EP198 - How to Write Compelling Bids to Win New Business with Louise Howson & Ian Luckett

INTRO: In this episode of the IT Experts podcast, we help you understand how to write compelling bids that win you new business.

Welcome to the IT Experts podcast, the only podcast to help MSPs scale to 1 million and if already there, get to five and go fast. 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: Just before we get into the main section of the show, I want to just share with you we are roaring towards the 200th episode of the IT Experts podcast. We've got a competition for you in a couple of weeks time. Our great friend Paul Green from Paul Green's MSP Marketing Edge is coming to one of our client events and we're going to record the 200th episode of this show live in the room and you've got a chance to win a 200 LB Amazon voucher. All you need to do is submit an amazing marketing question and if Paul picks it out to be the best question, you're going to win 200 lbs. So make it nice and difficult, make it really interesting. And if you're interested, click in the link within the show notes here, submit your details and we'll get all of the questions asked by Paul. And you're going to absolutely love it. But your chance to win £200 Amazon voucher to mark the milestone of 200 episodes of this show. I'm going to let you get onto the main part of the show now. Enjoy.

So good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Welcome to the IT experts podcast today. We've got a bit of a different show. We've never ever touched this subject before. So I'm absolutely delighted to welcome Louise Howson from bid IT services on the show today. And we're going to help you work out. Is this bidding thing worthwhile? How is this a good way for you to get new business? Is it the right thing for MSP? So welcome to the show, Louise.

LOUISE: Thank you. Thanks very much, Ian. Great to be here.

IAN: So what we want to cover off today is we want to cover off this whole bidding thing. Is this bidding thing worthwhile? Is it worthwhile tendering the amount of time and everything like that for the average MSP? Now we met up at the MSP show earlier on this year, and we got chatting and you had a chat with some of the team as well. And I thought, wow, that'd be really cool to get someone who's expert in bidding with the MSP. IT and technical services to just tell us if we've got to do this thing or not. So this could be a really short podcast and it could be quite a long podcast but, I don't think it is. But before we get going, Louise, can you please explain to all the wonderful listeners out there? Who are you? What do you do? And who'd you help?

LOUISE: So yeah, I my background is in I. T. services. I've worked in I. T. service management for 25, 30 years now. And one of the things I've spent a lot of time doing is working with, in managed service providers, outsourcing companies, helping them to tender for and win a new business or extend existing business. And I've also now I'm working as a freelancer, I'm working independently. And I'm doing a bit on the other side of the fence as well. So I'm actually reviewing responses that are coming in to tenders as well. So I've done, things on both sides of the fence in, in my career. I'm writing. It's something that I really enjoy doing and I love helping other people to do it as well.

IAN: Fantastic. So if we now laser focus this episode in most of the MSPs who are going to be listening to this podcast are going to be, they're not going to be the lifestyle MSPs. So anything from like kind of two 50 all the way up to five, six, 7 million, who've got multiple teams. He's bidding and winning new work. Is this something that those MSPs can do? Or is it just something for the really big businesses?

LOUISE: No, absolutely. It's definitely something that smaller MSPs can do as well. You may think and historically there's been a lot of focus on the kind of really large scale bids. You hear about the things that go wrong.

You hear about those large bids and the massive amounts of money, the millions of pounds. The delays you hear about the likes of Fujitsu and other companies like that who bid for things can't deliver it and then end up in the news? And that potentially gives puts a fear up people because they think it's a really risky process and it's very costly but There's an awful lot of work out there That is much smaller. And the relationships that could be established in the public and in the private sector where you can really build great businesses if you're if you, bid for the work. And it doesn't have to be anywhere near as scary, time consuming or risky as you may think.

IAN: So what normally happens, this is your first podcast. Congratulations, but what normally happens is my team has spent a lot of time and effort going through a set of questions with you. And now I'm thinking of other questions I'm going to ask as we go along. So I know we're going to cover off this structure and I know that Marie will kill me if we don't cover every questions, but why do needs to go to tender. Most, of the procurement that takes place with MSPs, it's all around business owner to business owner. They've, got a, they've got a problem. You solved that problem, but let's just, dig into why where the local authorities, I know we're going to talk about public versus private sector, but why do businesses need to bother with tender?

LOUISE: So public sector, as you've said, They have to, right? So they are governed by procurement legislation, which I am not an expert in, but there are plenty of people who are, and they have to be completely transparent in their procurement exercises and they have to go through that process cycle. So non negotiable for public sector. For private sector, they're not governed by the same rules. They can just award directly. And as you said, a lot of the private sector work will be driven by those relationships. Managed service providers and their sales teams, their account people will develop really strong relationships with counterparts in businesses. They will work very closely with them. They will get to know the way they work and they, and really they build on those relationships. And that's how in, in, a lot of cases, that's how new businesses won. It doesn't have to go through the tender route and there's no requirement for it to do however we do find increasingly that. Companies, particularly if they're going through a transformation, if they're having investments or if they're acquired, so if a business is acquired by another business or if they have a change of leadership within the organization, it's not necessarily a given that just because you've worked with a particular MSP for a period of time, that you will just be able to continue working with them if there's a transformation project that needs to happen within an organization change of as I said, a change of leadership, This may come under increased scrutiny and what we're finding with a lot of organizations now, particularly with the financial situation as it has been and the costs of I. T. increasing significantly, organizations just need to know that they're getting value for money. And they want to know that their what they're buying is best in class that they couldn't get it cheaper elsewhere. So whilst, absolutely within the private sector, you're always going to find that relationship thing is paramount. It's key. And it's how you drive a lot of your business. You will also find that at times there may be a requirement to submit a proposal of some description, which will not necessarily go through the same it won't go through the same route as a, public sector procurement, but it will have some of the same components and some of the same elements in it. And that's where being able to respond to a set of requirements within a proposal and to produce something coherent, high quality the answers, the questions, that's where that comes in really handy. And being a bit kind of being in a position to be able to do that quite quickly because what I also find with a lot of these things is you can spend a huge amount of time cultivating a relationship with an organization that you really want to win business, right? You've been working with them for a long time and you think you're a shoo in, right? And you're pretty sure they want your services and then you're already, you've mobilized everything, you've invested a huge amount of time and effort working with this with this organization and winding and dining them. And suddenly at the last minute they say, I've just taken it to the board and they want to see it written. They want a proposal and they want us to and they want it. The week after next deadline is tight. We've got this. We've got the funding for it, but they need to see something. So even if it doesn't actually go out to tender, open tender and competitive tender, you may find that you still have to turn around and produce a written submission, which is in the spirit of a tender response, if you like within a, fairly short timescale. And that is, is really quite common. I've seen that happen quite a number of times, and it tends to be that turnaround time. It tends to be the 10 days we need something in 10 days and you've got to demonstrate all of this to us.

IAN: So let's, park that one for the minute. Because that's about actually doing the tender and doing the proposal. I think it's the proposal. We'll just call it the proposal for the minute. Yeah,

LOUISE: absolutely. Yeah. Those are different acronyms that fly around out there. We're going to cover that.

IAN: I have got a thing here. It says demystify the jargon. So we will be covering that off. So, there's kind of two opportunities here. Aren't There's ones that you're going to go and target at proactively either through your account management or your top 50 list or something like that. And then there's going to be other ones where all of a sudden you go, Oh my God, we've been asked to tender for something. Isn't that brilliant? Now, should we, should the most MSPs if I get an email like that or an opportunity like that, see that as a bit of a red flag pricing exercise. If all of a sudden this opportunities come out of the blue. 10 minutes 10 days later, they need a quote back. The clients come on the call to us going, Oh my God, I've got this great opportunity. It's just landed. They want me to do it. Is that a red flag?

LOUISE: With all of these things, you just, you have to trust your instinct, right? You have to know if it's a, if it's a customer that you've been working with for a while and you've got you've got that history and the established that established relationship with them, then you use your instinct. And you, work out whether this is something that you want to be doing. If it's just something that comes out of the blue yeah, again you need to be prepared to qualify it. So how much time is this going to take me to do? How much am I going to invest in this? How, and how do I understand? So all the questions that, that you'd asked before you went into a procurement that that was, a planned procurement that you were looking, that you were looking at. So do I know who else is likely to be bidding? In this, so who are my competitors? You know what's in it for me? Am I how likely am I to win this? Do I have you know, could I stand this up quickly? Is this something completely new? So all of these things have to factor into your decision making One of the things that I have seen and that I'm sure many of your listeners will be aware of is that companies will come out with a request for proposal and you spend a huge amount of time writing something for them.

And actually, it's just a data gathering exercise. And they don't really at that point necessarily want to go ahead with it. So you do have to be you do genuinely have to trust your instinct and look at the context of this. Is this just come out of the blue? Is this something that you need to come in for a while? Yeah. and do a bit of research around that before you, go ahead and commit to actually spending the time to do it.

IAN: So that's a great point. So we've got two things here then we've got number one, the end client might not actually know what they want. I've done some bidding work. I didn't enjoy it to be fair, Louise. I worked with some people who, I didn't really that much. And it was a very aggressive public sector tender in process. And it went on. Anyway, that's boring.

LOUISE: They can. Yeah.

IAN: So they either don't know what they want. So they're going to go out to tender to gather, to see what people are going to tell them or they want a price check. How do we know what's, the telltale signs to see whether or not someone's fishing or whether there's something actually there or not?

LOUISE: I would say it's the it's the completeness of the set of requirements that you've given. Nice. Okay. So when you, if you deal with the public sector, you're going to get chapter and verse, right?

So that's always that those, those, RFPs that come out the ITTs that come out from the from the public sector, they will be very comprehensive. If you're, what you might find is that you actually, in the initial stage, it's more of a, request for information. So what we call a kind of RFI. Yeah. So those tend to come out and they're a little bit more like phishing with an F rather than a PH. So there'll be more, although you may think they, they're a PH. They're more around establishing what's out there. In generally, if you get one of those, it shouldn't be a huge amount of work. So they said it shouldn't be taking you days and a huge team to pull those together. So when RFI is more as it, says, it's a request for information. So it's, can you, are you able to deliver this sort of thing? What capabilities have you got? What would your solution look like? It would be quite high level stuff that shouldn't take you a huge amount of time to pull together. And then there may be a kind of high level view of how much that might cost, a bit of kind of indicative costs associated with it. But if you're, if something like that comes out and it's, wanting a full proposal, that's the point at which I would be a bit suspicious because unless they've actually nailed down all the costs. What the requirements are, so what are the requirements for this service, how they want it to, how they want it delivered to whom in what kind of time scales, who the other parties are that are going to be involved in it, if this is part of a wider landscape of services, all of that sort of stuff. So if the detail's not there. At the outset and you're effectively what you're writing is just a huge amount of stuff that could you could do it like this or could do it like that, then that I would say is I'm not saying that it's not worth going for that sort of thing, but unless you're confident and you understand. The, remit and the customer landscape there. I, those are the kinds of things where I would probably steer clear. I would say unless you have either significant credentials working in that kind of industry. So if you're, if you work a lot with banks and the landscape really well, and you, those services you provide in a lot, and then another one comes out, you're going to have, you're going to have a view of whether this is right or not. If it's something where you've never worked in that sector before, And it comes out and you fancy having a go at it. I would just say, just be careful with that sort of thing because unless you've got the, experience, you've got the case references, you've got evidence of where you've done this thing before in, in that kind of industry, you may be wasting your time and may not be worth going for it. So the good thing about the private sector is you can you're less restricted by questions that you can ask. So in public sector procurement, everybody has to have the same access to everything. You have a, clarification question window. You can't there's certain things you can and can't ask. There's and although there's freedom of information and all the rest of it, the timescales obviously quite often they don't line up with the procurement exercise. So you are constrained. With the private sector procurements, you really aren't. So you can ask questions and they can just not answer you. And that may give you. everything you need to know. If you can't get feedback from the, procurement team, that may tell you everything that you need to know, actually, about whether you want to bid for something or not.

IAN: So the RFI then in private sector is quite an opportunity, isn't it? Because you could, they could be gathering around looking for solution. And I think what you've just mentioned there is if you find yourself solutioning in your proposal and guessing what they want, then that's a bit of a red flag because it looks like they don't want that don't know what they need. But many times when we were bidding, we were actually helping them craft the bid and helping them craft the proposed because they didn't really know what they wanted. It was an engineering project, so they didn't understand it. So if we're in a position where they've got a request for information, that's an opportunity because someone's come to you and said, What do you think? What top tips do we have for this landscape for MSPs to stand out? So What top tips we got to stand out from the crowd, but without giving them too much...

LOUISE: Yeah, they're

IAN: Going to go and give to some of them. What a question that is.

LOUISE: I know that's a really tricky one. And I think that's a difficult balance to strike. I would say, The thing that I say every time when looking at whether it's public sector, whether it's private sector, you've got to look at the questions that are actually being asked and where it's really woolly or where it's really unclear. You just need to be you just need to be cognizant really of not giving too much away, but making sure that your offering is clear in itself. So one of the things that I really recommend to anyone who is thinking about going into that sort of bidding tendering scenario is actually have your service or service offerings. what you do clearly documented. So you're not, when you're going into that kind of bid type scenario, trying to create something brand new every single time. Now, I know that in a lot of cases, and particularly if you're looking at some of the larger procurements, the more complex procurements, they will need solutions. They will need to push at the edge of technology and they'll be wanting to leverage all the stuff that's not even been invented yet. But, Being clear just from the outset on what your portfolio of services are so that you can say This is what we do and this is how we do it. So you know by all means the flexibility is there so we're happy to discuss with you other ways of doing it but this is you know, pretty much our standard offering. We tailor this for our customers. So you're not actually giving much more away than they could probably guess from your from your website. But you're going into the, a bit more of the detail of how you do it. The things that customers will want to see is that you understand a bit about their business and what's important to them. And for me, that's really how you, stand out in any submission, whether it's an RFI, whether it's a full procurement thing, it's actually understanding how you're offering, how what you do as an organization will benefit them as an organization. So that ability to take your product, your offering, And really help the organization to achieve its goals and its, objective. So that's why an understanding of the business and what they're trying to do is really, important, which comes back to those relationships that you need to have. So if you haven't got those and you're going in cold, it can be really difficult to actually evidence how you could how you could help their business. But, but having a bit of an understanding, talking to them get, getting in touch with them and talking to them about what their pain points are within the organization and then really zoning in on how your solution will help support that. And that's my, that would be my key bit of advice, every point of the procurement exercise we're on.

IAN: And build yourself a bid library. Don't just keep creating everything every time. If someone, what I'm taking away from this is that if I'm working in a particular niche or, a business sector and I'm adding value in that, it's spend some time, as you've just said, and we say every single week to our clients what is it you do? Who'd you help? How do you help them? What are the business outcomes? All of that kind of stuff. So listen guys and girls, every time we're banging the blooming drum about your plumbing marketing, get, this is it. This is the bit where it's all pulling together, do that. Okay.

LOUISE: Understand it. Really understand what you do and how it helps your customers. That's the key bit. How does this actually help? Because we get all excited about what it does and how it does it, but actually the customer wants to know what's the benefit what's the outcome of all of this stuff.

IAN: Oh, blimey, all day about that one. Anyway, we're not, we're going to move forward. Let's do some demystification of the jargon. What we got? RFP, ITIL, COBIT, SIAM, what do we need to know about?

LOUISE: Some of that really isn't anything to do with tendering and bidding. So the main ones you're going to come across are RFI and RFP with a private sector. That's, we've talked about those a bit, a request for information. That's the, but you don't always get those, But sometimes you do and that's the stuff that'll get that might get sent out to loads and loads of suppliers. They may go through a list and just send it out speculatively or may send it out to providers and managed service providers that they work with in the past. And then the RFP, that's the request for proposal, and that's the document that will come out, which should be heavier weight, which should be Set out the procurement timelines. It should set out what the expectations are what the requirements are and it'll set out the it should tell you what format they want it in It should tell you what how they want the costs, set out and all of that sort of stuff so that's really on the private sector side The public sector tends to talk about PQQ which is pre qualification Questionnaire and then an ITT which is an invitation to tender. However Those, they're not, although those terms are technically private and public sector terms, they get used interchangeably. You may find an RFP being called an RFP in the, private, public sector and you may find them calling it an ITT in the private sector. They're not really that, it's not really formally, formally defined as such is just how it's just how it tends to be used.

IAN: So bid writing 101, never written a bid before. What are some of the top tips we've talked about the offering being clear about who you are, what you do, who you help, how do you help them with their business outcomes? What are some of the things if people have come across a bid and they've listened to this podcast and they've got crikey, we've got this opportunity, I think we need to go for it. I've done my qualification of it. It looks like it's a good opportunity. Where, do they start? What's, the process that they need to follow?

LOUISE: So I love myself a bit of process. So that's ...

IAN: a funny feeling. You might.

LOUISE: Yeah, I really, do. And you're absolutely right. It's the process you've got to follow. That's the bit. Yeah, so get that document that's come out. And And look at the time scales. That's where I always start. How long have we got? So when does this have to be in? And you will know within your organization, depending on the size of your organization and how you, work within the organization. Does anyone need to sign this off before I send it out? Or can I literally just write it and send it? So if you internally need to run this past someone to get approval to, go ahead and do it or whatever, then you need to factor that bit in. It sounds really, basic stuff, but you'd be surprised the amount of times that we think we've got until next Monday. And then somebody is Oh, have you shown it to someone? And it's no. Yeah. So yeah. Just check in to make sure if you're writing it and you're, you're, in, the sales arm that actually you've, the poor people that are actually going to have to deliver this. I've had the time to touch on, to look at it, to make sure they can actually do it. So, work back. That's my advice. Work back from the, We're backwards from the date, how long you've actually got to write it, and then who do you need to, support you on this. So it's a bit, treat it a bit like a project, really. So even before the, actual PQQ comes out or the ITT comes out, whatever it is check the timeline. So you should be able to get an indication if you're in, if you're engaged with the organization in advance. You should be able to get a bit of a timeline from them, which indicates how long, roughly what their procurement cycle is, and then how long before they expect, how long they take to award. The contract and then when they expect it to be mobilized. So you should have a bit of a view of that. So you, even before the documentation comes out, you should be able to start pulling together a bit of a plan. Make sure you've got the right people engaged in it. Once it actually lands, it's a bit like an exam paper, read the questions. Yeah, look at the scoring matrix. Yeah so it tells you in the exam paper how many How many points per question and it will tell you in? It I mean it will tell you to a degree whether it's public or private sector They will tell you how they're going to market or they should if they don't you need to go back to them and ask them Because you don't want to spend all of your time on one bit, if actually the thing that they're going to award all the points for is this. So you may tie yourself up in knots about the financial bit of it, and actually what they want is quality more than finance. So there should be an indication of the scoring matrix of the weighting that they're going to give to the different sections. So again, it's all about the preparation. So look at how much they're going to, how much you're going to score for each of the questions, and that should then tell you how long you need to spend roughly on each of them. So where you need to spend most of your time, look to see how they want it submitted. So if they are expecting you to put it, submit it via a portal, or if they're expecting you to spend, submit it as a document, just make sure that if you're emailing it, that there's no restriction on things like size of files, you would be surprised. Like you get all that with that a few times. Yeah. You get a lot...

IAN: of connection.

LOUISE: Internet connection or somebody puts a really glossy something in somewhere and it blows the file size and then you can't actually send it and then all of that sort of stuff so just

IAN: Nightmares coming back to me now

LOUISE: Just up front just I mean it's really basic stuff but just check all of this stuff just check to make sure read all of the questions and then you know assuming you may be doing it all yourself or you may have other people that are working with you but make sure that everybody you know understands the remit, right? Understands, understands what's being, what they're being asked to do. And then, really, just when you're, pulling the responses together, just keep reading the question, am I answering this? We talked, you mentioned BID collateral and BID library. I'm a big fan of reusing as much stuff as you can. But just because you've done it before doesn't mean that it answers the questions and quite often you'll get something, how, talk to us about how you'll handle incidents if we've got a problem. So if you just pull out a standard, answer to a question, stick it in there, it may be absolutely fine, but you just need to check to make sure that the actual specifics of what the question is asking is the answer that you're writing. If you're going to talk in detail about the technical design, My, my, guiding advice is the question to ask after every sentence, almost every paragraph is so what? So if you're writing something in the document get to the end of the question, the end of the sentence, end of the paragraph. You look at, you're looking at the diagram you've put in there, which is a beautiful diagram. So what, how is that house helping me to answer this question? What you'll often find is you've got a word limit, a page limit, a character limit sometimes. So with those sorts of things where they want war and peace in 250 words, every word almost is so what. So it's really important. So that, that, bit, the so what question is, something that's really key to ask as you work through. And my advice is always to make sure you leave time for somebody else to review it. Even if you don't have to go through a formal review cycle within your company. Get someone else to read it through. Preferably somebody who doesn't understand it necessarily. Because if he can, understand it, then then actually the chances are that somebody else from outside is likely to understand it as well, right?

IAN: Brilliant. I think that's great. And then and then just to make it clear on what you've just said, because I know that we did this as well, take that bid that you've just completed and deconstruct the questions and put those into your bid library.

LOUISE: Yeah, absolutely.

IAN: Someone else is going to ask you those, similar questions. They will ask similar questions as well.

LOUISE: And also A key thing with this, we talked about is it a waste of time? And if you don't win, if you don't win the business, you may be tempted to think that is a waste of time. You can pretty much you can always ask for feedback on the, bid. Sometimes you will be given it, particularly if you go through a public sector, they will give you feedback. If, it's a private sector bid, they won't necessarily. There's nothing to stop you asking for feedback. Where did we do well? Where did we do well? Were there any answers that were good? Were there any where we were? And take that feedback then and use it. So even if you don't, even you could do a brilliant submission and there's actually another organization that's a shoe in. So that's, so you could end up in that situation where you've invested a lot of time and then you don't win. And actually there wasn't anything wrong with the submission. It's just that it was a predetermined outcome anyway. So it's helpful to know that actually the quality was good. Because what you don't want to do necessarily is reuse something that wasn't good. But if something was actually good, and you were on the right lines, then absolutely take that answer, keep it somewhere safe, and then go back to it and revisit it next time. The other thing I know it's probably on your list, but, Using AI.

IAN: Oh, I was just about to come onto that. This is shiny Ball syndrome 1 0 1, but ...

LOUISE: Yeah.

IAN: How do the, how can we use AI to speed this up? What? Yeah,

LOUISE: Absolutely. And you may think, because I love writing bid responses and would, quite happy to spend all my time writing bit responses that I'd say don't ever use it only ever use a human being preferably me. But no, I actually, do you know what? There's absolutely nothing wrong at all with using AI. And in fact, to get you going sometimes, it's really not a bad idea. Particularly if you've got a question and you're a bit like, what could I put in this as an answer to this? What sort of thing might it be expecting me to do? Yeah, some ideas a framework perhaps for the, answer. I have reviewed some bids where it's quite clear that they are answers which have probably been spat out by ChatGPT or similar and it's obvious. So that's the other thing. Don't rely on it completely. Because it, it will usually be quite obvious, it will be an immaculately, perfectly written response, but it will be fluff predominantly, without actually any content, and it won't be tailored. So unless you one of the things that sort of organizations do is train their own AI to answer questions for them so that if you're doing a lot of this stuff That's absolutely something to look into because you can actually teach you can teach it what you do You can teach it how you do it and then it can tailor your responses for you I mean you can spend money on systems that will do this for you as well if you want to if you're doing this at scale but if you're not and you just want some ideas about what could I include in this response and What might good look what might something look like or you just got writers block absolutely, just fully boots use it, tailor it. But probably don't ever just take what chatGPT gives you and stick it into your bid response because it will be obvious that's what you've done.

IAN: We are inspired, motivated and delighted to be here. Yeah, exactly. To you today. Some of chatGPT's favorite words.

LOUISE: Yeah, absolutely. It will be obvious.

IAN: Louise, absolutely brilliant show. Thank you very much for your time today. You've brought some haunting memories back for me in my back in the day of, doing bidding. Yes. Thanks. Thanks for that. Quick summary. What are people need to what do people need to do coming off the back of this call if they get some opportunities or they want to go and do some tendering or some bidding? What's the things that where should they start?

LOUISE: So I think from what I said at the outset, trust your instincts when you get an opportunity. Don't be, don't be blinded by shiny numbers which look too good to be true cause they may well be. If you are going to go for it, plan treat it, as I said, treat it like a project work back, understand who's going to do what and just leave yourself enough time to do it and do it justice. And if you don't win, then, absolutely go back and look away. And, lessons learned, and, feedback that back into the next time if there, is going to be one, that's what I would say.

IAN: Brilliant. Brilliant. Thanks ever so much preparing and recording the show today. If people are interested in getting some help and support with their bidding and tendering, how can they get in contact with you?

LOUISE: Yeah, so I'm on LinkedIn. You'll find me on LinkedIn. Just look for Louise Howson. There may be a few of us, but I'm the one that works for Bid-IT services and I also have a website. It's not a particularly shiny website, but it's bidit.co.uk so you can get me on there as well.

IAN: Fantastic We'll put those links in the show notes so people can just hit them And get in contact if if it's something they're working on right now. Thanks ever so much. Good luck. For the rest of this year, where are we now? Like June, July, August, June. Oh, crikey. I can't even remember. Summertime. It's not even summer. Anyway, nevermind. Great talking to you. Lovely to learn about what you're doing and thanks very much for adding some value to the to the community. Good luck. Take care. I'll see you all soon.

OUTRO: Wait, just before you go. And if you're curious about how this episode links with the ability to scale your MSP to a million or, if you're already there, accelerate to five, then we want to invite you to come and take the MSP mastery quiz. And in just three minutes, you're going to get a 360 degree scan of your business where you can identify the one or two tactics that can help you find more time engaging along your people and help generate more leads in your MSP. It's 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 on Spotify 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 catching up and connecting with you soon. All the best.