Msp sales process for production

How to create outlook signature

hey good morning this is jeff ferris welcome to how to deliver the perfect sales presentation today we're going to talk about sales we're going to talk about that portion of the sales cycle where you have a lead and you're getting ready to talk to talk to that prospect you're in the right place today if you're unsure how to present your services uh in a sales call if you don't have a clear agenda for a sales meeting uh if you're not seeing results from a sales team or don't even have a sales team because you're you're worried about hiring that first one or even if you're unsure about how to price your offering today we're going to talk about the sales meeting the sales proposal part of that customer relationship so before we get started just a quick background for those of you that aren't familiar with cloud radio cloud radial is a solution for msps that provides an integrated account management for for msps and a private client portal for your clients so it is a basically your website for all of your existing uh existing customers my background uh i've been in this industry for a while i've done a variety of different things and and the basic gist is that i've been focused on the client experience i've been selling stuff for a long time to a lot of different people uh in a lot of different things from it to marketing to local businesses very similar to the backgrounds and the needs that you have going into your your clients today let's start with kind of the basic premise of what we think about sales and sales people which is that for the most part we hate being sold too our phones ring with interruptions for the nine calls out of ten start with well how are you doing today and you know already you know that your day's not going well because you're having to answer that question from salespeople so so a lot of msps are put off in the selling cycle simply because of a personal experience with other sales people that do their job poorly and so one of the things that you're going to find with cloud radial and with a lot of the strategy that's behind our product and a lot of things that we're uh we're focused on here today is that with with cloud radar and really the with anything that you're doing today um you don't really want to be a sales person uh you want to be um you want to be something different and so the first thing before we even start uh let's just focus on the fact that none of us like being sold to we don't want to be called a salesperson even though there's some pride in that but let's just focus today on the fact that we're going to work on getting that client's business uh into our into our msp so first i want to start with um their traditional sales pipeline and i'm sure everyone's seen a version of this uh over uh over time um starts with marketing on top um deals on the bottom and it's an inverted pyramid simply because there's probably more prospects than there are deals that you close and in between that transition from marketing to deals is the sales presentation now marketing by itself is is the subject of a future webinar deals and the way you manage that pipeline is is potentially another webinar but today we're just going to focus on the sales presentation we're going to focus on your on getting ready for and preparing and conducting that sales presentation with your clients but first before we look at this i want to understand something very clearly for msps this sales pipeline is wrong it doesn't show the real process that you should be going through in the way you should think about your clients the actual pipeline looks more like this and it's not a sales pipeline but it's an account management pipeline and what you're doing in the sales process is you're basically turning clients into uh or prospects into clients and in a sense you're conducting your first qbr or as we called it in a month ago a couple of months ago was the um the mutual opportunity review you're doing your first account on management review with the client except in this case um you don't have the history of working with them for months or years this is the first one and so it's going to be a little different than all the others but just as vital but not anything really different than a typical business review and so the first thing we want to challenge is not going in with that sales philosophy but really going in with an account management philosophy because what you're working on is a sales and account management pipeline you're working on your first account management experience not a sales call so now saying that we'll go we're going to use the term sales quite a bit to really talk about the fact that this is the first qbr or the first mor meeting but the keys that we're going to talk about today are really in five areas the first is client mindset so making sure that you're prepared from the client perspective to talk to the client at the client level secondly on persona making sure that you've aligned your vision um in your thought process with what you're trying to sell products making sure that you can you have the the things in the bag you have the things to present to the client that the client will relate to and understand uh make sure you're prepared before you go on the meeting and then actual the presentation itself so we're going to talk about those five things today in specific in in making sure that we have a good outcome at the end of that meeting so the first we're going to talk about is the client mindset which is really training yourselves to think like a customer day in and day out msps deal with very technical subjects they are down in the weeds in office 365 they're down in the weeds with security down in the weeds with a variety of technical subjects that basically determine the success or failure of that account from a client perspective they don't see how that how that solution is made they have concerns that are separate from the concerns that you have as an msp and so in client mindset the first thing to do is to is to basically imagine life from the client's eyes back to your business as opposed to your business back to the client and so the the key thing uh the key things to go in there is to first understand the client is asking different questions probably from what you're prepared to answer um and you know you need to be able to understand and relate to the client in these terms so again what are you selling is your as you sit down with the client what are the benefits you're going to bring to that client what's the what's even the name of what you're selling right um how will it benefit them what's the what's the key value that the client gets from this because again they don't understand the technology what they do understand is is how they're going to apply it and they understand their business and so the focus is how do you make that business better for them they're going to be curious about who else uses what you do i mean again we all like things that are proven we all like to buy things not as the as the guinea pigs but we all like to buy things that are proven in the marketplace and that we're not the learning curve on and from a client perspective if they're new to managed services um they won't necessarily know what managed services are or what to expect from that if they've been with a if they're with an existing msp then the challenge really may be to go back and retrain the client to get them to raise their expectations and to understand that you do things differently from the services they've had in the past and lastly the client and this is the personal side we always see sales as a as a logical effort when really sales is actually about personal and personal uh success so again at the bottom of every transaction or the thing that drives everything is the client's need to feel good about what they just did it's like buying the the laptop and then using it for a week and going like i made the right choice right there's nothing better than knowing that you made the right investment of your time and money and made a smart decision and what you what we all see with their own equipment what we all see with our own needs we want to deliver for that client as well so first thing again is we talk about the client mindset we have to remember what the clients buy is not typically what we sell right so there's we're managed we're in managed services we sell security we sell things that are packaged and presented by vendors in ways they're very technical and address layers of the of the problem clients don't see the layers what they're buying are things everything from efficiency through decision making and what they're looking for is ways to again to make their business better without knowing the details of what you do there are many businesses where we don't understand whether it's for example in medicine we don't understand um how the doctors arrive at the decisions they make when we go in for an exam we just know when they tell us to do something or they need it they need to tell us to in my case lose weight then um that we should follow that advice and we don't understand all the hours and and labor that went into that we just know they came up with it with a nice quick uh summary for us in how to improve um where we stand so the client is motivated i think more importantly is motivated by three things that affect their buying decisions the first is fears and and a lot of the traditional msp sales literature will have you focused on the fears of the client the ransomware attacks uh the threats the phishing attacks those are the fears that a business could be um it may go under if uh something bad happens to them and fears and fears is is one sales tool but it's actually not the strongest sales tool we have fears all the time we have fears that our house may burn down and so we buy insurance for that but at the same time too we don't think about insurance as being a strategic investment for our business we do not think about insurance as being a way to change and enable us to do new and better things so fear is one thing and it is a component of the msp sales cycle but it's not necessarily the most powerful uh secondly is once you know the the idea that that i want my business to grow and expand once i've undercome once i get past the prospect of fear that my business may go under now i start focusing on how my business may thrive and so the wants of a business owner or a decision maker become paramount and so how will my business grow i will achieve my goals with this with this offering and then lastly ego and ego is actually maybe the strongest of the three client motivations and it's the same thing we we do we experience all the time we want to look like heroes either to our friends to our family uh to our co-workers and we also want to feel smart about what we did so the the day of reckoning again whether it's a laptop a car there's nothing better than again having made a purchase and a month later realizing that you made the right purchase and and that's true in those endeavors it's it's just as important when a client buys managed services they feel good about that transaction a month later so uh when we talk about the account management experience we talk about the sales experience what we're really doing is is making sure that client uh has has a positive attitude and in that first month even after the deal's done is perhaps it's just as important as the uh the sales cycle itself so the next thing we want to get into is the msp persona and after talking to hundreds of msps what what's become clear is that there are two there's like the left brain and the right brain of an msp there's the service side of the of the business and there's the advisor side and they're and they turn out to be very different in the service side the the things that people equate with service are are very transactional they're like car repair right so if i take my car into the service it's not working i take my car out of service it's working that was a service call and it's technical as transaction it's it's very focused on on the immediate need today there's a charge for that service and it has its own vocabulary you know in the case of the car we replaced the the pin and the transmission and now it's working and that will be 850 dollars again it's about the service from an advisor standpoint advisor's a different is a different way to present to the client it's it's about experience it's it's about outcomes and consultation it's about the client vocabulary if you're consulting or advising on matters related to manufacturing it's going to be related to how that business can thrive in their manufacturing sector the best thing about the advisory role is it improves with time so the longer you're an advisor with the client the more you know about the client and the stronger that advisory relationship service and product have are the ways that those um can be manifested so in a service deliverable uh it's about labor and time so and five years ago maybe even yeah five years ago uh and certainly before that the the managed services experience was about labor and about cost reduction so it was about delivering people to a company for less cost than they could do it with i.t or internal id so it was about a labor or a time savings and the service um the quality of service the the amount of service needed obviously that varies based on uh how many problems there are and how many requirements need to be met on the product side though which is where most msps are shifting to today it's about intellectual property and with intellectual property msps are basically taking what's off-the-shelf solutions like office 365 and turning that into something that's very workable for clients uh something that's consistent explainable tangible clear benefits i mean those are all keywords in the in the ability to deliver a product and the product encapsulates that intellectual property so for example in our own business with cloud radio cloud regal is a product and it it is lines of code but it represents a massive investment in intellectual property that when when clients use it represents a consistent experience for them now all of them will apply in the case of cloud radial the product differently and in the case of your your your products and your managed services products they will all implement those things differently but to um but the get down to the product side which is the next piece it's important to understand that the products you deliver at an msp now are more likely going to focus and be [Music] valued based on the intellectual property as opposed to the amount of labor that it takes so what we're going to do with msp products and the products you show to clients is basically we're going to use the products to help clients understand what you do better so let's take 365 for an example in office 365 the key piece is that there's a license typically 1250 to 20 a month that is the office 365 license in itself so clients routinely pay that for word excel powerpoint and much more but what clients are actually buying with office 365 isn't word and excel what they're buying is productivity and what they're what they're buying is a better way to run their business and so the 12.50 a month really isn't the investment that the company expects or wants out of this the value to the client is extremely high but to make 365 work requires a lot of intellectual property behind it not only the intellectual property of 365 itself but also the intellectual property that goes with the deployment of office 365. so their their focus on 365 isn't on the cost of that license it's on all the things that make up the delivery of that license uh and and and there's a long list of things here if you fail to do any of these pieces well from a a roll out or an implementation standpoint the value of 365 may be greatly diminished or none at all or worse do things with lack of security or lack of planning could actually open up huge threats to that business so again from a from an intellectual standpoint it's the intellectual property in the deployment of 365 that makes 365 work for the client not necessarily the fact that 365 has features in it like bold and underlined in chat again it's the it's the intellectual property that you deliver as a managed service provider that makes that work so so now we want to talk a little bit about pricing and first i want to i want to make real clear that pricing is is something to be discussed but it's also not necessarily a clear it doesn't necessarily provide clear understanding for clients and so a couple examples here we know the difference in price winner rolex and a seiko we know also too the seiko's actually probably a more reliable watch with lower maintenance cost but the rolex will cost you know a hundred times um the price simply because of the brand and the way the product is positioned in the marketplace so the pricing here there's a lot of times in the pricing scheme when talking to clients pricing gets to be kind of a key point when really it doesn't really matter if it matters more on the brand and the deliverable than it does on um the price itself one other example that i found was two books on amazon war and peace a long time classic and then the latest expose on kim kardashian they both have a price they're both books but the price doesn't tell you the value behind that and so when it comes to msp pricing what i'm what i'm trying to get to is that pricing really isn't relevant um and the more it's relevant than the more that the product is more of a commodity so what we want to do if for example um if if it's labor then labor is going to have a comparable price and we can easily shop labor prices for um car repair but when it comes to things like lawyers or accountants typically we tell them what we want and then they tell us the price and so pricing is based not necessarily so much if it's done correctly pricing isn't as relevant in the discussion because what we're going to do is use the the understanding of pricing to make sure that what we're selling in the marketplace is not comparable to what other people are selling in the marketplace so the bottom line with pricing is the more similar the items the more comparable the price the more similar the items also to the lower the margin on those items labor is replaceable we've all lost staff members who have moved on and we've replaced those people we have all seen trades people come and go we know that labor is replaceable intellectual property is unique and the stronger the intellectual property is the more unique it is so in the case of of an attorney for example we all know or at least for those that have seen multiple sides of the of the court system what you'll know is the quality of the attorney can matter greatly in the outcome and and so intellectual property uh is strongly based on value whereas labor is strongly based on ours and so the more intellectual property that's perceived in what you deliver the more intellectual property that the client sees is unique to you the more value potentially that you can you can obtain from that client the more labor or more labor intensive it is then the less the value to the client so again intellectual property is is the strongest element labor's one element but even when you can add intellectual property to labor element you're going to improve the value of that price so now let's talk about the preparation so in in this sales presentation again we've we've skipped over a lot of steps uh in how we get there so it could have been a word of mouth referral it could have been a a website referral could have been an adwords referral but basically we've been invited in to talk to the client and now we need our preparation the first thing we're going to do before even getting that meeting is we're going to um we're going to do our homework and it's it's amazing to me in interviews i've conducted with potential employees how some prospects show up and don't even know the business they're applying to so if if an employee walks in the door or a potential employee walks in the door and and asks me what my business is about i know they haven't done their homework i know that they haven't done the prep work to get there if an employee asked me questions about what they saw on my website what they saw in my news feed what they saw in my industry now i know that they have interest and they they're actually able to do the research to get going so it's important before the meeting that you do the homework so that when you walk in you are up to speed with that client and what that client's needs hopefully you know what that client is is doing for their customers and you know what their goals are for the business is it growth is it efficiency is it you know in the move to covet now is it is it is the ability to better manage a remote workforce um and from all of that research you need to start having ideas right away about how you can make them better and how you're going to help them again address their their core requirements but again when you walk in the door you'd like to be fully prepared before you talk to the client so that you can talk to the client about them rather than being stuck about talking about you lastly you want to make sure that you have the right products if you walk into a client meeting for a medical company for example here in the united states there's there's a requirement to be um to basically have some some hipaa background to have the core agreements in place if you don't have those in place if you if you're not ready to talk about hipaa and and talk about compliance and don't have products in your arsenal to address that you may want to go back and rethink either the value of your your business to that client or you may want to go back and start developing the products that it's going to take to deliver success for that client so you know before you walk in again to like somebody like a medical environment or a legal environment finance environment you want to make sure that your products will match that needs it's not about the client adopting your standards that's going to make them better it's about you being prepared with the right products so that they can have success in their industry and so if you don't have the right products before that meeting you want to make sure that you have um thought out how you're going to address their concerns with a solution that's that's so it's not a a one size fits all model that doesn't truly address that client requirement the other thing in the msp mindset and a lot of pressure gets put on that initial meeting and msps and myself included i mean everybody makes this this is they believe that every sales meeting is the only chance they're going to have to win over that customer and one of the things you'll find as you do more and more sales calls is that if you have a good product um then then that client is going to be a client of yours someday right it may not be in that first sales call may not be in that first week after the sales call it may not be even the first six months but if you have a good product and you maintain that relationship over time that client will be a client of yours someday so so first thing you do when you walk into that meeting is you take the pressure off to close or or get a deal or get a transaction or a next step even in that meeting not that those aren't good things to achieve but they're not really the goal sales is a is a multi-step process and is going to require multiple touches with that client to whether that's phone email in-person visits to achieve that desired outcome but the first thing you have to do is you have to take the pressure off yourself in that first call to get a positive result so [Music] you also have to go in with the mindset that you can truly make their business better right again when you walk in with a mindset that that client can truly make your business better right you're already starting behind the curve right so you're also putting pressure on yourself financially so when you're making that pitch to a big client maybe a client bigger than you've had before you know the value that that client would bring to you you know the monetary advantages it would have to have a larger client in the mix but if you go in with that attitude the client's going to see that and so the bottom line is what you want to do is focus on how you're going to make that make their business better with your proposal so if you truly believe that you can help them and give them a superior offering it's going to be a huge step in the mindset when you walk in there and the client's going to understand that you're there to help them not necessarily to help yourselves um even though they understand that's part of the process what they're really looking for is a strong mutual benefit the other thing with the mindset again we talked about this but they will close when they are ready and some clients can be same-day sign-ups some clients can be six-month sign-ups but again the client's going to be a client someday and again the close sometimes isn't even the most important part or sometimes it's the anticlimactic part because you've if you've worked them right throughout the the process especially with that account management mentality it's just a different step on the account management ladder so so again from an msp mindset we want to be sure that we're focused on the client client mindset um and we also want through everything that we do especially the account manager we're showing them the kind of service they can expect from us so if if you don't listen in the sales meeting you're not going to listen uh when they're a client if you if you talk about your problems or your payroll um there know that that's going to be your primary concern going forward if you talk about technology maybe technology things they don't truly understand they're going to know that maybe they're never going to understand you throughout the cycle so again what you're doing in that first sales call again and really it's the first i can go back to this it's the first account management meeting you're starting to show them what they can expect from you in future communications in action so it's very important in this whole process to focus on the kind of service that you're going to deliver and set those expectations early by example as opposed to by bullet point so uh it's very easy to put a uh together a powerpoint that says hey we're client focused uh we're timely we're responsive and we're there to become your trusted advisor but if you don't show that in your interactions in those first few meetings they're not going to buy into the bullet points the other piece we talked about personas and we talked about a a service oriented persona and we talked about an advisor based persona and it's important to look at those two things and and make sure that when you walk in there that your parents not not necessarily physically but your web your collateral that all of that matches um you know your your lead your your your presentation so if you're going to walk in we see this a lot too you're going to walk in to be the trusted advisor you're going to tell your client that you're going to be their trusted advisor you're going to lead with the things that will help their business grow but then you focus on things like a ticketing portal or you focus on things like you know ease of submitting tickets or something along those lines all you're really doing is showing the client that you're going to take it right back to the service level what you need to do in this process is make sure your appearance matches what you're presenting so if you're going to be the advisor make sure that your web your collateral your leave behind what you're what you're showing the clients are going to get matches the type of role that you want in the in that company and then lastly the mindset needs to be that if you have competition in the space that's great the more that the clients talk to your competitors the more they should see the value that you bring to the table so again it's it's it's not a romantic relationship that you're trying to achieve it's a business relationship and so you we you don't need to be jealous of other competitors in there you need to understand that those competitors should give you a strong sales advantage as they do their research they're going to find that you're the better choice out there so again competition should help you close deals not take deals away from you so again from a mindset perspective if you have that mindset again with this coming in those clients will be more likely to do business with you because again you've shown them account management from an early time so now let's get into the meeting presentation this is really your first account management meeting so again let's talk about how that's going to flow and let's talk about how we're going to work with the clients on this so first thing you're going to see is the key ingredients when we talk about the the in a couple of months ago we talked about our mutual opportunities reviews and again in account management that this is the first account management then it's not surprising that the sales key ingredients and the more key ingredients or qbr key ingredients are the same thing right so again going in with the right mindset the right products the right preparation making sure that you understand you have a vision and a plan for that customer and then making sure you're excited to present it right if you're if you if you if you've nailed the first four then the excitement piece almost comes automatically so again making sure that you walk into that meeting fully prepared and ready to hold a good interaction with that client agenda-wise a lot of times in the agenda we it's easy to and again the client will try they may disrupt this or they may try to disrupt this but it's important to stick to this agenda and the first piece is is introductions um and it seems a little little odd but it's also important to know who everyone is around the table and the backgrounds and and and something personal as well in this interactions in this in these introductions what you're really trying to do is understand the decision makers understanding the process and you're also trying to relate to the client in a way that they can identify you as friend or foe and so if you think about it and i'll just use a personal example every time i walk into a best buy the sales person walks up to me and says how can i help you i just walked in the store i don't know what i want to look at yet i don't necessarily know where i want to go already that sales person to me is trying to get my money and they're going into the faux category right so again something simple that was supposed to be harmless and was supposed to be simple now has become threatening however when i'm looking at something in depth and the client comes up and goes you know we have those on sale or comes up and says you know you know can answer questions about the the device you're looking at now they may be a friend right now they may be in the helpful mode and so they're not as threatening they're there to assist and and it's it's a subtle distinction but what you're trying to do is the introductions is make sure that people relate to you as a person make sure they relate to you as an individual and understand that that you represent the organization um and if you're personable and and uh available then they're gonna see that throughout the organization as well after you get through the introductions piece the next part is really what i would call guided listening which is basically what you're going to do is let them tell you why you need to manage their account right so you're walking in you've done your research you understand their business and what you're going to try to do is get them to give you their own swot analysis strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats now a lot of clients may push back on that and just say look i don't care i don't want to talk about me i just want to hear from you what you have to do is guide them into this process if the client tries to disrupt this you can tell that there's going to be a challenge here right away because again the whole process here is to become their trusted advisor not the service rep so if you're going through the guided listening you need this process to really understand from the client to validate the theories or the the things that you observed in in the preparation side so again if they're not if they don't start off right away to give you a nice orderly uh swot analysis what you're going to do is use that preparation to guide that listening to to get the things you need from the client to better understand what their true needs are in that organization so again this guided listening people sometimes will want to our clients especially will try to circumvent this but your job in that sales presentation is to make sure that you get through this this effectively using your prep to overcome um the the slowness to talk or um you know maybe even simple one-word replies if you if you're forearmed you'll have the right list of questions after the guided listening the next step is to basically transition to confidence and so now that you understand exactly what that client needs now you also will start seeing exactly how you can help them so what you're going to do is start the process by helping to explain to them how you help businesses like theirs and you're going to apply the listenings from guided listening to basically tell them what they just told you but in a positive solution-oriented way so if they told you that they're worried about risk from the internet you're going to tell them how you're going to address that if they told you they're worried about people working from home and not being able to work collaboratively you're going to use that to address that basically you're going to let them write your proposal for you to a large extent and and one of the mistakes that a lot of people walk into is they walk in with a very but the powerpoint and the powerpoint presumes to know what the client's going to ask for when you get there sometimes it's much better to go in with with illustrations or slides as opposed to a powerpoint so now what you can do in the guided listening phase learn how to sell to them learn how to communicate to them learn how to overcome their objections and then and when you go to this phase of how to help them all you're doing is just feeding back what they told you so again it's important in this process if you go in with a standard powerpoint you're going to miss the opportunities because it's going to prove you're not actually listening you know if you've got a 20-page powerpoint about the the your business and how successful it is and how many happy customers you have now you've made it about you it's not about the client and you're starting to lose that trust and relationship and then at the end of the agenda you always want to have a next step now the next step based on everything you've heard to this point can vary so it could lead to an audit an i.t audit of their business could lead to an evaluation of the business could lead to further demonstrations could lead to proposals again what you want to do is remember you're not trying to close this account in this first sales call what you're trying to do is just make sure that there's a good action step that you're going to use to build trust so if you tell somebody that you're going to follow up with them on i'm going to get you some literature on how to minimize uh phishing attacks and how we deal with that then make sure when you get back to the office to send that to them right away so again what you're doing in those next steps is very important is you're in the trust building phase and so if you're if you're confident okay so that's a big check mark but the next thing they'll want to know is are you trustworthy and so make promises in those next steps deliver on those next steps and slowly and surely you'll win over their confidence that you can do exactly what you say you're going to do so as you get in there too um there's going to be questions that come up either phrase just like this but more often a little different and you need to make sure that you always have key answers for this client now here's some general question here's the three specific questions which is the first is how are you going to save us money now it may not be phrased exactly like that but the core of that is is a client needs to understand how your services are actually going to help them in the expense control department the next question is how are you going to help us make money right so again if it's done right it becomes a driver of revenue for a business not just an expense control issue so again if it's if it's about their productivity and collaboration more remote working to maintain and to not miss a heartbeat while they're shifting from a work in office to work at home strategy or not missing a beat when they're shifting from work at home back to work to office those are the things that an msp can address and i think those are important things for a client to assess is not only is there a need here to make sure we don't have technology disruptions but with the right provider there's actually an opportunity here to actually make us more productive and and therefore help us grow our revenues in our industry and then lastly how are you going to reduce our risk right again there's no client today that is unaware of ransomware or obvious i mean there's there's they shouldn't be that unaware they shouldn't be unaware of phishing attacks so again how are you going to reduce the risk and how you're going to do that in a cost effective way to make that work again the risk piece is the insurance piece of the equation it's the piece that typically is the least desirable but still needed nobody likes making their house insurance payment but most people do because they don't want to take that risk themselves and so again how you address that and what component of that is going to be in there you have to be ready to address that and how that fits in your overall strategy for that client you're going to talk to the needs of each attendee one of the things in business is when you walk in there isn't there may be one decision maker but there's not necessarily this one decision process and so the owner may be the one to um that's going to that's going to write the check it may be the one that actually has to approve the deal but everybody around that table is going to have a say and typically in those transactions one person who doesn't feel the value or or feels unsure about where they fit in the equation can can can scuttle the whole deal and so as you're working the the room you want to make sure not to just to make eye contact with the owner and address you know his or her concerns you want to talk individually to each person around that table again we've done the introduction so we know what people do and we can also ask them questions about things that they would want to see things that they are afraid of things that they've had problems with in the past and address those concerns so what you want to do is address the needs of each attendee so again when they talk to themselves after you leave which they will you want to make sure that they all talk in a positive way and they all see how you're going to interact with them in in a great way so again don't focus on just the owner uh it may be the office manager it may be the it staff it may be an employee that actually will turn out having more say in the deal than you could ever imagine so talk to talk to each make eye contact with each and just assume that you need the buy-in of everybody around that table not just the person who's the designated ceo or owner now as you're starting to engage with those those employees or that staff within the company there are at least four different roles that you you're going to have to address and from an from a typical managed services environment where it's very focused on or say traditional let's go back to the word traditional five years ago it was about labor and so so labor we needed to be able to show how labor was going to interact with these different people and mostly it was the same story every time but today with more stuff being in the cloud with the opportunity to show off more with more things going on behind the scenes what we need to do is give each of the people around that table a clear sense of where they're going to fit and what they're going to have in their tool set and so for an employee perspective what you want to be able to do is show them how life will be simpler for them right there's nothing that seems simpler than submitting a ticket by email or phone but we all know that those tickets often take more time to resolve because of incomplete information or lack of transparency or even lack of visibility into the process so if you can deliver simplicity to employees so that they can easily get the services or the support they need they can get the training they need they can get the the references they need they're going to be very strong in in being able to understand how life will improve with the new solution so again if it's focused on simplifying you know email and phone calls we need to show them exactly how it's going to be better and how it's actually going to save them more time by using the tools and and process you put in place things that you know without tooting our own horn the things that cloud radar were exactly designed to address the other thing we're going to do is we're going to show the office managers in i.t how they get a process again for them they're managing not just they have their own individual concerns as they would as an employee but they also have concerns for the business overall because again they're the ones that have to answer to the owner or the ceo about how things are going to flow and they need to understand what you're doing as well as you do sometimes so that they can communicate clearly because again the first person that that the ceo is going to ask or the president's going to ask in that company is typically the office manager or your point of contact so if they're not prepared with an answer you know they're not going to they're not going to appreciate um what you're doing for them and then lastly for the owners you want to be sure and deliver a plan to them so that they can understand um kind of at a high level what you're doing and where you're taking their business and so it's for each of these they each have different concerns uh they alpha they also have different needs and they're all going to use the tools to provide them in different ways for different purposes and so it's important that each of these clients understand fully um what's what what the benefit is to them as you go forward uh the last thing and this is probably one of the key parts is show them what the case studies look like so make sure that you understand um again if it's easy to kind of get into a pitch where now you've understood you've talked to the client and now you want to talk about your solution and your products more in depth but the best way to show those is to show the before and after examples to show clients what they're going to get before and after your solution so and the best way to do that is to use other companies you've worked with show them the before and after pictures show them you know maybe the the problems they had before you arrived how you dealt with it and where they're at today uh that's the best testimonial you can have is somebody it's not somebody says hey you know acme did a great job but uh acme saved me money and and made me money and reduced my risk if you've got those core case studies down then that's the best reference you can have and then also the case studies make it about them not about you so everybody likes stories everybody likes to hear stories and the core thing in the process is to make sure that those case studies tell the story of your business that your clients can relate to so again what you're doing is telling them the products you offer you're telling them the solutions you deliver you just do it in a storytelling way that they can relate to as opposed to a product list way that they maybe they can't relate to and then you know if you're new and you don't have your own case studies customers.microsoft.com is a great resource to pull together before and after examples of people that were uh on office recently or weren't on office 365 and migrated 365 or people that weren't on azure and went to azure so even if you're new in the space you can still use the the case studies either that you've developed yourselves or again that microsoft provides to you to really help you explain the clients the benefits they're going to get when they sign with your service so so it's sooner or later you're gonna present a proposal to them um and you know it it typically won't be in the meeting uh because again that would that would mean that you came for arnold proposal before you actually listen to them so that may not be the best sign but in that proposal what you want to do is again make that about them every proposal should be custom written you should not have a generic template that says this is what you do i mean again it's going to have a lot of standard verbiage in it but every proposal should start with a cover letter that makes it clear to the client that you are addressing their problems and that you understand their problems so again you want to make sure they understand why it's about them what they will get from it how it addresses their needs why it's uh why it needs to be you and that ultimately that price is your area of expertise so again when we talk about uh commodity that's a price that's shoppable when it comes to a proposal that's about value and and relationship and advising then that price is going to be your area of expertise so again that's going to when you make your offer make your offer the best offer the the fair offer but then know that you're going to live with that offer no matter what because after the proposal what's going to happen with that client so you make the proposal you may or may not get a yes right away you may not get a yes for for months that's okay because during that process the clients are going to start to imagine life with and without you so before you showed up the client if they're calling their existing msp or if they're doing it themselves they unders once once they after you've presented to them an alternative view the next time they get frustrated they're going to think that maybe if they'd had you as a as an msp they wouldn't be frustrated they're going to start noticing issues they didn't see before if you've ever shopped for cars have you ever thought about buying a volvo for example you never see i mean you typically never see a volvo on the road unless you think about volvos and then you'll be surprised at how many that you see and and that basically becomes a a filter bias so again we see so many cars during the day we don't notice them but once we think about a specific brand we can't help but notice them and it's the same thing in the problems with the clients so they're going to start noticing issues they didn't have before they're going to start seeing frustrations of staff they didn't notice because again now they have a possible scenario where they don't have to deal with that the next time the employee shows up in their office or a new employee shows up in their office goes like where do i get toner how do i get help with my pc how to order a they're going to realize that that internet that you pitched to them would solve all of that they're going to realize that that that service catalog would have addressed those needs that that knowledge base that you were going to provide to them was going to solve that problem so they're going to start noticing things and they're going to start realizing that maybe you were dead spot on in your analysis and that actually really can can help they're also probably going to ask other people to come in and pitch a solution again the the managed services space is competitive and it's not unlikely that once you make a pitch you could be the first one in you could be the last one in there's really no advantage as i can tell from being the first or last in what it matters is if you ever prepared for that and so when you know that other msps are going to be in there making their proposals what you need to do is cut them off by basically what we call rigging the bit right and so it's it's a common phrase in some government contracting this stuff is you make sure the requirements of the bidding process exactly match your your ability to fulfill it so you'll see in a lot of proposals that the way they're written they can only be addressed by one vendor and you saw this in cloud contracts with vendors you can see things that are heavily written towards azure or aws and it works exactly the same way in the msps so if you can make sure that the client is focused on the things that you can provide uniquely and that's one of the things that we like about cloud radio is each cloud radial case gives you the ability to present a unique solution to that client and again once you wire the the bid to make sure that that's a part of that transparency uh that may be client internet that ease of access that the training resources um the the information the reporting or should be a requirement of that bidding process now you've wired the bid to hopefully just you so again as you as you get in there and you just know that other msps are going to propose make sure the bid is wired in your favor so the more they talk to other msps the more they realize that your msp is the one that can really help them and will have that features that nobody else has they're going to ask for references again the case studies should have addressed that but again they're going to want to talk to clients and lastly they're going to push back on price everybody pushes back on price especially about things they don't really understand right and so the worst thing you can do is is to reduce the price right the number one thing you can do is to basically defend the price and basically not justify it but say this is what it cost because again when it comes to pricing when we talk about especially we talk about managed services there isn't a price out there that really that people can relate to they don't understand how much intellectual property is required they understand the labor that's required you know you can't client should no more be able to set your price then you set the price when you go to the doctor again you don't understand what the doctor has to deal with to do the things that you do so it's the same on the msp side again price is your area of expertise they're going to push back on the price and you just defend the price if if if you quoted the amount incorrectly you know then you either need to consider whether you just need to live with it or adjust it but again it should never be because the client wants a price reduction it should only be because you think that's the right price to charge so again price is your perception and again if you've delivered intellectual property and value and explain that all clearly then the price will will be in will be something to talk about but it shouldn't become an obstacle so that wraps up the presentation or my presentation on on doing sales presentations um and i think we have a little bit of time left for questions um safy do you did we did anything come in um really the only thing that's come in is that people would like um us to mail your presentation back out um after the webinar so um you know i think that i think that we're we're kind of set um you should probably also remind everybody um about our upcoming webinars if you'd like to do that that'd be great well one why why why don't you spoil the surprise so why don't you go ahead and uh and do that okay um to get to our events page you can go on to cloud radio's website and look under resources and you will see that we have added um another product update i'm going to run to that real quick so that i can um can give you the exact dates and times we have a product update um on august 13th that's um you know just in a few weeks and we'll be talking about um you know some new features new updates and we'll also have discussion there um the webinar will be at the same time at ten o'clock central standard time and if this is past your bedtime know that we record all of these um sessions so and we also send out a link so that you can watch and you're off time and then we also have um another seminar a more educational seminar coming up on august 27th uh the perfect ticketing experience and jeff and ricky will both go through what it takes to you know provide a good experience um from the ticketing standpoint and how to gather the information that you would like your clients to in turn give to you as you as you kind of self triage type through tickets um and of course using cloud radial to do that uh so we look forward um to seeing you at other webinars and i um thank you for your time today and we hope to see you again soon thanks everybody you