Mastering MDF for MSP Success

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Powered Services Podcast, your one-stop shop for all the information,

[00:00:09] strategies and insights you need to supercharge your MSP. Get ready to hear from other MSPs

[00:00:19] and industry experts in the trenches and behind the scenes to help you change the future

[00:00:25] of your MSP and increase your MRR. Now, here's your host, Dan Tomashezki.

[00:00:34] Greetings everybody, welcome to another episode of the Powered Services Podcast. I'm your host, Dan Tomashezki.

[00:00:40] I'm excited to be with you and as always wonderful co-host, Wilbyshup, how are you?

[00:00:46] I'm good, Dan, how are you? Been too long since we recorded an episode.

[00:00:51] We just had one go out like a week ago, so not terribly far.

[00:00:55] So we're back in the saddle, we're kicking, we're here bringing awesome content to you, our MSPs.

[00:01:02] You know today I asked Wil, I said I wanted to take a second.

[00:01:06] We just did a webinar a couple weeks ago and it was very well attended and I wanted to reiterate it

[00:01:11] because some folks don't make it on webinars and it's the topic of MDF.

[00:01:16] And if you don't know what MDF means, it's marketing development funds that are available through vendors in the space.

[00:01:23] We specifically have it as a part of our global partner program at Kasey and Dato.

[00:01:27] And I want to take you through with Wil an MDF overview, just what is MDF?

[00:01:35] What does success kind of look like if I wanted to start leveraging MDF?

[00:01:39] Or maybe you're leveraging MDF today and you're looking for a new idea.

[00:01:44] We're going to walk through the top four areas that we're seeing for MSPs that are generating the highest ROI.

[00:01:52] So we have the ability through our partner program to track and work with you, the MSPs.

[00:01:58] We see what events are working, we see what events aren't working.

[00:02:02] And today we're going to walk through and list them off in order, the ones that are generating the highest ROI when MSPs do them.

[00:02:10] And there's a couple in here when we did the webinar, people were like, that is such an awesome idea.

[00:02:15] I haven't thought of something like that.

[00:02:17] And then some of them are ones we've heard of before but we'll add a little bit of a twist to it because we're starting to see the more creative you get the better ROI results.

[00:02:29] So you ready? You ready to rock into this?

[00:02:31] Let's dive into it.

[00:02:34] So let's go through it real quick.

[00:02:36] So today I kind of set it a little bit in the beginning.

[00:02:39] The most successful MSPs are leveraging events to build their brand awareness, drive new leads, upsell current customers, form new partnerships and more importantly, you know probably at the end of the day, you're trying to drive more profits to your business.

[00:02:55] So MDF allows you as the MSP to grow their business by leveraging funds to host events, campaigns, generate revenue and so much more.

[00:03:05] But just getting the funds isn't going to help you.

[00:03:09] Like you know what I mean? Like we can't just say here's a check for 5,000 good luck figured out there really needs to be a plan in place will and we see this all the time when we're structuring and going through events and things like that.

[00:03:22] Is you really need to sit down and put a plan together of what does success look like?

[00:03:28] You know, what are the goals? What are the expectations from this event?

[00:03:32] What is the ROI? What's the attendance?

[00:03:34] Like you need to put a full blueprint together for your event so that way you can really dive in and see success.

[00:03:41] The MSPs that are doing that.

[00:03:44] That are defining what success looks like, putting those goals in place and really tracking through are definitely seeing a horror ROI.

[00:03:53] And I think you can attest to that.

[00:03:55] 100% you know you touched on something there having a blueprint, you know the plan for your event doesn't stop when the events overwrite it goes all the way through to the follow up.

[00:04:05] That's really where the money's at and the follow up.

[00:04:07] That's something people overlook a lot of times when they put these things together.

[00:04:11] Yeah, and then think so let's go. We set our goals, we set our expectations, we know who our attendances were setting the ROI but then what type of event do you want to have?

[00:04:20] Is it going to be a breakfast? Is it going to be a lunch? Is it a dinner? Is it a hockey game? Is it a football game?

[00:04:26] Is it a wine tasting event?

[00:04:28] You know, what type of event are you trying to go after?

[00:04:32] And you know, more importantly when you look at what success looks like it really falls into the type of event you're going to have.

[00:04:38] If you're looking for sea level executives then you need to hold an event that sea level executives would come to.

[00:04:45] If you're looking for, you know, so just take that demographic and find an activity that's really in the alley of the people you're trying to come after.

[00:04:54] And then look at the vendors that are out there in the space. Like think about this, we have a team of over 60 people on it that are geared towards helping you the MSP be able to go out there and not just give you the check and say go have an event but we're actually sending staff out there.

[00:05:14] We're also having staff help you prep for that event. We're helping you make sure that your registrants are going like we're helping you from start to finish.

[00:05:21] So you don't have to go out of the loan, leverage the resources that the vendors are out there having, you know, as a part of their programs to really capitalize on that event.

[00:05:31] I mean, and I will you oversee the powered services team. I mean, we see people daily coming to us to help them with events and it makes a big difference for someone that's never done this.

[00:05:43] Absolutely. And you know, one of the things we hear a lot then is, you know, the planning of it. How do I get people there? What, you know, what type of event should I have? What's a good idea for?

[00:05:53] I think that's what we're going to talk to you next is the events that are having success and, you know, the big thing to think of there when you start talking about event types is you've got to offer something right to see their entertainment value or its value in the content.

[00:06:06] Some of the map nature, it's something that people want to come for. They know what they're going to take away from it.

[00:06:11] So let's talk a little bit about the types of events we're seeing that are having success.

[00:06:16] Yeah. And this is so far. We're a little bit over halfway through the year and these are the events that we're seeing with the top ROI number one slot is obviously its live events.

[00:06:27] It's pivoted pretty dramatically obviously in the, you know, COVID timeframe. The webinar structure there's still on the list but it's moved down live events have really picked up and we're seeing partners that are doing happy hours after hours lunch and learns top golf cyber security type, you know, live event training is being the number one ROI so far.

[00:06:52] The first two quarters of the year and I think you know the example I'm going to give I'm going to try to give an example in each of these.

[00:07:00] I think this is absolutely one of the coolest ideas we've heard probably four or five partners talk about this.

[00:07:07] This guy actually put it in place he did a cyber incident dinner.

[00:07:13] Okay, and this was really cool. Well, I think you and I we heard one person talk about this when we were at connect and now we had another person that did something very similar in the way I'll reference it is.

[00:07:26] We've all heard or probably some of us may have gone to like a murder mystery dinner where you go and there's clues and you have to make decisions and at the end you see if you're right and stuff like that.

[00:07:39] And this gentleman brought in over 53 attendees to an event at and what they did was a cyber incident dinner and they went through and had it was geared towards sea level executives.

[00:07:52] And what they did was as they went through the process of saying okay, we're going to take you through this next hour or next night I think it was 90 minutes that they did it in.

[00:08:02] In the next 90 minutes, we're going to go through and we're going to take you through an incident but you're making the decisions as we go along.

[00:08:11] You're going to have to make the decisions as this is your company and we want to see towards the end how well you feel and prepare it and we're going to educate along the way.

[00:08:22] He got to the end. I mean, he was asking the questions okay, a cyber incident just occurred your staff comes into your office and let you know that all the computers are locked out what do you do.

[00:08:32] And there's like four answers then it's the next and like they went through I think 15 to 20 some odd different questions but it was getting the owners the sea level executives to really be thinking about their company really kind of making them go wow if this happened to my company what would what would happen.

[00:08:51] And that's the exact thing that blew my mind will he got to the end and he asked that all of you just went through a cyber incident.

[00:08:59] How many of you feel that in this room today you're prepared to be able to go through one of these you know what to do your teams know what to do and everybody from your IT if there's internal external are prepared to go through this not a single hand one of.

[00:09:16] Oh I love this one that you can't sit through it right you can't blink out you can't go off into space somewhere in your mind you've really got to think through the whole thing.

[00:09:25] Yeah he generated 45 leads from this event and remember not a single hand went up saying they did it so out of the 53 people 45 of them basically have said we want to go further with you we want to look at IT we want to look at the making sure we're prepared for incidents and that we've got these things in place now this is early numbers we have.

[00:09:45] He's closed 2 deals so far from this for 62k and MRR and not to mention the fact that he still got about 40 some odd appointments to go through because they got a laundry list probably the most leads I've seen that have been credible good genuine leads.

[00:10:02] I actually think it was a problem because he generated too many good leads that you couldn't get to right at the end but.

[00:10:09] It is an awesome thing to see the just the creativity to engage people to make them think about their place and make it be interactive man it was a home run.

[00:10:20] Yeah and this I believe then has to be the in the category of live events the one that's converted but it's like an 80% conversion rate for people raising their hands so that's awesome.

[00:10:32] Yeah I mean so just an example there I think that one really stood out to me it definitely shows why the ROI is coming in from those events we've seen a few others very similar to that where you can do like a live customer event where people have sort up like hacker rooms and they run dark web

[00:10:49] scans and they talk about compliance and things it really fits into that live event we've seen it they work they do a really good thing so think about live events you know happy hours after hours lunch and learn sport events whatever trainings customer you know appreciation things

[00:11:08] you could do a customer appreciation thing and still generate MRR so put that into your consideration number two on the list I actually probably will was the most surprised at this one but digital marketing campaigns have really picked up and they weren't even on the list a couple of years ago

[00:11:28] but digital marketing is really where people are starting to see some traction when it comes to LinkedIn and SEO ads.

[00:11:36] Yeah you see this a lot then as far as a talking point you know people with people are starting to market in the MSP space they're starting to understand the value of it and they're getting good at it they're really starting to build their chops up with it.

[00:11:49] Yeah and this we had a success story that were bringing in you know in an MSP who ran to the in in purchase a hockey suite but they put out social ads you know asking people to look for a network assessment or for current customers for like a referral process but they ran it through the digital and digital ads

[00:12:10] and they were able to go out there and generate over 67.8K down to the point eights I guess I want to make sure our stats are accurate and they they had people so they took a hockey suite they made it fun they made it interactive they asked people that did a network assessment held a meeting with them got an opportunity to be in you know in the drawing for the hockey suite

[00:12:35] and it turned out I mean they added over 67K in MRR they had 28 contracts that came from that some of them were back up you know only but they had different things in place and over the 28 contracts they also had 38 current clients that benefit from this promotion.

[00:12:55] So man again it just goes back to get creative maybe it's a football suite maybe it's a hockey baseball maybe it's a college whatever but having people you know have a meeting with you to have a chance to win something or be a part of something fun is really gotten people into interest.

[00:13:16] Yeah we've got a little bit of a theme going here right then something they want to do or information that they want.

[00:13:22] It goes back to the beginning of success it's tailoring it to the people that you're trying to get and every one of these seem to kind of be hitting in that and they're definitely seeing the ROI and the results.

[00:13:35] Trade shows definitely coming back up on the list you know we haven't seen that on the list in a while but trade shows and expos are really really becoming.

[00:13:45] The new thing and not new thing but it's coming back on the list again and one of the things we see is if you're in the healthcare industry if you're in this construction manufacturing financial whatever there's associations.

[00:14:02] And getting out there getting into those association trade shows and things like that positioning yourself as the you know I used to do them in the senior living one and we would go to senior living shows.

[00:14:15] We'd set up our booth we'd explain why we are the one you should be choosing for senior living facilities and we would just do a really bang up job of leads with going in and positioning ourselves that way it's a big opportunity they come a lot of times with speaking engagement and you can sometimes even close as sale at your booth.

[00:14:36] Yeah so like there's a lot of benefits to doing this.

[00:14:39] We used to do these for healthcare you know we would do medical group management for the state and the other thing that's great about these is you can have a testimonial right there right if you've got a customer at the event they can bring their friend up to your booth and talking it's the warm handoff and a really great opportunity to have those.

[00:14:57] Those interactions and people there that are champions for your your MSB.

[00:15:00] Yeah in the success story of this is so we talked earlier on about how our staff can be a part of this and we recently went to an event with an MSP we sent our specialists to really be able to go out there and understand and be able to guide and talk through things.

[00:15:19] And we helped a company that had 325 companies at the event they were at.

[00:15:24] They utilized our specialist and helping from a speaking spot and driving people to the booth to be able to do demos and actually take them through what would happen in a disaster and like be able to actually show it.

[00:15:36] And at the time they closed just around 60 K but I know updated numbers now it's been like a week or two since we got the update and it's well over 90 K now.

[00:15:49] So going to a show 325 companies they were positioning back up disaster preparedness going through a lot of different things and been able to generate over 90 K in that MDF cost them I think it was like $5,000.

[00:16:03] So I was going to ask you what cost was so $5,000 to sponsor the event to generate 90 K in MRR I would say that's a pretty good ROI.

[00:16:13] Yeah I'll take that every time.

[00:16:16] So I mean it's just another thing to think about again you're going to these shows don't go out of the loan leverage the different vendors in the space we have tremendous knowledge were able to get you some resources to be an extension of your team at these events positioning you for the best spot to go out there and win.

[00:16:35] Now let's get to number 4.

[00:16:37] Number 4 what we're still seeing is on the list it's moved down a few slots but still generating good ROI as webinars.

[00:16:44] Virtual conferences customer trainings in virtual panels and well I think this is something that I've talked about with quite a few MSPs here in the last couple of weeks is I'm seeing a trend on virtual panels which I think is unique and hear me out on this.

[00:17:02] A virtual panel you hold it with other community based businesses that are in your area county community whatever you want to look at and you're holding it with other folks and bringing them on and talking about topics that are hot for other business owners and you're leading it.

[00:17:19] And you're positioning it and running it and then nurturing things like you kind of maybe spearing in some tech talk into it but it's positioning it's allowing other businesses to bring their customers on to it to see themselves the owners or the bank owners or the CEOs or whoever.

[00:17:36] But you're getting other community based businesses on that are going to help promote it chambers associations things like that it's a little bit different than a webinar but can still yield the same results.

[00:17:49] Yeah absolutely and the other thing there Dan is when you're on the panel with someone in the community and they've got a sphere of influence you're associated right yeah you get a little credibility straight out of the gate.

[00:18:01] So I mean I think it's just people are getting creative because I think a lot of people got webinared out everybody was getting out there Uber each card or whatever to go to a you know good or webinar and you know I think a lot of people got webinar now but like get a little creative and that's what we're seeing now virtual panels customer trainings.

[00:18:20] And maybe you like making your own little virtual conference for people to go to seeing really good results the hot topic is still security it's really top of mind on everybody you can't go around and not see or hear about security but bringing in other people in the community to talk about it.

[00:18:39] It can normally help seal the deal and again position you as the one that everyone should go to because the different businesses that are there their customers see you and associate you to that company and it really helps you have that leg up.

[00:18:52] Yeah we've seen a few folks too that have reached out to local law enforcement in some cases you know FBI resources asking to join and give a point of view from from a law enforcement perspective and those organizations are happy to join so that's a thought as well.

[00:19:08] Yeah so at the end of the day I think what we were trying to really make sure today is that you know make sure that you're getting the most financial assistance by leveraging MDF funds.

[00:19:25] You should consider you know the teams that are available to support you and don't go out of the loan look at it help it MDF's going to help you with brand awareness it's going to help you with customer acquisition it's going to help you with a competitive edge.

[00:19:40] It's going to help you with upselling and cross selling it's going to help you with market expansion.

[00:19:46] And really at the end of the day if you execute on these correctly it can be some of the best events you'll do you just have to make sure that you have measurable ROI and making sure that they're bringing the right activity refine your strategy focus on those strategies that are yielding the best results.

[00:20:04] You might do four events in one's better than the other three okay then we lean on that and keep going more and more but it is more crucial than ever before I think

[00:20:15] to leverage MDF because in my mind if you're not leveraging your competitors in your area are taking money and going to bat and taking away opportunities from you so I don't know will anything you want to end us on.

[00:20:28] Yeah I'd give one last thought and I think we kind of touched on this at the beginning when you were talking through what we have set up your other team and that's it if you feel like this is something you like to do but you don't have an idea of what you might like to do what the events going to look like still reach out to our team you know those folks that are that are.

[00:20:45] They're great they've seen a lot of things they can listen to kind of what you have from a resource perspective and help you piece together what you might want to do or throw out a few different ideas and help you put something together and get started.

[00:20:56] Yeah so again if you like well said if this is something if you're doing MDF events take your MDF events to the next level step it up try something new get a little more creative

[00:21:08] if you're not seeing the ROI and the results you know let's try to go after something we just talked about that we're seeing the ROI and the results we can help you with.

[00:21:16] If you're someone that's never done an event don't go ahead and alone we'll talk about it we've got proper teams and things here if you're not a customer we'd love you to be one or reach out to your current vendors and see how they can help and support you but I can promise you on the Kaseyadato team here we've got an extensive team built out

[00:21:36] tremendous knowledge in MDF and how to go at this and most of the people have been at MSPs or have been around the MSPs and so long that we're experienced and we can really help you take it to the next level.

[00:21:49] So appreciate you all listening hopefully you took something out of this one I'm hoping there's a nugget in there or we got you thinking about MDF because it's you know we're the halfway point of the year.

[00:22:02] If you hit your sales numbers you wanted to get to have you gotten to all the goals the leads and the things you're looking for if you're answering no to that there's funds available to help you get to you know to that goal or that number you're trying to get to by the end of the year so let's go at it and let's have it.

[00:22:20] So until next time this is the Powered Services podcast and we'll see everybody here again next week.

[00:22:27] Yep see you next time.

[00:22:29] Alright everybody have a good one.

[00:22:59] The Powered Services podcast signing on.