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e [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] welcome to the pre-show for tonight's atmp live tonight we have an educational session on how to build a simple sales funnel most msps do not like to do sales and marketing but it's necessary evil if you're going to consistently grow a business the methods I'm going to show you tonight are some simple ideas some simple things but do require some work they shouldn't cost you any money unless you decide to hire or Outsource the work two very valuable resources that I think every MSP can use are a pair of books first the emth Revisited by Michael Gerber this one right here uh to put you in the mindset of an entrepreneur not just a technician that owns their own job you'll have to read the book to find out the difference second is the one-page marketing plan by Alan dib this book is the simplest marketing book I've ever found and I think it's a mustre for msps that want to grow their business because it just gives them that basic understanding of marketing that everybody needs these are the books that fundamentally changed my business and I know they'll change yours too I'll be back after a few words from tonight's sponsors hey have you ever wondered how much time your team spends in meetings and what the real impact was well Wonder no more with produce A's latest release you're getting insights into meeting Effectiveness and productivity metrics that will improve the way you do business some of the benefits are seamless Integrations with leading platforms such as Google Calendar Outlook Microsoft teams zoom and slack to help you streamline meetings especially for your MSP teams executive dashboards help gain insights into meeting Investments including salary breakdowns and resource allocation that gives you enhanced views into profitability team sentiment analysis provides understanding of employee morale through user sentiment analysis leveraging feedback to improve productivity and workplace well-being team empowerment gives access to personalized reports realtime metrics and goal setting features for better work life balance and productivity control explore how produce 8 is revolutionizing the MSP landscape at atms. link produce improve your productivity and Propel your MSP business to new heights with produce 8 comex systems specializes in ucast ccass Internet circuits and more their top selling product Microsoft teams voice ensures seamless communication experiences when you team up with comtech your customers get continuity with one dedicated rep smooth onboarding processes local deployment and ongoing us-based support transparent pricing and optimization of assets with an impressive 4.9 star rating on Google reviews their rating reflects the dedication of their team ready to drive business success schedule a one-on-one with Abby Smith at 412 519 2652 hey good evening everybody welcome back to another episode of all things MSP live really do appreciate you guys hanging out with me on a Wednesday night now tonight we have something you know that I'd like to bring up every once in a while and that's kind of an educational sess session it's usually when we don't have a guest and uh there'll be guests coming up soon now I do want to say that next week's episode you will not want to miss it okay first of all uh you won't want to miss it but it is a recorded session but it's a recorded session you've never seen before it is on shared responsibility and the shared responsibility Matrix when we're dealing with cyber security and uh it has my good friend rfy Jam goin on it and it is one of the best conversations I think I've ever been a part of comes to Shared responsibility because one of my I guess I should say issues with a lot of the conversations around shared responsibility is that it doesn't go very deep it doesn't explain what they mean by shared responsibility when it comes to cyber security so rafie did a great job of explaining it and giving lots of examples and so we'll definitely get into that uh in next week's show but the reason I won't be doing next week's show live is because I will be at the aces conference so if you are at the aces conference uh come by and see me I'll be wandering around helping Justin out as uh as much as I can and then of course uh all things MSP is sponsoring the dinner the one night so definitely looking forward to seeing everybody there all right so tonight's episode is about a simplified sales funnel so let me go ahead I do have a slide deck for this one so let me go ahead and bring it up and let me make things a little bit bigger just so that I can uh see see the slides a little bit better anyway I wanted to bring this up because number one in the 2024 memb survey a lot of you mentioned that sales was something that we should talk about more here on all things MSP and I don't disagree because it is one of the things that many msbs just almost kind of don't want to deal with and many of you existed for a long time on referrals and didn't have to do a lot of sales and either you've changed and you want to grow or you want to take it a step further and you know replace those customers that are you know every once in a while you have a customer that churns right so you know you got to replace those customers those customers are not as easy to replace as they used to be so you know it's just one of those things that uh you know from time to time you may need to replace one or two so what I've put together is my opinion on what a simple sales funnel would look like for an MSP um now put a little joke down here it does say powered by caffeine and hard work okay uh less the caffeine uh because obviously not everybody can can uh use caffeine but uh hard work absolutely sales is not difficult doesn't have to be difficult uh it can be can be very difficult but it quite frequently is hard work uh you got to put in the time you got to put in the effort so anyway let's get started and let's talk about this simplified sales funnel okay so this is kind of the agenda for tonight what is a sales funnel uh defining your ideal client profile that's kind of a prerequisite to doing this and I wanted to include it because if you don't have this the other pieces don't fall into place uh you have to be findable so we'll talk about that uh you have to create compelling content okay so that's important you have to capture their information so when they have gone through your they found you they' read your compelling content now you need to capture them you need to you know kind of I want to say grab them in but hold on it's about the storm here tonight so of course you know my sinuses are acting up um but you want to capture their information as soon as they are ready to engage one of the Dynamics that I'm going to talk about tonight is how the reason it's important to be findable and and to have compelling content is most often they will rule you in or rule you out before they ever talk to you so you need to make sure that you have content available that's going to convince them that you know how to solve their solution and you are at least one of the top three choices that they should evaluate okay and then the next thing after capturing their information so that you can actually now reach out to them is you need to get a meeting you need to get a meeting so that you can be face Toof face with them and describe how you are going to solve their problems after by the way you listen to what their problems are so that you can then repeat back what those problems are and describe the solutions to them um and then some will some won't next um there's there's a strategy behind okay you've had a meeting and I think there's in my opinion there's three buckets that people fall into after you've had the meeting so we'll get into that and then at the very end I'll talk about some things that we do to accelerate that uh you know what you're doing here accelerate the process of the sales funnel all right so give me just a second here I'm gonna go and just check the chat here real quick uh Keith Nelson in the house Mr no sales that's because you are a solution seller sir people already know based on you know your previous history uh of your expertise and so when they approach you they already know that you can solve their problem and that's one of the benefits of doing this for a while is uh you get a reputation out there and that's by the way that's one of the reasons why Word of Mouth works so well in the MSP industry is because people trust msps who have already solved problems for other people so you need to have that proof that's part of that compelling content that I was talking about to have on your website and and to put the other places that I'll talk about a little bit later all right okay so what is a sales funnel I'm not going to read the thing basically a sales funnel is and they call it here a marketing model I don't necessarily agree with it I just grabbed the definition and put it in here so that I'd have a Webster style definition but what it really is it's a sales and marketing model that allows you to kind of look at with a holistic approach the movement of people from top of funnel to bottom of funnel so basically how do you make people aware of you how do you engage them and then how do you convert them into a customer or a client now the reason it's shaped as a funnel is because typically you start with a large number of people and it gradually funnels down into a smaller number of people as you get through the qualification process and all of that now I'm not going to talk a lot about qualification and mqls and sqls and those kinds of things tonight those are the more technical marketing terms that you may see in a more complex situation you're not going to see that in this this is meant to be a simplified model OKAY four important questions before we get started you need to know who your ideal client is you need to know what they need you need to know what they want because emotions play A Part here and where do they consume information those are the four basic things you need to know before you create your sales funnel and and here's my rundown of why first of all you can't focus on every kind of client okay so you have to have a distinct audience or once you get good at this a distinct set of audiences that you are particularly trying to make aware of you and attract to your business because those are the clients that work best what do they need what they need is going to determine how you build your product offerings okay now I know this is different for everybody this is The Simple Solution right the more complex solution is you actually create a custom solution for them what we're talking about tonight is more the simplified version a more productized type of offering okay and then what do they want because what they need is not necessarily what they want and they're going to buy what they want not what they need but you need to still Supply what they need to solve the problem does that make sense I hope it does and then lastly where do they consume information one of the biggest changes that we've seen over the last probably 10 years is the fact that people are doing their own research first they are not just picking up the phone and calling a bunch of people and asking them to come present their products or their services to them they are doing research on the internet they are looking on social media they're looking at reviews and they're consuming that information and narrowing it down maybe to make a purchase so they're narrowing it down to one or at best they're probably narrowing it down to three and then they'll contact or reach out to those three and have those three present all right so ideal client building your ideal client profile you need to figure out who are they where do they search and consume data like we said before how do they behave what do they need okay so how do you do this well first you're going to identify your best existing clients because your best existing clients are most likely going to look like your best new prospects okay so you want to look and see what do they look like how profitable are they and I mean profitable to you not profitable in their own business but how profitable are they to you uh how many users do they typically have okay how many uh what's their annual revenue look like what industry are they in those type of demographics okay and what you're going to do is you're going to take those different criteria you're going to look across those best clients and see if you see any similarities okay and then where they consume information because obviously you don't want to have to throw a really wide net and you know spend money advertising or spend time delivering content on a lot of different social media platforms or building a whole bunch of different landing pages for your website right um then you want to find out why do they use you okay this is an important part because a lot of times you won't really know why they use you and if you don't know asking them is the best way to find out and it's the best way to be able to attract new prospects who would want to use you for the same reason building a persona for your ICP your ideal client's one thing that's a business okay your ideal client is a business your personas are going to be the people who actually make the decision to purchase okay now for most msps who are probably watching this show that is the business owner it may be a manager uh if there's a manager of the business it may be a CFO um there may be a lot of different decision makers but the main decision maker is the one you want to build a Persona on now one of the differences between a simple sales funnel like the one we're talking about tonight and a more complex sales funnel is that you are going to have more personas involved in the decisionmaking process so you're going to need to describe or enumerate those all of those personas okay and I don't want to go into that tonight because like I said most msps who are probably watching this show are have one primary decision maker at a prospect because they're dealing with those siiz businesses okay what to look for in your best clients do you like working for them I mean if you're doing this and you hate it why are you doing it so let's not add more clients that you're going to hate to work for add the ones that you like working for do they generate an acceptable level of profit for you okay it's important uh we just had uh Sean Walsh and Dave Cava from the pumpkin plan for manage service providers on the podcast not that long ago and talked about this very thing you know talked about how a lot of msps are carrying clients that have almost zero or even negative value to the business and you need to weed those out um and you definitely don't want to be attracting more of those right um do you have specialized knowledge in their industry I mean this is one of those things where I had some specialized knowledge in manufacturing so manufacturing clients were easier for me to get because I had experience I understood the software that they were using and the processes that they used on the shop floors and things like that uh do you have other special advantages to serving those clients anything that makes your MSP unique maybe it's an employee maybe it's special knowledge maybe it's special tools but special advantages you have to serving those clients that will give you a leg up when trying to prospect to new clients what makes them similar uh industry are they in the same industry size employees Revenue Geographics and by Geographics I mean the size of the area that they cover um location where they're at okay um what their technology needs are because one of the things that especially with smaller msps you benefit from standardization right and so if you have a bunch of clients that all use the same technology that is much easier on your business from a tactical standpoint than having lots of different kinds of solutions for all different looks of clients right uh business structure and decision makers again your sales process is going to work easier if you can replicate it over and over again and so the decision makers the business structure all of that it's going to be easier if they are similar and then the questions that you're going to want to ask them so that you can put all this together uh where do they consume information okay again I know I'm going to harp on that but it is super important uh that you know where they hang out and consume information in order to get your information your brand in front of them um how do they make decisions okay because how they make decisions is probably how other businesses that look like them are going to make decisions so very important to know that um what do they want out of a Managed IT services provider okay um because again the companies that look like them are probably going to want the same thing and then again why did they use you what makes you unique that you can put into your content that says this is why I'm different this is why these businesses come and work with me as their outsourced it service provider and all of that comes down to combining that and creating uh at this stage I would say one or two buyer personas at the most once you get bigger clients or more complex situations you will probably have more than two personas but uh you can create a client Persona um it it looks like a real person okay the closer you can get to making your personas look like a real person the better because the the importance of having a persona is that now you have a sheet of paper that you can literally look at and go okay I am this person what type of advertising what type of marketing what type of content is going to be attractive to me if I am this person and so that is very helpful when you're putting together all of this content to make sure that the decision makers the ones who are actually going to decide whether or not they choose you as their it service provider that those people are getting the content that are going to answer their questions in the way that you know they they they want it to be presented example okay if this was a 50-year-old you know uh ice cream shop owner okay let's call it that uh you are probably not going to attract them on Tik Tok okay you might but it's probably not going to be the norm um but you may find them on a Facebook page for their Chamber of Commerce or a Facebook group of small Entre entrepreneurs in their local city so that's why this matters it speaks a lot to the where and the how all right I've been talking a lot so let me just check and see if there are any more comments all right be findable where do they search and consume data now search is pretty easy because once you're on Google you've got most of the audience anyway uh there are other search engines of course but if you rank high on Google you're probably going to rank pretty well on those as well uh consuming data however is a little different this is probably mostly social media platforms okay if it's a business LinkedIn if it's a more consumer type business maybe Facebook uh and of course never forget the localized groups that are created uh on those different platforms there may be different groups for you know the city of Chicago or the Orlando area or you know San Francisco area you know you want to make sure that you're you're going Geographic as well as um industry okay and there's probably some other ways uh to break that down as well um and consuming data as well it's not just where do they search it's where they consume data so they would also consume data like on YouTube okay and and this goes for creating YouTube content or sponsoring YouTube content uh you know like I said at the beginning of the show uh you don't have to spend a lot of money to do this and that was my point right I wanted to create something simple that you put more work into than money so that you could get something out of it uh but as we'll find out when we get to the accelerate session money doesn't hurt um basically here what you're trying to do is make sure you're figuring out how to get in their eyes and their ears because if you never get in their eyes and their ears you are never going to uh be the person that they choose and and I choose I said ears here very specifically because podcasts for for a while now have been very good ways to attract uh your target audiences they're very cheap to produce very easy to produce and uh one of those things that I think everybody can do especially if you're not comfortable on camera because that's one of the keys with doing an audio POS podcast an audio only podcast is that you don't have to be on camera to do an audio podcast and a lot of more people are com able with that all right top three places you need to be find findable Google I I'm sorry I had it's obvious but I had to put it up there because it is number one uh LinkedIn uh because you're you're a business right so and and this goes for your personal LinkedIn you've got to have stuff you've got to have content there you've got to have a well filled out LinkedIn profile I'm not going to go into that there's plenty of places you can search for what you should do to make sure that you have a complete LinkedIn profile but also for your business I see so many especially small businesses which most msps fall in the range of that don't have business pages on LinkedIn and and it's so weird to me that you don't it's a it's a whole another opportunity to be found by those other business owners and it's another place for you to put content that is more related to the business than related to you now I know because I was there right the business and and us the business owner uh of an MSP are quite frequently very much one and the same okay but you need to be better at separating that out and here's why you never necessarily expect an exit if you are looking to an exit you 100% have to do this right because the business needs to stand on its own for it to have value it needs to operate without you to have real value to a buyer but you know even if you're not looking for an exit stuff happens we've talked about this on previous sessions before you need to have an exit strategy even if you're not planning on exiting so that the people around you still get the best benefit of the business whether it's being being sold whether it's being continued and run on uh so again just separate yourself a little bit from the business uh it's okay to promote it I'm not saying you know create a wall in between I'm just saying make them distinctly different for both uh the business can be more ad and content related your personal page should probably be a little more thought leadership type of thing because you are you're a leader you're leader in your business and your personal LinkedIn profile should reflect that all right YouTube uh it's the second largest search engine in the world okay now I don't want to harp on this too much but you should be creating video content even if it's just for LinkedIn but you should be putting it on YouTube too um video content has so much more reach than text and because YouTube is the second largest search in the world it is quite often the place that people go for for especially for reviews and advice okay so that's why YouTube and other places you know the other social media platforms on that's going to depend again on your audience uh local directories think Chamber of Commerce uh you know those little newsletters or even the place mats that have advertisements on them in your local sports bar that kind of stuff um uh local advertising Billboards Believe It or Not Billboards actually still do pretty well and the prices come down so I mean it depends on where you are right because it depends on the traffic counts but they can be very effective uh a bench outside the local sports bar I always throw this one in because this one worked wonders for me this is probably the single best piece of advertising I ever did as an MSP now small town small town this particular sports bar I would bet that almost of all the business people who ate out every day every week I would say that those people went to the sports bar at least once a week at at least once a week and so my name my business was in front of those business owners at least once a week as they were walking in to the restaurant uh every single time and and it's those types of persistent advertising that I really really like uh the more transient like radio ads tv ads I'm not crazy about those if you can get them at the right rate and there's some competitive ways to do that now uh it's not as bad but Billboards permanent advertising the the trash cans outside of Walmart you know that have the advertising on the four sides probably not your Target demographic okay okay if if Target had them maybe um but Walmart no um yeah so that's kind of my my thing on Advertising creating compelling content this is the part that is probably going to be the hardest amount of work the other stuff was kind of prep work okay um being findable you do it once okay pretty much and you're done uh you're probably going to updated every you know maybe once a year to add more services or to be searchable for something else things come up right but content you are going to need to create on a consistent basis in fact I recommend creating a calendar and just start you you know planning it out every month and say I'm gonna do this post I'm gonna do this video I'm gonna do this white paper whatever it is and create content consistently every single month and to do that you need to know what do they need what do they want which we've covered you know earlier tonight okay um let's talk about your website okay needs to be what they need not what you want and I probably should have changed that it needs to be what they want and not what you want uh that probably would have made more sense uh well would have been more accurate I think this reads better anyway and what I mean there is because I'm I I was guilty of this right I created the website that I wanted that talked about me talked about my business now of course it did talk about what I could do for them and those kinds of things but today because we have this Dynamic of they're going to evaluate you before they ever talk to you your website is going to be the number one way they do that because I doubt that any of you are going to become prolific content creators I love for you to be but you're probably not going to be prolific content creators and so you're not going to be in front of them every day that way and not really going to be searchable that way however your website your website's how they're going to find you most likely uh may not be the first place they see you but it is certainly the place they're going to find you and absolutely is going to be where they research you so make sure that you have the content on your website that answers their questions and shows you have and can solve the problems that they have okay now of course it needs to be SEO friendly for all of those things and you need to make it easy for them to reach out by phone and to submit you know like their email address or ask for a call back or something like that a short small form do not ask a survey just to get their one piece of contact information and phone works email works one of the two both is great but you only need one of those two to actually reach out and be able to start that engagement all right top types of content topic specific landing pages this is going to help with SEO and it's going to help with when they search for a particular problem right if it takes them to that specific land landing page you can address that particular problem rather than a generic homepage okay generic homepage is okay and it has its place but if they're searching for a specific Topic in your local and for managed it or for IT services in general you want them to land on a specific page for that specific problem so that they can go ah they get it they can solve my problem I'm going to reach out to them which is another great Point make sure that you give them the opportunity on that landing page to connect okay uh social media posts and comments that should be pretty relevant and you know I'd love to give you some straight advice on that stuff but uh it changes all the time the algorithms are constantly changing so there's you know nothing that's terribly consistent there except make it about the problems you solve you know benefits not features and make sure that you're being polite uh especially when you're commenting um and even more so like if you're if you're posting uh you know on your own profile that's fine but if you are posting to a group make sure you're following the rules of that group uh make sure you're not spamming a group make sure you're not advertising in a group unless you're a paid Advertiser um and sometimes that will be beneficial and it may be something that if you find a group that's really good for you then maybe sponsoring that group is something that you want to consider uh white papers white papers give them an in-depth look at maybe a problem like theirs that you've already solved for somebody else kind of like a testimonial but written um and speaking of testimonials video okay uh video is again it's the contact it's the content that connects the most uh with people and you know if you don't want to be on video use upwork use Fiverr uh you can get things done very reasonably and then you know you have content to put out but testimonials are probably one of the best videos that you can do and you know we're technical people Mo okay I'm speak speaking to my own crowd here right most of you are technical most of you know how to pick up a a phone and use the video camera on your phone to record somebody saying something nice about your business in fact most of your existing clients know how to pick up their phone and say something nice about your business and so give them a discount give them a Starbucks card whatever it is to create that video content for you and that's video content that you can use to show on your website as well as in your social media posts and and sometimes even it's relevant for a comment right somebody talks about a certain problem they're having and you just happen to have a testimonial in your back pocket that talks about how you solved that problem for XYZ client why not respond with a link to your YouTube channel with that video in it it works um when you're creating this content though I want you to remember two things make it relevant make it memorable okay two easy things to remember make it relevant to the client and the problems that they're having and make it memorable make it fun uh you know you don't have to be great at video editing to have fun on on camera right uh you don't or you can hire somebody on Fiverr or upwork to do the the memorable part for you but make sure that for whatever reason it's memorable and sometimes by the way the worst videos are the most memorable so don't worry about getting it perfect because sometimes perfect is boring so you know mess up sometimes works for me all right okay capture um you have to when they have kind of pre-selected You by doing you know reading your compelling content right if they've pre-selected you you need need to make it easy for them to reach out but you also need to make sure that you're capturing that info like I said you only need one of two pieces you need an email address or you need a phone number that's it and their name preferably you want their name too sorry um I I kind of thought that was assumed um but that information is enough for you to start reaching out to them from your side see everything that we've talked about in the first first almost 40 minutes of tonight is them looking at you okay now this is your first opportunity to actually go the other direction and reach out to them um landing pages make sure again that they're specific to a problem and solution um with a contact form on the page don't make them scroll or go to another page to be able to reach out to you okay um put them in your CRM if you don't have a CRM I don't know what you're doing I'm sorry I'm just gonna put it out there like that your PSA probably has enough of a CRM to get by if you don't you can use something like I like a a bigan it's by Zoho if you know you're familiar with them uh $115 a month $15 a month come on if you're in business and you can't afor afford $15 a month for the most one of the most valuable pieces of information in your business which is the contact information for your clients and con and Prospects I don't know I don't know what to tell you at this point okay I'm trying to make it simple um and again you don't need everything phone number email and name is enough to start next and this is where the proac peace goes now you can always give them the option because we have these wonderful tools now right calendly and and tools like them that you can use in order to create a meeting where they can just say I want a meeting put that on the page put those on your L put links like that or the forms that you can create with those as you know on on your landing pages so you know they can just book a meeting right there um but if not now you have their contact information your next step is to get the meeting now the meeting basically has three components to it you have to prepare for it because if you're unprepared a they're going to know and B you're just not going to be very effective um you need to be engaged you need to bring the energy because you're setting the tone and then followup so many people just fail to follow up well okay prepping okay do your research industry what does their business look like size and structure what is their current it setup if you can get that um is there any relevant industry news that you can use to show that you're keeping up and you're actually interested in their industry now don't do this falsely right because remember if we go back all the way to the beginning tonight we talked about the ideal client profile if these prospects look like your existing clients you should already have relevant industry news because you should already be tracking that tell me I'm wrong Uh custom pitch the pitch should be different for each customer okay because the solution is going to be slightly different because their problems are probably slightly different now hopefully they're similar because you don't want to have things too too different but you know it needs to be for them um a value proposition specific specific to the prospect because again their business is different and one of the things that I always had great success with was case studies and lookalike clients now of course you need permission to reveal that another client of yours is a client to another Prospect or another client because there are security issues there right there are privacy issues you want to make sure that you're not revealing too much information but it's it's like a testimonial right just get permission to use it and do these case studies and case studies you can do without revealing the name of the client but if you have lookalike clients where you can actually use their name that's going to better build up your credibility and show that you serve clients that look like them uh and then make sure you have answers this is part of the the preparation right you you can handle the objections um you can demonstrate expertise in solving the problems that they're having uh that you have a basic knowledge of their industry and how it works um and then if you have certifications make sure that you're showing those now I know that this is a little bit controversial and my opinion used to be that credentials really didn't matter and on a factual scale they probably don't okay in reality they probably don't however they do look impressive if if you have them so and it does lend some more credibility to you and your business if you have some of those certifications and just as a Shameless plug uh CompTIA security trust Mark um a lot of friends of mine are going through that right now uh it's it's tough but I think they're definitely going to see Roi from it uh once they've completed it all right holding the meeting face to face always preferred but you can do this over Zoom if you have to um in fact post pandemic Some people prefer to kind of gauge your client and how they feel about that but face- Toof face is pred for a couple of reasons number one nothing substitutes for being able to listen to what they're saying and watching what their body is telling you okay body language matters all the other sites sounds everything else that they matter and it's extra information that's going to help you form a response or a solution uh for that client and then you are going to be able to transfer energy okay you're going to be able to better set the tone if it's face to face and so that's important as well uh focus on the client and their wants not what you can do for them okay that comes after they've already communicated what they want because what they want you tell them what they need okay that's the order that that should go in uh use visuals to communicate value don't communicate features communicate value okay and use them sparingly don't put this is an educational session okay so that's why I have a lot of words on these slides okay and by the way if anybody's interested in this slide deck just let me know afterwards and uh and I'll let you have it um but if you're selling something somebody it should be mostly pictures okay pictures that con convey emotions and value of what you're going to solve for them how they're going to feel as a client of yours and then ask for the sale never forget to ask for the sale now low percentage of the time are you going to get the sale right then and there because chances are you haven't learned enough to quote them right or to even design a solution but you might as well because it's not going to hurt and the best thing to do after that is if they say no is ask what you can do to get the sale okay and then do it because followup like I said is important so important I made another slide for it so followup is the most important thing that you can do because again most of the time you won't close the sale at the meeting um followup is critical you know there are going to be quotes there are going to be answers that you need to give them there's going to be solution engineering that needs to be done in order to figure out all of the pieces and parts that are going to go into this solution for this client um and by the way one of the reasons why we want to put all of this information into your CRM is so that you can track the progress you can track the followup so that you don't miss any of these deadlines after the fact because here's the deal you miss deadlines while you're trying to sell them something they're going to assume you're going to miss deadlines when they paid you to deliver something and that's probably not going to get you selected some will some won't next now this is actually something that I learned a long long time ago we're talking College days selling Amway and if you don't know what Amway is don't look it up it's basically multi-level marketing right but they had some actually good training materials okay that was the thing I will not knock the days that I was doing Amway because the the training tapes the sales training tapes that that they had you listen to that were ridiculously expensive and and we bought them anyway but they were good like they taught me what I needed to know about sales even though I really wasn't going into sales okay enough of the Amway story um I divide prospects who who aren't going straight into becoming a client into three buckets okay not now qualified and not qualified okay now uh they know and have expressed that you have the right solution for them they just can't commit right now for whatever reason okay this is very important you need to find out exactly when or what needs to be done for them to commit okay you need to write it down on a calendar do it so that when you go back to them and say okay the time has passed we've done the things that you needed us to do to make this sale it's time to sign the paper okay it's hard for them to refuse that it really is okay so that's how the not now should go qualified these are people who fit your ideal client profile but they're either not experiencing enough pain or they don't see you as the right solution quite yet to make a change or or to engage in in in a manag Services agreement get them into a nurture sequence in your CRM and make sure that you are reaching out probably I would say once a week but not the same way every week I would alternate phone calls and emails do that for about two three months and then if they kind of drop off then then take it back to probably something once a month put them in the not qualified bucket because that's the next one and this is where they really don't fit your ideal client profile and by the way chances are if they're in the qualified and they don't respond after the two to three months of contacting them once a week they're probably not really your ideal client right either that or the existing MSP is so good you're probably not going to displace them anyway until something breaks and that's why we want to put in the in the not qualified bucket because as long as you are reaching out to them on a semi-regular basis and and here I say uh once a month you know a slow drip nurture sequence is what I want to call it um and it keeps you top of mind so if that other managed service provider uh messes up hey are still the one who's been reaching out to them and and you're going to be top of mind you're going to be one of the first people hopefully that they think of when you know they come to you know need another managed service provider the other point here is if they if there's somebody who doesn't fit your ideal client profile they may not fit it now but they may in the future so you might as well put them on an email list where you're slow dripping to them give them some valuable information once a month that they can action in their business you know and and hope someday that they call you you okay very rarely have I ever seen if you're sharing valuable content with them on a monthly basis that they will unsubscribe okay because that's not enough to be annoying and you're delivering value with the email not just trying to pitch them something and I wouldn't even in that drip nurture sequence I wouldn't even ask them to contact you they know how to contact you they've been in contact with you before and you're sending them an email so all they have to do reply to it simple enough all right um accelerate this is really short basically paid social paid ads outsourc lead gen you know I've had uh Terry hen from marketopia here on the show a couple of times in the last month uh they certainly do this kind of work uh but really if if you want to accelerate it and not have to put money into it it's just hard work just put in the work you put in the work you put enough people in the top of the funnel you'll get results out the other end I promise you it will work it's a numbers game sales and marketing is a numbers game you put enough people in the top of the funnel you'll get a certain number of people out the bottom of the funnel it just works that way now how long it takes depends on how good you are at it but the more you practice the better you're going to get at it that's one of the points to a sales funnel is it's repeatable and it gives you a process to follow every time all right so that is my TED Talk for tonight or in this case a simplified sales funnel training um really do appreciate you guys being here uh I should check to see if there are any questions oh and Keith's been blowing me up and I didn't see it so um first of all let me finish with uh before I get to Keith's questions because we will do Q&A here at the end um any questions or if you want one-on-one training or Consulting feel free to reach out to me Eric atall things mp.com super simple all right let us go back to yeah I like that one better okay so Keith says I say face tace not in an office for the first meeting it's actually a really good idea Keith um because in their office there's going to be distractions in your office they're probably not going to be 100% comfortable okay so things to keep in mind there he says make it the country club exclusive restaurant or similar provide the image of your success another reason to do it in another location right is to give them that image of success I had a a lawyer client of mine back in Orlando who originally and I don't I I wish I could remember the model of car that he had when he started out as a lawyer and another older attorney told him you're not getting clients because of what you drive and so he upgraded his car and you know what it worked he upgraded his Client List as well so appearances do matter okay it's not everything obviously you have to deliver on that but the look of success does matter to a lot of people um Keith says uh Pro tip for meet and greet do not do big events oneon-one to an event floor seats for a sporting event send a limo service to get them uh and ple and people do not cancel those events yes so it depends on probably the value of your client right and and what type of clients you're going after uh in Keith's case he's very selective about the clients that he chooses uh and but the clients are worth it right and this is another thing if you're profit margin will handle it the client really doesn't matter right as long as the client is paying you and and you're getting a good profit margin on all these clients doing things like this spending this kind of money is is you're really not spending that much when you're comparing it to what you're going to get out of what hopefully is going to be you know many many years of a contract uh not one contract for many many years we're not going to be you know somebody else we know but you know you should still have I I oneyear contracts they make sense okay you're not going to do something for less than a year um but hopefully that relationship let's not talk about contracts let's talk about relationships that relationship is going to last for several years and your profit margin is high enough taking them to a sporting event or some other type of special event uh on a one-on-one basis is not going to be terribly expensive as and I'll throw out another term here uh acquisition cost of a client all right um it's hard for them to refuse your proposal if it aligns with the business outcomes improves their outcomes and increases the service value for their customers yes as an IT service provider you are no longer just their outsourced health desk um the new podcast atmp Evolutions that's coming out uh tomorrow now because it's brand new I don't know if it'll show up on the podcast platforms right away tomorrow it will be available on YouTube tomorrow that is uh something that we talked about in terms of fractional CTO or fractional CIO uh type Services if you affect their business outcomes not just protect their expenses you are going to be much more valuable to their business uh if you're actually having an effect on those business outcomes uh when you sell Services Commodities uh he has in parenthesis uh or in yeah um they feel like they're is no deadline and price matters yes um that is one of the things that we are seeing in the IT services industry right now is that things like help desk uh things like infrastructure management are becoming commoditized because the tools do a lot of the work a lot automation does a lot of the work right AI is even replacing some people on the help desk and so there's not as much value there and also selling a commodity because you're not solving a problem necessarily you're probably just replacing somebody that they already have yeah the there's no deadline and chances are if they're replacing a commodity they're just trying to get it for cheaper so so Keith thank you very much for those things um I do appreciate it hopefully you guys got something out of this tonight I know that this is very specifically targeted at the smaller msps but I also feel like they're the ones who get less love when we're talking about sales and marketing specifically and so that's why I wanted to provide something very simple again if you're interested in some one-on-one time or some Consulting uh please reach out to me Eric at all things MSP uh it's Eric with a c and I will get back to you and and we can talk about you know and by the way first phone Call's free I'm not going to charge it for the first phone call uh because who knows if it's even the right solution for you right anyway um up next uh I'm sure that uh in fact I know I've seen it uh I don't remember what it's about but Marvin B Uncle Marv does have a uh a live stream tonight so head on over there if you are not tired of MSP live streams for this evening and we will see you next week well I won't because I'll be at Aces but there will be a live stream next week and and it's the one with ra rafy Jamin uh yeah great episode on shared responsibility Matrix and uh stuff like that oh uh so Keith is telling me that uh Brad gross is on Uncle Marv tonight great that that you don't want to miss that you should have skipped mine and and gone to that one or something all right see you guys later have a great night