EP176 - Ask Stuart #13 -
How Do I Stop My Clients from Bothering Me?
with Ian Luckett & Stuart Warwick

INTRO

In this episode of the IT Experts Podcast will help you answer the question how you stop my clients from bothering me.

Welcome to the IT Experts Podcast, the only podcast to help MSP's scale to 1,000,000 in if already there get to 5 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

So, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to the IT Experts podcast. Today we've got a really great question came out of a great conversations we were having with our clients. As we were refreshing this 16-week plans a couple of weeks ago for those who are listening to this, you know who you are, Stuart's back in the House today. Good afternoon, Stuart.

STUART

Afternoon. Great to be back. Hello everyone.

IAN

And yeah, we're going to be chatting about how to stop my clients from bothering me and getting in the way. So I want to put some context around this. It was on the accountability call, we were talking to some clients and they'd said a couple of them had said, Oh my God, it's been transformational since I have trained my clients to do what I want them to do, rather than bother me and kind of have this legacy of when I started the business, where they texting me, phoning me, interrupting me and all these kind of things. So I thought, let's do a podcast about it, Stuart, why not? This is a really big thing, isn't it?

STUART

Yes.

IAN

So, you know, being an MSP, you're busy being busy anyway, cause life is just throwing stuff at you left, right and centre, whether it's technology, whether it's software, whether it's people, whether it's users, whatever it might be and then on top of that you've got all these clients who you believe that if you don't serve them, answer them back, ring them back as straight away, answer their text message, they're all going to leave, which is a complete and utter myth isn't it.

STUART

It is. You see the thing about a service business and any MSP is in the business of service, people like to be of service. And so the challenge, it's like an equal and opposite tension between the reason you went into the MSP world to be of great service and help people with their technology. And then after a certain while, it's like, well, why are you calling me? Why are you disturbing my day? But how do you grow that, if the reason behind the growth today has been because you've been available for hours and serve them. So it's a real contradiction in terms, and a change in how you show up in your business to take it to the next level.

IAN

Yeah.

STUART

Many MSPs are very happy being front and centre in their business. You know, we talk about lifestyle businesses, a lifestyle business can be an amazing business if that's the business for you, but there are many MSPs also that want to scale something and build asset and the issue is they go, I haven't got any time because my clients are needing me all the time and they're texting me in the evenings, at weekends during the day and every time I try to work on the business, I feel sucked away from it into helping them because they need me and actually it makes me feel good because they need me.

IAN

So the interesting thing here is it will always get to a point where the MSP will say no, I'm not doing this anymore and all the new clients that come in have a completely different experience to their existing clients, don't they? From an onboarding point of view. From a how does it work point of view from who you meet and all this sort of stuff because you know that. You know what got you here is not going to get you there. And you need to then make sure that you're scalable and more efficient moving forwards, but then you get this dilemma. Oh my God, I've got this new process moving forward, but how do I look in my rearview mirror and get my clients behind me to do this because. They're all going to leave still, aren't they? Well, you think they are not sure by the way, that's the answer.

STUART

The thing is, you think they're going to leave you and the reality is they're not going to. But we're so wrapped up in this psychology of being of service. And, you know, we built our business successfully by being available. The thing is, you just need to retrain your clients on what the rules are. And remember, your clients have perhaps grown alongside you. They're probably going through exactly the same challenges themselves in their business. So when you show up and explain to them that you've now set up this out of office on your e-mail, which is on permanently by the way, and it says, hey, I'm busy working on the business. If you need support call this person or send a ticket to this e-mail address and you are just less available at extreme, people get to you, you know the phone numbers or you just don't respond, or if you do respond, you have a standard like out of office text message response that says, hey, if you want support, otherwise, text me if it's personal. If you think about it yourself, how many times would you contact someone personally on their personal mobile phone if they set that expectation. So the starting point is setting the expectation and the boundaries in your business, but you've got to stick to them.

IAN

And the interesting thing is that they're setting expectations. So I understand why you'd be worried if you were going to do this. If the only time you have a conversation with your client is when you're fixing stuff for them, that goes wrong, right? Ian can fix it, Ian, can you fix it? When have you had a conversation and account management conversation on where's the business going? How's it feeling? What's happening in your world life, so you can actually get ahead of the curve so you can all crikey. If you've got 10 more users coming in, I'm not sure I'm going to be, you know, talk to me about why account, why this is now feathering in really nicely into account management and why, if you have a really great account management relationship with your clients, these conversations number one probably don't need to happen, and number two is going to be easier, aren’t they?

STUART

You've just summarized it perfectly. Thank you. I think the sound bite there is turning something that is reactive. They need you to fix something into something that's a response from you. You know, so responding and being proactive and if you've got that opportunity to speak to your clients and you know you've got to educate them as to why, ATB or QBR or an account management review is of worth, and that is a starting point reeducating them. If you've spent like, five or ten years just being reacting to them. So there is some challenge in reeducating them to it, but the starting point is not being available and we it's like a diversion, isn't it? You know when you see a road closed and they're diverting with that yellow sign, you're setting up some yellow signs diverting them to the help. Not via you and we're all quite happy. It's a bit annoying to start with and then you get used to what the diversion is and you adjust to the diversion until they stop the diversion and you go back to the old ways. You just want to keep that on permanent divert.

IAN

So before we get on to the kind of the framework and the and the steps that we're going to help you with, so you can kind of get back control into this, the absolute cherry on the cake of this conversation that we were having was in actual fact what these clients have actually identified was when they had actually got rid with some of these noisy clients who are ringing him up bothering him not doing this. They weren't making any bloody money out of them anyway, so they're actually better off.

STUART

Yeah, huge.

IAN

Yeah, getting rid of them. Because they're going to be more profitable.

STUART

Yeah. So yeah, once you understand the value of the people, well, the start point is, who's calling you? It's probably only two or three certain clients that call you all the time. The noisy ones, if they're profitable, great. Just retrain them to work in a different way, as we've just talked about. But actually, if you do the crunch the numbers and realise you're not making any money on them, then either put your prices up or encourage them to go find someone else.

IAN

You don't have to talk to about how to ring, you just ring them up and say we're not doing this anymore. I'm sorry I can't carry on and if you do want to carry on, this is what it's going to cost you. This is how it's going to work. Thanks very much. And if it's a no, then you can actually, if it's a yes, you can cheer and if it's a no, you can’t cheer because you know you are going to make more money, you can go and work with clients you want to work with completely. And then you got more time to do your marketing, yeah.

IAN

Don't start that one again, right. So look, let's get into the into the nitty gritty. What are the key steps that if people have listened to this podcast so far I've gone. Oh my God, that's me, I need to do is I need to do this. But I'm not confident. I'm scared. I'm a little bit nervous about how to do it. How do I start?

STUART

Well, it starts with the data. Go get the data who's calling you and when you keep a log for a week or two weeks or a month and just log every time you are text messaged or phoned and it's a client needing help, log it and then look at what that pattern looks like and then you can work out as we just said who's calling me. Are they worth it, and what sort of conversation? I have to have cause if you've got 100 clients, I bet you that less than five are causing most of the noise.

IAN

Yes.

STUART

And once you know who's calling you and when you know who you going to talk to, then you need a carte blanche redirection. You know, the yellow signs we're talking about diversions.

IAN

Yeah, diversions.

STUART

What are you going to do, to block people reaching you direct and is your help desk team set up to handle you know, the inbound inquiries. Are they giving the right kind of service, does it automatically set up a ticket you know is the PSA configured appropriately to automatically allow clients to log a support request. And are your team capable of handling the different types of requests they've got, it's not just a small technical fix such that they can diagnose the issue, raise a quote, get procurement involved. Send the invoice out you know, is that all set up and automated such that it works then you're not involved in any step of the process, but as a minimum you don't want the phone ringing or the emails coming to you. And to do that, you've got to set up your out of office. You're out of office on your phone and text messages, your WhatsApp, if that's how you've been working with them. Change phones. Get rid of your phone, and a new phone. And also communicate it you perhaps want to send a letter out to everyone explaining the change of process or E-mail put it in your newsletter if you have a newsletter so you know if you're going to change anyone's behaviour, you've got to communicate. You got to educate them. Explain the situation. It might take a couple of months, as you drip, drip and gently drip, feed it out and people start to get used to the fact that they can't get hold of you. It takes time to pick up a new habit both for them and for you.

IAN

And it also starts and just as you were talking. And I just, I just wrote it down. You know it starts with personal time management as well. If you are accessible 24 hours a day because you're trying to do it to be quite frank, then stop being so accessible. Give them times when they can get in contact with you. Give them times if he's going to set up a Calendly link, give him that time in the afternoon or an hour in the morning hour in the afternoon, whatever it might be. So at least you can then focus and you can get on with what you want to do, you know, during your day. And as Stuart said, you know, communicate. This is a great opportunity for you to if you haven't been ready. And there's a podcast on this somewhere I can't remember what number it is on the top of my head, started your account management process. This is a great opportunity on how you can begin that conversation about how the management of your account is going to work moving forward. Oh, by the way, we're doing things better to help you keep safer, secure, more efficient, etcetera, etcetera. And a great time to bring that right one in right now. Isn't it?

STUART

Yeah, perfect, and the thing you can say to your clients is like guys I'm redirecting you to my team who can handle your day-to-day queries because I'm working on the more important stuff in all of all of my clients as businesses, including yours. You know, I'm the technology strategist and I'm working on strategy and the latest security tools and I need my team just like you probably need your team to step up and do the day-to-day servicing of clients.

IAN

To get back to you quicker and better.

STUART

Absolutely, absolutely.

IAN

So wrapping this one up Stuart, what's the bottom line on this one?

STUART

The bottom line is you have the power to stop your clients bothering you, but you have to do something about it.

IAN

And if you do something about it, you're going to end up being more efficient, more profitable, have a better system in place, have more fun and play more golf.

STUART

Maybe and stop pulling your hair out.

IAN

And stop pulling the hair up. Why do you always keep mentioning hair?

Right. Well, look, that's it from us today. We hope you've enjoyed the show. You go and enjoy the rest of your day and Stuart and I'll catch up with you soon.

STUART

Thanks everyone.

OUTRO

So I hope you enjoyed the show if you did, I'd love it if you could leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. If you want to know more about how to take your MSP to a million or if you're already there go faster. Then come and join Stuart Warwick and myself in the scale with confidence Facebook group the link is in the show notes. You go enjoy the rest of your day and I look forward to connecting with you soon.