Episode 213: Ask prospects this cyber security question

[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 Shearer. 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 Shearer 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 Tun, 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.