5 Surefire Ways To Increase Show Rates For MSPs

:: 00:00:00

Speaker 1

You work way too hard and you spend too much money finding qualified prospects for your IT business or MSP. To ignore these five things that I'm going to share that will help them get to the appointment or the sales call that you're actually booking them to. So we're going to talk about how to increase your show rates. And if you don't know who I am, I am Ray green, former managing director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and CEO for investor groups, where I led sales turnarounds.

:: 00:24:19

Speaker 1

Now I'm the founder of MSP Sales Partners, where we help IT companies scale sales, as well as managing director of repeatable revenue Ventures, where we work with just a small number of B2B service businesses and go in and actually scale their their sales for them to to exit. And a big part of what I've done for the past 15 years across industries and different roles is optimizing sales processes, which fundamentally comes down to optimizing each step and conversion at each step in the sales process.

:: 00:54:06

Speaker 1

So like just mapping out what are the steps that we're going to go through and how do we optimize conversion from here to here to here to here to here. You want more throughput and right for the whole damn thing, everything from lead generation to qualification to discovery to proposal to close. And the more throughput you can get, the easier it's going to be to scale and sell more stuff.

:: 01:13:25

Speaker 1

And what I've learned and what I've seen over the years is one huge gap and area for improvement, like a big leverage point is the show rate. How do I get more people to simply show up right? Like I'm pushing a lot of volume on, you know, my my outbound or my content or, you know, I'm getting people to to book a call.

:: 01:34:24

Speaker 1

But our show rates are, you know, 40, 50% and or worse, which means we're just leaking a ton of time and money that we've put in to get them there. Right? Like, we're, we've, we've we've pushed them all the way to this point and that's a success. But then the falloff is so significant that the ROI on this activity just plummets.

:: 01:56:02

Speaker 1

Finding ways to get more people to the actual appointment or to the booking or to the sales call can have a huge impact on your business, especially in it where one sale is six, sometimes seven figures in lifetime value. Getting a handful of more people from here to here can be a 7 or 8 figure decision for your business.

:: 02:17:10

Speaker 1

So what I'm gonna do is break down. There's five, five things that I want to see when I when I'm looking at the sales process. And I'm saying we want to optimize the show rates, want to get more people to this call. These are the five things that I'm actually looking for. Can you clearly explain what is in it for them to show up to that call?

:: 02:34:25

Speaker 1

Right. Like I already know what's in it for you, but you want them to show up because you want to sell them. But the question is, can you clearly articulate what is in it for them to show up to that call? Like what source of value do they get? And, you know, like value is, is this like cliche thing people like show value show.

:: 02:50:05

Speaker 1

But what you really want to understand from their perspective is do they have a legitimate reason or a want to to show up? And are you doing a good job of communicating that at every place possible that you can communicate that? And I mean, are you in the script on your pitch? Right. Like if you're doing outbound, you're calling people, you're like, you've got BTR or somebody making these phone calls and you've got bidders or SDR, somebody making these phone calls in the pitch.

:: 03:14:24

Speaker 1

Have you taken the time to articulate what's really in it for them? Right. Like, have you crafted something that makes it feel valuable and worth my time to show up to your call on the booking page, right. Like, do you have copy that is designed to help sell the appointment, right, to actually help them understand, oh, this is actually why I want to go to this appointment.

:: 03:34:20

Speaker 1

Not I gotta go through this process begrudgingly, and I'll get on a call with a salesperson. Or have you crafted it so that they go interesting? Like, I actually I want to go to this call when they book that call. Is there like a thank you page that reinforces it. It's like, hey, fantastic. Congratulations. Like, hey, we're looking forward to talking to you.

:: 03:49:21

Speaker 1

Don't forget you're going to get this on a call. You're going to, you know, we're going to be able to provide you this. And here's what you're going to walk away with. Is there anything that's like compelling me to go there. The emails that you send afterwards are like a confirmation email, right? Like, hey, here's your calendar. Invite it, accept.

:: 04:02:11

Speaker 1

Or is it a sale? Right? Every piece of this process is a sales and marketing function. It's not an administrative an ops function. It's a sales and marketing function. And the booking process needs to be designed accordingly. Now one tried and true way to do that is having gift or have something that they can't otherwise get if they don't get on this call.

:: 04:22:19

Speaker 1

Right? So in my business we have one funnel where we have a whole scorecard. We say, hey, as an IT company we can break down all of your goals. Like if you want, you know, if you want to add 25 K Amra, buy, you know, per month, here's what you need to do and like work backwards for this.

:: 04:37:00

Speaker 1

And so we have this worksheet that you work through. And at the end of that you can actually hop on a call. And me or somebody on my team will walk you through the scorecard and say, okay, well like here's the we would actually adjust these numbers. Are those realistic. Like this is based on what we're seeing over here and watch you walk you through it.

:: 04:53:23

Speaker 1

Now at that same time we're demonstrating our like some knowledge and we're building some trust and we're establishing that relationship and we're giving them something of value. When they show up on that call. And it's not just a straight pitch fest, right? Like it's not like, hey, this book a call, it's bring that scorecard here and we'll walk you through it with somebody that understands this process and has seen it 100 times and give you some feedback on the numbers that you plugged in and tell you if it's like relevant for you, if it's actually realistic, and help you identify any errors or blindspots that you may have.

:: 05:25:18

Speaker 1

And of course, if there is an opportunity for us to work together, great. We'll schedule another call to do that. And it you know, can you offer, you know, hey, when you show up, we've also got this new guide that we actually just created. It's ten of the best ways that you can leverage AI in your business that almost everybody is overlooking today.

:: 05:41:22

Speaker 1

Or these are the benchmarks to look for with a great IT company or best in class IT company. These are things that you can create relatively easily too, by the way. And, you know, pretty them up like pretty pretty quickly and make people actually want to show up. And you can reinforce that in your communications like, hey, and don't forget, we'll give you this when you show up and looking forward to talking to you.

:: 06:00:15

Speaker 1

Now, the second thing I'm gonna look for is the availability on the calendar. What is the number one thing that leads to more bookings and higher show rates? It's having more availability. We'll get you more bookings and having sooner availability or availability closer to the date and the time that they're booking will increase your show rates. If I go to a booking calendar and I see the first available meeting is actually next week, I go, okay, one, you're probably limiting your the number of people that are booked.

:: 06:25:04

Speaker 1

Not probably you actually are I know it. You're limiting the number of people that are booking because a week is a like a year in today's time. Okay, so that's number one. Two is a week from now I will have completely forgotten what we booked a time for. The urgency that I have. The book right now is gone a week from now, and it's gone either because I went to another competitor and they they actually had availability and this afternoon and I could hop on a quick call with somebody and get my questions answered pretty quickly.

:: 06:54:04

Speaker 1

Or it was a week ago, and I've had three other problems come up since then. And that's no longer like at the top of my radar. So you were just asking for low show rates if you don't have a lot of availability and availability really soon, best case scenario, then you go to the booking calendar and they can book and it says the next available window is I'm recording this at 335.

:: 07:16:14

Speaker 1

The next available window is at 345. So sweet. In fact, do you one better hop on a call right now, right? Like we have somebody available right now. Like you will dramatically increase your throughput number of on van volume, and you will increase the conversion if you have more availability. And the closer it is to the time that they're booking, just remember, like keep in the back of your mind.

:: 07:38:12

Speaker 1

There's a reason they are on that page right now. And maybe, maybe it's even because of something you sent, right? Like maybe you've got some a marketing campaign or some messaging that went out and it tapped. It struck a nerve. And you hit the right message at the right time. Is that all right, all right, all right, all right.

:: 07:52:12

Speaker 1

You got me. Let me click on that thing. And they went to that thing and it says awesome. Like we we will talk to you next week at, you know, 4:00, which was it isn't even a convenient time for me captured the emotion, the urgency that you've created by making it easy for them to book an eBook like right now, if they can.

:: 08:09:23

Speaker 1

Now the third thing I'm going to look at to increase show rates is basically the booking funnel. I kind of alluded to this earlier when I was talking about creating value like it's and where to message it along the way. And there's, there's kind of like inbound and outbound, right. Like if you're doing inbound and you go somebody goes to your website, it says, you know, book a consultation or get your cybersecurity score by hopping on a call with us or something like that.

:: 08:31:13

Speaker 1

And then they they start that process, all the steps in that process to the time that they show up is what I think of as the booking funnel. It starts with, first of all, obviously the booking page. All right. So they click book a call. They get to a booking page. The booking page should yes have a calendar.

:: 08:47:05

Speaker 1

And like I said that availability should be a lot and it should be soon. Okay. But they get to that booking page and on that booking page there should be a reinforcement of the value prop that you're offering them when they booked the call. Get your free cyber assessment score. You know, when you get on the call, I click okay.

:: 09:05:11

Speaker 1

And then above the calendar, you got your calendar above the calendar, you've got a pitch like to reinforce psychologically the thing that they are going to get when they actually show up to the call. Okay. So there's a little bit of a sales pitch and the copy and the messaging is around that. Then when they book, they select their time and that when they hit schedule, that should redirect them instantly to a thank you page.

:: 09:30:26

Speaker 1

And on that thank you page you want a few things. You want a video, a short video of the person that they're going to be meeting with. If it's if it's you, the salesperson, if it's the the business owner, whoever it is, you want a video from the person that they are going to be meeting with, then you want that video to do a couple of things.

:: 09:47:21

Speaker 1

You want to say, hey, congratulations. Looking forward to talking to you. Thanks for booking that call. You know, looking forward to giving you that thing, that gift that you're going to get. Now, just a couple things before we meet. I mean, you're busy. I'm busy. Completely understand if something comes up, all I ask is that you let us know.

:: 10:02:14

Speaker 1

We're going to send you an email right now, and you just reply to that email, or there's a there's a link in the calendar invite. Go ahead and use that, to reschedule if something comes up. I completely understand. No hard feelings. And by the way, if something comes up on our end, I'll do the same. Also, keep an eye out.

:: 10:18:00

Speaker 1

We probably just sent you a couple of emails. One is going to be, you know, the calendar invite. Make sure to to look at that and hit accept to be sure that that gets on your calendar. And then we send you a couple of other resources just to check out. It'll make the best use of your time.

:: 10:29:20

Speaker 1

Now somewhere else on this page, there's probably a couple links here, or resources that you can use to dive in in the interim. If you have any questions on all this, I encourage you to check it all out. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an email reply to the one that we just sent you and otherwise.

:: 10:43:00

Speaker 1

Yeah, look forward to seeing that video does a lot. Like. First of all, it's like psychologically you're now a person, right? Like before I books this call, it was just like some faceless machine, a business. Okay. Now there's a person behind it and they've asked me to politely reschedule or cancel. If something comes up, they've told me they'll give me the respect to the same.

:: 11:02:04

Speaker 1

Okay. So there's like a little bit of reciprocation, a little bit of respect thing going on. Now, we've also told them go to your inbox, which is going to increase the likelihood of them going to their inbox and hitting the accept on the calendar invite and reading the stuff that we send them. I'll get to that in a second.

:: 11:13:22

Speaker 1

And the other thing that we've done is redirect them to other resources on the page. Now on that page, what I would love to see is content that is engaging them and what are most likely to be their problems and their pain points. Now that may vary based on what your offers are. Okay, so if the vast majority of people coming in are wanting some form of cybersecurity, maybe you've got some reports or something that's localized to your market, some information that they can dive into that feels like it's like actually valuable, like they want to check it out.

:: 11:42:09

Speaker 1

If people are using your firm now for a lot of AI stuff, like maybe you give them, you know, a guide on how to get started with AI. There's you know, what you could also do is like, you can add in like a the, the I.T buyer's guide, right. Like take something where you say, hey, this is what to look for in your I.T providers.

:: 11:57:10

Speaker 1

That should be positioned obviously to help you look better than your competitors, but also give them like a legitimate sense of hey, these are questions to ask. These are things to look for. These are certain scores or metrics to to look for when you're interviewing your next potential partners. Maybe you have some stuff there that adds authority or credibility or builds trust, like if you've written a a book or if you've got some other material that says, hey, look what we we know what we're doing.

:: 12:21:05

Speaker 1

And it could also show your, you know, CSat scores or whatever it is. Right? Like, so you've got some other information, other content that is on that page. What I want to do is I want to take them down the rabbit hole of content, and I want to give them as much value. I want to give them as much information.

:: 12:35:14

Speaker 1

I want to pre-sell them as much as possible, while also reinforcing the reason that they want to show up to that call. Okay, so that's all one. That's all end. Thank you page. Then what I want to see is I want to see the calendar invite go out instantly. Boom. Make sure that doesn't go to spam. Then I want to see the email go out.

:: 12:51:17

Speaker 1

What's on the email? Probably stuff that's similar to what's on the thank you page. In fact, a lot of times I've used the same stuff. Why? Because everybody doesn't go through everything that's on there. Okay. Like in our booking funnels. You know, we use a lot of our YouTube videos. We use things like that. I know that they're not necessarily consuming all of it.

:: 13:06:11

Speaker 1

So, you know, when you're first setting up your booking funnel, you don't have a ton of content like go ahead and send the same stuff like, hey, in case you missed it, check this out. And we want them to go down that rabbit hole of content. And here's what I've learned. The more content and the more stuff that people consume of yours, the higher the likelihood of closing a deal, right?

:: 13:23:22

Speaker 1

Like, got a friend of mine actually used to have a thing called the eight hour rule, and if you could get them to consume eight hours of content, the close rate dramatically increase, like at exponential rates, because at that point they're pre-sold. You know, if you've been on podcast interviews or you've got YouTube videos or you've got tutorials or you've got webinars and you can get them to engage when they show up to meet you, they kind of know you.

:: 13:45:15

Speaker 1

So I want to feed them as much content. So I send out the calendar invite, I send out the email, I've got the thank you page. Then in terms of the reminders and everything that go out, I like a 24 hour email reminder and I like a one hour text or a semester reminder. I don't like to overkill, right.

:: 14:01:28

Speaker 1

Like I that's in B2B sales. I don't want I don't want to hit them with, you know, 17 email sequences. But I do recognize that in B2B sales we're dealing with business people and they are busy. They do forget also the importance of compressing those schedules. But, you know, get them at least a 24 hour email reminder. And the text reminder is is really important, has a huge impact.

:: 14:20:21

Speaker 1

One hour before now for outbound, this changes a little bit because you don't have the thank you page necessarily. Right. Like you can actually use that same I don't have your your USD reader set or whatever actually get go through that process and trigger some of those emails. Right. So your your BDR, SDR whatever can use that same calendar for them.

:: 14:38:21

Speaker 1

And that will trigger the other parts of the sequence so that I'll get the reminder out. That'll get the, the the other email out. But they're not going to actually get like the booking page. They're not going to get the thank you page. So what I'd like to see is incorporating into the script anything that would have been on those pages.

:: 14:53:15

Speaker 1

Right. So one, we're trying to schedule as close as possible. Again, we're trying to make that like, hey, you're available tomorrow. Add, you know, 2 or 4, right? Or, you know, tomorrow, the day after at 2:00. Which one's which one's ideal for you? Like I want to get them closer. So I incorporate that in the script. The other thing is when we get the booking we say excellent.

:: 15:11:28

Speaker 1

So here's what will happen. You know, we're looking forward to meeting you. If anything comes up, please just let us know. Reply to the email. Will you extend the same courtesy of and then comes up on our end? We'll do the same thing. We'll share the guide or the report or whatever it is that, you know, when we hop on the call and just adding that to the script.

:: 15:27:08

Speaker 1

Right. So the confirm the booking process and the confirmation process when the language that's there, just use that to effectively do the same thing psychologically that you would have done in the booking funnel. So that's all that really changes in the outbound process. So having a good booking funnel in place absolutely imperative if you want to maximize your show rates.

:: 15:44:25

Speaker 1

All right. So the fourth thing that you can do is call to confirm the appointment before the appointment, but also pull that appointment forward. All right. So here's what I mean. You can you can have somebody on your team or you sit down every morning and look at the calendar and see who's on the calendar tomorrow, who's on the calendar the day after.

:: 16:00:26

Speaker 1

Because if you have some blank spots on your calendar today, let's make sure, first of all, that they're going to show up. So you can call you can confirm, you can say, hey, Ray, you know Joe here actually just calling to confirm tomorrow 2:00 is a good time. Okay, great. Excellent. Looking forward to it. And that's that's one half of it.

:: 16:17:00

Speaker 1

Now, if you want to get really ninja with this move, if you want to like a pro tip here, what you can do is you can call to confirm. But while you're confirming, pull that appointment up. Right. Like you can actually call and say, hey, Joe, saw you're on the calendar for 2:00 tomorrow. Yep. Yeah, yeah, I'm still still good for that.

:: 16:33:12

Speaker 1

Okay. Excellent. Hey, you know what? I actually have an opening here, like, in, like, I mean, right now, like, if you're, I mean, if you have a few minutes, we can catch up, or you can say, hey, I actually have an opening this afternoon. Like, if, I mean, if you want to chat with with Sally here and, like, we had a reschedule and, that opened up, so I just, I looked forward, I saw that you're on tomorrow.

:: 16:51:13

Speaker 1

I thought, you know, hey, if you if you want to hop on, Sarah, we can absolutely do that. So, making the call to confirm, like, an excellent way to do this, making the call to confirm and converting it into something where you can pull those appointments forward. It's really slick. It actually helps you get those people in sooner.

:: 17:06:15

Speaker 1

Now, what that does is a couple of things. One is you've got the confirmation worst case scenario. Okay. Second, if you can get them forward, like if I can pull something that's out from tomorrow to today or a couple days from now into today. Now what I've also done is increase availability on the calendar, right? Because that meeting, that 30, 60, whatever it is that was on there for tomorrow now gets pulled up into today and it's available for somebody else.

:: 17:32:11

Speaker 1

Which means if somebody else now goes to the booking calendar, you've increased the booking volume and you've made a slot open sooner. So this is just efficiencies, right? Like you're finding efficiencies in the process and in the systems. Now the fifth thing that will increase your show rates is the bam bam principle. Bam bam stands for book a meeting from a meeting.

:: 17:49:01

Speaker 1

Okay. Now when we're looking at show rates, a lot of times we're not necessarily looking at just that first call like that qualifier discovery call. We're looking at the follow up call. So we've done like the first half of a two stage call and we've got the discovery done. But after the discovery we do maybe like a network assessment, something like that.

:: 18:06:07

Speaker 1

And getting people to the proposal becomes really hard. Right. And like they they ghost us, they don't follow up like we leave that meeting. Maybe they don't take their part in, initiate whatever they need to do on the assessment. Something like that. Okay, I see it a lot and so you have this fall off from discovery to the proposal phase or discovery, even to the assessment, if you need them to do something or you actually need access to something, and what you do is you incorporate the bam bam principle, which is at the end of every call.

:: 18:35:13

Speaker 1

You lock in the next call in the next meeting, not just like verbally, like, hey, are you, you know, year round Friday. Okay. Friday afternoon. Cool. I'll give you a call Friday afternoon like, no, no, no, no. Like you are actually saying excellent. So here's what we're going to do here. What the next steps are. Now we're going to need to meet again to go over all of this.

:: 18:54:13

Speaker 1

And I've got availability Friday at two and 4:00. Which one is best for you. And they say Friday 2:00 or they say, you know, I'm not available. Then let's shoot for Monday. Okay, cool. Let's get it on the calendar and you send that invite or you get that locked in and you get that confirmed right then in there.

:: 19:12:00

Speaker 1

So my view is when you're selling it, services at each sale is really the next step. Like if you're not selling the deal, if you're not closing the deal, you're selling the next step. So at qualifying, my sale is getting a confirmed discovery. At discovery, my sale is getting the next step locked in. And even at the proposal, if I don't, if I'm not closing the deal, my close the sale is locking in and confirming the next step, right.

:: 19:39:00

Speaker 1

Like that's a follow up appointment or that follow up call or that, like whatever that is, each time you're actually confirming what the next step is, that is your sale, right? If you're not getting the money, if you're not getting the yes or the no, then you're getting the next step. And if you walk out without that, then you haven't necessarily closed bam bam at every step in the process.

:: 19:56:04

Speaker 1

Book a meeting from a meeting and keep it locked in. When you do that, you dramatically increase the throughput instead of these vague like, yeah, okay, I'll follow up with you on Friday afternoon, which is like super easy to blow off, super easy to forget, like even well-intended people, and makes it super easy for me to dodge. Like having to give you an actual answer.

:: 20:13:14

Speaker 1

So there you have it. Five ways that you can increase your show rates, increase your throughput of your entire sales process, and make more money and get more ammo for your business. If you want more sales tips, feel free to subscribe to my newsletter, which a link is below. And I also have the MSP Sales toolbox, which has objection handling playbooks, templates, goal setting sheets, all sorts of tools that I but I put stuff in there all the time.

:: 20:38:04

Speaker 1

Completely free. You can get access to that. The link is also below. And of course subscribe to the channel if you want more stuff here. Thanks again and adios your.