Wes Spencer of Empath explains how MSPs can get past office gatekeepers by asking about IT budgets and technology roadmaps instead of tickets and SLAs. Gatekeepers protect the CEO's time, so frame your request as a 30-minute meeting on budget alignment or revenue impact. They'll refer you to the decision-maker once they see it matters to the bottom line.
Hey friends, so how do you get past the gatekeeper? Many of you, if you're an MSP, or even maybe not an MSP but an IT practitioner, we've all met with a gatekeeper. You know the gatekeeper, it's the office manager. It's the wonderful person whose literal job is to keep people away from the CEO so the CEO can go focus on doing what their job is. What's their job? Well, it's really simple. No, it's not managing technology. No, it's not keeping their company secure. It's not. It's making money. Like, that's it. That's what their job is, is to make money. And so sometimes we bring a gatekeeper in and we say, I need you to keep me away from all the riffraff. I need you to keep me away from all the people around me that might waste my time. Time vampires, as it were. And here's the thing about gatekeepers. They're ridiculously important until it's your turn and you can't get past the gatekeeper. And so you sit down and you talk with the gatekeeper and you're trying to talk about IT strategy and all the things that this company needs to do, and you realize you're talking to the wrong person. The gatekeeper doesn't have the authority to make decisions. The gatekeeper does care about IT, but only just making sure IT things are working. So you find yourself doing what? Talking to them about boring things that they don't really care about, like how many tickets you answered and what your SLA time was, and all of these things that you've taken a look at that they're like, yeah, cool, that's your job, I don't know why we're even talking. But you really want to do is you want to get in front of them and talk about IT strategy. You want to help them build a budget. You want to talk about where their organization is trying to go so that you can deliver a technology plan to help them get there. But the gatekeeper doesn't care about any of that. The gatekeeper is literally keeping you away from the one person who can help you get your objectives accomplished, and they're also a threat to your relevancy. Because the gatekeeper being there in front of you just turns you into every other MSP, you know, the ones that are just there to get your IT stuff done and get out. And that's all they do. And you want to do more. Well, how do we get past that gatekeeper? First of all, it's important to remember that the gatekeeper is literally their term and title, a keeper of the gates. They have the ability to open that gate. And if they open that gate, you now get through the hurdle to talk to the decision maker. But the gatekeepers don't want you to get through that hurdle because they've been told, "Keep those people away from me so you do this and you have this attitude so that they don't have to talk to me. They don't waste my time." So how do you surpass the gatekeeper? You have to speak to value. Now, I know what you're thinking, Wes Spencer, I've heard that 1,000 times. Quit telling me like everyone else, speak to value, blah, blah, blah. I've heard that a million times. It's a little bit more than that, though. Here's what I would do. I would sit down with that gatekeeper and say, hey, What's the budget look like for your IT strategy this year? Can we take a peek at that? I really do need to see that. Well, what are they gonna say? They don't have the budget. They probably don't know how to build the budget. They're not involved in the budget-making process. They're the office manager. So that question is gonna say, yeah, I don't— we're gonna have to go talk to Sally, our CEO, on that. Oh, great. Can I meet with her next week? Just 30 minutes. I want to talk about budget. I want to make sure we're spending the money, our money correctly. We're not overspending on anything. You could also ask the gatekeeper, hey, from a strategy perspective, what's going on in the organization next year that we need to be planning for? I know we've got some old dental machines that we probably want to think about upgrading. What's the plan for that? We have a good selection process on that technology, and how can I help with that? Well, I'm not sure. That's Sally's job. Sally's thinking about all that. Great. Can I get a meeting with Sally next week? 30 minutes. Just want to talk about technology road mapping and make sure we can actually talk about that from an agenda perspective. That'll really help us make sure you guys are getting where you need to be. You see how that can work? You gotta ask questions that go above and beyond the gatekeeper so the gatekeeper can say, oh, that actually is a question worthy of my CEO. I will set that up for you. That's how you get past the gatekeeper. I've heard from so many MSPs that get stuck because they want to get to a better relationship with their end clients, but the gatekeeper won't let them pass. So that's the key. Number 1, understand that the gatekeeper is doing their job, and the job is to keep you away from the actual revenue producer, the CEO of the company, until you can help them understand that your conversations are going to actually help them make revenue, going to help them preserve their revenue. When you get to those level discussions, the gatekeeper will happily open the door because now it's a relevant conversation. So I wanted to share those thoughts with you, but that's certainly not the only way to do this. I'm curious to know from you. I want to hear from you what's worked from you for your perspective on getting past the gatekeeper in an organization. What's worked to help you get one level a little higher, one level to the decision maker above that can give you the unlocking keys that you need to get your organization where it wants to go. I want to hear from you. Give me some comments down below on how you get past the gatekeeper. All right. This is Wes Spencer from Empath. Thanks for watching. Thank you so much.
