Transcript
My name is Stephanie Hammond and I am part of the Head Nerds team here at Enable. And I'm the head nerd that really focuses on all things growth and sales and marketing related. The goal of these coaching videos is really to provide bite size sales and marketing guidance that hopefully you can immediately incorporate into your MSP that will hopefully pay off with either new leads or new signed customers at the end of the day. We are continuing our multi-part training series focused on helping MSPs develop a marketing operating system for their business. I'm being joined once again by MSP industry marketing experts, Mark Coatman, Dave Sutton from Wingman. So hello gentlemen, because a lot of the MSPs that we do work with on a daily basis, they're continuing to struggle with their marketing. They're struggling with their prospecting, struggling with trying to find new quality leads for their MSP and then struggling with their sales processes. We work with MSPs and they're continuing to struggle with their marketing. They're struggling with their prospecting, struggling with finding new quality leads for their MSP and then struggling with how do they use their sales process so they can convert those leads into new signed contracts in the end. So very excited to be able to continue this video series focused on how we can help MSPs improve their marketing and sales know-how and improve the outcomes of their marketing and sales activities. So in today's episode, and I'm going to share out my screen, bring our little guide back up. Perfect. So in today's episode, we are continuing our deep dive into eight of the different jigsaw puzzle pieces that MSPs really need to focus on to help them gain real success and real traction when it comes to their marketing efforts. In today's episode, we're going to be speaking about the sixth jigsaw puzzle piece that contributes to an MSP's marketing success, and that is how should MSPs ensure that they have the right sales process in place, that they have the right proposal creation process in place so they can convert the leads that they've generated from their marketing efforts into signed closed deals. As MSPs, a good marketing and sales process should always have you converting leads and converting opportunities into deals. So thank you, Mark. Thank you, Dave. So I'm just going to start off, you know, let's talk about sales process. So what are those key elements of an MSP's sales process that they should be focused on to help them consistently close deals? I think we'll always wrestle over who will go first. I know, we've both got so much to say, but go for it. I think the proposal thing is kind of close to my heart. Having been there, done that, got the T-shirt of being a sales guy in three MSPs across my career, I know what it's like to have prospects ghost you when you've put together something that you think is a perfect proposal and constantly sort of question myself on how should I present it? How should I engage prospects in a conversation around the proposal? And how should I stand out from several other MSPs that they might well be doing their due diligence with at this very same time? And of course, there's several different considerations from understanding the billing mechanism of what do they understand is normal? What do they have as a billing arrangement with their incumbent MSP that sets a precedent in their mind for how they should be procuring that service from someone else? So you've got to think about not being too different that you will then be misunderstood. Particularly us Brits, maybe Canadians are kind of similar, that we avoid the money conversation. We don't talk about money. I think, you know, God bless America, I think people are more straight talking there on saying, no, that's too expensive, or no, I don't understand it. Maybe not always. But I think us Brits, we avoid an awkward conversation. So you may well lose a prospect, but the prospect isn't clear enough to come back to you and sort of say why, so you understand what to do. So I've kind of built this mechanism out for how to build a proposal and cover all the bases, try and think about everything that an MSP typically wouldn't have in their proposal, so you can stand apart against any competitors. And that all starts with repeating back to the prospect what it is that they've shared with you, what pains are they experiencing, what goals have they got that they wish to achieve. And I'm not talking about technology here, I'm talking about, you know, commercial, operational, compliance challenges, business centric language that will mean something to them. So when they read back through your proposal, two, three, four weeks after you've been in to meet with them, you're reminding them of the things that they said to you in the room. But also importantly, it gives you an opportunity to squeeze things in there that they may have not directly said, but they wouldn't argue against. And by that I mean, you know, you said that your reputation is important, therefore you want to protect your data. No one's going to outrightly say that necessarily unless they're a heavily regulated firm, but they would struggle to argue against it because anyone reasonable would say that's important. So I think start your proposal with what have you heard from the prospect? What pains have they shared with you? What objectives have they shared? And make sure you repeat that back. And then that sets the path for the whole of the rest of the proposal document to play back on solving your problems and helping you realize your goals through these services that we've carved out against this pricing. And here's our proven methodology for delivering it. You've got to look beyond the quotes, you've got to look beyond selling to referrals where it's already your business to lose and someone's already had a strong recommendation. So the proposal document has to work a lot harder than the majority of sales that MSP owners are so very used to. So let me let me also chime in here, Stephanie, if I may, your question was around the sort of the key components of the sales process, and it always beats me, and this isn't just in our industry, but it's in multiple industries I've been part of. When you're in the sales game and you are constantly looking for those opportunities and how to develop them, the number of people that don't just have the relevant pieces of information, copy, brochureware, video, whatever it may be, all those sort of essential, essential collateral pieces, they quite often seem to be scratching around for it, like it's almost a surprise that it might be needed within the sales process. And I'm being a bit flippant, but it happens all the time. It's like, oh, you've just sort of fudged this together for me. It's like, do you not have this on a shelf? But then linked to that. So I think having having the suite of all the different elements you might need. And I have to say, you know, we wingman, we genuinely try to practice what we preach in this area. But then the important thing is that you're not just sending boilerplates people, which looks like you've just pulled it off a shelf and put their first name at the top there. So I think an element of of being sympathetic to what that prospect is going through, the current state of your relationship with them and if things have progressed or not, and therefore customising the information that you've got, those templates that you have at your fingertips, I think is really, really important. And I think as you know, in today's AI age, and I think I've already deleted 10 emails that got through our quarantine today, which were, you know, and it's like Monday afternoon, the number of templated, utterly pointless AI generated emails, which you can see are AI generated before you almost read them just because of the font people are using. Come on, we can do better than this. So I think personalisation is absolutely key in the sales process. But don't constantly reinvent the wheel when you're looking to send somebody something, you know, you're scratching around for all the time, spend some time, take a week out and get those those boilerplate elements together, but be prepared to customise them when you need to use them. Yeah. And so when we talk about kind of sales strategy, and that that sales process, are there pieces that you often see MSPs kind of missing or skipping over, you know, to get to that proposal stage? Because the like, in all the material, and as we record this, I'm actually building a new masterclass focused on proposal creation, and what how do you build a compelling proposal? So it's very timely. But is there pieces that you see MSPs kind of quickly skipping over just to kind of, you know, if they even do a proposal, kind of get to that stage? Yeah, I think an important thing to remember is, you can systemise your sales process, of course, not every prospect will necessarily follow that to the letter. But think about the various points that you need to, you know, in our previous videos, as we've spoken about building trust so much, and some of the marketing, of course, should get them to the point where trust is enough that they're prepared to get into a conversation. But you might still have to reaffirm some of those things, like social proof, like certain credentials, like personalisation, as Mark said, so they feel you understand them, and you're tailoring something for them. And of course, you can templatise as much of that as possible, but you're going to have to put your hands on the keyboard and write something out that really sounds like them and echoes something back to them. But to go a step further, as part of the sales process, MSPs could carve out an initial, what we often call a stepping stone product. And this is something that they've never really had to do before. Because again, back to those referrals, people are perhaps in need right now, they already get what you do, the trust is already established by, you know, your good friend or existing client that's referred them in. But if you still need to engage somebody in a light touch commercial relationship, now, this isn't something that necessarily should be free, you might have a very small, modest free engagement as a prior call to action on the back of marketing activity. But as soon as you want to start the commercial relationship, you want to offer them something that allows them to dip the toe in the water without making a huge commitment. Back to one of my analogies, again, you know, this is a bit like dating, you want them to sign that MSA and sign a managed services proposal. And if they don't know you well enough, because you've had, let's face it, maybe one or two dates at most, where you've gone out and met with them, and you've talked about their needs, and then sent a proposal, you need to ask for their hand in marriage to sign up to you for, you know, an indefinite period effectively, because that's how people will see it, you know, they don't want to necessarily switch MSP every 12 months. So even if you've only got a 12 month term, those objections, those barriers that people have to going through the pain of switching MSP, they're making a big decision. So if you can offer them something that's a stepping stone sale, that they can spend, you know, 1500 bucks, or three grand, or something that's not a crazy amount of money, but feels like no brainer value, compared to a key outcome. Now, that could be some kind of cyber audit, if the prospect is minded that way, perhaps something that's compliance driven, maybe something that's AI centric right now, to help them get a key outcome, something that's going to increase their productivity, decrease their risk, as an outcome of that project, not just a report, not a scan, not the old school, it health check that no one values, because they see it as a cheap sales tactic, something that's really going to help them set them on the path to achieving their goals, for a modest sum of money, then you've got the trust, then it's a lot easier to get that sale for the bigger managed services piece. Okay, perfect. Now, I know, a big part of sales, you know, being a former salesperson is, you know, your sales targets, your KPIs, make sure that you hit your key performance indicators. What do you see as being kind of the top sales, key performance indicators, KPIs that MSP should be tracking for their business? And then how do you get those to align to maybe your marketing efforts? So I'll, I'll perhaps take a lead on this one. And I think activity is, is everything here, because no matter what you do, nobody can ever predict when, accurately, when a prospect is going to say yes. And so I think, you know, of course, there needs to be some kind of financial targeting that goes on. But on a on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, I think it's incredibly hard to do that. And to do it accurately, because you're not always in, in fact, no, I'm going to rephrase that, you're never totally in control of the process, you might think you are, but it's always going to be that prospect that owns the process and makes that final decision on or not, as the case may be. So I think the whole point of KPIs, when it comes to sales, is about the more activity that you engage in, then the higher the likelihood that you're going to achieve success over time. So that, I mean, I guess you could argue the same from a marketing perspective as well. So, so whether it be the number of outbound, I guess we can sort of split this in terms of sort of proactive and reactive. So let's say you're already managing 30 opportunities, for example, then I think, you know, showing the fact that you've, there has been some form of activity against the majority of those 30 on a, on a weekly basis or whatever is most appropriate, such as, and I'll get specific here, sending that prospect something of use, not just, hey, how are you doing? Have you looked at the proposal again? Have you made a decision? Because frankly, that's a bit pointless. But actually, the great work that's going on from a marketing perspective, see previous videos, you're creating lots of great content. And, and so it's like, ah, that's reasons people often just publish that content and go, it's on the blog, I've done my job. But the whole point of being involved with bringing sales and marketing together for me is for that salesperson, or you as a business owner, whoever it may be to go, hey, I spotted that thing that we produced. That's really relevant in this particular situation. I'm going to send it to my prospect. Saw this and thought of you. Do you remember when we used to get things through the mail, people would cut out bits from the newspaper, do that as well. That's cool as well. It's just much easier doing it online. And I would also say, I've done this for years, Stephanie, and I would also say, it's not just about the content you produce. If you're keeping up to date with news in the industry and so on, and you see something which is relevant to a specific opportunity you're working on, send someone a link, you know, WhatsApp them, email them, fax them, whatever you're going to do, just show that you're plugged in and you're helping them. And the other thing I'd also throw in on that front as well, if you've just produced a case study of some kind, whether it be video, written, audio, whatever. And again, you think it's relevant to accelerating that opportunity. That's the perfect thing to send to people. Hey, we've just recorded this. We thought you might like to see it because it's someone in your industry, perhaps they're saying great things about us. You know, feel free to share it with your team. So I think I think targeting salespeople on those sorts of activities, I think is absolutely key. And what else have I did scribble some things down here? So you could actually start to measure some people on the number of phone calls, the number of emails sent, even the number of face to face contacts they've had if they're going to go and visit or attend a conference of some kind as well. And I think the more of that starts to roll up over the course of the weeks and the months, you'll see those sales progressing and those opportunities closing as a result of sort of like the indirect activities which feed into those opportunities. So I think, yeah, everybody's going to be different in their business. But set KPIs based on the type of salesperson or salespeople that you have within your organization and encourage activity and contact with both existing opportunities and, of course, creating new ones as well. Yeah, because we need to get those prospects out of the pipeline and convert into a contract. So I love those kind of follow up ideas, you know, so you're not always saying, hey, have you seen my proposal? Have you seen my proposal? Any question on my proposal? Like it's very, very tiring, very, very quickly. Yeah, I love that. For both sides. For both sides. Yeah, absolutely. So then the last... Go ahead, Dave. Sorry, I was just going to jump in and share something that might help MSPs where sort of budgeting and rationalizing sales targets is concerned. You know, we often see, depending on the currency, a seat or a user might be worth anywhere between sort of one and two thousand per year to an MSP on average, depending on the exact stack and currency, of course. So if you extrapolate that out, you know, trying to think of where do you want to get to in terms of a realistic sales target? Many MSPs, of course, don't have a target or they set something very modest, which is a good starting point. But if you're trying to figure out what you should be spending on marketing and whether that makes sense, just think about those per seat values and maybe you need to do the calculations to see what a seat is worth to you. Then if you multiply that by three for an average lifespan, you know, again, a conservative figure given many MSP clients will be many, many more years than just three years. But if you multiply that by three, it then gives you a per seat per sort of average client tenure, say, of three years. And then if you factor in cost per acquisition might typically be in the region of six to eight grand to win a new customer cold as opposed to those referrals. And that's on the basis if you're winning, say, one in three, one in four, you then work out, you know, cost per lead beneath that. If you're winning one in three, one in four, your cost per lead, you know, divide that accordingly. That then starts to give you a bit of a marketing budget and helps you work out that reverse funnel of, you know, where do we want to get to in terms of those seat wins? Where's the value? And then working back up the pipeline of how many conversations do we need? How many opportunities do we need if we're going to close one in four? How many conversations do I need to have to get to opportunities? And then what does that audience potential need to look like if we're talking sort of very conservative numbers of between sort of two and four percent maybe of an audience sort of engaging with you through your marketing over any sort of 12 to 18 month period? That's something we do a lot of work on and try and help MSP sort of rationalize those numbers of what does my audience need to look like? What is a realistic target to hit? But just factoring in often it only takes one or two to close over any, you know, given period of several months. If you're spending a respectable amount on marketing, not throwing tens of thousands of dollars at PPC, perhaps, then those numbers start to add up and it makes sense. And you pay your marketing bill that you will then feel a lot better about the ongoing investment. Absolutely. The last thing I want to touch on before we wrap up this episode is around sales team mentoring, some oversight there of the sales team. You know, what happens if your close rates aren't one in four, one in three? You know, what can maybe it's the MSP business owner because maybe they're wearing the hats or if there's, you know, sales directors, sales managers that are listening, what can what do you help your MSP clients with when it comes to kind of sales team mentoring and that kind of oversight? I think the thing I'd pitch in, first of all, is that quite often multiple brains are better than one that there's always going to be situations where you just can't move somebody and lethargy kicks in. And that actually is the is the competitor, in which case between you all, I think you need to decide, you know what, we're just going to park out of there and move on. That's the whole point about having a, you know, a big enough funnel that you're constantly working on different activity. But I think some of the things, again, we try this, we practice what we preach. The idea of the pincer movement, Stephanie, where actually, you know, if somebody relatively junior, let's say there is more of a team rather than perhaps it just being owner led, where you have more of a team and somebody junior has perhaps hit a stumbling block, you know, to then at least ask the owner through those sales meetings and that mentoring. Hey, look, why don't you give this a go? Why don't you pick up the phone to and, you know, you've perhaps got a bit more gray hair, you perhaps just a bit more. I don't know. You come across with more expertise and experience and so on. Let's try a different tack. You know, it's like throwing a substitute on a sports field. I can't do analogies as well as Dave does, but it's the same sort of thing. You know, sometimes just a slightly different approach, a different voice and a slightly different angle can actually help to to move things forward a little bit. So I think I think that's a really important part of of that of that sales team and that mentoring idea as well. No one person is necessarily going to have all the answers. And I think encouraging that that conversation between reviewing opportunities regularly, but also being really honest with yourself that sometimes, you know what, if we go back to this person again, it's just going to annoy them and just allowing things to breathe a little bit and not having so much pressure on you that you start to, you know, get a little bit sort of punchy when it comes to a sales perspective. And look, I've always had this phrase and you can disagree with it if you want, but it's something I truly believe in is that people can't be sold to that you can help people to buy. So I think, you know, timing has to be right. And sometimes you can never get that right necessarily. You just have to park it. You know, we see we mentioned this in a previous video. Sometimes these sales can take a really, really long time to come through because timing is everything. Yeah. So for me, it's about the sales mentoring thing is about multiple brains, multiple ideas and different approaches and just get creative with how you approach people. There's something you're good at, Mark, in particular, knowing when a prospect does drag things on. And of course, you know, you're selling to business owners, they always get distracted is knowing how to follow up in the right way that sometimes, you know, you've helped, say, Josh here in our business to follow up with someone and say, hey, you haven't come back to us. I'm going to leave that with you there now. And how many people have actually come back and said, oh, no, no, I am still interested. That's a very good point. They suddenly feel, you know, a sense of guilt or something like that, that they haven't responded. Very true. Yeah, very true. Absolutely. Perfect. Well, thank you, gentlemen, for once again, crystallizing for MSPs watching today what it means to always be converting and talking about the different tasks and activities that MSPs, business owners and the like need to focus on so they can consistently convert leads into those brand new contract clients. In our next episode, we're going to be moving on to discuss the seventh jigsaw puzzle out of eight. So we're getting near the end that makes up an MSPs marketing operating system. And that is really on how do you build your MSP to the point where you can be recommended? And we've been talking about referrals in a lot of the other episodes, but the next episode is going to be focused on how do you get yourself recommended where you can turn those clients of yours into advocates for your MSP so you can get yourself recommended to others. So we're going to be talking about client success programs, referral programs, and how to build that community within your industry. So that's what we're going to be talking about. Hope you can join us on our next installment of Teched to the Bank, focused on building your MSPs marketing operating system.
