Why being the cheapest MSP is a bad strategy

[00:00:02] Speaker A: No shortcuts maybe. But good news. Growing MSPs have this show right here, packed with real tactics, case studies, and all the inspiration you'll ever need. There's no time for mucking about. We need to crack on with another podcast episode right now, and this is what I've got coming up for you today. Why Being the Cheapest MSP Is a terrible strategy the MSPs who win at marketing are always the ones who are better at implementation. And my special guest today reveals why. You can't win new clients without super simple clear messaging. Welcome to episode 312 powered by MSP marketingedge.com Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast if your marketing strategy is to be the cheapest MSP around, then you're setting yourself up for a world of pain. Lots of MSPs do this because when you're not very good at marketing, which most MSPs aren't, it just seems like the easiest thing to do. Offer a good service, deliver it at a good price. But what you're actually doing is setting yourself up to attract the worst clients who create the most noise and generate the least amount of profit. If you don't today have the confidence to put up your prices, heck, to be the most expensive MSP in your marketplace, let me tell you why. You owe it to your existing clients, your future clients, yourself and your family to do this. On the surface, being the cheapest MSP feels like a good idea, because everyone likes a bargain, right? But here's the thing. Being the cheapest is not a winning strategy. It attracts completely the wrong kind of clients. The ones who are constantly haggling. They're always looking for shortcuts, and they just don't value what you do for them. In fact, they'll leave the moment someone else comes along who's a pound or a dollar cheaper than you. And that is not really a foundation that you can build a profitable, stable MSP on. So instead, you kind of want to be, at the other end of the scale, the most expensive MSP in town. Now, I know that you might maybe have tensed up when I said that, and you might be thinking, well, me, the most expensive? No way. I don't want to be that. I don't want to do that. But listen, just hear me out on this. The MSPs who charge the most are often the ones who are seen as the safest choice. It kind of seems crazy, doesn't it? But actually, higher prices signal higher value. They signal better service. They signal more Stability, more reliability. And guess what? The best clients, the ones who are really serious about their businesses and protecting their businesses and growing them with a proper partner, they want that reassurance. They don't just want to spend money on a service and spend as little as they can. They want the best quality because they want a genuine partnership from someone that offers a very high quality of service. So how do you do this? Well, there are two main approaches that you can take. Overt and covert. So overt is where you're very upfront about being premium. In fact, you build your whole brand around expertise, trust and high standards. You're never apologizing for your price, in fact, you're proud of it. But then the opposite is covert because this is a little bit more subtle. And in this with being covert, you don't shout about being the most expensive from the rooftops. Instead you just focus on value. One very smart way to do this is to use a three tier pricing, like a good, better, best pricing, where your good price, kind of like your entry level price, is a very, very keen price. And when they're comparing you to the other MSPs, and you, and I know they're comparing apples to oranges, but when they're doing that, they can see that you're a very good value price. But ultimately the package that you most want to sell, that actually most people will want to buy because it's the best value, there's always all of the stuff in there. It becomes your better package or your best package. And of course the price for that is a lot higher. So you're the most expensive without essentially advertising that you are the most expensive. But what if you're thinking, paul, this is all very good, but I just don't feel comfortable charging more. Well, maybe that's something called imposter syndrome talking. And we all get that it's the little voice in the back of our head that says you're not good enough. And sometimes it's there and it's loud and we listen to it and we let it dictate us and we think, well, if we put our prices up, people are going to see that we're an imposter, right? That we're not worth the money that we want to charge. But let me tell you something, you are worth that money. You really are. If you've been running your MSP for a few years, if you're good at keeping your clients safe, you're good at not just the reactive stuff, but you're good at the proactive stuff. You protect them sometimes you protect them from themselves and, and you help them to grow their businesses. If you do all of this, and you've been doing it for a few years, you're already delivering huge value. You're not just fixing stuff here, right? You are so far past break fix. You are safeguarding people's businesses, you're safeguarding their livelihoods, you're safeguarding jobs, you're safeguarding whatever it is that they do for their clients. You are instrumental in this. And if you get it wrong, which you don't right most of the time, but if you get it wrong, it has lots of implications. But you don't do this, you are a massive part of their success. So instead of asking yourself, can I justify charging more? Why don't you try asking yourself, what do I need to do so that my clients see the value in what we do and are happy to pay more for it? It's a tiny little shift in thinking, but it can change everything. So here's my big takeaway for today. Don't ever play the cheapest game. You'll always, always lose in some way, either by attracting the wrong clients or just having to deal with the and the hassle and the lack of profits that they generate. Instead, play the value game. Instead, position yourself as the MSP worth paying more for. And even if you don't feel ready to be the most expensive in your marketplace, at least make sure you're never the cheapest. Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast. Still to come. If you were to look at your website right now and please don't do this if you're driving, but if you were, how simple and clear and straightforward is your messaging? Is it really obvious what you do and who you do it for and what the benefits are of using you rather than one of your competitors? Well, my special guest today is an expert at messaging and he's going to be here to explain why clear, simple messaging will always win you more new clients. He's going to be here in the next few minutes. Would you like me to tell you the greatest secret I've ever learned about marketing an msp? It's the secret every MSP has been begging me to reveal. And you'll be surprised to hear that it hasn't changed over the last decade. What I'm going to say is exactly the same today as I would have said to you back when I got into the channel in 2016. And you won't believe how simple it is, but also what kind of dramatic, positive impact it can have on your marketing. So let me reveal the number one all time secret of EPIC MSP marketing. A member of my team recently paid me the highest possible compliment. Several months back, I took over driving our MSP Marketing Edge development roadmap, mostly out of frustration at how long it was taking to just get things done. And my colleague said to me, it's a lot more chaotic with you pushing things, but we're getting so much more done, which is amazing. So obviously I gave him an immediate pay rise. No, I didn't listen. I do pride myself as an EPIC implementer because everything I've achieved in the 20 years now that I've been running my own businesses has been accomplished purely by getting things done. So I'm not the smartest guy in the room and I'm never going to be. This is an average brain that I'm carrying here and I'm certainly not the most driven person, I'll be honest. I'm comfortable and I prioritize being a present parent and a present partner above driving a sick Lamborghini. But I'm also the most impatient person you will ever meet. I just hide it really well. And I have a hundred marketing ideas a day and I want to implement as many of them as I possibly can as quickly as possible because this is the only way to find out which ideas work and which suck. Being able to rapidly implement marketing is a key skill to develop in your msp. And the good news is that doesn't mean that you have to do it all personally. In fact, it's better that you don't try to do it all yourself. I can get more implemented by inspiring, guiding and driving my team than I can by trying to do everything myself. Being able to step back and take in the overall picture is valuable and almost impossible to do when you've personally worked for hours and hours and hours on something. So here's what that means for you. It's kind of one of two things. Number one, if you want to get more marketing implemented and you have the time and energy to do it yourself, then you must stay focused on implementing only the things that make the biggest difference. So what are those things for you? Well, it's easy. What will help you generate a new lead? What will help you to turn a lead into a prospect? What will help you to get someone on a 15 minute introduction call? What will help you to sell more monthly recurring revenue to an existing client? Make a list of all the tasks that come into those things I just said, and then remove the clutter from that list and then just make sure you review that list daily and be ready to implement any time that you can clear time. Easiest place to do that 6am every single weekday. That is a great time to get things done. In fact, if you could knock out 90 minutes a day of pure implementation at 6 till 7:30 in the morning when the rest of the world is is asleep and isn't expecting anything from you, you could change your whole business in just 12 months. I promise you that is so real. And then the other option number two if you want to get more marketing implemented but you don't have the time or energy to spare, just get someone else to do it for you. There are lots of people you could talk to. You could talk to Mark Copeman at Wingman MSP Marketing, or Nate Friedman at TechPro Marketing and MSP Sites, or Paul Charnock at Plexa. Or better still, you could join my MSP Marketing Edge if it's not locked in your area and you can ask our done for you team to implement your MSP Marketing edge marketing for you. But whatever you do, whichever of those two options you take, just remember this. The winners aren't smarter and don't necessarily work harder than everyone else. They just get more of the right stuff implemented really fast. Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast still to come when you or your team send out an email, what's in the email signature? Is it something promoting something your MSP does, or is it just a boring signature with your details and your website address? Stuff like that? Well look, we've got a marketing minute coming up in a second where a special guest joins me with a very, very smart idea. In fact, it's something simple that you can implement very quickly. That's coming up in the next few minutes. If I looked at your website and your other marketing materials, what would I think about your msp? Would it be really clear for me who you serve, what you do, what you're great at, and more importantly, why I should choose you instead of the 20 or 30 other MSPs in your marketplace? Well, most MSPs just don't have that kind of clarity in their messaging. And I'll tell you something, it's killing your sales. So my special guest today is an expert at making messaging simple. Your eyes are about to be opened as to how confused messaging is killing all of your marketing efforts. Dead. [00:11:51] Speaker B: Hi, I'm Jesse Flocken. I'm the CEO of Clearly Relevant and I'm just excited to be here today. [00:11:56] Speaker A: And not as Excited as I am, Jesse, because we are going to be talking about telling stories. We're going to be talking about getting your marketing message clear. And you and I both know, obviously, we both work with MSPs. We know how difficult it is for most MSPs to understand what story they should be telling and get that message across, get any message across to their audience. You and I have both been on lots of MSPs websites and seen the same thing again and again and again. And we know how damaging that is when you see the same thing again and again. Because to the, to the prospect who's trying to pick at msp, they don't know which one to pick. So we're going to explore those kind of themes today. But you have an awesome backstory. Tell us. [00:12:35] Speaker B: Give us the. [00:12:36] Speaker A: Give us the brief version of your life up to this point. [00:12:40] Speaker B: Yeah, the brief version is that I started. I was a firefighter for almost 15 years. And you know, the one thing that fire. Firefighters are, I feel like, are really good at is that just that overwhelming. Excellent customer service at all cost. And so through that, I had taken customer service classes and other things. And as I started continuing my education, I actually was starting to go to medical school. And by going to medical school, I was in the process. I had not started yet, and I was in the process. And we accidentally started a business and our first client was a fortune, like 100 client. And. And so it was really just a wild ride. And there's a lot of pieces that back, but it was really neat. And that was the inception of, you know, now I've owned this business for 12 years. I left the fire department four years ago. And, you know, it wasn't until I really found that, like, radical purpose and clarity in what I was doing. And today we'll talk a little bit about messaging. But, you know, in my own life and even my wife and I did this, like, little workshop that we do for people. And it was just about finding radical clarity about what I want to be known for at the end of my life. What's that look like? And if that's going to be true, what has to happen today in order to help make those things come true. And so that was when I really just went all in. And in just the last 12 years now, I've been the CEO of a company, has been growing. We've had some twists and some turns and some evolutions, but it's really been a wild ride. And now we've done everything from take 80 or so adults to Disneyland with some author and some other folks just to, you know, just have a little bit more whimsy in their life to. We've taken people on marriage retreats all the way to Hawaii. So. So it's really just this all encompassing crazy journey to where, you know, we started in customer service and the marketing, the internal marketing space, and now here we are working with authors and speakers and financial advisors and MSPs and alike. [00:14:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that you're going to have an awesome next 30 years. It feels like you had an awesome first 30, 30 odd years. How however old you are right now. [00:14:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:14:43] Speaker A: So let's talk about messaging then. So we know that MSPs struggle with messaging, it's one of the hardest things. It's, in fact it's the question I get asked that I struggle to answer the most, which is how do I differentiate myself from the 10 of the competitors in town, the 30 in our surrounding area, the 40,000 that are out there? Because in theory, every MSP is against up against every other msp and a lot of that comes down to messaging. Why do you think MSP owners struggle with messaging so much? [00:15:13] Speaker B: You know, I think there's a couple of things. You know, the first thing, honestly, I think that Most of the MSPs that I meet, they're actually struggling with really like one or two things. And you know, the first thing is they're not, they're usually not struggling because they're bad at tech, they're usually stuck because their messaging is really confusing or they're actually like invisible to the people that need them the most. And so some of those common pain points I see is, you know, they're actually competing on price instead of value. You know, the other one is like struggling to explain just what makes them different. Like you said, if you had a hundred websites, they would all kind of feel the same. And even nowadays with chat GTP. Chat GTP. [00:15:56] Speaker A: You can do it on. [00:15:57] Speaker B: Third attempt with chatGPT. Sorry, you know, but even nowadays with all this AI and everything, you could even put it up to them to say what's the difference? And you can't often tell. There's just a little, maybe a slow list of pros and cons of whatever is publicly available. And so because of that marketing efforts, they feel scattered or reactive. And then it really creates this like feast or famine client acquisition style. And so I really think that, you know, you're great at what you do if your ideal customer essentially can get what you do in 10 seconds. Because if the ideal client doesn't get in that first 10 seconds, then they're just gonna go find someone else who can explain it better. It doesn't matter if you're actually better at it. They're just gonna go find someone to explain it better. And you know, one thing that we'll, we'll talk about later is, you know, truly that trickles down. So it's not just from you to your customers, but it's also about giving your customers the words to talk about you to other people. And so that's where I feel like, you know, there's just like we have in our own business, you know, we have like a launch market and grow silo and most people always want, and I'm sure you see this in your lead generation, all the other things that you do. Most people want to go right to like, I need more leads, I need more ads, I need all those things. And like if we don't get this message right, then we're going to put pay money to get this message out there to get people to your website only to confuse them. And so now we're actually paying to confuse your customers rather than get really, really clear on who you are and what you can do. And to the point of where our team right now for our own silos is actually redoing each silo and package and offering one by one so that we don't get stale in this and that we're consistently evolving. [00:17:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I completely agree with you. There is spending all of that money when you haven't actually got the basics right, the fundamentals right is kind of nuts, but it's what most people do. And by the way, I'm with you in saying how difficult it is in saying ChatGPT, it's like for something that has become such a massive so quickly, they could have given it a much better name. I mean even the alternatives, I suppose Claude is okay, but perplexity, and that's an even harder one to say. But anyway, there we go. Gemini. Google have got it right with Gemini. So let's look at those fundamentals and talk us through more about your, your you call it your silo and I think the three elements to it but that I love a system. I love it when you, when someone's got a framework and it's something you can look at it and you can say, right, I need to do ABC. 1, 2, 3. Just talk us through a little bit more of that. And for the MSPs who are listening to this or watching this on YouTube. What are some specific things that they could do to help get themselves clear on how they would communicate their message, you know, briefly and succinctly to their prospects? [00:18:38] Speaker B: Truly, I think it comes down and really like five or six steps here and number one is, you know, like something that, like if we reveal the curtain a little bit and this is, you know, Viktor Frankl and storybrand and Donald Miller and all these folks have talked about this and but truly, like you have to take yourself out of the hero position. I think the best example is plumbers. Everybody has seen a plumber commercial where, you know, there's like 10 guys getting out of a van. They're like, we're here for you, we're here for you. You know, all these things. But honestly, if there's a plumber commercial that just says like, hey, you wanted your spouse to fix that leaky faucet for six months. We show up on time, we'll be done, you know, we'll, we'll be there when we say we'll be there. And you can always have that. Like that leaky faucet will no longer be there anymore and you can go about and enjoy your day and something that's actually placing you as the person to help them get what you want. So I will talk about that a little bit later and I'll give some laser focused examples that any MSP entrepreneur can put into action today. Because truly, again, that common mistake is they're trying to sell the drill or the, or the, the hammer when really what they need to be selling is the picture frame hung on the wall. And so, you know, in all of this say it's, it's not just the value, but it's actually something where rather than selling, you know, in this analogy, selling the, the drill or the hammer hammer, it's something that, that the client just wants their picture, their family picture hung on the wall. That's it. In the same way, there's a whole lot of different things for the actual business owner that they want. So I'll just say like, here's some practice. I'm going to skip to the end just a little bit, but we're going to come back and I think just that practical piece is really thinking about, you know, an MSP that might be selling 24. 7 monitoring. Now what they actually need to do is start selling peace of mind for a business owner like that business over and over. There's case studies. Those businesses double in literally monthly reoccurring revenue in 18 months every single Time. And it's because you're not selling you your service or anything else. What you're selling is the end result of what your customer actually wants. And so there's a few ways that we'll actually break it down. You know, number one is, you know, I think just placing yourself as the person that's going to help them win the day. You know, in the, in the story brand or in Viktor Frankl, you know, they talk about that, that guide. And so, you know, for me, you know, I was a firefighter to the CEO journey. I've helped Fortune 1 hundreds and financial advisors and entrepreneurs and speakers and authors all these things, but truly, I built clearly relevant to solve, like the biggest small business failures known, which is they're not clear and they need a scalable message. And truly, for me, it's something where I just saw friend after friend after friend and business owner after business owner where they had a great service, they were actually really awesome, which goes into the silos that I'll talk about. But they couldn't get the word out. They couldn't get people to come. And they had these businesses that hit these ceilings. And so truly, where that came from. And you asked me about our silos, like the launch market, grow the launch silo. Again, everybody wants to go right to the end or they have a really great service offering. I would say MSPs are also specific to where they usually have a lot of systems and processes and people that are more on the analytical side of thinkers. But usually they're imbalanced with sales folks in a way that are not technical sales. They're relational sales. And so this is where I think messaging brings internal communication to a head in a positive way. It gathers your team around the right vision or core values or things like that. And then also the external message that actually gets your customers excited, like, oh, yeah, I want that. You know, common. It's, it's no, it's no, like, secret that like a common sales question is like, hey, like, truly, aside from all these things we're talking about, like, what keeps you up at night? And some people might say, oh man, family or whatever, you know, like, there might be actually some other things going on. That's a really important relational sales tip. But most of the time they'll say, you know, in this, that analogy that I said about like 247 monitoring, like, man, I just keep wondering, like, you know, what if, what if these sites go down or if I can't get a hold of people or I have a team in India. And so the time zones from the U.S. or you know, like wherever we are are just flip flopped. Or the Philippines. And so it's those things where once you hear those things, you are now as an MSP owner, you need to be selling the outcome. And so that's where you're not shift, you're shifting from tech support to a business growth partner and you're breaking into a premium market where you're actually able to clarify and say, you know, hey, like you, you need to hire the right people and scale without some chaos. And so that's where you say like when you change your story, you're actually changing all the type of clients you attract. This is something in a real life scenario. In the last 24 hours, I'm working on a trademark for be a lighthouse, not a firehouse. And we talked a little bit before this about our firefighting background, but essentially most businesses are just going and putting out fires over and over. MSPs know this probably more than almost any other industry because it is a constant situation of where they are calling you because they are like they need you to respond to their fire in some capacity. And so, you know, there's a, there's lots of different speakers and you know, if I ever write a book, it's going to be a combination of all these different, different things and how we, and how we do it. But I think that the common thread is that essentially, and this is true in any industry, but if you are even real estate, financial advisors, anything like you are absolutely a commodity if you're not standing out and leading your industry in some way that's unique to you. So you don't have to be better, you don't have to be cheaper, you don't have to do it. You have to be leading in a way that truly you're a lighthouse to your audience. And so just by doing that, before we go to this next piece, if you just think about an actual lighthouse, by projecting that light out, it's going out. It literally is drawing in people away. It's also protecting people from what they, from what they don't want to hit in a real life situation. But you know, it's something that the more you put out the light of your leadership and what you guys do really, really well, this, and you're selling those outcomes and that peace of mind as a business owner. Now, business owners are not looking for an MSP company, they're looking for that, that peace of mind. So the MSP owners are looking truly for that outcome and how to be this, you know, this, this guide rather than this hero. And so, so with that, like just pieces of that so people know what it looks like is right away in your own team, you know, you don't have to outsource this yet. This is a, if you're a one person or a five person or 100 person team, take just one service offering, write it down, rewrite it plain. Absolutely. Benefit driven language to where it sounds like something that anyone can say, then rewrite it until it's unique to you. But the more you compare it down to get that simplicity, that clarity and then get it to where it's unique to you, clarity wins every single time. The second piece, I would say, and the final piece is really a strategic piece and that's just pick some 90 day marketing goal and commit to ignoring every other shiny object, distraction, anything else, because they're all going to come at you at once. Just focus on that one, you know, 90 day marketing goal and commit to getting rid of everything else. Because getting clear is going to be the single most thing that's going to change your business. [00:26:44] Speaker A: Oh, Jesse, there is so much there to unpack. I think this is going to be one of Those podcast episodes, YouTube videos that people kind of go back 30 seconds and just be like, wait, hang on, that guy just dropped another value bomb. Another one, another one, another one. There's so many good ideas to unpack there. What you could do actually is just help us by summarizing all of that for us. So for an MSP that's, that's sitting there, they know they've got this problem, but they're not quite sure where to start or, or what's the main thing that you've come up with there? How would you summarize that? What would you be your closing point, as it were? [00:27:13] Speaker B: Thanks, I really appreciate that. And I think that if I could just have one business owner walk away from msp, it's just knowing that the silent killer of MSP growth is not competition, it's confusion. And the last thing about that is that the human brain ignores whatever it doesn't immediately understand. And so that's where you could just take that one offering. You actually take it from a way where you're talk, you're not selling what you offer, you're selling the outcome that they want. And that's where you know the 24,7 technical support. Now to peace of mind for the business owner. [00:27:49] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. So 24. 7 technical support is a, is a feature, but the benefit is, hey, you know when you're working at home at 9:30 at night and the printer just won't work, you've got someone to help you and you don't have to feel bad about calling that person to help you. Which of course is the benefit. Jesse, amazing. We're going to get you back on the show in the future. I think you might be a special episode just waiting to happen where we can give you space to explore some of these massive, massive ideas. Just for now though, tell us exactly what you do to help MSPs and what's the best way to get in. [00:28:17] Speaker B: Touch with you Right now you can currently go to clearly relevant.com and really, we like to just really drive down on the messaging. The messaging is so important. You know, we have, we can do websites, we can do lead generation and other things but you know, that's something that I honestly I defer to you for the lead generation in those areas. For us, we want to get people laser focused on their internal messaging for their team for great hiring and getting the support they need. But their external messaging, so when they are ready to go out into the world, most companies are great. We just want to tell the world that they're great. But we got to start with that. [00:28:53] Speaker A: Messaging piece and what's the best way to get in touch with you? [00:28:56] Speaker B: Clearly, relevant.com, we have a short discovery link on there. So if they go and book a free discovery link, then it'll break up a 15 minutes, it'll be directly with me or the team and we'll kind of dive into what the biggest problem is, the challenges and how we can help. And often we like those free discoveries to also be something that you can walk away with and do without ever needing us. I. You don't have to be our client for us to help you. We always want to provide that. So go to the website clearlyrelevant.com you know, and book a discovery call Paul. [00:29:27] Speaker A: Green's MSP Marketing Podcast, the Marketing Minute. [00:29:32] Speaker C: Rhonda from Nagla Tech here I've got a simple marketing idea that can make a big impact and that's email signatures. If you think about it, every single day you and your team are sending out tons of different emails to prospects, customers, partners and suppliers. And that's a huge amount of free marketing space that really does go untapped. An email signature is already built into apps like Outlook, so it can cost nothing. And it's really easy to update with things like your monthly promotions, special offers, linking people to your social media channels. You can include a professional photo of yourself because, let's be honest, people are naturally curious and love to put a face to a name. You can add links to your most recent blog post or an event that you're running, or even a simple call to action like booking a meeting or a demo or downloading your company brochure. And because it's right there at the bottom of every email, it feels more subtle and not too pushy. So really, it's a marketing tool that's free and effective and already at your fingertips. You just have to get around to using it and making the most of it, really. So good luck. [00:30:32] Speaker A: Coming up, Coming up next week. Thank you so much for joining me this week. Next week we're going to be talking about cliches. Specifically cliches in your social proof. When you ask someone for a testimonial, a review, or a case study, you want to make sure they're communicating in a way that other people find interesting and intriguing and unusual, and they don't just dismiss it as a business cliche. Let me give you some examples of things to avoid next week and also tell you how you can shape what people say without actually telling them what to say or what to write. It's a very subtle difference, but you'll get much better results from it. This is all coming up in next week's show for MSPs around the world. Around the World, the MSP Marketing podcast with Paul Green.