 So when I started my business in 2003, I was thinking, man, I know all kinds of tech stuff. I was leaving the corporate world. I had a really good understanding of working in other small businesses with technology. I could fix anything. I could do all kinds of different disciplines in IT. And I thought that would just instantly make a business. Turns out there's a lot more to it than that. Matter of fact, most of my learning since 2003 has been not just in tech, but a lot of learning in business and marketing and sales specifically. Now, I thought that people would just use me. And it's such a weird concept when I look back at it. I don't know, it was like simple-mindedness maybe and learning the world's a little more complicated than that when you start a business. Now, I'm gonna break down some of my numbers and talk about how I got where I'm at and the methods that work for me. I don't know if those methods work for you. I'm not saying they are the end-all solution. I'm just saying, what's worked for me? What's helped me build my company, build my business? And what's brought me the customers I have and the market that I have? So that being said, let me start with who my customers are. So my customers are small businesses. Generally, we have clients that have less than 20 workstations. We have larger clients. We have a lot of smaller clients. That is most of the base. We've pursued the small business market, not the high-level executive market. So we don't have any massive, you know, multi-million dollar companies like large-scale global hospitals or anything like that. Most of our market has been the small mom and pops and I say small mom and pops, but some of them are actually quite large in terms of annual revenues. So we do a lot of those transportation companies and when you look at them as a small business, which they may not be really considered small business because they do have a lot of employees, but they only have a few computers. So I'm focusing how many works they have to consider them small business. And that being said, we have some manufacturing companies that are doing millions, but they only have four computers because what they do requires almost a one-acre facility full of machines and four computers in the office to bill it. Doesn't take a lot. Same with transportation companies, an entire fleet of trucks driving around the Midwest and 11 people in a dispatch group to take care of the actual dispatching of the trucks. So that's kind of what I'm talking about with small businesses. Now, we've never focused on any vertical. To me, everyone's the same, they run Windows. Now, each different vertical does have their own software. We see certain pieces of software. We actually work with several chambers of commerce as our clients and they use a program called CC Assist to manage all their client databases. So you start learning some of the vendor-specific stuff, but generally, most of the time you just facilitate calling those vendors and making sure everything works. So let's get back to the sales topic. So where did my clients come from? I broke that down. I went through and analyzed and we have over 400 businesses that we're doing IT for. Now that does not mean we have 400 contract IT. Some of them are doing MSP-style support for managed services. Some of them are just doing break fix. And some of them are really happy on managed services. Some are really happy just on break fix. We're a hybrid shop, we do both. I don't see why I should focus all my energy on one or the other. I have clients who, granted, they're playing the money bet. Do I need to pay them monthly to do it or can we just do things ourselves and call them when something goes wrong? Sometimes they're right and if they're tech savvy and don't click on things and are real careful and they have a competent crew, they might win that. So that's why we don't force them one side or the other. So let's break down where I acquired all these clients and then we'll talk about the methods that were used to acquire them. So business networking groups is 46% of all the clients I've accumulated came from business networking. Then we're gonna go down to client referrals, 31%. So just those two make up the majority of where all of my clients came from. And then we're gonna have 14% came from the store. Now the store from what that is is just people walked in and they're like, hey, we don't have an IT guy at work. So that's how my storefront has kind of fed my business because 14% of the people were people who just came into the store and said, hey, let's talk to you. You guys seem nice, you fixed my personal computer. And a couple of times we fixed the business owner's computer and he says, wow, you guys did such a good job and the IT guy we have, we don't care for, they don't answer the phone, whatever the reasons were and we take over IT. But a lot of times we're taking over IT from their cousin who helped them when they started, but now they're a bigger company and they can't just have their cousin randomly show up and fix things or their nephew or their friends. So, and then a smaller amount was website about 7.8%. And websites combined with, they came to our website and contacted us probably from a Google ad. I didn't have the best tracking at the time when I acquired some of these clients. I just knew that's how they found us. So maybe from some of the ads we're running. But with sales, I know a lot of people are always going, what's that keyword you use or what's the method you use to hire them on there? The reality is that's the smallest part of my business and it's not been the most profitable because a lot of the people I find that are just searching online, they're the ones budget hunting. They're going, what's the cheapest guy? This guy wants this much an hour. This guy, oh, this guy wants this much an hour. And they're just seeing how cheap they can get things done. We were running ads for a while for our cabling and infrastructure and we found them to be the most least paying jobs ever. They were people who wanted to do everything and didn't constantly negotiate. We give them a bid and they would want to renegotiate with us the whole big going, well, what can we do this part ourselves? What if we pulled part of the cable and this had you guys put the ends on it? And it was just back and forth and it takes a lot of time going back and forth with them because they don't want you to do the whole job. They're always looking at it and that's why they were budget shopping on places like Thumbtack and things like that. We've tried a lot of them and the budget shoppers, they're not the best clients. They really were the ones that drained us, so to speak, of lots of time trying to talk to them as they're trying to find out the cheapest way to get it done. Now, the clients we met through the business referrals and the larger companies, those are great. Now, networking groups, I belong to the Chamber of Commerce and they actually more than one Chamber of Commerce locally here and we have a few of them in the area so that's not a bad place to start at all. It depends how active your chamber is as the results you get out of that. There are business networking groups. Now, I'm lucky because our Chamber runs their own business networking groups which are very similar to like B&I and some of those. Look them up if you're not familiar with them. They're great sales tools and you have to understand how to kind of work the crowd. Now, the most important thing about sales is connecting with people. The reality is people still buy from people they like and that's always sometimes the harder part about unseating a competitor from their IT. We, there's a guy that's really nice, I've met him, super nice guy and it's really hard because people don't wanna change away from him because they like him but they hate the fact that it takes them four or five days to answer the phone and they just, ah, we really like so and so and we hear that all the time, you know, the old saying, you dance with the devil, you know. So you really have to connect and earn their trust. Now, a lot of that, I start with the business networking groups, you can't just go and throw out there and I've talked about this about predatory confusion where you confuse them going, we do everything IT, we can fix this, this, this, this, and we do all these amazing things and they glaze over and they're going, I'm not sure how you could help me, you seem to kinda do everything but you're not proposing a solution to them, also you're throwing a lot at them. So you try to start out and be more conversational and I frequently, because being in business for so long, I know some of the different things about different industries. So why we start with talking to them is you know what people like to talk about themselves. I like what people ask me questions and I'll start answering. So it's a good sales thing, you start developing a rapport with people, you start connecting with them and you have to be friendly and while this is kind of building up to, hey, we can do this thing for you and I've seen someone mention like, oh, I've seen you do this really cool job, I can't wait till someone calls me for a job like that, I'm like, they didn't call me for those jobs. They were given a solution, a proposal. I look at things going on and say, hey, let's do this. I think I told the story before about I went to a new bed and I realized when I got there, I looked around, I thought the guy wasn't there, I go inside and he is and I had to ask, where's your car? And he said I was the first person to ask, where's your car? And it turns out that he owns a building a few places down and we were able to set up a site-to-site wireless between his buildings to connect it so he didn't have to have servers. So our proposal went through right away because the other guys wanted to duplicate his entire network and buy a second server with all the licensing for his software. Now he had enough licenses to run multiple workstations on there, but he would have a second server license under the other, two other IT companies proposals as opposed to his building was a few blocks away. Site-to-site wireless, the back of the buildings were high enough to just point them at each other across an empty parking lot, done. And it was, you know, how I get those jobs is you're suggesting solutions. They don't know, he didn't know you could tie two buildings together. So you can't just expect that they're just, you can't sit back and wait and say they're gonna Google, how do I connect two buildings together and they're gonna find my cool website I made that tells them how to do it and they're gonna call me for it. That isn't really how it works, at least not in my experience. So you start, you really wanna do when you start in sales, you start with connecting with them. You start talking to people, literally be friendly with people. I know it sounds really an odd thing to say, but you can't be in this mindset all the time. You know, there's people I've known for a while. I see them at different business events. I say hi to them all the time. You don't pushy, I'm not a pushy sales. As a matter of fact, I sure I'd be a little more pushy because I'm sometimes a little bit bad about follow-up. I got a pile of business cards that I gotta just send out emails from a couple of days ago that I met some people. And it's just follow-up, hey, how you doing? Great seeing you at the event. And it's this sales technique. Now, some people are going, Tom, I'm not, you know, I'm really introverted. I'm not an extroverted person, or maybe you are. I learned to be extroverted. It's still kind of forced. If you turn the camera off and I just go back to doing it, I'm fine not to talk to people for a day or two. And that's not gonna bother me. And you look at some very successful people. Let's take Bill Gates. He's not like this incredible extrovert person. But people, if you want to have the sales hire a salesperson. If you're the introvert, hire an extrovert. You put someone in there. If you can't figure out how to do it yourself, you put someone in there and you focus on the tech in the back end side. And even myself, I have a new sales guy that started to hire sales people in the past and it's not always worked out, but you keep trying and I'm trying to find the right mix for that. Because IT sales are a little tricky. Now, that being said, when it comes to sales people, you have to find someone who's willing to work hard, willing to hustle. I know some people like to jump right on the commission. The problem I have with commission is they start not looking out for the customer because they're looking out for themselves. So high commission sales people sounds like a great concept, but I've just not found it to be, I want to be a very much my customer's advocate. And we're not always, just because a server's a couple of years old doesn't mean it's time to replace it immediately. And sometimes they go, well, I really need to make this commission. So let me really push for all new stuff for them. I would really try to keep that the same reason we don't go through a bunch of reselling commission products. So when it comes to sales, staying away from these commission products means we become hardware agnostic, we're software agnostic, we'll recommend the solution that works for the client that's gonna give us the least amount of trouble, not the stuff we're making the best commission on. And I don't know anyone who can honestly tell me that if they choose to sign up for a high commission for one particular antivirus, that they're willing to switch it on a dime to one that makes a lower commission because the company's not that good. You're gonna really go to bat for the company when they make mistakes because you're going, hey, that company, man, I make so much commission on them. I can't just switch away. You know, I've got a thousand seats that I have to renew every year and it makes me this much money. Once you get in that loop, you never wanna get out of it. So I'm always really careful on reselling antivirus commission stuff. Because of that too, we let our clients know that very much up front and you help develop that trust with them because people need to trust you before they turn over your IT. We have law offices. We have doctor's offices. We have insurance agencies. They have to trust us. If they don't trust us, they don't want us in their system. We have remote access to all these things. We reassure them all the time that we're very secure. We talk about our processes internally. We offer them insights into their network once we've taken stuff over for them. You constantly are building this report. You don't need to overload them or reports. The reality is they wanna focus on their business. That's one of the reasons we adapted our slogan to be we focus on technology so you can focus on your business. Because the reality is that's what they really wanna do. They are good at their vocation. They started a business in insurance because they know that market. They know how to sell it. They know how to package it. They don't have time to update Java and they don't necessarily need a report to let them know and feel good that you did all the Java. What they do like to know is that, hey, these are some of the things we've prevented overall. They kinda like the big picture look. Maybe once a month we reach out to clients and tell them that. But the real point is you have to just build that confidence. Now, you also have to be confident in your product. If you just kinda, and I don't know, they're gonna see that. You're not sure you can do this. We need this set up. Can you or can't you? So you always try to answer a more definitive, yes sir, we'll take care of that. Or I'm very quick to say, I don't know the answer, but I'll have my guys research it right away. Because that's what we run into with some of these weird programs that clients have with different servers. But that's the thing. You're willing to reach out. We're willing to be convenient for them. Now, the really customers that I find the best is customers that shop on value as opposed to ones on price. People who like to just bicker, go back and forth and back to some of the people that found me on the web, the about every little dollar for every little thing. And it just, it wears you out. Really smart clients. They look at the value you provide. And as a business owner myself, I've really gone to that myself. I don't go for the cheapest product. I go, what is the value that product provides for me? And is that worth it? So is the money I give for this worth it? Some of the reasons I buy nicer laptops. I don't have patience for cheap, crappy stuff that's gonna fall apart on me in a couple of years. So I'll spend a little more and buy a better laptop. You buy a better car once you can afford one. Cause you go, hey, this will do a little bit better for me. I can, you know, it's more reliable. I'm not gonna just drive this old beater and with duct tape holding it all together. You know, could you save money that way? Yeah, but at some point, if you break down on a way to the client, what did it really save you? Now you don't look professional. So keeping that in mind, those are the customers you really wanna seek out. You know, maybe I have the luxury of being in business a long time and being able to fire some of the clients. But I tell you, I did this, I would did this one, I was a lot earlier in business too. I realized early on. And I had some great people who told me things like that. You know, one of my friends just shocked me early on in business. That owns a business is very successful. And when I asked him how he was able to get that much for his service he provided. And he goes, Tom, I just put down that's what I charge. And I just, it was such an obvious answer, but he's also so right. It kind of changed my thinking. And you never wanna sell yourself short. Just because you're new in the market doesn't mean you can't provide value. Matter of fact, you may find you get more respect if you gave them, you're looking at your competitors offer, let's just throw numbers out there of a $5,000 proposal. You're like, no, I can do it for three. They makes the client nervous. They're going, well, what are you doing differently? And if you can't justify why you're doing it different? Well, for us, for example, we got the sale on the building, one because we showed them that we didn't need to purchase servers and we could cite the building. But if you just say, I can do the same thing for less, you raise questions. And when we look at other proposals, and sometimes we have that inside advantage where they show us what the other IT guys propose, we sometimes are even higher. And I'm fine with that. And we tell them why. This is how we're gonna handle the project. We're gonna be on the spot. We're going to document it. When it's all done, it's going to work. We're gonna guarantee our work. And you really build that confidence in them. And that's so key to sales is really having confidence in your product, confidence in what you can do. And bottom line is you have to deliver. You don't want to be just that nice guy that some of the other, like I was talking about earlier, where they really like him, but he doesn't respond real well on phone calls and he gets around to it then. So I'm just trying to give you this overall sales. Maybe I'll do some more updated videos based on the comments or feedback I get. But sales is not just about finding that right keyword. Now retail sales, more so. I do get a lot of retail clients off of Google AdWords and maybe I'll do a separate video on that. And I am gonna do some videos on Facebook targeting and things like that. But those are more specific to retail because the retail customers, the mass consumers, they shop a lot differently than businesses looking to hire an IT services company. Because you're building a relationship when it's then. These companies, we've had clients that we've had since 2003 that we still have today. We've got, we call them, because the way our system increments their numbers up, you know, they're the lower digit numbers, we just know they've been around for a long time. And some of them are still break fixed, but you look at the numbers what they've spent with us and it's pretty amazing. They've really, over time, spent a lot of money with us. They're still break fixed. We have a great client relationship and we've watched some of them grow to be really big customers. And maybe at some point we sell them on managed services. Some of them we have sold on managed services that we've had for years. But we've built this trust over time and it makes it easier to convert them. So when we offered a managed services project, once one of our clients got bigger and it was something we know that was, they could afford in their budget and would be a really good benefit to them, then we proposed it. And it was an easy walk in, walk out 20 minute sale because they were like, you know, you've done so great for us over the years, you've answered the phone, you've built that confidence and then you can sell them up on other services. And I'm not saying I sold them up on services in a way that was bad. They didn't have proper antivirus. They had all these little things. What we did was did a comparison. Look, this is what you spent last year and we always asked the question to them, what does it cost you to be disrupted? What did it cost you to have so-and-so's computer down for that day when they had a virus? We fixed it fast, but it was still down for a day. What if that wouldn't have been down for a day? How much productivity time would your accountant not have lost? So there's ways you can, you know, provide better services for them as they can afford it, but you have to build that trust first. If they don't have trust in you, you walk in the door and throw a big proposal and they don't know you, you know, it's gonna be a lot harder of a sale. So thank you for listening to me. If you've made it to the end of the video, if you like the content here, like and subscribe and I'll keep coming up with more videos and stuff like that. Thank you.