Episode 204: New client? Why you should ask for a 3 year contract

NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast.

Welcome back to the show. We have an absolute cracker for you this week and this is what’s coming up.

[00:00:14] Speaker B: Hey, I’m Braith Bamkin, and if you’ve ever wondered about how you get referrals into your MSP, join me in the podcast where I’m going to share some tips and tricks on how to get your referral ready.

[00:00:28] Speaker A: And on top of that interview with Braith, we’re also going to be talking about contract length. I believe every new client should be joining you on a three year contract. What do you think? Let’s find out later on.

Paul Green’s, MSP Marketing Podcast so you finally reach that point where you’re ready to start investing time, working on the business rather than in the business. Of course, working in the business is doing technical Work, it’s doing admin, it’s doing accounts, anything that kind of just stuff that keeps the business running or keeps the delivery going. And we all work in the business to a certain extent at the beginning of our business ownership careers, we spend more time working in the business than on the business. But if you want to get serious about growing it, you’ve got to work on it. So on it is activities that get you more new Clients, get those clients to spend more, and get them to choose to buy more from you. Now, let’s say you’ve made that decision that yes, right, I’m going to do it. I’m going to spend more time working on the business in future. Sometimes when I’m talking to MSPs, and I talk to MSPs all the time, almost every single day, sometimes they say to me, right, I’m going to start working more on the business. I’ve put aside Thursdays or some other day. And there’s always a little part of me inside that goes, oh no, really? Because here’s the thing. If you put aside an entire day to work on your business, that feels good to you, it’s something you can block out in your calendar. It feels like you’re really giving it some substantial resources. And your mindset is very much a case of, right, I’m going to do this all day Thursday. We’re going to do nothing but grow the business. Grow the business. RA the problem with having a massive chunk of time once a week is that that time can far too easily be stolen by other things, like the big client problem that comes in on a Wednesday afternoon. And quite rightly, you’d get to Thursday morning and the problem hasn’t been fixed and you’d think, well, actually we need to or I need to jump in and fix that problem with my team. That’s understandable. Everyone else would do exactly the same thing. Or maybe if you’re not feeling too well on that Thursday and you’re not 100%. And as business owners, we try to power through, don’t we? But even we have times where we should just R and R rather than try and power ourselves through. And then of course there’s staff crises, family crises, your kids sports day, there’s a hundred different things which can come along and steal your time. And the biggest problem with just having a day a week when you’re working on the business is if something steals that day from you, you’ve skipped an entire week and you’re not doing any work on the business for that entire week versus the other way of doing it. And this is my preferred option. My preferred option is that you find a chunk of time every day and I mean every weekday. I don’t expect you to work on your business at the weekends. It’s more important that you get a rest at the weekend. But what if you could find, let’s say 60 to 90 minutes every single weekday to work on your business? Of course you’re going to lose some of those 60 to 90 minutes sessions. Of course you are. All those things I was just talking about are going to come and steal those 60 to 90 minutes sessions from you. But here’s the thing. If you lose today’s session you can pick up again tomorrow. If you lose tomorrow’s session, you can pick up again the day after. Do you see how exciting that is? You can take the same amount of time. Well, what would it be? I’m going to try and do some on the fly maths here. Let’s say it was 60 minutes. You do 60 minutes a day, that’s 5 hours in a week, right? So that’s pretty much what, a half a day? A half a day in one go? Far too easily wiped out. And you are not as productive working 5 hours in a block as you think you are. We all kind of become less productive and less efficient the longer the day goes on and the older we get, says the aging graying 49 year old. But actually that 60 to 90 minutes today. You can start that fresh today and fresh tomorrow and fresh the day after. Why 60 to 90 minutes? Because actually that’s a peak amount of time to do a set of activities if you’re very focused with that time. So you hide yourself away from your staff and your family and your clients or maybe do early in the morning or find a place to hide or turn off your phone. Disable teams have no notifications from your PSA. It’s surprising what you can get done in that time, particularly if that 90 minutes is a maximum. You say to yourself, I’m only going to do 90 minutes and then I’m going to stop. And the beauty of that is you’ve got a deadline. And when you’ve got a deadline you work up towards that deadline. It’s like when you go on holiday or on vacation, isn’t it? And the day before you go the last working day. You get like six days worth of work done in that day. I know you’re exhausted, but the reason you do it is because you’ve got an immovable deadline, which is, hey, I’ve got to switch off at 07:00 tonight. Got to pack a suitcase and drive to the airport. And very rarely do we miss that kind of deadline. So if and when, as you’re starting to plan working on your business more, please, please tackle that in small chunks. And those small chunks, 60 to 90 minutes every day. It’s a much more robust way of doing it than trying to do it all in one big day a week. Here’s this week’s clever idea.

Amazing news. You have got a brand new client. You’ve done all the hard work. You’ve generated the lead. The lead turned into a prospect. You had a zoom call with them. You went out and did a sales meeting. You did an in person proposal and you had a scheduled follow up. That, by the way, being an ideal sales sequence. And you just got the call or the email from your brand new client saying, yes, we’re in. The price is good. We like you guys. We think we’re a good fit. Let’s do it. Amazing. Right? Here’s the question. How long are you going to ask them to commit to you? How long is your contract length? Do you ask for twelve months? Do you ask for longer? Do you even have a specified contract length or do you just do it on a month by month basis? Now, before I start talking in this bit, let me first of all say there is no right or wrong way to do this. There is only the way that’s best for you. However, saying that if I was advising you, I would always advise you to ask for a fixed length contract and ideally you would ask for at least two years, possibly even three years. And yes, MSPs. Do this. I know of a number of MSPs that do ask for three year contracts. Now, let’s look at the pros and cons of this. Let’s look at the psychology of this from your point of view. If you ask someone to make a three year commitment to you, you are saying to them, we are so good at what we do that we are very happy being committed to you for three years. And here’s the thing, Mr. Or Mrs. New Client, we want you to make a commitment back to us for an equal period of time. Because when the two parties, when the two of us agree that we’re going to have a long term marriage, a long term agreement together, long term relationship, then we’re going to take a long view on everything. We’re not going to do silly short term stuff. We’re going to have very much a long term view. Now, you may be recoiling in horror at the moment from the thought of asking your clients from a three year contract. Maybe because that’s fear. Maybe because you don’t want to be committed to them at any point. Or maybe you think, well, no one’s going to sign up for a three year contract. Sometimes you don’t know until you ask. And if you ask with confidence you’d be surprised what you can get away with. Here’s an idea for you if the idea of a three year contract is not really for you. Well actually I’ll give you two ideas. The first idea is this if you’re not confident asking a new client for a three year contract, ask them for a standard year or month by month, whatever you do right now. But when you get your existing clients renewing, ask them for a three year contract. Because let’s say you’ve got someone who’s been with you for let’s say it’s two or three years already. So every year they sign a new contract and you say to them, hey, we would like you to sign a three year contract, please to commit us to you, to commit you to us. And also it fixes in your price for three years. And I know you need to think through the economics of that. Or maybe the contract has a price rise every twelve months. So just that the fact they’re in a three year contract doesn’t make any difference to the actual money coming in. It’s going to go up every year. In fact that would be a smart way to do it. So that’s the first idea is to just make it easy on yourself by asking someone you already have a relationship with to try that easy. Idea number two is if you want to try this with brand new clients, insert a get out of jail free card for them. Or this is sometimes called a we hate you clause. So this could be as simple as you have it written into the contract that at any point in their 1st 90 days, maybe even 180 days, which is six months, if at any point they feel that the relationship isn’t right or maybe it’s a two way thing. In fact I think it’s always very smart to make this a two way thing. If at any point in the first, however many days, 90 days, 180 days, we don’t feel that we’re the right fit for you, or we feel that we’ve become mismatched, or you feel that we’ve become mismatched, we can walk away with a reasonable notice period, which might be a month notice, say, just so that you can undo what has been done. And this is that get out of jail free card or the we hate you clause. Essentially what you’re going to do is you’re going to guarantee that your new client is so satisfied with you that if they’re not you will release them from the contract at any point. In fact, you could argue that even on a three year contract, you could say to them, although this is a three year contract, you’ve got to get out of jail free card at any point during that contract. If you’re unhappy, you can terminate the contract with a three month notice period. And I know that goes against the point of having a three year contract, and I’m sure any lawyer listening to this would have a complete meltdown and seizure. But what I’m talking about here is the psychology of getting people to commit to you. We are derisking it for the clients. We’re asking them to make a three year commitment. But we’re saying to them, if it doesn’t work out, for whatever reason, you can walk away with a reasonable notice period for such a long contract. Because here’s the thing. If you had a client and they’d signed a long contract and a year in, they said to you guys, you’re just not the right people for us. We’re not very happy with you. The service levels aren’t right, your strategic advice isn’t good. This wouldn’t be a surprise to you, would it? It’s a 99% chance that you would know that there was a problem, right, because the work that we do with people, particularly when we’re close working them and what you do, you pick up when there’s a level of dissatisfaction. And actually the chances are that a client that isn’t happy with you is probably a bit of a nightmare client anyway, right? So if a nightmare client, someone came to you and said they weren’t happy, even if you were in the middle of a contract, what would you do? You’d release them from that contract, right? Of course you would. Most businesses would. And this is why well, most businesses would unless they were going through a process of selling the business, right? Those companies that are locking you into three year contracts or locking people in three year contracts and absolutely they must be honored, whatever. There’s a different strategic reason for that. But for the average MSP like yours, if you lock someone into a three year contract and they’re unhappy, of course you’d let them go because you don’t want to have the hassle and the hell of servicing an unhappy client for the remainder of their contract. So if you’re willing to do that anyway, we call that a hidden guarantee. It’s a silent hidden guarantee that if they’re unhappy, you would make them happy by letting them go. So therefore, you might as well make that a reason to join your MSP. Do you know what? You could take on 100 clients on that basis. One of them will trigger that unhappiness guarantee, the other 99 won’t. Because they have walked into the relationship thinking, actually, these people are so reasonable, let’s try these people, let’s go with them. We can always walk away from it if it doesn’t work. So what length contract do you ask for now and more importantly, are you brave enough to ask for a three year contract? Paul’s? Paul’s Blatant Plug would you like to see something sneaky kind of behind the scenes? Now, if you’re listening to this podcast, and it’s audio only, the next 5 seconds is going to mean nothing to you. But if you are watching this on YouTube right now, let me reveal some magic. Producer Simon Show. The green screen. Ta DA. Yes. I’m actually filming this in front of a green screen. It’s a brand new studio setup that we’ve had put in place in my house here in Milton Keynes in the UK. And it’s pretty dominant. It dominates my office. I’ve got these amazing lights and a green screen behind me and a microphone up there. And we’ve taken a lot of time throughout this year to get this setup absolutely spot on. The reason we’ve done that is we are tripling down on our YouTube content. We’ve got some pretty good content on there right now, but we’ve been on some training courses, we’ve learnt about storytelling, we’ve got some great new resources coming in and we’ve doing some amazing things with our editing. And the reason we’re doing that is to produce better YouTube videos for you to keep you entertained. So when you’re kicking back with a beer on a Friday night and you don’t want to read a magazine or scroll through something on your phone, you can watch me on YouTube. That sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Yeah, many of my friends wouldn’t think so. But hey, if you want to see what content we’ve got right now, we haven’t released any of the new stuff yet. The new stuff is coming very soon. But if you want to see what we’ve got for you right now, you can kill hours while learning about out to grow your business@youtube.com slash MSP Marketing big Interview hey, everyone.

[00:14:19] Speaker B: My name is Braith Bamkin. I’m super excited to be on the podcast today. My background is in small business and I’m currently the Executive director of B. I here in Central Australia, mate.

[00:14:31] Speaker A: Welcome, welcome. We scour the globe to find the very, very best experts. And we found you, Braith, because we want you to talk today about getting referrals. Now, we’re going to talk about BNI later in the interview because it can be a very powerful tool, particularly for MSPs. But the big picture, the big reason we want you here is to talk about referrals. How do you get more referrals? How do you qualify them? How do you get people to refer you in the right way? Before we get on to that, let’s hear a little bit of background about you. So you’re not an MSP, but you now, as you say, you own, I think it was the biggest BNI franchise in Australia. You were telling me before the interview, so how did you get to this point? What’s your background?

[00:15:11] Speaker B: Well, I started out in the telco world. So I do have a little bit of a techie understanding, but I was in the sales and marketing area of that, and I was actually around with Nokia before nokia was cool. I was there when the first little tiny phones came out, the three series. I don’t know if your guests may remember this. There was a little game called snake. We had a three hour training session in the late 90s on how to use snake. So that’s how old I am in the tech world. But I moved from telco, I got a redundancy, and I went overseas and went to the UK, went to Europe, traveled, came back, applied for a job to be the national sales and marketing manager for a mattress company, of all things. It was a franchising thing, so I ended up buying one of their franchises, and that’s how I got myself into BNI. And one thing led to another. And like the gillette guy, I loved the business so much, I bought it.

[00:16:05] Speaker A: Fantastic. Yes. It wasn’t the gillette guy, it was the Remington guy.

[00:16:08] Speaker B: I’m Remington. Okay.

[00:16:12] Speaker A: Victor. Oh, it’ll come to me. I’ve got his book. I’ve got his somewhere on one of these bookshelves near me. I’ve got his books. Anyway, I’ll come back to me in a second, but yeah. So you bought the business. Fantastic. And you operate, is it now 22 chapters across Melbourne?

[00:16:26] Speaker B: Yeah, 22 chapters across Melbourne. It’s great. Yeah.

[00:16:29] Speaker A: So you must be attending a lot of early morning meetings and eating a lot of breakfasts.

[00:16:34] Speaker B: I have to say, I have a really great team, so I’m pretty good. I don’t go to more than two or three a week, and these days I actually don’t eat breakfast because I think I’ve eaten more cooked breakfast than anyone on the planet. So these days I just give it a miss.

[00:16:48] Speaker A: Yeah. No, I can imagine. I guess it’s one of the hazards of the job with a job like yours. So referrals, so everyone loves referrals, and I think most MSPs, if they could get enough referrals, they would happily just sit back and make that their main marketing channel. Because, of course, a referral is work that turns up, or potential work that turns up. That’s yours to lose. So if I’m looking for, well, as we’re speaking now, Braith and around me in the house, I’m having work done.

I’ve got a guy out in front of me fixing my drive. There’s a guy out in my garage right now putting some plaster boards up. There’s some people in my office putting some soundproofing up. And a lot of those people have come to me through referrals where I’ve said to one builder, hey, I need someone who can do XYZ. Can you find me someone? And they’ll say, oh yeah, go and speak to Jim. And suddenly, in my mind, because I’m not an expert in buying these things, in my mind, if one person has said to me, oh, I bought from Jim and he’s a safe guy to use. The price and all of the other factors are less important to me than trust. And I think that’s what makes referrals so powerful. It’s where someone you trust or someone you have trust in recommends the person that they are already buying from. Now in your experience, what is it that stops most MSPs from getting more and more referrals?

[00:18:11] Speaker B: Well, can we take a step back, if you don’t mind, and let’s just explain what a referral is because I think if people understand this, it might make wanting to get more of them a little bit more attractive. So a lot of people think don’t know the difference between leads and referrals. So a lead is, I say, Mate, go and call this guy because he needs his computer fixed. You call up my mate. My mate goes, Braith, I don’t know him, why is he giving you my number? And it’s just a cold call and we don’t want to be doing cold calls in our life. And if you want to do cold calls, there’s a lot easier ways to do it. But if it’s a referral, I’ve referred somebody to a colleague who has said I have a problem, my tech at work is not working, my emails are slow, I can’t download files, my staff are losing information there. I really need somebody to help with that. And I say, hey, look, I know somebody who’s an MSP who can come in and support you to get the problems that you have solved. So my mate’s really happy because he hears problems solved and I’ve told him to expect a call from my mate the MSP. My mate the MSP calls up and goes, oh, Braith gave me your details, great. I’ve been expecting your call blurt. This is my problem. So instantly you’ve got a warm introduction, they’re expecting your call and they want to do business with you. It’s a triangle. And if you think about the sides of a triangle, if I’m up the top, I have trust with my mate, with the problem computer and my mate the MSP supplier. And when I give a referral, there is a closure of the bottom of that triangle and that’s the trust transfer. So you talked about it a bit before you trust somebody once you’ve been given their details. When I close that triangle, we have a triangle of trust and a triangle is pretty hard to break, right? So that’s how referrals work. So in answer to your question, there was a very long way to get there. If you can solve people’s problems and that’s all a referral is, solving someone’s problems. And you have been given a warm introduction, you don’t have to sell anymore. It is simply, how do I help you to get your problems solved? It’s a really nice way to do business.

[00:20:16] Speaker A: It is. It’s a beautiful way to do business. And what’s wonderful about the answer you’ve just given is I can ask the same question again, which is, now you’ve explained to us why referrals are so powerful. And I love the concept of the triangle of trust. I will be stealing that one. Thank you. Adapting it. Anyway, what stops MSPs from getting more referrals?

[00:20:36] Speaker B: Well, firstly, they don’t know who to ask for. So a lot of times, if I don’t know how to help you because you haven’t explained it to me, I can’t introduce you to somebody. So I’ve got to have a relationship with an MSP, and that MSP has to be training me effectively on how to introduce them. So that takes time. Trust takes time, and you need to invest in the relationship. So a lot of people think that, I meet you once for lunch and you’re going to open up your little black book and off we go. You’re going to have all your connections. But I don’t know about you, but I know a lot of people, and I’m really tight with my network because if I refer you and you don’t do a good job, they don’t care about you, they care about me. It’s me that’s done the bad thing. So our reputation and our relationship has been diminished. So really it is about investing the time to build the relationships, which will increase trust, which affords you the right to teach me how you would like to be introduced. Because then you say to me, hey, if you hear people say, I have this problem, I know MSPs usually are helping people who have problems with emails, slow emails, files not downloading, malware, all the stuff that people who aren’t technical just we don’t want to know about. We just want it fixed. So if you teach me what to listen for, because I’m sure there are lots of technical terms that your MSPs are going, well, this is, this is that. I don’t know what they are, I don’t need to know what they are, but I need to know what the problem is that people are facing. And if you tell me a story on how you have solved someone’s problems, I’m going to remember that story. Because our brain can latch on to a story and we can repeat it. And if I trust you, I’m going to tell you, hey, this bloke knows what he’s talking about because and I share the story, I love this.

[00:22:32] Speaker A: I love it because what you’re talking about here is turning other people into your unwitting but willing salesforce. Right? And you’re absolutely right. It’s not about technical. Ordinary business owners and managers do not pick an MSP based on technical things.

They pick them based on how they feel emotionally, whether they can trust them, whether they seem to click it’s, all of those kind of things. And that’s why you can unleash a salesforce on the world. Now, putting BNI to one side, because that’s an obvious solution, which we are going to talk about in a second. What other practical things can MSP owners do to start to get more referrals? So how do they build that relationship of trust with other people who know the kind of prospects they want to reach? And how do they get those stories out there?

[00:23:23] Speaker B: That’s a great question. I think a lot of people look at the end user as the person they want to be connected to. So I hear often people say, I want to be connected to legal service firms who have 100 seats or more and that’s great, and you will get introduced to them. But think about who in the buying cycle is hanging out with those dream customers and engaging with them before they have the problem that you are going to solve. So, for example, in the legal services firm, it might be business coaches, it might be accountants. I don’t know who’s going to be in the sales cycle beforehand because I don’t know the industry of MSPs as well as you guys do. But you’ve got to know where the sales cycle is and who’s speaking to your client before there is a problem that they need to have solved. And understanding that sales cycle means that you can get in before the decision is made. Because ultimately, once the decision is made, you’re out of the picture. Right? So if somebody’s already decided to use MSP Bloke down the road, even if I’ve got a great relationship with you, that job is over. So you need to get ahead of the curve. So tell me who are great referral partners and then build relationships with those referral partners and MSPs? It might be office fit out people businesses, it might be hardware suppliers, it might be software suppliers, it could even be web designers or software people who are working within businesses and they identify problems in that business once they’ve got in there and worked with them.

We’ve all had the experience where you’ve had this fabulous new website built, but it’s going like a snail in the office and you’ve obviously got a problem. So you need somebody to come in and solve that. Even though you’ve got, I don’t know if you have broadband in the UK, but broadband or whatever the service is, you’ve got a problem, you need somebody to come in there and fix it. So those guys know the clients before you do. So build relationships with those.

[00:25:27] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Just just of interest, here in the UK, we have dial up, so we have to dial a number and put the phone sort of into a receiver and it goes like that. I am joking.

[00:25:40] Speaker B: Yes, we have a smart comment to make, but I don’t think I will.

You might be way ahead of us. You might have something even more no.

[00:25:51] Speaker A: Oh, no. This is a vaguely monopolized national. Quasi national telecoms network that you ask any UK MSP well, UK MSPs will get this. The word they fear the most is the word openreach. Openreach is the national company that looks after all the telecoms infrastructure. So you ask them for a new line, and eight weeks down the line, they’ll reply. It’s that kind of thing.

[00:26:16] Speaker B: I think we have that in Australia, too.

[00:26:19] Speaker A: You always think countries like Australia and the US. Would be so much further ahead, but hey, there we go. You’re actually right. Find other people who know that there’s likely to be a change or a problem coming. So you’re right to say web design agencies. Web design agencies are an amazing source of referrals because someone will say to their web design agency, hey, you guys do computers. Can you help us with ours? We’ve got this problem. And of course, web design agencies, they don’t even know how to do email properly, right? So how would they know to do anything else?

[00:26:49] Speaker B: So, you know what makes that really powerful is if you help those people to solve their clients problems, it makes them more sticky. So if they have a client saying, hey, we need this problem solved, and you can be introduced really quickly to solve that problem, everyone is a winner. So often people think, well, why would they refer me? Well, the reason they will refer you is because they want to help their clients make them look good as well.

[00:27:12] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly that. In fact, you’re making their lives easier. And the reward that you get for that is they will push work your way, and that can work both ways as well, which is pretty exciting. Okay. Let’s talk about BNI. So you loved it so much. Victor Kayam. That was the name that’s the Remington guy. If you don’t know this story, there’s a series of adverts which you can find on YouTube from the 1980s, starring this guy called Victor Kayam, who’s using a Remington shaver. And he said, I love the company so much, I bought it. Which is true. He actually did buy the company. And his autobiography, which came out in the 80s, I’ve got a copy of it somewhere. You can get it for it’s about 50, $60 on ebay. And it’s an amazing story of how he basically risks everything.

He was just a kind of a mid level executive in a normal corporation and leveraged every possible cent he could to buy this failing Remington company and then turned it around. It’s a great story, but yeah. So you bought the franchise. You’re obviously b and I, through and through, cut you, you bleed b and I now, I did a couple of years in BNI in 2005, and that was with a different you make it.

[00:28:24] Speaker B: Sound like a sentence.

[00:28:27] Speaker A: Not a sentence at all.

I enjoyed my years. So when I was looking for general marketing business, it worked very well for me, and then I discovered the power of verticals and niching, and I went off down a separate route, and I went down the care route. And at the time, I was looking for veterinarians and opticians or optometrists and dentists, and they weren’t in BNI, so I didn’t reach them. But I deal with lots of MSPs. I talk to lots of MSPs, and those who are in BNI for a number of years sing its praises. And it seems to be that the trick is getting into the right kind of group. So can you explain what would be a good group for an MSP and what would be a bad group or a group that isn’t quite as a good sure, sure.

[00:29:11] Speaker B: Well, first of all, I would say that no matter where you go in the BNI world, if you come with the right mindset, you’re already ahead of the game. So I think a lot of people come to b. I. And they expect things to fall in their lap straight away. But B I Is a long, slow burn. So wherever you go in the b. I. World, you’ve got to think about this as a two to three year.

Think of it like an apprenticeship. You will get business along the way, but it takes time for that pipeline to fill up. What you’re looking for is people in a chapter that are natural referral partners. So we talked before about the software people, the web people, the accountants, the business coaches, people who are speaking to your clients before they need your product or service. So we call them in BNI contact spheres. So they’re groups of people that share the same client but don’t compete and are on the same side of the buying cycle. So that’s where you go. But what I will tell you about any BNI chapter, if you walk in the room and you feel comfortable with the people that are in the room, it doesn’t matter whether or not you’ve got your natural referral partners in there, because you’re trying to tap into the people in the room. Whose networks do you want to access? And if you feel comfortable with the culture, you’re always going to be ahead of the curve, because every BNI chapter around the world, in every language is the same agenda and process. But they’re all different because human beings come together in groups, and they create a culture. So you want to be in a room where you feel the right cultural fit for yourself.

[00:30:47] Speaker A: Yes. So I guess that would mean a group where you’ve got a CPA, you’ve got a lawyer, you’ve got other people who are talking to b, two b clients. Whereas if you’ve got a group that’s perhaps more based around trades, so where you’ve got a plumber, a builder, a carpenter, you can see that there’s. I don’t know if this is a concept within BNI or just in my head, but almost like affinity groups so carpenters and builders and carpet fitters, they’re all dealing with the same kind of people who are looking for people like them, and the same with accountants, web designers, all of that kind of stuff. A lot of MSPs struggle to find an empty chapter because the It seat has been filled. So I guess with that, you have to just get to know the chapter director of the local area and look for new chapters opening up in the future.

[00:31:34] Speaker B: Well, there’s always opportunity. People come and people go. Like things happen in their businesses, their lives. They get married, they move house, they sell their businesses, all sorts of stuff. So there’s always opportunity to join A-B-I chapter. So I’d make myself aware of what’s around you and make myself aware of who you need to speak to to get in there.

[00:31:59] Speaker A: Simple as that.

[00:32:00] Speaker B: Simple as that.

[00:32:01] Speaker A: So essentially, play the long game and you’ll find a way.

[00:32:04] Speaker B: Yes?

[00:32:05] Speaker A: Yes. Okay. Braith. Thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. I’ve had a blast with you today. It’s been absolutely great fun. Now, I know that you have a ton of resources on your website as well to help business owners, not just people involved with B I, but business owners around the world and MSPs. Tell us what you’ve got available and how can we access it?

[00:32:24] Speaker B: Look, I’ve got a really cool free course. It’ll take you about just over an hour, plus a bit of time to invest in filling out the documents. It’s called three steps to get your business referral ready today. So if you’re brand new on the networking referral game, this will give you a really easy way to collect your thoughts and help you to prepare for the journey of generating referrals in your business. And even if you don’t go down the referral pathway, it will help you get clear about how to communicate what it is that you want in your business, because that’s ultimately what will set you apart from your competitors.

[00:32:59] Speaker A: Awesome. And give us the website address.

[00:33:01] Speaker B: So it’s Braith Bamkin. That’s braithbamkin.com.

[00:33:07] Speaker A: Paul Green’s, MSP Marketing Podcast this week’s recommended book.

[00:33:13] Speaker B: Hi, I’m Craig Andrews. I’m a marketing consultant that specializes in building rapid trust for high ticket sales. And the book that we recommend has been so transformative for me. It’s called Predictably Irrational by Dan Arielli, and what he talks about are predictable ways that we make irrational decisions and how you can use those to benefit your marketing.

[00:33:38] Speaker A: Coming up next week. Hi, I’m Jake Gregorich and I’m going.

[00:33:42] Speaker B: To be on Paul Green’s Marketing Podcast.

[00:33:45] Speaker A: To talk about what the biggest challenge is in the MSP industry, which in.

[00:33:48] Speaker B: My opinion is new logo growth and.

[00:33:51] Speaker A: How to address those challenges to help grow your MSP business. That’s going to be such a great interview with Jake next week. And we’re also going to be talking about something called Lead Magnets. I’ll explain what a lead magnet is and why you would use LinkedIn messaging to reach new prospects using this thing called a lead magnet. 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.