728: 5 Marketing Commandments Every MSP Needs to Know

[Uncle Marv]
I'm going to start that again. Let's see here. Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast presented by NetAlly, the show for IT professionals and managed service providers where we help you run your business better, smarter, and faster.

And we are back with another audio episode presented by our good friends over at SuperOps. And this is part two, where I have Jennifer Bleem from the MSP Sales Revolution. She was so kind to allow us to do a part two because I took us so far off track in part one, but Jennifer, thank you and welcome back.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Thank you so much for having me back. And I'm going to remind you, you told me to try to control you. I don't know that I can, but I'll just say that up front.

[Uncle Marv]
Nobody's going to believe that. So we were talking about MSP sales and it's funny, when we first started out, we were going to put together this list of commandments for sales and marketing, but we ended up going down this rabbit hole about goal setting and nurturing leads that, for some reason, we always seem to forget. And we talked about vendor strategies and how that affects us stuff.

So you had mentioned something where we talked about this marketing pendulum. Yes. So I want us to start there and then hopefully get back on track because that seems interesting to me that we are in this pendulum.

So where exactly, again, do you think we are on this pendulum?

[Jennifer Bleam]
Yeah. So this is one of the commandments. So it's kind of a thou shalt not.

So thou shalt not follow or do the marketing pendulum. And so the marketing pendulum is the idea that MSPs so strongly detest how many vendors market and that there's so much prickliness around that, that they swing to the other extreme and they don't do any marketing or they don't do any follow up. And so that's the marketing pendulum and the magic is really somewhere in the middle.

But the problem is that they don't necessarily recognize that they're being a pendulum marketer. And so they think they are doing a little bit of marketing, maybe they're doing social media or some SEO, but then they come to me and they say this phrase that my marketing doesn't work. And I think it's important to overcome that belief because anytime that we're saying X doesn't work, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If MSPs were all the time saying, migrating from Google to Microsoft 365 never works right. Well, when they wake up in the morning and the ticket that they have to resolve is a migration from the one tool to the other platform, they're going to hate it and they're going to have this angst around it. So I want to give you just a couple of very concrete ways to overcome that belief that marketing just doesn't work.

[Uncle Marv]
Before you do that, I want to get the concept of the pendulum because it feels like because the vendors over market to us, we say that we're not going to do that to our prospects.

[Jennifer Bleam]
That's a hundred percent what the pendulum is. So the vendors that are doing the follow-up calls every single day, and they're lying to the gatekeepers to get through to you. And they're saying, we saw you at an event and it's an event you never went to.

So there's the lying, there's the lack of trust, there's just the pestering you to death, like, please go away. I will call you when I'm interested, or please go away and call me in three months. Like we agreed to when you called me last week, but because the sales team is churning and there's no detailed notes in the CRM, the MSPs are getting pestered to death.

So that's the one extreme of the pendulum. And then because MSPs don't want to do marketing that way, they swing to the opposite extreme and they therefore don't do very much outbound marketing at all. So that's the pendulum.

And at its root, they are like, well, I'm doing a little bit of marketing, but it's not really working. Therefore, marketing doesn't work. So they kind of make this broad brushstroke about marketing doesn't work.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. But going back to our last show, we talked about the concept of nurture, because for some reason we equate marketing as pestering, which is not what it's supposed to be.

[Jennifer Bleam]
It's not what it's supposed to be, but it is often the only marketing that MSPs are experiencing when they're the prospect.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Yep.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So now you're going to help us understand how we can overcome that belief.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Yes. Okay. So we're going to overcome the belief that marketing, that marketing doesn't work.

And so I'm going to use a really silly analogy because there's something that happens in our brains when we're hearing a story or we're hearing an analogy, we can latch onto it. We can recognize the truth in the analogy and that'll help you apply it to marketing. So let's pretend at time of recording, it's kind of cool outside here in Maryland.

It's starting to feel like fall. And that is when I like to make chili. So let's pretend like I say, my chili never tastes good.

I make chili from scratch, but it never tastes good. The first principle is to get curious. Well, why not?

Okay. So for marketing, my marketing never works. Why not?

What KPIs are we tracking? Is it true that it's not working? Is the tactic that we're doing designed to get us the result we think it's designed to get?

So the principle there is get curious. Why not? Why does my chili not taste good?

Why do I believe that marketing never works? So that's kind of step one is to get curious. Step two is to fact check yourself.

Like you're saying, my chili doesn't taste good. Therefore chili never tastes good. Well, that's a bit of a logical leap.

So I want you to fact check your assumption. Well, has anyone ever made chili that tastes good? Because if the answer to that is yes, then we have to kind of look in the mirror and go, well, Jennifer, other people's chili tastes good.

It's just that your chili sucks. So what's the problem? It's not chili across the board.

It's your recipe for chili. So if we apply that to marketing, I'm like, okay, my marketing doesn't work. Okay.

But let's fact check. Does anyone in your industry have marketing that works? Is there anyone in your geography or serving your niche or serving small business owners broadly?

Is anyone having luck with marketing? Because if yes, then we have to look in the mirror and say, it's not marketing. It's not this broad brushstroke that marketing never works.

It's, oh, my marketing recipe isn't any good. And that's why it doesn't work. So we have to fact check that assumption.

And then the third piece is finding once we found people that are seemingly having success with marketing, the third principle is swipe and deploy. So maybe you find someone that is, you're based in Florida, you find someone in Phoenix, Arizona, that is having success, and you follow what they're doing. You watch their social media; you use a throwaway email address and get on their list.

You ethically stalk them to see what they're doing to stay in front of people to nurture. What are they doing for social media? What kind of offers are they doing?

So swipe and deploy on marketing, the way that I swipe and deploy with chili is I open like 10 or 15 recipes, and then I take little bits and pieces from each one. And then I make my own chili recipe based on best practices from all of these five star chili recipes. And so instead of saying marketing never works, we get curious and say, why not?

What's not working with my marketing? And then secondly, we fact check that, like, is it true that marketing never works? Or is it simply my marketing that isn't working, which is kind of sobering?

And then finally, where can we steal genius, swipe and deploy from? And where can we maybe model somebody else's marketing that is working better than ours? So we have to get rid of the belief, it's really a mindset that marketing doesn't work.

Because when I believe that marketing never works, guess what I'm not going to do? I'm not going to market because it's useless. It doesn't work.

That's a waste of time and money.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So is it safe to say that you're not going to be like some of the others where you've got this? I don't even know what the right word is.

I want to say, marketing strategy where it's boom, boom, boom, you know, A, B, C, D, do all of these, because what it sounds like you're saying is, no, we're going to find out what works for you. Specifically, that might come from A, it might come from F. Yes.

Does that sound like it does?

[Jennifer Bleam]
Yeah. So there's four pillars to what I do inside of marketing. So we need branding and visibility and we need to build our list, we need to nurture our list, and then we need to make sales offers.

But that's kind of like picture that as four boxes that we need to fill in, kind of a fill in the blank worksheet, if you will. But what goes in each of those boxes is very unique to each one of my clients. Because people like you, you may do a podcast, you may do a video, you may do in-person meetings.

But another one of my clients may say, I do not like humans. Like, if I never have to talk to a single human, that would be great. And so I would never say, whoa, do a video every week, because that isn't going to work for that individual.

So the concept of cookie cutter marketing, whether it's cookie cutter social media or cookie cutter direct mail, just doesn't work. I think in 10 years or so, it will work again, to some extent. But right now, the cookie cutter, you know, copy and paste a marketing template and throw in your own brand colors just isn't working anymore, because people need a genuine connection with the person that they're buying from.

So there is a framework, but what goes in each of those boxes is different from client to client.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So getting past that first commandment of staying off the pendulum, we are now overcoming this belief that marketing doesn't work. So we're starting to believe.

All right, I'll take a next step with you. So what's next?

[Jennifer Bleam]
Okay, so the next thing is, hopefully your marketing system is creating those sales ready leads or the sales opportunities or the FTAs, the first time appointments. And so that's where we get into commandment number two, thou shalt disqualify your leads or prospects. I know, it's so crazy, because MSPs are so lead hungry, that they're like, yay, the phone rang, it must be a qualified lead.

And this is this is it's funny, because if you look at what we all hate with vendors, we hate that they're not disqualifying us. If I'm an MSP, and I don't need your tool, or I love what you're doing, but I'm locked into a contract for another year, then I'm not qualified to buy from you. And that's why I hate you continuing to call me every single week.

Because every single week, I either have to send your phone call to voicemail, or I need to explain again, for the 17th time, I love what you're doing, but I can't buy for nine months, please follow up with me then. So when we're the buyer, we recognize the wisdom in being disqualified, please, please disqualify me, I don't want to take another phone call from a company that I'm not qualified to do business with. But when we're in the selling seat, we are so hungry for leads, that we can trick ourselves into believing that every live prospect is a viable prospect.

And it simply isn't the case. And so you need to disqualify people, because they aren't all able to do business with you. It could be a budgetary reason, it could be that they're just shopping for the cheapest price, and maybe you're not the cheapest price.

It could be that they're on paper, they're shopping, but they're really only shopping because the board of directors makes them get three competing quotes every year, so that they can stick with the incumbent. Well, why in the world would you want to meet with that person, because they're not going to buy from you unless you're significantly less expensive. And if there's no real compelling reason for them to go with you, if there's no pain, then they're not going to buy from you, they're just using you to get a dollar figure.

And they're literally using you. So that's not a qualified buyer.

[Uncle Marv]
All right, left turn again.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Okay, maybe, maybe if I let you.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, so we have been hearing about this, you know, not every customer is for you. And we have heard about qualifying customers, meaning, you know, we're only going to deal with customers that are going to have X number of endpoints or higher, or that are willing to spend this amount of money or higher, or, you know, I only work with clients that are willing to be in the cloud. I will never do servers again stuff.

Sure. All of that sounds great until you start complaining about, well, I'm not getting the right leads. Yes.

So, so part of my question, I guess comes into part of the disqualification has to be the front end of that and qualifying what gets into your funnel, right?

[Jennifer Bleam]
Yes. So ideally, your marketing will attract the right people. But sometimes, like in my case, people were so hungry for help with marketing, that even though they knew they didn't meet, you know, the 600k and up that I used to only serve those slightly larger MSPs, they would still come to me and almost the first question would be, I know I'm too small, but I'm hoping you can make an exception.

So sometimes it's a marketing question. Sometimes it's a volume question, like you're you have to get comfortable saying no to this lead, because you know, another lead is coming. But what we're talking about is almost a probability.

So most MSP sales processes are three, three to six hours long. So if we have a discovery meeting, then maybe we do a risk assessment or some type of a network audit network assessment, then we have to create a proposal, which even if it's templated, we're probably looking at 30 to 60 minutes. And then we have to have that final meeting where we're showing them the results of everything.

And that doesn't even count drive time to and from and you know, what your hourly rate for the team member who's doing the assessment, in case you're sending out a senior technician or something like that. So it's a time intensive sales process. So I would I'm not trying to close you but there is a closing technique called the Benjamin Franklin close where on the one side, we have a six hour sales process.

And it's very, very unlikely for someone who is unqualified to actually buy from you. So do we want to invest six hours in the hopes and the fingers crossed and the prayer that we are so flamboyant and we overcome everything and we're such a winning personality that someone will buy from us? Or if we go to be on the Benjamin Franklin close a is six hours spent on a possibly unqualified prospect B is a 15 minute phone call to find out that they're not qualified and say, let me refer you to my most hated competitor, maybe they'll waste time and money with you.

I understand that it feels like a defeat to say you're not qualified and you're not going to buy from me. But six hours versus 15 minutes is very real dollars and very real time spent. So I would rather you spend that 15 minutes and disqualify and then you have additional time to work on whatever you want to work on.

It could be marketing, it could be efficiency, it could be leaving early on a Friday. But if you're constantly filling your pipeline with deals that have a one in 10 or one in 100 chance of closing, what happens is you're living on hope and it isn't even well founded hope. And just like we talked at the beginning of the hour about, oh, my marketing doesn't work.

I hear I'm really bad at sales. Well, almost nobody can close a disqualified prospect. And so if you work 10 leads and nine of the 10 weren't qualified, you can very quickly walk out of the other end and you're like, I really stink as a salesperson.

No, you might. But if the data says, no, you don't stink as a salesperson, you just went on sales calls you shouldn't have gone on because they were very truly a waste of your time. And so it's a different shift than why don't we pack more opportunities into your sales funnel from people who can buy from you and do care about what you provide and aren't looking for the cheapest provider and aren't just looking for three bids to put up against the company they're happy with.

Those are viable sales prospects and they're out there.

[Uncle Marv]
Right. So is there a couple of examples you can give without giving away secret sauce and stuff of how MSPs can do that disqualification without it being so, I'm trying to find the right word, because we can be jerks when it comes to disqualifying people. Oh, sure.

Yeah. But are there some good tactics that are proper ways to disqualify?

[Jennifer Bleam]
Yep. So you want to start first by saying what is a qualified prospect so that we have a kind of guardrails to play inside. So if they don't fall in that qualified category, they're outside, which means they're disqualified.

So let's not chase that because that's probably pretty straightforward to figure out. You want to check budget and pain and are they in your geography and are they just looking for the cheapest price? Are they planning to buy from another provider in the next three months?

Those are some bare minimums where I would start. And then at the point that you find out that they're not a fit, here's what I say. Listen, you've clearly got a need.

Unfortunately, I don't think I'm the best fit for you, but I'd be happy to make a recommendation. Do you want me to make that recommendation via a three-way email or would you prefer for me just to call my colleague and have them reach out to you? Which, by the way, that's a choice close.

You're literally just closing them on the fact, how do you want me to politely pass you off? And so that's one way. That's what I typically do.

People will sometimes come to me and they're like, I want a fully done for you 10k a month package. That's not what I do. I'm a coach.

So I typically find that out in the sales call. We don't have a disqualification right now. We're getting ready to tweak our process to add that, but it doesn't happen often.

I've got the data, but it's probably one in 12 sales calls where someone gets on the phone and inside of 15 minutes, I'm like, oh, you don't want someone to coach you on how to do it. You just want to write a check and know that it's done. That's not what I do.

Let me make an introduction. So that's one way. Another way is, do you mind if I just check on something with you?

Can I just fact check something? Make sure I'm reading this right. That's very powerful psychologically because you're throwing yourself under the bus and you're like, hey, I give you permission to tell me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like what you're looking for is the lowest price and no harm, no foul if that's you.

But is that an accurate read? Am I reading the situation right? Yep.

We need the lowest price. Okay. Transparently, that's not me.

We really provide a white glove service. Our prospective clients and clients are willing to pay a premium for that. But if you're looking for the lowest cost provider, may I recommend that you call Best Buy, whatever, fill in that blank, however you want to fill in that blank.

So literally some of it is simply practicing that a few times. It feels uncomfortable because it's new and it feels uncomfortable because you've never planned for it. So plan for it.

And by the way, this is a great use for AI. You can say, hey, I'm an MSP and the AIs, they do know what an MSP is. I'm an MSP.

I'm getting ready to put in place a prequalification call or disqualification call. And I need at least six different talk tracks or six different polite ways to get someone out of my pipeline without making myself look like a jerk. Can you make some suggestions for me?

And it will come up with great ideas.

[Uncle Marv]
You just gave me a great idea. We'll talk off air.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Okay, perfect.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So sounds good. So thou shalt not be on the marketing pendulum.

Thou shalt disqualify sales. Yes. Which I think the way that you put it is great.

If you know early on that this is not going to be the client, don't spend the six hours wasting your time. Just rip it off.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Yeah. You don't want a pipeline filled with hope. It's awful.

It's awful because then nothing closes and you feel like a loser. And it's not that you're a loser. It's that you should have done something earlier in your process to get them away from your pipeline, get them off the pipeline.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. So assuming we've got the pipeline set properly, we're getting in the right qualified leads. Next commandment would be what?

[Jennifer Bleam]
Okay. The next commandment is thou shalt follow solution selling best practices. So solution selling is not here's my stack and let me describe to you all of the pieces of the puzzle that are going to give you the thing you want.

Instead, you're selling a package deal. You're selling a solution to their problem, which assumes that they have a problem that you can solve. And so this gets into active listening, listening with really open, curious ears so that you can hear the problems your prospect has so that you can solve those problems.

And so this is easy to say, a little harder to do, especially if the person that is selling is technical. Because the seller, if the seller is technical, they get really excited about the speeds and feeds and about the latest AI plugin and they get excited by the tech, the technology. Never forget that your prospect is buying the ability to not even hear about technology.

They just want their problem solved. So make sure that you are following best practices related to solution selling.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So I know that people have talked about solution selling ad nauseum to some degree, but there always seems to be this bleed over into the features. Like you said, where, yeah, here's the solution.

And the solution is this, this, and this, where the customers like glossed over the face. I'm like, okay, I hear you, but I don't understand how that's the solution. You've told me what the solution is, but how is that going to fix my problem?

That seems to me what they want to hear the most. Because I just had a customer, he called me into his office a couple of weeks ago and he told me what he needed. And I said, yeah, I can do that.

And I said, do you want to know how much? He's like, no, tell me how you're going to do it. Got it.

Well, we're going to do this, this, and this. And I said, do you want me to get into all the details of what the tools are? And he goes, no, just tell me you can do it and we'll be fine.

And that's what it ended up being. And it was, I didn't have to say one thing technical. I actually even gave him a link to a webpage and he looked, he went to the link for like two minutes.

I said, yeah. Okay. That's good.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Yes. Yeah. Because they all, all the prospect wants to do, they want to know that you can solve their problem.

So let's, let's assume that the prospect wants to know a little bit of tech. Cause your example is perfect. If they're like, I don't care.

I don't care what kind of scalpel you're going to use. I just want to know that you can cut open my knee and make my pain go away. I don't care how you make the incision.

I don't care what brand of bed you use. I don't care if you're, I want your, your, your knife to not be rusty, but I'm going to trust that you're using a new scalpel and that it's the state of the art. I don't care.

I don't care how you researched it. I don't care that you put it through a proof of concept. I just care.

You can fix my problem. So, but if you are speaking to a little bit more of a technical buyer, you do need to have a little bit of features, but then you need heavy benefits and there's a super easy way to do it. Um, I call it the so what technique and you're literally going to do feature so that la la la la la, we're going to solve this problem and then feature so that you never have to worry about this again.

And then feature so that your team and you're literally you're regurgitating back to them everything they told you when you were practicing active listening, you're sort of reverse engineering. Okay. So in order to make sure that you don't have spam arriving in your, in your email, we're going to put in a spam solution, um, or anti-spam solution, right?

So you're like, okay, we're going to put in our state of the art email cleanliness tool so that your team doesn't ever have to lose hours every week cleaning up spam and dealing with the junk and missing valid emails. So that those two words, so that, or so what, um, are, are the, you don't have to use those words every single time. Um, but that, that muscle memory will very quickly serve you by the way, really abstract example of this, but it was, it was brilliantly executed.

If you're ever flying American airlines and you're on a long enough flight, which I think is like two hours or longer, they pitch you a credit card at the end. I hate it. I feel like it's unethical.

Like I can't escape. I can't hang up on you. Um, but you're pitching your credit card.

They do a masterful job at giving you the feature and then giving you the benefit. So they're like, you've got 150,000 miles so that you could even fly to Europe. And it's like, and you don't have to make a massive purchase.

So you could literally just buy a pack of gum. And so next time you're flying American, pay attention to the pitch. Even if you don't want the credit card, it doesn't matter because you're going to see a, they did a really, really good job of combining the features, but tying it to why you should care about this feature.

We don't have a monthly fee or we don't have an annual fee or you only have to, I think it's, you only have to sign up for a once a one year commit on like our competitors who lock you into a three-year contract. That one's a little more subtle, but it's a feature. And then you don't want to buy from someone else because they don't have that feature.

It's not exactly feature benefit, but it's awfully close and they really do a good job.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So I'm going to have to take my headphones off to listen to that American Airlines pitch.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Okay.

[Uncle Marv]
That's how I don't.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Probably. Yeah. I have to take out my, my Bose noise canceling and do the same thing, but they, they really do a good job.

So just take that three minutes and study sales and then you can put, put your headphones back on.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. Let me, let me kind of go back a step because if we're getting to the point where we're trying to offer our solutions for them, I want to find out if you have any ways to advise people. Sometimes we don't know what the problems are and we don't know how to ask what the problems are.

We know that the prospect either hates their current provider and they're tired or their computer's breaking, but trying to get them to tell us what's really wrong or what do you really want your network to do? How do you advise people to get through that?

[Jennifer Bleam]
One of my favorite questions, and this feels so antithetical, but it, it works is okay. So you've, you're with an existing provider, which is usually true. What do you love about them?

They are almost always going to give you one thing that is, that is they love or it's acceptable. And then they're going to trip over themselves to tell you everything that's broken. So you can't say and expect to get a whole lot of response.

Tell me everything you hate about them so I can sell you more. Cause most humans don't want to be sold. They want to buy and they want to solve their problems, but they don't want to be sold at.

And so you can get around that by saying, you know, who is, who are you with right now? And tell me everything you love about them. And if that feels disingenuous, you can say, tell me everything you love about them.

Cause I want to make sure we do all those things too. They're going to give you one, maybe two things. And then they're going to say, but they don't this.

And they make me feel that. And they, we had this problem and then the ransomware attack and the, and you're going to get what you want, which is all the reasons that they want to switch. So that's one option.

I also like if I gave you a magic wand, what would your relationship with your IT service provider look like? So the magic wand is a good one. And then this last one it's, it's called the wedge technique.

It's, it's written by a gentleman named Randy Schwantz, and he wrote how to get your competition fired without saying anything bad about them. That's the approximate title. And so he, his, his process is does your existing provider do X so that you can benefit, right?

So it's like, does your existing provider come in and meet with you every quarter and give you a technology roadmap so that you never, you're never surprised and you can plan ahead and you have kind of a five-year plan in front of you so that you can budget effectively. Hopefully they say, no, my provider doesn't do that. And you can say, oh, then that's not important to you, I guess.

And they're like, no, no, no, no, that would be amazing. And then you're like, okay, let me make a note of that. And you just make a note to current provider, not doing QBRs, that would be super valuable.

And then you move on with your discovery conversation. You can use that wedge technique, maybe up to three times, two or three times in a single sales call. You don't want to overdo it and don't do it back to back to back.

Cause I see what you're doing. But when your current provider comes in and does the annual assessment of your cybersecurity posture so that you can get your cyber liability insurance quickly, easily, smoothly, were you happy with the way that process went? They don't do that.

Oh, so you don't need to have cyber liability insurance. No, we need that. Oh, okay.

So that type of service would be valuable? Yes. Okay.

Let me make a note of that. That that's another real tactical example of how you can uncover pain. That last one is more latent pain, which is really fun.

That's when I didn't even know that existed. I should, I was paying a lot of money. Wow.

Now I'm not so sure my provider was doing right by me. And just like we want to create no like and trust in marketing and sales. We also want to erode a little bit of trust from the incumbent and that wedge technique does so very, very effectively.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. I'm sorry, because my mind was wandering. I'm listening to all the stuff you're talking about.

And part of me got to a thing where I was sitting in with a prospect. This is a while ago. And I was listening to what they were saying.

And I actually got to the point where I said, they do that for you. That's awesome. I don't know if anybody else that's doing that.

I don't know if I can do that for you. And they were like, what do you mean? I said, well, at the price you said, that's what they're doing for that price.

I can't match that price. That was me trying to disqualify them.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Yep. Or a price anchor that like, because you could have been like, I'm shocked they can do that at that price, which now you're like, we can do it, but we're not going to be at that price. So if this is just a money conversation, we're going to be more expensive.

[Uncle Marv]
Right. Well, that's what actually it turned out because the person turned around and said, well, we'll pay more if we can get this other stuff. Nice.

And that's, that's what worked for me.

[Jennifer Bleam]
It's very powerful to take something away from the prospect. Yeah. It's like, nobody likes, don't, don't take my cookie away.

I like my cookie.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Okay. So we've got three commandments.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Yep.

[Uncle Marv]
Thou shalt follow solution selling. Yes. Very good.

All right. So we're at the point. So the discovery call we've given them all the stuff.

What do you love about your current provider? And then I have to assume that we now need to do that closing thing that you talked about.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Not yet. So we need to dig into discovery a little bit more because right now we we've gotten some, some pain. There's a little bit of a gap, but we want to widen that gap significantly.

So thou shalt have a discovery process. And so discovery is rooted in curiosity. You should like everything that the prospect says, you can be like, really, why that, or why is that important to you?

Or please, if it's true, don't say this, if it's not true, but wow, no one's said that to me before. Help me understand where you're coming from. So you're just, you're just digging.

You're just where you're not sure. It's kind of like a dog and somebody else buried the bone in the backyard and the dog's just like, I know it's here somewhere, but where, where can I find it? So being curious.

And so people are sometimes like, give me the best discovery questions ever. And I just harken back to like high school English, who, what, when, where, why, how, those are all really good discovery questions. So no matter what a prospect throws at you, we need 24 by seven support.

Okay. What, what would that look like? Is that for all of your team?

Why, why 24 by seven? You're a salon. Why do you need 24 by seven?

Like, you're curious. You're just like, help me understand. So the who, what, when, where how is a good, it's a good hack where if you're, if you're kind of stuck and you're like, oh, I got off my script, my mind wandered.

They just threw me something. I'm not sure how to handle it. This isn't, this isn't on my sales process.

They kind of took a right turn. And you just, you just go back to that and you can very quickly come up with them who, what, when, where, why, how, even if it's just like, why, why that I don't understand. So those are some really good discovery things.

And then the goal of discovery, because sometimes we get as salespeople, we get into this habit where we're not sure, okay, this is, I'm supposed to be doing discovery, but what's the end goal of discovery. It's not just, I'm filling 30 minutes of discovery and I want to just check the box and say, okay, I did discovery, but it's really, you're going into the conversation and you probably already know that there's a whole lot of value that you can provide, but discovery is for the prospect to realize how big the problem really is and that you can add value to their world. And so the way you can add value is to uncover the impact of the problem.

And so in, in your example where you said, I'm surprised you can get that at that price, whatever that, that bullet point was, why was that so important to them? And what would it look like if they didn't have that? Because what you're uncovering is the impact, that business impact, and that's what people buy.

They buy either the risk reduction, because I can't deal with that business impact, or they're willing to buy, you know, your platinum plan. If you've got your silver gold platinum, they want that thing. And they're, they're willing to buy it.

And you're like, why, why, why is like, that's fine. If that's, if that benefits your organization, but I don't want you to buy something you don't need. So help me understand why that's so crucial to your business.

And they'll, they'll be, they'll start to sell themselves. So that's when it really gets fun. So a discovery process that helps the end user discover how underserved they are, or how at risk they are, or how much they need what you have to, to, to offer them.

That's, that's really what you want inside of discovery.

[Uncle Marv]
So let me ask, because it sounds like the solution selling and the discovery can actually happen at the same time. Is that? Yes, yes.

[Jennifer Bleam]
A lot of these sales fundamentals, they kind of layer over top of themselves, kind of like a, a Lego block, right? So we're sticking one block on and we're sticking another. And now we have a tower of three Lego blocks.

And those three Lego blocks could be solution selling, you know, open, open questions and active listening discovery process, using the wedge technique, like it all falls under that discovery umbrella. Okay. And then you mentioned closing, which is one of my favorite topics, even though I don't have it as a, as a commandment of closing.

[Uncle Marv]
We all know, always be closing. A, always B, B, A closing.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Yes, yes. So I didn't list that one, but it is one of the most commonly searched, search terms related to sales, how to overcome objections and how to close more sales.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So you smile real big. Was there a particular thought that came up about closing in terms of how to do it the right way or?

[Jennifer Bleam]
Yeah. So, so the close is just the natural culmination of the whole rest of the sales process having been completed correctly. It's kind of like, so I did football.

I was the football manager and statistician in high school. So I know a little bit more than the average woman about football. And there's no coach that is preparing for their game.

And they're saying, how do I score more touchdowns this, this Sunday? Now that's the goal, just like the goal of a sales call is to close the sale, but they're looking at how do I gain yardage? How do I defend against the other team?

How do they're look at the game holistically? They're not just looking at that last play. I kind of feel like it's almost unfair to the rest of the team that only one person scores a touchdown.

And that's where all the stats all go towards that one person, but more than likely that one person couldn't have scored a touchdown if it wasn't for the other 50 plays that happen in the game. So to apply that to sales, if we're disqualifying or qualifying early, if we're doing a great discovery and asking open-ended questions and hearing them and taking away when appropriate, and we're helping the prospect to open their eyes and realize where they are underserved, helping them to see the impact of not bridging this gap, helping them see the impact on their organization, if they have these things that they want, explaining how you deliver white glove service. If you do all of those things correctly in your system, then the close, this real mysterious thing, is literally, it can be as simple as, listen, you told me this, we can do that. I mentioned this feature and how that can benefit you.

You mentioned you have to have this thing that we happen to be able to deliver. You weren't even aware that you should be getting quarterly business reviews, and you were like, yeah, that would be amazing. We can do all of that.

We've already talked a little bit about budget. You're the perfect client for us. I just need to ask you, and then you literally can either say, where do you want to go from here?

Or you can say, can we get you started with our onboarding? We've got one open slot next week. But literally, it's not this big mysterious close.

It's just a natural continuation of the conversation. And so it's not, how do I close more deals? It's, well, you open correctly, and you diffuse objections, and you have a great discovery.

And then you can almost, not quite, but almost accidentally fall into the close, because it isn't this whole new piece of the sales process. It's just the end. It's the end of a conversation.

[Uncle Marv]
It's the next step. And it's not the last step, because it's the next step in, you mentioned something at our last recording, the lifetime value of a client. So the process doesn't stop when you close the sale.

[Jennifer Bleam]
No, you could almost say the close is really the beginning of the relationship.

[Uncle Marv]
Right.

[Jennifer Bleam]
Very interesting.

[Uncle Marv]
Interesting that you mentioned this as a holistic marketing. So holistic health has been something that has gained popularity over the last few years. People are looking at their body and their life in a holistic manner.

It's almost like we, as IT professionals, need to do that with our businesses, look at it holistically in terms of every aspect, from the time that we meet a prospect, get them through our processes, through the journey that we go through. So let me ask you this, and I don't know if this falls into a commandment or not, but how do you talk? I mean, we talked about having them do their mind shift with marketing isn't broken, but how do we get their mind to shift into this as a strategic marketing or holistic marketing system?

[Jennifer Bleam]
So this is a little kind of dark energy, but it can be effective in small doses. So if you, as the MSP, don't learn to market and you don't learn to close the sale, then the end user is probably going to buy from the lowest bidder, which means they're going to have a very high likelihood of having a cyber security incident or a breach or ransomware attack or downtime because they didn't have a BDR or all the things like we all know those worst case scenarios. And so for many of my clients, dwelling on that eventuality as often as needed, when we're having a bad day or we wake up and we're supposed to do marketing today, we don't want to, that knowledge that I have an obligation to the consumer, I have an obligation to my niche that I've selected or to the small business owners in general, or to my geography, and the knowledge that if I don't get good at those things, and if I don't look at my business as how am I marketing? How am I nurturing?

How am I showing up for the people in my list? Am I making offers? I have something that can help them.

And if I don't help them and then something happens, regardless of whether I hear about it or not, that's on me. And that knowledge is what takes many MSPs to the next level because they all of a sudden can't sleep at night because they're like, just like I need to treat my business as a holistic, healthy, how am I growing? How am I serving?

Looking at the greater marketplace holistically as well. You may be their last best hope of stopping in that very bad day. So you have to be in front of people showing up with your marketing.

You have to be able to close that sale, which is getting good at sales. And so it's a holistic look at the business and the community as a whole. It's almost its own kind of symbiotic relationship.

Does that make sense?

[Uncle Marv]
It does. It does. So now let me ask you this.

Did we stay on track?

[Jennifer Bleam]
I think we did really well staying on track this time. Good job. We did awesome.

[Uncle Marv]
We did. We did. So that is fantastic.

So folks, again, Jennifer Bleem, MSP Sales Revolution. And basically, I'm going to call it the holistic approach to marketing. And Jennifer will help you with the tools to book more calls, close more opportunities.

Can I say at higher profit margins?

[Jennifer Bleam]
A hundred percent. Higher profit margins is just a byproduct of knowing how to sell value. So yes.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Very nice. So what do we get?

We got four commandments or five?

[Jennifer Bleam]
Four commandments. So we talked about the marketing pendulum. Thou shalt not follow the marketing pendulum.

Well, I think we did add a fifth because we talked about closing the sale. Thou shalt disqualify your sales. Thou shalt follow best practices related to solution selling.

Thou shalt have a defined discovery process. And then we talked about closing sales. We didn't really put a commandment around it.

But thou shalt have a great selling system that leads naturally to the close.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. I'll come up with something to do a thou shalt thingy.

[Jennifer Bleam]
I love it. Amazing.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So Jennifer, thank you very much. Again, I'm going to say this again.

We should have done this sooner.

[Jennifer Bleam]
We should have. I can't believe we haven't done it because we've circled each other on social media. Like the nurturing was firmly in place.

We just, the stars hadn't aligned. And I'm glad that they finally did. This was a ton of fun.

[Uncle Marv]
I'm sure it's my fault.

[Jennifer Bleam]
No, I think it's, I think it's what we will share that responsibility.

[Uncle Marv]
Yes. All right. Well, I should probably go ahead and let everybody know that this is not the last you're going to hear of Jennifer.

We are going to be coming back and doing a live show, which is basically going to be a follow up to this. And that is going to be on Wednesday, October 30th. And we are doing, oh, we're doing the 4 p.m. slot, aren't we? I think we are. Okay. So that'll be an afternoon matinee on October 30th, next Wednesday.

So in between my conferences and ask you to join us live, you can hopefully have listened to this, have questions, comments, and hang out with us in the chat. We'll come back and talk more about the holistic approach to marketing that I've just dubbed here.

[Jennifer Bleam]
All good. I love it. It's lovely.

[Uncle Marv]
All right, Jen, thank you very much again. And we'll look forward to seeing you on the live show. Ladies and gentlemen, be sure to head over to her site.

Check out her book, msprevolution.com. Oh, no, it's mspsalesrevolution.com.

[Jennifer Bleam]
It is mspsalesrevolution.com. You got it.

[Uncle Marv]
And also there you can download. Now you've got a bunch of free tools on there.

[Jennifer Bleam]
I do. I've got a sales process blueprint. I have discovery questions.

I have how to win friends and influence people. I think that one's already taken. But how to close more sales using stories and storytelling.

So all kinds of resources there.

[Uncle Marv]
Right. And then again, I'll have a link to her book, Simplified Cybersecurity Sales for MSPs. Amazon bestseller, is it?

[Jennifer Bleam]
Yes, Amazon bestseller and Audible bestseller. So I like to say I'm a two-time bestselling author, even though it's the same book. But I don't know what the rules are.

So I just kind of make up my own rules.

[Uncle Marv]
Hey, until somebody sends you assistance assist, say what you want.

[Jennifer Bleam]
That's right.

[Uncle Marv]
All right, Jen, thank you very much. And look forward to having you back. And I'll let you get going so you can have a good rest of your day.

Awesome. Thank you so much. This was a treat.

All right, folks, we'll see you next time. Holla.