Summary: 

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An effective sales process takes time, skill, and strategy – but it also means making meaningful connections that speak to your prospects’ needs.

When you’ve so many options, channels, and opportunities for outreach, how do you make the marketing move that captivates your prospect – and turns them into a loyal client? 

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Here are seven tips that’ll have your conversion rates improving in no time:

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Key takeaways:

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What is the difference between MQL and SQL?

Every MSP needs to have a sales process that's going to pull your leads to the top of the funnel. When they come to the top of the funnel, they go into the MQL stage.

The MQL stage is where you have the first discovery call and qualify them as an opportunity. For a prospect to be an MQL, you need to make sure - 

• The client has the budget 
• You're speaking to someone with authority 
• They have a need/problem that you can solve
• A timeline for the next six months, depending on the size of the customer

Also, to classify it as an MQL, it's important to know what a good customer looks like for you? If they are the right fit for your MSP business, have all four of the above; pull them through to the sales funnel.

And after you've qualified this part of it, it becomes the SQL. 

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Tip 1: Use multiple touchpoints to interact with prospects

Marketing and Sales is about gaining attention and having a conversation, which means creating multiple touchpoints. You have to understand where your prospects are. You need a process to touch them with email, phone calls, LinkedIn, etc. You're looking for them to recognize who you are and get to your first sales call. 

You are selling to four different generations now, and each has a different context. If you're dealing with the younger generations, then it's far more social. If you're dealing with the older generations, they're typically more traditional, so it's email and phone. Even letters and direct mail through the post because there are so few people are doing it -  that if you do that sort of thing, you will actually get noticed. 

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Tip 2: The first follow-up needs to happen within 5 minutes 

You are more likely to convert a lead if you respond to it within the first five minutes of the lead coming into your business.

And from an MSP's perspective, you need to remember that one of the things you're doing is selling a service. Your first impression of that prospect would be critically important because if they see you answer quickly to an incoming lead that comes into your business within five minutes, that shows them if they did have a problem. They raised a ticket with you; you would more than likely resolve that quicker but in a good time frame as well.

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Tip 3: Have CTAs, or a “Call-to-Action” on every marketing interaction point: 

One of the highest converting CTA is definitely a Calendly link. You put the link in for the customer to pre-book sometime in your calendar at a time that suits them and a time that suits you. 

It actually works and converts so well because it's almost like a psychological thing where because the customer has booked the appointment with you, they feel more committed to turning up to the meeting. So if you’re looking for face-time with prospects, you’ll want to use Calendly links.

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Tip 4: Do your research beforehand on the prospect and their company

There's nothing worse than having somebody turn up and say, tell me about your business. In this day and age, there's no excuse for not doing some quick research around the company, the website, or the size of the company. You can go as far as whether they're profitable, who the execs are, where they come from, and what sort of people they know. 

You can get all of that information in 10 minutes, and then you can prepare. When you go into the meeting, it makes you look like you're really interested, you've put some time in, and you respect their time.

‍For MSPs that are short of time, you can connect with your prospect on LinkedIn before you have the meeting. Send them a quick note, say you're looking forward to meeting them later this afternoon and get them to connect with you. You can very easily see in their LinkedIn profile if you have similar connections, what they're talking about, what they're doing. It's a really quick and easy way of pre-meeting to get to know them. 

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Tip 5: First impressions count

A really good way to make a good first impression with a prospect is to basically start your meeting or start your call with, “At this MSP, we do things slightly differently because we like to get to know our clients, we like to have a business conversation as opposed to a technology conversation.” 

The key things that you could take them through are to learn their business outcomes, what they are trying to achieve, their financial outcomes, their KPIs, and their business capabilities and processes. Let the customer talk. 

Using stories also helps you to sell. When the prospect starts talking about their business, you should always have an MSP story box of other customers that you have already helped to achieve what they're trying to achieve, or perhaps the customer that you have had to save money for or increased productivity for, something that's going to relate to them so that you can share that story because there's nothing more captivating as telling a really good story that really engages your prospect and keeps them interested. 

Tip 6: Send a focused video message that covers these important points

If you want to stand out on an email today, video works really well. Include a short video message within the email backed up by a CTA. Instead of having your prospect read through all of the text, you can just say, “I've just recorded a quick 2-minute video for you,” and put that in the subject line because when somebody sees that you have recorded a video for them, without watching the video, it kind of teases them. It makes them open the email.

If it's a very early contact and you're trying to get them to have another conversation with you, you can say one of the key things: "Thanks for reaching out to us. We have customers like you reaching out to us all the time. Just to save you some time, there are three key questions that most new prospects coming to us want us to answer for them. Those three questions are 

• why you should work with us
• why you should pay us more than any other MSP
• how we differentiate

So let me give that to you in a very short, sharp statement”, which is your value proposition with a hook, and then get them to book a call with you using a Calendly link. So you're teasing them, answering the questions they're already asking in advance, and then booking a call. 

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Tip 7: Vertical-specific guides and quizzes are top-performing content

One of the key things that work really well is if you build a guide around what your customers actually want to buy, not what you sell. Write a guide that is vertical-specific, and that becomes your lead magnet. You give that away for free, but it talks all about the customer's business

outcomes, and it's just a framework. It's a really good way to build an audience of prospects you know are interested. 

The second is quizzes. It could be a cybersecurity quiz as an example, but for a given sector. That's how you get the hook in. Quizzes at the moment are really high engagement. They're converting super well. It's 20 questions that you ask them on the quiz. But what happens is, as you're asking them those questions, what you're actually doing is qualifying them simultaneously. So it's a double hit. While they come into your funnel by answering the said quiz, it also simultaneously assesses whether they're going to be a good prospect for you or not. 

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Transcript

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SHANNON MURPHY:

Hello and welcome to our webinar, From Leads To Customers - Seven Tips For Converting Leads Into Sales. I'm Shannon Murphy, Chief Marketer at Zomentum, the revenue platform re-inventing partner sales.

So today, I am joined by Fiona challis and Paul Lloyd. And let me first tell you a little bit about Fiona.

Fiona is a channel expert, accomplished speaker, and multiple award-winning sales enabler. Fiona brings an enthusiastic and innovative perspective to mastering your sales journey, recognized by top industry channels and alumni. Fiona, welcome.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Hi. Thank you very much for having me. And hey to all the MSPs that have joined.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Thank you. And of course, let us not forget Paul with over 25 years of experience in strategizing sales, a successful consultancy business in Sellerly, and a proven track record for delivering business growth.

Paul brings a history of sales success to the day's events. Welcome, Paul.

PAUL LLOYD:

Good morning for you, and good afternoon for us.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yes. It's been quite the morning for me. I've been kind of going off of the coffee this week.

PAUL LLOYD:

What? Why?

SHANNON MURPHY:

You guys are hitting me on day 3. Did you say why?

PAUL LLOYD:

Why?

SHANNON MURPHY:

Oh. I've been having some intestinal issues. I'm too acidic, so I have to cut out the coffee. It's chai for me right now.

PAUL LLOYD:

Eight or nine cups of coffee a day, you have to have.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Oh Wow.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Oh no.

SHANNON MURPHY:

That's the Paul Lloyd health program, guys.

PAUL LLOYD:

It's got to happen.

SHANNON MURPHY:

So today's webinar we'll be focused on sales challenges. That's what you guys signed up for, no big surprise there. But we feel that a lot of MSPs struggle from taking that first contact with prospects to actually converting them.

I think before we get into today's webinar-- and we know we have seven tips, seven questions to bring you through-- I would like to throw a question at Fiona just to set context. And I think that is understanding the difference between an MQL and an SQL, so that as we have this conversation, that we've set the context for how we define those because I think if you just make first contact and you don't really engage them further, MQL just immediately becomes an SQL. It gets confusing.

So I want us to clarify that. Would you mind just defining that for everybody before we get started?

FIONA CHALLIS:

Yeah, no, that's fine. And I'll start by going with the basics. So every MSP needs to have a sales process in place. So you need a process that's going to pull your leads in top of funnel.

When they come in top of funnel, they then go into MQL stage, and the MQL is normally where you would have that first discovery call. And after you have the discovery call and you've qualified them as an opportunity, then it would come into your sales funnel. And after you've qualified that part of it, it becomes the SQL.

But for it to be classed as an MQL, you need to have four things. You need to make sure that the client has budget. You need to make sure they have authority, so i.e., you're speaking to the right decision maker. You need to make sure they have a need that you can solve or a problem that you can solve. And you need to have a timeline within the next six months, depending on the size of the customer, but normally within the next six months.

But also to classify it as an MQL, it's really important that within your own MSP business, what does a good customer look like for you because the MQL stage is as much about qualifying customers in for your business as much as qualifying them out. So if they don't make the right fit for your MSP business, that's where you qualify them out, and you only spend more time with those customers who are good for your MSP and they have all four of those things, so budget, authority, need, and timeline. And then pull them through the sales funnel to SQL.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yep, BAT friends. Look it up.

FIONA CHALLIS:

BAT friends, Yeah. Some things are so old school in sales, but some of them still work. And BAT is one of those things. BAT still works.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Absolutely, absolutely. So we've defined how we're going to categorize our leads and what a appropriate MQL looks like. So one of our first tips that we want to share with you guys is that we really feel like the sales outreach takes multiple forms. We all know that marketing and sales is about gaining attention and having a conversation, which means creating multiple touchpoints.

So Paul, how do you feel like we can most effectively utilize these multiple forms? And I am going to launch a poll for the audience on kind of where you guys are doing your sales outreach as well. So feel free to contribute to that.

PAUL LLOYD:

I think, first and foremost, you have to understand where your prospects are. I think in this day and age, we're selling to-- potentially selling to four different generations of individuals, and each one of those have a different channel of a different sort of area that they work. And then I'm a big fan of process. So you would have a process that you touch them with email, you'll try and make a phone call. You may follow them on LinkedIn, comment on their things on LinkedIn so that they see your name because what you're looking for is you're looking for them to recognize who you are and get to your first phone call.

You have to talk to them. You're not-- the best one in the world, you're not going to sell MSP services without having at least had a conversation with people. So what you're looking to do is to get to that first conversation such that you can take control of the process and manage people, as Fiona says, down your funnel.

But the challenge inevitably-- the challenge in the old days was there was only one channel and therefore it was difficult because you were banging away at the same thing. And today, there's so many of them that retaining control of all of them is quite difficult, or time consuming as opposed to difficult, I guess. But if you're dealing with the younger generations, then it's far more social. If you're dealing with the older generations, then typically they're more traditional, so it's email, it's phone.

I'd go as far as to say-- this will make a few people look the other way, but even letters and direct mail through the post because there are so few people doing it that if you do that sort of thing, you will actually get noticed. But what you're looking for is recognition, first and foremost, so that they know who you are and they've got a level of understanding.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Think we've lost Paul, Shannon?

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yeah. Paul, can you just repeat maybe those last 20 seconds? It cut out for me.

PAUL LLOYD:

The poll has just appeared on my screen. Can you hear me now?

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yeah. Yeah, I hope that didn't mess up our feed somehow. That hasn't happened to me before.

PAUL LLOYD:

No, I went on mute earlier because I've been standing talking to you for 20 minutes, and I've got a dog downstairs and it decided to start barking just as you asked me the question.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Oh, he has something to contribute as well. Yeah, but I think it was interesting that-- I think you were hitting on the fact that we're kind of spread, even though you need to know where that potential customer is going to be.

Right now, for the poll, in terms of what they're using for sales outreach, we have about 80% of our respondents or utilizing email, only topped by social media at 85%, which I think makes sense because I feel that often social media can kind of cut through the otherwise cluttered email inbox, if you can gain that permission to be sharing content out to them by them following you.

But telephone, 70%, older methods still effective there. I think you can't leave the phone out of it. Right?

FIONA CHALLIS:

Yeah, you still need to, once they're warmed up.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yeah, absolutely. Is there anything that you wanted to add to that, Fiona, in terms of best utilizing like different channels?

FIONA CHALLIS:

I think, yes, it comes down to who your target audience is. So if you have a specialist vertical, if you have a niche that you're really targeting, that will generally tell you whether they're old school, whether they're the younger generation, so you'll know which ones to use.

But the thing I would say is multiple touch points are really good because it used to be-- and we were talking about this yesterday, Shannon. It used to be needed to have eight to nine touch points before a potential buyer gets to know you, like you, and trust you and therefore they're willing to have that sales conversation with you. But in the last two years-- maybe do it as a chat thing. Who can guess how many touch points you need to make today to get a prospect to know you, like you, trust you? So put your number in the chat box, see who can get it right.

23 from Randy. See if we can get another one in. You're not far off it, Randy, actually. 21. Hi, James Filer. 25.

SHANNON MURPHY:

25, 28. It's close, but not quite.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Close, but not close enough. It is 27. So it has basically tripled. In the last two years, it has tripled. So the more content you can push out in social, on email, on phone, and direct mail, you're going to speed up that touchpoint.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yeah, absolutely.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Really? Yikes. Yes, Walter, 27.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yeah.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Scary, isn't it?

SHANNON MURPHY:

And of course, we were making the point that those nine touch points, a lot of it was kind of smile and dial back in the day. And now, as Paul mentioned, it's spread across multiple channels. So it's not always, quote unquote, "direct," but maybe you're sharing out content on social and that is a touch point through which you are gaining that trust, as Fiona mentioned, because really buy things from people we trust.

And so moving on, I think that this is a really important point, speed, speed to sales and moving quickly. Why is it so crucial to make that contact quickly? And I'm going to start with you, Fiona, on that.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Do you mean the first point of contact once they have made an inquiry?

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yes, yes. Once that inbound lead comes in.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Yeah. So basically, when an inbound lead comes in, you were more likely to convert that lead if you respond to it within the first five minutes of the lead coming into your business. So the magic number there is 5. If you leave it any later than that, if you leave it to 30 minutes, 40 minutes, even longer than that, your conversion percentage is going to go way, way, way, way down.

And from an MSP's perspective, you need to remember that one of the things you're doing is you're selling a service, and your first impression to that prospect is going to be critically important because if they see you answer quickly to an incoming lead that comes into your business within five minutes, that shows them if they did have a problem and they raised a ticket with you, you would more than likely resolve that quicker, but in a good time frame as well. So they're almost weighing up, how quick did you respond to me when I first came to you. That tells me a lot about how quickly you will come to me in the future. So five minutes.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Absolutely.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Which is why chat works so well. So having chat on your website, that works really, really well because you can chat straight away.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yeah. And Paul, you like to say, sales is a moment in time. Right?

PAUL LLOYD:

That's right. I think, if you're look-- we all do it. If you're looking to buy something, you'll think about it, you'll think about it, you'll think about it, and then you'll act. And that moment in time is when they'll pick up the phone to you or they'll do an inquiry via the website, and generally it's because something's provoked them to make that inquiry. And that's the moment that they're open to having the conversation.

If you leave it, then that moment passes. And of course, in a lot of cases, they're not just phoning you or they're not just contacting you. They may sit down, make half an hour this afternoon, I'm going to make contact with four or five MSPs. I want to change.

So they'll start with the first one and they will engage with the first one that gets back to them, and statistically people with projects, 70% of the time, they go with the first people that they speak to. And so if you're not there and you're not responsive, then you miss the boat. And I've had clients as MSPs who don't answer their phone and they'll only respond to a message.

I had one client for a while and he wouldn't answer the phone to me. I used to have to leave him a message and then he would phone me back at his pleasure. And I said to him the one day, if I was a prospect, I'd be dealing with somebody else. But he didn't want them interrupting his day. And in some cases, it's that attitude of, I don't want my day interrupted, I'll get back to you when I can, just means you lose business because the person who picks the phone up, the person who answers the inquiry, is the one that will be progressing it and moving it forwards.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yep, absolutely. I'm trying to give you money. This person is calling you to give you money. So at a certain point, I think you have to deal with intrusion, if you will.

PAUL LLOYD:

It's gobsmacking to me. And a lot of it is because of my background. So this is, to a large extent, this is all I've ever done. So when somebody said, well, they can leave a message and I'll call them back.

What? No, because by the time you call them back, they're talking to somebody else. You're not the only one in the world.

FIONA CHALLIS:

A good thing to do is do secret shopper. So for any of the MSPs on here, maybe get somebody to secret shop your MSP so they're pretending to be a customer. And they follow it through to say, well, how long did it take your team to get back to me? Then what your customer experience is like. That's a really good exercise to do.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And Daniel was saying in our chat that he has a client of a client that's got an IT company like that. They haven't returned her call for a couple of days now. He said, I'll probably be picking up a new client as a result.

FIONA CHALLIS:

You see? You can win from it, too.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yeah, absolutely. And then as far as our poll goes, about 47% said that they're responding the same working day. 41% said that they are responding under an hour. So--

FIONA CHALLIS:

That's good.

SHANNON MURPHY:

That's really good to see. And even same working day, sometimes logistically things get in the way to not be able to respond within the first 5 minutes.

PAUL LLOYD:

I think sometimes, if you were to answer, you answer it straight away and explain that you're up to your neck in something and you call them back within the hour, at least you've got them on the hook in the first instance. So you don't have to engage in some long and lengthy conversation immediately.

But what you want to do is you want to have that human contact. And then, thank you for the inquiry. I'm servicing a client. I'll call you back within an hour, and you call them back within the hour. Do what you say you're going to do, obviously, and then people will respect that. What they don't respect is no response. They'll go elsewhere.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Or just even wondering if you are in no man's land if I filled out a form, so that point that you mentioned of a human touch, to know that this has been received by a human and I'm not wondering if I will hear back from an inbound inquiry because we've all dealt with unreliable forms. Or we're not sure if the form is unreliable or the person is, because we filled it out and we never heard back. So I think that being able to hear something is important.

Or I know, Fiona, you like to recommend that CTA is actually a Calendly link so that they can set up an appointment, and I would say that's a way that you have the human touch locked in as well. I know that I have a time that I'm going to speak to a human.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Yeah. So for me, we work with loads of MSPs, and I'm really clear with everybody I work. With we have CTAs, so Call To Actions on everything. One of the most highest converting ones is definitely included a Calendly link. So you're putting the link in for the customer to pre-book sometime in your calendar at a time that suits them and a time that suits you.

But the reason it actually works and converts so well is it's almost like it's a psychological thing where because the customer has booked the appointment with you, they feel more committed to turning up to the meeting. So they feel like they can't let you down because they're booked it with you. So their turn up rate, the show up rate to the next meeting or the call they've booked is much, much higher when you use Calendly links.

Or you can use Teams. I think they have a bookings facility within Teams. So you could use Teams or Calendly.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yes, calendar link of your choice, but take this tip from Fiona, for sure. So that moves nicely to our next topic, which is that we've got the meeting, and we need to know about the prospect and their company. That's a crucial step in that outreach process and warming them up. So Paul, why do you think that is. So imperative to ensuring sales success?

PAUL LLOYD:

I think there's nothing worse than having somebody turn up and say, tell me about your business. Now, in this day and age, there's no excuse for not doing some quick research around the company, their website, the size of the company. You can go as far as whether they're profitable, who are the execs, where have they come from, what sort of people do they know that.

So you can get all of that information in 10 minutes. And you've got that then, and you can prepare. And when you go into the meeting, you can mention people that you've got in common so immediately, you get some sort of resonance. You can talk about their business in comparison to the clients that you have. So we've got a number of clients of your sort of size, and these are who they are.

And all that just makes you look-- I mean, clearly it's true, but it makes you look like you're really interested, you've put some time in, and you respecting their time, as opposed to-- and it happens and it used to happen a lot to me-- people truck up, and they go, tell me about your business. Why am I going to spend half an hour my time telling you all about my business? You can find that out.

Why aren't you saying, you're a food product company and I've got half a dozen companies of a similar sort of size that we deal with, and these are who they are. And I can see from your profile that you know George and you know Bert, and these are the people that we've dealt with. And they're similar sorts of sizes and these are the services that we give.

And all the time, what you're showing is that you understand their market. And they will warm to you because people like to deal with people who deal with people like them. And it works. But it does take that sort of time, 10 minutes. So you can't do enough, in some respects.

FIONA CHALLIS:

And I think for MSPs who are short of time on that, a really quick, easy tip to do that is connect with your prospect on LinkedIn before you have the meeting. Send them a quick note, say you're looking forward to meeting them later on this afternoon, get them to connect with you. And you can very easily see in their LinkedIn profile if you have similar connections, what they're talking about, what they're doing. It's a really quick and easy way of pre-meeting to get to know them.

PAUL LLOYD:

One of the things that I do--

FIONA CHALLIS:

That proves you've done your research before you've come to the meeting. They like that.

PAUL LLOYD:

One of the things that I do as a matter of course and sort of personally is I print their LinkedIn profile, and I put it in my folder. And I open it and I just leave it so that they can see, within the notes that I have, they can see that I've got a printout of their profile. So immediately they can see that I put that effort in to find it.

And I've got it there, so if I need it as a cue, then I can actually refer to it. And that works for both sides in many respects, because it does give them-- they can see that you've done it. And as I say, it's there, so you can use it as a sort of a cue if you get a bit lost or there's somebody the specifically on there that you want to talk to them about. And it's there in front of you.

And you're surprised at how many people will see it. And they go, oh, well, you've done that, then. And again, you've got another avenue for a conversation. And from a sales perspective, LinkedIn and the like are the best sources of information in the world, aren't they?

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yes, absolutely. And I would put a question-- Daniel is giving us a lot of detail on how he's interacting with his leads. So I love it. Keep that coming, Daniel.

We did have 100% of those who responded, which is about 70% on the line-- so some of you, interact a little more with our polls, if you can. But they said that they are doing research before they reach out to a lead. I would ask maybe in the chat if you guys want to say you're looking at their LinkedIn, are you looking at their website, is there some other method with how you're doing your research that might-- maybe something really innovative that most of us are not thinking of. Please share.

I think the website can be a great place also for that MSP mindset of you are a problem solver. You're looking through a potential clients website, you see their offerings. I think you're immediately going to start to think of ways that they could be optimizing efficiencies for some of these different items that they're offering, or backend tools that they need based upon your experience with clients who are similar to them.

So I think that even gives you, oh, I noticed on your website, you offer the following service. I had another client who had an issue with x, y, z. Are you guys dealing with that? To bring in your point about talking about clients who are like them, too, I think that can be a good way to start that conversation.

And then tip 4, first impressions count, getting off on the right foot. Fiona, do you have any advice that you could give here on what you think-- sorry, I'm tripping over my words-- would create a really great first impression for MSPs?

FIONA CHALLIS:

Yeah. So with MSPs we work with, we focus on getting them to have more business conversations rather than technology conversations. So a really good way to make a good first impression with a prospect is to basically start your meeting or start your call with, at this MSP, we do things slightly differently because we like to get to know our clients, we like to have a business conversation as opposed to a technology conversation.

So in order for us to start the meeting, is there are some key things then that you could take them through, which is learn their business outcomes, what are they trying to achieve. What are their financial outcomes, what are their KPIs, and what are their business capabilities and processes. Let the customer talk. So ask them questions around that framework.

But customers love to talk about themselves. So as long as you make that good first impression, the key is get them talking and get them engaged and get them telling you about their business.

PAUL LLOYD:

Or wear a bright pink jacket.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Exactly.

SHANNON MURPHY:

The hot pink, the magenta is Fiona's power color. Paul told us he's more of a baby pink guy for his power color. But that's also subtext on that tip-- wear pink.

FIONA CHALLIS:

I think another thing I would do there, Shannon, I'm a great fan of story selling, so using stories to really help you to sell. So normally what we would do is you would start off that business conversation, and then when the prospect starts talking about their business, you should always have an MSP story box, so a box of stories that you can keep in your back pocket of other customers that you have already helped to achieve what they're trying to achieve, or perhaps the customer that you have had to save money for or increased productivity for, something that's going to relate to them so that you can share that story because there's nothing more as captivating as telling a really good story that really engages your prospect and keeps them interested. So have a story box of stories that you can tell.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yes, and that's actually something that I am writing to Walter right now. He's having some trouble with getting leads to the site, it sounds like. And so I just actually said, to Fiona's point right here, tell stories on that site, too.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Yeah, absolutely.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Pictures of people, pictures of your customers and clients, and making sure that their stories are showcased as well.

PAUL LLOYD:

Yeah. It comes-- also case studies, it comes down, with websites, it comes down to having something there that resonates with the people that are looking. All too often, if you go and look at MSPs' websites, the front page is 9 times out of 10 so is exactly the same thing. They're the best in whatever the area is that they're in, and they do lots of IT stuff and they do lots of IT services and they're marvelous with Microsoft and outstanding with something else, which the majority of the people that you're selling to, it doesn't mean anything.

Putting down the fact that you're a ConnectWise partner doesn't actually mean anything to the person that is looking for you to support their business. And I think looking at it from the client's perspective, so in their language, if you were in their shoes, what would you look for. So it is stories, it is case studies, and use their language.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Absolutely, use their language when you do those requests for feedback.

PAUL LLOYD:

But that comes down to that know it comes back down to having a sensible what we call a niche, what you call a niche, but a sensible target market that you understand everything that goes on within that market so that when you do talk to people, they recognize the fact that you understand their market, their business, the people that they deal with, the people that they mix with. And then you're automatically become a part of that group and they will listen to what you've got to say.

And there's no-- you can't overstate that sort of making the prospect feel that you truly understand what it is that they're looking to do because the one-- I have a particular bee in my bonnet about the size of the decision that you're asking these people to make. So you're asking, if you're going out as an MSP to a small business, you're asking to essentially look after the heart of that company because if it doesn't work, they can't trade. So that's a massive decision in the context of the businesses that you're going to.

And you wouldn't go to a heart surgeon and just take it on the fly that he looks like a nice bloke. I mean you'd want to know-- woman, for that matter. But you'd want to know that he's done it before, that he understands what's going on, that you can put confidence that he understands what he's actually doing.

And the same goes for this. That beating heart of that business, if their infrastructure goes down, for as long as it's down, they can't trade. It costs them money. So that's a massive, massive decision, whether it's a big company or a little company. So take some time and understand, and demonstrate the fact that you understand their issues and the businesses and their concerns and where they're edgy about passing that control over to somebody else.

FIONA CHALLIS:

I think the key thing to remember with everything that MSPs do for their websites, for marketing, and their sales process, you're not selling technology, you're selling business results, you're selling business outcomes. And as soon as a prospect comes to your website, they come to your LinkedIn profile, they come to your marketing, as soon as you can stop the scroll, as in they're scrolling through lots of different things on LinkedIn or scrolling through lots of different MSPs' websites, as long as they can get to your website and see, these are industries we work with, so we work with manufacturing, we work with legal, we work with SMBs, and these are the results that we get from them. As soon as they can see that, you've stopped the scroll, and that is your objective.

So anytime you do marketing, your websites, ask yourself the question, if I was my customer, would that stop the scroll? And that's a good change to see if you've got the right information there.

PAUL LLOYD:

And they all need to say the same thing as well because it's surprising how many people's website says something different to the description on LinkedIn, says something different to their Google-- it's frightening in some respects that you've got all these various channels, but often, if you actually did an audit of them, that they're actually saying a slightly different message. And if somebody reads it once and then reads the same thing again and again, they're gaining confidence. If they're reading once and then the next one is different, then they're starting to question. And those questions then lead them to do something else, certainly.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yeah, inconsistency. I think that might be a question for everyone, too, who's thinking about their websites, their social presence. When is the last time you did an audit, made sure that they all matched?

Or is that even a considered discussion that happens internally? Or do you kind of just say to somebody marketing, in house, out of house, oh, I want our website to be more this. They make that change, but then they don't change anything on the social profiles or your Google My Business or anything like that. So now you think you're leading with the new message, but the ways in which people find you predominantly are lacking. They're not they're not up to date with how you want to lead the conversation anymore.

So we know that getting time with a prospect can be a challenge. Paul, what advice would you give MSPs to improve their chances of speaking with the prospect?

PAUL LLOYD:

I'm a fan of email and the telephone. So it would be an email, teeing up a telephone conversation. Try and arrange a time, if you can. I'm probably one of the most disorganized people in the world, so I would prefer people to just phone me because I can answer the phone in five minutes, whereas if I've got to sort of schedule a whole day of calls, it just takes me longer.

But again, it's understanding the market. It may be that people won't phone at 8:00 in the morning. You can arrange to speak to them at 7 o'clock at night. So you've got to give a good enough reason and add enough value that they want to talk to you. So it's not a matter of, let's catch up, let's have five minutes, or how are you. Everybody asks the question, how are you, but nobody really listens to the answer.

So it's important that you try different routes and be persistent. Leave a voicemail with a nice hook on it, try and get people to call you back because that's by far the best way because they're then calling you. And when they call you, that's a slightly different conversation to when you're chasing them. But a lot of it is just persistence, but having something of value to share so that every time they've spoken to you, they're a little wiser at the end of it than they were before they started.

FIONA CHALLIS:

I think just to add into that, Shannon, if you want to reduce that amount of time it takes, so if you want to have more likelihood of having a conversation with them on the second outreach rather than the 11th, you need to understand that customers are saying into their own head, is it worth me giving you my time? So time is critical for everybody. You need to convince them in any outreach that it is worth me giving you 15 or 30 minutes of your time.

So in the outreach, there does need to be a hook. But that hook needs to be real, it needs to be relevant, it needs to be results orientated. And again, a really good way to do that is hook them with a story.

So as an example, you would lead with a story to say, hey, Mr. Prospect. I just wanted to let you know I recently worked with another MSP, and they actually help one of their customers to save 85,000 pounds a year by removing one third-party tool. I'd love to have a quick 10-minute conversation with you and share which tool that was.

So you've hooked them, you've given them a reason, and you've given them some value because you're going to tell them something that they really need to know. So hook them in with stories. Hook them in with results.

And tease them a bit. Don't give them all the answers. Tease them so they have to have the call with you to find out what it was. Pique the curiosity and you shorten the cycle.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Absolutely. That's great advice. That is great advice. OK, sorry, I think I lost myself in my notes here.

So all of us here, we receive hundreds of emails a day. Our prospects are no exception. Fiona, what do you think MSPs should be doing to improve their sales emails and stand out in the inbox?

FIONA CHALLIS:

So yeah, I think if you want to stand out on email today, video works really well, so including a short video message within the email. And actually, instead of them reading through all of the text, you can just say, I've just recorded a quick 2-minute video for you, and you put that in the subject line because when somebody sees that you have recorded a video for them, without watching the video, they don't know what you're saying.

So it kind of teases them again. It's like, oh, wonder what they're saying on the video. So it makes them open the email. So that works really well today, video.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yeah, I love the video email. The three of us were chatting yesterday, too, and were saying how there used to be that moment in inbound marketing where it was kind of creepy. You'd go to somebody's site or you download it a white paper. And this does still happen, of course. You download a white paper and a sales guy immediately calls you. Do you have any questions about the X white paper?

And we were like, no, no, no, don't want to be doing that. But that's a way to lessen that while showing human touch and wanting to be supportive of their journey of learning is maybe you shoot them a video introduction. Hi, I'm here to answer your questions. Hope you enjoyed that resource or whatnot. Or maybe you would like to elaborate, Fiona, on what should be in that video.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Yeah. So again, it depends where the outreach came from. It depends the initial first point of contact of that prospect, but always link it back into that.

But one of the key things that you can say, if it's a very early contact and you're trying to get them to have another conversation with you, a good thing to say in that video is, thanks for reaching out to us. We have customers like you reaching out to us all the time. Just to save you some time, there are three key questions that most new prospects coming to us want us to answer for them.

Those three questions are why should you work with us, why should you pay us more than any other MSP, and how do we differentiate. So let me give that to you in a very short, sharp statement, which is your value proposition with a hook, and then get them to book a call with you using a Calendly link. So you're teasing them, you're answering the questions they're already asking in advance, and then book a call.

SHANNON MURPHY:

I love that. I love it. I love how organized it. Is I love how confident it is. Paul, do you have anything you'd like to add to that?

PAUL LLOYD:

I think that the approach of having all of your various stages linked up is actually quite important. As I said yesterday, really, I'm almost at the other end of the scale because what I find works really well is a straightforward, plain text, short email with a single message. So it may only be-- I would try and keep it on one screen so there's no scroll, it just appears. They can see it.

They can get the gist of it from the first paragraph, single message, with a call to action, but all plain text. Not trying to be clever with putting "re" before it on the title because that sort of thing really irritates me, but a meaningful title. And it may be that you've spoken to me, you're following it up, it may be just a cold outreach, but a meaningful title with a very short message and a call to action. And that tends to get through all the various tools that are there to stop these things because it hasn't got anything fancy in it.

And as I say, it tends to work well. I've never tried doing it with video. And there's a whole host of-- you get HTML and all the rest of it sort of wonderful jumping around emails. But people don't have massive amounts of time. And even if they look at it on the phone, they can read a short message, click a link if that's what they have to do, but they're respectful of--

Occasionally, I have once in a while, if I'm doing it specifically, so not in terms of maybe just one outreach, then I'll put a message and I'll actually put a sentence that says, if you're not interested in it so far, don't read the rest, so respecting the fact that there's a lot of information there. But if they're not really interested at that point, not to bother reading it further. And of course, what they do then is they read it further because that's just human nature. But it does these things take a lot of-- in many respects, they take a lot of thought and planning.

And again, I think, Fiona, there's lots of planning, from one step to the next step, that these are linked and there's a process that you're going through. It's not ad hoc. I think there's a tendency you think, well, we do this and we'll do that and we'll do the other, but it's got to form part of a series of steps.

FIONA CHALLIS:

That's the problem, though, isn't it? But the biggest problem I see with MSPs is sales and marketing, and having that process in place--

PAUL LLOYD:

Absolutely.

FIONA CHALLIS:

--is ad hoc. It's we'll pick it up, we'll put it down. Oh, we're too busy, oh, we've got time now. We'll do a little bit of selling, we'll do a little bit of marketing. Without having that consistency, without having that process, things like that happen, and that's when it goes wrong. And you think, oh, sales doesn't work, or marketing is not giving me a result. When you do have the right process in place with those touchpoints, you know exactly what you're going to be doing next, it streamlines it. It makes it so much easier and you get much better results from it.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yep, consistent and persistent is what I like to say.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Yep, that's it.

SHANNON MURPHY:

So speaking of marketing, we know that a lot of our MSPs are getting into creating content, blogs, ebooks, how-to guides, case studies, we already touched on, so on. Fiona, I know that you have, I think, two content offers that in your experience with MSPs that are performing the best. Would you mind sharing that with our audience?

FIONA CHALLIS:

Yeah, definitely. So I can see one of them on here, actually, James Filer. I'm going to call you out. So well done, James. He does a super job of content. So one of the-- well, two of the key things that work really well is if you build a guide around what your customers actually want to buy, not what you sell, but what they want to buy-- so you would have, let's say, 2022 profitability guide for the manufacturing sector.

So you write a guide that is vertical pacific, and then that becomes your kind of lead magnet. So you give that away for free, but it talks all about the customer's business outcomes, and it's literally a framework. It's a nine-page guide that we give you a framework with to say, talk about this here, tell them that there, and it's a really good way to build an audience of prospects that you know are interested. So that's the first one.

The second one, which is actually a better converting one today, is quizzes, so doing an online quiz. It could be a cybersecurity quiz as an example, but for a given sector. That's how you get the hook in. Quizzes at the moment, they are really high engagement. They're converting super, super well.

And even with my mentor group, a group that I mentor of MSPs, I shared that with them this week. And I tried it in my business, and within two months, I generated 154 leads just by using a quiz.

And it's 20 questions that you ask them on the quiz. But what happens is, as you're asking them those questions, what you're actually doing is qualifying them at the same time. So it's a double hit. You're like, give me a lead, come into my funnel. But whilst you're coming into the funnel, answer these questions for me, because then you can see whether they're going to be a good prospect for you or not. So all the MSPs I mentor, I'm getting them to do quizzes now.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Fiona's sneaky. I love that.

FIONA CHALLIS:

And James had a good teacher, Fiona Challis. So James does a fantastic job. He's literally implemented everything we've taught him, but he is so consistent. He is the most consistent MSP I've ever seen at implementing contacts. So well done, James.

And he does a thing called Monday's Moments. So every Monday, every Monday morning, literally for 2 minutes, he pops on LinkedIn, does a quick video tip, and gives two minutes video tips to all of his audience. And consistently, every single Monday he does it. And that gives great awareness. So things like that really work, so well done, James.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yes.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Good. I'm glad you're doing the quiz next.

SHANNON MURPHY:

I love-- yeah. I've been in marketing for 15 years, most of it through content. It's not a quick solution. You have to, again, be consistent and persistent. So James, kudos to you, video content, putting that out regularly on social.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Yeah.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Like to see that and know what to expect. OK, I have my little Monday morning meet with James.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Monday's moment.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yeah. Paul, is there anything else that you wanted to add in terms of offers from a marketing perspective?

PAUL LLOYD:

Obviously, I agree with everything Fiona said. But I think I would be-- it's almost a word of caution in some respects, in that now there's an awful lot of people telling people to produce lots and lots of content, down to the odd sales guru who says that salespeople should be writing blogs all the time and writing their own content and putting out three or four sets of content a day. I think Gary Vee reckons that every salesman should be doing three or four content pieces a day.

And it's very easy to say, but, A, it's inordinately time consuming. And if you pay for it, it's actually quite expensive. So I think if you're going to do it, you need to pick your market, pick your piece, and understand what's involved in it, and not necessarily take notice of all the super sort of social media content marketing people that are around.

I worked with an organization for a while, and we were being put under a lot of pressure to just do blogs, just get the technical people to write a blog. And then you're relying on the fact that they can write in the first place, and then the time for them to do it. And it's not something that I think most places can actually incorporate in their sort of run of the mill business. They've got to step outside and pay for it.

Now, there's a number of organizations that will produce vanilla content that you can adapt, and that's one route. You can use some of the vendors materials, obviously, as long as you can put it in the context of selling the solution and your business outcome and your business, as opposed to necessarily a product.

But I just think you've got to just be careful that it doesn't soak up all your time, would be, as I say, it's a bit of a word of warning. But I've seen it over and over and over again.

And as you say, it takes a long time, really, to get that sort of traction with it. You've got to be consistent, you've got to be persistent, and you've got to be producing these things over and over again. And it could take weeks and months to start to get that sort of traction.

FIONA CHALLIS:

See, I disagree with that a little, Paul, and I don't often disagree with you.

PAUL LLOYD:

If we don't disagree once in an hour, we're going--

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yeah. No, we want we want multiple opinions. So yeah, let's disagree.

FIONA CHALLIS:

I honestly do think that sometimes we overcomplicate this. If you have a framework to creating good content, you can make it a rinse and repeat type thing where you're just reusing, you're refreshing, you're putting everything in place to get loads of content out there.

But literally, it starts with writing that guide. Write the guide, write 12 points within the guide. Then you pick the parts of the guide out and you use them as a blog post, you use them as a video post, you use them as a social post. Everything's in one place, and you just keep picking bits out of it and reusing it. So you're actually only writing it once, but you're creating a 12-week lead gen campaign in advance, planning it in advance, and pushing that content out.

I think when you have a framework, when you have a content calendar, when you get clever about content, it's actually really easy and it doesn't take that much time. The MSPs I work with, they probably have a day a quarter where they're planning that content. It's programmed in the system, it pumps out automatically once it's set up.

And you can get so creative. Like, James get so creative with his. Those 2-minute videos, you're not preparing loads of content. You just stand in front of your phone for 2 minutes. So 2 minutes or 2 minutes a day, you can get a bit of content out.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yep. Yeah. And so career content marketer, I can see both sides of this.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Yeah, one in the middle.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yeah, I know, because when Paul was talking about it, I thought, yes, good content, especially consistently, can be hard to create. But then in my mind, I thought, somebody like our MSP audience should be hacking this by templatizing.

That's something that I always guide my clients through. It's like, how do we templatize this, because I'll create whole content programs with them, help them find the appropriate content marketers to hire in house, all of that. And so you have to templatize.

You need to-- you know you're distracted. So many of you are. I have leaders that say to me, oh, I'd really like to be featured on like these publications and this and that. I know they're not going to sit down and write. I have to make it as lightweight as possible for them.

But then also, to Fiona's point, don't waste the content, because I think that her guides are a brilliant way to start because that content has, as we call, evergreen. It has value long term. Those guides for the niches on your website are always going to be great downloadable for you, but you maybe hire an agency, you work with somebody to create that content.

Don't waste it. There are valuable points throughout that long form piece. As Fiona said, recycle. Make sure that they're turned into blogs, into easy videos, where you just create a selfie video answering FAQs that your clients typically ask you. That's something you could talk about all day. So I think that's why that works well for James, too.

And so it's really just that's the thing I love to say everywhere, all the time, internally, externally. Don't waste the good content. If you created a great resource-- and I think any of you MSPs listening, if you decide to work with an agency or somebody who's promising you content, I was like help people evaluate vendors, that's a great, salient question to ask, to say, OK, well, if you're going to create me this resource, charge me 10K for this white paper, what's the plan to repurpose that? Make sure that they have a good answer in all the various forms that will be repurposed so that one investment actually is repurposed into other forms as well.

So I digress, content marketing passion here. But I can see both.

FIONA CHALLIS:

I can that. I can see.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yeah. So we have--

FIONA CHALLIS:

I think as well, though, just to add into that. I think it's important to note the content doesn't have to be written today. That's the beauty about it. So it's not a case of you having to sit down for three hours to write a blog or anything else. Most of the time, what even I do now for my business is they have an app called Otter. I talk into it because I can talk a lot quicker than I can write, and it turns it into a text document for me automatically.

And a lot of my customers use it now. Even the Microsoft Word app on your phone is actually really good. You just talk into it, it automatically puts it into a text file for you, and you turn it into a piece of content. And you could just be talking in the car on the way home.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Be still my heart. When I had sales guys come to me and tell me they wanted to contribute to the business blogs that I managed and they would have a hard time creating it, that was actually what I said. I was like, you're a sales guy. You could talk all day.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Yeah, talk all day on the phone.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Go for it. I love that. I love that. Fiona's, like, my sales expert, and then she's like, I'm talking to my phone. It's perfect.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Keep it simple and easy. That's what I am about.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Absolutely. Yeah, remove barriers at all costs. And that's, I think, for any-- you guys have done that in other facets of your business, those that are online right now. And sometimes with marketing and sales, it's recognizing where you're getting stuck and trying to find the easiest way forward, which Fiona's illuminating here.

So I just wanted to touch on our seven tips before we conclude. We are close to time. I don't know, Fiona, Paul, if you have a few minutes to stay in and answer any questions or if you have a hard stop.

PAUL LLOYD:

No.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Yeah, I'm OK for about 10 minutes.

SHANNON MURPHY:

OK. All right, and I think that's fair. So I just wanted to summarize some of our tips. So tip 1, sales outreach takes multiple forms. Remember, 27 touches.

Tip 2, first follow-up needs to happen within 5 minutes. I think Paul gave you a wonderful elaboration on that to say, maybe just give them a call, tell them that you're in the weeds right now, you're working on solving a client problem, but that you will get back to them later that day.

And then I kind of want to combine tip 3 and 4, to be honest with you. Its first impressions count, get to know the prospect and their company so that you can make sure that when you have that first touch, that first phone call, as Paul said, tell me about your business. It's kind of like when he also said, oh, how are you, but nobody listens to the answer. Varying degrees of consultants will actually listen to the answer about my business. So I think we should do some research on that first.

Tip 5, perseverance is essential. But the big thing that I want to underline that our experts were mentioning, too, is that you need to deliver value, though, and tease it with that follow-up.

And then if you are following up via email, I think the big things that we want to try today, now, dip our feet into this, is video and also provide a meaningful subject line. Both of those things are probably going to help you break through, but they need to be backed up by a good solid CTA.

And then tip 7, we want to provide value with resources and content. But as we've talked about just now, it needs to be consistent and persistent, and we need to repurpose content intelligently as well. Is there anything else that you two wanted to add to that?

FIONA CHALLIS:

You see, there are seven bits of content. You've just done your whole week's content calendar because you can turn that into seven tips, seven videos, seven blog posts, seven Canva posts, and you've got a whole week's of content there.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Exactly. It doesn't always have to be long form, short bit.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Yeah.

PAUL LLOYD:

OK.

SHANNON MURPHY:

OK. So I, at this point, if anybody has any other questions, send them into us, please. And I will also-- let me just share my screen. We have some good offers for you guys, too.

OK, I know we're going to circle back to Walter's website. But if we have any other questions--

FIONA CHALLIS:

Just curious, what area of Ireland is Fiona from?

SHANNON MURPHY:

Ah, yes, share.

FIONA CHALLIS:

I'm from a different time called Enniskillen in County Fermanagh, so Northern Ireland.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Enniskillen. I think I've heard of that, actually. Yeah, that's so funny.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Though I've lived in London now longer than I've actually lived in Ireland, but I still have the accent.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

FIONA CHALLIS:

You have an Enniskillen in Ontario, Canada. Wow.

SHANNON MURPHY:

That's so funny. Thank you, Fred. So we are having a sale on Zomentum Grow right now. WELCOMESPRING30, that's the code. And then also, Fiona is providing us access to her MSP Sales Mastery. I'm going to chat you some of these links so that you can copy and paste.

And we will be sending a follow-up email with the recording, with these resources. So let me just copy these for you guys right now into the chat so you have everything.

And also, Paul has graciously shared his 90 days sales cycle, sales process, and his sales-ready questionnaire. So related to what we were talking about with BATs, understanding if they're actually MQL ready, and then I think from there exploring the sales side and getting those questions answered to make sure that they're appropriate fit. Right, Paul?

PAUL LLOYD:

Yep. Yeah. So the sales process is a lot of what we've talked about. It's a very simple sort of yes and no approach, and the various sort of stages in that process. And then the sales-ready questionnaire is really there to say, look, these are the things that you need to get in place before you sort of put your foot down and start looking at taking salespeople on.

And it's all about making sure that you've got your sales story and you've got your collateral and you know where you're going and you've got your target market, and all those things are all sorted so that when you start to move forward you've got everything there to make it successful. And all too often, it comes back to these sort of haphazard way that a lot of MSPs will follow things up.

Often it's, oh, we think we'll take on somebody in sales. And then after three months, they get rid of them because they haven't sold anything. And it's always the salesman's fault if we don't sell anything. So it's just a bit of background to help them move things forward.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yeah, awesome. Awesome. So let me go back to Walter. And it was nice. We had some conversation going on where Daniel was helping Walter with his website as well while we were talking. But he did mention that he feels like he must be doing something wrong because he's had the website redesigned, hired a company to do daily touches and LinkedIn requests, and for three months, I haven't seen anything.

Do you guys-- I know that's kind of cursory. But he also goes on to mention later that he's a very slow site, which I'm sure it's not helping the situation. But I think, if you were talking to an MSP, they said, I've had my site redesigned. I'm sending out the daily touches, I'm doing the LinkedIn requests, I guess, where are you guys seeing a gap that you would want to advise that person on?

FIONA CHALLIS:

I think with Walter there, Walter, there's a chap in the UK called Mark Copeman, who specializes in working with MSPs' website, and he does free reviews on all of your websites to see where it's going slow, to see where it's working and where it's not working. So perhaps ping me your details and I'll pass them on to him if you want, and I'll get him to reach out to you. He does really good reviews for MSPs.

SHANNON MURPHY:

OK. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, because I think it sounds like conversions is the issue.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Yeah.

SHANNON MURPHY:

And so-- and feel free to get in touch with me, Walter, ShannonMurphy@Zomentum.com. We did do-- I think it was two weeks ago, no, a month ago, we had Paul Green on the line and we actually just did a live tear down of a Zomentum customer's website. They volunteered graciously.

Tear down sounds awful. It's really just to get butts in seats. We're kind, I promise. But if you want, I'm thinking about doing that quarterly with MSPs, if you guys should need, where we could bring up your websites, have some experts on the line, go through, and give you some advice.

FIONA CHALLIS:

You should get Mark Copeman on for the next webinar. I bet he'll do it right for you.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Oh, yeah. No, perfect. Yeah, send me his details. Exactly, that's what we would love to do. We just have it live. I don't know, it hasn't been too scary yet. We might stumble upon some landmines later, evaluating the marketing.

But oh, Daniel, don't be too hard on yourself. He says, I know much.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Things that can be easily fixed. Once you spot the problem, a lot of the time it can be easily fixed.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yes. Yeah, and I think also if I had to rank making improvements to your website or getting the stories that Fiona mentioned, I would get the stories because--

FIONA CHALLIS:

Stories are really important.

SHANNON MURPHY:

I think sometimes people think the website validates you. It does help, but it doesn't validate your business as much as having stories about clients and the value that you have delivered to them, that you can weave into conversations, website later. I think that is really vital.

PAUL LLOYD:

But also, I think if you know who you're selling to and the market that you're in, you can go out and go to networking events and go to the events where they are, and engage with people in 3D. And you'll start to gain that credibility that you will get with content if you're sending content out.

So I don't think you can necessarily rely on your website to do everything for you. But if you go out-- it can certainly lose you business. Because if you refer somebody to your website, and you've told them one thing and your website tells them something else, then inevitably you've got a challenge. But there's always networking groups, there's local business groups. If it's a specific vertical market, they'll have publications, they'll have their own sort of audiences and communities. And get out and be in there and demonstrate that you understand their business.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Mm-hmm, absolutely. Oh, and Fiona has--

FIONA CHALLIS:

I've just put a quiz up there for anybody. So if you want to test how strong-- I call it how strong or how sloppy is your MSP sales process. You either have a very sloppy one or you have a strong one, or you have one with holes in it.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yep, find those holes. Remediate.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Yeah, so I've just popped a free quiz in there, if anybody wants to take it.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Awesome. And that's-- yes, I love having your live expertise. I love when we can share our resources as well.

Rick was asking about the live tear down. I sent a link to all of our on demand webinars. We've been doing this since November, so we have quite a hub gathered there. And you can actually see in the upper left, that live tear down with Paul Green is listed there as one of the top-- in the top row there.

FIONA CHALLIS:

And he's very funny. He's worth a watch.

SHANNON MURPHY:

It is quite entertaining.

FIONA CHALLIS:

He's a good friend of mine. He's very funny.

SHANNON MURPHY:

He's fantastic. He's fantastic. Yes, I'm stealing his joke, but I think one of the first webinars I did with him, he was offering a physical copy of his book. So this is an interesting take, if maybe somebody wants to steal this from a marketing perspective.

He has the downloadable, but he has also had that downloadable resource binded and printed. And so when somebody downloads, they get access, I think-- or when they fill out the form, they get access immediately. He does send them a physical copy, which, as Paul mentioned, direct mail can be effective in that regard.

And he mentioned, oh yeah, I'll send you an actual physical book, no matter where you are, US, UK. It's great toilet reading. I almost spit out my water. So he is quite the character, so smart, and very passionate when it comes to seeing those areas that need to be fixed. He can hone in very quickly on that. So I would definitely--

FIONA CHALLIS:

Yeah, he's very good. Me and Paul both started our speaking career together at the same time 15 years ago, long time ago.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Oh, wow. Wow, yeah, you guys came up together. Yeah. OK, awesome.

Well, I think we're kind of at time. We don't have any other questions, except clearly our audience enjoyed this because they've asked several times for the recording. So it will be mailed out to all of you with the resources that Fiona and Paul graciously shared with us. And also we'll get it live in the in-demand hub link that I sent to you as well.

Be sure to follow us on LinkedIn, the Zomentum brand, because we are doing webinars every two weeks, so we promote those pretty heavily. And also I'm planning some content right now around a whole LinkedIn April. So our sessions on the 14th and the 28th, which I'm solidifying right now, will be all about social selling and how to do that on LinkedIn because I feel like a lot of MSPs are asking questions about that. So watch us on all the socials for that for more info.

Anything else that you guys would like to tell people to-- places to follow you or things to watch for?

PAUL LLOYD:

Well, we're clearly both on LinkedIn. And I have a Twitter handle, but I don't do much on Twitter. Most of what I do, most of my business comes through either networking events, this type of thing, or LinkedIn. And I'm always-- I try and post valuable things on LinkedIn as well as sometimes opinions.

So I do say to people-- I did a workshop yesterday, and I said to them, have a look at my profile on LinkedIn. Read some of the comments, read some of the posts. And all things being equal, you should the sort of person that you're actually dealing with. And that's just the way that I approach it.

But it's being seen, all the time. It's being in the place where your prospects are and being seen so that they think, oh, there he is. I'll go and talk to him. So I'm spending two days at an event next week. I used to spend up to two days a week at events, vendor events and whatever. But of course, they all stopped.

But they are now starting again. I'll get out to get a free lunch.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Yeah, you just do it for the free lunch, Paul.

PAUL LLOYD:

Yeah, I'm always up for a free lunch.

FIONA CHALLIS:

So yeah, for me, LinkedIn is the best place, or MSP Sales Mastery. If you just Google MSP Sales Mastery, you'll get me there. But LinkedIn is probably the best place to connect with me.

SHANNON MURPHY:

All right. Awesome.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Thank you so much, guys. And thank you, Shannon, for inviting us. It's been a great event.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Yes. Yes, thank you, again, for lively conversation, both everything we had going on here and in the chat with our audience. Thank you guys so much for being with us all around.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Have a good time.

SHANNON MURPHY:

Have a great rest of your day, everyone. Ta-ta.

PAUL LLOYD:

Cheers.

FIONA CHALLIS:

Bye.

PAUL LLOYD:

Bye.

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