MSPs: How notifications stop you from buying a better car

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hey, did you get the email about reading maps backwards? Don't open it, it's spam. Hello. How you doing today? Here's what I've got coming up for you in the show, how notifications are stopping you from buying a better car. Tell me, are you up against a super MSP? Well, this is why you have nothing to fear. And my guest talks about why your brand is so much more than your logo. Welcome to episode 258, powered by mspmarketingedge.com Dot Paul Greens and MSP Marketing podcast one of the hard facts that you soon learn as a business owner is if you want to grow your business, you have to find and protect substantial chunks of time in order for you to work on your business. It's this time where you make the forward progress, because you're implementing things that will generate new clients, retain existing clients, and encourage your existing clients to buy more services from you. But there's a problem. You see, I believe you have to spend this time in the zone completely focused on the task in hand. And this is especially true if you're an MSP doing marketing activities, and that's not a natural skill set for you. Yet, the vast majority of MSP's, they never get into this state of full focus. And there's a specific reason why. Many, many years ago, I used to do one on one consults with MSP's here in the UK. We'd hire a business meeting room and we'd spend the day exploring their business goals, their marketing, what was going well and what was not going well. And I probably did about, I don't know, 20 or 30 of these over about 18 months. And it's not something I do anymore, but it was a great way for me to learn about MSP's and of course for me to help them with their marketing. That was before we had our MSP marketing edge service. But I'll never forget one of the meetings I had, which was, it was almost like a comedy situation, like it could have been in a sitcom. So let's just take the context of this meeting. The MSP that I'm meeting with has paid a few thousand pounds for my time and attention, and the whole purpose of the day is to examine their marketing and make it better so that they can win new clients and ultimately grow their business, which is the way that of course, they'll grow their own personal income and ultimately have a better lifestyle. So to me, that makes the beating a very big deal indeed. And in fact, most of the MSP's that I met with. They took their meeting very seriously, but one of them didn't. And it wasn't that he didn't want to. He was desperate to grow his business, and I knew that he valued my advice. The trouble was, he was caught up in the notifications of what was happening in his business at that exact moment. The first hour or so, I could barely drag him away from his laptop. He was looking at teams messages, he was looking at his PSA, and he was just generally distracted. And I challenged him on this when we had our coffee break, and I said, look, I don't believe that you can spend quality time working on your business while your brain is trapped on these notifications about things that are happening in the business. You're working still in the business. Oh, and I gotta say, it wasn't like there was a big incident going off. There was no cyberattack or anything like that. It was just the regular day to day stuff between him and his techs. Now, as you can imagine, this MSP was trapped working in his business on a day to day basis. And even though he wasnt there in his office, he was sat in a meeting room with me. He was still mentally in his office with his techs. You know what I mean by that. So after that first coffee break, I did manage to persuade him to log out of his PSA, to shut down teams, and to spend more time focused on what we were doing, what him and I were doing in the room. And that's when his phone started pinging. Ping? A text message. I could see his eyes jump down to the phone, and he was desperate to read it and see if it was from his team. And when he didn't read it and didn't respond, they whatsapped him. Ping. And he almost started sweating as he could see the name of one of his staff on his phone, and he wasn't reading the message because he'd promised to pay attention to me. And then the phone started ringing, and both of us could see the word office on the screen. So I let him answer that, and I kind of mentally gave up on that session because I realized he was never going to spend quality time thinking about the growth of his own business. Now, let me be clear. I'm not in any way being critical of this business owner, although he did waste a couple of thousand pounds on me and the meeting room that day. The point is, the point that I'm trying to make is that if you're going to do important work, you've got to get into the zone. You've got to get into that deep mode where you're implementing important things that are going to grow your business in the years ahead. And you cannot do that if every 5 seconds is a ping, ping, ping, ping, ping of something somewhere going off. In this respect, teams is evil. Your PSA is evil. Your phone is evil. Your children are evil. I'm just joking about the children. One, I'm not really joking, but it's true. You cannot do quality work on your business if you're constantly being interrupted. Let me tell you something that you and I might disagree with. Multitasking is a myth. I genuinely believe it is. I know that you think you can multitask because you can set up a new user while you're resetting someone else's password, and you can be on the phone to a third person. You can do this all at the same time. And you might think that you're one of those really clever people whose brain is set up that way and you can genuinely multitask. And yes, indeed, that may be the case, but when you're doing important jobs that you're not good at, things like marketing, and especially when they're really important, they're not just a trivial thing like a password reset. They need your full brain capacity. Every single time a notification grabs your attention, you are pushing your progress backwards. This is why I actually have very few notifications on my phone. I have a couple of select people on WhatsApp who I'm notified about and a couple of select apps which don't abuse the notifications. But there's very little else that gets through on my phone. And if I'm doing really important work, I enable do not disturb on my phone and on my laptop. It feels like the whole world's gonna explode and you won't know about it. If you're on do not disturb for an hour or 90 minutes, doesn't it? But I promise you that is not the case. What will happen is that you'll spend quality time working on things that grow your MSP. The MSP owners who are growing their businesses do this on a regular basis. I promise you. So the next time you see a car that you'd love to own or a house that you would love to move into, but you can't yet afford it, ask yourself if the blame lies with the ping, ping, ping. Paul Greenshouse, MSP marketing podcast still to come, when someone talks about your brand, do you think they just mean your logo? Lots of MSP's believe this, but my special guest today is a brand expert who says your brand is everything. Not just your logo, but your website, your social media presence, and right down to what happens on live chat, in tickets. And when technicians pick up the phone, he'll be here to tell you how to improve perceptions of your brand across all channels in the next five minutes. So this happens. A super MSP that has hundreds of employees buys a local competitor of yours, and suddenly they're in your town. Has this happened to you? Or do you fear coming up against a super MSP? Well, I don't think you have anything to worry about from Super MSP's. In fact, I believe they create lots of opportunities for you. Hey, I'm Paul Green, and don't forget, for all of the content, tools and training to market and grow your MSP, check out mspmarketingedge.com. super MSP's are huge companies that buy MSP's and merge them together. And here are three reasons why I believe they create marketing opportunities for other MSP's like yours. Here's the first one at your old competitor. The clients. Once the acquisition has gone through, they watch the service levels go down and the prices go up, and all of the people that they've known for years just seem to vanish. And this makes them sometimes reluctant to sign another contract. So here are some ideas to capitalize on this. Look at an archived copy of your old competitor's website to get names from testimonials and call them run paid ads with a headline, does your business miss old competitor's name? Number two, some of the technicians who were transferred to the super MSP will hate working for a big company. So reach. Reach out to all of them on LinkedIn and meet for a coffee just to connect. Bingo. You now have a pipeline of potential new technicians. Hire the one who can remember the contact names of all of the clients of your old competitor. And number three, sure, the super MSP will always be better resourced than you with more marketing and salespeople, but none of them will have your passion or your speed. The bigger a business, the slower it is to react. You are a speedboat. They are a supertanker. You can adapt to the winds on a whim, and they take 3 miles to change course. Never be scared when you're up against a super MSP. Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast still to come. Do you read or listen to lots of business books? But then a few months later, you can't quite remember what the core messages were in those books? Well, I have this problem too, and so does an MSP owner. So I'm going to answer it in the next five minutes. Your MSP's brand is so much more than your logo. Your brand is actually how people feel about you based on everything they see or hear about you. My guest expert today is going to tell us why your brand tone must be consistent across every way you communicate with everyone, including on live chat, in PSA tickets and when technicians pick up the phone. Today's guest believes so strongly in the power of a good brand, he says it helps you truly differentiate from all the other MSP's. [00:10:03] Speaker B: Hi, I'm Jim Petrszynski. I am the CEO of Solsite. We are a full service brand design agency. I've been with the company since inception, three of us now up to 80, and just as of the last month acquired another agency on the east coast. So brand agency and growing. [00:10:21] Speaker A: Amazing. Congratulations on your recent acquisition. But 80 staff, oh my goodness. You must have either a very good management team in place or a very busy schedule. But we're not here to talk about staff, we are here to talk about branding. And in fact, I'm going to challenge you in the next couple of minutes, Jim, about how important branding really is for an MSP that's looking to grow. I suspect that you and I may have conflicting opinions on this. We will find out in the next few minutes. But first of all, tell us a little bit about you. So how did you come to be a branding expert sitting in a fast growing business like you are now? [00:10:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I started in. So I have a background in design, bachelor of fine arts in graphic design actually, and started in the industry working with consumer packaged goods and branding in b two B and working at a small agency. Then moved on to a very large agency which was global, worldwide and realized that neither of those places were right for me and that something needed to be, I needed to find something in the center. So Solsite was born in 1990, 919 97, focused on more mid sized companies working with their brand and helping develop their brand and grow their brand and help add value to business by maintaining those brands. We're on a pretty fast growth trajectory through, I would say, the last 20 years and in the last ten have really grown quite considerably. Especially as I talk about the acquisition that we've made, the east coast, you know, I think what's next is really to look for another opportunities for us to engage in partnerships in the UK so that we do actually have a global presence because we do work on iconic brands that are global in the marketplace. [00:12:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I wouldn't bother with the UK. It's a terrible place. Really is very downbeat. I wouldn't bother with that at all. What's the most in your whole of your career? What's the most famous brand you've ever worked on? [00:12:24] Speaker B: Most Coca Cola probably comes to the top of my head. And then if you're into beer, Molson, Coors, which was, you know, is Miller and Coors products and Molson projects in Canada, they've been a client of ours over 20 years. So that's been kind of our pride and joy, you know, as we've, as we've grown the business. [00:12:48] Speaker A: Yeah, that's pretty impressive. There's some good brands there. But let's talk about MSP's and b to b. So obviously, most MSP's are business to business. I know some MSP's do still do domestic work, consumer work, but that's not the majority of the audience who listen to this podcast and watch these YouTube videos. From a b, two b point of view, I don't see a great deal of investment into branding from MSP's. So your average MSP, even up to a million, maybe a couple of million turnover, will look at their brand as being that logo that was done, which can either be done by someone on the cheap, maybe on fiverr, on upwork, or it was just done by their website people. And for most MSP's, they seed that as their brand. I guess when you hear something like that, that just makes your kind of heart go cold inside. [00:13:33] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, we've had this conversation a lot and talking to companies that are b, two b, and companies that we work with that are b, two b. There's always a c. Like there's always a c and there's always someone that is reciprocating that brand or feeling that brand or using that brand. So there is nuanced differences in how MSP's work in a b, two b space. But in general, the value of the brand becomes more important because a lot of, especially as technology has grown and as these MSP's are. And again, I don't run an MSP, but work with a lot of MSP's that are mostly virtual or remote. So it's a voice on a phone. That's all part of the brand. It is the way that you present yourselves, the way that your response times, how well you are able equipped to intellectually lead someone to help them with whatever problem or nuance might exist. For them, it is. We're a service company, MSP's are service companies. And that service component becomes a very important piece when we talk about the brand. And when we work with MSP's, we really try to strike the balance of helping them understand that there is a purpose that they need to have. There is a vision, there is a mission, and there have to be values that are formed so that characteristics can really start to build the company. I mean, there is. The brand in most MSP's is really not a logo. It is the experience that you feel working with an MSP. [00:15:19] Speaker A: Now that's really interesting because most MSP's really struggle with differentiation, with explaining in any way what makes them different from, well, explaining in a non technical way what makes them different from their competitors. Because the MSP's will know, hey, my tech stack is better. We're greater at security. We outsource, we have an outsourced help desk overseas overnight. So they know all of those things. But translating those features into benefits and using them as a point of differentiation is really hard for most MSP's because they're not marketers. If we were to look at something like, let's take Coca Cola for example, so we all know there's Coca Cola and there's Pepsi, and call me a heathen, but they taste similar, right? I know everyone has their preference, but let's be honest, that preference is probably more built up over marketing to us our entire lives, because all of us who are alive now have been marketed to our entire lives by those colas. And our preference is probably dictated by our parents preference, by what happened to us as when we were children, all of that kind of stuff. So I think it's really easy for a business owner, an MSP owner, to look at Coke and Pepsi and say, hey, obviously marketing and branding is really important to those because ultimately they're just the same product. They're the same product with slightly different chemicals in slightly different tastes. But it's the brand that makes the difference. How does that translate to my MSP? So you were saying that it gives good branding is a point of differentiation to look at all of those things practically. How do you do that if it's not about the logo? How do you help ordinary business owners and managers to feel something about the MSP that they're thinking of choosing? [00:16:58] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a great question. I think one of them is to have a story. I think that as we look at MSP's and we talk to them about, you look for a point of difference, everyone started in a different place. Where is it that you began? And, you know, there are certain MSP can mean and how. And the service that you provide is very vast. But like, what do you really specialize in? Like, I think that it's important to understand where do, like, where do you shine and where do you, what is shining best for you and looking at, you know, that service and then understanding what characteristics then are built from that service that become important to how people feel that and how you're expressing yourself. So I think to look at, to build a vision and to build a system, state of values is something that has to be. It's almost an internal playbook for an MSP on how their team or their teammates or their partners or whatever you want to call your coworkers are all embodying that same vision. And they understand that, you know, the service. And when someone is calling you, for the most part, they're usually in some sort of state of distress or in need of help. That there is a personality type that needs to be looked at to fulfill roles to in management and in service for them. So, you know, again, that still builds from the story. You want to make sure that the characters that are part of your brand also relate to the story that is being built so that there is a relationship that's happening even internally within the company if you need to be transferred to a specialist to work on a specific assignment or someone's not well equipped to handle the issue that you have at hand. So for us, MSP's have really been really looking at, you know, like we look back at like what are your average response times for your, for your clients? What are the things that, all the things that you're familiar with, you know, and how often our teams reaching out to you, how often do you feel it problems are being resolved and, you know, and then what is, what did that interaction feel like? You know, like what are there ways? There's a little bit of research for that. We can do it. Understanding and doing some interviewing to understand what is the playback that you're getting from your current partners or your clients and then use that to develop a playlist. I wouldn't say it's a total script, but like a personality profile and kind of the do's and don'ts of how to manage a wide array of different types of businesses. You know, they don't all think the same as a creative agency like ours. [00:19:52] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I guess what you're talking about here is a coherence. So if the brand of the business based on the values of the people that work within their business and the reactions of the clients, if the values are, you know, you're reliable, you're trusted and people feel safe with you and that's what your entire brand is built on. But then a user picks up the phone for support and a twelve year old technician answers saying hello, no, I can't help you with that, I'm too busy or oh yeah, that's not important, you know, I'll log a ticket. It's just the complete opposite experience of what you're trying. I get what you're saying there. The brand isn't just what's on the website. The brand is everything. It's the way the company acts, it's the way it feels, would that be a correct thing to say? [00:20:31] Speaker B: Correct. We call it brand World or brand experience. And I think a lot of that's connected to the user experience and what that user experience is not just in a conversation between on the phone or directions on the phone, but how easy is it to reach you, how easy is it to what's the interface look like when we're working together and we see a lot of really great ones and we see a lot of really bad ones. So like when that brand actually how you appear in the communication platform that you're using is important also is just as important as your brand. I think you said, you know, a logo, a brand is more than just what your logo is like. Your logo hopefully would be something that someday many people would, you know, become memorable based on positive experiences that they've had with you over time and have recommended you to you know, multiple other people's in the, in the, in the business industry. But, but yeah you're, you're correct. It is, it is a holistic brand is very holistic and it's also, you know, involves all of, pretty much all of our senses. Right? You know, yeah, except for taste I guess. You're not going to be licking, you're not going to be licking your MSB provider hopefully, but you might be licking. [00:21:53] Speaker A: The screen of your computer which I'm sure Steve Jobs said that once about that they designed. It was so lovely you wanted to lick it. Final question for you Jim, because what you just said there makes a lot of sense and it is difficult. I think we can all see, particularly for small MSP's to get a consistency across live chat in the ticketing system, the PSA on the phone, on the website, in emails that are sent out. Particularly for a small business, there's lots of different channels there to get a coherence, and I can see the difficulty in that. For bigger MSP's, it's kind of easy. They just pull out there, pull out a checkbook anymore. Do you pull out your credit card and you go and talk to someone like yourself? But for smaller MSP's, what would you recommend is a good first step or something that they could do themselves to start going down that brand of, down that route of getting some kind of brand coherence? [00:22:43] Speaker B: That's a great question. And it's kind of how we began our company here too is really through empathy. I mean, I think thinking about what does it feel like to be in someone else's shoes when you're working with them and really understand that what is the need or the problem to be solved is a great starting place. And when you try to take yourself out of your own world and put yourself into someone else's shoes, you start to understand where those needs are and ask yourself, are we really fulfilling these needs or not? And those are the things that are going to be remembered by that brand and those are the things that are emotionally are going to start to connect, make connections that, you know, keep your brand growing, but also keep your brand healthy. [00:23:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I completely agree. And I read in a book somewhere, I can't remember which book, but it was to influence what John Smith buys, you must look through John Smith's eyes. And I think that applies not just to brand, but to all marketing as well. Jim, an amazing interview. Thank you so much. You've made big high level brand concepts very simple for us there, which I appreciate. Just tell us a little bit more about your business and what you do for MSP's and how can we get in touch with you. [00:23:53] Speaker B: Yeah, so we are, like I said, a full service brand design agency, which includes the strategy we can help MSP's uncover what their secret sauce is, or how they should position themselves in the marketplace by doing audits. And we have tools that help us understand, you know, how to help individual MSP's stand out from one another. We can actually do the design work. We can help with that user experience and help define really what that holistic brand experience is across many of the touch points that they would need. Even when it comes to digital advertising or if they're doing any social work or thought leadership in the marketplace, we can help them prepare what visually, how that might visually what that might feel like. We can't write it, but we can help visually articulate, you know, what that would feel like for someone. And does it feel helpful? Does it feel simple? Does it feel succinct? And do I have. And making sure it's. Communications are coming over in a way that people can absorb quickly. So that's a lot of what we focus on. We also do a lot of CPG along with MSP, and there is a lot of overlap. You know, I think that MSP's, they need to think of themselves as, you know, like I said, I know it is b two b, but there's always the c. And thinking about there as a consumer on the other end of who you're and of who you're working with. [00:25:27] Speaker A: And what's the best way to get in touch with you? [00:25:29] Speaker B: The best way to get in touch with me is [email protected]. it's s o u l s I g h t. I'm also on LinkedIn. You can look up my name, James Petrosynski, or our website is soulsight.com, as another way to see some of our work. [00:25:48] Speaker A: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast, Paul's personal peer group. Right then, we're nearly done for this week, but we do have time to answer one of your questions. Producer James, what have we got? Thanks, Paul. Well, this week actually quite an interesting question from Terry, who's based in Pennsylvania, and he's got a small concern about the risk of forgetting the things that might help him grow his MSP. His question is, I've listened to some great business books and loved them, but what's the best way to keep them alive for me in the long term? Oh, yes. I mean, this is a common problem for prolific readers. I've read and listened to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of business and marketing books, and I probably only retained so much knowledge from them because that's my job. But in reality, I've forgotten and way more than I remember. So here's a clever idea. Go and get yourself some visual summaries of your favorite books, and you could then frame those visual summaries and hang them on the walls of your office. I don't think they'll ever replace the books, but they do act like an aid memoir. I've got a few sites for you to look at. One's called visual synopsis. Can't say the word visual. Visual, visual synopsis. There we go. Now, these are very beautiful and quite clever summaries of books. There's another one called reading Graphics, which has got book summaries as infographics. And also, it's kind of surprising what you can just find on Pinterest. Just put the book title into Pinterest now. To submit your own question for this part of the show, go to mspmarketingedge.com and contact us. And for help finding new clients for your MSP, we've created an easy to follow marketing system. Get that and all the content to go in [email protected]. dot coming up, coming up next week. Thank you so much for listening this week. Next week, some MSP's give us their golden rules of sales and marketing for MSP's around the world. Around the world. The MSP marketing podcast with Paul Green.