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what's stopping you from doing a lunch and learn maybe you're concerned that no one will turn up or worse just one person will show up or maybe you're nervous about presenting or you're not sure how to talk about cyber security in a way that doesn't send people to sleep or you're not clear on the best way to deliver value to your audience yet still make it an event that actually delivers sales to you which is the ultimate goal my big interview guest today has all the answers about how to put on a highly successful l and learn hey I'm Paul Green from the MSP marketing Edge the leading white label content Marketing System that's trusted by over 700 msps around the world check if your area is available now at MSP marketing edge.com you're about to discover how to put on a highly successful lunch and learn in today's big interview hi I'm Brian Gillette founder and CEO of Feelgood MSP the sales development Community for the manage service industry and it's so good to have you back on the show Brian I can't remember if this is your third maybe fourth appearance over the last few years but it's always good to get you here because you always bring so many value bombs dropping those bombs delivering value left right and center and today we're going to talk about lunch and learns and why every MSP should be doing them how to do them how to maximize them how to get people into those events and how of course to turn the people who've been to those events into clients at the back of it now before we talk about those lunch and learns let's just explore who is Brian Gillette for so for someone who hasn't listened to the podcast before hasn't come across you before tell us your story yeah sure so you've been in sales for 15 years or so I was a VP of sales for an MSP in Southern California where I live We Grew that business really fast uncomfortably fast you might even say we got to two million in in three years and during that time I realized that this is a an incredibly difficult product to sell but B it's a very incredibly difficult product to understand so once you can help people bridge that Gap nobody wants to talk about it but they all need it it's we're White Collar mechanics we fix the thing that they desperately rely on that they don't understand right so as soon as you can sort of bridge the gap with empathy in the sales process then you're going to succeed so it did that for a few years and then now we're coming up on we're two and a half years in with Feelgood MSP which is our our sales development membership for the man service like man Services all over the world yeah and we'll talk about that towards the end of the interview by the way if you're just listening to this on one of our audio platforms go and check out the the video recording of this on YouTube because Brian says he's been in MSP sales for 15 years but you'll look at him and either he's got some kind of Instagram filter going off or he's got a painting in the in the Attic that that that's where the Aging is happening because it's certainly not happening on Brian's face and I say this as a guy who turns 50 in the next few months right I'm feeling I'm looking at you Brian I'm feeling every month of my 50 years now I really am so let's talk about let let's talk about L and by the way don't get too cocky because in in a few decades time you'll feel as tired as I do right now everyone in their 40s is agreeing with me right now so let's talk about lunch and learns so uh what is it about a lunch and learn that a seems to be so difficult for msps to do but B is worth doing what makes them so powerful right that's that's a really important distin dichotomy right is that both of those first of all it's so incredibly hard to pull off a good lunch and learn we've observed but is it still worth doing so the main reason that I'm excited about lunch and learns right now is that what we're seeing is as the the Mana service industry has matured in its sales outbound its sales maturity overall in the last let's say five years we're seeing an increased amount of outbound and with that we're also seeing an increase in saturation in outbound so what maybe in 2017 we could say hey I'm from this IT company you know listen we would love to do a free assessment for you we come check out the network give you some information you'll get a handout and if it's valuable then or it'll be valuable and you can either take it further with us or not but now an IT assessment is just not a sexy enough offering for somebody on a cold Outreach it's just not it's just not and that's what we're seeing coold calls were increasing the number of calls per opportunity has gone up two or three x in the last five years I've observed um so what we need to do is lower the barrier to engage with us right uh so it's it's easier and more attractive for somebody to say yes when we send them a cold email LinkedIn direct message Direct Mail whatever but we also need the engagement to be meaningful we we still want to be able to somehow build a relationship so the directions we can go are can we have simpler lead magnets like guys like you Paul are so great at making the it buyers guide and all those the things that are easy for customers for prospects to get and download and consume it's along those same lines rather than just saying hi nice to meet you can I demo you my services we want to say hey I'm an IT company in the in the area we've been supporting the dental industry in Phoenix for over 10 years and here's what we've observed along the way is that because of our experience in working in so many dental offices there's five or six little productivity hacks that we've picked up along the way that we'd love to share with your team I can bring by some lunch the whole office and all I ask is that you Mr doctor Mrs doctor are present for the lunch and I promise you I won't pitch you but I just but I'd love to to come by meet you meet the office and I'll bring lunch for everybody then get them to commit to that this in the same way a pharmaceutical rep might do something along those lines in the US that's how far farmer reps will sell to doctors so doctors already have a framework for that so of course it's very hard to say no to a free lunch even though you know there is no such thing as a true free lunch but then they have this decision to make do I want to get free lunch for my whole office or do I want to turn it away rather than do I need an IT company right now you see what I mean that's kind of the idea behind can we lower the entry and make it more fun and more meaningful to engage with us as a prospect yeah absolutely and one of the the most powerful Concepts in marketing is exactly as you say Brian is getting them onto that first rung of the ladder so if you think of of someone buying from you as climbing a ladder and and this doesn't really happen in an MSP but but in other businesses you know you'll buy one thing for a few dollars and then you'll buy something that's more dollars and you buy something and you're you're climbing up the ladder towards the the big ticket item at the top and this is what we're trying to do here with the lunch and learns is is to get them on that ladder what we're really trying to do is build trust we're trying to build a relationship and build trust and the the power of having someone in the room with you and educating them in a fun way about something that matters to them like their technology is a very powerful thing so do you recommend then that MSP should only be doing this in people's offices or do you recommend they should also try and do kind of like public events that lots of different business owners can come to right yeah I think there's two different both of those approaches are great and I think depending on your vendor relationships venue relationships your own personality and temperament like what kind of event do you want to run I think you should really try both at least once there's a couple schools of thought for starters there's a lot of vendors in this in the channel who will happily come to a room where you've collected a bunch of potential end points right and they will present for you you can call everybody in your stack and they've all got marketing dollars that they have to spend okay the backup company we used would do this and they' bring their backup device and they would set it on fire and then show you how it was just very theatrical over the toop thing but they would do that right now those vendors are going to want a room full of a certain amount of opportunity right so they're going to want hey let's throw an EV will pay for the sponsorship they might even have a a a a promotional playbook for how to get people in the room they might have flyers and emails and stuff if you've got a venue I think it's a great idea to try to get a bunch of prospects in one room candidly I'm thinking of myself as a if I'm the buyer in that position I don't think there's any world where I'm going to go out of my way and go to a steakhouse for an event held by an IT company and I know that the only reason I'm there is that me and all my contemporaries in the same industry are all going to get presented to I personally don't think I would attend that and so for that reason even though that in theory sounds like the better value because you've got more opportunities in one presentation I think that there's a certain caliber of buyer that's never going to approach those events you see what I mean so you should run them you should try them and you should do everything you can to not have to pay for it because there there are vendors I'm telling you just call all your vendors that are beating you over the head every day with telling you how they know how to sell manage services and you should sell more of their agents say okay if you really want me to be the hands and feet of your whole sales organization how about you help bring me some sponsorship bring me some stuff to give away bring me some flyers get some you know get some help that said uh vendors don't know how to sell managed Services right they don't know if they knew then they would probably be selling for manag services but they don't know how that's why a lot of vendors were msps that just couldn't figure out how to sell manage services so they developed a tool and then now they sell it to other manage services so I also love the idea of finding a vendor that's relevant to your ideal vertical there's nothing stopping us from if you you know I'll use an example of dentrix is a is a a huge market share holder of like a dental software a lot of dentists use it and dentrix cloud is well at the time of this recording famously difficult and so a lot of people still have to run dentrix on Prem for so an MSP might even have to run it on Prem in their own virtualized environment so it could be a really strategic partnership for you to have a great relationship with drix if you only sell the dentist so why don't you just try call I'm I should maybe I shouldn't be calling a a a vendor by name call your vendor that's the primary line of business vendor for all of your customers and say what if I could get you all of these customers using your product more get them all on the on-prem or the the cloud version what if I could go and find more of these I'm going to be a big lead generator for you find a regional account executive and say how can you help me explain the value of your product or what are your biggest frustrations with with low user engagement and then get them to come and say hey I'm xyzit company helping dentists in Phoenix listen uh I've got a rep coming in from dric are you a dentrix shop you are okay listen well any value in in having your team come and get 25 minutes free training over a steak and shrimp dinner now you are the conduit of this really valuable relationship and you're weaving yourself into the software vendor role which is a critical part of being a good MSP but you don't have to hit them you don't have to come in hot with a sales pitch you could truly add value but it's tangential value to you being involved in their life rather than just the value of your stack yeah yeah I completely get that and I agree with your advice I think it's a great advice with one slight tweak I personally wouldn't let the vendors anywhere near your prospects and that's because as you say the vast majority of vendors they don't know how to sell manage services and also they are overly obsessed with their own product as they should be because they're the vendors now I experienced this myself actually about 10 years ago when I used to work with optometrists or Opticians and uh I put on a big event and I got it sponsored by one of their suppliers it was probably something like contact lenses so I'm there and I'm I'm doing my lunch and learn thing we was actually a hold event and I had my audience in a really good place and of course I'm I'm hoping to sell them my marketing products CU I worked with those guys back then and then I had my contact lens sponsor come in and he did an hour talking about all the technical details of the thickness of the Silicon of 0.25 mm thickness contact lens at this diameter and literally the entire room just fell asleep and like the whole vibe went the whole energy went and it was such a mistake um and what I should have done and this is what I'd recommend to msps is I take the gu money I take the vendor's money and I say I don't want you to attend because you you sell this right this is tiny little part of what we sell overall but what we're going to do is we're going to take your money we're going to get x x number of business owners and managers into a room and we're going to bring some of them on board and in our stack by default will be your solution so you give me some of your MDF your marketing development funds don't come to my event give me some freebies if you want which I will pass on to them if they're high enough quality but as a what you'll get as a return for this is I will win new clients and your stack you're you're in my stack and you're in my stack for every new client and I think that you know especially when it comes to actually traveling and will you will you send someone please a thousand miles on a plane or whatsoever for for a lot of vendors that's going to be a a much better thing and just a note on that MDF marketing development funds all vendors have or the vast majority of vendors have money sat there to give to you if you can show it's going to help them sell more products and certainly the bigger the vendor the more money is available um there's there's you know there's millions of dollars worth of MDF around you just have to put forward a business case for it right one last thing for me and then I'm going to ask the next question for you Brian which is um you talked about the difficulty of getting people to come to a steakhouse or something or come to an event and I think you're absolutely right the smart play for that I believe is you find other people's events that you can go to so I think your original idea of going to someone's office that's brilliant I love that um second to that if you can't fill your own event or you're not confident about it then hey what you know like B and I for example B and I does um does does meetings in every city in across the world almost in you know every week they're doing a meeting and there's always a spot a slot for an expert that would be a great thing to do you go and be an expert at bnii or you find another meeting or as you say Brian if you're in a vertical where are these verticals meeting verticals meet all the time they have associations they have trade shows they have all sorts of things so yeah if you can't generate your own audience then you you find someone else's audience that's relevant and you go and you educate them you do the the learn bit right let's talk about um follow-ups we've talked a little bit about how to get an audience well let's talk about actually two things number one is what kind of content should be um at the the lunch and learn and number two is how do you then pivot that event where you've been in front of people and you've impress them with your content how do you then pivot that into some kind of sales conversation without being overt about it right that's a really really good question the key to having a good converting a a wellon converting presentation is actually not doesn't start in the follow-up I think it starts in the construction of the presentation itself so any good presentation should create a problem agitate the problem and then establish a gap right uh what Donald Miller would call a story Gap where okay here's the issue that you're facing or that we find people in your position face and this is all the consequences of that issue this is how it can turn out this is what happens when you resolve the issue input results mechanism which ideally if I mean if you're well structured if you have a good marketing strategy you've got your own unique proven method or results mechanism or whatever you want to call it so if you were to just straight up Pitch you that's how you would structure it but you don't necessarily have to do it that overtly I think it's about coming up with creating an emotional connection with the material itself and that comes from being really well researched before the presentation because if you come in and just say uh hey here's a bunch of best practices for cyber security there is no emotional connection that's good Insight but what you've done is connected to their intellect but people don't as you have you you've probably said a hundred times Paul people don't buy with their intellect they first have to emotionally decide they need it and then they'll use all the intellectual stuff to justify the decision that they've already made in their heart so the content is is key this is the part that people oftentimes phone in because it's so much work to put the material to put the event together they forget to have an amazing presentation I would I would recommend doing it this way have a core have a core talk on a specific topic whatever topic you feel the most confident with and then get yourself a 10 minute 20 minute 30 minute and maybe a 40 minute version of that talk so I do this it's like modular presentation building I'm sure Paul you've done this you have certain things you've talked about so many times you know you could spit it out and you could probably go to an event and somebody says Paul can you give me five minutes on websites or can you give me 30 minutes on websites you could probably do it since you've done it so many times in your head go okay I'll talk this and I'll I'll expand this area but that's the part you need to do focus a lot on you can refine a lot of the verbiage at the networking events go to the Hokey little chamber you know uh round taes where everybody stands up and does a 90 second Pitch practice it practice it in front of a mirror Etc but I would say use a good balance of things that are that only an MSP could tell you so your subject matter expertise but I want you to really really carefully counterbalance it with relevant user specific short-term gain information there's something I've said a billion times I don't know why more people don't do this Windows is full of keyboard hacks that make it easier to use a Windows computer but nobody knows any of them why don't you just spend why don't you do five minutes on hey did you know you can make multiple versions of your desktop with three buttons on your keyboard did you know we could actually write a script and in fact as a takeaway I've got a script you can run and you can fill in a few variables and it can do you can basically start up your day and open all your windows as you have like to have them configured and that'll be our free GI to you just in the users want to if you want the users to like you and then they want to associate when I want help this guy will help me that's the whole thing we're trying to do with manage services and cyber security of course is the the undercurrent that is really relevant but we can't make people care about cyber security if they don't that we just can't do it in a 20-minute lunch the only version of that is fear-based education which doesn't build connection as we all know fear-based education does not work all it will really make you do is look like a villain in my opinion and then you're now in the adversarial complex and you have to conquer them in order to win the deal versus coming in as an incredibly helpful person that says by the way there's a lot of deeper cybercity stuff that we don't I'm not going to get into today but here are five things I'd like you to do and the reasons why number one consider multiactor authentication hear me out and then use the seat Bel analogy that Paul I mentioned you once i' LinkedIn hey multiactor is kind of like putting on a seat belt it's really frustrating when you start your car but once you've done it six times you'll actually just automatically do it as a part of your startup ritual it's the same way when you log into your computer once you've done that you'll never notice it again and you're blank times less likely to get whatever stuff like that number two implement the 3 second rule before you click on any Link in an email count to three and then read it again oh maybe this isn't what I thought it was a couple basic things like that you are doing user awareness but you're doing it in like a ticktock way it's short it's more fun they'll remember a lisal version rather than a long form presentation so I'm I'm trying my best to answer your question I feel I might be off I'm trying not to go off the rails but the way that we construct the education is going to determine whether or not followup is even fruitful see what I mean because if it's it's if it's encyclopedic for 30 minutes they don't ever want to talk to you again but if you make it engaging short form and valuable we can always schedule another talk to get into more depth of cyber security but start with the with the shiny objects of having a good it setup see what I mean just start with the the lowest hanging fruit quality of life basic user support hey if they all have to use sage and they don't know how to work it give them some Sage shortcuts whatever you see what I mean those sorts of things that can help them then with your followup think the way we follow up we determine at the end of the lunch so we go to the decision maker and say hey I hope this was helpful any off the Record feedback for me get them to say something and then if they uh depending on how they engage we're going to essentially ask them what type of follow-up we should do by asking them what would be most helpful like so listen I've got a ton of continuation material would it be helpful if I were to send some additional stuff over to you or would you rather we just have another talk in a few months something like that and let them sort of in the Feelgood clothes we're all about giving people constant opportunities to opt out and that sort of uh paradoxically ends up making them feel much more engaged because they don't they never have to lie and you know they never have to say face because they have constant permission to tell you to buzz off so I would ask them hey what would be most helpful at this point they might say I don't know thanks for this and say well here's our default would be I've got some continuation stuff I can send over it's very brief and I'd love to why don't I do this let me send you an email in a week can you I schedule 10 minutes and just talk about this lunch and maybe you can give me some feedback and then letting it positioning it that way they're a lot more likely to want to have that follow-up call and and that makes perfect sense because when you feel you're being backed into a corner and you're being trapped uh you know the fight or flight right you either want a run away or you want to fight it whereas what you're talking about is is an approach of at any point anyone can walk away and there doesn't have to be any kind of aggression so actually more people will will have that conversation which is just brilliant Brian you again have dropped another value bomb and I thank you so much for that we're going to get you back on the podcast in 2025 it will definitely be your fourth or fifth appearance something like that um for now tell us about this sales community that you've put together uh what is it how do we find out more about it and how do we get in touch with you yeah for sure um I mean it really came out of my hatred for fear-based selling I think um if you have to sell using fear your product sucks right but if we don't really have any other alternative it seems to be the only path to create urgency for people who don't seem to care about these big cybercity risks that they're facing every day so my question became what if we could just use empathy to create urgency rather than using fear uncertainty and doubt and that's why my company is called the feel-good MSP because I don't think it feels good to sell using fear both as a buyer or as neither as a buyer nor as a seller so we've we've built the sales development program that is uh uh where msps can join at any level of operational maturity whether you're still a Founder in the sales role or you've got three salespeople on your team the idea is we put together we sort of align everyone's sales philosophy using the Feelgood close which is the empathy and honesty driven sales method that I've that I've created in my sales career then we put together what we call the fud free Playbook so how do you actually sell and actually create urgency and get a 30 to 90day close without having to terrify or vaguely threaten your prospects with everything terrible that could happen to them which nobody really likes to do but we do because we don't have an alternative and then we put together the fail prooof prospecting engine that sits on top of it now that we have a sales machine we know how to convert deals at a really high rate then we go out and create an engine to go and find four to eight qualified opportunities per month to get 10 to 12 super qualified highly targeted customers per year yeah sounds good so what's the best way to get in touch with you Feelgood mp.com you can read all about our program there's free training and there's links to all of our upcoming events Paul greens MSP marketing Edge