MSPs: How to minimise interruptions from staff

[00:00:02] Speaker A: Did you know you can watch these podcasts on YouTube? You can grow your MSP and see Paul's face at the same time. [00:00:12] Speaker B: Oh, it is great to be back on your device because here's what's coming up this how to minimize interruptions and stupid questions from your staff. Five big ugly MSP marketing myths busted. And the three most important growth things you can do in the final three months of this year. Welcome to episode 255 Howard by mspmarketingedge.com. [00:00:35] Speaker A: Dot Paul Greens and MSP Marketing podcast. [00:00:39] Speaker B: One of the things you hear me regularly talking about is the need to invest 60 to 90 minutes every day working on your MSP rather than in it. And that means doing activities that win you new clients, encourage them to buy more from you, and encourage them to spend more when they buy. Now one of the biggest problems with this is when your staff constantly interrupts you with questions that really they could answer for themselves. Do you have this problem? If so, youre going to love my solution. Staff interrupt you all the time, often with stupid questions. Im not being rude about your staff because this is a fact, but interruptions kill progress. Why do they do it? Well, partly its to show that theyre working, partly its because theyre too lazy to look up the answer for themselves, and partly its because they want your attention as they are the child and as their boss, you are the parent. Now there is a three step fix for this, and you have to make a very long term commitment to all three of these steps so that this becomes, if you like, a way of working and not just your current thing. Step one, find your own space. Its impossible to do your work on the business when youre in the same physical space as your staff who are working in the business on your behalf. So you need a separate office at least, or maybe even an office away from your building. Theres nothing wrong with sitting in with your staff sometimes, but not all the time because its exhausting and frankly unproductive. Step two, answer every stupid question with a question of your own. So lets say youre asked boss, were out of milk. What should we do? Which of course makes you want to pull out your sword and with one swift chop end their miserable life. But this isnt Game of Thrones. So instead you ask this question back, if I wasnt here, what would you do? And then you repeat that question, or variations of it for each of the follow up stupid questions until they realise that they had the answer inside them all along. And yeah, I know this is the slow way to tackle the problem because the fastest thing to do is just tell them the answer that's quicker and easier, but it also reinforces their need for you, and we want your staff to thrive without you. And then step three is to make yourself available at fixed times of the day. Because not all staff questions are stupid, some will be totally valid, especially the technical ones. So make yourself available to your team once, twice, or three times a day at fixed times. And ideally these will be the same times every day. To turn them into a positive habit, have a teams call where they ask the questions they need answering. You might even ask them to document these questions in advance of the call, which forces preparation and that can remove time wasting. Now, stupid questions get the same question as number two. [00:03:23] Speaker C: I was just talking about, you know. [00:03:25] Speaker B: That whole thing of what would you do if I wasnt available? But valid questions can be explored and answered. And here are some ways to explore. [00:03:32] Speaker C: Problems that will teach your staff to look after themselves. [00:03:35] Speaker B: So you could say, for example, what does the standard operating procedure say about this? How do you think youd find that information? What did the Google machine say about this? Whats your gut feel for how this could be fixed? And the best one? What ideas did your colleagues suggest? Were just trying to train them here to answer all of their questions themselves. So they only bring to you the one or two questions a week that genuinely only you can answer. [00:04:01] Speaker A: Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast still to. [00:04:04] Speaker B: Come wow, this year has gone really fast. And if youre listening to this podcast on the day its released, today is the 1 October which means there are exactly three months of 2024 left. My guest today is an MSP growth expert and he has three activities he believes you should focus on in the final months of this year. He'll be here to share them with you in the next five minutes. Often when I start talking to an MSP about improving their marketing, the first thing I have to do is wipe out some common marketing myths from their head. So lets look at five of the most common of these and see which ones are stopping you from doing effective marketing. 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]. here are five myths about MSP Marketing that I want to scrub from your head so that you can improve your marketing with vigour big bristly, myth busting brush. Ready? [00:05:08] Speaker C: Here we go. [00:05:09] Speaker B: Myth number one is that marketing is a dark art and not at all logical. Now im not a technical person. If you explain the ins and outs of something technical to me, I would glaze over and possibly slip into a coma and youd be baffled because to you, tech stuff is logical and delicious and systemizable and you love it. Well, marketing is to me what tech stuff is to you. And you might see it as baffling and maybe even boring and a bit of a dark art, but to me it's logical and delicious and systemizable and I love it. And the best marketing for any MSP is a series of small, easy to implement actions that you can repeat daily, weekly or monthly so that you end up with marketing that never ends. It's the perfect way to get the right message in front of the right person at exactly the right time. Myth two, you need lots of cash to do good marketing. Sure, having cash helps because cash lets you buy other people's time or invest in marketing services. But any MSP can set up a really, really good marketing system with almost zero cash outlay. Take my simple three step marketing strategy. Build multiple audiences such as your LinkedIn and your email list. Grow a relationship with them through content marketing. So daily social posts and a weekly email and commercialize the relationship. Get them to book a 15 minutes zoom with you at the point that they're thinking of switching MSP's. Now you can set all of this up by spending just a tiny amount of cash. And by the way, my MSP marketing edge would be an excellent investment as a a it's built around that exact strategy and b there's no contract. Cancel any time. Anyway, onto myth number three. You need to hire a marketing agency. And there are lots of great marketing agencies in the channel. And of course, a few ropey ones. A great agency can save you a lot of time and effort building a spectacular website and putting smart digital marketing strategies in place. But you will pay for this and through the nose. And if you're not paying an eye watering price to an agency, then they're probably not that good at what they do. So hiring an agency is what you do when you have an abundance of spare cash and you want to invest in the long term growth of your business. Reality check. You want one new client of about ten to 20 users every month, right? And that would change your life if you could achieve that every month, agreed. To get that new client, you just need two, maybe three highly qualified leads a month. Assuming that you have a 50% close rate of at this stage of your growth a marketing agency might be overkill. Myth number marketing is all about the digital stuff. And digital stuff is great, as it's low cost and relatively easy. The downside is that everyone does digital stuff, and that makes it very hard to stand out from your competitors. Never underestimate the ongoing power of physical stuff in our digital world. Members of my MSP marketing edge have an IT services buyer's guide that they can print. A book on business, email compromise with their name on the COVID a monthly printed newsletter, marketing campaigns with lumpy mailers. Because all of these physical items speed up their marketing and their lead generation, and they will stand out in a way that their competitors can never hope to match. Which leads me onto our final myth number five. You have to beat all of your competitors in order to win. Simply not true. There's plenty of business for plenty of MSP's, but you don't have to be at the very top of the pile to win. You just need to be a little bit better than some of your local competitors. Remember what I said earlier about just wanting one new client a month? Well, that's a great mindset and it's a great context with which to approach all of your marketing. Now don't get me wrong, it's fantastic to dominate a marketplace. And I know a few MSP's who are doing that right now that can change your business and your life in ways you can almost never dream of. But for most MSP's, it's just not what they want. Winning one new client every month would make them the happiest business owners on the planet. Would it for you? [00:09:10] Speaker A: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast still to. [00:09:14] Speaker B: Come do you sometimes hear me talking about things in this podcast which you think, yeah, that's a really good idea, but you can never seem to actually motivate yourself into actually doing it. Well, the trick is to turn any task that seems difficult into a game. And I'm going to tell you exactly how to do that in the next five minutes. At this point of the year, we have about three months left, which doesn't seem a lot, does it? I'm sure it was January just a few seconds ago. Anyway, my guest today is an expert at growing MSP's, and I asked him what three activities you should be focused on for the remainder of this year. Today's guest will tell you the three most important growth things you can do in the final months of 2024. [00:09:55] Speaker D: Hey there, it's Ian Luckett from the MSP growth hub. [00:09:58] Speaker C: Hey Ian, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. You're one of our regulars. I think it's every year or so, we just get you back on because you are so full of value and you always bring something amazing. So I've invited you on for this. [00:10:10] Speaker B: Special episode, which is not really a. [00:10:12] Speaker C: Special episode, but it's a very special date because as of the day of this episode being released, the 1 October 2024, you, me and the thousands of MSP's who are going to watch this and listen to this have got exactly. [00:10:24] Speaker B: Three months left till the end of the year. [00:10:26] Speaker C: And we're kind of fudging over Thanksgiving there and Christmas and pretending there are no holidays or vacations. Theoretically, we've got three months exactly till the next year. [00:10:37] Speaker B: And what I wanted to get you. [00:10:39] Speaker C: On to talk about was give us. [00:10:41] Speaker B: Three activities, three things that every MSP. [00:10:44] Speaker C: Should be doing to max out the next three months. Before we get onto those, let's just. [00:10:49] Speaker B: Hear a little bit about you. Let's do the credibility thing. [00:10:51] Speaker C: Ian, who are you, where do you. [00:10:53] Speaker B: Come from and why should we listen to you? [00:10:55] Speaker D: Crikey, what a great. What a great three questions to start off. So, yes, as I said, Ian Luckett from the MSP growth up here in the UK, myself and my business partner, Stuart Warwick, help MSP's get to a million. And if you're already there profitably, then we help you get to five and faster, helping you build a business that works for you rather than you for it. So we help MSP's work on the business, on the non technical side of things. Well, I can faff around with all the technology, but we help them with their leadership, sales and marketing and all of that kind of great stuff, knowing your numbers and everything. And it's. And it's absolutely brilliant. We love being part of the channel. Super grateful for helping so many MSP's out. And this is a really great idea, three months left because everyone goes on holiday in December, don't they? No, they don't. And this is where the opportunity opportunities lie. I think this is a great, great opportunity for every MSP just to buckle down and really get a good push to the last six, last three months of the year. [00:11:45] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I completely agree. I should just add as a side note that Ian, I are very good mates. We live about 45 minutes apart, although we don't meet up nearly enough. But what happens is Ian will often call me when he knows I'm in a long car journey with my daughter. And my daughter has to bless her. She has to sit and listen to us rambling on for 2030 minutes. Lots of swearing, lots of ideas, energy. And then almost every single time we have one of those calls, I nearly crash my cardinal car, don't I? Or yeah, I miss a junction and I'm jumping. I'm swearing because I've just added 20 minutes of my journey. So anyway, we need to stop that. We need to have proper, proper calls when one of us isn't driving. We do. [00:12:19] Speaker D: And we do. [00:12:20] Speaker C: I also have a better car than Ian, which he hates. [00:12:23] Speaker D: Well, we've got petrol head versus a electric car chat. I don't think we go there on this episode because I think we have a 50 50 blend in our client base and 50% are electric and 50 are pure petrol heads. So we always have a bit of bands. It's a bit like that Apple and the PC thing, isn't it? You know it is, yes. [00:12:43] Speaker C: And I'm the EV one. Just to clarify that. [00:12:47] Speaker D: I wanted to clarify that as well. [00:12:49] Speaker C: Yes, because I care about the planet. So let's get on with what we were supposed to be talking about, which. [00:12:53] Speaker B: Is three things that you could be. [00:12:55] Speaker C: Focusing on for the next three months to really end the year as a maximum. What's your first thing, Ian? [00:13:01] Speaker D: First one's around maximizing the relationship and revenue with your existing clients. Account management. Every single time we get a client coming into the growth hub, we know, we know. We almost guarantee there is between 51 hundred, 50,000 pounds of untapped revenue because of a non connected account management process. Poor qbrs, TBrs. You're not going back in. And this is a. This is a gift that keeps on giving. Right? Every single year you can do the same thing over again. As long as you're providing value, you're selling value, demonstrating value to your clients. Every year you'll be able to increase your stack to keep you secure and you'll also be able to increase the revenue and the relationship with your clients. So the first one's all around account management, great relationships, great, you know, opportunity, great processes as well. You don't all have to do this yourself. As your business owner, you've got a whole team amongst you. Build the process and then leverage it amongst the team and it just makes them even, even sticker and you even more profitable. Absolutely guaranteed. That's the first one. [00:14:01] Speaker C: Thank you. I love that. And as we know, there is money on the table, let me ask you the follow up question to that, which is the question I get most often on that subject. Which is, where do I start? So if, you know, if you're like a three, four person business, the owner's still doing a lot of second line, all of the third line support, they've got all these clients, they're trying to grow the business. And they can see that, as you say, there's that hundred, 150,000 sat on the table. [00:14:24] Speaker B: But it seems like a lot of work to go and get that money. [00:14:27] Speaker C: So where would you start? [00:14:28] Speaker B: What are the first steps? [00:14:29] Speaker D: What a great question. And the first question is, start off by understanding is every client that you're working with making you money? Because I guarantee there will be a handful that aren't. And if they're not making you money and they're not going to move because you work with them for many, many years and they want a simple stack, get rid of them, because otherwise, we did a podcast on this just the other day, otherwise you're giving your profits. Yes. All those ice creams and holidays and cars and everything like that, that you could be spending with your friends and family to your clients, because if they're not making money, what you're doing it for. So the first thing is start off by analyzing your clients. Work out your a, b and c grade clients, and, you know, from, from a point of view of profitability, yes, you're going to be looking to move the ones that are not profitable into profitable. But also it's quite a, you know, a daunting process, putting my prices up. I've got to talk to someone. Oh, my God. I don't want to do that. Get some clients. Get a handful of clients who you know damn well are going to go, no problem at all. I'm going to do this. And that will help you build your confidence as you go through the process. And yeah, you're going to get some who are going to go, this is, is too expensive. No, I'm not doing it. And then you need to go and sell the value. So grade your clients, work out your profitable ones, work out your non profitable ones, and get a plan of attack to get yourself in a position to. And this is, this is how this whole process works. It's some of the frameworks we use here at the growth hub. [00:15:46] Speaker C: Did you just plug your podcast on my podcast? [00:15:50] Speaker D: Yes, I did. Yeah, we've got a podcast. It's called the it Experts podcast. Also here to help MSP's grow in scale. [00:15:56] Speaker C: I don't know if I like that. Let's move on to the second one. So what's the second thing we should be focusing on in the next three months. [00:16:01] Speaker D: You did that on my podcast. [00:16:04] Speaker C: You did. [00:16:04] Speaker D: Absolutely right. Second one, you're going to love this. It's start filling your funnel now, right? Paul talks about it all the time. We talk about it all the time. Sales and marketing is the one way to accelerate your business growth in your MSP. But yes. Where do you start? It's clunky. It's hard. It takes a long time. It costs a lot of money. No, it doesn't. But if you don't get started and you don't start building connections, then it will take a long time and it will cost you a lot of money and you will get bored of it and you'll probably find another vendor tool that you'll go and I tinkle with instead. So find out who your ideal customers, who are the ones we just talked about at Cambridge, who are the ones who are most profitable, right? Let's go and find them. Let's go and hunt them down. Are they in LinkedIn groups, Facebook groups? Your chamber of commerce is different associations you might be in. Also. Go and find those people and build a network of those people and become the technical expert with those people saying you are the go to tech it, MSP, whatever you want to call it in that space. So you're seeing credibility deliver some value. Go and do some lunch and learns. Go and do some keynotes. Go and explain to them. But the most important thing, please, and this is a plug back for you, Paul. Just take Paul's it services buyer's guide. It's brilliant. As your middle of funnel and educate, educate, educate in what poor it looks like and what good it looks like. And literally, our clients are just using it all the time and they are pulling clients off the shelves because they're going to. I don't get that. I don't get that. I don't get that. Is that what you do? Yes, I want what you do. So have that middle of funnel. The middle of funnel is the bit that everybody misses out. You know, people aren't interested in white papers anymore, but they want to come to a lunch and learn. They want to understand where their vulnerabilities are. So do that. Build the, you know, it's what Paul says. Build the audiences, educate, build connection with them and just do that. But start the funnel now as you're coming through because it takes a long time to come through and then by the time you started doing that investigation and who are you trying to connect with and get out on LinkedIn and all of this kind of great stuff. Beginning of next year, you'll have some traction and you'll have a bit of motivation around that. [00:18:08] Speaker C: Yeah, I love that. And thank you for plugging my it services buyers guide. No problem. So we actually only give that to members of the MSP marketing edge. A lot of our members, of course, work with you and vice versa. Any MSP can do a buyer's guide. The concept is really simple. You write a guide of how to. [00:18:24] Speaker B: Buy what you sell. [00:18:25] Speaker C: Because managed services is difficult. Ordinary business owners and managers, they don't really understand it. Just if you want to sort of gem up on this and understand exactly what are you going to write, go and look at. They ask, you answer, which is a book by Marcus Sheridan. He talks about buyer's guides in there. It's an incredible tool. And in fact, it was off the back of reading that book a few years ago that I wrote that for our members. And we update it every year. So right now we're just about to deliver the 2025 version. I also interviewed Marcus on this show. I think it was like two christmases ago. But if you go onto our podcast page on the website, you'll see it's our most listened to episode. So it's right up there at the top top for you to go in. And it's an interview about an hour with Marcus. But who knows? MSP's inside out because he's worked with hundreds of them. So we take all of his concepts and we make those sort of. What's the word I'm looking for? Valid. Valid. What's the word I'm looking for? Ian? I've suddenly lost. [00:19:18] Speaker D: Validate the concepts. [00:19:21] Speaker C: Thank you very much. Just like in real life, right? [00:19:24] Speaker D: Yes. [00:19:25] Speaker B: Okay. [00:19:25] Speaker C: What's your third and final thing you think we should do before end of this year? [00:19:29] Speaker D: Okay, number three, really simple. If I didn't mention it before, we do have our IT Experts podcast, and we've just recorded this show yesterday, so there's a plug. And it's called stepping up and out of your own way. So what we mean by this is that many MSP business owners, you might have a handful of people, and you're the bottleneck. Everybody's getting in your way. You don't trust anybody. Everything needs to be happening because of your say so. We always talk about getting out your own way, which is sometimes can be a bit of a forward term on, you know, do something different. But what we're saying about here is step up as a leader and understand that you're leading the business rather than managing it and managing the processes, and let people come up and flourish amongst you. Let them come up and let you hand over some of the tasks, let you delegate with authority and start helping them understand what you're trying to achieve with the culture of the business, the team working, even, maybe just give them a little project or something like that. Because people wake up in the morning, right? Because they want to win, they want to have a great day, they want to go to bed and go, that was a great day. They don't wake up in the morning going, oh, I can't wait to earn 237 pounds, 65. It doesn't work like that. Right. You know, we're of a, humans are of a need where we need to, we need to succeed. And if you're just pushing people down and you're suppressing people all the time, then they're going to leave. But if you involve them, you include them, you get involved in your culture, your vision, your mission, where you want the business to go. So step up a little bit as a leader. Look at the shadow that you're casting, look how people are behaving. And it's probably in relation to you. One of the things we just mentioned was, if you're not careful, you've got a family at home. You also have a family of kids at work as well. And they're going to play around like a load of kittens and have a load of fun. If you let them, if you educate them and you give them the responsibility and give them the tools, blow the business to pieces. Love it in a positive way, by the way, not a negative. [00:21:16] Speaker C: Yes, exactly. [00:21:17] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And you have more fun, don't you? [00:21:20] Speaker C: And you were quite right, saying, no one wakes up hoping for a bad day. We all want to have amazing days. And the more we're growing our business and systemizing it and making that business stand on its own, 2ft without us, I think that's more fun. [00:21:34] Speaker D: Absolutely. [00:21:35] Speaker C: A lot of business owners, I think you get trapped in that routine of, oh, well, I've spent the last 20 years doing tech problems every day and. [00:21:43] Speaker B: That'S what I do. [00:21:44] Speaker C: And actually, there are many more other more fun things you can do with your life. You can go and learn to fly, spend time with your other half, hang out with your kids, play golf, do whatever your thing is and still have a business that runs without you. But you're absolutely right, Ian. It requires that leadership. [00:21:59] Speaker D: Exactly. [00:21:59] Speaker C: Yeah. Perfect. [00:22:00] Speaker B: Thank you very much. I might give you one more plug. [00:22:04] Speaker C: Maybe don't tell us about your podcast because we're bored of hearing about that. But tell us about what the growth hub does. Tell us what you do, who you do it for. [00:22:12] Speaker B: Do you work with MSP's outside of. [00:22:14] Speaker C: The UK as well? And how do we get in touch with you? [00:22:16] Speaker D: So at the MSP growth hub, we work with MSP's mainly over the UK. Well, no, not mainly. Only in the UK at the moment. But we do want to change that as part of our vision. But if you're an MSP in the UK and you want to get in contact, and you're finding yesterday we kind of defined it as how many moments do you have in your MSP where something's hard, either people or your finances, or you're not making money. We talk to lots of MSP's who've been in business a lot of time and they're still not turning a profit because they just keep adding people and things to the businesses. So we help them streamline, get an efficient business. And I say build a business that works for you profitably rather than you working for it. Right. So that you can do the things that Paul just mentioned about go out. You might even want to do an experience driving an electric car. You know, maybe, maybe if you're a bit strange. But anyway, that's the one thing. But yeah, we help them. We have frameworks that we work with. We have programs, we have coaching, we've got leadership coaches. We've got some really amazing tools that are powerful. And it's not uncommon for us to double an MSP's turnover and profitability in between 24 and 36 months. And we're doing it, and it's putting hairs on my arms now, you know, just saying that because that's what we're here for. Stuart and I put this together to create a legacy of helping people. And, you know, if you help enough other people get what they want, guess what? You know, you get what you want. And we absolutely love doing it. And it isn't like work. A bit like yourself, Paul. So, yeah, if you want to get in contact with us, either hunt us down on LinkedIn, hit the website themspgrowth hub.com. there's a great little quiz there. Scale your scale your MSP quiz. Get in touch, have a chat. Just see if there's anything we can help you with more than happy Paul. [00:23:55] Speaker A: Green's MSP marketing podcast, Paul's personal peer group. [00:24:00] Speaker B: That's another show nearly done. So let me end by answering another one of your questions. Producer James, what have we got this week? [00:24:07] Speaker E: Well, this question, Paul, I think, is going to resonate with a lot of MSP owners this week. It comes from Francis, whose MSP is in Washington, and his question is, how can I motivate myself to do work I don't enjoy? [00:24:22] Speaker B: Well, one clever way is to gamify the job that you need to do. By that I mean turn it into a game. So, for example, let's say you've got to make a series of phone calls to hot leads. You could play the paperclips game. You get two glasses and you put a number of paper clips into one glass, and that number should represent the number of calls that you have to make. And every time you dial the number, you move a paperclip into the other glass, and you just keep going until all of the paper clips are in the other glass, and then you stop and you do a different activity. Now, this simple game triggers off a number of powerful psychological factors. You can see that progress is being made. Once you've started, your brain will really want you to finish, and filling the other glass will give your brain a really nice burst of dopamine, the reward chemical. Just dont make the mistake that I once made of using M and Ms instead of paperclips, because you soon end. [00:25:15] Speaker C: Up with two very empty glasses. [00:25:17] Speaker B: If you want to submit your own question, go to mspmarketingedge.com and head over to the Contact Us section. And dont forget for help finding new clients for your MSP. Weve created an easy to follow marketing system and all the content to go in it all in the same place. Mspmarketingedge.com coming up, coming up next week. Thank you so much for listening this week. Next week. Why you must remove every single tiny piece of friction that sits as a barrier to new sales for MSP's around. [00:25:49] Speaker A: The world around the world, the MSP marketing podcast with Paul Green.