Should you be cold calling? Is there is a better way to get MSP clients?
4 Jun 2024 · 4 min
Cold calling works for MSPs if you lead with value, not the sale. Invite prospects to events or webinars instead of pitching. Assign clear ownership for dialing and list-building, and dial daily. Response rates are low, so volume matters.
Questions this episode answers
About 15% (at the highest).
About 3–5%.
10 first-time appointments/month → 2–3 CSRAs → 1 new client.
Should you be cold calling? So if you are an msp, you may be asking yourself, should you be actually spending your time calling cold prospects? Well, the answer may surprise you. So fun fact here at 7Figure MSP, we actually do teach our clients to make cold calls. However, it is very, very important that you are doing it in an effective way that gives prospects a reason to want to talk to you. Okay? So whenever you make your cold calls, there's a few important things that you need to remember. Number one, the first thing that we do not want to do is we do not want to lead assuming the sale. Okay? So we do not want to lead our cold calls assuming the sale. So assuming that they will become our client, assuming that they will say yes, assuming that they will sign off on a cybersecurity risk assessment instead, we want to go into our cold calls, we with a very valuable ask. So does this relate to you? Maybe you've made a call before and you get the gatekeeper on the phone and you say, hey, would you like to set up a 15 minute appointment with our sales team? Or hey, would you like to set up a coffee chat with our chief security officer? And what are you going to get nine times out of 10a. No, no thank you. Do not call me again. Please don't call me back. Okay? So we want to make sure that we are not assuming the close we go into the call, leading with value. So my typical Recommendation for our MSPs is to go into the calls and say, hey, this is Cyber Joe calling from ABC Tech. We're actually putting on the cybersecurity briefing this Thursday. We're going to be talking to local CPAs on how to protect your business from hackers and what's going on with the most current breach that happened in the XYZ area. Have you heard about that? Okay, no worries. Here's what we're going to do. I'll go ahead and lock you down, I'll go and put you into the calendar, we'll send you over the invite, I will personally send it over to you and then I'll call you the morning of just to confirm your attendance. Does that sound good to you? Okay, great. So nowhere in that conversation did I ask for someone to get on a one on one coffee chat with me. Nowhere did I ask, oh, do you have an IT department? Can we replace your. Your IT guy? I'm not assuming the sell. Okay? So therefore I'm leading with value and I'm moving people into the direction that I want them to Go in. Which is just to the very next yes. All I need is the very next yes. Okay. Number two, we want to make sure that we have very tight responsibilities on who is responsible for cold calls. Yes. But also who's responsible for your list building. So this is the process of actually getting the prospects onto a list for your dialing team. So this could be you, it could be a va, it could be a outbound caller. Okay. And then who's going to be responsible for reviewing those calls? So this is something that you can really map out very quickly. It doesn't need to take long. You just have to decide who's going to own this process. Okay. And last but not least, this one's going to blow your mind. But quantity. So are you making enough cold calls? Even the most successful outbound call calling campaigns in the world are only averaging 15% at the highest. Okay. So on average, you're going to see anywhere between 3 to 5% in the MSP space. Okay, so quantity is the name of the game here. So for example, if you're making 100 outbound calls in a day, you get 50 answers. So you actually get 50 people on a phone call. If you can get five yeses that day, I'm happy with that. If you can get five people to say yes, I want to attend your cybersecurity briefing. Yes, I want to attend your next webinar. Great, that's a success. Do it again tomorrow. Do that again every single day for a week. Now you've got 25 yeses. Okay. And in general, the rule of thumb is 10 first time appointments a month will lead to 2 to 3 CSRAs will lead to one new client. How many cold calls will you make today?
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