MSP Business School

EP 149 - Roundtable - Perfecting the Art of the Sales One on One   2:21 Robb starts discussing his ideas about sales one on one. He says that one important aspect that owners missed is having a head check. He points out that it is essential to start the week by asking your sales persons how they were and if there were anything they would like to talk about. In this manner, you are understanding your sales reps before you are understood. 6:44 Robb continues saying that it should always be the reps that have to bring in the numbers and the report, and not the manager. Brian agrees with Robb’s point as the reps are the ones responsible in bring in people to the business. Tim expands the discussion by specifying that when choosing reps, you want somebody who is money-driven and someone who knows exactly what they were doing.  10:30 As Brian talks about reps fluffing their reports and numbers, Robb provided two easy ways to recognize if the reps are fluffing – a) the 8-6-4-1 rule and b) if they keep talking about the one deal they are working on. He expounds that these two methods have been of great help in identifying red flags. 14:55 The third step in perfecting sales one-on-one according to Robb is having built-in steps for the next six weeks. He emphasized that if there are no steps shown, you are going to start from square one as it is already considered a lost deal. He also added that aside from weekly meetings, it is also necessary to meet monthly to talk about quarterly rocks – how to improve the reps long term and how to get them to the next position in the company. 17:04 Tim added that one-on-one meetings with sales reps are different from one-on-one meetings with engineers or tech people. Salespeople got different personality types, they may like to talk and banter, so you ought to be prepared for the difference in the conversation. Robb joins in the topic, sharing his idea that it is significant to talk about their wins or losses however it is as equally as important to talk about how did they get to that win or loss. This is to figure out which aspects you can coach and have them supported. 19:20 Brian gives a recap of all the key points talked about during the discussion.   

00:54 – Brian mentioned that many companies like to do daily stand-ups and huddles, but they are often haphazardly run and not as effective as they could be. They have a standardized process for running sales huddles with all their sales reps cascading across the US that virtually manage, but they can give insight into how to structure the huddle and make sure it is effective for all users on a call. 5:03 – Robb suggested that the role play should be divided into two parts: prospecting and objection handling. The goal is to have the participants try to get past a gatekeeper and get shut down by the gatekeeper, and then role play until one good thing is achieved. 6:36 – Tim said that the MSP Sparks have stats and figures that are easy to grasp, making it easier for salespersons to find the next reason why they should reach out to a company again. This helps them to have something in the back of their head to pull from when they talk to the decision-maker. 11:28 – Tim believes that role play is an effective way to self-diagnose a rep. He suggests finding a 3-minute call that is not an everyday thing, once a week or at least every other week, and listening to it. This is a good time for the rep to self-diagnose. 14:00 – Brian believes that a good morning huddle should have a conversation about what they did today, what they did yesterday, and what they accomplished yesterday. They also like the concept of mixing up content to keep people engaged, such as role play, pulling a calling, and bringing in inspirational quotes or something else to celebrate a win or dissect a loss. This will help keep people engaged and keep them focused on the task at hand.

Len DiCostanzo has been a mainstay of the global IT channel and is a sought-after consultant and speaker. For decades, he has been providing thought leadership and best practice guidance for senior leaders who want to understand the channel’s roots and its future. DiCostanzo consults and collaborates with leading and emerging channel vendors, as well as managed service providers and business technology solution providers who want to accelerate growth and better serve clients. He has worked with thousands of partners helping them build their managed services practice with a focus on service catalog development, pricing and bundling, and go-to-market strategy development and execution. His recent work has focused on helping SaaS and cybersecurity vendors and specialty distributors to grow their MSP and VAR channels by building comprehensive partner programs. The programs are designed to drive internal awareness across the business while accelerating partner go-to-market motion and recurring revenue for the vendor and their partners. Len has consulted with and led the buildout and execution of Partner Programs for top channel vendors including ConnectWise, LogMeIn, and LastPass.   2:08 – Len has been in the business for a long time, having started a solution provider business in 1984. He was a solution writer for 20 years and sold his business to a publicly traded company in 2001. He then moved to consulting and helping them build out their global MSP partner community and eventually found a role at Auto Task. 5:51 – Tim believes Len just made an important point about the number of MSPs they've spoken with over the years who simply don't know how to wrap all of those into one service. Despite his belief that people are far more advanced than they have ever been, there is still a great need. 9:10 – Brian believes that products are becoming more specialized and that MSPs should form a partnership with their vendor partner to better support their needs. This includes educating the vendor on how to better meet the needs of the MSP. 9:50 – Len said that it depends on the vendor and how they intend to market. They are aware that they are an outsourced partner. The bottom line is that every vendor must become a more strategic partner for the MSP, which begins with having a comprehensive and robust partner program.  11:43 – Robb's message is that MSPs often go to vendors with great ideas and don't implement them, leading to a loss of the vendor 6 months later. It is a powerful message that can help both the sale and implementation sides. 16:07 – Len spent a year and a half with Cordo before COVID sold the business, building a product called Cloud Optimizer for offices of sixty-five. He now consults on the MSP side and talks about the vendor's offering. 21:25 – Brian believes that the only way to increase the amount per seat charge is by consolidating products, building them into the service offering, and providing services around it. The products are just enablers for him to get to that service offering.

In this episode, they talked about Risky Business and Life in IT. 3:09 – Ken ended up in the crazy world of technology because he was a full-time firefighter for about twelve years and he started selling t-shirts and realized he needed a website. He taught himself how to code, and build a website, and decided that technology and business were what he wanted to do. He has been involved in a bunch of startups and taken a company public and has been involved with software for 25 years. 8:15 – Brian asks Ken “what drives kind of creativity for you today and what are your working on right now?” Ken is working on a project with Cybrance, a company that provides a platform for cyber compliance in risk management. The platform includes enterprise GRC, third-party risk management, cyber incidental response management, and more modules. Cybrance sees a need in the marketplace for software and the know-how to put something out there that has a real possibility of gaining significant market share. 11:06 – Brian said that the most important details in this text are that the human factor, insecurities, is the biggest challenge in delivering policy, following up on compliance, and reviewing status. There are a lot of moving pieces in infrastructure that are being recorded and measured, so it is important to ensure that they are being reviewed appropriately and not missing things that can get chaotic. 12:41 – Ken and his team are looking to reduce the number of tools used in the security landscape by offering different capabilities. They are also aware of how the three sixty partners and supplier and vendor ecosystem is expanding, with a thirty percent year of growth. They need to consider not only their suppliers, but also their partners, networks, and security posture. This can lead to an infinite loop of enrolling everything up without tools and things that make it easy to collect. 16:42 – Ken believes that when starting a business, you should be opportunistic and fluid in terms of who you take on as a client. You know the target demographic, twenty to hundred million in revenue, ten to twenty people on the IT staff, with one or two people focusing on security. 20:11 – Brian explains that when they think about their contacts, they think about the people they work with and law enforcement. They have to engage bodies like CIS to help with forensics, and the more data they can collect and organize, the easier it is to communicate those things to insurance companies. The more they can document, the more they can quickly give to them and share with them.

Show Website: https://mspbusinessschool.com/ Guest  Name: Jason Pufahl https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonpufahl/ Company: Vancord https://www.vancord.com/  Podcast: https://www.vancord.com/cybersound/ Hosts Brian Doyle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briandoyl... Robb Rogers: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robb-roge... Tim McNeil: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timmcneil3/ Sponsors vCIOToolbox: https://vciotoolbox.com OSR Manage: https://osrmanage.com   Jason Pufahl is the Vice President of Information Security Services at Vancord.  1:45 – Jason found himself in the world of MSP after applying for 30 national park ranger jobs and one IT role. He chose the IT gig and that is what brought him here with us today.   6:31 – Jason believes that his ability to communicate has been his strongest quality throughout his career. He said he had never been the most technical person in the room, but he had a good vision and the ability to communicate that vision to get buy-in and get projects moving. 9:38 – Tim's most important advice to salespeople is not to be pushy when selling and to have an honest conversation about what they are looking to achieve. If they can do this, they will be ahead of 50% of the reps out there. 13:21 – Jason emphasized the importance of security education, which is a non-technical discipline that doesn't get enough attention. It is important to explain to people what risk potentially remains and to train staff to recognize threats. 18:05 – Brian noted that there was an educational process that led to people becoming more aware of networks, computers, and security. This led to people taking on roles in their generation, similar to what is happening now with security. 20:15 – Brian said that we know we’re able to work in and it does open up a lot of security holes when you got people geographically dispersed accessing the same information and see where the human factor comes into play.   

In this episode, the team discusses Battling Burnout here at MSP Business School.  1:37 – Robb stated that burnout is a combination of factors for him, both as a business owner and as an employee. He discussed how to address this on both an employee and a company culture level, which he enjoys discussing. 3:25 – Brian also claims that burnout is usually caused by some kind of stressor, but not all stressors are the same. He has had some of his most energizing times when he worked the most hours and some of his most stressful times when he can't figure out what to do. 7:32 – Brian suggests that when an individual is experiencing burnout, he tries to retain them by providing them with a win-win benefit such as a conference or personal training exercise. This can help them get out of the office for a couple of days. 14:06 – Brian suggests looking into yourself to identify what is causing stress and burnout in your job. It could be the people you're working with or the person there, and it can be better if you get an action plan together to change the team's turnover rate. This way, no word will get out and you'll be better off for it when it's over. 15:28 – Robb says that if you can see burnout in yourself, you can also see it in your staff. If you don't deal with it head-on and find solutions, it will just grow worse and you'll start having nightmares about it.

In this episode, our team discusses The Game of Risk here at MSP Business School. 2:20 – Brian suggests that organizations engage with customers to understand risk and take the next step in risk management by introducing frameworks to them to manage their organization. Cyber liability insurance can be a challenge for some organizations, so it is important to engage with customers and understand risk during the sales process. 3:11 – Robb said that he’d like to define a little bit better about “What are we talking about when we're talking about risk? Are you talking about it as it relates to the insurance side? Are you talking about the hacking side? What exactly do you mean when you say the global word risk?” 7:21 – Brian explains that there is a challenge of not all risks needing to be solved right due to the cost justification versus the percentage opportunity of risk. For example, if a customer has 3 to 4 risks, it could be that they have a realistic budget and are looking to protect to the best of their capabilities.  12:12 – Robb inquires how to coordinate the sales process between the sales rep, the owner, and the sales LED. He is blown away by the variety of ideas discussed. 17:19 – Brian emphasized the importance of having a good cyber security posture for businesses. There are a lot of different frameworks and regulations that are industry-based, so it is important to focus on cyber frameworks. These frameworks are groups of controls that businesses can define and measure against over time. 21:12 – Brian explains that CIS is geared towards non-targeted companies that don't have security professionals on staff. It focuses on protecting and detecting the first 3 identities, then moving up to implementation where they usually have security professionals, and then dealing with vendors that are the companies that support us publicly. 24:53 – Robb stated that the ads of services are picking up for code management, and they are seeing a lot of interest and opportunity on the upper side as well. There is a lot of opportunity out there right now. 27:54 – Brian's most important idea is to understand the risk and not focus on fear or uncertainty in doubt. He emphasizes that not all risks are equal and not all risks need to be attended to immediately.

Tyson Choptain is the Executive Vice President and co-founder of Broadview Networks, a leading Managed Services and Security Solutions provider based out of Winnipeg. With more than 30 years of consulting, sales engineering, and implementation has a track record of success with technology in the workplace and providing IT solutions meeting business needs. As an entrepreneur who helped build a successful IT consulting business, his focus on business solutions has helped grow the company to be recognized as one of Canada’s fastest-growing businesses and one of Manitoba’s fastest-growing companies. With a philosophy of teamwork and collaboration, Broadview attributes its success to its 30+ employees. In this episode, they talked about The Co-Managed Opportunity. 1:48 – Tyson shares how he got started in the MSP community and how he got to where he is now. After high school, he started a computer consulting company with his father that he ran for ten years. Broadview Networks was a project-based business for the first ten years, not knowing what managed services were. 5:24 – Tyson said that they've had a solid Microsoft relationship the entire time, so they've been able to keep a very big quantity of Microsoft 365 licensing for the size of the firm. Because of several major enterprise project-based customers, we are by far the largest local Microsoft 365 dealer in the products. 7:36 – Tyson claims that when they first started offering managed services to clients without an IT department, they actually offered more co-managed services than the more common fully managed situations they now offer. 8:56 – Brian said that in reality security never goes out of style so when you start looking at things that an MSP can do in a world that’s constantly adapting and always changing over time.    12:58 – Tim stated that Tyson just made an extremely important point. Throughout the years, they have spoken with many security professionals, and attending conferences has become extremely important. It's just becoming more and more crucial to outsource that component of it, and not everyone has the patience for that given the amount of education, salary, and time required. 14:46 – Tyson stated that when selling to a co-managed customer, you are selling to a fully managed customer, thus not every MSP has experience in their sales staff or even how they market their services.  17:03 – Tyson goes on to say that security is an excellent door opener for businesses, as it allows them to gain customers who previously refused managed services. This changes the customer narrative.

Jacob has 25 years of experience in managed IT and cybersecurity services and has participated in multiple startups, acquisitions, and successful exits with experience from company formation through exit and integration. Jacob was Co-Founder and CEO of Proactive Technologies, where he led revenue growth to over $10M per year with an owner-led sales model until Proactive’s acquisition by Abacus Group. Jacob currently works with MSPs to help them optimize owner-led sales and lay the groundwork to make dedicated sales professionals successful. In this episode, they talked about Maximizing your Centers of Influence. 2:23 – Jacob tells how he stumbled into the managed services industry. He did not begin as an IT professional, and he recalls beginning to work in it shortly after graduating from college. 25 years later, he reflects on his generation's lack of IT degrees and notes that it is frequently the profession of the intelligent but unprepared. 11:04 – Tim believes that teaching customers that no one is perfect is one of the most crucial aspects of the sales cycle. You go and try to sell your product or service, whether you're an MSP or simply a little firm. People must be aware of the good, the bad, and the ugly. 12:06 – Robb's question is answered by Jacob. He noted that when they first started the business, their intention was not to be labeled as a financially minded MSP. We wanted to be all things to all people. 14:29 – Brian adds a comment in response to what Jacob stated. He stated that if you can cut through all the minutia and get to the subject the way people see it. 17:28 – Jacob explained that they had finally received their first lead, which he declined. They went through the sales procedure and were selected as finalists. It turned out to be quite difficult to turn down the lead, but what it did is that he always looked at his right leads can come and go. 21:50 – “Did you have a big sales department? Did you have a giant marketing department to get all these hedge funds? How did that work for you?” Robb asks Jacob.  26:26 – Brian said it's fantastic to have it so well set out and know and stay under control while he does that because obviously there's that part of us that just wants to keep hitting the accelerator when sales start flowing in, but they do get to look at it objectively from the other side. 27:23 – Tim claims that because you worked in a field where people tended to come and go quickly, spending time with them after they left was wonderful because they were either going to move on to something else, catch on, or advance in status wherever they went. 28:12 – Brian wraps up the show with a recap. When going through this, he really thought about developing your center of influence, getting those people on board, and really making sure you're treating the people that are closest to you.

Aaron spent the first years of his career in Sports & Hospitality working in Event Management and Operations and started in the MSP industry in 2011 while completing an MBA. Aaron’s expertise is in Project Management, Finance, and Organizational Strategy & Business Development. In this episode, they talked about Peer Group opportunities for the Masses. 1:58 – Aaron explains how he became involved in the world of MSP. He studied at the University of Florida. He earned an undergraduate degree in business management and then took a year to two years off to figure out what he wanted to do before deciding on a career in hospitality, specifically with Outback Steakhouse. 5:33 – Brian states that his business changed when he got involved with a strategist and a peer group. 8:54 – Tim appreciates Aaron for his commitment to lifelong learning in a variety of fields, including sales operations and customer service. “All areas that don’t matter what size MSP you are. You can always be better somewhere and be part of that.” 10:55 – Tim was impressed by what Aaron had accomplished for the community. He asked “What would you say as an MSP who is not in a peer group right now? What would they be looking for or what would be different about it?”  12:17 – Brian said that one aspect of this industry is that it is a burnout-prone one. They observe many owners who become depressed over it. Everyone talks about finding a work-life balance, but nobody ever succeeds at it.  13:37 – Aaron admits that in order to solve this, they make a significant effort to assist some or all of the members in seeing the need to surround themselves with a leadership team and to empower their subordinates so that they may share some of the burdens. 18:09 – Brian believes that many MSPs are unaware of the importance of thinking about the exit virtually from day one since, without doing so, it is difficult to provide guidance and to be realistic about how you will arrive at your goal. 22:45 – Tim adds that they have discussed it in the past and that having strong leadership teams is how more mature organizations develop, expand, and set themselves apart from the competition. Building them up makes sense because if they have a team under them, everyone will benefit.