The Roadmap To Hiring Your First Salesperson

What is up, guys? Hope you guys are having a fantastic day. It's good to see you, Michelle. Michelle, what's up? Hey. Hey.

It's another beautiful summer day in Park City and my first day back from vacation, so I'm pretty excited.

That's pretty fun. Yeah. You are in a beautiful area. I'm actually, I was on a podcast this morning and the guy said, where are you, Heaven? And I said, no, it's Iowa. I'm in Iowa. We're using Field of Dreams all, all this week, so that's what we're doing. So I'm in central Iowa, just south, south of des moines, like 4, 45 minutes or so, so. All right, so we got a great, great, great webcast for you guys today. Why don't you do me and Michelle a favor? Michelle is in Park City, Utah. I'm in Knoxville, Iowa. Why don't you put in the chat where you guys are joining us from today? That would be awesome. So we can kind of get a good group of people from the room. It'd be good to see you guys and see where you're all calling from. Michelle, what are we going to. I'm going to. I got my slides ready to share here. Any highlights we want to give everybody while we get and kind of getting everybody in here with us.

Yeah. So I think what's really important about today's training and webinar is how to prevent the most common mistakes that every single business owner makes, actually, regardless of industry. When hiring your first sales professional to help you in your business, your closer, your salesperson who's going to help you grow your msp, it's really easy to make these mistakes. And so we're just going to save people a lot of time and a lot of money and a lot of stress. So just make sure that you are listening, paying attention, taking notes. And if you already have a salesperson that's in your business but something feels off, you're totally going to benefit from today as well. So stick around.

Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the things that I'm going to say out of the box, I have a lot of experience with this on the MSP side because I was the founder led sales model for, I don't know, probably 10 to 12 years before I started hiring other people on my team. And now I'm, you know, full blown. I do no actual front level sales, but we manage. So it's kind of like taking up that next level. And Michelle runs our whole sales team here at seven figures. So it's, it's a really good one, two punch for you guys. And if you're watching live with us, we'd love to see you. Please comment, please participate. If you're watching on the recording, pay attention, pause, take notes, do the right things. You guys that are with us live, please go back. Also go back and watch the recording because it's a lot of stuff that Michelle and I are going to talk about today. I'm going to kind of set the stage with kind of the MSP space and where we're sitting and then we're going to come back in a few minutes. Michelle's going to present and we're going to talk about all the details on hiring your first salesperson. So I'm going to share my screen. We good? Michelle, can you see everything? We good to go. Oh, and by the way, I am. What's pretty cool actually, really quick before we get started, what's pretty cool about my background here that I'm working on is I have like a weird kind of like behind me retro look. I'm actually sitting in a car shop. Oh, that's cool. Old school cars and stuff. It's kind of fun. At my friend Alex house in, in Iowa. So the true work from anywhere mindset got webinars, you got stuff going on. You got to do what you got to do. So it is what it is. So. All right, here, my screen here, get all my stuff rolling. Let me just get that up here. Okay, so if you guys don't know who I am and Michelle, you want to man the chat for me as we go here.

Yes.

If we got any questions, don't hesitate to chime in as we go here and then we'll. We're just limited on screens and all the different stuff. Stuff we got going on here. So. Okay, so a couple things for you guys out of the box. First of all, my promise to you, Michelle and I are going to show you how to hire your first or maybe your next MSP salesperson. And what's key about this? And I, I have a lot of personal failures around this whole thing. Making sure that you know how to manage these people. Because one of the big things I see the MSP owner do is they're like, I want to do tech, do sales plop. And they just pop somebody in that role and expect them to excel. Still your show, they have to be managed and it's really, really important. It doesn't necessarily have to be you that manages it. Case in point, I don't necessarily manage it anymore. I have a head of revenue. But you have to empower that person to do their job. You have to do all this other stuff and then you have to kind of let them cook. That's what's really key about this, right? So we're going to be sharing real skills, real strategy today that we are using and then we're also training our seven figure MSP elite members on how to use as well. That'll help you to build and start or maybe start then build your own sales team out of the box. So get ready to take notes, take action. We got a couple prizes for you guys today. Now there's a couple keys with this. We've definitely been seeing the bots and the scammers ramping up. Michelle, you and I were talking about that this morning, how we're seeing bots and scammers kind of ramping up on the backside. So we are going to give prizes away today. One winner is going to get a 100Amazon gift card and a second winner is going to get a 75Amazon gift card. But you have to be qualified, you have to be real and you have to be willing to prove that you are an msp. Because we've had a bunch recently that's been kind of weird stuff, wonky stuff, chat, GPT generated things, bots, AI guys, all kinds of different stuff. Also we're going to be giving this away between halfway and three quarters away to the end. So you have to stay, attend, stay here and you have to participate as we go. Which brings me, excuse me. Which brings me to the please pay attention piece. That means no tickets, no client calls, no distractions. I know this stuff's hard. I know you got a lot of stuff going on in your life, in your business. You're maybe a single or a two or three person msp. But if you're serious about changing your life, please pay attention to what we're talking about. These things all matter and they all make a big difference. And it's important. Kind of the rule of, kind of thumb that I have around, this is how you do anything, is how you do everything. So if you can't commit to this, how can you commit to yourself and hold. If you can't hold yourself accountable to watch a one hour or one and a half hour webinar, how are you going to hold yourself accountable to do all this other stuff as well? You're probably not. So be honest with yourself, hold yourself accountable and let's go. We have coming up literally next week, this is probably a little bit too late for you guys. But if you're in the Denver area or if you're bored and want to come up there next week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, August 13th, 14th, 15th, we will be in Denver, Colorado at the Brown Palace. This is an amazing venue, an amazing event. Our Mile Heart, Our Mile High MRR Q3W MRR live training event. We have me, Michelle, Mr. Penn Gillette is going to be there from Penn and Teller, we got Cindy Phillips, we got Lindsay Badillo, Ryan o', Hara, all of our sponsors and vendor partners are all going to be there. So we'd love to have you. You can still go to that. Michelle, you want to drop a 7 figure MSP events.com URL in there for me?

And, and also you can grab your virtual ticket as well if you cannot get there and you still want to stream in. So I think that's an important thing that we bring up since we're a bit. We're getting pretty close to the date.

Yep, absolutely. So Mile High MRR next week at 7 figure MSP events.com we'd love to see you live or on the virtual ticket. I totally forgot about the virtual ticket. So thank you for throwing that in there. If you can't come to either of those or can't watch that, you should be able have time to even watch for three full days next week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. We have our Q4 event coming up that's going to be basically opened up live next week as we're in Denver. Our San Antonio event is October 22nd, 23rd, 24th. We got some amazing stuff there. Our keynote speaker for that event is Mr. Dan Martell from the book Buy back your time. So really he's gonna be doing a full workshop. Super excited about him. He just started following me on TikTok literally yesterday. Michelle, that was pretty cool.

Oh, that's exciting.

And I don't even put anything on TikTok, so I don't even know. I haven't gotten there yet. I haven't gotten that far. But Dan started following me on TikTok so that's kind of cool. But that is going to be our next.

He's preparing for San Antonio. Let's know what you're talking about.

I love it. I love it. If you guys notice the difference here. Actually, we kind of don't put that in here. But the mindset of Our Mile High MRR event is all about scaling your operations, scaling your MSP business. We whereas Q4 is called mindset Reset. So it's about helping you as a business owner. And this is going to be literally, it's kind of be the Chris and Michelle show there in Q4 because we are very much mindset people. We're focused on sales, we're focused on cash flow, we're focused on revenue. All these different things to help get your brain right. Also going to have Dan Martell. They're going to be talking about buying your time back, all these different things. So please try and make it to one of our live events. If you cannot make it, please come virtually. We would love to have you. It's awesome stuff. Michelle, throw that in the link or threw that in the chat for you guys@7figuremspevents.com so you heard me mention some of our coaches. There's a couple of different people that we have on the team. Michelle is actually not a coach. She's, you know, she kind of is on the outside because we do this kind of stuff all the time. But she's coaching our internal team, running sales internally, doing all these different things. This is our public facing MSP coaching team. You got me. We have Cindy Phillips who's our VP of sales coaching. We have Lindsay Video who's our VP of marketing coaching. And we have Ryan o' Hara who's our VP of member services. So these, this whole team here and we're expanding this all the time. This team runs the run your plate side of seven figure msp, helping you guys double your cash flow, double your revenue, getting your higher ticket items in place, going back and operationalizing and focusing on the marketing side of your business. These are our internal coaches, so please pay attention to them when they're speaking. We got some amazing stuff and we do webinars. All of us do webinars every single quarter. So please pay attention to all that. I usually am on, but I don't do a whole lot of coaching anymore, which you're going to actually get a little bit of dose of right now. So, Michelle, before I get rolling after that, anything else we want to talk about here? Anything from the comments? Any. Any chat?

Nope. And we got people excited in the chat. We've got Seattle, we have San Juan, Johannesburg, South Africa, New Jersey, Chicagoland, everywhere. So I always love it. What a global poll we have. I think it's so fun to see. So I'm excited to jump in.

Yeah, it's pretty cool. Pretty cool. Okay, guys, I'm gonna get rolling into my side of this and then we're bring back Michelle in a few minutes here and Michelle, just make sure you got your slides ready when you're ready to go here. She's going to add them to the bottom. We're in stream yards. It's a little bit different than just like zoom sharing your screen and all that. We got a lot of stuff rolling around, so I'm gonna get rolling. So you heard me mention earlier about doubling your mrr, doubling your cash flow. That's one of the things that seven figure MSP talks about a lot. And I actually did a podcast recording with Kevin Lancaster from Channel Program literally this morning. And one of the things that we were talking about, it's very interesting because Kevin and I have never actually talked about that personally, but our views on this whole thing were so aligned, it was really, really cool. If you guys don't know who Kevin is, Kevin was, was the founder of ID Agent, which was a phishing dark web firm for a while that got acquired a few years ago. And they have since him and Matt Solomon have partnered on a company called Channel Program. And it was very interesting to hear Kevin's mindset around this. And I said out loud on the podcast that I believe this is the best opportunity, the best time that the MSP industry has ever seen. And he's like, oh my word, you are so accurate. You're so right. Because there's so much money to be made. Because the bottom line is things have changed. When I talk about that, what does that mean? Things have changed. And I want you guys to really take this to heart and really understand how big of a deal this is. So think about the mindset of your decision maker at your number one client or maybe your top five clients or, you know, depending on what you have, but your client base overall, how do they think about technology? What do they think MSP is for? What do they think an IT company is for? For the most part they've thought of the MSP industry as, and they don't necessarily know MSPs, but they see you as your, as their computer person, as their IT person, IT shop or you know, helper guy or whatever. There's all those different ones out there, right? But they see IT or MSP or whatever we service with ms, people that install things when I need them new installed and I need things fixed technology related as fast as possible. And that's really, for the most part where most of your clients stop. That's their mindset around it all. So they see that whole thing is a commodity that they only pay x4 and they maybe have to deal with or maybe they can penny pinch around it, they can make it as cheap as possible because it's just a cost and costs are a nuisance and they don't have to deal with it. But in reality, you think about where we sit. Businesses are not prepared for what they're for. Today's market, when I say that, what am I talking about? They're not prepared. The bottom line is your clients are going to get hacked. They don't understand. Now I understand we're probably moving further down the line. It's getting a little bit better. A little bit better, a little bit better. They're understanding more. But still, for the most part, when it comes down to signing on the bottom line for I'm going to spend more money on it, they don't get it. They don't realize this until it's maybe too late most of the time because they still treat IT support like a bargain basement service. This is something I can go cheap on. I don't have to worry about doing this higher level stuff because even if I have my IT guy, he'll just fix it or I'm covered. I got my stuff's in the cloud. How many times, you know, you guys think about this that are paying attention to this? How many times have we heard a medical client or a dental client or a legal client saying, oh, oh, my stuff's in the cloud. I'm fine, I'm good. They don't understand that the stuff's only. They don't get it. They don't, they don't understand cyber security because your clients fully believe and they think you are doing everything they need for cyber security. They don't see the difference. So how do we convey a difference to them? First of all, we have to educate them like crazy. You have to eat, sleep, breathe cyber security. You have to eat, sleep, breathe tech. But not just tech. It's got to be the security focus. You're going to get hacked side of it. So you have to sell. Oops, I clicked a couple buttons there. You have to sell and lead with cyber security. So your entire message in your MSP has to completely change. It can't be. We are your break, fix it, shop. It can't be. We manage your IT so you can manage your business. It has to be. You're going to get hacked. What's your plan? You're going to get hacked with me. How are you going to recover? There's no IT guy in the world that can stop all the hacks. What's your plan when you have a Breach, that's the kind of language you need. I'm probably being a little extreme there, but that's the kind of language and the kind of culture you have to have around cyber security and hacking and making sure your clients get it. It's kind of like right now what the MSP is kind of doing is we're kind of letting our are teenagers drive around on the street with no seat belt and no speed limit. Not everything. What was that? I didn't hear all that.

I said it sounds fun. I'm just kidding.

Well it sounds super fun. Until the bad stuff happens, right? So not everybody's going to get in an accident. Not everybody's going to have a problem. But I'll tell you what, when the accidents happen with no seat belt, no speed limit, probably not going to be real pretty, Right?

Right.

I want you guys to think about that. Kind of a little rough analogy, but it kind of works actually. I like it. And so it's really important that you lead and actively sell. When I say lead, it's gotta be the first thing you're talking about when you get up in the morning. It's got to be the last thing you talk about when you're going to bed. Every single client should understand they're going to get hacked, breach compromised because you they have a piece of software you can't control. I don't care who you are, can't control that piece of software. You know what it is, Michelle? Do you know the answer to that question? We've never talked about this. That piece of software, every single, the piece of software that every single business has that they can't control. People peep good job for a non cyber security deal that is nail absolutely spot on. They can't control the people. People get social engine. Where do the hackers start? They all start that. So how do you as the MSP solve this? Now this is a small taste of what we do inside of our elite coaching program. But I want you to think of everything I'm going to tell you right now and then put it on severe steroids. And that's what we give you. Okay? So first of all, no more good, better or best. Now I understand you're going to have clients that can't afford everything you do. So we basically have two factors now and I want you to think of it this way. When you walk into every client, if you, I want you to think this way. Had unlimited budget at every single client, how would we support them? A good, a better or best? Every IT person in the world is like, well, I'd put in the best. So why have we been allow allowing good and better? Well, the client doesn't want to pay that. That's fine. I'm still fine with all of that. But it is our job now to put the best out there. Here's what you should have, Mr. Client. I just first of all, actually we lead with cyber security, we lead with education, we lead with all these things, showing them all the stuff they should be doing, making sure they understand. And then we say, here's what our plan offers all these services. Do you agree that you should have that? Yes. Do you agree that in all cases of the world I understand we maybe didn't have the money before, but we should budget for this? Yes, we understand that. Okay, then let's move down that path and getting them to understand that that is our job as salespeople now. So one plan, full stack. Now I understand like I said, not everybody can afford this. Not everybody budgets for this, not everybody understands it. So we offer the best and let them see sign off on having less. So when you have a breach, Mr. Client, you can sit there as the MSP and be like, ah, guys, I told you so. I'm not going to be held liable. I'm also not going to be the guy holding the bag to pay the pickup cleanup bill because that's the other big factors. Because think about this, how who's going to pick up the pieces? You, who's going to pay for that? Most MSP clients are just going to assume it's covered. We have to state that it's not covered. So one plan, offer that best plan and let them scale you back if they have to. But you should go in with the mindset of we have one plan now, everything else is not there. I'm never going to tell you to walk away from cash, I'm never going to tell you to walk away from money. But I'm going to tell you to control your liability. And that's what's really key about this. So you go in the door with a very set plan and then we back down if we have to, making the client responsible. Because why one stack period liability. Because I'm going to tell you right now, you think supply chain hacks, you think about these other things down the pipe. You think about what happens when a client gets hit and let's say million dollars is gone, $200,000 is gone, $50,000 is gone. Who they're going to expect somebody that money just doesn't Vanish and then goes nowhere. We saw a company a couple weeks ago lose their entire payroll, bank account. It was in the millions. What happens? They're going to try and file an insurance plan. Oh, that's why we have insurance. What happens if the insurance company comes back and they're like, well, you should have been doing this, this and this. That's the stuff you got to protect yourself on. Right. Those protections are really key because how will you or your clients refute that charge of gross negligence? If you think about the medical industry, this is exactly why they have malpractice insurance. Also the legal industry, why they have malpractice insurance, it's called gross negligence in IT business land. So you got to be careful on this. And this helps you to put a wedge in between you and your clients. Previous scenarios. Second, on top of that, you absolutely have to do a client discovery risk assessment. We call that a csra, a client cybersecurity risk assessment. CSRA really, really mission critical. This should happen for every existing client, every quarter. This should happen for every new prospect in a paid professional services engagement. This is mission critical. No allowances out of this period. So why would we say that we want to put a full risk assessment in play now? Obviously we want to do everything we always did with gathering data, pain points and tech issues. That is key. And I agree that that's, that's basically what we did before. Maybe find some pain, discover some emotional ties. But here's some really big factors that I want you to be aware of. First of all, we have to know their network better than the hackers. There's no 30 minute quickie scan that is going to go out there and give you the kind of data that you should have that's going to allow you to have this. It just doesn't happen. Most of these hacks are sitting resident for weeks or months before they even move towards compromise. So you have to do that. And then really importantly, and probably the most important thing on this whole thing is you have to show your prospect and your existing client as you're doing your quarterly business reviews, what a hack will really do. They have to understand how severe this is. Michelle, I, I talk about all the time when I do these, these webinars and my talks. You and I are similar in age. We remember when we were kids, I think, I don't know if they still do this or not. I hope they do. But remember when we used to do the fire drills in school, like middle school school, we used to do the fire drills and they pull the alarm. And it was like in my school, when I was a middle schooler, it was like. And everybody'd run outside and we'd all follow our whole evacuation thing. And I know we got some of our staff in the middle of this hurricane that's going on right now. They had to do evacuation drills and all these things as well this week. But you. They didn't do that because they really didn't think that people could evacuate that well. It was to get the mental picture in your head of what the whole incident looks like so people don't panic under pressure. And that's the big factor of it. It's making sure that they understand what that is.

Yeah, we did earthquake drills because I grew up in California, so we had to practice what to do with earthquakes. That was actually more common than the fire drill one. And for that exact same reason.

I've actually never been in an earthquake.

Oh, there I've been in a ton. They're interesting.

I've never even felt that whole thing rumble. Deal. But anyway, as Michelle and Chris talk about earthquakes and tornadoes today, but you guys get the mindset of what we're talking about. That's the whole. That's the whole key here. So I got a little deliverable for you guys off today's webcast. This is our seven figure MSP run the play worksheet. Now, when we call, we say run the play. What we do in this deal that's going through the entire seven figure MSP process, top to bottom. So in this case here, you'd go through and you see step one, list all accounts that have paid you money in the last 12 months. Rank that. Then we do a cyber security risk assessment on them. Present, you know, build a presentation. Now, in our elite program, we have a full sales presentation. We have this entire sales process. All these things are done for you. I shouldn't say done for you. All the, all the proposals and PowerPoint presentations and all that are there as templates. And then we teach you how to present them the right way. That's what's key about this. And then you go in and put this in play by presenting your whole risk findings. What's key about the risk findings? I'm gonna back up one thing here. What's key about the risk findings is making sure that you speak in a language that they can't understand. Now, you don't want to talk super techy. What's really key? Think about your previous maybe network assessment or even walk through. What are we presenting? How Big their hard drives are, how full their hard drives are, what their patch status is, how many, you know, how many programs they have that need patching. These are the things that MSPs oftentimes would put in there or maybe when their last backups were, what their cloud status looks like. All these things that are really irrelevant now. I understand they're important, but does any of that stuff move the needle from for the decision maker towards making them understand risk and what's going to happen when they have a breach? I'm going to go back a couple of slides and I want you to be very conscious of those last two dots. Knowing their network better when the hackers do and then showing them what a hack actually will do to their network. Remember that fire drill or that earthquake drill that Michelle was talking about? These are the things that you have to do to push put in front of your prospects and your decision makers to make sure they understand there is zero amount of tech that is going to make that work. They don't care, they don't even need to know. That's like going and getting your oil change and them telling you, you know, how many CC your engines cylinders are like it doesn't matter to you, just change the damn oil. That's all you really care about, just get it done. That's the stuff that makes a difference. So you highlight your pain points that you, that you found create emotion in need and you have to turn on what we call the risk light bulb. They have to get it. The decision maker sitting across that table has to, they have to be able to say in their head holy crap, so we're going to get hacked and we have to be able to recover and we have to get somebody else to pay the bill. They have to get that. And if they don't get that, you're never going to get real far with them. Now again, I'm not going to tell you everybody's going to do that. But the better you get at sales, the better you get at converting these mindset ideas to them and turning on that risk light bulb. The more you're going to eliminate price. Objection. This is also going to allow you to raise your prices over time. We recommend an 80% gross profit margin on an all inclusive full stack suite product. I want you to be very conscious of that that's around depending on the market you're in. I'm going to give you a baseline starting point, 300 in your currency per seat per month on a 36 month agreement is what we recommend you start at now. What's a seat? Laptop, iPhone right here. I got a tablet. That's a seat for a human being. We manage that whole seat everything all inclusive, we manage it. What should they have? Let's go back to good, better, best. They should have the best, not what's in the stack. Kevin Lancaster, I was talking about him this morning as well. He told me today he is aware of about 30 different full stack options right now with smattering of solutions, smattering of vendors. There's more than one way to make your chocolate cake recipe, but it's various different vendors. Bottom line covering basic managed services, basic cyber security, all inclusive help desk, all inclusive on site labor, all is one fleet, always one flat rate deal. Around 300 per seat on an 80 gross profit margin should be your goal. That's best in class. Okay, I know we're probably gonna have some questions on the stack. More than willing to answer that in the chat as Michelle presents. But let's start to hear from Michelle. Michelle, I'm going to throw your stuff on stage. Look at that. That was so seamless. Great job. I love it. Related to the stack. I'm going to be managing the chat here. I'm going to answer a couple quick questions. Michelle, just to get this really like this question, Josh said full. Do you include projects? Here's how I include projects. Everything existing. Sure. Anything net new, brand new. Mrr. So let's say they want to put a new server in. It's not new. Let's say they want to replace an existing server that's not new. They want to put a new server in that is net new. I said not new or net new. That's confusing. But those things are really key. So think of it that way. Common sense applies. Simple is key. Okay. I had no problems with this over time. Bottom line is everything that is net new should have a long term agreement tied to it. Long term recurring revenue, cash flow, mrr, monthly recurring revenue. It's key. Put everything on a term agreement. Michelle, how do we sell our businesses when we're ready? Everything long term recurring revenue, right? Yes.

100. Oh, I'm sorry.

No, no, it's good. It's okay. It's fine. That's how we. That's double. Double. Personal webinars. You just talk over each other all the time. One last question from Josh. How do you count users? That seat is a user. And you know, I don't call it an endpoint because technically this is an endpoint. Right. Laptops an endpoint. Tablet's an endpoint. I like a seat for a human being. This is their stuff. Right. So. And for the most part, my phone and my tablet, I have an iPad Pro and my workstation are about the same to manage, even though they're. I know there are three endpoints, but they're about the same to manage. So that's how I count it. Still a single user. And then I also count servers, things that I have to manage as endpoints or, sorry, as seats. So common sense applies. Simple is key and presented as a single flat rate deal. How you calculate it really doesn't matter. So don't over and part of the challenge with this whole thing. Michelle, I know you don't come from the MSP industry, but part of the challenge from MSP Land is all the vendors count every single thing. Thing as an endpoint. So it gets confusing because. But I try and make it so it's simple and then present it as a single flat rate to the. To the prospect or the client. And a good rule of thumb is the confused mind doesn't act.

Yep.

So they have to get it and it has to be super clear because if they're confused and they're like, if they got to do that once, like, you're done, probably more than likely. Right. So you want it to be super simple for them and they have to get it part time and seasonal. Here's what I'll tell you on that, Josh. That's pretty damn rare. Out of all my clients, I had like 90 clients in my MSP. I think we had one guy that was part time and seasonal. Then we make it work for them. Don't worry about what every. Don't worry about anomalies. To apply to your standard, just make a standard, make it apply to 95 of your clients and then deal with the anomaly when it comes up. But don't worry about that. In my opinion, it doesn't. It's not going to make. And if you got to work on it, you work on it. You can move it up and down as you go if you have to. Doesn't matter. Okay, Michelle, I'm going to let you keep going. Josh Hammer with questions if you got it. I'll answer it in the chat. Michelle, I'm going to turn off my video for one second because I have to go to the restroom, but I'll be right back.

All right. Awesome. Okay. Hello, everyone. As Chris mentioned, my name is Michelle Terpstra and I am the Chief Revenue Officer at Seven Figure msp. And so I'm here Today to share with you the best practices of starting to create your sales team. What I would love to know in the chat right now is that if it's on your. I'm curious if you're ready to hire in the next 90 days. I would love to know in the chat right now. So Chris will be managing the chat and sharing it here for us. But get those comments going here quickly. I would love to know if this is something that you are planning, planning in the next 90 days. Now if you're not planning it in the next 90 days, I would love to know what's on your mind right now that motivated you to join a webinar about hiring for a salesperson. Really super curious. I love to know what's on people's minds and you know how we can support you. If it's slightly off topic, I can absolutely integrate it into my presentation. So it's really important that you share those things in the chat. All right, let's go ahead and rock and roll. Okay, so the first thing is, is it's really important that we talk about what that what a closer is for today's training. Now, if you've been around the seven figure MSP world for a while, you'll know that we rotate on our sales webinars and our marketing webinars and our VP of marketing coaching is Lindsey Badillo and going to be talking about the closers, the person who takes the appointment, the sales call and closes the client today. If you're curious about how you can get that appointment booked and the type of sales role that does that, which we would call a dialer or an SDR or a bdr, then I really encourage you to go and catch one of Lindsay's recordings. Now, all of our recordings from all of our webinars are exclusively held inside our school community. So I have a couple of my team members in the chat here. If someone could please drop the school community into the chat, that would be amazing. If you're not part of that community yet, please get in there because that's where you're able to catch all of our recordings. Okay, so what does our closer do for our conversation today? Okay, so. So first of all, what closers do, what they do is they run your first time appointments. That's what referred to as an fta. They deliver your cybersecurity risk assessment results. If you remember from what Chris said a little earlier, is we aren't having techs deliver the assessment. We are having salespeople or yourself, the business owner. Until you hire the salesperson delivering the results because that keeps us from tech, talking about tech, and it keeps us in an active selling position. Okay. So that's what the closer can do. And then also the contract process and there's a couple of more things. But as I'm going through this, I would love for you to do some mental calculations of how much time right now you spend doing all of these things and how powerful it is for your business scalability and your free time. If you can get some someone to take these things over for you. I would think that Chris would agree with me is that when you hire your first salesperson as a business owner and you're not having to actually do the sales and the selling anymore, it's a pretty, pretty happy day regardless of how much you love sales. Chris and I both love sales. However, we also really love our time and we want to be scaling our businesses and leading our teams. Right, Right. So it becomes this incredible gift. Once you're able to do this, what else can they do? They can do your QBR process. So our head of member services, VP of member services, Ryan, did a fantastic training about how to use your QBR process as a sales opportunity. So once again, if you have not checked out our school community, hopefully someone put that into the chat. If not, reminder to the team, please put our school community in the chat. That's where you're going to find those recordings. Every interaction with every single interaction with a client or a prospect, I want you to put your sales hat on and this applies. And a lot of what I'm going to speak to applies to you as the business owner and then also when you hand it off to your sales team, because you have to master this and you have to prove your sales process works before anybody's going to come in and be able to help you. So they'll do moves, ads, changes, and also attend professional networking as time permits. And I'm willing to bet that if you added up all the time that you spent on all of these things right now, you should be salvating right now and pretty darn excited about hiring that first salesperson and the ability to hand this off. So if you're excited, let me know in the chat. I would love to hear if this, if the time calculation alone is getting you excited about what this can do. Okay.

Hey, Michelle, Michelle. One thing really quick and one thing I want you guys to be aware of. I know Michelle's going to talk a little bit about this and Michelle, I just want to plant this seed A little bit that I think a lot of MSP owners think in their head I'm going to hire a salesperson and I'm going to dump all lead gen on them. So I want this to be a very specific point that you guys think about. And I know Michelle's going to emphasize this, but I want it to be really, really clear what closes closers do not do. Because there's a difference between a salesperson and a closer. And I think I want you to be very conscious of that.

100 and like, it's almost like you knew what my next slide was going to be. What closers don't do. Oh, I don't think I could hear you if you were talking. I think there's a little bit of a lag either between me or you. I'm not quite sure.

Yeah, yeah, there is a little bit, but it's fine. I'm just muting myself in between because I got some background noise.

So that's all right.

Awesome.

So that's a great lead into to the slide that you see on the screen right now about what closers don't do. Now let me tell you a little bit of a story. I didn't become a chief revenue officer by not pounding the pavement myself. So I went up through the ranks and started as an individual contributor cold calling in a car in a sales territory. And I will tell you, so much has changed. You know, I hate to date myself, but I will in the last 20 years in sales. It's really interesting to me that, you know, the marketing departments have really beefed themselves up to give more opportunities to the sales professionals. Back in the day, I was never given a lead ever. Like it was like, I don't know, go, pull, go to the the book of records of all the companies and get, go try to figure it out. Like you were a hunter, you were a gatherer, you were a closer, you were all the things. And you know, the evolution of what marketing departments have been able to do around just around different types of marketing initiatives, getting sales calls, booked, booking appointment, all these things. I mean, I would have been 10 times more effective and successful had the company supported me in that way back then. And so I really like to share that purpose, perspective because I've been in it, I've seen it when someone's responsible for everything versus when someone is siloed and very specific role into where their strengths are. And I'm just encouraging you as you're listening to this to make sure not to blend the two rules because that person will be less successful, which means your business will not, will not scale the way that you want it to. So closers do not generate traffic or new leads. Okay. Minus the networking. Networking is great. If they have time, they can do it right? So that's like the one caveat. They shouldn't be making cold calls, sending emails, doing outreach, doing the email marketing, your social media marketing, or booking your first time appointments. That all should fall underneath the dialer role and your marketing department. So if you remember I said a few slides ago, go check out one of Lindsay's webinars in our stories School community and you'll be able to educate yourself even further on what this looks like for your business. You want your two departments to work super closely but have very specific roles and KPIs so that you can control your scale. I mean, every single Monday I meet with my sales manager and we review all of the data from the previous week and we break it down between, you know, our SDRs and, and our closers, the show up rates, the close rates and money. It would be very difficult to have a successful sales team. So just keep this in mind that these things need to be separate. And I'm really curious right now in the comment section right now if you're a little bit surprised about this or if this was like, yeah, duh, Michelle, of course they don't. So share your experience in the chat right now. I would love to hear about it. And Chris, if anything cool comes up in the chat that you want to share on the screen, let me know. Fine. All right, so the next thing is, is how do I know I'm ready to hire, hire a closer for my msp. So this is a really important piece of the puzzle and the reason why I want to spend, I'm going to spend a little bit of time on this is that most MSP business owners are really any business owner, regardless of if you love sales or you don't. Once you can, once you understand what a salesperson can do for you time wise and scalability wise and sales wise, you might jump the gun, right? And you don't want to jump the gun because then you're going to have a sour taste in your mouth about what a salesperson can do for you and how, how one can help you. So it's really critical that you pay attention. And I'm about to share my key readiness areas for when you're ready to do this. Okay, so the number one thing is a scalable offer. And Chris already talked about getting Rid of, you know, the three options of a stack and just selling the best. That simplifies the sales process. So much for your potential sales team that you're going to be hiring. So much easier to sell versus like all these custom proposals, they don't even know how much they can really get paid in commission because you haven't calculated the, the profit. You don't know how much you can pay them. Like it gets really complicated. So if you set up like we're teaching you right now for that 80% gross profit margin off your, your stack of 300 per seat, it's really easy to decide how much to pay someone. They know how much they're going to pay and they can sell it faster. Occasionally I jump on sales calls for seven figure MSP so that I can understand and make sure that I'm on the plan pulse for what everybody needs in the organization. And I will never forget the phone call that I had or the teams meeting I had with this gentleman who was doing custom proposals for all of these different options inside his MSP. And he estimated he was spending about 15 hours a week doing proposals. 15 hours a week. I literally wanted to cry for him because that is an insane, insane amount of time just on that part of the sales cycle. And even worse is that he was preparing those proposals at the wrong stage of the sales process where it wasn't even, he wasn't even ready to do that because he was doing it so prematurely and the conversion rates were so low. Okay, so it is so incredibly critical that you have that best offer, you know, the profit margin and you're ready to go and sell it and keep it simple for, for your team to sell.

Hey Michelle, can I just chime in on one thing, one thing on this guys that I want you to think about. This is also a massive evolution and change in how you believe in yourself as an MSP and as a sales company because you should be positioning yourself. This is a non negotiable. As far as I'm concerned. You are the expert. You are the are walking in the door with the best solution. This is what you should have. This is why you should have this. I am the expert. This is what I'm telling you. If you don't like it, that's fine. But this is what it is. Think of all the other industries that we're in. We work with the cpa, we work with a lawyer, we work with a doctor, we work with any professional services engagement. We see them as an expert and we expect to get Their expert opinion. Opinion, not hem and haw over what the client thinks they can afford. If so, number one, go in there with your single scalable offer. Just like Michelle said, be confident, believe in yourself as the expert and deliver the right solution. And if they don't want it, that's fine. Maybe they're not a fit. But part of charging the right way is having enough cash flow and enough profit that you can afford to walk away from some deals that you don't want. Not being desperate for everything.

Yeah.

Yeah. You think about that?

Yeah, and I think that's. I think that's really, really powerful. And just in my business experience, it's, you know, it costs you a lot to sell something that you shouldn't be selling. And I want that to soak in for a second because we get in a desperate zone sometimes, especially in challenging economies where you're like, well, I'll sell it this way or I'll sell it this way or I'll make this accommodation. And if you just channeled that energy back to actually selling what makes you money, you're going to make more money. Like, you cannot dilute your efforts and you need to stay strong and committed to what it is that you want in your business and your life. And every single time you veer, it's jeopardizing that opportunity. And I think you'd probably agree with me, Chris, on that one.

Yeah, 100%.

All right, so the other thing is cheap sales people are a red flag. Okay? And we'll get into compensation, and I'm sure you're wondering, so hang tight, we're going to talk about this. But cheap sales people are a red flag because it means they're typically not experienced enough. So they're just looking to get experience. Two, they might be doing several jobs. Several. Selling for several different types of businesses or even similar businesses. And so they're willing to take, you know, commission only. Only. Or certain things like that. We, as an organization do not do commission only. We believe in base salaries plus commission based on performance. We personally do a scalable model for our closers. And it's really important that you do that. And Chris and I are really aligned on this, is that cheap salespeople are red flags. Just don't do it. Okay? And we'll get into what that looks like here in a few slides. The next thing is, is that, and this is our. Arguably the most important piece of the puzzle is a proven sales process. Closers salespeople do not come in to create your sales process. This is by far the biggest mistake that I see, especially in the MSP marketplace. I have been shocked time and time again when I jump on these calls and they say, oh yeah, you know, I hired the sales guy. So you know, I think that he'll just figure it out, you know, he'll make it work. And I am literally, my stomach is turning knowing that they don't have a proven sales process but they hired the salesperson. That is in the wrong order. Friends, you absolutely have to have a proven sales process with expected KPIs that you've been able to meet yourself before handing it off to a salesperson. If you don't do this, you're going to lose an enormous amount of money. You're going to be frustrated, frustrated and you're going to want to throw in the towel. I have literally seen it time and time again and I can say it till I'm blue in the face. And some of you are, some of you are going to listen to me and some of you aren't. But this is absolutely critical piece of the puzzle. Okay. And the other, Michelle, quick things on.

That the founder led sales model is you're probably always getting, you know, I don't care if you don't think you're great at sales, you're probably always going to convert some of the best in your company because no one's you. You're always going to be the CEO, the owner, the founder, whatever you want to call yourself. And even if you're not great at sales, they can't match your passion. So more than like, and you honestly, if you've gotten to the point where you are ready to hire a salesperson, you've probably scrapped like crazy and turned into a little bit of a salesperson anyway because we've all like, we've all been there, we've all, all learned this, we've all had to figure it out. So that's probably going to be the best it's going to be. And I'll give you a great example. I can close Michelle, you've seen my numbers. I close insane numbers in seven figure msp. My sales people, even Michelle probably will never hit those numbers because they're not the founder. It just, it is what it is. So you got to understand that. So if you think you're going to hand off something that doesn't exist and get even mediocre performance from somebody cutting their teeth on your dollar and you're more importantly probably in your dollar, your time, rude awakening time.

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And the Thing is, is, you know, and that might sound harsh if someone's listening right now, like, why would I hire a salesperson if they're not going to convert as much? Right. However, what is important to you, it's time to really check in with yourself. Is your time, your freedom and your scalability more important or is it that you maintain the exact same conversion amount? Right. And you know what, that's a personal choice for everybody listening right now. But I personally know which one I would choose because quality of life as a business owner is one of the most difficult things to achieve, but the most beautiful thing that you're never going to want to give up once you get it.

Yeah.

So Chris, I'm sorry, what was that?

I said it's really difficult to get your time back.

Really? Really? Time is literally the only finite resource. Right? Chris, I love that you got it this morning. Last time we did this together you spoke to this. So I'm going to let you speak to this a little bit. If it's a 50 of calendar to sales.

Yep. And so this guys, this is kind of how I measure the founder led sales model. And this is my opinion, this is exactly what I did and what I recommend all of our members, members do. By the way, Michelle, we had in onboarding this morning, very proud to say that we had three different members with three different sales people that they have gone through the model, gone through the seven figure MSP elite program and now they've hired sales people and they're going back through it again with them with their new closers. So that was really cool to see this morning, just so you know.

That's amazing. That makes me so excited.

Yeah, it's so exciting. So what we talk about guys, with the founder led sales model is you should get to a point running the seven figure MSP play or running, you know, I gave you that run the play worksheet that you can do on your own. All the stuff that we're telling you today is free and you can do this on your own if you want to. But you run this, run a CSRA on every single client, go back through, upgrade them, you should be pushing them up the ladder towards 300 a seat maybe even if you have to scale them over a period of time and, and stack their costs over, you know, three, six, nine, 12 months, whatever. But you should be going through every existing client, getting your numbers up as high as you can to where 50% of your day to day is spent on sales and sales activities. That doesn't mean 15 hours on building quotes. Like Michelle said with the other guy, it's actually doing real sales activities, meeting with clients, account managers, QBRs, all these other things, meeting with prospects. So now you actually have something that you can hand off to a real closer. And effectively, by hiring that person, you've just bought back all of those hours in your week. So think about that. If that's 15 hours, 20 hours, 30 hours a week, you've. Now we actually have something that we can bring them on. They can shadow you on real time. They can learn from the master in the business. Internally. Internally. System.

Process.

Process. Scalable. Okay, now I'm going to hand this off to you. Now we have something that we can give them. So once your calendar hits 50% full, my opinion is you're then ready to hire a closer. Now, again, common sense applies on that. And your mileage may vary. But that's our baseline.

Yes, mileage may vary. Oh, my gosh, I love that saying. Okay, so, yes, and then you can reallocate your time back to marketing. And I think that's a really important piece of the puzzle because once you have run the play on all your existing clients and your 50% of your time is dedicated to sales and you're able to give that back to someone else, that means you can do more marketing and more leads is a good thing. All right. Okay, so let's go through a couple of secrets here when we're talking about hiring that salesperson and kicking the sale off. Okay, so most CEOs fail when handing off sales. So before I was here at seven figure msp, I literally taught founders how to scale with sales teams. Okay? That is like, literally what I did. And I have seen this time and time again. So I am speaking from a place of truth, and trust me, nothing has changed. Okay? Most CEOs fail when handing off sales. And here is how you will this. Okay, you're hiring for the wrong reasons and before you're ready. Right. And the other thing is, is so we have a really detailed process for hiring. So I'm Chief Revenue Officer, so I hire clearly for more than just salespeople. But it's a really, really tight process of where we publish our job descriptions. Okay, so there's step one. Step two is the preliminary screening, which usually requires them to not just submit their resume, but also a video. So I know they're interested and they're real people and I can get a vibe for them even before then. I never take the first interview myself. Absolutely not. But they're all Recorded. And I'm able to look at the notes from the person who did the interviewing as well. Then we take typically the top three. The top three people, and that's who I will go interview my final candidate. Occasionally, I'll even use a third party to vet my final couple to make sure that it is 100% the best. The best we can do. I never just say, hey, you're cool. I met you at a networking event, or, hey, my aunt said I should hire you, so I'm going to never skip the steps. Even if it's your cousin. Make them go through the entire interview process and determine as a company if they are the right fit. Okay. This is so absolutely critical. And I know Chris, you know, always says, don't hire your family. That's his. That's.

I have, I have a pretty standard rule that is I don't hire family or friends. Now, if I become friends with you, like, Michelle and I are friends. We became friends after we started working together. We knew each other. We had established the level of competency. Yes, yes, probably doable. Okay. But do not hire. Like, I. I really like this slide. Don't hire your cousin because your aunt begged you. Don't hire your brother. In fact, we see this a lot. People hiring family members because they're like, oh, they'll be pretty good for this job. No, they'll suck. I'll just tell you that. They're gonna suck.

And I never want to hire someone that's pretty good. Right? I actually look to hire people that are better at me at certain things. Like, that's so critical. And I know that that's something you believe in too, and I'm glad you like this slide every once in a while. I'm funny.

That's a great slide.

Okay, so you want to hire for the right reasons. Okay. That means a proven track record. Culture fit is huge. Huge. Huge, Huge. Okay, okay.

Probably the most. Probably some of the most important thing I'd say with culture. I mean, you guys could just tell, like, Michelle and I just totally jive. Like, she's sitting there wearing a T shirt. I'm wearing a T shirt. Like, we don't care. She's in Park City, I'm in Iowa. Like, it doesn't matter. You got to have the people that fit in jam with you.

Yes. 100, Chris. How weird would that be if I showed up in like a four piece or five piece suit? Oh, wait, you're muted.

Oh, no, I'm not.

That was weird. Okay.

That was such a better Muted. No, I, I think it's, you just gotta have the right people that write flow. Like it would not fit at all. I would, I mean, I'm in shorts and a T shirt every day at work. Like that's what I work in, you know, that's how it works.

Yep, absolutely. Okay. Love it, Love it all. And the culture fit is, is really critical because there's some fast paced companies, there's slow paced companies, there's companies with a lot of rest, red tape, there's companies without a lot of red tape. And so it's really critical that you're hiring people that fit well with that. Like, I hesitate for, you know, we're a fast moving company and you got to keep up or you're going to get left behind and you're not going to have fun working here. Right. And then nobody's going to be happy. So you have to be quick, fast, modern and super hungry to, you know, enjoy working here. And that's, and that's who we hire. So another really big thing is making sure that you do role play. Ensuring that it sounds good when they're using your script or your syntax or your format. Making sure that they're hungry. And that is a really, really critical one. Salespeople who aren't hungry, they're just gonna die a slow death because sales is one of the hardest jobs ever. So they need to be hungry. And I love during a sales interview, if they interview you. So if they don't have great, great follow up questions for you and I'm not talking about like what made you want to start your company. Right. A good question for a salesperson to ask is, for example. Okay, Mr. Business Owner. You know, I, I have noticed in my sales career that, you know, 30% of my sales come from follow ups within 90 days. Can you share a little bit with me about your experience and deal velocity within the organization and what I can expect?

Whoa.

Right? So someone who can show up like that and ask you that type of question is going to knock it out of the park for you. Okay. And this is, and this is the other part is thinking, and I mentioned this slightly before, is thinking that a closer is a CRO or a cso. So Chief Revenue Officer. Chief Sales Officer. And sorry is not sorry. It is your job as the business, business owner to create the proven sales process before handing it off. Okay. It is absolutely critical. It's just seriously the most recipe for disaster ever if you don't.

Okay, I do have a, I do have a question that's come up here.

Oh yeah, what is it?

I think it kind of fits now. So this is from Eslee. I'll put this on the screen for everybody here that can see that. So Asley said, should companies consider hiring cheap salespeople if they deliver results? Can this be a viable strategy for saving some dollars? Okay, so I'm gonna answer this and then I want Michelle to answer this too because I have no, we, we've not talked about this kind of thing before but I have gone down the couple of different paths with this guys, just so you know. So I, I tried the whole commission only salesperson thing. I've tried the pay per clothes poker function. I've probably done everything you're thinking of. I've probably already done AKA I've made all the mistakes there are to be made. Here's my mindset around that. Time is more important than the money that you're going to save. That's thing one. So the time you're going to probably waste on this is more important than the money you're going to save. They're more than likely not going to be working for you as a full time job. I'd say what, 95 chance or higher. More importantly than that they're not going to get very good results. Like I know you, there's companies that come in all day long and tell you like Michelle, you and I have gone down the path with ads companies. Like we do this stuff too. Like we see it all over the place. If it sounds too good to be true, it's probably too good to be true. Right. So my recommendation and we're going to go into some of this stuff is to pay them properly. Michelle's going to dive into this a little bit further. It's pay them properly, hire them internally and bet on long term stability versus short term, get in, get off, get out strategies. That's my thoughts on that.

Yeah. So my thoughts are very, very similar to what you just said and so much so that like I've, I've never had anybody come back to me and say guess what Michelle, I got the cheapest salesperson and they were so good and they totally performed way better than my friend that actually hired one that paid, they paid a base salary to. I've never in my 20 something years of sales had anyone ever say that. So I'm up for the challenge. Anyone can send me a message if I'm wrong but it is, it just does not happen. And the thing is, is another thing I'd like to add is the amount of time it takes to, to train someone, regardless if they're part time, cheap or expensive. It's still 40 to 80 hours of training on onboarding to hand off sales to someone. So every time you make a hiring mistake, you don't get that time back. And that is like so frustrating. And it's usually a reason and a catalyst why a lot of people, if they have a failed attempt, don't want to do it again. And I think it's really powerful Chris, that we have our elite members that are now bringing their salespeople people through our proven process because oh my gosh, that is like such an incredible benefit of being part of our community that you can do that because that's saving the CEO so much time on creating training, universities, mentorship. Like it blows my mind. We're able to do that because it's such a huge value.

Yeah. And I. So you guys can see that Michelle and I are pretty damn aligned on this. We've actually never talked about, about that because she knows my viewpoint was we're building it internally, we're hiring our own closers, etc. Etc. She's going to go more into depth on that, but I think it's a really, really good scenario. Do have one other question here from Sarah. What should a business owner look for in a candidate's work culture fit? I'm going to tell you from my standpoint, you can't be over to the right. I don't want to say right and left, it's today's political time, but you can. There can't be one side and maybe the other. Like it literally has to be the same. Like I said, Michelle and I are shooting the swearing, not caring, wearing T shirts and shorts. It's just you need to have a cult. You, you know, when people are a culture fit or not, you can't have a group of all elderly people and then bring in a 18 year old. You can't have a group of 18 year olds and bring in a grandfather. Like it just doesn't work that way. So you got to think about the stuff that you're going to do and it's got to be a, it's got to be a fit to what you jam your values. And Michelle and I put together our core values for when, when she came here full time and we presented it to our management team and it really was her interviewing me on what I believe. So we got to know each other really well, we got to have establish our core values and then I projected that to the rest of the team. And we've had a couple of people since then that we've decided to part ways with because they weren't a culture fit. So sometimes you have to do it later, too. Just stuff to think about.

Yeah, 100%. And I think, and I'm so glad that you brought up the core values, is that you have to hire based on your core values. And if you've not established core values, you need to, because it's really, really hard to stay committed to that hiring process if you don't know what they are. Okay. And what I love, what Cindy's put inside the elite program program, is she's inside the hiring process toolkit that she has in there. She teaches you how to create your core values and hire for core values. So once again, it's just everything is accessible for you. And I just really love that about what we've created. But if you're not a member or you don't plan to be a member, at least go through that exercise because it's really, really important.

Yeah. Lisa Thompson, I'm gonna get to your question in a few minutes because I think you're going to to see some of this and what Michelle has. So we'll keep going on this and I'll come back and I'll answer that question.

Okay, awesome. So CEOs that don't love or excel at sales often also jump ahead and try to hire a closer to build the sales process and sell at the same time. So this is an expansion of what I talked about on the last slide. So. But the ones who hate sales are usually the highest at risk for this. And so I'm just bringing this to the surface and attention so that I don't think that that's going to fix your problem and certainly is. We will probably. I think I have a slide on this. I may or may not, but I'm going to touch on it real quick here. Please, for the love of God, do not go and hire an outside agency to close for you. Okay. It's just. It will absolutely not work well.

And some of that is what they're talking about with the cheap salesperson, too. Like there. I know there's agencies out there like Michelle's talking about. I echo that 100%. Yeah.

It just doesn't work. You know, there are a few industries where I've seen it be moderately successful, but in the MSP industry, absolutely not. And your internal closer will always be better than anyone that's trained from the outside. And also, if you ever want to exit the day to day activities or sell your business and that's outsourced, you are worth so, so much less because you don't have control over client acquisition. And if someone.

That is such an insanely good point that I've never heard stated that way. Oh my God, that is so well said. Thank you for saying that.

Yeah, it's really, really critical. Okay. So it's why we're obsessed and committed to one proven sales process and helping the CEO plug and play. Plug and play prove and then train a close closer to take over. So my next slide here, I'm gonna see if I can figure this out. Okay. I think I have to click. Let's see what happens. Oh, good.

It clicks for everyone. Yay.

Okay. Clicks for everybody.

I will make our own slides here at seven figure anymore.

I know. I'm like, I don't even know what Ron did. Okay, here we go. I'm like, thanks, Ron. You rocked. Okay, so Ron is our wonderful graphic designer that works a ton and does all this beautiful stuff for us. Okay, so I'm gonna share with you our proven sales process. And this is where I hope you're taking notes. You can take a picture of the screen, like whatever you want. Okay. But it's really critical that you see what this looks like, what a proven sales process looks like in an msp. Okay. So first of all, you get a cold lead, right? So this could be dials, emails, a networking event, someone who comes to your website, an ad. I mean guys, it could go on forever, right? So you have this lead come in. What's really critical is the first thing is to nurture them, which means you're going to have a direct outreach campaign that builds trust, pre qualifies leads and increases close rates. Okay, this is really cool. Critical because if you don't do this, it's a lot harder to close. Okay. Even if you do happen to get them on a call. Okay. The. The next thing is your first time appointment. So that first time appointment is really critical. I love how Lindsay refers to it as can you stand their voice? I think that's really awesome how she talks to that. The first time appointment is a brief conversation just in make sure you're an overall good fit and then you will move to the discovery call. You'll notice these are distinctive steps. This is not. We are not teaching how to go in and close off of a 1A1 appointment. Yes. You will not have the. You will not have the success selling the $300 per seat. Which is ultimately what we think and we believe will make you scalable and profitable if you're just going in there shooting your, your shot and, you know, shooting from the hip on that first appointment. So the discovery call is really the intake sales conversation where you're able to deep dive into their business and understand what their potential risk is and how you can serve them. Okay. And unlike some other coaching organizations out there, you don't just go and close them into a $300 per seat. You must sell them into a cybersecurity risk assessment. And yes, you heard me right. Sell them into a cyber security risk assessment. Hundreds and hundreds of posts inside our client Facebook group about how much people are charging for cybersecurity risk assessments. It is common practice and from a sales psychology standpoint, if someone's willing to pay you a little bit of money, they're willing to pay you a lot of money. And so that helps build into the sales psychology. Right?

Right.

So I'm not just giving you a free assessment because my time and my advice and my expertise is valuable. So you're already establishing that authority and you're not going to have to race to the bottom like the other MSPs. Okay. And I don't know about you, I never buy the cheapest thing. I'm scared of the cheapest thing. I'm like, oh my gosh, if you're the cheapest, why? Like, why? So unless you can give me a compelling reason of why you're cheap, then I am like not going for this. Especially when it comes to something like cyber security protection. Okay. And then you will go from the cyber security risk assessment, then you will pitch your 300 per seat, close them, wrap them up and go have a party. Chris, would you like to add anything to this?

No. I mean, it's completely scalable. Completely. How do we say this? Transportable. We talked about the gentlemen or the various different people coming into our coaching call this morning. Our onboarding, our weekly onboarding for new clients. They're bringing their brand new hired closers in and putting them through our sales process because they've actually been able to put it into play, graduate basically from it, and now are bringing in someone else to buy back their time. So this is exactly the process. I agree with everything you went through there.

Awesome. So I would love to know in the comments section right now how important time is for you. Like, I'm really curious about the value alignment on this call of what we're saying is like really speaking to people. So let me know in the comments section below because for Chris and I, I think time is probably our most, you know, valuable and cherished, cherished asset. Like when I first came into seven figure msp, like, I mean, I made a lot of laundry list of everything that we wanted to automate, systemize, structure, SOPs, because I wanted to optimize my time so I can be a more effective leader and optimize my team's time so that we can accomplish more and less time. It is so valuable. And so I would just love to know in the comments section below, like, if you also are aligned with Chris and I on that being one of the most important things.

Yeah, we're getting a ton of messages here. Extremely important. Time is everything. Time is the one thing you can't buy more of. So everybody's on the same page with us. Good.

Love it. I love it when we're aligned on values. Okay, so secret number two is that the sales team hiring order really matters. And I think I'm gonna have to talk to Ron because these are some cheesy photos right now. I think we might need to upgrade. Oh, my gosh, it's so funny. I think he has like, some kind of, like, good luck beads on his wrist. That's really funny. Okay. That's actually really funny. Okay. It's like the yogi interviewing for a sales job or something. Okay, I digress. I get sidetracked. All right, so the sales team hiring order really matters. Okay. And like I mentioned before, like, have you been listening to our other webinars? Okay, let me know in the comment section right now if you've been listening to them, because the clues to my answer and the actual answers are in all of the webinars that we do. Okay, so our head, our head of marketing coaching, our VP of marketing coaching, Lindsey, has literally dropped so many serious value bombs, one of them being how important cold calling and FTA lead generation are. Okay. And one. Once again, if you join the school community, and I hope that somebody put that in the chat for me, you can go back and binge this. Okay, so one thing that, like, I love about being this online business and providing these recordings to everyone is if you go on a walk, just plug your earbuds in and start to listen. You don't need to be at your computer and, you know, ready and all the things like if that's not available for you for these replays, just plug in and just listen and walk or do something and you will learn so much. Like Lindsay over delivers every single time okay, so please don't hire a closer, thinking they will also create your marketing machine. Now, marketing machine is what Lindsay teaches you to create. Okay? Salespeople want to make money, and without leads, they get frustrated and leave. Okay? So my recommendation is to hire that dialer before you hire the closer. Okay. And Chris, I'd love to hear your opinion on that, but I think we're aligned on that as well. It's so important that you have the marketing activity built to justify bringing someone on to then start to close them.

Yeah, we're. We're totally on the same page with that. What where I would say with you guys, especially if you're a little bit more of a mature MSP, when I say mature, at least 10 clients, you should be the one account managing. You should be the one selling. You should be the one doing your quarterly business reviews. So you actually then are upselling your existing client base. You're working with your existing client base. You're selling new deals. You automatically have something that you can actually hand off to that closer at that point. And then what you should be on, focused, focusing on. And I really liked. There's a comment from Jeff Seaman here that said I have regained much of my time. I have the capacity to continue sales efforts. My number one job now is to make sure that my marketing and lead gen team drives appointments to the closers, period. That's Michelle. Like, I. I manage Michelle and Michelle manages them. And that's what we're all like. That's literally what we focus on every single day, is we're focused on that almost exclusive first thing we look at when we get up. It's the last thing we look at before we go to bed. And it's really critical that you're staying on top of that. Notice how that doesn't mean that we're not a great coaching firm. I'm still responsible for vision, but it is not my primary role. It is not my primary job to be in the trenches at the company. My primary job is making sure that we are cash flow focused. So that should be the same as yours. And that was in my msp. That's where I was. But right before I sold as well. That's your job. I understand you were the best at tech. You want to grow and sell and build a machine, or do you want to just be in the trenches working on servers? Hey, you can do that. That's fine. Nobody's gonna judge that. But why are you here on the webinar then?

Right? 100. And I think that's. And that that shift of identity is a big mindset hurdle for a lot of people. Right. So I would encourage, encourage you if you're listening to this and maybe it's triggering you a little bit and you're like, oh my gosh, Chris just called me out. Right? Like, get a community. Like, I mean, we would love to welcome you into our elite coaching program, which we'll talk about when we're done with the education piece of this. But if it's not that, get something, because you need people to hold your hand through those identity shifts, both professional coaches and peers, and it'll be ten times easier. Okay, so a reminder here is that we have a marketing. We have a more marketing education that's coming up in two weeks. And so you always want to be catching our next webinar if you're a repeat webinar venture.

Okay.

All right, so let's go ahead and talk compensation and assuming that you meet the criteria to hire. Okay, now this is a really, really big one that has a lot of wiggle room and different ways that you can do things. But I want to break this down. Okay? So I would recommend a 60k per year base plus commission so that the on target earnings, that's what OTE means, is between 110 and 150. Okay. This is a very moderate middle of the ground compensation plan. Great salespeople expect to make six figures, and you only want the best inside your organization so that you can hit your targets. And so this is the absolute minimum I would pay. And Chris, I'll let you chime in here. When it comes to somebody handling, literally client acquisition for your company. So if you think of it that way, that's why it's paid so, so much. Chris, any comments?

Your job is to drive leads to their calendar and educate them and empower them to close these deals in the best way. And either you build that on your own, aka what it took me 15 years to do, I built my entire sales system. I did trainings and podcasts, like all this stuff for years. I went to chartech, I went to Rock Robin Robbins, I went to ascii, I went to Channel Con. I like, I went to all these different things and it took me 15 years. And then I still saw after that there was still a hole in the industry. And that's where we put that into play. Michelle, can you back up one slide? There's a couple people asking questions here. So all these things put together, people, and this goes back to the commission. Only thing and some of the other stuff I was talking about earlier, you want them full time, you want them to follow you, your process, you want them to follow your machine, you want them to be on staff, you have to give them a livable wage to work and live. Because I'm going to tell you right now, anybody that's coming in commission only out of the box. Unless you have. The only way that I would give you a little bit of latitude on that is if you are like literally your calendar is jam full of appointments that you're closing 60 to 70% of your deals on, which I'm going to tell you in MSP land, that's less than 2%. Probably less than 1% of MSPs are actually doing that for the right numbers too. Like I had a guy tell me I'm closing 100% of my deals and then he's closing at like $20 a seat. I'm like, that's a. Why are you closing? Like, don't tell me that. Like, doesn't it. It's not even real, right? So you have to give them a real job. If you say to yourself, I can't afford this person, then we gotta go back to work, then we gotta close. Founder led sales model. Owner led sales model. Until we get to the point that we're talking and then you can afford to scale. I also echo 100%. Build a lead gen system and a sales process. First you have to have something you can give these people. If you hire somebody full time, 100 grand a year, they're still not going to be qualified enough to create this sales system. Hand off to some wackey like that's not what you want to do just because you don't like it. I understand you don't like it. Work with a system. If it's not 7 figure MSP, find somebody else in the marketplace that has something that you could mimic and that could. I have an MSP that I know in, in Louisiana. They went through the Gary Vee system. They've spent $200,000. I'm sorry, not Gary Vee. They went through, through. What's the 10x stuff? Grant Cardone. They went through Grant. Grant Cardone university. It's like 200 grand going through that and it's not MSP specific. Hey, that's fine. Nobody like it's still working for them and they're doing okay and they're not unhappy. So I don't care what you do, but do something and just understand it's going to cost you. The failures, the Amount of companies that can actually withstand a horrible hire, foreign, we're talking single digit percentage points that can handle a full flop of a higher. It's really difficult. Okay, next question from Russ here that I'm going to get to. And then there was a question. Hold on. One quick question. Actually, this might be. Actually I'm gonna let you do this and then Russ, I'm going to come back to your question because I think this might be relevant to what Michelle's talking about. His question was how's commission part of the structure. But here you go.

Awesome. Okay. Yeah, we put this slide together. We put this slide together, together, together. Okay. So what, so what I would Recommend is a 90 day training period. And what you can do right now to make that training period eventually a lot easier for yourself is record yourself doing everything you do in sales. Okay. So how you manage your pipeline, you call how you book your first time appointments what, anything you can learn, literally document and record can become part of your training library. Okay. That will help you so much. And then clearly, like I hope you're in some type of program where your salesperson will also be trained alongside that process. That's what we do in Elite. So that's a key part of it. And then also giving them achievable milestones that scale over 90 days, you cannot expect them to come in and perform, perform at like a hundred percent in the first 30 or 60 days. Like show them the path to success and allow them to like grab the carrot at each stage. Because if they have small successes along the way, psychologically that gets them super excited and devoted to the company and they will keep moving forward to do better for you. Okay. So that's a really, really key part of it. Also making sure that you shadow them. Like depending on what your sales process looks like, if it's all in person or maybe you've mixed in some virtual, like shadow them or listen to their calls, like be part of it. You cannot just throw them into the trenches and expect it to be successful. Okay. The next thing here is a tiered gross MRR accelerators. Chris, I'm going to let you explain this since it's so specific to MSPs of the 2% to 5%.

Yeah. So it really is going to depend. We have various different things out there, but if you follow our specific timeline around this and on our specific in. Where it gets wonky is you got all kinds of different people on this webinar doing all kinds of different sales systems. So I'm going to specifically Talk to what we do. We have tiered accelerators based on how long they're around, whether they're hitting quota or not. We have various different things that you hit. And the longer they're with you, the longer they hit their commission and their quota. Or, sorry, the longer they hit. Their quota will determine what level of percentage they're at and how long they're with you. So common sense applies, but you have to be, again, the one that runs the show top to bottom on that. And you have to have something scalable, and you have to have something predictable and controllable.

Yes. And I'll add to that from a salesperson's perspective, when you get paid on recurring revenue, you're not going to want to leave. So instead of just getting paid one off when you close a deal, but now you're getting paid off the mrr, and however long they stay around, that is huge. People will not want to abandon that. It is a huge part of retention in the sales role. Okay, so that's one thing that I wanted to mention. And then clearly, with your project and hardware, you'll have to come calculate those commissions based on, you know, how much room you have in order to pay someone. Okay, Chris, did you say there. There was another question around this, or should I move on?

There was. This was from Lisa. I'll put it on the screen for everybody to hear. This was necessary, more of a. How can you verify a candidate. Candidates claim sales achievements during an interview. Like, how is that proven during the interview? I think we come back to that still in the Q A. So, Lisa, I'm gonna come back to that one, but it's kind of relevant during all this. But we'll come back to it.

Okay, cool. Yeah, I want to make sure. That's a great question, so I want to make sure I get to that.

All right. And by the way, my friend just handed me a beer, so I'm cracking the beer, so whatever.

That's amazing.

This is our culture that we have here.

Well, then, I mean, I only have, like, a healthy soda right now. I feel like I should go.

Whatever.

All right, so secret number three is that great salespeople still need management, so you're going to get an enormous amount of your time back by not having to do sales. But you don't completely, like, exit and don't ever, like, worry about client acquisition ever again. Your role has changed. Is it less time? 1,000,000%? Typically anywhere from you spend 75 to 60% less time on client equity. I would say, let me go to 75%. So 75% of the time towards client acquisition and sales, you get back. But you still have that 25% that's now transitioning into a management role and guiding the salespeople to be successful. Okay, so here is your. Here is your leadership checklist list. Doing discovery call reviews. So it kind of depends on how you do this. If they're in person or if they're virtual. Discovery call reviews. If they're recorded is awesome. If not, then do go with them on a few. If they are in person to make sure that everything's going well. Okay.

My personal recommendation on this guys, is get as much as your company, digital and remote as you can within reason. As an msp, Right. We're going to have clients that we've met with forever in person. So you got to be conscious of that. But remote and digital is kind of accept pretty accepted in today's world. It's also very, very, very scalable and it very much opens up so many things. Now that doesn't mean you can be lazy and quit on things. You got to actually double down on everything. And I really like Michelle's leadership checklist here because you notice what she's got on there. Daily weekly huddles. Daily huddles, guys. Deal review every single day. We're doing this stuff every day on our team. And we got what, nine on your team, Michelle?

Yeah. I'm gonna have to do a head count here. I think you're about right.

Yeah. So like, it is mission critical that, that if so the more remote they are, the more you have to do this. If they're in person person, you still got to do it. Yeah. And the IT guy is like, I don't want to deal with this. Too freaking bad. Like, do you want to grow? You want sales? You better. I don't like dealing with it either. So I've dealt with it for a long time until I got to the point of I could afford to buy my time back with someone like Michelle and her team.

Yes. And this is just really critical. And guys, don't overthink this. It's not like you're spending six hours a day doing these things. Like, you gotta streamline it and it's really important. So like your daily huddle can be just like if you have one person, it could take you 15 minutes. If they have a bigger team, you're doing 30. Right. And eventually you have a big enough sales team where you have a leader who starts them. Like, I don't even do our Daily huddles in the morning anymore because I have a sales manager who does that. Right. So I reserve my time for other things that, you know, I need to be doing at my skill level level and my responsibility level. The daily huddles is holding people accountable. What are you going to do today? What went well yesterday? What didn't? How are things going to change? Like, it's really, really, really critical. Role play is also huge. I love doing role play. So I host a once a week sales training for the entire team and I pick a different topic and do different things and roleplay is one of my most favorite things to lean on. I absolutely love that. So role play is great also. Deal review. Like your pipe is life. I mean, there's a reason that's a saying and one of the most famous sayings in sales actually, pipe is life, is that you have to be looking at who is in your pipeline, at what stage, how quickly are they moving through? Do you understand how long it takes you from cold lead to closed? What's the, what's the expectation for movement? Why, why is a deal getting stuck? Like, it's really critical to ask those questions so you as the CEO and the mentor can help move it along.

And it's also really to jump in on this. But it's very interesting because guys, I want you to think about this. How many leads do you actually actively have in your pipeline? Most msps, Michelle, I'm going to tell you, are like near zero. It's growth by accident. So here's what I'm going to tell you about this. You're all probably like shaking your head like, oh, this is, I don't want to, blah, blah, blah, Michelle, Chris, blah, blah, blah. What you, what you purposely do in life will happen. I'm going to tell you that right now. So if you're moving towards, I want to be sales focused, I want to be legion focused, I want to be pipeline focused. It's going to take a little bit of time. Not going to say it's going to happen overnight, but it will happen. So my question to you is on that, and this is going to be a little Chris moment here. How bad do you want it? Yep, that's it.

Yep. I think that that's, that is a great way. Like, how much do you want it? And like, I don't think you or I are in any. We have zero interest in forcing people to want to do things. You have to want to do it. You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make them drink. It. Right. And I just think it's a really critical thing. But we tend to attract the MSPs that are ready to rock and roll and are motivated and want to do that. So I hope that's who's here right now because you can do this. Now the next thing is month to date and year to date KPIs. So it's really important you're not just looking at everything in isolation like what happened today. Right. Because it would be a great day and a horrible, horrible week or a great week and a horrible day. And you see where I'm going with this pattern, right? And it's really critical that you're always looking at the data. And I smile a little bit when I say data because I'm the data person at the company and every time there's an issue, I look at the data and I, you know, sometimes I think that maybe Chris is like, michelle, hurry up. And I'm like, I'm getting the data. Right. So I love the data because it helps me make sound decisions on what's working and what's not so that I don't make knee jerk reactions to things and I can make calculated decisions and movements. And so the data is so important. So you need to be tracking things like close rate, show up rate, how long it takes someone from hello to closed the source of the deals. Where are you getting most of your deals from? Like I even did this this morning with my sales manager. I was like, hey, when we close now, I don't want to have to go investigate. I don't want you to investigate on the source. Like the source needs to auto populate. So anyway, we're like working on some cool things inside our CRM so that we can see because it's really, really important because you want to double down on what's working. And we're seeing patterns in our business right now and I want to put more fuel on the fire for those patterns and step back from things that aren't working, working. And without the data you just don't know.

Okay.

Also, it's really important once you get your marketing machine moving and you have your sales process moving, they need to talk to each other. Okay. Like they're really, it's really important. So I like to, we currently have, we'll do it like twice a month where we have sales and marketing talk to each other and we strategize, we see what the obstacles are. Right. Depending on how big your organization is, once a month might just be fun.

Okay.

And then also just Making sure you're eliminating any obstacles that you can control. And this is what I like to call the CEO moves. Right? You know, if something is preventing people from buying and you can fix it, please go fix it. Okay. Like you're the authority. You can go do this. And I just realized here, that slide did not get updated. You can't join us in Indie virtually, but you can join us in Denver virtually. And it's not tomorrow, it's next week. Okay, so we have put that in the chat or put that in the chat. Denver. Oh, I'm hearing a bunch of. Is that me or Chris? Do you have something going on out there?

No, I didn't. But just keep going. Okay. Just keep.

I'm just hearing myself echo, Michael. Goodness.

Okay.

Okay, so what's. So if you can join us, you have to do continuing education. And our three day events, I think personally are some of the best continued education in the marketplace. So get your virtual ticket or if you're close to Denver, or if you're a last minute person like I am, get your booty to Denver. Okay? It's going to be an amazing event. One thing I'm personal, personally looking forward to is, you know, as a sales expert and someone who lives and dies by client acquisition, like I'm obsessed with the topic, right. And I can't wait to hear Cindy's presentation about how she's changing our sales scripts based on the size of the company you're pitching, which is so cool. And I'm really looking forward to that talk. As you know, I just, I, I can't wait to eat that up. So I think that it's to going, going to be really valuable and you won't want to miss this. So virtually or in person in Denver next week, it's going to be awesome. Okay? So most of all here I need, you need to know that your tude tone and timing impact, selling success of your closer more than anything. Okay? This is by far my favorite slide of the entire time. Slide number 53. Okay. This is really, really critical. Sales is hard. No one's trying to say it's not okay. It takes commitment, hunger, determination, intelligence, all of these things. Okay. And it is critical that you master the leadership that motivates people to keep, to keep it on, to keep it going to work for you to be successful. And, and you just got to really watch the way that you talk to your sales team. They need to perform, but they also need to know occasionally they're doing okay and you got to pat them on the back. Okay, this is a really, really critical piece of the puzzle. All right, so recap areas here. Okay? So scalable offer be profitable enough to pay a closer proven sales process 50% of calendar to sales when you're ready to go. All right, and these are your three choices at this point. You either go figure it out based on what we've educated with you today and anything else that you can Google up. Okay? You go hire someone like myself as a CSO or a CRO, but you will spell hundreds and hundreds of thousands of of dollars on that. Or you choose to work with someone like us and you put in a plug and play proven system. Okay. That you can then duplicate and hand off to a salesperson. All right, so those are your three choices, friends. And now it is time for Q and A. So I'll wait for Chris to pop back up here since he's controlling some of the chat here. And Chris, also, do you want to take over over the slide from here since you'll wrap us up already?

Already done. Oh, wow. I actually. I updated that Denver slide on the fly, so.

Did you really? Oh, thank you.

That one that said indie? Yeah, I don't know. Sometimes gets a little wonky when you're doing stuff real time, so whatever. Okay, so let's get back to that question. If you guys, Anybody else has any questions for us related to any of that, feel free to ask questions as we go. Just put it in the chat and I will bring that up. We had a question from Lisa, so we're going to go to this right now. This is on the screen. How can you verify a candidate's claimed sales achievements during an interview? Like, how is that proven? Proven during the interview. Okay, so I got a couple things on this. Michelle and I have never talked about this, so I'll be curious to see what she says. But here's what I say. Proof. Send the pudding. People can claim what they want. If you feel like they're a culture fit. Let's. Let's just say the. The only thing that you can't verify or you don't, you know, you have looked. People can claim whatever they want. It's very difficult. I actually saw a tweet the other day that said, go ahead and put that you were a Radio Shack regional manager and see him disprove that one on your resume. Because it was like, all about that because you can't prove it. Or like, maybe I was a blockbuster director or something like that. You can't prove most of that stuff, but you Know what? The truth is going to come out in the performance, performance. So we always recommend putting them on a trial. Don't hire immediately without some type of proof of concept. We actively do that. They have to go through our process both for a sdr, your sales development rep, that's your dialer, or potentially a bdr, your business development rep, kind of next lineup or the closer. We do all three of those things and they all have to go through a trial to get the job. Michelle?

Yes. So the other thing here is when you interview a lot, it takes some time sometimes, but I can smell a liar a mile away. Okay. And the way that you can start to smell a mile a liar a mile away is ask detailed questions. Okay? So if somebody says, if somebody says, for example, I, I was 120% of quota with the last MSP that I worked for and blah, blah, blah, say, oh, that's amazing. Why did you leave if you're 120% of quota, right? So there's a challenging question. You're going to learn more about them and then say, okay, so if you were. So I understand you have this amazing background selling for other MSPs. I'm curious, like, what was your sales process? Okay, all of these questions. Eventually, if you're really smart about interviewing, you're going to be able to know if it's true or it's not. And so your interview questions will reveal a liar really, really, really quickly. And also it's, I honestly, I think I've done, I don't know, like a hundred, I don't even know, 100 interviews of salespeople in my life, maybe more. And I'm like, I'm not even sure, actually. I think I've lost track. And I've never had anyone like come to that interview and totally lie. Like, I'm sure they fudged a little bit because, you know, they're, they want to sell themselves, right? So I'm sure there's like a little bit of a fudge. But I have never actually had that happen because the screening process, because they have to submit a video, because they have to be committed, because they go through a first interview, like the barrier entry is there. And so I just wouldn't, wouldn't stress out too much about that. Lisa?

Yeah, a couple things I'll say to this too. I agree with what Michelle said. Like, if they were hit their quota numbers for five years straight, why are they looking to leave? So if they're looking to leave, chances are, why are they looking to Leave. Think about it, what are they wanting? They want more money. That's why they're trying to leave. Are you the solution to that? Maybe, maybe not. So you got to think about those things and you got to be very conscious of the day they're going to interview you with you. This is probably the best behavior they're ever going to be on, right? You think about that. It's probably the best. It's for sure in tech world, right? For sure. If we're going to engineer a help or a, a hire or interview a tech or a help desk guy, for sure that's the best behavior. So it's like that in sales. Sales are just better at disguising it because they're better at selling. So they're going to sell themselves. It's probably the best behavior they're ever going to be on. So you just got to be very conscious of it. Don't over commit too early. Don't commit to, oh yeah, you know, walking in the door, giving them a full time job right away with 100k base or something like don't do that. Put them on a trial, make them show that they actually can do some stuff. But a lot of this comes down to, and this is something we didn't talk about at all during this today with Michelle. We. You may want to add this in the future to a deck. If you don't have all the processes in place that Michelle was talking about there, the chances are high that there's going to be a failure somewhere in here. And it's usually not the prospect, meaning the interviewee that fails. It's usually us. It's usually us not having our processes down, not managing properly, not having a good sales machine, not having a good machine behind it. And we just expect. And what I see most MSP sales people try and do is they pick this whole thing called sales and marketing and Legion and then they dump it on them and they're like here, I want to go be a tech, have fun, go double my company. Don't work that way guys. It's your show.

Run it, own it 100 and you know everybody who's still here. I almost forgot, I have a readiness checklist for you.

Oh boy. Where did this go?

There it goes. So I just put it there in the chat right now and you go ahead and pull it up if you would like. I actually thought I had a QR code in here and I don't know what happened to that but it's in the chat.

Feels like user error.

It Might be. That might be. Well, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna deny that, but at least you got it. Okay people, you got it.

Is there anything, Is anything you can show on the screen so we can show what it looks like? I don't know what that is. Okay, show that. That. This is gonna be an adventure, guys. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna see if we got any more questions here via viso board. I don't know what that means, but somebody said I just joined so I missed a chunk. We'll go, go back and watch. But before even thinking about hiring a salesperson, do we need to have a marketing and lead generation in place first? Correct. Namely, you need to have a sales process. That's thing number one. Two, you need to be doing an owner, founder led sales model in some capacity. My recommendation is that you're filling up 50% of your weekly calendar with sales and marketing activities. Specifically qbrs, tbrs, Technology Business Review reviews, Quarterly business reviews. Actively doing new prospect meetings and actively doing CSRAs and running the play on existing clients. That's what I would recommend. Then you have something that you can hand off. Meanwhile, you're using the cash flow that you're generating to build a true marketing system. We call it a marketing machine and we have a full training system on that along with a full training process on this whole thing, which I'm going to go through in a couple minutes. I believe Michelle is ready with her handout because I see it popped up in the bottom. So hold on. We got the link that we put in the chat for you guys. But Michelle, I just shared your screen so you can take a look at that. This is our sales team readiness checklist. Michelle, take it away.

Yeah, so this is just reflecting what's been in the presentation today. I love like a one sheet personally, so I would encourage you to just print this off, put it on your bulletin board, keep it on your desk and start, start to of course check the boxes as you are ready. And so this is just a way for you to remember everything we talked about today without having to go back and listen to everything. So I hope you enjoy it.

Yeah. So there's your link, guys. That's pretty awesome. That's really good stuff. We usually try and give at least one to two really good deliverables on every one of these webcasts. So you guys have that. I'm going to bring my thing back up on the screen here. I'm going to keep going. If anybody has any other Questions please put it in the chat. I'm going to keep going on my presentation here and get you guys out here in the next 15 minutes as promised. Let me just bring up my stuff. So you heard mention Michelle mentioned a little bit earlier about our seven figure MSP inner circle program. We have a couple different packages inside of our inner circle. I want to talk about both of them really quick but first of all I want to give you a great example of a a case study. This is a gentleman named Brian Worcester. In fact Michelle, I don't know if you saw the somebody had asked about our elite program in the IT and MSP business owners group over the weekend and we had like 30 or 40 of our clients come in and Brian was one of them talking that he added I think 20,000 of MRR in his first 90 days in the program. And this is a great example of somebody that came in joined just about a year ago. 8, 24, 23 closed his first deal in about 20 days which is cool. 5 presentations in 4 weeks, 4 contract sign and he added just with existing clients 7, 800 in new MRR and that's a great example of somebody that's coming in adding a bunch of stuff. And we have two different factors inside of the seven figure MSP inner circle program. We have not only our employees elite program but we also have our 0-10K program. 0-10K is if you're below 10K and MRR or here's what kind of my goal is on this. If you are at a place where you are still a single MSP trying to get new deals and you're focused mostly on break fix you should look at 0 to 10k. It's 0210k.com it is a two thousand dollar flat rate program. It is a course. We have coaching aligned with it, a ton of really good content in it but it's a do it yourself course. We also have on top of that our inner circle elite program. This is a complete sales and marketing coaching program to take your MSP27 figures and beyond. So we have full sales and marketing coaching on top of that included with that starting out. You heard me mention earlier our sales onboarding. I was on that this morning. Every Monday I'm on that with me and Ryan o' Hara are on our onboarding every single week. So you get our full sales onboarding process live. You get me Ryan Cindy. So Monday every single week is me and Ryan o'. Hara. Then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday is Cindy Phillips going through her stuff we also have on top of that, our full weekly sales open office hours. We have three of those and we are just getting ready to fully expand and launch into Australia with a full onboarding system. We've been covering Australia but they've been kind of having to adapt to our hours. But we're just getting ready to launch our full Australian team, which I'm very excited about as well. So we've been working on that pretty actively for a couple months now, just making sure we have a really good footprint over there because we're really good in Australia. We just don't have calls on their time zones quite yet. We also have on top of that with Lindsay Badillo, our VP of marketing coaching. She has her marketing machine. This is the program we were talking about earlier. That's our complete marketing onboarding process live. Now in sales coaching, we do onboarding every week. Every single week, new people in boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. With marketing, it's a lot more involved, takes a lot more stuff. This also covers your entire company. So one subscription for your entire staff. I don't care if you're 5k MRR or 50k MRR, we work with you. It's the same exact cost. So you get sales coaching, you get full marketing coaching. Our full marketing onboarding process live, along with Lindsay also has three marketing open office hours every single week. So just between the sales coaching team and the marketing coaching team, we have six open office hours, calls and all kinds of onboarding systems. This is a complete top to bottom process, sales process and marketing process, top to bottom. On top of that we include full proposal, presentation and experience agreement templates. So our full cyber security sales presentation included. That's a PowerPoint. Our full cyber security sales proposal included. That is a word doc. So fully included. We also have our full risk acceptance letter template included. So we teach you how to go back to your existing clients, upsell them and if they say we're not going to say, you're going to close 100%. So you're either going to get people that close and it's about 60% close on the new deal on the upsell and then the other 40%, we draw a line in the sand of liability. You heard me mention that earlier. Hey guys, I told you that you needed to do more stuff. Here's the line I'm drawing in the sand. Here's what's going to happen when you do get a breach. I'm not going to be left holding the bag. On top of that we have our full master Service agreement and statement of work templates included along with our incident response plan template and our full ultimate MSP contract kit included. This was an add on previously and in the last Q3 here we've added this as a full included inside of Elite. So that was previously sold for $4,000. It's still sold to the public for four grand. It's included inside of Elite now. We also have our weekly legal advice call with our in house general counsel, Paige Taylor. She runs that every Monday, 2pm Central Time. So she was on about two and a half hours to go running that call just like a normal Monday. We also have on top of that you guys see the stack of stuff we're talking here. We got process, structure and tools, our full risk assessment system. We teach you how to do CSRAs top to bottom and include a tool called Televi. On top of that we also have our seven figure MSP hiring machine templates, job descriptions, how to do CSAT stuff and how to do disc assessments and all these other things. On top of that we also include on the marketing side, our full MSP CRM wisetrack. We have a thousand included downloadable leads per month inside of our clean lead software that's there as well, training and coaching. We got a full help desk, all kinds of different stuff with Wisetrack we got tons of marketing campaigns, our monthly client newsletter and then our entire copywritten email sequence for you guys to use. And an MSP website. All that stuff's built into the program. It's all built into wisetrack. It runs like a machine. It's absolutely awesome. So Chris, what is the next step? I gotta get my breath. Too much talking. What's the next step here? You guys saw all the stuff that we have included in our inner Circle Elite program. Here's all the stuff here. I'm just gonna go really quickly through that $18,000 a month in value. My special offer for you guys today, it is a minimum 12 month commit. Now you can do month to month, but it's like 3, 500 if you want to do month to month. Because the bottom line is you're not going to come in here and take all my stuff and leave in a single month. But it's $2,000 per month on a 12 month commit. But I'm going to give you a little bit better offer if you guys act right away and book your call with our sales team. And Michelle's going to throw the link in the chat for me for our booking link. I'll save you 250 per month. So you get 170050 on a 12 month commit. If you book your call right now, you can scan the QR code on your screen. You can also book the call with the URL. I'm not going to you give you right now. Michelle's throwing it in the chat also actually got it. Okay, hold on, I'm gonna hit that really quick and I'll come back. Yep, there's your URL. And I'm going to come back to my guarantees. 7. Let me come back to my guarantees really quick here. Just let me do this. I don't know if this program will work. I'm nervous to commit. I think it's a scam. Chris Weiser sucks. There's a whole Reddit thread if you guys want to look at that. It's called Chris Weiser. Sunday told me, you know you've made it when you have your own subreddit. So that's, I guess that's the deal. But is there a guarantee? So we got two guarantees guys. Guarantee number one. I believe in the program so much. We have actually this was a 30 day initially, this is now a 90 day money back guarantee. If you come into the program now, you have to do the work. This is a big caveat on this. And it's not a getcha, it's not a gotcha, it's not a bait and switch. It's you're not going to come in here and steal all my stuff. I have tens of thousand dollars of value. So if you're going to come in here and tell me my program sucks, then you better do the work. So you have to come in here and meet, do your meetings, you have to actually do your calls, you have to go to your existing clients, you have to meet with them. And we're going to prove this. It's in writing in our agreement. I'm not going to say that everybody that comes into this program succeeds because I can't control people. But here's what I can say. Everyone that comes in here and does the work sees the results. It's that simple. So if you come in here and do all the work in the first 90 days and you feel you'll see no ROI, it's not worth it, or maybe you know, Chris does suck, won't work in my market, whatever. And keep in mind, we have closed deals at $300 for 300 or whatever currency that they're in. So states 300 US Canadian, 300 Canadian, Australia, 300 Australian UK we've actually even done Nigeria, we've done South America, we've done all of the UK 300 or whatever their currency is. And it's working in every single one of those countries. And we're doing this all over the world, even in places that people say we can't do it. I will give you your money back without question. Side note, this has never been requested at once. Again, not going to tell you that people haven't succeeded. But then they're like, oh, crap, I didn't do anything. I guess I can't get my money back. Sorry. That's part of the deal. It only works if you do the job. Added a second guarantee. If you participate in all the work and attend all the calls and do your first three, like last literally do all the stuff and you don't let make at least $1750 your investment in additional MRR, I'll write you a check for 1750. Again, never been requested. Because if they do the work, oh, magically the program works. Shocking, right? It's amazing. Here's your URL. Okay, let me see if we got any questions. Would love to have you guys in the program and Jason. Yes, Jason said a thousand leads included. It's a thousand leads per month. It's actually, Michelle, I upped it. It's not.

You up it. Oh, you. You should tell. You should tell your CRO.

Well, we announced it last week on the, on the Wednesday.

Oh, shoot. When I was on vacation.

That you were not at. Yeah. So.

Okay.

Yeah, it's. It's a thousand leads per month. Now we've opted. We build our own software called Clean Leads and every elite member gets that. You also get an MSP website with Tech Rescue. You get Wisetrack. We use Y Strike internally, guys. Like, it's a great product. We're very happy with it. Works really well. Oh yeah, Michelle's talking about Clean Leads here. Okay. Okay, let's see. My chat is not working. Hold on. Okay, anybody else have any questions? Yeah, I like this. So Michelle put this in here. I go on vacation for a week and look what's happen. Okay, guys, well, I guess Michelle, it's time for our giveaway.

Chris, real quick. We have, we have one last question that I think should be addressed. Grab it here real quick. Okay, hold on. Hold. I'm scrolling, scrolling.

Yes, I am drinking a beer. I'm drinking a beer in a webinar.

Okay, so that's the. That's the. I'm jealous. I'm jealous of the beer. Okay, so that's the first part of the question. And then the second part is best class msps are 18 profitable. So how much of that should we pay towards sales? So I think that's a really comprehensive set of questions that would wrap us up really nicely.

That's good. It's good questions and it's very applicable. I like it. Michelle, I'll let you start.

Okay, so I would like more detail on commission structure because you need quotas to keep them hungry. You need to keep that MRR percentage ticking to ensure they retain the client and star salesperson needs it. Okay. Yes, 100%. So, Russ, it would be difficult for me to, to tell you exactly what to do without looking at your business right now because everyone's sales goals are going to be different based on the precedent and what your own growth goals are. So this is a tough question for me, but I want you to retrospectively think back of what. First of all, you figure out how much you're going to pay the pay the salesperson and that's going to be your next. I know that's the follow up question. Once you know that, then how much do they need to sell for them to be happy and to you to be happy? Okay, so work backwards with those numbers then make sure it's realistic. Okay. So you don't want to bring someone in and tell them to go sell 10x than you've ever sold in your whole life. Right. That just won't be realistic. So can you do a 20% increase? 20% increase per quarter perhaps. Like I'm just throwing out numbers. Numbers. But without knowing your business in detail and intimately know what the history is. It's difficult for me to answer that. Russ, if you're going to be in Denver, are you going to be in Denver by any chance? Because I'm happy to sit down with you with your actual numbers if you're coming to Denver and you can catch me in the hallway and we can run this for you, but without the details of your business. This is a tough one for me. Chris, do you have anything that you can add on?

Yeah, I, I agree with what Michelle's saying. I'll also say this is why you start with founder led sales model. This is why you build yourself some type of a provable scalable system. This is also why at that point you can start to figure out what your actual profitability numbers are. Because most MSPs and I don't. Russ, I don't, I don't know you. So it's very hard to speak. But I'm going to tell you, probably 95 of MSPs that I see have no idea what their profitability. They're like, oh, I'm profitable, okay. And then they actually say here's where I'm at with a measuring stick that has nothing to do with any type of profit related to actual profitability because they don't measure their tech time at all. So here's what I'd recommend. This is self serving, but okay, cool, that's great. Russ, tell me where are we, Matt, because it's. I see a lot of people, I'm sorry if I don't recognize your name, but I don't know your system is what more what I mean. My recommendation is get into our elite program, run through the play for 180 days is what I'd recommend. Run through exactly what we tell you to do. Which means we're going to go back to existing clients first, we're going to upgrade them. We're going to do that. We're going to build an entire system top to bottom. And you'll have that. It'll be completely done. It's built into it. And Michelle, if we're talking six months, it's 1750amonth. What's the math on that? The cost of that alone. Let's look at what that is. Think about how much a person is going to cost. So we got 1750 times six. So I'm telling you to spend $10,500 over the course of six months. That's like three months of sales money to get an entire system top to bottom that you can then and you should be able to have a complete plug and play system boom to put somebody into. And then you can start to figure out where you sit around commission structure, profitability because you're going to be tracking your numbers and you're going to be know where you're sitting and you're going to know how profitable you are and you're going to know what your tech time looks like and you're going to know what your cost per tech is and you're going to know how much your new, your brand new stack costs. And at the bottom line is you're going to know how profitable you are per seat along with per client. And then you can start to really determine how to pay the person the right way based on what Michelle likes, such as data versus.

Yeah, so I, I wish, yeah, exactly. I wish I could just give you the answer right now, Russ, but that would be really, really irresponsible of me. So But I'm excited that. But I'm super excited you're going to be in Denver, so I'm looking forward to meeting with you.

Yeah. Awesome. That's going to be great. That's going to be great. Okay, cool. Yeah. And Russ is going to be in Denver, so that's great. Awesome. Yeah. Come say hi, please. There was another question that. Do we want me to answer or going to. Good for prize. Nope.

That's it. That's it. That was the one I wanted to make sure.

Let's get into prizes. So here's what we're gonna do. We got two prizes. We got one 75 gift card. We got Jody with us today, too. Jody K. Edwards is our marketing manager, so she's going to be monitoring the chat and monitoring all that kind of stuff as well. Hey, Jody. Jody's coming to Denver too, right? I've never met Jody in person.

No, Jody's not coming to Denver, but.

Coming to Denver this time.

Okay.

You can come to San Antonio and Jody's in Dallas, I think. So she can definitely come to see. I've never met her in person, which is kind of. I've met most. Most of my staff in person. It's kind of crazy. Okay, so here's how we're going to do this. $100 gift card, $70 gift card, first 175 gift card. Actually, we'll just do them both at the same time. What is one thing that you can take away from today's webinar that you can implement immediately in your msp? And then I'm going to make Michelle pick the winners.

Do you remember what happened last time? This is really struggle for me. There were so many good answers.

Yeah, well, okay. Well, then I'll just talk. I'll just, you know, take it over if I have to throw that in the chat. Guys, what did you win today? I like Russ just said scaling operations is important. I think that was a response to my thing that I was talking about. What's one thing you learned today? Let's throw that in the chat, and then we're going to pick one of those chats. I'm going to set a little timer here, guys. I should play the Jeopardy Music is what I should play.

Yeah. When I said that I wanted to hang out in Denver, YouTube said that I was scamming and wouldn't publish it. So insultive. I know.

Are you trying to hook up with our members? Michelle, stop it.

What's going on? I'm spammy. Geez.

All right, now I'm gonna. This is going to be the new management team. Rumor. Michelle is trying to hook up with members.

Bad one. All right, let's see here.

Hey, guys. It's a good thing I'm hr.

Pretty sure Paige took that on now, right? Okay.

Nope, she did not. I'm still hr. She's done. She's a lawyer. She can't HR at all.

Oh, my God. I died.

Okay, I like this. Here's one from Russ. Okay. Do not sell what you cannot deliver service. I like that. This is from Lisa, a structured sales process provider. Prevents inefficiencies and missed opportunities for new hires. Luigi said, fix your sales process and ensure it's solid before going for a salesperson. Great job. Jeff said, Bill lead gen. Okay, let's keep them going here. That there's a Reddit for Chris sucks. It's Chris Weiser sucks. You just Google it. I think you just go into Reddit and search it and you'll see. Sarah said, internal closers often have a better understanding. Jody said, we shall meet one day.

Oh, my God. That's funny.

Here's a good one from sle. Great webinar. Learned a lot from you. But my takeaway is, when hiring, I should maintain my leadership by ensuring I hired for the right reasons and still manage the salesperson effectively. I like that. Here's another thing I'll tell you guys. These people have to be managed. We said this a couple times, but I cannot stress this enough. They absolutely, without question, have to be talked to, met with, coddled, cuddled, every single damn day. They are high performers. The higher the performer means the higher maintenance. That's the reality of it. I'm sorry, but it's real. If you want high performing salespeople, you are going to have to babysit them. Okay, there's our time. And Michelle's back to hitting on our clients. Or maybe it's our staff. I don't know.

Sales people love.

Okay. All right. I'm throwing this in the private chat for my team.

Are you picking or am I picking? I can't remember.

I just said Jody picked too.

Okay, Jody. Fine.

Jody got the list. Jody, let us know in the private chat what we got. This is from. Oh, this. How do you. I. I don't. She was on Onboarding this morning. I have no idea how to say your name. I'm really sorry. I feel really bad. I should have asked you this morning. We were talking this morning and I forgot to ask. Is it Tisnat? Did I say that wrong? Is that. It's fine. Probably. That's.

I'm willing to bet the T is silent.

Sin that.

Yeah. I don't know. I need to get the T is silent.

She's a client was on onboarding this morning, so that's good. All right, we gotta pick two. Jody or Michelle. Pick two.

I don't see. Okay, hold on, hold on. Here we go. Okay, the first. First winner is. Hold on.

Wait.

What happened? Shoot. Hold on.

I guess I'm still drinking your beers.

So Russ is gonna get. Yeah, you are. So Russ for the 100.

Okay, Russ, congrats, buddy.

Wait, and then also, what was the other amount?

I forgot 75 on the second one.

Okay.

Michelle is massacring the out of this guy. I know.

Sorry. Jeff Seaman. I'm gonna go for the next one.

To see you, buddy. Jeff is an active participant in all of our stuff, so that's great.

Okay, awesome.

Okay, guys, here's what I need from you. I need you. I think Jody's got all your stuff because you registered for today. But, Jody, can you confirm that we have emails for Jeff and Russ?

I don't know if she is hearing us because she's usually pretty responsive. I know. We do. If they're here, we will.

I'm good. Okay, guys. My name. Oh, Sinot.

Okay, I did say it, right?

I did say it right. That's good. Okay, cool. Thanks. Thanks. That's awesome.

All right.

This morning on onboarding. So that's cool. Okay, guys. Thanks so much, Michelle. Great job as always. Appreciate you. We will be live in Denver in one week from today. Today, basically, we'll be going live next Tuesday morning at 9:00am Mountain Time. Very, very excited about that. If you cannot join us, please register@7Figuremspevents.com. We will be simulcasting all three days, but you have to register to show up for that amazing, amazing content. Super excited to be on stage. You guys can meet me. If you're gonna be there in person, please come say hi. Terpstra. My name is Chris Weiser and we'll see you guys later. Have a great day. Bye. Bye.

Bye.