So You Hired an Outsourced Marketing Agency, NOW WHAT?

I'm so excited to be having this talk with y'.

All.

Okay, raise your hand if you currently are in the marketing machine. Who's in marketing machine? Raise your hands higher. We can't see them. All right, cool. So you are going to be familiar with some of the stuff that we're talking about today. You're going to hear some things that are. Oh, yeah, I knew that. I knew I should be doing that. Or, oh, I'm already doing that thing. Or, hey, I need to tighten up on that. Bear with me. Feel free to collaborate, to contribute to the topic as we go today. And, yeah, I'm excited. Okay, so first thing, everyone put your hands in the air. Both hands. Wave them around like you just don't care. All right, cool. Now what I want you to do is. Nope. Leave them up. Leave your hands in the air if you have a formal education of any kind. College certifications, masters, bachelor's associates. Leave them. Okay. Now leave your hands in the air if you have formal education in it. Hmm. All right. Leave them in the air if you have formal education in cyber security. All right, now leave your hand in the air if you have formal education in marketing. Oh, okay. We had some extra hands come up. Cool. Okay, so the reason why I ask. Actually, I don't want to tell you why I asked yet. What I want you to do is I want you to tell your table really quick how you got started in it, because most, like 95% of the room just told me that you don't have formal education in it. So I want you to tell your table how you got started it. Go. Let's see. Jamie, how'd you get started in it? You were. I was. You were in college. Okay. All right. Jesse, how did you get started in it?

Got started as a freshman in high school.

As a freshman in high school?

Yes.

Why did you start, like.

Okay, so I broke my first computer. It was a Tandy sensation, if any of you remember that, but broke it deleting files because, you know, who needs these Windows files.

Yeah.

And then a couple weeks later, fixed it with just the manuals and the disk that it came with, and then I was hooked.

So you broke it and then you fixed it?

Yes.

Okay, cool. Emilio, how did you get started in it?

I think since, like, sixth, seventh grade. It's really all I wanted to do.

I got accepted into vocational high school, where I did my CCNA and high

school classes at the same time.

Because of that, my credits transferred to DeVry, so I got my Bachelor's in it a little bit under three years, and I've been doing it ever since. Okay, so you do have some formal education. Okay, let me see. Chris Burns. How did you get started in it?

Actually helped a teacher of mine. He was a treasurer for a township. He couldn't figure out computing, so I actually went over there and worked with him to teach him how to use his own program.

So just helping out a friend. Yeah, teaching a friend. Okay, cool. So you were probably researching, redditing, figuring things out, breaking things, putting them back together, Right? Does that sound right? Okay, you probably did that because it was fun. Was it fun to break things and put them back together? Was it a challenge? Do you still feel that way? Is it still a challenge to see these problems get solved? And you're like, oh, I fixed that. I did that. And then you see this on the other side of it, you see this thing that you produced and you fixed and you made it better. That's satisfying, right? It's fun. So here's the thing. You have to do the exact same thing with your lead generation, with your sales. That's right. You're gonna have to break it sometimes and put it back together with your mindset, with your business mindset. Sometimes, like Ryan said, you have to get out of the head trash. And it's a funny thing about head trash. It stays with you sometimes. Sometimes it's this voice in your head that doesn't actually ever really go away. We just find ways of working with it. We find ways of coping. We find ways. We find strategies and community to make it work for us in some cases, okay, you have to do the same thing with your marketing. You're going to have to screw it up to get it right. Okay? And leading people, I think this is the hardest one. Business is easy. People are hard. We have to learn how to lead people. And it will take sometimes doing it wrong. It will take being a crappy leader before you're a good leader. Okay? So as we go through today's workshop, we're gonna do some fun stuff together. We're gonna do some interaction. But I want you to have this mindset that I'm gonna have to screw it up to get it right. Okay? So remember this morning when you all closed your eyes and I said, think about the thing that you came here to get. Do you remember what it was? Okay. All right, so think about that. Whatever your thing was, and you don't have to tell anyone. You can if you want, but you don't have to think about that. And how we're going to apply what we learned today to contribute to your intention for being here. Because the reason why you came is probably different from why the person next to you came. Okay? So think about that. So as Paige said this morning, with growth comes a lot of responsibility. You have to learn to tear your business apart and put it back together. In fact, I asked Chris last week, I said, how did you get started in it? Because we're going through this. We're talking about just the mindset and moving from tech into marketing, into sales and taking control of your sales and all these things. And I was like, how did you get started? He said, I was in my parents living room and I turned to Windows 3.1 and Chris, feel free to contribute to this if you'd like, into a Windows 95 computer. Okay. So he was literally in his parents living room tearing stuff apart. And I think you said you still have that maybe.

Yeah, it was a compact Presario. And yeah, they still. My mom still uses it.

She still uses it?

Yeah, still got Windows 95 on it.

Wow.

Can't talk her out of it. She does have a Surface tablet, but she doesn't use that.

Okay. She likes her Windows 95.

Yep.

All right, cool. This is the thing you all started somewhere. Chris, were you bad at it in the beginning? Did you break it? Did stuff break on you?

It was like, you guys remember with the Windows 3.1 to 95 upgrade, it was like what, 30 floppy disks? I was actually pretty good at it from the beginning, but I never got super advanced. I was good at talking to people, so it became easy. And like you said, it was fun.

It was fun to you.

That's so key. It was like super fun to me to do that and go in and fix people's problems. And it. That's what started the ball rolling.

Yeah. Okay, cool. So here's the thing. Then I asked him, what was the turning point for you? So you started out in tech, but like, how did you really get into marketing and like becoming Chris Weiser and seven Figure msp or even getting to the point where he sold your msp. What was his answer? He liked money more than tech. Who can relate? Give me a hell yeah, if you can relate. All right, cool. Here's the thing. I want you two minutes or less. Okay. What's your turning point? Tell someone beside you, why are you here today? What's your turning point? Is it because you like money more than tech? Is it because you want to retire? Do you want to sell? Are you Sick of being a business owner. You want to do something else? Tell the table, two minutes. Let's see, Vince, what's your turning point for you? You're here. This is a sales and marketing event. So what's the turning point for you, Vince?

Oh, our turning point is we're trying to build a juggernaut out of Chicago for the IT and cybersecurity space and we need to get better at selling because we've been doing it the wrong way for 25 years and we're ready to kick ass. And that's why we're here.

We've been doing it wrong for 25 years and that's why we're here. We're ready to sell, we are ready to make some cash. I love that. Will, would you mind telling us what your turning point is?

Oh, let's see. I just came in here, you said what is my turning point?

Yeah, what's your turning point? You're here, you show up these events, you're immersed into the program. You're a marketing machine. What's your turning point? Why are you moving from tech into really being focused on building out revenue and lead gen all these things?

Oh, for me, I am always interested in new things. I'm never stagnant, stay stagnant at what I do. I've always, forever always looked to evolve. I've never stayed the same. So if you stay the same, you will not grow and you'll get left behind.

That's right.

And to me, you're just as bad as the people who don't know. So with me, this has been a great journey for me because I'm always learning whether I come to the event or if I see it on market, machine or online. But I'm always looking to grow and learn about something else.

Love that. Thank you so much. It was good. We're here to evolve. Yeah. Okay, so here's the thing. If you're here, most likely 99% of us are a founder. We run a founder led sales model. What does that mean? That means that you are responsible for your sales. We are not corporate entities where we have these huge division divisions of salespeople and then we have the marketing team and then we have the PR team and maybe we're starting to build out some leadership within our organizations, but we are still founder led sales. Okay. So as the MSP owner, you are responsible for making sure that you get new leads into and through the pipeline to close deals. Okay. So with that, no one's going to come save your sales no one's going to come save your marketing. No agency, no magical salesperson, no outbound dialing agency, no employee. It's us, right? It's the owners of the business. We have to own that fully. Not even us as coaches. We can't save that. You have to be willing to take radical responsibility for your results. Okay? No one will care about your results more than you do. So let's say. And just raise your hand really quick if this resonates. Are you one to eight people on your team? Go raise your hand really quick. Okay, cool. So let's say you have one to eight people on your team. And I'm going to speak to this structure because that's where most of us in here fall in. And let's say that you've been referring on or relying on referrals, and you've built your business and you've done a little marketing here and maybe you've done some outsourced marketing there, and you've maybe hired a dialer once or twice or you've hired the agency for the dialer and you've dabbled in this stuff, but you really don't have true strategy behind it. Okay? And so you're trying to figure out, where do I go? What do I do? Tell me what to do. Okay, here's what I want you to do. Your starting block, number one. You guys ready for your starting block? It's your MRR goal, your monthly recurring revenue goal. If you're a marketing machine, you already know this. It's your MRR goal. How much monthly recurring revenue do you want to add? And you're going to see this plastered everywhere throughout our events, throughout our language that we use, throughout our coaching techniques. Everything that we do comes back to that North Star star of mrr. Because you know what? I can make decisions from mrr. I can make decisions when I know that this for the next 12 to 36 months, I will have this amount of money coming in no matter what, because I have tight contracts, I've got repeatable processes. I've got things locked in. Okay? So everything is going to start and end with that MRR goal. All right? So here's what we're going to do. I sent Chris on a. On an excursion this morning. I was like, hey, will you go get some popcorn? Funny story. He thought the popcorn was for me, which it is. He brought me back three types of popcorn. He said, I didn't know which one you want. So I got all three bags. Thank you, Chris, for that. But it's actually for you. I need two volunteers over here in this direction. Anybody? Yeah, what's your name? Josh. Okay. Hi, Josh. Anybody else over here in this area? All right, yeah. What's your name? Corey. Okay, so can you guys just. Actually, you'll be fine sitting at your table here. One of you hold the popcorn bag. All right? All right, and then I need two volunteers over here, all right? Zach and someone near Zach. Okay, do lead. All right, Just find two chairs. You guys can sit right here if you want for this. Julie, will you come sit right here? Okay, so whenever I say go, we are going to popcorn some MRR goals. So what that means is I'm going to call on you throughout the room, and I'm just going to. I just want you to shoot out your MRR goal. How much MRR do you want to add in the meantime? Our volunteers are going to stand up and they're going to shoot popcorn in the other person's mouth. All right? Ready, set, go. All right, Brett. 250,000 in new MRR. All right, let's do it. Yeah, go ahead, Michael. 80,000 by the end of the year. Awesome. What about this table over here? Back table. Howard, you want to share? Be nice.

15,000 mrr added every month.

15,000 mrr added every Month. I love that. Smart goal. Let's do someone over here. Let's do Brian. Brian Gunther. 50k in new MRR by the end of the year. Awesome. All right, thank you. Thank you, guys. Very good. What's your score over here? 1 0. What's your score over here? 10 or 12. Great job. All right. Awesome. Thank you. All right, can I hold the popcorn bags? Thank you. Oh, you know what? No, no, here, you hold on to it. I have something better. Thank you. Just hold on to it, Zach. Hold on to it until I tell you. Thank you. All right, so here's the thing. Everyone in here has an MRR goal. If you don't yet, I'm going to give you some ideas of how you can come up with one. Because again, everything that you do has to go back to that MRR goal. And I'm going to show you a visual here in a few seconds that's going to show you how we take our marketing activity and our lead generation activity and our mid funnel activity and how we actually turn that into your MRR. Okay? So if you're at 10k MRR or in that range, your next MRR goal may be 25k in monthly recurring revenue. Okay, so what that would do for you, you're now a $300,000 a year company. Now you can start to think about bringing in that tech, bringing in that level one tech, bringing in maybe an admin, hiring out your help desk. You can start making some strategic decisions. At that point, you're probably going to start to pay yourself. And that's nice. Okay, if you are at 80k in MRR, your next logical goal may be 125 in Mr. So that's going to push you over that $1 million mark. You're going to be a one and a half million dollar company again. You're going to start to build out your leadership teams. You can start to do some ascension and start thinking about some organizational growth. Okay. And you can see how the strategy for each one of these is a little bit different. All right, let's say you're at 300k mrr. Okay, you've gotten that past that hurdle of reaching the million dollar a year mark. But now you're starting to hit some roadblocks. Now you're starting to hit roadblocks of leading people, of scale, of organization, of you being stretched thin. You're hitting bandwidth. You probably got eight people on your team at this point. Problems get a little bit bigger. But what this does, whenever you have MRR that is repeatable, that's predictable, you're able to make strategic decisions. So do we see why MRR is so incredibly important? Do we all agree that MRR is important? I cannot go any farther if we don't know why that's important. And they're going to have to throw popcorn some more. Okay, all right, awesome. So let's say I get my new MRR goal. Put it in your head. Put your new MRR goal on your head. Now we're going to back ourselves into that goal. All right? We are going to take our goal and we're going to start to break it down. How do I get there? Okay, so to add XMRR, let's say 20k or 15k per month. I need to, number one, make sure I have a really simple plan to get there. Did you guys see how it was complicated to watch them throwing popcorn while listening to me, while watching the folks around the room share their MRR goals? We get a little sidetracked, right? Okay. We got to keep things simple because there's going to be folks throwing popcorn all over the place all the time. You got folks saying, buy this and do this CRM and go to this PSA and buy our toolkit and all these things going on all the Time. So we got to keep things simple. Okay. We got to have things that are repeatable. Right? So whenever you come into marketing machine, you know, it gets a little, it's very repetitive. It's. This is what we do. And you run this webinar and you're going to drive leads and then you're going to do it all again. And it's the same thing over and over again. If you feel like you're repeating yourself, you're probably doing marketing. Right? All right, and next we got to have a linear sales process. Got to be fast. You got to have a linear sales process. What does that mean? Do any of you. I'm just curious. Just raise your hand if you want. Bless you. Do you have deals that are like in the air right now and they're just lingering there and there's this like stuck energy of do I follow up with them or do they follow up with me or I really don't know where we go from here. Does that sound relatable? Yeah. Okay, so we gotta have a linear sales process so that when a lead comes in the door, when someone reaches out to me, when I meet someone at a networking event, when we make our first call to them, I know where they're going. I know the direction in which they're moving. Okay, so this is our linear sales process that we teach in seven figure MSP as well as in our elite program. This is the process. This is the way of the Jedi. Okay. So we get a cold lead, we nurture them. We are preferably doing that through live conversion events such as webinars, cybersecurity briefings, lunch and learns. Things like this, where we're gathering people together to nurture, to educate, to inform, to build real quality relationship, to move them to the next step. What's the next step? Do I give them a quote after never having a conversation with them? No, I get them into a first time appointment. Okay. Cindy is going to talk to you about first time appointments. Whenever she comes on stage, she's going to talk all about FTAs and how we have those conversations. And that's a craft that we're always working on. Okay. Always after the fta, you go into the discovery call, then am I giving a quote for services? Then? No. What am I giving them? What am I pitching in that discovery csra. Awesome. So then I'm selling the csra. That's the very first buy I'm getting at that point. Once I present our findings, I turn on their risk light bulb. Then I can Move them into fully managed services. Okay. It's very important that we remember this linear sales process. Say it with me. Linear sales process. Okay? We want to know where our deals are going all the time. So let's just make it simple, easy math. If I need to close one deal per month, I need 10 first time appointments. And there's a worksheet on your table if you want to follow along with me. I'm not really referring to the worksheet, but you're welcome. You'll see that we're going in the order of the worksheet, so feel free to fill these things in as we go. Clean up on aisle 4. If I need to close 2 deals per month, I need 21st time appointments per month. If I want to close 3 deals per month, I need 30 first time appointments with qualified leads. Not just anybody either. I need qualified leads on the books. Would you guys say that these numbers are about right, this math? Is the math in? Yeah. Okay. Typically is. This is what I get back. All right. So on and so forth. Okay. Now you're going to see whenever you start taking 30, 40 FTAs a month, we got to start having someone that's going to help you in that process, such as a bdr, an sdr. You got to have folks on your team that can help you take these mid funnel activities because you're going to be spent on time. Okay? So the math is easy. We keep the math easy. The grit is what's hard. Okay. The grid is what's hard. Making decision from data, making decision from numbers is hard. Not getting in the emotional pitfall of what comes along with being a business owner is hard. Making sure that every single day, week, month, quarter and year, you are looking at your numbers. That's the kind of stuff that we have to be doing. Because again, no one's coming to save our sales. No one else is going to come do this for us. No matter who you try to outsource it to, we are the ones that are in charge of this. Okay? So maintain the path even in discomfort is what's hard. But that's why you're here today. Okay, so now it may seem I'm just going to outsource this. And they told me that they would guarantee me five appointments per month. I'm going to do that. That's the way to go. Or hey, I'm going to work with this marketing agency and they told me that they're going to do all of my social media content, they're going to do all of my blog content, and. And they're gonna do my graphics, and they're just gonna handle everything for me. That seems easy. It seems simple. Yeah, that's what Lindsay told me to do. She said to choose simple. Okay. But here's the thing. There's really no such thing as totally outsourced marketing and sales. Okay? Here's a couple of the top traps that I see in outsourcing it all. So outsourcing your dialing, outsourcing done for you. Marketing, outsourcing, endless toolkits. Let me get another toolkit with all these things that I need to do in here and a bunch of templates and all these things. And it's. Did I really ever put those into execution, or did they sit there and get dusty? Okay, so here's the thing. Let's talk about just outsourcing our dialers first. Their primary strategy is to pump out large amounts of numbers. It's actually, it makes sense as a business model to have folks pay you a monthly fee, a monthly retainer, and then in return, you guarantee that this roi, you guarantee this result. On the other side of it, it makes sense. Someone has a problem, we have a solution. MSPs have a problem, we have the solution. It makes sense as a business. Okay. But what doesn't work out is that their business model is based on putting out tons of numbers. They put out all these numbers of calls every single day. And their conversion rates are so low. I see it. I see it every single day. Every day. Okay? Their conversion rates are very low. And the reason why is that they're doing this for so many clients at a time. And even if you have a dedicated account manager or you have a dedicated dialer or a dedicated person that does this for you, they're still not in your company following your strategy. You're probably having to go through a middleman or through someone else within their company to even have contact with this person. Or when you do have contact with them, they're going to get paid regardless. Okay? So their performance is going to reflect that. All right? So what happens is they end up lacking real core value. Focused training. Someone just popcorn out a core value in your company. Really quick. Do it loud so we don't have to run mics. Grit. What else? Transparency. Love that. So if you have an outsourced dialer, are you having conversations with them about grit and transparency? Maybe. Probably not. Okay, so what happens is you get these folks that are pushing out tons of numbers for you, but they don't really know what makes Your company special. They don't really have the knowledge to book qualified appointments that are going to be great to work with you that's going to give you the higher conversion rates because they don't know enough about your company. We've not developed them like we would, as if they were an employee. Employee or a contractor that works for us solely. Okay. Relationship building. They're probably not building relationships. They're pumping out numbers. Okay. They're not qualifying in most cases. Again, they're pumping out numbers. Okay? So a lot of times they're not even following through all the way to the finish line to make sure that they even show up for the call to make sure those appointments even show up. Let's say they do show up. Then what? Then they're off to the races for the next one. But what happens whenever you are six months in, you're $30,000 into having this outsourced company, and you've went through, let's say, 30 appointments, and all of them were crap. Are you going back and having those tough conversations with that dialer in that outsourced company that, hey, we got to change? If you waited six months to have that conversation. I'm sorry. These are conversations that have to be had daily, right, Casey? These conversations happen every single day. Okay? So they are usually sharing leads. I literally just had a conversation with a Leads Mastery client last week. They're coming out of an outsourced dialing company. We are hiring an internal dialer for them. And I said, hey, can we get the list that they have already worked with and that they've already had touch points with? Nope, they couldn't take that list with them. So they'd worked with this company for five months or so. I would say had a couple of appointments, but all the touch points, all the work, all the thousands of dollars, I'd say probably about $20,000, give or take, that had been invested. They don't get any of that list. Okay, so what happens is they are left with that bill, Right? And then they don't have any of the list or any of the nurture to show for that. Okay, so who owns those leads? They do that. Outsourced dialing company owns the leads. Are we starting to see why it's so important to have the stuff internal? Because if you hire the dialer, if you hire the appointment setter, they go on to whatever their next step in life is. Who owns the leads? Do they take it with them? No, you keep it. That's your list. Those are your leads. Those are the leads that you've been farming. Okay, so in 90% of cases, if you're outsourcing this, they're not going to let you take those leads. Has anyone ever experienced that? I'm just curious. Anyone in here ever experience that? No. Okay. All right, so let's talk about conversion rates. For the top conversion rates for our outbound agencies, it's around 1%, 2%, maybe we start to move into 3%. I have actually never seen that. Please tell me if you have. I would love to update my data. Okay, so out of the 429 students that have come through marketing machine, the 61 students that are in Leads Mastery, and having personally coached over 5,000 hours in the MSP industry, our average conversion rate is 8.320-37325%. I just totaled this up right back there today. Okay, that's the data. Those are the numbers that matter. And between 12 to 20%, when we skip the I didn't listen to Lindsey learning curve, that usually comes in the beginning. Okay. If I took that out, it'd be even higher. All right, so what I'm really drilling home here is that you will get better results whenever you own that strategy. All right, so. All right, enough on that. Let's talk about outsourced marketing agencies. Anyone ever outsourced their marketing content? Blogs, LinkedIn? Yeah. Okay. We'll do it all for you. Yeah, sounds great. All right, we're gonna create your social content, write your blogs, all those things. That's great. But how many appointments are they putting on the calendar? Could you text your marketing agency right now and ask how many appointments did we add to the calendar in the last 30 days? Could we do that? Anyone that runs, could you ask that question? Anybody want to answer? No, that's okay. Usually not. Usually they're not even tracking that. I know because I've worked with marketing agencies. Okay, how many leads are in the pipeline? They usually can't answer that question either because their job is solely focused on getting the activity done. Oh, we published three social media posts this week. We wrote one newsletter, we published a blog. But how many leads actually went into the pipeline? How many folks actually got on the calendar? They don't know. So now we're running a business off of activity. Okay. Activity does not deposit. This is a motto. Actually got from Chris. I think he's in here. There he is. You can't substitute activity for achievement. And again, it's this stuff. We have to be tracking the data. So I just want you to Take note of this. As we're talking to marketing, as we're talking to sales teams, are we tracking the data? Are we tracking those things? I'm going to give you some data points here in a few minutes that you can actually start to reference, okay? Because I cannot deposit social media, graphics, newsletters and content into the bank. They don't take that there. If I went to Wells Fargo and I said, here you go, put these social posts into the bank, they're going to look at me like I'm crazy. Now, the favorite of the MSPs of what I hear of this favorite marketing activity. If I had a nickel for every time I hear this, of, like, Lindsay, I have to do this thing before I can start marketing, I'd have a lot of nickels. Does anyone want to guess what it is? Can't say. Migrating my psa. Although that's on the list, too. Got to get my stack in order. That's a good one. Website rebuild. I gotta go build my website. I gotta go redo my website. All right. And again, if I had a nickel, I had a lot. I'd have a lot of those. But what happens is we get into this place of I can't make dials because I need to redo my branding. I'm hiring a brand strategist. I'm finding this guy on Fiverr and he's gonna redo my entire brand. And then I gotta submit for a new LLC because I'm going to change my business name and, oh, I got to get new business cards, and then I got to get T shirts printed. And now before you know it, we're six months in and you still haven't picked up the phone. Okay. Or let's just say you start the website rebuild and then you realize I kind of changed my mind. Now you're another six months and we still haven't ran our first webinar. We still haven't put out our first event because. Okay. And we're just kicking the can of the thing that we're going to have to do eventually. So not to say that having a website is wrong. I think we should definitely all have a website. But what we want to do is we want to generate results fast. So if you are in marketing machine, you know this, you know that we get you in and you start taking crazy action. Where's Brian? Is Brian Jodre in the room? There's Brian. So Brian knows. He comes in the marketing machine and he's like, I know Lindsay's gonna kick my today. And Cause it's every single day we're taking action. Every single day we're doing something that's going to go get you results that day. Okay? So what I want you to do is I want you to embrace that money loves speed. I've heard Michelle say this. Our CRO, she lives by this. She teaches this in all of her webinars as well. That money loves speed. So when we take fast action, we're going to get faster results. So my advice, go do marketing and lead gen, get some cash generated and then go hire the professionals to do your website for you so that you're generating leads, you're making money, and then you can have that going out, going on in the background. Okay? We have some awesome partners that can help you with that if you need someone. Okay? Stop making yourself busy with the tasks that are not actually in your wheelhouse. Okay? So now I'm going to ask you to do something crazy. And no, we're not going to meditate as a room again. It's like really crazy. Are we ready? Because it is step number two to scaling and taking control of your results. All right? You're gonna choose a freaking niche. How many of us have said I don't wanna niche down because I think it's going to like block people from coming to me and I don't. And I'm just gonna service everyone in the XYZ area. Have we ever said that? Yep, yep. Hear it every day. This is like the hazing week of marketing machine where it's day two and I say, okay, let's choose a niche. And then everyone's. And I'm like, no, you have to today. And what it does is it forces you to get specific with your marketing and with the activity that you're putting in so that you can get the results. I want you to choose a niche and I want you to go all in, go crazy with it. I want you to become the msps, the MSP for dentists in Texas. I want you to become the MSP for manufacturing. I want you to become the MSP for defense contractors, for media and production, for med spas. Whatever it is that you choose, become that MSP for that. Now here's my caveat with that. If you get clients that don't fit within that niche, heck yeah, go for it. If you go in for three to six months, in fact, we have a three month rule and marketing machine that if you get in for three or when you come in, you run this niche for three months. At the end of that three months, you make a data driven decision on if you will continue within that niche. Okay. Will you continue down that path or not? But we're going to make a decision from data and not emotion. Okay? So I want you to choose a niche and go all the way in. Now, after that three months, let's say you spend your first three months. In fact, we did this in Leads Mastery in the beginning of the year where we created a quarterly marketing plan. So everyone in Leads Mastery came out with four industries that they would potentially target for the year. And if one of those were like, whoa, this was great, they're going to keep going so we can make those strategic decisions in the moment, that's okay. But I'm not just winging it and saying anyone that buys. Okay. All right, so here's the thing. Trying to be everything to anyone. I got this from Chris in our conversation. Also, trying to be everything to anyone is leading you to be nothing to everyone. And I know it's really tough to make that decision because it does. It feels like you're putting yourself in a box. And I know that we don't want that. I don't want any of us to be in a box and stuck and limited in our business, but I want you to get results. And so whenever you say, I am the MSP and solution provider for, let's just go crazy here and say for wealth advisors in North Florida with employees, but with between 10 to 20 employees, between three and a half to 10 million in revenue, it's so specific. Versus when I say I'm an IT and cybersecurity provider, do you see the difference in that? If you know exactly who it is that you're focusing on, you're going to have that much more specificity in the lists that you build and the marketing that you put out and the dials that your team puts out. Okay. And then we're not just, okay, two minute tabletop. What's your niche and why? Why is this your niche? Go. All right, I want to hear from the left side of the room. All right, let's hear from Andrew. Do you want to share what your niche is and why?

So our niche is primarily medical, but our fastest growing niche is insurance brokers.

Your fastest growing need. Why do you say that?

Medical's had HIPAA for a long time. In New York State, the compliance requirements for insurance brokers has recently changed. So there's new requirements for insurance brokers, whereas medical offices have always had the requirements they have.

So you see a new need in the marketplace.

Correct.

And you're making a data driven decision because you see this demand. Yep. Love it. Awesome. Let's get someone else over here. Yeah, go ahead, Brian.

You looked right at me when you said it.

I said it. I thought of you. I thought about you whenever I made the slide deck.

So we're defense contractor focused and your next question will be why? Right. So we looked at this very strategically over the last four or five years when the CMMC was coming, and now it's just about here. The final proposed rule is almost done end of the year. So if any of you have contractors, clients that need to know about this. But that was, it was very intentional for us.

It was very intentional, yeah.

Given that we're in the D.C. metro market.

So you looked at your market, you saw an impending need. So you being the expert in the industry, you were like, hey, we see the CMC stuff, CMC stuff coming out and you're like, hey, we're gonna go and start prepping for this, start building our list, our community. We're gonna be the experts for this. And now it's coming to the surface. Right.

And it's regulation. They have to do it.

Yeah, it's regulation. It has to be done.

If they don't do it, they're hosed.

Okay, so you're that guy.

I'm the guy.

You're the guy. All right, awesome. Let's hear from someone over here. Anyone want to share? Krios, you want to share what your niche is and why?

So my niche is focusing on the housing industry. There's a big housing boom in the area where I live in San Antonio, in Texas, within a 10 mile radius. There's just so many contractors and so many opportunities that I see popping up as well as working with the real estate people who are selling those homes and than no business people that are in the area.

Yeah, I think real estate would really be good for you, Chris, because especially if you're focusing on new development because then you can work the supply chain. Right. So you start out with the real estate. They're probably the easiest to get in with. They're probably in community events, et cetera. And then you just go, oh, which developers are you working with? Oh, what security companies are servicing your development company, who's doing this? And you're really going to be able to work that supply. Supply chain. Awesome. Thanks for sharing. Okay, so the reason why I ask you this again, you can see if you're listening, you hear the demand. There is a demand. He said, hey, There was this compliance, this regulation that was coming. There's tons of development in this area. There's insurance requirements. All these things are coming up. So we're listening to the demand. Okay? So make it. Make a decision off of things that make sense. Okay? Either there's a demand there, you see a demand. You have experience in that niche. So for an example, maybe you used to own a CPA firm, or your wife is an accountant and you have experience in that and you say, hey, I've got real world experience there. So that's where we're going to focus. And we're going to go for three months at least. And then at the end of the three months, we can make a strategic decision on if we continue or not. Okay? So now after this, the next part here, it's really simple. This is where we're going to keep things. Super, super simple strategy. Okay? Not a temporary plan, but a master strategy. I want you to answer these strategic questions. Ready? But first, can you guys. Can you choose two new volunteers? That's going to be your popcorn throwers, okay? Go. Choose two new people. Anyone you want. Can you guys choose Dalif and Zach? Can you choose two new people? Okay. Anyone you want. Make it fun. Don't ask for volunteers. It's more fun that way. Once I say go, you're going to try to wring it in its mouth. You need at least like four, like three foot. That's too far. It doesn't have good air resistance. Yep, there you go. That's good. Okay, so what are your current KPIs to measure your marketing success? Go. What's yours? Patrick, throw the popcorn. Unknown. All right, let's see this table over here. I don't know your name. Over there. What's your current KPIs to measure marketing? Look at your conversions. Legion conversions. Some stuff in there. Okay. All right, what else we got? I heard Roaz over here. Roas return on ad spend. Love that. What about you FTAs? How many FTAs did we book? What else? Opt ins. How many leads? Opted in Love that. Someone over here. Lead gen. How do you measure Lead gen? Qualified leads that maybe went to a discovery call or that bought a csra. Okay. All right. All right. Joseph and Skyler, what's your score? 2, 4. All right, their data is off. All right, guys, what's your. What's our score? Seven. Nice. All right, thanks, guys. Hold the popcorn. Hold it. Thank you. Give him a hand. Good job. Okay, so this is what's gonna happen when you Start marketing. And then you've got all these popcorn throwers around you. Try this, do that, do this thing. Build your website. Try this strategy. Hire it all out. Okay. Did you see how hard it was to concentrate again? It's a little difficult. Okay, couple of KPIs for marketing that every single one of us in here can start measuring. Are you ready? Number one, number of opted in leads. So how many people said yes to a webinar? To a lead magnet to an event? So they opted in. They have not booked a call with me yet, but they opted in. They said yes. I consent to being marketed to. That's the first thing. Write this down. Number two is number of first time appointments. We heard that over here. How many people actually booked an appointment? That's important. Okay. Number three, Average. Yes. So when you are making your outbound dials, how many folks said yes to the next step? So whether it was webinar or fta, just what's my average? Yes. Rate?

Okay.

And I shared hours with you earlier. It was like 1.3. Something, something, something, something, something. 8.3. 8.3. 8. 3. That was scary, right? 8.3. Okay. It's higher than that when you listen to Lindsey the first time. So. And last year, lead conversion rates. So how many of those leads came in? How many of those leads that came in actually converted into that csra? This is where your marketing starts to blur into sales. This is where you start to go from top funnel to. To mid funnel right here. Because now it's not just about how many I got in, but it's how good were the leads, how many of them actually converted to the next step. Okay? So this is where we have to have a really tight track on these numbers. Both tracking the numbers, but also tracking the conversations and making sure that you're uploading notes, taking notes, having a very smooth pass off a smooth handoff between your marketing and your sales team. Okay? And I'm actually. I told you guys, I was so excited for this to have high level up here. They're going to talk to us about how you can effectively use your CRM to help you with this process. Okay? Because this is where things get really muddy and I don't want you doing this in your psa. That's not what that's for. Okay? This is just an example of some end of day KPIs that are reported every single day in our leads mastery group. Okay? So you can see here, at the end of every single day, our dialers report their numbers And. And they say, hey, today I made this many calls. Out of those calls, this many people answered. So I actually had this many conversations. Out of those conversations, here's how many said yes to a webinar. Or actually, this is for a briefing pitch for our cybersecurity briefing campaign. Here's how many follow up LinkedIn connection requests I made. That's not really a KPI. It's still a metric to keep track of, though. So metric, not a KPI. Okay, and what was how many yeses did I get? So this is data that we can use to make decisions the next day. And actually, this is one of our Australian clients. We meet with Australia in the evenings once a week. And he may tell me, lindsey, I feel like I did really good this week. And then I feel like it was a really good week. I'm like, okay, let's go look at your data. That's great. Let's go look at your data. And I'm like, all right, we have a 3% conversion rate. What's going on? So it's one thing to feel really good about your marketing. It's another thing to look at the data and say, okay, that worked. That script worked. Okay. Two totally different things going on there. That's why we have to track this stuff. Okay, so after goals, after niche, after strategy, I've got one final question for you, and this is where it starts to get a little sticky. Who's on your team? Who's on your team? Not just the folks that are on payroll. Okay? Who's on your team? Who is making change? Who is opening up ideas? They're saying, let's do that. I see your vision. Let's go there. Let's do that thing. Let's try this. Okay, who's okay with the pursuit of doing it wrong to get it right? Are you on your team? How about that? Are you on your team? I think so. You're here. This is the first step, right? You're here more strategically. Okay, let's talk strategic here. Do you need to hire that tech to free up your time? Do we need to make some hiring decisions? Do you need to get your dialer out of the marketing process? All right, so now we got to make some restructuring decisions. Do we need to get our administration out of making dials? It gets a little sticky here, gets a little uncomfortable. Okay, but these are the types of questions that we have to start asking ourselves when we want to scale. Okay? Do we need to get our wives out of the marketing role? Do we need our do we need to get our business partner out of the marketing role? He's an ops guy. Right. These are the sticky questions that make you a little uncomfortable. Because you're a good person. You don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. But most likely, if they're not doing a great job at it, they probably don't want to be doing it. People want to do good things. People want excellence. I truly believe that. I think everyone wants excellence. So it's time for us to ask these sticky questions. Okay? So is your team operating in their superpower? Are you operating in your superpower? This is the grit that is required. I loved. I think it was Zach that said grit was one of their core values. Was that right? No, someone else said grit. Okay. Grit was one of your core values. Vince, Love that. This is what's required to scale. Okay, so two minute tabletop. I want you to talk when I say go. I want you to talk to your table. Is it time to do some restructuring? Is it time to do some hiring, some firing, some retention, some ascension restructuring really quick? Just from what we've talked about, is it time to make some of these decisions? Go. Do you feel like you should make any hiring, firing, ascension, or restructuring decisions? You don't have to share personal information if you don't want, but do you feel like this brings up, hey, I need to make some decisions, or this is a change that we need to make.

So about start of June, we actually made some changes.

Okay.

Sales guy wasn't selling anything. Dedicated sales guy. Way to let him go.

Did he have leads?

Yeah. Typical. We had issue with leads, and we went through the Hire the SDR persons. We fired the outsourced SDR company, put out the thing. We hired somebody with Brian.

That's after our indie show.

Yes. Yeah, the guy. The new SD artworking out of the office working great. We're getting leads in now, so.

So you fired the outsourced.

We made a big change. We fired the outsourced SDR and the sales guy.

And you brought it in house.

Exactly.

And now you're seeing results.

Yes.

This was not scripted, y'. All. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. So you made a restructuring decision. All right, who else? Let's see. You want to share with your hiring, firing, restructure decisions.

Everybody, this is Jake. He's been with me nine days.

Hi, Jake. Hi, Jake.

So this is my new sdr, and he's in Denver, so I now no longer need to hire. So what we need to do now is execute.

Now we Gotta execute. Yes. All right. Someone over here. Yeah, go ahead, Zach.

My business cat, Inactio. We really need to ascend.

We need to ascend.

Yeah. We started an internship program to give people an opportunity to get a job and cyber security. And it turns out that a lot of people want them. And even. Even if it's unpaid. Now we got 15 interns who are loving the work we're doing with them. And I feel a responsibility to build up our MRR to give them a permanent home.

That is freaking awesome, Zach. You guys are bootstrapping it. We met y' all in, what, San Diego last year? Yeah. Los Angeles or in LA in December of last year. I remember I got the flu at the end of that trip. It was beautiful, though. Yeah. We met you there. You guys came into one of our roadshows and you're like, yeah, we're just getting started. And you guys have just went all in. So you've got this internship program and you're gonna move some of them into these full time roles. Love that. Thank you for sharing. Yeah, go ahead, Jack.

I was gonna give a little different part of the perspective. Cause I'm actually in sales as an employer. I actually had. When I first started, it was really slow for me, for people. Think about that hiring. I think I was just telling my table, it was four months before I closed my first contract. By my first year, I think I closed three deals. But now I probably closed, I want to say, two new clients every single month like clockwork. And part of joining this program is to put, you know, gasoline on that. So if you're doing the right things, you can build your team correctly. We're looking to ascend. We're actually just adding another salesperson that we actually haven't told you guys that we need to add to Wisetrack and everything. So keep doing the right things and give your employees all the resources to succeed, and then you can build it up that way. And we did bring more of those parts in house. We tried outsource marketing and it was about, how do we fundamentally rebuild this?

Yeah, love that. So you tried the outsource marketing. You're fundamentally rebuilding. So Jack is a salesperson. And Jack, you actually now have a dialer that's working with you and sourcing your leads. Right. And then you pick up the leads and you start working them mid funnel. Correct.

We're letting that SDR go.

All right, so we're making. That's okay. Like we have to make these decisions. Yes.

And at this point, not that it's anything to shake stick at, but I do about 50,000 right now in MRR and that's my next goal to keep building that as an employee who's looking to. How do I get over the million dollar mark?

It's.

I was very far from here when I started.

Love that. Thank you so much for sharing that, Jack. Awesome. This is also a testament to why it's so important to have your team here with you. And so if we're able to to pull your team into these events, it's going to be so magical for what they walk away with inspiration, talking with other salespeople in the industry. It really helps. So get them invested. Okay, all right, so really quick recap. We want to make sure that we've got our goal. Give you a thumbs up if you've got your Mr. Goal. All right, I see thumbs not up. Just come up with a new goal right now. You're not going to leave this room without a new Mr. Goal. All right, Give me a thumbs up if you have a new MRR goal. All right, that was not much better. Okay. You're going to choose a freaking niche. You are going to choose a market to focus on. For how long? What was the time frame? Three months. Then we make a yes, you're speaking my language. Data driven decision. Okay. Then I got to know that I'm the master strategist. It's me, no one else. I got to have my linear sales process. I've got to make decisions from KPIs. I got to be looking at these numbers every single day. Okay. And then I got to build out my dream team. No one will own your results the way that you do. All right, so take out your worksheet. Turn at the very the second page. And I want everyone to go to section seven where it says, what's my next step? What's my next step? It's on section seven. Says five, six, seven. What's my next step? Action steps and timelines. Okay, I want you to write down. You may have to write small. If you're missing a worksheet, just let us know, raise your hand, we'll get you one. My immediate action steps are to what? What's an immediate action step that you're going to take? Do you need to decide on a niche? Do you need to apply for a marketing machine? Do you need to get into the elite program? Do you need to build a list? Do you need to activate your Wisetrack account? You know what you need to do? You don't need me to tell you? Do you need to have a tough conversation? Do you need to show up to sales onboarding again next week? Okay. List your top three action steps, but I don't want you to stop there. Do this in the zoom room. What are your next three action steps? Then I want you to give yourself a timeline. Okay, so whenever several of you were giving me your MRR goals, you said, I want 15k by the end of the year. I want 50k by the end of the year. Give me a timeline. So for that first goal goal, what's your timeline? I need to build a list. By next Wednesday. I need to apply for leads mastery. By Thursday, I need to up get into marketing machine. For next week we start a fresh round. Next week we get fresh round a marketing machine. Next week, I need to pull all of our sales data. Next Monday, give yourself a date. Now, what I want you to do is I want you to just reflect and I want you to write in the next box what resonated most with you during this workshop. What was an aha moment? What's an idea that you got? Humans are so full of ideas. We breed creativity in rooms like this.