EP244 – How Changing Your Behaviour Can Get You More Sales with Graham Stead & Ian Luckett

IAN: In This episode of the IT Experts podcast, we help you change your behavior to get more sales.

INTRO: 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 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. Today we're going to talk a little bit off topic. You might even think this is a little bit woke because we're going to talk about something around sales, which is not to do with the technique in sales. Anyway, about your behavior, Graham Stead from Growth Habits. Welcome to the show, Graham, how you doing today?

GRAHAM: Yeah, I'm good Ian. Thanks for inviting me. Yeah, looking forward to the conversation.

IAN: No problem at all. So Graham and I have recently met at an event and we were having a chat, it actually turned into a bit of an interview. He said to me, he said, this is because I was really interested in what Graham was saying. He's going to tell us all about his story in a minute, and his experience and all the battle scars that he's got in MSP sales. But the reason he's on the podcast today is, I said to him, he came to me, he was talking, yeah, I help people, MSPs with sales, and I'm thinking, oh, I've heard this before, blah, blah, blah. So I said, what's the number one thing, Graham, that MSPs need to do to get more sales? What's the one thing? And he said, change their behavior. And I went, ooh, that's interesting because they've got to get a sales pipeline, it wasn't, they've got to get their marketing working. It wasn't anything to do with that. It was all, what's going on in the old peanut, what's going on in the head? So that's why we're talking today, because this is the essence of Graham's business that he's created and his methodology and we're going to learn all about those today, and you are going to get some habits that's going to help you to get more sales in your MSP. So there's the pre-frame, now, the detail behind the experts. So Graham explained to us, or share with us, who are you, what'd you do, and who'd you help?

GRAHAM: Yeah, of course. Look, I've been in IT technology, ever since I started working ultimately. I ran an MSP for 20 years that we sold back in 2016. Now, obviously, when we started that business back in 96, it wasn't an MSP, we didn't MSP back then. But that's what we evolved into. I can relate very much to, I was a techie by trade. Working back with HP at the time. So I can relate very much to the sort of the challenges and pains of a techie finding himself running a business and trying to grow that business and all the challenges that come with that. So lots and lots of scars and lessons learned through that process. But, roll forward after 20 years, eventually we sold that business to CMI. And, grew that business, and at that business then I was very focused on sales and marketing. That was my role at CMI. So whereas before I was wearing all the different hats that an MSP owner typically wears. It was very much on sales and on marketing. So we really honed in on the sort, the lessons and the scars and really got that team singing and tuned. And then obviously we exited that business a couple of years or so back. I stayed with that MSP for until November or so last year and earlier this year, I was like, okay what do I want to do? I know I just have this intrinsic sort of want to help people. And I really love the coaching side of, there's a whole analogy around sort of kids' football team, but I'll say that for another time about it when you were interview me, maybe. So that's what I do. So ultimately, I'm here trying to help MSPs grow. But you mentioned it there in your introduction. It's not. I don't want people to think of me as a typical, like sales trainer. Training the techniques or educating people on the techniques. Of course that's an important part. You have to be able to have the craft of selling, but it is actually about the activities and the PA behaviors. And I will always use the sort of the analogy of Usain Bolt and running a hundred meter race, it's not about being at the 98 meter line, realizing, late to end of quarter or end of month. So thinking, okay, I need to try harder because all the success that comes from him winning his races started four years back. In all the planning and the diet and nutrition, the training plans, the training camps, et cetera. You just relate that to the world of sales and there's so much there in those activities and behaviors and the mindset ultimately that needs to go along with that. That's how I help.

IAN: Brilliant. Well, Look, over the years we know that leadership has come up in a much more of a forefront now, I think, in terms of, the vulnerable leader talking about the vision, talking about where you want to go, employee engagement culture and all of these words that I won't call them woke because they're really important, but some people, some very traditionalists will say, oh, you don't need to worry about that. You just need to get in there and just get selling and all of this kind of stuff. So leadership, I think, has seen a really lovely awareness in this vulnerability that we say that helps impact and connect more people. And I think we've seen it the same in sales and I would love to get your view on, the last four years, four, five years. We've got much more technology within technology now with AI. You could go into chat GPT and ask it for a sales script and it'll tell you, whereas before you'd be blundering around not even doing it or anything like that, okay, we've got the economy and what's going on in the world, which we're always going to get. Which is fine. We've got, the back out of the pandemic and everyone's a technical partner. What's the sales landscape looking like? Is it easier, is it harder than when you were in your MSP or what's happened recently?

GRAHAM: Yeah, that's a great question. Certainly since the time of COVID, which are all we very familiar with, the, you're trying to sell or how you sold prior to that, compared to how do so now just even about the remoteness of it is massively different. But I'm going to spin that round a little bit. And one of the, if not the most important thing that I'll talk about when I'm helping MSPs is managing their time. And I go back to the very first, MSP, we always used to be able to say, look if I could get out to a meeting, then I'd know I'd be able to make the sale. Because you've got that sort of relationship and you can do that and you're pretty confident you come away with a chance of making a sale. But that might mean a two hour drive to the meeting, a couple of hours in the meeting, a two hour drive. It could wreck the day, from that side of things, which is great if you get the sale from it, whereas you wind forward now, then obviously a lot of those conversations happen on teams. And actually sometimes trying to get out to a client prospect could be quite challenging because maybe they're working from home or they just don't want to have that time themselves. So it is really around the time. So yes, you've got all the tools and everything there, but it's, there's so much more. What's the word I'm looking for? Probably intense, okay. You have to make sure that you are using your time properly. And I will always get, people that I'm working with, whether it's an individual in my team back in, the MSPs or an MSP themselves, is to take their annual number, whether it's their number or the business's number that needs to be achieved for the sale for that year. And then chunk it down into the quarter, into the month, into the day, and ultimately down to the hour. And that's really important then, because then you understand how much sales margin or do margin, not revenue, how much sales margin you need to be selling per hour in order to hit your target for the year, right? So that then becomes a real useful psychological tool because every time you decide to go and do something, it distracts you from being able to make that money. It gives you some to question because if you do choose to take two hours doing something, you've then got to go and double that in the following two hours. So again, it is just that's the time. So yes, a AI and some of these tools around can help massively there from the prospecting. But that's really around saving yourself time. I'm still a little bit skeptical about how that's going to damage the human interaction.

IAN: Yeah. Yeah.

GRAHAM: And that's clearly really important in our game.

IAN: I was going to say, because it's not really, it's not B2B sales. It is still ultimately H to H sales, isn't it? It's human to human. It's that connection, that rapport, there's no point spending that time or creating that time and going out to that sale and then not building rapport overcoming objections and all of that kind of stuff, which is obviously getting into the bit of the techniques, but, we started off this show, and that just goes straight into the Usain Bolt analogy, doesn't it? That time is created before you even get to the starting time. So if you are distracted with other things, guess what? Your sales performance is going to be poor. Yeah. You need to fix that, which is great because that's what we talk about at the MSP Growth Hub Graham. So thank you for walking straight into that healthcare once again. Let's talk about habits. And, you've just alluded to it, there it is, that we just take the number, we break it all the way down to the hour and what you are going to do. Why do people not do this? Because it makes perfect sense and we're sitting here going, oh, it's very good Graham, very good Graham. Get off the podcast and then they'll put the phone down or whatever they're listening to, and then they'll go let's just get busy something else. Why is it so hard to form these habits?

GRAHAM: Oh I think it's like anything any habit you're trying to form, whether it's, be fitter, spend more time with your kids. Whatever it may be. Any habit you're trying to form it is, there's a reason why you've not done that in the past. Whether it's distractions, whether you don't really want to do it, et cetera. There's a few things there and I guess relating to, a lot of MSPs are tech led. Sales isn't there so native comfortable place of operations yeah. It's like we always start the day and number one on the list is I do something sales related, you'll find a reason to go to number two. Before you know it, at the end of the day there, you didn't get number one. There's just that sort of comfort factor to it. And I think then, there's also really understanding, the purpose, the reason, the why behind why you want to do it. So you know, if you can find a way of linking that to the real why. Maybe in some of an MSP owner's perspective, it might be like, if I don't grow this business, then I'm not going to achieve the retirement or want, or I'm not going to be able help the kids out, getting their first house. Whatever it might be, if you can really tie it to that. And then every time you make that decision not to spend the hour on something, then there's that sort of connection to how it's going to impact the real emotion why you're doing something. So I think if it's really important to try and tie that in because if you can't get that connection, you're not going to have that sort of going to hold yourself to account around what you're doing.

IAN: And we talked about that recently at one of our client intensives, was all around, changing gears to actually go just what's this all about? What is the purpose? What is the vision? And you'll hear Claire talking about it, our finance coach on some of the podcasts. But if you haven't done the exercise of looking at what do you need from exit, what do you need to retire, how much money do you need? Because you're scared of doing it. Because you don't know what the answer is. Go and do it. Yeah, put your big boy and girl pants on. Go and do it because it's your responsibility to make sure that you are building this business if you're the owner, that it delivers what you want. Because otherwise you're going to get to the end and you're going to go, do you know what? I'll just sell it. You probably won't be able to sell it because it won't be worth anything. Because it's like a clap tailed, old Ford Cortina rather than something that's a really highly operational business.

GRAHAM: No, totally. And I think again, just to help some of the listeners or take away something practical from the conversation is, I refer to it as a cookbook of activity. So it is basically nothing more glamorous than the spreadsheet. And you've got down, in the columns your weeks. I wouldn't go as far as a day, just make it a week. And down the left you've got those activities you need to be doing. Now those activities will be different depending on what it is you're trying to achieve. But that might be trying to make a new connection in existing client. It might be outreach to five prospects or it might be making a referral, whatever those things may be. If you do that and actually start tracking that, that will be really enlightening to, you might be sitting there thinking, I'm doing lots of this, and when you actually track it for a week, you realize how little you're doing, or it could away. But when it comes to establishing the habit, it's like anything, just start small, yeah. Don't try and suddenly go to, from, zero to hero in a day. It is just about, okay, this week I'm going to do one of this. Yeah, and maybe just do that for the first month, make you doing year one and maybe to five, whatever the numbers make sense to do. So yeah that's a big thing. But I think, you have to, I'm a great believer in, I'm quite a sort of an analytical person. I don't know where that's come from, but in tracking the numbers. And actually seeing how that changes. And that's really important then, because then you can see what's working and what's not working. There's no point continuing doing the same old stuff if it's not working. If it's outreach or whatever you could use your try one method and try a different method, know email or phone or LinkedIn, et cetera, and see what actually gives you the best results.

IAN: Measure what matters. Great book, and check it out because it's really important that you get that data clear. Just before we come on to the four steps we're going to run through here just one thing that you just mentioned there just about those habits is, it's so common, isn't it, that you'll start off and set up a habit and then day two, you'll close a client and you'll go, whoa, we've got a new client. Whether it come from referral or whatever it is. You go, great, this works. And then you go and get distracted. Stop everything that's going on, go and onboard this client. It might be easy, there might be a bit of a pain, whatever it might be, but you're delighted and you're living in that glory that you've got this new client.

Three weeks later, you sit back and go, why have we got no sales?

GRAHAM: Yeah.

IAN: Yeah. Because those habits didn't continue.

GRAHAM: Totally.

IAN: So, let's talk about the first thing that we've got here on the list. Demand creation habit. What's this all about, Graham? What does that mean?

GRAHAM: It is just the language I use, but and I tend to use it just to try and make sure it's not perceived as, oh, he's just another sort of, sales 1 0 1 type thing. But ultimately it's just about building your audience, creating that top of the pipeline, whatever you need to call it, it doesn't matter where you've got, amazing techniques and you're a master of the craft of sales and everything. And you've got all these habits that we go on to talk about. If you've got nothing in your pipeline, then it's all worth nothing. So you've got to build that audience.

IAN: Yeah.

GRAHAM: It is really around, what we've just been talking about the habits there is it's about making sure you're doing the slightly different things, this is all the normal stuff or the marketing that you might be doing or having a sort of a partner that's working with. For example, you know how many artists posted about this morning on LinkedIn is. If we take one of our clients, if we take an MSP client, and certainly back, you go back five years or so back, the primary point of contact would've been maybe the MD or the FD or maybe the office manager in a maybe smaller business. So the conversation between the MSP and the client was with that single primary point of contact that've been always delegated the responsibility of looking after the MSP. So let's bring that forward into now and the world of AI and copilot and these sorts of things there. If you're trying to sell or demonstrate to a client the benefits of those, but you're only putting a contact as the MD or maybe the MD's tried ChatGPT or copilot and it just couldn't get on with it. Didn't like it, it doesn't see the value, like it was dead. If you can have the conversation with maybe the HR director or the marketing director or the finance director and bring the value there. One of the habits that we really embedded into the team over at CMI was to make sure they expanded those contacts. Now, I know back in sales 1 0 1, that's something you do to just protect against people moving or leaving or the likes there, but it makes sure that you know every one of those sort of department heads, if you want to call it there.

IAN: Yeah.

GRAHAM: As a responsibility to deliver their function to the business and outcomes. Yeah. And they will need to use technology in slightly different ways and different outcomes. So there's no point having the conversation with the MD about what the FD and the detail of the marketing director's trying to do. You're going to get that real nugget of information, that real need that they have directly from those people. Again, just a tip we try and do is just take one or two of your MSP clients and just map out the stakeholders. Have you got the relationship with all those heads off? And where you haven't got them just put it in your cookbook to reach out to one of those a week and arrange a, just a one-to-one conversation team meeting. And talk to them about, what they need to do and move on from there. But yeah, you could talk about referrals and I've got I don't want people to think about referrals in the traditional way. People think about referrals, there's different ways of doing that. But so many things that need to happen. And again, if you're doing those daily, spending 30 minutes, an hour, whatever it might be daily then that will keep your pipeline, demand, topped up.

 STUART’S INTERRUPT: Hey, Stuart here. Got a quick message for everyone that's listening. If you've decided that you want to grow your MSP but you're not sure what support you need, then you must check out our ultimate MSP Growth Guide. It's designed to help you compare all of the support that's out there in the channel for you and help you shortcut your decision making so you get the right support to help you get the right results to grow your MSP. But alternatively, if you'd like to come and see us in action, then why not come to one of our events? Simply click on the link in the show notes and we'll see you very soon. Now back to the show.

IAN: Cheers, Stuart.

Again, absolutely on the money there. And if we reverse engineer that again there was a workshop we run recently around the sales and marketing element. And if you reverse engineer it to go, do you know what most MSPs, if you put one new good quality flight into an MSP every single month, you blow the doors off. You probably put them in serious overwhelm. So when you wind that one back to how many of those would you convert in a sales process? And then how many of those do you actually need in your funnel? You don't need hundreds and thousands of people in a list sitting in HubSpot that you're spamming every day about a generic message that no one's opening up. And what we see far, quite a lot, and I'm sure you do as well, Graham is that you've got a framework for the sales and marketing or you've got some curated content or you've got an idea from someone and the MSP thinks that the only way to do it is to do it absolutely a hundred percent complete. So until it's completely no, 10 minutes on LinkedIn, then 15 minutes on LinkedIn. Then like someone's post and then connect with the right people. I do love that idea of the spreading around those organizations. So you've got contacts in those organizations that are not just the owner and everybody focuses on the owner, but if the owner either moves or leaves on, and I guess when you'll get more and more people when you've got the sales process, number one, what are you doing every day to create that demand? For, to build your list. And if you haven't got a list, forget everything else about marketing. Because it's irrelevant. You've got no one to talk to.

GRAHAM: Yeah, totally. You need an audience. You absolutely need an audience to talk to.

IAN: Exactly. So they've just popped in through the door now. They've just opened up the door and they're all now queuing up, waiting outside, qualification, habit. Let's just make sure we've got the right people in the pipeline.

GRAHAM: Yeah, absolutely. And this ties very strongly into what I was talking about at the moment about time and we've all been there and I mentioned before in the very early MSP, driving two, three hours up to somewhere another a couple of hours meeting and we had a really nice chat and you drive back, et cetera, and then you don't hear from the guy again. That's a whole day wasted. Yeah. So it really is about making sure you're protecting your time. We really try and again, embed into the team, not to go I guess with happy years and thinking every conversation and every prospect, every lead that comes in, good one and happy and all this sort of stuff, and actually reverse that completely. And this is a really difficult mindset shift to make. But to actually go out into every conversation with it in your mind, to find the reason and on a mutual conversation perspective to find the reason why we're not going to be able to do business together.

IAN: Yeah.

GRAHAM: Now that might be the fact that Okay. They definitely need to be using an MSP or change MSP, but there's something about their man, us as an MSP, that's just not going to fit. Where that might be, or it might be the fact that, maybe they've got an alternative, maybe they don't actually really need to be doing whatever it is with the sort of technology project we're looking at. So it's going out there and trying to find the reason why we can't, asking those difficult questions that we've all been there, haven't we? You come off a call or have a meeting, you're saying, oh, I wish I'd asked that guy back because I've got this feeling that if I'd asked that. But you're scared to, and the reason you're scared to comes back to the fact that demand creation, because you haven't got enough pipeline. So you don't want to get rid of this one?

IAN: No. My pipeline will be empty and then there'll be no one in it.

GRAHAM: Yeah, exactly that if you need it. So you need a big power line. I used to say I used to have on a presentation that I had a sort two images of a, like a coffee van. If you imagine. You're at a festival or somewhere that and there's two, they're never art next to each other. But just imagine for the sake of this, there's two coffee van. And one's got one person in the queue and the other one's got 50 people in the queue. Now what the owner of the coffee van with one person in that queue is always, he's going to have to sell to that. Because he's got no choice. He can't send them to the back of the queue. That guy dithers, he is looking at the thing. I'll have a Cappuccino, oh no I won't, I'll have a Flat Whie. Oh no, I'll have an Americano. And he is dithering and dither and ding. And it makes a decision. Yeah, I'll buy this from you three pound 50, or I don't know what coffee's probably five pound 50 now, whatever it is. Anyway. And he is searching through for change. He said I'm 50 p. Sure. So the guy has no option. The coffee owner shop owner now has no option but to sell this coffee to this chap at a discount.

IAN: Yeah. Yeah.

GRAHAM: Whereas on the other side where you've got a Q of 50 and somebody's ding, very politely. Do you want to say, just pop yourself to the back of the queue and when you're ready, come back forward? And you can move people and you can qualify people out of that. And he's never going to have to discount. So it is protecting your time. Come back to those qualification questions. It really is hard asking the hard questions that are actually really hunting for the reason why we're not going to end up doing business together. Yeah. But doing that mutually and respectfully.

IAN: And I think that time thing is so important because, you are nurturing, you're spending a lot of time touch points right now. I have no idea, got to be in terms of touching your content and touching your brand, I reckon it's anywhere between 20 and 30, if not more than that right now. Used to be seven. But it's even more than that right now. And you've got to put that effort out there to create that content and to lure people in and to lure people in. God, it sounds like something a bit odd. No, to educate them into what you do so that they say that they can see value from it. And if they're not the right person, they haven't got the authority, the money, or the need or anything like that, just get them out of your pipeline. Cause otherwise you're going to waste time with them. It goes back to the first thing you said was you need to find some time. You're not going to find that time if you're chasing the wrong people. And just a story that's just popped into my head very quickly just about that, chasing the wrong people. I was at a festival last year, an event last year, and there was two burger vans next to each other. One of them, this was really interesting. I should have taken a photo of it. One of them was of Big Q and one of them there wasn't, and I sat there and I said to my wife, I said, why is that? What, there's something wrong here. There's something, what is it, what is it? And she's sitting there going just you are weird. And one of them had got it, it was, it said the only thing I can put it down to, one of them was prime burgers and the other one was burgers, chicken wings for heaters, this, that, this, that, and the other. And it gave too much option, which kind of, when you link that back into, you know the, what we said at the beginning about the niche in your target market, in the sector, this was just a clear message. So when you are in that place and you are looking to the, to qualify out the nose, what language are you, because if you use language that they don't like, they will determine themselves. They'll qualify themselves out of your pipeline. And that's good. And it was really interesting. Why has one got a big cure? One knot? Because it was just, there was too much going on.

GRAHAM: But it's amazing, isn't it? That just the psychology of this, it's just that, the buyer's psychology and the mindset is like. So often you see MSPs giving too much choice. And I think that comes from a place of they don't want to give only one choice or two choices, because if that doesn't fit, I'm not going to get the sales. They want to give themselves four or five. Here, we could do this, or we could do this, and we could do this. And you can't, you've just got to be you. You've just got to be confident, bold and you say you have a really refined message.

IAN: It's that FOMO as well, isn't it? What if there's no one in the pipeline? There's no one in the pipeline then there's something wrong earlier on in your marketing.

GRAHAM: Yeah. That's why that demand creation, you fill the, building your audience, creating your demand and the bit around time they are, the two most important things to get in like high performance out of that.

IAN: We've created a bit of demand. We've got some people coming in and out the about in and out the pipeline. What does effective questioning habit mean? What does that kind of like? Is this sales scripts?

GRAHAM: There's questions and we've all had, you get into the technique and, objection handling and the life causing of that comes into this sort of pillar as I refer to it. But it's, again the effective question, the outcome of this is bigger orders. These four pillars, which we'll probably touch on, if you can make small incremental gains in each of these pillars, they all compound up. So this one is about actually just moving that average order value from 2000 to 2040, 2% gain. But that compounds. So yes, there's obviously the question in, and there's all the usual, the sales 1 0 1 of really understand the need and understand the emotional, not the intellectual reasons behind this stuff. But again the activity and the behavior that is often left out at this stage is almost post-event. Is that sort of post-call debrief? That post-meeting debrief and actually looking back and thinking, okay, look, we asked some different questions in there and we got some really u really useful information out that question and you put that in your bank. Keep a bank of these questions, et cetera that you can use. They're lessons. Everything you should be doing, there should be a lesson from that. Love it. And that's not, and I don't mean lesson to be, you did something wrong and there's something better to do. You could have absolutely smashed it out of the park. And you want to smash it out of the park in the next meeting. So make a note of it, put it in the bank, share it with your colleagues and your other teams. But equally, you're going to come out meetings, you're going to think, oh I asked this question and I didn't, I didn't really articulate my point very well. I didn't get the information out of it, or actually, I wish I'd asked that question I should have done or you might be two weeks, three weeks further down the line and you find out you didn't win that new client or so, and then hopefully you get a bit of feedback and they tell you why and they'll be some lessons from that. So it's really making sure you take those lessons from everything can build up yourself at almost a library of what's really good question you can use. The more you can do that, the more you're going to have really solid conversations with your clients and prospects. And the more those questions will uncover real need, which results in bigger orders.

IAN: Do you know, I love the way you just started that with bigger orders, right? Because one of the things, and this is just, listening to this podcast, it's just about thinking bigger and thinking getting really visionary about some of the things that you can do. And I'm absolutely sure that after 250 episodes, they've got some value out of this, right? Because they're thinking a little bit bigger. So one of the things that I think is a small now that you've just said what you've said, I think a small mindset is don't worry about it, with this client, I'm going to land and expand, right? So I'm just going to get in, go small, sell them a few small bits and pieces, then I'm going to do the account management, and then we're going to grow with this business right now. I could probably almost guess what you're going to say around that, but you're just saying to start if that land and expand was a bigger land. Yeah. Then the bigger expands. Yeah. The habits going to get bigger and bigger as you go up.

GRAHAM: Absolutely and let's link that back into sort of the create demand habits where you're almost doing that white space of your stakeholders. Not talking about products and stuff you're selling, but the white space, if you can actually have the conversation with the MD has its need, the FD has that need and you can bring that all back into it, then that, there's questioning around that. And there's just bigger orders, so Yeah, absolutely. It is very much, this the habits of the activities and the behaviors, it is underpinned by this mindset, shift. Ultimately you've got to come back to what I said earlier. You've got to understand the reason why we're doing these things and why maybe we're doing them slightly differently. Yeah. And in some cases there'd be counterintuitive. You've got to be, I'm trying to find a reason why we shouldn't work together. God who wants to do that? Yeah. That's really uncomfortable when you first start doing that. So yeah.

IAN: That's a cracking one. And then the final one we've got here I was always told the money's in the follow up. Whoever turns up to the event is great, but the money's in the follow up. How you then follow up people once they've processed we're selling professional services, right? We're selling people, we're selling time, we're selling value, we're selling outcomes. We are not just selling a cup of coffee, we're not just selling a car. It's not a thing that you just go and buy and sometimes, you'll do all of this and you'll get to that conversation, that closing call, and they'll go, oh, I'll get back to you. And you'll go, oh no, I didn't get the sale. No, you didn't not get the sale. You just didn't get it then. So what's the next step- habit. Because this one is going to probably be the one that's going to hoover up more money than anything, isn't it?

GRAHAM: Exactly that. It is, I call it agreed next steps. But it is being, it is you being in control of the sales cycle. And I don't mean that to be sound like, you're bullish and you're overbearing or anything like that. Some, it is a mutual thing, but it is making sure that respectfully to each other you agreeing. Do we want to carry on to the next step? Yes. Okay. What is the next step? What do we want to get out of that? What, from each other? What am I going to do in between now and then? What are they going to do in between now and then? It's agreeing what, not just when the next step's going to happen, but what we're going to do between now and that next step. And what the purpose of the next meeting or call, whatever that may be at the next step. And that, and again, the outcome of those habits is quicker orders, rather than a three month average time to order you bring that down to two and a half months. But again, link that back to time, the whole sales cycle that means you can do more sales in a year. And that compounds. So again, you know what we found really impactful, I guess is the word, looking, back with the team at CMI is holding each other to account, so we used to do this thing, and this came out of actually of COVID where we all, most of it I think had those like little half hour check-ins, every morning. COVID. So we carried that on, but we dropped it down to three sort of Monday, Wednesday, and a Friday. And each one of those sessions just 30 minutes. We had themed and we had them themed around these pillars that we're talking about. But the Wednesday one was really about opportunity challenge, we called it, we themed it, that for a while we changed it about a bit, but that was where we'd come in and maybe the week before one of the team we've been talking about, okay we've got this challenge and we shared it around with the team. We came up with the ideas, more minds, think better ideas, et cetera. And then the sales person would go and have that call or do whatever that next step was. So we could then hold them, hold into account the following week.

IAN: Yeah.

GRAHAM: And on occasions they hadn't agreed the next step. I hadn't done got the date in the diary and agreed. All this sort of stuff. And another good way of forming habits is to make the not doing something more painful than the

IAN: Yes.

GRAHAM: Doing something. Yeah. So we started, you can imagine just the banter around the likes is, and the pressure of that, the peer pressure is you need to get back onto the phone. And have that call and make that next step.

IAN: Yeah.

GRAHAM: So again it's just having that accountability partner, that might be somebody, might be a sales colleague, it might be your co-owner, it could be somebody over yourself at Growth Hub or peer groups or something. Yeah. But having those accountability partners to hold, keep yourself true to what you should be doing.

IAN: Absolutely. And you do all of that, then you're going to get quicker, bigger orders.

GRAHAM: Totally. Yeah. All of that. And I'm just going to refer to some stuff here just as an example. So if even each of those pillars, we're going to create more opportunities. We're going to improve our win rate because we're working protecting our time, working on the stuff. We're going to get bigger orders and we're going to get orders quicker. Let's just say you're starting with, 2% gain is moving from 50 opportunities to 51, 1 extra opportunity. We're not talking like doubling it. A win rate of 35% to 35.7%. You're getting the idea, these are small incremental gains, but by gain, just improving each one of those four areas by 2%, that's over, it gets close to 10% gain on your number. If you can do it, move those to 5% or even 10%, they're material gains, so they're compounds.

IAN: That's crazy.

GRAHAM: Yeah.

IAN: Graham thoroughly enjoyed that show. We could have talked for many hours. Yeah, enjoyed and really, I'm sure we should talk again further on the podcast. Just before we shoot off, what's some of the top tips for the listeners to take away from the show?

GRAHAM: Yeah. I think you've got to start, come back to what I said earlier. Just start somewhere. And I think, you have to start at the top of the pipeline, that's what all sales is about. So you've got to create that demand. Yeah, find your time, protect your time. Think about those, that cookbook concept I talked about just fine. But it's 15 minutes a day, 30 minutes a day. Just start somewhere. Carve that out. And take some activities, whichever are right for your business, your MSP, and make sure you are doing that on a daily basis. And above that, if for whatever reason, the fire hits and all hell breaks loose. Say for example on Tuesday, you can't make that half hour, that's fine, these things happen, but make sure you roll it over and do an hour the following day. Don't use it as an excuse.

IAN: No. Get accountable, get that habit, and then when you've done that, you can then come back and listen to the rest of the podcast and then get more sales, bigger sales quicker. I think that's the takeaway from today.

GRAHAM: Absolutely.

IAN: Yeah. Again, once again thanks every much Graham for your time preparing and recording the show. How can people get in contact with you if they want to continue the conversation?

GRAHAM: No, look, Ian, the clinics came for the invite. Really enjoyed the conversation. I know. It seems mad that we only met a few months back properly. Yes. And yeah, thanks for the interview.

IAN: Got the same haircut. It just connects everybody together.

GRAHAM: Yes. So yeah, best way to get a hold of me, LinkedIn find me on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is Graham Stead, the business is Growth Habits. And, I try and post yeah, pretty regularly on there. Some little tips, hints and tips. So follow me on LinkedIn. And there is the option to sort of book a 45 minute, advisory call. If you've got a particular challenge or, want a sounding board around something we've been talking about, just book it. I'm more than happy to share some ideas with you.

IAN: Amazing. And we'll drop all those links in the show notes people can find it nice and easily. Look, good luck with Growth Habits this year. I'm sure it's going to be go from strength to strength and what I've seen so far. Again, thanks again and look forward to catch up with you all on the next show.

See you later. Take care now.

OUTRO: Wait, wait, wait, wait, 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, or if you are 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 360 degrees scan of your business where you can identify the one or two tactics that can help you find more time engage in, align 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 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 catching up and connecting with you soon. All the best day.