Episode 211: MSPs: Turn away clients like these

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world, this Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul Greens.

[00:00:10] Speaker B: MSP Marketing podcast show. Here’s what I got in store for you this week.

[00:00:14] Speaker C: Hi, I’m Robert Gillette with the MSP dojo. I’ve talked to hundreds of MSPs in the last year. All of them want one thing more, better leads. But unfortunately, what a lot of them need is to eat their vegetables and just get better at sales. I’m going to be talking about how to practice your sales craft so you’re never practicing on a prospect.

[00:00:32] Speaker B: And on top of that fascinating interview with Robert later on in the show, we’re also going to talk about how you can take your low level staff, take someone from no knowledge to actually being a superstar in just 52 weeks.

[00:00:46] Speaker A: Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast.

[00:00:50] Speaker B: Tell me, do you keep notes of meetings that you’ve had in the past?

[00:00:54] Speaker D: Maybe you use Onenote for this and you can access all sorts of meeting notes that you’ve had for years and years in the past. Just the other day, I was looking back through some old notes of mine. I used to meet up with a.

[00:01:04] Speaker B: Whole bunch of MSPs.

[00:01:05] Speaker D: We would physically sit in a room.

[00:01:07] Speaker B: And sort of talk about their businesses.

[00:01:09] Speaker D: And I did that for years and years.

[00:01:11] Speaker B: Stopped that earlier this year.

[00:01:13] Speaker D: But the other day I came across.

[00:01:14] Speaker B: My notes all filed away in Onenote.

[00:01:16] Speaker D: It’s one of the few Microsoft applications that I do actually use. And I was going back through some of these old notes and I found an amazing sentence. And it’s a sentence I want to give to you. And then if you’re not based in the UK and you don’t understand part of it, I’ll see if I can make it relevant to you as well.

[00:01:32] Speaker B: The sentence was this, if you’re not on DD, you’re not a customer for me.

[00:01:38] Speaker D: Now, let me explain what DD is. Here in the UK, we have something called Direct debit.

[00:01:43] Speaker B: I’m aware that direct debit does exist.

[00:01:45] Speaker D: In other countries around the world, but I think I’m right in saying that in the UK, direct debit is a phenomenon. It’s huge.

Everyone in inverted commas and speechmarks uses it. So direct debit is where a company.

[00:01:58] Speaker B: Can take money out of your bank account.

[00:02:00] Speaker D: So, for example, I have, like my gas company.

[00:02:04] Speaker B: I don’t sit and pay the bill. They just take the money for the.

[00:02:08] Speaker D: Bill out of my bank account.

[00:02:09] Speaker B: Right.

[00:02:10] Speaker D: And this has been the case in the UK for decades. Just decades. It’s a really big thing here.

[00:02:17] Speaker B: All of the money that we take.

[00:02:18] Speaker D: From MSPs that we work with in the UK, that comes out by direct debit as well. And we’ll come on to how that would be relevant to other countries in a second.

[00:02:26] Speaker B: But the principle of if you’re not on DD, you’re not a client. For me, the principle of that is if we’re going to do business, Mr. Or Mrs. Client, and this is you, the MSP, talking. If we’re going to do business, it has to be on my basis. If you want to work with me.

[00:02:43] Speaker D: That MSP that I was talking to.

[00:02:44] Speaker B: Was saying, if you want to work with me, then you have to sign a direct debit form so that I can take the money from you at the beginning of the month before I deliver the service.

[00:02:55] Speaker D: And the conversation that we were having back in the day, back in that room, was about making sure that clients paid.

[00:03:01] Speaker B: Why would you have a business model where you deliver something that cannot be taken back, which is your service, and then you send out an invoice and.

[00:03:12] Speaker D: You give them 30 or 60 or.

[00:03:13] Speaker B: 90 days to pay it? Why would you do that? That’s the most insanely bad business model ever. And yet that’s what a large number.

[00:03:21] Speaker D: Of MSPs still do.

[00:03:22] Speaker B: So instead of delivering something that can’t.

[00:03:24] Speaker D: Be returned and then hoping they pay for it, because hope is never a good strategy, instead, you make them pay.

[00:03:30] Speaker B: For it at the beginning of the month. Hence, if you’re not on DD, you’re not a customer for me. And a lot of the MSPs that I work with, not all by any counts, but a lot of them now.

[00:03:40] Speaker D: Will decline a client who says, actually, we will not enter into a direct debit upfront.

[00:03:46] Speaker B: And quite right too, because someone who won’t pay by direct debit in advance of receiving the work is likely to end up being a nightmare or a bad debt. Not always, and I know we need.

[00:03:55] Speaker D: To give people the benefit of the.

[00:03:56] Speaker B: Doubt, but the chances are that at.

[00:03:58] Speaker D: Some point they will default.

[00:04:00] Speaker B: You are not a bank. It’s not your job to subsidize their cash flow. It’s their job as your customer to subsidize your cash flow. The equivalent, I guess, in the US.

[00:04:11] Speaker D: And in other countries.

[00:04:12] Speaker B: I know there is direct debit in the US, but I don’t think many people use it.

[00:04:16] Speaker D: So the equivalent would be to say, if we don’t hold a card, then you are fired. That doesn’t work, does it? But we can take the basis of it. The equivalent is that you must pay up front. You have to keep an active card.

[00:04:31] Speaker B: Or an active payment method and we will take payment up front.

[00:04:35] Speaker D: So on the first of every month.

[00:04:37] Speaker B: Or whatever the date is, you take the payment, but it’s in front of the work being delivered. And critically, if their payment falls over, you do not provide the service. Right. I know this sounds really hardball, and I know that you have to take each case as it comes, but if you have a client who regularly their card payment falls over and they do not pay, then you need to be tougher about that, I believe.

[00:05:01] Speaker D: Anyway, you need to ring them up.

[00:05:02] Speaker B: And say, hey, your payment fell through.

[00:05:04] Speaker D: We’re happy to keep the service going for a week, but it will end in a week’s time. How did you want to get up to date on your payment schedule?

[00:05:10] Speaker B: Because I’ve spoken to MSPs in the.

[00:05:12] Speaker D: Past who have let clients go 2345.

[00:05:16] Speaker B: Months in arrears and they’re still providing the service. And the most insane thing is that they are paying for the 365 licenses.

So it’s actually costing the money. It’s not just them providing the service, but it’s actually costing the money in.

[00:05:29] Speaker D: Licenses and seats that they’re paying out. And of course, if you’re paying someone’s 365 license, you can stop them getting their 365, right. That’s the quickest way to get the.

[00:05:40] Speaker B: Money back that you’re owed. I think far too many MSPs look.

[00:05:43] Speaker D: At it, that actually it’s good customer service to let people get away with.

[00:05:47] Speaker B: The odd bad payment or slow payment. And I agree, it’s good customer service if you have a conversation about it, if they ring you up, if any.

[00:05:55] Speaker D: Of your clients rang you up and said, oh, hi, yeah, look, we’re having a really tough month. We’ve got a ton of money coming in in a couple of months time. Could we please pay this one on a 90 day term instead of a 30 day term?

[00:06:07] Speaker B: You’d say yes, right? Because they’ve rung you, they’ve had the conversation, they’ve engaged with you, but if they haven’t, if they’ve just not paid it, then why should you continue to provide the service? And I know that you don’t want to lose the client because you keep the client for five years or however long you keep them, but actually, don’t we just want to keep the good.

[00:06:26] Speaker D: Clients and not the bad clients? So back to that phrase, if you’re.

[00:06:29] Speaker B: Not on DD, if you’re not on.

[00:06:31] Speaker D: Credit card, then you’re not a client.

[00:06:32] Speaker B: For me, do you apply that within your MSP? How difficult would it be?

[00:06:36] Speaker D: Or how easy would it be even.

[00:06:38] Speaker B: If you just started applying it from this point forward? Any new clients that join you from.

[00:06:42] Speaker D: Today onwards, if they’re not on DD, they’re not a customer for you. I know that doesn’t rhyme, but it makes sense.

[00:06:49] Speaker A: Here’s this week’s clever idea.

[00:06:52] Speaker D: Here’s something else that I read in those old notes of mine from when I used to meet with those MSPs.

[00:06:57] Speaker B: How do you take someone with a very, very low knowledge and knowledge area and skill set, and how do you turn them into a superstar as quickly as possible? So let’s say, for example, you took on an apprentice.

[00:07:10] Speaker D: Now, again, I know there are different schemes around the world, but here in the UK, you can take on an apprentice, typically a younger person, typically with fewer qualifications.

[00:07:20] Speaker B: Legally you can pay them less, but you have to train them. So it’s like a training contract. You take them on for a year, they go off to college, they do.

[00:07:28] Speaker D: Some training, and then at the end.

[00:07:29] Speaker B: Of that, what they’re hoping is that you are so happy with them that.

[00:07:34] Speaker D: You take them on full time. Obviously you start paying them a proper wage at this point and essentially you’ve eased yourself into a new member of staff.

[00:07:41] Speaker B: But it hasn’t.

[00:07:42] Speaker D: Well, if you don’t want them, you don’t have to take them on and it hasn’t cost you a lot of money. So apprentices can be a great way for MSPs to bring on board new sort of first line technicians.

[00:07:52] Speaker B: The problem with that is the training that they are having when they’re going.

[00:07:56] Speaker D: Out to college and getting training.

[00:07:57] Speaker B: That’s not necessarily the training, the exact training that you would want them to have, because actually you want them to be trained up on your systems and on customer service, on how to answer.

[00:08:07] Speaker D: The phone properly, on how to fill.

[00:08:08] Speaker B: In tickets properly, on how to chase things, on how to be an adult, right?

[00:08:13] Speaker D: If an 1819 year old comes into.

[00:08:15] Speaker B: Your business, you have to teach them how to be an adult, how to be a team player, all of these kind of things. Do they teach these things at colleges? I suspect they don’t. So here’s what we were discussing.

[00:08:25] Speaker D: What I was discussing with those MSPs I sat in a room with.

[00:08:28] Speaker B: What if when someone low level, someone new to the business, someone you’re going to have to train up, what if when they join you, regardless of the training they’re getting at college, what if you put together a 50 week training plan for them and that sounds like a lot of work, but it’s not. All you’ve got to do is identify. And you might do this at the start, or you might do it as you go along. You identify 50 very, very small things that you want them to get better at. And then each week you train them just on that thing and you want.

[00:08:59] Speaker D: To be as granular as possible with this list.

[00:09:01] Speaker B: So for example, let’s say you’ve got an 1819 year old who has joined.

[00:09:05] Speaker D: The business and their job is literally level zero five tech, right? They’re level one, they’re as low level as they can get. So one of their jobs is to answer the phone.

[00:09:15] Speaker B: So you might have, as eight weeks training, is answering the phone with confidence.

[00:09:20] Speaker D: Now that sounds like, well, surely we could do that in four minutes.

[00:09:23] Speaker B: Well, yeah, you could tell them that in four minutes, but they’re not going to learn that in four minutes.

[00:09:27] Speaker D: They’ve got to learn that through a feedback loop, right? They’ve got to learn.

[00:09:32] Speaker B: Well, I don’t know about you, but.

[00:09:33] Speaker D: I remember being, I got my first job.

[00:09:36] Speaker B: How old was I?

[00:09:37] Speaker D: 18.

[00:09:38] Speaker B: My first ever job where I was.

[00:09:39] Speaker D: On the phone in front of other people.

[00:09:40] Speaker B: I failed an A level.

[00:09:42] Speaker D: That’s like a higher qualification here in the UK. So I couldn’t go to university until I repeated the A level. Spoiler alert, I never ended up going to university, but that’s by the by.

[00:09:50] Speaker B: So while I was repeating the A level, I got a job in like a grocery store.

[00:09:54] Speaker D: And then that led onto a job.

[00:09:55] Speaker B: Selling advertising on a newspaper and I.

[00:09:57] Speaker D: Wanted to be a journalist, so that was a good step for me. And I remember being, whatever I was.

[00:10:01] Speaker B: 19 day one, turning up at this office.

[00:10:04] Speaker D: There’s adults, right?

[00:10:05] Speaker B: There’s adults and there’s me.

[00:10:06] Speaker D: And I was a very young 19 year old. I’m dressed in a 90s big baggy shirt, go and watch, look at Chandler on early friends, that kind of shirt and tie. And I had to sit there and make my first outbound phone call, like selling advertising. And it was terrifying because everyone else.

[00:10:21] Speaker B: Was pretending to be on the phone so they could listen to me to.

[00:10:24] Speaker D: See if I was any good or not, right?

[00:10:25] Speaker B: So just that, just having an 1819.

[00:10:28] Speaker D: Year old in your business who has to pick up the phone and say.

[00:10:31] Speaker B: Hello, it company, can I help?

That in itself is terrifying for them. So to have a module, a week’s module, of where you teach them this week how to answer the phone confidently.

[00:10:44] Speaker D: That would be an amazing contribution to their skill set, because you could do some role play. You could give them some words to say, some scripts, you could give them some breathing exercises, you could tell them to go into a room and answer.

[00:10:55] Speaker B: The phone 100 times on their own.

[00:10:57] Speaker D: Where no one will hear them.

[00:10:59] Speaker B: You get the idea. Yeah. And you can really work on that skill for a whole week. Doesn’t have to be a huge amount of your own personal time. We’re talking ten minutes a day here. Or someone. Someone on your behalf invests ten minutes a day helping this lower level member.

[00:11:13] Speaker D: Of staff get better at that one skill.

[00:11:15] Speaker B: And then next week, the skill might be correctly filling in a tickEt. And that’s all you work on for a week. So, yeah, they do their work, they go off to college, but you or whoever is doing their ten minute training.

[00:11:26] Speaker D: Every day, how to fill in a ticket properly.

[00:11:28] Speaker B: In fact, you may break even that.

[00:11:30] Speaker D: Down into how to capture the client’s details.

[00:11:33] Speaker B: That might be one week, and then another week might be how to capture the problem, and then another week might.

[00:11:38] Speaker D: Be how to triage.

[00:11:39] Speaker B: You get the idea, right? So you break down all the things you want.

[00:11:42] Speaker D: This.

[00:11:42] Speaker B: It’s almost like if this person was to be the perfect member of staff.

[00:11:46] Speaker D: At that level, at that pay grade, how would they act? How would they behave?

[00:11:51] Speaker B: What would they do? What would they not do? You take all of those things and.

[00:11:55] Speaker D: You put them together, and that’s how.

[00:11:57] Speaker B: You figure out what your training is for this person. But the secret to this, and the reason it needs to take 50 plus weeks, is you have to break it.

[00:12:05] Speaker D: Down and be as granular as possible.

[00:12:07] Speaker B: If you think on day one, you.

[00:12:09] Speaker D: Can teach them to be confident on.

[00:12:10] Speaker B: The phone, fill in a ticket properly.

[00:12:12] Speaker D: Be an adult in the room, be a nice, smiley person, and actually start to deal with password changes and new user requests. No, it’s far too.

[00:12:22] Speaker B: Your level ones with experience might be.

[00:12:24] Speaker D: Able to do that. Your level twos obviously can. But someone who, this is their first.

[00:12:28] Speaker B: Adult job and they were in school.

[00:12:30] Speaker D: Two minutes ago, it’s just not going to work. A small set of actions, one action.

[00:12:35] Speaker B: Per week for 50 weeks will take someone from being a terrified new person.

[00:12:40] Speaker D: In the business to being an absolute.

[00:12:41] Speaker B: Superstar in just 50 weeks.

[00:12:44] Speaker A: Paul’s. Paul’s blatant plug. Blatant plug.

[00:12:47] Speaker B: You know how people develop patterns.

[00:12:49] Speaker D: Do you have a pattern for your evening entertainment? So I do.

[00:12:53] Speaker B: Weekday evenings, I’ll typically work a little bit late because obviously we have lots of members of our MSP marketing edge that are in the US.

[00:13:01] Speaker D: So, time zones, it’s just easier for me to work a bit late, and I don’t mind. During the weekdays, I’ll work a little bit late.

[00:13:06] Speaker B: I’ll eat with my daughter.

[00:13:08] Speaker D: She goes off to bed, and then I typically watch one TV show. So at the moment, I’m, like, finishing off the Mandalorian just a little bit boring. And I’m watching as well.

[00:13:18] Speaker B: Gen V on Prime.

[00:13:20] Speaker D: You’ve heard of the Boys, right? On Prime. If you’ve never heard of the boys, you have to go and watch it. It’s very good. It’s like superheroes. The kind of realistic superheroes where they abuse their powers. And Gen Z is a spin off from that. Anyway, I digress. So I’ll watch one episode of something.

[00:13:35] Speaker B: And then normally I’ll sort of fill 20 minutes before bed on YouTube.

[00:13:41] Speaker D: And I’ve got all sorts of YouTube channels. I’ve been training my YouTube algorithm to show me stuff. Well, for years, I suppose. And it shows me every time. It shows me, in fact, the problem is I stay up longer. I end up doing 40 or 50 minutes on YouTube because it keeps putting good content in front of me.

[00:13:57] Speaker B: Now, this is why we have been.

[00:13:58] Speaker D: Focusing a lot of our efforts onto filming YouTube content for you, because maybe.

[00:14:03] Speaker B: You have a similar pattern of watching.

[00:14:05] Speaker D: A cool TV show and then just going onto YouTube. So we’ve started to film some brand new YouTube videos that are edutainment we’re.

[00:14:14] Speaker B: Teaching you and helping you discover how.

[00:14:16] Speaker D: To improve the marketing of your MSP while entertaining you at the same time.

[00:14:21] Speaker B: Why don’t you go and have a look? Because the first couple are just starting.

[00:14:24] Speaker D: To filter onto the channel now, and we’re going to be adding them every two weeks or so from this point forward.

[00:14:29] Speaker B: Go have a look@Youtube.com. Slash MSP Marketing.

[00:14:37] Speaker C: Hi, I’m Robert Chalette. I’m the creator of the MSP Dojo. Come practice with us. Never on your prospects.

[00:14:43] Speaker D: And thank you so much for joining me on the show, Robert. We were connected by a mutual friend, Kevin Klun, lovely guy of MSP Growth hacks. And it was really good of him to send you my way because you’ve built something unique that I’ve never seen before, and it’s one of those things that I know MSPs need. I’m not being paid to say that we met like, four minutes ago for the first time properly on this call. So this is not a commercial endorsement, but what I think you’ve put Together here is absolutely insane and clever. So let’s, first of all, because now.

[00:15:16] Speaker B: I’ve given that tease, I think we.

[00:15:17] Speaker D: Kind of need to say what you’ve built before we delve into a bit about you and your background. So just give us the 32nd summary of what you’ve built.

[00:15:25] Speaker B: Don’t tell us why you built it.

[00:15:26] Speaker D: Yet, but what is it that you’ve actually created?

[00:15:29] Speaker C: So I’ve created a place for people who own MSPs or sell MSP services, but whoever is responsible for meeting that first time potential client and practice the 52 most common sales scenarios you’re going to experience in that meeting, so that when it happens to you, you’re not making it up on the spot. You have a couple at bats with those scenarios in a real life environment, well, close to real life environment, where you’re selling against people that also sell MSP services. So you’re getting a realistic example.

[00:16:03] Speaker D: I love it, and it’s the practice element that makes it the most interesting to me, because we all know the cliches, don’t we? Practice makes perfect. You’ve got to do something. What is it 10,000 times to be a master at it? And actually, most MSP owners, the only time they get to practice sales is when they’re doing sales, which isn’t very often, so they’re not getting much practice at it.

[00:16:25] Speaker B: And actually, that would be like being.

[00:16:27] Speaker D: In the Super bowl and only practicing. Is it football? Yeah, it’s football, isn’t it? I’m not very good at American football.

[00:16:32] Speaker C: Yeah, that’s good.

[00:16:34] Speaker D: It’d be like practicing football for the first time when you played at the Super bowl, which, of course, we know is ridiculous. You wouldn’t do that. So let’s rewind a little bit and.

[00:16:43] Speaker B: Tell us a little bit about you.

[00:16:44] Speaker D: What’s your background and what got you to this point of creating this service?

[00:16:48] Speaker C: Yeah, so it’s a pretty interesting story. I ran from sales my whole life. Grandpa did it, dad did it. I never wanted to do it. And I found myself 33 years old trying to figure out who I was going to be when I grew up. And I ended up joining a company called Endsight, which is about a $10 million at the time MSP in the San Francisco Bay Area. I didn’t want to take a Sales Role there. I didn’t want a job there. But I absolutely was enamored with the CEO, Mike Chapit. He was Just like, I could tell within Minutes. I’m like, this is the smartest man I’ve met probably in a very Long time, if not my whole life. And so I said, I’ll give it six months. We’ll try it out. I’ll do the cold calling thing. And he was able to show me how. I’ve been in sales my whole life. I just didn’t call it that. And I had this strange understanding and discontinuity between what a salesperson was and what it should be, what it really was, and what we see on the Movies. And so I worked for him for seven years. I helped him grow his MSP from Ten to $30 million in revenue. Obviously, that wasn’t all me, but I think I still hold the distinction of closing the largest deal they’ve ever had. And I just loved it. It made me a better person all the way around, family, work, everything. And then when it was time to leave, because I wasn’t a partner there or anything, it was time to go. At some point, I ended up, Within a month, being hired by four of our local competitors. They said, hey, you’ve been beating us up for a while. Show us how to do what you’re doing. And then I immediately, within three months, had the same problem my Jujitsu coach used to have with me, which was, I started Jujitsu when I was 37. And I said, hey, I’m not going to go to the classes because I don’t need to get a black eye and broken Fingers because some 24 year old Wants to make state championships. I’m just not going to do it. So I’ll take private classes. And I took those private classes. And after three months, he said, you can’t do this anymore. Perplexed? Why not? He says, because you’re not learning Jiu Jitsu. You’re learning something. But here’s the problem. I could kill you and you couldn’t stop me. But I’m not going to do that because you’re my student and I don’t want to go to jail and all that. But you’re also never going to surprise me because everything you know is something I taught you. You need to go wrestle with a 24 year old who’s going to try and break your fingers, and you need to figure out how to surprise him. Otherwise you’re not going to experience real martial arts. So I had that problem with my clients. I could teach them all day and we could practice together, but it wasn’t real, it wasn’t realistic. There was no pressure. I’m not going to hurt them and they’re never going to surprise me. So I took those four clients and stuck them in our Zoom room together, and I made them fight with each other. And the results were almost immediate. Like within weeks, they’re like, this is what was missing. So then I scooped up a dozen other people that I wasn’t coaching, and I brought them into what I was calling them, the MSP dojo so that my clients could beat up on them. And it turned out they were getting a lot of experience out of it, too. Everyone was kind know, like a rising tide lifts all ships. And so I spent a bunch of money, built a platform, and now it’s welcome to anyone that sells MSP services. The kind of hook line, if you will, from the marketing is everybody needs a black belt. Who’s going to sell for them? Because it’s not the best MSP that wins. It’s the best salesperson. In a competitive environment, your MSP might be the best, but if your salesperson can’t communicate that to the prospective client, they’ll never pay you. And so whether you’re a business owner who sales, or you have a sales team, or you’re a sales manager, someone has to be in that competitive environment, not fighting with the prospect, but fighting against each other. And it’s the one that has the most practice, the best training, the best mentorship that’s going to win. You can buy mentorship fewer places, but you can find it. You can get a sales coach. There’s countless MSP programs that will teach you how to sell, but almost nobody was giving you a place to go practice that. And when I sold MSP services, there were five of us on a team, and we practiced constantly. So that’s how the MSP dojo came to be, if you will.

[00:20:44] Speaker D: That is an insane story. And there’s so much to unpack, starting with who starts to learn jujitsu in their late 30s. Who does that?

[00:20:52] Speaker C: So crazy. A crazy man, realistically. But I needed to hijack my limbic system. I would go into these sales meetings and I would just be sweating. Someone would say something that would stump me and I would just get terrified. And you’d feel the adrenaline hit your system. And if you do 100 sales meetings, that’ll go away. But I needed it to go away, like right now. And because I didn’t have the MSP dojo, where I could go have that same adrenaline rush. I started taking jujitsu because I figured if a guy tried to kill me in the morning, a sales meeting isn’t that scary in the afternoon. And that did prove to be true. It really was helpful for me. It doesn’t work for everybody, but it worked for me.

[00:21:30] Speaker D: So I’m 49 and there’s no way I’m going anywhere near martial arts.

[00:21:34] Speaker B: I value my back too much.

[00:21:36] Speaker C: You got other things you’re working on.

[00:21:37] Speaker A: It’s cool.

[00:21:38] Speaker D: I like working fingers. So the fact that you did seven years on the ground doing the job again, it’s just insane. I’ve met loads of sales trainers. We’ve had some great sales trainers on this show and all of the best sales trainers I’ve ever met in my career. People like Fiona Chalice, Brian Gillette, I think comes from an MSP. All of these people have been on the ground doing sales in the same way that I got into this, by doing marketing. I’m not just someone who sells marketing, I do marketing and have done marketing for a very long time and I think it’s really, really important that you do that. So the final thing I want to unpack just from that first answer, and I want to give you a genuine Bravo and a round of applause, is for grasping that concept of practice. I’ve never heard of this before. There may be other people doing it already that are not on my radar. But the fact that you’ve actually not just had the idea, but created the platform and put this together, because the easy thing to have done would be to have left that seven year job, been hired by some competitors and coached them and trained them, right, to put together a training course and to show them exactly what you do and coach them. But as you very well explained, that that’s not as good as getting beaten up, as beating each other up, which is just brilliant. And maybe, just maybe, you have stumbled across the future of coaching. Maybe there are lots of good coaches out there, there are many more bad coaches. And maybe the future of coaching is.

[00:23:03] Speaker B: Actually doing coaching in the way that it’s done in sports.

[00:23:08] Speaker D: Certainly I did a coaching diploma in the year 2000 to help me to coach radio presenters because I was a radio presenter myself and I was in charge and they’re very hard to coach, but we coached them on their performance. So we listened to a bit of something they’d done on the radio and then we took it apart and then they did it again. And that was what was taught to me because I was on a sports coaching diploma and I don’t do sports, but I saw the value of that coaching. Well, a lot of coaching these days that I see is talking about stuff and setting an action and then coming back and doing that action. You’ve approached it from a completely different environment. So let’s talk about how it actually works in practice, and I don’t want you to give away any commercial secrets or any secret sauce. That’s not what we’re about. But do you do it all over Zoom? Does it mean if I joined a group and I was an MSP owner, do I have to take some time beating up some of the other guys before the other guys beat me up?

[00:24:00] Speaker B: How does it actually work?

[00:24:01] Speaker C: So I’m a big fan of the deep end philosophy. So the way that works right now is you sign up for the platform, you’re required to take a short onboarding course that walks you through the tools and the rules and how it works in general. So you’re not completely lost when you first show up to your weekly exercise, which we call the drill. But once you’ve been through that onboarding course and you get the rough grasp of it, it’s pretty simple. On Thursday you get an email and the email tells you, hey, the new scenario is up.

Navigate to a members only page where it walks through, hey, here’s the time and date and the Zoom link. Here’s the scenario that we’re going to be practicing. All the information you need, what your objectives are, what the first line is, so we all know how to start. And then there’s a video, about a 15 to 20 minutes video of me or some other, what I call black belts falling in the mud and showing you how we would do it. They don’t get any preparation. They get less preparation than you do. But the problem is, no one really likes gurus anymore, at least not me. I see a guy that like, I see a 45 minutes clip on LinkedIn that clearly took 45, 2nd clip, that’s 45 minutes to record. And I go, that’s just the perfect version. And I don’t need the perfect version. That’s not helpful to me. So we take some of those people, we put them in the dojo as black belts, and we say, like, if you were the salesperson in the seat, how would you do it? Go and we record that. And that’s the example we present to our members. There’s a couple of tools on that page that help you functionally go through the drill, but that’s what you get every week. There’s some open office hours on Friday, so that if you want to practice before you practice or you’re really nervous or you’ve got some other stuff you want to talk about, come meet with the black belts. And then that next Wednesday, Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time, which is the only time we do it right now, you show up to a Zoom room, you go into some breakout rooms with a couple of other MSPs, and you duke it out for 20 minutes. We come back, we have a quick little pow wow. What’s working, what’s not, make some adjustments, go right back into the breakout rooms again and do it again with new people. And that rhythm is what really matters. It’s not even the first practice that’s the most valuable. It’s the second one. And if we really have time, because people are efficient, it’s the third one. It’s those multiple iterations where you get to not just try it for the first time, but you get to get some correction, see an idea, and then try it again. And that way, even if you never revisit it by the third time, you’re doing it with your prospect. You’re at least warm, you’ve at least done this before. It’s not your first barbecue.

[00:26:27] Speaker D: And I love every little bit of that. That is just perfection. I love it. Right.

[00:26:33] Speaker B: I want to hear a scenario. Can you give us a recent scenario.

[00:26:36] Speaker D: That you and your students have run through?

[00:26:38] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, there’s the common ones, but honestly, the one we just practiced, literally an hour ago was getting a cold call from someone who found you on your website. So they googled it support your area, and they’re on the phone and they say something along the lines of, hey, I got this quote for a server for my current it provider. Can you tell me if it’s a good price?

And this is something that absolutely should have happened to you. If not, then you need better marketing, because you should get this like all the time, a couple of times a year, minimum. But what happens is you have to respond in a way that helps them feel like they’re being helped and heard. But you also have to understand, is this a real opportunity? Let’s unpack this a little bit. Because the very first thing I would always, in that scenario when I was coaching people through and what we were practicing is, why are you calling a stranger for business advice?

Yes, maybe I can give you a good price for the server. Maybe I can give you a better price. Maybe it’s a reason to start working with you. Maybe I can even shoehorn this into a great MSP agreement or MSA or something like that. A managed services. But realistically, why are you calling a stranger for business advice? And how do you turn meeting their need into a sniff out? Is there an opportunity? Are they really just cheap and they really just want to get the cheapest price possible, and there’s not someone anybody ever want to work With. They might be the best client you’ve ever had if you can dig and figure out the real reason why they’re calling around. And so that’s the scenario. We put four minutes up on the board. What would you do?

[00:28:10] Speaker B: Go, oh, God, are you asking me?

[00:28:14] Speaker C: No, thank God.

But that’s essentially what we do in the dojo. We got 52 of those that are curated from my own sales experience and the sales experience people have had that are in the dojo. Every year we put together that list, we shuffle it, and then we throw it up there. Here’s the calendar for the year. You don’t get to see it because I need it to be a surprise, but we have that. And then around Christmas time, I re aggregate the list, I shuffle it again, and we post it up for the year. And you get one week at a time to consider those 52 common scenarios and then practice them.

[00:28:48] Speaker D: I love it. Did you see the look of complete fear that rent over my eyes when. No. You’re asking me to do it. Thing is, I haven’t done any sales since 2014. My mind is not in that area. And do you know what? For 4 seconds then I suddenly felt like one of your MSP students. And that’s the power of this, isn’t it?

[00:29:07] Speaker B: Because that adrenaline rush.

[00:29:09] Speaker D: Yeah, exactly.

[00:29:10] Speaker B: You should have made me do it.

[00:29:10] Speaker D: But you can’t now because it’s my podcast and I’m not going to do it. Robert, thank you so much. I think you’ve explained that so very, very well. Normally we try and make these interviews that are not just massive adverts for a service. But the second that Kevin introduced us and I realized this is insane, everybody needs to do this, I wanted to get you on and get you talking about the actual service. So just remind us what the website address is and for anyone listening that.

[00:29:35] Speaker B: Wants to reach out to you in particular and perhaps ask you a question or just chat to you, what’s the.

[00:29:40] Speaker D: Best way to get in touch with you?

[00:29:41] Speaker C: For sure, it’s MSPtojo. Net. You go there, I’ll tell you everything you need. You can sign up if you want. We offer a couple different ways to engage for those that are nervous.

We try and make it easy if we can. You can also reach out. LinkedIn is the only social media platform I’m really in. RW Gillette will lead you right to me, and I’m pretty responsive on that still. So if you want reach out reach out through the website. I like talking to people. It’s what I do for a living.

[00:30:09] Speaker A: Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast this week’s.

[00:30:13] Speaker E: Recommended book hey, this is Don Colliver, former Blue man and professional touring clown and current technical public speaking trainer at Google and professional speaker at Cybersecurity events. What I do is I help technical folks like you communicate with non technical people in an engaging way. And the book I recommend is crucial Conversations tools for talking when the stakes are high by a bunch of authors. But the first author is Patterson, and I love this book because I love models and frameworks and it gives a very simple framework of handling when a discussion becomes contentious or antagonistic. It gives a great way of navigating through that conversation in a way that’s safe for everybody involved and ends up benefiting everybody. This works not only in presentations when you start to get antagonistic questions, but also in one on one business conversations. So check it out coming up next week.

[00:31:20] Speaker F: Hi, this is Damien Stevens, and I grew my MSP from four full time employees to 17 in one year, and it was utter chaos. If you want to learn how to do that and how to not do most of the things that I did, join us on the show.

[00:31:37] Speaker B: That’s going to be a fascinating interview.

[00:31:38] Speaker D: With Damien for you next week.

[00:31:40] Speaker B: We’re also going to be asking the question, should your MSP be doing Google Ads? Pay per click in 2024? Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.

[00:31:53] Speaker A: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world Paul Green’s MS MS MSP Marketing podcast.