4 Steps you can to crush the close of 2023

[00:00:00] Welcome to MSP Business School, led by our deans of business development, Brian Doyle,

[00:00:08] Tim McNeil, and Rob Rogers.

[00:00:11] Each week MSP Business School is committed to delivering you proven strategies, tips,

[00:00:16] and tactics for MSPs to accelerate their business growth and revenue through better sales, better

[00:00:23] marketing, and true account management.

[00:00:26] Classes start now, so it's still stuff that needs to get done and usually

[00:01:40] comes with services attached. If I was an MSP, those project commitments were fast and furious in December. To your point, we didn't start those projects usually until Q1, but also it gave us some flexibility from a cash flow perspective too on what we wanted to do at the end of the year.

[00:03:01] If we knew that we had these projects queued up,

[00:03:04] didn't necessarily mean we had to buy all product right on day one too. are always pushing on the nonprofits. And that was really some nice cash flow for us as a company to just keep the engine going. Yeah, you know, it's nice to have those predictable times where you know cash is going to come in. And certainly for those that are working with not for profits in school systems, you can almost guarantee that money. And in June, you know, the commits in June

[00:04:23] money to come in in July. And mean, one thing that we preach,

[00:05:42] especially on the OSR side with any of the MSPs

[00:05:46] that we're working with is there is, all right, take a look at, you know, who our good customers are and the obvious bottle of whiskey earners, right? But it's great, right. And we know who our noisy ones are. We'll tell you too, if I could give coal without you kicking me

[00:07:00] out of your office, probably would.

[00:07:03] But you got those folks in the middle of your stack.

[00:07:05] And this is a great time to analyze those and go,

[00:07:08] who are my good partners? I'm not talking tech at all, but I've just figured out that I've got a new location opportunity and I've got a growth opportunity, at least 15 endpoints and associated things that go with it, right? So you can figure out those subtle things and put it into your plan and in a casual holiday lunch being human. And remember, that's a big part of what we're supposed to do here too.

[00:08:21] Really genuinely, I used to love learning about my customers.

[00:08:24] I'd find out interesting hobbies that they had? I would find either prospects or clients that we had just signed and we'd go out to breakfast somewhere, go out to lunch somewhere, or meet up after hours and get a beer somewhere. It's just building those relationships. And like you said, it doesn't always have to be focused on business.

[00:09:41] No, and as crazy as this sounds too, I want to now go into what can you do as an example? What are the key services you provide? And then of course, who are your partners? Now, I said a mouthful there, but when you map this out under the business model, some interesting things show up very quickly. You want to get some quick wins with your customer? Take a look at their go-to-market model.

[00:12:21] I'll find things out like they'll say, you know,

[00:12:23] one of the things that we're trying to do is provide more self-service services

[00:12:27] for our customers. And I've now established that you've got some pretty risky partners who have some big access into some of your critical systems, maybe on purpose, maybe not. And you've never been done a vendor risk assessment. You have no idea if they're doing security awareness training. You have no idea if they're doing any social engineering testing. So you're vulnerable. You know, I just kind of put a bow on that.

[00:13:41] You know, we had a doctor's office that was outsourcing call confirmation to the Philippines.

[00:13:47] Okay, great. ran into, we've had a lot of conversations with MSPs that they're trying to figure out what their go-to-market strategy is going to be for sales next year. And I've actively told multiple people over the last, just over the last couple of days that whether you work with us or not, you really need to have a plan. And what I'm finding, which has always been true to a certain extent, is a little bit

[00:15:03] of a ready-aimed shoot.

[00:15:05] Right?

[00:15:06] Or a ready-shoot aim.

[00:15:08] Sorry, ready-shoot aim. to get that 2024 planning out of the way, especially on the sales side, you're gonna be better for it in the start of April and beyond. Yeah, and again, not to continue going back to the business canvas, but the one thing that I always liked in the business canvas is it tells you to look at your sales channels, right?

[00:16:20] So let's forget about your customers' business canvas,

[00:16:23] but do one on yourself.

[00:16:25] We all have multiple sales channels. have for you is what are you seeing as far as is there anything from you know we've talked about the MSP side and some of the some things that they can do to get some clients on their end I mean switching over to the vendor side I know kind of what we've been going through over the last you know six to eight months from a vendor perspective what are you saying out there well I mean you

[00:17:40] know we were talking about this prior to the call to right things are slowing

[00:17:43] down you know when saying slowing down if the item has a big enough ticket price are high right now. When interest rates are high, people are concerned about what's coming on the other side. What's the economic impact of that? I'm not going to say recession or any of those terms because I'm far from an economist. But there's a slowdown, right? What do you see in Tim?

[00:20:24] I would say the same. From a vendor We like anybody, are you trying to sign anybody you can, whether they're the right fit or not, you can't increase sales, you know, you spend money to make money, right? The old added. They do. Yeah. It's the way it is. It's the way it is. People don't always like to hear that, but it is true. Well, guys, we covered off on a few different things

[00:21:45] you can do and things to think about as you head, you know, isn't going to cost your company money or if you're, you know, nobody wants to be the bank. But sometimes, you know, if the bank is low risk banking, it may be put a little interest rate on top of it, if you will, and you'll put a little, yeah, I can do that, but it's going to cost you, you know, 3% more or something like that, you know, as if we spread it out, you know,

[00:23:05] things can creatively get this point in time

[00:24:20] about what to do.

[00:24:21] Hopefully, you know, if you're listening today,

[00:24:22] you found some tidbits that you can take out of this

[00:24:25] to really close your year out strong.