7-Part MSP Sales System That Delivers Predictable Growth
In this episode, I walk you through the 7-part MSP sales system we use to help managed service providers grow consistently and predictably. If you're tired of relying on random referrals or stalled pipelines, this framework will give you the structure and clarity you need to scale. Let's break it down step by step.
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Welcome to Repeatable Revenue, hosted by strategic growth advisor , Ray J. Green.
About Ray:
→ Former Managing Director of National Small & Midsize Business at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he doubled revenue per sale in fundraising, led the first increase in SMB membership, co-built a national Mid-Market sales channel, and more.
→ Former CEO operator for several investor groups where he led turnarounds of recently acquired small businesses.
→ Current founder of MSP Sales Partners, where we currently help IT companies scale sales: www.MSPSalesPartners.com
→ Current Sales & Sales Management Expert in Residence at the world’s largest IT business mastermind.
→ Current Managing Partner of Repeatable Revenue Ventures, where we scale B2B companies we have equity in: www.RayJGreen.com
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Transcript
Speaker 1
If sales in your MSP are flat, or you've got a dry pipeline, or you're just wondering why the hell growth has stalled out in your business, this video is going to show you where the breakdown in your sales system is actually happening. Because we audit MSP growth systems all the time. We go in, we look at marketing, we look at the sales, we look at the revenue operations.
::Speaker 1
The vast majority of the time, it's the same few things that are holding companies back from getting to the next level and fixing it isn't rocket science, it's actually just more a matter of knowing where to look, to find the right problem to fix right now, and the way that we do this, when we go in and do these sales audits, is we look at the seven parts of the sale system, and I'm going to break these down for you so that you can take this and run the same type of evaluation or assessment on your own company and get the same result.
::Speaker 1
Scale your sales. And I'll start with the first, which is do you have a good high quality list of people to target? In other words, what is your list building strategy? Because a lot of companies that we talked to go out and they buy a list, right? Like they go to a vendor, they purchase a list and their geography and they say, hey, here are all the businesses and you know, these zip codes.
::Speaker 1
These ought to be good. Let me hand these to, you know, somebody to start making some deals and they start making deals. They realize, hey, the connection rates suck, the emails aren't right. They go, you know, the vendor told us this was going to be like 95% accurate. And it's not let's I'm sorry. You know, all the all the vendors.
::Speaker 1
It's not if your strategy is to buy a list that is perfectly fine, but there's a process that you run after you've purchased that list to turn that into a high quality list that you can sell and market to, that means going through and scrubbing it. That means going through and doing some list cleaning. That means going through and doing some validation.
::Speaker 1
I mean going through and doing some enrichment. There is a way to turn a purchase list into a high quality list, but if you buy it stock and you plug that into your CRM and you turn on the dials, the likelihood that that is going to have high connection, high conversion, high quality effectiveness through your whole system is going to be very low.
::Speaker 1
So I highly recommend that you've got a process to clean it, to turn it into something that is going to be really effective for you. Now, the alternative to buying a list is building a list. Building a list is harder, but the quality of that list over time is going to be significant higher, and the value of that list to you over time is going to be significantly higher.
::Speaker 1
How do you build a list? You can go out and you can do the self sourcing deals, right? Like you can tap your personal network. You can go into, LinkedIn, like with connections, like people that you actually know. You can go to trade shows, you can go to chamber events, you can go to buy events, you can go to, I mean, whatever you want, like, I mean, hell, you can knock doors, get cards, validate that data as you're going.
::Speaker 1
And that is a slower but equally effective way of building a list. Either way, you can buy or you can build like there is no right and there is no wrong. You can use both if you want. The question is, do you have sufficient and qualitative data that's going to make the rest of your system really effective? If you don't, that's a great starting point.
::Speaker 1
That is probably the thing that you need to focus on in order to make everything else work, because there's no sense solving a problem over here and proposals over here and closing over here in discovery. If you don't have a list to begin with to go out, prospect and create the opportunities that you're going to need downstream. Now, the second part of the system is lead generation.
::Speaker 1
And lead generation is, from a sales standpoint, the process of converting this list, which right now is just raw data, right? Like they don't know who we are. And in sales and marketing, there's the Ada framework. It's awareness, interest, decision action. And what that means is this is the first stage that they've got to go through. They've got to become aware of who you are before they can show any interest in what you do.
::Speaker 1
This raw data doesn't have any awareness of who we are. So sales is going to do some outreach, and marketing is going to do some outreach to this list to create some awareness so that we can then create some interest and make them an actual lead. Now, if you're doing outbound, meaning you're doing some emails, you're doing some phone calls, you're doing some canvasing, you're doing some some targeted outreach through LinkedIn, through different platforms.
::Speaker 1
Your goal is to reach out to these people, make contact, generate the awareness, create the interest, and try to move them through the rest of the system. The other thing that you can be doing, of course, is things like marketing, right? Like so if you're doing organic content marketing, chances are those people that come into organic content marketing are actually going to come in at this stage, because they have already shown some awareness.
::Speaker 1
They saw your marketing, they have opted into something. So there's some degree of interest, at least in something, right? They aren't necessarily just raw data. So if you're pulling people in through content marketing, things like that, they're going to come in at this stage. If not, then what you're doing is you're going outbound to your data and you're converting them from a name on a list to an actual lead for your business.
::Speaker 1
Now, I categorize basically everything between raw data and a qualifying call, or some type of discovery call, or some type of real intent as lead generation. So everything that's involved in turning the raw data or a general market into an opportunity where they signal some intent, right where they say, sure, I'll hop on a 15 minute call with you.
::Speaker 1
Sure. I'll hop on. You know, a 60 minute discovery. Sure. I'll take that thing for me. Like I where I show some degree of intent and that will move them through to the third part of the system, which is qualification. Okay. Now, qualification can be a phone call. It's actually my preference. Like having an actual, you know, whether it's, you know, zoom, zoom call or a phone call, something where there's a little bit of human contact, but it's not the only way to do it right.
::Speaker 1
Like, you can do it through forms, you can do it through some automation, you can do it through bots. And I I'm looking at two things in qualification. First and foremost, by far the most important pieces. Are you qualified as a prospects meaning are you in our market right. Like if I serve a specific vertical right. If I serve the legal vertical, then I want to know, are you a law firm?
::Speaker 1
Right. If I serve a specific geographic area, I want to make sure are you in our area? Because if you're qualified at least at the prospect level, I know once you're in our system, I go, okay, even if we're not going to do business right now, you are somebody that we can continue to market to and try to bring into our ecosystem as a client, because you are qualified as a prospect.
::Speaker 1
Secondarily, then I want to qualify at the opportunity level. All right. That means is there a current opportunity for us to do business. So first and foremost, is there any opportunity ever. Because are you a qualified prospect. Secondarily is there a qualified opportunity today. Right. Is there some degree of interest in doing business? Is there some degree of intent in moving forward right now?
::Speaker 1
Is there any degree of urgency that you have. But that's secondary if you're qualified, unless my pipeline is just really full, right. If my calendar is as full as a salesperson, if I don't have any slots to fill, if I don't have any time because I am so busy talking to qualified opportunities like the marketing and sales and outreach is doing so good that 100% of my time is being allocated towards qualified opportunities.
::Speaker 1
Then and only then do I say, hey, I know that it's a qualified prospect, but they're not ready to buy, so I'm not interested, right? That is the only time that I do not move that forward in any other case, that I'm going to move a qualified prospect into the next phase, which is discovery, right? That is the fourth part of the system, and I want to move them into the fourth part of the system, because a good salesperson doesn't just take current opportunities and convert them.
::Speaker 1
A really good salesperson can create opportunities, right? Like if you give me a conversation with somebody who's in my market and, you know, maybe they're under an agreement right now, but it's going to be up in in six months. And I can start to poke around and ask about the relationship with the current vendor. I can, you know, potentially create a wedge, you know, and on on, you know, the service levels that they're currently getting or, you know, maybe we run an assessment, you know, we take a look and we find out, hey, like there's all sorts of vulnerabilities here, you know, like as a salesperson, if they're qualified as a prospect, like, I want
::Speaker 1
at least a shot to have a conversation with them and see if I can create an opportunity. Now, of course, if there's an obvious opportunity, yeah, I want to move those into the fourth part because we're obviously going to run it. But again, in that third part, if they're qualified as a prospect, probably moving them to the fourth part, which is going to be that discovery.
::Speaker 1
The discovery is where I'm looking at problems, I'm looking at pains. I'm trying to identify the buying cycle and trying to understand the buying process. I'm trying to understand is there any urgency? I'm trying to, you know, determine is, you know, is there budget? There's a good framework called Bant, which is budget. Authority need trusts and it is a really good framework.
::Speaker 1
Now, the caveat that I would add is it's a much better framework at that stage than it is a qualification. Right? Like I would not use the band framework again unless my pipeline was a so overloaded. Like I was swimming in opportunities and I just had to like push it away because I had too much shit to sell, then I would not run bands at the qualification stage because you're gonna root out a bunch of people.
::Speaker 1
That's basically saying sorry. Like, salespeople can only get low hanging fruit, like they can only get the softballs. And I think that that's bullshit personally. So band as a framework in the discovery is good, though. That's where you're going to actually look at. Do they have budget like are you even in your similar range? Is it like a, you know, real opportunity there?
::Speaker 1
Are we talking to the right person? Is there an actual need right. Do they do they have current managed services? Do they are they looking for managed services? You know, what are the current issues that they're having with a current provider? Or maybe they don't have a current provider, but, you know, they're they're being, you know, facing some, some compliance issues, like you name it, like you, you know, the drill.
::Speaker 1
So you know, you're looking for what's the real need. And then timing. Right. Like why now. Right. Like why not six months from now. Why not six months ago. And that's where you're going to identify where there's some, some real urgency or not. Now, the thing about discovery is it is such a powerful tool when you run it effectively and like I tell people, and we're doing sales coaching and training with all roads lead to discovery.
::Speaker 1
Meaning if you are dealing with common objections at the end of your process, things like pricing, things like, you know, decision maker, things like, you know, I have to talk to somebody, things like, hey, we need to think it over. Like those are all really common objections that you should be fully prepared for. And the best place to prepare for those is in discovery, because you can put questions in your discovery that allow you to address those objections that you know are going to come up later.
::Speaker 1
Like just as one example, we have plenty of other videos on this. Like if somebody says, you know, I need to, I need to think it over or I'm not sure we're ready to move forward. Why did we not ask in discovery what makes us an issue? Why not six months from now or six months ago? Once you answer that, I now have the data that I need later in the conversation.
::Speaker 1
When you say, you know, hey, we're not we're not ready to move forward, I think we're gonna, you know, we're gonna think this over. And I say, hey, I'm confused. When we were talking earlier, you had mentioned you're ready to move forward now because it guy that you have is is going to be retiring. And you know, like whatever those those reasons were.
::Speaker 1
So you can plant those things in your discovery. So really really powerful tool here. And once you've run your discovery at that point, the next sale that you need to make, the next conversion that's going to happen is move them in to the assessment. Probably like if you run some type of assessment right. So you're going to have whether it's paid, whether it's free, you're going to run that assessment, get that thing going and identify, you know, what are the vulnerabilities.
::Speaker 1
What are you know, what's the cybersecurity posture. You know, what's the current training with the team. Like whatever it is that you find in your assessment, you're going to be running your assessment so that you can one understand what you're working with. Okay. It's like for like when I go to do a proposal, you know, do I have everything that I need to give a legitimate and accurate quote?
::Speaker 1
Okay. So that's one part of it. Then it's also a sales tool, frankly. Like you go in and you identify what are the areas that they may not even have known. There may be latent pains in this business and they may have challenges they were completely unaware of. If they've got stuff that's completely outdated, if they have, you know, they're vulnerable to to phishing deals, if they've got passwords floating all over the interwebs and you name it.
::Speaker 1
Right. So you run that assessment partly technical, partly for your proposal, partly for your sales. And that's the fifth part. Now, after the assessment, you're going to move to the six part of the system, which is the proposal. Right? So you've done your discovery. You've done the assessment. Now you're going to sit down with them and you're going to make your pitch.
::Speaker 1
You're going to propose to do business, and you're going to confirm everything that you thought you heard. Right. Like, these are the pains. These are the things that I understood. You're going to walk through why you were the best fit. You're going to highlight, you know, what the unique selling points are for you. You're going to make sure that you differentiate yourself from all the other competitors.
::Speaker 1
You're going to assume they're going to be sitting like looking in front of three people. And you're going to say, this is why we are the absolute best fit for you. And of course, you're going to deliver the information like, you know, this is how much the investment is going to be. This is how easy an awesome onboarding is going to be.
::Speaker 1
This is what life is going to look like, you know, after when you're working with us. So like on the one hand, here's what we found in the assessment. And here are the pains and the problems that you have. Now here's what the future looks like. You know, this is what the network is going to look like. This is what the service levels are going to look like.
::Speaker 1
This is why you want to do business with us. Now, this part of the system is obviously important because it's where you're asking to do business, right. So most people inherently get that. But the question is, do you have a good process for it? Right. Do you have a good system for in this part of the system, do you have something that is methodical and effective at highlighting where they are today and where they need to be tomorrow, and where they want to be tomorrow, and how you were the solution for that gap, right?
::Speaker 1
How you help close the gap between current state and future state that you are the solution, the bridge to get from here to there. And of course you're going to close the business, right? So how often are you closing your business in the six part of the system? Now, I'm no dummy. Like I wish everybody would sign on the dotted line, right?
::Speaker 1
Like when you do the proposal and everyone's a cough, man, you guys just run such a great the great system here. Like we're just going to go in and sign. I wish that were the case all the time. Now that is the case for a lot of people with really good processes in the proposal. They will close a hell of a lot more deals at that meeting.
::Speaker 1
And so like I talk to a lot of people, they're like, well, you know, nobody really signs that. And that's that's bullshit, right? Like a lot of people will sign, will do business, agree to do business and close it right there if you're running that process effectively. But even if you have a perfect process, it's not going to be 100%.
::Speaker 1
So there is a seventh part of the system, which is the follow up. Right? So that's after the proposal for the people that don't close there. Then what happens in the follow up. Like what is the sequence? What is the follow up? What is the process that you're running to get the deal closed. And the reality is most deals that get to seven just kind of float into the ether, right?
::Speaker 1
Like they you get ghosted. I got to lose touch and oh yeah, we'll get back to you will, you know, let's think it over. Let me talk to so-and-so and you know, well, we'll go ahead and meet, you know. Yeah, just call us sometime next week. And then you're like, hey, man, I'm meeting. We're really well, like, what happened?
::Speaker 1
Well, what happened was you had a breakdown in the seventh part of the system, right? Like, you look at that and you go, why are all of our deals ending up in our pipeline and follow up stage? Why are we not getting actual wins and losses? Right? Like, why are we having these deals that just stay open forever and ever and ever?
::Speaker 1
And every time I ask the salesperson or I make a phone call, it's like, well, yeah, I just got follow up next week or we're waiting on this or, you know, there's always some excuse like to kick the can down the road. So getting deals to the actual finish line is the seventh part of the process that don't close in the meeting.
::Speaker 1
And make no mistake, getting a no still means you're running an effective process. Like I would rather have no's than chase somebody for months, right? Like chase somebody who basically decided weeks and months ago they're not going to do business, but they just don't want to be mean or, you know, they you don't feel rude saying it or, you know, they really liked me as a, as a salesperson.
::Speaker 1
So they don't want to let me down or whatever it is. And then I follow up and I follow up and I follow up and I waste time. And three months later they're like, can you leave me alone? Like, that is a symptom that the seven part of your system isn't working really well because you're not getting closure, you're not getting an actual decision on the deal.
::Speaker 1
So those are the seven parts of the system. Now, when we zoom out and we look at that, we say all right, how do we know, generally speaking. Right. Like if you're going to go run this on on your own system, you're going to say, all right, cool. I got the seven parts. How do I kind of assess this when I'm looking at this?
::Speaker 1
All right. First of all, looking at list building. Right. The best way to know if you're list building is versus a volume component. Like do you have a list. Is it sufficient to market and sell to. If not, chances are that's the urge to focus on the other way to look at that is from a qualitative standpoint. You look at that and go, well, what's what's the lead generation look like, right.
::Speaker 1
Like if we're doing outbound phone calls, for example, like I've got an SDR and they're making phone calls, what's their connection rate? Are they getting through to decision makers. Are they is there right. Information like and there's a lot of ways you can look at that. You can look at the logs in CRM. Right. You can know how many how many log changes are there.
::Speaker 1
You can look at, you know, just a if you've got a dialer, you can look at how many of the calls that we're making are actually picked up by a human, or are the right number or the wrong number. You can have the SDR is actually, you know, logging that you can look at, you know, pitch rates, you can look at like the the metrics in the lead generation are often very symptomatic of what's happening in this building.
::Speaker 1
Right? Because even if you have a badass SDR or BTR making outbound phone calls for you, if they're calling a shit list, the metrics are going to suck, right? So if you if you're listening to the calls and the calls are decent and the volume of calls is there, but the outcomes aren't, they're probably symptomatic of this problem.
::Speaker 1
You can do the same for virtually any type of your prospect. You can do the same for email. If you do an outbound email, go look at the email rates. What is the deliverability? What is the open rate? That will tell you a lot about your list, right? So like look one step further in the process to look back and see, hey, is that the problem?
::Speaker 1
Right? Are we dealing with issues in lead generation because we're actually calling bad data now lead generation. Look at and say how is that good or bad? Well, the best way to look at that is say, hey, how much are we paying for a qualifying call? Right? Like if you just take all the amount of money that you're spending on sales and marketing and on your prospecting, and you say, we're getting X number of qualified calls, does that math work out right.
::Speaker 1
Like and everybody's you know, cost of of acquiring new customers is going to be going to be different based on your system and how you're generating and who your market is and all that. But just run the economics of it. Are you getting the qualified calls that you want, and are you getting the volume of qualified calls that you want?
::Speaker 1
And then are you getting qualified qualifying calls? Right. Like if you're getting 100 qualifying calls a month and you're pushing through one, then chances are you've got a lead generation or a list building issue. Now, if you're getting one qualifying call and it's qualified, but you just don't have the volume there, then you look at it and you go, okay, maybe something's happening at lead generation that we need to improve here.
::Speaker 1
So same thing. You look one step further in the system and say, what does that tell me about what's happening in this part of the system. Now of course you can also go take your core metrics like break down whatever process you're running every day. I mean, canvasing every single one. It can be broken down into some KPI or some metric that you can evaluate and you can look online, you can use AI.
::Speaker 1
You can. You know that. Comment below. I'll see if I can if I can answer questions. But there's always a baseline, right? Like that. You're like industry standard that you're looking for, whether it's for your outbound, calls or emails or, you know, doorknocking your, you know, networking. Right? Like how many networking events are you happening? How many qualified leads are coming?
::Speaker 1
They're not like, so you want to break that down and then look at the next step in the process for qualifying calls. Is that process working or not? Oh pretty simple. No. You know, look at that and say, hey, are we getting qualified people to move forward into the discovery stage? And is that rate sufficient. Right. Is the conversion rate from that stage to the next stage sufficient for us to grow at the rate that we need?
::Speaker 1
For example, if I'm getting 20 qualifying calls a month and we're only moving four forward, what I might do is go back and I might listen to a bunch of those qualifying calls. I might say, hey, let's let's take a look like, what is this telling us about the process and about the system? Is it telling us, hey, the actual qualifying process sucks because I'm listening to some of these calls.
::Speaker 1
I'm thinking, Holy shit, like, this is somebody we should be moving forward. Why are they not moving forward? That's a problem with the qualifying process. If I'm listening to those qualifying calls and I'm hearing all sorts of like, okay, there's people that are in, not even in the country that, you know, like people way outside the market. Again, I'm going back stream.
::Speaker 1
Right? I'm going to go like I'm gonna go look at the lead generation, and I'm gonna go look at the list pulling at the next part of the system. In discovery. Conversion into the assessment is a huge way to to measure that. Right. So that's that's super helpful. But another way that I look at the effectiveness of discovery is how many standard objections are we dealing with at the proposal stage that could have been handled in discovery?
::Speaker 1
I actually look to the proposal one if I can. I you know, I go on some sales calls or I listen to the sales calls and I look at the close rate and I start going like the objections that were getting, you know, upstream, are they are they things that could have been handled it discovery conversion to the assessment.
::Speaker 1
There's one factor. And then the actual close rate and the impacts that it has coming from discovery. Remember all roads lead to discovery. That's another way to look at it. So that's how we look at and determine hey is discovery working or not. Now at the assessment. Pretty straightforward here right. How many people are actually getting the assessment completed like we we ordered in a company one time that was running a tool that required the prospect to, to to initiate the assessment.
::Speaker 1
And they had this huge fall off, right, that they would get them to the assessment, and then these people just wouldn't started it. Send the email like, hey, you know, can you get this started? Can you click on this link, please click on this link. Please click on this. Click on this link. That part of the system is broken.
::Speaker 1
So what can you do to fix it? Well in that case we said, well let's incorporate while we're in the discovery. Let's say, hey, first of all, let's get our next meeting booked right now, which we call book a meeting for my meeting. Bam bam. So get that thing booked and let's do this. Mr.. Mrs.. Prospect, what I'm going to do is I'm going to send you an email right now.
::Speaker 1
Really simple. I just want to show you how we run this assessment. Now, while I'm sitting here, takes 20s. Let me send this to you. We're going now. Go ahead and click on that link for me now when I get back to the office. So you get that going. Now when I get back to the office we're going to send that out.
::Speaker 1
And you give the instructions on how it's gonna run. Now you've at least got one like if you're running an assessment like that, or run a different kind of assessment. Right. But it's the throughput on the assessment and how many people are getting to the proposal. Good gauge on how that part of the system works. Then, of course, you get to proposal.
::Speaker 1
And at the proposal what do you look at. You look at close rate, right. Like how many people actually close. Because by this time you've already demonstrated that they're qualified, you've already run your discovery, you've already got the assessment. So the primary way that you're going to measure the effectiveness of your proposal is close. Like what's the conversion rate?
::Speaker 1
How many people do we present to and actually become customers of ours? And then the follow up, as I mentioned before, the the big one here is actually how many deals just get ghosted, right? Like what's the percentage of deals actually close. Not based on time. Right. Because, you know, I'm in a good sales process. You put a timeline and you close out and you move deals to a loss stage and you know, some number of days or months or whatever that is, define it for your own business.
::Speaker 1
But there's always going to be something that keeps them from just staying open forever, I hope. But what I really want to know is how many deals got a decision right? Like how many, how many of these deals did we get a yes or no from the prospect on. Right. And that is a really good indication of how effective your follow up is.
::Speaker 1
If your follow up processes are leading to indecision, then they're not working right. You're wasting your time. You're wasting their time. So you've got to go back and look at it and say, how can we tighten this up? Right. And one obvious way to tighten it up is move fewer deals to that seventh part, like closed them in the meeting.
::Speaker 1
But the other one is knowing that those deals are going to go there. All right. Cool. Like what can we do to tighten this loop. Right. Like can we schedule that next like bam bam out of your proposal meeting. Right. Or can we, you know, hey, we were dealing a lot of companies. I want to go to boards.
::Speaker 1
How can we be more effective at targeting? Those board members are getting a seat at that board table, or getting our proposal into that thing, or creating a meeting, a presentation or a ten minute video to go into that, board meeting that the champion that we're working with can take into that board. Like, there's a lot of ways that you can do that.
::Speaker 1
So the close rate, closure rate, win or loss, like I would, I will take losses. I will take no's as still a sign that your follow up process is working right. Like you're just not getting the answer you want. We got to go. Yeah. Look at the rest of the system for that. But at least you're getting decisions.
::Speaker 1
So that's it. Those are the seven parts of the system that we look at. And you know, kind of how we we work through that system. And then, you know, high level what to look at. If you're going to go do this assessment on your own business. Of course, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out.
::Speaker 1
Yeah. You can join our our lists, our email list. There should be a link below in the description. To get access to the email list. You can also book a call with us, if you'd like some some help with that. If you run this assessment and you actually say, hey, you know, like these are some of the findings that I have, I'm not sure if this is good or bad or I'm not sure what to do this information book or call us.
::Speaker 1
How about a quick 15 minute call this happy to walk through the results. And I'll tell you what. What we think based on on what we've seen. And if you like this video on sales, you're actually going to really like this one on MSP sales here.
