Episode 200 SPECIAL: 5 times this podcast has changed MSP’s lives

Hello and welcome. You are listening to our special episode to celebrate the 200th edition. Five times, this podcast has changed MSPs’ lives.

Some people want facts and figures. Some people want storytelling. Your job isn’t to sell. Your job is to help. And by helping, they build trust. By building trust, they buy.

I love cold calling MSP sales, because most MSPs suck at talking to people.

With break-fix, it’s harder to guarantee the income. If the customer doesn’t have a problem, they’re not necessarily calling you.

If you are sending a cold email, and you’re using a template, and you’re about to hit send and you’re like, “I don’t think I would send that”, stop yourself and don’t do it.

It’s not just about the website. It’s that whole digital customer journey of awareness and online reviews and credibility and all of those pieces of the puzzle.

Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast Special.

Hello and welcome to this incredibly special episode. Thank you so much. Whether this is your first time listening or watching, or you’ve been with us all the way since November 2019, this is Episode 200, and we have a real cracker for you today.

Because I’m always being asked what other successful MSPs are doing. It’s one of the most common questions that people have for me. MSPs want to know what other people are doing, what works for them, what doesn’t work for them, all of that kind of stuff, so this episode is all about that. And it’s powered by the gems and the nuggets of inspiration, from this podcast, over the past 200 episodes.

Now, often, I talk to MSPs. In fact, I’m talking to MSPs all the time. It’s on LinkedIn. It’s in Facebook groups. It’s face-to-face. It’s on Zoom calls. And I’ve been keeping notes, over the last few months, of some very specific stories of people who have been motivated, who’ve had a light bulb moment from this podcast and the difference it has made to them. So I’ve pulled together for you just some of them. We’ve got five times this podcast has changed MSPs’ lives. And you are going to hear about the MSP that grew revenue with stories, the MSP that won a client just from doing some cold calling, the MSP that quit a habit and never looked back, the MSP who makes money by sending emails, and the MSP who created the best website.

Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast Special.

So we’re going to start with the MSP who grew their revenue through better storytelling. Now, I’ve made a choice not to identify the MSPs who I’m using for these examples. As I say, they’re a mix of people from different platforms, but I have taken some notes, got my notes here, and I’m going to sort of summarize the conversations I’ve had. Sometimes, these have been quick conversations. Sometimes, they’ve been over a number of months or just tracking someone’s journey. But for this first person, they messaged me to say that they were so excited because they just signed up another client, and this client acknowledged the new style of marketing that they were doing, which we’re about to talk about in a second, was what made them sign up. So this MSP, they started approaching their marketing, more from a storytelling point of view than from a cold, hard fact point of view.

Now, this MSP had previously just been relying on referrals, which many people do, and there’s nothing wrong with referrals. But the problem with referrals is you’re not in charge of it. You are reliant upon other people bringing you business. And he’d noticed that the referrals were starting to slow down, that they were becoming unreliable. But this was about the same time that he and his wife had moved into a new house and the mortgage payments were higher. And you’ve been there, haven’t you? I’ve been there. You’ve been there. It’s a horrible situation to be in.

So this MSP joined some more forums, joined some more groups, started listening to podcasts, including this one, which was a smart move, and realized that he had a major flaw in his sales approach. Because what he told me was that, time and time again, he heard about the importance of telling stories about the benefits of great IT, and not just listing the features and services. So let’s replay the exact moment that he was talking about. We found this in Episode 176. This is Jon Weberg. He’s a business communications expert.

In order to build that trust, you have to illustrate you care from a variety of viewpoints. There are a variety of different kinds of people who view information differently. Some people are more analytical. Some people are more emotional. Some people want facts and figures. Some people want storytelling, because again, if you’re doing a little bit of storytelling, if you’re entertaining them, enticing them, if you’re educating them, because your job isn’t to sell, your job is to help. And by helping, they build trust. By building trust, they buy.

That really is a great clip from Jon about how people consume messages in different ways, and how you can entice them, especially with storytelling.

So as we were saying, a listener to this podcast, an MSP owner, was really grabbed by that, and here’s the rest of the conversation that he and I have had over a period of time. So he admits that marketing, of course, isn’t his strong point and that what he was doing in the past was just copying what he saw on other MSPs’ websites. Don’t you hear about a lot of people doing that? I always believe you should do the opposite. You should look at all of your competitors, look at all the things that they’ve got in common on their websites, and do something completely different, because it’s a way that you can stand out.

So he told me that a big moment for him is when he heard that clip in that podcast of Jon talking about combining storytelling, entertainment, and education. And he said that he was blending those aspects together that would sort of satisfy different types of people and help him stand out. So he actually embraced that, not just with his website but with everything, with his emails, to some postcards that he was sending out, to people that he was meeting at networking events. So he stopped talking about IT and started telling stories. He did a video, although he wasn’t happy with the video, and he was all about telling stories about how IT transforms businesses.

And what happened was, over a period of time, he started getting what he calls discovery calls with prospects. And then he got an email one day, which was a new client or a new prospect saying, “Please, can you give us a quote?” And that came in through the website. And when he asked them how they’d found out about him, they said, “You stand out because you help us make sense of technology. You don’t blind us with science.” Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t that exactly the kind of response that you want to get? You want someone to come to you and say, “I’ve picked you because you make technology make sense,” because they’re not going to come to you and say, “Oh, you seem to be the best at managed services.” That’s not how normal people think. Storytelling really is a great way of standing out in a very busy market.

This is an MSP Marketing Podcast Special.

Right now, you are enjoying our special episode to celebrate the 200th edition. It’s five times this podcast has changed MSPs’ lives. Now next up, we’ve got the MSP that won a client from cold calling.

So I’ve been having a number of messages with this MSP, it’s a different MSP, and his story is actually a fascinating one. Apparently, he’s a regular listener to this podcast. Hello, you know who you are, as I’m talking to you. And apparently, his wife loves listening to me as well. Not that she has a choice, I’m on in the car, often once a week when they’re on a journey, which is cool. And this MSP told me there was something he heard on the podcast that struck a chord so much that he put it into action straight away. And six months on from that, he’s now finding it a little easier to win new clients, spending more time with his wife.

Now, I don’t know if I could say the next bit because I know his wife listens to this podcast, not by choice, but because it’s on in the car, so she has no idea. Shall I say it? I’m going to say it. I’ll drop this MSP a message to warn him I’m going to say this in the episode. He’s just booked a cruise. It’s only a small cruise, but they’re going on a cruise together and it’s a surprise for her. So need to make sure this episode doesn’t get played out in the car.

Before we continue the story, let me play you the thing that he heard in the podcast which inspired him to make this change, which ultimately led to this secret cruise. The cat is out the bag now. So from Episode 133, this is Brian Gillette, and he is an MSP sales expert.

I cold call. I love cold calling MSP sales, because most MSPs suck at talking to people. I actually leave feeling more energized after two hours of cold calling than when I started. People actually desperately need what I am selling. Most people are their own biggest problem. The reason that they’ve been frustrated with their IT guy for 12 months is because they didn’t have the skills to fire their IT guy when they should have 12 months ago. So they’re not really mad at their IT guy, they’re mad at them. And so if I think of myself, not as the hero of this story, with my prospect being the foe, but I am the guide of the story and they are the hero, then I’m offering them an opportunity to transcend their current situation and get to a better situation, get to a better tomorrow. If I am the guide, the humble Sherpa, and they are the main character, then this is all about them. And their inability to see the value in that, it’s got nothing to do with how good of a guide I am, it just means they’re not ready to be hero.

That really is a great clip from Brian about how to look at cold calling differently. I’m not a big fan of cold calling, but the way that Brian positions it there, it makes complete sense.

And someone who listens to this podcast and MSP owner, he heard that and made some massive changes in his business. And I’ve got sort of my notes on our messages here. Here is the rest of what he said. So he said to me that finding new clients had always been slow and frustrating, and cold calling was never in his marketing mix. He had tried it a few times, but it was painful and he gave up. And anyone that tries cold calling the first time finds it painful and gives up. So unfortunately, the context of his business was that working long hours was the norm. He was always tired, hardly ever saw his wife, and she’d got used to it as well. I hear that a lot. Do you hear that? That’s a very common story.

When he heard Brian talking about cold calling in that way, it gave him… Well, I can’t remember if he said it was a glimmer of hope, or whether he said it was a case of I’ve got nothing left to try. So he threw himself into that, changed his mindset and approach, and couldn’t actually believe it when he worked. And what he discovered is, the more that he talked in a way that he talked to a friend, and the more that he talked to people about finding the solutions to their IT issues, the more meetings he actually got off the back of it. So yes, he took a lot of dialing and a lot of activity, but he was getting some meetings off the back of it.

And then, he found that his wife’s friend was looking for some part-time work, so he trained her on how to do this and essentially delegated that out to someone else. And soon, he was able to step away from the outbound calling and just focus on the actual meetings that were being booked for him, which is awesome, right? And a respectable proportion, he tells me, of these calls have gone on to become clients. That’s more stability for the business and more quality time with his wife, which is just awesome.

This is an MSP Marketing Podcast Special.

Hello and welcome. You are listening to our special episode to celebrate the 200th edition. Five times, this podcast has changed MSPs’ lives. Now next up, the story about the MSP that quit this habit and never looked back.

So I’ve been having a series of messages with this one. It’s a UK-based MSP, and the conversation that we’ve been having, which has been going on for some time, pretty much revolves around this. If I have a look at my notes. So we were actually introduced by a mutual connection. He discovered the podcast, and I remember this guy saying to me in one of his messages, he feels like he has now woken up. So he said, “Before starting my IT business in 2015, I realized now I’d been sleepwalking through the growth period.” Excuse me, since starting his business in 2015, he realized he’d been sleepwalking through the growth period. And there was growth in the business, but there was never a plan. So many of us do that. Even I did that when I first started my first business in 2005. There was no plan. There was just, let’s get clients, let’s take it from there.

But you need to have a plan. He had signed up a couple of managed service clients that he’s still got now, they’re very loyal, and he was still accepting other work. But that other work he now knows stunted his growth. And that’ll change when he heard Episode 157 of the podcast. Now from that episode, this is Brian Brammeier. He’s a successful MSP turned vendor, and this is what he had to say back then.

We needed to figure out a way to quantify what we’re going to make every month. I knew what my previous run rate was, but with break-fix, it’s harder to guarantee the income. If the customer doesn’t have a problem, they’re not necessarily calling you. So shifting from just in time fix to a more proactive plan gave me a little peace of mind. So that was the push that moved us into that category.

Yeah. Brian has so much to say there about quitting the break-fix drug. It’s a really interesting thing. And if you are still doing break-fix, that’s something maybe you should ponder in the days ahead.

Now, the MSP that I was just talking about, he listened to that back then and it woke him up to a brand new way of working. If I pick up the rest of my notes on our conversation. Listen to this, if a customer doesn’t have a problem, they’re not calling you. That’s a major thing, right? And that line stuck with this MSP. Because although he’d heard people talk about ditching break-fix many times, it was that line that stood out. Let me say it again. If a customer doesn’t have a problem, they’re not calling you.

So he wanted to grow the business through planning, proactive planning, and through putting systems in place, not just waiting for the phone to ring. Now, he did find it unsettling turning work away, and it was unsettling knowing that he was asking for more money overall, almost for nothing, because it wasn’t the simplicity of fix something and get paid for it. But of course, as anyone who has done the transition from break-fix to managed services knows, some clients do transfer, not all of them, but some clients transferred onto contracts. And now, he believes it’s a better business because he helps them before things break, but also can predict how his business is growing, which is great.

And I’ve heard various iterations of that story over the last few years. It’s amazing feedback and thank you very much. And I know you know that your story’s in this podcast, so please do continue to let me know how you get on.

Now, if you are still on break-fix and you are nervous about charging more overall on a contract, check out this clip. This is from a different episode. It’s from Episode 183, featuring MSP sales expert, David Newman. He had this to say on pricing.

My quick advice on this is, please, please, please, if you’re still doing hourly pricing, you absolutely have to stop, and move to value-based pricing and value-based fees. Every single time that one of our clients has said, “I’m afraid to raise my prices. I’m going to put myself out of business.” And what they really say is, “I’m going to price myself out of the market.” And when I hear, “I’m going to price myself out of the market”, with an MSP who is not doing well financially or not doing as well as they would like to, I say, “Well, yeah. You’re pricing yourself out of the broke market, and you’re pricing yourself into the premium market.” Because, my friends, I guarantee you, your MSP has lost business because you are too cheap.

So your pricing is baked into your positioning. Your positioning is baked into your pricing. The premium positioning automatically has a halo effect. They must be better. They must be smarter. They must be more reputable. They must get better results. They must have a higher level of client base. All MSPs, they basically have the future of their client firms in the palm of their hands. They can either totally crush it and destroy it and derail it, or they can make it amazing and awesome and streamlined and propelled into a brand new future. You want to position yourself as the firm that’s going to propel them into a brand new future, and you have to be reassuringly expensive.

This is an MSP Marketing Podcast Special.

Next up, let’s look at the story of the MSP who makes money by sending out emails.

Now, I think this is someone I met in real life, initially, and then obviously, we’ve exchanged messages since. And he was chatting about a few things. When I do meet people, I like to ask them, what do they remember from the podcast, because it helps me understand what’s kind of cut through. And he was telling me about a few things that he remembered, but especially the thing was about email marketing, and how he’d tried email marketing and it had really helped his MSP to grow. So I’ve kind of got my notes here on his view on email marketing.

He started the business around about 2009. By 2014, his family was growing and he needed more money. That’s a familiar story, isn’t it? And while he was investigating different tactics, he read half a book, I remember him saying that, about how important it is to send emails. Bearing in mind that email marketing, what are we talking about here? Nine years ago. Nine years ago, email marketing was probably five to 10 times more powerful than it is today. So email marketing still has power in 2023, but not as powerful as it was back in 2014.

So he’d already collected a few hundred email addresses from his previous customers and from prospect conversations that hadn’t gone anywhere, so he thought he’d give it a go. Signed up for a free Mailchimp account and created his first email. And that was his first mistake. Because what I want to do at this point is I want to replay the piece from the podcast that he heard that really helped him. And obviously, this is a number of years on from when he sent that first email out in 2014. This is from Episode 143, and it’s email marketing expert, Nate Nate Freedman.

My number one rule of sending a cold email is to be normal. So if you are sending a cold email, and an agency has suggested it, maybe you’ve read in an ebook or a blog somewhere how to format a cold email, and you’re using a template, and you’re about to hit send and you’re like, “I don’t think I would send that”, stop yourself and don’t do it. You need to send a normal email, like you would send to somebody else. So I think that’s the number one golden rule about sending an email.

I think the content, it’s got to be relevant. And I think your goal with this is not to pitch them on your services. I think we all know basic sales and marketing strategy is that you don’t pitch on your services. We’ve all heard this analogy. When you talk about dating and you compare it to asking someone to get married on the first date, it’s the same thing. What you’re doing with a cold email, that initial outreach, is trying to find out what’s going on. Do you work with an IT company? Do you have any issues with IT? How many employees do you have? How many users do you have? Just some of these basic questions that maybe you need to know before you get into a sales process.

Nate really is great, and what he was saying there about the importance of being more human and not just pitching your services in cold emails is absolutely right. So let’s just return back to this story, and it was the person, the MSP, who was telling me this, told me how that podcast clip helped him to fix his email problems.

If we go back to 2014, when he’d loaded that first email into Mailchimp, and he clicked the go button, and prayed that a few of the people whose emailing would reply, and the wheels would start moving. And nothing. He’d sent out that email to a couple of hundred previous customers and people that he’d met, and there was no response whatsoever, no replies whatsoever. He got a few bounced emails from email addresses that no longer existed, and several people, of course, hit the unsubscribe button, which does always happen the first time you email people. They were people who’d been friendly on email previously, but for whatever reason, they just didn’t want to be on his email list. And that was pretty disheartening for him, as you can imagine. And if you’ve ever been in this situation, this experience, you’ll know it’s exactly the same.

So a few weeks went by, this is back in 2014 still, and he plucked up the courage to try again. Spent hours creating another email. Poured over the structure of it. Spell checked it within an inch of its life. Clicked send. And it was a bulletproof list of reasons why someone would want to work with his MSP. And again, nothing. Absolutely nothing. And that was back in 2014, and he didn’t log into Mailchimp again. Now this is a great place to pause once more, and to look at that experience of email marketing and find another gem that helped him from the podcast. So back from Episode 143 again, it’s Nate Freedman once more, talking about specific email content tips and tricks.

When you are doing this cold outreach, there has to be a reason. There has to be a bridge from, I am this random person emailing you or calling you or whatever it is, to I’m actually a normal person communicating with you for a regular reason. So a perfect bridge would be like joining BNI. And I think that’s a great example of if you’re going to make calls, those are people that would be really interested. And you say, “Yeah, I’m…”

When you’re trying to get through to the secretary, you’re trying to get through the gatekeeper, how much easier is that? If it’s yes, “I’m a fellow BNI member, just looking to connect with him and just have a few questions about BNI, and I want to introduce myself to you guys.” The secretary’s going to be like, “Oh, great. It’s someone who’s in the BNI chapter, with the owner who I know goes to BNI every Wednesday morning. This is a normal conversation that should be had.” As opposed to, “Who are you?” “We’re this IT company, and really, we just want to sell you guys something. And that’s the only reason we’re calling.” So I think if you have a strong bridge, yeah, those tactics, they all work better. And definitely calling works better. So BNI is a great bridge.

Joining an organization is a great bridge. Geography can be a bridge. “Hey, we’re actually just three minutes down the road.” I’ve received an email before, where people send a BombBomb or a Loom video. I think that’s another great tactic to include in your cold email, a 30-second personalized video, with just a Google map showing, “Hey, this is where you guys are. This is where we are. We’d love to meet you. If you’re ever in the area, let me stop by and say hello. I just want to share about our services.” And I think that type of stuff, if you’ve got a strong link, a strong bridge, that’s one of the major ways to have success.

That’s such a great idea about finding the bridge with your leads or your prospects. So what did our friendly MSP owner do with this new knowledge? Let’s just finish off the rest of his story.

When he heard the episodes with Nate, he says it was a light bulb moment. And he realized that those emails he’d tried all those years before were boring, salesy and spammy. So he did some research, kept his content human, and generated some new emails. He’s on a new and different CRM now, I can’t remember which one. He has a renewed sense of confidence, and he sent out some emails. And he said, he’s not getting an earth-shattering volume of replies. The click-through rate and the open rate aren’t anything to write home about. But there have been some replies and some people visiting his website.

And the unexpected benefit is, when he’s made phone calls to people. So one of the things I’ve recommended previously on the podcast is, when you send out an email, you look at who’s opened it, or particularly, who’s clicked through. And I know that’s not a precise science because of link scanners and Apple Mail pre-opens all the emails. But you can look at who’s opened something and you can say, “Right, if that didn’t happen in the first 10 seconds or 20 seconds or so, it’s probably a human that’s done that. Let’s just call that person, because we know they’re active. We know they’re alive, let’s just call them.” And this MSP said that it’s made the follow-up phone calls so much easier. He’s had a warmer response, and he has won some new business, thanks to his email-led approach, which is awesome to hear.

This is an MSP Marketing Podcast Special.

Hello. You are listening to our special episode to celebrate the 200th edition. We are looking at five times that this podcast has changed MSPs’ lives. And somehow, we’re on our final success story.

This is the MSP who created the best website, and thank you to this podcast listener who owns an MSP in the US, and we’ve been having a conversation about this. If I look at my notes of the conversation, it’s, “Hey, Paul. Everywhere you turn in business, you always hear that it’s important to have a website. Over the years, whenever I heard that reminder, I kind of felt pretty good because our MSP had a good website, big fat tick. Although my MSP had been experiencing sluggish growth over the last few years, and I’ve been trying a variety of sales and marketing tactics, I’d never considered our website was something holding us back, until your podcast.”

So what’s David talking about here? Well, obviously, your website’s improvement is a common thread in the show, because it’s so important. If the website isn’t right, it’s the shop front. If the website isn’t right, then the prospect is judging you in ways we don’t want them to judge you. And it is so clear and relatively so easy to get your website to be absolutely spot on. There are so many things you can do, improving the headline, images, videos, good call to actions, engagement tools, and social proof. All of these things need to be there, and that’s just on your homepage. So how did this MSP that I’ve been speaking to make the best website? Well, he didn’t make the perfect website because the perfect website doesn’t exist. But he did make the best website compared to his local competition. And this is how his story continues on.

He says, “I was desperate to take on an extra tech to free me from the day-to-day work, but I needed to build a better sales pipeline to cover their salary. Now, I’d heard you talk about the common elements in the websites of leading MSPs.” That’s some of those things that I was just mentioning. “And I knew straight away that our website wasn’t good enough. It could even be turning potential clients away,” he said. “So making the changes on our website had dramatic results to our ability to warm up prospects. We got rid of the stock images. We put some real humans on the business.” He became the face of the business, which is great. “We had loads of client testimonials, a couple of videos, and overhauled all the text.” And he found a writer to do that.

So he goes on to say that, “Traffic improved slightly, but the biggest increase came in the number of positive warm conversations with prospects. They were all impressed with how we presented ourselves, compared to all of the other MSPs in town.” That’s amazing feedback, and I’ve heard that from a few people, a few stories like that. Website refreshes are always a nightmare. It always takes six times longer than you think it’s going to take, but it really is worth it.

Now actually, in the messaging there, he actually said, “They’re all impressed with how we presented ourselves across all of our platforms, compared to other MSPs in town.” And what does he mean by other platforms? Well, as we wrap up this special episode, let’s hear from one more previous guest, about the importance of other platforms and how they work alongside your website. This is Andrew Down. He’s an MSP expert with some great advice, from Episode 159.

Everyone knows you need a website, just like everyone assumes you need a store, a brick and mortar retail store. But if you don’t have the roads built to the store, and you don’t have signage up in your city promoting the location, it’s really hard to drive awareness and views. And so, it’s not just about the website, it’s that whole digital customer journey of awareness and online reviews and credibility and all of those pieces of the puzzle. A great website that no one goes to is just like a great podcast that no one listens to, and you have lots of listeners. And so it’s a great resource that people are coming and learning these digestible little nuggets of information. If no one was listening, we could have the most amazing conversation, and you and I would love it, but then it just dies there.

So your website isn’t the be all and end all of your marketing. Like Andrew said, you could have the very best website in the world, but if no one visits, what have you really got? And that’s why it’s so important to build out your whole marketing system.

But, if you are wondering how exactly to flesh out that fuller marketing system, and where you’re going to find the content to fill it, it’s blatant plug time. Please do check out my MSP Marketing Edge Service. We give you all the tools and content that you need to attract new leads, warm them up, and convert them into sales appointments. And we only work with one MSP per area, so you can see whether or not your area is locked or whether or not it’s still free. And to do that, you just go to mspmarketingedge.com.

Right. We are done. Thank you so much for listening. And of course, if you ever have any success stories, if anything you’ve heard in this podcast or something you’ve read on my website, no matter how big or small, please do drop me an email. It’s me, personally me, at the end of this email address. I love hearing about things that you’ve done which have changed your business, whether it’s the big things like we’ve been talking about today, or even just something small that you’ve done to improve your marketing, and therefore, improve your business. My email address is hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Coming up. Coming up next week.

Hi, my name is Manuj Agarwal, a global thought leader in AI. AI is going to revolutionize the world and create one of the biggest wealth transfers in the human history. If you want to be part of this wealth transfer and take advantage of AI to grow your business, then listen to the podcast episode.

We are back to our usual format next week. And on top of that fantastic interview, we’ll be looking at how many new users away you are from potentially having to hire a new technician. Join me next Tuesday, and have a very profitable week in your MSP.

Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world, Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.