[00:00:00] Introduction and Guest Presentation

[00:00:00] Carrie Richardson: My name is Carrie Richardson, and I am one of the partners at Richardson & Richardson Consulting, and the host of WIN. Today I'm with Robb Rogers, the Founder of the new AI sales enablement platform, Sales Maturity. How are you doing today Robb?

[00:00:15] Robb Rogers: I'm doing well, Kerry.

[00:00:16] Robb Rogers: How are you doing today? 

[00:00:17] Robb Rogers: I'm doing great. I'm recovering from it nation. I finally got a full night's sleep for a couple of nights in a row. So I'm feeling good. Yeah. 

[00:00:26] Robb Rogers: That's hard charging it nation. Yeah. 

[00:00:28] Discussing the Pitch It Event

[00:00:28] Carrie Richardson: You were, you guys were a finalist in pitch it this year. Tell me about that. 

[00:00:32] Robb Rogers: We came in fourth and it was a fantastic opportunity for us.

[00:00:36] Robb Rogers: It was a 16 week long program. And I would say it's a cross between The Apprentice and Shark Tank. And you go, you do two pitches, five minute pitches, and whoever makes it to the next round just keeps on going until you finally get up to the top three. And how 

[00:00:51] Carrie Richardson: do they choose the finalists? Do the people that are watching pitch it vote?

[00:00:56] Carrie Richardson: I haven't seen one. 

[00:00:57] Robb Rogers: The ConnectWise GMs got to vote on [00:01:00] who they wanted, and then we did one through channel program, and the MSPs in the audience voted. And then those two pitches, judges, put you through to the finals. And then the finals was some people at IT Nation that had their little secret score sheet, and they were able to see who they wanted.

[00:01:18] Carrie Richardson: So did you have to present at it nation as well? 

[00:01:21] Robb Rogers: I did not. So I didn't have to present there. I just had to do it for those other two. A couple other companies did it at it nation. I did have to present to so many different people that walked up to us on the booth. We were right there on the main floor with the Pitchit group.

[00:01:35] Robb Rogers: And we did a lot of demos and a lot of people heard about us from. The organization. So it was really cool. We had a great time. 

[00:01:43] Carrie Richardson: I really liked how they set that up this year. That little gauntlet that you had to run before you could get into any of the other events gave you guys a really nice boost. And if I had been a vendor inside of it nation this year, I'd have been a little jealous of.

[00:01:58] Carrie Richardson: The small booths outside because you guys had [00:02:00] lots of action out there. Lots of traffic. 

[00:02:02] Robb Rogers: Everybody had to walk right by us. So out of all 3, 500 people, 3, 500 people saw us, right? They had to walk right by us. And we were shaking hands and talking to a lot of people as they were going into the events. It worked out really well.

[00:02:15] Carrie Richardson: I enjoyed the little candy bags.

[00:02:18] Robb Rogers: Did you? Yeah, we gave those things out. Those were great. Selma was a hit, right? Selma is our little AI bot and everybody loves Selma. It was a good show and we had a good showing. We finally did what we've been telling our clients to do and really putting in the prep work before you go to the event and we, it showed, right?

[00:02:37] Robb Rogers: We got the ROI. 

[00:02:39] Carrie Richardson: So for those of you who don't know, I owned managed sales pros from 2013 to 2021. And Rob and I were friendly competitors for much of that time. 

[00:02:52] The Evolution of Sales Maturity

[00:02:52] Carrie Richardson: The evolution of sales maturity has been interesting. So tell us a little bit about. How you started in the MSP space and where you are now? [00:03:00] 

[00:03:00] Robb Rogers: Sure.

[00:03:01] Robb Rogers: At the very beginning, we were, it was me and my business partner, Tim, and we were Osprey Strategic Research. And we still are that, but we were a Legion company and we were basically, you were Coke and we were Pepsi. And we were always just battling out and doing a really good job and always friendly, like you were saying.

[00:03:18] Robb Rogers: And from there, we started realizing that we just could not give our clients the value that they deserved because the cold calling by itself was just not getting it done like it was doing in previous years. And so we changed our company to not only do the prospecting, but also do the sales management.

[00:03:35] Robb Rogers: So we would manage the clients and we would do the recruiting, the training and the daily management of. Sales reps sitting at their location. And we did that for Kerry. We're going on our six year doing that. And it's a very successful campaign for us. What we found was that once we got them into the certain level of, they couldn't get to the second rep and what was happening was they were, we would get them to where they needed to be, but [00:04:00] their organization. Didn't have the maturity that it needed on the sales side to grow past that. So that's how we built sales maturity. 

[00:04:08] Robb Rogers: And so we figured out what is the problem? Why can't we get these people past sales rep one and into sales rep two and into sales rep three. And it was all the structure around that sales rep.

[00:04:19] Robb Rogers: So we built out this 84 point questionnaire to, to analyze everything from the marketing intern, all the way up to sales leadership. And then that was when we really hit onto something and we took all of our documentation, put it inside the app. And then that's what we have today. 

[00:04:35] Introduction to Selma, the AI Bot

[00:04:35] Carrie Richardson: So tell me about Selma.

[00:04:37] Carrie Richardson: I learned a little bit about it when you were talking about the LLMs, and there's so many different applications for it. How did you finally figure out, I know that you built it yourself. And I remember the bloodshot eyes and the sleepless nights. That's right. 

[00:04:50] Robb Rogers: Yeah. I was the coding nerd. I did it all myself and so Selma is an acronym for sales enablement language model assistant and she [00:05:00] is she sits inside of a privatized GPT system like a privatized LLM so you think of chat GPT out there that's a public one we built a private container and we embedded it with all of our documentation over the last 10 years so you could fine tune the system based on MSP sales and marketing documents and then that was how we Started out the system, then we iterated it even more and we allowed the clients to put their documentation into a siloed system.

[00:05:28] Robb Rogers: So now you've got all of our documentation, all the MSPs documentation, and their unique value proposition. So now Selma can drive any sales or marketing content based on your information, our information, and all the power of a GPT system. 

[00:05:46] Carrie Richardson: So taking all of the legacy information that an MSP has secession planning data, for example.

[00:05:52] Carrie Richardson: So you're, you've got like a sales rep that's worked with you for 20 years. You can now take that brain dump and put it into something. So you're not [00:06:00] losing that legacy data when you bring in a new sales rep. I think that's phenomenal. And then combining it with industry best practices and the things that you've learned over the last 10 years, over how many MSPs now?

[00:06:13] Robb Rogers: Oh, gosh, we're up to about 270 MSPs that we've worked with, so it's a lot of MSPs over the year. We've worked with probably about 600 sales reps inside of MSPs, so we have a lot of documentation. Everything got put inside of it. And then we're able to really build that on for the client as well. What we're doing now, this is the cool part.

[00:06:36] Robb Rogers: This is where I really find value in it. We're taking all the vendors inside the industry and putting all the vendor knowledge inside of it as well. So if you've got like one of your vendors and they gave you all this beautiful marketing material. But you don't really know what to do with it. You can put it inside the system and now all of your vendor marketing will be in there as well, used in your voice, in your style and the way that you want it.[00:07:00] 

[00:07:00] Carrie Richardson: And you guys, I have seen this in action. They actually built me a carry bot that sounds like me without the profanity. It's pretty amazing. 

[00:07:10] Carrie Richardson: The things I really loved about the platform was its ability to build cadences, right? So we were talking about it when you demoed it and we talked about an email cadence for a very specific sort of campaign. You put a couple of sentences in it and it built backwards.

[00:07:26] Carrie Richardson: Yeah, on that contract end date, which we stole from you years ago. Thank you. But from that contract end date, it built back every activity that you need to do to make sure you're right there when it's time for you to win the renewal from a competitor. And it did it in, I don't know, 30 seconds less. It was very fast.

[00:07:44] Carrie Richardson: Yeah. And then you just need to take that and build it into something. 

[00:07:48] Robb Rogers: It's really cool. So the contract end date system. That we did a long time ago, we made it so much better. Now, not only do we teach people how to get the contract end date, but that [00:08:00] countdown cadence that's automated really changes everything.

[00:08:03] Robb Rogers: And it tells you how to do it month, six week, one day, three. This is what you're doing and it does it for you, right? It builds you your hero story. It builds you your case studies. It builds you your voicemails, your scripts, everything that you need to do. And it just automates the entire system all the way down based on your unique value proposition and your voice.

[00:08:26] Robb Rogers: And that's what, when we did that carry, it was special. Like we, we changed everything by making the whole thing automated. 

[00:08:34] Carrie Richardson: That's really exciting. 

[00:08:36] Who Can Benefit from Sales Maturity?

[00:08:36] Carrie Richardson: So tell me about the, who would benefit most from working with sales maturity from an MSP perspective, 

[00:08:42] Robb Rogers: sure. We have two plans. The first plan is for people that are looking to maybe sell in the next five years. That would be one plan that we are doing. So if you go through our roadmap system with that in mind, you'll get two to three more points on your EBITDA when you are looking to sell.[00:09:00] 

[00:09:00] Robb Rogers: So that is a maturity piece where you're trying to figure out your assessment, grow your assessment. So at the end of it, you get those two to three more points on EBITDA when you're selling. And so far we have already helped 94 million worth of our clients sell. So that's how much we've helped them so far.

[00:09:19] Robb Rogers: If you're not looking for doing that right now, and you're just looking for the journey, then the principal led system moving into their first salesperson would be a very good case study. That person that the sales owner who they're trying to do everything right now they don't know how to recruit for a salesperson, which is completely different than an I.

[00:09:37] Robb Rogers: T. person, which is completely different than an account manager, right? There's all these different nuances. We'll help you with the recruiting. The training and the management as we're trying to get past that system and understanding what's best in class.

[00:09:50] Carrie Richardson: So tell me about the evolution of that. 

[00:09:52] The Journey of Sales Maturity

[00:09:52] Carrie Richardson: You've got to This really interesting software development model and you started as a [00:10:00] services firm.

[00:10:00] Carrie Richardson: I'm seeing a lot of similarities between the way an MSP grows and the way your business grew like how many of the companies at Pitchit this year or at IT Nation exhibiting this year were MSPs before they started their software company. 

[00:10:17] Robb Rogers: They actually tracked that. It was 70 percent of all the contestants were an MSP before they got into whatever they were doing.

[00:10:24] Robb Rogers: Every single one of them, right? We were the only ones who didn't own an MSP. We worked at an MSP, but we didn't own the MSP. And this community is so tight knit, right? And they're such a go giver community. And when you find out that these guys, they're like, You know what? I can solve another challenge for the rest of the people that haven't gotten here.

[00:10:43] Robb Rogers: It was pretty powerful, right? 70%. It was cool. 

[00:10:47] Carrie Richardson: So all of us services based businesses logging along, only able to bill the number of people that we have hours for finally decide to go where the money is [00:11:00] and start a software company. And there's so much automation out there that it would.

[00:11:06] Robb Rogers: What couldn't be done 10 years ago, five years ago, is now like a reality for all of us. And this software as a service part is really helping out a lot of MSPs. 

[00:11:18] Carrie Richardson: So you can work with a smaller MSP that's trying to add their first. Sales rep, you can work with a larger MSP that's trying to hone their sales process so that they have a repeatable, scalable, non owner led sales process to achieve a larger multiple.

[00:11:38] Carrie Richardson: What percentage makeup is that right now for your business? Are 50 50? Are you 70 30? 

[00:11:44] Robb Rogers: Not we're about 75 percent of the the businesses that are larger, like our client deck is usually 3 million and above, and that's why we built Selma to help out people that couldn't really get there.

[00:11:58] Robb Rogers: They can't get that first salesperson. [00:12:00] You typically get the first salesperson right around 2 million and. It, but it's the struggle because at 2 million, you can't also afford the marketing. You can't afford all the other stuff that goes with it. So 3 million seemed to be that sweet spot, but now that we've automated everything and bought it, brought it into a software platform, we can get people down at 250, 000 when they're really just trying to figure out what is my UVP?

[00:12:23] Robb Rogers: What's my unique value proposition? How do I build one? We build one for you. So we're, we were able to go down there and we're about 25 percent of the market there. 

[00:12:33] Carrie Richardson: All right, 

[00:12:33] The Importance of Unique Value Proposition

[00:12:33] Carrie Richardson: you've worked with, if my tally is right, 600 sales leaders at managed service providers and 300 MSP business owners, you've obviously seen the challenges that they're experiencing. What should they gravitate towards ? Let's say you've got that business somewhere between 1 million and 5 million in ARR. What's the first thing that they should gravitate towards? 

[00:12:59] Robb Rogers: They should go to [00:13:00] Selma. Very first thing they should do. . 

[00:13:02] Carrie Richardson: All right, what's the second thing they should go to? 

[00:13:04] Robb Rogers: With Selma you get your, we build you a unique value proposition, right?

[00:13:09] Robb Rogers: And we teach you how to build, we, we actually do it for you. So you have that. Then I would take that information, go to a marketing company. So marketing company would be second . And then once the marketing company, you, you got that part squared away, then I would go. Somewhere else after that consulting 

[00:13:26] Carrie Richardson: would probably be by third, then marketing, then strategy.

[00:13:30] Robb Rogers: I would do strategy with the UVP, then strategy with the marketing and then strategy with your sales department. That would be us, right? Don't come to us until you've had your marketing piece squared away on the strategy side and you understand your UVP. 

[00:13:46] Carrie Richardson: That's good advice. So did I understand you correctly when you said that you can build that UVP for the managed service provider?

[00:13:54] Robb Rogers: Yeah, we can. And we help them do that. We literally build out their battle card, which has [00:14:00] their 32nd pitch, the other three pillars of their company, all their success stories and things like that. And then that goes into the app. So the app can use that information to give you out your sales and marketing content.

[00:14:12] Robb Rogers: That's it. When it comes to strategy, then you have to go to a professional marketing people who really understand all the nuances of the strategy piece. We can't, we control all the tactical pieces after that, but not the strategy. And you've got to have that. 

[00:14:26] Carrie Richardson: Getting my unique value proposition down to something punchy and tight has been challenging for me because I'm like It does everything. It's so amazing. And then on and on. So I'm really focused right now on disseminating or filtering so much of the message down to that one or two headline things. So maybe I need to check out Selma and figure out how I can tell my story.

[00:14:50] Carrie Richardson: I think you guys have all of the content 10 years fed into Carrie bot already. I'm going to ask Carrie bot what my unique [00:15:00] value proposition is. And hopefully she's a polite. 

[00:15:06] Robb Rogers: That's nice. That's funny. 

[00:15:08] Final Thoughts and Conclusion

[00:15:08] Robb Rogers: I will say, I know we're coming up close to our time here, Carrie, but I did want to say this, to build out your MSP, I would say there's two most important things that you have to do when you're going out there and you're evaluating your vendors.

[00:15:23] Robb Rogers: One. Is has the person been in the channel for a long time and really know what the heck they're talking about, right? Carrie, you've done every piece of the marketing and sales side all of it out there and you've been successful at each piece. So if you're going to look at one of these people out there for the consulting side, look, that would be the number one thing that I would suggest for an MSP to decide what they want to do would be how successful were they with clients while they were doing it.

[00:15:51] Robb Rogers: Carrie's right up there. I would say that you're the second best one in the entire industry. 

[00:15:57] Carrie Richardson: See, that's what I would have said about you. So I guess we're good. 

[00:15:59] Robb Rogers: [00:16:00] See, Coke and Pepsi.

[00:16:03] Carrie Richardson: And my first question is usually like, how many times have you tried this now? Oh, we've worked with six lead generation companies and they were all crap. That's right. And the first thing I think is, I don't think the lead generation company is the problem here. Yeah. At what point is it you're telling me that all six of them were terrible and none of them could generate a single lead for you?

[00:16:22] Carrie Richardson: Yeah, like one of us. Okay. Two of us maybe. But there's no way that every single lead generation in the channel is incompetent. That's right. So yeah, if you don't know who the problem is, it's you. That's right. You're the mark. That's terrible. Fair. So thank you, Rob, for joining us today. We are coming up to the end of The podcast for sales maturity.

[00:16:51] Carrie Richardson: Thank you very much. 

[00:16:52] Carrie Richardson: So if you are wondering how to solve some sales and marketing problems, obviously you can call me, you can call Rob [00:17:00] and I think Rob and I are going to have to arm wrestle for it. 

[00:17:02] Carrie Richardson: Rob, thank you so much. 

[00:17:04] ​