EP 184 New Prospecting with Professor Jake

[00:00:00] Hey everyone, welcome to the latest installment of MSP business school.

[00:00:07] As always, I'm Brian Doyle and I'm here with good old Tim McNeil and Rob Rogers.

[00:00:11] It's good to see you guys again.

[00:00:14] Yeah, good to see you.

[00:00:16] You're getting a lot better.

[00:00:18] You're starting to smile again.

[00:00:20] You were not.

[00:00:22] Pretty banged up there for a while.

[00:00:24] So I'm glad to be here again. Yeah. We're here. It's always a good time when you come on though, man. You know, I'm looking forward to the next time you and I get

[00:01:40] together live.

[00:01:42] Yeah.

[00:01:43] But you know, today, I think you're here to talk to us about

[00:01:46] what you're best at, man. Try to instill in them is you got to make your app that's count, right? And fundamentally that means you have to be relevant with your prospects. Like you guys all know when you get a scripted cold call coming across. It's not something that really gains your attention right away or you even get cold outreach from someone that just doesn't resonate with you because

[00:03:01] it doesn't matter to you, right?

[00:03:02] So, you know, framing those things around stories that are relevant to your prospects

[00:03:06] is super important. And that always comes from, you know, how well do you know your customers? How well do you know your solution and the problems that you solve and then crafting that around something that's, you know, meaningful, empathetic and resonates with the company that you're talking to. So you've got to know the industry, right? And then you also have to know the person that you're speaking to and the challenges that they face.

[00:04:20] There's a couple of advantages here in the managed services business.

[00:04:23] And if we take, you know, 90% of the organizations out So you're not just going in there talking about technology so, right? So- We do that again.

[00:07:00] Say who, where they want, use the word but,

[00:07:06] because that gets in their way they're attacked. But right? Ensuring that all the controls are in place for that policy to be valid is really hard. Right? So they need managed service providers and cybersecurity experts to make sure that all the controls are in place. And as managed service providers, we know the controls that

[00:08:20] are required to have your cyber security insurance stick So not that that follows the framework of the story that you've got here, but it's another way that these sales methodologies that have been out there for years are really trying to get you to open a conversation and a dialogue with the customer to draw them in. Yeah, go ahead. That's the depth of the most salespeople, right?

[00:09:43] They ask close-handed questions.

[00:09:46] They don't open it up. I need to know who's the money authority need. I got to figure out all that stuff and I got to go and interrogate my client in it. Which, think about this for a second, if you're in a highly competitive market and someone's actually looking for a solution and they've got four sales people back to back to back coming in and asking them 10 questions each, that business owner is exhausted by the end of it. Don't remember anybody.

[00:11:00] And it does feel like an interrogation.

[00:11:02] Then if you can come in with a fresh like the Seinfeld method, right? And this is something that was very common for a long time With the emails that you received where people would just kind of send mindless emails about nothing on the daily

[00:12:22] But talking about something, you know, the old hey, you calls, right? Observational selling, trying to get someone's attention is really important. It's got to be relevant. It's got to be empathetic. You got to hit hard. Um, you got to skip the niceties sometimes. How are you doing that? Just circle, like all that, just circling back, just following up. Yeah. Like, um, you know, all that stuff's got to get all the niceties.

[00:13:40] Hi, hope you're having a great day today.

[00:13:41] No, you're not, you know, who I am, you know, what kind of day I'm having?

[00:13:43] Don't ask me.

[00:13:43] Just get that stuff out of here.

[00:13:45] The thing now is like, if you can't want to pay a license for that, chat GPT and all the AI tools that are out there is like, write me an email for such and such for a law firm that's trying to do X, Y, and Z.

[00:15:01] It'll write it for you, right?

[00:15:04] And then if nothing else,

[00:15:05] it takes the thought process of trying to create a little bit, you know, we've talked about emails a little bit tougher channel these days, but there are some tactics you can take there. Certainly cold calling the biggest challenge. There's just getting somebody on the other side of the line, right? If you do get them, then the standard numbers still exist. You know, obviously social is becoming the playground, right? But I think in social, I think storytelling could be used in a different manner, right?

[00:16:23] It's more about how do you become that attractive figure to it about but you're you know, you're gonna if you if you went if you're on LinkedIn long enough You're gonna hear cold calling is dead cold emailing is dead socials dead networking is dead in person's dead everything's dead You know what it ain't all that it all works and indeed Something

[00:17:41] Some things it all fails right but the combination of

[00:17:45] You know, it's all familiarity right if you even ask for a connection request. So if you've called into the business and you've emailed into the business and if you've liked from Rob. Yeah. You must be intentional about who you want to sell to or you'll just get the customers that you don't want.

[00:20:20] No, that's all.

[00:20:21] And there's so much truth to it, right?

[00:20:24] I mean, you hear it all the time.

[00:20:25] If you don't put together your list of people you want to target, you're targeting nobody.