 sales. So Brett and me, we did a video about why we shouldn't hire a sales guy. I think if you dig through there you'll find that. But there's a little bit more to the story and part of it's finding the right salesperson. And I decided to contract Brett to do sales here because I want to, well of course we want to grow as a business and we're trying to find the right salesperson. So for now Brett is the right salesperson. And what we mean by that is a learning experience and he wanted to give it a try because Brett came from insurance sales. And he's actually been able to accomplish a lot since October of 2019. It's currently December of 2019 and so far you threw out what over $200,000 with the bids. Yeah we're like 211,329 to be exact. Yeah. It's been an incredible ride going from insurance to IT sales. Yeah. Except for the fact that they both protect people. Right. And that's what I, once I got that in my head it was actually pretty. Yeah. And a lot of that was project sales. So let me just be upfront about this. A lot of the way my company brings in money isn't just MSP. MSP is a piece of it but actually the larger amount of annual revenue that comes into my company is project work. Some people may call it break fix work. I like to call it project work because well you're selling things like installing Wi-Fi throughout several warehouses or installing and ripping and replacing infrastructure, rebuilding firewalls and that. And these sales numbers are only the new business brought in. And what I'm going to talk about is that process. And I like to just reiterate it that people buy from people they like and the kind of deliverable I hope that you may get from this video. One, I like to be very open about how we do sales. But I am separating this though from two pieces. One, one of my inbound lead generation systems is YouTube. I put a lot of videos out there that generates a lot of leads for us. That is a big piece of it. This is not part of that. We're only going to talk about what is. Because I'm not saying that you shouldn't do YouTube. I'm not saying it's for everyone. I'm not going to try to sell you on some line of BS. Oh yeah, just get on YouTube. It's like the next best thing, rah, rah, rah. So I see people doing that. It's not for everyone. If it's a fit for you, awesome. It's a fit for me. So I like it. It is inbound lead. Let's talk about relationship building, landing MSP clients. Because included in that is some MSP sales in there. But in a lot of project work. And it starts with getting out there. They say it's about who you know. That's actually highly, that's a very true statement, wouldn't you say? That's reality. Let's face it. It's hard to get jobs out there. It's hard to meet other people. It's who you know. I would say when you think about referral based business and people who get to know and like you, those things close at a higher percentage rate. Yes. And it's about building that relationship. It's not just going out there and handing your card to somebody and hoping they call. It's maybe getting their card, giving them a call, sitting down having a cup of coffee and actually talking about what their wants and needs are. Yeah. And it's one of the things that is so important about the sales process. A lot of people are looking for that magic bullet, that magic, oh, Tom, how many Facebook ads do you spend or how much did you spend on Google or any type of advertising? Zero dollars. We quit advertising in, I think, 2017, late 2017. It was probably the last time we ever bought a Google or any type of online advertising. We just don't do that anymore. I really found when you started breaking down the clients. Now, who's shopping on Google? Consumers, yeah, if you're running a retail store, separate story, this is all about B2B sales and MSP sales. You look the same. Everyone goes, oh, look at that. I typed in, I need a computer repair. And look, these people popped up that who's the cheapest price? Who's got that? A lot of the price shoppers. Well, the best clients we have, the ones that are, that you have good margin on, that you have a good relationship with, that is not you just competing to do it as cheap as possible, are people that you have a relationship from. And we just, one of the MSP deals that Brett landed, someone actually, I met from 2015. It took a long time to land that particular company, a big engineering firm. And how do we land them? I knew the guy from 2015, we had talked, we had conversations over time. And about anything, I'd say, hey, we belong to unrelated, but another business group that I had met him in. And though you just keep those relationships up because with IT, you have to wait for the pain point. And they had it. They had it with their other IT company after a few years. They already, there was grumblings. But that's one of the things you have to be at the ready when the pain comes in IT. It's not easy to get someone switched when they're happy. That's as simple as that. Right. And you got to solve for that pain. You can't come up there and have it, they have an issue and you can't help them with that issue. You've got to be able to solve for that pain. And it's about understanding your product. Yes. One of the things in having a sales person, like myself, who, yes, I came from the insurance industry, but I know enough about technology to be able to get by. I know about a mill of percentage of what he knows, but I know enough to be able to have an intelligent conversation about what the product can do for that consumer. And that's important. And you have to think about it from a business integration standpoint. And the reason I bring that up too is because so many people get deep technical. I love deep technical. Don't get me wrong. That's on my YouTube channel is about. That's my place. I like to live is in a deep technical side of things. But I do realize myself as a business owner, I have to deal with the property that we manage here because we're in a strip mall. And why do I bring it up? Well, the guy wanted to tell me about a new guy that want to tell me about what kind of salt he's using and stuff like that. I just stopped him. I'm like, dude, I'm sure that's really interesting. I was not too rude about it. But I said, let me give you some advice. Just tell me how much is honestly the price. Yeah. And he really, I could tell he was enthusiastic about it. And I didn't cut him off really, but I want to I kind of want to make the point. I'm really worried. I just need to know the price, how much can cost to maintain this parking lot with all these spots? Oh, yeah, it's about $3,000. This is the contract. Cool. And, you know, that's mean not deal and deal with that. There's other aspects of the building like, you know, that I don't really want to do with the HVAC system. I mean, the guy wanted to tell me what brand I said I want a good brand. I want a good warranty. Cool. And when you look at it, how it solves for the pain of their problem, that's how you speak like they call, Hey, we really want to be protected. We have this problem. We had ransomware, etc. What do you guys do to stop it? Oh, we're going to put in a filtering system. We're going to help maintain your business continuity. Rarely do we even get into do you even get the question from you're sitting down of what anti-virus brand do you use? Never. No, I haven't yet. And I've seen people's technical where they want to lead with that. Oh, we're using XYZ product. They want to brag about it or something. I mean, you do have to on the back end, you should know your stack and you should be doing it really well. And if the client asks, I mean, feel free to present, but I wouldn't lead with it. And that's part of that relationship building. Like Brett said, you have to be there to solve for X and have a concise sheet, have a concise answer. It helps get your quotes out faster. Well, let's face it, most business owners, when they open up their doors, they just want to make sure their computer turns on and that it can connect to the internet or connect to their network. They don't care how it does it. They just want to know that it will do it. Right. So you got to solve for that kind of a pain and be simplistic. Don't, don't over-tech it. Don't, don't overthink it. Just have a conversation, take lots of notes and build that relationship. Yeah. And people dig into like having lots of handouts to close this business. Do we have a ton of handouts? I created two and I haven't used one yet. Yeah. And people think that's like the key, like they need all this stuff. What you need is be likable. It sounds, it sounds weird, but it actually helps a lot. If you come in, you talk concisely, you talk about how you can solve the problem. And, or matter of fact, the big warehousing job is because a year ago, I couldn't solve the problem. Right. So the person had a problem. We went and looked at it. We realized selling them new Wi-Fi wouldn't have solved it, although they had already taken two bids from other competitors. I told them the honest truth. I said, I can sell you new Wi-Fi, but the problem is the devices you have over here don't support this function. I'm sorry, I can't sell you Wi-Fi because my new Wi-Fi won't solve your old device problem that you're trying to get connected. And he's like, why are you the first tech to tell me that? I'm like, I don't know. And he said, why had two other companies come out here and give me these huge bids? And I'm like, I just wanted to make money. Yeah. That's all they didn't care about. And it's funny because full circle back on there, that's now landed us, cumulatively when we're all done is going to be almost 100 something thousand dollars in Wi-Fi sold. Yes. Right around there, 90 something thousand. I think once we can do all the locations, but they chose us because we couldn't, we were honest and everyone else just wanted to hurry up and make the sale without actually taking the time to look at it. And it's not the first time that's happened. A lot of companies, especially in the MSP space, they just look in not to solve the problem. They just go, rip and replace. Let's put all of our stack in and all of our magic will just work. And they give them a really big bill as opposed to looking at what are the, how does this integrate in your business and having that conversation with them? Well, I've been surprised when I've come back from meeting with somebody and I sit down with with the guys here and talk over and we'd like to talk about every project and everybody here is involved in every project because it's almost like a family here. It's kind of a cool, cool aspect of it. But we taught when we talk about a project and I'm surprised pleasantly when someone will say, you know what, let's keep this there with them. We don't need to take that out. That's working. Let's continue that to be working and let's just add to this whole rip and replace and come in. I've heard of companies coming in after a few months of a business owner having equipment and then taking it all out, throwing it away and putting in their stuff. Why would you do that? Yeah. I mean, I get it that some companies want to be everyone on exactly the same stack and things like that. But those companies become very generic. They treat people like tickets and not like people. And it's always been our thing. We treat you like a person, not like a ticket. I've said that many times and, you know, we just had a guy who came in today. He stopped in to say hi to us. The law firm, which he took over. And it's great. And this is a complete Bret sales. You meet these people at the chamber. So, you know where the leads are coming from. Referrals following up and lots of Chamber of Commerce events and lots of business networking events. And like Bret said, you're playing the long game of building relationships saying, hi, just offer to go have lunch with people once in a while and start with, hey, what problems are you having? You know, see if they want to do that. Buy them lunch. It's not that expensive. People try to overthink it or try to buy a bunch of crazy inbound leads. And I've never been big on that. I mean, I'm not saying cold calling won't work at all. But cold calling is a numbers game. You need a thousand numbers. And if you're lucky, you'll convert one or two of those. And that's a lot of time and effort on there. And you're calling random strangers versus, hey, build this relationship. And now the relationship we built with this law firm. Because you know what this guy at the law firm knows? A lot of other people. A lot of other law firms. A lot of other law firms. Apparently they pass off business to people that will say, hey, we don't do this type of law. And we'll pass it off to them. And lawyers apparently hang out, especially defense attorneys. We have a group of defense attorneys that know each other. They start with some of the wildest stories. We haven't had to use them though. And we haven't had to use them. Let's make that clear. Yeah, yeah. Defense attorneys, I'll just say that they have some of the best stories. And they're interesting people. And they do, they have like a lot of water cooler talks. So if you treat them really well, well, and we don't offer any commission for them. We're not doing finders fees. A lot of people ask about that. You don't want someone to be just a paid chill for you because you want them to honestly refer you because people will also refer you because they like you. So that's a big thing about this one. And people always ask where your inbound needs come in. It's not from some job board. It's not from buying a bunch of, you know, people looking for IT. And what are these list people looking for IT? I've never found them to be that concise. I mean, you can build target lists and stuff like that. And there's marketing companies out there, if you ever wanted outsource it. We don't use any of them, but I know some of them do work. But trust me, you can expect to pay quite a bit. I've seen some of them charging like, you know, five, $6,000 a month just to do those calls. And it's because there is genuinely what they do. It's someone smiling and dialing. My wife used to work for quick and long. Roll up numbers, right? Yeah. And it's a numbers game. They have a list of 5,000 numbers that they're handing out to a group of people to say, Hey, solve for X, man, start smiling and dialing. But the problem is who jumps around on prices when it comes to IT? People price shopping. So do you get the highest bidding cost? Or you might land some, I'm not saying you won't, but statistically, who switches on a phone call? Hey, I got this, and I'll do it for this much. Cool. I pay X and I can pay X minus 20%. Okay, I'll switch to your little bitter creed. You know, is it the relationship you want to build? But if you spend the time like we do curating people, meeting them, and I know it sounds impersonal, I see curating, but it's just being friendly, you know, out there have a conversation. Be genuine. Be genuine. You know, if you look at a close ratio, so if you want to get technical about sales, let's talk about close ratios. If you're going to be doing Facebook leads and going for those people that are price shopping for your service, you're going to be dealing with people that are price shopping for your service when they go and find the next person. Right. When then they go and find that next person. But you build a relationship. People who know you, who like you, who start to trust you, will actually close between 70 and 80% of the time because of that relationship you built. And a genuine relationship, not fake, but truly getting to know somebody. I mean, there are people that know what you do with your kids, what you know. Oh, yeah, yeah. We have personal conversations. You know, this is me, you know, I do use Facebook at a personal level. I'm not out ranting about whatever the political or hot button topic of the day is, whatever people want to be outraged about. I avoid those topics are stupid. Anyways, I don't find either side of the fence being very productive on Facebook. It just becomes a place where you divide people if you participate in that. But you know, what I do have is a lot of genuine conversations with people. We landed a country club over that they were just it came into discussion of photos and things like that. And one of the people that also likes photos I had posted happens to do photography for the country club and knew they needed IT and it was just someone I knew on Facebook. We landed a country club and when we solved a big Wi-Fi thing at the country club and put a new service for them and started solving that problem, the next thing that happened was the board. You know, who happens to be on the board of the country club? A lot of people that also own businesses at times. And they want to do business, they're making the decisions. Yeah. And then we happened to land them as we now service their businesses. But it's, you know, it's about leaving an impression on people. We follow up with them. Follow up, I will tell you, is absolutely huge. So much of it. And this is where I knew I had a problem myself and why I had to bring Brett. I'm like, Brett, I just don't have time to follow up with these people. And so most of his sales, I mean, we did go to the Chamber of Commerce and meet some of these, but the 200,000 there was mostly him just follow up in the last, you know, it was like a month and a half. I've been doing that landed 200 more thousand on top of there's still other sales that happened off YouTube and everything else that's got the business, you know, coming in. And that's where I try to focus because those inbound leads are hot and they're coming in and people, we have a really, I mean, I think my close rate, I think it's still at like 70% close rate. Yes, it is. The YouTube stuff, I'm going to do a separate video on how we do inbound leads on YouTube, but our close rate on it from, from inbound lead to converted to someone spending money with us is really, really high for that. So it's been good. But I just wanted to throw this video out there because this question comes up all the time. I know I sound a little bit repetitive, but people buy from people they like, but get out there and no people get out there and be social. I can't because I don't know how many times I've sent all these different sales videos to people and I keep saying it like there's not a secret to it. You have to get out from behind the keyboard. There's not like the best key words you ever use that suddenly landed you a bunch of MSP sales or things like that. The MSP stuff, like I said, he's like selling insurance. You go out there, you solve for X, we have a plan for you. I mean, I think you know what, I just got tagged in a Facebook post. This is indirectly related to YouTube, which probably going to turn into an MSP sale for a 30 person office because tagged in a Facebook post, had a conversation with a person on Facebook like, Hey, we're growing. We're a little worried about security and things like that. Cool. Let me, I'll look at what you have and let's put a solution together. And you know, it's not that hard. It's as simple as that. It really is. But it is hard work. There's hard work involved. Oh, yeah. Know your stack and everything else. Don't talk over people's heads. And this person's highly focused on their industry and they're doing well in it and their company's growing fast. They want someone that can grow with them. And you know, Brad had that set down, had that conversation, took about an hour maybe. Yeah. And then get along great, have some conversation and away you go. It's not as hard as people think in some ways, but it's different because everyone's looking for the magical, but I have a pretty website. Why don't the leads just pour in from the website? Why don't the leads just come in from these ad clicks? Oh, don't we need to click funnel them into a bunch of a webinar stuff? I know not. I've not really found not when it comes to MSP cells. Honestly, I've never found them effective at all. No matter how much technology evolves, it's never going to replace face to face communication. Yeah. Ever. People are nervous. And especially because you're faceless when you're doing all these ads. You want to put a face in front of them. You want to put some confidence in front of them. And that's really what sells it. So that's a lot of what is my deliverable from this video that I'm hoping that people have a takeaway with. It's just you do need to do the legwork. You do need to get out there, build relationships. Facebook is one of those ways that I get tagged in a lot of stuff that I my Facebook list is filled with a bunch of CEOs and business owners. So those are people you've met and built relationships with. Yeah. Met them in person, things like that's anything linked in conversations, not not some blah, blah, blah. We offer the best this this those generic spam messages just get you banned. People see right through that. So yeah. All right. Well, we're going to leave you with that. I just wanted to bring it up and give you that because this, like I said, it's repeated question comes up and I'll be sending this video to all those people that keep dropping links in the forum going, but Tom, what's the secret to your sales? You're seeing it right here. It's actually hard work and meeting people. Get out from behind the keyboard. All right. Thanks. And thank you for making it to the end of the video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. 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