EP260 - Why Getting to NO Faster Will Grow Your MSP Quicker with Stuart Warwick and Ian Luckett

IAN: In this episode of the IT Experts Podcast, we're going to help you work out how getting to ‘NO’ faster will grow your MSP quicker.

INTRO: Good morning, good afternoon. Welcome to the IT Experts podcast. We've got Stuart back in the podcast lounge this afternoon. Good afternoon, Stuart.

STUART: Afternoon. Ian. Good to be back.

IAN: How are you doing today?

STUART: Very well, Very well. Looking forward to this one.

IAN: Yes. Today we're talking about sales. Huh?

STUART: We are, love sales.

IAN: Love sales, we love a bit of sales. It's what makes the business most sustainable. And it's one of the hardest things that we get to hear are amazing clients talking about.

STUART: It does, it sounds so simple, but it is so much harder than that.

IAN: It is. And today we're going to help you to understand and learn the concept of basically getting people out of your pipeline who aren't a good fit. They're blocking it up. They're making it bloated, they're making you know your life. And this is all about time...

STUART: Time management, isn't it? Completely being efficient with your pipeline, being efficient with your time. And ultimately that translates to the bottom line. So actually we're talking about profit.

IAN: Absolutely. And you know, every MSP, have you ever heard that MSPs are busy? A couple of times haven't we?

STUART: A couple of times.

IAN: And you know, a lot of the time we go through the sales process with people, which we know, you know, can be years. It can be one even two years in length and people don't want to start going into too much depth around their pipeline, because they think, oh, if I clear everybody out who's not going to buy from me, then I won't have a pipeline. And some people who might be listening to this podcast might not actually have what they would call a pipeline anyway. But you do have opportunities, there's always opportunities, whether they're referrals or whether they're new leads that are coming in. But you know, this is a key one because we want to make sure that people aren't missing out. But as you say, we've been really focused on who they're following up with and who they're not.

STUART: It is because a thing we hear all the time is the frustration. And I've been there in different roles in my career. You have, and all of our clients have, and everyone we talk to is like tire kickers.

IAN: Yeah.

STUART: It frustrates the hell out of me. Whoever me is that I'm wasting my time with people that don't end up buying. And the quicker you can get to know I...

IAN: Yeah.

STUART: Can I tell you a story?

IAN: Of course you can.

STUART: Some years ago when I was less experienced than I am now I was reading, and this was in the previous century...

IAN: Right? This is when your hair was not silver.

STUART: It was darker. And I was devouring every sales marketing strategy, leadership, personal growth book you could find like you do when you're early in your career. And it was a particular time when trying to build a business in a country where I didn't speak the language. And was trying to think how do I sell? And I needed a pipeline. I needed a pipeline. I remember reading this book by can't remember now, one of the gurus at the time. And the thing that stood out to me most well for a lifetime was the quicker you get to know, the better your job in sales is to speak to enough people and get enough of them to say no, because mathematically the next yes is just around the corner. And it stuck with me in my sort of new business career forever. And it's even more true to today. It's as true today as it was back then, as it has been throughout history. And so as an MSP, even if you've got a pipeline of one, like one prospect, the quicker that you can decide if this client is a good or prospect is a good fit for your business and a good fit for you, and hopefully you like them and they like you, and you go, do you know what? I can do business with this person at the right price. It's the holy grail, isn't it? But, the problem with new business is that nobody's got enough new business coming down the pipe. And so you're like, oh, I've got a new lead. Oh, brilliant. And if you are in those early, you know you're sub a million, you're perhaps sub 500 k and you're like, you know, every prospect is hopefully a new client.

IAN: Yes, Yes.

STUART: Because you might not be desperate, but actually, if you're still in survive mode. In the MSP journey. And you've only got six clients and you're only doing a hundred grand a year, like every lead is a new client. You hope and you hope it'll turn into cash, because you want a new client, you want more money , you want more turnover. But not all prospects are equal. So the sooner we can identify, otherwise, we're just like, there's a fear of missing out, isn't there? It's oh, if I don't win this one, where's my next bit of business going to come from? You know, you worry about being direct and saying, actually, we only work with these types of people and unless you want to work with us in our, we know our stack. Sorry. You know, there's no opportunity for you to work with us and I don't want your money. That's scary to say, isn't it?

IAN: It's really funny. And another thing that I'm just going through the old peanut while we're talking. This is very much like the MSPs who are scared to look at their bank balance because they don't know, it, you know, or really go into their numbers. They look at their bank balance, but they don't really want to go into their numbers because they don't really want know the truth. Because I'm doing all right. But if I don't look at it, then it's not going to bite me in the bum, basically. And this is sometimes the same thing we find with sales, isn't it? You know, the king Herod created the business blueprint back in the day. You know, people coming in, you solve a problem for them. You do a good job for them. They're going to be a customer, end of story. That's the business pipeline. It's really simple. And when you track and measure at every stage, the analytics will tell you, as you say to me many times, look at the data. What is the data telling us that will tell you what you're doing? But if you're not doing things in sales, and if you're not going into your numbers and you are a little bit, anxious about it, not scared, but you're anxious about going into it, because if I go and look at it, if I open up the lead of the CRM or of my spreadsheet and there's not much in it, I'm going to feel even worse. I better off just leaving it down. I'm sure a referral will come along in a minute. You know, there may be some MSPs on this podcast saying that right now. So it, starts off with, for me, with this is around, what does your pipeline look like? And so many times where, you've got to get, you know, this big CRM, you've got to get, buy an email list, you've got to do this, you've got to do that. And all of these big numbers because everyone's telling you, you got to, but you don't do, you could actually just start off with LinkedIn, couldn't you? And just start having conversations with people, quality conversations with people.

STUART: You absolutely could. Yeah. And again, in many cases, if you are just getting going with sales and perhaps you're desperate, the quickest place to start is if you're, if you like people, is networking. You know, and over a cup of coffee, hi, what do you do? I do X. Great. You're looking for clues as to whether you should continue the conversation or not. It's dating.

BOTH: Yeah.

STUART: Is this the right person? I should spend the next 20 minutes or 10 minutes talking to see whether it might lead somewhere else? You know, somewhere positive. And it's the same because, we were talking at the beginning about efficiency and time management. The quicker you can get to know, the quicker you can move on and do something more interesting or more valuable as can they, and it's a confidence thing.

IAN: You've just taken the words right out of my mouth. I've written that down here. Just to say it exactly. We were on, I was on a call the other day, I was doing an implementation sales and marketing implementation session with the clients, and one of them said, I've got an event tomorrow. And they were going to an expo. And I said, okay what's the outcome of this event? I don't really know. What do you mean you don't really know? I'm just going to try and get some people's contact details. I said, okay, let's get this a little bit more specific than this. So let's see how many people we can book in for a security order. Do you have a call booking me? Yes. Great. You got that. Now, so we were in an r in and toing and fro a little bit with this, and I just stopped the conversation. I said, do you believe that security audit would add value to anybody who walked past your stand. And she looked at me as if I was like crazy. And I went, she went, yeah, I do. I said, do you really believe it? Do you honestly believe that is, you know, I'm going to go to the top of the building and I'm going to shout and go, everybody needs one of these audits because there's so much hacking going, all that sort of stuff. I said, do you think you could do that? And she goes, yeah, I think I could. And you could see cfxher energy level rising, which is her confidence. A lot of people are going, I want to keep everybody in my pipeline because if I go and tell them that they're not going to have a pipeline. But this is about actually the more confidence that you have, the more you could turn around to somebody and say I don't think we are a right fit yet, or, I don't think it's a good time for you or anything like that, because you've got to remember, again, they're coming to you, the MSP as the technical expert, so they're looking for you to stand there. For those who are watching this on video, I'm now sitting up a little bit straight to my shoulders are back or sitting there, you know, with a confident, believable posture, haven't they?

STUART: Because confidence is attractive.

IAN: Yeah.

STUART: And

IAN: Thank you.

STUART: And if people buy confidence and as an expert, a technology expert, your prospects are trying to suss out, because you're not important. What they're trying to work out is, can I try, who can I trust to fix this problem or support my business such that I can then carry on with my business. It's about am I in the right place with the right person? And I think this whole thing about, you know, the quicker you can get to know the better and building a, having confidence on the call, but also coming back to if you've only got one prospect or half a dozen prospects, and you feel like, oh my God, I need to close this business because otherwise I ha you know, I've got nothing. It's like there's no point closing a bad client. And in fact, everyone on this call will have closed a client, that they shouldn't have done. And weeks or years later, they're like. I'd have never taken this person on. Yeah. If I'd had a choice back in the day. But hey, you know, you have got what you are where you're at when you start a business and every customer, or every prospect's a customer in your eyes at those times. But however, in terms of maturing and scaling and in terms of solutions to this thing, ultimately you want enough prospects so that you can confidently say no to whoever isn't relevant. So it comes back to the thing we talk about a lot. People are calling it ICP these days. Your ideal client profile, your avatar. Do you know exactly what a good customer looks like? You know, how many users do they need? What industry do they need? What problems do they need to have? What kind of mindset do they need to have? Are they open to you? You know, you being the expert and willing to accept, how you operate and how you work. Do they want a partnership or are they just looking for a cheap price?

IAN: It's right fit, isn't it? It's all about that. It's all about that right fit and is it a now thing? As well. You know, so questioning can really help with this, can't it? When you...

STUART: Being prepared..

IAN: When you start having a chat. Yeah. Being prepared.

STUART: Having a checklist, literally, what are my five key questions or 10 points checklist of what I need to know is present. And you do that when you go into the network. So before even you waste time going into their network to assess what they've got. That's step two.

IAN: Yeah.

STUART: From a the initial conversation you want to get quickly to the point, and going back to confidence is attractive. I think when people are firm structured, you know, good questioning firm and ...

IAN: Deliberate would be a word.

STUART: Deliberate use. Yeah, deliberate, I think deliberate in their questioning and get to the point and say, look, this is about a good right fit. I think a lot of people say, oh, we're trying to work out if we're a good fit together.

IAN: Yeah.

STUART: But actually taking control of the conversation, it's Hey, Mr. Prospect, let's not waste each other's time. We need to understand whether we're a good fit to move forward. Yeah. So why are we talking today?

IAN: Yeah.

STUART: Okay. That's interesting. I've got a number of questions I'd like to ask you to work out if we then spend more time. Yeah. Going deeper on this, and actually within two minutes you might be going, I, this isn't a good fit. Now then you can down sell somebody maybe to a referral. So many MSPs have another MSP they might refer business to that's smaller than they would handle or bigger than they might handle and say, look, I know exactly who you should be talking to, we're not good a good fit for you. Let me pass you on to Andrew, who's who specializes in what you're telling me you want. Again, how good does that leave a taste in the mouth of that person in terms of They may be then talking to someone. Actually, I was just talking to this Ian guy. He told me I, I wasn't a good fit for me. He passed me on to Andrew. But actually I was quite impressed with that and that, you know, you're putting out those positive vibes that will help you in the future. Again, that means that you can go on and move on to the next prospect in your list.

IAN: I think scripting in this case is probably the number one thing. I remember, you know, you know, again. When I had more hair, you know, when I started out doing this, scripts were your sales best friend, because it's how you build that confidence in the right words, in the right way, you know, to say to somebody you know confidently, is this a now thing or is this a later thing, you know, which basically says, do you want to do this today or do you want to muck me around for the next year and what do you want to do? And I think people you know, really value that decisiveness, particularly in today's world of you know, slop as they call it, you know, the AI generated content that's out there. And nowadays that. Literally, I can't believe I'm saying it. You'll pick your phone up and you do not know whether a social media post is actually a real person or not, because there could some AI avatar in there or something, which is so lifelike. Which is just incredible. So when they find someone who has these qualities, who has confidence, who has expertise, who has, you know, the charisma and the, you know, the kind of the attractiveness as it would be that... the gravitas to say, look, this person's going to be an expert. They're going to help me out, then that's going to build that con right in the middle of those conversations. So having those scripts, I think are really important. And having some questions that are, again, relevant to your target market. You know, I was talking to someone the other day and I said, who's your ideal, customer avatar? It's anyone between about 25 and 256. And I'm like, really? I said, you've got eight different business configurations in there. They, you know, 250 seats is a pretty good chance they can have an IT department. So you're doing co-managed or 25 is they might not, you know, and you've got these different areas, so what size...

STUART: Yeah.

IAN: Avatar, what pain do they have and what are those questions going to be? Then as you go through, you know, as we talk to smaller and larger MSPs when they come into the Growth Hub completely different question set, depending on where they're at. You go around. The model and the expertise that you've got in your marketing model, depending on who's come towards you, about what depends what they're going to, want to talk to you about. If they come in talking about wifi, don't go and start talking to them about setting up licenses for Office 365.

STUART: Yeah, you're absolutely right. And it brings it back again to this word, the C word, again, of confidence. Because if you are confident in your pricing, if you are confident in your stack, if you are confident in your ideal client and who you want to work with and who you don't want to work with, it comes across and then you are into having enough of those conversations to apply that confidence and that clarity to help as many people as you can. And it's your duty to build a pipeline. So if we bring it back to this topic today of sales, it's like you want to get to know as quickly as possible, but before that you want a list of as ideally qualified as possible. Whether you buy a list. So let's say you buy a list of two and a half thousand accountants in 25 miles of your city you work in because you specialize in accountants and you start ringing them or marketing to them and they start inquiring or they come on webinars. You want to get very quickly to the point and say, is this an accountant? Hopefully it is, because you bought a list of accountants. What's their problem? What do they need? Because not all accountants are equal either. You know, do you work with the one man bands? Maybe not. You've only, you only want two licenses and got two people to support you or are you looking for 10 plus, 20 plus? You know, as you just said, anywhere between 25 and 200. So build your list, make it as high quality as you possibly can. And then when you start building up, and start having conversations. You owe it to them and to you to get to know as quickly as possible. And that comes down to you having a clear product, a clear pricing, a clear understanding of the needs and problems you solve, and a clear set of questions to go through in that first conversation. So that you don't waste their time or your time, that then makes you more efficient, you'll close more business and everyone wins.

IAN: Absolutely. And just on that point you just mentioned there, about two and a half thousand accountants. Many people that we speak to will go and buy a list of 5,000 businesses or 7,000 businesses whatever it might be on an email list. Now, this is where it doesn't work that well because you've just explained that we've got a list of questions relating to accountants, so you're going to have lots of different questions for different types of businesses, of course you are, because all businesses use IT differently. And they, you know, they have different numbers of people. They have different numbers of skill sets. They have different numbers of adoption and things like that.

STUART: Jargon needs compliance requirements.

IAN: Absolutely. And you are going to go and send them an email about. Something to do with IT. It's got to be so specific. An accountant working in Hartford ever year, whatever it might be. Are you having concerns over, you know, the recent insert company breach? That's not going to resonate to people if you are been too generic about it. I know we keep going on about it and every, all the marketing people say, oh, you've got to have an ideal customer profile. But this is an exact example of you would not have the same conversation with every single business in a networking room if they're completely different businesses.

STUART: And the point you've just made is that actually you'll get to Yes. Quicker.

IAN: Yes.

STUART: Without having to say no to so many. If you do that targeting right, that we just talked about. Because if you do specialize in accountants, don't buy a general business list. That seems obvious that makes it easier to talk to more accountants, talk to their pain points and their need. Demonstrate your credibility. Every call you have then is likely to be more qualified than any others.

IAN: Yeah.

STUART: And you'll get to Yes quicker as a result of that. And that's without you having to say no directly to them face to face and having lots of crappy leads.

IAN: And I love it because virtually every call that I have with a new prospect for the growth hub I start the conversation. So be aware if you are just about to book a call with us of how do we get to where we are today? Now why do I ask that question? I want to know if my marketing's working right. Is it an event or was it LinkedIn or whatever it was? It's really interesting what they say. And then, you know, as part of the conversation, as we are going through it, and yes, I don't think I particularly follow a script, but we, because it's honed over the years. I go why are you on the phone to us? And do you know what they say? Stuart?

STUART: I have no idea.

IAN: You know exactly what they say. They say, because you specifically deal with MSPs, you help with MSPs. And I go. Isn't that interesting? How's your marketing going? And they go we go full. No, we don't want to, we don't want to hone in. I said, but you wouldn't be talking to me today if I was a general business coach, would you? They go no. It is go case in point. Thank you very much. So outcomes are doing this then. So we're going to get some great qualification, we're calls qualification questions in there, build up that confidence so that we have a much better quality conversation with the people.

STUART: Yeah. You'll have a cleaner, higher quality pipeline. Yeah. So you'll have more of those high quality conversations. You'll have a shorter sales cycle.

IAN: Everybody wants that.

STUART: It you know, it is, does have a long sales cycle. However, if you've got the right people with the right pipeline listening to you and enough of them. You will find that you are having conversations where people have already made their decision to buy from you and it's an easy one to just for you to decide whether you want to take them on as a client or not. So you will have shorter sales cycles or so it will feel because you're not desperate, you're not desperate for the next client. So they can sit in your email list or your LinkedIn connections list. They're consuming your content, they're coming to stuff, they're downloading stuff. And then when they do pop up and you spend time with them because you're talking to people all the time, because you've got a steady flow of leads. You have more positive yes conversations than you do in terms of saying No, back in the pond, go away. So you get more confidence. We get more control over the sales process and ultimately you'll look at a higher conversion rate. You know many clients that come to us, yes, they've got referrals, so they're, when you average out what they're, you know, I'd like to get one new client a month. Great. What are you doing at the moment? Actually it's like 0.1 new clients a month, which is basically not quite a one a year. When you roll it all up. So if we can move you to 0.5 new clients a year, that's six new clients a year. And on that journey to that nirvana of oh, wouldn't it be great to have an ideal client every month? Constantly. But from there, you grow it from there. This is all part of that process.

IAN: Lovely. I think that is pretty much we've said all we need to say about this, we have this is going to give you that so much more confidence and then you'll be able to look at the data and then realize that you need to probably go and listen to a podcast about lead generation, which is, which is more than likely, which is a whole another story. But hopefully you've you found that useful today. It's so important that we keep that pipeline clean. Build as we say, build up that confidence and you will start to see the results in your numbers.

STUART: You do.

IAN: Thank you very much, Stuart. You're welcome. Catch with you on the next one.

STUART: Will do. Bye everyone.

OUTRO: 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 a 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.