The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge
Welcome to Episode 295 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…
Ghosted? Send your MSP’s proposals in 3 ways: There are a number of things we can do to minimise proposal ghosting with prospects. Only sending it digitally risks your proposal being lost in digital noise.
A free cyber security webinar outline any MSP can use:Â Webinars are a great way to enhance your reputation and your perceived authority as the local tech expert. Let me give you a free cyber security webinar outline that any MSP can use.
Why every MSP must niche in some way: My guest and I to talk about niching and about the power of super laser focus on a very specific set of people. Find out exactly what to do and how it works.
Paul’s Personal Peer Group: Confused about which social media platforms to use to market your MSP? Let me tell you my top 5 in priority order.
Ghosted? Send your MSP’s proposals in 3 ways
This must have happened to your MSP… proposal ghosting. You send a proposal to a hot prospect and crickets. All the conversations, all of the relationship building that you did leading up to this proposal seem to have counted for nothing. So how do we fix this? Why don’t they reply? Why can’t you get hold of them? Are there three simple things that you can do that will improve your hit rate? Absolutely, there are, and let’s get into them right now.
A few years back when I was single, dark days, I was being ghosted all the time. OK, that was on Tinder and Hinge and Bumble and other platforms, but I know that you get ghosted by your prospects now they seem so hot, so ready to join you, and then you send the proposal through and they never get back to you. So you never quite understand what’s happened.
Is the problem that the price isn’t right, that you didn’t display an understanding of their business? Have they changed their mind? Have they gone off to another MSP? Have they signed another contract with their incumbent MSP? Are they actually dead? I mean actually really, are they dead? And you can phone them as much as you want, but there’s no one there to answer the phone. We all have these exact thoughts when we get ghosted by prospects.
The problem is not your prospects… the problem is actually you. You’ve allowed them to take some level of control of the sales process.
You’ve allowed them to ghost you. I believe there’s a number of things that we can do to minimise ghosting, not in dating, but certainly with prospects. Now, let me tell you about two of those things. The first is that I think you should send all of your proposals out in three separate ways, and then the second thing I’m going to tell you about is that you should always have the next appointment in your calendar. That’s coming up in a second. Let’s first of all go into some of the details.
So, how do you send your proposals now? If you’re like most MSPs, you probably just do it digitally. Maybe you use a specific piece of software or you have a proposal tool built into one of the platforms that you’re using and these kind of tools they are cool, especially as they can track who’s opening your proposals, how many times they view it, all of that kind of stuff. Or maybe you just pull a PDF together or even just an email and you just send it off to them by email. Most MSPs do proposals digitally because it’s quick and it’s easy, but anytime something is quick and easy for you to send out, it’s then quick and easy for people to consume it and ignore it....
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SPECIAL: Why this business owner will switch MSPs
The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge
Welcome to this SPECIAL edition of the show, Episode 294, of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green.
I’m interviewing an ordinary business owner and he’s going to talk about why he’s unhappy with his MSP and is thinking of switching.
SPECIAL: Why this business owner will switch MSPs
For MSPs looking to find new clients, this is the holy grail. It’s taken nearly 18 months to arrange this, but boy is it going to be worth it. It’s a conversation with an ordinary business owner, the type of person who might be your dream client. It’s the number one wish I hear – I’m the owner of an awesome MSP, but it’s so hard to get new clients if only I could get in their head to find out what I could do to attract them, especially if they’re currently with another MSP who they’re thinking of leaving. Well, here we go.
Now I’ve agreed to keep his identity anonymous so he can be extremely open with answers to questions like, why he’s unhappy with his current MSP, what’s changed in the last few years, what he likes and dislikes about them, and why he’s thinking of switching. Oh, and most importantly, what could you offer him that would win him and keep him in your business?
Welcome to this very special episode of the podcast, and I have a treat for you today. This is an idea I’ve been trying to implement for years and years because I think it’s really going to help you get an insight into what happens in the head and the heart of an ordinary business owner when they may be thinking of switching MSPs. We’re going to interview today someone who’s been a friend of mine for over 25 years, but his identity is going to be kept a complete secret. In fact, I’ve given him a false name. I’ll introduce you to him in a second.
He’s with an MSP right now that was acquired sometime in the past, and as I’ve been talking to him over the last few months, I’ve realised his satisfaction levels with his incumbent MSP have been going down and down and down. They’ve done nothing wrong, it’s all just tiny little things that have chipped away and he’s now getting to that point where he might be ready to switch MSPs.
Let’s see if today we can figure out how he thinks, how he feels about his MSP and what are the things that he would go looking for from another MSP. If you can understand how ordinary people think and act, the chances of you getting them to come to your MSP goes up dramatically. So let me introduce you to my friend, we’re going to call him Jason. His real name is Sean, but we’re not going to use that, we’re going to call him Jason. That’s not his real name that was just a joke.
Jason, thank you so much for jumping onto the call. Obviously we don’t want to identify you because we don’t want any awkward conversations between you and your incumbent MSP. So without revealing what you do as a business or where you’re based, just give us an idea of your company. So how many staff have you got? Are you like a professional services company or a consumer driven company? Give us a bit of an overview.
We are I guess a professional services company. We’re a marketing business at heart, obviously based here in the UK, and we have got staff who are employed in the UK and in the Philippines. We’ve also got contractors in the UK and the Philippines as well.
Okay, so you’re spread around the globe, even if that’s just two locations, which is a pretty common setup these days I think for many businesses. Obviously this is your business, you started this, you’ve grown this over a number of years. If you go back in your mind to when you first started to take on professional help. so before we talk about the switching and the dissatisfaction you might...
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What if you only had 90 days to win new clients?
The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge
Welcome to Episode 293 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…
What if you only had 90 days to win new clients?: Imagine you absolutely had to generate new business, FAST. Let’s explore where you should focus your time, effort and resources.
3 HUGE questions to ask about your MSP’s clients: It’s very common to hope that the awesome retention of your key clients just continues, but unless you really give them what they need and want you run the risk of losing them.
This MSP’s best ideas from his 8 year podcast: My guest is a long-standing MSP owner and eight year podcaster. He’s here to share the very best things he’s learned during that time.
Paul’s Personal Peer Group: You still hand out business cards, right? You definitely should, and here’s my recommendation of what should be on them.
What if you only had 90 days to win new clients?
Are you ready to take the MSP experiment? How would you do if you had to win a load of new clients within the next 90 days? Yes, just 90 days to find and sign up new managed service clients. The reason isn’t important, it’s a thought experiment, but does the sound of having to do that make your blood run cold? If so, let’s dig into why it’s such an important test and the real world benefits to your MSP.
This is kind of based on a question I was asked on a podcast I appeared on a few months back. I can’t quite remember which one it was right now, but the host asked me if I had to start an MSP from scratch, what would I do? And I think he was waiting for me to suggest which RMM I would use and which PSA and what my tech stack would look like. But the answer I actually gave was that I would figure out all of that stuff only after I’d won some clients.
I’d focus all of my time, effort and energy into creating a pipeline and then shaking that tree until some new business fell out of it.
Yeah, I know I’ve mixed up my analogies there, but you see the point I’m making, right? I’ve never actually owned or run an MSP, but I’ve been a business owner for 20 years and there’s no point getting your operations ready and perfect if there are no clients to put through those operations.
So let’s make that a real life question for you. Not what would you do if you started again with your MSP, but if you absolutely had to generate new business in the next 90 days, what would you do? Don’t get too hung up on the why’s about this. Just imagine you’ve lost a big client or your personal circumstances dictate that you just need more cash. The reason is not relevant. What’s more important is to talk about what you would actually do.
A quick aside, if that was a real situation for you and you desperately needed more cash in the next month or so, that cash is going to come from your existing clients. There’s always more revenue and certainly high levels of profit to be made selling something to your existing clients than winning new clients. But for the purpose of this piece here, what would you do to win new clients in just 90 days? Well, let me break this down into a series of suggestions.
The first of those would be actually the way that you think and the way that you act. One of the reasons that many MSPs really struggle with marketing and winning new clients is because they simply don’t take it seriously. If you’re only spending 20 or 30 minutes a day or even a week on marketing, how can you expect to get momentum on that? How can you expect to get traction? There a...
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Does your service desk manager really need to be a tech?
The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge
Welcome to Episode 292 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…
Does your service desk manager really need to be a tech?: A service desk manager’s job is to make sure your MSP’s clients are delighted while freeing you up to grow the business. It’s possible that the best person for this job isn’t a technician.
How your MSP can break into a new vertical: It’s easier to do marketing, find new clients, and make more money for your MSP, if you choose a vertical. Here’s how to get started.
The framework MSPs can use to be more efficient: Visionary leaders are notorious for moving at such speed that they leave a trail of chaos behind them. My guest helps such visionaries put an end to operational chaos and create operational excellence in their business.
Paul’s Personal Peer Group: Have you considered how your MSP would respond to a supply chain attack and what marketing actions you would take? If not, it would be a very wise idea.
Does your service desk manager really need to be a tech?
You may just have to tear up that job ad, and let me tell you why. We all know a service desk manager is a critical role. It’s their job to make sure the clients are delighted while freeing you up to grow the business. But whoever said that a service desk manager has to be a tech. What if there’s a different kind of person who’s much more suited to this kind of role?
I really do talk to a lot of MSPs. In fact, it’s one of the most wonderful things about the work I do. I get to talk to lots of different people about lots of different things. And because of my work in my MSP Marketing Edge where we are working with 700 MSPs, I talk to people in all sorts of different circumstances. So we have startups, two businesses that have been going for 30 years. We’ve got one person bands, two businesses with 200 employees. We’ve got all of these and everything in between.
But there’s one thing that I notice again and again and again, and that’s that the most successful MSPs, and let’s define successful as, the owner can do what they want to do with their life. They’ve got enough cash and they’ve got enough time, that’s success is to have that.
The MSPs who are most successful are those where the owner is surrounded by a very good team who take on the burden of the work for them.
Because it’s just too difficult to do everything yourself for more than a couple of years. What’s acceptable for our first few years in business gets tiring and boring as time goes on. And I’m sorry if that’s disappointing news for you because you never wanted to have staff, but it is the difference between just working for yourself and having a business that can survive and thrive without you.
And of course, one of the most key hires in there is a service desk manager or change that job title to whatever is appropriate for you. But basically someone whose entire role is to keep the clients happy and make sure that the work happens as it’s supposed to. Now, different MSPs have different ways of doing this, but they all come down to the same things. You’ve got some technical resource and you’ve got customers who want things to be done, and the service desk manager sits in the middle of that making the magic happen. If you own the business and you are currently doing that as well as the marketing and the sales and looking after the team and account management and finance and admin, that’s so tiring. What a liberating role to have a service desk manager whose enti...
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They want to buy 365 direct – fight it, or accept it?
The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge
Welcome to Episode 291 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…
They want to buy 365 direct – fight it, or accept it?: If a client wants to buy 365 direct, it’s not necessarily a bad thing… it could actually become a massive sales opportunity for your MSP.
Should your MSP start a podcast?: Lots of MSPs have asked me for advice on setting up a podcast, and yes, having a podcast can be an insanely powerful marketing tool. But should you do one? Let me help you answer that question.
Ask these questions to pick an MSP marketing agency: Many MSPs hate marketing and they hate agencies even more. My guest is going to tell you the specific questions you should ask a marketing agency to separate the good guys from the bad.
Paul’s Personal Peer Group: Have you ever considered sending an impact box to prospects? Find out what you should include in yours.
They want to buy 365 direct – fight it, or accept it?
Are these clients for real? They want to switch to buying 365 directly to save a couple of bucks a month. This is a scenario most MSPs face at some point, but should you fight it, try and educate them or let them just do what they want? What if I told you this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing and could actually become a massive sales opportunity for your MSP.
As someone who doesn’t personally have to deal with 365 and all the licenses and NCE and all of that, it does look to me like Microsoft has made it as hard as possible for you. That whole NCE thing is a massive pain, right? And especially if you have a client where you’ve made an annual commitment and then of course they hit you a few months in that they want to buy directly, and that just creates a headache for everybody.
It’s not like 365 is a high margin item for you, but from the client’s point of view, 365 is right there at the core of their experience.
Outlook and Teams and Word and Excel, these are all applications that most businesses use multiple times every single workday. So they want them to work, they want them to be productivity tools, not pains in the backside tools, and I think that’s a basic and perfectly understandable requirement of any business owner or manager today. Don’t you agree? So if someone wants to move the licenses away from you, buy direct and save themselves a couple of dollars per user per month, what should you do?
I’ve asked a few MSPs this question over the last couple of weeks and some of them have said that you should just roll over and you should just take it. So invoice them for any out-of-pocket expenses caused by NCE. Make sure they know how that’s going to affect the direct support that you give them and then let them go off and buy it from elsewhere.
Others have said that you should fight really hard to keep everything under your jurisdiction. Isn’t that the point of a managed service provider that you are looking after all of their technology? And that starts with the very basic help desk functions and goes right up to their technology strategy. Now if you don’t have some level of control over everything in between those two items. help desk and strategy, then surely you’re making your life harder than it needs to be and that must have an impact on the service that you can deliver to them and the service that they’ll enjoy.
So maybe the message you want to send them is telling them all the downsides, all the bad things that could happen, like the fact they’ll have to de...
Welcome to Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. If you're a Managed Service Provider (MSP) and want to improve your marketing & grow your business, this is the show for you. It's out every Tuesday on your favorite podcast platform.
Since launching in 2019, this has become the world's most listened to podcast about MSP marketing. Host Paul Green is the world's go to MSP marketing expert, and the founder of the MSP Marketing Edge.
Every week you'll get really smart ideas to improve your marketing. Plus you'll hear from the best guests, who will help you think differently about the way you attract new clients.
You can easily email and chat to the host Paul Green, who answers MSP's marketing questions every week. And there are versions of the podcast on YouTube if you want the full video experience.
Paul and his team at the MSP Marketing Edge say their mission for the podcast is to give you practical insights and expert advice to boost your business performance. They provide strategies to help you get more clients, increase your Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR), and grow your net profit. They know that profitability is crucial, and we're here to help you succeed financially.
Running an MSP can feel lonely. If you ever feel lost or overwhelmed, this podcast is for you. Each week it covers key topics for MSPs, offering specific, practical advice tailored to the channel. You will learn effective marketing techniques to attract new clients and grow your business consistently and profitably.
Marketing an MSP involves many strategies, from digital marketing to traditional networking meetings. Paul's podcast explores all avenues to help you reach your target audience. The weekly episodes discuss creating compelling marketing materials, using social media effectively, and optimizing your website for search engines.
Every episode features special guests, including industry veterans and successful MSP owners, who share valuable insights and real-world experiences. These interviews provide inspiration and practical tips you can apply to your business.
Paul Green often talks with successful MSPs about how they are growing their businesses, sharing actionable tips and strategies. The discussions cover finding new clients, increasing revenue, and building service consistency to give you a competitive edge.
They also address day-to-day business aspects like recruitment, leadership, and financial management. The goal is to equip you with the knowledge and tools to run your business efficiently and profitably. Topics include attracting and retaining top talent, creating a positive workplace culture, and motivating your team.
Business growth is a central theme. In the podcast you'll hear strategies for scaling your business, expanding services, and entering new markets. Paul and his guests discuss the challenges and opportunities of growth, providing practical advice to overcome obstacles and seize opportunities.
Innovation is another key topic. Discuss the latest trends in the MSP industry and how to leverage them to your advantage. Topics include digital transformation, cybersecurity, and cloud computing, helping you stay competitive.
Though based in the UK, Paul's content is relevant globally. MSP challenges are similar worldwide, and his advice addresses these common issues, regardless of your location.
The MSP Marketing podcast offers in-depth discussions about the channel and MSP industry, providing actionable insights and practical advice. Listen each week for expert advice, practical strategies, and insights from industry leaders. Whether you're looking to boost your client base, optimize operations, or increase profitability, the MSP Marketing Podcast supports your journey to success.
About Paul Green
Paul encourages listener interaction and values your feedback and suggestions. Connect with him through the website, social media, and email to share your thoughts and ideas.
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