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Trevor Thomas:
They've left me on red quite a few times.
Justin Esgar:
We feel the same way about Liquid Death. Hashtag still not a sponsor. I actually ran out for those. You're paying attention. I ran out of Liquid Dev and I'm still drinking some other brand. Simply Bubbles. Can't even say it. It's so dry. Well,
Eric Anthony:
Because it's hard to say an eight bit.
Justin Esgar:
It's killing me.
What's up everybody? Justin here, host of the All Things MSB podcast, and I want to take a few minutes just to talk to you about the upcoming ACEs conference. ACEs conference is a conference that I've been hosting. We're going into our 10th year this year. We're going to be live in person in Salt Lake City, May 15th and 16th, 2024. ACE is all about the business side of IT consulting. We're talking about management, marketing, branding, legal, hr, business methodologies, social. All of these things are covered, not sponsor driven. This is purely content driven. We bring in some of the best speakers to come and talk to you, so this way you can elevate your MSP. Tickets are on sale now. They're 8 99, but with the special 10% coupon code A-T-M-S-P, you get 10% off. If you have any questions, please hit us up on the All Things MSP Facebook group, DM me, ask me any questions. I can't wait to see you there. Live in person, salt Lake City. May 15th and 16th. ACEs comp.com for more details. What's up everybody? Welcome back to the All Things MSP podcast. I am your host, pixelated Justin, if you're watching on YouTube. And with me always is my good friend, podcast host, podcast producer extraordinaire, co-host, friend pirate, and the man who's much clearer because his streaming services are better. Mr. Eric, Anthony. Eric, what's up buddy?
Eric Anthony:
Well, and I'm the one who's always worried about how my internet connection is so much so that I've actually prepaid for the company that's building fiber out here so that as soon as it comes to my neighborhood, I'll be one of the first people to have it.
Justin Esgar:
I don't think my problem is my ISP. I think honestly, I need to call, what is it? The cobbler has no shoes. I need to sit down and look at my wiring and figuring it out. I've been having random problems for the last couple of weeks, and even though we record nine a day, this is the first one that's gotten a little blocky. So if you're listening to this in your car, you should be, and then you're like, Hey, I wonder what's going on. I want to watch it on YouTube. There's a good chance this one's never making it to YouTube
Eric Anthony:
Or it just might because it's funny.
Justin Esgar:
Justin. It's fine. No one watches the YouTube for me.
Eric Anthony:
It's eight bit Justin.
Justin Esgar:
And as we know, if you're paying attention, you listen to this in order. Justin loves a good eight bit. We have a guest today. We love it when we have a guest on, maybe that'll detract people from looking at me and looking and they'll look at the guests instead on the YouTube. It
Eric Anthony:
Does make your little window smaller.
Justin Esgar:
It does, yeah, it doesn't make it any less pixelated. Ladies and gentlemen, if you are a wiring specialist in New Jersey and want to offer some help to me, dmm me on Facebook, facebook.com/group/all things msp. I'm usually the one who writes, welcome, welcome, welcome. Yeah. So we have a guest on today, Mr. Trevor Thomas, VP of Sales from Zen Contract. Let's bring him up. Trevor, how are you today, ma'am?
Trevor Thomas:
I'm good. And let's be real. You brought me on because I'm pretty not because you're pixelated.
Justin Esgar:
Yeah, once in a while. It's all about bringing on the pretty boys. Trevor, why don't you give everybody a two minute spiel, who you are, what Zen contract where you are in the M embassy market, and I ever heard this part earlier. Why don't you tell everybody what your favorite craft beer is?
Trevor Thomas:
Two minutes. Oh wow. Where do I start? Okay, so let's start on the business side of things. So Zen Contract, we are a contract lifecycle management platform built for MSPs by MSPs. Our founder, Greg Sharp, has been in the MSP space for about 30 years and realized that there's a very big problem with MSPs in the contract space. No one does contracts. You start out and it's this handshake thing where you're like, Hey Justin, we've been good friends. I'm going to manage your it. I'm going to manage your Microsoft licenses and your ad and these types of things, and it just kind of grows organically from there. And then you're five years, 10 years into the game and you're like, we have a problem here if there's any sort of conflict or liability issues or where's our contracted revenue sitting? So that's kind of where it's born out of. And if you think of DocuSign, it's like that, but on steroids. And that's the easiest way to kind of dictate it. Now when we get to a personal level on the craft beer side of things, any IPA, any IPA? So when I was in Raleigh, there is this company, Highwire Brewing. Highline Brewing, yeah. Is that it? Yeah,
Eric Anthony:
It's Highwire Brewing.
Trevor Thomas:
Yeah, I've been messaging them for about seven years now, trying to bring them to Canada and they still aren't here.
Eric Anthony:
So now I know what to bring you next
Justin Esgar:
Time you've messaging years that goes is that is definitely it, person move. And then if you weren't in it and it wasn't specifically at craft beer, there's a good chance it would be called stalking. So today, Trevor, we're going to talk a little bit, not necessarily about contract, but we're going to talk a little bit about the sales cycles. The topic we want to get into as MSP MSPs go traditionally, and we've had this conversation many times in past episodes that most people who become MSPs do so because they're good at computers, not necessarily good at marketing or sales or legal or contracts or whatever. And so they can set a price or they can learn about what prices should be from our shows or other influential people and things like that. But really how to make that sale start to finish seems to be something that has escaped a lot of people. So I know Eric wanted to bring you on today to talk a little bit about this.
Trevor Thomas:
Yeah,
Justin Esgar:
I'll let Eric go.
Trevor Thomas:
Yeah, Eric, you talk. You've got the best background out of all of us, so why don't you go,
Eric Anthony:
I don't know about the best background, just the oldest for sure. So we all know that sales is something that MSPs struggle with. And so what I wanted to do is I wanted to bring on somebody who is in a position at a vendor that has sales leadership experience, has built sales programs, not just in this arena, but also in other arenas. So I mean, probably the first question that I would have is when an MSP finally figures out that sales is not just something that happens to them, it's something that they need to actually be proactive about. What are some of those first steps that an MSP needs to do to start building a sales process?
Trevor Thomas:
What a loaded question.
Justin Esgar:
See, the craft beer one wasn't so bad now, was it?
Trevor Thomas:
No, no, it wasn't. No, that is a very loaded question though, because there are 30, a hundred different steps that you need to take. And shameless plug for Zen contract is taking some of the friction out of that process. So having a standardized contract proposal, whatever you want to call it, and just having that automated or just you can send it out in five minutes kind of thing. Now, if we take a step back from that and say, okay, you've engaged with the prospect. Well, the first meeting really needs to be about and setting the steps, but there's more to it than that. You can take a step back and go, okay, what is our internal process and how do we actually scope anything? Do we standardize our packages, which we should? Are we verticalizing? And then basing our packages based on that vertical, which you should. So loaded question, long-winded answer to say it's a loaded question. No,
Eric Anthony:
And sales is not a easy thing. There are a lot of complex attributes to it. Now, I think when you talk about removing friction, we've done the very same thing at all things MSP. We have a very smooth process for getting somebody a proposal. There's less discovery in what we do. There's a lot more discovery in what an MSP would do. And so that's a highly important piece to it. But we take friction out of it by, as soon as somebody says they want to go, I can turn around a contract and send it to them in the e-sign software that we use, I attach the appendix and the appendix is the custom stuff. It shows all the stuff that we're delivering as part of their specific package. And then as soon as I get that back, it goes into QuickBooks, it gets attached to the invoice, and they can pay right from the digital invoice that they received by email. So it's setting up those processes to make sure that the sales operations work well. But you also mentioned the piece about preparation and you talked about discovery. Discovery is one of those things where I think MSPs, they don't systemize it and because of that, they often miss the mark. Do you think that's true?
Trevor Thomas:
I think that it can go one of two ways where you can look at a company and go, we've got our gold package and it's the right thing for you because you pay a lot of money for your internet, so you should go with our gold package. So I think you can lump things into that, but I also think more often than not, people will go down the, let's get into the weeds and let's go back to sales friction. When you get into the weeds on anything that's going to lead to more questions and more like, is this actually the right thing for me? So when you start talking speeds and feeds with people, you and I, and maybe not Justin because he's an eight, that when you get into the weeds with people, they're not going to know what you're talking about. And especially coming from technical background, people don't understand that, and that's where that actual friction comes up. So I think more often than not, it's not about generalizing and saying, Hey, you need gold because you spend a lot of money. You need your business to operate properly. It's more about going, well, you need this for your internet and this for your, we're going to talk about cat five E cables. No one caress about that. So it's about the technical side versus getting into the actual business value.
Eric Anthony:
Well, and great point, because I use the word discovery and a lot of times we equate that to asset discovery, which is not what we're talking about here when we're talking about sales discovery. We're talking about uncovering pain points, uncovering needs, uncovering gaps in value and other things that the client needs regardless of the tech, we'll solve the technical. What we need to find out is what's keeping them up at night that we can sell them a solution.
Justin Esgar:
So we do this at Virtua. Basically our discovery is a three phone call approach. That initial email that comes to us that says like, Hey, there's a potential opportunity. I need some help. We call them, we only talk to them for 15 minutes that first time. Let me hear what this one thing is you're calling me about. Then we set up a second call. That second call I go, the second call I want to have with you is I want to know about all of your pain points. So I'm sending you home with homework. And that is because I booked this call with them. They're on for the first 15 minutes, and I say, we're going to book it for whatever date this time on Zoom, whatever. I send them the calendar invite, they have it, and I say on that call, come to me with all of your pain points, not just the one thing you're asking me about because I want to know the whole Kate and caboodle.
And then usually by the end of that second call, they will ask us how much is it going to cost? And I never tell them the price on the second call. I haven't told 'em the price on the first call. I haven't told 'em the price. On the second call, I will tend to say, let's say they're a 10 person office. I'll say like, well, we just did a 15 person office for, and I'll raise some high price number. I want to get the sticker shock out of the way. Then I say, let's have a third phone call. And on the third phone call, because now I'm going to digest the information you gave me on the second one on this third phone call I'm going to put together. I'm going to show you the plan and what it's going to cost, and obviously my cost that I'm going to show them on that third phone call is less than what I quoted them on the second one. I did that on purpose, right?
Trevor Thomas:
Anchor anchoring,
Justin Esgar:
I'm anchoring the high price. So that way the second one comes in a little bit lower, which if you listen to our episode one before or two before where we talk about the value gap there, that's what we're talking about here. And usually by then I say, how does that sound? What does that look like for you? And obviously you get the normal like, well, I need to talk to the boss, or I need this and blah, blah, blah, whatever the pushback you're going to get, which is standard. But at that point though, they've already now talked to me three times in those three phone calls, I've probably answered one or two little things for them. I've proven my subject matter expertise for them. I haven't hit them with the most expensive bill. I made it seem like I'm giving them a discount because the numbers worked out differently. Or when I did the 14 person office, I quoted at 175, and I'm only quoting you at one 50. My price point or whatever that has landed and worked maybe 85% of the time for us and actually gotten a signed contract.
Trevor Thomas:
That's huge. That's huge.
Justin Esgar:
And it's a ridiculous number. But the thing is that second phone call, because so many people, I think when they want to go for the sale right away, they want to go, what is it? Jeb? Jeb, Jeb. Right hook, right? They go right for the right hook. First
Trevor Thomas:
Call close, first call close. I'm in software sales and that's what I would call it. First call close.
Justin Esgar:
And that's not the way to do MSP sales. That shouldn't be the way to do any sales unless you're a car salesman. But if you're going to close because you're trying to close a client that's going to provide, you're going to be providing value for over the long haul of things. It's not a one and done. You're never going to see them again. So you need to prove yourself to them. They're coming to you with something that they need help with. And so on those second phone calls, I'm asking 'em things that they probably didn't come to me with, and I've already looked them up. I know who they are. I've looked 'em up on LinkedIn. I've run them through MX Toolbox, so I know who their email provider is. I've done all these things in advance, but then I go, what are you doing for file storage? Or what kind of compliance are you be held to? Or all of these, they're very open-ended questions. What do you want to happen here? What kind of service are you looking for? What do you wish Something to happen? And then from there, that helps us get to the third phone call.
Trevor Thomas:
And so I've had this conversation multiple times over the last week where I think you just hit the nail on the head, what is your end goal? And this is a tangent, a tattoo shop that I know obviously very covered. They come to me because I'm in technology. I'm an idiot, but they come to me because I'm in technology and they're like, we won't do this thing. We need need QR codes, we need booking pages, we need all these things. And I'm like, okay, whoa. What is your end goal? Is your end goal of more bookings? Is your end goal more followers? What is your end goal, right? From your end goal? And to your point, what is your end goal as a business? You want to avoid downtime, you want to have continuity in your business, you want more efficient operations. There's a lot of end goals, but let's start there and then we can work backwards and then we can build a plan.
Eric Anthony:
Yeah,
Trevor Thomas:
Right?
Justin Esgar:
Yeah, exactly. Because again, going back to the original, what I said earlier, which is that a lot of MSPs we're computer people. We're not business people. We just want to fix the problem. We just want to solve the issue. And when you're trying to make a sale, making the sale and closing the sale is not fixing the problem. There's a very specialized nuance art to, that's kind of what we're getting at. It's
Eric Anthony:
More about articulating the problem and then being able to articulate the solution to that problem in a way that the client understands.
Trevor Thomas:
Yes, yes, exactly that, right? I want Zoom because I need to be able to communicate with my clients, okay, is Zoom going to solve that problem or what is the actual problem here? Is it that you are not getting in touch with people you can't effectively communicate? Well, then it's not just Zoom. It might be your email chains. It might be like a SharePoint folder with a OneNote. There's more into it than just, well, I need this tool. And you look at it and you go, there's tools, there's people and there's technology and you need to solve for all of them.
Eric Anthony:
And if you're just selling tools, you're only selling commodity and commodity has very little margin.
Trevor Thomas:
Well, and then, Hey, I want Zoom. It's 50 bucks a month for a user. Well, I don't need Eric or Justin to sell me that. I can just go buy it by myself.
Justin Esgar:
We always look at it, and I got this from a cybersecurity firm. It's people process technology, right?
Trevor Thomas:
There we go. That's that the thing I was looking for.
Justin Esgar:
I knew where you're going with it. The idea being that you're not solving the problem with a technological answer. Most of the time the technological answer, the technological answer is going to enhance your offering or is going to enhance the solution. But selling a Zoom license or selling them an Office 365 license is going to be, here's a great example of that is we have a client where there's something going on with their email. They're on Office 365. We really have zero I idea what's going on. We couldn't do an email audit on her account, and it took us forever to figure out why. And it turned out because she had an E three and we needed an E five, which there's a big price difference when you go from E three to E five, you go from $25 a month to almost $50 a month, and I'm like, the person pushed back and we're talking about one license or we're talking about $25 a month over the course of six or 12 months.
It's not a lot of money, but I wasn't solving the email audit problem for the client. I'm solving the we're going to use this thing for a short amount of time so we can solve the bigger thing and make your life happy because you're so pissed off about this thing that keeps happening that we have no insight on. We have to do it this way. The office license has as much as it is technological has to do with, it really has nothing to do with the rest of it, right? Because it doesn't matter if the licenses the E five license or a third party tool, or I just have Eric stand over this client and watch what they do 24 hours a day. The price is the price. At the end of the day, the goal is solve the problem. So you stop having it and you can go on sleep at night as opposed to wearing some issues going down with your email.
So that whole process, and it took four or five different phone calls to get this through because we had to find a way to articulate it to the person who clearly is not in technology to get the value prop behind it. Because even as our clients, they just look at the dollar amount. Oh, I don't want to spend any more money. Well, you can spend $25 a month and we can figure this out in six months and do it, or you could just not sleep for the next six months and be dead because you're just so stressed the F out over this stupid thing that I can solve for you for 300 bucks.
Trevor Thomas:
Yeah, yeah. It's funny, right? So personally, I had a problem in the last year where I would go camping and I was sleeping in a tent.
Justin Esgar:
That seems like a problem.
Trevor Thomas:
No, no, no, no. I'm trying to relate this to this certain situation. So I had a problem where I was sleeping in the tent and I camp a lot and Canda, I'm 20 minutes from the mountains. So my problem is that it is cold and there's bears. So the easy solution is you sleep in your car and we're going to the commodity side of things or the easy solution or not selling things properly. So the easy solution is, well, I'm going to sell you an SUV and you're going to sleep in the back of your SUV. The real solution and the value proposition here is we'll buy a trailer and now you've got your home away from home and you can, so sleeping in an SUV is a relatively cheap solution if you have an SUV versus a trailer where you're spending 70 K Canadian, which is like 20 bucks American, right? So what do you think we did? We realized the problem and we bought a trailer. The same can be said in the business sense where, okay, there is a cheap solution here. There's an easy solution that is very cheap, but it's not actually going to solve your problems. What it's going to do is make them less pronounced.
That was my shameless Canadian plug with our trailer.
Eric Anthony:
Do you guys really call them trailers up there or do you call them caravans like they do in the uk?
Trevor Thomas:
I don't want to get into the snatch conversation right now, but we call them trailers.
Justin Esgar:
I was thinking more about top gear, about how Jeremy hates caravan, and there was one episode where he tore the shred on a downhill rally, whatever. I digress. Anyway, point being here though, is that in the sales cycle, this is what we're talking about, your process of understanding the client's business, not just their technology, understanding their business, understanding their workflow, understanding things that they need to be compliant. I mean, there has not been a conversation I've had in the last six months where I have not said, I don't know your business yet. Are you beheld to any sort of compliance? And most people go, no. And I go, are you sure? They don't need to know themselves, right? Yeah,
Trevor Thomas:
Yeah.
Justin Esgar:
Well, we have this machine. Yeah, your PCID is that's compliant or not compliant or whatever. So my eight bits turning into four bit, I'm watching it happen in real time. It's horrible. Those who are listening.
Trevor Thomas:
So I, it caught me off guard. I was like, is he gone?
Justin Esgar:
For those who are listening and not watching this on YouTube, like I said in the beginning, I'm not letting Eric put this one on YouTube. This is an audio only podcast. It's special. So I got to get real close.
Eric Anthony:
I know. I think the Threadless shop needs to have an eight bit, Justin.
Justin Esgar:
Oh my God, that'd be amazing. Calling all designers in the offerings, MSP free quick group. If you want to design me as eight bit one, that's amazing. And two, let's make a T-shirt. We'll do something. Anyway, point being here though is even the clients don't really know. So it's your job to, you have to be that dude that they wanted to fire from office space that took the stuff from the client and brought it to the engineer and then reversed it. Be the person who can translate. Because if you just talk tech to your clients, they're not going to get it, and they don't talk tech enough for you to understand it. So you have to bridge that gap because that's what it means to be a managed service provider, not just the IT fix it person
Trevor Thomas:
Understanding their business is. So I alluded to this earlier, verticalization, if you can go into a tattoo shop, let's say, right? So I do some not work. I do some consulting with some tattoo shops, and they're like, our process sucks, which of course it does. They're tattoo artists. What do they know about it? How do we fix it? Okay, well, because I know your business, because I've spent a couple hundred hours under the needle, here's the things that would make my experience better. So I'm taking what I know about their business and applying it to their business. And now you've got this more robust offering. So you can go into a tattoo shop or a dentist shop or business and say, Hey, I know that you sold these things. Here's how we're going to apply what I know about it from the technical side and make your business better.
We're going to apply a booking system that's going to streamline people coming in for consults. It's going to clean up your calendar. It's going to make things more clear for your customers. They're going to know that they're being taken care of. They're going to get confirmations. You're going to have a calendar that's clear where what's going on instead of managing it from your Instagram messages. That's a very topical space, but it applies to all businesses. Everyone's got very specific needs that you need to meet. And if you can meet them where they have those needs, you're good.
Eric Anthony:
And it's that hierarchy, right? It's the hierarchy of yes, you can just solve pain points. Next level, you can do revenue. And then the third level where you can actually enhance profitability. And if you can actually sell on those different value pieces, that's where you gain stickiness, profitability, all of those things.
Justin Esgar:
And this is where I promote a lot of learning too, because I know a lot of consultants who want to just go in with the blinders on, fix what they want to fix and not think about learning about different type of calendaring solutions or schedules and solutions or billing platforms or whatever it is. And you don't need to be the expert in all of them. You just need to know that they exist. You need to be in the industry and reading up on what the new things that are out there or listening to podcasts like this, or some of our friends are going to events like IT Nation or ACEs or whatever. You need to be constantly learning because if you're not, you're not going to be able to offer those kinds of solutions because then someone's going to come to you and say, Hey, I know we're a graphic design firm and we've been dealing with you help us with our Adobe, and that's great, but we're thinking about expanding and offering consultative services. What can we do for calendaring? And you go, well, I don't know. I don't do that. They're not going to want to hear that from you.
Trevor Thomas:
So you could be a generalist. And so let's take a step back from being a generalist. So I took BIO 30, so I know some stuff about Bio, I actually didn't, but so I know some stuff, right? And this is where a lot of MSPs live. I know some stuff about technology. Then you take Bio 30 and you're like, actually, I know a good amount about business, but then you took kinesiology or something like that. Now you're a bit more tailored. So each layer, you go deeper. You know more about these certain businesses, and you can actually hone in on their pain points. And instead of saying, well, you're going to get hacked, or Technology is a pain in the ass, you can go in and go, Hey, for your business, I know that people coming into your shop experience it wait time of X Minutes, and that's delaying your business by X minutes, and then that's costing you X dollars per year. So you can keep funneling down to the point where you can provide a real value proposition that's tailored for each business you work with, right? And I'm not saying that you have to work with tattoo shops. And actually as MSPs, if you're listening to this, do not work with tattoo shops. They're a nightmare. And for all my tattoo shops that are listening to this, you are a nightmare.
I'm going to send this to the guy who does my tattoos and he's going to laugh. But there is a sense of providing a true business relief where you're not just saying, Hey, we do your it. We solve a real pain point in your company based on your business needs.
Justin Esgar:
Yeah, that's what it's about. That's what it's about. Being an MSP, solving the real pain points. I don't think we can have a better ending than that. Trevor, where can people find you online if they want to find out more about you or Zen contract?
Trevor Thomas:
Zen contract.com, trevor@zencontract.com. On LinkedIn, it's just Trevor Thomas. Or if you go LinkedIn slash Trevor yyc, or you can just message Eric and He'll Point, or
Justin Esgar:
Probably in your local tattoo shop. Trevor's probably just hanging out in the back fixing POS systems and such like that. Well, Trevor, thanks so much for being here. I'm Justin. That's Eric. Don't forget to join the All Things MSP Facebook group, facebook.com/group/all things msp. Check us out on YouTube, but not this episode, youtube.com/at all things MSP like and subscribe on all of your podcasting platforms. Leave a review, leave a one star review. Tell us what kind of tattoo Trevor should get next, maybe should it be the All Things MSP logo. I'm down with that. That's it for us. Bye.
Eric Anthony:
From your host, Justin and myself, thank you for listening to the All Things MSP podcast. Join the All Things MSP Facebook group or follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube. The All Things MSP podcast is a biz POW LLC production. And even though we drink a lot of it, this podcast is still not sponsored by Liquid Death.