Show notes
Episode 206 Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week’s show includes: 00:00 Improve your networking game to win more clients 10:17 How to raise your prices and take your clients with you 19:31 Securing investment for your new business Featured guest: Thank you to Scott McCrady, CEO of SolCyber, for joining me to talk about setting up a brand new MSSP, and how he raised $20 million of investment to get the business off the ground. With 25 years of experience working in the networking, telecommunications, and information security space, Scott is currently serving as the CEO of SolCyber Managed Security Services. Scott has worked with large companies and start-ups, among them IBM and EDS, where he held Security Engineer and Team Leader positions (US and London). Previous to SolCyber, McCrady built the Asia-Pacific-Japan business at Symantec; he ran the global Managed Security Service, and the Symantec and Accenture Joint Venture. He then transitioned to FireEye pre-IPO to create their global MSS and System Integrator, and traveled to Singapore to help build their APJ business. After a successful run with FireEye, Scott helped spin out SonicWall from Dell to private equity and reconstitute the business into a profitable, cash flow-positive entity. Connect with Scott on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottmccrady/ Extra show notes: Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ http://mspmarketingedge.com/about/ You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ Subscribe to my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service: https://www.mspmarketingedge.com Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-Podcast/B08JK38L4V https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast/id1485101351 https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/paul-greens-msp-marketing-podcast https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucGF1bGdyZWVuc21zcG1hcmtldGluZy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0?sa https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/b03a9638-adf4-4491-93f1-569183e079d7/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast https://open.spotify.com/show/1Hw52ScOg5WvGaBUkaOrI7 https://tunein.com/radio/Paul-Greens-MSP-Marketing-Podcast-p1264893/ https://blubrry.com/paulgreenmspmarketing/ https://deezer.com/show/1512622 Got a question from the show? Email me directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com Here’s a link to Episode 179, where I covered networking in detail: http://mspmarketingedge.com/podcast/episode179/ Check out this week’s recommended business author, Jay Abraham: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jay-Abraham/e/B001IR1EXG/ Transcription: NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is. [00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world. This is Paul Green’s, MSP Marketing podcast. Hello, my friend, and welcome back to the show. Here’s what we got in store for you this week. [00:00:14] Speaker B: Hey, I’m Scott McCrady with SolCyber. Can’t wait to be on Paul’s podcast to talk about how we raised $20 million to bring a new security service to the market. [00:00:23] Speaker A: And on top of that, fascinating interview with Scott, later on in the show, we’ll be talking about hidden price rises. Is there an opportunity coming up for you to put your prices up in the new year? Paul Green’s, MSP Marketing Podcast let’s start this week’s show talking about networking. And I’ll avoid my usual joke of networking, saying, I mean the one with people and not cables. But I do mean the one with people and not cables. Because networking events, depending on your experience of them and whether you’ve ever done them before, networking events are either fantastic places for you to go and meet potential new leads, or they are sheer hell. The idea of them is torture. It’s a torment for you, the thought of having to go out and do them. I’ve done my fair share of networking over the years. When I started my very first business in 2005, it was like a general marketing business. And I used to go out to all the networking events in a county called Northamptonshire in the middle of the UK. And I went to literally every event that I could find. And then I joined BNI, which was great for a couple of years until it wasn’t anymore. And over the years, I’ve had so many badly cooked breakfasts, got up at 05:00 A.m. To go to meetings, gone to evening meetings. It did win business. But then I found really good marketing, and I got really good at marketing, and particularly B to B marketing. And suddenly, networking was just one little thing that we did. It was no longer the thing that we relied on, but for many MSPs, networking is a big thing. And we did a whole subject on this back in episode 179. So if you want to dive into networking and why you should be doing it, go and relisten right now, or listen for the first time to episode 179. Now, the reason I want to mention it here in this episode is because I was recently talking to an MSP, happened to be here in the UK. It’s someone I’m working closely with, but I’ve only known closely for about six months. And they have utterly gone for networking, almost as if there was nothing else. And there is actually lots of other marketing that they’re doing, but they have a full time marketing resource in the business. And that person has decided, if I’m going to do networking, I’m going to do networking properly. And I’ve got some stats that they gave me just a few weeks ago when we had a catch up call. So they attended, they did eight separate events. So they are in London, here in the UK, and there are a lot of networking events and I think eight events was actually a fairly small number, but that was across a two week period. So for two weeks, they went to eight separate events. And I’m not quite sure if they are figuring on doing that regularly. That seems like a hell of a cadence, doesn’t it, to go to? I guess that works out at four events a week. Maybe that’s overkill, maybe you wouldn’t find that many events in your area. But that’s what they did initially. They went to eight different events and their goal was to go there and meet as many new people as possible, have some kind of meaningful conversation with them. So they went to these eight events. Out of these eight events, they got three hot leads. And I pushed them and said, Right, what does that mean? That three hot leads. Three hot leads is where they’ve had a conversation with someone which has ended with an exchange of business cards and diarizing. Hey, great, I’m going to give you a call tomorrow morning, 945, or whatever is the case. So that hot lead is someone that could go on to do business with them. There’s an opportunity there and crucially, it’s in the diary. There’s not just that vague, give me a call. Oh, I hate that, don’t you? Give me a call. What does that mean? Give me a call? It’s a way of fobbing people off, isn’t it? Give me a call next week, see if we’re ready to talk to you. Well, guess what? Spoilers, we’re probably not, because it’s a way of fobbing someone off. If they’re serious about talking to you, they will book something in their calendar there and then. And if they won’t do that, the chances are high that they are not serious. So, eight networking events, lots of breakfasts, lots of talking to people, three hot leads and they have generated a brand new client. Out of those three hot leads, worth 7000 pounds of monthly recurring revenue in US money, that’s around about, let’s say, about nine k $9,000 of monthly recurring revenue. Was that a useful use of their time? I would say so, yes. Wouldn’t you? Eight meetings, three hot leads, one new client. Now, what I don’t want is for you to say, oh, there’s the magic formula. All I got to do is go to eight meetings, all I got to do is talk to get three hot leads and I’ll get a really juicy client out of it. ISIS bet it’s not going to be quite as easy as that for you. I say this not to give you an idea of numbers, because of course, we don’t know the type of events they went to, we don’t know what kind of businesses were there, we don’t know how much work they had to do to actually reel in. That 8000 excuse me, that 7000 pounds of monthly recurring revenue, I suspect quite a lot of work. My point was this networking, like any type of marketing, can work really, really well for you. Really well if you throw yourself at it. And I see so many MSPs doing little bits of marketing here. I’ll do a little bit of email, a little bit of LinkedIn, a little bit of something else. I’ll go to one networking event, oh, I didn’t meet anyone interesting there. And actually marketing doesn’t work like that. Especially B. Two B marketing and especially MSP. Marketing. MSP marketing has a very long sales cycle. The kinds of people who are one day going to become your clients are currently sat with your competitors, fearful of leaving them because better the devil you know, they know technology is important, but they don’t understand that technology. Therefore they’re scared to switch to someone they don’t know and that might include you. It’s a very, very slow sales cycle for this and a number of other reasons. Networking is a great way to meet new people, but it is only the start of that. You’ve got to throw yourself into it. If you’re going to do it, try it and give it a good long term push. Now, as you can imagine, my client is very, very happy to keep doing networking. And I’m sure that over a period of time that networking will become less efficient. But they’ve certainly had a good start from it to win one new client like that. And I would encourage them to get going. By the way, while we are talking about this, there is a side conversation which came up about getting stuck, stuck talking to the same person. Well, actually it was two subjects. One was how to work a room, and the other was how to avoid getting stuck talking to the same person. And if you’ve been networking yourself, you may know that this is a problem. Particularly if you’re nervous and you’re not a particularly confident person. And you walk into this networking room and there’s someone you meet the very first time and you shake hands and you’ve not met them before and they’re nervous and you’re nervous and you say hi, hi, how are you? And 3 hours later you’re stills talking to each other, you’re stuck with each other, it’s just you and that other person. And you’re looking at all these other people thinking I missed out on these people, what do I do? Well, actually, we’ve got one thing that we can do which combines both of these things and it’s very, very simple. You spend ten minutes talking to the person that you’ve met, but you talk exclusively about them. You see there’s a number of things that happen when you talk exclusively about someone else. So you go to a networking meeting, you shake their hand. Hi. I’m Paul. What’s your name? You’re Dave? Hi, Dave. Nice to meet you. What do you do, Dave? Dave tells you what he does, and it’s either a good explanation of what he does that he’s bringing to life, or he bores you for five minutes telling you something. I’m an accountant, and I like to do numbers and figures or whatever it is he says. But whatever it is he says, you then follow that up with a series of open questions about him and his business. And the more you ask about him and his business, the more fascinating you will be to him. It’s kind of weird how that works. It’s the opposite of how it should be. It should be that the more we talk about us, the more fascinating we should be. But actually, that’s not how it works. Brains are not wired that way. It’s completely the opposite way. The more you talk about him and his business and ask him interesting questions, the more fascinating you become. And that is the challenge that is open to you. So you ask him about his business. Of course you tell him what you do. But anytime he starts swinging the conversation back to him, back to you sorry. You swing it back to him, and then you make a decision after ten minutes, is Dave, is this person I’m talking to worth continuing the conversation, or is it time for me to move on? And if it is time for you to move on, here’s what you can do. You can say, Dave, I’ve really enjoyed talking to you today. It’s been fascinating. Shake my hand. Shake, shake, shake. It’s good to have the little sound effect there. Shake, shake, shake. And you say, I’m going to go and meet someone new here, and I’m sure that you want to do the same as well. Let’s just swap business cards, and perhaps we can keep in touch. The point is, by talking to Dave about him and his business for so much, you have earned the right to terminate the conversation. Essentially, you’ve controlled the entire interaction here. Now I’m talking about people that you meet for the first time. When you meet them the second, 3rd, fourth time, it’s not so easy to do this. But that first time, you can be completely in control of that interaction, because you know, the goal for you being here tonight is to meet ten or 15 or 20 people, and you’re not going to do that when you’re stuck talking to Dave. So you kind of blitz Dave, learn as much as you can about him, and then you have earned the right to shake his hand. Say, you’re a fascinating guy, Dave. I’m so glad I bumped into you. So I’m going to go and meet some new people, and I’m sure you want to do the same. Always make it seem aligned, like you’re there for the same reason. Look forward to seeing you again soon. And that’s it, you’re off. Simple as that. So is networking a big thing for your MSP? I’d love to know your experiences of it. Why don’t you go into our Facebook group and let me and a whole load of other MSPs know what networking is like for you? It’s the Facebook group. It’s called MSP Marketing and I’d love to hear your experiences in there. Here’s this week’s. Clever idea. Don’t hate me, but I’m going to be one of the first to say it. Christmas is nearly here. I know, I know. We’re only at the end of October, more or less, and it does seem like we’ve got two months, but we haven’t. We’ve got about six and a half weeks, something like that. It’s kind of crazy when you look at how fast Christmas sneaks up on you once you get to this time of year. Christmas is good because it leads on to New Year and January a new year. And January presents you an opportunity to do something very cool, specifically to put your prices up for your existing clients. Now I love price rises. Ironically, not with my MSP Marketing Edge service. It is still the same price today as it was when we launched it in 2016. It’s 99 pounds a month, plus VAT in the UK and $129 everywhere else in the world. Bit of a warning. We can sign a claxon warning in January. February, we are going to increase the prices for new members. So if you want to lock that price in now, go and have a look. MSP. MSP marketing edge. Just sneaked in a sneaky advert there. You didn’t even know that I’d done it. Anyway, I might not love price Rises for my service. We’re playing a bigger game. We’re playing a subscription. Not a bigger game, a different game. We’re playing a subscription game where we have I mean, we’ve got 700 plus MSPs. It’s a little bit different to the MSP game that you’re playing where you might only have ten or 20 or 30 clients and actually you’ve got to grow their revenue in order to grow your own revenue. So January gives us a massive opportunity to do this, and one of the opportunities in January is to do kind of like a hidden price rise. Now, there are a number of different ways that you might do this. Here’s one that I like. Yo…
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