Sales Secrets for MSPs: Building an Effective, Remote Sales Team | Chris Wiser | Vianney Wilson

Build a really solid sales process. Then you close deals, starting with your existing clients until you can afford to scale, I call it afford, to buy your time back. Then you actually hire somebody to hand that book of business to you. As the business MSP owner should be filling half of your calendar with revenue, generating sales appointments, meaning closing deals, pitching, doing cybersecurity risk assessment presentations. That takes a lot of time. It should be 50% of your calendar. So bottom line, work on your sales process. Build something on your own that you can actually then offload to a closer. Then you've bought all that time back. What is up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Building A Profitable MSP Podcast. My name is Chris Weiser, your host for today. Really? Well, I'd like to call you a special guest, but I don't know, man, but it's our internal VP of sales, Vianni Wilson. What's up, brother? How you doing, man?

What's up everyone? Really pleased to be here.

So it's, it's kind of cool for, for me to have to have you on this, namely because the MSP world kind of doesn't know who you are. And even more importantly for the guys that are watching this, the Gianni didn't even know what an MSP was when I first met him, which is, I think we're like a year in, give or take, roughly. Yeah, like knowing each other. We met through digital marketing land. And one of the things that the MSP industry does a lot is it hires internally. I have kind of made a point. And if you guys, if you see, if you meet my staff, if you get a chance to meet anybody, if you're a client that comes in and all this, we don't have many MSP people in. We have me that came from MSP land. I owned an MSP for 10 years. We have Ryan O', Hara, who owned an MSP for 10 years. We HAVE Cindy Phillips who worked in an MSP for 10 years plus. And that's it. Everybody else is talent that I've specifically sought out for and beyond. And I kind of met separately from that. I think you approached me with a meeting booking platform, right?

Yeah, it was really interesting. I, I pitched you when I had my agency on lead generation services. Right. And that's how we, we first met. And then that thing grew and grew and grew. But I think it's really interesting to. I always like looking at cross industry because there's so much that we don't do.

And the other thing that's very unique about this And I want you guys that are watching this to really think about how important this is. Viani's based in Spain. He's, he's a Brit that is based in Valencia, Spain. Running our entire seven figure MSP sales team. Now it's worked out really, really well. We have and I kind of want to go through that a little bit. But more importantly, I want to bring this back to MSPs building sales teams and where this kind of relates and where the mistakes are often made, which I know you don't know, but you kind of see what some of these guys do and you come in and you work with me presenting to our, our live coaching calls. Probably once a quarter, Vienna comes in and presents with me and we kind of talk to them. But if we talk about the things that make a really strong sales team. What's your thoughts about working on a remote sales team like a company like, like seven figure MSP? We are 100 remote, 100 digital. But most MSPs are local, maybe regional. Very few are national, even fewer are international. So the whole remote mindset doesn't necessarily encompass them. Now what I will say to that is you totally can do this with any company. You just have to change your brain a little bit. What's your thoughts on that? And kind of how we built this.

Yeah, for sure. So I think, you know, there are things if we're just talking about like sales team structure, like where can we be international, remote, all this kind of stuff and, and where can't we be? There's huge amounts of the sales funnel if we're thinking about it this way, like getting, getting the actual call book, taking the call, moving people through a sales process. Huge part of that. Don't require face to face anyway. There will be pieces of it that are for, for our conversation. The way that I see it is that, well, if we have access to more talent globally, then we can get better talent. Right. Like we have access to more people. We can be very, very specific with the type of person that we're looking for in terms of character traits.

And we can be pretty damn choosy with which we are, we're very choosy as opposed to being limited to your, you know, you think about how you put a job ad out in your local area. Yeah, it's like this tiny little snippet versus weekend. I mean we're hiring now a setter a week. I'd say. Am I that off base? Right. So I agree with that. I think that's huge.

Yeah. And I think I mean, you've just got to think, think about this this way. You're right. If you're looking at a very small area and it has to be local, you're limited fully to that or to people that are willing to relocate. Going to be tons and tons of people. What I like, like doing, we touched upon this in the beginning. I think this is an interesting conversation, maybe for, for you guys out there listening as MSPs, is that there are things that can be taught and there are things that can't be taught. So, like, attitude is much more important to me as someone hiring than existing skills. It's all existing experience because someone can have the greatest skills, but if they don't run with the team, I'd much rather take someone who's a great fit.

And we watch, We've watched over the last six, nine months. Here we are. Specifically, this is a really, really good point for anybody that's listening to this. We've actively watched the right person fitting in like that versus we've had a couple that were like, nope, that's not a fit. And we're dropping them in, I don't want to say days, but one to two weeks. You know, we hire kind of slow, we fire kind of fast, and we're making sure that there's a personality fit. So I think that's really key.

Yeah, for sure. And think about it this way, sales people and sales teams, they run off momentum. And so if you have someone who is pulling everyone down all the time, who's negative, who's not willing to do the work, who's not a team player, it's not that they are individually not going to do well. That's true. Anyway. It's that they will affect everyone else negatively. So the attitude is super, super important, for sure. And if we have access to a bigger pool of people, because we can work internationally, we can work with people. Say we have. We have salespeople from the, the uk, the us, Canada. Right.

We're all over the place now. Right. I mean, nobody is based. I live in Austin, Texas, just so you guys know that headquarters is in Austin, Texas. I mean, Jose is in Georgetown. And that's just coincidence, honestly. That's our, that's one of our closers. Other than that, nobody's in most. Most aren't even in the state. Do we have anybody in the States? I guess Sean's in the States.

Sean's. Sean's in the States. And then we have Canada. I'm in Spain, Alexis in the. In the. But it just doesn't matter because as long as you can work the right hours and as long as you have the right attitude, as long as you are developing the right skill, you can become an asset from everywhere.

Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the things from my standpoint is as the leader is I've empowered Viani to whatever it takes to get the job done. Like, I mean do you have, do you feel that you have any constraints from like I, we've never really talked about this. But the other thing that I'm different on is I'm not a control freak. I mean you've definitely seen that. I haven't even. It's funny, I've not met any of our setters, not even in, not even on a video call because that's your team.

So. Right.

So I think a couple really important things is your mindset as a leader as you start to build your sales team. Now I totally understand you probably as an MSP still need an in person closer at least sometimes. Now could you make it so you close out of the box and then your setters and your closers could also be remote for everything else you could do that. But I, I think that's, you know, so a couple important things here and especially Viani minding thinking that most MSPs are one to five person shops. You've seen that most of them are smaller, especially in the early stages. It's the MSP owner that's doing the closing.

Right.

And one of the things that we do in our coaching program and I'm, you know, I obviously would love to have anybody that's listening to this in our coaching program because it's really good and it really works. But we teach you how to build a strategy and you how to close first. You have a sales so something you can actually give to people. Now one mistake that I see msps really, really make out of the box and I want to get your take on this is they hire a salesperson. For those of you listening on, on the audio version air quoting, they hire a salesperson that is a basically a prospector. And that is not the mindset that you should have. You should have people that are, are in your team to generate leads, to generate appointments and then you have people that close deals. You're, you're closing deals. People are your high talent closers. You do not want to hire a person to run around and book appointments. You know your door. And this is where MSPs do this a lot, especially in the States. Bianni, just so you know this, they hire a salesperson and then they're expecting them to bring a book of business in. They're expecting them to go close deals, but they're also expecting them to prospect like crazy and like book all these meetings and then take. It just doesn't work that way. And it's going to be a total fail.

Yeah.

Does that happen in your world? I know you come from digital land and I just, we've never talked about some of these things, so I want to get your take on that.

I think it's, it's, it's transferable. You just got to think about. I actually think that industries think that they're more special than they are. There's a lot of stuff that's related to everyone in the same way. And so one of the things I like to think about is that the personality and skill set of an appointment setter is not the same as a closer, is not the same as an account manager. Right. They're responsible for different parts of the sales journey and, or keeping a client. And so you can, maybe as a CEO, because you get it, because you are the business owner, you can do some of that. It's obviously not scalable, but in the very early days, you are just setting and closing. But when it, when the next point comes, I would really recommend you don't hire a setter closer. You hire someone who can book sets first. It's an easier job. You can still close. So you control the end variable. And it's a less expensive staff member, too. Yeah, that should be the first step.

Yeah. And I think those are really key points. And I think, you know, one of the things the MSP wants to do is they're like, oh, I can hire the salesperson. They're going to give me all these meetings, they're going to close all these deals, and it's off my plate. That is a really, really dangerous thing because one of the reasons that I was successful is I closed all my deals initially. And Yanni, you've seen through our webinars and a lot of the stuff that I talk about, some of my key rules for sales in my world are build a system, SOPs, process system, whatever you want to call it, sales process. Then I execute on that until I can afford to scale. So I really recommend building a sales system. Hey, you can do it on your own. It's just going to take you a while. And you got to really know and you got to really focus on it. And it's hard with msp, which is where seven figure MSP comes into play. We're really good at that. Our sales system is rock solid. You know Vianna, you come in here and you see all the deals that are closing all the time for these members. It's awesome.

It's wild.

Yeah, it's really cool to watch them transform and it's really so build a really solid sales process. Then you close deals starting with your existing clients until you can afford to scale, I call it afford to buy your time back. Then you actually hire somebody to hand that book of business to. Kind of my baseline rules for this are fill half of your calendar with appointments that are directly closing related. So you as the business MSP owner should be filling half of your calendar with revenue generating sales appointments, meaning closing deals, pitching, doing cyber security risk assessment presentations. Working through the sale like that takes a lot of time. It should be 50% of your calendar is working on now we got something we can pick up and hand to a closer. So if you do that consistently, first of all, if you do that consistently for three months and then in your second month start to work on hiring a person and by month three you got a person that's actually vetted solid note. They can even probably do most of this work sitting at home. Both of our closers, Sean and Jose, both work from home. They both close deals from home anywhere. This is totally. If I had, if I was starting an MSP right now, I would do exactly the same thing. I my job would be to drive appointments to them them close remotely, at least 95% of it. Then you go on site. So bottom line, work on your sales process. Build them something on your own that you can actually then offload to a closer, then hire a closer, then give them then you've bought all that time back. I freed up 50% of my calendar not to go back to being a tech, which I mean, hey, if you want to do that, that's fine but I think it's really dangerous because your job now and correct me if I'm wrong on this diani at all, your job now as an MSP owner should be exclusively. Okay, I understand we're managing tech and sometimes we got to do some of that other stuff. But our number one focus first should be I am generating appointments for my sales team like you think about what my role is in seven figure msp. What am I working on all the time with you every single day?

Yeah. Appointments. Yeah.

What should we working on? It doesn't mean I'm booking. It doesn't mean I'M on the phone, but Vianney and I are building systems and we're working on processes and literally we work on this every day.

Every day.

And you know, you're what, eight hours ahead of me. So luckily I only have to deal with you for like four hours a day or you only got to deal with me for like four.

Yeah, I mean, it works both, both ways. One of the things I was going to say, I think is really, really important. There's a temptation this, this was true in the high ticket coaching and the agency world that I came from before and I can see it now in MSP land as well. There's a temptation to, you know, you might not like doing sales calls on MSP owner, especially if you're, if you're moving right, you're trying to remove that from your plate. But the reality of the situation is until you have just like Chris said, an SOP and a system that you get, how are you going to measure someone else that's doing it right? You have to understand, and obviously when you're hiring someone you want, you want someone who is a builder by nature, someone who's going to come in and run with it. But if you don't understand what's actually going on and they're just doing the thing, you don't also, you don't know how to improve it. You can't review anything, you can't move things forward. So it's super, super important that we, we don't let the desire to not do something win over. Let's do this right and build it right. Because in the long term that's going to cause a lot of problems.

Yeah. I also think that the sales stuff is such a big, unfamiliar behemoth that the MSP owner avoids it like almost exclusively because they don't want to do it. They're like, oh, I'll just do this. And here's what I'm going to tell you guys. A couple other things on out. I want to get into a little bit more of the, the things you can do immediately. You have to put in a sales system for this to work. Things have changed in the MSP industry. If you, you know, maybe watch. In fact, let me, I'm gonna, while we're talking here, I'm going to put a banner up with one of our strategy call webinars. If you've not seen our strategy call webinar, I highly encourage you to watch that. It's with me and Cindy Phillips and we talk about why things have changed, how Things are different. Let me just get this URL made here. And for you guys that are on the audio version. Hold on. That's in there. Strategy.7FigureMSP.com Cindy and I do a live sales strategy webinar the first Monday of every single month. It's very similar every single month. We change it quarterly. But the whole concept around it is you have to understand that the MSP industry has changed. You also have to convey during your sales process that the MSP industry has changed. And part of that. So a lot of people come in and we're like, oh, Chris, you're crazy. You, you can't charge $300 per seat for MSP services. What's in it? We go through that whole thing in that webinar, we walk through the why and then we teach you kind of a baseline of the sales process. Here's the base basic stuff that you're going to get. Here's the basic stuff that you should be teaching your clients. But what's more important is that, you know, you should be as an MSP owner focused on cash flow, revenue, lead generation, sales. Because if you're not growing, you are absolutely going backwards. Especially in Today's market. We're Q4, 2023. Vianni, you see how much like it's funny because you come from high ticket coaching and you're like, there's so much money to be made in this industry. And it's funny because MSPs are like, oh, MSPs not. I can't make any money doing MSP. Vianney's like, oh my God, this is insane. There's so much money to be made in this industry. Chris, should we start an msp? And I'm like, let's just focus on what we're good at.

Yeah, this is actually really funny. Like almost every day, every single time that we have in our inner circles group, right? I see all these wins and stuff that and I'm like, should we just start an msp?

Maybe we should be doing that.

It's honestly when it's, when it's done right. And I think you, you've got to develop a love for growing business. That's something that's crucial, right? It's not. That's what I, I would say as, as someone who is.

You just nailed that so well. And you know what's, what's tough is. And I get this, guys, like, I, I understand that you're an MSP owner, most of us. And I'm in the same boat. I built An MSP because I liked computers, I like technology, I liked all this stuff and I'm not going to say. And the other challenges, most MSP owners, they start a company because they either saw an opportunity or they're unemployable. That's literally usually it. I see an opportunity to make myself this life that I don't have right now because I'm working for. That's what I saw. That's exactly why I built mine. But what happens is you're so. And I kind of call it the MSP Wheel of Death. What happens is you start out and Diani, I don't know if I've ever told you about the MSP Wheel of Death, but I talk about it when I do our, our live presentations and our live events, especially our lunch and learns our MSP revenue generator which are we do regionals, our local locals around the United States, Canada right now, expanding into the UK in Europe next year. But one of the things that I talk about is and I want to get your. I don't think you've ever heard me say this. Here's what most MSPs do. They start out solo, shop with zero and side note, with zero nest egg, they're like, oh, I can start this super cheap. Got a guy literally that, that messaged me last night, he's like, hey, I'm doing this on the side for my full time job. Okay, first of all, in today's world you better have like 50k to start out because you have to have all the right stuff. You also should have kind of the right people. So if I was going to start an MSP right now, I'd have a minimum of $50,000 sitting there in a little bit of a nest egg to have some sales systems and some sales process because realistically we can build this whole thing remotely now. But what's happened is most MSPs start out, they're trading hours for dollars in the initial stages, doing the work themselves. They're like, okay, crap, I need more clients, I need clients. So they underprice it and they do it super cheap. And then they get so much work that because they're cheap that they're like, oh crap, I'm out of time now. I'm like completely trading hours for dollars. I need to hire a tech, I need to hire a help desk person. I need to hire somebody to help me. But they aren't charging enough. So they either look for crappy techs because they can't afford it, they look for a halftime tech because they can't afford it, all these other things. And then it just kind of goes around in this giant circle of trading hours for dollars and not having enough money because you never built it on the right building blocks in the first place. So what we do in our seven figure MSP coaching program is we say, okay, let's sell differently, let's sell the right way, let's charge the amount. And by the way, then the 300 per seat equates to. Usually it's not perfect, I'm not going to debate that. But it's out there. And it's probably the average that comes into an interview call with us is $68 per seat is what the average MSP around the world is charging. So we say, let's look at $300 per seat. And this is a, it equates to 80% gross profit margin on top of whatever your costs are. Most MSPs don't track any. So it's a little bit like shooting in the dark, but it's better than nothing is the whole concept and it's moving forward. Let's teach you how to do it the right way then. What we do is help build sales systems. And what Vianney and I really work on, we built this internally out, we try and equate that down to have you guys build sales systems, charge the right amount, so then you can afford as an MSP owner to put in the right pieces to build a setting team, a closing team, all these pieces. What's your, what's your thoughts on it? I don't know if you heard me talk about the Wheel of Death or any of that in the past, but.

Yeah, I, I haven't heard you talk about the, the Wheel of Death. I've talked about the same concept in other industries and I call it the Valley of Death. So it's funny that we literally have the same thing, but it's, it's, it's.

Exactly the same concept. It's working yourself into the ground and you can't afford anything. So it's just like this, we're just going, we're the, or the hamster on the wheel, right? Just round, right?

Exactly that. And it's, it's, it's really funny. I mean, I've experienced this, you've experienced this. Probably everyone listening in this call has been in the Wheel of Death or the Value of Death at some point in their life. That's why we became aware of this concept. And the only way out of it that I know is that first we have to Fix the actual offer and the price, that's the number one thing. If we don't have the cash flow to be able to do other things, like, what's the point for me personally, what's the point of actually doing this if you don't get that upside of it right? You're just replacing.

Just so you know, the average msp, they're like, oh, I need to change my stack, I need to pull things out of the stack. And this is a really dangerous thing, guys, because the average MSP is like, okay, I got to pull some things out to make this cheap, make it cost less. When in reality in today's market, or again, Q4, 20, 23, you have to provide cyber security for your clients, period. Which means your costs are going to go up. So unless you know how to actively position and sell this, just like Vianney just said, your costs instead of going backwards are going to go up and you don't know how to sell the. So your opportunity that you sit on right now to make more money, like this industry is the best it's ever been to make money. So you're actually effectively, if you don't do it right, you're going to go backwards. And here's the other factor, because I get a lot of people that are like, oh, I'm a crappy tech. If I'm a crappy MSP, I'm a mean MSP. I'm scamming my clients. If I charge $300 per se, here's my equivalent for this. And I want anybody that's listening to think about this. You can tell I'm passionate about this one. Beyond. I was at it Nation last week and I stood in front of my room and I said, everybody in the room raised their hands and I made everyone in the room. I had 100 plus people in that room. I made them all raise their hands and I said, hey, if I gave you guys unlimited budget at every client, would you put in the good, the better, or the best? I said, who would put in the best? Everybody had their hands up. I said, who would put in the least? They all lowered their hands. So that means, you know, as a tech, you should be doing more in today's market. We should be doing cybersecurity. We should be doing full help desk. We should be doing odds. We should be doing the best. So why haven't we? Because we don't know how to sell and we don't know how to position enough leads in front of our clients. That's what we do in our whole coaching program is we help you to do that. And then the other problem with it is they're not in a place where they know how to build a sales team because they think they have to do all the closing. They think they have to do all the stuff. And you can't build a business only on. And this is where I want to come into this. You can't build a business only on referral. This has to be a purposeful system for driving leads into your company.

For sure. I think just, just. Yeah, I mean, absolutely spot on. I just wanted to add to that too. I mean, the reason that most people that I've spoken to, even, even in my year in MSP land, the reason that people don't offer the best is because they're scared of offering it. And the reason they're scared of offering it is that you don't have the sales process to confidently offer it to the place where it closes. So that's, that's the first thing and every single client I've ever had, whether it's an msp, whether it's in high ticket coaching, whether it's an agency, we always talk about offer first. That's the number one thing. And after that you're right, it's about leads. So we go offer and then leads, which is where we, where we talk about systems, where we talk about sales team stuff like that.

Yeah.

And then the third piece of that is then time.

Well, and I think, you know, so many MSPs do not spend enough time generating leads, networking, generating traffic, doing all the things they should be doing that they come down to it and it's like slim pickings. You're like, oh, okay, I only got one lead this month. I'll guess I'll go, I got to do whatever I can to close it versus you know what I mean? Think about how many leads that you and I are working on generating into our sales team we're dealing with. Like I'm sitting here, let me just look at teams here. In the last 30 minutes, we had two meetings booked. Like we're actively seeing 5 to 10 to 15 meetings booked in ARC. Now I understand that's extreme for MSP Land, but what if you had 15 booked a month? What if you had 20 book to month? If you put the right systems in place, you can do it. And to give you an idea, my last year in 2015, so let's just say 2015, January through June, when I sold the company mid July, we were averaging about 40 new meetings per month. And out of that, 40 meetings about, I'd say 20 were qualified. Like actually the FTAs would go somewhere and about 8, 8 to 12 turned into actual presentations to where we did a cyber security. And we didn't do cyber security risk assessments back then, but to where we actually did a network assessment. And we took it all the way to the closing table and out of that we closed. Two to four sales is a numbers game. So if you only have one lead per month, the chances of you closing it are going to be minimal unless you come. And this is where you get into this trouble of like, okay, how can I close this deal? What do I have to do to close this deal? And you become the desperate one versus if you do the right stuff, you can be the one that dictates the path, you can be the one that dictates the package, you can be the one that dictates the price. Wow. Ppp. That was pretty good right there.

I like that.

Yeah.

You do this for a living, do you? But I just want to jump in. I think it's, you know, there's a, there's a reality check moment that I think is really important. And I've done this exercise with many, many people in the past. But say you are at, for the sake of pulling out any numbers, you're at 15k a month at the moment, right. And say your aim is to get to 45k a month. You know, that would be a great number. I'd have more freedom. I do all this stuff and then we sit down a week and we actually have a look at, well, how many leads are you getting per month right now? And say your number's five, right. And you might close 0.5 of them a month or whatever's going on. So you're on average taking on six clients a year. We have to ask ourselves, with what you're charging currently, how many years of this do you need to do to get to your target? And when you actually think about it, oftentimes when you do the maths, it's 8 years, 9 years, 10 years. Assuming no one ever leaves you. Right. Assuming all clients stick forever.

Yeah.

So we have to actually, when we have a look at where we are and where we want to go, we have to actually extrapolate this and do the math and look at what needs to be done. Because otherwise we're just living in la la land. Right. And we're just, we're just kidding ourselves.

Well said. On the living in la la land. Because and here's the thing on this, guys, and I want, I want everybody to think about this. How much in reality are you living in sales LA la land? Most msps, I'm going to tell you, I'm gonna say 95 plus are living in LA LA Land because they have, first of all, they don't know their numbers. They put zero effort into all this stuff. And it's literally just like the Wild west crapshoot. Like, nobody has any idea what they're going to do. And it's always. And I actually call it growth by accident. It comes down to this. Okay, I grew a little bit, but there really wasn't a plan. It really wasn't a system. Versus, I will tell you, about a month ago, I sat down with, with my. I have a fractional CRO in our company. We sat down Vianney. I actively planned out, you know, this. I planned out, here's what I want. Here's what our new member goal is going to be for 2024. I told the team, look at the systems we have now. Do you have any doubt? We've never talked about this. Do you have any doubt that we're going to hit those goals based on our. All the stuff that we're building? No, it's crazy. Like, once you actually, like, here's my goal, here's my plan, here's the things I'm going to put in place and I actively encourage my people and I enable them to succeed. Now, I'm not doing any closing, I'm not doing any prospecting, but I've empowered my team to do that.

Yeah.

I can't tell you how important it is to, to set goals, have a system, have a process and say, here's what we're going to do to get there. Here's. Here's the numbers. And once you enable yourself as a leader to do that and be. Hon, you've probably seen me grow a lot in the last six, six to nine to 12 months together, right? Because it's like realizing that you can do this, empowering the people around you and not being a control freak. There's one thing I'm not. I'm not a control freak. Right. I'm probably the opposite. Like, the honey's gonna be like, can you please put some effort into this? It's not like, lack of effort. It's more a matter of like. And I'm like, what did I tell you? I'm like, hey, it's your show. You. It's your show, man. I'm. I'm hiring you to be a superstar.

Well, well, this is it. And I can, you know, speaking for I, I can speak from, from two different perspectives here, which is interesting. I can speak from, from the people, the person that's leading a team, but also from the person that's being, Being led.

Right.

Because I sit between you and the sales guys. And so what's really cool, when the CEO or whoever's leading goes, okay, our goal is X, you can say, okay, cool. Well, based on the numbers that we have, if you're actually measuring, which you should be, please, please, please, for the love of God, measure your sales stats. Because if you do, then you can actually say, well, if this is our aim, we know we have a 70% sharp rate, so we need to actually book this many calls. We know we have a 20% close rate, so that means we have to book this many calls. We like you can extrapolate it all the way through and you get to a final number and you say, if our aim for next year is X, that means we have to book Y calls per month to on average, we will definitely hit this goal. And the thing that's really cool about it is that once you have a goal number for lead generation, now it's about going wide and thinking about, great, what systems do I need to make this happen? What staff do I need to make this happen? What are the tangible steps? And it turns from la la land, which is, I have an amazing idea. Wouldn't this be great to what are the facts that need to happen for me to guarantee this result? And that's a really cool place to be. As someone who is building something, Chris, you're obviously building something. I'm a builder by nature, so you enabling me to build within 7 MSP, that's like, that's just what I do. You have to have that specificity in order to be able to build in the first place. And that's a very cool place to be because it gives you confidence and you have a mission that you can actually align.

So, so important. And all the thing that Vianney is talking about here is just like how smart and important it is to actively like. And you're going to hear me say this word a lot, actively work on this stuff, like, how are we actively going to do this versus it being completely passive in your life, oh, I'm going to grow by accident, I'm going to grow this way, blah, blah, blah, I'm going to grow my msp. What's your plan? How are you actively going to do this. And I think it's really important that you realize how critical this stuff is. Like, it's a really big deal. I know it's not comfortable. I know it's not easy. I get it. But at what point are you going to really actively work on this as an msp? I know you're a tech. I get it. I was a tech initially too. Vianney. Do I do any tech work in our company at this? But, like, I don't do shit. Like, not because I don't think I could be good at it, because my time is better spent elsewhere. And I'm better off as a lead generating machine now than tinkering with computers and laptops and phones and all this stuff. I have a team for that. And I understand small pieces and all these different things. And some guys are going to be sitting there like, oh, I'm too small for that. No, it all starts somewhere. My very first hire in 2004, I hired a help desk guy and I stopped, like, literally in my first month in business. No, I didn't have any money for it. But you know what I did is I said, okay, I'm gonna go out there and I'm gonna. I'm gonna close a deal. And it's crazy. I didn't know any of the shit. I know now, for the record. But my very first hire was I went out there and I said, okay, I need to have these people stop calling me. They need to go to a help desk. How many of you are still taking owner calls on your personal cell phone because they want to talk to the owner? You're enabling that. Stop doing that. Build a system. Build a machine. Like, that's what if you want to make money. And here's the other thing. I get Vianney, and I want to hear your take on this because I have guys that come to me and they say, I'm very comfortable with the lifestyle I've built. I just want to work 20 hours a week and make this much money. And I'm fine being like. To me, it's like, okay, that's fine. Why did you start a business? Like, that's what you want to do. What's, what's your thoughts on that? I mean, I don't know. I know you kind of work for me at this point, but.

Yeah, no, I mean, it's, it's, it's interesting. I think everyone has life, life goals. I think, honestly, if someone honestly sits there and goes, listen, I just want to make this. I want to 20 hours a week. And this is all I want to sustain. Like if that's all you, you want from life, cool. But honestly, if there is a part of you that thinks that that might be a bit of a cop out. Right. Because you just don't know what you don't know or you're afraid of the next step or whatever.

Yeah.

Then you know there are so many resources out there. And just a quick touch on this. So if you are listening to this, join our faith based me a link below this video. Whether this is on YouTube or Spotify or wherever it is. But also there's actually resources below this video. Chris, do you want to touch upon the sales team cheat sheet?

Yeah. And I actually built a link here on the screen too. So I think it'll be below this video. But I want to make sure that even the people watching this on the web get a chance to see this because they don't always see the landing page but 7 figure MSP link. Remote sales team. Actually let me share, can we do a little quick through on what that is? Because I got it up in PDF here on my screen. Let me just share this really quick here for you. Those of you that are listening on audio. I'm sharing our remote sales team document. And Vianney, I'll just let you do a little quick walkthrough on it. But it's kind of a little mini cheat sheet like Viani said, for building your own remote sales team.

Yeah, I mean in effect this is really what it is. And so let's, let's pre frame this with the steps that I think this is important in. Right. So you've got to think of your client acquisition as, as a funnel. You can't make more clients if you don't have more sets. That's what we talk about. Hiring sales development representatives. That's, that's going to be the first hire and the cheat sheet you can see we're talking about how to actually hire them, what you're looking for, the way that you interview them, the way that you trial them, the way that you compensate and everything else when that is rocking and rolling and you're moving to a stage where you now take a little calls and the business is growing, then the next piece of this is closers.

Right.

So we can remove you from the equation and buy your time back the way that Chris says. So again this is about how to search that talent, how to interview them, how, how to trial them and how to comp them. If you just scroll down for Me, Chris.

Oh, there we go. Sorry.

A hugely important piece of this is how do you actually manage them? Because it won't be enough just to hire them and then expect them to stay forever loyal and motivated and everything else. Like no one cares about your business as much as you.

And I will also tell you from personal experience that doesn't work very well. I tried that. I'm for me, I'm not a very good manager. I'm not detail oriented enough. I also know my personal limitations on that. So I had to hire somebody that is really good at it which is the guy that is below me on the screen. Like he's really good at it. All this stuff is what you do. And I want to be clear on this. Look at the setters and closers daily regimens. Right every day. Right every single day.

Every single day. And it's just got to be really clear. We're all human. You know salespeople especially they live off hype. They ride that flow, they, they ride the motivation. They are people who need to be checked in with it every single day and so but they also need to know they need to be held accountable. These are my top priorities every day. These are the end of day report KPIs that I have to hand into my team. This is what I'm responsible for. And you have to have a flow in the actual communication as a leader for the team team itself. And then if you just scroll down one more thing I want to add.

To this really quick. I do think it's harder to do this early and gets easier as you get a bigger team. Like we got a pretty big team now. We got what like probably 10 people on your group daily start a day, give or take. Much easier with 10 versus 1.

Yeah, I think that yeah for sure this is true. And so these are just things that as you grow you will get better at. To be fair if you're doing this for the first time you don't want a team of 10, right. You want to be able to as you're moving forward. But so really crucial things, I'm just going to put, put them out there for you guys listening. Remember to download this is going to be available below this, this audio or video wherever you are you are consuming this. For the setters, what we call setters which is really a sales development representative, someone who creates selling opportunities. Here are some things that you want to track daily. How many reach outs they're doing, how many conversations are they having, how many call offers are they making, how many Discovery calls that they booked. If they're doing like a mini discovery piece and how many sales calls have they booked? The reason we want to do this is again, if we're being goal orientated and we extrapolated all the way back and we have our numbers, we can say, well, we need to book X amount of calls per month. I know that we will do that if we do Y amount of reach outs per day. So you can guarantee your result if you know your numbers. And for the closes, it's the same thing again. We want to have a look at how many sales calls have you taken, how many offers have you made, what, what's the show up rate, follow ups, book closes, cash collected, and then revenue. The reason is again, we can say, well, if we know the numbers then we can per, we can perfectly predict or pretty well predict going forwards what we need to have happen to actually hit.

And I will tell you guys, it freaking works like across the board. Not only. And I know because I'm going to get a message from somebody's like, oh, Chris, your agency is different than an msp. We're putting this in and replicating this down the line for MSPs. Not only local MSPs, but we have MSPs that are actively saying, okay, I got a system now that I can generate appointments. And just like we talked about the talent pool being bigger if you're fully remote. The client pool is much bigger if you're fully remote. And most importantly, you can then start to really niche focus. You can hit. Think about how many accounting firms are in your local area. Okay, well now take that and make it 50 states or all of 50 states in Canada or all of 50, like there's no reason. And if there's one thing that Covid really did that empowers all of this, it's that your prospect is used to being on Zoom. They're used to being on teams.

Now.

In fact, Jordan Belfort was on our stage at our Orlando show a couple weeks ago and somebody came up during the Q A. We did a little fireside chat with me and Jordan and they said, in fact it was Dan Defay, who's now in 15, 16 states. He said, how much of this do I need to do in person? And he's like, I don't really know your business, but none of it. He was almost like bewildered by the question because the thought of being forced to do stuff in person. And he actively said if there's one. He even said, if there's one thing that Covid really did is it enables all your prospects to work remotely. Everybody is fine with it. Now it is the rules in your head that are blocking you.

Yeah, I think I just want to do a little, a little mindset piece on this. I think this is a really cool exercise. So when you want to achieve something, feel free to set yourself some limitations around how you are willing to achieve it. Because what happens is that you become aware of other ways of doing things that you haven't been aware of before. So for example, I'm not saying you have to do this, but this would be an exercise. I want to make sales, but I don't want to see anyone in person just do this as an exercise. And what will happen is that if you set up those limits, you will think about, well, I could be doing this, I could be doing that. There are ways to do all these things. So when you have a goal, it's so easy to get caught in. Well, this is what everyone's doing. This is the stream, this is how it's done or whatever. But the reality of things are that there's tons of ways to get stuff done.

Yeah. And I think so much of this, and I will tell you guys this, I'm going to say this again, so much of this is internal rules, internal limiting beliefs, internal mindset stuff and also traditional beliefs of what the MSP industry is. This industry has changed. It is evolving. You need to evolve with it. There is more money to be made in this industry than I've ever seen before. Vianni comes in here and he's like, holy crap, these guys have a gold mine. And we see MSPs that are sitting on the side being like, oh, I can't get anybody to meet with me. They only want to, they only want to talk about me putting firewalls in. That is all in your head. So build a sales team, build a system, teach yourself how to be a sales leader. If you need help with that, that is what we do in our seven figure MSP coaching program. It is a hundred percent, totally doable across the board. Vianney, what's your, what's your take on any of that? So we've not talked about any of this stuff, but it's so important for these.

No, I mean, yeah, it'll. It, it all makes perfect sense. There's gonna be a link for all of these things below. If you want to book a call, join our Facebook with the resources. All that stuff is going to be below this. But just, you know, don't get stuck in the dogma of this is how it's done. Borrow from other industries, look at systems, look at how can I be more effective at doing this thing that's currently really manual is taking a lot of time and chances are just by thinking that way you will likely come up with a solution of how you can get faster. Just this week we built out some really cool systems that are saving me personally about five hours a week, which is great. And that happened because who's.

How do we cut down your pay?

That is part of my value to this company.

I watched the automation like some of the, like some of the stuff we're doing with the teams automations and all these other systems that are happening. It's enabled you to be, it's empowering you to be a better leader.

Right. And, and when I say it saved me five hours a week just for you guys listening, I'm not saying these are five hours that I'm sitting at the beach. I'm saying I can do higher impact things in those five hours.

You're buying your time back, right? That's exactly. So it's. I just want to beat that home a little bit. Again, there's going to be some strategy call stuff below in the video but at the very least you can go to 7Figuremsp.com and book a call right from there. You got to fill out an application and some other stuff if you're interested in working with us. But most importantly, I want you to be able to take this, this giveaway that we had today for our sales team and I'm going to show that one more time. 7FigureMSP link remote sales team all one word. For anybody listening on the audio, there also should be resources that you can download on. I just wanted to kind of add it for a little bit of redundancy for the people, but get started on it. If you have questions, feel free to reach out to us. Vianni's also available Vianney if you charge for sales calls. I'm taking all the money just for the record.

Yeah, that's fine. That's all right.

Okay, so a lot of stuff here. We're 45 minutes deep in this today. I want to probably cut this off because the episode's getting a little bit long but really good content. And most importantly you guys that are listening, belief systems are either your power or your limiter is what I will tell you like. So you're either stuck back in where you're at because of your limiting beliefs or you're hitting the stars and all these different Things. Stars and moon and all this stuff. So they're kind of crappy, you know, mindset stuff. But bottom line is, there's no limitations if you believe that you can get wherever you want. So beyond any. Any parting words from you on this today, really great episode, I mean, I.

Would just say just listen to Chris and do the thing. I've been. Honestly, I've seen a lot of coaching programs in my time. I've had a lot of clients that are. That are teaching businesses how to grow. I'm not just saying this because I'm the VP of sales. I've never seen a program that works as well as this. And even if you just join the Facebook group and you communicate with people there, it's super engaged. People are helping each other. It's phenomenal.

Even if you just watch our webinars and actually execute, we have people come in, they're like, I've been doing your stuff. I've been listening. I've seen. It's the discipline that they lack. It's the. And it's for the record, I've lost £40 in the last two years because, yes, I know how to work out. Yes, I know how to eat right. But I need discipline and accountability. So I have a personal trainer and health coach that's made all the difference in the last 12 months. So coaching is key.

Yeah. I've got one last thing. I think. I think I want to say. I think that and this is sales specific or maybe action specific as a. As a business owner or someone who's building something. Just do the thing. Worst case scenario, you still won't get that client paying you what you want to be paid. Like, it's still the same outcome whether you do it and get a no or whether you don't do it. It's literally the same. There is no downside to trying. Yeah, right. So just execute on this stuff. It does work. And listen to what Chris Wiser says. Such.

Other than that last part, it's such. Such good advice. I mean, but that paralysis by analysis is a real problem, and you just got to do the thing. I totally agree. All right, Viani, great job today. I mean, this is flew by. We got 45, 47 minutes of recording here. That just flew by. Amazing content. If you guys need anything from us, we'll always be here.7Figuremsp.com. You can also reach out. To be honest, you can reach out to me. All of our stuff's below. Really enjoy you listening and watching our building a profitable MSP podcast. Bianni Wilson. Thanks so much for being with us today. My name is Chris Weiser. We'll see you guys next time.

Bye.