EP297 - How to Use Vendor MDF for MSPs so Everyone Wins with Gemma Telford and Ian Luckett

IAN: In this episode of the IT Experts Podcast. We help you work out how to use vendor MDF funds so that everybody wins.

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. We've got one of those free cash shows for you today. Yes, you are going to get some free cash just by listening to this show, not from us. And there's loads of caveats and you can't sue me if it doesn't work. So today is going to be one of those free cash shows by the time you get to the end of this show. Yes. There will be free cash in your bank. No, we're not going to give it to you from The Growth Hub. No, we're not going to give it to you from our guests, but this is going to be a great show around marketing development fund, which are money that's basically available from your vendors. And today Gemma Telford from the Archer Agency is going to be sharing with us how we do just that. So now it's taken us a couple of times to get this podcast off the ground. Gemma, good morning to you. Welcome. Thank you very much for coming onto the show today. A little bit of an intro. Who are you? What'd you do? Who'd you help?

GEMMA: Hi Ian. Thanks for having me.

IAN: No problem.

GEMMA: So I'm Gemma Telford from the Archer Agency as you just said. I've been in tech marketing for about 20 years. I started off as a marketing director, Ingram Micro. I've been VP of global marketing for partners at Sage and am me marketing director at Palo Alto Networks. And I've also run an agency in the past and I've been running Archer Agency for about seven years now. I work mainly in vendor land and with distribution. I work a lot in the UK and the US and I tend to work with people who are looking to do more with their partners, to grow their partners more strategically. So that can be sometimes consultancy, it can be sometimes more, more generic marketing campaigns if you like. But I tend to work with them over a longer period of time where I get to know their business really well. And because I've worked all around the channel, I can bring that knowledge of what actually works for partners, what actually works for vendors, what disties need, and hopefully make that work a bit better for everybody.

IAN: Gemma, you've got a wealth of experience there. And, unlike many MSPs, I love marketing. It's something that I've just grown, grown to love and grown to enjoy. And I suppose the bit that I really is when you get that messaging right and you can portray to someone who doesn't know that you can help them, and then you can help them and then you transform what they're doing. That's like the winning journey of marketing, right? And for many MSPs, they just sit there and they're quite happy, truckling along with referrals because they're a great set business. But when they want to change gear, they know that they need to do this M word and they hate it. They hate it with a passion. It takes too long. I don't like talking to people, how the hell do I do it? What's Canva? And all of these other bits and pieces like that, how can we help more MSPs fall in love with marketing? What a question. It's not even on our script, but there must be a way that we can do this, right? Because it's just such a fairly complex, but it isn't complicated, is it? It is just a messaging thing, right? What's your view on how can we help more people?

GEMMA: It's a really interesting question, and actually you're right. I think a lot of MSPs have started up their business because they're really good on the technical stuff, a marketing scarce a life out them. When I was a kid I really wanted to get into marketing because I thought it was a job that helped people, but that was still interesting. So I actually think there's quite a lot of synergy there because the technical guys, the MSP guys are doing that job because they want to help people do better. And actually, if they get their marketing right, which is, like you said, it's just the messaging, it's how they help people. If they get that right, then they're going to help more people. So in fact, maybe they just need to stop thinking about it as something big and scary and just think about it as how do I get my message across to people so I can help more of them?

IAN: Yeah. And I think what happens as well, I think a lot of MSPs think that they have to do the marketing themselves.

GEMMA: Yeah.

IAN: When you don't, that your business, whether it's, whether you are 500 K or 5 million or whatever it might be, the success in your business will predominantly be, around three things. Understanding your data, having a good sales and marketing strategy, and the team around you. And if you hate marketing, if you don't like marketing because it gives you the ick or whatever it might be, you know, go and find somebody who can, and the most successful, by the way, the most successful way that the clients in the MSP Growth Hub nail marketing is by bringing somebody in and growing their own person to market their business. Hey, this is what we do. Go and put that into some marketing wizardry and bring me the leads. And that's the one that works the most. Yes, you've got the agencies where you've got, where they're trying to connect with you, but they're also trying to connect with lots of other businesses as well. When you've got the marketing manager, is that going to solve the problem? You've got the intern and all of that. And it's around having somebody and a team of people who enjoy it so that you can tell them. You know how to market the business, but you don't have to do it yourself. And I think sometimes the MSP owners, particularly up to, I'm going to say kind of 1.5 million turnover, roughly, kind of like around 10 people. They take it all themselves, don't they? It's like, Mimi, I'm the only one who can do this. I'm the only one. And I think that's somewhere where the bottleneck starts, isn't it?

GEMMA: Yeah. And I think MSPs, like any business, they have the strengths, the things that they're good at. And often in any smaller business, it is founder led.

My business is the same, it's founder led. I do my own sales and marketing. I'm the one with the relationships. And it's the same for MSPs, but I think it's not being afraid to bring in people who are better at stuff than you are in some other areas, yeah. So I have a guy who does my IT for me. I have someone else who helps me with my finance stuff, because that's the stuff I'm no good at. So I think you're right. I think one thing I see a lot in MSP businesses especially is they do bring on a young, inexperienced intern or...

IAN: Yeah.

GEMMA: Someone who's fresh out of college or something, and that's great. But then they expect them to be able to do everything from a marketing point of view.

IAN: Yeah.

GEMMA: And I think sometimes you do need that bit of experience early on, maybe while you're growing that into their role.

IAN: Yeah.

GEMMA: Someone who can work with you, understand what your messaging is and how to get that out to your audience. And then yeah, you can have someone with less experience to get that delivered and grow them into the role. But I do see that quite often that, oh, we've got a marketing person, she's 20, she's straight out of college or...

IAN: Yeah, yeah.

GEMMA: And she's going to do everything. She's usually, she sometimes.

IAN: Yeah. Yeah. No we hear that. And in actual fact I'll tell you something. We're doing something now, which is really cool because we actually collect those, those people within our clients and they come on a coaching call with me every two weeks to teach them how to do marketing, because guess what? Oh, cool. The MSP owners don't know how to do it.

GEMMA: Yeah.

IAN: And we have got young girls, oh, I'm going to say young girls. Yes, because there isn't any, any young boys in the area in there just yet, but I'm sure there will be. And they come on Rabbit in the headlights and now they're running events and now they're running lists and they're going up and they're doing some of the LinkedIn outreach. And when you look at the structure of the team, everybody all can't do it, but you need to have that kind of, that coordination person who's going to run that plan. And it was like, why are they getting stuck with this framework? And it's because they don't like it. But anyway, so that's really cool. And it's when you hear an MSP saying, we're just going to bring in a sales director and that's going to solve all the problem. It's going to be like so do you know how to train a sales director? Do you know how to train a sales? No. How do you think? because they're just going to do what they did before. But anyway, let's talk about what we were going to talk about today. And budget is a big, enabler to any part of growing your business. And if you didn't know, if you've been living under a rock, which you may be there is a thing called MDF - Marketing Development Fund and which you can get from your vendors. Gemma, give us the 30,000 foot view. What is MDF and why should anybody care about it?

GEMMA: Yeah, so MDF has been around for as long as I've been around in the channel, which is a long time. And like you said, marketing development funds. I think if you actually think about what that's trying to say that it does in theory it's there to help you grow your business. But I think actually it's just been MDF used to get bottom line. In the old days you'd get some MDF from your vendor, you just add it to your literally bottom line. You wouldn't do any activity with it. And I think what that has caused is some problems in now how MDF gets allocated and measured. And Jay McBain did a piece recently where he highlighted that about 60% of MDF goes unused every quarter. So every, most vendors will have an amount of MDF that will come to their channel marketing director or VP or whatever, and they will have to decide where to allocate that money. And because channel marketing teams are usually small, they're usually under pressure, they're usually budget constrained. What tends to happen is the people who shout the loudest for that money will get it and they're often the really big partners. And so MSPs people are starting to recognise that's a growth area for them, but a lot of vendors still don't really have a good system in place for working with MSPs. So yeah, there's quite a lot of MDF around and a lot of it doesn't get used.

IAN: So is it being blunt, MDF if I was a vendor, MDF is a budget that I have within my financial cost centre to allow me to give to an MSP so that basically they can sell more of my stuff. That's the nuts and bolts of it really, isn't it?

GEMMA: It is, yeah.

IAN: Pretty, pretty much it. So everybody wins because.

They're growing your business, you are growing, you we are growing their business, et cetera, et cetera. Now obviously there's lots of different flavours of vendors as there are ice cream.

GEMMA: Yes.

IAN: And some of them are sweet and some of them are not so sweet and some of the approaches that we were talking about as, as we came on can be a bit difficult because, basically this is a way that you can dip your toe into marketing events, webinars, campaigns, some things that you maybe not want to risk, you know, your money doing and, you know, test it all out to see how it works. So why does so much of it, why is so much of it unused?

GEMMA: So I think there's a couple of reasons. I think first of all, most vendors don't strategically allocate MDF, so they will give it to the people who shout the loudest. I think often they don't make it clear to partners that MDF is available. And so a lot of MSPs that are working with a vendor may not know that there is MDF that they could access that they could, they're often not sure which partners to give it to. Why would they choose X partner over Y partner? And lastly, you usually have to access it through some convoluted process, maybe on a partner portal with forms and hoops to jump through. And that's because the vendor's getting measured on it, but it can be really off-putting for partners and for MSPs. And then I think also, as you mentioned earlier, Ian, a lot of partners don't have a lot of marketing capability in house. And so they perhaps don't have the time or can't see the benefit in applying for MDF or know what to do with it when they get it. And secondly, most partners, most MSPs will not be wanting to take one single product to market when they're working with their end customers. They'll be wanting to sell them a suite of products to help that customer deliver their business.

IAN: Yeah.

GEMMA: And often with MDF, if it's allocated from one partner, that one partner only wants the messaging to be about them. That one vendor only wants the messaging to be about them. And if you are talking to somebody about securing their whole business, yes, that might have a cybersecurity element, but it might also have a backup element. It might have disaster recovery, it might have something else.

IAN: Yeah.

GEMMA: And an MSP will be looking holistically at what they, what that customer needs, but the vendor is only looking at their product and that can be a bit of an issue.

IAN: So it sounds like a bit of a bittersweet pill really, isn't it? We've got the MSP, who knows they need some money to get their marketing off the ground. We've got the vendor who we believe, you know, making some assumptions here, only want to talk, only want the MSP to talk about them and them only thing to, so that they get their

MQLs

IAN: and yet you are because I guess there's a potentially lack of collaboration in the fact that, this is actually about getting eyes on the prize on what you do as an MSP on what the vendor does as a vendor, product as it may be, could be a suite of products. It feels like this. There could be a bit of a stalemate couldn't there about if I'm going to do that and you are going to do that, then I'm just not going to bother.

GEMMA: Yeah.

IAN: So the vendor doesn't win because they don't sell anymore. The MSP doesn't get out of the out of the shell and never does any marketing because they don't know how it's all going to work, what's the first step that should be taken then by, I guess the step needs to be taken by the MSP doesn't it? Because the money's there on the table, it's in the budgets, right? So if you want to sell more your MSP services, what do we need to do? Who, which vendors do we need to approach? What's the first steps really?

GEMMA: Yeah. I'm imagining the MSPs who work with you and Stuart in are probably more switched on than most and probably have some kind of business or sales and marketing plan, hopefully both.

IAN: Yes. Yes.

GEMMA: So they will know who their target audience is and what problems they're solving for that target audience.

IAN: Yeah.

GEMMA: And they'll probably have a plan on how they're going to address that. And I would say really that is already the bones of a marketing plan that you could take to a vendor. And so I would suggest that they look at which vendors they've got, which vendors they sell a lot of, and they can see more opportunity or which vendors they like to give a try to, or something along those lines and actually put a plan together and proactively approach that vendor. Because that's not really happening, again like I was saying at the beginning, a lot of those a lot of that funding is allocated just to the partners who shout the loudest. And often that's one of the big. And more and more people want to get into MSPs and they don't know how to do it. Some people are starting to build dedicated MSP divisions, which is great.

IAN: Yeah.

GEMMA: But I think you're right. The MSP has to be proactive in this instance, and they have to be the one who's approaching the vendor and saying, I want to sell more of your stuff. This is who I go after. This is what I'm going to say to them. These are the benefits I bring them. I want to build your messaging into that and I want you to help me do it. And...

IAN: Yeah.

GEMMA: Ask them for some funding. Show them what your marketing plan is likely to cost you and ask them for some funding, even if they 50 - 50 fund it with you which they might, or they might give you the money altogether. It's worth asking, but I think what you also need to be aware of is there'll be an ex expectation coming out of that, and this is one of my biggest bug bears about MDF and I'm sure we'll come onto that, but there'll be some expectations for them. So I think it's just being prepared with being proactive, having a plan and taking it to the vendor and asking.

IAN: We asked one of our high growth MSPs, they're not in The Growth Hub anymore. We said, what is the number one thing that successful MSP should do, is they near the seven figure mark? And they said the number one thing that got them from one to two to three to four million was vendor relationships.

GEMMA: Yeah.

IAN: Period. The relationships that you have with your vendor, the relationships you have with your account manager, we hear so many times, I've got a crap account manager, get a new one then, because if you had a bad doctor, you wouldn't put up with it. So go and get, go and get a new one, because these are the people that are, they've got, like you, they've got their eyes in their ears on the world. They've got their eyes, their ears on what's going on in the channel. And they will help you. It goes back to the same thing, like the ethos of the channel, is very much this whole go giver Bob Berg thing. Helping enough other people get what they want. They'll go, they'll get what you want. And if you get the right person in the right vendor, you'll have that conversation. And it's not just get money, get leads, get this. And if you've got a really highly motivated, vendor, you are going to struggle to break down the collaboration and the joint banners and how it's going to work and it's going to be very prescriptive and you are going to make, it's going to feel very clinical to you and probably something you won't want to do again.

GEMMA: Yeah.

IAN: To be honest, won't it? That happens.

GEMMA: I think you're right. For me, relationships has always been at the heart of what I've done in 20 years in the channel. And I've always, even though I've worked in marketing, I've worked with the CSs who talk to customs on the frontline. I've worked with the sales teams. I think marketing at vendor land can often be in an ivory tower and they're not very connected to their channel. And, but yeah, the channel account managers, the partner account managers, they're the people where you really need to build good relationships and...

IAN: Yeah.

GEMMA: You know, and that lasts. And often I'll see that when there's a really good, someone needing the SE team or someone leading the channel team, they go somewhere else to a different vendor. Their partners will go with them. So it is... products are great. All of that stuff is great. ALA is great still about people for me.

STUART INTERRUPT: If scaling your MSP is your goal, but you're not sure which road to take, then you'll really want to get hold of the MSP Growth Guide. It's the shortcut most MSPs wish they had much earlier on to work out what the right support is for them. Even better, if you like meeting up in person, why not come to join us at one of our live events? See the system, meet the people, get inspired, get to kick the tires, and see exactly what we get up to at The Growth Hub. So details are on the show notes below. Go have a look, click, and come and join us, and we look forward to seeing you another time. But let's get back to the show.

IAN: Thanks, Stuart.

So if you had an MSP in front of you right now, and they said, okay, yeah, I get what you're saying, yeah, there's an opportunity there. What would they do? Would they contact all their vendors? Would they go to their favourite vendor, the one that they get on with? What would they, because it's not just about, the amount of money this is about, for most MSPs I'm guessing this is going to be around testing the process and getting confidence in the process that this is going to work. Are we going to run an event? Is it a webinar? Is it a physical event? How's that going to, then funnily enough, MSPs are not event companies. Where should they start in terms of this process?

GEMMA: So I would say pick a vendor to start with. Don't try and do it all at once. And I think going back to what I was saying earlier, look at what you are trying to do with your business. Are you trying to grow your business into a specific vertical? Are you trying to grow a new area of your business? Are, have you got a vendor that you are doing quite a lot with that you think is really good that you could be doing more with? So I would say look at what matches your business best, and then go and talk to that vendor. And I know that events is something that gets talked about a lot, and I would say that marketing is something that is beyond an event. So I get it. We need events where we meet people and all that kind of stuff. But I think sometimes an MSP will go, all right, we're going to do an event. And that's really hard to sometimes prove an outcome. So I think if you've got a longer term strategy where you can say, okay, we are looking to, we work a lot in education. We are working with, I don't know, six schools in our local vicinity. So now what we're going to do is we can do all this remotely. We are going to widen that and we're going to look at schools, nationwide. So how do we put that messaging together? How are we working with that vendor to deliver that programme and then take that to the vendor and say, this is what we're trying to do. At the moment, we're turning over, I don't know, a hundred grand a year in this sector. We reckon we can get it to 200 grand a year, but it's going to take a year maybe more to get there. And this is the support we need along the way because it won't just be an event or a webinar. It will be a dedicated push over time into that sector. And that will mean messaging, it will mean a campaign, it will mean, emails, it will mean social posts, it will mean an event maybe, and a webinar. All of those things together and ask that vendor for help doing that. They should have a lot of that stuff that they can give that partner. But the marketing has to come from the partner. I think one of the things that is really frustrating is, you just get, oh, here's cybersecurity vendor, here's all their marketing stuff that they use fair end customers on. There's my low form of it. That's not saying why that end customer or that sector should be working with that MSP, that's just saying, here's a brochure for that vendor.

IAN: Yeah. Yeah.

GEMMA: So I think there is a bit to do, and whether you use an agency, whether you have someone in house, I think it's working with that vendor to produce something that is a joint value proposition. So it's the vendor value proposition plus the MSP value proposition into the end customer. And I think that's where people sometimes get a bit stuck.

IAN: So bringing forward any shameless plug? Is that what you help people with?

GEMMA: Yeah.

IAN: Yeah. Right. Okay, good. Now we've got that out of the closet because, I totally agree. It's, and all I hear is it's about the one off event. Oh, we're going to do an event, we're going to do this, we're going to do that. And if you are saying no, let's just look at a 12 month, what would the 12 month, building a quality relationship and engagement be so that we, we work together so that we're not just selling your products. A lot of people in the early days, we, they, we don't do it now, but they, there's we all know there's a very large vendor that's on every single machine in the whole wide world. And it was like, I'm just going to use some of their marketing collateral. I said, yeah, but look at their marketing collateral and all it's doing is selling the product.

GEMMA: Yeah.

IAN: We need to educate, we need to serve, we need to help people understand why they need, a managed service, why they need all the dif different elements and the outcomes to the business and the benefits to the business, and the risk reduction to the business. And oh, by the way, you can use this product for this, and you can use this product for this and this product for that. And I think you need to as I say, quite often, put your big girl and boy pants on and go, yeah, do you know what, in actual fact we need to put a proper plan together. We need to dial up the energy. We hate doing this stuff. And this could be like, multi five, six figure sums of money, isn't it? There's a lot of money out there. You could say, let's do this for the next year. There'll be some events, there'll be some copy. Would that MDF also pay for you to maybe, use some copywriting services to get that campaign correct and things like that? Does it do that, or is it just, a bit more tangible things?

GEMMA: So I think for me, the biggest problem with MDF from a vendor point of view and from the MSP point of view is this thing about ROI. And I think that comes out of years ago when people just used to bottom line their MDF. So now the vendors have to prove that anything that they fund gives them a return on investment, but they nearly always want to see leads from that return in that quarter, which is nearly always impossible. And I'm sure you know what, MSP.

IAN: Yeah. Good luck with that one.

GEMMA: Yeah. Walks into an end customer and says yeah, we're going to refit all your computers. We are going to, give you, get you on whatever. It's not going to happen. And I think that's the really big problem. And I was speaking to a vendor recently who are an ERP vendor. So they're quite big, but they have, they're the first one that I've ever heard that takes a longer term view on MDF and it's really refreshing. They have someone from their marketing team sit in with their partners and they build out multi-year plans, which they fund. Because they can see that the sales are going to come in, not even this year maybe, but next year. And their MDF grow internally because they're proving better results. They've seen their partners grow because of that. And more and more vendors need to take that on board. And I think, yeah. So we have to be that change, if you like. We have to go to those vendors and say, I want to do this with you, but I'm not going to get you 30 qualified leads off one webinar. I'm going to do this over a year. And at the end of it, here's my sales pipeline. And that's what I'll share with you.

IAN: It's the same as any submission, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. It is the same as any submission, isn't it? When you're asking for a grant or anything like that? Yeah. If you just phone them up and just say, Hey, can I have 20 grand please? And they go, well for, oh, so we can just do something together. They're going to go maybe not. If you put that case together, you put a plan together, because I suppose, thinking about this, you've got to help the, your first con, your account manager, I'll say to start with, although there could be, people within the MDF trial you've got to help your account manager sell this to the business to say, yes, this is a good case. It's a good bit of a tender tick the box. Yes, this is going to be something that's going to happen. And the easier you help them do that, then guess what's going to happen? The boom rank's going to come back round and the money's going to come into your bank, isn't it, sort of thing.

GEMMA: I understand. I think something else worth mentioning is if you are able to give a vendor a case study, either through your business or through one of your end customers, that's definitely something that will be attractive to the vendors because they're always looking for external proof points so they can say, oh, this school, this hospital, this business, whatever it is, uses our products. And if you are doing a push into a specific sector or you can share with the vendor what companies you are targeting, and if you do this really well, they will even perhaps help you with that. They might be able to share with you people who, used to be customers of that vendor or whitespace customers or, targets that they're going after themselves. So I think you're right, yeah, building that closer relationship and building that business case for them to take internally. The more ammo you can give them, the more likely you are to have that success.

IAN: And this kind of goes on to a bit of your ethos, doesn't it? Your SOS sales opportunity support, because that's all around, the language and the behaviour and those, setting those expectations, isn't it? So you are really clear on what you are going into. As well as they're really clear what they're going to get as well. And I think, it's really easy to get, mismatch in that, which upsets everybody and we all get a sour taste in our mouth. And then that might be why, 60% of the MDF doesn't get used because people haven't operated the process properly. They haven't, either engaged with someone like you or put that plan together. What, I guess over and above what we've got there right now, what would an ideal kind of programme in that case look like, from that opportunity?

GEMMA: Yeah, I think then it would be working with your vendor to say, what are we both looking to try and achieve? What's our revenue target? Put a number on it, what accounts are we going to go after? Have we got the data on those accounts? How are we going to do it? What's the actual process? And see what things they can bring to that with you, so that you are building that plan together. You've got a clear idea of where you are wanting it to go, but you can also share that with them and they should be able to give you marketing, sort of support in terms of messaging and logos and, some tools. But I think it's not just blanket using what the, the vendor gives to you. It is building a plan. That's your plan with the vendor's messaging and funding behind it.

IAN: Yeah. Yeah. So it is a real collaboration, isn't it? It's what we call about, talk about all the time in the growth of, it's that expectation exchange. Let's have a conversation about a, kind of what that looks like. We've covered an awful lot of ground in the last half an hour. What three changes could you think there could be about the MDF programmes that would make it more successful for everybody? What does that look like in your view?

GEMMA: I think for me, the first one is definitely, and it needs vendors to do this, and it's to stop this function that this focus on the quarterly ROI, so if you're giving a quarter, you need the ROI back in that quarter. I just think it doesn't work for anybody. So I think it's taking that longer term view. I think it's working with partners to help them build that plan. The partners know their markets better than the vendor knows it. So it's supporting them in, letting them choose activities rather than being very prescriptive. And I think the third thing is, working together, making it, if you're a vendor, making it easier for partners to apply for MDF, not making them jump through a million hoops, which is putting them off and supporting them with the things that are useful. So rather than just, a flyer with the vendor logo on all the vendor messaging and your bit at the bottom gives them-

IAN: Yeah.

GEMMA: Copy. Give them the logos, give them a layout maybe, but let them add their own flavour to that because they're the ones who have the relationship with the end customer and they know what that customer is looking for.

IAN: Yeah. And I think that's absolutely right. Just to get that plan. Just before we wrap up we haven't really mentioned this, which is quite a laugh really. We talk about MDF can be used for marketing. If you were to have a shopping list of the different things that an MSP could spend on, we just touched on some consultancy for some, marketing and we touched on some events sort of things. But what do you see as, if there were 10 things that people could be could use for MDF that they don't know they could use for MDS what would that shopping list look like?

GEMMA: Oh. I think it would depend on the vendor and what they'd be willing to fund. And there might be some rules or guidelines around that. But I think, for me it starts off like it, I'm sure it does for you with all the MSPs you work with the focus, what's the plan? What are you looking to try and do? And be really clear on that. And then getting your messaging right. So I saw something on LinkedIn recently where, someone was saying I'm an MSP, I just do the same as every other MSP. And it's so that just, and I'm sure you hear that all the time, right?

IAN: Yeah, we do. Yeah, yeah.

GEMMA: Yeah. But that's not true. Every MSP will have things that they specialise in. They'll have like areas that they specialise in, they'll have geographies that they specialise in. They'll have services that they specialise in. So I think it's making sure your own messaging is clear as well. And looking at how you do that and looking at how you're presenting yourself to the outside world. Have a look at your website. Have you done anything on it for a hundred years or is it still the same? Are you sharing your knowledge with your potential customers? Do you have a blog or a newsletter or educational content that you can share with people because they don't necessarily want to be sold to, or they might not be in the market for those services, but you just need to keep that drip going of, we're still here. This is what we do, here's a case study of somebody else. I think those sort of things like case studies and testimonials are really important. Making sure you've got proof points for your business and you can say, this is what we did for this business. We help them go from here to here. We help them upgrade, we help them secure themselves after this happened. So I think there's, and then there's a whole bunch of like more demand gen based things, so if we want to run a campaign into this sector, what we trying to achieve, what we're trying to do, how do we run that campaign, is it an event? Is it a series of webinars, is it a workshop, it can go on as long as you can keep coming up with the ideas, really.

IAN: As long as you can. So if you were talking about like doing some webinars and things like that, would the MDF then be basically paying your, like your staffing fees to do that? Is that how that would work rather than absolute costs around events and things like that?

GEMMA: Again it will probably depend on vendor.

IAN: Depends.

GEMMA: Yeah, but I think the more you can build that stuff into a plan, and you can, some of it will be a cost perhaps, but some of it will be time in your business. And as long as you can build a plan that's showing what the outcome will be okay, we're going after 50 grands worth of business or a hundred grand's worth of business, or whatever that looks like, then it will matter less about. And we've spent five of it here and two of it there and we've hired.

IAN: Yeah.

Get it. Yeah. Yeah. It is putting that all together, isn't it? So...

GEMMA: Yeah.

IAN: Absolutely brilliant show. Thank you very much Gemma for that. It's opened up my eyes on a bit of the bit of the structure and the strategy around that, which I think is great. And I think, if you're an MSP and you're listening to this and you haven't even got a sales and marketing plan, or even a kind of marketing plan or even a thought about marketing, do that first. And when you've done that, Gemma, what are the things that we need to do? This crazy number of 60% of MDF is unspent. Let's go and get some of that, let's make a difference. Let's build some of these MSPs up. But what are the three things that most MSPs have got to take away from this podcast today?

GEMMA: So I think you're right. They've got to have a plan. They've got to know, where they're going as a business and what they're looking to do. Then I would say, go and ask your vendor because that vendor wants to spend that money and they just probably are not thinking about where they're spending it and put a plan together with them over a longer period, over a year if you can get them to sign up to that sign and start to prove the success. So I think they're the things I would really say to do. In my experience I see very few partners coming to me proactively when I was on the vendor side to say, we want to work with you. We want to build our business. This is what it looks like. And so I think you, if you do that, you've got a good chance of being listened to. And if you can start to prove success with that, then that relationship will continue and hopefully your business will grow, their business will grow, win-win.

IAN: And when you said a minute ago, I saw a link on a post on LinkedIn where everyone says, we're all the same thing. If you are not reaching out to your vendors to ask for MDF and to ask to help support your business, then yes, you are right. You are doing the same as every other MSP. You are keeping silent. So do something about it. Take some action and do something about it. Again, Gemma, thank you for your time. Not only preparing for today's show, but recording it as well. If people want to continue the conversation with you and work out what do those first steps look like, how could you possibly help them, unearth this this big chunk of cash that's sitting out there? How do they find you?

GEMMA: So I'm on Archer Agency dot co uk. They can find me on LinkedIn at Gemma Telford. Not that difficult. And yeah and happy to have a chat with anybody about it. It's a pretty common problem. And I think, we've given people some clear ideas about what to do, and so hopefully that helps. I hope to hear back from you and say.

IAN: Yes.

GEMMA: We've all went across MDF.

IAN: Absolutely. Definitely. I'm sure you will. Well, look all the best of luck for yourself and the business, for the rest of the year. And if you want to learn a little bit more about it, then get in contact with Gemma and let's get some MDF.

So, in the meantime, I look forward to catching up with you all on the next show. Thanks again, Gemma, and I'll see you all soon. 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'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, engage and 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 now.