Step #1 to Improving Your MSP Sales - Patience | Guest: Mike Booth

[00:00:15] Since the first of October through today, I think my leads team generated something like 57 or 58 new first time appointments. From an owner's perspective, what does 52 leads actually mean? I don't think they understand like, you know, that's the work that we're doing today that's going to pay dividends down the road in six months, 12 months or a year. They get a little antsy like you said, it's like, I want results now. But yeah, okay, we're getting results now, but we may not actually show for it today.

[00:00:45] Hey guys, Damien Stevens, host of MSP Mindset. And I'm excited to be at GrowCon 2024 live and in person with Mike Booth. And you are VP of sales, is that right? Correct. At Tobin Solutions. Mike, thank you for taking the time at GrowCon to come talk with me. Fantastic. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. So we were talking a little bit kind of backstage that how did you end up at Tobin Solutions? This is not your first time at an MSP?

[00:01:14] No. I've been in the industry quite a while, about 10 years as a, in the MSP industry, but actually only four months at Tobin. Kind of got introduced to him through a roundabout way, kind of a friend of a friend brought me in kind of because of what I knew and some of the weird things that I was doing. But yeah, it's, it, it's kind of happened in a weird way because of some of the other companies that I'd worked with and kind of ran into a weird scenario where one of the companies ended up filing bankruptcy.

[00:01:43] I got booted out the door and, you know, kind of was out looking for an opportunity and this one fell in my lap. So that's really interesting, right? Without getting all the details, I'm kind of curious. How does the guy that's the revenue grower, this company, you know, how did they end up in bankruptcy? Well, you know, the company that I was at, right, where that happened, I think he just got overextended.

[00:02:12] He was in an MSP and had some weird contracts and he was going for some really, really big fish, selling those enterprise level accounts and kind of got himself into some situations. And, you know, brought me in as the VP of sales, was there for three months and literally got a call out of the blue July 1st. But like, hey, sorry, by the way, dude, you're out the door. Oh, man. And I'd already started building this exact same team that I'm doing here at Tobin. But yeah, so that caught me off guard for sure.

[00:02:41] So it was very interesting. I literally from July 1st till about the 1st of August, middle of August, I almost decided it was done. I'm leaving the industry. This is bullshit. I'm out of here. This is done. I do not even want to do this anymore. And then this opportunity for Tobin kind of fell in my lap and met the owners and really super great folks. And they've been in the industry a long time. So I'm like, all right, you know what? I could probably do it one more time and we'll see how it goes. Yeah. So about how many folks are at Tobin when you joined? About 13.

[00:03:11] So a small, small company. Been around a long time. I think they've been about 26, 27 years. Oh, wow. Very longstanding MSP. Pretty traditional in the way they do things. But 13 employees. So two things jump out. One, 13 employees is smaller than most people say, oh, I need to actually get serious and bring in a VP of sales. Yeah. Two, most people don't change their ways after 20 something years of doing it one way.

[00:03:40] Well, that's pretty interesting. Yeah. And I give them a lot of credit from that standpoint because they've tried, you know, and just kind of not knowing the full backstory, but having now getting kind of a peek behind the curtains a little bit. They've tried a couple different sales managers along the way over the last couple of years because their growth has been a little stagnant and they've lost a few clients along the way. And, you know, it's not anything just a normal MSP, right? Yeah. Clients leave. Customers close their doors. People get acquired. Stuff happens.

[00:04:10] You know, they're not growing. Even if you do a great job. Yeah, you're right. You're going to lose. You're going to lose. It's just churn, right? It happens. So they've tried to hire some sales managers and different things, but they were doing kind of stuff. I guess I would call it like the old, old traditional way of marketing. They were like, you know, hey, let's do some billboards. Let's send out some direct mail pieces. Let's join the chamber. Let's do the B&I groups. Let's do some drip email campaigns.

[00:04:38] You know, those are the type of things that they were doing and it just wasn't working. Do you have any idea what pushed them to go from doing things the old way to saying this isn't working? Because it's a big investment to hire a VP of sales. And then the little bit I know is you can't just hire a VP of sales, right? You've got to have budget. You've got to build on a team. So that's a big commitment. What was it that hurt so much that they decided to change?

[00:05:05] You know, it was I think they took a long, hard look at themselves and said, you know what? We are either going to have to commit to grow or be OK with that continual downslide, right? And, you know, being a business of that age and maturity, you know, I guess you could probably say the writing is on the wall.

[00:05:28] Either you're going to continue to contract until the point where you're either going to have to sell out or close or potentially get bought up or you grow. And if you grow, it's going to be an investment and it's going to have to be a substantial investment to hire me, hire a team, build a process, give me a budget, do all the tools. Right. It's a it's a big thing. So, you know, when we sat down and had those conversations, we literally laid out like what does that next 6, 12, 18 months look like?

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[00:06:48] Or you can keep the tech stack you have in place, your existing backup into your provider and steal my 18 years of knowledge and download that process and add that to your operational maturity today. So I'm sure they asked you this. What was the expectation? What was the expectation? Because I felt like so many MCs get this wrong in terms of I hire you. I invest this time. You invest all this time. You build out this team. It takes time to hire.

[00:07:17] It takes time to ramp. The thing I know about making calls is there's no results instantly. Right. So what kind of expectations did you set with them of not only going to make an investment for a month or two or three, but what expectation did you set of how long you're going to invest before you really start to see a return? Right. Right. You know, I probably overestimated. I mean, I gave them a little bit of a, I'm not going to say pie in the sky, but you know, I mean, I know what we're capable of, right? With the system.

[00:07:47] And I'm sure we're going to talk about that a little bit about what we do. But realistically, I told him it's going to probably take four to six months before you really see any substantial return on investment. And by substantial, I mean, closed business, closed work, reoccurring revenue. We might see a few things dribbling in here and there, but you know, don't expect anything before that. If you're expecting anything more than that is this isn't going to work. You know, maybe by the end of that first year, we're going to start hitting full stride. Yeah.

[00:08:16] You know, and then by year two, hopefully things are really rocking and rolling. So that was kind of the expectations laid out. Give me six months to kind of get things ramped. By the end of that first year, we should be hitting stride. And then by the end of year two and on, we should be cooking. I think that's what we miss. And that's what I missed early on when I was building on a team is I just kind of like the prospect. I hear the low number and that's what I remember. And so I think four to six months, we'll just be crushing it. Right. Yeah.

[00:08:45] And that's what you're telling me lines with my experience, which is in four to six months, maybe we're going to close a deal or two. You know, maybe there'll be the first sign of a decent size closed one deal. But like you said, a year before you really hit your stride. And my guess is you're probably actually getting the return in year two. So does that align with your experience? I would say for sure. So with that, was that what they were expecting? How was their battle?

[00:09:15] Because a lot of people, you know, no matter what X dollars a month is, what I found, it seems to be harder. Just us as humans to go X dollars. Okay. I can wait three months. Wait. You tell me six. I guess I could wait six months. But now you're telling me not to see zero, but really this is a, if you don't do it for 18 or 24 months, it sounds like. I don't put words in your mouth. You probably shouldn't do it. Right. Kind of minimum commitment. Is that fair? You know, yeah.

[00:09:44] I mean, it is. It is to that point. I guess I always have that. If I'm hitting my nut in six months or 12 months, then what am I doing wrong, too? I'm going to have that internal reflection going, hey, if I'm not hitting my number in six months, then maybe I'm in the wrong spot. Or maybe there's something else in operations that's not working. Or maybe it's our pricing.

[00:10:11] Maybe there's some other thing there that's not working correctly. I tend to be the optimist. I don't think it's going to be me. Right. I think I can generate leads. I think I can close deals. I think I can get things through the pipeline. But, you know, trying to set those expectations to let them know that I don't expect it overnight. Yes. You're going to invest in me. It's going to cost a team. There's going to be tools. There's going to be processes. And it's going to be really different than what you've ever done before. So to some extent, you've got to trust me.

[00:10:41] Yeah. And I still find that every day when we have these meetings and, you know, when we have our, you know, weekly huddle with the team. And, you know, I'm talking about what our leads team is doing and what kind of lead stuff we're getting and what kind of meetings we're getting into. It still just blows their mind that, A, we're getting any results. Yeah. And B, you know, just how we're getting it is so foreign to what they've done before. It just kind of, I don't think they even understand what we're doing yet.

[00:11:11] So it's, I guess that's good for me because it's like, hey, what's going on over here? They don't quite understand how we're doing it. Yeah. And so you've been there to build that team how long? Four months. Okay. So my guess is you're somewhere at the peak of the expense without return. I don't mean the negative way, but like, I think people miss that there's going to be this part where I think you're going to have this peak. And if you're not careful, peak of anxiety because you have more and more outlay.

[00:11:36] And while you might have more activities, conversations, things that you know will lead, if you're inexperienced, you don't really like, you know, it's too easy to look at the outcome and go, well, we don't have enough closed one. You know, I don't have enough new MRR. And so is that where you are kind of that somewhere near that peak of like, you know, we're about to crest. We're about to see all the things actually hatch. But this is like the, you know, this is how long it takes to spin things up and build the leads and then, you know, work our sales pipeline. That's interesting. Yeah.

[00:12:06] I mean, you know, I hadn't really thought of it that way, but I guess I can kind of see that anxiety in their eyes. Like, you know, now all of a sudden we're having these, you know, the first three months here, it was like, oh, hey, great. Love you having the team. It's all exciting. And you're doing all these wonderful things. And now it's like the last one on one was like, so what's your funnel look like? How much do you have in your pipeline? Like, what are you actually got in there? What are you going to close? What is your this? Let's take a look at what you promised me.

[00:12:32] Now, fortunately, I did close one small project deal last month. So it was, you know, 15,000 in a project, just something small. So at least there's a there is something in the W column, which sort of huge sort of, you know, it's not a huge revenue, but there's some psychological aspect. Yes. I think maybe them, you, your team. Yes. Because it's freaking hard work.

[00:12:57] Like when I say it's hard work, it's anybody that makes however many dials a day and gets hung up on like, I've done it. It's hard work. I don't care what you say. That's real hard work. And I just say that because I was a technical founder. You know, I've been an MSP. I get the, oh, it's a lot of hard work to hire this person and this technical project and do the things. But I undervalued sales and how much work it really is.

[00:13:27] And so whether it's your team, whether it's you or even owners, just having something in the W column is, you know, probably the biggest like psychological lift, you know, with a $15 or 15 grand, just that somebody finally said yes to something. Well, right. And like, I didn't realize that coming into this company, that's the first net new client brought into that company in probably 12 months. Wow. So that tells you where they were at as a company.

[00:13:54] And that is no disrespect to Tobin, because again, like I said, I'm there because of what we're doing. But from a company wide standpoint, looking at everybody from a technical to the owners to everybody, it's like, oh, wait, we now have a brand new client with a new logo coming in that now we're doing projects for and we're having kickoff meetings for and doing all that stuff. So it was a good, it's a great experience. But it doesn't negate the fact that we're still at that point where, like you said, what's your pipeline look like? What do you have out there?

[00:14:24] And yeah, we've got proposals. We've got things in the pipeline. It's coming. But do I think we're going to close anything significant this month? Probably not. You know, you know, and it might get pushed to January. And who knows? I think people miss the fact that your MSP sales pipeline with cold outreach or whatever it is that you're doing combination of is very different than the referral pipeline. Right. And so I'd love your take on it.

[00:14:54] But even like there's X number of, you know, a few months to build the team, build the procedures, put the tools in place just to generate the leads. But then they think that's it. Right. But no, if your average sales cycle is six months. Right. Then it's six months from then. Yes. Before the revenue starts showing up. Right. Right. Yeah. So help me connect that. Like if you're able to say, hey, look, we're going to generate these leads.

[00:15:19] And this is the leading indicator to understand that we're going to hit that nut or I'm underperforming or we're doing better. But there's a real sales cycle because I think after you've invested, I think it's easy to look the other way for 90 days on a lot of hires and go give them time. But there's just something I feel like in the next three to six months where you get antsy, at least I did as an owner. And I'm like, I want results. And how do I know?

[00:15:47] And I think from my perspective, it's also just I didn't originally understand it. It was almost like a black box. You know, sure, you had some calls, but what does that really mean? I don't you know, you understand when you're getting certain outcomes or if you're getting enough conversations per day that appointments are going to come. And you understand if you get enough appointments, deals are going to come like you understand those sort of things. But if you haven't been through it, you just think, oh, you're having a lots of and worse yet.

[00:16:16] I think as an owner, I'm used to having, you know, two sales meetings and one of them closes because they're all referrals. And they're basically just, you know, easy layups. And in my experience, when you do cold outreach and other things, you are not going to close anywhere near the percentage. That is a fantastic point, because, again, trying to teach, showing them this whole new system. Right. Because what we're doing and how we're bringing in leads.

[00:16:41] I mean, since since the first of October through today, I think my leads team has something generated something like 57 or 58 new first time appointments for myself and my other sales rep. That's huge. So those are all 58, 57 from zero. From zero. Right. Hiring, building processes, building teams. And the reason I say that is, first of all, that's actual high number, I think.

[00:17:07] But secondly, to try to make this relatable MSPs, I feel like if we built out a tech team from scratch, we would say, oh, yeah, well, it takes some time to to stand up this RMM or this PSA. And then we've got to build our processes and we've got our team. So it's going to take us three or four months before we're ready to start, you know, processing tickets or really moving the needle in projects or whatever the thing is becoming more efficient.

[00:17:35] So the fact that you can stand up a team and produce the leads, you know, like that is is a testament to the process. Yeah. But, yeah, you get that many leads coming in. Right. So that's that that is one thing right there. So you got that many leads coming in, getting those people introduced to Tobin, which is a completely foreign concept. They've never heard of us.

[00:17:55] So now you've got to figure out how do we have those conversations and and as opposed to warm leads or referral leads, you've got to figure out that half or more of those are going to be ones that are probably not that interested. Right. They're already in a contract. They're already here. So then you've got to sort through those. And then there's going to be the other ones that do want to have some sort of, you know, maybe move them to a discovery. Maybe move them to a business assessment or a technical assessment. And like you said, you know, what does that sales cycle look like?

[00:18:24] And what I've found is, you know, you're going to stumble across one once in a while that might be ready to buy or you can move into a 30 or 60 day sales cycle. But realistically, you're probably talking more like three to six months. Yeah. You put them there. You stay in touch with them. You stay there. You keep working them through the funnel. And then, you know, hopefully sometime those are going to close in the next three months, six months, 12 months. So you're laying all those seeds for the next year. So, yeah, you're right.

[00:18:51] From an owner's perspective, what does 52 leads actually mean? I don't think they understand. Like, you know, that's the work that we're doing today that's going to pay dividends down the road in six months, 12 months or a year. Yeah. They get a little antsy. Like you said, it's like, I want results now. But yeah, OK, we're getting results now, but we may not actually show for it today. I think I had a couple of reactions. One is, holy crap, 52 is more than we had in the last decade or something. You know, like, what are we going to do? Like, we better hire more people.

[00:19:20] Like, I don't know what we're going to even do. And then, of course, you start to see the reality of like, most of those are not ready to buy. Most of those are not closing now. And then, at least for me, you kind of go, what is a lead? What does it really mean? And will it close? And then for me, I get impatient. I'm like, I'm making this investment. Like, is this just, you know, pleasant conversations with people? Like, you know, when is this going to actually kind of pay off?

[00:19:52] So, how's that been with them? And especially, like, I'm fascinated by the fact that they were where a lot of MSPs are, which is not growing. Yeah. You know, not really doing anything. And so, it's got to be a kind of a 180, you know, mindset shift. Right. Well, yeah. And I mean, not only, yeah, they were not growing and then bringing in these leads. And the lead system that I brought in, and I mean, is really bringing in a system of outbound callers.

[00:20:21] So, we hired an entire team, sourced them from the Philippines. Okay. So, I've got a full-on leads team doing lead generation, stood up a CRM, brought in a HubSpot, spun that up, got the leads team calling. You'd probably get data. Yeah. Right. And using tools like Zoom Info and Apollo to source all that information. And, you know, so we're doing all of that stuff behind the scenes to get the data out there.

[00:20:49] And then you've got these callers who really, from a company of 13 people, and most of them have been with the company, the shortest tenure is like five years. Most of them have been there 15 to 20 years. Now, all of a sudden, we've got a team of three people from the Philippines. Myself is a new one. I've got another marketing person there. So, we've got five new hires that have all come on in the last four months. All new faces, new people, new backgrounds. It's like a complete culture shock and a 180 to the company.

[00:21:20] But in a good way, right? It's like this whole new fresh energy coming in, and it blows their mind a little bit, which is good. Because I've noticed that there's a whole new fresh energy and excitement in the company about, like, what does the future hold? Does that resonate not just through the owners, but to the team? A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Up and down the stack. Like, from the help desk all the way up to the top of the engineers to, you know, the operations manager. Everybody's like, wow, this is really cool. We're seeing new this.

[00:21:49] And we do a lot of weekly meetings and stand-up meetings and end-of-day stuff like that. And we're bringing in the callers and our leads team going to all those meetings with everybody. So, they're in the meetings with us just like their team member, even though they're independent contractors or whatever. They're treated just like they're part of the team, which is really cool to see. Why is that important to you?

[00:22:15] Because it really makes, you know, in that VA world where you're bringing in those outsourced people halfway around the country in the Philippines, I mean, a lot of times they're treated just like a commodity. They are. Just like a tool, right? That's right. You know, you hire them, you fire them, you bring them in. If they don't work, you're there. And what I've found is through working with this, you treat them well, treat them like an employee, treat them like people, treat them like somebody that you really respect on your team. The performance level is amazing.

[00:22:45] And what you find is it really is life-changing for a lot of them. You don't realize the economies of scale are so different. And, you know, we pay top of scale for what they're asking over there. We give them bonuses for what they're looking for. And it's really been really changing their world. And they continue to make references and recommendations.

[00:23:07] And now I've got a complete book of people that they know, that they've worked with in the past that are literally just waiting for me if we need to grow and want to hire more and need to expand. I've got a bench of probably 15 or 20 other VAs that are capable of anything from, you know, graphic design to engineers to anything you could imagine. That's a testament of how you're treating the folks you have right there. It's really cool. Yeah. So I want to talk about this.

[00:23:35] I have built out an SDR team and I never heard anybody had SDR experience because the tenure was usually pretty short. And I don't care what you, if you think it's easy to make $100 a day, you've never done $100 a day, in my opinion. And so no matter what your target is, I found that it's a high turnover job. It's not easy. No matter how many playbooks and processes I've built out, it's hard for them. But also it means a lot of people just, they need more help.

[00:24:03] There's a lot more coaching, not only listening calls, but just a lot more because they tend to be kind of one of their first professional jobs. New, green, that sort of thing. And so I found that challenging to do in office. And my point is remote work, when you are dealing with somebody more senior, more non-commodity, you can look for this CS background in this, whatever it is.

[00:24:28] But to me, building an outbound SDR team remotely has got to be one of the hardest things. How do you even find the right people? Let's start with that. How do you, for me, working with them out of the Philippines is it's really been a matter of finding those one or two key people that I call my team leads. And the one that's helping me the most, his name is Eldon. He's a great dude.

[00:24:58] That's actually his real name, by the way. You know, you hear all that all the time. But Eldon, he's been a great guy. He's my team lead over there and has been just so instrumental in helping me find and cultivate and coach the right ones. And find the ones that have the right mindset and mentality. But we do morning huddles. We do continuous education after lunch. So we do like sales coaching and training. So there's a couple of different coaches, sales coaches that I work with.

[00:25:23] And like I enroll them in all of the different coaching that I that I personally do. I share that training with them. So we spend about an hour a day working on continuing education, working on sales coaching, working on best practices and tips. So and then being on the end of the day call, being included in the team training. It just brings them in and helps them kind of feel like they're part of the team. Yeah. Which helps a lot on that side of it.

[00:25:52] And, you know, and then and then looking for those ones that have that drive to find those diamonds in the rough. I guess we look to call it, you know, it's like mining for mining for gold out there. And they always don't mind doing it, you know, and again, that's that's the goal for working with those SDRs like that. Those people that do that, they just make that number of calls and they live for those one or two golden nuggets out there and do really well. I found it's not easy to find people with drive and often salespeople.

[00:26:21] The best sale they made was when I hired them. So whether they're in my office or across the world, like how do you figure out which of these people can actually do this? Yeah. That's a great question. I mean, a lot of it is just, you know, spending the time working with them through the coaching. You can tell if they've got the drive for me. I've got an outside the outside sales team is one thing.

[00:26:50] Knowing where their personal goals are when we have our one on ones, just finding out what they're personally motivated by. Why somewhat helps me gauge where their level of abilities lie. You know, from that standpoint, for our inside sales reps, you know, how willing are they are to stick with the process?

[00:27:12] Like, that's my big thing is, you know, to make this work, whether we're doing it from the sales or the outbound calling, it really is. You do have to stick with the process. And if they're willing to believe in the process and follow the process and adhere to the process, that really does work well. So, how do you figure that out when you're recruiting them? Like, that's, I think once you bring them on and, you know, maybe in a few weeks or a month or two, you could figure that out.

[00:27:39] But, you know, most of us, especially when I say us, technical founders that have a little sales experience, you know, we don't know how to understand who can sell and who can talk like they can sell. So, you're right. Yeah, that's a great question. I don't know. I guess I always just look for that person that's got the it factor, right? I don't know.

[00:28:02] I mean, I've just kind of always had that innate ability as we go through the interview process and we have those conversations and we start digging into kind of what motivates you, what drives me. Tell me about what, you know, what sets you apart from everybody else. Why are you different than everyone else? And, you know, I always have had that ability to just kind of read people and know what motivates them. And I don't know that I can quite quantify that. Yeah. Maybe it's one of your superpowers that you're able to figure out.

[00:28:31] Or maybe I'm just not willing to share that. I don't know. Maybe both, right? If you could go back 10 years and tell Mike, here's one thing to focus on. Here's something I'd love for you to lean into. What would that be? Oh, that's a great question. 10 years. Yeah. Because this is before you had all that figured out, right? Yeah. You know, it would be. Yeah. I mean, I guess it would be just to just to trust the process.

[00:29:00] Because so often early on, we kept thinking that it was a moving target. Like, you know, we didn't see you didn't see that instant success. And the owner at that time was very much, you know, like, oh, hey, we're not seeing that success. You know, stay the course. Trust the process. Just keep keep keep working it. You know, keep doing the grind. And the and the results will come. So if I could go back and tell myself, you know, hey, trust the process.

[00:29:30] Like, that would be the thing that I would say to myself 10 years ago would be like, hey, just trust the process. Stay on the path. Trust the process. It's going to work itself out. And, you know, don't get don't get your don't get too worked up about it. It'll work. I'm curious about this. You came into what is probably a stereotypical MSP. Maybe they've been there longer, but by stereotypical, maybe not go to sales, not growing. Like, unfortunately, that's a lot of the industry.

[00:29:57] How did you know that? Like, what did you look for? Or because the reality is you could crush it and they don't they're not going to keep up the delivery. I think maybe another reality is a lot of technical organizations, which most of the folks tend to be. They don't appreciate sales. I'm not saying they have to know what you really do, but some of them, I think, almost look down at it. So I think there's a lot of factors. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm curious.

[00:30:27] You could have hitched your wagon to a lot of places. What was it you were looking for to say, if I come in here, are they ready? Will this work? Yeah. Well, I mean, there was that point in time where literally after that kind of that fiasco happened and I almost left the industry and I'm just like, I don't even know that I want to even do this any longer. I'm kind of looking at it going like, what is it that's going to make me want to stick this out? What do what I know?

[00:30:54] I can do what I do, whether it's going to be in the MSP industry or, you know, gosh, whatever. I could go sell real estate or cars. Probably it's all kind of the same thing. But why would I stick this out in this industry? I met with the owner and I met with his wife and I kind of met with the operations manager. And, you know, at the end of the day, what really kind of motivated me was, you know, having that conversation with them and looking them directly in the eye and going, we are committed to growth.

[00:31:25] We are a profitable company. We have money in the bank. I've heard about your system. I believe in you and I'm going to give you the runway to do it and I'm going to trust you. Like to have somebody look you in the eye and me telling them, like, we're going to do this. And it is a completely bizarre system to anything that they've ever done. Right. And look me in the eye and go, I'm going to give you the time and the runway to figure it out. I'm going to trust that it's going to work. That I guess that was what sold it to me.

[00:31:53] I'm like, OK, well, you know, I guess now it's on my shoulders to figure it out. But that really did say a lot for me. Yeah, I think you there's some really good gems. And we just said, right. Too often we're not committed to change. I think unpacking what you said, we're not confident that we want to change as a company or as leaders. And will we will the team?

[00:32:21] Because even if I say, let's do this, but I haven't really discussed it with the team, they might think, why are you doing this? This equals more work or, you know, all sorts of other things. And then lastly, that part you mentioned of like, I'm committed. I'm confident in you. I trust in you because it's where it all starts. Right. Without trust, this is nothing. And that means that they know it's not going to be overnight.

[00:32:46] And I think there's a lot of us that in the dopamine filled world we live in, you know, we want to we want to scroll the next thing. But we got to lean in and make that commitment and trust and say, I trust Mike. I'm going to I'm going to lean in because the reality is it's they can't give you a month. They can't give you three months. Right. There's absolutely no reason to hire you for three months and to decide if like you made a ton of revenue. Let's let's keep going or not.

[00:33:15] But I know I've been in that spot. Yeah. As an owner, I'm like, oh, man, three months in. Did you or not? No, let's just let's go to the next thing. Yeah. That'd be the worst thing. So amazing that they they were able to to sell the sales guy. I want to challenge you on one thing, though, because I have hired the real estate guy. I have hired the guy that sold cars and I'm sure you're better than I was.

[00:33:41] But in my opinion, it's much more nuanced and complex to sell managed services than which of these cars do you like? Sure. OK, sure. Right. Or I think real estate is a little different, maybe a little more complex. But I don't mean the complexity of real estate. I actually mean the people. But I actually think it's more of a people business. Just there are always people in the market. They're always there.

[00:34:07] You really just need to kind of understand that and a little bit like ours. Which of these would you like? Because they're both tangible things you can touch. Yeah. You can decide if you like the granite at this house. You can decide if the seat is comfortable in this car or whatever it is you're looking for. You can touch these things. You can't touch managed services. And obviously you're talking about B2B versus B2C.

[00:34:32] There's just a lot of different that I feel like a lot of people, I don't know if it's been my lack of system or process, but a lot of people that might be good at selling any of those things or cell phones or something else. They can't make the transition to having conversation with the CEO to even book an appointment, let alone close when you're talking about the complexity of managed services. And I've got a $10 million business or $50 million business. I've got to trust you, the IT of it.

[00:35:02] I mean, the car has warranty. If I don't like it, I'll trade it in. Right. What are your thoughts on that? That's great. That is great. Because, you know, it is true. It is a completely different beast. And what I have found in direct response to that is those conversations do have to be very nuanced because you're selling a solution. You're selling the outcome.

[00:35:28] You're selling the perceived value of a potential future problem that they don't even realize is potentially a problem. Yes. And every conversation that I have, and I mean, without exception, and I mean, I've had 57 of them, whatever it's already been in the last couple months. Every one of us is like, yeah, we're pretty good. We got a guy for that. We're already set. We got everything we need. And, you know, then my job is to be like, well, yeah, okay. But, you know, what about this? Or what about that?

[00:35:57] Or why are you saying that is the case? You know, you got to try to understand beyond what they're saying to understand and get them to understand like, well, what happens if that is the case? And trying to paint that picture of what does life look like if that something happens? What if the house burns down? What happens if you're breached? What happens if this happens? What if, you know, and trying to have those conversations when those are not great conversations to have that nobody wants to have those conversations.

[00:36:24] So that is a very tricky sales process to have. And I think that's kind of where I've been able to have the ability to paint that picture of a solution and an outcome and a perceived outcome long before you even get to that close. Right. By being able to plant the seeds in the beginning and being able to kind of steer them in that conversation of like, why are we having this conversation?

[00:36:53] And what is the potential outcome without them necessarily knowing why we're having it is what's been able to lead me to success along the way. And again, it's all part of kind of like that stage process of what I've got in my mind of like, okay, here's like step one, step two, step three. How do we get from, you know, the first FTA all the way to the proposal? And you do have to follow that process. But that I think that's kind of what you were looking for, right?

[00:37:19] Is like, how do you have that high level conversation about the perceived solution and the perceived outcome when nobody really wants to have that conversation? And that is that is tricky. It is. But it is different. It is not like any other sale, whether you're selling if you're selling project work. That's simple. Right. Okay, I'm going to sell a camera, a switch, a router, a firewall, whatever it is. You know, you got a thing. Yeah. Now you're selling managed services.

[00:37:44] You're selling a solution and an outcome and a process on a what if scenario. Yeah. Yeah. And usually, like you said, displace the one that's there, which is makes it even harder. Yes. Yeah. You're always trying to kick that other guy out. Yeah. Yeah. So, Mike, you have a wealth of knowledge. So for everybody that's watching this and listening, is there anything that you would offer them if they're going through this, experiencing this? Should they reach out to you?

[00:38:12] Is there something you would be able or willing to help with? Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, that's I think we talked about it. Maybe it was before or whatever. But, you know, part of my passion is I love building things. And part of the process and why I came to Tobin was to build this process. And, you know, the owners at Tobin were gracious enough to let me build this process for them. And they knew going into this that if we could offer this service and we build it out, I could even do that for other MSPs.

[00:38:41] Maybe not right in my back door, but anybody else that would definitely want to, you know, potentially have me help them figure out what does that process look like? If they want to figure out how to stand up a CRM and stand up a calling team and stand up like the whole thing and figure out what that sales process is, just have them reach out to me. Give me a call. Shoot me a text. Send me an email. Whatever it looks like. I'm sure you'll have all my contact information in here and we can get together that way. Happy to connect. That's an amazing gift. I think almost every MSP is struggling with.

[00:39:10] So I'm sure you will find lots of takers. I would love to help. Let me flip that around on you. Lots of people listening and watching, the best people in the industry. What's one ask that you would have and say, this is something I'd love help with or love to talk with somebody about? Ooh, that's a good one. Yeah.

[00:39:34] I mean, probably the biggest thing, the ask that I would have would be, you know, give me, give me, give me something that's coming down the pipe in the industry. I mean, one of the things that I'm always looking for is that insight. Right. If I can provide my prospects, my clients some nugget of wisdom, some key insight that helps me get further in that conversation.

[00:39:59] I think with the reach you have, if we could share that insight knowledge, it'll help all of us get further in those conversations. Because for me doing the cold calling, that's one of the key things that we do in our talk tracks is providing insight and knowledge. Even though we don't necessarily always ask for that appointment, we always provide an insight and some knowledge, send out an email, do some follow-up work.

[00:40:23] So if anybody's got any key insights into the industry, some things that maybe, you know, that you're seeing out there that isn't, that you're running into on a day-to-day basis that maybe nobody else is talking about, shoot it over. Let's have a conversation about it. Maybe I can, you know, share that with some of my clients and prospects and, you know, get that, get that out in the industry. Yeah. So whether you can help Mike or he can help you, make sure to reach out to him.

[00:40:51] Mike, thank you so much for being willing to take time out of your valuable schedule here at GrowCon and speak with me on MSP Mindset today. Sounds great. Thank you.