Why MSP Cold Outreach Fails and How to Fix It

Why MSP Cold Outreach Fails and How to Fix It

Tim Fitzpatrick
The reality is that most MSP cold outreach falls completely flat. It is rare for me to speak with someone experiencing success with cold outreach. Why is that the case? It's not because the timing is wrong or the market is too competitive. Today, we're getting into exactly what MSPs are doing wrong with their outreach, why most MSP offers fail to connect with prospects, and the one critical element that's almost certainly missing from yours right now. Hi, I'm Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we help companies turn client acquisition from their biggest challenge into their biggest advantage. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in today. I am super excited to have Jim Punzenberger from managedprospectingsystem.com with me. Jim, welcome and thanks for being here.

Jim Punzenberger
Thank you for having me, Tim.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Absolutely, man. I'm excited to dig this, man. Cold outreach, outreach in general, is something that so many MSPs are doing, but they're having very little success with. So I am excited to have you share your thoughts, your words of wisdom as we dig into this today. But before we do that, I want to ask you a few rapid fire questions to help us get to know you. You ready to jump in with both feet?

Jim Punzenberger
I'm ready.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay, man. So when you're not working, how do you like to spend your time?

Jim Punzenberger
I love to spend my time outdoors, especially with my dog out in the woods. Hiking is one of the ways that I love to spend my time, and of course, with family and friends also. Those are the things that are important in my life.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Cool. What kind of dog?

Jim Punzenberger
I have a chocolate Labrador. You can see a sculpture behind me to my other side. I raised my long hand here, but right there, that's actually a chocolate Labrador sculpture. So yes, I have a chocolate Labrador.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Very cool. I love it, man. What's your hidden talent?

Jim Punzenberger
My hidden talent is blowing a duck call.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay, nice.

Jim Punzenberger
So it's important when you're duck hunting, or if you're wanting to get people's attention, it works really well. I actually blew a duck call out of Robin Robin's event once, and it I got everybody to. Yeah, blowing a duck call is my hidden talent.

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

Jim Punzenberger
My best piece of advice is, if you think you can, you can. If you think you can't, you can't. It's also a saying by Henry Ford. Really, the best piece of advice, I think, is it's all about your mind and your mindset. So if you think you can, you can. If you think you can't, you can't. It resonates with myself.

Tim Fitzpatrick
What's one thing about you that surprises people?

Jim Punzenberger
One thing about me that surprises people is that I like to dance. I'm actually done a little bit of ballroom dancing. I think that's something that surprises people because I don't like to dance.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Good for you, man.

Jim Punzenberger
I'm a horrible dancer. I like to be a dancer.

Tim Fitzpatrick
I like it. So now, do you prefer ballroom or are there other forms of dancing that you.

Jim Punzenberger
I like ballroom. I also like just like dancing to cover band or like, so just get your body moving and have fun and groove.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, cool. I love it. Well, what does success mean to you?

Jim Punzenberger
Success means fulfilling your life in the way that you want it fulfilled. So to me, it's about having a business that supports my life and not the other way around for everybody. Their own definition can be whatever you want it to be. But for me, success is having a business that supports my life and allowing me to have the freedom to really have the adventures and travel the world and be part of, spend time family and friends, and also just enjoy life.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Where's your happy place?

Jim Punzenberger
My happy place is in a marsh at sunrise. That is my happy place. And I can spend it with my dog and be out duck hunting. So that's the duck hunting mind.

Tim Fitzpatrick
No, do you do other?

Jim Punzenberger
It has to do with the long day duck call. That's what I lead through on the themes of my life.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So is duck hunting your favorite type of hunting, or do you also do other hunting as well?

Jim Punzenberger
I'd say duck hunting is my favorite, and there's a lot of commonalities between duck hunting and marketing. In duck hunting, you're attracting the ducks, trying to get them to land basically in front of you. They're coming to you. In marketing, you're trying to get prospects to do the same thing. There's a lot of commonalities and similarities between hunting and marketing.

Tim Fitzpatrick
What qualities do you value in the people you spend time with?

Jim Punzenberger
Communication and trust, honesty. Humor is something that I value. I like to be light-hearted and laughing. So others that enjoy the same things are it's something that I value in others too.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So, Jim, tell us more about what you're doing at manageprospectingsystem.com.

Jim Punzenberger
Yeah, so manageprospectingsystem.com, we help the IT service businesses, the bulk of our clients are MSPs. And ultimately, what we do is we help them find new clients. Really, there is several pillars to our system, but ultimately it starts with helping the MSP to be unique and to be able to articulate that, their uniqueness, and then define who their ideal prospect is. And then the pillars that stand on that are ultimately content, outreach via LinkedIn, outreach via cold email, social media, and using content as a form of the SEO also.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Jim, you're speaking my language, man. Every time we help an MSP build their growth engine, it always starts with strategy. And within strategy, it starts with who your ideal clients are and then creating that message that's going to attract them and help differentiate you. So many MSPs struggle with this, and I'm sure you see the same thing. And it's why we often have these conversations where it's like, well, I'm doing all this stuff, but it's not working.

Jim Punzenberger
There's a lot of me too. Yes. In the industry, you could take... You could probably look at 100 MSP websites and take the logo off any of them, put them on any other ones, and they wouldn't be anything that would... They wouldn't be anything unique in that. You could take 100 MSP websites, exchange the logos, exchange the phone numbers, and everything would be... Nothing would be untrue in that. They all say the same things.

What Are MSPs Doing Wrong With Cold Outreach?

Tim Fitzpatrick
So this leads into the first question I was going to ask you, which is what are MSPs doing wrong with cold outreach?

Jim Punzenberger
Yeah, well, there's multiple things that they're doing wrong. The first one is usually their source of their lists, their data. Most of them are just going out and using some cheap source of data and basically, you go out and buy cheap data, get junk data, and then not using... Well, what they're not doing is using multiple sources of data and aggregating that data together and building their own lists. What they're usually doing is going to Zoom info or the like, and just buying whatever data they have and using it, which is highly inaccurate to begin with. So when you start doing your outreach and you're using bad data, you're going to get bad results.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So quality of the list is one of the biggest tactical errors they're making. Are there other tactical mistakes that you commonly see as well?

Jim Punzenberger
Yes. Other ones is when it comes to cold outreach, a common thing is the email sending mechanisms that they're using are not warmed up and optimized, so they're landing in spam because of that. Other tactical things would be the messaging that is commonly used is usually templated and copied from somebody else. So It's not unique, and it's not true to them.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So those are great tactical things. We already touched on the strategic side of it, right? And to me, if the strategic side of it has not been done, the tactical side is not going to work. You've got to know who your ideal clients are, and you have to have messaging that resonates with them, that helps differentiate your MSP. The other thing that I see often, I'm curious what you think here is, in the outreach messages that I see from MSPs, a lot of them are asking for too much up front. And I always say, focus on the next measurable step. You just want to get a response, a sign of life, and then you can start to engage. What are your thoughts on that?

Jim Punzenberger
Yeah, well, definitely with cold outreach, we need to first get a response. It's so easy to just ignore cold outreach for the prospect. And also the tendency is to... In the industry, in general, is to just go for the jugular, more or less like, you don't know me. The prospect doesn't even know that the MSP exists, and they're reaching out and asking for them to marry them in the email. Or in the DM or in the cold call or whatever message that they're doing or whatever media they're using. They go from... If you think about it, comparing it to dating in human life versus business, you wouldn't just walk up to a person, a girl, or a guy and ask them if you If they want to marry you. But that's what a lot of companies are doing in their marketing, in their outreach, in their messages. It's not a Why we exist? Have you considered these things? It's, Hi, I'm the owner of XYZ IT Company. Do you We're going to be our next client? Reply if you need IT help.

Tim Fitzpatrick
I really want to understand how you think about this, because a lot of what I see is, Hey, we're this IT company. This is the problem we solve. Would you like to jump on a call? I'm of the opinion that that's taking too many steps forward first, and we just want to get a response. So I lean more towards just asking them a question based on a context of the email. How do you think about that? And it's totally okay if you disagree with me. Frankly, some people will probably like it, but I'm curious what your thoughts are on that.

Jim Punzenberger
Yeah, I think that what we have to do is ultimately you have to get to some pain that they're experiencing to get them to respond. If they're not experiencing any pain or you're not asking any questions that are creating pain, they're never going to respond to it. So when we're emailing them or DMing them or what have you, we need to ask a specific questions that would uncover their pain and that they can reply to, yes or no, I'm experiencing this issue. And I'd like to have an easy way, a path to resolve this issue. That's not a going from... It's not jumping into asking them to be to be married right away.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So at a high level, and this is not perfect, but that initial outreach could be something like, Hey, we're working with attorneys like you. In our experience, this is one of the most common problems we see coming up. It's X, Y, Z. Is this a challenge that you've had, that you've experienced? Something like that, right? You're asking, it's a binary question. It's yes or it's no. Is that the thought process here?

Jim Punzenberger
Yes. And to ultimately to make it simple and... What a lot of MSPs get wrong in this is that they put way too much in the email. And you have 10 seconds at the most for them to... Their attention span to read it and to get them to respond. If you're writing paragraphs and bullet points within those paragraphs, you're never going to get it. It's not going to be effective. Plus, you're just giving more for the spam filters to analyze to then send it to the junk folder than the inbox.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So short to the point, you got to focus on the problems they have. Ask a yes or no question, right? Because if they have to respond with the paragraph, they are not going to respond.

Jim Punzenberger
Yes.

Tim Fitzpatrick
How do you approach... Do you approach culture cold outreach from a multi-channel approach? Is it a combination of calls, email, LinkedIn? What are your thoughts there?

Jim Punzenberger
Yeah, we utilize LinkedIn and email. It's a is our primary channels of outreach. And then also to have content to support that outreach. Maybe I can talk more about the specific thing of content in the future, but that's another key to the having successful outreach is what naturally people do when you reach out to them is they're going to go into a search on Google. So that's one of the the key components to having a successful outreach campaign is that it's not just outreach, you have to have content also.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So when they go to check you out, the content supports the outreach?

Jim Punzenberger
Yes.

Why Most MSP Offers Fail To Connect With Prospects

Tim Fitzpatrick
I love it, man. Awesome. So let's go to the next step in this, right? I'm doing my outreach. I get somebody that's interested. What's happening with most MSP offers? Why are they not? Why do they suck?

Jim Punzenberger
Well, most of them aren't actually something that the prospect finds valuable or that they want. Most MSP offers are of some review or audit or something when the prospect has some specific pain that they're trying to resolve, and the offer is something in general that's not specific to the pain point that the prospect is having.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So do you have an example there? It could be hypothetical, too. It doesn't matter.

Jim Punzenberger
So the most common offer is some audit or review, network assessment, even like now, a cybersecurity assessment. These are the most common offers But the pain point that the prospect is currently experiencing, probably they don't see that being resolved by an audit or a review. The pain point that they're currently experiencing is that their ERP keeps crashing, and they want to figure out why that happens. And now they're the offer is, let's see if you're secure or not. And the ERP crashing, does it resonate with whether we're secure or not?

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, got it. So whatever the offer is, they need to find a way to tie that off or back to the problem that the prospect responded to?

Jim Punzenberger
Yes.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So in the case of the ERP example, what could that be? What does an MSP need to think about? Or is it really just a matter of, Hey, you can still do an assessment, but you have to position it differently so that it addresses the problem?

Jim Punzenberger
Basically, what we need to do is uncover what their specific pain points are first and then have an offer that addresses them. The assessment can definitely address why the ERP is crashing all the time as part of your assessment. But just a general network assessment, the prospect is probably not going to correlate a general network assessment to resolving why their ERP is crashing all the time. So what we need to do is address the ERP crashing as one of the bullet points of the assessment. We're going to look at the... I guess the area environment is different, but We're going to look at every piece of your environment and determine what's causing the ERP to crash and give you a plan to resolve it as part of the assessment meant.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So, Jim, if I'm hearing you correctly, it's not that they have the wrong offer, it's that they're not tying the offer back to the specific problems of the prospect.

Jim Punzenberger
Yes, it's not resonating ultimately. There is a disconnect between the language that the MSP is using in their offer and the perceived problem in the mind of the prospect.

Tim Fitzpatrick
What are your thoughts on how an We haven't talked about this before, but so many MSPs are priced around price per seat or price per workstation. What are your thoughts on that? Do you think there are better ways for MSPs to start to position and differentiate?

Jim Punzenberger
Yes, I think the pricing per seat, you're just commoditizing it. I think ultimately the better way is to have a proposal that's really includes everything that the prospect needs that's customized to the prospect. You're going through it, having a discovery process to discover what the actual needs of the prospect are and to then create a plan or proposal that meets and matches those instead of having a menu of confusion, what I call them, is prospectize. If you put yourself in the chair of the owner of the small business or the CFO of the small business, and you see this proposal that's 30 pages, and there's four different tiers, and you don't really know what you need or don't need and what the tiers mean. And there's a lot of confusion in the evaluation process versus, here, this is what you need. This is what we're going to do for you. This is all the problems we're going to solve. This is how we, ultimately, how we're going to be better than your current solution. And this is what the investment is going to be every month.

Tim Fitzpatrick
How do you... I can hear MSPs thinking, Okay, this makes sense. How do they or how have you seen MSPs address... Obviously, they've got ongoing costs per user, and as they add more users, those costs increase. If they go down this path that we're talking about here, how do they accommodate and have that flexibility to go back as costs increase? What are your thoughts there?

Jim Punzenberger
Yeah, I think that's all addressed in their agreement with the client and having those terms laid out in the agreement. But those I see The successful MSPs are then getting the prospect as a client first. They get their agreement and then negotiate those terms or provide those terms as part of the agreement after the proposal, after the proposal is approved versus upfront in the proposal itself, because that's things that are going to change in the future versus we're proposing... What I see is successful is MSPs that are coming up with a proposal based on state of the network, the business needs right now, and then the agreement addresses how things are going to be as the client grows and they add more users, et cetera, locations or whatever it is that's addressed in the agreement.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, got it. They're differentiating up front with how they're proposing what they're going to do, but then they're also protecting themselves in their agreement so that the client knows, Hey, this proposal is for X amount of users. As you add users, or it could be maybe it's a window, right? This includes this window of users. When you go over that, here's how the price shows.

Jim Punzenberger
Yes. You add or change. This is how the agreement is affected.

The One Critical Element That's Almost Certainly Missing From Yours Right Now

Tim Fitzpatrick
So what do you see? Let's continue down this offer path. What's the one critical element that's probably missing from the MSP's offer that are listening or watching this?

Jim Punzenberger
Yeah, so what is missing, probably, is something that makes it unique, and also that is then addressing specific pain points. Most MSP offers are very general in nature in that, yes, the offer is of some assessment, to review, audit, etc. And they're very broad. Like I was mentioning or talking about earlier is that there's specific pain in the prospect's mind, and we need the offer to address that specific pain versus having a general offer that isn't speaking specifically to the ERP scratching or whatever the pain that the prospect is experiencing that isn't addressing that whenever they call, they don't get a response to in 2 days or whatever it is from their current vendor.

Tim Fitzpatrick
When so many MSPs are pricing per seat, for example, to me, this is such a low-hanging fruit to differentiate your MSP from everybody else. How you propose and how you position your offer is a... It's right there for any MSP to take. And if you go down that different path, you are going to immediately be different from the vast majority of MSPs that they're getting. Absolutely. So this is not rocket science. You don't necessarily have to knock it out of the park. You just need to approach it a little bit differently. And as we've talked about, I think there are ways to overcome, because I can hear MSPs bringing up objections about what we've just talked about. There ways to overcome that. Frankly, there are MSPs in the market that are already doing what we've talked about.

Jim Punzenberger
Yes. Having an all-in price is nothing new. It's been a concept for 15 years or so in the industry, not longer.

Tim Fitzpatrick
It's just one that most have not embraced.

Jim Punzenberger
That is the case, yes.

Conclusion

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, it's awesome, man. I love it. Jim, this This has been great, man. I appreciate you taking the time. Before we wrap things up, any last minute thoughts, words of wisdom you want to share with us?

Jim Punzenberger
Yeah. So ultimately, the other thing that I see MSPs that are having success with, or the biggest challenge with MSP outreach and marketing is that the prospects are just in in a perpetual state of, we're okay, we have IT, our existing solution is fine. They don't want to talk about IT. And so no matter what you have, any questions you ask or what you... The number of times you reach out. If you're reaching out talking about IT, it's an uphill battle. So what we've helped clients with as a way, we call a back door into the prospects, is having something to talk to them about other than IT. And so which is something like this, like what we're doing right now is having a podcast or a YouTube channel, a show that you can invite prospects onto so they can talk about something other than IT, and you can then start a relationship with them so that they'll start paying attention to you versus just trying to talk to them about IT, and they really It's really just like talking to a brick wall because when anything IT comes up, they avoid talking about it, and they don't want to talk about it.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So instead of reaching reaching out cold about IT, you're reaching out cold for something different. Hey, it's like you'd be a great person to feature on our podcast, the blah, blah, blah podcast. Yes. Any interest?

Jim Punzenberger
If so, let's set up some time to talk. Yeah. Would you like to come on and promote your business among the local business community and my local business YouTube channel?

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah.

Jim Punzenberger
Can I promote your business for you?

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. So finding some type of backdoor way, other, outside of a podcast, any other common backdoor opportunities?

Jim Punzenberger
Yeah, I wouldn't say that there's, there's, well, networking groups are another one in that there's not very many, what I'd say is common, especially in the industry. Most, either, most MSPs are using referrals. Referrals are great. That could be considered another backdoor method, but the referrals really are not controllable or predictable. So what you ultimately need is something that you can control. If you have a podcast, you can control the amount of people that you invite on it and such to create and to open doors and go through the back door. The other ways that you might be able to do it, too, is creating your own business group association, like local networking. If you're hosting it, you become authority in the local community. Also, or hosting a community newsletter or email would be another way other than a podcast. So you could have a local business community email newsletter and promote guests on that or promote prospects, I should say, on that. It's part of that and promote other things that are happening in the local business community. But the the most common way that we see or that we're helping clients with is through a podcast.

Tim Fitzpatrick
The other similar way that I've seen people do it, too, are like roundtable type discussions. It could be a virtual, it could be an in-person. I've seen people do dinners where there's 10 to 12 local business owners, and the MSP SP is the one that's hosting and emceeing the event, for a lack of a better term. But that stuff can work. I love the idea of a backdoor, but just different approach. The one thing I will say, because a lot of cold outreach is all focused on, let me find the 5% of the market or the 3% of the market that is looking to buy right now. The approach you just shared, you're not reaching out and they're raising their hands saying they have a problem. So a lot of the people that you're going to come in contact with may not be in that buying cycle, but you're starting the relationship, and then you can nurture it so that when they are in that 3 to 5%, they're thinking of you.

Jim Punzenberger
Absolutely, yeah.

Tim Fitzpatrick
It's a much longer term approach. And it is a different approach than most MSPs are taking, which is why I like it.

Jim Punzenberger
Yes, and so that's where also, when nurturing them, I mentioned content earlier...Having. So you basically think of it as that's the back door to open the relationship. And then we need to nurture that relationship over a long period of time because we don't when the prospect is going to be experiencing enough pain that they'd want to make a switch. But through this, starting the relationship and then hopefully paying attention to some of your content, your emails, the posts you make on LinkedIn, your blog posts, the videos, they see these sporadically over a period of time. You reach back out to them to the email or phone call, things like that, stay in touch with them and nurture it, nurture the prospect so that when they do have the pain, you're top of mind and you're the company that they're going to call.

Tim Fitzpatrick
It's been awesome. Jim, where can people connect and learn more about Yeah.

Jim Punzenberger
So manageprospectingsystem.com is our website. So you can check us out on there. Also, you can find me on LinkedIn, Jim Punzenberger. I believe I'm the only Jim Punzenberger on LinkedIn.

Tim Fitzpatrick
I was going to say, man, I don't think there's too many Jim Punzenberger's on LinkedIn.

Jim Punzenberger
So you can feel free to look me up on LinkedIn or check out manageprospectingsystem.com. And if you're watching this, I know Tim, he twisted my arm to see if I would do something for the the audience here. And so I'm offering. If you contact me before the end of August, September will be on me, or courtesy of Tim, I'll call it, for twisting my arm. If you're interested, reach out in the next 2 weeks, and September will be on me.

Tim Fitzpatrick
I love it. Jim, I appreciate you doing that. I appreciate you taking the time. This has been a great conversation. Those are to all of you that are watching and listening, appreciate you, and thank you so much for tuning in. If you feel like you're stuck in the marketing maze, you're not sure what's working or what to focus on next, take advantage of our free marketing engine scorecard at marketingenginescorecard.com. In 2 minutes, we'll help you evaluate the nine areas of what we call the Supercharged Marketing Engine, so you get clear direction on exactly what to fix first. You can also always connect with at rialtomarketing.com. And until next time, take care.