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foreign [Music] hey there folks this is the MSP lead gen podcast and this is episode one on MSP cold calling best practices for 2023 exciting topic uh really it's something that our team works on every single day and I appreciate that you give this a click and you're you're considering uh listening and hearing a bit more um just a quick background uh you know case we haven't met because you haven't heard of simple selling um or myself so my name is Derek Marin I'm the founder of a company called Simple selling we do manage Business Development and marketing for ambitious msps we've been around since 2019 so a couple of years under our belts and this is our official launch of our podcast so I have to totally admit that I am new to podcasting at least from a production standpoint I listened to to plenty of podcasts so I will definitely be doing uh I'm sure I'll be making plenty of mistakes along the way so I gotta apologize up front for you know uh for that but I do promise to bring value and to do my very best to bring you data to bring you uh guests whenever it makes sense and just to really come prepared so anyway uh this first episode just covering three main points on cold calling um so the first is is cold calling debt right so we're going to talk a little bit about our data our our benchmarks and also what some of our competitors have even shared publicly just to give you a sense of that second point will be like what have we found in the industry as far as like the status quo approach to cold calling and telemarketing for msps you know what is what is the the status quo there um and then finally we'll finish this episode with sort of the direction that you know at least we believe it's simple selling that msps need to head when it comes to Business Development and prospecting so would love your feedback and I hope that you'll continue to to listen uh to the future episodes and cold calling is not you know completely going to be um you know finished in this first episode we're just kind of Dipping our toes so don't forget to subscribe if you think this is an interesting and important topic for your MSP anyway take care and thanks very much all right so I think I mentioned you know is cold calling dead I think that's a very fair question uh for for anyone uh who's considering telemarketing to to look at so before I jump into you know my own teams our own teams you know data and numbers from from last year 2022. I'm just going to share some some facts and figures that I found from our competitors so I'm not going to name names but these are other um telemarketing cold calling sales uh MSP specific um vendors that are out there uh so one of these that I I went to their website and their their blog this is one that's more into the sales coaching side of things so they'll help msps who are bringing in internal um account execs and what have you you know that's their approach and so what they said in one of their blogs about their own performance they said I'm reading now so far in 2022 bdrs which bdrs uh refers to you know Business Development reps right the ones doing the a cold calling in 2022 bdrs by themselves averaged just one appointment for every 337 calls and each appointment took an average of 6.7 attempts to get okay and we also know I'm so I'm still reading here we know from experience that this role experiences a high employee turnover rate with nine months being the average tenure I just thought I would throw that in there because uh yeah it is definitely one of the um harder more difficult aspects about I'd say the bdr and cold calling work that we do is the turnover which I can talk about in another episode about sort of how we look at it in our numbers but I thought that was interesting for that to be shared here's what another vendor in the space in the MSB specific right I'm not taking vendors or cold calling from other from other you know B2B or b2c that's even too General I'm getting very specific here with uh with with people who have MSP experience so this person said this company said rather now I'm reading 300 to 1 vet ratio is the ratio of dials to appointments which translates to about one sales appointment per 20 to 25 hours of calling time okay and another quote which I thought was interesting is as most MSP cold calling programs generate four appointments per 80 hours of calling time uh or one per one per month um is what it says there so um or rather in one month not one per month in one month so four appointments per 80 hours of calling time one month interesting um one more thing that from this second vendor one more quote that I thought was interesting that says and I quote again most programs will not generate an appointment in the first few months totally makes sense that is very similar to you know I'd say our average right in the first couple of months so that's what two other companies uh that are similar to us are are saying that they're that they're you know metrics that they're willing to put out there into the channel I don't think they would do that unless they could really back it up so I thought it was interesting and relevant to share with you um for for us uh for our msps the ones that we're doing um this for you know last year 2022 we did over 94 000 dials as as a whole not for one single MSP but for several msps um they uh all of our msps together close a total of 39 agreements over the course of last year and the average FTA or first time appointments for each MSP so the average was 52 appointments for the year for the whole year for 2022 and that's after an MSP is fully ramped up so really you know um that's counting you know a bdr that is already at least uh has three months behind them right at a minimum for 12 months after that okay so um so you know I guess if you're probably thinking maybe you're thinking well okay that's great so appointments got it but like what does this mean in terms of Revenue right and you know the beauty of Target right the right type of prospect right so us and our competitors we're all doing that we already know who the ideal client profile is for each of our msps so that could be based on all kinds of factors um so let's just say for you know our our worst performing MSP last year they closed only five agreements right um so I would say you know let's just do some some of the math because maybe you haven't had the opportunity to to do that so if you closed five agreements in in your average mrr say for each one of these customers let's let's just say just for simple numbers two thousand dollars a month right that's five times two thousand that's ten thousand dollars in new mrr okay so how does that look like does that really pay off right if you're paying a company for for a year and you're only getting five agreements um Say by by month 10 11 and 12 is when these agreements actually come in right does that really make it worth is it is there an Roi and that I I what I would say is you know think about the what makes your business model so awesome so unique right so you many msps I'm assuming many of you listening to this are already thinking doing the math as we go so there's a lot of retention right when you guys get a new customer many of you guys are fantastic at keeping customers long term you have they sign an agreement and it could be a year two years three years long and many times customers stay even beyond that right so we say ten thousand dollars a new mrr and we're talking about you know say you know uh you know five years right um there's already you know six hundred thousand a new mrr alone right in in the course of five years right and that's not even including the professional uh services or like the projects that are done especially in the first year uh but also subsequent years and projects or um also revenue from from from Hardware Which is less maybe than it used to be but it's still Revenue nonetheless so um I think it doesn't take too too much work to figure out that yeah like you can get a good return on cold calling and cold calling is not dead um okay so I guess I maybe I maybe spoke enough about that let's get into the next part of today's chat with it which is around what does MSP cold calling actually look like for for msps and I'm sorry I'm just going to take a quick sip of this uh espresso here because I've just been talking not stopping my mouth is already dry um so when you know we've been doing this for for about four years now I started off myself you know just working alone um and I didn't have any employees of course just like any small business you know you start start off by yourselves first couple years is just me um but when I was starting to do research and when I started to do the cold calling I found all kinds of guides right you know eBooks on MSP cold calling and you know the Lion's Share of them focus a lot on you know first you gotta figure you gotta build a list you got to find um you're gonna figure out your ICP your ideal client profile right there's got to be organizations that that fit your perfect ideal client prospects you know all the demographics and the industries the verticals like the head count size like all those types of things makes perfect sense um and you know after that right so what is the meat of the call like what what are what are what are the cold colors supposed to actually say on the phone and um I took a screenshot actually of one of these one of these guys this MSP cold calling guys one that's been around for a couple of years but it still ranks very high on when you Google uh MSP cold calling it's still one of the top um top options there and I thought it was interesting um just to kind of just to kind of um to demonstrate sort of the spirit of the cold call I just took a screenshot and I'm reading it says you know here's a scenario right they have the Prospect Day the prospect they have time and materials or break and fix agreement already in place and then it has some bullet points here as to what questions the bdr business development should be Business Development rep should be asking um in this scenario and I'm saying I'm just going to read now it says ask when they last had a complete Network Health assessment that's one bullet point next bullet point ask how often they meet proactively with the team to discuss changes and Trends in security and Technology bullet point three ask if their business could survive a data breach and if they are 100 protected from one and another bullet point last one I'll read for now ask who's responsible for their Disaster Recovery plan and how often it's updated okay so clearly there's a lot of questions so that's good you do want to ask a lot of questions in a cold call and that that that's not going to change right because you want it to be a conversation but what is interesting is that all of these conversations or other all of these questions that are recommended are very very focused on I.T infrastructure cyber security disaster right these types of things recovery these types of things and this has been the predominant sort of Playbook and and all the blogs and articles that I read from other vendors in the channel um being my own competitors or or others um very very similar scripts even from different MSP peer groups or I was able to read some of the things that that I found acts you know I was able to get access to from my own msps what is what was the play you know script and it was very similar and what's I think what's really telling is that um you know there there's actually a survey that that uh that datto did um I think it was in early 2022 or maybe even 2021 where they were they were surveying smbs about their satisfaction with it and they have um one of the questions related to outsourced I.T and their satisfaction and what it's what the SMB SMBC levels answered was that you know completely satisfied was 40 percent and somewhat satisfied was 43 percent um and very very similar uh with co-manage completely satisfied 45 somewhat satisfied 49 percent so we're talking about any anywhere between 83 to you know over 90 94 are reasonably satisfied with I.T outsourced I.T or co-managed I.T um situation and so is that is that a surprise to you if you're listening to this I I imagine it's probably not I imagine it's probably not many of you have been in business much longer than we have and you've been you've had customers for a long time loyal customers and you guys have seen your own industry evolve the technology has evolved right you guys can and I'm not an I you know I don't have an I.T background myself you know I'm new to the channel as I mentioned at the beginning of this but you know based on what I've learned is that you know a lot of a lot of technology for msps has improved dramatically in the last you know 5 10 15 years like you guys can do patching and remote monitoring from anywhere right and um not to mention just just the quality of of of of all the technology that your customers have right a lot of things are in the cloud and you know the computers and laptops that they have um that they still have that that stuff just doesn't break down as much as it as it used to right so um when it comes to just it and things working like things for the most part work and so it's not so surprising I think that when you ask an SMB owner or a decision maker or people who are working in these small medium-sized businesses if they're reasonably happy yeah I think for the most part I.T is is getting things done and so what's unfortunate is that when it comes to cold calling this is making it very very difficult for msps to to break in to stand out to actually have a chance um to to get a customer or a prospect rather to switch over right because that's what we're talking about with code calling is getting the opportunity to go at bat right but the fact of the matter is that today in 2023 all those prospects that you want us to be your customer they're already customers of one of your competitors and they've probably been so for years and so there's relation not not only is it working reasonably well but they also have that loyalty and relationship with those customers so you have a double a double whammy like an extra challenge to overcome so here's some food for thought for you questions you know to be going through your head here which is you know and I you know Frank Frankly I I like to describe the status quo approach as and the name that I've I mean I can't think of a more accurate description of of the strategy which is that it's it's a hyena approach to getting new customers hyena yeah the animal that's right and the reason I think that's the most apt animal to describe the status quo cold calling approach is because hyenas are scavengers they are just waiting for something to die waiting for something to die and then and then hop on the dead carcass and many msps approach cold calling the same way they're waiting for the incumbent to screw up royally and to just hope wish and pray that your MSP shows up and saves the day at that exact moment and so my food my question for you is you know if you're going to compete in cold calling with the hyena approach here how would this affect your prospect's perception of your MSP right think about that put yourself in the shoes of of the of the buyer another question is if you compete in cold calling with the hyena approach how would this affect your pricing pressure on pricing for you to get a customer to switch over to you does it help or not and another question to think about if you compete in cold calling with the hyena approach how will this affect your bdr's psychology remember the bdr is the business development rep the the human being who's cold calling every day picking up the phone and getting rejected constantly how does this approach affect that person their performance and their tenure frankly with your MSP I think if you're being brutally honest with all these questions you're going to agree or I I think that you're most of you are probably agreeing that something really needs to change because if we just keep going the same way boys are going to be difficult to get the return get the results um and have the math work in our favor right hey folks Yep this is a mid-roll commercial I just had to introduce our company so look here's a quick story so back in 2019 I was lucky to get introduced to an MSP at the time I didn't know much about your industry I'd seen what this MSP had invested heavily in SEO and inbound marketing and that it just wasn't working for him and in the first year or so I have to admit that we struggled to try to crack the code but fortunately uh we figured it out and This Not only is this MSP still a partner of ours we work with many msps now throughout North America and you know we are focused really on just two aspects that really helps with top of the funnel for msps and that is manage Business Development so it's getting those appointments with first time qualified leads and second it's the nurturing part right so it's keeping these these qualified businesses warm and warming them up really towards our MSP partner so if your MSP needs help with this just give us a you know give us a call you can visit our website it's simpleselling.com and you can find the link to book a meeting with us and we would love to meet you and see if maybe we're a good uh fit for one another thanks so much and I'll let you get back to the episode now so what what would a different strategy look like so this gets us to the final part of of the episode of today's of today's episode which is you know what do we need to do to start doing differently and that's what I want um that's what I want our msps to be thinking about and that's what I want our team to be working on right because we want our msps to get the results that they need and for it to be sustainable and for it to you know to to work out for so that everybody wins so I have like two ideas um two little like stories I I guess I'm not sure if you call them a story but that kind of relates to this so the first is in the theme of of these two stories I I I is is to think like a buyer I'm gonna think like a buyer so for example right have you heard of Tony Stark he's that uh that billionaire industrialist from Marvel Comics the guy who's an inventor so remember he's like kidnapped and he's he's forced to build like this this devastating weapon but instead he uses his intelligence and Ingenuity right to build like this high-tech suit of armor and he escapes captivity um and so the reason I bring up Iron Man is because when when I'm coaching my my new bdrs right the ones who are um doing the the cold calling one of the things I I try to tell them and explain to them is that the customer the prospect the buyer right for msps they want to be they want to buy Iron Man right they want to be Iron Man they want to buy Iron Man right they don't want to buy the high-tech armored suit they don't want the red suit what they want is to be Iron Man so when we're thinking about how does a buyer think and how we approach the cold call how we approach the conversation we can't be pitching stuff right we got to be putting ourselves and having a conversation in a way that helps the buyer see themselves in the way that they want to be seen right helping them achieve their goals so that's just a that's just a you know kind of like a a mentality that the bdr needs to adopt and I encourage um anyone who's getting ready to do cold calling to think in that way and here's so that was one and the other the other sort of um uh thing I wanted to share that's related to thinking like a buyer is a letter to a sales rep so I I just recently read this fantastic book by Keenan who wrote Gap wrote this book called Gap selling and in his book he actually shared a letter to a sales rep that was written by um written by now now I'm going to read it written by a VP of actually a large Telecom company um a VP of actually it service management and operations for a telecom company and I thought um I'll just read the letter because I thought it was very um appropriate for this topic of thinking like a buyer so he says dear salesperson I am the customer I have responsibility for it operations for a for an 18 billion dollar company with 30 million plus customers do I bet on you do I take a chance I am responsible for 100 million in Opex budget and 100 million in capex why should I invest in your company and your product when I have many competing ways to spend company resources I get dozens of cold call solicitations every week I consistently work 50 to 60 hours per week and my schedule is booked solid two weeks in advance why should I return your call meeting invite email what makes you better faster cheaper safer smarter than what I have today I have 300 plus staff do they have the wherewithal to learn understand implement the product and derive the value of what you are selling I have a dozen vendors I spend three million or more a year with do you know who they are and why I buy from them I have many challenges problems issues do you know what they are I have a strategy and a three-year plan do you know what it is do you fit in I have Partners vendors and suppliers which one are you aspiring to be a partner shares risk my upside is your upside my downside is your downside are you willing to share in that a vendor consistently sells me a product or service I need at a fair price and good value and is easy to do business with are you a one and done or are you willing to be there for the long term A supplier gives me a commodity when I have many choices why should I buy from you on a regular basis price service flexibility do you have an easy button my company has a strategy a place in the market looking to differentiate striving to improve our position by increasing our lead or catching the competitor in front of me do you know my business my competitors my company strategy I buy from those I have a relationship with who has proven themselves over time I can count on them I can vouch for them can I count on you I am the customer last time I heard I'm right mic drop so yeah I know we're not selling to you know large companies of that magnitude but I thought his letter was so appropriate to get us all into the mindset of the customer because something has got to change to get the customers attention so I hope you got some value from today's uh from today's episode cold calling episodes as I mentioned at the beginning we're going to continue I'm striving to do one every two weeks so hold me accountable please and uh until next time thank you very much thank you very much signing off uh for today's episode take care bye [Music]