Should your MSP fire your most annoying client?

[00:00:00] Speaker A: All right, let's crack on with today's show because I have some gold dust for you today, including should your MSP fire your most annoying client, then I've got a load of analogies to help any prospect to understand complex tech issues. And my special guest Today has generated 1,000 highly qualified leads for MSPs at events. We're laying out his system step by step so you can copy him. Welcome to episode 336 powered by MSP marketingedge.com Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast A big question should your MSP fire a client? It's a question almost no one asks loud. But a lot of MSP owners think about it privately. Now, you know the client I mean, right? The one whose name pops up and your stomach tightens slightly. The one who, when they ring your team kind of looks around quietly, hoping [00:00:54] Speaker B: someone else answers the phone or. Or more likely, they look down at their desk, hoping they don't make eye contact with someone. [00:00:59] Speaker A: I mean, the client who drains more [00:01:02] Speaker B: energy than they generate. [00:01:03] Speaker A: And you know that name that's in your head right now. If you've had that name negatively floating around in your head or in meetings or in discussions more than once over the last few weeks or months, then what I've got to say here is worth paying attention to. Because every so often in business, perhaps if you just take a few days off or if you have a bit of space to think about things strategically, you get this amazing rare combination of perspective and momentum, the two going together. Perspective, because you can step back and see the bigger picture. So how the last 12 months have really felt. And momentum, because you're thinking about growth and direction and what the next stage [00:01:40] Speaker B: of your MSP's growth looks like. [00:01:42] Speaker A: And when you zoom out like that, the handful of difficult clients, they really stand out very, very clearly. You know, the noisy one, the energy vampire, the one who questions every single line on every invoice, the one who is permanently unhappy, the one who doesn't treat your team with respect. And you find yourself thinking, am I really going to put up with this for another 6 12, 18 months? And then the doubt creeps in. You tell yourself, oh, hang on here, I'm trying to grow the business. Firing a client is going backwards. [00:02:15] Speaker B: No, that's completely the wrong way to think about it. [00:02:18] Speaker A: Because here's something that most MSPs don't realize until they've done it. Your worst client often costs you more than they actually pay you. Let me say that again. Often your worst client Cost you more than the money that they give you now. Sometimes, yes, that cost is financial, but it's always emotional, mental and operational. A single difficult client can completely demoralize your team. They can drain all the time from your senior technicians and from senior management. They can create chaos in your calendar and slow down work that you're doing for good clients. Bad clients can even contribute to staff churn. I've seen it happen. And they can absolutely destroy your personal mood or the mood of your team with a single ticket. So why would you continue to tolerate that? The opportunity cost of keeping the wrong client is huge. So how do you spot one? Clearly, to me, there are four big red flags. And the first is when your team groans when you're. When their name appears on caller id, that is the biggest warning sign of all. If your people feel dread and just avoiding the call, something is very wrong there. Second, they argue over everything. Quotes, invoices, priorities, response times, every time anyone speaks to them, any kind of interaction, it just feels like a negotiation, which is not a partnership, is it? That's just pain. Third, they expect champagne service, a lemonade budget. I love that line. They want premium response and premium outcomes. But when you explain what that costs, suddenly you're too expensive. And the fourth red flag? They don't follow your processes. They won't log tickets properly, they won't approve upgrades, they won't invest in their own security. Maybe they even phone you on your personal mobile in the evenings. But despite all of this, when something breaks, it's still your fault. If a client consistently refuses to work with you, they'll always feel like they're working against you. So let me ask again, is someone's name very clearly in your head at this point? Then let's talk about how to handle that properly. First of all, change the language in your own mind. You're not really firing them, you're helping them to find a provider who is a better fit for how they want to operate. I mean, that mindset shift alone changes your tone immediately. This conversation should be done with them on the phone. It should be professional, should be calm. Thank them genuinely for their business and just explain that your business, your msp, is moving in a slightly different direction and you no longer feel like the fit is right between you and them. Give them formal notice, of course, confirm it in writing and do recommend another provider who may suit them better. And then it goes without saying that you should work properly to transition them [00:05:08] Speaker B: without any kind of drama. [00:05:10] Speaker A: So, done right, they won't be thrilled of course they won't, because they're already probably a negative person or negative people, but they will respect how you've handled this. Done badly, there's always that danger that they'll leave a review that leads like a horror story or just, you know, talk badly about you to other businesses. But here's the bigger point. Growth is not just about adding new clients and growth for the sake of it. That's very rarely a smart idea. Growth is also about protecting your culture, your energy, and your direction. The right clients energize your team. They respect your process and they trust your advice. And of course, they make your business better. But the wrong clients do exactly the opposite. So if you're serious about building an MSP that's profitable, stable, and enjoyable to run, sometimes deleting a client is the smartest move you can make. Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast. You might be tempted to file this one under Sounds too good to be true, but actually it's real. What is? It's a cool freebie that hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of MSPs around the world have now taken advantage of. And it's something that's going to help you go from no leads to new clients. It is a physical wall planner that goes on your wall and it gives you 36 smart marketing actions that you can use to grow your msp. Now, I wrote the whole thing myself and, and it's all the things that I'm always recommending to MSPs that frankly make the biggest difference to their marketing. As I say, it's a real thing. We're physically going to send you. I nearly said one of these, but actually we're going to send you two of these because it's a double sided wall planner. So if you have the wall space, you can display both sides at the same time. And it is completely free. You don't pay any postage. You don't even have to put in a credit card number. I'm not trying to get you to start a subscription or anything like that. We absorb the cost of printing the wall planner and we absorb the cost of mailing it to you. And I do this so that you and I can start a business relationship. So to get your free copy, either go to mspwallplanner.com or if you're watching this on YouTube, scan the QR code that's on screen right now. Surely one of the biggest frustrations for any MSP is to trying, trying to explain something complex to a prospect and watching their eyes Kind of glaze over halfway through the sentence. Because you understand the tech, but they don't. And that's not a criticism, it's just a reality. Most ordinary business owners and managers don't want to understand the technical detail, but of course, yes, they do want to understand the impact and the outcomes. So right now, I'm going to give you three analogies that you can use to make complex tech issues instantly make sense. And then after that, I'm going to share a whole blast of extra ideas that came out of a conversation inside my MSP Marketing Facebook group, because there are some brilliant ideas in there. So let's start with the first and most common analogy. Computers and cars. This is a classic, isn't it? Because it just works. Most business owners can drive a car. Some of them could do small fixes or tweaks to their car. At the very least, most people can swap a tire, right? But yet they still get it serviced. They still rely on a professional mechanic for preventative maintenance. And when something serious goes wrong with their car, they don't personally strip the engine out. They don't take it out and strip it down to pieces, do they? They call a specialist for this. So it can be positioned as exactly the same. And yes, a user can reboot a PC and maybe even reinstall a printer, but that doesn't mean that they should be responsible for patching or security backups or monitoring or recovery planning. And here's the key point. If you don't service a car properly, it doesn't always fail immediately. But as we know, the problem builds quietly until one day, just when you need it the most, you're stranded. And that's what unmanaged it looks like. So framing managed services as a servicing plan for the most critical asset in their business suddenly makes it kind of obvious rather than optional. The second analogy you can use is the smoke alarm or smoke detector. And this is brilliant for explaining monitoring and cybersecurity. Because a smoke alarm doesn't stop fires or eliminate risk. It just detects danger early enough for you to act. Monitoring tools and security alerts and suspicious login notifications, they're kind of like digital smoke alarms. You don't wait until the building is on fire to install a smoke alarm. You install it, because early warning massively reduces damage. And that one lands really quickly with most prospects. And then the third analogy is insurance. No sensible business owner cancels their insurance just because they didn't make a claim last year. They understand it's there to protect against catastrophic Risk backups, disaster recovery, layered cybersecurity, all of those things and more are insurance for the digital side of their business. And just like with insurance, you don't want to discover the gaps when you're mid crisis. You want to know in advance that you're covered properly. So do those three make sense to you? Can you see that they would be a useful way for you to explain difficult tech stuff to people using concepts they already understand. And it's important you know this is not about talking down to people at all. This is actually you physically dropping down to their level to explain stuff in a way that they understand. It's very, very powerful. Now let me give you some other ideas. A few months back I asked inside my MSP Marketing Facebook group what analogies people there use and there were some absolute gems. By the way, if you're not in that group, it's completely free and it's a vendor free zone as well. Just go onto Facebook, search for MSP Marketing and have a look at groups. We're normally the top result in that it's just looking for the MSP Marketing Facebook group. [00:11:00] Speaker B: You'll see my pretty face on there and that's how you'll know you'll find the right one. [00:11:04] Speaker A: So Gerard in that group who's a prolific contributor. Thank you Gerard. He talked about how a professional builder doesn't give his team hobby tools, DIY tools to do serious work, which is perfect for explaining why business grade it matters. Alan used the Lamborghini analogy. You wouldn't buy an expensive performance car and then skip servicing it because eventually the repair bill will be eye watering. Jason compared slow Internet to drinking through a thin straw versus a wide one. That is such a simple way to explain bandwidth. He also mentioned comparing monitoring to a SWAT team ready at the first sign of smoke. [00:11:40] Speaker B: I love that one. [00:11:41] Speaker A: Then Neville, who's also been a prolific contributor over the years, Neville used the seat belt and and airbags comparison. You can have all the safety features in the world, but if someone drives straight into a brick wall, there are limits to what those safety features can do. That's very powerful when explaining user behavior and security risk. Ed mentioned roads, traffic lights and roundabouts. Very useful for explaining how systems need structure and flow to prevent chaos. And someone even compared pricing transparency to walking into a car dealership and asking how much a car is. [00:12:13] Speaker B: And of course the answer is you. [00:12:14] Speaker A: It depends on what model you want, what spec you want, etc. Etc. In fact, this ties beautifully into conversations about it pricing. The point of throwing all these ideas at you is that there isn't one perfect analogy. It's that analogies cut through complexity. They help prospects move from confusion to clarity in seconds. Because when someone says to you, oh yes, I get that, what they're really saying is, I trust that you understand this better than I do. And that's the moment the sales conversation shifts. So instead of trying to impress prospects with technical depth, because that never works, try translating complexity into something familiar cars, insurance, smoke alarms, straws, seatbelts, and tools. Because the MSP who can simplify complexity will always win against the MSP who hides behind technical jargon. The MSP Marketing Edge Member Update if you're a member of the MSP Marketing Edge, I hope that you're using our Content Calendar, which we released at the beginning of this year. So it allows you to see what content to publish when it's all just there on the screen in front of you. And it also shows you what cadence we recommend that you publish content. If you're using our Done for you service, then you can see when your [00:13:31] Speaker B: content will be published for you. [00:13:33] Speaker A: If I do say so, it's a lovely and easy to use visual tool, and you'll find it easy in the navigation on the left, just look for [00:13:40] Speaker B: the words Content Calendar. [00:13:42] Speaker A: Now, if you're not yet a member of the MSP Marketing Edge, we do only work with one MSP per area and you can check to see if your area is free. Just go to mspmarketingedge.com membership just enter your postcode or your zip code. In fact, if you're watching this on YouTube, you can also scan the QR code that's on screen right now. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast if you've ever paid to exhibit your MSP at an event and you've walked away thinking, [00:14:12] Speaker B: well, that was a waste of time [00:14:13] Speaker A: and money, then you're going to love my special guest. Right now. He's on track to attend 100 events helping MSPs just like you, and he's generated somewhere in the region of 1000 highly qualified leads for those MSPs. Highly qualified means that they're nearly ready, or they are indeed ready to to have a serious conversation right now about potentially switching from their existing MSP over to someone new. I'm going to ask him right now to lay out the system he uses to achieve that so you can swipe it and adapt it for your msp. [00:14:48] Speaker C: Hello everyone, My name is Michael Bukaic and I'm trying to Learn the fastest from the front lines by doing the most number of MSP Legion events ever. [00:14:58] Speaker B: Yes. In fact, you are without a doubt the hardest working person in the MSP marketing space. Because am I right in saying that as at this point, right now, you've [00:15:09] Speaker A: done 99 lead generation events with MSPs [00:15:13] Speaker B: that you work with over the last 12 months alone? [00:15:15] Speaker C: Is that correct figure we're cranking up that. That's 2025. In the calendar year I did 4047. And whenever this comes out, we're cruising past that because I'm going to do 100 all in 2026. So you better get this out quick or else it's gonna be way past 99. [00:15:31] Speaker B: It is, it is. And what's really cool is, and this is what we're here to talk about is doing those events is you're not doing those events just for fun. You're doing those events to help to generate highly qualified, ready to have a sales conversation leads for the MSPs that you work with and just give us the big figure. So out of those hundred events, how [00:15:51] Speaker A: many, how many qualified and we'll go [00:15:53] Speaker B: back and talk about what a qualified lead a ready to buy lead is. [00:15:56] Speaker A: But how many qualified ready to buy [00:15:58] Speaker B: leads do you reckon you have helped MSPS to generate just in the last 12 months? [00:16:02] Speaker C: This is where the rubber hits the road in writing stuff down. And I'm getting better at that. So the first few events I was, wasn't taking enough notes. I would say reasonably, 5 to 10 engaged leads per event, whether it's a trade show booth or a golf course booth, 5 to 10 is a reasonable expectation that you should set for yourself and that I have accomplished for each of these events. So you multiply that by 100, we're talking 500 to a thousand engaged. Like there's a, there's a reasonable level of engagement and recon collected. Not just a stranger that you said hi to. [00:16:35] Speaker B: Yes. And this is why you are the hardest working man in the MSP marketing space. You're also the guy with the most frequent flyer points because I know that you are doing some serious flying to do this right. [00:16:44] Speaker C: Everyone jokes about that, but I, I don't collect any points because United does not give away points for the cheapest tickets that they sell. [00:16:51] Speaker B: Okay, okay. We need to talk about AMEX points. We'll come back on to that perhaps after the interview. But anyway, let's, let's take this back. So we've set the expectation of what you do and how you do it. And I know a lot of this. You're, you're, you're doing it to help MSPs who are really struggling with their marketing, which is, which is just wonderful. But let's take this right back to start at the beginning. In fact, let's, let's go back a few more years. So just briefly, tell us about your, your background and how you got to this point where you're the hardest working, most flying person in the MSP marketing space. [00:17:24] Speaker C: Well, 10 years ago, I made the foolish decision with a friend of mine to start a business. That was 2016. We tried to follow the typical tech startup route and be cool tech startup type people. Well, it turns out that two engineers starting a business is not a good recipe. And we fell into the quintessential startup trap of thinking that we could design a product so good it sold itself. And we hid in our offices for like seven years, not facing the reality that nothing could sell itself. And then we ran out of money and we burned through millions of dollars of other people's money, millions of dollars before we finally bottomed out. And then I thought to myself, well, I've learned too much to give up and go get a job. So I started a new company for the first year of Iceberg Cyber, repeating those same mistakes until I was desperate enough to listen to one of my mentors that got me hooked on some books that taught me how to be a half decent entrepreneur. And from that I've just been slowly trying to crawl my way towards being smarter and better. And I'm definitely not smart enough. So in, in lieu of skill, I will overdo it with effort. And that's my fallback plan right now. [00:18:43] Speaker B: Oh, effort always wins. Effort. I've spent 20 years not being the smartest guy in the room, but I've read most books and I've tried the most things. And I haven't worked as hard as you for some years because I'm a little bit older than you. And you do trust me, the energy levels come down once you hit your early 50s. But yeah, I agree, effort absolutely will outwin. [00:19:06] Speaker C: That's all I got. Sometimes it's hard to get smart, but you can, you can be dumb and over overdo with effort, that's for sure. [00:19:11] Speaker B: Very true, very true. Tell us what those books were. What were the books that you sort of grabbed and changed your life? [00:19:17] Speaker C: This book taught me how to be a pretty decent entrepreneur. The book title is $100 million offers by Alex Hormozi. If you hadn't heard it or if you hadn't heard about it yet, please allow me the pleasure of introducing you to this book. I strongly believe that it will give you some good ideas if you're an entrepreneur. The core concept here, all of our businesses do the same thing, which is solve people's problems in exchange for money. That's what sales is. Which means the better you know people's problems, the better equipped you are at solving them. So this book just tells you how to clearly define and wrap your head around people's problems so that you can turn that into an offer that they will pay you to solve. I've listened to this book four times and the other books two or three times. He has a whole series, but this one's the core one. So, yeah, if you take anything from this podcast, go grab this thing is like $5 on audible or something and you can find it for free if you really scratch it for five bucks. Hundred million dollar offers. Alex Hormozi. It's. It's no bible, but it's a great reference on how to get your mind around focusing on people's problems. That's what I didn't know on my first business, and that's what I'm, that's what I'm clinging to desperately in this business. [00:20:37] Speaker B: Yeah. And Alex Hormozy is amazing. And I think, I think he gets mentioned almost every week in some, some way in the podcast because I've read his three books as well. $100 million money models, which is his most recent ones, is, is absolutely insane for, for an established business that's looking for, for new ways to generate cash. Anyway, Alex Hormozy doesn't need more publicity, but you do. So, so you read those books and you, you, you, you changed your business. Take us very briefly because I want to, I really want to dive into these events. [00:21:05] Speaker A: But take us very briefly what you [00:21:06] Speaker B: change the business to do. [00:21:08] Speaker C: When I started Iceberg Cyber, and you're going to piece this together because there's a word cyber in the name. I don't really do any cyber things anymore. I am a mechanical engineer. So I was approaching this business as a tech brain again, which was repeating the same mistake as the first business. I thought we would do some cool cyber scanning stuff because for whatever misguided reason I thought that that was necessary, like someone needed that. The first year was crashing against the wall of no one caring what I had to say because I was not solving anyone's problems. I was just coming up with an idea and trying to push it outwards. I was creating all this supply irrelevant of demand. The demand is someone's problem. So fortunately, before I went bankrupt again, my mentor told me to read this book, $100 million offers. And I like whatever brain chemistry was floating around of like between desperation and motivation at the time, it clicked for me and I started to instead of reject the feedback that I was getting as these people don't know what they're talking about, which is so egotistical, I was actually listening when people rejected my ideas and I started gravitating on the real problems they were having. So instead of selling security software like a vendor which no MSP needed at the time, I was hearing the problem is, well, the reason they didn't want to buy my software is that they couldn't pitch it to their clients, clients didn't want to pay for it. And I, we start talking about the sales problems that the MSPs had, not the lack of technology solutions. And probably because I was struggling with sales and had struggled with sales for seven years at the time, I latched onto that problem. And really that's like the last two years. It's only October 2023 that I read this book. So it's two and a half years I've just been projecting my own tech brain struggle with getting better at sales into the problems that I'm solving for my clients. And there's the affinity between what I was struggling with and what I'm helping people do now. And that's what the company does now. Like right now I, I hunt for leads for people because I know that's a huge struggle for sub million dollar per year msps because that's, there's no difference between them. And I like I'm making less than a million bucks now too and I struggle for leads. So we are solving the same problems with each other. Yeah. [00:23:28] Speaker B: So tell us, tell us what? Because I think what you've created is beautiful actually. Tell us what, what, what you've created and how MSPs should use it. [00:23:35] Speaker C: So the initial thing that we made was a network vulnerability scanner. No different than what, what has been created for 26 years more than that. So any tech brains hearing that's going to think oh my God, that exists. Yes it did. And yet I still thought that it was a good idea to make another one crazy. Looking back in hindsight, that morphed through the discussions I was having with my potential clients who were rejecting me ruthlessly and they said, well there's no, I can't do this. I Can't pitch this to a client. There's no way the prospect wants this. I can't explain why a prospect might need this. And I was listening to that. Okay, this is a communication problem. How do we communicate that this prospect needs to pay for more cybersecurity? Because like the MSP might think they should get cybersecurity, but if the prospect doesn't perceive the need for it, they ain't going to pay anything. Helping, helping a lead perceive that they have a problem can be resolved with a sales vehicle called a lead Magnet, which is the book above my left shoulder here is Alex's second book on lead magnets. And I read that, I was like, oh shoot, okay, we could make reveal a problem style lead magnets that help a lead perceive that they have a lack of security and this causes problems in their business. So I morphed my vulnerability scanner, like tech jargon junk into more of a non technical little scorey thing. We call it the cyber score. Cyber version of a credit score. Same thing as a credit score. It's just a lead magnet to you put in someone's website, gives them some information about some security problems. The inherent value is it gets them curious and talking to you about what those problems are, that's a problem solved for an MSP because their core part of their sales challenges is communication challenges. And so that's what the product is now. Like my core thing, the cyberscore is a lead magnet. I mean it doesn't do any cyber securing, it doesn't secure anything. It's a conversational tool. It's a communication mechanism to get a stranger to engage with you about a topic that you want to talk about. And that's. I just built more and more things around that core offer to help MSPs talk to strangers. [00:25:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that and it's a very smart thing to do because the, you know, if ever anyone's looked at something like Score app, which was, was built by a. Yes, an entrepreneur called Daniel Priestley, which has just grown and grown and grown over the last few years. And, and we, we ourselves, we use an interactive lead magnet for our business. We recommend it to our MSP Marketing edge members. That, that interactivity of, of you know, a lead magnet back in the day used to be get a PDF and obviously, you know, we're talking like 20 for 20 years that was lead magnets or books or whatsoever. And there's nothing wrong with those, those can still work. But the interactivity of, you know, finding out what, what problem you've Got it's, it's a very smart evolution with that. And what I think you've done very well, and this is where we're getting onto the events, is how you have used that tool in the wild. So you're now going out with all these MSPs that you work with and you're flying all over the US and Canada and you're, you're, you're going out to events with them where there are real life business owners and then they're [00:27:02] Speaker A: using your tool or you, you are teaching them in the field to use [00:27:06] Speaker B: your tool to start conversations and to engage with people. And we said right at the beginning that you're generating five to ten highly qualified leads. [00:27:15] Speaker A: Do you want to just tell. Because there might be like a thousand [00:27:17] Speaker B: business owners at an event, you might only be able to talk to 20, 30, 50, 100 of them. But we're talking here about highly qualified leads. [00:27:24] Speaker A: So just take us through what, what [00:27:26] Speaker B: you do and why you do it [00:27:27] Speaker A: that way and what makes a highly qualified lead. [00:27:30] Speaker C: All right, I'll break it down very quickly. So why I'm doing this and what I'm doing in a, in essence, I'm trying to be my most powerful power user to prove to others that I can solve their problems. So I'm putting my own skin on the line by traveling to all these events to show people you can use this playbook, which is a combination of scripts and tools and coaching and accountability and everything to achieve your goal, which is to engage leads. If you're an msp, that's the goal. That's the problem I'm trying to help you solve. You don't know how to engage leads. Here's a way that you can gauge leads. There's many ways. Here's one way. And I, in most cases when I sucked at this, I did it for free. Because the fastest way to get better is to get the repetition in. And sometimes you gotta do stuff for free to get the reps in. So you don't suck as much. I don't suck as much anymore because I did a lot of stuff for free. But that's how you learn really quickly. So here's a good example of it. Chamber of Commerce Business Expo. I'm sure many listeners have either been to one or have exhibited at one because they're very common. Your local Chamber of commerce will have their like fall Business Expo. You're in a little hotel conference room and everyone's got their like six foot table or two meter table because we're on the metric system, two meter table set up right, and you got your little booth there and people trickle in and you try and talk to them. That's a good environment to get people to engage you. You can use a lead magnet. Costco does this by giving away free cheese and free hot dogs. Costco, that's, that's the free sample lead magnet. You can do it by having a raffle to give away a big bottle of booze or something. Those. That's also a lead magnet. It's not doing a great job at disqualifying the wrong people, but it is attracting someone to come to your booth. An effective lead magnet will attract the right type of people and reject the wrong type of people. So if you're a managed service provider, you want to attract, let's say you like serving accountants, you want to attract accountants to come talk to you. If there's a manufacturing company that you don't want to serve, you don't want them to come to your booth because this is not to make friends, this is to get leads. The cyberscore has been an effective lead magnet at qualifying people who want to talk about cybersecurity and disqualifying people that couldn't care less. Because if they don't want to stand there for four seconds and see if we can find their passwords, they don't want to talk about the rest of your managed services. So it's a great qualifier and disqualifier. And through practice, I've learned that people are pretty curious about this kind of stuff and they want to see if their name's on the list. If their boss's name's on the list, they get pretty curious, which is great because what they're not doing is walking past you and what they're doing is engaging in a conversation. So that's the first big hurdle to get over. Get them to stop, get them to talk about a theme that you want to talk about. Like it. And then you got to build a little rapport to ask them more qualifying questions. This is where more practice and skill come in. But that's at least the big first chunk of the challenge, which is getting someone that's wandering around at a small biz expo to stop at your booth and talk to you for a couple seconds. So that's what I've been doing. [00:30:37] Speaker B: I love that. Absolutely love that. I think it's, it's a very elegant and beautiful solution. How, what advice do you give to the MSPs that you're accompanying to these events? What advice do you give them about having the guts to go up to straight or, you know, to talk to strangers or. Because we've all, we've all seen those chamber things where someone rents their desk and they sit behind it and they, they're on their laptop and that what they're, the message they're projecting is go away, don't talk to me. And, and then those are the people who at the end of the event go, oh, that was a terrible event. All the wrong people were here. And yet, and yet the guy next to them generated 20 leads, 30 leads. [00:31:10] Speaker C: So a nail on the head. [00:31:11] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. [00:31:12] Speaker A: So how do you encourage MSPs to, [00:31:14] Speaker B: to not to not be that guy, but to be, to be the open guy even though they're terrified. And you know, I've done events. I mean you do a lot of events, but we all feel sick when we're, you know, even confident, seemingly extrovert. People feel sick at the start of an event because you, you know, you're standing there and you're trying not to look desperate, but you know, you've put $5,000 on the line and you've got to get really good opportunities out of this. So how do you get the MSPs to do that? [00:31:38] Speaker C: Okay, first thing, wear a dark colored shirt. Okay. That way no one sees you sweat. Wear a dark colored shirt. We're going to get super tactical. So let your AI note taker, whoever's listening to this podcast, pay attention to this part. Wear a dark colored shirt so no one sees you sweat. Get the table out of the way. Paul is totally right. Most people put the table like a lemonade stand as a physical barrier between you and the audience. What that the non verbal communication there is. I am against you. So get the table out of the way. I put the table on the side and I just roam around the floor. No physical barriers. And you got to be the first person to say hello. No one wants to talk to you. No one wants to talk to you. No one wants to talk to me. Right. You got to be the first person to say hello. I know that's hard, but you're going to do a lot of hard things running this business. So at least like try and stomach this one because it's not going to get any easier. You got to be the first person to say hello. At least at a chamber of commerce business expo, the audience is giving you some signal that they're interested in talking to people because they, they left their house. It's post Covid. Right? They left their house. They drove all the way to this hotel. They put on business casual clothes. They're wandering around this hotel floor. They want to talk to somebody. So just say, hello, say, hey, my name's Joe. What type of business do you run? That's it. Don't hit them with the pitch in the first two seconds. Just say, hi. Hey, are you a member of this chamber? That's it. Try and start a conversation before you slap them with whatever pitch that you were going to do. That's it. That's the basics. That and you made a good point. If this is the first event you're doing and you paid 5, $5,000 for it, you're going to be nervous. So my recommendation here is don't make an expensive event. Your first event. You should find some cheaper ones to practice at. I know there are MSPs that have called me that are doing like $10,000 sponsorship fees for a booth. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of money, especially for your first time, because you're probably not going to be good at it. It's your first time, you're probably not going to be good at it. Or something weird is going to happen. There's going to be a big snowstorm. I'm in Toronto. It's going to be a big snowstorm. No one shows up. Okay, you just rolled the dice and you lost. Better to practice with cheaper events until you build the self confidence and you build the SOP so that you can execute effectively at a more expensive event. And that is my consistent recommendation to people is like the reason that a chamber of commerce event is good to practice at is because it's usually cheap and only like 60 human beings will show up. Okay, not a big deal for 500 bucks. That's fine. Because the, the, the real learning is you learning how to talk to human beings. You might not get any leads at all, but if you talk to 60 people, you have now learned how to get 60 people to stop at your booth. How to break the ice with 60 people. None of them may be leads, but that's okay. You have learned again, how to disqualify 60 people. That's killer skill. The whole process of sales is about filtering. So if you just learn how to disqualify people, that's still a useful skill. Take all of those skills, change the environment. Maybe you don't go to the chamber next time, maybe you go to a vertically aligned business association. But all those same skills are going to be required, which you just practice for cheap. That's good. [00:35:04] Speaker B: Yeah. I love this. And what I particularly love is that you're recommending turning it into an sop, a standard operating procedure. I'm a big fan of taking all of these marketing things that you have to do and systemizing the whole lot and ideally getting other people to do it and do these things for you. And obviously actually at a trade show, the owner or the, the face of the business should absolutely be there. But there's no reason you couldn't train your staff to do exactly this so you can handle bigger events with just two or three people. [00:35:29] Speaker A: Michael, this is amazing stuff. [00:35:31] Speaker B: Thank you so much. We are definitely getting you back on the show next year. That, of course is, is if you're not flying around the US and the, and Canada. You talked about AI tools. Your, your big action from this for your AI tool is get yourself an amex card if you haven't already, because you get the point, you get the points on the, on the flights there, even if United doesn't give you points. But for the MSPs that are listening this or watching this on YouTube, just briefly tell us, where can we find you? What's the best way to talk to you and how do we get you [00:35:57] Speaker A: to come to our events? [00:35:59] Speaker C: I will come to any event for someone that's hungry and wants to hustle, honestly, because I'm, I'm looking to learn. So if you want to run an event, you, you get in contact with me and we'll do an event together. You can find me. If you want to be my like 70th YouTube subscriber, you can find me on YouTube. Full name Michael Bakais. I think there's only one of me. I'm Most frequent on LinkedIn. So again, search my name. Michael Bakaich. B A K A, I, C. You'll find me on LinkedIn. And then if you want to learn more about iceberg cyber icebergcyber.com you can't miss me. [00:36:33] Speaker A: Coming up, coming up next week. Thank you so much for being here this week. Next week we've got a brand new idea that you've never heard me talk about before because it was suggested to me by one of the MSPs that I'm working with in the MSP Marketing Edge. It is such a smart idea to present reporting data to your clients in a way that they will find irresistible. In fact, they'll be much more likely to consume it and therefore understand it. [00:36:58] Speaker B: And therefore it's going to have a [00:36:59] Speaker A: very positive effect on their retention. I'll tell you what the idea is and how you can implement it in next week's show. See you then for MSPs around the world. Around the World, the MSP Marketing podcast with Paul Green.