[00:00:02] Speaker A: This podcast is for those that know MSP should mean making systems perfect, but most of the time ends up being mysteriously seeking prospects.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: And if it's prospects you want, this is the right podcast to listen to coming up today, why you must collect valuable social proof before it degrades how to generate more MSP marketing content ideas than you could ever use. And my guest expert today will tell you how to create a repeatable sales process. Welcome to episode 244.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: Powered by mspmarketingedge.com dot Paul Green's MSP.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Marketing podcast, social proof, in the form of case studies, testimonials and reviews, is one of the most powerful marketing tools at your disposal. Nothing influences leads and prospects like seeing what other people like them think about the service that you offer. So you should be gathering social proof all the time. And what I'm going to tell you now will make you collect it with even more urgency because the power of social proof does degrade over time. Now let me give you a real life example of how social proof degrades over time. If you've been a listener to this podcast or been watching my videos for a while on YouTube, then you'll know that for an 18 month period I had a fairly major refurb of my house and it was quite an experience which ended in Christmas last year. It actually generated loads of content for this podcast and for the videos as I dealt with my frustrations with the builders and just the whole process in general. Anyway, I am getting counseling for this now and I'm slowly getting over it. But one of my final frustrations with my builder was that they didn't complete the tiny little finishes that make a job perfect. They finished like a day before Christmas and it was a rush job to get stuff done. So for example, I had a couple of doors that really needed just one more coat of paint. There's a little bit of pointing missing or grout or whatever you call it, like the cement stuff between tiles. Anyway, I've had a kind of a succession of hand men in to fix these little jobs in the last couple of weeks and finally just get the house completely finished. There was one big job as well, and that needed to be done. It was checking the fire. So we're very lucky to have like a log burner in the house. It's lovely. It's been here for a while and during the build the builders removed the log burner and then they reinstalled it again near the end. And I was a little bit skeptical that this was safe. So I paid for a local expert to come and do an assessment of the chimney and the fire installation. And I'm not gonna go into the details of what was wrong. Let's just say I'm glad that I had an expert check it and do the remedial work before I ever lit a fire. So I then hired some experts to come in and just make it all safe to do the whatever it was they did that made it safe, and it actually made it more energy efficient as well. And as I say, I don't know what they did, but we can now have a nice fire. There's no danger of burning the house down. And also, they cleaned up the whole log burner, and they made it all look great. And when I inspected the finished work, I said to the owner of the business, because it was him who'd been here working on it, I said, wow, you've done a really great job. Thank you so much for that. Look, will you whiz me over a link to your reviews? And of course, I'll happily leave you a review or a testimonial. Now, this was about four weeks ago that he was here, and as of this time of recording, he still hasn't emailed me over that link. And I suppose I could just look him up myself on Google reviews or something. But when you're doing someone a favor by leaving them a review, you know, I shouldn't have to be doing all the hard work, should I? Let's be honest. If I wasn't talking about it right now, then it wouldn't even be in my head. Now, even if you sent me the link, or even if he sent me the link link today, I wouldn't actually leave a review. I've changed my mind in the four weeks since they did the work. And what has changed? I'll tell you, my satisfaction with their work has gone down. Now, this is no reflection on the work that they've done. They did an amazing job. But the joy and the delight that I felt at that exact moment that he handed over the completed job to me, well, that's kind of gone. And in fact, since then, I've had the pain of having to pay their bill, which has diminished. My pleasure. Does that make sense? So the pleasure has substantial, but the pain has gone up because I've had the pain of paying. And there are also a couple of tiny little niggling things that I spotted in the days after they were here. There was a little mark on the rug where some soot had gotten to the rug, and there was just sort of a bit of slight bit of damage just in the fireplace. Not something I'm ever going to notice. But it was these tiny little things which reduced my pleasure. It reduced my desire to give them social proof. And this is why social proof degrades. You have to collect a testimonial or a review from someone at the exact moment that they are their happiest with you. The good news is we know when these points are likely to be for MSP's. So, for example, if you've just fixed a long standing and annoying tech problem, they will be delighted with you at that exact moment and will give you a great review. If you just successfully completed a big project, get the social proof right. If you've just started working with a new client and it's the first 90 days and you've made their lives better because you're more responsive and you've got things done compared to their old MSP, but they haven't yet got used to you, you know what I mean? You're still new and shiny. It's the honeymoon phase. This is a great time to ask them for a testimonial or a review. I think the answer to this, like the answer to most marketing problems, is to turn it into a system. So you've got a checklist for when you do a project, right? So why not add a final tick box onto the end of that checklist whereby you contact them to go through the work, look at what you said you would do, look at what you've done, check they're satisfied, and then ask them to do a review. And literally, as you put down the phone, you send the review link to them like 3 seconds later. Another way to systemize this would be to add, you know, like customer thermometer or one of those other feedback systems. You add that onto your ticketing. So every time a major ticket is closed and they get the closed ticket notification, they can click on a smiley face or a non smiley face, depending on happy or unhappy they are. And of course the smiley face takes them through to a review platform, whereas the non smiley face asks them for further feedback so you can get involved and find out why they're not so happy. And there's a reason that those go in ticket closure notifications, because there's no point asking them six weeks later, right? Because they'll have forgotten. It's diminished, it's degraded. What I'm trying to say here is that social proof expires quickly and you need to harvest it while it's at its freshest and most powerful.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast still to come.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: I'll tell you what else you need a system for your entire sales operation. And good news. I have a guest joining me shortly to talk about how to build a process for your sales. He's going to be here in the next five minutes.
Paul, how can I generate marketing content ideas? Now that's a common question I get from MSP's who are starting to take their marketing seriously. And I have a super simple way for you to generate an unlimited number of ideas. Im going to take you through it and generate a ton of different ideas for you right now. Hey, Im Paul Green from the MSP marketing edge, the leading white label content marketing system thats trusted by over 700 msp's around the world. Check if your area is available
[email protected]. dot first, youve got to understand that when we talk about ideas for marketing content, less is more. So sure, theres a place for a 15,000 word long ultimate guide to technology in your business. And perhaps you do that as part of your search engine optimization, your SEO strategy. But the ideas that we're going to generate here are designed for blog articles or social media posts or 62nd videos because each of those pieces of content should be one small subject explained in a way that anyone can understand. Okay, let's go down the rabbit hole now, last summer, I was having a zoom with an MSP called John. He's one of my favorite MSP's to talk to. And I mentioned to him that my laptop had been stolen in, in a bar in London earlier that week. And Noah wasn't drunk. And immediately he checked that I'd taken all of the precautions which I had. I listened to you guys, right? And this led onto how setting up a new laptop is such a productivity killer, especially since my home wifi isn't great and we generated so many content ideas. We literally just chatted for a couple of minutes and we generated a ton of ideas. And I'm gonna give them to you now. Feel free to write these down, or you can grab them from the transcript. So this is, if you're watching this on YouTube, this is part of our podcast. If you go onto mspmarketingedge.com comma, you can find the transcript there. Or of course, if you're listening to this podcast again, go onto that website and you can get the transcript there. Or of course, you can just get this transcribed yourself. But let me tell you, the ideas that came out of just that two minute conversation. Here they are. I'm going to bullet point them at you. The first is gone in 60 seconds. How thieves can steal your laptop in a bar is London a safe place to take your laptop? My top tip to keep your tech safe when traveling why you must encrypt your laptop you're a dummy if you don't password protect your laptop. Are biometrics safer than a password? Please never, ever use this password on your laptop. Can you wipe your laptop remotely? Will an airtag protect your laptop? Stolen tech why you must never try to track down the thief I was nervous. Had the backup worked the day my client lost all their data. A 2008 approach to backups doesn't work in 2024.
This is the new laptop I'm recommending right now. Stolen laptop getting a new one is the easy part.
Should you get a MacBook or a PC?
This is my favorite laptop bag of all time.
You'll love this wireless mouse more than you love your kids. I like that one. The easy way to set up a new laptop migrate your laptop or set it up from scratch.
Here's how professionals save time setting up a new laptop why a password manager should be your favorite software slow wifi this is the number one culprit. How often should you restart your router?
Three ways to improve wifi speed instantly baseball bat or support call while your Internet is slow the rabbit hole that we've been talking about here is about following the flow of a relevant conversation and using it to brainstorm a ton of small content ideas. So you can do this. You can do this while you're talking to clients. You can do it while you're looking at tickets. It becomes a habit just to get those ideas to think, oh, that would make a blog article or a small video or something like that. But the key thing is to write them down, them into onenote or on a pad or in your phone or something, and then spread them out over the year. Because do you remember right at the beginning there, there were loads of ideas for laptop security content? Well, if you did ten of those in a row, that would be dull. But if you spread them out around the year and have a variety of different things, youve got an easy flow of content. This is so cool and easy, right? Are you going to do this?
[00:11:29] Speaker A: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast still to.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: Come do you have the same problem as most MSP's that you really want to do marketing and generate new leads and win new clients. But time, time is your biggest issue because you just don't have any. Well, I've got some very plain and simple advice on how to create time to market your business, and I'll give it to you in the next five minutes.
You systemize the operations and admin of your MSP, so why not systemize the marketing and sales as well? In fact, you have to do this if you want to take your business growth seriously. My guest expert today is an expert at systemizing sales, and he also has some interesting ideas to share with you. For example, unlike most sales experts out there, he's discovered he wins more sales if he tells the prospect about his business before asking them questions about theirs. Today's big interview is with a guy who knows how any MSP should systemize its sales.
[00:12:30] Speaker C: Hey, I'm Ryan Robinette. I am the founder of Askmultiply.com comma, which is sales enablement company.
[00:12:36] Speaker B: And thanks so much for joining me on this podcast, Ryan. Now, when we were chatting on email and setting up this interview, you said something to me which actually made me recoil in horror from my computer screen. You said to me that you advise people on sales calls to talk first and ask questions of the prospect later, which is completely backwards to what every other sales expert has told me. So we're going to explore that later on and I'm going to quiz you on why you would give that kind of advice to MSP's. But before we get there, let's just find out a little bit about you. So tell us about your background when you were an it professional yourself and how you've come to be a sales expert right now.
[00:13:14] Speaker C: Sure thing. Well, I'm a operationalist by heart, if I'm going to describe myself. I'm a career consultant. And so came out of school, an Auburn school called Auburn University in the United States in Alabama, and joined Accenture out of school and so did sort of the large global consulting deal for a few years and then joined a regional IT firm and at the time it professional services. But at the time it was one office in Birmingham, Alabama. And so I went in as a project manager and through the course of the next ten to twelve years, we scaled that company from, you know, a bit of chaos into a predictable custom environment to where we could deliver inside of multitudes of enterprise level customers. And in that we did managed services, we did it professional services on a grand scale. And so, but sort of the three things that we had to do to take ourselves from something that, that was very chaotic to something that was repeatable was we had to create the capabilities to control projects, whether they were big or small. We had to have defined methodologies that allowed us to create predictable outcomes in custom environments. We had to create the capabilities to be able to build technical people. So whether it was support engineers, developers, whatever, we had to create the capabilities to where we could hire somebody and then make them a professional contributor in the way that we needed them to be to support our bill rates and that sort of thing. And then the final thing is we had to create the processes to create, to build revenue producers, because we went through this, once we sort of got those first two legs of the triangle built, we're like, we're just going to add salespeople now. And it was sort of a challenge because we made lots of assumptions based on where they were competitor, you know, skill set, all these things that, and we made assumptions that they knew things, and they really, it was an impossible assumption to assume. Very unfair. And so we created a process to build revenue producers. And once we did that, we scaled around the southeastern United States, and ultimately that company was acquired by a global provider. And I stayed a year but then left to build the processes or build, multiply around the processes that we developed to build revenue producers.
[00:15:48] Speaker B: Got it. So you essentially took a very systematic approach to building up a business. And as you say, you've got, can't remember the exact phrase you said, but the three legs of the business, you literally worked out what worked, and then you systemize it so that it just happened again and again and again as the business got bigger, which is, which is just brilliant. So what do you do?
[00:16:06] Speaker C: Sounds really great there. It sounds really great there. But it was very, just like, you know, it wasn't all, you know, linear and that sort of thing. There was a lot of trial and error and challenges that went with it, but it was really rewarding and fun.
[00:16:17] Speaker B: Oh, I'm sure. And let's be honest, anyone that's ever started their own business or runs their own business, which is the vast majority of people listening to this podcast or watching this video on YouTube, they feel exactly that way. That when you, it's like when you meet friends who are still employees, and I'm sure you have this, Ryan, and you say, I've been in business for 19 years, and I'll say things like, oh, yes. So I built this business up and then I sold it, and then I did this, and we've done this and we've hit this revenue, and you see kind of jaws dropping and they're like, wow, you, you've done an amazing thing. And then you say, yeah, but I haven't told you about the hundreds of thousands of pounds that I lost along the way. I haven't told you about all the mistakes the staff quit who were critical, the days I couldn't make payroll. And, you know, the sort of the downs of the, of the roller coaster as well. We like to focus on the, on the big things that we've achieved in the, in the past. So what do you do now to help MSP's?
[00:17:06] Speaker C: So for MSP's, and really any sort of company, but NMSP is a good part of our business, is we come in and those assumptions that we talked about when we are hiring a salesperson, it's all about sort of revenue, production. And so in the same thing, you sort of quoted it back to me, systematize something, make it repeatable. Sales is that exact same way. And the thing in sales that is not systematized and not repeatable is the personalities that we try to duplicate the big questions that we ask. Because when we ask questions, we lose control of the conversation. When we ask a question and we don't get the right answer back, we're struck, we struggle with it because, and it's totally dependent on the counterparty to reciprocate the way we want them to. And so what we've done at multiply is build a systematized process to help MSP's build out their sales message, background of the company. What makes them different? How do they compete in the market to where you can maximize your strengths against the competitive weaknesses that highlights this addressable problem that we drive a customer to. Then we get to the offerings that we provide. And so it is our job as salespeople, as business leaders to go in and tell that to a customer with great intentionality. And we don't hog the conversation. We ask. We tell them that story. Then we very politely get to our ask inside a set of conversational guardrails that allows the prospect to reciprocate back to us in a way that we can control.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: So, as I said right at the start, this is completely the opposite to everything that I've read about sales. My own experience selling within my own businesses, and of course, all the other sales experts we've had on this podcast. Now, I'm not saying this to do anything more than just challenge you to explain for us why that works so well.
[00:19:13] Speaker C: I'd love it.
[00:19:13] Speaker B: Yeah, that would be great to hear that.
[00:19:15] Speaker C: So, okay, so here's the thing, right. The reason it works, and we do this sort of with enterprise companies down to like, pre revenue startups and minimsps are in that, like, our first customer was an MSP company and back in 2018. And so the reason this works is because it's repeatable. And the number one thing that we get from customers is. Wait. That's simple. And yes, it's simple, because if I know how to go in, we chit chat for two minutes, then I say, well, let me tell you a little bit about my company. Then I want to hear what you've got going on on in your company and sort of your plans for the rest of 2024. You're going to be put at ease and you're going to say, that sounds good. Then I go through this very repeatable conversation. I don't make any assumptions that, you know about us, me, the MSP. I don't make any assumptions that, you know, what we do or that you have, you know, any problems. I tell you who we are, create credibility, differentiate us in the market. It. Then I tell you the problems that we solve. Then I very politely say, well, I'd love to hear what you've got going on in your company, in your company, and sort of what y'all's plans are, you know, and sort of how you're doing your network admin, how you're doing Wi Fi, like whatever the sort of the core you want to talk about. And so then the responses are going to be, that sounds good. Well, let me tell you what we're doing, and you're driving to the problem that you want to solve.
And so the difference is that if I walk in and I just say, well, tell me about how you do network admin, tell me how you do printer support, tell me how you're handling your Wi Fi or video security or whatever it is. You have an answer for that a lot of times. And then if, and so what happens is, is that I start playing catch up, trying to tell you that I have a way to do it better than you because you've dropped the anchor points versus if we talk first and say, hey, look, here's how we do things and here's why we're credible to do it. Here's the like, not just what makes us different, but here's how we are different, and here's the processes that we use as a company to ensure your success. And by the way, these are the problems that we solve. And so what I'd like to understand is how you're doing network security, how you're doing your Internet monitoring, whatever it is, then they're going to open up and be like, well, we're not doing it like that.
And so all of a sudden you've got a sort of a problem set that you're talking around, where you set the cadence of the conversation versus the question, where if you get the wrong response, you can be made to feel irrelevant. If you're sort of young and sort of inexperienced and don't know, you know, a lot of times new salespeople struggle with this. If I show up to a business owner and I start asking questions about their business, they can make me feel irrelevant really quick. It feels like an interview and that can be uncomfortable. So if you reverse it and even senior people like, but you take it to the background of the company and we talk and lay out what we do and then get to our ask, they respond inside of that problem set that we've laid out. And maybe they have the problem, maybe they don't, but at least they know who we are and what we do. So that when the problem evolves, because we know it is in MSP's, the problems are always going to be there. So when that problem evolves, they can call us back, say, hey, who is Ryan? I don't remember everything he said, but, but he was talking about this issue that I'm dealing with now and you creates the callback.
[00:23:01] Speaker B: Okay. So I think I've figured out why this works and why this is actually a very smart thing for managed service providers. And it's because the people you're talking to don't understand the technology. They're ordinary business owners and managers. You know, they don't understand the solution. They know they need someone to look after it. And actually all the other MSP's are coming in. And just as you were saying, Ryan, they're asking the questions, they're potentially confusing the customer. Whereas what you're saying is you go straight in, you essentially, you give them a very, very simple reason why they would pick you. And what you've systemized is the simplicity of that message, which also differentiates you because you're the only MSP who's doing it that way around everyone else is doing it. The questions first. This is very interesting. Now very briefly, because we are going to have to just finish up shortly. Tell us some other parts of the system that you recommend. And of course, I'm not expecting you to give away all of your secret sauce, but a couple of other things that you would recommend. That any MSP puts into their sales process would be great.
[00:24:01] Speaker C: Okay, so what we just talked about is eliminating the assumption that people know what to say, when to say and how to say it. Make sure when you go into a meeting at a macro level, you've defined your company and you know what you're going going to say. Right. At a macro level, then for every single encounter that we have, whether you go in with three questions, what are we going to say? What are we going to ask for? What do we want the next step to be? And if we can predetermine those questions and determine the answers that we want, then we can judge the success of me meetings and then we control success. Even if we get Nos, we're qualifying prospect as non buyers. But it eliminates sort of the good conversation that is lacks intentionality. Whereas if we answer those three questions, go into every single encounter with great intentionality, then we can move the sort of get to move prospects through the pipeline to with, with to where there's manageable next steps, as opposed to they're just in there like we think they're going to buy something and not really knowing intentionality or the intentionality of what do we want the next step to be. And did we get there? And so our whole company is based on the macro level, defining the repeatable conversation and then driving that down into the intentionality of every single encounter, whether it is the prospecting activities, whether we've got an introductory meeting, or whether we're at the problem based meeting that we want to get to a proposal.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Ryan, tell us a little bit more about specifically what does your business actually do with MSP's? Is it consultancy, is it training? How do you help them? And also, what's the best way for us to get in touch with you?
[00:25:55] Speaker C: Yeah, so we have a variety of solutions. So we started as a pure service firm. So we've got a consulting arm. We're what we call a tech enabled services firm. We've built a platform that goes through this whole process of how the outline and then onboarding and training mechanisms. And so we've got, you know, sas based options. We've built a playbook that has all of this detailed in it to where, you know, you can go with really light, you know, just pure SaaS based options to really heavy, where we come in, build this out over three or four months, train your team to be able to go sell it and that sort of thing. And then, you know, a playbook option to where you're going to do the work, but we're going to give you the materials, and then we work with you along the, you know, along the way as sort of advisory meetings and that sort of thing. And so all that's detailed on our website, it's www.askmultiply.com and then my email is Ryan askmultiply.com and I'm on LinkedIn and all the different things that Ryan.
[00:26:53] Speaker A: Robin Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast, Paul's personal peer group.
[00:27:00] Speaker B: A note from talking to listeners that often this podcast produces as many new questions as it does answers, which is why this section of the show. We answer your questions now. I'll tell you how to submit yours in a second. First of all, producer James, what have we got this week?
[00:27:15] Speaker D: Well, this week we have a rather sizable dilemma from Seb, who owns an MSP in Colorado. He says that his MSP is quite well established at seven years old. However, his growth has plateaued and he needs to grow and admit that marketing is the way forward. But his question is, I'm too busy. How do I find the time to do marketing?
[00:27:37] Speaker B: Yep, so I hear this all the time. And actually I don't believe the answer is really about finding time or trying to produce time or save time. I think it's about prioritizing marketing in your head. You almost need to take a step back and ask yourself, why do you own a business? Why did you start it in the first place? It's probably to gain some kind of control over what you do and how you do it, but also so that you can have a level of control over your personal income. Maybe because you wanted to have a bigger house or a better car or both. Or best of all, you want to spend more time with your family doing fun things. It is often lifestyle things that are drivers to start a business and to grow a business. So what I'm trying to say is most of us start the business, whether this is the original intention or not. Eventually we want the business there to feed our life, lifestyle. But the only way you can do that is for the business to give you the two things you need. And you need both of these things. You need cash and you need time to enjoy that cash. And you know, as you're growing the business, that's what you should be working towards. So, you know, when you're bringing in more work and you're investing the cash that you're generating into resources to implement the work for you so that you personally don't have to do it. That really should be the goal that you're working towards. You've got a bigger business producing more amounts of cash, and you're doing less work. This is not a bad thing. This is a really good thing. You end up with a much better business there. So if we acknowledge then that marketing helps to grow the business, and when you say you haven't got time to do marketing, what you're actually telling yourself is, I haven't got time to grow the business. Do you see the case I'm making there? And it's essentially the same as saying, I haven't got time to work towards a better lifestyle. I haven't got time to work on spending more time with my kids. It's kind of crazy. Now maybe you'll say, Paul, that's a bit brutal. But actually, if that feels brutal to you, maybe because it's the truth. And, you know, I've had various times, I've been in business for 19 years in total. I've had various times where I have caught myself saying, I haven't got time to do this. Haven't got time to, you know, to work on the business, to do the marketing, to grow the business. And when you realize your wake up call is when you're saying that, you're saying, I haven't got time to improve things so I can spend more time with my kids or with my other half or getting a better car, which is crazy, right? But maybe we need that wake up call. We all get really, really busy, and we tend to prioritize the things that actually aren't a priority. But understand this, the most successful business owners on this planet are the ones who get through that clutter and they find the time to do the things that matter, such as marketing. Oh, one final, very quick thought on this is that as you generate cash and sort of buy more of your time back by not doing well, you can buy more of your time back by not actually doing your marketing yourself. One of my favorite acronyms is DOA, which doesn't stand for dead on arrival. That's actually what you will be if you keep trying to do it all yourself. Instead, DOA should stand for delegate, outsource, automate, which is a great mindset to throw at your marketing, especially when you're sitting there thinking, I just don't have time. Now, if you've got any question about anything to do with growing or marketing your MSP, then just go to the contact
[email protected]. and while you're there, for help finding new clients for your MSP. We've created an easy to follow marketing system. You get that and all the content that you need to run it at mspmarketing edge coming up.
[00:31:09] Speaker A: Coming up next week.
[00:31:10] Speaker B: Thank you so much for listening this week. Next week, I've got five ways to measure whether or not your hot prospect is a great fit for your MSP.
[00:31:19] Speaker A: For MSP's around the world around the world. The MSP marketing podcast with Paul Green, prospects. Show yourself.
