Hosted By
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.
Voiceover:
Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.
Paul Green:
Hello, and welcome to the last regular show of 2021. We’ve got some specials for you in the next couple of weeks. I’ll tell you about those at the end of the show, but here’s what we got coming up for you this week.
Jimmy Armitage:
Most businesses froze recruitment, and then everybody’s trying to get back into the game at the same time. And it’s just basically supply and demand.
Paul Green:
That’s Jimmy Armitage, a recruitment expert. He’s going to be here later on in the show. We’re also going to be talking about your people and how warm are they towards the clients. There’s all sorts of cultural things and environmental things that can late your people appear to be warm or not so warm. We’re discussing that later on as well, plus for our last regular podcast of the year, we’ve got a lovely prize for you to win. Producer James will be here shortly to tell you what you can win and how to enter.
Voiceover:
Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.
Paul Green:
I have this WhatsApp group, and it’s me and two of my best buddies. And what started as, God, I don’t know, six, seven years ago as just a WhatsApp group for us to throw around business ideas, has, as you can imagine, descended into just the everyday fun that we have in our lives. And my friend Ed, a couple of weeks ago had to buy something. I can’t remember what it was now, but it was something that’s a fairly routine purchase. But it involves talking to people, it’s not just something you can buy off the shelf, it was whatever it was something you had to be personalised. And the pretty much the sentiment that he put into our WhatsApp group was, “Well, I found the thing I want to buy, and I found the supplier I want to get it from, but I can’t just order it on the website. I can’t press a button and make it happen. I’ve got to pick up the phone.”
Paul Green:
And there was genuine disgust that he’d actually got to pick up the phone and disrupt his day to order this thing, whatever this thing was. And that’s kind of how we are these days, isn’t it? We don’t want to have to pick up the phone and talk to people and do things because that’s a distraction. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I know some people prefer being on the phone, but actually most of us, we prefer the choice. If we’ve got a choice of, for example, live chatting with someone or engaging with them through an app or something digital. I don’t know about you, but I would always rather do that than actually pick up the phone. Because I can live chat with two or three different people at once, I can multitask across live chats.
Paul Green:
I can clear down my emails or check my LinkedIn while I’m live chatting someone in customer support. It’s a bit harder to do that, if you’re actually on the phone. To quote the Mandalorian, this is the way. It’s what we expect these days, we expect the choice. If we have to pick up the phone and we don’t have the choice of in engaging with someone digitally, it is a bit, “But it’s nearly 2022. What’s going on?” So you got to ask yourself and look now at your own marketing, can someone live chat you? And I don’t mean the clients. You might have live chat in place for your clients. Certainly they can probably press a button and submit a ticket and whatsoever. But what about your prospects? What about the people who aren’t yet your clients, but who could become your clients?
Paul Green:
Can they go onto your websites and live chat you? Can they engage with you in social channels, but where someone will actually engage fast? Not where they send you a message via LinkedIn or Facebook, and you get back to them four days later, because fast beats slow remember. How can you make that happen? Now the thing with live chat in particular, there are two issues that you have to think through. The first of them is, how do you stop your existing clients from using live chat that’s intend did for prospects? All MSPs who ever use live chats on their websites, they get this, existing clients go onto the website, maybe to get the phone number. They see live chat and so they chat with that person and they say, “Oh my computer’s slow. Can you help?” And you and I know that, that’s actually a slow method for them to get support.
Paul Green:
You’ve got to think through how do you stop your clients from using that live chat? I mean the easiest answer there is whoever’s doing the live chat has to say, “Hey, we are not part of the support team.” Even if actually they are in the background, “But we’re not part of the support team. Please, can you call this number or press the so and so button on your desktop or whatever it is.” And you kind of literally say, “I’m so sorry. We’re not actually able to help you with computer problems here”. This is an educational thing. And even when you get it a 100% that you’ve told everyone and you’ve told them every single day, and you’ve got a big red flashing light above the live chat that says, do not use this for support requests. You’ll still get some now and again, because that’s just the nature of people. But that’s one thing to consider the other and much more important thing to consider, is who’s actually going to man, the live chat?
Paul Green:
Now during the day, maybe that’s not such an issue, because you’ve got technicians sitting there anyway, waiting for things to happen. But you’ve got to ask yourself, do you want technicians managing your live chat? Because you’ll have some wastage on your live chat. You’ll have some sales people for vendors trying to contact you and trying to sell stuff through live chat. But you will actually have real prospects as well. Do you want one of your technicians to be their initial entry point into the business? There might be some specific technicians you would trust with that, but there might also be others you just wouldn’t want them to do that. Do you trust them to be on top of it quickly? Because here’s the thing, if someone live chats you, their expectation is that you are there to chat instantly. Now they don’t really know or care who’s on the other end, but they want someone to be there.
Paul Green:
That’s the whole point of live chat, it’s instant gratification. We want to do stuff now. Exactly at the moment we are ready to do stuff. So you’ve got to be there at that moment, ready for them. So maybe there’s someone in your business that could do that, maybe it’s you. But you’ve got to ask yourself the logistics questions. What happens when you are in a meeting? What happens when all the technicians are busy? What happens in the evenings? What happens at night? You should have live chat up to about 10 o’clock at night, I believe. Which might be a slightly controversial view, but people buy when they’re ready to buy. And a busy business owner might be ready to inquire to you at 10 o’clock at night. You’re not going to turn them down or deny them at that point. Because they could be worth a 100,000 to you in lifetime revenue.
Paul Green:
If they’re ready to chat now, let’s chat now. We can have a proper in depth conversation tomorrow or next week. So who’s going to do your live chat during all of these times? The easy answer is to say you, but do you want to go to the cinema, right? You want to go and have a meal with your other half and your kids, yeah? So wouldn’t it be better to find someone else to do all this for you? There are all sorts of services out there, that will monitor your live chatting. In fact, some of them will do it 24 hours a day. And you can set them a script, because you might think, “Oh it’s got to be me. I’m the only person that can live chat.” The reality is, it’s a completely scriptable thing. The only purpose of live chat is to find out who they are, find out roughly what they want and then move them onto the next step.
Paul Green:
The next step should be a 15 minute video call with you. Now that’s the point that only you can do it, but actually right up to that point, it can just be scripted. It could be basic questions. Tell me about you. Tell me about your business. How many staff have you got? What kind of thing are you looking for? And then literally you can get an agent, someone that you never meet. Who’s probably sat in a call center, hundreds, if not thousands of miles away. You can get them to look at your live calendar via your Calendly or your Microsoft Bookings and actually directly offer a slot to your potential future client there, and then on the live chat. Essentially, what I’m suggesting here is if you have the cash available to do this and these services are not that expensive, really.
Paul Green:
If you’ve got that cash resource, get someone else to do this for you. Even if this only generates one conversation a year, one new client a year it’s paid for itself many times over. And for those prospects who absolutely definitely have to talk now, we’ve got to be there for them with instant gratification and live chat is the easiest way to do that.
Voiceover:
Here’s this week’s clever idea.
Paul Green:
We got a kitten at home, his name’s Mellohi and I work from home and record this podcast from home. And just right now, he’s kind of sat on the sofa, looking at me. Mellohi, come here and say hello. No, don’t scratch me. Geez, blimey. Honestly, cats. Maybe I should have got a dog. A dog at least could probably bark on demand. Anyway, we got this cat. He’s lovely.
Paul Green:
Oh, and if you’re wondering where the name comes from, my daughter named him. Mellohi is a word from Minecraft. Yes, that’s right, I’ve just made a 20 year commitment to an animal based on a word within a game that no one’s going to be playing in 20 years. Anyway, we got this cat and he’s six months old, he’s lovely, and of course we’ve registered with a local vet. Now we used to have cats a few years ago and the vets that we used that kind of moved on and become part of a big group. So we decided to go elsewhere and there’s a practice in the next village, which I thought I would register with. I hear good things about them. They’ve got good Google reviews. They’ve got a generally a good digital presence. So I register with them, and it has been utterly wonderful.
Paul Green:
The whole process has been wonderful. When I say it’s been wonderful, I mean the people have been really warm and friendly. Now most vets, and most veterinary nurses are warm and friendly people. And I say this with some experience because I spent around about eight to 10 years working with veterinarians here in the UK. Although I’ve also met some veterinarians, you would not want to put your animal anywhere near, but most of them are quite warm and friendly. However, people get busy, people forget that they’re always in a customer service game, but these people have been wonderful. They have been utterly focused on my cat. They’ve been utterly focused on me. It’s been warm and friendly every point. Do you know what? They have upsold me, absolutely everything. And I’ve happily nodded and gone, “Mm-hmm, yep. I’ll buy that.” Because the people have been so warm.
Paul Green:
It hasn’t been a cold conversation sitting down with me saying, “Mr. Green, your cat has an X percent chance of being seriously ill in the next five years, would you like insurance and our health plan?” It hasn’t been that kind of conversation. It’s been a much more warm thing of, ” He’s lovely, isn’t he?” And blah, blah blah. “Would you like to get his claws clipped on a regular basis? And would you like us to just sort out that for you? And not have to worry about this and that? And it’s no, if you did this, it would only be 14 pounds a month, and why don’t you just do that?” It’s been just wonderful. And I can’t wait actually to meet the owner of the practice. I haven’t met them yet, but I want to congratulate them on setting up an environment of warmth within their business.
Paul Green:
There is genuine care and a genuine desire to do well and to help people and to do a good job. And I’m sure they don’t get it right all the time, but they seem to get it right most of the time. And as I say, the thing that’s most important, there is an environment of warmth and success. So what’s that got to do with your business? How is a vets and cats relevant to your business? Well, that’s the question of, do you have an environment of warmth? Are your people warm? Are they genuinely interested in helping. Again, I’ve met loads of technicians and most of them genuinely want to help people, but is the business set up for that? I’ll give you an example. Do you have troublesome clients? Everyone has troublesome clients, but do you permit your staff to talk about those troublesome clients in a way which is not necessarily polite about those clients?
Paul Green:
In essence, do you tolerate your staff, talking about your clients in a negative way in the office on a regular basis? How is that setting up an environment of warmth? It’s not, is it? That’s not setting up an environment of warmth and care and all of that kind of stuff. And I know that, that sounds like a silly tiny example to pick out there, but it makes a difference. What we tolerate within our business is what we get. If we ourselves do it… It’s like anything if you want yourself to be on time every day, but you rock up 20 minutes late on a regular basis. Guess what? They’re going to follow your example. If you want people to clean the toilets, then you’ve got to be the first person to clean the toilets. Otherwise, they’re not going to follow your example.
Paul Green:
And it’s the same with setting an atmosphere of warmth and care within the business. I would put money on the fact that the head vet, the owner of this veterinary practice, that I’m a member of that I’m client of now. I would bet that they are the warmest person and they have the most care when it comes to their animals, and looking after their patients and their clients. You, as the leader set the environment, you set out the expectations and guess what? You get back, what you put in. And the clients will really notice that, they really will.
Voiceover:
Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.
Paul Green:
Well, I’m hoping that we can bring Christmas a little bit early to one MSP somewhere around the world with our final, big competition of 2021.
James Lett:
Okay. This is producer James here with an inspirational Christmas gift. Your eyes and mind will be opened. This really is the best kind of prize that you can be winning at time of year. First up brand new copies of the top five ultimate books that Paul recommends out of all those that he’s read on marketing business growth and personal development. They are, number one Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes. A growing MSP business needs to run like an engine, rather than relying on referrals and doing activity in fits and starts. And this book will tell you how to get it all running. Number two, They Ask You Answer by Marcus Sheridan, the ultimate blueprint for how you can turn the tide in driving prospect inquiries. So your leads and prospects will actively come to you rather than you having to go out hunting for them.
James Lett:
Number three, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It, by Chris Voss. Amazing techniques to help you agree upon the best outcome for your business, for your finances and your personal life from an ex-FBI negotiator. Number four, Built To Sell by John Warrillow. All about how creating a business that can thrive without you, will make you happier, and when the time comes, make you more money. And number five, The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy. He lays down the principle that little everyday decisions will either take you to the life you desire or on the flip side to disaster. It’s the book to help with your mindset.
James Lett:
So they are the top five books. If you win, you’ll get all those, but that’s not it. So that you can consume any other book you fancy, you’ll also get a year’s membership to Audible. So if you want to listen to something, to help in your business, or just want to hear Stephen Fry read you Harry Potter.
Stephen Fry:
And then his eyes fell on the flute, Hagrid had given him for Christmas.
James Lett:
You just need to enter right now. There’s a special entry webpage exclusive to this podcast. Go to Paulgreensmspmarketing.com/win pop in a couple of details to who enter the random draw, which will be made at some point just after midnight, UK time on Sunday, January 2nd. Thank you for listening. Happy entering and have a Merry Christmas.
Voiceover:
The big interview.
Jimmy Armitage:
Hi I’m Jimmy Armitage one of the co-founders at Wavelength, the talent and recruitment advisors.
Paul Green:
And as we sit here on the cusp of 2022, Jimmy. It’s just a few days away. And I think anyone who’s tried to recruit a tech in any country really over the last six to nine months or so has found it really, really difficult. What’s been going on with recruitment this year? Why is it so difficult?
Jimmy Armitage:
What compounds it, is we’ve known for a long time, there’s a skills shortage. And what we mean by that is there are more businesses that need the people with the skills, than there are that possess them. So there’s not enough to go around. But what’s compounded, that is the dreaded COVID word. Most businesses have freezed recruitment over that period. And then everybody’s trying to get back into the game at the same time, and it’s just basically supply and demand. I’m not sure what reference points people are familiar with. If you’re not familiar with the stock market, because that’s effectively what it is. You might be more familiar with eBay, it’s just an option, isn’t it. If 10 companies want one candidate, they’re going to pay more salary and it becomes a bidding war.
Jimmy Armitage:
And that’s effectively what’s happened. Salaries have been artificially increased, it’s squeezed the market. And quite often, from what we can see, people are paying salaries that they can’t actually sustain. Because they’re short term fixing it, because they need people. What’s probably going to happen is, the market will then bounce back the other way. So it’s definitely a candidate’s market at the moment. And let’s say in four to six months, businesses have realised they can’t sustain the salaries that they’re paying for the work that, they’re doing because they’re not charging their clients enough.
Paul Green:
Yeah, this makes perfect sense. And in fact, I did an economics A level back in 1992. I failed it first time around, but passed it the second time round. And pretty much one of the only things I remember is exactly what you just said, supply and demand. If demand is really high and supply is really low, then that will have an affect on pricing and it will drive prices up. So obviously we’re about to enter January, and we all know that January is job hunting month. I think it’s things like jobs and houses, isn’t it? People put their houses up for sale after Christmas. And also if they’re unhappy with their job, they go job hunting. You guys are professionals and you’re very exposed to the job market. What are you expecting to see happen in January? Are you expecting to see a lot of movement because people are chasing those higher salaries?
Jimmy Armitage:
Yeah. I’d expect to see a fair bit of movement as always in January. I think it’s a natural time for people to reflect. Most people have spent a fair bit of time with their families and they can see if they’re really happy in their work, and their progression and what the future looks like. And I think businesses are still going to be struggling to find the right people. So it is pretty much going to be a continuation of what it’s been like the six months previous to now.
Paul Green:
But let’s have a ray of hope. Because the reason I got you onto the show, Jimmy, is you have an approach to recruitment, which is quite different to most recruiters. You don’t really believe in doing short term tactics.
Jimmy Armitage:
The backstory to how Wavelength was created is, we’re business people first and recruiters second. So as we talk now we’ve been going six and a half years, but we were frustrated business people before. And so our approach, isn’t what recruitment has always done. It’s about what is effective and what do you need. So ultimately the first thing is what is recruitment? What most people tend to think about is recruitment is getting the right person. But that’s the tip of the iceberg. And other version of what recruitment is, is getting the people in your business to deliver the strategy. So you return on investment, what is it you need to do? So hopefully the people which I’m pretty sure are that listen to this podcast are already strategically minded. They certainly are with their marketing. And if they’re already using your services, they’re expecting to grow.
Jimmy Armitage:
Is there a visual we use quite often up through this work to have this medium. But if not, Paul, please correct me. But if you think about your business plan over the next year, three years, five years, whatever you’re working on, visualise it as a graph. So I want you to visualise two lines on it. You’ve got the growth that you want to see from now moving forward. Hopefully that is an increasing line and below it, you’ve got a straight line, which is your current head count.
Jimmy Armitage:
The gap in between those two lines as they grow over time is your talent gap, as we refer to it. And the point is, you already know you are going to have that gap. So if we’re struggling to hire technical people, now. If we call now as in year one, but your business plan relies on you having three of them next year or the year after. And six of them in year four and 10 of them in year five. What are you doing now, to make it easier to get those people? Now the ray of light is, your competitors are doing nothing, and what they are going to do is do what the rest of the market does is work till they absolutely need them then panic. Does that make sense, Paul?
Paul Green:
Yes, that makes perfect sense. So what you are essentially talking about is taking a marketing approach to recruitment. You build up a pipeline of people that could come on to work for you. And so when you’ve got the vacancy, when you actually need that person, you’ve got warm relationships with some people and it’s then just a case of checking if it’s the right timing for them.
Jimmy Armitage:
Yeah. That’s definitely an element of it. If you know you need those people, how have you assumed that? So I guess what you’ve come to the conclusion is that, if it’s a technical role in their delivery. That’s what we’re going to talk about for the context of this. A person in our business creates X output. And in order for us to hit the number that we want, we need five more of those people to deliver X output. That’s an assumption. What about top performers in the industry? Could you solve that with two top performers instead of five? What would you need to pay all those top performers? Is there a different way of doing it? Could you give them an offer they couldn’t refuse? So many people don’t put the rigor in at this point. And the reason is because they don’t prioritise it, they don’t recognise just how important it is.
Jimmy Armitage:
Many people see recruitment as a linear progression. So even when it’s done well, we need somebody, we go through a series of steps and we get someone the end. But that’s not the end, the intention is are they actually delivering? So the whole point really is recruitment is supposed to serve, helping you get to where you want to get to as a business. And rather than thinking about it as a linear progression, think about it as a circle or a flywheel. To come shamelessly steal Jim Collins example from Good to Great, very much like marketing and the examples that you give them and the services you provide, Paul.
Jimmy Armitage:
What are you learning from your campaign? Who applied for your job? What was their feedback? How did they perform? Why do the ones not get the job? Are you happy with the calibre? If you are not, what are you going to change? All this is the intelligence you need to consistently get the right people in your business. So going back to that graph analogy, that you solve the problem in year one by getting that one person you need, if that’s the case. And next year, you’ve got the intelligence to build on, to get the two you need, which gives you more intelligence for year three, year four and year five. Because the world changes as we know, different platforms about at different times.
Paul Green:
So let’s make this practical just to wrap up the interview. What’s the first practical step that someone can take. So about to have a little bit time off for Christmas, back in January, where would you get started Jimmy?
Jimmy Armitage:
It, depending on the size of the business, the board room or whether you’re a sole trader or you’re a massive business it’s the same principle. What are you trying to achieve as a business? And how many people do you need to do that? What’s the return on investment you are looking for? Because that states what you’re prepared to pay. We’ve talked about the challenges in the market, which is artificial salaries. But actually if you can afford to pay somebody more, if they can deliver more, you’ve immediately side stepped most of the people in the market. So the first place to sit down is to look at what are you providing? What are the services you provide and how much you charge and where’s your margin? What would it mean to you to get these people in, to help you deliver that service, and not aiming at average.
Jimmy Armitage:
So a massive mistake to avoid and it’s so prevalent in recruitment is, everybody wants a top performer or above average performer, yet most people offer average salaries. How have you calculated the salary? If you want someone who’s been in the IT industry for five years, delivering performance, they’re not going to be on average salary. So don’t offer them that, but work out what they would need to deliver in your business, and put that together in their employment contract and then go and get it.
Paul Green:
Makes sense when you put it like that, doesn’t it. It really does. Jimmy, thank you for being on the show. Tell us a little bit more about your business and how can we get in touch with you?
Jimmy Armitage:
Yeah. Thanks Paul. So Wavelength, you can find us who are pretty active on LinkedIn. Our website is yourwavelength.co.uk. My name’s Jimmy Armitage, I’m pretty active on LinkedIn. In terms of what we do, we’re just really passionate about stopping recruitment holding people back. That’s where the business came from, which is we’ve worked in businesses, we’ve been really frustrated by how difficult it is to recruit. Particularly when you feel, “Look, we’re a good employer. We want to look after people and there’s lots of good people out there. Why is it this hard to get them on?” And so we’ve been on a journey over the last seven years, understanding what works and what doesn’t. And the key messages are stop using recruitment as the poor relation.
Jimmy Armitage:
If you look at your business plan, most businesses need the right people to deliver it. And if you don’t put the rigor in there, your business plan’s built on sand, it won’t work. What we do is we work with businesses to understand what they need, to make sure that they can keep getting the right people in their business.
Voiceover:
Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast. This week’s recommended book.
Santa Claus:
Santa here, just stopped for a mince pie, another one. And to recommend this book, The Leadership Secrets of me, Santa Claus. Yes, it’s a real book. It shows you what I’ve been doing to run an efficient elf operation for years. Have a read this holiday, and learn how you can better lead your MSP’s team. Anyway, I needs to get back to work, lots to do before Christmas Eve. By the way, if you see that Paul Green fella, tell him he’s not getting any presents again this year, as he’s still on the naughty list. That’s 20 years in a row Merry Christmas to you.
Voiceover:
Coming up next week.
Paul Green:
We’ve got the first of two special Christmas episodes. And next week I’m going to be interviewing a small panel of growth experts. I sat down with them at a CompTIA event in London just a few months ago. And I asked them this question, “What do successful MSP owners do to grow their business?” This is who you are going to be hearing from next week.
Ian Luckett:
Hi, I’m Ian Luckett from IT Experts, helping MSPs grow.
Stuart Warwick:
Hi Stuart Warwick from Scale With Confidence and the MSP Mastery, taking MSPs to a million or if they’re already there to go faster.
Daniel Welling:
Daniel Welling. Welling MSP, mentoring, recruitment and M&A.
Fiona Challis:
I’m Fiona Challis and I teach them how to sell stuff.
Paul Green:
It was a fascinating conversation and I cannot wait to play the highlights to you in next week’s show. Listen, have a great time for Christmas. Please, don’t forget to take some time off. It’s really important that you have a proper break from your business. You might feel like you are doing a good service to your clients being on top of your emails and messages every single day. But I promise you taking real time off, always pays off in the long term. Your family will appreciate it. You will appreciate it. And you know what? You’ll go back into the business. After a short break with real clarity on what you want to achieve next year. Have a great Christmas and join me next Tuesday.
Voiceover:
Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.
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