Why you should stop negotiating with yourself | Dave Alton's Success Story

My name is Dave Alton. We're an MSP based out of Southern California. Our name is Strategic Information Resources. And yeah, we've been in business for about. We've had this name for about 20 years and been operating for about 15. So we spent the last year really focusing on our internal company culture and really kind of riding that ship. We had a good culture, but it wasn't. It was never talked about or it was never specifically said what it was. So we did an exercise with the whole entire staff to really get that to be kind of dialed in. And what we found is that when we did that, we gained a lot of efficiencies that we weren't really expecting to gain in doing that work. And we realized, oh, we can really take on a lot more clients. We didn't know exactly how to do that. Most of our business had been referral. And so we started looking for opportunities where we could grow, right? Really, instead of the 3 to 5% a year that we were talking about, we were looking at 20 to 30% year over year kind of growth. So I went to IT Nation and I saw Lindsay and Maria there and they were super sweet and super nice. The conference was actually over. We were kind of all eating food by the pool or near the pool, and we were kind of wrapping up. And I immediately, I remember this vividly, Lindsay saying, yeah, no, we do this seven figure msp. And I went, yeah, that's. That's not really for us. We're not gonna put any money towards that. Like, thanks, but no thanks. She said, oh, it's all right. That's all right. Yeah, you know, it's not for everyone for sure, but you should come see us in la. And that was kind of the beginning of our journey with maybe we could really use some help in scaling our business versus trying to figure out how to do it on our own. Well, we haven't scaled as much as we want to yet, so we're still on that journey for sure. But I think that the thing that really hit this year for us was we didn't have the operating capital that we really wanted to have towards the end of the year. And that was kind of disappointing. And I know a lot of the management staff and the staff in general feel like we could do better, do more. And that includes everyone from top to bottom. And, you know, what we're really trying to get to is how can we execute on sales. And I think our issue has always been we had always devalued what we do, right? Like, we Think of it as it's a commodity people aren't going to pay that. People can't afford that. And some of that's true. I'm not discounting that it's expensive and it's hard to afford and things like that. But what we found was that was more a conversation we were having with ourselves versus a conversation we're actually having with our clients. And I think that's the biggest fear is like, we're going to go to our clients and we're going to say, hey, we want to upgrade you and give you all this stuff and it's going to cost X amount more, right? And oh, nobody's ever gonna pay that, right. And we would just not have the conversation. Right. We'd kind of hide out and everything's kind of normal and that's the way we're gonna do it and stuff like that. And I think the other thing that kind of started to happen was, is that we've seen some role shifts within the organization over the course of the last year and that we, I don't think we're really taking that into account in how we were working and what we were doing. And that I think also helped us to really kind of realize we wanted to scale, we wanted to grow. So we signed up December 27th of 2023. We didn't really engage. There was really no programs until January 6th. So we just finished our sales onboarding in towards the end of January and we started Marketing Machine this first week in February. I think the conversation, like the really big takeaway for me is the whole negotiating with yourself and me having conversations with others about stop, we need to stop having that conversation with us and have that conversation with a client. I can't count how many times our CEO and I have kind of gone back and forth a little bit on well, they're never going to pay that and things like that. And it was a very long, drawn out conversation. When we go re up a client on a new contract or something like that, and now it's, it's simple, we just say, hey, this is what we think we're going to charge the CEO. And I go, yep, that seems good. And when she says, I don't really think they're going to pay it, I'm like, well, we're going to find out, right? If I think, I'm sure it's Cindy that says this, but. Or no, I think it's Ryan that says this. If, if you're, if the client wants the service from you or wants the service and wants it from you. The rest is just math. And, and that was, that was so kind of, it was kind of almost freeing because you could put any, you can put any price on it you want to when you start. It doesn't necessarily have to be that price at the end, but if, if they want it and they're willing to and they want it from me, well, then I can negotiate at that point. But I don't want to negotiate before that point because then I'm just giving money away is really what I'm doing. So. Yeah, so I've only been through my first no, which I have a funny story about if you want me to share. And then I have my second and third no scheduled Monday and Tuesday. And we're actively scheduling out more clients. Clients as we're going through. So we've embraced the idea of this and I think as an organization, we've committed to it. So I think that's probably the biggest thing is a lot of times there's all kinds of these programs out there. Throw a rock and you'll probably hit somebody that's doing some kind of business consulting. Oftentimes when you do business consulting, you, you're like, yeah, I don't, that's too hard. Or nobody's gonna listen to it or that's not the right thing. And, and you, you get, you're getting all this coaching but you're not really listening to it, which seems kind of a waste. So when we decided to do this, we really thought of it more like of an investment, right? Hey, we're, we're paying X. We're gonna get the most out of that X we can get, right? And so rather than second guess or say, oh, we're gonna, oh, we're not going to do that because that's going to be too hard or nobody's going to listen to it. We just like, okay, great, let's do it. And I think the results will prove maybe I do need to modify it, but I don't right now. I don't even know enough to what I would modify. I could definitely go back to the old way of doing things, but I know for sure that doesn't work. So why keep doing that? I may as well try something new, right? And this is, I'll be the first to tell you, I'm not a salesperson, right? I'm a IT guy. I've got the propeller on my head. I love all the new gadgets. I'm all about the tech and I'm really Good at translating tech into business applications and results and things like that. But I don't like to do sales. Like, in my head, I don't like to do sales. And what I found with this is I'm not doing sales. I'm doing a disservice to my clients by not giving them all that they should have. And that's really helped me kind of transition from a very technical role into more of a, hey, this is a business development role. A way to serve more people, to engage more with our employees and, you know, give everybody what they need and want. Our reachable goal is 250k mrr per month. I guess mrr per month is kind of lame because that's monthly already. But we're really shooting for 300. That's really where we want to get to. And we know that's going to have to be a combination of existing clients and new clients. And so we're super stoked about Marketing Machine. We've never really done the marketing thing and we just started the first week of it and Lindsey's amazing and again, we've really doubled down on, look, let's just listen to her, let's do what she says and we'll figure out what works and what doesn't afterwards. Versus oh, that's never going to work, or we can't do that, or any of that kind of conversation where what Cindy calls it head trash. I think I'm staying out of that as much as possible. I'm just follow the program, do what works, and then go back and evaluate, iterate and make it work better for what we do and how we do stuff. But not, not throw anything out from day one before we've even tried it. I think it's really, I mean, it's all stuff people say all the time. It's like, look, if. If you've been doing this for a while and you have had these results and you're. You keep looking at stuff and you try new things and you keep having the same results over and over again, well, then maybe you're doing something wrong, right? Like the problem isn't the programs that you're doing, it's probably you. And I think that that's the thing that helps me the most about this program is that Chris says you need to work on your business. You need to work, figure out how to make it work for you. But a lot of that is, I don't have five years to figure this out. I want to get this done kind of now. So rather than wait around, do all this stuff wrong. It's a great plan to just kind of move you forward without trying everything new under the sun to figure it out.