the B's and C's and the C's. Then determine a budget; how much per month do you want to spend on these top 25 people or these top 10% of people that you've now named? Determine a budget, a gifting budget for these people. And then build a "random timeline". By random, I mean don't give them gifts in December when everybody else gives them gifts, don't give them gifts on their birthday or don't give them gifts on basically whenever a gift is expected, don't give them a gift.Give them a gift when they least expect it because you want the shock and awe factor. Give it to them on March 24th or give them to it on July 18th or some kind of random day in the middle of nowhere where no one thinks anything's coming and they get this gift and it's like, "Whoa." So that's why I said build a random timeline. So pick your budget and then decide when during the year do you want to give these gifts, have the gift list, so have some go-tos. That way, when it's time to order your next round of gifts, you just go to the plan that you have already built and you put it all together and it's like, and now you just start doing it versus trying to come up with a new idea every quarter. And then, so we have this thing called The Juice. So when people gossip, it's always like, "Oh, we're talking about the juicy stuff." So what I would say is know people's juice. Whenever we talk about or have a conversation with people, they're constantly spilling their juice.You have already talked about how your mom was divorced in '91 and that the juice there was that she dated people until '94, she was remarried and she got this guy named Ron who gave you this Leatherman. You went through all this stuff that I could completely turn around and gift, make a really great experience for you. But every person's like that. No offense, you're not unique to that, that's not unique to you. Everybody's like that. So you got to know their juice. Whenever you are talking about your top MSPs, your best relationship, you got to know them and you got to get to know them. And if you don't know them, it's an excuse to call them proactively and say, "Hey, let's get to know each other a little bit more or whatever." And you can come up with creative ideas for that. And then last but not least, let's not forget the basics, guys.Write a personal note with a personal message handwritten from you to them. If you don't have a huge budget, you can just send your MSPs a thank you note, "Hey, just want to let you know I really appreciate the fact that you let us do what we do to help you out. And just wanted to make you aware of it. Thanks. You're the best, appreciate you." Personal note directly from you. That's a really great thing.Paul Green:I love it. Steve, thank you so much. I've just had, there was horrendous epiphany of what if my mother actually listens to this podcast? Because I don't think she knows it exists, but what if she's figured out how to use Spotify or Audible or, oh, that's horrendous, what a thought that is. I'm going to get a very angry text message at some point, that's for sure. Steve, you mentioned earlier that your business does this for MSPs so that they don't have to, so they can focus on building their business and you can focus on systemizing the relationship marketing. Tell us briefly a little bit about how you do that and what's the best way for us to get in touch with you.Steve Buzogany:Yeah, for sure. So basically what we do, I went through a lot of it just right now with all of those different things. So we build out your plan for you and to do the shipping and the handling and the wrapping and the personal note-writing, all that does take a ton of time. It takes hours, sometimes as much as a month depending on the order size that you're trying to do. So we just want to make sure we give you your time back so we just do it all for you, you do what you do, we'll take care of this part. We'll get you the referrals, all you got to do is call behind the gift and just be like, "Hey, I sent you a gift a couple of days ago, just wanted to make sure you got it." If they don't call you first, because the gifts we send are usually pretty good.So you usually get the call instead. But outside of that, I mean, if it's something you guys are trying to do to make a bigger impact on the MSPs, I would say just send me an email directly. We'll talk about it a little bit because everybody's got a different plan. So just send me an email at steve@appreciationadvocate.com and we can just talk about whatever your goals are and your people, and we'll take it from there.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.Dan Albaum:Hi, I'm Dan Albaum, author of The Impact Makers: Voices of Leadership. But the book I want to talk about and recommend to you is Value Merchants. And this is so important in today's highly competitive marketplace; how do solutions providers really maximize the value and the revenue from their developed solutions? And this book is great, it breaks down a whole process around the concept of customer value management, where you use facts and data to support the value proposition for your solutions. So can't recommend it more. Please go and check it out.Voiceover:Coming up next week.Paul Katzoff:Hi, I'm Paul Katzoff. We're going to be discussing how, as an MSP, you can differentiate yourselves regionally, locally, or nationally from other MSPs, win clients and grow, grow, grow.Paul Green:If you're listening to me on a podcast platform, please do subscribe. And if you're on YouTube, also hit that little bell thing as well so that you never miss an episode of the show, because on top of that interview next week we are doing a marketing AMA, an ask me anything. And I would love to get your marketing questions. You can email me, hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com. And by the way, it'll be the real me that replies to you. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week with your MSP.Voiceover:Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, Paul Greens MSP Marketing Podcast.

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Episode 184Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 Marketing your MSP is investment not cost * 06:10 Top three lessons on LinkedIn newsletters * 15:48 Using workplace psychology to help your business grow

Featured guest:Thank you to Alexander Abney-King, Psychologist and vCIO with Abney Global, for joining me to talk about how an understanding of workplace psychology can help MSPs to help their personnel communicate better, upskill and engage with new systems, manage their mental health, and work better with colleagues and clients.Alexander Abney-King is a Workplace Psychologist and vCIO with Abney Global, a digital transformation company. Alexander provides MSPs & others insights into how I.T. management affects people in organizations.

Connect with Alexander on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderabney-king/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * You can search for more LinkedIn Newsletter advice on my Learning Hub: https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/learning-hub/ * And if you haven't already, you can sign up to receive my LinkedIn Newsletter here: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/msp-marketing-6899699924800204800/ * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, Value Merchants: Demonstrating and Documenting Superior Value in Business Markets: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Value-Merchants-Demonstrating-Documenting-Superior/dp/1422103358/

Transcription:Voiceover:Fresh every Tuesday, for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Greetings, my friend and welcome back to the world's most popular podcast on MSP marketing. My name is Paul Green and this is what we've got coming up this week.Alexander Abney-King:Hello, my name is Alexander Abney-King. I'm a workplace psychologist with Abney Global and I'll be on to talk about workplace psychology and how to help your employees work better within your organization.Paul Green:And on top of that interview with Alexander, we're also going to be talking about LinkedIn newsletters. Do you use these? They're an incredibly powerful and popular way to reach prospects in your local area.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:I'm going to try a little experiment in this week's podcast. I'm going to reach out through the airwaves. You're not on radio anymore, Paul. This is through a device. So I'm going to reach out through your device using the power of magnetism and electronics and I'm going to try and change the way you think about marketing your MSP. You see, I no longer want you to think of it as a cost, I want you to think of it as an investment. And I'm going to reframe it for you with three very simple questions.So as you're listening along or watching this on YouTube, please answer these three questions in your mind. Question number one is this, what's a new client worth to your MSP in the first transaction? So that first transaction might be a lovely, big juicy project. It could be $10,000 or pounds worth of change in hardware and software and migration and all of that stuff. So how much is a new client worth to you in the first transaction? That's the first thing I want you to think about.Now, my second question is a more interesting question because it's this. What is that new client going to be worth to you over their lifetime spent with your business? So we can calculate the answer to this one and what we're going to do is calculate something called lifetime value. And you may see this written about in books and online as LTV, lifetime value. So you've got a very easy sum for lifetime value. You take their monthly recurring payment. So let's say, just to make the figures easy for Mr Didn't Do Well With His Maths GCSE here, let's say it's $1,000 month, right? That's their monthly payment to you and it's recurring.So the first thing we're going to do is going to multiply that by 12. So this new client is worth $12,000 a year to you. I'm not talking about margin deliberately because I want to keep this nice and simple. I'm talking about top line revenue or turnover as we call it here in the UK. So that client, we're taking that monthly fee, we are multiplying it by 12, then we want to multiply it by the average number of years that you keep a client. And I say average, that can actually be a hard thing to work out. Many MSPs have a client still that they had 25 years ago or their first client when they set up 10, 15 years ago. But you have to kind of look at the average.If you never, ever lose a client ever but you've been going let's say 10 years, it's a bit of a stretch to assume they're all going to stay for 10 years, but you might play on the safe side and say, I don't know, five, seven, something like that. So let's go with seven. Can I do the sums on seven? Let's go with 10. Let's do the average of 10. So we've got a client that spends $12,000 a year times 10 years. You know what the sum is for that? Even I can do that sum, it's $120,000. And we're ignoring inflationary price rises. We're ignoring new users, we're ignoring new stuff that you sell them. We are ignoring growth, just general growth and you growing their revenue. But if you look at that when you're... Well, it's going to come on to my third and most interesting question.When you look at that, that new client walks in, on day one they drop $10,000 for that project and then so long as you keep supplying the service every year they will drop another $120,000 with you. This is insane. There are very few businesses where a business like yours can pick up a client worth $120,000 just like that. And I know they don't come along very often, which is why you listen to a podcast like this. But this is literally insane. And in fact it makes up for the slow sales cycle that you have to endure in order to get a new client.Let's have a look then at question number three. It is this. Based on that lifetime value figure that you just worked out, what are you willing to spend to acquire that client? And I hope the answer to this is, "Loads, Paul, I will spend loads, I will spend $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 in order to win that brand new client because I know that I'm going to get $120,000 of revenue from them over time." Here's the thing, the MSP that focuses in on life time value and uses that as the measurement of how much we should invest, not spend, how much we should invest in marketing in order to win a client, the MSP that does that is always going to be the MSP that wins. Because if you spend that money in the right places and in the right way, you will dominate your marketplace and your competitors will not understand it. They will be thinking about, "How much do I get in that first job and how much do I get in the first few months?" None of them will be thinking about the revenue that they'll be winning in seven years time.If you can truly, truly switch your thinking about the spending that you have to make on MSP marketing and change it from being spending to an investment you have potentially there a massive, massive competitive advantage.Voiceover:Here's this week's clever idea.Paul Green:One of my better long-term habits is that of writing a LinkedIn newsletter every single Thursday. It's been my habit now for getting on for about 60 weeks or so and I know this because when you create a LinkedIn newsletter every week, it tells you how many additions you've done. So every single Thursday for around about the last say 59, 60 weeks or so, I've sat down and written a LinkedIn newsletter. Actually if I've been on vacation, I've written it in advance and one of my team has sent it out for me. As I say, this is a good habit, it's a great weekly habit. In fact, back in, I think it was about two and a half, three and a half months ago, back around about February time I hit my year where I'd published a year's worth of LinkedIn newsletters. So I made my LinkedIn newsletter that week about what I'd learned, my lessons about LinkedIn newsletters.Let me first of all tell you what LinkedIn newsletters are if you don't know, and then I'll tell you my lessons, my top three lessons from a year of publishing them. And I'm going to literally directly off one of my own LinkedIn newsletters. So LinkedIn newsletters launched must be about a year and a half, maybe longer ago. And what it is, it's your ability to send out a newsletter on a regular basis, and I'm going to suggest weekly is the best time for you to do that, you send it out on a regular basis to people who have subscribed to your LinkedIn newsletter. So you actually get to build two audiences on LinkedIn. You've got your normal people who are connected to you and then with LinkedIn newsletters you also get LinkedIn newsletter subscribers and they are a separate set of people.So I'm not going to go into the full details of how you set this up because there's a few steps. You can Google it. I think there's some details on my website as well, if you have a look on paulgreensmspmarketing.com, go to the learning hub and type in LinkedIn newsletters. But essentially you change your accounts, your LinkedIn account changes over to something called Creator Mode. So you are now a content creator and then you set up your LinkedIn newsletter for the first time.One massive warning. In fact, Simon the Producer, can we sound the klaxon please? It's the warning klaxon. When you set up your LinkedIn newsletter the first time, you cannot go back and edit it. So as I say, Google how to do this, but just be aware when you choose the name and set the picture and the logo, as of time of recording, it's very hard if impossible to go back and edit those. Certainly was the last time that I looked anyway. Although at some point you'd hope that LinkedIn would give you that choice to go back and edit your own newsletter.So you go through a one time setup process and what you do from there, once you've set that up and you've decided what your newsletter is going to be called, what the logo is and how frequently you're going to send it out, to actually send out a newsletter every week you just go and write an article in LinkedIn. So calling it a newsletter, it's not quite what it is. Because we think of a newsletter as a collection of different items coming together and that's not what it is. A LinkedIn newsletter is actually an article. Because you know when you go into LinkedIn and you can add a video or a video or a photo or you can start a post or you can start an article, it's that. It's the red button that says Start an Article.So you click on the Start an Article, you write an article. Here's what makes LinkedIn newsletter cool. When you've written it, and the formatting tools are nice and simple but powerful enough to do what you need to do, when you've written it and you press publish, not only does it circulate that on LinkedIn, it also emails your subscribers with a copy of your newsletter. So LinkedIn, which you remember is part of Microsoft and probably knows quite a bit about email deliverability, LinkedIn is emailing your content to your subscribers on your behalf. That's great. That's exactly what we want.Now the reason that LinkedIn is motivated to do this is they want to reward you for creating content because your content is going to get people back onto their platform. And once they've got people's eyes on their platform, they can make money through the sales of advertising. So it's a virtuous circle. It's like most social media networks. Well, you've heard the saying, haven't you? They've turned us into the product and this is no different. But the advantage that we get for this or you certainly have as an MSP, is that you are getting your content emailed to people. And LinkedIn's emails are much more likely to get through than your emails because of deliverability and it's just nothing but advantages with it. So that's the brief version of how you create a LinkedIn newsletter.Back in February, I wrote my top three lessons for the year, and let me tell you what they are. The first is that the more personal you are, the better engagement you get. And by the way, if you want to subscribe to my LinkedIn newsletter, there is a link on the show notes for this episode. So you can go get those off my website. So the more personal you are, the better engagement you'll get. I looked at all 52 issues and it showed me that the more personal content I put on, the better engagement I got. And that doesn't mean... I choose not to do things like sharing photos of my family.Or you know that thing that some people do, I'm not judging if you do this, but you know when you go out for a meal with a friend and they take a photo of the food? I can kind of understand why they put that on Instagram, but why would you put that on LinkedIn? Anyway, not judging. Not judging at all. But I choose not to do that kind of content as my personal content. But I will just talk about more personal things that are happening to me. So my most successful, my most popular LinkedIn newsletter was one I sent about haters. So I found a piece of direct mail from a few years ago which I'd sent out and someone had sent it back to me with abuse scrawled all over it. So I did a post about that. And that so far has been, or certainly as of February, that was my most popular post. So that was my first lesson.My second lesson is that LinkedIn newsletters really do reach new people. So you can see this is so cool, sexy even, you can see the names of the people who have subscribed to your LinkedIn newsletters. And I've got a couple of thousand subscribers and I sat and looked at them and there were lots of names of people I didn't know. So these are all MSPs. I only connect with MSPs and select vendors on my LinkedIn account and lots and lots of names of people I don't know. And that's exciting, right? Because that means I'm reaching new people that I wouldn't necessarily have reached before. So this is why you really want to do LinkedIn newsletters because you have that opportunity. People who may be connected with you but don't respond to your stuff, whereas they may see your LinkedIn newsletters or they may just be subscribed to your LinkedIn newsletters and that's how they know about your MPS.And then the final point, my final lesson was that consistency matters and you have to plan around it. So when I started my newsletter, so it would've been February, 2022, I made a mental commitment to a year. I do this with any project. When we started this podcast three and a half years ago, I made a year's mental commitment to it. And by the time the year is up, it had such momentum and such good audience and such good feedback that we've just carried on and we will keep doing this for years and years to come. And it's the same with LinkedIn newsletters. After that year, you couldn't stop me from doing it. In fact, I was surprised it was a year because it had just become a rhythmic thing for me every single Thursday to publish that. Often I write it on a Thursday, sometimes ahead. But the point is it's planned in.I have a series of recurring weekly tasks which I personally have to do. I'm the content creator in the business. I create our own marketing content. So that's a job for me on Thursdays. And so far, as I say, 60 weeks in, I haven't screwed it up yet. If you're going to do this and do a LinkedIn newsletter, either go and find a great source of regular content and I'll tell you more about that in a second, I've got an idea for you, or just have plenty of ideas. See, I might write my content on a weekly basis, but I have a ton of ideas up here in my head. It's just simply a case of finding some time for me to turn that into the actual newsletter itself. This kind of marketing has to be systematic, it has to be a system. And if you don't want to do it yourself, you find someone else to do it for you so that you make sure it happens every single week without fail.Voiceover:Paul's blatant plug.Paul Green:So here's that idea I had about making LinkedIn newsletter content easy. You just buy it from me, from my team. We have a service called the MSP Marketing Edge and we supply you with all the contents and the tools you need to create a weekly system of marketing. It's all integrated so you're driving traffic back to your website with regular content. You've got blog, you've got video, all the different tools. And one of the things that we recommend is you take our weekly blog and video and you turn them into your LinkedIn newsletter. Literally couldn't be any easier for you. And we only supply this to one MSP per area. That's how we avoid content clash with our marketing.So if you haven't done so already, just go and check to see if your area is available. Go on to mspmarketingedge.com. We have sites for the UK, US, Canada, and Australia. You can pop in your zip code or your postcode and it'll tell you if your area is available. If it is, you can start a 30-day free trial. There's no contract, cancel anytime. Now it is possible that your area may already be gone, in which case please do join the waiting list. Sometimes areas become available and when they do, there's no obligation to buy. You just get first refusal.Voiceover:The big interview.Alexander Abney-King:Hello everyone, my name is Alexander Abney-King. I'm with Abney Global and I am a workplace psychologist and VCIO.Paul Green:Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast, Alexander. We want to talk about one of the most difficult subjects today, certainly one of the most difficult subjects when it comes to running and growing your business. And that is people. And by the sound of it, if you are a workplace psychologist, you've made people partly your career. Tell us a little bit about your background and what actually is a workplace psychologist.Alexander Abney-King:It is a huge part of any company, isn't it? I'd like to say that it's a part of any company that's not a shell company because it's the only company that doesn't really have employees. So as long as you're not a shell company, this is a topic that'll be of interest to you. So a workplace psychologist is someone that specializes in psychology and the research around people within the workplace. What we're trying to understand is how people work, how to hire the best people, but also how to reduce stress within the workplace, take care of people's wellbeing and optimize productivity through people.Part of my journey of getting here has been working through IT. I started down as kind of the trenches and the help desk field, worked my way up to an IT director and then CIO level. During this time period, I did go through school and become a psychologist because I realized that IT really is a spot that really needs more focus within how we work with our people and how we use IT to leverage the abilities within the organization. A big example is communication. Whenever we change email systems, we're fundamentally changing one of the key principles of humans, of how we communicate with each other. That's a huge undertaking and something that we really need to look at more closely. So that was one of the main drivers for me that started my path into psychology.Paul Green:I'll have to ask for those watching this on YouTube, Alexander, how old are you? Because you seem very young to be at VCIO level and to be a trained psychologist as well.Alexander Abney-King:I just turned 30 a few days ago, so yeah, I am kind of younger. I skipped high school, I only went to the ninth grade and then tested out and then I completed my undergrad and graduate school in four years. So that put me ahead of the curve.Paul Green:Yeah, no, absolutely. And you don't look 30 either. You have the same curse / blessing that I had when I was 30, which was I looked like I was 20 when I was 30, and now I'm nearly 50, I look like I'm 60. So I guess eventually it catches up with you.Let's talk about psychology, and a couple of my very good friends are psychologists and producer James knows who I'm talking about here. They're both highly trained psychologists, both up to master's level at least. I think one of them might have a PhD. They're a married couple and it's fascinating to hear how they argue because when they argue, they argue in high psychology principles. They'll say things, I'm going to get the words wrong here, but they'll say things like, "I completely appreciate you feeling the need to place yourself in that part of the resilient..." It's all those kind of big words and they're essentially using psychology as a weapon against each other. But psychology is fascinating, isn't it? And appreciate that you've studied it properly. Whereas, I think many of us find how people tick to be a fascinating thing. Certainly I'm surrounded by lots of books of marketing psychology. What is it about psychology that helps you to be a better business owner and a better employer?Alexander Abney-King:Great question. So for me, wanting to start a business and understanding where we needed to go, I realized that hiring people is one of your top issues, your payroll is one of your biggest expenses. So understanding how to make those hiring decisions was one of the biggest callings for me and understanding how do we create a culture that is going to long last past me, but also be able to make the company go to where I really wanted it to go? So that was one of the main drivers coming into it.Paul Green:And how have you found it's affected your approach to technology? Because obviously you were in IT first and then you delved into how people tick. Has that helped you do more with technology? Has it helped you influence people to make more of the right decisions?Alexander Abney-King:Absolutely. So when we look at IT and technology, one of the biggest things is change management. Digital transformation is a word that we hear all the time. It's kind of an umbrella term, but we really are looking at how do we really effectively enact change? And as workplace psychologists, that's one of our biggest things. The theories that you find from other people come from workplace psychologists, having the theories, doing the research, testing it, proving it wrong or right and then moving that forward. And so understanding that has really been able to help me come into companies and understand here's what we need to do to get this organization to really enact those changes and embrace the changes that we're looking for. How do we get people to want to accept this new technology and this new change? And then be able to enact that successfully.Paul Green:So certainly within an MSP environment, having a team that are very much used to change and up for change is, I would say, probably the norm because just how often so much change changes within our world. But what are some of the problems that MSPs typically have with their teams?Alexander Abney-King:One of the big problems with any kind of IT field is one of the things that the United States government and a few other governments within Europe, one being yours within the UK understood. And that is I want you to kind of think in your mind of the typical IT worker. They typically started at home at a young age. They tinkered around with their computers and they kind of self-taught themselves. And we see the same thing with an engineering people as well. And the same thing happens. These are people who have a bit of a harder time working with others externally. What makes them so great at being able to solve the complex problems also can hinder them within working with the other people side.On your website, we see book recommendations. You have two books that talk about introverts, but actually no books that talk about extroverts. It kind of falls into that stereotype that we see of kind of the nerd. So how we approach that is really looking at how do we make it where people can upskill themselves to work better with other people, even though it might not be something that's innate in their personality at first.Paul Green:So can you give us some practical examples of the kind of thing that MSPs would do to invest in their people or to help their people help themselves?Alexander Abney-King:So keeping in mind your audience and why people are here is marketing. There's one specific training that is really good with that. The research that the government did looked at that and realized that when there's cyber attacks, because of the personality types of IT workers, they were having a harder time during the crisis mode of working with external groups. So in order to resolve that, they spent $3 million to look into the research and how they could create a training program to help engage people in those situations. So it kind of comes out of a situation of a bit like entrepreneurship and starting companies. There's about 16 different courses that you can take to be able to do that.A partner of ours, Dr. Daniel Shore, is one of the people that does this and has an entire company that is dedicated to this cybersecurity part. However, it's not just about cybersecurity, right? When we're talking about how do we get people to communicate better, to work together, household name brands such as like Procter & Gamble, have been able to purchase that type of cybersecurity training to actually help with their sales teams because it helps you be able to communicate better, to be able to empathize with your prospects better and to be able to sympathize as well. So those are really important aspects of being able to be successful salespeople as well as when you get into a cybersecurity issue, you've got these different attacks coming on. We have to work with usually the police, we have to work with the insurance companies and all those types of people that are external groups that we might not feel comfortable with, especially if we're a bit of an introvert.Paul Green:Yes, I can imagine. So what's the answer to this? What's the work around for it or how do you help your people?Alexander Abney-King:So it's really going to be about skills up training and finding the right trainings to be able to help them engage other people, start getting them to have techniques that they can employ. Just like a therapy session, how do we deal with stress, anxiety? There's different techniques that we'll teach people. And so we use these same techniques to employ, "Hey, yes, it might be a stressful situation. I'm going to have to deal with these people. I've already done this in practice. Now it's just implementing those techniques as well."Paul Green:It's really interesting that there's been a lot of attention on the wellbeing of technicians and general mental health within the MSP world over the last couple of years. And I think COVID when the lockdown first happened, which is coming up for three years, can you believe that? But certainly the awareness of mental health issues and the acceptability of talking about it and doing something about it has come on leaps and bounds in the last few years. So do you think it's now... Well, let me ask you directly. When you're working with MSPs and when you're talking to them about this, is there generally a wider acceptance that actually yes, we should be investing in helping our people in all aspects of their performance and not just giving them more technical training?Alexander Abney-King:Absolutely. I think all of us have taken a huge mental toll within COVID, right? And we are looking at taking better care of ourself. The quiet quitting movement, of course, is something that's huge and not really being willing to just take the kind of abuse that we've experienced within the job place and really looking at how do we take care of ourselves. So yes, to answer that question, MSPs are looking at how do we take care of our employees? As a lot of MSPs experience, there's a high burnout rate within the MSP sector, so how do we address that within reducing stress within the workplace and being able to help make these choices that will make the employees feel that this is a manageable workload and that they can continue to invest into the company.Paul Green:That's great. It's so good to hear that. It really is. Alexander, let's finish off with one final question for you, and that is, what's the one of, if you like, the biggest insights, one of the biggest "whoa" moments that as a psychologist, as you were growing your skills and training and learning more about how people ticked, you obviously would've looked back at situations that you'd been in when you were in IT yourself, what was one of the biggest moments that you had a realization of, "Oh, that's why that problem would happen regularly. Or that's why that type of person always acted in that kind of way."?Alexander Abney-King:It's something that's happened more recently and it's something that's increasing more and more. It's the kind of technology challenges around new upcoming hires. We're seeing that a lot of the new hires haven't really been taught on Windows. You talk about your daughter a lot on the show, and then she talks about the iPad usage and stuff. They haven't really grown up on Windows devices. And so what we're really seeing in at least larger organizations and those co-managed spaces is how to actually successfully get new hires to feel comfortable with Windows and to be able to make that transition successfully, because that's something that does take training to get people up there and running. It's a lot different from past generations who grew up using these computers and had a level of understanding.Paul Green:Yeah, very true. Very good observation. Alexander, thank you so much for being on the show. Just briefly, tell us a little bit about what you do to help businesses and how can we get in touch with you?Alexander Abney-King:Wonderful. So easiest way to get in touch to me is through our website, abneyglobal.com, and what I do is I specialize in digital transformation and workplace psychology consulting.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast. This week's recommended book.Dan Albaum:Hi, I'm Dan Albaum, author of The Impact Makers: Voices of Leadership. But the book I want to talk about and recommend to you is Value Merchants. And this is so important in today's highly competitive marketplace, how do solutions providers really maximize the value and the revenue from their developed solutions? And this book is great. It breaks down a whole process around the concept of customer value management, where you use facts and data to support the value proposition for your solutions. So can't recommend it more. Please go and check it.Voiceover:Coming up next week.Steve Buzogany:Hi, I'm Steve Buzogany from The Appreciation Advocate, and next week we're going to be talking about how most MSPs are poisoning their best relationships and doing so unintentionally and how to correct it.Paul Green:Wherever you consume this beautiful podcast, please do subscribe. And if there is one, hit the little bell notification thing so that you never miss an episode. Me personally, I subscribe to my own podcast on Spotify and I get a little alert on my phone every single Tuesday morning. I love getting that alert. So please do do that because in next week's show, on top of that interview with Steve, we're going to be talking about an active versus a passive sales approach. I bet you $5 that you have a passive sales approach in your MSP, and I'm going to tell you why it needs to become a much more active one. We have a ton of content for you as well at youtube.com/mspmarketing. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.Voiceover:Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

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Episode 183Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 Should MSPs do SEO? * 06:15 Improving your outbound call success rate with a 'pave the way' letter * 11:23 Hate selling? Then try invitations and conversations

Featured guest:Thank you to David Newman, Founder and CEO, Do It! Marketing, for joining me to talk about how by reframing how MSPs think about selling, they can secure more clients, charge premium prices, and increase sales.David Newman is a Certified Speaking Professional and member of the NSA Million Dollar Speakers Group. David is the author of the business bestsellers, “Do It! Marketing”, “Do It! Speaking and “Do It! Selling”.David helps solo consultants and business coaches grow their revenues by 50%-500% in less than 15 months. Nothing makes David happier than client results. (Well, maybe puppies – but that’s it!)Connect with David on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidjnewman/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * I discussed SEO with Aaron Nihat in Episode 117, which you can find here: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode117/ * And here are the 'Ultimate MSP Marketing Strategy' episode links to catch up on: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode165/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode166/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode167/ * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, How to Win Friends and Influence People: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/938787320X/

Transcription:Voiceover:Fresh every Tuesday, for MSPs around the world, this is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Hello, my friend, and welcome back to the podcast. This is episode 183, and here's what we've got in store for you this week.David Newman:This is David Newman. Have you ever asked yourself, man, why is it so hard to sell? Why is a sales process so gosh darn challenging? Why can't I put up my fees? Why can't I start charging more money for the amazing work that our team does? Tune in, and we'll explain all of that and unpack it for you step by step.Paul Green:And on top of that great interview with David, we're also talking about something called a "pave-the-way letter". It's a unique tool which gives you a very good excuse to pick up the phone and call your prospects.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:This could be one of the quickest segments of the podcast ever, because I have a one-word, very simple answer to the question I'm about to pose myself. Should your MSP do SEO, search engine optimization? The answer is probably no. There we go. We're done, right? I can just go home now. See you, everyone, bye. Oh, hang on, you want me to finish the podcast? Okay, I will do. No, the answer is probably no. And I know that there will be 100 SEO experts listening to this putting their head in their hands thinking, "What is he doing?" And we have had some great experts on this podcast over the years. In particular, go back to episode 117, Aaron Nihat was my guest there talking about SEO.Now, don't get me wrong, there is a massive value in SEO. And what I'm not saying is that you shouldn't do SEO because it doesn't work. SEO works if you get the right people doing the right things, and they understand your audience, and they understand why people are looking for you. So SEO as a marketing strategy, as a marketing tactic, works, but the question I posed myself was, should your MSP do SEO? And the reason that I gave a negative answer to that was probably because you may not already have some of the marketing basics in place.Because here's the thing, SEO, it feels like you're doing good, it feels like you're doing your marketing. Because you can go and find an SEO agency, and you can put some gold and silver in their palms, and you can say to them, "Please go and do your search engine optimization magic." And when you've done that, you get a little rush of adrenaline. You kind of feel like, "Yeah, I'm doing marketing. I just paid someone to go and do some marketing."And most SEO companies will very happily take your gold and silver and go and do some marketing. But if they are just focused on sending new organic traffic to your website, and your website was built in 2007, 1884, it's the same year really in website terms, if your website is slow, if it never has any new content added to it, if it's clunky, it's full of stock images, there's not a very clear call to action, and it doesn't differentiate you from your competitors, so all the basic mistakes, or many of the basic mistakes, MSPs make, the problem is, you can drive as much traffic in the world to that site as you want, but it isn't going to convert. When it comes to good, decent SEO, it's not just about traffic, it's about two things; it's about traffic and conversion. Traffic without conversion is pointless. And the reality is that if your marketing fundamentals are not in place, there is no point driving a ton of traffic to your website.So should you do SEO? If you meet these criteria, then maybe you should. Criteria number one is you have an up-to-date exciting website that's full of images and videos of real people. It's got social proof in it, so case studies, testimonials, reviews. It's got lots of new blog content that's going on there. There's a very clear call to action, and that call to action is probably booking a 15-minute Zoom call with you to talk about their business. If this is your website... Oh, and it's optimized as well, as in it's fast, it's a now, it's a 2023 website in every way. If you've got that website and you've got someone whose job it is, and that might be your job or it might be some kind of marketing system, but someone whose job it is to look at people who are coming in and capture their details, and get them to join your email list, and work your LinkedIn, and just generally you've got a ton of marketing activity happening. If this is your business right now, then, yes, you will/could/should benefit from SEO, depending on the marketplace that you are in.Obviously in the big cities, you're competing against a lot of other SEOs, so it's going to take a lot longer than if you're in a small, one-horse town in the middle of a desert, a dusty desert at that. So yes, SEO could be the right thing for you, but you've got to get your marketing fundamental in place first.My experience, and this may not be the case with you, but my experience with working with many MSPs is that 80% are simply not in a position where they would benefit from SEO right now. And it does come down to the website's just not right, there's not enough work going into LinkedIn, there's no machine. We talk a lot on this podcast about building a marketing machine, and that machine needs lots of different cogs that goes in it, things that happen on a daily basis, a weekly basis, and a monthly basis, and you keep turning the handle. That is the machine. If you haven't got that yet, please don't waste your money on SEO, but do spend the money, go and get your website fixed, get in place all the cogs of the machine that you need, and that is the right thing to do to get started.And if you're wondering at this point, what are the cogs of the machine? If you go back to our first podcast episodes of this year, the first three podcast episodes of the year covered off the ultimate MSP marketing strategy. That will tell you the pieces that you need to put in place your own marketing machine.Voiceover:Here's this week's clever idea.Paul Green:I've just checked, and those podcast episodes about the ultimate MSP marketing strategy are episodes 165, 66, and 67. And if you go back and watch those, you'll see that the strategy I recommend has three parts to it. You build multiple audiences of people to listen to you, you build a relationship with those audiences through content marketing, and then you commercialize that relationship.An important part of commercializing that relationship is having somebody to make outbound phone calls on your behalf. And we normally recommend a back-to-work mum for this. Now, just in case you've never heard me talk about this before, I'm not talking about cold calling, I'm not talking about selling on the phone. I'm talking about having a warm, friendly person picking up the phone, calling everyone you're connected to on LinkedIn, calling everyone that's in your email database, people that you've been sending content marketing to. And her job is not to sell, it's not to talk about technology or your business, it's to talk about them and their business, and essentially try to see if this is the right moment for them to have a 15-minute Zoom with you. And then you do the hard work because, on that 15-minute Zoom, you qualify them and you check to see if this is the right time to talk and turn them into a proper sales meeting.Now, that job, even though it's not cold calling and it's not Robodialing and it's not a Wolf of Wall Street style kind of telesales room, even so, it is a difficult job to do. No one really likes picking up the phone and making outbound calls to people who don't really want to talk to you. Very, very few people enjoy that. So there are a number of things that you can do just to make life easier for that person, and one of those things is called a pave-the-way letter. And it does literally that, it paves the way for their call to be more likely to get through a gatekeeper, to be more likely to be taken by the decision maker, and for actually the call to be a much more pleasant thing.So the pave-the-way letter is literally something you send to someone in the mail, you ship it to them, before you call them. And it can be a letter, literally just a letter that you've written, and I'll give you an example in a second. It could be a postcard. It could be like a magazine or something like that. You might have a case studies book put together. There's a number of different things that you can do. Our MSP Marketing Edge members, we put together something called an IT Services Buyer's Guide, which is something that they can send out to people before that call.Now, the idea of this is that you cut through the noise. You capture their attention, and you cut through the noise, because you are sending them something. And then when you phone them up, you also have a reason to phone them up. So it cuts through the noise and it also makes it easier for your telephone person. Because starting a call with, "Oh, hi, I sent something through to you in the post a few days ago. I'm just calling to check you got it," that seems like a much more natural start to a conversation, doesn't it, than just, "Oh, I'm ringing today because..." We all put the phone down or kind of reject those kind of callers.So what could you send? Well, use your imagination. What's something unexpected and exciting that you would like to get through the post? And don't immediately jump straight to thinking of merch, and branded pens, and lumpy mail, and all that sort of stuff. And it can be as simple as, in fact, this is something else that we give our MSP Marketing Edge members, we give them a four-page sales letter, which just asks the recipient to think about the customer service levels they're getting from their current IT support company. And it literally says, "Are you getting the customer service you deserve? If not, here's what some of our clients say about us." And they open this up, it's like a four-page letter, they open it up, and the two middle pages, it's just full of testimonials and reviews and quotes from clients. And then, on the back, there's a call to action. It's a very, very simple thing. It's a sales letter that doesn't look like a sales letter.You're more than welcome to pick up that format. I can't give you the files, of course, but that kind of format works very well, or even just a simple postcard asking them a question about some aspect of their technology. It almost doesn't matter what you send so long as it paves the way for your phone person and makes it easier for her to pick up the phone and say, as I said earlier, "Hey, we sent you something in the post a couple of days ago, just calling to check that you got it." Oh, and by the way, when she asks that question, a surprising number of people will say, "No, I didn't get that." Trust me, they did get it, it's just fallen out of their mind. It doesn't matter. The point is not for them to read this thing and consume it, and they certainly won't act on it. The point of this is to pave the way for your phone person to call them.Voiceover:Paul's blatant plug.Paul Green:Cancel Netflix, get rid of Amazon Prime, and you definitely don't need Disney+ or Paramount+ anymore. Because if you want to be entertained and grow your MSP at the same time, you've just got to go to youtube.com/mspmarketing.Voiceover:The big interview.David Newman:My name is David Newman. I'm the author of Do It! Selling, and I want to help you sell even if you don't like it.Paul Green:And that's what we're here for, we're here for more selling. And I don't think there's any, or virtually any, MSP I've ever met who enjoys selling, it's just something that, of course, they have to do to grow their business. Now, David, you've worked with hundreds, possibly even thousands, of business owners who need to get out and to sell to grow their business. What is it that we do as business owners that sort of hobbles ourselves? How do we hold ourselves back in selling?David Newman:Well, I think there's a huge psychotic rift between the work of the work, which most MSPs love, and that's why they started their business in the first place, and then what they call the selling part. And, of course, the moment that you're in business, no matter how wonderful you are and how much you love the technology, you realize, "Oh, wait a minute, this is not about doing the work, it's about selling the work." And then maybe you go off and you go to some sales training, you go to some seminar, and what you see there and what you hear there makes your skin crawl. You're like, "Oh, I don't want to do that. That sounds terrible. I come across like a peddler. I come across like a vendor. This is the lowest possible positioning I could possibly be in. I'm chasing business, I'm persuading, I'm convincing, it's one step away from begging." And that is thinking about sales and selling the completely wrong way.So I'm going to channel all of our MSP listeners, and I'm going to say, if you don't like the words "sales" or "selling", you may remove them from your vocabulary. That's right, you may remove them completely from your vocabulary and replace them with two new words. Because everything that I talk about, everything that I teach, everything that I write about is really about an invitation to a conversation.Let's unpack that very quickly. Generally speaking, most people are not afraid of invitations. What happens when you get an invitation? There's a party somewhere. There's either cake or bourbon or barbecue or something delicious on the other end of that invitation, and so no one is afraid of either getting an invitation or sending an invitation. Part two, conversation. Usually, we look forward to conversations. They're engaging. You learn things. Maybe you make a new friend, you connect with some cool people. Again, generally speaking, no one is afraid of a conversation, being in a conversation or being invited to a conversation.So if you literally reframe the lead generation, and prospecting, and selling, and every part of what we're going to talk about as simply sending enough invitations to the right people that you would love to have come to your party, send enough invitations to a conversation, and those conversations are easy, effortless, enjoyable, organic, dare I say fun. And then at the end of that conversation, you mutually decide, "Hey, is there a reason for us to continue talking about having a commercial relationship or a financial relationship, everything in selling becomes so much easier. But rather, we're so freaked out, "What do I say? What do I send? Do I do it on LinkedIn? Do I send cold emails? Do I batch and blast the universe? Do I start ringing the phones and do 100 cold calls a day," that we overanalyze, we over paralyze, we over overthink and over dramatize the very beginning of that sales process, which really I think is the most fun.I mean, I think the whole sales process is fun, because I'm crazy that way, but I think the initial invitation to a conversation, that should be fun. And you should be having three, four, five of these every single day. And if you're dreading that or if you're not sure how to do that, I would say that, if sales isn't fun for you, you're probably doing it the wrong way.Paul Green:Talking of fun, I have to say cake and bourbon, that sounds like exactly the kind of invitation that I'd get, or I'd like to get anyway. I'd like to get more of those kind of invitations. Right, let's give you a scenario, David. Let's imagine it all goes wrong for you. This is horrible for you, but it works out well in the end. So your career as an author is over, you're down on your luck, your income streams have all dried up, but there's this MSP who takes pity on you and says, "Hey, I heard you on that podcast with that Paul Green guy, and you sound like you know what you're doing with sales. We don't really do a lot of sales here, but we are very ambitious. Come and do our sales." So you start on next Monday morning, you're in working for that MSP, they're local to you thankfully, and you're sitting at your desk, but there's no pipeline, there's no sales systems. What would you do first? How would you get the sales going within that business?David Newman:What a fantastic question. So I would start by really deciding and defining, who is my very best client? Who's my very best prospect? Who are the people that I truly want to do business with? And one of the mantras that I talk about, Paul, in the Do It! Selling book is target what you want, and you can always take what comes.Now sadly, because MSPs are famous for hating sales and not being very good at it, because they hate it, their business model is part two of that statement, take what comes. Take what comes, take what comes. Let's see who comes in the door. Let's see who comes out of the blue. Let's see who lands in my lap. Maybe I'll get lucky, maybe I'll have a referral, and maybe someone will just start knocking on my door. But that is a completely passive and reactive way to grow your MSP business.I would say target what you want, which is the clients that you really, really, really love. And this could be demographics, this could be psychographics, this could be by personality, industry, job traits, mindset, value system, companies that really ring your bell in every possible dimension. And then once you've decided that, and once you've defined that, I would start looking around. I would start looking around, I would check the business media. I would look at your local business journal. I would look in the business section of your metro newspaper. I would look at every possible place where these folks might gather, both online and offline. So, for example, what trade publications do they read? What associations do they belong to? What conferences and meetings do they go to? And I would strategically insert myself in those places. So what that means is accidentally on purpose start running into your ideal prospects.So most of us, if we're looking at a marketing or a lead generation strategy, it's some combination of speaking or publishing or online marketing. Maybe it's ads, maybe it's organic, maybe it's content marketing, maybe it's search engine optimization. But whatever it is, we need to accidentally on purpose start bumping into our ideal client. So if you decide, for example, "Boy, oh, boy, we do our best work with folks in this industry," you can go to Google right now, put in that industry. Let's just say it's financial services just to have an example. Financial services blog, financial services community, financial Services newsletter, financial services association, financial services conference, financial services meeting, financial services magazine, because the magazines and the media companies, of course, they also have live streams, webinars, in-person meetings, all kinds of things, that is the market that I would penetrate.And I would reach out to every one of those blogs, portals, communities, groups, media companies, conferences, professional and trade associations. I would do about 15 minutes of research on each one. I would look to see when their next event or their next webinar series or their next live stream or their next blog is coming out. I would subscribe to everything that they offer that's free. I might even have a conversation with someone in the membership department to say, "Hey, I'm curious, are your members interested in this? Are your members interested in that? Because I'd like to submit an article. What would you like to see from me to be considered?"So seriously, writing, speaking, publishing, all of these things are direct contact with your target market. So I'm also a little bit biased, I think that every owner of an MSP firm should also be the thought leader and the face and the voice of their company, the face and the voice of their firm, and they should be out speaking a couple times a month. They should be publishing articles, not just in their own in-house newsletter, but in the trade publications of their target market.And we need to be the one that is going to democratize and popularize the technology that we are selling and that we are advocating and make it friendly. And speak English; we don't need more geek speak in the world of MSPs. We need business solutions to business problems because that's what the CEO's, presidents, owners, and founders that you're trying to connect with, that's what they resonate with. They do not resonate with tech talk. They do not resonate with jargon. They do not resonate with consultant speak.So my first week on the job, Paul, would literally be that, where are the blogs, portals, communities, groups, associations, conferences, centers of influence where I could start to put my content, I could start to insert myself in those conversations? And then, when you find a conversation or you find a thread that has lots and lots of comments, because it's a hot topic or it's a big headache for your target market, I would then take those folks from that platform, find their email, and there's all kinds of different cool software that you can find anyone's direct email address, and I would say, "Hey, Bob, I..." Assuming his name is Bob, "Hey, Bob, I saw your post on the XYZ forum. Is that still a challenge you're working on? I may have a couple of ideas that would be helpful for you. Worth a quick chat, question mark?"And then that's my lead generating. So I'm going from public and publishing and connecting to inviting, right? That's a perfect example of send an invitation to spark a conversation, "I saw you had this problem, I saw you had this question, I saw you had this complaint. Is that still a problem? I may have a couple of ideas that would be helpful. Worth a quick chat?" 75%, Paul, 75% of people that receive that within a week or two of posting whatever that problem was, they will still have that problem and they will still want to talk to you.Paul Green:I love this, I absolutely do. What I love particularly is you could take a marketplace with 50 MSPs, all of whom are listening to you give out this such great advice here, and still only one of them will go and do it, or one or two of them will go and do it. And so your opportunity to stand out in the marketplace is immense, absolutely huge.Right. Follow up question for you, David. It's now your second week, so you've been busy that first week getting a sales pipeline started, but now in the second week, you look at the prices and you realize with horror that this MSP hasn't put its prices up for three years. And you ask the owner, "Why haven't they put the prices up?" What's the answer he's going to give?David Newman:We're having enough trouble with the prices that we have now. People are scared of our pricing now, and you're saying it should be higher? Are you crazy?Paul Green:Yeah, exactly. Or, if we put our prices up, we'll lose all of our clients. So obviously, this is not the case. Now, it's very easy for someone like me or you to say, "This is not the case. Put your prices up," and, in fact, this is a recurring theme within this podcast. You're an expert, David, at sales and at pricing, why should the prices go up?David Newman:So here's the reality, my friends, MSPs are not a commodity. You might think because of whatever you've been doing that your M SP looks like, sounds like, acts like everybody else, but you have a beautiful opportunity to de-commoditize yourself. When I say MSPs are not a commodity, what I mean is you're not a pork belly and you're not a barrel of oil, so the laws of supply and demand do not apply to you.So time after time after time, every single time that one of our clients has said, "I'm afraid to raise my prices. I'm afraid [inaudible 00:24:31]. I can't get people at my current prices. Are you crazy? Raise my prices? I'm going to put myself out of business." And what they really say is, "I'm going to price myself out of the market." And when I hear, "I'm going to price myself out of the market," with an MSP who is not doing well financially or not doing as well as they would like to, I meaningfully pause, and I smile, and I say, "Well, yeah, you're pricing yourself out of the broke market and you're pricing yourself into the premium market."Because, my friends, I guarantee you, your MSP has lost business because you are too cheap. Now, they don't tell you that that's the reason, they go, "Oh, that's what you charge? Hmm. Well, we're going in a different direction. Thank you so much for spending time with us. Thank you for those great meetings. We've decided to hire someone else." And I almost always guarantee you, that someone else is more expensive than you. You might do better work. You might do faster work. Your work might even be more meaningful, more lasting, more bulletproof, more future-proof than the technology that you advise and recommend and install, but they went with someone more expensive because you were too cheap and it scared them away.So your pricing is baked into your positioning; your positioning is baked into your pricing. When they say, "Oh, I thought this was like the market leading firm, I thought that these folks knew what they were doing, and it's only that much. Well, we were talking to these other folks, and they're three times the price. Don't you think they're better?" Because the premium positioning automatically has a halo effect, they must be better, they must be smarter, they must be more reputable, they must get better results, they must have a higher level of client base. And when you're too small or you're too cheap, they will throw the little fish back in the water. So you can be in the little fish pond and stay in that market, or you can elevate your fee structure and, of course, also elevate the way that you do pricing.I don't think, Paul, we have time to go into package pricing versus hourly pricing, but my quick advice on this is, please, please, please, if you're still doing hourly pricing, you absolutely have to stop and move to value-based pricing and value-based fees. But if it's too cheap, it will scare away premium clients. So price yourself out of one market, price yourself into the premium market. Your positioning will improve. That halo effect will improve. The confidence and the certainty of your clients that you can get the job done... Because it's a very, very important job, right?All MSPs, they basically have the future of their client firms in the palm of their hands. They can either totally crush it and destroy it and derail it, or they can make it amazing and awesome and streamlined and propelled into a brand new future. You want to position yourself as the firm that's going to propel them into a brand new future, and you have to be reassuringly expensive.Voiceover:Just like Stella Artois. The good news is, David, that most MSPs have already moved away from hourly based pricing, and they are in that sort of package pricing and monthly recurring revenue. And having a package pricing has been a very big part of the MSP model for a number of years. It doesn't mean everyone's doing it that way, but I would say the majority are certainly there, which is good news.David Newman:I'm talking to that one guy in Montana. That one guy in Montana is still doing $125 an hour and he needs to stop.Voiceover:Yeah, yeah. In fact, there's worse than that, there's still some people doing break-fix who are listening to this. And, of course, break-fix, that's like three business models ago, but there are still people doing it. And, hey, that's a choice, I guess, but it does make it difficult to grow your business when you are stuck at that kind of level.Even good news, David, is that you have a guaranteed career for life in the world of MSPs. I suspect you don't need it, because you've done quite well for yourself with what you do. Tell us a little bit about your books, about your business, and tell us how we can get in touch with you.David Newman:Yes, yes, yes. So there's a couple of resources that might be valuable to folks listening. The first thing, of course, is the Do It! Selling book, which is specifically and explicitly for people who hate to sell. Let me repeat that, people who hate to sell. So I think all of our listeners will love it. And the shortcut to go grab that book is simply doitselling.com. My main website is Do It! Marketing, because my first book was a marketing book, so doitmarketing.com. We have a blog, we have a podcast on there, all kinds of free resources and goodies. We also have our Do It! Marketing manifesto, which is at doitmarketing.com/manifesto. So those couple of resources I think will be massively helpful to our friends listening.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.Marc Gordon:Hi, I'm Marc Gordon, the customer experience expert. One of my favorite books, and I've read so many, but there's one that keeps coming back to the top of my list, is Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. This book is an old book, but, I'll tell you, the concepts and ideas in there about communicating with people, about being authentic, listening, and really making people feel that you want them there, that they are valued as individuals, and that you're listening to them, these are qualities and traits that we should all have regardless of what profession or industry you're in. And I would say, these qualities are probably more important today than ever before.Voiceover:Coming up next week.Alexander Abney-King:Hello, my name is Alexander Abney-King, I'm a workplace psychologist with Abney Global, and I'll be on next week to talk about workplace psychology and how to help your employees work better within your organization.Paul Green:Remember, please do subscribe wherever you listen to or watch this podcast. It helps us to reach more MSPs, and it also means that you will never miss an episode. On top of that interview next week,We're going to be talking about LinkedIn newsletters. I've been doing one every week for, it must be getting on for about 65, 70 weeks, something like that, so I've gotten my lessons for you from publishing a LinkedIn newsletter every single week. We'll also talk about three simple questions that you can ask yourself which will completely change the way that you think about the cost of marketing your MSP.So don't forget, we have our YouTube channel. When you do cancel your Netflix, you'll find that at youtube.com/mspmarketing. And join me next Tuesday. Have a very profitable week in your MSP.Voiceover:Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

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Episode 182Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 Why you must give up your break/fix habit * 09:08 Three tips for emergency lead generation * 22:11 Identifying and remedying failures in B2B sales journeys

Featured guest:Thank you to Leahanne Hobson, Founder and CEO of Alinea Partners, for joining me to talk about what she has learned from mystery-shopping hundreds of MSPs.With many years’ management and field experience in the high technology and telecommunications markets, Leahanne has directed business transformations, go-to-market strategies and new business development programs for global companies of all sizes. In 2005, she founded Alinea Partners, where she and her team of global Buyers consistently assess and transform customer experiences and sales journeys for MSPs of all sizes, globally. Alinea Partners is the only B2B high tech Secret Shopper and has shopped +700 different high tech companies globally. Pre Alinea Partners, Leahanne held Executive roles in Channel Development and Marketing at Avaya, Alcatel Lucent and IBM.

Connect with Leahanne on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/leahannehobsonalineapartners/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to the MSP Marketing Action Monthly magazine: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * If you haven't already listened to the 'part 1' episode I mentioned, Episode 180, you can find it here: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode180/ * And if you enjoyed my chat with Justin as much as I did, you can catch up on his previous appearance on this podcast here: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode75/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, The Challenger Sale: How To Take Control of the Customer Conversation: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Challenger-Sale-Control-Customer-Conversation/dp/0670922854/

Transcription:Voiceover:Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world, this is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Hello, hi there, and welcome back to the show. Here's what we got in store for you this week.Leahanne Hobson:Hi, I'm Leahanne Hobson, CEO and Founder of Alinea Partners, and I will be on the show to talk to you about how many MSPs don't pick up the phone and lose prospects.Paul Green:And on top of that interview with Leahanne, we're also going to be talking about emergency lead gen. If you desperately need more leads in your business in the next seven days, I've got three emergency lead gen options for you.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Look, there's no easy way of getting into this one, so I'm just going to jump straight into it. If you're still doing any kind of break/fix work within your MSP, then you've got to get yourself off this drug. It is a drug, it's a habit. Break/fix work is a very unhealthy habit and we need to clear it out of your system.Let me go back a couple of steps.I often talk to MSPs, I do interviews, I do Zoom calls, it's great to just talk to new people. And quite often, you'll find people who have transitioned or are in the process of transitioning from break/fix over to fully managed services. And if you've done this yourself, if you've finished your transition and you're fully in the managed service space, I think you'd be kind of surprised just how many people are still going through that.I've spoken, just in the last couple of weeks actually, I've spoken to two MSPs. I say MSPs because they're really still break/fix shops, but they're very keen to move into managed services, they know that in May 2023, that's where the game is at and has been for some time. So they're kind of doing that transition. But there are a surprising number of people at all different levels of transition over to full 100% managed services.And I think one of the things that some people get stuck on, and maybe you did if you were in this situation, is they get stuck on a point where they've got some people paying them monthly recurring revenue for a proper managed service, and in order to make ends meet, they're still taking on break/fix work. In fact, as far as they're concerned, they still have 40, 50, 60, 70 clients who are regular clients, they're just not managed service clients. So they're clients who turn up when something is broken.Now, I think we can all agree, and remember, I'm not a tech, but I understand your business model very well, I think we can all agree that break/fix isn't good for you from a cashflow point of view, it's not good for... I know it can be good from a profits point of view because you can charge a good hourly rate, but in terms of reliable sources of income, it's not great and it's certainly not great for you in terms of doing a proactive job. There's no encouragement for you there to look after a client proactively to do work that you're probably not going to get paid for. So from the client's point of view, they think they're getting a great deal, but you and I know genuinely if they are paying you a fixed amount a month on a recurring basis for you to manage services for them, there's a lot more proactive work that you can be doing. And overall, they are going to be safer, they're going to be better supported, they're going to have fewer interruptions to their precious productivity.So we know that. But we also know that break/fix is a drug. It is a drug because the reality is it's very, very hard to move a break/fix client into being a managed services client. The longer that they have been with you on a break/fix basis, I think the harder it is to actually move them over into being that managed services client. And I think this is why people get stuck with break/fix because actually, if it was as simple as taking 20 or 30 of your break/fix clients, putting them on a contract and that's it, bang, you're an MSP, then well, everyone would do that. But actually, it's not as simple as that. Is it? You have to find new clients. It's like as you are bringing on board new managed service clients, you've got to lose the break/fix clients at the same time. And that is tough. Lots of people find that tough.I think the only way that you can do this is almost a kind of a process of burning your bridges and saying, "Right, no more. I'm not going to go back." You know, I've been there in my business, my first business, which I started in 2005. My first year, well, I was going out and winning PR clients because that's what I started out doing, public relations back in 2005. I was going out and winning clients and I had a phone call from my employer that I'd left just a few months before saying, "Would you come and do some training for us? Would you come and do some minor-level consulting?"And initially I was very, very happy to do that. That was my PR equivalent of break/fix work, so it was easy work. I didn't have to think about it. It paid relatively well and all I had to do was go back and turn up at some offices and do it. And in the first few months that was very welcome, but then as time went on and my old employer was asking me to do more and more and more training, it actually started to become a bit of a burden and it was getting in the way of me building my business.So to put this in your terms, it would be imagine if you were doing so much break/fix work and you were glad of the money to do it, but it was stopping you from going out and finding proper managed service clients. That's the equivalent of what was happening.So I got to a point eventually where I drew a line in the sand and I said to my previous employer, "Thank you so much for all the work. I really appreciate it. However, as of this date," and I think I gave myself like three months, I said, "as of this date, I won't be accepting any more work from you. It's not you, it's me." I know that's what girlfriends always seem to say, but in this case, it was actually the truth. It's not you, it's me. And I said to them, "I'll be honest, while I'm working for you and enjoying the money and the work from you, I'm not building a proper business." And my goal was to build a business, not just to sort of build a freelance income as it were. And they were great with that because I've given them three months' notice and that was it.So maybe there's a break/fix equivalent that you could do in your business. Maybe you say to your break/fix clients, "Hey, as of this date, we will not be supporting you on a break/fix basis." And you don't need to explain to them what that is because that's jargon to them, but you might say to them, "We are not going to work with you on a 'You break it, we fix it' basis. From this date forward, we are only working with our clients who are under contract with us because of all these reasons," and you talk about the proactivity and the protection and how you sleep better at night knowing you're looking after someone properly, whereas of course, your break/fix clients are at risk, always at risk because they're probably not protected properly.Now, you wouldn't necessarily do this with all of your clients in one go, but you may choose. Let's say you've got 20 or 30 break/fix clients. You might choose two or three a month every month for the next year. So you are slowly winding down the amount of break/fix clients you have. Crucially at this time, you don't take on any new break/fix work. So anyone that comes to you the first time and asks you to fix something, you say no. You say, "I'm sorry. We only deal with people proactively." So this is you slowly, over a 12-month period, drawing a line in the sand.Now, maybe, just maybe, some of those people will choose to come on board with you on a managed basis because they don't want to lose you. Some of them will never put their hands in their pockets and pay for it because, and this is frustrating, they will with someone else, but they won't with you. I think sometimes people get stuck in pigeon holes in the brain. You are the break/fix guys and someone else is the managed service people and they will spend that extra money with them. But you never know. If you were to ask each of your clients slowly over a period of time and say to them, "This is the deadline. We'll stop working with you on this date. It's not you, it's us. We're focused very much on protecting our clients, which has to be done using this business model," some of them may just come over to you.Now if they don't, and this is your backup plan, is by setting this deadline and slowly off-boarding your break/fix clients, you're sending a very keen message to yourself. That message is you've got to get out there and you've got to go and find yourself some new managed service clients because they are the future. The fact you're not taking on any more break/fix work and you're slowly firing your break/fix clients, this is a good thing. Not if you do it all in one go. That's how you destroy the business. But if you do it slowly over a period of time, what happens is things change in your brain and things change in your heart and suddenly, you start to put extra effort in to all the things we talk about on this podcast of how you can go out and win yourself new clients.So if you are there with that break/fix stuff, go on, give it a go. I know it seems scary, but it is a drug. Break/fix is a drug and it's time to wean yourself off it and stay focused on a much more healthy future with managed service clients.Voiceover:Here's this week's clever idea.Paul Green:There comes a point in many businesses where we need to generate leads in an emergency. Maybe it's because you're doing something like we were just talking about, transitioning over from break/fix, or maybe you're just at a point where your costs have gone up or you're in a bit of a cashflow hole and you need new leads.Now, one of the worst things about owning an MSP is that there is no real super fast lead generation because the sales cycle is so long when you're trying to find new clients, and you're trying to get in front of people on the day, the exact day that they are ready, willing and able to pick a new MSP. And even at that point, it can take months until they're actually taking money off them. So it's a very, very long game. And I normally try and shy away from these kinds of silver bullets, fast and quick and dirty actions, but I do understand that there are moments where you just need more leads.So I'm going to give you, right now, three, if you like, emergency lead gen options. My preference would be that you put in place a lot of the things that we've talked about on this podcast, especially if you go back to the beginning of this year. I know we're going back four months now, but the first three podcasts of 2023, I laid out for you the ultimate marketing strategy for MSPs. That's a great place to start on this podcast and that's the long-term lead gen strategy. I'd always much prefer you focused on the long term, but if you need leads in an emergency, here's three things that you can do. And I'm going to be honest with you, they are going to get more difficult as I go through them.You see, the first one is relatively easy. It's about getting on LinkedIn, so LinkedIn, the most beautiful, beautiful social media platform for MSPs. And if you can find 60 minutes a day to work LinkedIn, you can work it with the four Cs. You may have heard me talk before about the three Cs. Well we added a fourth one in. The four Cs, let's see if I can remember them all off the top of my head. We've got connect. I'll explain them in a second. We've got connect, we've got content, we've got comment, and we've got contact. Surprisingly hard to remember those four words because they're all very similar.So contact... No, hang on. What was the first one? It was connect. Every day, trying to connect to seven, eight new people. Go and find someone who already has the connections, the people that you most want to do business with, connect to them and then connect to their connections. So essentially there might be like an uber networker in your town who's connected to thousands of business owners and managers. Connect to them and then just go and connect to their connections. Simple as that. So connect is the first C.The second C is content. You post a piece of content every single day, five days a week. This is about being out there. It's about having a presence. It's about being active. Getting marketing right is partly a numbers game and it's partly a game of timing. People only buy when they're ready to buy. This is more true in managed services than anything else. So you need to have a presence on LinkedIn seven days a week. And if you don't have the ability to generate your own content, then don't worry if you do because very few MSPs enjoy generating their own content, then you just go and find a user service like my MSP Marketing Edge or there are many other services out there that will supply you with social media content. It's never going to be as good as your own content, this kind of canned content, but it's better than nothing.So we've got connect, we've got content, then we've got comment. That's my new one that I've just inserted in the last few months. Comment is where you go and find other people's posts and you add a relevant comment on it. So let's say, for example, you're looking in your timeline, someone's written something and there's been some comments underneath and you think, "Actually, I've got something to add there," you would add in a comment. So you are commenting on other people's posts and this is putting you and your profile in front of strangers, hopefully relevant strangers to you. Now, it's not going to get them to all run out and go to your website and phone you up and buy from you, but it's all part of building your audience and building a relationship with your audience.So we've had connect, we've got content, we've got comment, and then the final one is to contact. And that's about messaging people on LinkedIn because unlike email, we've got 100% deliverability on LinkedIn messaging. We can't guarantee they're going to read them and we certainly can't guarantee they're going to respond, but at least we can send a message to them. And you might look at it and say, "Right. Three, four, five people a day. What's a value-add message that I could send to them?"So that's your first sort of emergency lead gen and that might not sound like an emergency, but if you put in 60 to 90 minutes a day every day on LinkedIn following those four Cs, you're just creating this burst of activity. And what will happen relatively quickly, I'm not going to give you timescales, but fairly quickly, you will start to get up some big momentum and the momentum on LinkedIn, especially as you're working the messaging... In fact, if you can do more, if you could do an hour in the morning and then do an hour at lunch and do half an hour at the end of the day, this is not mucking about on social media. This is using social media as a tool to build your audience and to build a relationship with the audience. And what we're looking for are those people in your audience that, as I said, they've got to that point where they're fed up with their incumbent MSP and they're almost ready, willing and able to have a conversation with someone else. Well, let's get them having a conversation with you.So that's the first activity. That's the easiest to do because you can do that at a keyboard, you can do that absolutely anywhere.The second activity must be done during the day and requires you to step way out of your comfort zone. And the second activity is picking up the phone and calling people.Now, if you do go back to my early January episodes where we talk about the ultimate MSP marketing strategy, you'll remember, or if you haven't heard of it before, I have a three-step strategy for your marketing. It's to build multiple audiences of people to listen to, such as on LinkedIn and your email newsletter. Then you build a relationship with them, which is done through content marketing. And the final part is to commercialize that relationship. And for that, I recommend that you get someone to make outbound phone calls for you. So it's not selling, it's someone phoning up your audiences and ultimately, they're trying to book a 15-minute Zoom with you.Now, if you are desperate for leads, essentially rather than hiring someone else to do this, you do this yourself. So we're not talking about cold calling, we're not talking about making horrible sales calls. Yes, there is an element of pain to this. I don't like picking up the phone and calling people and I'm sure you don't either. But you know what? If I was desperate for leads and revenue in the business, I would do it. And I have done it myself many, many times in the past. You pick up the phone, you phone 10 or 20 or 30 people a day, you might get through to one or two or three of them, maybe more, and then you just have a conversation about their favorite subject. And their favorite subject, of course, is themselves and their business.So you don't talk about you at all. That's why this isn't selling. This is just connecting someone saying, "Oh hi. Yeah, we're connected on LinkedIn. I'm just phoning around to a few people I'm connected with. I'm just wondering, how is business for you guys right now? Here we are in May. How is it May already? This year's gone so quickly. Has the year been good to you? With the economy the way it is, has that affected you in a good way, a bad way?"And then you could just jump straight into, "So I'll be honest, we do an IT support service. Do you have an IT support partner at the moment? You do? You don't need to tell me who it is, but just on a scale of one to 10, where one is awful and 10 is world-class, how would you rank them right now?" And if they give you a score of eight, nine or 10, they're happy. If it's seven or below, then there's an opportunity there and you can probe and you can say, "Well, that's actually quite a low score. Well, can you give me an example of something they've done wrong that's made you give them that low score?" That, by the way, is called a leading question. "Can you give me an example of something they've done wrong?" Very, very leading, that is, but it has its use, that kind of question.And the goal here is to find people again who are at that point where they're either highly dissatisfied or on their way to being dissatisfied enough with their incumbent MSP that they will do something about it. So all we're doing with the phoning is we're just trying to get the timing right because you can email 1,000 people, you can contact 1,000 people on LinkedIn, but that won't... And by the way, and those are very valuable activities, they pave the way for what we're trying to do here, but nothing is as fruitful as picking up the phone and phoning people. It's a really critical part of your overall marketing mix.So that's the second emergency lead gen thing. And if you're not comfortable with that, maybe you'll be more comfortable with the third one, although it does involve you leaving the house or leaving the office, and that is to go networking. You literally get out there and you find yourself as many networking meetings as you can go to.Now, if you set yourself a, I don't know, a geographical area that you'd be willing to network in. When I was starting my first business in 2005, I would travel. I think the most I traveled was like 100, 120 miles, which was a couple of hours driving. And I actually won some clients from those cities that I went to a long way away. So I was trying to get out and go networking at least once a day, and that did involve having to get out of the area. And it was great to win those clients until I realized that I had to drive out there to service them. So I had a couple of clients where I had to drive a couple of hours just to service them, which was fine. It worked out okay. You, of course, don't have quite so much servicing difficulty because after the sales and the setup, it's all remote work. The vast majority of it is until you come to do some kind of strategic review with them.So you may look within a couple of hours, where can you go networking? What are the networking events? What are the BNI chapters? Does everyone have an IT person? Because BNI will only allow one type of business per chapter. Could you join a local BNI? Could you sub with BNI? You make a commitment to going every single week, and if you can't go, you have to send someone in your place and they're called a substitute. Could you be a professional substitute working your way around the BNI chapters in your town? What else? What other networking meetings are there? If you're in a niche, a vertical, where do your vertical companies meet? Where do they hang out?Networking is unpleasant for many people. I didn't really enjoy it. I did it for a number of years and it was okay. It can be a great way though to meet people. And again, just like the phone, it shortcuts the relationship building and it shortcuts the finding people who are nearly ready, willing and able to talk to you and nearly ready, willing and able to buy.The thing with networking, as with all of this, is as much as it's a bit of a shortcut, there's still an amount of relationship building that has to be done. Don't expect to walk into a networking meeting for the first time ever today, meet someone and get a good referral from them that turns into a six-figure sum tomorrow. It doesn't quite work that fast, but it will. Well, going and physically meeting people and having an overpriced unhealthy breakfast with them is way, way more productive than just doing a bit of LinkedIn.So LinkedIn's a great thing to do, but it's digital. Everything that's digital is just slow and it's a lot of noise. Calling someone cuts through the noise a hell of a lot more, but actually physically meeting someone cuts through the noise like you wouldn't believe. You've got their full attention for a good five to 10 minutes talking to them, shaking their hand, swapping business cards, having a coffee with them or eating a bacon sandwich or whatever it is. And yes, that's the most distressing thing you might have to do for the day, but ultimately, it's the thing that might bring in some emergency leads.And if you really do need some emergency leads, there are three things there that you can try.Voiceover:Paul's blatant plug.Paul Green:We have talked about some difficult subjects in this week's podcast and if you would like extra support, there is a group that you can join where you can get support directly from me and up to 2,000 other MSPs. It's a Facebook group, it's the one that I run. It's called the MSP Marketing Facebook Group, and it's completely free for you to join, but only if you are an MSP. We don't allow vendors in. So I'm there every day discussing how to market your MSP, how to grow your business, how to make your life easier. Those are all fun subjects that we talk about and it is a great place for you and me to interact.So if you're not already a member of that Facebook group, grab your phone, go onto the Facebook app, type in MSP marketing at the top. Now, just be aware that we have a page and we have a group and it's the group that you want to join. You go in, you answer a few basic questions, and one of my team will let you in within around about 24 hours. It's the MSP Marketing Facebook Group and it is the perfect free resource to help you while you are growing your business.Voiceover:The big interview.Leahanne Hobson:Hi, I'm Leahanne Hobson, CEO and Founder of Alinea Partners, and I am a professional high-tech B2B shopper.Paul Green:And we got chatting on LinkedIn several months ago, and you hooked me into getting you onto this podcast by saying that you had essentially mystery shopped 700 MSPs, which means that you understand what it's like to be a prospect and to try to buy from lots and lots of different MSPs.Now, that's just mind-blowing and I know that some of the things you're going to tell us today will blow minds because there are so many MSPs listening to this who are making it far too hard to buy from them, and it's not as if people are queuing up day and night to buy from an MSP in the first place.Before we get onto that, tell us a little bit about your background. So what makes you a professional shopper?Leahanne Hobson:So as you can hear, I started in the States doing high-tech PR a number of years ago. I then moved over to Europe and worked for IBM, learned all about buying and selling PCs, and then I went to Lucent Technologies and learned about buying and selling from telcos and all about the channel. And I spun with Avaya and learned about moving from selling hardware into selling software.And when I left the company, one of the things that I decided to do is establish that while we can do sales enablement, channel development and strategic marketing, we had some pretty strong background in trying to purchase hardware and software from different companies. And the reason that we had this was because of a PR gag. We decided that we wanted to do a Christmas card for Lucent Technologies, and so I had my team secret shop 50 different Lucent partners and listened to their music on hold and rate it. So it was a bit of a gag, but we learned a lot about who had music on hold, who was running ads, which was very annoying, and who had nothing, and also who picked up the phone.So we took that learning, and actually Microsoft, which is a client of ours since 2006, asked us if we could prove or deny what McKinsey and Bain were saying about if you improve customer experience, can you move the needle on revenue? And I thought, well, our tagline is a different train of thought. Let's do things differently. So we suggested why don't we actually try to buy hardware, software, and services from these companies, put together a methodology and rate how they do?So we started with 40 in Europe as the pilot and that grew to 700 today of different companies, and also we do this for other clients.Paul Green:I love it. And I love how you just dropped in there, the 17-year relationship with Microsoft. That was a sly little one. Get that one in there.So when you are acting as a mystery buyer, talk us through the process. So let's say you are looking at an MSP, it doesn't matter where they are, but you're looking at an MSP. Your methodology, without going into all of the detail and giving away your secret source, I assume it starts with looking at their websites, looking at what messages they're putting out there and then actually leads on to getting in touch with them.Leahanne Hobson:Yes. Well, first what we do is we put together an ideal persona. So for example, a lot of the MSPs are focusing on the S&B market. And we don't ever try to be something we're not, so we don't pretend to be a bank, which has its own vocabulary and their own websites, et cetera, but we do shop as a real company. So if they're savvy about using Google or LinkedIn, then they'll find us, or at least the company that we shop as.So we sit down and we say, "Okay, who and what? What are the drivers? What would they be looking for? What's the deal size that this would represent? That way, at the end of the experience, we can say, 'It was this add to your revenue,' or 'this loss.'"And then we brief our buyers and we have buyers available who can do this in multiple languages because we shop all over the world and we go through a process, so we start with discovery. Ah-huh, I want to buy a PC. Who might sell it? So we look at social media, just as you would or anyone else would who was looking to buy something. We look at websites and we then get to a website or several websites that we actually like. We then look at whether or not they function and we have quite a few nightmares regarding that, and also regarding collection of data, privacy settings, 404 alerts that go off, which scare our buyers away completely before we even had a chance to get to the website. We also look at the content and is it relevant for the buyer that we are pretending to be? Does it answer our questions? Does it move us farther into the buying process? Is it engaging and authentic?We then look at the construct of the offer. How is it put together? Does it appear from our buyer's eyes that there's an upsell? Does it appear as though there are good packaging with managed services? Because we all know we're not making money today on just selling hardware and services. The margin's too small. And so we go through that full process on the website.When we're then ready and interested in this company and want to engage with them and ask a few more questions, we go to the sales process, and we take a look at all of the possible sales engagement channels. And from my experience, this is going to be chat, email, web forms. Believe it or not, in Latin America, they still use fax. We don't test fax though. And then telephone. So if we're buying a walkie-talkie from Motorola Solutions partners, then maybe we have one call. If we're buying a printer with some software around that, then there could be two or three calls. And if we're buying Azure from Microsoft, then it could be three or four calls depending on whether it's just moving to the cloud or they're actually looking at building out a consultancy practice on data.Once we get through that process, we then look at either 100% purchasing on the web if that's possible, if they have a marketplace, or getting a proposal. And actually, two-thirds of the time when we go and ask for a proposal, we don't get one. So that's a pretty significant amount of lost opportunity in the market out there and lots of room for the competition. If it's easy to purchase and it doesn't mean that a CEO or sales director is going to have to take a big amount of money off of their PnL, we actually purchase. So we buy Microsoft 365, and then look at what is the onboarding process? What is the welcoming process? Telcos are notoriously confusing. You get three or four different emails, some from Microsoft, some from the telco, and you don't know how to actually sign up and start downloading and provisioning.Then we look at aftercare and customer support. So if we have any problems, we usually come up with a couple of things, we then look at customer support, not only the phone call but the assets that the company has. So have they built up a community center? Do they have a frequently asked question? Can we get through if we want to get through on the telephone?And that's the process. We package it up with recommendations for improvement. We let the shopped company know this is the benchmark for your type of business model. So whether you're a high-volume seller like a GoDaddy or a Telco or SoftwareOne, I only mention companies that have approved it, or if you're more of a value MSP, a value reseller, then we can look at that business model and benchmark you against those in our group that fit. We'll tell you where you perform better and where you're highly competitive and you should keep doing those things. And then we also tell you where things were a little bit confusing or could have been a little smoother or where we know that you're losing prospects, and that's what we call our prospect abandonment rate. So these are prospects that you've lost before they even hit the CRM system.Paul Green:And this is such valuable intel because it's really hard for any business owner to stand back and not... I think once you know everything about the business, to then experience the way that the business markets and how you sell, it's very difficult to do as a business owner because you already know everything.Now Leahanne, let's focus in just on MSPs because I know you work across the whole technology spectrum as it were. You and I were having a conversation just before this interview and I was saying to you that we have lots of members of our MSP Marketing Edge service in the US and it's not an infrequent thing for a member of my team to phone an MSP in the US during their opening hours. We're not talking about, because I appreciate we're in a different country, but not talking about extreme hours, but during normal working hours, and more often than not, an MSP that we call in the US will not answer the phone. There's no answer phone, which in itself is bad, but no one ever answers the phone. And when we were talking about this, you were saying that was your finding as well.Can you give us the headline horrors, the things that far too many MSPs are doing wrong, which is literally creating friction and killing sales?Leahanne Hobson:Yeah, so we go through that process, as you say. First we find out that there's no phone number on the website. Very common mistake. People think they're all Amazon and therefore don't have to put any contact details.Once we get in there, and I would say the majority of companies have one sales channel, and remember I mentioned chat, email, web forms and telephone, one of them doesn't work in approximately seven out of 10 times. And so we send in an email request and we never get a response, or even a web form and we don't get a response. Now the thing to think about with that is we don't ever get a response. So we may shop a company, deliver a report in three or four weeks, and then never hear from that company again, so it's a systematic problem within the industry.When it comes to telephone, it's quite often that we sit on hold, we can't get through, we then get through to a receptionist who bounces us to another department. Quite often it's the wrong department, and depending on where you are in the world between US, you were talking about that, and maybe Germany, you will get different levels of aggression when you bounce and say, "Listen, I was transferred here. Can you transfer me to the right department, if you're the wrong department?" People will actually be actively aggressive if you bother them during the day to talk about wanting to buy something from them.In the beginning, we had the experience that we would try to contact some companies as many times until we get through to a correct salesperson, and we stopped that because we were hitting numbers like 9, 16, 27-plus. And so now I have my buyers just try three times with each channel.Paul Green:Because of course that's more realistic. Normal buyers won't contact someone nine, 15, however many times. They will try once and if they don't hear anything, they'll move on to someone else.If you could wave a magic wand, Leahanne, and make all MSPs do one thing better as a result of all of your research, what would that one thing be?Leahanne Hobson:Pick up the phone. And sorry, can I have two? Please get a proposal out. Two-thirds of the times, we never get a proposal and that's just such a lost opportunity because it's a profit hit. If you put your website together, get me to call you, have a conversation with me or one of our buyers and then never follow up and send the proposal, then that's a profit hit.Paul Green:Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to turn your two down into one. I'm going to turn it out into communication, better communication, pick up the phone, answer the emails, send out the proposals. Essentially, I think the business owner needs to systemize contact with prospects. They probably have systemized contact with their existing clients, but there's no system for, if someone sends an email and the boss is away for a day, what happens to that email? Who picks it up? Who responds to it?It shocks me that in 2023, any business would have a position where their phone isn't answered. You'd think every phone system in the world, after three or four unanswered rings, it can move over to a call answering service. I thought this stuff was standard, but by the sound of it, it clearly isn't.Leahanne Hobson:And it's what we're selling, so we should be experts in this.We hear quite often that it is the technology because there are patchwork bespoke systems that are put together to represent the organization. We get PBX's that are too old. If you're going to rely on hardware and your PBX is over five years old, then the chances are you're going to miss calls, so either get a new PBX or go to the cloud. There are lots of really good solutions out there. You're probably selling some of them.We get people who are overwhelmed. There's a lot of resourcing issues and so the phone keeps ringing and I can only answer so many calls. Well, somebody needs to look strategically at that and make sure that the right processes are set up, but also, that the right workload is set up within the organization so that the sales people can respond and react as needed and as desired by the company.Paul Green:Yeah. But I think the technology one that you mentioned before, I think that's an excuse, blaming your technology for a lack of response. To me, that means that it's just not a priority for the business owner and so it hasn't become a priority for the business. The reality is most MSPs have so few leads coming in, so few inquiries that they should be on top of every single one the second they come in. Because if someone phones you now or submits a web form now or live chats you now, the opportunity is now, and unfortunately these days, fast very much beat slow, unlike the old days when it used to be that big beat small. That's all gone now. It's absolutely about fast beating slow.Okay, Leahanne, thank you so much for this. Let's wrap this up here because I figure we could keep talking about this and it would just get worse and worse and worse.This does, by the way, this does present a massive opportunity for one or two MSPs in every single area. I've said this about all marketing right from the start, which is if you can get a little bit better than your competitors in your marketing, in your customer service, in the way that you do business, that will give you a massive advantage over your competitors because often, a lot of your competitors just aren't doing very well. And I think that's quite an exciting thing, and let's finish the interview on that positive note.Leahanne, just briefly tell us a little bit what you would do for MSPs if they were to contact you and what's the best way to get in touch?Leahanne Hobson:Yeah, sure. You can contact me on LinkedIn or through my email address. You could then have a conversation, set up your own persona, your own deal size, and identify whether you want to be shopped directly or if you actually have other partners that you work with and you want to shop them. We can do that as well. And the discussion takes usually about 30, 40 minutes. We then go away and we shop and we bring back a report within two to four weeks, depending on how many shopping experiences we're going through at the time.To land the results. We do an hour, hour-and-a-half call where we go through the summary and all of the specific results, and give you specific recommendations for how you can improve. Because we all know we're moving really fast, and if we can save a CEO, a sales director, marketing manager time by saying, "Don't focus here. This works. Focus here instead and fix that," then we'll have done our job.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.Darren Strong:Hi, I'm Darren Strong from scaleablemsp.co.uk. The book I recommend is The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon. It's all about challenging the prospect of a sale to think about something differently, maybe something about the business that they don't know, to challenge them to think that you are the person they need to talk to.Voiceover:Coming up next week.David Newman:This is David Newman. Have you ever asked yourself, man, why is it so hard to sell? Why is a sales process so gosh darn challenging? Why can't I put up my fees? Why can't I start charging more money for the amazing work that our team does? Tune in and we'll explain all of that and unpack it for you step by step.Paul Green:If you're watching this on YouTube, please hit the subscribe button below and the little bell notification thing so that you never miss an episode. And in fact, whichever podcast platform you are listening to this on, you can do exactly the same. Please subscribe so you never miss an episode.On top of that interview next week, we're also going to be looking at whether or not your MSP should be doing SEO, and picking up from what we were talking about today about phoning people, I'm going to introduce you to the concept of a pave-the-way letter. It's something that makes phoning prospects so much easier.We've got tons more content for you on our YouTube channel. It's youtube.com/mspmarketing, and join me next Tuesday. Have a very profitable week in your MSP.Voiceover:Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation

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Episode 181Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 Working out your hourly profit per client * 09:39 Why your clients aren't terrified of cyber crime (part 2) * 23:34 Growing your MSP business via acquisitions

Featured guest:Thank you to Justin Esgar, CEO of Virtua Consulting Group, for joining me to talk about growing his business by acquisition.Justin Esgar runs Virtua Computers, one of the top-ranked Apple-focused tech consultancies in the country. With 20 years of tech industry experience under his belt, Justin helps small-mid-sized businesses and non-profits analyze, design and install technology solutions to help their operations run more efficiently and protect them from disruptive and (sometimes catastrophic) scams and crises.

Connect with Justin on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinesgar/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to the MSP Marketing Action Monthly magazine: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * If you haven't already listened to the 'part 1' episode I mentioned, Episode 180, you can find it here: https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode180/ * And if you enjoyed my chat with Justin as much as I did, you can catch up on his previous appearance on this podcast here: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode75/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, The Alchemist: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alchemist-Fable-About-Following-Dream/dp/0722532938/

Transcription:Voiceover:Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. It's around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Hello, greetings, and welcome to episode 181. Here's what we got in store for you this week.Justin Esgar:What's up everybody? I'm Justin Esgar from the Virtua Consulting Group and we talk about how a small business like yours can acquire other MSPs.Paul Green:So on top of that interview with Justin, we are finishing off something we started in last week's show; your clients aren't terrified of cybercrime. Why is that? Let's find out and what you can do about it.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:A couple of weeks ago I sat down with my accountant, my CPA, for our annual catch up and just looking at things. And we always end up talking about everything but the business and definitely anything but the figures. In fact, we spent more of that time talking about my accountant's business than we did my business, which might seem weird to you, but I've worked with my accountant for 15 years. We've been literally through the highs and lows together. He helped me to sell my last business back in 2016, and he's just generally one of those guys that looks after you. When you're in his gang, he looks after you. And I always look forward to sitting down with him, talking about business and what's going on. And it's really interesting because he has recently been through a process of firing some of his bottom clients. So we're talking the bottom 20% of the bottom 20% of his client list. And what triggered that was something which you'd think as an accountant he would be on top of a regular basis, but he hadn't done it for many years.It's something that I should be doing, you should be doing, in fact, everyone should be doing this. It is sitting down and working out what profit you are making per hour on each of your clients. Let me say that again so it's completely clear. You sit down and you figure out how much profit per hour am I making for each of my clients? So my accountant, Rob, has a range of clients, he's got really big businesses, we're talking multimillion turnover businesses, he's got some in the middle, which is where I am with my business, and then he's got a bunch of much smaller businesses. And some of those businesses don't cause him any grief at all. They use the software, they ask a question once and they write down the reply. So they're fairly low-impact clients. They might not be high revenue, but they're low-impact clients. But conversely, he still has some heritage clients, clients he's had for years and years and years.And we're talking that the trader that walks in with a box full of paper, receipts of physical paperwork, and will dump that on his desk three days before all the stats are due, due to be sent off to the tax authority. And they'll say to him, "Here you go, here's a year's worth of records." And so Rob sat down because that's a distress thing for him, it's not a fun thing. So he sat down and he said, "Right, for all of these clients, how much profit per hour are they making me?" So if we took, let's say, the smaller business that doesn't pay him a lot of money but doesn't bother him a lot, they were actually quite profitable per hour because any client has a certain number of hours that has to be invested. Let's say the average client for an accountant, at the bottom end, is five hours per year of work. So if he's getting paid, let's say, £1,000 or $1,000 a year for five hours, that works out £200 pounds an hour.And for an accountancy business, typically it's mostly every extra client that comes on is mostly more margin because they don't really have to buy anything, do they? It's just time, it's just people's time, and he's already got the staff to do it. So £200 an hour profit, he's happy with that. Obviously he'd rather that was a £10,000 a year client, but £1,000 that'll do it, £200 an hour profit. And then you take Mr. Shoebox coming in with all his paper receipts. And as you can imagine, when he realized how many hours of his staff's time, so if it took a junior member of his team, let's say, another five hours to input all of those bits of paper and scan them and turn them into something that his digital accounting software can use, now, okay, you wouldn't charge that person's timeout at £50 pounds an hour, but there's still a cost of doing that. In fact, it's more an opportunity cost, isn't it? If an admin person is tied up for five or six hours, which is a day, let's be honest, that's a day's work, then that admin person can't do something else.So the actual profit per hour of that client, who might be paying the same amount of money, that same £1,000, but their profit was, well, he was telling me some figures that it was down, really down, embarrassingly low. So he fired that client. Actually he gave them an option, he said to them, "Look, you cost me more to services a client than you actually bring in revenue. So we've got an option for you with two choices, or rather a choice with two options, which is number one, you go and find another accountant, or number two, you pay me £3,000 a year." And Rob has now set himself a kind of, what's the opposite of a ceiling? It's a floor I guess, isn't it? It's been a long day. It's a floor that if a client routinely, we're talking across a number of years, if a client routinely doesn't deliver a certain amount of profit per hour across the year or across a number of years, then either the price has to go up or that client has to go and find themselves a new CPA.And I think this is a very smart thing for MSPs because you will have a similar kind of thing. You might have two identical clients. They look the same on the surface, similar number of users, similar amount of services they buy from you, but one of them doesn't ring the help desk very often. They don't seem to have many problems, maybe because you have suggested a project to them and a whole series of services to keep them protected. And they have gone with those things. So they've bought the project, they've done the work, they have taken the services, so they have less hassles, they have less risks, less chance of a breach, and they are generally less hassle for you as a business. But then you might have conversely a identical client, similar setup, similar number of users, similar services, but they didn't buy the big upgrade project, they didn't take all of your security advice. So they have more problems, they have slower computers, they are more likely to ring up the help desk. Now it's obvious, which of those two clients is more profitable?Well, obviously, it's going to be the one that calls you less. Isn't that really the dream? Isn't that what every MSP wants? To get clients who don't call you? I know you want to stay in touch with them and you want to keep the customer service levels high, but actually if they're not calling you, it's because you've proactively stopped the problems from interrupting them. And I appreciate that the less they call you, the harder it becomes for you to justify the cost of what you do because they don't see the background work, do they? I understand that. I suppose you want kind of a balance of a little bit of cause. But obviously, there's a certain amount of profit there. Now, I don't know which PSA you use, and let's not use this as an excuse to start discussing different PSAs in different reporting. But wouldn't it be cool if you could work out for each client, how much profit are we making per hour?Now, unlike my accountant friend, you have more options to you. So you can go to a client and you can say, "Hey," and I would be honest with them and say, "Hey, we've, we've done some sums, we love working with you. Going to be honest, we've been working with you for a number of years. Even though our prices have gone up, we've calculated that we don't make a lot of profit working with you. And we wanted to talk you through our thinking on this. You see, at this point you have a choice to make. You have three options. Option number one, if you don't want to invest in your business, if you don't want to pay more, please go and find yourself a new IT support partner." In fact, you could give them the website address of your most hated competitor. That might be a fun thing to do. Actually, you only do that with the hassle clients really. So that's option number one is they leave.Option number two is you say to them, "Currently you're paying £1,000 a month, we need to put that up to £1,200, £1,300," whatever, whatever the price is per month, so that essentially there is a price rise, but it's a big jump because it puts them back into the profitability area. Or for you, and this is a third option you have that my CPA didn't have is you could say to them, "We need to upgrade your technology to reduce the amount of support that you need." So we need to invest into whether it's a migration or better computing, computing powers, laptops, more services, whatever it is, whatever it is that you know. You sell them a project at this, it's a fixed cost, it's a capital expenditure, but you know that when they've got that in place and all of that work is done on that project, that they are going to be less of a support burden for you going forward.Now, you may be scared of having that conversation with a client. And certainly, if you're in your first few years as an MSP, this perhaps isn't a conversation you'd want to have. But if you are a more mature business, you've been going a number of years, and especially if you've got clients who have been with you for years, maybe it would just be something to do, just a fun report to try to figure out how much profit are you making per hour for each of your clients? And you will, at some point, set a floor. What is the floor? What's the basic per profit hour that we need to earn per client? Because if we don't, then they're going to have to make that difficult choice from one of those three options.Voiceover:Here's this week's clever idea.Paul Green:This is the second part of something that I started in last week's show. If you haven't listened to or watched that on YouTube yet, head on back to episode 180 and go and watch the first part of this because we're talking about why the ordinary business owners and managers that you look after so well, why aren't they terrified of cybercrime? And we're exploring that and what you can do about it. So last week we talked about the way the ordinary people think and how their brains aren't as exposed to the horrors of cybercrime as yours are. And then we talked about the three Rs, Rs, I could say that like a pirate, couldn't I? The three Rs, I'll never do ever do that again, the three Rs to wake them up. And those Rs were we need to make it relevant to them, we need to repeat the message again and again and we need to remove choice from them. And that's what we're going to explore in more detail right now, right now. I can roll my Rs as well as do the pirate thing. As I said, will never do that again.So first of all, how do we make cybersecurity more relevant to ordinary people? As I said last week, it's just not on their radar the way it is for you. You see breaches all day, every day, if not with your clients because obviously you don't see those very often, you certainly don't want to, but you read about them, you get alerts about them, you're in forums, you see breach, breach, breach, breach. Malware, ransomware, attack, it's everywhere. So it must be for you what it's like to be a police officer. So police officers see crime all the time. So when they go home, do they lock their door with 10 locks? I guess they do, right? Because they know what crime there is around all the time and it's no different for you. But for the ordinary clients, the ordinary business owners and managers, it's just not relevant to them. So what we need to do is we need to hack their reticular activating system.Now, you may remember me talking about this. This is the part of our brain which acts as a relevant filter. So if, well, some sensory information comes into the brain, if the reticular activating system, the RAS, if it decides that that information is not relevant to the person, then they will not perceive it. Essentially, it blocks it, it doesn't pass it onto the conscious brain. So what we need to do is we need to make cybercrime seem more relevant. We need to wake up the reticular activating system. So there's a couple of different ways that you could do this. For example, you could start monitoring them on the dark web. And I'm conscious there are lots of great services out there to do that. It makes very good sense to go and sign up to one of those. It's an investment, it's an investment into marketing, it's not a cost in any way. Dark web monitoring is great.You could do dark web monitoring and you imagine saying to your client, "Hey, what's your personal email address? Da-da-da-da-da-da-da. I've just put that in and look, there are 217 results that have come out. And in fact your email address has been compromised on this occasion, this occasion, this occasion," et cetera, et cetera. And you do this in a way which doesn't cause them embarrassment. But instantly, it makes them aware that, well, let's be honest, some of them don't even know that the dart web exists, right? They have no idea. They wouldn't know how to access it. In fact, they'd be scared to go on there even if they did know it existed. So this is a great way of showing them that not only does it exist and it's real and it's huge, but their email address is for sale on the dark web that is going to wake up their reticular activating system.The other thing you could do is go to something, if you didn't want to go through a proper dark web monitoring service, you could just go to Have I Been Pwned?, put their email address in there. And again, you could just do a screenshot of the results that come up. You could also do an element of show and tell. If you have a laptop that has been compromised in a ransomware attack, pull out the wifi card. I just said something technical, did you see that there? I snuck that one in. They don't do wifi cards anymore. Is it a chip? I don't know. Hit the wifi thing with a hammer so that laptop can never connect to wifi and keep that laptop to show them what ransomware actually looks like. Because imagine going and sitting down with a client, doing the strategic review, and then saying to them, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, ransomware attack." And they say, "What? Ransom what?" And you say, "Let me show you what it looks like."And you say, "This is a real laptop that used to belong to one of our clients and we've disabled its connectivity so it cannot connect to anything and spread the malware, the ransomware that's on here, but look," and you open it up and there's the red screen that says, "You are screwed, please pay Bitcoin." And then you can explain to them, so this was the owner's laptop and they came in on a Tuesday morning and this was the red screen and it was the red screen on their assistant's laptop and everyone's computers. And then they discovered that it was the data was gone from the server and all the backups have been corrupted, and you can actually start to talk it through. Just showing them the laptop makes it real. That's the goal of this. To make something relevant, we've got to make it feel very real to them. So that's one of the things or a number of things that we can do to make it relevant to them.Now, I think once you've done that once, you've got to keep doing it again because the next R is repeat, repeat, repeat. You've got to keep repeating things to them. When I was a radio presenter back in the mid to late nineties and early noughties, one of the things my boss, my bosses kept saying to me is that if you want listeners, if you want people to take in something that you're saying, you've got to keep repeating yourself because people often they need to hear the same thing again and again and again and again for it to go in. So once you've figured out a way of getting past the gatekeeper that is their reticular activating system, you've got to keep repeating the message. If a client chooses not to buy more cybersecurity services from you today, doesn't mean you never ask them again.In fact, in the next time you do a strategic review, you bring it up again and you say to them, "Well, we sat down six months ago, nine months ago, whatever it was, and you declined X, Y, Z service, whatever it is. And do you know what? I just want to talk you through that again because now, 84.3% of our clients are using this service," nice bit of social proof there, "they're using this service because it keeps them safe, it makes everything less stressful for everyone, and I'd urge you to reconsider." And you keep mentioning it and keep mentioning it because you never know, you never know when the day's going to come, when the day's going to come when they are ready to buy that from you. Well, if someone doesn't buy something the first time, we mustn't be scared of mentioning it again and again and again. And at the point that you are sick yourself of mentioning something, that's the point you double down.And again, looking back in my radio days, as a radio presenter sitting doing a four-hour show every single day or often six days a week, you repeat yourself quite a lot. And my boss used to say to me, "At the point to which you are sick to death of talking about something, whatever it is thing is we want them to know about, the listeners are only just starting to twig that something's happening." And it's exactly the same for you. So you might sit down and do 100 strategic reviews across a three or four or five-month period. So you said the same thing a hundred times, but each of the clients has heard it once or twice. And that's the mistake we make. We mistake the repetition in our brain as everyone who is listening has heard it 100 times and they haven't, they've heard it once or twice.I do loads of webinars and this podcast and videos and I write articles, I pretty much do 99% of our business' content myself. And often I'll find myself, like now, coming onto a podcast thinking, "Right, okay, I'm going to be talking about this. I've talked about this so many times." And yeah, I have, but I've not done it on the podcast. I've perhaps done it in a video and I've written about it in an article and I've done it in a live webinar and I've done it in a prerecorded video as an interview and maybe... You get the idea. So I've repeated it a number of different times, but you're just hearing it for the first time now. Someone reading an article I wrote on my website six months ago is just reading it for the first time now, so you've got to keep repeating it.So the first one was to make it relevant to them to get past their gatekeeper of their brain, the second way to make this real to them is to keep repeating the message, and then the third part, and this is the hardcore thing to do, I believe you need to remove their choice. Now, this is slightly controversial, and I would love to get your views on this, but I believe there comes a point as an MSP, and remember, I am not an MSP, I never have been, I'm not technical, but I am a reasonably good business operator and I know how important it is what you do, I know how critical it is what you do, and how important you are to your clients, but I also know that sometimes they don't help themselves.So I think when we're talking about removing choice, I think, and you'll do this on a case-by-case basis, but there has to come a point where you say to them, "You need to buy this service or do this upgrade or do this project or whatever it is, because if you do not, we are soon going to get to a point where you are going to be breached." And you could, depending on how brave you're feeling, you could say to your client, "I require you now please to buy this service. Of course you have the choice to decline it, but if you do, I need you to sign this disclaimer." And the disclaimer, it's not really there for a legal point of view because if you asked a lawyer, depending on which country you're in, I mean, in the UK it would be a four-page document, in the US it would be a 42-page document that the lawyers will put together for you and charge you $10,000 to put that together.So that what we're talking about here with this disclaimer has no legal bearing really. I'm sure it could be helpful, but this isn't legal advice, this is marketing advice. The disclaimer says, "I've declined to buy the things that have been offered," and then you list what's been offered, "I understand that my chances of a breach go up every day when I don't use these services. I also understand that in the event of a breach, this is not covered by our regular technology support agreement and I will have to pay $200 per hour for all and any cleanup actions." And that $200 might be $300 or $400, whatever, it's a painful price. So that actually, if and when, I guess when really, when they do get breached, you're going to have a bit of a payday to rescue them.Now, that's not profiteering, that's not cashing in, that's a punishment tax, that's an idiot tax because if the client won't protect themselves and invest a couple of hundred bucks a month or whatever it is to invest to protect themselves, then when they get breached, not only should they have to go through the 10 days of hell, they should have to pay a ton of cash as well. And that's to you to fix that problem. And believe me, they will take you more seriously if they're paying you $300 or $400 per hour to fix a massive problem than if they're paying you $50 an hour. So don't be afraid to charge that high amount. But also here, the real purpose of that disclaimer is to make them just pause and say to themselves, "Hey, maybe we should look at this more seriously. Maybe, just maybe, we should revisit this."In fact, when you are saying to someone, "I want you to sign this," which it admits that you will be in the wrong if bad things happen and it's going to cost you a ton of cash, the whole point of this is to get them to just pause and go, "Yeah, hang on, maybe just tell me about that again." And that's really what a disclaimer is. So when we talk about removing choice, we're kind of removing choice, but we're, what we are really doing is pushing them in the right direction because let's be honest, you and I know that they're going to be much better protected if they buy from you, whatever it is you want them to buy. If you do that, by the way, if you're in that removing choice situation, make sure you sell them everything they need at that point. Even if it means they're adding on $1,000 or $2,000 per month, whatever they're spending. It's better to do that.If you're going to remove that choice, sell them everything in one go than selling them one solution now and then be back again in three months time with another solution. That will make you feel like a persistent salesperson. And no one likes persistent salespeople, but what they do like is being protected by their strategic advisor. And that's you.Voiceover:Paul's blatant plug.Paul Green:That disclaimer that I just mentioned in the last bit, we actually give one of those to our MSP Marketing Edge members. So we give them a whole bunch of different tools to sell cybersecurity. There's some templates, there's some videos. In fact, we've got a cool set of videos. It shows what happens when a ransomware attack unfolds. They're terrifying to watch. We paid a white hat, an ethical hacker who is an MSP, we paid them to hack a machine for us and we screen videoed it, screen recorded it, and we've turned it into an educational video that you can show to your clients. In fact, there are different versions. There's one that can go on your website and there's one that you can use and talk through yourself what's happening. Plus, there's that disclaimer. You see, the MSP Marketing Edge, it's not just about social media and it's not just about educational guides and emails and videos and blogs and LinkedIn content, it's also a whole set of very smart tools to help you sell more to your existing client.Here's the important thing, we only sell this to one MSP per area. The reason we do that is so you never have any clash with any of your competitors. So you need to go and see if your area is still available. You can do this at mspmarketingedge.com. If your area is available, please do start your free 30-day trial, because afterwards, there's no contract and you can cancel any time. Have a look, at mspmarketingedge.com.Voiceover:The big interview.Justin Esgar:What's up everybody? I'm Justin Esgar, three-time guest of the Paul Green MSP Marketing Podcast, owner of the Virtua Consulting Group. Got a lot of things going on, I'm really looking forward to talking to Paul today. Let's do this.Paul Green:And I was about to say, I think you actually qualify as the most frequent guest on the podcast. So is this your third time or is this your fourth time? I've kind of lost track.Justin Esgar:This is I think my third. I do say that if I make it to five, you owe me one of those five-timer robes like they have on Saturday Night Live.Paul Green:Okay. Okay, right. I've I've never seen Saturday Night Live because they don't show it here in the UK. But yeah, okay, we'll go with one of those. In fact, I will come to New York especially to give that to you in person, Justin. That's the promise if you are on for the fifth time. So thank you again. You have been an incredible guest in the past. In fact, from memory, you still feature in what is our most listened to episode, which is when you and a couple of buddies came on and you answered some marketing questions that other MSPs had pitched in. So thank you so much for that. And let's see if we can get you to be the second. Wouldn't that be awesome? If you had the top three slots of the three most listened to episodes, that would be pretty cool.Justin Esgar:What you didn't realize is that I've been slowly trying to take over and I'm going to make it that Justin Esgar MSP Podcast. You just don't realize that it's happening yet.Paul Green:Maybe this is the point we should make public the conversation we were having last summer when I said I was going on vacation and you actually wanted to come and do the podcast for a couple of weeks. I'm still toying with that idea. Maybe we'll do a takeover, maybe not. I know producer James, his eye twitches a bit and he gets a bit of a funny look at the thought of someone else coming in. But I think you're a better professional than I am. Anyway, we're not here to talk about us. What we're here to talk about is acquiring another MSP because that's something that you have done in the most recent past. And I want to talk to you today about how you find another MSP to acquire, what it's actually like to buy one, how you value it and what it's like to integrate it with your operations, all of that. Before we talk about that, let's just establish who you are. So for those people who are listening that don't actually know you, Justin, just tell us a little bit about you and your MSP.Justin Esgar:I own Virtua Consulting Group and our primary piece of that is called Virtua Computers. I started that in 2008. We're an Apple consultant, so we're an Apple-focused MSP, taking care of small to medium business, 5 to 50, as long as they have Apple products. Every now and then, the bookkeeper has a PC, we'll say, "Sure." Handling Macs, iOS, Apple TVs, anything like that. And then since then, since starting in 2008, I've grown a couple of other companies and in 2017, we merged all in. So we have a software hardware arm and we have a conferencing department, and I do business consulting for other IT professionals. And then most recently, the acquisition, and we'll talk about this later, of two companies we acquired this past year in 2022, My Mac Mentor, which is a training company and Gravity, which was an Apple Authorized Service Provider allowing us to legally exchange and do warranty repairs on Apple products, which is a big thing for us. So all of that falls under the guise of what is Virtua Consulting.Paul Green:Okay. So those two acquisitions then, and by the way, you've got such a wide variety of things you do, I remember us talking about this before, it's really exciting talking to you because there's always another angle, there's always another new thing or another opportunity that you spotted, these two acquisitions, these sound like strategic acquisitions. So it sounds like you've identified opportunities to sell more to your existing clients or to new clients, but you didn't have the ability to service those. Hence, you've gone out and you've looked for someone to buy.Justin Esgar:Yeah, so the My Mac Mentor is more B2C, that's a lot more residential clients, but we are working on creating that product, the training section of it, and making it a B2B pay for a product so we can now train our existing customers on how to maximize your Zoom or how to use SquadCast, for example, and host your own podcast, or things like that. And so we're building that out for the next upcoming year. So we acquired them for a couple of pieces. One is we wanted to tap a little bit of residential, sprawl out a little bit there. Because I know we talk a lot, MSPs don't only doing a lot of residential people, but there are a lot of MSPs that are very successful only doing residential, and I'm friends with a lot of them. So we wanted to start get in a little bit there, as well as buying that pre-established learning management system that came with the company and all the benefits of the pre-existing classes and her already monetized YouTube channel and all of these things.So we acquired all of that in what we call an asset purchase, and were able to expand that way. For the one in Gravity, their company's based in Columbia, Missouri, it was symbiotic because they had a little bit of going on of MSP. So we were able now to increase their MSP abilities by giving them all the tools that we already had pre-established, like our ticketing system, our RMM, things like that. And we gained the added benefit of now being an Apple Authorized Service Provider, which you cannot really get on your own. And now, all of our pre-existing customers from Virtua Computers, and of course now My Mac Mentor, if we have a hardware problem, we just ship it to our own place in Columbia, Missouri and ship it back out. And Apple pays us for warranty repair. So if I have a client in New York who's got a broken machine, our Columbia office ships them a pre-made, ready-to-go loaner machine with the majority of their data on it and enough to get by for the next couple of days.They put their broken machine in the box, ship it back to Columbia, Columbia fixes it and ships it back to them and they ship back the loaner. This way, our clients are never without their computers, they're never without their data, and we're able to take care of the entire thing from the top down. So we're offering now consultative services, training services, and hardware services, which is the trifecta for any MSP.Paul Green:Yeah, no, it sounds it. So I can see how there is lots of cross-selling opportunity, there's lots of new markets that that opens up for you. So these were, as I thought they were, strategic acquisitions. So take us back 15, 18 months. And were these opportunities that landed on your plate or was this your mind saying, "Right, we want to get bigger, we want to do more of these things. How do we do that? Do we start it ourselves? Do go out and to acquire?" What was your mindset as you threw yourself into that growth?Justin Esgar:All of the acquisitions we've done so far, because this is now our third in two years, have kind of landed on our plate, but only through other things. And I'll get there. So this is where I'm going to call out producer James, he can fix my quote if I get it wrong and cut in and do a TikTok shot. Apparently there's a quote, it says, "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." Something like that, right?Paul Green:Yeah. Yeah, it's Richard Branson I think said that.Justin Esgar:That would make sense, no wonder I like it. So the idea here is that we cause those opportunities and the way we were able to do that was actually by hosting the ACES Conference, which is our business-related IT conference, which you were a part of last year, and we thank you so much for being a part of.Paul Green:Thank you.Justin Esgar:And the people, everyone that we've acquired have been to the ACES Conference. They got to meet me, they got to see what I'm doing, and they came to me with, "Hey, I have an opportunity." Now, there have been plenty of people who come to me and said, "Hey, I heard you bought so-and-so, would you buy me also?" And those were fluff numbers. "I'll tell you my contact list for a three times multiplier." But none of that really landed. But these three came to me, they knew me. In fact, the woman who owned My Mac Mentor, she was at the First ACES Conference in New Orleans in 2015. And I remember her just so distinctly because I remember, and I'm sorry for embarrassing her, she lost her phone. And so she came to me and was like, "I lost my phone." And I stopped everything and we found her phone. And we created a friendship over that. And after seven years, she came to me and was like, "I'm thinking about selling my business. You're the first person I'm telling."And so that opportunity would've never come to me had I not been risky enough to have the conference and meet these people. And now, that's just me. I'm not telling everyone to start a conference. In fact, it don't start a conference, they're horrible. But there are opportunities out there that you need to take advantage of. There are steps you could do. There are networking events, there are other groups you can go and meet people, find out what they're doing. In the case of Gravity, our one in Columbia, Missouri, like I said earlier, his MSP part, the guy who owned it was coming to me asking me all these questions about the MSP side of things. And we were having a Zoom call and drinking beers and going, "Wouldn't it just make more sense if you were a part of us? Because the Apple hardware thing come and go, whatever, but we can help your MSP part. We already have everything pre-established."And it made sense. And then we looked at the numbers, which is always the important part, and just it worked, it worked out. We were able to come to an agreement on the numbers. And now, I added four full-time staff and four part-timers. He's now our director of customer experience because he's really good at talking to clients, and allows me to free up my time to do awesome podcasts like this one.Paul Green:Yeah, no, that's amazing. And I've got some questions for you on the actual acquisition activity. Let me just ask a curveball question, was if you didn't know these people and well, let's say, there was another business that you had your eye on, and you thought, "Oh, that would be a great strategic fit for what we're doing," but you didn't know that person, how would you go about getting their attention and seeing if this was the right time for them to sell their business?Justin Esgar:It's not so much a curveball because I kind of done this. If I didn't know them, getting that relationship is the most important part because anything when it comes to businesses is relationships. If you're not good at making relationships, you can't run a business. And that's true for all pieces. My relationship with you allows me to be on this show, my relationship with my clients allows them to pay me, my relationship with other Apple consultants allows me to sell them on things like my conference or joining our company and things like that. But you have to establish that relationship. So one is go in groups that they're a part of, meet with them, offer them something that they're not offering. When I first started in this industry in 2008, on my own, I had worked for a company for a couple of years and I broke off, did my own thing, I didn't have any clients, I had four clients. The way I got more clients was in the Apple industry we have a thing called Apple Consultants Network and we used to have meetings.And so I would go to the meetings every month, they were at Tekserve, rest in peace, and I would offer my services to the other Apple consultants because at 28 years old, I was really egotistical and I was like, "I know more than everyone else does." And so I would offer my services for doing the things they couldn't do. I was really well versed in MacOS server AD integrations, which, thank God, is long dead. But when my colleagues, my other Apple consultant friends were there and they had a client that had that and they couldn't figure it out, they would turn to me. And so I established a relationship with those other consultants. Fast-forward that when I started my conference, I immediately hit all of those people up, going, "Hey, come to this. I know you need this." And they did. So you build that relationship with people, then they got to trust you, then you can talk about buying.I've had plenty of other conversations with consultants who I'm friendly with, but I don't necessarily want to acquire them, or maybe I do. What I'll do is I'll just be like, "Hey, I really want to get on a Zoom and talk to you and get to learn a little bit more about your business."Paul Green:Yeah.Justin Esgar:One of my best friends in this industry is a guy named Brian Best, oddly enough. Love that guy to death, Kansas City, shout out Chiefs. I've talked to him multiple times about acquiring him, and he goes, and he keeps telling me for profoundly no, and I'll keep knocking on that door in a jokey kind of way, in a serious kind of way. It doesn't matter, he's still my friend first. That's what matters.Paul Green:Yeah.Justin Esgar:So build those relationships, then start asking questions. "Hey, what can I do to help you?" Offer, be the one to be the one providing for them. That's going to allow them to think, "Oh, Paul's got an edge on this thing, I want to talk to Paul more." And then you come in and you say, "Hey, listen, not only can I do this, but I can do 45 other things that you're not doing. Maybe it makes sense because I like the way you talk or work or think or act or project manage, or whatever, and I'm lacking that skill. Maybe it makes sense we partner up." And then that's how you start those conversations.Paul Green:Yeah, relationships. I absolutely love this. It's funny, I was talking to an MSP here in the UK just earlier today, and he said not a week goes by where he doesn't get a letter from a business broker saying, "Hey, do you want to sell your business?" And those letters always go in the bin. And then a couple of weeks ago, he got a letter from another MSP the next town along. It wasn't quite handwritten, but he'd written his name at the top and signed it at the bottom and it just said, "Hi, I'm Dave. I run so-and-so IT just up the road. I'm hoping to expand into this town. If ever you were thinking of selling, just give me a call on this number." And he's not thinking of selling, but that stood out to him because it's a more real approach than, "I'm a business broker and your business is worth 10 times this," which obviously is always nonsense, the brokers always exaggerate the figures.But I think you're right. If he was going to go and sell to that guy, the first thing they would do is they'd go and have a beer or a coffee, they'd get to know each other. When I sold my business back in 2016, I went for the middle offer. I had an okay offer, a good offer and a great offer. And I went for the good offer because I'd built a relationship up with the guy that went on to buy it. So let's talk about the actual structure of deals. You mentioned earlier something called an asset purchase, which is different to something called a share purchase. And so talk to us about what the difference is between a share purchase and an asset purchase and why you would favor one over the other.Justin Esgar:I'm not even sure what a share purchase is. I can tell you what I do know. And again, asterisks on this, I'm not a lawyer, despite what my mother wanted me to be in life. From the way I've looked at things and the way I always explained things, you either buy just the assets or you buy the assets and liabilities. And the difference between those two is if you're buying liabilities, you're buying loans that that company still owes, you're buying all the negative stuff. And you never want to do that. You don't want to acquire someone who owes $100,000 to some big daddy corp because then that becomes your $100,000 bill, and what are you getting for it? So many at a time, we do what's called an asset purchase. We only buy the good stuff. So in an asset purchase, we're buying the things that actually have value to the company. So what does that include? Contracts with clients, intellectual property, physical property, hardware, things like that.And so those are really the two. I think in a share, you're buying shares of the company, but the companies we're buying are so small, basically what we're doing is we're dissolving their companies and creating, we're just buying all the goods, we're not buying their name.Paul Green:Yeah.Justin Esgar:We're dissolving their name, shutting down their company basically. And then we're creating a DBA, doing business as, or there's a couple other ways to explain that one, and adding that to our company. So Virtua Consulting Group has a DBA of Gravity, and we've established a presence under the name Gravity, even though the company we bought was Gravity, Gravity LLC no longer exists in a registrar with the agencies that are involved. So we bought all of the stuff that's involved. So in this case, for Gravity, we bought all of the hardware that was in the shop, we bought the van, we bought the computers that were used by the employees, we bought the bananas they have for scale, we bought the TV that was on the wall, we bought the desk chairs, we bought the tables, we bought the cameras, we bought all of that. What we didn't buy was any debt that the owner or owners still owe to other people. So that's an asset buy.Paul Green:Yeah, no, I think the term share purchase might just be a UK thing. So very similar here in the UK, you can either buy the assets of the company, all of the things you just talked about, or you buy the entire company. So the equivalent of an LLC here in the UK, it's just called a limited company. I think they're similar legal themes, but they're slightly different rules. The advantage you have of certainly here in the UK is as the person selling the business, you want to sell the whole business as a share purchase because the tax laws are so in your favor if you do that here in the UK. Whereas if you have an assets sale, you just sell the assets and you keep the company, it's not so advantageous from a tax point of view. Let's move on. I want to talk about integrating a business.Now, I've read loads of books about M&A. I find mergers and acquisitions or murders and executions as they called it in American Psycho, which is much better way of putting it, I find it just fascinating, I've been doubling in it myself for the last couple of years. I've still not got a purchase over the line yet, but we're working on something as we speak. Now, one of my favorite books, and I'm looking to see if I've got it here on my bookshelf, and it must be one of my downstairs bookshelves, but it's a book called Barbarians at the Gate, and it was about the hostile takeover of, I think it was Nabisco back in the 1980s or the 1990s. And it's one of those books that as you read it becomes less and less like reality, and yet it's completely about reality.One of the things it talks about, the hardest things of putting two companies together is clashes of culture. And certainly, that's what whatever the company was that bought Nabisco found, that they were essentially getting huge culture clashes. Now, you are talking small numbers of people here because you guys, there's not hundreds of you in your company, there's just a reasonable amount of people, and it sounds the same in the ones that you've been acquiring. What were your concerns and worries about culture clash as you were bringing people together and how did you overcome those?Justin Esgar:That's a really solid question. I want to preface with the Nabisco factory is, well, was 10 minutes from where I live now, by the way. And we saw it and then they closed recently, so now their sign is down. But you used to drive by and get the smell of cookies, which was great. Okay, culture, I'm massively huge on culture. In fact, I just did another interview with an Australian podcast all about culture. Even in a small business, culture is massively important. And here's something that I never thought of being a problem until it became a problem, is people used to make fun of me for being too New York. On a podcast, this is me, but I'm tamed down a little bit, I'm not cursing. If you hear me in a regular conversation, the F-bomb, it's literally every other word. In fact, I get in trouble all the time for cursing in front of my children. That's my way of talking. However, people in the Midwest in the United States don't take to the "New York attitude".So I have clients in Iowa, that when we first brought them on board, I was like, oh, I need to step back a little bit because their clients, bring myself to where they are culturally, and then for my staff that I integrated, I need to bring them up to what we do. And that's true between how we interact with clients, how we interact with each other, how we interact on Slack, how we write emails, how we write our proposals. Right now, our contract's New York centric because we're a New York based company. But when I'm trying to close a client in Columbia, Missouri, the rules are different there. So I have to be able to deal with that. That's all culture, on top of the personnel piece of it. Before we acquire anyone, I talk to every employee at that place.I didn't talk about part-timers here because they're college students, they're really easily moldable, but all of the full-time employees, I talk to them each individually on my own, and I interview them the same way I would interview them as if they were applying for a job with me directly, as opposed to being brought over the acquisition. Because I need to know where they stand. And people know that I do this, I asked the printer question. It's a Friday afternoon, you're the only one in the office, CEO calls, says, "Paul, I can't print. I need my keynote presentation because I'm flying to Vegas and I want to mark it up in my favorite pad. Fix it now. What do you do?" An MSP, a good consultant will know the answer to that. But I need to get that from them, I need to know where they are culturally because then I can move them in the right direction. So that's part one.Paul Green:Yeah.Justin Esgar:Part two is providing them the tools to integrate with us culturally that they never would've had they stayed on their own. So to do that, for example, we offer outsourced professional development as a courtesy benefit to anyone who works for us. We have a woman named Melanie Curtis, love her, she does professional development for everyone. You get free access to her, she'll talk to you about growing yourself professionally and personally. That helps build the culture because one, she knows who I am, I'm very good friends with her. She knows who I am, she knows what I want out of my team. And it's not that she's pushing them towards that, but she understands the ultimate goal. So again, pushing them in the right direction towards the right culture. So building all of that up.But that, at the same time, my original team needs to bend a little for the new people. For example, the new director of customer experience is bring the new tool in that we've never used before, we need to bend our culture to use that because that's actually the right tool to use. So a lot of different angles to be had there, but you have to manage it. You're the ref in the soccer game, and you have to manage everybody's tendencies and fights and whatever. Sorry, I went on a little bit of a ramble.Paul Green:No, no, no, it's good. It's great stuff and I wish we had longer and more time to spend with you. And unfortunately, we do have to stop there. Otherwise, this will become the longest podcast, and you then get another record for being the longest interviewed guest on the podcast. Justin, you've been very generous with your time, as always. Just tell us how we can get in touch with you. Whether you're an MSP looking to exit an Apple-based business, or whether you just think, "Hey, this is an interesting guy. I want to be connected to this guy."Justin Esgar:Yeah, head over to virtuaconsulting.com or find me on LinkedIn under Justin Esgar. Pretty much all the socials under my name. But best place is probably virtuaconsulting.com.Paul Green:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.Ian Luckett:Hi there, it's Ian Luckett.Stuart Warwick:And Stuart Warwick from the MSP Growth Hub. Our book recommendation is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. It's an amazing book, it's not your usual read. And if you want to be the hero in your journey, in your business, in your MSP over the coming year, this story will ignite your imagination about who you can become to take your business where you want to take it.Paul Green:Coming up next week.Leahanne Hobson:Hi, I'm Leahanne Hobson, CEO and founder of Alinea Partners, and I will be on the show next week to talk to you about how many MSPs don't pick up the phone and lose prospects.Paul Green:Whichever platform you are listening to or watching this podcast right now, please subscribe. And if there's one of those little notification bells, you get it on YouTube, I think you get it on Spotify as well, do go for the notification so you never miss an episode because on top of that interview next week, we're going to be talking about emergency lead generation. If you absolutely need new leads in your MSP superfast, I've got three options for you next week that you can put into place really, really quickly. We've also got between now and then a ton of content for you at youtube.com/mspmarketing. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.Voiceover:Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

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Episode 180Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 How to not get locked in a 'prison' of your own design * 04:11 Why your clients aren't terrified of cyber crime * 24:15 Reaching B2B audiences using Facebook ads

Featured guest:Thank you to Brian Davidson, Co-Founder of Matchnode and Facebook Ads Expert, for joining me to talk about making the most out of Facebook advertising.Brian Davidson is the Co-Founder of Matchnode, a digital marketing agency that is changing the way people and organizations leverage social media. He and his team have worked on digital ad campaigns for influential brands like New Balance, Chicago Bulls, Chicago Blackhawks, LendingTree, and Indiana University.

Brian has been a leader in generating leads using Social Media since 2007 when he became the VP of Social Media at NCSA Athletic Recruiting. Lead generation efforts helped the company join both the Crain’s and Inc fastest-growing lists. Brian is passionate about using his experience to help businesses achieve provable, meaningful growth. His relatable style makes Brian a sought after guest, providing actionable insights on all things social media marketing.

Connect with Brian on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/BrianRDavidson/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Subscribe to the MSP Marketing Action Monthly magazine: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, Scale or Fail: How to Build Your Dream Team, Explode Your Growth, and Let Your Business Soar: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scale-Fail-Explode-Growth-Business/dp/1119461014

Transcription:Voiceover:Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Hello my lovelies and welcome to the show. I have no idea what's going on there. This is what we've got coming up for you this week.Brian Davidson:Hi, mine's Brian Davidson. I own a digital agency called Match Node and I will be talking Facebook ads, more specifically how you can reach B2B audiences on Facebook.Paul Green:And on top of that fantastic interview with Brian, later on in the show we're also going to be asking a very pertinent question, why aren't your clients terrified of cyber crime?Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:You might be able to help me out in this first bit because I read something in a business or marketing book years and years ago. We're talking probably about 15 years ago, and often when I read really good books and I read sentences in them or things that just really reverberate with me, I take that line and add it to the big pool, the big soup of things that are there in my head. And there's a specific line which I know came from a book. I know I didn't invent this myself, but can I remember which book it is? So here's how you may be able to help me. If I say this sentence to you, and you recognize which book it's from, could you email me please? My email address is Hello@PaulGreensMSPmarketing.com. And that will just put me out of the misery of trying to remember which book I got it from.So this is the sentence, this is what I read all those years ago. "The average business owner creates a prison of their own design and then locks themselves inside." So let me say that again. "The average business owner creates a prison of their own design and then locks themselves inside." And the concept that the author of the book that I read was trying to get across and the whole point of this is what we typically do as business owners.So when we start our business, we do it for a number of different reasons. Often, it's to take control of our time, and what we do with our time, and to take control of the kind of work that we do. Most people, not everyone, but most people start their business because they enjoy the work they're doing, but they don't particularly like doing it for someone else or they don't like the way that someone else does it. So in starting their own business, when you started your own MSP, you got to pick your own vendors, your choice of vendors. You got to do things the way you want them to be do. You got to build your own systems. It was all about control. And control is a major reason that people start a business.Another reason which can be a primary motivating factor as well is of course, to take control of your own personal income because of course when you own the business, even though this isn't the case for the first few years, but when you own the business, in theory there's an uncapped personal income. If the business is churning out decent net profit, then that can increase your own personal ability to spend money, to earn money and to spend it. So those are one or two of the reasons why we start a business, but what typically happens, not to everyone but to many business owners is we start our business, we get busy, we get our first clients on board and everything is hunky dory until the point where we hire our first member of staff.Now, there are some people, there'll be loads of people listening to this who are one-person bands, one-man bands, who are working towards getting out of being a one-man band. And there were many downsides of being a one-man band. Not being able to take proper vacations is the biggest of them. But there are also some upsides, and I say this as someone in my last business, I had 15 staff. In our current business, we have 12, although it's a much more relaxed atmosphere, and we've got 12 really good adults who they don't need management. So it's a less stressful business.But back when I had 15 staff, and they were all 17 years old working in an office, running a marketing agency in my last business, that was stressful. And the second, you'll know this if you have staff yourself, the second you start adding staff into the mix, you lose a certain amount of the control that you enjoyed over the business. Now, yes, you gain a lot. We can't do this without staff. It's crazy to think that we can build a genuine business. A genuine business is a business that operates well. It thrives regardless of whether you are here or not. And we can't do that without staff, but it really does change things. And everyone goes through an appalling process whereby your first couple of members of staff, it actually increases your already busy workload, and you are running around doing even more work. And the crazy thing is that your staff are doing things their way. So you almost lose control over your business.And this is the start of the prison. When we talk about that phrase that business owners create a prison of their own design and then lock themselves inside, this is where it happens. And I have talked to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of MSPs who've got two or three years down the line and they've got five, six, seven staff and they do feel like they're trapped in the prison. They are trapped doing work in the business they don't really want to do. They've fallen out of love with the business to a certain extent because the business doesn't do things the way they want it to be done. Essentially, they've ended up with a business that they don't love that's operating in a way they don't want it to, run by staff doing things their own way.And of course, the staff do things their own way because we sometimes as business owners, we don't tell them what we want them to do, and we don't tell them how we want them to do it. And then we get really annoyed with them when they don't do it in the way that we want them to do it, and we don't do what we want them to do. So we haven't told them, but then we get annoyed when they don't do it. It's crazy, isn't it? If you were to actually write that down, it just looks insane if it's on a piece of paper. But this is where the prison comes from.And any business owner who is unhappy... They're unhappy with the amount of growth. They're unhappy with the way the business operates. They're unhappy because they can't give all of the clients the high level of service and the high level of delivery that they would like to. This is the prison. If you can't go on a proper genuine vacation where you leave your mobile off for two weeks, that's a proper vacation. If you can't do that, you are locked in the prison. If you are struggling every single month to make payroll or you personally don't necessarily earn money every month, it's a bit hit and miss whether or not you earn money, this is the prison. And it's a prison of your own design that you are now locked inside.Now, getting you out of that prison, if only it was as simple as popping a key in a cake and giving it to you. It kind of can be because I've got three areas that I suggest you focus on. And I'm going to give a caveat to these, which is the whole point of this is you're locked in a prison of your own design. So you'll be locked, if this is you, you'll be locked in your business and your business will have a particular set of circumstances that keep you locked inside. But typically, what I find is if you examine one of the three areas I'm about to talk about, then somewhere in there, if not a key, there's something which can help you get closer to understanding how the lock works on the door and how you can start to find the key to unlock yourself from the prison.So the three areas that I want to look at are personal time. Well, it's taking control of your personal time. It's taking control of the business, and then it's being a marketer rather than being the owner. Let me explain each of those in order.So the first of those is to take control of your personal time. You cannot grow the business and turn the business into something that you are so proud of at a deep emotional level that you could just kiss it and hug your business. You can't do that without taking control of your own personal time. It's about making sure that you've got time and space to work on the business and quality time to work on the business. Grabbing snatches of 15 minutes here, 20 minutes there at 8:00 or 9:00 in the evening to work on the business. That's no good at all. The most successful business owners, you listen back to the last 180 episodes of this podcast, and you'll hear lots of successful people. And they have got there by finding lots of time and creating lots of space to work on the business, and it's quality time and quality space.So you've got to take control of your own personal time, and that means mostly, looking at what are you doing that somebody else, anybody else could do on your behalf. There's a phrase I've used many times in this podcast. You should only do what only you can do. And I'm going to say that again because it's so important. You should only do what only you can do. Everything else, you DOA it: you delegate it, or you outsource it or you automate it. Now, this doesn't happen overnight, but it can start with one thing a week. What's one job? In fact, if you're on your way to work now or if it's early on in the day, today, what's one job you do today that someone else could do for you. If it's later in the day, what about tomorrow.You've got to ask yourself this question tomorrow morning. What's something that you have to do today that someone else could do for you? Maybe it's an admin thing. Maybe it's something to do with invoicing. Maybe it's a low-level tech thing. There are always ways to find other people to do it. And the trick for you is to get as much off your plate as possible so you can focus on the really important job, which is focusing on the business, growing the business, marketing, getting new clients, upselling existing clients, etcetera, etcetera. So that's the first part is you've got to take control of your own personal time.But the second part is you've got to take control of the business. And this is about conquering the chaos. This is about telling your staff what you want them to do and telling your staff how you want them to do it. And this is really about systems. Systems are awesome. Systems don't remove creativity. They don't remove people's ability to make decisions. If anything, it's the complete opposite. When you have a system, it sets a boundary. It says, "Right, I want you to do things within this boundary, please. You just got to follow this system, and you can make your own decisions because this system is how I want this business to run for this reason," whatever that reason might be. So you've got to as part of it, and this is why you need time and space to do this.You've got to look at every part of your business, and apply a system to it, right down to how do we answer the phone? How do we log a ticket? How do we communicate to our clients that we are on it, that we understand your problem, that we are working towards a fix even if we don't have an ETA for that fix? Communication can be systemized. Everything can be systemized. You may already have systemized some of the actual technical work. You may have documentation for setting up a new user or doing a password change or something like that, and if you don't, that's certainly a good place to start with systems.My experience of many, not all but many MSPs, is you systemize the actual technical work, certainly the lower-level technical work, but you never systemize anything else, the things that actually make a difference. If someone asks you to do something, if a client asks you to do something, and they don't hear anything for three hours, there is a certain amount of friction annoyance that builds in because they're thinking, "Did these guys even pick this up?" Whereas actually, you're hard at work on it. It's just you don't have a system. You don't have a method of telling your clients, "We're working on it. We're going to check in with you every hour, and let you know what our progress is," or whatever your system is. The actual system is down to you.The point being that a system to communicate with clients is way more important than the system to actually get the work done. It doesn't matter if it takes you two hours to do a really simple job so long as you are communicating that really well to the clients because it's the customer service that makes them feel good or bad, not the actual fix itself. They don't know that a password... Okay, password reset is probably a bad idea, but they don't know that adding a new user takes four minutes, right? They're sure it doesn't take that long, but if it takes you 30 minutes or 60 minutes because you're doing other things first, it's all about the communication. So the first thing was to take control of your own personal time. The second thing was to take control of the business through systems.There's a third thing, and remember this this isn't going to fix everything. This isn't going to get everyone out of their prison, but these are three areas that are certainly worth looking at. That third thing is, instead of being the owner of the MSP or the manager of the MSP, be the marketer of the MSP. So what I mean by that is your job really, once you've moved yourself away from basic tech that, you're not on the help desk, perhaps you're third line, that's okay. But you are the driver and the grower of the business. At this point, focusing on marketing above all else is the right thing to do because marketing don't forget, it brings you new clients in. It keeps your existing clients, and it gets your existing clients to spend more.Well, those are the only three ways to grow your business. You get more new clients, you get them to buy from you more often, and you get them to spend more every time they buy. And if you as the leader are focused, I mean, we're talking 80% of your time. That should be a target to work towards, that 80% of your time is spent on those three activities. Suddenly, your MSP will see crazy growth, really crazy growth because you are a focused and determined action taking leader who's just focused on the right things.So please, take control of your own personal time, take control of the business and be a marketer rather than just being an owner. It's the marketers who really do get ahead of all the competition. If you aren't locked in that prison, please do drop me an email as well. You got my email address now. It's Hello@PaulGreensMSPmarketing.com. If you wanted to drop me a line and tell me about the specific prison that you are locked in, I'll be more than happy to give you my advice over email.Voiceover:Here's this week's clever idea.Paul Green:Why don't your clients take cybersecurity more seriously? Have you ever wondered that? There aren't specific reasons why ordinary people aren't terrified of ransomware, why malware doesn't leave them lying awake at night, sweating, worrying that it could happen to them. There is some very specific reasons why, and what we're going to do this week, and then finishing off next week is we're going to look at why ordinary business owners and managers just aren't aware of cybersecurity in the way that you and I are. And we're going to look at how to wake them up, make it more real for them, and ultimately, get them to choose to spend money with you to protect themselves.So if you think, let's start by looking at how ordinary people think. So I'm ordinary to a certain extent, maybe I'm not. Well, compared to you, I'm more ordinary because I'm not a tech. I don't come from a technical background. I have no tech ability. If you watch me the number of times when I'm starting to record this podcast figure out why isn't my camera working, and it's because I haven't plugged the cable in, I kid you not. That's my level of ability.So before I started working with MSPs in 2016, I was 100% normal. Now, I've been hanging around with MSPs for a long time. I'm kind of normal, but I'm not because I know stuff. I've seen a video of a ransomware attack, never actually seen an attack itself, but I've seen cyber crime issues. I've talked to dozens and dozens of MSPs who clean up, and deal with attacks, and prevent their clients from being attacked. So even I'm not normal, but compared to you and me, ordinary people, your clients, those decision makers, they don't know what they don't know. And the problem is, well, there are three big reasons why they're not terrified of cyber crime or not terrified of the general problems out there.The first is that cyber crime, cybersecurity, is only actually on the fringes of their attention. So for you and me, we read about it every day. It's in all the blogs and the news stories and the email newsletters that we watch. You probably go on YouTube and up comes cyber crime stuff because it's your world. It's absolutely everywhere. And as I said, I have a foot in that world, so I see a lot of cyber crime stuff as well. For ordinary people, they just don't see it. That big hack that happens once a year, that goes national, that goes onto the mainstream news outlets, they see that then, but it's not as big to them as it is to you and me because they don't realize just how major that is.Don't get me wrong. If they're affected by it, then that's a big issue if they're directly affected by it, but most of the time they're not. So it's only on the fringes of their attention. And for that reason, it doesn't seem as important to them as other things that are in their business. Even when they are aware of it, the next problem is that they don't really understand it, and they can't explain it. If you had asked me to describe a ransomware attack before I watched one unfold in a video, I would've said to you, "Oh, a ransomware attack. It's something to do with your data being held to ransom." And I wouldn't have understood that actually it's a complete shutdown.Your business, certainly anything has to do with technology, is completely shut down. Not just shut down, there's nothing. There's nothing there. And I think the people thinking, "Oh, my computer isn't working," they'll think that that's a ransomware that, "Oh, this is annoying. I'll have to grab my phone and do it." No, as you and I know, there is no data. There is nothing. There is no... It's like being as in the stone age again. And because they don't understand that, they don't realize. They don't understand it, and they can't explain it, so they don't realize what a big deal it is.I think the other thing that stops ordinary business owners and managers not being terrified of cybersecurity problems is that the perception that hacks, ransomware, all these compromises, they only happen to big businesses. I still think a lot of people still perceive that these are very specific targeted attacks, and I appreciate there are a lot of targeted attacks, but you and I also know that there is a lot of malware and a lot of just automated software out there looking for easy opportunities. So I don't think ordinary folk realize that even just having one or two minor weaknesses in their setup can be a big issue for them. Even clicking on one email, one phishing email can be a big deal for them. They really don't realize this at all.So what we need to do is we need to wake them up, and I'm going to give you the headlines of what we're going to do today. And in next week's episode, episode 181, we will look deep dive a little bit more into each of these. What we need to do to weight them up is we need to use the three Rs. The three Rs are this, first of all, we need to make it more relevant to them. And as I say, next week we're going to dive into some of the detail of how exactly to do that.Now, relevancy is really interesting because we have a part of our brain called the reticular activating system, which acts as a relevance filter. We don't consciously have to deal with all of the sensory information that's coming into our brains. If we did, we'd have no time for anything else. So our reticular activating system in our noggin, it does the work for us. It works out each piece of information if it is relevant or not to the conscious brain. So in comes some information about a ransomware attack, the reticular activating system says, "Nah, mate, that's not relevant." Chucks it out. So you see a piece of information or you hear a piece of information, but you don't perceive it. Well, you do because it's relevant to you, but they don't because basically, their programming in their brain is programmed that it's not relevant to them. So the first thing we need to do is make it feel relevant to them.The second R that we need to do is to repeat the message. When I was a radio presenter back in the 1860s, one of the things my bosses used to tell me is you have to keep repeating the same messages again and again and again because people aren't really listening. It's on in the background. Radio is actually very similar to all marketing. It's a bit background. So you have to keep repeating the same things. You don't use exactly the same words all the time, but you keep repeating the same messages again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, until you are sick to death of it. That's the point at which it's starting to cut through, particularly if that relevance filter has being cutting it out. And then the final R, the final thing that we need to do is we need to remove choice for them.Next week I'm going to suggest, and this might be slightly controversial for you, but it is only a suggestion. I'm going to suggest that you make it so hard for your existing clients to opt out of a greater level of cybersecurity that it's almost easier for them just to go along with what you want. And yes, that's going to mean them spending some more money with you, but the purpose of this is not really about revenue generation. That's a bonus. Extra profit is a bonus for looking after them. I'm sure you have a stack of tools, and protections, and things that you would love all of your clients to buy. Well, what if we make that standard? All of your clients have to buy all the protection so that you sleep at night, they sleep at night, and the chances of them going through a major cybersecurity incident are very low.Now, you may be in a place where you are already doing that with your clients, and if you are bravo, genuinely bravo because I think it's the only way you can run an MSP right now. If you're not, then next week we'll look at specifics. How exactly do you get all of your clients to buy all of your cybersecurity offerings and all of your services and protections? We're going to examine those three Rs, which is make it relevant, repeat that message, and remove their choice. We'll do that in next week's episode.Voiceover:Paul's blatant plug.Paul Green:Here's a provocative question. Are you a serious MSP owner? Are you ambitious and determined to grow your business regardless of all the things that are getting in your way? I said earlier on in the podcast that one of the things you need to do is be a marketer of your MSP business. Well, I can help you directly, and I have lots and lots of different things I do with MSPs, but one of our most popular things right now is this. If you're watching on YouTube, I'm holding up a copy of my MSP Marketing Action Monthly. It's a print newsletter that we post out. We ship it to MSPs all around the world every month, and it is a physical print newsletter.Why do I go to all the effort and expense of actually getting this written, and designed, and printed every month? Because I know, I understand that if you sit on the toilet, or on your couch, or in your car, not when you're driving, or lie in bed and you physically read, you hold something in your hands and you read something, you are 10 times more likely to actually take action on it. The most serious MSP owners, the people who grow their business more are the ones who take action. And the challenge for me, working with any MSP is getting you to take action because it's the only way to do it.So a really good place to start is to actually subscribe to this. We've done it. We've priced it at the lowest possible price we can to make a little bit of profit for us, but also to get this into your hands because if I can get it in your hands, and I can get you to read it, you're much more likely to take action. So look, I've made this as easy for you as possible. On my website, you can have a 30-day free trial. Get your first issue into your hands and see what you think. See if it's for you. If it's not, you can cancel at any time. There's absolutely no obligation to buy this ongoing. Although obviously, I hope you do, I'm more than happy to take on board the risk if you don't. Go and have a look now on my website, it's paulgreensMSPmarketing.com/action. So get your first issue posted to you free and enjoy 30 days free trial of a subscription that you can cancel at any time anyway, at paulgreensMSPmarketing.com/action.Voiceover:The big interview.Brian Davidson:Hi, my name is Brian Davidson. I'm one of the co-founders of Match Node, and I'm a Facebook ads expert.Paul Green:And Facebook is one of those really hard things for MSPs to crack because as we know, it is a consumer social media network. We could argue the consumer social media network, and we know that everyone we want to reach is out there on Facebook. But of course, Facebook isn't primarily used as a B2B social media platform in the way that LinkedIn is. So Brian, before you tell us how we can use Facebook and Facebook ads better to reach decision makers, tell us a little bit about you. What qualifies you to be a Facebook ads expert?Brian Davidson:Sure. Well, I started running Facebook ads from the very beginning when we were running right-hand rail ads on desktop only. I was in-house at a sports recruiting agency, and I've seen the evolution throughout the years. We started Match Node nine and a half years ago. One of the things that really stood out for us in the marketplace is a lot of the other agencies out there either started creating websites, running Google AdWords, running SEO projects. We realized that we had social first DNA, and that's what we've led with, and that's led to the majority of our clients running paid social campaigns and engagements.Paul Green:So essentially, Facebook is baked right into everything that you do. I mean, you talked there, and it's funny, as you said about on desktop only with the adverts down the right hand side. I had an instant memory flash of what Facebook used to be years and years ago. So for you who's been right there in Facebook every single day, it must be fascinating for you or fascinating for you over the years, watching as Facebook has completely changed.Brian Davidson:It's actually one of the things I love most about the platform is how quickly it changes. It can be frustrating at times for sure, and we get thrown for loops as things change that are outside of our control. But I love seeing the evolution that really it does happen on a monthly, weekly, sometimes daily basis. It's interesting that sometimes my teammates will log into Facebook Ads Manager and have a completely different view than what I'm seeing because new features are always being rolled out in different ways across different accounts and across different users.Paul Green:And you look at the money that Mark Zuckerberg's sinking into the Metaverse, its research in the Metaverse. You can see that Facebook is or Meta as the company is now, he absolutely wants to be a major player for the next 20, 30 years. Absolutely fascinating. So I do think these days in 2023, many people have a love/hate relationship with Facebook. I hate Facebook for the randomness and the negative stuff that I see in front of it, but I love it as a communication tool. I use it. I run a Facebook group for MSPs in general. I run one for our members of our MSP marketing edge service. So Facebook has some incredible tools, but it obviously has a lot of negativity as well. From a B2B point of view, how do you see, or what kind of usage change have you seen in the way that you can reach decision makers over the, you said the last five years or so?Brian Davidson:I think it's interesting to look at it from two different angles. One, you can see these different products within Facebook becoming more and more popular for different people in different stages in their life. So you mentioned groups might be very, very powerful for MSPs. WhatsApp might be very powerful for MSPs. Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Facebook proper, all these different little features can be exploited in, I think, a little bit different ways that can be very beneficial for MSPs. And I think more importantly, the engagement on those different features creates more opportunities for advertising placements. For instance, within groups or marketplace, very targeted ads could be placed that would make a lot of sense for MSPs.Paul Green:But is it possible to reach decision makers, so ordinary business owners and managers just using Facebook?Brian Davidson:Absolutely. So I run a very large advertising account that is targeted to business owners for actually business loans for a very large financial institution. So we're strictly targeting business owners with over $200,000 in revenue, and we spend thousands of dollars a day on that account very profitably reaching business owners. So it absolutely is possible really to adjust your tactics to the platform to find the right audience.Paul Green:So let's talk a little bit about those tactics. So your average MSP listening to this is typically marketing in a geographical area. They can serve people anywhere because of the beauties of remote access, but typically their marketing within their area, often because the sales process requires going out to meet people. Sometimes they'll have a niche as well or some kind of vertical. What recommendations would you make of how to get started on Facebook ads?Brian Davidson:Well, the first thing I would say is I think of about two different categories. One, I would look at retargeting audiences and custom audiences in one category. To the degree that you can get as much first party data on your intended target, as well as retargeting audiences that you developed through all of your other marketing activities, I would look at those in one bucket as far as Facebook ads. That's probably a lower spend budget, very, very targeted ads, very, very targeted copy and imagery, and ideally that's your bottom of the funnel best audience. But it probably is going to spend very little amount to make sure your frequency, ie, the amount of times you're seeing an ad doesn't get too high.The second bucket, I would try to be as broad as possible, but be realistic with it. If you can only run in X amount of area geographically, don't necessarily limit yourself by picking, let's say the top five zip codes that you might think have the highest GDP, for instance. Try to be as broad as targeting in your prospecting, but realistically. And then secondly, while you're targeting more broadly, make sure that your actual ad and the creative is aimed as tightly as possible at the specific audience you're trying to reach, and let the algorithm actually find those specific people because it absolutely is reading your copy. It's reading your video. It's reading your image, and trying to learn who is best served on the opposite side of that ad. So I would say target broadly, message tightly.Paul Green:Okay. And I'm going to come back on to messaging in a second. You mentioned a couple of things a second ago, and I want to make sure that everyone who's listened to this understands everything. You mentioned retargeting, which many people will be familiar with, but can you explain it anyway? And can you also explain what a custom audience is?Brian Davidson:So a custom audience is a audience defined in Facebook, either through email, phone number, page visited on a website, amount of video that someone has watched. It can be any sort of defined audience within a variable that you feed into Facebook. So it could either be on platform, meaning you watched x video or you clicked on X ad in the past, or it could be data that you feed back into Facebook. For instance again, emails or phone numbers, unique signifiers of specific people that you want to target. So that's a custom audience.As far as retargeting the audience, it's done from the Facebook pixel. That's gotten a lot harder post to iOS 14.5 update, and that people that opt out are naturally no longer within your retargeting audience. So you're going to have to be using your desktop audience. However, for MSPs, probably a lot of your traffic is still coming from the desktop. That B2B audience is still searching via desktop. So setting that pixel onto your website and feeding that data back into Facebook/Meta for ad targeting.Paul Green:Yeah, that makes perfect sense. That's some good suggestions. Now, let's just come finally on to the messaging. And one of the hardest things doing marketing with MSPs is that the things that are really important to MSPs, their end clients don't perceive them to be so important. So for example, ransomware. So Brian, you are not a technical guy. You are not an MSP. So you hear the word, in fact be interesting. When I say ransomware to you, what do you know about ransomware?Brian Davidson:I think of security. I think of some stocks that I own, but it doesn't really play a role in my day to day.Paul Green:Just as a research exercise, because this will be a fascinating thing for the podcast, can you tell me what ransomware is?Brian Davidson:I couldn't. Not in a way that would sound good to your audience.Paul Green:Okay. Okay. And that's exactly the issue that MSPs have. In fact, I think that's going to be a question I'm going to ask all non-technical people who come on this show this year. So the average business owner or manager has exactly the same issue that you have. That they don't really know what ransomware is, they can't describe it, they don't know the horrors of it, and obviously, most MSPs do because they've seen it or they've had to deal with that. Ransomware is only one small part of the overall security issues. And there are so many things which are actually really important to MSPs, which just the perception from the end clients is it's not important until it is, until they get hit with something, and then it's an issue.Brian Davidson:So tell me if I'm right, ransomware protects you against your IT being essentially stolen and ransomed against. Am I correct?Paul Green:Kind of. Yeah, you're in the right ballpark. Ransomware is where someone blocks your... You go into work tomorrow morning, and your screen turns red, and it says "Your data has been encrypted. To get it, you've got to pay X thousand dollars in Bitcoin." That's ransomware, and that's just the start of a hell week for you. But yeah, no, I mean, that was a pretty good guess at it.So the issue is if you put messages like ransomware, cybersecurity, backup, all the things that are important to MSPs to deliver, if you put those into the marketing messages, the business owners that you're trying to reach will slip into a coma because these things just aren't of interest to them. So obviously, that has an impact on engagement, has an impact on response. What kind of messaging do you find works best in Facebook when you're reaching B2B? Is it a very straightforward message or would you be a more amusing, would you use more entertaining content and imaging, for example, because of the platform that you're using?Brian Davidson:I Think it goes back to the classic Simon Sinek thinking of start your why? Why does this audience care? I wouldn't try to be too technical. I'd try to either classic advertising 101, try to think of the pain that I'm solving or the joy that I'm creating, and try to lean into those as much as possible. Some of these products might not necessarily be in either of those categories, but ransomware certainly is. The pain that would happen if you aren't set up properly from a security standpoint is pretty large. There's also the peace of mind in the joy category when you're set up properly from an IT standpoint. So I try to think, not necessarily B2B, I try to think classic consumer messaging, advertising 101.Paul Green:Yeah, so you're reaching people. The fact that they're on Facebook or the fact that they're business owners is almost irrelevant. It's still just people trying to reach people.Brian Davidson:Yeah, and hitting them with the message that is targeted to them. So my ads for business loans are very, very targeted to business owners. They would not make sense to my wife. It certainly makes sense to them.Paul Green:And in fact, actually something not making sense to someone outside of the audience shows that you've got a very, very targeted message. Okay. Brian, just before we finish up, can you just give us one, two, maybe even three things that when you start working with a new client that you wish that they knew about Facebook ads? So if you like common misconceptions that you have to put right, or common myths or just things that you wish that people knew about Facebook ads.Brian Davidson:By far, the number one thing that I get all the time is my audience is only on Instagram, or my audience is 25 to 34 year old women, and they're only on Facebook groups. My audience is this. This is the person I want to reach. And to my statement earlier, the best way to use Facebook is to lean into the algorithm and go as broad as possible. Again, my business ads that I'm running right now, it's very specific business owners. The majority of them have no targeting at all. The targeting is all done through the creative and leaning into the algorithms much as possible is by far the most efficient way to use the platform.Rather than thinking, I know this exact persona, I think because mainly of the press, going back to Cambridge Analytica, the Trump election targeted ads, everyone feels that and they're told specifically through political campaigns that they're targeting, let's say a very specific state and a very specific voter because they have so much data on that person that they know they need to swing them over to the other side.Well, the majority of marketing isn't that way. When I'm selling my business, I'm not trying to sell it into one specific state. I'm willing to sell to any business owner. And in fact, if I think of most of our elections in the United States, if we didn't have an electoral college, we wouldn't have these targeted ads in geography. They'd be trying again, to be using the algorithm to go broad. So I think that political backdrop and all these political stories that you hear have people thinking that they should go really, really narrow on the platform. And yes, the ads are very, very targeted, but you doing that microscopic targeting is not the most efficient way to do it. You can do it again, like we mentioned on the retargeting side and the custom audience side for very sharp targeting, but your broad targeting, I would do that at the ad level.Paul Green:Okay, wonderful. Thank you, Brian, for giving us your time to appear on the show. Tell us briefly what your business does. Just remind us of that, and tell us how we can get in touch with you.Brian Davidson:We're Match Node. We are a digital ad agency. We've been at it for nine and a half years. We primarily help B2C businesses reach their consumers on both paid social, organic social, and Google ads.Paul Green:And how can we get in touch with you?Brian Davidson:Just visit our website at matchnode.com. M-A-T-C-H-N-O-D-EVoiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast. This week's recommended book.Jason Kemsley:Hey, it's Jason Kemsley from Uptime Solutions. And the book that I would recommend is "Scale or Fail". Now, as a team, everything that you do decides on how explosive your growth is or how your growth doesn't exist. Building a business to scale is the foundations to a successful business, even if you don't want to exit or sell. So have a read, see what you can do starting from people to process, and then scaling and repeating, and see if you can scale and hopefully, not fail.Voiceover:Coming up next week.Justin Esgar:What's up everybody? I'm Justin Esgar from the Virtual Consulting Group, and join me next week when we talk about how a small business like yours can acquire other MSPs.Paul Green:Whichever platform you are listening to or watching this podcast right now, please do subscribe so you never miss a new episode. Or if you're on YouTube as well, make sure you hit that little notification bell. Because on top of that interview with Justin next week, we're going to be finishing off what we started this week about why your clients are terrified of cyber crime and what you can do about it. And I'm also going to ask you another provocative question. Have you ever sat down and worked out how much profit you make per client per hour? We'll have a look at how you do that next week. Don't forget, we have a ton of extra content at youtube.com/mspmarketing. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.Voiceover:Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Scale or Fail: How to Build Your Dream Team, Explode Your Growth, and Let Your Business Soar

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Episode 179Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 You can't expect 'A Team' game if you hire 'B Team' players * 06:18 How to max networking (events not cables) * 18:59 Helping MSPs shorten sales cycles and double sales - in 90 days

Featured guest:Thank you to Simon Severino, Founder and CEO of Strategy Sprints, for joining me to talk about how MSP owners can shorten sales cycles, increasing conversion rates, and double sales in 90 days.Simon Severino helps business owners in SaaS and services discover how to be able to run their company more efficiently which results in sales that soar. He created the Strategy Sprints® Method that doubles revenue in 90 days by getting owners out of the weeds.Simon is the CEO and founder of Strategy Sprints which is a global team of certified Strategy Sprints® Coaches which has offers a customized strategy to help clients gain market share and work in weekly sprints which results in fast execution. He is also a Forbes Business Council Member, a contributor to Entrepreneur Magazine, and a member of Duke Corporate Education.Connect with Simon on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonseverino/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Artists-Way-Spiritual-Higher-Creativity/dp/1788164296/

Transcription:Voiceover:Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world, this is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Greetings. Hello and welcome to episode 179. This is what's in the show this week.Simon Severino:Hi, I'm Sam Severino, and if you are in sales, you know that the sales cycles, they're becoming longer and longer. How can we shorten the sales cycle and close more deals in the same time? This is what we're going to cover in this episode, so join us.Paul Green:And as well as that interview later on with Simon, we're going to be talking about networking. No, not the networking you enjoy plugging cables in. I mean networking where you go out and meet people at events. In fact, we're going to talk about how you can totally maximize networking for your MSP.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP marketing Podcast.Paul Green:I have this friend. He's a lovely guy, one of the most successful people that I have ever known, and he acts as a mentor to me still, and he has multiple businesses. He is constantly changing, and driving, and pushing things. He's a real inspiration, and there's one side of his business that if I was to be brutally honest and stand back and look at it coldly, perhaps if I was a consultant that he was paying me thousands and thousands of dollars to do, I would stand back and I would say his biggest negative behavior, his biggest downside to the way he operates is that he is constantly hiring B team players and expecting them to deliver an A team game.Now, let me explain what I mean by this because you may be doing this yourself in your MSP, and you may be accidentally hobbling yourself with exactly this behavior. Let me explain it. When I talk about A team, B team players, this is about ability. This is about attitude. This is about all the things that you cannot train someone in. So it's not about skillset at all. It's about ability and attitude.So if you think about the technicians you've got right now, you'll have some technicians who perhaps when they joined you, they didn't have the necessary skills. They weren't ready with the qualifications and the ability to just do stuff, but what they did come in with was this amazing ability to be very open to it. They had a great attitude. They came in wanting to learn, hungry to learn, ready to throw themselves into it, to do the training, perhaps even to do stuff in their own time. They don't complain as much. They're very open to change, and at the same time, they just want exactly what you want, which is let's do a great job for the customer, and let's make some money.So do you have technicians like that? Maybe you have technicians that are perhaps the little opposite in that they came in with qualifications, with the ability to do more things, but their mind is a little bit closed. They're perhaps not as keen to do more training, learn more things, move onto something new. They're perhaps a little more arms folding, if you know what I mean by that; a little more of a barrier to change. That's the difference between your A team and your B team players.A team could be 18 years old, and they could have no ability whatsoever in terms of actual formal technical ability, but they come in to you with an open mind. And an interesting fact, they will have ability. What am I talking about? A team go and teach themselves the skills that they want to acquire. It's really rare for an A team player to turn up at any job that they really badly want without having learned some aspects of the job. They're a bit rough around the edges sure, but they've thrown themselves into it in their spare time.I love it when I'm hiring writers. If I have a writer or an applicant to be a writer who's never actually formally professionally written, but they have written blogs. They've done newsletters. They've done community stuff. They've written, written, written, written. They might even have gotten Fiverr or Upwork and just sold their work. And they've thrown themselves into it because they're desperate to get a proper professional writing job. It's exactly the same with techs. So A team have this amazing open attitude. They have the ability to pick up stuff and they're just amazing people and you can upskill these people, whereas B team players, I wouldn't say it's quite the opposite, but typically, it's about mindset really. That their mind is closed, their ability to learn and change is closed, and it makes them less valuable.So as I said, my friend makes this recurring mistake of hiring B team players and expecting them to deliver an A team game. So he knows exactly what the A team game looks like, but really every time he hires someone, he should be paying more to hire better people, and it is a conversation we've vaguely had. I think at some point we need to... Maybe I should get him to pay me thousands in consultancy fees. Because when someone pays thousands of pounds for an answer, they listen to the answer, right? This is the quandary of consulting. Exactly the same advice that no one pays for doesn't get acted on. You pay $10,000 for it, and suddenly it gets acted on.So you've got to ask yourself in your MSP, are you possibly doing the same thing? I mean, don't get me wrong. We all make that mistake sometimes, but do we make that mistake on a regular basis? If you think right now about your technicians, are they A team players? Are they B team players? Blimey, are they even C team players? C team players should be fired, by the way. C team players are just all the bad things you can think about with your team, and I know recruitment is difficult right now, but that's no reason to hang onto a C team player. In fact, your C team players drag everyone else down. In fact, your B team players drag down A team players as well.The perfect business is full of highly paid, well organized, A team players who have all the resources that they need, and your job as the leader is just to stand at the side and let them get on with it. Be there when they need you, but just stand at the side and let them get on with it. Very hard to do that with B team players. So much easier with A team, and I would argue the extra $5,000 or $10,000 a year that you have to pay for that person is worth every single penny.Voiceover:Here's this week's clever idea.Paul Green:There are two types of networking aren't there? There's the networking that makes you excited and makes you rub your thighs, and then there's the networking that makes you sit in your car feeling a bit sweaty and a bit cold, cold clammy hands. I'm no different actually, although I don't enjoy the networking that you enjoy, which is pushing the cables into the slots. That all just baffles me, that kind of thing. But I really don't enjoy the networking at events, the going to events, the meeting strangers, the shaking of hands, the eating of breakfast. It's horrendous. When I started my very first business in 2005, and I'll be brutally honest, I didn't know how to get new clients. It was hilarious. It was a marketing agency that didn't know how to get new clients.But hey, we all have to start from somewhere. So I thought, "Okay, I'm going to try 10 different things, and I'm going to see which of these things work." That was my attitude and my mindset at the time. And one of those things was to get off my ass, get in the car, and go to every single networking meeting that I could find. And at the time, I lived in near a little town called Wellingborough in Northamptonshire. We're talking sleepy market towns, very quiet counties in the middle of England. And so I found myself driving 50, 60 miles to go to lots of different networking events. I remember going. I think I drove, it was 100 miles to a city called Norwich, which is a lovely big city here in the UK, and I ended up getting a client. I got a marketing client from meeting them at a networking meeting. And it was a real pain because then for the next three years, every two, three months or so, I had to drive to Norwich to go and meet with this client, and it was a real pain.Anyway, the point is it got the business off the ground. It was one of the 10 channels that worked really well. Networking, which is okay for marketing people, can be awesome for MSPs because if you think about the marketing strategy that works for MSPs, and this is my three step marketing strategy that works, you build multiple audiences of people to listen to you. You build a relationship with them, and then you commercialize that relationship. If you think about it, networking, meeting people, is great for the first step and the second step.First of all, it's a great place to meet people because who goes to networking events? I'll tell you who? Other business owners, well actually other business owners, managers, and salespeople. Salespeople go there to sell, sell, sell. But actually, depending on the events that you pick, and certainly if you were to join something like a BNI, which can work very well, and go and look up your local chapter to see if there's a space even for an MSP, because most BNIs, they only allow one type of each business in. And most BNIs, the IT side is just locked down immediately, but it's worth asking the question at your local chapter.Depending on which meetings you go to, will depend on the quality of the people that you meet. I can't think of a better way to meet other business owners, people who you could do business with down the line because you meet them, and then you get to spend time talking about their favorite subject. Their favorite subject of course, is themselves, and that's one of the secrets to networking. You do not go to networking to talk about you and your business. Let's be honest. What you do is a bit dull anyway, not to you, and not to me, but it is to ordinary people. They find IT technology, managed services, cloud security, cyber crime, all of that, they just find it a bit dull. To them, it's the conduit. It's something that they have to use to get the outcome that they want. For you, it's your entire world plus your kids. But it's your entire world. So the worst thing you can do is to talk about you and your business and technology. Instead, you talk about their favorite subject.You ask them about their business, lots of open questions. So tell me, what do you guys do? How long have you been doing that? That sounds amazing. What's the best thing about this? What's the worst thing? What's the thing that keeps you up at night? What's the biggest challenge? Where do you think you can take your business in the next three years? I've just given you there enough questions to get you through 15 minutes of conversation at networking events, and the goal of a networking event is actually to try and meet as many new people. Well, the first goal is to try and meet as many new people as you can.So you go in, you find someone to talk to, and there's a wonderful dynamic of networking that you can look for. If you go in and there are three people talking, and their bodies are all facing into each other so it's a circle, that is not a group that is ready to be interrupted. It will create emotional trauma for you. Maybe not for them, but it certainly will for you if you try and break into that group.Whereas you go and look around the room, and you see two people standing with their bodies facing away from each other, like there's a gap for a third person. That is literally them desperate for a third person. Their bodies, their subconsciouses have opened up their circle, so a third person can come and join them. Boom, straight in there. Hi, how are you? They're going to greet you because they're ready for you to come in. "Hi, how are you?" you ask, and you shake their hands. You ask those questions, and then of course you've give them the business card. Ill talk about business cards in a second. Don't be afraid to move on.One of the biggest mistakes anyone makes at networking, I've done this, you've done this, maybe you still do it, is you go in, you find the first person to talk to, and you're stuck with that person for the next two hours, and you go away from the meeting really annoyed because you spent two hours talking to a plumber that's never going to give you any business or that's never going to do any business with you, and you get really annoyed with yourself. The trick is go in, meet someone, shake a hand, move on. Obviously, you'll meet people that you have met before. Shake hands again. Hi, how's it going? How are you? Build the relationship. Build the relationship, but move on.You have to work the room. There is value talking to the same people in 15, 20 minute bursts. You're looking to build up the relationship over time. No one meets you on a Monday at a networking meeting and hands you a $12,000 a year contract on Tuesday because that's just not how it works. You have to build up a relationship with you. Sure, they may call you if they have an urgent problem, and they don't know who else to call. That can work sometimes, but the real value of networking is remember, build multiple audiences, build a relationship with them, then commercialize that relationship. So you're meeting new people, you're building up, meeting them regularly over time, and you're building up that relationship with them.Now, I promised to mention to you business cards. That's coming up in a second. One note on food and drink. So I've been to breakfast events, lunch events, evening events, afternoon, morning. I've done the whole lot, and what I discovered very quickly is that your food and drink choices matter dramatically to the quality of the event. It's almost like sometimes we go to a networking event, and we forget why we are there. We think we are there to fill our face with sausages, and bacon, and eggs. And you could look at that as a bonus or maybe a punishment depending on your view of breakfast. But you've got to put the food and the drink into perspective of why am I here? I am here to build audiences and to build a relationship with them so I can commercialize that down the line.What that means is, for example, if you go in and there are sandwiches, you use the lunch queue as a way of talking to people, the people around you in the queue. You don't just fill your plate up with a ton of food. You take a couple of basic sandwiches. In fact, I would argue eating and drinking light at these events keeps you nimble anyway. There is nothing worse than having a great big massive cooked breakfast and then trying to carry on a meeting. Plus your breath stinks of baked beans which is disgusting.So pick your food and drink choices very carefully. It goes without saying, no alcohol. I've seen people knock back a couple of glasses of wine at a networking event through nerves, and guess what? It was very obvious they were drunk. Even two glasses of wine makes a big difference, and when you're trying to meet people, that whole thing of you never get a chance to make a first impression, it's very true. I'm picturing in my mind one particular lady I think of as wine lady because I don't know who she is. I have no idea what business she is, but 15 years on, she's still in my head, and I can see her face right now as wine lady.One other thought before I tell you about business cards, one other thought about food, which is a practical thing, and I figured this one out within my first six months or so. When you go to a networking meeting, you shake hands with your right hand, don't you? Well, that's what most people do. You shake. You shake. You shake. You are touching all of these people, and you don't know where their hands have been. It's making me feel a bit disgusted just thinking about it. You could take some gel with you, but my pro tip for networking is you shake hands with your right, and you eat your sandwich with your left hand.So even if that's not natural behavior for you, I'm lucky that I'm reasonably ambidextrous so it doesn't bother me. I can more or less write with my left hand, but I shake hands with my right, and I eat my sandwich, I literally touch my sandwich with my left because I know my left hand is clean. It has not touched any other human beings, whereas the right hand that's going to need a good bleach shower, that one. It's going to need some sterilization, that one because it's touched all of those hands.Right. I've been promising you a pro tip on business cards. When you get your business cards done, and if your business cards aren't as good as what I'm about to suggest, spend the couple of hundred dollars or pounds to get them redone. If you go networking, you must must put your photo on the back of the business cards. I mean literally. You've got a business card. On the front, it should say your name, your business, or better still a headline of what you do. We keep 1,000 people in Town Name. We keep the technology running for 1,000 people in Town Name. That would be a great headline, for example. You could literally take the headline off your LinkedIn. So your name, your headline or your business name, your mobile number, and your email. That goes on the front.And on the back, the whole of the back of it is taken up with head and shoulders photo of you. Why? Not because you are a narcissist, but because you want to get business out of the networking meeting. You see people go to these networking meetings, and they will shake hands, and meet 10 to 15 people in an hour or 90 minutes. There is literally no way on the planet they can remember anything about those people. They won't remember most of their names. They won't remember their businesses. Anyone that's immediately relevant to them, they will.If for example, you run a business where you need a new ceiling installed, and you go to a networking event, and there's a ceiling installer guy, well, that person is going to be top of mind for you. But everyone else, they just become this mix of names and businesses and whatsoever. This is why actually good practice when you go to a networking meeting is always, even if you're meeting people you've known for a while is put your hand out and say, "Hi, it's Paul. Hi, I'm Paul. How are you?" Because it just makes life easy for them. It saves them having to pretend to not to be looking at your name badge when they are. So back to the business card.Your photo is on there because although people do not remember names and business names, they do remember faces. This is how our brain works. Our brain primarily locks onto faces first. We remember faces, even people who say, "I'm not good with faces." They either have a medical condition, or they're lying because we are all at a basic programming level good with faces because this is the main identifying factor we have. You look at a tiger, right? You might not be able to tell two tigers apart, but you look at a tiger, and immediately the pattern recognition part of your brain says, "I'm going to get eaten. Run." Or "I'm at the zoo."But you look at someone's face right now and immediately there will be, even if you can't remember who they are, there is some glimmer of recognition, and when someone sees your face on the back of your business card, six months after they've met you at a business networking meeting, they will think, "Oh, I remember that guy or that person. I like them. I like them," and they make that assessment, that feeling, that emotional assessment based off their memory of how you made them feel when you meet them or when you met them. And that's why having your photo on your business card is so important. It also becomes a good talking point as well, and you could even encourage people to get a sharpie out and draw a mustache on you and do whatever with that.Those are all of my pro tips for networking. If you've got any others, it would be great to pop those into my Facebook group. We have a Facebook group that's just for MSPs. If you go into Facebook and type in MSP marketing, go up to groups, that's how you can join us there, and I would love to hear your networking pro tips.Voiceover:Paul's blatant plug.Paul Green:If you want more pro tips on more MSP marketing subjects, we've got it covered. There's a YouTube channel for you to go and enjoy, immerse yourself in the whole world of growing your MSP. Just go on to youtube.com/MSPmarketing or if you're on an app, just type in into the search bar MSP marketing.Voiceover:The big interview.Simon Severino:Hello everybody. I'm Simon Severino, and I do only one thing. I coach business owners on how to double sales in 90 days. That's what we do. We are the team Strategy Sprints, a management consultancy, and we help with shortening sales cycles, increasing conversion rates, and finding a way to market that is full of integrity, and that it's actually fun.Paul Green:And with the promise like doubling your sales in 90 days, you don't need to do anything else. That in itself is a great business. Simon, thank you so much for joining me on the show. I want to talk about some of the sales problems that many MSPs face, and let's see if there's some things that you can recommend to improve those things. Now, in particular, we're going to talk about how long sales cycle seems to be for MSPs. We're going to talk about the fact that sales can be very much everything's happening right now or there's nothing happening at all, and there's no smoothening out of the process. Before we do, let's just set some credibility up for you. So tell us about your background and what enables you to be a consultant in sales.Simon Severino:In 21 years, I've started with the big brands that you will probably know. I did the strategy for BMW, for the biggest brands that you are using probably. And from there I have developed tools and techniques for go-to market that I now share with small digital agencies like IT teams, business intelligence teams, UXUI teams, marketing teams, consulting agencies, agencies that are similar to ours because we have found out that the problems that of a B2B sales cycle are very similar also for other B2B teams. And so we have started collecting them and sharing them. It became a book, the "Strategy Sprints" book. It became the Sprint University 274 templates that help people just put in half an hour into go-to market activities, and then get feedback from a Sprint coach, improve it quickly and then ship it.And so we have done this with now over 1,000 agencies, and you can find many case studies at strategysprints.com. We help them increase conversion rates, have more fun with sales, have more accountability in their team, and also aligning better the product and the product experience and the selling part of that, which sometimes is disconnected. And also the most important thing is really to get that sales time reduced because then when you increase the frequency, you can have a totally different monthly number that you hit.Paul Green:Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And you can always tell as the host of a podcast when you're interviewing a natural born salesperson because they cannot stop themselves from selling their own business. So well done for getting a really good plug for your business in early. We will talk later on about your Sprint system and what exactly you do. Let's pick up what you were just saying there about shortening the sales. So many MSPs have this issue that you cannot get people to buy before they're ready to buy. So someone's switching all of their technology and their IT partner from their incumbent MSP over to a new MSP. Because it's so big, it's such a massive deal that can cripple their business if it goes wrong, and they don't really understand it, and there's a certain element of inertia loyalty in there, better the devil you know, that I believe, is what creates this very slow sales cycle. What would you say to MSPs to help to speed something like that up?Simon Severino:There are three levels of sales. One is the team accountability. So what's the culture? Do we have a culture of prospecting that multiple people on our team are doing prospecting all the time? And do we have a good pipeline review meeting per week and a deal review meeting per week? We can Zoom into those, and see what is it actually. So B2B sales is made of three levels. One is team accountability. Do we all prospect, fill pipeline, and report on the opportunities that we have created every week? The second level is the deals level where we Zoom into specific negotiations or deals that we have coming up.Let's say next week you have a meeting where you can close a $100K IT contract. Now you want to have a deal review, meaning that you look at the sales materials, the sales flow, the sales script, how are you prepared to close that deal? And you have a helpful format for others to coach you on this to practice the objection handling with you, to practice the de-risking with you because sales is always creating risk on the other side. There are 11 risks that we have to look at in a B2B sales conversation. And the conversation goes from the beginning to closing.You have actually not just one closing but 11 closings. At the beginning. You are asking for their time. So the risk for them, what if I waste my time talking to this person? And then the meeting, and then the visualization, the goals, the proposal, the statement of work, the concerns, etcetera. We can go through all of them and Zoom into them, and see how can we de-risk each of those 11 steps. And if we de-risk them, that increases the conversion rate. This will not yet shorten the sales cycle, but it will increase the conversion rate, which also increases frequency of your sales overall when you have a higher conversion rate. A good goal would be to have 40%, 50% conversion rate, and usually teams that we coach have a lower one. They are around 20%, 30%.So this one level is increasing the conversion rate. But looking at these 11 things, we ask them to share a recording of a Zoom sales call with us, and then we go through those 11 points, and give them feedback on all 11, how they did it, and what they might try to reduce risk. And we have templates what they can do in each stage to reduce risk. Because you are always putting the buyer in a risk position when you say, "I do your support," there is a lot of risk, time risk, quality risk, money risk. So those are all risks. And what is your plan? What do you have prepared for them to de-risk it? So this is something that we have to look at.Paul Green:So let's come back to the risks in a second. When you were talking about setting up or doing pipeline reviews and looking at deal reviews, I think for the vast majority of MSPs, that's just simply not on their radar. Even I know of some relatively large businesses, MSPs we're talking 15, 20, 25 staff where still, sales is very much an ad hoc thing. It's a case of if a lead comes in, we chase up that lead. If it goes turns into a meeting, great, we go to the meeting. If we win the business, great. But there's certainly not what I would call a very organized systematic approach to sales. Do you believe that's the only way you can get good at sales is to take that systematic approach to it?Simon Severino:Yeah, let's go one step back and say if people tell me that they're probably in turtle stage. We talk about three levels of an agency of a B2B business, turtle stage, cheetah stage, dog stage. So in level one turtle, that's how it feels, ad hoc, unorganized, chasing opportunities. And when you do that, many, many times the team is confused, is stressed, is not happy, and is not fast. So in 90 days we want to move from being underwater like a turtle, which is reacting to opportunities, to cheetah mode, which creates opportunity. Now you are fast like a cheetah. And from there, because the intensity is too much to stay always in cheetah mode, we want to move to happy like a dog. So the goal is fast like a cheetah, happy like a dog, and going away from this reacting to things ad hoc.So how do we get there? There are seven baby steps, but maybe we focus on the first two that you just asked about, the deal review and the pipeline review. So the pipeline review is a meeting that happens once a week. Most of our clients do it on a Monday. And in this Monday meeting, all salespeople come together, and ideally also non-sales people who are creating opportunities. For example, you might have the people delivering in the project join the meeting because they can tell you opportunities from current clients to upsell or cross-sell or get referrals. So don't think that sales is done only by the sales team. You have a huge opportunity basket by involving also the marketing team and also the operations team, even the technicians doing the work because they know what the client needs next. And they have the trust because they're not the sales guys. They're the people who actually solve the problem. So they have enough trust that if they ask for three referrals, they get three referrals.If you import a salesperson once a month, they don't have the same level of trust. So first, think about the composition of the weekly pipeline meeting, and then it's really important when you start looking at the pipeline that there are just five questions allowed. And it starts with each member of that meeting starting with these are the opportunities that I created this week. This is the volume, the size potential. This is the percentage, the probability that I'm going to close this in the next three weeks. And then this is the agreed next step with the potential buyer.And if you are in sales meeting, you know that at some point you start going tangents. You go, "Oh, this meeting, let's talk about this. Oh, I tried this new material. Look at this material." And so you start going into single deal discussions. It's natural. We want to help the person close the deal, and so we go into deal review, but deal review is a separate format that you then can either start the next day and schedule for the next day, or like most of our clients do, they have a dedicated weekly slot for the deal review. So you have the pipeline review, how many opportunities did we create this week? And you have the deal review. Let me help you close this deal.Paul Green:Yeah, okay, that makes perfect sense. Finally, Simon, let's just return back to those 11 risks. Now, I don't think we've quite got time to go into detail on all 11, but can you briefly take us through the concept of the risks that the buyer takes on board? And we mentioned this right at the beginning, I talked about inertia loyalty, that it sometimes feels easier to them to stay with their incumbent than it does to come to move on to someone new. So take us through what some of those risks are, and what we can do to mitigate those risks.Simon Severino:Yes. So when most people say closing, and they think of one thing, it's actually 11 steps. And in each one we need to de-risk. The first close is you want time from them. You want half an hour on the phone or a Zoom call. Now you are asking for time. The risk on their side is, what if I waste half an hour? So we have to de-risk what will happen in that call. And with our clients, we help them create a small set of these are the three things that you can expect from this call. This is what's going to happen, and this is what you can expect as a result of the call. One, two, three, results.Then you have the meeting. In the meeting, how can you visualize how can you create a flow of things? That is value in itself because they're not buying the product. They are buying the experience that they have with you. Are you creating value in each experience? So the next close is when we talk to them and explore what they want, what they need, what the difference is, and where we can bring them, what's the value that we are creating? Are we helping them take decisions better? Are we helping them see their business model in a sharper way? Are we helping them know more about their field? We should know more about the field that we are talking about if we are experts, and so that you should actually get as a value. And then this is the discovery call.Then comes the next stage where you make a proposal, and this is not yet the statement of work. You make a proposal, an oral proposal. I propose this to you, and now you check their reaction, and you start the first set of negotiations. They will come with concerns. Many people call them objection handling. So you start triggering the first objections. We call them concerns because we think they are very relevant concerns. We want to respect them and take them very seriously. We are prepared with a set of 15 concerns because you are hearing probably the same 10 to 15 concerns all the time. So you can start writing them down, preparing for that. You don't prepare during the sales call. You prepare before.And so that's the next set of de-risking because they hear that you have a plan for each of those concerns, that you are openly listening, and that you have an answer. You have a plan for that, a process that shows them this is how we deal with these concerns, the quality concern, the timing concern, the cost concern, the what if it doesn't work concern, the how will you measure the quality concern, the how quickly will you see that it doesn't work and you will react concern. These are all very valid concerns.And then the last part is closing the deal, and very important is the post sales. Now, continuously monitoring satisfaction and addressing issues promptly, also celebrating unlocks, celebrating activations, which will then increase the probability of a referral or a lower churn rate, which means a higher retainment rate or also an upsell or a continuation of working with you.Paul Green:I love it. Simon, thank you so much. Just very briefly, tell us a little bit more about your business, that Sprint methodology that you were talking about earlier, and what's the best way for us to get in touch with you?Simon Severino:We coach business owners on de-risking the sales process, shortening the sales cycle, and generally supercharging their sales and having more fun in sales, more accountability in the team, and more fun in sales. You can find our book "Strategy Sprints" wherever you buy books, and you can find us at strategysprints.com.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast. This week's recommended book.Graham Allcott:Hi, I'm Graham Allcott. I'm the author of "How to Be a Productivity Ninja," which is a great book, but the book I'm going to suggest is this book, "The Artist's Way," by Julia Cameron. It's a book, it's a course in discovering and recovering your creative self. Now, I read this a good few years ago, and I've since reread it, and it's a really remarkable book that helps you to frame your creativity in different ways. It also really helps me to overcome procrastination and overcome a lot of the fear and self-doubt that we often have when we put creative ideas out there. My belief, and I think the book really backs this up, is that everybody needs to be creative in some way, and "The Artist's Way" is just, it's a peerless book. You'll hear this book recommended in lots of different places, and she's written lots of more sense, but the essence is in here. And for me, it really was one of those handful of books that has really changed my life. So go and read "The Artist's Way."Voiceover:Coming up next week.Brian Davidson:Hi, my name's Brian Davidson. I'm going to be on the podcast next week. I own a digital agency called Match Node, and I be talking Facebook ads, more specifically, how you can reach B2B audiences on Facebook next week.Paul Green:Wherever you are listening to this podcast right now, or if you are watching it on YouTube, please do subscribe and hit the bell notification so that you never miss an episode. On top of that interview with Brian next week, we're starting a new series looking at why your clients aren't terrified of cyber crime. Why aren't they? We'll delve into the psychology of why not and exactly what you can do with it. We've got more content for you at youtube.com/MSPmarketing. Join me next Tuesday, and have a very profitable week in your MSP.Voiceover:Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity

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Episode 178Welcome to a special episode of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP.In this week's podcast, I'm joined by MSP owner Tony Sollars for a 121 marketing consult. He won a competition in my MSP Marketing Facebook group.We talk about his business and what marketing he's already doing to promote it. Then I give him some advice on things he could try to push his business to the next level and become the dominant player in his niche.Featured guest:Tony Sollars is a serial entrepreneur who has launched, run and sold several successful businesses. He started Roland Schorr over 10 years ago to support businesses by improving their use of technology, so they can focus on their clients, be more efficient and ultimately have more time and freedom.Tony believes in improving his customer's lives so profoundly with great technology, they couldn't imagine doing business with anyone else. We succeed when our customers do!Connect with Tony on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/tsollars/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcriptionTony:We want to sit down with somebody to come up with a whole marketing plan or a marketing strategy that makes sense, that builds towards something.Tony:How effective are the case studies?Tony:I've never seen the numbers. I don't have any data to go off of.Paul:Good marketing actually doesn't start with looking at you and your business and what you do. It starts with looking at the prospect.Tony:This is pretty gold stuff here. Thank you very much. I really value and appreciate that.Speaker 4:Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast special.Paul:So it's really hard to believe that we have already made it round to Easter. I'm sure it was New Year's Eve just a few days ago, but here we are. It's Easter already. I hope you've enjoyed your Easter weekend and we have another special episode for you this week. Now it's something we haven't done on this podcast actually for a number of years 'cause I'm joined by a real life MSP who is going to talk us through what he's doing for his marketing, how well that's working for him, and then I'm going to give him a one-on-one marketing consult.Now this was something I offered as a competition in my MSP Marketing Facebook group. So if you missed out on this, if you're not yet a member of that group, and it is completely free, just get Facebook up on the app on your phone, just type in "MSP Marketing" at the top. Go to groups, and you'll see there's an MSP marketing Facebook group. It's free to join and you are welcome to join me there if you are an MSP, but no one else because it is a vendor free zone. So let's jump straight into our marketing consult. Welcome Tony Solars. You told me how to pronounce your name that it rhymes with dollars. So straightaway, Tony, we have a strapline for you. Tony Solars brings home the dollars. Is that what's happening with your MSP right now?Tony:Yeah, we've done really good in the last... My MSP merged and partnered with another MSP about five years ago and we've done double digit growth every year ever since then. We're headquartered out of Honolulu, Hawaii; and we're also in three other West coast cities.Paul:Okay. Well, you've jumped straight into what my next question would've been, which is tell us a little bit about you and the business. So tell us how you got started, a little bit about that merger, and then what kind of client base do you have? What kind of size business are you?Tony:So we are a six-person MSP. We're headquartered out of, like I said, Honolulu, Hawaii. Telling everyone hears that, they're like, "We'd love to go out there if you need anybody." They think it's always paradise. So we have two people out in our Hawaii office and we're also based in Seattle where I'm at and we have two here, including myself. My business partner is in Oregon on the coast, and then we are also in Phoenix. And we have clients throughout the Phoenix and Flagstaff and Sedona areas. We manage clients throughout the country. So we do a lot of remote work that way.Paul:So would you describe yourself as just a standard MSP, just looking for general clients within the areas that you're in? Or do you have a specific vertical or a niche that you work in?Tony:We don't describe ourselves as a typical MSP. We try to avoid that word altogether, really. It's an overarching theme of a peer group that I belong to of other MSP owners, I guess you could call them. Even though we use that term, but we try to say, "We're not MSPs," just because that term has become so loosely used nowadays. We're definitely an IT solutions provider that focuses on cybersecurity.We don't call ourselves experts for sure, but we do have several niches that we work in, and [inaudible 00:03:38] of those is law firms. That's a place we came from. We know how law firms work; we know how they talk; and we know the tools they use and the problems that exist within their firms. Another one is financial wealth, the finance vertical. So that's financial wealth advisors, CPAs, bookkeepers, and then the insurance game. So mostly we have quite a few brokers. But we also work heavily in construction. We have a lot of large construction firms. And then just two years ago, we broke into manufacturing, which is something that I've always had a love for. Manufacturing people, they're my people. They're real salt to the earth. They're not great with technology, but they need it to run their business, and they're just super down to earth.Paul:Yes. So I guess one of the downsides of working with manufacturing people is that you've got lots of different systems. And I've heard some horror stories over the years about the most important machine in the manufacturing plant running on XP and it's been stable and up for eight, eight and a half years, and no one wants to take it down or update it or tweak with it. But I guess if you love a challenge like that, why not?Those first three sectors that you mentioned, those first three niches, which was law firm's, financial wealth, and insurance; they're beautiful verticals to be in because of course they're regulated. And anyone that is regulated has a regulator breathing down their neck, which means they're going to be a lot more open to buying more cybersecurity. They're going to be just generally a lot more compliant because once they trust you and understand that you're there to help keep them safe and to keep them out of the regulator's bad books, then that can be a very good thing. Just a general question for you, Tony. If you could wave a magic wand and land the perfect client tomorrow? What exactly would that client look like? Would it sit within one of those niches for you? How many users would it be? Whereabouts would they be based? What does the perfect new client look like?Tony:Our perfect new client, and this is the one that we are targeting as far as our marketing goes and our conversations and we talk to people is in that 25 to 75 user employee range. If I had to give you an exact number, 50 employees is where is that sweet spot. Because what I find is, they have budgets. They have enough employees to give the leadership time to sit down and actually have meetings with us and do strategic planning and to build out those three month, one year, three year, and five year plans. But they're not so big that they have IT or that they've actually said they usually don't have standardization. That's why I love manufacturing because they understand standards, but it doesn't mean anything to them when it comes to IT. So there's usually a lot. There's a big game plan to be had there when it comes to teaching them standardization when it comes to IT.Paul:Yeah. I can see why you're going for these niches, these verticals. You clearly, as a business, have a lot to offer them. Right. Let's talk about the marketing. So what are you doing right now? And when I say what are you doing, I don't mean, "What are you intending to do?" or, "What initiatives and programs have you got coming up?" Right now, as we record this, here in April, 2023, what is the business doing right now? What's the marketing that you're doing to attract attention, to generate leads, to turn those leads into prospects, and to actually get yourself sales meetings?Tony:Well, I'll be a hundred percent honest, not enough. That's for sure. I've been listening to you for a couple of years, and I haven't been able to get your services because your markets in my areas are all locked. And they have been from the beginning. Otherwise, I would be using you. But we have a company that handles our social media and is pushing out content through social media.And we have another company that is doing some basic SEO work for our website on a very minimal basis. But we don't do any ads, don't do any kind of that kind of work just because we just have never seen any validity for that yet. So we do get leads. Our website does work. We don't get enough. For me and my business partner, it's like doing a little here, a little there, punching that just doesn't seem to be cost effective. It's like, we want to sit down with somebody to come up with a whole marketing plan or a marketing strategy that makes sense that builds towards something. And if that's something that we could find and makes sense, then that's something we would dump money into.Paul:Okay. Well let's see if... I'm not going to give you an entire marketing strategy in a 15, 20 minutes consult on a podcast.Tony:No.Paul:But I'm going to have a good bash at it, that's for sure. And it's interesting you mentioned about our services being locked. I know our clients in Honolulu and I'm sorry that that's locked. So we're talking about the MSP Marketing edge by the way. Go and have a look. Get my little blatant plugin. Go and have a look at mspmarketingedge.com to see if one of your competitors is beating you to your area. You just put your zip code or your postcode in, and it tells you if we can work with you or whether or not it is locked. So you've actually made my job really, really easy because you've got all of these niches that you want to reach. And in fact, we're going to pick manufacturing because that's clearly the one you've got the most passion for.And we're going to explore... We're just going to take a few minutes to explore a really interesting question which is, why would a manufacturer want to work with you? Because good marketing actually doesn't start with looking at you and your business and what you do. It starts with looking at the prospect and looking at them and answering that question of why would they pick you when there's actually a thousand other MSPs that they could pick. So Tony, let's forget lawyers 'cause no one likes lawyers. Let's forget financial people, insurances. Let's go for that manufacturing one. The people that you most like and that you most want to do business with. Just as an aside, pretty much everything we're about to talk about can be used in all those other verticals as well. But I just want to go for the one that you've got the most passion for.So be a manufacturer now. Let's call you... You're not Tony anymore. Let's call you Bob. You're Bob. You're the owner of a manufacturing business. Actually, rather than me saying this, you should be saying this because you know these people. Tell us what Bob is. So tell us a little bit about his business. If you want to amalgamate a couple of manufacturing clients in your mind, that's fine. But tell us about Bob. What's it like to own a manufacturing plant? Is it fun? Is it hassle? Is it all just cash flow crises? Is it lurching from one big order to another? What kind of a business do these guys have?Tony:For the ones that I've had exposure to, it is, most of them do import, export because they're bringing in materials from out of country. So it's a lot of legal and embargo tax stuff. They have in-house councils or that kind of thing. So they do have compliance stuff that they have to worry about. They're not poor. There's a lot of money flowing through these, but they are frugal with where they spend it. I would say the biggest thing that I find from owners of these manufacturing companies is they are not technical and they hate computers. I would say I have three of them, two of them directly just curse words every third word, F this and all sorts of tertiary words of, "I don't like these things. I would like to throw them out a window, but I need them for my business. And every IT company I've ever worked with has screwed me.And I don't believe what you're telling me, but this guy's telling me that you're the real deal, and if you can make it work, then you'll bring a smile to my face. And we shook on it. And I said, "Yeah, this is not the way it should work, and give me three months. I can't fix it overnight." And yeah, we did it. He was having outages at two, three times a week. Some of them like half day outages. So that's probably what I would explain that these people is they have production plants that need... I've got one that just added a second shift and they've got these machines that cut, that manufacture things, and they cost anywhere from a quarter to three quarters of a million dollars for these machines, sometimes more. And workers that run them sometimes two 8-hour shifts a day, three 8-hour shifts a day, and maintenance people. And when they call, the important thing is to set expectations of when you're available because sometimes they think you're available at two in the morning to come in and fix stuff.Paul:So would these guys typically have this kind of Heath Robinson haphazard technical set up where things often go wrong and they're losing money? Or do you find more often that they have an incumbent MSP or some kind of break fix IT support, but they've outgrown it and perhaps haven't realized they've outgrown it?Tony:What I always come in and tell them... And this is what I find with especially manufacturing companies, is, they're being handled in a reactive IT manner. Because these companies don't know what to do. They don't know that, "Hey, all your production machines out here on the plant floor have wireless cards in them, and they're being provided wireless with Google Nest devices that your program manager put in three years ago. And your connection is bad because you put in consumer grade wireless with consumer grade wireless cards. And that's why it's going down all the time. So you need to spend $10,000 and put in proper wiring and have a wired infrastructure put into your production environment. And this is what it's going to cost. This is how long it's going to take. And you need to plan for that and budget it." And they don't have anybody talking to them like that. And saying, and if you don't do this, this is why you're having outages. And so they don't have that proactive saying, people coming in and telling them things like that. Or, "Hey, you need fiber at these locations."Paul:So you're having more proactive strategic conversations with them.Tony:Correct.Paul:Is it a case that they're just not having those conversations with any IT resource they've got right now? So let me ask that question another way. What's the trigger for them to start a conversation with you typically? Is it a, there's a recurring problem that they've perhaps been putting up with for some time, such as, as you said, a really bad connection or using consumer? Or is it that there's an emergency, that something's down and we need to get it back up?Tony:Yeah, it's usually multiple problems, bad relationship with their current provider. That's how the two of the three that I've gotten have come my way. I got referred in. There was an overheard conversation that they were thinking about looking for other IT because they were unhappy with their current one because of all the problems.Paul:Essentially then, there is a level of distress. So we've got these people. And just to recap some of the stuff you said earlier. There's lots of compliance for them. They've got in-house council. There's a lot of hassle in their world. There's loads of money going through, but they're frugal. So they don't like to splash the cash, but they do see the... Well, they have to invest in the business because of course, they've got these big manufacturing equipment that they've invested in. And essentially, they get ground down. They get to a point where there's so many problems to fix and it may be a series of things stacked up on top of each other that eventually they come to a point where they will actually listen to someone strategic. And you are clearly well positioned as a strategic expert for manufacturers. Okay. This is going to be beautifully easy for me. Thank you for making this easy, Tony.We didn't talk before this recording. But I'm so glad you won the draw now. I really am. I'm going to ask you just a couple of quick [inaudible 00:15:22] questions and then I'm just going to jump into prescriptive mode. And obviously for all the MSPs listening to this, you can take exactly what we're going to talk about here. And this is a great way to target any niche or niche as we call it in the UK, or any vertical. Now you can do this alongside your general business. And I advised to most MSPs that, yeah, you have your general business. People in your town, your state, your city, whatever it is. But you also, if you can, you have a vertical. And some MSPs go marry their vertical and marry the market where they pick the vertical and the vertical becomes the business.And that's great if you have utter confidence in the market. In fact I'm working with three or four MSPs who have completely married their market and they're slowly reducing the general clients as they bring on more of their vertical clients. That's great. But most MSPs don't do that. Most MSPs just have a bit of vertical business that sits alongside their general business or do what you are doing Tony, where you've got three or four different markets and you're using those as marketing opportunities to win more of the clients that you know how to serve well. So couple of questions for you. On your website, and we're not going to go and have a look at the website 'cause obviously we're recording this both for YouTube but also for audio-only podcast platforms. But just briefly on your website, how much of that website... If I'm Bob the manufacturer, and I go and have a look at it, how much of that is relevant to me versus relevant to lawyers, to financial people, insurance companies, et cetera?Tony:We haven't done a good job of that. So it's very general, 10,000 foot view. We haven't made anything specific to those industries. It's on the to-do list.Paul:Yeah. Well and do you know what? it's a big to-do one. So one of the beautiful things of marketing to a niche or a vertical is that you can paint a picture, you can come across with a perception that you are the experts at technology for their business. If we take manufacturers, if you've got a manufacturer who has got that cascading set of problems. And they've finally one morning, it's a Tuesday morning and they've got their head in their hands and they're saying, "Right. That's it. I've had enough. We need to do something about this." So they go on to Google and they type in, "IT support manufacturing," or "IT support," whatever they type in. And they have a look at three businesses. And the first two of them are generalists. So they're general IT support companies. They've got lots of social proofs. So they've got lots of case studies and testimonials, lots of other businesses around here.They're clearly well admired, well trusted businesses in the area. And those are of interest to [inaudible 00:17:59]. And then they come across the third one and this third one, without using these exact words, but it essentially says, we do technology support for manufacturing companies in, let's say, in Hawaii. I appreciate you've got three different locations, but we'll just go with Hawaii. So we look after manufacturers in Hawaii, or even better... In fact, there's an actual headline forming in my head now, which is, Hawaii manufacturers trust us to make sure production never stops, which is the start of a great headline. I'm normally better typing these headlines than saying them, but that's a start of something there which can be developed with a writer or with a freelance marketing expert. Hawaii, Hawaiian, Hawaii business, Hawaii businesses, Honolulu businesses, manufacturers trust us to make sure production never stops or never stops unexpectedly or something along those lines.So instantly, if I'm Bob the manufacturer, and I've just come onto this website; instantly, just like that, that seems more relevant to me. Because even though those other two companies, those other two MSPs I was looking at were clearly well-respected and of interest, suddenly I found someone who I perceive as an expert at manufacturers like me. Now, when we can make something relevant to someone, which is so easy with vertical, it literally talks directly to their heart. Now Tony, if you've been a listener to the podcast for a while, and thank you so much for listening, you'll have heard me say many, many times that the ordinary business owners and managers we want to reach, they don't make buying decisions with their brain because they don't have... They don't know what they don't know about technology. So they don't have the brain skills to decide whether or not you are any good at what you do. So they delegate the decision down to their heart.So Bob the manufacturer and 95% of people who are buying from MSPs, they're literally picking you based on how they feel about you. And if from the very first word on your website, they are feeling, these guys are safe. This is the safe choice. Because they understand my business. They understand businesses like mine. The chances of you winning that business right from that very first headline has just gone up by a factor of X, which is just literally sexy. And that's why vertical marketing is so much easier. So I think job number one for you, Tony... And this may require investing a few dollars into this. Go and start a second website. So you keep your general website as it is now. You've clearly put some work into it. You said you've got an SEO, a search engine optimization company, so that's great.Don't do anything with that. Don't make any rash decisions. You just leave that there. But start a second one. In fact, you've got three locations, Honolulu, Seattle, and I think you said Phoenix, was the third location. So maybe that would... Well, you could either have three sites and your SEO company will advise you on this. You might have a specialist site for manufacturers in Honolulu and another one for manufacturers in Seattle, et cetera, et cetera. You might end up... You can see that you'd end up with 15 websites if you went down that route, which may be too much. So you might just have one manufacturer's website for those three locations that the question is always of how do I get traffic onto this site. Although traffic is, again, in a vertical is an easy thing to do. But I would certainly move that way up the task list of let's have a specialist website that seems to talk directly just to manufacturers and to show that we are the technology expert.By the way, you can't just do this as a page on your existing website. They will see through that because they will see that you've got a page for manufacturers, a page for lawyers, and a page for insurance companies. So instantly, that perceived specialty just goes out the window. That's why you need to have a standalone site. Now that site can just be a one-page website. So a one-page website still has a navigation at the top, but it has what we call anchor links. So when you click on the navigation, it just jumps down the page. Essentially, you have a very, very long page. And a specialist vertical site doesn't need to have a huge amount of content in it. All it needs to do is talk to Bob the manufacturer about his business or her business, if it's Roberta. It talks to them about their business.And so you throw in lines like, "Manufacturers in this town trust us to keep their production running," or whatever it was I said earlier. You'd then have a photo of a manufacturing business. In fact, ideally, it would be a photo of you standing next to a complicated piece of machinery, which is clearly manufacturing. It doesn't matter what the manufacturing is, but it is manufacturing. And then you would have, in an ideal world, you would then have a video case study. And that video case study would be a manufacturing client of yours. Now this is the beautiful thing. For MSPs listening right now that are not in a vertical, getting into a vertical can be as simple as having one client. So Tony, you've got three or four manufacturers, but even if you only had one and you got on well with that client and you had a good relationship and you could persuade them to do a video case study with you, that's all you need for better marketing.That's what makes this beautiful. So one short video case study with one manufacturer. And I'll give you the format for that case study video as well because it's so beautiful. You get them to talk about the problem that they had, which is whatever it was that drove them to you in the first place. So they talk about that problem. Then you poke the pain of that problem. So the problem itself is never really the actual pain. So let's say their problem was that their machine, their core machine, manufacturing machine, went up and down three times a day. And that in itself is a problem. But what does that problem mean. If we poke the pain, imagine I've hurt my hand and I literally poke the wound on my hand, what's the pain that that causes? Well, if the machine goes down three times a day, that means manufacturing goes down three times a day, which then comes into lost hours, lost productivity, damaged raw materials, all of that kind of stuff.I imagine that recycling the power on a machine will shorten the life of the machine. You can take this to... You know more about this stuff than I do. But you say, what's the pain of that problem? So the client talks about the problem they've got. They talk about the pain. Then we introduce the solution. The solution is of course what you did. And when I say what you did, it's not the technicals. So you don't start to talk about the, "Oh, we came in with the UPS and we put in an RS232 connector with a blue wire sticking out of the beta port." I don't mean that kind of what you did. I mean where you come in and you do a strategic review of the whole site and you recommend a power upgrade or a fiber upgrade. And you replace consumer grade equipment with military grade equipment, et cetera, et cetera.So you talk in big business terms about the technology, not the specifics of what you do. And then the final part of that case study is, we talk about, it's what we call the happy ending. And it's where the client talks about what they've been able to achieve because of their partnership with you. So the happy ending is not the resolution of the problem they had. It's the bigger picture.The ideal world, it would be, "Oh, I had this problem with my machine. It was going down three times a day. It was causing a real nightmare. The machine's life was shortening; we were losing raw materials; our staff were having three hours a day of unproductive time; we were slipping back on our production schedules; we weren't going to be able to fulfill our contract. Then I met Tony. And Tony came in and he did a strategic review of the entire site and he upgraded some systems and put in place a three year technology strategy for us to help us upgrade all of our systems when cashflow allowed. And thanks to our partnership with Tony, we have grown our turnover by 126% over the last three years." And that's what I mean by that happy ending.Their business will probably have grown that 126% regardless. It's just that you're now their partner. You're their technology partner. So you get to take credit for that. So we're talking about your website, your new website. You've got your cool headline. You've got your picture of you. You've got the relevance to manufacturing. You've got a case study video. I would then embed your live calendar. So get calendarly.com or use Microsoft 365 bookings. Your live calendar there, right there on the website for them to book a 15 minute Zoom call or video call with you. And then I would go into some more testimonials, or I would go into talking about what you do for manufacturers.The whole thing about this is not to talk about your business. You've got to talk about their business, about manufacturing businesses. And in fact, what you could do is, a lot of what we've just been talking about in the last 10, 15 minutes would be perfect. What are the problems they face? How do they overcome those problems? And then again, a call to action, your live calendar embedded there in that page. Now that's only a five minute website design. But that there will give you the basis of something that a manufacturer would look at and they didn't instantly think, "Yeah, I get that. These guys understand me. I feel like these guys would understand me." And is that something that you think you would be quite easy to put together, or do you think you're going to have to divert quite a considerable amount of resource to make that happen?Tony:That's actually something [inaudible 00:27:11].Paul:No, it's an absolute pleasure. And I have to say, I've only got started because I do have a second step for you. So the reason you need the websites is so that you've got credibility. Well, first of all, you'll get more referrals because it's easier for your existing clients to refer you. Because they'll look at your general website now and the people don't refer because there's a perceived social risk. So if I refer you to my friend and you don't live up to the promise that I made on your behalf, I'm taking on board the social risk. Whereas if you're existing manufacturing clients, who by the way will love seeing the fact that you are specializing in manufacturing now. They will love that. If they see that you've got a specialist manufacturing site, it gives them more confidence. So they will actually start to spread the word for you. Not all of them, but some of them.And the other thing is, I'm going to suggest as well, you put in place what we call an evergreen marketing campaign. So most people when they hear about marketing campaigns, they get something from a big vendor, and a big vendor produces a big box of stuff and says, "Here you go. It's an amazing marketing campaign to sell routers, routers," whatever it is we're selling. And those one-off marketing campaigns have a small amount of value, but nowhere near the amount of value as an evergreen marketing campaign. So I'm going to just literally run through the steps of that campaign, what you would do. But I'm going to suggest that you target like 20 or 30 different manufacturers a week. That's what makes this an evergreen. It's not something that you do as a one-off exercise. You actually put it in place as a system and that system happens every week. And with, I think you said there was six of you within the business, so you're probably going to need someone else to run this for you.Don't go and hire a marketing agency to do that because they will over complicate it and try and get you to redesign your logo and do all sorts of things. You can do this with a marketing freelancer. You could do this with a virtual assistant. If you get it set up once and you can use resources on fivver.com or upwork.com to find freelance resources to get this set up for you. You then basically need admin staff to just run this for you on a weekly basis. And I would highly recommend you run it for 48, 49 weeks of the year. It's just essentially preps Thanksgiving and Christmas that you wouldn't bother with this. But the rest of the year, you would go with it. Here's what you do. First of all, you start with something physical that you can ship out to people in the mail. You know that video we were talking about earlier? The reason for doing a case study video with a client is that once you start with a video, you can then downgrade that video down into other versions.So you could take that video and get a writer from Fivver or Upwork to turn that video into a booklet, literally a physical print booklet. So you'd need to get it designed. You'd need to get it rewritten. But once you've got... You obviously can't turn a written case study into a video. But you can do it the other way around. So we're repurposing some content you've already created for the website. But get that turned into a booklet. In an ideal world, that would be using American paper sizes that would be tabloid, folded into letter size. For the UK and Europe, that's A3 folded into A4. So it's essentially... I'm just going to hold up my pad here if you're watching this on YouTube. It's that size. We'll know what we mean by that size.So it's letter size, but you're opening it up. Really thick paper, really high quality, really good quality print. Don't skimp and do cheap nasty paper or anything. This is your shop front. And if you had a physical shop, you wouldn't skimp on the shop front. So you get that made. That might be four pages or eight pages because the thing about having a tabloid is, when you fold it, you have a minimum of four pages. And each piece of paper you add in, it's another four pages. So let's say you could somehow space that out to eight pages. And that's not eight pages of text. You've got in there images. You might have some other testimonials. You might have a bit of information about you guys; but essentially, you've got something that you can post down. And the critical thing is that right from the page one on the first page, it is relevant to Bob the manufacturer.It's got to be because you want Bob to get that in the mail, to open it and to look at it and instantly to see that this is relevant to him. And then he's going to either flick through it or put it on his desk to read later or take it home or read it on the toilet or give it to his operations manager. The point being, it's in his hands. And it almost doesn't matter whether he reads it or not. In an ideal world, he would read it. But if he doesn't read it or not, that doesn't really matter. You send out, let's say, 30 of those a week. So there are 30 manufacturers, never heard of you before. They've had this piece of mail that turns up. Now the next thing that you would do, is you would then send them a digital message to coincide with them getting that in the mail.And that might be an email because obviously, it's fairly easy to find out someone's email address. Mostly, it's on the website, or you can use software to find it. The great thing about manufacturers is there's only a tiny number of people that have emails. And it might be that the owner or the manager is the person who responds to the sales at general email address. Because it's not like they're inundated with sales inquiries, right? So it's probably quite easy to message that person. The alternative is that you connect to them on LinkedIn, let's say, a couple of weeks before. And once you're connected on LinkedIn, you can send them a message on LinkedIn, again, to coincide on the day it arrives. Now the reality is, not everyone will open their email or will look at their LinkedIn messaging on that day. But it's something we just try and do. We try to hit them with the same message delivered via two or three different platforms.So if I've received something in the post, and I've had a LinkedIn message, and I've had an email, and they all have different words but they're about the same thing. So the message might be, "If you have problems like Bob did in his manufacturing business, read this now." And instantly, I'm going to be much more likely to read that. If I get the email, I will go and have a look in the post to see if it's arrived. If I open that LinkedIn message... And in fact, you might even do it as a link to a PDF version of that on LinkedIn. Don't take that as an excuse to cut out the print. The print is absolute TNT. It's the thing that drives the whole campaign because the power of getting something in someone's hands is huge. But there are lots of different ways that you can get that same message over to them.What we're trying to do is we're trying to just open them up. We're trying to get them to have a look at this, to read it, just to get their mind to open slightly to, there's a company that does IT. There's a company that does technology that partners with manufacturers. Because then the final part of the campaign is, you're going to get someone to phone these manufacturers. And remember, we're only targeting like 25 or 30 a week or whatever number is doable. Now I always recommend a back to work mom for this. You get someone who wants to do some adult work. They've perhaps come out of a professional career, had a six or seven year career break. Kids have done school. They're now ready to go back to work, but it's just not right for them to return to their old career.They want something interesting but something that can be flexible and arranged around schoolwork and when one of the kids is off sick, they don't have to worry about it. And this is the perfect job for a back to work mom. So you can actually hire in a very high level skill set person, someone who's very comfortable on the phone, at actually quite a low hourly wage. And you're just paying them to make follow-up phone calls. Now this isn't cold calling. This is slightly warm calling. Because they're calling people that you've already sent stuff to. In fact, we call the mail piece and the messaging, we call that opening the door. Because you are pushing the door open for your phone person to call them. Now you're back to work mom who's doing the calls, she doesn't need to know anything about selling. She doesn't need to know anything about technology. She doesn't need to know much about your business.Because her job is literally to ring them up and the conversation may go like this: "Oh hi, is that Bob?" "Yes, hi. It is." "Oh, hi Bob. My name's Sandra. I'm calling from," so-and-so, "computers. Hey, we sent you guys like a case study book through. We shipped it to you and it should have arrived with you a couple of days ago." Because she's making this follow up call a few days after it's arrived. "Hey, did you guys get that? Have you had that?" And let's say Bob says yes. If he says no, you don't worry. You just plow on regardless and you promised to send him another one. Because he probably did get it. It's just, he forgot about it. So he says, "Yeah, yeah, I got that. Yeah, that was kind of interesting." And then Sandra then asks him... And this is why she doesn't need to know anything about technology or your business. Sandra then asks him a series of open questions. And she asks him about his favorite subject. And everyone's favorite subject... Tony, can you tell me what everyone's favorite subject is?It is. It's exactly that. It's themselves. So she gets Bob engaged in talking by saying... And in fact, with the manufacturer, it's the easiest thing in the world. "What do you guys manufacture there?" That's her opening question once she's introduced herself. "What do you guys manufacture there?" And suddenly he'll start talking about whatever it is they're manufacturing. And then she can jump in with, "So how's business going right now?" And then, "So do you guys export a lot or do you sell internally?" And she can have a five minute conversation here. In fact, she will end up having the same five minute conversation with a ton of manufacturers, which is great. This is exactly what we want. Then she can jump to a qualifying question. So you could be as crass as to say, "So do you guys have technology issues that are holding you back or that give you a headache?"Or maybe she might say something like, "Do you guys have recurring technology issues?" That might be too much too soon? In which case she might just say something as simple as, "So do you guys have a technology company, like an IT company you use?" And if they do, she can then ask the world's best question about your opponent, because that's who they are. The incumbent is the opponent. She could ask them, "On a scale of one to ten, where one is awful and ten is world class, how would you rank your current IT support company?" And if they answer seven or below, then there's an opportunity there for you to have a conversation with them. Because eight, nine and ten is pretty happy. But seven or below means there is some level of dissatisfaction there. And then Sandra moves to the kill. Sandra's goal is to book them a 15 minute Zoom call with you. Not Teams.I know MSPs love Teams, but Teams is just a horrible piece of software for ordinary people to use unless they're in the Team's ecosystem. And of course not everyone is. So I would just go with Zoom, which is the universal thing. And her job is just book a 15 minute video call. So she almost says it as if it's just occurred to her. So let's say she's on the phone to Bob. His current IT support company is seven. She goes, "Seven." She goes, "That's quite a low score. I've got to be honest, I don't hear scores that low very often. So what is it that these guys do that..." Or, "What is it that these guys do or don't do that gave them such a low score?"And he may say something or may not. And then she can say, "Well, do you know what I think we should do, Bob? If you can spare 15 minutes, why don't I set you up on a 15 minute Zoom with my boss. His name is Tony Solars. He's an expert at technology and IT for manufacturers. And it would just be an introductory call. So there's no obligation to buy anything ever. Literally 15 minutes on a Zoom. Because I'm not a technical person, you could tell him more about the problems you've been having. Maybe he could suggest some things to look at, maybe not." And some people are going to say yes, more people are going to say no. But that's okay. Because if she's hitting 25 people a week, in fact, you send that out to 25 people, she will attempt to... Or she'll dial 25 people. She might get hold of 10 to 15 of them. She might book one, one, maybe two zooms.Well, wouldn't you be delighted with a Zoom every single week with a manufacturer? Well God, yes you would. Because let's say two in three of those Zooms are going to turn into a proper sales meeting. And let's say one in three of those Zooms will turn into a new client. Which basically means, you could potentially be onboarding a new client once every month or once every six weeks or so. And most MSPs would be delighted. And I know your sweet spot was 50. Maybe you wouldn't get those 50 users with a manufacturer. But remember what we said that you can roll this out to all of those other verticals that you've been looking at. My final point on this, and then we're going to wrap this up, Tony. I'm just going to give you an opportunity to ask me any sort of questions about this.I did mention where are you going to get the data for this. How are you going to target these people? Again, with a vertical, with a niche, it's the easiest thing in the world. You either buy the data or you pay someone to go scrape that data or you look at associations. What are the associations they belong to? Where you've got a group of people who all do the same thing or a similar thing, getting the data is the easiest thing in the world. And to be honest, Google is probably the first place that I would look for that. When you've run out of Google data or you've run out of the low hanging fruit, that's the point I'd go off and buy data or look at other exciting things like that. But literally, can you see why I got so excited when you started talking about niches? And nothing we've talked about here is actually particularly sophisticated.It's not hard to do. The difficulty is getting someone to build that website because that's a time suck and a money suck. It's putting in place that... Getting that video case study done. Again, it's time suck and a bit of a money suck. And putting all the bits in place. That's the difficult thing to do. I think actually, 'cause we're talking here about a marketing machine, turning the crank of that marketing machine on a weekly basis, it becomes the easy thing to do. Particularly when you get other people to do it for you like virtual assistants. It's actually putting the pieces together in the first place that's hard. Right. I'm going to shut up now. Tony, hit me with any questions you've got. Anything very specific or confidential, we'll do that on email afterwards. But have you got general questions for me about what we were just talking about there?Tony:Well, [inaudible 00:41:50].Paul:I've read upon the psychology of case studies quite extensively. There's a book; you're never going to read it, Tony, because it's a hardcore psychology marketing book. It's called Influence by Dr. Robert Cialdini, written in 1984. He's a professor of psychology who, based in New York I think, who focuses on marketing. And he actually coined the term "social proof." So social proof is about case studies. It's about testimonials. It's reviews. What it comes down to, if you look at it at a deep psychological level, is that most people most of the time prefer to do what other people like them are doing. Let me say that again. Most people most of the time prefer to do to take action to act in the way that other people like them are acting. And this is because we've still got the same programming in our heads today that we had a hundred thousand years ago when we lived in caves. And we were in the middle of the food chain back then.So sabertooth tigers and things like that, they ate us. So if we were in a cave with 30 other cave people and they all started running that way, we didn't sit there and think, "We wonder if tiger is coming." We just ran. And you think we're whatever, however many thousand generations on from that, and we've just evolved and got stronger and stronger. That's why we're here because our ancestors learnt to avoid predators better than the guys that got eaten. And hence, we're the result of that.So it's a very strong thing within us to be sheep, to follow the herd. We all logically think we're not sheep and that we make very, very distinct decisions. But if you've ever seen an illusionist, a mentalist on TV or you've gone to Vegas or something and you've seen a show, and you see how easily those guys read their audience and how easily they influence people and persuade them and force them to make choices, which is kind of magic 101, it's because the vast majority of people most of the time follow this. So case studies, as I say, I can refer you to several books if you want to read up on it. And there is some data in there. But I'd just go with that case study. Put it like this, it cannot do you any harm to show a prospect someone else like them who has trusted you. That literally cannot do any harm at all.Tony:[inaudible 00:44:08]Paul:Okay. I think you are the only MSP then who's possibly read that book. But yeah, it's a great book. So you will understand then that how our behavior is influenced by things we have very little control over. And that's what social proof is. People look at case studies and say, "Well isn't that manipulation?" Or, this is my favorite. People say, "Well I wouldn't be influenced by that." And I say, "Well you wouldn't be influenced by that because you are looking at a technical case study, and you're a technical person, and you're in a technical world." But if you pick something that you don't understand how to buy... I'll give you an example. I'm in month 10 of the hell of my house remodeling. It just feels like it's never going to end. We are 80% done, but the builder's just so slow getting the finished bit done. I know nothing about construction and building.And I picked my builder because he had great case studies. And I looked at it and I thought, "Oh, I know her. She lives in the village. I trust her. If she's used Andy, then Andy must be safe." Right? People who don't know what they don't know about the thing they would need to buy are going to lean more heavily on social proof and case studies than... If you were swapping PSA, for example, social proof would be a big part of it because you'd want to know what your peers were doing. But actually, you have the ability to assess one PSA against another because you understand what... You understand it. You can get into it, and you can assess it. So the social proof is less relevant in that situation. But for the kind of people you want to reach, it's incredibly relevant.Tony:[inaudible 00:45:51]Paul:Yeah. So that's a very specialist form of social proof. That's an elevated session, isn't it? Because you have trust with a bunch... There are a bunch of people like you, but also, you've built trust with each other. So we won't name names on PSAs. But if everyone in that group suddenly ditched their PSA and went over to new shiny PSA, it would be very hard for you to act against that because you trust... In fact, what you've got, Tony, is you've got the classic mastermind. I don't know if you've ever read a book called Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, which again has been recommended a number of times in the podcast. And in fact, we had a guest on a few months ago who had written an enhanced version of it. 'Cause it's out of copyright now. It's a 1920s book. And one of the things he talks about is exactly what you talked about there, a peer group.And we're talking the likes of Henry Ford from back in the '20s sitting down with... I'm going to get the names wrong. But imagine Henry Ford and Edison and... Oh, I can't remember the names of the other '20s. Sort of Robert Barrons, all of these people sitting around in a group advising each other, that's exactly... That happened. Maybe not those names because they didn't all live at the same time. But that's what you've got with your peer group. And it's a very powerful thing to try and work against. Okay. Any final questions for us, Tony? And then we will wrap this up.Tony:[inaudible 00:47:21]Paul:No, thank you. You've been very, very generous with your time. Now you have my private email address. Please don't say what it is or I will be inundated with emails. But anything to follow up on this for any year... The next couple of years as you're implementing this, please do email me and if I can answer any of your questions. 'Cause I really want you to implement this and it'll be awesome to get you back on the podcast in a year or so's time for you to say, "Well, I implemented some of this. Look at what we've done. And we've won four more manufacturers." And that would be an epic way of finishing that. So Tony, thank you so much for your time and good luck. I say good luck. You don't really need it because you've got some great markets. You clearly are switched on action taking individual. But I'm going to wish you good luck anyway and good luck mopping up all those manufacturers' lawyers and all of those other clients.Tony:Thank you very much.Speaker 4:Coming up. Coming up next week.Simon:Hi, I'm Simon Severino, and if you are in sales, you know that the sales cycles, they're becoming longer and longer. How can we shorten the sales cycle and close more deals in the same time? This is what we're going to cover in this episode. So join us.Paul:On top of that interview with Simon next week then, we are talking about hiring A team players. If you really, really want to get the maximum performance out of your MSP, you cannot do it with B team players. And yes, that probably means that you're going to be paying a little bit more. But I promise you, it will be worth every penny. We'll talk about that next week. Don't forget, we have a ton of extra content on YouTube as well at youtube.com/mspmarketing. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.Speaker 4:Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Greens MSP Marketing podcast.

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Episode 177Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 How a change of environment could help boost your productivity * 07:03 Three MSP media release ideas to swipe & use * 17:27 The future of on-demand sales is AaaS - Anything as a Service

Featured guest:Thank you to Mark Wass, Strategic Sales Director at CloudBlue, for joining me to talk about how he helps make it easier for MSPs and other businesses to offer services 'on-demand' (AKA 'Anything as a Service'), providing flexibility for their customers.Mark heads up Enterprise and Strategic Sales in the UK & North EMEA for CloudBlue, working with clients to drive their digital transformation and growth strategy.He is experienced in leading and managing high performing sales teams and territories, and is responsible for go to market strategy, regional growth and the acquisition of net new logos and revenue.Connect with Mark on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-wass-01450826/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Power-Moments-Certain-Experiences-Extraordinary/dp/0593079264/

Transcription:Voiceover:Fresh every Tuesday, for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Good day to thee, and welcome to the podcast. Here's what we've got lined up for you this week.Mark Wass:Hi, I'm Mark Wass from CloudBlue, and I'm going to be on the show discussing everything as a service, and how money service providers and service providers out there can provide services to their customers as a subscription, and they can start moving and turning into them aggressive digital service providers.Paul Green:So on top of that interview with Mark, we also talking about how you can get free publicity in your local media. And I've got three specific ideas to give to you later in the show.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:The question I'm going to ask you next kind of depends on where you are within your day. I have no idea what time you are listening to or watching this podcast, but my question is this; how productive have you been today? And I ask this because I'm recording this podcast towards the end of the day, it's around about, well, it's quarter to six on a Thursday evening as I record this. And I've had a very productive date today. And one of the reasons I've had a very productive day is because I've moved around to what I think is more locations than I've ever moved around before. You see, I don't know about you, but I find that when I'm in the same location all the time, I get almost an itchy bum. I need to just move and my mind gets clogged up. It's like I'm stuck in this place and I'm unable to produce an amount of work. And I've noticed that that tends to last, well, I tend to get around about 90 to 120 minutes. So up to around two hours in one location before I need to move.Now, back in the old days when I had an office and a building with staff, I was exactly the same. If I look back now, I used to go and sit in my office for a couple of hours and then I'd move to the meeting room, and then I'd move out into the office where the team were. That didn't last very long because obviously they were talking to me. And then so I'd go and find a coffee shop somewhere. And looking back, actually, for the last 10, 15 years or so, I've been pretty much the same, where I've needed to move around. Now, it took me a few years to realize that it was the refreshing of my environment that helped me keep my productivity high. Now, maybe this is just me. This is the danger of doing something like this in a podcast before you discuss it with other people. You might not be like this at all, I might just be one of those really weird people who needs to wander around a lot.But if I sit in the same place, in the same environment for too long, then I don't get as much done. And actually, that happens across all of my life. I find myself moving around into different environments all the time. So I have a home office, I work from home, but we've still got the builders in. Yes, I have been talking about it for months and they're still here. Progress has just slowed, its ground to a halt. And so I couldn't work from here today, so I dropped my daughter off at school and then first thing I did was I went to Leon. Leon is a little chain in the UK. I had breakfast at Leon, that was great. Nice, healthy breakfast. Did a couple of hours there. Then I moved over to a Starbucks just across the way. And then later on, I moved to another Starbucks, a different one in the city. And then I moved to, and for those in the UK, you're going to judge me on this, but I moved to a Wetherspoon.Don't judge me on Wetherspoons, Wetherspoons is basically a pub chain in the UK that people have quite an opinion on, but hey, it cost me £1.45 for unlimited tea and coffee, and their wifi was fast enough to upload some videos. So that couldn't have been a bad thing. And then where did I finish off today? Oh, I finished at a Costa Coffee, which is another coffee chain. So I moved around all these different locations before I had to pick up my child from school. And it was like each time I got there, each time I had a deadline. Maybe this is the secret to this, it was a deadline of things. So at one of the locations I had 90 minutes of parking because that's all you get for free before you need to pay. So that was a frenzy of 90 minutes. I ordered my coffee, frenzy, frenzy, frenzy, get work done, get work done, boom, and then I'm off to another location. And each time I get to that new location, I pick a new spot.I'm in a different chair, I've got a different desk, sometimes it's my laptop on my lap, but I've changed my environment. And actually, for me, a hell day is being stuck all day, let's say, it's a day of doing Zoom calls or something, I'm stuck all day in the same environment. And I don't just find this with day-to-day working, sometimes I try and completely change my environment. Like I'll go and spend 24 hours in London, which is only kind of like 45 minutes away on the train for me. But if I can go and spend a day in London, and maybe even have a night staying over in London, if I can find somewhere to get rid of the child for the night, it's amazing how much work I get done because I've completely changed my environment, because I can work of an evening. I'm not in my house, I'm sat in a pub having a beer that will last me two hours, getting work done. And I find that this is really good for productivity.How are you with this? Do you have exactly the same thing? Do you have a point in your afternoon where you run out of energy? Maybe, just maybe, it's worth, at that point, trying to get out of your office. What if, after lunch every day, you just left your office and found yourself a coffee shop or a hotel lobby or a restaurant somewhere you could just go and work and spend a couple of pounds or a couple of dollars on a coffee or a Pepsi or whatever, a Pepsi Max, Diet Pepsi, we mustn't have sugar, and just spent the time working on your business. What if that got you through that energy lull of the afternoon? What if the energy lull was actually an environment lull? This might not be you, as I say, this might be a completely out there thing for me, but I've certainly found that changing my environment regularly makes quite a difference to my own productivity. It's kind of the same thing when you go on holiday, isn't it?You know when you get away, you have the whole airport thing, you get to your holiday home, and that first 24 hours, you're trying to unwind from not just the stress of life but the stress of travel. Because traveling is quite stressful because of deadlines and cues and security. But actually, once you've got past that first 24 hours, you're in a different environment and you start to think differently when often you'll find that your life partner says to you, "Oh, I like going on holiday because that's when I see the real you again." It's that person that they fell in love with years and years ago, it kind of comes back again during a holiday because you relax a bit, you change your environment.And do you find this as well, that you start thinking better thoughts about your business? You start thinking in different directions, you start thinking bigger. This is the power of being in a different environment. It's why I'm so keen for everyone, all MSPs, you and everyone else listening to this, to take more vacations, take more holidays. But we can do this on a mini basis by changing our environment and where we work today. Go on, try it. Let me know how you get on.Voiceover:Here's this week's clever idea.Paul Green:If you've been a listener or a viewer of this podcast for some time, and if you have, thank you very much for sticking with us, then you might know that I haven't always been a marketing guy, I actually started my career at the tender age of 19 as a newspaper reporter, and then went on to have a 10-year media career, most of that spent within radio. I adored working in radio. It was just local commercial music radio, but I met some great people there and just had such great fun. And for 10 years, it was awesome. And then it stopped being awesome, so I stopped doing it. But because of that media background, because I am actually a formerly trained journalist, which I think is hilarious still to this day, it's, for me, one of the marketing channels still that you can use to promote your MSP is your local media. Now, sure, when I was 19, back in 1995, I appreciate there's people listening to this who probably weren't alive in 1995, anyway, when I was starting as a journalist in 1995, your local newspaper, your local radio station, they had massive audiences.In fact, they controlled the eyeballs and the ears. If you wanted to reach people, decision makers, back in the nineties, you had to pay the magazines or the newspapers or the TV or the radio stations or some other the distribution, because all of the distribution was controlled by the media companies. And now, here in 2023, well, the distribution is in our hands. So we still have these newspapers and radio stations. There aren't quite as many of them, they're certainly not taking anywhere near the amount of money they used to take, and definitely aren't making the amount of profit they used to make, but they are around. And what's still good about local media is not distribution, its credibility. You see, if your local newspaper or your local radio station or TV station talks about you or mentions you in the context of technology or cybersecurity, this is amazing positioning, because even though they no longer have anywhere near the reach that they used to have, they still have the credibility.In our era, where anyone can publish anything at any time, the fact that you've got these 20, 30, 40, sometimes 50-year-old brands, the newspaper and the radio brands, still putting out content, they have huge amounts of credibility. So if you can get into your local newspaper, that's a massive thing for you. Now, the easy way, well, not the easy way, but one of the ways to get featured by your local media is to send them a press release, also known as a media release. Why would you do this? And by the way, I'm about to give you two or three great ideas, specific ideas that you can use. Why would you send something out as a press release? Because actually, that's how the vast majority of media gets its stories. People perceive that journalists are out there sniffing out stories, looking for things. And yes, there are still some journalists who are investigating or writing features, but certainly, nowadays now, there's so much pressure on reporters, on writers to output tons of content, it's just easier for them to use media releases.And they will look at the stream of media releases coming in and they will rewrite some of those, they will get people for interview off the back of those. They don't necessarily tell you that they're doing it, but it's just an easy source of news. And to a certain extent, when you're sending out a media release, a press release, you are playing the numbers game. When I worked in the media, we would get hundreds and hundreds of press releases a day, and you might get a press release once every month from the same company. And for the first four or five months, you might completely ignore it. And then suddenly, one day, a press release turns up from that company on a day where you have nothing to write about. And believe me, those days happen, they're called slow news days. It's where there just doesn't seem to be anything new to write about. And then a press release turns up and it's about cybercrime and it's from a company that is local because they send out press releases on a regular basis.And there's a little thing at the back of your brain, as the journalist, that says, "I think I could turn this into something," because you're, I'm not going to use you a desperate, but you're very keen to generate new content. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to give you three specific headlines. So these are press releases that I have written in the past for members of my MSP Marketing Edge service. Every month we give our 700 members all around the world, we give them a specific press release with instructions, how to send it to their local media. And the whole point of that is, as I say, it's to get the local media to write about you for credibility purposes. Once you've had something in the local newspaper or on their website, or ideally on the local radio station, you can take a copy of that, you can use that in other pieces of your marketing. You can say, "As seen in this newspaper," or, "As heard on this radio station."Subject to copyright laws, and there are different laws in different countries, you can take a copy of that, you can put it in your marketing materials, you can certainly link to their website or take a screenshot of their website and put that on your About Us page with a link to say, "Hey, we are in the so-and-so newspaper last week. Go and see us here." That coverage is not going to get you a huge amount of tension, it's certainly not going to win you new clients. Some of your existing clients may comment on it, they might say, "Oh, we saw you in so-and-so newspaper last week." But the principal goal of this is credibility. It's part of your domination. You've got to dominate your local market. And that's a subject we're going to be talking about in the podcast in a few weeks' time. But let me give you three headlines. So as I say, these are real headlines from real press releases I've done in the years past for my MSP Marketing Edge members.And I'll just explain what you would do with each story. So the first one is this, so this is the headline, it's the headline of the press release, which means that when you send it out to the journalist, because a press release is just something you email out, this is what goes in the subject line of the email. So they get an email, this is the subject line, they open it up, and then you write the story. Essentially all a press release is a story suggestion. You are suggesting something to them. So the first headline is this, "Don't Click That Link! 'Town Name' Businesses' Biggest Risk is Cybercrime". Let me say that again for you. And of course, this is on the transcript, we have a transcript on our website at paulgreensmspmarketing.com. Just go to the podcast section and look for this episode, episode 177. Here's the headline again though, "Don't Click That Link! 'Town Name' Businesses' Biggest Risk is Cybercrime"So it's fairly self-explanatory what this is. It's telling the audience how big cybercrime is. Now, you might listen to that and think, "Well, come on, Paul. Surely everyone knows that." But they don't. How many times have you sat down with the prospect and talked to them about security, and they're not even doing the bare minimum? That happens on a regular basis. So I think we can generally agree that the audience that you are trying to talk to, the general business owners and managers out there, they really are not as aware of cybercrime as they need to be. And I would argue it's part of your role as a prominent MSP in your town to educate people about this. So that's the first one. The second one, and this is something you can use at Christmas, or just before the holidays in the summer, and this is the Christmas version of it, "Christmas Data Disaster: 'Town Name' Businesses Should Triple-Check Backups Before Holidays". You can see how you could use that before the summer vacations as well.Christmas Data Disaster: 'Town Name' Businesses Should Triple-Check Backups Before Holidays. Again, this is self-explanatory, isn't it? Where people go off for the holidays, there might be a flood, there might be a fire, they might be burglarized or burgled, and suddenly their main computers have gone. "No worry," they say, "because we've got a backup. Oh, we haven't backed up since January." That's not the right time to find that out. Can you see what we're doing here? Is we're taking almost boring everyday occurrences that are routine for you, and we're turning them into new stories because this is based on the principle, as I said, that the average business owner or manager you want to reach, this isn't every day for them at all. Right, final suggestion for you, and this is the specific headline that I wrote, "World's Worst Password."And then you put this in speech markets, in inverted commas, you say, "World's Worst Password, '123456', Still Being Used by Staff in 'Town Name". "World's Worst Password, '123456', Still Being Used by Staff in 'Town Name". Now, just go and Google password 123456, and you will find the latest research which shows that it is still one of the top used passwords. Now, I don't know that, but I think I've used that press release headline about four times over the last six or seven years because every time you go and look at the list of the top 10 weakest most used passwords, 123456 is always in there or some variant of it. And obviously what this press release, this story suggestion allows you to do, is it allows you to talk about weak passwords and talk about random password generators and talk about password managers.And again, ordinary business owners and managers don't know as much about these things as you think or you or I might think that they do. So you've got three specific ideas there. They're great ideas. Get them off to the media. Don't overthink it. You're not being a pest, they want your story suggestions. You'll only be a pest if you ring them up after every single press release to see if they're going to use it. If they're going to use it, they'll just use it, they won't let you know. But what you can do of course, is set up a Google Alert for your MSP's name and often that's the first way that you find out that you've actually got yourself some valuable media coverage.Voiceover:Paul's blatant plug.Paul Green:In that last bit, I mentioned the MSP Marketing Edge in how we give a press release to all 700 plus of our members. And you might be thinking, "But, Paul, surely that means that you've got people, the same people, sending the same press release to the same newspaper." Well, no, we thought of that because right from the very first day that we launched that service, we only supply it to one MSP per area. Once you have it in your area, no one else can use that so long as you remain an active member. All the details are on the website. Go and have a look now and you can check. In fact, there's a postcode and zip code checker to check to see if your area is still available, mspmarketingedge.com.Voiceover:The big interview.Mark Wass:Hi, my name is Mark Wass and I am the Northern European Sales Director for CloudBlue.Paul Green:And thank you so much for joining me on this podcast, Mark. Now, the first thing I want to ask you is what is CloudBlue? Because it sets context for all the conversation we're going to have. So tell us a little bit of background about the business and also what you do within CloudBlue.Mark Wass:CloudBlue are a digital ecosystem and catalog service provider. So at our core, we're actually a platform service provider. And what we actually do is we provide the underlying technology that allows businesses to launch B2B digital marketplaces for them to transform into essentially digital service providers, and provide services to their customer as a subscription-based model and anything as a service. So CloudBlue actually formed, we actually are part of Ingram Micro, and our technology actually underpins the Ingram Cloud Marketplace, which is actually the largest cloud marketplace globally. And our technology allows them to service all of their customers within their cloud marketplace globally. And our technology is where CloudBlue were formed in 2018 through a number of different acquisitions. And I head up the Northern European territory for the strategic sales team, and I lead that as the sales director for that team.Paul Green:Okay, cool. There was lots of big words in there, and when we hear things like digital platform, I never like to assume anyone understands what that means. Actually, the link to Ingram Micro makes it clear because I think everyone knows what the shop offering is there, or certainly here in the UK anyway. So just explain for me, for the average MSP, what do you do for them and what's the benefit for them of using your services? What's the outcome they would get from that?Mark Wass:So if a managed service provider is looking to transform themselves and to grow and scale and sell more digital services to the likes of Microsoft licenses, AWF subscriptions, Azure subscriptions, cybersecurity, it allows them to sell them to their end customers in a completely automated way. So at one end you have a catalog, so a catalog of services, and allows an MSP to expand the briefcase, if you like. So when they open the brief, all the services that are able to be sold to their customers, it allows them to sell them in a completely automated way as a subscription. So at the other end, you may have the marketplace side of our platform, which is the nice front end where their customers can go in, they can see they can buy procure services, whether that's buying them directly or being brought on behalf, their MSP buying them for them, and essentially, all of that management piece in between, so the subscription, the billing, the invoicing, the metering.So where the real value comes into this, if an organization is looking to sell digital services and bundle their own IP together as a total solution, as a managed service provider, it allows them to do that and removes the complexity because what managed service providers and what tends to happen is as you try and grow and scale, it gets extremely complex to manage all of them subscriptions and manage all of them customers a as one go. And I think just to summarize that as we're seeing the markets change, we know that customers now are very demanding. They want everything, they want it on demand. They want to go up, they want to go down, they want to turn it on, they want to turn it off. And our platform essentially allows you to do that and by removing that overall complexity for the MSP.Paul Green:That makes perfect sense. Thank you for explaining that. But let me play devil's advocate on this. So I'm not an MSP, I'm not a technical person, but I speak to so many MSPs and work so closely with them. And I don't mean this to be offensive to ordinary business owners or managers, but sometimes the average business owner or manager, so the people that MSPs serve, you could argue they're not yet sophisticated enough about technology to self-serve, so essentially to use a platform like this to buy services. What kind of things do you put in place or do you recommend for MSPs to help them help their clients to self-serve, to even know what they should be buying from these platforms?Mark Wass:I mean, look, that makes sense. And typically, I have seen this with customers in the past and the previous organization I work. With inside the managed service providers, it's almost a cultural shift as well. So not only for your customers but also internally as well in terms of how you servicing your customer. Typically, you may have an account manager, they pick up the phone to you and they say, "Hi, I would like to order X, Y, and Z." And it's quite a manual, labor-intensive process from creating quotes to drawing up contracts to having them sign, for example. So what customers typically tend to find is it doesn't necessarily completely switch over to their clients having to do everything self-serve. But what it does do is it brings in the ease of which you can procure new services for your customers in terms of that automation piece.Because now, as the market has changed and it's very much moved away from the traditional huge capital investment right up front, a multi-year contract, for example, where they're signing everything in day one, it's all set, it's all good to go, they pay for three years a yearly in advance, or they pay for a three-year contract, as contracts are changing now and they're going to as a service if you like, or monthly subscriptions, that's where the uses and the up and down, it's ever-changing. So that's where the real benefit of the platform is because all of that is completely automated. So if a customer's buying one thing from month to month, it can change and it can move with them. But I think the interesting point there is, even with the technology as a managed service provider, you wouldn't necessarily on day one expect all of your customers to then go in and start using it as self-service.It allows that to a point when you get there for your customers, but it allows you to start selling your services as that subscription base, month to month, moving everything to an operational cost and that on demand for the services they're buying from you.Paul Green:You make some really interesting points there, which is MSPs are operating, you could argue, at the edge, the cutting edge of technology, and yet they still expect people to pick up the phone and call them and speak to an account manager, which is, that's the 1972 way of doing things. That's a really good observation, and actually it ties in to a number of conversations I've had recently with big thinkers in the channel about how being a strategic partner, well, is one of the main routes forward for MSPs. So if you look at what the average MSP does today and you say, "Right, let's jump 10 years, so what's that? 2033, are we still going to be doing password resets for people on their 365?" And the answer is no. There's going to be AI to do that or it's going to be a lot easier to self-serve because that's the way things are going.However, those business owners are still going to need strategic, in fact, they're going to need more strategic advice than ever before. And of course security is likely to be a massive headache for decades to come because it's a never-ending escalation of weapons on either side. So if you were to put your Mystic Meg hat on and look into your crystal ball, because obviously your world is this as a service, it's selling things in a more hands-off way, what kind of changes do you see for MSPs over the next, let's say, 10 years or so?Mark Wass:I think the big thing is I think you're possibly going to see more organizations trying to turn into an MSP because what's essentially happening over the last number of years is you've gone from them being product-selling to solution-selling, and almost becoming an MSP. So companies are almost, they're trying to become leaner, they're trying to reduce costs, and that's all types of business essentially, and that's what they're trying to do. So if anything, over the coming years, I see this automated, subscription as a service market growing and accelerating, I think you only have to look at the way the world's going already, and this isn't necessarily B2B, but B2C. You take BMW, for example, they are moving to a subscription-based model within their offerings because now you're buying a car with everything on it at the start, but you're paying for your heated seats just for the winter months, for example. And you can turn that on and you can turn that off.Similarly, with things like Peloton almost, for example, you're paying for your fitness goals now as a subscription, and if it's not meeting them needs, then you are going to switch that off as well. So if anything, I do see that accelerating, and organizations having to be able to adapt to that to be able to capture the margin if you like. So selling bundled solutions, so as the consumer demands a one-stop shop, if you like, for all of their services, certainly from an IT perspective, or across the business, it's not only IT, but as a demand for these services grows from that, again, I'm mentioning again, but that subscription-based, or as a service, as the whole world takes this up, that's where I see the market going. Definitely certainly accelerating there.Paul Green:You're right. When [inaudible 00:27:02] car manufacturers like BMW, great cars, but it's hardly a dynamic organization, when they jump in and start figuring out, "Hang on a second, we could charge people more money, we could charge them a subscription fee to turn things on. That's there hardware wise, it's in the car, I just need to pay to switch it on." And I think, as consumers, we're getting used to that and there is a general acceptance of it. I know people grumble a bit about it, but there is a general acceptance. I think you're right, B2B wise, that's definitely where we're going. Okay, Mark, thank you very much. I think you're one of those guests we need to get back on the show every year just to see how things are changing and track and look at the future trends. You've been a great guest today, thank you so much. Just briefly tell us again about CloudBlue, and how can people get in touch with you?Mark Wass:So www.cloud blue.com. But also you can reach out to sales@cloudblue.com if you were interested. But happy for people to reach out to me direct, so mark.wass@cloudblue.com.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.Mark Copeman:Hi, my name is Mark Copeman. I'm the author of MSP Secrets Revealed and Helpdesk Habits. And the book I'd like to recommend is this one here. It's called The Power of Moments. It's by Chip and Dan Heath. Properly inspiring. It's all about creating extraordinary moments for your customers. There's a particularly good example on there, which I've spoken about around the world, about the Magic Castle Hotel and how they've done so well despite being a very, very average-looking motel. There's a lot of brilliant stories in there and it can be absolutely applied to your MSP business.Voiceover:Coming up next week.Tony:Hello, my name is Tony [inaudible 00:29:11] and I'm an MSP, and I won. I get to have a one-on-one Marketing Edge consult with Paul Green.Paul Green:And Tony has indeed won. For our Easter special next week, we are going to deep-dive into Tony's business, look at how he generates clients, and we're going to put together a brand new marketing strategy for him. I will do this in a way which will be relevant to you as well. It's a marketing strategy deep-dive, a one-on-one with an MSP owner, and it's here on next week's show. If you need something to do in between now and then as you are taking some time off for Easter, we've got content every day onto our YouTube channel. Just go to youtube.com/mspmarketing. Join me next Tuesday, and have a very profitable week in your MSP.Voiceover:Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact

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Episode 176Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 Retrain your reticular activating system and focus on the positives * 08:01 The MSP Marketing KPIs that matter * 17:42 How better communication and follow-up with leads and prospects can dramatically improve growth

Featured guest:Thank you to business consultant Jon Weburg for joining me to talk about helping MSPs create a more enticing offer for their leads and prospects, and the importance of good communications and follow-ups in order to convert those leads and prospects into customers.Jon is an entrepreneur, author and business growth consultant, with more than a decade of experience working with over 2,000 entrepreneurs, companies, and businesses some with over $250 million in sales.Widely considered a leading profit, optimization, and scaling expert, Jon spends his time helping entrepreneurs grow their business hyper profitably and without outside capital.Connect with Jon on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonweberg/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Visit my Learning Hub, where you'll find lots of resources, tips and ideas: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/learning-hub/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * If you want to go back and learn about those 'technical KPIs' I mentioned, here's the link: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode169/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * I mentioned Jim Rohn's work, find out more about his ideas here: + https://www.jimrohn.com/ * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended books, Attention Pays: How to Drive Profitability, Productivity and Accountability and Exactly What to Say: the Magic Words for Influence and Impact: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Attention-Pays-Profitability-Productivity-Accountability/dp/1119480256/ + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Exactly-What-Say-Influence-Impact/dp/B077ZGFXQ4/

Transcription:Voiceover:Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Welcome back, or if this is your first time listening to or watching the podcast, you're going to love what we talk about here. Here's what's coming up in this week's show.Jon Weberg:Hey, my name is Jon Weberg. I'm going to help you improve massively your follow-up plan to get a lot more customers and get a lot more of your current leads and prospects interested in actually wanting to buy from you because you've actually built a relationship with them. And I'm going to teach you how to give them pure value that will make them beg to work with you.Paul Green:And on top of that interview with Jon, at the end of this week's episode, we're also going to be talking about KPIs, the key performance indicators that matter the most.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Now, I've got to start this first bit with a bit of a public information warning. In the next five minutes or so, you may make the decision to stop watching certain videos on YouTube. You may take the decision to stop reading specific websites. You may even make the decision in the next few minutes to cancel some of your friends. Let me explain why. In the next few minutes, I'm going to explain how your brain processes information and why, if you want to be a truly successful MSP owner, you've got to be very, very strict what you put in your brain.You see, we have this amazing piece of technology within our heads. I don't just mean our brains, I mean inside our brains. We have something called the reticular activating system. Now, what this system does, let's call it the RAS, the RAS, what it does is it acts as a sensory filter for us. Because if you think about the sheer amount of information that's coming into our brains all the time, I don't mean all your notifications and your emails and kind of the information from just work and life. I mean all of our sensory information. You think of all the things you're touching, hearing, smelling, and seeing. Especially we get most of our sensory information through our eyes. Have I missed one there? Tasting, that one as well. All of that sensory information, if we had to physically, actively deal with it, we literally wouldn't have any time to live our lives, would we? If you think just how much information is coming in all the time.So I guess over thousands of years, our brain developed a mechanism to filter all of our sensory information for us. This is the RAS, the reticular activating system, which by the way does have some other functions as well, but I'm primarily looking at this one. ,You see the RAS acts as a relevance filter. It will determine whether or not a piece of information is relevant to you and whether or not it should pass on that information to your active conscious brain. This is why you can, for example, drive to a brand new city somewhere you've not been to before. And within minutes of entering that city, you'll spot an advert or a van or a sign somewhere for another IT support company, because your RAS, it understands that IT support is really important to you. And so it's flagging it up and it's alerting you. It's telling your conscious brain, "Over there. There's something about IT support."What it's not doing is telling you about that dentist's office that you just drove past. It's not telling you about that lawyer's office. It's not alerting you to that advert for a new moisturizer because none of these things are of interest to you. They are not relevant to you, so you don't perceive them. So you're kind of clear on how that works? It's a very, very basic thing and we don't really have a direct control over it other than the things that we are interested in. Our brain's a bit like an algorithm, really, isn't it? Like a social media algorithm. The more you consume of something, the greater the programming it has on your reticular activating system.Right at the beginning I said that you may make a decision to stop reading certain websites or watching videos or even fire a friend. Can you see the link I'm about to make between what I've just told you and those people? You see, if you hang out with negative people, if you read bad news, and let's be honest, there's a lot of bad news around at the moment, isn't there, about the economy and just general bad news. If you watch negative videos on YouTube, things that feed your brain, this is the message that your reticular activating system is getting.In fact, there is an American motivational speaker, an entrepreneur called Jim Rohn. Go and look his stuff up because his stuff is excellent, very positive stuff. And he once said that you are the sum total of the five people you spend the most time with. Now you think about that. Who are the five people that you spend the most time with? What are the video channels or the TV channels that you spend the most time watching? What are the websites and the blogs that you spend the most time consuming? These things are programming your reticular activating system. If you constantly read negative news, then you will perceive more and more negative news because you're programming your reticular activating system to go out and look for it.And I know there's plenty of negative news out there because that's what sells news. That's what sells eyeballs. I was a journalist and a radio presenter for 10 years back in the day, and it's something you learn on day three at journalism school is that bad news sells more newspapers. People are more inclined to consume bad news than they are good news, which is another psychological reason because basically we're programmed to look out for danger, so we see bad news as danger. But you and me as ambitious business owners, we don't have and we shouldn't have the headspace for negativity. Of course, we've got to be aware of things that are happening, but just to be aware of them doesn't mean that we need to consume a ton of negative stuff. We don't have to throw ourselves into the sea of negativity when actually there's so much good news out there.I mean, take your choice of business. You're running an MSP. It's one of the best business models in the world and one of the most recession proof industries in the world where change is so constant. There's nothing but opportunity all the time. And I know a tiny number of MSPs fail and just can't make it, but that's a tiny number. There aren't many business sectors where you can be really bad at marketing, really bad at growing your business, but so long as the technical work is okay, you'll win some clients and you'll keep those clients for a very long time. That doesn't happen anywhere else. This is the kind of positivity I mean. If you want to be a truly, truly successful business owner, you've got to feed your relevance filter with the right stuff, positive stuff. It's the only way is to fill your mind with positive stuff.Let me give myself a very quick, early free plug for something else that can help you. I have a YouTube channel which is full of positive content. It's all highly entertaining stuff about how to grow and market your MSP. That's one of the channels you should be spending more time on. In fact, go and subscribe to it and hit the bell notification thing so that you get notifications when I release new videos. And that's at youtube.com/mspmarketing. No negative stuff guaranteed.Voiceover:Here's this week's clever idea.Paul Green:Let's talk about KPIs, key performance indicators. And I have five marketing KPIs to give to you. Now, far too many MSPs in my view discover KPIs one day and go, "Ooh, look, I've got a new cool dashboard in my PSA." Or they'll go and get an app and realize they can use APIs to drive KPIs. That kind of rhymes, doesn't it? APIs to use the KPIs into the dashboard and suddenly they're tracking like 50 or 60 different KPIs. For me, doing KPIs properly means actually having the smallest number of KPIs that you can. Just because you can track a thousand different figures doesn't mean that you should track a thousand different figures.And I try not to talk too much about technical KPIs. I'm not a technical person. We don't really do technical stuff on this podcast, although as an aside, if you go back to episode 169, we had on Jason Kemsley from Uptime Solutions who did give some technical KPIs. It was how many tickets each line of technicians should be able to process, and also the average number of tickets you should get for each user that you are supporting. So go back to episode 169 for those technical KPIs.But here I just want to focus on marketing KPIs. Let me tell you the five most important marketing KPIs in my opinion. The first of them is the number of leads that you generate. Now I need to just explain exactly what I mean by a lead and sort of where it fits into the sales funnel. So I see a lead as anyone who is in your audiences. And let me just remind you, maybe you've never heard this before, of the three-step marketing strategy that I recommend for all MSPs because that explains what audiences are.So the first step of the strategy is to build multiple audiences of people to listen to you. Typically, for an MSP, that's your LinkedIn connections, your LinkedIn newsletter subscribers, and your email database. The second step is to then build a relationship with them, which you do through content marketing. And the third step is then to commercialize that relationship.So we go back up to that first step of building multiple audiences. All those people you're connected to on LinkedIn, all those people who are subscribed to your emails, they are all leads. And the goal should be to have thousands of them. You want as many leads as you can possibly get. Well, as many of the right kind of people, you don't just want numbers for the sake of it, but people who could go on to become prospects and clients, you want as many of those as possible.Now, if you do start a KPI tracking this, the temptation is to track a number of emails and the number of LinkedIn connections and the number of Twitter followers or whatever you're doing. I would just bundle them all in and just call them leads. And I know there's going to be some crosspollination. You will get someone who is on your email database and they connected you on LinkedIn and they follow you on Twitter. You could sit there and drive yourself crazy trying to de-dupe it. Or you could just simply just throw these numbers all together and say, how many leads did we generate this week? This week, adding up seven new followers here, five new connections there, and three joined the email list, blah, blah, blah, blah. Great, we got 15 new leads this week. That's a key figure to track.And it directly leads on to the next statistic, which is how many of those people turn into prospects. So in the sales funnel, you have leads, you have prospects, then you have opportunities, and then you have clients. So leads is, as we say, all those people in the audiences. Prospects is when someone starts a one-to-one conversation with you. So essentially they have inquired in some way or you've picked up an inquiry with them.And the strategy under the three-step marketing strategy that I recommend, my recommendation is always that your first step is actually of someone going from being a lead to being a prospect, is having a 15-minute video call with you. That's a great first step for everyone, because actually it's a low risk. It's 15 minutes for them, 15 minutes for you. People will give up 15 minutes for a video call to explore something. Of course, the real purpose of that 15 minute call is for you to, A, qualify this person and see if they are a good opportunity or whether they're potentially a time waster, and B, to get them engaged with you by talking about their favorite subject. And their favorite subject is themselves and their business.So first KPI to track then was the number of leads. The second KPI to track is the number of prospects, and that would typically be shown by the number of new people who've had their first Zoom with you or their first Teams call or whatever video call they have with you. Zoom is better though, just my opinion. How many people, how many of my leads have had their first prospect call? So if you have a second or a third or a fourth video call with someone, that doesn't count, that's not a useful KPI. What you want to know is how many of the leads have turned into prospects. And so for the average MSP, on a weekly basis, it's going to be somewhere between zero to one. If you're doing more than one or two introductory video calls with someone a week where essentially you're ascertaining if the thing they think they want to buy or the conversation they want to have is actually an opportunity, then you're doing well because most MSPs or some MSPs can go weeks and weeks without having those conversations.Then the next KPI, then, number three of five is actually how many sales meetings you have. So the purpose of doing those video calls is actually to book a proper meeting, a proper sales meeting. What happened in 2020 where everyone went to Zoom and suddenly the whole world was operating by Zoom or by video call, that's allowed us to insert that video call step because it is now normal. In fact, let's be honest, you and I, we probably have more video meetings than we do actual real life meetings, which is not how it was for many people in 2019. For many it was the other way around.So we've inserted that video call step just for efficiency, for engagement, but that's a track. You're tracking how many leads that you've generated, you're tracking how many of those turn into prospects, that first video call, and then you track how many sales meetings. And again, if you have four physical real life sales meetings with the same prospect, you don't record that four times. It's the first time. That's the only useful KPIs. How many people have we had had a first sales meeting with? So I'd expect you to see a number like you might generate 10 or 15 new leads. You might then generate one or maybe two video calls out of that. Actually, that would be a pretty good conversion rate. But you would have, for example, it might take two or three video calls to have one sales meeting. You certainly wouldn't have 100% of those video calls turning into actual meetings, because some of them will be time wasters in some way.Then the next conversion to track, then, KPI to track, this is the fourth one is of course number of clients, and that's the one that we're most interested in. That's the true outcome. When people talk about improving their marketing, what they really mean is, how do I get more new clients? How do I get those clients to spend more money? That's the outcome that everyone wants, the only reason you're listening to this podcast is for that outcome.And then the final KPI to track is a slightly curveball one, but I think actually this is one of the most critical, which is monthly recurring revenue by seat. So we've got here, we've got number of leads, number of video call meetings, number of real life meetings, number of clients won, those are the first four. And then the fifth and most important KPI to track is monthly recurring revenue by seat. You see, marketing is split into those two things. It's winning new clients, but then secondly it's growing those clients. It's getting them to choose to buy more from you. It's getting them to choose to spend more with you and you've got to focus almost as much attention on growing your existing clients and what they're worth to your business as you do on actually getting new clients in the first place. And that means focusing on your strategic reviews, doing things like the profit matrix, technology roadmaps, there's so many cool tools that are around. And you can find details of them on my website, paulgreensmspmarketing.com. Just go to the learning hub and there's tons of help there on all of these things.But there are your five KPIs to track. That last one is the ongoing one with all of the clients. Which of these do you track in your MSP? Go on, drop me an email and let me know. And it's the real me at the other end. And I will reply to you, as I reply to every email from every listener of this podcast. My email address is hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.Voiceover:Paul's blatant plug.Paul Green:I'll tell you, nevermind emailing me, if you wanted to interact with me and a load of other MSPs who all want to improve their marketing, we have a free Facebook group and it is strictly only for MSPs. There's not a single vendor in there. We screen everyone who applies to join to make sure that they are actually an MSP. And I'm in that group every single day. So if you want to come and join us and talk about growing your business, getting more new clients, generating more revenue, go on to Facebook, type in MSP Marketing and then go to groups and I'll see you in there.Voiceover:The big interview.Jon Weberg:Hey, my friend, my name is Jon Weberg. I help MSP businesses grow and improve their follow-up and so much more. And I just love helping out and giving people value they can use and scale with.Paul Green:And every now and again as I'm just talking to people and looking around at different websites and different resources, I come across people who seem to be really intelligent, really smart, and who seem to know exactly what they're talking about. And, Jon, you fit absolutely into that category. So thank you so much for joining me here on the show.Now I want to talk about two primary things with you. The first of those is offers in terms of what can MSPs do to make their services and what they offer to their prospects, how can they make it more enticing? And then I want to talk about follow up as well because I believe that most MSPs have a follow-up failure. So we'll come onto that later on. But before we talk about both of these things, do you want to just give us a recap of you and your career and what you've done and the fun that you've had in marketing over the last few years?Jon Weberg:For sure. It has been an amazing journey. I got started out pretty rough though. My family has a very poor financial background that we actually turned to starting businesses to get out of. And ever since I was actually around 13, 14 years old, that's when I got started in business. I'm a second generation marketer. My dad got me into it. Ever since then, it's all I've done. And it started out as doing simple affiliate marketing and eventually now speaking on stages, being on some pretty great podcasts and just doing a lot more actual business, what I would call and now I just love teaching people, educating people on how to better their MSPs, any other business model, how to optimize and grow them and see a lot more profit and higher ROI.Paul Green:And how old are you now, if you don't mind me asking?Jon Weberg:I'm now 24, so I've been doing it for about 10 years now.Paul Green:And actually 10 years of hands-on marketing I think is 20, 30, 40 times more valuable than a marketing degree. And I'm not knocking anyone that has a marketing degree. I don't. I suspect you don't either. But if you've been in there-Jon Weberg:No.Paul Green:... in the trenches, sleeves rolled up, I think marketing is one of those things probably like IT that, yes, you learn an enormous amount from doing courses, watching videos, but you learn just as much from getting your hands dirty and just jumping in and doing it. So just describe for us, just in case any of our audience isn't quite aware what this is, they may have heard the term before, but perhaps not realize what it is. What is affiliate marketing and how do you actually make money from it?Jon Weberg:So affiliate marketing is basically just promoting other people's products, services. It could be B2B, it could be B2C, you name it. And referring customers to them and getting a commission for referring them those sales. I've done that extensively throughout my career. And then I've transitioned from doing affiliate marketing, which no matter the industry or niche anyone who's listening to this is in, a lot of marketing and sales and follow up and what we're going to be talking about applies regardless of the industry. So I've taken what I learned in affiliate marketing and now I'm applying it to other business models as well.Paul Green:Yeah, in fact, the reason I zeroed in on affiliate marketing, it's not something I've personally ever done, but I know people who've made a fortune in affiliate marketing and I suspect that's a lot harder today because that landscape changed a few years ago. But the way that you got good at affiliate marketing, and please tell me if I've got this correct, Jon, is you've got to be really good at driving traffic. You've got to be really good at optimizing every single thing that you do. And you've got to be able to understand the basic mechanics of marketing, which is, if you spend $10 to generate $20 of revenue, you've won. Whereas if you spend $20 to generate $10 of revenue, you've lost. So I think from what I've seen of affiliate marketing over the years, there are actually some incredibly good business and marketing lessons in there.Jon Weberg:I think extensively what has helped my business and all businesses in general the most has been follow up. What we've done really well and what we always advise on for follow up has helped us get around, we've estimated... The affiliate marketing stuff I do, I'm business partners with my father, Richard Weberg. We've gotten about an 8.4 times ROI, like I have a whole case study on it. We've achieved very high ROI and it's because of what most businesses do, whether it's B2B, B2C, you name it is, one, lack of any follow up in general, as we all know, a lot of people don't follow up, lack of follow up from a variety of sources. So not just maybe calling a client, maybe texting a client, messaging a client, messaging other connected prospects to that client to try to get a way in or another avenue of communication.And also the true value of follow up, what follow up is actually meant to do is it's actually meant to actually continue building a relationship and actually helping the customer. You're not following up with someone to get them to buy. You're following up with them to give them value and give them something they can actually use. And because they see that value, then they actually want to buy from you. So it's done wrong and I think we do it right and that's why I love talking about it because follow up, there's so many different things you can do to make sure you land any client you want. It's where a lot of the money is, is in the follow-up.Paul Green:Let's drill down into that and let's see if we can get to some practical stuff. So as you know, most MSPs, when they've won a client, obviously their relationship go stratospheric because they're having multiple contact points with the clients. There are things like strategic reviews or quarterly business reviews, depending on what you call them. So if we put aside sort of upselling to clients, because most MSPs, as we acknowledge, don't have a huge number of clients, but they have great numbers of contact with those clients. .Where I think most MSPs have follow-up failure is when they generate leads, they don't do a lot with those leads, when those leads turn into prospects. Just defining for the audience, a lead is someone that is following you in some way, they're in your audience, they're connected to you on LinkedIn, they're in your email database, they're subscribed to you on YouTube. That's a lead. You could have thousands and should have thousands of leads. Most MSPs don't do enough with those. They definitely don't do enough with prospects. So a prospect is someone who has in some ways put their hand up and said, "Hey, I want to talk to you about..." X, Y, Z, whatever that thing is. And they certainly don't do enough.I know far too many MSPs who have follow-up failure when they've actually put a proposal in. So they'll go to a meeting, they'll spend hours talking to someone, putting a bespoke proposal together, putting it in, and then they'll do one follow-up call like six weeks later. Let's take all of those three scenarios and talk us through some... If you run an MSP, what would you do differently or what would be the perfect thing that you would aim to do in those scenarios?Jon Weberg:If I had my own MSP business, here's what I would do exactly, and I can guarantee any MSP that does this, you will see a lot higher profits within doing this for a few days. Number one, any client, say, you're on a call, you're talking with them or, again, whether they've really shown an incredible amount of interest and they just end up at some point saying, no, they aren't interested. If possible, have some other product or service to possibly downsell them. So not upselling necessarily, but downsell them if you can. You try again, you follow up again, you keep doing everything you can and you just cannot get them to say yes, to just put their money in and invest. You need to make sure you are selling them some other product or service because no matter what, your job for any prospect or lead is to, again, still provide value and have them as well because you're in business, spend money with you.Number two, very few people who talk about follow up define what giving value is. Because we often think value is giving them a PDF or a ebook or some kind of training or a course or a business presentation, you name it. I believe value and how you need to follow up, whether you're an MSP or any other business, you name it, there's three different things you can do and everything, all communication, all follow up to leads or prospects or even customers. You have three kinds of content. Stuff that entices, so deals, discounts, things like that. Stuff that entertains. So it could be like an entertaining video of jokes, almost like a TikTok video, but with ways you're going to help them grow their business. You have to be creative. So there's enticing, entertaining, and educating content. Educating content is how to do this, why this is the best for you.So what you want to do is, most often businesses, they only follow up with one form. "Hey, this is going to help you do this. It's really great for you." I'm just speaking off the top of my head. But they lead with benefits. Benefits and how great your stuff is. Or, "Just watch this presentation, it'll get you there." You have to follow up from enticing, educating and entertaining content because whether it's B2B, whether you're a MSP, whether it's B2C, you name it, you have to actually, what people miss out on in all business is build an actual relationship with your prospect leads and customers. If you do that, they will buy from you because they actually trust you.In order to build that trust, you have to illustrate you care from a variety of viewpoints. Because what people also don't understand and why a lot of follow up doesn't work that people do is because they think that people are just the same. If I follow up in this one way, it's going to convert most of the time. But just like as you learn maybe in high school or college or just in life, there are a variety of different kinds of people who view information differently. Some people are more analytical, some people are more emotional. Some people want facts and figures, some people want storytelling.So in all follow up, if you can use those three different ways to follow up, what you're going to do is you're going to see a lot higher amount of people buying from you or are jumping on calls with you because you're actually relating with every possible way to relate with the leader prospect. Because, again, if you're doing a little bit of storytelling, you have some jokes in the copy you're using or in any of your messaging, if you're entertaining them, enticing them, if you're educating them with how to do this, how this is actually going to help you providing value like that, in using all these different things, you'll actually, again, build a actual relationship with the customer and they'll be actual thankful that you're not just selling to them. Because your job isn't to sell, there's like this big misconception. Your job is to help. And by helping, they build trust. By building trust, they buy.Paul Green:What you're essentially saying in fixing follow-up failure is just communicate more with people and build more trust with people. This is exactly what I've been saying to MSPs for years, which is the MSP in a marketplace that really stands out, that wins a disproportionate amount of sales, is the MSP that markets more, that communicates more, and that builds trust. I have a standard three-step marketing strategy that I recommend to all MSPs. Number one is to build multiple audiences of people to listen to you. Number two is to build a relationship with them. And then number three is to commercialize that relationship. And that middle step is exactly what you and I have both been talking about there, which is building relationship through content, through communications. So you work with all different types of businesses and obviously the actual work that MSPs do is unique and is different in a very highly rapidly changing environment. But the way that MSPs can sell it is pretty much the same as any B2B business, right?Jon Weberg:What you said there is really key. You're not selling. You're building relationships because whether it's B2B, whether it's B2C, you're always talking to a person. You're always talking to a person on the other end who again, reacts like everyone else with human psychology, they only buy from people they trust. They need to trust you, they need to trust the product or service, they need to trust the company that you're representing or that's yours. Either way.It's really about mainly relationship building. And actually I would say counterintuitive to what most people say is put in the numbers, put in the numbers, get as many leads, get as many prospects as possible. I find a much better return from focusing on truly providing as much value from a lot smaller lead base or prospect base because then, again, you're focusing on truly actually helping people. As crazy as that sounds, if you actually help people, they'll actually want to buy from you. So when you focus that seriously heavily on that, they will want to buy from you naturally because they actually feel obligated to because you've shown so much love to them. This guy actually knows what he's talking about. He's willing to put in the work to help me. I'm interested, at least very minimally interested.Paul Green:I love this. We should label this "Be Nice Marketing". We've just invented a whole new category there.Jon Weberg:I call it human marketing. I call it human marketing because that's what it is. Just treat people like actual people. Wow.Paul Green:That's what works best anyway. If you produce high-quality videos that people are interested in and want to watch, then your YouTube channel's going to do well. And it's exactly the same as Google, has been doing the same thing with websites for years. And, of course, Google owns YouTube. It's the same philosophy. About 10, 15 years ago, people got lost in search engine optimization of, oh, you've got to have your meta tags and you've got to keyword stuff. Basically people were trying to trick Google with link farms and all sorts of things like that. And then what's happened is Google has over the years removed the tricks. And now the general advice, when someone says to me, "How do I get more traffic on my website?" I say, "You create original, interesting content that humans want to read." And there is no shortcut for that. You could probably use AI to speed it up, artificial intelligence, but that's ultimately what it's about. We're talking about all the same thing here.Okay, final question for you, Jon, and then we'll just find out a little bit more about what you do to help MSPs. Final question is, if you had $1,000 and only $1,000 and you had to spend that to win a new client for your MSP, your fictitious MSP, which you've just set up, how would you invest that $1,000?Jon Weberg:Number one, MailChimp or any other autoresponder CRM, I would first get that account set up, make sure I have the prospects or prospect that I want, that I'm deciding that I want to work with. Number two, I would thoroughly research and take a look at any way I can possibly help them that stand out to me by chatting with them by also multiple contact points. So I wouldn't just reach out to someone who would be the decision maker for a deal, possibly. I will reach out to between three to five different people in the organization. Again, not pitching, not asking for a business presentation, nothing like that. Just being, how can I provide value to you? How can I help you? I've seen some things that I can maybe give to you for free.Number three, I would say, other than just contacting, really focusing on also maybe even doing videos in any communication, whether I email them, whether I'm texting them, you name it. Videos are very powerful. I would also, if I really want to land a particular client, I would be sending them stuff in the mail. If I could have their address, for example, or use something to get their address, I'd be sending them gift baskets. I'd be sending them different... There's some different ways you can send mail that is very presentative or entertaining that gets people like, wow.I have a really good friend, Ryan Allaire. He does a lot of direct mail marketing for MSPs that are looking to work with people who do direct mail, possibly, someone you should contact. And they've sent, for example, if they wanted to land a baseball client or a sports client, they send them sports memorabilia. If they want to land a food company as a client... They use a variety of different ways that relate to what the business they want to work with, what they're doing and they're industry and niche, and send them gifts with a possible presentation, with a pamphlet, with a brochure, with something to get someone interested along with just, "Oh, this person sent me," maybe someone smokes cigars. "Oh, they sent me cigars." Maybe I know this person drinks whiskey. You have to do research into your clients, find out what they like, love or want help with or the problems they have. I would spend some serious decent money because the more lucrative the gift, the more you're really going to grab someone's attention.So that'll probably be my main approach is follow up and contact them from a variety of sources. So it could be, again, messaging, texting, calling, you name it. It would be following up with, and again, entertaining, enticing, educating content as well. This, I would keep following up daily if possible, or at least every other day. I would send stuff to their door. And just what you want to do is show and do everything you can to show the client you care the most and that you are serious about landing them as a customer. One approach I've even done in this communication with clients is literally saying, "Hey, I'm willing to do anything to make this deal work or to want to work with you. Tell me what I can do and I will make it happen. I want the best for you. How can we work that out?" So just again, human marketing and doing everything possible, how can I impress this person so much they're begging me to work with them?Paul Green:Yeah. I love this. And even with the well researched, well-thought-out gifts that's within $1,000 dollars budget. There's nothing you've described there that's massively expensive.Jon Weberg:Oh, totally.Paul Green:And the thing is that as an MSP, even if you did just those things, the vast majority of your competitors are not doing a small proportion of those things.Jon Weberg:No, they're doing almost nothing. They're all doing almost nothing.Paul Green:Exactly. Exactly. You can have 50 MSPs in a town and 45 of them are not doing any proactive marketing. So the other five, just by the virtue of momentum and the numbers game just mop up more of the business. But it takes time. You can't expect to start marketing on Monday and you get a client on Friday. It simply doesn't work like that in massive B2B sales.Jon Weberg:Right. Another quick thing I want to add to that is also people who have MSPs probably are knowledgeable about customer retention, but there's also something called leader prospect retention. And what this leader prospect retention is, again, you might have a client or customer buy from you, not now, but a year later, two years later, three years later, a prospect might actually want to work with you. So you have to focus on providing value so much that even if they're not going to buy from you now, they're going to down the line because you keep showing when your competition isn't, that you're there for them again and again and again and again. You will line the customer. I've had people on my leads list who I recognize their names, who've bought from me five years later down the line.Paul Green:Yeah. People buy when they're ready to buy. That's so true. Jon, thank you so much for your time. Just tell us a little bit more about you. What can you do to help us and how can we get in touch with you?Jon Weberg:For sure. I recommend everyone, and I say this everywhere I'm at, just go to my YouTube channel and learn or go to jonweberg.com and learn. I give out a lot of free content, free training. Better, I would say, than most people's courses because I've been... And I've created all the courses out there. I know what's good. I know what actually can help people see the largest returns in the shortest amount of time without spending a ton of money. Again, a lot of producing profit with the lowest expenditure possible is a lot of how I've ran my businesses over the years. So go to my YouTube channel, just look up Jon Weberg, learn from me, subscribe. And that's all I ask because I just want to, just like I preach, keep giving value, keep helping people, and maybe some people will eventually become customers. And if they don't, at least I gave to the world and expected nothing in return, just gave to it.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.Joey Coleman:Hi, friends. My name is Joey Coleman, I'm the author of the book Never Lose a Customer Again, and I'd love to give you two books that I highly recommend that you check out. They’re short reads, but they are powerful reads that will impact your business in ways that you can't even imagine. The first one is by my good friend and fellow author and speaker Neen James. It's called Attention Pays: How to Drive Profitability, Productivity and Accountability, and it's all about focusing on the key relationships in your business to make sure that you can maximize not only the value that you provide to them, but the value you receive from them as well. The second book, in honor of Paul inviting me to be on the show is by an Englander named Phil Jones, and it's called Exactly What to Say: the Magic Words for Influence and Impact. This is a quick, fast, powerful read that will give you the language you can use to create better connection with your prospects and your customers alike. So pay more attention and know exactly what to say with Attention Pays and Exactly What To Say.Voiceover:Coming up next week.Mark Wass:Hi, I'm Mark Wass from CloudBlue and I'm going to be on the show next week discussing everything as a service and how managed service providers and service providers out there can provide services to their customers as a subscription and they can start moving and move into them aggressive digital service providers.Paul Green:Wherever you listen to or watch this podcast, make sure you subscribe and if it is YouTube, hit that bell notification so you never miss an episode. Because on top of that interview next week, we're going to be talking about giving yourself a productivity boost by changing your environment. And I've also got three specific press release, media release ideas, ways for you to get free publicity for your MSP. I'll give those to you next week. Don't forget, we have a YouTube channel with loads of inspiration to improve your marketing at youtube.com/mspmarketing. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MAP.Voiceover:Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Attention Pays: How to Drive Profitability, Productivity, and Accountability

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Episode 175Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 Harnessing the power of your unconscious mind * 09:19 Remove all friction from your sales * 17:09 How a well-designed 'welcome sequence' can dramatically improve your email marketing results

Featured guest:Thank you to Jeff Felten, The Welcome Sequences Guy, for joining me to talk about how welcome sequences can help you get the most out of your email marketing, and convert more prospects and leads into customers.Jeff is an email marketing strategist and copywriter who helps service-based business owners hustle less for leads and build armies of loyal fans.Since 2018, Jeff has written thousands of marketing emails and helped clients drive more than $100k in email revenue.Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-felten/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to the MSP Marketing Action Monthly magazine: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action/ * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rich-Dad-Poor-Teach-Middle/dp/1612681131/

Transcription:Speaker 1:Fresh every Tuesday. For MSPs around the world. Around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. Podcast.Paul:Hey there, welcome to the show. This is episode 175, and here's what we got coming up for you this week.Jeff:Hey there, I'm Jeff Felton from contentremedy.co. I will be on the show to talk about email marketing, most specifically lead magnets and welcome sequences, and how an effective lead magnet and welcome sequence can help you turn more prospects into leads, nurture relationships better, and get more sales from email marketing.Paul:So as well as that interview with Jeff, which is going to be towards the end of the podcast, we're going to be talking about your sales. How can you improve your sales by removing as much of the friction as possible?Speaker 1:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul:Let's start this week by me asking you a direct question. What's the house that you most want to own? What's the car that you want to drive? What's the holiday, the vacation that you most want to be on right now rather than be sat in your car or on the golf course or probably sat in the office, whatever it is you are doing? The more that you can get clear in your head exactly what these things are, and the more that you can capture that in a way which really motivates and communicates with your brain that you most want this thing, the more likely you are to actually get it. Let me go back a step. What I'm really talking about here is vision boards. And wait, wait, don't go anywhere. I know this is slightly hippie territory here. The idea that just having a vision board of things that you want will make it happen. I don't believe that at all.I think of a vision board as programming for the subconscious, the unconscious part of your brain. So I've been using vision boards for years and I have one. In fact, I don't actually have a board. I have it in a book that I read every morning. It's got in there my goals. So every day I'm reading my current goals, but I also have pictures there of future things that I want and I do... I'll tell you why I believe in the vision board so much and it's programming abilities, because right now, the house that I am recording this in is in the specific part of the very specific village that I have wanted to live in for years. And years and years and years ago, it must be getting on for 10 years ago, we looked at buying a house here. And at that time, 10 years ago, we couldn't quite afford it. 'Cause this is quite a nice village on the edge of Milton Keynes here in the UK. And there's a very specific part of that village that I wanted to live in, which is where we live now.So I went on to Rightmove 10 years ago and just pulled up a house. It wasn't this house or anything like this, but it was a house for sale in the specific part of the specific village. And I put that on my vision board. And forgot it. It was in front of me for years and years and years, but I forgot the details of it. I certainly wasn't thinking, [inaudible 00:03:00]. It wasn't an active thing. It was just there in front of me. And then when we moved house, it was March, 2020. We moved in just before the lockdown, the very first lockdown happened. And I mean, literally like a week before, which was very good timing. But I bought this house and found this house. And the houses don't come up very often in this past of the village. But it was almost like the timing was right.I put my old house up for sale and I started actively with a vengeance, looking for a new house and was drawn to this particular house and absolutely fell in love with it, and it's been a great place for us to live. So what was important from that is that I had this desire to live in a very specific place, and it needed to be a specific kind of house as well. We have got the gravel driveway. It's not the longest gravel driveway in the world, but there's a gravel driveway, which is nice. And it has a very nice long garden and there's lots of open countryside around. And we're on the edge of the woods and there's wildlife and birds and badgers and all that sort of stuff. And that's the kind of thing that I wanted. I wanted a home in the country, but also that was actually quite near to town. And we're 15 minutes away from the center of Milton Keynes city, which is great.So this was on my vision board for years and years and years, and I wasn't actively working towards this. It's not like I got up every morning and I'm like, "Right, what's it going to take to get this house?" I just knew that it would be important to me in the future. The same as right now, one of the things that's on my vision board is a villa in Portugal. And again, it's a very specific villa because I could probably buy a villa in Portugal now. It just, it might not be a very nice villa or not in a very nice part of Portugal. The villa that's on my vision board has a big pool, an external pool. It's kind of modern and sexy looking. There's plenty of spare rooms for my friends to come out. And I can see me sitting by the pool having a barbecue, drinking an nice glass of wine, socializing with friends.And that's not for now. That's sort of the next step. But that's on my vision board now. And in fact, it's actually, as I say that, I realize I haven't actively thought about that for some time. But I see the picture of it every single morning. The power of the vision board is not to talk to the conscious mind that's thinking about things that's listening to this right now. The power of the vision board is to speak to the unconscious mind, the one that guides us in a big sense that we as humans don't really understand. We don't really understand deep values and deep motivations. We know when we've gone against them. When you've done something that goes against your values or goes away from the lifestyle that you want to lead, that it feels uneasy, doesn't it, inside? As humans, we don't really understand the mechanics of how that works, but we don't need to understand it to game it, to leverage you.If you want to live in a house with a gravel drive and badgers running across your lawn... Actually they're quite destructive. You might not want to do that, but you get the idea. If you want to drive a Maserati, if you want to fly planes or helicopters and you want that to be your hobby, you have to put it on your vision board because it is you, the conscious you, telling your unconscious self, "This is something that's important to me. Please, in the long term, guide me towards this." I figured out a long time ago, and I'm sure you figured this out as well, is that we have a greater problem solving capacity when we're asleep than when we are awake. Now, don't get me wrong. We're very good at solving problems when we're awake, especially you. You are a problem solving machine, my friend. That's what you do for a living.You're much better at it than I am because you do it all day every day, and you're very good at it. But both of us, when we're asleep, we are so much better at solving problems. Because when we're asleep, we actually gain access to parts of our brain that can't be used for problem solving during the day. Maybe they're needed for breathing or not stepping in front of a taxi or something like that. When we're asleep and we're off in the land of Nod, there are different parts of our brain that suddenly throw themselves at problem solving. Now you may not have known this, but you'll know the effect of it, which is you feel like your best ideas come to you first thing in the morning. Perhaps when you're in the shower or you're working out or going for your walk or your first coffee or whatever.You've often thought, "Oh, I get my best ideas in the morning." No, you don't get your best ideas in the morning. What happens in the morning is you're delivered the results of all the work your unconscious mind was doing all night long. It's been problem solving and working towards things all night long and it delivers that to you. It's why if you are stuck on a big problem, the best thing you can do is actually load the problem into your brain before bed, go to bed, read for half an hour just to chill out so you're not obsessed by that problem and it doesn't keep you awake and let your subconscious just figure out the answer to the problem overnight. And then in the morning, if there is an answer, it'll be delivered to you. If there isn't an answer, it won't be delivered to you. It's as simple as that.This is what we want to harness and leverage in the long term. And I know it's a bit hippy, and I fought this myself some years ago. But a number of different things have come true, have gone in that direction because of the vision board. As I said at the beginning, I don't believe that whole law of attraction thing. You may have heard about this. There was a book about it. What was it called? Well, there've been many, many books about it. Think and Grow Rich, which is the original Napoleon Hill book, is kind of about the law of attraction. And then about 20 years ago, there was a very popular book. I did buy it. And I'm looking at my bookshelves now to see if I can see it. But I can't remember what it was called. The Secret, that was it. It was called The Secret. Absolute Nonsense.That whole idea of the law of attraction, that just if you think about something, you'll attract it. I think the law of attraction is nonsense. All you're doing when you're thinking about something and working towards something is you're programming yourself to move in that direction. You've got to do the work. If you want the gravel drive house with five bedrooms and a Maserati on the drive, then the business needs to pay for that lifestyle. So you've got to do the work to get there. But having that on your vision board for a number of years, make sure that you program your subconscious mind to go in the right direction. Do you have a vision board? Are you willing to share it with us? This is the kind of thing that we call in our MSP Marketing Facebook group. If you're not yet a member, just go into Facebook, type MSP Marketing in the search bar, go to groups and join us there. It's only MSPs there. You'll be joining around about 1900 other MSPs. It'll be delight to see you in there and also for you to share your vision boards with us.Speaker 1:Here's this week's clever idea.Paul:Right. Gather round. We are going to have a physics lesson right now presented by the least scientific person on the podcast. Science wasn't really my thing at school. I enjoyed English more, and history. That was about it actually. Physics and biology and chemistry, all of that stuff just left me a little bit cold. But I still retain some of my memories from school, particularly about friction, when it came to physics. I understood that friction was that the thing that stopped perpetual motion from happening. So in theory, if you push something, it would just keep going forever, I seem to remember, but for the fact that friction slows it down. And friction slows everything down. Now let me flip that into a sales and marketing thing, because friction damages your sales. In fact, it slows your sales down. What's friction? Well it's anything that slows down your potential customer from becoming a client of yours. And there are dozens and dozens of places where you could potentially have friction.For example, they go on your website and it's not utterly obvious to them what the next step is. Perhaps your phone number is hidden away, or actually it's 2023. Who wants to phone these days? There's no live chat or your live calendar isn't there. In fact, your live calendar is the perfect frictionless call to action on the website. It's frictionless because they can go and book a 15 minute video call with you at a point that is convenient for them. And of course, because you control your calendar, it's convenient for you as well. So a live calendar is a frictionless call to action. Most other call to actions, sending an email, phoning and certainly filling in a web form. No one likes filling in a web form because you always have that doubt at the back of your mind of, has it actually gone through? They never really know.So all of those are friction. What about if someone did phone up your business today? Is there friction in that? Well, it depends. If the friction is, "Good afternoon, Badger IT. How can I help you?" There's no friction there. Whereas if the friction is your 19 year old first line tech picking up the phone and going, "Badger IT," Immediately there's friction. Because anytime someone gets that kind of greeting on the phone, their heart just sinks down to their feet and they think, "I don't know if I can be bothered with this." Because trying to explain to the 19 year old who has minimal verbal communication skills that you want to talk to someone about possibly taking you on as the IT partner. It's friction. Anytime there's friction, we're less likely to go through with it. What about actually physically talking to someone? If I phone into a business or live chat or something like that, I want someone now. And we've talked previously on this podcast about how it's not these days about big beating small.It's about fast beating slow. You've got to be fast. If you're slow, that's friction. If you're not there today and you're not calling back within an hour, that's friction. If they want to meet next week and you're on vacation, you can't do that. But there's no one that can go in your place... Because don't get me wrong, vacations are important, but so are sales, then that's friction, isn't it? So here's a challenge for you. I want you to go through your entire prospecting process from the point that someone might Google you to the point that they visit your website, to the point that they get in touch with you, to the point that they have a sales meeting with you, where is the friction? In fact, maybe you should put a business owning friend through this. The actual sales meeting might be a bit weird, but where's the friction?Is your website easy to find? Is the domain easy? If you've got a ".co" domain, I would say ".co" isn't very easy. Certainly here in the UK, because most of our UK domains are ".co.uk," if we see a ".co," we automatically put a ".uk" on the end. Elsewhere in the world, when someone sees a ".co," they put an M on the end and turn it into a ".com." I think ".co" domains are awful, but I see MSPs using them. In fact, I see MSPs using ".tech." So your business name ".tech," I see that as friction because actually ordinary people, they're not very good with those. Those, what are they called? TLDs? Is it top level domains? They're not very good with anything that's not a ".com" or a ".co.uk." Even a ".net" is a bit weird. So if you've got something like that, that's friction. If someone can't get hold of someone immediately, that's friction.Why not get someone, it could be a friend of yours, it could be a business coach, it could be another MSP, although that could be a bit difficult 'cause you know what's happening if it's another MSP. Get them to go through from finding your website to looking at your website, to calling in, to booking an appointment, to actually having a sales meeting, to how long it takes for the proposal to come out, to understanding the proposal. Difficult to read, difficult to understand proposals are friction. If you're struggling with sales right now and you're struggling to get enough leads and you're struggling to get enough meetings and then convert those meetings to clients, maybe it's because you've fallen foul of Paul's law of physics, which I've just made up, which is that friction kills sales. The more friction you can remove, the easier you can make it for people to buy from you, guess what? The more people will buy from you.Speaker 1:Paul's, Paul's blatant plug.Paul:I'm going to admit something right now that I don't think I've ever admitted on this podcast before. I am a total and utter Dr. Who fanboy. Now, if you've not heard of Dr. Who, it's a British sci-fi show. Been going since 1963. Had a bit of a break in the '90s. But it was rebooted in 2005 and it is gorgeous. In fact, right now, we're in the 60th anniversary year. There are two new doctors. There's David Tenon is the 14th doctor, and Ncuti Gatwa. You'll know him if you've ever seen Sex Education on Netflix. He plays Eric in that. He's the 15th doctor. I literally could talk about Dr. Who for hours and hours and hours. I'm not going to. The reason I mention it is because once a month in our house, there's a great buzz of excitement when this arrives.Now, if you're watching this on YouTube, you'll see that I'm holding up my copy of Dr. Who magazine. Yes, such a thing exists. And this is the special subscribers only one, which has no printing over the picture on the front. And I read this... I'll admit, I'll read it on the toilet. It's a good toilet read, this one. And I'll pore through all the details, all the stories. And oh, I love it. Absolutely love it. And then when I'm finished with it, I give it to my daughter. She doesn't know that I've had it in the toilet, but she's quite a Doctor Who fan as well. And she'll rip pictures out and put them on her wall. And it's all very exciting. And I know I could read all this stuff online, but there's something about having it in my hands.In fact, the physicality of the newsletter makes it more exciting for me. And I'm more likely to talk about it and do something about the things I've been reading about. And that's why I have a physical newsletter too. It's called MSP Marketing Action Monthly, and it's a deliberate physical newsletter. We do a digital version, but that only goes out to our physical subscribers. The reason we do this as a physical thing is because I want you to take action. See, I pack this 16 page newsletter every single month with ideas and actions, kind of an extension of the stuff we talk about here on the podcast.But if I can get it into your hands because it's physical, because you can read it on the toilet or pass copies to your colleagues, you're dramatically more likely to take action. That's why we've called it the MSP Marketing Action Monthly. Now, listen, I've made it totally risk-free for you to sample this. You can go and start a sample trial. Just have a go at it, get one shipped out to you. It doesn't matter where you are in the world, we will ship it to you every month. Just go onto our website and you can see all the details at paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action. Go on, get your sample copy now at paulgreensMSPmarketing.com/action.Speaker 1:The big interview.Jeff:Hey there, my name is Jeff Felton. I am an email marketer. I'm also a copywriter, former coffee roaster, a little bit of doing it all.Paul:And who doesn't love doing it all on your roots to becoming a specialist and the best you can be at a specific thing. So we're not going to talk about coffee roasting on today's podcast. But I do want to talk about email marketing, and I know you have a very specific usage for email that we're going to talk about later in the show. Jeff, let's talk the big picture about email marketing.Now, I've been running my own business since 2005, and email marketing has always been a very critical part of what we did and what we have done. I had a business I sold in 2016, and that business was pretty much built up through email marketing. So we were building up lists of clean prospects. We were emailing them two to three times a week. And we were doing around about a million pounds in UK sterling a year just pretty much based off of email. So email was the start of the sales process. Now fast forward 6, 7, 8 years, I think I would struggle to do the same thing today just with email marketing. So my opening question to you is, is email marketing still valid for B2B sales in 2023?Jeff:100%. Yes. You'll see a lot of statistics on the internet about the profitability of email marketing. You'll see 4200% ROI. Even if you don't come close to that number, email marketing is a highly profitable channel for a couple of reasons. Number one, social media gets a lot of attention and a lot of focus from brands and B2B brands, I think, and probably MSPs are trying to find their place on social media. But the reality is with social media, although it's great, it's rented real estate. It's property that you do not own. When you build an audience there, you do not own it.However, when you build your email list, the people that are on your email list are people who have already raised their hand and said, "I'm interested in what you have to say." So email marketing then just becomes continuing that conversation in a strategic way to lead people to the next step in the journey with you, which is becoming a client. You can also consider why email marketing is still relevant. Again, partially because on social media, somewhere around 5 or 10% of your audience actually sees your posts. You contrast that with email marketing and a hundred percent of people get your emails in the inbox, or pretty close to a hundred percent. It's a big, big difference. So your messages are highly targeted. They're to the right people, and if done well, they're with the right message at the right time.Paul:Let me be the devil's advocate on this just for one more question, which is, when I go onto social media, I'm going on there because I want to either see what my friends are up to or just see stuff that I know will be of interest to me because the algorithm's learning about me, or maybe I'm doing it for the business or whatever. Whereas email, email sometimes feels like the distress activity that you have to do at the beginning and the end of a day. And actually people who feel trapped in their email box throughout the day. Does that not have an impact on the efficacy, the usefulness of email marketing?Jeff:People do go to social media to scroll, to have fun, to be entertained. And email is a better channel to be able to reach people correctly. As you said, for a lot of people, it's a chore. But 99% of people check their inboxes every day. Most of them clean out their inboxes every day. So I think, it's 60 something percent of people prefer to be communicated with via email. So it's just a preferred channel for a lot of people. You're absolutely right. I personally don't really like going on social media to see advertisements to be sold to. It's just not really the human thing to do. A human approach to email marketing is actually the better way to do things anyway.Paul:Now you of course introduced yourself as an email marketer at the start of this interview, but you're not really an email marketer. Your specialty these days is something you call welcome sequences. Tell us, what's a welcome sequence?Jeff:A welcome sequence is a series of emails that somebody receives, hopefully a lead or a prospect receives when they visit your website and download your free offer like a lead magnet or a free mini-course or free webinar or some sort of free offer. The welcome sequence is a series of emails that they receive after the lead magnet that is focused on engaging with the prospect, building trust with them, and then ultimately leading them to the next logical step in the journey, which is your offer. So the welcome sequence is really just a small segment of email marketing. Email marketing is broad just like social media is broad. Email marketing is broad. There are different focuses for different industries like e-commerce, MSP, B2B. The strategies are all a little bit different, and welcome sequence is just a small segment of email marketing. But I believe the reason I focus on is because I believe it's one of the most important parts of email marketing.Paul:So this almost sounds like a storytelling function, your welcome sequence. Can you give us a B2B example of how you would use a welcome sequence to tell a story and build up a bit more rapport with your prospect?Jeff:So I actually, I did one of these for a B2B company earlier this year. They were a, believe it or not, they were an o-ring and seals distributor. That's what it is. Okay. So we created as a free offer when a prospect lands on the website, we got into the mindset of who our ideal prospects were. For them, it was engineers. And we created a checklist for them, a free downloadable checklist that will help them be able to troubleshoot some of the ceiling issues that they might be having with their machines.Super, super handy thing for them to have just in their back pocket. So they don't have to frantically try to call somebody up every time an issue goes wrong. So we give them that free offer. And then as soon as they get that free checklist, over the course of the next couple of weeks, depending on how long the sales cycle is or depending on how long it takes typically for somebody to reach out after the first point of contact, over the next couple of weeks, we sent them a series of... It was between 8 to 10 emails. And all of the emails were focused on providing more value.So we shared a couple of relevant blog posts. We added more value to the checklist to continue to earn that trust with them. And then we positioned the offer, which was simply just scheduling a free call to get a quote on O-rings for their business. We positioned that as the next logical step in the journey for them. We made it just an absolute no-brainer to lead people from, here's a really helpful resource to help you troubleshoot, to, we are the solution for you to handle X, Y, Z. If you need us, let's schedule a call and get this show on the road.Paul:I can see that if that works for something as obscure as a seal manufacturer, you'd be crazy not to use that kind of killer marketing. And certainly some future of paradise is where we want to get to. So even an MSP could use something like that. So let's use that as an example. Let's assume that you're working with an MSP, Jeff. And obviously the MSP sale is a lot more complicated and bigger than just someone selling O-rings or seals or whatsoever. What kind of welcome sequence would you put together for an MSP that's got to have a big detailed technical conversation with these prospects?Jeff:We'd start in the same place. We would start with some sort of free offer that would be irresistible. And it doesn't have to be a PDF. It doesn't have to be a checklist or a mini-course. But some sort of free offer that when your ideal prospect lands on your website and sees your popup or your banner or the landing page or wherever they see it, they see it and say, "Wow, that sounds super helpful. I really need that." Honestly, in my opinion, the days of the white paper and downloadable PDFs that say, seven ways to X, Y, Z, five steps to blah, blah, blah, those are gone. You can find that information on Google these days on just a quick Google search. So PDFs like that, in my opinion, are out. But a free offer that is well positioned and well thought out and is insanely valuable to your audience gets downloaded. It still works.So what I would do with an MSP is exactly the same. We would focus on what is the first step of the journey for somebody? What is the thing that we can help them accomplish, give them a quick win and really give them some good value right out of the gate? And if it's a long sales cycle, we would really probably just create a long email sequence. We would give them a lot of the necessary information that we would on phone calls, or maybe there are certain assets or content that we have on our website that we find a lot of our prospects are consuming before they make a purchase.We would use all those things to create a welcome sequence that matches and mirrors the real sales conversation that's happening. The mistake that a lot of business owners, and I'm assuming MSPs would make this mistake as well, is that they don't follow the journey that's already happening. They don't mirror the sales conversations that are already happening in their emails. They're just conjuring things up out of thin air and thinking, "Well, this sounds good. This sounds like what we should say," or, "This is what the internet says we should say." But really the most effective email sequences are the ones that actually mirror the real conversations that are happening already by the sales team.Paul:One final question for you, Jeff, before we talk about what your business actually does and how you can help MSPs. We talked about sequences and we assume we've got a CRM. So something like MailerLite or MailChimp or Active Campaign or HubSpot, or Keep, one of these systems where you've built a sequence. So someone joining a list gets a series of emails. But of course, we know that not everyone opens every single email. Does that have an impact on a welcome sequence? Or do you build that into the design that they may only open, let's say, one in four of your emails?Jeff:Yeah. And that's why we typically make a welcome sequence more than three or four emails. Most of the welcome sequences that I write are between 8 to 10 emails, assuming that you may or may not open half of them. But there are some tricks up our sleeves that we try to use to try to encourage better open rates and more engagement. And it all starts with the welcome email, the very first email that they receive. So the first email in the sequence should deliver whatever asset it is that the lead or prospect requested, whether it's a PDF, checklist, course, whatever it is. It delivers that, but we're also trying to really capture engagement. Here's a fun fact about welcome emails. The welcome email is the first email that somebody receives when they sign up. Those emails get opened 91% of the time on average, which is just a crazy, crazy number.It's the most engaging marketing email that you'll probably ever send to your audience. So my philosophy is, if you're not leveraging that to create better engagement, you're wasting valuable real estate. So in the welcome email, a lot of times, I'll try to coax the prospect to just reply to the email with something really simple, to answer a question, to tell me one quick thing, something like that. A very human centered approach to this because what that does is, Google and all of the powers that be, I guess, they look favorably on emails that feel more human. And so the replies are a very human thing. So the more you can get replies, the more likely Google is to send signals that, "Yes, this email sender is good. This email sender sends good stuff. We can put it in the inbox." The more you can do that, the more likely it is that people will actually open the rest of the emails in your sequence. So just a little trick there to get more mileage out of a welcome email that already is really powerful and set up the rest of the sequence for success.Paul:That's such a good piece of advice. I am so stealing that. And in fact, off the back of this interview, I'm going to go and change our sequence that we use within our CRM. So thank you for that, Jeff. Jeff, tell us a little bit about your business. What do you do for business owners? And I'm assuming that you've got something on your own website that triggers an email sequence, which of course, it would be worth all MSPs studying. So tell us about your website as well.Jeff:I work with online service providers, mostly coaches, consultants, freelancers. I actually do work with an MSP, a large network provider here in the US. And if you visit my website, you'll see, I do, yes, I have a few sequences of my own, a few free offers. You can find a free email marketing checklists. You can find a free mini course on how to write your own welcome email. I've even got a $50 masterclass on writing your own welcome sequence. So the entire sequence. So I've got lots of resources on there for people when it comes to welcome sequences or email marketing in general. And typically, I try to gear all of my content towards service providers. I think that service providers don't really get enough love from email marketers. A lot of email marketing content on social media is focused on e-commerce brands. I think that service providers don't get enough love. But there's such a huge missed opportunity for service providers, MSPs, B2B brands to really capitalize on developing relationships, nurturing those relationships, and honestly, automating part of your sales process with email.Paul:Yeah, absolutely. And Jeff, give us your website address.Jeff:It is www.contentremedy.co.Speaker 1:Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast. This week's recommended book.Matthew:Hello, my name's Matthew Pollard. I'm the author of the Introverts Edge bestselling book series. And the book I recommend is Rich Dad, Poor Dad. For MSP's, especially, it's important because so many of you think you have businesses, but you actually have a self-employed job that the moment you don't go to work, the business runs to a screaming halt. So if you're sick of constantly waiting till late nights to do work, to catch up, and everybody's calling your cell phone, read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I think you'll find it really helpful. Cheers.Speaker 1:Coming up. Coming up next week.John:Hey, my name is John Weber. I am very excited to talk with you next week where I'm going to help you improve massively your follow-up plan to get a lot more customers and get a lot more of your current leads and prospects interested in actually wanting to buy from you because you've actually built a relationship with them. I'm going to teach you how to give them pure value that will make them beg to work.Paul:Right now, whichever platform you are listening to this on or watching this on, hit the subscribe button. And it means you'll never miss an episode. 'Cause on top of that interview next week, we are talking about KPIs. What are the five, six, maybe seven KPIs, key performance indicators, that are most important to run your MSP? We'll discuss those next week, plus of course, a ton of other ideas to improve your marketing. Don't forget, we also have a YouTube channel stuffed with inspiration for you. You can find that at youtube.com/mspmarketing. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.Speaker 1:Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!

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Episode 174Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 Building strategic partnerships within your vertical to promote growth * 11:12 Should MSPs do lunch & learns? * 20:43 How a servant leader management approach can empower your team to success

Featured guest:Thank you to Dan Albaum, Marketing Leader and Author of ‘The Impact Makers’, for joining me to talk about leadership and the 'servant leader mindset'.With nearly 30 years of B2B marketing experience at leading companies including Verizon Wireless, Cisco, Honeywell and Amer Sports, Dan excels in helping companies develop the right strategies, programs, metrics and processes for Go-To-Market excellence. From integrated demand generation campaigns to new product launch planning to scalable channel marketing to generating quality market insights for fully leveraging brand power, Dan brings his highly collaborative approach in helping client companies meet their business objectives.Connect with Dan on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/danalbaum/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * I mentioned these 'Ultimate Marketing Strategy for MSPs' special episodes I recorded earlier this year: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode163/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode164/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode165/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Good-Great-Jim-Collins/dp/0712676090/

Transcription:Voiceover:Fresh every Tuesday, for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Good day to the, and welcome back to the podcast. Here's what we got coming up for you this week.Dan Albaum:Hi, I'm Dan Albaum. I'm marketing leader and author of The Impact Makers: Voices of Leadership. And I'll be sharing with you some of the key learnings from the book about how global exceptional leaders drive improved performance based on a servant leader mindset.Paul Green:So on top of that great interview with Dan, we're also going to be talking about the value of lunch and learns. Are they still a great way to warm up prospects and turn them into clients?Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:I thought we'd start this week by talking about an advanced marketing strategy, something that you can only really start to focus on and concentrate your efforts on if you've already got the basics in place. What do I consider to be the basics? Well, you've got your fundamentals. So things like getting your website as good as it can possibly be, getting your LinkedIn as good as it could be, those are your kind of your two basic MSP fundamentals.But then you've got some other basics to do as well. So getting a good lead generation system put into place where you've got the ability to generate leads, build audiences, build a relationship with those audiences, and ultimately commercialize them. And all of the information on how to do that, it's scattered across a whole load of podcasts. In fact, if you go back to, I think it was the end of last year, I think it was the end of last year, it might be in the beginning of this year where I actually did a whole series of specials about that, about the ultimate marketing strategy for MSPs. But you'll find that's on our podcast page.But today, what I mean by advanced marketing is putting in place new things which are going to give you sort of huge advantages going forward. But often, as is the case with a lot of advanced stuff, it takes quite a lot of resource to do and it takes quite a lot of effort and you often have to wait for the payback.Now the advanced marketing strategy method that I want to talk about today is building core partnerships within the marketplace you operate. What do I mean by a partnership? I mean you find the important people or the important organizations at the center of your audiences, at the center of the people who you most want to reach, that you most want to do business with, and you find some way, any way to form a strategic partnership with them.Now, let me give you an example. So this is a real life example from one of the MSPs I work closely with. It's within a vertical, within the niche, and I'm going to change the vertical because I don't want to give the game away of what my client, and in fact, someone who's become a friend of mine is doing with his marketing. So I'm going to give it a different niche. We'll say CPAs, accountants, chartered ... What's that? What does CPA stand for? Is it chartered professional accountants? Something like that. Here in the UK we just call them accountants, but I'm conscious they're called CPAs in many other countries.So let's say it's CPAs and let's say you are in a specific area or a state or a city and you want to get more CPAs. In fact, you've decided that CPAs are the future for your business. So you've still got your general business, but you've got two, three, four, five CPAs that you work with and you want 10, 20, 30 more. This, by the way, is a great strategy in itself, keeping your general business that got you from where you started a few years ago to sort of where you are now, but actually deciding that going forward you want to focus in just on a vertical or on a niche, on a niche. This is a very smart thing to do and what a lot of MSPs do around about 10 to 15 years in.So let's say it's CPAs. Let's say it's CPAs within 100 mile radius and let's say there's more than enough of them because you only want 20 or 30 more of them and you are happy with that. That would be a good stop point for you. What can you do to reach those people?Well, a lot of the basic marketing tactics I was talking about at the beginning you can do, so building audiences of CPAs and building a relationship with them and commercializing that relationship, which is often done by the phone. And having a website that's focused on CPAs and a LinkedIn that's focused on CPAs. All of those things are, as I say, they're basics to do. The advanced stuff comes from building partnerships then with people that they consider to be important.Who do CPAs consider to be important? Well, we could kind of have a guess at this, even if we don't really understand how CPAs work. First of all, their regulators. In fact their regulators are top of the important scale 'cause their regulators have the ability to find them, to put them out of business and they probably have to be registered with some organizations or do some CPD or something in some way. So often, even though they're a pain, regulators sort of sit at the top of the important scale.Who are the other people that are important to them? Well, there will be industry bodies, industry associations. There'll be some that they have to be a member of maybe, and then there'll be others that they choose to be a member of because they find them quite useful. Then there will be other organizations within their world. For example, there might be someone like me doing marketing for accountants. Can you imagine anything more boring? Yeah, accounting, not accounting, marketing for lawyers that would be more boring than marketing for accountants. Anyway, but there might be someone like me, like coaching accountants, helping them to grow their business. Just add up the figures. There's all sorts of people that within their sort of biosphere, because you are in the channel biosphere, in the MSP biosphere and they're in the CPA biosphere and there will be a whole series of people in there.So the challenge for you is to go and meet with those people, if you can, and slowly over time build some organic relationships and become more and more and more important to them. For example, you might, let's take one of those or let's take the guy that does marketing for accountants. What does that guy want? So what does anyone want? They want more new business. He will want more new clients. He will want to sell more to his existing clients, which is your in, and he will want to get his existing clients to buy more every single time they buy from him because those are the only three ways to grow a business. And if he's good at marketing for accountants, he'll understand that.So you could seek out this person. You could offer him something to help. For example, you could say, "Hey, I work with accountants in the same area as you. You and I have the same clients, but we're not in competition with each other. What could I do to help you? What could I do to make your life easier?" And what you're looking to do is you're looking to build some value quickly and early on for this person. So it would make sense to go with someone like this, someone that's got a more commercial offering early on and you build some value for them.Now that would be a conversation that you would have with them. For example, you might have something that they can sell to their clients or you might have information or advice or something of huge value that they can pass on to their members or something like that. You don't really know until you have the conversation. And you may have to have two or three conversations. You may have to meet up for lunch or for coffee, but that's the point. This requires an investment in time and in resource, and there's no fast way of doing it because the whole point here is to build a solid relationship with someone.But at some point there's going to be something you can help them with and that's where this really becomes quite exciting and the power comes into it from your point of view. You can do something for them. They, as part of that, expose you to the accountants, to the CPAs that they are working with. And that is what you want. Because suddenly now you have a strategic partnership with them. And you may try and do something back the other way. That's the smart play, is where they rely on you for something and you rely on them for something. This is coming towards being a real strategic partnership. And at that point they're telling their clients about you. You're telling your CPA clients about them.And that's the kind of thing that could go on for a number of years. You could speak at each other's events. You could back each other up. You could form parts of groups. It might be that if they had meetings that you go along to meetings and you talk about technology for CPAs, you don't get paid for any of this. But what you are getting to do is you get to be the authority in the room or the authority on the webinar in front of exactly the kind of people that you want to reach. And that is beautiful.Now, once you've done those sort of commercial relationships, because those are the easiest ones to start, what you're looking to move up to, you're kind of moving up to where the regulator at the top is the ultimate destination. So along the way you were trying to do the same thing with some associations or some memberships or the insurance companies that look after them. You look at everyone, their whole biosphere, who's around and who can we build a relationship with?And you won't be able to do it with everyone. Some of them will be closed shops, literally their arms are folded, they don't want to know you, they're not interested. It might be some kind of old boys club or something like that. You just have to kind of see how it goes. But as I said, one of the MSPs I'm working closely with, in his vertical, he has managed to work his way up into the regulator.And it's been about three years work. He's done so much work. So he's been to all the trade shows. He's a speaker. He's an exhibitor. He writes endlessly. He markets endlessly. His job is not delivering the tech in the business. He has great staff to do that for him. His job is being the face of the business and building partnerships and all the other things that are important. And over a period of time he's worked his way into the regulator where now they're working together on a project about the future of technology in that vertical, which is beautiful. And it was a little bit of being in the right place and the right vertical at the right time. So luck, absolutely, well, luck, great timing, which is luck, great timing, played a part in that.But he was there and he was ready. And he was very open to we are going to build strategic partnerships because now he is the number one go-to technology partner in his vertical. And you could throw another 20 MSPs into that vertical and they will struggle to catch up because of the headstart that he's gotten. We are talking in three years, I would say he's done 10 years worth of work. It's very, very impressive. And if he's listening to this, I'm sure you'll know I'm talking about you and I'm genuinely not gobsmacked is the right word, but proud of what you've done because you've done an incredible amount of work in three years. But anyone can do it. It might take you more than three years. You can do it. You've got to put those strategic partnerships together.So some actions from this bit for you. Number one is if you don't have a vertical or a niche or a niche, please do think about it. The easiest place to start is who are you already working with? If you have two or three of them, you are already in a vertical. You just have to have a marketing mindset to expand that vertical. The second thing then is if you are there, what strategic partnerships can you build? Who's important to you? Who are the big authority figures that your potential future clients are already listening to? And what's in it for them to have a decent in-depth conversation with you?There's an idea that's been around for years, and years and years, and I think COVID killed it. And I'm not quite sure if it's come back or not, but if it hasn't come back, if you are not doing this, embracing this idea, then there's an opportunity for you here. What's the idea? It's the lunch and learn. It's simply getting a small number of prospects into a room. You give them some lunch and you teach them some stuff they didn't know before. Preferably you don't just teach them, you don't just educate them, you also entertain them, which is of course edutainment.The concept of getting people in a room, even if it's just for 60 to 90 minutes and embracing them, involving them into your world and positioning yourself as that authority figure, which we were just talking about, it's so, so powerful. In fact, it's one of the most powerful things that you can do.60 minutes or 90 minutes spent with someone in a room can jump your relationship forward by a factor of X. It's such a dramatic thing to do. And yet so few MSPs are doing this.Now, so few were doing it before the lockdown in 2020 ended, all of that kind of stuff. And I don't hear people talking about it that much. I mean maybe you are doing it, maybe other MSPs are doing it. I'm not saying it isn't happening, but it doesn't seem to have rebounded in the way that big events have done and a number of other real life things have done. If you've ever done lunch and learns in the past, maybe it's time for you to think about it. If you've never done them, I would definitely think about it. In fact, you could do one, two, maybe even three just as an experiment. Give it a go. See what happens.Now what's the hardest thing with a lunch and learn? Let me tell you. It's getting people to actually attend and turn up in the room. In my last business, which I sold in 2016, which was a marketing business for optometrists, opticians, veterinarians, vets and dentists, we basically drove much of that business. We had a big telesales operation and we had a big field sales, but we did a lot of events as well.So I would go around the country with my sales people and we'd put on free seminars and we experimented with just mornings, afternoons, evenings, all days, two days lunch and learns. And I think that the one-day format was the one that we settled on, but that was because we were selling people ... Well, we were trying to paint a vision of how their business could be if they improved their marketing. And we needed that day to sort of get them into the emotional state where they realized that actually the key to fixing their business, and of course you fix your business, you fix a lot of problems, the key to fixing their business was about marketing.I think for technology, a lunch and learn, a 90-minute lunch and learn is more than enough. But when we were running those seminars, we would have 20 or 30 people say they were going to attend a seminar and then you'd get 10 turn up. Now, I mean 10 is not a bad number, but when you've got seven people saying they'll be there and two turn up, that's not a seminar. That's an awkward conversation between someone who's paid a lot of money to hire a room for a day and two people who are sitting there with their arms folded saying, "Come on, entertain me," or, "Educate me," especially when one of them leaves at lunchtime. So that's a difficult thing to do. So that was our constant battle with our events, was getting people to turn up.Now you may have exactly the same thing, 'cause when we're talking here about is not getting existing clients to turn up for lunch and learn. In fact, you could mix your clients and your prospects. That's actually a pretty smart thing to do. You have a couple of clients mixing with four or five prospects because of course over lunch the clients talk and they say that, "Oh yeah, actually these guys look after our IT and they're amazing." Obviously you don't put unhappy clients in the room, you only have happy clients, satisfied clients. But the hardest thing is getting people in the room. So how do you do that? I'll tell you how.You make the value ... Well, there's a number of things you do. The first thing is you make the value of what you're going to give them on the day so huge that they really wouldn't want to miss it. For example, you might do something about cybersecurity. Now ordinary people on the whole don't really understand cybersecurity. They can't describe ransomware. They've never really, most of them haven't actually seen it. It's not as real a thing to them as it is to you and to me. You see ransomware and cyber crime on a regular basis. I obviously do a lot of marketing around it and I have seen a ton of videos about it as well. So it's very real and it's a big thing to us. To them it's not. So you have to position cyber crime in a very specific way or cybersecurity because if you say to them, "Please come to a lunch and learn about cybersecurity and ransomware," that doesn't tick the box. That doesn't float the boat. You've got to make it more interesting to them.So it might be that you perhaps do some dark web scanning. Literally they're in the room, they're in the room. We will, completely free of charge, we'll do a $500 dark web scan on your domain. It's confidential. It'll stay within the realms of the room and obviously nothing confidential will get out, but you'll know whether or not any personal information from your business has been leaked or is for sale on the dark web. So something like that might be more intriguing to people than just a lecture about cybersecurity.So you have to make the value proposition really high because when you ask someone for 90 minutes and you're not asking them for cash, but I would argue 90 minutes of their time is more valuable than asking them for say, a couple of hundred dollars because that time is finite. Money really is infinite. I know it doesn't feel like that when you're trying to meet payroll, but money is infinite. There's tons of money out there. Your job is just to go and get more of it and collect it in and put it into your bank account instead of one of your competitor's bank accounts. But time is finite. When the time is gone, there is no more of it.So you have to focus really hard on painting that value. This is why a lunch and learn is kind of a value add because hey, it's only lunch. You get a free lunch and it's 90 minutes and you might learn something while you're at it. So that actually ticks the box as well.The other thing is you need to follow these people up well. So if they register for something three, four weeks out, you need to make sure that you're following them up a week before. "Just checking that you're still attending. We've got you down for this. We've only got 10 places and we currently have 13 people registered. So please can you let me know will you definitely be there." When someone books, you send them an email, you send them a calendar invitation, you actually send them something in the post. You literally mail or ship them a letter confirming their appointment. We did that and our attending rate went up in the last business.The other thing that you do is you only ever do one of each event. We learned this the hard way. If you do 10 events, people book in for the first event and then they all cancel the day before because you know what it's like. We all commit to things, and then we get to the day and we think, "Ah, I can't be bothered." But actually if there's a glimmer of interest in the back of their head and there is no other event to book onto, then that will force some people to attend.And there's kind of another clever little things that you can do giving them gifts. That could be merch or it could be a book. You could say, in fact, this worked really well, on the day we'll give you a $20 Amazon gift voucher and 10 of the best business growth books that we've ever read as a recommendation. So like a list of a recommendation. So they could take that $20 home and spend it on cat food or they could ... Do they sell cat food on Amazon? Of course they do. They sell everything on Amazon. Or they could send it on the business book recommendations. You get the idea.So you kind of have to over oversell and over egg the pudding on the lunch and learn. But I do believe it's worth it because you will get people in the room and you've got their attention for 90 minutes. You are the authority for 90 minutes. And it doesn't matter whether or not you are a confident public speaker, it really doesn't matter, as long as your content is interesting. And in fact, if you are not a confident public speaker, the worst thing you could do is over PowerPoint it."Hello everyone. Welcome. We've got a 612 slide PowerPoint for you in the next 90 minutes." That may make you feel a little more confident because there's content there ready. But the reality is if you're not a confident public speaker, the passion for technology and protecting people that you have deep in your heart is way, way better than 500 slides of PowerPoint. You might want a few bullet points, so you know the areas to go to, but live dark web scanning someone is a great thing to do, live looking at someone's security or examining them or questioning them or doing a Q&A session, all of those things are much more interesting than death by PowerPoint.So if this is something you've ever thought about doing or you just want to try something new, please do try a lunch and learn. Do you know what? I'd be fascinated to hear how you get on and to hear how ordinary people are responding to lunch and learns right now about subjects like cybersecurity. Why don't you let me know how you got on? You can drop me an email. My email is hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.If you love being inspired with new ideas to improve the marketing of your MSP, which ultimately gets you more new clients and more money in through the door, then you will love our YouTube channel. We are adding new videos all the time, sparking you off with clever ideas, clever marketing strategies and tactics that you can use to make more money from your MSP. Go and have a look now. We're at youtube.com/mspmarketing.Dan Albaum:Hello, I'm Dan Albaum. I'm a marketing leader and author of The Impact Makers and I'm fully passionate and committed to the idea of exceptional leadership built on a servant leader mindset.Paul Green:And we're going to explore exactly what a servant leader mindset is later on in this interview. Dan, it's an absolute pleasure to have you here on the podcast. I think I was on your podcast around about a couple of years ago, so it's wonderful to finally be able to turn the tables and get you onto this show. And we're going to talk about your book. It's called The Impact Makers. Tell us what this book is about, why every MSP should get a copy.Dan Albaum:Well, Paul, this book, The Impact Makers: Voices of Leadership is all about sharing best practices and sharing the passion and the learning of more than 75 successful global leaders around the world in their journey towards delivering exceptional leadership. And the common thread behind this exceptional journey is a servant leader mindset, which is really focusing on the growth and the wellbeing of team members and their communities and not putting yourself as the leader first, but really thinking first about empowering your teams to achieve everything that they can.Paul Green:And leadership is one of those things that so many MSPs really, really struggle with. Take us through the themes of the book and what the big picture messages are.Dan Albaum:What we do in the book is really break down this idea of exceptional leadership into six guiding principles. And I think this is something that every leader within an MSP can really take to heart and apply to their organization.The first is around developing and nurturing a culture of innovation, to think differently, to think outside the box. And I think in today's disruptive environment, we can all relate to the benefits of really differentiating through an innovative culture.The second principle is around the importance of developing healthy, trusted, and aligned relationships. Whether it's one-to-one peer-to-peer or we think about teams within an organization or we think about ecosystems, MSPs can probably relate to this of organization to organization, the power of that trusted, authentic relationship will win over time and it's another key source of delivering exceptional leadership.The third principle is around valuing diversity, diversity in thought, diversity of experience when you look at the composition of your organization. And that can take on a lot of different forms in terms of levels of experience from mature to entry level, in terms of industry experience. It certainly has in terms of being diverse, in terms of just socioeconomic representation. A lot of different ways to define diversity, but the one common thread of success is that organizations that do value diversity, and there have been studies on this, Paul, do outperform those that are not. So a really critical concept to remember.The next principle is around data and leveraging data to make improved decisions over time. How to establish a consistent and a disciplined process to know what is truly important and not to get overwhelmed in a sea of data, but rather be selective in really leveraging the data that will lead to the most important decisions. So that's the next principle.And then from that, as any leader in an organization, your behaviors in terms of exceptional leadership is a model for others in the organization. And so what are the things you need to think about? Again, beginning with the servant leader mindset, but what are the things that you exhibit that are observed and hopefully copied by others within an organization to deliver on that?And then the last principle, and this was one Paul, you talk about in the book, which is the power of an optimistic mindset. So we're not talking about process, we're not talking necessarily even about behaviors, but here it's a mindset and a perspective that is optimistic, that is energetic and that brings that in a contagious way into the organization and driving future strategy.Paul Green:Yes, I remember you and me talking about that some point in the past, and it's so cool to see yourself in a book, by the way. So thank you so much for including my little contribution into that. I mean you've done all the work here. You've done a great deal of work to look at those six big principles of great leadership. And what do you say to your everyday business owner who is just busy, busy, busy and doesn't really have a lot of time to think about this kind of stuff?Dan Albaum:We all deal with that in our busy professional lives, Paul, where sometimes it just feels like there's just more things to do than we can possibly have enough hours in the day to do. But at the end of the day, if you accept and understand, and the track record proves this out on the importance of that servant leader mindset and the focus on people and on empowering people, if you start there and you start engaging with your teams before just being focused on what are the outputs of your organization.Look a little inward, start engaging with your team, really do an honest assessment. Are you really maximizing the performance and the capabilities of the teams, of the people you've got in your organization? And what are their inputs? What do they feel is working well? What do they feel they're falling short in? And then build from the inside out an approach and a process that ultimately will optimize your team's contributions.And that's probably going to involve some discomfort for some of your leaders that are maybe used to managing in a more hierarchical, traditional way that's focused more about their objectives, and then translating those objectives into the outputs of their teams. But turning it around to say, how do I remove the barriers and how do I better empower my teams to accomplish more?And by starting on the inside, Paul, my experience certainly in working with a lot of tech companies, and I think this would be the case for your MSP clients as well, you'll see amazing results over time because you should be able to more passionately engage with your clients. And clients can see that. That's transparent. When you are aligned in your organization and you're empowering your teams, there's an aura about that. When you go out and you engage with your clients, that is a positive reflection of your commitment as a leader in your organization. So from a competitive standpoint, you're doing it. Some of your competitors are probably not doing it. And it's going to give you a leg up. So inside, focus inside, and then take that to the outside for competitive advantage.Paul Green:You mentioned earlier discomfort, when you're going through a process like that. I think sometimes the discomfort is, it's almost, it's an internal notification from us that we are doing something brand new because as humans, we don't like being uncomfortable. We are driven to be comfortable.Dan Albaum:That's right.Paul Green:But that was when we were cave dwellers. And now we have the ability to think bigger and to imagine going places that we've never been before. Something else that you mentioned, Dan was, and you've mentioned it a couple of times, was the servant leadership. Can you explain exactly what that is?Dan Albaum:It really flips the script in terms of traditional models of leadership where you think about myself as a leader of an organization or a team. Typically, I've got more experience, I've got more seniority. So the temptation might be to rely on that title and that authority structure to impose my will and to pose my view. And then it's really about, oh, well, my team just needs to execute on my vision and my objectives, and this is about what I've laid out and they're helping me be successful.It flips the script on that to really say, as a leader, it really says, set your ego aside and think about being an enabler. Your biggest gift to the organization, I found this to be the case in my experience, maybe how will you develop your people and get them to elevate their performance and contribute more to the organization that could have ever been thought possible before.What this means is what are those blockers? What is the trust that you're willing to place in your next line of leadership? Sure, you've got to agree on overall objectives and there's accountability around overall team achieving its goal. But at the end of the day, knowing when to step out of the way and let them be fully empowered, help remove those obstacles to their success, give them the resources they need, and you'll be amazed at what happens in terms of morale, in terms of the passion, in terms of the confidence, and then ultimately just watching people grow, be able to be promoted, be able to contribute more in new and different ways. That's the telltale sign of a leader. If you can generate that, that's the long-term test. Not just the imposition of your specific view of what the team should be doing.Paul Green:Yeah, I love it. So exciting. Final thing I wanted to reflect on. You mentioned earlier as well using data. So when you talk about data, specifically what kind of data, how would you collect it, how would you best use it to improve your leadership position?Dan Albaum:We are in a time, there's never been more availability of data and information that pertains to our business. It may be transactional information in terms of our customer transactions. It could be data around our product performance from a revenue, from a profit perspective. We are literally swimming in data. But what so many organizations find out is that you can be overwhelmed, you can have too much data and not know what are the most important questions to ask. How to manage your progress using that data into translating that into specific decisions?An analogy I use in the book. I take a very personal experience. I'm a guy that is very active. I've been very fitness oriented my whole life, worked at a fitness company for several years. But to me, breaking down your goals, you may have significant big, hairy, audacious goals, BHAGs. We all have them. But that can be overwhelming if you break that goal down into more manageable small increments. It's amazing over time, the cumulative effect of time. It's like the time value equation for interest on your money. It's like the cumulative interest that builds over time.And my example was I was motivated by a friend to really take on a personal journey for a pushup challenge to raise money for veterans that are committing suicide at unbelievably high rates. And as part of that, this was a 22 pushup challenge. I did the challenge over 22 days, 22 pushups, and that sparked the next challenge working with my personal trainer, to say, "Well, where can I go next?" And I came up with a gold in eight months to max out the number of pushups I could do in 60 seconds.But we didn't just start and doing the max out at 60 seconds. What we did was we started at 20 seconds and we did a one-second increment per every Friday for 40 weeks to build up my strength over time to be able to do more pushups. And you know, Paul? At the end of the year, after completing that challenge, I look back and I ask my trainer, "How many pushups did I do in total," because we recorded everything. I did more than 17,000 pushups.Paul Green:Wow.Dan Albaum:The lesson here is that if you would've told me at the beginning of that journey, Paul, "Dan, we're going to start training and you're going to do 17,000 pushups over the next eight months," you know where I would've been? I would've run for the hills. Okay?Paul Green:Yeah.Dan Albaum:I would've run away. But the lesson of just one second per week, not that much. But then you're building your strength. You're growing and heading towards achieving that final goal. So small increment goals. Break it down.Paul Green:I love that. I love it. You're absolutely right. I mean, the thoughts for me of doing seven pushups is too much.Dan, thank you so much. You've been such a great guest. Tell us where we can get hold of your book, the Impact Makers, and also how can we get in touch with you as well?Dan Albaum:Impact Makers out available wherever you buy books, on Amazon, certainly barnesandnoble.com available in both the ebook version and printed paperback. So very easy to find. And if you have questions, feedback, want to reach out and contact me, you can find me at dan@marketimpactnow.com.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.Marcus Sheridan:Hey folks, I'm Marcus Sheridan, the author of They Ask, You Answer, and the book that I got to recommend to you because it's really changed my life, changed my business in many, many ways, is Good to Great by Jim Collins. I've listened to it over and over again, and there's this one principle that has helped me so much when I was debating about what should I do, what should I do? It's called The Hedgehog Concept. And in a nutshell, what it means is understanding what can you be the best in the world at? Yes, what are you passionate about, but what can you be the best in the world at? What can you really just find your mojo with? And for me, because I understood hedgehog concept, I was able to say, "All right, I don't want to be all things to all people. I need to have a clear lane." And because we got in that lane, it completely changed our business. So Good to Great by Jim Collins.Voiceover:Coming up. Coming up next week.Jeff Felten:Hey there, I'm Jeff Felten from contentremedy.co, and I will be on the show next week to talk about email marketing, most specifically lead magnets and welcome sequences and how an effective lead magnet and welcome sequence can help you turn more prospects into leads, nurture relationships better, and obviously get more sales from email marketing.Paul Green:Wherever you are listening to or watching this podcast right now, please do subscribe so that you never miss an episode. 'Cause on top of that interview for next week, we'll also be talking about how to remove all the friction from your sales, make it easier for people to buy from you, and more people will buy. Quelle surprise. Yeah, I just did a bit of French there. Don't forget, we have loads more content at youtube.com/mspmarketing. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.Voiceover:Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Good To Great : Why Some Companies Make The Leap and Others Don't

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Episode 173Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 Why paying your (small) suppliers faster makes business sense * 07:09 The Six Steps from 'suspect' to 'loyal customer' * 18:01 How this MSP uses AI in real life

Featured guest:Thank you to Trenton Schuttler of Net Guardians for joining me to talk about how his use of generative AI has transformed his MSP.A self-confessed tech nerd, Trenton worked in a variety of industries including Medical, Dental, Legal, Production, Manufacturing, even large scale bakery automation, before founding Net Guardians to help people, businesses, organisations, leaders and teams across the world, overcome their challenges and find new innovating ways to integrate the latest technology to help them Grow, Scale, and Succeed like never before.Connect with Trenton on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/trenton-schuttler/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Subscribe to the MSP Marketing Action Monthly magazine: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action/ * Trenton and I discussed Chat GPT-3 and Jasper, I'd definitely recommend checking those out * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Purple-Cow-Transform-Business-Remarkable/dp/014101640X/

Transcription:voiceover:Fresh every Tuesday, for MSPs around the world, this is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Hello and welcome to episode 173 of the show. Here's what we've got coming up for you this week.Trenton Schuttler:Hey, my name is Trenton Schuttler. I use generative AI with my team every day. It lets us truly unlock the power to transform my MSP, and on this upcoming podcast, how you can use it to really unleash the power within.Paul Green:And as well as that interview later on in the show talking about AI, we are talking about the six stages that clients go through from where they're a suspect with their arms folded and they don't know you, all the way through to being a very, very happy bonded client. How do you move them faster through that process? We'll talk about it later on in the show.voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:What I'm about to say in the next few minutes, you might think I've lost the plot. You might think I've gone completely insane in the membrane. But no, I haven't at all. I'm going to suggest that you pay some of your suppliers faster, that if they offer you 30 days, you pay them in three days.Now that may go against every piece of business advice that you've ever been given. However, I have a good reason for saying this, and I could have put some context on first. You should only do what I'm about to suggest if cash is not an issue for you. So if you've got plenty of monthly recurring revenue, and in fact, your costs are covered on the first of every month by your MRR that's coming in, this is for you. Whereas if you're still at a stage where cash is a bit of a struggle, and you do have some difficult months and particularly months where you perhaps don't guarantee, you can't guarantee, that you personally are going to be paid, then this isn't quite for you yet.But why would I suggest that you pay suppliers faster? Well, let me first of all define which suppliers you pay it faster. We all have big suppliers and little suppliers. So big suppliers are those massive companies that the super companies that all MSPs have to deal with in some way. Whether they're happy about it or not, I don't necessarily think you should pay them any faster. So if they offer you 30-day terms, you should pay them on 30 days. In fact, that helps them with their cash flow forecasting. I'm sure it does. You should, as a matter of default, always be asking your big vendor partners for better payment terms. If you buy two or three products from the same partner, and if you can get hold of this week's account manager, you can say to them, "Hey, I'm on 30 days. How could we push me back to a 50-day payment terms?" I truly believe, the big companies, your job is to slow down the cash. Always pay them on time, of course. You should always pay your bills on time, but you should slow down that cash.No, the suppliers that I'm talking about that you should pay faster are your smaller suppliers. For example, let's say your landlord. Let's say you rent some premises and your landlord isn't some faceless corporation. It's a guy or it's a woman who lives down the street who pops in now and again, you should pay them perhaps a little bit faster than you would pay everyone else. Maybe you'd pay them early. Maybe you've got other local suppliers. Maybe there are other local businesses that you do business with. I think, when you're dealing with smaller businesses, you should always pay as fast as you can.Well, it's a kind of a reputation for me, but I've had a reputation for a number of years, both in this business and the previous business, for, if you put in an invoice today, I'll pay that today or tomorrow, regardless of the date that's on it. And as I say, I don't do this with the big companies. They get paid on the day that it's due. But anyone else, so anyone who works with me in any capacity, any capacity at all, who is it's a person or it's a small business or I know them, I will always pay them faster.Now, you could say, "Paul, that's crazy. Surely, the cash is better in your bank than it is in their bank." And that's the case with the bigger businesses. Yes, the faceless businesses where an accounts clerk is the only one who notices that you've paid. When it's a small business, when for them potentially, every penny is important, I think the reputation that you build up by being a fast reliable payer can go such a long way. In fact, you can build lifelong partnerships and genuine partnerships. We throw around these word partnerships in the channel like it's an easy thing. It's not at all. A partnership comes from trust, and trust comes from action. You build trust or you lose trust based on your actions.I'll give you an example of when this was incredibly useful for me. So about two years before I sold my last business, so this is around about 2014, but I mean, that's nine years ago, we had a massive cash flow crunch. We had a couple of months where, I can't remember what it was. I think we'd over recruited and sales dipped. I saw it coming and it was horrendous. Ah, this was just after I couldn't pay my stuff. That's right. You may have heard this story before. I was at a Christmas party.In fact, I was in the Premier Inn hotel room where all my staff were out drinking, having beers, texting me, saying, "Where are you? We're having fun." And I was desperately trying to scrape together enough money to pay them the next day. And that was kind of the start of this. And we just didn't have enough money to get through the next month. We actually sold our way out of that crisis. By that, I mean, we just buckled down and sold and sold and sold and sold. But for three months, I needed to do everything I could to stop cash going out.And that was where I could ring people like Steve, my designer, and... I forget the names of the other people, but there were lots of regular folk who did stuff for us. And I rang them all and said, "Hey, you know how I always pay your invoice the day that it comes in. I'm going to be honest with you, cash is really tight right now. How would you feel if I took 60 or 90 days to pay your invoices? I will pay them. I will prioritize paying you above anyone else. But how would you feel about giving me temporarily 60, 90 days to do that?" And every single one of them said, "Absolutely. Of course, we can." And of course, I paid them as soon as I could. In fact, I was able to pay them earlier than I thought I would be and we got back onto track. And of course, as soon as I could, I put them straight back onto immediate payments.Now why would they all do that to me? I mean, maybe you could argue partly that was them protecting their business and protecting a key client of theirs. Or maybe it was just the fact we'd built up trust, because for years, I'd paid their bills the day that they had put the invoice in. So it's maybe just worth something having a look at. If you've got a finance person in your business, or if you pay the bills yourself, maybe you could categorize them by big evil faceless corporations where no one cares if I pay early, so let's ask for longer terms, versus lovely, friendly, smaller business, it makes a big difference to someone if I pay my bills on time. In fact, maybe it gives us not just that partnership, but it gives us some kind of leverage. Maybe we become a more important client to them because they can trust us to pay on time every single month.voiceover:Here's this week's clever idea.Paul Green:You might not have realized this, but when someone goes from a Google search to being a client of yours for the 10th year running, there are actually six distinct stages that they go through along the way. And I'm going to tell you what those six stages are today. Now this is very much a simplification of a sales funnel. Sales funnels are actually deeply complex. There's actually tremendously more stages than six. There's all sorts of nuances and things in there, but my job, I believe, is to simplify all concepts down, all marketing and sales concepts down, so they're easy for you to understand, and so you know what action you need to take at what stage. So let's talk about what I believe are the six stages that people go through.The first stage is where they are a suspect. So this is the point where, let's say they're a business owner or a manager and they are looking for a new MSP. They've reached that point where their dissatisfaction with their incumbent MSP is high enough that they're willing to go through the high level of pain to switch to someone else, because of course, these people, they don't know what they don't know, and therefore, they didn't really understand technology, the difference between MSPs, and they are more likely to stick with, well, better the devil you know. But there does come a point where the pain of staying is so high, in fact it's higher than the pain of actually moving. And that's the point they start Googling. It's the point they start asking their friends, "Who do you use for your IT support?" And just generally being aware of who is around them.At this stage, we call them a suspect. They've got their arms folded. They're deliberately scowling when they're Googling because they don't trust anyone because they don't know anyone. Like I was just saying about paying people faster, trust builds up over time. You cannot force someone to trust you quickly. In fact, this is one of the downsides of marketing. You're asking them to trust you with one of the few things in their business that can destroy their business if it goes wrong, which is their IT. If you think about it, why does anyone ever hire an MSP? They're trusting people they don't know with one of their most critical functions.It's kind of crazy, isn't it? This is why social proof, like case studies, testimonials, reviews, are so important. This is why the way you present yourself is so important. This is why never ever talking tech with them. Don't talk technical, talk business with them. Talk about productivity and keeping staff happy and sleeping at night and being safe and all of that stuff. That's what turns them on. What doesn't turn them on is technical stuff. Anyway, I digress. So they are suspects. They don't trust anyone, but they are ready to go and start talking to people.Now, your goal is to take them from being a suspect to the next stage, stage two, which is them being a lead. So a lead is where you know who they are, as in they've joined one of your audiences in some ways. So someone connecting to you on LinkedIn is a lead. Someone who joins your email database, your email newsletter, is a lead. Someone who is connected to you in any other audience, perhaps you've met them at a networking meeting and you've shaken their hands, and you kind of gently rubbed it on your trouser leg afterwards, and you've taken the business card from them, they are a lead in some way. So you could and should have hundreds if not thousands of leads.In fact, one of the goals for you, because marketing is a numbers game, because you're basically waiting for the timing to be right, you can't force the timing to be any faster. So the bigger the numbers, the luckier you get on timing. One of the goals for you as an MSP owner is to get as many leads as you can into the business. And lead generation is a lot simpler than MSPs believe it to be because it is about multiple audiences. It's about building up your LinkedIn connections, building up your email list, building up your YouTube subscribers if you do YouTube, building up your Twitter followers if you're crazy enough to do Twitter right now, possibly the most unstable social platform to be on right now, but you get the idea. So build up multiple audiences and those are the leads.From there, we go into stage three. And stage three is where they go from being a lead to being a prospect. Now, what's the difference between a prospect and a lead? A lead, as we say, is just someone who's in one of your audiences, but you wouldn't necessarily know much about that person. You certainly wouldn't be having routinely a two-way in-depth engaged conversation with them. You might comment on their posts on LinkedIn or vice versa sometimes, but that doesn't make them a prospect. They're a prospect at the point that in some way they've put their hand up and they're saying to you, even if they don't use these words, "I would like to talk to you about us doing business, please." Now they may do this by filling in a web form. It might be because you've phoned them and they've responded or they've booked a video call with you, or maybe you just got chatting at a networking meeting. There are dozens of different ways that someone becomes a prospect, but the prospect is where you actually start.Well, it's kind of like where you get interested in them. It's like, yeah, you are having a conversation with them and you are interested because you're thinking, "Right, could I do business with these people? Is this the right kind of business for me?" So that's the point they become a prospect. Essentially, that's the real start of sales, isn't it? Everything that's gone before is marketing. So taking people from being a suspect to being a lead... Well, up to that point really, that's marketing. And that in itself is a big job, and this is where sales kicks in if you wanted to differentiate between the two.Now the prospect, next we need to move them onto stage four. Stage four is where they become an opportunity. So not every prospect becomes an opportunity. What's an opportunity? It's something where you're willing to do business with that person. So you may have someone phone up, and theoretically, that's a prospect and you ask them questions about their business. It turns out, there's two of them in the business. They use Windows XP machines and they've got a broken iPad they want to get the screen repaired. That's not a business, is it? That's certainly not a business you would want to support. You would want to look after, I'm guessing. Maybe you have a minimum user number or a minimum tech level, or you want them to have a certain mindset towards the way they invest into their IT. And anyone using Windows 7 or XP or any of all of that, they're telling you that they don't have the right mindset towards investing. Or it's a big opportunity to upgrade them.Anyway, the point is, you mentally do this whenever you talk to a prospect. You mentally run through and say to yourself, "Is this a good prospect for me? Is this actually an opportunity?" And don't be afraid to turn away work if it's not an opportunity. In fact, you may have a referral partner. There might be kind of like a break fix shop or some other MSP, maybe a one-man band in town that you can refer this kind of work onto. Why let that person go back out into the world of Google when you can actually say, "Hey, look, we can't help you here because we deal with minimum five staff, 10 staff," I hate the word user, "five staff businesses. But look, my friend David runs a computer supports and repair service. He's just down the road. Would you like me to give you his number? Would you like me to give him your number?" And you don't have to pay each other for those referrals because David can refer stuff that's too big for him up to you. Something like that can be a very clever thing.So where are we? So far, we've taken them from being suspect, to being a lead, to being a prospect, to being an opportunity. We know what happens then. You do a sales meeting. They love you. You love them. You get married, and they become a client. And that's stage five, them becoming a client. But that's not the final stage. You see, the final stage, and this goes, we're now out of sales and we're into long-term retention. I guess, if you were to do the three phases of this, you've got marketing, you've got sales, and you've got long-term retention. We're in that final phase now, and it's to turn them into a bonded client.A bonded client is where you and they have literally... I know I joked about you being married to them when they buy. That's not really marriage. That's kind of more a... It's not a one night stand. It's an affair. It's a steamy affair. Even that sounds wrong as well. Someone come up with something better for that. But you get the idea. The long term... Okay. When you get married to someone, you expect it or you hope it's going to last forever, but you know there's always an opportunity. That's the wrong word. There's always the possibility it may not last forever. I guess that's the same when someone becomes your client. So let's say getting married, bonded is where you're going to celebrate your silver wedding anniversary together, because a bonded client will not leave you unless you die, they die, their business goes bust, your business goes bust, or they get bought or Armageddon happens. Their idea of hell is leaving you. That's what bonded is.Bonded comes from a number of different things. First of all, it's dictated by what happens in the first 90 days. So your first three months with a client, that dictates what happens to them long term. The second thing is, it's dictated by the relationships that they build with you. That doesn't have to be with you personally, but their business and your business. The relationship building is such an important part. And that's certainly in the first 90 days, but ongoing from there as well. And then thirdly, there's shifting you from just being a supplier to being a strategic advisor to them. I'm a big fan of strategic reviews, QBRs, quarterly business reviews. Sometimes quarterly is way over the top, way too often for most clients. So strategic reviews and also putting together technology roadmaps where you literally work on a document together of what their technology is going to be, what they're going to do, what they're going to invest in in the years ahead, and that's where you move them into a sixth stage, being a bonded client, but only when you can move into a strategic role.Here's a question for you. Which of these are you good at within your MSP? Which of these work for you? Which of these need work? Most MSPs are pretty good at the sales phase, but they're rubbish at the lead generation phase, and they don't systemize that long-term retention. They kind of just go with it and hope that the clients will bond with them over the years. Just because someone stayed with you for 15 years, and they were your first ever client, doesn't mean they're bonded with you. It could just be that they're quite comfortable with you. In the same way that there are many husbands and wives who stay together because they're quite comfortable sitting on the couch, watching TV, eating crisps together or chips together, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to make it to that 25 years. What are you doing systematically to encourage that kind of bonded client within your MSP?voiceover:Paul's blatant plug.Paul Green:Let me make this super simple for you. If you want to generate new revenue, and you want more new clients, and you want to be the number one MSP in your area, go to mspmarketingedge.com.voiceover:The big interview.Trenton Schuttler:Hi. My name's Trenton Schuttler. I'm an MSP owner, and I am passionate about AI and cutting edge generative technology. I use it all the time.Paul Green:And thank you so much, Trenton, for giving up some of your time to come and join us on this show. You and I got chatting a couple of weeks ago about AI and how AI can be used in marketing, and how it can be used in other parts of the business as well. And of course, AI seems to have just gone crazy since... I think it was around the middle of December last year when ChatGPT-3, I think it is, ChatGPT suddenly became a big thing. And suddenly, you could have a normal conversation with a chat bot that seemed to reply in a very, very normal way. And I'm sure, many MSPs have looked at this, and also, I'm sure there are other MSPs that haven't looked at it. I know, for you, this isn't the first time that AI has been a big thing, that you've been using Jasper, which is a more commercially available chat bot. I know you've been using that for some time.Do you want to just give us an overview of your MSP, what kind of resources you have, and how you got into starting to use AI in the last year or so, or whenever it was?Trenton Schuttler:At Net Guardians, we try to focus on leveraging the latest cutting edge models and tools coming out. Deep learning and machine models have always been something of a keen interest to me. So as they started emerging, I began looking for ways to incorporate it into our existing stack, given that we already had so many different components of AI all throughout it. Given your security solutions for email, IRONSCALES and Avanan, leveraging AI models to detect natural language processing to highlight phishing attempts, over to SentinelOne, utilizing its AI behavioral analysis to track potential threats on an endpoint. So we already had a lot of AI components, and those are just some of the more popular tools that we use that habit.When the models began maturing, it drew my attention to be sure, but at first, it was hard to really find a way to quickly and easily leverage it. One of the issues I always found were the prompts. Crafting the prompts and figuring out how to interact with it, it wasn't very easy. Powerful, mind you, but certainly not easy. As I embarked on discovering more about this platform and these tools, it wasn't clear at first how it could be incorporated, because there's a lot of different APIs out there, a lot of different variants and flavors. And depending on what you're trying to do with it, whether you're generating text content or maybe creating the perfect image for a blog post, you might use a different tool and they're not all made the same. I find that, much like many of the tools that we use as MSPs, while the given AI model might be capable of multitasking or multipurpose tasks, it probably isn't well suited to it.A great example being coding, writing code. ChatGPT absolutely can write PowerShell scripts, not necessarily really advanced or complex ones, but it certainly can generate them, will get you started. Jasper can't code. So for me, if I'm looking at the two models from a text generation standpoint, I see both being used by two different halfs of my team, marketing and content creation, service customer success. They can all benefit from leveraging these language models to generate impactful, compelling language to use in your PSA tools, your CRMs, your sales pipelines, quoting tools, you name it. It's able to really, really write in a way that you want it to, that you need it to.And I don't just mean generating the content you need it to. I mean, chatting with it and giving it feedback as it's working on the content you need it to create. It's like having that superpowered assistant that we've always dreamt of, working for you, live, right before your eyes, generating content. "No, change this. I like that part. Take this and incorporate elements of humor. Okay, that looks great. Now rewrite the whole thing." That's just a little snippet of some of the more casual, quick interactions that I've had. This stuff is truly amazing.Paul Green:Do you have your team, all of your team actively using it? Was that a difficult sell for you, or was it a case of it just took, let's say one technician to suddenly find that basic PowerShell scripts were really easy and suddenly all of your technicians wants to use the tools?Trenton Schuttler:There was absolutely some slow starters, dragging their feet. Maybe thought it was a little gimmicky at first would be my guess. But as of today, I believe, everyone on my team now has their logins and have started at least experimenting with some of the tools. There were definitely a few holdouts. I've pretty much been feeling like I'm beating a dead horse though, mentioning it all the time, everywhere. I've even used it to write a really short motivational speech to give to my team one morning during our team morning check in.And I got to say, Paul, the looks on all their faces when I was done was incredible. That was one of the most productive weeks I can remember.Paul Green:No, I bet. Did you tell them that you generated it using AI?Trenton Schuttler:Well, I guess I just did, since they're probably going to listen to the podcast.Paul Green:Busted. You're completely busted now. So, Trenton, you've been thinking about the uses of AI within an MSP for some time. What are some of the risks that you have identified?Trenton Schuttler:This is actually something my team and I were talking about just this morning. These tools are immensely powerful and capable of great things, but as they say, with great power comes great responsibility. Not to get too corny here, but it's so true. These tools could be leveraged in really unsavory ways. I remember reading a post not too long ago from a security researcher, claiming to have utilized ChatGPT, and through some trial and error and determination, were able to bypass some of the filters to get it to craft a polymorphic malware family that is capable of pretty much blowing by any modern protection platform. And that kind of thing is terrifying. And that's just from the security side of it.There's also all kinds of implications around privacy and data and data governance. What is okay to feed into these tools? What is okay information to feed into a ChatGPT algorithm? Even if it's helping you be more effective, we need to be careful. We need to be selective. And that's something that we're talking about constantly. I don't think that there's any one proverbial silver bullet to that question, if I had to say honestly, and I think a lot of that is because so much of this is still coming into focus. We don't know what it's going to look like when GPT-4 gets released.And the developers and designers behind these platforms are certainly making every effort to try and build safe platforms. But we as experts and professionals using them have to be mindful of what we feed into it, because there's so much risk with these platforms and these tools. If you give it the wrong information, suddenly, your client's info could be out there on the web through some other chatter's conversation. I don't know how much input builds into the models because it's not like I have visibility inside these companies, but it's certainly something that concerns me.Paul Green:And your clients, because this would give us quite an insight into how ordinary business owners and managers think about AI, are they even aware of ChatGPT? Have they realized how advanced, relatively advanced, the AI models have become in the last couple of years? Because I was chatting about it at the weekend. In fact, as part of my prep for this interview, I was chatting about it with a business-owning friend I was socializing with. And I said, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, ChatGPT," and he went, "Chat what?" And I said, "How can you have not heard of ChatGPT?"Trenton Schuttler:Oh my gosh.Paul Green:This is just an ordinary business owner. He doesn't operate in our world. It is literally passed him by. And he's sort of my age, little bit of gray hair but not too much. And I was horrified at just how little awareness he had of that. So your clients, are they aware of it? Are they talking to you about it? Are they wary of it? Or similarly, is it just sort of passing them by at the moment?Trenton Schuttler:I think we have a bit of a split camp in that. Clients that I've been actively working with for projects or engagements, quoting, absolutely are aware of it. I mean, just think about how our conversation went. Now put yourself in the shoes of one of my clients that's actually talking to me in person all the time, there's no way they were getting away without hearing about it. Even on sales meetings, initial assessment meetings, I've brought it up and talked about it. And I do that because the world changed back in December. When ChatGPT released, everything really changed. A lot of folks might disagree with that and say that we're still a long way off from a lot of the monumental improvements and differences in how we live and work. But these tools, these systems, they're here to stay, and they're only going to get better. Tomorrow isn't tomorrow anymore. It's today. It's now.I pretty much advocate about it, pontificate, talk about it, bring it up anytime I can. I'm going to be meeting with one client of ours that's a marketing firm for small businesses in the area here, because I have a feeling, once they know about Jasper, they're going to fall in love. The beautiful thing about a tool like Jasper, for an organization like this one that I mentioned, the client, with the right application and the right approach, it's not some scary thing that's coming for everybody's jobs. It's a tool. It's going to enhance and elevate those teams and their ability to produce and to service their clients. It comes right back to that whole business process improvement, right? Understand our client's business, make the right recommendations, show them and introduce them tools that can truly help them to achieve that greatness they've always dreamed of, freeing them from the shackles of technology. It's a really, really awesome thing and I'm really excited to share it any chance I get.Paul Green:It's funny. You're talking about it being used by a marketing company. And you say about it not coming for people's jobs. Actually, I think there are some low level jobs which potentially will be replaced by let's say, take Jasper. So I've played with Jasper since our conversation and it's good. It's really good. I mean ChatGPT is good. Jasper is, as you said to me, is the next level on. And if you look at someone who's selling basic writing on Fiverr or Upwork, I would argue that, if you know the subject that you want to be written about, and you know the style in which you want it to be written, and you have the ability to edit and to curate content, there is less work for you to give to external writers, low level writers. I think there's absolutely a place for experienced writers who have spent 20 years crafting words because they simply can output better content.And I think the ability to use a tool like Jasper, as you were saying right at the beginning to, "Take a bit of this. Rewrite that. Can you make that more friendly? Can you make that harder? Can you put that into bullet points?" And it's just there instantly is exciting. What if, and it is very much a what if, because I don't think anyone outside of a particular building in San Francisco knows, but what if Google develops the ability to detect AI-detected text? Now if that's the case, and let's say you... I don't know if you've done this with your website, but let's say, on an MSP's website, you've got 200 blog articles, and they were all generated by AI. And perhaps you haven't done any human editing. So it's pure AI text. The question is, could Google, maybe not yet, but in the near future, could it detect that? And if it does detect that, could Google decide that, "Hey, that's like link farms. That's not right. We want good long form content written by humans, not short form content written by AI."?Trenton Schuttler:One of the dynamics we're likely to see as a result of exactly that happening is almost a shift or a new category of content that is human generated. So as we shift and move more towards these times where video, imagery, text content stories can all be generated by AI, I can absolutely see we're in that same world, the truly human crafted content becoming so much more special. Because while it may be not put together in exactly the right cadence to send your message, sometimes it's those imperfections that can really make something special. If you live in a world of perfection everywhere, when you find those flaws, they tend to stick in your mind a little more. So I think, while content being generated by AI is certainly a big issue today, one that's undoubtedly caused great alarm within the halls of Google and Facebook and all the others, I definitely believe that it's not going to bring providers or content creators down.And I think that because the content this stuff generates really is very good. It may not be written word for word by human today, but all of these models were trained on content that we created at some point in the past. It's trained on human knowledge. It doesn't seem like it's a different thing. And I think that's where there is so much controversy and debate and lack of clarity. And everyone's unsure and uncertainty generates fear and doubt. And so then, you get second guessers and naysayers. I mean, Google's had plenty of these models for a long time. They're just internal because they don't want to release them. I am curious to see what Google will be releasing. They've hinted at preparing to release some kind of a ChatGPT competitor. Certainly, they will have a wealth of data, so I'm quite curious to see what they produce.Paul Green:Yeah. It's going to be a very exciting couple of years. And let's be honest, all of us would love to jump forward to the stage where we can have a proper conversation with our devices. Siri, we always thought Siri was going to be that thing that you could just talk to, and it would just understand you and it would keep the thread of a conversation, and that has not been the case. And certainly, the tools that are out now are a bigger step closer to that, with all the implications that go with that.Trenton, thank you so much. I officially declare you to be a thought leader in AI for MSPs. I think you can take an early adopter position in that and go forward with it. And I've just realized, you and I so missed an opportunity. We should have deep faked this entire interview. We could have replicated both of us on video and audio, just to show how good the AI tools were. But no, we're human. Look, just pull your face out and poke yourself a little bit for those watching on YouTube to prove that we really are real. For those MSPs listening that want to get in touch with you right now, Trenton, what's the best way to connect to you?Trenton Schuttler:The best way to connect would definitely be LinkedIn. Send me a message or a mail, Trenton Schuttler, Net Guardians Tech of Santa Rosa, and I'd be happy to chat. I'm passionate about this stuff, and if you ask me a question, chances are, you'll want me to shut up at some point because I just keep on talking. I am so passionate about this stuff. You give me a time of day and I will fill your ear with thoughts.voiceover:Paul Green's MSP marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.Jamie Warner, Invarosoft:Hi, this is Jamie Warner from Invarosoft, and the book I recommend is Purple Cow by Seth Godin. If you want to learn how to differentiate your MSP in a very competitive market, this is the book for you, to find out the tactical strategies you can implement to be the best in your market.voiceover:Coming up next week.Dan Albaum:Hi, I'm Dan Albaum, marketing leader and author of The Impact Makers: Voices of Leadership. And I'll be sharing with you some of the key learnings from the book, about how global exceptional leaders drive improved performance, based on a servant leader mindset.Paul Green:Go on, wherever you are listening to this right now, or watching it, subscribe, so you never miss an episode. Because on top of that interview, next week, we are going to be looking at the value of strategic partnerships, what they are, how to form them, and how to nourish them so they get stronger. We're also going to be looking at the huge marketing and sales value of the lunch and learn. If you want more, there is a ton more content for you right now at youtube.com/mspmarketing. Join me next Tuesday, and have a very profitable week in your MSP.voiceover:Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

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Episode 172Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 '4000 Weeks' and the importance of 'you time' to your life and business * 07:51 This tool makes hiring techs easier * 16:48 How creating an excellent customer experience can help grow your business * Featured guest:

Thank you to Marc Gordon, The Customer Experience Expert, for joining me to talk about creating customer loyalty with better and more effective customer experiences.Marc is an internationally recognized thought leader in the field of customer experience. With over 25 years of marketing and business communications in a number of diverse industries, he has built a reputation for providing impactful methods that increase sales and inspire customer loyalty.

Marc is also an advocate for youth business initiatives, and speaks at schools about entrepreneurship and the art of public speaking.

Connect with Marc on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcgordondotca/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Order your free copy of the MSP Marketing magazine: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/magazine/ * If you're intrigued by the 4000 week movement, get the book here: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Four-Thousand-Weeks-Embrace-limits/dp/1784704008/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, The Wedge: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wedge-Stop-Selling-Start-Winning/dp/0872183718/

Transcription:Voiceover:Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world, this is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Hello and welcome back to the show. Here's what we got coming up for you this week.Marc Gordon:Hi, I'm Marc Gordon, the customer experience expert. Look for my interview coming up where I'm going to be sharing with you ways that you can create better, more efficient, more effective customer experiences to keep your customers coming back.Paul Green:And that really is going to be a fantastic interview with Mark later on towards the end of the show. We're also going to be talking about recruitment this week. I've got a very cool tool that you could use to cut through all the noise and get straight to the very best candidates.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Now, let's start this week with a difficult subject, but it's an important one. It's something that we need to talk about and it's not strictly about MSP marketing, but it is about your business and especially about you and your life and just how finite your life is. I believe this podcast should be 80% marketing stuff and 20% related stuff, and I personally find productivity things very interesting and increasingly, as I get older, I'm finding it more and more interesting to talk about the finiteness of life.Now, let's just set some context here. At time of recording, I'm 48, but I'm around about 15, 16 months away from turning 50, which is a proper munch scream, when you're putting your hands on your face and going, "Ugh!" It's a proper scream moment for me because I was cool going into my thirties, I was all right going into my forties, but approaching my fifties, I don't know. That feels like it's old, proper old.My dad was only 23 when I was born. So at the age I am now, I'm 48 now, he had a 25-year-old son. I was 25 at the point my dad was this age. Can you see how that changes the way you think about things? And my dad now, he's only 70 and he's still quite a young 70, but it's terrifying. Over the last few years or so, I've just been delving into something. It's called a 4,000-week movement, and it's based around the principle that the average person, if we are lucky, we've got 4,000 weeks on this planet, which is just around about 80 years.Now, I've just been listening to a book. I've just pulled it up on Audible on my phone. It's called 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. It's got a few fruity words in there, bit of fruity language, but it's a really, really good book. And it's all about, we've got to, as we go through life and as we are trying to grow our business and look after our customers and do a great job and be good husbands or wives and be good parents as well, we've also got to not forget to actually enjoy our lives along the way.And do you ever get to this time of the year and you look up and you think, "How is it this time already? I'm sure it was Christmas four seconds ago," because I know that happens to me. And in fact, the older I get, the more that seems to speed up. The core message within this book is about enjoying yourself now and not being so worried about the future. And I think we as business owners are very, very guilty of this, whereby we tend to put in a lot of hard work today and we self justify it as we are building something for the future so there will be greater profits in the future, more stability in the future. The business will be better and will operate without me in the future.I hear lots and lots of these things, but the risk is that you keep your nose down for 20 years and then you look up and suddenly you are old and you're at retirement. And that's a scary thing. And what this book is, this 4,000-week book, one of the core messages is not to forget to enjoy yourself along the way, that actually you can't assume you're going to get those full 4,000 weeks. You've got to enjoy doing the things that you enjoy doing.My enjoyment is very simple in life. I love time with my daughter. For now, she's still 12. We'll see what happens when she turns into that teenager at 13 and the years ahead. I know teenage girls are the most difficult. Don't need to tell me that one. Plenty of people have told me that, but I enjoy spending time with her, quality time anyway. We go to see musicals at the theater together. We do escape rooms. Escape rooms are awesome. We have lots of shared hobbies and I appreciate those will tail off as the years come by.But it means, for me, never working weekends. Never ever, ever working weekends is literally number one priority. Weekends is family time. Evenings, I'll work some evenings. We have lots of members of our MSP marketing edge who are in the US, which means doing stuff in the evenings. I'm comfortable with that because I'm always there to pick her up from school or do the school runs. Never missed a sports day, never missed a theater club, all of the stuff that's important. But weekends are absolutely incredibly important to me as I'm sure they should be for you as well, particularly if you do have family. That's family time. That's when the family has you.But what about time for yourself? I really like walking. I like running. I like photography. As I say, my hobbies are actually very simple. I like traveling and going to places and exploring and looking at things. And for many years, I had the habit of taking Fridays off, not working Fridays. It was a habit I lost during lockdown. I've toyed with it, but I did find Fridays to actually be quite productive days for me. Maybe I should take Mondays off. I hate Mondays. Who likes Mondays?There's a version of this for you. No matter how busy you are in your business, unless you are literally the business; you need to have some kind of help to do this, but there comes a point where if you can take Fridays off or take Mondays off or find a regular day a week when you can have time for yourself because you give time to your family, you give time to your business, but when is the time for yourself?We've only got 4,000 weeks. What we do with that time is so critical. I'm going to finish on a thing I'm going to suggest to you; a tool that you can buy or you could make your own. Now, you can't quite see it. If you're watching this on YouTube, you'll notice that just over my left shoulder here, there's a little set of drawers. I'm in my temporary office that I've been in for a number of months and, in the next couple of weeks, I'm moving down into my new office as the builders finish that office. I'm really looking forward to it. So you won't be seeing these draws in the future because it's a much bigger office that I'm moving into.But you can't see on the YouTube video, but on the side I have a poster up. It's quite a large poster and it says, "My life in weeks." And I bought that from ... I think the website address is 4kweeks.com, as in 4,000weeks.com. And what you do is you put in your date of birth and they print a poster where they have prefilled in the number of weeks that you've already lived, because the idea with this poster is it lists out the 4,000 weeks as 4,000 boxes. And at the end of every week, you get your pencil and you just fill in another little box; the idea being that you can literally physically watch the number of weeks that you've got left on this planet going down and down and down.Now at 48, it doesn't look so bad. I'm just a little bit over the middle, but obviously as I get onto 50, that's going to be a whole new section. Every 10 years is a section. So I'm entering a whole new section in about 14, 15 months time and that is terrifying. Now, these posters are really expensive. They're something like $40, $50 for them to print off a sheet of A4 or a sheet of A3, A2, whatever it is. These are European sizes, but it's a big sheet.Well done to them for coming up with something with a massive profit margin. The point is I've got to track now. I can literally look at any point and in my new office it's going to be there in front of me to remind me not only that I've got to stay focused on what I want to achieve, but also I mustn't forget to enjoy my life along the way. Maybe you could do something exactly the same.Voiceover:Here's this week's clever idea.Paul Green:I think we all agree that recruitment is a headache right now. It's a headache with two sides of the sword, a double-edged sword. On one side, it's difficult to find good technicians who aren't just shopping around to try and increase their salary wherever they're working right now. But the other side of the sword is when you apply or when you advertise for non-technical jobs, so admin jobs or marketing jobs or any other kind of level of job that almost anyone can apply for, you are swamped. I mean, literally swamped with a very, very broad range of people who essentially have just sat there on whatever app they're using to apply for jobs and they're just stabbing the button. They've got their phone and they're just stabbing, stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, stab.And the stabbing is the applying for the job. They're not putting any thought into it. They don't know really what they're applying for. They're just applying for jobs. They're treating recruitment, they're treating job hunting as a numbers game, and they're just applying for as many jobs as they want. Now, the problem for you as the recruiter, as the person trying to take someone on, is that a lot of noise. I know this because we've just recruited two or three different roles, and one of them in particular, we had I think it was around about something ridiculous. It was either 1500 or 2000 applications. I forget what it was.And we were looking for a new video editor. Who knew there were like 2000 people out there who wanted to be a video editor working from home? It's clearly a desirable job, but that was an incredible amount of noise to get through. And in fact, the person that got that job is literally one in 2000, which is awesome. So you've got two problems there, two completely different problems. One is the inability to find good people and the second is the inability to sort the wheat from the chaff.There is a tool that a few MSPs I know are using, and I believe it can help you with both of these problems. And in fact, this tool has been specifically designed for a number of issues and you can use it for recruitment. It is one of its published use cases. The tool is called VideoAsk, and you can find it at videoask.com. And what it allows you to do is to use video as a two-way communication between you and your job hunter. Now, let's look at how you'd use that for hard to find technicians. Then let's use it for the swamped version and then let's talk about how you use VideoAsk in your general marketing.VideoAsk, when you're looking for technicians. Let's say you're looking for a second line or third line technician. There aren't many of them around. Those that are, if they're happy where they are, they may job hunt just to get another offer so they can get their salary increase where they currently are, or they just may have totally unrealistic expectations of their worth to you, their salary. Now, the idea with VideoAsk is that, as part of the recruitment process, you record a simple video. And of course, you do this once for a job. And in that video you introduce yourself.You say, "Hi, my name's Paul. Here I am. This is our MSP. This is what we do. We're looking for a second line tech. What's in it for you is this, this, this, this, and this." So essentially you recap the advert. You sell them on the concept of you and your business in a video message. But here's the critical thing. They then have to, as part of the recruitment process, they have to record a video message back to you. You may ask them to perhaps complete a qualifying question. It might be like a high level tech question.I can't think of any high level tech questions. How would you reset someone's password in Teams? I know that's not high tech, I'm joking, but you get the idea. So you might set them a technical challenge and they have to present to you on video literally just using their phone. They don't need any special equipment. This is just a phone app, but they have to record something saying, "Hi, this is me, this is what I do, this is my experience. The answer to the question is you'd go in with a pair of pliers, you'd turn it to the left, get an electric shock and hit it with a hammer."And of course, when they're saying that to you, even if they've Googled the answer, you'll be able to see in their eyes if they truly understand what it is that they're saying, because there is a massive difference between Googling something and saying what's on Google, and actually understanding something and being able to communicate it properly. Now, here's why Getting someone to do this on video is such a big deal.First of all, it's a hoop to jump through. It's something that someone has got to do and where there's a bit of work to be done where someone's got to do some work, that immediately is going to get rid of the time wasters. So those people who aren't really bothered about moving, they don't really want to leave their current job, they're just shopping around to try and get a salary increase, they may even be fearful that if they do this on a video platform, that it could somehow get back to their boss. I believe there'll be a lower number of those time wasters literally wasting your time by doing this. So that will immediately eliminate some people. And you shouldn't be scared of that. You want to eliminate bad candidates from this process.Now, the flip side of that is those technicians who are genuinely looking for a new role, this is a very engaging process, and engagement, as we know with any kind of marketing recruitment really is just a form of marketing. Engagement is such an important thing. If you can get someone engaged with your business, engaged with the way you do things, and video is an awesome tool to do that, then that's half the battle. So I believe it's going to really help you in that difficult technical role.Now, what about where you are swamped? Well, I wish we'd done it with our video editor and with our other vacancies that we've done recently. And we may look at doing this in the future, because again, there's a level of work that they have to do. So those people that are just sitting pressing the apply button, instantly they're gone because, well, they haven't read what they've got to do because you make this part of the advert. "Please don't just send your CV. Please apply via VideoAsk or the link."I haven't actually used it, so I don't know exactly how it works. I haven't used it yet, I should say. But the load of people won't apply properly because they haven't actually read what they have to do. Others won't have read the instructions or their video will just be rubbish, or you'll just get a general feeling this is not the right person for me. So you literally cut through a whole series of people. But again, for those that actually could be good candidates, awesome. There's some level of engagement that's just happened there as well.So you can see how VideoAsk would be an incredible recruitment tool for you. I believe actually, having gone onto their website in research for this and looked at all of their use cases, I think it's actually a pretty awesome marketing tool as well. For example, you could use it to collect testimonials, you could use it to build a sales funnel, you could use it for lead generation. There's a whole series of different things.So with that caveat that I haven't yet actually downloaded it, used it on my phone, this is going to be a little project for me perhaps this weekend. Now, hang on. Can't work this weekend because of what I was saying earlier. Don't work weekends. We'll do it on Monday, I think. Go and have a look, videoask.com com. See if this is a tool that could help you with your recruitment or indeed maybe some of your marketing problems.Voiceover:Paul's blatant plug.Paul Green:One of my missions in life, one of the things that gets me up in the morning is helping MSPs, regardless of whether they are paying me to help them or not. That's why we do so much free stuff. This podcast costs real money because there's not just my time in researching it. We do spend money on tools and on equipment and on awesome editors, and there's licenses to be paid and we have to upload it to the hosting service and distribute it and all that kind of stuff.But it's worth it because a lot of MSPs, an enormous number of MSPs, listen to this podcast and I enjoy doing it. I know most people enjoy listening to it. It's one of the ways we can give free help to MSPs, the same as our learning hub on paulgreensmspmarketing.com. I mean, literally hundreds of free articles for you to help you with your marketing.We also have a free magazine. Now, it's just a one edition magazine. It's not something we are going to do regularly, but it's called the MSP Marketing Magazine. It's completely free. It's just eight pages showing you what other MSPs are doing with their marketing and how you can swipe and adapt that. There's a great case study in there as well of a very successful MSP. So if you want to get a free copy of this, we will even ship it to you completely free. You don't even have to pay the postage.And that's not one of those things where we want you to put in your credit card to pay a pound or a dollar for the postage and then try and upsell you something. We're not doing anything like that. This is completely free and we ship it to you for free. It's my investment in helping you get started with your marketing. And of course, it's a bit of a relationship starter for us as well. Maybe you'll go on to buy something from me and my team down the line, maybe won't. It doesn't really matter. But you can get your Free MSP marketing magazine right now at paulgreensmspmarketing.com.Voiceover:The big interview.Marc Gordon:Hi, I'm Marc Gordon, the customer experience expert.Paul Green:And thank you so much for joining us on the show, Mark. I have a ton of things to ask you about customer experience, and specifically how you can design a great experience even when you are a very busy business owner. But let's first of all do the credibility thing. Tell us a little bit about your background. How do you come to label yourself as the customer experience expert?Marc Gordon:Well, I started in business at around 16 years old, purely out of looking for opportunities to not necessarily make money, but I was involved in a number of hobbies and sports and things like that. And I was looking for opportunities to be able to get access to products or services. So that led me to that entrepreneurial journey. And over the years, I've been involved in the clothing industry and mostly in the automotive industry.And over that time, every business model had something unique in common, and that was that I never actually made any of the products that I sold. They were always made by another company, and I would put them in my box and rebrand them and market them under my name. And one thing I realized early on, that what really made me different from everyone else, since the products in many ways were the same, was how I treated my customers.But at the time, terms like customer service, customer experience, it didn't really exist. I mean, these were terms that were not thrown around back in the early mid-nineties, even the late nineties. And over that time, I refined this process and this philosophy of whatever I do, it's got to be easy, convenient, and stress-free for the customer. They shouldn't have to worry about anything in doing a transaction with me.I sold my automotive company in 2003 and decided to move into a marketing slash consulting role with a new company and a new organization I created. And over that time, I built on this philosophy I had in terms of delivering products and services in a way that make clients loyal, make them want to share their positive experiences with others. And over that time, I just earned the moniker as being a customer experience expert, which is interesting. When I started, that term again didn't exist. So it is a relatively new term, I think. And a lot of people still today, they'll throw around customer service and customer experience interchangeably, but for me, it's really about the all-encompassing experience.Paul Green:Yes, yes, I bet it is. And of course, customer experience is something that we as customers are very quick to criticize. You go into any social media platform and it's full of people tweeting brands and messaging brands, telling them what a poor experience they've had. And yet as business owners, is it your experience, as is my experience, that most business owners don't think enough about the customer experience in their own business?Marc Gordon:Well, I think it's twofold. You touched on two great points. First off, from a customer perspective, we live in a world now where customers perhaps, maybe through no fault of their own, may have unrealistic expectations. I attribute a lot of this to marketing. Businesses are very quick to market themselves in a way that perhaps creates expectations that they can't manage. We live in a world now where everybody wants to be the best; best quality, best service, best price. You can't have everything. So customers sometimes come in with these unrealistic expectations.Now, on the flip side, the businesses, a lot of them just kind of fly by the seat of their pants and don't really have a strategy or a process in place, understanding the different touchpoints over the course of the transaction process, what problems they may encounter, what challenges the customers may face, how they'll deal with those challenges. If things don't go, how will they respond? A lot of times it's just very willy-nilly. They're just going to do whatever seems to work. Not every customer will be treated the same, and it can lead to a lot of stress from both sides.Paul Green:And certainly when I've had a bad customer experience in the past, nine times out of 10, it's because of the quality of the people that I've been interacting with. Is that something that many of the businesses you work with find in common, that it's more about the people than it is the systems or is it a mixture of both?Marc Gordon:It is a mixture of both. In many cases, businesses will put people in positions that they shouldn't be in, and anyone who's ever called an MSP or any other type of business, they'll sometimes encounter someone who will answer the phone and you're thinking to yourself, "This person should never be allowed to talk to another human being. They belong in a small office in a dark room where they can just fill out forms and do paperwork." But businesses, for whatever reason, will put people in jobs or in positions that they may not be suited to. So there's that, and then as well too, there is internal processes about how things are actually done.Paul Green:Let's get down to some specific examples that can help MSPs. You know how MSPs work, of course. Well, it's supposedly not supposed to be much of a reactive role these days, but there is still a huge amount of reactivity because essentially a client's buying an MSP to manage their technology for them. But there is also still that, "Hey, something is broken. Please can you fix it," element to it. And as we all know, when something isn't working as it's supposed to, that can become a distress point for the client. So where you've got here B2B businesses typically looking after lots and lots of different things, lots of moving parts for lots of different people, what are some of the things or the areas that you would advise any MSP to look at to improve that overall customer experience?Marc Gordon:Well, the first thing I would say is they need to not necessarily wait until they get that call that there's a problem. And one of the things that I say is that if you wait till the problem's happening, then it's a problem that's going to be harder to deal with. A great way to not only let customers know that you genuinely care about their wellbeing and their success and to potentially increase sales is to be proactive, not reactive.After the job is done, after the MSP is left, reach out to the customer maybe a few days later, maybe a week later. Check in and say, "I just want to make sure that everything is working as it should. Are there any problems you have? Are there any challenges you're facing? Is something not doing what you thought it should?" Come out and ask these questions.Not only will it make you look like a service leader, but in many cases, you will get an increase in sales because a lot of times, and I've seen this in so many industries, you call up the customer to make sure everything's okay and the customer comes back and says, "Yeah, everything's working great. Thanks for calling. I really appreciate it. But you know what? We ordered two of these units from you and now we're realizing it's not enough. We need to order a third. So I'm really glad you called."Or they're saying, "This system we purchased from you, I know you wanted us to purchase the top of the line. We didn't, we purchased the midline, but now we're realizing you were right. Is there a way that we can upgrade our system? Is there something you can do to help us out?" These are sales that are self-generating and make you look like a hero at the same time.Paul Green:Yeah, and we've had guests on this podcast before, particularly people with customer experience platforms, which of course is a piece of software designed to help MSPs create a better experience. We've had lots of people on this podcast talk about the beauty of doing quarterly business reviews, strategic reviews, and actually sitting, talking with clients and talking about their business and their needs and their wants and their fears. And not only do you get better retention and a better experience out of that, but you get more sales as well. Let's just finish off, Marc, with two or three, if you like, easy wins; things that almost any B2B company could do that would instantly give them a better customer experience. What would those be?Marc Gordon:At the very core of what I do, if there's one takeaway, it's to create an experience that is easy, convenient, and stress-free. And those key points, if you don't do anything else and you can just create an experience that falls under these or checks off these three traits, you're going to be ahead of most of your competitors. And it's very simple. So easy being that the customer doesn't have to work at completing the transaction or having a transaction with you.And when I say work, for example, they shouldn't have to work going through your website looking for information they need. They shouldn't have to work in trying to reach the right person who can help them or the right department. They shouldn't have to work with regards to understanding your order processing or how to make a purchase, or whether you require PO or whatever paperwork has to be filled out. That's work. They shouldn't have to work at it. It should be easy for them. And if that involves handholding, so be it.Convenient means that the customer can work in a way that is convenient for them. They can do things on their terms. They can reach out to you in a way that they want, whether it be through text, through sell, through email, through WhatsApp, whatever platform they want. They can purchase something through you using a credit card, using e-transfer, using whatever form of payment they want. You want to make it as convenient for them as possible to empower them to work in a way that's comfortable for them.And of course, stress-free is absolutely essential. So many businesses mess up on this because they're focused on themselves, on their own measure of success, rather than really understanding what the customer wants. And we as human beings, we don't like stress in any way, shape, or form, but a lot of businesses create stressful environments because they make the customer have to question things.For example, if this system doesn't work right, will you be there for me? Will you take care of me if things don't work as they should? Can I trust you? If there's a problem with payment, if there's a problem with delivery, are these things I need to know about or can I count on you to be able to come through and do what you say you will? These are things customers should not have to think about. So easy, convenient, and stress-free, I would say to any MSP, regardless of anything else you do, if you can create transactions that check off these three traits, you will be miles ahead of your competition.Paul Green:I love it. Thank you so much, Mark. Tell us, what do you do for businesses and how can we get in touch with you?Marc Gordon:Well, for the most part, I do a lot of corporate speaking. I travel around the world and I share these kinds of ideas and concepts from the stage with organizations and associations, helping them learn how to create experiences that get customers coming back. On a one-to-one level, I do offer a fair amount of consulting, so businesses can reach out to me directly through my website at marcgordon.ca, and they can work with me in creating that strategy or creating that process internally so that they can manage their resources.And what's really interesting, a lot of businesses have this belief that they need to wow their customers, they need to exceed expectations. And I say, "You know what? You don't have to. It's not about under promising and over-delivering. It's about promising and delivering, doing what you say you're going to do." And when you balance that, not only do you better allocate your resources and you're more efficient as a business, you also lower your costs while creating more satisfied customers.Paul Green:I love it. And just give us your website address again.Marc Gordon:It's Marc Gordon, and that's Marc with a C. Marcgordon.ca.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast. This week's recommended book.Zach Kitchen:Hey there, I'm Zach Kitchen. I'm an MSP owner just like you. I actually recommend a book called The Wedge by Randy Schwantz. The reason I recommend this book is because it teaches you how to push out those incumbent MSP providers out there and how it sets yourself apart from those competitors out there.Voiceover:Coming up next week.Trenton Shuttler:Hey, my name is Trenton Shuttler. I use generative AI with my team every day. It lets us truly unlock the power to transform my MSP. And on this upcoming podcast, I talked to Paul about it and how you can use it to really unleash the power within.Paul Green:Wherever you are listening to or watching this right now, do subscribe and click the notification bell if you're watching on YouTube so you never miss a new episode, because on top of that interview next week, we are going to be talking about paying your suppliers. There are some of your suppliers I believe you should pay faster and not slower, despite the fact that cash is the difficult thing for some MSPs right now. I'll explain why next week.I will also look at the six stages of the client journey. They go through six distinct stages before they are locked into you for life. We have a ton more marketing content for you on YouTube. Just go to youtube.com/mspmarketing and join me next Tuesday. Have a very profitable week in your MSP.Voiceover:Made in the UK. For MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use It

The Wedge: How to Stop Selling and Start Winning

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Episode 171Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 How to structure your day to manage your MSP effectively * 6:02 Growing your client base with LinkedIn Live * 12:48 How you can retain staff and use data to grow your business

Featured guest:Thank you to Darren Strong of Scalable MSP for joining me to talk about how MSPs can improve their operational data and hiring practices to build their business.Darren works with over 60 MSP Business Owners every quarter to help them and their teams to build profitable, scalable companies to achieve more value for their futures.

Darren has also been heavily involved with the ConnectWise Evolve peer group as a facilitator for over 9 years and in that time has seen the highs and lows that MSP owners face.

Connect with Darren on LinkedIn:https://uk.linkedin.com/in/darren-strongExtra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Subscribe to the MSP Marketing Action Monthly magazine: + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action/ * Remember to check out the creator tools I mentioned, including LinkedIn Live, over on LinkedIn * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, Crossing the Chasm: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crossing-Chasm-3rd-Disruptive-Mainstream/dp/0062292986/

Transcription:Voiceover:Fresh every Tuesday, for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Oh, hello, it's you. Welcome back to the podcast. Here's what we got in store for you this week.Darren Strong:Hi, I'm Darren Strong from scalablemsp.co.uk. We'll be talking about retaining talent and using data in your business to execute on your strategy here and your legacy plan.Paul Green:And that interview with Darren is later on in the show, we'll be talking about how you can better retain your staff and also use data to grow your business. We'll also be talking this week about LinkedIn Live; is it a useful tool to get more clients for your MSP?Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Literally just before I recorded this week's podcast, I've just rerecorded some new onboarding videos for my core service, it's called the MSP Marketing Edge. And one of the challenges that I set for our new members in those onboarding videos is to try to find at least 60 minutes, and ideally 90 minutes, every single day to work on their business as opposed to working in their business. What's the difference between the two? Well, working in your business is admin, definitely technical work, you could argue, chatting to your staff about stuff, that's all working in your business. The only real activities working on your business is stuff that gets you brand-new clients, stuff that gets your clients to buy more often from you, and stuff that gets your clients to spend more every single time they buy Those three big activities, those are the definition of working on your business.Now, many MSPs really struggle to find time every day to work on the business, especially if you're a small business and it's just you and a bit of help. It's certainly the bigger the business, the more resources you have, the easier it is to spend more time working on your business. But everyone, and I truly believe this, everyone can find 60 to 90 minutes a day to work on the business. And typically, certainly in the early years, this has to be done at a time when perhaps other people aren't working. Put another way, some people get ahead in the time that other people waste. Now, I've built two businesses from scratch now, and the very first one, which I started in 2005 and sold in 2016, it was a marketing agency, not in technology, in healthcare. That business was built, in the first probably six or seven years, at 5:00 AM in the morning. Now, I don't do this anymore because I'm too old and because I value my sleep, and also I don't need to do this anymore. I would if I absolutely had to.But back then I would get up at 5:00 AM every single weekday, I tried not to work weekends, 'cause it's important to have a complete break. But every single weekday I would get up at 5:00 AM and I would work for 90 minutes on the business. So by the time my family was starting to rouse from their deep slumber at 6:30 AM in the morning, I'd done 90 minutes worth of work. Now, to put that in context, I literally got out of bed at 5:00 AM, I microwaved a mug of coffee that I'd prepared the night before, and I was sat at my desk, in my office, in my house, hair everywhere, smelling, in pajamas, don't wear pajamas to bed, but you get the idea. So we're not talking any presentable, not looking all gorgeous as I am right now. We're talking literally stinky breath, fallen out of bed, but I'm on it.In fact, I was such in the habit for this, I used to fall out of bed at 5:00 AM and instantly, as soon as I woke, my brain was like, "Right, we're doing this and this and this and this. Let's see if we can get that done in 90 minutes." And you know what it's like when you have a deadline, and mine was an immovable deadline, at 6:30 AM people were waking, child was young back then, very young, child would wake up. There is activity, can't focus anymore. So I pretty much built that business in the first 5, 6, 7 years from 5:00 AM to 6:30 AM. And I would go into work, I would get to my office at, let's say, 8:30 AM and my staff bombarding me with daft questions as they do. And it didn't matter because I felt epic, absolutely epic, because I had already done the most important thing. It didn't matter what happened and how my day was completely ripped away from me by clients and by staff and other people, I'd already done the most important thing.And there were perhaps a handful, in those number of years, a handful of times that I didn't get up at 5:00 AM and work on that business. And we reinvented that business several times. It wasn't a linear thing, that we started it in 2005 and it grew linear, in a linear way, up to 2016. I struggled with that business for a good 5 to 6 years. We didn't get any traction with it, I had to reinvent it a number of times, and then we just found a model that worked, which, as I say, that was a marketing business so I don't need to go into the details of that. The point is the work that was done in the morning. Some people get ahead in the time that others waste.So my challenge for you is this; if you are desperate to grow the business, I mean truly desperate, you really want it, it's like, "It's got to happen this year." We're already a couple of months into the year or certainly at this point of the year, you've got to do something different. And that means finding time to work on the business, getting more new clients, getting those clients to buy from you more often and getting those clients to choose to spend more every single time they buy. You need 60 to 90 minutes every day. Now, 5:00 AM might be too extreme for you, but what about 6:00 AM? What about 10:00 PM? What about Saturday mornings or Sunday mornings? I mean, an hour a day is better than trying to do a four-hour block on one particular day because it's too easy to lose time on that four-hour block. But actually, something is better than nothing. What's the time that you're wasting? Where's the dead time, and how could you refocus that back in on working on your business and achieving the things you so desperately want to achieve this year?Voiceover:Here's this week's clever idea.Paul Green:Usually, when I give you a clever idea in this podcast, it's something that either I've tried or a friend of mine has tried somewhere or an MSP has tried. I try not to bring experimental ideas into this podcast. However, I'm going to break my own rule today because I have an idea that I would like someone somewhere to test to see if it's worthwhile. And there's not a lot of risk in this, it's not going to cost you money, it's going to cost you a little bit of time, but it could really make you stand out. And as we have been talking about on the podcast, I think it was the last week we were talking about this, do you remember me saying last week that samey kills sales? You've got to stand out and be different from all the other MSPs. So here's my idea; there is something in LinkedIn called creator mode. Now, this is something that was only introduced, it was either about a year ago or maybe just late in 2021.But creator mode is where LinkedIn, you essentially turn on a different type of LinkedIn. I've had this going for about 45 weeks or so now. And in creator mode, people can't just connect to you, they can follow you because you are creating content. So for example, you may have heard me talk about LinkedIn newsletters a lot 'cause LinkedIn newsletters are awesome. And LinkedIn newsletter is where you publish a newsletter once a week, say, and you can build up a list of subscribers. And these subscribers are separate to your LinkedIn connections. You can only do that when you're in creator mode. You can Google how to turn on creator mode, it's fairly easy to do. But the whole point of creator mode is you are creating content. One of the other tools, and I'm sure there will be many other tools that LinkedIn are working on and will release down the line, but as well as newsletters, one of the other tools that LinkedIn offers to you is the ability to go live.So we've seen this before. Facebook has been doing this for, oh my goodness, it must be a decade at least, where you can go live on Facebook. And do you remember when that first came out and everyone was just going live all the time? My first ever Facebook Live was me drunk walking back from a train back to my house, and I was live-streaming going to a kebab shop, which is embarrassing. In fact, I had to delete that video 'cause I didn't realize that when someone connects to you on Facebook for the first time, the first piece of content they see is your most popular content. That was my most popular content, so that wasn't necessarily one I wanted new friends and MSPs I was connecting to to see. Anyway, I digress. On LinkedIn, you can just go live. Literally, you press a button, you go live and you are broadcasting a video. It occurred to me that LinkedIn Live is cool, but what if you use LinkedIn Live to try to achieve what we're doing here? What if you did a live broadcast, kind of like a podcast, on a regular basis?What if every single, I don't know, Tuesday at 7:00 PM, you went live on LinkedIn just for 15 minutes to talk about how to use technology to make more profit out of your business, or to be more productive? In fact, it could be The Productivity and Profitability Podcast. Try saying that after you've had a few beers, Paul. Wouldn't that be cool? 'Cause remember, ordinary people don't really care about technology per se, they care about what it can do for their business. They care about profitability, productivity, all of that kind of stuff. So doing a formal podcast like this, where you have to record something and edit it and put it on all the platforms and promote it and all of that, don't get me wrong, the rewards are great, we have a huge audience, we get loads of MSPs talking to us and joining our services because of this podcast, and thank you for being a listener or a viewer, depending on which platform you're consuming this on, but it is a lot of work. I do a bit of work and producer James, say hi, James.James:Ah, hello, hello.Paul Green:Producer James does tons of work on this because he's actually the secret weapon. A quicker way to get going with a regular broadcast is just to do that live on LinkedIn. So challenge there, do you fancy that? Do you fancy giving it a go and seeing if this is the thing for you, if maybe you could be one of the first MSPs to start doing a regular podcast, which, of course, your LinkedIn connections would see as well? I'm just thinking actually, 7:00 PM on a Tuesday wouldn't do it, you want to do it during the workday, so maybe at lunchtime. Lunchtime would be a good time to do it. Could you be the first or one of the first MSPs to start doing a lunchtime, once-a-week live broadcast on LinkedIn? If you do, do it for at least three or four weeks, see what reaction you get. You won't get a lot of reaction, but the goal is to be doing this consistently.And just drop me an email and let me know, would you? 'Cause I'd like to watch it, see what you're doing, and also, of course, see if it does actually help you start conversations with prospects. That's the whole point of all of our marketing, it's engagement and moving prospects forward, further and further and closer to you becoming a client or then becoming a client of yours. So if you do do this, just drop me an email, would you? It's hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.Voiceover:Paul's blatant plug.Paul Green:Right, hang on two seconds. The postman's just been and I just want to see what's in today's mail. So okay, we've got a flyer there, a bit of junk mail, that's no good. A bank statement, which banks still send out statements in the post? Well, clearly my bank does. Oh, and this is much more interesting. Look at this, it's the Marketing Action Monthly. This is actually my own newsletter, my own printed newsletter that I send out every month to MSPs all over the world. Let's crack this baby open. Let's see what's inside for this month. Let's have a look. Oh, look at that. That looks good. So inside this issue we've got "Give LinkedIn Newsletters an Hour a Week", I said I talk about those, don't I? "Prepare Your MSP Now for the Shift to MSSP", managed security service provider, and another one, Your Attitude and Not Your Aptitude Determines Your Altitude. Well, those are the headlines. We've got here, what is this? 16 pages. I know exactly how long it is, I write this myself. 16 pages every month, printed and sent to your door.See, the thing is, if you are serious about improving your marketing, actually getting something in your hands that you can read on the toilet is, well, it's much more likely you'll read it and much more likely that you'll take action on it. In fact, we've even summarized on the back the action points that you should be taking. Go and have a look at this because this could be a game changer for you. This could really get you taking action on your marketing and making this year the year that things start to happen. There's a reason that we call it the MSP Marketing Action Monthly because it's all about getting you to take the necessary actions that really improve your MSP. You can see all the details of this and how to get it shipped to your door, regardless of where you live in the world, at paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action.Voiceover:The big interview.Darren Strong:Hi, Darren Strong from Scalable MSP. We help MSPs specifically to improve their operational, financial and data that they run the business on.Paul Green:And you're exactly the kind of person that all MSPs should be talking to as we get going into this newish year, I say newish, it's now February. I don't think it's a New Year anymore, Paul, when you get to February. Darren, you actually have a pretty good solid background in the MSP world because you own an MSP as well.Darren Strong:Correct. Yeah, so we own MSP, which I think is more unique to us. Even though we're a consultancy business, we're still in that world. So that world's moving very fast, especially security, et cetera, nowadays. So we're keeping in touch with that world and I've been in that world for over 20 years now, first of all helping other MSPs, owners to build those businesses, and then in the last three years, running my own.Paul Green:So talk us through your background and your history, how do you end up as a consultant to MSPs and the owner of one as well?Darren Strong:So started off in corporate IT, so doing corporate internal IT, then I joined a business. So I went from a corporate IT team of about 240 people in IT alone to an MSP that had 6 people, helped that owner to build that business to a maximum of 50 people, £6 million turnover, went through the recession, went through couple of M&As, good and bad, and then joined a peer group. And during that peer group we learned a lot about running the business and getting the best out of those tools. And then I created my own MSP three years ago. And then off the back of that, just born out of demand, lots of MSPs that I knew from the peer group were asking me to help them with their businesses, operational, financial and tools. And so born out of just that demand, we've started to build a consultancy business, and now we've turned that into its own brand and we're driving that forward.Paul Green:That's awesome. I love it when MSPs or people who are working in MSPs have that entrepreneurial spark, and they spot an opportunity in the market because this marketplace we're in is so huge. It's exciting when someone sees something and absolutely goes for it. So what do you think are some of the biggest challenges for MSPs as we go throughout this year?Darren Strong:So I think the biggest challenge is actually retaining talent, retaining talent and hiring new talent, and what does that look like? And especially I think we're not very good at nurturing our own talent, so we tend to go in, very knee-jerk reaction at the last minute, "I need a Tier 3 person and I need them tomorrow," versus, "Actually, let's bring on an apprentice and let's nurture that and create a nurture system of doing that."Paul Green:But, of course, creating a nurture system is a 5 or 10-year investment in a Level 3 tech, isn't it? And if you've got a demand for a Level 3 tech today and you've got more work and too sophisticated work that your Level 2 techs can cope with, that's not going to answer the question, or that's not going to fill the need, as it were. Can you see why MSPs are so tempted to cut corners and just jump into finding the first half-decent person they can find?Darren Strong:You're not going to speak to any MSP that says, "Oh, I've got four hours spare today, so I think I'll do some planning." We're all maxed out, we've all got no time, we're all firefighting, customers don't tell us, "Thank you for polishing my shiny server." They're calling us with issues, we're in a negative industry, and so typically those owners as well are from a technical background, so they're not comfortable planning and being in a planning phase of working on their business. And so there's no forecast, there's no financial forecast, there's no hard data within the business for them to use strategically. The MSPs that I see over the last 10 years that have grown intensively but also kept that margin on the bottom line and also grown well-established businesses that start to run on their own are actually people that have really targeted the planning and the sales.They've turned their MSP into a sales business, not a technical business, and they've got strong planning that helps them to look at resource demands, resource nurturing and training, and those openings within the organization that you can be strategic about rather than being knee-jerk reaction when you need it right now, which is probably six months later than you did actually need it, it's just that you're seeing that maximum pain right now.Paul Green:Yes, that makes perfect sense. I love that, where you're talking about an MSP turning their business into a sales business that happens to deliver managed services rather than a managed services business that happens to need to do sales. There's a quite significant and dramatic difference between those two. Right, I'm going to come back onto hiring and retaining talent in a second. You mentioned data a few times, and obviously you're an expert at this, this is what you do. In fact, you don't just consult on it, you live it as well. What are some of the most important data points that an MSP can track and can actually leverage and use to make good decisions about the future?Darren Strong:It all stems back to your service catalog. So what are you delivering as a service, which can be a very hard question to answer if you've never done any planning or any documentation. So often I find, when I'm consulting, that actually we don't know or we can't agree on what time the service desk opens, for instance. And so what services are you delivering and what are those pots? So if you've got certain IT pots, certain security pots, certain professional services pots, what is the revenue that those pots bring in, monthly, quarterly and yearly? And then what is the COGS to those revenue? So how much does it cost you to deliver that service, whether that be software tools, hard COGS, fully burdened rate of individuals? Then we've now got the true profitability of that service.Now we can start to plan, if we pull this lever on this service and we create 25% more revenue in this pot, what does that mean? Just historically, if we bring on an IT customer, it may be that in the first six months we earn 25% of the revenue in professional services because we've got to do onboarding, we've got to do projects, we've got to get their networks to a certain level, we've got to document it, what does that look like across the different services that you provide? Then we can look at what's the financial plan moving forward, that then leads into what resources do we need to provide those services if we are successful? Then we turn that into a sales model and say, "If we need to achieve X amount of lagging indicator," which is a sale, "how much of the leading indicators," like your outgoing calling, your sales resources, your prospect meetings, your opportunity creations, "how many of those do we need to actually hit that financial target?" Now we've got a plan on paper to say how we're going to take the business from A to B.Paul Green:But for the average MSP, that's a thousand miles away from the way that they run the business now. Psychologically, what needs to change? What needs to shift for you to get to a position where you're going to go through the pain of putting a plan like that together?Darren Strong:What I see is two things. It's either pain levers, pain, you've hit the maximum of your pain threshold as an individual. So you're working the 60, 70 hours, you're not getting anywhere, you're not putting any more to the bottom line, the business isn't growing past, let's say, £1 million or £2 million, whatever those ceilings are, and you're just fatigued. And it can't continue like this for the next 10 years, so that creates a stop. And at that point you start looking around for, "What is the things I need to do?" Or it's because someone's actually talked to you about your legacy plan and saying, "Right, okay, what do you want out of this?" You're telling your wife, your spouse, "I'm doing this for 20 years, I'm doing 60 hours a week, we will create this legacy," i.e., this retirement plan and this net worth, but actually what is that? And so then when you start to track that back, you can see that the business hasn't grown over the last five years, so how am I going to hit that target? So something has to change.And typically, that's the way that you are leading the business. Typically, it's not because you've not got good people in the business, typically an MSP has got good people, it's all about are they in the right seats and have they got the leadership and mentoring in place so then they can achieve what they need to achieve?Paul Green:I think one of the hardest moments for a newish business owner, let's say, someone within their first 3, 4, 5 years is when they realize that it really is all on them. And I don't mean that they have to do it all, but the success or the failure of the business is 100% down to them and their attitude and the way they think, and more importantly, the way that they act. Let's talk about the talent then, Darren. So we started right at the beginning talking about retention and how you should be keeping people and nurturing them and training them. For those MSPs that do need an urgent recruitment fix, they need to fill a hole today, talk us through some of the practical things that they can do, and then we'll come onto that long-term nurturing.Darren Strong:I think, first of all, it starts off with what do you actually need? I see a lot of MSPs' knee-jerk reaction that they want a Tier 3, they get just an advert out there, but there's no setup for success. So what is the job description/role profile? What does good look like? What sort of KPIs are they going to be held accountable to? What type of person does that need to be? What experience do they need to have? There's no structure around what does that actually need to look like because you're knee-jerk reacting that I need that resource and I need it now, and I'm going to basically employ the first person I meet on an interview. So I think it starts with what do you actually need? And actually, do you need a Tier 3 person?It may be that actually you've got Tier 1, 2 and 3 structure, but if you did an analysis, like I did on a customer a couple of months ago, you'll find out that actually your Tier 3 engineers are doing a lot of Tier 2 and a little bit of Tier 2, and your Tier 2 engineers are doing a lot of Tier 1.So actually, if you hire two or three Tier 1s instead of a Tier 3, you could fix the problem. So is that actually the problem that you need a Tier 3 engineer, or is it just because the team say, "We're really busy and we need a Tier 3 engineer"? So I think it goes back to the data, then set them up for success and then use some avenues, for instance, LinkedIn is a great one, and also there's some avenues that you can create on some platforms that allow you to look at the area that you are in. And are any of those MSPs, are any of those employees putting their CVs up online, for instance?So Indeed is a good one, they do one where you can subscribe to it, it will notify you if there's a certain category of individuals putting their CVs up. Obviously you then can reach out to them and offer them a coffee, and go and speak to them, see what they're like. And then I think then it also leads on to a great onboarding. Again, I see so many people, it's a knee-jerk reaction, you're six months behind the curve, you need them now, so their first day, they're put in front of the wheel and they're expected to drive the car just because they've got IT experience. So what does that onboarding look like? Don't set them up for failure, don't put them in front of a customer that they're going to go wrong, the customer doesn't forget. Then they're banned from working on that customer forevermore, and that's just a spiral that happens. So I think that onboarding is a key function. It should take roughly three months.And during that, they should shadow individuals, they should shadow other team members in other departments to learn how your business functions and how they can have an impact, good or bad, on those departments. If they don't fill out a chargeable ticket correctly, how does that impact finance? How does that impact invoicing runs? If they get to learn that, they can then change their behavior because of that, and then slowly introduce those items that you want them to be successful with 'cause you've already got the role profile, you've already got the KPIs. And I can't remember the book now, but a real good methodology that I use is painting what does good look like. So giving them live dashboards or reporting on a regular frequency, which means they can finish the day or finish the week knowing, "I've been successful."There's a lot of data around an individual needs to feel successful. That isn't just that they got a paycheck or they got a pay rise of X, it's because they feel successful in the business and they know they're doing a good job. So you've got to enable them to be able to see that. And maybe even compare them against their peers. If you're going to give them a KPI, what are other people in their team achieving as an average? So then you can work with them to get to that average, rather than it just being your gut feel that they need to do more tickets.Paul Green:I love that. Absolutely love that. And in fact, when you were talking about taking on someone with IT experience, and on day one, just dumping them on your clients because they know IT, I was thinking a good analogy for that is commercial airline pilots. So as a commercial airline pilot, you can fly a Boeing 747 from London to New York, but if you move on to a different kind of aircraft, let's say a Boeing 777, then you have to spend hundreds of hours transferring over. So the principles of flying the plane are exactly the same, but the actual setup of the plane is different. And it occurred to me that that's actually a good analogy. In fact, you can steal that analogy, Darren, if you want to, that's yours.Darren Strong:That's great.Paul Green:You can pop that one in your tool set. Yeah, and no one airline would expect a pilot to transfer to a different aircraft without a dramatic amount of onboarding. And yet, as MSPs, that's what a lot of MSPs do. Okay, final question and subject then, let's come back to those Level 1 techs that you were talking about earlier. And one of the things you said right at the start was, let's hire Level 1 people that we know can stay with us for a number of years, and can perform better and be upgraded and be promoted to being Level 2 and maybe even Level 3. What do you look for when you're looking for someone like that? 'Cause you're not just looking for someone to clear tickets, you're looking for someone who's obviously got the right mindset, got the right attitude and really wants it, but also will stick with you. I think that's got to be the critical thing.And that's hard because these days, different generations are used to flipping from, I don't know how old you are, Darren, but certainly I'm 48, and when I started my career, I was expecting to have three or four employers. And it worked out that it was probably a roundabout right actually, but then I started my own business so everything changed. I think kids entering the workforce today are probably going into it expecting to have three or four employers in the first few years because they will flip from thing to thing to thing, or from employer to employer, where they think they can get a boost. So what kind of people are we looking for right at the beginning, that can go on and become our future superstars?Darren Strong:So I think that goes back to the what's the culture of the business? What's the values of the business? And how do you provide your service? What makes you different? And definitely the ability of communication, unbelievable is the telephone. This era that we're looking at don't want to talk on the telephone and can't talk on the telephone, so that's the first thing you've got to teach them, what's their telephone behavior going to look like? So I think you need to make sure that they're going to fit the culture, they've got the values, they have a spark about IT, they've got a passion to grow and move forward, and maybe even an openness to ask. They're inquisitive, they want to ask, but they're not scared. So they want to ask, every little step of the way they want to know more. So they're inquisitive. And then you've got to set them up for success. So you've got to make sure that your ticketing system, whether it to be built in to your ticketing system as task lists, or whether it be external processes.So many times we put an apprentice or a Tier 1 engineer on the frontline and we don't get anything out of them for six months, they don't match our expectations or match our requirement of what it costs us to employ them. So then we remove them from the business. It's not their fault that we haven't set them up for success. We've made it where it's too complicated to read our documentation, there's no technical documentation, they don't know where passwords are, they don't know how to do certain things. So really structure your ticketing system so they can categorize a ticket and get a process. So every time they categorize a ticket, they get a process. They follow that process, they might have some automation on scripts that they run. They don't know what those scripts do, they just know what the output says. Then they might recategorize the ticket.And what you're looking for is that first 15 to 30 minutes that, A&E triage. You walk into A&E, you go to a nurse, they triage you and they move you onto x-ray, to a doctor, et cetera. That's what you're looking for, that first initial reaction when you're looking for 75 to 80% of your tickets being closed in that first 30 minutes. But the customer feels that they know what they're talking about, but we know their following some structure behind that. It's not a rigid structure, so they don't become a robot, but they're following a step-by-step structure that is questions that aren't yes or no answers. So they can't passively read it, they've got to read it and give you an answer. If it's a server disk space, rather than it just being, "Is it low, yes or no?" "Actually, is it low, and what is the current disk space?" That then means when they escalate it, the Tier 2 engineer gets more details about it was at this size on this time, now it's this size, how much is it consuming, for instance, if it does have to be escalated.So I think setting those Tier 1 people up for success, and I think also painting what the pathway's going to look like. Often, if you don't paint that pathway, you will lose them to somebody else that may be offering them a £1,000 a year more. They didn't realize that you weren't going to give them the £1,000 more, but it was going to be in three months time when they equaled X. So plotting that pathway out alongside certification, experience, KPIs, CSAT, et cetera, so they know what that next two to three years could look like if they want to be successful and what pace that could go at.Paul Green:Darren, you've been an absolute star, sharing what you have spent many, many years learning the hard way. Please tell us again the benefits of working with you and how can we get in touch with you?Darren Strong:So you can reach us on scalablemsp.co.uk. We're all about looking at the core of the systems, the process, the strategy, and enabling the business to grow, but doing that using data. So we bring the best practices, but we're not just bringing one box, we bring multiple boxes, tailor that to your environment. And the biggest USP we've got is that we do the heavy lifting. So rather than you having to reconfigure your systems or build processes, we build those tailored processes and systems for you and help you to engage with them inside your business.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.Per Sjofors:Hi there, my name is Per Sjofors and I'm also known as The Price Whisperer. The book I recommend is Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore. It's an old book, but I read it every couple of years. And it's all about how you elevate your company from being a company selling to early adopters, to being a company selling to an early mainstream market. And that gap, that chasm, is where most companies fail. And the book tells you how not to. You read it, you love it.Paul Green:Coming up next week.Marc Gordon:Hi, I'm Marc Gordon, the Customer Experience Expert. Look for my interview coming up, where I'm going to be sharing with you ways that you can create better, more efficient, more effective customer experiences to keep your customers coming back.Paul Green:Whichever platform you are watching or listening to this podcast on right now, please do subscribe so you never miss an episode, 'cause on top of that interview, we're also going to be looking at recruitment. And I've got a very specific and very clever recruitment tool that you can use to dramatically lower the amount of time and energy you have to spend trying to recruit great people for your MSP. We have more great advice and content to help you grow your business on our YouTube channel, it's youtube.com/mspmarketing, or just search for MSP Marketing in the search bar. And join me next Tuesday. Have a very profitable week in your MSP.Voiceover:Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Crossing the Chasm, 3rd Edition: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers

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Episode 170Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 Should you use AI for your MSP's marketing * 11:42 Beware of killing sales with 'samey' marketing * 19:10 Get out of your own way to grow your MSP

Featured guests:Thank you to Stuart Warwick and Ian Luckett from The MSP Growth Hub for joining me to talk about how get out of your own way to grow your MSP.Following many years successfully helping large corporates grow and mastering skills in Business & Leadership Development and Commercial & Financial Performance, Stuart and Ian now help ambitious MSP owners to Scale with Confidence.Connect with Stuart and Ian on LinkedIn:https://uk.linkedin.com/in/stuartwarwickhttps://uk.linkedin.com/in/ianluckettExtra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: + https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ + https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: + https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * On the subject of using AI to help with your marketing, I mentioned the Chat GPT service * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: + https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: + https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: + https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V + https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 + https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast + https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa + https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast + https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 + https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ + https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ + https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, Born To Run: + https://www.amazon.co.uk/Born-Run-Hidden-Ultra-Runners-Greatest/dp/1861978774

Transcription:Voiceover:Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world, around the world, this is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Hello and welcome along to episode 170 of the show. Here's what we've got coming up for you this week.Stuart Warwick:Hi, this is Stuart Warwick from the MSP Growth Hub.Ian Luckett:This is Ian Luckett.Stuart Warwick:Getting out of your own way is the number one key to scaling your MSP with confidence.Ian Luckett:If you've come into January and you're now in February and you're feeling a little bit flat, we will help you get that momentum and energy back into your business.Paul Green:They're going to be here later on in the show challenging you to get out of your own way. Now we're also going to be talking about your marketing and the fact that samey kills sales.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.Paul Green:We're going to start this week's show by answering three common marketing questions that I get asked by MSPs. I do loads of webinars and I hang out in lots of different forums and places, and you do tend to see the same kinds of questions coming up again and again. I've picked out three common but not that common ones. They're not the usual ones, which is how do I generate leads? That's the number one question I get. How do I get more new clients and how do I get more new leads? These are some of the newer, more common ones that are starting to come up. The first of them is about TikTok. Paul, should I be using TikTok to market my MSP? I can give you a one word answer for that and then I'll expand on it. The one word answer is, nope.You really shouldn't be using TikTok for marketing your MSP. The main reason for that is because TikTok's audience is primarily not the middle-aged business owners and managers that you want to reach. The thing with any social media platform is to look at who is using that platform. Now, I appreciate that TikTok is kind of moving into the mainstream. It's trying very hard to reach people like you and me. In fact, here in the UK, I can't remember where it was, it might have been some posters on the Tube in London, but I saw some posters kind of aimed at me. It certainly wasn't aimed at 13 year olds going like, "Renegade, Renegade, Renegade." Whatever it is that 13 year olds watch on YouTube. It was definitely aimed at me.I can see the power of TikTok, I see the shorts on Facebook and on YouTube. That sort of short style, zip through quickly video is certainly growing in popularity, but right now, even though TikTok is huge and it's used by so many people, and there will be MSPs doing marketing on it, it's not for you right now. At the point at which a bulk of the audience is middle-aged decision makers, and obviously the Gen Z, the generation that's around right now, they're going to be using TikTok for, we assume they will, TikTok for search and for answers and video and entertainment and content down the line when they are decision makers. Right now the average decision maker isn't on TikTok.In the spirit of there are many other platforms to focus on, I wouldn't use TikTok. If you're going to do videos, I would focus more on YouTube. YouTube is the everyone social media network. I mean, people say that Facebook is the universal one, but actually YouTube is. Do you know anyone who doesn't use YouTube? They may not use it as a social platform, but the commenting side of it is so big on YouTube, everyone, putting that in speech marks, everyone uses YouTube. If you're going to focus on something on a new platform, I would focus on YouTube ahead of TikTok.Another question, and this has only really come about since the backend of last year when ChatGPT released the, what's it called? It's called ChatGPT, isn't it? Where you can go in and you can ask anything of the AI and it will generate something. The question I'm increasingly getting is, "Paul, can I or should I create content for my marketing using AI?" Because you can go into ChatGPT with a free account and you can type, "Write me a 300 word blog on how businesses should buy technology." The content is good. It's not just okay, it's good. It's almost as good as low level writers on Fiverr and Upwork are outputting.In fact, if I was a low level writer on Fiverr and Upwork, I'd be genuinely scared right now. Because there's no personality in the content that's produced, but if you just want basic content to go onto your website, perhaps for SEO purposes, then you could output hundreds of blog articles in just a couple of hours using ChatGPT. You've been able to do this for a while using Jasper, but ChatGPT is new. The interface is great and it's free currently for low level use. The question is, should I use it to generate content? My answer is yes with extreme caution.When I talk about generating content, I don't really mean good marketing content that you would use for humans, but if you just need, for SEO purposes, you need 50 blog articles for your website, absolutely go in there. You could tighten the brief. The tighter the brief you give to ChatGPT, the better the output. Please write me a 300 word article that would be of interest to business owners in the US who are thinking of switching from one IT support company to another about the things they should ask about, the factors they should ask about it. That's certainly, when you tighten it down like that, it produces a very targeted and focused piece of content in about 20 seconds or something like that. Absolutely use that to fill up your website.My big caveat with this is going to be that at some point, Google and the other search engines will kind of figure, well, I believe this. I could be wrong, but I believe they will figure out a way of spotting AI generated content. Because what's going to happen is if we continue down the trajectory we're going, where you can do virtually anything with AI at the moment. You can produce written content, you can deep fake yourself. I was looking into how much it would cost to create an avatar of me and it wouldn't pass the uncanny valley test. I can recreate my voice and my likeness for a couple of thousand dollars I think. I thought, ooh, for creating quick and easy instructional videos, maybe that's something worth doing. The technology is rapidly becoming not quite mainstream, but nearly mainstream, and certainly within the next few years it will become good enough.I believe that people will start to use, generate thousands of blogs a day and put them on their websites, which would immediately give them a massive search engine boost. I think Google will find ways of detecting AI content. Already I've seen some things about OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, building in some kind of watermark. I don't know how that would work, but within the words, within the pattern of the words, some kind of water mark that would tell people this is AI generated content. I believe that eventually Google will find a way of identifying it and they will essentially discount it for SEO purposes.It's kind of like link farms. If you go back, I don't know what, 7, 10 years, link farms were the big thing and the big SEO tactic was to pay to have, because it was all about links. It was having a high quality link to your website was massive for SEO. It's still part of SEO, it's not as big as it was, but back in the day you could pay to have thousands of links from link farms all over the web directed to your website. Google didn't like that because it was artificial, it wasn't real. They eventually discounted, and link farms are not good now for link building. I believe they could go down that route with AI if they can figure out a way to spot AI. Maybe there's a new arms race starting here between the search engines and AI content.Yes, my short answer is yes with caution. Certainly keep track of which pages you've put on your website in case you do need to take them off if and when Google has a rule against AI. Be very cautious with just using that content straight to humans. I would certainly put that content through an editor first to make sure. It's all about emotionally talking to people and affecting someone emotionally and persuading them emotionally. People buy from people. The content on your website is just all part of that process. You want to make sure you're affecting them in the correct emotional way.Then the final, and this isn't a very common question, but it's been asked of me twice in the last month and by different people, and I thought that's quite an in interesting one to answer. Paul, if you only had a hundred pounds to spend on marketing or a hundred dollars to spend on marketing, what would you spend it on? I have sort of sat and thought about this. Most of the marketing that I recommend, the strategy that I recommend, which is to build multiple audiences and build a relationship with those audiences through content marketing and then commercialize that relationship by picking up the phone. There's very little actual cash cost in that. The cost is in time. Someone somewhere has to set up the social media profile, set up the email database, post content, put content into the email and send the emails out.Someone somewhere has to pick up the phone and call people, but they say that's a time cost. That's not a cash cost. If I only had a hundred pounds, I would be doing all of that. It's the same question, in fact the version of the question that was asked me was if you had a hundred pounds or if you had to start again, what would you do with your marketing? I would do exactly that. I would build multiple audiences, I would work those audiences, build a relationship with them. I would get them to a stage where I could be picking up the phone and literally working round all of my prospects until I found someone who's nearly ready, willing and able to buy. Then obviously I can move towards a sales meeting.I think if I had a hundred pounds, I would actually spend that on business cards, really expensive looking, good quality business cards with my photo on the back, because people remember faces rather than they do names. I would go to networking meetings. I would invest that hundred pounds, a hundred dollars into networking. This is on top of all the digital stuff. I wouldn't just do this. I don't think networking on its own is of great value, but networking added in to really good content marketing, to really good phone follow up is dynamite.Because when you physically meet someone in a room and you have an overpriced horrible tasting breakfast with them, your relationship with that person, one meeting with someone can be the equivalent of a year's worth of emailing them or a year's worth of LinkedIn stuff. It really is surprisingly dramatic what a difference it makes meeting people. Didn't we all find that or rediscover that post COVID? I would invest that money in going networking, but I would be there, I'd be the first person there, I'd be the last person there. I'd meet everyone in the room, I'd put all of their emails into my email database. I would start emailing them my newsletter. I'd ring them all up anyway just to say it was great to meet you. Because somewhere, if I could meet 300 people for that a hundred bucks, it's somewhere there, there's someone who is nearly ready, willing and able to have a conversation about leaving their incumbent MSP and moving somewhere else. Your chances of getting the right timing go up the more people you meet and the more marketing that you do to them.By the way, if you have a specific marketing question, I would be delighted to answer that. You can either go and put it in my Facebook groups. If you go into Facebook and type in at the top MSP marketing and go to groups, it's a free Facebook groups. It's just for MSPs. There are no vendors in there, or you could just email me directly and I'd be delighted to hear from you with any question at all. The email is hello@paulgreensMSPmarketing.com.Voiceover:Here's this week's clever idea.Paul Green:This would be a fun exercise to do. Get five ordinary people, ordinary business owners and managers. Get them into a room and show them a whole load of websites of MSPs in that area. Literally just bring up the homepage of each one and get those ordinary people to go and look at all of the homepages and then ask them which of those MSPs is the best MSP in town? Which of them is the very best? Which is the one that they would call if they were looking for a new technology partner? Now I predict that they would all pick one or two pretty much the same MSP, and that would be based on the friendliness and the warmth and the marketing superpowers of their website.Of course, it can't be based on the actual technical knowledge and the efficiency of the business because at this stage they have no idea. In fact, they're normal people. They couldn't assess that anyway, but they would typically pick the website that was different, that was better than all of the other websites. The reason they would do that is because if you do actually look at a whole load of MSP's websites at the same time, you quickly realize they're all exactly the same. I mean literally exactly the same. They may have different words and different pictures, but they're all different on the same theme. They all pretty much say the same things.They all talk about technical services, they all talk about the things that they do. They sometimes throw in a bit about the area, but they're more focused on services and capabilities than anything else. Certainly when I first got into the world of MSPs back in 2016 and I was doing my research and literally looking at hundreds and hundreds of MSP's websites and I remember thinking that they're all the same, they're all exactly the same. That lack of differentiation makes it very hard for a prospect to pick you.There is a lovely three word sentence that summarizes this, and you should have this tattooed on your hand, perhaps just in temporary tattoo. The sentence is this, samey kills sales. If your marketing looks and feels and appears to be the same as other MSPs marketing, and I don't just mean one other MSP, I mean all the other MSPs, then it's samey. Ordinary people who don't understand technology and can't tell the difference between a good MSP and a bad MSP, they are not picking you based on what you do and how you do it. They're picking you based on your marketing. If your marketing looks the same as all the other MSPs, then you just simply aren't going to stand out. You have to be different with your marketing.Maybe this is a good exercise for you to do. Go and pull up and you could do it right now, unless you're driving, you could go and pull up all the websites of all of your local competitors and look at them. Are they the same as yours? The designs will be different, the words will be different. It's very hard for you to do this because you've got to take away the emotional thing, the emotional reaction that you would have. Because you that Dave is a really nice guy, so you look at his website and you see it through the filter of Dave is a nice guy filter. Whereas actually the ordinary people who are just Googling and have come onto Dave's website, they don't know Dave, so they're looking at it completely emotionally cold, just as they're looking at your website completely emotionally cold.It's a very hard thing for you to do, but if you look at your website and your competitors and they're all broadly the same, you have a problem. You've got to stand out and be different. I would argue the more different you can be, the more extreme you can be, the better. Here in the UK we have a spread, like a food spread. It's called Marmite, it's called Vegemite. The same thing is called Vegemite in Australia. I think there is a US equivalent, I can't remember what it's called. Someone did tell me and I've forgotten, but Marmite is made of yeast extract, so it's a bit of a, well, you either love it or you hate it. In fact, they ran an advertising campaign for years which said, "Marmite, you either love it or you hate it." Their thing was it was black and white. Either it suddenly stands out and you love it or you absolutely hate it.People talk about being Marmite-ey in your marketing, having Marmite marketing, this is a good thing. You want to be Marmite. I deliberately, I'm obviously the face of the business. I'm not the entire business. I have a team, but I am the face of the business and I try very hard to be Marmite because I appreciate some people will not like me. I can live with that. I really can, because there are many people that do like me and what I'm saying and the stuff I'm putting out there. It's not really me, it's the form of Paul that you hear in the podcast or you see in the videos or whatsoever, but I go out of my way to be Marmite in my marketing. I'd rather stand out to a bulk of people than stand out to no one, and you should be trying to do exactly the same thing.The thing to focus on is the one thing that you've got that makes you completely different from your competitors that can never be copied. That thing is you. Look at yourself now in the mirror. Actually, even if you're driving, you can look at yourself in the mirror just not for too long. You are the most unique thing in your business. Because what you do and the methodology by which you do it is not of interest to ordinary people. That's a differentiator, but they don't know or care about that. They do know and care about how they feel about your business. Ordinary people do not pick an MSP based on what they think about it. They pick an MSP based on how they feel about it. The more you can stand out and emotionally influence them with your marketing, the higher the chance you have of them picking you.Voiceover:Paul's blatant plug.Paul Green:I mentioned earlier that I have this Facebook group for MSPs. It's the MSP marketing Facebook group. Completely free. We don't let vendors in. It's only for genuine MSPs. Now I've got the group open on my phone here. I'm just having a look through some of the recent posts. We've got a post here from Paige, how much do you budget per month for digital ads? What platforms are you seeing a return on for ads? LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Ads, et cetera. Some interesting replies on that. Alexa's looking for recommendations for both outsource support and a 24/7 knock service. Here's something from me, oh, it's website Quick win Wednesday. What's the one thing you could change on your site that would make it more engaging with prospects? We've got 13 comments on that.Then I've got here I shared a link about page on Google. You'd probably know, you might have heard this, Google is switching to continuous scrolling. There's no more sort of skipping onto page two, three or four. It's continuous scrolling. Then we've got here something about doing more marketing. We've got something on here about what you want to achieve with your MSP this year. We've got something else about being tired. Habit tracking cards.There's tons of stuff in here. Anything that can help you to market or grow your MSP, that's what we talk about in the MSP marketing Facebook group. I drop in there at least once a day and engage with every single comment and post that's been put there. It's kind of like the natural companion to this podcast. If you're not already a member, grab your phone, fire up Facebook. Up at the top in the search bar, type in MSP marketing. This is important, go to groups. We do have a page, but it's kind of old and gone and don't really think about it. You want to go to groups. MSP marketing Facebook groups, and just a couple of questions for you to join. We will be checking that you are an MSP before you join. This is a vendor free zone, so no sneaking in.Voiceover:The big interview.Ian Luckett:Hi there, I'm Ian Luckett from the MSP Growth Hub.Stuart Warwick:Hi, I'm Stuart Warwick, also from the MSP Growth Hub.Paul Green:It's so exciting to finally get both of you in one room on the podcast. As a bonus as well, it's Valentine's Day and I can't think of any better podcast dinner date. Is that sounding a bit weird of having you two on here? You're both very good friends of mine and I do enjoy talking to both of you. Because what I love about you guys is you are big thinkers, and you're big thinkers who are there to help MSPs get out of their own way. That's the topic of what I want to talk to you about today.We'll get a little bit more into what you do to help MSPs towards the end of the interview, but let's talk about this idea of MSPs getting out of their own way. As we're standing today, we're six, seven weeks into the start of the year. The excitement and the buzz of, woo-hoo, it's a new year, that's gone, that's passed. We can't rely on that anymore. A lot of MSPs now are just kind of settling into, oh here we go, it's another month of the same old this the same old that. Do you see that with a lot of the MSPs that you work with?Ian Luckett:One of the problems, challenges, opportunities probably all wrapped up together is the fact that so many MSPs, the longer you stay in business, the more referrals you're going to get. You can kind of make a good lifestyle just by turning the lights on and doing what you do every day. It gets to a point where some people just go, "I've had enough of this now." They just want to carry on, don't they? Just go faster.Stuart Warwick:Enough is enough, I think is a point where you get to, but the really frustrating thing for us is that particularly this time of year, as you just said Paul, there's all that new year, new me buzz in January. All that kind of self expectation, and now we're in February and it's kind of starting to drift back to kind of same old, same old. Those that make the biggest difference, and we've seen this year in, year out, are the ones that kind of go, "Actually no, I'm not going to drift. I'm conscious that I've drifted. I want more than this. Actually how do I effectively get out of my own way, my own mediocrity and really take my MSP where it could really go?"Paul Green:Why do you think we get caught in these loops, these patterns of repeat behavior where you know can easily spend 5, 10 years working in a business and being trapped within that business without ever being able to break out? Is that the fault of the individual person or is that kind of the default path that every business owner gets trapped in unless they do something different and break out?Ian Luckett:Many, if not all MSPs started out as techy business owners, as technicians and they're happy doing what they're doing. They're in their comfort zone and you've got this whole fear of failure. Am I good enough? We talk about this in the MSP journey, don't we? Am I good enough? Can I really do this? Am I worthy? I'm only just a technician, which might sound a little bit raw, but it's very true that some people have a real scare of being successful.Stuart Warwick:It's a fear of the next step and we all have it at some point.Ian Luckett:We're all guilty of it.Paul Green:Sorry to interrupt you, but is it a fear of success or is it more a fear of failure? Do you think people get trapped in patterns of behavior that are comfortable with them because that's easy and that's easier than trying something new, or is it something different?Stuart Warwick:I think it's actually something different because it's actually about comfort, what we know. As human beings, we're designed to be safe and most of us are happy in our comfort zone. I know it's a cliche. Once we feel safe and we're... We started our business, we started our MSP, we've got it going, we've got some clients, we can put food on the table, we've hired one person. We feel good, but how long do we sit feeling good before we go, do you know what? I want a bit more? Those that have got real connection to where they want to go, their ambition, and they find a way to spend less time in the comfort zone and more time in what you might call a stretch zone, a learning zone, fear zone, the faster they will progress.I think the important thing for MSPs that are ambitious, and not everybody needs to scale up beyond a lifestyle business. It's a choice, but the choice is if you want more, then how can you spend more time in that learning growth zone, which will be invigorating for an entrepreneur, a business owner mindset, MSP owner, as opposed to getting there and then spending possibly, and sometimes in some cases, sometimes 10 years, just kind of navigating the safe zone. Two, three, four, 500k, when actually deep down you want a true business that ultimately works for you, but you kind of don't know quite what that means because you've never done it before. It's ignorance. I think it's as much fear, safety, as well as ignorance.Paul Green:What's really interesting for me doing this podcast is I get to interview some of the most awesome people in our world. I was just thinking back to, I don't mean you two, by the way. I was just thinking back to some of the episodes at the back end of last year. Episode, I think it was 162, we had Jamie Warner on who built an MSP up over like 15, 20 years and has then built up Invarosoft, which is a CX platform. Then you've got Antasca, who built up again her own MSP over 15, 20 years.What would be interesting is, as you were talking there, Stuart, about people moving out of their comfort levels and moving into the fear zone. I think Jamie and Anne and many other successful people I've interviewed have done exactly the same thing. What's that trick? Because for every Jamie or Anne, there's probably 100, 200, 300 people who never make that big leap. They get stuck in that comfort zone for far too long and perhaps to the point where they can't get out. What do you need to do as an MSP owner to get yourself to that point of actually, as we said in the start of this interview, getting out of your own way?Ian Luckett:For me it's around how you process what you are going to do. What I mean by that is, and I know you probably hear this all the time, Paul, marketing takes too long. Oh, this takes too long. Everyone looks at things in such a big chunk. When they look at something that's been a 12 month process or a two-year process, they just get scared and they're not going to get the results quick so they give up. I think the ability to chunk it down into 90 day, 60 day, 30 day plan, and know that you know what? I'm going to go all in on this particular strategy or tactic for 30 days, and at the end of 30 days success looks like this. At the end of 60 days success looks like this. And at the end of 90 days, success looks like this. Because when you get to the end of 90 days and you've achieved, you feel better in yourself because that's what it's all about.You feel better in yourself, you feel more confident. You've achieved things that you didn't in the previous 90 days. All of a sudden you go, "Ooh, I've just stood on the first step. Where's the second step?" I think for me it's how quickly someone can change their thought process and their actions and their routines and their discipline and all the other good stuff. That's the ingredients to say, "I'm going to do things differently today or for the next 30 day. I'm going to be consistent, I'm going to be deliberate and I'm going to get some help."Stuart Warwick:There's two other things. The first one is modeling. Model someone or others that have done it before. That then leads on to get yourself in the right environment where you can learn from and model the behavior and actions of those who've already done it before. When you get those three ingredients together, you completely shorten the time and the number of mistakes you're going to make to get you from A to B. That's the difference between those that seem to make it and those that seem to get stuck.Paul Green:Define for me the difference between modeling and copying.Stuart Warwick:Modeling is whereby you copy the actions of others but apply it to your situation. It's why the best tennis players on the planet get coaches. Those coaches teach them how to model the best backhands currently and the best techniques for backhand. Every single person will deploy it in their own unique way. If you go and copy LinkedIn strategies or hiring strategies that the big boys are using, the successful guys are doing, or you try and rebuild a management team with similar sorts of people, it's still going to be different by definition. You're modeling the approach, but the execution will be by definition unique to you.Ian Luckett:That kind of goes back to the first thing we said, which was everyone's different. Everyone processes information differently. Everyone behaves differently. Everyone's got their own DiSC profile and personality traits. That's why all tennis players don't play the same. They play in their own personality and their own way, which I suppose is why what we do is quite interesting, isn't it? Because every single person who walks through the door is completely different to the last person, and that's what makes it fun.Stuart Warwick:I just came off a call with an MSP who was talking about when he, in a six month period, lost 300 endpoints and 225,000 pounds worth of his business. At the time he was a 700k MSP. No fault of his own. M&A activity and a business going into receivership and transition. He had a million ways of reacting to that, but he chose to hire a salesperson and sell his way out of that problem, but it was an 18 month roadmap. Most would cut their way out of that situation. He decided to invest in a BDM. I think that's the key, is that his execution was unique to him. I think that's the difference between modeling and copying. It's all in the execution.Paul Green:Well, let's be honest, everything's in the execution, the implementation, the action. That's the only place where magic happens. We will talk about what you do to help MSPs in a second, but my final question for you is for the average MSP that's listening to this, that might think, oh my goodness, yes, this completely resonates with me. I get this, but where do I start? Ian, you were saying earlier about breaking things down into small chunks so that they're easier to get started with. Where would you recommend the average MSP get started?Ian Luckett:What I would recommend for anybody listening to this is find out where you are today. What does the business look like? How does it make you feel? How does it feel to other people? How do people in it working, how do they feel about it? Then work out where you want to be in three, five years time in terms of turnover, endpoints, clients, employees, that sort of thing.Then you've got what we call, and we talk about it every day, the gap. We need to analyze that gap and look at what's in the way? What's stopping us from bringing in fresh leads? What's stopping us from recruiting the best technicians? What's stopping us from recruiting a salesperson if that's what we need? We were on a call earlier on with one of our clients this morning looking at buying a new office and he said, "It's going to give employee engagement, it's going to give them space. They're going to have better time to relax and people are going to walk in and go, 'Wow, this is an amazing place to work.'" He's worried a little bit obviously about the money with what's going on in the world and everything like that.Now it's identifying what's in that gap. Then really the question I would ask is, because the channel is one of the most amazing places in the world to work, who do I know who needs to help me? It could be joining CompTIA. It could be joining any of the other organizations or any of the other. The tech tribe, or just asking people for some help. It's such a giving business sector. I've never known anything like it. Then just start putting a plan together, small plan, bit by bit, small successes to close that gap and to start putting some targets in place and measure what matters.Stuart Warwick:Just to link on top of that is very simply, am I happy with where my business is today and does it give me what I really want out of life and out of business? Professional fulfillment? If the answer is no, then do exactly what Ian just said. I think it's a very simple self-audit as a business owner. How do I want this business to work for me rather than me for it? If you're scoring six out of 10, then it's mediocre. Who wants a mediocre business? Then go find the right community, the right environment to put that plan together so that you can actually deliberately execute in the right direction for you.Ian Luckett:This whole competition thing about all MSPs do the same, there's not enough people, it's absolute rubbish. There is more than enough work out there, particularly since the pandemic, for every single MSP on this planet to have a very successful business. We put competitors in the room together to work together to help each other become more successful. One person might have a recruitment problem, the other one might have a technical problem. Another guy might have marketing issues where another guy might actually be nailing the whole sales process. Everybody's different. Everyone's doing it differently and it's such getting out of your own way. The only people who are in competition you're with is people who are not listening to this podcast because everyone who's listened to this podcast wants to do something about it. Everyone who's not listening to this podcast is your competition, not the people in the room.Stuart Warwick:In fact, your biggest competition is you. Not you, Paul.Paul Green:Yes.Stuart Warwick:Yourself.Paul Green:Yes. No, not me, but you're in competition with yourself. I admire and respect both of you and I think you know so much and you have so much value to add. Ian, you know I'm going to now pick on you and praise Stuart and give you some criticism because that's the nature of our relationship. Stuart is one of the most quotable people I've ever interviewed. Earlier you said, Stuart, you said, "No one wants a mediocre business." You said a quote to me about two years ago and it's actually, give me a second. I've got to see if I can grab the board at the back of my office. I have this on my board and Stuart said, "Businesses grow to the size of thinking of the owner." I was so inspired by you saying that to me a couple years ago that I actually printed that out when I got home and put it on the board in my office.Stuart Warwick:That's amazing.Paul Green:Well done for being quotable, Stuart.Ian Luckett:Your board is obsolete because we've actually updated that quotation. We had a good think about this actually, and it now comes out as, your business will grow to the size of your thinking. The reason why we changed it is because it's not just down to the business owner to grow the business. You could have a senior tech, you could have a leadership team, and if your leadership team's thinking big, guess what's going to happen?If the people second in command while you're out and about doing the networking and whatever it might be, they're thinking big, then it's going to grow bigger. We had quite a good chat about that. We just kind of evolved a little bit. That now applies to everybody in an MSP. Your business grows to the size of your thinking. I would like you to update your chart, please.Paul Green:Challenge accepted. I will update my chart. Now, you mentioned that you and Stuart are married. Obviously you're not married in the traditional church sense, because you both have other halves and families, but you have married your businesses. Briefly tell us sort of what's happened in the last couple of years. Each of you had your own individual businesses working with MSPs, but you've come together and you've created something amazing in this MSP Growth Hub.Ian Luckett:We met up, through Daniel Welling and the group that we had the pleasure of coming to your acquaintance with, Paul, between us. There was a couple of calls, wasn't there?Stuart Warwick:Pandemic boredom.Ian Luckett:We were both doing exactly the same thing, so MSP business growth coaching. Generally most of my clients were smaller and Stuart's were higher six and seven figures. We just asked the question, if we worked together, could we help more people, have more impact, change more lives and have more fun? It took us about six months. We ate our own dog food. We did our USPs, our value propositions, our company values, our personal values, our why on earth do I want to work with you? What are you good at? What are you crap at? What am I good at? Why do you want? All of these really difficult things that everyone should do before they even probably date anybody. It was all just going yes, yes, yes, wasn't it?Stuart Warwick:Ultimately the fit was right. I think in many things in life you meet people and you have an instinct. You go, "Well, these are good people." You kind of just get a feel for it. Ian's great fun to work with. He's completely different to me. He clearly enjoys working with me. I won't put words in his mouth, but we're completely different yet we're completely aligned and we're linked by our values. We have a lot of connections in our personal lives in terms of our family and kids, which I think connected us. Grounded us. Then we realized there was strength in diversity of our personalities and our skillsets. Ultimately, as Ian just said, those four things. How can we help more people, have more impact, change more lives, and have more fun doing it?The ripple effect in the MSP world, there were so many MSPs that we were aware of, and I did the research, we talked about that in one of your other podcasts, which I did back in 2017. So many MSPs are in that kind of comfort zone, mediocrity zone. Many are in a great place and they're happy where they are, but there's also so many that aren't. When Ian and I spoke and said, look, we both absolutely care about getting the results for our clients and seeing them thrive and grow, it was like, well, why don't we just put our skills together and our knowledge together and do it faster, bigger, better, and have more impact? 18 months later, we've achieved a huge amount putting it together into MSP Growth Hub brand, and now we're ready to really execute on impact, changing lives, fun and going faster.Paul Green:Big pitch then. You have 27.4 seconds to tell the MSPs around the world, because you mentioned earlier about your competition is people who don't listen to this podcast. I'm not aware of any MSPs that don't listen to this podcast. A little bit different to your podcast, Ian.Ian Luckett:Yes.Paul Green:I think you've got many people. No, I'm joking. I'm being terribly cruel. If it's not obvious, we are actually very good friends, the three of us, and Ian is generally the focal point of all our amusement.Stuart Warwick:All our ribbing.Paul Green:Exactly, because you're an easy target.Ian Luckett:Thank you very much.Paul Green:Give us the brief pitch. Who's it for? Why would you get involved and how can we get in touch with you?Stuart Warwick:The MSP Growth Hub is for those ambitious MSPs that want to scale with confidence to a million, or if they're already there, to go faster and accelerate towards 5 million. That's the key simple thing. If you're at a place where you want your business to work for you rather than you for it and to become that true business asset that a business can and should be, then if you're frustrated on that journey, then get in touch.Paul Green:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.Andrew Down:Hi, I'm Andrew Down with Vendasta. My book recommendation is Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. It's a guilty pleasure of mine. Part inspirational, part crazy. To me, it's about so much more than just literally running, which is a passion of mine. It speaks to being truly authentic to who you are, both in life and in business. I'm a big believer in leading with honesty and transparency. It's a great read for all and it truly proves that anything is possible for humans.Voiceover:Coming up next week.Darren Strong:Hi, I'm Darren Strong from ScalableMSP.co.UK. Next week me and Paul will be talking about retaining talent and also using data to build your business and execute on your legacy fund.Paul Green:Wherever you are listening to or watching this podcast right now, please do subscribe so you never miss an episode. Because on top of that great interview next week, we're also talking about using LinkedIn Live as some kind of podcast. It's a very clever thing to do if you've got the guts to go live on a social media platform every single week. Talking of social media, we have loads of content on our YouTube channel. We add new content all the time. It's all there. To help you get more new clients and generate more new revenue, just go to youtube.com/MSP marketing. Join me next Tuesday and have another profitable week in your MSP.Voiceover:Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

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Episode 169Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 The marketing advantage of a standard tech stack * 09:13 How to use IT consulting to sell managed services * 17:46 Compare your helpdesk solution to our expert's statistics

Featured guest:Thank you to Jason Kemsley from Uptime Solutions for joining me to talk about how to compare the efficiencies of helpdesk solutions.Jason is not only a director at Uptime Solutions, he also sits on the Comptia UK Executive Council and is an expert & speaker on outsourcing.Connect with Jason on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-kemsley-630983159/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: * https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 * https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast * https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa * https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast * https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 * https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ * https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ * https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book, The Leadership Contract: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Leadership-Contract-Becoming-Accountable-Leader/dp/111944053X

Transcription:Voiceover:Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Everyone ready? Everyone good? Yep? Okay, let's do this. Three, two, one. Action. Welcome to the show. Here's what we got coming up in this week's episode.Jason Kemsley:We get all types of tickets from all types of end users from across those over 3,000 tickets. We have possibly the perfect set of data to have this conversation with.Paul Green:That's Jason Kemsley from Uptime Solutions. He's joining me later in the show with some fascinating stats. You'll be able to see how efficient your technicians are and also how normal, how routine your clients are. We're also going to be looking at IT consulting and asking, can it get you a foot in the door with new clients before you try and sell them a managed services contract?Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Now, before I start this first bit, I must give you a warning and a caveat. And if you're a longtime listener to the show, and thank you so much if you are, you will probably know this already. But if you are brand new here, if this is one of your first few episodes, welcome. I'm glad you are here. We have three years worth of the podcast for you to work your way back if you want to. But one of the things that you'll quickly realize is that despite only working with MSPs on their marketing, I am not a technician. I never have been. I've never owned an MSP. I actually see this as an advantage rather than a disadvantage.I've been here for seven years. I know the channel. I know a little bit about your world just through the power of osmosis, but I don't really get technology at the level at which you get it. I couldn't fault find. I couldn't work through that process. I know the broad strokes. I know what the cloud is. I know what a ransomware attack is. I just wouldn't know the technical things of what buttons and what software to launch to do them. Now, I tell you this because in this first part of the podcast, we're going to talk about the advantages of having a standard tech setup. Let me explain what I mean by standard tech setup and then what I mean by the advantages.Because I'm not talking about technical advantages, I'm talking about marketing advantages. Standard tech setup is where every client that you have must have exactly the tech stack that you want and you will not support anything else. There are a number of MSPs I know that do this. There's one in particular, Owen, I've been working closely with over the last year. Hi, Owen. This is your shout out that you asked for on the podcast. His business is, I think, it's two, three years old. He's been in the fortunate position that right from day one he decided this is our stack. We want this kind of router. We want this cloud solution.We want this antivirus. Don't make me list all the things, but you know what I mean. He has picked out his ideal stack. When he starts work with a client, the number one rule, in fact it's part of the sales qualifying process, is the number one rule is that whatever they've got gets ripped out and his tech stack goes in. Now, he will explain it to them in a very specific way, and we'll come onto that in a second because that's the marketing advantage we're talking about. But you see where I'm going with this? He only has one set of things to look after.Now, from a business point of view, this is really smart because Owen and his team, they only have to be specialists in the exact setup they've got, unlike most MSPs who have to support lots of different technologies, lots of different ways of doing things. And sure, some things are standardized, but you will have a legacy client that you've had for 10 years, 15 years and you'll have a new technician today who has to support not only the new things you're putting into your clients today, but also what you did for your clients 15 years ago because some of them may still have that tech put in. From a business efficiency and profitability point of view, that's a very, very smart thing to do.I'm sure you will tell me, and maybe you're shouting at your device right now, that there are so many tech disadvantages of doing it this way. That's fine. The tech conversation is not one we're going to have. What I'm interested in is what are the marketing advantages of doing this? Does it actually hold you back? Does it stop you from getting new clients? If you say to someone, "We will upgrade you. It will be exactly this way of doing things and you will pay for that upgrade," does that sound like insanity to you? I don't believe that is insanity at all. In fact, I think that's a very, very smart thing to do.It all comes down to the confidence with which you talk about it and your ability to turn it into a massive advantage for your client. Because you've got to remember how ordinary clients think. Ordinary business owners and managers, remember, they don't understand technology. They don't get it. They're kind of like me, but six years ago. Six years ago, I didn't know what ransomware was. I didn't know really what the cloud was. I couldn't describe it to you. That's where they are now.Technology they know is a big part of their lives and their business, but they don't necessarily understand it, nowhere near the level that you understand it, but not even the level that I understand it as a non-technical person. You have to understand that that's where they're coming from. To see how if you walk in and say to them, "We're going to rip out all of your technology and replace it with our recommended technology," that is an advantage. It's not a disadvantage. Now, if they were technical people, if you said this to an internal IT manager, let's say you wanted more co-managed IT, that approach wouldn't work at all, would it?An internal IT manager for a company is not going to let you change that entire company's tech stack to suit you. They won't do that because they've got the knowledge. They know what they know and they know what they don't know. But ordinary business owners and managers, well, they don't know what they don't know. Therefore, they are more likely to be influenced by you as an authority. In fact, that's the real power of you walking in and ripping out their tech in favor of your tech.You're saying from an absolute authority point of view, "We are specialists in this. We have put together the very best combination of services, software, and hardware, and we are already supporting this for 500 people around here. 500 people in 30, 40 odd businesses around here, they already have this exact setup supported by us. We are so expert at it, we can maintain it in our sleep. It means if one of our other clients has a fault at 6:00 in the morning, we can fix that fault, and then we can proactively stop that fault from happening across all of our other clients instead of you.If a piece of software needs to be updated or a piece of hardware needs to be updated, again, we can test that with some of our other clients before we ever come to you. We're never, ever in the dark about what's happening with your technology because we are utter experts at it. And here's the thing, Mr. or Mrs. prospect, we will not support you unless you use our technology, because our goal is to make your life easy and to make our life easy. This is how you make more money and we make more money."I honestly don't think there's anything wrong in having this conversation with prospects about the way that you keep your profits good, not excessive, but you keep good profits is by reducing down the amount of work that you have to do and therefore the amount of disruption that they have to put up with. This is one of the benefits of having a standard tech stack, right? I think yes, it is a marketing advantage. It's a brave thing to do, and it's obviously easier if you start your business from scratch. I mean, would you do it with all your existing clients? I guess you could. I'm sure there are technical reasons.Maybe there are days where you would love to just draw a line in the sand and say, "Right. From now on, we're just doing this and we're going to migrate all of our existing clients over the next two years onto this. And if they won't migrate, then they've got to go. They've got to go and find another MSP." I'm sure you've had days where you think like that. Obviously there are technical and profit advantages of doing, but there are massive marketing advantages of doing so as well. The most important thing is that you believe it.You believe it so much that literally you would rather walk away from thousands of new monthly recurring revenue than support some other tech stack that you don't really know as well as you know your own tech stack. That's when you absolutely know that you believe it so much when you literally would leave money on the table because for you that's not good money because it's not your single tech stack. Do you know what?If you do this or if you've tried it and it didn't work or indeed you're going to try it, I would love to have a talk to you about this because I'd love to put some real life examples on the show. Would you drop me an email and let me know? My email is hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.Voiceover:Here's this week's clever idea.Paul Green:Let me share a really interesting question that an MSP asked me the other day. They said, "Paul, is it possible to use IT consulting as a way to sell managed services?" I had to think about that for a while because I thought, okay, that's quite an interesting concept. You see, if you think about IT consulting or VCIO, it's top level. It's strategic. Well, if this happens to you, you'll get an opportunity to go and work with the business at a very strategic level to talk to them, to consult with them, to advise them on their overall technology strategy. Obviously a part of that will be the hardware, the software, the services, the setup, all of the things that actually you deal with as a managed service provider.Here's the thing though, I think if you can get IT consulting gigs, because I know the upsides and downsides of consulting. Personally, I choose not to do a great deal of consulting because the downsides overweigh the good sides for me. The downsides of consulting are, of course, it's a time suck. People are paying you a lot of money and they expect a lot of your time, preparation, and attention. It's a massive time suck. Other downsides are that I think when people are paying you those big bucks, they want absolutely best advice. They almost feel like they own you in some way.I guess, if you are going in advising a board on its technology strategy and they ask you to put a paper together, you can't say, "Well, I'm a bit busy, actually." You've got to do it. It's a bit of a time suck. They owe you. Those are the downsides. Did I say owe you? They don't owe you, they own you. Those are the downsides. The upside, of course, is being paid a thousand or a couple of thousand to attend a meeting. Because when you get a really good IT consulting gig, not only is it top level strategic consulting on the technology, but it pays really well as well. Maybe you're thinking, "Oh Paul, I don't quite have the experience to do that."Oh believe me, you do. Compared to the average board member, the average business owner, the average, well, exactly what we were just talking about in the last bit, they don't know what they don't know. How many times have you met an internal IT manager, so someone who's supposedly in our world, and they just don't have the depth or breadth of knowledge about technology that you do? You have such an advantage working across so many different clients, so many different platforms supporting so many people in so many ways that often internal IT managers, I've been told, they find that they get quite narrow and they lose that kind of up-to-dateness.You're probably a better strategic advisor than someone's internal IT support manager. As long as you've been in this game for three, four, five years or so, you are perfectly capable of operating at a high strategic level. You might just need to put a suit on or maybe iron your shirt or something like that. You really do have to look the part, as well as actually deliver at a high level when you're a strategist. The downsides then, it sucks your time. They own you. The upsides, lots and lots of money. That big question, can we turn IT consulting into a managed services contract, well, the answer is hell yeah, you absolutely can.In fact, you owe it to that business to sell them your managed services because you are the best MSP at what you do in your area, right? I was expecting a kind of a, "Woo! Yeah, Paul." Come on, let me ask that again. You're the best at what you do, right? You're better than all of your competitors, right? Can I hear a hell yeah? It's always embarrassing when you do a bit of audience participation and no one's participating. Anyway, you are very good at what you do, so you know that you look after your clients better than any MSP anywhere else could. Therefore, you do. You owe it to those clients that you're consulting with to sell them managed services.I realized this for the first time, it must be getting off for nearly oh 17, 18 years ago, at my last proper job before I started my first business. In around about 2004, I was working for a company called Johnston Press. They used to be one of the biggest newspaper companies, like local newspaper companies here in the UK. They don't exist anymore. I was involved in their digital side, which was where they were desperately trying to make money out of websites, as in their own news websites, faster than the money was sort of moving into Google and online. They didn't succeed in that, unfortunately. I lasted a year there.It wasn't fun/ but at one point, I remember there was a guy they brought in as a consultant, and I can't remember what he was consulting on, but he was consulting. Wasn't that interesting? Clearly he was consulting on something and we were paying him like 1,000 pounds a day or 2,000 pounds a day. I remember in about the fourth or fifth meeting... Bear in mind, this guy has pocketed let's say 10,000 pounds at this point just for telling us what's in his head. At some point, we had this epiphany. We realized we needed the service that his company provided. I'll never forget that meeting. I can't remember the name of the guy I sat with.I think it was Dave. Dave and I were sat there and we'd had this conversation on the train the way to the meeting that we need the service this guy sells. Dave sat there and essentially Dave pitched to this guy along the lines of, "Please, will you supply us with your service?" It was insane. Here we were sat there as representatives of this 100 million pound a year company to a guy we were paying to be in a meeting and we were asking him, "Please, will you supplies for those services?" Because our perception was this guy has given us the strategy, he's told us how to deliver it, the one thing that's missing is someone to deliver that for us.We want his company. We want his company to do it, because we perceived that if he's the guy that has the strategy, then they're going to deliver brilliantly. Can you see how awesome that is when you flip it round the other way? Again, I can't remember what it was he did, some kind of market research or something, but they did go on and they had many, many, many thousands out of that business in their equivalent of managed services. As I say, you owe it to your client to give them the managed services that they are looking for. In fact, I think it's easier to sell from the top than it is to sell from the bottom.You think how difficult it is selling to a decision maker through someone else. If you're meeting with someone who is compiling information before passing onto the decision maker, it's almost impossible to get that sale, isn't it? Whereas the very nature of top level strategic consulting is you are there at the top with the top decision makers. What I think you've got to do is just bide your time. You need to set out for them a strategy that you could deliver. Obviously it needs to be the right strategy for them, but I'm guessing it would be perfectly within your skillset or your MSP skillset to deliver that anyway.You set out a strategy that you could deliver and you just wait for that right moment. It might be the moment they realized their internal team aren't capable of delivering it, or their existing, their incumbent MSP, because it's not unheard of for someone to have an incumbent tech support company and still hire a different person to be their strategic partner above them. You've just got to bide your time and wait for that opportunity. The one final thought I would have on this is if you are a consultant, you're acting as a consultant and you go on to sell them managed services, don't be cheap.If you're charging them 1,000 or a couple of thousand for each time you attend a meeting or whatever it is that you do, and then you come in at your normal managed services rates, which are perhaps competitively priced, you risk breaking the mystique, breaking the magic. When they know you as a consultant and they've come to trust you so much that they are not just open to taking you on to providing the service, but they are almost desperate for you to do so, the price must match that.If you go in at too low a price, you will literally burst the bubble, the perception bubble that you're great at what you do. People are used to paying top dollar for top service, for top quality, for top ability. That's what you represent to them. You've already won that. It's just a case of getting them to sign up for some managed services.Voiceover:Paul's blatant plug.Paul Green:Let me keep this super simple. If you want to win tons more new clients, generate loads more monthly recurring revenue and be perceived as the number one MSP in your area, just go to mspmarketingedge.com.Voiceover:The big interview.Jason Kemsley:Hi, I'm Jason Kemsley, and I'm the director of Uptime Solutions.Paul Green:Jason, thank you so much for coming back onto this podcast, because not many people listen to this will realize just how much arm bending I've been doing to you over the last couple of months. I knew that you had some information, some stats which we had to get on the podcast, and I also know that you've been very selective where you have shared those. I know you've shared them privately with some of your clients. I know you've shared them at some of the most exclusive IT events.Thank you so much for coming here onto this podcast and for I believe is the first time today actually sharing some of these stats in public. Now, before we get onto those stats and they do relate to how effective your technicians are and how much technician time you need per client, before we come onto those stats, I think we first of all need to establish your credentials. Just tell us a little bit about you, what's your history, Jason, and what do you do right now with MSPs?Jason Kemsley:Well, firstly, thank you for having me, Paul. I've been listening for a long time and know how much value you give back, so I felt the pressure to make sure I bring the A game. Hopefully, it is that. I've been with Uptime since, oh, it's been 13 years now. Brad was six months or a year in when I joined. I'm one of the two owners and current director at Uptime Solutions. We provide outsourcing services in regards to the help desk for over 180 MSPs, where it just keeps going up and up because of the demands of the world these days.That is everything from, "Hey, I need help with some outbound work," and we deliver that with our US, UK, and New Zealand offices, all the way up to, "Hey, I'm an MSP. I don't want to touch the technical. I just want to focus on selling, the account management, and building value through just account management to make sure that they are always the go-to people for any questions." We look at all ends of the spectrum. As a help desk, as you can imagine with the US and New Zealand factored in as well, we get all types of tickets from all types of places, from all types of end users. We have possibly the perfect set of data to have this conversation with.Paul Green:Yes, exactly, which is why I wanted you to come on. Thank you so much again for doing that.Jason Kemsley:Pleasure.Paul Green:This data you have essentially collected, the 180 MSPs that you are looking after, just out of interest, how many end points or how many users does that relate to?Jason Kemsley:We work in two ways in the ways we work for our MSPs. We have consumption based billing and we have end user or device based billing. The most frustrating thing about my role or us as a company is I can never accurately tell you how many endpoints we look after, but I can tell you we're in excess of 3000 tickets a month. What I've done is the data I've pulled, if you can see me, I've got it live on screen because this is live data that I pulled as of last week, everything we're talking about when we're talking about endpoints and tickets and your engineers, this is the latest and hopefully the greatest as well from across those over 3,000 tickets around the world.Paul Green:I think that deserves a pause moment, 3,000 tickets a month. Everyone wants new clients, but they don't necessarily want more new tickets. But 3,000 a month is insane. Just out of interest, how many people on your team are dealing with those 3,000 tickets? I know that one of the stats or some of the stats we're going to go into later on help you to predict how many people you need, but how many people have you currently got looking after those 3,000 tickets?Jason Kemsley:We are 36 or 37 help desk only people around the world. We have a couple of value add things that we do for partners, et cetera, which skew our numbers slightly, and we'll come onto the help desk people. I hesitate because we're growing at a great rate and I thank everyone who trusts us for that, but we've just added another two last week. Forgive me, I might be one off. I don't want anyone to come after me.Paul Green:I don't know. You come on this podcast. You've got live stats up on your screen because they keep changing. You don't even know how many staff you've got. You have no idea of end points. I'm kidding. I'm just kidding. Right. Let's get into the good stuff. We're going to start with some stats for... Tell me if I'm right with this, Jason. This is how many tickets each level of your technicians should be able to handle on average. Is that correct?Jason Kemsley:Correct. Yep. We're going to look at both sides of the spectrum, and we're going to start with what you can expect from your level one to a level three people or what we expect, so hopefully a place for you to benchmark internally as well.Paul Green:Okay, let's jump into line one, first line, level one. How many tickets would you expect a first line technician to handle on a, I guess what, daily, weekly, monthly basis?Jason Kemsley:Well, our target is around 10 to 14 tickets in a day. And then when you're measuring them, obviously you're not measuring daily, you're looking weekly, monthly, and that's when you're doing your sit downs and your catch-ups and your reviews. But it relates to 10 to 14, somewhere in that spectrum, per day that they can be completing. That is ticket is done, customer is happy, and the issue is complete.Paul Green:For an MSP listening to this, if they have a technician who is significantly underperforming, so less than 10 tickets a day, let's say six or seven tickets a day, and yet there is the demand, there are more tickets coming in, it's not the case that there just isn't the work there, do you see that as an immediate problem that has to be addressed, or in your experience, and obviously you're running a lot of first line technicians, does it mean that actually you've got to delve into what are the reasons for this? Is it the person? Is it the clients? Is it us? Is it our ticketing system? Are there lots of factors you need to look at?Jason Kemsley:Absolutely. What I'll do is I'll come onto one of the key KPIs we judge our guys on internally, guys and girls, and we can talk about how that flips either way. Particularly for level one, level two and three is slightly different, but particularly for level one, if you're not hitting those 10 to 14, and I'm assuming you're quite a way off, you have one of two issues specifically of level ones. One, you've got someone that unfortunately isn't very motivated or very bought into the culture or wants to drive success, or two, unfortunately, their base skillset, their base knowledge is just not there. There is no question. When you're a level one and you have a level one ticket, there is no, is this with the right person?A level one issue is a level one issue. As you grow up that changes, but you have a foundation of knowledge problem, which we see quite a lot surprisingly in the industry when we talk with MSPs, is a lot of people trying to elevate juniors far too quickly and wonder why they get stuck on a ticket for a prolonged amount of time. When that ticket, any ticket, gets to an hour of work time, for you to continue, Mr. engineer or Mrs. engineer, you have to get that peer reviewed from someone of a higher skillset than you to say, "Yes, please continue, or no, you're going along the wrong path. I need to take it or head down this path." That is a huge, huge thing that can help any busy help desk.All of these things come in and compliment each other. But if you're not getting the 10 to 14 tickets a day, you need to look at how many tickets are they doing, how long they spending on them, it's probably a knowledge or a motivation issue I'm afraid.Paul Green:I love the idea of the peer review because also that means you as the MSP owner running the business, the burden of reviewing that work is not all on you. You're actually pushing it down to your team, which, of course, in itself becomes a training exercise. Because when everyone's working together on looking at things, that's great for bonding and it's great for training as well. Let's look at those second line technicians. If you expect your first line technicians to do 10 to 14 a day, what about your second line?Jason Kemsley:Second line, hopefully you'll see a trend, but we're starting to come down. The issues are getting more complex. They're typically on average longer, and so slowly those number of tickets are coming down as we reach up to level three. For a level two engineer, we see typically anywhere from eight to 12 issues a day. Now, these stats are maybe not quite where people would expect. There's a couple of things that go into these. One, every help desk does have some slightly premature escalations. You do sometimes get the first liner, they've escalated it, but actually it's probably something that could be done with some ease. They get those quick wins in there.Anywhere from eight to 12 is where a second liner sits, and that allows for a couple of those escalations that have happened a bit too soon to be done. And that's actually super common is as a help desk engineer, as a technician, we want to help people and we want to help them as soon as we can. If we feel like we're not able to make a big difference, I would much rather you escalated it and a level two done it really quickly than you held onto it for far too long, not knowing quite what to do. That allows a bit of that wiggle room, if you like, in there. The eight to 12 is about spot on what we see in a given day, week, month.Paul Green:Okay, and what about third line?Jason Kemsley:As a third line, we're going all the way down now. Third line is a super interesting one. You never want to KPI someone for zero, but I have seen days where a third line engineer may not complete a ticket because of the complexity of it. We all have that end customer that they have got an application that's specific, it's not documented. And when there's an issue, you've got to reverse engineer it. You never want to KPI someone for zero, so we don't. But third level three engineer are typically completing anywhere from one to four tickets per day.Now, obviously one you would hope is fewer days than maybe four, but you get stuck on a long issue, you can have that one for the day. And then four allows for what is a pretty much normal transactional day for a third line engineer, a couple of hour, maybe hour, two hour tickets for the entirety of the day.Paul Green:Yeah, this makes perfect sense. Now, you mentioned earlier about KPIs for your second and third liners. Do you share these stats with your team? Obviously they know they're being measured because all technicians are being measured in terms of ticket completion, but do you share these stats with your team and whether or not they're on track and how do you tie that into general KPIs, key performance indicators?Jason Kemsley:We do it in two ways. We do team-based goals and we do individual goals. As a team, if you are achieving your KPIs and let's say it's five first liners in a team, then hey, as a team, you deliver roughly, what is it, it's around 60, 70 tickets. I'm not great at maths, apologies. As a team, that's what you're roughly able to deliver. There's usually going to be someone that's falling a little bit short. There's usually going to be an A player that is a little bit above. But all in all, it works out, because ultimately we want them as a team to succeed and drive up as much what we call tribal awareness as possible.That is trying to create a culture where people can thrive, people can grow, and we can bring anyone through the business up to whatever level they would like to be at. The primary goal is to drive this through a team goal and that is just a combined set of KPIs. You can just add them all together and you can find roughly where you want to measure the team. Just when you're trying to create that culture, you've got the willingness to help each other. Then when you're having your one-to-ones and you're having your performance reviews, that is when you're looking individually at what they've achieved.You can talk about remuneration, supporting their education, and further progression within the business. Day to day we're not actively saying, "Hey, you haven't hit your KPIs." That's absolutely not the case. We are looking weekly is how we do it in our... We use EOS, so we have level 10 meetings. We look at the team KPIs and we show how the individuals added together to meet that KPI. The team get to see how each of them are doing and they get to pick one up. If someone's falling a bit short, they've had a bad week, they go and pick him up or her and they help them.And if someone's having a great week, they celebrate that person. How are you doing it all for us and try to create that team culture. The individuals and the KPIs are used when we're talking performance review, remuneration, those types of things. But otherwise, were looking at team level, but it consists of all of their individual stats.Paul Green:Yeah, love it. Let's now look at the other side of the coin because I think it's when we introduce the next stat you're about to tell us and combine it with these stats you've just given us, that's where some secret source really starts to come in, because you now have the ability to estimate how many tickets you'll get on average per user that you support.Jason Kemsley:Absolutely. There are two elements to knowing what your help desk is doing, not doing. I meet so many MSPs that wonder, hey, are we delivering enough, or they think, hey, we're not delivering enough, but it's not based on any data. Hopefully that helps build a, are we at the line? And if we are not, that's where the line should be and we're not reaching for a crazy number by putting it in. The second part of this is, but what can we expect? When you put the two together, we can work out pricing maybe. We can start to look at both ends of the spectrum.Going back now to 2020 or 2019, what we've thought was really important was to start to track what is the typical number of tickets we would receive per person per month from an end user. That allows both sides of the coin. We get to see what is the demand and what we're able to deliver on average. Everyone knows COVID times happened. And just before that, we still had the data, so we got to go back. Just before COVID, we were seeing on average 1.2 tickets per person per month, and this is the latest up-to-date data I have. If you had a 10 person organization you were supporting, on average, around 12 tickets a month you could expect to receive from them.Going into COVID, like everyone expected, it absolutely shot up. It went through the roof. Everyone got super busy. No one had enough time, and it got to just below 2.5 tickets per person per month. I don't want to stay on that year because we were trying to forget it. Let's fast forward to today. We still had the IoT devices that we never had pre-COVID to the scale we have it. We had home printers, a lot of remote working, a lot of hybrid working, unplugging a dock, moving. We've seen that now settle at 1.4, 1.45 per person per month. What does that mean? Well, this year, 2023, next year, 2024, all of this is going to continue.At roughly 1.4, 1.45, we've settled now and the data seems to be fairly consistent. If you have a 10 person organization now that you're bringing on, you're expecting 14, 15 on average tickets per person per month. That's a two to three ticket increase, which isn't a huge amount. But when you factor in that you were maybe looking at 12 before and then you scale that up to 100 users, 500 users, 1,000 users, it does eventually make quite a difference. We're talking 15, 20% roughly extra demand on our help desk, and I would argue maybe possibly not 15, 20% more revenue.Paul Green:Yes, yes. Putting these two things together, and I'm about to ask you something which I guess is your specialty as a business, because when you take on a new client, which is an MSP, you're taking on hundreds, if not thousands of users in one go. But theoretically, you could put these two sides of the equation together. You can say, "Right. We're going to take on another 20 users, and we now know that that will produce 20 times 1.4... Let's go with just 1.4. 20 times 1.4 tickets per person per month." Oh, I wish I picked an easier sum. I'm as bad at sums as you are.Let's go with 10. We're taking on a 10 user business. We're in MSP. We're taking on a 10 user business. That's going to generate 14 tickets per person per month. That's right. Yes, isn't it?Jason Kemsley:14 tickets for the whole company.Paul Green:There are people listening to this thinking, these are the simplest sums ever. Why can't you do them? We're under the pressure. We're under the pressure. You know you're going to generate on average 14 tickets for that new client every single month, and you know now how many tickets your different level technicians can handle. Tell us how you put those two pieces of information together to help you assess capacity, whether or not your technicians are genuinely too busy, and how it helps you plan ahead, because we all know that recruitment is a very long exercise these days.Jason Kemsley:Absolutely. Hesitant to say it's a little bit easier for us than it is for most MSPs. We have the benefit of luxury of scale or quantity of scale now, however you want to phrase it. We typically do always need the next set of resourcing and are getting it before we actually need it. Sorry, just put it the other way around. We have an academy. We have lots of things. We have a constant engagement process. I mean, I don't want to throw sales in here. I'm sure it's saying you talk about a lot, Paul, but if you have a steady pipeline, it actually makes that recruitment pipeline just as easy as well. We have quantity of scale, and so we have the ability to take this data across a plethora of end customers.As an MSP, let's say this is your first customer, it might be your 10th customer, it's not going to be as exact, and I don't want you to bank on it being 14 quite like I'm saying. There are two things to consider and that is size of customer. If they're a 10 person organization, there's a good chance they are what I would consider a higher risk company. It depends on their business maturity, their business operations as to how quiet or noisy they're going to be. If they're quite mature, they've got a lot of processes in place, they spend that money and they need to on equipment, issues are going to be less.When we talk about going for the bigger customers, the 100 users, actually in relative terms, they are quieter than the 10 user per person on average because they have the maturity, they have the group policy, the process, the in-tune, all of those good things that go behind it. If you look at the type of customer you're getting in, Google search whatever, see what type of industry they're in, you can pretty much make a good assessment of how professional mature do we think they're going to be, right? They're going to be 14 tickets. I think that's a good number. They fit about par. Maybe they're in the retail sector, which is about an average space.Then I go and take into consideration, right, I've got everyone hitting metrics in this team and we're green, green, green, green, green, and I'll come onto that calculation in just a second. We're green, green, green and we're delivering 100% SLAs and we're delivering our average response time is 20% of what is in our contract. Then you know I've got some wiggle room. I can I hate to say eke it out, but you can add a bit more on there. This is all about complimenting each other and complimenting all of the stats together.Once you start to work out, right, I know roughly what they are, 14 tickets per person, per company, per month and you know right, as a team, we are hitting our KPIs and this is roughly where we can aim, it's completely realistic and we can definitely target it, then you can say, "As a team, we're hitting our KPIs and our SLAs are fantastic, or we're not hitting our targets, we're not hitting our team targets, which means maybe there's not enough tickets. Let's get them more tickets," which is the dream scenario. But putting the two together, you now have a complete picture of what they need and potentially what you can put on them before it becomes a bit too much.Obviously you always want to allow a holiday, a sickness, those types of things. It gets a little bit more complex as you get further into it. But as a starting point, hopefully I've just shared some stats that you can go and look at internally and say, "My level ones are hitting this. My level twos are hitting this. My level threes are hitting this." Tie that into the next customer you're quoting and then watch how they marry up. You should hopefully see, yes, we could take that, or no, we can't take that in a relatively straightforward fashion. It is a repeatable process, process, process, process. Once you get familiar with it, you can repeat it time and time again.Paul Green:Jason, this is absolute gold dust. Thank you very much. Now, obviously what you do as a business is you take a lot of this hassle and stress away from MSPs. Just briefly tell us what Uptime Solutions does, get into just a little bit of the detail and tell us how can we get in touch with you.Jason Kemsley:Perfect, thank you. We've been providing outsource services for over 12 years now. It is the core. It is everything that we do, and we provide it channel only to MSPs around the world, all the way from the US all the way down to Australia and in the UK. We do that using our UK, New Zealand, and American offices. What we're trying to do is we're trying to bring that premium element into the outsourcing space. When your customer calls, they get a friendly person into the phone ready to help them and ready to deliver a customer-centric experience.We're trying to change that mold that outsourcing has to be a cheap item, that maybe quality is not the first thing they think of, and hopefully we're succeeding in that.Paul Green:What's the best way to get in touch with you, Jason?Jason Kemsley:Look, I got so busy talking about me, I didn't even talk about how. Grab me on LinkedIn, Jason Kemsley to you on LinkedIn, or please feel free to find me an email. I'm more than happy to have a chat about these stats and how they measure internally for you. It doesn't have to be a sales question. I'm more than happy to help however I can. You can get me at jasonk, K for kilo, @uptimesolutions.tech.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.Lori-Ann Duguay:Hi, I'm Lori-Ann Duguay of The People Person: HR Growth Solutions. The book I recommend the most in business is The Leadership Contract by Vince Molinaro. It is a great book on helping provide kind of that fine print to becoming a more accountable leader.Voiceover:Coming up next week.Stuart Warwick:Hi, this is Stuart Warwick from the MSP Growth Hub.Ian Luckett:And this is Ian Luckett.Stuart Warwick:Join us next week on this podcast with Paul and understand why getting out of your own way is the number one key to scaling your MSP with confidence.Ian Luckett:If you come into January and you're now in February and you're feeling a little bit flat, don't miss next week's episode and we will help you get that momentum and energy back into your business.Paul Green:Do subscribe wherever you listen to or watch this podcast so you never miss an episode. Because on top of that epic interview with the gruesome twosome next week, we're also going to be talking about how Sammy kills sales. If your marketing appears to be the same as all the other MSPs, it will get lost in the wash. The goal is to push it out and really get an edge with your marketing. I'm also going to be answering a couple of basic marketing questions asked by MSPs. If you've got some, drop me an email. It's hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.Now, we have a ton of extra content over on YouTube. We upload a new video every single weekday, and it's there to help you grow your MSP. Just have a look at youtube.com/mspmarketing. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.Voiceover:Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

The Leadership Contract: The Fine Print to Becoming an Accountable Leader

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Episode 168Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* Why you need to stop for the sake of your MSP * The MSP invoice that helps client retention * The productivity author on how to get more important stuff done

Featured guest:Thank you to productivity author Graham Allcott for joining me to talk about how to get more important stuff done.Graham is the author of the global best-seller, "How to be a Productivity Ninja". He is the founder of Think Productive, one of the world's leading providers of personal productivity training and consultancy. His podcast "Beyond Busy" explores the issues of productivity, work/life balance and how people define happiness in their lives. Previous roles include Chief Executive of Student Volunteering England, Head of Volunteering at the University of Birmingham and an advisor to the UK Government on youth volunteering policy.Connect with Graham on LinkedIn, check out his book and also the recommended reading on productivity:https://uk.linkedin.com/in/grahamallcotthttps://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Be-Productivity-Ninja-Achieve/dp/178578028Xhttps://www.amazon.co.uk/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-Break/dp/1847941834https://www.amazon.co.uk/Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-About/dp/0887307280Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 * https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast * https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa * https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast * https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 * https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ * https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ * https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Grab yourself a copy of this week's recommended book: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/This-They-Tell-World-Ends/dp/1635576059

Transcription:Voiceover:Fresh every Tuesday, for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Greetings, earthlings, and welcome to the show. Here's what we got in store for you this week.Graham Allcott:Hi, I'm Graham Allcott, author of How to be a Productivity Ninja, and I'm coming up to talk about busyness and how to create more space and deal with notifications and basically make your MSP much more productive.Paul Green:Graham's got so much good advice for you to make you more productive and in fact, a productivity ninja. I'm looking forward to that interview later on in the show. We're also looking at your invoices today. What can we do to your invoices to help them aid retention?Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Let's start this week by talking about knowing when it's time to stop. So I think we've reached a really interesting part of the year, the end of January where you've had that bit of a refresh, a bit of a break from Christmas, and then you've come into the new year full of new ideas. Well, I hope you did, anyway. Full of new ideas, full of new energy. And of course, you hit that first working day of January where everyone's got things they need you to do, the support requests or a projects, and it can be quite an overwhelming month, January, and that's not just within IT. I think within all businesses. January can be a very overwhelming month, especially for accountants here in the UK, for CPAs, all the personal tax deadlines are the end of January. I think it's today, the 31st of January is the... I know, trying to talk to your accountant, if you're in the UK, in January, is not easy because they've got so many bits of paper to file, but everyone really struggles with January.And the problem is you get to this time of year, and all of that energy is starting to run out. Essentially what I'm talking about here is knowing when it's time to stop, knowing when it's time to have another break, knowing when it's time to just slow things down a little bit. Now don't get me wrong, I am the most keen person on progress and pushing and constantly improving your business and making things better and just driving, driving, driving, driving. But I'm getting on a bit now, and I'm not sure how old you are, but I'll be 49 this year, which is literally the single most terrifying thing I think I've ever said on this podcast, 49. I remember being 39 and thinking, "God, 40 is a bit old, isn't it?" Well, now I'm, what, a year and six months away from being 50. That's actually horrifying.And one of the net effects of that is I just don't have as much energy as I used to. Can't even talk properly. I used to have so much. I still have got a lot of energy, don't get me wrong. I am full on most days. But what I have noticed is that the point at which I have to stop and just pull things back a little bit, it's getting earlier and earlier in the evenings, especially in wintertime like this. I'm better in the summer really, so I'm going to move to Portugal one day. So the point I'm trying to make is we, as business owners, are constantly running the risk of burnout because especially you, you are in the world's most changing industry ever where everything changes every single day. There's new horrors every single day, new things you have to be aware of and train on every single day.Plus, you're trying to grow your business, and you're trying to push things forwards and drive things. Can you see how that puts you at the risk of burnout? I don't have as much change in my world, my world being marketing, but I feel that sometimes I'm at the risk of burnout. So what I've had to do over the years, and what I'm highly recommending you do is that you just listen to yourself. It's kind of about listening to your mind and it's about listening to your body and just reading the signs. We have a very good built in alarm system, a warning system, which tells us if we've just gone too far, we've done too much, we've piled too much on. It's almost impossible for us to really fully burn out, but only if we actually listen to ourselves.And often that comes out, I think that the warning signs are delivered to us at the weekends. If on a Saturday morning, if you are springing out of bed full of energy, ready to get on and do fun things, then I think you're okay. You're very little risk of burnout, but if you... Friday night to Saturday morning is the beer zone and you wake up on the couch at 3:00 AM on a Saturday morning and getting out of bed on a Saturday is a difficult thing to do, especially if you've got kids and they've got full of energy and they want you to do things, I think that's a warning sign. That's your body and your mind telling you, "Whoa, you got to slow down a bit there, son." We have to listen to this. We have to listen to our minds and our bodies.Because I like systems, I'm sure you like systems as well. So one of the things that I've done to systemize myself around this, because I go on and off for this. I have weekends where I'm exhausted and then weekends where I'm bursting with energy. What I've done to systemize this is I've built into my schedule a series of breaks, a series of holidays. I'm quite lucky to have a child who's going to turn 13 this year. So obviously that means we have, I think it's between 12 and 14 weeks of the year where she's not at school. Those are the most challenging weeks of the year, as you can imagine. I do like school for the childcare if nothing else, but what I've done to systemize around that is I've just made sure that there are holidays in there. I've made sure there are weekends away. The holidays essentially, and this is a great thing to follow. This is a great system.I've put the holidays and the weekends away and the fun into my diary and then built the work around that. In fact, I did that for this year back in September last year. As I do in every September, I sit and look at the year ahead. So our holiday for this year is locked. It's there. There's nothing, literally nothing in the world. In fact, we've booked it. We haven't just put a couple of weeks in the calendar at the start of August, we've actually physically booked in, paid a deposit. That's real now. I'm just about to book next Christmas' or this Christmas' holiday away, and we've got fun weekends assigned. We haven't filled them all, but the point is they are in the calendar. The work stuff has to fit around them. There are some weekday things that I really want to do. They're in the calendar, the work will have to fit around them.So I've created this. It's not a very smart system, but it's a system of forcing myself to have downtime. And as I say, having a child makes that easy because it affects the whole family. If you've got children, you can do exactly the same thing. Prioritize your children and your family on a series of different things and space them out throughout the year. I think it's harder if you don't have family or if you don't have particularly children because obviously children are driven by a school agenda more than anything else. This is where you need to be very strict with yourself, particularly if you're feeling tired right now. What if you put in one weekend in three, you go away somewhere. And not just go away, you go away on Fridays. You go away, let's say, Friday lunchtime, and you don't come back until Sunday night or Monday lunch, whatever works for you.The point being your entire week's work can be driven by, woo-hoo, fun starts at lunchtime on Friday. And I'm not saying we should compress all of the fun into just our leisure time and just our time off. What I'm saying is you've got to look after yourself, and if you're not able to listen to what your mind and your body is saying, then you've got to systemize your way around that and having scheduled holidays in your calendar is one great way of doing that.Voiceover:Here's this week's-Clever idea.Paul Green:Invoices. Nobody likes invoices. You don't like having to send them out. Well, actually, you probably don't mind sending them out because invoices turn into cash. But no one likes getting invoices or having to pay them. It's a horrible process really. There must be a better way for businesses to do business with each other than doing invoices.I know payments are a little bit more automated and smarter these days, but there's always that paper trail. Well, these days it tends to be more the PDF trail. We've always got these invoices, and the problem with invoices is they can create friction. The number of MSPs that I've spoken to who have seen some level of friction come between them and their clients because the client has come back to them, brandishing the invoice, holding the PDF in their hands saying, "Hey, what were we charged for here? What was all this for? Can you explain this?" And of course, it's always several months on from when they got the invoice because the payment perhaps is automatic. So it's setting up friction. We don't want friction. We want to do everything in our power to remove friction between you and between your clients. The whole point of getting a client is to keep them for 10 years. So then we've got to remove friction, remove all the friction that we possibly can from that relationship.Here's an idea that some of the MSPs I work closely with have tried and it seems to work really well. You see, I'm always saying to you, you should be growing each client and growing their value to them by selling them more monthly recurring revenue services, doing strategic reviews, setting out technology roadmaps, using things like the profit matrix. All of these are really great tools, and you can go back and listen to a series we ran right at the beginning of this year about those exact tools and how to use them. I think it was the first three podcasts of January covers off those three items. So I'm always pushing you to sell more to your clients. However, if you just bundle all of that into the invoice and it's just one sum, they just see one figure going up. At some point they are going to come back to you and say, "The bill seems to be going up quite a lot. What are we paying for?"So here's what those MSPs that I work with are doing or some of them are doing. They're splitting the invoice down into three separate areas. These are the three separate areas. They are support, security, and telecoms. Now some of them are doing a line-by-line breakdown within those three areas. Some of them aren't. They're just grouping them into support, security, and telecoms. But here's the clever thing. You see as an MSP, you actually sell, not just one service, but you do sell a broad range of services to your clients. And in breaking it down into three different areas like that, we're making them realize that they are indeed buying three things from you, because you and I know that, well, their spend on security is only going to get bigger as the years go by.There's going to be more and more threats and more and more levels of protection that they'll be able to buy. So their security spend is going to go up. What we're doing here by listing support, security, and telecoms is we are separating the security out from the support because the support is a pretty much is a fixed cost. So I know that prices go up and you bring on board new tools, but more or less it's a fixed cost. In fact, the more proactive stuff you do, and the more automation comes in and the more AI does stuff, I'm guessing that the actual cost of support is going down a little bit or maybe will go down a bit. So in divorcing support and security, we are giving the clients an opportunity to see where the spend is going. It's the same with telecoms.You are splitting out telecoms. Now I know that telecoms is a bit of a cash cow. I know there's very, very little work for you to do once you've done the setup. It's just the money just keeps rolling in. But obviously, the cost of telecom, depending on the deal that you've sold them on, if it's not some kind of unlimited deal, then the cost will go up or down depending on the amount of telephony use there is. So wouldn't that make sense to divorce and split out telecoms? What we're trying to do here is show them where the value is. So yes, their overall bill is going up, but at the point they come to you with some friction, and they say to you, "Hey, my bill's going up and up and up."You can say to them, "That's fine. Which of these three areas do you want to reduce spend in? Do you want to reduce spend support? And which means we'll be doing less proactive stuff, so you'll have more problems. Oh, and of course, we'll have to charge you more to fix those problems because it costs more to fix things that we could have stopped from going wrong in the first place. Or do you want to reduce the amount of money that you're spending on security and here are the downsides of that? Or do you want to use your phones less?" Now, okay, you wouldn't use those exact words, but the sentiment is there. And that's a very, very powerful thing to be able to go back to your client and do. In fact, it removes all the friction. It shows them that they are the ones pushing the bills up because they are better supported, better protected, and they're able to pick up the phone and call anyone that they want at any time or whatever their telephony deal is.So if you are not doing this already, please do split those down. You may choose to do more areas than that. The MSPs that I work closely with, it tends to be just those three areas, support, security, and telecoms. And as I say, you could choose to break that down line by line. I think there are downsides to doing that. That's when people really start to get into nitpicking and saying, "Well, what's this line here, line 72, where we're buying the X, Y, Z service? Do we really need that?" I think you can be too granular, and of course it can create an invoicing nightmare as well. But breaking it down into three broad areas should be a way of removing any invoicing friction between you and your client.Voiceover:Paul's blatant plug.Paul Green:You know how I said earlier that sometimes, as business owners, we fall for that Friday night beer zone thing where we're so tired that we're just slobbing on the couch, watching whatever. Well, I have the way for you to do that to be tired and still consume stuff on YouTube, but actually it's good stuff, not just wasteful stuff that you won't remember. You see, we have an entire channel called MSP Marketing, and we put new videos on that channel five days a week, and they're all about how to grow your business, how to get more new clients, how to be the number one MSP in your area, how to generate more revenue and more monthly recurring revenue from your existing clients. It's all there. So if you are really tired this week or if you just fancy some edutainment, some educational entertainment, head on over to youtube.com/mspmarketing.Voiceover:The big interview.Graham Allcott:Yes. I'm Graham Olcott. I'm the author of five books including the global bestseller, How to be a Productivity Ninja, and I'm also the founder of Think Productive, which is a global company that works with some of the biggest and brightest and most interesting companies in the world on personal productivity in helping people to get more done.Paul Green:And I'm so excited to have you on the show for Authors' Month. We've had some epic authors so far this month with more still to come. Yours are... I know I've listened to How to be a Productivity Ninja at least twice. In fact, I remember one particular car journey, and I can't remember exactly where I was, but I remember thinking, "Oh, I've got 40 minutes of this book left, and I've only got 20 minutes of journey. How am I going to find the time to listen to the end of this book?" Because I so wanted to get to the end of it. So it's an absolute delight to have you here on the show. Before we talk about how MSPs can be more productive and get more done in the same amount of time or even in less time, let's talk about you. So what makes you a worldwide authority on productivity? How have you got to this point?Graham Allcott:Well, I guess the backstory for me was not being good at productivity and realizing that and wanting to fix it. So I was originally working in the charity world, and then I went freelance, and I was in leadership positions at quite a young age. And then when I went freelance, I suddenly was having all these ideas at my desk one day and I looked round for the team of people that were going to help me implement stuff and there was no one there. And I was sat at my desk in my spare room in East London. And so it, for me, was just this realization that I'd become really good at leadership and really good ideas but not actually good at being a complete a finisher, and someone that could actually hold staff, be organized, have control over stuff. And so I was quite, and I think generally my brain works in quite a strategic big picture, quite flaky way.And so for me the question became how can I get the structures? How can I get the sense of control and organization so that I can deliver the stuff that I wanted to deliver, but also to have the right kind of impact that I want to have? So it was really about how to fix me was how I got into it. And then from there, eBay became one of our biggest clients quite early on and British Airways, and it just snowballed from there, and we've now got offices in three or four different continents around the world and people around the world just doing this work. So yeah, that was back in 2009 we started and, as you can imagine, a lot of things have changed since then and actually a lot of the fundamentals are actually pretty similar too.Paul Green:Yes. I can imagine. And which was your first book and what led you to write that?Graham Allcott:So the first book was How to be a Productivity Ninja. And I then I've done other book since, but also did a five-year anniversary edition, and that was definitely the one that has had the most resonance, the highest sales, the one that had the most translations around the world and just seems to have had the biggest impact.And essentially, I wrote it because I noticed that a lot of the books that I'd read around productivity tended to start with this mindset of superheroes, and this mindset of perfection, and this mindset of, "Hey, here's all the stuff we need to do and let's do all of it." And I just find some of that stuff, in a way, it's too ambitious because if you set the bar that high and then you fail, then you feel bad about it. So the first words of How to be a Productivity Ninja are "dear human being". And the whole purpose of it is to say there's mindsets that you can adopt here, there's structures that you can do. It's a very practical book. But at the same time, just don't be surprised if sometimes things fall over, or you have a bad day, or it doesn't quite get to plan. And I think that's really missing from a lot of business books that I come across. It's just the sense of recognizing that we all have limits, and we all screw stuff up sometimes and life isn't perfect.Paul Green:Yeah. No. I completely agree. In fact, in my mind I classify How to be a Productivity Ninja with Atomic Habits, which I'm sure you have read by James Clear, it's another worldwide bestseller. And what I like about both of those books is, as you say, you operate in the real world. In fact, Atomic Habits starts with James Clear talking about how he could never get good habits and how he had to create a system that was built on how we actually are as humans, not what the productivity books of the 70s and 80s told us about.Graham Allcott:Yeah, for sure.Paul Green:Now let's talk about MSPs, because MSPs are the most wonderful set of people I've ever known, and I've been in this world for about seven years now, and they get more done than the average person, the average business owner. However, when I talk about them getting more done, the things that they get done are typically the technology things that their clients need them to get done because their very nature is to do the projects that bring in the revenue, to set up the services that bring in the monthly recurring revenue. And of course, to fix the things that have gone wrong. That's what the clients are ultimately paying for. But the price that MSPs pay for that is very often. The owner or the manager of the business has very little time left to actually work on their own business. And I think the vast majority of MSPs, regardless of turnover, regardless of staff, they have this problem. Do you see this with business owners everywhere, or do you think that that's a very specific thing to people working on if you like the cutting edge of technology?Graham Allcott:Yeah. That's a good question. So I love that phrase from The E-Myth, "Work on your business, not in your business." And I do think there's, generally, in every industry that I come across is a real need to take a step back and to do some quality thinking and also to think about our thinking. And so what I mean by that is setting the right ground rules for how we think, creating the space for good thinking. To have really good ideas, you don't generally need time, you need space. And so to be able to really take a step back, create the space, do different things, add creativity into the mix, all of that stuff takes a little bit of effort to design how you're going to think. Most ideas and great ideas don't happen by accident. They happen because people lay the groundwork and create the space first.So I think that's just a general thing that happens across all businesses. But as you say with MSPs, I think there's something really interesting there around so much of what the clients need you to do is react as quickly as possible. And that creates a different problem, which I see in other industries too, but I think for MSPs, this is going to be a really significant one, which is that often we confuse busyness with productivity and almost addicted to the idea of being busy. And when we solve a problem in that state of busyness, then we get that little dopamine hit, we're looking for the next one. So busy becomes addictive.And I think that's a real problem. If you're trying to grow an MSP, then ultimately you need to be able to take a step back, get away from busy, and really look at that bigger picture of how am I going to grow? What do I need to build to do that? Rather than just fighting the fires as they arrive and dealing with all the notifications as they pop up. You need to create that space and quiet landscape to be able to do that work.Paul Green:Yeah. So it's funny you talk about notifications, that was going to be my next question, which was the value of attention. That's a large part of what you've written about in your book. And MSPs, I've had conversations with MSPs on Zoom calls, in real life, and they'll sit there and this thing, their phone is just going off, it's ping, ping, ping, ping. Often they'll leave the sound on as well, which I find curious. But there's a constant flow of messages, it's Teams messages from their own staff. It's emails coming in, it's text, it's WhatsApp, and I find it exhausting and I don't even have to deal with it.I operate to a completely different way, which I think I got from reading your book, which is where the vast majority of notifications don't reach me. So any app that I put on my phone, I switch the notifications off. WhatsApp, lots of WhatsApp groups and bits and bobs like that, but the only ones that can reach me are very close friends and family. All of the rest of them, the notifications sit there for when I'm ready to do them. Is that... Well, I've got that from reading your book.Graham Allcott:Oh, yeah. That's definitely the philosophy of the book, turn notifications off. And yeah, I think there's a few things going on here. I love what you're saying about some people that you work with have the sound turned on because I sometimes find I'm on a train or something or just in a public place and someone's phone goes off, and there's noise on the phone, and I'm just like, "People still do that." People still have it turned on because I've been just working in that way for so many years. I think obviously there's going to be days where I'm going to be checking, checking, checking email, waiting for the big contract to come in or the big thing to happen. And I'm sure as MSPs there's a sense of there's always going to be a crisis around the corner that's really important and needs to be dealt with.I think partly the trick is delegating, finding the people in your business that can almost be poised by the phone ready for that to happen. And part of that delegation can then also be sharing that load so that nobody is having to be always on for an entire workday or 24/7, God forbid. But I also think there's like we need to deal with our own habits and our own addiction to busyness around notifications too. So there's a couple of apps that I use that I think are really valuable. One is called Forest. So what Forest does is it takes away that temptation that when you're working on something and you're trying to really concentrate, and then you get a bit tired in your brain, then we have this little temptation to, "Let me go and just check my phone, let me just go and see."And we have that little thing of like, "There's going to be something useful and interesting over there, so let me go and have a look at it." And what Forest does is it just grows a tree on the screen. So you set up 30 minutes as your time period to work away on the laptop and the tree takes 30 minutes to grow. And if you then go off that screen where the tree's growing to go and look at Twitter, or WhatsApp, or whatever, then the tree dies. So it's just this really small little thing that says, "Hey, why don't I just be intentional about my phone use, leave it over there, let that tree grow and build a forest, and actually while I'm doing that, just a bit more plugged into the work?" So Forest is really great. And then the other one I use a lot is one called Freedom, which is a paid for app, but there are some equivalent ones that you can get for free, or for a dollar, or whatever.But basically, just blocks apps at different times in the day. So my morning time is what I call my proactive attention. That's the time in my day where I have the best energy, I have the best attention, I'm most capable of doing the most difficult problem-solving work or the most creative work, and I want space in that time. So in that time, if I'm then tempted to go and check Instagram, or check LinkedIn, or whatever, then Freedom actually just blocks me. It just blocks the websites, it blocks the apps and stops me getting on there. So it's about basically saying, "I'm going to treat myself like an absolute child once, and then once it's set up, then I've removed those temptations," rather than doing what most people do, which is a really bad idea, which is trying to just rely on your own willpower to just check the right things at the right time and not check things that are distracting. And your own willpower is a depleting resource. It's a really bad strategy.So finding ways to just be much more intentional, mindful around those notifications and those interruptions will actually give you increased attention and give you increased ability to focus on the right stuff.Paul Green:Yeah. I love that. Thank you. I'm going to look at both of those apps and anything that buys you back 10, 20, 30 minutes of your time every day, it's got to be worth looking at that as an investment. Final question, Graham, before we just talk briefly about your books. If you were the complete opposite of a productivity ninja, indeed you have been there by your own admission earlier on in the interview, if right now you are caught between too many clients, your staff, teams, notifications and just the general noise of business, where would be a good place to get started? What would be a good first step?Graham Allcott:Ah, that's a good question. I think it depends on whether your start point is, "I want new structures and strategies," or whether it is just, "I'm just stressed out and I want to just figure something out." I'd say if you're stressed, a really good place to start is just put all of that to one side. And if that is too difficult to even contemplate, just pretend that you're calling in sick that day and you're not there, which is the productivity ninja characteristic, stealth and camouflage. Basically, just make yourself deliberately less available. And then just sit with a pen and paper and just write down all the stuff that's on your mind but hasn't been done and feels incomplete. And once you start to do that and just dump it onto the page, you'll actually have a much better sense of what you actually have to complete and also a much better ability to be able to manipulate that stuff, move it around, prioritize, see it all next to each other, see the wood from the trees.It actually gets much easier when you can see these things in front of you. So there's a term in psychology called distributed cognition, which basically means when you can see the words on the page as objects, it's much easier to make sense of them, move them around and make better decisions about them. So your decision making gets better when you get out of your head and you can see it in front of you. So I'd say that's a really good place to start. And then the other thing I'd say is just having a think about what an average... If you're just in the office or just working from home on a really typical day, just have a think about what are the things that take up time and space in your day. Number one to acknowledge them. So there's so many people I work with who don't have anything in their calendar that says lunch or doing email, and yet those are things that people do every day.So just to quantify that stuff gives you a sense of what periods in the week do I really have to do that more proactive, creative, strategic, important building work. So that's I think a really good place to start. And then just to think about what perhaps in my day are the habits that I don't like and what can I change? And so there's lots you can do just around... Obviously, my book, How to be a Productivity Ninja, is literally the start to finish of how to implement a lot of that stuff. But even just going onto YouTube and putting in what kind of to-do list apps are out there, you'll find so many people out there just sharing their favorite apps and tools.And I'm sure MSPs are not short of the magpie syndrome of, "Ooh, shiny new tool." But I think there's something really valuable about just taking that step back and starting from what do I want today to feel like? What do I want the habits that I have to actually produce? And just starting from there with almost like a blank page, not looking at your diary, not in the middle of everything, is really a good way to just design a better way of working for the next typical day that you're going to have in the office or working from home or whatever.Paul Green:I love it. Although I'm not sure about going on to YouTube.Graham Allcott:Could be a distraction in itself.Paul Green:Exactly. Yeah. You can easily lose an hour there. Graham, thank you for being on the show. Just tell us briefly a little bit more about the book and of course, where can we get it worldwide?Graham Allcott:There are various different books, and you can find links to most of what I do just at grahamallcott.com/links, so you've got links to the book and everything in there. I do a weekly email called Rev Up for the Week, which is basically one positive or productive idea for free every Sunday. It's at 4:05 PM UK time. I just picked that time at random. But the idea is it's just something positive or productive for the week ahead. So you can just get that at grahamallcott.com and sign up there. Everything else that I'm up to really is also at grahamallcott.com/links. If you go there, you'll find pretty much everything you need.Voiceover:This week's recommended book.Brian Brammeier:Everybody, I'm Brian Brammeier, and I'd like to recommend a book for you guys today. So this is how they tell me the world ends. It's a book about cybersecurity, but specifically focusing on some of the aspects of OT, which is the cousin to IT, operational technology. I'm on the board of a company that's in this space. Highly recommend you look at it so you can understand how the further looking technologies might apply to things that happen in history.Voiceover:Coming up next week.Jason Kemsley:Hey, it's Jason Kemsley from Uptime Solutions. I'm going to be on the show next week giving you the stats that you need to see if your help desk engineers are performing and if they're not, where should they be and how many tickets should they be competing each and every single day.Paul Green:Wherever you are listening to or watching this podcast right now, please do subscribe so you never miss an episode. On top of that fantastic interview with Jason revealing those help desk stats next week. We're also going to be asking, "Can it consulting be a good way to win new clients?" If you get a consulting gig with someone, how do you turn that into managed services? Don't forget, we have a ton of content on youtube.com/mspmarketing. We are adding a new video every single weekday. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.Voiceover:Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

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Episode 167Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* The best marketing strategy, part 3 of 3 'how to turn your marketing into cash' * Keep clients for longer with technology roadmaps * The author with a book all about other MSP's secrets

Featured guest:Thank you to author Mark Copeman for joining me to talk about his book of MSP's secrets.Mark is a director of Wingman MSP Marketing – an agency dedicated to starting conversations with prospects for IT support businesses around the world. He is also the author of the books, MSP Secrets Revealed and Helpdesk Habits, as well as being the creator of the online customer service video program, helpdeskhabits.com and more recently, Website Success 101.Connect with Mark on LinkedIn, check out his books and also the recommended reading on habit building:https://uk.linkedin.com/in/markcopemanhttps://www.amazon.co.uk/Helpdesk-Habits-helpdesk-superhero-indispensable/dp/1729416896https://www.amazon.co.uk/MSP-Secrets-Revealed-inspiration-practical/dp/B0875Z2JLFhttps://www.amazon.co.uk/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-Break/dp/1847941834https://www.amazon.co.uk/Power-Habit-Why-What-Change/dp/1847946240Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Subscribe to the MSP Marketing Action Monthly magazine: * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 * https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast * https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa * https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast * https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 * https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ * https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ * https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Talking about commercialising on marketing audiences and creating technology roadmaps, I suggest listening first to parts 1 and 2 from the last week's episode first: * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode165 * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode166 * The recommended book was Hook Point: How to Stand Out in a 3-Second World by Brendan Kane: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hook-Point-Stand-3-Second-World-ebook/dp/B08D56R2FW

Transcription:Voiceover:Fresh every Tuesday. For MSPs around the world, this is Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.Paul Green:Hello, and you are very welcome back to the podcast. Here's what we got in store for you this week.Mark Copeman:If you are interested in finding out tactics, techniques, ways of getting better at dealing with customers, getting better at supporting customers on the frontline and creating those relationships, then I would hope that Helpdesk Habits is for you.Paul Green:That's Mark Copeman, and as part of Author's Month, which is running throughout January, he's joining me later on in the show to talk about the books that he's written to help you as an MSP. In fact, he's got a new book coming out later on this year. We're also going to be talking about the most amazing tool that you can use to bond your clients to you for the next 5, 10, 15 years. They're called Technology Roadmaps and I'll tell you about them later on in the show.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.Paul Green:I know we're a few weeks into 2023 now, but we have been going back through the basics as part of a couple of series. And in this first part of the show, we are doing the ultimate MSP marketing strategy. It's the final part this week. So two weeks ago we talked about the first part, which was the first of the three-step strategy I recommend. That is to build multiple audiences. And then last week we talked about building a relationship with those audiences. Please go back and review those two episodes if you haven't watched them yet, because the third part this week is about commercialising those relationships. So if you have followed my advice from last week, you've built some people to listen to you and you've built a light relationship with them through great content marketing. The final step then is commercialising it.You see, doing all this marketing, we don't just do it for fun, we do it because it grows our business. Because all of us have things that we want, a lifestyle we want to lead, things we want to do with our time. We need a certain amount of income to do that. And we also just want to succeed. We want more resources, more techs. We all just want more from our businesses. So that means our marketing has got to deliver. This final stage is all about taking all of the work that you've done in the first two stages and turning it into money. You see, people only buy when they are ready to buy. This is a core marketing problem that you have to understand, or you'll never get any traction with it. People only buy when they are ready to buy. And the job that you've got is to be there in front of them at exactly that moment.Now, that's one of the reasons why we build these audiences, and why we build the relationship with them. Because we want people to remember you at that point, they're ready to bite. The reality is, most people don't, because they just... Well, put it like this, there's too much information, there's too much in our brains, there's too much noise. We just don't remember things. We can bookmark stuff, we can keep printed stuff, we can have a little mental note or write it down. But if someone sees your stuff today but isn't ready to buy for six months, the chances of them remembering you are really quite low.So what we can do instead is we can stack the odds in our favor. And this is done through making phone calls to prospects. Now, I'm not suggesting that we do cold calls. I know we've had guests on this show talking about cold calls, and personally I'm not a big fan of cold calling. Some of my guests have recommended it, that's fine. I think if you choose to go down that route, that's your choice. Me, I prefer slightly warm calls. So for example, if you were to phone... No, not you, I'm going to tell you who's going to do this in a second. But if someone was to phone up your LinkedIn connections, or to phone up the people who are in your email database, or to phone up the people you send out a printed newsletter too, that would be a very smart thing to do.The question is, who's going to phone them? What are they going to say, and how are they going to sell the business? Well, here's the secret. With this phone call, we are not looking to do any selling, no selling at all. And that's kind of cool, 'cause that means we can hire someone to do this who A, can't sell, B, hasn't been trained to sell, doesn't know how to sell. C, doesn't really know about technology and D, doesn't know anything about your business. You can teach them a little bit about technology and a little bit about business just through a few conversations. But we don't want a hardcore salesperson. What we want is a relationship builder who is good at spotting timed opportunities.Now, the best kind of person for this, I believe, is a back-to-work mom. So for your phone person, you shake the network of the important female in your life or if you are an important female, you shake your own network. These back-to-work moms do tend to know other back-to-work moms. You shake that network through Facebook or just through personal connections. Somewhere out there, there is a back-to-work mom. So she had a pretty good career before she had some kids. Now those kids have gone to school, maybe her confidence isn't quite as high as it was. Maybe she doesn't want to return to her previous job because it's not flexible enough or it's not fun anymore. There are lots of different reasons why.But what you are offering her is the chance to work two to three days a week, two to three hours a day, doing work that matters. She can come into the office to do if if she wants to hang out with other adults. Sometimes that's her primary driver. Or she can work from home and she can work flexible hours around the kids being at school. Little Johnny's got a cold tomorrow, doesn't go to school, it's no problem. You just take the day off. Can you see how that kind of flexible job, that flexible arrangement is very, very desirable for some people?So you potentially can get a back-to-work mom who's got an enormous skill set, but you can pay them a lot less than you would pay them if you hired them for the skillset, the skillset that they used to have in their old job. What you want from them primarily is their ability to communicate well on the phone. Essentially, you want someone who loves being on the phone, and their idea of fun is just picking up the phone dial numbers and chatting to people about their favorite subject, which is of course themselves and their business. This is the perfect gig for someone, for some back-to-work mum.And that's what they're doing. They're literally phoning your audiences and they're asking open questions. They're asking about people's businesses, how's it going right now? You could take the seasonality. So for example, this time of year you might say, "Hey, I know it was a few weeks ago. Did you have a good Christmas? Have you got really good plans for this year?" I mean there's a line you can't go too quickly into "Tell me about your plans for the business." The people kind of have a guard up, until you started to build a little bit of a relationship. But essentially you get them talking about their business.And then at some point your phone mom may ask them this question, "Hey, do you guys have an IT support company right now?" I don't advise you say technology company by the way. So we talk about being technology partners, but to ordinary people out there, we're still IT support companies. Obviously they don't know what an MSP is, but it's still IT support in their head. If you say to them, do you have a technology company? That's actually a slightly confusing question for them today. It might not be in the years ahead.So your back to work mom might say, "Hey, do you guys have an IT support company you work with?" And they, let's say they say yes and your back to work mom would then ask them this qualifying question and this is a cracker: "On a scale of one to 10 where one is appalling and 10 is world class, how would you rank your current IT support company?" Now if they give an answer of 10, nine or eight, they're happy. In fact, that that's the answer you'd want your clients to give out to in response to that question. So your back-to-work mom can end the conversation, thank them very much and give them a call in a year's time, see if anything has changed. But there's not an opportunity there. So if they answer seven, six or five, there's an opportunity coming up. And in fact if it's more down at the five level, that's a low score.If it's four or below, then there's an immediate opportunity. Because essentially that's a level of dissatisfaction that's so low it needs to be jumped on. So if they answer seven or below, your back-to-work mom can say something like, "Oh that's a really low score. I mean normally when I ask people that question, the score is much higher. Can you tell me why you've given them that low a score?" This is the perfect follow up question. "Can you tell me why you've given them that low a score?"And then the person that they're speaking to, your back-to-work mom is speaking to, this prospect will then, if all is well, they will tell you something that their current MSP is doing wrong. Now what's really important is that your phone mom writes this down and passes this information to you, because you can use that. Let's say for example they say, "Oh they're just so slow. We call them and they never call us back. And it's just getting hold of them to tell them about problems takes ages."If you knew that in a sales meeting four or five weeks later, if you knew that that was their primary problem with their incumbent, wouldn't you, without actually saying, "Hey, I know your problem is this," wouldn't you use that in some way? So for example, you would say, "Oh by the way, we guarantee what we do, I guarantee, in fact these are SLAs." I don't like SLAs, but SLAs have a value when your incumbent that you're up against has no ability to meet SLAs. Does that make sense?So the phone mom asks them what they're unhappy about with their incumbents and then she moves for a close. Now remember she's, she can't sell, she can't sell technology, she can't quote it. You can't close someone on the phone anyway. What she does is she says, "Look, is your contract up at any point in the next 12 months or when's? When's your contract up?" Let's say it's three, four months away. She says, "Look, I think it'll be worth you having just a 15-minute conversation with you. He's our technology strategist, and the owner of the business and he can just advise you, just ask you a few questions and advise you on some technology stuff that I can't because I'm not a technology person."And then she can use the either or close. The either or is this, where she can say, "So look, Dave's available either on Monday afternoon or Wednesday morning just for a 15-minute video call. Which will be better for you, Monday afternoon or Wednesday morning?" That's the either or. So phone mom books you a 15-minute video call with you.Now she could spend the week, weeks and weeks phoning people and she might only get one of these a week. But wouldn't you just be delighted to have that video meeting, right? That's probably more than you, that might be more than you're doing right now. Even just one meeting a week. And we're talking here about qualified prospects. They're qualified because we know they've got an IT support company. We know that they're unhappy with them. You may even have asked, or she may have asked on your behalf, how many staff they've got or how many computers. This is a really good prospect. And you know it will go well or it has gone well if the 15-minute meeting actually lasts 30 to 45 minutes. That's when you know things are very much going your way. And this is hallelujah moment. It really is.Because your job on that video call is to book yourself a proper sales meeting with them. Most MSPs I speak to say, "Look, if you can get me in front of a prospect, I will close the sale seven or eight times out of 10." Most MSPs say that. That's great. That's what we've just delivered here. We've just delivered you a meeting with a prospect. And that is pretty much it.Now there are other things that you can do, which we will cover off in future episodes of the podcast. In fact, we've talked about them in the past. Go and look up things like impact boxes and good sales proposals. But I think for now we'll stop there, because you now have the three steps of the ultimate MSP marketing strategy. And by the way, if you have any questions on this at all, you can just drop me an email. It's the real me at the other end. And I will reply to you, I reply to every single comment I get about this show. Just email me. Hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.Voiceover:Here's this week's clever idea.Paul Green:That's one series finished. And let's finish a second series now, because in this part of the show we've been talking in the last couple of weeks about how to sell more to your existing clients. So two weeks ago we talked about the profit matrix. Last week we talked about strategic reviews. I have one final tool that makes these three perfect and it is technology roadmaps. Now, technology roadmap is actually directly linked into the strategic review. In fact, it'll be pretty tough, pretty hard to do a technology roadmap unless you've done strategic reviews, because you take the answers from strategic reviews and you flow those into a technology roadmap. Which is literally a roadmap for them of their future technology, what they're going to invest in, what they're going to change, what the plan is.And the software that you can use to create these, a lot of the vCCO software is pretty good at that. Or you could just put something together yourself in PowerPoint or Word. We give a template to our MSP marketing edge members just to make it easy. But the goal here is to produce a plan as far into the future as you dare look. That might be 12 months, probably more three years, maybe even five years. And based on your strategic review and what you talked about, you lay out for them where you think their technology should go, what kind of changes they should make, and where they need to invest in their business. And then you get essentially a sign-off from the client. And obviously there's no real commitment from them. But it's more an emotional sign-off that they're looking at this and saying, "Yeah, this is a good plan. This is what we are planning to do over the next three years, five years, whatsoever."Now there are many, many advantages of a technology roadmap. The biggest advantage is you are locking your client in emotionally. I said to you right at the beginning of the podcast that this tool is a retention tool that keeps them for 5, 10, 15 years. They won't want to leave you. They would rather sell their children than leave you, because you are literally their strategic IT planning partner. You are laying out everything that they're going to do in the years ahead. And they will perceive not just in the noggin, but more importantly in their heart, in their emotions, they will perceive that if you go, you take away their technology plans.Even though they'd got the document, a document is just a formalisation of what's in your head of your ability to deliver a technology strategy. They will be more satisfied, they will feel that you are operating at a higher level. They won't mind when the prices go up, and the retention will go through the roof. Unless of course they go bust, they get sold, or you make a massive technology screw up. And we all know that sometimes you lose clients over those, whether it's your fault or not, it's just the way it goes.But the technology roadmap, you don't overthink it. It's simply your ability of laying out what their future technology plan should be. I've forgotten one of the other benefits. A benefit for them is they can plan future cash flow spend. So if they know for example, in 12 months' time they're getting rid of their servers, they're transitioning over to the cloud and that's going to cost $5,000 for the project, then they can make sure they budget that $5,000. Also, you can actually schedule that time in as well. If you know you've got a project, a transition project coming up in 12 months time, it's in your diary. You can make sure you've got enough technical resource to implement that. So those are the three ways to upsell your clients. The profit matrix, the strategic review, and the technology roadmap. The three of them, they work together to help you generate more revenue from your existing clients while making your retention better than it's ever been.Voiceover:Paul's blatant plug. Blatant plug.Paul Green:So look, if you love this podcast and you love reading stuff on my website or maybe even watching stuff on YouTube, then why not invest in this? It's the MSP Marketing Action Monthly. It's my brand new printed newsletter, which we now ship out to MSPs all around the world. So yes, it's a physical print newsletter. We give you digital copies as well. And the most insane bundle of bonuses that you will ever see. Best part is you don't even have to spend any money. You can do a 30 day trial of this brand new MSP marketing action monthly. All you have to do is go to Paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action. Go and have a look now. Paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action.Voiceover:The big big interview.Mark Copeman:Hi there Paul. My name is Mark Copeman. I'm the author of two books currently, Helpdesk Habits and MSP Secrets Revealed. And on top of that, I've been in the channel for the last, 12 years or so. I love every moment of it. I think the IT industry is a fabulous place to be.Paul Green:Yes it is. And what's particularly fabulous about it is meeting people like you, Mark. And I'm genuinely delighted to have become friends with you over the last couple of years 'cause I needed a few more friends, and also to be able to invite you back onto this podcast. You have featured before, but you're back here as part of Authors' Month. So we have had some epic authors as part of this special series of guest interviews, and I did want to make sure that we got an MSP-specific author in there as well. So you've written a couple of books and let's focus in, first of all on Helpdesk Habits. 'Cause I think I'm right in saying that was your first book. What was the big message of Helpdesk Habits?Mark Copeman:Yes, it was. And I'm not sure you should really be including me on an epic list, but I'll go with an okay list. I'm happy with that. And everybody, so many people say to you, "Oh I want to write a book. Oh I really wish I could write a book," and so on. And when I exited my SAS business customer thermometer in 2018, I kind of swung back in this very chair and I thought, I don't really know what to do next. I didn't have a plan. And so I thought, "Okay, well maybe I should write the book that I've always wanted to write." And so this was born out of the previous five years or so of working with hundreds of MSPs around the world on their CSAT, on their customer service, on the customer experience. And I saw lots of common issues and thought I should address them.And so I decided to become that first-time author. I actually loved the process for the most part, until you got through to the third edit at the end. And then I thought the thing was terrible. However, three plus years on, it continues to sell every day and it blows my mind. So it's a proud moment. It's a lovely moment to receive your first proof through the post. I'll never forget that.Paul Green:Yes, I bet it is. And just let us, I've been asking some of our author guests to give us the behind the scenes of what it's like to be an author. You sell a copy or a couple of copies of Helpdesk Habits every day. I've got a copy somewhere in my bookshelves here, but I'm guessing it's about 10 pounds, 12 pounds on the cover price. How much of that, once Amazon's have its share and the publisher, if there's a publisher, have had their share, how much of that actually gets to you?Mark Copeman:Yeah, and you are making the presumption it's only two copies a day, Paul. Some days it's actually genuinely way more than that. And I can't believe it. Every day is different. From memory. I think I earn about three or four pounds per book, something along those lines. And I mean, I don't know if you want to get into the whole Amazon direct publishing thing, but it's a tremendous way for people like me, who was never ever going to get hold of a publisher in a sensible fashion, to put something out to the world and on a very, very easy way.Paul Green:Oh yeah, I mean Amazon, we won't go down that route, but Amazon has completely democratised niche publishing. '.Cause that's what we're talking about here is very niche publishing and clearly selling three copies a day is a very big thing. That was sarcasm there, so I apologise for that. So obviously Helpdesk Habits was where you got started. I know you have an enormous amount to talk about. And when it comes to habits, who should read Helpdesk Habits? Is it for service delivery managers? Is it for technicians? What level of technicians? Is it for the owners? Is it for everyone?Mark Copeman:I hate saying this, but probably all of the above. And I know that because that there's an online program off the back of that, because guess what? You don't get rich being an author, a self-published author. So the book actually formed the basis for the online program. And I know, from that, that people right across MSP businesses, across all the functions have been through that program. And we joke about the three copies a day. 25 copies were bought a couple of days ago as we sit here and record this. And I'll never know, but I have a suspicion that somebody bought those 25 copies to give to everybody in the office. Because I know that that's happened before. So yeah, if you are interested in finding out tactics, techniques, ways of getting better at dealing with customers, getting better at supporting customers on the frontline and creating those relationships, then I would hope that Helpdesk Habits is for you.And I guess the thing I would tack onto that, I brought this habits word in because I've seen over the years, you pick up on tactics and so on. And very, very quickly you revert back to the stuff you've always done. And there's some physiological reasons for that, which I absolutely won't bore you with now unless you ask me about them. So I thought, let's bring in the habits element, so that there is a chance therefore people take on a particular tactic or something I suggest, there's 50 in the book, that there's a chance that will stick over time by the use of habits and overloading that across all the different tactics and techniques which I talk about.Paul Green:Yeah, that's a great observation. I'm sure Mark, that you've read Atomic Habits, which is a great book by James Clear. James was too busy to come on tour this month, so maybe we'll get him on-Mark Copeman:He sent me instead.Paul Green:Yeah he did. But maybe he'll be here for next year. But some of the things, and for every MSP listening, watching this, Atomic Habits is a must-read or a must-listen.Mark Copeman:The other one I throw in though along those lines is Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habits as well. Which is the first one I read. And some of the studies into a lot of this research I guess is only about 30, 40 years old. That's when they discovered the stuff that's going on inside the brain. And he describes all sorts of different psychological experiments and observations that he's done his research around. It's absolutely fascinating. So yeah, that's what really got me into it.Paul Green:Yeah, no it is, it's an utterly fascinating area, particularly where they're looking at leveraging how we actually work, as opposed to how people thought the brain worked in a lot of the productivity advice of yesteryear as it were. Right, let's move on to your second book. So what drove you to want to pull together what became now the first volume of MSP Secrets Revealed?Mark Copeman:I guess my love of the collaboration that goes on in our industry. Having come from a marketing background, if you had a customer asking two agencies to work together, both sides would sort of nod politely and then laugh behind the scenes. It's so different in our industry. And I see competitors collaborating in the same town or city, and I think it's a wonderful thing. And that is what inspired me, really, to write the book. I've always always loved listening to people talking about their war stories, explaining how they do things, which I guess is where the "secrets" word came from. And I thought, wouldn't it be brilliant to go out to the industry? It's cheating a little bit because I didn't actually write every single word, but let me tell you, it's not straightforward curating either. So it's a combination of, I think it's about 85 different IT professionals' words, coupled with a sprinkling of my words around the edge and some editing as well. Obviously I didn't need to edit your secret, Paul, 'cause it was absolutely perfect.Paul Green:Ah, get out. Get out. As a former professional journalist myself, it was how I made my living for 13 years, I completely agree with you. It's harder to edit other people's work than it is to create your own work. So I think with MSP Secrets Revealed you probably made your life hard there. But it was such an original book. Was that a 2020 book?Mark Copeman:Yeah, it was just as the pandemic was starting actually. And I thought it would take me maybe three months to pull together a hundred odd secrets and it took me closer to nine I think, and then another four months to edit and write it and all the rest of it. So it was way later than I thought. It didn't matter and it was quite therapeutic, I suppose, to release it at that very, very difficult time for the world. So yeah, out it went and as a... Everybody that actually submitted a secret, I sent them a copy of the book and said thank you. I signed it as well, so unfortunately the value went down a little, but nobody seemed to mind about that. So no, it was... You got your copy there, look at that. There we go.Paul Green:I have, and I'll let you into a secret, which I don't think I've told you before, which is, this book MSP Secrets Revealed doesn't only... Well, the reason it has a little place on my desk is because if I'm stuck for something to talk about in the podcast, or if I've got to write some content for my website and I don't know what to talk about, I dip into this. And there's actually, there's three or four books, all MSP books, we've got Jennifer Bleam's book there, I've got Nigel Moore's book and then there's your book. So thank you. Because even prolific content producers such as myself have days where we sit there with our head in our hands and we are thinking, "What am I going to write about?" And the answer is always to be inspired by other people.And in fact, this is why I'm so excited. 'Cause I've nearly used all of your book now, I'm so excited that you have a second edition. So I believe that as we're sitting here now at the start of 2023, do you know how many months you are away from getting this published? Or are you still sort of stuck in editing hell with that? Oh look at that. There we go. For those of you watching on YouTube, you can see the exclusive blue cover. It's amazing. There's nothing inside at the moment, but it's basically the red cover of the first edition, but it's blue. How far into the process are you, Mark?Mark Copeman:So I've got all my secrets now. I'm in very much editing phase. And I don't know an exact date of release yet, but I would hope that it will be three years after the first one. So if I shoot for April, I will keep my fingers crossed on that. And yeah, I can't wait to get to number two. Because obviously if you are running out of content, Paul, I need to help you out a little bit. So hopefully you and many thousands of others will benefit from many other people's advice, with a little sprinkling of mine put in there as well.Paul Green:Ah, you're just too kind. You really are. So thank you. And do you think there'll be a third? I realise asking an author in the middle of production hell on their second book, asking them about the third is probably the wrong question. In fact, don't even answer that one. Don't even answer that one.Mark Copeman:I don't know. Is this your answer? I don't know. What's interesting is that I... There's a change of themes. Bearing in mind the submissions for the previous one would've been four years previous. So I'm really enjoying the mergers and acquisitions elements to this. I felt that there will be more of that sort of stuff coming through with the industry so buoyant, so many things going on. I thought it was interesting to get people's experiences in that space as well. So that wasn't part of the first book and that's absolutely going to be part of the second one.Paul Green:Okay. Final question, Mark, and I'm going to ask you to reveal a secret, a secret in the soon to be published book. Can you delve into... And appreciate you may need to go over to a Word document on your computer or something. But can you delve into your submissions? Go and grab one for us and give us the edited highlights of one of the secrets that's going to be in your upcoming book.Mark Copeman:That is massively putting me on the spot, because I need to reach for all my bits and pieces. Can I give you one from the current one, which is a bit of a favorite of mine? Is that going to be acceptable to you?Paul Green:Yeah, go on then. Go on. That means you'll have to come back onto the show next year to talk about the second one.Mark Copeman:There we go. I'll keep it super brief. And it's very, very hard to choose a favorite. But one of the things I think is so so so appropriate in our MSP world is the concept of don't sell commodity. And I love that concept and it's all born around the fact that you can buy a cup of coffee for a pound, for a dollar, for $5. And if you actually troll around the internet, the most expensive cup you'll find is about a hundred bucks. And it's essentially the same thing, but what is the difference in value? It's the wrap that is put around the edge. It's the customer experience element, it's the people you're buying it from, it's the location, it's all those things.And I think in our increasingly commoditized industry, a lot of people trying to sell the same things to similar people, having that wrap around the edge and not selling the commodity, but we're reminding yourself that people buy from people is such an important part of the equation. So yeah, that's just one off the top of my head from episode one, but there's plenty more gems coming in episode two.Paul Green:Okay Mark, thank you so much for joining me on the show yet again. I know you will be a perennial guest in the years ahead, especially if you do keep publishing these books. I also know that, as you said earlier, that being an author doesn't pay the bills. It's just a very nice thing to do. It's good positioning, it's great to get involved with lots of interesting people. What is your day job? And tell us how we can get in touch with you.Mark Copeman:Aside from my Helpdesk Habits program, on the first November, 2022, let's date that correctly. Really excited to join a dedicated MSP marketing agency called Wingman MSP Marketing. I've been working with them for the last 12 months or so, and it was a natural partnership. So I became a shareholder, a director and employee of the team. And it's now brilliant because I used to be solo and I'd spent a lot of time advising people and they would tell me it was great advice, Mark, but unfortunately do very little with it. And it was driving me crazy.So I needed a team behind me to actually deliver on the crazy ideas that I come up with and the suggestions that I make for people. So yeah, if you visit Wingmanmspmarketing.com, you'll find out all about us and a bit more about me. I even have some nice photos taken of me, Paul, so I look nearly as good as you do. But it was, there was a lot of Photoshop needed, I'm afraid.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast, this week's recommended book.Brendan Kane:Hi, my name is Brendan Kane and the book that I'm going to recommend is actually my book. And the reason I'm doing it is because we live in a world where there's over 4 billion content creators on the planet, and it's critical to figure out how to stand out and rise above the noise. So I'd highly recommend checking out "Hook Point: How to stand out in a 3-second world."Voiceover:Coming up. Coming up next week.Graham Allcott:Hi, I'm Graham Allcott, author of "How to Be a Productivity Ninja," and I'm coming up on the show next week to talk about busyness and how to create more space and deal with notifications and basically make your MSP much more productive.Paul Green:The platform that you are listening to this podcast on right now, or indeed watching it, please subscribe. Not only does it help you make sure you never miss an episode, but it helps me to reach more wonderful MSPs like you and I thank you for it. So as well as our interview with Graham next week continuing Authors' month, we're also going to be talking about invoicing. I've got a suggested invoice format for you that's going to help retention rather than make your clients think, "Oh, how much are these guys charging us?" We have got a YouTube channel with tons more free content for you. Just go to youtube.com/mspmarketing and join me next Tuesday. Have a very profitable week in your MSP.Voiceover:Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's, MSP Marketing Podcast.

Hook Point: How to Stand Out in a 3-Second World

Helpdesk Habits: Become a helpdesk superhero and make yourself indispensable.

MSP Secrets Revealed: 101 gems of inspiration, stories & practical advice for managed service provider owners

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

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Episode 166Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* The best marketing strategy, part 2 of 3 'create an unfair advantage for your MSP by building a relationship with your audiences' * Sell more to current clients by getting the very best out of 'strategic reviews' * An expert joins me to share how to get more referrals by improving retention

Featured guest:Thank you to Joey Coleman, author of Never Lose a Customer Again, for joining me to talk about how to get more referrals by improving retention.Joey helps companies keep their customers. An award-winning speaker, he shares his First 100 Days® methodology for improving customer experience/retention with organisations around the world (e.g., Whirlpool, Volkswagen Australia, and Zappos). His Wall Street Journal #2 best selling book Never Lose a Customer Again shows how to turn any sale into a lifelong customer.Connect with Joey on LinkedIn, read / listen to his book and check out the Experience This! podcast:https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeycoleman1https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Never-Lose-a-Customer-Again-Audiobook/B07BDQKDRDhttps://www.amazon.co.uk/Never-Lose-Customer-Again-Lifelong/dp/0735220034https://dangingiss.com/experience-this/Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Subscribe to the MSP Marketing Action Monthly magazine: * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 * https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast * https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa * https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast * https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 * https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ * https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ * https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * On the subject of content marketing, I suggested listening back to episode 164 to hear the conversation with Marcus Sheridan, author of They Ask, You Answer * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode164 * Talking about building marketing relationships and conducting strategic reviews, listen to last week's episode first: * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode165 * The recommended book was The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ideal-Team-Player-Recognize-Cultivate-ebook/dp/B01B6AEJJ0

Transcription:Voiceover:Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world, this is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:Hello and welcome back to the podcast. We got a cracker for you this week. Here's what's happening.Joey Coleman:There's a problem that most organisations are facing and that is the relationship they have with their existing customers and whether that's going to lead to more business in the future or whether they need to be worried about those folks leaving.Paul Green:That's Joey Coleman. He's the author of Never Lose a Customer Again. And as part of author's month, right throughout January, he'll be joining me on the show later on today with loads of great retention advice for you. We'll also be talking about strategic reviews. They are a very useful tool, not only for retention, but also for selling your clients more monthly recurring revenue.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:So, we are doing a few series at the moment to get us into better marketing for all MSPs in 2023. And in this first part of the show, we started last week talking about the ultimate MSP marketing strategy. Now, last week we talked about the first step, which is building multiple audiences. Today, I want to talk about the second step of that strategy, which is to build a relationship with those audiences. So, if you haven't heard last week's show yet, please do go back and have a listen to that, so I don't have to recap it now.But once you've built yourself up some audiences, as we discussed last week, the whole point of this strategy is to then build a relationship with them. Now, why do we want to try to do that? Simply because when you come to sell your services to a prospect, you normally find yourself up against all the other MSPs that they've been speaking to and everyone's in the same boat in that the customer, the potential client, the prospect, knows nothing about technology. They know nothing about the MSPs around. And essentially, all of it is just this big scary pit of nothingness, unawareness. They don't really know anything.That's not a great position to go into because you could be, and indeed, you probably are, the best MSP in your area, but the prospect is never going to know that, then that's not going to come over to them through the marketing. It's almost impossible to show that you are genuinely the highest quality through your marketing. Well, certainly it is possible, but it's very, very difficult unless you really build up your marketing.So, we don't want you going into any sales situation where you are seen to be the same as all the other MSPs you're in competition with. I believe in stacking the odds in your favor. I believe in giving you a massively unfair advantage against your competitors. And one of the ways that you can do that is to build relationships with prospects before you ever sit down with them. Now, this is typically done through content marketing. So, we take educational content, we take entertaining content, we put the two together and we create edutainment. We educate people and we entertain them at the same time. That's the content marketing that I'm talking about.I do not mean content that is selling to them. There's nothing wrong with trying to sell to people in content, but you can't do it all the time because you'll never build a relationship with people. Instead, you've got to educate them, you've got to entertain them, you've got to give some value. This is what content marketing is all about and it's very easy to look at all the content that's being produced and there is so much content that's been produced. Isn't that there a stat knocking around at the moment that something like 90% of all the information that humans have ever produced ever, has been produced in the last five years? I don't know if someone's made that up or whether or not that's a real stat, but it certainly feels that way, doesn't it?It's not as if everyone, anyone has ever sat there and thought, "There's just nothing to read. There's not enough content." There's so much out there and that may have put you off producing your own content, but actually that's the wrong thing to do. You've got to take part in this game because content is how we build relationships. If you look at the things that you can do as a person to build authority, to build credibility, to build a relationship with people, they all relate down to producing content.Look at what I'm doing here. I'm standing looking at a camera, talking into a microphone, creating content, creating podcast content. There's millions of hours of other podcast content out there, but you've chosen to listen to this one. And thank you very much for that because the value that you get from the edutainment is worth the time swap, I guess. It's worth you giving up your time or having me on in the background while you're walking your dog or whatever it is that you're doing right now. That's the point of this. You build the relationship with people through the content, regardless of what all of the people are trying to do.Now, we must never forget that the prospects we're trying to reach, the average business owner or manager, they don't know what they don't know about technology, about IT, about cybersecurity. They literally haven't got a clue. And I'm not being offensive when I say that. They really don't have a clue and I know they don't have a clue and that's why we must educate them and entertain them at their level. We mustn't talk about admin settings. We mustn't talk about ransomware attacks in any more than educating people about how easily it can start and how it's most likely to start in their email inbox. We've got to educate them and entertain them about stuff that is relevant to them.So, you've got to understand your audience. What drives them? What do they want? What do they need? What do they fear? What keeps them awake at night? What's the thing they want more than anything else? Well, we can pretty much guess regardless of which niche or geographical area you're in. They want business growth. They want happier staff. They want more clients. They want more revenue. They want more net profit. They want it to be easier. We all just want it to be easier.And can you think of ways that technology can make things easier for them? Well, I can think of a million ways and I'm not even an MSP. I'm not a technology guy, but I've spent seven years talking to technology people and that rubs off on you and I have an idea of how technology just makes business easier. That's the stuff we want to educate them about because it's relevant to them and if it's relevant, it's more of interest, they're more likely to consume it.And if they consume it, if they engage with it at the point they're ready to buy, they are much more likely to see you standing out from all the other MSPs. That's the goal here. It's about on the day they're ready to buy. You can't make someone buy before they're ready. People only buy when they're ready to buy. But on that day, we want all those other MSPs that you're in competition with to be here and we want you to be slightly above it because you've built a slight relationship with that person.And maybe you've done it through content marketing, maybe it's been through good multi-touch point marketing. You could take your LinkedIn audience, your email database, and just from those databases, someone who has seen your posts on LinkedIn and maybe received a message from you on LinkedIn and read your LinkedIn newsletter, and opened some emails from you and clicked through to your website and enjoyed looking at that. Maybe even watched a video on your YouTube channel, well, maybe even seeing you on another platform or even met you in real life, there is a certain level. It's a low level, but there is a certain level of relationship there and that's what pushes you up.So, practical matters, how do you actually do this? Well, last week I recommended you build up your LinkedIn connections and you build up your email database. So, on a practical level, you first of all you post content on LinkedIn every day, and I'm talking six to seven days a week. Stop at five if you want. It doesn't really matter. I don't do LinkedIn weekends, but that's a personal preference. That's a personal choice. You can do it seven days a week, but put some content on LinkedIn once a day every single day of the week.The second thing that you need to do then is send out an educational email once a week. So, that's our rhythm. Social media goes out daily. Emails go out weekly. There is a monthly one which is sending out a printed newsletter, but we'll cover that off in a future podcast and in fact, we have spoken about it in previous podcasts as well. You can go searching for that. Daily social media weekly, sending out an email.And by the way, best practice on that email is you send them out an email with a bit of a summary. A tease, something intriguing to get them to click the link and go and read the full article on your website. That's what we want them to do. So, you can use this to drive traffic to your website as well.Practically, I guess the final question that you might have about this is, "Well, what do I write about, Paul?" Well, that's easy. There is a ton of content that's sitting there for you and it will be suggested by your technicians and your existing clients and your prospects. Every time you have a sales meeting and they ask you a question and you think, "Ooh, I get that question a lot," that's a piece of content. Every time you are in a strategic review and a client says something to you or asks you a question, "You think that's a good question."That's something an ordinary person, an ordinary business owner would want to know. You write it down, it becomes a piece of content. There's a great book for this. Well, you'll have heard Marcus Sheridan just a couple of weeks ago on the podcast, the author of They Ask, You Answer. It's the best, best book I've ever read on content marketing. And it's quite in depth, but it certainly tells you the content that people want to read. They have questions about how to buy what it is that you sell and just general technology questions and answer those questions. That is the easiest way to put out content.Last week, we talked about building multiple audiences. This week, we've talked about building a relationship with them. There's one final step on that, we're going to cover it off next week, which is how you commercialise those audiences.Voiceover:Here's this week's clever idea.Paul Green:The other series that we are running right now in the podcast is how to upsell your existing clients. Last week we talked about the profit matrix. Again, please go back and review that if you haven't already listened to it, because today we're talking about something I mentioned just a few minutes ago, strategic reviews. Now, you may know these as quarterly business reviews, QBRs, technology reviews. They're all just different names for the same thing. I'd like to call them a strategic review because the value in this review is at the strategic level.A strategic review is where you sit down with your existing clients and you review their technology strategically. It's as simple as that. What it shouldn't be and what it must not be is a look backwards at your performance, at tickets, at issues and problems. If you go into a session and it becomes a beat you up session, you're A, not going to get anything out of it and B, you're going to feel a bit crappy at the end of it.And also, you're not going to want to repeat them in the future, so I will tell you in a second how to [inaudible 00:11:12] or get rid of any potential problems before you do the meeting. But the purpose of this meeting is to sit down and look forward. It's to sit down and ask the clients that you've got some questions, some open questions about their favorite subject. And everyone's favorite subject is, of course, themselves, themselves and their business.So, you are positioning yourself with these meetings as their technology strategist. We could even go as far as saying VCIO, Virtual Chief Information Officer. I appreciate that's there's probably a big leap from just doing strategic review to being a full proper VCIO. And indeed, many of your clients neither need or want something like that. But it is important that you position yourself at a strategic level because that's where the big cash lies. And also, they come to rely upon you, they will trust you more. They will have a better relationship with you. The more strategic that they perceive you to be.So, it's a strategic review. First thing you do is you book it in with your client, you ring them or you send them a letter. Actually, physically ship them a letter in the post, in the mail, or if you have to just send them an email, although we all know that's the least impactful way to do. And you say to them, "Hey, I would like to take you out to lunch just for an hour at so-and-so restaurant." We'll talk about your choice of restaurant in a second. "And we're going to do something called a strategic review where we are going to review your plans for the next 12 to 36 months and look at your technology. And how we can make sure the technology gets you where you want to go faster and in no way, holds you back."It's really important they understand what the purpose of this meeting is, okay? So, let's say you send out a letter to a client and you then follow them up because obviously, you don't hear anything because no one responds to these things anytime. If you don't hear from them, you give them a call and you say, "Hey, I sent you a letter, sent you an email, whatsoever. Just called in to get that booked in." And you do diaries and you compare calendars.Let's say you're meeting them two weeks on Thursday. So, the next thing is you set a venue. And I recommend you go and find a local restaurant in town that's independently owned and operated. No franchises. No chains. Really important that you are seen to be supporting local businesses. Why? Because local businesses have got to stick together, right? You're a local business. The chances are your client is a local business. If this is a client that's out of town, then you pick a restaurant in their town, an independent restaurant.And you book your table and in fact, you ring up the restaurant owner and you say, "Hey, I want to have a table at the back of the restaurant, please. A little bit of privacy if possible, but we want to be at the back." And when you get there, you make sure that your client sits with their back to the restaurant. So, you sit with your back against the wall, seeing all the restaurant. They sit with their back to the restaurant.Why do you do that? Well, think it through. If they're sat with nothing to look at than you, they're completely 100% focused on you during the strategic review. You've just got to be good enough not to be constantly looking up at all the interesting people in the restaurant. So, that's the venue that you set.If you are going to do a lot of strategic reviews in the same town or in the same restaurant, go and do a deal with the owner and say, "Hey, I'm going to be booking 20 lunch meetings here in the next few months. Can we do a deal, please? Can we have a discount?" Or something like that. "Because all of these are the wealthy, well-off business owners that you want in your restaurant, and I'm going to bring 20 of them in here, so some discount would be nice, please. At the very least, I want that table and I want to have it every time." That's a fair thing to do, isn't it? Everyone's open to a deal if you go in and give them a reason for a deal.Now, what if there is an issue? What if you are having some issues with that client? Maybe there's some outstanding tickets or problems or unhappiness. You have to resolve those things before your strategic review. Well, if you're in a strategic review and problems and issues keep coming up, you literally might as well not bother. So, if you're in dispute with a client, don't bother.If it's just some minor things that haven't been sorted, then the week before, jump in, get your hands dirty. Get those things sorted and send an email or phone your client, it will be better. And say, "Hey, I'm just conscious that Dave on your team has been having issues with X, Y, Z. And we've got that sorted now. And I've jumped in and sorted that out myself, so that's not a problem. Can you check in with Dave? We'll check with Dave. Can you check with Dave, please?" Just to make sure that everyone is happy, so essentially you remove any possibility.And then when you start any possibility of it being a whinging session, when you start the strategic review, you acknowledge it. You say, "Hey, I know we've had a few problems recently. As you know, we got that sorted out with Dave last week, and we have enhanced our own internal systems, procedures, whatever, to make sure that doesn't happen again." It's almost like the elephant in the room. Sometimes, you need to address it to move on from it.Then we get into the actual strategic review itself. The reason I want you to take them out to lunch is because I want you to have an hour of their quality time. And when I say quality, I mean, quality with their brain. I want you to have a very high-level conversation with them. You can't do that in their office because in their office they're looking at their phone, they're looking at their laptop. They're being distracted by their staff. They're listening to what their staff are doing behind closed doors. In your office, it's the reverse. You're not really focused on the meeting. You've got to get out.And the beauty of lunch as opposed to just meeting for a coffee or sitting in a hotel lobby, the beauty of lunch is it guarantees you an hour because that's what you need. You need an hour for this strategic review. In fact, if you do do a deal with a local restaurant owner, you may say to them, "Please, can you slow the service down a bit?"Often people are rushing lunch, aren't they? Because they want to get to lunch and get back to the office. But you might say to the restaurant owner, "Just slow things down. Don't worry. Tell your waiter they'll still get a great tip at the end of it. In fact, I'll tip better if we are here for more than 60 minutes," than if the service is too quick.So, you sit down. You agree the basic rules, phones on silent, upside down on the table. You both have to do that. I highly recommend you take notes on a physical pad if you can, rather than on a laptop or an iPad. I appreciate that's not the very modern digital way to do it, but I think it's more valuable to be concentrating on the person that you're talking to than any other distractions. In fact, if you do use a laptop or a tablet, please don't connect it to the internet, so you can't see the team's messages and all the other rubbish that's going to distract you from this important meeting.The strategic review then is basically you asking them about the future. Ask big open questions. What are your plans for the next year? What about in three years' time? Where do you see yourselves down the line? What are your competitors doing? What do you guys need to do faster? What do you need to do more of? What do you need to do less of?What's annoying your staff? Don't ask that one if it's you that's annoying their staff. What frustrations have you got? What could hold you back? If I could wave a magic wand and change something that would help you get to your goals faster, what would that be? What keeps you up at night? What do you lie in bed worrying about?What we are looking to do is we are looking to shift the answers that they'll give you from being head answers to being heart answers. When you first start asking someone those questions, I mean obviously, they're willing to have this conversation because it's their love, it's their baby, it's their business. But initially, they'll just give you head answers. Almost like the answers they think you want to hear.We want to get to a point where you and they have bonded so much that they are starting to give you heart answers. Heart answers are what they truly feel and what they're truly worried about. The most powerful thing is if someone says to you, "I just lie ahead, I lie awake in bed at night and I just lie there and I think, 'I don't know how we're going to make payroll.'" Because that's normal, isn't it? That's all businesses go through at some point.And if you can get someone at that emotional level while they're opening up to you emotionally, then not only are you going to strengthen your bond with them, but you can serve them better because you understand exactly what's driving with them. And also, you can sell more stuff to them, if it's appropriate. I'm not suggesting in any way that this is an exercise in selling something for the sake of it.But let's be honest, all of your clients, you know could sell more monthly recurring revenue services to that would help them. You can help them be better protected. You can help them be more productive, more efficient, communicate better, collaborate better. Remove blocks, remove problems. Speed things up. You know this because you are a genius. Because you're a technical genius, but they don't know this because they're ordinary. They're ordinary business owners and managers, so they don't get it at all.This is why you need to get those heart answers out of them, so you can talk about them. And then you would suggest some stuff. You might say, "Well, hey, look, I think what we could do here is we could shut down that 1998 server that you've got in your office. We can move you fully over to the Cloud. That's going to solve that problem you were talking about having these new premises here, And with your staff hybrid working, we can make all of that go away with one project. Would you like me to get a proposal, a quote together for that?"And of course, they'll say yes. All we're doing here is we're opening doors. We're opening doors for new projects, we're opening doors for new monthly recurring revenue services. Now, there is a third part to this. We talked last week about the profit matrix. We've just talked about strategic reviews.Next week, we're going to talk about the real long-term strategic tool. The thing that turns any client into a bonded client, who literally will never ever leave you. In fact, they would rather sell their children than leave you because you are so critical to their business. It's called a technology roadmap. And I'll tell you all about that in next week's podcast.Voiceover:Paul's blatant plug.Paul Green:How do you fancy a guaranteed increase in your monthly recurring revenue of at least $10,000, or whatever that is in your local currency, a month as a guaranteed increase? I don't think there's a single MSP on the planet that wouldn't say, "Yes, please" to something like that. Well, I have a massive bonus, which is available to you if and when you become a subscriber to this. It's my brand new launch. We launched it at the backend of last year. It's called the MSP Marketing Action Monthly. And it's a physical printed newsletter that we send out to you.We ship it to your door every single month. Of course, you get digital copies as well, but it also comes with some amazing bonuses. And one of those is the opportunity to win working with me for 18 months, growing your MSP and growing its monthly recurring revenue. I'll put all the details on a webpage for you to go and have a look. Just go to paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action.Voiceover:The big interview.Joey Coleman:Hey, everyone. My name is Joey Coleman. I'm the author of Never Lose a Customer Again. And for the last 20 years, I've helped organisations around the world to think differently about how they keep their customers.Paul Green:And it's so cool to hear your voice, Joey, because I've enjoyed 9 hours and 28 minutes of your voice, mostly while I've been running around the village where I live. You were the book of choice for me for a week and a half, I think it was. Listening to Never Lose a Customer Again, and I enjoyed every single second of it. And I knew we had to get you here during author's month, so thank you so much for joining us.Joey Coleman:Thank you so much and thanks for letting me travel around the village with you in your ears while you were going. It's very kind. And it's one of the things I love best about having a book that's available as an audiobook is that folks can have that interaction, so that when we get to connect today, it feels like a little bit we already know each other, so I appreciate that.Paul Green:Exactly. And actually, it's quite rarely for authors, it's you that reads the Audible and you did an absolute top job. I can't imagine how many hours. In fact, well, I'll ask you at the end of the interview how many hours of recording you did for a nine and a half hour book, because I'd love to get the insight to that. But your book is, it's one of those very special ones and this doesn't happen to me very often these days that I hear the book and then I immediately go and buy a paperback copy of it. So, I've actually bought your book twice.Joey Coleman:You're very kind. My publisher is very happy.Paul Green:For those MSPs who haven't yet had chance to read this book, and this is one of the most recommended books for me because it's all about retention, just give us an overview of your message and what you say within the book.Joey Coleman:I think this is a challenge that most MSPs have, but maybe aren't aware of, and that is we spend all of our time over indexing on how do we get new customers. How do we fill the funnel, how do we market, how do we prospect? And I'm not opposed to that. I just want us to devote an equal amount of time to how we keep our customers. What are we doing to deepen the relationship? What are we doing to expand the type of interaction we have in the type of revenue streams and service offerings we have for folks that are already in the fold?So, the entire book is built on this framework of the first 100 days. And the research shows that across all industries globally, wherever you're operating, somewhere between 20 and 70% of new customers will decide to quit doing business with the organisation they just signed on with in the first 100 days of the relationship.Now, before any of the listeners say, "Well, Joey, you don't understand. Our MSP, we signed a yearlong contract. They're into it. They're not going to quit that fast." The reality is they make the decision on whether or not they're going to renew that contract based on how you interact with them in the first three months. That's what all the research shows. Lots of folks think, "Oh, well, as long as we do a great job in month 10 and 11 when we're having the renewal conversation, we're going to be great." No, it's all about that foundation that you lay in the first 100 days.So, the entire book offers case studies from around the world, yeah, 46, I think in total, about how businesses can think more strategically about retention and the relationships they're building with customers. Instead of just always being focused on acquisition marketing and sales.Paul Green:Yes. And of course, MSPs are quite famously, because you and I were talking about this before we started the recording. MSPs quite famously will say that they have insane retention. As in, you can talk to someone who's been in business 15, 20 years and they've still got customers No. 1, 2 and 3. But I think you and I both agree that a lot of that retention is down to something called inertia loyalty.Joey Coleman:Absolutely. I think it's inertia loyalty. And I think the parallel for MSPs is banks, okay? And put yourself in this position. Because sometimes when we're running a business or we're operating in an industry, it's hard to see our own challenges because we live them every day, so it's hard to put ourselves into the shoes of a new customer, but flip the script a little bit and look to banking. Most people stay with their bank not because they love their bank, but because the pain of changing to another bank is greater than the pain of staying with the evil they already know.And I think with all due respect to the folks listening, that's how a lot of people think about their IT support from an MSP. It's like, "Ugh, I'm really not loving it. It's not amazing. I'm not referring other people to the platform. I'm not excited to use it. But the idea of trying to find someone else to fill this mission critical need in my business is so painful that I'm just going to stay where I'm at." And I don't know about you, but I'm less excited about building a business on people that are handcuffed to be there or feel that I'm the lesser of the evils available in the industry than building a business that is all about people who want to be there, who are excited to be there. And most importantly, want to tell everyone they know about how much they love being there.Paul Green:Yes, completely. I'm not going to name names, but everyone who's listening will know exactly who I'm talking about. There is a big, big business, a big vendor in the channel and if you read what's written about them on various forums, it's that people stay because they're locked into contracts. It's exactly as you were saying there. And they have a great product set. They acquire a lot of products.And I'm sure not all of their customers are unhappy, but the unhappy ones talk at great length about the unhappiness and how they feel trapped. And I'm sure that the leadership team or hope the leadership team of that vendor is reading that and they clearly need to hire you to go and fix that. If you get a multimillion dollar contract off the back of this, Joey, I'd like-Joey Coleman:I'll know that it came from you, Paul. I'll be happy to bring you on as my commissioned salesperson.Paul Green:Okay. I think with a lot of MSPs when they get started, it's often the technician. It's the technician within, they want to do a good job. I've never met an MSP who doesn't want to do a good job. Obviously, that's why we all start our own business. Those first two, three customers, they super serve them. They overserve them. In fact, a lot of the things you talk about in your book, in your framework, I think is it the eight parts in the first 100 days?Joey Coleman:Yes. Eight phases of the customer journey. Exactly.Paul Green:So, a lot of those MSPs do naturally just in terms of trying to do their best for their first three customers. I think it starts to go wrong for them at 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 20, 30 because it's suddenly impossible for one human being to super serve customers, and actually, not desirable. That's when you end up with getting tech support requests at 10:00 on a Friday night. It's not a great life. Talk to us more about that framework. How did you put that framework together and what does it actually look like for a B2B service firm?Joey Coleman:Well, what's interesting, Paul, is while I certainly respect and understand that some people see their businesses as B2B and some see them as B2C, I see all of this as H to H, human to human. And while I recognise that maybe when you're getting a long term contract with a corporation, it's at a different price point. There might be more lawyers involved. There might be more people involved than selling to an individual consumer.The reality is the emotional impact and the emotional relationship we have with the people we do business with is often overlooked in a B2B setting. I think at the end of the day, the challenge that many businesses have, as you point to as they grow and as they scale, is we go beyond knowing the people who are our customers. That first customer, you know their name, you know their significant other's name, you probably know their children's name, you know if they have pets because they're the only customer you're serving. You're holding them in the palm of your hand and you're waking up in the morning thinking, "I got to do everything I can to make this person happy because if I lose them, there's no food on the dinner table tonight."As we grow and as we expand our ability to not only service those folks, but even just to keep in our mind, the scope of the relationship, the depth of the things that matter to them becomes exponentially more difficult. And then as we hire new employees to help our team, other technicians to serve them, customer support members, the problem is they don't have the back history that we have. They're trying to get up to speed.And what are we doing? We're continuing to throw more new customers into the mix because we want to grow and scale because now, we have to pay for these team members that we've just hired on. So, it becomes this vicious cycle that just feeds upon itself. I think the opportunity available to every MSP owner is to say, "What can we do to step back just for a moment and look at the depth of the relationships or potentially the lack of depth of relationships that we actually have with our customers. What are we doing to navigate them through a relationship with us where we're paying attention to where they are in the customer life cycle?"As you mentioned, I believe there are eight phases to the customer life cycle and you don't get someone to move from one phase to the next unless you're behaving intentionally. You're holding their hand. You're doing the types of things to deliver not only the practical experience they need to move to the next phase, but the emotional experience they need to feel confident in moving to the next phase.Paul Green:What I love the most about your book, apart from those 46 case studies, which I mean, case studies always bring a book alive, but was that so many of your stages are actually after the sale, which makes sense.Joey Coleman:Yes.Paul Green:It makes sense when you step back and you look at it. Joey, do you have time to take us through the eight stages and give us a very brief summary of each stage?Joey Coleman:Absolutely. And Paul, what I'll do here and everyone, I appreciate your indulgence, we'll go through a fire hose of all eight because there are eight of them and they all start with the letter A. And the idea behind that is not to confuse you, but rather to think of it that if you're achieving in each of the eight phases, it's like getting all straight A high marks from your customers. They're going to love you even more. So I'll go through all eight and then if you have any questions, we can dive into specific phases.Phase 1 is the Assess phase. This is when a prospective customer is considering whether or not they want to do business with you. In common parlance, this is marketing and sales. How are we filling the funnel? How are we driving new business?After they decide, "Yes, I want to hire this MSP," They move to Phase 2, the Admit phase. This is where they admit that they have a problem or a need that they believe you can help them with. They transition from being a prospect to being a customer and this is Day 1 of that 100-day journey that is to come.Immediately after they make the decision to work with you, they sign the contract. They hand over their hard-earned dollars. You're high fiving, you're celebrating that you landed the new client. Meanwhile, back at their office, they have entered Phase 3, the Affirm phase. This in common parlance is known as buyer's remorse where they begin to doubt the decision they just made. And in this phase, we need to reaffirm their choice to work with us and give them the confidence that they made the right choice and that we're going to take great care of them.We then come to Phase 4, the Activate phase. I call it the Activate phase because I want you to energise the relationship at this point. I want the kickoff, the first real moment of truth with them to feel unlike any business experience they've ever had. That's how you set the standard for what is to come.And then we come to Phase 5, the Acclimate phase. Now, as a pro tip everyone, this is where most businesses start to lose. They start to fall off the rails, okay? In the Acclimate phase, your new customer is getting used to your way of doing business. They're figuring out, "Do we do tickets? Do we call? How do we get information? How do we take advantage of the services and the products that we've signed up for?"See, you've done this hundreds of times, thousands of times, maybe tens of thousands of times, but to a new customer, they have no idea what comes next. And you may say, "But Joey, I put it in the contract. We explained it in our kickoff meeting. They have a manual that shows them how to do it."Folks, with all due respect, you sign things that you don't read all the time, all the time, and your customers are exactly the same way. When they are learning, when they are new, we need more handholding and less document giving. Less like, "Oh, go to Page 78 of the manual and you'll be able to figure it out." No, help them to find Page 78 of the manual. Help them to explain. Teach them to fish, instead of giving them fish.We then come to Phase 6, the Accomplished phase. In the Accomplished phase, our customer achieves the goal that they had when they originally decided to do business with us. Now, what's interesting is most MSPs probably think that the goal is just to have someone on the other end of the line when there's a tech support problem. That's all they want. "Well, as long as we're taking care of, as long as we've got the backup, we're good to go."No, no, no, friends. There is a much deeper emotional reason why they've decided to do business with you. Maybe that's they had a problem in the past where they couldn't get help and it costs them money, it costs them morale. It costs them some type of a negative impact. Maybe they have a vision of where they're growing or taking their business in the future and they know they've expanded past their in-house teams technical capabilities. There is some goal that they have. And if you're not tracking that goal, paying attention to that goal as it progresses, and then celebrating the achievement of that goal when they accomplish it, they're not going to celebrate it either.We then come to Phase 7, the Adopt phase where the customer becomes loyal to us and only us. They're all bought in. They're not going to look at the competition. They are committed. This is where we want to guard against that inertia though, because our adopters are the ones who are most loyal and most committed. Yet, in the typical organisation they receive the least amount of attention. They receive the worst pricing because we give our best prices to the new people and they don't get the same level of care and focus and consideration that they did when they first joined.And last, but not least, if we've made it through all seven phases, we have the right privilege to take our customers to the 8th phase, the final phase, nirvana, when they become an Advocate, a raving fan, singing our praises far and wide. Now, Paul, I don't know about you, but I have yet to meet an MSP anywhere in the world who has said to me, "Joey, I'm all good on referrals. I don't want any more referrals. I'm happy with my business where it's at. We don't need anyone."No, we all want more referrals. The problem is the typical business is trying to jump from the early phases to the last phase without navigating their customer through the necessary phases before a customer feels comfortable making a recommendation. And if you doubt the validity of that statement, I would just ask anybody listening to consider how willing you are to put your name, your reputation on the line in referring a B2B provider to one of your fellow business owners before you really know if they're able to deliver. Most referrals don't come in the first 100 days, they come after that. But if we don't get the first 100 days right, the likelihood of getting a referral in the future is slim to none.Paul Green:I think you're absolutely right and what's terrifying is far too many MSPs rely on referrals alone as their marketing strategy. It is very much a haphazard thing. There's a book on referrals that I'm sure you've read, Joey, and it's feels rude of me to mention someone else's book during your interview.Joey Coleman:We're all in this together.Paul Green:It's called Unstoppable Referrals by Steve Gordon and it talks about the fact that there is a risk, a social risk. If I refer you as a provider and actually, you turned out not to be very good, I've taken on board the social risk of the referral. And what you've just explained is why that's the case. You've put real detail into that. Essentially, for someone to be an advocate and to genuinely run around, saying, "You've got to use these guys," that there's an enormous amount of emotional development that they need to go through.In your experience, where do businesses get stuck? Is it a case that businesses try to jump from the first day to the last day? Or when they're trying to implement the process that you talk about in your book, do they typically get stuck at a different stage or is it just that they run out of steam?Joey Coleman:All of the above, right? I mean it depends on the business and it depends on the business owner. I mean, I think some businesses don't even think of the multiple phases that a customer goes through. They think of, well, there's somebody who isn't a customer and there's someone who is a customer. It's a binary conversation. That's not the world we live in.And I understand for tech folks to think in a binary world makes sense. That's what you do all day every day, but humans don't operate that way. Humans are more complex. There's more shades of gray between here and there and where we're going. So, I think there's automatically a challenge given the industry and there's automatic a challenge given the fact that we're also busy that we just want to put people into buckets really quickly and move on.Additionally, I think most businesses are structured not to take care of their customers in the long term. What do I mean by that? The typical business, if I ask an MSP owner, how much did you spend on marketing last year or last quarter, they can answer that question. If I ask them how much they spent on taking care of their existing customers, their eyes glaze over. They're not sure.If I go to the typical business and I say to the sales team, "What are our goals for this quarter? How many new clients are we trying to land?" And then I go to the rest of the company and I say, "What are our goals this quarter for how much we're going to expand the relationship with our existing clients?" I don't get any answers.Instead, I get things like, "Well, we're just not going to lose any. We're going to try to save them. We're going to have this retention program that really isn't retention. It's more of a crisis response program that if somebody is going to leave, we're going to put a ton of effort and human power towards it to try to save them". Instead of saying strategically, "Where are we going to build and grow and develop and deepen the relationships we have with our existing customers."So, sadly, Paul, I think it's not a "There's one thing that all companies can do to make it better." I do think the opportunity is to say, "What is our current customer journey? What does it look like?" Because most businesses haven't even done that. They haven't even mapped the current customer journey. They did it maybe when they first started out with their business.But once you're up and running and you're successful, going back and looking at what the actual experience is, is often something business owners don't do. I'll give you a quick story. This past weekend, I was working with a mastermind group that we flew into Las Vegas and we had a whole event for them and as part of that process we mapped the journey. And I had CEOs in the room.And what I noticed is by the time we were done mapping the journey, over the course of the next several hours, they would keep saying, "Oh, but then there's also this other thing we do. Oh, and you know, I need to check with my team because we used to do that, but I'll be candid, I'm not even sure we're doing that anymore."Lots of times as our business grows, we get away from the handholding. from the care and the consideration that we had when our business started. And as a result, we become more focused on, "Well, what is the big picture?" Instead of paying close attention to those details that are actually the things that are going to keep us in business long term.Paul Green:Yeah, I can imagine. There's two more things I want to ask you, Joey, and then unfortunately, I'll have to end our time together. I do want to ask you what else you do to help businesses? Clearly, you mentioned the mastermind in Vegas, which all sounds very showbiz, so we'll come onto that in a second. Before we do, let's just talk about the actual book itself.I was going to ask you how long it took you to write it, but I'm conscious that the actual physical putting down words on a page can often be a very short period of time. Often, these books and this feels like a lifetime's work in a book. How long do you think it's taken you to create this book?Joey Coleman:Well, Paul, it's a great question and I'm actually in the process of writing my second book right now, so we can compare the two. With my first book, I had given hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of speeches on this topic over almost 15 years. So, by the time I sat down to write the book, I didn't actually write the book, I talked the book, because I'm a speaker. What I did is I recorded myself talking through the chapters and then had that transcribed. To get the first draft of the book, it took 12 hours.Now, it's 12 hours that were built over 15 years. But it took 12 hours to lay down that first version of the book, which was about 240 pages. Final book was about 340 pages. So, you see that the editing process that happened over the course of the next month to three months. And then all the work we did beyond that, added an additional 100 pages of clarification and content and additional case studies.I think when it comes to writing a book, lots of times people's first book is one that they've spent a boatload of time on and the second book is a little more of a challenge. Now, for my second book, which is called Never Lose an Employee Again, comes out in June of 2023. And it's all about what can we do with these same eight phases when we turn them internally on our organisation to retain our top talent. It's taken a little bit longer to write, but has also been researched and written in the last five or six years as opposed to 15 years. And so, it's a little bit of a different environment.Paul Green:You're going to be there at the age of 85, saying, "I've got my 7th book, I just need another couple of years."Joey Coleman:Let me tell you, I love writing books, Paul. I'm one of those folks that really enjoys doing it, so I think there are definitely more books to come, indeed.Paul Green:I hope so. I really do hope so. And was it you that made the decision to read your own book on Audible? Because that is quite rare for a non-celebrity author to read their own book. I mean, you said you're a speaker, but there's a difference between being on a stage communicating something and sitting in a voice booth somewhere, probably in LA, reading your own work.Joey Coleman:Yeah, there really is, Paul. And it was actually a piece of the contract I did with my publisher. I worked with the folks at Portfolio Penguin. And as part of the contract I said, "I want to be the one who reads the book." And they were like, "Oh, we're not sure if we want to do this." And I said, "Well, here's what we'll do. Let's do an audio test and if you feel confident in my ability to do the book, then we move forward."And by the time we got ready to record the audiobook, we'd had so many conversations with their team. They were like, "We think this well enough to be able to run with it," which I was very appreciative of and honored by. And you asked earlier, we booked three days to record the entire book and it took us a day and a half.Now, the reason it took us a day and a half, Paul, is not because I'm special or amazing, but as a former singer, as somebody who spends most time on, most of my days on stage, being in a recording booth felt very comfortable to me. So, we were able to lay down the tracks much faster than if I didn't have that previous life or background experience.Paul Green:Yes, I can imagine. I can imagine. Joey, thank you very much. You've been such a great guest. Tell us a little bit more, we know all about the book, but obviously, a lot of authors, they do use the book to... it's their business card, and it's a very, very smart business card. So, what other things do you do to help businesses with their customer retention?Joey Coleman:Well, I appreciate that, Paul. I do a variety of things, but I would say the bulk of my time is spent giving speeches and leading workshops. So, coming in to work with companies individually or an entire industry or at a conference. Doing a keynote. Doing a multi-hour workshop. Sometimes, companies will bring me in to spend three or four days with their team where we map out their entire journey and figure out all the ways we're going to enhance it. And then create the deliverables, so they can actually implement and execute going forward.I also do private consulting with companies where I will work with a group of folks from your organisation that want to be focused on customer experience, so the customer experience or the customer loyalty team. And we go through and build out your 100-day journey, so that you're ready to deliver the remarkable experiences that will keep your customers coming back for more.Paul Green:Cool. And what's the best way to get in touch with you?Joey Coleman:The best way to get in touch is through my website joeycoleman.com. That's J-O-E-Y, like a baby kangaroo or a five-year-old, Coleman, C-O-L-E-M-A-N.com. If you enjoyed listening to my voice, as Paul mentioned, there's an audiobook version. There's also a podcast that I co-host with my friend, Dan Gingiss. It's all about customer and employee experience called The Experience This Show, which we're in our 10th season now. And if folks are into customer experience and want to come over for some positive little tidbits of customer experience delight, we'd love to have you listen over there, too.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.Chuck Canton:Hi, I'm Chuck Canton, the CEO of Sourcepass. I don't read a lot of business books, but one that did capture my attention, I saw super beneficial was the Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni. It's super impactful to build self-awareness and also, an understanding of your team to help guide them and develop super healthy culture, to help you execute your business strategy. Easy read and I really enjoyed reading the book.Voiceover:Coming up next week.Mark Copeman:Hi, my name is Mark Copeman, and next week, I will be here on Paul's podcast talking about my two books, Helpdesk Habits and MSP Secrets Revealed. I'll even be talking about Episode 2, which is coming very, very soon and revealing some of the secrets inside those books. And some of my thinking behind the two books, and perhaps why you should maybe even go out and buy a copy. I hope you enjoy it.Paul Green:Please subscribe wherever you listen to this podcast, so you never miss an episode. On top of that interview with the wonderful Mark next week, we're also going to be talking about the third step in the ultimate MSP marketing strategy, that's commercializing your audiences, and of course, the technology roadmap. It's the long-term strategic tool that bonds your clients with your MSP. We have a ton of extra content and you can see that at YouTube. Just go to youtube.com/mspmarketing and join me next Tuesday. Have a very profitable week in your MSP.Voiceover:Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate The Three Essential Virtues (J-B Lencioni Series)

Never Lose a Customer Again: Turn Any Sale into Lifelong Loyalty in 100 Days

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Episode 165Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* The best marketing strategy part 1 of 3: building audiences * Start 2023 by selling more to your current clients with this tool * A self-proclaimed introverted sales expert on how to out-perform your competition

Featured guest:Thank you to Matthew Pollard, the Rapid Growth Coach, for joining me to talk about how to out-perform your competition.Matthew Pollard is an internationally-recognised consultant, speaker, blogger, author, mentor, coach, and serial entrepreneur with five multi-million dollar business success stories under his belt. He is the founder and CEO of Rapid Growth, LLC, dedicated to achieving maximum ROI for businesses of all sizes. Though his client list includes multiple Fortune 500 companies, his real passion is helping small business owners end the overwhelm, eliminate the stress and guesswork, and get on a clear path to Rapid Growth.Connect with Matthew on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewpollardspeakerExtra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Subscribe to the MSP Marketing Action Monthly magazine: * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 * https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast * https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa * https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast * https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 * https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ * https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ * https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * On the subject of email CRMs, I mentioned Mailchimp, Mailerlite and Active Campaign: * https://mailchimp.com/ * https://www.mailerlite.com/ * https://www.activecampaign.com/ * On the subject of creating a Profit Matrix, I suggested listening back to a previous episode * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode5 * The recommended book was The Lean Startup by Eric Ries: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lean-Startup-Innovation-Successful-Businesses/dp/0670921602

The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses

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Episode 164Welcome to a special episode of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP.This week's podcast is all about our special guest, Marcus Sheridan, author of the incredible marketing book They Ask You Answer. He joins me to talk about how MSPs, through content marketing, can become THE trusted voice in their market.Marcus Sheridan is a highly sought-after international keynote speaker known for his unique ability to excite, engage, and motivate audiences.Forbes named Marcus “One of 20 Speakers You Don’t Want to Miss.” He has been dubbed a “Web Marketing Guru” by the New York Times and featured in Inc., The Globe and Mail, Forbes, and many more.As an owner of IMPACT, Marcus has established one of the most successful digital sales and marketing agencies in the country. Within his speaking company, Marcus Sheridan International, Inc., he gives over 70 global keynotes annually where he inspires audiences in the areas of sales, marketing, leadership, and communication. Mashable rated his book, They Ask, You Answer, the “#1 Marketing Book”, and Forbes listed it as one of “11 Marketing Books Every CMO Should Read”.Connect with Marcus on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcussheridanExtra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: * https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 * https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast * https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa * https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast * https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 * https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ * https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ * https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcriptionPaul Green:She bought because she was researching one of our competitors. Think about that. That's the power of producing this type of content. What scares you away is when they completely ignore the subject and they say, "Only call for a quote," which in the world of the internet, that's like the middle finger of the internet.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast special.Paul Green:So happy New Year to you, and welcome to another brand-new year of the podcast. We have got so many exciting things lined up for you this year. As we often do at the start of the year, we are starting with a special edition. And today, I am a bit of a fanboy, a bit overexcited today because we are interviewing one of my favorite authors of all time. He has written one of the best marketing books, in my opinion anyway. It's a book I've read so many times and a book that we have implemented in our business and, in fact, I've been recommending to MSPs for a couple of years that they implemented in their business as well. And this interview today is kicking off the start of Authors Month. We have so many cool authors that we're going to feature in this podcast throughout January. Let's start today with Marcus Sheridan. Marcus, thank you very much for joining us. You are, of course, the author of They Ask You Answer. Do you want to just introduce yourself and start to tell us a little bit? It's probably a story that you've had to tell a thousand times because it is the book. Your story is the book They Ask You Answer. Introduce yourself. Say hello, and tell us a little bit about your story.Marcus Sheridan:Yeah, Paul. Well, it's great being here. And happy New Year's everyone. We're going to make 2023 a great year. And what a better way to start than discussing what is really how we can become the most trusted voice in our space? And that's been my great obsession in so many ways. Certainly, I think that's what we do as marketers and a salespeople. My quick background, the very quick 101, is I started a swimming pool company with two friends in 2001. Things were going okay up until the market crashed in 2008. Thought we were going to lose the business. That's when I started to really learn about things like inbound marketing, content marketing. And what I heard in my simple pool guy mind was, Marcus, if you just obsess over your customer's questions, worries, fears, issues, concerns and you're willing to address those things on your website through text, through video, you just might save your business.And so I said, well, we can do that. And I sat down one evening, and this was in 2009, and brainstormed all the questions I'd ever received about, in my case, fiberglass swimming pools and ground pools. And came up with a couple hundred questions. And over the next couple of years, one by one, every single evening, I'd produce an article or a video that addressed each one. And we would go on to become the most traffic swimming pool website in the world. And then I started to talk about what I had done and teach this to other companies at other events and conferences. And suddenly, I had an agency where folks from around the world were saying, "Hey, could you show us how to do that?" And They Ask You Answer would become a book. And the book has now been purchased over a couple hundred thousand times around the world. And so many companies, actually a lot of MSPs, have embraced some of the principles of They Ask You Answer. And it's pretty exciting to see that it's just all over the world now. So many companies do this. I speak full-time, still have the agency, still have swimming pool company. It's been an amazing ride and all because we're willing to answer our customer's questions.Paul Green:They Ask You Answer has made a massive difference to my business. So obviously, I'm not an MSP. I do marketing and work with MSPs, but I discovered this. In fact, I actually bought this book a couple of years before I read it because anytime anyone says to me, oh, here's a book you should buy, I get it. I've got this massive bookshelf, I'm looking at it here. There's dozens and dozens of books that I've bought and haven't read. And I pretty sure this was a lockdown book when we first went into lockdown in 2020. I was flicking through the shelves and thought, oh, They Ask You Answer, that's an interesting title. And it was one of those that I was hooked three or four pages in. And I read it across two days. Then I got the Audible version. I think you, isn't it? Do you do-Marcus Sheridan:That is me.Paul Green:Yeah, it is. So you narrate. So I've listened to you while I've been out running. I've read this. And unlike many people, we have actually implemented it. So directly off the back of this, we hired a new writer. We hired a video producer. We hired a content manager, pretty much-Marcus Sheridan:Wow, impressive.Paul Green:Well, thank you very much. And you know what? It has paid off massively. So we've grown enormously through inbound content. And I'm not going to go into the specific details, but if you go and look at our website, you'll see a lot of the ingredients that you, Marcus, recommend on yours. And we didn't try to reinvent the wheel. In fact, we have a saying. This is so embarrassing to admit to this, but we have a saying in the business. What does Marcus recommend? What would Marcus do? Because the answers are in this, what's this, $25 book. Here's a $25 book, and all of the answers are in here and particularly when you add in all of the videos and the huge amounts of content that your impact agency puts out because, obviously, we're subscribed to that as well. So a personal thank you from me, Marcus. You've made a massive difference.Marcus Sheridan:Yeah. You're so welcome.Paul Green:What I really want to talk about is how we get MSPs to do this because I'm going to hit you now with a bunch of objections, which I can guess my audience will throw out. Let's start with the first one. But Paul or Marcus, you said this worked for a swimming pool company. So I don't run a swimming pool company. I run a B2B business. We are looking for business owners with 30, 40 staff. How is this applicable? Now, I know you cover this off in the book, but talk to us how this is as applicable for B2B marketing as it is for B2C.Marcus Sheridan:When we start this conversation, we've got to recognise that we all have this belief that we're very, very different. And in many ways, we are in terms of our customers and whatnot, and I understand that. If you're listening to this right now, let's focus on just for a minute what we have in common. And again, if you're listening to this, just let's pretend we're talking with each other. If I said to you, "Is trust fundamental to your business," my sense is you'd say, "Yes." "Is it fundamental to MSPs?" You'd say, "Yeah, it really is." If I said, "Is trust going to be fundamental in 20 years," what would you say? You'd say, "Yeah, of course it is." And so what They Ask You Answer is, it's a blueprint. It's a framework for you to become the most trusted voice in your space.And so instead of thinking, well, this guy as a pool company did it, please recognise that we've had thousands and thousands of companies, many of which are B2B service-based businesses, have embraced these principles. And if you're open to it as Paul and I are having this discussion today, my sense is that you'll say, "Okay, I could see how that could apply." But you can't put yourself in that corner of we're different. You got to say, "Okay, if we did do this, what Marcus is suggesting or derivative of it, would it induce more trust?" And that's really, again, where we have to start. If the answer is yes, then let's not debate if we should do it. The debate should be, how do we do it? And of course I know we're going to discuss that, Paul. We're going to talk about how you apply these principles, and I think you're going to quickly start to see, oh, you know what, I really can do that. I can talk about things like cost and price on my website, which assuredly is going to come up.Paul Green:Yes, yes. In fact, well, let's move on to that because that's the biggest objection that I come across from MSPs. In They Ask You Answer, you talk about the big five, and they're the five biggest areas that make the difference. And the first of those is pricing and costs. So I run a Facebook group for any MSP to join to talk about marketing and business growth. And we recently put something on there about putting your pricing on your website or using a pricing calculator because, of course, the answer to... In your book when someone says to you, "How much does a swimming pool cost," your answer, of course, is it depends because it depends on a myriad of different factors. And it's exactly the same for an MSP. The answer is always it depends. So we talked about pricing calculators and all these other tools, and there was a plethora of angry, negative comments.Marcus Sheridan:But, but, but, but.Paul Green:Exactly. Exactly. Paul, how can you? We would never do this. Blah, blah, blah. So let's address that. I would say that's biggest negative factor, is most MSPs are terrified of putting their pricing on their website. And I suspect you're going to say to me that most business owners are terrified of putting their pricing on the website.Marcus Sheridan:Yeah, that's right. Okay, so let's start here. To your point earlier, there's five subjects that you, me, all of us that are listening to this right now tend to research before we reach out to a company. We also know that in the B2B space that the average buyer's 70% to 80% through the buyer's journey before they reach out to a company. In other words, they're vetting us online to death before they reach out. And while they're vetting us, they want know five main things. And here's the five things that you, me, we all research B2B, B2C. Here's the five. We want to research cost. We want to research problems or negatives. We want to research comparisons. We want to research reviews, and we want to research best or most or top. So cost, problems, comparisons, reviews, best. Those are what we call the big five. Now, as buyers and consumers, we're obsessed with learning these things before we reach out to a company, and as businesses, we don't want to talk about these things. And so it creates a paradox of wants, and we call that ostrich marketing, as you read about in the book, the ostrich bearing its head in the sand saying, ah, I hope this problem goes away.Now, foremost, of course, is cost and price. Now, let's first go back to what I said earlier. If you could talk about cost and price in a way that would help educate your buyers, would they appreciate it? Would it induce more trust? Of course, the answer is yes. And then if I said to anybody that's listening to this, "If you're on a website and if you're looking for cost and price information, you cannot find it, what's the emotion you experience," they're going to say, "Oh, I get frustrated." And if I said, "Well, in that moment of frustration, do you say, 'Oh, I'm sure it's on this website somewhere. I'll just keep looking,'" "No." If I said to you, "So in that moment of frustration, do you say, 'Well, of course they're not talking about cost and price. They're a value-based business. I'm going to call them on the phone instead,'" you're like, "No," because you as the buyer, you as the searcher, you keep doing what? Well, you keep searching, and you search until what happens? You find what you're looking for. And generally speaking, whoever gives you what you are looking for, most of the time, they're going to get your business. If not your business, they're going to get first contact, first phone call.And so people say, "Well, okay, I get that, Marcus. Yeah, that's true for me." Again, "But, but, but." Well, there's three reasons why we tend not to talk about cost and price on our websites. First reason why we tend not to talk about cost and price is we say things like, well, every job is different, and therefore, it depends. And we have a very customised solution, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, that's fine. So if I came to you, if you were an MSP and I said, "Can you help me understand what would drive the cost in this industry? In the IT space, what drives the cost of an MSP up? What are the factors," anybody could say, "Oh yeah, I could explain those factors." If I said to you, "Can you help me understand the factors that would keep the cost of an MSP down," you could explain those as well. If I came to you and I said, "You know what, you gave me a quote, and your competitors gave me a quote too. Some of you are more expensive. Some of you are less expensive. Can you help me understand why there's a delta in the industry in terms of MSPs," you could do that too. And, of course, how many times have you had to do that? You've had to do it a bunch of times.And so really there's four major questions on this whole it depends, we're a customised solution spectrum. What drives cost up in an industry? What drives cost down? Why are some companies so expensive? Why are some companies so cheap? They're not the same two things, by the way. They're different things. And so that is how you teach what we would call value proposition in an industry. What makes one s P more valuable per se from a service deliverability standpoint than somebody else? And if I said to anybody that's listening to this, "Do you think it's important that your prospects understand what defines value within the IT space," they're going to say, "Of course, IT outsourcing, any of that." So they're like, yeah, yeah, I really need to know that because that's our value prop right there as a company. It's our value prop system. Okay. So that's the first reason why we don't talk about it. It depends. It's actually one of the easiest to address. It's one of the most important because by educating, you can decom commoditise.Now, the second reason we say we can't talk about cost and price., We say things like, well, our competitors will find out. That's pretty silly because if I went to any MSP and I said, "Do you have a pretty decent sense as to what your competitors charge," they're going to say, "Yeah. Of course I do. I've been in the game long enough." And so if you have a good sense as to what they charge, it therefore means, yes, they know what you charge, or at least they have a sense for it. So this is the big secret non-secret. Everybody acts like nobody knows what everybody's charging when, in reality, everybody's got a pretty good sense as to what everybody else is charging.And the final reason why we say, hey, I can't talk about cost and price is we say things like, well, we tend to be more expensive. And if we're more expensive and they see we're more expensive, we just might scare them away. But in reality, and you know this if you're listening to this right now, the thing that scares you away as a buyer, as a consumer, as a researcher isn't when a company takes the time to really educate you on value proposition and what drives cost in the industry. What scares you away is when they completely ignore the subject and they say, only call for quote, which in the world of the internet, that's like the middle finger of the internet because how many of you say, geez, I just can't wait to call for a quote? It's not the way you think today. It's not the way your buyers think today. And so you are like your buyers in many ways. If it would frustrate you, it's frustrating them. And so those are the three major reasons.Now, people might hear that and say, yeah, but I'm still not completely sold. Listen, folks. Here's what we're saying. It is your job to teach the industry what drives cost in your space. It's your job to define value. If you don't do it, somebody else will. And at a minimum, I would suggest that you do that. Many of the companies that we've worked with, because cost and price is one of the first pieces of content we help them produce because it's such a huge lead generator, they become more, not less, specific over time in terms of the information that they'll give, Paul. And the reason for that is because the lead quality gets better over the course of time too. It's really fascinating. So as where they might start and just talk about, hey, here's what drives costs up and down, then they might say, well, your average MSP is between $5,000 and $15,000 a month depending on X, Y, Z, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so they start to give ranges.And so last thing I'm going to say about this, one of the best ways to produce a cost and price page of your website is to look at it like this. And this is true in most industries, and I believe it's pretty true with MSPs too. In most industries, there's essentially a three-tiered pricing system. So what I mean by that is there's low end, middle end and high end in terms of what the packages look like, deliverabilities, if you will. And so imagine writing a piece of content that says, okay, here within the MSP space, you're going to find three different types of MSPs that you're going to get pricing from. Now, what we would consider the lower end would generally include the following services. And generally, you're going to see this price range for that group. Middle end, you're generally going to see these services and generally going to see this price range. Higher end, generally these services, generally these price ranges. Now, here at Marcus Sheridan's IT Solutions, we generally fall in the middle to upper ranges of what you've just been explained. Now by doing that, the person saying, wow, you've just given me more than 90%, 99% probably, of the marketplace. It's incredibly powerful. Folks, this is what your buyers want. This is what you would want, and that's how you talk about cost and price on your website.Paul Green:That's brilliant, Marcus. Thank you. In fact, what I'm going to do is I'm going to clip that answer and I'm going to provide that to all the MSPs that I work closely with because you have obviously more succinctly than I could possibly do told us why we need to have pricing or, at the very least, a pricing calculator on our website. So let's look at the other big things you suggest, the other big tools. Now, some of them make perfect sense. So for example, when you talk about writing about problems, that makes sense. And the MSPs I recommend this to, it makes sense to them as well. But then as recommended in They Ask You Answer, I suggest to them that they write reviews and comparisons of their competitors and they directly name their competitors. And often, they look at me as if I've gone completely crazy.Marcus Sheridan:Okay. So there's a lot here. And obviously, if you're listening to this, hopefully when you read the book, you're going to see it and understand it differently. Everything here is rooted in the questions, the worries, the fears, the issues, concerns that your potential customers are asking and therefore searching. And if they're asking it and searching it, they're getting their answer from somewhere. And so the question becomes, are they going to get it from you? Now, let's take an example for a second. I live somewhat near Richmond, Virginia. And so certainly if I was looking for, let's say, an MSP, I might go online right now and say, "Who are the best IT outsourcing companies in Richmond, Virginia?" That's how in my just typical business owner sense I would research it. Now, me, because I've spoken with so many MSPs, I've worked with MSPs, that's the language we use within the industry, but most of our clients don't actually use that language when they're searching as much. Some do, but a lot of them do not. They talk about IT outsourcing, a lot of stuff like that.And so what's Google going to give them? They're going to show them something. Google's goal is to give the best, most specific, relevant answer to the question. And so could you produce an article that talks about who are the best IT outsourcing companies in the Richmond, Virginia area? Absolutely. Could you mention your competitors? Of course. Could they find that information easily regardless of you? Yes. And so to give you a sense of how I did this with my pool company, it's same thing. Don't think it's different because it's not. I used to get asked all the time questions like, "Marcus, who are the best pool builders in Richmond, Virginia?" So I decided to write an article about it. Who Are the Best Pool Builders in Richmond, Virginia: Review/Ratings. So that's the title. Okay. So if you listen to this right now, go to Google and type in, "Who are the best pool builders in Richmond, Virginia?" You're going to see the article. And I listed five of my biggest competitors, and I didn't even put myself on the list of five because I didn't want to sound braggadocious.Now, people might say, that sounds crazy, but if you think about it, number one, if they're reading the article, they're on my website and I'm winning anyway. Number two, the fact that they see that we're willing to address that question, they're like, wow, this company's different. They're special. I'm just amazed with how honest they are. And it's just one of those things where I've had lots of crazy experiences. One of the companies on the list that for best pool builders in Richmond, Virginia, is called Pla-Mor Pools. And this lady calls me up one time back in the day, and she said, "Marcus, as the craziest thing happened. I was so close to signing a contract with Pla-Mor Pools, but before I signed that contract, I decided to go online and research their company. And as I researched their company, I stumbled across this article that you guys had written. And so I said, these guys are so honest, I should probably call them too." And, of course, you know what happened. Otherwise, I wouldn't be telling you the story, and bang. That's just how it goes. She bought, and she bought because she was researching one of our competitors. Think about that. Think about that for a second. And that's the power of producing this type of content.Our core belief is buyers, they're not dumb. Eventually, they're going to become informed. So we have to accept that because they're going to be informed, they can either learn it from us, or they can learn it from somebody else. Do you want your competitors to be the ones that are controlling all the conversations in your space, or would you prefer that to be you? That's the simple question that you have to answer if you're listening to this right now. And personally, I just don't like the idea of them learning from anybody else. I want them learn from me.Paul Green:So what makes me laugh, and I think this is in the book, I'm pretty sure I got this from the book, is that you have told your direct competitors exactly... And by that, I mean your direct swimming pool competitors. You've told them exactly what you do, what you've done and how you've done it, and still, none of them have actually picked this up and done it for themselves.Marcus Sheridan:A lot of people listen to this podcast today, Paul, and they'll be like, yeah, that was kind of cool. I see what he was saying. It does make sense. But they're not going to do anything. Less than 5% of anyone that listens to this podcast today are going to take any action whatsoever. And that's not a knock on your audience. That's just called humans. Less than 5% of my audiences when I speak in public are going to do the thing. I've taught over 1,000 swimming pool companies exactly the framework as to how we became the most trafficked, arguably most successful swimming pool company in the world, Paul. And of the 1,000 plus that I've taught, I've never seen even one, even one, do it as well as River Pools. I saw one do it maybe half as well as River Pools. So why? You can take a horse to water, but you can't make a drink.And so that's why there's always room on top. People say to me, sometimes they're like, "Well, what happens if all my competitors do this?" It's like, seriously? Seriously? That's not the conversation you should be having because, otherwise, you wouldn't have become an MSP. That's the funny thing about MSPs. Most MSPs didn't start as MSPs. They started, and they were selling something else. And it wasn't managed services, but it became managed services. Take the copier space. A lot of them started off. They were just selling copy machines. But they realised, ah, long term, there's a better business model out there for us. It's called being an MSP. And so they became an MSP. Maybe they still sell office equipment, but fundamentally, what's driving their recurring revenue is that MSP. It's funny to me that we realise we look ahead. If we're listening to this podcast, we're in the business we're in because we're saying this is where the marketplace is headed. Do you really think the marketplace is headed in a direction where you can't find cost and price online and learn about it? Do you really think the marketplace is headed in a direction where people can't get their common questions, worries, fears, issues, concerned answered? Come on, y'all. It all is obvious, isn't it?If we're being really honest with ourselves, the future is full of getting whatever we want whenever we want. That's how it works. And so the arms race is, who can give it to them faster? And I'm not going to sit there and debate with the marketplace and say, well, I just don't like it like that. It's the way that life is. It's the way that life is. It's the rising tide. Tide's going to come up, whether you move your lounge chair or not. People are going to start watching more and more videos, just like they have in the last 10 years, whether we like video or not. Marketplace doesn't care about our opinions. It does what it does.Paul Green:Yeah, that is absolutely spot on. So right. I have a 12-year-old, a 12-year-old daughter, and just watching how she consumes information, how she Googles things, it's a completely different way, a different relationship with information and with data than certainly than I have even now. We are in the same year, but she does things in a totally different way. And, of course, video. Video is completely different. There is always video on. I know she's in the house because there is video playing, and it's either YouTube or Netflix or Disney or Prime or something else. And I understand from the other parents that their kids, their preteens are exactly the same. Well, these kids in 10, 15 years time, they're making buying decisions in offices. And they're going to be influenced in a very different way to today's decision-makers. In fact, we don't even have to look ahead 10 to 15 years. I think we can look at the amount of YouTube video that's being consumed, and it just goes up and up and up every single year. Now, this is a good bridge to your second book, which is called The Visual Sale. It's another great read. And, of course, this is more about or this is just on video. So what's the message from this second book of yours?Marcus Sheridan:The revised version of They Ask You Answer has a lot of the video stuff in there, but I wanted to write a book just specific to video. I've a co-author there, Tyler Lessard of Vidyard. And the thing about video, most of us know we should do video. We just don't know what are the videos that are actually going to work, that are going to move the needle. And it's not those dumb about us videos that you see all day long. Trust me, that's not what's moving the sales needle. That's not what your sales team is saying they need. And so we talk about the types of videos that are going to drive revenue. And if it's okay, I'll just share one of my favorite ones.In the book, and you see it and They Ask You Answer as well, we've got what's called the selling seven. The selling seven are the seven types of videos that have the greatest impact on the sales process. And the first of the selling seven is what we call the 80% video. And what's the 80% video? Well, if you talk to most MSPs and you say, "When you have a sales call, what percentage of the questions are pretty much the same questions that you get from the prospect every time," most folks are going to say about 75%, 80% are the same questions every single time. And so I would ask, "Well, why do you keep answering those same questions over and over again? Is it efficient?" No, of course it's not efficient. What would happen if you not only answered those questions, but they knew the answer to those questions, before that meeting they had heard the answers taught by you, they had seen it from you? How would your initial sales meeting be different at that point? And now all of a sudden it's like, wow, they'd be much more informed. I'd spend more time selling, less time teaching, et cetera, et cetera.So we suggest to every client that you produce an 80% video. 80% video addresses those most repeated questions that you know they're going to ask in that first sales call or second sales call, whichever one you want to target. And that video is going to be a little bit longer because you're probably going to be addressing on average 7 to 10 most repeated questions. So the video could easily be 5 to 15 minutes, could even be longer, which is okay. People get caught up in length of video because we see these dumb stats for, hey, this is what works on Facebook. But it's not about Facebook. It's not about TikTok. It's not about that. It's like the length of video is more contingent with where is the buyer in that buyer's journey. So if they're getting ready to spend money, they'll spend the time to watch the video. Trust me. Our average customer has watched over 30 minutes of video with my swimming pool company. And so it's like we know the stats on this, and the stats are way higher than most people realize in terms of the willingness of buyers to consume content. It's just the way that it works.And so the 80% video, the key is you produce it for every major product or service that you sell. And then before the initial sales call, you send it to them, and you say something like this. You say, "Hey, Paul, I know we're going to be meeting this Friday, but also know that you've got a lot of questions and some potential worries or fears with this decision that you're going to ready to make. And so I'm sending you this video. It's going to answer seven most common questions people have about outsourcing their IT. Okay? And here's some of the questions it's going to answer. It's going to talk about this. It's going to talk about this. It's going to talk about this, all of which you should know. And ideally, you should know that before our first call. This way, our time together is going to be much more productive. So with that, Paul, will you take the time to review this video before our call on Friday?" And so that's how it would sound. But by doing that, Paul's going to say, "Yep, sure. No problem." And now all of a sudden, it's going to be a very different sales call. So that's the power of using content in the sales process. But it starts with making the right type of content, the right types of videos. That there was the 80% video.Paul Green:Thank you, Marcus. You've been so generous with your time. And I just want to wrap up what we've been talking about here and actually turn it into an action, a definable thing. Now, when we started doing They Ask You Answer, we essentially did everything that you said in the book not to do. So we did it kind of halfheartedly. We didn't resource it properly. And guess what? It just lingered around for a bit. It was a bit of a pain. It was a millstone around my neck. And then I reread They Ask You Answer, and it's like, duh, Marcus said this would happen. And it did. So that was when we resourced it properly. So that was when we hired content manager. We took video more seriously. And even today, we're adding more resources in so we can produce more content because we already have seen and are seeing the return on this. So as we've already said as well, it is human nature not to take action, to intend to take action but to not take action. And because this is such a big subject and because you do need to resource it properly, how would you recommend an MSP? Where would you recommend an MSP get started with this?Marcus Sheridan:Okay. Here's the first thing I would do if I was you, and this activity is so valuable. I want you to sit down with a pen and paper, not with your computer, pen and paper. And I want you to really write down if somebody needs an MSP or if they have, let's call it, IT issues or whatever thing is, write down all the questions that they would have. Write them in complete sentences. If they knew they want to hire an MSP, write out the question. Write all the questions they would have. By the way, if you don't come up with at least 50, you're just being intellectually lazy. All right. Now, once you've done that, second step, put a check next to each one that you've thoroughly answered on your website. Now, the answer there is going to be less than 10% probably, less than 10% from most of us. And then I want you to say or ask, are you okay with that? Is your buyer okay with that? Your customer, are they okay with that? Would you be okay with that? Of course, the answer is no, you're not okay with that. That's why you listen to a podcast in the first place, because you don't want to be average. You want to be great.Now, once you do that, then you need to read the book They Ask You Answer because it's going to show you how you answer all those questions because while you're brainstorming them, you're thinking, I don't know how we could answer that. Don't focus on that. Just write the dang things down. They Ask You Answer, the book, is going to show you how to do it through text, through video, and then it's going to show your sales team how to up your digital selling game too along those same lines. It's really cool like that. So that's the second process.Third process is if you want to do it, you have your leadership team read the book too. Okay? But don't go and try to teach your team after you've got excited about They Ask You Answer how they should all be talking about cost and price on their website because at first, they're just going to yell at you and say you're crazy. So you got to do it in such a way that you build the foundation. You asked me about cost and price, and it took me about 10 minutes to explain all the why's behind it, Paul, because there's no shortcuts around it. It's like it takes a while to explain why we should talk about cost and price and how to talk about cost and price on a website. Now, by the end, most people are like, huh, actually, that's pretty viable. That's possible. Oh, I could do that. Before, they were just saying, there's no way I could do that. Now they're like, I see what he's saying. I see why we should. I see how we could do it. No, we're not going to put ourselves in a corner. Okay, this makes sense to me now. That's what's happening there. And so that's what you need to do as well.So have them read the book. And then once you've done that, now meet together and say, "Are we going to become the most trusted voice in our space? Is that a goal of ours?" If we want to become the most trusted voice in our space, the steps, the action items you need to take, they're in the book. They're in the book. They're all right there. You just follow from that point.Paul Green:Wouldn't it be so cool even if just one MSP was inspired by this interview to go and do They Ask You Answer properly? Could you imagine? If that is you, if are the MSP and you go and do this and you come back to this interview, drop me an email sometime in 2024 to let me know that this was the thing that started you off because as I've said throughout this whole interview, I do genuinely believe They Ask You Answer is the longterm marketing strategy for all MSPs. It's just beautiful. Marcus, thank you, again, for your time. So we know what your book is called. We know you can get it on Amazon at bookstores. It's on Audible read by yourself. Your second book is The Visual Sale. Now, for anyone that wants to reach out to you or engage with you, what's the best way to do that?Marcus Sheridan:Definitely on LinkedIn, folks. If you're listening to this and you use LinkedIn, you'll find me on LinkedIn. I generally produce at least one post a day that's high quality, and it's not some silly motivational quote or something like that. It is really meant to share something with you of value, and that's where I'm connected with so many people. So find me on LinkedIn. You can also email me directly, marcus@marcussheridan.com. Marcus@marcussheridan.com. If you had a question as you're listening to me today and you just didn't feel like you understood something or need an idea, again, email me at marcus@marcussheridan.com. But, Paul, this was great. You're doing a great job. You're doing a great service to the MSP space. I can see why your agency has grown and why you're successful and why you've helped so many MSPs grow too. So keep up the good work on your end. I'm really impressed.Voiceover:Coming up. Coming up next week.Matthew Pollard:Hello. My name's Matthew Pollard, and I'm the author of the best-selling Introvert's Edge series. If you're an MSP and you're an introvert, you need to watch this episode because I'm going to share with you why you can actually outperform your extroverted counterparts, and I'm going to talk you through an exact way that you can utilise to differentiate yourselves so you don't find networking and sales so uncomfortable and so you don't have to constantly battle on price.Paul Green:We've got another author next week. His name is Matthew Pollard. He's the author of a couple of really, really good books that you are going to love. One of them is called The Introvert's Edge. It could practically have been written for many of the technician-driven MSP owners that I meet. So he's here on the show next week. We are also returning to our normal format. In fact, I'm going to be talking about the ultimate MSP marketing system. I'm going to be talking about that over the next few podcasts, and we're going to be talking as well about how to sell more to your existing clients. Now, don't forget we're on YouTube. We're adding a new video every single day. You can see those at youtube.com/mspmarketing. Join me next Tuesday, and have a very profitable week in your MSP.Voiceover:Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

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Episode 163Welcome to a special episode of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP.This week's podcast is all about our special guest, Anne Tasker, who grew her MSP to £5m in revenue. She joins me to explain exactly how she did it and the lessons she learnt along the way.Anne founded Zenzero Solutions in 2001. During her 20+ years as Managing Director of Zenzero she took on multiple responsibilities as the business developed. Initially hands-on supporting customers, implementing innovative digital services. As the business grew her focus moved to: developing the core technical teams and SLT; developing the sales engine; and implementing commercial and risk controls. In 2021 having grown the business organically to £5.5m, she successfully obtained Private Equity funding to ensure the continued growth of the business. Anne is now a Non-Executive Director for the business which is allowing her to enjoy other interests (mainly sailing!).Connect with Anne on LinkedIn:https://uk.linkedin.com/in/anne-tasker-4072217Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: * https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 * https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast * https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa * https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast * https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 * https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ * https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ * https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * On the subject of Zenzero's private equity funding, I suggested listening back to Episode 122 that featured them: * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode122/

Episode transcriptionAnne Tasker:Hi, I'm Anne, and I built an MSP from nothing to 5 million. That felt successful because we were continuing to grow the services we were offering, there was real value to that and we should have been putting prices up maybe a little bit sooner than we did. It was an interesting time making those mistakes, but ultimately, I think we came out of it better for it.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast Special.Paul Green:Hello, and merry Christmas to you. Welcome to our final podcast of 2022 and a very special episode. You see, this week, I want to inspire you to do something amazing with your MSP next year. We are focusing this entire episode on a massive success story. In a second, I'm going to introduce you to a very special person who did the same thing as you did, they started their own business, in fact, it was 19-odd years ago, started their own MSP and then built it up over nearly 20 years into a business turning over more than 5 million pounds here in the UK, and then exited that business.And they've since gone on to be part of a management team buying other MSPs here in the UK. It's an amazing story that's full of a mix of things that went well and things that didn't go so well. And what I'm aiming to do with this episode is to inspire you to take next year and make next year the year that you really go for it with your MSP, that you go for extra growth and you really push it to the max.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast Special.Paul Green:Let me introduce you to this week's very special guest.Anne Tasker:Yeah. Hi, I'm Anne, Anne Tasker. I was managing director of Zenzero and I'm now a non-exec director for that business and continuing to enjoy being part of it.Paul Green:And thank you so much for joining me on this recording, Anne, this is going to be such an inspirational episode. Let's start at the very beginning. So, you started Zenzero all the way back, and it seems so many years ago now, doesn't it? But it was back in the year 2001. So, tell us, what were you doing just before you had that entrepreneurial seizure and decided to start your own business?Anne Tasker:Oh, well if only I thought I was going to start my own business. It was purely accidental. I was doing some contract work and I happened to be introduced to some people and I just thought, "Do you know what? I can do better than that." I've seen people buying IT services, talking to IT people, and it just didn't make sense and I just knew I could do better than that. So, I thought, "Yeah, I'll start and I'll do it."Paul Green:But there must have been some kind of an entrepreneurial streak there. I mean, is it something that runs in the family or is your family more from the technology side? You, yourself, you were a technician, you were an IT person before.Anne Tasker:Yeah. Yeah, no, I was in IT. I was actually a software developer doing management reports, developing very trending now, Power BI. So, I think I was ahead of my time. I really enjoyed helping businesses understand technology and see what technology could do for them. Not just installing it, but actually going and talking to them, so they understood it, because it didn't feel like that was happening when I spoke to people. And I got real enjoyment out of it and I wanted that satisfaction, and that's really why I started the business.Paul Green:Yeah. But going from being a software developer to running your own IT firm, you clearly didn't enjoy money then, because you must have taken quite a pay cut to do that.Anne Tasker:Yeah. I mean, it's all about the enjoyment as well. Seeing the satisfaction out of what you can do and actually seeing the potential of that, what you can deliver to those businesses. And it was always more about providing that extra element, which my software background allowed me to do. It helped businesses to not only function on technology but to get the most out of it. And I think that's where the two things came nicely together.Paul Green:And of course, 2001 is literally ancient history, certainly in technology terms. So, when you first got started, I presume, did you just open a break fix shop?Anne Tasker:Actually, it was always a managed service. I always thought that was really important by not just providing kits or fixing kit, but actually providing the service along with it. Now, I mean that's all the rage, obviously with most MSPs now do that handholding, trying to build that relationship with the customers. But I always thought that was the bit that always interested me. So, that's the bit always did.So, it was always about, yes, it was about providing some kits and it was about fixing it if it went wrong. And I got some horror stories about the good old modems that used to make that really screeching noise. And yeah, technology's changed but it was always about enabling customers to do more and I think that's why it was exciting.Paul Green:You know that no one watching this or listening to this under the age of 30 has any idea what we're talking about with modems screeching.Anne Tasker:I'm not going to imitate that noise for you, but yeah.Paul Green:No, I think those of us above 30, and I'm certainly well above 30, we know exactly what you mean. Looking back then, if you started off trying to do those managed services before that was even a phrase. I would say that's, what, probably 10 years or more before that was even a thing or thought of as a thing? What kind of struggles did you have trying to educate the clients? Because sometimes, I think you can be a little bit too ahead of the curve, can't you?Anne Tasker:That's obviously something, again, it's building those relationships. That's the most important thing I think you can do in any business really, but it's that old adage that you got to get to know your clients. People buy from people. And I think they appreciated the fact that we talked to them. We didn't just provide kit and leave them to it. We were trying to help and understand why they needed certain kit, why there were certain levels of service.One of the first things I remember doing, which was again, it's pretty standard now, but it was pretty unique at the time, was we insisted on certain things as part of our contracts. So, all our customers had to have antivirus software that we provided and we had our struggles with suppliers getting that licensing model right. Whereas now, of course, it's very standard. We insisted that all our customers had backups. These weren't options that we talked about. They were, if you're coming and talking to us about your IT, these are the things you need to have as part of that managed service.I think that's where we were able to grow. People recommended us because of those services and obviously we retained customers as well, because if things did go wrong, we'd got everything in place to put it right again. So yeah, I think that was quite important in that growth. And obviously now it's pretty commonplace in the MSP market, that that's how the model works.Paul Green:Yeah. And when we talk about you selling managed services 20-odd years ago, were you doing that on a recurring revenue basis? I know a lot of people did the blocks thing, didn't they? Where they would sell a block of units and then use those units up. Or, did you have some other way of billing your clients?Anne Tasker:What we did initially, we carried on doing and still do as a business today, in that we charge a fixed amount per month, and that allows almost unlimited support. Obviously, there are limits to that. If a customer needed to call us, what we didn't want them to do was to think, "I know I'm going to use up a block of time, so maybe I won't call them just yet." Situation gets worse, things happen, "I clicked on an email, I shouldn't have done." Those sort of things. You want the customer to ring you straight away about those, rather than worrying about using up units of time.So yeah, we always had a way of doing the contract that it was a fixed price depending on the number of users, the complexity of the infrastructure. And we just had a fair usage policy on that, so we'd monitor how much the customers were using it and obviously if they peaked, if they suddenly started using more than we thought they should. Well, that either was a conversation about price or there was a conversation as to, "Why are you using us so much? There's obviously clearly something not working." So again, it was a great way of having that engagement with the customer regularly, just to make sure everything was on par.Paul Green:Now, the first few years that you were running that business, did you run through the standard first three, four, five years that most MSPs, in fact, most businesses go through, where you, yourself, get really busy and then you hire some help and the help doesn't quite provide you as many hours as you're buying? Because you might be buying 40 hours a week of someone's time, but it takes another 10 hours of your time to keep that person going, and then you have that frustrating thing of trying to increase the work to pay for the employees, and the chicken and egg thing of, "Do I hire more resources first or do I get more customers?" Did you go through all of that and how many years was that a struggle for you?Anne Tasker:Well, I'd say always a struggle. Those things always happen. I always think it's like stairs, you'll go quite smoothly for a while and then you'll suddenly hit a bit of a barrier as you're going to go up the next step and you have to make that next investment in people.So, when I started the business it became clearly obvious that I couldn't do everything. So, you had to make your first hire. Then it was like, well suddenly, as you say, you've got that huge drop in, effectively, income to the business because you've got to pay someone. I think that's something you go through but you learn by that as you go through your journey. So, you have similar problems later on. They're just slightly bigger problems or bigger challenges, I should say. Not really problems, they're challenges.Paul Green:Yeah, no I would agree with that. My business growth journey is nowhere near as impressive as yours, but I think you're right, that when you hire your first person ... My very first employee, Lucy, Lazy Lucy, we used to call her, after we'd fired her.Anne Tasker:Oh, did you?Paul Green:And I made all the mistakes on that first employee. I hired the wrong person too quickly and I expected them to do everything that needed to be done. It's a classic mistake and I've made it, I'm sure you've made it, everyone's that mistake. But certainly early on, when that first employee turns out to be wrong, after two weeks, you don't sleep, do you? It is actually, it's like your entire world has come crushing down. Whereas I guess, when you've got 40 or 50 staff and you get a hire wrong, because everyone gets a hire wrong now and again, as you say, it becomes a challenge, it's a minor annoyance rather than a complete tragedy.Anne Tasker:Yeah. And you've just got to face different challenges because you've got to put structure in, you've suddenly you've got a service desk of people and then suddenly you need a service desk manager. So, it's just different challenges. As a service industry, people are absolutely key to the business, and I was very fortunate that I happened to know the first person I employed in advance, which was great, because it took away a lot of the strain that you'd normally get with just recruiting someone.Then you got the second person. I think it was my second person I hired that was the, "Oh, what have I done? Oh, that was a mistake." And bizarrely it was actually a salesperson. Myself, and the other guy was technical, and we thought, "Right, well, we need to grow the business." At that point we were already thinking, "We need to get that next contract in." We wanted an office. Those overheads that you initially need as you start the business. But oh dear, that was one of those mistakes. The first one, very junior person. So, we moved on from that quite quickly.Paul Green:Yeah. No, what's really interesting, Anne, is, and I talk to a lot of MSPs, I interview a lot of people who have grown a business and have been very ambitious and it's quite rare that early on ... When someone starts a business for the sake of, "Right, I want to do something, I know I can be good at it and I want to do a good job and look after the customers." Which is why most people start most businesses. It's quite rare for them as early on as their third, or their second or third hire, to actually start to think about taking on a salesperson. Did you know from the beginning that you wanted to build up something big and impressive and something that you could one day sell? Or, was that something that it took you a few years to get to that point?Anne Tasker:I always wanted to be successful. Anything I do, I want to be good at and I wanted to be successful at. And certainly, in the early days there was a need to grow it or a wish to grow it. So, obviously it seemed in my head an obvious thing to do, because it's like that, "I'll hire a salesperson. We'll get loads of sales in, this'll be easy." But of course, it's not quite that easy.To be fair, I think we were probably turning over 800,000, we'd probably got seven, eight people and we did then make another investment in sales, and that was a more structured and a more well thought out hire in terms of sales, someone with a little bit more experience that could keep my enthusiasm in check as to what a salesperson could actually deliver, but actually build on the relationships we've got with existing customers. But obviously also look at what we needed to do to drive new business.Paul Green:Was there a pivotal moment where you perhaps had a long holiday and you came back and you thought, "We're doing really well but we're never going to be super successful if we carry on down this route?" And was there that moment where you pivoted off and did things differently? Or, was it just an iterative process?Anne Tasker:Being always thinking about growth and wanting to make the business better, always reinvesting in the business. It was never really a business where I was doing it just to take income out of. I was growing something to be proud of. I think it's difficult when you've not done it to think, "What is the end game? What am I actually trying to achieve?" And for a long time for me, it was more about the growth of the business, the success of the business, making sure that people we brought into the business enjoyed the business as well, and just making sure that the clients were happy and just wanting to build a successful business. And that was really the focus for a very long time.It was probably only in the last five years, we started to think about, "Well, at some point there's got to be an exit. At some point we need to think about what's next and what we want for the business."Paul Green:I'm going to come back to that exit shortly because that's, I think, quite an interesting part of the story. Let me just ask you about success. You've said a few times that you wanted to be successful in that business. How do you know when you've achieved success?I talk to someone, you, who's built up a business, who's exited that business. By any measure you are successful, but I guess we all have different things that we measure success by. So, as you were building that business and as you were clearly making money out of it, you were clearly winning more clients, the business was getting bigger. Did you feel as though that mythical, "I am successful," level, was getting further away from you? Was it tangible or was it just something that was always just out your reach?Anne Tasker:Yeah, it's interesting. So, for me, the measure of success was customer retention and how happy our customers were, because I always thought that if we were doing a good job and that was ultimately what the business is about, we wanted to do a good job for our customers. So, as the number of customers extended, some of our customers grew at the same time as us. We grew at the same time as them. That felt successful, because we were continuing to grow and we'd always set ourselves a budget for the year and try and hit that.So, you planned out what you wanted your revenue to be, how many customers you wanted to attract, and we always kept a close eye on that. So again, if we hit those targets, that was a good measure of success. I have to say, one of my ambitions was always to try and get out the day-to-day business, and that would've been another great achievement. I must admit, I never really achieved that. There's always something to do, always something you have an idea and you want to do something. Yeah, I think it sounds a bit odd but yeah, that customer success was really how I would measure my success in the business.Paul Green:Did you proactively try and remove yourself from the day-to-day running of the business at some point, perhaps by putting in a general manager or a managing director?Anne Tasker:At one point in the journey I think we'd got to about 4 million, little bit of me thought, "Do you know what? This is getting a bit too big for me." And I brought in a managing director, I brought in a finance director, and I brought in a sales director. I thought, "I'll go the full hog." And actually, what it taught me was there was no one better to run the business than me.And actually, that was a bit of a reawakening and it gave us momentum to move forward as a business. The team were very supportive of the changes, but ultimately, we came out of that more focused, more enthused, more energetic. I think it was an interesting time making those mistakes, but ultimately, I think we came out of it better for it.Paul Green:So, do you think the process of hiring a management team from scratch, which is a huge thing to do, do you think the process of doing that actually gave you the confidence to realise that you could do this?Anne Tasker:Yes. Yeah. No, and absolutely. And don't get me wrong, we've promoted within the teams, which is always great. People who joined us very early on, went into those management roles and ultimately, we made some mistakes but we brought in some great management team members towards the end as well, I'd say about three years before I exited, after the mistakes. That's the good thing about mistakes is as long as you learn from them, they're actually really useful.Paul Green:Yes.Anne Tasker:So, just making those mistakes. And then we brought in a very experienced service delivery director and it was just a marvelous ... Everyone really took to him, made a big difference, knew a little bit more about how to structure the teams, was very specific about our industry. Just made a big difference.Paul Green:I think as long as mistakes don't wipe you out and you make sure you don't repeat the same mistake again, and mistakes can actually be more useful learning experience than anything else. Before we come on to talk about the exit, let's look back, I want you to look back over the nearly 20 years that you were growing that business and driving it. And I'm sure there were loads of very, very high moments and also some very low moments.My core question that I'm interested in is, if you could get in a TARDIS, which for those who don't know, is Dr. Who's time machine on the British TV show. If you could get in a TARDIS and travel back and talk to yourself of 2001, what key pieces of advice would you give yourself? Essentially, what would you do differently if you could do it all over again?Anne Tasker:Like you say, the mistakes you make are part of the journey and it would've been great to bypass some of those, but I think they're part of that journey. One, I guess, comment I'd say is, more confidence just that, "We are going to build this and it's going to grow." Ultimately, looking back, I enjoyed the journey, so yeah, I probably wouldn't want to give too much away to myself in the past, because I think having those challenges were a good thing. They might not be nice at the time, but they're a good thing at the end of it.Paul Green:That was a very good politician's answer. You completely sidestepped my question there. So, I'm going to do the journalist thing and ask you essentially the same question but with different words. Looking back, what do you wish you'd done faster or what do you wish you'd done sooner?Anne Tasker:Probably focusing on profit a little bit more, sooner. We tended to be that as long as we were getting new customers and we were servicing, and as long as we were making some money, we didn't worry too much about profitability and we probably let too many customers ... The costings needed to be corrected. And I think we should have done that a little bit earlier. It would've been good to focus on that we're actually there to make money at the end of the day, because we're a business.And I think it would've been useful to plan that out a little bit better, just understanding that the services we're offering, there was real value to that and we should have been putting prices up maybe a little bit sooner than we did. Because it's really easy and I know everyone says it, it's really easy not to put prices up, but it is actually, I think customers appreciate that if they're getting value for money then that's a good thing to be doing.Paul Green:Yeah. They don't mind paying for it. And also as you're growing a business, assuming you own the business, once you've covered your own personal income needs and assuming that you're not yourself looking to get a yacht or that house in Barbados or whatsoever, it becomes easier to not put the prices up and not to worry about the profit. Especially as the turnover is growing, because you can look at it and think, "Oh well, we can always monetize that. We can always turn more of that turnover into profit down the line." But I agree with you, far too many ... And this isn't just an MSP thing, this is all small businesses, it's just too easy to go another year and not put your prices up and just hold back.Okay. Let's talk about the exit. So, you exited, let me just check my notes here. So, you exited two years ago, so it was December 2020. How long before that exit did you realise that you were done with the business, that the business was ready to move on perhaps without you at the helm?Anne Tasker:Yeah. I mean, that's an interesting journey really, because the year before, 2019, before we did our deal, we were actually looking to do our own acquisition. We were really focused on growth. We'd hit one of those little barriers that needed a bit of a step up. We needed to increase the number of services, we were going after bigger clients, we wanted to get into different technologies. So, we were actually looking to do our own acquisition in 2019 and we looked at a number of businesses.And then of course, we all know what happened in March 2020, time-wise and timeline-wise though, it actually worked really well for us, because I think we could have made some mistakes. Whereas, what's actually happened is I've exited, but the business has continued to grow. I'd love to say it was planned out for that year, but actually, we were probably thinking it was going to be another three or four years before we got to that point. But it's funny how sometimes things happen earlier than you expect and actually all for the best as far as we were concerned.Paul Green:Yes. And even though you're not actively leading the business, you're still involved in the business because you dropped down, I think it was January this year, wasn't it?Anne Tasker:That's right.Paul Green:That you dropped down from a leadership role down to a non-executive role.Anne Tasker:For a year, I stayed on in the business because as I say, I wasn't necessarily looking to get away from the business, just wanted the business to go through that next step, that next level. We'd got a great team of people and again, we still needed to build it, and this was a much better way of us doing that and achieving that for the business than if we'd tried to do something slightly differently.Yeah. So, it was a very interesting 12 months, as you can imagine. And the business has now done a couple of additional acquisitions. Obviously, during COVID it's had its challenges, but again, it's just been able to see the business continue on that journey and the people within the business carry on their journey. So, it's been great to see that happen. And obviously, it's great for me. I've got more time now since I've stood back, but it's still great to be involved with the business and see it growing and continuing to see how it evolves in the future.Paul Green:You exited to a private equity organization called Fordhouse and we actually had Nicholas Ashford from Fordhouse on this podcast. From memory, it was episode 122, which was back in March this year. And that's worth going and having a listen to that, especially if you're thinking of exiting your MSP in the next year or two. When you were looking at exit options, Anne, did that one stand out from day one? Was that a number of different options, or what drew you into that?Anne Tasker:Yeah. So again, as we hadn't necessarily been looking to exit at the time, it's not like we did a whole big beauty parade of different investors or speaking to other MSPs. We'd spoken to some but nothing too serious. But yeah, I mean, speaking to Fordhouse, the opportunity just seemed too good to miss, really. It was a smaller private equity firm. I got to speak to the partners, they cared about the business. Again, it was quite a unique way that they were funded. And it just meant that the future for the business looked really attractive under that investment.So, protecting people, making sure that we talked about culture, which was really important, and how we grew that business. So, the enthusiasm I got from them and the knowledge from Fordhouse, that they knew a lot about the MSP market already. This was more than just an investment. It was something that they'd researched and obviously cared a lot about. So, for me, it made sense to go with that partner.Paul Green:And clearly Fordhouse has, it's been two years and as you said, you've already made a couple of acquisitions and Zenzero has continued to grow, and I know that a great deal of work has been done over the last couple of years, building on the work that you put in of a couple of decades of your life. It sounds terrible when you say it like that, but that that's the reality of it, isn't it?Anne Tasker:Crazy.Paul Green:Each of us can only do something like this once or twice if we're going to put 10 or 20 years in every time we do it. So, you've acquired a couple of other MSPs and you're now working with the overall management team to look for other MSPs. So, tell us what makes the perfect MSP, for someone that's listening to this, whereabouts would they be geographically based? Would it just be UK or would it be other countries? What kind of turnovers would those businesses be? What's your ideal partner that you might want to talk to in 2023?Anne Tasker:Yeah. No. So yeah, I've got a great role now of going out and talking to other MSPs, which is great because we're in quite a unique industry, in that we all like talking to each other and sharing stories and sharing our experience, which is great. It's not like some industries where it's all very closed book.But yeah, so we're looking for high quality MSPs. We're looking for that cultural fit. So, we're looking for businesses that offer quality services with good customers, of a good size. We're looking for businesses that are transacting with those slightly bigger businesses. Obviously, it's important again that technologies are aligned. So, we're looking for people that are dealing predominantly with the Microsoft technology stack. And again, we're looking to increase our skillsets in terms of Azure and Power Platform, Power BI, all those services now that are adding onto the services that we offer.So, as far as Zenzero is concerned, yeah we're focused predominantly in the UK. We do have offices now outside of the UK to help us service customers. Probably in 3 million turnover, plus. But again, it depends if there's a real niche that an organisation has a particular skillset in, that's again something that would be attractive to us.Paul Green:Okay. And we'll come onto your contact details just in a second. You did mention that you've stepped back from the business and started doing fun things, other things. Surely, you haven't got a hobby or anything now, Anne?Anne Tasker:Yeah, I know it's great, isn't it? Although I don't know, everyone says you fill your time, but yeah, I mean I love sailing, so I'm able to go out and do that a little bit more. It's a great position to be in, have that real life balance that everyone talks about, work-life balance. So, I get to dip in and as I say, still be involved in a business I love, but yet have a bit more time to do the things that are a bit more fun.Paul Green:Thank you, Anne, you've been absolutely inspirational. It's so rare for someone to lay out exactly what they did over a long business journey, to build a business from nothing. If you think about what you've actually achieved, and I'm sure you've reflected back on it, but all of us are on this mission to turn nothing ... Literally, we're sitting down in our spare bedroom on day one of the business and we're looking to create that from literally zero, where it doesn't exist, to something that's so valuable that someone else is willing to actually pay money and take that off our hands, and keep you involved, which is very much a measure of you and what you've achieved over the last 20 years.So, thank you so much for spilling your story with us, for sharing that. Well done, for what you've achieved. And just for any MSP that does want to just have a chat with you about whether or not they would be a good fit for Zenzero, what's the best way to get in touch with you?Anne Tasker:If anyone wants to link me in and drop me a message on LinkedIn or drop me an email, my email's Anne, with an E, .tasker@zenzero.co.uk. Obviously, you can look me up on the website or find me on LinkedIn is probably just as easy. But yeah, it'd be great to speak to anyone that's interested and even if you don't think it would be a fit, if you want to just have a chat, more than happy to do that as well.Voiceover:Coming up next week.Marcus Sheridan:Hey, folks, I'm Marcus Sheridan, the author of They Ask You Answer. I'm going to be on the show next week. Yeah, we're going to start the year right and we're going to talk about how you can become the most trusted voice in your space.Paul Green:Oh you are going to love that next week. Marcus is an astonishing guy. The content marketing ideas he's come up with are astonishing and next week's interview, our first for 2023, is also going to be astonishing. Next week you'll hear why you must put your prices on your website. You'll hear why you must invest more in original content next year. And why you must must must do more videos. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.Voiceover:Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

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Episode 162Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* THIS is your MSP's 2023 goal * Can you beat my MSP productivity stack? * A $10m MSP owner's 2023 forecast

Featured guest:Thank you to Jamie Warner from E-Nerds and Invarosoft for joining me to share how he grew his MSP to $10m and predictions for 2023.Jamie is passionate about the IT support industry and previously founded an award winning MSP business in 2000 which he grew and was honoured 7 times in the MSPmentor 501 list from 2011 to 2018. Jamie was also honoured twice in the MSPmentor 250 list recognising the world’s leading MSP entrepreneurs and executives.

Connect with Jamie on LinkedIn:https://au.linkedin.com/in/jamie-warner-75769a16Extra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: * https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 * https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast * https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa * https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast * https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 * https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ * https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ * https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * On the subject of productivity, I mentioned the tools Todoist & Basecamp: * https://basecamp.com/ * https://todoist.com/ * The recommended book was The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/10X-Rule-Difference-Between-Success/dp/0470627603

Episode transcriptionVoiceover:Fresh every Tuesday.Voiceover:For MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.Voiceover:Podcast.Paul Green:Hello. It's our last show before Christmas and we have a cracker for you today. Here's what's coming up.Jamie Warner:We've built our business with no acquisitions and you've got to do these tactical things to win in very competitive markets, which is pretty much all markets that have MSPs in them.Paul Green:That's Jamie Warner from Invarosoft, literally the perfect guest to finish off our regular podcasts for 2022. He's going to be joining me later to look at 2023. What do you think is going to happen next year? Now, Jamie has built up two businesses from scratch into multi million dollar enterprises, one of them being his own MSP. So he's the perfect person to look at what could happen next year and what you can do with your business to make sure that next year is awesome, regardless of what happens with the economy and all of that kind of stuff. We're also going to be talking this episode about productivity. I'm going to share with you my own productivity stack and see if we can make you a more productive person in 2023.Voiceover:Paul Green'sVoiceover:MSP Marketing-Voiceover:Podcast.Paul Green:Let's start this week's show talking about what it is you want to achieve with your business next year. If we were to jump forward a year, get in a time machine and ask you, at the end of 2023, what would you like to look back and think, "Yeah, I achieved that with my business," what would that thing be? I started to ask you this back in episode 156 at the beginning of November where I asked you, what's your moonshot? What's your big, hairy audacious goal? And the reason that I put these ideas in your head and talk about these things at this time of year is because we are all about to have a collective pause and a collective few days off. I think Christmas is pretty much the only time where virtually all of us get to have a few days and we get to stop.You can't really think about your business properly when you are busy, when you are rushing through things and trying to get things done. And I'm conscious that with just a few days until Christmas and having a break and hopefully spending some time with your family, I'm very conscious that you're probably very busy right now. This week is probably the worst week to think about what you want to do with your business next year. Whereas this time next week, that's exactly the right time to think about it because we are all busy people getting things done. That immovable deadline of Christmas is an epic productivity hack because it's immovable. Christmas is going to happen on the 25th whether we like it or not. So we can leverage that to get things done because we've got to down tools by a certain time. But that fills our brain, that clutters us up with things that need to be done and task lists and that leaves very little space for big picture thinking.So that's why, let's talk about that today, next week. I'm hoping you get some downtime. I'm hoping you don't have this thing cluttering up your life. I'm hoping that your laptop is closed. I'm hoping that your PSA isn't even open. I'm guessing your MSP will be closed for a few days. This is awesome because you can take the dog for a walk or the cat or the mongoose if you've got one. Hang out with your family, have a few beers, eat a little bit too much food, watch trashy TV. Go on long walks, just enjoy yourself and crucially not think about tickets, clients, computers, all the things that you think about because those things need to leave your head. You've got to start thinking about the big picture. What do we want next year? Now your temptation maybe to think, "Right, I want to get another technician next year and I want to get up to this turnover level and have this amount of net profit."What I suggest you do is that you and your other half spend a little bit of time talking about actually what do you two, if there is another half, what do you two want from the business next year? Because it could be that actually next year you want to pick up your kids from school every day because that's an awesome thing to do. And believe me, that's something that you will look back and be glad that you did. Maybe you want to take most Fridays off next year. Maybe you do want to double your income, you want to buy a bigger house or a better car or something like that. Maybe it's material things, maybe it's time things. But before you start thinking about what you want to do with your MSP next year, you've got to be very, very clear what you want for you next year.Cause remember the whole point of the business, the sole purpose of the business in the bigger picture is it's there to give you the lifestyle that you desire. Sure, you've got to keep the customers happy and you've got to keep all their technology things done. And from their point of view, that's the purpose of the business, that business is there to service them. But the big picture is once you've got the business off the ground and you're paying people's salaries, the purpose of the business is to give you the lifestyle that you most desire. So you've got to be very clear on what that lifestyle is. There are very few MSPs that I've met who are in this to get rich, making good money is a nice side effect, side effect byproduct I guess, of doing a really, really good job. That's got to be the goal for this.But it starts with knowing exactly what you want. So please if you can take some time next week, chill out, relax. And you know what? Almost don't think about this. Don't think too much about what you want from the business. Once you've had two or three days off, what will happen is you'll wake up one morning and it will just be there in your brain. Because what's actually been happening is in the background, certainly when you sleep, when we sleep, a large proportion of our brain is reallocated during sleep time into problem solving. And essentially running a business is just a massive problem. So our brain immediately goes into that problem solving mode. And about two or three days into your break, you will wake up one morning and your brain will deliver to you some of the answers It's been thinking about, some of the things it's been thinking about and certainly particularly if you've listened to this before, thinking about it will deliver to you what you want next year.And of course it's worth having a chat with the other half to solidify that and make sure that you both want the same things. And as I said, they're more likely to be about time than they are about cash. If you want to share these with me, I would love to have a one-on-one conversation with you. Now we do have thousands of listeners to this podcast, so I can't have a video call conversation with everyone unfortunately, but I would love to have a brief email conversation with you or indeed on LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn. Just go and look for Paul Green MSP Marketing connect with me or you can't just drop me an email as well. And let's have a chat about what you want to achieve with your business next year. My email address is hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.Voiceover:Here's this week's-Voiceover:Clever idea.Paul Green:So, once you're clear on where you want to go and where you want to take your business next year, the next job is to remove any possible barrier, any obstacle to success along the way. And it's possible that your greatest obstacle to success is your ability to get things done. I don't mean technical things, I don't mean client things, I mean business development things. The most successful people that I have ever known and ever met, they all have one thing in common. They have the ability to get things done, whether that's through delegation, whether it's through action taking, that's their superpower. They don't just talk about stuff, they get things done. So in that spirit, and because I know you'll have a few days to think about this over Christmas, let me tell you about my productivity stack. So I don't consider myself a productivity expert, but I have refined my productivity stack over the last 20 years or so.And I do consider myself an incredibly productive person. So I don't get everything done every day because who does. But I am aware what needs to be done and I'm aware what can be put off till another date and what needs to be done now. So when I talk about my productivity stack, I am going to mention software, but I don't really mean software. I mean a stack of things. So the three things I've got in my stack is I've got tasks, now tasks is about doing the little things. I've got projects, that's about doing the big things. And then I've got systems and systems just make life easy. I love systems. So let's start with tasks. So for tasks, it's all the little things that have to be done because they're important or urgent, but they don't move things forward. All of those things get shoved into tasks.I'll give you an example of a task that's come up today for me just to show how random and boring my life can be as well. I had to dig out my digital tire monitor today because I've had my car for a year and I noticed at the weekend that my tires were getting quite low, how the tires wear out. And here in the UK if your tires are below 1.6 millimeters and you get stopped by the police, then you get an instant fine. But more important than the fine, you get three points on your license. And once you have 12 points on your license, you lose your license for six months. I think it's six months anyway. So if you were stopped in your car, all four tires were under the legal limit, you've instantly lost your license, which is inconvenient. So one of my jobs for today is to go out and use my little digital thing here, which I got off Amazon and just measure my tires and then book myself into a tire replacement center if I need to.Now that's not moving the business forward, that's not moving my life forward. But what it is doing, it's important because it stops any kind of interruption and not being able to drive for six months is a pretty big interruption when you live in a village in the middle of nowhere like we do. So I use for my tasks, a piece of software called Todoist, please don't get caught up on the specific software I use. You pick the software that's right for you because they all more or less do the same thing. And I have refined Todoist down in all sorts of ways over the years. But primarily I use it in of three different ways. I'm going to tell you the three different things. I've got my inbox, I've got my timed tasks and I've got my priority hit list.So my inbox is where every single thought in my head goes. The second I think, "Oh, I need to do that." It goes in the inbox. If I'm driving I can send myself a voice note which is transcribed into the inbox and I use an app called Braintoss for that. I should get a Alexa set up for you as well, really. But the idea is that you never ever carry a task in your head, you get it out of your head as quickly as you can. You shove it in the inbox and you forget about it. So I review my inbox at the end of each day and there'll be five to 10 items in there. The things that I can do, instantly I do those things and the rest of them, they get scheduled for the future if they're not something that I can do quickly, but that inbox must be cleared every single day, otherwise it becomes your email inbox.And when there's 200 items in there, no one wants to tackle that, do they? It's just too difficult. So once an item has come into my system, it either then becomes a timed task or it goes onto my priority hit list. So the timed tasks are things that have to happen on a routine basis. So for example, in fact, let me go into my Todoist now. I'm go into my times tasks. So I have a mixture. I have business to all work time tasks and personal time tasks. So here we go. This is so dull. The reality is the mundane things of people's lives are dull when you get into them. So I have a task here to log into iCloud to check that photos are syncing from my phone okay. And the last time I did that was February. So that's one of those tasks that if I'm going to skip something, I'll skip that one because it's normally quite fine.I've got here another time task that my daughter is due an eye test in a month's time so I need to book her in on the opticians. Can you see what I mean by timed tasks? They're things that have to be done, they're time specific. And then I've got my priority hit list is my other thing. I have a priority hit list for the business. I have one for personal. And the beauty thing of the priority hit list is it's literally the list of things that you need to do now. So I will build my priority hit list at the end of each day. What are the tasks that I need to get done each day? And remember they're the small things, these aren't the big projects, these are the small tasks. So looking here at my priority hit list for the business today, I've got to sign off our monthly MSP marketing edge content because that's just been delivered to me by my content manager.I've got a couple of emails that I need to deal with. I've got to set up some Zooms for Monday, I've got to send some invoices off to my bookkeeper, it's that kind of stuff. But all of those things go into my task list. And again, my goal is to empty my task list every day. Often I'll pull things out of my timed tasks and put them into my priority hit list. And that's how I fill each day. Some days I don't get it finished, but I have to say, nothing beats getting to the end of the day. And you've got three tasks left and you have a productivity surge because you can see oh three tasks, I'm just going to do those things. And that can be the most productive 10 or 20 minutes of the day because you're getting towards an empty list.Crossing off everything on your list is incredibly motivating. So that's what I do with tasks, but I increasingly am trying to spend less time on tasks and more time on projects. So projects are the big things, the things that drive your, well everything forward. And I use a piece of software for this called Basecamp. Again, use the project management software of your choice. I love Basecamp because it's incredibly affordable, it's very flexible, it's not perfect in any way, but they're constantly adding new features and it looks nice as well. So Basecamp is where within the business where we plan all of our projects, all the things that are moving us forward. I also use it for my private life as well because you can choose who sees projects. So I have my personal projects there in Basecamp and I know some of my team do exactly the same thing, which is fine.We have unlimited projects in Basecamp. So I'm running my house refurb through Basecamp, but I'm also running the business through it as well. And the reason I want to spend more time in Basecamp is because that's where the big jumps forward come from. And Basecamp allows us to break each project down into multiple lists and break each list down into specific tasks. And you can see progress, you can see what's up next, you can see whose responsibility for something. It's beautiful. So if I look at the three, I try to have no more than three big projects on that I'm responsible for at a time. I have a team of 10 in total. So everyone has projects that they're responsible for. But me personally, I can only cope with about three big projects. And I'm looking at my, I'm not going to tell you what my projects are, but I'm looking at them now.And for each of my projects in Basecamp, I can see what the next specific task is. So I get to my point of my day now where at the beginning of the day I check my emails, I check my Facebook groups, I check my tasks of things that need to be done and then as soon as I can into Basecamp and I'm looking at right, what's a task, what's a thing that I can do today that moves the projects forward? That's where I'm trying to spend more of my time because that's where the magic happens. So backs the stack, we've got tasks that get the small things done, we've got projects that get the big things done. And then the final thing is systems. So I'm just going into my systems here. I keep all of my systems within Todoist, but systems are again the magic that just keep regular things going.So there are lots of different systems. You can have systems for your staff, I'm sure you have systems all over the place. I have productivity systems as well and they tend to be around things that need to be done each week. So for example, I'm recording this on a Thursday and in my Thursday system in my repeat system for Thursdays, record podcast is the very first thing. Then I need to do new client welcome videos. So every time we have a new member joining the MSP Marketing Edge, I film a personalised video for them. Then I'm ready to write my Friday email. So we have an email that goes out to our database every Friday. I need to set up our next split test because we're constantly doing AB split tests on our emails. And then there's a series of other things right down to, I need to pay the cleaner because the Cleaner comes on Thursday.And I know that, again, this sort of minutiae sounds dull, but these are systemised things. They're systemised because they happen on the same day each week. So I always talk to my team on Mondays. We have a series of calls every single Monday. I have specific jobs that I do every single Tuesday. And again, there's no stress in these jobs because they always get done every week because they must happen. In fact, if for example we have a big social event and I lose a proportion of a day, I will often focus more on my systemized repeat tasks before we go off and do that social ahead of anything else. Because if I get to the end of the day and I haven't completed my repeat tasks, my systemised tasks, then I don't sleep well. It's weird. But I feel I don't have any peace of mind for the end of the day because I know that I've broken my system.And the one thing I know more than anything else about systems is that actually the word system is an acronym. You may have heard me say this before. It's an acronym for Saves You Stress, time, energy, money. System, it's beautifully simple like that. So that is my productivity stack. As I say, it's not necessarily the right productivity stack for you, but it works for me. And what has worked very well over the years is separating out the small things that need to be done from the very big things that move the business forward and maybe you could do the same in 2023.Voiceover:Paul's blatant plug.Voiceover:Blatant plug.Paul Green:One more suggested thing for you to help you in 2023. And that is to join my free Facebook group. It's the MSP Marketing Facebook group. It's the biggest free community on Facebook purely of MSPs, no vendors, it's just MSPs who talk about growing their business through better marketing. And if I look just at some of the most recent posts, we've got something here about a big revenue opportunity in 2023 that's to generate more monthly recurring revenue from existing clients. Got a website, quick win Wednesday on improving SEO, that's a pretty good one.We've got here. Where are we? Scroll down here. Scroll down here. We've got something about back to hiring, back to work moms to phone people to move your marketing forward. Then we've got something here about technicians and their attitude. So there's loads of things in here, tons of things. It's about marketing and anything to do with growing your business. Completely free. And if you are an MSP and not a vendor, then to apply to join is very simple. Go onto Facebook, type in MSP Marketing at the top. Just make sure you go to groups and then you can push your finger onto my face and fill in a few questions and that's how you join. It's the MSP Marketing Facebook group and I look forward to talking to you inside.Voiceover:The big-Voiceover:Big interview.Jamie Warner:Hi, this is Jamie Warner, CEO of eNerds and Invarosoft.Paul Green:And welcome back to the show, Jamie. I can't believe it's been so long. You were last on the show, it was July last year, episode 88. In fact, it was a special episode and if you are listening to this right now and you haven't heard that special with Jamie, press pause, go back to episode 88 and go and listen to Jamie's story because we're not going to go back into it today. But it is an amazing story and Jamie will tell you how he built up a business from nothing. Jamie's not even a tech and he built up an MSP from nothing to I think there's around about nine million Australian dollars.But that's all back in episode 88. But thank you for joining me again today, Jamie, you are the final guest interview before Christmas, which makes you the most special interview of the year. What I want to talk about today is 2023. Now you are in a very unique position that you are both the owner and driver of an MSP and you are also a vendor of course as the owner of Invarosoft. I appreciate here, I'm asking you to look into the crystal ball, but what do you think 2023 is going to have in store for MSPs around the world?Jamie Warner:Well firstly, thanks for having me. And what do I think they have in store in 2023? Well, it's just tremendous amount of opportunity. I think the great thing about the MSP model is that it's very consistent, it is an annuity, monthly revenue type business. If you're doing a managed approach, obviously there'll be a lot of people listening that do break fix still. If you want to go annuity, it's probably a little less stressful in terms of that model. But I think there's just a great opportunity to continue to work with your clients, continue to provide that proactive advice. And really I think at the heart of it is that from a revenue and a growth perspective, there really is a great opportunity to nurture your existing client base and tactically help your MSP grow through looking at the current client pool that you have.Paul Green:Yeah. In fact, one of the things that stood out most for me listening back to our original interview from last year was you said a great sentence. So these aren't your exact words, but this is your sentiment, which was, if you end the year with more recurring revenue and more recurring revenue clients than you started the year, then that's a good year And the goal has to constantly be adding in new clients. But we then also reflected on part of that being that you've got to retain your existing clients as well. Do you see that selling more to existing clients is an easier growth opportunity for MSPs than adding new clients?Jamie Warner:Well let's focus on that and do a bit of a recap. So the main thing that I see most MSPs not doing is that they don't think about their sales target for the year because it is intrinsically two metrics, sign up more dollar revenue because it's not about more clients, it's more dollar revenue than you lose every year. And lo and behold, you will grow your business, it's not rocket science, but ask probably eight out of 10 MSPs and they won't actually have a sales target for their monthly support, their monthly revenue. So I don't mean monthly internet and Office 365 and those sort of things because they're very low margin. I'm talking about new clients and you really do need a target on that. So it is important, the stuff that you help them with Paul, is super important to get the clients in the door.And you do need that because that creates pipeline. But one of the biggest observations I've made over the last 22 years of growing an MSP is that the area in which will grow the business in leaps and bounds is definitely procurement, it's your advisory, it's your VCIO process, it's all of that where you go and actually speak to clients and proactively talk about the things they need to fix. But it's about this concept of sales compression. If you put your clients down the left hand side of an Excel spreadsheet and you said, "Okay, I think you need this and you need this and you need this." And you added it all up, you probably average maybe 10 to $15,000 per client. And what I'm seeing most MSPs do is that they don't do that for one thing. They don't do that exercise of looking at your clients as a pipeline to some degree, Paul, a lot of MSPs seem to think that that's a dirty word.I don't want to sell things that they don't need and these types of things. But it's not about that. It's about figuring out what is burning, what's breaking in their environment, putting it in a list and understand that you do need to go and actually speak to them about it. So it's about being proactive and it's about this concept of sales compression. So whilst getting new businesses great, it's this concept of looking at a large pipeline that you have, let's say an MSP had a hundred clients and it was 10 grand each, that each client you could potentially sell them something, some new desktops, laptops or UPS a project to go to Office 365, whatever it happens to be, that's a million dollar pipeline. And what I'm observing, putting my vendor hat on and now actually speaking to hundreds of MSPs around the world, is that the difference between the MSPs like my MSP that's now 10 million and those that are a bit smaller is that they don't see it as a pipeline and they don't have those conversations.They don't do what I call sales compression, which is to squeeze that deal flow into a shorter period of time so that they can increase that revenue. So I'm not saying you're not going to sell it, I'm just saying that those that are more efficient in their sales process have a better chance of increasing revenue because they're going out and having conversations and getting people to convert. So a lot of people are going out and actually having the conversation, but what they're doing is they're doing this kind of old approach of a one option approach. And that's where I start to talk about things like good, better, best and tactical things where you can get buyers to make buying decisions faster. So when you do these types of things, you compress deal flow in a shorter period of time and lo and behold, once again, you can increase that revenue just by being sales efficient.Paul Green:Yes, I love this. Absolutely love it. Now you mentioned their good, better, best, which is one of my favorite ways of selling. It's where you offer people three choices. Talk us through how you do that in your MSP. So literally the practical steps of when you're trying to sell something to an existing client, how do you offer them three different packages and what's the difference between that good package, that better package and that best package?Jamie Warner:Right, bear with me. It's a good question, I just need to give the listeners a bit of a background on this because in the MSP space, there's a lot of conjecture, there's a lot of pushback on good, better, best. And I have to say it does frustrate me a little bit because there is so much research about good, better, best, and why you need to do things like this. Ultimately in the market, think of any buyer, think of yourself personally. When you go to a supermarket and you look for toilet paper, you intrinsically have the choice between the rough as guts cheap toilet paper and the Cleopatra smooth, beautiful toilet paper. The same goes for petrol or gasoline, good, better, best. Shoes, grapes, yogurt, I don't care what it is. As buyers, we are conditioned to have options. Starbucks, coffee all around the world, what do you want?Good, better, best, small, medium and large. It's the same thing over and over again. So there's this conjecture out there going, "Oh, I don't think good, better, best works." But this is fundamentally researched by our behavior. And so to poo poo it without any thought and just poo poo it because someone said it doesn't work, is really going against everything that's been researched. So have a look at a book called Monetizing Innovation. Have a look at a Harvard Business Review article about good, better, best and you'll see what I mean, have a good read of it and it's important for you to understand because this is the journey the buyer goes through. So now let's look at complex situations like whether it be your support plans or whether it be selling and coming back to them with recommendations about things. If buyers are intrinsically conditioned by an option, it works really well because if you give someone one option, it's what they call a take it or leave it proposition, the buyer can fundamentally only say yes, no, or go dark.And I bet you a million bucks, people listening to this have seen their clients go, "Oh, let me have a think about it. Oh I'll come back to you on that." And they don't come back to you because they don't know what to do because they can't negotiate with you because essentially when you only have one option, the only thing they can negotiate on is price, because you've got everything included. So you can only say, "Oh well can you reduce the price a little bit?" Whereas when you have packages you go, "Well I could take this out and this out to meet your budget." So with good, better, best, you are catering to what they call three buying personas. It's the budget conscious, middle of the road and your premium buyer. Now the reality is there's not many premium buyers in SMB, but having a premium package, if you have three packages, enables you to anchor the other two packages.So for example, if the quote was 20 grand, you would ordinarily come back to them on a large recommendations. It makes more sense to go, "Well you could spend 10 grand with just a few upgrades, could be 20 or it could be 40 or 50." The 40 or 50,000 anchors the other two prices, if you just said to someone of 20,000 pounds or dollars, they go, "Whoa, whoa, well hang on." They have no context over that 20,000. Whereas if you give them context 10 or 40 or 50, suddenly the buyer goes to themselves, well yeah, in their mind they'll be thinking, "I'm not spending 40." So they think they've made a saving by not selecting the most expensive one. So this is how the buying process goes with a buyer and it's why good, better, best works so well because they can now choose to buy as opposed to being sold to.And there is an absolute difference between someone buying and saying yes or no with their arms crossed. You watch a buyer when it's a yes or no proposition, they'll have their arms crossed and they'll be like, "Mm." But if you give them options, their arms come open, they start rubbing their chin, leaning in, going, "Oh, what should I do there?" And this is the sort of thing that we've done in my MSP for a long, long time, and I think it's why we do a great job. When we come back to a client with recommendations, we give them options, we build the solution, we actually call it solution builder for the recommendation side and it enables us to get them to buy something and we can circle back later to sell them other things they need. So let's give an example where, for example, this is a good one.We're pitching for some new business just like all of you in our MSP right now. And the client, lots of clients will be saying to you, "Come back to me with your recommendations." So MSPs are running around going, "Yes I will and I'll audit it and I'll give you the premium solution, the three to five year solution." So they'll slap a one number with their support plans, which is also probably one number to the client. And now the client's looking at three MSPs, they're like, "Oh well you were 30 grand, you were 20 and oh hang on, eNerds, you were three prices."So straight away we don't get knocked out on price because they have to actually speak to us and go, "Hang on, you're giving us three options. Well which one is it?" And you can go into that consultative discussion to talk about it with them. So there's so many benefits of doing it, but what it really achieves you to do is to get a buyer to make a buying decision. You intrinsically end up selling more to them anyway through this structure. And it is a more aligned process to how buyers are used to buying in that sense in their general day to day-to-day life. So it's fascinating and it works a treat.Paul Green:I love this. Absolutely love this Jamie. Right. I could spend hours talking about this, but I want to move on to another subject which is Invarosoft. So give us a 30 second recap of exactly what Invarosoft is. \Because I want to talk about how you are developing an entire new way of allowing MSPs to work with their clients long term.Jamie Warner:Absolutely. So what we've built is a unified customer experience platform. So it's centered around our client portal experience with our apps, the actual client portal itself. And it's all about giving the customer one pane of glass to show your value, improve your productivity around ticketing and improve communication, improve identity security, and the account management piece. And we are calling it a unified CX platform now because we do, do VCIO, QBR, TBR technology, we have CSAP, we're doing engineer scheduling, we're doing warranty look-ups, we're doing Office 365 and device reports all bundled up in this one platform. You've got live chat, identity, security and all this sort of stuff. So we are really trying to help our MSPs with two things. One is the whole customer experience piece, but two, it's about reducing your stat costs by getting all of the smaller tools you need under the one hood at the same quality as you normally would get from the shelf tools.Paul Green:Got it, got it. And apart from the fact that you threw so many acronyms there that you could have sneaked in an acronym, that was nothing to do with tech at all and you got away with that. But no, that makes complete sense. So you are building and I think what makes a vendor started by an MSP and a successful MSP, what makes that vendor special is that you aren't just building stuff you think MSPs should be using. I know from the conversations we've had previously that you are literally building the tool set that you wish that you had had. And then obviously I can see you've developed Invarosoft massively compared to when we last spoke, what was it 18 months ago. And you've added in all of those extra tools. Give us an example of the retention and upselling impacts that a good unified CX platform customer experience platform can have on an MSP.Jamie Warner:Well, there's two, I'll give you two examples. Firstly, it's winning new business. So one of the things I talk about a lot is where you will help MSPs actually get more leads and get these opportunities through the door. One of the things that doesn't get spoken about is improving conversion. If you are converting say one out of four deals, and if you can improve that to a conversion of two out of four deals, you've literally doubled your growth just by improving conversion. And when you go and see a client, you've got to remember that they are looking for a partnership. They're not looking for a technical solution. Everybody that thinks that, they're not, they're looking for a partnership. And when they're looking for a partnership, they're looking for a step up in that service experience. And so what you want to be able to show them is how you are going to deliver that step up.And if they asked you, "Hey, how's it going to look with this new relationship with you?" And you say, "Don't worry, I'll replace all the mouse pads and stickers you had before with new mouse pads and stickers and you can email and call me that way." And then the next MSP comes in and goes, "You know what? We've invested in the customer experience piece. We know that we need to take away the darkness of the IT support experience. So we've given you this beautiful client portal experience. You can see your tickets, you can see Office 365 reports and you've got forms for onboarding and offboarding, all that sort of stuff. We just make the whole experience easy." Which one do you think is going to have the best chance of winning that deal, the old school 1990s approach or the one that's obviously investing in the customer experience?So it's going to help you improve your conversion and new business. And on the VCIO side, we've actually built our good, better, best methodology into that tool set. So essentially when you go and present these recommendations, you can go through and give them these options, help them select the right thing, and it actually adds it all up down the right hand side of this table so that when you get to the end of that VCIO, QBR, TBR discussion, you're essentially getting that buyer to make a buying decision.Now all you need to do when you send the quote is Chase for sign off rather than what almost nine out of 10 MSPs are doing, which is sending them a quote and trying to have that complicated discussion of what they think they need to do. So there's a massive difference there. And these are the tactical things that we've been doing, both these things in my MSP to beat other MSPs time and time again to build the business. Because we've built that business with no acquisitions and you've got to do these tactical things to win in very competitive markets, which is pretty much all markets that have MSPs in it.Paul Green:I love this. It's so smart. Thank you, Jamie. Can you give us a very brief glimpse at what you are going to be doing with Invarosoft next year? And obviously don't give away any secret source that your competitors can steal from you, but where do you see it developing? What's the big plan for you?Jamie Warner:Well look, next year at the start of Q1 we'll be repackaging the platform so that you'll be able to buy modular things from us. So if you just want to buy VCIO or CSAT or engineer scheduling and these sorts of things, you can do that. But we'll also be bundling them into tech tool bundles so that you can start to help reduce the stat cost, et cetera. One of the surveys we did at the start of the year, we asked people, look, what tools do you use and would you want to reduce the stat costs? And actually it was interesting, 94.4% of MSPs said, "Yeah, I would love to do that because it's just too hard it's too complex managing all these different portals and tools." And so that's what we are looking at doing at the start of the next year and we'll continue to invest in the platform in all the different areas that I've already mentioned to accelerate the feature set for our partners and new partners to come.Paul Green:Awesome. Thank you, Jamie, so much. Just briefly tell us what the website address is for Invarosoft, how can MSPs get in touch with you?Jamie Warner:Sure. If you go to ww.invarosoft I-N-V-A-R-O-S-O-F-T.com and you can contact us there, we've got a very simple process for investigating our software. It's a three steps, you book in a demo, if you like what you see, we'll help you set up a trial, it takes about 30 minutes just to connect your PSA and Azure and then we just book another quick meeting to find out what you'd like to do. So very easy investigating it and it's all templatised. You don't have to do anything. We've invested in it so that you can just plug and play, get this platform going. So for those listening and you're thinking, "Oh yes, I'm thinking about doing CX or something like that in the future," it's very fast, it's not a massive project. We know your time poor and we've invested to make sure that that's an easy process for you.Voiceover:Paul Green's-Voiceover:MSP Marketing-Voiceover:Podcast, this week's-Voiceover:Recommended book.Alton Johnson:Hey everyone, my name is Elton Johnson and the book that I recommend is The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone because it's really all about taking action. The 10X Rule is really just about getting up and actually making a move rather than waiting for the competitors to take advantage of the opportunity.Voiceover:Coming up.Voiceover:Coming up next week.Anne Tasker:Hi, I'm Anne from Zenzero and I've built an MSP from nothing to five million and I'll be on next week's podcast to show you how.Paul Green:Wherever you consume this podcast, please do hit the subscribe button so you never miss an episode, because next week it's our Christmas special featuring that lady. On next week's show, she'll tell you her story, how she did it, the strategies she used, and I'm hoping to inspire you to jump into 2023 ready to build your business and achieve more than you ever thought you could achieve, because you really can do it. We then got a series of specials throughout January. In fact, I'm declaring it to be Authors Month, and I have a whole series of best selling authors joining me throughout January for a series of specials. I'll tell you more about that next week. But join me next Tuesday. Have a very profitable week in your MSP. Oh and happy Christmas.Voiceover:Made in the UK.Voiceover:For MSPs around the world.Voiceover:Paul Green's-Voiceover:MSP Marketing Podcast.

The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure

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Episode 161Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 Fix your MSP's website navigation * 07:42 Three types of MSP sales people * 17:32 The MSP who turned a potato into $30,000

Featured guest:Thank you to MSP owner Zach Kitchen for joining me to talk about how he turned a potato into a new client for his MSP.Over 20 years ago, in middle school, Zach got caught hacking into the school computer system. The incident made him extremely popular with the students, but it sat negatively with the school administration. Students went home and told their parents about the incident, which is how he landed his first IT job in cybersecurity forensics at only 17 years old. In running his successful MSP business, Digital Crisis, Zach has discovered a love for experimental marketing.

Connect with Zach on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/digitalcrisisExtra show notes:Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert:* https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * On the subject of tracking how users interact with your website, I mentioned the tools from HotJar and Lucky Orange: * https://www.hotjar.com/ * https://www.luckyorange.com/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Thank you to Anne Hall from IT Agree for recommending the book The Introvert's Edge to Networking by Matthew Pollard: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Introverts-Edge-Networking-Leverage-Connections/dp/1400216680 * https://nz.linkedin.com/in/annehall-itagree * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 * https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast * https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa * https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast * https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 * https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ * https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ * https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcriptionVoiceover:Fresh every Tuesday, for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.Paul Green:Oh, you are here. That means we can get started with this week's show. Welcome along. Here's what we've got coming up for you this week.Zach Kitchen:Hi, I'm Zach Kitchen. I'm an MSP owner just like you. I made over $30,000 from just an $0.84 potato.Paul Green:We'll listen to that story later on in the show. Plus, we're going to be talking about the three different kinds of salespeople that you need to have in your business.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.Paul Green:Let's start this week talking about a small marketing task that takes so little time to do but has an absolutely massive impact. Now we're talking about the order of items within your website's navigation. And you may not have put a huge amount of thought into that, but as I say, it's something that you can just tweak and play with in 30 seconds, depending which website technology you are using. In fact, it's going to take me longer to talk to you about it than it is for you to actually do it. But the order of your navigation does have an impact on people's expectations of your website and indeed how people use your website.You see, when websites first came along, we're talking the mid to late '90s here, and I just immediately had a memory in my head of being at work in a radio station that I used to work at in around about '96, '97 and we got an internet PC. It was the one PC in the building that was actually connected to the internet. And I remember us all going in and I think we were using Netscape Navigator. How old am I? Using that to actually go and we were asking each other, "Where do we go? Which websites do we go to?" Back then that was a time of immense experimentation. There were no set standards for websites.Today, just on the verge of 2023, we are kind of in a much different place. And not to say that there isn't and shouldn't be lots of innovation with websites, but there are some things that are just done that way just because that's what people expect. For example, your logo in the top left hand side of your website. Now that just goes there. Maybe if you were some kind of experimental brand or some kind of cool trendy marketing agency, you'd put the logo somewhere else. But for an MSP with a standard sales website, your logo goes at the top left. And when someone clicks or taps on that logo, what does it do? It takes them back to the homepage.This is standard behavior from a website. And because we've all been using websites for 25 years, it's what we expect. And when we come across a website which doesn't work in that way, it feels a bit weird. And we don't want people feeling weird when they're on your website. The purpose of your website is to get them to feel like you are the people they can trust with their technology. So we want them feeling warm and comfortable and ready to move on and take the next step with you. We don't want them feeling slightly awkward or even just feeling like things aren't quite right. That's exactly the opposite of how we want them to feel. It's why you don't want the navigation going down the left hand side of your website, that's the navigation of 2010, 2005. On the verge of 2023, the navigation sits at the top. That's just one of those things that we don't experiment with.Now in particular what I want to talk about today is the order of the items in your navigation. Your navigation should be as uncluttered as possible. So if you have more than around about four, five, six things in that navigation, and if start having lots and lots of sub menus, there's just too much in there. And sometimes, well certainly with navigation, I believe less is more. And you can bring that back a little bit. The order is important as much as not having clutter is important. So you should have your logo on the left and then you may choose to have the word Home.Now the Home button does exactly the same as clicking on the logo. It takes them back to the homepage. But there is a certain school of thought which says an older generation, I'm not going to date dates or name ages here, but an older generation still appreciates and uses a Home button. And remember, we want to make people feel comfortable. So if you have space for it in your navigation, put a Home button up there. Now I'm just going to jump to the other end of the navigation, sort of the right hand side, because there you need to have some very specific things. The final item on your navigation should always be Contact Us. Why? Because that's what people expect to see at the end of your navigation. And next to Contact Us, they expect to see About Us.So you've got Home on the left, you've got About Us and Contact Us on the far right, what goes in the middle? Well, that's where you've got a little bit of flexibility. I would argue that the next thing you should have after your Home is Services. Now, people don't really go onto your Services pages. Well, that they might go onto them, but they didn't really read them. They're a bit boring. But they still need to be there. And for your website to be complete, certainly you need to have those pages. Maybe then you'd have a blog section or a news section or some kind of a learning hub or something like that. Maybe you'd have other sectors, verticals that you work with, specific markets. Actually, I'd put that one next to the Services. So you'd have Home, Services, Specialties and then you'd go into your news, your blog or your learning hub and you could have a testimonials page in there as well. I would put the testimonials between the blog and the About Us.You can see we've got a little bit of variance there of things that you can do. It doesn't really matter what the order of the middle things is, but what is most important is that you've got Home on the left and you've got About Us and Contact Us on the right. Those things are fixed. So have a quick look at your website. Now if you have got an easy to edit menu like a WordPress, I mean it takes literally 30 seconds to log in and just move the order around on a WordPress site. Just have a quick juggle around. If you've got too many items and your navigation is cluttered, what you can do is you can put a little tool into your website to tell you, actually give you data on how people are using your website.There is a piece of software we use, it's called hotjar.com. There are other alternatives to it. Lucky Orange is another one that we've toyed with in the past. But we always come back to Hotjar. We have a paid account and that sits in our websites and it just watches and takes videos of what people are doing. In fact, it produces data heat maps, so you can see literally where people's mouse cursors have been around the page and what they're clicking on and therefore what they're not clicking on. But you can also, as I say, you see anonymous video, so you don't know who it is that's using your page, but you can see their behavior and what that does.So if you've got a really cluttered navigation and you're not quite sure which items to drop to make it less cluttered, go and put Hotjar in and within a few weeks you'll have a lovely heat map to show you what they're not clicking on. And guess what? What they're not clicking on, you can remove from the nav or you can hide it in a sub menu or something. But make sure your navigation is exactly what will make people comfortable on your website. In fact, you can broaden that across every element of your website. If it doesn't make them feel comfortable and feel like you can be trusted, then it hasn't earned its place on your website.Voiceover:Here's this week's clever idea.Paul Green:One of our goals as business owners is to hire other people to do the vast majority of the work that we do in the business so that we can spend more of our valuable time working on the business. Now that can take some time to do. And often for MSPs, one of the final roles that they end up delegating out to someone else or hiring someone in to do is sales. Because the weird thing about MSP sales is it's not really a full-time job. It's not like you can onboard 20 new clients this month, right? And in fact, even if you had an organisation big enough to handle 20 new clients, wouldn't you rather have five new clients each with 100 users than you would 20 new clients with five users? Of course you would.So no MSP wants to be onboarding lots and lots of clients. And the reality is, as business owners, we are just good at sales because we've got that passion, the knowledge and the passion for it. So selling always tends to be one of the final roles that we delegate out or that we hire someone to do. Now, as you start to work more towards getting yourself out of doing stuff within the business, I think it's important for you to bear in mind that there are actually three sales roles that you need to replace yourself with within the business. I'll tell you what the three roles are. So first of all, you've got someone hitting the phones and I'll explain what they're doing on the phones in a second. Secondly, you've got someone out doing new business. So literally going and bringing on board new clients. And then third, you've got someone doing account management. So that's retaining and looking after existing clients.Now you yourself, you do all three of these roles, but someone else that you get to do them for you, it's very unlikely you'll get one person who's able to do all three roles. And I'll tell you why in a second. It's all down to human nature and the fact that just naturally, we look for the easiest way and the easiest route to do things. Now when we talk about those three separate roles, I'm assuming that you're operating a marketing system along the lines of this. And maybe you're doing this yourself or maybe you're kind of skipping it and trying to shortcut it a bit. But you have someone hitting the phones to talk to your large audience of people, so everyone you're connected to on LinkedIn, everyone on your email list, all those people that you meet out at networking, these are your audiences. One of the biggest problems with marketing is, and one of the things that makes it so slow is, that people only buy when they're ready to buy.So whoever is picking up the phone in your business, whether it's you or whether you are hiring someone to do it, all they're doing is they're ringing around people trying to build a relationship with them and just trying to figure out when the timing is right, because someone's switching from one MSP to another, it's a big deal, it's a massive purchase, it's a huge thing in their head and they're not just going to do it willy-nilly. They're going to have to be in the right place to do it. And so your phone person is constantly working your network and if no one's doing this in the business, you really need someone doing it. Probably not you because you'd be doing it already if you enjoy doing it. And very few MSPs do enjoy doing it. Back to work mom, this is a great work job for back to work mom, two to three hours a day, two to three days a week. In fact, there we go, there's your first sales person hired.So that's what your telephone person is doing. What they are doing is they're not doing any selling. As I say, they're building relationships and their goal, their outcome is to book 15 minute video calls with the next person. Now this is probably you at the moment and in fact this is the hardest role to replace yourself in because this is the new business person. So this is the person who does the 15 minute video call. And of course, the real purpose of that 15 minute video call is for you to qualify them as a good prospect and to make them realize that you guys are great. And that 15 minute call, if it goes well, it'll actually be 30, 35, 40 minutes you are talking about their favorite subject, which is their business. Then off the back of that you arrange to meet in real life. And then you go and of course you have a meeting and the proposal goes in and there's a scheduled follow up and you win a new client and you go and buy a Porsche, which is awesome.So that's the new business role and you are going to have to get someone else to do that for you at some point, or you continue to do it in retirement or whatsoever. But it is the hardest one to do because it's not a full-time role. It's very much a part-time role and it is difficult. Salespeople who are good, who are reliable, who are consistent, are worth their weight in gold. They really are. And maybe you'll luck out and you'll find someone who perhaps has been doing it for a while but only just wants to drop down to, say, couple of days a week and do the difficult things for you, like going to networking meetings like chasing prospects, moving things along. It's a very difficult role. There's that third role.Remember, once we've got new clients on board, we then need someone to look after them, an account manager. Now this is actually the easiest role to recruit for because this is the funnest role. It's fun to look after clients, to make sure they're happy, to smooth over any problems. Because actually the earlier you smooth over a potential problem, the quicker the problem goes away. Most account management roles are fun. In fact, us as business owners, we like doing it because we take pride in seeing our customers, our clients, be happy in them seeing that we're servicing them well, that we care, that we're keeping the quality high.This is why you probably can't put one person into all three of these roles because account management is fun. Going and getting new business is less fun. And picking up the phone to try and generate appointments for the new business person is also not fun. So you've got three different parts to a job, but two of them are not fun. It's human nature to do the things which are more fun and to do the things which feel less like work. And I've seen people hire in people, full-time people, MSPs, and say to them, "Right, half of your job is account management, half of your job is to bring in new business. Off you go." And six months later they are acing account management. I mean they are truly acing it. And even when there's a bonus scheme in place that only really pays out the good money when they win new clients, they're just not winning new clients. In fact, they're not even doing the activity to win new clients because they're not motivated. Yet they can keep themselves busy at work looking after the existing clients.So I have no specific answer for you in this. Every single MSP is different. And this is the final pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. You're going to have to figure this one out for yourself, and maybe you're years away from being there. One of those is very easy to get, which is your back to work phone mom. You can get that person today. The account management role is the second easiest one to get. Just find someone, doesn't even need to be a technology person, find someone who's great with people and let them look after your people. Those two things are really easy to delegate or to move out to someone else. The hardest one is that new business person.It's the kind of thing that you want to just have in your head now because maybe you've got a technician who would like to earn a ton more cash and we'll take on even just a day or two days a week take on new business in the future. Maybe your service desk manager, service delivery manager would do that in the future. Maybe there is someone that you know right now who's full time doing new business sales for another MSP in town who maybe they're going to some kind of semi-retirement in a few years time and would appreciate doing that for you on a part-time basis. I think it's one of those things you've got to get in your head right now, that some point in the future you've got to replace yourself doing these difficult sales roles, but they're not easy roles to fill.What kind of a network can you build up? This is a bit hippie, but I do believe in this. What kind of a message can you send to the universe of something you need in the future so that the universe can move things around and put the person you need in front of you at exactly the point that you need them. I really do believe it works like that, especially when you pop it in the back of your head right now and give it a couple of years to stew.Voiceover:Paul's blatant plug.Paul Green:Okay everyone, quiet on set please. Lights check. Camera check. It's rolling. And we've got a microphone. Ladies and gentlemen, this is scene 16, take four. Yeah, if you're watching this on YouTube, I've actually got a proper clapperboard. Bought it on Amazon. It's amazing what you can get on Amazon. Literally everything. We need a clapperboard now because every two, three months or so I go into a proper film studio. There's a cameraman called Brendan I think, we've got a makeup lady, we don't have a makeup lady. But we go there to do YouTube videos and not just for fun, they're the kind of videos that are going to help you to grow your business. We're literally sucking all of the good ideas out of my head and committing them to video, really high quality YouTube videos.You see, what I want you to be able to do is, maybe you'll do this tonight, is when he's sitting down thinking, "Oh, I'm just going to do YouTube for 10 minutes." Instead of going and looking at super cars or technical things or cool borg designs from Star Trek. Instead, you can actually discover how to grow your business and how to improve your marketing. So if you fancy a little bit of that, the channel's even got its own little unique name, just go to youtube.com/mspmarketing or if you're just on YouTube on your TV or something, just go and search for MSP marketing.Voiceover:The big interview.Zach Kitchen:So, hi, I'm Zach Kitchen, I'm an MSP owner just like you. And the thing is, I made over $30,000 from just an $0.84 potato.Paul Green:And that's such a compelling story, Zachary. Thank you so much for joining us. We will get to your potato story and how you made so much money off a vegetable. Is a potato of vegetable> I suppose it is, isn't it, a root vegetable. We'll get onto that later on in the interview. But I'm so excited to have you on because you are a very rare breed of MSP, you're a rare MSP who really embraces marketing and particularly experimental marketing. Now, I know over the last couple of years or so you've been doing all sorts of different things. And when we say experimental marketing, we don't mean widely out there, we just mean the routine, regular marketing things, but things that most MSPs don't experiment with. Give us an idea of some of the things that you've been trying out over the last few months.Zach Kitchen:So I have done the potato, of course. Something else I've done is I wanted to make a package that somebody would take and benefit from. Because something I've always learned, if you can give something of true value to people, you can capture their attention for much longer than if you're trying to do a sales pitch. So I did come up with a cyber pack toolkit, and all it is just a bunch of resources and information like setting up acceptable use policies, basic phishing tips. And it actually has your Email Hijack book as well, your Email Hijack book is also in there. It's part of a cyber pack that is all built in together that I provide as a package.What I use with that is I use that as a gift to give somebody with your monthly guides. Last month you did one on password security. So I sent out postcards to every single person, whether it was active client, an old client, or a prospect, they all have postcards, but it looked just like your guide except for it was an invitation to the webinar. It had a QR code on there, people could register online, they could register on LinkedIn. And the thing is, when people actually register and get in, they immediately receive the guide that you send out to us every single month as a gift just for registering. And that immediately gives us their contact information because we use that for marketing for later. Because when you take the steps to start calling and bugging these people to come and attend, getting through the gatekeeper is so much easier when you're inviting them to a webinar than when you're trying to make a sales bid.Paul Green:Yes. Yes, I bet it is. Let's talk about those webinars in a second. I just wanted to clarify what Zachary's talking about in terms of my stuff is it's through our service called the MSP Marketing Edge. So we have that book, Email Hijack that you talked about and we do guides every month. And what is interesting, Zachary, is you've taken some resources and you've looked for ways to maximise those resources such as turning them into a webinar. In fact, what you've done is you've put together multi-touch point campaigns. Can you just explain to us the benefit of having lots of different touchpoints as you're trying to reach out to all of these prospects?Zach Kitchen:Yeah, is an easy one. In fact, that's actually what led me into doing the potato campaign because I got a hold of the person, I got a hold of the prospect and he was haphazardly interested in meeting with me. And I met with him and had a great meeting sit down with him. Everything was good. They were going to review it and they were going to sign the agreement and they were going to follow up with me next week. I mean we've all been there, right? Oh, everything's good, everything's good. And then all of a sudden it's just radio silent. And it was quite frustrating because I called him every single day. And then I was like, "Okay, fine, I'm not going to sell him services." In fact, he was an insurance company. So I was like, "Well, maybe I can just say, 'Hey, I'll host a webinar for you. I'll do all the legwork for you and present the webinar on password security.'" So I called and called and called, no response.And the thing is, my sister has a passion about crocheting inanimate objects. And one of the ideas came across is a potato. And this guy, this prospect that we're working with, his name is Sam. I said, that's it, I'm sending Sam a potato. And everybody on the team's call was like, "What? What are you talking about?" They knew who Sam was because they hear me gripe about Sam not answering his phone, not returning his calls, not returning emails. So I mailed the potato and then I wrote on the potato with the sharpie, "Hey spuddy, did we not mash? Zach." And I stuck the label on there, I mailed it to him. And the thing is that it didn't even get to him. It got delivered back to my virtual office because I put it in the wrong postal code. But then my team at the virtual office said, "Holy crap, your marketing is spudtacular."Now, I didn't consider as a fail because I got the seed, the potato, despite it taking a week going all the way almost out of state back to Houston, it didn't grow legs, it didn't rot, it didn't smell. So I turned around and I did it again. And I'm almost positive that he called me the moment he received that potato because Sam picked up the phone and called me and goes, "What's up with this potato?" And I told him, I said, "Well it worked, didn't it?" He goes, "What do you mean?" I said, "I've been trying to call you every day, Sam." And I said, "Your team is terrible." He goes, "What do you mean?" I said, "I call your team all the time, I'm trying to hunt you down and you don't even know I'm trying to get ahold of you." I wasn't rude but I was facetious and very direct to the point of like, "Listen, I've been trying to reach you."And so he says, "Can you come in on Monday?" And I said, "Absolutely I can come in on Monday. Of course." So I come in Monday. I'm sitting in the waiting room, he walks in through the main entrance of his office, he walks through the waiting room, he goes, "Come bring that contract. I'm signing it." He didn't even hesitate. He signed it right there on the spot. Didn't even bat an eye. And things have been great. And towards the end of that meeting he goes, "Man, I'm glad you sent that potato." It worked.Paul Green:Love it. I love it. I tell you what, for anyone that walks into someone's office and they say, "Just bring me that contract." You almost want to have three contracts with you, don't you, perhaps at different pricing levels, if someone's not even reading the contract. There's the potato story. Let's talk about webinars. So you have recently started a series of webinars. And I've spoken to several MSPs who've been a bit nervous about doing webinars. They're nervous about what they're going to talk about. They're nervous that no one will show up. They're nervous that it'll be like being in a room with two other people. What's your experience been and why do you keep persisting with webinars?Zach Kitchen:So actually these are all great questions and the thing is, people are worried about nobody showing up to the webinar, that's actually the easiest webinar to do because you should still do it. And the reason is because now you're talking to yourself, in a way. But you get to speak comfortably. You're not worrying about being on the spot. I mean it's just like me meeting with you right now. No one cares about the mistakes or the gaffs you make. In fact, I want you to think of something that someone else that has done that was extremely embarrassing, that would be like traumatising if you were able to remember. And most people can't remember because most people don't think that way. Most people don't even function that way. The only people that really think about those embarrassing moments is themselves. So I learned to just push forward with it.I mean I struggled with it for a long time as well, and I learned that if people don't like it, it's who I am. And I'm a firm believer of people doing business with people and it's not doing business with the business. So if they're not comfortable with my webinars or how I speak or how I behave, then maybe they're not a fit client for me. But in fact, I've had the opposite. I'm in Texas. I've had people all the way in Puerto Rico and go, "I want you to be my IT guy. I don't care. I want you to be my IT guy." Because they somehow through their legal wall network group found out I was hosting a webinar on something they were fascinated in. And I'm trying to do, and my purpose behind those webinars is my face is out there enough that not necessarily they go, "Oh yeah, I've seen you on your webinar." But it's like, "I've seen your face somewhere. Your name's familiar."I'm already getting that even with my company logo because I put it everywhere. But it's getting everywhere and getting in your face. It's constant. The postcards. It's the letters. It's the phone calls. And the thing is the phone calls do still work. It's not something that needs to be neglected. And those that are really worried about having zero attendees for webinars, I can almost guarantee without a shout of doubt, they didn't market it on LinkedIn. And what I mean market it, did they sell it? Did they make it something I want to attend? Did they call and invite people? Did they say, "Hey, I've got a webinar coming up, blah blah blah."? Those are two things.If you have something compelling for someone to learn from it, and if you have the bonus, use your guides. You offer a guide every single month, even if it's not relevant to the webinar and say, "Hey look, I'm going to give you a free booklet of information on password managers." You don't have to talk about password managers. I just happen to do it because here's the thing, I guarantee you about 95% of the people are not going to read the guide. They just want it. I don't know why people like to collect PDFs, but they just want a guide. It's a free guide and it's like, "Ooh, give me, give me, give me." But if you turn around and you use that same material and turn it to a webinar, then you even have employers that have their employees attend your webinar because it's like, "Wow, this is useful information. My team can use this." So absolutely. And the thing is, keep them recorded, keep an archive of them. And you'll notice if you go back to your very first webinar to what you do now, it's 100 times better.Paul Green:Yeah, completely. I think as someone who does a lot of video and tons of audio stuff, you always look back at early recordings and you're cringing. And it was the same for me when I was a radio presenter. At the end of my 10 year career, I look back at my squeaky voice, pre-pubescent self on the radio at the start of my career and it was shocking. But we all get better through practice. So I think that's great advice.Final question for you, Zachary. You are obviously doing lots of marketing, lots of different things, lots of experimenting, and that chews up time. Now you've got a busy MSP, obviously you've got a team of people that you work with. How have you managed to carve out enough time? So I guess what I'm asking is what's your habit? What's your routine, your schedule for you to have enough time each week for you to do these marketing experiments and to make sure that your marketing happens?Zach Kitchen:I have learned that as being a business owner or being a CEO of a company, my personal belief that it's 80% communication and 20% tech. It's not 20% communication, 80% IT. And actually I think that applies in any industry. I see that with Apple, I see that with all these other things. I'm not saying that they don't invest in technology or anything, but they invest in communicating it because that's very important. Most IT people find that a server being down or having an outage or having a problem being more important than marketing. But they're not taking marketing serious enough.My carve out time for doing the marketing, I upload the postcards I make, I use VistaPrint here in the States. You can also use stamp.com and I mail out those. That will take you maybe an hour, maybe an hour to upload, to make sure the addresses are right, whole nine yards, as long as you have a way to maintain your list. So that's very straightforward and that's very easy. But I spend weekends doing most of my marketing stuff, stuffing letters, mailing out letters, that's a Saturday routine. Every Saturday I stuff letters. In fact, I work from home, I have a virtual office and I work from home and I'm already trying to arrange to get a big Xerox machine to put into my house because it could print in full letters so I can stuff them in envelopes.And seriously, I treat it just as important as me running business. Because that's how you get money in the door. It's great you can support and maintain your clients, but it's more important to keep going out there and keep marketing. Even with your existing clients. The thing is, I noticed that since lately, since I've really been aggressive with marketing, I've had old clients that I haven't talked to in years starting to come back to me. In fact, one of my attorneys that I used to work with years ago, they came up, I hadn't talked to them in seven years, but because I started being aggressive in marketing and started putting myself out there, he reached out to me and he signed a managed service agreement. So it shows that you're alive and that communication is what makes it successful.No one cares about what kind of tech stack you have or what kind of tools you have. They just want the results. They just want the job done. And so don't focus on having the latest, greatest automation or PSA or [inaudible 00:31:08]. Focus on getting the communication out there. Me personally, I believe that use a little bit more expensive paper when you're marketing because they only know how good your marketing is before you actually start working for them. How do they know if you're a good tech or not? They don't know, they're not experts. You are.Paul Green:Zachary, you have been so gracious with your time. Thank you very much for sharing some of your insights. Keep experimenting with that marketing. Let's get you back on the show in future years to see what other things you've been trying with. And in the meantime, for MSPs listening who want to connect with you, what's the best way to get in touch with you?Zach Kitchen:Definitely add me on LinkedIn. I'm a big fan of LinkedIn and I actually do have a secret Zoom group for people to get together, for MSP owners to get together and share market ideas if they have some. I'm big on coming up with ideas. I'm big on helping the little guys, especially if you're a one man shop. It's not easy. Thing I learned a long time ago from marketing, I didn't realise how hard it was going to be, but I didn't realize how rewarding it was going to be at the same time.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast. This week's recommended book.Anne Hall:Hi, I'm Anne Hall, the founder of ITagree, the Agreement Lifeguard. The book I'd like to recommend is a book by Matthew Pollard called The Introverts Guide to Networking. And it's a great book for everyone who attends events and finds they'd like to do a lot of networking, but not sure really how to go about that most effectively. So that's the book I recommend.Voiceover:Coming up next week.Jamie Warner:Hi, this is Jamie Warner from Invarosoft and in next week's episode I'm going to give you the sales secrets of how I built my MSP organically to $10 million in revenue.Paul Green:Wherever you're consuming this podcast, please do subscribe so you never miss an episode. Because next week it's our last regular show before Christmas. And as well as that interview, we're going to be talking about productivity. I'll explain my productivity stack to you. We'll also talk about what you want to achieve with your MSP in the year 2023. As I mentioned earlier, we've got that YouTube channel. If you fancy delve down that tonight, it's at youtube.com/mspmarketing. And join me next Tuesday. Have a very profitable week in your MSP.Voiceover:Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

The Introvert’s Edge to Networking: Work the Room. Leverage Social Media. Develop Powerful Connections

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Episode 160Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:* 00:00 Why it's time for your MSP to fire a tech * 06:44 How to make tech news relevant to your clients and prospects * 13:54 A pricing expert on how to accelerate your growth * 27:02 A great book recommendation about transforming your leadership skills

Featured guest:Thank you to Per Sjöfors, the Price Whisperer, for joining me to talk about how to accelerate your MSP's growth.Per is a thought-leader in everything pricing and how companies can use pricing to drive higher growth, sales volume, and profits. He is a sought-after speaker for various conferences,appears regularly on podcasts and business radio shows, and gets routinely quoted in the financial and business press. His new book, “The Price Whisperer - A Holistic Approach to Pricing Power” is available at booksellers nationwide and online.

Connect with Per on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/persjoforsExtra show notes:* Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Find out about Paul's MSP Marketing Edge service: * https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Thank you to George Smith from Augmentt for recommending the book It's Your Ship by Michael Abrashoff: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Its-Your-Ship-Management-Anniversary/dp/145552302X * https://ca.linkedin.com/in/george-smith-augmentt * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 * https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast * https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa * https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast * https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 * https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ * https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ * https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcriptionVoiceover:Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:All right, we are ready to rock and roll. This is what I've got lined up for you in this week's show.Per Sjöfors:Hi there. My name is Per Sjöfors. Pricing is so important for your company, how you can use pricing as a profit lever and drive unsurpassed business results.Paul Green:We'll also be talking about turning technology into readable, usable content. The average business owner or manager that you want to reach, they don't really care about technology. So how do we take tech news and make it interesting to them? I'll tell you later on in the show.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.Paul Green:There's a possibility that someone's going to get fired as a direct result of this podcast today. That's a scary thought, isn't it? I'm talking about technicians. Now, I know, let me give you that caveat, I know that recruiting and retaining technicians is hard work right now. It's going to be something that continues, I think, throughout 2023, but just because it's hard to find, attract, and retain talent doesn't mean that we should put up with bad talent.What I mean is technicians who have coming with the wrong attitude, who just don't bring their A game to work, essentially, they're working against you. You know deep down who these people are. Don't say their name out loud. But if you were to think about someone right now, who's the weakest member of your team? Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? If you were to ask the other technicians on your team, just maybe they would have the same name on their lips as well, and, in fact, you could kind of test this with some senior members of your tech team, people that you trust not to go and tell anyone else that you've asked that question.If two or three of you who've worked together for a while all agree that there is someone who is not pulling their weight and it's because they haven't got the right attitude rather than anything else, then really that person has to go. There are actually a ton of tools available to help you figure out who should stay and who should go. And I've got one here, which is from the excellent book Traction by Gino Wickman. Now, there's a whole series of books in the Traction Series. I've talked about them before on the podcast because they are wonderful books for helping you get a grip on the chaos within your MSP and setting yourself on a growth track for the future. It's a lot of work, but isn't that the case for businesses anyway, that there's always a lot of work to be done?So one of the things in right about the middle of the book, Traction and Traction is the introductory book to the series, it's the one you should start with that talks about something called the People Analyser. Now, the People Analyser allows you to score all of your people against the core values of the business. So what are core values? Well, something that they get you to do earlier in the book is to sit down and think what are the core values? When we're recruiting people, what are the core values we want to recruit them to? So typically for MSPs, that would be a deep desire to get the job done. It would be huge levels of customer service. It would be to genuinely care about someone's problem. It's those kind of things.In fact, the easy way to find your core values for the business is actually to think about your own personal core values. What I tend to find is that the owner or the operator of the business, if they're owning and operating with passion, then they typically have a whole set of core values which become the business's core values. This is what makes each of our businesses so wonderfully different because they are reflections of us. They are not just a series of things that we've got out of a book.So if you could write down, and this is something you can reflect on during a long dog walk or over a coffee or a weekend away or something, what are the core values of the business? And you can check in with Traction if you want to do that exercise formally. Then you can kind of draw a grid and you can put your people down the left-hand side, literally list their names down the left-hand side and put the core values for your business across the top. And then you can go through and give them a score against each of these core values. Now, what they recommend in Traction, rather than a number score, they recommend like a plus or a minus score.So, for example, let's imagine one of your core values was take ownership of problems. You might have a member of your staff called Sally Jones and you might think, oh, Sally, she's awesome. She always takes ownership of problems. So where the value and Sally intersect, you put in a plus. And then you've got another member of your team called John Smith. And John Smith does not take ownership of problems whatsoever. So for him, you'd put the minus because he doesn't do that. But then you've got a third member of your team called George Wilson. And George kind of sometimes takes ownership of problems and sometimes doesn't. So for George you would put a plus and a minus.And as I say, this is how they score it in the book Traction. You could probably think of an easier way to do it, but you get the principle of what we're trying to do here. Because what you want to be able to do is look at the grid when you finish scoring each of your staff according to each of your core values and ask yourself, why am I hanging on to John Smith? Because look, he's scored a negative. It's no in all of these core values, there is no place for someone in your business like that. And this kind of allows you to identify the extreme outliers, because you can see who your very best people are, but you probably know that anyway. You can see who your kind of B team players are, the people that are of average performance and maybe they can be improved or maybe you just look at them and think, right, we've got to do some work on them.But it's the C team players, it's the worst ones, the bottom 20% of 20%, those people have got to go. And this formally helps you to identify who those people are. It's worth doing that for all of your team and don't forget to do yourself in that as well. Because I think what happens, especially if you've been an owner for a long time, is we do go through dips, peaks and troughs as business owners. We have times where we're utterly in love with our business and it doesn't matter what the issues and problems are, we can cope with them. And then we have other times where everything is just too much. It's kind of like our own personal attitude just dips down. Maybe it's just worth scoring yourself to see how well you do against the core values of the business. I guess another way of asking that is, would you fire yourself?Voiceover:Here's this week's clever idea.Paul Green:Now talking about teams, I have a wonderful team. I've built them up slowly over a number of years. There's about nine, I think maybe 10 of us now within the business. The vast majority full time, we've got a couple of part-timers as well, although everyone puts everything into the business. And I did do the exercise I was just telling you about. I did that in secret on my team, sorry team, but I did it and everyone scored really, really high marks on that and I wasn't surprised. I love my team. They are absolutely spot on.Of course, in our business we have difficult jobs to do just as you do within your MSP. And one of our most difficult jobs is taking things, technology things and making them as relevant as they can be to ordinary people. You see, the main thing that we do, our main service is called the MSP Marketing Edge and we write, well, we create a ton of marketing content for MSPs, but it's for them to use to target ordinary people, those ordinary business owners and managers that you want to reach. So we're kind of sitting in the middle between MSPs and ordinary people and we have to write marketing content that's kind of about technology that MSPs like that they tick and say, "Yep, that's good," but it has to resonate with ordinary people. If it doesn't, then we've kind of missed the... Got it wrong, essentially we've got it wrong.So we constantly are asking ourselves and challenging each other and saying, "Is this relevant to our target audience?" Because our target audience is not MSPs. Things I do, like this podcast and our YouTube channel, that's targeted at MSPs, but our actual content output is targeted at the people that you want to reach, your prospects. And so this is actually quite a good mindset for us. We do this all the time. So it becomes not a difficult thing, but I know a lot of MSPs really struggle with that. And I think the secret to turning technology into something that's of interest to ordinary people is, instead of looking at the features of something, to look at the benefits of it. In fact, that's actually the secret of much marketing content with whoever you're targeting is not to talk about the features of something, but to talk about the benefits.So let me give you a couple of examples. Let's talk about Teams. Now I don't like Teams at all. Microsoft Teams. Really, it's a distress call for me if I have to have a call with someone and it's on Teams, it's just not my thing. But I know many people do. You probably love it and certainly many ordinary people love it as well. But Teams is packed with features and things and bits and bobs. None of that is really of interest to ordinary people. What are the benefits of Teams?Well, the benefits are they can collaborate, they can communicate, they can work flexibly, they can work remotely, they can send messages to each other. They can do a lot of these things... Did I just say they can send messages to each other? That's a feature. That's not a benefit. You see how difficult it is to get this right. All of these things that they have within Teams, the big benefit is all of that is together in one software package. You can communicate and collaborate and work together on things without having to switch between 12 different applications. That's the big benefit of Teams.What about something like, let's take the cloud. The cloud, which ordinary people, they hear the word, they say the word, but they don't really know what it means. So we can't just tell them what the features of the cloud are because it's boring. I don't even know what the features of the cloud are, but I can tell you what the benefits are. It's you can work anywhere, anytime, on anything, on any device. That's pretty much the benefit of the cloud. Someone, write that down and trademark that. That's a great line, that one. But that's the benefit of the cloud. It opens up your business in a completely wow way. We know that there are businesses out there that haven't embraced the cloud or they do a little bit of cloud or they think they're doing cloud, because they can access their email via the browser if they want to. You and I know that's not really the cloud. So truly genuinely empowering a business for the cloud changes everything for that business. You know that. I know that. So let's sell them on the benefits of that.Let's take one more, passkeys. Passkeys, which is now starting to come in, maybe they'll replace the password, maybe they won't. What's the benefit of that? You never need to remember a password again. In fact, it's the same benefit for a password manager as it is for passkeys. I'm assuming you know how passkeys work. Essentially you have to be close to your computer with your phone and it sends like a thing to your phone and you use your face ID or your fingerprint. So essentially it's using your phone to log you into whatever it is you're trying to get into. You don't have to remember a password. If you haven't read up on those, please do go and have a look at passkeys, because I think they're going to be a very big part of our world in the years ahead.But as I say, you never need to remember a password again, that's how you sell them on the benefits and the concept of passkeys, it's exactly the same with a password manager. Mr. or Mrs. Client, let me put a password manager in for you and all of your team. You never need to remember a password again, apart from the master password, but we won't mention that. And the other benefit is anytime any of your team leave you, you can instantly lock them out of all of their accounts at the push of a button.Can you see how talking about benefits is so huge? So when you're looking at content, processing content, creating it or indeed doing any marketing, the trick is always to look at it as your prospect looks at it. Don't think like a tech, think like an ordinary person and ask, what's the benefit of this?Voiceover:Paul's blatant plug.Paul Green:A few minutes ago I mentioned the MSP Marketing Edge. It is the marketing service if you are genuine and ambitious and ready to grow your MSP. We give you all the marketing strategy you need. We give you all of the marketing content you need, and me and my team are there literally day in, day out, holding your hands supporting our members. We don't just do this group wise either, we do one-to-one support. And all of this for the throwaway price of just £99 a month in the UK or $129 a month in the US. How can we do it at that price? Because we have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of members. So all of those members adds up to volume and allows me to pay for all of my wonderful team to provide this great service to you.But here's the rub, we only provide this to one MSP per area. So if you go to mspmarketingedge.com, pop in your postcode or zip code or whatever code you've got wherever you live. We have various different sites for different countries and it will tell you if your area is available. If it is, you can start a 30-day free trial. And if it's not, please do join the waiting list, because now and again we do get people ending their service and we just talk to the people on the waiting list. There's no obligation to buy ever. But go and have a look and see if your area is available or whether or not a competitor has beaten you to it. Mspmarketingedge.com.Voiceover:The big interview.Per Sjöfors:Hi there, my name is Per Sjöfors and weird name, I know. It makes perfect sense in my native Scandinavia. And because of that and among other reasons, I also go by the name The Price Whisperer and pricing is what I do. I help companies of all sizes globally to price right and stop leaving money on the table.Paul Green:And thank you very much Mr. Whisperer for joining me on the show. Pricing is such an emotional and evocative thing I know not just for MSPs but for all business owners. Now you obviously are one of the big experts on pricing. What is it that makes getting the pricing right such an evocative thing?Per Sjöfors:Oh, people are scared s***less for raising prices. I talk to CEOs of smallish and mid-market companies day in and day out. And what I hear all the time is that, "If I just raise my price a tiny, tiny bit, I'm going to lose all my business." But, of course, that's not the case. In fact, pricing is so important for several reasons. A, pricing is actually the strongest message of benefits and quality. So if you're too low priced, people won't buy because they simply think that whatever product or service that you're selling is not going to be any good. They don't believe you're going to live up to your promises.Pricing is also so important, because it has the highest leverage of profitability because it works on the top line. Because it works on the top line, it affects profits the most. And that means that if you can increase your prices, your profitability increases. If you can decrease your discount, your profitability increases with much more than if you can reduce cost the same amount or increase your sales volume the same amount. And profits are good. Profits is something that you use to become more a competitor, to develop new services, to market better, to market more, to even hire better people.Paul Green:Yeah. You don't have to sell the concept of increasing profits to anyone listening to this podcast. That's very much a top of mind thing for us. Now we're going to come onto the process of getting your price right, but you said two very interesting things there. You said that people are scared to put their prices up and you also said that we link price or value perception with the price. And the second you said that I thought of Apple.Now, many MSPs think I'm crazy for being an Apple fanboy, but am. I'm recording this on a Mac, I've got my iPhone here, my iPods... My iPod, it's not 2005, Paul. My iPad is back down there. I've got my Apple Watch, we've got two Apple TVs in the house. There is virtually no mainstream Apple product that I haven't bought. And each time I think, whoa, that's expensive. But I know it's going to last, I equate it with quality. In fact, my child does her schoolwork on a 10-year-old MacBook Air, which still works perfectly well. It's a bit slow, but it works perfectly well. And that was, I don't know, $1,000 10 years ago. And how many other laptops can still be relied upon for day-to-day work after 10 years?So I think we see that and MSPs will see their own equivalent of that with the technology that they prefer buying. And yet we're still scared to put the prices up. So what's going on? Talk us through the emotions that happen to us as business owners when we fail to make the right decision.Per Sjöfors:Well, obviously it's fear and the fear is very strong anywhere you go, but much of it has to do with that pricing is largely ignored in business education. You spend nine months to learn about strategy, nine months to learn about costs and accounting and stuff like that. And then there is an afternoon about pricing. And so that's one point. And the little that are being taught about pricing in business school and most books about pricing are so theoretical and so academic that it's absolutely useless.A few years back I was asked to review and comment on a article from the Harvard Business Review, some professor in marketing that had written it and he talked about these traditional demand curves. You have price on the Y axis and sales volume on the X axis and it's a straight line. The higher the price, the lower the sales. And I said, "You can't use that. I mean these are just falls, because that's not reality." And in the end he sort of completely ignored what I said, because that is what academia does. "These curves have been used for the last 50 years and we're not going to change it only because you tell me something."Yet I'm sure many of us have had the same experience that you go to market with whatever price you go to market with and then you increase your price for reasons. And lo and behold, you see a increase in sales volume too. Those traditional demand curves doesn't tell you that. They also doesn't tell you that there's something called price rules, psychological price points where small price changes can make huge changes in sales volume and revenue, either positive or negative.Paul Green:Yeah. So one of the things that I've done a few times on this podcast in the last three years, and something I do with all the MSPs I work closely with is say, "Hey, put your prices up." So do it carefully for existing clients because that needs to be done with thought and consideration. But for new clients, every time you make a sale, in my mind the price should go up, because obviously the new client who's coming to talk to you or the new prospect who's coming to talk to you today doesn't know that the price went up yesterday. We have listeners all over the world in multiple different countries. And the thing is that the price in the city I live in in the UK is not the right price for the city that you live in. So you have to push the price up until you discover the ceiling. Is that a good strategy or have I been getting that wrong?Per Sjöfors:It's a strategy. First of all, you can increase prices to existing customers as well. And, in fact, if you go to my company's website, you can download the guide called the 7 Easy Steps To Increase Prices and keep your customers happier. And there's a method that is basically, it's about how we communicate both internally and externally and obviously preferably you should use your pricing based on willingness to pay research, so to avoid these price walls, et cetera, et cetera.The problem with what you just said is that pricing power is something that comes from differentiation. And with pricing power, I mean that is the ability to increase prices, not lose sales volume or even gain sales volume. Now that pricing power you get from differentiation and unless you know what specific features, functions and benefits and so forth that leads to higher willingness to pay, you don't know. And therefore, as you just go to market with the same sort of benefit statements that you've had for some time, your strategy of just increasing prices until you get pushback works. But it may be that using other benefit statements will lead to a higher price before you get the pushback. Or you may find that there's another market vertical among your clients that will accept higher prices than another market vertical and so forth.Paul Green:So can you give us a practical example of how that would work? And maybe, as you said, looking for the niche within your audience of someone that's likely to pay more. So, for example, would looking at a regulated audience such as lawyers be a great place to look for someone that's willing to pay more money? Because obviously if they're regulated, the consequences of them having a cybersecurity attack is so much higher than it would be for an unregulated industry.Per Sjöfors:Yeah. Or it could be obviously regulated lawyers or if you serve the medical industry in some way, there are lots and lots of rules and regulations and security is really, really tight and those are most likely to be willing to pay higher prices if you as a vendor can provide that security that they require. Or another, let me give you an example. We worked with an MSP a few years back and they were going to market as a commodity and they said, "We can't hold prices. We have to discount to get any business." And what we actually found was that they were at the time unique because they had developed a certain intellectual property on how you integrate a data center with AWS and their customers were willing to pay substantially higher fees for that integration and it made them differentiated. They were no longer a commodity and they could reap much higher sales, much higher profits, and grow tremendously over the next couple of years.Paul Green:Yeah, that sounds amazing. Per, tell us a little bit more about your business, what you do. And also, I know you have a book, so tell us about your book. Earlier on in the interview you mentioned a free guide, so tell us how we can get ahold of that.Per Sjöfors:My moniker, The Price Whisperer, the best way of finding me. Finding my new book, finding my company, finding my YouTube channel is all to do a Google Search for The Price Whisper. The book is all about everything you need to know about pricing really. Although I just started on a second edition, so there's going to be a little bit more eventually. The website has six or seven guides that you can download for free. There's also on the website a masterclass in pricing. These are 19 video episodes with, again, just about everything there is to know about pricing. And we do sell that and it's $950, but if you use, we have a coupon that you can use which is Fall 2022, and you'll get a 20% discount on the masterclass.It's not theory, this is not anything that comes out of academia. In fact, I think I should give the audience a little bit of the backstory here in that I ran companies, a couple of them in Europe and several of them here in the US and we did experiments with pricing and some of those experiments worked really well. Like next quarter revenues are up 25%. Some were complete duds. And what I had learned in business school about pricing was so theoretical and so academic that it was useless information. And it's that process that I eventually developed and started the company around that makes every pricing experiment a success. And that is to do willingness to pay research, which is done online from where we can accurately measure what a market to our clients are willing to pay. And then from that predict sales volume and revenue at different prices and identify price walls.Paul Green:I love it. Thank you so much. And I know you said to Google it, but just give us your website address.Per Sjöfors:Oh, you can do pricewhisperer.me.Voiceover:Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.George Smith:Hi, everyone. My name's George Smith from Augment. The book I would recommend is It's Your Ship by Michael Abrashoff. As a quick note, it is a military book about a US admiral back in the '90s who takes over the worst ship in the Navy and within two years turns it around to be the best performing ship in the Navy. So some great examples of leadership, how to build a team, create culture, and some great insights from something a little bit earlier in history.Voiceover:Coming up next week.Zach Kitchen:My name is Zach Kitchen and I'm an MSP owner, just like you. Can't wait to meet with you next week to talk to you about how I turned an 84 cent potato into over a $30,000 deal.Paul Green:Wherever you're listening to or watching this right now, please do subscribe so you never miss an episode. Get on top of next week's guest interview. We'll be talking about the three types of salesperson that you need within your business. And answering the question, can one human do all three sales jobs? We'll also be looking at your website and asking whether or not your navigation is in the right order. Now, if you want to dive into even more content about improving your MSP's marketing, go and have a look at our YouTube channel. We upload three new videos a week, all proper studio-based videos, very high quality. Just go to youtube.com/mspmarketing. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.Voiceover:Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

It's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy, 10th Anniversary Edition

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Episode 159 Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week's show includes: * 00:00 Is 'data capture' dead? * 07:02 Why you need to keep Googling your MSP * 11:27 Monthly recurring revenue from selling marketing services * 25:00 A great book recommendation about discovering the best plan for your MSP

Featured guest:

Thank you to Andrew Down, IT Channel Leader at Vendasta, for joining me to talk about how to generate monthly recurring revenue from selling marketing services.

Andrew's role includes consulting and influencing various segments of the business with a core focus on the Go-to-market strategy and sales efforts for new and existing channel partners in the tech space. An avid runner, Andrew has run over 25 half marathons and recently completed the New York City Marathon.

Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/andrewdown Extra show notes: * Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Order your free copy of the MSP Marketing magazine: * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/magazine/ * Thank you to Stuart Holtby from GetInSync Strategic Management for recommending the book Nine Lies About Work by Marcus Buckingham: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nine-Lies-about-Work-Freethinking/dp/1633696308 * https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartholtby/ * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 * https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast * https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa * https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast * https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 * https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ * https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ * https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Fresh every Tuesday, for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: Good day to thee. A little bit of Shakespeare there to start the show. Here's what we got coming up for you this week.

Andrew Down: With websites and SMBs, they know they need it, and that's where the MSP can be that expert and make the recommendations of what else is required.

Paul Green: That's my special guest, Andrew Down, and he'll be here later on with a potential new revenue stream for you. Could you imagine selling marketing services to your clients? It potentially could be easier than you think. I'm also going to be asking, when was the last time that you actually Googled your MSP?

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: I want to start this week's show with quite a difficult question for me to answer, because it's quite an emotional subject, and you'll think I'm a bit weird when you hear what the question is. The question is, is data capture dead? Now, let me define what I mean by data capture. I mean when someone comes onto your MSP's website and there's a form that they can fill in order for them to get something or to join your mailing list. Now the reason this is such an emotive subject for me is, I've built up this business initially, certainly in the first two, three years. And I built up my entire last business, which I ran for 11 years and sold in 2016. I pretty much built those up on data capture. So all of the prospects in my last business and many of the MSPs that I'm working with today and that still get my emails or are part of my audiences, they all came through data capture. People were driven to my website and they chose to opt into my marketing, but that was then. And I've got to be honest, if I look at what marketing is working for us right now, and more so what marketing is working for the MSPs that we are close to, increasingly data capture does not feature in the top marketing tactics. Now let me clarify exactly what I mean by data capture, and good, good practice, best practice of data capture. You see, data capture has been around for 25 years or so. We're talking right back to the late '90s. And in fact back then, when there were very few websites around, you could get away with just putting something on your website that said, "Please sign up for our newsletter." And back in the late '90s, people did because they didn't get that much spam. Whereas of course these days, certainly over the last 10, 15 years or so, we all have too much spam. No one wants more email, literally no one. So increasingly over the last 10, 15 years, you've had to really work hard to get someone to give you their contact details. Now this is easy for consumer facing businesses, E-commerce stores, those people, they can just do newsletters. And people will sign up for newsletters if it's a product they're thinking of buying. Consumer driven businesses can do competitions, give away things like iPads, or even just their products. It's a lot easier for them than it is for us. B2B data capture has been getting harder and harder. I've always been a fan of the ethical bribe. And in fact, I still do use the ethical bribe today. What's an ethical bribe? Well, it's something you give to someone in return for their contact details. So for many years, I gave away a book called Updating Servers Doesn't Grow Your Business. And that book's now out of print, by the way. We have no copies of that left. We've given them all away. And what I basically said to thousands of MSPs was, "You go onto my website. You fill in your contact details. And I will send you a physical, I'll literally ship you, a copy of that book completely free of charge." And that worked really well. We got thousands of MSPs choosing to join our database using that book. And I do still have a version of that now. If you go onto my website, paulgreensmspmarketing.com, you'll see... If you go into the learning hub, you'll see this is now a free magazine. We created something new. It's an eight-page magazine, and you can still get that. But we don't get that many people actually going through with that. And this is one of the things that's made me think over the last year, six months, nine months or so, that data capture has really changed. The ethical bribe can work well. It still has a place. But increasingly, it's getting harder and harder and harder to get people to do that, to get them to hand over their contact details. And you compare that to how much easier it is to get people to connect to you on LinkedIn, or follow you on LinkedIn if you're set up in creator mode, or subscribe to you on YouTube, or even do something like listen to a podcast. We have thousands of MSPs that listen to this podcast. And they're choosing to do so, as are you. And thank you very much. I really genuinely appreciate you watching us on YouTube or listening to us on whichever platform you're on. And so increasingly now, when I'm talking to MSPs, I'm downgrading data capture as a marketing method. It's still in the mix. But whereas, five years ago it was right at the top of the mix. Increasingly now, it's underneath LinkedIn. It's underneath other social outlets. I say to MSPs now, email marketing still has value, huge amounts of value, but where you get the email addresses from has changed. Take the data you've already got from everyone you've ever met. And just as you're going forward, every phone call from someone new, every web form that's filled in, every business card that lands in your hand, every networking event you go to, those email addresses go into your email database. Data capture on your website is increasingly being pushed down, and down, and down. I think just in talking about this, I think I've almost made my mind up that maybe data capture has had its day, for B2B businesses. We won't be walking away from it, but now it's just one of a number of things that we do. And maybe it's the time for you to do that. Not that many MSPs have really embraced data capture fully anyway. But if data capture has been an important marketing channel for you, I think we're at the stage now where you can downgrade it. Actually take the effort and the time and the focus that you previously have put into data capture and put that into LinkedIn, or get a YouTube channel going, or get a podcast going. Increasingly, creating content that people can find and that they can choose to consume has more value to you in the long-term than just trying to get someone to give you their email address. Do email marketing. Make sure that you have an email database, but you're going to have to fill that up using different techniques than just data capture.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: So in the last bit, I started with a scary question for me. Now, here's a scary question for you. When was the last time you Googled your MSP? And when I say by Googling it, I mean you actually put the name into Google in speech marks, so you're getting exact hits, things that have been said about your business. And then you didn't just look on page one, you looked on page two, three, four, five, maybe you even go up to page 10. Every MSP owner I have ever got to do this has discovered something that slightly terrified them. It might be a bad review that was left on some random reviews platform that they didn't know about, or it might be a good thing. It might be a mention of them somewhere... There's always something. Often, we've had people certainly here in the UK finding information about themselves on business data platforms that they didn't know. Very simple process. It's worth you doing once every six months or so. Go put your business name into speech marks, put it into Google, and Google the next page, the next page, the next page. Don't just look at the first page, even though that's the page most people look at. You want to see exactly what's being said about you until you run out of mentions of your business. Now, we call this your digital footprint. It is what is there, what's out there, about your business. And the reason it's important for you to be on top of this is because that's what some of your potential future customers are doing before they'll do business with you. They will Google you to see what is being said about your business. They will Google you to find the reviews that people are writing that you didn't necessarily solicit yourself. And that's why at the very least, you need to be aware what is out there. Your digital footprint is the thing that sits on the internet. And of course, it being 2022, it is changing all of the time, which is why it's worth repeating this on a six-month basis. I'll tell you the other thing you could do, which is pretty cool, is you could set up a Google alert for your business name. Depending on what your name is... My name's Paul Green. There are literally a million Paul Greens in the world, so I don't have a Google alert on the name Paul Green because there's a footballer... I think the School of Rock has a Paul Green. There's loads of us around. There's a shoe manufacturer as well. But I certainly have Google alerts on my business name and on the legal entity, the company name, and other things of interest. So, do this exercise, this digital footprint check, every six months. And go and set yourself up Google alerts for anything that's of importance, maybe your name, certainly your company name. By the way, it can be a pretty good way of keeping track of competitors as well. And how do you find Google alerts? You just Google, Google Alerts. Really as simple as that.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green: Right back at the beginning of the show when I was asking the question, is data capture dead? I admitted that we are still doing data capture on our website. So I might as well give it a bit of a plug in case you want to go and pop your email address in it. We have a free magazine. It's called the MSP Marketing Magazine, and it's eight pages of goodness. If you like the podcast, you'll love what's in this magazine. We've got some case studies of marketing that MSPs have done. We've got a talk about a powerful MSP marketing strategy. And it's also a piece in there about how to reach ordinary business owners. Now, if you are in the UK or the US, we will physically ship a copy of this to you for free. That's the ethical bribe that I was talking about earlier. Everywhere else in the world, I'm sorry, you'll just have to have a PDF only because we've got warehouses with copies of these sat in the UK and in the US. So all you do is go onto paulgreensmspmarketing.com. Go to the learning hub, and you'll see the magazine up at the top. You can just click on that or tap on that, enter your details, and you'll get a free magazine in the post. Yes, you will go on my email list. Of course, you can unsubscribe if you don't want to, but we're not going to spam you with stuff. We're just going to send you useful marketing stuff to help you grow your MSP.

Voiceover: The big interview.

Andrew Down: Hi, I'm Andrew Down, IT Channel Leader at Vendasta Technologies with a core focus on our go-to-market strategy and sales efforts for MSPs.

Paul Green: And the reason I wanted to get you onto this podcast, Andrew, is because I think you might have one of the answers to a common question that many MSPs are asked. That question of course being, do you do websites? Now, I know it's a weird thing, isn't it? Because you and I know that MSPs don't do websites. And yet, the ordinary business owners and managers that they're looking after, they perceive that it's a computer thing. That websites are computer things, and you're computer guys, so those two things must go together. Why do you think business owners so often ask MSPs about websites and about other digital marketing technologies and techniques?

Andrew Down: It's a great question, Paul. I think it really comes down to your point. The SMB, when they think of the Internet, when they think of online, they think IT. And to the average doctor, lawyer, hair salon, that an MSP may be servicing, they're their trusted provider. They're the most trusted expert that they have. I was a previous owner of an MSP. And the reality is, you have the admin credentials and passwords of your customers. You know everything about their business, and they trust you with their technology. And I think as the world's evolved into more of this digital space, we're talking from Canada to the UK, there's a real, growing need for these services, and the MSPs are being asked. And to your points, often are saying no or not sure where to go, because it's not something that they specialise.

Paul Green: Yeah, absolutely. So I appreciate that this is what your platform does, and we'll go on to talk about that, and how it actually could become a new revenue stream for MSPs. Before we get to that, I want to talk about perceived difficulties that MSPs might have in selling digital marketing. I've just remembered something. My last ever proper job, before I started my first business in 2005, I worked for a company called Johnston Press. You wouldn't know who they were, but they owned... I don't know if they even exist anymore, but they owned hundreds of local newspapers here in the UK. And I was actually employed back in 2004, 2005. I was employed to work in their digital production unit, and I was the only journalist there. So everyone else were developers, or advertising executives, or whatsoever. They actually genuinely had a conversation at one point in this company... Well, there were two funny things, two funny conversations. One of them was a conversation where they talked about the guys that ran the printing presses taking over the digital department. And the mindset of the board at the time, bear in mind this is 18 years ago, their mindset was actually, the people who print the newspapers, surely that's no different than putting together a website for the newspapers. And in their head, the executives at the time actually connected those two things, which I guess is, as you say, business owners now maintaining proactive stuff on computers with websites. As a side note, the other interesting thing that board allegedly asked was, who owns the Internet and can we buy it? So that shows you... It's a true story. I've been told. I wasn't in that board meeting, but that shows the level of technical ability in that business back in 2004. So you used to run an MSP yourself, so you've come up against the question, and I'm sure before you got involved with Vendasta and you started seeing how digital marketing services could be delivered. You must have had that fear when a client said to you, "Oh, could you help us with your website?" The people are asking the question, and yet MSPs don't feel they can deliver.

Andrew Down: Yeah, for sure. It's always one of those things you're not sure really what to say. You don't want to say no, and you definitely don't want to say yes because you don't have the expertise. And what I explored early on was local partnerships with agencies. So we had a couple local digital marketing agencies that we could work with and that's great. And we would refer clients, and you build that network of like-minded business owners. The challenge always came back to though, how are we truly going to monetize and drive additional revenue? And if we don't offer these services and one of our competitors does, do we risk losing because they're looking for that single, trusted expert? And I really think one of the values of Vendasta is, we have a fulfillment team. We have over 200 marketing services professionals that are building websites, writing blogs, doing social posts for SMBs. And we can fulfill the work for a channel partner, fully white-labeled on the back end, so it's still your brand, still your expertise, and reputation. But it allows you to say yes, and get that additional sticky recurring software driven revenue that so exists in the digital marketing world.

Paul Green: Seeing as you insist on dropping in little adverts for Vendasta throughout the interview, I'm going to ask you the tough questions. This is a tough question. I can see, for an MSP listening to this who might engage with you to sell websites and other digital marketing services, the thing that they would be most scared of is you screwing up something for their client. Or not just you, a web agency, any external partner doing something. Someone's marketing is an incredibly emotive thing. And I know this because I work with people on their marketing literally day in, day out. Everyone has an opinion on it. Everyone seems to know whether your website is any good or not, whether your marketing's any good or not, and it's a very emotive thing. And I can see an MSP who's got a very strong, long relationship with their client being utterly terrified about trying to deliver something that actually they're not an expert at.

Andrew Down: 100%. It's probably why I joined Vendasta, why I was brought over and exited my MSP, was to build some credibility in the space. And I think the reality is, it's similar to a manufacturer relationship. The goal of an MSP, if you're selling laptops as an example... Let's say you specialise in Lenovo or HP. The goal is that you know the product. You're able to position the good, better, best scenario. You're giving options. But when it maybe gets more technical, or it's outside of your scope, or you're not sure about the latest product, you bring in your Lenovo rep as the trusted, third-party expert to help validate the solution. And we're no different. We do a lot of four-legged sales calls and jump on discovery and discussions with the SMBs. We're there to help validate and provide assurance. So it's not that we leave you hanging and we expect you to be digital marketing experts. The goal is that you learn a bit, and we help build some curated packages that you can learn and resell. But we're there on the back end to help. So we do customer-facing calls with our MSP partners, and can answer questions direct to the SMB, or for you and your business.

Paul Green: In the future, you should really think about being a politician. Because you're taking every question I ask you and you're giving me back the answer you want to give, not answering the question I'm giving you. Literally, that is Core 101 politician skill there. So I expect you to be the Mayor of your town at the very least in the near future.

Andrew Down: Not in the cards, but I appreciate it.

Paul Green: Okay, well you never know. Never say no to a new opportunity. Although, who would want to be an elected official today? Talking about those business owners, the SMBs as you've called them. What do they most want? So we've talked about websites, and we know that a website is the big thing. It's the Holy Grail. Every business needs one, and most of them have one. What are the other services these days that they're looking to buy?

Andrew Down: I'm not sure that they always know what they want. Sometimes you don't know what you don't know. And I think everyone thinks you need a website. Everyone knows you need a website, just like everyone assumes you need a store, a brick and mortar retail store. But if you don't have the roads built to the store, and you don't have signage up in your city promoting the location, it's really hard to drive awareness and views. And so, it's not just about the website. It's that whole digital customer journey of awareness, and online reviews, and credibility, and all of those pieces of the puzzle. A great website that no one goes to is just like a great podcast that no one listens to. And you have lots of listeners, and so it's a great resource that people are coming and learning these adjustable little nuggets of information. If no one was listening, we could have the most amazing conversation, and you and I would love it, but then it just dies there. And my wife would hear it, and that'd be it. So I think similarly with websites and SMBs, they know they need it. They don't necessarily know what else. And that's where the channel partner, the MSP, can be that expert and make the recommendations of what else is required. So things like SEO, and ads, and reviews, and all those sorts of things.

Paul Green: Yeah. And do you recommend to your MSP partners that they are completely open about the fact that they have partnered with you and you were saying that you jump onto calls. Or do you recommend the MSPs try to position you inside their business? Because there's a very fine line of truth there that you've got to be careful with.

Andrew Down: 100%, there is. One thing I'm proud with Vendasta is, we are 100% through the channels, so we do not sell direct to SMBs. In the digital marketing world, we partner with a lot of agencies. And they like to keep it a secret. No one wants to share the secret sauce. And one thing I love about IT, I've been in the channel for 15 years, I love that it's relationship driven. And I love that people genuinely want to share their secrets and their success. You see a lot of peer groups and different businesses working together in various regions. So a lot of our customers do be fairly transparent and say, "We partnered with Vendasta." We're based in Canada. We're a fast-growing company. We're friendly. We're well-known in our market. Most of our businesses are in the US though, similar to you and the viewers of this podcast. So I think it's important to have that fine line. If it makes sense, share away. We're happy to be mentioned. We're also happy to work behind the scenes under your brand. So whatever makes sense for you and your market. But to your point, I think a lot do like to share. They've partnered with or they're leveraging the resources of Vendasta.

Paul Green: Yeah, I think if I had a marketing agency, which I did. That was my very first business I started. I think I would keep that relationship quiet. But if I owned an MSP... Because it's not the core skill set. Marketing isn't the core skill of an MSP. I would absolutely own up to that partnership, and in fact embrace it. Because as you say, you've got a big, fast-growing, knowledgeable company powering the marketing services. And I think business owners are pretty sophisticated these days. So tell us a little bit about Vendasta. How long has it been going? You mentioned you're in Canada and you're fast-growing. Give us some of the credibility stats about the business.

Andrew Down: Yeah, for sure. Vendasta's been around for 14 years. It started as really a point solution around reputation management. And over the years, it's grown. We're now, proudly, over 700 employees, about 500 based in North America. And with some recent private equity, we've been making some major acquisitions in the digital landscape. So we've acquired a company CalendarHero. I like to call it Calendly on steroids, but a nice natural add-on to a Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. There's another acquisition that, by the time this podcast airs, will be public, but today I got to keep private.

Paul Green: I like it.

Andrew Down: Things that are being added on to to our ecosystem. And we're now an end-to-end platform. We have a CRM. We have marketing automations, email campaigns. We have a cloud marketplace of over 250 brands of products and services like Google Workspace in the marketplace. So all of these software solutions and services are available to our channel partners, and we continue to grow. We continue to acquire. And I only joined two years ago. I was employee 400 and some, and we're now over 700. So it's really been a rocketship the last, especially three to four years, for Vendasta.

Paul Green: Yeah, sounds it. With secret acquisition deals going through... I love that cloak and dagger stuff. Tell us how we can get in touch with you then, Andrew. And what's the best next step?

Andrew Down: Yeah, I'd love to chat with anyone who wants to learn more, share feedback. I would say what we're doing is not for everyone. A lot of MSPs are very cut and dry. We do cybersecurity. That's it. We do networks. We do email. I love having those conversations. My background is running an MSP. I came to Vendasta because I believe that this is the future of the channel. We've seen agencies and MSPs merge. We've actually had channel partners acquire each other, where an MSP buys an agency to be a more full-fledged technical consultant. I think in the future, MSPs will offer digital services. And agencies will have to have a security offering, whether that be official partnership, acquisition, or through third parties like Vendasta. The best way is email, adown@vendasta.com. My cell phone is on LinkedIn. And like I said, I love talking IT channel and all things technology with anyone who wants to chat.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.

Stuart Holtby: Hi, I'm Stuart Holtby from GetInSync, and the book I recommend is The Nine Lies About Work. There's a really good chapter in there about, the problem most businesses have today is they believe that the best plans win. Well, this commonly held certainty is a lie. According to Marcus Buckingham, who is the author of the book, we don't know how to do the right plan in the right way.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

Per Sjöfors : Hi, there. My name is Per Sjöfors, and I'm also known as The Price Whisperer. I'm going to be with Paul next week and talk about why pricing is so important for your company, and how you can use pricing as a profit lever and drive unsurpassed business results.

Paul Green: Wherever you listen to this podcast, make sure you subscribe and you'll never miss an episode. Because on top of next week's interview, we're also talking about how to turn tech stuff into relevant content that ordinary business owners and managers will find interesting. Got an example for you around passkeys, the new replacement for the password. That's coming up next week. Plus, I suspect that someone will be fired as a result of next week's podcast. I'm going to challenge you to get rid of your worst member of staff, and I'll have an assessment method for you to figure out who should go. We've got a ton more content at our YouTube channel. It's youtube.com/mspmarketing. Join me next Tuesday, and have a very profitable week in your MSP.

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World

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Episode 158 Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week's show includes: * 00:00 Does automation still have a role to play in dealing with your LinkedIn * 08:30 Why a 'buyer persona' needs to be central to your MSP's marketing * 15:52 A recruitment expert explains how to find the best new people for your team * 35:18 A great book recommendation about coming up with creative solutions

Featured guest:

Thank you to Lori-Ann Duguay 'the people person' for joining me to talk about how to find the best new people for your team.

After working 21 years in government, Lori-Ann Duguay decided to take a leap and launch her own consulting venture helping organisations with a growth mindset. She helps them build the culture, experience and leadership required to attract and retain the talent that they need to thrive in the new world of work. Connect with Lori-Ann on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loriannduguay/ Extra show notes: * Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * For loads of MSP marketing and business growth advice and resources, check out my free learning hub: * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/learning-hub/ * Thank you to Colt Briner from Scrappy AF Marketing for recommending the book Creative Acts for Curious People by Sarah Stein Greenberg: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Creative-Acts-Curious-People-Unconventional/dp/1984858165 * https://www.linkedin.com/in/colt-briner * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 * https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast * https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa * https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast * https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 * https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ * https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ * https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green: Hey, welcome to another week of the podcast. This is what we've got in store for you this week.

Lori-Ann Duguay: One of the most prominent challenges for MSPs, recruitment, tips and tricks on how to recruit and keep the talent you need to thrive.

Paul Green: That's my special guest this episode, Lori-Ann Duguay. Now we all know how difficult it is right now to recruit technicians and also holding onto your best people is a nightmare as well. She is a people expert and an HR expert. And later on in the show she'll be telling you how you can hang onto your best people and even use your existing best people to attract more great people. We'll also be talking about something called a buyer persona. Have you ever heard of this? I'll explain what it is and how it can be central to your marketing later in the show.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: Let's start this week's show by talking about the current state of automation within LinkedIn. Now you and I, we understand the value of automation compared to the average business owner. Most MSPs that I speak to readily embrace automation. And why wouldn't you? When it's set up correctly and when it's monitored properly, there are fewer mistakes if you use automation to move information around between different platforms. Why would you sit and have a human entering something into an invoice when you can get the computer to do it for you? It's insane. So you and I get that even if perhaps not all of your clients get that. And once you've started automating one set of tools within your business, it becomes kind of addictive, doesn't it? To start to look at what else can you automate. Particularly when you've got things like Zapier or Zapier, however you call it, sitting in between lots and lots of different software systems. But there comes a point sometimes where automation is not necessarily the best solution. And I think we are at a point now with LinkedIn where automation is maybe not the right route for you. Now, this is only my opinion. I'm not a technical expert on LinkedIn and automation. I haven't spent 50, 60 hours examining this. What I do through the work that I do, talking to MSPs and just reading stuff and absorbing what's happening, I get a general picture of what's happening in the world with certain types of marketing. And my gut feel right now is that LinkedIn automation is not necessarily something that you want to go near. Now in the not so distant past, LinkedIn automation was definitely a good thing to do as long as you were careful with it. I have around about seven and a half thousand contacts, connections on LinkedIn, and many of those were in fact built up using an automated tool called Dux-Soup, D-U-X hyphen soup as in the drink that you have. But I don't use Dux-Soup today. And the main reason I don't use it today is because LinkedIn did a whole series of changes roughly around a year ago. And since those changes, my gut feel is it's not worth risking my LinkedIn account now with automation. And in fact, I did some research just before this podcast looking into LinkedIn automation. I've got something to read to you here. The headline from this article, it doesn't matter where I found it, it's just something online. It's asking is LinkedIn automation illegal? And it says, because LinkedIn is a platform for professionals, they want to maintain an atmosphere that reflects such. And one way of doing that is blocking spammers. That's why LinkedIn states on its prohibited software and extensions page that they don't permit the use of third party software on their platform. Does that mean that LinkedIn automation is illegal? It says here, it depends on what you use automation tools for. If you use them for illegal and gray area activities like spamming contacts or scraping data to sell, then yes, it's illegal. And if you get caught, you'll get barred from the platform. Now when you and I think about automating LinkedIn, we're not thinking about spamming people or scraping data, we just want to automate basic functions like finding new contacts and connecting to those people. But my gut feel is that LinkedIn really, really doesn't like that. And it would rather that you didn't use third party tools. So my advice today is that you don't. Let me tell you what we do instead. We stopped using Dux-Soup around about a year ago. It was around about the time that LinkedIn changed the limits on how many connection requests you could make in a day. And they basically put more of a focus on quality than quantity. That was the point we pulled our automation tool and instead we hooked in a virtual assistant. So I have a great virtual assistant called Sam. And Sam's job certainly on LinkedIn is to build my quality connections for me. And the thing is that Sam being a human acts in a way which could never be detected as automated, it could never be detected as a bot because she's random in the way that humans are random. Now, Dux-Soup, when we used to use that, that was very clever because that worked as a browser extension. So I had it in, well, I didn't, my colleague James, who's my marketing manager, had it installed into Chrome. And he would run it, in fact it was on one instance of Chrome on a laptop he didn't use, and he would run it every day. And essentially it was coming off his IP address, not off some central server's IP address. So that's why LinkedIn I guess couldn't detect that we were using Dux-Soup. But it's only a matter of time, surely in my view, till LinkedIn can figure out the patterns of behavior of these kind of bots. And I'm sure there are some people at LinkedIn working on this right now. So in my mind, using a human to achieve the same effect seems a much more quality way to do it. Yes, it costs me a lot more money to have Sam attempting connection requests for me, but the quality I believe is likely to outweigh it. And LinkedIn has become a very important sales tool for me, as it should be for you too. You do not want to risk your LinkedIn account ever. So we have Sam now, she will take connection requests, she will accept them on my behalf and she'll just leave the more complicated conversations for me. So when someone asks for advice or wants to form a partnership or something, I will go in and I'll do those a couple of times a week. But Sam's doing the basic stuff there. She's doing basic messaging. If someone joins our MSP marketing Facebook group, then she'll go and try and connect to them on LinkedIn. So she's doing all the things that Dux-Soup that the automated tools used to do for us. I tell you the one big advantage that we get from having her do that as well, is that she's using her brain and she's looking at each person as an individual person and not just another automated request. So for example, if an MSP connection requests me, and then let's say she sees that they're in a certain city, and they start talking about their marketing, Sam knows for example that we only work with one MSP per area on our MSP marketing edge program. So she can actually head off and say to them, I have just checked and your area's not available, so sorry, would you like me to add you to the waiting list? Because we have a healthy waiting list for most areas that we've sold around the world. And no bot could ever do that. I mean, maybe we could program a bot to do that, but they'll never do it with the care and the quality that Sam will do it. And I think to me that's the big advantage because LinkedIn, more than any other platform right now, is pushing on quality, quality, quality. It wants quality content, it wants quality connections. It's all about the quality. And in my mind we've reached the point, and we're certainly at that tipping point, where automation just cannot give you the quality that a human being can do. So the question for you then is if you're not using automation in LinkedIn, I wouldn't start, just my opinion, but I wouldn't start. Instead I would find a trusted virtual assistant who can go in and who can run your LinkedIn for you, so you don't have to. It's certainly worth having a look at that because it's a quick way to beef up your LinkedIn, to get more LinkedIn connections and just do more activity in there without having any risk of LinkedIn detecting you using automated tools.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: Do you ever have a moment where you sit down and look at your marketing and think, I'm really not sure if what we're doing here is right. I don't know how to reach people, how to generate leads, how to get appointments with them. I think most MSPs, in fact most business owners, have that point where they've got their head in their hands and they're just thinking, I don't know what I'm doing. One of the easiest ways, or maybe not easiest, but one of the most robust ways to get your head clear on your marketing is to know exactly who you're trying to reach and what kind of messages they will best respond to. And this is traditionally done by creating something called a buyer persona. Now the phrase buyer persona is not a particularly user-friendly name, but it's the kind of thing that's quite googleable. So we'll go with it for this podcast. A buyer persona literally personifies your ideal buyer. And what you do is you put together your idea of how this person thinks, how they act, what they worry about, so emotionally what affects them, cognitively what affects them. And you start to build up a picture of this other person. Because the biggest problem you've got with your marketing really is that you are trying to market something deeply technical and difficult to people who are, well, they're not you, they're not technical, they're not technology people, but they are business people. So you are trying to reach people and you're trying to influence people who are not like you. And that's hard. That's really, really hard. And this is where the buyer persona comes in. So we're going to briefly put a buyer persona together. Now if you're watching this on YouTube, because we do do this podcast now, I film it on camera for YouTube as well as all the audio platforms. If you're watching this on YouTube right now, you'll see that I've got a little cardboard cutout of Matt Smith. He's an actor from the UK who played Dr. Who from 2010 to about 2017, something like that, 2015, whenever. Don't ask why I have a cardboard cut out of Matt Smith. I just do. It's just one of my things. I like Dr. Who. So Matt Smith is going to be our buyer persona and we are going to pretend that instead of him being Dr Who, a thousand year old time traveling Gallifreyan who travels around the universe in time and space in his blue box called the Tardis, instead of him being Dr. Who, he is going to be Jim Smith, a business owner. And we're going to look at him and we're going to build up a buyer persona for Jim Smith. So we've got to remember that, let's say Jim Smith is a CPA, he is an accountant, so obviously he's an exceedingly boring person because he's an accountant. What do we know about accountants? What do we know about Jim Smith? Well, we know that he is probably qualified, he's probably regulated and because he's regulated, maybe some of the greatest stress in his life comes from his regulator. So maybe for him a cyber attack isn't so much about losing data, as actually being punished by his regulator. So regulation is a big thing for him. In fact, he's actually in a trusted position, I'm just going to put him down, can't hold Matt Smith next to me for a while, maybe he's a trusted member of the community. Maybe because he's got 50, 60, 70 businesses in our community who trust him with their accounts, maybe to him holding the quality of what he does, keeping that high, maybe that's a massive driving factor for him. And maybe that's a bigger driving factor for him than maybe his staff's convenience or the speed of their internet or something like that. What keeps Jim, our buyer, our business owning buyer persona up at night? It's loss of data. Maybe it's losing a client. Maybe he's worried that they're falling behind in terms of technology. Maybe he's worried about his staff leaving him. You can do this for your buyer persona. You can pick your perfect buyer and you can ask yourself all of these big open questions. What keeps this person up at night? What do they worry about? What do they fear? What makes them happy? What are they working towards? Where would they want their business to be in a year's time, in three years time, in five years time? All of these are the kind of things to ask. And you've got to remember, you cannot think like you, you've got to think like your buyer persona, like your person that you are targeting at. Now, you can take this a step further, you can start to, and this works very well when you are in a particular niche or vertical, you can start to read the news that they read, the magazines that they read. If you're just looking for business owners geographically, read the local business magazines, read the business blogs, read the business news. What kind of things are they worried about? Are they thinking about? Are they aspirating ... Aspirating, is that a word? What's aspirational for them right now? The more that you can get inside the head and heart of your ideal buyer, the easier you're going to find it to do marketing towards them. Because the hardest thing for you is doing marketing that doesn't appeal to you. You are not your target audience. Your target audience thinks and acts completely different to you. So this is something that you could actually get all of your team involved in. You could make this fun. Or you could do it with your other business owning friends if you're all targeting the same people. Or if you have an MSP peer group, this can be done within the peer group. Most MSPs have very, very similar ideal prospects, buyer personas that they go towards. But spend time on this. Consume the content that they're consuming, try to think like them. Look at the world through their eyes. Ask yourself big questions about how they're thinking and how they're feeling. And then any time you do any marketing, and that can be as simple as your business card, your website, anything you do on LinkedIn, an email that you send out, anything, ask yourself this question, does this directly talk to my ideal client? Does this talk directly to the buyer persona, to the person that I most want to reach? If it does, then you release it out into the wild. If it doesn't, then it has failed the so what test. It is not likely to be relevant to your ideal buyer and you need to go back and do it again. And I know that there's a certain amount of distress in creating some marketing and then having to do it again. But there's no point putting out there marketing that doesn't talk directly to your ideal client. This is the power of the buyer persona. It gets you completely focused on the people you most want to reach and how you can most easily influence them.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug. Blatant plug.

Paul Green: As you're growing your MSP, we have a very cool comprehensive free resource available to help you. I have a team of content creators and editors who've been working with me for the last year taking all of our content and reshaping it to make it as useful as possible for you. We've put it all in something called a Learning Hub. And if you go to paulgreensmspmarketing.com, up at the top it says Learning Hub in the navigation. Tap on that and go and have a look and you can search for anything. You can go and have a look at articles. We've got hundreds of bits of content in there. And it's all aimed at helping you to get more new clients, drive more revenue and sell more to your existing clients. Go to the Learning Hub right now at paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover: The big big interview.

Lori-Ann Duguay: Hi, I'm Lori Ann-Duguay, I am a workplace culture strategist, an HR consultant. I am very passionate about helping employers and organisations create the employee experience needed to be able to attract and keep their talent.

Paul Green: And it's such a hot topic in the MSP world right now because I don't know what it's like with your other clients and the rest of the world where you're working, Lori, but right now it's really, really hard to get technicians. And I've spoken to MSPs in the UK, in Canada, where you are, in the US, even in Australia and everyone is really ... Well, there's two issues. There's retention of existing talent and then there's recruiting new talent. Is this a universal problem the world over or is this just a tech thing?

Lori-Ann Duguay: It's not. Unfortunately I'd love to say it's really only relevant to the one market, but it's actually universal. It is a job seekers market out there. One in four employees are currently shopping around because it's a job seekers, they've got tons of choices. So when you said that challenge is two tiered, not only acquiring and getting that talent through the door but then actually keeping them and being able to keep them engaged enough for them to stick around and not just occupy space or be tenants of the workplaces, I like to refer to them, but really go above and beyond and perform at the level you need them to perform in order for your business to thrive.

Paul Green: And it's extra pressure on the business owner though at a time when we're all really busy trying to grow our business anyway. Tell us a little bit about your background and what puts you in the position of being a culture ... Was it a culture strategist, was that how you described yourself?

Lori-Ann Duguay: Culture strategist, culture catalyst. I actually like to come into organizations and actually just assess their existing culture and figure out where there might be room for improvement. And then really help them optimise that experience and that culture they provide to perspective and existing employees. So I actually worked for 21 years for government. I was in a variety of strategic roles, and for provincial as well as federal government. And what I learned from that experience is how not to do employee experience essentially. They're great by all means, and it was a wonderful career that I had with them. But I find that a lot of, when it came to engagement and assessing and measuring how happy, how satisfied, how much their employees are thriving, it was done as a check mark exercise. The surveys were going out, we were providing, there were focus groups put together, but whether or not they were really committed to actually changing and applying some of the data collected and really starting to use it to influence that design of that future experience. Not at all. It was done annually. Check mark, it's done. That's it. And I realized that I myself had become one of those tenants I referred to. So I started to look at how could I do something different. But all the while, the part of my career that I loved the most is when I was working specifically in HR, in a strategic HR role, where I was able to really start to devise these strategies to improve a number of our existing processes but also to start to proactively put together some initiatives that are going to help us retain our people. Because even government, usually people will think those golden handcuffs, benefits, and you got nice pension, cushy pension and benefits and all this time off. So I call them almost golden shackles that actually fuel I find an entire population of tenants within our ranks. So really how can we look at those motivational drivers, so what are some of the things that make people not just show up and occupy space, what are some of the things and some of the elements that you can work into that day to day work environment that will drive the level of motivation and thrive that you need to be able to succeed. So I started to really deep dive and think about those motivational drivers and came up with a bit of a methodology where I thought if the uptake is not happening within government, let's look at actually implementing this methodology for other organisations outside of government. And actually ironically, I actually have quite a few government clients now that use the methodology. So just interesting little sidebar on that.

Paul Green: Definitely ironic. Definitely an ironic thing. So let's look at three major areas because these are the three areas that come up the most often when I talk to MSPs. First area I want to look at is getting your first couple of staff. Because it is really hard. And anyone that's been in business for more than two, three years and has got past their first staff knows all the things that you do wrong. And it's very hard to tell someone about that when they're hiring their first member of staff. Then I want to look at how we retain people without that golden handcuffs. What are better ways of retaining people than just overpaying them. And then finally, let's look at recruitment, if that's cool with you. So you are talking to an MSP owner, they've started the business, it's been just them for six months or however long. It's okay, they're now busy and they've realized there's that crunch point between ... there's just not enough time, not enough time and resource to win new clients and actually service the existing clients. So they have the brainwave of I should hire a tech. For those MSPs listening who are in that position, tell us right now what mistakes they're going to make and how they can avoid those mistakes.

Lori-Ann Duguay: Okay, interesting. So what are the mistakes that they're going to make. Okay. So when they're hitting that inflection point and they're starting to think, okay, I definitely can see where I'd have enough workload for someone to ... I think one of the first mistakes is to attempting to right away go to full time. I think you're best off transition into, when you're starting to delegate, you're starting to assign some work outside. You almost want to make it a bit of a smaller transition, like a slower transition, by going with some casual or some temp staff. As you're starting to fill it out, think of it as working interviews if you may. There are ways of really trialing people and trying them and doing it with ... One of the mistakes that I've seen a lot of organisations make is go with their heaviest client. So give some of the biggest work to that new person or that temp as a means for them to free up their time, but it's also the highest risk. So I would say start with smaller safer contracts that you're really able to start to get a bit of a realistic preview of what you can expect and how they work. And then I would say then transition that into a more full-time contract as you move forward. Different countries have different laws regarding payroll and all that administrative HR stuff revolving around and there may actually be benefits. So speak to your accountant as well to see what are the benefits of subbing the work as opposed to actually bringing them on as full-time employees. You might want to weigh the cost-benefit and have that analysis done to make sure that you're doing it strategically and not shooting yourself in the foot by either going full on with an employee or full on subbing. Really finding that sweet spot. Is that helpful?

Paul Green: Of course in our world as well there's outsourced support and lots of MSPs have lots of different opinions about it, but it can fill a void, you can find, as you say ... It's funny, as you get older, and I'm 48 now, Lori, and I'm not going to ask how old you are because a gentleman never asks a lady her age. But certainly the people I know that I was working with 20 odd years ago, we are all a bit older, we've all got a bit grayer, they've got fatter as I've got thinner, which is cool, but everyone's looking for flexibility as much as anything. And I have got some friends now who pretty high level of skills who are working perhaps a couple of rungs down on the job ladder because the flexibility and the lifestyle suits them more than they need the money. So I think you're right, and certainly technology skills are very transferable from country to country. It's a very open market, whether you go to an outsource thing or you find freelancers. Okay, good advice there. Basically start small and work up.

Lori-Ann Duguay: And transition it. But also use it as your working interview. You're using this to feel them out and start to ... As opposed to posting a job for a full-time position and then you go through the selection process. And some people are really good at interviewing, which sadly doesn't necessarily reflect in their work or their work ethic. So sometimes it's best if you can transition them and feel them out, do a bit of a realistic work preview with them before you actually start to hand over the bigger work.

Paul Green: In terms of then hiring more people, for the MSPs that are listening that have already got a number of techs, how do you beat other people in a really tough recruitment market?

Lori-Ann Duguay: Okay, so now I feel like you're touching two things without intention or not. You're talking about retention. How do you create the work experience that will have them coming to you as opposed to you constantly having to run after, how do you fill that prospective pipeline of talent. So I'm going to actually speak about them concurrently because I think ultimately the way to recruit, and one of the best strategies, is to create that kind of work environment. Talking about that employee experience again, talking about the motivational drivers. So flexibility, I heard you allude to it earlier, absolutely, work-life balance is a huge, huge motivational driver. It's always been there I think, but obviously the pandemic and the entire global crisis really gave people time to pause and to reassess and to start to see that there's more to life than this hustle culture. So that being said, if you're able to provide work-life balance, and again we talked about it really briefly, but bringing the human back to human resources. So to have faith and trust your employees to do the work that you've hired them to do. When you think about the leadership style that's resonating with the younger generations, it's more of a coaching empowerment style. It's not this command and control. This you do as I say, not as I do, ain't going to fly anymore. So to really be able to be more human and take a more people centered approach, take the time to understand the needs and the preferences of each of your team members as a means of then crafting that ideal work experience that's curated and unique to them and meeting them where they're at will go a long way in terms of word of mouth. And I think you'll see that snowball effect from just creating that work experience and then encouraging your employees to speak of their work experience, of their employee experience. Because I had one of my clients where I said, what's your secret sauce? I've heard you say at one point that you've never spent a penny in marketing for recruitment. And he said, no, I haven't. And I said, so what's your secret sauce? And he says, good people know good people. Good people generally can refer you someone within their circle of friends or family or whatnot that would align with their work ethic, would align with their ... So he says, I really encourage them to go out onto the Glassdoors of the world and really speak of their experience as a means of not only garnering some of those referrals, but also of getting those additional referrals from people just reading reviews about this specific employer. So certainly providing that work-life balance, encouraging your employees to actually speak of their experience. But then also diversifying, we want to get back to the recruitment piece, we know which are those schools out there that actually produce high quality, their program and the curriculum by its very nature create really high quality programmers or technical folk. So that being said, I think it's really important to network and to establish a great rapport with some of these institutions as a means, again, of diversifying that pipeline of where you're going to get your talent. And making sure that you're already connected. And there's a bunch of government grants out there and different programs for funding to hire new grads. So certainly just putting all the chances on your side in terms of not only having that source of talent but also optimizing by reducing the cost of hiring them by having these different funding options to help offset the cost.

Paul Green: Yeah, that makes sense. And getting your current great staff to recommend other great people, that's just such a sensible thing. And of course they won't do that unless they're loving the work that they're doing for you. So that in itself is almost a barometer, isn't it, of how well you're doing with your current people.

Lori-Ann Duguay: It is. One of the things that when people say, well, I don't know if my employees are happy, I don't know. Have you ever heard of the employee net promoter score?

Paul Green: I've heard of net promoter score, but I didn't know there was an employee version.

Lori-Ann Duguay: There's an employee version. One question, how likely are you to refer this place of employment to friends or family? And you need to add the caveat, to someone you actually like. Because some of them are like, I hate my place of employment, so for sure I want this person to work here. So to someone you actually like. And then you can add a follow up to that saying, please provide insight as to why you scored us this. And it's between one and 10. And it's actually a very specific formula. Anyone can just Google employee net promoter score and all the formula will come out. But it's really quick and easy. People will totally do one question surveys, they're quick and done. But it gives you a bit of a baseline measure. It actually enables you to have an actual number. Then as you're starting to be more proactive with your HR strategy and be more proactive in terms of starting to address some of the issues at play, then you can remeasure and see if you've actually effectively increased your overall employee net promoter score.

Paul Green: Such good advice. And from memory, SurveyMonkey has net promoter score built in as part of its functionality. So you can very quickly spin that out into a single survey question. And of course SurveyMonkey is pretty much free at that kind of level. It's only when you're surveying thousands of people that you have to start paying for it. Final question for you then, Lori. The biggest recruitment and retention issues for MSPs speaking broadly right now tends to be their very senior people. So those first line techs you were talking about, new grads and various programs and schemes, I think it's a lot easier to hire a first line tech. Perhaps an experienced first line tech a little less easy. But to get someone brand new in, to shape them the way you want them, that's a hell of a lot easier than finding a second or even a third line tech, 10, 15 years on the job, they're earning big money already. And as you said right at the start, one in four people are, because it's a job seekers market, they're looking around to see what else is good for them. So we've talked about flexibility, we've talked about having a culture where people enjoy their work so much that they would actually recommend their friends. What other things can we do to attract these very senior, highly skilled people and keep them for longer?

Lori-Ann Duguay: That's a really great question. And to attract those senior people, I mean, honestly, people assume that pay and compensation is the number one. It's always in the top five reasons or complaints when we do any employee satisfaction survey. But certainly I think if you're able to offer compensation, but maybe offer alternate means of compensation, maybe you're offering telework as an option, which I believe is pretty par for the course with MSPs. So you're offering hybrid models, you're offering 100% telework. You're offering that level of flexibility, which we already talked about, but certainly not only offering it, but as a means to attract specifically. Talking about how people can actually fit the job description to their own preferences and they can customise it, they can change it, that it's not this rigid approach. It's not, this is the job description, either you cut it or you don't, you're out. Really being a lot more flexible. But working with them to empower and coach them into stepping in. One of the things I would say is, some of the more junior people who you already have on your team, start to think about what kind of curated training or developmental opportunities could you be providing them specifically as a means of using your internal pipeline to grow that level of seniority, that level of expertise. Perhaps if it's just mapping out your entire expertise inventory with your existing folks and being able to then have them identify which roles they want to grow into. Because growth and opportunities for development is a huge motivational driver as well. So where is it you'd want to grow within our company? And help them grow and invest in them that way. To plant that seed of loyalty, they feel invested in, they feel valued, they feel seen and heard. So certainly if you can work on your existing more junior positions, but then also ensure that your senior positions that are already within your company, that they've got the tools to be able to provide that coaching and that empowerment to grow your potential. And then that last note, if you're able to identify those high potential, and then incentivize with compensation and/or any other benefits you're able to provide as a means of attracting those high potentials. Because those high potentials will easily grow into that higher senior position.

Paul Green: Yeah. Perfect. Perfect. Lori, tell us a little bit about what you do for business owners to help people grow their business? And how can we get in touch with you?

Lori-Ann Duguay: Okay. I meet them where they're at. I think I work with everything from small to global companies. First we start by mapping out the existing experience. So put yourself in the shoes of your employee, get them from the moment that you're actually pitching at the interview, all the way through to their exit. And talking about some of the practices and some of the experiences relevant to those 10 motivational drivers. I didn't cover them all. But certainly if folks want to check out my website, they can download a free infograph that has all of those 10 drivers. Which are essentially those secret ingredients that you want to infuse into that day-to-day work experience for every employee in your company, be it frontline services, all the way through to senior leadership. You actually need to think about these things. And then help them map it out and then talk about some of those processes. And then we normally would develop a short term, medium, longer term solutions and then work at implementing them. But where I differentiate is I actually work with the company and their people. So my approach is to really, I'm not going to one and done, and then you got to call me back. I'm going to build the capacity from within your ranks. We're going to build the frameworks, the infrastructure required to maintain these kinds of programs and initiatives on a long-term basis. So, that's essentially what I do. I help them create that culture that drives people to them as opposed to them constantly having to run after their next talent. So, that's basically what I do in a nutshell. And folks who want to connect, I am on LinkedIn, they're more than welcome to connect that way. Or check out our website. And again, there is that infograph as well as a series of videos that elaborates a bit more about how to create that culture that people want to work for.

Paul Green: And just give us your website's address.

Lori-Ann Duguay: Www.thepeopleperson.ca because I help bring that human side, help people become more people centric.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast, this week's recommended book.

Colt Briner: Hey, this is Colt Briner from Scrappy AF Solutions. The book I want to recommend today is Creative Acts for Curious People. It's a fantastic way to develop your creative capacities that's both coming up with ideas and implementing them. Tons of fun exercises in here for both you and your team to level up your creativity.

Voiceover: Coming up, coming up next week.

Andrew Down: Hi, I'm Andrew Down from Vendasta. I'll be on the podcast next week talking about how digital marketing solutions could be your next revenue stream for your MSP.

Paul Green: Do subscribe wherever you listen to this podcast so you never miss an episode. On top of next week's interview, we're asking, is data capture dead? Is it still worth trying to get ordinary business owners to enter their contact details on your website? I'll also be asking you when was the last time you googled your MSP? Now we've got a ton of extra content for you at youtube.com/mspmarketing. And join me next Tuesday. Have a very profitable week in your MSP.

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Creative Acts for Curious People: How to Think, Create, and Lead in Unconventional Ways (Stanford d.school Library)

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Episode 157 Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week's show includes: * 00:00 I answer 3 of the most common MSP marketing questions * 12:09 This is what I think about having a Pricing Calculator on your MSP's website * 19:22 An ex-MSP's journey to create a tool to give you time back * 36:07 A great book recommendation about creating great processing within your MSP

Featured guest:

Thank you to Brian Brammeier from ZeroTouch MSP for joining me to talk about his journey from MSP owner, to the creator of a time-saving tool.

Brian is an experienced business operator, crisis IT and cybersecurity professional, as well as an investor. Currently, Brian advises several companies, either as a board member or in a consulting capacity, helping them craft and define their company strategy and cyber security postures. Brian is also an active investor in various technology, fintech, and pharma/biotechnology ventures. Connect with Brian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianbrammeier Extra show notes: * Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * On the subject of putting a pricing calculator on your MSP's website, I recommended the book They Ask You Answer by Marcus Sheridan: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/They-Ask-You-Answer-Revolutionary/dp/1119312973 * You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: * https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Thank you to Jamie Shanks from Pipeline Signals for recommending the book The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ultimate-Sales-Machine-Turbocharge-Relentless/dp/1591842158 * https://ca.linkedin.com/in/jamestshanks * Subscribe to my YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 * https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast * https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa * https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast * https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 * https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ * https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ * https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world, it's around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: Hello and welcome to the show. You look lovely day. Have you done something different with your hair? Here's what we got coming up this week.

Brian Brammeier: Hey everybody. I'm Brian Brammeier I'm an MSP veteran. We'll be chatting about one of my new startups, helping MSPs get time back so they can spend it with their customers.

Paul Green: That's Brian Brammeier He's my special guest this week and he built up an MSP over 20 years. He's going to tell you about his journey, what he would do differently if he did it again, and what he's doing now to make life easy for MSPs. Plus, we're going to be talking about pricing calculators. Should you put one onto your website?

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: One of the most fun things that I get to do is talk to loads of MSPs and answer their marketing questions. In any one week I'm doing a webinar or some kind of interview or something like that. So I thought what would be cool this week on the podcast is to answer three common marketing questions. Now, they're not the most common ones, but they're some of the questions that tend to come up again and again because just in the same way that when you are talking to normal business owners and managers, they all kind of ask versions of the same technical and technology questions. It's pretty much the same for me when I am answering marketing questions from MSPs. So I've got the questions written down here on a card and the first common question that I get is, how do I generate more leads? In fact, I would say that's probably the number one question I get asked because let's be honest, that's why you are listening to this podcast. You want more revenue, you want more new leads, and of course, ultimately what you really want is more new clients. Well, the way that I look at lead generation is there is no one specific answer that works for all MSPs. So every MSP will have a different blend of things and you need to make sure that you've got the right strategic approach and then the right tactical approach. Now what do I mean by strategic and tactical? Well, for example, I always recommend the long strategy, the strategy that takes the most time but generates the most highly qualified and ready to buy leads and prospects. And that's using my three step marketing strategy. So the first step is where you build multiple audiences of people to listen to you. That's typically done on LinkedIn through your email platform you can build other audiences as well. This podcast, you listening to me on this podcast is an audience, for example. The second part of that strategy is that you then build a relationship with them, and that's done through quality content marketing. So putting together good educational content or buying it in and sending that out to your audiences. And then the third step is to commercialise that relationship. Now this is not a fast thing because people only buy when they're ready to buy and there's a huge amount of inertia loyalty within the ordinary business owners that you are talking to. So that's what I mean by a strategy. We're not talking about tactical stuff. Things like should you use Google Ads, should you be on YouTube? All of those kind of things. And as I say, it differs from MSP to MSP. I don't normally, for example, recommend paid ads like Google ads or LinkedIn ads and yet there are a small handful of MSPs that I work closely with who use Google Ads and actually get a pretty good return from it. I've talked before about an MSP I work with who puts up with the nine out of 10 of the inquiries they get from Google Ads being the wrong person with a broken screen on an iPad. And that's not the business they're after, but for them because of their location, their ad spend is not too high, they haven't got too much competition. So it's worth them spending that money on Google ads for that one in 10, which does turn out to be a 5, 10, 15, 20 user business and it's worth them talking to. So I think for most MSPs to generate more leads, the bigger answer I guess is actually just do more activity. Certainly the more marketing you do, the luckier you will get because you could put in place that three step marketing strategy that I was just talking about and you might find that in itself doesn't generate you a ton of leads but along the way you start to get more referrals because the people say, "Oh, well we saw you all over LinkedIn and we saw your book and we saw your printed newsletter and your emails and we know that you're actively looking for more clients right now." So they would send more people your way. And you might find that you just get more traffic to your website and you have more conversations on LinkedIn and you find that when your telephone person is phoning prospects, that they get a warmer reception from some of them because you've been more active. So I guess if that was the big answer, which I know it's what you're looking for, how do I get more new leads? The answer would have to be do more marketing activity. It almost doesn't matter what you do, as long as you're just doing more activity to groups of people that you could one day sell to. I could do an entire podcast just on that question alone. Next question here, YouTube, should I use YouTube? So you may actually be watching this on YouTube right now. We've been massively upping our game on YouTube. We've put three high quality videos a week on YouTube, including this podcast. I now actually film this in front of a camera doing a little dance right now, which you wouldn't see if you're not watching it on YouTube. But we did that because YouTube has turned out to be one of the major podcasting platforms. So we'll always do an audio only version, but a YouTube version is now there as well. Should you be doing YouTube? Yes. Ask the next 100 people that you interact with from the, well ask the next 100 business owners you interact with, do you use YouTube? And 99 of them will say yes because YouTube is not just the world's biggest video platform and that's beating by far Netflix and Disney Plus and Amazon Prime and all the other streaming TV providers but YouTube is also the world's second biggest search engine. Of course it's owned by Google, which is the world's first biggest used search engine. And these days if you search, for example, if you searched how to do something, how to ice a cake. And the thing that's going to come up at the top of the search results is a YouTube clip. And in fact, YouTube has figured out where in the video is the answer that you are looking for, it's like a little three second clip and it will take you straight to that three second clip. So YouTube isn't just there for entertainment, it isn't just there for how tos, it's everything. All of video is on YouTube and you should be on YouTube as well. And there are lots of different ways to do it. You can take content that you can buy in and you can put that content onto YouTube. We provide a weekly video to the members of our MSP Marketing Edge service and many of them put that onto YouTube to fill up their YouTube channel, which is great. You can film your own videos, which is always preferred, canned content as in content that someone else has built and given to you that's better than nothing but frankly the very best content you can do is your own content, you and a camera and a microphone, and just talking about things that matter to the people you want to talk to, which is business owners and business managers. And I think the thing that stops most MSPs doing YouTube is just fear because it is quite difficult. If you are watching me on YouTube right now, you can see that I'm fairly disciplined. I don't look away from the camera, I try not to move too much, although I move my hands a lot. I'm physically rooted to one spots. I've done just a tiny bit of training on video presenting and most of it is just having presented tons of videos over years and years and years. I'm not naturally gifted at video presenting, it's just practice. And the MSPs that I know who do a lot of YouTube, and that's Christian and Lee and a bunch of other folk, there's a couple in the US whose names have slipped out of my mind, but the people who do YouTube regularly, they have got better just through practice and you can do exactly the same thing. So yes, if you have any desire within you to be on camera, be on camera, just start small, use your phone, stick it in a tripod, go outside because you don't have to worry about the lighting and get a decent mic. In fact that's really it. You've got a decent camera, you can get a mic for $20 off Amazon and lights. Lights are good if you're indoors like this, I've got some LED lights here for my YouTube video but going outdoors pretty much answers all of your lighting issues. Just get started. Film a video a week. If you can get into the habit of doing that, you get a year down the line and suddenly you've got 50 videos on your YouTube channel and most of them will have five views and that doesn't matter. What does matter is that as you get better over time people will start to notice you. YouTube will start to send you more organic traffic. It's like the boulder rolling down the hill. You've just got to get it going and once it gets going and you keep pushing it, eventually it will just have its own momentum. Okay, final question. Oh this is a good one. Now this is one which has started to come up over the last few weeks and few months or so. Should I be on BeReal? Now, BeReal, it doesn't matter if you haven't heard of this, but it's the latest app, the latest social media app. I'll confess that I've downloaded it, I've never actually used it. I downloaded it because my child has it. I think it's some photo sharing app and it's got some unique quirks which inevitably Instagram and the other big social media networks will copy at some point. My answer on this, and I've had similar questions about TikTok, should I be on TikTok and that audio only app, which was big last year, which I think was called Clubhouse. You see how quickly apps come and go. My answer for all of these is you use these apps, you embrace these apps, if and when the audience that you want to reach is embracing those apps. So you take TikTok for example, and I'm not on TikTok because the person that I want to reach, which is you, the chances are that you are not on TikTok if you are the the middle-aged person that I think you might be. Because most MSP owners and managers tend to be middle-aged and that means they tend typically not to turn to TikTok for entertainment. If you do, I'm not criticising you or being offensive, frankly, what we all do for our own entertainment is as long as it's legal, everyone's happy. But for most middle-aged people who tend to be the owners and managers of businesses, they're not on TikTok, they're not using TikTok for anything more than a little bit of minor entertainment. Now and again versus YouTube, virtually all the business owners or the MSP owners I want to reach are using YouTube in some way. So you got to ask yourself the people you want to reach, are they on TikTok? Are they on Be Real? Are they on Clubhouse? And the answer is probably no. It's the same for Instagram or Snapchat. You use these things only if the people that you are wanting to reach are on them. Instagram is an interesting one for example because if for example, you wanted clients that ran hotels, hospitality owners or restaurant owners, shop owners, those people tend to use Instagram because Instagram is the way that they reach their clients and therefore if the decision maker is on Instagram, then yes, in that instance it would make sense for you to use the Gram. But apart from that, I just wouldn't bother with it. So those are three of some of the most common marketing questions that I get. I'm very happy to do this again in a future episode. If you have any marketing question, you can email me anytime it's hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: Another common question that I get is, should I put my prices on the website? The simplistic answer to that is yes. However, I know it's a little bit more complicated for MSPs. One of my favorite marketing books that I've read in the last few years is They Ask, You Answer by Marcus Sheridan and he has an entire chapter. It's a book about content marketing and taking a very 2022 approach to how you answer prospect questions in your marketing. He has an entire chapter about pricing and essentially if you boil down that entire chapter into a single sentence, it is, tell people how much your stuff costs, put the prices on your websites. So the reason I know this is an issue for MSPs is because when someone says to you, "How much is it?" The answer from you is always, "It depends." Because of course it depends on the equipment they've got, services, security, there's so many different variables within managed services. So I think rather than asking the question, should you be putting prices on your website, the question to ask should be, should you put a pricing calculator on your website? And the answer to that is 100% yes. You see a pricing calculator allows someone to answer their question of how much is it? And it allows you to answer back with, it depends. Tell us a little bit about your situation. Me and my team, we've been spending quite a lot of time over the last few months looking at pricing calculators. We've just recently launched one for our MSP Marketing Edge members that they can put into their websites because we've got 700 odd members they can alter whether it's per user or per device. And there're all sorts of different customizations that they can do because different MSPs price things up in different ways. But we spent a long time during the research phase of building this tool that our members can put on their website. We spent a long time looking at what lots of MSPs are doing, what lots of other businesses are doing, and the psychology of getting a price. I know the thing that stops you from putting any kind of pricing on your website is fear. What if someone goes on to a couple of your competitor's websites and they get a rough idea of price and then they come onto your website and the rough idea of the price they get from you is a lot higher than the rough idea they've got from your competitors. Aren't they just going to not engage with you? And yes, there is that risk, but I believe there are so few MSPs and I can count just as I'm thinking now about the thousand odd websites I must have looked at over the years of MSPs, I can only think of perhaps five or 10, maybe if it's even that many that have actually put their prices or a pricing calculator on their websites. It's a tiny, tiny, tiny number that have done that. And this is what I believe would give you the advantage. If you put a pricing calculator on your website and you are honest that there are lots of different variables and this is an indicative price only, and of course it could go up and it could go down depending on your circumstances, it can be a way of moving the relationship with your prospect forward. What's the number one goal of your website? It is to get people to book something with you for the next stage. Ideally a 15 minute video call, that is the entire purpose of your website. Its job is to position you and what you do and your team and who you look after and where you operate and all of those things and it's to make the prospect feel not think because they are not making a cognitive decision about this. It is to make them feel at a very deep emotional level that you are a very safe choice. And you know what safe choices do? They put their prices on their website. There is an absolute direct correlation between that. So if you've been uhming and ahing this, put a pricing calculator on your website. As I say, we have one at mspmarketingedge.com. We only work with one MSP per area. So if your area is already locked, if we're already working with one of your competitors, I'm sure you can go and build one elsewhere. There are probably, if you put pricing calculator in, there'll be WordPress plugins and places to go and get it, but please do do that. The other way of looking at this is how many leads do you currently get off your website a year? If right now you get two leads a year off your website, what damage can you possibly do by putting a pricing calculator on there? You can't do any damage. If you've got an underperforming website and many MSPs do, then one of the ways... There's no risk, there's absolutely no risk to you of putting a pricing calculator on there and don't do anything crazy like make them put their name or their email address in to get the price, don't do that. Give them the price, make everything available to them without having to give you contact details. The truly, truly qualified, nearly ready to buy prospects who like what they see will get in touch with you anyway. In fact, they're much more likely to do it, the more open and honest you are with them with your marketing.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green: Bear with me two seconds, hang on. I just need to just press this, nearly done. There we go. Okay, I've done it. I can't do two jobs at once. And the thing is, I had to let another 13 MSPs into our Facebook group. It's the MSP marketing Facebook group. It's only for MSPs. There are no vendors and it is the free place on the Tinter web where you can discuss growing your business through better marketing. Now if you haven't joined already, here's some of the recent topics we've been talking about. Here's a question that I asked. How you make people feel about your MSP service is just as important as what you actually do for them. Discuss, and we've got 596 MSPs, have seen that one. Got a post here from another Paul about tech data and cynic joining together. There's an interesting one here from Rob. Sometimes we get slightly off topic ones and this is about why his clients are moaning about a shared Excel workbook being slow to open and which is amusing. It's got 20,000 formulas in it, means nothing to me, but apparently that might mean something to you. What else have we got? We've got here something about signing documents in real time during Microsoft Teams meetings. We've got $1,000 giveaway. Here's another thing for me. Does your LinkedIn headline make people yawn? I've got some suggestions in there that you can steal as well. So if you are not a member of this group and how many people have we got? Let me just go up and have a look. Click on members. We have got 1,765 MSPs who are already members. All you do is you grab your phone, go into the Facebook app, type in MSP marketing at the top, but go to groups. So we have a Facebook page, but no one ever goes on that. Go into groups, that's what you want. And then just push your finger onto my face. Couple of basic questions just to check you're an MSP and not a vendor sneaking in, and I look forward to interacting with you and talking to you in the MSP marketing Facebook group.

Voiceover: The big big interview.

Brian Brammeier: Hi, I'm Brian Brammeier I live in Chicago and I've been in the MSP industry for about 20 something years. I founded a Chicago-based managed services firm in 1998. It came organically out of a need I saw in the community. I'm cybersecurity professional. I've worked at some companies including Discover Financial, doing security engineering.

Paul Green: And you're one of my favorite types of guests to get on the podcast because you are an MSP of many, many years of service who has then exited the business and gone on to fill some holes in the marketplace that he's seen. So we're going to come onto your current venture and you've got so many exciting ideas. It's been awesome talking to you is leading up to this interview about the things you've been preparing. Let's roll it back to '98. So tell us, that was that first MSP that you put together. I guess when you first started that in '98, you didn't call yourself an MSP, you were just doing tech support.

Brian Brammeier: Yeah, I didn't really have the notion that I was going to start a company. It was more of I had a passion for technology, I had the skill set for it, and somebody came up and said, "Can you do this computer fix for me?" And I said, "Absolutely." And they said, "Well, how much does it cost?" And that's when I said, "Wait a second, I can charge people and I can make a business out of this." And it evolved slowly over time where referrals led to more referrals and then it became an almost 50 person company that got acquired in 2019.

Paul Green: Okay, and when you were building that, did you have a big plan? Did you have a big vision of, we're going to build this up and make it big? Or was it just a case of you made some really good smart decisions along the way and the business grew and grew and grew?

Brian Brammeier: I think it's a combination of both, Paul. The market back then was nowhere near as frothy and busy as it is now. Just by entering the market and having these services businesses demanded them constantly. They didn't have great places to go and the number of people offering the services were a lot lower than they're now. So the initial probably 10 years of the company, we didn't do any marketing. We did silly things like we didn't even track customer leads because we had so many leads inbound that we couldn't service them all. So if the customer wanted to buy right then and there, great. If not, we didn't even follow up. Now the market's a lot more advanced on both sides in today's climate, but it really evolved out of talking to customers, understanding what their needs were, our capabilities, and trying to make sure that we were always staying ahead of what was available. We were not an MSP back when it started, but that's the direction that things evolved into as we saw market need.

Paul Green: And no one was an MSP back in late '90s, early '90s, it was a completely foreign concept. Although interestingly, I have interviewed a few former MSP owners over the years who stumbled across managed services and got into monthly recurring revenue because it ticked so many boxes. Was that what happened to you guys or was it for you a conscious decision of we've got to change this model and get away from this break fix thing?

Brian Brammeier: Yeah, it was a funny story. So I was at Discover Financial, I was doing security engineering work, I was living at home, but about to buy my first house and have a car and all these expenses and looked at a budget, everything worked out fine. And I was talking to my work and they said, "We really want you to make a decision between doing discover work full time or doing your side business full time." And I said, "Well, I don't really see a conflict. We're not selling credit cards, the work's getting done." And they persisted that they wanted me to make a decision, talk to my parents, and I said, "I might have to move back in with you guys, but I'm going to try this thing full time." And that's really how managed services came a part of the tech company that I built. We needed to figure out a way to, I wanted to have a way to quantify what we're going to make every month. I knew what my previous run rate was, but with break fix, it's harder to guarantee the income. If the customer doesn't have a problem, they're not necessarily calling you. So shifting from just in time fix to a more proactive plan gave me a little piece of mind so that was the push that moved us into that category.

Paul Green: And then I guess the desire to get off your parents' couch again as you continue to grow that business.

Brian Brammeier: Yes.

Paul Green: What was it that made you look at exiting that business? You say you got out in 2019, how early before that exit did you start to think about it?

Brian Brammeier: Probably I would say almost two years before. And it started out with, there was some activity in the space. M&A right now is really hot in the managed services industry. I looked at buying small companies to plug into my own and we had conversations with a number of individuals that were between one to five employees to be able to plug in and acquire the customer base something I'd call an aqua hire. We would bring them on board. There wouldn't really be a purchase price, but they would join the company and gain benefit by being part of a larger ecosystem. In the back of my mind, cybersecurity is always something being thought of. And it's hard for smaller MSPs to participate in the same level of the security landscape as it is a larger MSP. You could have a dedicated security team, for example, once you get big enough. And so that was one of the conversations we had at these companies we were looking to partner with as well as conversations evolved, figuring out how much time it would take to acquire a larger MSP or to be acquired using private equity money. I'd have to go interview the private equity firms. I'd have to decide how that platform is going to be developed and ultimately benchmark that against some discussions that we were having with two MSPs to acquire us and decided on one and the numbers were pretty close. So for me it wasn't worth it to build the entire platform from scratch and then have to go through all that process versus joining a company that already existed. And I think the outcome was very, very good for not only us, but the clients and the employees.

Paul Green: Yeah, yeah. No, I bet. Before we start talking about the future and all the exciting ideas you've got, one more question looking backwards, and this is aimed at helping MSP owners listening to this or watching this on YouTube who are in their first three to five years, which I think it's a difficult thing, it's a difficult time. You've proven that you can actually make a living running your own business. You've probably got your first couple of staff, but I think many people get to that three to five to seven year stage where they almost plateau and they're stuck. They're stuck with it's them, and there's a little bit of help and they don't necessarily know how to break out to that. And maybe you were at that stage at some point in your business, I appreciate you were growing it during a very different time. If you could go back and throw some advice to yourself back in the day when you were at that stage, what advice would you give yourself? What would you do differently? What would you not do? What would you do maybe faster?

Brian Brammeier: I think two topics come to mind. One of them is hiring as you described, my hiring strategy because I was very new to this field of running a company and I took very personally the ability for us to hit payroll. We've never, in the 20 plus years of running my company, has ever missed a payroll period. And I feel like the making sure you provide that paycheck to your employee who's relying upon that is mission critical. So my strategy was I would work up to 80 hours worth of work myself and then chop 40 hours of work off to give it to an employee because I know I could always keep them busy. We always had enough work and that was kind of our growth strategy, is I would work it up to 80, chop off 40 hours and give it that employee. That was very lumpy. My advice to myself and other business owners, if you're at that point where you're starting to even exceed that 40, 50 hours of working in the business, take that entire chunk out and work less on the business itself. As an engineer myself, I enjoy the MSP conversations getting into the technical nitty gritty, but at the end of the day, that's not what is going to grow your business. Working on the business, not in the business is a common discussion. So I'd say stop doing the engineering work a little bit faster and focus on the company itself. And the second is how to utilise debt. I think I learned a lot of that when working with private equity firms and working with larger companies. It's okay to take on debt, especially if you can use the debt properly and you have good instruments to track when things are due. So if you've got good financial dashboards using debt, even if it's at six, 8% interest, maybe even 10% interest, if you can use that to hire somebody or use that for a marketing campaign that generates more money than the interest is costing you, that's a business win. So I would've utilised debt more often. We never went into debt to finance activities, but I'd recommend people look at that more.

Paul Green: Yeah, okay. That's great advice. Thank you. Let's look now at the future. And you sold that business, was it over three years ago? And how long did it take you to get bored and for your mind to start thinking about filling these immense opportunities that you seem to see in front of you every day?

Brian Brammeier: So I went from a company that was roughly 50 employees to a company that at the time had about 300 employees. I think now they have about 500. And I was their chief information security officer and chief strategy officer. So I got to see a lot of different facets of the business. I used to be an operator as well, so I had that previous experience and I learned a lot. I appreciate the opportunity and the time I had there. And the output of that was I got to see where companies have scaling challenges when they're smaller and when they're larger. And I think that that culmination of experience led me to think about how the MSP industry can be like what the next generation of tools and experience is going to look like for the customer. And there are some companies out there that are hyper focused on all being virtual MSPs or hyper focused on some AI tools. I think when it boils down to it, the most important thing an MSP can do is to have conversations, meaningful conversations with their customers. MSPs don't make money by fixing printers, that's table stakes type of stuff or keeping the computers powered on or Windows updates. Everybody does that. Spending time more than the check on a box I think is not value adding. It doesn't build the relationship. So trying to abstract the day-to-day stuff from the value add is I think where my head went next. And that's what led me to start building out software products for the industry. I think there's a lot of operational tasks that managed service providers do that don't add value, they actually bogged them down, or if they're done wrong, they have optics issues with the customer. So the more that we can do to help give that managed service provider time back to go talk to their customer is a huge win. And that's really where Zero-touch got started.

Paul Green: Okay. So you are going to be known as the guy that gives you back time. You're going to be the most popular person in the channel. Talk to us about Zero-touch MSP and I appreciate it. It's really early days. You've got an amazing series of ideas, some of which aren't quite ready to even talk about, but what kind of tools are you building right now? What's ready? What's coming up soon? And if you can give us a vision of where you're going over the next few years.

Brian Brammeier: Absolutely. So we have two products right now that are available. The two products that we launched with are a video conferencing platform and I'll explain what that is. And the other one is a phishing platform. So a common problem that MSPs have are somebody's in a server room and the Internet's down or whatever the cause is, they can't remote in. Firewalls, unplugged, loss of power, UPS, dozens of reasons why, but they can't see the screen. And so they're trying to talk to somebody who's non-technical and decide, do I need to roll a truck or do I try to walk this person through over the phone? And often that walking them through over the phone is a painful experience for the customer. The customer inevitably says, "What am I paying you for? It's a slow and tedious process. Just come out of here and fix it." Well, that's why this Connect product got started. It's a way that the technician can send a link to the customer's phone from a work computer and share the phone's camera with the technician, audio, video, everything can flow through that platform. There's no app involved. It's an instant process and the technician is able to immediately see what's going on so they can walk the customer through exactly what needs to be done. It alleviates some of that need to have pictures up to date in documentation because even those can get stale. So there's no Google Meets or there's no iPhone chat that are iMessage chat that has to occur. There's no giving out personal numbers. It's an easy way to save a truck roll essentially, and everyone can log in and share it. So that's the first platform. The second one is fishing. And there's a lot of products in the fishing space right now. I don't think that we want to build a better fishing platform. I think they're all pretty straightforward. I think what the focus on ours is around the operationalisation of the fishing within the organisation. So our fishing platform is made to be turned on and never touched again. All the activities that you normally have to do manually like making sure the billing counts are correct, making sure that Office 365 data gets synced into the fishing platform, scheduling the campaigns, choosing the campaigns, sending the reports to the person on the other side, we've automated all of that back to what our moniker is, our name. We want it to be set up and forget it. And the data can be sent to the people that need action, like the account manager and the customer point of contact but other than that, you turn it on and you can focus on something else.

Paul Green: So do you have a bunch of ideas that have sat in your head for a number of years or are you at the stage now of every time you talk to an MSP and they grumble about something that you think, oh, we could create something, we could create a tool that would alleviate that pain?

Brian Brammeier: Yeah, I think it's a combination of all of it. We're pretty active on the MSP thread on Reddit, soliciting feedback from community members, offering some of our early stage products for free to get some feedback. And we've got lots of other ideas including how to make the support experience from the customer side better. And so I remember the days where I would join a phone call with a customer and that's all I had. I couldn't see their screen, that wasn't even an option. I had to fumble through it. And nowadays customers are doing phone call, they're doing video chat, they're doing remote sessions and chat is an area in which they're also starting to demand. They want access to the support team in more real time. And that's the next area that we're getting into is building a fully integrated system that'll talk to your PSA and document these things in a straightforward and easy to implement fashion.

Paul Green: Yeah, I love it. Absolutely love it. You're in full R&D mode and it's going to be fascinating to track what you do in the years ahead, Brian. So we will get you back on the podcast next year and the year after. Just tell us finally, what's your website address? How can we get in touch with you?

Brian Brammeier: Sure. So the website address is zerotouchmsp.com, Z-E-R-O. Please visit the website, take a look at the products that we have up there. We'll have a way for you to subscribe to our updates so you can see when new products come out. But the idea behind it all is it's going to be an ecosystem of connected products that all talk to each other and help you save time in your day-to-day to focus on spending time with the customers.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast, this week's recommended book.

Jamie Shanks: Hi, this is Jamie Shanks, CEO of Pipeline Signals, and I recommend you read Chet Holmes' book, The Ultimate Sales Machine. You're going to recognise that there's only 3% of a market willing to buy today. So how do you identify who's that 3%?

Voiceover: Count up, coming up next week.

Lori-Ann Duguay: Hi everyone, Lori-Ann Duguay. Make sure to join in next week where we talk about one of the most prominent challenges for MSPs, recruitment, tips and tricks on how to recruit and keep the talent you need to thrive.

Paul Green: Wherever you listen to this podcast, make sure you subscribe so you never, ever, ever miss an episode, because also next week we'll be talking about the current state of automation on LinkedIn and something called buyer personas. Now, a buyer persona can be a very powerful way to laser focus your MSPs marketing. I'll tell you more about it next week. Don't forget there's a ton more content for you on YouTube. Just go to youtube.com/mspmarketing. Perhaps you should do it tonight. Spend 20 minutes on YouTube instead of watching that new Netflix show that you are thinking of watching. And join me next Tuesday. Have a very profitable week in your MSP.

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

The Ultimate Sales Machine: Turbocharge Your Business with Relentless Focus on 12 Key Strategies

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Episode 156 includes: * 00:00 How to create a 'moonshot' goal for your MSP * 08:05 Why your techs are NOT too busy for new clients * 17:58 A social media expert explains how your business can stand out online * 35:31 A great book recommendation about creating great processes within your MSP

Featured guest:

Thank you to Brendan Kane from Hook Point for joining Paul to discuss how an MSP can stand out on social media.

Since 2005, Brendan has helped the largest brands and celebrities in the world reverse engineer how to make content go viral. Brendan and his team at Hook Point have generated 60 billion views and 100+ million followers for the content they have worked on. Connect with Brendan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanjkane Extra show notes: * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * On the subject of creating a 'moonshot' for your MSP, Paul recommended the book Traction by Gino Wickman: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Traction-Get-Grip-Your-Business/dp/1936661837 * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Thank you to Owen McGab Enaohwo from SweetProcess for recommending the book The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Checklist-Manifesto-Things-Right-Gawande/dp/1846683149 * https://www.linkedin.com/in/owenmcgabenaohwo * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 * https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast * https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa * https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast * https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 * https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ * https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ * https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world, this is Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green: I'm so excited and I just can't hide it. Here's what's coming up in this week's show. I think you'll like it.

Brendan Kane: Hi, I'm Brendan Kane, the author of the books One Million Followers and Hook Point: How to Stand Out in a 3-Second World. I'll be talking about what it takes to go viral on social media and how to maximise these platforms toward your B2B marketing efforts.

Paul Green: That's Brendan Kane. He's possibly one of the greatest living social media experts, certainly when it comes to going viral. He's worked with celebrities, some enormous companies, and he's got some great advice for how you can better use social media in your MSP. We're also going to be talking about your technicians and when they complain that they're just too busy, that they can't possibly take on any more users. We're going to talk about how you can assess whether they are really busy or whether they just think that they're busy and figure out how much extra technician time you could possibly sell.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green: On the 12th of September, 1962 in a speech in Houston, Texas, then US President John F. Kennedy stood up and announced to the nation his desire to send man, because it was a bit sexist back then, man to the moon and back again safely by the end of the decade which was of course something that happened with the first moon landing or the faked moon landing, depending on which you believe, I'm sure it did actually happen, the first actual moon landing at the end of that decade. Now, what JFK set out on that day with that speech is understandably these days known as a moonshot because when he stood up during that speech and he set out what he wanted the US to achieve in just a few years, it was just about seven, eight years or so, at that point, NASA had a pretty good idea how they were going to get humans to the moon. They didn't quite know exactly how they were going to land them on the moon and they really didn't know how they were going to bring them back safely. It was a very big mission and that's why we call moonshot moonshots. It's as big as that. Something else you may have heard a moonshot called is a big, hairy, audacious goal that you may have about read about that in the book Traction by Gino Wickman. He talks about BHAGs, big, hairy, audacious goals. Now, you need a big, hairy, audacious goal, a moonshot for your MSP, and what I'm talking about here is not a goal of what you're going to achieve next year. I'm sure around about now you're starting to think, "What's 2023 going to have in store for us?" and maybe starting to set yourself some kind of goal. Oh no, I want you to think bigger than that. Not one year, not three years, not five years, but in 10 years' time, what could your MSP look like in 10 years' time. Now, the reason that's a moonshot is because actually the world of technology is going to have changed completely over the next 10 years. You look back 10 years, look at 2012, how different is the technology environment today. You can see that we've gone down a route. Cybersecurity is way bigger than it was 10 years ago, and in 10 years' time, I'm guessing it's going to be even bigger still because although the defenses get better, the weapons attacking people are getting better as well. We can look at managed services and subscriptions and follow that route, and we just generally know from decades of watching technology that everything can change in seven to 10 years. But I still think you should ask yourself for your MSP, what's your moonshot? What's your big, hairy audacious goal? What could your business look like by 2032 or 2033? In fact, now would be a great time to sit down with your team or your business partner or your life partner if they're involved in your business or you just want someone to riff off and to say, "What could we achieve in 10 years?" Because here's the thing I know about humans. We massively overestimate what we can achieve in a short period of time, but then conversely, massively underestimate what we can achieve in a long period of time. If I sit you down for a day and say, "What are you going to get done today?" you're going to come up with a whole list of things. You won't get all of those things done at all. But if I say to you, "10 years, what would you like to achieve in 10 years?" it's almost like you won't think big enough because in 10 years you could do anything. You could take a business that's today doing a hundred thousand a year and that could be a 10 or $20 million a year within 10 years. In fact, I think you could achieve that within five years if you're focused enough and you've got the drive to do it. What could your MSP look like in 10 years' time? What kind of reach could it have? What kind of clients could it be looking after? How many users or end clients could you possibly have? How many technicians could you have? Maybe you'll have no technicians. Maybe you'll have 500 or 1,000 clients but no technicians. What kind of experience could you create for the end clients that you're looking after? Will you just be in your town or will you be in another town, or maybe in other parts of the world? In fact, you could argue in 10 years' time that it doesn't matter where your MSP is based. You could genuinely look after and very well service clients anywhere in the world. Wouldn't it be great just over the next couple of weeks and months to dream, to think what's the moonshot, what's the big, hairy, audacious goal. We've just been doing this with our business, our MSP Marketing Edge business. Me and my team, we've been looking ahead 10 years and saying, "Well, what does this look like in 10 years' time? Are we still doing the same thing? Are we delivering white label marketing content to MSPs around the world and supporting them with insane amounts of support to help them implement that, or are we doing something different? What do we evolve into? How do we work with instead of 700-odd MSPs, how do we work with 10,000 MSPs in 10 years' time?" Now, I don't have the answers to those questions at all. The answers will come in the years ahead, but that's my moonshot. That's my big, hairy, audacious goal. I don't know how we're going to get there, but I know we're going to be completely different when we get that 10 years down the line, and that's the way that you need to be thinking about your MSP. Now, you could argue this is a distraction from what you're trying to do now. When you're just trying to increase monthly recurring revenue and just win another client and get through another day without quite so many problems coming to affect you, it's very hard to be thinking about the long-term future. Maybe you see that as a distraction, or maybe it affects the decisions you make today. If I know, for example, that I'm going to have 10,000 MSPs that I look after in 10 years' time, then that's going to affect the people that I hire today because if I'm hiring someone in their twenties or their thirties today, I'm looking at that person thinking, "Could you be a leader in the business that I'm going to create in the future? Are you the right person? Even if you're not in the right seat today, could you work your way into the right seat? Could you replace me?" Maybe I won't be running that business in 10 years. I hope to be, but what if I'm not? What if I make the decision to step away? Can you see how having an eye on where you're going is so important for the decisions you start to make in the short term and the mid term? So, an action point for you, if you get chance, please find some time with your team, your business partner, your life partner, a friend, a business-owning friend, someone you play golf with, someone you go hang gliding with. Find someone that you can just riff off. No one knows exactly what will happen in 10 years' time, but we can have a vague idea of what could happen, and we could certainly form a moonshot based on that.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: One of the greatest sources of distress for MSPs that I talk closely to is often technicians. I know you can't do without them as much as you'd like to, and I know there are very good technicians, but there are also technicians that are testing you constantly in many different ways. Now, let me give a caveat. Not all MSPs have issues with their technicians. Some of the MSPs I talk to have great technicians. They're very well trained, they operate the systems well, and those kind of businesses run very, very smoothly. But I do have a lot of conversations with MSPs, typically those that are going through change. They're trying to grow the business and do something different with the business, and often they feel as though the technicians are holding them back. They're struggling to recruit those technicians. They don't have enough time to train them, and those technicians don't seem to be able to follow the systems. As I say, not universal, don't write in with lots of complaints, but these are some of the common things that I see and I have conversations with MSPs all of the time. One of the biggest issues with technicians, and I don't think this is the technicians trying to rip you off, I think it's a perception problem for them as much as anything, one of the common perception or common problems is when the technicians perceive that they are full. So, they look at the number of clients that they're looking after and the number of end users, and they perceive that with the current resources of the business they can't take on any more work, or rather they say to you, "Oh god, if you're going to win that business, that new 50-user business that you're talking to, we're going to need another technician here." That just drives MSP owners crazy, and of course it does because if you add in another technician, that fine balance between resource and net profit suddenly goes out again, doesn't it? You add on a new client with 50 users without having to add on your resource, your gross profit goes up, your net profit goes up, your personal spending ability goes up, happy days. But if in order to bring on that new client you need a new technician, then the chances are that actually bringing on that new client has reduced your net profit and reduced your personal spending ability, not happy days, thumbs down for that one. So, I think you need to find a way within your business to figure out how busy are my technicians in reality, and this can only come from good ticket discipline because if you ask someone to ascertain how busy they are, they will always report that they are busier than they actually are. Now, partly that's them almost expanding the work to fill the time, partly that's that no one wants to say to their boss that they've only really worked half the week because we all want to look busy. Well, I don't have a boss. Neither do you, I expect. But we all want to look busy and feel as though we're doing a good thing, but it's human nature to want to look busy and to show that you're doing something. I do have someone on my team who comes to me regularly and says, "I'm out of things to do," and I love him. I literally could give, but for the fact we work remotely, I could give him a hug, give him a kiss and say, "Brilliant, let's talk about some projects that are on my plate which I can move onto your plate," and everyone's happy with that, but it's a rare person that can do that. So, some technicians will deliberately fib to you. Some technicians just perceive they're busy because they've expanded the work to fill the time. A problem comes in with the client and instead of just doing what needs to be done, the basic essentials of following the system to fix that problem and proactively stop it from happening again, they will go a little bit further. Perhaps they'll take it upon themselves to do some extra servicing or sort out some extra configurations. They're expanding the work. So, I think working out how much technician capacity you actually have which of course tells you how much technician time you can go on and sell to new clients, it all does come down to good ticket discipline. Now, I personally have never run a help desk. I have seen very little of PSAs. There were plenty of people around who can talk PSAs, people like Chris Timm. You'll find him around in various forums, and he's been a guest on this podcast a very long time ago. But there are lots of people around that will get into the nuts and bolts, the specifics of how you do that in your PSA. The way I see it, it starts with good time tracking and it continues with great ticket discipline. So, if a ticket comes in at 10:00 AM, it's logged at 10:00 AM, and the work that your technicians are doing, whichever level they're at, that gets logged on that ticket and that time gets logged. Now, technicians don't like logging time partly because it makes them accountable and I know that time logging in itself can be an issue. I have a friend who is a lawyer and he has to log for his company. This is so funny. He has to log 10 units of six minutes every hour. So, he basically from, I guess he works like 9:00 AM till 5:00 AM, and apart from his hour for lunch, he has to log for every single hour 10 units. So, if he spends 12 minutes reading your file, then he will log two units and you get charged for two units. If he spends then three units, we'll say 18 minutes reading my file, I get charged for that. You can see the basis of this. The reality is he's not a robot. So, there are times during the day when his mind just wanders off because the work is boring. Most lawyer-ly work is boring unless you're in court doing a murder trial, I imagine, which he's not, he's doing convincing. So, there are times where his mind wanders off. There are times where he needs to go to the toilet and he kind of is forced by his system to allocate his toilet breaks to a client because he has to track every single unit of six minutes. Crazy, isn't it, but it's a common thing within his firm which will go unnamed for obvious reasons, especially if you're a client of theirs. So, time tracking does have its problems. No one wants to register that they've only worked half the time, but I think if you make it acceptable to your staff to say, "Actually I only worked five hours today and I did an hour's training or I invested an hour into doing some proactive work, or looking at this server, or helping someone with this problem," essentially this becomes a cultural thing, doesn't it? It's a cultural thing of we all of us accurately record the time that we spend on all of the client work so we can see how much capacity we've got. So, we can see if we are too busy or we're overservicing or we're underservicing, and then anytime we've got left, you can say to your technicians, "I will invest into training but I can only invest into training for you if I know that you have spare capacity for training," training or proactive work or new projects or exciting things. There's always exciting things you can get technicians to do. So, it starts with time tracking. I think then other ticket discipline is making sure that tickets are closed, making sure that everything is logged in them. Again, I don't have specifics for your PSA or even tickets per se. I'm sure there are plenty of people who will tell you some very specific ticket behavior. But I do know that the more you can use the tickets, and this isn't as a control method, that the more you can use tickets to assess what is actually being done, the greater control and flexibility that's going to give you over your resource, the resource that you are paying to be there, whether they're actually doing any work or not. It's really important that your team understand why you're pushing for this. In fact, I think you could play them this podcast segment. Maybe you should edit out the bit at the beginning where I was critical of technicians, but you get the idea. You could play them this podcast segment and say, "Hey, this is what we're trying to do. I'm not interested in watching you. Obviously, I want to keep quality high, but I want to keep your skill set high. I want to keep your interest high. I want to do a great job for the clients. And also what if we can all finish at three o'clock on a Friday afternoon, have some pizzas, have a beer, and enjoy some time?" That's awesome. Isn't that the kind of thing that technicians would love? And actually, if that means that we've got to do our tickets properly and track our time across the week in order to do all of those things, that's a good thing. So, please don't try and tackle this alone. Do this with your technicians. Have the conversation with them, and don't expect them to all just switch and be perfect from day one. This will take some time to get good ticket behaviors up and running within the business, but it is worth persisting with because then you'll know exactly how much time you've got to go out and sell to new clients.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green: Do you know, I've just realised that this podcast is three years old this week? We started on the 5th of November 2019 and here we are with this episode coming out on the 8th of November 2022. Happy third birthday to the podcast. Now, I'm going to keep going with this podcast every single week for the indefinite future. It has to end one day because all good things must come to an end, but we love doing this podcast. We love getting your feedback and we're going to keep doing it. Something else we're going to keep doing is adding content to our YouTube channel. So, 3, 4, 5 times a year I go into a professional film studio, the kind that's got a multi-camera setup and green screens and men that do things with cameras and microphones and I film videos. They're sort of short videos, somewhere around about 1 to 3-minute videos. We have lots of different formats we film, and the idea is that you can just go onto our YouTube channel and there is a ton of content, and it's all there to help you improve your marketing and to grow your MSP because I know that's what you want. I know you want more revenue and you want new clients. So, if you want to delve into that YouTube rabbit hole, just go to youtube.com/MSPMarketing.

Voiceover: The big interview.

Brendan Kane: Hi, my name is Brendan Kane. I'm the founder of Hook Point and the author of the books One Million Followers and Hook Point: How to Stand Out in a 3-Second World, and our company specialises in understanding the nuances of what it takes to go viral in today's very noisy world.

Paul Green: It is a very noisy world, and many MSPs find that when they put out social media content, Brendan, that actually it's lost in all the noise out there. Now, you I realise specialise in this, in just helping people to cut through. Give us an idea of the kind of businesses and even some of the celebrities that you've worked with in the past.

Brendan Kane: Yeah, at this point we've worked pretty much in every sector, every industry. Obviously, some of the more notable ones is MTV, Viacom, Paramount Pictures, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Katie Couric. So, we've worked obviously with some big names but also we've worked in every sector from insurance to real estate to technology. So, there really isn't a sector that we haven't worked on over the years we've been doing this.

Paul Green: And I have to ask because it's a show business, it gets on this podcast, when you work with someone like Taylor Swift or Rihanna, do you actually get to meet the star or are you dealing with an assistant of an assistant of an assistant?

Brendan Kane: It depends, it depends on the individual. Some you work directly with. Some celebrities, all I do is work directly with them. Some, you have some meetings with them but then you're working with their team. Other times you're just working with their team. So, it really depends on the situation of how you get that introduction and how the conversations first start off. So, it's all across the board.

Paul Green: If you look back over the history of your career cutting through social media, what are some of the big things that have stood out for you where you've managed to cut through that noise and actually achieved something awesome?

Brendan Kane: Well, our team collectively using our process, we've done over 60 billion views, a hundred million followers and a billion in revenue for the projects we've worked on. And again, it ranges across the board, but I mean, from the earliest stages, I did the first-ever influencer campaign on YouTube in 2007, built the first influencer technology platform on MySpace around the same time. So, we've been doing this for quite some time. It's not like we just stumbled into this over the past few years. I've been in social media since about 2005 at this point.

Paul Green: You've been here for 17-odd years then, and you've obviously seen it change and get bigger and bigger and bigger. There's a lot of noise out there. I remember going on to YouTube around about 2007, 2008 for the first time because of course it only launched in 2005, and of course these days YouTube is a completely different beast. It has an enormous share of the video market. In fact, I think it has more viewing time than all of the subscription services put together, like Disney and Netflix, and then you've got things like LinkedIn, you've got Twitter, Facebook, there's just so much out there. Is it really worth businesses actually spending time trying to cut through on social media still?

Brendan Kane: Well, I think it's a great question, and it's really dependent on the business because I'm not going to sit here and say you have to be on social media to be successful in today's world. Does it help? Absolutely. Does it give you an extra edge if you crack it? Yes. But there's so many different ways that you can market your product or service. Social media is one of those, and I'm not going to sit here and say it's a requirement, and on top of that, it takes a lot of work. To get good at anything, it takes a tremendous amount of dedication, effort, resources, and expertise. So, there's a massive potential on these platforms. But typically when we're working with a client, we're working hard to define, well, what is the best way to leverage these platforms if they are going to. In some cases, if I'm just doing overall business strategy, I determine based upon all of the variables that play with the business, what type of growth trajectory are they on, what do they want to achieve, where are their clients, what are the resources they have, what is their marketing budget to determine is this really the best path, or is there a different path or different strategy to take to be successful.

Paul Green: Yeah, I completely agree with you there. I recommend the same to the MSPs that I work with, that social media is just one of the channels. Of the multiple audiences that you're building, social media, obviously an important one, but obviously not the only channel. Let's look at LinkedIn because LinkedIn for MSPs is predominantly their main channel because it is seen as the B2B social media channel. LinkedIn has had quite a, I don't know if it's a renaissance or a transformation over the last few years under Microsoft's care, and it has certainly become much more of a content platform than previously where it was just the online version of your offline network. How has that changed how you and your team use LinkedIn?

Brendan Kane: Yeah, I would say that it's still going through a transformation, especially on the content side, and I think it's very early, and there's some kind of challenges and obstacles that I see with the content that's being produced for the platform, what's gaining weight in the algorithms, what's not. I really look at LinkedIn as that direct data source of your core target audience. So, oftentime when we're working with LinkedIn, it's really an aggregation tool to find your core target market, extract that contact information, and then pipe that contact information into more email cadences because the challenge with LinkedIn like the other platforms is there's so much noise out there, and with LinkedIn specifically, the noise is a lot of people trying to sell you stuff, and that can really numb people to be open to outreach on those platforms and really pay attention to it. I'm not saying it can't be successful, it can, but you're fighting against, and I'm sure everybody could open up their LinkedIn inbox or the connections they get, when the first message is a sales pitch, and because of that, most people are turned off to connecting with new people on LinkedIn from a value standpoint of helping or getting their problems solved by other partners and providers. So, typically, when we look at LinkedIn, we look at it as more of a source to extract the contact details of these people and then follow up via email with a well-thought-out email cadence to express the value and the problems that we can solve for the individual.

Paul Green: Got it. So, you use LinkedIn to meet people, then you use a mixture of LinkedIn and email to actually build a relationship with them. How do you extract those details? Would you use an automated tool or would you do that manually?

Brendan Kane: It depends on the volume that we're doing. In some instances when we're only going after like 10 to 50 people, we'll do it manually. There's other platforms out there that can automate that. If I'm connecting with somebody, I never send a connection, a message with the connection request because it's too hard to nail that initial message where it doesn't come off salesy. So, I typically just don't do that. Have them connect and then you can get their emails through that. Some people have those emails available without the connection, but that's typically what I do with that. But in that message, the biggest advice I can give you is you've got to get in the head of the other person. You've got to understand what is the greatest problem that they're experiencing, what are the exact words and phrases that they're using to themselves, and go to the message with that in mind and basically say, "Hey, I know you're experiencing this very difficult problem, I would love to help you solve this." Now, with that said, there is a very fine line that you run with that type of message coming off of salesy versus coming off value. So, sometimes we'll take weeks to craft that messaging for our clients or for ourselves to get that right, and if you get it right, it's massively valuable. I mean, I've closed companies like Disney, Fox, Xbox off of cold outreach emails just because we kind of nailed that cadence to it. Again, I'm not going to sit here and say it's easy, but it's definitely achievable.

Paul Green: Yeah, yeah. So, it's achievable when you're thinking about the person that you're trying to reach and what their issues are, rather than what you want to sell. That makes perfect sense. Okay, I've got two, three final questions for you. They're big questions and you've given me some brilliant answers so far. The first of them is I want to talk about other social media platforms. So, let me give you an idea of the sort of average listener to this podcast. So, they run an MSP. They might be anything from a one-man band up to a sort of a multimillion-dollar turnover business, but essentially they are providing B2B solutions and they want to reach other business owners, other people like them who are not in IT because that's their sort of bread and butter. What other social media platforms, taking into account everything you've talked about so far with the positioning of your message, would you use Facebook, would you use Twitter, would you use some of the newer platforms like TikTok which we traditionally don't think are the right places to reach the 35, 40-year-old CEOs that you want to reach? What kind of platforms are you recommending for B2B businesses right now?

Brendan Kane: Yeah, it's a great question, and your audience is predominantly going to be on most of these platforms at this point because each of these platforms have about 2 billion users on them. Now, obviously, TikTok does skew younger, but it is attracting that older audience, predominantly because their young kids are using that platform, so they want to check it out and understand it. But each platform has its pros and cons. One of the biggest differences I would say is YouTube, for example, as you mentioned, the amount of time spent on that platform is much higher. It's a long-form consumption, so people will spend 8, 10, 20 minutes watching a video versus TikTok or Instagram or Facebook is notoriously short-form content. So, the upside is that you can build more brand connection, more brand loyalty than those other platforms. So, we typically say a view on YouTube or subscriber on YouTube is 10 to 20 times more valuable than the other platforms. By saying that, I'm not saying the other platforms aren't valuable because the con is with YouTube, you got to really be producing longer form content. Yes, YouTube has YouTube Shorts, but still to maximise the value of a platform like that, you need to be producing videos that are eight to 12 minutes minimum in length to really extract that value out of it. But I would really only enter into those platforms and creating a strategy for them if you're willing to put in the time and dedication and resources, and one of the big things that people, even in the B2B space get wrong with social media specifically from an organic perspective is, hey, we're just going to create content for our specific demographic niche audience. Well, that is counterintuitive to what the algorithms actually want. Algorithms care about user retention because the more time people spend on these platforms, the more ads they can serve, the more revenue they generate. So, when we're looking at content, the algorithms care about content that they can send to the widest possible audience and still grab and hold attention. So, if you're just designing your content for a B2B audience, and the minute it goes outside of that audience, the algorithms see that it's not holding attention, they're going to suppress the reach. You won't even reach your followers at that point. So, you've got to figure out how to turn your message into more of a generalist piece of content that anybody could be interested in, while at the same time, the subtext of that content still playing to your core audience. It's definitely achievable. It sounds kind of crazy in the beginning, but there's a lot of examples of that. For example, for taxes, there's a YouTube account called Clear Tax Value that it made taxes viral. There's a luxury real estate agent named Ryan Serhant who sells 10 to 50 million properties out of New York. He makes that content interesting for the general audience by the way that he contextualises his message. So, if you are to go into any of those platforms from an organic perspective, then you've got to have this generalist approach of how do I make anybody care about the content that I'm about to produce.

Paul Green: I can see how selling $50 million houses is a lot easier to go viral than talking about tax, but clearly it is achievable even in a boring B2B sense like that. Let's talk briefly about going viral. So, you said to me before we started the interview that going viral is not really down to luck. There's very much a science behind it.

Brendan Kane: Yeah. So, again, setting the stage is we live in a world where there's 4 billion content creators on the planet that are pushing 200 billion messages into the world every day. So, these algorithms have so much content to choose from, and they're looking for content that can grab and hold attention at scale. So, a big part of our process is gleaming insights from who's doing it well. So, what we do is we go and mine publicly available data on social media of what's going viral, content creators covering all different subject matters, and then we dissect the nuances of what is causing it to go viral. How are they telling their stories? What are the formats that they're using? How do they construct their message to be successful? Because you cannot systematically engineer virality if you don't understand why things go viral. Now, some people can get lucky and get one, two, or three things to go viral, but they don't know why. Thus, it's not predictable. You can't do over the long run. So, a huge part of our success is constantly analysing other content creators that may have nothing to do with the subject matter we're going to cover, but we can gleam insights about how they're telling their story to apply it to our content.

Paul Green: That's fascinating. So, essentially, you're looking to see what the algorithms have picked up and then you're obviously trying to replicate that in some way. I guess the issue we're all battling against is we don't know what the algorithms want. In fact, I suspect that for a lot of these social media platforms, even the programmers, even the developers don't really understand their own algorithms because there's years of rules that have been built up there. Final question for you, Brendan, and as someone who's been in social media pretty much since it started existing, what's the future? If you were to look forward 10 years from here where, what are the trends? Where do you think we're going? Is it all going to be short-form content like TikTok? Is it all going to be video as Mark Zuckerberg believes it will all be in the future? What do you see is the future of social media?

Brendan Kane: Yeah, I don't know that I'm smart enough to answer 10 years out because I think that there's a lot of... The biggest thing you have to look at is technology because the hardware dictates the software. This is one of the reasons that Mark Zuckerberg bought Oculus because he's investing heavy into the metaverse and he wants to own the hardware versus with today he's super reliant on Android and iOS to serve his platforms. I would say for the next five years, I think that the predominant players are still going to be succeeding because of the level of intelligence and innovation that they do. I definitely wouldn't say that the future is all short-form content because I think that there's a little bit of a misconception about kind of micro-attention. There is micro-attention, but it's for grabbing attention. It's not for holding it because if that were the case, then people wouldn't binge watch the latest Netflix show or Game of Thrones, or people wouldn't listen to a Joe Rogan two and a half hour podcast. So, I think that there is always going to be a place for long-form content if it really entices you with the story and keeps you involved in the characters or the conversation that is happening. But as far as beyond that, it's tough to say because we have to see how technology evolves. Meta is making a huge investment, 10 billion a year in the metaverse, but it's still so early that we don't know how that technology is going to unfold. Even Mark Zuckerberg talks about they have a vision for it, but there's so many things that have to fall into place in order to get it there. So, I would really just say for businesses is you can't go wrong focusing on the big players because this isn't in the beginning where like a Friendster or a MySpace comes along and then it falls flat. People have been saying Facebook is going to die since the very beginning, but these companies have really evolved in terms of how they approach social media, how they engage people on their platforms, that it's not going to happen overnight that it's just going to disappear.

Paul Green: Friendster, I'd completely forgotten about that one. Tell us a little bit about your agency, Brendan, and tell us how we can get in touch.

Brendan Kane: Yeah. So, basically we help companies with their social strategy, and there's two different ways that we do it. We have a community called Viral Trends. They can go to goviral.hookpoint.com where every week we're delivering the latest insights of what's going viral and why it's going viral so that we can take over that role for somebody's team, or we can develop a full custom social media strategy for a company based upon their specific goals, their needs, their challenges, their competition, and if they want to learn more about that, they'd go to hookpoint.com.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast. This week's recommended book.

Owen McGab Enaohwo: Hi, my name is Owen McGab Enaohwo and I'm the CEO of Sweet Process. The title of the book is The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande, and why I like the book, every business needs to have documentation in place so they can scale and grow and so their employees can get work done predictably, so that you can actually deliver results predictably to your customers. But in this case, this is a doctor's standpoint. In this case, a surgeon is talking about how having procedures in place and checklists actually improved what they were doing. Life and death is necessary in healthcare, obviously it makes sense to have your business, but get the books so you can see how it applied in its own industry. It's a good read.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

Brian Braumeier: Hey everybody, I'm Brian Braumeier, look forward to chatting with you guys next week. I'm an MSP veteran, been in the industry for about 20 years, and we'll be chatting about one of my new startups called Zero Touch MSP, helping MSPs get time back so they can spend it with their customers.

Paul Green: Wherever you listen to this podcast, please do subscribe and you'll never miss an episode. On top of that interview, next week we'll be talking about your website and adding a pricing calculator to it. Now, you might think that I've gone mad by suggesting you even put your prices on a website, let alone a pricing calculator, but there is method in the madness and I will explain it to you next week. I'm also going to answer some of the most common marketing questions that I get asked. There are certain questions that just repeat again and again and again in a loop, and I'm going to answer three of them for you next week. Don't forget, there is a ton of extra content like I was mentioning earlier on in the show. Just go to youtube.com/MSPMarketing. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

View Details

Episode 155 includes: * 00:00 How to shape your business with your future lifestyle * 07:39 Why you should charge an 'idiot tax' * 12:45 The right mindset to grow your MSP * 27:57 A great book recommendation about breaking through the ceiling to the next level

Featured guest:

Thank you to Chuck Canton from Sourcepass for joining Paul to discuss the right mindset to grow your MSP.

Chuck is a seasoned and dynamic technology executive with more than a decade of experience at hyper-growth companies, with experience in launching and growing startups, securing growth funding, acquisitions, and sales. Chuck attributes his past successes to two key areas of focus: building healthy and collaborative company cultures and always listening to his customers. Connect with Chuck on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuck-canton-a0152a13 Extra show notes: * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Find out about Paul's MSP Marketing Edge service: * https://www.mspmarketingedge.com * Thank you to MSP sales expert Fiona Challis for recommending the book The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Big-Leap-Conquer-Hidden-Level/dp/0061735361 * https://uk.linkedin.com/in/fionachallis * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 * https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast * https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa * https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast * https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 * https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ * https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ * https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Fresh every Tuesday. For MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green: Hello and welcome to episode 155. Here's what we got coming up for you this week.

Chuck Canton: Hi, I'm Chuck Canton, CEO of Sourcepass. Super excited to join Paul's podcast to share our journey that we're embarking on to build a billion dollar MSP and some of the ingredients we're infusing into that mission to accomplish.

Paul Green: That's Chuck Canton from Sourcepass. Now, he's the kind of entrepreneurial big thinker that I love to get on this show. And later on we'll be talking about the kind of mindset that you need to succeed in business. I'm also going to ask you about your clients. Do you have a client who very often acts like an idiot? If you do, let's ask the big question today of whether or not you should be charging them an idiot tax.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green: Your MSP exists to fund your future lifestyle. What a very strange thing for me to say. Let me go back a step and explain that a little bit. When you first started your business, do you remember back then that you had a passion, a fire, a flame that was deep within you and regardless of where you worked and how much you earned, you knew you had to do your own thing, you wanted to be your own person and it was partly about increasing your earning capacity. It was really more about getting control. That's why most of us start a business in the first place. We want to be the crazy person in control. So you start your business and initially it's wonderful because you've got control and then you start to bring onboard staff and you lose control and you have to systemize and you get caught. I think everyone gets caught in two to three years of quite difficult work where you're almost clashing because you want to do things this way but you can't because you're too busy and you're reliant on your staff and a lot of people get stuck in that actually for decades. But, eventually, you will come out of that and the business starts making really good money. And when the business starts making good money, you can start to spend some of that money on even more staff and resources so you, personally, are doing less and less and less of the work. And that's the point I think at which your MSP starts to need to, not just fund what you are doing today, but to start to fund your future lifestyle. Because, yes, whether we start the business because of a flame or a passion, regardless of why we start it, we all need to pay our mortgages. We've all got bills and children and holidays and all of that stuff that we need to pay for. And that's initially, certainly in those first few years, that's what the business is there to do. But once you start making good money and you start being able to replace yourself, I mean properly replace yourself in the business, that's the point at which you've got a really good lifestyle, a good work life balance in the business where you're choosing to do the work that you want to do. Now is the point where there's excess money. That's the point at which you need to start to think about the future, because I don't know about you, but I'm not getting any older. I'm 48 as I record this, and swear I was about 45 or 46 when I started this podcast. In fact, I was. I was 45 when I started this podcast in November, 2019. How did I suddenly become 48? How come when I look in the mirror in the mornings, an older, grayer, tired version of myself is looking back at me? So it's about now that I'm starting to think about the future and I'm starting to think, "Well, when will I stop this?" I mean, at the moment I can't imagine stopping, but I'm pretty sure that somewhere in my 60s or maybe early 70s, I won't want to do exactly the same things at the same pace. Maybe I want to do ... Well, I know exactly what I want to do. I want to do more scuba diving and hang out in cool hot countries. Hang on, there's a bit of a clash there, isn't there? Hot countries that are cool to hang out in. And I want to drink coffee in harbor cafes and hang out with cool people and that's what I want to be doing more of and perhaps less standing in my house doing a podcast. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy this but I can't see that I'll be enjoying it so much in my 70s. So as I'm starting to think that way now I've got to make sure that my current business is feeding that future lifestyle because that future lifestyle, I want the option of not having to work. Now, that's actually my idea of hell: not having to work, but that's what 48 year old Paul says. Go ask 71 year old Paul if he wants to work and he would rather have the choice of whether to work or not. Therefore, today I've got to make sure that the excess money that the business is generating is funded into my future lifestyle and perhaps this is the time for you to do exactly the same thing. So we've got the basics, things like your pension. Now, I don't know what your pensions are like wherever you live, but certainly here in the UK, pensions have undergone a bit of a revolution in the last 10 years or so. So back in the day when it was my granddad, he's pension ... He died at 70 ... I think it was about 73, so he, basically, didn't get to take much of his pension. He spent, literally, 45 years of his life paying into a pension pot and wasn't able to take much of it. So my gran, who survived him by nearly 20 years, she had some of that pension, but did they get back the money they paid in? I don't know. But that was how pensions used to be, certainly here in the UK. And now a pension is just a very effective tax rapper. So you can save up to a million pounds in your pension here in the UK and you can take all of that out at your retirement age and go and blow it on Las Vegas if you want to and Mustangs and stuff like that or you can invest it. In fact, you can invest it along the way into commercial property. There's just many sexy things you can do with a pension these days. I never thought I'd be describing pensions as sexy, but they are because they're just efficient tax rappers. And maybe there's similar things where you live. But there's more than just pensions, isn't there? There's investments, there's property, and certainly now I've covered my bills. My bills are covered for my day to day living. And now with any excess cash in the business, I'm thinking about how do I give 71/72 year old Paul more options? What's another investment I can do today? Is there another rental property that I can buy today which will be generating an income, essentially an income generating asset? Can I put that together today because that gives me more options in the future? And I want you to be thinking about your business this way. If you're still at the startup stage or you're still at the stage where you're desperately trying to get the business just to meet your bills, then park this one for a couple of years. Come back to this one in a few years time. But if you are at that stage where your MSP is comfortably covering all of your bills and there is excess cash, now is a great time to think about how you can give yourself more options in the future. And that starts with going to talk to experts. Here in the UK we have something called independent financial advisors. I have a great one of those called Graham. In fact, if you want an introduction to Graham, just drop me an email, hello, at paulgreensmspmarketing.com. I get no financial benefit of that other than looking after someone who is looking after me very well. So Graham just tells me about options, comes up with ideas and, of course, he makes money off investments that I make. Maybe there are financial advisors in your area that can do the same thing for you. But the message is if you've got excess cash in the business, don't do anything frivolous with it. Think about your future and how you can give yourself more options so 72 year old you is looking back and thanking you for the clever and smart decisions that you made today.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: Now here's a contentious question: Are any of your clients idiots? And you know what I mean by idiots? The kind of person that when their number comes up on the phone system, everyone in the office goes, "Ugh," and, in fact, the atmosphere just dies because no one wants to pick up the phone. They're a hassle client, they're an idiot, they're the kind of client that really you should fire. They're in the bottom 20% of your bottom 20% of clients. Do you have a client like this? So let their name come into your mind right now. Right. I've previously said on this podcast that you should fire that client and I still stand by that. I genuinely think we don't have energy, we don't have the cognitive energy or just the life force energy to have to deal with idiot clients. But here's the thing: Sometimes their idiot is tolerable. So obviously the very, very worst clients, they've got to go. You've got to fire them, if only to protect your staff, to protect yourself so you'll sleep better at night. But someone who is just mid-level idiot, I don't think you should necessarily fire them, but I do think that they should be ... What's the word I'm looking for? They should be paying more money to you. There is a concept and it's called idiot tax. It's not actually called that. It has a much ruder word, but this is a family podcast so I want your family to be able to listen to this podcast. They won't? Why would it be of interest to them? But you get the idea. No rude words here. So we won't call it what it is commonly known as. It's known as idiot tax on this podcast. If someone acts like an idiot with you on a regular basis, then they should pay more than your clients who don't act like idiots and this is done through idiot tax. So how do you apply an idiot tax? Because idiots don't always reveal themselves before you've actually sold to them. So someone could come on board as a brand new client and you wouldn't know they were an idiot. Well, I think the first thing you can do is you can just put the prices up. So you can say to your idiot client, "Hey, this is what you're currently paying per user or per device, that's rising to this much from this date." And, in fact, you might put through a larger than normal price rise. In fact, you might even put through a price rise when you're not doing it for any other clients because you're just charging them more money for the hassle that they create. And if they choose to opt out and leave you, oh, well, it's not the end of the world, is it? Because, remember, they're within your idiot clientele. So just putting up the price is something I think you can when you sell them something extra so when you do strategic reviews, you can do covert idiot taxes. Covert idiot taxes is where when you add on a new service or a new bundle, you just charge them more. So you might buy something and you might wholesale it at, I don't know, $3 per user per month and for everyone else you might retail that out at $6 or $9 per user per month. For your idiot clients, you retail that out at $20 per user per month. So you're just adding on extra margin. This is actually one of the ways of doing a covert price increase. You can apply this across other clients. You just need to be careful because it is a slightly underhanded thing to do. I think the third way that you can charge an idiot tax is just to be out and out blunt with your clients and just tell them, "We're going to charge you more." You can say to them, "Look, of all of our clients, these are all of our clients, you take up this amount of our resource. So you're on the help desk creating or registering problems and chasing us on this many occasions. You take up this amount of resource and, we'll be honest, we charge you for this amount. So if you want to stay with us as a client and you're more than welcome to stay, we just need to charge you more because, essentially, we don't make any profit on you." Is it a bad thing to tell a client that you don't make any profit on them? I don't think it is because we're all in business to make profit. That's what we were just talking about in the last bit. All of that extra profit is paying today's mortgage and it's paying for the future lifestyle. It's generally accepted in business that unless you work for not for profit, you're here to make profit. So I don't think it's a bad thing at all, depending on the way you say it and the words you use to say to your idiot client, "I've got to be honest. We don't make any profit on you so we need to charge you more." And that sparks a conversation about how you either need to reduce down the level of service or you need to charge them more. They may leave. Again, I don't think this is a bad thing at all. I think when we've got an idiot client and we are not making money on them and we are not happy with them, charging them an idiot tax at least makes some of the hassle worthwhile.

Voiceover: Paul pulls latent plug. Latent plug.

Paul Green: I'll keep this message as simple as I can. Tell your friends, tell your mum if you want to improve your MSPs marketing, me and my team are here to help you. Go to mspmarketingedge.com.

Voiceover: The big interview.

Chuck Canton: Paul, thanks for having me here today. And hi everyone listening in on the podcast. Pleasure to be here. I'm Chuck Canton, the CEO of Sourcepass. We began our journey in December of 2020, that's embarked on elevating the IT services and security industry.

Paul Green: And thank you so much for dropping in, Chuck. Now, I was having a chat with your PR team ahead of getting you onto the podcast and they sent me through your resume. That was a long email. You've done a load of very, very interesting things in your time. Without going into it in too much detail, give us an overview of your career and some of the more fun, the cool dinner party things that you've done?

Chuck Canton: So, happy to do that. And I appreciate the kind words. Our PR team has done a good job. So I've been predominantly in the tech space my entire career. I pride myself in a lot of hands on multifunctional expertise, whether it's working in support, sales, project management, engineering. I've done the full gamut. My first entry in the space was a company called iCore Networks and I was there to see that company grow from its inception to about 200 employees, 72 million revenue, and it was, ultimately, sold to Vonage business. That is what we merged together and built out what is known as Vonage business today and was recently sold to Ericsson. That's also where, which we'll talk about shortly, I got the vision for what Sourcepass is today.

Paul Green: So you've done a huge amount, and those MSPs watching this interview on YouTube, as opposed to just listening to the audio, will see that you look really young. So how old are you Chuck? So 24/25?

Chuck Canton: I appreciate that. I'm 36. It's most indicative in my hairline if I tip over there. But my battle scars probably are that of someone who's been in the space for 30 or 40 years. At iCore and Vonage we did so much M&A and such hyper growth, we joke it was like dog years in that one year there, seven years' service anywhere else. But, yeah, no, I'm 36 years old but I have over 15 years of experience in the specific sector.

Paul Green: But it's that's experience, it's those dog years, those hard won dog years that made me want to get you onto this podcast, because obviously the vast majority of people who listen to this are MSP owners. They're running their own business and that can be from ... I know we have listeners from one man bands up to tens of millions of dollars worth of turnover and we've got everything in between. You talking about scale and by the very virtue of talking about scale, the drive and the leadership, that's what's most of interest to me. What's the thing that you think are the most important things in driving any business? Because you've been involved in multiple big projects that have moved at speed and you are still relatively young, says the 48 year old. What would you say are the most important things? Is it about having the right mindset? Is it about surrounding yourself with the right people? Is it the right business idea or is it all of these things?

Chuck Canton: So I think it's definitely all the above, but there's some priorities to them. I think the most beneficial thing that's helped me and the teams around me along my journey is, first, surrounding yourself with the right people. Your reflection of your team as a leader, you've got to be super self-aware of your strengths and your weaknesses and build a team that complements your weaknesses and, at the same time, build and recruit a team that, from their interview, you believe is better than you could ever be on your greatest day because, ultimately, that makes your job easier and that's the right thing to do for the business. And so I've always been super mindful and spend a lot of time on recruiting and selecting the right folks, align them with their strengths and making sure that the leadership team is a very complementary nature. The next thing is once you have that great team is clear focus on a mission. You have to have a mission, a vision at a very high level, 10,000 foot view, and be able to distill that down to every individual employee, whether it's your executive team, mid-level manager or frontline employees taking phone calls, they have to understand how [inaudible 00:16:57] they are to help accomplish that and their purpose and then that all translates to a super healthy culture. At Vonage, we went from ... When I started there, I think our valuation, our market cap was something like 300 million at that time. When I left, it was about a 3.5 billion valuation. And it would not have been possible without our team being so maniacally focused on integrating all these assets, building a portfolio of cloud services and voice services that was never out there, but also being super excited having a healthy culture. And so one of the biggest things I say that made Vonage so successful is we had an awesome CEO with Alan Masarek and he just built such a great culture where everyone was super empathetic, everyone embraced servant leadership, but people enjoyed showing up every day and doing something new. And so I think culture and resiliency is so important because you're going to come across so many challenges, you want everyone to bounce back and just keep coming back and be focused on that mission.

Paul Green: What's interesting is you've given us a whole bunch of big headline things there and I agree with all of the items you've mentioned. Would you argue it's ... Let's take something like culture. So you talked about how important a culture is, and I can see in an exciting startup, something like Vonage, it's an exciting moment. Everyone's going there knowing they're going to have to work really hard and there's going to be two to three years of really hard work to do something new that's never been done before and then there will be a landscape change in some way. And we see that a lot in Silicon Valley and other big startups. Would you argue that it's easier to have that positive culture in that big business versus a smaller business, say, where you've got an owner-operator and two or three staff and there is no exciting three to five year plan, there's just, "Lets do a great job?" Is it fair to think that a smaller business could have that exciting culture that a bigger business could have?

Chuck Canton: So I think that the only thing that separates the smaller businesses from the larger businesses is the willingness to take the risk and invest in those differentiated strategies and put it all out there in an attempt to propel the business forward and to elevate our clients' experiences. So I don't think it's necessarily easier for a smaller or a larger business. I think a growth business is where it's easier, but whether a large or small business, you have to be willing to challenge your team, take risks, be entrepreneurial. And I think the smaller business with these entrepreneurs, which, in this space, there's 45,000 or more IT service companies in the US, every one of these individuals at some point decided to embark on their own and start a business took a huge risk. They've been benefactors of a very great growing tech sector and a lot of them have woken up 20 years later and they have 10 to 20 million revenue streams. But it gets to a point where you get so cautious about protecting that nest egg and that asset that you forget to take those risks like you did when you first started it. And I think you have to protect ... Perpetually think about not preserving the asset or growing and investing it at any size. I don't care if you're a billion dollar revenue stream or two, keep thinking about ways to challenge the business and propel it.

Paul Green: Yes. That's almost mindset related regardless the size of the business, which is just fascinating. So let's move on to Sourcepass. So what was the business that you left and what was the big idea that you had that made you want to create Sourcepass?

Chuck Canton: When I was at Vonage, which was a great company, there's a charter from the board to single early focus on cloud communications, specifically voice services. So that was our charter. Do it very well, be specialized, dominate that sector, and that built some great customer outcomes and we helped a lot of businesses grow. What I noticed, because I was very client facing there in my role, was when we go into a client they'd be super happy at the voice services. We're doing unified communications, doing their contact center, but always translate into, "Okay. Great. You're helping with voice. I need help with security or I need help with network. I need help with cloud migration." But because it wasn't our charter, we couldn't help them so they were forced to work with multiple managed service providers, software providers, carriers, et cetera, and the client experience became difficult because there's just a lot of finger pointing, there's a web of confusion, the economics weren't that great. And so although we started this business in December, 2020, the idea actually began in 2015 where I came up with the concept that, "I think we need to do a service provider that has a very broad portfolio. It's the best thing to give the customers a great experience. It has economic benefits to them. And, by the way, I think it's an underserved cohort where they still just don't seem super satisfied with the technology services that they're getting and that's distracting them." And so that's why I came with the concept. The timing wasn't perfect. It was right before the pandemic, but I just said, "You've got to take risks and left Compass to start Sourcepass.

Paul Green: Yeah, that makes sense. So in a second I'm going to ask you exactly what Sourcepass does and what the benefits are for MSPs. Before I do, when you first got started with Sourcepass, you've come out of this stream of high energy dog years companies, you've lived a thousand lifetimes through growing these, what were some of the most important things for you from day one that you made sure that Sourcepass had?

Chuck Canton: One, a very clear mission and vision, which I could talk about in a bit. Distilling that down to every individual, how to make sure that they can align with that mission and vision. Making sure everyone on our team embraces service based leadership and knows the leadership expectations we have of the business. We grew through M&A so the first year was building out the product strategy, raising the funds. We raised about 74 million in capital. But then also making sure that once we made that first acquisition we had a platform that we could sermonize and mobilize all of our employees around day one, which helped us tremendously. Just everyone pivoting from ... NST was our first acquisition and [inaudible 00:23:20] the platform for Sourcepass, we immediately were able to give that mission vision, those core values and that operating rhythm to work with and that was super helpful, one of the benefits to having that first year in 2021 to lay the framework for the business.

Paul Green: Okay. So final question then, Chuck, what exactly is Sourcepass? What do you do and what's the benefit for MSPs?

Chuck Canton: So we are an IT security and services provider. We have a charter that is somewhat similar to the 45,000 companies in the US doing it. What's a little different about our strategy and that separates us is we are trying to elevate and mobilize the industry. And so we don't believe in competition in this space. We call it co-opetition. We just want to elevate the experience that every MSP in this space can give to small businesses. And so the way we're trying to do that is, one, we mobilize and merge or partner with MSPs that have some type of product benefit to our clients. So as a [inaudible 00:24:26] broad portfolio in the space, we have one that's specializes in network, one that's specializes in cloud, one specializes in service and then there's sub-microverticals within it. Some do municipalities and law enforcement, some do education, some do financial services. And so we try to be broad with our capabilities but narrow with the focus with how we execute. And so, as a part of that, no IT service company is our competition because we want them to join us and see that with our capital position, our leadership expertise as operators and our technology, that I'll talk about a minute, that they can better serve their customers by joining us. The next thing that we're focused on is making that experience significantly better and empowering our employees to be more strategic advisors. So we spent a lot of money on back office systems that leverage AI, robotic process automation, digital insights so that when someone reaches out to us, we're not spending time trying to diagnose the issue and determine what it is. We can go right to troubleshooting. So it translates to faster resolution times for our clients, but a more satisfied employee because they feel so great that they go right to the strategic consultation. We try to eliminate the mundane. So everyone that's in our community, every MSP that merges with us, every employee we hire, they get fulfillment because they're not doing data entry, they're not doing basic tasks, they're doing super strategic work. The third layer, we're building out this digital layer for modern experience. And so it's called the elevate portal. It's interactive web portal mobile app that our clients can use to interact with us in a more modern omnichannel fashion. And it's designed to be multi-generational, kind of like Amazon with their interface and their portals. It's catered towards millennials, Gen Z and baby boomers where you can adopt the style of service that you want. If you prefer to just hop on a phone call, you can use the portal and get on us via voice and video. Prefer someone to be in person, you can select that. Someone will be dispatched to your site. If you like to self-serve, it has all the learning knowledge base in there to troubleshoot on your own, reset passwords, provision PCs. If you want to co-manage with us, you can see all your IT assets. You can see the uptime of every site. And so that makes it easier for our customers to have a 360 view into the health of their IT and security systems, but interacting with us, it's very omnichannel catered to that individual, which makes a better end user experience. And for our main counterparts or main important contacts, the office managers, the COOs, the directors of IT, the CIOs, we can make them look good.

Paul Green: Yeah, I love it. And do you know what? Let's get you back on the podcast in the years ahead so we can follow that journey and see as you're trying to, as you said, elevate everyone up to a whole new standard with everyone getting there together. Thank you, Chuck, for your time. Just finally remind us what your website address is?

Chuck Canton: Our website is www.sourcepass.com. You can see it here on my shirt. Feel free to take a look at the website. My email address is on there, my contact information. Please reach out any time. Love to hear from all the IT service providers out there to share our common struggles and successes and we'd love to join forces with a lot of you and collaborate how to move the industry forward. And, Paul, really appreciate the time today.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast. This week's recommended book.

Fiona Challis: Hi there. I'm Fiona Challis. I'm an MSP sales expert and my book recommendation, my favorite book of all time, is called The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. And it's all about how to take yourself to the next level, how to raise that last glass ceiling in your business and how to break through to the next level to be even more profitable and successful than what you are today.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

Brendan Kane: Hi, I'm Brendan Kane, the author of the books One Million Followers & Hook Point: How to Stand Out in a 3-Second World. On the next episode I'll be talking about what it takes to go viral on social media and how to maximize these platforms for your B2B marketing efforts.

Paul Green: You know the platform that you are listening to or watching this podcast on right now, go on, hit the subscribe button so you never miss an episode, because on top of the interview with Brendan next week, we're going to be talking about whether or not your techs are really as busy as they think they are. Let's find a way to measure that so you can measure exactly how much capacity you've actually got within your MSP. We're also going to be talking about the concept of BHAGs, big, hairy, audacious goals or moonshots. Is there a moonshot that you are pushing your business towards? We've got a ton more content for you on YouTube. Just go to youtube.com/mspmarketing and join me next Tuesday. Have a very profitable week in your MSP.

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level

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Episode 154 includes: * 00:00 How best to persuade your prospects in advance * 08:28 A 'Work From Home' setup that could be a great sales tool * 15:14 How to create a new revenue stream from compliance * 24:26 A great book recommendation about changing the way you work forever

Featured guest:

Thank you to Shay Cohen from Kamanja for joining Paul to discuss a potential new automated Pen Test revenue stream.

Shay's career began as a technical support engineer for Windows desktop and server systems, and then moved to become a junior Linux engineer. Kamanja have developed a solution that involves the most experienced compliance consultants and MSPs in the market. This has resulted in a product designed to help to SMBs. Connect with Shay on LinkedIn: https://il.linkedin.com/in/shay-cohen-1749055a Extra show notes: * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * In describing influential marketing, Paul mentioned the books Influence and Pre-Suasion by Robert Cialdini: * https://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Robert-Cialdini/dp/006124189X * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Influence-Audiobook/B00N349QTG * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pre-Suasion-Revolutionary-Way-Influence-Persuade/dp/1847941419 * Order your free copy of the MSP Marketing magazine: * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/magazine/ * Thank you to Mike Andrews from NovaBACKUP for recommending the book Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, plus the blog from OpenView Venture Partners: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/ReWork-Change-Way-Work-Forever/dp/0091929784 * https://openviewpartners.com/blog/ * https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeandrews * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 * https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast * https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa * https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast * https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 * https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ * https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ * https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: Hello and welcome to a new, hot, fresh, sizzling podcast. Here's what we got coming up for you this week.

Shay Cohen: How you can take the compliance headaches for MSPs and make a real revenue from it.

Paul Green: That's Shay Cohen, he is an expert in compliance. Yeah, I know, not the most interesting subject to put in a podcast. However, compliance could potentially be a brand new profit stream for your MSP. We'll explain more later on in the show. We're also looking at work-from-home setups and whether you can use a work-from-home setup to persuade an existing client to buy something new from you or even persuade a brand new client to pick you in the first place.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: I got a strange tale of two books, one, which is the best book I've ever read and another by the same author, yeah, not quite so good. Years ago I read, it was probably one of my first ever marketing psychology books. I've talked about it on this podcast numerous times, it's a book called Influence by Dr. Robert Cialdini, and you have to read this. It was written in 1984. Robert Cialdini, who is a marketing professor, excuse me actually, he's a psychology professor who focuses just on marketing, somewhere in New York I think. He essentially invented the whole field of marketing psychology. He coined the term, social proof. So, go and find that book and read it and absorb it. If you find it a tough read, because it is a little bit technical in places, listen to it on Audible. But there are so many insights that you'll get about how to influence people with your marketing. So, that came out, what? 30 odd, 40 years ago, and when I heard about five years ago that Cialdini had written a brand new book called Pre-Suasion, well, I grabbed myself a hardback copy. I got literally the first edition that came out.

Paul Green: I hungrily ripped it open from Amazon and I tweeted Robert Cialdini, who didn't reply and said, "I've got Pre-Suasion. It's amazing." And yeah, it's not such a great book, unfortunately. If I'm honest, Pre-Suasion is one idea wrapped up in a very big book, lots of padding. His original book, Influence is many, many, many great ideas, neatly packaged into a tiny and very well written book. I don't like to dismiss books. It's hard to write books, but Pre-Suasion by Robert Cialdini is not a book I recommend you read. In fact, what I'm going to do or attempt to do in the next 60 seconds is to tell you what the book is about and the implications on your MSP's marketing. The very concept of pre-suasion, which is if you like, pre-persuasion. Pre-suasion is where what goes before affects what comes after. Let me give you some examples which I've just made up on the spot, because normally when I talk about a book I reread the book before I come and mention it on the podcast.

Paul Green: But I cannot bring myself to reread this book, sorry Dr. Cialdini. So, I'm going to make up some examples off the top of my head. So, let's do some from outside of technology. Let's say for example you were going to look at houses, and in fact what I'm about to describe happened to me when I was looking for the very house that I'm living in now. The state agent I went to, said to him, "Look, I want to live in this area, this village. I'm looking for this kind of house. This is my budget from kind of minimum up to, if you get past this, I'm just not going to get a mortgage on it. Can you take me and show me some houses please?" He took me to three houses and he deliberately took me to two of the wrong houses before he brought me to this house, which was very much the right kind of house. I think he was doing that deliberately because I think he knew that what goes before affects what comes after. So, he took me to the first house, it was a little bit pokey, it's got an old Victorian house, there wasn't much parking. It was nice, don't get me wrong, it was nice and it was within budget, but it just didn't feel right and it didn't meet my criteria. So, then we drove to the second house and this was exhausted.

Paul Green: I mean this house was, it was big, it was huge, it was lovely, it just wasn't a great house. It wasn't the right house. And then he brought me to this house, and this house wasn't perfect but it ticked a lot of the boxes. In fact, it was near the top of our budget. It needed a lot of work doing to it, which is what I'm having actually done right now, but it was amazing and I literally fell in love with this house as I walked in. I was reflecting on this a few months later as all the paperwork was going through, where if he'd taken me to this house first then maybe I wouldn't have been so open to it, so receptive because he almost told me, "Well, I'm going to take you to two houses which I don't think are right for you. Then the final house I think is perfect." What goes before affects what comes after, so he pre-suaded me. He did that by deliberately showing me the wrong choice before he took me to the right choice. Lots of people do this in many, many different ways. How would you do this within an MSP? Well, there's lots of different things that you could do.

Paul Green: For example, you could pre-suade your prospects by sending them things before they ever meet with you. So, let's say you've got a prospect meeting with someone next week, it's the first time that you're going to meet with them. You could pre-suade them by posting shipping out to them some social proof, as Cialdini talked about in Influence. So, let's say you have a case study done, in fact let's say you've had an amazing case study done. It's one of your clients, they've had an amazing amount of success and you have wrapped that case study up into almost like a booklet. It's there as a printed form and you send that out to your prospect with some candy or with some chocolate or some merch of some kind, mugs, pens, doesn't really matter, whatever. You send it all in a box, we call this an impact box and you send it out to them and you say, "Hey, can't wait to meet you next Thursday. Please, before we sit down and discuss your business, please can you read this case study. Or even better still, here's a link to it on YouTube. Read this case study and go watch one of our clients talking about our business on YouTube."

Paul Green: This is pre-suasion because you will be the only MSP that does this and the chances of you winning the sale are dramatically higher than your competitors because they are reading, the prospect is reading and watching a happy client. Someone like them are having a great experience with your business. What great pre-suasion. It's almost setting up that yours is the sale to lose, if you understand what I mean by that. You've got to perform quite badly not to win that sale. That's a great example of pre-suasion. You could do exactly the same with your existing clients. If you're doing a strategic review with them, you're going to build them a technology roadmap, then you might do exactly the same thing. You might send them a technology roadmap of another client and say, look, we are going to sit down and we are going to work out your technology priorities for the next two, three to five years. And I'm going to ask you to commit to that roadmap because then I know the work I've got to do, you know what you've got to budget, and actually this is taking a very strategic overview of your business, which they will love.

Paul Green: You can pre-suade someone, you get them coming into that strategic review thinking immediately, here I am ready to commit to three to five years of technology spend with my MSP, with my IT company. This is amazing. This is exactly what we want. So, the book itself you can skip, it's a big long read with one idea in it, and that is the idea that what we do before affects what comes after. If you want to get more sales and you want better conversions and clients to say yes to you more often, then you've got to put more work in before you are actually going to see them. Case studies, prep like that, all of those kind of things. It really is a worthwhile use of your time.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: Now, here's another persuasive tool. This isn't quite pre-suasion, this is almost bribing your clients to do something. You see I've had this idea, I think it's a cracker. I'd be interested to see what you think about this. You can let me know by the way, any feedback on this podcast, just email hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com. It's me, you will actually reach the real me at the end and I will reply to every single email that I get, as long as you're not rude to me. So, this idea is to use technology to bribe either an existing client to commit to a new contract or to sign off a big project, or maybe to get a brand new client to choose you in the first place. Bribe probably isn't a good word, there are probably legal ramifications of the word bribe, he says, thinking of the UK's Anti-bribery Act.

Paul Green: So, let's say persuade, it's something you give, it's a freebie. You give someone a freebie, but the freebie you give them is unique, expensive, and beautiful. And that's what makes this ideally something that's going to make you stand out from all the other MSPs. Now, the idea behind this is that you build them a unique work-from-home setup, because we know right now two odd years, was is it two and a half years on from the start of the pandemic that everyone has some element of work-from-home right now. So, if you've got a decision maker, either an existing client or a brand new prospect and you're trying to persuade them to make a sensible choice and pick you, what you could throw into the mix is you say to them, hey, look, when you make this commitment we are going to come into your house and we're going to set you up with the ultimate work-from-home set up.

Paul Green: We're going to get a highly professional webcam, we're going to attach it to your desk so it's fixed and all the wires are hidden and it'll look beautiful. There'll be some LED lights on the side, we'll have a professional proper microphone for you. It'll all be set up and it'll be wonderful. It'll be on your desk. Hey, do you have an Alexa? You do? Okay, we'll bring some smart plugs and we'll set them all up as well so that when you say Alexa, you know can say, Alexa, switch on, switch off, whatever it is, and please don't let my own Alexa go off. Are you going to? Well, the blue ring is on. That's a scary thought. Sorry if I've just triggered your Alexa there, but you get the idea. So, you set them up with this amazing work-from-home setup. I mean you could go even further if you wanted to.

Paul Green: You could get them a stand up, sit down desk. You could get them one of those expensive ergonomic chairs. What was it? The Herman Miller ones. You could really go to town on that and you could actually put a dollar value on that of a couple of thousand dollars. Certainly a decent camera, lights, microphone, all the other bits and bobs that go with that. There's an expense for that, but this is free to them. So, you're setting this up in the boss's home, in the decision makers home as a thank you for them picking you for their business. Now, what's the cash cost to you? Well, it's going to be a little bit less than the retail value, but yes, there will be a cash cost and I would look at that as a marketing investment. Let's say it cost you a $1,00 plus the hell of sending a technician to someone's home.

Paul Green: I know we don't want to go near homes and I know as well, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, yeah, at some point that work-from-home setup is going to break and we are going to have to go and support that, or maybe even go into that home, and I know that's hell. But if that wins you a new client that's spending a couple of thousand dollars a month and they stay with you for 10 years, is visiting someone's house now and again to fix their broken webcam if you can't do it remotely, is that such a big deal? I didn't think it is. I think that's a great investment in marketing. That's what I would do if I ran an MSP. And the thing is, you can actually probably recoup that actual investment anyway, because you could say once you've set up the work-from-home setup, you could say to the decision maker, would you like us to replicate this in your office for you?

Paul Green: So, not your home office but your workplace office, literally exactly the same setup. So, you just plug your laptop in wherever you are and it works exactly the same. And of course many, not all, but many decision makers will say, yeah, I quite like that. You charge for that. That becomes a project. In fact, you could even take that a step further, if they have a management team you could say, would you like us to set up this professional video calling work-from-home setup for you and all of your team? So, the one that you get in your house is free Mr. or Mrs. decision maker, to do it in your workplace or to do it for your senior leadership team's homes there's going to be a cost to that. Even if you say to them, look, you just please cover the cost of the equipment and we'll install it at no cost for you.

Paul Green: Now, the reason I think this is such a good idea is because no one's doing this. If everyone was doing this then it would be routine, it would be boring and it'd be very samey and samey kills sales. But right now I don't know of any or many MSPs that are doing this, and that's the opportunity for you. It doesn't have to be a work-from-home setup, you just got to ask yourself, what could we give to our new clients or our existing clients as a thank you that's relevant to technology that genuinely will make their working life better? I can't think of anything other than a work-from-home setup. Maybe you can, and if you can, go on, do drop me that email because I would love to feature your idea in a future issue of this show. It's hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug, blatant plug.

Paul Green: I've got something brand new for you this week and it's a freebie for you. In fact, you are one of the first MSPs in the entire world to know about this because we have launched a magazine. It's a free magazine, it's called MSP Marketing Magazine. Does what it says on the Tim, and you can get a copy absolutely free. Now, this isn't a magazine that we're going to be doing on a regular basis, it's just like a one-off thing that we are giving away free and you can get it on our website. All you got to do is fill in your contact details, you go into our email database, we will send you a physical copy of this magazine for free. But it is good stuff. It's brand new content which I've written myself. There's case studies in there of other MSPs. You can get marketing ideas from them and we'll ship this out to you completely free of charge. All you need to do is go onto Paulgreensmspmarketing.com, in the navigation click on learning hub and you'll see my little face up at the top offering you a free copy of the MSP Marketing Magazine. Just go on to paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover: The big, big interview.

Shay Cohen: Hey, my name is Shay, I'm the CEO and the co-founder of Kamanja and I'm an expert in compliance market.

Paul Green: Thank you very much for joining us. I think you're joining us from Israel today, which I believe you're the first guest we've ever had on, unless I'm wrong I'm pretty sure in three years, nearly three years, you're the first guest we've had from Israel. So, we are going to talk today about compliance and I realize I'm risking thousands of MSPs hitting the stop button on their podcast. But actually we're going to talk about compliance made easy and actually turning it into a revenue stream for your MSP. Before we go on to talk about that, Shay, let's talk about compliance from ordinary business owner's point of view, because you have an accountancy degree, so you probably have a small insight into the world of accountancy. I'm sure you've looked at the law and there are many other regulated industries. For a lot of ordinary business owners and managers out there compliancy is a real headache, isn't it?

Shay Cohen: Yeah. You're right, 100%. Actually most of the companies when we're speaking with they don't want to hear about compliance and when they have a customer that ask them to do so, they are trying to bypass it in some other ways because there is a lot of things to do, a lot of data to collect, a lot of task that need to be implemented on many, many systems that they have. So, they try to do bypassing, try to find a way how to do things that will not let them doing compliance.

Paul Green: So, they're looking for shortcuts is essentially what you're saying?

Shay Cohen: Yeah.

Paul Green: Because I guess too if you're a lawyer or a CPA, a certified professional accountant or some of the kind of regulated industry that need for, no one wants compliance. No one wakes up in the morning being like, woo hoo, I get to do compliance and paperwork today. But in their worlds they need to be compliant in order to sit within the regulations which allow them to operate business freely. Now that desire for shortcuts on compliancy, that's not just sat with those end users, those end business owners and managers. In your experience do you see that MSPs are also looking for shortcuts when they have to get involved with compliance?

Shay Cohen: Actually when we spoke with some MSPs, what they do in some way they don't want to do the compliance and they refer it to someone that actually does it. Some consultant security or someone in that profession. In other way when it comes that they need to do it, it will be very expensive for the SMEs or to the end customers because a lot of data and a lot of things to be managed, collect evidence, configure environments, and do a lot of things in order to be compliant. So, when it comes to that the MSP if they're not referred it will be very, very hard for them to comply then if they do so. For the end client it will be very, very expensive and very, very exhausting to collect and do all the task that they required. So, some cases some clients need to be for example SOC 2 and they need to be also in ISO, ISO 27001. So, doing this both compliance and do [inaudible 00:18:27] and all of these task is quite hard for them. And for what we see there is not enough resources in the company to do all the things that are related there for compliance.

Paul Green: Yeah. No, I imagine. And do you know what? I never thought we'd be talking about ISO standards on this podcast. If I was to make a list of things we must never talk about, that's actually on that list. So, let's come talk about your platform. Obviously you and your colleagues have created something which actually allows the MSP to keep this service in-house. So, this service of helping their clients stay compliant, keep it in-house, but there's not a huge amount of work for the MSP to do, I mean that sounds like exactly what we're looking for. Talk us through how this platform was created in the first place.

Shay Cohen: Actually we have found first of all that MSPs, it's hard for them to learn new system and adopt new system and platform. When it comes to compliance it's harder, if you want to start to provide the Azure or AWS services you need to do certification that will take you a lot of time to learn and pass some exams, et cetera. So, what we tried to build here it's first of all answer the first problem of the MSPs, don't refer your customers to someone else, make money for it. So, what we did we build a platform that help MSP with wizard, step-by-step wizard, you don't need to learn the standard, do not need to read nothing, just open Kamanja platform, do step-by-step wizard. We giving you everything that you need for help your clients to be compliant. Just three days, two hours a day, you will implement your clients easily.

Shay Cohen: Now, the second thing it's during the compliance you need, the customer what you need to do is process a lot of system. Same goes with risk management, asset management, questionnaire systems. If they will not buy it, they will use Excels and try to speak with their vendors to answer the question, the questionnaire, a lot of mails and ping pongs. So, what we did in Kamanja, we put all of this solution, enterprise great solution into one platform and evidence collection between all of them. So, what it give to the client and to the MSPs, the MSPs have a multi-tenant SaaS solution. All the time we updated with all the frameworks that are relevant and have a fully cross mapping between all of them. Which means once you do SOC 2 we tell you what left you to do in ISO 27001, you have all the cross mapping. Everything that you need for compliance, you will not need to do something else, just follow step-by-step wizard, you don't need to learn, you don't need to be a certificate, nothing. Just use Kamanja, you have all the tools and your client will be compliance quickly.

Paul Green: So, let's talk about the difficult thing which is risk. If I think of, often when I'm doing these interviews I picture MSPs that I know well, particularly those who are quite cynical and I can imagine them folding their arms and saying, well it's all very well with Shay coming up with a solution like that. The person I'm picturing at the moment, I can imagine him saying risk, if I take on board helping my clients be compliant, I am therefore taking onboard some level of responsibility for that, as opposed to let's say setting up their 365, which the MSP will know they can do a 100% because that's what they do. Something like compliance which is a distress activity, it's okay, we could do it, we could use a platform like this, but what if we end up being responsible for something that's not done properly? So, how do you manage that level of risk, that risk of it not being done properly?

Shay Cohen: This is very good questions. Actually what we do in Kamanja we provide to the MSP automatic risk management. What it mean, once you enter the type of the asset that you want to check we providing you all the risk that are related, depends on the stand out this type of asset. For example if you're using of Office 365, we're telling you regarding to this compliance, this is the risk that need to be checking 1, 2, 3, 4. You need to do this mitigations in order to help your client to be compliant with it. And all of this is by the standard requested. What is the more good thing on Kamanja that we do? We provide to the MSPs and also to the client all the options to implement some task. For example, we are not telling you, okay, this is the task, we're telling you actually how to do it and we're giving you between 1 to 20 options how to implement every task by the standard and guide you how to do so.

Shay Cohen: So, this is actually help them to not doing mistake and taking the responsibilities. By the way, we generate automatically reports, so you don't need to waste time writing reports. You just press one click, you get a risk assessment report automatically. You can provide it to your client and tell them, okay, this is what I did, tell me if this is enough for you, this is by the standard. You get approval of the top management and all those things that they requested by the compliance. And by the end of the day there is an auditor that need to review this, so the auditor give you the last stamp that what you do, you do it well.

Paul Green: Okay, wonderful. Shay, thank you so much for appearing on the podcast today. We have an understanding now of how your platform works. Just tell us what's the best way to get in touch with you and have a look to see if it's the kind of tool that could create a new revenue stream?

Shay Cohen: Thank you. You can reach us through our LinkedIn. You can just press Kamanja, write Kamanja on the search box. You can use our website, Kamanja.io. There is a book a demo, and you can immediately reach my calendar and 30 minutes call and we will start to be friends.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.

Mike Andrews: Hi, this is Mike Andrews, CEO of NovaBACKUP. The book that I recommend is Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. Jason is the CEO of Basecamp and David is the inventor of Ruby on Rails. They just pretty much simplified entrepreneurship. One of the sayings in there that I like is, "When you stand for something, decisions are obvious." Bootstrapping, growing business, increasing productivity, reducing the over planning of things and getting exposure, that's kind of what it's about, kind of that whole simplifying business and growth. Also, a blog that I'd recommend would be from a company called OpenView Venture Partners. The founder, Scott Maxwell, he's got plenty of success in my industry, but they got a lot of insights into just the SaaS, cloud computing and storage industries to name a few. And they're kind of the experts in what we call product-led growth, which I believe is the future of most technology, and they arguably invented that term. So, they give you a lot of information in these weekly bites to be able to understand that market and grow with it.

Voiceover: Coming up, coming up next week.

Chuck Canton: Hello everyone, this is Chuck Canton, the CEO of Sourcepass. Super excited to join Paul's podcast to share our journey that we're embarking on to build a billion dollar MSP and some of the ingredients we're infusing into that mission to accomplish.

Paul Green: Wherever you listen to this podcast, do subscribe so you never miss an episode, because on top of that interview with Chuck next week we'll be talking about your MSP funding your future lifestyle. In fact, the more it funds your future lifestyle, the more enjoyable your business becomes now. I'll explain that one fully next week. We'll also talk about when clients act like idiots and whether or not you should apply an idiot tax. We've got tons more content for you on YouTube, just go to youtube.com/mspmarketing and join me next Tuesday. Have a very profitable week in your MSP.

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Revised Edition

View Details

Episode 153 includes: * 00:00 The 2% mindset for successful people * 07:19 How to grab anyone's attention on LinkedIn * 14:43 A potential new automated Pen Test revenue stream * 26:37 A great book recommendation about realising any goal

Featured guest:

Thank you to Alton Johnson from Vonahi Security for joining Paul to discuss a potential new automated Pen Test revenue stream.

Prior to Vonahi Security, Alton has worked at several large and small cybersecurity consulting firms as a Principal Security Consultant. Throughout his professional career, he has performed hundreds of security assessments for organisations ranging from small businesses to Fortune 10. He also regularly attends information security conferences and have spoken at DerbyCon as well as local communities. Connect with Alton on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/altonjx Extra show notes: * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: * https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Thank you to Blaine Oelkers, the only Chief Results Officer®, for recommending the book Think And Grow Rich (the Study Guide edition), by Napoleon Hill: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Think-Grow-Rich-Study-Guide-ebook/dp/B07J3PM32G * https://www.linkedin.com/in/blaineoelkers * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 * https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast * https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa * https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast * https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 * https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ * https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ * https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. Podcast.

Paul Green: Hello and welcome back to the show. This is what we've got lined up for you this week.

Alton Johnson: I want to talk to you about how you can use VPN test to generate additional revenue for your customers by performing automated network penetration testing engagements.

Paul Green: That's Alton Johnson. He's an ethical hacker who's created a fully automated pen testing tool. It could go on to be a brand new revenue stream for your MSP. We're also going to be talking about messaging using LinkedIn. I believe this is underutilized by most MSPs. So today I've got some specific guidelines for you, including how to catch anyone's attention.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: I want to start this week by talking about success and successful people, and the mindset that those people have. Now, before we can start doing this, I think you and I need to have a clear definition of what I mean by success. I do not see success as having a 17 bedroom house and long gravel driveway and a James Bond Aston Martin parked on it. I don't see success as a private jet or constantly being on holiday or having your own yacht, or anything like that. I see success as a very clear and simple thing, something that's achievable by every single person. My definition of success is where you have more than enough cash and more than enough time to do exactly what you want to do with your life. That's it. It's an absolute simple measure of success, and you can now apply that to yourself and say, "Am I successful?

Paul Green: Have I got more than enough cash and more than enough time to do the things I want to do with my life?" I consider myself to be partially successful, well, on the way. I have more than enough cash, which is a lovely position to be in, and I've been in that position for a number of years. Time wise, perhaps a little bit squeezed, and that's more to do with my life. I'm a sole parent of an epic 12 year old. Yes, I'm talking about you. And that tends to squeeze your time more than work stuff does. But I would, I guess, on that measure, consider myself to be reasonably successful. There's very few things that I want to do that I can't do, and I'm certainly not held back by lack of cash. It's perhaps more lack of time. Just schools and things get in the way of going to the seashore for a month. Anyway, that's to come in the years ahead.

Paul Green: Now, the reason I have gone to such lengths of how defining what success is, is because I have deliberately and systematically over the last 10 to 15 years, surrounding myself with successful people. Virtually all of my close friends are always wildly successful in their respects. Now, some of them happen also to be rich, but I remember that's not my definition of success. All of them have more than enough cash, and most of them have more than enough time to do all of the things that they want to do with their lives. And as I say, I systematically gathered these people and have gone out of my way to be friends with them because I believe, as I think I've said on the podcast before, and this comes from, I think it's Jim Rohn who's an entrepreneur, and he said, "You are the sum total of the five people you spend the most time with."

Paul Green: So if I'm going to be talking to people on a regular basis or going to see them or hanging out with them, I want them to be the right kind of thinkers. I want them to be people who are going to add to my life and I can add to their life. I have no time for people who aren't contributing. I'm nearly 50. I haven't got time to hang out with negative people. I've only got time to hang out with successful people. And you can learn from those people and they can inspire you and they can challenge you to do more. Now, what I've noticed of successful people is that the vast majority of them have the 2% mindset. Now, this is something I read about on a website years ago, can't remember the website, but I remember the theory. The theory is that 98% of people are scared to change the status quo.

Paul Green: They're scared to do something different. They're stuck in their own comfort zone. And the only thing that will push them out of that comfort zone is external events happening to them. And certainly if I think of some of my other friends, some really good people that I've known for years and years, and talked to once or twice a year, most of them, they don't run their own business. They work for someone else. And most of them will just sit and stay happily in their comfortable jobs for a number of years until something comes along and disrupts them. They may be redundant or the business moves, or typically it's some kind of interruption to their comfort levels, perhaps they have a new boss or something like that, or they have another child and suddenly the house isn't big enough for three kids, whereas before it was for two.

Paul Green: But essentially they are reacting to external events moving them out of their comfort zone. That's the 98% of people, and the risk for you is that you get stuck in that 98%. The top two percent of people who think very differently and act very differently, these are the people who are most likely to be successful, to have more than enough cash and time. The top two percent of people, they go for their dreams, they embrace the unknown, They push themselves out of their comfort zone, and they do this systematically again and again and again. And actually these two percent thinkers, they actually experience more failure than everyone else because they're trying harder. They're pushing themselves, they're doing new things. If you didn't experience failure on a regular basis, it's because you're not trying enough new stuff. In fact, perhaps this is the big takeaway from this week's show for you, ask yourself, "When was the last time we failed at something?"

Paul Green: Failed at something new. I don't mean just things going wrong in the business, but when did you try something new and it didn't work? Now, if you consider that lots of new things shouldn't work until we try lots of different ways to get to where we want to go, and to try this different thing, then obviously you've got to limit the possibility of the cost of failure. I fail at stuff all the time, but I won't throw $10,000 at a new idea. I'll throw perhaps $1,000s or $500 at a new idea to test it, because I know it's likely to fail. But I also then know, tweak, tweak, tweak, tweak, tweak, tweak, tweak and keep going, and eventually you'll find some version of that, that will work in some way.

Paul Green: That's what the two percent mindset is. Give yourself an audit throughout the rest of this week and the weekend. You, your partner, your family, your business partner, if you've got one, are you in the 98% of people who are just comfortable waiting to be disrupted or are you in that two percent, that magical two percent of big thinkers who are willing to move themselves out of their comfort zone and get towards that wonderful success?

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: Tell me, have you built LinkedIn messaging into your MSP's marketing system? Because LinkedIn messaging is gorgeous. First of all, you benefit from 100% guaranteed deliverability. You can't say that about email, can you? You have no idea whether or not your email gets to someone. But you know when you send a message within LinkedIn, it's an internal message. It's an internal system so you know that your message is delivered. You can't guarantee they'll read it, of course, because some people don't check their LinkedIn messages often, but hey ho, at least we know has actually got into their inbox. The next thing that makes LinkedIn messaging beautiful, is the fact you've got people who kind of know each other, messaging each other, even though they don't actually know each other. And what I mean by that is you connect to people on LinkedIn and you're now connected, you're friends. You're not really friends on LinkedIn, are you? You're just connections. But once you're connected with someone and you send them a message, they obviously they're more likely to open or read your message, which is just what makes it beautiful.

Paul Green: I think the other beautiful thing about LinkedIn messaging is that LinkedIn wants it to work. You'll notice if you go in... And by that I mean algorithmically and design-wise, it's constantly interrupting your LinkedIn experience to tell you you've got a message. Drives me crazy when I go into LinkedIn. I check my LinkedIn once every day, sometimes twice a day, and it drives me crazy to go in and look at my LinkedIn screen. And then you've got all those new messages that stack up at the bottom. So I don't know what it's like in the mobile view cause I very rarely do it on mobile, but certainly on desktop it's just they're interrupting.

Paul Green: I don't know if it's deliberate UX usability design or just poor UX, but it interrupts my use of LinkedIn, which is fine, I can live with that. It shows that LinkedIn is keen for you to use messaging a lot. So everything is in your favor with LinkedIn. I'll tell you what else is in your favor is, you'd be surprised how few messages are sent. So I'm connected to a roundabout, I think it's about 7,000, might be a little more MSPs, mostly MSPs and some vendors as well. And I get two or three messages a day. And by that I mean messages where I'm not already in a conversation thread. Someone new who's connected to me has sent me a message. I don't get that many emails, which are the sponsored messaging. I wouldn't bother with those at all. But even with seven odd thousand connections, I'm not being bombarded with new messages every day. I'm getting a very small amount of new messages.

Paul Green: That's the opportunity for you, because if I'm not being bombarded, then your prospects aren't being bombarded either. Send LinkedIn messages, don't try and sell to them on LinkedIn. There's nowhere in an MSP's marketing channels where you should be out and out selling to them. You've got to educate them, you've got to entertain them, which is edutainment. Now, the beautiful thing about LinkedIn messaging is you know exactly who you're sending the message to, and because of that, you can make sure that that message is highly relevant. In fact, all good marketing works primarily because it is highly relevant to the person who is seeing that marketing.

Paul Green: So if for example, you were messaging a lawyer and you wanted to draw their attention to, I don't know, let's say you worked with other lawyers and you knew there was a tweak or setting in some lawyer software, which you wanted to educate them about. You wanted to show off your expertise by telling them that you'd found this and here's how to do the settings and here's how to change it. If you know they're a lawyer, and you know that their primary interest in technology is bound to be, "How can technology help me sue people or ambulance chase faster?" Then you put that into your message right down to at the start of, "Hi Steven, tell me, do you use..." insert software name question mark. "Because if you do, there's a useful setting we've discovered for our lawyer clients, which you might find useful."

Paul Green: Now, even if they don't use that particular software, they will still read that message. Will be more likely to read that message because it seems relevant to them. In the same way that if someone sent you a message, let's say you used Autotask and someone sent you a message about Halo and HaloPSA and how to change your setting on that, you wouldn't read it all in great detail, but it would register for you that here is an expert in PSAs. So, it doesn't matter that you don't have to hit exactly the software that they're using, but just taking stuff from their world.

Paul Green: I think case management software is what lawyers use. So, if you wanted loads more lawyers or you had some lawyers, you just find out the names of all the case management software that's popular and you build that into some kind of blog article and then you send that out to the lawyers via LinkedIn messaging, highly relevant. They're highly likely to open it and maybe to read it, and maybe some of them will even go onto your website and have a look. And isn't that the goal? The goal here is engagement. Some of them will also hit reply to you and just ask you a question or just engage with you in some way. Remember, the whole point of all the things that we're trying to do in our marketing system is about finding groups of people, audiences to listen to you. And then we're trying to build a relationship with those people. That relationship is done through communication, is done through content marketing, and through engagement. And if you're not already using it, I highly recommend that you pick up LinkedIn messaging as one of your distribution channels.

Alton Johnson: Paul's Blatant plug. Blatant Plug.

Paul Green: If you're here because you are truly serious about growing your MSP by improving its marketing, then come and join me and 1,700 other MSPs to talk about exactly how you do this. We have a great free resource, it's a Facebook group. It's the MSP marketing Facebook group, and I run this. I'm in there every single day answering your questions and inspiring you with more great content like we have here on the podcast. Just tracking through some of the recent posts. They've got a question here for me, "How do you track how much technician capacity you have available to sell?" Steven says, "That's an interesting question. Maybe it's all down to time for us. Each engineer has a 40 hour work week. We expect 35 of those to be billable in one shape or another." That's a great reply there. Another question here. Oh, this is about a story that was in the news a few months ago about a government minister in Japan, declaring war on floppy discs.

Paul Green: I didn't know floppy discs still existed. Here's another one for me, "As the MSP owner, your most precious commodity is your personal time, it must be protected above all else, discuss." There's tons of inspirational posts in there and practical help as well. If you are an MSP, you are welcome to join. I'm sorry, vendors, that's the one thing that we ask you not to join because it is a vendor-free zone. So go into your Facebook app on your phone, type in MSP marketing at the top, go to groups and you'll see my little face. Stab your finger right onto the top of my face and that will get you into the group. A few quick qualifying questions and I look forward to seeing you in the MSP marketing Facebook group.

Voiceover: The big interview.

Alton Johnson: Hey, my name is Alton Johnson and I'm the founder and principal security consultant here at Vonahi Security. And we have an automated network penetration testing platform that fully automates network penetration test engagements. So, basically replacing what I used to do full time as a pen tester for the last 10 years.

Paul Green: And we're going to talk about pen testing and how to actually turn it into a profit center today. Before we get started though, you and I have something in common, Alton. We've actually only met today for the first time, but back in July this year you won the Channel Program Pitch with Matt Solomon and with Kevin, and I then won the August one. And I'll let you into a little secret, because the way... If you haven't heard about the Channel Program Pitch is a load of vendors come on and they pitch their product and then the MSPs who are there, and we're talking several hundred, they then get to vote for who's the best pitch. I'll let you into a secret, Alton, as part of my prep for my pitch, my winning pitch, I watched your winning pitch. So thank you. Thank you very much.

Paul Green: I actually watched yours three times over and broke down what you've done and your secret, which I'll reveal now for all the other vendors who are doing it. Your secret, which is what I stole, is you talked about MSPs, you didn't talk about what you do. You talked about them, which is a pretty smart move. So, let's talk about pen testing. Now, as you know, I'm not a technical person. I've never owned an MSP. And just hearing a phrase like pen testing just makes my eye twitch. It makes me feel funny cause it feels too technical. But I am conscious that from all the conversations I've had with hundreds and hundreds of MSPs, everyone's aware of it, but very few people are actually doing it. Why is that?

Alton Johnson: Yeah, so I think there's two things, right? There's a lack of understanding of the value of penetration testing, and I think for the MSPs that do understand what a pen test is, there's just a lot of challenges. So for example, they kind of touched on the first point, a penetration test is basically going in... Not just finding the vulnerability, but actually exploiting the vulnerability to show the impact. Because a lot of MSPs are doing vulnerability assessments, so they're aware of the vulnerabilities that exist, but they're not aware of how those vulnerabilities will actually impact the business if they were to get compromised.

Alton Johnson: So that's where a pen test comes in. The pen test goes, "All right, yeah, you have a lot of vulnerabilities, but let me show you exactly what this means if an attacker was able to compromise this." So the pen test is focused mostly on the impact. Here's confidential data because of this vulnerability. Here's a low vulnerability, that's your vulnerability scanner told you wasn't a big problem, but here's the proof that it is a big problem because here's your social security numbers that are in your database. So it truly hits home.

Paul Green: Which of course has more impacts, doesn't it? Because if you can show someone data that they think no one else can access, that's going to utterly... Well, I was going to say terrify them. It's a level more than terrify, I'd imagine.

Alton Johnson: Exactly. So it really hits home a lot more. There's a lot of companies that have been doing vulnerability assessments for years and they get their first pen test, and they're just like, "Wow, I didn't even realize it was this bad," because there's so much focus on the impact. But then the other thing too is the cost. So traditional cybersecurity companies, they charge a ton of money for pen test engagements. I mean, it's so expensive that SMBs typically can't afford to go spend 10 grand for a pen test. It's just not a thing. So there's the MSPs that do understand that their customers need pen test engagements, but they just can't satisfy that need because it's too expensive. It takes a really long time to get it going.

Alton Johnson: For example, if they can afford it, when now there's a four or five week process of just scheduling and scoping and logistics. And then once the project actually gets started, there's another month or two. So it's a long, tedious, expensive process that it's just a huge headache at the end of the day. But yeah, I think those are really the two biggest reasons behind it.

Paul Green: So, tell us about your career as a manual pen tester. How did you get into this in the first place?

Alton Johnson: Yeah, so I've actually been hacking since I was a kid. I was just a bored kid, didn't really care for school too much. I was just wanted to go back home and get on the computer. Somebody hacked me, showed me how they did it and I became very curious about getting access to computers. And so I got my first cybersecurity job when I was around 19 or so. And I've been doing pen testing for a while. I really got started just doing IT stuff, like securing and managing a network, deploying hardware, things like that. Then we had a cybersecurity company come in to do a security assessment for us. And I was just mind blown. I was like, "You can actually get paid to hack? This is a real legit profession? I want to do this." So that's kind of how I got started into the industry. I got my first opportunity and I just took it and just ran with it.

Paul Green: And what's the best reaction you've ever had from someone when you have got through their defenses and you've physically shown them, "Here's some data that I acquired from your business?"

Alton Johnson: I think one of my favorite things that I'll never forget is we did a penetration physical assessment for a gas company. And basically our goal was to get in and get as much assets as possible, and we did before we even... because we went on site and we basically walked into the headquarters, got beyond the physical security controls, got access to the network, went back to the hotel, and compromised the entire domain from the hotel. And so when we finally went back on site to meet the client, he was basically, "Hey, my name's Alton," and I had a coworker. And we were like, "We have access to everything." And he was just mind blown at all of the different security layers that we went past. So, that to me was always one of my favorites.

Paul Green: Yeah, I bet you've heard... There's a book I've read, or actually I listened to it, couple years ago now and I can't quite remember what it's called, might be Ghost in the Wire. This guy called Kevin Mitnick, I think. And at one point he was the FBI's most wanted hacker. And you talk in there about how you just went in somewhere. Often his hacks were as simple as just social engineering his way into a building or onto a phone call, or something like that. And obviously there's some technical expertise. Have you read that before?

Alton Johnson: Yeah, I've read two of them by Kevin Mitnick, and I've actually met him at Defcon once before and it was pretty cool. So yeah, I definitely know a lot about him.

Paul Green: Yeah, and it's an interesting book, even if you're not in technology. As a non-tech person myself, I found it fascinating and horrifying at the same time. So Alton, you've developed an automated platform. So as we said right at start, pen testing is perceived as difficult. Many MSPs don't really know how to implement it properly. What made you want to create this automated platform?

Alton Johnson: Yeah, so it was pretty interesting. I proposed the idea of automating what I was doing as a pen tester at previous companies, but at bigger companies it's kind of hard to move thanks quickly. You have to do a lot of meeting and talking, and discussing and it just never gets done. So for me, when I started started Vonahi Security, my goal was to basically make myself as a pen tester much more efficient. In fact, when I started creating a lot of the code for vPenTest, it was really to make myself a better pen tester. I just hated reporting. Every pen tester hates reporting. It's just a lot. We all hate it. So I wanted to create something that would make life easier for me as a pen tester. And we finally had our first demo. We got our first demo and it came from place we didn't even expect.

Alton Johnson: And that's when we started talking to MSPs like, wow, there's MSPs that actually want this type of solution. Here I am making a tool for myself to make myself a better pen tester, but all we have to do is put our front end interface to it and to give access to other people to use the same thing. And so that's kind of how it really took off. I really wanted to just make pen testing just better, easier, quicker, more efficient, because no pen tester is perfect, but we all want to do things better. And so for me, I just really wanted to take that initiative and get it going.

Paul Green: Now, we're not going to go into the technicalities of how your pen test works or how an MSP would use it, because that's not what this podcast is. But tell me how you would recommend an MSP uses pen testing as a revenue generator, as a profit center.

Alton Johnson: Yeah, so absolutely. So one of the biggest things a lot of MSPs ask is we have a potential... We have a prospect and we want to know how do we fit vPenTest into the picture? And one of the good things about our licensing model is it's super flexible. So they can sign up and they could run assessments on customers, on any company they want to, obviously with contracts and everything like that. But one of the things that really get customers in the door for our MSP's is the ability to perform a free vulnerability assessment for their customer. And typically the way that goes is they perform the vulnerability assessment, they show their customer, "Hey, here are the vulnerabilities that we found. We could actually potentially find more if we did a pen test." But the vulnerability assessment is kind of a way in. It's a way to say, "Hey, here's what we know from the external side and here are the possible things that could come out of this."

Alton Johnson: So, that's the first one. It's really just a pre-sales tool. But then the other part is after the pen test is complete, we actually don't perform the remediation. We instruct the MSPs on how to do it, what setting to click and stuff like that. But for an MSP, this could provide some other opportunities because for example, our pen test may have identified that they didn't detect something happening or there's a huge issue that's pretty common across the network. So an MSP can take that opportunity to fix the issue. Sometimes they may run across opportunities to plug in other solutions to further increase the environment. So there's a lot of opportunities on the remediation side for an MSP to get in and find ways to better secure their network as well.

Paul Green: Let's say for a mature MSP that's got an impressive client base, at what point would you recommend they introduce the concept of pen testing? Would it be when they're doing strategic reviews or quarterly business reviews with clients? Would it be introduced as a new tool or is it something that's perhaps they should use to test a new security installation even in the knowledge that obviously you potentially are going to find some weaknesses?

Alton Johnson: Yeah, absolutely. So traditionally penetration testing is something that the industry recommends to do once a year. That's a kind of standard, right once a year. But with the ability to perform automated penetration testing, we typically recommend a lot more frequent, so at least quarterly. We have some partners that are doing it monthly as well. But I would say doing it frequently at least quarterly is probably the best bet. Even monthly, just depending on the environment. But there are other cases as well to where, for example, to your point, if there's a new environment that they're trying to migrate with, they may want to make sure that the other environment is secure. So they may want to do a pen test on that network before they go with their process. And then of course too on the acquisition side, is kind of very similar. You just want to make sure that that other company is secure before you start to go forward and migrate data and things like that.

Paul Green: Yeah. This is Alton's sleep at night pill. That's what this is certainly for the MSPs anyway. You can steal that as a strap line if you want to. That one's on me. And give us a broad overview then of what you do, what you sell, and what's the best way to get in touch with you.

Alton Johnson: Yeah, so Vonahi Security, we do specialize in the automated pen testing platform, which is vPenTest. We do offer other cybersecurity services to social engineering, but we heavily focus on the automated pen test. We do offer a free proof of concept as well. So we know we understand automated pen testing, "Is it really true," things like that. And, "Let me just see how it works." So they could definitely reach out to us as well and get set up with a free trial. They could run a trial for up to 25 IP addresses, any of their customers and experience what the whole process is like. And then they can also obviously book a demo at our website as well to get in touch with somebody and learn more information about it. But yeah, definitely take advantage of the free proof of concept. It's an eye opener.

Paul Green: Cool. And go on, give us the website address.

Alton Johnson: Yeah, it's www.vonahi, so that's V-O-N-A-H-I.io.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast. This week's recommended book.

Blaine Oelkers: Blaine Oelkers here, your Chief Results Officer. And my book recommendation would be Think and Grow Rich, the book study edition. Now this book has created more millionaires than any other book. But in the book study edition, it kind of takes you through week by week, by week and you realize what you think about, you bring about. And so I think that's going to help you to bring about whatever you are thinking about

Voiceover: Coming up. Coming up next week.

Speaker 5: Hello, my name is Shyanne, the CEO of [inaudible 00:27:12] and I will be in the next week to show you how you can take the compliance edit for MSPs and make a real revenue from it. See you.

Paul Green: Do subscribe wherever you listen to this podcast so you never miss an episode, because also on the show next week we'll discuss a clever marketing psychology idea called Pre-Suasion. It's another way to influence prospects to choose you. We'll also be talking about work from home setups and how you can actually leverage them into being a sales tool, not just to get on new clients, but also to persuade your existing clients to upgrade. All of that will be on next week's show. Now, in the meantime, if you want more marketing ideas for your MSP, we've got tons of content on YouTube. Just go to youtube.com/mspmarketing. Join me on this podcast next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your business

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's, MSP Marketing podcast.

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Episode 152 includes: * 00:00 Why stack fiddling could be wasting your MSP time and money * 07:04 How to cement your new client relationships during the 'honeymoon' period * 15:12 How MSPs can stop 'revenue leakage' and reduce risk * 32:14 A great book recommendation about increasing your value and growing your business

Featured guests:

Thank you to Anne Hall from ITagree for joining Paul to discuss how MSPs can stop 'revenue leakage' and reduce risk.

ITagree was founded by Anne Hall who has 25 years of experience as a specialist IT lawyer in New Zealand. She is a thought leader in the MSP and Technology agreements space. Connect with Anne on LinkedIn: https://nz.linkedin.com/in/annehall-itagree Extra show notes: * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Thank you to Nate Freedman from Tech Pro Marketing for recommending the book $100M Offers by Alex Hormozi: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/100M-Offers-People-Stupid-Saying/dp/1737475731 * https://www.linkedin.com/in/natefreedman * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 * https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast * https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa * https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast * https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 * https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ * https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ * https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Fresh, every Tuesday, for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: Hello, and welcome back. And we have got another cracker for you this week. Here's what we'll be talking about.

Anne Hall: Revenue leakage. Did you know that your MSP is likely losing money that could be hitting your bottom line?

Paul Green: That's Anne Hall. She's on a mission to prevent revenue leakage for MSPs. What's revenue leakage? It's where you lose money because of the arrangements and the contracts that you've got with your clients. She's going to be here towards the end of the show, to explain exactly what it is, tell you how to check if your MSP is affected, and of course, what you can do about it. We're also going to talk about onboarding and the critical first 90 days when a client joins your MSP, what extra can you do to make it the truly most special 90 days that they've ever had with any provider ever?

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: Let's talk about a problem that far too many MSPs have. It's called stack fiddling, AKA shiny new thing syndrome. It's where you get your technology stack all sorted out. You got your PSA, your RMM, your marketing automation, all your other little platforms and bits and bobs that you need, and your stack is done. And then you start talking to another MSP, doesn't matter how or where, but they mention to you that they used to use your RMM and then they moved over to this new RMM, or this newly improved one. And even though you were perfectly happy with your stack 12 seconds ago, suddenly this feeling comes into the back of your brain or really, it enters your heart. And you start to think to yourself, "Maybe, just maybe, we should look at that other RMM. Maybe that's not the perfect one for us."

Paul Green: It's an awful thing. And this is where you start to go down that process, because a few weeks later you sign yourself up for a trial. You're kind of impressed with it, and before you realize it, you've just committed yourself to transitioning from your old RMM to your new RMM. Stack fiddling. You've just committed yourself to a 20 to 30 hour project, moving from one supplier to another. And that has a major impact on the business.

Paul Green: Now I know, I know that there's always new things out there. I've never known a sector, an industry that has so many new, shiny, cool things coming out so often. There's literally something out every single day, which is cool, but also leads to this problem of stack fiddling. Because here's the thing, ordinary business owners and managers do not pick you based on your stack. They didn't even know what a stack is. They haven't heard of all of these vendors. They're not going to be there, rubbing their chin, saying to you, "Oh, tell me which RMM you use." Because they don't know what that is. And you know what? They don't care.

Paul Green: In fact, they are buying you and your services and the outcomes that you deliver, so that they don't have to think about these things, because they don't care. It's too complicated. It's too difficult for them. So, fiddling with your stack, I know it brings benefits when you move from platform A to platform B, but often those benefits are, if not, let's say counter-weighed by the difficulty and the opportunity cost of you doing that switch in the first place.

Paul Green: There are times when you have to move up to a completely different technology. If you're on a very cheap, low-end platform, and that doesn't allow you to, for example, automate billing, then yes, obviously switching to a more complex platform, where you can automate billing, that's a smart and sensible thing to do. But if you're just switching because the grass might look greener on the other side, that's stack fiddling.

Paul Green: I would rather you took those 20 to 30 hours of time that you're investing into your stack fiddling, and put it instead into marketing, marketing projects. There are a never ending series of things that you could do to improve your marketing, to build more audiences of people to listen to you, to build a relationship with those audiences. And then of course, to commercialize that relationship. And it's only by doing marketing projects, that you actually start to move your marketing forward and start to have more people to speak to. That's when you get luckier with your marketing. That's when your timing seems to be right more often, because you're creating more conversations.

Paul Green: Now, what I'm going to suggest to you in terms of looking at your stack, is that you actually formalize, instead of stack fiddling and jumping from thing to thing to thing, you actually formalize looking at shiny new things. So, you might choose to do this once a year. You might sit down with your technicians or your management team, whatever's relevant, and you might sit down and say, "Right, let's review every single tool that's in our stack. Let's ask ourselves some key questions. Is this tool still delivering what we need it to? Is this tool holding us back in any way? Have we looked at what is out there in the marketplace, to check that we have the right tool for us right now?" There is no such thing as the right tool for everyone. There's just the right tool for your MSP, right now.

Paul Green: And then what you may also do is you may pull together a list throughout the year, of shiny new things that are out there. New technologies, new ideas, new ways of doing things. And you might once a year, twice a year, review this list, maybe do some trials, do some demos, and just ask yourself, "What we've got right now, are we going to see a dramatic," and I mean dramatic, "a dramatic leap forward, if we switch from platform A to platform B?" AKA, is this worth the 20 to 30 hours that it's going to take to implement this? Nevermind the cash investment as well.

Paul Green: That is not stack fiddling. That is a strategic approach to your stack. And I applaud you if you go down that route, because that's the smart thing to do. What that then does is that leaves a void, a void of time, time that you've got where you're not running around, transitioning from one system to another or building something in your technology. A void of your own management time. That's when you can start to invest that time into those marketing projects, which ultimately are going to get you to your goals. They're going to get you to your business growth goals, your financial goals. And when you hit your financial goals, that's when you tend to be closer to the kind of lifestyle that you want to live.

Paul Green: So, no more stack fiddling. Marketing fiddling is absolutely fine, so long as it's big, important marketing projects. But go and schedule something for once a year, make it a formal thing, make strategic decisions, and your MSP will be so much stronger because of it.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: It's pretty universally accepted in our world that MSPs keep their clients for years and years and years. And there are a number of reasons why that happens. One of them, if I was being cynical, one of them is inertia loyalty. Inertia loyalty is where it feels easier to stay with something than it is to move to something new. Ironically, the opposite of the stack fiddling that we were just talking about.

Paul Green: Now, inertia loyalty is kind of a double-edged sword for you, because yes it does keep some of your clients with you for years. Don't get me wrong, most of your clients stick with you because they love you, they love the service and they love what you do. But you will have a proportion of clients who stick with you through inertia loyalty. So, it's keeping people, it's retaining them. That's good, right? But it's also making it harder for you to win new clients because inertia loyalty is keeping people with other MSPs.

Paul Green: Every MSP I've ever spoken to has met a prospect who has been meaning to leave their incumbent provider for two to three years. It's just, they haven't got round to it, because the perceived pain of switching from their incumbent to someone new, is high, because they don't understand technology. So, inertial loyalty is a big thing. As I say, looking after people really well is another thing.

Paul Green: I think the third factor that affects how long someone stays with you is actually what happens to them during the honeymoon period. So, the first 90 days that someone's with your MSP, this is the honeymoon period. We've all been married once or twice, at least, maybe a third in the future, maybe. Anyway, that's a private thing, and we all know the honeymoon period. It's that moment, you have the wedding, you go off to Hawaii and you have a great time. And regardless of how the relationship will one day end with you spitting venom at each other, in that moment, in that honeymoon period, you think you've made the best decision ever. Am I talking about wives now or clients? I'm a bit confused now. But you get the idea.

Paul Green: It's exactly the same when a client moves over to you. They sign your contract. They decide that they want to move over to you, and they want it to work really badly, because no one wants to make the wrong decision. No one at all. Do you? I don't. And your clients certainly don't either. They want it to work, you want it to work, because you want their monthly recurring revenue and you want the pride of doing a good job and you want to add to your client base. Of course, you do. Everyone wants it to work.

Paul Green: But what happens in that first 90 days does dictate pretty much how long they will stay with you. If the first 90 days is an awful experience, it goes completely against their expectations, they will see out their contract, they may even sign another contract because of inertia loyalty, but you will not keep them longer than that. You really do win them forever or pretty much set them up for a future loss, in that first 90 days.

Paul Green: Now, I know that onboarding can be a bit haphazard. And this is my challenge to you today, how can you put in place a system so that your onboarding is not haphazard? So, that actually, it is systemized. There are a series of things that happen in sequence, in the first 90 days. Now, I'm not really talking here about the technical things. I know you have to find out all the devices they're using and what their setup is, and gather as much as you can and pop it into your information system, and all of that kind of stuff. I know you need all of that, but all of that is background stuff, in that it doesn't directly affect the people.

Paul Green: You see, the onboarding that I'm talking about, the honeymoon 90 day onboarding, that's really about the people. It's about making them feel special. I'm going to give you a couple of very simple examples. For example, what if you had a conversation with every single person who worked for your new client? Be that over Zoom, over phone, or maybe even face-to-face, maybe you choose to descend on the office for a couple of days to clear things up.

Paul Green: What if you had a one-to-one conversation, you said, "What technical issues have been bothering you for the last couple of months, that you haven't been able to get anything fixed? What's bothering you right now? Let's see if we can draw a line and give you a clean slate going forward." Because of course, you and I know that staff do accumulate a series of tiny technology niggles, things that are annoying them. And they tend to stack them up in their heads, in their hearts, the things they whinge about on a daily basis with their colleagues. You have an opportunity right in that first 90 days, boom, come on in, proactive action, bosh, you take out all of those niggles. You take all the things that are annoying them, and you take them away.

Paul Green: And what would be really cool is if you then got the emotional, what's the word I'm looking for? The emotional gratitude of that. For example, if you were doing a site visit, you would put support stickers everywhere. You would put it on all their devices. You would make sure they've got your number. Perhaps even bring some gifts in for them. What if there was some candy or some chocolates or cakes? What if actually you'd handmade some cakes? That could go wrong. It's like the concept of homemade, people think that homemade is a good thing. I always say, "It depends whose home it's been made in." But you get the idea.

Paul Green: What if someone on your team or even you paid a nice lady somewhere, or a nice guy somewhere, to bake you 48 cupcakes, 48 little cakes, for you to take in when you're doing a site visit, and you pretend that you guys have cooked them yourself? Even something like that, that shows that you're willing to go the extra mile. You turn up to someone's office, you fix the faults that have been bothering them for months and you give them a homemade cupcake, and slap your number and your support information everywhere. Guess what? You've just done a cracking job there. And that's only one thing. And that one thing can easily be systemized. It's all just part of the onboarding.

Paul Green: We know that, let's say within the first five days of taking over the contract, we need a scheduled day. We go en masse. We descend on this new client. They're not going to see us very often, but we're going to go in, we're going to get things fixed. Right down to, what about even cleaning the computers? I mean, physically cleaning them. I realize here, I'm getting very close to things you don't want to do. That's like me saying, "Why don't you give the printer a service while you're there?" I know you don't like this stuff, but do you know what? It makes people feel special.

Paul Green: My car was in the garage today, in the service. I have a Tesla, and they couldn't actually fix the fault, ironically, couldn't fix the vault that it's there. They need to order a new seat and replace the seat. But while it was there, they did a complimentary tire check, they topped my pressure up. They did the washer fluid, the squirty stuff that goes on the windshield, and they gave it a wash. And all of that, it obviously didn't cost me anything. The car was cleaned inside and out. It made me feel great. I mean, it hasn't cost me anything, but I wasn't expecting it either. And that's the key thing with this. What can you do that is unexpected? But don't make it randomly unexpected, systemize it. That first 90 days, it's so critical, how can you make your new clients feel so, so special?

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green: If you enjoy listening to this podcast every week, then we have another treat for you on YouTube. You see, the last few months we've really been upping our game on YouTube. I've been to proper film studios and everything, to sit down and record short nuggets.

Paul Green: If you've got two or three minutes to spare, you can nip onto youtube.com/mspmarketing, and there's a marketing nugget from me to help you grow your business. In fact, let me show you a quick example. What if you put your face on your sales proposal? What if you put your face all over your website? What if your face was on your business card? So, if you're looking for a ton of inspiration to grow your MSP, go and have a look now, youtube.com/mspmarketing.

Voiceover: The Big interview.

Anne Hall: Hi, I'm Anne Hall, the founder of ITagree, the agreement lifeguard, and as the agreement lifeguard, we're really helping MSPs to manage business risk, to reduce revenue leakage, and also, help them with upsell opportunities.

Paul Green: And agreements are something we haven't really talked about on this show, Anne, and thank you very much for joining us all the way from New Zealand as well. You and I really had to do some extreme scheduling at the either ends of our day, to do this interview. When most MSPs get going, it's simply a case of, "Right. Where can I get an agreement from? How can I do that easily?" And what you recommend is actually, you get the right agreements in place from day one. Talk to us about revenue leakage and what you mean by that concept.

Anne Hall: Sure. Yeah. Well, for a lot of MSPs, it's plain to see that they're providing amazing services. What they're doing is incredible. A lot of complexity, a lot of knowledge and experience going into the services that they provide. And indeed, so many MSPs are passionate about the services that they provide. And while on the surface things look great, underneath, what we find, is that so many MSPs are concerned about business risk and they're concerned about revenue leakage.

Anne Hall: And I really hate to see that, because I hate to see MSPs burdened with unnecessary risk. And the way that really shows out often, is in revenue leakage. So, a lot of partners when they first come and talk with us, they think, "Oh, I need an agreement to manage my risk." And what they're really thinking about is, "In case I'm sued." But in actual fact, it's the things that happen day to day, week to week, month to month, that eat away at their profitability, at their team's productivity, and indeed, their enjoyment of their business. So, I love to get in there and help to identify those areas where there can be revenue leakage, and a lot of MSPs will, once they start to become aware of it, they actually put it at it often 5% or more of their revenue. So, it's a real issue for them.

Paul Green: Okay. So, let's define down exactly what we mean by revenue leakage and how this relates to agreements. So, are we talking about things like, for example, I know with NCE coming in over the last year or so, that's been a major headache for MSPs, because obviously it's a brand new way of dealing with 365 and it's perhaps been in conflict with previous agreements. Is that what you mean by revenue leakage or is it more than just seats and licenses?

Anne Hall: Yeah, it's more than seats and licenses, because you've got, for example, MSPs providing additional services beyond the scope of what they're expected to provide. The whole reselling activity is one area, but it's in the managed service, what's in scope, what's out of scope? When do things become additional services? And for a lot of MSPs, customers can see that they're providing amazing services. In fact, they choose them because they look like they're great. They've got all this experience and there's a lot of trust there.

Anne Hall: But do you know, that trust is also the cause of problems? Because what's obvious to the MSP is not necessarily obvious to the customer. So, in terms of NCE, of course, yes, there's been a flurry of activity around, how do we manage those sorts of risks? And really, if you look at it, we've got to break down the barrier, what I call the barrier of expertise, we've got to find ways to overcome that barrier of expertise. Because on the one hand you've got these MSPs who have so much knowledge and experience. On the other hand, you've got customers with relative to the MSP, a lot less knowledge and experience.

Anne Hall: So, what's needed is really a simple translation by the MSP, that the customers can understand, in a way that's meaningful to them, that the customers can see, and so that they learn what they can actually expect. And maybe I could give you an example of that, so we can put something tangible there.

Paul Green: Yeah, please do.

Anne Hall: When I first met Nick, he had a problem. He'd been in MSP. A lot of these guys they've come, it's been their lifetime career. By the time they're in MSP, they've gone through a lot of different services. A lot of them have come from break/fix or other parts of the industry, and they come in and be a managed service provider.

Anne Hall: So, Nick was one of these guys and he'd been bringing in great customers for about 20 years. But what he found is, sure, they sign an agreement. But in actual fact, he said, "He doesn't have any problems with agreements, they just sign it." And he said, "In fact, a lot of them don't even read the agreement." Now, that might seem good, but for Nick and the same is true for a lot of other MSPs, what happened is that soon after, those same sort of problems were coming up over and over and again. So, that's really what we want to address.

Anne Hall: And in terms of Nick, he'd brought on the great customer, they'd mapped out the services that they expected to be providing, but the customers didn't really connect with that. It didn't really seem meaningful to them. So, they took away from that a different understanding than what Nick intended. So, Nick's team, they find customers logging support requests, which were really what they considered to be out of scope. And yet, Nick's team was dealing with those requests.

Anne Hall: Now, straight away there, you've got a revenue leakage kind of issue. And I think that most MSPs will relate to that as being something that is really difficult to manage. How do I help the customer to understand what's really involved in my managed service and what is not? Because, going back to what I said earlier, there's that level of trust, "We're going to provide this managed service. We'll look after you." And what does that really mean for the customer?

Paul Green: Yeah. So, we're so busy marketing and selling and just trying to get the new clients on board, because that's not a common event for many MSPs. It's something that a lot of work has to go into. So, then there's almost a bit of missing work at the point that we get the agreement and agree-

Anne Hall: Exactly.

Paul Green: ... with non-technical experts, what's in scope and what isn't in scope.

Anne Hall: Exactly.

Paul Green: And what percentage of MSPs do you think have some kind of revenue leakage problem, whether it's them doing work that's out of scope and not billing for it, or not billing properly, or perhaps paying for licenses that they're not billing for? How big a problem do you think this is, in your experience?

Anne Hall: It's a huge problem. I mean, I was just on a call earlier with an MSP in the States and he said, "Any MSP that says they don't have a revenue leakage problem, they're not being straight up." Some partners, of course, they're not so conscious of it. It's like something that it's part and parcel of being an MSP. Of course, we have these areas of revenue leakage and the bottom line doesn't look as good as what it perhaps should, as was the case with Nick.

Anne Hall: So, I would say it's a very universal problem. One MSP I was talking to in the UK recently, at first, quite defensive, "We don't have a revenue leakage problem. Our business is running totally smoothly." But within a very short time, I would say within seven minutes, between five and 10 minutes of me raising that point with them, he said, "Actually, you have got a point there. I put our revenue leakage at £11,000 a month."

Paul Green: Whoa.

Anne Hall: Five minutes later, the £11,000 a month was £200,000 a year.

Paul Green: Wow. Wow.

Anne Hall: And of course, it's always going to be relative to their revenue, but most MSPs when I raise it with them and they start to think about it, that number grows during the conversation. It grows from 5% of revenue, upwards from there.

Anne Hall: But the good news is that there are things that can be done about this. As I said earlier, I hate to see partners feeling like they're burdened with unnecessary risk. And it's a common thing that people come in and say, "I feel like I'm carrying too much business risk." And that is something that we can help them with. And it's really, they might come in thinking they want contracts, but of course, they don't want a contract for the sake of having that in place, and that old view or common view, perhaps, that that is there for the worst case scenario.

Anne Hall: In 25 years, I've been doing this for a long, long time with the IT industry, I've had three clients that have faced legal proceedings, and I'm working with IT contracts day in and day out. So, just three and none of those actually went to court. But of course, what does happen is the ups and downs of providing these services, and indeed, the revenue leakage is part of that.

Paul Green: Yes. Now, you mentioned legal action. In fact, earlier you talked about MSPs being scared of being sued. And I would say that's a much higher, please tell me if you disagree, Anne, but I would say that that's a much higher thing on most MSP's mind than actually revenue leakage. Because of course, everyone's getting hacked, left, right, and center. There are MSPs that have been breached. There are examples of that. Is that something that, as part of reviewing agreements, that MSPs should be concerned about? Are you a lawyer, Anne? Can I just double check that?

Anne Hall: Yes. I've been a lawyer for 30 years, and of those, 28 years as an IT lawyer.

Paul Green: Okay. Okay. Hang on a second. We made a mistake, we let a lawyer on the show. How did this happen? I need to talk to the team. I'm joking.

Anne Hall: I just want to clarify though, that whilst I am a lawyer, ITagree itself is not a law firm. We're providing services in an innovative way, to bring to MSPs the agreements and the guidance that they need.

Paul Green: Okay. Hang on. I'll just stand down my team. Stand down, everyone. It's all okay. It's all sorted. But no, so in your experience, and you said that a tiny proportion of MSPs you've worked with have had legal issues, none of which have gone to court, should MSPs be more concerned about getting those agreements to be watertight, regarding risk going forward? Or, do you believe that most agreements actually take care of that?

Anne Hall: Most agreements are very focused on what I call reactive protection. So, what that means is, the MSP thinks, "Great, I've got a contract. If I'm sued, if I face legal proceedings, I've got my contract there. And fingers crossed, that'll protect me." But that's kind of a bottom of the cliff approach to things. Of course, we need that reactive protection piece there, we need that limitation of liability and all of that there, which I often call the lawyer's part of the agreement.

Anne Hall: But let's turn to the top of the cliff and see what's going on there. Let's look at how we can proactively reduce risk, proactively reduce the sorts of risks that are involved in reselling cloud services, including the Microsoft Cloud services, of course, in providing managed services, in doing project work. All of these areas that managed service providers work in, have large degrees of business risk associated with them. And that is an increasing concern to MSPs with cyber attacks and so on, and data outages and feeling responsible for the services that they are reselling. Even though, of course, it's not their service, they're reselling that.

Paul Green: Yeah, absolutely. They're just reselling it. So, I guess the overall message here is, if you get the agreements right from the beginning, you're just removing the risk to a certain extent, but also that revenue leakage, that £200,000 that you mentioned earlier, that that MSP is essentially losing a year, that's a Ferrari, that's like a really good Ferrari every year.

Anne Hall: Yeah. And that is the bottom line impact. And going back to Nick, that I was telling you about, they had the out of scope issues being logged as support requests, that their team was dealing with, which chips away at their profitability. They had taken care, they thought, to map out what their service offering involved. But in actual fact, customers took away from that something different than what was intended, so there were gray areas, and it's those gray areas that often give rise to the revenue leakage.

Anne Hall: So, this poor guy, Nick, which is not uncommon, waking up thinking, "What's going to happen next? What do I need to be looking at and concerned about and cover off on?" Meanwhile, his team's working long hours and the business is not necessarily progressing as quickly and growing as quickly as what they would want. Remember, these guys are passionate about their services, so they do tend to go above and beyond.

Paul Green: Of course.

Anne Hall: But of course, if you said, "Well, would you rather have a Ferrari?" If you could manage all of this just a little bit more tightly, in a way that brings it to the customer in a simple, structured way. I don't think customers expect to have free services. I don't expect that customers expect their IT company to take on all of the risk to do with their business, but some of that is indeed what's happening. And that's where these guys are concerned about business risk, and of course, the reality is the revenue leakage.

Paul Green: Yes, completely agree. I think it's a balance. Customer service is really important and customer service is not providing technical services. Customer service is great communication. It's empathy. It's good follow up. All of those things. That's what customers want and what they'll judge you on. But you're absolutely right, virtually every MSP I've ever spoken to does things for free for the client, thinking that it's emotionally enriching them, and it's not. The client doesn't know, doesn't realize, doesn't even know they're getting something free.

Anne Hall: Doesn't know.

Paul Green: Yeah.

Anne Hall: The customer comes to think that everything is easy. And what I find is that guys like Nick, once they take on the new approach and understand, yes, they can deal with risk, they can manage the risk, they can have ways to reduce revenue and indeed, nice upsell opportunities along the way. They start to see that the relationships become more balanced as opposed to one-way. They start to get their teams responding with confidence, "Yes, we can do that. We'll send you out the work order for that." Or, "How we are going to manage that outside of your managed service?" Rather than the uncertainty of, "I suppose we just have to do this."

Anne Hall: And shifting from customers perhaps coming in with demands and expectations of things, "I need this now." Not appreciating, "Well, actually, what you've asked for is quite complex, it's going to take a little bit of time and we need to look at the basis on which we're going to be doing that work for you." So, it does even up things for them. It does put them more in control of the situation. And of course, there's that nice bottom line impact.

Paul Green: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you very much. Briefly, tell us a little bit about you, what you do for MSPs, and how we can get in touch with you.

Anne Hall: All right. So, for MSPs, we are the agreement lifeguard. We're looking out for MSPs, the issues that are impacting them. There's a great checklist. I'm not here to say that you need to use ITagree. You can go to your local lawyer. You might find it's more expensive than the plans that we have available.

Anne Hall: And indeed, it's really important that whoever you go to, understands the IT industry, because it's a pretty complex industry and certainly not everyone has an understanding of that. So, for any MSPs wanting to get in contact with us and indeed to get our checklist, of course they can go to our website at itagree.com. We have prepared a nice eight point checklist, that your audience can go and get. And that is at itagree.com/checklist.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.

Nate Freedman: Hi, my name's Nate Freedman from Tech Pro Marketing. The book I recommend is $100 Million Offers by Alex Hormozi. I recommend this book because this is one of the few books where he really tells the truth about how you can have success in business, and that is by providing an overwhelming amount of value. Once he explains that, he'll actually go into some ways you can do it and creative thought processes for going beyond selling services and actually becoming a value-focused entrepreneur.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

Alton Johnson: Hey, everyone. My name is Alton Johnson, the founder of Vonahi Security. And next week, I want to talk to you about how you can use VPN tests to generate additional revenue for your customers, by performing automated network penetration testing engagements.

Paul Green: Do subscribe wherever you listen to this podcast, so you never miss an episode, because we'll also be talking next week about LinkedIn Messaging. It's actually a very powerful communication tool, that's vastly underutilized by most MSPs. So, I'll tell you why it's so powerful next week, and how you can make the most of it.

Paul Green: We're also going to be talking about the 2% mindset. It's a way of thinking that the world's most successful people have and you can nurture it, not just in your own mind, but in your partner's mind, in your kid's mind as well. It could completely change your life forever. Now, don't forget, we do have that YouTube channel, a ton of extra content and inspiration for you in your marketing. It's all at youtube.com/mspmarketing. And join me next Tuesday. Have a very profitable week in your MSP.

Voiceover: Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

$100M Offers: How To Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No

View Details

Episode 151 includes: * 00:00 Why you should always question every process within your MSP * 06:14 What is 'cause-related marketing'... and how could it work for your MSP? * 14:15 How MSPs can better manage 'software as a service' * 30:55 A great book recommendation about using the right words in sales conversations

Featured guests:

Thank you to George Smith from Augmentt for joining Paul to discuss how MSPs can tackle managing their SaaS solutions.

George is a dynamic and results-focused senior sales and marketing leader. He's recognised for strong communication and the ability to lead the professional development of individuals and support teams. He's also a certified canoe and climbing instructor with a passion for rugby. Connect with George on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-smith-augmentt/ Extra show notes: * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * On the subject of creating a good system within your MSP, Paul recommended the book Traction by Gino Wickman: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Traction-Get-Grip-Your-Business/dp/1936661837 * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge: * https://www.mspmarketingedge.com/ * Thank you to Harold Mann from Mann Consulting for recommending the book Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nonviolent-Communication-Language-Life-Guides/dp/189200528X * https://www.linkedin.com/in/hmann * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 * https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast * https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa * https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast * https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 * https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ * https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ * https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Fresh every Tuesday. For MSPs around the world. It's around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

Paul Green: Hello, my friend. And welcome to the show. This is episode 151, and this is what's coming up this week.

George Smith: An Irishman and an Englishman. We'll talk about a Canadian company making waves across the globe with SAS management.

Paul Green: That's George Smith from Augmentt. He's going to be here later in the show talking about SAS management. Maybe you didn't even know that that was a thing, but it is. And in fact, you can turn it into a revenue stream, a new one, for your MSP. We're also going to be talking about cause related marketing. It's where you find some kind of charitable effort that really resonates with you, but would resonate with your ideal clients as well and you really get behind it. You leverage giving money to charity and getting involved with something as a way to get new clients. It's not a cynical thing. In fact, everyone wins when you use cause related marketing well.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: Tell me, have you come across EOS before? Not iOS. That's an operating system for phones. EOS is an operating system for entrepreneurs. In fact, it stands for entrepreneurial or entrepreneur operating system, and it was created by a guy called Geno Wickman, who's written about it in a whole range of books, which aimed at different levels of your business. Now, one of my favourite books of his is called Traction and Traction... For you, if you are the business owner or manager, if you are MSP, you should start with Traction. You should read it. It talks about controlling the chaos and putting in place a growth structure for the business. So this is no good for you if it's just you and a bit of help at this stage but once you start building up your staff, probably at about 3, 4, 5 staff onwards, you should read Traction and start to implement it.

Paul Green: It's not easy. There's a lot of work involved in it, but what you end up with is a great growth structure at the end. So I've recently been rereading traction for some work that I'm doing with some MSPs that I meet physically in a room every month in Milton Keens here in the UK, it's kind of like a peer group in person, we call it. And I'm reading a little bit ahead of... I've read this two, three times, but I'm reading a little bit ahead of what we're doing in each session and I've just read something great, which is on page 156 of my particular expanded edition.

Paul Green: And it's this, let me read this to you. "A man was once with his wife's family for Thanksgiving. During the preparation of the meal, he observed his wife cutting the back of a ham off before putting it in the oven. Curious, he asked her why she cut the back off the ham and she replied, "It's tradition. It's the way we've always done it in our family." Her mother had just arrived. So he took the opportunity to go over and ask why they cut off the back of a ham. She said, "It's tradition. It's the way we've always done it." Fortunately, his wife's grandmother was there as well. So he went to her and asked the same question. She replied, "Once upon a time, the pan was too small and it was the only way to get the ham to fit in the pan.""

Paul Green: I love that, don't you? And it says, the next sentence says, "Your people are doing things because they've always done them that way, is not good enough. With the opportunity to build a well-oiled machine. You must now be able to show them a better way."

Paul Green: What a great example. And in fact, even in your MSP, how many of your people are doing something just because it's always been done that way? Regardless of the age of your business, it's very hard for someone new slotting in. If you've been running the business on your own for a year, and then you hire your first employee and they start to make decisions about how to do things because you are too busy, you're too busy to give them the input. And then there's another employee and another one and another one and by the time you get to employee five or six or seven, this is how we do it, it's just done this way, is just the law. It becomes the law of the business for no reason, no one actually ever designed it that way. In fact, if you look at why most people start their business, it's not really for the money, it's for control.

Paul Green: We want the control over what we're doing and what happens as we start to hire staff is we start to feel out of control. We feel out of control of our own business. In fact, if you feel that way, you need to read this book Traction, because it is aimed directly at you, getting a grip on that situation and putting in place that growth structure to change it. So what is being done in your MSP today that's being done because people perceive it's always been done that way? What's the best way that you could challenge that with your team? In fact, you yourself, how often do you do things just because it's always been done that way even though the business today is completely different to how it was many years ago, when you started it up yourself?

Paul Green: Rereading this book... And I read it on a vacation a few weeks ago, rereading this book has made me look at almost everything within our business and asked myself, why do we do it that way? We have... Just as with any business, we have all sorts of horrendous, complicated, stupid little things that we... We log a piece of information on this system, and we copy it to that system and we copy it to... And it's... And humans are doing this.

Paul Green: I know, right? I know at the very least I should automate that, but it's actually made me look at it and say, why are we doing that? Why do we need all of this information? Because actually, often it becomes something historical that back in the day, we needed the information for XYZ, XYZZ, but now we don't really need that information because we've moved on or we've replaced it. In fact, I've had a great couple of weeks, stripping out jobs, taking things away from my team, stuff that people have been doing for years, but we can't really think of a reason why we are doing it anymore. Simplification, if you like. KISS, keep it simple sunshine. Maybe there's an opportunity to do that within your MSP. I mean, come on, haven't you got a complicated enough business as it is. Wouldn't it be lovely just to simplify everything down, simply by reviewing everything you do and asking, do we really need to do that?

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: Something else I've been thinking about since my vacation ended is cause related marketing. Now the basis of cause related marketing is where you throw yourself behind a charitable cause of some kind in a way which will resonate with you. So it matches up with your own values. It will resonate with your staff and it will resonate with your clients and particularly your prospects. So there are lots of things that we can do with our businesses to help charities. I mean the most obvious thing is we can give money to charities or we can donate goods. And I don't know how it works in your neck of the woods, but certainly here in the UK, if your business makes a charitable donation, then that comes off your tax bill. That's... Let's say you give 10,000 pounds away then that's 10,000 pounds off of profit that you don't have to pay tax on.

Paul Green: And obviously you don't get the profit, but if you are making good money in your business and you wanted to support something that was important to you, much better that money goes to a charity than it goes to the tax man. That's the way that I see it. I think charities do... They're much better with, to have that cash. The real thing with cause related marketing though is not just to make it as simple as let's give some money. I think if you're going to do it properly, you need to find a cause and commit to that cause, and as I said, it should ideally be something that really resonates with all of, if you like, the groups of interest with your business. So let me give you an example. It's not a real life example, but let's say in your town, there was a particular charity that was very focused on... Let's say it was an animal charity.

Paul Green: So let's assume... Or a charity that works with children. But the point is it's very specific to your city or your area. And let's say you built up a connection, you met some of the people that are involved with that. In fact, maybe you met them at a networking event or you got involved with them in a personal capacity. You could and should sort of build a deal with them almost where you become an official partner of theirs. In fact, you may support them in a number of different ways. You might give them some cash, you might give them some technology support and I appreciate you've got to be very cautious. You don't want every charity coming to you, asking you to do work for free. In fact, one of the beauties of having a cause that you support is that you can say to everyone else who asks for money or support or something, "I'm ever so sorry, but we are a hundred percent committed to this cause to this charity."

Paul Green: So you might give them some cash. You might give them some technology assistance. Even if it's just some strategic assistance, you might commit your and your staff's time once a year to go and help them with something. Let's say they did a big fundraising event once a year, you commit you and your team to go and help. So can you see how that's kind of all in? And that let's say was like a local children's or animal charity, that would be something which would resonate with you. Particularly, if you love animals or love children, animals are easier to love, I find. But if that would resonate with you... It's more likely to resonate with your staff if it's a local charity and of course, that will resonate with your clients and with your prospects because again, they're local people. This is why it's really important to pick your cause or your charity carefully.

Paul Green: Now, if you can make that kind of commitment and you might make like a three year commitment to them, what you ask of them in return is, can we be a partner, please? Can you put our logo on your website? On all of your marketing materials? In fact, can we be your official technology partner? So we're not just a partner, but we are essentially getting married. Your charity brand and our MSP brand, coming together. We're getting married and we will make a 3, 4, 5 year commitment. The one thing you want to be careful committing on that is the cash. You might have that cash today, but you might not have that cash in three years time. So just be very cautious and make sure the charity understands that the time you'll throw in, the technology support, you're throwing the cash is a bonus on top.

Paul Green: And just be honest with them and explain that, "Hey, if there's a massive downturn in our business in a couple of years time, we may struggle with that cash, but we will try our best to give you this amount of money." I think that's just a fair thing to do. And I do believe in protecting yourself from any kind of long-term cash commitment in that way.

Paul Green: Now, that would work very well in a local area, in a niche, a vertical you could do exactly the same thing. If you worked with accountants, CPAs, what's an accountancy charity or cause that's important. Maybe there's an... And I say this, not meaning to make it sound tongue and cheek, but maybe there's an accountants hardship fund, or I'm just trying to think if you work with lawyers, would you want to give money to a lawyer's hardship?

Paul Green: Probably not. I belong in the UK to something called the Chartered Institute of PR. Sounds really posh and lush and it took me a number of years to get into that and that's the only reason I maintain my membership is because it was hard to get in. And really I should try and get into the Chartered Institute of Marketing, but I have to do an exam, a conversion exam, and I can't be bothered. So I didn't use this qualification in... Is it qualifications? It's just a membership. I don't use this membership in any way, but it was hard to get, it's 80 pounds a year. I might as well keep going with it. But one of the bonuses of that is there is a hardship fund. So if PR, public relations people here in the UK who are members fall into some kind of hardship situation down the line, this fund is sat there with a ton of cash to help them out if they really reached rock bottom.

Paul Green: Now again, there are probably better causes and charities for your specific vertical, but you can take exactly the same thing. Just remember though, for this cause related marketing to work really well. You can't just give money. Giving money in itself is the lazy way out. The really powerful way and the way to form a true partnership is to go all in, find a cause, marry that cause and you will benefit from prospects and clients seeing that you are supporting either your local community or the vertical that you are in. And that's a very, very powerful, emotional piece of marketing.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

James Lett: Hello, producer James here. We interrupt this episode of Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast to pre-warn our audio only listeners about what's coming next. Here follows a short sketch performed by Paul and his child. The concept of which created by his child and in Paul's eagerness to encourage creativity and to take an interest in daddy's business, agreed to the idea without considering that the sketch is very visual and would only really make sense if you were to be watching the video version of this podcast on YouTube. In this sketch, Paul is playing himself and his child, for some reason, is out of shot holding a fluffy toy dog in view and using personification techniques to suggest that it can talk in a high-pitched human voice. And his name is Dave. Here you go.

Paul Green: Oh, hi, Dave, how are you?

"Dave": Oh, I'm feeling really down.

Paul Green: Oh no. How come?

"Dave": It's my MSP. It's doing OK, but I just need more revenue. I don't know how to get new clients.

Paul Green: Wait, have you tried the MSP marketing edge.

"Dave": The what [inaudible 00:13:32]?

Paul Green: The MSP marketing edge. It's all the marketing content and tools that you need to get new clients for your MSP.

"Dave": Sounds great, but I don't want to use the same marketing stuff as my competitors.

Paul Green: But that's the beauty, Dave. It's only sold to one MSP per area and then that area is locked. Plus you get a month's free trial and then it's only 99 pounds or 129 US dollars per month. No contract, cancel any time.

"Dave": Wow. That's really cheered me up. What's the website address? Check my area's still available.

Paul Green: Www.MSPmarketingedge.com.

"Dave": I forgot already. What was the website address again?

Paul Green: MSPmarketingedge.com.

George Smith: The big thing, big interview.

George Smith: Hi everyone. My name's George Smith. I'm the senior business development manager here at Augmentt and I'm here joining Paul today to talk about SAS management and security.

Paul Green: And just when you thought it was safe to listen to a podcast about growing your MSP, someone like George comes along and tells you there's a new thing that you need to buy. So just briefly tell us what SAS management is and we'll talk obviously specifically about your product towards the end of the interview. What is SAS management?

George Smith: For sure. Well, maybe we can start by defining what SaaS is, which is many people, but maybe not everyone knows is software as a service. And you could also use the term cloud application and really what SaaS is, Paul, is it's one of the new main pillars of modern businesses, Facebook, QuickBooks, Salesforce, N365. These are all examples of SaaS applications. And so when we talk about SaaS management, what we're really looking at is how people more specifically through the lens of Augmentt MSPs are managing, securing, auditing and monitoring the variety of applications that people are using to run their businesses today.

Paul Green: Got it, got it. So I know that there's a revenue opportunity and a positioning opportunity for MSPs, which we'll come to talk about down the line. So remind me, what was your role at Augmentt, George?

George Smith: I'm the senior business development manager, Paul. So I'm responsible really for promoting Augmentt. I do a lot of events. I look after our technical integrations and our strategic alliances and really just working with our current MSP partners to better understand what their needs are as well as integrating with other vendors and really enhancing the product and our scope.

Paul Green: So where did the idea for Augmentt come from, this idea of managing the SaaS applications that ultimately end users and clients are signing up for?

Voiceover: Yeah. It's a great question. I can kind of tell a little bit of the story about that around our co-founders Gavin Garba and Derek Bellair, who were actually the two guys that originally started Enable way back in early 2000s. And it's funny how things in business can be quite cyclical. So back in 2000, a lot of MSPs weren't even called manage service providers then. It was very much quick fix. You go out in the van, you see what's wrong, you go to the site and to speed up the story a little bit Gavin at that time realized that there must be a better way to do things. And so they were responsible Adam label for creating the first remote monitoring and management system. At that time, people didn't really know what that was. 10 years later, 15 years later, every MSP uses an RMM.

Voiceover: So as we kind of approached the 2015 year mark, SaaS is increasing. Gavin and Derek also realized that more and more people are using SaaS but if we look at the channel, MSPs still have a great bunch of tools in terms of PSAs, RMMs, backup, et cetera, but there's nothing actually really helping them understand, monitor, manage, and secure the vastly increasing number of applications that their customers are using. And interestingly enough, when speaking to some of the other senior vendors in the channel, there wasn't really any appetite to create something. And so that's when they founded Augmentt at the very end of 2019 with the sole focus of being a channel centric, MSP focused platform that allows MSPs to focus on SaaS and really kind of unlock what we're calling SaaS services. It's a completely new menu item that they can offer, in addition to their traditional managed services.

Paul Green: I love this. True serial entrepreneurs who... Lots of people start lots of businesses and call themselves a serial entrepreneur but your founders here have actually spotted, genuine, massive, great, big glaring holes in the market. I always think when you create... You know someone's a true entrepreneur, when they create something, which when it's been launched, everyone looks back at it and says, well, that was obvious. Remote management and monitoring... Remote monitoring and management, whichever way around it is. That's an obvious thing, you can say this side of it. I guess the hope for you is that SaaS management becomes the next thing that all MSPs have to add into their stack.

George Smith: Yeah. And that's certainly what the numbers are saying. We know that IT is moving towards the cloud. And with that, that's part of the reason why we're seeing such an increase in breaches all over the world, because that's where the hackers are going and they're not targeting these big companies anymore. They have that shotgun approach where it's just spray, see what comes back and it's often that the smaller businesses that are affected because they don't have the same security protocols and postures in place.

George Smith: And what's something we've coined as well, Paul, is that sort of SaaS assumption gap that we see developing between MSPs and their clients, which is where, I'm a client. I'm signing up for all this SaaS. This is my business, but I pay my MSP every month. They're my IT guide, they take care of it. Whereas on the MSP side, they're like, well, actually, no, Mr. Customer, we have a very clearly legal worded master services agreement that outlines exactly what I do for you. And it doesn't involve me looking after your QuickBooks or your HubSpot or any of this other stuff but in the event that a breach occurs and bad things happen, that's not a position you want to find yourself in, either as a client or an MSP, because it's going to be an awkward conversation about whose fault it is or having those difficult conversations.

Paul Green: And something you mentioned earlier happens in my business all the time, which is a member of my team... They always claim that we've had a conversation about it, but I don't sometimes remember all the details, but I'll suddenly see, I'm just reviewing new things that have turned up on the credit card. I'm like, what's this? And it's always... It's some kind of SaaS service and they're like, ah, we need that to do this. Don't you remember you agreed that three weeks ago? And it does seem that... And we are a fairly small business. I think it's eight or nine of us in the team now, but we seem to be signing up to all sorts of services all over the shop.

Paul Green: And I guess if that's happening in a small business and a small micro business, can't keep track of that. By the time you start getting up to someone with 30, 40, 50, 60 staff users, then it becomes a completely unmanageable thing. But the MSP, as you were saying, is the one that could ultimately be blamed for not knowing that the business had signed up for something that even the management didn't know they'd signed up for. Is that a correct assumption to make?

George Smith: I think so in a lot of cases, I mean, you've hit the nail on the head, Paul. It's so easy to sign up for these applications, right? Gone are the days where you go to a store and pick up a sort of shell of a box, I'm buying this piece of software, you just need a browser and a credit card and away you go. And so with that ease of transaction also comes the method whereby any employee can navigate or bypass around their IT, whether it's internal or an MSP and sign up for what they want. We like to pick on data sharing or file sharing applications like your Dropbox. I mean, they're great tools, but I, myself, I've done it... I'm trying to share something with someone, SharePoint isn't working, there's too many information. You know what? I'm just going to make a Dropbox account, leave this in here for you. Paul, you go pick it up. Great, problem solved.

George Smith: But what's happened is now we're sharing our corporate data into this massive ethernet of online and it kind of just sits there and it's the same story for people signing up to the shiny new tool, whether it's sales and marketing. I want to try this, I'm going to sign up with my corporate email, probably use the same corporate passwords because I want to remember and keep it easy. Two weeks later, I don't really like it so I'm moving on, but now your information is still up there and it can be possibly accessed by bad actors who then get those credentials, same credentials for your Microsoft and all of a sudden you've got a Microsoft breach and that's what your main business runs on. So you can see how easily it can snowball that this risk.

Paul Green: And actually that's such a credible situation you've put together there because you could imagine, let's say you signed up with, I don't know, Pencil Lee. They always seem to be called Lee, don't they? Pencil Lee is a new piece of software. You've used exactly the same credentials as your 365, as you say, and then it's not for you so you cancel your subscription. And a year later Pencil Lee gets hacked and breached and as an employee, you might vaguely see that, but you just don't remember that you once did a trial of it and you certainly don't remember that your Core 365 login details were what you used for that. And we all know users, employees do exactly this so I can see the use case for this. So without getting technical, because this isn't a technical podcast and there is the danger I'll slip into a coma if you get too technical. How does Augmentt keep track of this? So is it a case... Is there manual intervention? Is it done automatically? How does it work?

George Smith: So Augmentt is the platform and I think that's important for MSPs to understand. We're not just a simple tool where we're a full suite of tools of modules specifically that when triangulated together provide a comprehensive SaaS management service. So the first thing is what's called Discover. And again, without putting you into a coma, I'm going to spend just about maybe 30 seconds on each module. So Discover is just that. Using a very lightweight agent, which can be deployed silently via your RMM or other Partial, whatever you like to use as an MSP. Discover gives you the full list of all the SaaS applications being used across your entire IT estate, because we're multi tenant, then you can drill in to see exactly which company that you're servicing uses which, and again, because we have that agent, you can get right down to the tattle tale user level. So if there's a particular offender, you can generate reports on Simon from sales, who's constantly signing up to SaaS and actually generate a report showing these are the applications he's using.

George Smith: Why is he using a file sharing application? At a higher level, you can see there's five apps, Mr. Customer, that you've signed up for that do the same thing. Or you think that everybody, you need 50 licenses of Salesforce because all 50 of your staff are using it. I can show you that only six people use it on a regular basis. So let's save you see money on licenses. So really it's that kind of classic cliche of you can't protect what you can't see. A lot of MSPs have done a great job focusing on the network, but now this hybrid remote work model is here to stay. It's how do we get access and insight into the applications that people are using outside of the network? So that's Discover.

George Smith: The next module's called Secure, which is focused on Microsoft security, posture and policies. Now we know a lot of businesses run on either Microsoft or Google and Secure will be available for Google shortly but for now, today, it's just available for Microsoft. It's giving MSPs the multi-tenancy that they need to go into tenant by tenant and check all the security, postures and policies of their Microsoft clients. So to kind of tell the story, Paul, a lot of MSPs think maybe that these recommendations or security settings come pre-configured out of the box with Microsoft, the problem is they don't and it's a very cumbersome manual process to go in for an MSP and do a tenant by tenant. I log in, the Microsoft portal's a complex base. I have to find where these different recommendations are. I have to tweak it. I log out, I clear my cash. I go into my next tenant's portal and repeat the same process.

George Smith: And really, as I said, it can be quite cumbersome. So Secure is focused really on enhancing the security of Microsoft for MSPs, but presenting it in a way that actually helps them upsell their services. So you can show a threat report by saying. Mr. Customer, here's all the stuff that's wrong with your portal. How would you like me to uncover or deal with the risk that I've uncovered for you today? We can... If you sign up to this special program or X amount of dollars per seat or a month, we can fix that for you. And then I can show you this summary report, which is showing you all the things I'm doing on a monthly basis to make sure that your Microsoft 365 is secure.

George Smith: The final one is Engage, which a lot of MSPs love, it's our managing component. And what it's doing is it's increasing the speed and efficiency with which you can reduce, or I guess eliminate the tickets that come in for Microsoft and Google.

George Smith: So again, this whole idea that there's these big portals that you need to be quite a technical expert to use. When we know things like password resets, onboarding, off boarding are all very common requests that come through. What we've done at Augmentt with our Engage module is simply create a zone of lease privilege access and with a few clicks, you can resolve those tickets. So someone needs their password reset, I can do that with three clicks in Augmentt without ever going into the Microsoft portal. Specifically, what that means for the MSP is that now I, instead of having an L-3 technician do those tasks, you can have an L-1 or an intern or an office administrator, begin to resolve tickets for you, which obviously increases your bottom line because you're being more efficient but also the time it takes to resolve these tickets is quicker, which means your margins increase as well. So instead of it taking an R and you're charging an R to off board a client, you can still charge that fee, but it's only going to take you 10 minutes.

Paul Green: Yeah, that's great. So I see the benefits of SaaS management here. We're talking, obviously there are upsell opportunities you were talking about there. There are more efficiencies, so you can have lower skilled staff doing higher skilled work, which is great. And I guess we're at a position as well now where talking about SaaS management gives a... It's such a cliche, but a thought leadership benefit. Are you seeing that now? Because not all MSPs are talking about this. So is it something that can place your MSP apart?

George Smith: Yeah, it's a hundred percent. It's definitely a differentiator. And that's the key thing as well that with going back to Secure and the sales part is, even if someone's not a client, you can still use what we call prospecting licenses to quickly show them that threat report. So even if they're not a client, you can actually kind of sit there and say, look at all the stuff that's... All these bad things, all this risky activity that's happening with your Microsoft, is your current provider handling this for you? It doesn't look. So your Secure score is only 25 out of a hundred. Your identity score is even worse. If you come over to me, I can get this all fixed for you. So not only is it a differentiator, but we've actually created mechanisms that actually help MSPs sell as well.

Paul Green: Yeah. Okay. Perfect. George, thank you very much for your time today. We've got two things I need to say just before we wrap up and ask for your contact details. Earlier on, I invented off the top of my head, an app or a SaaS service called Pencil Lee and I was inspired literally by the pencil on my desk. While you were just talking, I did just Google it to check that there wasn't an app called... Or a SaaS called Pencil Lee and there's not. If you look at... What I found when I typed in Pencil Lee was there is a store in Australia that's a boutique wooden pencil store. Who knew that you could make a living out of selling boutique wooden pencils?

George Smith: Well, there you go. Even improve their SEO today with this podcast.

Paul Green: You probably have. Yes. And there's also now a great name for someone to jump in for a new SaaS company. The other thing is, you mentioned long time back in the interview buying box software, and that instantly triggered a memory for me. And I can't remember the year. It must be probably mid to late nineties of going into... There was a store in the UK called PC World, which doesn't exist anymore, of course.

George Smith: I remember it well. Where in the world PC World.

Paul Green: That's it. Yeah. Well, you could even sing that, couldn't you? Go on and sing it for us.

George Smith: Where in the world PC World.

Paul Green: You know that's going to end up in the trailer for the podcast, don't you?

George Smith: Love it. Bring it on.

Paul Green: And all of our listeners around the rest of the world are thinking, what's going on? What happened to the podcast? Yeah, there was this big box store. It's now full of fridges and other stuff, but I went in to buy probably Norton Antivirus, because that was the main reason you'd go in back then. And I remember instead buying, I think it was Rollercoaster Tycoon, which is... And it was the first ever version, which was possibly one of the best strategy games ever, anyway. There we go.

George Smith: I let... I know exactly, we're talking about PC World and I also had Rollercoaster Tycoon on my brother's [inaudible 00:29:59] and we'd all gather around the monitor and play it together and then cause disasters and watch our guests run around.

Paul Green: And you know, you can get it as an app. You can get the original version as an app and there's also an open source version of Rollercoaster Tycoon, which you can find if you just Google it and that's just lost three hours of your life. So before we go further down that rabbit hole, George, just remind us of your company name and just tell us how we can get in touch with you.

George Smith: Absolutely. So company name is Augmentt with two Ts, A-U-G-M-E-N-T-T. My name is George Smith. My email is just first name.last name@Augmentt.com. Our website is Augmentt.com. For more information, we have tons of resources available and of course, MSPs can sign up for a free trial and you can get some free licenses. If anyone does have any questions, please feel free to email me directly at George.smith@Augmentt.com. I love hearing from MSPs, happy to answer questions. Hop on a quick phone call, whatever, however people prefer communicating.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast. This week's recommended book.

Harold Mann: Hi, I'm Harold with Mann Consulting in San Francisco. The book that I recommend is Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. We found it to be super helpful in picking the very best words when interacting with clients. It's a really fascinating book. It also helps with relationships as well.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

Anne Hall: Hi, I'm Anne Hall. The founder of ITagree, the agreement lifeguard. I'll be on the show next week, talking to you about revenue leakage. Did you know that your MSP is likely losing money that could be hitting your bottom line? I'll see you on the show next week.

Paul Green: Do subscribe wherever you listen to this podcast. So you never miss an episode because also next week we'll be talking about onboarding new clients and how you can inject more positive emotions into that process. The start of a relationship with a client is a honeymoon. How can we make the honeymoon unforgettable? We'll also be talking about shiny new thing syndrome. In fact, I'm going to invent a new term, stack fiddling. The dangers of stack fiddling are messing about with your RMM and your PSA and all the other things in your stack. It's a very dangerous thing. We'll talk about that next week. Now don't forget, we have a ton of inspirational content for you at youtube.com/mspmarketing. It'll be great to see you there and join me next Tuesday. Have a very profitable week in your MSP.

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships (Nonviolent Communication Guides)

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The Big Quiz: In addition to the normal podcast schedule, we bring you this special show to mark the end of a month-long MSP podcast collaboration. Throughout September 2022, six leading MSP podcasters joined forces to share their combined knowledge and to highlight the other podcasts on offer. The Ultimate MSP podcast crossover event culminates with a special show on Friday September 30th 2022, in which our hosts come together to tackle a fun tech quiz. Listen / watch to see how the MSP podcasters get on, plus find out if you could do any better! PLUS to celebrate the event, you could win $1000. Find out more about this September's Ultimate MSP podcast crossover event, including the $1000 prize: https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/MSPpodcastcrossover The Big Quiz host:

Paul Green is the host of The MSP Marketing Podcast.

Listen every Tuesday for powerful marketing and business growth advice to get more new clients, grow monthly recurring revenue and increase net profit. The show is about 30 minutes long and you can either watch it on YouTube or your normal podcast platform (full subscribe links further below).

Check out The MSP Marketing Podcast: https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast-intro/

Connect with Paul on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ Contestants:

Richard Tubb is the host of TubbTalk.

Richard provides expert advice to help IT businesses grow. Richard has worked with the owners of hundreds of MSPs to free up their time, concentrate on doing what is important and make more money.

Check out TubbTalk: https://www.tubblog.co.uk/podcast/

Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardtubb/

Ian Luckett is the host of The IT Experts Podcast.

Ian is a Business Growth Consultant and specialises in helping business owners in the IT & MSP space. Ian has always been a big fan of Personal Development and his passion has spread over the years into the business world.

Check out The IT Experts Podcast: https://innovatetosuccess.com/itega-podcast/

Connect with Ian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianluckett/

Skip Ziegler is the co-host of The Humanize IT Podcast.

In each episode of their show, hosts Adam Walter, Skip Ziegler and other industry experts, show business owners, technology professionals and problem-solvers how to excel their careers with a new, more conversation-based approach to IT.

Check out the Humanize IT Podcast: https://anchor.fm/humanize-it

Connect with Skip on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/skipziegler

Todd Kane is the host of the Evolved Radio Podcast.

Todd is an accomplished business leader with 20+ years of experience and runs Evolved Management Consulting, helping managed IT companies increase profit and decrease stress.

Check out the Evolved Radio Podcast: https://www.evolvedmgmt.com/podcast

Connect with Todd on LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/toddakane Extra show notes: * The regular podcast is out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Find out more about September's MSP marketing podcast crossover event including the $1000 prize (note the closing date): * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/MSPpodcastcrossover * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 * https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast * https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa * https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast * https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 * https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ * https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ * https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Transcription:

Voiceover: The ultimate MSP Podcast, Crossover, Big Quiz.

Paul Green: Hello, and welcome to the MSP podcast, Crossover. We are at the end of an amazing month, helping you to find cool new MSP podcasts to listen to on whichever is your favourite podcast platform. In this show, we are here just to have a little bit of fun. We've got together a whole bunch of friends, all of whom have some great podcasts and we'll tell you about those towards the end of the show. But let's have some fun in the next 20 minutes or so.

Paul Green: Now, we also of course have some money for you to win. We have a $1,000 to be won as part of our competition and the way to enter this competition is so simple. All you need to do and you can do it now, is get onto LinkedIn or Facebook, or whichever is your favourite social platform, and just write something about this MSP podcast Crossover. And then all you need to do is just make sure you add the hashtag #MSPpodcastcrossover. What we'll do is we will pull someone at random in the next, I think it's about the next 24 hours or so, we'll pull someone at random who's done that #MSPpodcastcrossover, and that person will win $1,000 of cash. So let's crack on with this show and let's get our guests to introduce themselves.

Ian Luckett: Hi, my name's Ian Luckett from the IT Experts podcast over here in the UK.

Skip Ziegler: And my name is Skip Ziegler, I co-host the Humanize IT podcast, and we are a bit of a global company, but generally based in North America and the United States.

Richard Tubb: Hi I'm Richard Tubb. I am the host of TubbTalk, the podcast for IT consultants, and I'm coming to you live and in living colour from the studio, garage, in Newcastle upon Tyne in the Northeast of England.

Todd Kane: Hey everyone. I'm Todd Kane. I'm a host of Evolved Radio Podcast and I'm coming from Vancouver Island in West Coast of Canada.

Paul Green: Thank you very much gentlemen, and welcome to our podcast, Crossover. Now we are going to be having some fun with kind of like a quiz, kind of like a MSP game show tonight. And I've actually split you into two teams. So we have team Atari and we have team Commodore. Now Ian Luckett, you are lucky enough to be the captain of team Atari.

Ian Luckett: Fantastic.

Paul Green: And tonight, I know, I'm going to give you your team member and that will be Skip. So if you two would like to virtually shake hands, even though you're 4,000 miles apart, that would be wonderful. And Richard Tubb, you are the team captain of team Commodore and of course you'll be playing with Todd. Now the rules of the game are very, very simple. We have three rounds of questions and they're questions which are not too techy, but they are related to technology and to computing. And in fact, if you wanted to play along at home, as we're going along, you can see if you could beat our experts. We've got a total of 260 points in total that you could win. So as we're going along, I will give you the correct answers and let's see if you can beat any of our teams.

Paul Green: Gentlemen, are you ready for round one?

Skip Ziegler: Yes.

Todd Kane: Ready.

Ian Luckett: As we ever will be.

Paul Green: Listen the high levels of enthusiasm there. Let's do that again.

Skip Ziegler: This is right out of my wheel house, gentlemen. I'm excited.

Paul Green: Are you ready for round one?

Skip Ziegler: Yes.

Richard Tubb: Yes.

Todd Kane: Yes.

Voiceover: The ultimate MSP podcast Crossover, Big Quiz.

Paul Green: Ah, okay, here we go. Right. This round is called the technology test. So remember to shout out your team name, not just the answer. Question number one. What year was the first ever USB released?

Ian Luckett: Atari. I'm going to say 1989.

Paul Green: 1989. Okay. Team Commodore. Go on, Richard

Richard Tubb: 1991.

Paul Green: Oh, okay. So you are closer, but we're not quite there. So I'm not going to give any points there. The actual answer is 1996. That was the answer. By the way, we've got producer James is lurking in the background. James, would you mind keeping score for me? That would be great if you can.

Richard Tubb: It shouldn't be too difficult.

Paul Green: It's not going to be. Yeah. You can get a cup of tea, James. I don't think there's going to be much to do. I do have a bonus follow up question though.

Ian Luckett: Oh, great.

Paul Green: This should really be for the winner, but seeing as we don't have a winner on that question, this is open to everyone. How many connector types are there on USB currently?

Richard Tubb: Commodore. Four.

Paul Green: Is totally incorrect. Sorry. Let me rephrase the question. How many connector types have they been since the introduction of USB? That's what I meant to say.

Ian Luckett: Oh, Atari. Seven.

Paul Green: Okay. Still wrong. And nowhere near. This is going to be a nightmare, isn't it? Rich went four and he's looking to the sky, trying to recall information. I'm thinking, I'm just going to have a bang at this and just see what happens.

Richard Tubb: I'm in a bit of an advantage here, it's got to be said. I'm looking around. I've got most of those USB connectors in the room with me now, but I can't place them all.

Paul Green: Skip, do you want to have a guess?

Skip Ziegler: I'm going to go... If seven didn't seem right, I'm going to go 14. We'll just double it.

Paul Green: And there we go. Straight on the money. That's the answer. 10 points to Atari there. Okay. Second question, this is much easier this one. Should have started with this one. Which university did Bill Gates drop out of?

Skip Ziegler: Atari.

Todd Kane: Commodore.

Paul Green: So let's go with Atari.

Skip Ziegler: I think it was MIT.

Paul Green: Was it MIT? It wasn't MIT. So Todd, what's the correct answer?

Todd Kane: Harvard.

Paul Green: Is correct. Now Todd, because you got that right you get to answer the bonus question. So no shouting out for this one unless Todd gets it wrong. For a bonus 10 points Todd, what was Bill Gates studying? Now, he was actually studying three things at Harvard. So I'll give you these points if you get any one of those three things.

Todd Kane: We'll go with the obvious, business and computer science.

Paul Green: Computer science is correct. He was actually studying law. He was majoring in law with maths and computer science, which is good. Okay, here we go. It's open to the whole group again. Your question is this. What was the first thing ever sold on eBay?

Richard Tubb: Commodore.

Paul Green: Richard Tubb.

Richard Tubb: A teddy bear.

Paul Green: It wasn't a teddy bear. There are MSPs around the planet right now with their head in their hands.

Richard Tubb: Was it a watch?

Paul Green: It wasn't a watch. No. I'll give you a clue. It was something that was broken. So the creator of eBay, Pierre Omidyar, I think his name is, he created eBay and he thought, what can I sell? I've built this platform. And he saw something on his desk, which had been broken. He'd been meaning to fix it. And he said, he put it on eBay. And he was very surprised when it was sold just a few days later.

Ian Luckett: Atari. Was it a mug?

Paul Green: It wasn't a mug. I was a mug for suggesting this idea.

Ian Luckett: I'm glad if one good thing comes out of tonight, Paul, it's your realization of your ideas.

Skip Ziegler: I've read this story. I just can't remember what it was. It was something. It wasn't what you would think a normal eBay item would be. Yeah, it was something you'd kind of put to the curb, but he instead put it on eBay and it sold rather surprisingly to his credit, I believe.

Paul Green: Exactly, exactly that. So that's the founding story. And the answer is a broken laser pointer. Which I guess back in the mid 90s was something that you could fix. Okay. For the bonus then and no one's going to get this. I don't know why I'm even bothering with this, because this is a harder question. The most expensive item ever sold on eBay was a yacht. And that was bought by Roman Abramovich, who is one of these Russian oligarchs, is that how you say it? And he owns Chelsea Football Club here in the UK. How much did he spend buying this yacht on eBay?

Richard Tubb: Commodore. £35 million.

Paul Green: That's a good guess. Not quite there. Let's see if we can get nearer to the correct guess. Atari.

Ian Luckett: 50 million.

Paul Green: 50 million. It was actually $85 million.

Ian Luckett: So we win that.

Paul Green: Buying the yacht. I'm not going to give any points on that one.

Skip Ziegler: I'm trying to do the dollars to pounds conversions in my head.

Paul Green: It was, yeah. So it was bought, I forget when this was, but that was actually just the deposit. So he spent $85 million on the deposit on eBay and the total cost of the yacht was $168 million.

Ian Luckett: Imagine the fees on that.

Paul Green: His PayPal fees will be enormous. This next question is a bit of a bit sci-fi one, but it's also a tech one. What unit of length is equal to around about 5.8 trillion miles?

Todd Kane: Commodore. A parsec.

Paul Green: It's not a parsec. That's a very Star Trek answer, but we need a much simpler Star Trek answer than that.

Skip Ziegler: Atari. Is it an AU?

Paul Green: It's not an AU. I don't know what an AU is and let's not go down that rabbit hole.

Skip Ziegler: [inaudible 00:09:04].

Paul Green: You so are. One more guess. We'll take one more guess.

Richard Tubb: Commodore. A light year.

Paul Green: Yes. Richard Tubb. Finally someone gets some points.

Ian Luckett: That's what I was going to say.

Paul Green: 10 points for you, Richard Tubb. Now, your follow up question. This is just for Richard, and the bonus question is this is actually about the film Lightyear, which is the recent Disney Pixar film, which is frankly one of the worst Pixar films ever made. I was so bored, I slept through half of it, but Richard, your question is for 10 more bonus points, who played Buzz Lightyear in the most recent film? And I'll give you a clue...

Richard Tubb: Can I not defer to my colleague, Todd here?

Paul Green: You can. If he knows. Todd, as a clue for you, it wasn't the person who voiced Buzz Lightyear in the original Toy Story film.

Richard Tubb: So yeah, it was Tim Allen before. Was it Chris Pratt?

Paul Green: Not Chris Pratt, but you're right. It was a Chris. It was Chris Evans as in Captain America. Chris Evans. So let's give Todd and Richard five bonus points there because someone needs to earn some points. Right. One more question in the technology test round. Open to everyone. If you don't get this, this is just pathetic. What is the name of the classic 1972 arcade game based on table tennis?

Richard Tubb: Commodore. Pong.

Paul Green: Yes. Richard Tubb there. The Mr. Retro Technology.

Richard Tubb: I've got one here as well.

Paul Green: Have you? Okay. Well, did you know that Pong actually wasn't the first arcade game? There was one other game released just before it in 1971. If you know the name, Richard, we will give you another 10 points.

Richard Tubb: I'm going to say it's Space War.

Paul Green: It's not Space War. It was Computer Space. Although that may be the same thing. In fact, you'll probably go and Google it and find out that they were the same thing. So let's give you the points anyway. Oh, that was fun. That was fun. We've only got two more rounds to go. Producer James, tell us. I think we all know, but tell us what's the point situation at the end of round one?

James Lett: Well, it is painfully close, not. Atari are on 10. Commodore on 65.

Ian Luckett: [inaudible 00:11:14] need to come in on this.

Skip Ziegler: We're coming in a close second, Ian.

Voiceover: The ultimate MSP podcast Crossover, Big Quiz.

Paul Green: So this second round is called Acronym Annoyance. And we've got a whole series of technology acronyms, you hear them every day, but do you know what they stand for? So everyone's back. There are no bonus questions in this. It's just a rapid fire round. Everyone's back in the game. First one is what does this acronym stand for? PDF.

Richard Tubb: Commodore. Portable documents format.

Paul Green: What a hero. Absolutely straight in there. Second question and everyone should know this. What does SAAS stand for? SAAS.

Skip Ziegler: Atari.

Richard Tubb: Commodore.

Paul Green: That was Skip for Atari.

Skip Ziegler: Software as a service.

Paul Green: Correct. What does IP stand for?

Richard Tubb: Commodore.

Ian Luckett: Atari.

Paul Green: That was Richard.

Richard Tubb: Yeah. We can go with a number of different things, but I'm going to say internet protocol.

Paul Green: Correct, yes. And the other one of course would be...

Ian Luckett: Intellectual property.

Richard Tubb: Intellectual property.

Paul Green: Yeah. Intellectual property.

Ian Luckett: Give us a point for that. Come on.

Skip Ziegler: Yes.

Paul Green: No. What does URL stand for?

Richard Tubb: Commodore.

Paul Green: Richard again?

Richard Tubb: Universal resource locator.

Paul Green: I'm sorry. You actually got one of those words wrong. So I'll open that to the Atari team. So resource locator is correct, but it's not universal. It is?

Ian Luckett: Skip, have you got any idea?

Skip Ziegler: I guess I thought...

Ian Luckett: No. Atari then. Is it unified resource?

Paul Green: It's not unified. It's uniform.

Ian Luckett: That's it. Same thing.

Paul Green: You can argue all you want, but you're not going to get the points. So five points to Commodore there. There is a company called LG Electronics. What does LG stand for?

Todd Kane: Commodore.

Richard Tubb: Commodore. Lucky gold star.

Paul Green: Correct Richard. Are you Googling these, Richard, as we go along or have you got Alexa in your ear?

Richard Tubb: No. I'll answer the next question like this.

Paul Green: Okay. Final question on this round, you will be surprised to know, or you may be surprised to know that the word laser is an acronym. What does it stand for?

Richard Tubb: I'll give you this one, Ian. That's why I'm keeping quiet.

Ian Luckett: Yeah. Cheers. Cheers, Rich. I really appreciate it. I'm trying to think of something funny that's not rude because I've been told not to swear.

Paul Green: I'll give you a starter with the first word. The first word is light.

Ian Luckett: Light and sound accentuating radar.

Paul Green: You're just making it up now.

Ian Luckett: I am. You're absolutely right.

Paul Green: It's light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. Who knew? Who knew? Okay. End of round two. Producer James, what are the scores on the doors?

James Lett: Well, including one pity point, 21 to Atari and to Commodore it's 105.

Paul Green: Very good. Very good. I like the idea of pity points.

Voiceover: The ultimate MSP podcast Crossover, Big Quiz.

Paul Green: So we are at the final round. Gentlemen, you need to bring your A game to this because Atari, the opportunity is there for you to win, but you're going to have to really go for it. We have, I think it's about 10 questions. And Richard Tubb, you're going to love this because this is your world. You're literally sat amongst this. This is the Retro Computing rapid fire round.

Richard Tubb: I'm just laughing at Ian's face here.

Paul Green: I didn't do this deliberately. Ian, the marketing round is next year. We'll do that in next year's quiz.

Ian Luckett: Yeah, thanks.

Paul Green: Based on the success of this year's quiz, there isn't going to be another quiz next year. So here we go. Question number one. What was the name of the portable storage disc used to transfer files between computers in the old days?

Richard Tubb: Commodore.

Paul Green: That was Richard.

Richard Tubb: Floppy disk.

Paul Green: Correct. In the Tandy TRS-80, which coincidentally, that was the first computer my family ever owned. What did the initials TRS stand for?

Richard Tubb: Commodore.

Paul Green: Richard.

Richard Tubb: Tandy Radio System.

Paul Green: Incorrect. You were there with the first two words, but the final word was wrong and I'm going to give a clue to Atari.

Richard Tubb: Oh no. I've got it now.

Paul Green: It was the name and don't say it, Richard. It was the name of the shops these were sold in.

Ian Luckett: I think I might have it. And if I have it, I'm going to be really delighted.

Paul Green: I think this was a US only chain. So Skip, you might know the answer to this. It's Tandy Radio...

Ian Luckett: Shack.

Paul Green: Correct. Correct. Very good. Right. Next question. What was the very first computer with a... Now, listen to the wording of this. Not what was the first home computer, but what was the very first computer with a graphical user interface?

Todd Kane: Commodore.

Paul Green: Todd.

Todd Kane: Oh, wait. No. Was it the Lisa?

Paul Green: It wasn't the Lisa. That was the first one available to the public.

Skip Ziegler: Atari.

Paul Green: Skip.

Skip Ziegler: I believe it was the Amiga.

Paul Green: It wasn't the Amiga. That's a few years after this. It was...

Richard Tubb: Commodore.

Paul Green: Oh, Richard.

Richard Tubb: The very first available computer, not very first home computer, yeah?

Paul Green: The very first available. The first ever computer with a graphical user interface.

Richard Tubb: I think it was... It a Xerox Park?

Paul Green: Do you know what? You can get five points for that. Because Xerox Park were the developers of it. It was the Alto, A-L-T-O. That was the very first one. And the very first GUI computer for the public was of course the Apple Lisa of which about seven of those were sold. Next question. In the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, what were the keys made out of?

Richard Tubb: Commodore.

Paul Green: Richard.

Richard Tubb: Rubber.

Paul Green: Rubber is the answer. Question for Skip and Todd. In America, did you call that the ZX Spectrum?

Skip Ziegler: I'm drawing a complete blank on this one.

Paul Green: Maybe that was just a UK computer.

Richard Tubb: I've got one here. Can I show it to you?

Paul Green: They were pretty cool. They were pretty cool. Next question. In 1996, which games console did the Nintendo... Oh, you have actually got one. You've actually got one.

Richard Tubb: Yeah, I wasn't joking.

Paul Green: Richard, if you want to get your Nintendo collection ready, because this next question's about Nintendo. What's impressive is how quickly you sourced that, that is actually quite an impressive thing.

Todd Kane: Yes.

Paul Green: In 1996, what console did the Nintendo 64 replace?

Richard Tubb: Commodore. The Nintendo Entertainment System.

Paul Green: Technically incorrect. So I'm going to pass that to Atari.

Ian Luckett: Atari. Was it the Commodore 32?

Paul Green: It was the Nintendo Entertainment System, but there's... No, it's not. I'm just going to give you a clue Ian, before you jump into another pit of no points. The Nintendo Entertainment System, which was part of it but there's a word missing at the beginning.

Todd Kane: I got it.

Paul Green: Todd.

Todd Kane: Can I go for a point?

Paul Green: Hang on. You're on the wrong team. This is an Atari question now. So Skip or Ian?

Ian Luckett: Yeah. Todd, can you tell Skip?

Skip Ziegler: Yeah, please.

Paul Green: Look. Richard's actually got one. Richard. Just tell us, just put us out of our misery.

Richard Tubb: It's the Super Nintendo.

Paul Green: That's right. It was the Super Nintendo. The SNES. Richard will know the answer to this as well. And this is pretty much Richard and Todd have got this victory in the can now, but in which game did Mario make his first ever appearance?

Skip Ziegler: Atari. It was actually in Donkey Kong, wasn't it?

Ian Luckett: Yay. We got some point.

Paul Green: Yeah. Very good. We're down to our final three questions. What year did the first IBM PC come out?

Skip Ziegler: Atari.

Paul Green: Go for it, Skip.

Skip Ziegler: 1982.

Paul Green: Oh, so close. Do you know what? Just for the hell of it, I'm going to give you another chance.

Ian Luckett: Are you going to go higher or lower?

Paul Green: You are one year out.

Skip Ziegler: I'll go just a little bit more...

Paul Green: So you got a 50/50 chance.

Skip Ziegler: All right. We'll go up. 1983. I went the wrong way.

Paul Green: Wrong way. It was 1981. Let's see if you can get this one. This is for everyone again. What year did the first version of Windows come out?

Skip Ziegler: I was there. I just can't remember it.

Richard Tubb: Commodore.

Paul Green: Oh, let's go Richard.

Richard Tubb: 1987.

Paul Green: Two years out. I've just given the answer away. Atari, say 1985 and you get the points.

Skip Ziegler: Atari. 1989.

Paul Green: No. Did you say '89?

Skip Ziegler: I thought you were pointing at us. Oh no.

Paul Green: Okay.

Richard Tubb: Nil points.

Paul Green: No points for anyone in that one. The final question should be an easy one. There is a very famous TV advert, which came out back in the day. It was based on a very famous novel called 1984. And it was used to launch which computer?

Skip Ziegler: Atari.

Paul Green: Let's go for it, Skip.

Skip Ziegler: The Macintosh.

Paul Green: It was the Apple Mac. Amazing. Right, gentlemen. Thank you very much.

Skip Ziegler: That was a Super Bowl commercial. So I got a US advantage on that one.

Paul Green: Yes you did. Although I think it's world famous. Producer James, what are our final scores on the doors and who is our winner today?

James Lett: Well, it's been very entertaining listening and watching you guys. However, there's been nothing to laugh about in terms of the scores. Ending up Atari on 51. In the massive lead, Commodore with 130.

Paul Green: Very good. Very good.

James Lett: Congratulations.

Paul Green: Thank you very much, everyone. That has been some fun. Of course, the purpose of us being here is to tell every MSP on the planet about all of our great podcasts, because podcasts are a great way to learn and to find out new stuff and to improve your business. So if you would like to take the final word, starting with you, Ian, just to tell us briefly about your podcast and especially tell us which is the best episode to get started with on your podcast.

Ian Luckett: So you would be delighted to know that our podcast is non-technical. So in terms of everything to do with growing an MSP, we can help with the other things like the sales and the marketing and the leadership and all of that great stuff. So tune in to the IT Experts podcast, where you'll hear myself and my business partner, Stuart Warwick, help you learn how to build a seven figure MSP, and if you're already there, help you get to five and go faster. And our best show, the one that I think is the most relevant right now is Episode 99. And it's where Stuart and I talk about the MSP journey and where we talk about the different parts, the different stages, the different gaps, the different process, and the headspace that you go through as an MSP business owner. So I'd love for you to check it out and thank you ever so much, Paul, for letting us be absolutely annihilated by Richard Tubb once again.

Skip Ziegler: Our podcast is Humanize IT with the co-founder Adam Walter of Humanize IT. And our goal is really to engage MSPs in the business conversation. Adam and I are both very techy guys. We really enjoy jumping into that, but we realize that technology is great, but businesses don't buy technology because it's great. They buy technology because it helps their business out. So our conversation is a mix of business owners and technical professionals who are really looking to engage and empower technology to drive and support organizations. I think one of the more entertaining podcasts that we have is, How to Fire Your MSP. And it's an interesting conversation because it also leads in how to hire one as well. But what are you really looking for? You're getting a resource to help your organization be more successful. You need technology. What are the really important elements? And so we look at some of the bad ones, because those are good indicators that you need to move on. And those are really good indicators of who you need to engage with to make your organization more successful.

Richard Tubb: So I'm the host of TubbTalk, the podcast for IT Consultants where I speak to the smartest, most successful people in the IT industry who give freely of their time and experience, ideas, tips, and techniques to help you to grow your MSP business. My personal favorite episode of the past few years was Episode 50 when I spoke to David Allen, who is the godfather of modern productivity, the author behind the very, very famous book, million selling book, Getting Things Done. And in the episode, David shares a lot of tips for getting things done, surprisingly or not. Getting stuff done, enabling you to grow your IT business and get all that stuff done that you keep saying you'll get around to and never do.

Todd Kane: I'm Todd Kane and I host the Evolved Radio podcast. And it's a bit of a mix. It's not all MSP content. The content lately has been very MSP centric, but there's a pretty good archive. I think we're on Episode 90 and you can go all the way back. It's really just the intersection of business and technology. And quite often the MSP space comes up in that, but there's also some just fun, weird, interesting, nerdy topics that I enjoy, like nuclear technology and drones and all kinds of other of interesting, fascinating stuff. So lots to pick through. Probably a good entry point would be Episode 75 where I do I think a six part series on MSP insights, where I interview MSP owners and operators, just to get their insights of what have you learned in starting and growing your business? So it'd definitely be relevant for this audience and it's a good six part series to work through, but there's tons of other content to check out as well on all kinds of cool and interesting topics.

Paul Green: Those are great podcasts and there's mine as well to throw into the mix, it's called Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast and every Tuesday on your favorite podcast platform, we talk about MSP marketing and business growth, is always tons of ideas and some amazing guests and in fact, everyone on our Crossover today has been a guest on the podcast at some point. All we're doing is talking about how you can grow your MSP and make more money by improving your marketing.

Paul Green: So thank you very much for being with us on this Crossover. Don't forget you've just got a few hours left to win $1,000. If you've enjoyed what we've been talking about here, go and write something about it on LinkedIn and make sure you use this hashtag, #MSPpodcastcrossover. And that's all you have to do to get in that draw to win $1,000. We might be back next year doing this, I think based on the performance of the quiz, it certainly won't be a technology quiz. It might be on something else, but thank you for listening to us. Thank you for watching us if you've been on YouTube watching this and maybe we'll see you again next year. Bye.

Ian Luckett: See you later.

Skip Ziegler: See you all.

Richard Tubb: Ta ta for now.

Todd Kane: Bye.

Voiceover: The ultimate MSP podcast, Crossover.

View Details

Episode 150 includes: * 00:00 Three more powerful marketing weapons to influence your prospects * 08:47 How to best help your staff during the cost of living crisis * 19:00 Some great advice about collaboration and time management, as part of the Ultimate MSP podcast crossover event * 22:06 A new vCIO revenue stream for your MSP * 37:31 A great book recommendation about getting the most out of your day

Featured guests:

As part of this month's Ultimate MSP podcast crossover event, thank you to Richard Tubb, the host of TubbTalk, for joining Paul to share the best piece of business advice he's ever been given.

Richard provides expert advice to help IT businesses grow. Richard has worked with the owners of hundreds of MSPs to free up their time, concentrate on doing what is important and make more money.

Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardtubb/

Thanks also goes to Praveen Ramesh from SuperOps.ai and the host of SuperPod, for also joining Paul to share the best piece of business advice he's ever been given.

Praveen handles all things growth and product marketing at SuperOps.ai. He’s super passionate about helping MSPs overcome their go-to-market challenges, and achieve sustainable growth – that’s the reason you will see him sharing everything he knows about marketing and growth throughout many MSP communities. When not thinking about marketing, you will see him binging videos on productivity and cricket!

Connect with Praveen on LinkedIn: https://in.linkedin.com/in/rameshpraveen

Find out more about this September's Ultimate MSP podcast crossover event, including the $1000 prize: https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/MSPpodcastcrossover

Thank you to Stuart Holtby from GetInSync Strategic Management for joining Paul to discuss a potential new vCIO revenue stream for your MSP.

MSPs turn to Stuart when they are fed up with being treated as a faceless vendor caught in the MSP commodity trap. Stuart works closely with MSP owners to differentiate their firms by offering an exceptional vCIO service. Using the GetInSync framework, MSPs gain a clear line-of-sight to their clients’ business drivers and are empowered to craft a game-changing Business-IT strategy for their clients. Connect with Stuart on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartholtby/ Extra show notes: * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * On the subject of creating influential marketing, Paul recommended the book / audiobook Influence by Robert Cialdini: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Influence-Psychology-Robert-Cialdini-PhD/dp/006124189X * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Influence-Audiobook/B00N349QTG * Paul mention the UK tax relief scheme for home workers: * https://www.gov.uk/tax-relief-for-employees/working-at-home * Find out more about this September's MSP marketing podcast crossover event including the $1000 prize: * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/MSPpodcastcrossover * Thank you to Adam Wootton from Impact Sales Coaching for recommending the book Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Miracle-Morning-Not-So-Obvious-Guaranteed-Transform/dp/0979019710 * https://uk.linkedin.com/in/adam-wootton-b4607015 * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 * https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast * https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa * https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast * https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 * https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ * https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ * https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Fresh every Tuesday.

Paul Green: For MSPs around the world, this is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: We've hit a big milestone this week. Welcome to episode 150 of the podcast, here's what we got coming up for you this week.

Stuart Holtby: Hi, I'm Stuart and. We'll be talking about how you can take your PCI, practice up a notch and make more money.

Paul Green: That's my guest Stuart Holtby, and he's here to talk about VCIO, virtual chief information officer. It should be or could be a revenue and profit stream in every MSP. We're going to be talking about that later on in the show. I've also got an idea for you to help your staff. It's a way of helping them with the cost of living crisis that we're going through right now, but it's also a way of showing to them that you really care. It's a simple idea. Won't cost you a huge amount of money or reveal it to you later on in the podcast,

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

Paul Green: Last week on the show, I introduced you to three very clever weapons of influence, and they come from a book called Influence by Dr. Robert Cialdini, a psychology professor who focuses on marketing. Now I've got three more of those weapons to tell you about this week. So last week we looked at social proof, reciprocity and commitment and consistency. And the first we're looking at today is liking. If someone likes you, you will be in a better position to influence them. And just like last week, we were saying all of the weapons of influence we were talking about were essentially core psychology. They talked to our core programming. So too does liking because our core programming that drives us today is the same programming that we had in caves a hundred thousand years ago.

Paul Green: And of course, back then we were in the middle of the food chain. So things ate us. There were also no police officers. So people would kill us. Could meet someone one loud, walking down a country lane. If the dinosaurs donate you, some other kind of cave dweller can come up to you and smack you on the head with a club. And there's no consequence. There's absolutely zero consequence.

Paul Green: So that's why we evolved the ability to instantly gauge whether or not we like someone or whether we are fearful of them. And we still have this today. When you meet people and you shake hands with them, we do form an instant sort of appreciation of whether or not this person is safe or not safe. We call it gut feel, but it's actually the thing that's kept us alive. And of course, because our ancestors back in cave days carry bread, and it's weird to think that you've got family from a hundred thousand years ago that lived in caves. Anyway, you get the idea. So we are the evolution of that sense of feel. That sense of acceptance, that emotional gut feel because obviously we are the survivors and that makes sense from an evolution point of view.

Paul Green: So if someone likes you, particularly, if they like you a lot, then you are much more likely to be able to influence them. Now, this is why in your marketing, you need to put you everywhere. I need to see photos of you. I need to see videos of you. I need to learn more about your story and not your boring computer story. I first got an Amigo in 1982, please do write to the usual address to tell me it came out in 1987 or whatever is the case.

Paul Green: But I want to know about your real story. Why do you live in the city where you are? What is it about that city? You love show me your other half. Show me your kids. Tell me what you do. What are you involved in? How do you give back to the community? No one can get to like you if you are hiding behind a brand and a website and stock images, you've got to show people the real. You know that when you go and sit down with a prospect and you talk about their business, they bond with you in some way, they're not picking your MSP, that picking you. And they're doing that because they've formed a relationship with you. They've realised they like you over a couple of meetings. We can actually start doing that earlier on through our marketing. And it's why we know that people buy from people, so show the people, the people it's as simple as that.

Paul Green: Now the next one that we've got is authority. So people in a position of authority are much more likely to influence. In the old days. This was why doctors, medical doctors wore white coats, because if you had a white coat you were an authority figure. It's why the police, it's why lots of people wear uniforms because uniforms set up a sense of authority within us. Now you can build authority as well. And the good news is you don't need to wear a uniform. But what you do need to do is to act like an authority figure, authority figures write, they create books. They write blog articles. They write on LinkedIn, they write LinkedIn newsletters. They record videos. They do podcasts. They do talks and things. Authority figures are content creators. You can put those two things together. And this has been the case for a hundred years or so. This is not just a new internety thing.

Paul Green: It is simply the case that we perceive high quality content creators to be authority figures. In fact, it's one of the reasons why in my MSP marketing edge program, we give a series of resources to our members to help them catapult themselves into an authority figure position. So for example, we give them an IT services buyers guide, which they can tailor to their MSP and pretend that they wrote it. We give them a book called email hijack, which again, they can put their name on the front. It shows that they are a published author and we give them help doing presentations and talks. And of course, a load of video content as well. So we make it really easy to be an authority figure. People prefer buying from authority figures and are certainly more easily influenced by them. And then we've got the final of Cialdini's six weapons of influence.

Paul Green: And that final one is scarcity. When there is only a finite amount of something left, it forces us to make an opinion whether or not we want it. So restaurants will use this against us. They will say, for example, here's the menu, just a couple of things. This is ours, this is ours, and this, we are down to the last two of those because a good restaurant does run out of dishes. And they're not just taking out the freezer and microwaving them. And if you have a party of four and a waiter says, "We're down to the last two of this dish," all of that party, four instantly thinking they've got to make a decision of, do I want that or not? And then there's that awkward standoff isn't there, where three people in the party want to have it. And it's like, no, no, no, you have it I'll have the Curry or whatever is the case.

Paul Green: Now, how would you use scarcity in your MSP? Because the reality is you have very little scarcity. It's software doesn't run out, does it? I know the number of licenses run out, but you just buy more licenses. And we've kind of had a bit of scarcity with hardware, with the supply chain disruption, but that's not a long term thing. I prefer to deal in long term stuff in the podcast, because that stays relevant to you. Even if you're listening to this in the year 2032, welcome to you from the future if you're listening to this in 2032. If you are, could you email me if I'm not retired or dead or something? Hello at Paul Green's MSP marketing.com would just be really cool to hear from someone in the future. Anyway, it's a hot summer evening as I'm recording this, I think the weather's get into my brain.

Paul Green: The scarcity that you've got within your MSP, the only scarcity is project time, technician time. So I think scarcity can be leveraged when you're doing your strategic reviews with your existing clients and you're talking to them about their roadmap, we mentioned roadmaps last week in the podcast as well. Roadmaps are great because you get someone to sign it or if they're committing themselves to it.

Paul Green: A technology roadmap can also be great for getting them to make a decision. Hey look, you said, you want to do this, this and this. That's going to be 80 hours of project time. We don't have that time now, the earliest we can do is three months time. Did you want to do it in three months or did you want to book it in for, let's say spring next year? And you can actually get people to make a commitment to, if you like, reserve the scarcity, the only scarce resource you've got, which is your project time. So please do go and have a look at this book Influence by dr. Robert Cialdini, it's on Audible. It's a dry read, but it's a great read. And there are so many cool marketing and psychology things that you'll learn from it.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: Weirdly considering it was how I made my living for the first few years of my adult career, I kind of try and avoid the news now. And I don't know about you, but I find the general news just to be very negative, especially at the moment the cost of everything's going up, inflation's going up interest rates, no one can afford to buy a loaf of bread. It's an absolute nightmare. And I just choose to insulate myself from that. So I want to know what's going on, but I just don't want the general negativity pushing down on me. Maybe you are the same. I find a lot of business owners are very similar in this way, but of course I am aware of the cost of living crisis. Certainly that's what we're calling it here in the UK, wherever you are, maybe you are experiencing a similar thing.

Paul Green: I know within the US, there's a similar thing happening as we in the US just a few weeks ago and lots of talk of inflation and gas prices going up. And the reality is it is having an impact on ordinary people. The cost of living, just being around every day, it's costing more. And as a side note, I don't think this is something you should worry about for your business. Even as we go into recessions, I hate saying that recession word, but this recessions are cyclical. They come round. It doesn't really matter. All the recession means is instead of the growth line being slightly up, the growth line is slightly down. It doesn't really mean anything. Yes, it's going to impact some of your clients. Yes. You may use a client. You may use some lose some users as some of your clients shrink down.

Paul Green: I see recessions as opportunities, because if you are fast and fun and you're full of energy and you're going for it and the kind of person that listens to a podcast like this is that kind of person, I think this is an opportunity. There's lots of old, slow MSPs out there that aren't changing. They're not reviewing what they do and adding new services and keeping up to date. Even in the six years that I've been in this world of MSPs in the channel, everything has changed and everything is going to change every, I think, seven to 10 years in our world. So I think if you are staying on top of stuff and you proactively marketing and you're doing things, you honestly have nothing to worry about. If anything, you are going to take clients, you're going to win more new clients and you will come out of this recession better and bigger than you were going in.

Paul Green: And there are literally thousands of case studies of businesses that were built or grew hugely during bad economic times. It doesn't all have to be doom and gloom, but that's a side note. That's not really what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is the impact of the cost of living on your team. You see, as the business owner, you have the ability to take money out of the business anytime you need to, so long as there is money there, of course. But we do this as business owners. If there's money in the bank account, we can dip into that bank account and we can take some of that money out. Of course the accountants and the bean accountants have got to make it right somewhere, but we have access to cash. And we forget as business owners, certainly when you've been doing it for a while. And I've been doing this since 2005, which is a very long time and you kind of forget what it's like to be on a fixed income, which is what probably the vast majority of your team are.

Paul Green: There is an amount of money that they earn. And when that money is gone, they either have to borrow that money or they have to find a way to earn some extra money. It's a fixed income. So for people on a fixed income, when the cost of living goes up, when petrol store gas prices are going up, when energy prices, general food prices, transport, when all of that goes up, even if it's just by a little bit, when you're on a fixed income, then obviously that has an impact. Now you already probably give pay rises to your staff and certainly on a regular basis, that's something you should be doing because of the cost of living is going up.

Paul Green: But pay rises are expensive and I'm actually not a fan at all of just handing out pay rises willy-nilly. The idea that everyone should get a three, four, 5% pay rise every year, just because they'd stayed with you for another year, I don't believe in that. I believe that you give the best people pay rises and you give them big, generous pay rises on an irregular basis, but I'm not suggesting you give your team an extra pay rise. What I am suggesting is that if you choose to make a one off award, give them a one off payment to help them with the cost of living. Now, the reason you'd call it a one off payment is you don't want them to think that this is something you're going to do on a regular basis because the problem with bonuses, or pay raises is if they happen on a regular basis is people come to expect them.

Paul Green: If you give them a 3% pay raise every February say then every February comes around, people are expecting that pay rise. And I've seen MSPs get to reposition where they're having to justify to their staff why they can't give them a pay this year. And because the business hasn't performed so well, it's crazy. Shouldn't be like that. So you could make a one off payment to your team to help with the cost of, or the rising cost of living. And that might be a few hundred pounds, a few hundred dollars, whatever is comfortable to you. But really importantly, you just give them that as a one off. I mean, what you could do is you could time it carefully. For example, here in the UK, gas and electricity prices have gone up quite dramatically. After years of them being sort of artificially capped by the government or something like that, but they've gone up and they're going up again in this fall, this autumn and they're going to go up again in the new year.

Paul Green: And a lot of people are paying twice as much now for their gas, electricity than they were paying before. So it would make sense if you were in the UK, for example, to time your one off payment, to the point at which those bills go up and if we look at what this actually is, it's you saying to your staff, "I understand, I understand that the cost of living has gone up and here is a one off bit of money just to help you out."

Paul Green: Now, if they choose to go and spend it on a PlayStation and not on electricity, that's their choice. That's nothing to do with you. The point is that you are showing them empathy. We talked about empathy. Didn't we? A number of weeks ago in the podcast, you are empathising with your team and their position.

Paul Green: Now, if you are going to pay it, let's say in two lumps, so lump in one month and lump couple of months later, what you should do if you decide to do this is you should tell them about it now. So you might say to them, "Hey guys, I'm going to do a payment to help you with the cost of living in two months time, I'm going to give you this much, two months after that, I'm going to give you that much." Why would you tell them about that now? Because you get the benefit, in fact, you get three big benefits. You get the wow factor of telling them, let's hope they don't listen to this podcast, the wow factor of you telling them, and you're showing that you're in tune, then you get the payment and then you get the second payment. So you get three sort of emotional benefits from you making that payment.

Paul Green: I think you should do this with pay raises and bonuses as well. If you're going to give someone a bonus, tell them about it a month before they get the cash so you get two impacts from it. If it's pay rises and announce it two months before, so you get all of the emotional benefits and the desire to retain, the desire to stay. Obviously retention is something we all have to think about right now because of how difficult it is to recruit technicians. Have a think about that. What would be a reasonable amount of money? I don't know. I think that depends for you talking to some UK MSPs a couple of weeks ago, we said probably around about 500 pounds, which is about $600 maybe, would be a generous thing. Obviously split into two payments for cash flow. Depends how many staff you've got depends how much the cost of living has gone up.

Paul Green: One of the MSPs I work with says all of his technicians, they live with mom and dad. And so what's the point of giving them money to help with the electricity bills, because it's never going to get to the electricity bill. They're going to spend it on beer and games. So I completely get that. So I think you do it in your own situation. Just want final aside on this, if you are in the UK, there is also a tax benefit which gives the benefit, I think it's around six pounds a week. So all of your staff can fill in a form and we'll put a link to this in the show notes, all of your staff can fill in a form and online through the government gateway thing. And basically they tell the government that they work from home on a regular basis, which I'm sure they do.

Paul Green: They do don't they do. Yes they do. So they will then get the equivalent of, I think it's a tax benefit, but it'll save them the equivalent of six pounds a week. Well that adds up six pounds a week, six pounds a month. I can't remember it's six pounds or something. It's free money. So it's free money for working from home and they don't have to fill in a tax return, which is critical because ordinary employees hate filling in tax returns. We do it because we have to, most people will choose not to do it, but they literally just fill in a form and it adjusts their tax code thing. So we'll put a link to that in the UK, wherever you are in the world, it's perhaps worth having a look at your local tax laws just to see, is there any kind of work from home benefit or allowance or something or is there anything else?

Paul Green: Can you help your team to claim that kind of allowance? Certainly for that UK one, because it requires people sitting down filling in a form. I would recommend if you are going to do that, you actually sit down with your team and do it. You could do it as a team thing and over lunch, it takes like 10 minutes to do, but you are kind of almost forcing them to do it, to save them money at no cost to you, but they get a bit of extra benefit. So you go and have a look and see what local benefits there are available to you in your local area.

Voiceover: The ultimate MSP podcast crossover.

Paul Green: Just before we get to this week's big interview, we've got something a little bit different for you. September is such an important month for growing your business because people come back from their summer, vacations, their holidays and they kind of get their head down and plow on with doing as much as they can to grow their business throughout the next few months, before we get to the Christmas break. Now the ordinary business owners are managers that you want to reach, they're doing that right now, which makes it a great opportunity for you to reach out to them, because this is the point, they're starting to make their big plans and implement them. So I've got together with a bunch of other great MSP podcasters around the world and together we are sharing our knowledge, our best ideas throughout September. Today it's Richard Tub and Pravin Ramesh.

Pravin Ramesh: Hey folks, this is Pravin Ramesh from SuperOps.ai. I'm super excited to be part of this ultimate MSP podcast crossover event happening in September. And as part of this, I wanted to share the one piece of advice that I have followed being part of a startup and in my personal life as well. We grossly overestimate what we can do in the short term and highly underestimate what we can do in the long term, and when I say short term, it's like six months, one year, and when I say long term, it's five years, 10 years. So it's these unsexy little things, boring tasks done with deliberate practice and deliberate improvement over time, that ensures that your results starting and leads to massive success. I think as humans and as businesses, we grossly underestimate the power of compounding. And once they realise that when someone gave me this advice, my life changed forever.

Voiceover: The ultimate MSP podcast crossover.

Richard Tub: Hey Richard Tub here, the host of Tub Talk the podcast for IT consultants. Now we are celebrating the ultimate MSP crossover event all through September. So here's the best piece of business advice I've ever been given. Don't try to do this alone. Running a managed service provider business can be a hugely rewarding endeavor, but it can be a lonely tough slog. One way to mitigate this and accelerate your growth is to seek out like-minded individuals and communities. For instance, I'd highly recommend you attend a local peer group where you can speak to other MSP owners about your challenges and fast track your solutions. You can also get involved in communities like the tech tribe and CompTIA, where you soon realize that your fellow MSP owners can help you.

Richard Tub: You might also seek out mentors and coaches, people who have been there and done that. In short, don't try to do this on your own. You can grow your business a lot faster and have a lot more fun. If you seek out people to surround yourself with, for advice and encouragement. Now I'll be back on that ultimate MSP crossover show on the 30th of September. And remember you can win $1,000 by posting about our crossover on LinkedIn. Use the hashtag MSP podcast crossover to enter the drawing.

Voiceover: The big, big interview.

Stuart Holtby: So hi, I'm Stuart Holtby and I'm from GetInSync and I'm here to help IT professionals get unstuck and get in sync.

Paul Green: And what we mean by that of course is helping them to win lots more business, which we're going to talk about later on in the interview. Now you are an MSP owner yourself, Stuart. So tell us a little bit about your background. How did you get started and what kind of business are you running now?

Stuart Holtby: Yeah, when I started Paul, we weren't really called on MSP. So I started in 1989 and yes, that's correct, 1989, that's before cell phones and internet. So carried a pager and did all that. And we built our business on the burgeoning course of networking. That's how we began well back. Some of your listeners will know Novel and I think that's kind of gone by the dinosaur, but we used to be the Novel certified partner. And of course then back then it was really novel to connect two or more computers and share a printer. And that's how we grew. So we grew to about 35 employees and then moved into the dot com space and everyone knows the history of that. And so when we hit the dot com we shrank back down to smaller size and that's where we are now.

Paul Green: Okay. And what was the point that you shifted your business model away from the old fashioned break fix and more into managed services?

Stuart Holtby: Well, we started amount of services, sort the mid, like I said, 1995. They didn't really call it MSP back then we called it virtual IT. So we were your virtual IT group and you could actually obviously contact us. And back then it was kind of a weird financial model because you used to have a bank of money with us and then you would draw from that. So it was kind of almost like a prepaid service, but it was not really kind of geared as a monthly recurring revenue. It was more along the lines. So we knew that was a zero sum game because we had to sit around for the phone to ring for us to make money. And someone had to have a problem for us to make money. So, that's just a completely zero sum game. So that's when we started moving into that more, I guess, what is now called managed services. And so we moved into that in the late nineties, but we also moved into the dot com business and started doing websites, web portals, and pretty much driven by customer need.

Paul Green: Sure. And today would you say you've got the standard... I'm going to put standard in speech marks, but the standard managed services model, so monthly recurring revenue and they pay you a fee, whether or not there's a problem, and of course you're doing proactive work as well. Is that the model that you're up today?

Stuart Holtby: Well, actually it's interesting. We've sort of moved away from all of the actual speeds and feeds, wires and pliers, and we really turned the business into what is, I think, referred to as a virtual CIO. We like to call it more key account management or fractional CIO whereby, more on the consulting side. So digital transformation and we are really turning around it teams and their organizations. So senior executives usually bring us in when their IT isn't working the way they want. And so we work closely with MSPs and we help them get them unstuck and get out of rut, show them sort a fresh way of thinking and particularly leveraging that digital transformation to develop new business for their clients.

Voiceover: Sure, sure. So we're going to talk about your platform, GetInSync in a little while, first of all, just go back and explore this VCIO. Now I'm guilty of letting that phrase come out now and again, in the podcast, VCIO. Now we all know, most of us know what it means, virtual chief information officer, but it's one thing to understand what the acronym stands for and it's another thing to actually understand what that means. Assume that I'm a seven year old, teach me what a VCIO is. Tell me I was a seven year old, Stuart.

Stuart Holtby: It's really designed to take a practical view of how technology can make a business more money. That's it in a nutshell. So what I mean by that is that instead of focusing on speeds and feeds, wires and pliers, let's talk about growing revenues, so the top line, let's talk about shrinking expense, so the bottom line, or what's really in the news these days is reducing risk. So that's fortifying your environment so you're protected against the bad guys.

Paul Green: And I assume that because this is a more strategic thing, you are taking a higher level approach and therefore you are charging a lot more, even though you are doing less stuff for the clients.

Stuart Holtby: Yeah. It's not, it's mostly that strategic element whereby you're aligning the business's strategy with the IT strategy. And so if the business, for example, let's just say, for example, one of their initiatives is to be more environmentally friendly. Well, that's sometimes lost on the traditional IT guys. They're like, well, that doesn't mean anything to me. Well, but then it does because how can you be more environmentally friendly by providing unique technologies? Well perhaps you can digitize all the paper in the organization, and if you're by digitizing all the paper, you're actually saving the environment. So there's a number of ways you can connect those initiatives that look a little fuzzy to the historical or the traditional IT guy and you can kind of relate it back to how you're going to push that or that thrust forward for the business.

Voiceover: And what kind of business owner or what kind of management team really thrive with that kind of service?

Stuart Holtby: The IT leadership are looking for that coaching and teams of IT managers really are looking for that variety of pertinent topics that help that business succeed. And what I mean by that is that usually we get some tremendous success and people rave about our work from the way that we approach it in terms of our operating model. So what we look at is how can we leverage what you own already within your organization? So it's kind of those hidden IT assets. A lot of technology gets underutilized. So what we're trying to do is really turn on the technology you already have and really make that resource, if you will, available to the business. Does that make sense?

Paul Green: Makes perfect sense. So you have a platform called GetInSync, which you supply to MSPs and it allows MSPs, well, tell me if I've got this correct that your platform allows MSPs to identify, sell and deliver these VCRO services. Have I got that right?

Stuart Holtby: Hundred percent. And so what it does is it really provides that... We know it's hard for it professionals to really get that client's business strategy. And because often it's, I don't know, fuzzy. So there's a really good saying your strategy needs a strategy. But so what we do is we have this GetInSync platform that's specifically designed for MSPs to help it professionals really see their high level business opportunities and help their clients make that smart it investment and grow their company. Most MSPs turn to GetInSync when they need to gain a clear line of sight to the business drivers and really implement and craft a game changing business IT strategy that delivers business innovation. So we often see the differentiators there are really... MSPs are being more commoditized, and so this gives them a unique differentiator so they can have more of a face because I think one of the biggest risks with MSPs is they're becoming that faceless vendor caught in the MSP what I call commodity trap.

Paul Green: Yeah, yeah, totally. And more of a commodity you become the less value people see in what you do, which is quite ironic really. Obviously you've gone from being a supplier to ordinary businesses to actually creating this platform to help MSPs. What was your a-ha moment for want of a better phrase, the moment when you realized, hang on, there's an issue here. There's a problem. And I could build something or create something to fix that problem.

Stuart Holtby: Well, it was interesting because in the rush to help our customers, we'd always get them what they asked for, but then we discovered it wasn't what they needed. And they were very frustrated with that. And so we needed a way in which to understand their true needs and get their real requirements. And so the only way that we could do that is by putting in a decision management system, which is what GetInSync is, to really take that frustration away. Often the old story, person gets off the aircraft with a magazine and says, "Get me one of them." Well, it's really not what you need, but it's what you're asking for. So it's really frustrating dealing with that and the other a-ha moment was we were frustrated with giving away all the advice for free.

Stuart Holtby: So I think what's unfortunate, MSPs, there's gold all around their feet. They're just not picking it up because the other a-ha moment was we got introduced to a strategic consultant from a very large charted accounting firm and he came in and our client introduced me as the IT guy, "Well meet our IT guy. This is our new strategic consultant." Wait, wait a minute. Why aren't you asking me? Because they didn't know. They didn't know we did that kind of service. We could provide that kind of or perform those kind of functions. So again, we are faceless to the business. So that was the other a-ha moment.

Paul Green: So this is really about taking things that almost any MSP can do the ability and knowledge and actually repackaging it in a way where it has a higher perceived value for the clients.

Stuart Holtby: That's right. And we have some MSPs that are charging. Like I always say to them, close the front door, close the back door service the calling you already have. And so we have some MSPs that are charging 5,000 a month for fractional CIO services. And the customers are delighted by the fact that they can hire and get a CIO for what it would normally cost them at half the price. So they see it as a super discount. And think of it, fractional CIO or strategic account management is what we like to frame it as more so it's that key account management is really what it's about. So sometimes the client doesn't even need to know you're being a fractional CIO to them. You know what I'm saying?

Paul Green: What stops more MSPs from selling this high level consulting, this high level strategy work? Do you think it's confidence?

Stuart Holtby: It's that, but it's also, I acknowledge that it's not for the faint of heart. You're being called into the boardroom. You're getting out of the server room and getting into the boardroom. It can be, but with the GetInSync method, we prepare you for all of that. So we take you through an eight part framework, we call it the eight eights where you advocate, orchestrate, facilitate, iterate, integrate. It goes on. But the point being is that we prepare you for all that so that you have confidence, like you say, it is a bit of a lack of confidence and we acknowledge it's not for the faint of heart, like I say so, but we prepare you for all of that. And really it's to get rid of the unhealthy perceptions of MSPs, what they have today, because there's a lot of really, really strong people within these MSPs that we've come and it's a diamond in the rough.

Paul Green: Yeah, I love that. There's something you said earlier about, there's plenty of gold at your feet. You just got to go and pick that gold up, which I think is an epic phrase. So tell us a little bit more about the GetInSync platform. So is it a mixture of training and support? How exactly does it work?

Stuart Holtby: Well, it's traditionally known I guess if you will, in the IT world as portfolio management. So it's IT portfolio management, but it's more than that. It's an akin to QBRs, so quarterly business reviews. We take all of the information that we know about the client and we put it into the GetInSync framework, into the platform, which it comes with awesome SAS tools and so forth. And then what happens is that the rich information starts to, if you will, bubble up into this dashboard and gives you that strategic capability to make really informed decisions.

Stuart Holtby: So what we're saying is the QBRs are sort of dead. It's an outdated approach because think of brushing your teeth every quarter and thinking you have good hygiene, you know what I mean? What we're trying to say is that you need to be doing this in a real time, kind of having that real time dashboard and information at your fingertips, to be able to pivot with the business and understand what their real pains are, what client are they trying to land? What revenue or goals are they trying to meet and then really tailor the IT investments to meet those challenges of your client. So, like I say, it really opens you up and endears you to the client because of course you're talking their business.

Paul Green: And the best way to support someone or sell something to them is to be in their shoes to understand what their priorities are, their fears, their worries, and their needs. So this is great stuff. So Stuart, tell us what your website address is, and what's the best way to get in touch with you.

Stuart Holtby: So the website is getinsync.ca. So spelled exactly as it said, and you can also reach out to me on LinkedIn. So it's Stewart with a U Stuart Holtby, H-O-L-T-B-Y. Reach out to me on LinkedIn and we can get you plugged in and have that great conversation, how you can pick up that gold. And again, the necessity is what? The motherhood of invention did I say that correctly? So this was exactly what we did after the dot com blowout, and we just tried to bring that enterprise thinking into midsize and smaller businesses and been very successful at getting, like I say, folks really rave about it and you get endeared to them. Because now, like I say, you're talking about their business.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast. This week's recommended book.

Adam Wood: Hi, this is Adam Wood. My book recommendation is Hal Elrod's Miracle Morning. You win the morning. You're going to win the day and help more people.

Voiceover: Coming up, coming up next week.

George Smith: Hi everyone. George Smith here from Augmentt. Join me and Paul for the podcast next week where an Irishman and an Englishman will talk about a Canadian company making waves across the globe with stats management. Don't want to miss it.

Paul Green: Subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen so you never miss an episode, because also coming up next week, we're going to be talking about cause related marketing. It's essentially helping charities, but using the help that you're giving to charities or some other the kind of organization, turning it into a marketing advantage for your MSP. We'll also be looking at the ham in the pan. And this is something which has come out of a great book I've been rereading recently called Traction and it's about us doing things the way they've always been done and forgetting why we started to do those things in the first place. We'll explore that more next week. We have a ton of new content for you on YouTube. We're adding two to three new videos a week at youtube.com/mspmarketing. So please do check that out and join me next Tuesday, have a very profitable week in your MSP.

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8am)

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Episode 149 includes: * 00:00 Create amazing marketing with these 3 influential weapons * 09:20 Find out about the $5,000 MSP giveaway * 12:45 MSP failure advice from the MSP Podcast Crossover * 14:40 What is 'scrappy marketing' and how you can use it * 27:49 A great book recommendation all about knowing your audience

Featured guests:

As part of this month's Ultimate MSP podcast crossover event, thank you to Adam Walter, co-host of The Humanize IT Podcast, for joining Paul to share the best piece of business advice he's ever been given.

Find out more about this September's Ultimate MSP podcast crossover event, including the $1000 prize: https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/MSPpodcastcrossover

Check out the Humanize IT Podcast: https://anchor.fm/humanize-it

Connect with Adam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamswalter/

Thank you to Colt Briner from Scrappy AF Marketing for joining Paul to discuss how smart marketing on a low budget can have huge impact.

Colt helps mid-stage organisations apply creativity and strategy to capture market share from industry incumbents and build pathways into new markets. Colt combines rich strategy with deeply practical application - and a bit of humour - to ensure his listeners come away equipped to succeed as better marketers and better leaders.

Connect with Colt on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/colt-briner Extra show notes: * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * On the subject of creating influential marketing, Paul recommended the book / audiobook Influence by Robert Cialdini: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Influence-Psychology-Robert-Cialdini-PhD/dp/006124189X * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Influence-Audiobook/B00N349QTG * Find out how to leave a product / vendor revue with Channel Program and earn your share of $5000: * https://channelprogram.com/products * Find out more about this September's MSP marketing podcast crossover event including the $1000 prize: * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/MSPpodcastcrossover * Thank you to Mike Verret from Verret & Associates for recommending the book Rise & Grind by Daymond John: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rise-Grind-Outperform-Outhustle-Successful/dp/0804189951 * https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-verret-7027211 * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 * https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast * https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa * https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast * https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 * https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ * https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ * https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Fresh, every Tuesday, for MSPs around the world, around the world, this is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast, podcast.

Paul Green: Hello, superstar. Welcome back to the show. Here's what we've got coming up for you this week.

Colt Briner: Talk about strong strategies and creative execution to capture market share from industry incumbents if you're a small starting business.

Paul Green: That's Colt Briner. He's a lovely guy, and he's going to be talking later on in the show about how you can steal market share from the big incumbent MSPs in your marketplace.

Paul Green: We're also talking this week about cash. There's a big cash giveaway. $5,000 is being given away in total, and you can claim your share of it. I'll tell you how in a few minutes time.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: One of the best business books that I've ever read is a fusion of two of my favourite subjects. You've got a bit of marketing in it, and you've got a lot of psychology in it. And those two things going together made for an absolutely cracking book. The book is called Influence, by Dr. Robert Cialdini, who is a psychology professor, but who specialises in marketing. And he wrote this book, I think it was mid-80s when he wrote it, and it's quite a dry read. I think if you are really into your hardcore marketing, you'll enjoy it a great deal. I would definitely start with it on Audible and have a listen to it.

Paul Green: You may find it's a little bit too dry for you if you only have a sort of small interest in marketing and it's not your passion as it is for me. But, I try and reread this book every year. There's always, every time I read it, there's something in it, something that I've perhaps learnt before and forgotten and it's just a good reminder. In fact, I'm going to start rereading it tonight. This can be one of my autumn reads, my fall reads.

Paul Green: What I'm going to do this week is I'm going to take you through three of the core principles in this book, so three weapons of influence. And then next week on next week's podcast, I'm going to take you through the other three. Because in this book, Cialdini gives you six weapons of influence. Now because this book has been around for, what's coming up to, I guess, 40 odd years, because of that, you will have heard of a lot of these before. But just because you're hearing about something again and again and again, it doesn't mean that it has less value. In fact, if anything, it's the other way around. It has greater value if you keep hearing about it again and again.

Paul Green: And the first weapon of influence that I want to focus on that's in this book is called social proof. Now we've talked about social proof a great deal in this podcast. We've talked about testimonials, reviews, case studies. Social proof works because, at a deep psychological level, people are motivated, very highly motivated, to do what most other people are doing. And this goes back to when we all lived in caves and we were in the middle of the food chain. So back then, there really was safety in numbers. If you lived with 50 other people in your tribe, in a cave somewhere, and those 50 people started running, you didn't stop to think about it and to ask, "Hey, what's everyone running for?" You just ran with them. It was a bit like being a sheep. You just did it. And you didn't stop to think about it, it was basic programming that's within you.

Paul Green: Now these days, we have social proof, which is our attempt to sort of hook into that. So, when you see a case study, in fact, this is why you need a case study, when you put out a case study of someone who's used your MSP and they had a problem, and it was a nightmare of a problem, and you solved that problem for them and you made their situation better, and you just smoothed the path for them to greater growth or some of the kind of happy ending, you're demonstrating social proof in action.

Paul Green: And, people are heavily influenced by other people they perceive to be like them, which is why you want social proof from business owners and managers. If you're in a niche, you're in a niche or a vertical, then you want social proof from within that vertical. For example, I have about 65 reviews on Google, and they're all from MSPs, because I only work with MSPs. Kind of makes sense, doesn't it really? So that's your first weapon of influence.

Paul Green: Now your second weapon is something called reciprocity. It took me ages to learn how to say that word properly, reciprocity, and I can roll my Rs as well. So reciprocity is, when we are given something, it sets up a need, not a want, but a need to reciprocate, to give something back. This is why, if you were pushing consumer goods, you would offer free samples. If you go to the food store, to the supermarkets, what do you see? You see free samples of stuff. That reciprocity really does work. When you give someone something, it sets up that need to give it back. It's like a favour.

Paul Green: This week, as I'm recording this, it's the school holidays here in the UK. And this week, my daughter's been at a stage school, learning how to act and stuff. And on Wednesday, I had meetings and other stuff and I just couldn't take her in. One of the other parents very, very thankfully jumped to help me. And, she sort of had her at her house early in the morning, and then I had her at her house afterwards. And I have this massive reciprocity now that's been set up in my head that I need to do a favour for that parent now. Does that make sense? So, the other parent hasn't asked for the favour, and probably never will, but at the back of my head, I have to do something to help that parent, just because they helped me out of a difficult situation. That's reciprocity in action.

Paul Green: How would you use reciprocity? Well, there are lots of different ways. If we think about an old marketing tactic that used to be used by MSPs years ago, which is the free audit, hooking someone in and doing a free audit of their business, maybe there's a level of reciprocity in action with a free audit. I mean, these days, you do a dark web scan or something like that. That would be a clever way to do it. And there are, of course, lots of great places to go and get those dark web scans done now. But yeah, that might be a way of leveraging that kind of reciprocity.

Paul Green: The third weapon of influence that I want to talk to you about today is commitment and consistency. So this is, again, is down, all of this is down to the basics of how we are driven. When we commit ourselves to something, and we do that in front of other people, we tend to be quite consistent in that behaviour. So I'll give you an example. Let's say you want to get fit, and you go and join a gym. And the chances are high that if you just join a gym on your own, you will do what millions and millions of people have done, and will do in the future, which is you join a gym. You go on day one all fired up. You go on day two, a little less fired up. Day three, yeah, not quite as fired up. Day four, you don't go, but you keep the membership for another year, even though you don't go to the gym. Now that's what happens to people when they go on their own.

Paul Green: When someone goes and they have a PT, a personal trainer, or better still, a friend of theirs who goes to the gym with them, both of those people tend to go and train longer. And, their desire to train has tailored off at the same it would if you were just going solo. But what you don't want to do is you don't want to be seen to be inconsistent to your friend. It's crazy, really. You've got two people, neither of whom really wants to go to the gym, but they're going, not to let the other person down. Isn't that crazy? But you can actually leverage that.

Paul Green: So, in terms of your marketing, how would you leverage commitments and consistency? Well, I think here, it's for existing clients. So when you are doing your QBRs, your quarterly business reviews, or, as I prefer to call them, your strategic reviews, I think, getting someone to sign off a future plan, almost like a roadmap, I think roadmaps can be an important and critical part of a strategic review. And actually sitting with your clients and talking about, asking them about their technology, their growth plans, what's going to be happening in the next two to three years, that's a smart thing to do. Put together a roadmap and get them to sign that roadmap. Why do we ask them to sign something? Because someone signing something is psychologically them committing themselves to that. So they are then... No, there's no actual commitment. No one's going to hold them to that roadmap. But mentally, emotionally, at a psychological level, they are committing themselves to that roadmap, and they are going to want to be consistent with that commitment.

Paul Green: And, that means that they are essentially, they're not just really signing a roadmap, are they? They are signing a pledge to stay with your MSP for the next two to three years. In fact, I believe you use strategic reviews to stop clients ever leaving. They might not have signed the new contract with you yet, but if emotionally, mentally and psychologically, they have committed for another two to three years, they're not going anywhere.

Paul Green: So next week, we will do the three more weapons of influence. If you get a chance, do go and get this book off Audible. It's called Influence, by Robert Cialdini. It's worth the Audible credit that you'll spend on it. And I think, as I said, you'll find some fascinating things inside that book.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: It's not so much a clever idea today as a clever way for you to take your share of a $5,000 giveaway. That's what we're attempting to do this week, across all of my channels, this podcast, YouTube, my email list, my Facebook group and LinkedIn. I am pushing this and pushing this. It's going to take you 10 to 15 minutes of work. That's all. And that 10 to 15 minutes is going to earn you up to $45. And the best bit is, in earning that $45, you're actually helping other MSPs. Let me explain what's going on, and tell you how you can get your share of this $5,000 giveaway.

Paul Green: So right at the beginning of this year, I had two wonderful guests on the show. It was Matt Solomon and Kevin Lancaster. And they'd launched a brand new thing. It was called Channel Program. You may be aware of it. It's been growing at some pace this year, really getting onto quite a lot of people's radars. If you haven't checked it out yet, just go and Google Channel Program. And for those of you not in the US, it's Program with one M. So, here in the UK, we spell program with two Ms and an E. Obviously, we're doing it wrong here. It's just the one M. So go and Google Channel Program. They launched that in January.

Paul Green: And, a couple of weeks ago, they launched a reviews platform as part of that. So they've got all the big vendors on there. In fact, there are tons of vendors. We are on there with the MSP Marketing Edge. And, what Matt and Kevin are looking to do now is to build up a huge bank of independent, unbiased reviews about the vendors. So obviously, they just want ordinary MSPs like you to go in and leave reviews about products that they are using. We've already got a small number of reviews for the MSP Marketing Edge, which is wonderful, and thank you very much to my members that have left those reviews.

Paul Green: But this is where the cash comes in. Because right now, they are rewarding MSPs with $15. I think it is as an Amazon gift card. So you get $15 to spend on Amazon, for every review that you leave. To a maximum of three reviews. Otherwise, I guess you could claim the entire $5,000 yourself. But, what we are doing this week is I'm helping Matt and Kevin to get more of those reviews. They've given me a budget of $5,000 to give away. So you won't get the money from me. The money will come from them. But all you have to do is leave a review. So let me tell you how to do it.

Paul Green: You simply go and register yourself a free account at Channel Program, so it's channelprogram.com, and then you go to /products. Channelprogram.com/products, that's where you search for... Basically, go and search for your stack. So take your top three favourite parts of your stack, or your top three favourite vendors. Go and look for them in Channel Program, and then go and leave them an independent review. And once you've done those reviews, as I say, you'll get those $15 gift cards to spend. Three reviews maximum, $45 for you to spend. And we are trying to give away that $5,000 across this week. Tell your friends. I was going to say tell your mom, but actually, it doesn't really affect your mom, does it, unless your mom runs an MSP. So if your mom runs an MSP, tell your mom. Otherwise, get yourself to channelprogram.com/products, write a review and get some free cash in your pocket.

Voiceover: The ultimate MSP podcast crossover.

Paul Green: Just before we get to this week's big interview, we've got something a little bit different for you. September is such an important month for growing your business, because people come back from their summer vacations, their holidays, and they kind of get their head down and plow on with doing as much as they can to grow their business throughout the next few months before we get to the Christmas break. Now the ordinary business owners and managers that you want to reach, they're doing that right now, which makes it a great opportunity for you to reach out to them, because this is the point they're starting to make their big plans and implement them.

Paul Green: So I've got together with a bunch of other great MSP podcasters around the world, and together, we are sharing our knowledge, our best ideas throughout September. Today, it's Adam Walter.

Adam Walter: Hi, my name is Adam Walter, and I'm the host of the Humanize IT podcast.

Adam Walter: I'm celebrating the ultimate MSP crossover all through September. And here's the best piece of business advice I've ever been given. Fail fast. Too often, we hold on to projects, teams and ideas too long, because we think, through sheer force of will, we can make them succeed. If we just work a little harder, if we just push a little harder, we'll get there. Instead, accept the failure. Accept the fact that it didn't work. And then continuously improve. Make what you're doing today look like crap tomorrow. So that over time, your business will evolve. Your ideas will evolve. Your teams will evolve. And you will become a best in class business, rather than being stuck on an idea that's not working.

Adam Walter: I'll be back on the Ultimate MSP Crossover Show on September 30th. Remember, you can win a thousand dollars by posting about a crossover on LinkedIn. Use the #MSPpodcastcrossover to enter the draw. We'll see you there.

Voiceover: The big, big interview.

Colt Briner: Hi, I'm Colt Briner with Scrappy AF. I've been helping small and mid stage startup companies grow into their markets, with creative execution of proven strategies.

Paul Green: And, I particularly wanted to get you onto the show to talk about this concept of scrappy marketing. Can you explain what you mean by scrappy marketing? What does that actually mean?

Colt Briner: Sure. Well, as I have been involved with helping early stage companies capture market share from industry incumbents, generally, they don't provide me with a budget. So, I've had to figure out how to get that done with very few resources. And, that's allowed me to really create a list of tactics and executables that can be done for very little money. So you add a lot of creativity and super strong strategy, in order to actually achieve capturing market share from deep-pocketed industry incumbents. So that's the technique of Scrappy.

Paul Green: So it's almost a similar thing to bootstrapping, which of course is a phrase which has been around for many years.

Colt Briner: Definitely. Yeah, you could certainly call it bootstrapping, the bootstrapping version of marketing. It involves a lot of personality. It involves kind of guerilla tactics, in places like conferences and things like that, to create a lot of visibility for a brand, even without spending much money.

Paul Green: Yeah. Impressive. Okay. Well, we're going to come onto some scrappy marketing strategies and tactics later on. Let's, first of all, rewind a little bit. Tell us a bit about you, Colt. Where have you come from? What's in your background? What allows you to be an expert on our podcast today?

Colt Briner: Right on. Well, I appreciate you asking. So, I did start my executive career about 20 years ago with my own startup called Coltronix, which I based on a product which I invented and had manufactured out of China. Before that, I had performed, moonlighted as a professional magician, which helped me kind of get comfortable in front of audiences and engaging people in interesting ideas. And then I started into my professional career being employed. I've been in video streaming technology. I've been in education technology. I've been in analytics and machine learning and robotic process automation. And now, most recently, my last gig as chief marketing officer was for a company in healthcare, specifically the healthcare back office, which is, in the US health system, quite a mess.

Paul Green: Yes. Yes. I can imagine. And, just jumping back to Coltronix, because obviously that's named after you.

Colt Briner: Yeah.

Paul Green: I'd imagine it was. And what was the product that you invented?

Colt Briner: Well, this was just a novelty product. It was one of the first battery-powered light sticks that you could use for camping or partying or emergency use, that type of thing. The glow stick, with the chemical stick, you crack it and use it. You could only use it once. But a battery-powered version, you could use many, many times.

Paul Green: So cool. And how many thousands of those, or millions of those, did you sell across the globe?

Colt Briner: We got up to about 20,000 units a month. And then I think that the ultimate sign that you're making progress is that somebody knocks you off. I did spot my product in the Oriental Trading Company catalog, which is when I decided, well, that was fun.

Paul Green: Yeah. Once it started being copied in China, you've got no chance, really, have you?

Colt Briner: That's right.

Paul Green: So, let's return back to this scrappy marketing. In fact, as we've been talking, I've remembered the musical Hamilton, which I'm sure you've seen, it's-

Colt Briner: Yeah. Totally great.

Paul Green: Disney+. Yeah. Yeah, it is. It's an amazing, I've seen it in London. In fact, we're going to go and see it in Broadway at Christmas time, when we visit the US. But, it was on Disney+ during the pandemic. And my child and I must have watched it perhaps 50 times. And I remember a lyric from one of the songs, Hamilton singing, what was it? It was, "Just like my country, I'm young, scrappy and hungry," which I think was probably the first time, certainly here in the UK, that we'd really heard that expression of scrappy.

Paul Green: So, when we're talking about scrappy marketing, and you were saying it's more personality-based and it's about not spending money, and I know a lot of my listeners, a lot of MSPs are going to be listening to this thinking, "I like the idea of not spending money." What kind of strategies work well for those kind of complicated B2B sales that MSPs have?

Colt Briner: Yeah, totally. So, I'll give you some kind of examples of principles that we're going to use. So, if you're trying to get to a conference, I mean, it can cost $50,000 to exhibit at a conference, right? And what you see is, is business teams, they'll come out and they'll pay for their booths and they'll wait for people to walk by and that type of thing. If I'm going to take a team to a conference, it might not even get a booth. What I'm going to do is, I'm going to make sure that they stand out with really bold shoes, and I mean expensive, nice shoes, the kind of shoes people will go, "Oh, those really nice shoes." That starts a conversation.

Colt Briner: Or, I actually have a team where we worked with The Lapel Project. I don't know if you know Lapel Project. They have really cool adhesive applications that go onto your existing sports coat, and then make the lapel really pop. And if you've got five or six people walking around a conference with something like a really cool hat, some kind of a treatment on the lapel, something like that, bold tie or whatever it is that matches them together, what will happen is that, they'll create a sense of visibility at the conference that can't be outperformed by somebody who's paying for a booth, because your people are sitting in the sessions. They're walking in the halls. It's like, "Well, who are these people with the cool hats or the cool shirts or the cool whatever it is?"

Colt Briner: And that's just a very affordable way to create visibility for your team at a conference, where everybody else is just wearing basic suits. I mean, that creates no visibility. I had a team do bunny slippers at a conference once, and of course that starts conversations, right?

Paul Green: Yes. Yes, it does. Yes. So, essentially, it's about thinking, I hate to use this, it's such a cliche, but thinking outside the box and saying, "If everyone is doing A, what's the B, C or D that we could do differently to them?"

Colt Briner: Yeah. And it's like, sometimes you'll have people who aren't necessarily excited about wearing bunny slippers to the event, but once they see how much attention and visibility and conversations that starts, because that's the point, right? You're at a conference to start conversations. You want to, whether it's about your product or not, if you've got an entree into the discussion, "Hey, I like your shoes. I like your jacket," whatever you do, if you're good at sales, you can take that starting point and roll with it.

Paul Green: Yeah. That makes perfect sense. There's a great book I've just finished listening to on Audible. It's called The Founders. It's about the creators of PayPal. Of course, Elon Musk was one of those. Peter Thiel, there were a number of people involved in PayPal. And, there was a point where, and I'm probably mixing up parts of the story now, but there was a point where PayPal went to an eBay conference. And, they somehow managed to get the vast majority of the audience in this big panel discussion wearing these PayPal tshirts. So as the eBay executives were looking out at the audience that...

Paul Green: They had paid for this conference, and they had paid for this audience, there is a sea of PayPal logos. And this was before eBay bought PayPal to be its payment system. And at the time, PayPal and eBay were in a bit of a war as to which payment system would win on eBay. I mean, that's a great example, I think, of a scrappy solution. Because that cost PayPal, I don't know, a hundred t-shirts, whereas, of course, eBay had paid X hundred thousand dollars, X million dollars to actually put on that conference in the first place.

Paul Green: Realistically, for small businesses, because it's always fun to see big business examples like that. Realistically, for small businesses, what are some of the practical things that you can actually do to stand out, such as you said bunny slippers? What are some everyday things that you can do?

Colt Briner: Personality in your videos is probably the number one that I find. As companies get larger, they have to become much more risk averse. Smaller companies can express a personality. I mean, some really good examples would be like the Dollar Shave Company. When they got started, the commercial that they put out, really, really great, a lot of personality. They put a little bit of language in there. But, people connected with it. It was like, "I like this guy, and I want to buy razors from this guy because that's a personality that I resonate with."

Colt Briner: Same thing with Dr. Squatch soap company, Poo-Pourri, these are some commercial campaigns that had a lot of personality and took risks that large companies can't take, because they were either playing on some humor angles or what it might be, that just conservative large companies can't do.

Colt Briner: So, take advantage of the risk profile that you can, as a small company, that big players just can't compete with. That's an advantage that they don't want you taking on them, but you really can, if you decide, "This is what I'm out to express. This is who I am." Go for it. Put some personality in your marketing, your photos, your videos, your copy, that type of thing, and give somebody something to connect with.

Paul Green: But what would you say to the timid business owner who has heard that advice and thinks, "Yeah, yeah, that's all very well, but I don't see other people doing that. I don't want to put myself out too much out there." What's your advice to them in terms of showing there's nothing for them to lose?

Colt Briner: I would say, well, let's first look at the numbers. I mean, if you look at the campaign success for some of the examples that I just listed, I mean, the numbers speak for themselves. The video views alone on each one of those videos, it's in the tens of millions. So, I think that those numbers should be convincing.

Colt Briner: And then if you think about, maybe you don't want to be edgy, but rather you'd like to put some passion behind communicating purpose, that can be another way to go. And campaigns like Nike's Dream Crazy, the Always Campaign for... A Girl Campaign and Dove's Choose Beautiful Campaign, again, the numbers absolutely speak for themselves on the results of those campaigns. So whether you want to be bold in communicating personality, or bold in talking about the impact that you want to have on the world, step into it because the numbers will validate you.

Paul Green: Yeah. So give me an example of some of the best things that either you've done with your clients, or that you've seen in your research over the years.

Colt Briner: Sure. One of the strongest results that we got working with Ensemble Health Partners was going, like I said, with purpose-driven, to really express the impact that that organisation is trying to have on the world. And, for these guys, these guys worked in the back office of healthcare, as I mentioned. That's a kind of messy space in the US, and hospitals need help in that space. So, what Ensemble did was they communicated that they were out to support these healthcare providers in bringing better health and care to the communities that they were supporting, to step out boldly and say, "The impact that we're trying to have is better health for people's lives."

Colt Briner: And, during the course of that run, we saw a great success, which included growing the company from $60 million to $2 billion in valuation.

Paul Green: Whoa.

Colt Briner: And during the two-year kind of peak of that campaign, Ensemble was securing 60% of the contracts that were being written in their industry. I mean, that's an incredible market share.

Paul Green: That's enormous. That's just phenomenal. But that was a bigger business. It must have been difficult for you to get that business to buy into your methodology, your idea of doing it differently, rather than just going and hiring a mainstream marketing agency.

Colt Briner: It's a good point. One of the things that we found though, it became evident that we needed to do something like this, because of the circumstance that Ensemble was in. Their employees were working in cubicles, hundreds or thousands of miles aways from the hospitals and clinics that they were supporting. So they didn't have really any visibility in terms of, "How does my work as a biller or a coder or a collector lead to a better health in the life of a father, a daughter, a son, a mother?" They didn't see that at all.

Colt Briner: So, we undertook this campaign to create visibility, both internally and externally. Because, when people understood the value of their work, they were more committed to the company. They brought in better ideas and committed better effort. They spoke better about the company. I mean, everything about employee engagement went up, as everything about customer engagement went up. So, it was really a win-win.

Paul Green: Yeah. Yeah, that sounds amazing. Colt, give us a brief overview of what you do to help business owners with their marketing, and then tell us how we can get in touch with you.

Colt Briner: Sure. I appreciate you asking that. So, I generally engage companies in two different ways. One is, you either got a burning platform. You don't have any solution overview video, or you're about to go to a conference, you need a strategy, and we'll just solve one specific problem. The other is, we'll take a look at the revenue goals that you have over the next year, and I'll build a roadmap for you to achieve that in terms of generating leads that can turn into opportunities that turn into revenue.

Colt Briner: Easy to reach me on LinkedIn, Colt Briner. I'm the only Colt Briner on LinkedIn that I found. Or you can find me at scrappyafsolutions.com.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Voiceover: This week's recommended book.

Mike Barrett: Hi, my name's Mike Barrett with Barrett & Associates. And, a book that had a big impact on how I think about business is called Rise and Grind by Daymond John. You may know him from Shark Tank. But what you may not know is how he started his business, creating street wear and selling it out of the back of his car. And, his journey to how he got to where he is now just fascinated me, about how he knows his audience, to the point where the first thing he created generated a cultural storm in street wear. And, that's just an example of how you know the people you want to serve. I would recommend Daymond John and his collection of books to anybody.

Voiceover: Coming up, coming up next week.

Stuart Holtby: Hi, I'm Stuart Holtby, and I'm from GetInSync. And, we'll be here next week and talking about how you can take your vCIO practice up a notch and make more money.

Paul Green: Subscribe wherever you listen to this podcast so you never miss an episode. Because also next week, I've got an idea for you, something that's going to buy you an enormous amount of goodwill with your team, and actually help them as well. And, it's all to do with the cost of living and the crisis and inflation and rising prices and all of that kind of stuff. Don't worry. There'll be nothing negative next week. We don't do negative on this podcast. It's a positive idea, and it's not going to cost you a lot of money either. It will cost you a little bit if you choose to do it. But I'll tell you all about that idea next week.

Paul Green: Plus, of course, we've got three more weapons of influence from the book Influence by Robert Cialdini. Now we have a ton of content over at youtube.com/mspmarketing. We're adding two or three new videos a week. And you can even watch this podcast on YouTube if you want to. It's staying on all of the audio, any platforms, that you also get to see my lovely mug on YouTube while I'm actually presenting the podcast, if you so choose. Join me next Tuesday, and have a very profitable week in your MSP.

Voiceover: Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Rise and Grind: Outperform, Outwork, and Outhustle Your Way to a More Successful and Rewarding Life

View Details

Episode 148 includes: * 00:00 A great example of modern direct mail * 14:03 Clever automation with calendar bookings * 16:47 MSP planning advice from the MSP Podcast Crossover * 19:15 Improve sales with 'relationship signal intelligence' * 29:37 A great book recommendation filled with MSP inspiration

Featured guests:

As part of this month's Ultimate MSP podcast crossover event, thank you to Ian Luckett, the host of The IT Experts Podcast, for joining Paul to share the best piece of business advice he's ever been given.

Find out more about this September's Ultimate MSP podcast crossover event, including the $1000 prize: https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/MSPpodcastcrossover

Check out The IT Experts Podcast: https://innovatetosuccess.com/itega-podcast/

Connect with Ian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianluckett/

Thank you to Jamie Shanks from Pipeline Signals for joining Paul to discuss how to improve sales with 'relationship signal intelligence'. Jamie is the CEO of Pipeline Signals, a startup SaaS firm that helps businesses scale their pipeline through Relationship Signal Intelligence Monitoring by addressing the most common yet unanswered challenges that most sellers have. For the past ten years, Jamie ran Sales for Life, the world's most extensive Social Selling training program for mid-market and enterprise companies. Jamie has delivered workshops across six continents for Microsoft, Thomson Reuters, Oracle, American Airlines & Intel. Connect with Jamie on LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/jamestshanks Extra show notes: * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * On the subject of creating clever calendar automations, Paul recommended the Hubspot CRM: * https://www.hubspot.com * Find out more about this September's MSP marketing podcast crossover event including the $1000 prize: * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/MSPpodcastcrossover * Thank you to Cassandra Morgan from White Whisker Publications for recommending the book MSP Secrets Revealed by Mark Copeman: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/MSP-Secrets-Revealed-inspiration-practical/dp/B0875Z2JLF * https://www.linkedin.com/in/cassandra-morgan-09b7b9126 * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 * https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast * https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa * https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast * https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 * https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ * https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ * https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world, this is Paul Green's MSP marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: Welcome back. We have got another great show for you this week, and this is what's coming up.

Jamie Shanks: Relationship signal intelligence. Watch who leaves your customers and goes into prospects, and you will be able to create opportunities.

Paul Green: That's Jamie Shanks from Pipeline Signals. He's going to be here towards the end of the show, talking about how prospects give off information that could be turned into opportunities for you. For example, if someone posts something on LinkedIn that they've got a new job or that their business has won a big new contract, you can leverage that signal into becoming an opportunity for your MSP. More on that later on, and I've also got a great suggestion for you today from one of our listeners. It's how you can use your live calendar to trigger off some extra marketing things. A lovely automation, we'll talk about how you can do that later on in the show.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: For years, I've been a huge fan of you sending out direct mail items to your prospects and to your leads, and the reason being, when we send something in the post, when we ship something, we mail it, it tends to have a higher proportion of someone's attention than when we send them something digitally. So, if you think back to like 1997 which was 25 years ago, which makes me feel very old because I remember '97 very well, got married the first time that year, don't talk about that marriage, not anymore, but 1997, you had huge amounts of post coming in, physical stuff coming into your house. You had very small amounts of email. 25 years later, completely the other way round. We have a ton of digital things. In fact, the digital overload is overwhelming and yet we have so little stuff coming into our houses in the form of mail. So, when a piece of mail turns up, we tend to give it a little more attention.

Paul Green: Now, I don't get a great deal of good post. Bizarrely, I still get a bank statement from one bank. I've tried to switch it off a number of times from a bank called Santander here in the UK, and they can't figure out which computer is sending me a bank statement every month because I've got it all switched off in my accounts. Anyway, so I get that which that just goes straight into the shredding every month. But every now and again, I'll get an offer of some kind, and I got one a couple of weeks ago which I want to show to you.

Paul Green: Now, I say show, I realise you're probably listening on an audio-only platform. That's how most people consume this podcast. Now, that's okay. As we go through this, I will describe everything I'm looking at, but if you want to see it, we do actually do this podcast now on YouTube. So, it's been on YouTube since we've started, but for the last few, I think the last couple of weeks or so, I've started doing the podcast on camera. So, if you go onto youtube.com/mspmarketing, it's exactly the same podcast, but you'll see me on the camera, and you'll be able to see anything that I'm holding up.

Paul Green: So, I've got this direct mail letter and it comes from a company called Bluecrest. Now, Bluecrest is a health, I've never actually heard of them, but it's a healthcare company. The way it works here in the UK is everyone gets basic... Well, actually very, very good healthcare. I was about to say for free. We do pay something called National Insurance which is a very low level tax, but it means that we have something called the NHS, the national health service, and I believe the UK is unique in this, that every single human being in this country is entitled to free healthcare at any level, and it's all paid for by the government.

Paul Green: You can top it up with private insurance. So, I have private insurance with a company called Bupa which sits on top. So, I go and see my NHS doctor, but if I need to be referred for surgery or treatment or something, I can choose to go and have that done in a private hospital. So, that's the way it works, but because of this, I suspect that... Because obviously, NHS doesn't have enough money, far too many people, far too many medical conditions. We're all inconveniently living longer than ever, and you hear every day in the media that the NHS doesn't have enough money.

Paul Green: So, one of the things which I suspect happens in places like the US where you have a private medical system, I suspect that you are encouraged to have an annual health check, whereas we don't really do this in the UK. We essentially operate a break-fix model. We wait till our bodies are broken and then we go to get them fixed. So, I haven't had a routine health check actually since I was 40, so seven years ago. I mean, I'm reasonably healthy. I'm pretty healthy actually for a 47-year-old, but there are probably two or three little minor medical things that I could get addressed if I wanted to, and it's certainly been on my mind recently that maybe I should go and get a health check, just a general health MOT.

Paul Green: So, then this company Bluecrest writes to me and they've addressed it to Mr. Green. So, they don't even know my full name. So, they've clearly just bought some data from somewhere. But this envelope that it's arrived in, it says on the front, it say, "A health marketing offer inside for Mr. Green," and it looks like there's a stamp on it. I've never seen this before in the UK because it's a proper UK stamp, but it's actually, it's been printed on the envelope and that's been delivered by the Royal Mail, but the beauty of putting a stamp on is it makes it feel more real, and certainly when you're sending direct mail, if you can put a stamp on, that will be great.

Paul Green: Now, obviously this is a healthcare offer. This isn't selling managed services, but I think this is one of the best direct mail letters that I've ever seen. So, I'm just going to take you through some of the elements that work so well. So, first of all, this is a four-page letter. It's actually a really weird size. I think they've done it in a US letter size. Most people in the UK don't realise that we have a format called A4 which is like the US letter, but A4's a little bit wider and this actually feels thin, and actually that was one of the things that made it stand out to me. It feels like a weird size.

Paul Green: "Dear Mr. Green," it says. "I'm sure you know how important it is to take care of your health and wellbeing, especially after witnessing the events in the last 18 months." They mean COVID. "Whilst our NHS has done an incredible job looking after us all at a time of national emergency, don't we owe it to them as much to ourselves to try and help avoid potentially preventable illness in the first place? But where do we start?" Now, this is a great... This is what's called a positioning paragraph, and what they've done is they've addressed right off at the beginning the fact that I don't pay for healthcare. There is something called the NHS effect here in the UK where people don't realise how much healthcare costs.

Paul Green: When my daughter was born, she was born 15 weeks premature. So, back in 2010, she was born at 25 weeks, 25 weeks and three days, which is insanely premature, and she's fine now. She's just turned 12. She's in perfect health now, and obviously she's a preteen. She's a tweenie as they call them, and so, she's becoming a nightmare. She's literally becoming a teenager in front of me, but medically she's fine. But 10, 12 years ago, she was born with no... Literally like an hour's warning, just like that, out she popped, a Sunday afternoon in a little sort of tiny community hospital, and she ended up staying in hospital for three months, and the NHS paid for everything. I mean, we literally paid nothing. We didn't even pay for the car parking at the hospital because we had a car parking pass.

Paul Green: And when she was discharged, three months later, the staff actually wrote us a letter which I've got somewhere up in the attic, and the letter said, "I hope you've enjoyed our stay with us here. We're glad that your child is well enough to go home. Did you know, the letter said, "did you know that if you had had to pay for the treatment you've received in the last three months, it would've cost you a quarter of a million pounds?" which is around about $320,000. Now, that was the first time my wife and I had realised the cost of medical care in this country. Because in this country, it's not like you get a bill and then the NHS pays it. You never see the bill. You don't know how much stuff costs. So, what Bluecrest have done in this opening thing is they've positioned it very well. "The NHS has done an incredible job," they're saying, "but we almost owe it to them to look after ourselves better."

Paul Green: Now, I'm not going to read the whole letter out to you, but essentially then it says, "All too often, we wait for health issues to arise before addressing them." Like I was saying earlier, that's what we do. We have a break-fixed system with our healthcare system. And then they've underlined this, "But you don't have to. Your Bluecrest health MOT is designed to help you understand your health, pick up risks early and help avoid potential problems further down the line." Now, an MOT is a British thing. It's something we have to have done with our car every year. It stands for Ministry of Transport. It's basically a check. It's like a safety check. Once your car's three years old, every year, you have to pass your MOT, otherwise you can't drive your car on the road. It's kind of like a simple safety check. Everyone in the UK knows what an MOT is. So, calling it a health MOT is a very smart thing to do.

Paul Green: And then they've gone on, they've sort of gone immediately, they've said where the appointments are available, and they've told me where to go for the clinics. The one, they're like three miles from my home. So, that's really convenient and they're giving me the dates as well. So, instantly I can see if I'm available. Then they talk about how you get peace of mind with a private GP helpline. Now, at the moment, GPs... GPs are general practitioners. They're the doctors that we go to, like the triage doctors, your general doctor... And because of COVID and just general pressure, it's quite difficult to get a GPs appointment right now. So, it's like, that's a value add. Hang on a second. I can speak to a private GP. I like that. And then it just goes on and on and on, and it basically tells you what's going to happen in the whole thing.

Paul Green: It addresses all of your wants, your needs, and your fears, and this is what makes this piece of direct mail so brilliant. "There are no invasive procedures. You'll remain fully clothed throughout. You will need to take your socks off," it says, "and we'll ask you questions about your medical history. You'll relax on a comfortable examination couch." Whoever wrote this is a marketing genius. They talk about painless, harmless electrodes, to record your heart, your bloods, and then it talks you through, there's like a green, amber, red for your results, and then it takes you through all the different things. And it starts to go a little bit into medical jargon, but not too far. So, it's enough so that you realise they know what they're talking about.

Paul Green: There is just here, there is a testimonial from Pat Gowie. Pat says, "I thoroughly enjoyed my experience with Bluecrest. The staff were efficient, friendly, and helpful, and there was no time wasted." That's social proof. Social proof is an important element of it. I mean, no, one's going to sit and read every aspect of this, but you can kind of flick through, and then it says, "Look, your report is still only halfway through," and then it tells you all the different things. And then it says the cost, just £129. Surely this should cost more, and then it tells you how come and it kind of breaks it down. So, it tells you the cost of all the different tests and it all comes to £270, but you get a discount when purchased as a package, and so, you get the special price of £129.

Paul Green: And then there's a call to action. There's a number to call. There's scarcity. Places are limited to 15 per clinic. There's a signature. Obviously this has been printed, but there's a blue signature as if someone's actually signed it, and that's from so Alexander Higman who's got lots of qualifications after his name. Interestingly, he's not a doctor, I see. But he's the director. He's the director of clinical operations, and then there's a PS, and then there's a thing that explains why you've been invited for private health check, and it's got their Trust Pilot rating and some FIFO, and then there's some leaflets in there as well, and there's kind of like some frequently asked questions in there. There's a special package discount which tells you why it's so cheap, and then there's a guide. So, essentially there's a repeat of the information that's in the letter in this.

Paul Green: This is genius. Now, I haven't booked it yet, but it has been sat on my desk for some time, and I have no doubt whatsoever that's my... Because I got this back in June. Appreciate this was a few months ago. I didn't realise how many months ago it was, but I have no doubt at all that I could very easily go online now and probably get the same deal for like a September deal or something like that. Here's the thing. I have sat and read this twice. I have told three friends about it, particularly unhealthy friends, and I've now told you about it and taking you through it, and I realise I'm taking you through from a marketing point of view, but I never heard of this company before, and yet their letter has been sat on my desk, I've told friends about it, and I'm spreading the word on the podcast because it's an excellent piece of direct mail.

Paul Green: If direct mail is not a part of your MSP's marketing mix, this really is the time to look at it. There is such power in putting something together that someone can get and physically read and read again and again and again, and you could take this exact same format and you could sort of adjust that to talk about not someone's healthcare problems, but their technology problems. In fact, I'm just thinking this would be a great letter to sell an audit, a paid audit because isn't that the same thing as like a health check. Certainly a very similar thing to me. If you don't have the ability to send these out right now, go and find a writer somewhere, whether it's on Fiverr or whether it's a vendor that will do you some direct mail. I provide a whole ton of direct mail to the members of my MSP Marketing Edge Program. Find someone that can do direct mail for you so you can send that out to your prospects. What a very powerful piece of marketing that could be.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: Now here's an exceptionally clever idea, and this was sent to me by a friend, an MSP, Robert Gibbons. See, for years, I've been suggesting that the best call to action that you can have on your website is to put your live calendar. So, you use Calendly or Microsoft Bookings or similar service of your choice and you put your live calendar on the website. So, the main call to action is someone booking a 15-minute appointment with you, and 15 minutes is the perfect length of time, not too short, not too long. So, if they're on the website at 2:00 in the morning, they can take action. They can book an appointment with you, not at 2:00 in the morning because of course you've got control over your calendar, but they can book in at a time that's convenient for them and convenient for you.

Paul Green: Now, Robert, who is generally pretty good at marketing and often sends me ideas of things that he's doing, he's taken this one step further. So, what he's done is instead of using Calendly, he uses a CRM called HubSpot, which HubSpot also has a live calendar element to it, and he has used the HubSpot live calendar in his website. Now, the main advantage of this is he can now trigger marketing automations once someone has booked an appointment with him. So, you use Calendly or Bookings, and if you wanted to do the same thing, I guess you'd have to use something like Zapier to connect up your live calendar to your CRM, and that's very, very doable. I haven't looked to see if you can do it, but if those things connect to Zapier, if they've got APIs, it shouldn't be a problem.

Paul Green: With HubSpot, the one benefit of HubSpot, Well, the big benefit of HubSpot is the fact that everything is integrated, and if you do one thing in HubSpot, you can trigger off another thing. So, now someone will go onto Robert's website, they will book a 15-minute appointment, and the process of them doing that puts them into his CRM. They are now a known entity in his HubSpot. So, he can trigger off some marketing automations, he can track what pages they're looking at on the website. It's a very, very smart move for Robert. So, it's perhaps worth you just looking at that and saying, "Right, what's the next level for that integrated calendar? How can we use it to add someone into our CRM and trigger off some marketing automations?" Because remember, the less work that you need to do when someone inquires into your MSP, the more that the automation can do for you, the more chances you have of turning that person into a client. Less work for you, more work for the automation, everyone is happy.

Voiceover: The ultimate MSP Podcast Crossover.

Paul Green: Just before we get to this week's big interview, we've got something a little bit different for you. September is such an important month for growing your business because people come back from their summer vacations, their holidays, and they kind of get their head down and plow on with doing as much as they can to grow their business throughout the next few months, before we get to the Christmas break. Now, the ordinary business owners and managers that you want to reach, they're doing that right now which makes it a great opportunity for you to reach out to them because this is the point they're starting to make their big plans and implement them. So, I've got together with a bunch of other great MSP podcasters around the world and together we are sharing our knowledge, our best ideas throughout September. Today, it's Ian Luckett.

Ian Luckett: Hey there. It's Ian Luckett, host of The IT Experts Podcast over here in the UK. I'm absolutely delighted to be supporting and celebrating the MSP Podcast Crossover event this September, and my best bit of business advice is about getting a plan together, a written down plan. I'm sorry it sounds really, really boring, but you're never going to go on holiday, build a house, or fly a plane unless you've got a plan, and you're never going to scale a profitable MSP without one either. The important thing about having a plan and having it written down is that when you take that strategic time to sit down and think in a logical manner about your sales, your marketing, your people, your pricing, your understanding, your target market, understanding your operations, you can then put down a methodical plan that has actions and accountability built into it that you can then go and deploy.

Ian Luckett: And then if all of a sudden something happens like a pandemic or all of these other crazy things and things need to change, you can adjust and deal with a particular situation and then come back to your plan because that's what was important at the beginning. So, it's really important that if you want to grow and scale a profitable MSP, then you need to have a written down plan that you can refer to and your whole business is involved in. I'm going to be back to the ultimate podcast crossover event on the 30th of September. It's going to be absolutely great fun, and remember you can win $1,000 straight into your bank by entering a draw. All you need to do is post about the event on LinkedIn and use the hashtag MSP podcast crossover, we'll enter you in the drawer, and win a chance of that $1,000. Have a great day. I look forward to connecting with you soon.

Voiceover: The big interview.

Jamie Shanks: Hi, my name's Jamie Shanks. I'm the CEO of Pipeline Signals and we help you follow your fans. We have a SaaS software company that tracks people leaving your customers into your prospects.

Paul Green: Okay. I like this sound of that because that's what this podcast is all about. It's about generating more sales through great marketing and finding greater leads. We'll come on and talk about Pipeline Signals later on down the line. Let's first of all talk about you, Jamie. So, you were highly recommended to me as someone who really knows his sales stuff inside out. Tell us a little bit about your journey over the last 10 years or so.

Jamie Shanks: Well, I was the VP of a SaaS software startup in Toronto, Canada. If you hear it from my accent, I am a Canuck, and I decided to leave that company to start a consulting company around inside sales best practices. I took a couple years to find my feet, but ultimately I was there at the right time and the perfect opportunity to invent and pioneer a category in sales called social selling. So, ultimately helping sales professionals digitise their sales process using tools like LinkedIn. So, we grew sales for life from zero to certifying 600 global customers, a quarter million sellers. I was very fortunate to work with the biggest companies in the world, and from that we recognised that the world was Pareto's law, that 20% of sellers would continue moving forward with the teachings, and 80% of sellers would ask, "Can you just do this for me?"

Jamie Shanks: And so, ultimately, when the pandemic hit in 2020, we decided to beta and alpha test this idea of a managed service turned SaaS software company called Pipeline Signals. We incorporated the business in 2021 and launched it less than a year ago and scaling rapidly to help do it for you, manage who's leaving your customers going into your prospects, who's being promoted or taking new jobs in any account in the world, we monitor that and place it in your CRM as task notifications.

Paul Green: So, let's explore this concept of social selling. Now, assume that I know nothing about this and our audience know nothing about this. Explain it as if you were discussing it with a seven-year-old.

Jamie Shanks: Okay. So, selling really from a process standpoint hasn't changed a lot in the last, I don't know, 5,000 years. The technology around the sales process has. And so, ultimately what happened 10 years ago was the advent of social media, and so, sales professionals assumed that the way that they collected information and the way that they engaged their customers was the telephone, was email, was handshakes. I mean, that's the way sales had always been, and then along comes social media, tools like Facebook, Twitter, and primarily for business, LinkedIn, and LinkedIn for everybody 10 years ago was a giant resume. You would put it online and you would use it to go from one company to the next.

Jamie Shanks: What social selling offered you was an ability into the window of your customer. So, when you prospect, there's a left and a right brain motion. The left brain was able to collect data and intelligence to make informed decisions about the person online. The right side of the brain could use that same tool to engage the customer in a bold and different way that they had never been engaged before. So, now they're having conversations in this tool, LinkedIn, rather than just email. That's the easiest way to think about it. It's the same process that's been digitised, and that's what we help the sales world do is modernise and digitise the way that they went to market.

Paul Green: So, give me an example of how an MSP would actually use that, a practical step by step example of something that could happen in real life.

Jamie Shanks: Okay. So, if I'm an MSP owner, there's two things I need to be thinking about. One is creating an inbound magnet-like motion, and one is an account-based outbound motion. So, let's start with the inbound motion. My team, we need to have a strong reputation and appear as trusted advisors because as an MSP, what are we selling, we're selling ourselves in relationships. So, we need to build an online brand through a LinkedIn profile, sharing great content, growing a social network so that our customers trust us. That's part A. Part B is that not all the right fish jump into our boat, right? If you think about it from a fishing analogy, random fish, crabs, and oysters, and everything will just jump in the boat, and that for our practice doesn't always make sense. So, we need an outbound account-based sales development program that ensures that we're selecting and prioritising the right accounts, planning them, engaging them, and so forth.

Jamie Shanks: So, from a practical standpoint, you need something like signals to objectively help you determine, do I have focus on account A versus B today or account B versus C today, not tomorrow. That's account selection and prioritisation. So, I use tools like LinkedIn to figure out which accounts are growing rapidly, which accounts have a past customer going into a prospect, which accounts have competitors connecting to that account. So, I'm focusing in on the right accounts to give me the highest probability of conversion. So, that's where I'm using LinkedIn to both draw people in, but also using it to aim my fishing rods in the right spot going outbound.

Paul Green: So, one of the biggest selling challenges for MSPs is timing, and you'll know this yourself as a sales professional that people only buy when they're ready to buy. We will come on to talking about your specific solutions, so don't jump straight into your free advert just yet. But how can we use that kind of signals, those LinkedIn signals to know that a company is approaching a point where it might actually be genuinely ready to have a conversation about switching from one MSP to another?

Jamie Shanks: Well, the easiest way to think about it is that a company does not make a decision. The people within companies are the ones that set priorities for a business to move forward. So, you then reverse engineer an exercise in your own business called will. What does ideal look like? And what you most likely notice is that the compelling events that happen when a company is interested in switching is when there is a new key stakeholder that goes into that business, and when they go into that business, they want to shake things up, and they typically want to bring in the people process and technology that made them successful in the past. So, if I were yourselves, I'd be looking for two compelling events. One, is there a new stakeholder in that business that meets the buying committee's definition of the ideal customer profile? Two, did that person come from a business that has experience using a solution like ours? Because they then have the reason to change and they have the knowledge on how to change, using a different solution or a solution that makes sense for you.

Jamie Shanks: And if you look at what's called the Chet Holmes Pyramid, the Chet Holmes Pyramid means that in any given market, 3% of that market is changing and willing to buy. You are trying to find that top 3%, and it only happens when a person has been willing to change themselves, typically because of employment, and two, they typically revert to past experience. So, you follow the humans, and then you'll most likely... Other than buying intent, buying intent is like the sister sales intelligence to relationships. Those are people that are actively raising their hands and googling keywords. Outside of that overt, obvious knowledge, follow the humans.

Paul Green: I love that. Follow the humans. And you mentioned Chet Holmes there, and Chet Holmes is the author of one of my favorite books on sales, The Ultimate Sales Machine, which I'm sure you've read many times over, and every MSP on the planet needs to get a hold of a copy of that book and either read it or listen to it because it's so... It's not written about MSP sales, but it could have been. It's an absolutely cracking book that is. So, let's talk about Pipeline Signals. So, we're going to explore on the extended interview on YouTube, which we'll talk about in a second, that's where we'll explore your transition from one business to another because I'm always interested in how entrepreneurs like us make those kind of decisions to switch over. But let's talk now about what Pipeline Signals actually does.

Jamie Shanks: Yes. So, from the end result of your sales organisation, your sellers open up their CRM and they received task or lead notifications that change is happening in any account in the world that matters to you. So, that means whether it's a prospect or a customer, you can identify who walked in the door, who got promoted, and who left, and did they come in as a friend or a foe. So, that's the easiest way to think about. The end result is we are the middleware that actually mines that intelligence on your behalf and places it in your CRM or marketing automation platform of choice so that your sales team can make informed decisions. The value to you is quite obvious. One is we are giving you the highest converting leads and opportunities at scale, two, we're saving your sales team a mountain of time because you don't pay sellers to data mine, you pay them for outcomes, and so, we're doing the data mining for you, and we just took over that responsibility.

Paul Green: Jamie, thank you so much for your time. Just remind us finally, what's your website address?

Jamie Shanks: It is pipelinesignals.com, and we work with any business that has a total adjustable market that's sizable that you can't monitor on your own. We'll do the monitoring for you.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.

Cassandra Morgan: I'm Cassandra Morgan. I am an award-winning author and the HR manager for an MSP. I would highly recommend MSP's Secret Revealed by Mark Copeland. It is full of inspirational quotes and ideas for helping you grow your business and just kind of get some oomph going for that day.

Voiceover: Coming up, coming up next week.

Colt Briner: Hi, I'm Colt Briner of Scrappy AF solutions. I'll be here on the show next week to talk about strong strategies and creative execution to capture market share from industry incumbents if you're a small starting business.

Paul Green: Do subscribe wherever you listen to this podcast so you never miss an episode because on top of Colt's interview next week, we're also going to be talking about three weapons of influence. They're taken from a great book by Robert Cialdini, Dr. Robert Cialdini. It's called Influence. There are six weapons of influence. We're going to cover three of them off in next week's show and show how you would apply them to your marketing. We'll also talk about the concept of cause-related marketing. It's where you find a charity or some other kind of community organisation that benefits other people and you put it together with your MSP, and actually both you and the organisation benefit when you do that. I'll tell you how to do that in next week's show. As I mentioned earlier, don't forget we have a ton of new content for you on YouTube. Just go to youtube.com/mspmarketing, and join me next Tuesday. Have a very profitable week in your MSP.

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

View Details

Episode 147 includes: * 00:00 The benefit to your MSP of identifying a 'loss leader' within your service * 05:51 The importance of being an adult when a client leaves you * 12:54 Great advice about creating measuring objectives, as part of the Ultimate MSP podcast crossover event * 15:48 A process expert joins Paul to explain how to easily document the procedures within your MSP * 31:38 A book recommendation to help you transition from being a manager to a true leader

Featured guests:

As part of this month's Ultimate MSP podcast crossover event, thank you to Todd Kane, the host of the Evolved Radio Podcast, for joining Paul to share the best piece of business advice he's ever been given.

Todd is an accomplished business leader with 20+ years of experience and runs Evolved Management Consulting, helping managed IT companies increase profit and decrease stress.

Find out more about this September's Ultimate MSP podcast crossover event, including the $1000 prize: https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/MSPpodcastcrossover

Check out the Evolved Radio Podcast: https://www.evolvedmgmt.com/podcast

Connect with Todd on LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/toddakane

Thank you to Owen McGab Enaohwo from SweetProcess for joining Paul to discuss how sales can be turned into a series of small simple steps. Owen's easy-to-use software enables company executives and their employees to collaborate together to quickly document and/or improve their standard operating procedures, processes, and policies. Owen was previously the CEO of Hire Your Virtual Assistant (H.Y.V.A.), a virtual assistant service for small business owners. His specialties include business development, negotiation, operations management, and more. Connect with Owen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/owenmcgabenaohwo Extra show notes: * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * On the subject of how to handle a client leaving you, Paul recommended reading the book MSP Secrets Revealed by Mark Copeman: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/MSP-Secrets-Revealed-inspiration-practical/dp/B0875Z2JLF * Find out more about this September's Ultimate MSP podcast crossover event, including the $1000 prize: * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/MSPpodcastcrossover * Thank you to Shoaib Laher from As.a.Service for recommending the book Leading by Sir Alex Ferguson: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Leading-Sir-Alex-Ferguson/dp/1473621178 * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 * https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast * https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa * https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast * https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 * https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ * https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ * https://deezer.com/show/1512622 * Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world, this is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: Hello, and welcome to the show. Here's what we got coming up for you this week.

Owen McGab: Documentation. How can you document procedures and prices for your business? I know you probably have documentation in place for your clients, but sometimes you might neglect documenting how work is done within your company.

Paul Green: That's Owen McGab of SweetProcess, and we're going to be talking systems today. Systems, processes, and documentation. They're so important in your MSP, and Owen will reveal later on how to make it easier to document the things that you do day to day. We're also going to be talking about what happens when a client wants to leave you. It's so frustrating. But what's really important is that you are an adult about it, because you never know. That client might come back to you in the future.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

Paul Green: Imagine this nightmare scenario. You're at home, you're in the middle of a real work flurry, but you need caffeine. You're desperate for caffeine. So, you nip downstairs. You make yourself a coffee, open the fridge, pull out the milk and give it the sniff test. Oh, it's gone off. The milk's off. This is an absolute nightmare. So, you think, right. Okay. It's not a problem. I'll just nip down to the local supermarket or the grocery store, and I'll just get myself some milk. So, you jump in the car, drive down to the shop, jump in, and you go in and you grab yourself some milk. And you chose that particular supermarket because the milk is always cheap there. And you grab some milk and you look at it, and you think, "Great. I've got some milk." And then, by the time you get to the till, there are five or six other items in your hands.

Paul Green: You've picked yourself up some chocolate, maybe some biscuits. "Oh, need some of that washing powder." Or, "We're nearly out of washing powder at home." You get the idea. You sometimes you might even walk out with a flat screen TV. That's why they sell these things there. The point is that you nipped into the store to get one thing. A staple, a basic everyday item. And while you were there, you bought other things.

Paul Green: Now, shops, smart retailers, know this is how we work as humans, so they work very hard to do two things. The first thing is, they try to attract us in by making the staples that we buy on a regular basis being as low priced as they can be. Even premium stores will make the price of staples low price. So, that milk... And I've got to be honest that I would fail the politician's question of how much is a pint of milk right now. I have no idea. But let's say a milk cost you 50 pence, or what's that, about 70 cents in dollars. Let's say that milk costs you 50 pence. That's probably got no profit for the retailer whatsoever.

Paul Green: And this is known as a loss leader. It's known as a loss leader because people go in to buy that item, and the store is choosing, in fact, it's a strategic choice, to lose money or not make any money on that item because the other thing that they're doing is they're putting things in front of you that they know you will buy on an impulse. So, that flat screen TV, or those biscuits, or something else, that's where they make up the profit margin. And, of course, the big retailers are very good at this.

Paul Green: Well, the reality is, you could actually do this in your MSP. You could have a loss leader. And I don't see many MSPs doing this, but that doesn't mean it's something that you shouldn't look at. Because there are lots of different things that you could do as a loss leader. And these are only examples. But if, for example, you were so focused on getting the monthly recurring revenue that you didn't really care how you went about getting it, because you know that someone who signs a contract is going to stay five, seven years, you just want that monthly recurring revenue.

Paul Green: In that situation, you might, for example, discount the project that it takes to get them in through the door in the first place. So, you might have a $10,000 project to upgrade them or move them onto the cloud or whatever you are doing. And you might offer that to them at a discount. You might say, "Look, this is a retail price of $10,000. If you sign a three-year contract, we will drop that down to $7,000. So, essentially, we are not making any margin on that project. That's our way of investing in you, Mr. or Mrs. Client, because we want to get you on board and obviously get you onto a contract."

Paul Green: And that would be a loss leader, actually losing any money on that project. But I appreciate that projects can be nice profit items. They can be great for cash flow. But they can also be a great way to make sure that you secure that client for the next 3, 4, 5 years.

Paul Green: You could apply exactly the same approach to some of your services, like VoIP. I mean, we all know that VoIP is money for old rope, isn't it? There's just huge amounts of margin around VoIP. Maybe you could offer that as some kind of a loss leader. You may choose not to because there's too much margin in it, but actually it's a commodity product. If it takes "giving away"... Giving in speech marks there. If it takes more or less giving away the VoIP to get the client, so that you can actually make the good margin on all the other services you sell them, maybe that's worth doing.

Paul Green: What we've got here is a very clever pricing strategy that you can use to pull people into your MSP. And because most MSPs don't do this, that's the opportunity for you. The question to ask yourself is, where are we willing to lose some money in order to gain a client for the next 3, 5, 7, 10 years? Once you can get your head around that strategy and have some ideas ready to roll out, that could give you a huge pricing advantage over some of your competitors.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: I know the phone calls or the emails that you dread the most. It's when a client who you know deep down is not really happy with you drops you that email, or makes that phone call, to say, "Guys, we are done. We're not going to renew our contract. We're going to move to someone else." And I know it doesn't happen to you very often, so when it does happen, it hurts. Everyone takes this personally. Even if you have a bigger business and you've been doing this a long time and you are somewhat insulated from the clients, it's still personal. Certainly, I take it personally. I'm sure you take it personally as well. I think that effect of us taking it personally shows how, I don't know, how much we care still about the business. But it is a horrible situation. No one likes being in that situation where a client tells you it's over, and it is something... It can affect your whole day.

Paul Green: I always think, in those situations, you have to, as much as you can, be the adult about this. Because it's very tempting, when someone tells you that they're willing to move on to another MSP, it's very tempting to not be an adult about that. And obviously I'm not an MSP, but I speak to MSPs all the time, and I know that sometimes clients leave because of things that are wrong that they've done, and not that you've done. And in fact, I've got a great quote to read about this in a second. I know in those situations, it's very easy for you to not be the adult. To say, "Well, you know what? You guys are idiots." You might not say this to them, but you might think it. "You guys are idiots. The problems you've got are caused by you. You don't listen to our recommendations. You don't follow our advice. You said you didn't want XYZ solution, and then you got hacked, and somehow that was our problem." And all of this is going through your head and your heart when that client says they're leaving. And that's a situation where it's very, very easy to be... I'm not going to say be childish, but to not be an adult about it.

Paul Green: Here's the thing, though. I believe when a client is dumb enough to want to leave you, have to be as professional and as adult as you can possibly be in helping them to leave you, exit, and to hand over to another MSP. And it's really important that the client sees you being the adult and being the professional about it.

Paul Green: Why? Because I believe some of those clients will come back to you in the future, but only if you've been an adult at the point that they left. So, if at the point that they left you, you let the service levels drop, you didn't look after them properly, you didn't do a proper handover to their new MSP, in six months' time when they're unhappy with that new MSP and they've got that buyer's regret, right in their heart they're thinking, "Oh, we made a really bad choice. Why did we do that? We should have stuck with the last guys." If you were unprofessional in the way that they exited the business, they're never going to come back to you. They're going to think, "Well, those guys weren't great. These guys aren't great. We need a third MSP."

Paul Green: But if you were utterly professional, and you were the adult, and you still went above and beyond what it took to help offboard them onto another MSP, it makes it easy for them to come back to you. Because it's actually a very hard phone call for them. It's a massive blow to their ego and their pride for them to pick up the phone or to send you an email saying, "Yeah, we made a mistake. Can we talk? We'd like to come back. Can we talk?" That's a big step down for a former client to do.

Paul Green: And I know this does happen for MSPs, so you want to make it as easy as possible for them. You want to be professional, even if it's they're going for the wrong reasons, be professional, be the adult. And at the very end of it, send them a handwritten note. This is what I would do. Send them a handwritten note saying, "Hey, Dave. I'm sorry it didn't work out between us," or "I'm sorry it didn't work out more long term with us looking after you. It's been fun working with you. If you ever want to have a conversation in the future about how we can help you, please give me a call. Here's my cell number. Here's my mobile number." And I think that would be a very, very smart thing to do.

Paul Green: So, you offboard them like an adult. There's always, always, the opportunity that someone will come back. And many MSPs, maybe if you haven't had this, you will in the future at some point, many MSPs have had clients coming back, particularly when that client has switched to save money. Very often, when a client switches to save money, they realise why the other MSPs service is cheaper: because the service levels are lower. And they suddenly appreciate that the service levels that you had, and the proactive work that you did, and the speed at which you operated, was worth paying that extra money for.

Paul Green: Now, I'm going to read you a quote, and this comes from an awesome book. If you haven't read this yet, it's a book I highly recommend. It's called MSP Secrets Revealed by Mark Copeman. Mark's a lovely friend of mine. I've got to know him over the last couple of years. He's been on this podcast. He wrote this book... I think it was a couple of years ago. This might have been his pandemic project. Yeah, 2020. This is the copyright at the beginning. And I know he's actively writing MSP Secrets Revealed 2 as we speak and as we record this podcast. Now, the great thing about this book is, he's gone out and he's got lots of MSPs and vendors and experts who have contributed content into this book. I've got something somewhere in here. I think I wrote about the profit matrix in this one.

Paul Green: But I'm going to read you something from page 207 of the book, and this was written by Nathan Maxwell of CCI Team. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but I'll give you a shortcut. Nathan writes, "Stay classy. Always, always." That's like Ron Burgundy, isn't it? "Stay classy, San Diego." So, Nathan writes, "Stay classy, always. MSP services are like any other aspect of life: up and down. Sometimes your clients love you, sometimes, well, not so much. Be honest, be real and be classy. No matter what the situation is, be the adult." And then he writes, "We bend over backwards to provide good service, to keep computers, networks, wireless, firewalls, and all the other gear humming smoothly. And then, we aren't appreciated. We're accused of poor quality. We're blamed for something breaking, when all we did was walk by an office. Be patient, be the adult, even if that means being slighted."

Paul Green: And Nathan finishes this by writing, and I love this, "Our true personality shows only in dark times. A thinker once said, "You only see what's in the cup when it's bumped." If you're a true professional, show it. When life gives you the chance, be the adult in the room. You will never regret it." And MSP Secrets Revealed is full of great advice like that, so please do go and get that book. It is on Amazon. Be the adult in the room. Stay classy, San Diego.

Voiceover: The Ultimate MSP podcast crossover.

Paul Green: Just before we get to this week's big interview, we've got something a little bit different for you. September is such an important month for growing your business. Because people come back from their summer vacations, their holidays, and they kind of get their head down and plow on with doing as much as they can to grow their business throughout the next few months, before we get to the Christmas break. Now, the ordinary business owners and managers that you want to reach, they're doing that right now, which makes it a great opportunity for you to reach out to them. Because this is the point they're starting to make their big plans and implement them.

Paul Green: So, I've got together with a bunch of other great MSP podcasters around the world, and together we are sharing our knowledge, our best ideas, throughout September. Today, it's Todd Kane.

Todd Kane: Hi, I'm Todd Kane. And I'm the host of the Evolved Radio Podcast. We're celebrating the ultimate MSP podcast crossover event all through September. The best piece of business advice that I've ever received is what gets measured gets managed. This is from management godfather, Peter Drucker. This is really useful because MSP owners are very busy. There's a lot going on. There's a lot to focus on and you can get pulled in a lot of different directions. And if you understand what good looks like, you have these measures that are clearly understood by yourself and the staff. They act as objective measures that help everyone to understand what good looks like so that everyone can focus on what the priorities are and know when the business is off track, what areas need support and allows you to focus on more of the strategic activities rather than being dragged into the day-to-day and the minutia of the business.

Todd Kane: Then if things are red and showing as off track, then you know where to apply some energy. But otherwise you get to stay out of the day-to-day and be more trusting with the staff so that they can be more independent with the day-to-day and the management of the activities that they're supposed to be responsible for because they know what good looks like, they have those objective measures and allows everyone to work on the parts of the business that will move everyone forward, and it feels like everyone's working on the same thing and pulling in the right direction and know when it's working and when it's not.

Todd Kane: So when it's not, just work with the team, be curious, ask lots of questions. Why do we think this isn't working? What are we not doing? Are there processes or systems that we're missing? And it allows a more balanced approach to the troubleshooting of the things that naturally go wrong in the business. So I'll be back for our ultimate MSP podcast crossover on September 30th. And remember you can win a $1,000 by posting about our crossover on LinkedIn. You can use the hashtag MSP podcast crossover to enter the draw, see you then.

Voiceover: The big interview.

Owen McGab: Hi, my name's Owen McGab Enaohwo, and I'm the CEO and co-founder of SweetProcess. So, nutshell, our app makes it very simple for employees, their managers, and even employees on the ground, and management to come together to document procedures for how work is done, and even have this whole process of continuously improving them so, at any given point, you can have one single place online to go to find instructions on how work is done at your company.

Paul Green: So, documentation is an interesting thing in our world. Owen, you're just taking your first few steps into working with MSPs, so I know you don't know our world very well. But documentation is interesting, because your average MSP is actually very good at documentation. But that documentation is their clients. It's how their clients' networks are set up, it's what hardware they've got, what software they've got, the licenses, the users, and it's very much... The part of being a good MSP is to fully document all of your clients as much as you can, because it just makes your job easier.

Paul Green: However, many, not all, but many, of the MSPs that I speak to fail to use that level of documentation for their own businesses. Is this a common thing that you see? Do you see that people find it very difficult to document things within their businesses?

Owen McGab: So, yes. As a matter of fact, that is a normal thing where people, they will focus on trying to... In terms of MSPs, they're working with clients and helping them with their IT, and all that. But then internally, they don't have this documentation in place. We actually have several clients who are MSPs who have even given us case studies, and tell us probably one of the issues we're having is that in order to scale and grow the company, they needed to have this documentation in place so that onboarding can be much faster. Mistakes are much less. So, it's an issue. Not only MSPs, but across the board, different companies experience this very thing.

Paul Green: So, why? Why do we find it so hard to document the things that we are doing every day?

Owen McGab: Well, it might be just that it might not be the most exciting part of business. Maybe trying to go get sales, get new clients, and all that, that's also exciting, right, because you're bringing more revenue into the business. But this other side doesn't get as much attention, or maybe stays all the way to the end, because it's not as that exciting. And then it looks like, "Oh, gosh, I don't have enough time in the day to get stuff done. Now I've got to spend time to sit down and document how we do work." So, it again gets procrastinated.

Owen McGab: But the reality is that the business is really way much more valuable if you do have documentation in place. Imagine the person who, if you're trying to sell your business, who wants to come in, and you don't have any documentation in place, versus the one who has everything all documented, and they don't really have to be in the business because anybody can be replaced at any single time. Which business will have more value?

Paul Green: Of course. Of course, it would be the documented one. I'm sure you've read The E-Myth Revisited, and you've probably read Built To Sell, as well, which essentially are... If you haven't read them, you need to read those books because the outcome of both of those is, to remove the chaos from the business, you systemise the business, and you document the systems, and you create, certainly what Michael Gerber calls in the E-Myth Revisited, he calls it the franchise model.

Paul Green: You look at your business as if you were going to franchise it, and you build an operating manual as if you were going to sell that onto someone else, even though you're not. That book alone has been out since, what, 1980-something.

Owen McGab: For a long time.

Paul Green: Yeah, very, very long time. And I think you're right, that there seem to be many other things. Do you find that people hit a point where, either they're going to put the business up for sale and the broker tells them they need to start documenting, or as you say, they just hit a barrier to growth, and they realise that the barrier to growth is because they themselves are doing too many things or doing too much firefighting?

Owen McGab: So, I'll come at it at two angles because I've actually seen both situations. There was actually a customer who came to us, and the issue was they were trying to sell the business. And the reality was, they told him that, "Hey, you can't really get as much value for the business until you have this documentation in place, because that's what will make the company much more exciting for potential buyers."

Owen McGab: And then on the other one was a situation where he's getting a lot of customers in, and he wants to scale the operation side of things, but onboarding was slow. You get people into the company, taking over the roles, but you can't dump the information into their head much quickly as to how the work is done. And so, that was slowing down his growth.

Owen McGab: So, it's from different angles. Employee onboarding, basically scaling the business, and selling the business, so on and so forth.

Owen McGab: And even to another extent, too, is delivering predictable results to customers is another thing, too. Because if you don't have documentation in place on how you do that, then people are doing things however they like, and then the results are not being predictable the way you want it to be. So, I just explained different angles in which people find out, okay, having this problem. But then it all boils down to, you need to have documentation in place.

Paul Green: Yes, yes. Let me admit something stupid I did back in around about 2009, 2010-ish. So, I had a different business then. I had a marketing agency, and we only had around about three staff, but I read The E-Myth Revisited. I think I read it on a holiday. And so, I came racing back to the business and I'm like, "Right, everyone. We're going to document everything. We're going to create an operations manual. This is going to free me from the hell that is this business."

Paul Green: And obviously, I then started the documentation, which, in a week, I perhaps produced four words because I had too many other things to do. So, I think, too, Zoe... Zoe is still one of my friends, although she doesn't work with me anymore. Zoe is one of the most capable human beings on the planet. And, in fact, actually, she left me to go and become an air ambulance paramedic-

Owen McGab: Wow.

Paul Green: ... where she would fly around in helicopters and save people's lives. She's awesome. And I said to Zoe, "Could you just document everything?" Which I know now is a mistake. So, essentially, I sat her down for a three-month process, and she just sat and looked at everything we did in the business and turned it into a piece of paper.

Paul Green: Now, the reason that was my biggest mistake was, at the end of it we had this massive manual with, I kid you not, 70, 80, 90 pieces of paper, and everything was documented of how it should be done. The mistake we'd made, I believe the mistake we made, was that there was zero engagement with me and with the other members of the staff. So, Zoe had just sat down, used her analytical brain to break things down, write those things on paper. She printed four or five copies of it, and no one ever looked at it ever again. Now, please make me feel better about my mistake from 10 years ago. Is that a common thing? Have you seen that before?

Owen McGab: That's a common thing.

Paul Green: Good.

Owen McGab: As a matter of fact, if I could give you a backstory so that people have context as to how I got involved in SweetProcess... SweetProcess got started in the fourth quarter of 2019. And so, SweetProcess, like I mentioned is the software. But before then, I used to run an agency where I was providing people with back office support from the Philippines. People who had read this book, The 4-Hour Workweek, The World is Flat, and automatically they would think, okay, they can go ahead and hire somebody and just magically give them work to do, and the work gets done predictably, and the way they want. Right?

Owen McGab: But then, what I had to educate people on was that, in order for us... Especially someone who's not sitting next to you, someone in a different culture, a country, to come in and take over the work for me, there has to be documentation in place. Well, the problem was a lot of the tools that were being used to document stuff were enterprise-level tools, and so were hard to use.

Owen McGab: And so I said, "Okay, maybe there has to be a better way for us to do this. We have to find easier tools." I went on a podcast similar to this one, where I was teaching how I was doing my business of helping people document procedures and processes in their business, and then giving their work to my teammates, my people in the Philippines, to do the work. And my co-founder, Jarvis, at SweetProcess, listened to that interview. Was like, "Dude, I want to build something similar to what you were talking about."

Owen McGab: And so, we had a conversation after he reached out to me. I said, "Instead of me just giving you suggestions on how to build this software you're talking about, what if we come together to build the software together? Because this is an issue we're facing. The tools out here to do this are hard to use, and I wanted to build something." That was how SweetProcess got started.

Owen McGab: Long story short, before we built anything, we spent some time talking to a bunch of different people to figure out what the specific needs were with regards to documenting procedures for their business. Took all those findings, and then we were able to announce, okay, you start making our software as complicated as the ones I was running from. We got to focus on the root problems people were having, and build the minimum viable version of that, so that software is simple and easy to use.

Owen McGab: So now, to the question of how to get started. Because you said you gave it to somebody to, in this case, Zoe, to get work done, to get it documented, and nobody else was involved. And before you know, you have all this documentation in place that nobody else was involved in and nobody can use.

Owen McGab: So, what I said to do, to combat that, is before you get documented anything in your business, first of all, ask yourself the question, "Is this something that we do need to document?" Or, "Is this something that we need to do in the first place?"

Owen McGab: Because if you don't need to do it, then there's really no need to go through that whole process of documenting it. It might be some tribal knowledge thing that you, "Oh, we've always done this," but you've got to ask that critical question. And if that's the case, eliminate it.

Owen McGab: Well, then, now you're left with stuff that you actually need to do which is required for the business, and that could be broken down into two parts. The first part is the tasks that are income generating, like the sales, the marketing stuff that actually bring in revenue. And then, the parts that is not necessarily income generating, but it's what you need to... The production parts of things, like the things you need to do in order to deliver to your customers, and so on and so forth. Right? So, the production side of the business.

Owen McGab: And so, what happens, people might say, "Okay, I want to go ahead and jump into documenting the revenue-generating parts of the business, because that seems like the exciting part to get involved with." And then the mistake, if you do that, is that, okay, if you document all that stuff and you bring in more people to follow those documents to get in more revenue, you're going to be stuck with the fact that you have a lot of bottlenecks on the other side that you have not fixed yet.

Owen McGab: So, that's why I say, focus on the production side of things. Figure out, okay, what is the single biggest bottleneck of your time right now? Right? That's where I want you to start first. And so, you take that single biggest bottleneck of your task, and then say, "Okay, let's start documenting that task."

Owen McGab: The first way to do it is, you got to install in your mind, and the mind of your managers and your employees, that, "Hey, we are doing do this. We're going to collaborate together, and it doesn't have to be perfect. This is going to be a thing of continuous improvement." Because when they see the very first version of it, they're giving you permission to understand that, hey, we are starting from the scratch.

Owen McGab: So, first thing is, you've identified the task that's the biggest bottleneck of your time. Then, you go ahead and you can use this tool like SweetProcess, or even any other tool out there, but document the title of the procedure, and the title of all the steps. And the best way to even do that is while you're doing the work, because while you're doing the work, it's most fresher to you. So as you're doing it, you enter title of the task, and title of each of the steps.

Owen McGab: Now, don't worry about entering the details just yet. And people will be like, "Why don't I enter details?" I say, "No, because this has to be a collaborative thing where your employees have to be involved in it." Let's say you're doing a task that's 10 steps. When you're done, you have what I call a minimum viable procedure that has title, procedure and title of the 10 steps.

Owen McGab: Now, then you give that procedure to your manager, or some employee who you're verbally trained on the task before, and say, "Hey, this is something that I documented. I didn't want you to have a blank screen. Now, let's go ahead and go ahead and start filling out the details." Now they define some time, and start putting in as much details in there. And you tell them, "Hey, don't worry about making details encyclopedia, what level. Just the minimum amount of information in terms of text, screenshots, or if you want to put a small video in each step, whatever. Just put it in there so that we have something."

Owen McGab: And now you have that in there. And then, as your employees on the ground start doing work with whatever task management software, whatever tool you use to manage tasks, make sure that while they're doing the work, that procedure that your managers added some steps and some details into the steps is right there in front of them.

Owen McGab: So, as they're doing the work, the reality is they're going to come across certain things that were not accounted for. Right? And so, those things they're not accounted for, they're empowered now, or you empowered them to say, "Hey, whenever you come across something that was not clear in each of these procedures, let us know, and then we can take that information back and improve upon the documents."

Owen McGab: So, what I just walked you through is how you identify the biggest bottleneck, work with your manager to fill in the details as much as possible, encourage your employees when they're doing work to have that thing right there in front of them, so that as they're doing work, they can pass the feedback back to you.

Owen McGab: And once you're done with that first one, now you identify the next biggest bottleneck. Do the same thing again. Everybody is giving permission to know that this is continuous improvement. It's not going to be perfect, but we're counting on everybody's bring back feedback so we can improve it.

Owen McGab: Before you know it, you've gone from the biggest bottleneck to the next one. And now you have more time, because you've documented all those tasks, to now start looking at, okay, what are those income-generating tasks that I need to also document how they're done? Do the same exact thing on working on those as well, and you can start getting more people to come over and take over some of those income-generating tasks for you. Which at this time makes more sense, because these are the tasks that was the biggest bottleneck. You've documented how it's done, and people actually getting work done based on your instructions, so you're kind of clearing up the bottlenecks, knowing that if you bring in more employees following your income-generating tasks, the bottlenecks will not be there to be as an issue anymore as it was.

Owen McGab: But now you've documented the different parts of your business, just following this dance of keeping everything simple, and everybody understand this continuous improvement.

Paul Green: Yeah. That makes perfect sense. Owen, I've really enjoyed talking to you. I thought I was a fast talker. You're just at it just nonstop. It's awesome. I love your energy.

Owen McGab: I should have told you earlier that if I'm talking too fast, slow me down.

Paul Green: A lot of our listeners listen to our audio podcast on 1.5.

Owen McGab: Oh, wow.

Paul Green: So, they listen faster. I think with you, they're going to have to come back to the 0.5, I tell you. They really are. So, listen, I'm going to get you back on the podcast perhaps next year, at some point. Because as you iterate your software, and as you learn more and more about how companies document themselves, I think that that learning will be valuable. So, it'd be great to get you back on. Just to finis, just remind us what the website address is for your business.

Owen McGab: So, it's sweetprocess.com. So, sweet like candy, process. So, sweetprocess.com. But I know people have been talking... We've been talking about a software, but I want to leave people with basically 52 standard operating procedure templates. Because even though I've shown you the framework on how to do it on your own, you might still want to have something handy to start off from. So, to get access to that 52 standard operating procedure templates, you just basically go to sweetprocess.com/mspmarketing. So, sweetprocess.com/mspmarketing, and you'll get access to that.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. This week's recommended book.

Schweb: Hi. This is Schweb from asaservice.support. The book I'm recommending is Leading, by the legendary Sir Alex Ferguson, where he throws parallels between managing and leading men united into great success, and how that would work in the world of business.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

Jamie Shanks: Hi, my name's Jamie Shanks. I'm the CEO of Pipeline Signals, and I'll be on the show next week talking about relationship signal intelligence. Follow your fans. Watch who leaves your customers and goes into prospects, and you will be able to create opportunity.

Paul Green: Make sure you subscribe wherever you listen to this podcast so you never miss an episode. On top of our interview with Jamie next week, we're going to be talking about direct mail. I got something in the post this week that made me really want to take urgent action, so I'm going to show it to you, break down all the different elements that, in my opinion, make it a fantastic piece of direct mail.

Paul Green: I've also got an idea from a real-life MSP, and it's to do with making your live calendar available to prospects on your website. It's a bit of a twist on that idea, which will actually help you with your marketing. All of that is coming next week, and don't forget as well, we have a ton of content for you right now on YouTube. Just go to youtube.com/mspmarketing. Join me next Tuesday, and have a very profitable week in your MSP.

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Leading: Business and leadership skills from the iconic football manager

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Episode 146 includes: * 00:00 When MSPs should buy clients out of contracts * 06:47 The financial numbers that are important to your MSP * 18:12 An MSP sales expert joins Paul to break sales down into simple steps * 27:42 A book recommendation to help you combine your life skills and business experience to boost your success

Featured guest:

Thank you to MSP sales expert Fiona Challis for joining Paul to discuss how sales can be turned into a series of small simple steps.

Fiona helps MSP's to overcome one of the greatest challenges they face which is filling top of funnel, winning new clients and having a structured sales process to grow and retain those clients.

Find out about Fiona's course 'How to win, grow and retain new clients for your MSP' on Paul's affiliate link: https://www.mspsalesmastery.com/a/2147515389/iJJozk7q

Or use Fiona's regular course link: https://www.mspsalesmastery.com/onlinecourse

Connect with Fiona on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/fionachallis Extra show notes: * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge: * https://www.mspmarketingedge.com/ * Thank you to Ben Spector from Zomentum for recommending the book Principles by Ray Dalio: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Principles-Life-Work-Ray-Dalio/dp/1501124021 * https://uk.linkedin.com/in/benspector1 * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V

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Episode 145 includes: * 00:00 How to become an expert at standard operating procedures * 08:20 Why your MSP could benefit from creating an 'authority site' * 15:45 A backup expert predicts what the future could look like * 28:41 A book recommendation to help you tackle the most constrained part of your business

Featured guest:

Thank you to Mike Andrews from NovaBACKUP for joining Paul to discuss the future of cloud back-up as solution for MSPs. Mike is a data protection industry veteran and Software as a Service pioneer. As CEO at NovaStor Corporation, he helped introduce the first windows-based cloud backup solution and has since worked with thousands of Managed Service Provider (MSP) partners to launch successful recurring incremental revenue generating businesses. Mike holds several industry awards and is credited with inventing patents on file restoration. Prior to NovaStor Corporation, Mike founded a Managed Service Provider business and held various executive roles in the data protection and security software space. Connect with Mike on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeandrews Show notes: * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * On the subject of creating great standard operating procedures, Paul recommended reading The E-Myth Revisited, Built to Sell and The Checklist Manifesto: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-About/dp/0887307280 * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Built-Sell-Creating-business-without/dp/1591843979 * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Checklist-Manifesto-Things-Right-Gawande/dp/1846683149 * Paul recommended the solution Tango for creating standard operating procedures * https://www.tango.us/ * Thank you to Al Alper from CyberGuard360 for recommending the book The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Goal-Process-Ongoing-Improvement/dp/0884271951 * https://www.linkedin.com/in/alperal * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider:

Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You

The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement - 30th Anniversary Edition

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Episode 144 includes: * 00:00 Why speed is of the essence for dealing with prospects * 10:59 Identify a Dream 100 prospect list to accelerate your MSP's growth * 19:40 A productivity expert explains how to do 1 hour of work in 30 minutes * 46:26 A book recommendation to help you earn an MBA without the associated cost

Featured guest:

Thank you to Blaine Oelkers, the only Chief Results Officer®, for joining Paul to explain how you can do 1 hour of work in 30 minutes. Blaine is a high level performer with a wealth of knowledge who is committed to helping people achieve results quickly. He brings high energy and ultra focus which is critical to quickly generate amazing results and build momentum in any business. If you are a business owner or entrepreneur in need of a Chief Results Officer, Blaine comes highly recommended. Connect with Blaine on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/blaineoelkers Show notes: * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * On the subject of creating a Dream 100, Paul recommended reading the book The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ultimate-Sales-Machine-Turbocharge-Relentless/dp/1591842158 * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: * https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Harry Brelsford from SMB Nation recommended his book The Pocket MBA: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pocket-MBA-Instant-Entrepreneur/dp/1733904824 * https://www.linkedin.com/in/harryb * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V

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Episode 143 includes: * 00:00 The marketing power of admitting your limitations * 08:00 Understand the Pros and Cons of using MSP jargon * 17:36 A marketing expert explains why email marketing isn't dead * 39:44 A book recommendation to help you create better customer service

Featured guest:

Thank you to Nate Freedman from Tech Pro Marketing for joining Paul to explain why email marketing for MSPs isn't dead. Nate is the founder of Tech Pro Marketing, a marketing company specifically dedicated to serving the MSP community. He has been featured throughout the channel in publications such as Channel Marketer Report, Channel Executive Magazine and Channel Futures. He lives in Rhode Island with his wife and two young daughters. In his spare time, he loves watching wrestling (yes, he's that guy) and his favourite wrestler is the Macho Man Randy Savage. Connect with Nate on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hmann Show notes: * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge: * https://www.mspmarketingedge.com/ * Thank you to Len Herstein, author of Be Vigilant!, for recommending the book I'll Be Back by Shep Hyken: * https://www.amazon.com/Ill-Be-Back-Shep-Hyken/dp/1640953019 * https://www.linkedin.com/in/lenherstein * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-

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Episode 142 includes: * 00:00 Why empathy is the core marketing skill to develop * 07:33 Paul's real life example of why 'before & after' case studies matter * 12:59 The MSP owner who thinks the tech on-site visit is dead * 25:11 A book recommendation to help you build trust within internal teams

Featured guest:

Thank you to Harold Mann from Mann Consulting for joining Paul to explain why the MSP on-site tech visit is dead. Harold Mann is co-founder of Mann Consulting, an IT consultancy based in San Francisco. Started in 1991, the firm supports hundreds of businesses around the U.S. each year with an emphasis in Mac device management for fast-growing startups. Connect with Harold on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hmann Show notes: * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Register for a free copy of Paul’s book, Updating Servers Doesn't Grow Your Business * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbook/ * Thank you to RevOps specialist (and the creator of the Feel-Good MSP) Brian Gillette for recommending the book The Speed Of Trust by Stephen M.R. Covey: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Speed-Trust-Thing-Changes-Everything/dp/1416549005 * https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-gillette-27884b128 * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351

The Speed of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything

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Episode 141 includes: * How one MSP has driven huge growth over the last couple of years - what they did and why * Which business cards have a place in your wallet in 2022? * Plus on the show this week, a sales expert with advice to make selling much easier for you

Featured guest:

Thank you to Adam Wootton from Impact Sales Coaching for joining Paul to talk about how MSPs can make selling easier. Adam has 20 years sales experience ranging from telesales, field sales, key account sales, key account management and leading high performance teams. He launched Impact Sales Coaching five years ago and has delivered results for large corporates and SME's spanning sectors such as telecommunications, IT infrastructure, finance, logistics, education, manufacturing, recruitment and events. Connect with Adam on LinkedIn:

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/adam-wootton-b4607015 Show notes: * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * On the subject of the MSP demonstrating momentum, Paul recommended listening back to Episode 140: * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode140 * On the subject of using classic marketing techniques (like printed newsletters), Paul recommended listening back to Episode 134: * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode134 * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge: * https://www.mspmarketingedge.com/ * Right now you can watch the extended interview with this week's featured guests on the YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEBEL1Sh4Z-t3PXKbsW7b4BC * Thank you to Luis Giraldo, Chief Experience Officer at ScalePad for recommending the book Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order by Ray Dalio: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Changing-World-Order-Nations-Succeed/dp/1982160276 * https://ca.linkedin.com/in/luisgiraldo * In next week's episode, Paul will be joined by Harold Mann from Mann Consulting to explain why the MSP on-site tech visit is dead: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/hmann * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider:

Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

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Episode 140 includes: * Why you should be constantly recruiting on LinkedIn - even if you don't have a vacancy * How you can use marketing momentum to grow your MSP * Plus on the show this week a branding expert explains the power of a single message

Featured guest:

Thank you to Mike Verret from Verret and Associates for joining Paul to talk about how MSPs can be better at talking about themselves.

Mike has spent over 25 years in the brand marketing business and the hallmark of his career is his ability to understand an audience. Now he shows businesses how to talk about themselves To THEIR audience.

Connect with Mike on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-verret-7027211 Show notes: * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge: * https://www.mspmarketingedge.com/ * Right now you can watch the extended interview with this week's featured guests on the YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEBEL1Sh4Z-t3PXKbsW7b4BC * To dig deeper into this episode, Paul joins Sophie Law on the complimentary YouTube show 'Another Byte', from this coming Thursday: * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEAXxJRY5vU4LWldRNLjZZng * Thank you to Max Pruger, Compliance Manager at Kaseya, for recommending the book Becoming Your Own Banker by Nelson Nash: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Becoming-Your-Own-Banker-Infinite/dp/B001NZO1DS * https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxpruger * In next week's episode, Paul will be joined by Adam Wootton from Impact Sales Coaching to talk about how you can make great sales people, unstoppable: * https://uk.linkedin.com/in/adam-wootton-b4607015 * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: * https://www.audible.

Becoming Your Own Banker: Unlock the Infinite Banking Concept

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Episode 139 includes: * How to get the most out of your techs' time * The importance of thinking like a prospect, not like an MSP * Plus on the show this week why you should write your own book and how to do it

Featured guest:

Thank you to Cassandra Morgan from White Whisker Publications for joining Paul to talk about how MSPs can write their own book.

Cassandra Morgan is an award-winning author, writing coach and speaker residing in Toledo, Ohio. Her works span several genres including Fantasy, Paranormal Cozy Mystery, Sweet Romance, and Gothic Fairytale Horror.

She lives with her husband, six cats, and any number of foster kittens where she thrives on coffee, courage, and kitten cuddles.

Connect with Cassandra on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cassandra-morgan-09b7b9126 Show notes: * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Register for a free copy of Paul’s book, Updating Servers Doesn't Grow Your Business * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbook/ * Right now you can watch the extended interview with this week's featured guests on the YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEBEL1Sh4Z-t3PXKbsW7b4BC * To dig deeper into this episode, Paul joins Sophie Law on the complimentary YouTube show 'Another Byte', from this coming Thursday: * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEAXxJRY5vU4LWldRNLjZZng * Thank you to Andrew Moon from Orange Nomad for recommending the book It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work by Basecamp's creators David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doesnt-Have-Be-Crazy-Work/dp/0062874780 * https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmoonorangenomad * In next week's episode, Paul will be joined by brand and marketing expert Mike Verret to talk about how MSPs can be better at talking about themselves: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-verret-7027211 * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider:

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Episode 138 includes: * Why every MSP needs someone in a "motherly" role * Who should your phone person be calling and what should they be talking about * Plus on the show this week, an international MSP expert shares the global differences between MSPs

Featured guest

Thank you to Shoaib Laher from As.a.Service for joining Paul to talk about the challenges facing MSPs around the world.

Shoaib founded As.a.Service after spotting a niche in the MSP market with a particular focus on the US based MSPs. When he’s not making clients happy during the week, Shoaib is a “borderline obsessive” golfer and a Dad to twins. Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Paul advised listening back to the last few episodes on hiring a 'phone person' (where to find them and their technical set-up): * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode136 * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode137 * On the subject of cold-calling, Paul suggested you listen back to episode 133, that features an interview with a cold-calling expert: * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode133 * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: * https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Right now you can watch the extended interview with this week's featured guests on the YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEBEL1Sh4Z-t3PXKbsW7b4BC * To dig deeper into this episode, Paul joins Sophie Law on the complimentary YouTube show 'Another Byte', from this coming Thursday: * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEAXxJRY5vU4LWldRNLjZZng * Thank you to Nick Rubright from New Reach Marketing for recommending the book Your Life Isn't for You by Seth Adam Smith: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Your-Life-Isnt-You-Selfless/dp/1626560951 * https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-rubright-29225047/ * In next week's episode, Paul will be joined by Cassandra Morgan from White Whisker Publications to talk about how MSPs can write their own book: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/cassandra-morgan-09b7b9126 * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider:

Your Life Isn't for You: A Selfish Person's Guide to Being Selfless

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Episode 137 includes: * How (and why) your MSP should dominate YouTube * The technical set-up to give your phone person * Plus on the show this week, which tools do MSPs always get wrong

Featured guest

Thank you to Ben Spector, Zomentum's Product Manager and MSP consultant, for joining Paul to talk about how to choose the right tools to run your MSP. Ben is a former MSP owner who sold and exited his business in late 2020. Since then, he's been working in two capacities. First as Product Manager with Zomentum, leveraging his previous experience running an MSP to shape Zomentum's development roadmap. Second as a mentor to other MSP owners, delivering tactical support to help solve their operational challenges, focussing mostly on their tools, systems, and processes.. Connect with Ben on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/benspector1/ Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Paul advised listening back to last week's episode about finding a great 'phone person': * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/episode136 * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge: * https://www.mspmarketingedge.com/ * Register for a free copy of Paul’s book, Updating Servers Doesn't Grow Your Business * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbook/ * Right now you can watch the extended interview with this week's featured guests on the YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEBEL1Sh4Z-t3PXKbsW7b4BC * To dig deeper into this episode, Paul joins Sophie Law on the complimentary YouTube show 'Another Byte', from this coming Thursday: * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEAXxJRY5vU4LWldRNLjZZng * Thank you to Neil Renwick from MSP Dark Web for recommending the book Launch by Jeff Walker: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Launch-Internet-Millionaires-Anything-Business/dp/1501226614 * In next week's episode, Paul will be joined by Shoaib Laher from As.a.Service, to talk about the challenges facing MSPs around the world * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider:

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Episode 136 includes: * Why every MSP needs a phone person, and the best way to recruit yours * 3 rules to maximise your personal time * Plus on the show this week, what it really means to be a serial entrepreneur

Featured guest

Thank you to Al Alper from CyberGuard360 for joining Paul to talk about the new ways to sell cyber security and what it means to be a serial entrepreneur. Al Alper is Founder and CEO of Absolute Logic, Inc. and CyberGuard360. He is a serial entrepreneur, having founded several successful companies where he saw exits through acquisitions by companies such as CIT. Absolute Logic and CyberGuard360 are his 5th and 6th ventures. Al lives in Wilton, CT with his wife, Janice, where they raised three children, Kaitlin, AJ and Alexandra. In his spare time, he volunteers on several local community Boards and Commissions, and many non-profits. He enjoys a myriad of sports including skiing, windsurfing, boating, racquetball and more. Connect with Al on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alperal Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Paul mentioned a few time trackers you may find helpful: * https://timeular.com/ * https://clockify.me/ * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge: * https://www.mspmarketingedge.com/ * Register for a free copy of Paul’s book, Updating Servers Doesn't Grow Your Business * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbook/ * Right now you can watch the extended interview with this week's featured guests on the YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEBEL1Sh4Z-t3PXKbsW7b4BC * To dig deeper into this episode, Paul joins Sophie Law on the complimentary YouTube show 'Another Byte', from this coming Thursday: * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEAXxJRY5vU4LWldRNLjZZng * Thank you to Heather Harlos, Head of MSP and Channel Marketing at JumpCloud, for recommending the book Radical Candor by Kim Scott: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Radical-Candor-What-Want-Saying/dp/1509845356 * https://www.linkedin.com/in/heatherharlos * In next week's episode, Paul will be joined by Ben Spector, Zomentum's Product Manager and MSP consultant, to talk about how to choose the right tools to run your MSP: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/benspector1/ * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel:

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Episode 135 includes: * How to earn an extra 100k by running a sales week * Why repeating yourself in sales conversations is a good thing * Plus in the show this week, how will mergers & acquisitions change over the next year

Featured guest

Thank you to Harry Brelsford from SMB Nation for joining Paul to talk about what mergers and acquisitions might mean for MSPs in 2022. Entrepreneur Harry is the founder of SMB Nation (www.smbnation.com) from Austin, Texas. He oversees the popular SMB Nation workflow including marketing analytics, content and events (webinars, workshops and multi-day conferences). He holds an MBA in Project Management from the University of Denver (and numerous certifications such as MCSE, MCT, CNE, et al) and is the author of 23 books on technology and business topics. His 20 years of SMB technology experience were supplemented by teaching 12+ years at night as an adjunct professor at Seattle Pacific University and other higher-learning institutions. Harry is a board member at Moonshot Equity Partners and an in-demand speaker at industry events. An active entrepreneur, Harry is the force behind the Pocket MBA, Telephonation, Cloud Nation and XPmigrations.com. His latest startup The CannaTech Group. Connect with Harry on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/harryb Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: * https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Right now you can watch the extended interview with this week's featured guests on the YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEBEL1Sh4Z-t3PXKbsW7b4BC * To dig deeper into this episode, Paul joins Sophie Law on the complimentary YouTube show 'Another Byte', from this coming Thursday: * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEAXxJRY5vU4LWldRNLjZZng * Thank you to Simon Marcil from Propel Your MSP for recommending the book They Ask, You Answer by Marcus Sheridan: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/They-Ask-You-Answer-Revolutionary/dp/1119312973 * https://ca.linkedin.com/in/smarcil * In next week's episode, Paul will be joined by Al Alper from CyberGuard360 to talk about the new ways to sell cyber security: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/alperal * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider:

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Episode 134 includes: * Why you should start using this 100 year old marketing tool * How to create 'evergreen' content for your website * Plus on the show this week, the benefit of being a vigilant MSP owner

Featured guest

Thank you to Len Herstein, author of Be Vigilant!, for joining Paul to talk about what complacency is, why it's so dangerous and what MSPs can do to identify and fight it. Len has over 30 years of experience in business and brand marketing. Prior to founding his marketing and events company (ManageCamp Inc.), Len innovated, managed and grew brands for major consumer packaged goods marketers, including Campbell Soup Company, Coca-Cola, and Nabisco. Since 2015, Len has served as a reserve deputy sheriff with the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office in Colorado. Connect with Len on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lenherstein Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * In discussing printed newsletters, Paul mentioned the 'No BS' newsletter and series of books from the direct response marketing expert Dan Kennedy: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/B-S-Direct-Marketing-Non-Direct-Businesses/dp/1599185016 * https://marketingsecrets.com/programs/newsletters * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge: * https://www.mspmarketingedge.com/ * Right now you can watch the extended interview with this week's featured guests on the YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEBEL1Sh4Z-t3PXKbsW7b4BC * To dig deeper into this episode, Paul joins Sophie Law on the complimentary YouTube show 'Another Byte', from this coming Thursday: * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEAXxJRY5vU4LWldRNLjZZng * Thank you to Tony Capewell from MSP Dark Web for recommending the book Retention Point by Robert Skrob: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Retention-Point-Membership-Subscription-Associations-ebook/dp/B07CZXD289 * https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonycapewell * In next week's episode, Paul will be joined by Harry Brelsford from SMB Nation to talk about how about what mergers and acquisitions might mean for MSPs in 2022: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/harryb * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using

Retention Point: The Single Biggest Secret to Membership and Subscription Growth for Associations, SAAS, Publishers, Digital Access, Subscription Boxes and all Membership and Subscription Businesses

No B.S. Direct Marketing: The Ultimate No Holds Barred Kick Butt Take No Prisoners Direct Marketing for Non-Direct Marketing Businesses

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Episode 133 includes: * How to combat most of the reasons prospects give for not buying * The importance of understanding your prospect's emotional motivation * Plus on the show this week, the MSP sales expert who thinks you can actually enjoy cold calling

Featured guest

Thank you to RevOps specialist (and the creator of the Feel-Good MSP) Brian Gillette, for joining Paul to talk about how you can actually feel-good about cold calling and selling. "I work with clients ranging from solopreneurs to multi-million dollar companies, and I love my job. As a former actor, I’ve had tons of different jobs—I’ve sold TVs, burritos, houses, business loans, managed services, and plenty more. I live in Pasadena, CA with my wife Sam. When I’m not working as a consultant, I am a freelance voice actor for audiobooks, corporate training, and commercials." Connect with Brian on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-gillette-27884b128 Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Register for a free copy of Paul’s book, Updating Servers Doesn't Grow Your Business * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbook/ * Right now you can watch the extended interview with this week's featured guests on the YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEBEL1Sh4Z-t3PXKbsW7b4BC * To dig deeper into this episode, Paul joins Sophie Law on the complimentary YouTube show 'Another Byte', from this coming Thursday: * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEAXxJRY5vU4LWldRNLjZZng * Thank you to Jennifer Bleam from MSP Sales Revolution for recommending the book Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tiny-Habits-Changes-Change-Everything/dp/0358003326 * https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleamjennifer * In next week's episode, Paul will be joined by Len Herstein, author of Be Vigilant!, to talk about what complacency is, why it's so dangerous and what MSPs can do to identify and fight it: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/lenherstein * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider:

Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything

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Episode 132 includes: * Valuable advice for keeping on top of cash flow * The benefit to your MSP of doing a 'ticket frenzy' * Plus on the show this week an industry expert joins Paul to explain why now is the time to get things done and move your MSP forward

Featured guest

Thank you to Luis Giraldo, Chief Experience Officer at ScalePad and CEO of Ook Enterprises, for joining Paul to talk about why MSP should focus on growth in the second half of 2022.

Luis has founded, scaled and sold various successful IT businesses since 2006. He created SaaS documentation platform Monkey Box in 2013, which was acquired by IT Glue in 2017. He has since held key executive roles with vendors such as IT Glue, Kaseya, and N-able, and is an influential leader in the global MSP space. Luis helms the Partner Success and IT organisations, and brings deep MSP experience, thought leadership, and long-term strategic focus to ScalePad.

Connect with Luis on LinkedIn:

https://ca.linkedin.com/in/luisgiraldo Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: * https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Right now you can watch the extended interview with this week's featured guests on the YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEBEL1Sh4Z-t3PXKbsW7b4BC * To dig deeper into this episode, Paul joins Sophie Law on the complimentary YouTube show 'Another Byte', from this coming Thursday: * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEAXxJRY5vU4LWldRNLjZZng * Thank you to lead generation and LinkedIn expert Mark Firth for recommending the book The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Eric Jorgenson: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Almanack-Naval-Ravikant-Wealth-Happiness-ebook/dp/B08FF8MTM6 * https://www.linkedin.com/in/markfirthonline * In next week's episode, Paul will be joined by RevOps specialist (and the creator of the Feel-Good MSP) Brian Gillette, to talk about how you can actually feel-good about selling: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-gillette-27884b128 * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider:

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness

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Episode 131 includes: * Why MSPs aren't charging properly - and why this is CRAZY * The pros and cons of making follow-up phone calls to clients after support * Plus there's an opportunity for extra monthly recurring revenue

Featured guest

Thank you to Max Pruger, Compliance Manager at Kaseya, for joining Paul to talk about a brand new 'compliance as a service' revenue opportunity. This interview with Max was recorded back in February 2022, a few weeks before Kaseya announced the acquisition of Datto.

Max has been a pioneer in the managed services industry since the late 1990s. He currently serves as SVP and GM of Compliance Manager, VulScan and MyITProcess and is responsible for Kaseya’s go to market strategy for his respective business units. Max began his MSP career at USWeb as a founding member of that company’s managed service division. He has also held the position of Senior Architect at IBM. Max holds a BS in Computer Science from American University and an MBA from the University of Maryland - Robert H. Smith School of Business.

Connect with Max on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxpruger Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge: * https://www.mspmarketingedge.com/ * Right now you can watch the extended interview with this week's featured guests on the YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEBEL1Sh4Z-t3PXKbsW7b4BC * To dig deeper into this episode, Paul joins Sophie Law on the complimentary YouTube show 'Another Byte', from this coming Thursday: * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEAXxJRY5vU4LWldRNLjZZng * Thank you to Nicholas Ashford from Fordhouse for recommending the book Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Extreme-Ownership-Jocko-Willink/dp/1250067057 * https://uk.linkedin.com/in/nicholasashford * In next week's episode, Paul will be joined by Luis Giraldo, Chief Experience Officer at ScalePad and CEO of Ook Enterprises, to talk about MSP opportunities for the second half of 2022: * https://ca.linkedin.com/in/luisgiraldo * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider:

Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win

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Episode 130 includes: * To hell with imposter syndrome! Here's how to become the truly confident MSP you really are * The importance of taking your team out for a walk * Plus this week, former MSP and number one LinkedIn expert Andrew Moon shares his advice on the platform

Featured guest

Thank you to Andrew Moon from Orange Nomad for joining Paul to share some great LinkedIn lead generation tips.

Andrew is serial entrepreneur who has launched and run several successful businesses since the age of 8! After running a successful MSP for 10 years, Andrew founded Orange Nomad to help MSPs, small businesses and entrepreneurs bridge the gap between strategy and execution. Andrew helps his clients to learn how to build a "calm company".

Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmoonorangenomad Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * In discussing the importance of the 'walk and talk', Paul mentioned the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Steve-Jobs-Exclusive-Walter-Isaacson/dp/034914043X * Register for a free copy of Paul’s book, Updating Servers Doesn't Grow Your Business * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbook/ * Right now you can watch the extended interview with this week's featured guests on the YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEBEL1Sh4Z-t3PXKbsW7b4BC * To dig deeper into this episode, Paul joins Sophie Law on the complimentary YouTube show 'Another Byte', from this coming Thursday: * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEAXxJRY5vU4LWldRNLjZZng * Thank you to Rob Jolliffe from Sabre Limited and MicroAge Kitchener for recommending the book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blink-Power-Thinking-Without/dp/0141014598 * https://ca.linkedin.com/in/robjolliffe * In next week's episode, Paul will be joined by Max Pruger, Compliance Manager at Kaseya, to talk about a brand new 'compliance as a service' revenue opportunity: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxpruger * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider:

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

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Episode 129 includes: * A simple Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) technique to rank better for local searches in Google * The importance of NOT jumping on a new idea too quickly * What your clients really feel when you increase prices

Featured guest

Thank you to SEO expert Nick Rubright from New Reach Marketing for joining Paul to talk about how to improve your local Google ranking.

Nick is the founder & CEO of an SEO-focused marketing agency. Nick and his team have worked with large brands like Webex, smaller ones like Finance-able, and local ones like Willis Lawn Services to build and run scalable SEO campaigns that drive revenue.

Connect with Nick on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-rubright-29225047/ Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * In discussing productivity, Paul mentioned the tool ToDoist and the book Get Things Done by David Allen: * todoist.com * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-free-Productivity/dp/0349408947 * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: * https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ * Right now you can watch the extended interview with this week's featured guests on the YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEBEL1Sh4Z-t3PXKbsW7b4BC * To dig deeper into this episode, Paul joins Sophie Law on the complimentary YouTube show 'Another Byte', from this coming Thursday: * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEAXxJRY5vU4LWldRNLjZZng * Thank you to Miles Walker from Graphus for recommending the book The Big Con by Tony Sales: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Big-How-stole-million-away/dp/1913406393 * https://ca.linkedin.com/in/mileswalker9th * In next week's episode, Paul will be joined by Andrew Moon from Orange Nomad, to share some great LinkedIn lead generation tips: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmoonorangenomad * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider:

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Episode 128 includes: * Why you need to buddy up with a particular type of business to share referrals * Understand the special tool from LinkedIn that can boost your profile * Plus our guest is an MSP sales expert explaining how to win more business by focusing on people not technology

Featured guest

Thank you to Heather Harlos, Head of MSP and Channel Marketing at JumpCloud, for joining Paul to talk about the power of making your business more 'human'.

Heather has been helping companies optimise their business operations and go-to-market strategies for over 15 years. Before joining JumpCloud, she served in multiple global roles for Fortune 500 companies, helping them create live experiences, leverage modern digital platforms, and empower their customers to thrive. In her free time, she trains hunter/jumper horses and actually could ride before she could walk.

Connect with Heather on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/heatherharlos Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ * https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ * Paul mentioned the LinkedIn Sales Selling Index test: * https://linkedin.com/sales/ssi * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge: * https://www.mspmarketingedge.com/ * Right now you can watch the extended interview with this week's featured guests on the YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEBEL1Sh4Z-t3PXKbsW7b4BC * To dig deeper into this episode, Paul joins Sophie Law on the complimentary YouTube show 'Another Byte', from this coming Thursday: * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEAXxJRY5vU4LWldRNLjZZng * Thank you to John Montgomery from Hot Prospects for recommending the book Emotional Intelligence for Sales Success by Colleen Stanley: * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Emotional-Intelligence-Sales-Success-Customers/dp/0814430295 * https://uk.linkedin.com/in/john-montgomery-b646bb1b * In next week's episode, Paul will be joined by Nick Rubright from New Reach Marketing, to talk about how to improve your Google Maps listing: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-rubright-29225047/ * Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing * Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider:

Emotional Intelligence for Sales Success: Connect with Customers and Get Results

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Episode 127 is a special episode in which Paul talks to the owner of a technology marketing agency about the areas in which MSPs should focus their marketing efforts, they also touch on how to adopt a growth mindset and how they grew their own business over a two year period

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Episode 126 includes how to make the absolute most of every piece of marketing content, the leadership benefit of really getting to know your team and the MSP that grew to 100 staff within 18 years

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Episode 125 includes how to make your website more fun to use, the MSP owner that created a tool for other MSPs and a solution to your business growth distractions

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Episode 124 includes some powerful LinkedIn tools, how to sell cyber security and making the best long-term decisions

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Episode 123 includes why ticket triage can help your marketing, the final stage of your one page marketing plan and how to use LinkedIn advertising

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Episode 122 includes how to prepare your MSP for sale, the importance of being a leader and the next part of your one-page marketing plan

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Episode 121 includes how to bond with clients during onboarding, the niche in your marketing plan and another Microsoft revenue stream

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Episode 120 includes the next stage in creating your 1 page marketing plan, how to check if your marketing will work and a phishing expert shares the latest industry news

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Episode 119 includes why it's important to understand what a client buys, how to start a marketing plan and great tips from a lead gen expert

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Episode 118 includes how your MSP can use webinars to generate leads, tips for doubling your marketing and to build trust with your clients

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Episode 117 includes why you need to be the most expensive MSP in your market, the business owners that don't buy technology and awesome tips from an SEO and MSP expert

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In this week’s episode * Surely you should be celebrating when your staff don’t take their holidays? Actually no… apart from it increasing the chances of them burning out, it can be a huge pain when everyone tries to take their time off, at the same time, at the end of the year. In today’s show Paul explores something you could put in place today to make this go away * Also on the show this week, there may be something wrong with your marketing and you don’t even know about it. Paul explains where these errors may exist and why you should fix them * Plus there’s a valuable conversation with Paul’s guest about how to improve your lead generation. And a book to read to help you be more effective

Featured guest

Thank you to Jeff Pugel from Ignition for joining Paul to talk about how to start selling based on value, not price.

Waking up in a cold sweat at 3AM in the spring of 2019, Jeff knew he was done with corporate life. After 20+ years in advertising and media sales, Jeff realised small business owners have been misled on what they need to know about growing their business. Jeff’s mission is to accelerate profits and guarantee a quantifiable Return on Investment from his hybrid marketing coaching/consulting services.

Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn.

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Register for a free copy of Paul’s book * Thank you to Todd Kane from Evolve Management Consulting for recommending the book Effective Executive by Peter Drucker * In next week’s episode on February 8th, Paul will be joined by Aaron Nihat from Cornwall IT, talking about how you can improve your website’s Google rank with some SEO tips * Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP marketing

The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

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In this week’s episode * If the limit of your prospect’s technical knowledge is them taking a screenshot on an iPhone, how can they understand the technology solutions you’re trying to sell to them? It’s all about making your services feel relevant to them. And this week Paul talks about how you can do this * Also on the show this week, how do you feel about attending physical networking meetings? If it’s Covid-safe for you to attend, Paul explains how to get the most out of them * And there’s some great advice from Paul’s featured guest about using YouTube as part of your marketing mix. Plus there’s a great book recommendation all about virtual selling

Featured guest

Thank you to Sam Sheridan from Sheridan Computers for joining Paul to talk about how you can use YouTube to win new clients.

Sam grew up in Bolton, UK and has always had a passion for computers. Before the internet was made publicly available in 1993, he was brought up around the world of dial-up connections, modems, and bulletin boards. Sheridan Computers has been providing IT support and consultancy to small and medium businesses for twenty years.

Connect with Sam on LinkedIn.

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook * Thank you to B.J. Ferguson from Keyfactor for recommending the book Virtual Selling by Andy Springer, Dave Shaby, and Mike Schultz * In next week’s episode on February 1st, Paul will be joined by Jeff Pugel from Ignition, talking about how to start selling based on value, not price * Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world, this is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Hello, and welcome back to the show. Here’s what we’ve got coming up for you this week.

Sam Sheridan:

So I’m currently standing at about 2000 subscribers. I use YouTube to get new clients and I’m here to tell you how you can do the same.

Paul Green:

That’s Sam Sheridan. He’s an MSP owner, just

Virtual Selling: How to Build Relationships, Differentiate, and Win Sales Remotely

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In this week’s episode * You know your MSP is different to your competitors, but how can your prospects tell you apart (and therefore decide they must choose you?). It all comes down to having a USP – a Unique Selling Proposition. And this week Paul explains precisely what yours should be * Also on the show this week, did you know your MSP-branded polo shirt could lose the sale… as could your nicely ironed shirt. So what DO you wear in sales meetings with prospective clients? Paul describes exactly how you should be dressing for success * Plus listen for some great ideas on how to improve your MSP’s website thanks to Paul’s featured guest. And there’s a book recommendation all about the power of integrators and visionaries

Featured guest

Thank you to Mark Copeman from Wisecurve for joining Paul to talk about how MSPs can improve their websites.

Mark is the founder of Wisecurve, which brings together a number of his ventures including TechTestimonials – the only video / written testimonial service dedicated to the tech industry. He is the author of the books, MSP Secrets Revealed and Helpdesk Habits. Mark is married with 2 children and lives in the village of Bray, the home of 50% of the UK’s 3-starred Michelin restaurants. He loves to cook and run, but not necessarily at the same time.

Connect with Mark on LinkedIn.

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Paul mentioned two example customer experience platforms, Invarosoft and CloudRadial * Paul mentioned the book The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber, in which it talks about having an entrepreneurial seizure * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge * Thank you to Lucas Meadowcroft from Tribu for recommending the book Rocket Fuel by Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters * In next week’s episode on January 25th, Paul will be joined by Sam Sheridan from Sheridan Computers, talking about how you can use YouTube to win new clients * Got a question fr

Rocket Fuel: The One Essential Combination That Will Get You More of What You Want from Your Business

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In this week’s episode * Are you ready for total market domination in 2022? Now THAT’S something big to aim for this year 😃 In this week’s podcast Paul talks about how to totally dominate your area through systematic, persistent marketing. It’s easier than it sounds because most of the MSPs you’re up against will be doing very little marketing * Also on the show this week, the best things to talk about when doing a job interview. There are a few key questions that can make the whole recruitment process 1,000% more effective * Plus listen for a great new way of dealing with vendors. This week’s featured guests are attempting to revolutionise the channel and remove a lot of the ‘friction’ between MSPs and vendors

Featured guests Thank you to this week’s featured guests, Matt Solomon and Kevin Lancaster from Channel Program, a platform designed to bring together the most innovative technologies in front of Channel Partners and give them a voice in how companies present, enter and succeed in the channel.

Matt Solomon has worked in sales & business development for 16+ years. Matt has spoken at more than 150 industry events in six countries and received 40 awards in recognition. Matt started a consulting company, Channel Halo, working with vendors and MSPs on their go-to-market strategies. After having many of the same conversations, Matt and his former CEO Kevin Lancaster decided to team up again and launched Channel Program.

Connect with Matt on LinkedIn.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

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In this week’s special episode * What a way to start 2022. This is the second of our two podcast specials to help you position your MSP for growth this year * A large panel of industry experts join Paul to share the most valuable piece of business advice they’ve ever been given * From ‘jumping in with two feet’ to ‘ensuring true compensation for skills’, the panel have tons of invaluable advice to share

Show notes

Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform
Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert
Paul’s panel of experts consists of…
Richard Tubb the IT Business Growth Expert
Heather Johnson from Gozynta
Christian Fleming from Northstar IT
James Vickery from Benchmark 365
Jamie Warner from Invarosoft
Jason Kemsley from Uptime Solutions
Jay McBain from Forrester Research
Jennifer Bleam from MSP Sales Revolution
Justin Esgar from the Virtua Consulting Group
Mark Copeman from Wisecurve
Praveen Ramesh from SuperOps.ai
Nigel Moore from the Tech Tribe
Jason Kemsley mentioned personality tests, including DISC assessment and Myers-Briggs
Next week, in Episode 113 on the 11th of January, Paul will be joined by Kevin Lancaster and Matt Solomon from Channel Program, talking about their mission to revolutionise the way channel partners and vendors communicate and interact
Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is an MSP Marketing Podcast Special.

Paul Green:

Hello, and welcome to the show, and Happy New Year. I want 2022 to be the year you get everything you want and need out of your MSP. Maybe it’s more leads, it’s certainly more clients I’d have thought and you definitely want to increase the net profit that you’re getting from your business. All of these things can be done, and throughout the whole of this year, we are committed to bringing you the best guests, the best information and clever ways that you can get more out of your MSP, generate more leads, get more new clients and make more net profit. Now, to get us off to a great start to the year, it’s not going to be much of me in this show. Instead, I contacted a whole load of friends, experts, previous guests on the show just before

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In this week’s special episode * As 2021 draws to a close, now’s a great time to position your MSP for growth next year. This is the first of two podcast special episodes aimed at helping you * A panel of industry experts join Paul to look at the recipe for successful MSPs * They look at everything from ambition to delegation and processes to mindset. As one guest says “businesses grow to the size of thinking of the owner”

Featured guests

Ian Luckett from ‘IT Experts’. Ian is a multi-talented IT & MSP business growth expert with over 20 years’ experience as a mentor, coach and ebusiness strategist. Over the years of working at various blue-chip companies holding a variety of senior positions, no one fits the profile better than Ian to help you build a profitable IT & MSP business by increasing your sales, productivity and profits.

Connect with Ian on LinkedIn.

Stuart Warwick from Scale With Confidence and the MSP mastery. Stuart is an MSP specific business coach, creator of the Scale With Confidence Model and founder of the MSP Mastery programme designed to help MSP’s scale with confidence to £1million or, if already there, to go faster.

Connect with Stuart on LinkedIn.

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In this week’s episode * Does the idea of introducing ‘live chat’ on your website give you the shivers and feel like a massive burden? This week Paul explains how this feature, when used correctly, can help to generate more leads for your MSP * Also on the show this week, did you know you that you are unconsciously setting the ‘warmth’ factor of everyone working in your business? Warmth is critical to keep both staff and clients happy. And increasing it should be a key focus in 2022 * Plus, in the final show before Christmas, a recruitment specialist joins Paul to predict what MSP recruitment is going to be like next year. And there’s an awesome inspirational prize to be won

Featured guest

Thank you to recruitment specialist Jimmy Armitage from Wavelength for joining Paul to talk about the state of recruitment for MSPs and how to get the most out of the process.

Jimmy has been helping businesses grow since 2005. Jimmy represented England Rugby at U18 level, which opened his eyes to the difference the right team can make. Combining his business insight and experience with his passion for high-performing teams, Jimmy is dedicated to helping business leaders recruit the right people for their team.

Away from work Jimmy is still a passionate England Rugby supporter, trying to work out how to be a good parent, enjoys a craft beer (or 4) and loves relaxing by walking his trusty dog, Reggie.

Connect with Jimmy on LinkedIn.

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Producer James Lett detailed a competition to win Paul’s top 5 books and a year’s subscription to Audible, enter here before midnight UK time Sunday January 2022 * The top 5 books are the Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes, They Ask You Answer by Marcus Sheridan, Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss, Built To Sell

by John Warrillow & The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy

The Leadership Secrets of Santa Claus: How to Get Big Things Done in YOUR "Workshop"...All Year Long

Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It

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In this week’s episode * Do you think like prospects think? If you can put yourself in the shoes of the prospect and think through what kind of journey you’d like them to have with your MSP, that will be a huge marketing advantage. This week Paul explains how to design the perfect prospect journey * Also on the show this week, how you can improve the business by using data points to make positive changes every single day * Plus find out from Paul’s featured guest what video storytelling is, and shy you should do it

Featured guest

Thank you to filmmaker and brand strategist Jude Charles for joining Paul to talk about how you leverage the power of video storytelling in your MSP.

After starting his video production business at 17 years old, he found his specialty in helping entrepreneurs bring their stories to life through documentaries. For over 15 years, Jude has been producing documentary series for major brands such as Google, Coldwell Banker, and Steve Harvey but he is fuelled by working closely with purpose-driven entrepreneurs and leaders.

Connect with Jude on LinkedIn.

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook * Thank you to the email marketing specialist Liz Wilcox for recommending the book Real Artists Don’t Starve by Jeff Goins * In the next show on December 21st Paul will be joined by Jimmy Armitage from Wavelength to talk about how you can improve on the recent issues with recruitment * Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Hey, don’t tell anyone that I told you, but today, it’s 11 days to Christmas. Here’s what we’ve got coming up in this week’s show.

Jude Charles :

Video is powerful and it’s much easier

Real Artists Don't Starve: Timeless Strategies for Thriving in the New Creative Age

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In this week’s episode * We know it’s not good, but why do we allow chaos to run riot in our businesses? This week Paul explains how to banish chaos and put your MSP on a new growth path * Also on the show this week, the difference between your clients’ “real” and “perceived” problems. How to identify which is which and get to the core of the real problem * And this week’s featured guest joins Paul to explain how MSPs can really get the most out of technology roadmaps

Featured guest

Thank you to Stephen Rosenthal from Managed Services Platform for joining Paul to talk about how MSPs can best implement technology roadmaps for clients.

Stephen is a multipreneur with ventures in sales, marketing, real estate, and retail. He leads Aurra Media, a scrappy omni-channel marketing team with a special focus on podcast marketing. As a friendly “sales guy”, Stephen genuinely enjoys serving and connecting with people. By day, Stephen builds positive customer experiences. And by night he enjoys hanging with his family and nerding out about NFTs.

Connect with Stephen on email.

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In talking about the need for systems, Paul mentioned the books Power Play: Elon Musk, Tesla, and the Bet of the Century by Tim Higgins and The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook * Thank you to Alex Robinson from Novus Digital for recommending the book the 12 Rules of Life by Jordan Peterson * In the next show on December 14th Paul will be joined by filmmaker Jude Charles talking about how you can leverage the power of video storytelling in your MSP * Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh, every Tuesday, for MSPs around the world, this is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Oh my goodness, we are here in December already? This year is going so fast. Here’s what we’ve got coming up for y

Blind Corner: Tesla, the Model 3, and Elon Musk’s Most Dangerous Race

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In this week’s episode * Does cash flow keep you awake at night? If it does, this is definitely the episode for you. Paul explains how certain aspects of the MSP business model can improve your cash flow and your sleeping habits! * Also, what’s the connection between a successful MSP and that 90s Keanu Reeves film about a runaway bus? Speed! This week Paul dives into the business benefits of being a fast-moving MSP * Plus on the show this week, there’s a recommendation for an excellent book about bitesize growth. And Paul’s featured guest introduces you to a new way to sell cyber security

Featured guest

Thank you to Phylip Morgan from Pax8 for joining Paul to talk about how to sell cyber security without using fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

As Chief Channel Officer of Pax8 UK, Phylip provides leadership, guidance, and support to successfully extend the company’s key channel and marketing objectives to UK markets.

Phylip holds an M.A. in Missional Leadership from Bangor University, is the Pastor and Co-Founder of Calon Church, and sits on the board for several companies and non-profits. He enjoys working with small business owners and spending time with his wife and three daughters.

Connect with Phylip on LinkedIn.

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Thank you to Adrian Savage from Deliverability Dashboard for recommending the book the The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy * In the next show on December 7th Paul will be joined by Stephen Rosenthal from Managed Services Platform talking about how MSPs can best implement technology roadmaps for clients * Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Hi, there and welcome back to the show. Here’s what we got coming up for you this week.

Phylip Morgan:

Fear, uncertainty, and doubt was the way to sell those products, right? A new way that we could maybe be so a cybersecurity.

Paul Green:

That’s Phylip Morgan from

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In this week’s episode * You want more revenue? Paul’s got 3 ideas for you * Also this week, do you obsess over the right things? Making your clients’ lives easier is something worth sweating over. Paul explains what it could mean for your MSP * Plus, can you tell your prospects good stories about tech, rather than the dry facts? This week’s guest describes the benefits of becoming a great story teller * All that on this week’s show, plus your chance to win a copy of one of the best video editors – Camtasia

Featured guest

Thank you to the inspirational storyteller Roger E Jones for joining Paul to talk about how to turn difficult sales conversations into effective stories.

Roger E Jones is the expert tech firms go to, to become master storytellers to accelerate sales growth, differentiate themselves in their market and inspire investors. His passion is working with smaller growth-focused firms to help them secure their growth ambitions. A former tech CMO, Roger works worldwide.

Connect with Roger on LinkedIn.

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In discussing great customer service, Paul mentioned Episode 88 in which he talked to Jamie Warner from Invarosoft * Producer James Lett told you about the chance to win the latest copy of Camtasia thanks to Techsmith * Thank you to Greg Jones from Datto for recommending the book the MSP’s Survival Guide to Co-Managed IT Services by Bob Coppedge * In the next show on November 30th Paul will be joined by Phylip Morgan from Pax8 talking about how to sell cyber security without using fear, uncertainty, and doubt * Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around th

The MSP’S Survival Guide To Co-Managed IT Services: A Crotchety Old Geek’s Road Map on Marketing, Selling and Providing Managed Services to Organizations with Existing IT Staff (CoMITs)

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In this week’s episode * There’s a 99.74% chance that if you run an MSP, you love a good gadget. This week, Paul takes a look at some productivity toys, aimed at helping you take better notes * Also on the show this week, do you and your team have a ‘growth mindset’? If you have one, you’re more likely to do what you want to do with your life. Paul takes a look at what a growth mindset is, and how you can introduce it to your staff. * Plus, how do you truly run your business, rather than your business running you? Paul’s featured guest this week is an expert with unmissable advice

Featured guest

Thank you to Todd Kane from Evolve Management Consulting for joining Paul to talk about how to run your business instead of your business running you.

Todd Kane worked as VP of Operations for the award winning MSP Fully Managed. Todd has led technology teams for several of largest and high growth companies in western Canada.

Todd‘s record includes doubling the revenue of several companies and leading double digit increases in margins.

Connect with Todd on LinkedIn.

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Here’s a link to the book Paul mentioned Mindset by Carol Dweck * In discussing interesting notepad solutions, Paul mentioned ReMarkable 2, Rocketbook and Desk Board Buddy * Thank you to Jonno White from Clarity for recommending the book The Advantage by Patrick Lencione * In the next show on November 23rd Paul will be joined by inspirational storyteller Roger Jones, talking about how to turn difficult sales conversations into effective stories * Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green:

Hello, and you are very welcome to episode 105 of the podcast

Mindset - Updated Edition: Changing The Way You think To Fulfil Your Potential

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In this week’s episode * Are you prepared to out-spend your competitors to attract new clients? You will be when you calculate the Average Lifetime Value (ALV) of a client to your business! This week Paul takes a deep dive into how you can link your marketing to the ALV of a potential new client * It can be hard for a prospect to jump straight into a monthly recurring revenue relationship. Paul explains more about the special low-cost purchases that can help convert prospects into regular clients * And, is the future of IT support in the hands of artificial intelligence? This week’s featured guest is working on a system to help your MSP shoulder some of the heavy lifting

Featured guest

Thank you to Lucas Meadowcroft from Tribu for joining Paul to talk about how artificial intelligence could be help you deliver IT support in the future.

Pushing the boundaries when it comes to tech & innovation, his mission is to change the MSP industry forever. For more than 17 years he has served a diverse range of businesses, from start-ups to scale-ups, with the highest calibre in helping businesses leverage the latest technology trends, digitally transforms organisations and drive competitive advantage.

Connect with Lucas on LinkedIn.

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Here’s a link to the book Paul mentioned Influence by Dr Robert Cialdini * Paul suggested listening back to Episode 91 for more on the subject of risk reversals and guarantees * Register for a free copy of Paul’s book * Thank you to Stormie Andrews from the Yokel Local marketing agency for recommending the book Post Corona by Scott Galloway * In the next show on November 16th Paul will be joined by Todd Kane from Evolve Management Consulting, talking about how to run your business instead of your business running you * Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday, for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Hello, and welcome to the show. We only recently celebrated our 100th episode, but this

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In this week’s episode * Can Mr Zuckerberg actually help MSPs grow? More and more businesses are using Facebook Messenger to talk to potential customers. And this week Paul explores the opportunities for MSPs * Also on the show this week, we look at a better way than appraisals to improve your staff’s performance * Plus, do you find it hard to stop talking tech with potential clients? This week’s featured guest explains why MSPs should leave the tech at the door and just have better business conversations

Featured guest

Thank you to Adam Walter from Managed Services Platform for joining Paul to talk about how to have more effective non-technical conversations with clients and prospects.

Adam grew up in western Nebraska. When his parents bought a home computer in the 80s, this cemented his technical path and he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. A few years later Adam received an opportunity to work for a large company as a strategic technical lead. While working here Adam was able to shine by pulling many teams together to solve issues in high pressure situations. This is where he began shifting his career towards business and strategy.

Connect with Adam on LinkedIn.

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In discussing how to potentially incorporate Facebook Messenger into your marketing, Paul mentioned Click To Messenger ads and MobileMonkey * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook * In discussing how to stand out, Paul mentioned the book Purple Cow by Seth Godin * Thank you to Colin Knox from Gradient MSP for recommending the book Building a StoryBrand by Donald

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In this week’s episode * Ever ruin something because you didn’t know, what you didn’t know about it? Recently Paul ruined a watch for this very reason. This week he explains how you can educate your users to avoid disasters and the resulting benefit to your MSP * Also on this week’s show, is your marketing pot empty with no new prospects in the pipeline? Paul has some great practical advice on how to generate leads quickly * Plus, how do you feel about writing marketing emails? If the idea of sitting down to create an email gives you the sweats, Paul’s featured guest will tell you how to take the sting out of email marketing

Featured guest

Thank you to email marketing specialist Liz Wilcox for joining Paul to talk about how to take the pain out of creating engaging and effective emails newsletters.

Liz Wilcox is an Email Strategist helping bloggers build online relationships, package up their “magic” and turn it into emails that people want to read and, most importantly, purchase from. In a span of three years, Liz founded, grew, and sold a successful blog. Since selling the blog, she has helped her clients master their sales by leveraging the power of strategic email. Offline, Liz lives in Florida, loves to run and is a walking 90s pop culture encyclopaedia.

Connect with Liz on LinkedIn.

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expe

The Irresistible Consultant's Guide to Winning Clients: 6 Steps to Unlimited Clients & Financial Freedom

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In this week’s episode * Are you one of the wasteful 48 per cent? Stats show that 48 per cent of people waste valuable sales opportunities by not following up with a prospect. This week Paul explains how you can fix this and increase sales for your MSP * Also on this week’s show, how to help your team to solve their problems without getting bogged down in problem-solving. When someone presents you with an issue, there’s a great technique for dealing with them effectively * Plus there’s an extremely valuable conversation with Paul’s featured guest, all about improving your SEO and the changes that Google have been making (these might have impacted your MSP’s website search ranking)

Featured guest

Thank you to Alex Robinson from Novus Digital for joining Paul to talk about SEO and the changes Google have been making.

Launched in 2019, Novus Digital are a digital marketing agency dedicated to delivering commercially viable SEO to SMEs in the UK and US. We pride ourselves on being able to deliver value at almost any budget with open, tangible SEO methodology. Connect with Alex on LinkedIn.

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In discussing how to use a ‘telephone person’, Paul mentioned the full guide that featured in Episode 72 * Register for a free copy of Paul’s book * Thank you to Nick Moran from Powernet for recommending the book Legacy by James Kerr * In the next show on October 26th Paul will be joined by email marketing specialist Liz Wilcox, talking about how to get people to open and take action on an email newsletter * Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Hey, there. And welcome to episode 101 of the podcast. Here’s what we got coming up for you this week.

Alex Robinson:

Core Web Vitals are the core technical indicators that Google uses to determine where your website’s going

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In this week’s special episode * As a thank you for listening and supporting this podcast, Paul has pulled out all the stops to pack this milestone episode full of value * Previously a few MSPs have appeared on the show to reveal their secrets, but this week’s 100th episode features a panel-full of successful MSPs joining Paul. Justin, Will and Richard will be answering listeners’ questions and discussing how they grew their MSPs * Also on this week’s show, your chance to win a special prize. Thanks to Datto, you could get your hands on one of five $100 Amazon giftcards

Featured guests

Justin Esgar from the Virtua Consulting Group

With a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Rhode Island and over 15 years of industry experience under his belt, Justin Esgar has combined his eclectic tech interests under the Virtua Consulting umbrella. Virtua specialises in helping small and medium-sized businesses and non-profit organisations analyse, design, and install technology solutions. The software development group Virtua XYZ brings together Justin’s various programming projects, including the Your Computer Inventory service for IT consultants. Finally, Justin organises and cheerleads for the business-focused ACES Conference and associated online community. Connect with Justin on LinkedIn.

Richard Wingfield from Envision Design****

Richard grew up in a small town in Texas as the son of a general contractor and obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from the University of Texas in 1983. He entered the architecture industry at a time when computer technology was first coming of age and by the early 90’s he had become a computer expert in his fiel

Unstoppable Referrals: 10x Referrals Half the Effort

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In this week’s episode * What gets your staff into work every day – passion or pay? Sometimes it’s a combination but maybe it’s more one than the other. This week Paul helps you identify their motivations, which can make it easier to grow your MSP * Also on this week’s show, do you know how to truly measure success every day? Paul has two simple but hugely powerful things you can do to make sure you set the context for measurable success * Plus there’s an extremely valuable conversation with Paul’s featured guest, all about improving your email deliverability. And news of a big prize for next week’s 100th episode

Featured guest

Thank you to Adrian Savage from Deliverability Dashboard for joining Paul to talk about how to improve email open rates.

Adrian Savage is a dad, a geek and an entrepreneur. He left the corporate world 10 years ago and now specialises in email deliverability: how to avoid the spam folder and double your open rates. He’s helped many well-known names improve their email performance and is also the founder and creator of Deliverability Dashboard, which quickly and simply shows how well your emails are performing and how you can get even more people seeing and opening your emails. Connect with Adrian on LinkedIn.

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In discussing how engaged your staff are, Paul mentioned Gallup’s Q12 Employee Engagement Survey * Thank you to Praveen Ramesh from SuperOps.ai for recommending the book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein * The October 12th milestone 100th episode will be sponsored by Datto and will feature a special panel of industry experts including Will O’Neal, Richard Wingfield and Justin Esgar * Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world, this is Paul Green’s MSP Marketin

Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

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In this week’s episode * Is is possible to buy cold data and turn it into clients for your MSP? This week Paul deep dives into what type of data you could buy and how best to use that data for prospecting * Also on the show this week: When you achieve your business goals, will that give you the lifestyle you most want? Put another way, are your business goals aligned with the vision for your life? Paul explains why they need to be linked * And there are TWO recommendations for the same inspirational leadership author this week, both from Paul’s featured guest Jonno White and fellow MSP John Clark

Featured guest

Thank you to Jonno White from Clarity for joining Paul to talk about how to deal with conflict and difficult people within your MSP.

Jonno is the Founder and Principal Consultant at Clarity, a consultancy based in Brisbane, Australia. Jonno is also the author of a new book – ‘Step Up or Step Out: How to deal with difficult people even if you hate conflict’ and he is passionate about investing in people to become everything they’re meant to be. The book is also available at a special price on the Clarity website. Connect with Jonno on LinkedIn.

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In discussing his experience with buying cold data, Paul mentioned Selectabase who are a reseller of Experian data * Paul mentioned The Checker as one tool for scrubbing cold data * Check out Paul’s in-depth guide on using cold data * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge * Register for a free copy of Paul’s book * Paul’s featured guest Jonno White mentioned one of his favourite leadership authors, Patrick Lencioni * Thank you to John Clark from Solutions Shared for recommending the book Getting Naked, A Business Fable by Patrick Lencioni * On October 5th Paul will be joined by Adrian Savage from Deliverability Dashboard to talk about how to increase the chances of your emails being delivered * Got a question from the show? Email P

Getting Naked: A Business Fable About Shedding The Three Fears That Sabotage Client Loyalty

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In this week’s episode * Of course you’d love to appear at the very top of Google when a ‘hot buyer’ is searching for a new MSP. In many cases you’d need to use Google Ads to achieve this… but are they really worth it? This week Paul dives into the pros and cons of Google Ads for MSPs * Also on the show this week, it’s the second half of Paul’s masterclass on PR. Listen for 10 practical killer ideas for generating free publicity * Plus, what is a ‘buyer persona’ and how can your MSP use one to out-smart the competition? All this and more is answered by Paul’s featured guest this week, Stormie Andrews

Featured guest

Thank you to Stormie Andrews from the Yokel Local marketing agency for joining Paul to talk about how to outsmart the competition by creating a fictitious buyer persona.

Stormie’s passion is to make it much easier for organisations to attract their ideal clients by understanding how their prospects think in order to experience what it’s like to achieve ridiculous growth. Stormie is a recognised Member of the Year from the American Marketing Association, named as a Top 50 Tech Visionary by Intercon in 2020-2021, and his book, “The Worlds Best Buyer Persona System“, became an Amazon Hot New Releases Best Seller when released in July of 2020.

Connect with Stormie on LinkedIn.

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In discussing the benefits of Google Ads, Paul recommended listening back to Episode 88 for a conversation with an MSP who uses Google Ads heavily * Listen back to Episode 96 for part one of the conversation on PR and getting free publicity * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge * Many than

Predictable Success: Getting Your Organization on the Growth Track-and Keeping It There

The World's Best Buyer Persona System: The Buyer Persona Reimagined: It's Not Who They Are but HOW THEY THINK!

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In this week’s episode * Do you know the difference between PR (publicity) and advertising? It’s to do with cost vs credibility… and former journalist Paul explains in this week’s podcast * Also on the show this week: Three classic book suggestions you may not have heard of before, but you absolutely should read * And what data is hiding within your business? The chances are you already have access to some powerful information that, once identified, could go on to help you make better business decisions

Featured guest

Thank you to Colin Knox from Gradient MSP for joining Paul to talk about how to unlock and use the hidden data in your MSP.

Colin has spent the past 20 years deeply embedded in the technology field and is now the Founder & CEO of Gradient MSP, focused on giving vision and voice to MSPs both small and large. Colin is a technology innovator, passionate leader, and professional speaker focused on advising entrepreneurs how to grow, expand, and mature their businesses.

Connect with Colin on LinkedIn.

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Paul recommended the following classic marketing and business growth books: * How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Betcher * Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill * Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude by Napoleon Hill * Register for a free copy of Paul’s book * Many thanks to Stephen De Tomasi from Amigo Technology for recommending the book Work the System by Sam Carpenter * On September 21st Paul will be joined by Stormie Andrews to talk about how to outsmart the competition * Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Gre

Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude

Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century (Think and Grow Rich Series)

How I Raised Myself From Failure to Success in Selling

Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less (Revised 3rd Edition, 2019)

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In this week’s special episode * There’s no point having an amazing website… if no-one ever sees it. Getting the most out of your website is Paul’s main theme in this week’s special episode * Listen for 10+ free or low cost ideas to attract more traffic to your site. So you can turn the visitors into leads, prospects and clients * This deep dive into increasing web traffic touches on many tactics, including social media, reciprocal promotions, client referrals, public relations, promotional items and paid for advertising

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In this special episode Paul mentioned Google Analytics as way to find out how much traffic you’re currently getting * The service Stannp was mentioned for sending automated physically printed materials * Register for a free copy of Paul’s book * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook * On September 14th Paul’s special guest will be Colin Knox from Gradient MSP, talking about how best to deal with your client’s data security compliance * Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world, this is an MSP Marketing Podcast special.

Paul Green:

Hello, welcome to a very special episode of the MSP Marketing Podcast. This week, we’re doing a deep dive into a subject that many people don’t talk that much about web traffic, because getting your website set up is almost the easy part. And there’s loads of places you can go for help getting your website perfect. But actually you’ve got to get traffic to your website. And then you’ve got to turn that traffic into leads, and those leads into prospects and those prospects into clients. And that’s the difficult, ongoing bit. If the website is the marketing engine of your business, then web traffic is the fuel. And without fuel, your website is an expensive and useless lump. So most MSP owners don’t invest nearly enough resource into driving enough web traffic. The days of setting up a website and people just getting to it, just visiting it, they ended, I don’t know, 20,21 years ago, the turn of the century.

Paul Green:

These days, your website will just sit there unvisited. So the trick is to focus on quality and not quantity. You don’t need 10,000 unique visitors every single week. You just need 50 to 100 highly targeted, relevant people every single week. The people who are most likely to go on to become great clients for your MSP. Now, as a side note, if you don’t know how many unique visitors your website currently gets, or even how many pages they view or anything like that, then install Google Analytics. It’s free, of course. It is a bit hard to read, but it gives you an insight into what’s happening in your website. And there are a lot of much more user-friendly alternatives to Google Analytics out there. If you just go and Google some, you̵

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In this week’s episode * Do you feel uncomfortable about submitting a quote in a proposal or increasing your prices? Many MSPs worry about this, but this week Paul explains why you should always be the most expensive MSP in town * Speaking of proposals, how do you stop wasting time submitting proposals to people you never hear from again? This week’s featured guest talks about the importance of capturing your prospect’s ‘story’ before and during the process of creating a proposal * And live events have finally returned! Heard about DattoCon 21? It’s back, bigger and better, for 3 days in October. Now as a hybrid event, you can win either a place at the event in Seattle or VIP places for the virtual experience – just for listening

Featured guest

Thank you to Reuben Swartz from Mimiran for joining Paul to talk about how MSPs can create better proposals.

A software engineer to who accidentally became a sales and marketing consultant. He built Mimiran, the CRM for solo consultants who love serving clients but hate selling, the CRM he wished he’d had when he was trying to use tools built for his much bigger clients. When not working, Reuben is probably trying to keep up with his wife, his twins or his dog.

Connect with Reuben on LinkedIn.

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Paul recommended the productivity app TextExpander * Producer James told you about the chance to win access to the huge DattoCon 21 event. Find out more and enter, (before midnight UK time September 5th). * While talking about creating better proposals, Paul’s guest recommended their ‘fill-in-the-blank’ template on the Mimiran site * Many thanks to Jamie Warner, CEO of eNerds and Invarosoft for recommending the book

Monetizing Innovation: How Smart Companies Design the Product Around the Price

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In this week’s episode * Want your MSP to stand out in the crowd and really be noticed? There is a solution that involves your car and a LOT of vinyl plastic. Check out Paul’s brilliant tried and tested method for making a lot of noise and being seen in the marketplace * Also, did you know your MSP needs a Star Wars-esq opening scrolling story? Okay, maybe not literally yellow text fading into the distance, but Paul explains how creating the right backstory can set up your MSP for increased growth * Plus on the show this week, Paul’s featured guest explains exactly how he grew his MSP and navigated some very challenging times

Featured guest

Thank you to Nick Moran from Powernet for joining Paul to talk about how he grew his MSP to have offices in 3 cities and 85 staff.

After co-founding Evolve IT back in 1993 and merging with Powernet in 2019, Nick still looks the same as he did at 18(!). He loves his music, kebabs and travelling with the family.

Connect with Nick on LinkedIn.

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Producer James told you about a forthcoming chance to win access to the huge DattoCon 21 event * Many thanks to the business guide Steve Preda for recommending the book High Output Management by Andy Grove * On August 31st Paul will be joined by Reuben Swartz from Mimiran, talking about how to create better MSP proposals * Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for M`SPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green:

Hi. Hello and welcome back to the show. Here’s what we’ve got in store for you today.

Nick Moran:

Once that client lift and they outsourced direct to the vendor, we have to look for a new revenue opportunity.

Paul Green:

We’re also going to be talking about your backstory today, your origin story, how you came to be the owner of the business. This is a nice follow-up to something we did in last week’s show about wheth

High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove (1983-09-27)

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In this week’s episode * Do you want to be the Nike, Apple or Tesla of the MSP world – a brand that people want and talk about all the time? This week Paul talks about branding for MSPs and what you should focus on * In a related subject, how do you stand out in a vast ‘field’ of other MSPs? The answer is to be a purple cow, and Paul explains what it is, and how to use it to grab your prospects’ attention * Plus Paul’s brilliant guest this week explains how you can sell co-managed IT and work alongside your clients’ internal IT departments

Featured guest

Thank you to Greg Jones from Datto for joining Paul to talk about how MSPs can to sell co-managed solutions.

Greg Jones is Business Development Director for Datto within the EMEA region. He has worked in the IT sector for the past 20+ years, providing clear and visionary management approach to the development of IT in many sectors/organisations. Greg started his career in IT for the public sector after securing a senior IT management position within the local authority he then went on to private consultancy whilst working with many cutting-edge technologies for public and private sector.

Greg is extremely passionate about the MSP landscape & loves working with business owners / Partners of Datto to drive strategy and growth.

Connect with Greg on LinkedIn. To access free business advice from a panel of 40 industry experts (including Paul), you can email mspofficehours@datto.com

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In discussing how to make your business stand out, Paul mentioned the book Purple Cow by Seth Godin * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge * Greg Jones mentioned the free MSP business advice available by emailing mspofficehours@datto.com * Many thanks to Joey Donovan Guido from Cuppa SEO Web Design for recommending the book Essentialism by Greg McKeown * On August 24th Paul will be joined by Nick Moran from Powernet, talking about he grew his MSP in a dramati

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

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In this week’s episode * YOU know you’ll do an awesome job for a potential new client, but how do you convince THEM of this? You need to totally remove the perceived risk of dealing with your MSP. This week Paul looks at risk reversals, also known as guarantees * Also, while online ‘gated content’ can help you build your database, which pieces of content should you protect (unless someone enters their details) and which should be made freely available? * Plus Paul’s featured guest this week will tell you how you can take one content idea and turn it into multiple pieces of content

Featured guest

Thank you to Praveen Ramesh from SuperOps.ai for joining Paul to talk about how to create lots of content from just one podcast.

Connect with Praveen on LinkedIn.

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Register for a free copy of Paul’s book * Many thanks to Derek Morgan from Nexon Asia Pacific for recommending the book The Perfect Close by James Muir * On August 17th Paul will be joined by Greg Jones from Datto, talking about the co-managed opportunities for MSPs * Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green:

Hi, there, and welcome back to the show. Here’s what we’ve got lined up for you this week.

Praveen Ramesh:

Two to three social media posts, a couple of video posts, and what is the marketing expertise that you would need to produce this content? Literally zero.

Paul Green:

That’s P

The Perfect Close: The Secret To Closing Sales - The Best Selling Practices & Techniques For Closing The Deal

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In this week’s episode * Doesn’t it feel like there are a million things to focus on AT THE SAME TIME to grow a successful MSP? In terms of growth, there are really just three things to focus on. This week Paul looks at the right way to think about your business’s growth * Also, how would your MSP cope if you suddenly disappeared… literally, right now? From kidnapping (!) to illness, there are several events that could take you away from the business unexpectedly. Paul explains what you can prepare so the business continues to thrive whether you’re there or not * Plus on the show this week, we’ve got an another awesome prize – a physical time-tracker that really could change your life. And Paul’s featured guest could inspire you to create a new revenue stream

Featured guest

Thank you to John Clark from Solutions Shared for joining Paul to talk about how he created a new revenue stream based around customising Microsoft Dynamics.

John Clark is the founder and a director of Solutions Shared Ltd. With a background in software engineering, consultancy, IT infrastructure and Microsoft SharePoint, John started his CRM consulting career in 2008. Over the years, he has transitioned Solutions Shared from being an IT support company that did some CRM consultancy, to being 100% focused on the implementation of CRM for small and medium sized businesses.

Connect with John on LinkedIn.

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Producer James Lett told you about the chance to win a Timeular tracker dice and lifetime Pro membership – find out more and enter HERE (closes midnight Sunday 8th August 2021 UK time) * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook * Many thanks to Nate Freedman from Tech Pro Marketing for recommending the book Who: The A Method for Hiring by Geoff Smart and Randy Street * On August 10th Paul will be joined by Praveen Ramesh from Superops.ai talking about how to create lots of content just by listening to one podcast

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In this week’s episode * You’re listening to a podcast for MSPs, so you’ll know all about glorious ‘monthly recurring revenue’… but do you know how best to grow it for your business? This week Paul shows you the 3 core areas to focus on * Also, do you have your ‘scatter work’ under control? On the show Paul explains what ‘scatter work’ is, why it’s inevitable and how to get it under control so you have more time for the important stuff * Plus on the show this week, your clients will increasingly be turning to you to help them be more data compliant. Listen to a fascinating conversation with a data security expert about how you can benefit from this opportunity

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge * Paul’s special guest was Kevin Coppins, from Spirion, talking about how best to deal with your client’s data security compliance * Many thanks to Ernest Murry from Genuine Technology Group for recommending the book Leadership and Self-Deception from The Arbinger Institute * On August 3rd Paul will be joined by John Clark from Solutions Shared, talking about creating a new revenue stream based around customising Microsoft dynamics * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Hi there, and welcome to the show. Here’s what we got coming up for you this week.

Kevin Coppins:

Guess what? Next month, a new compliance law is passed; a new regulation comes forward.

Paul Green:

We’re also going to be talking about the holy trinity of monthly recurring revenue: three things that you should do at the same time, to grow the average revenue per user per month. And we’ve got a book suggestion from an MSP just like you. I’ll play that to you at the end of today’s show.

Voiceover:

Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

There’s a certain type of working, which seems to plague MSPs more than any other kind of business owner that I’ve ever worked with. And that type of work is known as scatter work. What’s scatter work? It’s kind of a word I’ve made up, but it describes where you’re trying to get things done, and you can’t ever really deeply focus in and settle into a task, because you’re being constantly interrupted by other people: be that phone calls, messages, emails, that urgent knock

Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box

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In this week’s special episode * Have you ever wondered how you’re going to generate millions in revenue for your MSP? In this special episode, you can hear how one owner did it * Jamie Warner of eNerds joins Paul to explain exactly how he grew his MSP organically to over A$9 million in revenue * Also in this special episode find out how he commercialised a solution to fix an internal issue, and created a new customer experience (CX) platform

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * This week Paul hosts a special episode featuring Jamie Warner, CEO of eNerds and Invarosoft. The show takes a deep dive into how Jamie built his MSP to over $9 million in revenue * Paul mentioned the book Unstoppable Referrals by Steve Gordon * In discussing marketing concepts, Jamie mentioned the book Purple Cow by Seth Godin, all about getting noticed * DeskDirector and Helpdesk Buttons were mentioned while talking about the growth of CX platforms * On July 27th Paul’s special guest will be Kevin Coppins, from Spirion, talking about how best to deal with your client’s data security compliance * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs all around the world. This is an MSP Marketing Podcast special.

Paul Green:

Hello, and welcome to another MSP Marketing Podcast special. These are our most listened to episodes and no wonder we have an amazing guest for you today. I’ve got a guy from Australia who’s going to tell us how he did it. Now, over the last 21 years, he’s built up, with his brother, from scratch a business that’s now doing around about 7 million US dollars a year. It’s an incredible story that he’s got for us today. He’s also going to tell us how he’s along the way become the owner of his own vendor. How he saw a problem and actually launched his own solution for that problem as well. It’s a fascinating story, and I’m delighted to welcome you to the subject of today’s very, very special episode.

Jamie Warner:

Hi, Paul. Thanks for having me. My name is Jamie Warner, and I’m the CEO of eNerds and Invarosoft.

Paul Green:

We’re going to talk about both of those businesses today. I want to start, Jamie, with the eNerds story. Thank you so much for joining me on this podcast. eNerds has got to be one of the b

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In this week’s episode * With all the security news over the last few weeks, you’ve put together a new security bundle and now you want to launch it to your clients and prospects. It’s great you’re excited about the new stack you’re selling, but how do you get others to care about it? Especially when they’re “uneducated” about security matters, compared to you. This week on the show Paul gives some great advice on educating clients and prospects so your offering sells itself * Also, do you get stressed about recruitment? If you’re finding it hard to attract the right kind of future employees, here’s a different way to look at recruitment * Plus Paul’s special guest this week is an expert in turning OK businesses into highly sellable businesses. It’s an awesome approach because it can make your MSP even more profitable and enjoyable to run, whether you want to sell it now or not

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Register for a free copy of Paul’s book * Paul’s special guest was the business guide Steve Preda, bringing his book to life called ‘Buyable: Your Guide to Building a Self-Managing, Fast-Growing, and High-Profit Business’ * During the conversation Steve mentioned the great books ‘The E-Myth Revisited‘ by Michael Gerber and Traction by Gino Wickman * Try Steve’s buyability assessment * Many thanks to Nancy Sabino for recommending the book The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain * On July 20th Paul presents a special extended podcast with featuring Jamie Warner, CEO of eNerds and Invarosoft. The show will take a deep dive into how Jamie built his MSP to over $9 million in revenue * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

I’ve got a cracker for you toda

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

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In this week’s episode * One day you’ll want to sell your MSP. It might be years away, but it’s a good habit to start to look at your business now, in the way your potential buyer will in the future * Want to get even more traffic to your website? An SEO expert joins Paul to reveal what else you can do to optimise your on-line presence * Speaking of your website, have you heard about ‘exit intent pop ups’? And are they right for your website? They could help generate more leads… Paul explains more * Plus, how about an amazing prize for life?! In the show this week you can win a lifetime membership to the MSP community The Tech Tribe

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In talking about the importance of running your business as if you were trying to sell it, Paul mentioned the great book Built To Sell by John Warrillow (and his podcast) * Register for a free copy of Paul’s book * Paul mentioned Google Optimize when discussing the benefits of testing an ‘exit intent pop up’ * Producer James Lett told you about the chance to win a lifetime membership to the Tech Tribe – enter HERE (closes midnight Sunday 11th July 2021 UK time) * Paul’s special guest was Joey Donovan Guido from Cuppa SEO Web Design and the author of A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing, talking about how to get more traffic to your website * In the conversation, Joey mentioned BrightLocal (that could help you with citations) plus Google My Business * Many thanks to Christian Fleming from Northstar IT for recommending the book Zero Negativity by Ant Middleton * On July 13th Paul will be joined by the business guide Steve Preda, talking about how to make your MSP self managing, fast growing, and highly profitable * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode

A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing: SEO - User Experience - Conversion

Zero Negativity: The Power of Positive Thinking

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In this week’s episode * Few MSP owners enjoy selling. And so inevitably at some point, everyone considers getting in a sales person to replace themselves. This is the right way of thinking for the long-term… but you absolutely never ever want to hire a commission-only sales person. Paul explains why in today’s podcast * Also on the show this week, how do you go about getting free publicity and what do you do with it when you get it? Listen as Paul (a former journalist) helps you get the most out of the traditional ‘press release’ * There’s also a fascinating conversation with an E-Learning expert – it’s an area of huge growth and you’ll discover how your MSP can benefit

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Paul spoke more back in Episode 72 about why and how to use a ‘phone person’ * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge (that includes monthly press releases) * Set up a Google Alert to help you track media coverage * Read more about the research surrounding the future value of the E-Learning market * Paul’s special guest was Derek Morgan from Nexon Asia Pacific talking about how to train your clients to buy more (find out more at Clip Training) * Many thanks to Bob Layton from Digital Defense for recommending the book Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg * On July 6th Paul will be joined by the online marketing consultant Joey Donovan Guido, talking about how to get more traffic to your website * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green:

Thank you so much for giving me your ears for the next 20, 25 minutes or so. Here’s what we’ve got coming up in today’s show.

Derek Morgan:

Users can actually go onto that platform and easily search and find the answers to the questions that they’re after.

Paul Green:

We’re also going to be talking about why your MSP should be sending out regular press releases to your local media and to news blogs. Plus we’ve got another book suggestion at the end of the show, and we’re going to be telling you about a competition we’re doing next week to win an incredible prize.

Voiceover:

Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast.

Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business

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In this week’s episode * It’s not in any way about being lazy – but you do need to stop personally working on so many tasks. If you free yourself from jobs that someone else can do for you, then you can focus your valuable attention on growing your business… and actually enjoying life. This week on the show Paul explains how you can do this * Also on the show this week, you may have noticed that LinkedIn has changed its rules around connecting with people. Paul’s joined by an expert special guest to look at what’s changed and how this might affect your MSP * Plus, how’s your About Us page on your site? It’s the second most important page on your site. And this week Paul gives you some great practical advice on how to make it as good as it can be

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Find out about the physical time tracking tool Paul mentioned called Timeular * Register for a free copy of Paul’s book * Paul’s special guest was Nate Freedman from Tech Pro Marketing talking about the new restrictions applied by LinkedIn * Check out the unofficial LinkedIn automation tool Dux-Soup * Find out more about LinkedIn’s other native content hosting solutions, for example Newsletters * Paul was looking forward to his future conversation with Praveen Ramesh from Superops.ai all about marketing and LinkedIn * Many thanks to Rebecca Finken from Traction 4 Success for recommending the book Who Not How by Dan Sullivan & Dr. Benjamin Hardy * On June 29th Paul will be joined by Derek Morgan from Nexon Asia Pacific talking about how to train your clients to buy more * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s, MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green:

I am delighted to be back with you, and we’ve got a cracker of a show for you this week. Here’s what’s coming up.

Nate Freedman:

In the older days when LinkedIn was maybe a little more lenient, you might be able to g

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In this week’s episode * One of the easiest ways to get new clients is to find other businesses that have the same clients as you, but aren’t in competition with you, and form a strategic partnership. Paul tells you how to do that in today’s podcast * Also on the show this week, we all know web traffic can be increased with better Search Engine Optimisation, but is it really something you can do yourself? * Plus listen for a special interview with an MSP who increased the scale of his business by acquiring 10 other MSPs within the last 5 years. It’s a fascinating conversation and there could be elements that you could copy within your business

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Here’s the blog post Paul mentioned on the subject of ‘Can I DIY my own SEO?’ * Try a Udemy course if you’d like to try to learn more about SEO * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge content service, that includes a book that you can call your own * Paul’s special guest was Ian Maclellan from Cloudstream Technology talking about how he bought 10 MSPs in 5 years, plus the revolutionary connectivity solution Neutrino8 * Many thanks to Andrew Eardsley from MSP Easy Tools for recommending the book Eat That Frog! by Brian Tracy * On June 22nd Paul will be joined by Nate Freedman from Tech Pro Marketing talking about the new restrictions applied by LinkedIn * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is ‎Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

‎Paul Green:

Hi there. Hello. Welcome to episode 83. Here’s what we’ve got coming up for you this week.

Ian Maclellan:

Over the last five years, I’ve bought 10 MSPs, I’m very happy to give guidance if anyone wants to try this.

‎Paul Green:

That’s Ian Maclellan. An MSP owner, who’s going to be on the show later on today. We’ve also got Andrew Eardley another MSP. He’s going to be back later on towards the end of the podcast to suggest a great book suggestion for you. We’ll also be talking about how you can set up joint ventures with other companies that have exactly the same clients as you, that aren’t in com

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In this week’s episode * There are good times and bad times to talk strategically with clients. In this week’s show, Paul wants to make sure you don’t find out it’s a bad time the hard way. You’ll discover the best times to do strategic review meetings * Also on the show this week, a great piece on offline marketing. Sure, online tools are easy (Facebook, Google, email etc), but there are a load of other offline tools that are just as powerful * Plus listen out for a fantastic interview with an MSP with a pretty unique pricing model and a book suggestion that could transform your MSP

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In talking about strategic reviews, Paul mentioned vCIO Toolbox and Managed Services Platform as example tools * Listen back to Episode 12, all about the concept of the ‘impact box’ * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge * Here’s just a selection of the ‘video greeting cards’ on Amazon that you could send in your impact box * Register for a free copy of Paul’s book * Paul’s special guest was Ernest Murray from Genuine Technology Group talking about his unique pricing and bundling model * Many thanks to Luis Giraldo from N-able for recommending the book Value-Based Fees by Alan Weiss * On June 15th Paul will be joined by Ian Maclellan from Cloudstream Technology talking about how he bought 10 MSPs in 5 years * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world, this is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Well, hi there. It’s great to be back with you. Here’s what we got coming up on the show this week.

Ernest Murray:

We do not have a per user price and we do not have a per workstation price.

Paul Green:

We’ll be talking about the offline marketing tools that you should be using. Almost everyone talks about online marketing tools these days, I find that the offline ones can be more ef

Value-Based Fees: How to Charge - and Get - What You're Worth

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In this week’s episode * You know you’ve got to do it at some point, but are you nervous about putting up your prices? Especially during these challenging times? This week Paul explains how and when you should make an increase * Also on the show this week – you could win an incredible prize. Listen to find out how to win a brand new smart watch * Plus listen for a list of the best qualifying questions to ask prospects. And Paul’s special guest talks about how they closed their break/fix business to start an MSP

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Producer James told you about the chance to win a Ticwatch Pro 3 GPS – enter HERE (closes midnight Sunday 6th June 2021 UK time) * Paul’s special guest, who he met through the Tech Tribe, was Nancy Sabino from Sabino Comp Tech talking about why and how she closed her IT business in favour of starting an MSP * You can enjoy an awesome discount from the Tech Tribe membership because you’re a listener to Paul’s podcast * Justin Esgar from Virtua Consulting Group recommended his own book Appitalize on Your Idea * On June 8th Paul will be joined by Ernest Murray from Genuine Technology Group talking about his unique pricing and bundling model * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Hello, and welcome back to the podcast. Here’s what we’ve got coming up for you this week.

Nancy Sabino:

Oh, my God. That was hard. We went from a list of 300 businesses that we worked with on a break/fix basis. We got it down to 10.

Paul Green:

Plus, we’re going to be talking about the best qualification questions that you can ask your prospects. You’ve only got a finite amount of time on this world, you might as well invest it into talking to the people most likely to go on to become clients of yours. Plus, we’re going to start a brand new thing in the show where we give things away. Every couple of weeks or so, we’ll have a competition with some cool stuff for you to win. Today, we’re giving away a brand new GPS smartwatch. I’ll tell you how you can w

Appitalize on your Idea: Bringing Any Idea to Fruition

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In this week’s episode * What’s the best way to build trust with prospects quickly? Lots of genuine reviews from your clients. Getting them can be a challenge, so this week Paul explains how to do it * Also on the show this week, in-depth guidance on starting your own podcast – whether it’s worth the hassle and how to get started. You’ll get a peek behind the scenes of our podcast * Or if a podcast isn’t right, could you do more with video instead of audio? There’s a special guest who has really embraced video marketing for his MSP and he reveals how it could work for you too

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge content service * Paul uses a Samson USB microphone, the Castos podcast host and his producer is James Lett * Paul mentioned Influence by Dr Robert Cialdini in regards to ‘social proof’ * Paul’s special guest was Christian Fleming from Northstar IT talking about how to grow with great video marketing – please give his Facebook page a like * Thank you to John Davis ‘the Corporate Action Hero’ for recommending the book Off Balance On Purpose by Dan Thurmon * On June 1st Paul will be joined by Nancy Sabino from Sabino Comp Tech talking about why and how she closed her IT business in favour of starting an MSP * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP marketing podcast.

Paul Green:

Welcome to episode 80 of the show. Here’s what we’ve got coming up for you this week.

Christian Fleming:

Never record it if you’re not in the mood because it’s bloody obvious on camera.

Paul Green:

We’re also going to look at an easy way for you to get more positive reviews from your delighted clients. And we’ve got a book suggestion about making yourself uncomfortable in order to achieve your big goals.

Voiceover:

Paul Green’s MSP marketing podcast.

Paul Green:

I feel like this week’s show is

Off Balance on Purpose: Embrace Uncertainty and Create a Life You Love

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In this week’s episode * Whatever you think of LinkedIn, one thing’s clear – you need to build an audience there… and then grow your relationship with your contacts by giving them valuable content. This week Paul talks about how frequently you should be posting content on LinkedIn * Also on the show this week, a cyber security expert joins Paul to discuss how you can best demonstrate value to your clients around your security offerings * Plus ever read a great book, but then forgotten the ‘take-away’ points? Paul has a fantastic solution to keep your knowledge alive

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In talking about how often to post on LinkedIn, Paul mentioned the content about maximising LinkedIn from Episode 63 * To buy or create a visual representation of your favourite book, you could try platforms like visualsynopsis.com, readingraphics.com, Pinterest, fiverr.com or upwork.com * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge * Paul’s special guest was Bob Layton from Digital Defense talking about how to demonstrate value with cyber security protection * Thank you to Jake Gardner from Gunners Office Equipment for recommending the book Question-Based Selling by Tom Freese * On May 25th Paul will be joined by Christian Fleming from Northstar IT talking about how to grow with great video marketing * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Greens MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Hi. Hello, and welcome to the show. Here’s what we’ve got coming up for you this week.

Rebecca Finken:

A lot of entrepreneurs, they run their businesses on egos and subjective emotions, which doesn’t always give you the real true picture.

Paul Green:

We’ve also got a great book suggestion later on about how looking after your people better can actually help your bottom line. I’ve also got an opportunity for you to get a free copy of my book on MSP marketing. If you don’t already have a copy, I’m going to be talk

Secrets of Question-Based Selling: How the Most Powerful Tool in Business Can Double Your Sales Results (Top Selling Books to Increase Profit, Money Books for Growth)

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In this week’s episode * If you find content writing for your website a painful and slow process, you’re not alone. This week Paul has a great 5 step process for easily creating original content * Also on the show this week, should you use LinkedIn’s InMail or Messages to contact prospects? * Plus there’s a great book suggestion all about how your people can drive your profits and a special guest explains why you need an ‘Entrepreneurial Operating System’

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In talking about what kind of content to write, Paul mentioned the brilliant book They Ask, You Answer by Marcus Sheridan * Register for a free copy of Paul’s book * Paul’s special guest was Rebecca Finken from Traction 4 Success talking about Gino Wickman‘s ‘entrepreneurial operating system’ and why you need one (also check out his book Traction) * Here’s a link to the book Paul mentioned ‘The E-Myth Revisited‘ by Michael Gerber * Thank you to Stephen King from GrowthForce for recommending the book Take Care of Your People by Paul Sarvadi * On May 18th Paul will be joined by Bob Layton from Digital Defense talking about how to demonstrate value with cyber security protection * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Greens MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Hi. Hello, and welcome to the show. Here’s what we’ve got coming up for you this week.

Rebecca Finken:

A lot of entrepreneurs, they run their businesses on egos and subjective emotions, which doesn’t always give you the real true picture.

Paul Green:

We’ve also got a great book suggestion later on about how looking after your people better can actually help your bottom line. I’ve also got an opportunity for you to get a free copy o

Take Care of your People: The Enlightened CEO'S Guide To Business Success

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In this week’s episode * You don’t need a beach… you don’t need to be slavered in factor 50… but you DO need a break. This week Paul talks about the new trend of never ending working – and why it’s bad for you * Also on the show this week, what exactly is a ‘trust badge’ and why should your website have one? * Plus there’s a brilliant interview with a special guest who has a service that can 1) stop your clients from suffering a totally preventable breach, 2) let your first line techs do third line work, and 3) create a new stream of Monthly Recurring Revenue for you

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Check out this free web tool to convert logos to grayscale so you can use them on your website as ‘trust badges’ * Sign up for Paul’s entry-level Marketing Accelerator training * Paul’s special guest was Andrew Eardsley from MSP Easy Tools talking about some hidden security problems in Office 365 (for more on Andrew’s story, listen back to Episode 6) * Thank you to Robert Bowden from mspaccountant.com for recommending the book Chasing Daylight by Eugene O’Kelly * On May 11th Paul will be joined by Rebecca Finken talking about what an ‘entrepreneurial operating system’ is and why you need one * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh, every Tuesday, for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Tilda:

Hi, my name’s Tilda and welcome to my dad’s podcast. Here’s what the old man’s got coming up in the show this week.

Andrew Eardley:

We’ve seen quite a few examples. MSPs that didn’t know they were breached, cyber criminals were already in.

Tilda:

Also coming up in the show, why you should put trust badges on your website. I have no clue what those are, but I’m sure my dad will tell you. Also, he’s going to try and flog you a really good training course. And he’s going to bang on a bit about taking holidays. Anyway, I’ve got more important things to do. Here’s my dad.

Voiceover:

Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

“Dad, can I have a Burger King?” “Only if you record some lines from my podcast.” “Oh, do I have to?” “Yes, you do.” Thank you for that Tilda. Welcome to this week’s podcast. And I want to stay on that kind of family theme for our first segment today because I want to ta

Chasing Daylight: How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life

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In this week’s episode * It’s a challenge facing most MSPs: how can you grow bigger… with a small team? Well, this special episode will definitely help * Paul has an extended interview with an MSP owner who achieved huge success with a small team * His fascinating journey has been broken down into 9 critical areas for you to focus on

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Paul’s special guest was Luis Giraldo from N-able, talking about how he grew a very profitable MSP with limited staff * Check out the Café con Luis webinar / podcast series * The following books were mentioned: Built To Sell and Automatic Customer by John Warrillow, plus Start With Why by Simon Sinek and Value-Based Fees by Alan Weiss * For more fascinating long-form interviews with leading figures in the channel, check out the Studio section of the new N-able website * On May 4th Paul will be joined by Andrew Eardsley from MSP Easy Tools talking about some hidden security problems in Office 365 * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Luis Giraldo:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is an MSP Marketing Podcast special.

Paul Green:

Hello, and welcome to a very special edition of the podcast. Now this week, we’re going to get rid of the usual format, because there’s someone fascinating that I want you to listen to for the next 20, 30 minutes or so. He’s someone that I’ve come to know fairly well over the last couple of weeks, because we’ve been spending what seems like a never ending series of video calls and interviews, and just sitting, talking to each other, even though he’s many, many thousands of miles away from me.

Paul Green:

So I’m going to introduce you to a guy who has built an MSP from scratch up to a 1.2 million pound business. And in fact, he did that just with himself and a tiny, tiny number of staff. He’s going to tell us today exactly how he did that and how you can take some of the mistakes that he made along the way and many of the things that he got right and turn them into useful things for your business. He’s also

The Automatic Customer: Creating a Subscription Business in Any Industry

Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

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In this week’s episode * If you want to make your marketing 10x easier, you need to pick a vertical or niche to target. Many MSPs have a vertical that sits alongside their general business. In today’s podcast, Paul tells you the easy way to pick a vertical, and how to dip your toe in to see if it’s the right vertical for you * Also on the show this week, when you should and shouldn’t hand over your marketing to an agency * Plus – what are your personal goals? How does your business help you get to those goals? How are your goals changing over time? Paul’s special guest this week is an MSP owner talking about stretching yourself to achieve what you really want

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Paul mentioned a couple of example marketing agencies, including Purechannels and Marketopia * Paul mentioned the outsourcing services fiverr.com, Upwork.com, PeoplePerHour.com & copify.com * Listen back to episode 24 for more details about how to ‘niche’ your marketing * Paul mentioned the book Unstoppable Referrals by Steve Gordon * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook * Find out the subject and book your free place on Paul’s next Live MSP Monthly Profit Booster webinar * Paul’s special guest was Justin Esgar from Virtua Consulting Group and host of the ACES Conference, talking about how to make a better business * John mentioned Bruce Lee’s book Tao of Jeet Kune Do * Many thanks to Jason Kemsley from Uptime Solutions for recommending the book Eat Their Lunch by Anthony Iannarino * Please recommend a book you think will inspire other MSPs here paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbooks * On April 27th Paul will be joined by Luis Giraldo from

Eat Their Lunch: Winning Customers Away from Your Competition

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In this week’s episode * Do you create technology roadmaps for your clients? Then you really should create a development roadmap for your own business too. This week Paul details how you can create a clear plan for the next couple of years, to help you focus on the right things * Also on this week’s show, did you know bees and your prospects have something in common? In the same way flowers use something called “signals” to attract bees, Paul talks about which signals need to be in your marketing to attract prospects * Plus listen out for a brilliant motivational interview with Paul’s special guest. And there’s a great book recommendation for controlling your finances

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Paul recommended the books Traction by Gino Wickman * Paul mentioned the ticketing portal used by one of his clients CloudRadial * Paul discussed the work from Rory Sutherland on ‘marketing signals’ (as heard in his audiobook Alchemy) * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge * Paul’s special guest was John Davis, the ‘Corporate Action Hero‘ talking about how to become a better version of yourself in business * John mentioned Bruce Lee’s book Tao of Jeet Kune Do * Many thanks to former MSP owner Pete Matheson for recommending the book Profit First by Mike Michalowicz * Please recommend a book you think will inspire other MSPs here paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbooks * On April 20th Paul will be joined by Justin Esgar from Virtua Consulting Group and host of the ACES Conference, talking about how to make a better business * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Hello. How are you doing today? Here’s what we got coming up in this week’

Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine

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In this week’s episode * Does your team make the same mistakes again… and again… and again? Ever considered that this is actually down to you? This week Paul has some great insight into how you can eliminate this problem * Also on this week’s show, a financial expert joins Paul to talk about which numbers you need to focus on, to grow and increase your profits * Plus, what’s your ‘happy balance’ score? Paul explains what this is and how you can improve it

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Paul recommended the books The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande, The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber and Built To Sell by John Warrillow * Register for a free copy of Paul’s book * Paul’s special guest was Stephen King from GrowthForce talking about how to get your pricing right * Many thanks to Paul Charnock from Plexa for recommending the book The Chimp Paradox by Dr. Steve Peters * Please recommend a book you think will inspire other MSPs here paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbooks * On April 13th Paul will be joined by John Davis, the ‘Corporate Action Hero‘ talking about how to become a better version of yourself in business * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green:

Hi there. Welcome back, and how are you doing today? Here’s what we’ve got coming up in this week’s show.

Stephen King:

Pricing is the single most important decision any business will make. It’s the difference between companies that are knocking it out of the park and those that are struggling to survive.

Paul Green:

I’m also going to tell you how you can get a free copy of

Chimp Paradox: How Our Impulses and Emotions Can Determine Success and Happiness and How We Can Control Them

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In this week’s episode * One of the reasons why it’s REALLY hard to turn a break/fix client into a managed services client, can be down to how they perceive you. Join Paul this week to find out how you can encourage them to flip over and become Monthly Recurring Revenue * Also on this week’s show, what the future looks like for your helpdesk solution. Paul’s special guest gives insight into the most robust way to support your users * And, as Paul’s campaign for you to hire a ‘telephone person’ continues, find out exactly what they should be talking to your leads and prospects about

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Paul mentioned services on his website, including the MSP Marketing Edge and The War Room * Paul mentioned the brilliant book all about inbound content marketing They Ask, You Answer by Marcus Sheridan * The conversation regarding vendors moving to subscription-based models was in Episode 67 * Sign up for Paul’s entry-level Marketing Accelerator training * Paul’s special guest was Jason Kemsley from Uptime Solutions talking about what the future could hold for your helpdesk solution * Many thanks to Jay McBain from Forrester Research for recommending the book The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell * Please recommend a book you think will inspire other MSPs here paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbooks * On April 6th Paul will be joined by Stephen King from GrowthForce talking about how to get your pricing right * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Hello and welcome back to the show. Here’s what we’ve got coming up for you this week.

Jason Kemsley:

With these really high ticket volumes, tell them we’re seeing these large volumes, but we will be dealing with your issue and we’ll be back to you by this time.

Paul Green:

Plus, we’re going to be looking at how you can convert more o

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

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In this week’s episode * When can cleaning the dishes suddenly become really appealing? Or when does Facebook become welcome, rather than be an annoying distraction? That’s easy – it’s when you’re procrastinating! This week Paul looks into why we let ourselves get distracted and what we can do to stay focused * Also on the show this week, Paul’s special guest talks about something that Steve Jobs used to transform Apple – the humble whiteboard – and how it could do the same for your MSP * Plus Paul explains why your MSP could grow faster if you personally work less. And there’s a listener book recommendation all about brilliant positioning

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Read more about the Zeigarnik effect and how it can help beat procrastination * Find out the subject and book your free place on Paul’s next Live MSP Monthly Profit Booster webinar * Paul’s special guest was Mark Edwards from Whiteboard Strategies talking about how grab attention and sell more on video meetings * Many thanks to Brenna Loury from Todoist for recommending the book Obviously Awesome by April Dunford * Please recommend a book you think will inspire other MSPs here paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbooks * On March 30th Paul will be joined by Jason Kemsley from Uptime Solutions talking about what the future could hold for your helpdesk solution * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Hello, and welcome to episode 71. Here’s what we got coming up for you this week.

Mark Edwards:

Done in the right way by the right person, the combination of the visual element and the verbal is very, very powerful.

Paul Green:

We’ve also got a great book suggestion from a productivity expert, and we’re going to explore how you can avoid procrastination.

Voiceover:

Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Have you ever asked why you find it so hard to stop doing so much yourself or why you find it so hard to outsource things to people outside the business or delegate to within your team? Well, it’s probably because you’re an intolerable control freak. And don’t worry, I’m an intole

Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It

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In this week’s episode * Words have power – be careful which ones you use! This week Paul unpicks the terrible words used by many MSPs, that can be a real turn off for your clients and prospects * Also in this week’s show, an MSP customer satisfaction expert details how best to survey clients and what to do with the results * Plus Paul talks about the kind of meetings that will help your MSP to grow (and which could have the opposite affect). And there’s a listener book recommendation all about brilliant branding

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In talking about planning better meetings, Paul recommended the book Traction: Get A Grip On Your Business by Gino Wickman * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge content service * Paul’s special guest was Andrew Wallace from SmileBack talking about how to keep your clients for longer by collecting feedback * Many thanks to Steve Pailing from Plexa for recommending the book Building Strong Brands by David Aaker * Please recommend a book you think will inspire other MSPs here paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbooks * On March 23rd Paul will be joined by Mark Edwards from Whiteboard Strategies talking about how grab attention and sell more on video meetings * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Somehow we’re already 10 weeks into 2021. Seriously, how did that happen? Here’s what we’ve got coming up for you on today’s show.

Andrew Wallace:

Businesses tend to focus more on growth than we do on retaining our existing customer base.

Paul Green:

I’ve got a great book suggestion for you later on about how to build a great brand for your MSP. Plus, we’re going to be talking about meeting rhythms, how often you should meet and who you should meet with on your team in order to grow your business.

Voiceover:

Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

There’s a word that far too many MSPs use in their marketing. And I hate it, hate it, hate it. That word is user or users, because to us, you and I, we know what users are, they̵

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In this week’s episode * Embrace the ‘science’ and say goodbye to your marketing appearing to be frustratingly random. This week it’s all about Paul’s formula for a great marketing ‘funnel’. You can make it much easier to attract new leads and turn them into clients with this detailed 10 step marketing machine * Also on this week’s show, how to increase the fun at work and improve productivity at the same time – it really is a win-win * Plus details of six new monthly recurring revenue streams and a brilliant book recommendation from a productivity expert

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Register for a free copy of Paul’s book * In talking about multi touch point campaigns, Paul referenced the content back in Episode 50 * Paul’s special guest was Paul Charnock from Plexa talking about how to sell white-label marketing services to your clients * Many thanks to Barnaby Lashbrooke from Time Etc for recommending the book Alchemy by Rory Sutherland * Please recommend a book you think will inspire other MSPs here paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbooks * On March 16th Paul will be joined by Andrew Wallace from SmileBack talking about how to keep your clients for longer by collecting feedback * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Hello and welcome back to another podcast. Here’s what we’ve got coming up for you this week.

Paul Charnock:

You’ve now got six monthly revenue streams that MSPs can sell.

Paul Green:

We’re also going to be talking about marketing funnels. In fact, I’m going to explain what a marketing funnel is and tell you what your MSPs marketing funnel really should look like.

Paul Green:

Plus I’ll be offering you a free book, a chance for you to get a copy of my book on MSP Marketing. And we’ve got a book suggestion from a productivity expert who’s helping thousands of business owners around the world to get more done.

Voiceover:

Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Over the last year or so I’ve got into a really good habit with this podcasts, whereby I record it around about a month before it goes out. So as I’m speaking to you now, it’s cu

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In this week’s episode * There’s nothing more frustrating than getting all the way to a sales meeting… building a good relationship with your prospect… putting in your proposal… answering their questions… and then losing the sale, right at the last minute 😔 * Paul and many of his MSP clients have doubled their sales conversion rate by implementing one tactic before the meeting – find out what it is in today’s episode * Also on the show this week, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) no longer has to be a mysterious ‘dark art’. Want to improve your search position? An expert joins Paul to tell you exactly what Google wants you to do better * Plus there’s the chance to dramatically improve how organised you are AND do it for free. Paul’s giving away premium subscriptions to Todoist

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Here’s just a selection of the ‘video greeting cards’ on Amazon that you could send before prospect meetings * Paul mentioned the brilliant book all about inbound content marketing They Ask, You Answer by Marcus Sheridan * For a chance to win one of three 6 months premium Todoist memberships thanks to Brenna Loury, just comment on Paul’s LinkedIn post (closes 5pm GMT 16th March 2021) * Sign up for Paul’s entry-level Marketing Accelerator training * Paul’s special guest was John Vuong from Local SEO Search, talking about how to rank better in search results * Many thanks to Manuel Bruschi from Timeular for recommending the books Atomic Habits by James Clear and A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking * Please recommend a book you think will inspire other MSPs here paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbooks * On March 9th Paul will be joined by Paul Charnock from Plexa talking about how to sell white-label marketing services to your clients * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to

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In this week's episode * Sure, you may get SOME referrals from happy clients – but why don't they all send potential new clients to you? This week Paul explains why there are many potential referrals you're not aware of and what you can do to make them appear * Also on this week's show – there are some big opportunities that can put you in the best position for growth this year. And Paul's joined by an expert technology analyst to discuss them * Plus, how do you motivate a sales person (it's easier than you might think). And there are more details on Paul's free marketing webinar

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Paul mentioned MSP sales experts Fiona Challis from The Next Gen Sales Acceleration Academy and Paul Lloyd from Sellerly (he was a guest in Episode 57) * Paul discussed the power of Social Proof as detailed in the brilliant book Unstoppable Referrals by Steve Gordon * Find out more about the book that you can call your own from Paul Green's MSP Marketing Edge service * Sign up for Paul's free webinar the Live MSP Monthly Profit Booster * Paul's special guest was Jay McBain from Forrester Research, talking about what 2021 could have in store for your MSP * Many thanks to Mark Edwards from Whiteboard Strategies for recommending the book Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb * Please recommend a book you think will inspire other MSPs here paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbooks * On March 2nd Paul will be joined by John Vuong from Local SEO Search, talking about how to rank better in search results * Also on next week's show there's the chance to win 6 months premium from Todoist thanks to Brenna Loury * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to

Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

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In this week’s episode * It’s not being selfish – it’s being smart. This week Paul talks about the importance of making sure your business pays you, the owner, first. And how hiding away money could actually help you spend more in the right areas, such as on your marketing * Also on this week’s show, does your MSP do sporadic maketing, or does it have a marketing machine? If so, like all good machines, it should operate with a rhythm. Paul explains how to get your marketing machine oiled up and working like clockwork * Plus, another expert from the world of productivity – check out how to get more done thanks to our expert from Todoist

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Paul mentioned the books Atomic Habits by James Clear and Profit First by Mike Michalowicz * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge * Paul’s special guest was Brenna Loury from Todoist, talking about how to improve time management and productivity * Many thanks to Martin Baulig from Cloud Console for recommending the book Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland * Please recommend a book you think will inspire other MSPs here paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbooks * On February 23rd Paul will be joined by Jay McBain from Forrester Research, talking about what 2021 could have in store for your MSP * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Hello, and welcome to Order 66. Here’s what’s coming up in this week’s show.

Brenna Loury:

By the end of the day, you’re like, “Oh, I didn’t work on this huge task that I’m supposed to work on because I was focusing on all of these other small things that are competing for my attention.”

Paul Green:

We’re going to be talking about a service that makes your marketing really easy by giving

Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

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In this week’s episode * It’s the MSP equivalent of putting your hand down the back of the couch, to see what you might find! On this week’s show Paul explains how old forgotten data could uncover some brand new surprise revenue for your MSP * Also – starting to use the services of a part-time virtual assistant could be even easier than you think. Listen as Paul’s joined by an expert in the field to explain how you make it cheaper and hassle-free to get help * Plus on the show this week, why you need to create a financial forecast more than ever before. And a listener book recommendation that could even improve your business karma

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Register for a free copy of Paul’s book * Paul mentioned the tool for tracking time Timeular * Paul’s special guest was Barnaby Lashbrooke from Time Etc, talking about how best to use a virtual assistant * Many thanks to John Vuong from Local SEO Search for recommending the book Give and Take by Adam Grant * Please recommend a book you think will inspire other MSPs here paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbooks * On February 16th Paul will be joined by Brenna Loury from Todoist, talking about how to improve time management and productivity * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

You’re very welcome to episode 65 of the podcast. Here’s what we’ve got coming up for you this week.

Barnaby Lashbrooke:

Lots of people let the day run away from them because they’re pummelled with distractions that they haven’t planned for.

Paul Green:

We’re also going to be talking about why your MSP should phone every single old prospect, every single one, and why it’s a critical part of the numbers game. That’s so important in marketing. I’m also going to tell you later on how you can get a free copy of my book on MSP marketing, and we’ve got a great book suggestion from another marketing expert.

Voiceover:

Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

I have a great accountant, his name is Rob Bowden, and he’s one of those accountants who is not just interested in the numbers, he’s interested in what’s caused the numbers. He has a real passion

Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success

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In this week’s episode * Does this vicious circle sound familiar? To grow your MSP, you need to do more marketing… but you don’t have time to do marketing, so you can’t grow. If that’s you right now, check out Paul’s special month of episodes about productivity * For the next 3 weeks Paul’s joined by an expert who can help you use time more efficiently – this week he’s joined by the creator of the incredible physical time tracking tool Timeular * On the subject of productivity, Paul also talks about your pace of work vs your team’s pace of work (and how a greater understanding can also help communication with prospects and clients) * Plus on the show this week, the format for an effective staff one-to-one and a great listener book suggestion to inspire better learning

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Paul mentioned the tool for creating and tracking tasks Todoist * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook * Paul’s special guest was founder and CEO Manuel Bruschi, talking about how his incredible Timeular tool was created * Many thanks to Andrew Wallace from Smile Back for recommending the book The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin * Please recommend a book you think will inspire other MSPs here paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbooks * On February 9th Paul will be joined by Barnaby Lashbrooke from Time Etc, talking about how best to use a virtual assistant * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh, every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s, MSP marketing podcast.

Paul Green:

Hello and welcome to the first podcast for February and back to our normal format. Here’s what’s coming up in this week show.

Manuel Bruschi:

This is how the idea was come up with, not just becoming aware of how you’re spending your time, but actually, how can I improve it?

Paul Green:

That’s Manuel Bruschi, the founder of Timeular.com. He’s the first of four productivity experts that I’m going to be interviewing throughout February. And you can hear his interview later on in the show.

Paul Green:

We’re also going to be talking today about a free marketing resource. It’s an amazing Facebook group with more than 1000 MSPs already inside. I’ll tell you h

The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence

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In this week’s special episode * LinkedIn is a stunning tool for prospecting. And vastly under used by far too many MSPs * On this week’s show Paul dives into why you should readdress your relationship with LinkedIn and how to maximise the platform to help find new clients * Check out Paul’s simple but effective advice to make LinkedIn truly work for you. And more details about his ‘Three C’s’ – Connect, Content, Contact

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge for content to use on LinkedIn * The Linkedin automation tool Paul mentioned was Dux-Soup * Paul’s special guest on February 2nd will be Manuel Bruschi, founder of the incredible time tracking tool Timeular * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is an MSP Marketing Podcast Special.

Paul Green:

Our final January special this week. We’ve already looked at your website and we looked at your marketing priorities for 2021. This week, we’re going to be focused just on LinkedIn, why LinkedIn is so exciting and how you can make the most of it every single day.

Voiceover:

This is an MSP Marketing Podcast Special.

Paul Green:

I completely understand why many people are apathetic about LinkedIn. Sometimes when you go on there, it’s like being at the world’s worst networking meeting, where everyone is there to sell and no one’s there to buy, but a thing we always need to switch our mindset and look at the bigger picture with LinkedIn. Because if I said to you 20 years ago, “Hey, in early 2021, you’ll have access to a massive constantly up-to-date public database containing every single lead you could ever want to speak to, every potential contact, and every position of virtually every single business.

Paul Green:

Oh, and by the way, it’s free. Oh, and by the way, you can use clever computer bots that will exist in the future to automate the holiday work of using this database. Oh, and you can set yourself up as a thought leader, cliche alert, and you can stamp your expertise on this.” Now, 20 years ago, you’d have thought that was witchcraft, which is pretty amazing, and yet today we’ve got that. It’s LinkedIn. We’re all a bit sometimes a bit nah about it. And I get that, because sometimes I go into LinkedIn and I can’t be bothered.

Paul Green:

The messages from people I don’t want to hear from and the content. It’s almost like a business version of Facebook, isn’t it? Everyone’s doing so well on LinkedIn. Just like everyone’s doing so well on Facebook. Now, some of that content is not real. You know that person that you’re connected to on Facebook who has the amazing life? They don’t. They’re just posting the good stuff and not the bad stuff on Facebook. Anyway, I digress. You’ve got to look at th

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In this week’s special episode * Every MSP has one. And being honest, most of them are rubbish… we’re talking about websites in this week’s special episode * Join Paul to discover what you can do to fix your most important marketing tool * Paul takes you through the 10 fundamental things to improve on your website

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In this special podcast Paul mentioned the book Influence by Dr Robert Cialdini * Paul mentioned the outsourcing services fiverr.com, Upwork.com, PeoplePerHour.com & copify.com * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge which includes a book you can claim as your own and give away to help with data capture * Paul mentioned automated appointment booking services Calendly, Microsoft Bookings, AppointmentCore and ScheduleOnce * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday, for MSPs around the world. This is an MSP Marketing Podcast special.

Paul Green:

It’s the second of three marketing specials to get your MSP off to the best possible start for 2021. And this week, we’re going to be focusing on the single most important marketing asset that you have at your disposal, it’s your website. Today, we’re going to talk about how you can fix it.

Voiceover:

This is an MSP Marketing Podcast special.

Paul Green:

I know that you’re not happy with your website. I know that you’re genuinely frustrated with it, and you don’t understand why it doesn’t generate enough leads and what exactly to do to fix it. And the reason I know this is I have looked at hundreds and hundreds, if not getting on for 1,000 MSP websites. Anytime I start working with any MSP anywhere, I just have a quick look onto their sites. It gives me a very quick snapshot of where their marketing superpowers are.

Paul Green:

And obviously the vast majority of MSPs don’t have great marketing abilities, but it helps me understand what I’m working with. In fact, sometimes I come across a website that’s just beautiful. And it makes me realise, “Wow, this MSP has upped their game. Let me see if I can push them further, and further, and further, and further.” But the vast majority of websites just aren’t great.

Paul Green:

What we’re going to look at in this podcast special is how ordinary decision makers think and act. We’ll look a

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In this week’s special episode * Time to focus on the things that will make a REAL difference in your MSP this year. As we start what could be another unusual year, Paul presents the 5 most important things you need to focus on * Join Paul for this special episode in which he discusses how to conquer 2021 with the best mindset, daily actions, website, social media, digital footprint – and more

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In this special podcast Paul mentioned the following books… * The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber * Built To Sell by John Warrillow * Atomic Habits by James Clear * The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande * They Ask You Answer by Marcus Sheridan * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge * Looking ahead to February’s podcasts, Paul mentioned he’ll have special guests from productivity tools Timeular and Todoist * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is an MSP Marketing Podcast special.

Paul:

Hello and welcome to the first of three MSP Marketing specials designed to help your business and really get the most out of 2021. I’ve pulled together three subjects that I think are critical for any MSP to master, and I want to focus on those throughout January’s podcasts.

Paul:

Now in two weeks time we’re going to be talking about LinkedIn, why it’s the world’s best prospecting database and why you should be spending more time on it every day. Next week we’ll be talking about your website, because it is the most important marketing basic to get right. But this week we’re going to start by looking at what your five marketing priorities should be for 2021.

Voiceover:

This is an MSP Marketing Podcast special.

Paul:

Before we start talking about your five marketing priorities this year, let’s just take just a few minutes just to look back at last year, the crazy year, what actually happened. I believe we saw five to ten years of change

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In this week’s special episode * So you’ve heard Paul talking about how MSPs can be better at marketing. But would you love to know how to practically apply his ideas to your business? MSP owner Tom Fisher wondered exactly that. And this special episode is dedicated to the 121 marketing consultation he won with Paul * Listen to hear Tom align his life goal with his business goals. Plus discover how he plans to maximise his available time and resources to execute a new marketing plan designed to achieve his goals * This first episode of 2021 is designed to help you look forward positively, with a show packed full of practical advice and thought-provoking tactics. Even though it’s about Tom, you will 100% hear strategies and tactics that you can use in your business

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * For this podcast special, the whole show is dedicated to the recording of an MSP marketing consultation. Paul conducts a one-to-one with Tom Fisher from The Tech Frood * During the marketing consult the following books were mentioned The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber and Built To Sell by John Warrillow * Paul mentioned the outsourcing services fiverr.com, Upwork.com, PeoplePerHour.com & copify.com * The CRMs mentioned were Mailchimp and MailerLite * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge * The technology news resources for helping to generate social media content included CNN and The Verge (you could use the likes of Hootsuite or Publer to schedule it) * On January 12th Paul hosts another podcast special, all about the best 3-step strategy for an MSP’s marketing * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world – this is an MSP Marketing Podcast special.

Paul Green:

Happy new year. Welcome to the first show of 2021. Last year was a crazy year and we are going to make sure that thi

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In this week’s special episode * As most years end we normally tend to review the last 12 months, but of course 2020 has been no normal year. So in this special show Paul has decided just to look ahead to the opportunities coming up in 2021 * In predicting what the next 12 months may bring for MSPs, Paul’s joined by two of the most respected experts in the channel, Nigel Moore and Karl Palachuk, to discuss how best to gear up for increased growth * 2021 maybe a hard year for some. But listen for some brilliant advice on adopting a mindset that could help you secure an even stronger position in your market

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * For this podcast special, Paul is joined by experts Nigel Moore from The Tech Tribe and Karl Palachuk from Small Biz Thoughts technology community and author of many titles including Managed Services in a Month * On January 5th Paul hosts another podcast special where the whole show will be dedicated to the recording of an MSP marketing consultation. Paul will conduct a one-to-one with Tom Fisher from The Tech Frood and identify opportunities to improve his marketing and grow his MSP * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world, this is an MSP Marketing Podcast special.

Paul Green:

Hello, and welcome to a very, very special edition of the podcast. Now, it’s just a few days left of, let’s be honest, what frankly has been a crazy year. I’ve asked two of the most trusted and respected experts in our world to join us, not to look back at 2020 because I think we’re all kind of glad to be at the end of the year, but instead I want them to look forward to next year. Because I think that next year is going to have probably some new challenges for you and for all the other MSPs out there, but also some really truly wonderful opportunities.

Paul Green:

So let’s explore what those opportunities might be. Let’s explore how you can grow your MSP, how you can really benefit next year. What if next year could be a massive year for you? What if you could get new clients? What if you could grow your business and grow your net profits and your monthly recurring revenue and all of that, despite all the challenges to the economy, despite all the pressures on your clients and your end users, and just the general difficulty of doing business. This is going to be a positive podcast focused on how you can make the most of 2021. Now let me introduce you to the brain trust that I’ve lined up for you.

Nigel Moore

Managed Services in a Month - Build a Successful It Service Business in 30 Days - 2nd Ed.

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In this week's episode * There's more to YouTube than endless videos asking you to "hit Like and Subscribe!"... there could be a very real benefit to your MSP by getting more heavily involved in video. This week Paul's joined by a former MSP owner who had great success with YouTube and explains what he actually did * Also on this week's show, it's really important to create content that educates your prospects, but that doesn't mean you have to do all the hard work yourself. Paul has some great advice for finding the best writer to help you create brilliant content * Plus, how do you help team members who don't want to improve? Listen for some powerful insight into what some MSPs are doing to make sure their techs embrace training

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In talking about source of freelance writers, Paul mentioned fiverr.com, upwork.com and peopleperhour.com * Sign up for Paul's entry-level Marketing Accelerator training * Paul's special guest was former MSP owner Pete Matheson, talking about how to best use YouTube to help win new clients * Many thanks to Ed Rivis for recommending the book Start With Why by Simon Sinek * Please recommend a book you think will inspire other MSPs here paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbooks * On December 29th Paul hosts a podcast special, all about looking forward to 2021. He'll be joined by experts Nigel Moore and Karl Palachuk * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: Hello, and welcome to our final episode before Christmas and the last normal podcast till February. We've got five specials coming up for you over the next few weeks. And I'll tell you more about that at the end of the show. Here's what we got coming up for you today.

Pete Matheson: Yes, there are channels with millions of views and millions of subscribers, but actually for you when you're running a business, none of that really matters.

Paul Green: We're also going to look at how you can find a great writer on Fiverr, Upwork, PeoplePerHour, any platform you fancy. It's a very simple way which will save you tons of time, kissing all the frogs. We've got a great book suggestion, which is all about leadership. That's towards the end of the show. And I'm going to tell you how you can work directly with me in January or February next year, where I can

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In this week's episode * Worried how your customers will react if you outsource your helpdesk? Don't worry. On today's show we've got a positive way to tell them * Also on this week's show, an MSP sales expert joins Paul to explain how you can dramatically improve your sales revenue, simply using a pen and a white board * And how much are you willing to spend on securing a new client? Paul has an idea for something you can send to prospects. It could make a massive difference to the conversions of your sales meetings.

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Paul mentioned the brilliant book all about inbound content marketing They Ask, You Answer by Marcus Sheridan * Here’s just a selection of the ‘video greeting cards’ on Amazon that you could send before prospect meetings * Sign up for Paul's entry-level Marketing Accelerator training * Paul's special guest was MSP sales expert Paul Lloyd from Sellerly talking about how to effectively manage a sales person * James Lett from the Marketing Edge (and producer of Paul's podcast) recommended the book DotCom Secrets by Russell Brunson * Please recommend a book you think will inspire other MSPs here paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbooks * Paul's special guest on December 22nd will be former MSP owner Pete Matheson, talking about how to best use YouTube to help win new clients * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: My goodness. How did we make it to the 15th of December? Welcome to Episode 57 of the show. Here's what we've got coming up for you today.

Paul Lloyd: And as long as they can get back firmly fixed in their minds, then they grow.

Paul Green: We've also got a very clever way for you to get valuable social proof in front of your best prospects. And believe me, it's got nothing to do with sending them a YouTube link. Plus, we've got a book suggestion at the end of the show which is all about building a

DotCom Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Growing Your Company Online (1st Edition)

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In this week’s episode * Your clients aren’t just there to help you build the business financially. On this week’s show Paul explains why they’re also a valuable source of content ideas to fuel your long-term marketing strategy * Plus on this week’s show, you may have heard that the internet giants use A/B split testing to make their websites better at converting traffic into sales. Paul reveals how you too could do this to help get new clients * And there’s a fascinating conversation with a technology leadership expert – as you plan to grow and scale your MSP, find out how to improve your leadership skills to get the best out of a growing team

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Paul mentioned the brilliant book They Ask, You Answer by Marcus Sheridan – listen back to Episode 35 to find out even more * Find out more about Google Optimize for A/B split testing * Sign up for Paul’s entry-level Marketing Accelerator training * Paul’s special guest was technology leadership expert R Michael Anderson talking about how to truly be a better leader * Many thanks to growth expert Mostyn Thomas from Astrix Cybersecurity for recommending the book Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thinking by Matthew Syed * Please recommend a book you think will inspire other MSPs here paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbooks * Paul’s special guest on December 15th will be MSP sales expert Paul Lloyd from Sellerly talking about how to effectively manage a sales person * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green:

Thank you for joining me for today’s episode. I really appreciate your time and I’ve got loads of stuff to talk to you about today. Here’s what’s coming up on the show.

R. Michael Anderson:

They have to stop being the Superman or Superwoman and getting in and fixing all the problems themselves. Let go of that control and really become the director.

Paul Green:

We’re also going to be talking abo

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In this week’s episode * Try as you might, you’ll probably never be able to stop answering all those technical questions your team wants to ‘just run by you’ on a daily basis. However Paul talks you through something you can do to reduce the endless stream of questions – leaving you more time to focus on growing your business * Also on this week’s show – why MSPs don’t do any consistent marketing… and what you can do to get better at it. Paul’s joined by a special guest to unpick this issue and go through some of the latest MSP marketing trends * Plus Paul’s going to introduce you to a piece of paper – a special piece of paper that can go on your wall. And could ultimately change your outlook on life and work

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Paul mentioned the website 4kweeks.com where you can order a poster to show how many weeks you have left to live! * Find out more about Paul’s entry-level MSP Marketing Accelerator training programme * Paul’s special guest was Steve Taylor from RocketMSP talking about current trends in MSP marketing (during which Steve mentioned the content marketing service MSP Marketing Edge) * Many thanks to growth expert Jonathan Jay from The Dealmaker’s Academy for recommending the books Business Buying Strategies and Common Sense: Direct Marketing * Please recommend a book you think will inspire other MSPs here paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbooks * Paul’s special guest on December 8th will be technology leadership expert R Michael Anderson talking about how to truly be a better leader * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s, MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Pinch, punch it’s the first of the month. Welcome to December and episode 55 of the podcast. Here’s what we got coming up for you this week.

Steve Taylor:

As crazy as that trend sounds is a lot of MSPs don’t know how to market.

Paul Green:

We’re also going to be talking about a clever way to manage all of those questions that come in from your technicians every single day. All the tech inquiries handled in one clever place. Plus we’ve got two books suggestions from business buying expert, Jonathan Jay. He’s going to join me at the end of the show with two really great books that you shou

Business Buying Strategies: How To Buy A Business Without Risking Your Own Capital

Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing

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In this week’s episode * Did you know one of the quickest ways for an MSP to grow… is to actually buy another MSP? But a lot of people think that buying a business is out of their league; assuming it’ll cost too much money or be overly difficult. This week on the show Paul’s joined by an MSP M&A (mergers & acquisitions) expert to dispel some myths and help you identify the opportunities, and potential pitfalls * Also this week – times have changed and you can no longer rely on just one particular way of gaining new clients. Paul explains the importance of having multiple marketing pillars * Plus how to properly brief a Virtual Assistant. If you’re toying with the idea of using a VA, in this episode Paul helps you get the most from them

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Find out more about marketer and business consultant Jay Abraham and his books * Paul mentioned the brilliant book They Ask, You Answer by Marcus Sheridan * Find out more about the brilliant physical time-tracking tool Timeular * Paul mentioned the project management software Basecamp * Here’s a link to the MSP Marketing Group on Facebook * Paul’s special guest was MSP Commercial Solutions expert Daniel Welling talking about how best to buy or sell an MSP business in 2021 – check out his website here * Many thanks to Chris Timm from Sondela Consulting for recommending the books The Ride of a Lifetime by Disney’s Bob Iger and Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss * Please recommend a book you think will inspire other MSPs here paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbooks * Paul’s special guest on December 1st will be Steve Taylor from RocketMSP talking about current trends in MSP marketing * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company

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In this week’s episode * Don’t worry, they won’t be able to see when you’re going to the dentist… but giving your leads and prospects access to your calendar is the ultimate way to move your relationship with them forward. And this week Paul explains how best to use a clever booking system on your website * Also in this week’s show, now could be a great time to expand your team, especially with a 2nd or 3rd line tech. Paul’s joined by an MSP recruitment specialist with some great tips for getting your hands on the best people * Plus Paul’s going to tell you about some fascinating and potentially terrifying tech stories that your prospects could love as much as you. Use these stories to help educate your prospects about the risks they could face and therefore the support you can provide in reducing that risk

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In talking about the powerful Darknet Diaries podcast, Paul also mentioned again the books he recommended in Episode 47 – Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick and Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin’s Most Dangerous Hackers by Andy Greenberg * Paul mentioned automated appointment booking services Calendly, Microsoft Bookings, AppointmentCore and ScheduleOnce * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge * Paul’s special guest was MSP and technology recruiter Chris Duggan from Big Red talking about current trends and tips for recruiting 1st, 2nd and 3rd line techs * Many thanks to Heather Harlos from Bitdefender for recommending the book Who Moved My Cheese by Dr Spencer Johnson * Please recommend a book you think will inspire other MSPs here paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbooks * Paul’s special gu

Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers

Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker

Who Moved My Cheese? : An Amazing Way to Deal With Change in Your Work and in Your Life

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In this week’s episode * It’s a common problem in the world of MSPs. Time and time again Paul talks to business owners about their marketing, and the conversations are focused in the wrong areas. Being clear on your marketing goals, strategy and tactics is fundamental to the growth of your MSP. This week Paul spends a chunk of the show looking at just that * Also on this week’s show; your MSP is not going to grow unless a) you’ve got the right kind of people around you, and b) YOU can lead them in the right kind of way. Paul welcomes a special guest with 7 core principles for being a better leader * Plus why it’s easier to focus on selling ‘outcomes’ than “technology’ (and how to do that). And a guest joins Paul to suggest a brilliant book that combines two rarely matched themes; software and spirituality!

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In discussing selling outcomes, Paul mentioned the topic of ‘good, better, best’ from Episode 44 * Book your free place on Paul’s brand new monthly Live MSP Monthly Profit Booster webinar * Paul’s special guest was speaker, coach and author Andy Edwards. Find out about his new book “Leadersh*t” here * Many thanks to the Technology Leadership Insider R. Michael Anderson for recommending the book The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer * Please recommend a book you think will inspire other MSPs here paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbooks * Paul’s special guest on November 17th will be MSP and technology recruiter Chris Duggan from Big Red talking about current trends and tips for recruiting 1st, 2nd and 3rd line techs * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Hello, and welcome to this first anniversary edition of the MSP Marketing Podcast. Here’s what we got coming up for you this week:

Andy Edwards:

They don’t trust their leadership. So the question here is, are leaders delusional, or are staff complete and utter liars?

Paul Green:

We’re also going to be asking the question later on. Do people really buy technical services from you or are they only interested in outcomes? There’s a brand new free live monthly webinar series that I want to tell you about. It could give you a real insight into even more

The Surrender Experiment: My Journey Into Life's Perfection

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Episode 51 includes tips for developing a better work/life balance, how to grab the hottest new software & apps, plus how to sell more cyber security

Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits!: 4 Keys to Unlock Your Business Potential

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In this week's episode * It's time to be more like David and stop worrying about Goliath. If there's a massive dominant MSP operating in your marketplace, Paul has some invaluable advice this week on how you can dodge, duck and weave your larger competitor... and actually become a better and stronger MSP along the way * Also in this week's show, if you've ever sat down and thought to yourself "if only we had a really simple marketing plan" - you've come to the right podcast! Paul welcomes a special guest who has the ultimate guide on how to systemise a brilliant marketing plan * Paul also looks at the beauty and power of a multi touchpoint marketing campaign. Plus how you can free yourself from the day-to-day clutter in your life, work less and take more holidays

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Paul mentioned the brilliant book – They Ask, You Answer by Marcus Sheridan * Find out more about Paul Green's MSP Marketing Edge (in which there is a multi touchpoint 'campaign in a box' about ransomware) * For more details about the competition to celebrate the first birthday of this podcast, just visit paulgreensmspmarketing.com/win * Paul's special guest was author and marketing coach Cody Butler, talking about how exactly to make a great marketing plan. Check out his book The 90 Day Marketing Plan on Amazon or get a digital copy at the90daymarketingplan.biz * Many thanks to James Newell from Clear Sales Message for recommending the book The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss * Please recommend a book you think will inspire other MSPs here paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbooks * Paul's special guest on November 3rd will be cyber security sales expert Jennifer Bleam from the MSP Sales Revolution talking about current trends in cybersecurity and how you can leverage these to sell more to your clients * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Fresh, every Tuesday, for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

Paul Green: Oh my goodness. I can't believe I've

The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

The 90 Day Marketing Plan: Create A Plan To Get More Customers, Make More Sales And Automate Your Marketing

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In this week's episode * How would you want a client to describe your business in just 3 words? Hopefully 'cheap' wouldn't be one of those words! This week on the show Paul explains how discounting your services can affect your business in good, but (mostly) bad ways * Plus, what's on your wall? MSP legend and author Karl Palachuk joins Paul to list some of the unbreakable rules he used to put up around the office, designed to focus him and his staff on growth * Also how to win some incredible prizes to celebrate the podcast's first birthday. And some great tips on how to change your daily habits to make you more productive

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In talking about the compound effect of creating better daily habits, Paul mentioned the brilliant book Atomic Habits by James Clear * For more details about the competition to celebrate the first birthday of this podcast, just visit paulgreensmspmarketing.com/win * Paul's special guest was the legendary author and managed services expert Karl Palachuk, talking about his ultimate guide for starting and running an MSP. Check out his book The Absolutely Unbreakable Rules of Service Delivery and the Small Biz Thoughts community * Many thanks to Sam James from Fresh IT for recommending the book The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz * Please recommend a book you think will inspire other MSPs here paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbooks * Paul's special guest on October 27th will be author and marketing coach Cody Butler, talking about how exactly to make a great marketing plan. Check out his book The 90 Day Marketing Plan * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: Hello, and welcome back to episode 49 of the show. Here's what we've got coming up for you this week.

Karl Palachuk: A lot of people at the beginning of the recession started saying, "Well, times are hard and Karl doesn't understand, and you can't get prepaid for everything."

Paul Green:

The Pumpkin Plan: A Simple Strategy to Grow a Remarkable Business in Any Field

The Absolutely Unbreakable Rules of Service Delivery: How to Manage Your Business to Maximize Customer Service, Profit, and Employee Culture

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In this week’s episode * Everyone’s a critic… but only some of them are worth listening to. Boosting your marketing efforts to grow your MSP can increase the chances of someone criticising you. This week on the show Paul explains who you should listen to and who you can happily ignore * Speaking of criticism, this week Paul’s joined by Lindsay Willott, the founder of Customer Thermometer, the brilliant one click satisfaction app. They discuss how you can improve your retention rate by embracing the small things that often go wrong within your MSP * Plus on the show this week, 3 recommended marketing blogs to inspire some fresh ideas. And 2 recommended books from the Nigel Moore, the leader of the Tech Tribe

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In talking about some great marketing blogs to check out, Paul mentioned the HubSpot blog, Neil Patel’s blog and marketingexamples.com * For more details about the competition to celebrate the first birthday of this podcast, just visit paulgreensmspmarketing.com/win * Paul’s special guest was Lindsay Willott from Customer Thermometer talking about how and why to track dissatisfaction * Many thanks to Nigel Moore from The Tech Tribe for recommending the books Get A Grip and Traction by Gino Wickman * Please recommend a book you think will inspire other MSPs here paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbooks * Paul’s special guest on October 20th will be the legendary author and managed services expert Karl Palachuk, talking about his unbreakable rules for growing and running an MSP * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday, for MSPs, around the world. This is Paul Green’s, MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

I’m delighted to have you back for another podcast. Here’s what coming up in today’s show.

Lindsay Willott:

Actually, I don’t want to start recommending you to people, or are you going to call me and ask me for a bunch of my contacts?

Paul Green:

We’ve also got a great book suggestion from the legend, that is Nigel Moore, of the Tech Tri

Get A Grip: An Entrepreneurial Fable . . . Your Journey to Get Real, Get Simple, and Get Results

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In this week’s episode * To sell more security services to your clients, you need to think like a hacker. The MSPs that get inside a hacker’s mind, can better educate their prospects and clients. They’re better protected; you sell more; everyone wins. This week Paul has some book recommendations to help you do this. * Also on this week’s show, Paul welcomes a special guest with some great suggestions on how to sell even more products to your current clients * Plus, are you feeling lucky? Well, are you? The answer hopefully is… no! Paul explains that to take advantage of growth opportunities, it’s better to believe in something better than luck

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In talking about some brilliant books to recommend, Paul mentioned Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick and Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin’s Most Dangerous Hackers by Andy Greenberg * For more details about the competition to celebrate the first birthday of this podcast, just visit paulgreensmspmarketing.com/win * Paul’s special guest was JB Fowler from Domotz talking about other ways to sell more to existing clients * Many thanks to MSP author, producer and entrepreneur Mark Copeman for recommending the book Key Person of Influence by Daniel Priestley * Please recommend a book you think will inspire other MSPs here paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbooks * Paul’s special guest on October 13th will be Lindsay Willott from Customer Thermometer talking about how and why to track dissatisfaction * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Here we go then for episode 47 of the podcast. Here’s what’s coming up on this week’s show.

JB Fowler:

Managed service providers can start to look at, are these other

Key Person of Influence (Revised Edition): The Five-Step Method to Become One of the Most Highly Valued and Highly Paid People in Your Industry

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In this week’s episode * + It’s the One Trillion Dollar question… which is the best PSA? The right PSA, set-up in the right way, can make you more efficient and increase your profits… but how do you choose a PSA in the first place? On this week’s show Paul is joined by a PSA expert to help guide you + Paul’s also going to be looking at the two most important elements of your website; traffic and conversion. You can’t rely on just one or the other. You need both. So Paul details how you can make them work hand in hand. + Plus in this week’s show there’s a brilliant book suggestion about improving sales techniques. And Paul has got some great suggestions for dealing with sales objections

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In talking about ways to increase website conversions, Paul mentioned the services calendly.com hotjar.com Google Optimize * Check out the free marketing resources at paulgreensmspmarketing.com/resources * Paul’s special guest was Chris Timm ‘the PSA guy’ from Sondela Consulting and author of PSA Profitability. Whilst talking about available PSAs, he listed ConnectWise, Autotask, Tigerpaw, Syncro, Atera, Bluetrait & Halopsa * Many thanks to Jennifer Bleam from MSP Sales Revolution for recommending the book Gap Selling by Keenan * Please recommend a book you think will inspire other MSPs here paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbooks * Paul’s special guest on October 6th will be JB Fowler from Domotz talking about how to sell even more to your current clients * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to

Gap Selling: Getting the Customer to Yes: How Problem-Centric Selling Increases Sales by Changing Everything You Know About Relationships, Overcoming Objections, Closing and Price

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In this week’s episode * Not many MSPs fully realise the scale of the opportunity for gaining new clients right now, but you will after listening to this podcast! Paul explains why, even though Covid has been impacting us for 6 months, NOW is the time to steal clients from your competitors * Also on this week’s show: What kind of marketing is working for other MSPs? Paul’s joined by a special guest from one of the biggest MSP marketing agencies in the United States, for a fascinating discussion about which tactics are working the best right now * Plus find out how to increase and improve your own personal content marketing. And there’s a brilliant book recommendation all about building the right kind of team to work with

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In talking about content marketing and scheduling social media content, Paul mentioned Hootsuite, Buffer and AppSumo * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge * Paul’s special guest was Andra Hedden from Marketopia talking about what kind of marketing is working right now for MSPs * Many thanks to Matt Solomon from ID Agent for recommending the book The Success Cadence by David Mattson * Please recommend a book you think will inspire other MSPs here paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbooks * Paul’s special guest on September 29th will be Chris Timm ‘the PSA guy’ from Sondela Consulting, talking about the best PSAs available * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Hello, and welcome to another fresh episode of the show. Here’s what we’ve got coming up for you today.

Andra Hedden:

And that is what’s really helping MSPs stay present in the market, even though we’re living in more of a virtual world right now.

Paul Green:

We’re still going to be talking about three ways that your MSP can really improve it’s content marketing. And we’ve got a great book suggestion from Matt Solomon of ID Agent.

Voiceover:

Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

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In this week's episode * Of course you'll agree, the best kind of selling... is when you don't have to sell at all! This week on the show Paul dives deep into the 3-tier principle of selling. And how you can easily grow your MSP by actually letting your clients choose between good, better and best options * Plus a marketing expert joins Paul to explain what a brand really is, how you can make one for your MSP, and the huge benefits that await * Also listen this week to find out why you should change your MSP to thrive whether you're actually there or not. And there's a brilliant book recommendation that could help you see business in a completely new way

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook * Paul's special guest was Heather Harlos from Bitdefender talking about the increased importance of 'branding' * Many thanks to Heather Johnson from Gozynta (creators of Mobius Connect and Tixt) for recommending the book ‘The E-Myth Revisited‘ by Michael Gerber * Please recommend a book you think will inspire other MSPs here paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbooks * Paul's special guest on September 22nd will be Andra Hedden from Marketopia talking about what kind of marketing is working right now for MSPs * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: Hello, and welcome to Episode 44. Here's what we've got coming up in today's show.

Heather Harlos: If you do this, customers are going to be your biggest advertisers without you having to pay a penny for it.

Paul Green: We're also going to be looking at how you can sell more, both to your existing clients and to new prospects, by giving them the perception of choice. And we've got another book suggestion this week. It's a classic book, and it's the one which explains wh

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In this week's episode * It's an all-too-familiar tale. You've had an awesome meeting with a prospect, but when you go to follow them up... they ignore you! Or that's the way it seems. Whatever the reason they're not getting back to you, this week Paul offers a brilliant technique to get a response * Also in this week's show, did you know that your marketing targets different areas of your prospect's brains? Understanding which part is the most important will help to increase the effectiveness of your message * If you've ever wondered whether outsourcing would be right for your MSP, James Vickery from Benchmark 365 joins Paul to explains what's changed in the world of outsourcing over the last 30 years. Plus, prepare to be inspired by a brand new feature on the show - MSPs and experts in and around tech join Paul to recommend inspirational books that have had a huge impact on them

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Check out the book Paul mentioned called “Never Split the Difference” by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz * Find out more about Paul Green's MSP Marketing Edge * Paul's special guest was James Vickery from Benchmark 365 talking about how best to outsource your workload * Many thanks to the IT Business Growth Expert Richard Tubb (find out more here) for recommending the book The Go-Giver by Bob Burg & John David Mann * Please recommend a book you think will inspire other MSPs here paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbooks * Paul's special guest on September 15th will be Heather Harlos from Bitdefender talking about the increased importance of 'branding' * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Fresh every Tu

The Go-Giver, Expanded Edition: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea (Go-Giver, Book 1

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In this week’s episode * So, there’s easy growth and hard growth. Most MSPs go for the harder, less risky route of growing by obtaining their own clients over time. But occasionally we hear stories of MSPs who take the bold step of growing through acquisition. This special podcast episode is all about one such success story. * This week Paul invites an MSP owner to share their inspiring story. Listen as David Darmstandler from Datapath explains how he built up his MSP over a number of years through a combination of focus, hard work and also acquisition. There’s some great advice in this show – especially if you’re also looking to acquire or even be acquired * Also Paul’s special guest talks about how he has done something that most MSPs will need to do in the not-too-distant future; transition from being an MSP to a true MSSP (a managed security services provider)

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Paul hosts a MSP Marketing Podcast Special, dedicated to the story of David Darmstandler from Data Path (you can email him here) * On September 8th Paul’s guest will be James Vickery from Benchmark 365 talking about how best to outsource your workload * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP marketing podcast.

Paul Green:

Hello and welcome to an MSP marketing podcast special. It’s always good to hear other people’s stories and to hear how other people have made it, especially when they’re building up a business, that’s just like yours. And I’m joined today by a very special guest from the States to tell us how he built up his business.

Voiceover:

This is an MSP marketing podcast special.

David Darmstandler:

Hi, my name is David Darmstandler, I’m the CEO and co founder of an MSP and MSSP data path.

Paul Green:

And thank you very much for joining me for this special, David. So I want to explore today your story. I want to explore how you’ve built up the business, what the challenges have been on the way. And then in particular, there are two aspects that I want to examine because I think these are fascinating aspects that will affect a lot of MSPs. One of them is that transition from being an MSP, to being an MSSP, and we’ll come onto that later on. And also, I know you’ve acquired a couple of businesses on the way, and I think

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In this week's episode * Time can drag, time can fly, but there's always one constant - we all easily spend too much time doing things that other people could be doing for us. Whether it's implementing your marketing, sorting finance or day-to-day tasks, Paul introduces you to a unique desk toy that can help you see time differently and ultimately transform your MSP * Also on this week's show, did you hear the one about the MSP who also became a vendor because there was a gap in the market? Paul finds out from an MSP what it was like to create their own resellable cloud service and what 'learns' they can share * Plus there's a question from a listener that hits the nail on the head - we know we need to do marketing, but how do we know when it's working?

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In talking about outsourcing tasks, Paul mentioned UK-based firm TimeEtc, also the likes of Fiverr, Upwork & PeoplePerHour * Find out more about the brilliant physical time-tracking tool Timeular * Paul and his team use Basecamp to organise communication, tasks and projects * Check out the free resources and ideas for improving your marketing at paulgreensmspmarketing.com/resources * Paul's special guest was Phil Donoghue from Cloud4 talking about how their Channel Host cloud business was born from their MSP business * Many thanks to Steve Macklin from Pure IT for the question about whether your marketing is working or not * On September 1st Paul will host a MSP Marketing Podcast Special, dedicated to the story of David Darmstandler from Data Path and how he grew his MSP business in a dramatic way * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. This i

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In this week’s episode * Has Coronavirus impacted your MSP? Maybe some clients have cancelled contracts. Or perhaps you’ve actually grown due to clients requesting more WFH projects. Whatever YOUR experience, it can be useful to hear how other MSPs are getting on. And in this week’s episode Paul’s joined by a special guest from Datto to discuss their latest ‘State of the MSP report’ * Also this week Paul answers a brilliant question from a listener on how to use marketing to beat the competition, and position yourself as THE expert in your field * Plus, Paul looks at the link between confidence and competence and why addressing these two factors can improve your team’s performance. Also, Google has made some things that could affect your search engine optimisation… you need to hear this.

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In talking about competence versus confidence, the book The Peter Principle was mentioned by Laurence J Peter * Paul mentioned the new Core Web Vitals and other resources including those from Yoast and Moz * Register for a free copy of Paul’s book * Paul’s special guest was Alan Butler from Datto, talking about their ‘Global State of the MSP’ report * Many thanks to Jason Watts from Neveco for the question about becoming seen as THE expert * Find out more about Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge * Paul’s guest on August 25th will be Phil Donoghue from Cloud4 talking about how their cloud business grew from their MSP business * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong

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In this week’s episode * It’s the holy grail of client relationships… becoming a ‘trusted partner’. Making the transition from being just a supplier to actually being a trusted partner will revolutionise your MSP and this week Paul explains how it can be done * Also on the show this week, Paul’s joined by a special guest who can not only help you pick the phone up more often, but then go on to build stronger relationships once you have them connected * Plus, how can you upgrade your website to help you win more business? Paul has a few simple things you can do that will make a big difference to your marketing. And on the subject of websites, he answers a great question from a listener about how to do split testing

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook * Paul’s special guest was communications expert Michelle Mills-Porter (find her on LinkedIn) talking about how to be better at selling on the phone. Get a copy of her book on Amazon called Phone Genius: The Art of Non-visual Communication * Many thanks to Elly Whitehead from Evaporate for the question about doing split testing on website (in which Paul mentioned Google Optimize) * Paul’s guest on August 18th will be Alan Butler from Datto, talking about their ‘Global State of the MSP’ report * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s, MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green:

Hello. And welcome to a brand new, fresh episode of the show. Here’s what’s coming up this week.

Michelle Mills-Porter:

I once booked an appointment from a cold call. I booked an appointment with the marketing director at Microsoft. I had him in absolute hysterics within just a few minutes, and he actually turned around to me and said, Michelle, if your organisation has got half your personality, then I will give them a job.

Paul Green:

Also going to look at how you can upgrade your website to win more business. And in a similar theme, I’m going to answer a question from an MSP about how to split test different webpages.

Voiceover:

Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green:

If you

Phone Genius: The Art of Non-visual Communication

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In this week's episode * Have you got the tattoo? Have you got 'we don't do discounts' tattooed across your forehead? You should have! This week Paul explains why it's important not to discount - and what you can offer instead as a sales incentive * Also this week Paul chats to the owner of an MSP based in the States with 85 staff. He's developed a great system to help you feel more like their boss and less like their babysitter! * Paul's also going to be looking at how you can run a marketing audit on your competitors, find out exactly what kind of marketing they're doing and exactly what you can do to make sure you're a step ahead

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In discussing ways to analysis your competitors, Paul mentioned how to view their sitemaps by adding /sitemap.xml or just /sitemap after their domain, or googling "site:theirwebsite.com filetype:xml". The other tools for tracking their marketing included the Wayback Machine, Google Alerts, Facbook's Ad library and spyfu.com * Find out more about the extensive marketing resources available from the MSP Marketing Edge * Paul's special guest was Peter Melby from Boss Or Babysitter and Greystone Technology talking about how to coach and keep your best staff * Many thanks to John Benson from Yorkshire Tech for the question about using the likes of Customer Thermometer (in which Paul mentioned an addition to the 3 ways to grow your business from Jay Abraham) * Paul's guest on August 11th will be communications expert Michelle Mills-Porter (find her on LinkedIn) talking about how to be better at selling on the phone * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podca

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In this week’s episode * So, how DO you stand out and grab the attention of a potential client as they look to change their MSP? A great way to move yourself front-of-mind is to send a physical newsletter. And in this week’s show Paul offers some great practical advice on how to easily make this happen * Plus, as most MSPs are run by people with a passion for technology and NOT for sales, Paul chats to a special guest who’s got a fantastic tool to create presentations and make selling easier * Also in the show this week, not only the answer to a question on company logo creation, but the huge difference that another £1 or $1 of Monthly Recurring Revenue can make to your MSP

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Listen back to Episode 8 where Paul discussed the only 3 ways to grow your business from Jay Abraham * Listen back to Episode 21 where Paul chatted about valuing your MSP with The IT Business Growth Expert Richard Tubb * In discussing creating and sending a physical printed newsletter, Paul mentioned fiverr.com to find someone to help write or re-write the content, stannp.com for printing and sending the direct mail and mspmarketingedge.com as a possible source for the actual newsletter * Order your free copy of Paul’s book Updating Servers Doesn’t Grow Your Business * Paul’s special guest was Frank DeBenedetto from Two River Technology Group talking about the incredible AudIT tool for creating MSP sales presentations * Many thanks to Alex Harvey from Snap for the question on the cost of logos (in which Paul mentioned fiverr.com, 99designs.co.uk, designcrowd.com, hatchwise.com, domoredesign.com and logocontest.com) * Paul’s guest on August 4th will be Peter Melby from Boss Or Babysitter and

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In this week’s episode * There’s lots of great stuff about social media marketing in this week’s show. Paul’s got it all – from why it’s important, to how to do more of it, what kind of content to produce and where to get it from * Also on this week’s show, on the subject of social media content, it’s really important to create regular simple videos but what kit should you use? Paul lists everything he uses and explains the benefits of each device… and it won’t break the bank * Plus Paul’s special guest this week is the owner of an MSP that identified a gap in the market and produced a brilliant tool for other MSPs to use. Listen to Greg’s story and think if there’s a way you too can develop a new product to increase your value during these uncertain times

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Paul mentioned a great source for source content – The Week In Breach from ID Agent (plus services that could help turn it into content that you can use like fiverr.com & copify.com) * In discussing the video kit Paul uses for producing social media content, he mentioned the DJI Osmo Mobile gimble and the DJI Osmo Pocket camera. He also mentioned the Samson Meteor microphone * Check out the resource site nuzoo.news from Glenn Robertson at Purechannels to find out what’s happening in the Channel * Paul’s special guest was Greg Edwards from CryptoStopper talking about how to develop a solution once and sell it multiple times * Many thanks to Olly Denhard from IT Trouble Free for the question about what kind of social media content to publish regularly * Paul’s guest on July 28th will be Frank DeBenedetto from Two River Technology Group talking about the incredible AudIT tool for creating MSP sales presentations * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to

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In this week’s episode * We all know how important case studies are in helping to get new clients, but did you know there’s so much more you can do with one? This week on the show, Paul explains a few simple extra steps that you could apply to the process of creating and sharing case studies that could dramatically increase your sales close rate * Also coming up this week, how to check if your MSP is sellable, from the expert special guest who works full-time in mergers and acquisitions * Plus, along with a listener question about using ‘live chat’ on your website, Paul lays down a plan that could give you a content marketing super-power

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Paul mentioned a couple of brilliant books – They Ask, You Answer by Marcus Sheridan and Influence by Dr Robert Cialdini * Some services for finding people to help curate case studies include fiverr.com, Upwork.com, PeoplePerHour.com & copify.com * Find out about the low-cost marketing service MSP Marketing Edge * Paul’s special guest was Linda Rose, MSP expert and author of ‘Get Acquired For Millions‘, talking about how best to sell your MSP (or at least improve it’s value) * Many thanks to Ben Schneider from IT Guys for the question about whether to use live chat on your website (the couple of options were Tawk.to and Tidio.com) * Paul’s guest on July 21st will be Greg Edwards from CryptoStopper talking about how to develop a solution once and sell it multiple times * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook

Episode transcription Voiceo

Get Acquired for Millions: A Roadmap for Technology Service Providers to Maximize Company Value

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In this week's episode * So right now you class yourself as an MSP, however the chance of you becoming an MSSP (a Managed Security Services Provider) in the next 5 to 10 years is quite high. As the importance of cyber security increases, in this week's show Paul addresses what would be the main implications for your marketing * Also on this week's show - have you heard about the new book containing 84 nuggets of critical advice for MSPs, actually produced by MSPs? Author Mark Copeman joins Paul to talk about how he pulled this amazing piece of work together * Paul's also going to be talking about website rules. And the things you really should be doing to make your website better

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Paul mentioned some great services for finding people to create content for your website; fiverr.com, Upwork.com, PeoplePerHour.com & copify.com * Check out the free online training courses and resources available on the site paulgreensmspmarketing.com/resources * Paul's special guest was MSP author, producer and entrepreneur Mark Copeman talking about the 101 nuggets of advice every MSP should use * Many thanks to Adam Robinson from J2 Technology for the question about how to appear higher up search results * In talking about other sites for content best practice and SEO, Paul mentioned hubspot.com, neilpatel.com, moz.com and semrush.com * Thank you to Brian Mangum from Bright Flow Technologies for the lovely feedback! * Paul's guest on July 14th will be Linda Rose, MSP expert and author of 'Get Acquired For Millions', talking about how best to sell your MSP (or at least improve it's value) * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

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In this week's episode * Although MSPs have had the opportunity during the Covid pandemic to service more clients needing homeworking solutions, the issue of client retention has never been so pressing. In this week's show Paul's joined by an expert in generating profitable growth to discuss the steps you can take to keep your clients * Paul's also going to be talking about a slightly delicate subject - the matter of your life expectancy and how your MSP is linked to it * Along with a great question from a listener on marketing to prospects, Paul recommends an incredible book on negotiating that could save you money. Paul literally used it to save thousands and thousands of pounds

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * As mentioned, listen back to Episode 28 for the discussion surrounding the 'wheel of life', plus the conversation with Andy Edwards in Episode 2 about the best work / life balance * Check out the books Paul mentioned called “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying” by Bronnie Ware and "Never Split the Difference" by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz * Paul's special guest was Ben Niernberg from MNJ Technologies and Ignyte talking about how to manage client retention in these unusual times * Many thanks to Jacques from Ingenio Technologies for the question about how to look at MSP marketing from a prospect and not a tech * The tools Paul mentioned to help with testing your website from a user's point of view were User Brain, User Bob and User Insights * Paul's guest on July 7th will be MSP author, producer and entrepreneur Mark Copeman talking about the 84 nuggets of advice every MSP should use * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * You can join Paul in the

The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing

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In this week's episode * It may not be a word you thought you'd ever associate with your business, but do you want to feel 'SEXY'?! This week Paul talks to an MSP video specialist about how to upgrade your image and influence people on your website through the power of video * Plus on the show Paul introduces you to the marketing super power of understanding how prospects think - essentially if you want to influence what they buy, you've got to look through their eyes * Also this week, the most frictionless call to action on your website for booking more phone calls with prospects. Plus there's a brilliant question from a listener on which stats to check out in Google Analytics

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Find out how to get a book you can re-print as your own as part of the MSP Marketing Edge * The tools Paul mentioned for self-service meeting scheduling were Calendly and Microsoft Bookings * Paul's special guest was Darren Wingham from MSPvideos.co.uk talking about how to make your MSP sexy with the power of video * Many thanks to Simon Smyth from Ingenio for the question about the most important things to track in Google analytics (where Paul mentioned the website heat-map tracking tool HotJar) * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook * Paul's guest on June 30th will be Ben Niernberg from MNJ Technologies talking about how to manage client retention in these unusual times * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

Paul Green: Hello, and welcome to a brand new episode of the show. Here's what's coming up today.

Darren Wingham: The real story is the fact that they can save you hundreds of thousands of pounds from leaving your bank account without your knowledge, and people will respond to that, funnily enough.

Paul Green: We'll also be looking at what you should be tracking within Google analytics and what should be the most frictionless call to action on your website.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

Paul Green: There's a distress task that I've got to tackle over t

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In this week’s special episode Unless you’ve reached capacity, I bet you’d love more new clients.

If this is something you struggle with (most MSPs do), then this special episode of the podcast is just for you. Listen to a real marketing deep dive between MSP owner Jim Smith and Paul Green.

Jim, from Philadelphia-based Proper Sky, has been doing pretty much everything he can to attract more clients, but reached out to Paul to see if he was missing anything. As expected, Jim was already doing some great marketing. However now with Paul’s advice, is poised to make it work even harder and is preparing to invite more new clients into his business.

The special extended episode this week has one sole focus – the full deep-dive conversation in it’s entirety. Listen as Jim discusses his MSP’s background, what marketing he’s tried so far and his honest feelings on running a growing MSP – it’s powerful stuff. There are definitely a couple of ‘light-bulb’ moments for Jim during this conversation and hopefully this special episode will help you too.

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * A huge thank you to Jim Smith from Proper Sky for allowing this conversation to feature in the podcast * Many sites and tools were mentioned during the conversation and all are details here… * Email marketing & CRM tools Zoho CRM, Mailchimp, MailerLite, ActiveCampaign and InfusionSoft * LinkedIn tools Dux-Soup, Linked Helper and Alfred * Direct Mail tool Stannp * Outsourcing services including fiverr.com, peopleperhour.com and upwork.com * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook * Register for a free copy of Paul’s book * Paul mentioned the service MSP Videos (also Darren Wingham from MSP Videos will be Paul’s guest next week, talking about the power of video for your MSP) * Please send a

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In this week’s episode * Did you know there’s a link between Iron Man and your MSP? Paul explains why embracing the ‘Iron Man protocol’ could really make your MSP stand out in the crowd and boost your business * These days when it comes to marketing your MSP, two things have changed everything. Special guest Heather Harlos from Bitdefender joins Paul to discuss how the shift to digital marketing has combined with the global pandemic to create new opportunities for MSPs * Also this week, a listener to the show may not have a problem with recruiting 1st line technicians, but asks Paul for some advice on attracting those with greater experience

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Listen back to Episode 5 in which Paul discussed the legendary book Influence by Dr Robert Cialdini * Register for a free copy of Paul’s book * Paul’s special guests was Heather Harlos from Bitdefender talking about how marketing has changed in the digital age, in which the customer relationship tool HubSpot was mentioned * Many thanks to Justin Chapman from Press Start Ltd for the question about recruiting 2nd and 3rd line techs (listen back to some great ideas for recruitment adverts in Episode 23 * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, this is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Hello, here’s what’s coming up in this week’s show.

Heather Harlos:

It’s not always the right time to ask somebody to buy something, I think that’s something that salespeople miss. You probably shouldn’t ask them to buy something yet.

Paul Green:

We’re also going to be talking about email subject lines that get opens, because email marketing is still a powerful thing to do. And, how to recruit second and third line techs.

Voiceover:

Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

So our family, along with around about 50 million other families around the world, have now got Disney Plus. I have to say, it’s a pretty good package, isn’t it? You’ve got your Star Wars in there, you’ve got all your classic Disney stuff, you’ve got The Simpsons. And, you’ve got Marvel, and I absolutely adore Marvel. Find me a 45 year old man, with the beating heart of a 14 year old boy inside him who doesn’t love Marvel. I think what Marvel have done over the last 10, 11 years, building up that cinematic universe, is just amazing.

Paul Green:

Of course, one of my favourite characters is Iron Man, played by Robert Downey Jr., Tony Stark. I was chatting to my nine year old daughter about Robert Downey Jr., she’s really, surprisingly, into the Marvel movies, which is great, sitting watching them together. We were talking about Robert Downey Jr., and I was telling her he’d had some troubles in his life, and now he’s one of the highest paid actors in the world. In fact, for End Game alone, he made $20 million as a base salary, that was just to do the acting. And then, because he has a bit of backend, he takes a percentage of the backend profits. He’s made, so far, an additional $55 million, because of course, End Game getting on for $3 billion worldwide, or something like that. It’s an immense amount of cash.

Paul Green:

I think Robert Downey Jr., I don’t know, can anyone justify owning $75 million for one piece of work? Maybe. But, I think he’s worth every penny. From everything that I’ve read, all the directors think he’s worth every penny, as well. One of the reasons for that is when you hire Robert Downey Jr., you don’t just hire him and his star power, his ability to attract people into theatres, you also get a pretty unique process from him, which leads to more interesting scripting for your film.

Paul Green:

What he does is, when you hire Robert Downey Jr., he will get the script, and obviously he’ll turn up on set, and he’ll deliver the script as it’s been written. But what he also does is he has his own script writer, and his own script writer rewrites his dialogue, three or four times. So they look at what it is he’s supposed to be saying in a scene, or his character’s supposed to be saying in a scene, and they’ll do three or four different versions of it. He, when he’s on set, constantly wears an earpiece.

Paul Green:

So they’ll do the first take, and that will be the scripted version. And then, in between the takes, in between take one and take two, an assistant will read him his lines for the second take. So he’s not doing the original lines that were written by the movie script writer, he’s now doing his own script writer’s lines. And then, he’ll do the same thing for the third, and the fourth, and the fifth. So essentially, you’re getting him acting, and playing it out, and his character doing lots and lots of different lines, every single time you do a script.

Paul Green:

Apparently, directors find this incredibly useful because he’s not being disrupted offset, he’s got an earpiece in his ear, he’s got an assistant feeding these lines to him, and he’s paying for all of this. I mean, $75 million for a film, I’m sure he can afford an assistant, and a script writer, and a wireless earpiece. But, he’s doing all of this off his own back, so that his character can come up with more interesting things. A lot of the iconic lines, the things that we know from Marvel, such as, “I am Iron Man.” You remember, it was the big reveal at the end of the very first Iron Man film, the one that really kicked it all off. That was, essentially, an ad-libbed line. This is what makes Robert Downey Jr. so, so powerful to movie directors.

Paul Green:

Now, what could Iron Man possibly have to teach at MSP? Very simply, Robert Downey Jr. goes the extra mile. And he doesn’t just go the extra mile a little bit, he studied, in some detail, what would make me more valuable to these people. “They’re paying me a lot of money for these films, I want to be a very, very wealthy mega-star. I also want to have the best lines in the film.”

Paul Green:

Because you know, Iron Man was never guaranteed to be the big star of Marvel, he’s worked hard, over 10 years, to make Iron Man incredibly successful, to the extent that, no spoilers, but when things happen in End Game … and, come on, it’s been out a year now, we’ve all seen it, surely. But, when things happen in End Game, it has the most incredible emotional impact because we’ve invested 10 years into a character that we absolutely adore. He’s done that off his own back, he’s hired his own script writer, he’s written his own process, it’s an incredible thing to do.

Paul Green:

Let’s flip that back to your MSP. What could you do, off your own back, that generates so much more value for your clients? I guess what we’re looking for here is what could you do for your client that, routinely and systematically, over services them? We’ve all heard the phrase before, that you should under promise and over deliver, but actually, this is a real thing. When you start working with a brand new client, and they’re expecting something from you, how amazing if, from day one, you’re constantly over delivering. Of course, yeah they’re going to get used to that, eventually, that stops being very special to them after a couple years, when you’re over delivering, over delivering, that becomes the new normal. But, what a great way to get a new client started.

Paul Green:

When the lockdown started, I spoke to many of the MSPs that I work with, clients, not clients, people that I just know, and the ones that seemed to do the best with their clients, and that certainly had fewer retention problems than others were the ones who constantly over service their clients. So they were ringing them up, they were saying, “What frustrations have you got? What can we do to make your life easier? How is that annoying you, what the best thing for us to do here?” And they were constantly over servicing them. They were finding out what their expectations where, and they were going the whole extra hog. Essentially, they were taking the Iron Man approach to it.

Paul Green:

So here’s a challenge for you, maybe this is something you and your team can jump on a Teams call, you can talk about later on this week. What can you do to over service your clients? When we say what can you do, we mean the easy things. We’re not talking, here, about massively upping your extra level of service, but something simple. For example, could you start doing training videos for them, tech tips just for your clients? Could you start doing a drop in, maybe it’s a Teams call once a week, and any of your users could just drop in? They haven’t got to log a support ticket, but if they’ve got a small, minor thing, an irritant, a thing they’d love to have fixed but they’ve never gotten around to raising a support ticket, could they just drop in, and it’s almost like a clinic?

Paul Green:

What if you could go through a process of ringing all of your clients once a month, say? So, someone in the office is responsible for ringing, yes the decision makers, but also the influencers as well, and maybe other key users in the business. People who are putting in lots of tickets, or people who seem to be influencing other people with their tech support. Yes, there’s a burden there, of calling people, but what great service! In fact, what kind of problems are you going to unearth, before they actually become a problem? Wouldn’t it be better to tackle stuff proactively, both from their point of view, but also to stop things getting worse, and to stop frustrations increasing? Let’s call this the Iron Man protocol. How can you put it in place in your business today?

Voiceover:

Here’s this week’s clever idea.

Paul Green:

As much as email marketing is getting harder and harder, it’s getting harder to get people’s email address, to actually get your emails delivered to them, let alone getting them to open it. Email marketing is so important, it should still be at the cornerstone of your direct response marketing.

Paul Green:

You’ll have heard me say before on the podcast how important it is to build audiences of people, build a relationship with them, and then obviously be there at the point they’re ready to switch from their incumbent MSP. Well, the number one audience that you should be building is your email list because it’s the only one that you completely control. No one can ever take your opt-in email list away from you. LinkedIn can snatch your audience away from you, if Microsoft falls out with you for whatever reason. And Mark Zuckerberg can definitely take your Facebook, or your Instagram, or your Messenger lists away from you, if Facebook changes its mind about how it’s algorithms should work, again. But, no one can ever remove your email list, it’s your data.

Paul Green:

So you should be focusing on building your email list using ethical bribes, which is something that you give to someone in return for their contact details, to build up your opt-in email lists. For an MSP, even just 500 prospects in an email list is enough. I mean, 1000, 2000 would be better, but 500 prospects is enough because it’s not like you need 50 new clients every single week. You need one new client a month, or every now and again, or whatever will fill the capacity that your MSP has got.

Paul Green:

So when it comes to email marketing, as I said, the challenge is getting it delivered to them. The challenge is, then, to get them to open it. And, what dictates whether or not someone opens an email versus deleting it, or just hitting the spam button, are two things. The first is the person or the company that sent it to them, and the second is the subject line.

Paul Green:

Now, I prefer to send emails that come from me, so if you’re on my email list, and if you’re not you can go and join up at paulgreensmspmarketing.com, and you’ll see that when I send out promotional emails, they just have my name, Paul Green, in the subject line. So what I’m looking to do is to build a relationship with my audience, and it’s based around my name. Company name is irrelevant to me, and you could do exactly the same with your MSP. You could base the name around you, so your MSP might be called XYZ IT, and your name might be Dave Smith but it’s much better to send it as Dave Smith. People who receive emails from other people are more likely to open them, more likely to build a bond. And ultimately, people buy from people anyway. People don’t buy from companies, they just buy from other people.

Paul Green:

I would send your promotional emails with a name, just make sure it’s a name of someone who isn’t going to leave. As the owner of the business, you’re the last person to leave. In fact, when you do leave, you care less about what happens to the business. You can always broker a deal to license your name for a year, for the new owners when they’re doing email marketing, if that’s important to them. So the sender name is easy, the hard thing is getting the email subject lines right.

Paul Green:

So I’ve got here three or four areas of subject lines, which I’ve always found work very, very well. And from what I’ve read in the newsletters that I’m subscribed to, because I’m subscribed to it feels like hundreds of different email marketing lists, these are the ones that tend to perform better.

Paul Green:

So in no particular order, we’ll start with social proof. Now, social proof is where most people prefer to do what most other people are doing. Social proof directly hooks into us as cave-dwelling animals, who are somewhere in the middle of the food chain, something’s going to eat us, so therefore, basically, if we stick together, there’s safety in numbers. We prefer to do what most other people are doing. A social proof email subject line is a very smart thing to do, something that, perhaps, highlights how other people are using your service.

Paul Green:

So you could say something like, “We’re humbled at this feedback from our client,” that would be a great piece of social proof. Or, if there is actually a short snippet of something they’ve actually written in a review, or a testimonial, you’d actually put that short line in the subject line, perhaps in inverted commas. Now, the concept of social proof was first coined by Dr. Robert Cialdini, in his 1980s, 1990s book Influence, and he calls it a weapon of influence.

Paul Green:

In fact, another one of his weapons of influence is scarcity, because when there’s only a short supply of something, we have to make a decision in our brains. Do we want this, or don’t we want it? So scarcity, or urgency, can be a great email subject line as well. In fact, I would say this is one of the most powerful types of subject line you have to use. The only issue you’ve got with scarcity for an MSP is, what’s your real scarcity? Because software licenses never run out, hardware, I know we’ve had supply issues, but hardware doesn’t really run out in normal times. The only thing you’ve got that really runs out is appointments, or slots, or project time, or something like that. So a great scarcity email subject line would be something like, “There are only three of these available.” Or, much better, maybe, is a deadline. “This ends on Sunday at six PM,” something like that.

Paul Green:

Another subject line that’s easy, and gets good open rates as well, is actually just relaying news. So you can take something that’s happening in our world, and let’s be honest, there’s plenty of places to go within the channel to do this, and then you can just rewrite it, and pop it in your email newsletter, and the subject line can be about something new. People do love reading about new devices, they do love reading about new services, so long as they’re relevant to them. The big challenge for you in doing this is not to be too techy. If you’re too techy, and you start using technical terms, you’re going to absolutely lose your audience, and they’re not going to open your emails. But, relaying news, rewriting news, can work very well.

Paul Green:

Two more for you, then. One of them is telling a story, or starting to tell a story in a subject line. For example, if you’re talking about someone who got hacked, and what a nightmare they went through, you might use, as your subject line, “This is the worst nightmare any business owner can face.” That, in itself, is compelling, it’s almost like a headline. You’ve got to think of email subjects as headlines to the story. “This is the worst nightmare any business owner could face,” that’s a very compelling subject line, a very compelling headline, and would make me want to open the email, to see what the nightmare is because it feels relevant to me, because I am business owner, and I would want to know what that is.

Paul Green:

The final one I’m going to suggest to you is just simply offers. Offering them free stuff, offering them sales on things, offering them not discounts, but value add, people love offers. Even intelligent B2B buyers are emotionally persuaded by offers, they really, really are. So, why not make offers to them, and offer them different things? It works incredibly well.

Paul Green:

With all of these, though, you have to make sure you use a variety of things. If you were to use scarcity in every single email you went out, it would lose its impact very quickly. If every single email you sent out was an offer, you would soon get people unsubscribing. Because there’s got to be a balance, a balance of subjects, a balance of content. That’s the trick to you, when you’re doing your email newsletters, your email marketing, is getting the balance right so people don’t get sick of what it is that you’re sending out.

Paul Green:

You will have people unsubscribing, but it’s going to be a very, very tiny percentage of people who’ve chosen to opt in. In fact, as you watch unsubscription rates go up, that’s your audience telling you that you haven’t quite got your content mix quite right. And you need to go back, and address the balance, and just put a bit more variety in there.

Voiceover:

Paul’s blatant plug.

Paul Green:

So since you’re staying, if you’re not on my email list, and you want to get my emails, just visit the website. I can actually go one further with that. Would you like a free copy of my book? It’s called Updating Servers Doesn’t Grow Your Business, and it’s the ultimate guide to marketing your MSPs. Not a very long read, it’s only about 44 pages, and it is a proper, physical print book. If you’re based either in the US, or the UK, we have copies sat in warehouses that we’re ready to ship to you. And, if you’re based anywhere else in the world, you can still get a copy of the book. Unfortunately, it’s just a PDF.

Paul Green:

Hey, to get your copy, all you got to do is go to my website, paulgreensmspmarketing.com. There on the homepage, the details of this book, just fill in your contact details. We’ll send you an immediate PDF, no matter where you are, and if you fill in your address in the US or the UK, we will post a copy to you, which should reach you in just a few days.

Voiceover:

The big interview.

Heather Harlos:

Hey, I am Heather Harlos, I’m from Greenville, South Carolina, in the states. I work at Bitdefender, and oversee their go-to-market strategy for all of cloud and MSP. And just a little bit about myself, I grew up on a farm, and I could actually ride a horse before I could walk.

Paul Green:

That’s amazing.

Heather Harlos:

That’s a little fun fact.

Paul Green:

It is, yeah. You hear things like that, and you never quite believe that people are brought up like that. But, that’s a pretty amazing fact.

Paul Green:

Now, we’re talking about marketing in the digital age, and of course, with everything that’s happened in the last three months or so, marketing has been quite severely disrupted. And I say disrupted, because it’s created some enormous opportunities for some people, and obviously stopped certain other marketing practices from working well.

Paul Green:

Now, you’ve been working remotely for some time with Bitdefender, and you’re used to this new digital age of marketing. What kind of marketing that you’re seeing, that works really well for MSPs right now?

Heather Harlos:

Yeah, it’s sort of interesting what I’m seeing now. I feel like people are more willing to connect now, than they ever were before. So if you really think about it, people just want to feel like they know somebody, whether it’s in person or digitally. There’s a different expectation from that digital experience, that it is more personal, and really just more of an engagement on a personal level versus always selling.

Heather Harlos:

So a lot of the things that I’ve seen that have worked is doing a little more around … you could do a virtual happy hour, or you could set up your website with some intelligence on the background, and we know all of your MSPs are really good with technology, but where it can actually create profiles, and customise that journey and that content for them. So they feel like they’re getting to what they need in a way that’s organic, and, they aren’t having to go through 20 pages to get there.

Heather Harlos:

One thing that I always tell people is it’s not always the right time to ask somebody to buy something, I think that’s something that salespeople miss, just in general, and some business people miss in general. If somebody’s just now figuring out about you, you probably shouldn’t ask them to buy something yet. It should be more about learning who they are, and who you are, and then wait for that right touchpoint to actually ask for the transaction.

Paul Green:

Completely agree with you, because it is about getting the right message in front of the right person, at exactly the right moment. As you say, people only buy when they’re ready to buy.

Paul Green:

So the MSPs that you see that are most successful with this, are they using specific types of software, such as HubSpot, or other kinds of software that allow them to track that relationship? Or, is it just being done almost a little bit more organically, using humans and spreadsheets, and stuff like that?

Heather Harlos:

I actually think it is a little more automated now. I think the average buyer is smarter with technology than they used to be, so in general, if people have to call you, I feel like it’s a problem a lot of times. Other than the off-handed meeting, and maybe a happy hour or something like that, but people don’t necessarily have to want to talk to people. But they want to feel like you know who they are.

Heather Harlos:

What I’m seeing is people that actually have a more robust website with some intelligence behind, so people who get that information faster, is actually working better than the ones that are doing the speed dialling for numbers.

Heather Harlos:

An interesting statistic I found was, if you actually look at digital devices, it’s around, I think, 127 devices are actually connected online per second, and that’s probably changed since the last time I actually looked this up. But, when you’re thinking about how to build out your websites, and build out your digital footprint, think mobile first because everybody’s working remote or they’re on the go. So you don’t have that person sitting there, next to their phone all the time, so you need to think about how to engage with them in a different way.

Paul Green:

So when you talk about things like having more assets available on your website so that people don’t have to pick up the phone, … Because again, I agree with you, I think people would prefer not to pick up the phone these days, unless they’re in a distress position. What kind of stuff do you think every MSP should have on their website?

Heather Harlos:

As a standard, you should always have an about section, some way of people to be able to reach out with you, contact forms on each page. That should be a standard in every template that you build.

Heather Harlos:

But, what I think people tend to do is they try to look like they are good at everything. So if you think about it, most people in … And, in general, you can do everything, but everybody can specialise in something. So the websites that really point out the verticals, or the solutions that they really specialise in, and build that first, they have more credibility. Especially with me, when I go search for somebody, if it’s somebody that says, “Hey, we can do it all,” nobody’s great at everything, and you shouldn’t position yourself that way.

Heather Harlos:

So I think that the most successful websites are built around a specialisation, and you separate your website in a way, from a navigation standpoint, that is easy to get to that. Always have the products, always have the services, but don’t forget about those solution pages or vertical pages, so that somebody that is in that area, they go there and they’re like, “Oh, they know who I am, they work with other people like me.”

Paul Green:

You mentioned a couple of times a happy hour. Can you tell me what a happy hour is? Obviously, I know what it is in a bar, but what is a happy hour on a website, or in digital marketing?

Heather Harlos:

Yeah, and this is something that, honestly, probably would have never came about if it wasn’t for the past couple months. So I have seen, and we’ve actually done, virtual happy hours. Normally you would go to a bar, but obviously, we weren’t able to do that.

Heather Harlos:

So what we did is we actually sent what I would call a care package, with our branding, to customers, and it had a bottle of wine in it, it had the glass in it, it had some snacks in it. We scheduled a time to meet “face to face,” over a virtual happy hour, using Zoom, or Ring Central, or Webex. Any of the above would work. But, it was a really cool way because people just wanted that personal touchpoint, and they didn’t want to talk about business. They just wanted to know people were going through the same things they were, and to really forget what was going on for a little while, so it was actually a pretty cool experience.

Heather Harlos:

I’ve also seen people do story times, I’ve seen people do virtual yoga classes, so you can find common interests. And, you don’t have to be in the same city, or even the same country, to share those experiences anymore, which is pretty cool, really, when you think about where technology’s taken us.

Paul Green:

It is pretty cool, because obviously MSPs can, theoretically, service any business, anywhere in the world. And, the fact that we are all working more remotely now, and digital marketing has taken a great big leap forward in the last few months, it certainly does open up all sorts of quite exciting opportunities.

Paul Green:

You mentioned verticals, I think vertical marketing is going to be a way forward for so many MSPs. So you have your general business, based in your local geographical area, but you also have a vertical that you super serve, and that could be anywhere in the country, or indeed, anywhere in the world.

Heather Harlos:

When you think about verticals, use that to actually expand your reach to areas you don’t touch. So I recommend for anybody to take time to do an exercise, figuring out what your social graph is.

Heather Harlos:

When I go into LinkedIn and I post something, I have a certain circle of people that I know are engaging with me, that would reshare that. But, when they reshare it, they have a circle of people that actually trust them, and reshare it from there. You can actually leverage those specialities, and those verticals, in building those virtual relationships to expand your reach to people that aren’t actually in that vertical.

Paul Green:

Heather, tell us a little bit about Bitdefender, and how we can get in touch with you?

Heather Harlos:

Yeah, definitely. Bitdefender is a cybersecurity company, we’re actually one of the leaders in the MSP space. We do everything from end point protection, virtual environments, email protection. Really, just insert name here, and we pretty much cover it. The easiest way to get in touch with us is to go to www.bitdefender.com, super simple.

Voiceover:

Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast, Ask Paul Anything.

Justin:

My name is Justin, from Press Start Limited. Can you suggest a good way to recruit second and third line technicians?

Paul Green:

Yes I can. Great question, Justin, thank you very much.

Paul Green:

We all know that recruitment can be one of the biggest headaches for MSPs right now. Your first line techs, not so difficult because, let’s be honest, you can hire good people with a great attitude, and you can teach them to be first line techs. There’s plenty of training around, there’s plenty of mentoring from you, and from your team. The issue you’ve got is people with that established knowledge base in their head, that skill, that ability, that second and third line techs bring. Many of the MSPs that I speak to do have issues recruiting second and third line techs.

Paul Green:

I think there’s a two-pronged approach that you can take to this. Now firstly, you could take a more proactive approach, and that’s to be actually recruiting second and third line techs, constantly. So you don’t just wait until you’ve got a vacancy, you already have people lined up. For example, you could get in contact with the second and third line techs, bigger competitors, perhaps in the next town, people that you don’t naturally come into competition with.

Paul Green:

But, the reason I say bigger competitors is often, second and third line techs get lost when there’s 20, 30, 40 people sat in a building, it’s so much easier for people to be lost, for no one really to know that they’re there. That can lead to a level of dissatisfaction for some, a little almost of disengagement with their job. So you could be constantly in touch with these people, or you could be in touch with second and third line techs who don’t work for MSPs, but they are in technical support roles, perhaps in your town. I guess what I’m saying here is don’t go and poach from your neighbours because if you poach from your neighbours, your neighbours are going to go and poach from you. There are other sources of second and third line techs, without you directly stealing from your direct competitors.

Paul Green:

You could just reach out to people, you could contact them on LinkedIn, you could send a piece of direct mail to them at their workplace, which is a pretty gutsy thing to do, but I still think it’s a good idea to do it sometimes. And you could just get in touch with them and say, “Hey, can we go for a coffee? Can we go for a beer? We’re not recruiting right now, but at least once a year we’re looking for a second or a third line tech. It would be great just to get to know you, to see if, perhaps, we could end up doing some work together, down the line.” Essentially, it’s a no commitment meeting. Some of those people will just want to meet with you, just because they can, and they’ll want to have a chat. It’s your way of getting to know, would I want to work with this person?

Paul Green:

In fact, what a great way to line up potential future employees. To have a coffee with them, every six months, or every year, just to keep in touch. Learn about them, see what’s happening in their life, and then when you do have a vacancy, all you’ve got to do is you’ve got to pick up the phone, and make two or three phone calls. And say, “Right, it’s time, we’ve got a vacancy. Is this the right time for you to actually formally start to talk about you coming to work here? If the timing’s not right, no problem, I’ve got someone else I can try.”

Paul Green:

Now, that would be the most proactive, and the most powerful way to do it. The reality is, very few of us have the time to sit and build up a recruitment pipeline like that, it almost becomes a specialist job in itself. In which case, you’ve got the reactive way to do it, which is to recruit people at the point you have a problem.

Paul Green:

Now here, we can bring into play something that we talked about back in episode 23, seven episodes ago, we talked about the world’s best recruitment advert. The goal here was to stand out from all the other second and third line tech adverts. Because you look at wherever you look for your adverts, and they’re all the same, everyone’s talking about, “Second line technician needed, must have this, must have that, must have this qualification,” and so it’s very hard to stand out.

Paul Green:

My recommendation for you, seven episodes ago, was to have a video advert. So you might even have an advert which says, “You don’t want this job. To find out why you don’t want this job, go to,” and you send them to a page on your website, and there’s a video of you and your staff. And you talk about how hard you work, you talk about all the training that they have to do, you talk about how great the clients are. Essentially, you show the attitude of your business in the video ad. Maybe even you get your existing staff to be in that video, and to talk about how, yes they love it, and they love the fact that it pays well, and it works well, but it is hard work.

Paul Green:

Because not only are we differentiating the business by showing how different it is to all the other adverts, but we’re also showing that look, this isn’t going to be an easy ride, you’re going to be worked hard here, but it’s going to be incredibly rewarding for you. That’s going to appeal to a very specific kind of person, the kind of person that we want. The person whose got a good work ethic, who doesn’t complain, who doesn’t whinge, and brings a great attitude. Because if you could hire that kind of person, you can work with that person every single day of the week.

Paul Green:

I guess, the key with your recruitment, like any other kind of marketing, because recruitment is just a marketing exercise, is to look at what everyone else is doing, and do something a little bit different. Because if you can stand out, that’s half the battle won.

Voiceover:

How to contribute to the show.

Paul Green:

Come on, let’s get your question on the show, it would be great to hear from you. Just record it on your phone, and you can email the audio file to me, hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover:

Coming up next week.

Jim Smith:

I can’t thank you enough for the time and the energy, and I’m sorry I didn’t find your podcast sooner. The quality is stellar.

Paul Green:

That’s Jim Smith, he’s an MSP owner from just outside Philadelphia. And next week, he’s the star of an MSP Marketing Podcast special. I did an hour long marketing consult with Jim, and he was kind enough to allow me to record it for you. We do a deep dive into how to get new clients for his MSP, and you can follow along, and copy the process as well.

Paul Green:

Now, this is unlike anything I’ve ever done before on this podcast, and I believe it’s going to be a very valuable episode for you. So I can’t wait for you to hear it next week, I’ll see you then.

Voiceover:

Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

View Details

In this week's episode * Google are not really in the search business, they're in the experience business. Paul's joined by an SEO expert (who also happens to be the VP of marketing at SolarWinds) to explain this and how you can appear higher in searches * Did you know there's a way to grow your business by 33% this year WITHOUT having to increase your activities by 33%? Paul explains the 3 simple steps that can help you achieve this * Also this week, having your own podcast can seem appealing, but a question from a listener prompts Paul to go behind the scenes of his own show and explain the good, bad and ugly side of creating a weekly podcast

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Find out more about marketing legend Jay Abraham and his books * Paul's special guests was Kyle Sutton from SolarWinds talking about how to improve your search engine optimisation (his email is Kyle.Sutton@Solarwinds.com) * Kyle mentioned the fooling tools, Google Search Console, SEMrush and Google Business * Many thanks to Wayne Stanley from Iron Dome for the question about starting your own podcast * Paul currently uses a Samson Studio USB microphone and his producer James Lett uses a combination of Audacity, Adobe Audition and hosts the podcast on the Castos platform * The guest on June 9th will be Heather Harlos from Bitdefender talking about how marketing has changed in the digital age * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green : It's an absolute pleasure to be back on your device for another podcast this week. And here is what I've got lined up for you.

Kyle Sutton: How does Google make money? They're not really in the search business, they're in the experience business.

Paul Green : We're also going to be looking at how to grow your business by 33% over the next year, and it's a lot easier than you'd think it would be, with three specific things to focus on. And I'm going to answer a question from an MSP of whether or not you should do a podcast to promote your business.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green : I try to support local businesses whenever I can, independent businesses. And there's a little coffee shop that was near my house for a couple of years. It was called the Coffee Bean, and it was an absolutely wonderful place to go. It was run by a family. The dad was in the kitchen, the mum was out front, the adult children were the waiters and the waitresses. And they ran that business for about, must be about two and a half, three years. And it reached a point of perfection because it was quite a big unit that they were in. And when they first opened, you know what people are like with new businesses. They flock to have a look and they're a bit suspicious, but there's something about this that they just got right on day one. The coffee was delicious. The cakes were delicious. The food was just amazing. And it was one of those places you suddenly found yourself going two or three days a week. And the weekend, if my family were like, "Should we just nip out for lunch?" I'd be like, "Coffee Bean."

Paul Green : I mean, there was a Costa Coffee and a Starbucks choice as well, but I would always be like, "Coffee Bean. Let's go to the Coffee Bean." Everything about it was perfect. It was the atmosphere, it was the staff. The customers seemed to enjoy it. It was beautiful. And then around about a year ago, they sold the business. And frankly, I'm not surprised because they looked exhausted. They must have been making some pretty good money out of it, but they all of them looked just generally a bit exhausted all of the time. And I think working six days a week, 51 weeks a year, who'd want to do that in a cafe? That can't be much fun and you can't be making that much money out of it.

Paul Green : Anyway, they sold the business quite easily and I'm not surprised. It was a very well run business. It was clearly churning out net profits and they sold it fairly easily. And then the new owner came in, and I'm looking at acquiring a business this year. And if I buy something that works very well, I'm not going to fiddle with that. I'm going to fiddle with the things that aren't working very well. And I'm assuming I'm going to buy some kind of business that operationally does well, but from a marketing point of view could be improved. And this guy that bought the Coffee Bean, he's a nice enough guy, but he's kind of changed it. I mean, it started with little things. They put up televisions. So the Coffee Bean has never had big televisions up. And suddenly I went in about a week after they bought it and there were big televisions up, and they were playing music videos. And you think, "Okay." But it changes the atmosphere of it.

Paul Green : And then the coffee changed and then the menu changed. And it wasn't just the actual food that changed. The look of the menu changed. It went from being a nice paper based menu to being that horrible wiped down plastic, if you know what I mean, that's kind of the greasy spoon type menus. And then the menu changed again and they stopped doing half the dishes that they used to, and it all became a bit chip heavy. And then the nice cakes kind of vanished and they became Costco cakes.

Paul Green : There's nothing wrong with all of these. These are all choices. And prices went down as well. That was it. Everything got a little bit cheaper. But essentially they bought something that worked very well, that churned out net profit, that was a very efficient business. And for a cafe to achieve that in a couple of years is quite impressive. And then they broke it. If you go in there these days, and I'm guessing because I've stopped going, but if you go in there these days, certainly outside of normal lockdown and quarantine, it's half empty. You just don't see the regulars that used to go in there anymore because it's just not nice. It was not cheap before. You were certainly paying a good price for what you were getting. Whereas now it's interesting, isn't it? It's cheap, it's lower quality and it's attracted a different kind of person.

Paul Green : I guess what I'm trying to say with this is when something works, don't break it. It's very tempting for us to be constantly reinventing the business all the time. And so often I'm talking to some of my MSP clients and we'll be talking about PSAs, and there'll be with auto task or there'll be with this, or they'll be with that. And they just want to shift. They want to switch over almost for the sake of trying to find something else. The grass is always greener in the other PSA. And actually sometimes it's a case of look, you've got auto task or you've got ConnectWise manager, whatever you've got. Do you like it? It's okay. Does it do the job? Yeah, it's okay. Then why don't you just stick with that for a year or for two years? Because you can be constantly switching around, but maybe, just maybe you're breaking something. Maybe you're investing the business into a 10 to 20 hour project and there's no real outcome from it. There's no real bonus or benefit from switching to a different PSA.

Paul Green : Look at your business right now. In fact, you can rank your business in all different areas on a scale of one to 10, where one is just awful and 10 is literally couldn't be any better. And if you were to look at your sales and marketing, at your operations, at your service desk, at your ability to generate net profit, at your management, at your leadership, at your staff, at all of these different things, how would you rank them? If you're really good at delivering a great service for clients, don't change it. Don't break it. Focus on the areas that are not good. Every single business has areas that are good and not good. And of course, as you go off and fix one area, sometimes another area breaks while your attention is diverted elsewhere. So there are always things that can be fixed in a business, but you've got to focus on those things and don't destroy the things that work just because you want to meddle with them.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green : Many MSPs think that the route to growing the business is all about getting new clients. And certainly you need to be onboarding new clients on a regular basis. It's a good systematic habit to be getting into because you do lose clients eventually, so you need to make sure that you're onboarding new ones. But in my mind, there are actually three jobs that you need to be focused on at the same time. You need to get more new clients, you need to get those new clients to buy from you more often, and you need to get your clients to spend more every single time they buy. And these three ways to grow your business were first put together by a marketing legend called Jay Abraham. Do go and Google him and look him up. I've bought, it must be 10,000, maybe 20,000 pounds worth of Jay Abraham stuff over the years, and much of today's modern marketing can really be traced back to Jay's career. He's put out some amazing stuff over the years.

Paul Green : In fact, my favourite thing I bought of his was I bought about four or five years ago, I bought a hard disc and it was called A Dump of Jay Abraham's computer. And it was all of his old programs, all of his old audio. I mean, there was literally 20 years worth of stuff in there. I did find a document with Tony Robbins' mobile phone number in as well. I mean, there were thousands of documents on this thing and I didn't think I was supposed to have that document. And no, I haven't phoned it yet. Maybe one day when I've had a few wines and I'm feeling a bit brave and it's 10:00 AM California time. Maybe I'll just try it then and see if that's still a valid number. I suspect it's not.

Paul Green : Anyway, Jay Abraham was talking about doing these three things simultaneously, and this is something I've adapted into my teachings and I've been talking about this for years. You can't just go and get more new clients. You've also at exactly the same time, got to increase the number of times they buy, and increase how much they spend every single time they buy, because these three things then work together to leverage up your turnover. Let me give you an example of this. I'm going to simplify it somewhat, away from actual real life business, but just to make my point. So let's say you had 100 clients and they're all on a monthly contract with you. So essentially they're buying from you 12 times a year because they're paying something monthly.

Paul Green : It's a good way to think about your monthly recurring revenue clients. They're actually making 12 purchases a year from you. Isn't that great when you think about it? So you've got 100 clients buying from you 12 times a year. And let's say just for figures sake, they're spending a hundred pounds a month or $100 a month. 100 clients multiplied by 12 multiplied by a hundred pounds or $100 gives you a turnover of 120,000. Now what if we can increase all of those three areas by just 10%? so we get 10% more new clients. That means 110 clients. What if we could get them to buy a 13th time in the year? So we find something else during the year that they can buy. Let's call it a mini project. Because 12 times a year increased by 10% is they're buying 13.2 times a year. Don't worry too much about the 0.2. It means some people are buying 13. Some people are buying 12.

Paul Green : They were spending on average a hundred pounds a month. If we increase that by 10% to 110 pounds a month, well, let's multiply those figures. 110 clients multiplied by 13.2, which is the number of times they buy in a year, multiplied by the average monthly spend of 110. Now, previously we had a turnover of 120,000. Just increasing those three areas by 10% increases our turnover to 159,720 pounds or dollars. That's actually a 33% increase in turnover. And yet we didn't have to increase the number of clients by 33%. We didn't have to sell them more by 33%. This is so exciting. And it's when you focus on these three things at exactly the same time, that's when you really start to see the power of growing the business strategically.

Paul Green : So what does this mean in real life? Well, obviously you should be looking for new clients all the time. As often as you can onboard new clients, onboard new clients, because they do stay with you a long time. It then means getting them all onto monthly recurring revenue. I'm sure you do that anyway. No more ad hoc clients, no more break/fix clients. If you want to shift to the MSP model and you're not already there, shift to the MSP model. Just stop taking on new ad hoc or new break/fix clients. And the real win for you then is to focus on increasing average monthly spend. If you can increase the amount of money that each of your client spends with you each month, that will be such a powerful thing. And in fact, that's where the extra net profits lie.

Paul Green : What we're really talking about here is great account management. It's about doing strategic reviews with your clients on a regular basis and finding out what they need, what they want and what they're scared of. Because if you can fulfil a need or you can fulfil a perceived want, or you can take that fear away from them and you will have services and products and things that you can do to achieve all of these, then that's going to be a way for you to grow your monthly recurring revenue and increase your monthly spend or their monthly spend with you the easy way. And the reason to do that with strategic reviews is simply because it's the cleverest and smartest way to do it. You don't want to be the MSP that's constantly ringing them up, asking them to buy more, but you meet with them, either every six months or 12 months to review where their business is going over the next couple of years. The sales opportunities will just present themselves.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green : Did you know, we have a free community where we discuss things like this? In fact, all the things that we talk about on the podcast tend to be reflected in the Facebook group as well. It's called the MSP Marketing Facebook group. It's free to join, but only if you actually run or own an MSP. Unfortunately, and I'm sorry vendors, it's just a vendor free zone. So when you apply to join, we do ask you to post your website, just so me and my team can double check that you are indeed a proper MSP and not a vendor trying to sneak in. So grab your Facebook on your phone, go to the search bar at the top, type in MSP Marketing. And then if you go to groups and I should be the top result. You'll see a little picture of my face. And it's called the MSP Marketing Facebook group. Apply to join it.

Paul Green : We normally let you in within 24 hours. And you're going to join a community of more than 800 MSPs from all around the world, talking about all the things that market and grow your business. Would love to see you in there.

Voiceover: The big interview.

Kyle Sutton: Hi, my name is Kyle Sutton. I'm the senior director of marketing with SolarWinds MSP. Pretty extensive background in search. So I spent about 11 years on the agency side, running digital media campaign from everything from mom and pop brick and mortars to the Fortune 100. Started in search on the paid side, moved into organic and ran teams there for many years.

Paul Green : Now we all know that appearing high up in search results is absolutely critical. And for most MSPs, myself included, I'll be honest, we see SEO or search engine optimisation as a bit of a dark art. You're never quite aware of what people are doing and what you should be doing and what you shouldn't be doing, because it all seems to change so much. So, is SEO actually that difficult, Kyle, or is it something that your average MSP owner should be aware of and should be doing?

Kyle Sutton: It can be challenging, but I think if you dig into what the search engine is really set out to do and start there, it makes a lot more sense. So the question I always ask is how does a business make money? And you can ask the same thing of the search engine. So how does Google make money? They're not really in the search business, they're in the experience business. So if you think about how they came to be, 20 plus years into the early days of search, the results were very, very low quality. You're talking about your lycos.com, Excite. And in these days, it was very easy to do a bunch of spammy tactics like keyword stuffing, white text on white background and do really well. And Google grew the way they did because of how successful they were at finding really relevant queries to the questions, because that's what a search is. It's a question without the wrapping of natural language.

Kyle Sutton: So if you start from the perspective of how do I provide the best experience for this query, and then view your decisions through that lens, the strategies and the tactics make a lot more sense because they really are in the business of delivering the best possible experience for the query.

Paul Green : So are we talking here about generating original content for websites that help Google to realise that we've got the most relevant answers to the questions that people are asking?

Kyle Sutton: Exactly that. I think about SEO really in three buckets. You have one page, and that deals with the content of your site. So are you saying the right things? Are your pages keyword optimised? You have offsites, and this deals with the things external to your site that are virtually irrelevant. So these are things like inbound links. Inbound links will always be very critical for Google because that's how they started. That's kind of the secret sauce to their early days of evaluation, is that they evaluated sites based on the number of back links to that domain. They almost serve as a vote. In the context of local SEO, reviews are very, very heavily weighted. And then the last category is going to be technical SEO. So this has to deal with can the engines get to your site, understand what it's about, and index it on a regular basis?

Kyle Sutton: So if you think about what an engine does, they're indexing or crawling an infinite amount of information with finite computing resources. So the easier it is from a technical perspective to make sure that Google can crawl the entirety, or visitors can crawl the entirety of your site, the more likely they are to visit your page frequently, the more likely they are to rank you well. So do I have broken pages? Are my files appropriately named? Have I done things like a site map? Mobile is massive now. It has been for some time. Is my load speed acceptable? Am I, as a site owner, providing that good experience for all users on all devices? And those are the categories.

Paul Green : Should the average MSP just outsource this and hire an SEO agency?

Kyle Sutton: I think agencies can be phenomenal, but you have to be really sharp around understanding what it is that you're buying. Agencies will come at this from a bunch of different angles. There are going to be some that offer an all-in-one comprehensive service, "Hey, we're going to come in and write content and do linking and help with reviews." And even in some cases, "We're going to build you a new property," or whatever. Others are more specialised. So I think the evaluation for an individual MSP comes down to how deep are you in the space? Do you understand it well? Do you have a marketing person that can oversee that relationship and direct this organisation? And then how much control do we really want to give up?

Kyle Sutton: So I'm happy to have someone come in for example, and at first with optimisation of content, but then from a branding perspective, I want to be in control of my brand voice, my value prop. So even if I'm not writing everything, I want a good amount of influence. So I'd love to have a direct answer there, but the honest answer is, but it really depends on the individual circumstances of the MSP in terms of how they go about outsourcing.

Paul Green : So what are the easy wins, as it were, that almost any MSP can just implement and benefit from?

Kyle Sutton: The places to start are number one, understanding what am I ranking for today? It's almost a mini audit to see how the site is showing up relative to competitors. There are a ton of tools on the market to help you understand this, some of them are free and some of them paid. On the free side, it's registering for Google Webmaster Tools. Search Console is the brand as of a couple of years back. And what that'll give you is some insight into your website, through the lens of how Google sees it. So it'll tell you, "Do you have broken pages?" It'll give you, to an extent, what keywords you're ranking for. It'll help you upload your site map, alert you of any errors. That's a great starting point. On the paid side, there's a paid tool called SEMrush. And what it is, is a competitive intelligence technology that'll tell you what your site is ranking for at a deeper keyword level. It'll tell you on the Google Ad side, what your competitors are doing, and that'll give you some insight into how you're ranking and what you're showing up for it.

Kyle Sutton: The other piece of low hanging fruit, and this is what then you can do on a technical perspective really in just a few minutes, is to claim your Google Business listing. So google.com/business. Everyone has a Google listing. Well, most businesses have a Google listing. It's just a matter of whether or not you claim the listing and that'll put you in a position to be in control over how you show up. So categorisation, photos. There's even a messaging feature where you can post details about your business. You know, "We're closed for this holiday or special hours or special we're running," whatever the case. That's massive because the engines, especially Google, have a bias towards their own technology. So claiming that listing is a huge step in the right direction. And then what you want to do is begin to encourage positive reviews where you can, because that's a major relevant signal.

Kyle Sutton: Lastly, I would say from a technical perspective, is getting an understanding of whether or not you have all the flexibility you want in terms of being able to manage your site. So for example, it's really popular now to see sites popping up on services like Square sites, which is really just a re-scan of the wix.com. They're great, but they're also paid services. And in some cases it's not always easy to do some of the more involved technical changes you want to make. So it's looking at the back end of your property and making sure that you have sufficient buttons and levers to really rank well.

Kyle Sutton: The thing that's frustrating about some of these technologies is that for example, anyone can jump on to a Square site today and spin up a property, but the rub is that on that free version, your URL is actually some flavor of a Square URL, and from an SEO perspective, unless you're a paid user, you're not going to rank organically. So just making sure you're in the best position from a technical perspective to even get started, and that'll make a really big difference.

Paul Green : That's great advice. Thank you so much. Let's return to your day job, which is, of course, being the senior marketing director of SolarWinds. So tell us briefly about SolarWinds and how can we get in touch with you or with SolarWinds?

Kyle Sutton: So, I'm within the MSP division of SolarWinds. So as an organisation, we've got a 20 year history of helping IT professionals do their jobs more effectively. And within the MSP business unit, we're really maniacally obsessed with helping MSPs grow and become more successful. We do that through the tools we build. So, a comprehensive suite of services to run the MSP business from the technical side, everything from remote monitoring and management to endpoint detection to password security and backup email protection, really a deep portfolio of tools to help the MSPs grow and be successful. To reach out, if anyone has questions can certainly feel free to ping me. I love helping MSPs sort through these issues both through the day job and then in terms of being a recovering agency guy, wanting to see people do really well in their marketing efforts. I'm just Kyle.Sutton@Solarwinds.com or to take a look at the product portfolio, it's just solarwindsmsp.com.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast. Ask Paul anything.

Wayne Stanley: Hi Paul. This is Wayne Stanley from Iron Dome. Should I create a podcast to promote my business?

Paul Green : Great question. And thanks for emailing that into me, Wayne. So should you create a podcast to promote your MSP? Well, as I'm sitting here at 6:30 AM on a bright Tuesday morning recording my podcast, my initial gut reaction is no. It's a hell of a lot of work. It really is a lot of work. I mean, this podcast takes me around about two to three hours every week, just to come up with the content, to script it out, to record it, to do the interviews, to set up new interviews. I don't do any of the editing myself. I have a lovely editor called James, who just makes me sound great. Thank you, James. But overall, he's probably putting in two, three hours in per episode. So it's six hours, let's say five to six hours of human time every single week to produce this podcast that's, what, between 20 and 30 minutes. And that's a lot of work.

Paul Green : However, saying that, it has opened so many doors for me. People like Kyle, that you just heard there, I would never have been able to chat to Kyle, never if it wasn't for this podcast. And actually he approached me on LinkedIn, which is just beautiful. I've been able to chat to people at Datto. I've been able to chat to people at ConnectWise. I've met some interesting people. I've been invited to speak. I've picked up so many new clients off the back of this podcast. People who say, "Oh, we found out about you from the podcast." So I think a podcast is both a curse and a blessing at the same time.

Paul Green : It's a curse because it is a lot of work. We work six weeks ahead because it suits the working patterns of me and James. And we worked together years ago in radio. So we're used to working ahead and we're used to working at a very high quality, but we also know that if we get behind, it's very, very easy to stop. It's very easy to get out of that working pattern, and we've got to be constantly pushing ourselves to make sure that we're keeping up and the podcast is ready almost a couple of weeks before it's due to be broadcast. It is a hamster wheel, but it does pay off. So if you think of doing your own podcast, the first thing I'd ask you to do is to think strategically why. What's the purpose of this podcast and what do I want to achieve from it?

Paul Green : So for me, it was about building a new audience, another audience of people who perhaps don't read my blog, or they're not interested in the Facebook group, but I know the podcasts are massive with MSPs. And the second thing I asked myself was what can I do that's different to the other MSP podcasts that are out there? Because there are some fine podcasts out there. So you should do exactly the same thing. I picked MSP marketing as my angle. Ask yourself, for the audience that you want to reach, why would they listen to your podcast? What's in it for them? What podcasts are they currently listening to? Maybe you should ask your audience this. You can ask your existing clients, what podcasts do they listen to and what would be different? What would be new for them?

Paul Green : Gut feel, this would work better for you if you operate within a vertical than in a geographical area. I mean, in a vertical, it would be beautiful because you could do the ... I mean, let's say your vertical is lawyers. You could do the legal tech podcast and you could make it not just about IT support, because that would be a bit boring, but you could make it about just technology. In fact, technology for lawyers would be great. And if lawyers listened to podcasts, they'd be more likely to listen to that because it feels relevant to them. So before you start, pick out your subject, ask yourself strategically, what are we trying to achieve here? What's the goal? What's the most exciting outcome that can come from this podcast? And it's probably you getting new clients or people just engaging with you, or just creating more touch points. It's another chance for you to touch potential clients.

Paul Green : Now in terms of the actual production of it, you need a microphone. I use something called a Samson studio microphone. It cost me a couple of hundred quid, probably about seven years ago. It's been a great microphone. It really has. I'm just about to upgrade actually. I'm going to get a proper broadcast quality microphone, which will cost me a couple of hundred quid and I'm going to mount it on an adjustable bar because I miss being able to move the microphone and I'm going to clamp that to my desk and have a pop shield on it. And I'll perhaps post a photo in my Facebook group when I do that upgrade.

Paul Green : Now I'm recording this right now in QuickTime because I have a Mac and the actual ... although we use Audacity to edit this and Audacity is open source, great editing software. I found that Audacity's pretty rubbish at actually recording audio. So on my Mac, I record it straight into QuickTime, which I've only ever lost one recording, touch word. You're probably using a Windows machine, so there'll be some audio recorder that's better for you. And you want to record that in the highest possible quality that you can. I mean, that's the easy bit. The recording of it is the easy bit. The hard bit really is the content. You've heard the format of this show and you're more than welcome to borrow the format of this show as long as you're not doing another show for MSPs. But we have a very specific format for this show because it keeps the show moving along.

Paul Green : So it always starts with a bit of a tease ahead. We always then go into what I like to call the rant. It's just something that's on my mind at the moment. We always then go into a clever idea. Then I have a bit of a plug for the things that I'm trying to push at the moment. Then we go into, of course, the guest interview, and then this bit where I answer someone's question. And then we start asking for a contribution and teasing next week. And that's a very deliberate and well thought out format because it keeps the energy of the podcast going. It keeps me going. It makes it easier to plan the podcast, but also it makes it a hell of a lot easier to listen to. So I think you've got to think about your structure.

Paul Green : Podcasts where it's just someone sitting, talking, or even two people sitting, talking, they have a value when those two people are either famous or they have an immense amount of interesting things to talk about. And the reality is for most of us, including myself, we just don't have the ability to do that. So a format is a very good idea.

Paul Green : Other things to bear in mind with your podcast is where are you going to host it? So we host ours on something called castos.com, which is C-A-S-T-O-S.com. There are loads of podcast hosts around. We picked Castos just because it was quite an easy interface to use. We can upload it to the website. In fact, we actually load the podcast into the website and publish it directly from my website, which is beautiful. It comes bundled with something called Headliner, which is a way of pulling out a clip of the podcast and using it to promote the podcast, which is just easy.

Paul Green : What else do you have to think about? Oh, I suppose you have to really think about is how long are you going to do this for? So I've made the commitment to do this for 50 weeks a year. So, we'll keep going for this. In fact, I'm going to do this this year and next year, probably the year after, because this has been so positive for me. Why would I stop doing something like this? I'll just take a break from it at Christmas time. You've got to think to yourself, are we going to do a weekly podcast that just keeps coming? Or are we going to do a series, a limited edition run? Perhaps do 10, 12 or 13 podcasts, which is a quarter of a year and then rest it for a bit and then bring out a season two. It's completely fine to do either of those.

Paul Green : The one thing you've got to remember is if you're doing a weekly podcast, you've got to keep doing it the same time each week, because you build up momentum with your listeners and with yourself. Ours comes out 10:30 AM, UK time, every single Tuesday morning. And we know we can do that because we're always six weeks ahead. And that's part of our commitment. When I first started the podcast, I sat down and I recorded six episodes and that took me a couple of days to do that. And that was fine. That was my way of getting ahead and my commitment to making sure the podcasts do come out every week. So you have got to commit yourself to doing that.

Paul Green : So in summary then, a podcast can be a great way to promote your MSP so long as you've got a good strategy behind it, you've got a strategic reason to doing it and not just for fun or because you fancy having a go at it. Because trust me, the fun soon melts away. I enjoy doing this podcast, but it is a little bit of a burden. And I'm always quite relieved when I finish recording each week's episode. So if you're going to do it, do it for strategic reasons, commit to either a run or to doing it every single week. And then just make sure you push it. Your first couple of podcasts are going to have very, very few people listening, but you have to keep going with it. Keep going, keep the momentum going, keep getting interesting people on, and eventually you'll get up to a point where you're getting a few hundred listens every week and it's starting to open doors for you. And when you get a client out of your podcast, that's when it really becomes exciting for you.

Voiceover: How to contribute to the show.

Paul Green : So Wayne emailed in that audio question for me to answer. And I'm so grateful for that, Wayne. Thank you very much. Maybe you'd like to do exactly the same thing. Just record a question on your phone and you can email it straight to me off your phone. It's hello@PaulGreensMSPmarketing.com.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

Heather Harlos: It's not always the right time to ask somebody to buy something. I think that's something that salespeople miss. You probably shouldn't ask them to buy something yet.

Paul Green : That's Heather Harlos from Bitdefender. She's going to be here next week talking about how marketing has changed in the digital age. We're also going to be talking about email subject lines that get more opens, which is critical. If you can't get them to open the email, how can get them to act on it? And we've got an idea of how Iron Man, yes, Tony Stark, can help you to get more new clients. See you next week.

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

View Details

In this week's episode * Some of the best IT innovations are born from the simplest of ideas, just like the incredible physical Helpdesk Buttons that allow your users to summon support. Paul's joined by Alex Permenter and his colleague Elizabeth Copeland to discuss how they developed this very clever concept and how you can use it to market your MSP * Also in this week's show, Paul talks about the immense impact of price increases and why you should be constantly nudging your prices up * Plus Paul discusses the 'wheel of life'. Business is so important and so consuming, but you have to remember all the other things that you need to have for a healthy balance

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Listen back to the episode discussing how best to price adhoc work here * Find out more about Paul's monthly marketing service at MSPmarketingedge.com * Paul's special guests were Alex Permenter and Elizabeth Copeland developers of the incredible Helpdesk Buttons * Many thanks to Ashley Kennedy from Pure IT for the question on how to test social media effectiveness * The guest on June 2nd will be Kyle Sutton from SolarWinds talking about how to improve your search engine optimisation * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: Hello and welcome to another packed show. Here's what we've got coming up for you this week.

Alex Permenter: We're trying to figure out a way to make it very easy for end users to put in tickets. Somebody came up with the idea of physically hitting a button and we sort of laughed.

Paul Green: We are also going to be looking at the immense impact of putting up your prices and answering a question for an MSP about how you know when your social media is working.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: I record this podcast quite a few weeks ahead and as of date of recording, we're still in lockdown or quarantine here in the UK and we're not supposed to leave our homes unless we're going out either to go shopping for food or go for exercise or if our work can't be done from home. Of course work like this can be done from home, can't it? I have to say what's been wonderful apart from the fact that weather's been so nice, is just spending loads of time with my nine year old daughter.

Paul Green: I have a good work life balance in normal times, but just lately it's been absolutely cracking because of course we've literally physically been together, trapped in the same house. I dare use the word trapped, but stuck in the same house literally 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And thank goodness what has been already a good relationship between the two of us has just got better and better and we've done loads of stuff together.

Paul Green: Weekends have been great but weekdays as well have have been good fun and yet I'm also getting good work done. And I was chatting this over with some of my MSP masterminders just a few weeks ago when we were doing a Zoom call and we were talking about the wheel of life. It's about remembering that there's more to life than just work and it's very easy for us, especially at times of crisis where we have to work a little bit harder, and I know that most MSPs have just done some sterling work over the last couple of months in terms of supporting people, getting them through this, getting them set up for remote working, removing their frustrations, and then going out and marketing and finding new clients because of course this is a great time to steal people from their incumbent MSP when they're unhappy, when they haven't been looked after properly because not everyone has been doing such a good job as you've been doing.

Paul Green: The wheel of life is all about balance and if you found that tomorrow that you only had, let's say five years left. For some reason your doctor rings you tomorrow and says, "Yeah, hi. Do you remember those tests you had last year? Well, I just remembered I found your test results on my desk. I've been meaning to call you for a few months. Unfortunately you've got a really rare and bizarre condition, which means you will just drop dead five years tomorrow. So, sorry about that. I have a good life. Bye."

Paul Green: And I've picked five years by the way because that's not a short enough time for you to immediately knee jerk and make some massive changes to your life, but it's also not 10, 15, 20 years. What's most likely off the back of a fairly unlikely scenario like that is that you would go and put more balance into your life if you don't already have that.

Paul Green: There are a number of things that we have to balance. We have to balance our health, we have to balance our family, we have to balance our wealth, and if we get these things out of balance, that's when we feel wrong in some way. If you ever find yourself getting to a Friday evening and all you can do on a Friday evening is pull yourself onto the sofa and get a glass of wine or a beer and start binging Netflix because you're exhausted, then that's a red flag if you like. The balance is out of whack for you.

Paul Green: There are many other flags. Your family saying that they don't spend enough time with you or you get into holiday times and it being a massive, massive stress. Getting yourself prepared for the holiday. The family might prepare themselves, but you yourself are quite stressed out because it's an enormous amount of work for you to get the business and yourself ready. These are all flags that your wheel of life, your balance is out of whack.

Paul Green: Now there are five elements of the wheel of life, which you need to make sure that you've got in the correct balance. And the first two are the two resources that we need the most and the two reasons really why we have our own business and that's cash and time. So most of us, we started our own business because we wanted control. We wanted to be our own person. We wanted some times maybe to stick it to the man, but we start the business for all these different reasons and then over a longer period of time we keep going with it because we enjoy the cash that it generates and also because we enjoy having control of our own time and cash and time are our two most basic resources and if you don't have enough of either of those, that's when it feels painful.

Paul Green: If you're throwing all of your time into the business and it's not chucking out enough cash for you, that's painful. It's actually equally painful if you're throwing all your time into the business and he's chucking out loads of cash, but there's no time left. You've got to have the right balance of cash and time. And a very smart friend of mine was saying to me just a few weeks ago how they're going to rebalance their life because they're making a ton of cash out of their different business ventures, but they felt that the time was just wrong, that they weren't doing all the things that they wanted to do. In fact, as part of lockdown, they've been going for very long walks every day in some beautiful sunshine and just really enjoying life. That whole thing of stopping to smell the roses.

Paul Green: So you need a balance of cash, you need a balance of time. You also need a balance of family. Family are the most important people in our lives if you think about it. I was about to say you only have one family and of course that's not true is it? Many people go on to have two or sometimes even three families, but we've got to look after the family that we've got. Your other half, your children, maybe even your extended family, your parents if they're still here, we do truly only have one family. And as much as sometimes we all want to kill them, slowly or quickly, family are the most important people we've got.

Paul Green: There's also having fun. What's your idea of fun? Is it golf? Is it hang gliding? Is it going out into the woods and building dens or sleeping overnight in the middle of a field or riding cows or whatever you're into? Whatever your fun is, you've got to do more of that fun.

Paul Green: Unfortunately a lot of my fun I've not been able to do during lockdown because my fun involves wandering around London with a camera, it involves going to the cinema, but I've been able to really get into running, I mean like seriously get into running. Some days I've be running 10 miles, which if you'd said to me just 12 months ago, "Hey, you're going to be going out for 10 mile run some days." I'd literally be laughing at you. But I've discovered that running is fun. And of course it's having very positive effects on my weight and on my mental wellbeing as well.

Paul Green: So, I've discovered some new fun from that, which is great. And I've prioritised, in fact, it's really interesting, I found a way to prioritise almost every single day of the week going out for a long run. And before lockdown I wouldn't have done that. I'd have been too busy doing something else. So, I've been quite grateful to lockdown for being able to address that balance and put some fun back into that.

Paul Green: So, we've got cash, we've got time, we've got family, we've got fun. There's one more thing that has to go in and that is meaningful work because people like you and me, we have to work. We have to find things that we can do to challenge our brain, to entertain us almost through our work and when I sold my first business back in 2016 I took more or less six months off. I had bits and bobs of work, but none of it was particularly meaningful and mentally I was so bored. I was doing almost any activity just to give myself something to do. I will never put myself in that situation ever again.

Paul Green: If I sell another business, I will absolutely put in place projects, in fact, I'm already lining up things that I can do in my fifties and sixties. I want to start a charity. I want to be a magistrate. I want to be a fiction writer. All of these are things that I can challenge my brain with. So, right up to the moment where I cannot work because my body or my mind will not allow me to anymore, I'm going to throw myself into meaningful work.

Paul Green: And do you know what? I bet you I last longer because I'm keeping my brain going and I've got meaningful work, things to do. So all of those things need to be in balance. Cash, time, family, fun, and meaningful work. And if you feel that your wheel of life balance isn't quite right at the moment, please do take some time, perhaps some time at the weekend, to reflect on what's out of balance and please do take urgent action on it because this stuff is so important.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: Now this one's a biggie because I want to talk about putting your prices up and the immense impact on your bottom line of doing that. Now, as I said earlier on, I have recorded this quite a few weeks ahead, so I'm not quite sure if you're still in quarantine now or lockdown, but certainly the world is in a very different place and what I'm about to talk about might not be for now, but it might be something to do down the line.

Paul Green: Saying that, there might be some prices that you can increase now and some prices which you can't. And we'll come to that towards the end of this segment. But in general, putting up your prices is something that you have to do on a regular basis, at least annual. I would almost recommend that you review your prices twice a year because the impact of putting up your price, even just a few percent, is absolutely massive when you're focused on the bottom line.

Paul Green: And remember the purpose of the business is not to provide IT support to your clients and to provide employment to your staff, the purpose of the business is to give you a great life and to churn out loads of net profit every single year in order to give you that great life. In fact, your clients will end up with a better service longterm and your staff will end up with more pleasurable, better paid jobs long term, if your business is highly profitable. No one, trust me, no one wants to work for a business that struggles for years and years and years and ultimately it's not much fun being a client of that business either. So, you really owe it to your family, you owe it to your staff and bizarrely, you owe it to your clients to put your prices up enough to make enough net profit that the business is fun to run.

Paul Green: It's rewarding enough to run, and you can provide a really high level of service. Now, let me give you an example of how much putting up your prices can make such a big difference. Let's say you made a 30% gross margin, just simplify everything that you sell. Everything you sell you make a 30% gross margin and let's say that you put up your prices by just 5%. Now, putting up the prices across the board by just 5%, which I know you wouldn't do but just go with this for an example, you could actually afford to lose 14% of your revenue and you would still make the same amount of gross profit.

Paul Green: Now let's assume you were able to put your prices up by 20%. You could actually lose 40% of your revenue and still make the same amount of gross margin. That's the beautiful impact, and that's just putting up your prices 20%. That's the beautiful impact of increasing prices. It has a dramatic effect on the bottom line.

Paul Green: Now even if you are scared of putting up the front end prices, there's always something that you can do in the backend. What's the difference between front end and backend? Well, front end are the prices that your clients see, that prospects see, so your per user charge or your per device charge. Maybe even what you're charging for Office 365 or some of your other basic subscriptions, the things that they can go and compare to other MSPs. But then you have a series of backend prices as well. And do you remember just two weeks ago, in episode 25, we were talking about how much do you charge for ad hoc clients and how you probably weren't charging enough. That's a perfect example of a backend price.

Paul Green: Very, very few of your clients, when they start working with you, will ask you how much you're going to charge them per hour for ad hoc pricing. It's the same with projects now. They may care about the project cost when they first come on board with and there's a certain onboarding costs, but long term they're just not going to ask a question like that because it just doesn't occur to them to say, "Hey, you know in about four years time when you're going to get rid of our server and move us to the cloud, how much is that going to cost us?"

Paul Green: Because apart from the fact that you can't price it, it just doesn't occur to them to look at something like that. So, if you can't put up your front end prices now because of the current situation, perfectly understandable. You've got to remain competitive, you've got to remain good value for money to your clients. But there are always backend prices that you can just nudge up and nudge up and nudge up. And remember that figure a 5% increase in prices. If nothing else changes, you could lose 14% of your work and still make the same amount of gross margin.

Paul Green: Now what we're really looking to do is to keep all of that work, put the price up, and actually keep all of the gross margin and add more gross margin. That would be the ultimate goal. Stick something in your diary every six months just to have a look at your prices, review them, have a look at how vendor prices have gone up and you don't just want to adjust for inflation as it were or for their price increases, you want to make sure that you're also adjusting so your own net profits are going up every six or 12 months.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green: Now having just suggested you for all your prices up, one of my core services, I haven't put the price up for some time. It's called the MSP marketing edge and I have no plans to increase the price this year. It's one of the ways that I'm helping MSPs around the world to improve their marketing so that they can be very well positioned to go and steal clients from lazy incumbent MSPs who just frankly aren't doing a great job.

Paul Green: So, if you go into MSPmarketingedge.com and you'll see everything you get in there, there's basically two parts to it. The first part is on a monthly basis you get a whole load of marketing tools that you can just use to promote your MSP in your area, because we do only supply this to one MSP per area. So you get a guide, an educational as you can give to your audiences, you get a video, you get a press release, you get some promotional emails, you get a sales letter, there's a whole bunch of stuff and it turns up every month.

Paul Green: Now the second part to it is ad hoc stuff if you like MSP marketing edge plus. So for example, during the coronavirus situation, we've been supplying lots of ad hoc marketing materials to our members to just help them at every single stage. We've got Have I Been Pwned plugin that goes into your website so you can use it as a form of data capture for people checking to see if their email address has been compromised. There's a book called email hijack, which is written from the point of view of decision makers, the business owners and managers that you want to reach, and you can rebrand that book and use that in your area. And there's a whole bunch of other stuff as well. Lots and lots of stuff. The idea is that it's super value, because it's only, in the UK, it's 99 pounds plus VAT every month. Or for the rest of the world, and we certainly aim it at the US but we sell it in about 12 countries now, it's just $129 a month.

Paul Green: So, it's meant to be a very, very low impact on your cashflow but high impact on your marketing. So you want to see all the details of that and check to see if your area is still available, just go into MSPmarketingedge.com. The UK in US versions of that are completely automated so you can check if your area's available in sign up. And if you're not quite sure, if you're outside of the US or the UK and you want to just inquire and see if this is something we can supply you with, we're delighted to chat. The email address is hello@mspmarketingedge.com

Voiceover: The big interview.

Elizabeth Copeland: I'm Elizabeth Copeland. I am here with Help Desk Buttons. I'm the COO and front end developer for our product. I'm here with Alex Permenter, He's our owner and CEO, and we're excited to talk about how our product is available to be a great front end for users with a physical button that allows them to put in a ticket and at the same time they're putting in a ticket to your PSA, we're also gathering a whole slew of real time diagnostic information as well as screenshots to help your techs resolve problems quickly and effectively.

Paul Green: And I featured HelpDeskButtons.com in the podcast, I think it was back in March, originally it was something my MSP masterminders told me about. One of them mentioned it in a session one day and we put it up on a screen and we all looked at your website and most of the members of that group, their reaction was, "Wow, what a great idea. A physical help desk button that the users could have on their desk and when they need help they press that button."

Paul Green: Now, Alex, I know that you own an MSP as well. Was this product created out of the frustrations that you had within your MSP?

Alex Permenter: Well, yeah, absolutely. So, I think that we deal with a lot of the problems that everyone deals with, especially as we're starting to scale up just a little bit. One of the things that we identified was a key source of problems and client complaints was that a ticket had never been created by the end user. They had called somebody, texted a cell phone, sent an email to the wrong place, grabbed somebody walking down the hall. We really pushed them to make tickets or at least call our service desk, but it's a struggle and so we're trying to figure out a way to make it very, very easy for end users to put in tickets. So, there are a couple of platforms that are ticketing front ends and there's nothing wrong with any of them, but the ones that we had tried were still a little bit difficult for end users to use. They didn't like it. There was a little bit of pushback.

Alex Permenter: And so our goal was let's make it absolutely as easy for end users to put in a ticket as we possibly can. Somebody came up with the idea of physically hitting a button and we laughed, but we had built a prototype in software with a keyboard by the end of the day. It just grew from there. We've added a bunch of diagnostics and things to make it give a really compelling ticket and our whole team has contributed to it. Everybody who owns this platform is part of my MSP and they're just folks who have added their ideas and time.

Paul Green: Elizabeth, you're one of the front end developers working on this. When a user presses the physical button, you've said a couple of times that it captures information to help the MSP diagnose the problem. What kind of information does it actually gather?

Elizabeth Copeland: We gather a variety, a myriad, of information sources from ... We have the user's last 20 actions. We have screenshots of those actions before they press the button, so if you're looking to replicate issue or if you have an intermittent issue that you haven't been able to catch in the act, you can press the button and there's that screenshot collected there.

Elizabeth Copeland: We've got software, network, hardware, diagnostic information, antivirus and security information and all of this is great on its own, but we also have the ability to append or upload any additional files that the MSP is looking to gather as well with every report that comes in.

Paul Green: So Alex, for your technicians within your MSP, what kind of a difference does it make for them doing their job properly? Because obviously they've immediately got the information that perhaps they've had to go and gather from other sources previously.

Alex Permenter: The biggest difference far and away is on the intermittent tickets, the tickets where we can't reproduce the problem or the end user is unable to explain what they were doing very well. So, it helps a lot with the communication and the mysteries. We built this not as a marketing tool, which I know is what you guys are geared to. We built it as a diagnostic tool for our techs. So, we just have lots of instances where we're spending more time chasing down the user, trying to get additional information, trying to find out what they were talking about when they say my computer is broken, that sort of thing. And this is very, very good for that sort of thing. So, it clarifies a lot of issues immediately and the places that it makes a really, really big difference are on the intermittent issues where we just can't reproduce them.

Alex Permenter: But now they hit the button the second that it's happening and we see here's what was going on the network at that time. Here's the processes that are running on the system at that time. Things that are very hard to get from a traditional RMM, you can only go in and look at it after the fact, and you don't really know what was happening when they have the problem.

Alex Permenter: So, it mostly helps with communication and it lets our techs also get a jump on these tickets before they get started. They can see the screenshots of what the user was doing before they hit the button. So, usually you get a minute or two of their mouse clicks and we highlight those and show everything that they were doing. So our techs, even if they haven't worked on the software that this person is using, they have all the steps to reproduce the issue themselves. They have the time to look up what's going on and when they get on with the client, they seem a lot more knowledgeable, they have the answer in their pocket already. So, we present a lot better to our clients because we know we have the answer by the time the tech is talking to the client.

Paul Green: Which is just brilliant for protecting your relationship with the users you're supporting. Now, Alex, you said there that it obviously was designed as a diagnostic tool originally. Elizabeth, how are MSPs using this to market themselves and to differentiate themselves from their competitors?

Elizabeth Copeland: So, the first thing that you notice when you look at the button is that it's completely customisable to whatever marketing message you would like to have on it. Perhaps that's your brand. Perhaps it's, "Get some help with the click of a button." And that is an item that can sit directly on the user's desk. We have two types of buttons. One's a simple button that just all it does is it activates the software, but we also have hub buttons that you can plug in a keyboard and a mouse to and that can sit closer on the desk with your brand right there for the users to be able to see. And it's usable and a really valuable aspect of being able to show your promise to good service right there with your brand.

Paul Green: Okay. Finally, Alex, what's the best way for us to get in touch with you and learn more about help desk buttons?

Alex Permenter: Oh, well we would love you guys to visit our website at HelpDeskButtons.com. We have a free trial that's available. You can sign up and log right in and play with it. And if you need more information or need help getting it set up, you can just reach out to us and we're happy to help.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. Ask Paul anything.

Ashley: Hi, my name is Ashley from Pure IT. How do I know if my social media is working?

Paul Green: Great question, Ashley. Thank you very much. And there are two answers to this. The first of them is engagement and the second is results. So with social media, the beautiful thing about it and what makes these platforms so addictive is engagement. You post a bit of content on social media, someone likes it, someone else comments on it, someone likes it, someone shares it. Can you see the addiction of that?

Paul Green: As humans, we're psychologically driven to seek attention, to seek out other people who engage with us, who care about us. Who think something over us. This is a deep psychological thing for most of us and social media absolutely ticks that box. It's why Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat and all these other platforms have absolutely taken over the planet because they ticked so many boxes in the way that we are psychologically driven.

Paul Green: From a business point of view, the more engagement you can get, the better. Engagement early on when you post something actually makes more people see it. Now we don't know this for a fact because Facebook and LinkedIn and all the other platforms, they don't tell us exactly how they work, but we know that if you post a bit of content and within the first hour you get some likes, you get some comments, and you get some shares, then more people are likely to see that content.

Paul Green: In fact, and again we don't know exactly what it is, but it is believed that each of those things has a point score allocated to it. So, it might be that a like gives you one point, it might be the comment gives you two points, and that is share gives you three points. Because these are getting harder. It's easy for someone to hit the like button, requires a bit more effort for them to comment, and there's a social risk to them of sharing it to their network.

Paul Green: And let's say the score is, or the threshold is, 30 points or 40 points. If you hit that point score within an hour, it's actually telling the platform this is an important piece of content that people care about. And it's why you can switch on your Facebook on your phone, and you'll see a piece of content that you and your friends have been most engaged with and you see that first and that's because either, and this works exactly the same on Facebook or LinkedIn, algorithmically people engaging with that content has told the platform to share it with loads of other people.

Paul Green: So, there's lots and lots of benefits of people sharing. The other benefit is of course the more they engage with your stuff, the more likely they are to engage with you. The whole point of doing social media from a business marketing point of view is we want to touch out prospects. The more touchpoints we have with prospects, the more likely we are to engage with them at the point at which they have a perceived need or perceived want.

Paul Green: And whatever you've read about the number of touch points, you can forget that. It is not 10 touch points or 20. It's 100, it's 200, it's 300. It's getting them to engage with you on social media. It's getting them to open your emails. It's getting them to look at your website, to watch your videos, to reply to your LinkedIn message, to pick up the piece of direct mail that's on your desk. There's all of these and more, they are all the touch points for your business and the more you have of them with your prospects, the more likely you are to get a place at the table at the point they're fed up with their incumbent MSP.

Paul Green: So, that's the first measure. Engagement. The second measure is simply results. If you put something on Facebook or on LinkedIn and ultimately it gets someone to message you or book a 15 minute phone call or just reply to you and say, "I'd love to have a chat about this." That's results. And results really can be measured in a number of different ways. It can be measured in activity, it can be measured in responses, it can be measured in phone calls, it can be measured in meetings. The ultimate measure is of course new clients and sometimes it's very, very hard to track back new clients to a specific platform because of all those touch points that we were talking about earlier. If someone has seen your email and watched your video and engaged with you on Facebook and then it's actually something on LinkedIn that made the message you and say, "Hey, can we chat?"

Paul Green: Then you might think that it was just LinkedIn that, "Oh yeah, LinkedIn is a great platform." Whereas actually it was all of those touch points put together. So, you can't judge these things in isolation anymore. They all work together to give you a multitouch way to talk to your prospects. But essentially when it comes to social media, you've got to keep doing it. Five or six or seven days a week because it's the only way to keep touching those prospects, which ultimately down the line will give you the results you want: new clients.

Voiceover: How to contribute to the show.

Paul Green: Isn't it about time that you were on the show? Have you got a question for me? It can be a question about anything to do with marketing or growing your MSP. Grab your phone, fire up the audio recorder, record me a little audio thing like that. Just remember to say your name at the beginning, so, "Hi, my name is so and so from business and" and then just ask your question. Send it through to me. You can email that through to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com. And if you've got any other feedback on the show as well, I'd love to hear it from you. Good feedback or bad feedback. It can all come through to the same email address. Hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

Kyle Sutton: How does Google make money? They're not really in the search business. They're in the experience business.

Paul Green: That's Kyle Sutton. He's the senior director of marketing at Solar Winds and he's also spent many years doing Google search campaigns. He's going to be here on the show next week giving you a whole stack of advice on how you can improve your SEO, your search engine optimisation, for your business. We're also going to be talking about not breaking things that are working really well and how we can recognise they're working really well and how to grow your business by 33% this year the easy way. Looking forward to seeing you on next week's show. Of course I won't see you because I'm a recording and you're human, but hey, you get the idea,

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

View Details

In this week’s episode * What will be the new normal for MSPs when the pandemic is over? Paul’s joined by special guests Heather and Brian Johnson from Gozynta to talk about what we’re going to be facing and how you can spot some huge opportunities amongst the chaos * We’re also going to be discussing growing through acquisition and whether or not you’ll be able to pick up some of your competitors because of everything that’s happening right now * Also this week Paul has a ton of advice about the one thing that most likely to keep you awake in bed at 4am – cashflow management

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * While talking about growing by acquisition, Paul mentioned the past conversations with growth expert Jonathan Jay from The Dealmaker’s Academy in Episode 10, plus how MSPs are typically valued with The IT Business Growth Expert Richard Tubb in Episode 21 * Order your free copy of Paul’s book Updating Servers Doesn’t Grow Your Business * Paul’s special guests were Brian and Heather Johnson from Gozynta talking about finding new opportunities during financially uncertain times. Within this they mentioned one of their products Mobius Connect and Tixt * Many thanks to Jason Watts from Neveco for the question about making tech cool * The guest on May 26th will be Alex Permenter and Elizabeth Copeland developers of the incredible Helpdesk Buttons * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Well I can’t quite believe it. We’ve been doing this podcast for half a year now. It feels both longer and shorter in so many different ways. Here’s what we’ve got coming up on today’s show.

Heather Johnson:

And then everything’s different. You’re in a new reality and it is scary. It is very easy to get in the mindset of I’m just kind of going down with the ship, but you don’t need to do that.

Paul Green:

We’re also going to be talking about something which on the surface doesn’t seem cool, but as business owners, we all know how important it is and why we’ve got to keep a grip on this because it keeps us up at night. It’s cash flow management. And I’m going to be answering a question from a listener about is there any way that we can make tech cool for the prospects that we want to engage with on social media.

Voiceover:

Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

One of the fastest ways to grow your business is actually not to try and do it organically by adding new clients, but instead to go out and acquire a competitor and I’m a big fan of acquisitions. One of my best friends is Jonathan Jay, who if you few listened to episode 10 of the podcast, he was on then talking about acquiring businesses. It’s what he teaches people to do, to buy and sell businesses. And I myself are looking at acquiring some businesses this year in my town where I live of Milton Keynes. I’m not interested in MSPs, but I tell you what is interesting. Right now with the way that things are right now, I think this is potentially some opportunities coming up for you to acquire something and I know there’s going to be opportunities for me to acquire something in the next six months ahead.

Paul Green:

Now going to start right from the start by saying with everything that’s happening right now and the impact it’s had on businesses, is unfortunate that some businesses are just simply not going to do well out of this. They’re going to really struggle. They’re going to struggle to get back on their feet. And I realise I risk criticism of people saying you’re profiteering on this Paul, you’re cashing in on other people’s misery. You’ve got to understand that a business which gets into trouble really quickly off the back of what we’re talking about here of the current situation, they were already struggling before we went into the current situation. All this has done is this has accelerated, I mean at some scale, but it has accelerated the business problems of those businesses that were going to fall over. They were always going to fall over anyway.

Paul Green:

And I think you actually owe it to the staff and the clients of these businesses that were going to fall over to pick up those businesses and to fix them and to integrate them with your existing operations so that the staff continue to have a job and the clients continue to have IT support. And that’s certainly the way that I’m viewing it. Whatever it is that I go and buy this year and I’m looking to buy one or two businesses, see if I can even put them together in some way, I will be aware that a business owner somewhere has suffered in some way. Or has put their business up for sale and perhaps they’re not able to sell it for as much as they had hoped for when they thought they would sell their business.

Paul Green:

And I will handle this in the most sensitive way that I can and I will try to make sure that that person gets a great deal, but also that I get a great deal because I’ve got the hard work of turning that business around and fixing that business and of course the cash impact as well. I’m going to be taking on the risk of looking after that business.

Paul Green:

So maybe that’s the opportunity for you over the next 6 to 12 months is to say, right, some of my competitors are struggling, they’re going to struggle more. They’ve got a client base, they’re probably not servicing that client base as well as I can service them. How can I acquire that business? And I think the very first step for you is to actually contact all of your competitors. Literally just write them a letter. Hi, this is me. I’m based just down the road from you. I just wanted to say, if ever you’re thinking of selling your business, I’d love to have a chat with you. The first step would be a confidential coffee or beer. Let’s just go and have a chat. See if we think we can work together and we can always take things from there. And what you’re looking for is you might send that to 50 competitors in your town, in neighbouring towns and you might get one or two people responding off the back of that.

Paul Green:

And what we’re looking for is those people who are at that point in their mind where actually yes, they’re ready to have a conversation. They’re starting to think, oh my goodness, business has been impacted so badly by what’s been happening over the last few weeks and months. Or they’ve just had enough. Essentially what you’re kind of looking for, you’re either looking for distressed businesses or better still, you’re looking for good businesses with distressed owners. And these are people who for whatever reason, maybe it’s illness, maybe it’s just tiredness, maybe is the impact of what’s been happening and they just haven’t got the energy to build it all up again. And believe me, we all feel like that sometimes, but these people feel like that over a longer period of time. You’re looking for those people and if you can find those people and if they are at that point where they just can’t and don’t want to do it anymore, you actually potentially are a knight in white armour swooping in to go and help those people.

Paul Green:

A few weeks ago, back in episode 21, we know that the average MSP is valued at one times recurring revenue or annual recurring revenue. To add up all the recurring revenue, the monthly recurring revenue and the annual recurring revenue and whatever that comes to, that’s what the business is typically worth. That seems to be becoming the standard valuation for an MSP. So you can say this to your competitor and you can say, look, this is what your business is worth. This is what I’ll be willing to pay for it. And actually you’re a hell of a lot closer to a deal if you’ve got a valuation that you can both agree on. Now you don’t need to pay cash up front because no one pays cash up front for a business. You can agree a deferred deal where you’re paying for the business over one, two or three years.

Paul Green:

So essentially you’re paying for the business out of cashflow and there’s massive, massive advantages for you of doing this because you’re integrating it into your existing operations. You can take their best techs and integrate them into your operations. You can take their clients and integrate them into your existing account management. You can take their technology stack and know that over two to three years, you can transition their clients from their technology stack into your technology stack. But this is the advantage that you would have over say someone like me, whatever kind of B2B business I’m going to acquire, I’ve got to start from scratch. I’ve got to learn that business. I’ve got to learn how it operates and I’ve got to work with the resources that I’ve bought. You’ve got a massive advantage in that you’re just buying clients and you can service them with your existing operations. And so long as you can do a better job of that than the business that you’ve bought, the chances of you keeping most of those clients are very high.

Paul Green:

Now, acquisition is not for everyone. It’s a time consuming thing to do. It’s incredibly energy consuming and it’s very, very difficult work in the first couple of years, but for some people listening to this, acquisition is absolutely a very smart route forward and you can grow your business dramatically, hundreds of percents worth of growth every year instead of 10 or 20% worth of growth because it is a hell of a lot faster than growing organically.

Voiceover:

Here’s this week’s clever idea.

Paul Green:

I really do try my hardest only to talk about interesting subjects on this podcast and the next one is potentially a slightly dull subject, but my goodness, it’s important and the subject is cashflow. Now we all know as business owners that cashflow is the thing that’s most likely to have us awake at four in the morning. You know how it works. You get up, you go to the bathroom and you go back to bed and you can’t sleep because things are whirring through your head and cashflow is such a destructive, worrying thing if the cashflow is negative. Because businesses don’t go under because they’re not profitable, they go under because they don’t have great cashflow. And just talking there as we were about acquisition, one of the reasons that a competitor might be up for sale or you might be able to acquire them is because their cashflow is in trouble.

Paul Green:

They could be unprofitable for years and that’s not really a massive issue. I mean it’s an issue for the owner in terms of personal income, but when the cashflow is wrong, that’s when things go badly very, very quickly and it’s why businesses get into trouble and it’s why businesses go under.

Paul Green:

Now I’ve got a number of things that I recommend that you do to monitor your own cash flow just to keep on track of it. The first of those is to make sure you know your figures. So you need to know what’s the cash that’s in the bank. If you take credit card payments and the card companies holding onto a chunk of that in case of chargebacks, what are they holding onto? You should be doing some regular cashflow reports. I mean weekly, I would say as a minimum and cashflow reports and forecasting literally what’s coming in and what’s coming out. In the next week is more money coming in than is going out?

Paul Green:

Because if it’s not, then you need to be aware that there needs to be some funds in the bank account to absorb that. You should perhaps ask your bookkeeper or your accountant for management reports so you can see what’s happening with the P&L on a monthly basis. It amazes me how many MSPs try and run their business without management reports. You’ve got to know what’s happening not just 12 months ago from your actual P&L, profit and loss, but you need to know what’s happened within the last month.

Paul Green:

Second thing I suggest that you do is you regularly review your overheads. So your utilities, your rent, your phones, your insurance, anything that’s a fixed cost and that’s a fairly commoditised one way you can switch to another supplier and it’s more or less exactly the same. In fact, anything like utilities or insurance, as long as you’re comparing, like for like if you can get better terms elsewhere, then do go and do that. And talking in better terms. You should also be talking to your suppliers. Now, some of the big vendors, they’re not going to be interested in talking to you about this but some of your smaller suppliers will, you might be able to ask for better terms. For example, if they normally offer you 30 days, why not just ask for 60 days? You never know.

Paul Green:

They might come back and say, well look, we can’t do 60 but maybe we’ll do 45 days and we can do that for the next year. Often, particularly if you have someone who’s account managing you, there will be an accounts department somewhere that rubber stamps their decisions, their job, they’re bonused on keeping you as a client. So you come back and you say, look, we’re willing to pay. We’re okay with cashflow. We’re just trying to improve our credit terms right now. Can we have 60 days please? And they’re not going to judge you on this. They’re not going to think that your business is failing. They’ll just trot off to accounts, ask accounts to see if that’s okay. And suddenly you’ve got yourself 60 days to pay. Now what that does is that just gives you another 30 days or another 15 days or whatever it is that your cash is sat in your bank account instead of their bank account. And good cashflow says that it’s always better that your cash is sat in your bank account rather than someone else’s bank account.

Paul Green:

Something else that you should be focusing on is making sure you’re getting cash upfront so your clients should be paying upfront for everything. And I hope that you’ve either got them on direct debit if you’re in the UK or authorised to take colour payments from the few in other parts of the world. And when clients order something, well you should be taking money from them upfront regardless. So their monthly recurring payment, that should come out early on in the month and that should be automatic. And then when they order something new like a new piece of hardware, you should be taking the cash for that up front. That’s really important because if you spend say £500 on a new laptop for someone and you have to pay for that fairly quickly, but your client isn’t paying for 30 days, you know there’s a gap, isn’t there? There’s a gap between the point at which the money has left your bank account and the money from your client has turned up to replace that money in your bank account.

Paul Green:

And if there’s a gap there of 10 days, that’s 10 where you have subsidised your client’s purchase from a cash point of view. Well you’re not a bank, you’re not a credit card company. They should be paying upfront for this technology because if they walked into any other store, they’d have to pay for that upfront before they got it.

Paul Green:

Now these are some very, very simple things, but when you put them into place and you systemise them within the business, they can have a fairly dramatic effect over the long term and I don’t believe that any business owners should ever have to worry about cashflow because bad cashflow often, not always, but often it comes because of a lack of design because there’s a lack of systems, a lack of thinking through how do we get that cash in quicker than it’s going out? How do we keep more of that cash in our bank account for longer? When you approach this from a systematic point of view and it’s done by design, it makes the cashflow so much less stressful.

Voiceover:

Paul’s blatant plug.

Paul Green:

Tell me you’ve got a copy of my book. I mean a physical paperback copy because nearly 2,000 MSPs worldwide now have a copy. It’s called Updating Servers Doesn’t Grow Your Business and paperback copies are available in the UK and the USA. This is about how to target and win higher quality clients who stay longer, spend more and whinge less. We talk about how most people who buy from you are uneducated buyers so they’re not picking a new IT support company with their brain. They’re not making a cognitive decision. They’re making an emotional decision with their heart and we talk about all sorts of other stuff in there including some of the marketing that you really shouldn’t be doing.

Paul Green:

Now if you want to get a free copy of this and it’s completely free, there’s no catch. We’ll post a paperback copy to you at my cost. If you’re in the UK or if you’re in the US, everywhere else in the world, we will send you a copy of that on PDF. All you’ve got to do is go to my website. It’s paulgreensmspmarketing.com and then in the navigation, just click on the bit that says free book.

Voiceover:

The big interview.

Heather Johnson:

Hi, my name is Heather Johnson and I’m here with Brian Johnson. We’re both from Gozynta. We are a software development company that helps support MSPs, make their life easier and we’re going to talk about some of our business experiences in making pivots in a time of chaos.

Paul Green:

And we are in a time of chaos right now and we recorded this interview a few weeks before it was broadcast, so we’re at time of recording, much of the world is in lockdown. Corona is still very much a fast changing situation at the time of broadcast. Obviously we have no idea what’s going to be happening, but we do know that from an economical point of view, everything’s going to change. Even though we may come back to some kind of normality, perhaps by the end of the year, and it’s going to be a new kind of normal and no one really knows where that’s going to go. So Heather you have an MBA and you’ve been mentoring lots of startups, you talked about finding opportunities amongst the chaos. Do you see lots of opportunity in the uncertain way ahead.

Heather Johnson:

The big thing is picking your head up and seeing what’s around you. It’s always hard when you get that list of things that you want to accomplish to take a moment and listen, just kind of breathe it all in and see what are the needs out there. Is there something that you can do to support that? Is there something that you can do to adjust? There’s a alcohol distillery in our area that now is making hand sanitiser. So very quickly we’re able to retool and be able to provide something like that. So lift your head up, take a breath and look for what’s around you.

Paul Green:

So I’ve been talking to a lot of my MSPs that I work with, in fact quite intensely over the last few weeks. And the vast majority of them have a great mindset for that. And are looking at the opportunities such as the short term opportunities to generate more break fix work. Maybe even take on some domestic customers in the short term. No one really wants those longterm, but in the short term, that can work. Brian, from your point of view, is that the kind of thing that you think MSPs should be doing and looking for those kinds of opportunities?

Brian Johnson:

We’ve been having a lot of conversations with MSPs lately as well as I’m sure you can imagine. I was on a Zoom call with a bunch of small MSPs yesterday. I’ve seen some of it where they seem to be taking a very good approach and it’s like, okay, how can we make ourselves stronger through this? How can we grow through this? And then some are a lot more protectionary. All right, how do I defend what I have and stop the bleeding? And not to say you don’t need to take actions to stop the bleeding, but I really love the ones that are able to take this and look for where are my new opportunities coming out of this so I can try to grow my way through this and outgrow the losses?

Brian Johnson:

I was part of a small MSP during the last recession in 2008 and 2009. Obviously this is looking like it’s going to shape up to be a lot worse than that, but I think the same principles apply and we did manage to grow our MSP through that time and ended up coming out of it quite successfully and you just need to be looking at it and the way to make that happen.

Paul Green:

So what did you do specifically to grow the MSP during that last recession? Was it just focusing on the basics?

Brian Johnson:

Yeah, focusing on what our customers needed. And if you’re a small MSP, there’s a big market. Right now what we’re seeing, the way I’m looking at it is the need for IT support is growing in what’s happening now. More people are working from home, they need more support than usual. So the opportunity should be growing for MSPs. Certain market segments are taking a nose dive, but there are a lot of market segments that are doing okay and there are some that are booming. So let’s focus on those market segments and figure out how we can serve them in the best way.

Paul Green:

Heather, from the work that you do mentoring other businesses, what do you think are the things that stop people from being able to see those opportunities? Is it simply a case of having the wrong mindset or is it just a case of mentally being in the wrong place and panicking a little bit more than actually you’re seeing the opportunities?

Heather Johnson:

Well, I think it’s a combination of both. You have your list and you have your goals and then everything’s different. You’re in a new reality and it is scary. It is very easy to get in the mindset of, well, I’m just kind of going down with the ship, but you don’t need to do that. There’s going to be a new look to the workforce now that people are working from home. There will be companies that think, well this is a good opportunity. This will cut some costs, but there are obstacles in a remote workforce and focusing on that more the MSPs can provide and support. Not everybody is built to work at home and just because they’re quiet doesn’t mean they’re happy. So helping MSPs customers to be able to have a successful work environment is a great way to pivot in this kind of environment.

Paul Green:

If you owned an MSP again tomorrow, what would you be doing right now to absolutely make the most of the situation? So you’ve talked about listening to your customers. Can you give us some specific things that you would do if you were in that situation?

Heather Johnson:

I think that communication is extremely important and building that relationship. Not just what do you need, but sometimes your customer doesn’t know what they need. So having a conversation of just what’s going on in general, there might be something that the MSP can provide that the customer doesn’t even know is available to them. I worked at a graduate school in HR. I was the director of HR. I was looking for a database software because I was really struggling with keeping track of attendance and timekeeping. I had no idea who our MSP was, but also that that was something that they provided. They, to me, were the people I called if my printer wasn’t working. So those conversations, when you start having those and can see, oh, you’re having a hard time with time keeping, I can be there for that. You’re having a hard time knowing if your remote worker’s functioning well in their environment. I can provide some assistance and support to you there as well.

Paul Green:

That’s such a good idea, that whole thing of we assume that people know everything that we can offer because it’s there on the website, even though we know that people don’t read the website. But that’s such a good point … In fact, it’s the reason why you should be constantly be doing strategic reviews with your clients.

Brian Johnson:

It boils down into being that trusted adviser. The whole point of the strategic review and the virtual CIO stuff, you’re their IT lead. You are their trusted adviser for everything related to IT and it doesn’t even have to be directly related to IT. It can be about sharing things that you’ve learned from your other clients and from the wider internet about how to manage a virtual and work from home workforce when you haven’t done that before. But it’s being in there, having those conversations with the business owners that are your clients and being their trusted adviser because that’s where you find the opportunities. Our MSP in 2008, 2009, my former business partner was great at communicating with our MSP clients and he ended up doing all of that communication, tripping on an opportunity with another business owner in town who was starting a consulting business for manufacturing companies. That ended up developing into another half of our business and we did custom software development for ERP systems, but it came out of those conversations and building those relationships.

Paul Green:

This is great. Tell us a little bit about Gozynta and what you do with MSPs.

Brian Johnson:

Gozynta formed out of that custom software business that I talked about and when our MSP was implementing ConnectWise, we ended up building accounting integrations and some other integrations between Manage and these accounting systems. One of those integrations is our Mobius Connect for QuickBooks Online product, which over 800 MSPs use to keep their accounting data in sync between Manage and QuickBooks Online. Since then we’ve also developed a product that we call Tixt, which is a text messaging version of the Manage email connector, which people are finding very useful right now with all of the work from home. Because now their customers can text from their cell phone, which has become their second screen since they often just have a laptop screen at home and they can text their MSP. But it’s going onto their ticket in Manage and so it’s trackable.

Paul Green:

That’s great. Heather, can you give us your website’s address please?

Heather Johnson:

www.gozynta.com. Gozynta is G-O-Z-Y-N-T-A. “We make your accounting data ‘goes in to’ the places it needs to go”.

Paul Green:

That’s very clever.

Voiceover:

Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast. Ask Paul Anything.

Jason:

Hey Paul. As an IT company, we have nerdy products and services to sell. How can I get my social media following excited and talking or interacting with our page when typically IT products and services and not very cool for non-tech heads like us?

Paul Green:

That was Jason Watts from Neveco. Thank you so much for your question Jason, and it really is a great question to ask. How do we get people who don’t really care about technology to care about it? To think that it’s cool? And I don’t think that we can to be honest, because everyone’s got technology embedded in their life. Their phone is in their hand 27 hours a day. They use their laptops. Technology now is so cool and there are so many cool things that you can do with it that it’s kind of become routine hasn’t it? It’s not like it was in the good old, late nineties or early noughties when we got so excited because you could actually rename something just by clicking 17 buttons instead of clicking 25 buttons. Technology’s so, so adaptable and advanced and cool and any problem you’ve got these days you can just Google it because you don’t even need to use your fingers. You can just tell your smart speaker to Google something and there’s a solution out there for it.

Paul Green:

And I think the net effect of this is that it’s no longer cool and for you it is. For me, it is. Everything’s cool because technology’s wonderful. But for ordinary people, the prospects and the decision makers that we want to influence, it’s not cool. And I don’t think they get excited by it in the way that we do. Jason, I don’t think to be honest, that we can make them excited about it because if they’re just a bit blase about it, then we’re not going to change their state of mind. So instead what we have to focus on is not the technology itself, but what it can do for them. And you’ve got to pick up every single solution that you’re trying to talk about, every single new gadget or piece of tech and ask yourself, what can this do for them? How is this going to influence them? What’s this going to do to improve their lives?

Paul Green:

In fact, with all marketing, we’ve got to look at things not from our point of view, but we’ve got to look at it from the point of view of the people that we’re trying to influence and constantly asking ourselves what’s in it for them? Why is this important to them? Why do they care about this? You do this on your website, you do this on your social media, you do this with your email marketing, you do it with any interactions you have with prospects, what’s in it for them? And I think that’s the only way you can make it interesting for these ordinary people, is by looking at it from their point of view.

Voiceover:

How to contribute to the show.

Paul Green:

Now you could probably hear from Jason’s question there that he literally sat down, recorded me a bit of audio and sent it over to me and I thank you so much for doing that Jason and everyone else who’s done that. Now I’d love to feature your question on a future episode. All you have to do is grab your phone, fire up the audio recorder and then just email that through to me and I’ll answer it in a future episode. I will tell you when I’m answering it as well so you can make sure to listen to your voice on the podcast. The email address is hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover:

Coming up next week.

Alex Permenter:

We’re trying to figure out a way to make it very easy for end users to put in tickets.

Paul Green:

That’s Alex Permenter from Help Desk Buttons. Now this is something we mentioned back in episode 19. They’re physical buttons that your users can press when they need to summon support. A very clever idea and we’re going to be talking to Alex and his colleague, Elizabeth Copeland next week about how they invented the idea and how you can use it to market your MSP. We’re also going to be talking about the immense impact of price increases, and while you should be constantly nudging your prices up and we’ll be talking as well about the wheel of life. Business is so important and so consuming, but you have to remember all the other things that you need to have for a healthy balance. See you in next week’s episode.

Voiceover:

Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

View Details

In this week’s episode * We look at why most technicians are so bad at upselling, and how to motivate them to tell you when your clients really should be buying extra services from you * We also look at how much you charge contract clients per hour for ad hoc work – it’s probably not enough, so get ready to put your prices up! * Plus this week Paul talks to the people behind a brilliant cybersecurity plug-in for ConnectWise Automate. And answers a question from an MSP on how you can differentiate yourself from all the other MSPs out there

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Paul’s special guest was Scott Springer from Third-Wall talking about a new cybersecurity plug-in for ConnectWise Automate * Many thanks to Martin Limburn from Limbtec for the question about differentiation * While talking about how to stand out against other MSPs, Paul mentioned the video service MSPvideos.co.uk * The guest on May 19th will be Brian and Heather Johnson from Gozynta talking about finding new opportunities during financially uncertain times * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

Hello and welcome to a fresh new episode of the show straight out of the oven. Here’s what I’ve got coming up for you today.

Scott Springer:

Bad guys always find a way in and we identified the primary ways that that happens and we built a plugin that makes taking care of those vulnerability really easy to do.

Paul Green:

We’re also going to look at how much you charged contract clients for ad hoc work, and it’s probably not enough, which is good news for your profit margins. And we’re going to answer a question from an MSP about how to differentiate yourself from all of your competitors.

Voiceover:

Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:

So we do record this podcast quite a few weeks in advance, and as I’m recording this one, we’re still in lockdown in the UK and my nine year old daughter and I, obviously we’re in the house, we’ve been in the house, more or less just the two of us, every single day. You get the drill. I’m sure it’s the same with you and your family. So what we’ve done of course is we’ve fallen into new patterns, brand new ways of working. She’s doing her schoolwork in the morning. I’m being interrupted by her while I’m doing my work in the morning. And then the afternoons she does her own thing and I carry on working. But one of the things that we have enjoyed is every Friday we are ordering in lunch from a local deli.

Paul Green:

Now where we live on the outskirts of Milton Keynes, there are no shops in our village, but the next village, which is literally just half a mile away has a bustling high street full of shops and there’s a deli there, which almost immediately, once locked down started, they announced that they were going to flip from being a deli to doing a sandwich delivery service. And I do believe that you should support your local independent businesses. So every single Friday we’ve been ordering a sandwich from them. It’s nothing that’s special, to be honest. It’s just sandwiches. Fairly overpriced if you ask me. But we’re supporting local businesses, which is the right thing to do. So we’ve been doing this for a number of weeks now, and it amuses me how little upselling this shop is doing on the phones. You have to phone your sandwich order through, which in itself is not great. Really they should be having online ordering, but there we go.

Paul Green:

So you phone through and you place your order and they’re clearly in a rush and they’re trying to get all the orders done in time. There’s a deadline that you have to phone it through by. But they never ever try and up sell anything. Now I know, I’ve been in this deli, and I know that on top of sandwiches they’ve obviously got crisps, they’ve got cakes, they’ve got all sorts of other stuff. I’ve just been waiting for them to say, “Oh, do you want us to pop a packet of crisps in there for you?” Or “Which of our cakes do you fancy today?” Or something like that. They never do this. In fact, last week, when I phoned my order through, the woman who was on the other end of the phone actually said, and these were her exact words, “You don’t want any crisps or anything with those, do you?” Listen to that there. “You don’t want any crisps or anything with those, do you?”

Paul Green:

Now bearing in mind, I’m primarily ordering from this shop to help this shop. If she said to me, “Shall I pop a packet of crisps in for each of you there?” I’d probably just say, “Yeah, go on then, what’s the worst that can happen?” But no, she actually said, “You don’t want any crisps or anything.” And it made me think about technicians and a lot of the MSPs that I’ve worked with, they have probably a very similar problem to you, which is that the technicians simply will not upsell, even when there’s a really easy upsell opportunity in front of them. So they might be on the phone to a client. It’s the decision maker, that client. That client has got a very specific problem and they know that you sell a specific service or an upgrade or a higher level of service that would solve that problem, but they don’t upsell. They don’t go for it.

Paul Green:

Why? What is it that stops them doing that? Well in my experience, the thing that stops most people from selling is fear. It’s fear of someone saying no or it’s fear of having to ask in the first place or it’s just in general fear that, “Oh no, I’m a technician. I don’t want to be seen as selling. I didn’t get into tech to sell. I got into tech to fix problems with people, to help people, to do all those kinds of things. Selling is not for me. That’s not something that I do.” And even when they can see that it would make their lives better, they don’t make that suggestion. Now, most technicians are this way. Not all of them, but most are. And what you’ll typically find in MSP is it’ll only take two or three technicians to be this way and all of the rest of the technicians will operate this way. It almost becomes a cultural thing.

Paul Green:

In fact, sometimes it’s terrifying how much culture in our business is set by two or three people who are doing something in a specific way or rather not doing something in a specific way. So I think the trick for trying to get technicians to upsell, first of all, is not to try and get technicians to upsell. It’s a battle that you could be having for weeks, months, and years, and I don’t think it’s a battle that you could ever win. So instead of asking them to actually do the selling, what we should be asking them to do instead is to ask them to spot the potential upsell opportunities. Well actually, let’s not even use the word upsell. Let’s use the words client delight opportunities. Because remember, most technicians want to do a great job for the clients and want to help the clients.

Paul Green:

So let’s train them to spot when the clients really should be buying a different service or a better service or something that helps them, and let’s focus on getting the technicians to tell someone about it. Now, maybe it should be you, maybe it should be the account managers, whoever it is, that will depend on the system within your business, but let’s focus their attention on that. Spot an opportunity, tell someone about that opportunity. Let’s have a system in place. You could even put in place some kind of reward mechanism. I mean, personally I don’t think you need a reward mechanism. The reward for the technician, for most of them, will be the feeling of doing a good job. But you could say, for example, you get 10% or 5% of any monthly recurring revenue for the first year. So if they go on to buy this monthly recurring revenue service and they stick with it for the next three years, you get 5% of that new monthly recurring revenue for the next 12 months.

Paul Green:

Now that’s an optional thing to bring in, but that will certainly make some of the technicians very focused on finding things that they think the clients should be buying, particularly when they haven’t actually got to do the close themselves, when someone else will do that. So I would make this a training issue. The very first thing is putting in place that system, here’s how you report this, here’s who you report it to, here’s how we track it, and here’s the reward if in fact we do sell something to a client. And then the second thing you need to do is product focus. And in fact, what you could do perhaps is a Friday lunch and learn. Every Friday, get some pizzas in, we divert the calls over to Continuum or whatever call answering service that we’re using at the moment and all of the technicians just have 30 minutes with a pizza and we do a bit of a lunch and learn. This is this service that we’re selling right now. This is the enhanced level of this service. This is the benefit of a client taking this service.

Paul Green:

And if you were to do that every single week of the year, just think 50 weeks where your lunch and learning them about a very specific service and teaching them about all these different enhanced levels of service. For some of them that’s going to go in and if you remind them every single week, 50 weeks, of the system for reporting clients who really should be taking a service like this, you can see that for many of your technicians, most of the time it’s going to become systematic for them to spot these opportunities and tell you about it. And of course the massive bonus for you off this is that you get to sell more services and we all know that selling more to existing clients is the route to dramatically higher net profits.

Voiceover:

Here’s this week’s clever idea.

Paul Green:

Now in the spirit of increasing your net profit, let’s talk about how much you’re charging your contract clients for ad hoc work. And this is a debate that I have with my MSP masterminders fairly regularly here in the UK because I believe that when you’re doing ad hoc work for clients who are under contract, you should be charging as much as you can get away with. And by get away, I don’t mean profiteering, I mean accepting what the actual cost to you is of delivering ad hoc work. So let’s put this in perspective. These are existing clients, they’re under contract, they’re paying you a fee every single month, it’s a recurring revenue, for their support contract. They’re buying other things from you, and then every now and again, some ad hoc work comes up. Now I’m going to be talking about this in pounds Sterling, but you can easily convert this over to dollars or your own local currency.

Paul Green:

If you’re charging them 50 pounds an hour for ad hoc work, you’re probably not making a profit on that 50 pounds. Because it probably costs you a lot more than 50 pounds an hour to deliver an hour’s worth of value. If you think how much it actually costs you to open the doors every day. What’s the cost of the office, the rent, the rates or any local taxes you have to pay, your staff, the utilities and the insurances, the debt costs, the equipment costs, all of that. In fact, it’s a good exercise to have is to figure out how much it actually cost you just to open your doors every day. It’s probably a lot more than you think. That means you’ve got to cover those costs every single day before you’ve actually made some money. So you’ve got all of that to take into account.

Paul Green:

Then you’ve got the opportunity cost and the cost of sale of an employee or a number of employees doing an hour’s worth of ad hoc work for clients and because they’re contract clients, you will tend to over-service them in some way. You will tend to do a very, very good job. So what’s the real cost of delivering an hour’s worth of ad hoc work to your existing clients? It is a lot more than you are currently charging right now. I mean if you wanted to be scientific about it, then maybe yes, you should actually work that out. Work out the cost of opening the doors every day. Work out the employee costs, which isn’t just what you’re paying them, it is of course also the cost of what they can’t be doing, the proactive work that they can be doing while they’re doing ad hoc work. And this is what you should be charging probably, if not double, and certainly a lot more than you’re charging right now.

Paul Green:

And my MSP mastermind, the clients, we’re pushing now 100 pounds, 110, some of them charging well over 150 pounds per hour of ad hoc work. Now that might seem a lot to you, but there’s a couple of factors at play here. Not only is there making sure that you’re actually making profit from it, there’s also looking at it from the client’s point of view, that they don’t know how much ad hoc work costs, and to be honest, they don’t really notice if it really is just the odd bit of ad hoc work. So when someone signs up for contract with you, that’s what they’re focused on. They’re focused on the monthly costs. How much is this going to cost me every month? And most B2B decisions are made with the cashflow in mind, remember. We don’t look at the overall cost of something. We look at what’s the impact going to be on our cashflow on a monthly basis.

Paul Green:

So they’ll be looking at that and when a piece of ad hoc work comes up, yeah, it stings a little bit, that 100, 150 pounds an hour. But do you know what? It’s just a cost of getting this job done. It’s only a couple of hours. It’s a few hundred pounds. Fine, fine, yeah, we’ll do that. No problem. And that’s very much the mindset of the typical client. And this is why if you’re charging them 50 pounds an hour, it’s going to cost them 100 pounds. You’ll charge them 150 pounds. It’s going to cost them 300 pounds. Sure, that’s a big difference between 100 and 300 pounds, but it’s a one off cost. Their mind is not looking at this as the recurring cost of this on a monthly basis.

Paul Green:

Their mind is looking at this saying, “Yep, we can afford 300 pounds. We need to get this work done. Absolutely. Go ahead with that.” So they don’t see the cost of ad hoc work in the same way that you do. You have to remember here that your business is not a charity. Your business does not exist in order just to do work for clients. The primary goal of the business is to make net profit for you. The primary goal of the business is to give you the cash you need to achieve the life vision that you’ve got laid out for you. The primary purpose of the business is to pay your mortgage, to put your kids through private school, if that’s appropriate, to give you and your family the resources you need to live the lifestyle that you want. To pay your staff. This is the primary goal of the business.

Paul Green:

And the way that we do that is we delight the clients and we make a great profit along the way. The profit is the side effect of running a great business that’s there to support you, but the profits side-effect needs to be there, otherwise it’s just not a fun business to run. And we’ve all run unprofitable businesses and it’s not fun at all, which is why we’ve got to make sure we’re making good money. So you should be examining every single stage of the process. How much net profit are we making off this, and if it’s not enough, we’ve just got to increase the prices. Being expensive is nothing to be scared of. In fact, you should aim to be the most expensive MSP in your area, and I don’t just mean just by ratcheting all the prices up.

Paul Green:

You’ve got to be aware of the front end, back end. The front end is the pricing they see when they sign up. That’s your per user or per device support costs, but the backend, you should absolutely look to be as expensive as you can be, because no one’s looking at the ad hoc price of having some work done at the point that they’re signing up. It’s just something that has to be done along the line. Therefore, we need to make sure we’re making loads of net profits off it.

Voiceover:

Paul’s blatant plug.

Paul Green:

We talk about these kinds of subjects all the time in my free MSP marketing Facebook group. We talk about how to make more net profit, how to get more new clients, just in general, how to grow your business. It’s become the most amazing community. At time of recording where well over 750 members, every single one of them working for or owning an MSP, because this is a vendor free zone. Sorry, vendors. I do love you and you’re very welcome on the show, but you’re just not welcome in my Facebook group.

Paul Green:

So if you want to join, you just got to go, get Facebook up on your phone, type in at the top “MSP marketing,” go to groups and you just tap on apply to join. The one thing I’ll ask you to do is to post the website address of your MSP so I can check that you do indeed work for an MSP and we normally let you into the group within about 24 hours of applying.

Voiceover:

The big interview.

Scott Springer:

Hi, my name is Scott Springer. I’m one of the founders of Third-Wall, a new cybersecurity plugin for Automate users.

Paul Green:

And one of my clients actually recommended that I get you on the show, Scott, because they are a user of ConnectWise Automate and I believe they’re a client of yours. They use Third-Wall and said it was absolutely brilliant, not only as a way for actually getting more money into the business and generating a new revenue stream, but also as a way for making life easy for their technicians. So do you want to just give us the 60 second rundown of what Third-Wall is and what it does?

Scott Springer:

So we built Third-Wall because we found that people, MSPs in particular, but anybody who tries to manage cybersecurity, it really struggles and leaves a lot of gaps. It doesn’t matter how good their firewall, how good their antivirus is, bad guys always find a way in. And what we did is we identified the primary ways that that happens and we built a plugin that makes taking care of those gaps in vulnerability really easy to do. We have an interface that’s smooth, that’s simple, and it provides a whole another level of protection. It replaces things like scripts, group policy, which is unfortunately not very effective in this world, and it replaces things like training and awareness, which everybody says, “Oh don’t do that.” And we all know how effective that is. So this gives an automated way to both lock down the environment for cybersecurity and also some very interesting ways to respond to threats that are happening real time.

Paul Green:

So the MSPs that do buy this from you, what’s the mix between those who buy it simply as a tool to reduce workload and stop their clients getting into trouble versus those who actually use this as a revenue stream and go on and sell it?

Scott Springer:

Based on our discussions with clients, I estimate that over half of our clients, and we have well over 500 clients now, use this to make additional revenue, substantial additional revenue and it really helps them in another way as well. Whether or not they charge for it, it’s used as a big differentiator for them as they’re battling for business, and I know you’re big on that. When you’ve got an ability to go and offer a much higher level of cybersecurity… Some of our clients at the trade shows, they come by us and they actually say, “Please don’t sell this anymore. It’s our secret weapon. It’s how we get new clients.” That’s just something that we do, but again, about half of them, we think, are actually selling this either as a premium tier of cybersecurity or we have some features that are standalone features that people are selling as well.

Paul Green:

Can you give us a specific example of how people are upselling this as an advanced security package?

Scott Springer:

One of the biggest things is we have three different policies and we’re very policy driven that don’t normally exist within people’s environments that are very targeted towards ransomware. And they’re quite effective. I mean there’s no such thing as 100% protection against ransomware. We have three different policies that are targeting ransomware. One to detect it when it gets in, in many cases. To prevent it from launching, and that actually reacts to an attack in progress. So we’ve got that and that’s often given our clients a way to upsell. People are afraid of ransomware. It’s always in the headlines. So when you have an ability to prevent ransomware, that’s a big selling point.

Paul Green:

So is ransomware typically the big money maker for your clients, then?

Scott Springer:

For many of our clients it is, but we… Actually, one of the things that we’ve incorporated into Third-Wall is a user log on report, which sounds so mundane, but it’s actually quite difficult to create. There’s a lot of software out there that you can buy that does user log on reporting, but we just build it in and we’re very inexpensive because of how we built this. And what our clients have found, we built this for cybersecurity auditing, a lot of different legal requirements say you must do log on reporting and keep it as an archive, so that’s why we built it. What our clients have found that when you can do user log on reporting, it’s an amazingly powerful and sellable tool for MSPs to sell to their clients because it allows them to do employee management. You can tell when people are logged on, you can tell them their computer’s locked or unlocked, and that becomes an objective tool and they’re making a ton of money off of that. Our clients call that pure gold.

Paul Green:

Scott, that’s brilliant. Thanks very much. What’s the best way for us to get in touch with you?

Scott Springer:

Well, our website is www.third-wall.com. There is a dash in the middle. And there’s contact information. There’s a way to sign up for free trials and webinars. I can tell you when people see a webinar, we have about a 90% close rate, because they do think it’s an exceptional product and well positioned and it gives them tools that they just can’t get anywhere else. So we’re growing fast and people recognise how valuable we are.

Voiceover:

Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast. Ask Paul anything.

Martin:

My name’s Martin from Limbtech. How do I make my MSP look different to all the others?

Paul Green:

Great question, Martin, and it’s a question which every MSP should answer because actually most MSPs look the same as all of their competitors. What we’re talking about here is developing something called a USP, a unique selling point, or a unique selling position. What is it that makes your MSP different from all of your competitors in the mind of your prospect? And this is something that most MSPs struggle with, and I’ve got to be honest, I struggle with this when I’m working with MSPs because all MSPs do essentially the same thing in more or less the same way. Yeah, there are different flavours of doing it and different preferred technology stacks and different preferred methodologies. But essentially from the uneducated prospect’s point of view, you do the same as your competitors.

Paul Green:

And you go and look at most MSPs’ websites and they all look the same. They got the same stock images, they’ve got the same messages, they’ve got the same boring pictures of data centers and network cables and everyone seems to look the same. So the challenge then is to A, find something that you genuinely do differently or a way of working that’s different to your competitors, which to be honest is quite hard, or maybe B, you take a completely different approach to it. And this is the approach that I recommend. Instead of focusing on what you do and how you do it, which your uneducated don’t really care about anyway, they just want the outcome. I would focus on the people who do it and the people are the only true differentiation you’ve got from your direct competitors. Now by the people, I primarily mean you and your staff, but you can also leverage your clients as well. Let me explain.

Paul Green:

If I was to go into your websites today, what would I see? Would I see you describing the services that you offer and the geographical area that you cover or the vertical you cover and all of that stuff. What I should be seeing right there on the home page and on the about us page, which are the two most important pages of any website, I should be seeing instead people. I should be seeing you, your senior techs, your business partner, maybe even the rest of your staff. I should be seeing people, people, people, people. If it’s just you and a bit of help in the business, so essentially you’re a one man band, then let me just see you and let me see your story. Tell us, the readers, tell us why you started your own business and why you’re so passionate about delivering IT support.

Paul Green:

If you’ve got enough staff, then pop your staff on the website as well. Let’s see pictures of you and your team. Let’s see the people who are going to be delivering the service. Let’s read a message from your team or something like that. No one can copy your staff. So they can copy anything else that you put on your website. Absolutely anything. You can come up with some very clever texted headlines, but other people can and if they can, they will copy it. But they cannot copy you and your staff. They cannot copy your personality. This is why I branded my business Paul Green’s MSP Marketing. In the four years since I’ve been going, there were a host of copycat competitors that are just cropped up in the UK and abroad and that doesn’t bother me at all. It’s irritating, but no one can be me. Absolutely no one can copy me. There’s only one me. Thank God.

Paul Green:

But it’s a clear point of differentiation and I decided very early on I was going to embrace that differentiation. So getting you and your staff and pictures and texts and stories and all of that stuff on the website is the perfect differentiation. The other way of doing it, if you really don’t want to make it about you is to make it about the clients, and the only really effective way to do that is to have a video of your clients on your website talking about you. So this is a beautiful thing to do and quite a number of people have done this already. If you want to see examples, you can go to a website, It’s MSPvideos.co.uk, which yes, is a service of mine, which unfortunately we only offer in the UK at the moment. But you can go and see sample videos of how to get your existing clients talking about you.

Paul Green:

So you’ve got to think about it from the prospect’s point of view. They come to your websites and there is a video of one of your favourite clients talking about how wonderful you are. So you’re not talking about you, the clients are talking about you, and that is a beautiful piece of differentiation. It’s beautiful because future clients are more likely to believe what your existing clients are saying and more likely to be influenced by it than anything that you say. So there’s the challenge for you is look at your website, look at your direct competitors, because that’s your clear point of differentiation. Your website is the display of the differentiation, and then go and find a way to make it different using either you or preferably using your clients, talking about you.

Voiceover:

How to contribute to the show.

Paul Green:

I’d love to get your question on the show as well. If you want to just do an audio recording for me, literally grab your phone, just record a little audio question. You heard how Martin just did it there. Say your name, say the business you work for, and then record your question and then just email that through to me. Doesn’t matter what the format is. You can email it directly off your phone. The address is hello@paulgreensMSPmarketing.com.

Voiceover:

Coming up next week.

Heather Johnson:

And then everything’s different. You’re in a new reality. And it is scary. It is very easy to get in the mindset of, “I’m just going down with the ship.” But you don’t need to do that.

Paul Green:

That’s Heather Johnson from Gozynta, she’s here next week with her husband Brian, and they’re going to be talking about the new normal that we’re going to be facing when all of this starts to settle down and how you can spot some huge opportunities amongst the chaos. We’re also going to be talking about growing through acquisition, whether or not you’ll be able to pick up some of your competitors because of everything that’s happening right now. I’m going to be talking about what doesn’t seem to be the most interesting subject, but we know it’s an important one because it’s the one that’s most likely to keep us up at 4:00 in the morning. It’s cashflow management. We’ve got a whole ton of advice for you. I’m going to speak to you next week. See you then.

Voiceover:

Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

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Episode 25 features an HR specialist who, as everyone finds new ways to work, discusses how best to manage a team during the Coronavirus pandemic

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In this week’s episode The world is gripped by a pandemic and offices everywhere are deserted. It may sound like the premise for a movie, but of course it’s sadly real. This week’s one-off special episode looks at how best to manage the fragmented workforce of an MSP during the Coronavirus lockdown. Paul’s joined by HR specialist Emma Wynne to discuss the affect that homeworking, financial uncertainty and strained communication can have on your team.

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Many thanks to Emma Wynne from Gateway HR for being Paul’s special guest * The guest on May 12th will be Scott Springer from Third-Wall talking a new cybersecurity plug-in for ConnectWise Automate * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover:

Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, this is Paul Green’s MSP marketing podcast.

Paul Green:

Hello and welcome to Episode 25. And in a change to the advertised program, we’re going to scrap the usual format this week for an MSP marketing podcast special. You see with everything that’s happening around the world right now and the impact on our businesses, it’s easy to look at how we can protect our clients. It’s easy to look at how we can do more marketing and get more new business in. And there is plenty of new business to be won right now. But there’s one other aspect that’s absolutely critical that certainly in this forum we haven’t talked about yet, and that’s looking after your team, your people, your staff. And that’s what I’ve invited this very special guest to join me today to talk about how you can protect your team right now and over the next few months.

Emma Wynne:

Hi, I’m Emma Wynne I own Gateway HR. Set up at 12 1/2 years ago now, mainly working with micro and small businesses to help them manage and develop their people better.

Paul Green:

So thank you for joining me at such short notice Emma. We did only concoct this one a few days ago, just before the transmission date. And I was talking to some of my MSP clients over the last couple of weeks really and we realised that the subject of looking after your own staff, so the MSPs looking after their teams, was something we hadn’t really addressed and hadn’t seen addressed in many different places.

Paul Green:

So obviously you and I have known each other for a very long time. I think it must be getting up to eight, nine years or so now. You did the HR for my last business and thank you very much for looking after those people and helping me get rid of the ones I didn’t want, in the most legal and incorrect way of course.

Paul Green:

Today I want to talk about the more, if you like, the more fluffy side of people. So I don’t want to talk about HR, I don’t want to talk about laws because obviously our audience on this podcast is MSPs all around the world. But I do want to talk about three specific issues.

Paul Green:

The first of them is managing our teams remotely in the long term. So we’re now what, I think it’s six, seven weeks into this in the UK. Some of the countries are a little bit less or a little bit longer. And we are now entering a long term remote management so I want to look at that. I want to look at caring for staff long term as well, when they’re remote and when we can’t see them and hear them as well as we can normally when they’re in the office. And then the final subject that I want to talk about is actually what happens when things start to return back to normal. We all know they’re not going to just snap back to how they used to be. So as things start to return back how should we look out for our staff, their welfare, their mental well being? And also what happens if we have to lay some staff off, so if we have to let some people go? Whether that is a genuine business necessity or whether it’s being used as an exercise in clearing out deadwood?

Paul Green:

So we’ll come on all of those things, but let’s start with just almost a little bit more credibility building for you. Because you’re not just an HR person are you? You’ve actually had quite an incredible career looking after people and making sure that the businesses look after their people well?

Emma Wynne:

Yeah, I mean it’s always been a big part of what we do. I genuinely believe if you treat people properly, and that obviously applies outside of work as well, you get the best from them and therefore the best for the business. So we spend a lot of time with our clients looking at how to look after their employees, how to motivate and inspire them to want to do a good job.

Emma Wynne:

And also recently, just before the lockdown happened, we were starting to run mental health training in organisations as well. So the organisations that we’ve done that for already, hopefully will be able to be putting some of that into practice. And I’m quite confident that once this is over, whenever that might be, I think there’s going to be a huge demand afterwards as well.

Paul Green:

So what kind of an impact do you think this unexpected and sudden lockdown had on staff in those first few weeks? And what kind of impact is it going to have as it kind of keeps going on and keeps dragging on?

Emma Wynne:

I think in the first few weeks it was almost shock, I think it was. Even though we saw it happening in other countries, there’s always that feeling that somehow it’s not going to have the same impact on us. A lot of obviously uncertainty. So anybody with parents in their workforce, parents not knowing if school’s going to shut. Are they not? If they do, how am I going to manage that? And equally, people who were caring for others as well. Lots of uncertainty I would say were the main emotions.

Emma Wynne:

And then the first few weeks before, certainly in the UK, the government stepped in, a lot of worry about is my job safe? What happens if I lose my job? And the financial impact of, obviously they’re still there, but in the moment in the UK with furloughing but only probational timescale. So I think everybody’s still got that worry at the back of their mind.

Paul Green:

I agree. And I think as we go into, where are we? I think this is week seven in the UK. Obviously this is clearly going to be a much longer thing than we thought. Even when the lockdown does end, we can see that there will be a phased end to it. It’s not going to be just straight back to normal. So as owners of businesses and you know most of the MSPs that I talk to and work with care very much for their staff and it’s a wonderful sector to work in Emma, what’s the best things that we can do to look after our team as they stay remote longer term?

Emma Wynne:

The most important thing is, as far as you’re able to, to be consistently honest with your team that you’re doing everything you can to protect the business, protect jobs. And also involve them in that. I mean there’ll be limits as to what you want to share financially, but probably your people in the team are the ones who will come up with some of the best ideas.

Emma Wynne:

We’ve seen lots of great examples, not just with our clients, but we’ve probably all seen them on the news, of businesses that have started to do something completely different. And have changed or pivoted, which seems to be the new favourite word, so much quicker than anybody ever has done before. So it’s keeping those lines of communication open, particularly if the vast majority of people you’re not physically seeing each other every day. So making sure that you’re keeping in contact, keeping people up to date, but also making sure that everybody’s okay.

Paul Green:

Most MSPs obviously are completely happy with video calls. They were set up for work from home years before everyone else was set up, which is quite right. It’s not just about physically keeping in touch with people, is it? What’s good remote management really about?

Emma Wynne:

Yeah. A lot of it is around trust, for clients that previously, until they’ve had to do this, did not like the idea of remote working. Some would be honest and say it was to do with trust. Some would say it was something else. But we were always pretty sure it was to do with trust. Now people have no choice. Managers have really starting to see, in most cases, who they can trust to continue to do a good job and who perhaps needs a little bit closer management. But it’s building that trust and managing, what we would normally call managing by outcomes rather than by time.

Emma Wynne:

So if people are juggling homeschooling, shopping for relatives, but it’s managers realising well what is a good level of performance? What are the outcomes I need from each team member? And as long as I know that they are happening, what time of day they happen doesn’t really matter.

Paul Green:

But how do you actually demonstrate that in a practical way? Because obviously certainly for MSPs where they’re trying to provide a level of service within a certain number of hours, where jobs just need to get done. You can have that desire to let your staff be flexible in your mind, but in practical terms it can annoy business owners and the managers really quickly, can’t it?

Emma Wynne:

Yeah, I think it’s, it always has to come back to what’s needed for the customer. So I’d imagine a lot of them have a service level agreements, amount of time it would take to respond to a call, how long it would take to make the changes or the repairs or whatever. So again, it’s sharing with the team.

Emma Wynne:

If there are definite work hours, if you have, maybe a help line that’s say between eight and six, those are the core hours. But then, where possible, maybe within the team, to divide up those core hours. So maybe each person has four hours where they have to be completely available. So they have to manage what else is going on within their household. But then maybe they have another four hours where the second person on call.

Paul Green:

Because I imagine it would be quite stressful for a member of your team, if you were trying to get them to work six to eight hours a day, and as you were saying, they’ve actually got homeschooling to do and they’ve got relatives to look after and they’ve got other things. And they’re utterly caught between needing to work and needing to do the things that that keeps you the owner happy, but also needing to look after their family.

Emma Wynne:

We always like to say that you should know your team really well anyway, but this might be a chance where actually you need to get to know them better. So what other demands do they have on their time? But equally as importantly, making sure that it’s fair within the team. Sometimes you see issues where perhaps the person who hasn’t got young children at home or all those other commitments ends up doing perhaps all the hours. And what you don’t want to do is cause a rift within the team.

Paul Green:

This is almost like how it used to be in the olden days when everyone smoked, wasn’t it? Where all the smokers got to go out and have regular breaks and the nonsmokers had to do all the work when everyone else was having a smoke.

Emma Wynne:

Yeah.

Paul Green:

So you and I have always been big fans of doing one to ones, and sitting down and having structured but informal conversations with staff. Not appraisals, just literally from, almost from their point of view, that you’re chewing the fat. But from your of view, you’re looking at what’s gone well and what hasn’t gone so well and what they can do differently. Would you recommend still trying to do this over Zoom or, or the teams or the video platform of your choice?

Emma Wynne:

Yeah, absolutely. We’re certainly saying to all our clients to carry on with all of those things, albeit in a different structure, probably via Zoom or over the phone. But all of that needs to carry on as normal. And perhaps now it’s even more important than it would be normally. Because there might be things that person will share in that dedicated time that perhaps they wouldn’t in a team Zoom call or whatever that might be.

Emma Wynne:

So again, you can check in with the individual, both in terms of work and anything that they’re struggling with or ideas that they’ve had, and also, again, that work/life balance. And the same goes for any new starters. We certainly, in our team, had two new starters the week before this happened. So they started work and then got sent home. So we’ve had to adapt all our induction process and our training to make sure that they’re still able to do their role. So it’s not been as easy, if that’s the right word, as doing it in the office, but both of them are now pretty much up to speed.

Paul Green:

So if you don’t already do regular one to ones with your team, but you can see the power of just having a 10, 15 minute video call one-to-one with them? Because you are missing out on that, that just having a look at them in the office and seeing what emotional state they’re in in the office. Emma, what do you think the most authentic way would be to to start that process right now?

Emma Wynne:

It would be as simple as to start it, so to announce it to the whole team. So however you do that, if you’re having maybe team Zoom calls, to let everybody know. Perhaps say that as a manager you’ve been looking at different ways to stay in touch and catch up with everybody. But also to say that actually having perhaps read around the subject, it’s something that you’d like to continue even once this period of time is over. There’s so much research out there to the benefits of regular one to ones, it would be very easy for managers to say that they’ve spent some of this time looking at that their management style, what they could do differently. And this is something that they would like do going forward.

Paul Green:

Now looking at the long term care, what other kinds of things should we as owners and managers be doing? For example, with some of my clients I’ve, we recommended in the early days that they send small gifts to their team just to say thank you very much for all your hard work over the last couple of weeks. Here’s 10 bars of your favourite chocolate bar to enjoy while you’re at home. Perhaps not best for their physical health, but certainly very good for their emotional health. I mean little things like that, little gestures, can they really, do they really make such a big difference to staff?

Emma Wynne:

Yes. I think they make a huge difference. I mean, motivation, engagement, as you know Paul, is one of my favourite topics. And what I really love showing the business owners is that it doesn’t have to cost you a lot of money. Again, it comes back down to knowing your team. So for example, at Easter normally I would leave an Easter egg on everybody’s desk, but of course it might still be there in August. So I sent everybody some mini eggs and chocolate rabbits and an Easter card. And I got really lovely thank yous from everybody saying, oh that was so, it really brightened my day. We’ve seen examples of clients sending vouchers for things like just eat. I’m sure there’s others available, but that that kind of thing.

Paul Green:

Okay. Let’s look at when things start to go back to normal. And we’re not going to speculate on how that may or may not happen because it’s going to happen in different ways in different countries. Now again, for MSPs, it’s not really about the technology, I want to focus more about the people and managing the people. So what advice are you giving to the people that you’re working with about how to bring people back into the workplace when they might be a little scared of going back into an office? Because a lot of people now are starting to say, you know that they’re liking the work from home, but you might prefer to work them in the office. What kind of advice are you giving at the moment?

Emma Wynne:

Different types of advice. Some of it’s really practical. Just looking at if people are nervous about coming back, depending on kind of the size of the office and possibilities. Maybe that everybody comes back, but you really look at the desk arrangements so perhaps there’s bigger space between people. Also look at rota systems if that works. So again, perhaps if there is no scope to move desks around, if everybody’s just proved they can work from home, do you look at a rota system so you maybe only have half the people in the office?

Emma Wynne:

But also talking to people as to what are people’s thoughts going forward. So perhaps people who have, like you said, have enjoyed, for all sorts of reasons, working from home. Some of it might be that they love the fact that they don’t have a long commute, things like that. We are still an office based business, but actually you used to come in five days a week. Would you like to do three days in the office and two days from home? Again, like I said, as a manager, really thinking through what you’re happy to offer before you do that, or before you ask people what they would like to do. And there’s a lot of talk about it never being the same again, but potentially in a good way in terms of people working differently.

Paul Green:

Yeah, I mean personally I’ve enjoyed working from home a great deal. As much as being trapped in the house with a child is, has its challenges and homeschooling has its challenges. But I’ve adapted my working methods, I’ve relaxed a little bit more. I am enjoying not driving around. And I can see that going back to work in an office for some people will be their idea of nightmare. So what do you do in a situation then when you as a manager absolutely want your people in the office? Because I think for some MSPs, when they’ve got a good setup and they’ve got an efficient team and they’ve got their screens up sharing their numbers, it’s more efficient to have people sat in the office.

Paul Green:

And it also does, I mean we’re coming back to that subject of trust again, sometimes we really don’t trust our staff as much as perhaps we should. And I’ve certainly been guilty of that in the past. And certainly many people listening to this will have had similar kinds of thoughts. So what do you do in that situation where your staff do want to carry on working from home in some way, but you don’t want them to?

Emma Wynne:

I would say there’s two bits there. It’s really thinking through as a manager why is that? Where do those trust issues come from? If you’ve managed very well during this long term period is it time for you as a manager to maybe change a little bit? You can always do a kind of a trial period. So you could, again, negotiate with people to say, well definitely not complete working from home but perhaps we could try some element of flexible working. But I’d like to do it for a six month trial before it becomes a permanent.

Emma Wynne:

But also the other way around, obviously talking to the employee, what was it about working from home that you preferred? Because you don’t want that to be an issue with perhaps somebody really doesn’t like some of their coworkers. Perhaps, maybe even, hopefully not, to the extent of maybe they were being harassed or bullied. And the reason they don’t want to come back is because they’ve enjoyed being away from that person. So it’s finding out what’s causing the anxiety.

Emma Wynne:

The other aspect also is whether work returns at the same time as school. Because if not, we’ve got that issue as well. If you’ve got younger children, you can’t just abandon them at home. So again, looking at flexibility, what’s possible, and again, working as a team to work around that.

Paul Green:

But surely you can’t abandon them at home if you lock them in a cupboard?

Emma Wynne:

As long as it’s soundproof, that’s actually fine, especially if you’ve got detached rather than terraced.

Paul Green:

Okay. I’ll take that as legally valid advice then. Final six questions Emma, and these are about losing people. You and I made some people redundant together in my business. I forget when it was now, but it was a horrendous January. It was after the worst Christmas I ever had because of cashflow. I couldn’t meet my payroll, I had to put money in. And the quickest solution I could see out of it was to make people redundant. And I remember you warning me at the time that when you do this Paul, it will solve your cash flow problems quickly, but it will create a whole new set of issues with your staff that you never knew you had.

Paul Green:

And you, of course, you were absolutely right. You’re always right, which is kind of frustrating. And we lost some deadwood, and the people I really wanted to stay became the most scared about their jobs. And I seem to spend an enormous amount of my time and my effort making my best people realise that I didn’t want them to go.

Paul Green:

I couldn’t out and out tell them I’ve just got rid of the deadwood, of course, because that wouldn’t have been legal. And obviously that wasn’t the only reason we did it. We did it for, to make sure the business didn’t fall over. This huge amount of my time was absolutely chewed up with the fluffiest elements of that. And reassuring everyone that the business wasn’t going to fall over, that we’d been proactive, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Paul Green:

Now I know that some MSPs, when we do go back to this, some of them will use this as an opportunity to get rid of deadwood, which is fine from my point of view. But others will be forced to let some of their people go. Because obviously as their clients have reduced user numbers and their monthly recurring revenue has gone down it may be that actually post-furloughing when you have to cover your payroll again, that some MSPs simply cannot afford to pay all of their staff in the way that they could before this lockdown happened. So what are the best ways to manage losing staff? Even in an extreme circumstance like this, where everyone can see why it’s happening, what are the best ways to manage those staff and manage the people who stay afterwards so that it doesn’t have such a massive impact on the business?

Emma Wynne:

So redundancy is quite a legal process, so I won’t go into that now. But just be careful that you’re following that in terms of consultation. But also being really careful in terms of how you select. It’s about roles, not people. So which roles are at risk of redundancies? Where you’ve maybe got support teams, are they at risk and how many? Is it all of the people in that role? In terms of process, it makes it simpler because you’re not having to select. And fair is the right word. Then if you’re challenged at any point by somebody saying, you selected me for redundancy because of … Is that because I’m a woman, is that because I’m white, is that because of my age? You get the idea.

Emma Wynne:

So it’s making sure that you’ve got a very clear selection process. One of which can be around performance, but it would need to be documented. So if one of the people who’s at risk and actually got written warnings on that in their file, documented maybe one to ones where you’ve talked about their performance, that can be part of the selection process. But if it’s just that actually you’re really fed up with them but you never told them, you’d be in a little bit of a sticky wicket relying on that.

Emma Wynne:

So you’ve got the process side, which is really, really important to get right in terms of timing. And with furloughing in the UK to get that timing right in terms of when you start having to pay people again. The other side, which is what you were talking about with the example back in that January, is about the people who are staying. Again, having that open and honest conversation. You can’t promise, as you never can, that somebody’s job is safe, but reassuring them that you’ve done all your due diligence in the background. You’ve really looked at cash flow forecasting. And as far as you can tell, based on what you’ve got now, their roles are safe. And they’re very much a part of the business going forward.

Emma Wynne:

And it is that continual kind of building their confidence, manage, sharing wins as well. So once you’ve gone through that process, any new clients that you bring on board, if there’s changes in the industry that show it’s getting better, making sure you share it with those team members. So they can see, okay, yeah, I can start to feel a little bit more confident. I think most people are going to be nervous for quite some time. But as a manager it’s reassuring them that you’re doing everything that you can, and that you’re being honest.

Paul Green:

It’s fair to say that you need to reassure people 10 times more than you think you do, don’t you?

Emma Wynne:

Yes.

Paul Green:

Because this was the thing that I found. In my head it was very clear you’re staying, you’re staying, you’re safe. I’ve done the right thing to protect the business, now let’s get on with this. But from their point of view they didn’t have the benefit of being in our heads and knowing what it is that we’re thinking.

Emma Wynne:

Yeah. And that’s why it’s important to share. Share what you can share in terms of actual numbers. Probably not necessarily financial numbers, but maybe looking at number of clients. And if clients are tied into contracts to say, well, as far as you can tell, this money’s guaranteed. Because the last thing you want, which can happen, is you lose people that perhaps you really want to keep because they’re so worried about the security of their roles.

Paul Green:

Okay, Emma, that’s really good advice, thank you. And, of course, the caveat with this is always seek a professional’s advice. Well I think every penny I ever spent on your business was worth it, Emma,` because you kept me legal, you kept me out of trouble. And yet we did the things that we wanted to do with the business and with the people there as well. And we treated those people fairly. So thank you for that.

Paul Green:

And that obviously leads onto a big plug for you to say thank you for joining us for this special podcast. So tell us a little bit about Gateway HR, what you do, how you can help people, and how we can get in touch with you?

Emma Wynne:

Well actually we are an outsourced HR functions. So basically that means that if you’re, when I say small business, mostly up to probably 150 employees. So you need HR, you need help with managing people. Because you, the people listening to this started a business. They didn’t start a HR business. So having access to experts in their field without paying for employing somebody full time.

Emma Wynne:

We do it in lots of different ways. Also at the moment, which is we’re getting loads of lovely emails from people which is nice, thanking us. We’re sending out guidance, sometimes at the moment, once a day based on a lot of things that we’ve been talking about today. And that’s something that’s open to everybody. You don’t need to be a client. For example, yesterday we sent guidance around making redundancies while people are furloughed. But also, on a more positive, at the end of the week we’ve got scheduled how do you still recruit and end up to people during this crisis, so lots of information.

Emma Wynne:

Most popular service by far, which is actually something that Paul gave me the idea for, so a thank you back in your direction, is our peace of mind service. So clients get unlimited access to our help line. Because we’re also conscious that as small businesses you’re always thinking, oh where to spend the money? And solicitors do a great job, but if you’re worried that if you pick up the phone it’s cost you 300 pounds, our peace of mind service we say that people can ring us as often as they need to and they will still only pay their normal monthly amount.

Emma Wynne:

So if you’ve got, at the moment we’ve got lots of clients who are ringing us literally three or four times a day asking for advice. What can we do, what can’t we do? And they didn’t get any additional bill. This is what businesses need all the time, isn’t it, security around payment? But certainly at the moment.

Paul Green:

And seeing as I gave you that idea, I think it’s only fair you send me a commission for half of the last eight years. Which we’ll have that conversation after the recording. What’s your website address, Emma?

Emma Wynne:

It’s www.gatewayhr.com.

Voiceover:

Coming up next week.

Paul Green:

Coming up in next week’s show we’re going to look at why most technicians are so bad at upselling, and how to motivate them to tell you when your clients really should be buying extra services from you. We’re also going to look at how much you charge contract clients per hour for ad hoc work. And it’s probably not enough you know, you can put your prices up. We’re also going to address the issue of how do you differentiate yourself from all the other MSPs out there. See you in next week’s show.

Voiceover:

Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

View Details

In this week's episode * It's natural to baulk at the idea of turning away perfectly good clients, but specialising in a market niche doesn't mean you need limit your options. Join Paul as he explains how you can still maintain a broad range of clients whilst boosting your business by marketing within a specific niche * Not only will we be looking at the traffic that you drive to your website and how to improve your conversion rate, but Paul also answers a brilliant question from a listener about the best kind of 'call to action' to put on your MSP website * Plus a special guest joining Paul to to explain how you could boost your monthly recurring revenue by selling a whitelist antivirus solution, rather than a traditional blacklisting one. It's called PC Matic and we find out how their whitelisting process means it's all ready to re-sell

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * During the discussion about improving conversions, Paul mentioned the AIDA marketing formula and services from Hotjar.com, Google Optimize & Optimizely * Find out more about Paul Green's MSP Marketing Edge * The guest was Corey Munson from PC Matic talking about how to resell their whitelist antivirus solution * During the MSP question about the best call to action on a website, Paul mentioned the plugin from calendly.com * The guest on May 5th will be Emma Wynne from Gateway HR with an extended discussion about how to look after staff during the Coronavirus lockdown * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: Hello, here's what's coming up in today's show.

Corey Munson: Even for the least tech savvy out there, I think it's easy to consume and appreciate the benefit.

Paul Green: We're also going to be looking at the marketing super power of niching, particularly when you do it in a single vertical; and I'm answering a question for an MSP about the best call to action to put on your website .

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: Sometimes as business owners, we think the answer is just to send more traffic to our website. "Let's get lots more traffic. Let's drive some Google ads. Let's do some Facebook. Let's do some more LinkedIn. Let's get traffic, traffic, traffic, traffic, traffic going to the website." And sure, getting more of the right qualified traffic can help and qualified traffic is the right kind of traffic. It's people who could go on to buy from you at some point.

Paul Green: Not all traffic is equal, but the way I see is that traffic alone is pointless. Traffic without conversion is just a waste of your time and money because traffic costs these days. The days of free traffic are long gone these days. You've got to pay for it in some way. You've got to pay for it either in cash or in sweat. Go back five, 10 years ago, and you could get loads of traffic from Google organically for virtually no cost, perhaps a little bit of investment in SEO. These days you've got to spend that money on either on the Google ads or spend the money on SEO on someone optimising the campaign for you. The traffic is more expensive and we actually need to make sure that that traffic is turning into something.

Paul Green: Let's talk about conversion. For most MSPs that I speak to, if you can get someone on the phone just for 15, 20 minutes, you can have a quality initial conversation. Which if it's appropriate for you and for your new lead, your new prospects that can lead to an offsite meeting when that can happen. And obviously, once you're in front of people at that point it can lead to an offline meeting when that can happen. And once that happens, then you know they're in your sales process from there.

Paul Green: Most MSPs, even if they don't enjoy selling, they don't have a problem with selling at all. The issue is just simply getting enough people to talk to. And that's why I believe that traffic without conversion is completely pointless. Because if you have a website which simply doesn't convert, tripling the number of people who come to that website is still not going to convert. Just because you're chucking more people at it doesn't mean it's going to perform any better.

Paul Green: I think those are the two areas that go absolutely hand in hand. You have to make sure that you're driving quality traffic and that's about having a plan, and you've got to know where are we going to get our traffic sources, how are we driving traffic? How much are we willing to invest in that traffic? That's the first thing.

Paul Green: But then secondly, you need to look at the conversion, and that's about looking at your website and saying, when someone comes onto this website, what does it tell them that makes us different from all the other MSPs that they could go and speak about? Does our website, at the same time, talk to them in their language and engage with them at an emotional level? And also is it very, very clear what it is that they have to do next?

Paul Green: Now there's an old marketing formula called AIDA, A-I-D-A, and it stands for attention, interest, desire, and action. This was created, I think it was more than a hundred years ago, and this was a formula for you to create marketing collateral with. You had to make sure that each piece of marketing that you did grabbed their attention, and we do that with a headline. You had to make sure that each piece of marketing collateral built up their interest and their desire to have whatever it is you're selling or to do whatever it is you want them to do.

Paul Green: And then the final one, A, action is the call to action. It's the thing that you most want them to do. In fact, we're going to be talking about that later on in the podcast, what's the best call to action on your website. But you need to make sure that it's easy for people to get in touch with you. Whether that's booking an appointment directly filling in a form, doing a live chat. There are lots of different things that you can do, and some work better than others for MSPs right now.

Paul Green: There are a couple of tools that are worth embedding into your websites. I've mentioned, I think, both of them are on the podcast before. One of them is something called hotjar.com, definitely mentioned that one before. It's a great piece of technology. You embed it in your website and it takes videos of people using your website. Well, there are two aspects to is it. It will video user sessions, so you can't see the person but you can see what action they've been taking within your website.

Paul Green: The other thing that it does is it does something called heat mapping. Heat mapping shows you where people have been looking on your website and it's kind of terrifying because it makes you realise how little content people actually look at. You put Hotjar into your websites and you realise that they don't go down the page as far as you think they do. What that knowledge allows you to do is to reorganise your website so that the call to action is what they see. It's why call to actions need to be typically higher up a page because they typically get more conversions up there. Hotjar.com is the first piece of software I suggest you use.

Paul Green: The other thing you can use is something called Google Optimize. Now there's a separate standalone piece of software called Optimizely, if you'd prefer not to use the Google version. But to be honest, the Google version is absolutely great and isn't going to cost you anything. And what Google Optimize will allow you to do is to set up split tests on your website. Split tests sometimes called an AB split test is where you have two different versions of the same page.

Paul Green: For example, if you had a page with a headline which said, "We are great at IT," which is a terrible headline of course, and you decided to test that with a split test. You would create within Google Optimize a second version of that page. It would be absolutely identical to the first version apart from the headline. And then you'd change the headline to say, "You found the right people for your IT," and then Google Optimize will split your traffic for you. It will split it.

Paul Green: Let's say you send 100 visitors to version A, 100 different visitors to version B; and version B has a slightly higher conversion rate, as in more people book an appointment with you online. We can tell now that that headline outperforms the original headline, and that's the beauty of split testing. You can optimise and optimise and optimise your website just off the back of doing something like this.

Paul Green: To sum up, most MSPs don't spend nearly enough time on their websites and you can see that by the state of most MSPs' websites. But if you want to be absolutely, genuinely serious about driving more traffic to your website and making sure that it actually turns into more prospect meetings then you've got to focus on the conversion as well.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: I discovered the super power of niching in a single vertical around about a decade ago. Back then I was running my very first business, which at the time was a general PR and marketing business, and we would take any client on, anyone that did anything. And as long as they had around about a thousand pounds a month, then we'd quite happily service them and do some of their marketing and do some of their public relations for them.

Paul Green: The problem with that was we never really got to know our clients particularly well because we had such a diverse range of clients. We did have some IT companies. In fact, that was the first introduction I had to IT support and MSPs and how wonderful your world is. But we also had some random clients, like a guy that printed charity greeting cards. We had a training school, we had an engineering company. kind of you name it, we had an accountant, we had a lawyer. It was your classic marketing agency with lots and lots of different clients doing lots of different things.

Paul Green: And the two main problems with that were inefficiency and lack of perceived expertise. So I had a team of I think three or four people at the time and they were constantly, all of us were running around creating marketing materials for our clients. And yeah, okay, that was our job. That was what we were supposed to do. But it was exhausting because you'd be writing something for the lawyer, and then you'd flip and you write something for the engineering company, and then you'd flip and you'd be trying to sort something out for the charity greetings card company. And it was a constant slog and your mind was constantly flitting from, "Right, what do our lawyers prospects want? What do people who buy from an engineering company, what do they want?" You're constantly flitting. It's exhausting. You never build any traction with it. You never get any momentum going.

Paul Green: And I had an epiphany, which was actually down to an optician that I was working with at the time. He was an optician who was doing very well for himself. In fact, he turned up at one of our meetings in an Aston Martin. Side note, never turn up for a meeting in an Aston Martin because your rates up. Anyway, we sat chatting and then we went out and had lunch. And he said to me, "You guys are really good at what you do. The problem is your flitting around all these different subjects. You should niche. You should just do this for one sector. And you know what, opticians would be a great sector."

Paul Green: And off the back of that, we formed a little bit of a partnership and we went off and we started doing marketing just for opticians. And within a year, we'd fired all of our general clients because suddenly those general clients were a real pain in the backside. Whereas with the opticians, we could do a piece of work once and then we could sell it multiple times. And in fact, we replaced the net profit that we'd been making from those general clients within a year just focusing on opticians because it was so efficient. There was a very, very clear route to market because they all read the same magazines and blogs and went to the same trade shows. It was very easy for us to gain momentum and traction and expertise in the marketplace. We just kept going and kept going, and learning more and more and more about opticians, and learning more and more and more about the marketing that works and what their clients responded to.

Paul Green: And the only reason that we went off and then worked in a couple of other niches, which turned out to be veterinary and then dentistry was because at that point, 10 years ago, the market for independent opticians in the UK just wasn't that big. It had been decimated by a company called spec savers, which then went on to do the same in Australia. And for my US listeners, it's the equivalent of LensCrafters. It's the big national chain. So we sidestepped into veterinary and dentistry, which are kind of similar sectors to optics, and that was it. Those were our three sectors.

Paul Green: We dipped our toe into some other sectors along the way. I lost a lot of money trying to do it for restaurants. Restaurant owners don't respond and act the same way as professionals do, professionals like vets and dentists. But we essentially, we stuck to those core three verticals. And again, the same thing happened. We could do a piece of work once. We could sell it multiple times to lots of different people. The routes to market were clear. It was beautiful. And it was one of the reasons why I was able to grow the business and we were doing a random at a million a year off the staff that we had. It was 15 staff. It was a systemised delivery and sales and marketing because we understood our audience. We were deep diving into our audience and the people that we needed to speak to, and that's why I recommend that you do exactly the same thing.

Paul Green: Now I've recommended this to virtually every MSP that I've ever spoken to, which is if you've got one, go find your niche, go find your vertical, and as much as you can marry that market because it's so powerful. And most MSPs will obviously still take on anyone that comes along, and quite right too, and you keep your general clients. You don't have to fire off your general clients. Because actually for you, the work that you do is 80% similar for every single client, but it's from a marketing point of view that the niching, the verticalisation becomes so powerful.

Paul Green: I have clients who specialise in lawyers. I have clients who specialise in accountants, recruitment, call centres, manufacturing, engineering. I've got a client who's doing very well in veterinary, another one who's doing very well in dentistry. They all have general clients on the side, and in fact most of them they've got more general clients than they've got niche clients. But from a marketing point of view, they can go and reach those people in a really, really clever way. It's so much cheaper to reach people when they perceive that you are the expert at what it is that you do for them. And this was the thing I found when I started working with the opticians.

Paul Green: Whereas the charity greetings card guy would say to me, "What do you know about marketing charity greeting cards?" Which actually the truth is very little. When the opticians just didn't say that. They never asked the question of, what do you know about optical marketing? Because we had a website that was just about optical marketing. We had staff that knew all about optical marketing. We had examples that we could show them. We got case studies, we got testimonials. It's very, very, very powerful.

Paul Green: The thing to do is to look at your existing business and say, is there a trend anywhere? Do I have two or three clients that happened to be within the same niche or the same vertical? Do I have two or three clients that seem to be the same? It could be professional services. Or it could be actually we've got three lawyers, not by design. We just ended up with three lawyers. That's when you can say to yourself, "Ah, I've got a hidden niche. I've got a hidden vertical. I'm already super serving lawyers and I've got a great relationship with them." So then you go and get some testimonials from them. You perhaps get a case study done. Better still, you get a video done and you either adapt your existing general website. Or better still, you set up a new website and on that new website you show that you are the expert at IT support for that vertical in your area.

Paul Green: One tip on creating the marketing materials for that is all you got to do is use a little bit of inside language. You don't want it to be completely overboard. Let's say it was lawyers that you specialised in. You don't need to say law and legal and practice every sentence. You just need to kind of mention it once.

Paul Green: For example, in a headline you might say, "Specialist IT support for lawyers in area." Now that's not a particularly clever headline, but that's what we call a name and address headline where you literally say who you are and what you do. "We do IT support for lawyers in area," and it's very, very clear for lawyers what you do and who you do for and in which area you do it. And that's actually quite appealing to some people even though he's not a particularly clever headline. You then drop in a little bit of their internal jargon.

Paul Green: For example, I don't know about any legal examples, but with opticians and vets and dentists, the software that they use to run their business is called a PMS, a practice management system. If for example you were verticalising in those niches, you would drop in very high up the page, because remember what we were saying earlier about people don't get as far down the page as you think, very high up the page you'd drop in that you can work with all the major PMSs and then you'd name a few. Because if you name them, well, hey, hang on, you've got inside knowledge. And that's the whole point of verticalisation.

Paul Green: Real experts have inside knowledge. So if you've used the word or the niche and you've dropped in one or two little pieces of their internal jargon early on, the rest of your website can be normal, and this is the beauty of verticalisation. It's verticalising the marketing only. It's focusing on them and the fact that they want to hire perceived experts and positioning you as that perceived expert.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green: At times like these. We all need as much help as we can get with our marketing and with drawing prospects closer and turning them into leads to have a conversation. I know that marketing is the single biggest headache for most MSPs because they're just not good at it. And if you're in that situation where you want more new clients, you want to have more conversations, it's just a case of "how do we do that", then I promise you, you're not alone.

Paul Green: It's where most people are. And because most people are there, that's why if you can get a little bit better at marketing, it can make quite a distinctive difference to your business. It can give you a huge advantage. Because you don't have to beat everyone, you've only got to be slightly better than some of your competitors. Now, that's the thinking behind my service called the MSP Marketing Edge and more than 130 MSPs worldwide now trust this service. What we do, there's two sides to it.

Paul Green: The first side is every month I give you fresh marketing content that you can use to appeal to your prospects. You get an educational guide every month, you get an advertising pack with adverts for Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn. You get a video that you can put your logo on and you can put that into your website. And by the way, we do UK and US versions of that video.

Paul Green: We do social media content, so stuff that you can put on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on Instagram if you're on Insta, you can put it on Facebook as well. We give you some prospect emails to send out to people who are in your list. They've opted into your marketing list, and in fact, we teach you how to get them to opt in as well. And then we do versions of those emails to go out to clients. And these are educational emails to warm your prospects up and to retain your clients.

Paul Green: There's a sales letter that you can physically post out to people. There's a press release that you can send to your local media. There's a whole bunch of support libraries to help you with these, and there's daily support from me in a Facebook group. We have a secret Facebook group, there's only for active members of the MSP Marketing Edge. That's all the stuff you get every single month.

Paul Green: There's also a second side to this, which we call MSP Marketing Edge Plus, and it's a whole series of extra tools. They don't come out monthly, but they're there to help you just to get more new clients for your MSP. For example, there's an educational book that you can put your name on and use as a marketing tool. It's called Email Hijack, and it's about how people's email is the single most used point of entry for some kind of hack and it teaches non-tech people how to secure their email. What it actually does is it drives them to you because it all seems very, very difficult. There's a Have I Been Pwned data capture plug-in for your website. You've heard of Have I Been Pwned. It's a great free service and there's a plug-in that we've created which uses the API. If you've got a WordPress website, you stick it in your website and then you have data capture using Have I Been Pwned?

Paul Green: There are extra marketing materials based on events in the news. During coronavirus, I've been giving marketing materials, fresh new marketing materials almost daily to my MSP Marketing Edge members. There's a video which comes out every week, which talks about how you can grow and market your business, and there's a whole bunch of other stuff that we're adding as the next couple of weeks go by. There's a quarterly printed newsletter for you to send to your clients and prospects. There's free entry on a lead generation website, which at the moment is UK only, but we'll be spreading that out to the US at some point. There's a quarterly campaign in a box. The first one is based around backups and the need for backups. It's whole series of different materials that you can send out to your prospects. And then coming in a few weeks time, we've got weekly tech tips videos for you to put on your website and social media. You'll get a total of five, maybe even six videos per month because we all know that this is the year of video and videos are so important.

Paul Green: Now all of this is really, really cheap. We deliberately made it cheap because do you remember that concept I was talking about in verticalisation and niching where you make something once and you sell it repeatedly? That's exactly what we do. We make all of this stuff once and then we strictly only sell it to one MSP per area, and that means in the UK it's yours for 99 pounds plus VAT every month. And in the US and other parts of the world, because we do already have clients in Australia, Singapore, the Philippines, Canada and a whole bunch of other territories, the US one is just $129 per month. And for both of those I've made it very easy for you to try it for a month virtually risk-free and the UK pay just a pound, try it for a month. In the US, it's free. It doesn't cost you anything to try it for a month. All the details are at mspmarketingedge.com.

Voiceover: The big interview.

Corey Munson: Hi, I'm Corey Munson. I am vice president at PC Matic. Been around for approximately 20 years. Solely dedicated to endpoint security and remote management tools. Increasingly involved in the MSP community.

Paul Green: And I know today we're going to be talking about security through white listing rather through black listing. Most devices by defaults are open to everything unless you blacklist something. Whereas your approach from PC Matic is that actually everything is blocked by default unless you white list it.

Corey Munson: Exactly. What we're setting up is default deny, as most people know it. We're simply dropping an agent onto an endpoint. We're monitoring for anything that attempts to execute on that endpoint. If it happens to execute and it's not on our white list of known go to applications, we'll block it from executing. The real difference to what we're doing with our white listing approach is we have that baseline of what we've curated as a list of known good to start from instead of requiring our partners to go out and build those lists on behalf of their customers. We're out there actively identifying what those known good applications are. If something attempts to execute them that's not recognised as part of that list, we'll simply block it.

Paul Green: From the MSP's point of view, they essentially get to lock down their client's devices just through the single application. But as you said, they don't have to actually do all the hard work of building the white list for themselves. They just have to add on any new applications that their clients are using that perhaps aren't on your list already.

Corey Munson: That's exactly right. The whole concept around white listing in itself is not necessarily new, but it's typically been rejected because it does involve some heavy lifting if you're doing it manually. That's what we've done is to try to give our MSP partners a running start. And if there are things that are proprietary for a particular customer, giving them the easy access to add those things, add deployment so they're not dealing with false positive later on.

Paul Green: Is this used as an advanced revenue generating opportunity or is it just becoming a standard tool for them?

Corey Munson: It's really two-fold. We have partners that are ripping and replacing their current endpoint security solutions for their customers and replacing it with what we're offering. And in some cases, they're simply adding this as an additional layer to their security stack. But I think even at its core, the value proposition in terms of a simple thing to explain to end customers that our MSP partners are doing to improve their security, it makes a lot of sense. And even for the least tech savvy out there, I think it's easy to consume and appreciate the benefit.

Paul Green: Okay, now you announced something about a month ago, which was what caught my attention because I could see this was, again, a massive revenue generating opportunity for people who are using and reselling your products. Tell us what you're going to be doing differently from June.

Corey Munson: What we've elected to do here in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, we really recognise that this makes the role of our MSP partners even more vital. We know for a fact we're hearing from companies of all sizes every day now that need additional support to deploy remote workforce. Knowing that our MSPs are going to do a lot of that work, what we've announced is any of our MSP partners, current or future, can add unlimited number of customers and/or end points to their accounts at no additional charge. This allows them to really go out there and meet the needs of people that are, in some cases, very desperate to get their remote workforces in place and be able to benefit from both the security features, and we even have some remote management features as part of our platform as well, benefit from all of those without having to worry about seeing that as a part of an invoice.

Paul Green: That's a great idea. Thank you for that, Corey. Tell us what your website is and how we can get in touch with you.

Corey Munson: Sure. The best way to get in touch with us is pcmatic.com, pcmatic.com/msp, or you can email us at partners@pcmatic.com. Either way, we're happy to have a conversation, provide a full demo of the platform trials or simply get our partners up and operational. The other thing we take a lot of pride in, especially given these challenging time is we have a very robust onboarding and support team that is there to stand behind our partners as they're trying to ramp up to meet the needs of their customers.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast. Ask Paul anything.

James: Hello, My name is James from Connection. What's the best call to action on my website?

Paul Green: Great question, James. Thank you very much, and it does tie in very nicely with what we were talking about earlier on when we were talking about traffic and conversion. The goal is to get people to talk to you, is to get them on the phone with you. Once they're on the phone with you, then you can do the hard job of converting them into a face-to-face meeting or whatever is your appropriate next step.

Paul Green: There's a couple of different things that you can do on your website and my personal favourite is to embed your live calendar. You all have heard of calendly.com or there's of course the Office365 equivalent, the calendar equivalent, and it's a little plug-in which goes into your website and it shows your live calendar. They can go and book a 15-minute phone call, and that's all it should be, that's all the call to action should be, book a 15-minute phone call with you or whoever handles the selling in the business. That is the best call to action because it's direct.

Paul Green: Now you don't get quite that many people doing it, but the people who do do it are the highest quality prospects. Essentially, the people who book 15 minutes with you are dramatically more likely to turn into clients than someone who just fills in a web form say or something like that. I would recommend that as the first call to action. Put it on every single page of your websites and put it high up the page as well. In fact, you could choose to have it high up the page and down at the bottom of the page. You could choose to have it all over the place. There's almost no way you can have too much of that on your website. Because remember, people only see a couple of pages of your website. They're not looking at every single page. They're not sitting reading your entire website, Getting that call to action in front of them, so they've got that desire to take action, it's very easy for them to do so.

Paul Green: The other things you could do is call to actions is of course you'd have your phone number and you can say to them, "Call us any time." The downside is if they're looking at your website at eight o'clock at night, they're not going to pick up the phone or if they do, there'll be no one there. And we do know these days that people don't like picking up the phone in the way that they did 20 years ago. It's because it's a commitment, isn't it? It's it seems more of a commitment to do something.

Paul Green: You can, of course, have just your email address. Again, this is quite a weak call to action and you'll just get a little spam off the back of it. You could also have a form for people to fill in. Ordinary people kind of don't like filling in forms because it's sometimes feels like what's happened to the form? What's happened when I fill in that form and at the other end?

Paul Green: Oh, I forgot one other, live chat, now is perhaps worth experimenting with live chat. A number of my MSP masterminders have experimented with it and their results haven't been great. To be completely honest with you, they found that it's more existing clients using live chat to try and talk about tech problems than it is prospects. But it's something worth trying because that could be a regional thing. It could be, live chat hasn't quite reached the right moment for B2B yet, but live chat certainly worth having a look at as well. But if I was going to start anywhere with your website, I would definitely just embed your calendar in it.

Voiceover: How to contribute to the show.

Paul Green: Thank you so much. If you've already sent in an email about the show or some kind of feedback, I do read every single one myself and I make sure to reply personally. If you'd like to get in touch, go on, drop me an email. It's hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com. Or if you want to engage with me in a slightly less scary, "I'm going to email a stranger" kind of way, then there is a Facebook group. If you open up your Facebook, tap in MSP Marketing at the top, go into groups and you'll see there, we've got nearly 700 people now, all MSPs from around the world. It's a vendor-free zone and you're welcome to join me in the MSP Marketing Facebook group.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

Scott Springer: Bad guys always find a way in, and we identified the primary ways that that happens and we built a plug-in that makes taking care of those vulnerability really easy to do.

Paul Green: That's Scott Springer from Third-Wall. It's a new cybersecurity plug-in for ConnectWise Automate, offering you a new way to lock down devices and respond to threats. We'll be talking next week about using it to create new revenue streams for your business. I'm also going to be talking about when something works don't fiddle and faff with it and break it. And we're going to be looking at how much you charge contract clients per hour for ad hoc work. Because the good news is, you're probably not charging enough and you can put your prices up. See you next week.

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

View Details

In this week's episode * You're great at the technical side of your business and you have some pretty good marketing ideas too - but why do we find it so hard to execute both at the same time? Paul's joined by a special guest who understands the challenge and can offer a solution * This week, there's a deep dive into the psychology of recruitment and why we plump for second best when we really need an A Team * If you ARE looking for new staff, particularly if it's second line or third line staff, Paul has a great recruitment advert concept for you to try. Plus he answers a question from an MSP about the best subject lines for emails

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Paul mentioned the book How to Hire A-Players by Eric Herrenkohl * You can order your free copy of the book Updating Servers Doesn’t Grow Your Business right here * Paul's guest was Kevin Clune from MSP Growth Hacks and author of The MSP Growth Funnel, talking about how to pick the right marketing strategy for your MSP * Thank you to James Wakefield from Contedia for the question about email subject lines * The guest on April 28th will be Corey Munson from PC Matic talking about how to resell their whitelist antivirus solution * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

Paul Green: Welcome back to another dive into marketing, growing and making the most of your MSP even in these difficult times. Here's what's coming up in this week's show.

Kevin Clune: It's really difficult to focus on growth, when you have all these technical issues and the day to day heading over your head.

Paul Green: Plus if you are looking for new staff, particularly if it's second line or third line staff, I've got a great recruitment advert concept for you to try. And I'm going to be answering your question from an MSP about the best subject lines for emails.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

Paul Green: I've got a friend I WhatsApp with quite a lot and he's a very successful person. By successful, I mean he's got a couple of businesses and he's achieved most of the things that he wants to achieve in life. That's my definition of success. The two businesses he's got, they churn out plenty of profit. They help to feed the lifestyle he has and they're good businesses, even in these uncertain times, his businesses are doing okay if not well. The biggest frustration in his life comes from the staff that he has and my friend's biggest problem is that he is expecting A team performance from B team players. Now he hires lots of people for these businesses and he hires managers to run them for him and those managers, hire people to work for them obviously and my friend almost has a deep suspicion of staff.

Paul Green: I think this is a deep rooted suspicion back to when he was running his very, very first business when he was ripped off by staff a little bit, which happens to all of us to a certain extent somewhere or another doesn't it when we're running a business, but this deep seated suspicion of staff has carried on to the extent that now he will hire people and almost expect them to do a bad job at some point. In fact, I think his default setting is that people will say one thing but the KPIs, the key performance indicators will say another thing, and this is quite an unusual situation because my friend is an A team player, he will operate at a high level of performance just like you do or just like I do. We operate at a high level of performance because that's what the business owner does and normally, normally, A team players hire other A team players, but that seems to go wrong when it's your own business.

Paul Green: So often I'll talk to one of my MSP clients and they're having an issue with a member of staff and often that's because they've hired a B team player just like my friend. Why do we do this? Because we all know what A team performance looks like. The issue for us is finding the right people to give that performance for us in the first place. Maybe part of the problem is that we're not willing to pay the wages. We have lots of discussions in our MSP mastermind groups about the cost of decent second and third line technicians and I'm not sure what it is around the world, but certainly in the UK you have to pay a lot of money for these people. And certainly if you're in, more popular parts of the UK like London and the Southeast, again that wages bill is going up and up and up and up.

Paul Green: It's almost unfair sometimes that we do hire these people who are okay at what they do and we expect absolutely the very, very best A team performance out of them. I think that's a little unfair because not everyone can operate at the level at which we can operate. If they could, then they'd be running their own business as well. So I think if you want to genuinely hire A team players within your MSP it's actually got to be a bit of a mindset shift, just like my friend, it's not just a case of doing interviews a little bit differently. I think you've got to switch the way you recruit for the entire business. For example, you've got to say, look, "We've got a gap, we've got a vacancy, we're busy. We need to fill this position." That's completely the wrong kind of mindset and we've all done that. I've done that, you've done that. And we all know we shouldn't do it, but we still do it anyway.

Paul Green: We've got to refuse to just try and fill positions instead of what we've got to do is we got to take our time and say, right, what's the best kind of person to fill this position? What are the traits that they've got? How can this person be the person that excels in this job? That takes the job spec of what we want them to achieve and goes with it and adapts it and maximises it and really, really pushes it. I believe these people are farmed more than they are hunted and what I mean by that is hunting is going out and recruiting someone and stealing them from another MSP maybe, or they're on the job market, but hunting is you go out, you find them, you hire them. That's it. In out, quick kill.

Paul Green: I think farming is a much more robust way of finding your A team players, particularly if your second and third line technicians, your more difficult hires. You need to be getting to know people almost months, maybe even years before you might possibly hire them. Imagine if you met on a regular basis, let's say once a quarter or every six months, just met up for a coffee when you can with the A team players for your local competitors or people who are perhaps doing a similar job or something else where, who could one day come and work for you? Now they won't all come and do that, but some of them might at some point and much better just like in marketing, I recommend exactly this approach in marketing, building relationships with people, long before they're ready to buy from you. You can do exactly the same thing with your staff, building relationships with your potential staff a long time before they may come and work with you and that's a great way to get to know people long before you're ready to actually talk about hiring them or offering them a job.

Paul Green: There's lots of other things that you could and should be doing. For example, you should be enhancing your profile within your marketplace, but within the IT world of your local marketplace as an influencer because A team players want to go and work for A team players, so you need to position yourself as a top person. You can put together a referral program for your employees. Many of your team already know your next hire. The trick is getting the referral out of them at exactly the right moment, but also making sure you don't create a little clique within your business of your employees who all know each other and then there is the opportunity to turn some of your B players into A players. And I've done a little bit of research on this. I haven't read the whole book, but I bought it and I had a quick flip through for this podcast.

Paul Green: It's a book you can find on Amazon called How to Hire A-Players, Finding the Top People for Your Team, Even If You Don't Have a Recruiting Department by Eric Herrenkohl. Go ahead and have a look at that book, as I say, I haven't read the whole book, but the stuff I flicked through look pretty good to me and know that this is one of the most important things for you to do, if you're going to grow the business and ultimately turn it into a lifestyle business where it pays you an exceedingly large amount of money to own the business, but not to have to run it. You're going to have to hire a really great staff along the way.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: So sticking with the same theme, how do you attract A players in your recruitment adverts? Now I believe that recruitment adverts are primarily a marketing problem rather than a people problem. In fact, I believe the whole of recruitment is a marketing problem because there are great people out there. It's just how do you reach them? How do you get the right message in front of them at exactly the right time? That sounds like a marketing problem to me. The issue when it comes to recruitment adverts is that all adverts look the same. If you go onto indeed or monster or whatever is the predominant jobs website in your local area and you go and type in whatever you think a third line or a second line technician would type into, look for a job in your area and maybe you'll see five 10, 20 jobs similar to the jobs that you've got that you'd like to fill. They all look the same. They've got very samey looking headlines that are very samey looking job roles. They all look the same.

Paul Green: In marketing, we say that samey kills sales and actually in recruitment we can say a similar thing, samey kills response. It's kind of simple when you look at it that way, because when you do exactly the same as everyone else in the marketplace, you don't stand out. You have zero standout ability and that directly affects the response you get from your advert. Now, I wrote a job advert for one of my clients a couple of years ago. I'm going to read just a few lines from it. The headline is this, do not apply for this junior installation engineer's job. It's highly unlikely you'd enjoy it and the text reads this, you don't want this job, trust us, you really don't. Because even though you'd get full training to become a junior installation engineer, you'd also work very, very hard. Why? Because we're business name, a busy growing network and AV installation business and we don't have time for standing around drinking tea and scratching our arses.

Paul Green: Yes, it actually put that in the advert and the advert goes on from there. It talks about the kind of work that they do, talks about where they work. It talks about the specifics of the job. It talks about ladders, drilling, fixing, lifting things because that's what's in that specific job and it talks about what kind of person they're looking for. In fact, I'll read it to you. Okay, we suppose there are some benefits. We assume you have no experience, which is okay. In the unlikely event you did want this job and actually got it. You'd work closely with the senior engineer so we could make sure you got excellent training and after an initial three month contract, there's a strong chance you could be awarded a permanent position. Plus, we might buy you a Mars bar now and again, might. Now the personality of these adverts was matched absolutely directly to my client and they use the advert couple of years ago and they did get a pretty good response.

Paul Green: They got their new junior installation engineer from it and that's an advert they can roll out again and again and again. Now you wouldn't use exactly that advert to hire second or third line techs for your business, but its got some real standout ability to it and that's the point. You've got to stand out. You've got to do something completely different. Here's a format that I think could work very well. Put an advert on your local jobs board and instead of just writing what everyone else writes, take a similar approach. You could say it's unlikely this is the job for you and your techs could say, we're looking for a second line, third line technician to work at company name, but this probably isn't the job for you. Go and have a look at our video to find out why. And that's it, that's all that's in the advert.

Paul Green: And then the response URL takes them to a recruitment page on your website. And on that recruitment page there's a video and the video is the actual advert itself. So the text that's on the job board is just driving traffic. The video is the advert. And what do you put in the video? I would say something that matches your personality. So you might show them your existing office or you might get one of your existing engineers to talk about how much fun they have in the job. Or it might be you talking about how much work this person is going to have to do. Remember A team players are always looking for a challenge. They're not looking to just sit on their backsides and do very little all day. They're looking for that challenge. So maybe you talk about how much work there is to do and how many sites there are to look after and how many projects there are to manage and all of that kind of stuff.

Paul Green: But a video advert gives you five minutes because five minutes is okay for a recruitment video, gives you five minutes to potentially talk to that person, those candidates, rather than the 30 seconds that you would perhaps have if they're reading a text advert. And I would then make the call to action the way that they apply for the job, a little more difficult than usual. You could for example, put a quiz together. So right from the start they have to prove that they have level two or level three ability or at least Google ability. So you might ask them a series of technical questions that they have to answer and say to them, please send in your CV along with the answers to these questions and email them to, and then there's a very specific email address and it might be something like 9 out of 10 people won't get this job@yourbusiness.com, now you've got to match all of this to your personality.

Paul Green: These are just my ideas, things that I would do and in fact I have done it when I was hiring staff in my previous business. Do the things that feel right to you and it will help the person that's applying for your job get a measure of what kind of business they're going to work for, but whether you do these video adverts or the kind of job adverts where you're telling people not to apply, you've got to do something that appears to be so, so different from the way your competitors are recruiting.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green: Tell me you've got a copy of my free book. It's called Updating Servers doesn't Grow Your Business. I wrote it a couple of years ago and it contains within loads of information to get new clients for your MSP. Now you can have it as a PDF anywhere in the world and if you're in the UK or the USA, we will post a physical paperback copy to you as well. Why do we do this? Because we all know if you've got a physical paperback copy in your hands, you're much more likely to actually read the book, hooray. It's not a long read, it's only 44 pages. You could easily read it in the evening and there's genuinely no downside to requesting a free copy. I send you a free copy, because I'm trying to set up some reciprocity, trying to set up a relationship between you and me and maybe just maybe we'll go and do some work together down the line. You can get a free copy from my website. It's paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover: The big interview.

Kevin Clune: Hi, I'm Kevin Clune. I'm the co-founder of mspgrowthhacks.com and author of the MSP Growth Funnel.

Paul Green: Which is a great book and it's the book that's got you onto this podcast Kevin, thank you very much. I actually started to read your book on a flight from England to Scotland, which is not a particularly long flight and it was one of those that when I got back to my hotel I had to keep reading and flicking and flicking, it's probably one of the best pure MSP marketing books that I've ever read. And I believe you and I, we have slightly different approaches to it, but we have very similar opinions and views on how MSP should market. So how did you come to write the book?

Kevin Clune: We started the blog after exiting at MSP. Really, just by writing one-off articles, I started to get a lot of direct feedback. People were reaching out, they're asking me questions. And what I realised was that I was giving a lot of, I would call it fractured advice, where I couldn't really help them in one situation without trying to explain 10 other things that they may... Well, you need to be doing this also, or if you're doing this, then don't do this, that kind of thing. So there was always more to it, and the bigger picture, we always started talking about one thing and then our conversation would keep zooming out. And so I realised that we really need something more concrete to go off of and say, yes, here's what you should do in this situation. But if you back up, 10,000 feet, here's maybe the overall approach that you should take.

Paul Green: As you said, you used to own an MSP yourself. When you owned that MSP, were you good at marketing or bad at marketing? And I ask that and of course in the context that most MSPs quite rightfully put their hands up and say, actually we're not that good at marketing.

Kevin Clune: So my background is not as a technician or in IT at all. I actually owned a marketing firm before joining an MSP. And I did that not as an owner. My business was acquired. So I had a partner, a customer, we call them partners that was doing managed services very lightly. They were a computer repair company back in 2007 and they started to work on a recurring model. And as a digital advertising consultant, I was helping them generate leads for this new initiative that they were taking managed services. And that's really how I got into it. So after a while, I ran my business for seven years in the marketing space. I kind of reached a dead end, I lost a very large customer. I was a sole proprietor, that was outsourcing a lot.

Kevin Clune: And I just kind of had the feeling like I needed a change. So the managed services campaigns that I was running was kind of the most intriguing thing that I had going. And Jeff, who's my partner now, I worked really well with during that whole process. So it was a natural fit to just go and join their team and then we quickly realised that he is a high level of technical engineer. He needed to focus on that and somebody needed to come in and work on the business and work on the growth. So that's kind of what we did and how we got to the point we are now.

Voiceover: It's the perfect combination really, when you have a high level tech and a high level salesperson or marketer and your view is that most MSPs should be taking a more strategic overview of their marketing. What is it do you think that stops most MSPs from having that strategy and that makes them fall into just a bit of tactical work here and there?

Kevin Clune: Honestly, I think it's two different sides of the brain trying to work at the same time. I know like my partner, he's very technical. He doesn't think the same way about things that I do, from a creative side. It's hard to operate full steam using both of those sides of your brain simultaneously. And it's the same way. I can't do what he does. That's kind of the organic look at it. If you look at it into more detail, it's also time. I mean they're focused on solving their customer's problems, which they should be.

Kevin Clune: Unless you have a full time marketer on staff, which most don't most actually hire sales first, which I think is also a possibly a mistake especially if we don't have leads to give, because it kind of just pigeonholes you into doing this cold direct response effort, which kind of in my experience doesn't really work that well. But that's really what it is. I think that it's really difficult to focus on growth, to do the creative side of it and to really understand your customer's behaviour when you have all of these technical issues and the day to day kind of hanging over your head.

Paul Green: So if an MSP came to you tomorrow and said, "Look Kevin, we're not currently doing a great deal of marketing. What could we do or what should we do to get started?" What would you advise them?

Kevin Clune: So when I actually help MSPs directly, I always start with just having them create a plan from top to bottom. That's really the best way to see the big picture because if you just start marketing, it's kind of difficult to build on as you go. And really when things don't work, you should be constantly pivoting. But at the same time you need something to rely on this concrete that allows you to take that customer from point A to point B. And so that should always be the goal. What you fill in between and what you do, those activities, you might be spending heavily on Facebook ads and then all of a sudden your campaign craps the bed and you need to pivot to something else. That's fine. The plan is more so how are you going to fill those gaps in the customer process? Getting them from knowing who you are to, signing a deal and then becoming your best customer.

Paul Green: And just one final question for you, Kevin, which is if you had to pick out one current strategy or tactic that works best at generating more monthly recurring revenue, what would that be? Because of course we all know that monthly recurring revenue is where the real profit lies and selling more to our existing clients. That's what it's all about. So what's the thing you've seen that's working the best right now?

Kevin Clune: If you want to sell to your existing customers and you want to increase monthly recurring, I rely heavily on email nurturing. I think it works really well still, doing a newsletter, things like that. And that's the best way to consistently engage with existing customers. Now if you're talking about new customers, new prospects, getting people in the door directly into your kind of recurring model, that's when I would say you have to really think about taking that full funnel approach. Do your homework. It's not as simply as saying, "Oh yeah, send out 10,000 emails or just run this type of LinkedIn ad." It's not that simple. So maybe pick up the book.

Paul Green: No, that's the perfect answer, isn't it? Tell us again what the book is called, where we can get it and also your website.

Kevin Clune: Yeah, so the book is called the MSP Growth Funnel. It's kind of like I described, we call it a complete guide to marketing and selling managed services, but it's more about how to build the funnel and how to take your customer from point A to point B. It's available on Amazon and our website is mspgrowthhacks.com, that's where we post articles on a weekly basis. We have a newsletter and really we have a little community that we operate there. And so, come on, check out our site and feel free to join.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast, ask Paul anything.

James: Hi, my name's James from Contedia. Can you suggest some good email subject lines?

Paul Green: Thanks James, that's a great question. It's actually a very, very big subject. We could do an entire podcast just on email subject lines and that's because they're so important. I mean email marketing is getting harder. I think we can all see that. People have too much email, spam filters are becoming very overzealous. Deliverability is an issue, but it really does pay off and mainly because you can use the tracking tools within your CRM to see who is opening and clicking on your emails, which is great for telephone followup. Rather than talk about specific subject lines because you can just Google, best email subject lines. You'll see literally hundreds and hundreds of specific examples. Let me talk about some of the areas of subject lines and you have to remember that people decide whether or not to open ignore or delete an email based just on two things.

Paul Green: The name of the sender and they do it based on the email subject line. And this is why emailing people regularly, at least weekly is so critical because you have to build up a trust relationship with those people. So stick to the same sender name each week when you send out promotional emails or educational emails, but it's your email subject lines that then have to work very hard to get people to decide to open your emails. So for example, several different areas that you could look at. You've got your sort of simple no nonsense email subject lines and if you look at any e-commerce purchases you make, often the email subject for those are very, very simple. It'll say, here's your order or confirming your order or something like that, now you can use that actually in marketing your MSP, you could simply put as an email subject line regarding your IT support or just your IT support.

Paul Green: Then we've got funny email subject lines and funny really should be something which stands out because it looks amusing to the person who's reading it within a small number of words of course as well because we've got to make sure our email subject lines show up properly in their email clients and controversial or shocking email subject lines can work very, very well. Just got to be very careful with that because it will reflect back upon your business. I tell you what, short email subject lines can work as well and I can't stop myself from opening an email from someone when it has a single word in the subject line such as Paul, which is my name of course, if someone sends me an email and its just got my name as the subject line, essentially just my first name, I cannot stop myself from opening that email.

Paul Green: I think the other kind of email subject line is worth attempting and trying as well is something that puts a question in the subject line. Are your laptops encrypted? Question Mark. Now there's a massive caveat that goes with email subject lines, which is local audiences act in different ways, so if you're going to try these kinds of different subject lines, I think you should almost do a series of experiments. You could send out emails to the same list, but try these different subject lines and then track open rates because it's one of the ways that your audience will tell you what kind of subject lines they like. Now, once you find a subject line that outperforms all the others, you can't just keep using that subject line because it will lose its magic power very, very quickly, but it gives you a guide to what your audience is interested in.

Paul Green: My email audience is predominantly MSPs and I've discovered that MSPs, like things to be straightforward. And we've tried humour that doesn't really work so well. We've tried complicated, that doesn't work. We've tried simple, that doesn't work quite as well for my particular audience as just straightforward telling people what it is that they're going to get in the email list, but that's because MSPs I think are very good at email. They've got very good email habits and they're good with filtering and stuff as well. Your audiences might be slightly different in fact, they're bound to be, so you've got to try different things and test and experiment and track the results and let the results guide what kind of email subjects you use.

Voiceover: How to contribute to the show.

Paul Green: Talking of email then why don't you drop me one and tell me what you think of the show or suggest a subject that I should talk about or maybe even a podcast guest. You can put anything in the subject line. Just send it through to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

Corey Munson: Even for the least tech savvy out there, I think it's easy to consume and appreciate the benefit.

Paul Green: That's Corey Munson from PC Matic. It's an antivirus vendor with a completely different approach. Instead of assuming all applications are safe and then just black listing, the ones that aren't, it works the other way around. It assumes all applications are bad unless proven otherwise. The white list approach and he's going to be telling you next week how you can resell PC Matic to make some money for your MSP. We're also going to be looking at the website traffic that you drive to your website and how traffic without conversion is completely pointless. And conversion, of course, is getting more people on the phone or requesting meetings with you. And finally we're going to be talking about the marketing super power of niching in a single vertical. It's very powerful and I'll tell you about it next week. See you then.

Voiceover: Made in the UK, the MSPs around the world Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

View Details

In this week's episode * It can be harder than you think to get business from a quality referral. You may be doing a great job but Paul explains why some people will never be able to recommend you * Now more than ever we need to be looking after ourselves, and this week Paul has some great tips to make sure you're doing the right thing by your business, your family and yourself * Also in this week's episode a BBC producer explains how to increase the chances of getting coverage in the media. And find out what an authority website is (and why you should get one)

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Find out more about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs * Read about Paul's MSP Ultimate Net Profit Bootcamp * Paul mentioned the book Unstoppable Referrals by Steve Gordon * Paul's guest was BBC radio producer Tara Dolby talking about how to gain media exposure * Thank you to Dan Martin from Platinum Business Systems for the question about authority sites * The guest on April 21st will be Kevin Clune from MSP Growth Hacks and author of The MSP Growth Funnel, talking about how to pick the right marketing strategy for your MSP * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, this is Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green: Hello and welcome back to the show, here's what we've got coming up for you today.

Tara Dolby: We often get contacted by people completely out of the blue. Sometimes when you talk to them, it's a case of you've never listened to what we do.

Paul Green: We're also going to be looking at how to generate more referrals from your existing clients, and a great marketing concept to introduce you to is something called authority sites.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green: Got a bit of a message for you today, and it's that you need to be better at looking after yourself and keeping yourself healthy and well. And I'm not talking about everything that's happening in the news and the world and all of that at the moment, I'm talking about just you running the business. Because I was talking to one of my clients last week, we had a chat on Zoom, he runs an MSP and he was exhausted, I could see it in his face, I could hear it in his words. He was mentally, emotionally, physically exhausted, and this person is normally very positive and you could hear it reflected in his speech that everything was negative, everything was a problem, every staff issue was just a major thing for him. The client that was causing them trouble, it was all just too much, too much and too much.

Paul Green: He thought that call was going to be talking about marketing and dealing with some staff issues, and actually I told him to take the afternoon off despite how busy he was and to go to sleep sort of 9:00 PM and not have any beer, get a decent night's sleep and have the weekend off. So often when I'm dealing with business owners, particularly if we're talking towards the end of the week, they're exhausted, I mean utterly exhausted, and of course we all know it's a terrible vicious circle that when you're tired you reach for the wine and the wine makes you stay up a little bit longer and you become even more tired, and the busier you are the harder it is to get out of that pattern.

Paul Green: I was talking to a friend of mine and a couple of weeks ago who is a psychologist, and she was mentioning something called Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, and you can Google this, you can find it. Maslow was a psychologist back in the day and he came up with a... It's like a little triangle, go and have a look at the image on Google, and it's his hierarchy of needs. And basically we have to deal with things in the correct order. So for example, it's impossible for us to even think about growing our business if we don't have the basics, if we don't have air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing. If we're not safe, if we don't have personal security, if we don't have the feeling that our business is generating money for us, if we don't have our health, it's impossible for us to do all of these things. And I'll put a link to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs in the show notes, but you don't need to study psychology to know at a very basic level, you've got to look after yourself.

Paul Green: The goal is to be the business owner, not just for 10 years but for 20, 30, 40, 50 years. And the only way you can do that is if it's something that you can tolerate 50 weeks of the year, regardless of how many holidays you take, 51, 52 weeks of the year, you've got to be that business owner. It is about prioritising sleep, it's about prioritising family, it's about prioritising the things that really, really matter to you more than anything else even though the business is trying to drag you down all the time. And even those of us with the most well run businesses have moments where it just all becomes too much. I believe that's actually a warning flag for you, it's your body and the world telling you it's time to just stop, address the balance and have a break.

Paul Green: I think as business owners, having a break is the hardest thing for us to do. And yet interestingly, the business owners I know who have the fastest growing businesses, who are the most successful, tend to be the ones that spend the least amount of time trapped within the business. And I defined trapped within the business as you have to be there for the business to thrive. It's a longterm thing to do, but if your business right now does not thrive unless you are there, that's not really a business, it's a job, and it's not a particularly well paid job. In fact, you are locked in a prison of your own design, and being utterly exhausted at the weekend or just not having that work life balance right is an early warning flag that you need to do something about it.

Paul Green: Because if you don't, ultimately you're not going to be a business owner for the decades that perhaps you would like to be, because you just simply will not be able to cope with it longterm and that will impact on you, that will impact on your family and ultimately it will impact quite negatively on your business as well.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: I'm going to try something new in today's podcast. You see a couple of months ago I put on a huge training event for a bunch of MSPs in the UK, it was called my MSP Ultimate Net Profit Bootcamp. We audio recorded the entire thing, and today I want to play you a clip from that bootcamp. It's about how you can get more referrals from your existing clients.

Paul Green: Number three is referrals from existing clients. The best way to get new prospects and to drive traffic into your website is to get referrals from people. To save me talking about this for hours, get this book. This is the best book on referrals I've ever read. It's by Steve Gordon, it's called Unstoppable Referrals, and I can sum it up in 10 seconds for you, which is stop asking for referrals, start offering a referral pack. So you probably at some point, whether formally or informally have said to your clients, "Hey, look, if you know anyone that's looking for IT support, would you send them our way?" There's two big problems with that. First of all, the problem is there is a social risk in referring you. Let's take Andy, let's say Andy says to me, "Oh Paul, if you know anyone, would you send them my way?"

Paul Green: And I say to Alex, I say, "Alex, your business is really screwed, you need a proper IT company, give Andy a call and we've been using it for years, he's amazing. Give him a call." And then you give him a call and it happens to be a bad day at that particular business, Andy's actually a way that day, the 12 year old technician somehow got near the phone, "Hello?" "Yeah, hi. Can I speak to Andy?" "He's not here." "Okay, do you know when he's next in?" "No." "Okay, all right I'll ring back. Thanks." That's happened in every single one of your businesses by the way. We could do... We're not going to, but we could do mystery calls into your businesses today, and Steve's is the first one. Your response to that, Steve, is immediately made me want to do it.

Steve: That's a fantastic idea!

Paul Green: It is a fantastic idea. It might take some time to do the whole room anyway. So if that was the referral, I'd then go back to... Or Alex would come back to me and say, "Yeah, I run the Andy guy, it was just all a bit vague," and I'm the one that's taken on the social risk of that. This is why your clients don't refer you, because the social risk of referring you is higher than the reward that they get. You will probably have one or two clients who are uber referrers, who refer you all the time, and those of you who go networking a lot will find that there are uber networkers who are really good at connecting people, but the vast majority of everyone else does nothing and doesn't refer anyone, this is because of the social risk.

Paul Green: The second problem with that is people refer in the wrong way. "Hey Alex, you're looking for an IT support company, aren't you? Give Andy a ring, he's brilliant, right, you can ring him on a Sunday night at 10:30 if you server is knackered or anything and he'll just fix it for you. He doesn't care that his kids are crying and his wife's leaving him, he doesn't care about that stuff. Just give him a ring." Can you see that's the wrong referral, isn't it? So what this guy suggests in his book, is that instead of asking for referrals, you offer a referral kit. A referral kit is a book, so you say to your existing clients, in fact maybe you even give them business cards and it's got a picture of your book on it, and it says, "The guy whose team looks after my IT has written a book about keeping your business secure. Get a free copy at www.keepyourbusinesssecure.com." First person to buy that domain, buys the beers.

Speaker 5: I'm sure it's been taken.

Paul Green: Sure it has, I'm sure it has. But essentially that's what that book is about and that saved you an evening reading that book. But existing clients are brilliant when they refer the right way using the right methodology.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green: How would you like to have direct access to me on a daily basis to help you with the marketing of your business? My blatant plug today is actually something free, it's an extra resource for you, it's a Facebook group. It's only for MSPs, it's a vendor free zone, and in that group we talk about marketing, we talk about things to grow your business, to give you more monthly recurring revenue and ultimately to get more net profit out of your business. So if you are genuinely an MSP, and I do ask you to prove it when you join that group, then just go onto your Facebook app, type in MSP Marketing in the search bar up at the top, go onto groups and apply to join. It's a closed group so I will have to... You just basically put your website address to prove that you're an MSP, I will approve your membership within 24 hours, and it would be great to have a chat to you in that group.

Voiceover: The big interview.

Tara Dolby: Hello, I'm Tara Dolby and I'm a journalist working for the BBC in their local radio stations department, and I've been working at the BBC for probably about 22 years now, and I've produced some brilliant programs. I work with a lot of great presenters and yeah, we've won quite a few awards and we know what we're looking for where we want a story.

Paul Green: Which is what I'm interested in talking to you about, because the MSPs that I work with and that are listening to this podcast, they want to get onto radio stations like their local BBC because it's great for PR and credibility and exposure, and they want to get into local newspapers and blogs and all of that kind of stuff. But the problem that most MSPs have is they will come up with a story and it's very technology focused, and the journalists or the producers that they speak to just don't seem to be interested. Why is that the case?

Tara Dolby: Well I suppose what we don't want in any story is for something to come across as dry. Unfortunately technical things can often seem a little bit dry, but they don't have to. And I suppose when it comes to a press release, whether it's a technology company or whoever it is, what we're always looking for is something that's going to grab our attention in the first sentence. And if you're dealing with a local radio station, and I'll talk on behalf of what my experience has been with local radio stations, I am initially looking for something that is going to be local. So I need a reason as to why I would look at this story, because if there is something that's happening in the world elsewhere that has a technological bias, I probably won't be that interested unless I am looking for a cyber crimes expert, for example.

Tara Dolby: I want to mention that in a minute because that's a useful thing to put across too, but one of the things I will probably do is I would look for a local angle and I would look for somebody who has either a local case study, or a really strong local guest who can give me the absolute categorical information that I want that is going to make the story sound exciting. So say if there was a Windows update, for example, would I want to put that out on air? No, unless something had gone wrong with that Windows update, which point, and this is what I go back to, I am looking for experts who speak really well on things, can put their message across to a lay person to explain why there's been a problem with a Windows update. That's what I'm looking for.

Paul Green: So we'll come back to the experts in a second because that's a really interesting idea. But in essence what you're saying here is you don't care about the story unless it is potentially relevant to your audience, to the people that listen to your radio station.

Tara Dolby: Right, well I produce a program that is very much about what people are talking about, and if there is a new story that I think they should be talking about, for example, because it's enormous, I will find a way to make it relevant so that they all talking about it. So if I get a subject presented to me, and I do get loads and loads of press releases, I probably get 10 or 12 a day, now that's a lot. So when I look at it, I don't spend a lot of time, and in the same way that if you get 10 CVs through, you're looking for something that's going to make one in particular stand out.

Tara Dolby: If it's got a local line for me, I'm more likely to spend more time on it. If it comes with photographs, I'll think, "Okay, how can I make this work?" There are things that add credit to a press release, and the local line, the photos, video that might make it more explainable, these are things that make me think, "Okay I will probably spend a bit more time on this. Is there something that I can get out this that will make it relevant to our audience?" Because at the top of my mind it's always about the audience and whether it's something that I can make workable for them.

Paul Green: So you touched earlier on having experts, people to add comment on stuff, and you've mentioned cyber crime as well. Can you give an example of where you would go looking for an expert to comment on something and how would you actually source that person?

Tara Dolby: Interestingly, there are a couple of universities, well, we've got quite a few who are in our patch. We cover quite a big patch, we cover Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire, so we have a lots of academics out there who will provide us with information on lots of different subjects. I've also got a lot of law firms and there are lots of big business, now some of them already do this, if I've already got an established relationship with them through working on different programs and different formats, they will sometimes email me and they will say, "Keep this in your kit bag, but I've got somebody who's a really good guest who I think would be able to talk to you on this, this and this subject," and I'll think, brilliant. I'll get back to them and say, "Yeah, that's lovely," and I'll have a quick chat with that person and then when I need them I'll remember that they're there and I'll get in touch.

Tara Dolby: You're working for companies who want to be able to promote what they do, that can be a really easy way of doing that, by providing local radio stations with a list of people who are good, who we know we can rely on and who are happy not to keep plugging what they do on air. Because I worked for BBC, we are not a commercial organisation, and we are not an organisation that gives a lot of name calls out to different companies. We do remain impartial, and when it comes to business we have to just be able to say this is so and so from so and so. And when a listener hears that, they're often like, "Oh, they're giving really good advice." And it's that sort of thing that can help that particular company, in terms of, "Oh, we were on the BBC and this is what we said, and actually we've proved that we can provide really good material for radio stations because we know what we're talking about."

Paul Green: Yes, and even though the media landscape has changed dramatically in the last 20 years, when an organisation like the BBC or another trusted media organisation has someone on, there is a perceived credibility, I think, of that guest. So as you use guests more and more and more, you trust them more and you're more likely to have them on. What would be a really easy way for an MSP to catch the attention of someone who works at their local radio station, just for the first time, to put the idea in their head that they could be a future guest?

Tara Dolby: We often get contacted by people completely out of the blue. Sometimes when you talk to them, it's a case of it sounds like you've never listened to what we do. If for example, let's go back to cyber crime, there was a story about cyber crime, you heard it on your local radio station and you thought, "Well, we've got someone who could talk about that." You then say, "Can I contact the producer of a particular show?" You just ring the general newsroom, "I've got someone that I think might be good to talk about a specific issue," find out what their names are, most of us are on Twitter nowadays, it's not too difficult to identify who we are, and then contact us directly.

Tara Dolby: It won't always be successful. Some of my colleagues, they can be too busy sometimes to pick up the phone or they'll ask someone to send an email in, but it's just that little starting point. We were doing about... Completely different subject, about domestic violence a few years ago. And within the law firm itself, their PR person said, "Oh, do you know, we've got other people, we've got other experts within this law firm who I think would be really good and they can talk about a whole list of things." Now I don't use them all the time, but I know what they're good for and I know that I can rely on them to be able to provide me with somebody who is a good speaker about a specific specialism within law.

Tara Dolby: Now that is great for me because like most producers, you work on quite a short timeframe. So you're looking for good people that you know will provide the goods at a very, very short amount of time. And so establishing those relationships can be quite easy to do if you can identify where you can provide people that you know we want.

Voiceover: Paul Green's, MSP Marketing podcast. Ask Paul anything.

Dan: Hi, this is Dan from Platinum Business Systems, you suggested I create something called an authority site, can you explain what that is and how I do it?

Paul Green: Great question, Dan, thank you very much. So an authority site is a very special kind of website that you use to dominate either a specific vertical or a specific product. So it's a content marketing tool really, it allows you to come up quite high on Google searches because you packed this website with very, very tight content about this very specific subject. So Google assumes that it is an authority site, hence where the title comes from. Let me give you an example, I have a client who serves a specific vertical, I won't tell you what it is, a specific vertical with VoIP, it's a side venture for him away from his core MSP business and we've been talking recently about him creating an authority site, so he can do 20, 30, 40, 50 different articles and videos all about using phone systems, or people within this vertical using phone systems.

Paul Green: And yes, there'll be a certain amount of repetition in those articles, but the point being that when someone who's in that vertical goes to look for a new phone system and they type in phone systems or, hopefully, the vertical that they're in, and phone systems into Google, his site will come up fairly high up the search results. And now this is a separate website to his normal website. So he's got his selling website that talks about the specific phone systems, obviously it's 3CX that he's selling, and it talks about their expertise and that they're already in 300 odd businesses of this kind. But this is a separate site that aims to teach people, it sets itself up as the authority on that specific subject.

Paul Green: Now, obviously there is a call to action on that, it might be some kind of data capture or it might be something else, but very much this is about showing your expertise, you set yourself up as the authority in the area, which is absolutely beautiful to do something like that. Now, you could do this for your MSP. You could do it, as I say, if you're in a specific vertical or a niche, you could do it quite easily, you could set yourself up as the authority site on IT for your niche. Wouldn't work on a general basis, but it would in a niche. Or if you have a very specific technology stack, I mean, we're looking at cybersecurity right now, and we all can see that MSSPs is going to be the future, a managed security service provider.

Paul Green: Maybe now is the right time to look at that and say, "Well, what if we set up an authority site on cybersecurity?" In fact, that would work very, very well for a niche, cybersecurity authority site for specific vertical, you could dominate your vertical on this subject of cybersecurity. And in fact what might only be two or three months work now, could actually pay off for years and years in the future.

Voiceover: How to contribute to the show.

Paul Green: I'd love to hear your question or just generally your feedback about a podcast. You can only talk to me in that Facebook group that I was mentioning earlier, the MSP Marketing one, or you can just drop me an email, hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

Kevin Clune: It's really difficult to focus on growth, to do the creative side of it, and to really understand your customer's behaviour when you have all these technical issues and the day-to-day hanging over your head.

Paul Green: That's Kevin Clune, he's the author of a book called the MSP Growth Funnel. And on next week's show, he'll be talking about how to pick the right marketing strategy for your MSP. We're also going to be talking about how high-performers hire other high-performers and why you've got to watch out for B players, and we're going to be talking about the world's best recruitment advert for second and third line techs. See you next week.

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

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In this week's episode * Hopefully your MSP has been growing at a decent rate (current blip aside) and continues to be successful, but is it REALLY heading in the right direction? This week Paul lays out some of the best KPIs - Key Performance Indicators - that can provide you with the real answers * IT Business Growth Expert Richard Tubb joins Paul to explain how much your MSP would be worth if you sold it tomorrow * Also this week Paul looks at how to overcome objections at sales meetings. And answers a question for an MSP on whether or not to use Google adverts

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * In discussing the best KPIs, Paul mentioned his MSP Mastermind groups and a previous podcast episode featuring Joe Pannone from CW Dash * Credit to MSP Anthony Thackray from AGT Computer Services for the great question to close a sales meeting * Find out more the marketing content available from the MSP Marketing Edge * Paul's guest was The IT Business Growth Expert Richard Tubb (click here for his newsletter) talking about how to value your MSP * During the conversation, Paul mentioned a previous podcast guest Jonathan Jay, who explained how to grow via acquisition * Thank you to Steven Pretlove from CCS IT Solutions for the question about the best use of Google Ads * Here's the link to find the Google Ads course on udemy.com * The guest on April 14th will be BBC radio producer Tara Dolby talking about how to gain media exposure * You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK, the MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green: Do you know this podcast has gone so quickly? We've made it through to episode 21 and this is what's coming up in today's show.

Richard Tubb: How can they look at extracting themselves from the business so that business is actually worth more without them?

Paul Green: We're also going to be looking at how to overcome objections at sales meetings and answering a question for an MSP. Should you or should you not be doing Google adverts?

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green: One of the downsides of running your own business is that it's very easy to lose the bigger picture. You can have really, really busy days and weeks, but you can get to the end of them and sort of ask yourself, have we made any money this week? Are the clients happy this week? Are the staff happy this week? Are we doing better this week as a business than we were last week? And there comes a point in everyone's business ownership career where they look to put in place KPIs. They're a bit jargony KPIs but they stand for Key Performance Indicators, and you might choose to put them together in a dashboard or just in spreadsheet, or even just on a scrap of paper on your desk. You remember paper, don't you? So 2004 it really is, but the points of KPIs is that they give you a visual indicator of what's happening within the business, and therefore what the trends are in the business.

Paul Green: Cause you see KPIs aren't just about the snapshot of what's happening now. It's what's happening over a period of time. What's going up? What's improving? What's getting worse? What's going down? Which are the areas that you need to focus your valuable management attention on because you can't be on top of everything all of the time. So the KPIs, particularly when married up to a really visually easy to read dashboard, make it easy for you to know where you should be spending time, what's broken, what's soon going to be broken or what's just generally a bit lackluster right now.

Paul Green: Now I have had many conversations with my MSP master minders in the UK over a period of time about which KPIs that they should be tracking, and I've got a list here, two lists for you really. One of them is a list of tech KPIs and then the second one is a list of management KPIs.

Paul Green: Now, caveat to this, as I've said many times on this podcast, I'm not a technician, I love technology, but I'm not a technician so this tech one is not going to be a particularly exhaustive list, but it's certainly got things such as billable hours. How many hours are you billing out right now? SLAs? How close have you come to breaching SLAs? If you've got Service Level Agreements, you should certainly be tracking the number of tickets opened and the number of tickets closed, and also the average ticket length because the average ticket length is an indicator of quality, and also probably customer satisfaction, which is also one of the technology KPIs that you should be tracking. Now, there are lots of different ways to do these. If you've got a good PSA, then you should be able to extract this data out of them easily. A couple of weeks ago on the podcast I had on Joe Pannone from CW Dash, which is a free dashboard which links into ConnectWise and does exactly this.

Paul Green: It extracts that information out of ConnectWise and shows you a dashboard. You've got Bright Gauge, which of course is owned by ConnectWise now and there are various other dashboards that you can find. It's fairly easy to present the information if you can get the information out. Oh, but you've got to make sure the information is good quality as well because there is a phrase isn't there, which is crap in, crap out. So if you're going to be tracking things like billable hours, or tickets opened and close, you've got to make sure, in fact there's got to be a culture within the business of your technicians tracking data properly because if they're not tracking data properly, they're not billing the hours properly. If they're not managing the tickets properly, then you're going to get a skewed picture from your KPIs.

Paul Green: The customer satisfaction one by the way, there are things like customer thermometer that you can use to just get, if you like a thumbs up or a smiley face from your clients and some of the PSAs have their own versions of that is certainly worth just tracking to see, again, trending over time, how happy or unhappy are your clients, how's that changing over a period of time?

Paul Green: Then we get into the sort of the management ones. Now with the management ones, I'd be looking to track the number of new leads, new leads coming into the business. So a lead isn't necessarily a prospect, a lead like someone joining your email database, or maybe even connecting to you on LinkedIn. So how many leads are you generating and how many prospects are you generating? The prospect is where someone puts their hand up, where a lead puts their hand up and says, "Can we have a conversation please?" And you actually start talking to them about their specific circumstances. That's the difference between leads and prospects and you need to be tracking both because you might only get one or two new prospects a week, but you potentially could get 20, 30, 40, 50, maybe even 100 new leads a week. Next year should be looking at the number of new sales appointments, and not just the number of sales appointments because someone could have three sales appointments in the same week with the same prospects.

Paul Green: That doesn't really count, but what are the number of new ones that we're starting? What's our lead, to prospect, to appointment conversion rate? In the business that I sold, it was a marketing business I sold four years ago. We knew exactly what our conversion rate was from the number of new leads joining the database, to the number of sales meetings that we had, to the number of new clients. I can't remember what those are off the top of my head, but we worked that out over a number of years and they were fairly consistent figures. By tracking those figures every single week, we were able to see A, if the system was broken in some way because typically when the figures changed quite dramatically and quite suddenly it meant that someone somewhere was not following the system that was laid out, but also allowed us to know with confidence if we spend a thousand pounds on lead generation, we know exactly how much revenue, and therefore gross profit, and potentially net profit that can turn into.

Paul Green: So that's definitely something you'd want to track those conversion rates. Then you've got your sales conversion rates, which is all part of the same thing. You definitely want to track your monthly recurring revenue because that is the dream goal for every MSP is to grow the monthly recurring revenue. So track it. Let's see it in your dashboard. What about monthly recurring revenue per user per month? So this actually gives you a quality score across the whole business. If you're supporting, let's say a thousand users and you're generating, I don't know, 10,000 pounds worth of monthly recurring revenue, then that's 10 pounds MRR per user per month. And again, over a period of time that could become a KPI that you're focusing on. How do we grow a MRR, a monthly recurring revenue per user per month? And that's where you'd use things like the profit matrix to go out and sell more to your existing clients.

Paul Green: In fact, it will motivate you to do so because you will make more money this way, and you'll know from the figure that it's going up. You could measure an upselling rate again for each client, how much are you growing their business every year? Upselling isn't so much about hardcore selling, it's about finding opportunities, finding things that your clients might want or need, or that might remove some fear for them, and just putting it in front of them in the right way. Some of them will go on to buy some of those things.

Paul Green: You should definitely be tracking your net profit percentage. So net profit is the bottom line of the accounts. It's the money that's yours, it goes to the owners, you just have to pay the tax on it sure. But one of the main goals of the business is to generate enough net profit to keep your interest over a long period of time. All of us have run businesses that don't make money and it's not fun. It's not fun doing that at all. So you should be absolutely tracking your net profit percentage. The percentage again is a quality score and what's happening to that month by month, year by year.

Paul Green: Then the final one, I think you should be tracking is staff satisfaction. Now there are lots of different ways of measuring staff satisfaction. You just have a good Google search to figure that out, but you might get them to put scores together in appraisals, or in reviews, or something like that. The more you can track how satisfied your staff are, the earlier the warning signals will be when things are going wrong because you will have key members of your team that you would be gutted if they left. You maybe have other members of the team you're not so bothered about, but if you're tracking whether it's individual, or whether it's team, staff satisfaction, it gives you an indicator of, "How am I doing as a boss? How are we doing as a business making this a great place to work?"

Paul Green: As I said, this is not an exhaustive list, but certainly if I owned an MSP, these are some of the KPIs that I would be tracking.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: We don't talk a lot about actual sales meetings on this podcast because my experience with most MSPs is that once you've got the sales meeting, you go and do your magic. Most MSP owners are pretty good at selling because they talk with passion, and with vigour, and with interest about how technology can solve their potential client's problems, but it is worth I think just having a look at objections. Objections at sales meetings are, I believe, the prospect telling you they haven't yet got all of the information that they need to make a decision, be that cognitive information or emotional information.

Paul Green: Because of course, most of the people that you're meeting are making the decision emotionally. They're making the decision with their heart, and then they're rubber stamping it with their brain. So with objections, I always think there's a four step process that you can use to overcome objections. The first of them is to listen fully to that objection. You've got to ask them, because the temptation is to jump in. Someone says, "Oh, but what about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah," and the temptation is to jump in and just try and kill it dead and answer it. Actually what I think you should do is you should take time to listen to the objection properly. You should explore the objection. You should ask questions, what, how questions, not why questions, because why questions can come across as defensive, but "What does that look like? How do you think that would affect the business? What is it about that that concerns you?" Those kinds of things.

Paul Green: You need to make sure that you understand the objection completely, and that's about exploring it properly with them. It's about asking them for examples. Most objections come out of previous experiences or lack of experience. So you've got to quite understand, "Is this because of something that's happened to them in the past, or is this because they haven't got something to compare this against?" And only after you've uncovered all of those objections, can you respond properly. Then you have to look at the objections and respond to the biggest things first. Resolving objections and responding properly isn't about being defensive. It isn't about just being dismissive. If they've got an objection, it's a real thing to them. To you, it might be nothing because you know it's not a big deal at all, but to them it's big and it's everything.

Paul Green: So you've got to throw out the evidence. You've got to give them the emotional evidence that they need, that this is not a problem. You've got to back that up with some cognitive evidence. You mustn't be swayed by the fact you know it's not a big deal, because if it's a big deal for them, it could potentially kill your sale. By the way, you've got to do all this without talking for 20 minutes because long winded responses just seem really insincere, and then once you've done that, I think you've got to confirm that you satisfy their objections. So that's about testing it, it's about asking them, "What do you believe about that? How do you feel about that? What do you think should happen from there?" Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Paul Green: Now I have to give a shout out to one of the MSPs that I know Anthony Thackray who came up with an amazing question to pull up all the objections in a meeting. It's something that you use towards the backend of the sales meeting when you believe that the client is on board, and this is the question, "What's standing in the way of us being your IT partner?" Let me say that again because it is a great one. "What's standing in the way of us being your IT partner?" That I believe, is the ultimate objection identifying question, "What's standing in the way of us being your IT partner?" Because they have to put on the table everything that potentially bothers them about working with you. Why don't you try it at the next sales meeting you do?

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green: Far too many MSPs really struggle with their marketing, which is crazy because there's so much help out there to help you with your marketing. Now, one of the big challenges is to build a relationship with prospects before the point that they are ready to have a serious conversation with you about switching from their incumbent to you.

Paul Green: This is where my service, the MSP Marketing Edge comes in, because what we do is we'd give you a whole bunch of stuff, marketing content that you can use on all of your marketing channels. So basically you don't have to write it, you don't have to think of it, you don't have to create it and you can use it. Now, only one MSP per area can use this. So as you can see, there's no clash. It's not that two or three MSPs will use it, no one in competition with you, will use it as long as they're in your area. So we're talking every single month you get a brand new guide, you get a video, you get some social media content, you get promotional emails, you get press release, you get a sales letter. There's a whole bunch of premium stuff in there as well. There's a "Have I been poned," plugin you can put on your website, there's a book that you can brand up as your own. We're adding a whole series of other things as we come into the spring and the summer to make that even more valuable, but we're not putting the price up.

Paul Green: So it's called the MSP Marketing Edge, and the very first thing to do is to go onto the website and check to see if your area is still available. So if you go into MSPmarketingedge.com and there's a UK site, and a US site, so you pick the site. Now in the UK, you then go in and put in your postcode and it'll tell you whether or not your area is available. In the States, same thing it's just it's your zip code, and it'll tell you if your area is available, and then we offer a trial from there.

Paul Green: So your first month in the UK costs you one pound plus VAT. In the States, it costs you absolutely nothing. Of course, you have to lodge your payment details, and if after the month you haven't cancelled, of course it will turn into a paid subscription, but it's not a huge amount of money. In the UK, it's 99 pounds plus VAT per month. And in the States it's just $129 per month. So we've deliberately made this very low cost, very easy, and it's all about you being able to do something and get your marketing done every month without a great deal of hustle. So go and have a look. MSPmarketingedge.com.

Voiceover: The big interview.

Richard Tubb: Hi, my name's Richard Tubb and I help the owners of IT businesses to free up their time, concentrate on what's important and essentially to make more money.

Paul Green: Who doesn't want a piece of that, that's for sure.

Paul Green: So a few weeks ago we had on the podcast a guy called Jonathan Jay, who's a good friend of mine, and he talked about growing your business through acquisition, and how you can grow so much faster just by buying someone else's business than trying to organically grow your own. And it's led on to a number of questions, Richard, which I can't answer, and I think you're the man that can answer those. Essentially, how do you value an MSP business? So is it done through multiples of EBITDAR? And if you could explain what EBITDAR is, that would be great. Or is it done through something to do with recurring revenue?

Richard Tubb: Sure, okay. So when it comes to valuing a MSP business in the UK, as it stands today, I'm afraid I'm not going to make myself very popular here Paul. But the reality is that you are typically looking around one times recurring revenue as the valuation. So to give an example, if you've got an MSP business and you are doing 500K a year, and the majority of that is recurring revenue, your business is roughly going to be valued at 500K there and thereabouts. Now before, I can almost hear your listeners jumping out of their seats and ready to throttle me around the throat and saying, "Well I've spoken to my accountant and my accountant says I can get between three and a half, and five times revenue," or any other fancy calculation. If you can get that valuation for your business, good luck to you I say.

Richard Tubb: I'm not dismissing the fact that some people might be able to get out there in exceptional circumstances, but every single one of the merger acquisitions that I've been a part of over the past few years in the UK, it is all boiled down to the buyer will be prepared to pay around one times the recurring revenue over an annual basis.

Richard Tubb: So that is, we can talk about EBITDAR and all of those things Paul, but when it comes down to it, real world valuation one times recurring revenue annually.

Paul Green: So that's really interesting to hear, because I've sold a business and I got three times EBITDAR. I know you sold an MSP business, so it's obviously, which is a different thing, and you mentioned about the accountant and what's the first thing we do, isn't it? When we're going to sell our business, we ring up our accountant, and we say, "Hey, what's my business worth?" And we always think the accountants are experts at this, but sometimes the accountants are making it up to a certain extent. When I say making it up, I mean they're just falling back on standard valuation. So it's really interesting to hear from you that one times recurring revenue is considered the fee.

Richard Tubb: Yeah, and I would say in, in the accountants defence, and you've already sort of spelled out a little bit there, they go with what they know and the vast, vast majority of accountants are not used to valuing IT businesses. Or indeed I should say service businesses, they tend to value retail businesses, and other things like that. So I'm not saying that what they're telling you is wrong, but for the IT industry, what I see out there in the real world is that buyers are only prepared to pay one times recurring revenue. But again, going back to what I said earlier, if you can find a buyer who is, if you've got a unique business and the buyer is prepared to pay more, more power to you, go for it.

Richard Tubb: But the reason I say I suspect many of your listeners will jump out the chair, or would be ready to throttle me is that it's a bit heartbreaking, isn't it, Paul? When you've built up the business, and then the reality is it isn't going to be worth millions and it isn't going to be your meal ticket out of there. That's the reality of the situation that we live in unfortunately. I'm happy to get feedback from your listeners, see if anybody absolutely disagrees with me, but that's the deals that I'm seeing out there in the UK.

Paul Green: Well as you and I have said before, when we've met up or when we've chatted because I don't think we've actually physically met.

Richard Tubb: I don't think we have Paul.

Paul Green: I don't think we have.

Richard Tubb: You're a mate and we talk about Doctor Who all the time, we've never met.

Paul Green: As we've we've said before on calls and stuff. The business is, you can say it's worth one times recurring revenue, but as you've just alluded to there it's worth what the buyer will spend on it. When I sold my marketing business back in 2016, that was one of the first things that my broker said to me, which is, "Well look, this is what we think it's worth. This is the range we think we can get for it, but ultimately if the only person that offers you money, will pay half that, that's what the business is worth. That's what the market has decided the business is worth." You must know quite a few people who've either bought businesses or sold businesses, and do you find that quite often it is a surprising figure that they either receive or that they end up paying for that business?

Richard Tubb: It is, and it can be, not to be negative about this Paul, because I've known lots of small MSPs that have sold their business and been very happy with what they've got. It can be life changing, some money for them, but it's always the case that it's never a ridiculous sum of money. And we're not talking Google, we're not talking Facebook here with absolutely billions and multiple times revenue and things like that. It just doesn't seem to work that way. The business is worth what somebody in the market will pay for it, what a buyer will pay for it.

Richard Tubb: I should actually go on and say that I've seen lots of deals done at the small end of the market, and when I talk about the small ends of the market, I'm talking about sort of a below 5 million turnover where the business owner is inextricably linked with the business, which is a challenge. So if the business can't run without the business owner, if the business owner is either a single point of failure within that business, or is linked to some processes or the relationships linked to the business owner, that becomes a challenge in itself because essentially buyers want to buy your client book, your intellectual property, and they're not really looking to bring on the existing business owner within the business.

Richard Tubb: So that might be another challenge for listeners of your podcast, how can they look at extracting themselves from the business so the business is actually worth more without them?

Paul Green: That's a really interesting point. Before I ask my final question, Richard, I did promise at the beginning of the interview would explain what EBITDAR was. Can you hear the thuds of people's bodies falling to the ground as we do in accounting terms?

Paul Green: So EBITDAR stands for earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortisation and put it into the way determined accountants used for normalised net profit. So you take whatever net profit you've got now and you bought a television last year which accidentally ended up in your house rather than in your business, but that was a thousand pounds or $1,000 or whatsoever. Well that would go back on your net profit because it's a one off cost.

Paul Green: So training, flying across the world to go to conferences, all of those things are considered one off costs and go back on. In the scenario you just talked about there Richard, where the business owner is inextricably linked with the business, that money would come off the net profit because if to replace you as the business owner would cost me let's say 40,000 pounds or $40,000 a year, then that would come off the net profit. And EBITDAR is a figure which is normally argued between accountants. I think when selling an IT business, if they're valued at one times recurring revenue, it's almost an irrelevant figure.

Richard Tubb: If any of your listeners are thinking and saying, "I've heard of EBITDAR, but I don't really know what it is," and you've just given a fantastic explanation. Well, I should say to your listeners, you're not alone because I don't fully understand the ins and out of it, and I built and sold an MSP business.

Richard Tubb: What I would say is when it reached a point where we did start to go into the nitty gritty of the thickest and that I reached out to an external consultant who helped me to understand these things, and helped me organise the books in the way that a buyer would want to see them. So we as MSPs are very used to talking to our clients about outsourcing the things that they're not good at, or they don't want to do. When it comes to selling a business or even valuing a business, I would argue that we need to take our own advice. We need to step out and reach out to somebody who has got experience in valuing IT businesses that may not be your accountants, and who can explain here's the things you need to do to put your business into a sellable state.

Richard Tubb: I can tell you from experience, you've got a figure in your head of what your business is worth. I have probably just rained on your parade, I'm talking about the one times recurring revenue, but when you actually speak to a buyer, prepare for it to get much, much more aggressive because the potential buyer will pull any and everything out that they think can devalue the business, because they want to pay as little as possible. So my advice for listeners would be reach out. Seek somebody who's got experience with helping put your business into a sellable state for all of the reasons that we've just talked about. Get external help for it because it really is money well spent.

Paul Green: What should we be doing to make the business worth more? So obviously adding in more monthly recurring revenue, but you've been there, you've hired a consultant. What would you do to that business to make it worth more when it came to exit?

Richard Tubb: Well, I'll bring out one of the ones that I get asked about all the time and that's, "Is a business worth more if it's got longterm contracts?" I would say the rational way of explaining is yes, if you've got longterm contracts with clients, it's worth more. However, I am the exception to the rule, my MSP business only had 30 day contracts. We actually used it as a selling point when we said we lived or died by the service that we provided to customers, and I managed to sell my business and so that's the exception to the rule there. But for the most part, I think buyers are looking for sort of 12 month plus contracts there. The other big thing that I would say is, I've just mentioned intellectual property, which it's one of those words is a little bit like EBITDAR people throw it around, but not really sure what it means.

Richard Tubb: Well, intellectual property for MSPs is the systems, the processes, and the documentation of your business. If you want to be extracted from your business, if you were to get rid of all of the staff within your business and to bring in other people to run that business, are there the instructions, are there the standard operating procedures, are there the checklists, are there the documentation for the client sites to enable somebody with the necessary technical skills to step in and to run your business? That's what's valuable about your business, because I've seen lots of MSPs who have gone through mergers, and I'm doing the quote signs above my head while saying that, it's typically where a bigger business buys a smaller business and merges them in.

Richard Tubb: The biggest challenge with those types of mergers is the two cultures coming together because businesses do things in different ways, and so most of those mergers at the small range of the market I've seen have turned into an absolute nightmare for the buyer, because the other business doesn't tend to have standard operating procedures, checklists, and documentation. They just do things the way they've always done them, and that's very difficult to scale. That's very difficult to hand off to other people. So in answer to your question, how can you increase the value of the business? Contracts certainly, but intellectual property, documentation, processes, checklists, talking yourself out of the business, essentially, that's what's going to increase the value of your business to a potential buyer.

Paul Green: Which ironically is also a way to give yourself a business that gives you a better lifestyle, and requires less of your time to run it. It's amazing that the two outcomes are completely different and yet the process to get there is exactly the same.

Richard Tubb: I had no intentions of selling my MSP business, and then a life event happens to me, I don't mind sharing with you, but it was actually my dad passed away. He was a ripe old age, he was 82 years of age, but it was one of those life events that happens, Paul, that causes you to take stock and say, "What do I want to be when I grow up? What do I want to do with my life?" And after his funeral, suddenly everything changed for me. But the interesting thing was I built a business that was scalable. I built a business that could run without me and so I was in a position to make the sale of the business fairly quickly. So even if you're not thinking about selling the business, or you think I'm going to do this till the day I retire, there is no downside whatsoever from building that intellectual property, from getting your business into a space where it can run without you, because it gives you options. And that's certainly the case for me.

Paul Green: Richard, what's the best way for us to find out more about you and get in touch with you?

Richard Tubb: The best way to stay in touch with what I do is to grab my weekly MSP insights email. So if you go to Tubblog.co.uk/NL for newsletter, you can sign up there and all of my contact details are on the website as well.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast, ask Paul anything.

Steve: My name is Steve from CCS IT. Should I be doing ads on Google?

Paul Green: Great question, Steve, thank you. And actually surprisingly hard one to answer because if you'd asked me that question 10 years ago, let's say back in 2010, the answer would have been, "Absolutely you've got to," because that's where the easy traffic is. That's where the easy money is to be paid. But here now in 2020 things are not quite as clear cut as that, because you can make money and quite good money off Google ads, but it's certainly not as easy or as profitable as it used to be. Let me explain some context. If you go back 25 years, back to 1995, which makes me feel old and you think about marketing back then it was very wasteful. You had to spend a lot of money without really knowing what was working.

Paul Green: Then Google came along and it was the first en masse search engine, and it was the first one to introduce en masse, the technology of matching up people who had something to sell to people who wanted to buy that thing. That's what Google ads is, and it only came around about 1999 and back then you were paying a penny per click, one or two Pence per click. The cost per click was absolutely tiny, and then what happened is the cost per click started to go up, and Google started to make a series of changes, and we get to today where the ads look pretty much exactly the same as organic listings. Apart from a tiny little green thing that says ad, which most people don't see. The ads get a huge amount of clicks because they are dominant, especially on mobile phones.

Paul Green: They dominate the real estate of the screen and there are fewer ads than they've ever been. Do you remember when there used to be like four or five at the top and then others down the side and others at the bottom, all of that's gone now. We've just got the ones up at the top and the cost per click is huge. In some areas you can be paying 30, 40, 50 pounds or dollars per click, and so your cash cost of using Google ads is fairly high. Saying that however, the concept still stands that Google is putting you in front of people who are looking for someone like you. I think if you are going to use Google AdWords to try to find MSP clients, it's probably a no, which is a very strange thing for me to say because actually an MSP client can be worth 10, 20,000 pounds or dollars a year.

Paul Green: Let's say you have to pay 500 pounds to win a $10,000 client, that's a great return on investment and everyone would do that every day. But here's the thing, to get someone as an MSP client, I believe you have to build a relationship with them first. We all know that when someone switches MSPs, there's a huge amount of fear involved because the risk is that you destroy their business, that you get their technology wrong, and that's why they have to have a relationship with you before they're willing to switch.

Paul Green: I don't think you can build that relationship off traffic from Google. So I think if you're going to do Google ads, what you should be doing is focusing on the people who've got an immediate need and problem now, and that could be please help us for this, but it could be a laptop repair, or it could be a printer problem. Or it could be some kind of technology problem that they need some help with now. I think if you can get those people and get them to make some kind of commitment to use you for a repair or a fix, and then use that not for that ad revenue because no one wants that ad revenue, but use it as a lead generation tool as a relationship starter, then that can lead to you then going and having proper conversations with these prospects, with these new clients, sitting down, maybe even doing audits with them and ultimately looking at switching them over to MSP.

Paul Green: I've got about two maybe three clients that are using Google ads, and they're happy enough that they stick with it week in, week out. There are a couple of other people I'm aware of in my MSP marketing Facebook group who again are spending money on Google ads. There's a figure, they reckon in all the clicks spend, it was costing them three grand to get a client, but the clients were coming in at 10,000 pounds a year or whatever those figures were. So again, there's a good return on investment, particularly since you do keep clients for years and years and years.

Paul Green: My most successful client in terms of Google ads put himself through a Udemy course, that's Udemy.com. It's a training course, it was a 25 hour course. If you type Google ads into Udemy, it's the one that comes up at the top. It's 25 hours. Just make sure you pay no more than about $30 for it because the price does vary depending on which browser you go in, and how often you visit Udemy. But he put himself through that course and he optimised his Google ads account in ways that even, I have no idea. Some of the things that he was doing is fairly impressive what he's done. So I think if you're going to do something like that, you either get an expert to do it for you or you do that yourself. You train yourself and you teach yourself the best way to do it, but ultimately you've got to have that mindset of, "It's going to cost me a couple of thousand pounds or dollars to get a new client, and that might just be for a piece of one off work. That's only the start of it. I've then got to do the hard relationship building."

Paul Green: Not as easy as it was 10 years ago and certainly not easy now, but it is potentially something to throw into your marketing arsenal.

Voiceover: How to contribute to the show.

Paul Green: Good or bad, I'd love to know what you think of the show. Why don't you drop me an email? It's hello@PaulgreensMSPmarketing.com or why not come and join me in my Facebook group. Just go into your Facebook app, type in MSP marketing up at the top. Go into groups and I'll see you there.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

Tara Dolby: We often get contacted by people completely out of the blue. Sometimes when you talk to them, it's a case of you've never listened to what we do.

Paul Green: That's Tara Dolby. She works for the BBC here in the UK as a producer, and she'll be telling you next week how to get the media interested in featuring your MSP in stories on radio and in newspapers. We're also going to be looking at something called Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It explains how the business suffers when you're tired and grumpy. We're going to be answering your question from an MSP about a wonderful marketing concept called authority sites. I'll explain exactly what those are and everything else in next week's show.

Voiceover: Made in the UK, the MSPs around the world Paul Greens MSP Marketing podcast.

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In this week's episode * It's devastating for any business to suffer an IT security breach, but when it happens to an MSP it could mean 'game over'. Following a huge story in the channel about the foiled hacking of an MSP, Paul explains how talking about your security measures could improve relationships with clients and prospects alike * Also this week, and on the subject of security, how a simple phishing test could lead to increased monthly recurring revenue * There's also a fascinating conversation with a special guest about how to see IT buying from a client's point of view. And a great listener question on how to build trust with prospects

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Read the article from CRN about the three vendors that foiled the hacking of an MSP * While talking about security training, Paul mentioned Knowbe4 and also the phishing test from Phishing Box * Order your free copy of Paul's book Updating Servers Doesn't Grow Your Business * Paul's guest was Tracy Pound from Maximity talking about the best way to converse with prospects * Thank you to Raffi Jamgotchian from Triada Networks for the question about how to build loyalty with prospects * The guest on April 7th will be the IT Business Growth Expert Richard Tubb (find out more here) talking about how to value your MSP * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green: Hello and welcome to episode 20. Here's what's coming up in this week's show.

Tracy Pound: We can't bandy around those types of terms, not knowing whether or not the receiver of our message really understands what it is that we're trying to say.

Paul Green: We're also going to be talking about a great tool that will help your clients and prospects to self-identify if they need phishing training, and we've got a question from an MSP about how to build trust with prospects.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green: I think one of the scariest things you can talk to any MSP about is the prospect of you being hacked. I mean could you just imagine how business ending it would be if you got hacked and through you, the hackers accessed your clients? There's virtually no way back from that. I'm looking at an article on crn.com back from February and the headline is, "I'm Selling Access To An MSP: How Three Vendors Teamed To Foil Hacking Plot." Now, you've probably heard about this. It's how Datto, Huntress Labs and ConnectWise found an MSPs access credentials up for sale on the dark web, and they work together to find the suspect. The suspect was arrested, which is absolutely great. But maybe it's the thing that keeps you up at night.

Paul Green: I had this discussion a few weeks ago with my MSP Masterminders. These are small groups of noncompeting MSPs. We meet in the UK and we meet once a month, We sit around a table and we talk about everything that grows the business, and we talk about things that get in the way of growing the business. The fear of being hacked is such a huge one that we came up with a bit of a mini list of things that you could do to secure your RMM, for example. So simple things like enabling multifactor authentication and of course, making sure that that MFA is not email based and of course, it's not text-based, because of course, SIM jacking is very much a thing.

Paul Green: We talked about things like removing the ability for someone to click on "I forgot my password," because if they've breached one of your staff's email accounts and someone could go and click on, "I forgot my password" and reset the password link. We discussed that instead, having a couple of admins with the ability to manually reset passwords when required would be a better thing. We discussed removing things like "trust this device" capabilities. Even me, a layman who's not a tech has looked at ... I think it's Xero, the accounting software system, is do you want to trust this device for 14 days? Even I'm thinking no, because what if I lose the laptop? Whereas if I have to generate a code every single time I log in, that seems safer.

Paul Green: We talked about forcing stricter password requirements even on your staff using random password generators. Of course, using passwords management tools, at least minimum 12 character mixed passwords, or using pass phrases or sentences. Some of the other more technical things that my Masterminders discussed were setting IP restrictions for host access and admin, which apparently, is done through the admin console. You still have to be careful if get locked out of your RMM on that. But the point being that there's lots of things that you can do within your business. Actually, all of those things that we've just been talking about there, aren't they the things that you would want your clients to do?

Paul Green: There is a concept and you'll have heard it, it comes out of Apple, but when Steve Jobs was running it the second time round, which is do you drink your own Kool-Aid? The goal with the first iPhone and with the iPods and with the Macs was that those computers and those phones have to be good enough that Apple could use them every single day as their main devices. You think about 15 years ago, they wouldn't have actually used their own devices because they just weren't good enough. So do you drink your own data security Kool-Aid? Have you got multifactor authentication everywhere, proper MFA? Do you remove the, "forget my password" and "trust this device" capabilities? You recommend it to your clients. Okay, some of them ignore it, but are you doing it within your own business?

Paul Green: I would say, as a series of basic things that you should do, you should just do those things. In fact, you should be telling your clients that you've done those things, and you should be recommending it as your standard best practice data security checklist. Maybe even you'd put one together and you'd say to your clients, "Look, we've got this basic checklist for data security. This is what we do. We run through this with every single one of our devices, every single one of our staff. We highly recommend you do the same." Because when someone sees their supplier, their trusted partner doing something, and it's the same things that they recommend that they do for them so that the seller, the vendor is doing the same things as the client is, that engenders a huge amount of trust and an enormous amount of goodwill. So this isn't just good for security, this is actually good for marketing and sales as well.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: They're on the same vein. I'm sure you've recommended to many of your clients that they have phishing training whether you buy and resell the one that's bundled into ID Agent or Continuum, or of course, there's KnowBe4. There's loads of phishing training out there, so you don't have to physically go on site and do it. But of course clients go, "Nah, we don't need that. We wouldn't make that mistake." Well now, there's a tool that you can use. In fact, you can embed it into your website to show them whether or not they actually need to do some phishing training. It's a website we found called PhishingBox.com, and if you go to phishingbox.com/phishing-iq-test ... We'll put that URL into the show notes on my website.

Paul Green: I'm just on that website now and I'm looking at it. It says, "Is the image below of a real email or a phishing email?" It says it's from QuickBooks. I'm just looking at the domain name, donotreply@quickbooks.com, and it's about recent changes to your credit card. Yeah, that looks all right, so I'm going to mark that as a real email. The next one we've got is the image below of a real email or a phishing email, and we've got the same one here. This one says it's from Wells Fargo, but it's got a ... ah, it's got a secure mail attachment, but the word attachment that's been spelled wrong. So I'm going to mark that as a phishing email. I'm 20% completed, so it looks like there are 10 questions in this. It's quite clever because it's making me have a look at it. So this next one from the email address, noreply@dropboxteam.com, so I'm going to say that that's a phishing email. Be really interesting to see what score I get out of this.

Paul Green: Anyway, this is a service that you can buy from PhishingBox. I believe that you can embed it into your website. I'm just having a look on the pricing. For a single company, it's not a huge amount of money, so clearly you can sell this training. But the fact that you can embed that test into your website and actually use that as a way to show your clients, "You're not as good at phishing as you think you are." So often its the person at the top who tends to be a little bit more rubbish at phishing than some of the staff, but certainly a tool like this is a good way for them just to see how good or bad they are as an organisation, which is going to help you to actually sell some phishing training.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green: Surprisingly this week, my blessing plug isn't going to cost you any money because it's something that I would like to give to you. You see a couple of years ago, I wrote a book. It's called Updating Servers Doesn't Grow Your Business. As the title suggests, it's about the need to work on the business rather than in the business. In fact, it contains within a whole series of suggestions, a whole bunch of advice, a whole load of marketing ideas for you to grow your MSP. Now, this is a physical print book. I had 5,000 printed in the UK, and we've given away around about 1,800 of those so far.

Paul Green: The big news is we've just had some printed in the United States as well, because we all know that no one ever really reads PDFs. They just sit on laptops. We've been sending PDFs to the States for the last year, and now we've actually got physical print copies that have been printed somewhere just outside of New York City, and we are posting those around the US as well. So if you want to just go onto my website, you go onto paulgreensmspmarketing.com and right there on the homepage, there are details of how you can get a free copy of my book, Updating Servers Doesn't Grow Your Business. Go on, go and get your free copy now.

Voiceover: The big interview.

Tracy Pound: Hi, I'm Tracy Pound, and I run a business and own a business called MaximITy, which is all services around IT and technology, but my background is I've been in the IT industry for 35 years. I sit on the board of directors for CompTIA worldwide, and I'm also part of the CompTIA Executive Council here in the UK. So I do a lot of work in and around the channel as well as with end users.

Paul Green: I want to talk to you today Tracy, about how difficult it is for most MSPs to look at their business from the decision makers point of view. Yet that's a critical skill that we have to develop, isn't it?

Tracy Pound: It is, absolutely. I think, in today's world, end users and decision makers are much more informed about technology than they ever have been in the past, they want to know that their suppliers and the people that they work with understand their business. Not just the technology that supports it, but understand their business and their industry. That's quite a hard thing to do for managed service providers because they'll be looking after lots of different organisations and lots of different industries. So they're going to have to become more chameleon-like, for want of a better phrase, in being able to use other industries' language and terminology and really understand what technology means for the end user business.

Paul Green: But doing this in a way where you're not using jargon. I mean we know that even the word "the cloud" is jargon to people outside of our world, because the cloud can mean lots and lots of different things to them. What are some of the things that you see MSPs doing which almost moves them further away from a sale rather than moving them closer?

Tracy Pound: That's a really good question. Still talking about technology is really disengaging from an end user's perspective. They don't want to know that they need a such and such router or they need this speed of broadband. What they want to know is that they've got continuous protected connection to the internet, and they want that in their own words, so that it means something to them within their business. So you cannot use jargon in any way, shape or form. As you said, people talk about the cloud.

Tracy Pound: People outside of the IT industry have a different perception of what the cloud is. Some people understand it, some people don't, but we can't bandy around those types of terms not knowing whether or not the receiver of our message really understands what it is that we're trying to say. What are the pain points in the end user's business and addressing those pain points. So people want to feel secure, they want peace of mind, they want to know that the technology that they are investing in is actually going to help move their business forward, or it's going to help them avoid a painful situation. So you need to talk about what that pain is, not what the technology is that sits behind it.

Paul Green: What's the most effective way to gain access to their pain points? How do you understand their business when, as you say, there are hundreds, thousands of different types of businesses out there?

Tracy Pound: There are. I mean there is some generic classing that apply across all businesses. So all businesses have to sell, they need to market. They either have products or services. They'll have internal admin. They'll buy stuff and they'll need to account for it. So understanding the basic principles of how businesses work gives you that common ground, but it's having conversations that assist at that business level that are more strategic, so being able to talk to somebody who runs finance. It could be the owner manager, it could be a finance manager, it could be somebody who isn't from the industry that their business is from, but being able to talk on common terms. So talking about profit and loss, talking about balance sheets. I know that can sound a little bit off putting because then an MSP might think, well what do I know about that?

Tracy Pound: But as a business, the MSP also needs to understand their balance sheet and their profit and loss and financials and how they work. So it's finding opportunities to share that common ground, but being inquisitive. A lot of people I know who are in tech, they like to learn. So being able to learn about another industry is as fulfilling as learning about the technology that can be supplied into that industry as well. MSPs, they have help desk staff, they have engineers who might go out on site. They are great salespeople because they're not seen as a sales person. So they're not seen as threatening, which means that people will talk to them about what those pain points are, what's going wrong. If you can teach your staff to listen out for warning bells that somebody might be struggling because they're not using technology properly, they are great leads then.

Paul Green: So how would you train your staff to look for those, bearing in mind that your staff are technical and are inclined to talk about things from a technical point of view? What's the most effective training that you've come across?

Tracy Pound: Anything to do with customer experience. I'd have to say 2020 seems set to be the year of customer experience, and there is a lot of training that's been developed around that, so a lot of vendors will run training programs around how to improve customer experience. Distribution is changing and a lot of distributors are now adding the soft skills to their training programs. It's not just about the product, but it's also about how you deliver a good service. So I'd start with vendors, I'd start with distribution and Google, good old Google. There is so much information, there's a wealth of knowledge about what represents good customer experience, what doesn't for people to learn from and apply that within their business. So I'd have a culture of customer experience within an MSP practice too. It's not just doing it because somebody said it's the right thing to do, or because it's the current vogue. It's doing it because actually as a business, you want to give a good customer experience. You want your end users to be sticky and to recommend you to other clients.

Paul Green: Tracy, thank you. What's the best way for us to learn a little bit more about you and get in touch?

Tracy Pound: LinkedIn is probably the best first point of call. You can look me up, Tracy Pound on LinkedIn or my website, which is maximity.co.uk. That's M-A-X-I-M-I-T-Y.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. Ask Paul anything.

Raffi Jamgotchian: Hi, this is Raffi Jamgotchian from Triada Networks. How do you build trust with prospects?

Paul Green: Oh, that really is a great question. Thank you very much, Raffi. It is so important to build that trust with prospects, because the sales cycle is very long one for MSPs, and prospects come into it's almost as suspects. They're suspicious because technology is a massive thing to them. They don't understand it. They don't really like the idea of being so reliant on technology, but they are, and they know that choosing the wrong MSP could utterly devastate their business. For that reason, the better the relationship you have with them, the more likely you are to sell to them.

Paul Green: I believe there are two distinct phases of someone being a prospect and two distinct ways to build relationships with them. The first distinct phase is before they've made that decision that it is time to switch from one MSP to another one. At this stage, there may be some level of dissatisfaction. There may be doubts in their mind, but they're not yet at that point that we're going to take action, but this is the point at which you want to get to know someone. This is the point you want to get them to join your audiences. That's to join you on LinkedIn, be connected to you there, to be connected to you on Facebook maybe, to join your email list.

Paul Green: If you go back over previous editions of this podcast, we talk about all these things and how to grow these audiences. This is the point to do more and more content marketing, so to put more of your stuff in front of them. That's daily posts on LinkedIn. Thought leadership is a great thing, you taking technology and translating it for them. It's about more articles onto your blog. It's about videos on your Facebook. It's about sending out a weekly or even twice weekly email to your email list. Because all of this stuff is what builds a relationship with prospects before the point at which they're ready to have a conversation with you. In fact, we call this one to many because it's you or someone on your behalf doing all of this stuff and you can send it out to potentially thousands of people using the tools like your CRM and LinkedIn and scheduling stuff with Hootsuite and things like that.

Paul Green: So it's one to many at this stage, and you won't need thousands in your prospect list. For most MSPs, just having 500 prospects at that content marketing stage is enough, but then it changes. The point at which you actually start a conversation with someone and they have entered the phase of looking for an alternative supplier, the relationship needs to change, because now you can't do one to many. Now, you need to do one on one. This is where things like impact boxes, which we talked about in the podcast a few weeks ago, which is a box of physical stuff, that's a great way to build a relationship with someone. Sending them stuff by direct mail is great. Literally right down to printing off an article that you've seen on the web that you think would be of interest to them because it's relevant to them in their situation and posting it to them. Yes, I know you could email it to them, but posting it to them will have a greater impact.

Paul Green: Of course, there is the person relationship as well. There's sitting, meeting with them, having conversations, talking about their business. You should be talking more about their business than your business. It's building that relationship. The key thing to remember is that people buy from people, and before they're ready to actually start to make that buying decision, it's okay to hide behind email platforms and social media platforms and all that kind of stuff. But at that point they're looking to do the switch, that's when you've got to roll out the people. It's got to be senior people. They've got to be likeable, and you've got to give the prospect time. Some prospects make fast decisions, some of them make very slow decisions. One of my MSP Masterminders recently told me it took them 18 months to get through this stage with a client. 18 months to win one client because that was the speed the client was working at, but it was a big contract. They've won it for three years, and we all know they'll probably keep it for 10 years, so it is worth doing.

Paul Green: So essentially, the more relationship building activity you can do with your prospects, the closer they are to making a decision, the more likely that is to pay off. What's wonderful is if you've been in business for a few years already, you already do this. The challenges for you is to systemise this so as your business gets bigger, and even the point of which you personally stop doing all of this and you start hiring other people to do it for you, as a business, you carry on building relationships in this way. So it's not haphazard. It's not relying on people remembering to do stuff. It's a systemised process that builds relationships day in, day out without anyone having to worry whether or not it's happening.

Voiceover: How to contribute to the show.

Paul Green: I'd love to know what you thought about today's show. Why don't you drop me an email? It's hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

Richard Tubb: How can they look at extracting sales from the business so the business is actually worth more without them?

Paul Green: That's Richard Tubb. He's an IT growth expert, and he'll be here on next week's show to tell you exactly how much your MSP is worth if you were to put it up for sale tomorrow. We're also going to be talking about KPIs, key performance indicators. Which one should you be tracking to make sure your business grows? And we're going to be talking about overcoming objections at sales meetings. See you next week.

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

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In this week's episode * You could be getting the edge over your competitors by giving your clients something which will automatically market your MSP and also streamline in-bound service tickets - Paul explains more about physical Helpdesk Buttons * As your MSP grows and the temptation increases to financially reward your staff, Paul suggests this might not be the best use of your money * Also in this week's show, how re-selling websites can be an easier source of monthly recurring revenue. And Paul answers a question from an MSP about the best way to test a direct mail campaign

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * The brilliant solution for giving your clients physical helpdesk buttons is from helpdeskbuttons.com * Join Paul and over 600 MSPs in his Facebook group * James Lyon from mspwhitelabelwebsites.com was Paul's guest talking about selling white-label websites * Thank you to Andy Newbrook from Crusade Computers Solutions for the question about direct mail * The guest on March 31st will be Tracy Pound from Maximity talking about the best way to converse with prospects * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

Paul Green: Here's what's coming up in the show.

James Lyon: We're offering a refresh, completely free, which would encourage them to stay on board as well. It is very much about longterm revenue and that longterm profit generation as well.

Paul Green: We've also got a very clever idea for some physical help desk buttons that you can give to your clients. And we're going to answer a question from an MSP about whether or not he should test his marketing to a general audience or a very specific vertical.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

Paul Green: Have you ever had that thing when you've been out for lunch or dinner with some of your friends, but people who don't own their own business, people who are employees, wage slaves, and the bills come in and however much the bill is, you've just grabbed it and you've said, "I'll get this." And they've all looked at you with astonishment on their faces, because there's actually a couple of things happening in this situation.

Paul Green: The first thing is when you're grabbing it, you're fully intending to put that on your business aren't you? You're fully intending for the business to pay for it and essentially you're reducing your tax bill. Yay, you're generous to your friends and your tax bill goes down at the same time. That's a huge bonus. So that's the first thing and they don't realise that. They don't realise that we do that.

Paul Green: The second thing that's going off is you've looked at the bill, and however much it is, it hasn't seemed as much as it does seem to your wage slave friends and the reason for that is because as business owners, our relationship with money becomes skewed over time. I know back in my last business, where we were turning over somewhere between about 80 to 90 grand a month, which is a fair amount of money, that kind of money became normal to me because there's 80 to 90,000 pounds going in, there is whatever was going out at the time, which was certainly a lot less than 80 to 90 grand and you forget that 80 to 90 grand is a phenomenal, huge amount of money and I think the more successful you are as a business owner, the more skewed your relationship with money becomes.

Paul Green: Also, you and I have the ability to just take money out of our business at any point, if the cash is there, of course. And again, this completely skews our relationship with money. In fact, I think this is a good thing in a way because it makes us less dependent on one source of income. If you can just go and get $5, $10 $20,000 out of your business, or pounds, at any point, then that's a good thing. It's the whole point of us having the business is to have the freedom to do that, but again, it changes how we think about money.

Paul Green: Now, the reason I mentioned all of this is not really to do with you taking your friends out to lunch, it's more to do with how much you pay your team. So I've had a number of conversations with my MSP mastermind clients in recent months where they've been talking about how much they should be paying their employees.

Paul Green: Now, I'm not talking here about third line techs who, I don't know what it's like in the States, but certainly in the UK, third line techs command an absolute premium. They're rare, or the good ones who aren't strange are rare. When you get someone like that, it is very much worth paying extra for those people - A, to get them and B, to keep them. But for first line techs for example, or for admin staff or even for marketing people or for salespeople, where there are thousands and thousands of people that you could employ in those roles, I think you can overpay. Now, I'm a big fan of overpaying to keep the best people, but I believe when someone joins your business, you shouldn't be overpaying them at all.

Paul Green: And the problem is, here's us as the business owner taking out five, 10, 15 grand a month out of the business, whatever it is that we take, completely skewed relationship with money because we're used to handle handling big sums, completely generous because we're used to just picking up the lunch bill or taking our family out or removing cash out of the business, and we forget that our staff don't have that mindset. Their relationship with money is not skewed. They understand the value of money almost better than we do, and for that reason, we don't need to overpay them until they get to a point where they're so critical to the business that we want to reward them and give them more money for keeping them happy and also for retention.

Paul Green: So anytime you find yourself thinking, "Oh, I'll just give my team a bonus of a couple of thousand pounds each." Or whatever it is, and you're looking at the bottom line and you're looking at the cashflow impact, I think you need to just run it by ordinary people first. Maybe that's your other half. If your other half doesn't run a business, what do they think? Do they think it's an obscene amount of money that you're going to pay someone or that you're going to give away to someone? Don't forget to an employee earning, let's say £20,000 to £25,000 a year, £1000 for free is a stunning amount of money. That just doesn't happen, so you've got to use that weapon very powerfully and wield it only when it has maximum impact and don't forget that your relationship with money is completely skewed, but theirs isn't.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: First time I heard about this, I literally squealed because from a marketing point of view, it is just beautiful. What is it? It's physical help desk buttons that you give to your clients and they sit on their desks so they can press the button, physically with their finger, press a button when they need support from you.

Paul Green: Now there's a website, it's helpdeskbuttons.com and you can get these buttons branded up to your business. They're very, very clever. They look beautiful as well, they look quality. And it talks you through what happens when one of your users actually presses the button.

Paul Green: So, imagine you've got a user who's struggling with something. Their help desk button is a USB port which is plugged into their computer and they can plug other USBs into that button. They don't need to know your phone number, your email, they don't need to know the URL of your website, they don't need to know how to take a screenshot or anything like that. All they do is they use their finger to press the button, it's beautiful, and then it comes up with the little form on their computer and it talks them through basic questions.

Paul Green: So it asks them to describe the problem. It asks them to a tick box whether they want you to connect to the computer or whether they want you to call them. They can say how urgent it is. They can say whether it's affecting just them or whether it's affecting multiple people. It's very well thought through. And then the help desk button actually does an amount of diagnostic work for you. So it starts to build a log of the last 20 actions that they took before the button was pressed so that you can reproduce the error, it collects all the system information, who's logged in, all the real time processes, memory, CPU, disk usage, that sort of stuff. It does some network diagnostics. It does connectivity checks and it's very clever, and of course it integrates with your PSA as well. So the idea is that you get a perfect ticket. They have a better experience because they're physically pressing something with their finger and you get the perfect ticket, which makes it much more likely you're going to figure out what's going on and solve it more quickly. Literally everyone wins.

Paul Green: Now, none of my clients who started using this yet in the UK, we talked about it a couple of months ago. The price, according to the website, is 30 cents per seat per month, which doesn't seem a huge amount of money. I'm guessing you have to pay some money to actually buy the physical hardware as well, but I'd love to hear some feedback from you. If you've been using this in your MSP, what kind of impact that has had on your end users or if you go and try it, let's have a chat and see what you think of this. This place to do that is I have a Facebook group and I'm on that Facebook group every single day. If you go into Facebook and type in MSP marketing at the top, and that's how you join my Facebook group.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green: My intention when I created that community for MSP owners on Facebook was to give people a chance to come together and talk about marketing. I believe it's one of the most under talked about subjects in the world of MSPs. Lots of chat about tech, but not enough chat about marketing and selling more and making more monthly recurring revenue and ultimately net profit as well. So as I said, you go into your Facebook app, you pop in MSP marketing at the top, go to groups and apply to join and me or a member of my team, we'll just double check that you are an MSP because it's a vendor free zone. We don't allow vendors in or anyone else. We'll just double check you're in an MSP and then we will let you in.

Paul Green: There's over 650 MSPs in there right now and it's a great place to discuss marketing, in fact, a great place to discuss stuff that we're talking about on this podcast. I'm there every day including weekends. I'm happy to answer any questions that you have. Get on to the MSP marketing Facebook group. It's another valuable resource as you're trying to grow your business.

Voiceover: The big interview.

James Lyon: So I'm James Lyon, it's MSP white label websites and we provide white label websites at outsourced prices.

Paul Green: So you don't build websites for MSPs, so that you don't build the MSPs own website, you build websites for the MSPs to resell. How did you come up with this idea?

James Lyon: So I've been selling websites for a long time. Websites itself is a great resell opportunity for MSPs. You're in a perfect position to talk about digital transformation with clients and really I looked at what skills I could bring to the MSP market and that was helping you to sell websites and deliver them at offshore prices. So that's why I created MSP White Label Websites.

Paul Green: And we know that ordinary business owners and business managers, because MSPs are dealing with computers, they see that websites are about computers as well. And actually websites as we know are more of a marketing thing, but is this why you think so many MSPs get their clients saying to them, "Hey, could you do our website?"

James Lyon: Yeah, it's the trusted relationship that I think the MSPs have with clients. Websites can be a sore point for clients. They have their domain hosting with someone, their actual website hosting with someone else and their email hosting. And actually, it's of much greater benefit to the client if everything can be condensed with one provider. And what we've found is that MSPs themselves are in perfect positions to look after everything under one roof for their clients.

Paul Green: You and I know loads of MSPs who build their own websites for clients, but there's also a whole chunk of people who don't want to take on that pain, they don't want to have to deal with designers, we know they're getting content out to clients is a real pain. So, how does your service take that pain away for the MSP?

James Lyon: In a real short sentence, we do everything for you. What we basically say is that all you need to do is manage the relationship with the client and we'll do all the hard work for you. So we've got content writers and we'll create order for content. We'll do all of the backend management and project management for you, design the website, get it sent live. Within our packages as well we include 30 minutes maintenance a month. So any onsite changes that you have to do, you literally just push back onto us. We also sort out hosting. So really, all you need to do is resell our services and make a profit every single month from it.

Paul Green: And of course as we'd expect, it's all monthly recurring revenue as well. This isn't a sell a website for a couple of thousand, this is turning it into an ongoing revenue stream.

James Lyon: What we're not looking at is just a 12 month here. The reason why we're looking at reselling services as a monthly resale is not thinking about a £1000 or £2000 income revenue generation there, we're looking at a three year period minimum.

James Lyon: What we've done is, within our packages, include a 12 month minimum program. Thereafter, the clients can roll over monthly, which we found helps them to stay on board for longer. And at the three year stage we're offering a refresh completely free, which would encourage them to stay on board as well. So yeah, like you said Paul, it is very much about longterm revenue and that long term profit generation as well.

Paul Green: So the goal is the MSP has a longterm revenue stream that they do very little work for, you have a revenue stream, but you're used to doing the word because you're used to doing that and the end client, the MSPs client, is happy because they have a great website which is updated regularly and is refreshed every three years.

James Lyon: Yeah, exactly that. What you're doing here is just looking at another way that you can help your client and that is via websites. MSPs are in the perfect positions to talk about digital transformation and helping clients with their website and we're giving you an opportunity to kind of make money from that without having to do any of the work.

Paul Green: How do we get in touch with you, James?

James Lyon: My website is www.mspwhitelabelwebsites.com.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast. Ask Paul anything.

Andy Newbrook: Hey Paul, Andy Newbrook from Crusade Computer Solutions here. We are going to send some direct mail campaigns to our cold list to then eventually give out our ethical bribe in the book. Do you recommend sending the test of 30 mails to a specific sector or just 30 general companies?

Paul Green: That's a great question. Thank you Andy and well done on doing direct mail. Direct mail has such potential impact because we don't have much post these days. So I think direct mail is a very good thing to do. One caveat with that is to make sure that you follow it up on the phone. Direct mail itself doesn't get a great response, but it paves the way for easier phone calls.

Paul Green: Now to answer your question of should you do a test to a general audience or to a specific sector, I would always do it to a specific sector or a specific vertical and I'll tell you why. You may have heard me say this phrase before, relevance increases results. The more relevant that someone perceives your marketing to be, the more likely they are to actually respond to it. And the beauty of sending a piece of direct mail to a specific vertical or a specific sector is you can make that direct mail seem more applicable to them.

Paul Green: Let's say for example, you're targeting accountants or CPAs as they're known in the States, you can put on the word accountant, you can talk about their practice rather than their business. Certainly here in the UK, accountants talk about having a practice. You can drop in a piece of software that is commonly used by accountants, and I don't just mean Sage or zero, but some insider software that they use.

Paul Green: Now that's all you need to do. You only need to sprinkle a tiny, tiny amount of relevance into a piece of direct mail or in fact any piece of marketing, and you will typically get a better response rate from it because the accountants, or whoever at the other end, the other people that you're targeting, if they perceive that it is targeted at them, they won't think of it as being targeted. But if they perceive that it is relevant to them, they automatically assume that you are an expert in what it is that they do and they perceive that it's more likely to be of interest to them. And you're more likely to be a quality supplier. Relevance increases results.

Paul Green: So the challenge to you actually is to do this in all of your marketing. I'm a big fan of MSPs having separate websites targeting separate niches, separate verticals because what it allows you to do is to appear to be relevant to a number of multiple audiences, but at the same time. So you keep your general website, but then you set up very specific targeted websites to each of the niches that you want to operate in. Yes, that's extra work, but my goodness, that extra work doesn't help pay off for you down the line.

Voiceover: How to contribute to the show.

Paul Green: Andy actually sent me that question from his phone. He recorded a quick audio question for me, just sent it over to me on email. Loads of people have done this now and I'd invite you to do the same. What's that burning question that you've got that you'd love me to answer on the podcast? You can email it through to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

Tracy Pound: We can't bandy around those types of terms not knowing whether or not the receiver of our message really understands what it is that we're trying to say.

Paul Green: That's Tracy Pound from Maximity, she's been working in the channel for more than 30 years and sits on the board for CompTIA worldwide. Next week, she's going to tell you how you can think like a prospect so you can sell more to them without ever having to talk about technology.

Paul Green: We're also going to be talking next week about one of the scariest subjects that any MSP can think about, what if you got hacked? And you probably heard that Datto, Huntress Labs and Connect Wise helped to save an MSPs, access credentials from being sold on the dark web recently. We're going to be talking about that and I've got a series of suggestions for you compiled from my MSP clients to help protect yourself from the hackers.

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

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In this week's episode * In a change to the advertised programme, Paul introduces a special panel discussing the effect Coronavirus may have on MSPs and their clients * In this special episode industry experts Nigel Moore, Glenn Robertson and Andrew Eardley join Paul to highlight how MSPs can protect themselves during this challenging time; the potential benefit to client relationships and why it's important to keep your marketing going right now

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Paul's panel featured Nigel Moore from The Tech Tribe, Glenn Robertson from Purechannels and Andrew Eardley from MSP Easy Tools * The Coronavirus statistics came from the free Worldometer tool * The video conference and virtual meeting tools mentioned included Zoom, WebEx and 8x8 * The guest on March 24th will be James Lyon from mspwhitelabelwebsites.com talking about how to increase MRR by selling websites * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Join Paul and over more than MSPs in his Facebook group

Episode transcription Voice over: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: Hello and welcome to this special edition of the show. Now a change to the advertised programme, we're going to be discussing the business impact of the coronavirus and how MSPs around the world can protect their businesses now and actually use this maybe as an opportunity to grow turnover and net profit.

Paul Green: So I pulled together a panel of people that I trust to talk about four things. We're going to talk about the short-term impact, the longer term impacts, the need more than ever before for more and more monthly recurring revenue, and why you must never ever stop marketing, especially at a time like this.

Paul Green: Before I introduce my panel, let's just set some context here. So normally this podcast is recorded weeks ahead, but not this special edition. In fact, if you're listening to this on the day of broadcast, we recorded it yesterday, Monday the 16th of March in the morning, UK time. Right now, according to worldometers.info or worldometers.info. There's been 170,000 cases of coronavirus worldwide and 6,500 deaths. Already, 77,000 people have recovered from it. Now, if you look at the number of cases per million of the population, is tiny. So the UK is just 20.5 cases per million people. The USA is just 11.5 cases. Australia is 14.7. Now Italy, obviously, is far more serious. They've got 409 cases per million people.

Paul Green: What's clear now is that most of us are going to get the coronavirus at some point. And the vast majority of us, we're going to be absolutely fine. In fact, most of the people I know are more worried about their elderly relatives than they are worried about themselves or their children. The real problem with this virus and what we're going to talk about on the podcast today is the economic impact.

Paul Green: So the world's healthcare systems simply couldn't cope if the virus spread at speed if we allowed it to just naturally spread. Most of the shutdowns and the changes that we're all seeing, they're all designed to slow down the spread. And virtually overnight that's had quite a huge impact on the way that people act and the way that people buy. We've all seen stockpiling. We've all seen empty shelves in supermarkets and we all know that toilet paper is the new gold.

Paul Green: But already some businesses are suffering. There's a lovely village pub that's near my house, they had 72 table cancellations over the weekend, 72. We went in on Saturday night when it's normally, it's quite difficult to physically get in is so full. And it was so quiet, they only had two bar staff on. There's a guy I know who owns a car crash repair centre. He says his work has just totally dried up in the last couple of weeks. Now I realised these are consumer facing businesses and these are businesses that need to sell stuff every day to stay alive. But maybe they're the kind of clients that you support. Maybe there's an impact on your clients. This is certainly where I'm seeing some of the panic from MSPs, right now. It's not necessarily them, but it's their clients.

Paul Green: Certainly when we look at the MSP business model, we have to look at it and say, "It's beautiful." You're mostly B2B hopefully, you've certainly got plenty of monthly recurring revenue or I hope you do. And it's definitely very easy for you and your teams to work remotely. So let me introduce today's panel and we'll start to talk about what's happening right now and where we think this is going to go. I'm going to start by introducing you to a Nigel Moore - Nigel tell us about you and the tech tribe.

Nigel Moore: Good day. Nigel here. Based out of just North of Sydney, Australia. I host a community of MSPs all around the world called The Tech Tribe. It's born out of my love of the community. I used to own and run my own MSP for many years. It was acquired in 2016 and I have built the tribe up as a resource for MSPs around the world to help them learn from all the mistakes that I made over the years running my own.

Paul Green: Andrew. Andrew Eardley, would you like to introduce yourself?

Andrew Eardley: Oh yes. I'm Andrew Eardley from MSP Easy Tools. I also run a MSP called Prompt PC. So MSP Easy Tools was born out of Prompt PC developing cyber security tools for Office 365. Something we'll talk about a bit later, Paul.

Paul Green: I'm sure we will. Thank you very much. And Glenn Robertson.

Glenn Robertson: Hi, I'm Glenn. I'm MD and owner of Purechannels. We're specialists dedicated channel marketing agency that worked with a number of MSPs worldwide in helping them take their own proposition and joint vendor propositions to market in the most effective way.

Paul Green: Brilliant. Thank you all three of you for assembling pretty much at the last minutes and Nigel, we're going to start with you. I'm a member of The Tech Tribe and I was just this morning actually reading your coronavirus threads. You've done a great thread in there, putting it in context and talking about what MSPs can do. What are you seeing MSPs doing to prepare themselves, because we are still at that point where it hasn't really impacted massively on us, but what are people doing to prepare right now?

Nigel Moore: At the early stages we're in right now, most MSPs are just scrambling to help their clients with remote access and so they haven't popped their head up to think at the 20,000 foot view, what's coming next? They're getting a ton of requests and a ton of help and a ton of people wanting them to be able to get them access to their businesses from home and at the moment that's where the most MSPs have got their head space.

Paul Green: Do you see that most MSPs are ready or are a lot of them just coming around to starting to think about getting ready, but in your mind this has all happened very, very quickly.

Nigel Moore: It is a mixed bag. A MSPs are very lucky incredibly because they know what needs to be done technically wise to be able to operate their businesses from home end. And most MSPs that I know of over the last couple of years have transitioned to being remote friendly. The culture in work environments has lended recently towards moving towards a remote culture and most MSPs have adopted that in some way, shape or form. So it's not at the moment seeming to be a tough transition for MSPs to go through to keep their business continuity plans in place or to start enacting their business continuity plans to start working remotely, working from home, working wherever got to so that they can continue supporting clients that are desperately screaming out for help at the moment.

Paul Green: Andrew, you own an MSP obviously as well as MSP Easy Tools. So what have you done with your team to make sure that you guys are fully ready to carry on business as usual, even if you have to work from home?

Andrew Eardley: To be honest, because we're cloud based anyway and our phone systems are VOIP, they can work from home as of any time. So for us it's so easy.

Paul Green: Wouldn't it be lovely for the clients who are like this as well, which is a subject we are going to come onto in a second. Glenn, let's talk about the vendors you work with MSPs and then vendors on the other side of the channel. Is it fair to say that the big vendors are already, because a lot of these, when you think of Microsoft and you think of thousands of people sitting in buildings in California, so how ready do you think they are?

Glenn Robertson: Well, the way that we've seen it is that they are ready. I mean we're having meetings canceled and we're doing more and more video as we are today, the likes of Zoom, WebEx, 8x8 as well. But a lot of our clients are global, so we are regularly having conversations in Australia, in the US, other than actual people getting together in an office where we're not seeing that much of a change as yet. Because a lot of what we do is conducted over video and over conference call anyway.

Paul Green: So let's talk about the longterm impacts and I think there's two to three areas to look at. The first is, whatever happens and however this rolls out, whether this goes on for a few months or a year and no one knows how it's going to go, eventually the world will return to normal. Eventually the economy will return to normal. Andrew, do you think this could lead to a longterm shift in the way that people run their businesses?

Andrew Eardley: I think most businesses are still very office centric. The managing director, the financial directors might work occasionally from home, but if opened their eyes to the fact that they can operate just as efficiently from home office environments as they do from centralised offices.

Paul Green: Obviously you've been beating that drum for your clients for years. Are you seeing your clients really jumping onto that now and actually listening to it because it's real?

Andrew Eardley: Yeah. I mean lots of them are coming back with, "You said some years ago when you sent out our sessions with Andrew, we could do this, this and this." I'm saying, "Yeah, it's there, it's straight forward, won't take much to change you over to working from home. As long as they've got something that we can work from there. It's really straightforward and easy."

Paul Green: Nigel, what opportunities do you see for MSPs in the longer term? And I must just clarify, when I say opportunities, I'm not talking here about cashing in or profiteering off the coronavirus, but rather using things like people being aware of things like remote working suddenly.

Nigel Moore: Over the last couple of years, a lot of MSPs have struggled to get their value propositions right with their clients so that the clients can understand the true value of what things like remote work and cybersecurity and these sorts of things are. And I think events like this, as horrible as they are, can help to solidify in clients' minds that, hey, we do actually need to invest some of this stuff, we do need to actually take it seriously because in the past we might not have taken business continuity seriously and now we do. And so to me that's a huge opportunity for MSPs to be able to step up and say, hey, well these kinds of things as you can tell, do happen and can happen, so let's get you as prepared as we possibly can now for the next time around.

Paul Green: One of the things that makes MSPs quite relaxed about what's happening or potentially could happen with the economy is this monthly recurring revenue. Nigel, you've always been a massive fan of monthly recurring revenue. Well as anyone would be once the ones they come across it. Can you see now that those people who are, they've got more of the business stuck in break fix are going to be quite motivated to just get on and finish that transition over to MSP?

Nigel Moore: 150%. The MSPs that are out there that are there, either pure play managed services or they've got a very high percentage of managed services are some of the most incredibly lucky businesses in this current climate. They're the most protected in some way, shape or form, especially from these early stages of issues. And for the ones that haven't made the transition fully or even started to as yet, this is kind of the icing on the cake that you have to make some changes to things, not only for the greater good of your bank account, but for the greater good of your clients so that you're still there to look after them in the future.

Paul Green: And that's just a great point, making sure that you left the client and that's what I say is not profiteering. I think selling someone, as Glenn was saying, a lot more video solution or making sure though they're set up correctly or upgrading them to a better plan. This is actually about helping them to do their work properly. So let's move on to look at marketing and let's assume we are going to into some kind of recession in the longer term, I think the speed at which we've had change in forced upon us, it's going to be in a bit of a shock to everyone's economy and that typically is what triggers some kind of recession. There are famously companies that do more marketing during the recession. There's a company called Specsavers, which my American listeners won't have heard of, but certainly in the UK and in Australia, you'll know it as the national optician because Specsavers dominates the UK opticians. They are dominating Australia as well.

Paul Green: It's the equivalent of LensCrafters in the US and they love recessions. As a private business, they spend more on marketing during recessions and come out of recessions with greater market share. Glenn, if you as a marketing expert, if you owned an MSP, what would you do with your marketing during a recession or during a downturn?

Glenn Robertson: From our point of view or something that we're talking about here quite a lot, this is a great opportunity and as you said earlier, it's not an opportunity to take advantage, but it's an opportunity to basically look at behavior and this about a reminder of good behaviour. Look, the tools exist to be able to deal with all of the remote work and working from home, et cetera. It's just the behaviour that doesn't. So we should be communicating with our customers and our prospects on a regular basis. We should be helping them, we should be them and we should be enabling them anyway on a regular basis.

Glenn Robertson: Let's remember, marketing is not a short term tactic. There are very short term tactics that can be used, but ultimately marketing should be seen as a longterm strategy with various different ongoing methods that you can use in order to help educate and communicate with your customers.

Paul Green: And Glen, you're quite famous on this podcast for talking about MDF, which is Marketing Development Funds. And we've said in previous episodes that there's millions and millions of pounds out there. This is a great time, isn't it, To go in and talk to your vendors and say, "Hey look, we want to keep marketing through this. We want to keep selling your products and please can you help us to access your MDF?"

Glenn Robertson: Exactly. That's exactly why and all, shall we say, good, in inverted commas, good vendors should welcome that. Come up with an idea, present a plan and actually it doesn't have to be a crazy thinking, funky idea, it can just be, as I mentioned, talking about good behaviour. This is about helping prospects and customers through this period and into the future. How we can help them to get their message to our customers. And we're also talking about helping our customers in the best way that they can deal with and be catered for by us on a monthly basis going forward.

Paul Green: So Andrew, again asking you to put your MSP owning hats on rather than the owner of MSP Easy Tools. In the short to long term from your marketing. Are you planning to ramp things up and use this as an opportunity to reach more people in your marketplace?

Andrew Eardley: Absolutely. As Glenn was saying, we need to educate, letting them know what the opportunities are, what's available to them. They will be looking for different solutions and they'll come to their trusted advisors. We need to be that calming influence in the marketplace now. Remove the panic and show them that actually it's not complicated. It's not difficult that businesses can continue to work. They just need to implement sensible, straightforward IT systems.

Paul Green: Nigel, you have a fairly unique view of MSPs worldwide through The Tech Tribe. So you see how bad most MSPs are at marketing and how little marketing they actually do. What do you see as the big opportunities over the next couple of years?

Nigel Moore: The opportunity to me now is to get yourself in a place of trust out in the marketplace. And if we rewind back just two years ago, three years ago, cybersecurity was and still currently is the big, big, big thing and that's just a need of people that MSPs have got the cure for. And if we fast forward to today, there is just a need of people that need to be able to remotely work from home or do these things and MSPs have that cure again. And so there's always the certain percentage of MSPs out there that are doing an amazing job of marketing and there's also the percentage that are struggling.

Nigel Moore: And to me as you're going through a process like this and it really helps you hone in and kind of get a feeling and understand that you have to go out there and market in an environment like this so that, when the dust settles and when we get through this horrible period, you are going to be set up to be able to at least start growing your business again and start helping your clients again and serving your people again.

Paul Green: And actually you're so right there that you mustn't lose momentum. While I suspect we'll see with lots of MSPs is that they will stop marketing in the short term, that they will stop talking to their audiences, they'll stop spending money on marketing and then when better times return, that's when they will, they will start spending money. But he's almost too late at that point, isn't it, because you've lost that momentum that you need, especially with the length of the sales cycle that MSPs have.

Nigel Moore: And the thing with marketing in a time like this is unfortunately the herd mentality of all of us humans is we tend to follow the herd and we tend to self preserve and we self preserve by cutting expenses that typically seem, or that can often seem non-necessary and marketing is one of those expenses. But as you say, the sales cycle in our industry is so incredibly long that if you don't market through this particular period, you're going to struggle coming out the other side. And on the flip side, one of the good things, as you go through recessionary periods and economic downturns, is that marketing costs can reduce and that means your customer acquisition costs can reduce as well because there's not as much competition for ad spend out there.

Paul Green: Absolutely. I think that's a great way to end this discussion panel. So thank you very much Nigel, Andrew and Glenn, I really appreciate you coming together at such short notice. Also, Nigel is actually in his pyjamas because it might be the morning in the UK, but its the evening in Sydney, Australia. So thank you guys for being on the panel. Thank you also to my producer James Lett. He's scrapped his day today to turn this podcast around in just a few hours. And the next week we will be back to the usual format. I've got an interview with James Lyon of MSP White Label Websites. Plus we'll be talking about physical help desk buttons that you can attach to your client's computers and we're going to look at how to test marketing strategies with minimal risks for you. See you next week.

Voice over : Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

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In this week's episode * There is an apparent shortage of cybersecurity talent and skills which is one of the key challenges MSPs have today in providing cybersecurity services to their customers. Special guest JP Kehoe from Skout joins Paul to explain how you can provide your clients with a better solution * Everyone has lost out to a competitor at some point. And Paul explains a few simple techniques that can help stop this happening and make your MSP stand out from the crowd * Also in this week's show Paul tells you about a website where your clients can find out for themselves just how rubbish their passwords actually are. And answers a question for an MSP on how to track his competitors

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * While discussing better ways to stand out from competitors, Paul mentioned cakesnextday.com and betterproposals.io * The tools to indirectly help sell password managers are howsecureismypassword.net and passwordsgenerator.net * To sign up for a free place on Paul's new UK tour, check out paulgreensMSPmarketing.com/lunch * Paul's guest was JP Kehoe from Skout Cybersecurity talking about how to drive MRR with cybersecurity * Thank you to Jack Peploe from Evaporate for the question about tracking competitors * The tracking tools mentioned were watchthatpage.com, followthatpage.com, fluxguard.com, agenty.com and visualping.io * The guest on March 17th will be James Lyon from mspwhitelabelwebsites.com talking about selling website creation * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green: Here we go for another week then. This is what's coming up in today's show.

JP Kehoe: There is a tremendous shortage of cybersecurity talent and skills. That's one of the key challenges MSPs have today in providing cybersecurity services to their customers.

Paul Green: I'm also going to tell you about a website where your clients can find out for themselves just how rubbish their passwords actually are, and we're answering a question for an MSP on how he can track his competitors.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green: I think it's fairly well established now that one of the biggest marketing challenges for any MSP is differentiating themselves from all of their competitors in the mind of the prospect. Because the problem starts with the prospect and most average business owners, managers, the decision makers that you want to reach, as we've discussed before, they don't know what they don't know about technology and about it support. So they will look at your business and you could have 20 staff and a building and 24 hour support and they can't really see the difference between that and all of the other businesses in the area that do what you do, and they do different flavours of what you do. But for someone outside of our world, they don't get that. And of course add to that the fact that there are no barriers to entry into this market, anyone can set themselves up as an IT support company from their bedroom and theoretically compete with you. This makes it a very hard thing to do.

Paul Green: And add in as well, there is this other thing that most MSPs are really bad at marketing, and are really bad at looking at things from other people's points of view, which is a core fundamental marketing skill. So this is where you need to differentiate yourself in a whole series of different ways which are very smart. I'm a big fan of videos because videos give you instant differentiation, particularly if you get videos featuring your clients, so it's your clients on the screen talking to your prospects, it's a very smart thing to do. And of course no one has your clients except you, so that is a great differentiation.

Paul Green: I think also when you're getting to the prospecting stage, and particularly when you're up against two or three other players, you've got to be a little bit more cute than them. Got to be a bit smarter than them. So most people will do the same thing. They'll go and have a meeting, they'll put in a proposal, they'll follow up that proposal and that'll be about it. I think you've got to ask yourself, not only what can we do to be different before we have a prospect meeting, but once we've met with someone, what makes the difference? For example, could you be the MSP that, when someone has booked a prospect meeting, you send them an impact box, which we've talked about on previous podcasts, but you send them a box of stuff, and there might be some videos in there and you can either do that as an old fashion DVD or you could do a link to some online videos or better still put it in one of those video presentation cards.

Paul Green: Could you send them some chocolate? Could you send them a brochure or some details of you and your team and say, "Hey, we're looking forward to meeting you next Wednesday. Here's some details about us and what our clients say." Send them a testimonials book. Imagine if you did that just before you'd even met them. That would be so, so powerful. And then once you've actually been to see them, what do you leave them on the day? You've already given them a brochure and something else, don't really want to just give them a business card. What else could you give them on the day? How about a copy of your book? Because of course you do need a book. You need to be the author of your own book. It's an amazing marketing tool, and you could actually sign it there and then as as the author, sign the cover of the book or the inside of the book and give it to them during that prospect meeting.

Paul Green: Now that might seem a little presumptuous to you and a little pretentious, but actually that's a very powerful positioning thing to show that you're the author of something and you've gone and signed the book and given it to them there and then at the prospect meeting. Then what else could you do differently from there? A couple of my clients are experimenting now with sending things afterwards. Some are doing the impact boxes. In the UK there's a website called cakesnextday.com which allows you to put a personalised message on a giant cake and send that over to someone. That's a very clever thing that you could do. What if you followed it up with more chocolate? Obviously you wouldn't do an impact box both sides of the prospect meeting, but you could send them something.

Paul Green: I would certainly, absolutely, send them a printed copy of the proposal. Now you might use something like betterproposals.io or one of the other many proposal software services that are available, and certainly getting people to use and look at a proposal online where you can track what they're doing is a very smart thing to do. But I would always, always print off a proposal, high quality print, really make the packaging really high quality, one of those nice cardboard outers. Really put some time and effort into it and send a copy to them, either first class post or maybe even courier it to them or drop it off to them, again with something else. Because although we want to know if they've read it online, we also absolutely want to make sure that they have actually read it and nothing beats a physical print thing sitting on their actual desk.

Paul Green: So there's just a few ideas there and I bet you and your team could come up with so many more ideas. But where you've got this common problem that they can't tell the difference between you and your competitors, it only takes being slightly different from everyone else to have a real impact. It's really exciting when you think about it.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: What we've got here is a very elegant answer to the problem of your clients using very, very weak passwords. It's a website called howsecureismypassword.net, and it's very simple. They go in and they enter their password and it tells them how long it would take a computer to brute force crack it. I've got the website up here. If I type in... Let's type in fluffy123 and it says here it would take a computer about 42 minutes to crack your password. So let's iterate that. We'll take off the three and put on a four. No, it's still 42 minutes, because of course it's based on length. So let's add a nine to that. It would take a computer one day to crack your password.

Paul Green: What this is encouraging your clients to do is to use longer passwords and hopefully maybe even some more complex ones as well. Now it does say at the bottom it's for educational purposes only, and it's sponsored by Dashlane, which is of course a password manager. And yes, you're going to look at that and think, hang on a second, that's just surely sending passwords over the internet? Although it does say at the bottom that nothing is sent over the internet. But the point is you can demonstrate to your clients, in front of them, pull up this website and say, "Look, let me, let me do a password here. If we generate a 16 digit password..." In fact, let me do it now, I'm going to go to the random... Here we go. Passwordsgenerator.net. I'm going to generate a random 16 digit password and copy that, paste that into How Secure Is My Password, and according to this, a 16 digit random password would take a computer 41 trillion years to crack that password.

Paul Green: I think that's the point where you can show your client that there's some very, very, very complex passwords which are so much more uncrackable or less crackable than fluffy123. That's the point, is to show them this and off the back of that, maybe you could then sell them a password manager, because isn't that really something we want all the clients to have? We want them all to have a password manager managed by you to give them more control over their passwords and of course more control when their staff leave. One final thing on How Secure Is My Password, go in and put in just random characters and you get some amazing numbers of years. We are up to quadrillion years here, and then quintillion years, sextillion years, and if I put it in, if I just keep putting characters in, I don't know if I can even say this. 805 novemvigintillion. If you know how to pronounce that, you're a better person than I am. It's a very fun website, this, and actually if it can drive some monthly recurring revenue for you as well, everyone wins.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green: A quick heads up that this one today is just for my listeners in the UK. Now I'm guessing that your biggest challenge in getting new clients for your MSP isn't actually getting the prospects to say yes. If you can get in front of the right people at the right time, then you'll get the sale. If you're like most MSPs in the UK, your biggest issue actually is generating good quality leads and then getting those people to agree to sales meetings at exactly the right point in the sales cycle. So if this is the issue in your business, then join me for something new. It's called the MSP Get New Clients Roadshow, and it's a new event I'm running through to the summer of 2020.

Paul Green: It's three hours of your day. You join me at a hotel near you, get a working lunch thrown in, and I'll show you a proven five step system. It's being used right now by dozens of MSPs across the UK. And the good news is even if you find marketing baffling, I will do it in a way that both educates you and entertains you. I've got a whole series of dates right through to the summer all across the UK. I'm so sorry, I'm not going international with this at this stage, it's just in the UK. If you want to see all the details for that, you just gone to paulgreensMSPmarketing.com. Don't forget the S on that. PaulgreensMSPmarketing.com, and then either go into the navigation and tap on free marketing lunch or just go to paulgreensMSPmarketing.com/lunch. You'll see all the details on how you can claim your free place.

Voiceover: The big interview.

JP Kehoe: Paul, how are you? My name is JP Kehoe. I'm the general manager for Skout Cybersecurity here in Europe, and we help MSPs go to market with a managed security service.

Paul Green: So we all know that cybersecurity is enormous. It's getting bigger almost every week. The opportunity's getting bigger, the the tactics being used are getting big. Everything about it is absolutely growing, and I think all MSPs now, whether or not the actively on board and selling it, they can see that this is an enormous opportunity, A to protect their clients, and B, to generate more of that lovely monthly recurring revenue. From your point of view, you specialise in cybersecurity, it's all your business does. What kind of trends have you seen in the marketplace?

JP Kehoe: There's a tremendous shortage of cybersecurity talent and skills, and the personnel that are required to enable MSPs to deliver that expertise is quite expensive. Staff are hard to train and retain. That's one of the key challenges MSPs have today in providing cybersecurity services to their customers.

Paul Green: The end users, the business decision makers that MSPs wants to reach, what's happened to their awareness over the last few years? You would imagine they'd be a bit more aware, but is it still enough to trigger more and more of them into action?

JP Kehoe: There certainly has been an increase in awareness. It probably falls into three buckets for them and customers. One is general awareness of cybersecurity within both their sector and their market, or indeed where they've had an issue, it certainly brings a awareness to the fore. Number two, regulation now is driving a lot of requirements for companies to have managed cybersecurity service in place and to increase their cyber posture. And then number three, we're seeing more and more third party due diligence, the need to have a mature cyber program in place, and MSPs are getting these questions. And as I said, the challenges for MSPs is providing that service at an easy and affordable way for the further end customers, and as you just mentioned on the recurring revenue, making sure that you tie that in with any other managed service that you have.

Paul Green: I think the question that most MSPs want answered is how do you sell more cybersecurity? In this world where decision makers are becoming more aware, but they're still very unaware, it's still not a big thing to them, they're willing to take huge risks with their system. How do you educate them about cybersecurity and ultimately sell more of it?

JP Kehoe: Well, they're both absolutely tied together. So education is key. Definitely having a conversations with your customers around cybersecurity, the issues that you're seeing across your own customer base, asking them questions, trying to understand their network, try to understand their critical data and how you're supporting them in building those concentric rings of security around that data, whether it's a firewall or endpoint or other supports or point solutions that you might have in place. I think after that, then making sure that you educate around the importance of having visibility under security logs emanating from those point solutions.

JP Kehoe: The average time to detect a breach now is 197 days. It's a long, long time. Making sure that you have the right partner in place then as well to provide a managed security service. So they're the two areas, education number one, that you have those conversations with your customers, and then number two, having the right partner with you to support you in those conversations. So there are MSSPs out there that have resources available to support you having those conversations and building up that credibility in your marketplace and having the right dedicated sales and marketing support.

Paul Green: Tell us briefly what Skout does to help MSPs.

JP Kehoe: Our platform uses a multi-tenant approach that makes it easy for MSPs to include those advanced security tools, the threat intelligent feeds, and that around the clock 24/7 security offering. So we provide that as a service to our customers, our MSP customers, and getting the right partnerships in place to support them going to market and answering some of those questions that your customers have.

Paul Green: And what's your website's address, JP?

JP Kehoe: Getskout.com. So that's G-E-T-S-K-O-U-T dot com. If you go there, you'll learn all about the company and there's a partner section that allow you to register some interest, and we're here to help and support, grow your business and grow your recurring revenue.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast. Ask Paul anything.

Jack Peploe: Hi, my name is Jack Peploe from Evaporate. How do I keep track of what my competitors are doing?

Paul Green: Great question Jack. Thank you. I do always say that we shouldn't be obsessed about what our competitors are doing. Better to be obsessed with our own business than with our competitors. But at the same time, we want to know exactly what our competitors are doing just so we can keep track of the marketplace. So there's two core fundamental things that I advise you do for all of your main competitors. By the way, when I say main competitors, I mean the ones that you lose business to. You can't track every single MSP in your market, because you just spend all day tracking your competitors. So pick the two, three or maybe four that if you're going to lose business to someone, it's going to be them. Or if you're up against them in competition, you know you've got to work hard.

Paul Green: The first thing that you should do is set up a Google alert for them. So just Google the phrase Google alerts. You go in, you can create an alert about anything. What Google will do is it will email you when it finds that phrase in new pages. You put in your competitors' names... Now make sure you put them in inverted commas, in quote marks, because then you'll get the exact match. And I recommend that you pick the daily digest option rather than instant results so you're not inundated. But that's quite good for Google. If it spots any mentions of your competitors anywhere, it will send those to you. Pro tip, by the way, is to put your own name in there, both your actual physical name and obviously the name of your business and set up Google alerts for those.

Paul Green: The second thing that you should be doing is to do some kind of web page change monitoring. Now there are some websites which will do this for you for free. Watchthatpage.com, which looks a bit like a website from 1990, or at least 1999, but it's actually quite a functional website and you put in a URL and it monitors it and if it's changed it sends you an email. There is another one which again looks a bit old fashioned, it's called followthatpage.com. It's exactly the same. Now these are free. For for a couple of websites, these are free. There are alternatives that you can find, which of course they all have subscription packages. Now I haven't used these, but fluxguard.com is one, and then you've got Agenty, agent with Y on the end agenty.com. Then you've got visualping.io. Now Visual Ping is slightly different, because whereas all the others are based on text changes. Visual Ping will tell you about any visual changes to the page, so obviously that will be some text changes, but also if they change images or graphics or anything like that.

Paul Green: There are loads and loads of different services around, and it's certainly worth setting them up just to see exactly what it is your competitors are doing. If you have to pick specific pages, I would go for their homepage and their about us page at, and if they've got a pricing page, of course you would set it up on there as well.

Voiceover: How to contribute to the show.

Paul Green: What you think about this podcast is very important to me. So would you drop me an email please and just tell me what you think. Give me the bad things as well as the good things. You can reach me, hello@paulgreensMSPmarketing.com.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

James Lyon: We're offering a refresh completely free, which would encourage them to stay on board as well. It's very much about long term revenue and that long term profit generation as well.

Paul Green: That's James Lyon from MSP White Label Websites. He's going to be here next week talking about a new monthly recurring revenue stream for you. We're also going to be talking about how, as business owners, our relationship with money is completely skewed, and a way for us to reset our brains and I've got an amazing idea for you. It's some physical help desk buttons that you can attach to your clients' computers. See you next week.

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

View Details

In this week's episode * It's massively frustrating for a promising new deal to evaporate because the client has decided to stay with their incumbent MSP, but it happens all too often. Understanding why this happens is the key to overcoming the issue and Paul has some fantastic insight and advice * It may not be great for your waistline (!) but Paul also explains why making regular bookings for the best placed table in your favourite local restaurant could make the world of difference to your MSP's net profit * Also in this week's show, a listener asks if physical direct mail has a place in the modern world. And Glenn Robertson from Purechannels is back with an update on the millions of pounds of free marketing money that you could be tapping into

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Here's a link to Paul Green's MSP Marketing Edge service * Paul's returning guest talking about unspent MDF (Marketing Development Fund) was with Glenn Robertson, MD and owner of Purechannels * Also hear Glenn in Episode 1 of Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast * The question about direct mail came from Craig Sharp from Abussi * The guest on March 10th will be JP Kehoe from Skout Cybersecurity talking about how to use security to drive MRR * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

Paul Green: Hello and welcome to the podcast. Here's what's coming up in today's show.

Glenn Robertson: Vendors want to sell as much of their stuff as possible and the MSP or the partner that can help that is going to be the one that's well-treated.

Paul Green: We're also going to look at why you should be taking your clients to lunch at least once a year because it's the most direct and reliable way to sell them more of your stuff. And i'm going to be answering a question from an MSP about whether or not you should be using more direct mail.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

Paul Green: So currently the greatest stress in my life is the fact that I'm moving house. Sold my house back in November, found a lovely place to live in a little village just outside of Milton Keens in the UK and that's all fine. It's a very short chain. There's only two transactions in the chain, should all have been done back at the beginning of February and it's still currently going through and it's still a little bit of a nightmare.

Paul Green: Now the problem isn't me because I've bought and sold several houses. I've got some investment properties. I understand houses. I know what the risks are. It's not a great deal for me. It's just finding the right place and making it happen. The people that I'm buying from equally, they're in their sixties. They've bought and sold many houses. Everyone's just quite relaxed. The problem is the people who are buying my house are first time buyers and they are... Well, there's a phrase a friend of mine use, she said that they're scared of their own shadow.

Paul Green: So these people they've rented for a while, but of course we all know that renting gives you a security blanket. There's a safety net, there's a landlord that is there if anything goes wrong. As they're going through this process of getting the surveys done and just thinking about things, they're scaring themselves. The conversation I keep having with my estate agent is that they are scared and they're trying to mitigate their risk. We have gotten to the point now where actually they're trying to mitigate risks that exists just owning a house.

Paul Green: We all know owning a house is a risky thing. I was reflecting on this at the weekend and it occurred to me that for them buying this house is the biggest, most dangerous, most scary thing. They want the house, but they're also terrified of what owning the house might mean. When someone switches from one MSP to another, it is a house purchase size deal to them.

Paul Green: Let me explain what I mean. When someone is with an MSP, even if they're not happy with that MSP, there is a certain level of trust because from the point of view of the ordinary decision maker, the ordinary business owner or manager, the MSP has the power to destroy their business completely. Now they don't necessarily think of it that way, but if you think about it from their point of view, they don't really understand technology. They don't really understand computers, hardware, software systems. They don't have the ability to just jump in and fix stuff like you do.

Paul Green: You are controlling their productivity. You're controlling their ability to get things done. You're controlling their access to their own data and their own information, and so for that reason, the MSP that they choose is a really big deal for them. Now, this is one of the things which makes the MSP sales cycles so slow. I'm sure you have previously had great in depth conversations with prospects who you're convinced switch over to you because they're really unhappy with their incumbent. Then you go a few months down the line, very frustratingly for you, they decide to stick with their incumbent for some bizarre reason. Even though they're unhappy, they've stuck with the devil that they know. Better the devil they know.

Paul Green: They've done this because it's less risk for them because even if they're unhappy with an MSP, they understand what it is that they're getting. They know where they're at, if that makes sense. This is why I'm a massive fan of you building relationships with prospects and with leads long before the point that they are ready to switch to another MSP. You might've heard me talk on this podcast before about the need to build multiple audiences so you get hundreds, thousands of people to connect to you on LinkedIn. You get hundreds and hundreds of people to choose to join your email mailing list so that they receive your marketing emails. Maybe if your active within specific verticals, you even start Facebook groups or if you're dealing with retail businesses or hospitality businesses, you build some Instagram profiles as well or an Instagram profile and build an audience there.

Paul Green: What this allows you to do is to build a relationship with people long before they're ever thinking of buying from you. In the UK, I do a series of MSP marketing lunches where I go around the country and I meet with prospects and most of the time, not always, but most of the time it's wonderful that someone walks in the room that I've never met before. Nine times out of 10 I don't really know that person, I don't know their name and they walk up to me and they shake my hand and they say, "It's so good to meet you in real life. I've been following you for years. I've read your book, I read your articles, I listen to your podcasts."

Paul Green: What I'm doing and I recommend you do the same, is in a one to many kind of way, I'm building a relationship with thousands of prospects. My podcast, my articles on my website, my book, my LinkedIn following it's all relationship building because I'm sending out educational, entertaining content and it builds a relationship. A tiny relationship, it's not a deep relationship, but it's the start of something. At the point at which people are theoretically ready to start spending money to actually buy something, they feel as though they know me in some way. It's a foundation to start with.

Paul Green: You need to do exactly this because so few MSPs do this. In any marketplace, the MSP that builds the biggest audiences, builds the best relationship with those audiences, and then markets them the most. Shakes the tree, commercialises it, sees what money is out there. The MSP that does that is much more likely to go on to be the dominant MSP in that area. Certainly from a marketing point of view. I know that you're really good at what you do, and I also know that your competitors are really good at what they do.

Paul Green: The plan and the challenge is to get better at the marketing because the product is probably good enough, but it's the marketing that makes a substantial difference. The biggest marketing difference you could make in your world is to get better at building relationships with people months or years before they're ready to even start thinking about switching.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: Of course there's a chunk of people that you already have a great relationship with and that's your clients. In fact, most MSPs have amazing relationships with their clients and no wonder this is essentially a service industry. That's what this is. Now, one of the challenges for you is to regularly tell your clients about new things, either that you're offering or that they should be buying or just general changes. Things that are shifting within the marketplace and keep them educated and up to date about those things so that they can, if it's appropriate for them, come on board with them, buy those extra services, protect their business.

Paul Green: This is why I'm a massive fan of strategic reviews. A strategic review is where you go out on a regular basis. Probably six months or every 12 months and you sit down with your client and it is a forward looking review. Strategic review is not a backwards looking review of tickets or problems or issues because the risk is it could turn into a bit of a moan fest if you do that. We're not interested in past performance. We're interested in looking forward. We want to talk about your client's favourite subject, which is themselves.

Paul Green: Everyone's favourite subject is themselves. We want to get your client talking about them, their business and talk about what's coming up in the next couple of years. What are their plans, how are they going to expand? What new staff are they going to take on? Do they have new premises that could be coming up? Are they going to go and hit some new marketplaces? Does the current technology set up that they've got really support the growth plans that they've got for the next couple of years.

Paul Green: Now strategic lunches are in my mind, best done away from their environment. They certainly shouldn't be done in your environment because there's a chance you could be distracted by your staff. If they're done in their environment, there's a chance that they'll be distracted by their staff or that they'll just see it as this 20 minute meeting that their IT company wants. What we don't want is them sitting behind their desk, one eye on a computer monitor because they've got things to do and you desperately trying to talk more and more to keep their time.

Paul Green: That's not the point of this, In fact in a good strategic review is an 80 20 talking rule. They do 80% of the talking, you do 20% of the talking. No, I think if you're going to do the best strategic review, you've got to take them out to lunch. You may find yourself getting fatter as you go out and do two or three lunches a week depending how many clients you've got, but nothing beats going out to lunch and buying lunch for your client, which essentially buys them a little bit of extra loyalty and buy 60 to 90 minutes of their valuable time.

Paul Green: Now you might find a local restaurant, not a chain, so you can be seen to be promoting and endorsing local businesses and you might even do a deal with them where you say, "Look, I'm going to be coming in here 40 times, 50 times in the next year, maybe even more, and I'd like a deal please Mr and Mrs. Owner. Could you do me a deal where I get a 20% discount? Perhaps even you bill me once a month or something like that." You'd be surprised how many restaurant owners are open to a deal like that.

Paul Green: You can even dictate which table you'd like to sit down. You might permanently reserve that table for your lunches. I would recommend a table at the back of the restaurant. When you come in, you seat you with your back to the wall so you can see the restaurant and you seat your client with their back to the restaurant so they can't see what's going on. The reason for doing that, is so they can't be distracted by things that are happening within the restaurant. The real purpose of the strategic IT review then is to ask a series of open questions.

Paul Green: You're trying to identify opportunities within that business. Opportunities really for you to sell them more stuff. You might ask things like, since we last met or had an in depth talk, in the context of your technology, what's gone well? What's not gone so well? What do you think is holding you back right now? What do you predict could be holding you back in the future? Looking at the business overall, what do you think your priorities will be in the next 12 months, 24 months, 36 months? What's keeping you up at night? What do you think is going to keep you up at night? What do you think is likely to be your biggest headaches? Then the very best question, what can we do to help?

Paul Green: These are some very powerful questions and your client is going to spend most of this lunch talking about his or her business and what they want to do with it and their plans and their dreams and their hopes and their fears. All of these things give you opportunities to satiate those needs, to fulfil those wants and also to protect them more. If they're going to grow a little bit more and they might need X, Y and Z and you've got a specific technology stack that would help them to do that, that's where you can have that conversation.

Paul Green: Off the back of those strategic lunches you should be going away and doing proposals and ultimately following them up at a specified time. Let me get that to you by tomorrow afternoon, shall I give you a call on Friday and we can run through it. That kind of thing. Some of my clients that I worked with in my MSP mastermind do strategic reviews with all of their clients and two out of three times they really do well. They sell a lot of extra stuff to their clients and there's all month the recurring revenue services.

Paul Green: This is not about generating project revenue, which is fine if you need that project revenue, but the real power is generating more monthly recurring revenue. That is what you need more of and you know what? Your clients are very happy to give it to you when they can talk themselves into it because this is the real power of the strategic review. The strategic lunch is not about you selling stuff to them, it's about them realising their life will be better if they buy this stuff. They do all the selling to themselves.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green: Quick shout out for my MSP marketing edge service because it is the most popular thing that I do. We've got more than 150 MSPs around the world now using this. It is primarily aimed at UK MSPs and also US MSPs. You can see all the details at mspmarketingedge.com. In a nutshell, it's a whole bunch of content that we give to you every month so that you can use it to get more new clients. We're talking a video, we're talking an educational guide, promotional emails, social media content. There's a sales letter and there's a load of freebies as well.

Paul Green: There's a book called Email Hijack that you can put your name on the front and say it's your book. You can edit the inside if you want to. You can get it printed. There's also a 'Have I Been Pwned' plugin which goes on your websites and it acts as a form of data capture for you. It's a whole bunch of stuff and it's really dirt cheap as well. It's £99 a month in the UK, $129 a month in the US. You can cancel anytime as well. There's no commitment.

Paul Green: We only sell it to one MSP per area. The best thing to do is go in and check to see if your area is still available. It's mspmarketingedge.com.

Voiceover: The big interview.

Paul Green: This week I'm delighted to welcome back one of my guests. He was actually the interview I did in the first ever podcast back on November 5th.

Glenn Robertson: Glenn Robertson, MD of Purechannels. Purechannels is B2B marketing agency with a difference. The difference being that whilst we provide all of the services that you would expect from a regular B2B marketing agency, we do it with a hundred percent dedication and focus on the channel.

Paul Green: So Glenn, the reason I wanted to get you back on the show is because you're just a great big tease. You reckon that an MSP can get all of their marketing done and generate brand new leads and it doesn't cost them anything?

Glenn Robertson: Yes.

Paul Green: How do you do it?

Glenn Robertson: It's been a while since I've been called a tease! As I've mentioned, we've been going 15 years now, nearly since 2005 and over that period we've worked with a number of what you would probably call the world's biggest brands. Okay. That does include Samsung, Vodafone and Microsoft and Fujitsu and Nordson and Symantec and various other very well known brands. What we've done for them over this period is we've done a number of partner surveys and those partner surveys have been locally in country, regionally across the Emea and globally as well.

Glenn Robertson: One of the things that we found is that, as a result of all this data that we've got, there genuinely is a misalignment within the channel. That misalignment exists between sales and marketing. You might think, oh well that's the same as every business. It's the same as every environment. Sales and marketing historically and typically don't get on. But in the channel it does actually cause some of the issues because they... Sales and marketing is complex enough relationship anyway.

Glenn Robertson: But then when you stack phone in different layers like that we have in the channel becomes even more complex. Where this misalignment exists, we have partners, we have MSPs that exist to sell as much stuff as possible and we have vendors who push down messages of please can you go and do some marketing? They're asking these... They're asking partners, they're asking MSPs to do marketing. Famously they're not particularly great at that activity because they want to focus so much on sales. Within the MSP community, there is naturally a lack of...

Glenn Robertson: I don't mean to be disrespectful to anybody of course, but it's a fact that there is a lack of knowledge, expertise, resource, time that is available to go into marketing. To answer that question Paul, the way that we can do that is there is this funding available via vendors called MDF, marketing development fund. It's supplied to partners in order to generate activity. But what we also find is that sometimes there's not the right people, or the right knowledge or the right time or the right focus that can go into marketing activity.

Glenn Robertson: What we're saying is it's very possible to outsource that marketing. Let's be clear as well, there can be a perception, impression of outsourcing where marketing managers can think that they might lose their jobs or that the agency is going to take over, which is absolutely not the case. When you engage with an agency of good sorts, they would only be wanting to work with you in a way that compliments your activity and actually spends all of their time making you look good.

Glenn Robertson: So marketing managers could be super relaxed about engaging with an agency in the same way that you would outsource other things. Let's be clear here, what is the MSP model, right? You're outsourcing. You're encouraging people to outsource. That's what we're doing. So you have social marketing and you get it all done. At that point, from that marketing because it's got such a good link into sales and once you've got a good understanding of that relationship, that marketing turns into lead gen. Then that lead gen turns into from an MQL into what we'd probably call an SQL. Then that has an effect and an impact on pipeline and then that has an effect and impact on revenue.

Glenn Robertson: Once you've outsourced your marketing to a good agency that has an understanding of the channel, what you can do then is you can actually go back to the vendors that you're working with and you can show them your plans, and you can show them your activity and you can actually apply for funding to carry out this activity. Once you've done that, you can offset that money against the money you've spent outsourcing the agency. Actually Paul, go back to the tease. What you've done over a period of time, this isn't an overnight fix. This is a commitment maybe three, six or 12 months, and you can simply get all of your marketing done, executed, delivered, generate new leads and actually it won't cost you anything.

Paul Green: It's very smart. So your taking those pots of money which you previously said in one of our previous podcasts that there are millions of pounds of MDF sitting unclaimed. You're taking that money which the vendors are going to spend anyway, they've committed to spend it and you set up... So you set up good marketing first through an agency and then essentially you go ask and you say, all right, who's going to fund this of all of your vendors. It's actually quite a smart way. Sometimes there are very creative solutions to things which are almost experimental. Is this one of those experimental solutions or is this something that's starting to actually get some traction?

Glenn Robertson: Well it happens. MDF is something that has existed in the channel for many years. It's something that is spoken about an awful lot. The best ways to do it, the best process to go through. Who's got the best platform? Do we need to develop something new? Is it about personal relationships? Forrester, Gartner, serious decisions, they talk about it all the time, especially with the emergence of what we call the shadow channel as well.

Glenn Robertson: MDF is absolutely a thing. You know what, it's a huge thing and you're absolutely right there's huge amounts. There's millions and millions of pounds available to partners to apply for. What we need to do is we need to help partners, help MSPs, the community out there to understand the best way of accessing that funding and there's some really simple ways of doing that. You speak to your cam or your pam, so your channel account manager, your partner account manager or your BDM, business development manager. There's a lot of acronyms for these guys but basically they are main point of contact to the vendor.

Glenn Robertson: You establish the contact, you make sure you've got a good plan in place. Vendors like to see a good plan. They like to know that what they're doing is essentially a sure bet. So if you've written a well-constructed plan around the activity that you're going to execute, then that's stage one done. Then what you need to do is you actually need to execute that activity. What you say you're going to do, you actually have to do it.

Glenn Robertson: This does sound a little bit like egg sucking but you'll be surprised to how these simple steps don't get followed and it does have a huge impact on the end result. What have we got? We've got established contact. We've got write your plan. We've got execute the activity. Then the next one, believe it or not is the one that almost always is the main culprit forget and forgotten. That is report and ROI.

Glenn Robertson: Once you've planned and once you've executed, you then need to track a report on the results that the activity got and then just simply pass them back to the vendor and say, thanks very much for paying for this activity. It well, we generated this many leads and actually that's looking to attach X amount to our pipeline and hopefully we'll be able to do some decent revenue off that. If we're looking for a number, it's okay to look for or hope for somewhere between 15 and 20 times spent on ROI.

Glenn Robertson: It's just a rough figure. Sometimes it can be an awful lot more. Sometimes it can be less. But what this is about is about maintaining good relationships. Vendors want to sell as much of their stuff as possible and the MSP or the partner that can help that is going to be the one that's... well-treated should we say.

Paul Green: Now you mentioned something at the beginning of your answer, which sounds like it's straight out of a cold war spy novel. That's the shadow channel. What's the shadow channel?

Glenn Robertson: There's an emergence of what we're calling the shadow channel. This is where there is a reselling community that is been created through non-typical or non traditional resellers or VARs or MSPs. You've got the likes of consultancies or even agencies that are emerging into the channel as a very valid, very real route to market for vendors. It's like, you've got this typical and you've got this traditional channel that we all know and love. Then you've got this new shadow channel that is emerging, which is the likes of consultancies and the likes of accountants in professional services in things like financial software.

Glenn Robertson: Then you've got even things like marketing agencies dare I say for things now like Microsoft software, some of the cloud activity and some of the other platforms that are being pushed is available real and a relatively new thing. Just to throw something else in there. I personally believe that there is an emergence of what I'm calling the reverse channel, but maybe we'll talk about that in another podcast.

Paul Green: There's a tease. Talk about teases, there is a tease for the future. We've got to get you back on that. Obviously your business Purechannels. I mean we were talking here about marketing done for you, with someone getting the funding. I know that that's a core competency of your channels. What's your website address? What's the best way for people to get in touch with you?

Glenn Robertson: Just go to a purechannels.co.uk.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast. Ask Paul anything.

Craig: Hi, this is Craig Sharp from Abussi. Paul, should I send direct mail to my customers?

Paul Green: Great question, Craig. Thank you. The answer is 100000% yes. Direct mail is beautiful. It's beautiful because it's expensive. It's beautiful because it's difficult. It's time consuming. Not many MSPs use it and also it's beautiful because most of us don't get much in the post anymore. Go back 20 years, we all had far too much junk mail, didn't we? Stuff coming through the letter box. It was a nightmare. It was very hard to stand out. Now flip around, 20 years on we don't have much coming in the post, but we have too much digitally.

Paul Green: Too many emails, too much on social media so direct mail is the stand out medium. I believe you should be doing direct mail to prospects and to clients. The prospects, you should just routinely be sending them stuff. At the very least, every two to three months you should be sending out a newsletter or just some communications, something to keep you in front of people. You should do everything within your power to keep the quality of that very high. There is a lot of print capacity in the marketplace.

Paul Green: There were a lot of very mature places to go to get direct mails done. This doesn't have to be and really shouldn't be something that you do in house off your own printers. Go and spend the money and get it done well. Sending something out to prospects on a regular basis is a good idea but also don't forget your clients, because I know that MSPs don't have issues with retention, but retention issues are caused by relationship more than anything else.

Paul Green: Someone who's more likely to leave your MSP and go off to a competitor because of the way they feel about the service more than the actual service itself. It's all about feelings. I believe that using direct mail is a great way of just keeping in touch with clients and showing them that you're being proactive and you're adding new services and you're training your staff and you're doing all of these things.

Paul Green: In fact, you can keep communicating this to your clients. Even just a very simple two page A4 newsletter would be so powerful. Get it done properly. Get it printed on quality paper in full color, get it well designed and send it out to them in the post. That can have a major impact. In fact, as you're lining up things like your strategic reviews and your lunches, putting stuff in front of clients through direct mail is a very smart way to keep your relationship with them absolutely topped up to the brim.

Paul Green: Those direct mail pieces will sit on desks, they'll get stuck on walls, they'll go into drawers. They're the things that come back, not quite to haunt you in a few years, but they come back and they make you money down the line. I have a client who sent out a big direct mail piece about seven years ago and even now, still now he's making money off that direct mail piece because every now and again someone finds it in a drawer or it's been pinned up to their wall for years and they ring them up and say, look, can we still do whatever it was that they are promoting within that piece seven, eight years ago, whatever it was?

Paul Green: Direct mail is beautiful because it's difficult and because it has that standout ability. Your first place to start with this should just be to Google to see who are the direct mail experts in your town. Is there someone here, perhaps it's a printer or a designer who doesn't just have the capacity and ability to do this stuff, but has done it successfully for some time. Because if you're going to do direct mail, you might as well get experts to do it for you so it looks brilliant from day one.

Voiceover: How to contribute to the show.

Paul Green: I love getting your feedback on the show and I do read every single email that you send in and I reply to them myself as well. Go on, drop me an email, tell me what you love, tell me what you'd like me to do differently. The email address is hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

JP Kehoe: There's a tremendous shortage of cybersecurity talent and skills. That's one of the key challenges MSPs have today in providing cybersecurity services to their customers.

Paul Green: That's JP Kehoe from Skout Cybersecurity and he's going to be here next week telling you how you can sell more cybersecurity to your clients and prospects. We're also going to be talking about the need for differentiation at the prospecting stage. In fact, I've got a great way for you to stand out from all the other MSPs that you're up against. I've also got a great website for you, for your clients to check the strength of their passwords which will help you to persuade them to not only change their passwords, but to go and buy a password manager from you as well.

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

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In this week's episode * If you use ConnectWise, there's an extremely powerful and FREE tool that can extract and display information in a way you may never have seen before. Paul's joined by the Joe Pannone to explain more about CWDash * There's understandably still nervousness around being GDPR compliant (in the UK anyway), however Paul has details about a brilliant service that can not only find you virtually any email address, but also use that email for marketing too * Also in the week's episode Paul discusses the power of taking action. And answers a listener's question about whether MSPs should use Instagram

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * The emailing finding tool Paul mentioned is called Hunter.io * To book a place on one of the free MSP marketing lunches, just go to paulgreensmspmarketing.com/lunch * Paul's guest was Joe Pannone from Forza Technology Solutions talking about extracting useful data from ConnectWise using the brilliant free tool CWDash * Find the video Paul has also recorded with Joe Pannone here * The guest on March 3rd will once again be Glenn Robertson, MD and owner of Purechannels. with an update on unspent free MDF (Marketing Development Fund) * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: Hello and welcome to this week's show. I've got a corker for you this week and this is what's coming up.

Joe Pannone: It made a dramatic change. And our clients saw it by the way, they saw it and they loved it. It really, really helped us and most importantly our clients.

Paul Green: We're also going to be talking about whether or not you should be using Instagram to get new clients and how to find anyone's email address and drop them a cold email.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: I truly believe that life is better when you are an action orientated individual. And I say this after working quite closely with a lot of business owners for nearly 15 years, and the ones who take action, who get things done, who have an idea and then act on it almost immediately, regardless of what else is happening in their lives, they seem to be the ones who make the most progress. And because they make the most progress, they get the most satisfaction from their businesses, from their lives. And because they get that satisfaction, they take that happiness home and you can see it's a virtuous circle. Now I do meet a lot of business owners, a huge amount of MSP owners who have really good intentions, and we all have those good intentions sometimes, but they fail to translate them into action. So many people talk about the things they would like to do, but they never get past that stage.

Paul Green: In fact, it's one of the reasons that I choose to work only with business owners and high level business managers and not work with employees. Because the few times in my life where I have worked with employees, I just get so frustrated by this, Oh, I'd love to do this someday or I want to do that. And you know, we're not talking about them going up into space or sculpting a life size Statue of Liberty out of clay. We're talking about fairly mundane, ordinary things. But it frustrates me when they're not there taking action. You and I as business owners or as business managers, we should, most of the time, desire something and be able to take action on it so quickly, and it is this action which makes the difference. I've said before on this podcast, I don't consider myself to be particularly highly intelligent.

Paul Green: I certainly, at school I did okay, but it was only okay. I never actually got off to university, but the thing that has allowed me to achieve things I want to achieve, which by the way is my definition of success. The reason I've been able to do that is just purely because of action. I get up early most days to take action. I don't overthink things. I take action. If I have an idea, I will clear stuff that isn't as important as that brand new idea, which is suddenly there and woo in my head, and I take action on it. Now, if you're someone who would like to take more action, there are often some things that typically hold people back from taking enough action. And we do all of us ebb and flow into this. I'm not a 100% action taker all the time.

Paul Green: When I'm tired, I find it very difficult to take action. But the majority of the time it's become a way of life for me. And you can make it a way of life for you, because you can train yourself to act differently. Some people don't take action because they think about stuff too much. Essentially they overthink it. They have an idea, they think, Oh, that's an amazing idea. And so, they think on it and they sleep on it, and there's nothing wrong with sleeping on it, but there comes a point where the sleeping has got to stop and the action has got to start. Sometimes it's fear of failure which stops you from taking action, because if you don't take action, nothing can change, and if nothing changes, you can't fail. Does that make sense? That fear of failure is a very real thing for people. They start to think through all the bad things that could happen if they take action on it.

Paul Green: Do you know what? I'll be honest, half of the stuff I take action on doesn't work. It doesn't pan out. And actually I'm delighted, because when something doesn't work, especially if it's a public failure, and I have plenty of public failures. When something doesn't work, you've discovered one way not to do it, and now you can go off and explore different ways of doing it. One of those ways is going to work eventually. That's typically how it works out. You just need to discover lots of ways if it doesn't work first. So, overthinking can be a very, very negative and very destructive thing to stop you taking action. Our minds don't forget our programmed to stop us from failing. This goes right back to when we were cave people, living in caves, fighting others for food. We didn't want to be seen to be failures because that affected our social standing. But in 2020 failure is good.

Paul Green: Failure is a great thing. Find an idea, act on it fast, fail fast, and then you can iterate it from there. Something else that stops some people from taking rapid action is the ability to act immediately. Again, this is why I love working with business owners because we can suddenly decide, Whoa, this is a great idea. I want to act on this. I'm going to clear my diary, I'm going to push all the other things to one side. All these projects are on hold, because I want to act on this now, and you know what? Acting on something immediately is a secret of getting things done. People who take action immediately, whether they have a great plan or not, are more likely to succeed with that thing. And this isn't just in your business, this is in all areas of your life. Have you ever had that moment when you think, God, I'd love to go to, let's say, the Maldives, and then you immediately find yourself on your laptop, and you're looking it up and you're researching it.

Paul Green: And an hour later you've booked that holiday. It's in your calendar. You've fixed it. You're going to do it and your family are happy and you're happy. That is what we mean by urgent action taking, and it's awesome because you've gone from having that great idea, to booking it, to it being done instantly. It doesn't hang around in your head. You don't have to overthink it. You don't have to worry about it. You don't have to have the fear of failure. It's instant and it's beautiful. One of the most wonderful side effects of taking action is that it obliterates fear. Fear is something that we all suffer from to various different levels. I certainly know that I suffer from fear if I overthink things, which is why I try to be a very action focused person. If I get stuff done, I don't have to be afraid. In the business that I sold four years ago, in 2016, there were moments where we had such negative cashflow, where there was so much money going out and just not enough money coming in, that I was gripped with fear.

Paul Green: What happens if I can't pay the bills? What happens if I lose a member of my staff? Or worse, what happens if we lose a client? And that fear was incredibly crippling, and the only way I found to get rid of that fear was to take action. If I found myself waking up at 2:00 in the morning worrying about cashflow, I discovered it was better for me to get up, go downstairs, turn my laptop on and do some work. Not just any odd work, but work that would help me get more new clients. Because if your fear is that, if you lose a client you're screwed. Then taking some action on getting new clients removes that fear. Action is the most wonderful thing to remove fear. And in fact, if you are plagued by fears, whether that's a longterm thing or just a short term thing, action is the way to get rid of that fear. Because you can't be fearful of something if you're taking action to mitigate it.

Paul Green: The final two things that I'd recommend to you are that, you surround yourself with action takers, and that you make action a daily thing. So, my best friends are all action takers. My best friends, Jonathan, Ed, and all of my other friends, most of whom are business owners, they're all rapid action takers. I try very hard not to associate myself with people who don't take rapid action, because that can be contagious. I don't want to know people who don't take action. I want people who get it done. I want people who aren't afraid to have a great idea and stay up three or four hours into the night to do it, if that's the right thing to do. Remember that you are the sum of the five people that you spend the most time with. Now, I don't physically see Jonathan and Ed more than two or three times a year, but I'm chatting to them every day. And we're talking about the things that we want to do and the things that we have done, and we're surrounding ourselves with action-takers.

Paul Green: The same with my other friends. So, surrounding yourself with other action takers is really important. They're probably not going to be your employees, but the other thing is to do daily action taking. Action, taking action is not something you can leave for a once a week thing, it's got to be a daily thing. You've heard me speak before about me getting up at 5:00 AM. I only do it Mondays to Thursdays now, but I get so much done in that time. And my brain has organised itself by the evening, by the morning, so I know exactly what I'm going to do in the mornings to get me closer to my goals. If I can get me closer to my business goals, I'll get me closer to my lifestyle that I desire. If I get myself closer to that, I don't feel the fear, and I feel as though I'm moving my life forward and I'm happier. And this is the whole point of action. Taking action makes you happy.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: As much as it's a pain in the backside sometimes, email does have an enormous value, especially, for reaching out to people that you haven't spoken to before. And in the last couple of months we found a tool, and actually I've started using a tool which I think you'll find very useful to get virtually anyone's email address. Now the tool is called Hunter.io and that's the website address as well, Hunter.io. I'll put that URL into the show notes, and you can use it for a number of different things relating to finding people's email addresses. So, you can do a domain search, to which you'd literally go into a domain and it shows you all the email addresses of everyone in that company. Or you can use it as an email finder. So, let's say for example, you're connected to someone on LinkedIn, you can go in, and you can put their details in there. And Hunter, if it has an email address for them, it will show you what their email address is.

Paul Green: And you can also use it as an email verifier. So, you can actually pop in an email address you have, or that you think that you have and it will verify that email address for you. Now, there's a whole different set of tools that you can use as an extension that you can add into Chrome. It's actually an add on to Google sheets as well, and they have all sorts of integrations and there's an API. And it's relatively low priced as well for what it is. There's a free plan and that'll allow you to do 50 requests a month. And a request is where you ask for a piece of information. We're using the starter plan, which is 34 my pricing is euros probably because I'm looking at it from the UK.

Paul Green: That's 34 euros a month. We've actually bought a year's worth and we can do a thousand requests a month. We can also export CSVs and we can do some campaigns as well. And this is where I think Hunter has its real value. You see, we've got a whole bunch of old email addresses that I've bought over the years. So, I want to reach more MSPs. I want to tell people about this podcast and my book and my Facebook group, and I want to welcome them into my audiences. You want to do exactly the same thing. You want to welcome people that you want to do business with into your audiences. So, I'm actually using Hunter to validate and to clean up old email addresses that I've got. So, we've got, I mean, thousands of email addresses in the States and in the UK, and we're feeding these into Hunter, a thousand at a time.

Paul Green: So, we're doing a thousand a month. We're asking Hunter to validate those, to clean those up for us. And then because they have cold email campaigning abilities, we're then going to send some cold emails to those people. Now for those people based in the UK and in Europe, yes, this is GDPR compliant, because it is using email addresses which are out there. And you can read more on Hunter's website about the GDPR compliance about it, but I'm certainly quite relaxed about that compliance. What it does, is it doesn't email from its own servers. It actually integrates with a Gmail account. So, of course I recommend that you set up a brand new Gmail account for this, so you're not doing any damage to any existing domain names you have. But I would pop a domain name in there rather than using a Gmail address. And you can get Hunter to send cold emails for you.

Paul Green: Now you can either do that to send people emails, just to have a chat with them, or what you might do is try and clean up those emails by getting them to opt into your email campaign, to your MailChimp or your MailerLite perhaps. And there's lots and lots of different ways that you would use it, but certainly we found in the last couple of months this to be quite a handy tool. If only because, even though people don't reply to emails all the time, once you've got someone's email address, it is a lot easier to try to start a conversation with them. So go and have a look at Hunter.io. I'm sure there are other services around that you found... I would love to know actually what you think of this, if you do start using it, even if it's just the free one. Or if you use a competitor and you think a competing product is better. Do you know, just drop me an email and let me know it's hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green: Now if you like the idea of tools like hunter.io, and you're based in the UK, I've got a way for you to meet up with me and I've got a whole series of different things that I will share with you. You see every week or so I put on, what is essentially, it's a lunch and learn. It's an MSP marketing lunch and I'm doing them all across the country. I've been doing it for the last couple of months. I've got about another two and a half months left to go before we end this current tour. And it's a chance for you to meet with me and let me just fill you up with ideas. Ideas of how to market your MSP, how to get more new clients, how to get those clients to choose to buy more from you, to turn them into more monthly recurring revenue and ultimately into more net profit. Because that's the goal of any business. Net profit. That's what you spend. So, let's talk about how you can generate more net profit in your business.

Paul Green: So, as I say, these lunches are completely free. I ask you to give me three hours of your time. I will reward you with so much information, so much knowledge. And it's based on what other MSPs have been doing as well by the way. This isn't theoretical stuff. This is all practical stuff that other MSPs have done. And I will show you what they have done and how you can replicate this in your business. We're going all around the UK, I'll tell you where to see the locations in a second. And it is completely free. Now, there's no catch to it being free. It's just a good chance for you and me to meet.

Paul Green: Because if we spend three hours in each other's company, you, me, and a bunch of other MSPs, maybe we'll go on to do some work together down the line. I've met hundreds of MSPs this way, and many of them have gone on to work with me. Some of them haven't. That's absolutely fine. But this is a great way to move our relationship forward. So, if you want to see all the locations and the timings and the venues that we've picked, and how easy we've made it for you with easy parking and stuff, all you've got to do is go onto the website. It's paulgreensmspmarketing.com/lunch. That's paulgreensmspmarketing.com/lunch.

Voiceover: The big interview.

Joe Pannone: Hi, I'm Joe Pannone. I'm CEO of Forza Technology Solutions. We're in the Northeast United States, in Connecticut. We have a great product for MSPs that's free, called CWDash. It's the ConnectWise management business intelligence platform.

Paul Green: When I interviewed Joe, he told me his frustrations when he owned his own MSP. That he had all this information sat in ConnectWise, but he couldn't get it out in a way which was meaningful and useful for him. And I asked him to tell me how he fixed that problem.

Joe Pannone: My management came to me, this was in 2007, we got ConnectWise and Kaseya at the same time. So, it was a big undertaking to our systems. And within months my management came to me and said, if we're going to do this right, we need better visibility, we need more real time interaction on things like, how many tickets are open per technician, how many tickets are open and not closed for each company, how many hours have been used in an agreement and in a particular time in the month. These kinds of questions that you had to go into ConnectWise and look at the report and see it. They'd rather see it up on a large monitor in front of them.

Joe Pannone: Another big one was, every MSP that I've talked to has an issue of their technicians putting their time in. And so, we have a very big dashboard that shows the exact time when the technicians put in their time. And if it's noon on a Thursday, hopefully they have, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday all their time in, and then half the day on Thursday. So, this is some of the information that management wanted to see in real time.

Paul Green: And how did it change how you ran the business? Having that information there on the screen in front of you in real time.

Joe Pannone: No time was slipping through the cracks. We were able to invoice right out of the same system. It was very efficient, but still my management saw the need to take it a bit further. What was in the package and still is, isn't enough. We have certain standard operating practices. SOPs - when a technician has more than five tickets open, dispatch knows about it, they get right on it. They find out what the problem is. And we have people responsible for each of those numbers and what exactly happens when the threshold is met. So, it made a dramatic change. And our clients saw it by the way, they saw it and they loved it, and it really, really helped us and most importantly, our clients.

Paul Green: So, fast forward a number of years and, now that same functionality is available to any MSP who uses ConnectWise via CWDash, which is of course your product. So, how did it go from being something you used in your MSP, to something that you made available to thousands of MSPs?

Joe Pannone: We used it internally. It was doing really well. I'm in a peer group, then called HTG, and now called IT Nation Evolve. And I inadvertently showed some of these dashboards in one of our meetings. My peers stopped and they said, "What are those? What are those dashboards?" And I said, all this is stuff that we've been doing internally. And they said, "We you want these, why don't you make them for us?" And they beta tested it and they convinced us to go to market. So, in 2010 we released CWDash. CW for ConnectWise, Dash for dashboard. We packaged it up and we officially launched it in 2010.

Paul Green: And how many MSPs rely on this now, Joe?

Joe Pannone: Well, right now we have over 6,000 MSPs. The dramatic change that happened in 2015, we had vendors that we deal with come to us and say, we want to advertise in this, let us advertise to these MSPs. So, we changed the model and it's now free. It's free to the MSPs, with advertising. There is a paid version that you can remove the ads, it's the same exact functionality. But overwhelming majority use the free version. And we have over 6,000 MSPs worldwide that use CWDash. We get about a hundred new a month that come on, and we enjoy their success and we enjoy the feedback.

Paul Green: That's a beautiful success story, it really is. Now, obviously, back end of last year we saw ConnectWise acquire BrightGauge at the same time they acquired Continuum, which I believe is a similar kind of product to yours. It's a dashboard for ConnectWise. Now that they've got their own products, does it concern you that that might have some impact on CWDash?

Joe Pannone: BrightGauge is a tremendous product. It's web based, it has multi sources so it just doesn't get from ConnectWise, it gets from, last time I looked over 50 different sources. So, it's a very different product. It is a dash boarding product. So, when we compare CWDash to the ConnectWise portion of BrightGauge, they're very different. CWDash is a Windows application. It does not download any of the MSPs ConnectWise information. BrightGauge and some others are in a browser. So, they have to get all the MSPs, ConnectWise information, bring it to their cloud and then display it. So, ours is real time in a Windows application, doing read only calls to the database and then displaying them. So, the technology, privacy in the real time are the big difference. Now, ConnectWise had acquired BrightGauge through the Continuum acquisition. ConnectWise continues to evangelise CWDash. The plumbing is completely different and there's benefits to both. And we're enjoying the relationship.

Paul Green: Okay, thank you Joe. So, for ConnectWise users, where's the best place for them to see CWDash in action, and to sign up for their free access to it?

Joe Pannone: Absolutely. Cwdash.com. CW for ConnectWise, Dash short for dashboard, has hundreds of videos. Go ahead and get it. Just click on it. You will have to complete a quick survey. Now, one thing I should mention, if you're hosted ConnectWise in their cloud, you do need a layer that they offer called cloud data access. ConnectWise offers this to allow direct access to the hosted version of their offering. So, if you're on prem, you don't need anything. But if you are on ConnectWise host, their cloud, you do need something called cloud data access, and it's all explained there on the website. But Cwdash.com is the website.

Joe Pannone: I would really, really enjoy after you get the application to send the survey, has my link on it, has my calendar. Please click on, I would love to walk through with you. Once you see your own data in a very different way, I really, really enjoy that conversation and that banter. How an MSP is seeing some of this information for the first time in such a different way. ConnectWise is holding so much information, and sometimes they don't realise it. So, it's really rewarding when it can really help them.

Paul Green: Thanks Joe. Now we're going to try something new on this week's podcast. You see, after I recorded my interview with Joe, I then went on to record a video with him actually going into the details of what's in CWDash. And I've just made that video live on my website. So, it's like a deep dive if you like. If you go to paulgreensmspmarketing.com, make sure you put that s in. So, paulgreens with the s, mspmarketing.com. And click on my blog. It's there in the navigation, and you'll see today a brand new blog post going live with that video with Joe showing you CWDash. By the way if you want to get more content like that, because we're going to do a few more deep dives in the weeks ahead, but if you want to get all my content delivered to you, just join my email list. It's very simple. It tells you there on the blog how you can do it, and in fact I'll send you a free copy of my book as well.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. Ask Paul anything.

Claudia: Hello, my name is Claudia. Should I be using Instagram?

Paul Green: That's an easy one to answer, Claudia. So, thank you for that question. The easy answer is, no, probably. And I'll tell you why. Instagram is a consumer marketing tool. So, if you're trying to reach B2B, you're trying to reach other businesses, it's not necessarily a tool that you would use. However, there is one caveat and one exception that goes with that. If the kind of businesses that you want to reach use Instagram themselves, so for example, restaurants, retail businesses, other hospitality like hotels. If they are using Instagram to reach their clients, then maybe there is an opportunity for you to use Instagram to reach them.

Paul Green: And it depends on the size of the business. If the owner or the manager is sat on Instagram every day doing marketing on Instagram, then wouldn't it be a sensible thing for you to be doing exactly the same thing. Does that make sense? Yeah. The reason that LinkedIn works so well as a B2B marketing platform, is because other businesses are sat on LinkedIn using it every single day or using it on a regular basis. It's exactly the same principle with Instagram. I worked with a small number of MSPs who use Instagram. I've got one that sells VoIP phones to dentists. I've got another that does normal support for vets, veterinarians and they're using Instagram because it's what their target audience uses. So, I mean, there's a general marketing principle in this. Which is, wherever the people you want to reach, wherever they are, wherever they hang out, that's where you do your marketing.

Voiceover: How to contribute to the show.

Paul Green: Without wanting to sound like a big head. There's virtually no MSP marketing question that I couldn't answer. So, what do you want to ask me? You can either record it as an audio file, perhaps an MP3, and send that over to me off your phone. Or you can just drop me an email and I'll read your question out for you. The address is hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

Glenn Robertson: Vendors want to sell as much of their stuff as possible. And the MSP or the partner that can help that is going to be the one that's well-treated.

Paul Green: That's Glenn Robertson from Purechannels. He's back on the podcast next week, talking about how you can get all of your marketing done for you completely free. We're also going to be talking about doing strategic reviews with clients over lunch, and all the things you need to get right to make that a very profitable lunch for you. And why switching from one MSP to another is such a big deal for clients. And how to build a relationship with them years before they're ready to even think about that switch.

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

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In this week's episode * Windows Virtual Desktop is gaining some traction with MSPs as a re-sellable product, but a lot of people still have questions around best practice. Special guest Joseph Landes from Nerdio is an ex-Microsoft employee and is back to share some brilliant tips * Paul's also got an idea for you to integrate Have I been Pwned into your website as a data capture tool * Plus find out how to sell more password managers; get clients excited about telecoms; and identify (and fire) your Internal Terrorist

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Read more about Gallup's research on employee engagement types * Paul has researched and written a series on employee engagement, read it here * The tool to create pass-phrases is useapassphrase.com * Paul discussed the site to help check if an account or password has been breached haveibeenpwned.com * The API from Have I Been Pwned has been turned into a free Wordpress plugin available with Paul Green's MSP Marketing Edge service * Paul's guest talking about the best way to re-sell Windows Virtual Desktop was Joseph Landes from Nerdio (you can find part 1 of his interview discussing how to improve margins selling Azure here) * The guest on Feb 25th will be Joe Pannone from CWDash talking about extracting useful data from ConnectWise * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: Hello and welcome to episode 14. Here's what's coming up in today's show.

Joseph Landes: A few months ago, Microsoft released Windows Virtual Desktop. Since then we have been fairly overwhelmed with demand.

Paul Green: That's Joseph Landes from Nerdio. We're going to be playing the second part of his interview talking about how to sell more Windows Virtual Desktop. I've also got an idea for you to integrate, Have I been Pwned into your website as a data capture tool. And a way to tell clients how to set passwords which seems easier to them. But will actually sell you more password managers.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: Once you've got about five or six staff, that's when you start to realise that you're almost a full time parent-manager. As much as you are the owner of the business. I say parent, not of actual children, but of your employee children. Children ... excuse me, freudian slip there. Employees do have a tendency to act a little bit like children. The thing that had always used to frustrate me was when I had 15 staff. I had a very highly systemised business. It was a business where, I didn't need to turn up every day and the business thrived.

Paul Green: Yet still the second I walked in on a Thursday morning, some of my staff would ask me stupid questions like, "Paul, we haven't got any milk. What should we do?" These are the questions which they would answer quite well if I wasn't there. But the second I'm there, it's like the switch flipped in their brain and we must go and ask daddy. Because the second you have staff and it's a number of staff, you do become daddy or mummy to them. It's kind of depressing.

Paul Green: As you get more and more and more staff, what happens is your staff actually start to fit into three types of category. Now this came from some research which is actually is done every year by the research company, Gallup. They've noticed that once you get past a certain number of staff, and I forget how many. But your engagement of your employees fit into one of only three categories. So the very best kind of employee that you'll have is your engaged employee. Now this is actually ... when you've got five or six staff, this should be the majority of your staff. But by the time you start getting up to ... certainly when I had 15 I only had really three or four engaged staff.

Paul Green: Essentially they treat the business like it's their own, but in a good way. So they're on your side, they're the kind of people who use their initiative. Which becomes rarer and rarer the bigger the organisation gets. They're the kind of people you can trust with the keys, with the alarm code. If they're on a scheduled holiday day, a day off, and there's a big problem. They're the first kind of person who's likely to come in on that day off, if it's in any way possible.

Paul Green: When you've got three or four staff, it is possible for them all to be engaged. Once you go pass, I think he's about seven, eight. You start to lose the ability to have everyone being engaged. Because the reality is, people just aren't engaged with your business in the way that you are engaged. It's your business, it's your baby, we're doing things your way. Therefore, that gives you a massive level of engagement and that's quite infectious in your first staff. As you get more and more staff, some of them stay as engaged. But increasingly, you start to hire people who will ultimately are not engaged. They're not engaged, is the Gallup label for these people. Actually you go into any big organisation and the vast majority of people are not engaged.

Paul Green: My last job I had before I started my first business in 2005. I worked in the digital department of a major newspaper group in the UK, it's called Johnston Press. There were about 40 people in my department back in 2004. They were building website platforms for all the newspapers to do their websites. It was a very highly not engaged environment. Just because the entire company was trying to reinvent itself for the digital age. As it turned out, it failed. We'd got a lot of developers, we've got a lot of tech people, we've got a lot of managers in that business. There was a lot of toing and froing, and direction changing. We had some solid leadership for a while and then the leader retired, moved on to something else. And we had a bad leader. It was surprising how quickly people who were engaged became not engaged.

Paul Green: Not engaged is the defacto for most employees. The symptoms of not engaged are they turn up and they do a job. Sometimes they do a good job, but then that's it. The second it hits five, six o'clock, whatever time it is for them to go home, they disconnect. They literally, they switch off. It's almost like as they walk over the threshold of the door, that internal switch in their head, click. It flicks and they don't really care. They could have a day off and you could ring them and you could be desperate for help and they'd lie. Even though they're planning to sit there and play Call of Duty all day. They would lie and say to you, "Oh no, I've got a big family thing on today." These people just are not engaged in what you're trying to do.

Paul Green: It is scary that the bigger the organisation, the more of these people are there. In fact, it's believed that not engaged people make up more than 50% of the workforce. They're literally turning up for the money. Isn't that scary? Well it's scary for us as business owners. It's also scary that so many people just waste their life away. I mean, I love work. I wouldn't do this work if I didn't love it. Would you? I know you wouldn't. You'd go and do something else because you've got the control over what you do.

Paul Green: We've got engaged people, who are the best people. We've got not engaged, who are sadly the silent majority. Then we've got the very worst people. When you've got four, five, six staff, you know when you've got one of these. When you're at 15 it's very hard to spot them, 15 or more. These people are called actively disengaged staff. I prefer to call them internal terrorists. Because knowingly or unknowingly, they are working against the business. I say knowingly or unknowingly, some of them do it deliberately. I've had a couple of internal terrorists who got fired. Ken, you are the worst. I know you won't be listening to this podcast because you hate me. But you are the worst and it was a pleasure to get rid of you.

Paul Green: Internal terrorists sometimes don't realise that they are destroying the business from within. Because what they do is they just basically tell everyone about their unhappiness. They're unhappy and they wear it on their sleeve. Now, the unhappiness might not just be at work. I've had internal terrorists in the past who actually quite enjoy their work. But they're so unhappy at home, they bring the unhappiness into the workplace. Which is actually quite hard to deal with. Whereas the ones who are unhappy with their work, it's easier to deal with them because you just performance manage them. I say it's easy to performance manage them, because people who are actively disengaged, who are internal terrorists. It is physically impossible for them to do a great job at work day after day after day.

Paul Green: You can give them a telling off. You can start to manage their performance and they will up their game. But it will only be in the short term. Actively disengaged employees are physically impossible of upping their game long term. You've got to just have a look at your staff right now. I don't like appraisals, I see why big businesses do appraisals. Me, I prefer just sitting down with members of the team on a regular basis. However regular that needs to be. It could be weekly, it could be fortnightly, maybe monthly. Just having a little chat, an one to one, a structured chat.

Paul Green: But as you're talking to your staff, as you're looking at them, as you're thinking about them now. Just have a look and think, who doesn't show initiative? Who could so easily, when the initiative is there in front of them or the ability to change something. But they're just not acknowledging it and then they're just not doing anything. Because that is a sign of disengagement and potentially actively disengagement. Who are taking part in lots of unhealthy activities?

Paul Green: When I was working for Johnston Press, and I'll admit this now, 15 years on. I used to sneak off to the toilet and sit in the toilet. Not because I needed the toilet, but because I could go in there with my phone and I would play solitaire. Actually, that was where I started my first business. I started my first business in the toilets of my employers. How amazing is that? I would go for 30-40 minutes and no one noticed I was gone. Which encouraged me to go longer. Isn't that crazy?

Paul Green: So who's doing that in your business? Are the smokers going out more often for cigarettes? Are they spending more time making coffee? Here's one to watch out for. Who's the person who is making coffee for everyone all the time? Because it's a sign of active disengagement. It's a way for them to get away from their desk for 20 minutes, making coffee for everyone else. Another one to look out for is silence. Maybe you have ... well you probably do have lots of introverts. But sometimes a really silent workplace is a sign that people are disengaging. I know lots of people like sitting with their big headphones on and listening to their own music. But it can be a pretty bad thing for a team.

Paul Green: When your team getting out there and go and put themselves on courses. Are they pushing you to improve their skill set? Or are you having to push them? Because if they're pushing you, that's a good sign. That's an engagement sign. If you're having to push them and you talk about stuff and they're very reluctant to do it. That's not a good sign, it really isn't.

Paul Green: Then finally, the final one is to just look out for is, what's happening in their lives? I think I'm a big fan of people leaving their home life at the door. Unless it's a major issue that we need to help them with. But at the same time, if they're having bad weekends and they're coming in grumpy and hungover and tired on a Monday morning. That can easily overflow into the workplace. Because if they're exhausted on a Monday morning, what are they going to be like on Friday morning? They're going to be triple exhausted. I know that some of your techs perhaps have an unhealthy relationship with gaming or with other activities. Sitting on the computer till three in the morning. I appreciate that that's their idea of fun. But if they're coming into work every day with six hours sleep. That's not only not healthy for them, but he's not healthy for the business either.

Paul Green: Which of your staff are engaged? Find those people, give them more mummy love or daddy love, and keep them engaged. Which of them are disengaged? What can you do to have a chat with them? To give them some of your time, even if it's just 20 minutes every month. Who are the actively disengaged people? What can you do to fix them? Because if he can't fix them, you do know that you've got to fire them, don't you?

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: Clients hate passwords. We all know that. They hate the fact that they have to be difficult and random. They hate the fact that they can't just do iterations of them. They hate the fact that they have to have passwords at all. They also hate multifactor authentication. We know this. Because what seems like a great idea when you're pitching it to them and it's safe and secure. Is just a real pain for them.

Paul Green: Now I've got something which I've tested on a couple of clients, which seems to work quite well. It's to say to your clients, instead of using passwords and using random password generators, to use a pass phrase. In fact, there is actually a website, useapassphrase.com. Where you can randomly generate a passphrase. I'm on this website now and I've just randomly generated a four word passphrase with spaces. It's come up with yin molehill unfitting syrup. The time it would take to brute force crack that is apparently 3,785,568 centuries. That's a fairly un-crackable one, yin molehill unfitting syrup. Now, theoretically the human brain should be able to remember yin molehill unfitting syrup, rather than it will DX7!B, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Paul Green: Here's the thing, because you say to your clients that they need to use a different password for every single system. They could go onto something like useapassphrase.com and they could come up with lots of different passphrases. We all know that within three or four passphrases, their brain is going to be full of random gobbledy goop. Yes, it's easier to remember yin molehill unfitting syrup than anything else. But not when you've got four or five of those going around in your head. This is when we get the opportunity to talk about a password manager.

Paul Green: See I think every single one of your clients and every single one of their users should be using a password manager. You should be reselling that as monthly recurring revenue. You probably agree with me. But what is it that stops people from doing it? I'll tell you what it is, it's their theory that they don't need it. Because passwords are easy. Yet we all know that fluffy123 or hang on the iteration, fluffy124 and fluffy125. Are the easiest things in the world to crack. There are various other websites online which will show you how long it takes to crack a password. You can just go in, paste a password in order or put a random password in. It will tell you how many months, or years, or weeks, or whatever it takes.

Paul Green: This is something that when you're sitting down with clients and you're talking about improving their security. Showing them just how important passwords are, proper random passwords. This is the kind of tool that really, really helps you to sell more password managers. Because you only need the person at the top to realise, "My goodness, everyone needs to use random passwords and you know what? Let's make their life easier. Let's hire in a password manager. Let's make it secure. And when they leave our employment, let's make it easy for us to just switch off all of their passwords so they can never log in to any of our systems again." It's a very, very beautiful solution.

Paul Green: But what makes it easy to sell is to appear to be helping them by suggesting things like passphrases. But actually what you're doing is you're setting up their mind for thinking, "This is too difficult. I can't do this. My staff can't do this." They're much more likely to go onto buy that password manager from you.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green: There's another website which is quite a good security tool and you've probably heard of it. It's called haveibeenpwned.com, P-W-N-E-D dot com. I'll put that URL in the show notes. Now it's not as good as something like ID Agent or the other dark web monitoring tools. But it's something that just about anyone can go and put their email address in and see whether or not it's been breached. Whether or not it's been stolen from a website or a database somewhere. We had a cracking idea a couple of weeks ago, which was how Have I been Pwned is actually a good data capture tool. Because anyone putting an email address into it is essentially checking out their email address.

Paul Green: We have, using the Have I been Pwned API, we've put together a WordPress plugin. Which allows you to integrate into your website the ability for someone to check their email address. Now I've got to be completely honest. This is something you could do yourself. The API is something ridiculously low like $3 a month. It's not a great deal of money. It's a pretty easy API to work with. If you've got a developer, it wouldn't take you long to integrate it into your website. You should do that, you really should.

Paul Green: If it's something that you think, "Ah, do you know what? We'll never get around to it." We're now giving away this WordPress plugin completely free to members of my service called the MSP Marketing Edge. This service gives you content every single month that you can use in your area and only you can use it in your area. We only sell it to one MSP per area. It's a video, there's an educational guide, there's educational emails, we've got social media content, there's a press release as a sales letter. There's a whole load of stuff that you use as your own marketing material.

Paul Green: It's fairly cheap, as well. I mean it's £99 a month in the UK, it's $129 a month in the US. Which is more or less the same price in the two countries. It's about 150 MSPs now we're using this service.

Paul Green: So this year we're going to bundle on a whole load of extra freebies with this. This Have I been Pwned plugin is just the first one. It's yours completely to use while you're an active member. You pop it on your website on a page and it becomes a data capture. Of course, we give you some best practice of how you should use it. We give you some texts that you can use on your website. We suggest the best way for you to use the email addresses that you get out of the back of it.

Paul Green: If you want to have a look at that, by the way. And of course check to see if your area is still available or whether or not a rival MSP has beaten you to it. It's mspmarketingedge.com.

Voiceover: The big interview.

Paul Green: Joseph, you're on our show last week talking about how MSPs can make more money selling Microsoft Azure. You had five fantastic tips, strategies that MSPs can use to reduce the cost of Azure and actually put some margin into it. Now we're going to talk about Windows Virtual Desktops today. Before we do, just to recap. Can you tell us again, just give us the ten second intro to yourself.

Joseph Landes: Great to be on the show again. My name is Joseph Landes, I'm the Chief Revenue Officer at Nerdio. Where our mission is to empower MSPs around the world to build successful cloud practices in Microsoft Azure.

Paul Green: Now, I'm not quite sure if this is a UK thing or whether it's reflected internationally. But many of the MSPs that I meet, they don't really embrace Windows Virtual Desktop. They know about it, they know it's an option. But it's not something that they're pushing onto many of their clients. Do you see that happening in all marketplaces? Or actually this something that's being embraced now by MSPs internationally?

Joseph Landes: A few months ago, Microsoft released Windows Virtual Desktop. Since then, we have been fairly overwhelmed with demand from MSPs who are looking to build a cloud practice, using the new virtual desktop technology from Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop.

Paul Green: Tell us more about that announcement that they made back at the back end of last year. What's it changed for MSPs? How does it make it easier for MSPs to roll out virtual desktop?

Joseph Landes: In the past, if MSPs wanted to move to virtual desktops as a core part of their business. If they wanted to put their customers into virtual desktops is what we call IT as a service. The option they really had was doing that using RDS technology or VDI technology. Now Microsoft has released Windows Virtual Desktop. With Windows Virtual Desktop there's a new version of Windows 10 that allows multiple users to use the same desktop virtual machine at the same time. This saves MSPs money because it requires less Azure infrastructure and it provides the user with the same desktop experience as they're used to on their physical devices. Because Windows 10 is now on ... I think Microsoft said over 800 million devices. If a MSP can say to their customer, "Look, you're going to be able to use the same Windows 10 you're used to. But do that using a virtual desktop." That's a win-win for the MSP, but also for the customer.

Paul Green: I think the key question here then is, how would you market that to the clients? Because obviously the end clients and end users, they're not aware of what Microsoft is doing. They don't follow Microsoft's announcements. To certain extent, they don't care. They just want their technology to work, they want it to be reliable, et cetera, et cetera. If you were running an MSP, how would you market this to the decision makers?

Joseph Landes: Well I think the first thing you need to talk about is a little bit less about Windows Virtual Desktop or the benefits of running your infrastructure on virtual desktops. The idea of a virtual desktop is that you can use any device, you could go to any device anywhere in the world and you could log into your own personal desktop. That's quite revolutionary relative to where we were some years ago. To be able to do that using the same Windows 10 that you, the end customer, are used to doing. And not having to play around with the old RDS or VDI technology. I think that's a real benefit to customers. Imagine task workers who may show up at very specific times into their companies. Or imagine remote workers who don't always use the same device but need access to their desktop no matter what device they're on. This is a great use case, the whole concept of virtual desktop. Once you as an end customer have bought into the concept of virtual desktops. Then embracing Windows Virtual Desktop, which is true Windows 10 Virtual Desktop environment. That's certainly the way to go.

Paul Green: Now you've be very generous last week and this week telling us how to make more money selling this technology. Tell us a little bit more about your business Nerdio. What does it do? What's the benefit for an MSP of using your service?

Joseph Landes: Yeah, so if you're an MSP and you're looking to move to Azure. You've probably struggled with a number of challenges in your business. You've probably said, "Look, I don't have anyone in my business that knows how to architect and manage an Azure solution. I find Azure to be complicated. Quite frankly, I think it's risky. Because I don't know how to make money using Azure relative to my on-premise world that I know so well." With Nerdio, we have solved all of those challenges for MSPs. We've made investments four primary areas.

Joseph Landes: The first is deployment. With Nerdio for Azure an MSP can deploy a complete IT environment in Azure in just a few hours. With our SAS application, you simply get your Azure and Office 365 subscriptions, you plug them in. Within a few hours everything you need for your customer is stood up in Azure.

Joseph Landes: The second investment we've made is in pricing and packaging. The idea of being able to go into something called our Nerdio cost estimator. Really understand the true costs of purchasing Azure from your distributor or from Microsoft is a huge advancement in the ecosystem.

Joseph Landes: The third is management. We've created a single pane of glass management portal that allows you to manage all of your clients in Azure once you've provisioned them. And to do it in every task you want to do in three clicks or less. What we call simplified management.

Joseph Landes: Then finally, the fourth investment we've made is in optimisation. Something we talked about in last week's show. Built-in auto scaling technology. The ability for you using our tool to scale down your customer's environment when it's not being used. To save you and your customer money.

Joseph Landes: Those are the four investments we've made with Nerdio for Azure. If any MSP is looking to build a successful cloud practice in Azure, we certainly recommend that you check us out at getnerdio.com.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. Ask Paul anything.

David: Hi, my name is David. How do I sell more telephones?

Paul Green: That is a great question. Anyone that sells phones certainly wants to sell more of them. Because of course, VoIP is such a great monthly recurring revenue generator. Once you've done your set up, very little extra work to do. Lots of extra profits to take month in, month out. And not much maintenance, as well. Who doesn't want to sell more telecoms?

Paul Green: I think the trick to selling more phones ... because you kind of up against everyone and everyone's pretty much selling the same thing. I'm sure there are differences between 3CX and Horizon and all the other systems. But essentially they are still the same thing to the end user. We've got to remember this core thing about the people who buy from us. Our decision makers we want to reach, don't know what they don't know. We know that with telecoms that they're distracted by the shiny handsets more than they are the services themselves. You're actually selling something that it should and could become a commodity thing. Because when you're selling very similar things and you've got lots and lots of people in the market able to sell those things. Typically that commoditises the market. Hasn't seemed to have happen within telecoms so far, which is a good thing.

Paul Green: I think what you need to do to sell more is to focus on the things that people want. Or that they think that they want. Now they need phones, but as we all know needs are brain decisions. The brain makes really bad buying decisions. It's very logical, it's very Spock about it, using a Star Trek reference. Whereas the heart, the heart makes great want decisions. So we need to put two things in front of heart. The first thing is nice handsets, shiny handsets. We know that the handsets are only part of the package and that it's the overall bundle of services. But they don't. They see the nice handset sat on their desk every day.

Paul Green: Can you find a way to subsidise the handsets? It's exactly the same trick that the ... I don't know if this is how it is in the States. But certainly in the UK, for decades and to a certain extent is still now. The telecoms companies, the mobile phone companies, subsidise the cost of the handsets just to get you to sign a three year contract. So you could get a thousand pound phone for virtually nothing. Because it was subsidised by your overall connectivity contracts.

Paul Green: Could you do the same thing with VoIP? Could you give them the best handset with the colour screen and the pretty buttons and the, "Oh." The nice stuff. Essentially it costs them very little because you're bundling the costing, you're subsidising the cost. That's one thing.

Paul Green: The second thing is to focus on those wants. What do they think they want? Now they probably think that they want their calls to be answered more quickly. They probably think that they want the hold message. They think they want the flexibility of diverting calls. They think they want the reporting. Now I say they think they want this because this is what people buy. But I'm sure if you are selling phone systems and you can see who's actually accessing the reporting. People who say, "Oh yeah, amazing. I want to know how many missed calls and I want to know how long it takes us on average to answer. Bladdy, bladdy, blah." They buy all of this and then they never look at the reports. Which is fine. Who cares whether they look at the reports or not. If that's what they want, let's give it to them. This is the key to great selling. You find out what someone wants and you give it to them. Again and again and again and again.

Paul Green: I think if you want to sell more telecoms, don't get too hung up on features. Get hung up on benefits. Don't sit and think about the cost of a handset per user to an organisation. Look at ways that you can subsidise that handset by tying them in for two to three years. Give them something that they want, that they think that they want. They will buy more telecoms from you.

Voiceover: How to contribute to the show.

Paul Green: What do you think of the show? What's a burning question you'd love me to answer about MSP marketing? Why don't you drop me an email? It's hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

Joe Pannone: It made a dramatic change. And our client's saw it, by the way. They saw it and they loved it. It really, really helped us and most importantly, our clients.

Paul Green: That's Joe Pannone from CWDash. Now if you use ConnectWise, you'll definitely want to listen to next week's interview. He's got a free dashboard which takes your ConnectWise data and extracts useful information for you.

Paul Green: We're also going to be talking about how you can choose to be a rapid action taker. And how you can find anyone's email address and cold email them.

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

View Details

In this week's episode * MSPs thrive or dive on the successful completion of small technical tasks. Paul suggests an easy solution for those times when a simple small mistake can be devastating to the business * Check out the first of a two-part interview with an ex-Microsoft employee who can help you sell Azure with fantastic margins * Also in this week's episode; how to spend more time out of the business with the Three Plus One plan. And the best way to run an email marketing campaign

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Find copies of the book The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande on Amazon * Paul mentioned services and tools including IT Glue, ConnectWise & AutoTask * Find out more about the video production services for MSPs websites at mspvideos.co.uk * Paul's guest talking about the best way to re-sell Microsoft Azure was Joseph Landes from Nerdio (who will also be back next week talking about Windows Virtual Desktop) * You can order your free copy of Paul's book Updating Servers Doesn’t Grow Your Business right here * The concept of the 'Learning Zone' was in reference to previous guest Fiona Challis who runs the The Next Gen Sales Acceleration Academy * The question about the best type of email campaign to run came from Andrew Eardley from Prompt PC * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: Hello. Here's what's coming up on today's show.

Joseph Landes: Taking advantage of these five suggestions that we've made. You can easily make up to 80% margins on Azure. You can save up to 80% off the list price of Azure.

Paul Green: That's Joseph Landes from from Nerdio. He's going to be telling you later on how you can sell more Azure and make a lot more profit on it. We're also going to be talking about checklisting everything in the business using paper, not screens, and I'm going to be answering a question for an MSP about the most powerful form of email marketing.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: One of the common themes of this podcast is that the business is there for you. That's the purpose of the business, to feed your life. And yet actually far too many MSPs, in fact, just general business owners, treat it that their life is there to feed the business. It's a very easy trap to fall into. In your first few years, you get busy, you throw yourself into your work, you're doing 60-hour weeks and it's the right thing to do at the very beginning of the business or when you first acquire the business. But long-term, it's not a healthy thing to do. It's not good for your health, it's not good for your mental health, certainly not good for your family and for the people who love you and who are supporting you.

Paul Green: And I think as you develop your business over time, you need to readdress the work-life balance. And there does come a point where you have to say, if this business can't give me sufficient money, and sufficient time, and sufficient fun, then I need to change the business. I either need to get rid of it, or I need to dramatically change it, or I need to do something different.

Paul Green: And I was talking to one of my clients a few weeks ago and he was telling me about his plan for this year for what he's going to do for the rest of this year and next year. And it's very much about addressing that balance and making sure, in fact guaranteeing, that he has enough fun and enough downtime in his life for him and for his other half to go and enjoy. And he's come up with something called the three plus one plan. Now, this is a very simple plan. You have three weeks of work and then you have a week away. Three weeks of work, week away. Three weeks of work, week away.

Paul Green: Now this particular client doesn't have children or certainly not school aged children, so he doesn't have to worry too much about that. So they are literally going to spend three weeks working in the business, good quality weeks, then they're going to have a complete break, a complete week away. And in the early days for this year, he's planning on going to lots of different holiday destinations. The long-term plan is to find somewhere to live. So they are looking for a second home in the sun somewhere that they can go in that one week off and they can enjoy their lives, him and his partner together. Because they realise at their age, and with all the work they've done in the business, that actually that's what life is all about. It's about enjoying themselves.

Paul Green: So that's the plan for this year and for next year. What's really interesting, is if you look at their plan from 2022 onwards. Because their long-term plan is to flip the three plus one plan around, so that actually they're spending three weeks away and then one week in the business. Three weeks away, one week in the business. Three weeks away, one week in the business. Now that sounds like fun, doesn't it? That sounds like a good lifestyle. Of course, it's not possible to completely run your business in just one week a month, which is essentially what that works out at. So they do intend to be in touch with the staff, to have video calls, but the goal is to flip their lifestyle so that they are spending more time enjoying themselves, living where they want to live, doing the things they want to do, and less time being frustrated with the business.

Paul Green: Now, that's the plan for, as I say, two to three years away. But what's interesting is that they have to start working on that plan now. So even though the business can quite safely sustain them going away for one week a month now, as the business stands today, it can't sustain them being away for three weeks of the month. And so they've got to start that work now to make that business more resilient without them. In fact, isn't that the goal? Isn't that the dream? But the business thrives, not just survives, not just ticks along, but thrives whether you personally are there in the business or not. This is a great goal. I mean, this is a truly life-changing goal and this is the real purpose of a business. The business does really well. It thrives whether you are there or not.

Paul Green: And you get to choose whether or not you spend the time in the business. And the key thing there is the choice. I love work. I love throwing myself into projects and doing stuff. But do you know what? I love my family more. And I love holidays more. And I love going for long walks and running and all the things I like doing. And that's the point, It's about the choice. It's about the choice to say, "I'm going to go and spend a couple of weeks back in the business because I enjoy it." I'm going to go and take on this big project, or do this big upgrade, because I want to do it. It's all about the choice.

Paul Green: Now my clients in two years time or three years time when they've got that business restructured, there'll be at that position where the business runs without them. So they know already, they've got to get someone who can run that business day-to-day when they're not there. They've got to put in place systems, standard operating procedures so that decisions can be made when they're not there. This is actually quite exciting. We're going to be talking shortly about checklisting things and systemising things, and this is exactly what they've got to do within that business.

Paul Green: What makes that particularly exciting is the more they do that, the more sellable that business becomes. And we've talked before about the fact that we're all going to have to leave the business at some point and either we sell the business or the business goes bust, or we die at our desks, which is not a great way to exit a business. The most sellable businesses thrive without the owner needing to be there. In fact, it's interesting that it's exactly the same set of things you do to a business to sell it, to make it more sellable, as it is to create a business that feeds your lifestyle. And this is the challenge for you this year, next year, the year after whatever stage you're at, however many staff or however few staff or however many clients or few clients you've got, that's got to be the long-term goal to make the business so good, so self-sustaining, that it creates an income and allows you to have a lifestyle regardless of whether you turn up or not. That is a true business. And really it should be the goal, something that we're all working towards.

Paul Green: Now as I say, you may choose to still go and work in that business for three or four weeks of the month. That's fine. That's your choice. But the day that you change your mind, the day that something happens in your family, or you and your other half just decide, let's spend more time away or you want to go away on a six-week holiday just you and your kids. If you've already done that hard work and that business thrives without you, you don't have to go through the two or three years of pain to reposition that business. You've already done it. And that's why for every single one of us, that should be our goal going forward.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: So staying with the same theme, let's talk about checklisting things. And I have another client who I work quite closely with. I'm not going to name him, but I know he listens to this podcast, and I know he'll have a smile and a chuckle as he hears me talking about this. Because we had a conversation, oh it must be a couple of months ago now, and it was about one of his engineers who is a perfectly competent guy. He's experienced, he's pleasant with customers. And the only thing wrong with this guy is when he goes out to a site, he will always miss two or three tiny things. Let's say setting up a new server. He'll get the installation done correctly. He'll do all the big things properly. Then he'll miss one or two. It might be just one or two little tick boxes. And it's been frustrating my client for years, I mean literally for years. And when you get him talking about this subject, he will go off on a 10-minute rant talking about this engineer and how he'd like to just gently put his hands around his neck and squeeze a little bit.

Paul Green: Because I'm exaggerating a little bit, but you get the idea. And maybe you've had a similar thing in your business where you've got great staff, who can do a great job most of the time, but they make tiny little mistakes. In fact, maybe you even do it yourself. Maybe you make tiny little mistakes when you're doing jobs that you do very often. There's a great book called The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande. Highly recommend that you get this book. Think I've talked about it before on the podcast. It talks about systemising things.

Paul Green: Now, Atul Gawande is a medical doctor based in the States. He looked at why doctors and nurses make the same mistakes time and time again. Whereas in aviation, obviously a mistake in aviation has fairly far-reaching effects. In aviation, they've pretty much pushed mistakes out. They've created a culture of openness regarding mistakes, and every single mistake is investigated and it's used to improve the systems. And he attempted to put in place in his hospital, a series of systems to stop the small things from going wrong. Because what he found was that, heart surgeons can do a four or five-hour operation, do absolutely brilliantly, but they'll make a small mistake at the end.

Paul Green: It might be something like leaving a swab inside someone, or the patient might not be given the right drug or something like that. So they started to checklist in his hospital, all the small things. You don't check just the big complicated things that would require extensive flow charts and people train for years to do. I'm thinking installing servers, that kind of thing. It's the small things that you checklist, such as setting up a new user or changing a password. Now, the conversation I had with my client was that these checklists, I know you can do them within things like IT Glue and Autotask and ConnectWise and stuff like that, but these checklists really come to life when you put them on paper. And I know that's heresy. I know that paper is evil and we try and have a paperless office and all of that stuff.

Paul Green: But as humans, we respond better to paper. Even technicians respond better to paper. I helped my client put in place a checklist. He put it onto whatever system they were using, his engineer went out, it was on an iPad and he still didn't do it. He still didn't complete the checklist. He still made the small mistakes. And it made my client even more frustrated. And the last conversation we had about this was, "Put it on paper." Because when you checklist something like that, you put it on paper and the engineer has to print it out before they go out to do the job. And then they have to tick all the boxes. And then, and this is what makes the paper one so powerful, they have to sign it at the bottom. When they have to do this, suddenly it becomes real.

Paul Green: Taking a pen, physically ticking a piece of paper and signing your name at the bottom, that's more real than ticking boxes on a screen. Especially when you sign it. The signing it is an act of committing your name to the work. If you've ever looked at some luxury cars, I think Aston Martin does this, and there's a whole load of other top end manufacturers do it, they get the people who are making the engine, say, to sign their name or to print their name on the engine. It's a very powerful thing to do. Because it makes sure that those craftspeople absolutely check every little thing that they should be doing, because it's their name on the engine. When the engine goes wrong and to mistake that they made during the construction and production of it, their name is on it. So putting their name on it makes it of a higher quality.

Paul Green: You think of the psychology of a signature, what do we sign these days? We sign contracts. We sign things that we're committing ourself to. You're getting your engineers to commit themselves that they have completed the checklist. And it actually makes the HR side of things very easy. Because if they have said that they've done all these things and they've ticked them off and they've signed it and they simply haven't, is very easy for you to pick that up and for that to become a disciplinary matter.

Paul Green: So, as much as it torments you, as much as it creates you pain, as much as you don't want those checklists going around on paper, paper checklists work. I highly recommend you pick up that book, The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande and I highly recommend you try some paper checklists. Don't try and checklist everything in one go. Just pick one thing that's a little bit broken right now. Could be a password reset, could be a new user, could be a tiny little job that you and your team do day-in, day-out. Pick one thing.

Paul Green: Write the checklist of exactly how you want it to be done, the perfect way it should be done. Introduce that checklist to your staff. Make it the new law that they tick all the boxes, they sign their name, and then they put the checklist in a tray on your desk or somewhere for you to collect. And then perhaps once or twice a week you should just pick a checklist at random and go and check that job. You don't have to check all the checklists. They just need to know that your checklisting some of them now and again. So long as they see you in enforcing it, they will fall into line with this system and they will do a great job.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green: So this is one that's just for my listeners in the UK and it's about videos. I have a joint venture with a video guy called Darren Wingham and together we have a website mspvideos.co.uk. And the reason we do this is because all the work I'm doing with my clients, helping them to improve their marketing, helping them to have a better impact or greater impact on prospects. We found over the last couple of years that having a well-made, well-produced, short, impact video on your homepage just has a greater impact than anything else. In fact, there are all sorts of statistics to show that videos keep people on your website for 88% longer. It increases the chances of people making contact by 46%. And, when you put something in a video, people are 95% more likely to remember what it is that you're trying to say.

Paul Green: The only difficulty is getting a half-decent video done by someone who understands MSPs, understands technology, but also knows that the decision makers that you want to reach don't understand it. And that's why I'm working with Darren. I've trained him to understand MSPs, to understand IT support, and he brings his incredible videos skills. Darren's superpower is telling stories using the form of video. So if you're looking for a new video for your homepage, for your about us page, perhaps even some testimonial videos and you're based in the UK, just go on to mspvideos.co.uk.

Voiceover: The big interview.

Joseph Landes: Paul, it's great to be on the show with you. My name is Joseph Landes. I'm the chief revenue officer at Nerdio where we empower MSPs to build successful cloud practices in Microsoft Azure.

Paul Green: Now this is the first of a series of interview format experiments that I'm going to do this year. And this interview with Joseph runs over two parts. So next week, he'll tell you how you can sell more Windows Virtual Desktop. But we're going to start this week by looking at Azure. And I asked him a question, how do you make more money selling Azure?

Joseph Landes: Well Paul, that's a great question. I worked at Microsoft for 23 years and I came over to Nerdio a year ago and one of the first questions I got from MSPs that I would speak to is, "I know that I need to move to the public cloud, and I know that Azure is the way I want to go, but I'm really concerned that there's no way to make money on Microsoft Azure." And in fact, it's quite the opposite. You can make a lot more money selling Microsoft Azure and building your cloud practice in Azure rather than staying on premises. Certainly if you're an MSP and you have not embraced this and you have thought gone in this direction, you're definitely missing out. So what I'd like to do now, Paul, is walk you through five tips that we have for MSP's who are looking to make more money selling Microsoft Azure. Would that work?

Paul Green: Yeah, let's go for it.

Joseph Landes: The first thing we say is you have to become a Microsoft CSP reseller or a cloud solution provider reseller. The most expensive way to buy Azure as an MSP is what Microsoft calls pay-as-you-go. That's where you take your credit card out of your pocket. You type the numbers in and you say, "Hey, I want to buy some Microsoft Azure." That is not the way to do it if you're an MSP. If you're an MSP, you need to become a CSP reseller. You go to what's called the CSP distributor in the UK or wherever you happen to be located, and you sign up. And by doing that, you will make at least 10 to 15% off of the list price of Azure. That will be the discount that you get. And in fact sometimes Microsoft has special programs that are running that will give you even more of a discount.

Joseph Landes: So step one, similar to how you're probably a CSP reseller for Office 365, or Microsoft 365, become a CSP reseller for Microsoft Azure. So step two is doing something that most people get a little bit nervous about, but really is the way to make the most money selling Microsoft Azure, and that is leveraging something called Azure reserved instances or Azure reservations. So the concept here is that you go to your distributor, to your CSP distributor, and you say, "I want to make a three-year or a one-year reservation on Compute. So you calculate with an automation platform like Nerdio, how much Compute your customer is going to consume over the course of the coming period. And you say, "I want to make a reservation. A one-year reservation or a three-year reservation." And in return for doing that, Microsoft will give you up to a 57% discount off of the list price of Azure.

Joseph Landes: Now you're probably sitting here thinking, well gosh, why do I want to make a three-year reservation? That seems kind of risky. What if my customer goes out of business? Well the truth is, is that you can return your reservation at any time and the most you will pay is a 12% fee on the unused piece of the consumption. So when you compare the 12% fee versus the 57% savings, it's really a very easy decision. So we always recommend to MSPs that they leverage Azure reserved instances and specifically they make a three-year reservation on Compute.

Paul Green: It sounds brilliant. So what's the third thing you should do?

Joseph Landes: So the third thing you want to do is you want to leverage a unique licensing program that Microsoft has called Azure hybrid usage. Now they only have this for the Azure Cloud, not for AWS or GCP. The concept of Azure hybrid usage is that you get credit as an MSP for the windows server that you have already purchased for your customer and you can bring those licenses to the cloud. Now you either need to have software assurance, which unfortunately most MSPs don't have. Or you go to your CSP distributor and you purchase something from them called a software subscription. And when you do that, you can take those licenses you've bought for Windows Server and you can move them to the cloud, saving you at least another 20 to 30% off of the list price of Azure. And again, that only is relevant when you move Windows Server into the Azure cloud.

Joseph Landes: The fourth thing you'd want to do is you'd want to leverage a platform like Nerdio for auto-scaling. Now, the concept of auto-scaling is similar to the electricity in your home, where the more you have it on, the larger your electrical bill will be at the end of the week or the end of the month. Similar with Azure. When you have the meters running, when you have the compute and operating system meters running, you're going to pay more for your consumption. Now, reserved instances, that's what stops the compute meter from running. Azure hybrid usage stops the operating system meter from running. But if for some reason you don't want to leverage those two programs, then you would use an automation platform like Nerdio to implement auto-scaling, where the system looks at your customer's configuration and it looks at the IT environment that you have set up, and scales down the environment when it's not being used.

Joseph Landes: So it says, "Hey, this server is not being used," let's say from the hours of 10:00 PM to 7:00 AM in the morning, "We will shut down or spin down those servers or those people's desktops so that they are not consuming Azure credits." And at the time when they need to be turned on, it will automatically turn them on as well. So scaling down and then scaling back up. So that's the fourth way of saving money for an MSP on Azure.

Joseph Landes: And then the fifth is something that very few people know about, but it's actually when you're setting up your IT environment at Azure, you want to leverage something called the B-Series, B like boy, the B-Series virtual machines. So Microsoft has created this thing called the B-Series virtual machines, which are called burstable virtual machines. The concept of a burstable virtual machine is that, if you have an application that is very bursty and only needs to be used at certain times, the the virtual machine will spin up and you will consume credits during the time that that application is being used. But when the application is not being used, you actually bank credits.

Joseph Landes: So, imagine your application only needs to be used maybe a couple of hours a day, for the other 22 hours, your banking credits to use during that time that your application is bursty. So leveraging B-Series virtual machines wherever possible is something that we at Nerdio recommend as well.

Joseph Landes: So those are the five ways to save and to make more money selling Azure as an MSP. So by moving your it infrastructure to Azure, and taking advantage of these five suggestions that we've made, you can easily make up to 80% margins on Azure. You can save up to 80% off the list price of Azure.

Paul Green: I love this, I love this because it is, although obviously some of the things you've talked about there are quite complex and very technical, actually the basic concepts of them are very easy to understand. Let's control our costs. Let's plan ahead a little bit more. Let's let's automate the switching off the lights, which is essentially what Nerdio does by the sound of it. I was thinking of me wandering around the house, switching off things after my daughter's been through a room, and then leveraging some of those smart things you were just talking about there. Do you find the MSPs are more likely to embrace Azure and push it as more of a solution for their end clients when they can see that actually yes, there's some really good margin they can make on it?

Joseph Landes: I certainly think so, Paul. Most MSPs are not equipped with a business model that allows them to grasp making money in a cloud world. So if they want to stay competitive in 2020, they're going to need to adapt a business model based on recurring revenue. And, as someone famous once said, "Updating servers doesn't grow your business." So, figuring out a way to make money in the cloud world and make money from the first day, really allows an MSP to make that transition into the world of recurring revenue into the world where they're going to make a lot more money than simply updating their server and hoping that it lasts for a few more years.

Paul Green: That's brilliant. Thank you. Joseph, I know you've got a lot to talk about Windows Virtual Desktop as well, so would you mind coming back onto the podcast next week and perhaps we can talk about that?

Joseph Landes: I would love to. I'd be happy to be your guest every week we have so much to talk about. But let's start with Windows Virtual Desktop.

Paul Green: Okay. We'll talk about that next week. In the meantime, where do we find you and what's the best way to get in touch with you?

Joseph Landes: Yeah, the best way to find us at Nerdio is up on our website, getnerdio.com, where you can take a look at our Nerdio Academy where we're chock-full of information for MSPs who are looking to build a cloud practice in Azure. You could also spin up a free trial of our automation platform. You could take a look at something called our Azure cost estimator, where you could see what it's going to cost you to actually move your practice to Azure, and we really hope you enjoy interacting with us. We're there to help you.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. Ask Paul anything.

Andrew: Hello, I'm Andrew Eardley from Prompt PC. I was just wondering, what's the best type of email campaign to get people to engage with you?

Paul Green: Great question. Thank you Andrew. And it's a very simple answer. If you want to engage prospects on email, then you've got to educate them and you've got to entertain them, and ideally do those two things at the same time. A couple of weeks ago, we had a sales expert called Fiona Challis. She was a guest on the podcast, and she talked about moving people into the learning zone. The learning zone is where their mind starts to change. They're open to discovering what it is that they don't know, because remember the moment they don't know, what they don't know. They are ready to reposition you as the expert in their mind. They're ready to open themselves up to different ways of doing things and the fact that there might be better solutions out there. And that really is your goal to get them into that learning zone. So your emails have got to teach them about stuff that they don't know about.

Paul Green: But you've got to do that in the most entertaining way possible. Because outside of our world, technology is just a thing. It's a thing you carry in your pocket and actually it's quite boring. Most of them don't really care what Azure is. They don't really care about cyber security. They don't want to have to deal with the consequences of it, but they don't really care about it. So that's the challenge of email marketing, it's about teaching them in a way that's fun.

Paul Green: Because the real goal here is to build a relationship with people. You know that your sales cycle is so very long. It takes people so long to make a decision about sticking with their incumbent MSP or moving to a different MSP. And that's because technology is so important to their business, but also they don't understand it. It's all a bit woo for them. And when they don't understand something, it's just easier to stick with the devil you know, than it is to move to someone new. And the way that we overcome that is by building a relationship with the prospects long before they're even ready to start thinking about switching to someone else. And that's best done with educational content.

Paul Green: So I think you educate people through videos. You do through written articles. You can do through infographics, you can do it with images. You can take the same content and you can repurpose it in lots of different ways and teach them about technology, but only if it's relevant to them. Let me give you an example of that. You wouldn't, for example say, "Here's why your computer slow." Because you could write some stuff about that. You could easily create content about that, but that's not as relevant to the decision makers that you want to reach as, "Here's why your staff whinge about slow computers."

Paul Green: Now that's actually exactly the same content, but we've packed it a little bit differently. It's aimed directly at the decision makers. And if it appears to be relevant to them, and if it appears to be educational and entertaining at the same time, they're much more likely to consume it. And if they consume it, it's a major touchpoint. The goal is to touch your prospects 10, 20, 30, 100 times before they're ready to make that decision. And the more of those touchpoints can be educational, the more likely you are to win the client when they are ready to switch.

Voiceover: How to contribute to the show.

Paul Green: I get a steady trickle of emails that come in Tuesdays and Wednesdays every week and it's people saying what they think about the podcast. Mostly positive stuff. A few suggestions and thank you. I want to know what you think about the podcast. What would you do differently? What would you like to hear on here? What subjects do you want me to talk about? What guests do you think I should invite on? Go on, drop me an email. Hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

Paul Green: Joseph Landes from Nerdio. He's back next week then. For the second part of his interview, he's going to tell you how to sell Windows Virtual Desktop.

Joseph Landes: A few months ago, Microsoft released Windows Virtual Desktop, and since then we have been fairly overwhelmed with demand.

Paul Green: We're also going to be talking about some clever ways to help your clients remember their passwords and why you must fire the internal terrorist who's making your business a major headache for you.

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

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In this week's episode * Not many people have heard about the Impact Box, but Paul talks about some MSPs are using them to tip prospects over the edge and turn them into happy clients * Also in this week's episode; you may not realise it but you have a Hassle Bucket in your brain. And Paul explains how to stop it overflowing * Plus special guests join Paul to discuss selling more hardware to customers and finding time to get the important stuff done

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * There is more on the concept of a 'Hassle Bucket' and how to manage yours here * Here's a link to Paul's Facebook group for MSP Marketing * Paul's guest talking about how to sell more hardware to your clients was James Cust from Warranty Master * They discussed services and tools including IT Glue, Kaseya, ConnectWise & AutoTask * The question about how to prioritise important work came from Andy Price from Initial IT * Our guest on the next show on 11th February to talk about the best way to re-sell Microsoft Azure will be Joseph Landes from Nerdio * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: Got another cracker for you this week. Here's what's coming up.

James Cust: And we'll be able to see real live data about their estate, and see an overview of devices which are in warranty, get the idea of the proportion of their estate, which ultimately is unprotected.

Paul Green: We're also going to be talking about something called an impact box. It's a bunch of stuff that you send to them in the post to push them over the edge. And I'll be answering your question about how to prioritise what's most important every day.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: I want to start today by talking about hassle buckets. I believe that every single one of us has a hassle bucket inside our head. So what's a hassle bucket? Well, it's a measure for how much hassle, how much grief and stress we can deal with at any one time.

Paul Green: And some people's buckets are very deep. They can take enormous amounts of hassle before their bucket overflows and they run into problems. Other people's buckets are more shallow. I don't believe that you're born with a specific depth of hassle bucket. I think it's something that appears in your head when you're a teenager and it develops as you become an adult. And in fact, you can deepen your hassle bucket over time, but you've got to beware, because it can also become more shallow. It can block up and overflow quite often, sometimes unexpectedly.

Paul Green: Anytime your hassle bucket gets so full that it overflows, you suddenly become unable to deal with all the things that you need to deal with in your life. Now as business owners, we do have quite deep hassle buckets, you and me as business owners and managers. So we can take on enormous amounts of hassle at any one time.

Paul Green: I think it's something that we learn in the first few years of running a business. You think about all the things that you have to do, all the hats that you have to wear in the first few years. And the depth of the bucket is what marks out someone who's able to be a successful business owner for decades, versus someone who does it for a few years and really struggles with it.

Paul Green: But here's the thing about being a business owner. Your hassle bucket might be deep, but it's also 80% full most of the time. In fact, wouldn't you argue that part of the curse of being the business owner is that your hassle bucket is so full, so often? Because you think about all the things that you and I have to juggle all the time. We've got the burden of cashflow, which we have to juggle, and cashflow mentally is one of the most destructive forces when you're running a business, if you have a bad cashflow. If you have a positive one, it's one of the most liberating ones.

Paul Green: There's the burden of staff, of course, because our staff are our children and no matter how old they are, no matter how experienced they are, they are looking to you as their parents. That's psychologically how the staff/boss relationship works.

Paul Green: There is of course the burden of winning new business and it's not so bad for an established MSP as it is for a newer one, but winning new business is difficult for all MSPs. And then of course, there's the burden of just keeping your existing clients happy and trying to be on top of all of the work. And you can have as many systems and PSAs and processes and tools as you like, but ultimately it is a burden.

Paul Green: And the bigger you get, the more the burden is, the greater the burden is. In fact, if any sane person was to look at the hassles and burdens of running a business, they'd be like, no thanks. I'm not doing this. I'm going to run a mile. But you and I and lots of people like us, we take on that burden, and we embrace it thoroughly because we love the freedom and the flexibility and how we can grow personally.

Paul Green: Plus, of course, financially what it can do for our family and for our staff as well. If we can pay them better than someone else could pay them. So the positives of course, of owning your own business absolutely outweigh the negatives.

Paul Green: But there are various times of the year when our hassle bucket overflows. And you think back to about a month ago, when perhaps you went back to work, early January, maybe you'd had a break and you felt great. Because you'd had a load of time off. You are really buzzing and you were just desperate to get back to work and do some stuff.

Paul Green: And a month on from there, maybe you're a little bit worn out again. I know I am at this time of year, just maybe you need a little rest again and your hassle bucket is getting near the brim, it's getting higher. It's a difficult thing to do. Because if the business owner's hassle bucket is normally at 80% and yours is currently at 90% or 95%, that's when you start to feel stressed. That's when we start to feel overworked. It's when we start to feel like everything's getting on top of us.

Paul Green: How would you grade your hassle bucket right now? What level is your hassle bucket at right now? Maybe that's a question you should be asking yourself every morning. What level is my hassle bucket right now?

Paul Green: When the hassle bucket overflows, we find it very, very hard to cope with things. In fact, it's the small things that are more likely to push the hassle over the edge of the bucket. You've heard that phrase about the straw breaking the camel's back? It's spot on, isn't it? You can have all these major projects and you can cope with all these major projects and then what pushes you over the edge one day is one tiny, tiny little thing.

Paul Green: Now I believe that the answer to this isn't to stop more things coming into the hassle bucket. What you've got to do instead is you've got to install a DOA relief tap further down the bucket. Now, we traditionally see DOA, and we've talked about this before on the podcast. We traditionally see DOA when we're watching a crime show on TV and the victim is DOA and it stands for dead on arrival. And we don't want to be dead on arrival as business owners, because we want to stay alive and healthy as long as we can.

Paul Green: That's what we've got business for to allow us to do that and to enjoy our lives. So we're going to change that acronym from dead on arrival to delegate, outsource, automate. And DOA means acknowledging that despite the fact that we are the business owner or manager and we are spectacular and we do have amazing superpowers and no one can do it as well as us, and by the way, of course, no one ever will do it as us. Despite this, we can actually delegate, we can outsource and we can automate many of the things that really we don't personally need to do.

Paul Green: Again, I've mentioned this before on the podcast, but it's a great mantra to live by. You should only do what only you can do. And in fact, the business owners who thrive for decades, not just last for decades, but thrive for decades, are the ones who are constantly looking at the work that they're supposed to be doing, the jobs that are sat in front of them and they're asking themselves, who on my team can do this better? Who can do this quicker or easier than I can? Or, who out there in the wonderful world we live in where we can outsource nearly anything on Fiverr or on PeoplePerHour, who can do this job for me so that I personally don't have to do it?

Paul Green: Or, how can I automate this? And thank the good Lord for APIs. The goal is to remove hassle, it's to simplify things and give yourself an easier life. To keep that hassle bucket at no more than 80%, so actually every day is a really good day, no matter what crops up.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: Marketing and sales are very much a science, rather than an art. They may seem sometimes like a bit of a mystery, that there's this mystique around them, but that's not the case. They're just a series of processes, of procedures, of systems. They're really no different to technology. Isn't technology just a series of processes and systems?

Paul Green: Sure, now and again you have to apply a tiny little bit of mystique, of art, of experience, of woo and it's exactly the same in marketing, but actually 95% of it is systemisable. 95% of it is a process. It's following it.

Paul Green: You take someone who is a stranger and you want to turn them into a lead, which is where they're aware of you. You want to build a relationship with them. You want to from that relationship, turn them into a prospect, where you're starting to have a one-on-one conversation with them, and then of course turning them into a client.

Paul Green: All of that is just a process. It's a system. You can tweak that system. You can change that process. You can make it better any time. This is why much of your marketing can be delegated or outsourced, so that other people do it for you. You retain control, but other people physically do the work for you.

Paul Green: Now, there's a clever idea that a number of my clients have been looking at. A couple of them have put it into place and it's called an impact box. And it's a bunch of stuff that you send to a prospect to push them over the edge.

Paul Green: So let's imagine that you've been out to see a prospect. You've had a great sales meeting with them and you know that they're talking to a couple of other people, but you just want to give yourself that edge. Because the problem you have is that you could have spent two or three hours with them and they could be, oh yes, absolutely. You are the right people for us, but they have a very, very low awareness of technology. They have a very short memory. You're reliant upon them remembering how you made them feel, because someone picks you or doesn't pick you based on how they feel about you.

Paul Green: Now I'm excluding selling to internal IT managers. Internal IT managers, it's not really a normal sales process because they know that technology. So exclude that for a second.

Paul Green: But when you're selling to normal business owners or managers it's very much about how they feel about you, because 99% of these people don't know what they don't know about technology. They don't know what the right solutions are. They don't really care. They just want it to work. But they want to put their trust in someone and we all know that get the technology wrong, and you can massively disrupt the business. So they are putting their trust in you.

Paul Green: And you could have spent a couple of hours with them. They could feel very, very warm about you, and feel that you're the right people to trust. But three weeks later when they're going to make that decision, do they remember that memory? Do they remember that feeling?

Paul Green: So an impact box is something that you can send to them to tip them over the edge, to make them remember you, and to make them believe that you are the right people to trust. When we say it's a box, it's physically a box that you send to someone, be it a cardboard box that you would fill. It's almost like a gift pack.

Paul Green: But what you put inside is designed to make them feel special. It's designed to make them feel that you have absolutely got their back. So what kinds of stuff would you send them? Well, perhaps the first thing you'd do is you'd send them your book. Every MSP needs to have a book, and it's a book that you have written or that has been written for you and has your name on the front, which is of course called ghost writing.

Paul Green: Now, a book is not really a book, it's just a business card. It's a 48 page or whatever page business card. And it's a way of positioning you as something special in your marketplace. People love buying from true experts and true experts become authors. So you need to have your own book, or you need to get that book written. So you'd certainly put your book in there.

Paul Green: And perhaps you'd put some other credibility materials in there, perhaps you'd put some case studies. Perhaps you'd put some testimonials. Again, all of these physical printed materials.

Paul Green: Maybe you'd have some videos. Now, if you have some of those videos, I would put them on a USB stick. Those videos being video testimonials from your clients, from your happy customers. The reason you put them on a USB stick, because it's physical, we want them to plug them into their laptop and watch those videos. Let's not have the conversation about the fact you could have had a virus on that USB. We'll save that conversation for another day.

Paul Green: Some other stuff you'd put in your impact box would be some stuff they can eat, maybe some chocolates or some biscuits. Quality stuff, something that's fun, not too expensive, but not too cheap. Maybe you could put a whole selection of chocolate bars in there. Maybe if you'd had a conversation with them about their favourite chocolate, let's say, okay, this would be a great thing to do. Let's say during parts of the sales process, you systemise to find out what their favourite chocolate bar is. Let's say it's a Snicker's. How would they feel if you sent them 25 Snickers? Maybe 25 is too many, but you get the idea, a whole bunch of Snickers.

Paul Green: Maybe you'd put in there some cans of Coke or some cans of Diet Coke. Again, maybe you'd find out what their favourite drink is. What's the emotional impact you're going to have on someone if you send them a whole bunch of their favourite chocolate bars, a whole bunch of their favourite drinks, a book to read, some videos to watch?

Paul Green: And then the cream of the impact box is a hand-written note. Now you don't personally have to hand write this. I try personally not to hand-write anything because my hand-writing hasn't really developed since I was 14, but I would get a hand-written note written by someone else and again, you can just outsource this or delegate it to someone on your staff or outsource it to someone in your area to just hand-write this note for you. And the hand-written note is from you to them and it's not just a hi, nice to meet you. Here's some stuff. It's a hand-written note about their business.

Paul Green: It might be a two or even a three page note and it might say hi, prospect name. It was great to meet you last week and to chat about your business. I remember you saying that Snickers were your favourite chocolate bar, so I thought I'd send you a few, plus some Diet Cokes while you're reading my book and looking at the testimonials that my clients have happily recorded for me.

Paul Green: I know that picking a new IT support company is a very big decision. I know that we got on very well at the meeting, and I think we would be an excellent choice for you. Certainly, we'd love to work with you. I wanted to send you this pack and this note, so you could see we were as keen to work with you as we hope that you are to work with us.

Paul Green: I'm available to chat to you at any point. If you've got any questions about joining the business, just give me a call on number, contact details, et cetera, et cetera.

Paul Green: Now, this box, which again, remember, you can systemise this. This box is called an impact box because it has a real impact. It arrives at someone's office, whoever receives the posts has a certain amount of, wow, what's this? It lands on the boss's desk. In fact, maybe you'd pick a brightly coloured box, a bright yellow box with a giant red label or a green label on it saying, open me now. Urgent materials inside. So that it does have a real shock.

Paul Green: In fact, I've heard this called a shock and awe box before, impact box, shock and awe box. It doesn't matter what you call it, it's a system. You take your hottest prospects, the ones that you really want to work with, the ones that you think are most likely to sign up and you hit them with this a few days after you meet.

Paul Green: Because what it does is it tips them over the edge. It pushes them to be much more likely to pick you. And after you've invested all of that time and effort and energy, warming someone up and going out and seeing them, that's exactly the position you want to be in. We don't want to leave this to chance. We want to tick off every single possible box, so that every single prospect you go to see that you want to work with is much more likely to select you. And that is a great system to have.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green: I have an epic community and he's got hundreds of members from around the world, all of them MSPs, who've come there to discuss marketing, sales and how to make more money out of their business. Now it's a safe place, because we've made it a vendor free zone. So you can go in and ask all sorts of questions about suppliers, about what you should be selling, about marketing and about sales, knowing that there's no vendor looking over your shoulder.

Paul Green: So if you want to join this community, it's completely free. All you got to do is go onto Facebook and type in MSP Marketing. Up at the top you'll see in the search results, just click on groups and you'll see the MSP Marketing Facebook group. Click on that. Tell me which MSP you work for, and I will add you in completely free. I'd be delighted and honoured to welcome you into my community.

Voiceover: The big interview.

James Cust: I'm James, I'm the product development exec here at Warranty Master. Part of the UK team, so we've been operating since January, 2018. Warranty Master is an asset lifecycle management tool, which is designed to help MSPs sell more or less and service less.

Paul Green: Obviously, all MSPs know that selling tin, shifting tin, it's no longer got the margins that it used to have. Most people are quite happy to supply hardware, but know they're not going to make a huge amount of money on it. But do you still see there are opportunities for making good money selling more hardware to end clients?

James Cust: Absolutely. Yeah. It's obviously the project time, which would be involved in this as well, which is another opportunity available for MSPs to gain on that front, and it's about protecting clients as much as anything as well. So if your client is running an older or so machine, it can be inefficient for their business and it could provide security issues as well.

Paul Green: And most MSPs I guess track the devices that their clients have got, using IT Glue or whatever documentation software that they've got. Obviously, Warranty Master is a system that specialises in tracking those assets. What's the advantages of using a specialist tool, rather than a general documentation tool?

James Cust: We integrate and get on very well with IT Glue actually. And the key difference between us and IT Glue is asset lifecycle management is our bread and butter, so to speak. So we are automatically pulling in all the purchase dates and all the warranty expiration dates of every single piece of equipment, which our MSP customers have got out on client's site. And that's coming straight from the vendor databases. And we're helping them report on that specific information as well.

Paul Green: And you actually integrate with the PSAs as well, don't you?

James Cust: Absolutely. Yeah. We integrate with Kaseya, ConnectWise, Autotask. Yeah.

Paul Green: So you're dragging the information out of the other systems and then putting it in a single place, but then you also put some value on top of that. Am I right?

James Cust: Yes, absolutely. So the reporting in Warranty Master is, first of all, it's very easy and efficient to generate and it's very good at getting the point across to a customer the risk and exposure they're taking into their estate. On top of that it's very good at helping recommend which devices should be flagged through the refresh or a warranty purchase.

Paul Green: The advantage to the MSP is that you've got a set of tools and some reporting and some information and evidence to show to the end clients. Yes, you could sit with that computer for another two years. But the disadvantage of doing that is this. And the advantage of upgrading is this, and then that's being provided to them at exactly the right moment.

James Cust: Exactly. Nail on the head. So there's a feature within the reporting which helps the MSP and the end user calculate the costs of running an older or a slower machine and then it's very easy to weigh those two numbers up versus the cost of actually buying a new machine. Quite often, the cost of acquiring a new machine tends to be the one that's better for the business.

Paul Green: But the clients that you have got that are using Warranty Master, what are the most successful ones doing with it? So how are they leveraging the software to sell more to their clients?

James Cust: It's a good question. We get asked that quite a bit as well actually. So some of them will automate it or schedule it, which is something which you can do within the Warranty Master portal. That can either be sent out once a month or once a quarter. So you can have this information in front of their customers, first of all, effortlessly. Second of all, on a nice regular basis as well.

James Cust: A lot of other customers are choosing to take these along to quarterly reviews or monthly reviews with their customers, and go through the reports with them in person.

Paul Green: What I like particularly about Warranty Master is that you can get started for free, so it's a freemium model, so you get started for free and then obviously you pay if you want to unlock extra functionality. What's the easiest way for an MSP to get started for free on Warranty Master?

James Cust: You'd go to warrantymaster.com and there are some instructions on there from where you can set up a free account. From there, the MSPs can that integrate their RMM or PSA or IT Glue if they're using it and we'll be able to see real live data about their estate and see an overview of devices which are in warranty, get the idea of the proportion of their estate, which ultimately is unprotected.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. Ask Paul anything.

Andy: Hi Paul it's Andy from Initial IT, with so much to do day-to-day, how do I prioritise what's important?

Paul Green: Thanks Andy. Great question, and I think it's a real problem for MSPs, because we're all too busy, but you have the added pressure that every now and again you have to drop everything to go and fix stuff. No matter how high up you are in the organisation, no matter how divorced you are from support, the very reason that someone hires you is to fix things when they're broken.

Paul Green: I appreciate you want to do a lot more proactive work, but you have to stop everything and fix it. How do you prioritise when you've got all these things that need to be done?

Paul Green: I think the answer comes in setting really good goals. You've got to know what it is that you're trying to achieve with your life and what it is that you're trying to achieve with your business. And remember, we've spoken about this before on the podcast that the business is there to give you a great life. The purpose of your life is not to feed the business. It's supposed to be the other way round.

Paul Green: So you need to be very, very clear on what you want from your life and how the business is going to give you that. I'll give you an example. I have some very clear goals for this year, in terms of my lifestyle. I'm just about to move house literally in the next few weeks. I'll be taking on a much bigger mortgage, in fact I've been mortgage free for a number of years. I'll be taking on a big mortgage. So I need to earn some more money to pay that mortgage.

Paul Green: And then I want to extend this house. I want to put another bedroom on it. I want to extend the kitchen, I want to do some stuff to this house. Who doesn't want to do stuff to their house? So that's going to need some more money. I'm going to need to either pay some debt or generate some capital to do that.

Paul Green: And all of this ultimately means I need to increase my own personal income this year. So that's my goal for the business is I need to my personal income. And to do that with the business, the business has got to generate more profit, but I don't want to spend more time working. I want to, in fact, actually work a little bit less this year. Why not? There's nothing wrong with that. Earn more money and work a little bit less.

Paul Green: So that means I've got to be very strategic in the things that I sell and the promotions that I do. I've got to be quite smart about how we bring on new customers, how we develop our existing clients, all of that stuff. And the goals for the business drive me therefore, in terms of the things that I'm going to do this year.

Paul Green: And it should be no different in your business, you should be looking at that saying, hey, right, okay, this year, I want let's say another 50,000 extra personal income from the business. How am I going to generate another 60, 70, 80,000 extra net profit from the business? What are going to be the things that are going to make the biggest difference? How am I going to increase the average customer value by 1,000 month or 1,000 a year say? And these are the kinds of thoughts that you should be having to look at this and say, right, this is what's most important in the business this year.

Paul Green: Now, once you've got that very clear and once you've written that down and once you're in the habit of looking at that every single day, suddenly prioritising becomes very, very clear to you and it becomes a lot easier. Because even though there's lots of other things that need to be done, lots of other tasks that need to be jumped on, and I'm excluding the major emergency when everyone has to drop everything and go and sort out a client, suddenly prioritising becomes very simple.

Paul Green: It's about doing the things that matter first. This podcast matters enormously to me. I made a 12 month commitment to this podcast. This is episode 12, so I've got at least another 40 episodes to go, and I have a feeling we'll be doing this podcast for years. So I make this podcast the number one thing I do on a Monday morning, come rain or shine, no matter what else needs to be done. Because it's the most important thing.

Paul Green: The two hours recording that podcast is more important than anything else, and all those other little jobs can wait. Now, sometimes that means I get to the end of the day and I haven't done those little jobs, but you know what? They're not as important as this podcast.

Paul Green: This podcast grows my list. It puts me in front of more new people. It grows my credibility, my reputation. All of those are boxes that I need to tick this year, because it's important to my business. So what's important to your business? Write it down, review it daily, and then do those things first.

Paul Green: And if you don't have space to do those things first every day, you've got to review where are you doing your work? Do you really need to sit at a desk in your office all day, every day, or can you go and sit in a coffee shop or at a hotel or find a restaurant somewhere where you can... You just need a bit of power and some Wi-Fi and some earphones in, and you can focus on doing whatever needs to be done every day.

Paul Green: In fact, I've said a few times on the podcast, and I say to my clients all the time, if you can find an hour a day, just one hour a day to work on your business rather than in your business, you can change everything within 12 months. It really is that simple, so long as you're focused on the things that make the biggest difference.

Voiceover: How to contribute to the show.

Paul Green: I would love to get your feedback on the show. What'd you want me to do more of? What do you want me to do less of? What guests do you think I should be interviewing? What subjects would you like me to talk about? Why don't you drop me an email? It's me at the end of the email and I'd love to have a chat with you. It's hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

Joseph Landes: Taking advantage of these five suggestions that we've made, you can easily make up to 80% margins on Azure. You can save up to 80% off the list price of Azure.

Paul Green: That's Joseph Landes from Nerdio. He's going to be joining me next week for the start of a special two-part series on how you can sell more Azure and also make a lot more money from it. We're also going to be talking next week about why you must checklist everything in your business and checklist it on paper, not on a screen. Plus, I'm going to tell you about the three plus one plan for your life.

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

View Details

In this week's episode * As your MSP grows and you take on more staff, there's an increased chance you'll be criticised by those that work for you. Paul explains how this can actually be a good thing for your business and leadership * Also in this week's episode, how a simple paperclip can keep your business on track; details of a monthly pack of marketing material; and James Newell joins Paul to share some amazing advice about improving sales techniques * This podcast is fully interactive and listener Sam has a great question about how an MSP owner can force clients to stop bothering them with historic technical support!

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Here's a link to Paul's Facebook group for MSP Marketing * The MSP Marketing Edge is at www.mspmarketingedge.com * Paul's guest on the show talking about how to become even better at sales was James Newell from Clear Sales Message * The question about how to stop clients bothering you with support issues came from Sam Veillet from Calibre Connections * Our guest on the next show on 4th February to talk about how to sell more hardware to your clients is James Cust from Warranty Master * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

Paul Green: Hello, I've got a great one for you today. Here's what's coming up.

James Newell: You might be too embarrassed to question me on what that actually means, and I'll lose the sale because I've assumed that you know what I'm talking about.

Paul Green: We're also going to explore a very simple but very powerful idea that will help you and your team to do the things that grow the business every single day, even when they're jobs that no one really likes doing. And I'm going to answer a question from an MSP about how you stop your clients coming to you personally for tech support when there's actually a team that they should be going to.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

Paul Green: I was catching up over the weekend with a really good friend of mine, John, who is a business owner as well. He has some kind of engineering business. I don't quite understand what they do, but we were talking about the burden of staff and they've all worked together for a long time. And something happened to him a couple of weeks ago, which really has bothered him at quite a deep emotional level, which was he became aware that two members of his team were discussing him on WhatsApp. And I can't remember the details of how he found out. I think someone might've referenced it or something. He certainly hasn't seen the chat, but it became clear to him that actually there is a degree of criticism that's happening between a couple of members of his team about him.

Paul Green: Now let's put this in perspective. He's actually... It's his business. He owns that business. He benefits from that and is also burdened by it at the same time, and only another business owner would know exactly what I mean by that. But because these people have worked for him for some time, it's really bothered him that they are criticising him and they're objecting to some of the decisions that he's making. Now it's bothered him even though it's his business. And he loses his house if that business fails; they only lose their jobs, and they can go and get other jobs quicker than he can get another house. And he's quite happy to stick with the decisions that he's made, but it's still bothered him at quite a deep level.

Paul Green: And the conversation that we had at the weekend was that actually the price of leadership is criticism. It's something that I had to come to terms with and I had 15 staff, of which about 14 were criticising me at any one time. You probably yourself have either come to terms with this or you're realising, yes, do you know what? As soon as you have employees and as soon as you set yourself up as a leader, you have to expect that kind of criticism. Because when we run the business, and when we own that business, we have to be the leaders.

Paul Green: In fact, the risk is if we're not the leaders, we leave a leadership void. And I've met many business owners where the business owner is introverted and they've shrunk away from being the leader. And the business has ticked along and it's done okay, but there is a leadership void. There's no one saying, "Hey, this is where we should go. This is the vision for the future." And in a leadership void like that, someone, a strong personality on the team, will rise and will take a position of authority, if you like, within the business.

Paul Green: They're not the owner, they're not the manager, but they assume a de facto leadership position and can actually take the business off in completely the wrong direction. So you want to be the leader within your business. You want to rise up and you want to paint that vision of the future and say, "Hey, this is the way we're going." And most of your staff, most of the time, want you to be the leader as well, because it's deeply ingrained into our ancient human psychology to expect leadership. We look for people to fall behind. We look for people to tell us a way to go. But that doesn't mean that we have to accept every single thing that our leader says.

Paul Green: One of the downsides of doing business in 2020 is we're much more enlightened these days. It's not like it was 150 years ago, where the owner, the boss, said, "This is what we do," and everyone just had to do it and couldn't have an opinion. These days we want collaboration, we want engagement, we want all of these things. They're seen as good things. And they are, but they have a price, and that price is criticism. Engaged, collaborative employees criticise the leader.

Paul Green: It's part of the process for them of coming to terms with the lack of control that they have within the business, because they don't really have any control at all. You do. You have all the control. You're the owner. You're the decision maker. You decide exactly what the business is going to do or not going to do. You have months to think about things, to ponder ideas, to move them around in your head, and then suddenly you announce something to your team almost out of the blue. And for them it's a bit of a shock. So they have no control whatsoever. You do as the leader. No wonder they're going to criticise you.

Paul Green: And do you know what? I think you should expect that criticism and actually accept it, because strong leaders are confident people, and confident people allow others to be critical, especially the people that they're leading. In fact, strong leaders, I believe, make constructive criticism a part of the whole organisational culture.

Paul Green: I run a Facebook group which is just for MSPs. You can go and find it in Facebook. It's called the MSP marketing group. So if you go into Facebook and type in "MSP marketing". at the top and go to groups, and that's my group and we've got more than 500 people in there, all MSPs from around the world. Come and join us in that group.

Paul Green: And every now and again I'm criticised in that group, and there's two or three strong personalities in there that criticise something I've written or my opinions on something. And I could, and it does cross my mind now and again that I could just kick them out of the group, but what would be the benefit of that for me and my personal growth, and what would be the benefit of that within the group?

Paul Green: Because even if they don't have a shared opinion that the whole group shares, actually that criticism makes me a better leader. I try very hard not to address that criticism defensively, but actually to have an open conversation about whatever it is that they're criticising me for. Because if that's their opinion and they're accepting me as a leader, even just in a small way in just a Facebook group, then I'm very happy with that, because to me, being criticised shows that actually my leadership is being accepted.

Paul Green: Because you need to keep criticism in perspective. Obviously I don't get emotionally bothered by being criticised in a Facebook group, but I have a team still. It's only a small team now and when my team do criticise me and I encourage it, I have to assume that, do you know what? Maybe they've got something here. Maybe they're criticising me because I'm making a mistake. Maybe this is not the right thing for the business. Sometimes I ignore that criticism. Sometimes I go with it. What do you do in your business?

Paul Green: You have to be careful not to give too much weight to one particular criticism that you miss what everyone else is saying. So it's almost like looking for trends. If the people you trust the most in your business are criticising you and their majority are criticising you, then maybe there's something in that. Actually if it's one or two lone guns, then maybe it's just a different perspective which you should take into consideration. I guess what I'm trying to say here is that as leaders of our businesses, we should actually appreciate criticism. We all want to be strong leaders, which isn't something we're born as. We have to grow and learn and train to become a strong leader. And strong leaders openly and quickly admit when they're wrong.

Paul Green: Because we're not perfect. You and I, we're not perfect. We never will be. We will make mistakes in the business. Even when we've done 40, 50 years running businesses, we're still going to make mistakes. And part of that is accepting the criticism from the people that we're leading, because it's somewhat of an early warning that we're getting it wrong.

Paul Green: So I wonder if off the back of this, maybe you put in place something formal to try and draw out the criticism from your business. And this is what I recommended to my friend John. Because if they're chatting about him on WhatsApp privately between themselves, maybe you should put something in place for them to formally have an opportunity to critique what it is that he's doing as the leader. So we stop it being criticism and we turn it into a critique. And we went through a couple of different ideas, having formal meetings, team meetings, which I don't think is the right forum.

Paul Green: And we settled on one-to-one individual conversations: coaching conversations, as it were. If he could sit down once a week, or once every couple of weeks, with every single member of his team, and have a one-on-one conversation, that's an opportunity for there to be a two-way critiquing. He can critique his staff, because of course he's got plenty to criticise about their performance, but also they can critique him as well. And he will do with that is start to draw it away from the private WhatsApp conversations into actually very useful feedback conversations between him and individual members of his team. It's a very powerful concept. Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could do that in your business?

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: We all have little daily jobs that we really, really should do because they move the business forward, but they're painful. For example, ringing prospects. You might have hundreds or thousands of prospects in your audiences connected to you on LinkedIn or in your email list. And it's a really good idea to just call those people now and again, because the phone moves those conversations forward. But none of us, none of us like picking up the phone and calling people in our network. It's a horrible, horrible thing to do. So here's a way that you can game-ify it. Make it fun for yourself, but also trick your brain into getting this work done.

Paul Green: Now it's such a simple idea, and all you need for this is three things. First of all, you need two glasses. Any two glasses will do. Just to make sure they're exactly the same glasses. Get them out of your cupboard, put them on your desk. And the next thing you need is a bunch of paper-clips. Now the number of paper-clips will depend on how many things you want to do. So let's say today you want to do 50 dials, you want to pick up the phone and you want to call 50 people. Well, you're going to attempt 50 calls, anyway. We all know that those 50 dials will actually turn into about two or three conversations. So it's a pretty good target for a day.

Paul Green: So you start off with the 50 paper-clips in one of the glasses, then you pick up the phone, you do a dial, and as you're doing the dial, or as the call's connecting, you move a paper-clip from one glass into the other glass. So you've now got 49 paper-clips in one glass and one paper-clip in the other glass. And then as you did the second dial, you move the second paper-clip over, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Can you see where this is going? So very quickly, you get five, six, seven, eight calls in and you can see at a glance through the glass exactly how many calls you've done and roughly how many you've got left to do.

Paul Green: And there's some satisfaction in getting that number down. Well, this is the game. This is the gamification part of it, where you're encouraging yourself to keep going because every single time you pick up the phone, the clips are moving over from one glass to another. So you get to about 10 or 15 left in one glass, and you've only got another 10 or 15 dials to do and you've hit your target for the day. How amazing is that? And your brain is going to want you to finish.

Paul Green: Because it might not seem this way most days, but our brains are desperate for us to finish jobs. Our brains hate it when we don't get jobs finished properly. So when it sees that there's only 10 paper-clips left, it wants to finish that. It wants to get it complete and it'll give you a little burst of the feel-good. I forget what it is. Is it endorphins that your brain gets when you do that last paper-clip over into the other glass? You get that burst of, let's say, endorphins. You feel great because you have finished a job.

Paul Green: Now the numbers game says if you attempt 50 dials in a day, you will have one, two, maybe even three conversations. In fact, imagine if you did that every single day. Every single day you picked up the phone, you dialled 50 people, that's 250 attempted dials a week. You're going to be having up to 10 conversations a week. Somewhere in there, someone is going to be ready to sit down and have a conversation with you about switching from their incumbent MSP to you, just because the numbers game says that is the case. It might not happen every week, but it will happen most weeks and it was made to happen through the paper-clips method.

Paul Green: Very, very simple. Because it works on all our basic psychological actions such as gamification and such as starting a job so that our brain wants to finish it. One thing: don't try and do this with sweets. I did have someone that replaced paper-clips for sweets and unfortunately more of the sweets went into their mouth than actually went into the other glass. So you don't have to use paper-clips. You could use anything. Just make sure it isn't something that you can eat, as you will find yourself eating to cheat.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green: So I was just talking there about building multiple audiences for your business, which is a great marketing concept. You get people to choose to join your email list, to connect with you on LinkedIn, maybe even join a Facebook group if you've got a clear vertical that can sustain a Facebook group. And then once you've got these people, you educate them over a period of time how to pick a good MSP. Because at a cognitive level, they don't know the difference between a good MSP and a bad MSP. So they're making the decision emotionally. Now the best way to educate them is to be constantly sending out content. This is the core crux of content marketing. You send content out to them on social media on a daily basis, and on email on a weekly basis.

Paul Green: And I have a service that can help you to do this. It's called the MSP Marketing Edge. And what we do is every single month we give you brand-new content that you can use in your area. And only one MSP can use it per area. So every month you get an educational guide. Literally it's a PDF in lots and lots of different formats that you can use either as a PDF or you can get it printed. Then you've got an educational video teaching them about technology. You've got social media content for every single day of the month. You've got emails, versions for prospects and versions for clients as well. And you've got a press release to send out to your local media, because there's no better credibility than being featured in your local media, plus a sales letter that you can send out to prospects in your area.

Paul Green: You get all of that new every single month, on the first of the month, and you can use it in any way you fancy in your local area to find prospects, to warm them up and ultimately to get a meeting with them. Because that's the goal of this, isn't it, is to get them on the phone and to get the meeting with them. That's how we get the sales process started. So I've made this incredibly cheap as well. In the UK it's £99 plus VAT every month. And in the US it's $129 a month. And there's a nice easy trial period for you as well. Your first month costs you very little to try it out.

Paul Green: So all you got to do now is check out if someone else has beaten you to it in your area. If you go to MSPmarketingedge.com, you can go in, check to see if your area is still available, see all the details and get started with your trial month. It's a very powerful way to market and grow your business.

Voiceover: The big interview.

James Newell: My name is James Newell. My company is Clear Sales Message, and in a nutshell I help businesses to articulate what they actually offer in the marketplace.

Paul Green: My guest today has an incredible skill. He can take that complicated beast of sales and make it very, very simple for you and for anyone to understand.

James Newell: The classic mistake that most people make, and we're actually naturally programmed to do this, is we sell the wrong thing. So it's a classic features and benefits scenario. The example that I always use is airline adverts. So when you see an airline advert on TV, on a bus, or on the tube or anywhere like that, you very rarely see a plane or a plane seat on the advert. What you'll see is a family on the beach, a Christmas scene or whatever. The airlines intrinsically understand they need to sell you the destination, not the journey. So nobody's actually buying what they're buying, they're buying the end result that they're after, thanks to something called the false consensus effect.

James Newell: The false consensus effect, which is a cognitive bias. It's a way of thinking. We focus on ourselves first. So easy for me as a sales person and MSP to talk about what I do and how to excite and get really techy and jargonistic straight away. But the client's sat there thinking, "Well, I couldn't really care less, will it get the end result that I want?" So to use computer parlance, we change the syntax of the conversation, change the order of the conversation. We'll talk first of all about the end result. So "This is what an MSP will mean for you," and then we'll go back to explain what it is. And I would try not to use the term MSP too much because I'm sure there's lots of people who don't even understand what that term means. Even that simple acronym.

Paul Green: What you're saying there is essentially you sell the sizzle, not the sausage.

James Newell: Yes.

Paul Green: Which is another way of saying the same thing. How do you practically do that though? Because again, most of the owner operators that would listen to a podcast like this would be technicians or would have started off as technicians, and obviously they've got a real passion for these incredible solutions that are out there to fix people's problems. How do you then translate that into the destinations, as it were, that the decision-makers are looking for?

James Newell: Well, really simply, so we judge the world very, very harshly when we buy things, whether it's MSP services, anything like that. The question we're trying to answer in our mind, which we would never overtly ask is, "Well, why should I care? Why should I care about an MSP and what you do?" So if you've got a particular piece of technology or service that you're offering, think about the end result and the context for the client. Does it give them peace of mind? Does it make them money? Does it save them money? Does it get them a speed advantage? Whatever it happens to be, relate it to them and their business and their context. And that's how you find in. And you have to be mindful that whatever you're selling, we're always speaking with humans.

James Newell: So people make decisions based on emotion, not logic. We make emotionally-based decisions and rationalise with logic. So if I talked to you about the peace of mind you're getting knowing that your systems will be supported and backed up and you've minimise your downtime, et cetera, et cetera, and I can talk in those quasi-emotional feeling terms, I'm going to connect with you. And then I can bring it back to the logical world of, "Okay, this is how we deliver that, and that's how that would work."

Paul Green: Do you think people who do selling over a number of years forget this because they're absorbed every single day in their world and their product and what it does and what it doesn't do? Do you think it's easy for them to forget that actually the prospect that they're sitting down with doesn't absorb themselves in this, and will perhaps be exposed to it once or twice in a 10 year period?

James Newell: 100%. It's called the curse of knowledge. So when you know something, you tend to presume that other people know the same things that you do and they see the world from your point of view. So the maxim for my business when I first began was: if they don't understand it, they can't buy it. So my avatar is the next person that walks past you, whether you're at work, whether you're out and about, as long as they're an adult and as long as English is their first language. How do you explain what you do in the most basic terms possible? Just so they understand, because they have to understand first before you can then engage them, but you have to remember if they don't understand it, they can't buy it. And if I'm throwing terms at you like MSP, et cetera, et cetera, you might be too embarrassed to question me on what that actually means, and I'll lose the sale because I've assumed that you know what I'm talking about. And I always say to my clients, that assumption is the mother of all lost sales.

Paul Green: There's another way to end that isn't there?

James Newell: I know. I put that on a slide once. It didn't go down well.

Paul Green: This is just beautiful to hear this because the world of the MSP is so full of acronyms and technology and new things that people are inventing every single day. The person who's doing the selling has to be a filter, and you have to filter out all of that and let just the emotional message and the outcomes get through.

James Newell: Think about yourself as an interface, that data is transitioning between yourself and the person that you're selling to. And we have to recognise that human beings have, on average, an eight-second attention span. So every eight seconds you're cycling your environment for movement, for change, for threats. So we only pay attention for eight seconds at a time. We're completely self-absorbed and looking out for what's in it for us. So why should I care?

James Newell: And interestingly in the UK, we have the average reading age of a nine year old. And that's an average, so some people are above that and some are below it. The Sun newspaper is written for 10-year-olds and The Times for 12-year-olds. So what it tells us is we need to use fewer words, simpler sentences, less complicated sentences, and just have a much slower cadence and walk people slowly into the information rather than bombard them. But in terms of the MSP world, if you just think about you are an interface for data transfer essentially between you and your prospect, they are a machine for processing information. If you feed it to them in the correct way and in the correct order, you'll maximise your chance of them understanding and then engaging.

James Newell: I always say to my clients that selling is essentially a conversation with money at the end, and if we bear that in mind, then we lose the nervousness that comes about. We feel that we have to become a salesperson. If you Google image-search "sales man", "sales woman", "sales team", the imagery that comes up, this is the general consensus of how we view selling. So we become nervous, because we feel like we have to be pushy and greedy and money... And "I've definitely got to sign it before we finish this podcast", et cetera, et cetera. And it's just not how things work, unfortunately.

Paul Green: Just before we started recording this podcast, I complimented you on your website, James, and having just heard what you've just said, I understand now why that website works so well. It's very simple. It's very clear and it immediately positions you differently. Tell us what the website address is and tell us how we can get in touch with you.

James Newell: Yeah, sure. So my website address is clearsalesmessage.com. I'm very active on LinkedIn, so the best thing to do is to connect with me on LinkedIn and follow me there. I share an awful lot of actionable tips and actionable content that comes from the books and courses that I've created. And one thing I would say is the word "clear" is actually an acrostic. So that is a five-step system to know if the next email, you write the next letter you write, the next web page that you create, is clear: client-focused, logical, engaging, accurate, results-driven. If you hit those five markers, you're in the best position to succeed with the next piece of communication that you send.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. Ask Paul Anything.

Sam Veillet: Hi, it's Sam Veillet from Calibre Connections IT Ltd. I've got this client that I've looked after for a number of years. I don't do that in the business any more, and the client insists on only speaking to myself. How do I best deal with this?

Paul Green: That's such a great question, Sam. Thank you. And it's a classic one, isn't it? Because you start the business, in the early days you're happy to go out and meet with the clients and fix their stuff and get under their desk, and then as time goes on and you employ staff, you just don't want to do that any more. And the thought of someone saying to you, "My printer doesn't work," or "My computer's slow," I know, it strikes fear into your heart. And yet the clients, they want to keep asking you, even though they know you've got a team, it's you. They see you as the tech person.

Paul Green: Here's the thing, before we talk about how to fix that, there is a strategic reason why you don't want to be the technician. You want to be the strategist. And this is just a positioning thing, because the most important role of any business owner or manager within an MSP is up-selling clients. It's reviewing where they are right now. It's reviewing where they're going in the future, and it's offering new solutions to them. Because they don't know about all the stuff that's out there. They're not tracking how technology is changing and all the different services. That's your job. And your job is to take their hopes, their fears, their problems, their worries, their needs, it's to take all of those things and translate them into more monthly-recurring revenue sales for you. You can't do that if you're on your knees under their desk plugging a network cable in.

Paul Green: In fact, we have a saying in our mastermind groups that I run in the UK, which is the second that they see your bum-crack, you'll never going to sell them anything. And you know what I mean by that? You're on the floor, your trousers are down a bit. Eurgh, none of us wants to really see that. So your job is actually to avoid all technology problems that the clients ring you with, because those kinds of low-level things, uh-uh (negative), there's someone else that can do that for you, whether it's your team, or you've outsourced it or whatsoever.

Paul Green: So the solution, how do you fix that? Simply you push it back to the clients and you tell them that actually that's not what you're good at any more. There's lots of different practical ways you can do it. So if you speak to the clients and they say, "Oh, while you're here, could you just..." or they phone you up and say, "Hey, I've got this problem. Could you...", you literally throw it back at them. Now lots of people say, "Oh, let me log that for you as a ticket." I believe the second you do the stuff for the client, Actually you're just encouraging them to keep ringing you. So you have to push it back to them and you say, "Oh, thank you so much. Do you know what, we can help with that. It's not something I've personally do any more. I employ people who are so much better than me to do that for me. Could you call the help line on this number?"

Paul Green: Don't transfer them. Don't take the ticket and log it for them. Push it back to them. Now I know this is kind of insane what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about pushing problems back to clients for them to go off and ring somewhere else. And you might think that's not the right customer service thing to do, but it is, because we need to teach the clients how to interact with our businesses. If they're ringing the boss all the time and the boss isn't available, that's not great customer service. We want them to ring the help desk, or better still, press the button on their desktop so they can live-chat the technicians or whatever it is that we want them to do.

Paul Green: Some of my clients have taken this to the extreme that they actually now have two mobile phone numbers. So they have the number that they've had for 20 years that the clients always ring. That one, they maintain the number, but it's never on. Any text messages which come in automatically divert off somewhere else. Any calls that go into that are automatically diverted to the help desk. And if they try and leave a message, they shut off answer-phone. They don't accept answer-phone messages on it. And then of course they have to go and buy a second number, and that's actually for their other half and their staff to be able to call them on. But essentially you hide from the clients by keeping the number that the clients have always rung, and you just never answer it. And as long as those calls get directed elsewhere, then that's fine.

Paul Green: Now, however technically you do that within the business, it doesn't really matter. The most important thing is you must never do first-line support. You must always push it on to someone else and make sure that the clients know they mustn't come to you, because you can't do it and they'll get a much better service going to your help desk.

Voiceover: How to contribute to the show.

Paul Green: Look, I'm going to level with you now. You know those little recorded questions? There's been lots of people I've met over the last few weeks and months and I'm running out of them. I've only got a couple more left. So I could really do with some recorded questions from you. Literally jump on your phone, go on the little voice memo thing. Just record me a question. Just say who you are, record the question, and then can you email that in to me? hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com. I'd really appreciate that. Thank you.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

James Cust: And we'll be able to see real live data about their estate and see a overview of devices which are in warranty, get an idea of the proportion of their estate, which ultimately is unprotected.

Paul Green: That's James Cust from Warranty Master. He's going to be here next week talking about something called asset life-cycle management. It's basically tracking when your client's hardware is getting old, to give you some opportunities to sell them some new stuff. We're also going to be talking about the hassle buckets that every single one of us carries around in our head, and we've got an amazing marketing idea, a way to push prospects over the edge and buy from you. It's called an impact box. I'll tell you more about it next week.

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

View Details

In this week's episode * Find out how MSPs are starting to make small changes to their business, but larger changes in their marketing, to be front-of-mind in a future where cyber security comes first * This week's big interview is with business acquisition expert Jonathan Jay. Find out how it's possible to grow your business via acquisition but without the off-putting costs * Also this week, Paul asks if now is the right time to out-source more of the 'hassle' work, plus there's a great question from listener Olly about how to find time to improve a business

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Paul talked about outsourcing specialists, including Continuum and Inbay * Find out more about Paul's blatant plug for MSP Easy Tools * Paul's guest on the show talking about how to grow through acquisition is Jonathan Jay from The Dealmaker's Academy * Check out some of the books from the brilliant aforementioned Stephen Covey * The question about how to find time to work on the business came from Olly Denhard from IT Trouble Free * Our guest on the next show on 28th January to talk about how to become even better at sales is James Newell from Clear Sales Message * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Here's a link to Paul's Facebook group for MSP Marketing

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green: Hello. Here's what's coming up in this week's show.

Jonathan Jay: As soon as you realise that the amount of money that you have in your bank account is not going to influence your ability to make an acquisition, you realise that yes, you can grow via acquisition.

Paul Green: We're also going to look at whether you should be outsourcing more from your business. Certainly something as simple as your NOC and we're going to answer a question from an MSP on how to get more stuff done.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green: If you look at the evolution of IT support over the last 10, 20 years or so, it's very clear for us now to look back and see that break/fix, which is still a business model used by many people, but break/fix was not a great business model because you're inherently sitting, waiting for work to come in. And I know there are many pure break/fix operators that are very, very busy. But it's still a very haphazard way of running a business, isn't it? It's the reason I'd never want to own a shop, any kind of retail shop, because you're just sitting there waiting for people to come in and you don't know whether or not you've sold anything. Now compared to the monthly recurring revenue model of an MSP, break/fix absolutely is a different world. And it's no surprise to me, you look back 10, 15 years when the vast majority of IT support was done on a break/fix basis and there were just a few people operating this managed services model.

Paul Green: It's no surprise to me now that many people, I would say a majority, are running managed services because it just makes life easier. Let's be honest, how many of us now lie awake at four in the morning and worry about how are we going to meet payroll when we know the money's coming in because of all the contracts, because of all the direct debits or the card payments or however you take your monthly recurring revenue. If you just look at how the world has changed over the last 10 years, we've gone generally, typically over to a more subscription business model. Netflix, TV, mobile phones, all sorts of things, it's now all done on a subscription basis and this certainly makes for running an easier business. Well, Office 365 is another great example of that. Microsoft have created an amazing subscription business out of what was once before a case of having to sell stuff all the time. Now the money just rolls in for Microsoft and it makes it a more robust and a safer business.

Paul Green: So that's where we are today. I think it's very clear if you look forward the next five to 10 years, what the next iteration of IT support is going to be. We've gone from break/fix over to managed services. I think the next thing is going to be cybersecurity first. And I already have two or three clients that have not quite pivoted, but have just shifted their marketing a little bit so that rather than competing with all the other MSPs out there, they are taking very much a cybersecurity first stance. So they're talking to people right from the get go about their cybersecurity, about their email, about protecting their data. And of course as part of that, when they do the projects and then take them on board, they're delivering managed services to them.

Paul Green: So, the actual delivery hasn't changed dramatically, but their marketing has and they're very much going in cybersecurity first. And I think you can look forward and say that most of today's MSPs are going to end up as MSSPs eventually. You could very much argue that's where it's going to go. It's just a case of how long is it going to take to go there. And actually, if you look at the trends of technology, hardware, software, most people don't try and repair a lot of hardware these days because it's too difficult to repair. It's pretty much unrepairable, some of it. It's just easier to get another unit in. Well that's not how it was 10 years ago. Going forward, that's going to get worse. You know there's going to be less and less hardware to fix. You could look at software and say, "Well, there's a lot of software around, there's a lot of services that need to be tweaked and configurations. And it's not perfect yet. It won't be perfect for a long time." And I'm not a tech and even I can see that it's going to need humans in there. But eventually that software is going to be smarter. It's going to just work better. It will fix itself. I think that's where it's going to come.

Paul Green: There comes a point where they're not going to need you so much for the hardware and we're already at that point really, they're not going to need you so much for the software, but they are going to need someone somewhere who's going to look after their cybersecurity. Because we all know that breaches and hacks are getting worse and worse and worse and that just creates an opportunity.

Paul Green: So, the reason I'm talking about this today is even though I think this is years off, when everyone will have to shift over to an MSSP model, I think this is the point to start thinking about this and saying, "Right, as we're planning out the next three to five years, what kind of extra qualifications do we need? What kind of capabilities do we need to add into the business? What kind of people do we need to hire? What kind of products do we need to be reselling? Are we reselling a robust enough solution for this, for this, for this? Are we reselling a training solution?" If this is what more people want and okay, it's only the early adopters that really want it at this stage, but if this is what people want, what's the reputation that we can be building up right now to make us a really robust MSSP in three, five, seven, 10 years time? And I think the businesses that really embrace this, the MSPs that really embrace this right now, are the ones that are most likely to pick up some good market share on this in the time ahead.

Paul Green: So, this is a great time, especially this time of year as you're starting to plan out what you want to achieve over the next 12 months. Looking at your security offerings and how you can improve those and how you can improve your marketing to position yourselves as cybersecurity experts. That would be a great use of your time.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: So, one of my goals for this year is I want to acquire one or two businesses. Now I'm not interested in being the operator of these businesses. As I said back in the podcast back in November, I'm interested in being the owner, not the operator. I don't want to be running it every day. I just want to be helping a management team to excel and financially benefiting from that. So, I won't acquire marketing or sales businesses because I know about that. I certainly won't acquire an MSP business because that's just too much of a clash with the work I'm doing here and I'm enjoying this work. I want to keep doing this for another 10 years.

Paul Green: So, I'm looking outside, I'm looking at all sorts of businesses. Currently looking at the care sector, adult care, either in the home or people going to live in care homes because I think it's an interesting market with a lot of opportunities. And as I'm looking at all these different businesses, I'm constantly looking at how can I improve this? So how can I reduce some costs within the business? But at the same time, how can I make it a better experience for the customer, a better experience for the staff? Because if I can reduce the cost of delivery and I can make it a better delivery, make it a better experience, and from a marketing point of view, differentiate myself from my competitors. Well whatever I buy I'm going to improve that business. And it reminds me of when I first came into the MSP world in late 2016 and I discovered fairly quickly that there is the ability to outsource a great proportion of the hassle work that you have to someone else.

Paul Green: And of course I'm talking about Continuum and Inbay, and I know there are other people out there that you can outsource it to. You know, my first realisation that you can outsource your NOC, that you can if you wanted to, outsource your First Line. And I have a whole series of clients who love Continuum, who love outsourcing. Some of them are very open with their clients. Some of them aren't so open. Some of them allow their clients to actually talk to America, or is it Manila where the other base is? And some of them they don't allow them to, so they talk to, they have people in England who are talking to the clients, but the work is still being done in America. And there's lots of different ways of doing it. But I remember being so excited when I first discovered this, that you can outsource much of the hassle.

Paul Green: And as I'm looking at these different business models of other companies outside of our world, I'm looking at it thinking, "How can I outsource much of this? Is there any way that this can be done elsewhere?" Because as I talked to business owning friends and I talk about different business models and what I'm seeing and what I'm discovering, they are genuinely gobsmacked that in your world you can outsource so much. And this is one of the things that makes an MSP a great business to run. And I know there are many downsides as well, but the ability to outsource hassle work to someone else who specialises in that is just beautiful And I know it's not perfect. I know there are upsides and downsides and I've had many conversations with MSPs who their points of differentiation is they don't want to outsource it. They want to keep it all in house and there's nothing wrong with that. But I think this is one of those things that you should revisit on at least an annual basis and look at it and say, "Do you know what? If we've got to take on another first line tech or if we've got to take on this and we've got to add to our own resource base, is that the right thing to do?"

Paul Green: I think every time you lose a member of your team, you should be constantly reviewing, do we really need to replace this human being sitting in this office? Or could we outsource much of the work that that human was doing to one of the outsource providers and perhaps hiring a young keen apprentice who can be our dispatcher as it were, who can sit on the phone to clients, giving them great customer service and ultimately that difficult technical work is being done elsewhere. Now, if that's not your cup of tea, there's nothing wrong with that. But I do think it's something you should be reviewing on a regular basis because this is the way the market is going. And you could argue there's a downside, if all MSPs are outsourcing all work to all sorts of companies.

Paul Green: Yes, that does take away a point of differentiation, but you know, the fewer humans that you have to manage, the better. Really. Humans are great for getting stuff done, but there is a burden. There's a burden of having staff. There's a burden of having to have all these difficult people. And I don't know what it's like in the States right now or around the rest of the world, but in the UK right now, recruitment is an issue, especially as you go up the ladder. Your second, your third line recruitment is hard and it becomes easier for you. If you can say to your second and third line people, "You'll never have to do any first line stuff. We will never ask you to do that because we outsource it." So, there are X hundred people sitting in a center in this country waiting to do this.

Paul Green: I know if I was acquiring an MSP tomorrow, I would definitely ask myself that question of "Can I outsource some of this work? Does that save me some money? Can I improve the customer experience by doing this? And does it make us more profitable?" Because actually if it ticks all of those boxes, then maybe it's a good thing to do.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green: Some friends and clients of mine, Andrew and Jean Eardley, built a set of tools over a number of years within their MSP. Every time they came across a job that frankly could and should have been automated, they got a coder to build a tool and it meant that their first-line techs were able to do much more complicated work because they could just press buttons. And they also discovered along the way that they could resell some of these services to their clients. Now they've put this on sale for other MSPs and they've bundled it together into a whole set of tools called MSP Easy Tools. And there's a link to their website in the show notes on my website. All the details are at paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/. But they've put these tools together and these tools themselves are generating thousands and thousands of pounds worth of monthly recurring revenue in their MSP. And they're starting to do the same in other MSPs as well. Cause that's what this toolkit does. It saves your techs some time and it also gives you a whole series of different things for you to sell to your existing clients. It's a beautiful set of tools designed by an MSP for MSPs such as you. If you want to get all the details, you can check it out on my website. As I said, it's paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcast/.

Voiceover: The big interview.

Paul Green: One of the reasons I want to acquire a couple of businesses this year is because I've spent 10 years learning from this guy. He's now become one of my best friends and he's one of the most inspirational people I've ever met.

Jonathan Jay: So I'm Jonathan Jay and over the last 25 years I have made my money from buying and selling businesses. And in recent years I've been helping other business owners do exactly the same.

Paul Green: So Jonathan, we all know that the MSP world is going through very early stage consolidation. A lot of the big players are of course buying themselves. We know that the ConnectWise bought Continuum last year and our sort of level, you see acquisitions happening tends to be the higher businesses but some smaller ones as well. Now you're a big fan of growing a business through acquisition rather than through the traditional route, aren't you?

Jonathan Jay: Yes. I think this is the secret strategy. You see what most businesses do is that they grow one customer at a time. They gain a few customers, they are losing customers as one step forward, two steps back and that's a slow process. So, what I always say to people is "What if you could take a business that you've been running for 10 years that's taken you 10 years to get to where you are today and then in the next 12 months double, even triple the size of that business by making one or two strategic acquisitions?" And what that does is that it leap frogs you over your competitors, it gives you a huge advantage in terms of growing a larger business, which if you want to sell your business in the future, the larger you are, typically the more valuable you are. And it means you don't have to spend another 10 years doing it. You can do it in the next 12 months.

Paul Green: Well that's very easy to say actually going out, finding a business, figuring out the finances. Is that what puts most people off from doing it?

Jonathan Jay: Well, like most things, if you don't know how to do something, then obviously it appears very complicated and, and you're right, some people fall at the first hurdle because they don't quite know what to do first, what to do second, what to do third. However, if there's a system, if there's a process, not only does it take a lot less time to buy a business if you've got a process, you're less likely to make mistakes. And of course the first step is the strategy, is understanding what is it you want to achieve. And as Stephen Covey says, you start with the end in mind, work backwards. If you want to be a 5 million revenue or 10 million revenue business, then how are we going to get there? And identifying the businesses to buy is that very first part of the process. And once we've identified the businesses that we want to buy, then we've got to approach them in the right way, structure a deal. And I'm a big fan of structuring deals that don't use any of your own capital.

Paul Green: So how exactly would you do that then? How can you buy a business without using your own money?

Jonathan Jay: Well, the key is always to use other people's money and that might be the bank's money and that might be using what we call vendor finance, where we structure the payment for the business over a period of time. So effectively the profit from the business pays for itself. So, it funds his own acquisition and when something funds his own acquisition, you then need to ask yourself, "Well, if I can do this, how many businesses do I want to acquire using the same strategy? And some people say, "Well, the answer is all of them because why wouldn't you?" As soon as you realise that the amount of money that you have in your bank account is not going to influence your ability to make an acquisition, suddenly the options are just open wide up to you and you realise that yes, you can grow via acquisition.

Paul Green: So, if you owned an MSP and you were looking to grow quite dramatically throughout this year, what would be the first steps that you would take?

Jonathan Jay: Well, I would say, Where do I want to end up?" So, if I'm at 1 million revenue or 2 million revenue, I want to get to five maybe on my existing business plan that is a five or a 10 year plan. I say, "Okay, I'm going to now do this in the next 12 months and I need to buy businesses that maybe are similar to mine in different parts of the country. Maybe direct competitors in the same part of the country. Maybe part of my supply chain, part of my distribution chain." But typically what most business owners do is they say businesses that are similar to mine where I can combine the two businesses, have the benefits of scale, reduce my overheads because I wouldn't need two offices, perhaps. I wouldn't need three. If I buy three businesses, I don't need four, my office and the other three. I can consolidate all of the cost and all the expenses and therefore be more profitable and I would plan this out and then I would approach each of those competitors and some of them would come back to me and say, "Jonathan, yes, I am interested in selling. Can we have a conversation?" And then I follow the process that I've used for years and years and years on how to do that.

Paul Green: Okay. It's great. Thank you very much. Jonathan where can we find out more about you?

Jonathan Jay: On my website, thedealmakersacademy.com, that's thedealmakersacademy.com. Lots of free resources there to help people.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast. Ask Paul anything.

Olly Denhard: Hi, I'm Olly from IT Trouble Free. I'm interested to find out about how people get things done every week or every day or every month when there's so many other things going on all the time.

Paul Green: It's the thousand dollar question, Olly, and thank you for asking it. The most successful clients that I have are the ones who implement faster. In fact, the most successful business owners I've ever met are people who just seem to get things done quickly. And I think rapid implementation has one simple secret, which is that you put aside time every single day. Now, I've spoken about this previously in the podcast that I'm a big fan of getting up early in the morning and spending 90 minutes every single day working on the business as opposed to working in the business. So my 90 minutes, which I typically do at five in the morning, and yes, I know that's extreme, but in my 90 minutes I'm not doing email. I'm not doing social media. I'm not looking at invoices. I'm not dealing with issues and problems. I'm working on the business. In fact, I'm doing one of three activities, stuff that either gets me more new clients or stuff that gets my clients to buy from me more often, or stuff that gets my clients to choose to spend more every single time they buy. That's what working on the business really means.

Paul Green: And the trick is to have that time diarised every single day. So, the way that I do that in the way it can't be stolen from me is to do it at five o'clock in the morning. An extreme thing to do, yes, but it works for me. I have clients who do this at lunchtime. I have clients who do it in the evening. I'll have clients who do it sort of at 9:30 in the morning so they can come in and talk to their tech team and then lock themselves away. The key to it is to put aside some time every single day and then protect that time. Switch your phone off. Don't let people interrupt you. Put a sign on the door which says if you are interrupted, you will literally kill them and you have to police that. Remember you have to enforce it. Or better still, go off to a coffee shop or sit in a hotel lobby and just do stuff.

Paul Green: If you could find 60 minutes a day or better, 90 minutes or even better, two hours a day, to work on the business, then within a couple of weeks you'll find that your problem isn't finding time to work on the business every day, your problem is actually "What are we going to do tomorrow morning?" Because you get things done so quickly. You get projects finished and by projects, I don't mean technical projects, I mean business building projects. You get stuff done. It's very exciting and rapidly you realise that you can clear the queue of things that must be done.

Paul Green: Now don't please fall into the trap of thinking you can do a day a week. Loads of people think, "Do you know what? A bit of time, every day is too difficult. I'm going to do a day a week. I'm going to put aside Fridays and I'm going to work on the business on Fridays." The problem is what happens is things come along and steal that time. The unhappy client, the project that stalled, the tech that needs some help on something and suddenly, and also if you do it on a Friday, you're exhausted on a Friday. So, what you might think of as eight hours on a Friday, suddenly turns into three hours or even worse, no hours at all. And then that's it until the end of next week. So, a little bit of time every day always outperforms a big chunk of time once a week.

Paul Green: And then the only other secret is to put yourself in an environment where you can't be interrupted when you have to focus on the things that make the biggest difference to the business. And that's always stuff that's working on the business rather than working in it.

Voiceover: How to contribute to the show.

Paul Green: So we're 10 episodes into this podcast now and I'm really keen to start tweaking it and improving it and making it better because I'm going to do at least a year of this. And if you love it, I'll keep doing it past that. I do need your feedback, please. Could you send me your positive feedback and your negative feedback? Just be kind with me. You can email it to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

James Newell: You might be too embarrassed to question me on what that actually means and I'll lose the sale because I've assumed that you know what I'm talking about.

Paul Green: That's James Newell is a sales expert and he has a way of explaining sales and teaching it to people like us who aren't professional salespeople, but who have to get out there and sell, and he's going to be talking next week about differentiating yourself from all the other MSPs. We're also got a very clever idea to help you pick up the phone and make more sales calls or in fact do any other repeatable tasks, which you don't really want to do, but it does make a difference. And we're going to talk about how as the owner of the business, the price of leadership is criticism. See you next week.

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

View Details

In this week's episode * If you're looking to get more new clients you need to be sure your time is spent as effectively as possible. So Paul talks about the one killer question that can save you from wasting time chasing prospects * If there's one prospecting tool that can help you stand out in the market and attract new clients, it's dark web monitoring. Paul chats to Matt Soloman from ID Agent who pioneered the service and explains how to use it in the best way * In this week's episode Paul also identifies the one thing your website really needs. And there's a great question from listener Ben from the ITGUYS about running campaigns on LinkedIn * Plus, with the start of a new year, it's a great time to take a fresh look at personal future financial planning and embrace any new perspective it may bring to your MSP

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Find out more about the video production services for MSPs websites at mspvideos.co.uk * This week's guest talking about the power of Dark Web Monitoring is Matt Solomon from ID Agent * The question about LinkedIn campaigns came from Ben Schneider from ITGUYS * Find out more about the tool to help generate LinkedIn connections called Dux-Soup * Our guest on the next show on 21st January to talk about how to grow through acquisition is Jonathan Jay from The Dealmaker's Academy * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Here's a link to Paul's Facebook group for MSP Marketing

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

Paul Green: Hello, here's what's coming up on this week's show.

Matt Solomon: You've trusted us with your business and I'm telling you this wasn't a thing that we were worried about two years ago, but now it's absolutely a risk to your organisation.

Paul Green: We're also going to be talking about how to run an effective LinkedIn campaign. And I've got a sales question so powerful you must ask it of every single prospect.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

Paul Green: I want to start off by talking about something slightly dull but actually very important and that's financial planning. You see I'm moving house at the moment and I'm using the opportunity to review my will and just to look at my insurance policies and general finance planning in general. And I think this is something that as business owners, we don't really take very seriously. I think because we're in charge of our own destiny. And to a certain extent in charge of our own income, we never get round to planning things like pensions, life insurance policies, all of that kind of stuff.

Paul Green: And actually this stuff's really, really important. Not so much for now, but in case something does happen to you. Or in the happy event that you make it to pensionable age and you don't want to be working at the pace you're working now when you're 65, 70. Because I don't know that many of us that really want to do that.

Paul Green: So as I say, I've just revised my will. It's always good to revisit that every two to three years. And I've been working with my financial advisor on three potential scenarios for my life from here on in. And as I'm just talking you through these, just go through in your own head these three scenarios. So I'm 45 now. All being well I should have another 25, 30 years left. That'd be great.

Paul Green: And scenario number one actually is living a long and healthy life. So I've been going through with my advisor what my income would look like at the age of let's say 65, 70. Now, I'm not sure how it works in the USA or in other countries, but essentially pensions have changed completely in the UK from being a place where you put money and hoped you live to take, to these days you can buy some very smart pension products.

Paul Green: And my IFA's been talking to me about some pensions that I can put a lot of money in. And then in the event that I can't take that money out for whatever reason, then actually that money can be left for my dependent, for my daughter. So there's some really good different pensions out there.

Paul Green: So the first scenario we've talked about is living a long life. And the way that they've positioned it to me is to think of a pension these days as a tax wrapper and not just something you pay into. So it's just a very tax efficient way to put money aside. And in fact we've come up with a figure at the age of 45 because I've got not a huge amount of pension. Two or three old company pensions. One I've been paying into a little bit for the last few years, but nothing substantial. And my financial advisor's given me a sum and it's around about £2000 a month.

Paul Green: If I can put up £2000 a month into a pension from now, then by the time I hit 65 I'll have a £1,000,000 in my pension pot. Now that's actually quite an exciting figure because I don't have to pay £1,000,000 in. Due to the wonders of compound interest and investments, over 25 years, £2000 a month plus what I've already got becomes £1,000,000.

Paul Green: And then I can choose to take out a lump sum or I can turn it into an income or just do something else with it at the age of 65. So that's going to be one of my goals is to get that going in the next few months. So scenario number one is living a long and healthy life. And that's the scenario that we all tend to think about.

Paul Green: Scenario number two, kind of a bit more depressing but something we need to plan for, because scenario number two is that you are dead. And some point in the next few years you die. And you know it happens and I don't know how old you are, but at the age of 45 now, I know a couple of people who've died from cancer. And it's real, these are people I've known quite well.

Paul Green: So you have to consider what would happen if you were dead. Obviously this doesn't concern you so much as it concerns your other half, your dependants. And you have to think about things like debt. So I've got some buy-to-lets and my plan for the buy-to-lets was always to enjoy capital growth and to sell a couple of them near the end and pay off.

Paul Green: But what if I die? What if I died in a car crash tomorrow? We have to think about these things. So actually I've just signed up for a number of different life insurance policies which pay out lump sums in the event of my death or if I'm given less than 12 months to live. So that's great. So I can lie under a taxi in my last few moments. I hope it doesn't happen like that, but I can lie there and at least have the peace of mind that all of my debts will be paid. My daughter will get my assets unencumbered and because of my will she'll be protected and can't get that till she's 30. Because I don't want her having lots of money until she's of a certain age.

Paul Green: So we all know what would happen if you gave a 20 year old a significant amount of money. It wouldn't end well. So scenario number one is living a long and healthy life. Scenario number two is dead. Scenario number three is the hardest one. And it's that you're alive but you can't work.

Paul Green: Now I don't know about you, but that's my personal idea of hell. To be alive, but to be in sufficiently bad health, whether that's some degenerative disease or some kind of disability or something that I can't work. And actually it's the most expensive one to insure for. That's when you're into your critical illness and there's a limit to critical illness.

Paul Green: There's only a certain amount of money that you can get from critical illness and it's all to do with how much income you have. So if you currently earn, well, let's say your business makes a 100,000 a year. You might only take 20,000 or 30,000 of that as your income on your tax return. They will have a look at your tax returns and assess what income you have.

Paul Green: So often what you can get on critical illness insurance is completely different to what you are actually putting in your bank account. And this is where you need to do some extra planning. So if you can only get X amount on critical illness, you're going to need to go and get either some more buy-to-let properties or just something else to give you an income. Maybe buy another business that you will own but not operate, to give you an income.

Paul Green: And these are the kinds of things that a really good financial planner will just help you through, because they can't sell you products for all of these things. But you need someone who takes an overall view of your life and what might happen in those three scenarios. So I'm in the process of doing that now, maybe, certainly this time of year mid-January, this is a good time to look at this and say, "Maybe we should just get this done."

Paul Green: And you and your other half should go and talk to some people and plan out what would happen in each of those three scenarios. A long and healthy life, being dead or being alive and not being able to work. And a bit of discomfort now and a bit of extra pain now and getting some stuff sorted out now, does mean that whatever happens with your life, at least you can kind of go to sleep at night knowing that you've got it sorted out. And that can give you great peace of mind.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: Most of the MSPs I work with do their own sales and you can have companies doing well over £1,000,000 where the owner is still the primary new client acquisition person within the business. They might not be doing the account management anymore. They are the one out seeing clients. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that because it's not like most MSPs are sitting down doing 10 sales calls a week. It tends to be one or two sales calls a week because obviously one client can actually bring on quite a fair, significant chunk of monthly recurring revenue.

Paul Green: Now there's a question that I developed a number of years ago. In fact, I developed this when I was running a sales team of two field sales supported by three telesales. And we wanted to get some instant information to help us understand exactly where the prospect's mindset is. And this is something that you can use when you're doing sales calls.

Paul Green: It's a question that you can ask of any prospect which will immediately tell you whether or not they are a prospect in dire need of help, someone who is warming up to the idea of moving away from their incumbent, or someone that's just a tyre kicker. They're just sort of fishing around for quotes. In fact, you might want to use this question at the qualifying stage. I'm sure you jump on the phone with your prospects before you physically go out and see them. This would be a great time to ask the question. This is the question.

Paul Green: On a scale of one to 10, where one is awful and 10 is amazing, how would you rank your current IT support company? Let me say it again. On a scale of one to 10, where one is awful, 10 is amazing, how would you rank your current IT support company?

Paul Green: Now the point of this is to get them to commit to telling us about their existing incumbent supplier. If they respond with a score of eight, nine or 10, there is no opportunity for you right now. So you may choose to meet them because there may be a future opportunity, but the chances are I'd park that one for a year or a couple of years because eight to 10 he's happy.

Paul Green: That's actually, it's the kind of score you would want your clients to give you. Eight to 10 means the level of dissatisfaction just isn't there yet. And we all know that people switching from one MSP to another is a very slow process because better the devil you know. Inertia loyalty keeps them with someone before they're ready to move.

Paul Green: Now, if they answer five, six or seven, then an opportunity is coming. It might not be now, or it might just be on the edge of now, but it's certainly coming at some point. Because actually five, six or seven is a level of dissatisfaction.

Paul Green: In fact, if you asked your own clients this and they replied, five, six or seven, then there's something wrong. Emotionally, there's some reason they're starting to disconnect. They're unhappy. Let's be honest, it's probably the small factors isn't it? Because often the clients become dissatisfied because of a series of small emotional factors rather than anything you've specifically done or not done.

Paul Green: Now if they answer one, two, three or four, there's a huge opportunity now. Because one to four means they're hugely dissatisfied with their incumbent MSP and you want to get in in front of them as soon as you can. Now, once you've asked this question that one of on a scale of one to 10, there's a followup question that you must ask and it's this. "Can I ask specifically why you gave them that score?" And then you close your mouth and you go quiet and you let them do the talking. Because they will tell you exactly what it is that their MSP has done to upset them.

Paul Green: In fact, they'll blurt something out and if you keep quiet, it then encourages them to say something else and they'll tell you. And it might be something like, "Oh, I don't know. We just found we can never get them on the phone. And you know, it's such a pain when we do get hold of them, everything's just seems to take so long and blah blah blah blah blah." And they will blurt out to you the reasons that they are dissatisfied with their current MSP.

Paul Green: And take careful notes on those. Because when you go to meet with them in a couple of days time, you can use that information to poke the pain a little bit. It's the pain they have of their current incumbent MSP. There's some pain there and you can poke that and you wouldn't be as crass as to jump in and say, "Hey, on the phone you told me X, Y, Z."

Paul Green: But you could say, "So one of the things that some people are unhappy with with their IT support company, is the time it takes to answer calls. How much of an issue is that for you right now?" I mean even that sounds like a bit of a crass question, but I'm sure on the day you'd come up with a great way of moving them around to their level of dissatisfaction before of course you ask them more open questions.

Paul Green: So if you're not currently asking this question as a qualifier, I would start doing this immediately. Not only will it save you some time not going out to see time-wasters, but I think it will make it dramatically more likely that someone will dump their incumbent MSP and move over to you instead.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green: This week it's one for my listeners in the UK and it's about getting an absolutely cracking video on the homepage of your website. So I've said in previous podcasts, you need two types of video. You need regular disposable video that can go on your blog, on your social media, all of that kind of stuff. And that you can do yourself.

Paul Green: You can either get it animated or just get on your mobile phone. It doesn't have to be a Hollywood production. But there's a video that you should have on your homepage which should be as good as you could make it. And that's a video, a 60 second summary of your business. And this video works best when it's your clients talking about you.

Paul Green: If you think about it from the prospect's point of view, someone who comes to your website, who sees a video of your existing clients saying how great you are, that's amazing social proof. And in fact they're going to listen more to your clients than they will actually listen to you.

Paul Green: So we have a service, it's a joint venture between myself and a very good friend of mine called Darren Wingham. He does all the videos and I find people that can buy videos from him and it's called mspvideos.co.uk. Now Darren will come out, he will arrange everything. He'll talk to your clients if you want him to. And he will take responsibility for making sure you get this amazing 60 second video that goes at the top of your website. It becomes one of your primary marketing tools, a 60 second engaging video featuring maybe you, but certainly some of your clients.

Paul Green: And while he's there he can also do some headshots for you so you've got decent photos. He can also do two or three other videos for you. It depends what you want to do. And I'd have a chat with Darren. So you can go and check out all of his portfolio and see Darren's availability to give him a call and book him with his live calendar. And all of that is available at mspvideos.co.uk.

Voiceover: The big interview.

Matt Solomon: My name is Matt Solomon. I'm the vice president of Business Development. What ID Agent does is we monitor the dark web for compromised credentials associated with organisations. So what's happening is employees are using their work emails on third party websites, so think of LinkedIn and Dropbox. Those websites get breached and expose potentially work credentials, network passwords, things like that, if they're being repeated.

Paul Green: How many MSPs are not yet offering any kind of dark web monitoring?

Matt Solomon: I mean, I'd say that's a high majority still haven't adopted to this. I mean, ID Agent was the first dark web monitoring company in the channel. So we brought it to the channel in May of 2017. So this was a completely new concept. No one was talking about it back then. In those 30 months, I mean we brought on 2,400 partners.

Matt Solomon: I mean that is an incredible number and any vendor would be happy to grow that quickly. But in the scope of the MSP space worldwide, that's a really low number actually. So we think there's this massive opportunity for MSPs to still have this as a differentiating product.

Paul Green: And why do you think MSPs haven't embraced dark web monitoring? Is it because they don't necessarily get it? Or is it because they don't think their clients want it?

Matt Solomon: Yes. So sometimes I think they're not sure their clients want it. So honestly, the number one objection we get, "I want to see if my clients will buy it first." That's something we really strongly fight against. Our message is you shouldn't be asking your clients if they want dark web monitor because the answer's going to be no probably because no one wants dark web monitoring.

Matt Solomon: But whether they need it is a whole other question. Stop asking if they want this and start telling them why they need it. MSPs clients often think that they're already doing these things and doing it at no additional cost. Right. And so it's definitely the onus is on the MSP to come in and say, look, you've trusted us with your business. And I'm telling you this wasn't a thing that we were worried about two years ago, but now it's absolutely a risk to your organisation.

Paul Green: So one of the things I always say about business owners and managers is that they don't know what they don't know. Which is a version of exactly what you've just said there. And what first put ID Agents on my radar, was when one of my clients was talking about using it as a prospecting tool. The idea of being able to sit down in front of a business owner and show them that they have been breached in some way is quite a powerful one. So how exactly does that work?

Matt Solomon: Yeah, so with the prospecting tool, you're putting the domain of really any organisation and it pulls up the 100 most recent emails and passwords on the dark web. Now an important note is that we are masking the password after four characters for privacy reasons. But what it enables an MSP to do, and you alluded to this, it's proof that something's actually occurred already. Versus having to speak in these terms of, well this is likely to occur and this could definitely happen at some point.

Matt Solomon: This is something that's actually happened already and this is why we need to talk about two FA, password management, security training awareness. It's just unbelievable how this data allows you to sell other products. But just getting back to the court, it gets you meetings you would never have access to.

Matt Solomon: I got my foot in the door to 50 plus Fortune 500 companies. I had the CIO of Starbucks, Walmart, Panera Bread, Best Buy, SC Johnson, on phone calls with me. I didn't have a single contact in any of these organisations. I just reached out to who I thought would be appropriate and it was a simple message. I just said, this is what we do. We ran an initial scan. You have X number of credentials on the dark web. Can we jump on a call and talk about the data and I'll provide you a lot more context?

Paul Green: So your best performing MSPs now, specifically how do they use this as a prospecting tool? So do they, for example, do as you said there. Just contact people out of the blue and say, "Hey, we found some information about you on the dark web." Do they have to explain what the dark web is? Do they take reports to meetings? What are they doing? Specifically, what are they doing that makes the most difference?

Matt Solomon: I mean there's definitely ones that are doing the more cold prospecting, like I just said, where they're sending out maybe email campaigns revolve around the number of credentials. And regardless of how you do this, you should never share the data unless you're doing an in person meeting or a screen share. Because I'm telling you if you send this data without context, I mean every objection you can think of, it's going to come up and you're not there to answer those questions.

Matt Solomon: So yeah, cold prospecting. Events have been a massive success. So you think of, in the States we call them lunch and learns. So whether you're inviting your current clients or prospects into a seminar about security, I mean, believe it or not, sponsoring a golf hole at a golf outing, a charity event. That's been massive successes for MSPs.

Matt Solomon: And the idea is one, you're either running a live data search at the event. Or two, you're offering free complimentary dark web scan if they drop your business card. And generally 80% of domains that are being run have a credential exposure. So you're almost guaranteeing yourself meetings by getting people to engage with you at events. Because if you see your number of credentials, I mean how do you not want to see the actual data?

Paul Green: That has a real, I've got to see that, feel to it. Hasn't it? That's very, very clever. Matt, thank you very much for being on the show. How do we best get in touch with you?

Matt Solomon: You can just go to our website, idagent.com and there's a partner with us. And you can just submit for a demo. And that's pretty simple.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast. Ask for anything.

Ben Schneider: Hi, my name is Ben Schneider. I run ITGUYS. I'm interested in how to run a LinkedIn campaign. Can you help me?

Paul Green: Thanks Ben. So I assume you mean by a campaign, an advertising campaign on LinkedIn. And certainly the LinkedIn advertising platform, it's not easy to use but you can go through and you have to pick your objectives. So yours is probably lead generation or website visits. You can build your target audience.

Paul Green: All of these kind of guides are obviously there in LinkedIn support articles. And then you can pick your ad format. And you can do imaging adverts, video adverts, message adverts, dynamic adverts. There's all sorts of different things you can do. We have done loads and loads of LinkedIn advertising. And I'll be honest, we've found LinkedIn very hard to get an ROI for the advertising.

Paul Green: Now we weren't spending huge amounts of money, maybe £10, £20 a day. And sometimes it was quite hard to actually spend that money because people just don't seem to engage with the adverts on LinkedIn in the way that they engage with adverts on say Facebook.

Paul Green: Now we're targeting MSP, so it's B2B adverts, the same kind of adverts that you'll be using because you want to reach a B2B people as well. My gut feel now, and it's only something I'm starting to develop this opinion, is that on LinkedIn you're better off putting your resources, whether that's cash or time, into much better content. And using automated tools like Dux-Soup, which we've talked about on this podcast before, focusing on the three Cs really. The three Cs being connect, content and call. So connecting with as many people as you can every day and putting out really good content every day.

Paul Green: And again, we've noticed that raw, real content just works better than that pre-packaged content. And I have a service, the MSP marketing edge, which sells pre-packaged content because that's better than nothing. But nothing beats you talking to your mobile phone or typing something real or checking in some way, that kind of thing. That kind of content seems to get more engagement. And the more engagement you get, the more likely you are to turn some of these people into prospects.

Paul Green: So connect, content and then call. And I think what is working best right now on LinkedIn for MSPs is picking up the phone and calling your network. And yes, it's uncomfortable. And yes, it's just slightly above cold calling. And yes, no one wants to do it. But now I have a number of my clients now in my MSP mastermind groups that do this. They ring people from their network on LinkedIn and it only takes 10, 12 dials and you can get hold of a decision maker and you can have a chat. And the fact that you connected on LinkedIn gives you something to start with.

Paul Green: There are many other ways of doing it. You can take your LinkedIn connection and send them something in the post before following them up. That works quite well and actually it gives you a reason to call. So there's lots of different things that you can do. But I think increasingly LinkedIn advertising just doesn't seem to give you the ROI, the return on investment.

Paul Green: So actually I would take that money, put that money into coming up with better content and doing more to get more activity on LinkedIn. And then try and get that activity offline, get them on the phone and have a chat with them. Because that's the only way that you'll ever book phone calls and sales meetings.

Voiceover: How to contribute to the show.

Paul Green: I'm now accepting questions to go on future additions of this podcast. You can either just send me through a text question or you can just send me through a little audio clip of yourself. You can just record yourself on your phone. Send me an MP3. You send anything through to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

Jonathan Jay: As soon as you realise that the amount of money that you have in your bank account is not going to influence your ability to make an acquisition and you realise that yes, you can grow via acquisition.

Paul Green: That's my very good friend, Jonathan Jay. He's going to be here next week talking about how to grow your business faster by acquiring one of your competitors. We're also going to be looking at whether CyberFirst is the future for your marketing and maybe even the whole way you run your business. And we'll be asking why, If you haven't already done it, have you not outsourced your NOC?

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

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In this week's episode * Welcome back to Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast and the first episode for a brand new year. As we take stock from 2019 and look ahead to an exciting 2020, Paul explains how writing your own business book could make the next twelve months for your MSP even more successful * Spoiler alert - there may just be a lightbulb moment waiting for you in this week's episode. Paul introduces you to the work of expert marketer Jay Abraham and his three simple steps to grow a business * Nigel Moore is today's guest. The successful ex-MSP owner, and founder of The Tech Tribe, discusses how he'd run an MSP differently with the benefit of hindsight * There’s a brilliant question from podcast subscriber Krunal about how and when to do the marketing for your MSP

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Find out more about marketer and business consultant Jay Abraham and his books * You can order your free copy of the book Updating Servers Doesn't Grow Your Business right here * The likes of fivver.com and peopleperhour.com are great places to look for writers to help with your book * An alternative to creating your own book is to be given one with your name already on it via the MSP Marketing Edge package * This week's guest is MSP expert Nigel Moore from The Tech Tribe * The question about the Profit Matrix came from Krunal Patel from Onega * Our guest on the next show on 14th January to talk about 'dark web monitoring' is Matt Solomon from ID Agent * Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Here's a link to Paul's Facebook group for MSP Marketing

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green: Hello and welcome back to the show. Here's what's coming up today.

Nigel Moore: Owned an MSP. I sold an MSP and now I teach and coach MSPs how to avoid the bajillion mistakes that I made when I had my MSP.

Paul Green: We are also going to be talking about how this year you're going to need your own book to help your MSP to stand out and be completely different to all of your competitors. I'm going to introduce you to a concept called the profit matrix. It's the one tool that is going to grow your net profit this year more than anything else.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green: So it seems a bit weird to be saying it this far into January but Happy New Year is our first podcast of 2020 and I hope you had a really good break with your family. I imagine now you're back to work and your probably, you're past that raring to go stage that we have past Christmas, but you're a few days in and you're quite focused on clearing up what's happened over the break and just getting on with having a great 2020.

Paul Green: I want to talk to you today about the three growth levers for your business. Now this is a classic piece of work which originally came from a famous marketer called Jay Abraham and he's worth Googling. He's not just a marketer actually. He's an incredibly good business consultant who's focused on helping people like ourselves. Jay's American and I most of spent five, maybe 10,000 pounds on his stuff over the years.

Paul Green: In fact, four years ago I bought his ultimate hard drive, which was literally a dump of everything on his hard drive, all his audio recordings, all of his books and everything, and every now and again I'll just have a dip in and have a look and see what's in there. Now, one of the things that I learned early on from Jay Abraham is that there are only three ways to grow your business. Think of these as your three growth levers.

Paul Green: So the first one is to get more new clients and most business owners, we think that getting new clients, that's the way to grow the business, but actually we've got to focus on the other two levers as well. The second lever is to get your clients to choose to buy from you more often, and the third lever is to get your clients to choose to spend more every single time they buy.

Paul Green: Now, even for an MSP where you've got a very high level of monthly recurring revenue, you still need to be focusing on those three things. Get more new clients, get them to choose to buy from you more often and get them to choose to spend more every single time they buy. And the most successful business owners who are focused on net profit growth and growing the whole overall business they're focused on those three things later on in today's podcast, we're going to talk about the profit matrix, which is a great way of growing your monthly recurring revenue and selling more to your existing clients.

Paul Green: And you need to have an eye on all of these things at once because the reality is that getting new clients while it's necessary because every MSP needs to add those new clients. It's the most expensive type of marketing you'll do. If you look at every single penny that you spend on marketing throughout a year, and you could track this, this year and then divide it by the number of new clients you're getting, you'll see that your acquisition costs, your cost of actually bringing a new client into the business is incredibly high. Because of course it's every single penny or pound or dollar or cent that you spend on marketing and your time and your staff's time, and you add all of that together and it will come to thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds or dollars. And you'll probably only have a small number of new clients coming into the business because of course MSPs don't win lots of new clients all the time, but they do keep the clients that they get for a very long time.

Paul Green: So the challenge to you then this year is not just a focus on let's get more new clients, but let's get more new clients. Let's get our existing clients to buy more from us and let's get them to spend more. Let's see if we can increase the average revenue per user. In fact, that might be one of the KPIs that you want to track and we'll be talking about KPIs in a future podcast, KPIs being key performance indicators, your revenue per user. You should be growing that by a pound per month, per user, per month or whatever is the relevant thing to you, but you certainly got to do in your strategic planning for this year, making sure that you're covering off all three of those growth levers.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: Talking, of getting brand new clients then, I believe one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal is to be the author of your own book and this is a book that's aimed at the decision makers that you want to reach. So the business owners and managers in your local area or your particular vertical.

Paul Green: Now I've written, it's either six or seven books and I've never sold a single one, but there are more than 20,000 of them in circulation. And that's because I use my books and I give away my books to achieve two things. I'm trying to achieve positioning and I'm trying to achieve building up audiences and you should be doing exactly the same thing. By the way, if you don't have a copy of my book, it's called Updating Service Doesn't Grow Your Business and just have a look in the show notes on my website and there's a link there for you to get a free copy of the book. If you're in the UK, we will physically post you a paperback, anywhere else in the world we'll send you the PDF.

Paul Green: So your book has two jobs as it were. Two things that it needs to achieve for you. The very first one is positioning because it is a crowded marketplace. There are lots of MSPs, there's loads of choice for the business owners and managers. And by writing your own book or putting your name as an author on the front page of a book on the front cover, it positions you in a way that no other marketing can. Well, I say no other marketing can. It's the same as going to speak at events. Being an author, being on the media, speaking at events these are all things that most people don't do and yet actually they're very easy things to do. In fact, once you're an author, it's a lot easier to get the media interested in you and it's a lot easier to get speaking gigs at events because people perceive that authors are experts.

Paul Green: I was a journalist and a radio presenter for 13 years and many of my friends still work in the media and even now they see that someone who has a book published is an expert. When they're booking people for media interviews, they're much more likely to trust an expert and experts write books, so you need to write a book.

Paul Green: Now, the second reason you need a book is not just for positioning, but it's also to build audiences. One of my favourite marketing strategies is to build multiple audiences of people who choose to opt in to your marketing. LinkedIn is a very clear audience and all MSPs should be all over LinkedIn right now. But another audience that you should build is your list of email addresses, your list of people who've chosen to get promotional emails from you or let's call them educational emails. Now, no one likes just signing up for a newsletter, so what we can do is we can offer them something in return for them joining the list, and this is where the book comes in.

Paul Green: In fact, the book can be considered something called an ethical bribe. You give them a copy of the book and in return you get their contact details and you get to market to them. And this is all above board and it's a very simple transaction. When I say you can get a copy of my book, I ask that you join my marketing. That's all I do. And of course you can unsubscribe at any time. Although my experience, 98 99% of people who join a marketing list then don't unsubscribe. Particularly if the first transaction they've had with you is you give them a free book.

Paul Green: Books aren't difficult to write. They aren't difficult to get printed and published. In fact, the writing is almost the easy bit. You've just got to get stuff out of your head and either get it onto paper yourself or just brief a journalist to do it for you. There are loads of writers, I mean literally thousands of writers on fiverr.com and on peopleperhour.com and they can do it for you. They can interview you about the stuff that's in your head and then they can write the actual words for you.

Paul Green: And even someone like myself who, you know, I'm a professional writer these days, I dictate more content than I actually write because it's just faster and it's easier and you can always fix it all in the edit later.

Paul Green: In fact, the real challenge with the writing of the book is making sure that it's relevant to the audience because you'll probably a tech, you've probably got a very tech brain and there's a whole load of detail out there that you know is important, but the people you want to reach don't necessarily share your passion for the high level of tech that you can operate at.

Paul Green: In fact, we already know that business owners or managers don't know what they don't know about technology and they kind of glaze over when you start talking at deeper levels about technology. So that's the challenge when you're writing your book is to make it so interesting that the business owners and managers that you want to reach read it and absolutely consume it and love it. Because we are trying to turn this book into a toilet read. We want this to be the book that they pick up when they're on the toilet and they flip through and they read it because they're consuming your content in their own personal time. And that is a very, very beautiful thing to so the writing is easy, the printing and the publishing and all of that is very, very easy.

Paul Green: You know these days publishing your own book is a very mature industry. It's a very routine thing to do. You don't need to go and get a book publisher. You don't need to get distribution to bookshops. You don't even need to have it on Amazon really. I mean if you put an ISBN one of the barcodes on the back of the international standard barcode number, it will just be an Amazon anyway. It's just Amazon can't sell any cause they don't have any stock of it, but you don't want any of that. It's just easy enough to just get a book published to get it printed and then you've got a book. And once you've got that book, you should use it everywhere. You should be carrying it with you at all times. You should take it on holiday in case you bump into prospects. You should have it on your website. You should have it on your LinkedIn should have it on your Facebook.

Paul Green: You should literally be offering copies of that book to everyone you meet at every meeting because it is the most perfect positioning tool for you. Now, if you're not quite sure how to get a book like that done or you'd like to shortcut it, there is actually something that I can do to help you-

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green: Because I wrote a book for my clients and they can put their names on the front and their business name and use it in their local market as if they are the author of that book. The book is called Email Hijack and its attempts to teach business owners and managers about email security in a way that's interesting to them. It tells the fictitious story of David, he's a business owner and while he's on vacation, while he's on holiday, he's email has an email forwarder set up and his staff accidentally pay a 12,000 or $12 pound invoice. Instead of sending it to the supplier, they send it off to a hacker. And of course that has an overall 24,000 pound or $24,000 impact on the business. And that's pretty much the story. And then he talks about all the different email scams that can happen and how you can prevent these with a blended security solution.

Paul Green: Now what's interesting about Email Hijack is it might be something that you can help as well, having just talked about how important books are. This is a book that's ready for you to go. It's all part of my MSP Marketing Edge service. So I sell a whole series of content tools to just one MSP per area. And then we refresh those content tools every month. So the book is an evergreen is there for you to use throughout the whole of this year, but every month we give you a press release video, an educational guide, educational emails, educational social media, and a whole bunch of other stuff that you can use and only you can use in your local area.

Paul Green: So this is something that you think would be useful? Email Hijack is actually a freebie that we give away for people when they start their first trial. The first month is a very low cost trial for you. Just go and have a look, see if this is something. Well, see if A, if your area is still available because there are a number of areas that are no longer available and we won't sell it to more than one MSP in an area. But also just go and have a look at the details and see if this is something that you think would benefit your MSP. Just go to MSPmarketingedge.com

Voiceover: The big interview.

Nigel Moore: I owned an MSP, I sold an MSP and now I teach and coach MSPs how to avoid the bajillion mistakes that I made when I had my MSP.

Paul Green: This is Nigel Moore. He's the founder of the Tech Tribe, a very highly recommended community for MSPs around the world. There are several hundred MSPs active in that community every day. I'm a member of it as well. It's an absolutely amazing place to be. Now, Nigel sold his MSP right about four years ago and I started by asking him that if he acquired another MSP tomorrow, what would he do to change that MSP in the first 90 days?

Nigel Moore: Well, that is a great question and you know in the first 90 days there's not a lot I would honestly do. Most of the time I would be observing how, be having a quick look at how things are working, where they're, where there's problems, where there's opportunities and just getting the lay of the land. Because the last thing you want to do in the first 90 days is changed too much because you risk alienating any potential staff, your risk alienating potential clients. And so first 90 days I'd be looking at the lay of the land, but things I would be looking at would be what sort of database or marketing funnel have they got? We've got something in place that we can start prospecting to or nurturing or looking at for untapped potential there.

Nigel Moore: I would also be behind the scenes starting to prep up a little bit of a client services matrix, so an Excel spreadsheet where along the left hand side we list out all of the clients that are in the business at the moment and along the top we list out all of the services that the MSP can offer and future services that I can help bring into the MSP that they aren't currently offering. And then we just fill in all the gaps green if their that client has got that particular service in that column and orange if they don't and it's an opportunity and red if it is not an opportunity whatsoever for some reason perhaps that particular client just won't be able to go down that particular service route or whatnot and I get that at least done and ready to go so that we've got a bit of an idea of where we can start to spot opportunities.

Nigel Moore: Obviously you've mentioned it was an owner led MSP and that will typically mean that that owner is probably on the way out in the short term, short to medium term. They're probably going to be going within six to 12 months depending on the owner and so I would also be spotting and looking for the ways that we can replace their role in the business. And so I want to be changing too much process wise or procedure wise, but I would be figuring out how I can get people in roles that can replace the vast majority of their work and the tech stuff is going to be quite easy. Typically, even though most owners believe that they are the best person at doing the tech stuff, the reality is that they're not and that's a limiting belief and we've all had that belief in me included.

Nigel Moore: So I'd be getting the tech stuff off their plate or starting the process for getting the tech stuff off their plate by other hiring or augmenting with an outsource team or whatnot. But, the more important point would be figuring out the process for shifting the relationships from all those clients because that owner-led manager is going to have the primary relationship with probably 100% of the clients and that needs to be shifted. So I'd be looking at how to shift that.

Nigel Moore: Now, if I was to buy an MSP in my position, I would not be looking to be a manager in it. I would be looking to hire people inside the business and running it from an investment perspective. And so I'd be looking at who can fill those particular roles, the tech stuff and the account management stuff because all the backend stuff I can pull in a team quite easily or they've, they've more than likely got a team to do the admin, the accounting, the procurement, all of that kind of stuff.

Nigel Moore: But I'd be looking at those things so that would be the first thing that I'd been doing. As I said, I'd, I'd be trying to figure out in the first 90 days what assets we've got around marketing and growth and sales and starting to just get my head around where we could leverage them, but for the first 90 days is just observing how it's working and just getting some plans in place for starting that shift of that, that owner transition out and spotting what opportunities current clients have got to start cross-selling different services and whatnot to start taking advantage of it.

Paul Green: That's really interesting answer because what I was trying to get at with that, because I know you wouldn't buy another MSP or I'm guessing you wouldn't. Obviously if you did walk into someone else's business tomorrow and you had complete control of it because you haven't put 10 years in because you haven't sat in the office for 80 hours a week because you didn't hire all this stuff because you're not emotionally attached to all the clients, you can look in that business completely differently than someone else can.

Paul Green: Do you think most business owners struggle to do that within their own business?

Nigel Moore: 100%, me included in that when I had my business for many years and quite often where we're so caught up in the weeds of running the business that we're not taking that 20,000 foot objective view above the business to look at it as a set of systems and a unit in itself.

Nigel Moore: Now with a different perspective like I've got now I can take that view of looking at it as an asset not as a job and a lot of especially owner led MSPs, me being one of them for many years. We want to look at it as a business but we treat it still like a high paid job or sometimes a low paid job and we don't look at it as an actual functioning business unit with systems and processes and people that are in defined roles.

Nigel Moore: We look at it as a extremely talented, smart, high level tech person that can also navigate the business world a little bit and, and we built a business a little bit around that and less around those systems and processes. Which the reality is the value in a business is more around systems and processes and good people than it is around the owner being the smart cookie in the house. And that took me a few years. I learned that lesson.

Paul Green: So I call this being locked in the prison. Locked in a prison of your own design. So you create this, you lock yourself inside and then spend the next 20 years looking for the key to get out.

Nigel Moore: Where the heck did I throw that key?

Paul Green: Obviously you work with lots of MSPs. I worked with lots of MPS. What do you think of the basic things that you need to do to find that key and to to let yourself out? Is it about the systems? Is about people?

Nigel Moore: Great question. I think you've got to go right to your core of why you're doing what you're doing. Are you, wanting to build a lifestyle business? Are you wanting to build a business that's a saleable asset, are you wanting to do it for the ego so you've got 50 staff or you've got to figure out why you're doing what you're doing and then you can start to figure out, okay, am I kind of creating this prison for myself or am I building it the way I want it to be built? And you can start to, at that point it's time you've just got to step back and take objective, look regularly at what you're doing. And quite often to have a proper objective look, you can't do it yourself. You need to help with people around you that have that external perspective.

Nigel Moore: And so that might be a business coach, it might be a mentor, it might be even some friends, some peer friends, you know, some sort of peer group situation where you spending your time in the business, you've got to do that. You're doing the work, you're getting in the hard yards, but you're taking a a regular objective look at what that business is, why it exists, what it's doing, where it's growing, what type of business model you're creating and doing that, as I said with yourself, but also with the help of other people around you that can provide that external perspective and can ask you the right questions so that you can see the kinds of things that you're not seeing yourself because you are down in that prison that you have initially created for yourself.

Paul Green: Nigel. Brilliant. Thank you. How can we find you?

Nigel Moore: The easiest place to find me is in the Tech Tribe, so that's thetechtribe.com and if you come and check that out and you'll be able to find where I hang out and a bunch of cool, smart, funny MSPs around the world also hang out.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. Ask Paul anything.

Krunal Patel: Hi, my name is Krunal Patel from Onega. Could you tell me what the profit matrix is?

Paul Green: Thanks Cornell. Put simply the profit matrix is what buys you more holidays because it's a way of spotting what your clients are not yet buying that they really should be. Now in practical terms, it's very easy to do. It's a spreadsheet where you've got your clients down one side and your services perhaps along the top and you literally put in a little mark where someone who's buying a service, so it's clear, it's empty, where someone isn't buying a service, you can do it on spreadsheets. With my clients, what I've found is that what works best is getting it off a screen and getting it onto a wall, onto a flip chart or some kind of whiteboard or something like that and making it the centrepiece of the office so you can see at a glance who is buying what and who isn't buying what.

Paul Green: Now you've got three potential ways to grow your monthly recurring revenue using the profit matrix. The first way is if you have it in front of your techs and they're on the phone to people, they're more likely to just look up, to glance at the board and see at a glance whether the person who's on the phone is buying a service or he's not buying a service. Now, I know this information is in the PSA, but it's kind of locked away when it's in the PSA. When someone's on the phone and they're typing a ticket, they can just glance up and you can almost see their thought process of this person. If they have the advanced version of XYZ, then they wouldn't have this problem at all.

Paul Green: Now we'd love our techs to jump straight on this and actually, you know, make the recommendation and that's probably not going to happen, but at the very least they could send an email to you or to the account manager to say, hey, just been having a chat, this user about this, and I think this service would fix that problem. It opens the door for someone to have make that phone call. So that's the first way to use the profit matrix.

Paul Green: The second way is when you're doing your strategic reviews, where you go out to see clients every six, nine, 12 months, whatever's appropriate. Maybe you take them out to lunch and you sit down with them and you talk about their business. That's the open questions meeting. Those support review meeting is where you're talking about where they're going in the next two to three years. Just before you go out to that, you study the profit matrix and then you look at it and you say, right, what are they not buying? What are the dots here that aren't in those services? It's really these people shouldn't be buying because they regulated or because they're in a high pressure environment or because they always need a better version.

Paul Green: It allows you to steer the strategic review conversation in a specific direction so you wouldn't come out and out and say, hey, I think you should buy this because that's just a bit crass, but you would, for example, steer them towards a specific set of fears that maybe a specific service takes away for them. So there's a very powerful way for you to position your strategic reviews and move them in a very clear direction.

Paul Green: Again, that information is in the PSA. You could just do it off the PSA, but there's a certain magic that comes from seeing that information there in a very visual form on a wall.

Paul Green: And then the third opportunity to grow using the profit matrix is adding more monthly recurring services. One of my clients thought he had more than enough monthly recurring revenue services until he did the profit matrix on a wall and realised he didn't have enough services. And from there he was able to offer enhanced versions of some services, some different flavours and add some brand new things on. And of course essentially what he's done is he's created more things that some of his clients will go on to buy.

Voiceover: How to contribute to the show.

Paul Green: I'd love to get your question to play out on the show. If you want to record me a quick MP3s, say who you are, said the name of your business and then just give me a quick question and then email that through to me. Hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com and do you know why that's the same email address for any feedback on the show at all? Negative or positive? Just send it through to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

Speaker 5: You've trusted us with your business and I'm telling you this wasn't a thing that we were worried about two years ago, but now it's absolutely a risk to your organisation.

Paul Green: That's Matt Solomon from ID Agents. We're going to be talking next week about using dark web monitoring as a prospecting tool. Always want to talk about three potential scenarios for your personal life, and I've got the very best sales question in the world that every MSP should be asking every single prospect.

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

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In this week's episode * Whilst LinkedIn is seen as the leading business marketing platform, Paul explains how Facebook can still do an amazing job for you, by using their remarketing tools * On the subject of LinkedIn, special guest Fiona Challis (an MSP sales expert) shares some great tips on using LinkedIn to drive lead generation * There’s a brilliant question from podcast subscriber Mike about how and when to do the marketing for your MSP * Plus Paul explains how Christmas could be an extra magical time for your business * The show is taking a holiday too - episode 8 is out on Tuesday 7th January 2020

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * You can find out more about remarketing on Facebook here * Here's a link to Paul's Facebook group for MSP Marketing * Thank you to special guest Fiona Challis who runs the The Next Gen Sales Acceleration Academy * The question about how to find time for marketing came from Mike Annesley from Mikrotek Solutions Ltd * Our guest on the next show on 7th January will be MSP expert Nigel Moore from The Tech Tribe

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK, for MSP's around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: Here's what's coming up in our last show before Christmas.

Fiona: They're sending these big, long and impersonal messages that, they're really just taking what they would have said in a cold call and put that in a LinkedIn message and expecting a result.

Paul Green: I'm also going to tell you how you can utterly dominate online advertising for a very select number of your hottest prospects. We got a great question we're going to answer about, how do you find time to implement marketing stuff in your MSP every single day?

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: So this is the last podcast I'm going to do before Christmas. In fact, we're going to have a two week break, no podcast next week or the week after the next one, episode eight will be out on the 7th of January. What I like at this time of year, is we're just a week or so away from Christmas. What I love is the the opportunity to disconnect from the business a little bit, really get back into family time and, really enjoy some policy time, not just with the people I love, but also in my own head, and to me that's the power of holidays. I talked about this back in episode two and about how important it is for us to have quality holiday time. At this time of year, it's a good reminder that actually, it's good for us to mentally disconnect from the day to day stuff in our business. Because you and me, we're business owners, we started something amazing, it's our baby, we want to throw everything into it and make as much of it as we can and we tend to obsess over it. It tends to be a such a big part of our lives at all times and that's a great thing until it becomes too much, until we lose the balance.

Paul Green: I think Christmas is a great time for everyone who has a break for whatever reason, to just get away and stop thinking about the business for a few days, because it's when you stop thinking about the business that the real magic starts to happen. You and I will have seen this before, for example, you take a week off, you go away on holiday and the first couple of days you're not really yourself, you're kind of coming down from being that person you are when you're at work. On day three or day four, you reconnect with a different kind of view, a different version of you, and that's when you start dreaming, and you start thinking, and you start having these big ideas and these visions. They are always there in the background, but you need that holiday time to reconnect with them.

Paul Green: My wife always used to say that the person I became on day three or day four of the holiday, was the person she fell in love with. And, the person I was actually, most of the time when I was busy with work was a different version of that person. So it's good for our families, it's good for us, but you know what? It's great for our businesses to just have some time off as well and to just disconnect and to focus on other things. Every single time I have a holiday, no matter what we do, where we go, whether it's an activity one or sitting by sunbed warm, I come back and I'm more motivated, I'm more driven, I've got a greater vision, I've got more good ideas and the business is better for it. Do you know what? I see a kind of a of a short-term effect of this when I stop working Fridays, and it's a habit I've got out of and I need to get back into that.

Paul Green: But, for a long time I didn't work Fridays at all, so I would have three day weekends and it was great because I had loads of quality time for my daughter, but also loads of quality time for me. I'd go to the cinema, I'd go and buy clothes, I'd go and have a sit and have a coffee and inevitably, as Monday morning rolled around, a great idea would be there or I'd have more drive or my motivation. In fact, I'm convinced I did more in those four days a week than I used to do right now, working five days a week. In fact, I've just now come up with my thing, there we go, there's my thing for early next year, I'm going to stop working Fridays again, I'm going to go back to just working four days a week and it's going to be a very power thing for my business.

Paul Green: What are you going to do? How are you going to make sure you have a break over Christmas? What are you going to do differently in the next year? I would love to know, why don't you drop me an email and let me know, hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: So every now and again someone asks me, should I be using Facebook for marketing to business owners and to business managers? While Facebook is not really primarily a B2B marketing platform, it still has an incredible amount of power for you, to reach the prospects that you really want to speak to. There's a number of different reasons for that, primarily, it's because the people you want to reach are likely to be on Facebook. So yeah sure, LinkedIn is a better platform, but most people have a Facebook account and at the very least, have it on their phone, for that reason, you can reach business decision makers in their downtime. Your chances of reaching them on Facebook on a Tuesday morning, are pretty low, but on a Sunday afternoon when they're at a family barbecue or something and they're a bit bored and they pull out their Facebook, and they just sort of have a flick through, that's a great time to put an advert in front of them.

Paul Green: The biggest opportunity for you right now, is to use something called, a custom audience in Facebook to do something called remarketing. Let me explain what those things are. So a customer audience is where you upload data to Facebook. Now that data can be just a list of email addresses, it can be a list of mobile or cell numbers. What you do is you upload that data to Facebook, and you're saying to Facebook, "If any of the people here..." So if anyone who has these email addresses, all these phone numbers, "Are Facebook users, please show them my advert." So you could take just a couple of hundred people, upload them to Facebook as a custom audience, it might match 180 of those. So the other 20 it just ignores, the a 180 that is matched, it's now going to show your advert just to those 180 people. Can you see the power of that? So it allows you to tell Facebook specifically, please market to these people.

Paul Green: Now you may have experienced this if you're on my email list, or you've been to my website in the last couple of months that I have been doing over the last couple of weeks, quite a lot of remarketing, quite a lot of advertising to people who have visited my website, and to people who get my emails and who I've got their contact details. I've uploaded that up to that customer audience, up to Facebook, and I've been doing adverts for the podcast on their. If you haven't seen any for a while, don't worry because obviously, different experiments, different adverts at different times.

Paul Green: If you think about someone who has been onto your website, perhaps had a look at one of your service pages or your about us page, you have an opportunity to set up an ad campaign using a custom audience, to market to those people. What makes remarketing so, so powerful, is you know you're marketing to someone who's already checked you out, so these aren't cold prospects, these aren't people who've never heard of you, these are people who've either been on your website or maybe even have inquired to you in the past, and you are now putting your message in front of them via Facebook. Actually, using the Facebook ad platform, you can also do it via Instagram, which might be appropriate for them if they're in a retail or hospitality business, so they using Instagram. You can also do it on the Facebook content platform.

Paul Green: So, they might go on a new site and there may be adverts on there powered by Facebook, but they're repairing on a news website, so it all comes from the same Facebook platform. So how would you use that in real life, what's a practical example? Well, let me talk you through one. Let's say for example, you're doing a cybersecurity event. I do love events, I'm going to talk about events in a future podcast.

Paul Green: So let's say you're putting on an event, and let's say a lunch, and you're trying to get people to book and come along so you can scare the hell out of them, the things they didn't know about cybersecurity. Let's say you've got a page on your website and you've also emailed it out to 500 people in your prospect list. So you email it out to 500 people in your prospect list, it's there on your website, you've got some adverts driving traffic towards it, you could now go into Facebook and you could upload, first of all those 500 people that you have emailed out that's your first custom audience. You can then set up a second custom audience, and that second custom audience would be anyone that's visited that specific page on your website, in the last, I think you can do up to about, it's either 90 or 180 days, I can't remember. But essentially, the only people who are going to see that advert in Facebook and on Facebook's partner sites, are people who at some level are aware of your cybersecurity lunch and then you just got to pick the right message. The message might be, "Hey, we're down to four places left for this, book now." You might do a video, you might do something else, but the beauty of that is that's going to cost you a couple of pounds or a couple of dollars a day.

Paul Green: It's not going to cost you a huge amount of money because you're marketing to a very, very small number of people, and this is what makes remarketing so powerful. You can pay very, very small amounts of money to get a specific message in front of a group of very specific people who you know have already seen the message. In fact, you should be doing remarketing campaigns all the time. Really, you should have a remarketing campaign that refreshes every single week aimed at people who visited your website in the last couple of weeks or so. Can you see the power of doing something like that? Now Facebook is, it's an easier advertising platform than Google, and it's one of those things that once you've done a couple of campaigns it's fairly easy to do it. Go and start a Facebook ad account if you don't already have one, lodge your credit card number and just have a go. Launch an advert tonight, it doesn't have to be a remarketing campaign, could just be any adverts tonight, just to have a go. Because, Facebook is one of those that, a tweak here, a little tweak there, and you can make quite a lot of difference to the traffic you get to your website from the advert, and of course the response that you get. But, it all starts with just having a go, which you could do tonight while you were just watching something on TV.

Voiceover: Pulls blatant plug.

Paul Green: Talking of Facebook, that's this week's blatant plug, because I've got this amazing resource which is completely free for you, and it's available to you on Facebook, it's called the MSP Marketing Facebook Group, and of course I'll put a link in the show notes. But, it's a group of, well we're more than 500 members now, all MSP's, business owners, managers from around the world, and it's a forum where I sit every single day. I'm there, pretty much six, sometimes seven days a week answering questions, suggesting things, passing on useful stuff, all to do with marketing your MSP, growing your net profits and of course, getting more monthly recurring revenue. So come on if you're not already a member, do come and join me in that forum, it's the MSP Marketing Facebook Group. You just go in there, you have to apply to join. I'll just quickly chat that you are indeed an MSP, and I will add you into that group. Completely free, but a very useful resource for you.

Voiceover: The big interview.

Fiona: So my name's Fiona Challis and I am a channel enablement expert, which is basically a very nice way of saying, I help MSP's on resellers to sell more stuff.

Paul Green: And, don't they need the help, because one of the most-

Fiona: Yeah.

Paul Green: ... common complaints I hear from from MSP's, from IT support companies is, they would love to sell more, but sales is difficult. Is that a common thing that you come across?

Fiona: Yeah, it's the number one to be honest. I mean, if you look at even all of the research from the MSP market base, sales and marketing is still their number one challenge that they have.

Paul Green: Why do you think that is, Fiona?

Fiona: It's a mixture of things. It's because a lot of the current MSPs, they started the business off because they were a technical person, and then they set up a business. By their nature, they're more techie than they are salesy, and the very word, sales, can actually scare them. So they're trying to learn how to sell more, but their passion is technical, so that's a lot of the problem. But, they also have this fear of not needing to sell. For years they've been able to rely on getting business from recommendation, or they focus on a small geographical area, and that's kind of how they got the majority of their business. But, that was before the whole MSP marketplace got swamped, before, you had every reseller in the country trying to become an MSP. So, now they need to sell if they want to stay above board there, they have to learn how to sell, and they have to win and retain new business.

Paul Green: Okay, so here's an interesting question. Let's say tomorrow for some bizarre reason you bought an MSP, and you walked in and they've got a great technical director and great help desk and all of delivery sorted out. You're a selling experts, so what would you do to instantly double the sales within that business?

Fiona: Oh, great question. So the first thing I would do, is nail a niche. So I would pick a vertical to specialise in, and kind of become that go-to expert in that niche. So say for example, it could be SMBs, which a lot of the MSPs focus on, or today, the more you narrow in on that niche, the more successful you will be. So it could be for example, accountants or it could be healthcare practices, but I'll certainly pick a niche or a vertical that's more prone to cybersecurity attacks. Then, I would niche in on security. So instead of just being a total managed service provider, I would niche in on managed service security provider where you become a security specialist for that niche. Because for me, that's where the puck is going as such, that's where the market's going, that's where the margin's going. If you can really set yourself up as a go-to security expert in a given niche, for me, that's quickest way to double your business.

Paul Green: In terms of structure, would you hire a marketing agency to generate leads, or would you do it in-house? Would you have salespeople, would you have telesales people? How would you set that up?

Fiona: So no, I would have a marketing team definitely. If you had the resources and the finances to do that, but if you didn't, I wouldn't let that stop you from marketing because today your salespeople are actually the best marketeers that you can get. But, it is a new skill that they need to learn, so you need to show them how to write good content, how to write good copy, how to utilise social selling and how to use things like LinkedIn for B2B prospecting, but how to use it the right way. I think the challenge that we see in our marketplace today, is cold calling used to be effective, but it's not as effective today to get through to prospects. Using things like LinkedIn are much, much more effective. But, a lot of existing MSP's or existing channel sales people, what they've done is they've just kind of swapped over the cold calling into LinkedIn, and they're sending these big long and impersonal messages. They're really just taking what they would have said in a cold call and they're putting it in a LinkedIn message and expecting a result, and that's not how you prospect today.

Paul Green: So how would you prospect with LinkedIn?

Fiona: Well, you have to build an online audience first, you have to get them... The same as you've done with yours, know you, like you, trust you. You don't pounce on them on the very first time they engage with you, instead, you have to kind of build up that authority and set yourself up as a leading expert in your niche or in your vertical. Then, when you know the time is right, then invite them to come offline, whether it be to download a guide, or whether it be to join you on our cybersecurity webinar, or come to an event. But, the key thing for me is today, you have to get those kinds of prospects to come into what I call, the learning zone, so it's where you educate them. It's where you lead with business insights, and really show them how you can have a proper business conversation with them around achieving key business outcomes, rather than you given them a sales pitch because they don't want a sales pitch from you today.

Paul Green: I love the learning zone. I absolutely love it, I'm going to steal that. Thank you-

Fiona: Yeah, it's mine!

Paul Green: That's what I got out of today, Paul Green's Learning Zone, you heard it hear first. But no, all seriousness, you're right, people hate being sold to, but they love to buy, don't they?

Fiona: Yeah.

Paul Green: Especially for you, you become the one that educates them about the problems they didn't even know that they had.

Fiona: Yeah. I mean, to be honest with you, what happens today as the buyer's journey, is more complex and longer than it's ever actually been before. Although the buyers today, they're more educated, they're also more confused than ever before, so what happens is, a lot of them when they go online, they're actually in the panic zone. The mistake that salespeople make, is they try to sell to prospects when they're in the panic zone, and that's completely the wrong way to do it because the only thing that happens in a panic zone, is inaction, which means they're not going to buy. So the trick, is to educate them, lead with insights, get them into the learning zone, and then sell to them because they're in a buying frame of mind, but unless you get them in there, they're not in the frame of mind to buy.

Paul Green: I love it. Thank you. Fiona. Final question, tell us about your 90 day sales challenge.

Fiona: The 90 day sales challenge, is basically a program that we've created as part of the Next Gen Sales Academy. The academy is purely a sales training academy, but it's designed purely for the IT and the MSP industry. So it's not general sales training, it's purely training to help you to evolve your sales approach, your process, and your mindset, and get you ready for modern day selling. So, it's really teaching you about what works in the channel today, what doesn't work. We learn from lessons, we learn from mistakes that everybody else has made, but we give you really good tool kits and ways to sell that will get you better results. The 90 day is basically a quarter, so it's a quarter for most of us. The reason that I do that Paul is, you can't just go on a sales training course for one day, today, and then learn how to completely reinvent your entire sales process, it's something that you have to implement over time.

Fiona: We have nine key modules that we have in the 90 day program. So what most partners do, is they do a module per week with their team, and then we give you three key areas that are really good revenue generators in the channel today. So we focus on cloud, we focus on cybersecurity, and we focus on moving from break/fix and selling time for money, and deciding profitable managed service contracts. So kind of over that 12 week period, we retrain you, and you and we get you really good at selling in three key areas in the channel today.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. Ask Paul anything.

Mike: This is Mike from Microtech Solutions Limited. I think the marketing materials we have here are absolutely fantastic, but I'm struggling to make time to implement them. What process would you suggest I should use to implement the materials that are offered?

Paul Green: That's such an important question to answer Mike, because the MSP's that typically win, are not those that have got the best ideas, it's those that actually get things done. The secret is always in implementation. I believe that to make implementation happen consistently in your business, it has to be something which is a daily thing, and not a weekly thing, or not a monthly thing. Let me put that another way. If you try to grow your business by putting aside a day a week, and lots of people do this, then what you'll typically find is, you're much more likely to be distracted on that day and to have other things come and steal that time from you. There will be problems that need to be fixed. There will be emergencies, there will be this, there will be that, and you don't get much stuff done. I believe it's much better if you can implement stuff on a daily basis.

Paul Green: So try to find 60 to 90 minutes every single day to get things done. When I say, "Get things done," I mean things that either get you more new clients or get your existing clients to buy from you more often, or get your existing clients to spend more every single time they buy. There's a whole range of activities that fit within that, a huge range of activities. But, if you can find that 60, 90 minutes every single day, every single week day, that's where the magic happens. I built a business from nothing literally from my bedroom over a 10 year, 11 year period, and we sold that business in 2016. I'm not particularly smart, I don't have a university degree, but what I do have is a good work ethic for constant implementation. I built that business in 90 minute daily chunks. There were days I didn't want to get up at 5:00, and I didn't want to work on that business, but I did it anyway. I worked through that pain, and it meant that we always had plenty of time to implement new marketing initiatives, just try our ideas, to respond to things that clients and prospects did and didn't like. Just through a series of 1,000, 2,000, maybe 5,000 small changes, we eventually got to the point where that business, it was a cash cow. It was systematically chucking out business all the time.

Paul Green: So I think really that's the secret, is to find that time everyday to implement. You've got to remember as well though, DOA, she's my favourite acronym because it means dead on arrival. If you try and do everything yourself, you can't, instead you've got to delegate, outsource, and automate. So when I say do stuff in 60, 90 minute chunks, now when I'm doing my daily 60... Well, I do 90 minutes, I tend to spend more time checking the work that I have outsourced to other people, than I do actually doing the work myself. So 90 minutes, I can actually oversee an enormous amount of stuff for the business without actually having to do most of it myself, which is a pretty smart way of working. But, even with that kind of working, it's got to be something you've got to do daily. Daily actions are the only way to guarantee that you'll get the implementation done in the business.

Voiceover: How to contribute to the show.

Paul Green: So around about boxing day, I'm going to be a bit bored and I'd love to read your emails, please. Why don't you drop me some feedback on this podcast, good or bad, just be polite, I'd appreciate that. And my email address is, hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

Nigel Moore: Owned an MSP, I sold an MSP, and now I teach and coach MSP's how to avoid a bajillion mistakes that I made when I had my MSP.

Paul Green: That's my friend and the founder of The Tech Tribe, Nigel Moore, and he's going to be my special guest when the podcast returns after its two week Christmas break. I'm going to be asking him, what would he do differently if he owned another MSP today? We're also going to be talking on the 7th of January, about the three growth levers, the three things you really should focus on if you want to grow your net profits in 2020.

Voiceover: Made in the UK, for MSP's around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

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In this week's episode * Google Analytics is an extremely powerful tool, but using it can often feel daunting. Paul has found a simpler and more visual way to understand what people are really doing on your website * Not that you should sell up and move on (well, not yet), but Paul introduces you to a couple of incredibly insightful books; one of which explains why a ‘ready to sell’ mentality could really help improve the way you feel about your business * Paul welcomes special guest Andrew Eardley to talk about a package of tools that could be easily re-sold for increased Monthly Recurring Revenue (and they make life easier for your techs, too) * And there’s a great question from the audience about whether virtual offices are really worth it

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * The two incredible books Paul talked about were E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber and Built To Sell by John Warrillow * The book Paul mentioned in the previous episode was Influence by Dr Robert Cialdini * To help systemise your business, Paul mentioned the tools called IT Glue and IT Boost * The tool to better understand what’s users are really doing on your website is Hot Jar * MSP Marketing Edge is the marketing content service Paul mentioned * Thank you to special guest Andrew Eardsley, the MSP who has created MSP Easy Tools * The great question about virtual offices was posed by Greg Micallef from GMA * Next week's guest will be MSP sales expert Fiona Challis who runs the The Next Gen Sales Acceleration Academy * Here's a link to Paul's Facebook group for MSP Marketing

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: Hello. Here's what's coming up on this week's show.

Andrew Eardley: In terms of security, I'm sleeping way better at night because I'm no longer worrying about if a client gets breached and they start threatening us with court action.

Paul Green: I'm also going to tell you about an app which will allow you to watch videos of what people are actually doing on your website. And we've got a great question about expanding to a new city. Do you need to take on a virtual office?

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: Got a couple of more books suggestions for you this week. So in last week's podcast I talked about a book called Influence by Dr. Robert Cialdini. This week it's two books which are very similar, although they've been written in completely different ways and in fact with decades in between them.

Paul Green: But they're both must read books for any business owner. And the two books are The E-Myth Revisited, and Built to Sell. So let's talk about The E-Myth Revisited first. And this is the classic 1980s text by Michael Gerber about the hell of being a business owner. The E in E-Myth is the entrepreneur myth or the entrepreneurship myth, and it talks about how you work for someone else.

Paul Green: One day you have what's known as an entrepreneurial seizure and this is where you suddenly believe, I've got to work for myself here. I don't work for myself. I'm going to go crazy. And we, you and I have been through this virtually everyone who owns a business has been through this and this had this seizure. And of course we all know that once that idea grabs you, you've got to act on it. So the E-Myth talks about how you get started in your business. In the first few months or few years, everything is hunky dory because you have this huge level of control.

Paul Green: You've got the ability to put all your passion into your business, you've got this ability to create something that's exactly as you would want it to be. And then of course you have to take on staff. And of course your staff never quite do things exactly as you would like them to be done, and they never operate with the same passion. Even the good ones, they just don't have your ability and your passion and your drive and your vision. And that just causes a huge amount of frustration.

Paul Green: And what Michael Gerber was really the first person ever to do was to capture the pure hell of being a business owner inside our heads because he absolutely got that it's about seeing your vision and your control be watered down and diluted because you're so busy, you need to have staff. And it's what keeps a lot of people as one man bands because they just don't want to go through that pain.

Paul Green: But of course a business without a staff isn't really a business. It's just a job that pays well or doesn't pay well and doesn't allow you to go on proper holidays. So Michael Gerber uses some fictionalised examples from a hotel, and I think the other one is a bakery to talk through this hell, to talk through this difficulty. And then he presents the solution. And the solution is to look at your business as if it going to be a franchise.

Paul Green: And you say, if I was going to go off and sell some franchises on this, I'd need to put together an operating manual. I'd need to put together some systems so you systemise the business. In fact, this really fits with what a lot of MSPs do with things like IT Glue and ITBoost, where they're documenting everything. But this isn't about documenting what you're doing for the clients.

Paul Green: This is about documenting how your business works. So everything has a standard operating process, a system, a checklist, all of that kind of stuff. So the E-Myth is a must read and make sure you buy The E-Myth Revisited. Michael Gerber wrote the book originally just as The E-Myth and it didn't have those fictionalised stories. It was actually quite hard to understand what he was saying. And then he rewrote the book as The E-Myth Revisited. It's an absolute classic and it's on Audible as well.

Paul Green: Now the second book I'm recommending, it's a version of the same thing. It's a more recent book, just a few years old. It's called Built to Sell by John Warrillow. And again, it talks about the hell of running a business and particularly when you need to be there for the business to thrive. Rather than sort of repeating what's in The E-Myth Revisited, what John Warrillow has very cleverly done is say, "Well, hey, you need to change the business and rebuild the business so that one day it can be sold."

Paul Green: Now I've sold a business. I sold a business in 2016 and that was a very systematised business that had lots of recurring revenue. I didn't need to turn up every day in order for the business to thrive. I just used to go into the office one morning a week. That was a great business. Why did I sell it? I sold it because actually we got a very good offer and I was a little bit bored with it and it was just time to sell that business. It was the culmination of 11 years worth of hard work.

Paul Green: And it's funny, I read Built to Sell after I'd sold the business and realised that more out of luck than judgement, I'd put together a business that was easily sold. Because when someone buys a business, they don't want to have to fix all your problems. They don't want something that's going to fall over.

Paul Green: People sometimes think that a business that isn't particularly optimised very well is actually more sell-able because someone else can fix it. But you know what? Most buyers, they don't want to fix it. They want to bolt it on, they want to pay you off and they want to just add some profit streams. And we'd built a business that was a very systemised, that didn't need the owner in order to thrive. And that's exactly what Built to Sell is about.

Paul Green: And it talks about how the more systemisable your business, and the more monthly the recurring revenue coming in, the easier it is to sell that business. What's interesting is that when you've built that business, that's also a business that gives you a great lifestyle without you being trapped in an office every day. So it's exactly the same route with different outcomes.

Paul Green: Maybe you want to sell the business, I mean you're going to want to sell it at some point, because you will leave that business at some point. Either you'll be carried out on a stretcher or the business will go bust or you'll sell it. So you might as well build the business to be sold at some point. Because it can take up to a year to sell a business.

Paul Green: It took a year to sell mine, so you want to have it in... It's almost like having your house ready to sell at any point just for when it grabs you, you can sell it. Exactly the same with your business. Get it into a shape where it's a sell-able entity and actually that sell-able entity gives you less stress. You can take more holidays, you can spend more time with your family, you can do more stuff.

Paul Green: And this is what Built to Sell is about. And again it uses a fictional story. In this case it's an advertising agency to tell the story of how you build your business up. Very similar solution to that recommended by Michael Gerber, which is to systemise the business and put in place processes for everything. If ever there was a sector, which I think is absolutely perfect for this. It's the world of IT support.

Paul Green: Because you think most jobs, yes, you've got complex things that need a lot of creative thinking, but most of the jobs, 80% of what you're doing is systemisable work. It's all done through checklists. And we live in a great age where there are so many tools around like IT Glue, like ITBoost and all the others that allow you to systemise the business. And it's standard, it's normal.

Paul Green: So I think these are both great books. The E-Myth Revisited and Built to Sell, both available on Audible. I like nice paper books myself because you can draw on paper books and you can highlight them, but these certainly a two that you should get on your bookshelf and actually read them as well.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: If you've ever spent serious time looking at the Google analytics for your website, then frankly you're a better marketer than I am because my goodness, it's just difficult isn't it? I know that all the stats are there and it can show you some amazing things, and in fact I have a colleague called James who is very analytical, really into his data and he spends hours looking at the analytics for our websites and all the projects we're working on. But me, I don't know, I'm just not that kind of detailed guy.

Paul Green: I find Google analytics a bit of a mystery and that's why I was so excited to come across something called hotjar.com, because what Hotjar does is give you a bit more of a warm, fluffy view of what people are actually doing in your website. Because it videos people. No it doesn't video them it doesn't identify them at all. So it's not like access is a webcam or anything silly like that, but it videos how someone is using your website.

Paul Green: So we have the free version of hotjar.com on most of our websites and every now and again, just to see what people are doing. I'll just go and watch some of the videos and I'll often just do it in the evening. And I'm not looking for anything in particular, although you can use it to answer specific questions. Just looking to see where are people getting to, how far down the page they're getting.

Paul Green: And the answer by the way, is not as far as you think. Which pages are they clicking on? What are they doing that's creating problems for them? Now, Hotjar isn't a particularly scientific way of doing it. It does offer functionality called heat mapping where it will show you where people's attention are. And that's quite useful. Me, I just find that the real value in it is just sitting, looking at videos of people using your website.

Paul Green: And you start to spot trends. My MSP Marketing Edge website, I completely revamped that about two years ago because the videos of the original website just showed us that people were not getting into the core guts of it. They weren't really getting right down into the content. So we redesigned all the content to draw people in and to show them, what we wanted them to do.

Paul Green: The same with the call to action, the CTA, the call to action on that wasn't very clear. So we made the call to action, the page we wanted them to go to, to look at it, to buy. We highlighted that in yellow in the navigation, and that worked. More people spotted it and therefore more people went over to it. And we only know this, not just through the analytics and through obviously the increased sales, but also through watching people on the videos.

Paul Green: Actually seeing mouse cursors on videos, going up and clicking on that navigation. So go and have a look at hotjar.com. There is a free plan, which for most people is good enough. If you have a serious website or you have a full time marketer or marketing team then the paid one might be worth looking at, but it's one of those things you should just put into your website just because, just because every now and again you can go and have a look and see what people are actually doing.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green: So talking about the MSP Marketing Edge as I was just then, that's my blatant plug for this week. It's a service which gives you marketing content that you can use to promote your MSP daily, weekly, or monthly for a very low fee, it's just 99 pounds a month in the UK, 129 dollars a month in the US. The idea is that you've just got content and it's done for you and you're the only MSP in your area that can use it.

Paul Green: So it's just simple concept really. So we're making something once and selling it multiple times. That's why we can give you so much content, because there's a video in there, there's a guide in there, there's social media content, there's emails, there's a press release, and then every year we also give our clients a brand new book that they can use. We've just delivered to our clients about a month ago, a book on cybersecurity.

Paul Green: It's called Email Hijack. And the idea behind that is they put their name and their company name on the front and they can change the text and they can change the book name if they wish, print some off and now they've got a 48 page business card, and they can use it as an ethical bribe on their websites to get people to opt in. So there's all of this stuff which is given to you every month.

Paul Green: You can tweak it, you can just use it as it is. The point is, there's marketing content. So you can build a relationship with people. We all know that prospects buy when they're ready to buy. This is your way of being in front of them every single day, week or month. So that at that point they're ready to buy, you're very much top of their mindset as the MSP that really they should speak to.

Voiceover: The Big Interview.

Paul Green: I've been working with Andrew and Jean Eardley for a number of years now, and it's been fascinating following their journey as they've transformed their business into something that's chocker with monthly recurring revenue, and is a business that thrives without them having to be there. Now one of the things that they identified early on is that they needed to automate more jobs that were just taking up technician time.

Paul Green: And they put together a very clever toolkit which works with Office 365 and just makes life easy for the techs. And a couple of years ago they figured out, hang on a second, we can also use this to generate revenue, because there were extra services in there that some of their clients wanted to buy from them. About a year or so ago, they realised that there were other MSPs that would want to access this toolkit, and so they launched MSP Easy Tools. They completely revamped those tools and they've scaled it up so that it can be used by any MSP anywhere in the world. And I interviewed Andrew about the launch of MSP Easy Tools. First thing I asked him to do was to tell me about his MSP.

Andrew Eardley: So Prompt PC was formed in 1997. I started as a one man band and we were doing the usual things, office, small business servers, desktop support, all the rest of it. Got to about 150, 170 servers overall. And then probably in the last four or five years we've turned the vast majority of them off, moving over to Office 365. Now we've probably got about 10, 11 servers left. And to be sure that we knew what we were doing, we became Microsoft Gold partners.

Paul Green: So you developed the MSP Easy Tools, and this was something you put together to fix a very specific problem, wasn't it?

Andrew Eardley: We'd been putting Office 365 into our clients for some time. And do you know what clients are like, they like things to be as the same as it always had been. So they wanted their T drives and the V drives, the usual drive letter mappings and we'd been using Microsoft Sync to do that. But then Microsoft went and messed everything up virtually overnight.

Andrew Eardley: And we were getting, we were inundated with calls through the office. The help desk was literally bombarded with calls about synchronisation errors and corrupted files and duplicate files. And we asked them what were the solution for it, and that's where Prompt Mapper was born.

Paul Green: So how did the toolkit develop from there?

Andrew Eardley: To be honest, it's happened because of the problems that we've encountered with our clients. Every time that we've seen an issue that we've struggled to find the answer for quickly, we've gone away and developed it. So a good example, for example, when we had email forwarding issues, clients were being compromised, accounts were being breached. And the cyber criminals were putting email forwarders on.

Andrew Eardley: There's three locations in Office 365. When you've got a hundred users in a business, takes a long time to go through them. So we scripted and got it fixed. So that automatically checks on a very regular basis for when there is an email forwarded on the system. And it now means that the end client can actually turn it off. It doesn't even need a call to us.

Paul Green: And what kind of a difference did this make to the way that you actually ran the business?

Andrew Eardley: Oh, it's made a massive difference. We've no longer getting those help desk calls in about issues on syncs. In terms of security, I'm sleeping way better at night because I'm no longer worrying about if a client gets breached and they start threatening us with court action, because we've not detected that someone's breached their system and put an email forward on, for example.

Andrew Eardley: And it also means I've got engineering time back where I can get them onto projects or our monthly support contracts are already paid. And I've got free time now for my engineers to go earn me even more money. So it a big smile on my face.

Paul Green: And how did it affect the profitability?

Andrew Eardley: Dramatically improved it. We're charging them fixed monthly fees, they're happy to pay it because they're getting a service that works reliably. They don't have to keep calling up about it. And money just keeps coming in to us. Yes, we spent the money in developing it, and I'm now getting the reward from it.

Paul Green: So what was it that triggered you to start selling this to other MSPs?

Andrew Eardley: I've got to be honest, Paul, it's when I sat in your mastermind groups with the other MSPs. We sat talking about what we were doing and where we're heading and during the tea breaks and, well, even during the meetings they'd say, "Can we have some of that? How can we get some of those tools that you're using?" And that's why the reason why we've developed it.

Paul Green: Okay. So it's now being used by a thousand end users and it's rolled out already to a number of MSPs. What have you done to change it so that it can be scaled up and it can be used by thousands of MSPs?

Andrew Eardley: To be honest, what we've ended up doing is actually breaking it all back down and rebuilding it from scratch, to make sure that we can sell it to multiple MSPs, to thousands of MSPs. Make sure the license in there, we've locked it down properly, made sure it's totally secure. It's been a complete revamp. Whereas it was a tool that was designed for us and our internal usage, and it can be a bit frayed around the edges.

Andrew Eardley: We've thought about how it's going to be at... If I was going to buy a tool from a software warehouse or a software vendor, what would I be expecting? You know, how would I expect to see it? And that's how we've redeveloped it. So we know that we're answering all the questions that an MSP would ask, because I've already asked them. If you've got more questions after that, obviously give us a call.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast, ask for anything.

Speaker 4: Hi I'm Greg Micallef from GMA, providing IT services and telecoms. We're looking at the idea of a wider catchment area and as part of that, looking at virtual offices, what are people's thoughts?

Paul Green: That is an interesting question. Thank you very much Greg. So I think maybe 20 years ago, if you wanted to break into a new area, you certainly needed to have a presence in that area, a physical presence. But marketing and the world of IT support has changed so much over the last 15, 20 years that I don't think that's necessarily something you need to have any more.

Paul Green: We all know that you can support anyone anywhere. In fact, you probably support users hundreds and hundreds of miles away, and you do so mostly without stress until you need to have some kind of physical presence, which is, let's be honest, it's such a minimal thing these days. I think to break into a new area, there is a marketing advantage of having a physical address in the area, but I don't know that you need to have an office for that. It's ever so easy to rent addresses just to have somewhere in the area.

Paul Green: But let's be honest, the clients aren't coming to see you, the prospects aren't coming to see you. You can arrange neutral meeting places if they don't want to meet at their place. So I think just in terms of keeping overheads under control, no, you don't need virtual offices. Maybe an address, maybe not even that. People buy in completely different ways to the way they did 15, 20 years ago.

Paul Green: We're not marketing to consumers here, consumers who may be looking for a local provider. We're marketing to business owners and to business managers and their criteria for picking a new IT support company; can I trust you, and what can you do for me? So for that reason, no, I wouldn't bother taking on the overhead. I'd just focus all your marketing on that area. And it's more about what you can do digitally than it is about what you have to do physically.

Voiceover: How to contribute to the show.

Paul Green: I would love to hear from you with any feedback you've got about the podcast. Good or bad. You can just drop me a line. It's hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

Fiona Challis: They're sending these big, long and impersonal messages that, they're really just taking what they would've said in the cold call and they're putting it in a LinkedIn message and expecting a result.

Paul Green: That's my friend Fiona Challis, also an MSP sales expert, and she's going to be telling you next week how to get more new clients into your business. We're also going to be talking about remarketing using Facebook. It's a way for you to completely dominate social media and websites that your prospects are browsing.

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

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In this week's episode * Reading of physical books maybe declining, but if there's just ONE book you check out (or even listen to on Audible), Paul explains how Influence by Robert Cialdini could transform the way you market your MSP * Some of the best potential sales people in your MSP could be the technicians. However you may find they either don't want to do it or aren't very good at it. Paul talks about something called the Profit Matrix that can easily help everyone contribute towards increased net profit * Did you know there's a free book all about improving your MSP's marketing? Paul has all the details * Nearly every MSP wants to grow their business. Specialist accountant Rob Bowden joins Paul to explain how not all growth is good growth * There's a great question about the amount of time that should be spent on LinkedIn and Paul shares some tips on how best to use it

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Here's a link to the book Paul mentioned Influence by Dr Robert Cialdini * You can find more interesting reading on the Profit Matrix here * This is the link to order your free copy of Paul Green's book Upgrading Servers Doesn't Grow Your Business * The special guest was Robert Bowden from MSP accounting specialist Brooklands Accountants. His website is mspaccountant.com * Thank you to Kevin Ackland from Systems & Solutions for the great question about how much time to spend on LinkedIn * Next week's guest will be Andrew Eardley from MSP Easy Tools who will be explain how they developed a some tools that MSPs can re-sell for greater MRR * Here's a link to Paul's Facebook group for MSP Marketing

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

Paul Green: Have I got a cracker of a show for you this week, here's what's coming up.

Robert Bowden: Can't really turn around to your staff and say, "Well, I'm sorry guys, we're not getting paid for 60 days on this. Can you wait until the end of next month and we'll pay you double."

Paul Green: We're also going to be talking about how something called the profit matrix completely, totally changes the profit situation in any IT support business and I'm going to be answering a question later on about how long you should be spending on LinkedIn every single day.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

Paul Green: One of the things that I'm most proud of when I greet new people into my house is my book collection. So we've got so many books as a family that we actually converted one of our spare rooms into a library, which sounds grand, but it's just a whole load of bookshelves and we have, I mean we must have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of books. My nine year old has an entire bookcase to herself. I've got a couple of bookcases. In fact, I've got books sort of almost in every single room of the house and mine tend to be more business and marketing books because for many, many years I've been in a pretty good habit of reading a book a week. Got to be honest actually the last few years it's been more listening to books than reading books. Audible, it's such a low investment of perhaps seven, eight pounds, probably I'd guess around the same dollars each month and you get one or two or three books a month depending on which package you subscribe to.

Paul Green: So I listen to a lot of books, but if I really enjoy a book, I will go out there and buy it. And throughout the course of this podcast, however many months or years I'll do this podcast, I will throw out to you some of the best books that I've read because there are some amazing books that make a real difference. I've got one that I'm going to recommend to you today. It's one of my all time favourites, business and marketing books and it's called Influence by Dr. Robert Cialdini. Now, Dr. Cialdini is a professor of psychology based in New York, but he's dedicated his professional career to the psychology of sales and marketing and Influence was written, I think it was some time in the in the 1980s or early 1990s and it's about how you can influence people to do things using a number of of different weapons. And the six weapons or the six principles of influence are reciprocity, consistency, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity.

Paul Green: And I'm going to go back over those and explain those in a second and you'll have heard of some of these. You'll certainly have heard of social proof. In fact, I believe that Cialdini, was the first person to coin the phrase social proof. Social proof describes our psychological need to do what most other people are doing. Now, not everyone acts like this, but the vast majority of us do. And it's because at our core we are still, in our brains, using the programming that we had when we lived in caves a hundred thousand years ago. At that time, the safest thing to do was to stay with a group and stick together because if you were in big numbers you were less likely to be picked off by dinosaurs or saber tooth tigers or whatsoever. And we still have that programming today. So you'll see this happen where you're in a group of people and they're doing something.

Paul Green: It's safer and easier to just go along with the group and do that. And in fact we feel sometimes a little uncomfortable if we're doing something different to what most of the people are doing. So that's what social proof is. It's why you need more testimonials. It's why you need more case studies, more videos of your clients on your website and in your marketing material talking about you and your business. Because then your prospects can see that other people like them trust you. Can you see the power of that? That's the power of social proof. And by the way, if you're one of those people who thinks, "Oh, that's social proof, all those testimonials, it doesn't work." It might not work on you, but the vast majority of people, social proof does influence them.

Paul Green: Let's look at Cialdini's other principles, and reciprocity is one, when you give something to someone, it sets up a need for them to reciprocate, for them to give you something back. It's why freebies work very well, sampling. If you're going to a supermarket and they give you something for free, a little taste of something, sales of that item go up. We don't all buy it, but some of us do. And in actual fact, in a marketing terms, people have been doing sampling and dropping off vouchers and all that sort of stuff for over a hundred years and it has worked consistently throughout all of that time. How you would use that in an MSP is, I mean, I'm a big fan of giving away a book. I have a book to give away, so I'm going to plug in about four minutes time and you're welcome to request a free copy of it. Does that set up a reciprocity? Maybe, maybe not. Is it generally just good marketing? Absolutely it is. So you would, within your MSP, you would certainly look to give away information.

Paul Green: Consistency is another one of Cialdini's principles. Consistency is where we prefer to be consistent with our own vision of ourselves. Well, here's a great example, if you've got a bit overweight and you've decided to go to a gym, you're much more likely to keep going to that gym and to succeed at losing weight if you have a gym buddy. What happens is you convince yourself that you mustn't let that person down. You've got to be consistent with the declaration that you made with that person to go to the gym every day, week, whatever it is. We see where I worked with a mastermind groups, MSP mastermind groups where I have noncompeting business owners all doing the same thing, all running IT sport companies and we have them in the room and when people talk about they're going to do something, whether that be fire someone or introduce a new service or whatsoever, they're much more likely to do it because they've declared it to a bunch of people.

Paul Green: They care about their opinion and people like to be consistent with the commitment that they have made. Then we've got another principle that of liking. Put it bluntly, if you're a likable person, you'll sell more because we've talked before on this podcast about how the people you want to sell to, they can't tell a good MSP from a bad MSP, not at a cognitive level so it all comes down to an emotional decision. And when someone is more likable, when you are more likable to someone, it makes the emotional decision easier. The prospects, even the people running big companies are picking a new MSP or not picking a new MSP based on how much they like or dislike the person. It's as simple as that. So you should be doing everything within your power to be more likable. And then the final principle of influence is scarcity.

Paul Green: And scarcity is perhaps the greatest of all of these principles of influence because when there is less of something left and it is clearly finite and it is going to run out, we want more of it. In Easter Island for example, where there's the great big Easter Island statues and as the resources started to dwindle and the indigenous population of Easter Island faced with the inability to bring in resources from elsewhere, but their resources were going down. As the resources dwindled, they build bigger and bigger and bigger Easter Island heads. And the reason they did that was to show off to each other and you can kind of see it now in humanity as our resources are starting to dwindle and become more scarce, we're using more and more and more of them. And it is a human condition to do that. Now, the greatest scarcity that you've got within your MSP is of course that there's only a finite amount of time.

Paul Green: And particularly as we look at something like the 2020 problem, which of course is coming up in January. Most of that Microsoft software is expiring in January. You've only got a finite amount of time between now and then to pop all those new Windows 10 computers in to replace servers or move people to the cloud or whatever you do. And really at this point at this stage of the year with that deadline so close, this is what you should be pushing the most is, "Hey, we physically only got this many man hours or Mondays left. If you want to do this before the deadline, before this software reaches the end of life, you need to make a decision now. We can do it for you in January or February, but you're at risk of being breached because of course your software will be out of life." If you only read one business book a year, this is the book you really should read.

Paul Green: It's Influence by Dr. Robert Cialdini an absolutely top read and so, so handy in your business' marketing as well.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: I'm yet to meet an MSP owner who doesn't want more net profit out of the business. Net profit being of course the bottom line figure that's yours. You pay your tax on it and then that's yours to take out and spend. And the quickest way to grow net profit in any MSP is to use something called the profit matrix. Now the profit matrix is a very, very simple device, but it's a very powerful device because it takes information that you've already got, but it's locked up in your PSA. It extracts that information out and it puts it in a place where you and your team are kind of forced to use it every single day. So the profit matrix at its most basic is a grid.

Paul Green: And if you imagine a grid with sort of two axes along the top, you would write the monthly recurring revenue services that you sell and down the left hand side you'd put your clients. And the idea is that if you've got, let's say client one and they buy additional service number one, they buy additional service number two, but they don't buy numbers three and four so you'd put a little dots in their box. So client number one buys service one, buys service two and then you come on to client number two. Well they don't buy additional service number one but they do buy number three. So you'd have a little dot in that number three and you do that for all of your clients. And the idea is that you build up this giant board and you can physically see exactly which clients are buying which service.

Paul Green: Now I appreciate you have already got this in your PSA, but what we want to do is we want to extract this out, not put it in a spreadsheet, not put it up on a screen anywhere, but put it in on a board, on a physical whiteboard or on a bit of paper or draw it on a wall or something. And the beauty of this at a glance, we can instantly see not only who's buying what, but really more importantly who's not buying what. Because the power of the profit matrix is about having that information in front of people every single day. And there are three particular ways to use it to grow your net profit. So the first way is, and I would put that profit matrix in front of your technicians because the first thing is when they're on the phone to the people that they're supporting and they're talking to them, they can literally look up and glance and see, is client number 17 buying service three, let's have a look.

Paul Green: No they're not. And they can start conversations with the clients like, "Do you know what? We do actually have a premium service that would stop this kind of thing from happening and it would just take all of this away. Is this something you want me to get one of my team to have a chat with you about?" Because we all know getting technicians to actually sell over the phone is pretty hard. But it is certainly a lot easier to get them to generate leads, generate opportunities, and pass them to someone within the business to follow them up. And again, I know that information is there in the PSA and believe me, I've had so many discussions and debates with IT owners about, "Well, why would I want to replicate this information or pull it out the PSA?" Even though it's in the PSA, it's not presented in exactly the same way.

Paul Green: Even when it's on an Excel spreadsheet, it's not presented in the same way. There is something magical and physical and it just brings it alive when you physically put it on a wall. So that's your first opportunity. You get your technicians to just look and to think and to refer for sales. Now the second opportunity to grow the profit matrix is when you do strategic reviews with clients. A big fan of strategic reviews, we'll cover off exactly how a strategic review should go in a future podcast. But I believe when you sit down with your clients and you have a review of them, of course you're not looking backwards at tickets and stuff, you're looking forwards at their business. What's going to happen in their business in the next six to 12 months? And the more and more more you get them talking about their business, the more chances there are for you to sell them a monthly recurring revenue service that will help them, that will help them grow, have less pain and avoid problems, which is what everyone wants.

Paul Green: Now that profit matrix becomes something that you study before you go out. Because for example, if you know by looking at the profit matrix, you can see, "Hmm, we've got basic backup, but they don't have the premium backup." We don't have any kind of on prem backup. So the speed would be an issue if we had to restore and then you can look at the security services and it gives you an idea of where you want to steer the conversation because of course in your strategic view, you wouldn't jump in and just be as unsubtle as, "Oh, I notice you haven't got the premium backup."

Paul Green: But you might, for example, ask them a series of open ended questions about the speed of recovery. If a computer died and it took six hours to recover the data and restore that to a new computer, how much of a problem would that be when even that's a bit of a blunt question, but you get the idea so when you know what they're not buying, you can take the conversation off down those lines. And I have clients that have generated 40,000 pounds and more of new recurring revenue every single month just from existing clients just using this profit matrix in exactly the way I've just talked about it there, that you get the technicians to generate opportunities and pass them up the chain and then of course you act on them quickly and taking clients for strategic reviews.

Paul Green: Now the third opportunity to grow the profit matrix is very simply to extend the number of services and you add more monthly recurring revenue services. I have a client who has more than a hundred recurring revenue services, which is quite a lot to keep up with. Lots of different options in there of course, but most of my clients when they do these profit matrix, they realise that actually they could add a premium service for this or they could add a bit of that or they could add something else and often it's just different flavors of the same thing. But remember, clients like choice. Some people will always buy the best option just because it's available and sometimes we don't realise that we don't have those best options available. So the profit matrix is such a powerful tool. But remember, the key to making it work is you've got to get it off a screen and you've got to get it onto a wall somewhere.

Paul Green: It's a bit of a fun project to do. It becomes something that you really should be spending time on every day. And the reward for this is just more money for you to spend on you and your family.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green: Earlier on when I was talking about the great business book called Influence by Robert Cialdini, I said that I've got a book and it's called Updating Servers Doesn't Grow Your Business and I wrote it back two, three years ago. It's absolutely designed for the owners of IT support businesses. And, as the title suggests, it's really, it's kind of a manifesto, a treaty for you spending more time working on your business than you do working in your business because that's really the only way to grow the business. We talk in that book about how to get more new clients, how to spend more time with your family and how to go and take more holidays or just do more of the stuff that you enjoy doing.

Paul Green: The good news is I have free copies of this book to give away, loads of free copies. Now if you're in the UK, which is where I'm based, I will physically post you a paperback copy of this book completely free. Anywhere else in the world, I'll just give you a PDF copy of that book. I hope you understand that's just to keep our postage costs under control. If you want to get that free copy, the link's in the show notes so you can just go to paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbook. That's paulgreensmspmarketing.com/podcastbook.

Voiceover: The big interview.

Robert Bowden: My name's Robert Bowden. I run a firm of accountants called Brooklands Accountants and we specialise in dealing with MSPs and fast growing businesses.

Paul Green: Now Rob is actually my accountant and over the years I've introduced him to so many MSPs that he has developed a speciality of being an MSP accountant and I asked Rob about the common problems that MSPs encounter as they're growing their business. And one of the common problems is that growth is expensive. So on the surface and MSP can be doing very well, but actually underneath the growth is really starting to hurt them in some way.

Robert Bowden: The strain of growth is a different animal to the strain of not having enough work. So not having enough work you can actually soldier on for quite a while because you ultimately can borrow your money from the VAT. You can borrow your money from the tax man. And these are all guys who need paying periodically, but their terms of contract tend to be much longer than suppliers or staff. So people who tend to grow very quickly tend to have two resources. They tend to need to buy in hardware, which they're reselling or they tend to need to buy in labour and skill charges, which are then recharged down. Both of these guys tend to want paying before you start receiving the money. So the consequence can be is you do a lot more work before you get paid, but you've actually got a lot more costs are involved and it's can suck money out of the system very, very quickly.

Paul Green: So when you start working with an MSP, what do you suggest that they put in place in order that they don't overgrow, go too fast and find themselves in a bad cash situation?

Robert Bowden: Well, let me think for an accountant to say, but I've never been a fan of working out 12 month projections because ultimately things can change very, very quickly. So we would ultimately recommend is probably looking ahead three to six months, working out what's coming up, working out simple things like your due dates for the VAT, due dates for your corporation tax, working out the implications of if you do take on a member of staff and what happens if someone takes three months to pay you, how far have you actually got to bridge this? At least working out what the working cashflow cycle is, what you ultimately need in reserve to be able to work your way through what is going to happen as you grow. And as I say, you start seeing the outflow of cash from the system. You've got to manage that through, so it's very much a case of looking ahead probably month to month, but also taking a slightly longer term view over the next three to six months and just working out what happens if you are as successful as you expect to be.

Paul Green: And what are the symptoms that a business is starting to get into trouble, if you like the early warning signs?

Robert Bowden: Early warning signs tend to be that you're making a lot more profit but you seem to have no cash. That's one of the most common questions we're asked is, "If we're earning all this money, where is it?" Quite often it tends to be tied up in your debtors and in other people's bank accounts and the signs that will start to come through is A, you have cash in the bank, but you start to notice your cash balance going down and then when you start find things like your VAT bill starts to come along, you start finding it actually, it's higher than you expect it to be. And it also becomes a bit more of a struggle to find it. And these things gradually build over a period of time until eventually you get a VAT bill through that you can't necessarily afford to pay or you find that you can't pay your suppliers quickly enough to get the equipment that you need to be able to do a job further on down the line.

Paul Green: So I've always thought that the MSP model was the best model in the world because you've got all of this monthly recurring revenue coming in and you've got a huge retention with your clients. But do you see, from the MSPs that you work with, do you see that actually, is it the projects that causes problems? Is it, as the clients are expanding and spending so much money? Is that where the issues lie?

Robert Bowden: Well, yeah, I mean, I suppose as much like accountancy in that model in the, we have your recurring income, which is your standard, your core base, your contracts. It's nice recurring income the generates each month for you. But let's just say you're a fast growing MSP and you decide to take on a project that is 50,000 pounds. It's going to cost you 30,000 pounds for the equipment and 20,000 pound for your guys. The upside you're going to have to pay for that 30,000 pounds worth of equipment quicker than you can get paid by your customer for it because your customer's typically going to be a larger customer.

Robert Bowden: They're going to be expecting to be paying or 60 or 90 days whereas once you've expanded out and you started taking more from your supplier, they're going to expect payments on 30 because their risk's increasing because they're selling you more equipment. Likewise, you can't really turn around to staff and say, "Well sorry guys, we're not getting paid for 60 days on this. Can you wait until the end of next month and we'll pay you double." Simply doesn't work that way, so you have all these costs incurred in there. There are really things that you can do to manage that though and ensure that your cashflow faces a much smoother progress through it.

Paul Green: Okay, final question, Rob. If there was one thing that you wished all of your MSP clients did, what would that one thing be?

Robert Bowden: The one thing that I'd ask or say to all MSP clients is that not all growth is good growth. Once you have a team of people, once you have a fully functioning business and you've reached a certain size and you continue to grow what you suddenly have as a cost of overhead and there's always a danger that you'll go chasing turnover rather than profit at that point. One thing I'd like any MSP, any business ultimately is the best advice we can do is try and match your income to your expenditure. It's try and get some money up front because at the end of the day you're undertaking all of the risk. You're taking all of the risks with these guys, with big customers, manage the risk, ask them for a deposit, ask them to match your payment terms on what's going on here. Try and match the income to the expenditure and don't confuse all growth as being good growth. Unless you manage it is going to cause you an exponential number of problems in the future.

Paul Green: Okay. Thank you, Rob. How can we get in touch with you?

Robert Bowden: If you'd like to get in touch with us, you can go to our website which is www.mspaccountant.com

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast. Ask Paul anything.

Kevin: Hi, my name is Kevin Ackland from Systems and Solutions in Whitney. I've got a question. Could you tell me how long you should be spending on LinkedIn every single day?

Paul Green: Thanks Kevin. I think the key thing there is doing something every single day because LinkedIn is such a powerful platform for MSPs right around the world, but only if you work it properly and I am think 20 to 30 minutes every single day would make you ... Well, it would change everything with LinkedIn because there were three things you want to be doing. There's connect, content, and call. Connecting to more and more people and just growing your network, which is easier done on a daily basis than trying to do a great big chunk once a week. Then you've got content, so just putting content on sharing things because LinkedIn these days is a much more like Facebook. It's a much more content driven platform and then you've got call, which is just shaking your tree, working your network, literally picking up the phone and calling people and treating it not as cold calling. It's slightly warmer calling because you are connected to these people in this network. If you can do 30 minutes everyday, which is two and a half hours a week, which works out at 10 hours a month, which works out at over a hundred hours a year just on LinkedIn, then that becomes a very powerful source of activity and marketing activity and a very powerful place for prospects to come from.

Paul Green: Now, if you personally just don't have the time for this, or you just don't have the passion, then this is something that can be either in sourced or outsourced. You can either get someone within the business to do this for you so they would do it in your name because you always want the LinkedIn activities you'd be done in the name of the owner. That's primarily a protective thing. You don't want one of your employees spending two years building up their own personal LinkedIn profile and then leaving because they'll be taking all of that hard work with them, so whoever's doing it, it should always be done in the name of the owner. You can either get someone in the business to do this for you or you could outsource it and there are plenty of people out there. There might be a VA, a virtual assistant in your area that could do this for you.

Paul Green: You might find someone on Fiverr with two R's. Fiverr.com or peopleperhour.com the principle being there's always more people out there looking for this kind of work than there is that amount of work available. Just make sure to you give that person your log ins to LinkedIn. You just need to make sure you know who that person is and that you trust them. 30 minutes on LinkedIn can change everything in just a few months.

Voiceover: How to contribute to the show.

Paul Green: So whether you've been listening for a while now or this is your first listen to my podcast, I'd love to hear your feedback. You can drop me an email anytime hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

Andrew Eardley: In terms of security, I'm sleeping way better at night because I'm no longer worrying about if a client gets breached and the staff threatened us with court action.

Paul Green: That's Andrew Eardley. He's an MSP owner just like you. And he's developed a set of tools that you can use to make life easy for your technicians and also generate some more valuable monthly recurring revenue. And we're also going to be telling you about something that you can embed into your website, which will give you an insight into how people really use your site. In fact, it will scare you just how little they're engaging with your stuff.

Voiceover: Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's, MSP marketing podcasts.

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In this week's episode * In a world where nearly every communication is digital, Paul talks about traditional direct mail, how to modernise its use and how it could help to get you in front of prospects * Here are the keys to a time machine. What would you tell your 20-year-old self? * Monthly Recurring Revenue is best kind of revenue. And Paul has found a couple of products that you could re-sell * A lot of MSPs don't realise the huge difference a well performing website could make to their new client enquiries. Special guest Louise Towler from marketing agency Indigo Tree explains * Every single drive to work you'll encounter branded commercial vehicles. You may even have your own. Find out more about the difference between good signage, bad signage and what it can do for your business

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Here's a link to the book Paul mentioned 'The E-Myth Revisited' by Michael Gerber * To submit the advice you'd give your 20 year old self, or for any other questions or feedback on the show, the address is hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com * Have you used Docmail? * Here's just a selection of the 'video cards' used for marketing on Amazon * For more details on the suite of security and monitoring tools that can be re-sold for increased MRR, just visit mspeasytools.com * The special guest was Louise Towler from the website & marketing agency Indigo Tree * Thank you to Jon Cross from Crosstek for the great question about vehicle branding * Next week's guest will be Robert Bowden from MSP accounting specialist Brooklands Accountants who will be explain how to make your business more financially robust, even when there's a steady stream of revenue * Here's a link to Paul's Facebook group for MSP Marketing

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, this is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: Hello, here's what's coming up on this week's show.

Louise Towler: Really important that the words are very reassuring and you don't just talk about the geeky stuff that perhaps people might be searching for in Google.

Paul Green: We're also going to look at whether your MSP should be sending out direct mail, more stuff in the post, to your prospects, and I've got a question from an IT support owner about how to best brand up his company vans.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: I don't watch a great deal of television. When I do, it tends to be science fiction, absolutely adore good sci-fi. My all-time favourite show is Doctor Who, the British classic, it's been going for 55 years, something like that, and it's based around an alien who can go anywhere in time and space. They've got a special ship, it's called the TARDIS, and they can go back.

Paul Green: And, in fact, I was having a conversation with my nine-year-old daughter just a few weeks ago, if you were given the keys to the TARDIS, you had the keys to a time machine, and we started talking about how interesting it would be for me to go back and talk to my 20-year-old self, I'm 45 now, what would I tell myself? Perhaps some girls to avoid, and then I'd want to really talk about business and I'd want to talk about finances and wealth, quality of life, and all that kind of stuff.

Paul Green: And I would tell my 20-year-old self to start a business earlier, the things that I know worked, the stuff that you know with the benefit of hindsight. The big one I'd probably tell my 20 year-old-self, which I think is relevant to every IT support company, every MSP, is if you're going to have a business, which is both the best thing in the world and the worst thing in the world, it really is both of those things combined, and I'm sure you agree with me, if you're going to have a business, make sure that you are more owner than you are operator. Now, what do I mean by that? If you look at how most of us have got into business, I started mine in 2005, my very first business, and I started off doing something that I was good at.

Paul Green: If you think about The E-Myth Revisited, which is a great book by Michael Gerber, he talks about three different levels of business owner: technicians, managers, and entrepreneurs. And the technician is good at a thing, and when they start their own business, they go and start up a business doing that thing. You, yourself, you may have been particularly good with computers, perhaps with tech support, maybe you worked for someone else, and when you started or acquired your first business, the chances are pretty high that you started a business doing tech support, and that's how you got into it. This is how we get trapped as operators.

Paul Green: I was good, at the time, at public relations and marketing, so I started a PR and marketing company, and I got trapped in that as the operator. And it's being trapped as the operator for decades is what emotionally kills us. We're locked in a business that is based around us because, typically, the owner is the best operator within the business. You'd love to clone yourself and have 10 little yous running around doing the business, but it doesn't work that way. A lot of our frustrations, as business owners, come when we have staff who don't quite do the things we want them to do in the way we'd like them to do them.

Paul Green: I would go back and tell my 20-year old self, "Don't start a marketing business, start a different kind of business, or go and buy a business where you cannot be the operator, where you can only be the owner." And in fact, in early 2020, I'm going to start a long-held dream of mine, which is to go and acquire some businesses, and the last kind of businesses that I'm going to acquire will be businesses I know how to run. I won't be acquiring marketing businesses. I won't be acquiring anything at all where I can jump in and do that work because then I would just get trapped as an operator again and I don't want to do that.

Paul Green: And, possibly, I'm looking at the care sector, the adult care sector, and go and acquire a business that I couldn't run even if I wanted to, which then forces me to acquire a business of a certain size and scale that will have a management team, and I can then focus on improving the management team, improving the overall feel and and productivity and profitability of the business without getting trapped being the operator. That's what I would tell myself.

Paul Green: I'd really love to know what would you do, if you could go back in that TARDIS in that time machine, talk to your 20-year-old self, what advice would you give that person? Do you want to email that through to me? Because maybe, if we get enough, we can feature some of these in a future edition of the show, hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: In a world of digital where everything comes through a screen, through a device, there's a real place for taking it offline and making it physical. I've just realised the start of that sounds like a bad movie trailer. In a world where everything is digital ... but it's true. If you think about it, 20 years ago, we had all of this stuff coming through our letterbox everyday. We had junk mail, flyers, leaflets, and we had very, very few emails and, 20 years ago, one of the most effective ways to reach someone was to send them an email because it was unusual. Well, 20 years on, we all have far too many emails. You never hear someone sitting and complaining because they haven't had enough emails. And yet the amount of posts that I get is very low, very, very low indeed.

Paul Green: I don't even get bank statements anymore. That all comes digitally. I get perhaps two or three items of post a week, still get catalogues and things like that from clothing companies, but really it's almost, almost getting to the point of becoming a lost art. And 20 years ago, it was a very, very beautiful and lucrative thing to do to send stuff out in the post, but these days, because it's cheaper and easier, people just stick to the digital platforms, the email, the social media, that kind of stuff.

Paul Green: Now, where you've got a trend where everyone is doing something, one of the opportunities to you is to look at that and say, hey, I'm going to do something completely different, and that's why I always recommend to MSPs and IT support companies to go physical, to make it real, to print stuff. And I'm a big fan of direct mail. I'm a big fan of books. I've written a whole load of books myself. I've never sold a single one. I've given away tens of thousands of books and it's probably coming up to 15, 16,000 books, and they've funded many business ventures by using them as introductions, as business cards rather than books.

Paul Green: I've sent out hundreds of thousands of pieces of direct mail, and some of it's been a bit rubbish and some of it's worked quite well and there's been a lot in the middle. But the point is it's a hell of a lot easier to get someone's attention when you send them something in the post or when you make it physical than it is just trying to do it through another digital platform. What I want you to do is I want you to think now, who are the people you'd most like to reach? What are some of the things that you could send to them, you could post to them, mail out to them, that would impact them and just make it easier for you to follow them up? Because you're not going to sell to people using direct mail, but what you will do is you'll get their attention and you'll get a chance for them to read some stuff.

Paul Green: I've worked with some clients over the years who've done some amazing things. I'm working with a client now who sends a box out in the post, it's, and this is an MSP by the way, a specially designed box designed to go through the letterbox so there's none of that hassle of having to pick it up from the delivery office. And inside, there's some chocolate bars and there's a very specific message related to the chocolate bars and there are stickers on it and it has a stamp and a handwritten envelope and it costs them probably about 10, 15 pounds per unit to put that together. But for every X units of those that they send out, they ended up sitting down in front of people and having the conversation about their IT support, which is exactly the point of that.

Paul Green: I have other clients who send out just basic mail merge letters, some that do it in the office, some that use services like Docmail which is a UK service. I'm sure there are American services equivalent, but Docmail is just a mail merge in the cloud essentially where they will do the posting for you. I've got one client who did a very clever piece. He would take a toy, a radio-controlled toy, and send out the toy, but not the remote control, not the radio control, and the letter inside would say, "Look, can I come over to your office for half an hour, share a coffee, and we'll get to play with the toy?" Some of the people that got that, it was so intriguing that they thought, "Yeah, do you know what? We'll do that."

Paul Green: These things, you never get 100% response, but isn't it all just about standing out? These exact same messages sent on email or through social media just wouldn't be as compelling as sending it in the post because it allows you to stand out. Or we have another client, just remembered another client that sends out videos by post, so rather than just relying on YouTube or Vimeo to get their video out there, they actually send it in the post, and they've got some special cards. They're quite widely available. You can get them on Amazon and from special places and they're video cards. I don't mean a video card in the sense you would think of a video card in a PC. I mean it's actually a greetings card with a video element, upload an MP4 to it and you physically post it out. It's like a mini-player that arrives in the post.

Paul Green: There's so many things that you can do. There's got to be an opportunity for you to integrate direct mail into your business. Maybe you would do it to people at the prospect stage, maybe you'd do it to people that you're just trying to keep in touch with, maybe you'd do it to brand new clients, but somehow there's some imaginative, very, very clever direct mail that you could do, which will give you a massive point of differentiation in an over-saturated market and would also move your relationship with prospects forward, which means you're closer and closer to sitting down with them, talking about taking over their IT support.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green: I have some lovely clients I've been working with for a number of years now, their names are Andrew and Jean, and it's been an absolute pleasure following along, watching them change their business, putting so much more monthly recurring revenue, completely change their relationship with their clients, and remove themselves from the technical delivery. One of the pleasures of that has been watching them automate common problems. And, in fact, I remember having a conversation with them, I think it was about three years ago, where they developed a piece of software internally to just solve problems that were happening again and again and again. And they were mostly Office 365 things where the fixes were were there, but they were hidden somewhere inside Office 365, and they just developed software which made it easier for their tech team to do this. And what it allowed them to do is it meant that level one technicians could do some level two work.

Paul Green: Now, around about a year ago, they realised that this was a set of tools that other MSPs could benefit from, and they went ahead and redesigned all those tools so that it could be sold on to other MSPs. And a few months ago, they launched that tool set and it's called MSP Easy Tools. I don't know technically how it works, but it's a very big bag of tools that just makes life easier for your technicians, but it also gives you the opportunity to generate new revenue streams. And, in fact, Andrew and Jean, they're generating thousands of pounds of monthly recurring revenue using their own tools. For example, one of them is called Prompt Mapper and it allows you to keep drives mapped. Prompt Mapper, if it falls over, it just fixes it.

Paul Green: They have another one which detects email forwarders being set up in either an Outlook or an Outlook Web Access, which obviously is a great security tool. We all know that that's an email hijack entry point, and they have that tool and they sell that tool on to some of their clients. They might use it with all of the clients to help the MSP do its job better, but they sell that on and have reporting for all of their clients. They've put together this whole set of tools and they all either make lives easier for your techs and/or become revenue streams for you. I'm going to put a link in the show notes to MSP Easy Tools. Go and have a look at that because it's one of those things that you think, oh, do you know what? The cost of that is completely justified by X, Y, and Z.

Paul Green: And in fact, the way they've priced it as well is very smart because this is the beauty of buying a toolkit from another MSP is they understand your world. The cost is fixed every single month regardless of how many users you put on, so the opportunity to you is to put this on to as many users as you can, the price never goes up. Have a look in the show notes. Go and have a look at MSP Easy Tools, could be some very nice monthly recurring revenue streams for you there, as well as something to make your staff more efficient and make their lives easier.

Voiceover: The big interview.

Paul Green: We're talking about websites with today's guest. Her name is Louise Towler and she runs a marketing agency in the UK called Indigo Tree. Now, Louise actually works quite closely with a number of my MSP clients, helping them to implement their marketing materials and ensure that they're in touch with their prospects on a daily basis. Now, I wanted her to come on and talk about websites. Louise is a self-confessed geek, she's a coder at heart, and she loves building websites, and I asked her why so many MSPs just went so long with websites that they really didn't love.

Louise Towler: It's quite a high threshold of pain you have to be in before you want to invest in a completely new website, and also a lot of businesses may not actually be aware of how much difference a new website could make. They're not always very methodical about how they're actually measuring whether leads convert into new customers and sales. Sometimes the thought of getting a new one might be just too much, and everybody's really busy in their day-to-day job, so it's very easy just to put it off and put it off until you get to the point where there's a real crunch of something not working or you get some feedback where someone says, "Oh, I really, really don't like it."

Paul Green: You don't get that feedback, do you?

Louise Towler: No.

Paul Green: It's just people go onto your website and they look at it and, three or five seconds later, they have an emotional opinion that, "Oh, this isn't the right one for me." When an MSP has a new website put together or when they're improving their website, what do you think are the most important aspects of that website?

Louise Towler: Oh, I think you've got to have lots of different calls to action. You cannot assume your visitors are like you. A lot of MSPs will be really geeky and technical and, actually, what they should be giving their customers is the peace of mind that they don't have to worry about the technical stuff, making it really easy to communicate, telephones, emails, inquiry forms. But I think, most importantly, what you've got to do is reassure that prospect so that they can get on with their day-to-day business. People often spend a lot of time talking in their own industry jargon without realising that some of their customers just may be something that they don't understand.

Paul Green: I think that's a major problem for MSPs because it is a very technical world and it's full of acronyms. Even MSP is an acronym that the end decision-maker doesn't know about, they don't know what that means. They're just looking for IT support. Most of the websites that you and I have sat down and looked at together in the MSP world have been shocking. There have been pictures of network cables. There's been no real pictures of real humans other than a few stock images. Does it really, in this age of LinkedIn and Facebook being so important, does it really make that much of a difference to have a good natural website that affects people at an emotional level?

Louise Towler: I think that people buy from people. If your target audiences are slightly larger organisations where you're not just always talking to the decision-maker, there might be an issue with a network or a PC and somebody a little bit low down in the organisation is tasked with going and finding a supplier or solution for that. But, actually, when they go back to their boss, their boss might go, "Oh, this company, right, I'll Google them. I'll find out a little bit more about them," and they will land on that website.

Louise Towler: Even if you've been found through an email or LinkedIn or some social marketing, it doesn't mean the decision-maker or the person signing the cheque isn't actually going to check out the company and do some due diligence. And, of course, as an MSP, what you're looking for is organisations who understand the value of their time and don't actually want to be doing it themselves. They don't want to have staff crawling under desks trying to figure out why the network stopped working and make sure that you're actually going to be helping them, not just in that pain point, that hour of need, but also to build that ongoing relationship.

Paul Green: What's more important on a website, really good copy, which is what we call words, or really good images?

Louise Towler: That's an interesting question. I think the images are very important, but for your website to be found, you need to have good words for Google. I think the two actually need to be in balance. If I'm buying a computer or a service from you, I'm actually buying the afters of having something on my desk which is going to be quick or having a network which is going to be reliable. I think it's really important that the words are very reassuring and you don't just talk about the geeky stuff that perhaps people might be searching for in Google.

Paul Green: Thanks, Louise. What's the best way for us to get in touch with you?

Louise Towler: Go on our website, IndigoTree.co.uk and click on the link to email, fill in an inquiry form or give us a call.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. Ask Paul anything.

John: Hi, it's John from Crosstek. We're getting our first van. What kind of branding would you recommend we put on it?

Paul Green: Well, I think the short answer to that is branding with impact. If you're going to have this cost of driving around town and you want people to see your van, then you don't want the van to look like all the other vans. You want it to have massive impact. And I think back to when I used to work in radio where we had promotional vehicles, we had virtually no money to promote the radio station, but we had these promotional vehicles which, at the time, were called black thunders. Oh, that takes me back many, many years, that does. And we would spend as much as we could on the graphics and on the design so that they had the maximum impact. And when you saw two or three of them together, it was amazing. It really felt like the entire radio station was there. And, actually, our entire marketing budget was caught up in three vehicles.

Paul Green: I think, John, you're looking for maximum impact. Absolutely go to a graphic designer, say to them, "I want to wrap this vehicle," depending on what your budget is. You could just have your logo on the side. I would wrap it, I would wrap it, and put it in ... consistent with your branding, something which just stands out a little bit. You could do clever stuff as well. For example, if you're often parking your fan at office blocks where there is more than one floor, so there are people in in upper floors, I would have a sign written on the top, "The IT guys are here." It's not going to generate sales, but you imagine someone in one office looking down and saying, "Blimey, I know we're having IT problems today, but so is someone else because, look, the IT guys are here," because they've seen it on the roof of the car down below in the car park.

Paul Green: There's lots of things that you can do. I think, generally though, impact is your word, and the vinyl technology on vehicles is so good these days, you want it to stand out. Now, your staff may not want to drive that, but the more it stands out, the greater the impact you'll have. One thing just to remember with that is the more standout ability on the vehicle, the better it needs to be driven. I've driven lots of promotional cars over the years in my radio careers, and the ones with subtle branding, you could get away with driving badly. The better the branding and the more it stood out, you had to really be on your best behaviour when driving. It's probably just something to bear in mind, to consider, depending on which of your staff are going to be driving the vans.

Voiceover: How to contribute to the show.

Paul Green: Do you know, actually, earlier in the show, I lied to you. I told you that I had too much email. I don't. I don't have enough email, so why don't you send me an email? Hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com, you could tell me nice things about the show, stuff that you don't like, perhaps recommend a guest, even put yourself up for interview. I'm happy to do that, just drop me an email, hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

Rob Bowden: You can't really turn around to your staff and say, "Well, sorry, guys, we're not getting paid for 60 days on this. Can you wait until the end of next month and we'll pay you double?" It simply doesn't work that way.

Paul Green: That's my friend and specialist MSP accountant, Rob Bowden, and he's going to be talking next week about how not all growth is good growth. In fact, if you grow too fast, you could run out of cash and put your business in considerable danger. We're also going to be talking next week about the beauty of something called the profit matrix. It's the one guaranteed way to grow the monthly recurring revenue in your business.

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

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In this week's episode * It may sound drastic, but getting rid of one of your worst clients could be transformational for your business. Paul's done it and the results were ASTONISHING * How are your sales team selling? Special guest Scott Tyson of Auvik talks about how to increase revenue by adopting a simple sales process, how to trust your team and when it's time to walk away from a potential customer * Also in this episode, there's a brilliant question answered about how to reach business owners on Facebook... details of a video service for MSP websites... and Paul explains how you can link personal goals to your business goals

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Here's the website for the service MSP Videos, that produces excellent video content for websites * The special guest talking about how to run a world-class sales operation is Scott Tyson of Auvik who also mentioned Sandler sales training and the Frankly MSP podcast * Thanks to Murray Thorpe from network and AV solutions specialist Cablers Ltd for the question about reaching business owners on Facebook * Here's the link to Paul's Facebook group for MSP Marketing * Find out more about the Pareto Principle (the 80/20 Rule) Paul mentioned * Next week's guest will be Louise Towler of IndigoTree, who will be explain the essential ingredients for a great website * The email address for show feedback or any questions is hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul: Here's a look at what's coming up on this week's show.

Scott Tyson: There's no good going into a Mercedes dealership looking for a sports car and the guy comes out and says, "I've got this great station wagon for you to buy."

Paul: We're also going to look at how the actions that you take or don't take every single day directly affect the lifestyle that you have. And I've got a question from an MSP owner about how to reach business decision makers on Facebook.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul: Now some will see this as controversial. You should fire more clients. And my reasoning for that is the 80/20 rule. Basically, input and output aren't equal. And it was Alfredo Pareto who was an Italian economist and I think in the 19th century, and he one day standing on his balcony, probably having an ice cream or Cornetto, and he looked out and he realised that 80% of the peas in his garden came from 20% of the pea pods. And being an economist he went off and looked into landownership and realised that at that point 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. And this is where the 80/20 rule comes from, the Pareto Principle. 80% of the hassle in your business comes from 20% of the clients, and you can do 20% within themselves. If you've got a hundred clients, 20 clients, who create most of the hassle, 20% of that 20% are the real hassle ones, which is of course four people.

Paul: So the majority of the hassle in your business comes from four clients, if you've got a hundred clients, does that make sense? Most business owners in fact just get a bit scared of firing clients because all we see is the loss of revenue. But what we don't see is the impact of that revenue. In the last business I had where I had lots of staffers, I had 15 staff in a marketing business which I sold in 2016, and we had one particular client called Steve. Steve was that client that when his name came up on the VoIP phone, you literally felt the whole atmosphere drop in the office. People were looking at each other to see who was going to pick up the phone and no one wanted to speak to him, because Steve was just wholly unreasonable. It wasn't so much what he was asking for is the way he was asking and everything was difficult and nothing was never good enough for him. You know that because you've probably got a client like that too.

Paul: I was so removed from doing day to day work for the clients by this point of the business's history that I wasn't feeling the Steve pain, but my staff were. Two or three of them mentioned this over a couple of weeks and then I fired Steve, so I fired the client. The effect on my staff was amazing, it was like the whole office just suddenly came up again. Suddenly they felt that I had really got their back. So I was their leader, I was their boss, I was the owner of the business, but they felt like I had got their back. And actually if you look at how human psychology works, because we are all programmed with a hundred thousand year old programming in our brains. And so a hundred thousand years ago we lived in a cave as part of a tribe and there was a tribe leader. And our whole psychology is based around that leader protecting us and us helping that leader.

Paul: What we have today in our office is the same psychological setup as we had living in caves a hundred thousand years ago. So when the leader fires someone, which is the same as the leader slaying a dragon, of course everyone feels a lot closer to the leader. What was interesting was that that revenue from Steve, it was about eighteen thousand pounds. That revenue from Steve was replaced within a week. Because of course suddenly my team had so much more time to do stuff, they weren't sitting around being unhappy doing stuff for Steve or whingeing about Steve. They were just getting on with doing it and we replaced that revenue very quickly. So my challenge to you as we start to hurtle towards Christmas is wouldn't it be a great Christmas present for your team if you said to them, "Do you know what? For Christmas I'm going to fire the client that you all hate the most." And you probably know who that's going to be and you'll probably know the revenue impact.

Paul: But could you imagine what a great Christmas present that would be for your staff to be able to fire the person that they hate the most? Also, what affect is that going to have on your retention in January? People have some time off over Christmas and they come back to work in January and they think, "I don't want to do this anymore." What a great motivator for people to have their worst client fired just before they go off, they have a little bit of a break. It's going to affect your retention in a positive way in January. So, fire a bad client for Christmas, let your staff decide who it's going to be, take the revenue impact on the nose. You will replace the revenue, the business will be easier to grow, everyone will have a better life apart from the client you fired. They're probably used to being fired by suppliers all the time because if they're rude to you, they're probably rude to everyone.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul: One of my lifetime habits is getting up really early in the morning and working on the business. Early in my life I was a radio presenter. I did 13 years in media, 10 of them on the radio. And for many of those years I was working in some capacity on breakfast shows, either reading the news or actually doing the breakfast show in the morning. It got me, kind of late teens, early twenties developed this habit of getting up at four in the morning and that hurts. That's painful. But when I started a business in 2005 I translated that into getting up at five in the morning. And the reason I did that was not because I couldn't sleep, but because I was so keen to build that business. I knew exactly what I wanted to achieve with it and I knew that that was going to chew up a whole load of time. And pretty much since then, I only do it four days a week now, I do it Monday to Thursdays. I get up at five in the morning and I work on my business.

Paul: Not in, so no emails, no social media, no paying invoices, admins, because that's working in the business. No, doing the delivery work and working on the business is things that get you more new clients. Things that get those clients to buy from you more often and things that get your clients to spend more every single time they buy. Now what's interesting is, if I look at everything I've achieved in the last, what is it 14 years business wise, I don't consider myself particularly smart. I don't consider myself to be more switched on than the average business owner. I've met a lot more smarter operators than me. Everything I've achieved in the last 14 years, which is building up a business from nothing to over a million turnover, selling that business and then obviously what I'm doing now with MSPs and IT support companies, it's all come down to 90 minutes a day. .

Paul: And that's really my big idea. My clever idea for today is that if you think about the lifestyle that you want to live and what you want to achieve with your life, it's the stuff that you do every day that directly gets you there. And I have a lovely diagram that I do with my clients. Get a sheet of paper or flip chart or something and you right at the top the life stuff that you want to achieve. For me right now I'm moving house so I just want a bigger house and there are specific things I want in that house. I want the gravel driveway and I want to a place where I can park a Tesla model S next to that house and a, specific charging points. And I could get the Tesla now, but it's the Tesla and the house together are a vision in my head.

Paul: There's some of the life stuff regarding holidays and lifestyle and stuff as well. Now all of that life stuff has to be funded by my businesses. So the next step underneath the lifestyle goals is to write down the business goals. We can all make a bit more net profit by cutting costs and doing things on the cheap. But I mean sustainable long term net profit that will exist year in, year out. So already now I've directly linked my lifestyle to how the business performs. If your business is going well, you're mentally and physically happy and healthy, and when business is bad, you know you've been there. When business is bad, everyone knows about it. And as much as you try not to take it home, you do, you can't help but do it. Then if we come down the line, we come down to strategy.

Paul: So for an MSP would be increasing monthly recurring revenue and getting onboard new clients, and the strategies are right for most MSPs. And then you come down to the tactical stuff and the tactical stuff is the stuff that people always want to jump into, and that's where you'd look at getting new clients would be LinkedIn, it might be Facebook, it might be going to events, it might be networking if you can handle it, increasing monthly recurring revenue would be about strategic reviews with clients. It would be about finding more services to sell. It would be using the profit matrix, which I'm going to cover off in a future edition of the podcast, et cetera, et cetera. And then the final thing at the bottom is what do I do every day? And this is how I filled my 90 minutes every morning for the last 14 years.

Paul: It's having a bit of paper like that and saying, okay, my 90 minutes this morning is going to be implementing and executing some of the tactics. The tactics of course support the strategy, the strategy supports the goals and the goals support the lifestyle that I want. And you can draw a direct line from the stuff that you're doing every single morning directly up to the lifestyle that you want to live. In fact, you kind of have to, because that's the direct link. We don't realise when we have these big lifestyle goals, this, "Oh, I'd love, I'd love to go to so and so next year for, for a couple of weeks. That would be great." Or, "I wish I could do this." You can do anything. But you've got to link it down to the actions that you take every day. This podcast is a really important way for me to reach MSPs around the world and this podcast is, is a difficult thing for me to do.

Paul: It's two hours of recording time every week, I'm spending money on editing and hosting and all that kind of stuff, but I do it because the action of doing this podcast over that period of time will help me to reach my lifestyle goals. It really is as simple as that. So whenever you can find time every day, whenever that is, and 60 preferably 90 even better, 120 minutes every single day to do stuff working on the business, and it's implementing tactical stuff that supports the strategy, that supports the goal, that ultimately gets you the things you want in your life.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul: So this is one for my listeners in the UK and it's about getting more prospects engaging with you faster. The easiest way to do that is with video. For 2019 video is the engagement tool to use. Now, you personally may not like watching videos from businesses, but you have to remember not everyone is like you. And many people will happily sit and watch a good 60 to maybe 70 second video when it's on a website.

Paul: So we have a service called MSP Videos and the URL is mspvideos.co.uk. It is only in the UK at the moment because it is a joint venture between me and my very good friend Darren Wingham. Now Darren, what makes him good is he's a storyteller. So for example, we've just produced some videos for one of the MSP, one of the IT support companies I'm working with and he's filmed their clients talking about the MSP. So the video that goes onto their homepage will not be the MSP talking about themselves. It will be the MSP's clients talking about how good the MSP is. What a great point of differentiation. And Darren's gone out and he's told a story in that video. So if you would like that kind of thing for your business, go to mspvideos.co.uk.

Paul: You can see all the details. You can see some sample videos. You can see Darren, I think I'm on there as well and you can contact Darren and you can chat to him about getting that done for your website. Now if whether you use Darren or not, and certainly if you're outside of the UK, you need videos on your website, so there are two types of videos. There's the one that goes on your website which is the professional polished version. That's, if you like, the sampler of your business, better as I say to get the clients talking about you than you talking about you. But then on social media you don't need polished videos. That's where you can be literally you just talking to your mobile phone. The more video you can do, the better engagement you'll have with the prospects and it's building a relationship with them. Because down the line some of those people who are engaging with your videos today will become the clients of the future.

Voiceover: The big Interview.

Paul: I live in a new city in the middle of the UK, which is called Milton Keynes. 10 minutes from my home, completely by chance is the UK and EMEA office of Auvik Networks. And I came across Auvik Networks in January when they actually interviewed me for their podcast, which is called Frankly MSP. It's a great podcast by the way, you should go in and seek that one out. It's one of the best MSP podcasts there is. And a couple of weeks ago I just nipped over to the offices to interview this guy.

Scott Tyson: So my name is Scott Tyson. I'm the managing director of Auvik Networks. I look out for all the business that's in the EMEA region.

Paul: You've made a career out of running sales teams, growing businesses, and most MSPs really struggle with this. So if they're in front of someone, it's easy because you can talk with passion and with knowledge. The difficulty they have is getting enough leads and just getting enough sales. And when they start taking on sales teams, often there's a feeling of what are my sales people doing? Am I being mugged off?

Scott Tyson: It's a very common thing to feel that way. It depends on the people you bring in. It depends on the induction and the training that you give and it depends on the support that you give on a day to day basis. So I'm dead against micromanagement. I never liked it myself as a young sales guy coming through and I never performed well under that type of management structure. So I guess you mirror what way the success that you've had. And the success I had was giving people enough tools, giving them support, knowing that you're there and being able to support them. And you will have a better performing sales team.

Paul: I guess it's also about having the right KPIs in place.

Scott Tyson: The simple KPI or the first KPI you've got to have is here's your revenue target. After that is how many leads need to come in, give us this many SQLs, that many SQLs give us this many demos. And it goes through the pipeline all the way out to verbal approval for a sale. We know all the numbers that we need to hit in order to hit that number at the end of the month. So here at Auvik we have a BDR team, the BDR team, get those leads into OTLs, which has over the line. So that means a demo with our sales team, the sales team then take that through a process of discovery, demo, trial and closure. Don't forget though that closer can also mean you're not a right fit for us, let's move on to the next one. From a sales perspective, you do hold onto leads for as long as you possibly can before you repo them. We're trying to make it an environment here where if you know that sales is not going to happen, you abandon it and you go on with the next one.

Paul: So you know if we get a hundred leads coming in and our funnel continues to be efficient and operates as it should do, then that would generate 20 sales at the bottom of it.

Scott Tyson: Yep, that's exactly right. It used to be the old hundred, ten, one formula. Remember you used to get a hundred leads come in, you'd get ten to an SQL level, sales qualified lead level and one of them would close. Now, we all know that's a very simplistic formula, so what we do here at Auvik is really look at the numbers every day, every week, every month to make sure that that cadence is actually accurate to what the number is that we need to hit for our growth trajectory as well as feeding our sales team. You know, the last thing you want is a sales team sitting there on their hands, not doing anything.

Scott Tyson: The best performing sales team are always busy, are always looking for the close. The other thing I really want to emphasise, and I say this a lot now with the sales people coming in is, it's not wrong and it's not dirty to ask for a close. It's not an ugly word, that close word. You know, you can ask for the sale. And I guess that's one thing that I try and help with my teams that I've worked with and it's certainly what we're trying to do here at Auvik now globally, is to make sure our sales team know to ask for the close.

Paul: Do you teach your sales teams specific strategies and tactics? Or do you just teach them to be good listeners?

Scott Tyson: And that's a really good point Paul actually because one of the things that we all do as salespeople is eventually go through some form of sales methodology. I'm Sandler trained, so I'm very much a David Sandler person that I love following the submarine and so forth. That's the way I do it. One of the things that we are really emphasising here at Auvik is having a methodology. Regardless of what methodology it is, making sure you've got one. And that means discovery, discovery, discovery, discovery, discovery, I don't want people just selling features and benefits. Gone are the days, there's no good going into a Mercedes dealership looking for a sports car and the guy comes out and says, "I've got this great station wagon for you to buy." I'm not after station wagon, I'm going to walk out. So I want people to ask, "Why are you looking at Auvik? What can we do to help you?" Just asking all these questions and then we can show whether Auvik's a fit or not.

Scott Tyson: And again, it's not a dirty word to say, you know what? It's not the right product. We can move on. We're getting enough leads into to be able to do that. The biggest thing is listen, listen, listen and sell to what that customer's points are. Then you've got a better chance of closing that sale.

Paul: What support do you give to the MSPs that are your clients to help them sell your product into their end decision makers?

Scott Tyson: That's probably the best question. I've been with a number of IT companies in my career, and I have to say that Auvik as a vendor is probably the best company I've seen that gives tools to be able to assist our MSP customers of how to sell their companies, in general, to their customers. We've spoken about our Frankly MSP Podcast, it gives tactics and abilities. You do a fantastic one yourself where you're trying to help MSPs become better business people.

Scott Tyson: What we do as a vendor, we have a lot of tools, a lot of documents. We have a set of documents called a Prospect Pitch and Sell Bible, if you will, and what that does is shows MSPs how to go out and sell their companies. And that gives them the ability of becoming business people as opposed to techies that have fallen into the world of MSP. And all the MSPs I know of, have really engaged in and embraced that information because that information is freely available. People have done it, people have got the scars and so forth. You use the experience that's out there and that'll help grow your business.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast. Ask Paul anything.

Murray: Hi, I'm Murray Thorpe from the Cablers. I was just wondering if you can give me some advice on how to reach business owners on Facebook.

Paul: Thanks Murray. There is some debate about this. Can you reach business owners on Facebook? I believe you can, although LinkedIn is a better platform for reaching people just because it is the business platform. I think Facebook has a certain level of engagement. As I said earlier about videos, if you're not into videos you can't assume other people are. It's the same thing. I know many IT people really hate Facebook. They're on it kind of just because you know, Facebook is not going to go away as a platform. It may, but they will own the next platforms. Because they already have Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and all of these other things. So I think the best way to reach business owners on Facebook is primarily to try and attack them in their downtime. Someone who is sat at work during the day, who has a great gatekeeper who isn't letting you through, their guard is down in the evenings and their guard is down at the weekends. And that's the time to reach people.

Paul: So I would focus on primarily two things. Number one is organic reach. Facebook pages are okay and you need a Facebook page because it's one of the default things you have to have to be in business. Like having a website. But the algorithm that Facebook has has put less focus on Facebook pages over the last couple of years in favour of Facebook groups. Now if you operate within a certain vertical, then a Facebook group is an absolute must have. I have my MSP Marketing Facebook group, which you're welcome to join. Just go into Facebook, type in at the top MSP Marketing and go to groups and you'll see it and join it. For verticals, if let's say you worked with accountants or CPAs as they're called in America, you would start a technology for accountants Facebook group or email hijack advice for accountants or some. So something like that.

Paul: And then you can see the more relevant it is to someone, the more likely they are to do something. So that's quite hard to pull off in a geographical area. Because business owners in certain area, they don't identify with that as much as they identify with the thing that they do. So that's the kind of the organic thing, groups and pages and then it's about posting regular content. Groups, you have to just keep content coming every day. I mean even now, and I've got well over 500 people, all MSPs in my Facebook group, I still every day, well four, five days a week put content on because it keeps the engagement. The trick with all of these is the more they engage with you, the more they see your stuff in their timeline. Because very few people go to these groups or go to your page, but your content appears in their timeline, in their feed.

Paul: The more they engage with it, the more they see of it, the more they see of it, the more they engage with it. Facebook has this figured out perfectly. So when someone stops looking so much at your content, they see less of your content. It's why you have to keep the engagement levels very high. I think the real opportunity for MSPs and IT support companies though is Facebook ads. Because you could just pay to reach people, ironically, it's really hard to reach owners, business owners of MSPs on Facebook. But if I was running your business, I would find it very easy to reach the people I want to reach. Accountants, lawyers, dentists, all the kind of people you want to reach, very easy. You just type in dentists and you set the filtering in Facebook ads to dentists, business owner. I wouldn't say it's easy use, but he's not difficult either. It's just a little bit clunky.

Paul: You put a picture up, which you can use a stock image if you must, or a video and you just write some texts. And when you know you're talking to owners of dental practices it's so much easier to put the right message in front of them. It really is. I think in terms of what content you would use. Well look at it this way, imagine it was dating. We don't ask people to get married straight away. Maybe we do in Vegas, but in the rest of the world we don't do that. So it's the same in business. Picking an MSP is a major emotional decision because they are trusting you with all the stuff which can destroy their business. This is why the sales cycle is so slow for MSP sales. So I personally wouldn't just do a straight out and out advert of here's us, this is our name, this is our address, we do IT.

Paul: You might get some traffic to your website off of that, but I don't think you'll get much interest. I would focus on building audiences and getting people to connect to you on LinkedIn. Yes, you can send them from Facebook to LinkedIn. If you can't do a direct link, you can do it via diversion on your website. So, I would focus on getting them to do that or getting them to join a Facebook group, if you've got one. Again, you can't advertise directly a Facebook group link, but you just fudge it. You just send them off to your website and then your website redirects them to the Facebook group. Or even just in joining your email list and downloading a report or a book that you've written or something like that. And look for engagement because the very best clients and the best opportunities come when you get people to join an audience and then you educate them over a period of time. Because the best sales come from getting the right message in front of the right person at exactly the right time and Facebook is just a tool to start that conversation.

Paul: That's all it is, but it's a very powerful way of doing it.

Voiceover: How to contribute to the show.

Paul: So you can reach me easily via my email address. It's hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com. You can also come and join me on my Facebook group, I mentioned this earlier. Just open your Facebook app, type in at the top MSP Marketing, go into groups, and there I am, right at the top, the MSP Marketing Group. Just tap on to join and I will add you in within a few hours. And I'm in that Facebook group seven days a week. It's really easy to ask me stuff there and interact with me there.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

Louise Towler: It's really important that the words are very reassuring and you don't just talk about the geeky stuff that perhaps people might be searching for in Google.

Paul: We're also going to be talking about the power of taking it offline, using direct mail and physical print to try and get more prospects and ultimately more clients for your MSP.

Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

View Details

In this week's episode * MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) forms a CRITICAL part of your business, Paul tells you about two great services that could be an easy re-sell * It's time to stop selling the same way to different people. Special guest Andy Edwards helps you to sell more effectively, by understanding the 4 main personality types. Every prospect fits into one of the types * Also in this episode, there's a brilliant question answered about the type of video to put on your website... details of some free marketing lunches to help boost your business... and Paul explains how a good work / life balance is easily achievable

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Check out the book Paul mentioned called "The Top Five Regrets of the Dying" * Here's a link to get Paul Green's book "Updating Servers Doesn't Grow Your Business" * Find out about the productivity and monitoring service Activtrak here * Visit uptimerobot.com for employee monitoring * Details on the FREE marketing lunches are right here * The special guest talking about the 4 different personality types was speaker, coach and trainer Andy Edwards. The website about the 4 personality types is Yoo or you can visit Andy's personal site here * Thanks to Jamie Seviour from IT support and consultants Geeking It Simple for the question about the type of video to have on your website * Next week's guest will be Scott Tyson of Auvik, who will be explaining how to systemise sales for greater revenue * The email address for show feedback or any questions is hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the U.K. for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green: Here's what's coming up on this week's show.

Andy Edwards: Be brief, be bright, be gone. Recognise those four different personality styles, and your sales will go up.

Paul Green: Plus, we'll be looking at two monthly recurring revenue services that you really should be selling, and asking what kind of video content works best on your website?

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green: Hi. This is Paul Green, and welcome to the show. Now, what I'm about to tell you I don't want you to judge me on this. I'm not telling you this to boast. I'm not telling you this for any other reason than I want to help you to get away from your business a little bit more.

Paul Green: You see, my nine-year-old daughter, Matilda, and I, we've just been sitting down planning out what holidays do we want to have next year. Now, I am a single parent, and that means that for about 10 weeks of the year, she's my problem and not the school's problem. And I don't mind that, really.

Paul Green: But for around about six to seven of those weeks next year, in 2020, I want to be on holiday. It's been a longstanding goal of mine, actually, to not work at all in the six weeks of the U.K. summer holiday that we have every year. I don't think we'll do that next year, but the year after we'll definitely do that and we'll go somewhere like Sydney, or somewhere hot, and kind of go and live in another country just for six weeks.

Paul Green: The reason we were looking at holidays next year and the reason we're doing it at this time, is partly because, obviously, you can get better deals if you book further ahead. But partly as well is, I want to lock into my diary: We are going away to these places, and these become like the building blocks that I put work around next year.

Paul Green: So, we're looking at two to three weeks in Orlando at the start of August. It's going to be very expensive, but it's going to be worth it because she's never been, and she's of that age if we don't do it now, in a couple of years time she might be a little bit too old to hang out with me for three weeks in Orlando.

Paul Green: We're going to do that, and then off the back of the summer holidays we're going to go to Pompeii. She has a real passion for seeing lots of ancient dead people, which is a bit weird, but we're going to go to Pompeii, a bit of a European tour. We've got we're going back to Cypress in there for next year, and we've probably got some visiting the south coast of the U.K. And there's another holiday we have yet to decide.

Paul Green: I'm not telling you this to boast about, "Oh, look how many holidays I'm having." This is all about putting life in perspective, and I love my work, I really love my work, and the work that I do with MSPs I do for fun first, and I do it for income second. If ever it switches around to the other way, that I'm doing it for the money, I will lose my passion for it.

Paul Green: I know, because I've been a business owner since 2005; and any of us that have had a business for a while, we know what it's like to lose the passion. I realised a long time ago that you've got to put the life stuff in first, so we book many weekends ahead. We have so many trips, and shows, and events, and plays, and cinema events and all sorts of stuff, and they all go in. Things like Sports Day, parents' evenings, and that whole, you know, "Daddy, can you come and see me in assembly?" That all goes in the diary.

Paul Green: The work stuff is very much secondary to the life stuff, and I believe that's the balance that most business owners get wrong. Most business owners are there for the business, and actually it should be the other way around: that the point of the business is to be there for you. I see this in the IT world so much, because of course the very nature of running an MSP is that it's a reactive job, isn't it? You're reacting to other people's problems, and no matter how proactive you are, there's always something broken.

Paul Green: But I think this is how you fall out of love of your business so quickly, when the business sucks the best of your life out of you. It happens to me now and again, but most days I get home and I'm looking forward to seeing my daughter, and we have some fun together. It might just be baking a cake, or just doing a little craft project, or even just sitting reading. Well, I read, she plays Minecraft, but you get the idea. The point is, we're together. And I remember back earlier years in different businesses, when I was so tired because I'd done a twelve-hour day and I hadn't had enough sleep the night before. I'd got home and, you know, I could barely look at my family I was so tired. I just wanted wine.

Paul Green: That's not a great life. We have to go through that sometimes, for a short while, to get to where we want to be. Life is about life. Life is not about business. The curse of the business owner is that we forget that. We get the balance wrong. Not all of us, but many of us. I could see that I would ever so easily go back to that, because it's fun growing a business and running a business, and you can throw yourself into it. But it's not what life is about.

Paul Green: There's a book that I've recommended to thousands of MSPs over the years, and it's not a very well-written book but it's got an interesting message. It's called, The Five Regrets of Dying People. Just go and look it up on Amazon. To be honest, you don't need to read the book. I'm going to give you the 30-second summary. That's enough. The lady that wrote it is a palliative care nurse. She looked after so many people at the end of their lives in Australia, and she realised that their regrets could be grouped into some very same groups.

Paul Green: The one that hit me the most is, "I missed my children's youth." Apparently, no one misses their children as adults, but they miss their kids when they're young. You get ones like, "I missed my partner's company." Not your business partner. No one misses their business partner at the end of their life. But, "I wish I'd done more of the stuff I wanted to do." You get the idea. So, you're not going to be on your deathbed and look back and wish that you'd fixed more servers, or you'd done more Windows 7 to Windows 10 updates. This is just stuff that has to be done, but it's not the stuff that you look back and think, "Oh, yeah."

Paul Green: In fact, this is why I called my book, Updating Servers Doesn't Grow Your Business, and if you don't have a copy of that book, just go onto the website. The link is in the show notes, and you can see that. So, a challenge for you then, and maybe it's to sit down with your family, maybe it's your kids, maybe even if it's just you, to just sit down with you and say, "Well, what do I want to do next year? What holidays do I want to take? What events do I want to go to?" You know, "Oh, I'd love to have a four-day weekend in New York or Paris." Or something like that.

Paul Green: Put it in the diary, make the work stuff work around it. Because when it's in the diary and you've booked it and you've paid for it, or at least paid the deposit, it is then going to happen. That was a trick I discovered. That's why we plan so far ahead. We put it in the diary, we book it with a travel counsellor person, we pay the deposit. It's then in. I'm not going to break that. I'm not going to have anything work-wise that's going to break that. And suddenly you've had an amazing, enormous year, and that's because you prioritised the right stuff. Life stuff first, business stuff second.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: The very best thing about running an MSP is, of course, the huge amounts of monthly recurring revenue. There are literally so very few businesses out there, outside of subscription businesses, that have just such enormous amounts of monthly recurring revenue. In the weeks ahead, I'm just going to drop in a whole load of different suppliers, many of them you'll have heard of, some of them, perhaps, you'll have looked at but not considered it. So, as I meet with MSPs and we talk about what they're reselling, I will sort of share those with you.

Paul Green: I've got two for you today. They're not obvious ones. They're fairly small ones, but they fit into your product offering so that as you're doing strategic reviews and you're talking to people, when they say, "Oh, we've got a problem with XYZ," or "We need this," or "We want this," you've got something that you can say, "Hey, do you know what? We might be able to help you with that."

Paul Green: The first of them is something called, "ActivTrak," and I'll put the URL in the show notes. What this does is, this is a bit of software that goes onto their PC and it essentially monitors their activities. Now, it's positioned as a tool for productivity. We can also see ... and I think it's kind of pretty obviously designed for monitoring what employees are doing. So, for someone who's got problem employees, or perhaps they're doing stuff on their computer that they really shouldn't be ... They shouldn't be on Facebook, they shouldn't be doing this, and your client would love to know what they're doing. Or it's maybe a performance issue. Then ActivTrak can be installed, and I'm told it's very hard to detect that it's running in the background unless you know specifically what it is that you're going to look for. So, that's the first one.

Paul Green: The second one is something called uptimerobot.com. Now again, this isn't a standard MSP offering, but even though you maybe have nothing to do with the web, you do computers, and as far as the clients are concerned computers and websites are the same things. So it's a fairly sensible thing is to offer a series of low-impact, high margin tools that support websites, and Uptime Robot will give you an alert when someone's website is down.

Paul Green: So, you could set this up in a number of different ways. There is a free plan. I believe there are premium plans, as well. You could set this up to notify the Helpdesk. You could set this up to just come into one of your systems and use some kind of automation to perhaps send that straight out to the client. I guess it depends on whether you're involved in the serving of the files, or not.

Paul Green: But again, you know, it's another five pounds per month per client. You get 10 clients on that, it's another 50 pounds, 50 dollars, 100 dollars, whatever. And it's money for nothing. You're providing a service to them that they didn't know existed. Yes, they could go and get this themselves, but how many of the clients actually do that. It's a very small number.

Paul Green: You should be looking out for all sorts of stuff. Where is there something I could find, which is very low cost, there's some good margin on that, and it's very low impact on the business? And how could I resell that to my clients? Because do you know what? For many of them, I'm going to be doing them a massive favour.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green: This one's for my listeners in the U.K., because they are physical events that I'm putting on around the U.K. Maybe we'll go international with them at some point, but certainly for this year, they're just within the United Kingdom.

Paul Green: There's some free MSP marketing lunches. I've got a whole series of case studies, five case studies about growing your net profit. In one instance, it's about growing your net profit by up to 200%. At these three-hour MSP marketing lunches, I show you some case studies, I play some videos, I reveal what other MSPs are doing and how powerful it is, and it's a whole bunch of stuff that you can copy into your MSP.

Paul Green: In fact, it's the results of a whole series of experiments that I've been doing with loads of MSPs over a period of time: I would say more than around about 150 marketing net profit growth experiments. A load of them didn't produce results. I'm not going to tell you about those. I'm going to show you the ones that did work, and in three hours just basically give you a whole series of new tools very heavily geared around, "How do you get more clients?" Because that's the single biggest question I get from MSPs. There's also a whole load of stuff about selling more monthly recurring revenue, particularly using things like the profit matrix, using videos. All of that kind of stuff.

Paul Green: So, in the show notes you can see the link to go and have a look at this on my website. I've got events around the U.K. up until just before Christmas, and we will do some more next year as well in some different locations. Go and have a look at that, and if you're in the U.K., I would love to buy you lunch. I'd love to meet with you, and show you more of about how you can grow the net profitability of your MSP.

Voiceover: The big interview.

Paul Green: So, have I got a real treat for you with this week's guest, because a couple of weeks ago I met up with a very good friend of mine in London. His name is Andy Edwards.

Andy Edwards: I am a speaker, a trainer, and a coach, all that stuff you might expect of somebody like me. Recently, I've gotten into behavioural psychology, the idea that people are different and should be treated as such. I'm one of those people that hates the idea that we should all be treated the same.

Paul Green: From a sales and a marketing point of view, this is a very powerful concept. But you don't have to learn 50 or 60 different types of people. You can actually narrow it down to four.

Paul Green: I had lunch with Andy. We sat in an outdoors restaurant just near Tower Bridge, actually. It was a very sunny day, it was very lovely, and I asked Andy about the mistakes that we make when we're trying to sell to people. I said to him, "Surely one of the biggest mistakes that we make is believing that other people buy things, buy services, in the same way that we buy."

Andy Edwards: It is a mistake. I suppose, at a point, we recognise that money has to exchange hands no matter what circumstances you're in. Behavioural psychology suggests that if somebody is more extroverted than introverted, they will make a decision based on a little bit more intuition. Whereas somebody who is a little bit more introverted may base their decision a little bit more through their senses, on logical, pragmatic ideas.

Andy Edwards: Then you couple th at with the idea of some people are head first rather than heart first, and of course it's the other way around. So, we get four basic positions: somebody whom I like to call the "red" style. Now this is somebody who wants to get things done, sort things out, at a pace, preferably their pace; and if you've got an issue, here's a tissue. Off you go. That sort of person wants to do a deal. Give them a couple of options, let them feel in charge, let them get on with it, and be brief, be bright, be gone. And get out of there.

Andy Edwards: If you try that with their opposite type, this is what I call the "green" type, you will fail. They will run away. They'll just nod, say "thank you very much," and you'll never hear from them again. With this sort of person, who is more introverted and more heart-based, the green style of person you need to make sure that they feel comfortable. So, bring up the idea that other people have done this, other people like them have done this, and bring out your testimonials. Those things will convince Mr. or Mrs. Green that you are genuine, you have their best interests at heart, and they want to deal with you.

Andy Edwards: Now we look at somebody who's a bit like me. This is what I call the "yellow" style: extroverted and heart based, feeling based. This person wants to get on with you. Make sure that you them in the process, get them to tell their story. You could almost let them sell to themselves. Just ask them a few questions around what they're going to be using your services and your products for, and they will literally talk themselves into what they're looking for. Make sure that you team up with that sort of person, validate their ideas, get excited with them, and they'll love you forever.

Andy Edwards: Do that with their opposite style, and you'll never see them again. This is what I call the "blue" style: this is introverted and thinking. This person will take decisions at a slower pace. They may be a little bit more concerned about the detail behind what you're suggesting. "Have you any proof? How do we know? Can I research that? What does it look like?" And will make sure that they've got all the information they need in order to make that decision. Recognise those four different personality styles, and your sales will go up.

Paul Green: But when you're sitting down with a prospect, how do you, in that moment, differentiate between those different styles of people?

Andy Edwards: Are they talking? If they are, they're probably extroverted. What are they talking about? Things? That's head first. Feelings? That's heart first. If they are listening more carefully, with more quizzical looks on their faces, then we've probably got somebody a little bit more introverted. Again, we can now look at, are they thinking about things that are process, proof, reliability? Or are they thinking about things that are more heart-based. You can work this out very easily if you just bear in mind, extroverted or introverted. Are they talking about things or people? That will lead you to one of the four personality styles.

Paul Green: Andy, thank you. Where can we learn a little bit more about you?

Andy Edwards: Check out my website. It's: www.andyedwards.biz.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast. Ask Paul anything.

Jamie: Hi. I'm Jamie Seviour from Geeking It Simple. My question would be, what sort of content should I put into a video for my website?

Paul Green: Great question, Jamie. Thank you very much for that. It's a great question, because video is the number one engagement tool that you've got, actually on your website and also on your social media. There are lots of different videos that you could be using. In a future episode of the podcast, we'll look at videos for social media. Sort of low-level, easy, cheap consumption videos, the kind of videos you can just knock those out. We'll come on to those in the future.

Paul Green: In terms of what video should be going onto your website, that's where you need to spend a little bit of time, a little bit of money. You see, what a video allows you to do is to massively differentiate yourself from all the other MSPs out there. There are too many MSPs, because anyone can be an MSP. There's no barrier to entry. You can just set up in your bedroom and say, "Hey, it's a tech support firm."

Paul Green: So, you're up against bedroom warriors, you're up against super MSPs, you're up against all of those kind of things. Quite often when I'm working with someone, I'll look at their website, and I'll look at their direct competitors' websites, and they're the same. They've got the same kind of cluttery, nothingness, meaningless language and words. They've got the same acronyms. They're all partners of this vendor and that vendor. They've all got the same pictures of network cables, and technicians, stock photos, all of that kind of stuff.

Paul Green: Decision-makers, your owners and your managers that you want to reach: they don't know a good MSP from a bad MSP, so they can't make a cognitive decision about which MSP to choose. Because when you don't know about something it's impossible to compare, so they are making emotional decisions. They are picking or rejecting MSPs based on how they feel, so then when they go and look at all the websites and they look at five websites and they all seem the same, it just adds to the confusion. "Samey" kills sales.

Paul Green: So, this is why you need to differentiate as much as you can, and a video is the number one tool for doing that. Imagine if someone came into your website, and the very first thing they see is a video, a great big video, it takes up the top half of the home page and you hit them with 60-70 seconds of emotional content.

Paul Green: The best kind of content you can use is actually not you. We certainly don't want to see technicians. We don't want to see people under tables. We don't want to see bum crack. We don't want to see servers. We don't want to see blinking lights. We don't want to see network cables. We don't want to see software. All of that stuff. Because that doesn't affect people at an emotional level.

Paul Green: What we want to see: real people talking about real things that are relevant to the audience that you want to reach, and that relevance is the key to making your marketing incredibly powerful. The more relevant the content is, the better the response that you'll get. So, what's the most relevant real kind of video content? It's actually your clients. This is where you should spend a little bit of money and spend some time.

Paul Green: You want to get a video person, not a geek, a tech who's got very nice camera equipment, because it's not about your tripod and your shutter rate, it's about storytelling. So, you want to find a video person who is a storyteller first, and secondly is good at the technical side. Because once you understand the story you want to tell, the technical side becomes a lot easier. The story we want to tell is one, or maybe two, of your clients talking about you. This will be so powerful: to get your clients introducing your company.

Paul Green: They might be interviewed on screen. They wouldn't be looking at the camera, they'd be looking off camera and they'd say things like, "Well, the thing I love most about working with (your company name) is how easy they are to work with, and how our IT just doesn't go wrong anymore." Even with that five second sentence, your client has just won you more clients, because it's a very powerful psychological marketing principle and it's called "social proof."

Paul Green: You'll have heard of this, where most people prefer to do what most other people are doing. The reason we act like this is because we've still got the programing that we had a hundred thousand years ago. And when we lived in caves, and there were dinosaurs that wanted to eat us, then it was more comfortable to be with other people. If you saw 20 people running, you just ran, because there was probably a saber-toothed tiger chasing you.

Paul Green: Now, we still have that programming today, so when we see another business owner or another manager just like us, and they are doing something, then we are more likely to want to do it. So, your clients introducing you will be more powerful than you introducing you, or someone else introducing you. Does that make sense?

Paul Green: If you work in a vertical, then obviously it's got to be someone within that vertical. If you just work within the geographical area, then pick your best client, the one that you have the best relationship with, but also the one that people will have heard of. Obviously, you can introduce a bit of a celebrity factor. You know, if you've got those clients that other people have heard of, those are the logos that should go in on your website, and testimonials, all of that kind of stuff.

Paul Green: In summary, you want the 60-second video, your client or clients talking about how great you are. And not tech stuff at all, but emotional content. That influences people. That is the very best kind of video. In fact, the rest of the website is kind of gravy if you get the rest of that. Sure, there's lots of things you need on your website, but that will absolutely, absolutely kill it.

Voiceover: How to contribute to the show.

Paul Green: Your questions, comments, bits of audio to stick in the show, even low-level abuse and criticism. You can send them all through to me. Just be polite. It's hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com. I really would love to get your feedback. Go on. Drop me an email.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

Scott Tyson: One key message I'd have for any sales guy or girl out there at the moment is, it's not wrong, and it's not dirty. It's not an ugly word, that "close" word, you know? You can ask for the sale.

Paul Green: That's Scott Tyson from Auvik Networks, and he's going to be looking at a sales play book. It's the process of systemising the sales that works the best in your MSP. We're also going to be looking at why you really must fire a client for Christmas.

Voiceover: Made in the U.K. for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.

View Details

In this week's episode * There's a fine line between successful and poor performing MSPs and IT support companies. Paul offers some great insight into the mindset required to make your business fly. * Paul tells you about a fantastic tool to help increase your LinkedIn connections and how the platform can really help you as part of your 'Connect, Content & Call' strategy. * If you have little time for creating marketing content, Paul explains how this can be done for you. * Did you know there's a whole load of free money to help with your marketing going unused? It's called MDF and special guest Glenn Robertson explains how to apply for it. * There's a brilliant question from the audience about the time it takes for MSPs to win new work.

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform. * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert. * Find out about the Dux-Soup plugin here. * Visit the website mentioned for MSP Marketing Edge at mspmarketingedge.com * The brilliant interview about unspent MDF (Marketing Development Fund) was with Glenn Robertson, MD and owner of Purechannels. * Thanks to Anthony Thackray from AGT Computer Services for the question about the time it takes to get new clients. * Future guests mentioned include Andy Edwards of Yoo, who will be explaining how to sell to different types of people. * The email address for show feedback or any questions is hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: Hello and welcome to this brand new podcast. Here's what's coming up in this week's show.

Glenn Robertson: Everybody wins because if you're selling more stuff, you make more money. That means a vendor makes more money, that means they're going to be happier and the cycle continues.

Paul Green: Plus we're going to look at an automated tool that will help you to grow your LinkedIn connections. I'm going to address why it takes so long for an MSP to win new clients.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green: Hello, this is Paul Green and welcome to the first ever MSP Marketing Podcast. Now my aim every single week is to give you 25, 30 minutes of a boost. I want to give you some motivation, some ideas, some clever stuff that you can take that other MSPs are doing around the world and you can bring it into your business and really make a difference to your business quite quickly and quite dramatically. Stuff that's going to help you to get more new clients, stuff that is going to help you to grow your monthly recurring revenue and ultimately have an impact on your net profits.

Paul Green: Because when you address those three things, that's what makes the biggest difference to your life. I'm a big fan of believing that the business is supposed to be there for you and not the other way around. But I've met so many MSPs over the years and I found far too many MSP owners who are trapped inside the business. And in fact, they are there for the business rather than the business being there for them. So this is one of my motivations to launch this podcast. I just got so much to say about this. I only work with MSPs, managed service providers and I work with quite a few of them and over the weeks ahead I'll tell you a little bit about some of the stuff that I do.

Paul Green: Really a lot of it is about mindset. And it's really interesting just before I sat down to record this podcast, I just nipped to the toilet and one of the other business owners was in there. A guy called Andy and I haven't seen him for years. He runs a business that does promotional items. I said, "Hello Andy, how are you? I haven't seen you for a while. How's business?" And his answer, which I wouldn't put on a podcast, but it was a four letter word, "It's rubbish." And I said, "What's happened?"

Paul Green: And then he started talking about all the bad things. This contract's falling through, this person won't place an order and the phone's just not ringing. So I immediately flipped into how can I help you mode? And I'm like, "Okay. So what are you doing? What marketing are you doing? Have you rung all of your old clients, have you done this? What campaigns are you doing?" Essentially, him and his team have sat there. The phone hasn't rung and nothing's happened and therefore it's the fault of everyone else in the world that they're not buying whatever it is that he's selling, the promotional goods that he's selling.

Paul Green: Actually, this is a mindset problem, isn't it? This isn't a business problem because obviously he's going to try and blame Brexit, he's going to try and blame the economies, he's going to try and blame everything, the clients. The problem is there in the business and it's the person at the top of the business. The problem is that he's decided it's rubbish right now, no one's buying anything. Therefore, it's just not worth it. And that's what I mean by mindset. You see, most MSPs I meet have a really good mindset, but now and again I do meet some you can see why the business isn't doing so well.

Paul Green: So every single week, I'm going to give you some practical stuff. I'm going to try and help you with some mindset stuff as well and you know what? You are welcome to contribute to this. My email address is hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com. As you'll hear in a minute ahead, I am very happy to have contributions to the show, whether it is guests that you would think I should have on the show or whether it's a question that you want to send in to be featured on the show. We've got so much coming up for you in the weeks ahead.

Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea.

Paul Green: Now I hope that you, like most MSPs are all over LinkedIn right now, because LinkedIn without a doubt is the number one marketing platform for MSPs around the world right now. Microsoft bought it a few years ago and at that point LinkedIn was a reasonably good B2B platform but I always used to call it a bad networking meeting. It was the place you went to be sold to or it was the place that you went to get a job. And Microsoft bought it and they have adapted what they've seen on Facebook and created a B2B version of Facebook.

Paul Green: Certainly much more content driven platform than it used to be. For example, if you put a piece of content on LinkedIn and it gets likes, shares or comments, whatever happens to it in the first kind of 60, 90 minutes dictates how many other people see it. They build up a point score for a post. So if someone likes a piece of content you've put into LinkedIn, you get one point, comments on it, that's two points, and if someone shares it's three points. You can certainly see that the more people share something that's a bigger commitment, isn't it? To share something.

Paul Green: Commenting is a bigger commitment than just liking. So the more engagement you get on a post, the more LinkedIn realises, "Hang on a second, other people are going to want to see this." So the more likely it is to share it. What makes LinkedIn so powerful for MSPs is it's just possible to reach so many people without a huge amount of effort. I mean, you still need to do a degree of work everyday, but there are tools out there to allow you to automate it. And what I want to talk about today is a tool called Dux-Soup.

Paul Green: That's D-U-X dash Soup, as in soup that you drink. And what Dux-Soup does, it's very clever. It's a plugin that sits in your Chrome, so it sits on your laptop and you give it access to your LinkedIn and you tell it who you want to reach. And what Dux-Soup does is it automates the searching and the connection requests that you would do. So it kind of tries to act like a human. It'll go off and it'll visit someone and it'll attempt a connection request and then it will go onto someone else and attempt some connection request and then it'll have a little break.

Paul Green: So it tries to replicate human behaviour. I would imagine it's very hard for LinkedIn to detect you're using Dux-Soup because it's a plugin in your own Chrome. Now what we've found, and we've been doing a lot of trials on LinkedIn lately, a huge amounts of trials, in fact, I've grown my own personal profile by a thousand in the last month. It just makes it more efficient for you to reach the people you want to reach. So I just want to be connected to MSPs. Who you want to be connected to, business owners, business managers, either in your geographical area or in your vertical, in your niche.

Paul Green: And so you can tell Dux-Soup to go and find these people and to attempt connections. And you may, for every let's say 10 connection requests, you might find that one or maybe two people accept that. So everyday you can grow your LinkedIn database, your connections by two or three people, which is just a beautiful thing to do. You can automate the messages you send out, it's a very efficient way of doing it. And with LinkedIn, you should be spending 30 to 60 minutes a day working on the three Cs, connect, content and call.

Paul Green: So connect is exactly what we've been talking about there. Whether you use an automated tool or whether you do it manually or you use a VA in another country to do it for you, a VA being a virtual assistant you could find say on fiverr.com or PeoplePerHour, someone somewhere is connecting, is attempting connections every single day. And then you put content in front of them because LinkedIn now is a content platform. In the weeks ahead I will talk about building up audiences and I'm a big believer in that you should build multiple audiences of people.

Paul Green: This is something for down the line. But your LinkedIn connection, your LinkedIn profile is one of your audiences, so you should be growing that audience as much as you can. So you want to connect to as many people, you want to put content in front of them and ideally on a daily basis, at least five days a week. And then the third thing that you should be doing is you should be calling people. And I am a big fan of when you've been connected to someone for 5, 10 weeks or so and particularly if they've engaged with your content, someone somewhere in your organisation should just pick up the phone and should just call them and just have a chat with them.

Paul Green: Because what moves relationships forward more than anything is talking to people on the phone. Now you might do some messaging before, you might send them something in the post, there's a number of different ways of doing it. But when you adopt the connect, content, call strategy, that protocol is a very powerful way of taking LinkedIn and turning it into brand new prospects.

Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug.

Paul Green: I'm not scared of having a blatant plug every single week as something that I sell, which I think you might benefit from and I will just flag it up so you know what I'm doing. Now I work mostly with MSPs in the UK but I have an international service and it's called the MSP Marketing Edge. It's a bunch of content that you get every single month. You can use that content in any way, so there's a video, there's a guide, there are eight emails, there's a whole bunch of social media content, a press release, and we provide these in all the different formats.

Paul Green: So you can use them as they are or you can tweak them, adjust them, put your logo on and use them as they are. And we only sell them to one MSP per area. And that's deliberate. So the idea is that as an MSP you can focus on doing what you do well, which is technology, which is proactive stuff, it's keeping clients happy. But you've got to do this marketing stuff. So me and my marketing team and what we do best is marketing.

Paul Green: We give you this stuff every month and you can just put it across your channels, on your websites, your social media, your YouTube, etc etc . That's the plan behind this. So currently we're in two countries - we're in the UK, which is our longest established market. We've been in the UK for over two years now and we launched into the United States just a couple of months ago. The US content is adapted, so it's American spellings and of course it's an American voice on the video. If you're not in the UK or the US, you are welcome to inquire as to whether you can buy this for your territory. We do have a client in Singapore. We've got someone in Australia, a couple in Canada and someone in New Zealand as well. All the details are at mspmarketingedge.com.

Voiceover: The big interview.

Paul Green: My mission every week is to find interesting people with useful stuff to say and to get that information out of their heads and onto this podcast. I'm going to interview loads of people within the MSP world, but I've also got plenty of people I know outside as well who've got plenty of things to tell us that you can use to grow your business and grow your profits.

Glenn Robertson: I'm Glenn Robertson, MD and now owner of Purechannels. Purechannels has been going since 2005.

Paul Green: It's a marketing agency that only works with MSPs, resellers and vendors. Now we met at a CRN event in Manchester. In fact, we were both on a panel. It was a marketing panel and we were discussing the concept of MDF. I thought for a second he was talking about medium density fiberboard and of course, Glenn meant something else.

Glenn Robertson: Typically, MDF stands for marketing development fund. And that's something that is provided to partners, resellers, MSPs by vendors as a way to help the partner to promote the vendors' wares. Vendors will typically allow an amount of money for qualifying partners and the way that you qualify, it's potentially determined by what type or what level or what tier of partner you are. Some ways the vendor will actually allocate some budget, but normally the vendor will provide MDF based on something like a rebate or a payback or a certain percentage of previous spend.

Glenn Robertson: And that previous spend can be either recent spend, it can be last 12 months, it can be related to the level of revenue that is generated by the MSP. What happens typically is the MSP will have to apply for a level of funding. Well, hopefully they would have accrued from previous revenue they've generated, or they can do on an ad hoc basis whereby they think that there is a suitably beneficial activity that they could carry out.

Glenn Robertson: And it could be attending events, it could be running an email campaign, it could be some dedicated social media activity and they have to put in an application to the vendor in order to apply for this funding. The vendor will assess whether or not this looks like a goer and then decide whether or not to allocate the budget. And then that budget can be allocated in one of the few ways. It can be co-funded, it can be part funded or it can be fully funded.

Paul Green: And the bombshell you dropped at the conference from memory was that you believe there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of pounds worth of MDF that just simply don't go claimed.

Glenn Robertson: Absolutely. Millions, without any question. We had a recent conversation with a vendor that did actually give a figure. They put a figure of £2 million on the value of unspent MDF in the last financial year, which was pretty amazing. And that's something where the opportunity lies because some MSPs will be getting it right, they'll be making the most of this funding.

Glenn Robertson: They'll be doing genuine marketing activity that not only helps promote them and generates leads for them, but it will also be helping promote the vendor. So there's two sides to this job. It's the partner having the awareness and the understanding that this firstly exists. And then you've got the vendor who needs to communicate the concept well enough to the MSP to tell them that it is available.

Paul Green: And this might seem like a schoolboy question, but do you have to use vendor funding to promote the vendors' services or products or can it be used for just general marketing so long as you're selling more of what the vendor is supplying?

Glenn Robertson: Yeah, I mean typically it has to be aligned to the vendor. Let's give a Microsoft example. Microsoft have a thousand partners around the UK and if one of those partners wants to apply for funding, then typically Microsoft would want it to be aligned to marketing activity that the partner is doing around Microsoft services and solutions. But ultimately, you need to fill out form and you need to have a commitment to the vendor.

Glenn Robertson: If you're going to be spending their money, you need to show that the money is being spent on activity that is going to help you to sell more of their stuff. And when you do that right, everybody wins. Because if you're selling more stuff, you make more money. That means the vendor makes more money, that means they're going to be happier on the side and the cycle continues.

Paul Green: So to get started, you pick up the phone or you drop an email to your rep or whoever you speak to at the vendor and you say, "I want to access your MDF." How do we get started? Is it really as simple as that?

Glenn Robertson: Yeah. Actually it is. Again, there are a couple of ways. Typically partners will have access to a portal and quite often if the vendor's portal is good enough, it should have an MDF section on there. Partners should have access to partner account managers or channel account managers and if they are managed then they have that direct data contact, they can just call them up and say, "We've got an idea. We want to do some activity next quarter is the MDF available for this? And can I make an application?" This isn't just about free money. This is about working together with your vendor to do ultimately you want to do as an MSP, too generate leads and sell more stuff. This money is available if you are serious about doing marketing activity that generate leads to do more business.

Paul Green: Okay, thank you Glenn. How does Purechannels get involved to help MSPs with MDF?

Glenn Robertson: We've worked with all of the big name brands and vendors that you would expect to see in IT and telecoms. Huge experiences over the last 15 years globally on managing marketing activity for vendors to and through the channel. We get it from the vendor's side, we understand how they work. And then from a partner's side, this is essentially about vendor management and executing the activity that has been applied for. So we help MSPs to look at potential funding that's available.

Glenn Robertson: We can help or have the conversations with the PAMs or CAMs back at the vendor. We can absolutely write the plans that the MSP will need to submit as part of their MDF application, and then we go right the way through to execution and delivery. What that means is that we kind of complete that cycle because not only are we coming up with working with the MSP to understand their business, what their needs are and how they can benefit from this vendor relationship. We can help them with vendor communication and vendor conversations.

Glenn Robertson: We can create a plan and help them with the application in order to secure the funding and then we can deliver and execute on the campaign that is being planned out. And then the final piece to this puzzle and it is something that does get left out believe it or not, this is the tracking the reporting and ultimately the ROI. And that means that for the MSP we make sure that we get results.

Paul Green: Cool. What's your website's address then?

Glenn Robertson: Purechannels.co.uk.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast... Ask Paul anything.

Anthony: Hi. It's Anthony from AGT Computer Services. Why does it take so long to get new clients?

Paul Green: And isn't that the thousand dollar question? Thank you very much for that Anthony. So most MSPs that I meet still have clients from when they started up, even if that was 20 years ago. And most MSPs, they retain their clients incredibly well. You win a client today, they will stay with you for 5, 10, maybe even 15 years. And that awesome retention is at the crux of why it's so difficult and what takes so long to win a new client. Because we've got to look at this not as MSPs, but we've got to look at this as the clients look at it. And there's an immense amount of what's known as inertia loyalty when someone's with your MSP.

Paul Green: Now inertia loyalty is where even if we're ready to switch to someone else, we perceive that the hassle and the difficulty and the risk is so great that actually it's easier to not take action than it is to take action. So you see this with banks, you see it with the accountants and you certainly see it with MSPs. I've been with the same bank, with Lloyds Bank in the UK. I've been with them since I was 14 and there've been moments when I've been ready to leave Lloyds.

Paul Green: And even though there's a switching guarantee in the UK that guarantees that my switch will be easy and pain free, I still can't be bothered. My inertial loyalty has kept me with Lloyds for 31 years. It's what keeps MSPs with you because their perception is you've got your fingers across all of their technology, which is all of it, mission critical. You're the ones who know exactly how their server works, you've got the setups, you've got the passwords, and frankly you have a better grip on their technology than they do.

Paul Green: So even if they're dissatisfied with you, they're probably going to stay with you a little bit longer, which of course gives you time to fix your relationship with them. All MSPs have an unhappy client at some point. Right now, unless you've got two clients, you have an unhappy client. And that unhappy client is going to leave you at some point, but it might not be in the next contract renewal. It might be the contract renewal after that because of inertia loyalty. So to answer the question, we kind of flip that round and we say, well, when we're talking to prospects, particularly when they're with an incumbent MSP, we've got to wait till the right moment.

Paul Green: There's a key phrase for this, which is people only buy when they're ready to buy. Now the core trick for you is being in front of that person at the point they're ready to make the switch to a brand new MSP. And this is one of the subjects that we're going to be covering off in the weeks ahead, is how do you become that person that's there at exactly that moment. And the answer lies in building a relationship with those people so they know you before they are ready to buy anything.

Voiceover: How to contribute to the show.

Paul Green: I'd love to know what you thought of this first podcast. Your ideas will help to shape future episodes. So go on, drop me an email. It's hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover: Coming up next week.

Andy Edwards: Be brief, be bright and be gone. Recognise these four different personality styles and your sales will go up.

Paul Green: That's my friend Andy Edwards. He's an expert at helping you to sell more without having to go on very long sales courses. He's going to tell you next week how to understand how different people buy. We're also going to look next week at monthly recurring revenue services. In fact, I've got two suggestions for you of services that you really should be selling.

Voiceover: Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world, Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast.

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In this trailer * This is a tease of what's coming up every week, in the MSP Marketing podcast

Show notes * Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform * Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert * Future guests featured in this trailer include Scott Tyson of Auvik, sales psychology expert Andy Edwards of Yoo, and website expert Louise Towler of IndigoTree

Trailer transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world...

Hello, this is Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert and the host of the MSP marketing podcast. Every week we have loads of very specific advice to help you get more new clients, grow your valuable monthly recurring revenue, and ultimately increase your net profit. Isn't that why we're all in business?

Yes yes yes!

Now, this is a show only for managed service providers and IT support companies. It's made in the UK and is designed for MSPs all over the planet.

Quote: "It's not an ugly word, that 'close' word, you know, you can ask for the sale"

Every week. I'll have a guest, some from our world and some from outside.

Quote: "We spend a lots of time as a web agency translating what I call customer into geek"

Quote: "Recognise those four different personality styles and your sales will go up"

So join me every week for the MSP marketing podcast. It's out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform.

Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast

Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast: Recent Episodes

Paul Green's MSP Marketing