Are audits still a good sales tool for MSPs?

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Welcome to Episode 274 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…

• Are audits still a good sales tool for MSPs?: Sell something small to start building a relationship before selling the thing you really want, which is of course, a managed services contract.
• Every MSP needs this strategic referral deal: There could be an opportunity for you to set up a win-win relationship with a local web agency near you, and it could get you more clients.
• Why your marketing must be about the prospect, not you: Your potential clients don’t care about you… they care about how you can help their business, so your marketing must be about them.
• Paul’s Personal Peer Group: How can you stop clients from contacting you directly? I have 9 suggestions for you to try.

Are audits still a good sales tool for MSPs?

If a client tells you they’ve got a Trojan, your heart sinks. But what if there was a kind of Trojan that actually made you happy because it meant that you were going to make some more money and win some new clients. And don’t worry, I’m not suggesting you infect people’s computers, but let’s talk about why this sales Trojan is a good one, how it can boost your sales and ultimately have a powerful positive impact on your MSP.

We all know what a Trojan horse is, and we all know the Greek myth that gave it that name. But of course, we also know its place within cyber security, perhaps a term that was maybe used more in the past than it is today. But I believe you can use a sales Trojan horse. So what is this? It’s where you sell something small to someone to start building a relationship with them ahead of the thing you really want to sell them, which is of course, a managed services contract.

As an example, you would sell them a low level service first, with the knowledge that you’re going to overdeliver, do a great job, totally delight them. And that’s going to help you to sell them a proper monthly recurring revenue managed services contracts down the line, which is always the goal of everything we’re trying to do here. MRR first. There is only MRR, everything else is just establishing the setup of more MRR.

The beauty of a sales Trojan horse is that it’s a lot easier to sell someone something small than it is to ask them for a 12, 24 or 36 month contract.

They might not understand technology at the level you do but they do understand that if and when something goes wrong, their business is completely screwed. So by selling them something small first, it gives you the opportunity to build up a level of trust with them to build a relationship. And this actually has a term within marketing. It’s called front end backend marketing.

Maybe you’ve seen one of these people online selling something, perhaps doing something like a giveaway where they ask you to pay a little bit for postage and packing. So the thing they’re giving away, the book or whatever is free, you just pay the postage and packing. Or maybe you get a huge value item for $20, something like that. And what this person is really trying to get you to do is to buy something and feel satisfied with it, and then you’ll go on and you’ll buy something more expensive from them in the background or what’s known as the backend. They probably don’t make any money from selling you the book or the $20 item or whatever it is, but they will make money from selling you the $500 item in the background. And let’s say one in 10 people goes on to buy that item, no one would ever buy it as the first purchase, but some may buy it as the second purchase. That’s the theory of front end backend, and that works very well depending on your audience and depending on what you’re selling.

From an MSP point of view, the most obvious thing that you would sell to someone in the front end is a project. In fact, I had a thread on this in my MSP marketing Facebook group that any MSP can join. I asked the direct question: Would you sell a project just to start a relationship with a customer so that you could go on to sell them managed services?, which seemed like a very black and white answer where people were either, yes, 100% I would do that, or they were, no, I will not do that, I only want to get recurring revenue. I don’t want to sell projects. And of course, there’s no right or wrong answer. You have to go with whichever is right for you. But a project is the most obvious small thing to sell people. It’s not really a small thing, I mean, a project isn’t cheap, is it? It could be a $10,000 (or pound) project. The point is, it’s a one-off fixed thing. They know what it is they’re buying, they know when it’s been completed, they know when it’s been done successfully. And so that project allows you to build a relationship with this new client. And you and I both know that if you do a project, you’ll uncover other things that need to be addressed. Maybe even some of those things can be fixed during some kind of managed services contract. So I think a project is the ultimate sales Trojan horse.

There are smaller things that you can do, of course. One of our MSP Marketing Edge members is doing very, very well right now selling small amounts of cyber security training to prospects. So he’ll get talking to a prospect and he’ll sell them a session for no more than about £50, which is about $70, $80. And all it is is a lunchtime zoom, almost like a lunch and learn where he’ll get the prospect’s team onto a Zoom and take them through about 30, 40 minutes of cyber security training, really low level stuff. But it works well because he can then do a review with the decision maker after that training and talk them through some areas where they really should invest in their business.

There are other things that you could sell along these lines, maybe such as selling them something like backups, a basic service like this, or even selling an audit. And I know that audits have fallen out of favour as a sales tool, but a solid audit where you are looking at someone’s systems and telling them what they should improve, I still think that’s possibly the ultimate sales Trojan horse. Because it’s low cost to them, high value for you. You get to dive into their systems to have a look and do the audit, and don’t you always find something which really needs to be followed up with them, which creates an opportunity for you. So tell me, do you think this is something that you’d actually use in your MSP?

Every MSP needs this strategic referral deal

What if the secret to landing your dream clients was a key you didn’t even know you had? There’s a hidden strategy locked away that could open doors to better clients without LinkedIn, without websites, cold calls or marketing campaigns. And it’s so effective that the MSPs already using it, hope that you will never find it. Right now, let’s discover where to find that key, how to unlock new opportunities and how to transform your business.

In nature there’s a phenomenon called mutualism. Those are two very hard words to say, a phenomenon called mutualism. Now, you would know this better as a symbiotic relationship. Think of little birds called oxpeckers sitting on the back of zebras and rhinos, and those birds eat the parasites off the animal’s body, which is an easy meal for them, but it also helps the zebra to stay healthy. In fact, they’ve even been observed warning short-sighted rhinos of approaching humans. They’ve got a good symbiotic, win-win relationship there. And there’s an opportunity for you to set up a win-win relationship just like this with a local web agency near you. And the good news is there’s no need to eat worms or anything like that.

From the point of view of ordinary business owners and managers, you and a web agency both do the same thing – “computer stuff”.

Now you and I know that websites and managed services are completely different sides of “computer stuff”, but this explains why your clients sometimes ask you whether you build websites. And believe me, they are asking their website agency whether or not they can help when their computers don’t work properly. Can you see the opportunity here? When a client asks about websites or SEO (search engine optimisation), you say, well, we don’t do this, but we work very, very closely with a local web agency. Let me connect them to you. When the web agency’s client asks them about IT support, they say, well, we don’t do this ourselves, but we work very, very closely with a local IT support company. Let me connect you to them.

Long-term, you could build this into your strategic reviews or your quarterly business reviews. You could generate loads of highly qualified leads for your chosen web agency partner and they could do the same for you. But how do you find a web agency partner? You are looking for a proper agency here, not a one man band who designs websites in their spare bedroom. Nothing wrong with that, but you want a bigger business that’s going to send larger prospects your way. One person band web designers tend to attract two to three user businesses. The best agency partner is someone that you already know. Is there a local web agency that you’ve met at networking events, or are highly respected in the local area? If not, and you need to create a relationship from scratch, and this needs to be done slowly.

Pick a few target agencies and reach out to the owners on LinkedIn. Tell them you’ve had a g