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hey there everyone welcome to another episode of the rocket MSP podcast I'm Steve Taylor your host and welcome to the show that asks the tough questions of vendors today I'm joined by Jacob Martin from scop stack thank you Jacob welcome thank you so much for having me Steve absolutely man so uh for people that don't know who you are can you give us a quick background of sure your accolades if you will yeah sure so um so I've worked in the MSP space for uh going over a decade um probably 15 years um worked as at an MSP for um quite a while did every job there pretty much um became coo uh left coo to come to a place called scop stack um I saw a very big need and that scop stack could fit that need and I love helping people so took the plunge left the left my my previous position and came over here the first of the year um really enjoying it so far just uh a lot to learn a lot of lot of meeting a lot of good people and and trying to improve the manage services space awesome so you'll notice that today I I wrote this long fancy title for today it's called expert insights navigating the pre-sales process for msps with Jacob Martin VP of sales at scop stack so that sounds really awesome sounds pretty important I think you know it makes me feel good that that my name's in there anywhere I mean I'm the host I don't I I'm I'm the show so I don't I don't need my name in the title all right kind of big deal you know I I pretend I am and that's what matters that's right so so let's let's do this before we dive into all these questions I've got I want to start by defining what is pre-sales because you know there's this whole sales and marketing engine that that msps should be building and and scope stack is a very I'll call it specific part of that engine in your eyes at least um so how do we Define pre-sales so that way the people that are watching or listening uh know what we're about to talk about so I think there's there's a couple of different uh aspects to a pre-sales uh role if you will um pre-sales in the MSP space is based around Services most of the time um so there's pre-sales for product but there's also pre-sales for services um I would say pre-sales is more of you know going out to speak to a customer finding out what they need making sure that you have a complete list of scope of work for the customer to make sure that you've qualified that deal as um as best you can to make sure that you fit all the needs the customer has that's before you speak to technical delivery or or anyone like that pre-sales is that motion of um almost Consulting with the customer to kind of Drive their technology and help them see you know these are the things that I see this is probably what we're going to need to do this is the level of effort it's going to take to get it done here's the kind of resources we're going to need to do it uh and this is ultimately going to be your price uh in order to fulfill that that need guess it helps if I unmute myself every every time every time without fail all right so that's cool um so what would you say is the most important aspect of a successful pre-sales process that uh I think that's two parts uh I think that there's not really the most important I think that that there's two things one listening to your customer is incredibly important uh if anything that's probably the most if we had to name one but I think uh actually delivering what you sell knowing that you can deliver what you what you're telling your customers so um there's there's never a time that I think you should fluff it and just assume that something can can be done um so I think making sure that you are telling your customer something that you know to be true uh and if you don't know then tell them you don't know I mean that seems like wise uh uh advice for anybody in any role if you don't know something uh don't it till you make it as as fun as that sounds it's probably not going to get you where you expect to go it might be fun at first until you actually don't make it and then it turns into into a disaster so yeah yeah so how do you go about identifying the needs and the pain points of a prospect so asking the right questions one um but also sometimes the customer may not know what their what their needs are they just know their pain points so I think it's up to us as technology providers um and solutions experts to be um driving the technology for the customer they shouldn't necessarily come to us and say Hey you know I'm worried about getting fished I need security awareness training they should say something along the lines of I'm getting these weird emails I don't know what to do about it and then we should provide hey have you ever thought about security awareness training you know um something of that to that nature um so asking the right questions to Define their pain points to see where they're uh if they're losing money because of a failed process uh how we can fix that process things of that nature you really got to dig in and really try to become a part of of that business whoever you're serving uh it shouldn't be a oneoff we're a third party it should be we want to be a part of your business and help you grow what pain points do you have where where do you see deficiencies that you think technology could help and uh can you can you talk about some of the common challenges msps face during the pre-sales process and and I want to talk not about the uh I need to go talk to my boss or I need to go talk to my wife before spending this money soft no I'm talking about uh the challenges that msps probably create for themselves yeah we we've done that in the past as well I think everyone has um to be honest I think that sometimes um sometimes msps want to put in a specific solution because they know uh that it's the best thing for the customer but sometimes the customer doesn't understand why it's the best thing for them especially when it hurts their wallet um and I think that could be one thing uh for example uh if you're talking to a customer and you know that they're opening in the next 10 years they're going to open seven locations it's probably a better idea to to do some Cloud hosted uh Services uh instead of doing it on premise server however the cost is probably going to be higher uh and that in the long run it may not be if you're doing a you know to 10 year analysis of pricing they're probably going to see the Balan and they'll say wait that's not that much difference um and sometimes the the MSP tries to push that a little bit too hard uh at the end of the day the customer is not always right but they are always right because of their money right um so I think they get their they back theirself into the corner sometimes and it's difficult to explain some of those Technologies to people who don't understand the technology um so I think that that's one common thing thing that I see people face uh for example if uh I had a client that wanted to move he he wanted to move to Cloud stores but he had no idea why he just had heard you know it's more uptime and this and that and um I asked him you know do you know the cost difference for him he had one location um he had never been down he had never lost any kind of data um we had a very very good backup solution in place for this guy and and he was just like well you know I've heard this and I read this and so it's kind of the opposite scenario right of what I just described so it's explaining that you don't actually need that like not saying we wouldn't rather have it we would rather manage it that way 100% but you don't need to spend that kind of money to to perform the same exact way that you're going to perform now like there's really not an advantage and and I gotta say one of the the most common ways that I used to set myself up for fail was by simply not having a pricing conversation toward the beginning and and I'm talking again pre-sales like I want to um I want to qualify everybody because you know I think there's a difference between a prospect and an active customer right you know if it's an active customer you've already got um an idea of what their budgets like what their going to say yes and no to Etc right when it's a prospect this is a new relationship uh there may not be a relationship at all it may be you know your first or second time talking with them and you need to make sure you're not wasting your time I think that's one of the biggest challenges msps create for themselves is they waste their own time they 100% yeah so and I'm sure you're going to tell us how scope stack later on is is going to help us waste a whole lot less time right sure cool so since we talked about pricing um what role would you say price plays in the pre-sales process on your side of things I mean I would say it's a pretty large a pretty large portion of it um I think that it's all in the way that you explain and lay out your plan but I do think at the end of the day it is a it's a major factor because at the end of the day that's what that's where impacts their bottom l so um I think it's very important to be transparent up front and I think you you're um you're very first and second conversations you need to be able to to make sure that that customer feels confident and can trust you uh building trust and and and knowing letting them know that you're an honest person uh is definitely going to weigh in heavily when you say this is how much money it's going to cost um so but I think cost is a very big factor I think it's second to building trust because at the end of the day if you build trust and you have a good plan and you lay it out and you're honest and say this is probably the timeline that it's going to take to get this you know this isn't going to be something that happens overnight I know you want the solution next week it's going to take that long to even ship you know that kind of stuff and you just be completely transparent the cost the price point kind of is it's relevant but it's not as relevant if you set the correct expectation so let's let's talk about some else that msps may not do a great job with let's talk about project scoping first can you discuss the importance of project scoping oh yeah that there's there's multiple parts of project scoping um I think that if you have I think it's the most important part of the project I think building a correct scope of work is more important than the timeline more important than scheduling I think it's more important than even the technical delivery u because it determines the technical delivery's outcome so how do we H how do we scope a project correctly well you're asking somebody who works at scope stack so that's kind of difficult for me to answer Fair okay so so let me let me rephrase the question let's say we as an MSP and most msps don't have this problem I'm sure but let's say maybe we don't have things properly documented and maybe the owner is the only person or maybe it's like one or two guys and everything just kind of lives in their heads right now again most msps don't do that because most msps are doing this right right so are now there is that one guy who has like the super secret notepad on his computer with all the data in there you know that's yes and that's the guy we're worried about right now that's the guy so so so let's talk about uh him how does he say all right this customer wants to migrate from On Prom exchange to Microsoft 365 how how do you begin to scope that project when when you don't actually have a defined process for how you're going to do this it's like it's like you have to do two things one you have to figure out what do I need to do to make this happen and then two what are my costs involved and what can I charge correct and then um on top of that you're you're figuring that out to give to the customer right you're building that scope of work to to quote the customer so there's a lot of questions a lot of Investigation to do with the customer how many mailboxes do you need how many alyses do you need how many you know do you need you know what kind of what kind of office suite do you need do you just need exchange online you there's so many questions that have to be answered first and foremost you have to answer ask the right questions uh but not only do you have to build that scope of work to give to your customer your technical delivery team has to build a matching scope of work uh in the PSA tool so I think U I think there's a lot that goes into that portion uh most mostly investigation and and uh setting clear expectations with your customer or are we going to do MFA if we're doing you know are we going to go ahead and do that now you know there was plenty of times where I would scope out something and and just assume that the technical delivery team knew we're going to we're going to do MFA with this just kind of hand inand uh and I that shame on me for for assuming you know what's in my head in my secret super super secret notepad may not be what's on someone else's right so that guy has a hard time it's almost like you're saying we need to know what we're doing before we can scope a project yeah you you definitely need to do your homework before you start uh I think if you if you some people do Jump Right In and they you you know they've they've done this I've done this before that's a horrible way to go about doing things um because what you did before it may be completely the same project and completely different from customer a to customer B yeah small business Server doesn't exist anymore guys you didn't do this before oh my goodness that that needs to burn all right I think everybody would agree small business server was a bad decision I liked it no no no no well you might like it until you try to migrate from it I guess maybe that's maybe that's a way I never migrated from it for a client a yeah I I really liked it now I stopped using it after 2003 okay so I I know I'm I'm older than I look maybe I don't know it's the camouflage all right right so how do you ensure your proposal accurately reflects yes I'm making sure I said my words correctly how do you ensure your proposal accurately reflects the scope of a project language matters um your language Fields have to have to match um very close to what your technical delivery team is going to deliver um I would say I think that is a very I think there's approvals that have to happen there's a lot of things that go into building a scope of work accurately um I mean you have to you have to build the scope first you have to investigate find out what you need you have to build the steps you have to look at the resources you have to look at how much those resources get paid and choose which rate to to charge for each uh each process and line of like whatever that line of business is and and their level of effort calculate that there's a lot that goes into that but even more than that if that language in each task doesn't match the language that the technical delivery team is expecting to build then they're going to not deliver what you sold um and that that makes a liar out of the pre-sales person which is something every pre-sales person should worry about and I know I did always worried that I'm telling some somebody something that really can't happen you know um even though I knew it could happen I didn't know how it was going to happen because I'm not the one writing that scope so now what's the difference between the proposal and a statement of work does scope does scope stack have two different things there so the scope the scope of work would be um what you're building out in order to give the statement of work if that makes sense or the proposal I would consider the proposal and the statement of work the same thing the scope of work and a statement of work I would consider two different things if that makes Goa it it does CU because sometimes you don't want so sometimes when you have a scope of work it's going to have a lot of technical language built around what that Services right but if you give that to a customer they're not going to understand the gibberish that you put on there so a statement of work may not even include all the tasks in the scope of work it may just say the top level you know this is a a wireless AP deployment and underneath it going to talk about building out ssids and all that they have no clue what all that is so sometimes you just that out I think John my the founder of scop Stack one of the founders he always says you know you may not want to show the customer how the sausage is made and that's true a lot of times you don't want to because it's just you're G to get the deer in the headlights they're going to have a thousand questions and it's going to lead to prolonging the the project when they really not saying they don't need to know but if they're not technical enough to understand it which most aren't they shouldn't be you know if you're talking to a doctor that's you know a neurosurgeon he's working on people's you know brains we don't he doesn't need to worry about what an ideas you know what I mean so so I would say that a statement of work or a proposal would be the same but a scope of work is completely different so how do you leverage feedback from the the customer or Prospect during the process during the pre-sales process to improve your proposals uh I'm big on feedback I love feedback uh positive or negative um I think that you can always improve um however I think that it's really great to give your team words of affirmation if if they have done something really great if they get really great feedback you know tell your team make make sure they know they did a great job um but if there is a mistake or if there's something that was a little slower than the timeline should have been uh that feedback definitely helps to say okay we really need to hone in on this process and find out you know what what do we do that we could have done differently to make this not take five hours and only take three you know know um what what changes could we have made before we handed this to the customer or you know if we would have planned this differently would it have possibly uh cause this not to happen you know uh I think feedback is critical in that because um if you're if it's honest feedback um and not you know something that's you get some of those no customer ever done this you know I'll just stop there but uh but no customers ever told us you know that that that we should have done something faster or maybe we should have done this better or something uh and it not be true so uh when that's never happened any MSP I'm sure oh rapid security response enter your password to apply the Mac OS security response oh what's the Worst That Could Happen let's restart have you tried rebooting oh boy um [Laughter] so we've got really active chat today and I'm I'm loving this uh right now they're talking they're not even talking about what we're talking about they're talking about password managers this is hilarious that's great so um all right let's see uh last pass don't recommend [Laughter] it I think you just did no just because the words came out of my mouth does not mean I'm saying buy it um all right so let's see here uh what are some best practices for managing expectations during the pre-sales process oh that's a good one so I think conversations I think you can gauge uh the the the customer by having conversations I don't think if you're in the middle of a project there should be two things happening and and a lot of people may disagree with me because people hate meetings um but I do think there should be an overview not a meeting not some kind of let's not waste a whole bunch of high level resources time talking about tasks but there should be a high level overview of your projects uh internally and I think that should be related to the customer externally um more frequently than not I would say weekly if you're in in the process of of a project I would think uh at least weekly you should have a ation between the team that's delivering the technical delivery team pre-sales and then the customer I'm a big advocate of of communication and I know that there are some people that uh subscribe to one of the many different uh sales trainings out there like Sandler for example um and like I said there's there's a bunch I can't think of any others off the top of my head but trust me there's a bunch so many of them say like uh they almost dictate here's how you should uh uh run your sales engine right you know here's what a sales meeting should look like here's what everything should you know get get that uh uh make an agreement at the beginning of the meeting so that way it's okay for them to tell you no you know things like that right so how how do you tailor how do you customize your your pre-sales approach that thing that that Sandler says don't change how do you change it based on the size of the prospect or project that's because you're not gonna do the same thing if someone's like hey I need a new laptop versus hey I need to migrate a thousand mailboxes this is true that that's true I will say I'll give you that but I disagree on some of the other stuff that Sandler says in that aspect I think that every customer's project should be treated exactly the same as far as uh they deserve the same attention okay you know I don't I don't necessarily think that you know building a second or third domain controller is any less important than an email migration I don't think that deploying you know 50 to 100 computers is any less important than um deploying a you know a network infrastructure stack I think that they're they deserve the same amount of dedication same amount of resource allocation if you will to as far far as um this person is an expert in this subject matter this person's a security analyst he should be in a firewall not a network person uh you know I think that that kind of thought should go into every project um but you are correct if you're deploying a laptop or you're deploying a server obviously there's a difference there um and I think that's a that's going to be a case-by casee basis um there's a lot of people that have um have project teams um or there's other people that have subject matter experts that work only in that specific Arena like network security or um and then there's some that have a mixure of both there's lots of different scenarios but I would say uh just knowing um knowing your client probably would help you more than knowing their size so it doesn't matter if you have a client that has 50 employees or you have a client that has 2,000 employees if the client that has 2,000 employees is really laidback and they're they've been a customer for a really long time they're just you know they're very kind and and understanding and then you have one that has 50 employees but they're a real jerk um you're going to have to manage that differently do you have to wear kid gloves around the 50 client and not so much on the the 2,000 person client you know I think it's more about the client than the project I guess is probably the easiest way to say that so so let's let's pivot a little bit here let's start talking about success or measuring success so what would you say some key metrics or kpis that msps can and should track during the pre-sales process are don't worry about explanation of why or any of that just give me top level overview bullet points what are some metrics that we should be tracking um I would say there's quite a few I'd say that the two most important to me uh in in say a pre-sales process is going to be your Buy window and your conversation rates that's probably the two that I would go with um you say conversation rights rate like aome you're having conversation sorry no you're good you're good it's the southern it's the southern draw man it gets everybody don't worry all right now how how do you use these metrics to identify areas of improvement in the process sure so so I think you should you should identify your buying window um and if you're if your buying window starts to look like it's closing um then you probably would measure that against a low conversation rate um I think that it matters to have the amount of conversations you have is going to allow that window to stay open longer or or you deliver the project right um so those are the two biggest ones that I follow um you know it in my opinion if you're if you have somebody who's ghosting you that doesn't mean they're not going to still come through but it also doesn't mean mean that you don't need to be sure that they understand we have all these other projects don't be afraid to tell your customer if we can't get an answer by this week we're gonna have to push this project behind other projects and I just want to Define buying window is uh I I know on average it takes me 90 days to sell an MSP proposal so 90 days is my buying window and if I've got a a sales proposal out there for 105 days the chances of this Clos closing is next to nothing or whatever right yeah I would I would I would assume that they've already went somewhere else that's when they get the hey is there any interest left um you know should we still be having conversations one of those kind of discussions should be should be had if if you make that 90 wind you should probably have that before the before the 90 windows up okay um now conversation rates is this just how frequently you're having touches with the client I would consider him yeah I would consider them touch points but I would also consider them um moving the needle like depends on what the conversation is if it's just hey we're still investigating or we're still looking at your product okay well you know your buying window is 90 days it's been 30 you know what what next steps do we need to take is there another you know another uh demo should we come do a walkth through you know whatever the case may be if we're talking about msps it's probably going to be more along the lines of we know the bind window was 90 days um you know I'm sure you're gaining other uh getting other quotes for services you know what would help us um you know what would help us get to the top of that list um is there anything we could do differently that to make sure that we're providing the most value that you can see uh between us and our competitors something that that would really push that needle not just oh we're still looking okay well don't just let them stop with that you know what I mean really put drive that drive that conversation to a point where um you know you're building a relationship you're not just you're not just selling them something you're building a relationship with them to to make sure that they understand they can trust you and that you're going to do what you can to really help their organization all right I've got three more questions I'm gonna do uh I'm GNA give everyone an opportunity that's watching live if you have any sales questions not scope SC Not scope stack questions sales questions pop them in the chat and we'll do our best to get those answered for you um so let's talk about sales pipeline um there's there's got to be metrics that you need to know how how many people I need to get in my pipeline before because because you know it's it's a funnel right so I need X number of people because that's going to convert into X number of meetings which will convert certain X number of proposals how do you measure that is there an app uh there's not an app that I've used um I'm maybe I'm just old school um but I I measure it by what the what the MSP can actually handle okay uh and I know that sounds crazy but there's if you were to take on more clients than you can support your previous client your current clients that may have been clients for years are going to suffer so I was always of the of the idea of this is how many C that I know we can actually handle per month um and that was where how I built my funnel out and I basically would go in say okay you know I think this one's going to land and I get the the buying window you know this is a long-term sale this might take this is a large customer they might take you know six months to actually come back and actually say we're ready uh so I would put them in a different funnel you gota you have to build your deal stages I use HubSpot so I when I say deal stage I'm referring to HubSpot um but my funnels always went in Deal stages so I would have you know six months out 90 days out whatever the case may be um and I would actually look at where we were internally and if it were that I thought we could take on another one then then I would reach back out to someone and say hey we're actually going to have a spot open uh in May whatever um if you're ready to on board you know we we can push that push that up a bit you know because I would try to lay that expectation out most companies have contracts with their current it provider so they're buying Windows already set they're like okay my contract's up in January I need to make my buying window between November and December because I need to be ready in January and then we would always tell them it's better to have 30 days with both of us because there's going to be some collaboration that's going to have to happen uh and a lot of times people would just cut them off like if you buy get a customer from another MSP and they they are disgruntled they'll just cut them off like oh well you're done so if they do that and they still have 30 days I mean a month left they're not getting paid for that 30 days so it's always good to make sure you're onboarding 30 days prior to them leaving their other C their other MSP um in case they're not professional MSP people you know I like that that is that is very good advice for everyone here um so let's talk about financial metrics uh what are the best metrics that we should be tracking for you know our our sales people when it when it comes to success for your sales can you ask that question again I'm sorry I kind of missed out for your financials for your sales people yeah so what what Financial metrics or kpis should we be tracking for the sales process if you will um so so how how how for example do you determine what a quota should be uh if if you're developing a sales process like I shouldn't I shouldn't say all right well I'm going to make a sales process and sign up for something and give myself a $100,000 a month quota because that just seems ridiculous well being realistic definitely definitely is is key um and I think that I think you should it's going to depend on the MSP again that's a very difficult question in the MSP World selling MSP services are um and we're talking about customer acquisition not projects um right at this point customer acquisition that's what I'm talking about customer acquisition you have to measure by what you're what you're able to bring in currently before you bring someone else in right um because a lot of times you're fishing in the same Pond there if you're if you're local right so a lot of these msps that are we'll say small to medium they're Regional at best right as to who they're trying to serve um and you're fishing in the same ponds so I think it really depends on the on the MSP that's a very difficult that's a very difficult question for me to answer as far as kpis go for a salesperson on customer acquisition now if it's inside sales that's a little easier because you kind of know these are the projects that are going to be coming up you know if you're driving your customer technology properly you know what they're going to need in the next year to two years so you can technically go in you can have that person budget for their customers their subset of customers if you will say they say they're everything south of here this is your your region these are your customers I need you to own their technology know it drive it and then you can basically budget from that well this this customer needs 35 computers by the end of quarter four well then we need to go ahead and budget for that and you can go ahead and set a kpi based on those projects you can set metrics that way new customer acquisition is a little bit more tricky um and I think that really is uh depends on if your person is more of a business development site or a sales cycle and I consider those things two different things Business Development mostly is long plays um you might land a huge client but it may take you two years to do it um whereas you can land five or six small clients in two months you know um it just depends on what kind of person you're hiring to sell that makes sense it does sorry sorry I don't have a really good answer for that one I always when I did customer acquisition for the MSP I was at it was more of a it was a natural thing I build relationships with people I get a lot of referrals because of it um and so you never really know when something's going to just drop in your lap or if it's uh if it's one of those things that hey I've I've got this in my pipeline I'm ass sure I'm sure that I'm going to land these three in the next five months you know that but every customer is different so you never really know how much you're going to charge that customer we charge based on end points due to network complexity so like if they had 100 end points and one office it's going to be a cheaper rate per endpoint than someone who has six offices and 100 end points because the complexity is higher so we would charge more for that so I know that's kind of a different way of of doing things than most msps but that's the way we did it so it's really difficult to say hey I'm going to land this doctor's office in six weeks there's 30 employees but they got 22 servers so it might be a little more complex in a doctor's office that's all cloud with 50 users so it's that was really difficult metric to follow for me I have one last sales related question and it's a complex one okay um so I'm going to call this a two-parter so how do you measure a prospect satisfaction of the sales process like is it as simple as they bought from me so they liked me they didn't buy so they didn't or or or is it more nuanced like yeah we we know they liked us but it just wasn't in the budget or they went a different direction for another reason or and then the second part of that is how do these metrics inform your business or sales and marketing strategy that's a fantastic question so I think that uh feed like again feedback is key um I I don't think that any one sale is either purchased or not purchased for the same reason as the next one so what I mean by that is let's just say for example I quote MSP services for customer a and I quote MSP services for customer B and then you know another MSP comes in and they quote the same exact quote as me the difference is let's just say I don't win customer a but I do win customer B let's say customer a is a manufacturer customer B is healthare well my company specializes in healthc care which is why we landed customer B not customer a they specialize in manufacturing or whatever right so so I think there's a lot of factors to that um as as to why you don't land a deal or why you do at the end of the day uh I think that the metrics behind it is a lot of feedback I think you need to ask you need to ask questions why did we not land this or why did we land this um because at the end of of the day they're going to come to you and they're going to tell you the truth either your price was too high common you know that's a common thing this person outbid you and what you find most of the time is two years later they come back and call you and say I really should have went with you guys and not worried about the cost um that's God's honest truth I've had that happen more times than not um and and most of the time I had one customer that came to me and they literally told me I did everything you told me in the consultation to do I bought the same backup solution I bought the the fiber from Spectrum I bought the same access points I bought the same switch that you said I needed I bought the same firewall that you said I needed I just went with this C this company because they were less expensive to manage it all and I said okay you're calling me why she said blatantly her words verbatim were because they were terrible and I should have known I was getting what I was paying for so you can use metrics like that um those kind of that kind of feedback in your next conversation you know with you can use stories stor sell that's just the bottom line stories will sell you faster than anything so if you go into a customer's office who you feel like is like H you know I got all these quotes I got I gota look at pricing and then you pull that out and you tell them that story it's going to persuade them to think at least maybe he's right maybe I do need to listen and you know maybe I do need to pay attention that I'm getting what I'm paying for um you know don't under undervalue yourself you know what you bring to the table but at the same time you have to be competitive and you have to listen to your customer and you have to instill trust and confidence if you go in there and you have no idea what you're talking about and you're not confident in what you're saying they should go somewhere else so if you get feedback that said Yeah well my salesperson just was kind of all over the place they didn't really make me feel like they you know they knew what was best for me then you need to use that to coach your employees right so two-parter I would say you need to ask why or why not um don't get don't get upset when someone specializes in something and you don't get a sale because you didn't specialize in it and they do that happens we got a lot of healthc care customers because we specialize in healthcare and they we beat out some really quality msps because we specialize in healthcare and so that just happens um so use those metrics to either say we're going to dive in and we're going to learn hippo laws we're going to specialize in healthcare you know if you really want to make a difference and you in your business and you you're willing to put in the work then you can say you you put in the work and you specialize in healthcare you know and next time you'll you'll have something to go up against so ask the questions that's that would be my answer ask the questions and find out how to be better that's fantastic feedback so uh thank you for coming on here and doing this jacob I do have some questions for you regarding scope stack elevator pitch what is it so scope saacks is a a pre-sales uh automation tool a cpq tool it's basically um think about it this way if you go out and you were to scope a project for a customer and pre-sales uh typically you're going through through the process we already discussed you're going to have to build out something in Microsoft Excel probably put a proposal together together in word give the proposal to the customer where looks all pretty in word then come back take the Excel spreadsheet go up against your projects team whiteboard everything try to figure everything out um find out the solutions um and then probably go back to your customer and say well I missed this little part whatever um but then then they're going to have to you're going to have to go in and you're going to take that build out your scope of work assign a resource a line of line of business if you will uh the the amount of hours it's going to take and how much it's going to cost you have to build all those calculations in and then after all that set and done your customer gets the official quote they sign off on it then you're going to have to go to your project delivery team and say hey I need you to take this and replicate it inside the PSA tool so what scope stack go ahead now you said cpq what is that so cpq is basically it's a quoting tool it stands for uh customer uh I'm sorry not customer configure price quote not customer price quote okay um you'll see that uh you'll see those tools but most of them are for product not services so the difference with scop stack is it's built for it providers by it providers and it's based around services so most cpq tools are like if we needed to you know sell you a switch or something of that nature and it can sell anything whether it's a you know roofing shingles or or a switch right they're not made for for it providers as much there are some um but what we do is we build it around the services so it actually builds the scope of work and attaches it to a resource and a level of effort so with us you you don't have to do those steps that I just said that MSP typically does with scope stack what you do is you go in and you say Okay I want to do a firewall you look at your standard Services which we have over 50 already built in there that we just give you uh you can manipulate those how you want save them how you want and uh so you go in you say okay I need a firewall you type in firewall installation click you know review and it reviews every step you push it over to your project it goes into your project and you have it right there all your steps your level of effort your resource which re resource rates to find you should never charge the same rate for a consultant that makes this much versus a security analyst that makes this much they should have different rates you're losing money if you're not doing that um so so it combines all those things calculates all those things builds you out a clean scope of work you hit generate generates a a docy sign integration document that you can send to your customer they sign off on it you push it over to the PSA and it builds it right in there so if you have connectwise manage or autotask uh I love both of those but everybody everybody knows it's terrible to build a project in those um it's absolutely hor horrifying to build a project inside those so with scope stack what your pre-sales builds your technical delivery team is going to deliver because you push it directly over it doesn't change all the language is there all the steps are in there but again you don't have to show the customer around the sausages made you can say send this with these limited amount of information line items calculations everything gets pushed over um it's it's an automation tool for your pre-sales process and there's so many different things that I could talk about it it's very difficult to do in a 30 second Elevate pitch I can tell you that no that's that's awesome and I I gotta say my next question you already answered because it was going to be how does scope stack help MSP streamline their sales process right we've we've actually seen uh we've had uh case studies to where people have said you know we it took us three weeks to do a scoping process and we cut it down to less than 24 hours so I mean you can just imagine that productivity I can scope a full Network design in less than 10 minutes that that's remarkable if I would have had that at my last job there's actually I mean there's a survey feature inside scope stack to where you could send an intern out to answer questions and it'll build the project and then you say okay have this approved by a project manager you send it over to the project manager they spend 15 minutes reviewing it approve it and you didn't send a project manager on site for three hours to do a S sidewalk you send an intern I mean we have one client that does that quite a bit and they have done really well by their their return uh return is pretty high their Ry is enormous actually because of just that one feature so it it saves time it makes sure that you have um accurate scopes of work you save those so it's not like you're Reinventing a wheel every time we did a lot of infrastructure as a service at my last job so we would onboard a client and then we would do infrastructure of service at the same time so we were installing their firewalls switches access points and onboarding all at the same time right that was that was one thing that we did a lot of and we had it down to a science but we still had to build it out right with scope stack you can build a blueprint which is multiple projects in one scope of work and just say apply this blueprint and it pop up your onboarding all the tasks that your onboarding needs your your firewall installation all those steps the even meeting with the customer steps are put in there and all of it has a number attached to it for how much it cost so you're not missing out on that money even travel and expense is built in so you can choose travel and expense and set it static in the settings that taxs it on to everything that you do that has to do with that service I mean there's so many different things that the tool can do um like I said man we're about we're about fixing problems in the MSP space we we want to be part of the community and really help and that's one of the reasons that I came here was because I'm like this is this is something that can save pre-sales Engineers or Solutions Architects weeks of time away from their family because that's what we do right we come home we've had a day we wait till our family goes to bed because we're so we don't want to spend time away from our family so we wait till our family goes to bed we're up till 2: in the morning building Scopes to work so we don't miss a deal because we know time kills deals but this you can build it in front of the customer I can sit in front of a customer build a wireless survey and have it signed off on before I leave the office that's amazing it's it's pretty remarkable and again it's all it was all built to improve that that's what John one of the founders that's what he did he was a he was a Solutions architect for um uh for some of the big guys I'm not going to name names but one of the really big players and he he got tired of spending time away from his family he was like there's got to be a better way to do this you know and so that's how it was even that's how it was birthed it with it providers lives in mind um and so you're going to start seeing you're going to start seeing scope stack a lot uh in in the community we're really making a push to make sure that we are part of something bigger than just a product um we you know msps spoke they said hey you know I can't afford some of the smaller msps well we can't afford this so we went in and while everyone else is raising their prices we just lowered ours we're we're not about we want to make the space better so if we if we're going to do that we have to put our money where our mouth is right so we came in guns blazing let's fix this let's make sure that everybody can afford it let's make sure that that there's no capacity on this anymore you can scope as many projects as you want we got rid of that we did a lot of price changing to make sure that every MSP can afford and use scope stack in a way that'll improve their business business so what's it cost so there's three different packages based on features um we do have a limit as to the users so there's um there's the essentials package can scope projects Professional Services all day long they can pull an opportunity from your CRM uh into it so if you use autotask or connectwise or some of those guys there's some other Integrations that you can pull the opportunity in uh and you can start scoping right then um if you wanted to integrate with your PSA uh would be the business plan you can push it over to your to autotask or connectwise manage Dynamics some others um and and there's the business plan there and then the ENT the Premium plan has workflow approval so if you need your all those things plus workflow approval to we if um if you wanted to say have your security team check off on a project before before it's ready to go out the door you can do that and it also has a surveys feature I was telling you about you can answer questions as an intern and push it over so our Essentials plan um is 105 comes with three licenses unlimited projects um our business plan is 250 comes with five users um and it's unlimited capacity as well and our Premium plan is 750 comes with 10 users that's really awesome man and I'd say the the pricing for for the fact that uh an entry level MSP can get started for around 10 what' you say 115 105 105 yeah an entry level MSP can get started scoping projects get more time with their families um and get to bed on time right well the you know one thing about it is people don't charge they should but they do not charge for the time it takes to scope I don't know if you've noticed that but msps just leave that part they just bake that in uh the the problem with that is you're not charging for your time and I don't know anyone that doesn't charge at least $100 an hour and if they are they they should at least charge $100 an hour right so just add I have one customer that literally they literally just put scoping time $105 so one project pays for their scope Tech account they're small and it works for them you know that's perfect yeah so yeah that's perfect pays for itself one one project pays for the platform a a month and you're good to go and that's a very you know going back to KP guys it's a very easy thing to measure uh did I sell a project this month yes or no did I pay for the product I'm using yes or no yeah I mean it really is and so uh I think everyone should be making money for the time they're spending you know I agree well well Jacob I think uh I ran you well over the time that we allotted so thank you for sticking around extra I appreciate it uh I would love to have you back to do a demo of scope stack this thing yeah I've I've been you know I know I got a a demo of this already with my MSP and it it's cool so I I want to show the world man yeah I'd love to come back I really appreciate you taking the time I enjoyed talking with you and getting to meet you I think we spoke before a long time ago but I I enjoyed actually getting to talk with you a little more absolutely well thank you so much Jacob thanks everyone for watching and I will catch you guys at the next episode take care thanks guys