People Mentioned

• Dave Brereton from Mysonpages

Products & Resources

• Package Price Profit
• The Tech Tribe

Key Terms

• MSP
• QBR - Quarterly Business Review
• TBR - Technology Business ReviEw
• ERP

Time Stamps:

00:00 Maximize Existing Client Opportunities

05:54 Client-Centric Business Review Approach

07:37 Justified Fear in Risk Management

12:05 Consultative Sales Through Client Engagement

14:41 Undervalued IT Consultation Opportunities

20:18 Simplify Client Conversations Effectively

21:47 Genuine Curiosity Drives Client Success

24:48 "Focus and Consistency Breed Success"

29:08 Tailored Sales Strategy for MSPs

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Transcript:

James Steel [00:00:00]:

While most MSPs are out there hunting.

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James Steel [00:00:02]:

Endlessly for new clients, the smart ones.

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James Steel [00:00:04]:

Know their richest opportunities lie in the fields they already own. My name is James Steele and this is harvest, where MSPs and industry experts share proven ways to grow profitable revenue from your current customer base. No theory, no fluff, just field tested strategies that work. Let's grow.

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Nigel Moore [00:00:28]:

Our whole goal was to paint that spreadsheet green. And that pile of orange is our opportunity to go deep into our existing clients. There's people that sell with fear unnecessarily, but there's times to sell with fear necessarily. And that's when a client is not scared enough of the threat that's looming threat that they've got in their business. Just be genuinely curious about what your clients are doing and where they're at and what their goals are and where they're headed and what they're struggling with all day, every day. And, and you'll be surprised, like the vast majority of clients will open up pretty quickly to you.

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James Steel [00:01:00]:

Hello, thank you for listening or watching. Welcome to the very first episode of Harvest, the MSP sales show. In this episode I'm talking to Nigel Moore of Tech Tribe fame. And we're going to dig into some really practical stuff today so things you can use in your business tomorrow. A theme you'll see throughout the show. We'll learn how to turn dull tech reviews into revenue conversations tech tackle security sales without that whole scaremongering stuff. And explore a fresh take on service tiers that, you know, may well ruffle a few feathers. Make sure you've got a way to take notes and we'll dive straight in.

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James Steel [00:01:37]:

After cultivating his own msp from seedling to successful sale, Nigel Moore didn't just rest in the shade. He built the tech tribe a thriving community where nearly 4,500 MSPs learn to grow their own profitable harvests. When he's not teaching MSPs how to package their produce through his book Package Price Profit, you'll find him tending to his tribe of tech farmers, helping them turn their break fix plots into flourishing managed services estates. Please welcome Nigel Farming More.

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Nigel Moore [00:02:05]:

Oh my goodness. Now I've got a lot to live.

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James Steel [00:02:07]:

Up to, so I've got a scenario for you. You're an msp, you're sat at say, let's say a million turnover. Somewhere around there you've got 10 staff. Things are kind of plateauing. You're thinking about your next step. You've got the year ahead and you're thinking, right, what Can I do in terms of marketing? I've played with marketing agencies before. I've done some new lead generation. It hasn't really worked for me yet.

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James Steel [00:02:26]:

I'd like to concentrate on my existing customer base, which is what this podcast is all about. Where would you go in terms of, like, how does marketing look when you're doing it back to your existing customers? You're trying to generate some more revenue from them?

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Nigel Moore [00:02:37]:

The very first thing you do is everyone has a different name for it, but you've got the client matrix, or whatever you want to call it, client service matrix, which is your basic Excel spreadsheet with your clients listed down one side and all of your products listed down the other side. And, and the way we used to do it in my MSP is we used to paint it traffic light colors. So green meant, you know, in a cell, meant that that particular client had that particular service that we offered. Orange meant that they were ripe to be sold that service because they were missing out on it. It was like whether they, they had whatever it was like cloud backups or whatever it happened to be, or voip or whatever, like cybersecurity tools or whatever. And then red was for. There's some sort of operational logistical reason that they're never going to have that particular thing.

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James Steel [00:03:20]:

That's a good idea. You actually cross it out, so they say. So you don't.

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Nigel Moore [00:03:24]:

There's no point. Like, we can't get that one. So we'll leave it. Leave it red. It's not going to be able. Like, there's. There's a. We had a few clients that for whatever reason had head offices overseas that, that managed certain aspects of their business that we would never get that particular part of the service from them.

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Nigel Moore [00:03:36]:

But. And so it was just a red. Like, there's no chance we're getting that one. But the oranges, our whole goal was to paint that spreadsheet green, but there was always a pile of orange. And that pile of orange is our opportunity to go deep into our exist existing clients and, and sell to them or, or service them in all the areas that we're under servicing them at the moment. And, and that's the very first thing you do. Everybody talks about it. It's very easy to do, but too many people overlook it and they're like, oh, I'm going to go out and I'm going to run this crazy stupid campaign where I'm going to put billboards up on the side of streets and all this sort of stupid stuff.

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Nigel Moore [00:04:06]:

Yeah, I'm going to get a new logo and let's go get some crazy looking business cards printed and brochures that we're going to put down in the front office of the local dance studio. And I've heard all like, all of these things that I'm having a dig at are all absolute legitimate campaigns that MSPs have come to me and said, I'm going to go and do this campaign. And I'm like, you guys are mad. Like you've got this great base of clients here which you're probably only 50% into at the moment. And you've got loads of opportunity to go out there and nurture and teach them and go deeper into them and deliver them the other areas of service that you're not delivering them at the moment. And so that's first basic step, right?

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James Steel [00:04:44]:

Okay. This I think is a really cool bit of advice and you may hear it multiple times throughout the show. But this is not about complex tools or expensive software. That is less of an issue around how you do this than just committing to the idea of this, this matrix, this going for maximum service penetration. And if you want to use a spreadsheet, that's absolutely fine. Sometimes the biggest changes come from just these simplest approaches and I really think this is one of them.

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James Steel [00:05:11]:

Understand who you got, right? Understand who you got. So then how do you go after them? That's the things, I guess some people will be looking at a spreadsheet going, okay, well, I'm a bit intimidated. There's a lot of, a lot of gaps.

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Nigel Moore [00:05:20]:

Yeah, yeah, well that's. We all know the term qbr, right? Quarterly Business Review. I don't think there's an MSP in the world that sticks to a quarterly cadence in them. So I think it's a horrible name for the business review process in our industry. We call them TBRs. So technology business review. And every client that's on an MSP agreement should be on some sort of cadence for a technology business review. And inside the tech tribe, a little shameless plug.

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Nigel Moore [00:05:44]:

We've got a great checklist and agenda and process for running TBRs in there. But you need to have, with every single managed service agreement client you need to have some sort of. And even if you've got break fix clients, you still should have some sort of cadence in there. Some clients may want a review monthly, some may want it every second month, some every quarter, which is where the term quarterly business review came from. Some are every six months. And we even had some clients, it was once a year that we had on our cadence when we, we had. We're running our technology business reviews.

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James Steel [00:06:11]:

Kind of depends on spend, would you say? Is it that largely it depends on client.

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Nigel Moore [00:06:15]:

Client demographics like those, those annual ones were ones where they had overseas ownership and we were more just a hands and feet agreement to them with a little bit extra on top. So those types of ones, you don't need a quarterly business review with lots of them. You're literally sitting down with the stakeholders overseas just to see if everything's running okay with the agreement and whatnot. But the majority are going to fit in that one to three month range, some maybe six months in there. The majority of typical managed service agreements, not your co managed IT agreements, which is.

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James Steel [00:06:44]:

And what should you talk about? What's, what's the kind of thing you take. I take to the table there where you, where you've got those. Because it must be loads.

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Nigel Moore [00:06:49]:

You tell them how good your backups are and how many patches you've installed over the last. No, I'm joking.

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James Steel [00:06:55]:

That's what I used to do by your existence.

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Nigel Moore [00:06:56]:

Yeah, well that's, that's what I used to do. And that was probably the biggest mistake I ever made in my MSP or one of the biggest mistakes I made in my MSP was I'd used to go and tell all the clients that hey, we do these awesome amazing technology business reviews every three months and whatever it happens to be. And I'd turn up and I'd have all these stupid technical reports or I'd talk them about their backups and their patching and their how fast we were to get to their tickets and all that sort of crap. And, and I used to see my clients eyes glaze over and then the next time I'd want to go and book in a TBR with them, they'd go, oh, I'm kind of busy at the moment.

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James Steel [00:07:26]:

No thanks Nige.

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Nigel Moore [00:07:27]:

And I'm like, maybe I'm doing these wrong. And I went out and obviously learned a bunch of lessons and realized that those reviews are really, look, it's all about the client and what they've got going on in their business and what risks they've got coming up to them and what opportunities they're looking at and what challenges they got going on in their business right now. What are the pain points that they're hitting with technology and other areas of the business? It doesn't have to be that. And as I said in the tech tribe, we've got this great checklist of all those types of seeder questions or seed questions that you can go in and hit those meetings with so that you can really get in and understand the client and what's going on in their business so that you can go back and start to bespoke customize solutions for them.

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James Steel [00:08:04]:

Nigel, that's interesting. I think, I think that when you know those conversations, I feel like that can be quite an art in itself in that you've kind of gone in, you've gone in there, right? You've seen this grid and you've gone, okay, I've got all these products. I know I need to, ideally I want them to take as many products as possible, but now I need to go in there. I need to fully understand their business requirements and I don't want to sell them stuff they don't need really, but I kind of do. At the same time, how do you steer that conversation in a way that kind of, that really gets the. There's some key questions that really do get like a genuine understanding of where's this company going and what's going to marry it best with the products and services I can do or what can I do to help them?

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Nigel Moore [00:08:39]:

Well, it kind of depends. There's two, two routes that you can go down there or there's two routes that you should go down there. Number one is the route of, of unmet, unmet gaps that they've got in their business now. And what I mean by that is part of your conversation that you need to be having with them is you've got a, as an msp, you've got a holistic view of all the different types of services that they absolutely need in their. Make sure that they got backups in place and they've got cybersecurity protection and they've got all of this policies and all of that compliance stuff in place. They don't, like a lot of clients still don't understand all of that stuff. And so part of your conversation is talking to them about all the different areas that as a fully functioning company they need to make sure they're looking after that they've got covered as a company, like all the different IT services. And that's education, it's helping them understand the risks that they have by not having these services in there and having those risk management conversations and opening their eyes to the risks.

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Nigel Moore [00:09:32]:

Some people are like, I can never use risk or bad stories to go and sell my clients products because then I'm selling with fear. And the reality is clients, there's people that sell with fear unnecessarily but there's times to sell with fear necessarily. And that's when a client is not scared enough of the threat, that's looming threat that they've got in their business because of some sort of unserviced area around cybersecurity or backups or whatever it happens to be. And in those times it is, it is your absolute job as an MSP to make them feel a little bit of fear so they're making the right decisions around, around protecting their business. Because if you don't let them feel a little bit of fear and they keep being blase around these decisions, then six months later they might not have a business in there. And that's going to be your fault for not stepping up and taking the growing the confidence to go and have those tougher conversations in there.

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James Steel [00:10:26]:

I love that distinction. I hear that a lot actually. And there's obviously some business growth experts that will teach that kind of using the fear to grow your business kind of thing. And actually that can be frowned upon. But I think that's a great distinction between the two.

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James Steel [00:10:36]:

I think a lot of people do need to hear this point from Nigel because this is a balance that's quite uncomfortable sometimes to tread. And it really is not about scaring clients into buying. You should not be doing that. However, you should be educating them on good, informed, recent, up to date information. And that is scary. So there is definitely a line there. And I think, you know, if you get it wrong and you're abusing it, then you'll lose trust. But if you get it right and you're the one that's there providing them with the solid education on this topic, you're really helping protect their business.

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James Steel [00:11:10]:

And it's in everyone's interest.

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James Steel [00:11:12]:

We're in an exciting time right now for productivity tools, of course, AI field stuff. There's no way we could have a conversation without mentioning AI. But there's a whole plethora of tools out there that could help a business. With the other arm you've talked about, how do you start that conversation around like the strategic direction? How can we help you actually with your goal? How do you first of all find out what the company's goals are?

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Nigel Moore [00:11:31]:

Yeah.

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James Steel [00:11:31]:

What kind of questions can you ask and then kind of, is there anything else that you'd be doing if you're an MSP right now?

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Nigel Moore [00:11:36]:

It takes time. Right. It's very relationship driven, this stuff. I found it very relationship driven. So I had prompter questions that I've got sitting in front of me to help me come up with different conversations to have. But with our great clients that we went really deep with, it was just building up that trust over periods of time where we would often have a lot of our meetings, not over QBRs but over dinners where we'd be talking about, hey, what are you like, what is, what's your next year look like in your business? What are the big projects you got going on? And, and then being confident. Like in my first couple of years in business, I was the wildly unconfident, scared, nerdy guy that would literally ask them about what antivirus tool they're running. I would never even dream that I would be able to ask them about like what profit margins you're aiming for and what are your projects for next year and what are your like business level questions out of them.

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Nigel Moore [00:12:21]:

But over time I built that confidence and I built that trust with clients to be able to have those, those conversations more and more and more. And, and once I started being comfortable asking them those sort of questions, they open up, right? Like most of them would open up and they'd like, oh well, we're planning like, I'll give you a specific example. We used to have this great restaurant group, one of Australia's most famous restaurant groups as one of our clients in my msp, sitting with them, talking about what their plans are and their plans were, hey, we're going to go and open up a burger franchise that's, we're going to build all these, sorry, not a franchise but a burger, burger chain where we're going to have a bunch of locations all around the place to do it. We're in the MO at the moment. We're trying to look at tools and all this sort of stuff. We're kind of overwhelmed with all of it. And so I went, oh well, would you like us to come in and do some vendor selection work for you? Like consultancy vendor selection work for you to help you figure out what sort of POS tools can integrate with your accounting systems and whatever. And we went out and sold them a many, many, many, many thousand dollar project to go and help them understand and pick their POS tool.

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Nigel Moore [00:13:18]:

We, I went in and had meetings like I went out and figured out all the, all the best POS tools that would work with their current platforms because we already knew all their current platforms and, and then went and had conversations with all the POS companies to figure out what their requirements were and, and it was hours worth of work, like quite a few hours worth of work. But then I actually jumped in the meetings with that particular client while they were interviewing their POS vendors. And I did a bunch of the interviewing as well, from a technical perspective in there, as well as from a business perspective around things like SLAs and all the typical things that we're used to having conversations about that our client didn't even think about. And they came out of that spending. I don't know, Maybe they spent 10 grand on that project with us or maybe a little bit less, maybe eight grand or something. But they came out of it with deep confidence that they'd picked the best vendor out there and they weren't getting the wool pulled over their eyes by these sales people when they really had no idea what they were talking about. They, like, we could talk about all the technology and all the ways that all the stores linked and all that sort of stuff quite easily. And so though, that.

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Nigel Moore [00:14:16]:

That project came out of me digging deep into, like, what. What goals are you working on next year? Like, what are the. What are the next. What's the next goals? Or what are the next plans that you plan on rocking out.

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James Steel [00:14:25]:

I mean, that is really nice, isn't it? This here is the difference between getting in that frame of mind of being the IT guy and being that trusted advisor on whatever topics it might be. Nigel has taken the opportunity, which happened to be a dinner conversation. Maybe that's something worth thinking about. If you don't already take clients out to dinner, maybe that's something you should be doing. Perhaps for the. Certainly for the. For the top ones, and explored a whole number of areas with them and it's resulted in an opportunity that's worth £10,000. So he's done this because he was thinking strategically about opportunities, not technically.

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James Steel [00:14:59]:

Yeah, that's a relaxed chat in a restaurant you're talking about. Basically, that started off as a relaxed.

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Nigel Moore [00:15:04]:

Chat in a restaurant over a dinner. Because we used to have a number of my clients that I'd go and hang out with for dinners and lunches and beers after work or whatever it was. And then we moved it formal, like as soon as it was like, hey, would you like some help with that? That particular things? Like, heck, yeah, I'd love some help with it. Like, we're kind of overwhelmed and I've got my operations person on it, but they don't really understand what POS systems are. And we've got some exposure to hospitality industry, so we know a little bit more than you guys. We actually knew probably a lot more than those guys. And so that was it. All right, let's go and buy a block of hours and let's just use it on a block of hours basis.

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Nigel Moore [00:15:36]:

I didn't even know how to back then. That was just an example of one, but I didn't even know how to charge for that stuff. So I just sold block of hours on it and they probably used eight grand worth of hours for that particular one. But again, it just started from a conversation around asking about where things are going. Then it moved formal after that and moved into that whole consultative side of the IT world and the IT consultation side, which I think a lot of MSPs undervalue. What opportunity exists in that space out there and how much value they can really add to their clients out there who are scared crapless of like line of business vendors and picking the wrong one and not knowing what questions to ask when they're picking a new line of business vendor. It could be an accounting software, it could be paused software, it could be a CRM, it could be an erp, it could be all sorts of different vendors out there, but that whole vendor selection process and consulting around that, it's just a perfect tiny piece of the pie that you can go deeper in with just some basic conversations, a basic question like digging and gathering.

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James Steel [00:16:42]:

This episode is sponsored by Sales Builder, where I work. I really wanted to tell you about us because I see so many MSP sales teams buried in admin. Instead of talking to customers and building relationships, we help you automate your sales process with standardized product catalogs and professional proposals. Our service matrix or the white space module. That's the bit that shows you visually where the opportunities are in your customer base. From service gaps to upcoming renewals. Everything links directly with your your PSA and of course your distributors. If you'd like to free up your sales team's time and spot more revenue opportunities, simply connect with me on LinkedIn or head to salesbuilder.com let's get back to it and do you see.

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James Steel [00:17:27]:

So let's take the Tech Drive members for example then do you see MSPS comfortably moving from the sort of, the more technical conversations through to those sort of more kind of strategic conversations around what's happening in the business and things do you think are something that something they're struggling with or do you have.

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James Steel [00:17:41]:

Any tips around that?

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Nigel Moore [00:17:42]:

If so broadly the industry is definitely having high level conversations over the last if you look at the conversations from a decade ago to the conversations that are happening now, broadly they're better conversations out there. MSPs hearing other MSPs have these conversations at conferences and hallway chats and events and, and so the rising, that kind of rising tide of better conversations is happening over time. But still us, I say us, I'm not an MSP anymore, but us geeks who run MSPs, we still often lack a little bit of confidence around having these conversations. And so sometimes it can be a slow process to pull ourselves away from the technical chats across and put a business hat on and start having business conversations. But my encouragement to anybody going through that process is to just keep plodding on, just keep plodding on and plotting on and plotting on. And eventually you start to look back and you go, holy crap. Like, I'm actually way more confident now having these conversations than I was a year ago and 10 times more confident than I was two years ago in it. And you don't notice it in the day to day because you're not really looking back too much.

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Nigel Moore [00:18:46]:

But when you're sitting, for me, at least when I used to sit and reflect about the types of conversations I had year after year after year, even with particular clients, I'd surprise myself. I'd go, holy crap, this is awesome. You're kind of operating with a seat at the C suite now versus just being the IT guy that people would call on their mobile phone when outlook's not working. And then my relationships with some of my clients started off exactly as that and progressed to me literally having a spot at the C suite table as essentially their CTO in there, making the budgetary decisions for them as well around it. And that's a journey. Right? You don't start off on day one as an msp that's a little bit geeky. And be very confident having CTO discussions. Some people do and awesome to you, but the majority of us folk don't.

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Nigel Moore [00:19:32]:

But essentially it's having a seat at the executive suite in some way, shape or form in a virtual capacity or some sort of fractional capacity. And it doesn't take that long. Especially if you, especially if you've got a bunch of clients that you're doing similar work with. You start to see all the patterns around all the different types of risks and all the different types of scenarios that are happening. You can start to build mental models for how to deal with them yourself and, and that just, that just happens with reps. It literally just happens with reps. Just getting in and having the conversations, making sure the conversations are interesting and helpful to the clients, not to you. Sure.

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Nigel Moore [00:20:07]:

You've got to get a little bit of value out of them as well, to make sure that you're doing the right thing and your clients are loving you. But you really. The key with those TBR conversations is making it about the client 100%, about them and their frustrations, their fears, their wants, their aspirations, their. All the types of things that they're looking for in the business. And again, back when I was in my early stages, I was so fearful of asking bigger businesses that sort of stuff. I'd be like, oh, like, what right do I have to ask a lot? Like a business that's doing 10 mil and I'm doing 500 grand here, what right do I have to ask them those questions? But once I started to, and I started with the ones that I was really close to, and I realized that they just open up and I was able to hold my own and have those conversations, I just went, holy crap. Like, why didn't I start having these conversations early? Like, I should have.

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James Steel [00:20:54]:

Just to pass judgment either is it. It's just so you can get a better understanding. I think it's a classic case, as you say, that, like, if you can make sure the traffic coming to, coming towards you is far greater in volume than the traffic going the other way. If you just sit back and listen. I know. Shout out to Dave Bretton at Mice and Pages. He's got a strategy where he literally goes in, he asks one question with a blank sheet of paper, and it's just kind of, where's your company going?

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Nigel Moore [00:21:13]:

Yeah, yeah.

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James Steel [00:21:13]:

Sits back, sits back and listen. Yeah, I think you can overthink this stuff, can't you? It's quite possible to go in there with a sort of structure that you don't need. And it's, as you say, as you said earlier, it's more relationships.

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Nigel Moore [00:21:23]:

Sheet of questions in front of you and have 10 questions that you're armed with, and that's it. Like, don't. Don't try and make it too formal. Too many people, like, have these crazy Excel sheets they try to fill in, and all of these. All these crazy tools that they're trying to fill in while they're having these conversations with the client. And that's like going in with a blank piece of paper and a couple of questions on it is the easiest. Like, grab your points out of that and just. You start going down some sort of route while you're having a conversation with them about something, and you might see something that you go, oh, hang on.

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Nigel Moore [00:21:50]:

I really know this area. And I can really add some Value here. So pull on that string, pull on that string and see where it goes. And the old active listening metric works wonders here in that you should be really talking 20% of the time and listening 80% of the time, which for me is exactly that. I love babbling on. But I have to force myself and just to, to just ask the right questions and just sit back like you said Dave was doing. Like, sit back and just listen. And once they finish asking and then you just ask another open ended question and what else? Right? And they might finish up about something.

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Nigel Moore [00:22:25]:

You're like, oh, and what else or what else is bugging you around that? Or why is that bugging you at this level? Like just either go deeper or wider in those questions to just really dig things in. And people love talking about themselves in their business so darn much. Right? Like that's.

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James Steel [00:22:39]:

And it can be interesting. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but from the other side, I love having a chat with the chat. So I genuinely love having chats with MSPs about what they're doing because it kind of, you know, you can think, can I, can I, can I help you there? Or what I think about that or Fantastic, I love that. That's a brilliant bit of advice I can share with someone else or on the podcast or whatever it might be.

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Nigel Moore [00:22:53]:

I was genuinely curious because I was a lot of my bigger clients, I was kind of awestruck at them. I used to look at them with this, this crazy levels of inspiration of like, these guys have built these 5, 10, 15, 20, $30 million. Like one of them was $100 million business. And I look at them so, so dumbstruck and awestruck like they were celebrities to me. And so every time I possibly could spend with them, I would be asking them questions like, how do you do? Like trying my hardest to get in and get an angle to get some time with them. Like, how do you do this? And what's, like, what happened here? And what's like asking them about their history and their story and whatnot. And I think just bringing that genuine curiosity to this, this whole, this whole conversation is such a vital part of it. Just be genuinely curious about, about what your clients are doing and where they're at and what their goals are and where they're headed and what they're struggling with all day, every day.

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Nigel Moore [00:23:40]:

And you'll be surprised. Like, the vast majority of your clients will open up pretty quickly to you and start to give you ideas and opportunities and ways you can help Them and sometimes just a shoulder, like an ear that you're listening. I used to have one client that used to love, after many years turning over $50 million a year and here I am turning over probably a million dollars at the time and we'd go out for chats and they would just talk my ear off about all the challenges they got going on, whatever. Because I think I just used to listen well back then and I'd ask them questions. I'd be genuinely curious. I'd love hearing about the problems in bigger businesses. It was cool. I still love doing it to this day.

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Nigel Moore [00:24:18]:

I love just asking people questions about their business and being genuinely curious and seeing what things I can pull a string on to go deeper into.

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James Steel [00:24:26]:

And you're in a great position to do that obviously with the tech tribe being as it is and having so many members there that you could, you can pull on and conversations you can observe.

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Nigel Moore [00:24:34]:

Then eventually when you get to the numbers that we've got in there, like every string you pull on, you go, hang on, I've pulled that string before.

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James Steel [00:24:40]:

Like they said, back, I'll put that one back.

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Nigel Moore [00:24:42]:

Put that one back. Exactly. But they start to. You see the patterns, right? Like, and when you're in an industry for so darn long, you see all these patterns and you see these mental models and it becomes freaks where, where.

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James Steel [00:24:52]:

The whole beautiful segue. That's a beautiful segue. What separates, what separates them? What separates the ones, the smaller ones perhaps from the, from the larger high performing ones. You spoke into both ends of the msv.

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Nigel Moore [00:25:06]:

Yeah.

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James Steel [00:25:07]:

Particularly in the context of like generating the most revenue from their existing customer bases, what they're doing really well, how they set up, what you really string pulling.

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Nigel Moore [00:25:14]:

To be honest, it's not a tactical thing, it's a mindset thing most of the time. Like it's, it comes into the confidence to be able to go and do it. Like, it's very easy to. Just like I said that, that one before about the client services matrix where you just listed out like, I don't think there's an MSP in the world that probably doesn't know, hasn't heard of that particular thing there. But the ones that are willing to go and push themselves past that little bit of pain to go and start the process are the ones that are going to be successful out there. And I think a lot of it is just like business is really mindset. Like our business only grows to the level that our mindset grows. Right.

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Nigel Moore [00:25:44]:

And the ones that are successful out there Are the ones that are going, oh, this process is going to be a little bit painful, but I'm going to go and do it anyway, right? I'm just going to get in and do it anyway. And so it's not. There's not really a. I can't say go and do this tactic or follow that strategy or whatever, because that's not the answer. The real answer is just do the work. Like get in and do the work and push yourself past that. Sometimes it's fear and sometimes it's procrastination out of boredom. And I fall into that ladder part a hell of a lot in that I go, do I really want to jump on a call with a client and chat about backups and whatever, or do I want to go and have a look at the next greatest tool out there so I can spend some time looking at the next shiny red object and my brain will always want to go and look and do a little bit of due diligence in the next shiny object tool? And I have to catch myself every single time I go, like, does that line up with where we're going at the moment? Really? What separates the successful from the non successful? It's just a bias from action and an ability to make sure, like, pull themselves up when they can see they're getting distracted and focus on making the one thing the one thing and just focus on making that one thing the one thing and getting rid of all the other distractions.

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Nigel Moore [00:26:48]:

Those that can do that, they're the ones that always win. They're the ones that always grow faster. They're the ones that always have better success. They're the ones that are always having good things come their way. And they're the ones that all the other MSPs that are wildly distracted are saying, oh, they're so lucky, they're so lucky. But they're not. They're just doing the thing. They're just making sure that the one thing that they've got to do is the one thing that they're doing and not all this other distraction out there.

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James Steel [00:27:10]:

So that leads us nicely into this and we're talking about tactics and how we're going to do this. So, Nigel, you and I, we're going to start on MSP tomorrow. Just thought I'd let you know, we've got three years. We got to make it as big as we can. We're looking to exit in three years. That's all we want to do. Where, what we're going to do. How's it going to look in terms of structure, what are we going to sell? What would you do if you, if you could do it over the pool?

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Nigel Moore [00:27:29]:

What I know nowadays, if I had to exit in three years, because three years is not a long time in the MSP space at all, especially with a long sales cycle that MSP contracts have, is I would, I'm going to be a bit cheeky on this one. I would go out and raise money and buy other MSPs. That's as simple as I would do. And I would go and raise the money. Even if I had zero money at all, I know I could go out now and raise capital to go and start an msb. And those of you that are thinking, oh, it's so hard to raise capital, it's actually not that hard to go and raise capital when you learn how to do it. And so that's like, if I only had three years to go and do something, I would go and buy an existing MSP that's. I would spend all time, effort and energy I possibly could on finding a great MSP that's kind of maybe unloved or has gone through a bit of a phase where there's a bunch of opportunity to go and clean it up.

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James Steel [00:28:12]:

And what does unloved look like? What does dirty and unloved look like?

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Nigel Moore [00:28:15]:

Often it's an owner that's fallen out of love with it and left it in maintenance mode for a good couple of years. Right. And so they've got clients that are plodding along, they've got loads of orange on their client services matrix in there because the owner's making okay money out of it, but not, but it's not optimized by any means. They're probably sitting at a level three or four on the operational maturity level chart. And there is tens of thousands of those MSPs out there where the owner has made some money, they're now making maybe a couple of hundred grand a year, sellers, discretionary earnings out of it or take home out of the business. And so they're not motivated by the big bucks. And then you get in and you spend those couple of years fixing up all that orange, like painting that spreadsheet green instead of orange out there. And hopefully if you've got enough capital and you've raised enough money to be able to buy an MSP that's got some access to marketing budget, you go down and you throw some marketing budget in and you put some dollars towards sales in there as well.

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James Steel [00:29:11]:

Yeah, I love that though. I think that's great. And there's such, there's such opportunity in some of these MSPs, isn't there? So if you could do that, that makes absolute sense to try and do that in a short space of time. Excellent. Right, listen, we're coming towards the end of our chat, but I want to ask you, there's one final segment we have on our podcast and that is industry manure. So, industry manure, Industry manure. What's the biggest crock of you here bandied around by industry experts? What really grinds your gears? Is there any advice that MSPs are listening to in our wonderful echo chamber that is the MSP industry?

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Nigel Moore [00:29:41]:

I got one. One of the ones that you hear from time to time and from certain, certain people is that you must only sell one MSP plan, right? Like you must have the one be all and end all MSP plan. You can't have multiple tiers of MSP plans. You have to sell one. And if you're not, you're an idiot. And why is that not true?

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James Steel [00:29:59]:

I hear that a lot.

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Nigel Moore [00:30:00]:

So it's, it is like, because the simple reason is because there's tons and tons and tons and tons of wildly successful, highly profitable MSPs out there with multiple plans, right? So you don't have to go and sell just one and have only one, because these other ones are proving that you can make money the other way. The reality, the reality is it's very, very, very nuanced though. And so there's certain stages in your business growth journey where one plan might make more sense than three plans or two plans or five plans or whatever that or, or bespoke. It just depends. And whenever anyone comes to me and says, hey, should I just do one plan or three or good, better, best, or whatever this variant is, you can't give them an answer. The answer really is it depends on a lot of things. And you have to do a bit of a deep dive into that person and their marketplace and their maturity as a business owner and their sales capability and their pipeline and all of those different types of things to figure out what one makes sense for them at that particular point in time in a journey. One of the dangerous things about people saying to MSPs, hey, you have to only go and sell one plan, is that like, please don't give that broad advice with a broad brush.

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Nigel Moore [00:31:06]:

At least ask the person some questions first so that you understand their particular situation before you start to give them some advice and help them understand what the pros and cons are of each, each approach out there. And it's very, very, very case specific. Depending on, as I said, depending on the msp, the owner, the team, the marketplace. Like all sorts of different things out there.

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James Steel [00:31:28]:

And I've not heard it framed like that. And I have heard many passionate pleas and conversations at industry events where people just argued this, you know, sometimes with even vitriol, you know, this is like.

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Nigel Moore [00:31:39]:

You have to be angry over this one.

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James Steel [00:31:40]:

It was like, really, it's a passionate.

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Nigel Moore [00:31:43]:

Ways to skin a cat. And, and the proof is in the pudding, right? Like you can, you don't have to listen to me. Just go and listen to the, the tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of MSPs that are making lots of money both ways with both approaches, right? Doing good quality service to their clients, with clients that are giving them high CSAT scores and protecting them against all these things. Like there's people making money both ways. Like it's not, it's not one way or the other way. It's both ways make sense at different points in time.

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James Steel [00:32:08]:

Nigel, thank you so much for joining me. There couldn't have been a better guest to really kick off this first episode of Harvest. It's been an absolute pleasure. Can I ask you for one question for our next guest? Is that. Okay, so we've got more industry experts coming. It can be in the field of marketing or wherever you like. But we'd like to put a question to our, our next guest on the podcast.

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Nigel Moore [00:32:28]:

All right, well, marketing is my favorite area, so I'm going to ask a marketing one. You're getting an MSP up and running and you're only small. You may be you and one or two or three people like Tiny, and you can invest $1,000 a month into finding new clients.

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James Steel [00:32:44]:

Thousand dollars. Not much, is it?

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Nigel Moore [00:32:46]:

Not much, not much at all. But I remember when I was at that particular point and it wasn't easy, it wasn't nice, but there's a lot, a lot of MSPs out there that are at that point. What would you spend that thousand dollars on? You've got, you got, let's say you got six months of thousand dollars per month out there that you can go and spend and you've got six grand. You're willing to, you've got a thousand dollars a month of free cash flow essentially that you want to put towards marketing. What are you going to spend it on? Like, what's the strategy? And I want to hear, I want to hear this one. I'm going to have to make sure I listen out for episode two so I hear what the advice is back.

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James Steel [00:33:20]:

Okay, that is it for this episode of Harvest. If you found this useful, all the links we mentioned are in the show notes. And of course if you enjoyed it, please do leave us a review and share it with a friend. Or even better, someone else in the industry who you know would get value from it. Until next time, Happy Harvesting.

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