EP190 - Want More Sales in Your MSP? Do This Now! with Ian Luckett

INTRO

In this episode of the IT Experts Podcast, we're going to help you to get more sales in your MSP right now.

Welcome to the IT Experts Podcast, the only podcast to help MSPs scale to 1,000,000, and if already there get to five and go faster at the end of the day, isn't it all about building a business that works for you rather than you for it? I hope you enjoy the show.

IAN

So, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to the IT Experts podcast. And this episode is for you, if you need to get some business, you need to get some new sales into your MSP. Right now, we're going to take you through some steps that's going to help you generate leads instantly, dot dot dot... Little caveat on that, this isn't a bit of a clickbait. But when we talk about sales in MSP, when we talk about the marketing, the marketing activities that most MSPs need to deliver fresh new sales cause, let's face it, 90% of MSPs are all with referral as business. There is a process that you need to go through. There is a system that you need to follow, but it isn't quick and there isn't such a thing as picking the phone up and just ringing someone and they're going to want your services. If they do, do that, and that's like a little golden Unicorn, and that's great. But these things happen over time. And what happened recently in the MSP Growth Hub, I had two phone calls in one afternoon with some of our clients and they said look, I just need to get some business in now. I'm not going to go on to the word need cause need is quite a desperate word and it's one of those things that need to be a bit careful about attracting negative energy. But that's a whole another podcast. But when you need to get quick business, when you want to get that quick business, you use that word. In there when you need it, say it again. When you have to get no, that's the wrong word when you need. I don't know what I think the word works when you need to get new business in quite quickly. How do you do it? What's the process? What do you need to do? What's the quickest way to do this, so at the conversation with the client, I wrote down a few things, and then about literally like an hour later I had another conversation with another client. Same thing they wanted to get. So there you go, they wanted to get some new business into their MSP really, really quickly. How do we do it? So I continued to write on my list and at the end of writing on my list because I've just spoken to someone previously. I thought right, hang on a minute, when you do two things twice, what do you do? Stuart tells me put it in an SOP.

So we built an SOP, and I've built what we call the shoe leather sales plan. Now what, the shoe leather sales plan is, is it's a case of getting your shoes, getting out there, burning a bit of leather, doing some networking and moving forwards to help you generate leads in your business. Now I'm going to run through with you the six steps that we have come together in this in this plan. So you know, if you want to get some fresh new leads in your business, it isn't going to be in the next month, if it is well done 2-3 months. It takes time to build relationships, people need to know like and trust you. But I'm going to run through you today what those six steps are to help you to generate some business in your business, get your shoes on.

So First things first. Number one, I want you to set some targets. So unless you know where you're going, what you're going to do, how you're going to get there, you're never going to buy a, you know, fly a plane, go on holiday or build a house, right, without a plan. So what do we want most MSPs, actually, just need one customer a month. So if you've got one customer a month, how many leads do you need? I'm going to take the wild assumption that you're not that great at closing, which most MSPs actually are, so you're going to need five quality leads, four to five leads to get one customer in a month. Now one customer a month to most MSPs, would transform the business because of your amazing retention rate, because you can be doing all that account management stuff as well sitting in the background. So how do we get into 10 quality conversations in your pipeline to feed that five leads to give you that one month, what do you need to do on a daily basis to get in front of that target market, look at those numbers. One new business, one new client. Far 5 leads 10 decent conversations over a period of time. Would you deem that to be an easy, ridiculous number of leads that I'm saying that the over six months time you'll be able to get? Of course you could get into more conversations with that when you think about LinkedIn and all the other networking opportunities. So #1, let's set some targets, but don't be too hard on yourself. You don't need thousands of leads, you don't need thousands of people on your e-mail database to just get one new client a month. So let's do that. Let's focus on that one new client a month and that.

Number 2, I want you to put together a dream 30, dream 50 are the ideal customers and companies that you want on your books. Yes, of course you could serve everybody on LinkedIn. We know that you could serve every single person on LinkedIn, but we don't want to, right? Because if you do that, then you're going to become a little bit generalistic we get into a niche or at least an area. Then you're going to start to get more specific and then you can start to charge better rates. So First things first, get into your dream 50. You want to make sure you've got a really nice tidy and tight LinkedIn profile, right? Because otherwise, when someone comes and looks at you, they're not going to see the benefit and the value of connecting with you connect on LinkedIn, new cells, navigate and find those people use LinkedIn like you're online networking them, who are those people getting into a chat with them, build connections, direct message people and get into conversations, as I said. And then add some value by adding value based educational content. Don't sell tech people, buy from people. What you need to do right now is make sure that whether you're using score cards or surveys or whatever, it might be you're educating, you're adding value. If you help somebody to make that buying decision to buy from you, they're more likely to come and actually make that transaction rather than to go off and have a chat with another. MSP but your profile storyboard who are you like, you know, stalk them in a very, very nice way. What's their activity? Where do they hang out? Are they on Facebook? Are they on LinkedIn? What networking groups do they go to? What other pages are they following? What these people are? This is about really understanding and knowing who your customer avatar. This one, send them something of value, so you send them a connection request on LinkedIn. They're seeing all your messages, your direct messaging them. Send them a newsletter, drop it in the post box. How easy is it to get into someone's post box these days? It's a lot easier than it used to be because there's not, you know, there is a little bit of junk mail, but get something of value over to them, a buyers guide, something that's informative, that they're going to get. They go oh, I didn't know that about my technology, so two, get to know your ideal customer, get to know your ideal avatar, find out who they are, stalk them, have it nicely, have nice conversations with them, great conversations with them about, you know, things that are going on in their world, not selling. Don't sell, don't sell, don't sell. That will come at the end. Alright, so don't worry about that. So that’s step two.

Step three, I want you to build connections and go to events. So in your local business estate. Now I know that if you're doing this and you are in a niche or you wanted to go into a particular niche, you might struggle to start with, because credibility and expert States and niches can take a long, long time to get up and running. But could you serve everybody with your MSP. Yes, you could so understand the size of business. I'll talk to a minute ago about your avatar. What size of business do you want? One or two men? Friends who are going to pay you £100 a month or do you want 10 + 20 + 30 plus users, they're going to pay you thousands of pounds a month. I'll let you do the maths on that one. But on your local businesses, stay in your offices, where are you, send out some leaflets. You know, got some great examples in the tech drive. Do a lunch and learn. Give, give, give. Give them something to give and some value. Where else could you actually run an event in association with your Chamber of Commerce or one of the vendors out there, the vendors have got a bucket load of money to spend MDF, they call it marketing development fund is to help them sell more stuff. So guess what, they help you sell more stuff, which means they get to sell more stuff. Lean into your vendor, they're really, really great at this stuff. Networking groups pull up some relationships. Where do your dream first your dream 50 hangout Google business groups, my town go and get in there. Build up those relationships, get to talk to people. Don't sell. Don't sell, just offer value. Just offer value. You serious network meetings if you're into professional services, some towns have like an elite networking groups or the professional services people get together. You don't know what you don't know until you go and get it on Google, right? So go and start, get into into Google, get into finding out what's going on in your area, what networking groups and where these people hang out. LinkedIn groups, awful for being groups, but brilliant for holding containers of people, if you want a lot of solicitors, go into a solicitors group. If you want a load of IT or MSP people go into a load of you know, go to the MSP groups for example local networking groups go and find them out on LinkedIn. You know Metro Bank they used to do some networking groups. I know whether other banks do that as well, but who else has got your list of accountants? Insurance companies? Solicitors? You know who else is also providing services to your target market, who you could then be, you know, get into a relationship with them so you could then go and maybe do a you know, an event with them. For example, if you're into construction companies, you want to go into the construction industry that provides no IT support which HR companies are working with construction companies, which technology companies and all these other different people. So think outside the box of who else has got your target market.

OK, step number 4, now, give back. The world is a wonderful reciprocal place. If you help enough other people get what they want, you will get what you want. Period. I think Zig Ziggler said that, which was amazing. But look, where can you speak? Everybody wants content, right? Everybody wants speakers. So go back into those groups, go back to some of those people you've made on networking. Would you like to do a webinar together? Let me come and do a lunch and learn. Let me do something for the, you know, the FSB or your Chamber of Commerce or one of the networking groups people always want to. Hey, listen to this one. No one's going to ever, ever going to come up to you and say, hey, I saw you speaking at that event. I'm posting about it on LinkedIn. If you don't do it, so make sure that you're using that opportunity. Create your own community, do your own events. Bring some clients in, get them to bring some guests in. Bring them into your office. Bring them into somewhere else and teach them something about cybersecurity. Teach them something about the tools that they're using each and every day. As I've mentioned before, join the local Chamber of Commerce. They have people there who are designed and their job is to make sure that you are successful in what you do. Go and use them local networking. And then content be a content contributor, people, as I said, all struggling for content. So go and provide blogs to someone go and provide some insights, some surveys, some assessments to another group, whoever it may be. But give back, give, give, give and you will receive.

OK, step number 5 now is all about being consistent. Okay, and this is really, really the boring bit. So #1 go into LinkedIn and check out your social selling index, your SSI linkedin.com forward slash. Sales forward Slash SSI stands for social selling index. It's your LinkedIn love-ometer it will tell you how much LinkedIn loves you or doesn't love you. And there's four key areas that it scrolls you on depending on you're connecting with people, adding insights, making sure you aren't getting into conversations and reputation within your within your field. Mark that down on day one as soon as you finish this. And then go in and work out where you need to be and what you need to do to help track that score on LinkedIn. When you make a new connection on LinkedIn, that person gets to see all of your content that's just popping up. Guess what happens if you don't pop in, and if you're not putting any content in there, they're not going to see it. So there's kind of like no point connecting with anyone cause I was going to see it anyway. So when they're fresh and new for the first 30 days, they get to see your LinkedIn content they've connected with you because they've seen your LinkedIn profile. That's all nice and tight, and it's targeted towards that target market. I'm going to connect with this person because I think they're going to be a value to me. They're going to add some value to my network. And I think one day they might be able to help me out. So check out what's going on with your LinkedIn social selling index. There will be a direct correlation between the amount of time you spend on LinkedIn and how much money is in your bank. I absolutely guarantee that. So on a daily basis, what calls are you making? Who are you connecting with in your network? Who are you going out there and which are you coming to this event? Can you do this? Can you do that? And you might have a team of people to do that for you. Again, daily, you know, LinkedIn posting. Get out there. Personal profile five times a day. Come on, let's not get scared about it. Guess what? If you put 30 days worth of content out there on your LinkedIn profile, do you think everybody in your LinkedIn profile is going to see? No, they're not. Put it out for the next month as well. So as soon as you've got 20 posts, you've actually got 2 or even 3 months worth of content. Don't leave it there for more than three months. Keep refreshing it. Changing it, but make sure that you're putting some really great content out there. Get into conversations with people, do some direct messaging as well. Get into connection requests. Who's connecting with you? Who are you connecting with? Go and add some insights to people when you're talking on their posts. When you've got your dream 30 or 50 lists, go and add some. You know, like and comment on their posts so people know what's going on. When you actually click on their posts and you make a comment on their post, it comes up with your name and your job title or your headline. So make sure that isn't your job title. Make sure that it's a headline of how you're helping people. Make sure you're out there connecting with people on LinkedIn. This is an absolute fire hose of a show, isn't it? Absolutely. Check your limits though. Make sure you don't end up in LinkedIn prison, because if you do, I won't be held responsible for this, but I think at the moment, at the time of recording, you can only make like 20 connections a day. So be really careful with that. This is quality, remember, go back to the top of this podcast. One new client a month 5 great conversations all we need every single month add insights as I mentioned daily activity even if you just spend half an hour on LinkedIn every day making insights, having conversations with people and make a massive difference set targets for all the above. Whether you're doing it or whether your team's doing it, how many comments you need to be making, how many posts you need to be getting out there, how many conversations, how many direct messages are you going to be sending out. Hey I've got this new PDF I've got this new white paper. I've got this new survey. Do you want to check it out? It's the way that LinkedIn works.

Then the next step is step number six, which is really simple, which is build yourself a plan. Build yourself a plan at the top, middle and bottom of funnel your networking plan your stakeholder, plan your content plan, what you doing in each of the areas I mentioned above to help you to generate. That credibility, that number, that liking, that trust of people, so they come towards you, cause then what happened is your e-mail will start pinging your direct messaging inbox will say Hey, I think we need to have a chat. You're talking quite a lot of sense. I need to, I need to have a conversation with you. Then you need to fall into amazing sales process. But in terms of getting those leads, generating those leads, the next part of the plan in Step 6 is just do that do that and do that and be consistent. This has been a complete and utter fire hose of the shoe leather sales plan from the MSP growth hub. Lot of information in there, but if you want or need to get some sales in your business, you need to get your marketing up and run thing. Do this just get cracking with it. Take action. Take action today. Talk about it with your team. Take some notes. Whatever you need to do, but it starts at the top. It's not complicated, but you need to make sure that you've been consistent. And I wish you all the very best of luck with your sales and your marketing. If you're on, learn a little bit more about what we're doing, the growth hub and how these frameworks. And help you take your MSP to a million or if you're already there, help you get to five and go faster. Head over to LinkedIn. Ping me a direct message. Let's have a chat, just as I said on this podcast, hope you enjoy. Enjoy the rest of your day and I look forward to catching up and connecting to you all soon. Be good. Take care. Now.

OUTRO

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Just before you go. And if you're curious about how this episode links with your ability to scale your MSP to a million or if you're already there, sell 8:00 to 5:00, then one invite you to come and take the MF master. It's 3 minutes you're going to get a 300 seat if you scan of your business where you can identify the one or two tactics that can help you find more time engaging, align your people and help generate more leads in your entities. Really simple. Just click on the link in the show notes and if you have enjoyed this episode, we'd love to get some feedback from you by means of a rating review. And then on Spotify or iTunes or your podcast platform of choice. We really appreciate every single one of them. Now you can go and enjoy the rest of your day, and we look forward to hearing, you know, and connecting you soon. All the best now.