Start Thinking Differently About The Sales System For Your MSP

Why Most Founder-Led Firms Struggle to Scale and How to Finally Break Through

Tim Fitzpatrick
Welcome to the Rialto Marketing podcast. Today's episode is a Revenue Acceleration Series interview where we talk to seven-figure B2B business owners and their growth-focused executives who are actively trying to grow their business and get to the next level. We talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly so that you can learn from their experience. Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we believe marketing shouldn't be difficult and it definitely shouldn't be guesswork. I am super excited to have Brian Strong from Tenhats with me today. Brian, welcome, and thanks for being here.

Brian Strong
Yeah, well, thanks, Tim. I appreciate you having me on the show.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Absolutely, man. We got all kinds of good stuff to talk about. You guys have grown a lot over the last five, six years, tons of stuff that you're going to share. So I'm excited to dig into that with you. But before we do that, I want to ask you just a few quick rapid fire questions if you're ready to jump in.

Brian Strong
Yeah, let's do it.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay, man. So very quickly, what do you do? How long have you been doing it?

Brian Strong
So I'm the CEO of Tenhats. Tenhats is, I joined Tenhats, it'll be five and a half years ago now. But I've been in the MSP space for 20 years since 2005. Okay. Yeah. So I've been in the space for a while.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. Yeah. You've seen a lot of changes in the space over 20 years.

Brian Strong
Yes, absolutely.

Tim Fitzpatrick
What's the most important lesson you've learned?

Brian Strong
The most important lesson I learned, especially going through the Tenhats, is once you have a formula and you know the formula works, use it. It was one of those, what we learned in the first MSP, we thought we got lightning in a bottle. But with the second one, we've grew faster and bigger through that using that same formula.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. Yeah. As long as it continues to work, why not leverage it?

Brian Strong
Yes, that's exactly right. It's one of those if somebody from Chick-fil-A came and said, Hey, let's open a chicken store. You probably know. You probably listen to it. Yeah.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Growing a company is hard. Any of us that have done it know that. Do you have any mantra or that you say to yourself, share with your team to push through those times where you guys are coming up against challenges or roadblocks?

Brian Strong
Yeah, no, that's a great question. And so it's one of those I always start with the end in mind is like, where are we going? And so if we know where are we going when we hit these speed bumps, or sometimes they're much bigger than that, in the road, we're going, Hey, yes, this is temporary. This is on the path. But you got to remember, we've got this is where we're going, and we have to get through this time just to get to that place.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. So keeping that goal and vision and where you want to go top of mind, hopes you Just not take your eyes off the prize. It's like, Hey, this is a speed bump along the way to here.

Brian Strong
Yeah, because this time will pass, and they all do, and we got to work through this. Especially as growing as fast as we did, there was all kinds of challenges. We broke all kinds of stuff. But if you know that you're trying to hit this goal and you're moving towards that goal, that all these challenges are just part of the journey.

Tim Fitzpatrick
I love this two shall pass because I leverage that on the good and the bad. The good doesn't last forever and the bad doesn't last forever. It goes both ways.

Brian Strong
That's exactly right. If it's going too well for a while, you're like, something's about to happen.

What It Took To Achieve Organic Growth

Tim Fitzpatrick
When is something going to happen? So I know you had touched on the growth that you guys have experienced with Tenhats. You've been there five, five and a half years. You help grow from 2 million to 19 million without acquisitions, which is almost unheard of in the MSP space. What had to change first to make this organic growth possible?

Brian Strong
Yeah. So when I joined Tenhats, they were still working on trying to lead with referrals and doing all those different things, and they weren't quite working. So what we had to do is we had to put an outside sales engine in place. And so that's my forte. I was in sales when I first joined the MSP space. And it's really getting people out in the market, making connections, from a professional standpoint, making connections, doing meetings, doing the activity, consistently projecting on the pipeline, and teaching and guiding them all the way through that. And just a relentless effort on having first-time appointments and making sure the whole process of we lead the process instead of letting the prospect lead us through the process. It was just all that discipline that we put in place that was what really was the catalyst for us growing.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Were they primarily growing through referral before that?

Brian Strong
They were a typical $2 million MSP, right? They had grown through referrals and word of mouth. But yeah, so that was what they were going after. And then they were doing some cold calling, right? And cold calling can work, but the close ratio on cold calling is like 1 to 2 %. And if you look at all the data now, over even the last five years, it continues to drop. So, yeah, you can muscle through it. But we use a centers of influence. And how do we build relationships that people tell us when there's something going on with companies that they know about that would be good for us to pursue? And so it's a relentless effort on really trying to fish or whatever or hunt for deals that would be good for our business. And it does take effort. It takes training. It takes a little bit of time, but the fruit from it is significantly better. Better deals, bigger deals. You get to pick and choose on which ones are that you really target and spend your effort towards because we have a big focus on growing the size of our average revenue as well. That was a big focus as well because we wanted to continue to go up market and serve the mid-market.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So coming in, your biggest change was putting that sales engine in place. Did they have any salespeople at that point in time, or was it all owner-led?

Brian Strong
No, they had three. They had three outside salespeople. Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Outside salespeople for $2 million MSP is a lot.

Brian Strong
Yeah, there was only 19 employees at the time. And so when I took over, we had three salespeople. There was one that had a lot of potential. Another one was a great guy, but it was not a right fit. One was, he was just a mismatch. It was one of those starting to coach and train them to see where they were actually going to land. And then being able to mature that one guy who's become a superstar, and we've added other people as we've gone along. So I did in the first couple of years, first three years I would say, I was involved with a lot of sales. But the last two years, I'm not as involved. I've trained the people, I've coached them. We talk through deals all the time on how do we structure What's the deal or how do we communicate with them? And then teaching them how to use the people in the organization to get the deal further down the road. It doesn't need a technical lead, doesn't need the leader, the CEO, the title to come in? Or does it need the DCIO, which we call a strategic technical advisor, to come in and actually help build that relationship as well? And that's what the whole realm of the methodology I teach for outside sales.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So break this down for us a little bit, because I know the way you approach this is different than a lot of what I see in the MSP space. With your sales engine, it's different. And what I see a lot in the MSP space is just the way you described it initially. It's like there's SDRs, they're doing outbound cold calling.

Brian Strong
That's right.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Maybe there's some email, some LinkedIn, maybe some direct mail as a supplement to that. It sounds like you guys have taken a different approach to that. So break that down a little bit.

Brian Strong
Yeah. So part of this is I'm a sales guy. I was an outside salesperson. I did this. This is what I did myself. Those first six and a half years that I was at the first MSP, I was doing this. I built the system. I modified the system. I did a lot of sales training myself. And then I executed on this and building out a COI process and really honing in on how it was really effective. In those last five years that I was there, I never sold under $100,000 in MRR annually. And this is back in 2008, 2009. I mean, if you think about the economics of that today, it could be double. So it was one of those that... I kept looking at going up market, how to refine my skills from that standpoint, how to... Because in the mid-market, one of the things is that the buyer is a lot more sophisticated, so there's a lot more decision-makers, and how do you work through that whole process? I took that same methodology that I did, that I learned and did myself. I could have cold-called, but it wasn't effective. It just over the long term, it is not effective. To get into the size deals that you wanted, I targeted people or targeted size companies and try to get into them in a strategic way versus just trying to... Really, if they accidentally find you or you catch them at the right time or they're reaching out, I'm reaching out to them. That also meant that there was fewer people in the deals. If somebody is reaching out to you, they're also reaching out to two, maybe even three other MSPs. When I'm hunting in the right way and targeting certain accounts, I may be the only person in the deal, or there might be somebody else, right? So it was rare. It was rare that I had a lot of competition.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So when you talk about COIs or centers of influence, are you really focusing on centers of influence as referral partners? So were you outreaching to people that were already working with the types of clients that you wanted to work with?

Brian Strong
Yes. And so anybody that called on the same type of person that I wanted to talk to, I was willing to talk to them. But it's a process in itself, too, is evaluating how they prospect, what relationships that they have. And what it I don't really care if they sold janitorial supplies, right? But if they had a really good relationship with a CFOs, and they were a well-respected person that you could tell that had built trust, that was a person I wanted to meet with. And it wasn't that I was looking necessarily for introductions. I was looking for pieces of information that was happening inside of companies that were good indicators that they might be open to having a conversation. Maybe they moved, maybe they have a new CFO, maybe all these different things that I was specifically targeting and asking for, and then I was strategically going after them. If you build a big network, too, is from the standpoint is people start referring you a little bit. It's like one of those like, Hey, I talked to Brian. I had coffee with him last week. He's somebody you might want to get a hold of. It was one of those. Then I would meet with them again and they go, Hey, I mentioned your name to somebody the other day. So I would call on them and it would turn into something. I kept control. I think introductions, everybody talks about warm introductions, like where somebody calls on your behalf. Those are fantastic to get. They're the best. They're hard to get. And then also, too, you're putting the responsibility for outreach in somebody else's hands. So you're losing control of that. And that person, if you think about it, if you sit in their shoes, they've got tons of other things to do. They're not thinking about you. They've got a list of things, and their boss is asking them different things, or if they're running the company, it's their employees. So I always thought, for me, it was always, if I can keep control, it's better because I'm worried more about Brian than anybody else out there, right? Yes. And so, yeah.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Well, so was... Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like most of your outbound activity was not necessarily connecting directly with prospects, it was connecting with potential partners. Do I have that right?

Brian Strong
I spent probably two-thirds of my time connecting with outside partners, and a third of my time actually going after companies.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay, got it. There's a balance there, but most of the time was being spent finding partners and then building those relationships with- That's correct.

Brian Strong
Part of it, too, is teaching them what you wanted as well, right? And so if they had great relationships, it was they don't know this process, right? And so they have to be taught. And so when you teach them, Then they understand how it works, and then you start getting better leads. Those warm and hot leads.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So part of that is them understanding what you do, how you work, the triggers that they might hear that tell them, Oh, these guys need to talk to Brian.

Brian Strong
Yes, that's right. And the thing of it is, is you I got to break it down to simple terms that they can relate to as well, right? They're adding a bunch of employees. So they got a new contract and they're in a big growth stage. So I'll simplify it from that standpoint. It's not, hey, are they going to upgrade their firewalls or their server infrastructure or whatever it is. They need to go Office 365. It was never the technical stuff. It was more about what is going on inside the business. They have a brand new CFO. That CFO is going to want to put their thumbprint on everything. So they're going to look at all the contracts, especially IT, from the standpoint of it's usually one of the biggest line on of expenses, reoccurring expenses that a business has. Of course, they're trying to see if they're getting the best value out of that relationship. On the on the flip side, too, from a customer service standpoint, if they're switching CFOs, you need to make sure that relationship is really tight and get in front of that CFO to show the value of what the MSP is doing for the company.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. Now, so sorry, I have a bunch of questions circling in my head because I think it's really important for people to understand how you approach this process. A lot of the time, those A third of prospects that you were working were most of those- Two-thirds.

Brian Strong
Oh, yeah, the third.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Go ahead. Yeah, were most of those coming directly out of your center of influence network?

Brian Strong
Absolutely. So Because you got to think about it. I think about this is like, if you cold call, one out of 100 will answer and you might get a meeting. Right. And so it's like one of those when you look at centers of influence, it's not one one ratio either. So I mean, sometimes you meet with a COI and they have nothing, they know nothing that's going on. And that's perfectly fine. So it might take three different COI meetings to figure out that, Hey, here's a clue of something that I need to go after. I mean, I think everybody goes into CROs. It's like, I'm going to go meet with the CROs, and I'm going to walk away with three leads. Well, that's a fantasy world. It's one of those. There is time, and there's also mature in that relationship, too, from the standpoint that they're willing to give it to you. The first time they meet with you, you're still a stranger.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yes. One of the things that has always stuck with me about building relationships is they don't require intensity, they require presence and time. I agree. If you go in hot in an initial referral partner interview review, and they can just tell that the only reason you're talking to them is to get referrals. Oh, yeah. It's not going anywhere, right? No. You have to have a process, steps that you're following ongoing, but we're building relationships isn't linear. And so you have to have this ability to adapt and identify, Hey, what does this person need or what do I need to do to continue to move and this relationship forward and build it? How do you approach that with your reps? So how do you teach them this process where it's like, hey, here's how many CIOs you should be working. Here's how you... Do you categorize them as A, B, C, and give A more attention than C? How do you approach that?

Brian Strong
Yeah, so I mean, all that. And so it's a methodical way of doing it, because The way I equate it to, it's a sales process. You don't walk into your FDA and go, you're here to buy. Here's the contract and sign up right away because we're the best in town. There's this maturation of that relationship to get them to trust you, to build in respect, and to get them to the point that you've won over their business Same thing with the COI. Our sales process is six steps. And so in the COI, there's also multiple steps into it as well. And then it's also, like you said, the A, B, C, and D is evaluating those different COIs, just like you would a potential prospect of these are going to be a good fit. No, they're not going to be a good fit. And here's the reason why they're not. And this one's going to be a good fit, and here's why. And then also the frequency you're going to meet with them as well, too. And what can you bring to them? All those different things. There's this calculus that goes through your head as you're actually doing this. And that's what I was saying. It's been pretty methodical on how you run this whole process. And people go, well, man, that's a lot of time, right? So is cold calling 3, 4 hours a day. It's like, how do you want to spend your time through this whole process, too? Also, are they a bad CEO because they're a bad person? Obviously, there's some of that, but typically it's just not a match. They're a good person. You don't prospect the same way. You don't call them the same clients, yada, yada. But you know what? That person, what's it? The Dunbar number. That person has 150 relationships that are close to them, right? And so I've had coffee with somebody two or three times. Two or three years later, I get a referral from them because I sat down and just talk to them about, Hey, we do IT. This is what we do. Yada, yada. What do you do? Hey, this is great. This has been great. I'm glad to get to know you. Obviously, it's like, I'm not calling them back because they're not a natural fit, but you never know who they have a barbecue with, or they switched jobs, or something like that. So building that relationship and building that network, it's not futile. Talking to the same receptionist four dozen times, I think that's a little bit of insanity.

Tim Fitzpatrick
The other thing I find, too, is sometimes I might categorize somebody as a C or a B, and they become an A. I think they're going to be an A, but then they turn out to be a C, and that's okay. That's fine. But you got to let the relationship build. I had a call today with the referral partner, things have changed in his business, right? So we caught up on where things were, and it's like, Oh, man, you've shifted. There's more alignment here than there was before. And so we have to approach these like any other relationship. Yes. But I think a lot of people are impatient, so they don't give this process the time and the attention it needs to actually work.

Brian Strong
Correct. Yeah. Because there is, I think, a lot of thought put into it and making sure that you're doing it. Because sometimes dialing 50 people, it feels like you've done more work than if you've had coffee with two people. It's like, Well, that 50 number looks awesome on a sheet of paper. For that day, versus two people that you've actually spent a little bit of time with, and one's potential and you were just a really nice person. But over time, I'm telling you, those relationships work.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Is there a number of COIs that you look for your salespeople to have in their network?

Brian Strong
Yeah, it's one of those. You talk about a And people do float between A, B, and C all the time, depending on cycle of business or whatever. It's just sometimes a business gets overwhelmed and they're not hunting for other business. I was taught a long time ago, if you get a magic of 12 A's, that you're pretty much a rock star. It's one of those having 12 A's is almost... It's like a mirage or something that's really hard to achieve just because people's lives change quite a bit. You're always evaluating them. But I was trying to meet a couple of people new people every week, and try to just keep adding to it. You just never know. You find out pieces of information talking to people and having a cup of coffee. It's just as cheap, too. I mean, a cup of coffee is not... I mean, of course, some coffee is getting expensive now. Get to drip. The drip coffee is still always like four bucks or cheaper. Latte, on the other hand, you could go broke doing those.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Now, you have a book coming out about this process, right?

Brian Strong
Yes. I'm in the middle of writing it right now, actually going through the editorial stage, and it should be coming out in, I'm hoping in the next few months. Yeah. I have a couple of chapters just on what we're talking right here on prospecting and one specifically on centers of influence.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Your approach just resonates so much with me because all the MSPs I talk to, the big focus is on prospect, prospect, prospect rather than center of influence. And I think so many of them would be much better off spending most of their time on center of influence.

Brian Strong
There's a lot of irony in the MSP space. So sometimes we sell, we do email campaigns, right? To try to get somebody to respond to set up an appointment or whatnot. And then we also sell span filtering at the same time. So we're sending out cold email blast and then also selling product that stops it as well. So it's like, I'm like, is that irony or hypocrisy? I don't know what it is, but it's one of those.

When Brand Validation and Trust Building Supported a Sales Process

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, exactly. So we talked a bit about sales. Let's shift gears to marketing a little bit. Most of the MSPs I talk to talk about lead gen, right? Man, my problem is lead gen. I need more top of funnel. You've really used marketing more for brand validation and trust building. How has that supported your sales process? What activities are you doing and And how has that supported sales process?

Brian Strong
Yeah, so we do all the standard things. We don't do email campaigns. We'll do some customer relations campaigns, but we do quite a bit of LinkedIn. And then we have our website, and we post on all kinds of different social medias. And what we're trying to be is relevant for the time of what's going on to validate what we're trying to talk about. We're doing a lot with modern workspace and what does that mean? And the AI stuff. But what we feel is marketing should support sales. It should support the brand of the company. And so when somebody goes to our website to look for us or they go on our social media posts or watch videos or whatever it's going on, it's like, yeah, these guys are real people doing real work, and it's a real company. And it's just building that brand and that authority in the space. Do we get web leads to come in? We do. But we really consider those as a gravy. It's not something that we count on. Because, I mean, frankly, they're going to send it to us in two or three of our competition as well. So I think it should do that. And it's one of those I hear in the MSP space all the time. It's like, well, the web leads that we're getting, they're not qualified. That's web marketing. I had a software as a service company, too. And it's just one of those, you can't control who's filling out that form. And they're going to do it despite whatever you put on there, if they want to fill it out, they're going to fill it out, especially bots and all kinds of stuff. You can work on honing that in, but it's still going to be there for all the marketing people out there. I hope, Tim, that gives you a little bit of support.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. Well, it sounds like you guys are creating a lot of content.

Brian Strong
Yes.

Tim Fitzpatrick
With your COI approach to sales, I'm assuming, are your salespeople reposting all that content on their personal profiles as well?

Brian Strong
They do. They do some, but we put out quite a bit. We try to put out a few a week. And so sometimes I'm not bad. Sometimes I'm bad about reposting it, but we do try to make concerted efforts towards doing that.

Tim Fitzpatrick
That's helping support as your outreach to centers of influence and they go to check you out, that content is helping build credibility. It's like you said, oh, these are real. That's right. It's not like they go to your website and it looks like Something from 1990 or your last social post was eight months ago. That's right. That doesn't give people a real warm and fuzzy feeling.

Brian Strong
No, you have to be very active.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. The marketing that you're doing on the front-end is helping build that credibility, trust, authority. And in the sales process, if you guys have content that speaks to a specific prospect problem, you can leverage that, right?

Brian Strong
A hundred %. We do that all the time. So it's like one of those where when we're working on marketing, it's what are people talking about? What do they want to be engaged about? What are customers asking about? Because if our customers are asking for it, prospects are asking for it, it's relevant. And then that's why I was saying marketing keeps us relevant. And it's something you constantly have to keep working on. And so it's not that we don't do marketing. We do a lot of marketing, but it's just in this realm of really validating the brand, boosting the brand. We still want to be top of the searches, and we're doing a lot with AEO, too. So when we get into all the generative AI stuff and somebody's looking it up, our articles pop up. We do some blogs, and we do some articles, and all this stuff to be thought leaders in our space. Because one of our goals was always to be the dominant IT maintenance service provider in our area. And to do that, that means that you have to have authority in the space. And so we're constantly working on building that image.

A Change in Sales Process That Changed The Game

Tim Fitzpatrick
Brian, one of the things you mentioned earlier, I want to dig into a little bit before we wrap things up. You had talked about moving up market, right? So initially, you were working with smaller clients. You wanted to start to work with larger clients. I know that you guys, you've been able to increase average MRR per client from a couple of grand to close to 10 grand, which is a lot. What did you guys have to change in your positioning, your sales process, your delivery model to make that work?

Brian Strong
On the sales process side, it's still going with the COIs, is helping your COIs know the type of companies that you're targeting, right? Yeah. There's tricks on how to do that to make sure that they're targeting the right way. But you're also looking at your... I call it the ICP. I call it. I use the targeted customer profile because what I say targeted is because that target changes. Because if you're at $2,000 average revenue right now, you would need to get to four. So you need to target accounts at around that four or $5,000. But so once you start moving that up, your average revenue changes as well. So it's going to be at three. So that target needs to change and move up as well of the company that you're going after. Because it's one of those, I've said this many times, it's like you can have a $10 million MSP. There's multiple ways to get there. I'll give you a couple of examples. It's like, just for round numbers, it's like you could have 80 customers paying you $10,000 a month, or you could have 400 paying you $2,000 a month. Yes. The math is the same. The companies are completely different. It's always looking to go up that market and how do I scale? Then And also there's a danger, too, of taking on a whale that could sink your company, too. And so none of our customers are over, I think one is right at eight %, but we don't have anybody that's over that eight % mark. And I've always watched this. In our first MSP, we got one that was a whale. We learned the lesson the hard way. So we kept inching our way up to make sure that we could consume these customers. We could support them. They have a good experience as we continue to grow. So that's where when you're dealing with CROIs and you're trying to... And you can tell them the companies you're looking for, because in a CRO meeting, they're going to go, Hey, there's a new barber shop down the street that's just opening up. That might be a good target. And I'm going to go, Thanks for telling me that. I'm going to write it down, but I'm not calling, right? But a lot of it could be saying, Hey, this medical practice is moving. I'm like, Oh, do you know the practice administrator? So it's just one of those where I'm, I'm picked, filtering through who the one, the accounts that we're going to target and call and and get more specific with. And so that's a big thing with. Cold calls, I mean, I guess you can do that, but I mean, it's usually just a cold list and somebody's just running down it and their job is not to target accounts, it's to hit a number. So it's a big difference in how we prospect. We We have fewer meetings because they're targeting the right type of customer that we're going for. Our FTAs are longer because we're spending time. These are somebody that we think could be a really good possibility for us. They hit all the certain metrics. So we're going to really spend time with qualifying them out and spending-

Tim Fitzpatrick
So did your sales, as you went up market, did your sales cycle get longer?

Brian Strong
It can. Yeah, it can. But still, I mean, not that much longer. I still talk to a lot of MSPs, and they still have... It may be changed at 30 days or something like that.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. So not significantly. You just had to have the-

Brian Strong
And also, too, if you go up market, there's fear competition. But you have to be able to serve them because they

Tim Fitzpatrick
Are you guys doing co-managed?

Brian Strong
Oh, yeah.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay. So as you went up market, how much of your business is co-managed versus fully managed?

Brian Strong
Probably close to 50/50.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay. So fair amount. Because as you go up, right, as they get larger, there's a higher likelihood that they're going to have internal IT people.

Brian Strong
Yeah. It's like the accounts that we have, quite a few of them do have internal. I mean, a lot of them have internal IT. The contracts are bigger. If you know how to work with them, the relationship is better. They're less noisy.

Tim Fitzpatrick
But here's the interesting thing, too, though. Do you find the positioning on co-managed is different? The messaging is different because in most cases, you're talking to an IT person instead of a business owner that doesn't really understand IT, right?

Brian Strong
So that's where having a really good sales process that can go into that mid-market of where you can... You have to get the business leaders involved with the meeting. And so also you're working with an IT manager, and you can't break respect with any of those different people. So it's a nuanced way on how to sell to those different people and get in get them all in the same room because that IT person, most of the time, is not the decision maker. They can tell you no, but they can't tell you yes. How do you get to that CFO or CEO or the Ops manager? What without breaking bonding rapport with that IT person.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. But you need the IT person to even get?

Brian Strong
It can work in multiple ways. You always want to enter at the top, and then you work your way down because it's easier to be introduced from if you're talking to a CFO to the IT manager than to the IT manager to the CFO. Now, that's in a perfect world, right? And so all of this, each deal is done a little bit different way. We talk to a lot of IT managers, and a lot of them are really good friends. And because you build that relationship with them, that you're there to help their job. Because it's one of those where as IT has gotten a lot more sophisticated, or yes, sophisticated and there's a lot more specialties, the generalist just-

Tim Fitzpatrick
They can't know everything.

Brian Strong
They can't know everything.

Tim Fitzpatrick
It's the same as marketing.

Brian Strong
Yeah. You have to learn to partner with these people. The contracts are always bigger, and the margins are better. Honestly, they're better and they're less noisy. And then you have somebody, an advocate on the other side, too, that understands what you're doing. And so usually the problems get resolved quicker, but it does take relationship management.

Tim Fitzpatrick
But the way you sell co-managed is different than fully managed. That process and how you're communicating and messaging is different.

Brian Strong
So the sales process is the same. It's a methodical sales process from that standpoint because when you-

Tim Fitzpatrick
How you message and communicate is different.

Brian Strong
Correct. So I mean, it's... Yeah. And that's how you learn the different positions and how to communicate to the different positions and how to work, Reconstruct a big deal where you have multiple decision-makers. In our sales process, we have... It's a six-step process. You have the agenda that's just formalizing what the meeting is going to be about and get an agreement, you have impact. A lot of people talk about pain. So pain is a symptom of something going wrong. On our body, sometimes, we have our quad is hurting, But it's actually something in our foot that's actually causing it, right? So what you're trying to do is whatever the pain is, you have to get to what's the impact? What is the impact to the business? What's the time and money? And typically, what's the personal impact to that that person that is affecting the way that they do business or something like that. And so the one thing you got to know is in a complex cell, each person has their own pains and impacts. Just because the IT guy has an impact doesn't mean the CFO has the same impact. They see the world, everybody sees the world different. The IT person is making sure the infrastructure is working, technology. Accounting is on money, right? The CFO, the operations person is that the people can work. So they all look at a problem through their lenses. And so you have to be able to deconstruct that and talk to each one of those people individually to get to the true impact.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah.

Brian Strong
Does that make sense?

Conclusion

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, absolutely. This has been great, man. Brian, I really appreciate you taking the time. Before we wrap up, I want to ask one last question, which is, knowing what you know now, is there anything you do differently?

Brian Strong
Yeah, I mean, the one thing I think I would do differently for sure is I didn't have faith in my... When I first joined, I was just like one of those thrown to the wolves, and I didn't have faith in my process that would actually work in the sales. And so I didn't teach as much as I should have fast enough and just really gotten them in deeper. I think we would have grown faster than we did already. It was like one of those that being a sales guy, I did lead a different company, but coming back and starting teaching my process and stuff like that, it was like it really, really worked. I wish I would have thought it. I wish I would have, why I'm doing these podcasts now, is talk more people about it. Because there's a lot of MSPs out there that could use this skillset that I have and the methodology that I have to grow their MSPs faster.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, that's cool. I appreciate you taking the time, Brian. Where can people connect with you?

Brian Strong
Linkedin is the best way, man. I'm on there. I'm posting quite a bit, so communicate with me. I love people reaching out, so that is the best way.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay, we'll make sure that gets in the show notes, But it's Brian Strong, and it's Brian-Strong at the end of the LinkedIn URL. So connect with them there. And then also, if you want to check out Tenhats, you can do that over at tenhats.com. But Brian, thank you so much, man. I really appreciate you taking the time. And those of you that are watching, listening, I appreciate you as well. If you're feeling stuck in the marketing maze, you're not sure what's working, what to focus on next, go check out our free marketing engine scorecard at marketingenginescorecard.com. It takes less than two minutes, and we hope you really evaluate the nine areas of building a supercharged marketing engine so you get clear direction on exactly what to fix first. So till next time. Take care. We'll chat soon.