Sales Without the Sleaze: How to Prospect the Right Way

Sales Without the Sleaze: How to Prospect the Right Way

Tim Fitzpatrick
You know you need to prospect for your business, and you know that relationships matter. But let's be real. Cold outreach can feel awkward. Linkedin can turn into a spam fest, and fear-based tactics push people away instead of pulling them in. In this episode, we're diving into practical, trust-based sales strategies that help you break the ice without feeling salesy, help you leverage LinkedIn without being a spammer and start relationships the right way without resorting to scare tactics. Get ready to transform your sales approach and create authentic connections that actually lead to business. Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Real to marketing, where we believe marketing shouldn't be difficult. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in. I am really excited to have with me today Michael Bakaic with Iceberg Cyber. Mike, welcome. Thanks for being here, man.

Michael Bakaic
Thanks for me on the show, Tim.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I'm excited to dig into this, man. Before we do that, I want to ask you a few rapid fire questions. Help us get to know you a little bit. You ready to jump in with both feet?

Michael Bakaic
Ready to rumble.

Tim Fitzpatrick
All right, man. When you're not working, how do you like to spend your time?

Michael Bakaic
Well, I work most of my waking hours. Let's go through yesterday's calendar. I wake up at 8: 00 sharp, I eat a pound of egg YTS, then I start working at 9: 00 sharp, and I'll work till 8: 15, then go to the gym, workout, come home, and go to bed. That's my entire day. So when I'm not working, I'm exercising, which I consider part of my professional life as well.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So you're exercising or you're sleeping?

Michael Bakaic
Exactly. Sleep is our superpower, and I try and sleep more. I have been deliberately tracking my sleep, especially with all the travel I've been doing. I I'm trying to build up a huge sleep debt, so I'm trying to keep it close to neutral, which is a weekly struggle.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. Do you notice it when you get better sleep?

Michael Bakaic
Absolutely. Oh, yeah. Physiologically, you know when you're not sleeping enough. The gadgets and stuff that I've been using just help me quantify that because I'm a gear nut, but you can feel it when you sleep well and when you don't sleep well. The gadgets just give you a number so you can stare at it throughout the day and then try and be better when it gets closer to the evening to go to bed early.

Tim Fitzpatrick
What's your hidden talent?

Michael Bakaic
I had this in prep, so I was thinking about this. I would I, maybe not even a talent. That's for other people to decide, but I enjoy doing the gross, boring things that are required to achieve something. I enjoy that. People tease me about the food that I eat because it's disgusting and flavorless, and we can talk about that if we have time in this show, but those are the gross, boring slogs that you got to go through in order to achieve your goal. And I would say that I enjoy that, and I would vote that as one of my talents, being able to suffer through that.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, that's interesting. With food, specifically, it's a mindset shift, right? If you think about food as fuel for your body rather than something that you just do to enjoy, it's different, right? It's not that it's easy, but it becomes easier to eat things that you might not enjoy, but that are good for you.

Michael Bakaic
Yes. I'm trying to use food as a food and not as a source of pleasure. It's a type 2 fun for me. It's not fun while you're eating it, but it's fun afterwards when you know that it's contributing towards something.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yes.

Michael Bakaic
Even flavorless cottage cheese and unsalted chicken is not pleasurable in the moment, but it's a building block leading to an objective. So it comes from that. That's type 2 fun. Not fun in the moment, but fun to think about afterwards.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

Michael Bakaic
Recency bias here. The best piece of advice or a great piece of advice that I think about often is to achieve something extraordinary. You have to do the ordinary things on an extraordinary amount of times, and I try and live that. It's these boring, repetitive fundamentals that get you to something extraordinary. And I think that's an empowering piece of advice. So if you hear that and think about that and apply it to yourself in some way through your own lens. Yeah.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Have you ever read the book The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson?

Michael Bakaic
No. What's that? Slight Edge?

Tim Fitzpatrick
The Slight Edge. Great book. That's really where he talks a lot about that, where It's those little things that are so easy to do and so easy not to do. If you choose to do them, you get exponential results over time. You choose not to do them, you get exponential results down. But it's just those simple daily choices that we either choose to do or choose not to do that just add up over and over and over again. So man, yeah.

Michael Bakaic
I'm an audiobook nut, so I'm just putting that on my library card right now.

Tim Fitzpatrick
It's a great book. I can't remember when it was written. It was written a while ago. Yeah dude, I just I loved that book. What's one thing about you that surprises people other than the fact that you eat gross stuff?

Michael Bakaic
That probably doesn't surprise people. That probably doesn't surprise people when they meet me. I don't know. I don't know if there's one thing. People say I'm taller than I look on Zoom, but when they finally meet me in person. But I don't know if there is anything that... At least nothing that's been vocalized back to me that's surprising. My personality gets out there. And so by the time people we meet face to face or we're talking on Zoom, they get a full dose of

Tim Fitzpatrick
What does success mean to you?

Michael Bakaic
That's a big life question. Sure is. Right now, because I'm in the grind, Tim, and I have the blinders on. I think I can say that somewhat abstracted. I know that I'm in the grind and I'm embracing that. So success right now for me in the short term, success is like trying to get ahead of all of the little tasks that I know that I have to do. And I think about that constantly. And I've been doing a lot of SOPs. We're talking about Dan Martell's book, Find Back Your Time. If I could achieve the tactics that Dan put in the book, that would be a huge success. Because I know that those fundamentals would lead me to the next stage. And the next stage of challenges, I don't even know if I have enough information to comprehend yet. But that's how I'm evolving, how I'm trying to evolve as as an entrepreneur.

Tim Fitzpatrick
It's interesting that you say that because our definition of success changes over time, or it can change over time, depending on where we are and what we're focused on. So I mean, you are where you are, and success means what it means to you at this point. Once you get past that, well, then it may change a little bit, or it may start to shift, and that's totally okay. It's part of the deal.

Michael Bakaic
I think so. I think that's the fun unknown part setting off on your path. If you're always looking at the end goal, then you don't see where you are right now. You can't always be looking at your feet because then you won't know where you're going. But if you only stare off into the distance, then you won't see all the stuff that you're going to trip over. So there's some balance there. Right now, I'm looking at my feet a lot.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I get it. Well, I also view, no matter what your definition of success is, I've always felt like it's important that that definition has to be something that you can control. Because if you can't control it, too many things beyond what you can do that impact whether you become successful or not. Whereas, hey, you got tasks you know you need to get done, and If that's successful, you can control whether you get those things done or not, right?

Michael Bakaic
Yeah, totally.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So I love it. What qualities do you value in the people you spend time with?

Michael Bakaic
I enjoy talking to people that are looking to keep pushing the ball forward. And often, and I have been told many times, that that comes off as an abrasive personality. I often lose interest. If the conversation is staying, I'll lose interest. And that's just a character flaw that I have. But if I had this conversation with someone I was working with last week at an event, and they were talking about starting their own business and doing stuff, that gets me rolling. I love talking about that. And it doesn't even have to be about business. But if I have a conversation with someone and they're exuding their interest in improving themselves, I get fired up and I get drawn into it and I love it.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Tell us more about what you're doing at Iceberg Cyber, Mike.

Michael Bakaic
Well, we're a two and a half year old startup. Yeah, almost three years, two and a half, three years old startup. We started by creating some Security tools, cyber security tools foolishly, because we were tech people that were repeating the same mistake that I made at a previous startup where we thought that technology would set us free. So for the first year or so, we were making tech tools for problems that didn't require new solutions. And then the switch flipped in my mind, and I started to see the change in myself and then in the clients that we serve, where, I'm an engineer still, I was a real tech person that was afraid of sales and hated sales. I actually negotiated against paying a salesperson commission at a previous company that I had, which resulted in the company running out of money. So there's the end of that story arc. But at Iceberg, the evolution of my own mindset towards sales has been embodied in what we're trying to do with MSPs, like using technology not as a security tool to secure their clients, but as a conversation starter to make them feel more comfortable about sales, to get the conversations flowing with prospects so they can earn more clients and thereby secure more small businesses. So we started Iceberg to try and help prevent small businesses from being victims of cybercrime. But to achieve that, I understood as I learned more that the MSP is the critical link in this chain. But if they can't feel confident in a sales process, they can't get any clients to pay them money, and therefore, those clients aren't going to get any security. So this is how we're achieving that now. And we use security tools as the fun conversation starter to make that flow more comfortable between the MSP salesperson and the small business prospect.

Tim Fitzpatrick
You're helping the MSPs sell and generate leads through these tools.

Michael Bakaic
Absolutely. And I love talking about sales. I used to hate talking about sales. Now I love I'm not talking about sales. I love talking about it. I love doing it. I love thinking about it because I've seen how it's changed my own personality. And I can see it. I just had a follow-up interview with one of my own clients yesterday. So small MSP doing a lot of cyber advisory stuff, uncomfortable in the sales conversations before, like many tech people are, just socially uncomfortable to try and ask someone for money. But we went through this our own onboarding process and coach him to show sales is about solving people's problems in exchange for money, but it's about solving people's problems. So if you use that as the reframing instead of you're not getting them up for money, you're solving their problems in exchange for money. Now he's loving it. And he called me to tell me he's rolling in new conversations. People are calling him and he can talk to them with confidence because he knows how to listen for their problems. And when he finds the right ones, he knows how to solve them, and then they pay him money, and he loves it, and they love it.

Tim Fitzpatrick
It's a mindset shift, I think, for a lot of people. It's like, how do you view sales? If you view it as something that's negative, then you're not going to be excited about it, right? And you're not going to want to do it. But if you look at it as, Hey, I'm here to see if I can help these people solve this problem. If I can, cool. Then it's my job to tell them how I can help them do it. And if they choose to move forward or not, that's up to them. But it's that mindset shift. And I also think that, and you and I are most probably say we're biased, but if you don't have marketing and sales generating leads that are turning into clients, what you do doesn't matter. Who cares how good you are, whether you're a managed service provider or whatever you're doing, you can be the greatest in the world, but if you don't have leads turning into clients, then none of it matters. So super, super important.

Michael Bakaic
That is a common fallacy. I got a startup company, so I swim in the startup pools, which are a little bit different personalities than the small business world. There's a common fallacy that the technology will sell itself, which is disconnected from the reality that no one buys technology. People pay to solve their problems. Many problems are solved by technology, but no one's buying the technology. They're buying the solution to their problem. So to say that you could be the best in the world, but you don't like sales is a fallacy. You can't be good at this if you don't have sales, because sales is the definition of the problem that needs to be solved. So you can be a as an R&D Department, which was my previous startup, and you can be great as a cost center, which is a company that doesn't sell anything. But that's not a business. A business is exchanging goods or services for money. And to do that, you need to solve people's problems. Yeah.

Tim Fitzpatrick
And they need to want to solve them, right? We all have problems that we know we have, but we're not ready to solve them yet. Right?

Michael Bakaic
Right. I mean, that's what the sales process is, is helping a lead appreciate that they have a problem and realize that it's a problem that they really need to solve, and then giving them the solution for it.

How Do You Break The Ice Without feeling salesy?

Tim Fitzpatrick
It's worth solving. So let's jump into this. First thing I want to ask you, how How do you break the ice without feeling salesy? That's a big hurdle for a lot of people. How do you think about this? How do you approach it?

Michael Bakaic
I won't get too cheeky here. I'm going to tell you how I do this as a building block. I think people have a trauma in sales where they think about the used car salesperson or some other experience that they've had where someone is just pitching at them. They just keep hounding them and say, I have this product, buy it. I have this product, buy it. That's where sales feels salesy. And we have to try and disconnect the... The word sales is not bad. Let's train our minds to think that. But being salesy is gross and. We can see it all the time. Sales usually happens when someone is trying to sell at you. You say hi to someone and then they start telling you about this great product that they want you to buy. That's what being salesy he is. So we can use that as a first step and say, well, just don't do that. Don't sell at someone. The first part of the sales process needs to be discovering if they have a problem. If they don't have a problem, you can't sell anything to them. If they don't have a problem, don't pitch. Because if they don't have a problem and you pitch, you're going to get rejected 100% of the time, and then you're going to feel gross and you're going to feel rejected emotionally, and they're going to also view you as someone that they've rejected, which is going to put you on a shelf of permanent rejection. You don't want that. If you don't want to get rejected, don't pitch someone unless you know they have a problem. That's my overarching strategy. I don't talk about anything that I sell until I know that the other person has a problem that I think that I can help them solve. And the first part, the whole part of the conversation leading up to that is me trying to understand whether they have a problem and then helping them appreciate if it's a problem that's bad enough for them to want to solve. Because maybe they also have a problem, but they just don't care enough to solve it. It's not painful enough. Okay, don't pitch. Don't pitch. It's this inflection point when When you pitch, that's where it'll either be them saying, You know what? Yeah. Okay, I do need this. Or, Gross, don't pitch at me. Hit the reject button. And that inflection point is where people's emotions hinge on a knife's edge, because if you do it too early or if you pitch before knowing that they have a problem we're solving, they're going to reject you 100% of the time and you're going to feel terrible about it.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. I love how you keep this simple. What I'm hearing you say is we need to just first start to have a conversation, to identify, do they have a problem that we can help them solve? And do they actually want to solve that problem at this point? Up until that point. We should not be talking about what we do and what our solutions are. We just need to get to know people and understand their situation and where they're at.

Michael Bakaic
Absolutely. And I know that might sound too passive and indirect and coy, but that patience is what's going to prevent you from feeling bad. That patience is going to prevent that salesy emotion. Because if you're impatient and you're just knocking on doors and saying, would you like to buy IT? Everyone's going to reject you because no one wants to buy IT. No one wants to buy IT. No one wants that. People have problems that they need solved and IT solves them, but no one wants to buy IT. So this patience to discover their problem, this is what will prevent you from feeling salesy. And there are ways to be very active. This is not like a just wait and hope someone comes to you. Not at all. You can still go and hunt hard. You just have to keep that rule in mind. No pitching until they understand that they have a problem. And if you read between the lines here, the advanced recon here of your pre-sales process and marketing is helping people understand that they have a problem. And there's a lot of education that goes into that. And that's all of the active part is helping people realize that they do have a problem and you studying common problems and telling people about it and using lead magnets to reveal to themselves that they have problems. That's the active part. Because then once in their mind that they switch like, shoot, this is a problem. This is a problem that I need solved. Then you're right there and you won't feel salesy. They'll be asking you to solve their problem and you'll feel great about.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Dude, I love how you kept this. This makes perfect sense. And this leads into my next question, and I think we can take the same approach to this, but that's what a lot of people do on LinkedIn. And so you just get you connect with somebody, and then you immediately freaking get spammed and hit, make all kinds of assumptions, right? Yeah.

How to Leverage LinkedIn Without Being a Spammer

Tim Fitzpatrick
So my next question was going to be like, hey, how can you use LinkedIn LinkedIn prospect without being a spammer. Linkedin is a great place to connect with people if you approach it from the right mindset. So I'm assuming what we just talked about is a good base. Any other Any other thoughts you want to add to that?

Michael Bakaic
My strategy here is still in development, but let me tell you where I'm at so far. It's clear to know what not to do. So that's an easy thing. It's always easier to critique than create. So we can critique here and just make sure we don't do the mistakes, and then we can get creative on some solutions. What you don't want to do, whether it's on LinkedIn or in person, is say hello to someone and then pitch them because they're going to reject you. And they're going to know that the only reason you said hello was to pitch at them. And they don't want that. I get messages like this daily. I take screenshots and save them because this is my thing. I like reading these. But I'm sure everyone watching this video gets these messages from random people on LinkedIn that you've never met before. They'll send you an invite. You'll accept it because you're kind-hearted. And immediately they send you two paragraphs about their business that you have no interest in, asking if you want to have a meeting with their CEO, which, of course, you don't because you care. And then they'll send you the 17 touch point follow-up sequence, which just reinforces how much they don't care about your time or your attention because they're just bothering you. 16 follow-up times without you ever lying. So you don't want to do that because that makes you a spammer. What I do, I just connect with people without a message. Before I was sending messages, like personalized messages about events we've been at, now I just send out invites. And I use the social media platform as a warm one to many tactic to talk about the problems that I know my ideal client profile have. That's what I'm doing. Because it ties back to this, don't pitch at someone until they have a problem that they want to solve and you know it. Don't pitch. So I'm not pitching anyone, but I am talking about their problems and ways that they can solve their problem.

Tim Fitzpatrick
You're connecting with people that are your ideal client, potential ideal clients, and then you're just actively posting. And a certain percentage of those people are going to start to see your content.

Michael Bakaic
That's right. So there's some amorphous brand awareness happening, and then you can be direct. Being direct requires you to have some lead magnet that they would care about. Lead magnets are fantastic tools because it's a way to give value to someone and help them appreciate their problem more. There are three categories of lead magnets: reveal a problem style, a free sample like Costco, or free step one out of a multi-step process. Reveal a problem, very common. So the reveal a problem, you can see the theme here, it's all about the problem. The reveal a problem, my posts talk about problems that I know my vertical has, and then maybe I'll have a free lead magnet. For IT people, a fun one would be the Microsoft Cost Analyzer or something, or a workshop on how to use all of the Microsoft tools you're already paying for. There's a fund lead magnet because it gives value to the audience. That's a reason for you to directly message someone. And the message would be, Hey, I'm doing a workshop on Thursday on how to better use all the Microsoft services you're already paying for. Do you want to come? You're giving value to someone. You're helping them understand and reveal their own problem, which is they're wasting a ton of money on IT because they're DIY-ing and they don't really know what to do. You're helping scratch that itch, but you're not pitching them, importantly. So they might say, no, thanks. I'm busy Thursday, but let me know the next one because I probably do care about how much I'm paying Microsoft because I know what type of problems they have, so I can guess what type of problems they have. But it's no pitch, which is critical. And that's the important part of this direct outreach is that when you make this first outreach vector, you can't pitch them because you don't know if they have a problem. But you can proffer lead magnets that may help them reveal their problem. And that makes you feel good, and it might make them feel good. They might ghost you, which is fine. Then you're still at neutral, but it's not pitching. If they ghost you, they haven't rejected you. They just said, no, it's okay. I don't want to come to the webinar. It was thoughtful. It wasn't spam. This might be a webinar they would be interested in. The relationship and the emotions are still at neutral, but they're not negative. Because if you just knocked on their... If you just send them a LinkedIn message saying, Here's all of the tech support that we do. We reply to tickets super fast, blah, blah, blah. No one cares. Meet with my CEO. They're going to reject you because that's silly, and they know that you're just in this relationship to pitch them.

How to Start a Relationship with a Prospect the Right Way

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I love it. To lead into this next question, with Iceberg Cyber, one of the tools you guys have is a cyber score lead magnet, right? I've seen this on the marketing side a lot where you get marketers who are like, Hey, let us do a free SEO audit or a free website audit. And that audit just points out all the crap that you've done wrong, which tends to not work because people feel like they're being scared into this. It's a scare tactic. Why shouldn't you start a relationship this way? And how can you still position something like that? Because there is value in it, but it seems to me like there needs to be some type of repositioning there in it. Am I?

Michael Bakaic
I firmly believe that you can't start this with a fear because the fear is so temporal and it dissipates so quickly, especially when it comes to computers. If you do whatever assessment that you want to do and you say, The boogie man is coming for you if you don't take action and fix this. All the prospect has to do is forget about that message for five days and then read it again and say, well, I guess it wasn't that urgent because nothing has happened. Then what's the value? Nothing. So if you base it all on urgency, you have a very short window to convert. If you don't convert in that short window, your whole value prop is gone. Our cyber scores are not designed to get someone to look at it and say, I got to pay to fix this stuff. That's not what they're for, honestly. The lead magnets are designed to get the prospect talking so that you can try and uncover whether they appreciate that they have a problem. The cyber scores are revealing a problem. They're a reveal a problem style lead magnet. However, you and I may know that there's a problem. The prospect doesn't know that there's a problem. The lead magnet is trying to help them understand that they have a problem. But no one's like, Here's your cyber score. Give me $1,500 and I'll make it perfect. No prospect is going to move on that because they weren't thinking about a cyber score 20 minutes ago. They probably won't be thinking about it 30 minutes from now. So no one's smashing and grabbing money from that. The purpose of the lead magnet is to get the conversation started and earn enough trust from the person you're talking to for them to tell you about their real problems. And then that's what the lead magnet leads towards. I'll give you a specific example. Last week or mid-February, whenever this show comes out, mid-February, I was at the Wisconsin City and County Management Association Winter Conference in Madison, Wisconsin. It was lovely. We used the Cyberscore. I was there with one of our MSP clients, helping them prospect.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So they had a booth?

Michael Bakaic
They had a little three by five table, tablecloth, TV on the TV stand, Cyberscore. That's it. Very simple. They had a bunch of Cheskis. It was lovely. We had a bunch of people walking by. There's probably like 150 human beings at this event. We got a decent amount of foot traffic for a few hours. The Cyberscore was there to attract people to stop walking past and to give us something fun to talk about. So my line was, Hey, you want to do something fun and see your Cyberscore? That was literally my icebreaker. And people would say, okay, that's the reaction I'm looking for because they stopped walking past. That's the big objective there. So they stopped. We do it. We do the Dark Web scan. That's okay. That didn't land with that many people because I think the city managers have been trained to talk about that. But what did land with many of them was the email impersonation check, which is like the SPFD Kim D-Mark for anyone listening. Most of the cities didn't have D-Mark configured. So I talked about that and I said, listen, your Dark Web stuff is fine, but one thing that you need to talk to your IT person about is this D-Mark thing allows, since you don't have this set up, I could send an email impersonating you to all your residents. And they would say, oh, that's not good. I said, yeah, it's not good, but don't worry. It's like five seconds to fix. And there's a little tutorial right here. If you click this button, who's the IT person that I should send this to so that you can fix this? That was the conversation starter, because then they would either say, you know what, we just have someone voluntold at the city that fixed this. We don't really have someone. Okay, now I know that you have many more problems and the conversation is flowing and I ask you about those. Or they might have said, we have an IT company that we have this source this to. And I said, great, here's the tips for it. Send this to them right now, and I'll follow up with you next week to make sure you get it fixed, which may not lead to a deal. Maybe they do have an MSP already, but at least it want us a little bit of trust to talk to them more. And then those people that, even if they have an MSP, those people are just going to ask for a referral later. Who else do you know that wants to see their cyber score? It's a great conversation segue. But at no point was I pitching. At no point was I pitching. I was just giving them some fun value. At no point was I scaring them. I was showing them, I was revealing a them and then immediately telling them how to solve it for free without having to pay me. I'm not holding them hostage for the information. In all of these cases, I'm giving the information away for free because the execution is where they would pay an MSP, not in the knowledge. You can find the information on how to fix this stuff on Google. You don't need an MSP for that. But the reason people need managed service providers is the service part. It's the implementation and the maintenance and the upkeep and the And it's a support. So giving the information away for free is what helps that dynamic not feel like I'm scaring them into it.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. One, it's how you positioned it up front, too. Rather than, Hey, do you want to know your cyber score so you know all the stuff that hackers can get in on? No, it's like, Hey, do you want to do something fun and find out what your cyber score is? Yeah, cool. That sounds good. How How would you... So I love this. So that was in person. How would you shift that? I mean, you guys are offering the cyber score as a lead magnet on the MSPs that are working with you. On their website, how might I use that, say, on LinkedIn, right? Like, I'm connecting with people.

Michael Bakaic
Same conversation. Make a connection. You can post about it. You can post little case studies. Find a client that you already and do before and after. That's a good way to attract some attention and promote the lead man itself, serve to someone that's looking. And you can send direct messages in the same way. Say, Hey, Jerry, we're doing this as part of the association member benefits. I did a quick score for you. And notice these issues, but don't worry, they're easy to fix. Here's what you need to do. If you got five minutes, I can explain it to you. And then tying it back to the SEO checker thing. The SEO checker was one of the inspirations for the whole cyber score thing because the SEO checker is a great reveal a problem style lead magnet. What I think is critical to it working for a visitor to the website is making sure you tie the problem to something that the person actually cares about. So you can't just say your D-Mark's missing because they don't know why they need that. They don't know why that's a problem. But if you say, Hey, we did a little check, someone can impersonate you to the city recidences. That's not good. The city manager knows that. That is a problem that they can appreciate. But if you say your demark records invalid, they don't know what those words mean. That's a means to an end that they don't appreciate. If the SEO And the SEO checker says, your SEO is all messed up, what does that mean? That's not a problem. No one wakes up worrying about SEO. They do worry about not being the first result on Google. So if the SEO checker said, listen, there are problems problems. But if you follow these prioritized top three, you can go from the eighth page of Google to the first page of Google. That would get someone's attention. So whatever the reveal of problem style lead magnet is, you got to tie it to a problem that they actually care about, not like the tech stuff that you're scanning, even with the Dark Web stuff. We do the Dark Web because it's common language now. But the point is not, Hey, you've got a ton of breaches. Everyone does. The point is, we use this as the canary say, are you doing anything with password management? Because the password management hygiene is the ongoing problem. The breaches that happened 12 years ago probably don't bother anyone anymore. But if you're using the same password that you were 12 years ago, it is bothering people. And we're trying to reveal the password hygiene part of this. And that's a critical part. And we're still trying to figure out new ways of making that jump. Go from the tech guts that we can scan for and relate it and explain to a problem that the prospect would care about. And that's got to be vertically aligned, too. Live at the event, I was vertically aligning the conversation to things city managers would talk about, because I would say the email impersonation stuff allows me to email your residents from the city's email account. That they care about. But to say your DMark's invalid, they don't care about that. No one cares about DMark, but they do care about email impersonation deliverability. So you got to talk about it like.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So it's about understanding your ideal clients, right, and what's important to them, but then tying back that reveal problem style lead magnet to a larger problem that they actually care about. And then offering, Hey, if it would be helpful to... I'd be happy to have a quick conversation with you to go deeper on this. Something like that.

Michael Bakaic
Exactly. And you get better at this when you study the vertical. I mean, this is the required homework before you have these conversations. You have to know the problems of the vertical before the conversation starts. So you can try and lead the person to realize they do have problems, because oftentimes, they don't know that it's a problem, or they may know it's a problem, but they don't know it's bad enough to fix. That's very common place. And And that's your responsibility to do your homework. So you can come to them and say, have you thought about it like this? Because other clients that we serve had these problems before. Now they don't. We didn't think about it like that. We thought it was just about the printers, not printing, But really, it's this whole thing behind the curtain. Yes, exactly. It is about that whole thing behind the curtain. And that's the homework you got to do.

Tim Fitzpatrick
In the case of a managed service provider offering this cyber to somebody, it's just a way to start that initial conversation and help you uncover whether they actually have problems that you can help them solve.

Michael Bakaic
Precisely. We do the cyber score, and then we do a more detailed risk assessment, so vulnerability scan. Again, no one's paying for your vulnerability scan. You should give this away for free because it earns you the trust from the prospect to to find out if they actually have a problem. You could sell the vulnerability scan for a thousand bucks one time, but why do that? No one cares about that because the scan isn't even the benefit. No one wakes up, says, I want a scan. No one wants the scan. They want the problems that the scan found to be resolved. It's a means to an end for us. We want to get them focused on the vacation, not all the plane ticket and the TSA to get there.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Well, and I can... Whether you're in the MSP space or not, you can apply these same concepts to whatever industry you're in. But do you find that your MSP clients are finding... Because Look, the reality is most people are already working with an MSP unless there's a problem that they're having right now, they're not even thinking about it. I don't have an IT problem. I got an MSP. The Cyberscore and the vulnerability scan are helping start that conversation. But it seems to me that it's also casting a little bit of doubt on their current MSP.

Michael Bakaic
That happens. That happens often with our clients, the our MSP clients run into prospects that have existing MSPs. That happens.

Tim Fitzpatrick
But do you find that, I just did a vulnerability scan for a potential prospect Is that prospect starting to think like, jeez, I'm working with an MSP. Why do I have these vulnerability issues?

Michael Bakaic
Yeah. If you get that far, and I'm talking to MSP salespeople, which is often the MSP business owner. If you get to the point in the conversation with a prospect where you've done a network vulnerability scan, like our cyber audit, with a prospect that has an existing MSP, don't bother talking about the scan results. It's good to do, but what you've just uncovered is that they clearly have a problem that has nothing to do with the scan results because they're talking to you. They let you scan their whole network and they have an existing IT provider. What's the problem that they're so unhappy with that they would allow you to come in as a foreign body into their office, touch all of their stuff. Clearly, they have an underlying problem. That's what you want to uncover. And the scan, and the cyber score, and the vulnerability scan, that's all just your tools to help scratch the itch and figure out what the real problem is. They're being underserved in some way. They're not happy with their provider. Ask them that.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. So it could even be something like, Hey, Why did you let us do this vulnerability scan?

Michael Bakaic
Yeah.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Would that be an okay question?

Michael Bakaic
A hundred %. If we can do the scan for you, absolutely. Why do you think you need it? Well, my current provider has never talked to me about risk management or anything. And why is that a concern to you? Because we can do the scan, but if you just want to do it for fun to get a discount from your existing provider, no, thanks. Which happens. Maybe you're just comparing quotes from people, don't bother. But if they say, the reason your email caught my attention is I've been hearing from my pal that their company had an issue with XYZ, and I asked our existing provider and they didn't reply to me for two weeks, okay, pick on that scab because there's an underlying problem there. They feel underserved. They feel neglected. Those are emotions that will lead to a problem that you can help them resolve. The scans are just the tactics biologically justified to themselves. But there's some emotion there, and they'll pay to resolve that emotion.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Because if they had full confidence in their existing provider-

Michael Bakaic
They'd tell you to buzz off.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, they would never need it, right? So there's something underlying that you have to uncover. To say, why are you having us do this?

Michael Bakaic
Yeah, exactly. That's what you want to focus on. And so the lead magnets are your tools to help discover those problems and help the conversation advance, winning the trust of the prospect to get them feeling comfortable enough to tell you their real problems. Because that takes trust. They're in a relationship with their existing provider, probably for several years. They know them on a personal level, probably, because all your MSP clients, you know your clients on a personal level. So something is painful enough for them to even entertain the idea of talking to someone else. This isn't a relationship. So they're thinking about stepping out on their current provider for some reason. That's what you need to find. And it has nothing to do with how fast their response times are, blah, blah, blah, or antivirus, Microsoft. It has nothing to do with that. Those are logical explanations. But the emotion is they feel neglected, they feel underserved, they feel ignored. You've got to win their trust to make them feel comfortable to tell you that. And we use the lead magnus to win the trust.

Conclusion

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I love it, man. Any last minute thoughts you want to leave us with before we wrap things up? This has been great.

Michael Bakaic
The theme of the first quarter, the in-person events are fantastic. I'm putting together a list, and I'm going to write a blog article about it. But there are tons of these little in-person events. The Chambers have them. Bni has a ton of them. Every state's got the City Management Association. So if you're interested in talking to municipalities, there's every state has an association. They have two events per year. The next one is like the summer event in June, July. The in-person events are great opportunities. We spent a day and a half at this event and got 30 meaningful leads. That will either turn into a couple clients or many referrals, many warm intros. For a day and a half, that's fantastic. And they needed a tablecloth, a power bar, and a TV. It's a no-brainer. I would look into that. Anyone listening, find the business association. There's centers of influence for manufacturers and the accountants and the dentists. Any vertical that you're thinking of, there's definitely some state or local association where these people congregate, find those, go to those events, even at least to attend, go to the events. Because we've been just rolling in leads from them, the ones that I go to, and then my other clients that follow that advice and then go to their own. The golf course, the golf tournament, I'm doing a golf tournament for someone in Texas at the end of March is great because having the personal face to face eliminates all that digital spammer barrier to begin with. So you're getting past that initially. And then if you appear like a human being that might actually care about their problems, then they'll talk to you. And from there, the conversation goes. Then you got to listen. You got to know their typical problems and listen for them and help them discover it. And if you can do that, then you'll get more clients like clockwork.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. I love it, man. Where can people learn more about you, Mike?

Michael Bakaic
I'm very active on LinkedIn. So if you make the mistake of connecting with me on LinkedIn, you'll see my face daily. Otherwise, you can go to the website, icebergcyber.com. I just launched the podcast maybe two, three weeks ago. We've done a couple of episodes. That's cyberconfidential.ca because I'm Canadian. So you check it out there, too. But LinkedIn is the central place. That's where I'm the most active. If you find me on LinkedIn, you'll see my stuff all the time and then shoot me a message.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Cool. Mike, I really appreciate you taking the time, and this has been a great conversation. Go connect with Mike. And his last Our last name is B-A-K-A-I-C. Mike, thank you. Those of you that are watching, listening, I appreciate you as well. If you want to connect with us, go do it at rialtomarketing.com. I'd be happy to chat with you. The other resource we've got for you is over at revenueroadblockscorecard.com. When we help clients build their engine, we focus on nine key areas. If you want to know which of those areas you're scoring well in, you can do that over there. Takes less than five minutes, so go check it out. Until next time. Take care.