BONUS EPISODE: The Power of Niching in Sales and Efficiency

[00:00:00] You're not going to go to the orthopedist when you have a rash or have a skin issue.

[00:00:03] You're going to go to a dermatologist. They niche, same with lawyers, right?

[00:00:08] They often, some general practice lawyers, but most of the time they're focused on an area.

[00:00:15] Well, you go to a real estate agent, a real estate attorney,

[00:00:18] when you're selling your house.

[00:00:20] Try, you don't go to personal injury attorney.

[00:00:21] Right. So you go to the best for that field. So it's

[00:00:26] they're doing it. Why are so many MSPs not doing it?

[00:00:34] Hey, guys. Damien Stevens, host of MSP Mindset. Today I want to give a special shout out

[00:00:41] to Joe and Jeff at StartGrow Manage. They let us set up shop and interview live at the StartGrow Manage

[00:00:47] Summit. And today I got the pleasure of interviewing George Beline. Don't miss out on our

[00:00:53] conversation today. I'm blessed to be here with George Beline and we are live at the SGM Summit.

[00:01:01] So George, we're talking kind of backstage quote unquote and

[00:01:06] really interesting to me that before being an MSP or an education,

[00:01:12] but you talked about the business of education. So tell me about that.

[00:01:15] Yeah, so off mic, what I said to you was a little bit about like, you know, I'm a business guy.

[00:01:21] I mean, you starting as a business guy that it could be any business. But, you know, I was

[00:01:27] had a former professional life in education and with the tech focus. But, everybody thinks

[00:01:35] teacher when you say to your kids. Yeah, so I wasn't a teacher. I did teach a little here and

[00:01:40] there as a, you know, helping out with computer science classes and things like that because

[00:01:44] that was a tech guy. But, but really got more into operations and, you know, the business aspects

[00:01:51] of running an institution. So it's really just the business skills that are super transverbal

[00:02:01] between a non-profit education or, you know, or a full profit MSP or any business. So coming in as a

[00:02:10] business person first is like, it's two an MSP is like, and I feel like you just have more power.

[00:02:17] You know, you can be a great business person and a horrible tech and you can be a horrible tech

[00:02:22] and a great business person and it's like being that great business person versus it's going to

[00:02:26] get your further in my opinion. Yeah, yeah. So speaking of that, tell me about what you did during

[00:02:32] COVID that's a little out of the box there. Yeah, so my MSP for the last few years has been growing.

[00:02:42] COVID kind of threw a weird, I mean, through a weird, something for everybody, right? So

[00:02:49] business came to a screeching halt which was a scary time for everybody but for me, I know

[00:02:57] from activity or halt from all sorts of like a payments and cash flow. All of the above.

[00:03:03] Right, so we have voiceover IP phone service and, you know, government officials in New York

[00:03:10] regulated and said, well, you don't have to pay your phone bill. You know, so that's it.

[00:03:15] Okay, well, there goes our revenue for phone service and that kind of became an extended thing.

[00:03:20] Like people say, well, I'm just not going to pay anything. So things kind of came to a halt.

[00:03:24] You know, fortunately I was okay, right? We had revenue coming in. We were to cover bills

[00:03:28] person from a personal perspective but I said, you know, I need something to do. So I said,

[00:03:33] let's, you know, low barrier to entry for me was, you know, getting insurance license,

[00:03:37] license quick buying a franchise and, and, you know, for two years, I, I focused on just the business

[00:03:45] aspect of that business. So it didn't matter what it was, right? Sales running the business, acquiring

[00:03:51] other books of business. And in the end, I flipped it after two, two and a half years,

[00:03:56] 25x my initial investment. So it was pretty, pretty awesome. And, you know, it's an

[00:04:04] entrepreneurial feather in my cap, so to speak. Hey, guys. Today's episode is sponsored by some

[00:04:11] of Ossity. I created Ossity because I was an MSP who lost data and had to face my client.

[00:04:19] I don't want you to ever be in that situation. So what's different about Ossity is that we

[00:04:24] test your backups monically. We do them. We test those daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly.

[00:04:30] We manage the backups for you. So 80% of your workload is gone and you can focus on your core mission.

[00:04:36] And all of the storage is both immutable and unlimited. You'd like to learn more. Take a look at

[00:04:42] Ossity.com. Yeah, that's really cool. So I don't know too many people that go from,

[00:04:51] I would say from, I want to say from, but you're already had your MSP

[00:04:55] insurance to MSP. And it folks that sell the insurance agents maybe they try to understand it.

[00:05:01] So how'd you build that up? How long does even take to get a license? Like why insurance? Why

[00:05:05] just how to do that? Yeah. So, you know, I'm a learner. So to me, like there's nothing you can't

[00:05:11] learn. I think that's true for everybody though, if you put your head, you know, put your mind to it.

[00:05:16] You can learn. So, you know, I think it was, I think I did it in two weeks. Like just read the book,

[00:05:22] took the test and here we go. Right? So I got the license. That was easy part, right? The hard part

[00:05:27] becomes the business aspects, the sales, the managing funds, and, you know, and growing a business.

[00:05:35] So it was really just something to that you could do from home during COVID.

[00:05:40] Well, tell me about that because I think everybody had different reactions to COVID. And some of them

[00:05:46] as the world is ending and some of them as I'm just going to have a lot more free time. And

[00:05:50] but how did you build a business? Because for so many MSPs and for so many of us, the way you

[00:05:56] build business is you go and meet people, you know, or you speaking front of people, or you have a

[00:06:00] physical meeting. So how did you build entirely new business? Especially insurance because I think

[00:06:05] I'm going to associate that with being in person, being local. Sure. I think no matter what business,

[00:06:15] you have to build relationships and then everything I've ever done, it's always been about building

[00:06:20] relationships. If you build those relationships with people and you can connect somehow,

[00:06:28] people do business with those they like, no and trust, right? It's known fact, but being able to

[00:06:35] build those relationships is the skill. So to me, build relationships, right? I came out of the box

[00:06:42] and decided our sales plan and who we're prospecting and how we're going to get business

[00:06:47] and build relationships with those referral partners. And it's no different as an MSP, right?

[00:06:52] You're going to get business from potential referral partners. You're going to do drop-ins and

[00:06:57] you're going to make phone calls and the hardest thing to do over the phone actually in my opinion

[00:07:02] is to connect with somebody because you don't have that in person, face-to-face. So we did it.

[00:07:09] You know, everybody was doing it via phones. So I think that helped a little bit because it just

[00:07:13] became the short-term norm. But, you know, I walk into somebody's office for sales meeting.

[00:07:20] I got to connect with them. I got 15 seconds, right? And they're going to say,

[00:07:24] I have trust or I don't have trust, right? You could build it but you want to be the horse out of

[00:07:30] the gate, right? So I have a little skill. I'm going to call it where I quickly glance and I could see

[00:07:39] all right. They got this thing on their desk that I can real quick get to that topic at some point.

[00:07:45] Yankee fan, right? They're a little Yankee bubble hit on their desk.

[00:07:50] I'm going to touch the Yankee's at some point in the next few minutes. You know, and they just

[00:07:54] feel like, well, okay, we have something in common. And there's all the aspects of relationships.

[00:08:01] That's, that's, you just build relationships. You know, figure out how to do that. And there's a lot of

[00:08:05] science on it. But just just be human, right? And just build relationships. Like, I can probably

[00:08:11] every answer. I'm going to go back and build relationships. Yeah. Did unpack that more because especially

[00:08:20] during COVID, like there's a lot of fears, a lot of other things going on. And like you said,

[00:08:24] when you can be face-to-face, it's, I love being face-to-face right now with these jerks.

[00:08:29] We're better, but my interviews are not. So this is really cool. But how did you do that

[00:08:34] over phone? Because most of us, you know, the business fees are paralyzed by it. We're seeing

[00:08:38] they're going like, we, I talked to somebody folks that were like, well, are existing business

[00:08:42] maybe-billion because of the short-term work from home, right? You know, VPN stuff, what have you?

[00:08:48] But what do I now, what do I do? So how did you build the business? Yeah, I think, you know,

[00:08:55] there's different types of phone conversations, right? There's the cold call, which most people don't

[00:09:01] like for whatever reason, right? I mean, the person making a person receiving it or yes.

[00:09:06] All of the above, right? And nobody likes a lot of people. One, there are people that love it.

[00:09:12] But a lot of people don't like cold calls and they don't like sent, just making or receiving them.

[00:09:17] But I try to do more warm-ups first, right? So before we get on the phone, you're going to know

[00:09:23] of me, you know, about me, cold to meeting in every business, every is the hardest thing.

[00:09:33] So I like to use the tools, right? You use social media, use LinkedIn, Instagram, wherever that

[00:09:39] potential prospect or potential client is warm-up. If they know my name have seen me before

[00:09:47] now I talked to them. It's no longer a cold call, you know? And if you get that in your own head as

[00:09:53] a salesperson to build that relationship with that person, it takes a lot of the fear out. So

[00:10:00] pay for the LinkedIn subscriptions. You could see when somebody looks at your LinkedIn page.

[00:10:08] I can't tell you how many times I see somebody looked at my page that day or almost right away.

[00:10:12] I call them and I say, hey, so you're checking out my LinkedIn page. We're going to do for you.

[00:10:18] It's not cold. They were checking me out first. You know? So you can get out of your own head a little bit.

[00:10:26] So that's the warming them up, right? So the relationship, so leading to that relationship now,

[00:10:33] there do you know who I was? So that should be a human and connect with them. And have a personality

[00:10:38] and smile when you're talking even on the phone. Yeah. You know that changes the tone of your voice in

[00:10:43] it. So circle back relationships. Yeah. Well, your business and you said business first. And that's

[00:10:53] awesome. But most MSPs I talk to are text first. And then maybe they're evolving and maybe they've

[00:10:59] evolved but it still seems like a gift of yours. So how give me a little more? How do you warm

[00:11:05] up on LinkedIn? So warming up on LinkedIn, there are I mean, there are tools, right? You can use

[00:11:12] some tools out there. You could spend a little bit of money or a lot of money. Actually at the

[00:11:17] SUM, some of yesterday I gave a little presentation on on some ways to do this. There are some products that

[00:11:23] are done for you and there's something that you pay 20 bucks a month. You have access and do it yourself.

[00:11:28] You build your little campaign. But you know, there's some data that says you gotta have like seven

[00:11:33] interactions before you really get somebody's attention if they're cold. So we build out a campaign

[00:11:39] via a LinkedIn prospecting tool that would be multiple steps in the process where you follow

[00:11:46] their page. There's one. You like something, you comment on something. You now add them as a connection.

[00:11:55] All of a sudden we're at four. You know, after they connect, you send them a hey, great to connect.

[00:12:00] No pressure, right? We're not selling. And then you go, hey, we're in the same industry. We'd

[00:12:05] love to see if there's some way we can collaborate. Look at that. All of a sudden I'm at seven.

[00:12:11] Yeah. GF15 minutes for a call. I'd love to chat and connect with you. They've seen me. I'm consistent.

[00:12:16] My messaging isn't salesy. And here we are. Now they're open to a conversation. It's no longer a

[00:12:21] cold conversation. You know, they were open. They set a meeting with me. Yeah. So that is like the

[00:12:28] warm-up process. And it works if you're targeted as well to a niche or to your client,

[00:12:38] they're going to be even more interested in your response rate and your conversation rate goes way

[00:12:44] up. I love that. I'm going to come back to that for the niche part. But I love the warm-up. And I love

[00:12:50] if you guys were listening closely, it wasn't. I found you and I sent a LinkedIn connection

[00:12:57] I can try to go from zero to connect with you. Now sign on the contract dotted line because

[00:13:01] I want your business. I want your money. Exactly. And then why are the few people even put a

[00:13:06] note in an connection request already pitching? Right. You know, like who's going to the right exactly.

[00:13:12] Right. And so we all get to you, Matt. That's like going to the bar and asking that girl you just met to

[00:13:15] marry me. Yes. Exactly. You might find some, but you know, it's not the customer you want.

[00:13:21] Definitely not the girl you want. Yeah. Yeah. So I love how you broke down the outreach process

[00:13:27] to seven steps really, really good. Now tell me about the new Qing Park right where at S.

[00:13:33] Y.M. And if you're really listening, like you've got a niche, you got to get a listen. So what

[00:13:38] kind of difference do you have you tried with it before you were an inch? Have you seen any of

[00:13:43] can you draw any core lyrics? Yeah. So almost every MSP starts out agnostic.

[00:13:49] We're they'll take anybody with a computer and a heartbeat, right? Anybody's trying to clear

[00:13:52] us? Right. Anybody's checked the clears has a little bit of money and wants you to do something

[00:13:57] for them. Yeah. So you have no choice. You have to start there. It's a little harder to

[00:14:06] generate business and operate. Are you going to pay your bills? Right. That's what we're all here.

[00:14:11] So it's hard to come out and not take customers. Right. Still guilty of it. I get a referral.

[00:14:17] I'm going to take that customer even if it's not the focus niche that I'm in.

[00:14:24] For a couple of reasons, right? It's a referral. You have prior relationships and

[00:14:28] ever referrals are pretty much done deal. Right. It's a very high close ratio. Yeah. So so I am

[00:14:36] very agnostic. I have customers in every industry as a business guy. I understand all of their

[00:14:41] industries. So I can speak to the attorney and their billable hours and how they want this print

[00:14:46] to model because they can track the cost per page and apply it to the bills for their clients

[00:14:53] and whatever it might be. However, since I've nicheed and I've gotten really into focusing on

[00:15:01] a technology practices specifically, you know, in the conversations I've had with dermatologists

[00:15:08] because we're speaking their language. We know their products. We know the tools they use. We know

[00:15:12] their software. They use it's gotten easier for us, right? So it's so from a business perspective,

[00:15:19] scale is a lot easier and support is a lot easier and quicker for that end customer.

[00:15:25] The perspective from the dermatology practices and the dermatologist and office managers

[00:15:30] is that you are the gold standard for dermatology practices. Why would a practice not want the gold

[00:15:40] standard? Why would a business not want the gold standard for their business? Right. And I think of

[00:15:50] you hurt yourself. You're going to go to a doctor. Well, you're not going to go to a

[00:15:59] allergist when you hurt your knee. Right? You're going to go to the orthopedic surgeon.

[00:16:05] You're not going to go to the orthopedist when you have a rash or have a skin issue. You're

[00:16:09] going to go to a dermatologist, right? So they niche saying with lawyers, right? They often,

[00:16:15] some general practice lawyers but most of the time they're focused on an area. Well, you go to a

[00:16:22] real estate agent, a real estate attorney and you're selling your house. Right? You don't go to

[00:16:27] the country attorney. Right. So you go to the best for that field. So they're doing it.

[00:16:34] Why are so many MSPs not doing it? That's a good question. It's because you just want to take

[00:16:43] whoever wants to work with you. But now you're caution, you're overhead of support. It goes away. Like

[00:16:49] it works in the short term. When you start to hit around 600, 700,000 in MRR,

[00:16:57] it doesn't work anymore. It starts to not work, the math. Yeah. You can't operate efficiently.

[00:17:07] So I love that. Now we feel listening you know if you're above that, you're already

[00:17:11] need to be making some changes. How did you know it was time? How did I know it was time to niche?

[00:17:22] So about a year ago, I started to feel that pain of operational efficiency. Things just start

[00:17:31] like, I feel like I'm flying by the sea to my pants, right? Isn't that normal with an MSP?

[00:17:36] It's totally normal, right? If you, you know, congrats when you get there, right?

[00:17:42] Growing pains are great problems. I remember saying, oh my god, I just signed three more

[00:17:50] customers, I'm going to do it. And you go, I'll figure it out. But now you're support. How am I

[00:17:58] going to onboard three? I'm onboarding six new customers right now. And it's, it's hard.

[00:18:05] I came across Star Girl Manage and shameless plug for them, right? Yeah. And they

[00:18:14] focus on them, they niche to MSPs, right? That's what they do. So why not leverage some of their expertise?

[00:18:22] The, I knew I had the problem. I knew I wanted to grow, but I didn't know how to grow. I didn't

[00:18:26] have was going to handle more. I didn't know what I didn't know. MSP, right? Business, I'm good.

[00:18:35] Give me the business stuff. I'm clear, but specifically MSP, I needed to know. I didn't have any

[00:18:42] MSPs and have any instruction documents. I didn't have any, you know, any processes and systems.

[00:18:47] I wasn't tracking time. I don't know how much time I was spending per customer to know if it's

[00:18:53] a profitable customer or not and how to, and not knowing that then you don't know to turn it around

[00:18:59] and figure out how to make it profitable, right? Let me jump in right there because the business

[00:19:04] guy and I appreciate the vulnerability, but he's admitting that basically sold something he does

[00:19:09] and understands costs. In other words, I say that if I hear you write your edges, we all do that.

[00:19:15] Yep. But like, as somebody logically, should I sell this widget when I don't know what it costs?

[00:19:19] Right. No. But we do it all the time. Right. Yeah. So just to call that, I'll thank you for

[00:19:25] being vulnerable because if you don't, and here's the thing, we all think we know. Right. We all

[00:19:31] think that our staff costs this and we put some multiplier on a salary and then we think we know,

[00:19:37] but then if you don't know where your time is, certainly don't know. Right. And that goes back

[00:19:42] to niching a little bit, right? Because certain industries are going to be, I don't want to use

[00:19:49] the word, NIDI. But certain industries have a higher support threshold where they just need more

[00:19:58] love from their MSP. And that price is higher for a reason. That should be as it should be,

[00:20:06] so when you niche, you know exactly an average amount of time you're going to spend per

[00:20:12] customer and you can build your product. Right. It's not a service. It's a product. What you

[00:20:19] provide to the customers a product. And you can very easily do a product design. And no,

[00:20:24] I'm going to spend X amount of time that cost me $X dollars. Here's all of my security

[00:20:29] stacks that I'm including. And they're paying a rate for that product. And to the MSP is out there's

[00:20:41] flat rate, everybody put it all together because it's easier to manage. That time your time

[00:20:50] is time. You know, and it's a cost. So figure out the product, the time you would spend,

[00:20:56] and especially if you're niche, you know, you know I can onboard a dermatology practice.

[00:21:02] Cake because we know them, right? We studied the heck out of them. And the onboarding is quick,

[00:21:08] the documentation is the same, which certainly makes it easier to support. So how did you pick dermatology?

[00:21:16] So I analyzed a lot of different industries as I mentioned before. I have pretty much every industry.

[00:21:22] There were some things that attracted me to it from business perspective.

[00:21:28] There were some things that attracted me to it from what they do, right? You know first they do

[00:21:34] things for people, right? And they you go to a dermatologist because you have a spot,

[00:21:45] a something you're concerned about which could potentially be a cancer, right? And the handle

[00:21:50] right? And if you have that cancer, they're going to remove it, right? Which is a personal stress

[00:21:55] or for someone. That's a health concern. And my understanding is, you know skin cancer levels are

[00:22:04] you know on the increase and they're in countries like Australia, they're the worst they

[00:22:09] in the world, right? So so they take care of that. Some people also go to dermatologists

[00:22:16] because they want to change their how they look and how they feel about themselves. And if somebody

[00:22:22] feels good in their own skin, you know, part of the pun, but that makes the person feel good about

[00:22:28] themselves. So I think that's awesome. From business perspective, I like, you know, I like what

[00:22:35] the insurance companies are paying out. And you know, they're there listen, there's a cash business

[00:22:39] as part of a dermatology practice, you know? We'll go down that rabbit hole too much, but but

[00:22:45] it's a reality, right? You know, we don't want to work with a customer that has

[00:22:49] doesn't have money coming into for our services, right? That's right. I would say most MSPs

[00:22:54] are worked with that dabble, for example, nonprofit. They don't know what to do, they're not

[00:22:58] specialist and most nonprofits don't have much ability to pay and so then they complain about it.

[00:23:04] And so you know, do your homework for your out here willing to serve. And we have some nonprofits.

[00:23:09] I'm gonna tell you we have some huge nonprofits. Some of them have a lot of money, but they

[00:23:16] know really well how to make sure they're spending it very, very cautiously. So, you know,

[00:23:24] you can build a great business with nonprofits. But if that's your niche, then you can be profitable

[00:23:32] and you can design your product to match that niche appropriately. It's a whole different suite

[00:23:40] of options. You know, there's Microsoft nonprofit licensing and it's another niche. So you can be

[00:23:47] profitable and not profit. I'm not saying you got to go and work with hedge funds to be profitable.

[00:23:53] Right? That's a whole different niche. Yeah. They all work, but you have to know your customer

[00:24:01] inside now. What is the response rate difference? You've seen when you were not niche versus

[00:24:08] response rate from your outreach and your closing list is that yeah. So,

[00:24:16] response rate is so much better when you're niche spray and pray doesn't really work in my opinion.

[00:24:24] If you go by percentages, it's super low to spray and pray and get responses. The

[00:24:30] when you reach out to your dermatologist and it says on your website, hey dermatologists,

[00:24:36] spend more time with patients, improve your processes and grow your practice.

[00:24:42] If I was dermatologist, I'd respond. Yeah. Right? You know, in my LinkedIn says helping dermatologists

[00:24:48] spend more time grow their practice. You know, it's by wouldn't you respond. Like if somebody

[00:24:53] said to me, he's dark or a manager each out to me, right? Hey, we help you grow your MSP

[00:24:58] and operate better blah, blah, blah. Well, I responded because they're speaking to me, right? They

[00:25:05] know my problem. So, and I know the problems they have, the dermatologists have. Right? So,

[00:25:10] the response rate is so much better when you're niche. That's awesome. Well, I could ask you

[00:25:15] questions all day, but I can't because we are live at STM Summit, so I want to let you get back

[00:25:20] to it. George, for everybody's listening, how can they get a hold of you connect with you?

[00:25:25] Absolutely. Yeah. I mean visit us online at biztechpro.net. I'm sure there will be a link

[00:25:30] somewhere down in the comments, right? Yeah. Yeah. Send us a message or happy to

[00:25:36] try to have a conversation, but needs help. You know, I'm no expert, but we've got some experience

[00:25:41] and happy to share ideas and collaborate with anybody that that wants to. Awesome. What about

[00:25:47] LinkedIn? Yeah, LinkedIn. I'm out there. You can find me on LinkedIn, George Ballane,

[00:25:53] and you can't miss me on that AI-generated photo, you know. And if it's talking about dermatologists,

[00:25:59] that's me. That's you. Thank you for your time today. Thanks so much. I'm really appreciate it.

[00:26:04] Absolutely. Great to talk to you. Thank you. Thank you.