LISTEN to the Mindwhirl Marketing Podcast Ep 48 – The Cost of Doing Business
WATCH The Mindwhirl Marketing Podcast Ep 48 – The Cost of Doing Business
Podcast Transcript
Shelly Miller 00:05
Welcome to the Mindwhirl Marketing podcast and our new format for 2022
Mike Miller 00:10
New year new format.
Shelly Miller 00:13
Love to have new
Mike Miller 00:14
Yes. I love New. Oh, me too. New cars, new houses
Shelly Miller 00:21
new employees new new everything new clients,
Mike Miller 00:24
right love it do is this new? It’s fresh. It’s wonderful. All right.
Shelly Miller 00:30
What is it this is the new black? What is that? Oh, no blue. This is the new white dude.
Mike Miller 00:35
I don’t know. Yeah, exactly. I just know that 50 is the new 30
Shelly Miller 00:40
There you go. All right. I like that. That’s new.
Mike Miller 00:42
Okay. Yeah,
Shelly Miller 00:43
we’ll run with that as well.
Mike Miller 00:45
Okay, awesome. I like that. So,
Shelly Miller 00:48
I’ve been excited about this new format.
Shelly Miller 00:50
I think it’ll work better with our personalities and be more fun.
Mike Miller 00:50
Me too.
Mike Miller 00:54
Yeah. Hopefully I don’t offend anyone. Because I’ve been known to.
Shelly Miller 01:01
Oh, shoot.
Mike Miller 01:02
So anyway,
Shelly Miller 01:03
Just makes it fun. Now. They have something to look forward to. Ooh, when’s Mike going to offend?
Mike Miller 01:07
Yeah. Every week. We’ll say something every week. That just shocks YOU. Bam. Shocks you
Shelly Miller 01:18
right between the eyes.
Mike Miller 01:19
Yeah. Right. Between the,
Shelly Miller 01:22
Again, more stuff to look forward to.
Mike Miller 01:24
Yeah, exactly. So hey, welcome in no matter where you are, right, driving in your car, going to work, going home after work. On the boat on the lake on a Saturday? Yes, no matter where you are. Welcome to the Mindwhirl Marketing Podcast, where we help MSPs learn how to sell and market their services, their products and services, because it’s tough.
Shelly Miller 01:51
It is tough.
Mike Miller 01:51
It’s super tough.
Shelly Miller 01:53
It’s tough to sell. It’s tough to market. It’s tough to know what will work, what won’t work, what apps to use, what not to use, who to hire, who not to hire
Mike Miller 02:01
exactly exactly what to do. If you’re doing it right. If you’re doing it wrong, how much you should do it. And if you should not even do it, all of that and more. That’s what we’re going to discuss and see we think that you guys need a community. Right? Not not a community like a we have a Facebook page. And you can ask us questions. Now we mean, like we actually want to interact with you, we’ll bring you on the show. If you want, we can do live. We’re doing as a matter of fact, part of the things that we have planned for this year, is we’re going to do the 411 on Friday. Right? So at 411. On Fridays, we’re going to start live streaming. And we’re going to be answering your questions, maybe bringing you on the show. And, you know, seeing what trouble we can get up to.
Shelly Miller 02:53
I think it’ll be fun. We’d been rolling a whole bunch of ideas around like, you know, they can submit a question or one of their if they submit a question, and we get to have it on the air. We will enter everybody who asked the question into a contest, pick one and let you send us a sales letter or anything you want us to review.
Mike Miller 03:13
Yeah, exactly.
Shelly Miller 03:14
So we’re hoping to get that started next month.
Mike Miller 03:18
Yes, No, exactly. And we want to, you know, build up to it. But if you’ve got any questions, you want us to review what you’ve got going on, give you some tips and pointers, we’re definitely willing to do that for free. Anything for the MSP community, we want you guys to succeed. And we like I said, we know how hard it is because we’ve been in the trenches. So we know exactly how hard it is. And and I mean, like if when I compare all of the other industries that we’ve been in all the under other verticals that we’ve been in, and marketed to, and the success that we’ve had in those, and you look at just how hard it is to deploy … have I said hard enough? Yeah, I’m wondering if I’ve said hard too many times,
Shelly Miller 04:12
maybe just a little, yeah, turn it down just a bit. But I know they know, the difficulties
Mike Miller 04:21
So basically, you know, you really have to hustle. And you, you have to realize what you’re selling. And you have to find the ways to sell it, that resonate with your industry, the industry, the targets are going out.
Shelly Miller 04:36
You do and managed service providers have … their services have evolved. So while we’ve been in marketing since 1999, we’ve been helping MSPs for the last year. While you know, there’s always similarities in marketing MSPs kind of have some things that are unique.
Mike Miller 04:54
Yes
Shelly Miller 04:54
because their services evolve so much. So yeah. Another reason why we think you need to have a community.
Mike Miller 05:02
Yeah. Because let’s be honest, who else are you going to talk to? You know, nobody understands. You know, like, everybody, all your friends are probably like, so how’s that business doing of yours? You’re like, well, it’s tough. They’re like, Yeah, okay, well, whatever. You know, nobody really understands what you have to go through in order to make this happen. Right. It’s not like an easy thing. It’s probably one of the most difficult businesses to start. And, and that’s really what I want to talk about later. But we’ll get into that in a future segment.
Shelly Miller 05:40
But that’s what we’re thinking about with our new format. So we want to build a community, a palce for you to get your questions answered.
Mike Miller 05:47
Ask questions, ask us question like you belong, to realize that you have a resource that you can turn to, right, who isn’t going to try to get you to spend $17,000 A month or even, you know, any money. It’s just, let’s all like, join together and bounce ideas off of each other and create a mastermind. And we’ll do it virtually through the power of the internet.
Shelly Miller 06:17
Oh, Vistage.
Mike Miller 06:19
Yeah, a Vistage mastermind peer advisory group.
Shelly Miller 06:23
There you go.
Mike Miller 06:24
Yes. I love
Shelly Miller 06:25
Awesome. Awesome.
Mike Miller 06:26
Yeah. Right. So that’s what we’ve got going this year. And I think the Friday 411 are going to be fun.
Shelly Miller 06:34
Oh, I think so too. will have a great time. You can even bring your favorite drink. Maybe we will, too. Yeah. Depends on if we have to drive somewhere after the shooting. But anyway, yeah, it’ll be a great time. We’ll have a good time together.
Mike Miller 06:46
But after I had a pina colada in Hawaii, I just can’t have another. Like, everything else pales in comparison, you know?
Shelly Miller 06:53
Yes.
Mike Miller 06:54
Like, Hey, would you like the original?
Shelly Miller 06:57
Let’s just have a trip to Hawaii, you know?
Mike Miller 06:59
Yeah, exactly. Okay, yeah.
Shelly Miller 07:01
But speaking of things, you know, wanting the community wanting to help you guys out. We also want to make sure that, you know, if you haven’t already visited our website, that we do have a bunch of downloadable resources.
Shelly Miller 07:14
you can check out that that will help you in your business and to set up processes because we believe that that’s really what we’re all looking for is, is processes. That’s how your business gets acquired. That’s how you can sell it. Because you have processes that go through each … basically each job in your business, you can run the process, and it’s done. So when you have when your company is set up in processes, then you you can get things done quicker and easier. You can hire staff better. You knowwhat you need what you don’t need. Yeah, exactly. So that’s what we a lot of our resources have to do with, processes. and a process map to help you see what your process should be.
Mike Miller 07:14
Yes, exactly
Mike Miller 07:59
Yeah, starts from square one, you know, who am I going after, I need to know who my ideal client profile is. We got an ICP Worksheet for you. We got SEO Checklist, we have social media worksheet. Right. So we’ve got those for you. We have the Client Magnet System Guide and Client Magnet System Webinar, which explains, really, it explains how to develop relationships, how to build your business through sales and marketing, and by aligning Sales and Marketing for maximum effectiveness, because if you don’t have your game, running, right, right, if you’re not if you’re not working it right, then you’re wasting time and money. That’s the thing, I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people tell me, we come to you because you’re everywhere. You know, and that’s how we may help our clients. They’re everywhere. That’s what we want, you know, when you’re thinking about because let’s face it. Okay, here it is.
So businesses go through phases, right? There’s the startup phase, there’s the growth phase, there’s the topping off and the leveling off. And then there’s decline. Well, we’re in that rounding off that topping and leveling off, right? Where it’s just just business as usual. And in the startup and growth phase, businesses didn’t have MSPs. Right? Right. They needed someone who knew technology to help them navigate the waters so that their business could run with more efficiency and more productivity and utilize technology to get those benefits that that you can get right. But they’ve already all kind of converted unless they’re a brand new company or have venture capital money, which means what we should be doing is chasing ambulances. We should all be knocking on venture capitalists doors going, Hey, we’re technology. Yeah, actually go steal that. I mean, don’t don’t steal that I’m gonna do it. Um, you know, we’re technology companies. And if you have companies that are starting up, we can help them. But otherwise you’re you’re trying to change. So like, otherwise a company that you’re going after a target, they probably already have a solution,
Shelly Miller 09:21
right.
Mike Miller 10:35
Or solution provider. So you have to, something has to happen in order for them to change. And you’ve got to be there.
Shelly Miller 10:45
You’ve got to be there when whatever, whatever changes, they’re just not getting paid attention to they can’t get in touch with their current provider, they don’t feel like their provider is taking care of them enough making sure that they’re secure. Yeah, I mean, there’s, there’s hundreds of reasons.
Mike Miller 11:00
Exactly. And if your face is there, yep. Yeah, then they’re gonna they’re gonna look at you, especially if they’ve been hearing from you for the last year. I mean, that’s how it works.
Shelly Miller 11:11
It is. like, look, you know, think about what you’ve have, like, for example, they’re so they’re annoyed. They look down. Oh, yeah. I just got a postcard from this company. I think they said they were IT services, right? Let’s take a look at them.
Mike Miller 11:22
Right, exactly. So that’s, that’s what you have to realize that has to happen. And anyway, went off on a tangent, Shelly.
Shelly Miller 11:36
Oh, I allowed you. Yeah, I’m looking at her outline. But anyway, that’s okay. Because it goes with, so you have to have processes and you have to know who your ICP is. You need to keep your your marketing and your sales on lock so that you can continually be in front of your prospects, because you don’t know when they’re going to be looking. You don’t know when that straw will break the camel’s back. And they know I’m tired of having these people I need someone else.
Mike Miller 12:02
Yes, exactly. Exactly. To help you with that. But you you know, exactly. We are. And but if you look at the client satisfaction rating of your competitor, who’s already in, you know, seated in a target, and they’re like 74% satisfaction rating, you know that you need to be hitting those people.
Shelly Miller 12:25
Yes, definitely. Great tip. There
Mike Miller 12:26
you go. Yeah. So, anyway, awesome. So go to mind world.com, our resources section, check out all those guides and stuff ready. And waiting for you to take advantage of you know, it’s an it’s an opportunity we spent time and
Shelly Miller 12:44
our 20 plus years experience. Yeah, there you say more because you know, exactly. Simple maps 1999 to now, but anyway, yeah, you can download any of those guides or like Mike said, Ask us questions. Right. Well, which brings me to the topic of our next segment, which is answer questions. But we have more of a topic this week, don’t we? Yes. Instead of just one general question, the topic in question is around sales letters, how much does it cost to mail them which like, well,
Mike Miller 13:13
well, I mean, this is what my mom calls a come to Jesus meeting. Right? Yes, we’re gonna come to Jesus, we’re going to understand what’s going on. Because if you’re so you’re starting an MSP. Right? Okay. So 80% of MSPs are under a million dollars a year in revenue. Other 20% are over a million dollars. And as Robin Robins said, herself, there’s a there’s a valley of death? From a million to 5 million?
Shelly Miller 13:53
Yes.
Mike Miller 13:53
Yeah. 3.5 is the bottom is the trough. She said. So if you look at that, and you go, okay, so it’s a struggle after a million, it’s easiest. To get to a million, it’s actually easier to get to a million than it is to get to 5 million as an MSP
Shelly Miller 14:11
it is
Mike Miller 14:12
So so all these people 80% are gone. I can’t even I’m struggling to get to a million. Right. So then we have to go okay. What is the reason for this? Right, what is what’s going on? And while I don’t want to talk about what’s going on, or what I think is going on, I really think that we need to
Shelly Miller 14:35
Why don’t you want to talk about it?
Mike Miller 14:36
Well, because I feel like there’s a lot of entrepreneurs. There’s a lot of people who think it’s a great idea to start my own MSP. You know, I’ll start my own MSP and maybe this is me, okay, so maybe this is where I go. Think about it, because if you if you don’t think about it, honestly, then you’re doomed … basically this guy, Michael Breen, he’s a really great trainer. Right? Business trainer. Yeah. And he said, if you’ve been trying to do something for 15 years, maybe you should just realize, yeah, and you haven’t accomplished it or even made moves towards it, but you haven’t actually gone for it. Maybe you should realize you’re just fooling yourself, and you should stop all that foolishness.
Shelly Miller 15:27
Stop trying to do it, because you haven’t done it in 15 years. Seems like you really don’t want to do it.
Mike Miller 15:32
Right.
Shelly Miller 15:33
So in corrolation to what you just said, the zero to 1 million is starting up. So if you’ve been doing this for 20 years, 18 years, 12 years, and you still haven’t gotten past the 1 million mark, is that what you’re saying?
Mike Miller 15:49
What I’m saying is if you’re an IT person, and you want to start an MSP, and you’re listening to all of the money that could be made, and you’ve got, you know, like, dollar signs in your eye about all the money that could be made, and how easy it is to make money in this industry, because you can just open a business, and you can be an MSP, and you could work for all these companies, you could be your own boss, and, you know, I think that you’re
Shelly Miller 16:20
You keep wishing and dreaming for that. But you don’t really take any actions towards it.
Mike Miller 16:24
And every now and again, you make some calls. And every now and again, you do a couple things, but you don’t really, you know, and you bought a logo, and you had a guy on Fiverr, make a website or you even bought a website, right? designed it, you’ve you’ve got some things, but you don’t have a business. I think you should look at yourself and go, am I gonna make this a business and do this? Or am I not?
Shelly Miller 16:49
Yeah. And should I put my effort into something else that I’m actually going to go after?
Mike Miller 16:53
Right? Exactly.
Shelly Miller 16:54
Not just sit here and want and dream for?
Mike Miller 16:57
Exactly
Shelly Miller 16:57
Without taking actions to do it?
Mike Miller 16:59
Yeah. Because if you’re, if you’re a tech, what, there’s a lot of different levels of IT, people. But every level makes decent money. Yes. So there’s nothing wrong with that? No, there isn’t at all, you know, plus, you can bang your head against the wall for a long time and not achieve results.
Shelly Miller 17:22
Well, we’re all different, different humans. And some of us don’t, you know, want to work for ourselves. Some of us don’t want to work for anybody else. We have different personalities.
Mike Miller 17:31
Yeah,
Shelly Miller 17:32
None is better than the other. It’s just basically what the to me, the best thing is, is to recognize who you are, so that you can go after the things that make you the best you are. As opposed to like the example you just gave, I need to start my own MSP, but it’s just a bunch of wanting and spending money on the this person’s next class that promises to get you there. But now it’s we’re going on a year, we’re going on four years, we’re going on five years, while you’re still wanting and dreaming to do it. But you haven’t You should back up and evaluate. Is that really what you want? Because it doesn’t seem like it? So you can focus on what you’re really good at and go after that.
Mike Miller 18:11
Right. Exactly. Absolutely.
Shelly Miller 18:15
Makes sense.
Mike Miller 18:15
Right? So So now that you know, okay, I’m going after it. Now let’s look at let’s just look at the basics of what it’s going to take.
Shelly Miller 18:27
We’re gonna go off on a tangent, we were talking about sales letters.
Mike Miller 18:30
Now this is it, this is awesome sales letter, right. So let me share the screen real fast. There it is. So this is Vistaprint. Right? And as printers go, Vistaprint is as cheap as you can get. It is cheap as you can it is definitely and the only way to do a sales letter. So why sales letter? Why am I talking sales letter because sales letters are what? Robin Robins says you should do Godfather letter, you know, push the Godfather letter and then follow up with two calls two or three calls.
Shelly Miller 19:06
Well, and not only in this industry, most industries, you know, they stopped doing direct mail because well, we have the web now. The fact of the matter is is direct mail does still work in multiple industries. So they should at any given time, you should always have some mail campaign direct mail campaign anyway. Absolutely. So and we do know that it works in the managed service provider. Industry.
Mike Miller 19:28
Yes. Oh, yeah. It works in every industry, right? If it’s not working for you, it’s because of because you sent one, or like the message is important. Don’t get me wrong. The message is extremely important. And you have to have an offer, which we’ll get into later. But not today. But I mean, we’ll get into it eventually. But if you have a good message and a good offer, it can make up for a lot.
Shelly Miller 19:54
It can
Mike Miller 19:55
but it’s not going to make up for you know, there’s a reason it’s called Reach, depth and frequency.
Shelly Miller 20:01
There you go. It’s not send 50 and then don’t do it again for months and months.
Mike Miller 20:05
Exactly. I’ll send one like that, you know, where we get postcards. Like we were getting postcards from a VoIP provider. They’ve sent six in the last one a week for the last six weeks.
Shelly Miller 20:22
And it was the third one where I realized it was a VoIP company,
Mike Miller 20:26
Bam, bam, didn’t even know what this was for three weeks.
Shelly Miller 20:30
And after the third one, it caught my eye enough to look down and read it. So in the stack of mail that we all get,
Mike Miller 20:35
yeah, so you can go well, gosh, there. And you could say that their marketing isn’t very good if we didn’t realize it was VoIP company until a third time. But you could also say that humans don’t have that kind of attention. You know what I mean? You get mail and you’re like, nope, nope, yes. Nope. Yes. So, so anyway, we’re on Vistaprint. Let’s look at this. So if I have 1000, okay, here we go. 1000 is 29 cents each, that’s $286.50. But that’s only one side. Right? So you don’t have to pay you don’t have to double that price. But you have to add like, like eight cents for the second side. Right? And so that’s $2,850. Or let’s say it’s $300 1000. So this, the funny thing about this is this, this looks like really like nothing. But I want you to think about that. 1000 where that 1000 come from? That’s a list of 1000 that you have to have. You can’t mail nobody, you got to have a list.
Shelly Miller 21:42
Yes. Which is a topic for a huge topic for another conversation, you have to have a list and not the list that you pulled and went, Oh, I got this on
Mike Miller 21:55
Data Axle – Info USA
Shelly Miller 22:00
We’ve been sent lists of many, many times, I will get somebody to tell us that. Yes, I have a list. I pulled it. It’s got 5000 people on it. Yeah. And we look and we look at the list that doesn’t have 5000 lines and Excel, but that’s not leads. So they’re the Econolodge Home Depot, and there’s at 92,000 of them. Yeah, so your your 5000 list is really like 300 quality industry, your ICP and industries you want after now someone has to spend weeks going over all of those 5000 to get 300
Mike Miller 22:38
Yeah, exactly. You need to go to manufacturers. Awesome. You know, you’re gonna get every restaurant every micro brewery, their manufacturing,
Shelly Miller 22:49
there you go. Heck, we even found MSPs who list themselves as manufacturers. So think of that. Yeah. So keep in your mind for another another podcast, you got to have a list.
Mike Miller 23:03
Yeah, you gotta have a list. So we’d let’s say you have 1000 Right, so we’re gonna send 1000 And it’s gonna cost $286 to print. Oh, but we want to two sides. Let’s just round it down to $300. $300 to print. So now I want to send each of these. And they’re what is it? 57 cents each? 58 each, for stamps times 1000. That’s I didn’t do the decimal. That is $580. So plus 300. We’re at $880. And we haven’t done now you know what happened? Yeah, exactly. We don’t have word $170. We don’t have envelopes. We haven’t stuff. We don’t have labels. We haven’t folded these and stuffed Amenda envelopes, right? Think of the work that’s required to do 1000. If you could do 20 An hour of you know, serious 20 an hour. That’s how many you’re going to do. At least for the first hour or so.
Shelly Miller 24:15
I think he’s gonna do a little more, but it’s gonna be a little anyway. If you you know, a teenager handy. Yeah, he wants to make some money. You know, they don’t they’re not $5 an hour. They they’re, they’re smarter than that. They want more money than that. It’s gonna take them a while. If to do 1000 It is going to take a while.
Mike Miller 24:33
Yeah, at least 10 hours. I would think, you know,
Shelly Miller 24:38
maybe a little less, but still you add this money and now you realize that this one spent $1,000 Yeah, this one campaign this one letter that you wanted to send out? Yeah, to basically a list size, like a 100o, is really almost minimum to get a return. Yeah. You know,
Mike Miller 24:55
there’s you’re looking for 1% Yeah, one to 2%. So if you got 1000, you get 1010 to 20. So
Shelly Miller 25:03
you need to at least send 1000? And are you just gonna send that one and not do anything else? Of course you wouldn’t, because then you just be wasting , wasting the money for that.
Mike Miller 25:11
As a matter of fact, what you’re going to find is the first time you send it. So let’s say we just send the same sales letter, the first time we send it, we’re going to get 0%, we might get 0.4, something like that. The second time you send it, you can you should expect the 1%.
Shelly Miller 25:31
Yeah, I agree.
Mike Miller 25:32
The third time you send it, it’s going to go up, you could get to like 2%. Every time you send it, it’s going to go up because people become more familiar with it.
Shelly Miller 25:44
It’s true
Mike Miller 25:45
Which is the strategy behind Robin Robins. Godfather letter, you send it and then in six months, you send it again. Right. And so you can say, Well, what I could do is I could send 20, right? Because I can call 20 This week, right? So it’s not going to cost me $1,000 all at once. The problem is that and you can’t do that. It’s just there’s not enough momentum there.
Shelly Miller 26:18
Right, right. And so we’re talking if you send out a letter, then you’re going to try to call them twice if you just use that sequence.
Mike Miller 26:25
Yes. Yeah, that’s your sequence. That’s your sales sequence, you send a letter, and then you call them twice. So you send the letter, wait seven days, then call day 10. And then called day 14, something like that. Right. So it takes you two weeks to go through those people. And you can stagger it. I’m not saying you can’t stagger it. But you need momentum, you need to keep that up. Because that first time you’re gonna get like 0.4%. And so you got to do it a second time.
Shelly Miller 27:01
You do? Yes. You know, you have to keep going. You have to keep continually be in front of your ICP.
Mike Miller 27:07
Yes, exactly.
Shelly Miller 27:08
So you need to be in front of them.
Mike Miller 27:09
Let’s think about okay, well, I want to start an MSP. You know, I want to be an MSP. I want to start my own business, be in business. So when you send with so you’re going to market to people, right? You have to, we’re not talking about the cost of the website, we’re not talking about the cost of pay per click. We’re not talking about writing articles, or all of the time that you could invest into content and social media. We’re saying that you have to send letters and call, and most people don’t want to call right. So Dan Kennedy invented the whole send a letter send a letter? Because then he could hit everybody on the block all at once, instead of having to call on everyone or go door to door to everybody. So send letters, but the thing is, is that you’ve got to be able to send enough letters to get their attention. And you’ve got to have a decent message. Because even in this Georgio letter C for the advanced people who know what I’m talking about, the GA letters had three letters. It was three, it’s a sequence of three and they roll off of each other.
Mike Miller 27:23
So if you don’t have money to do one,
Mike Miller 28:04
So you’re gonna spend $1,000 on one. Okay, and we’re talking GA letter sequences three, right? So no matter what you do, you’re going to spend a lot of money because you’re also going to have to call these people. Okay, so you’re going to do it all yourself? Well, you better be calling, you know, 20 a day, at least, or 50. More like 50. You know? Yes. So you’re calling 50 a day, which is going to take you four hours. I mean,
Shelly Miller 29:02
well, it will you know, there’s there’s people who call 150 a day, but they are they work for POS systems and they are under a quota. They have a dialer and they’re made to do it.
Mike Miller 29:12
I can do it but it takes a predictive dialer. And it takes a automatic voicemail drop,
Shelly Miller 29:20
And you doing it not brand new to it, you can’t jump in and go I’m gonna call 100 People today, it just doesn’t happen. Right? No start, you start around 20
Mike Miller 29:29
you got to have the list. You have to have the list. You got to know who you’re calling and what’s going on with them and have a little insight into their business and how you can help them. Yes. So I feel like that’s really the story. Okay, that’s what we wanted to talk about today. You got to get real, you got to get a little bit real and understand that shoot. You know, if I send this every month, if I send a letter every month, or a postcard even right now, I’m not talking about a little small postcard. I’m talking about you know the regular size postcard that you have to use a stamp on a letter, you know, a regular stamp, it’s 57 cents each. So, you know, and and here’s the one thing that we know that we’ve spent the last year banging our heads against the wall learning. You can’t go to market with a list of 200 people, you have to have 2000 that we’ve always only ever had 2000. And that’s where we’ve seen results. And MSPs have like, incredibly small lists.
Shelly Miller 30:36
The thing is, is, you know, and again, I don’t want to beat a dead horse, but they don’t believe they have a small list. They think they have a huge list. Right. But it’s not it’s not an actual list of ICPs that, you know that it’s a list of basically they went let me get all the the doctors around me. And it’s not necessarily … that doesn’t mean because you put that in that criteria. That’s what you got. Right. So because you pulled that doesn’t mean you have a list of 5000.
Mike Miller 31:05
Right. Well, so I just pulled a list. It was 3348. I think that number pops out. Right stands out, but it was definitely over 3000 people. I ended up with 199 qualified leads.
Shelly Miller 31:20
Yeah, it was it was more than that. Until you realize that there were some industries in that were included in that were that were obviously not that industry. Yeah. So you do what you dwindled it down to 3800 to come up with, you know, that had all of the contact information. The email address? Yeah. 199 is unbelievable.
Mike Miller 31:39
Yeah, it was point. It was half of 1%. was, you know, so you think Okay, in this list. 20% is junk,
Shelly Miller 31:48
Right that’s what you usually think but
Mike Miller 31:50
No this was 99.5% was junk. And this list came from up lead.
Shelly Miller 31:58
Yeah, you know, the better tools, the best tools that they tell you, you need to buy, you know, $100 $300 a month and and still, you’re getting trash.
Mike Miller 32:07
like zoom info, you know, you can’t get better than zoom info. It’s expensive. And you’re gonna you’re gonna get all the information you need. No, you’re not, you’re going to get a bunch of junk, you’re not going to find the targets that you want in there you get once you go through them all. And see this is this the other thing? Well, I don’t want to go on and on. But I’m just saying you’re gonna, what, what most people do is they get the list of 3000. And then they pay to send everybody a letter without looking at the list and qualifying it and vetting it and realizing 99.5% 99.8% is junk.
Shelly Miller 32:47
Yeah, it’s the truth. I say my rule of thumb to use a CRM or lead company like close, or any of those, just go to it or zoominfo. Just go to it, put your company name in it. Yeah. And just see what kind of information it provides you? Yeah. I bet you at least half of the companies that you try that out on you’re going to look at it and go, What, that’s not what my company does. How many employees it has the revenue, it has the computers, you know, just take a look. So in doing that, you’ll understand why you’re going to get a whole bunch of trash information when you pull a list. So yeah, we’ll leave it at that with the list.
Mike Miller 33:24
Yes Exactly. I think we’ve I think I’ll get that to a dead horse. And I’ve alienated the entire audience. Hey, come be a part of our community.
Shelly Miller 33:46
We were going to also include in our new format, you know, promotion or I mean, not promotions. But the products and services that work best right now that we’re using. Yeah. And so we’ll be sprinkling them in because like you, I think any industry no matter what you do, you find that you spend a lot of time now looking for the best app, the best software, the best tool, and and you spent like a whole weekend going, all I wanted was a CRM or an email automation tool. And you test them all out as best you can. And before you know it, you’ve literally spent all Friday night or Saturday or Sunday. So we’re going to share what we’re finding our clients are using and what’s working the best for them. You know, from a time standpoint, from a money standpoint, you know, through getting a return on that tool. So we’ll be sharing that as well.
Mike Miller 34:42
Yes, exactly. This is where we do the friends?
Shelly Miller 34:50
Yeah, our friends.
Mike Miller 34:51
All right. So Manuel has a bunch of friends in the industry because we’ve, we’ve reached out to people and realize that, you know, there’s some good people in the MSP industry, and we want to share who they are with you. And basically, these are the people that we believe are quality individuals, we’ve vetted them. And we know that they are exceptional at what they do. We’re not saying that they’re the only ones. We’re just saying, we like these people,
Shelly Miller 35:24
We like them. And we’ve looked at their products, and we’ve
Mike Miller 35:28
spoken with them on our podcasts. And, and there are pros, there are professionals. I don’t know, we haven’t figured out what we’re gonna call them.
Shelly Miller 35:38
We have been calling them friends. Yeah, we’ll leave it at that for now. But that’s who they are, again, kind of as a adjunct to the to giving you the best tools to use. These are some partners that can help you in your business, run it easier, quicker, maybe with less money more seamlessly have a better product to help you do what you do. Yes, we’ll be sharing that as well.
Mike Miller 35:59
Exactly. And they’re not paying us to say this. They’re just just friends. Alright, so Jennifer Bleem at MSP Sales Revolution, she shows you how to grow your business, and be an MSP learns cybersecurity tactics and how to sell it. That’s the big thing. You know how to sell it. And then OIT VoIP. If you if you’re looking for a VoIP provider, they have a really interesting product lineup and
Shelly Miller 36:39
have two ways for you to use it to you know, they’re white label it or they will, and most companies don’t do both. They won’t, you know, don’t just sell it to you and and white label it. Yeah. So it’s an interesting sell. It is if it’s a product that you’re wanting to add to your services,
Mike Miller 36:54
and make your business look even bigger than it is, which is what you should do, you know, businesses about arbitrage, you know, it’s it’s making a cut off of every transaction. That’s what you want. That’s how Amazon does it anyway, it’s the true Lifecycle Insights, Marnie Stockman is an amazing person. And they built Lifecycle Insights to help MSPs basically keep their QBRs together, and you know, realize that … she’s hesitant to call her company, a marketing company, or a marketing tool, but I think it is, right because your QBRs are your chance to it sounds dirty, when I want to say upsell to upsell your your customers, but but really to show them that there are other options or tools that they could take advantage of, that would help protect them more.
Shelly Miller 37:55
Right. And what they offer is the ability to know what their customers happiness levels are, their engagement with the product, what they like what they don’t like they are from an educational background, Marnie, and Alex. So they built in their tool, not only setting up the QBRs, and monitoring what your customers have what they need, being able to see, you know, your return on investment from each customer, but also what they their happiness level, basically identifying
Mike Miller 38:32
if they’re like, remember, you remember, as an MSP, you’re looking for targets, leads that aren’t being well served. So that you can snag them. Once they they make a mistake? Well, if you knew ahead of time that you were, like, screwing up.
Shelly Miller 38:57
Yeah, you had a customer who wasn’t that happy. And that customer is a good customer of yours. So you need to take care of them immediately.
Mike Miller 39:03
And you better do some about it soon. Lifecycle Insights dashboard tells you what’s going on. And it’s amazing. It helps you understand what’s going on, and hey, this is a client you better pay attention to. And last but not least, Craig Taylor, from Cyberhoot. I keep calling them by their first name. So I apologize. Cyberhoot
Shelly Miller 39:22
Becasue we feel like they’re our friends.
Mike Miller 39:24
Yeah, they’re our friends, right? They’re all CEOs. And they’re just like you they’re business owners. They’re trying their best to grow their businesses and to identify the the ways to best serve their clients. That’s the thing about these people, and hopefully us as well, is that we focus on the clients and it’s all about you guys, and giving you the things that you need to grow your business.
Shelly Miller 39:52
Yep. so Cyberhoot, who helps with your cybersecurity employee training for your business.
Mike Miller 39:59
Yes, Cybersecurity Awareness Training. So excellent stuff. All of these people, we believe that they are the cream of the crop, the top in the industry. And we really liked them. But also remember that we have a whole bunch of resources on our website. In the Resources section just we have the client Magnet System Quick Guide, which goes over the client magnet system. Remember, the client Magnet System is the map of sales and marketing and how to align them so that you can maximize your leads and sales and make more money and grow your business. We also have the webinar that explains the client magnet system. We have a B2B Social Media Strategy Guide. And I see persona work ICP Persona Worksheet and a Plug in Profit Marketing Jumpstart SEO checklist.
Shelly Miller 40:58
Yes, and we also have a YouTube channel that we house all of our podcasts on different topics everything from you know how you should do social. Using a teleprompter. I mean, we have a lot of interesting information that we know from the MSPs that we’ve worked with, you know they can they can use it because like a little teleprompter video has a lot of use because a lot of people need to know how to use that when you make your two to three minute videos, it becomes so helpful. You can shoot them quicker. It makes everything a lot easier. We have a lot of information on the YouTube channel. So we hope to see you there too. Absolutely. Or, or just your favorite podcast player. We are on all of them.
Mike Miller 41:40
Yeah, so if you like Apple, iTunes, we’re there if you like stitcher bam.
Shelly Miller 41:45
Yep, we’re syndicated on 19 podcast players. So yes, we’re saying you’re gonna find us on the internet
Mike Miller 41:50
across the interwebs. Look for the Mindwhirl Marketing Podcasts and you shall find us seek and you shall find. Oh, I know it all of a sudden, I’m a
Shelly Miller 41:59
Pun King.
Mike Miller 42:01
Punching like that. I can just hear someone twist in that right now. That’s gonna be awesome. Um, anyway, hashtag. Yeah, hashtag pun king. So, hey, we appreciate you.
Shelly Miller 42:18
We do and we we really love answering your questions, seeing what you’re struggling with. And lots of times, you know, it seems huge. And it’s not really kind of like in your business. You can have somebody come to you and say, Hey, I you know, they’re terrified about technology … something on their computer. Yeah. And you can put them at ease in a minute, you know, right. Same with us. There’s no sense in worrying about it holding it in, you know, thinking that you’re the only one we love to answer questions and you get you get to marketers for the price of one Exactly. Just free actually will answer your questions for free. So you can email us as always, our email addresses are in the description. But you can also comment on the video a question that you would like to have answered,
Mike Miller 43:00
Yes, please comment, like, subscribe, hit the bell to be notified when we put out new material. And as always, we really appreciate you guys and would love to help you in your business. So send in your questions, so that we can answer them. And I’ll see you very very soon.
Shelly Miller 43:19
We’ll see you next time. All right. Thanks again, for listening to the mind world Marketing podcast. Make sure to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Google podcast, Stitcher, Deezer or Spotify. Plus, check out my work 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.
