LISTEN to the Mindwhirl Marketing Podcast Ep 41 – MSPs Don’t Buy Into the Sales and Marketing Hype
WATCH The Mindwhirl Marketing Podcast Ep 41 – MSPs Don’t Buy Into the Sales and Marketing Hype
Podcast Transcript
Shelly Miller 00:07
Welcome to the Mindwhirl Marketing Podcast, your source for B2B business building information where we talk sales and marketing, and give managed service providers and IT service companies, the insider secrets you need to know to grow your business. We want to help you attract leads and sales and show you how to align sales and marketing. So you get more sales faster with less cost. I’m Shelly and he’s Mike. But are we talking about today, Mike?
Mike Miller 00:30
Today, we’re asking you guys to not buy into the hype. Don’t believe the hype?
Shelly Miller 00:36
Please don’t buy into the hype.
Mike Miller 00:37
I’m gonna get a T shirt that says that. All right. Don’t buy into the hype. Right? We’re committed to that. Yes. And then what are we saying? Right? So basically, marketers need to hype everything in order to get attention. That’s just the name of the game. But as a business owner, you should realize that it may not it may there may be a portion of it. That’s just tight. Yes. You know, yep. empty promises. Yeah. Because the job requires a little bit of hype. So like, with business continuity and disaster recovery, you have to say that hackers are out there looking for businesses to place ransomware on their network so that they can hold you for ransom? Yes, you have to say that. Right? That’s a thing. And if you’re not protected, your business could go under? Good. But you don’t want to take it to ridiculous levels.
Shelly Miller 01:41
You need to hype it in the sense that it’s accurate. So what’s happening, you can get ransomware you can write, but as a business owner, you know, the line where you wouldn’t go past to try to sell this. Right. So, marketers msps all businesses are basically the same in that you need to hype your business, but with real problems and real solutions.
Mike Miller 02:09
Yes, exactly. And like data has a really strong solution for business continuity and disaster recovery. But if you don’t have data, and you’re selling some, subpar, you know, we do backup, but we leave it on site. You know, you can’t sell it like it’s data. Right, right. I mean, if you do, then you’re hyping you’re lying.
Shelly Miller 02:33
Which brings us to the topic of this week’s podcast, which is what marketers are doing.
Mike Miller 02:41
In the MSP space
Shelly Miller 02:43
Yes to MSPs. I’m glad we got to talk to so many people in the last couple of months. Because we’ve learned so much about what these people are promising. MSPs and the timeframes have gone by and we know, they also haven’t, delivered on these empty promises. Yes, this is the hype. We don’t want you to buy into.
Mike Miller 03:06
exactly we’ve we’ve heard from many msps the basic lies that marketers have told them, that’s why they come to us, they’re like, you know, how can you help me? What can you do? What can you offer?
Shelly Miller 03:20
And I want to back up for a minute and say, marketers, that my I have an issue with that, too. That’s a it’s a that’s a loose term that they’re using. So to me, a fiver person who says that they are for example, this was one of the stories that we heard, yeah. A fiber person who says they’re the MSP lead getter. Basically, they are, they’re the pro at getting leads for msps. On fiber, they’re cheap. You know, they’re web marketer. And well, this is how they advertise. Right? So first of all, they’re not a marketer. Second of all, it wasn’t cheap. No, and it was really wasn’t cheap, because there was no results.
Mike Miller 04:04
Yeah, if you want to. Okay, so basically, we spoke with an MSP, who said that he hired a guy on Fiverr, who advertises himself as an lead generator for msps. And he promised that while he was going to prospect 800, leads and for 14 $100, right, and so his whole plan was he was gonna send an email, and then he was gonna follow up with a call. The email, we saw the email, the subject line was question. Yep, that’s, I think is ridiculous. You know, well, and not even your company and our company, not even an idea for you, or are you open to this? Nothing like that. Just question. Right. So that email got a 12% open rate. And just as so after the MSP didn’t get any results, he tried sending an email to these 800
Shelly Miller 05:07
MSP did
Mike Miller 05:08
yeah, the MSP himself wrote an email and sent it to his to this list of 100. prospects and or leads and got a 26% open rate
Shelly Miller 05:19
And higher than the so called best MSP marketing guy on Fiverr for MSPs.
Mike Miller 05:23
Exactly. And so for 14 $100, then the guy called the 800, well supposedly called the 800 people, and he got one lead one meeting set. And when the MSP, you know, showed up on the zoom call, the guy never never showed the appointment never came, right. So he called this prospect, and the prospect didn’t know what he was talking about.
Shelly Miller 05:50
Completely unfortunate, right? So this is not only hype, it’s a sham. And while you know, we understand that the dollar amounts that need to be spent on your business, to market it, and to, you know, to perform sales and operations and take care of your business and grow, yes, the money that’s being wasted. I mean, it’s like these, these people know that, no one’s going to try to go get that money back. Again, person doesn’t know that person that they’ve already told us aren’t gonna try to get the money back the next person in the next example, same thing. Yeah, she’s
Mike Miller 06:24
not gonna try to get the money back. Well, there were actually three that told us about this person.
Shelly Miller 06:28
Well, this person, but I’m talking about the next person that we’re headed to next, which is even more money. And, you know, they’re not insisting that that guy, give him their money back either.
Mike Miller 06:40
So right. So that person promised 75 leads in 90 days. And they were gonna do cold outbound, right, including cold emails and outbound sales calls. And they promised 75 leads in 90 days. And they got zero. I was three, right. And two of them weren’t,
Shelly Miller 07:06
didn’t meet the criteria. Basically got one lead one lead, and 90 days turn out two, or three to $4,000 a month. Yeah, yeah. So again, nothing happened. This person’s list didn’t grow. They didn’t, they didn’t gain any sales, they didn’t gain a lead, they just basically dropped off. $12,000. Right. They just walked away.
Mike Miller 07:35
So that’s, that’s the thing is, is? You know, it sounds great. When you’re thinking, wow, you know, what can I do with 75? leads, and it’s only going to cost me you know, three to $4,000 a month. And I could really use the business because I mean, shoot I could get even if I only got 150 leads, right? You know, yeah, or I mean, no 75 total, even if I only got 50 leads, I could at least close 10% right, so I’d get five sales, and with five sales, you know, if my average sales, yeah, is 2500, then it would pay for itself. And, and I would make money, and then there would be the recurring and all these, you know, fantasies, go through your head about you know, and then I can take the family on vacation, and then we could, you know, put a down payment on the house, whatever, right. But the thing is, is that this person can’t deliver, hasn’t delivered for anyone has no evidence that they’ve delivered and didn’t deliver. And, and there, they are calling different msps
Shelly Miller 08:41
They are calling almost all MSPs. So you know, really be aware that you know, they are you’re on their radar, and they are making promises that are unbelievable. And another way for you to tell that, you know, if you what they’re claiming they can do for you is outrageous. One way to know is if you have a salesperson, and he’s not been able to do that with your leads. Yeah. And you know, that’s one way to tell that, you know, these promises are really high being unbelievable and exaggerated. But you know, also, as a business owner, look at the sales cycle, again, what you just mentioned, Mike about, you know, you want to buy in to the fantasy who doesn’t, you know, I would love to just be able to just, you know, like turn on the water faucet, you know, turn on leads, like the waterfalls, and all of a sudden I have 50 and all I had to do is pay, you know, three or $400 or $1,000 and I just have all these new clients. Exactly. That’s great. But truly, do you. Have you ever met anyone that happened to ask yourself that too, because the answer is no. The people that are successful, successful msps continually market their business, non stop. And they have a plan and a process in place and they spend those dollars every month on sales and more marketing efforts. So as you and I have mentioned in past, it’s like, it really is like a steam train.
Mike Miller 10:05
It’s a long term play.
Shelly Miller 10:06
It’s a long term play. But the play is the way for you to grow your business to the point where you can sell it, or sail around the world in your boat if you want and have somebody else run it. That’s how you do it. It’s not hiring a Fiverr guy for $1400. And hope he does something.
Mike Miller 10:24
Yeah, like ad hoc, one shot marketing. Yeah, I mean, this is what I say. Like, this is what I mean, when I say stay away from ad hoc, one shot marketing, right? You know, just in the spur of the moment, you think, Hey, you know what I should do? I should spend $1400 on this guy on Fiverr. He said, he would call 800 people for me, let’s see what happens. If you’ve got $1400 to just throw down the toilet? That’s fine. You know, but most don’t and if you want to be serious about your business and actually grow it, I suggest that you don’t do that.
Shelly Miller 11:00
Well, it’s not the way that you grow your business, you get small little things, maybe small, little incremental, like maybe you get two or three leads? Yeah, well, the chances of those two or three leads actually closing are low. From those, you know I’ll spend $1400 on Fivver and or if that’s the only thing that you’re going to do. That’s not going to help you either. It’s, I think that you don’t need to buy into the hype, you just need to have a system in place that you that you run consists consistently Yeah, you know, it’s like buying a gym membership and thinking that the gym membership is going to make you eat right and look good exercise but it doesn’t, exactly. So you have to you got to buy the membership. But you also have to implement all the strategies to make yourself fit. And it’s, you know, if you’re a fit person or you play golf, you know, you know, the more you do it, the better you are. So the same thing with marketing and the only other. Yeah, go ahead.
Mike Miller 12:01
Well, you mentioned the steam train. And I got another analogy. There’s the a 380 plane, you know, it’s the biggest plane commercial airliner in the world, the double decker. So it can climb to 60,000 feet, it can go, you know, from I don’t know if this is true, but it can definitely go from New York to Paris, nonstop, right? It has that range, it can achieve amazing things. But it still has to get out on the runway and build up speed. Right, it has to go a mile down the runway, building up speed before it can actually take off. And that’s what marketing is to, you have to you have to build that consistency, you have to build that speed up so that you can reach those heights that you want to go to. And it’s while it seems like it would be really alluring, and Luke and, you know, wonderful to have an instant on an insert a profit faucet that you could just turn on. And all of a sudden money pours out. It just doesn’t. It doesn’t pan out in the real world. And that’s not how it happens.
Shelly Miller 13:17
It doesn’t happen that way at all. Nope, you have to have consistency in your marketing, and you have to put an effort towards it every month. Right? It has to be a real business thing that you do like accounting and operations and your insurance, sales marketing, right? It’s not this, there’s this guy who says he’ll do this. Here’s this chick who says she’ll do that, right? And now you know, and I can just everything will change for me. It just doesn’t happen that way. So we just don’t want you to buy into the hype
Mike Miller 13:45
right now. You need a strategy. And so you develop a plan, and then you work your plan. And that’s how, you know, sales and marketing and most things in life work.
Shelly Miller 13:59
Exactly. Well said.
Mike Miller 14:00
Yeah, well, thanks. And so basically, as Shelly said, We don’t want you to buy into the hype. There’s so many there’s we’ve just come across so many people that are running these what feels like scams to us. And, you know, we don’t want to do that. We want you to know specifically what it takes in order to grow your business through marketing and sales. And it takes a lot of hard work and dedication. It takes a plan and a strategy. So what are our results? Where are our results? We have a client and an MSP client. And over the last three months, we’ve there’s been four leads that have come in three of those leads were us, right, but everything is starting to take off. So that I believe because sales people you know, I’ve been in sales for a long time. Like, over 20 years, it’s really like 30. But I didn’t want to say that. And every salesperson always says it takes six months to build a territory. Every marketer I’ve ever spoken with says, it takes six months to get the marketing working
Shelly Miller 15:15
And let’s clarify we’re talking real experienced marketers, not a person claiming to give you leads and says they are a marketer, a real marketer who knows these numbers, it is 6 to 12 months, a person who is not a marketer, who just is hyping, his services to make a buck. Yeah, They will tell you things that are unbelievable. That’s how they’re getting you. That’s how they’re getting you because they are pulling the wool over on your eyes, because they know it’s what you want to hear. You don’t want to hear the truth, 6 to 12 months, which will actually transform your business. Because it will be it will be ongoing. They tell you what they know you want to hear, which is in three months, I can get you 75 leads, and in 90 days, you know, so that’s why you’re buying it. Don’t buy it.
Mike Miller 16:00
Right, exactly. You know, Michelangelo didn’t paint the Sistine Chapel Chapel by throwing paint at the ceiling. You know, he had a plan. He mapped it out, he worked at every day, you know, you can’t just throw stuff against the wall. That’s trying to not say that word. You can’t just throw stuff against the wall and expect things to happen. So don’t do that. Don’t just hire a guy because it sounds good. You know, like, vet it, make sure it’s part of your strategy. Ensure that you have a proper marketing budget that’s going to allow you to continue for six to 12 months without results. Because if you can do that, in six to 12 months, your business is going to take off
Shelly Miller 16:46
And all of the marketing pays for itself and you will have new clients Your business will be growing.
Mike Miller 16:54
You will recoup the money that you invested. But you need that runway. You need that time to get off the ground.
Shelly Miller 17:03
Perfect. Perfect, well said. Awesome. We’ll see you next Thursday. Thanks again, for listening to the Mindwhirl Marketing Podcast. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google podcast, Stitcher, Deezer or Spotify. Plus, check out my where on YouTube and subscribe. You’ll find a lot more marketing tips, insights and resources that will help you get your sales and marketing working together and moving in the same direction.
