727 Why Every MSP Needs to Focus on Nurturing Leads

[Uncle Marv]
Hello, friends. Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast, the show for IT professionals and managed service providers, where we help you run your business better, smarter, and faster. Welcome to The Remix.

Yeah, well, as most of you know, I don't edit. So that's going to stay. But welcome to the show.

This is an audio show that is, of course, presented by NetAlly. And this special episode is also presented by SuperOps. Streamline your operations with the AI-powered PSA RMM tool meant to streamline your business and supercharge your efficiency.

Today, I have a special guest. We have taken quite some time to put this together. And just so that people know, if you're listening to the shows in real time, I know some of you behind, and if you're in order and up to date, we are in the middle of October where I am getting ready to start all of my conferences.

And I told you there would not be a live show, but I told you, you would get a ton of audio and today is going to start that. And this show, like I said, we've been working on for, I don't know, a couple of months now, and I have with me, Jennifer Bleam, the founder of MSP Sales Revolution, the company that helps provide sales and marketing coaching in the IT industry. She is a best-selling author, award-winning speaker, inspired leader in the IT channels.

Did I get all that right, Jen?

[Jennifer Bleam]
Yes, that's amazing. Thank you. Oh, this is going to be so much fun.

Thanks for having me on.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, thanks for coming on and thanks for agreeing to tread in the waters of no marketing Marv.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Well, maybe by the end of this, we'll see how good of a marketing coach, how good of a sales coach I am. And maybe by the end of this, you'll be willing to dip your toe in the water of marketing.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, I've started to do that. People have kind of commented that, you know, I've done some branding. Good.

In terms of official MSP marketing, I'm one of those old school guys. You know, I've done everything by referral and I do a good enough job for people to say, Hey, I've got this person that might be interested in your work. Are you interested?

I'm sure I am. And that's how it's, how it's gone. Now, at some point I'm going to have to flip the switch and do something, but, uh, I've been lucky so far.

But there's a lot of people out there that this is what they need to do.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Yeah, there are. But, but it's funny because I'm one of those coaches that, uh, there's some coaches out there that they, they kind of mandate or they very strongly hint at what your business should look like. And I don't see that as my role as the coach.

Like I can help, I can access sounding board. I can give you good prompts and pull, pull vision out of you. But there's a lot of MSPs that simply want a really solid lifestyle business.

And there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, there are some MSPs and it solution providers who, who kind of pretend to want like a really large business, but in their heart of hearts, they want a lifestyle business. And so they're, they're miserable because they're kind of pretending to want the one, but they really want the other.

And so that's disingenuous. Don't do that. So if you want to rely on referrals, it'll take you to probably 400 K, sometimes a little bit more than that per year.

There's nothing wrong with that.

[Uncle Marv]
We have been told, you know, how our business should look. We have been told how much we should bill per end point. You're not going to tell me that today.

[Jennifer Bleam]
I'm not going to tell you that today. Listen, people tell me about the same thing with my coaching, my coaching business. They'll say, Oh, you have to lock people in for one year contract.

You have to bundle software solutions. You have to like all these things. It's my business.

Like, I'm not going to tell another coach that the way they're doing business is wrong, but I don't want other people to tell me what I need to include. I'll certainly, I need to listen to the marketplace and you know, I'm not, I'm not knocking that by any stretch, but I have a month to month agreement with my coaching offer. One of my offers includes unlimited support, which everybody is like, no, don't do that.

And I'm like, why? It's my business. As long as I can figure out how to make it profitable and I can sleep at night and I can add value to the people I want to add value to, then that works.

That's what business is. It doesn't have to be a one size fits all. We all have to fit in the same mold.

No, let's not do that.

[Uncle Marv]
So we're already off track and I'm going to, I'm going to keep us off track because this is one of those things where, I don't know, maybe a year or so ago, I finally got to the point where I wasn't going to pretend anymore. And I've always been on the bubble as to whether I call myself an MSP or an IT solution provider, yet I'm doing all of the things that the big boys are doing, but I chose to stay small. I did have full-time techs at one point, didn't quite work out.

And like I said, I was happy with where my business was. I was growing and per technician, if you want to put it that way, I am billing more per endpoint than a lot of MSPs. And I'm bringing home not just more gross revenue, but more net revenue than a lot of MSPs I know.

And I'm like, don't tell me how to run my business. Don't tell me whether or not I'm an MSP. If we can't come up with the right term for the business, I don't care.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Sure. Sure. IT consultant, whatever.

So there's two threads I'd like to pull on there. Number one, you said a word that is so important, which is I'm happy. That happiness, that satisfaction, that, that inner sense of almost peace and confidence that cannot be traded for anything.

And so, so lean into that. I love that. You said, you know, about a year ago, you finally maybe got a little bit more comfortable in your own skin.

You're like, this is what I want. Why do I need to be a six, seven, eight figure IT service provider? You don't, but what you do need to do is make sure you know what you want.

And then the second thread I want to pull, and I don't think this is where you are, but it is where some of your listeners are. And they're at this point where they're like, well, I tried blank in your case. I tried hiring technicians and because I couldn't figure it out, I backpedaled.

I don't want that either. I don't want you to settle, not, not you, Uncle Marv, but I don't want any listener to settle for a smaller business simply because they couldn't figure out the thing, the hiring, the marketing, the selling, the profit margins, the products and services, their solution stack. So I don't, I don't, there, there is this tendency in our industry where we, we hit a brick wall or we, we stall out because of a thing.

And then instead of plowing through or investing or talking to our peers and getting past that roadblock, we go back on our heels and we settle. I don't want that either. So there's, there's nuance.

I want you to want what you want, whatever size business that is, but understand that there will be roadblocks. And if, if you are bound and determined to get, I call it the tree North, if you are bound and determined to become a 1 million, 5 million multi-state IT consultant, MSP, then you have to be able to push through whatever those, those push points are, whatever that stall is and invest time, money, energy, effort to figure that thing out.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, I think the one thing that I would say is that most of the people that get into that mindset where they want it to be someplace and then they, they accepted a lesser position. A lot of times I see people that are still trying to grow, but they're miserable.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Yes.

[Uncle Marv]
And I'm like, why, why are you doing it? Well, that's what the metrics say I have to do. That's what the, you know, the, that's what the EBITDA says.

And that's what the year over year over year says I have to be growing. I mean, do you have to grow? Yes.

If you want to stay, you know, up with inflation and the cost of living, but you can adjust your prices. You can adjust some services. You don't have to always add a person or hire that salesperson so that you can make the sales because you are afraid of something there's, there's things that can be done.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Yes. And there again, you just said like miserable, why in the world would we want to stay miserable? And, and so if there's things that you can do to get out of miserable, which, which could mean realizing I'm not cut out for business ownership, maybe I need a job.

There is no, there's no shame in that. I think there would be shame to getting to like the age of 65 and going, I was just miserable for 40 years. Why didn't I get a job?

So now we have shame and now we've piled on top of it regret, which is a horrible place to be. So, um, if you're, if you're happy with a quote unquote, smaller MSP, which, which, what does that even mean? But that's a different conversation.

Then lean into that and serve your clients with the best that you can as a quote unquote, smaller MSP. If you're super unhappy because you're small and you want to be larger, very different scenario, but same end result. Well then let's not be unhappy.

Let's figure out how to grow. Let's figure out how to be bigger.

[Uncle Marv]
All right, so now let's take a step back and let me ask you this in terms of when you first set yourself up, you know, MSP sales revolution, what were your goals in terms of what you wanted to provide and what is it that you find MSPs are coming to you asking you for?

[Jennifer Bleam]
Oh, I love this question. Okay. So, um, let's talk short term and long term.

So short term, I wanted to do nothing but sales coaching. Uh, it's not that I don't love marketing. I do love marketing.

I can do it. I can speak to it, but I love sales. That's probably my first love language is sales.

I literally was selling when I was, when I was a kid, um, I've written a book on sales, hit the bestseller list, published it for audible, hit the bestseller list again, like I love sales. And so I started my business and wanting to do sales coaching and consulting. And my long-term goal was to, to be able to take some time off, you know, a week or two at a time to spend time with the grandkids who, by the way, they don't exist yet.

So this was really, really future casting. When I started my business five years ago, what I found is that my, my clients were thrilled. And the common theme was this is the best sales training I've ever heard.

However, we haven't gotten a lead in six months. And so by the time we get a lead, we're going to forget 90% of what you told me. And so for that reason, we need to end our relationship.

Well, it didn't take me hearing that more than a handful of times before I went, okay, I'm going to have to solve the marketing problem too. And so now MSP has come to me and I work with companies that are 250 K to 300 K a year up to, I've got a couple that are in that two ish million a year mark and we do sales and marketing. And I've got, think of it like a fill in the blank worksheet, if you will.

I help them create their own marketing system to get leads in the door and then sales system to be able to close those leads. So that is what I'm doing now.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. And so now the question is when they come to you and do they know like exactly what they're looking for? Cause that's my guess is that some of them are like, you know what, I need to grow by this much by this time, or I need to get leads.

How many do I need? I mean, what types of questions are they asking?

[Jennifer Bleam]
Yeah. So, so they ask things like, uh, how do I know that you're different? Because there's usually a something in the rear view mirror where they were burnt by a coach, an agency, a, you know, what, you know, fill in the blank.

They were burnt. They tried something. It didn't work.

Um, and that's probably 40% of the people that I talk to six and I don't, I, I could pull the numbers, but I don't have them at my fingertips. That's just a gut. The other 60% are very similar to you where they say, I've never done a single bit of marketing.

Everything I've done is word of mouth. And now I've stalled it. 300 K 600 K very rarely.

Is it any bigger than that? Because that's about the cap of organic. Um, word of mouth marketing is about 600 K.

Um, I did have someone that, that grew to about 1.3 million strictly on organic. And so they come to me and they say, can you help me? And usually it's the owner and they're very technical and they're brilliant technicians, but they don't speak marketing.

They, they, they're usually decent at sales, but marketing is like this foreign language. And so there is this, can you really help me? Can you really help me understand it and execute it?

Answer the million questions I'm going to have because I am process oriented. So I need to know, you know, put slot A into line B. Like they, they need, um, very organized, systematic ways to execute on marketing and to think about marketing.

And I was an MSP for years and then I helped MSPs for years with a couple of different vendors. My dad is an engineer. Uh, and so I think in terms of flow charts and systems and processes.

So even though my mind works very similarly to an MSP, I'm able to take my marketing knowledge and I understand the questions that I get. And I'm like, Oh, you need someone to draw you a picture. I can do that.

Let me draw you a picture. And so we often are coaching calls are me sharing a screen and just drawing something on the screen to help the MSPs see like, like literally see what a system could look like.

[Uncle Marv]
So now that you've mentioned the word system, when you and I were kind of talking about how we're going to approach this, rather than just simply throwing darts at the screen and just me peppering you with questions, we wanted to come up with a framework of what MSP should be, you know, looking at when it comes to, you know, strategic marketing, goal setting and stuff like that. One of the things that we came to an agreement early on is that there's a different approach between vendors and our channel and MSPs. Yes.

Tell us about that.

[Jennifer Bleam]
So this is a really interesting niche. This industry is super interesting because there's almost, there's a symbiotic, like MSPs wouldn't exist without the vendors, but vendors wouldn't exist without the MSPs. And even though they are very different business models, they often borrow things from each other.

And so sometimes the bad habits of a vendor bleeds into the MSP or the IT solution provider sees good habits that the vendor is really good at doing. And they attempt to forklift that system and process into their own business. And the two organizations are so dramatically different that that forklifting often doesn't work and that the bad habits are often worse habits when they get over into the MSP space.

So let me just give one tangible example and then feel free to pepper me with more questions. But I was working for a vendor at one point in time and the head of the marketing department, let's say chief marketing officer said, I don't understand why we have to create sell sheets and white labeled marketing and slide decks for webinars. I, you know, let's just pick those three things.

I don't understand why we have to create that for the MSP. Why doesn't the MSP marketing department do that for them? And I went, huh?

I said, oh, Sally, not her real name. Could you please explain to me, like draw me a picture verbally of what the average MSP marketing department looked like, looks like. And so she, she had this whole org chart in her mind.

Well, they have a chief marketing officer and then they have, you know, someone that's in charge of webinars and someone that she sketched this whole like five or six person department for the average MSP. And I'm like, okay, let's back up a step because the average MSP does not have five people in their marketing department. The average MSP doesn't even have a single person dedicated to nothing but marketing.

The average MSP has best a person who has marketing on their plate, but they are also perhaps they're doing dispatching, perhaps they're paying the bills, perhaps they're balancing the checkbook. And so this, this fictitious idea of a marketing department with five people in it just doesn't exist in real life for the MSP. But for the vendor, most vendors have more than five people in their marketing team.

And so they can adopt, those vendors can adopt more complex marketing strategies. They also have a very robust sales team, so they can adopt multi-touch, multi-channel sales strategies. Whereas if an MSP tried to forklift that over into their organization, it's simply too complex for, let's say, owner-led sales or maybe one full-time salesperson and a part-time marketing person.

So just from a tactics standpoint, it has to look very, very different.

[Uncle Marv]
So we have been in this, I'm going to say, era of like the last 18 to 24 months where vendors have been shifting a lot of their focus to education.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Yes.

[Uncle Marv]
Vendors are trying to teach us how to sell, how to run your MSP. But part of me listened to what you just said and to the experiences that I've had, and it, it just seems in my mind that the goals are not the same.

[Jennifer Bleam]
I think the goals are similar. And the vendor obviously wants you to sell their EDR solution, whatever, fill in the blank with whatever solution it is. I do love the educational approach to marketing, but that only works if the person or the team doing the education actually has run or managed an MSP before.

Otherwise they're taking lessons that work in a vendor and they're trying to pass it over to the MSP and it just doesn't work. So educational marketing can work if the person doing the educating has walked a mile in the shoes of the person that they're educating. So for example, when I was working for Carver Cybersecurity, we later got acquired by Continuum, who has now been acquired by ConnectWise.

The three, first three employees had all run either the entire MSP in the case of the CEO or the whole fulfillment arm and a service and all of that in the case of the CTO. And then for my piece, I ran sales and marketing for an MSP. So when we did educational marketing, it was rooted in reality.

It was not a fictitious type of thing. It was literally, here is what we did three, four, five years ago, and here's why it worked. Otherwise, it's just a little theoretical and that doesn't always work in real life.

So I love the education based, I love anything that can add value into the world of the MSP, but it has to be rooted in reality. Otherwise, it's dangerous because MSPs trust the thought leader that gave them this great idea and they're going to burn cycles, probably a quarter or two or three, trying to make this thing work that doesn't have any resemblance of an actual marketing system or sales system that works.

[Uncle Marv]
OK, so when we're talking about these goals, I guess the first question is when you're looking to start working with somebody and you're putting together strategies, goals, what are some meaningful metrics to start with?

[Jennifer Bleam]
So let's go to the basics. I like to know, on average, what a customer's lifetime value is or monthly recurring revenue. So I'm always a little bit surprised when a business owner comes to me and they don't even have that number.

And to me, that's a pretty easy, like there's not a lot of higher math, like some things there's higher math and there's a lot of guessing that has to happen, let's extrapolate that number. But average is pretty easy to get. Well, how much total MRR do you have?

Which sometimes an MSP knows, sometimes they don't. And how many active clients do you have? And we divide the one by the other.

That's a pretty basic, fundamental number that I think everybody should know, either on the tip of their tongue or something that they can pull inside of 30 seconds to a minute. It should not be a massive, well, it's stored in six different spreadsheets or I don't really have a great list or, well, I don't really know because my, my financials are a mess. And so that's one thing I like to start with is what is your average client paying you?

And then I don't usually get into margins on my sales conversations with MSPs. I just kind of mentally go, okay, if a client is paying you $2,000 a month, let's pretend like you've got $1,000 going to the bottom line. That's, that's not necessarily factual, but okay.

So how much are we willing to spend in order to get that $2,000 a month client that will bring $1,000 to your bottom line? And that's how we have to think about it. Because the ideal is that we create almost, almost an ATM where every time we put $10,000 in, we get two or three leads out and we close one of them.

And that math can only work if we know how much that one sale is worth, because then we can say, okay, I can cashflow this for X number of months because it will bring me Y number of leads. And I will close approximately Z number of net new MRR clients. And now we can do the math and say, okay, at the end of three months, I've put in this amount of money and I've gotten this amount of MRR, where do we go from here?

And so that we need that basic command of, of just some very fundamental numbers. And then from there we can, we can decide, okay, can we afford a $10,000 a month spend, can we afford a $2,000 a month spend, or do we need to go really grassroots and scrappy and create something, a marketing plan where we're not spending a lot of money? And all of those are possible there.

I, I, I can create a $10,000 a month plan. I can create a $2,000 or $3,000 a month plan and I can create a scrappy, I don't have any dimes to rub together kind of a marketing plan, but at some point you are trading time for dollars. And so that $10,000 a month, that's a, that's a fairly large spend for an MSP.

And I would not expect the first lead to come in, in six months to a year. Whereas if we're scraping together and we're kind of doing a little more, um, pounding the pavement, a little more duct tape type of marketing, then you're not going to get leads particularly quickly because we're not putting a lot of investment into the ATM machine. And so, um, that, that's one way to think about the marketing system, if you will.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So sounds all good. Nice place to start.

Got to know the numbers and all of that. So from here, walk me through what would be next in terms of your pyramid.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Yep.

[Uncle Marv]
Um, of, of steps to, to do sales and marketing.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Yeah. So, so let's talk marketing first. I, I see marketing as having four arms and you mentioned one of them.

It's the branding, um, branding. Sometimes I'll say like eyeballs. Um, that, that's the bare minimum.

If we go back to marketing fundamentals, no, like, and trust. Well, someone can't know you until they know that you exist. So there has to be some type of, uh, branding or visibility campaign.

And so that could, could be SEO. It could be social media. It could be, um, pounding the pavement and dropping off pamphlets.

It could be going to chamber meetings, but you can't be the best kept secret and check the box for that first thing, which is, which is that top of funnel. The knowing someone has to know that you exist. And then from there, I like to build a list.

It is a very traditional way to market. Uh, that list could be in LinkedIn. It could be in Facebook.

It also could be in a database, whether that's a spreadsheet or a, or a HubSpot or active campaign, uh, but some kind of a list that is growing over time. Um, and there's, there's a couple of different lists that you want, but to keep it simple, think prospect list. These are people that could buy from me sometime in the next, you know, one month to five years.

And so, so we've done some branding. We're starting to build our list. Building that list is the second piece of that pyramid.

The second step, then the third step is nurturing. How do you stay in front of that list? How are you constantly making sure that they don't forget that you exist?

Okay, great. They know that you exist, but if they just knew that you exist six months ago and they haven't heard from you in six months, they have forgotten about you. You don't exist in their world anymore.

And so how are we nurturing? How are we staying in front of, which by the way, educational content is a good way to do that. So to kind of piggyback to what some vendors are doing, that educational content is, listen, I'm pouring value on you.

I'm trying to prove to you that you should know me, like me, trust me. And so that's, that's that third piece is nurturing the list. And then the fourth piece is really missing from the know, like, and trust model, because we can know people and like people and trust people, but if they never make us an offer to buy anything, we are not going to chase them down in the parking lot, waving our checkbook.

And so that, that fourth piece has to be sales offers, offers to dip their toe in, offers to do business with you. And so that's, that's the fourth piece. It's Know Like Trust and making offers.

So if, if we look at this kind of like a, let's say a car dealership, maybe a horrible example, cause that's like sleazy, slimy sales, but it's the, it's the first one that came to mind. If I'm in the market for us for a new car, or let's say like, I really want a new car by the end of next year and I want something fun and anyway, that's a different conversation, but it's going to be either blue or red. And I'm, I know I'm going to buy a car, but if I walk on the car lot and nobody talks to me, well, we just went one direction down our critical path.

Did they talk to me? No. Did they build no like and trust?

They did not. They just eroded it. Whereas if I walk on the parking lot and they're like, Hey, nice to meet you.

Are you looking for a car today? No, no, no. This'll be like next December.

It's going to be a reward. Cool. No worries.

Here's my card. What's your name? And now I know of them.

So let's just say Keith. Keith is now my, a possible person I might buy a car from. I know him.

I might sort of like him cause we shook hands and had a quick conversation, but I don't really trust him yet because like I spent five minutes with him on the, you know, standing on the parking lot. He knows I don't want to buy a car for, you know, 12 to 18 months. And if he goes away, I might hold onto his business card.

Probably not. Cause I have lots of stuff going on in my life, just like any other prospect does. But if he stays in touch with me, maybe he sends me a text every couple of months.

Maybe he sends me a picture of my car that happens to be on the lot. Maybe he sends me a birthday card or adds me to his email list. And now in a year he knows I'm close to buying my car.

Maybe he starts to give me a calculator, how to know how much car you can afford, how to get the car with all the bells and whistles on it. Now he is, because of his marketing efforts, he's pushing me further down his marketing funnel and he's creating that trust because he hasn't really asked for me to buy anything. He's just like, listen, I took good notes.

I know you're not ready yet. I just thought I'd tell you; we've got a car. I know you're not ready to buy, but do you want to come test drive it?

I'm pretty darn likely to come and test drive that car. If I know it's the blue one that I want and it's got the sunroof and it's got the cool, you know, I don't know the seats that are super comfy, even though all he's done is stayed in touch with me, he has shown me respect. And so he has created that trust because of his follow up cadence.

And now he made me, you know, he kind of tossed that fishing line out and he's like, do you want to come drive the car? And I don't know what the statistics are, but there's a pretty high likelihood that if I drive my dream car and just kind of drive it around and hear the engine and feel, you know, feel the wind in my hair, it's probably a really good chance that I'm going to buy that car. So there's no like trust, but then there's also making those offers.

And that has to be a part of your marketing equation.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So as you were saying, all of that in my head, I'm thinking that most of the marketing sales funnels, things that I've heard, not tried, is that, you know, we do the branding, which is basically the social media campaign, spatter your name all over the place, build the list, attack the list, make the offer. Your third step of nurture isn't in a lot of those.

[Jennifer Bleam]
It's not.

[Uncle Marv]
And the way that you just described that whole process of, you know, reaching out and all of that sounds great, but I'm going to, this was a horrible day to do this.

[Jennifer Bleam]
I hear the butt coming. I can hear it. So give it to me.

[Uncle Marv]
Cause I had a vendor today call my office and I'm, you know, in my office and Kim's at the desk and I could just hear her telling the person on the phone, he doesn't want to talk to you. He just talked to you guys last week. And there's a, there's a disconnect in our industry, I think where that whole nurturing thing that you've talked about either doesn't exist or they don't care.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Or they don't understand the word, which is like horrible because like, you understood the word and you, you're not really a marketing person. At least that's kind of how you would, you would explain yourself. So there is a disconnect.

And some of it is because vendors get into this some of these kind of bad habits or bad sayings about sales. Like I'm going to follow up with the prospect until they buy or die. That's so morbid.

I mean like that's okay. And what happened to, I'm going to follow up with a prospect until they tell me their own buying cadence. Hey, listen, ABC vendor, I love what you do.

I'm in a contract right now for another year or I love what you do, but I'm happy with my vendor and I'm not really likely to buy from anybody else. And so some of the follow up, follow up, follow up until the prospect buys or dies, it comes from the vendor tracking the wrong metrics. Like this, this concept of touching the prospects, you know, 14 times or 25 times, like there's so many different numbers.

Like how many times do I have to touch the prospect? But when you dig into those numbers, that assumes that you are either in the top of the funnel and I need to follow up with you six or eight times to find out if you're even qualified. But then the rest of the follow-up should only be done to a qualified prospect.

So as soon as you know, your team member says, listen, he doesn't want to talk to you today. Well then it's no worries. I want to, I want to meet him where he is.

Does he not want to talk to me today because he had a server blow up and this is just a really bad time because hello, I should know your business model if I'm selling to you. Or does he not want to talk to me now because he's going on vacation? Well by all means, tidy up, go on vacation.

When does he get back? Because now if I'm a good salesperson, I'll be like, how was Disney? How was your cruise?

Oh my goodness. This was your wedding anniversary. Well, happy anniversary.

So I can get that. But if it's, he doesn't want to talk to you because you ticked him off, you lied to the, the, the, the person who answered the phone, which is happening a lot, it's horrible. Or he doesn't want to talk to you because you're not on his cycle of, of tools that he's evaluating this quarter call back in May.

Those are all completely valid to me. The stop sign he doesn't want to talk to you right now is not the end of the conversation. It's no worries.

When's a better time? And now some of the time I will get an answer. He's busy right now.

He's not looking for what you're selling right now. He's thrilled with his existing vendor. The chances of you calling him 15 more times and pestering into the point where he finally takes your call slim to none.

So Mr. Salesperson, Mrs. Salesperson, maybe instead of calling Marv again next week, you should put him on the six month mark and maybe even say, no worries. Are you okay if I call you in six months? Now that's, that sales motion is not followed much at all in this industry because the salespeople are measured based on outbound efforts.

And so they just get a little green check Mark because they called Marv again. Well, if that check Mark doesn't lead to more sales, then we're measuring the wrong metric.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. That's where I was going to try to see if I could steer you as to what are we measuring and why? Because I think that what, what, what trickles down from vendors, other coaches is that, you know, when you hire your sales and marketing person, when you've got to hire a bulldog and send them out and they've got to, you know, they've got to have a hundred touches a day.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Yep. Okay.

[Uncle Marv]
And it's, it's, you know, no mention of what quality those touches need to be.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Yeah. Agreed. Okay.

So what you're seeing is essentially a pendulum swing. So as, as humans are natural tendency, and I have to fight this tendency myself. So this is not like, Oh, the coaches, you know, is, is on the mountain preaching down at people.

Like I have to fight this inside of my own marketing system and sales system. And the pendulum swing is I see a company doing something that I detest. And so I swing to the other extreme.

So let's make it tangible. I see a vendor that is going to call me weekly or three times a week, or maybe they call and they text and they email and I'm on their pester campaign. And because I bristle at that so much, I will swing to the other extreme.

And now I never follow up with my lead. They call once the prospect calls me the MSP, I answer the phone and then I maybe make one follow-ups call to get them on my schedule. And that's where it ends.

So clearly I don't want you at either end of the pendulum. I don't want you pestering someone to death and, and acting tone deaf and seeing them as a number. But I also don't want you being like, well, I called you once.

If you really want it, you'll chase me down. There's a happy medium where you do follow up and you are persistent and maybe you do hire a bulldog, but you put together a reasonable cadence. So I have a salesperson and if somebody, and we don't do any cold calling, but if somebody has engaged in a piece of content, they download a discovery questions or they bought my book and then they download the bonuses or they attend a free workshop that I have, whatever, whatever my, my top of funnel activity is, or even middle of funnel.

We have a system set up where my sales development rep, my bulldog follows up with them, but we have a kind of a declining cadence where we, we call, Hey, I could pull it up, but it's approximately we call every other day for three days. And then on the second week we call once or twice. And then on the third week we don't call it all.

And then on the fourth week we call once and then we call kind of monthly ish. But it's, it's always, the angle is always, Hey, you downloaded X. We've got other resources around that.

So you downloaded discovery questions. It looks like you're interested in sales. Would you also like our sales process?

Like our blueprint? Would you like a training webinar where we talk about objection handling? And so we are always like, can we give you something of value?

And then we're like, okay. And if this is really something you're focused on, do you want to schedule a call with Jennifer? And most of the time the answer is no.

And that's fine. We then follow up in a month or two to see, did you, were you able to consume resource number two? And can we offer you resource number three?

So for us it's very much the long game. It works extremely well because by the time people come to me into my, into my world, and they're talking to me on a zoom call face to face, they've usually read my book or skimmed my book. They have usually downloaded three or more of my resources and they've, they've quote unquote met me either in person or via a live webinar or a live training event of some sort.

So they already know of me and they usually like me or they wouldn't be scheduling a call. Everybody doesn't like me. I am an acquired taste.

Some people can't stand my methodology. That's okay. That just means they're not qualified to buy from me.

I'd rather find that out quickly and early. And then they usually trust me because I've poured value on them. And so it's like, can you help me more?

So if we, if we apply that to the MSP world, they most MSPs have swung so far from the extreme because they are, I saw a stat, this was like a year ago that the average MSP gets 15 or 20 sales calls in a given day. Um, there's, there's vendors that are like looking up cell phone numbers that I've never opted in for you calling my cell phone. And by the way, I get it as well because my business name is called MSP sales revolution.

So obviously I must be an MSP, right? And I'm like, I'm not an MSP. I appreciate the hustle but take my name off your list.

So I, I get the calls as well. So I don't want you to over, over adjust to, I, I hate the follow-up till they buy or die. Therefore I'm never going to make a single follow-up.

There is, there's magic in the middle.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So let me do this, Jennifer. Let me first say thank you for allowing us to go off course and, and putting up with my, my sideways questions.

Um, but it sounds like obviously you've had time to think about this. You've talked about this with many people before. Uh, so I appreciate your insights and willing to, to share on that.

Uh, I want to ask because we, I don't think we touched on anything that we tended to. Can I ask us to do a part two where we attempt to do that?

[Jennifer Bleam]
A hundred percent happy to do that. Let's make it happen.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So, but before we go, let me at least do this. Let's, let's do a much better introduce introduction of you and your company.

I mean, I did talk about you, you know, bestselling author, didn't even mention the book. Uh, the one that I see that's out there right now is the, uh, simplified cybersecurity sales for MSPs. Is that the latest?

Yep. That's the latest. All right.

Available right now at Amazon. I'll have a link. Uh, and it's also available as an audible book.

Yes. Uh, so tell us a little bit as we go out and prepare for part two, uh, MSP sales revolution. Um, I asked you to talk about, you know, what you thought you would be when you started, what MSPs asked you about.

So tell me right now, if you were to tell somebody who you are and what you do, what's the best way to describe that?

[Jennifer Bleam]
So I am a sales and marketing coach. So literally I help MSPs figure out their own secret sauce, their own way to market, to create leads and to sell. And so literally I help my clients create custom marketing plans.

Most of my clients don't like cookie cutter marketing tools. They don't like a copy paste. They don't like templates that look like they were created in the eighties.

They want genuine human to human marketing. And so that's what I do. And then that also bleeds over into the sales process, which you, you've heard a little bit of that very human centric selling, nothing sleazy, nothing slimy, nothing manipulative.

It comes from a genuine desire to help your community. And so the people who like the sleazy, slimy sales are not attracted to me. And the people who really they're in this because it's a relationship business.

Those people are attracted to me. And so that's what I help. I help MSPs figure all of those components out for their own system.

[Uncle Marv]
You said something early on that caught my ear and I made a note because you actually mentioned MSPs as low as 250k.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Yep.

[Uncle Marv]
Which I'll be honest, I don't know the number exactly, but I know a lot of the other people that I've talked to in the industry don't want to touch anything less than a mil or two mil.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Yep.

[Uncle Marv]
And I ask you why you go that low.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Yeah. So it's data that that is the reason that I go that low. So I started being really fastidious about tracking my numbers a little over a year ago.

So, again, I'm not this this marketing person that that will scream at you to do something. I understand that it's challenging to do these things. But a year ago, I'm like, we are tracking our numbers.

We are going to track our sales numbers. And so this year I looked at three months’ worth of numbers. And even though my marketing at the time was very clear that I typically work with MSPs that are 600k and up, even though my marketing was clear and I've had outside people take a look at it and they're like, no, it's super clear.

Seventy five percent of companies that were coming to me weren't hitting that revenue number. And so I had two choices. I could continue to toe the line and say, no, I can't service you.

And I would turn them away. Or I could figure out something that would be able to help the smaller companies that need just as much help as the million dollar companies. And so I sat down with a coach one day and I'm like, here's my challenge, here's what I'm delivering right now.

How do I figure out how to deliver that same end result, a custom marketing and sales system without it having quite as much direct access to me, but still give them the results that they need? And inside of an hour, we had it figured out. And so literally a month or so ago, I dropped my minimum to that 250.

And my calendar is now booked like book solid for the next. Not quite solid. I've got a few little gaps here and there, but I'm booking out about three weeks and it's getting rave reviews.

It's very, very affordable for that 250, 350 K a year company. And they still get calls with me. I'm not outsourcing it to anyone.

They get group calls twice a month. And it's because there is a need. There are hungry people in the marketplace.

I have the food that they need. And I would be I would be remiss if I didn't figure out a way to deliver that to them and to help them because they have the same mission as the million dollar companies. They want to keep people safe and protected.

So I have a duty and an obligation to help those MSPs figure out their own system.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Well, Jennifer, first thing I got to say is. Can't believe we haven't made this happen sooner, because a lot of what you're saying is what I have been trying to talk to my listeners about.

And you're hitting the sweet spot. So let's go ahead and do a break here and come back with part two again. I want to thank you for being able to do that and.

Come back and do it the right way instead of all this ranting and raving that you let me do.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Awesome. All right. I'll do my best to control you.

I don't know that I'm going to have any luck, though, but thanks for the permission.

[Uncle Marv]
All right, folks, sit tight. We will be back with another episode here. Jennifer Bleam MSP sales revolution dot com.

All the links will be in the show notes. But if you're listening and you've got time on a plane or on the road or something, just wait. The next episode will be right out.

So see you in a few minutes. Holla!