Noticeable: Marketing Automation for MSPs (EP 798)

[Uncle Marv]
Hi friends, hello, Uncle Marv back, and continuing with day one of ASCII Edge in Orlando. And right now I am joined by Herman Pool, and some of you might recognize his name as being associated with Vertical Action, the website company for MSPs. But he's here today with a company called Noticeable.

And the first time I noticed it.

[Herman Pool]
Well, that's the first show. It's the first show we've done this year. Really, the very first one.

The very first one we've done is Noticeable. Noticeable is our new product that helps MSPs get noticed and make money through more than a website. Just a lot more marketing automation, marketing fulfillment, and also coaching people through learning how to use these kind of tools, because it can be difficult.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So I just finished up the Marketing and Money Month podcast. So I had a lot of marketing people on.

And of course, AI in marketing is the big tag that we talked about and stuff. But you mentioned coaching as part of that as well.

[Herman Pool]
Yeah, so one of the things that we learned through Vertical Action is that, so Vertical Action, you know, we build you a website, we do blog posts six times a week, we give you the social media posts, and we do all that for you. But nowadays, a lot of people are going out and they're buying, you know, marketing automation tools, you know, Active Campaign, Infusion, Softkeep, what have you, you know, and they end up becoming overwhelmed by the tool itself. And so what we learned is that if we spend a little bit of time with our customers, and rather than just trying to do reactive tech support, we actually have twice a week, an hour and a half long call, Tuesdays and Thursdays, where we sit down and we talk to you about marketing, marketing automation, different things you could be doing with marketing automations and different things that, you know, people run into problems they run into with doing all sorts of marketing tools, not just our own.

[Uncle Marv]
So do you actually help in terms of understanding how to use the CRM properly, how to tag that into your email marketing or marketing or whatever?

[Herman Pool]
Yeah. So we build you a lot of, so with Noticeable, what we do there is we build you a lot of different marketing things you can do. So for instance, like a 52-week tech tip campaign, we could all, you know, our customers would probably like to hear from us more than just an invoice.

Right. How many of us just send an invoice and say, okay, I talked to my customers this month, pay me. So what we decided, we started sending out 52-week email campaigns that just say, hey, here's a tip for Cybersecurity Awareness Month.

Here's a tip for, you know, just different little things. Tweak this on your Microsoft Word and save time, those kind of things. And so that keeps you top of mind.

So when other people try to like jump in on your sales or jump in on your existing customers, they go, no, no, no. I deal with these guys. They're keeping me abreast all the time.

So yeah, that's what we kind of do is kind of try to keep top of mind.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. So when was it that you kind of got the idea to expand beyond the websites and to do this? Was it people coming and asking you for help or?

[Herman Pool]
Yeah, what happened is, so I had an MSP myself for 25 years, as you know. And so I've been through all this before. And then we've done it with dozens of other companies that I've owned.

And what happens is naturally people go, man, thanks for helping me with the website. Thanks for helping me with social posts. What would you do if you're in this position?

And it got to the point where I said, you know, if I could just, I've been in the industry for a long time and I enjoy the industry. And I thought, man, if I just spent an hour of my time with everybody, that could be helpful. And so we just started doing these open office hours.

It's really made some good changes for people.

[Uncle Marv]
I'm going to go off script here and ask, what made this be your first conference?

[Herman Pool]
So I have been off the road for six years. Yeah. So we, I used to have Frank Gurney would come out to the ASCII shows and speak for me.

And during that time, my wife, I took on a consulting client. It was my wife. And she started an arcade called Rocket City Arcade.

It's in Huntsville, Alabama. You pay $15 and you can play all day long. No quarters needed.

Really?

[Uncle Marv]
I just spent $120 to take my nephew to a place and we only stayed for a couple of hours.

[Herman Pool]
Yeah. And so we wanted to have a different thing. My wife was a two-time stage four cancer survivor.

And during her second bout, she found video games really helped her out a whole lot. So we had the opportunity to buy an arcade in Huntsville, Alabama. So we did.

And then she says, Herman, she started taking classes from Dave Ramsey of all people. Okay. To learn how to run a business.

They had something called entre leadership. And she was getting frustrated by not getting her questions answered. And that's not knocking entre leadership at all.

It's just, they were new and they hadn't quite figured it out yet. And so she would come to me and she would say, well, you've written a book on this. Why don't you tell me something?

I said, “You want your husband to really to tell you things? She says, yeah, yeah. So we started helping her with her marketing, with her business process and all this other good stuff.

And then I realized like, hey, the things that I've learned really apply to all sorts of different businesses. So we helped her grow her business to a very successful, nationally recognized, classic arcade. You had like a GameStop up front, video games in the back.

Yeah. So we did that. And then I just started helping other people in Huntsville.

And I realized, man, why wasn't I doing this for MSPs the whole time? You know, why wasn't I helping these MSPs scale that I'd been helping for so many years? And so just this year we started doing the open office hours and building out the tools because there's a lot of good tools out there.

There's High Level, there's Keep, there's Active Campaign, HubSpot, but nobody really shows you how to use them.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, and I think people get overwhelmed with HubSpot. It's pretty massive out there. Active Campaign, I guess in a sense.

[Herman Pool]
There's only so much you can do.

[Uncle Marv]
It's more niche-y, I guess. Others have tried to make the Go High Level customizable. To be honest, I don't use any of those.

I'm not going to say I understand them all. But the idea of having a process in place, having content that you can manage is something we all need to worry about and stuff. So you had kind of stepped away, in a sense, from the MSP world, even though...

[Herman Pool]
Well, Vertical Action, every day still. I mean, but you weren't in the day-to-day dealing with us. Oh, no.

Absolutely still was. That's the interesting thing. And that's where I ran into everybody telling me, hey, can you help me with this?

And so what happened over the years, I talked to a lot of you guys individually and became real good friends with people. Angel Rojas would come up to Huntsville, Alabama and stay at my farm. Get out, really?

Yeah, he would stay for weeks. And then we'd just kind of like coach with each other and mastermind with each other.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. I'm sorry. I had to take one quick second.

Angel, listen, I know that you and I spoke earlier and I got on you for not returning my email, but yet you're going to go up to Alabama and spend time with Herman?

[Herman Pool]
Come on, now. I got you in trouble a second time at the show, Angel. So now here's the deal.

I talked to all these businesses and I learned that there's really, you know, and I looked at all my own businesses and I've had several winners and several losers. And I said, what's the difference between all these? And what I found is there's really four things.

And we built a system called GROW. It stands for get noticed, build reputation. Yeah, sorry, get noticed, build.

Do we need to write it down? Yeah, man. It's been a long day.

I'll tell you what happened earlier today. So we were talking about reputation management.

[Uncle Marv]
Right.

[Herman Pool]
And I said, build reputation. And that is a thing that you're going to do. But what I really meant was build relationships.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay.

[Herman Pool]
So get noticed, build relationships, own the sale and win fans.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay, got it.

[Herman Pool]
Yeah, I just got stuck in reputation.

[Uncle Marv]
It has been a long day.

[Herman Pool]
Yep. But yeah, so here's the thing. If you can get noticed, build relationships, own the sale and win fans, you can grow your business.

And here's what I mean. Get noticed. Well, that's the first part.

Nobody knows you exist. Hurts our feelings to hear that. I've been in business 25 years.

Everybody knows I'm here. No, they don't. If they did, they'd be doing business with you.

[Uncle Marv]
Right. They may be driving by your store, but that doesn't mean they've paid attention to the sign.

[Herman Pool]
And that's something you've noticed because you started doing this podcast. And now that you've done the podcast, more people come up to you, more people know you. And it just happens naturally.

You're doing part of getting noticed right now. You meet me as well, being on the podcast with you. These are the things that we need to do, but we never take the time.

You've got to ask for referrals to get noticed. You've got to run some ads to get noticed. You've got to ask your existing customers for referrals.

And we just don't do enough of it. So if you get noticed, you can make money. And then build a relationship means that you stay in communication.

If you're going to build a relationship with somebody, you have to first be able to be reached, which is really hard nowadays. A lot of people don't want to answer their phones.

[Uncle Marv]
Right.

[Herman Pool]
Right. And then once you're reachable, you have to stay in touch. If you if somebody does call you and says, hey, I want to quote on XYZ.

Are you returning that quote in a timely manner? Or do you let that lead slip out? Because there was a fire that started on the other side of town.

You had to go put it out.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. So two quick things. One, you talk about being reachable.

I take that a little step further to be approachable. Yeah. You want people to feel comfortable reaching out to you.

[Herman Pool]
Yes. And you want to actually be reachable. If they want to reach out to you, you better pick up the phone.

[Uncle Marv]
Or don't have a gatekeeper. Or don't have a gatekeeper. That just turns everybody away.

[Herman Pool]
Yeah. Oh, you can't talk to him. He's not here today.

You just have to talk to nobody. But yeah, you definitely want to. People don't leave voicemails anymore, you know.

So you want to have at least an answering service. If you don't have an answering service, maybe I shouldn't say at least answer, at least an AI attendant that they can talk to instead of just push a button. And we found that that actually works pretty well for us.

[Uncle Marv]
So my person, full disclosure, I actually have somebody answer the phone. As long as she's there. If she's not there, I answer.

I'm not there now. So it is going to voicemail. But when she's there, she takes a message.

And I have to get on there because she will actually tell them, well, I'm going to talk to him and I'll have him call you back.

[Herman Pool]
Yeah, we all got to the point with voicemail that we just said, oh, well, if it's important, they can leave a message and I'll call him back. But other people are now thinking, hey, if it was important to him, he'd answer me. Right.

So that's being reachable. And then, of course, staying in contact. Again, a lot of people never talk to their customers past an invoice.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah.

[Herman Pool]
So that's build relationship.

[Uncle Marv]
Or if the invoice isn't paid, the call is, hey, I haven't heard from you.

[Herman Pool]
Yeah, I haven't heard from you, buddy.

[Uncle Marv]
Where's that money? You should have called sooner.

[Herman Pool]
And that's building relationship. And then own the sale is different than making a sale. So, Marvin, if I told you right now that if you give me a thousand dollars, I'll give you a million.

Would you go for it? What's the catch? No catch.

I'm just going to give you a million dollars. I'll have it ready for you in 24 hours.

[Uncle Marv]
I'm still wondering what's the catch.

[Herman Pool]
No catch at all. Million dollars. That sounds like one of those fishing schemes.

And I'll make you a guarantee.

[Uncle Marv]
Go buy these cards for me.

[Herman Pool]
If you don't get the million dollars in 24 hours, I'll give you your money back. Still sounds fishy to me. OK, great.

But normally people would go, hey, yeah, I'll take that deal.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah, I mean, yes. It makes sense. The left side of my brain is saying, take it.

[Herman Pool]
Of course, yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
The right side of my brain is saying, what's wrong with this?

[Herman Pool]
But the important part of it is this. If I were to give you exactly, well, what would you want, right? For whatever price you want to pay for it.

And I make that promise to you. A million dollars for $1,000. But I don't deliver that million dollars.

What happens? It depends on how important that $1,000 is to me. Right, right.

So a number of things happen. Number one, if I gave you that million dollars tomorrow, what would happen? I'm happy as a lamb.

And you're going to what? You're going to tell your buddy about it?

[Uncle Marv]
No, I'm going to find a way to re-leverage that and do it again.

[Herman Pool]
I'm not telling anybody. Yeah, so here's the deal. When we deliver on what we say we're going to deliver on, people talk.

But that is your thing, yes. And when we don't deliver on what we do, people are going to talk. So making a sale is easy.

I can sell you something. But if I don't deliver on it, I didn't own the sale.

[Uncle Marv]
Right. I'm going to tell people; this is what I did. This is what he said he would do.

He didn't.

[Herman Pool]
Yep.

[Uncle Marv]
That's the simplest.

[Herman Pool]
Or vice versa.

[Uncle Marv]
Or vice versa. Dude didn't do it, which usually that gets talked about more. If you don't deliver, people are really going to talk.

[Herman Pool]
Absolutely. And so you're in a situation now where for a lot of people owning a sale is difficult because they can't quite quickly. So they end up losing the sale for that reason.

They can't invoice quickly. So they lose the sale for that reason. Or they don't deliver.

Right. They don't really have a process for going out and deploying all of their endpoints. They don't have a process for setting up their disaster recovery.

And they just kind of lose things along the way and eventually lose the customer because they failed down the road and they forgot about it. Right. Because they don't have the process built out.

And they don't have the automations behind to remind them to do the process. And so part of what Noticeable does is fixes that. And then WinFans is real easy.

Once I gave you the million dollars for a thousand, you're going to tell all my friends. Right. Or tell all your friends.

Or at least you're going to say something nice to me. Now it's my job to collect those reviews and testimonials and put them out there for the world to see so that I get noticed.

[Uncle Marv]
Make sense? All right. Big circle.

Big circle. So great. So first conference with the product and looking to do some good things here.

Will you be at all of the remaining ASCII events?

[Herman Pool]
I'm at a number of them. I couldn't tell you which ones they are off the top of my head. But I know I'll be there next month.

Not the next months. I don't think I'm doing March, April, May. Let's see.

What do we got on the calendar for ASCII events today or this year?

[Uncle Marv]
For the remaining ASCII events.

[Herman Pool]
There's one or two I'm missing and that's it. So we'll be on the road pretty much everywhere.

[Uncle Marv]
We're here at Orlando. Next month is Newark. Yep.

Be there. June is Chicago. I believe we'll be there.

We won't be at Columbus. July is Columbus. August is Toronto.

Yep. Won't be in Canada, unfortunately.

[Herman Pool]
Won't be in Canada.

[Uncle Marv]
No passport.

[Herman Pool]
They revoked it for my million-dollar scam. There you go.

[Uncle Marv]
September is Dallas, which I might be at that one. Oh, that'd be good. And then I will be in Philadelphia in October for the last event, the ASCII Cup.

[Herman Pool]
Yep. We'll be there for sure.

[Uncle Marv]
So great. Well, Herman, when we first saw each other earlier, we knew we had cross paths years ago.

[Herman Pool]
Yes.

[Uncle Marv]
Here we are now. You're on the show. Thank you very much.

[Herman Pool]
I appreciate it.

[Uncle Marv]
We'll have to do something a little bit more formal rather than just here at the table.

[Herman Pool]
I'm sure we can do that.

[Uncle Marv]
I want to appreciate—I'm sorry. I want to thank the people for being all in the room because I don't have to compete with all the noise.

[Herman Pool]
No kidding. There's no hallway noise. I caught that once or twice today.

Well, hey, man. Thanks. Thanks a lot.

We appreciate you, brother.

[Uncle Marv]
Thank you. So, folks, there it is. Vertical Action and Noticeable.

Check him out in the show notes. And I think this is going to conclude day one at Ask the Edge here in Orlando at the Hyatt Airport Hotel. Fabulous hotel.

Oh, and out comes the food. What is that? Sushi?

All right. We gotta go, folks. See you later.

Holla.