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Welcome to Episode 261 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…
When you are the person who started the MSP, one of the hardest transitions for you is to get away from delivering first line support to that very first set of clients that you won in your first few years. But it’s something that you absolutely have to do or otherwise you get trapped in doing technical work forever.
Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with technical work, but you can’t grow your business while you’re doing password resets and setting up new users, right? This problem happens to most MSP owners and the reason it’s so hard is because you used to look after these clients yourself, you personally. So they feel that they have some kind of special bond with you. And even when you’ve employed first line technicians whose very job it is to sit there and help your clients, they will still email you directly or call your mobile directly rather than speak to the help desk.
Now, this steals your time when you should be working on the business, but also reduces your ability to sell more to them during a strategic review.
You can’t be the technology strategist and first line support at the same time. Clients’ minds will only let you sit in one of those boxes.
There are a number of different ways to tackle this problem without annoying your clients, and you’ll probably put a couple of the things I’m about to talk about together into a blended solution. In fact, here are nine things that I recommend.
The first is to set clear expectations. Now, this is really easy with new clients, but hard with longer standing clients. So just remember you have to educate them, constantly. What’s top of mind for you is item 1,058 in their mind’s list of priorities.
Number two, make it easy. Put stickers with the help desk number on every single device. Put them on their hands so they can’t help but see them.
Number three, have a standard operating procedure to roll out each time a client contacts you directly. Make a plan in advance so you don’t have the emotional trauma of wondering, how am I going to deal with this?
Number four, play dumb. Tell them you don’t know how to fix that as you focus on strategy these days, but you’ll ask someone on the help desk to call them immediately.
Number five, change your voicemail to say that you’re not working today and for any support, please call the help desk on this number. You can then let client calls go to voicemail forever. Perhaps just follow up with them the first couple of times it happens or when their issue is being resolved just so that they know you are there, but you are not the one doing the work.
Number six, set up an email auto reply exactly at the same principle as the voicemail.
Number seven, this is a cheeky one, fake being your own virtual assistant. When someone emails you or sends you a text, send back a standard reply saying that you are actually your VA and that you are off today and here’s how to get support with the number for the help desk.
Number eight, get a second mobile number so you keep your old number that clients have been calling for years, but let it automatically forward all of the calls to the help desk. Then you get a second private number that’s just for friends, family, and your team.
And number nine, now this one will hurt, but it is worth it. Make your clients wait if they contact you directly after hours, do not take the call, do not reply to the email. You’ll only encourage more bad behaviour. And over-servicing clients can be just as bad for a working relationship as under-servicing them as it sets unrealistic expectations. So make them wait and explain in a warm way how using the proper channels will get them faster support.
Victory loves preparation. It’s a phrase I’ve been living by for years and years, and it was only when preparing this episode that I looked up where it had come from. I thought perhaps it was from one of the hundreds of business books that I’ve read over the years, or maybe from one of the inspirational business leaders that I follow on social media. Well, how embarrassing. It turns out to be a Latin phrase written on the side of a baddies gun in a Jason Statham film that I’ve never seen.
Hey ho, it’s still a good phrase to live by because it means making sure your help desk is ready to pick up the phone five minutes before the lines open. It means never going on a sales call without having done at least 30 minutes of basic research on the company that you are visiting. It means systemising the things that have to happen in your MSP every day and having a plan when someone’s off sick. It means always having someone in the office trained and ready to speak to incoming new client inquiries because these days, speed beats size. It means locking in a trusted partner to help you with your basic prospect marketing, assuming that that’s not a core skill of your business so that you are moving prospects closer to becoming clients every single day.
Now, this is one of the reasons why I recommend that your management team meets first thing every Monday morning or as soon as it’s practical, every single week. Even if the management team is just you and a colleague and actually together, you make up two thirds of the business, you still meet every week because that meeting is about the small actions that have to be taken in order to get the better lives that you and your management team desire by being prepared.
Growing your business isn’t going to happen without preparation, and it’s not going to happen just by doing the stuff that the business does every day.
Fixing technology, strategic planning, that’s what the business does, but those activities don’t grow the business. So your weekly management meeting time, that’s all about what the business is trying to achieve right now and what must happen in the next week to move you closer to that goal. And you do it weekly to ensure you get into a rhythm, something that’s planned weekly is more likely to actually happen than something that’s a bit more ad hoc.
And actually, here’s a simple agenda for your management meeting. You start with a recap of your goals, your three year goal and this year’s goal, and then you move on to progress on the actions agreed last week. And then you talk about what’s moving you away from the goal and what can we do to kill that. And then what do we need to do this week to move closer to our goal. And then you agree, actions, who’s responsible, and the deadline for each action.
Let me give you a final quote to finish on. Now, this one’s from Bill Gates, not Jason Statham. And Bill says – Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in 10 years. You could do the same with days or weeks or months. The way to guarantee that long-term achievement comes only through taking small actions every single day. And your weekly management meeting is where you plan those small actions that will make the biggest difference and make sure that they happen.
Featured guest: Dallas Amsden has honed the skills of communication for 30+ years. As a classically trained singer and actor – and even as a stand-up comedian who has performed at venues such as the Hollywood Improv and the world-famous Comedy Store – Dallas now leverages those skills he learned on stages all over the world to help business professionals use the “soft skills” of communication to more deeply connect with prospects, customers, and their teams. He has worked to create messaging with 100s of organisations, including Fortune 500 companies.
Dallas is on a mission to teach business owners, business professionals, and entrepreneurs – especially Introvert Entrepreneurs – to develop the skills necessary to become the most effective, most powerful – and even most successful – communicators in any room they enter. He is the co-founder of the Communicate2Succeed Academy, and the host of two upcoming podcasts, “The Future You Leadership Podcast” and “The Dallas Daily Show.” To learn more about Dallas, go to www.DallasAmsden.com
Perhaps at some point over the years you’ve been labeled either an introvert or an extrovert. I know that I have without really ever thinking about it. I always assumed that I was an extrovert because I don’t mind doing stuff like hosting a podcast or being on YouTube. But my guest today has challenged me on that and has really opened my eyes to how and why we define ourselves as an introvert or extrovert and how we can be more aware of the limitations of our vertness and be more successful by working around them. Most importantly, he has advice on how you can leverage the way you already are to better market your MSP.
Hey, I’m Dallas Amsden and my company is Communicate to Succeed, helping you communicate for your own success.
And thank you so much for joining me on this podcast, Dallas, you are very highly recommended to me and it’s a delight to get you on the show because we are going to talk primarily today about how introverts can better communicate. Now, I’m not an introvert myself. You can probably tell why would I do a podcast like this and so much YouTube if I was, but so it’s very hard for me to understand what it must be like as an introvert, having to pitch your business, go to networking meetings and talk about things that perhaps you’re not comfortable talking about such as cyber security solutions, all of those kinds of things. So that’s what we’re going to delve into today. And I know that you’re an absolute expert on this, and this is your sweet spot of how you are helping the world. Before we talk about that, just give us some of your background. So what got you from being a kid to being here?
Oh, well, I know we don’t have enough time to tell that whole story, so I’ll give you a very truncated version. I have basically been on stages or on screens or on microphones since I was 12 years old, so 30+ years now, I’ve been doing some form of performance or presentation. I’ve been everything from a professional mime at one point, I got my degree in musical theatre. I was an actor out in Hollywood for a little bit, a stunt performer for a little bit. And when I realised I didn’t like being told where to stand and what to say and how to say it, I started doing stand-up comedy and really kind of found my voice in that, the performative element of that. My parents were pastors when I was younger. My brother is a pastor, so talking on microphones comes very naturally, but it’s also one of those skills that I have developed over the last few years for me.
I worked inside of video production and video marketing for a long time. And what I had to do on a daily basis as the production manager was on one side, I had to talk to the writers, I had to talk to the directors, the artists, the animators and the editors and all of that. And then I had to go over here and I had to talk to all the industries that we were working with. So one day it could be I would talk with an insurance agency, a software development company, a biotech company, all in the same four hour span. So what I had to learn how to do was learn the speak, speak the speak, and figure out how to communicate to everybody. And from that, a lot of my systems and processes were born.
But I will tell you, I actually am an introvert. Nobody believes that about me. And I think this might be good for your people to hear that. Let’s get the definition of an introvert versus an extrovert. So a lot of people think an extrovert is someone who’s loud, who’s brash, who is outgoing, just loves, needs it, right? And an introvert is the shy, quiet person in the background. It’s not actually true. I know very shy extroverts and I know very loud introverts, I happen to be one.
Introversion and extroversion has to do with where you get your energy, your emotional energy.
So for an introvert, an introvert gets their energy from being alone, from having more solace. They get drained when they’re in groups and when they’re in crowds. And so for me, one of the most important things is after I’ve done a lot of output, I have to have a lot of quiet, and my wife will regularly send me away and she’ll say, honey, you need to go see a movie by yourself or go, just be alone and read.
But an extrovert needs the crowds. They need the people. I know people who got physically ill during the shelter in place and during 2020 and all of that because they couldn’t be around people and they couldn’t charge their battery. So when we talk introversion and extroversion, yes, there’s a quiet factor to it and a loudness factor, but really it’s about where do you charge your battery? And a lot of people, and I’ve listened to your pod here, and I think it’s a great show. A lot of people, I think this could benefit them because maybe they need more quiet time. They’re in this IT world. They’re in this MSP world. They might have a little more just tech in their head, and so they don’t need as much people. But I believe honestly, that introverts can actually shine the biggest, and be the most passionate experts in the room if they know how to tap into their passion in what I call the confidence formula.
So much to unpack from just one answer there, there’s so many things. So first of all, let’s deal with the showbiz one, which is you were a stunt performer in Hollywood, nevermind all the musical theater stuff, which is cool in itself, but you were a stunt performer. That’s cool. I love it when we have guests on this show who just casually drop in. We had someone several months ago who just casually dropped in. She was like a national TV producer, that’s really cool, I like that. And have you been on any shows that we might have seen you in or any movies, anything like that?
No. I would’ve been guest spotting and doing random stuff on everything from Days Of Our Lives to commercials you never would’ve seen. More of my acting experience was on stage. It didn’t take me long to realise that I didn’t like that process and I’d gone out to Hollywood and lived out there. And so the stunt performer thing was I did live shows a bunch. I did a lot of live stunt work, so I was one of the cowboys getting shot off the water towers, three times a day I’d do a 25 foot high fall off of a water tower. So it was more those in Southern California would be a little bit more familiar with it than anyone on TV.
Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. The other thing you said, by your definition, I started this interview by saying, oh I’m an extrovert, but actually by your definition, I’m an introvert because I find groups of people very tiring. I sit where we are filming here in my little home office, I’ve got a green screen and I like to sit on my own all day. That makes me happy. I love being around my child, for a couple of hours and I love being around my girlfriend, for limited amounts of time.
Does she listen to this? Is she going to hear what you just said just there?
No, not chance. Well, we hope so anyway, and I love her dearly, so that’s fine. But it’s really interesting and you are right. I think the public predictable definitions of introvert and extrovert are very much, I’m a loud person. I was on stage yesterday, I went to an MSP conference in London, which by the time this podcast comes out, it was a few months ago, it was the Managed Services Summit, and I was on stage and I have a stage persona, which you’ll know all about. You switch it on, and I’m bigger and I’m bolder and I’m louder and I do more things. And then I kind of come back down to myself, and I was the same when I was on radio. I had a persona, I’m going to have to go and have a psychological crisis now.
No, you don’t, the great thing is it’s just knowing where you charge your battery. And I think too many of us spend too much time thinking about, am I being bold enough? Am I not? It doesn’t matter. It’s like go get your battery full. Because once you are full, it comes down to a couple of things. I call it the confidence formula, and I always talk about the confidence formula when a person, especially with someone who is more introverted, when they step into a spot and they start talking about something they’re expert at, something they’re passionate about and something they can just be totally themselves. So expertise and passion and authenticity, when those things line up, the most introverted of persons can look like a superstar, and all of a sudden they’re confident, but they’re not arrogant. There’s that balance. Sometimes I think people, they try and go for confidence at the risk of coming off as too strong, too arrogant, too pompous.
What we have when someone talks about the thing they love, the thing they’re great at, and the thing that just makes them personally come alive – authenticity, plus passion, plus excellence – all of a sudden you’re like, Ooh. And you’ve seen it, right? When you’re talking to somebody and they’re kind of shy and they’re kind of looking all over the place, and then you get them talking about the thing that they love and that little fire goes off in their eyes. That’s kind of what it is. When you see that fire in someone, you go, Ooh, I need to unpack that a little bit. So you don’t have to go and do all the psychology stuff. It’s obvious you’re passionate about what you do. It’s obvious that you give massive value to your people and to your tribe. So you’re exactly in your confidence formula. You’re exactly aligned where you’re supposed to be in your purpose, in your passion, in your mission, obviously in your authority and your excellence. So man, I give you kudos, whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert.
Thank you. But listen, it’s not about me, it’s about the MSPs. And here’s an interesting thought. If we take what you just said there about anybody really coming alive and having that passion when they’re talking about something they’re passionate about, the problem that MSPs have sometimes when they’re talking to other people and when they’re doing their marketing is that the thing they’re passionate about is the thing they deliver, but it’s not necessarily what people buy.
So MSPs are obviously passionate about technology, what it can do for a business. They’re passionate about cyber security, but the average business owner or manager, they’re not necessarily passionate about those exact subjects. They’re just passionate about, I just want to get things done. I just want my business to work. I just want my business to be safe. So is that a mismatch there, or do you think actually that’s something that you learn as you become more confident talking about your passion, you learn how to adapt it to the audience you’re talking to?
That’s a great question. I think it’s one of the greatest things we can do as communicators, because as I always say, in any keynote that I give or any talk, communication equals connection. So if I’m building connection with you in any way, and I’m truly listening and I’m truly paying attention, then all of a sudden I can find the thing that’s going to help light the fire in you as well.
So, let’s say I’m the MSP in this case, I’m passionate about cyber security, I’m passionate about making sure that you’ve got email compliance and that somebody’s not clicking on the phishing scam and ruining their entire business, that’s what I’m excited about. But you’re thinking, I just need my team not to screw up, and I don’t want to be at a loss of possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars. So you’re making sure your company’s secure, but you’ve got other passions. So, when I ask you questions like, Hey, tell me what’s working. What are you looking for? I’m listening for the emotional cues.
If you’re frustrated by or if you’re telling me, oh, Dallas, I’m always frustrated. It seems like we are dealing with spam issues all the time. You just gave me a clue. And if I’m listening, I now know how to come at you with the proposition that’s going to hit a passion point for you. Now it’s going to be a pain point as well, obviously, right? So you and I know in this marketing side of things, we want to kind of sometimes push on the pain point for our prospects and for our clients.
If I discover through a question or two, what’s working, what isn’t working, what would you like to see a little different, what does an ideal thing look like for you? If I’m having that discovery conversation with you, I’m listening for two things. Is Paul going to reveal a passion point to me, or is he going to reveal a pain point to me? Because either one, I’m going to lean into because I’m an expert at MSPs. Again, I’m using myself as the example here because I’m an expert at this and because I’m passionate about it and because I’m authentically me, my bubbling confidence is going to overwhelm you in a good way that you’re going to go, oh, Dallas could hold me. I like this guy’s fire. I like this guy’s passion. I like what he’s saying. I like what he’s doing, and all I’ve done is kind of ask you a few questions that are important, and I’ve pushed on it a little bit and done that.
So I think for your people to understand when they are having these conversations, they’re not just giving their proposition. They’re not just saying, here’s my unique sales problem, my USP. They’re not just saying that because then they sound like everyone else. Instead, they want to get to the passion points and the pain points of their ideal client, whether it’s I work with legal companies, or I work in manufacturing, or whatever they’re helping as a service provider, whatever that looks like. If they know the passion and the pain points of their ideal audience, then they can push on them and they can get really excited about that. And then all of a sudden that connection, that communication connection builds, and you as the prospect are leaning into me because now I’m magnetic, now I’m exciting, now I’m persuasive whether I’m an introvert or not.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Dallas, I could speak to you for hours and hours about this, and maybe we should put an entire special together around this next year, but for now, let’s wrap up. I’ve got one final question for you before we learn what you do to help MSPs. If you could wave a magic wand and give a single short piece of advice to every introvert business owner out there who is desperate and so keen to grow their business, but perhaps scared of some of the things that they have to do because of the fact that they’re an introvert, what’s that one piece of advice you would give them?
It’s kind of been the keyword for this whole thing. I would say lean into what you love. Lean into what you love, lean into that passion point. That would be my short truncated answer, because again, once you get passionate about something, you draw people toward, you come alive in a way, and then all of a sudden life is more fun. So lean into what you love would be my answer.
That’s a great answer. It really is. Dallas, thank you so much for being on the show. Just tell us what you do to help people and how can we get in touch with you?
Sure, absolutely. So I’m a keynote speaker as well. People can reach out to me through my website, dallasamston.com. I know you’ll have all that in the show notes and everything. I speak on leadership a lot of times, obviously I speak on communication skills and I speak on this confidence formula. And specifically for introverts who are wanting to get better about presenting or get better about differentiating themselves in their market, I have a great resource if people want that. It’s actually called the Introvert Speakers Guide. And if you go to introvertspeakerguide.com, it’s just a short little video series that kind of gives you the training and unpacks those three points I talked about in the confidence formula. But connect with me on the socials as well. I’m active on LinkedIn at Dallas Amsden. I’d love to connect with you, find out what your passion points are, your pain points, and help you discover how you can communicate for your own success.
Greg from an MSP in South Carolina is feeling quite confused. He writes that someone has told him it’s dangerous just having one way of getting new clients, and said he needs to adopt the Parthenon principle of marketing channels. But what is that?
The Parthenon principle was invented by a guy called Jay Abraham, who is easily the granddaddy of marketing small businesses. In fact, I’ve spent thousands of dollars on Jay’s stuff over the years, and do highly recommend you acquire his books, read them all, listen to them, and then implement them in your MSP. Now, one of the most valuable marketing lessons that I learned early on from Jay was the principle of having multiple marketing channels to win new clients.
Go and Google the Parthenon, you know, the ancient temple in Greece, and you’ll see that it’s got many pillars holding up the roof. So if you think of the roof as your business, and think of the pillars as marketing channels, how many pillars do you have holding up your business? If it’s one, let’s say it’s referrals from clients, then your roof is at severe risk of falling down.
In fact, let’s take one very specific example. I hear people saying that they rely just on SEO on search engine optimisation to get new clients, and I think that’s nuts, because Google can change one rule tomorrow and suddenly all of your traffic just stops. If it’s two, let’s say referrals and LinkedIn, well that’s more stable, but nowhere near as stable as multiple pillars.
For example, and here’s a non-exhaustive list. You might be growing your email database and sending out a weekly email. You might be growing your LinkedIn connections and posting new content daily. You might be physically sending out a printed newsletter and mailing that out once a month. You might be using impact boxes, which are boxes containing merchandise and case studies and goodies that you send out to hot prospects, and it’s called an impact box because you want to stand out from your competitors. You might be building audiences on YouTube, you might have a podcast, you might use SEO (search engine optimisation) or PPC (pay per click). You might put on webinars or even seminars or lunch and learns on cyber security, and you might have a telephone person constantly calling all of your contacts.
Loads of pillars there. And those are just a few. But even if you implemented just a handful of them, you would have multiple pillars holding up your roof. And that is a very robust way to market your MSP.
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