Push Through The Dip (Why Most MSPs Fail to Scale)

:: 00:00:00

Speaker 1

Hey. Come here. I've got a secret for you. If the strategy that you were counting on to grow your MSP, whether that's cold email or whether that's outbound phone calls, direct mail, paid ads, you name it. If it doesn't make you want to chuck your computer out the window at least every couple of weeks, the likelihood of it really moving the needle in the long run isn't very high.

:: 00:20:03

Speaker 1

Here's the thing that I've worked in 15 years of building, fixing, growing businesses is that all of the outsized returns that I've experienced in my own businesses and the businesses that we work with, have come from outsized resistance on the front end. All of the flash in the pan overnight, things that I pursued. Right. And I and believe me, I pursued my fair share of them, right.

:: 00:42:26

Speaker 1

That this is a the big thing and b, this is not going to be that hard and C it's not going to take very long. None of those things materialized. And if they didn't materialize, they weren't sustainable at all. And I see this a lot with MSPs. I see this a lot with it. Business owners who get really optimistic about a particular idea or a tactic or a strategy, and they say, you know what?

:: 01:00:29

Speaker 1

We're going to go march down this path and we're going to do this thing. They start moving that direction. They face some initial resistance, and they interpret that resistance as, you know, this doesn't work like it's not supposed to be this hard because I see it working elsewhere. So like, clearly it's not supposed to be it's hard. Like people wouldn't push through this thing.

:: 01:17:08

Speaker 1

And what they don't realize is that is the work. That is the work that you've got to push through, that you've got to work through. Because on the other side of that are the exponential returns that you probably want from all of the effort that you're putting into your business. So what I'm gonna do in this video is break down.

:: 01:31:19

Speaker 1

Why the resistance that you face when you're going into a new growth initiative is actually a good sign. I'll share the mistake that most MSPs make when they hit that initial friction. And I'll share how, you know, if you're just in a dip that's got like a J curve, you know, an upside on the other end of it or a dead end called let's dive in.

:: 01:48:00

Speaker 1

If you're doing something new to grow your MSP right, and you are hiring your first salesperson, you are running your first paid ads. You are getting your SEO strategy going. You are starting a cold email campaign. Whatever it is, I promise you it is going to stretch you, not just logistically. Although that will happen. It'll be strategically. It'll be incredibly frustrating.

:: 02:08:18

Speaker 1

It will be a learning process. There will be all of these issues that you've got like, hey, I didn't expect this to happen and expect this to happen. You know, we've got to get this new tech. This process didn't work. We're not getting the results that we initially wanted. And your focus, your patience, your skill set, all of them are going to be challenged because you're going into something new.

:: 02:27:25

Speaker 1

And that is completely natural. That is normal. And that is exactly why most people don't stick with it. I'll share an example with you. Recently had a client who hired their first SDR, and they had done preparation right? Like it wasn't completely blind, like they had done some, you know, some scripting. They had done some set up on the tech in the systems, like so they had gone through a basic checklist and said, hey, let's at least increase the probability of success here, right?

:: 02:48:07

Speaker 1

So they get their first SDR and the first week was a train wreck. Right. Like from a process standpoint, from a logistic standpoint, from a tech standpoint, there were all sorts of integration issues and reporting issues and even simple shit within the CRM and the list loaded, blah, blah, blah. So there were all these, all these tech glitches and blah blah.

:: 03:06:29

Speaker 1

So first week kind of a kind of a train wreck, right? So week two now we're making calls and things are actually starting to semi work, I guess at least from an execution standpoint of getting calls made to people. And they're learning really quickly that, hey, you know the the connection rate sucks while the connection rate sucks while the the data sucks.

:: 03:24:19

Speaker 1

Like we're all these are the other bunch of wrong numbers, wrong contacts. So they've got to go back and look at the list quality and you know where those come from. Maybe needs to be scrubbed, maybe needs to be done going into week two. Like halfway through the like, oh shit. Like we're still not actually giving really high quality presentations.

:: 03:39:28

Speaker 1

That gets reloaded back in the CRM. They're now a couple of weeks into this initiative and they're, you know, they're making phone calls or having presentations. And the conversion sucks, right? Like the actual they were getting through to some some decision makers. But the number of appointments that we're actually getting from this isn't working. What's going on here?

:: 03:57:01

Speaker 1

So that, you know, goes on for a week or two, they're listening to calls or trying to figure out, all right, is this is it the script, is it the the offer? Is it the SDR? Like, are we just not executing properly? And so they go through this whole process like this learning curve and they finally get it dialed in.

:: 04:12:20

Speaker 1

And 6 or 7 weeks into this, the sequence in the business owner looks to me as fuck a fuck it like this is this isn't going to work like this. This, this is like, this is not supposed to be this hard. Let's try something else. You're six, seven weeks into this initiative. If you start something else, you're starting over a day zero.

:: 04:33:15

Speaker 1

And I promise you, whatever that initiative is going to be, any of them pick any single one of them. If you're starting it from scratch, it's going to be the exact same thing. And frankly, 6 to 8 weeks to get an outbound system kind of dialed in, at least to a degree, where you've got some data and you've got a playbook and you've got execution, you've got some reports.

:: 04:53:21

Speaker 1

Not bad actually. So he says, all right, we'll stick with it. They go back, they they hire another SDR, they get that person in the seat. And fast forward six months and they've got to high performing scores who are setting 15 to 20 high quality appointments for them every single month. The processes are dialed in, the scripts are dialed in, the reports are awesome.

:: 05:18:04

Speaker 1

Like you can see all of the activity, the entire process, all the way through. You can see the conversion rates, and one of those stars is probably going to move in to the next closer role, which might be the person who ends up replacing that business owner as the person who's closing the deals. So that's six months later, though.

:: 05:34:02

Speaker 1

And had he quit at week six because of the initial resistance, guess where they would be today? I have no idea. They'd still be relying on referrals. They'd still be crossing their fingers that there's some inbound leads and they'd be reactively trying to grow a business, frustratingly going, gosh, how do we grow this thing? How do we grow this thing?

:: 05:54:01

Speaker 1

And probably pursuing initiative after initiative after initiative and stopping at that initial resistance point that they faced in this one. And that's the thing that I really want to hammer home here is that that resistance, that initial friction that you're going to face, especially if something is new to the business and there's learning that has to go into a new process, a new systems and new people, all of those things together.

:: 06:15:14

Speaker 1

You should go into that fully anticipating that it's going to be hard, that it's going to take time, that it's going to take a minute to get that fully dialed in. And when you face the resistance, instead of thinking, hey, this shouldn't be this hard, you know, like, this isn't this isn't working. This must be the wrong strategy.

:: 06:31:21

Speaker 1

Like it's supposed to be easier than this. Recognizing that that's not a problem. Resistance isn't failure. Resistance is actually part of the process. What you're actually feeling when that happens is what Seth Godin calls the. It's basically that that stretch between beginner's luck and actually getting meaningful results, like the actual outcome and the achievements that you really want.

:: 06:52:00

Speaker 1

And you can see it here and I'm and I resonate with this so deeply, I cannot tell you because I've had to go into so many initiatives as I've grown different businesses. And you go into and you go, okay, like, hey, this is this is kind of a new thing. And at first there's like excitement, right? Like you're like, hey, this is a cool initiative.

:: 07:07:03

Speaker 1

I'm really excited about it. I'm, you know, I'm like, I think this is I think this is going to work. I see it working for other people. I'm, you know, I'm thinking about the outcomes. I'm thinking about when this is all said and done. Oh, man, this is going to be great business. We're going to double the size of the company, blah, blah, blah.

:: 07:19:12

Speaker 1

So there's like excitement and early on there's usually a faster progress loop. Right? Because you feel like, hey, this is this is going like we're moving really quickly. We got the CRM setup, we got the listing, we got the dialer plugged in. We we got the SDR started, like, okay, like this is we are just trucking along. We are going to be printing money soon.

:: 07:37:19

Speaker 1

And then reality kicks in, right? That momentum starts to slow down and the learning curve starts to really settle. And you start to realize, oh shit, like there is a ton of stuff that we don't know really know here. Like the complexity is increasing. The results aren't happening nearly as quickly as I expected them to happen. And that is the dip.

:: 07:56:06

Speaker 1

Like that is that painful, uncertain feeling of recognizing shit. It's much harder than I thought it was going to be. And starting to question is this actually going to work? And here's the thing. This is where most people quit. That's not entirely a bad thing, because if you manage to push through, you've already created somewhat of a moat, you've already weeded out a ton of competition because the number of people that are going to push through the dip that recognize, hey, you know what?

:: 08:23:01

Speaker 1

This is just part of the process is very small. So just by pressing through, you actually create space between you and a ton of your competitors. So the dip isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn't. I mean, sure as hell doesn't feel that way when you're, like, facing that initial resistance and dealing with the frustration and you're not getting the results that you want and shit is actually hard.

:: 08:42:08

Speaker 1

But if you recognize this is a dip and this is where most people quit, and I'm going to press through, and by pressing through, I'm going to weed out 90% of the other people who started this initiative with the same degree of optimism that I did and quit. Now go and coined the term the dip and has a great book on it, a very short book.

:: 09:00:13

Speaker 1

I highly recommend it. Now. Gordon coined the term the dip, but he didn't actually come up with the concept. The concept is actually stems from, you know, psychology in the 70s, and it stems from, Dan Kelly and Daryl Conner. And they have the emotional cycle of change. So they kind of originally developed this concept. And then Gordon just clearly articulated and condensed it and made it easy to understand to the dip.

:: 09:22:21

Speaker 1

But what I like about the original psychology is that if you look at it in the stages that you actually go through when you're changing anything, it is completely applicable to the entrepreneurial journey and every new initiative that you're going to start. Here's what I mean. So you start with what's called uninformed optimism, which means somebody said, oh, hey, go, go hire an SDR, start doing outbound calls.

:: 09:42:27

Speaker 1

You know, you said, okay, cool. Or somebody said, dude, we're doing cold email and we are crushing it. You said, okay, like we can write emails and send them out to a whole bunch of people. It seems fairly easy. I'm going to go do the same thing. Or someone says, dude, room, re and all kinds of our, all of our leads are coming in from, you know, from from ads from, you know, PPC or social media or whatever it is.

:: 10:01:23

Speaker 1

So you hear that concept and you're you're optimistic, but you're not really informed. You don't know the full story behind what it took to make that thing work. So you've got uninformed optimism and you go, we're in like, I'm going to, I'm going to go do this. This is going to work great. I can double or triple the size of the company.

:: 10:19:06

Speaker 1

Let's get after this. I'm ready. All right. So you get going. Then you run into the resistance and that resistance is. Wait. They didn't tell me about this part is the shit is harder than I thought. They didn't tell me the fuck I hire an SDR like that. That's actually a reasonably high turnover role in many cases. Or doing cold email actually.

:: 10:41:01

Speaker 1

Shit. Like there's there's a bunch that goes into this, there's a bunch of logistics and then the copywriting and then the systems and then multiple domains of blah, blah. And now you've got informed pessimism because your optimism of I've got this, this is going to be awesome. I can see the future becomes, I don't know, like, this is, are we are we going to be able to do this, which then becomes the valley of despair, which is ultimately like, I'm not sure I'm cut out for this.

:: 11:05:12

Speaker 1

I don't think this is going to work. The strategy is not going to work for us. And that's the inflection point. That's the point at which most people quit, are either quitting in form pessimism, or they quit in the valley despair. They say, I'm done, I'm out. Right? Like I'm going to go try something else and they're going to try something else because they're going to start a new thing with informed optimism, and then they're going to start.

:: 11:25:10

Speaker 1

Then they have faced informed pessimism because they're all the exact same. They're going to get to the Valley despair if they even make it that long and then quit and start again. If you push through this and just recognize this is part of the process, if I'm going to build an outbound engine for my business, it's going to take a minute and it's going to be hard.

:: 11:40:21

Speaker 1

There's going to be shit that I've got to learn. Then you go into informed optimism because you now know what is needed to push through and get to the other side, because you've actually experienced all of the stuff behind the original shiny object. You understand the logistics, you understand the work that's going to be involved, and you're pressing on and you're committed to that strategy.

:: 12:00:00

Speaker 1

So you've got informed optimism, which then takes you to the achievement. Most MSPs do what I call serial starting. Right. Like they just they they start over over and over and over. They start the outbound, they start the paid ads, they start the new sales hire, they start whatever that thing is, because they insist on staying in the uninformed optimism stage.

:: 12:19:21

Speaker 1

And every single time that they start over, they restart the clock with a new strategy, a new learning curve, a new dip because the dip doesn't change, and because they never actually see it through, they never stay long enough. They never actually get the results. That's when businesses plateau. That's when businesses basically flatline. And they say, we just we can't break through like we've been at this level for this long.

:: 12:43:24

Speaker 1

And no matter what we do, it doesn't work or that thing doesn't work for us. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying never quit. Like when when people say winners ever quit, it's bullshit like that. Is that is not true. People quit all the time. It's quitting the right things and not quitting the wrong things that actually matter more.

:: 12:59:04

Speaker 1

So the question is, what do you quit good and makes what is, I think, a really important distinction for for MSPs when it comes to what to quit in in the dip. And here's how he breaks it down. Basically, as an MSP owner, you want to think about this and say quit the tactics, but don't quit the strategy.

:: 13:17:15

Speaker 1

In other words, quit the tools, quit the specific tactics, the the specific features. Like if you have a strategy that you are going to to pursue, don't give up the entire strategy. The likelihood that that strategy can't work very long is just a matter of execution. It's a matter of the tactics. It's a matter of how you're implementing that strategy.

:: 13:37:17

Speaker 1

If you just quit and restart strategies all the time, you're starting over on the big picture on the tip over and over and over. So think about it and go, is this a strategy or is this a tactic? For example, quit the script, not outbound, right? If your SDR isn't performing, you look at that and you say, hey, you know what, maybe it's the playbook.

:: 13:56:18

Speaker 1

Maybe it's the script that we have, or maybe it's the offer that we have, but we're not going to say, hey, since we're not setting appointments with this script in this offer right now, what we're going to do, we're going to give up on the whole strategy. We're going to give up on outbound, outbound, not going to work for us.

:: 14:08:29

Speaker 1

Quit the SDR, not building the sales team. Time and time again, I see people start the initiative of building their sales team. They go out and they hire their first SDR or their first PDR, whatever. And they get going and they go, hey, you know what? Like this one person didn't work out. Ergo, I'm going to give up on building a sales team at all.

:: 14:27:06

Speaker 1

Then year after year after year, they plateau and wonder why they're getting surpassed. So recognize that one individual not working on your sales team is not representative of a sales team not working for your business. Quit the list, not the channel. Right. So if you're if you are doing cold email right, you're starting a cold email campaign, something like that.

:: 14:45:19

Speaker 1

Rain out campaign and you're out and you go, hey, you know what? Like we send this out and the delivery rates suck or the open rate sucks or, you know, the response, positive replies, all that stuff like that didn't work. So you don't say, well, you know, email doesn't work for us. You say, hey, you know what?

:: 15:00:12

Speaker 1

Within that there are things that we can clearly improve. There are, you know, that we can get a better list. We can do things with the list to enrich it and make it better. We can improve the copy. We can improve the subject line. We can improve the CTA. We can improve all of the things that are underneath that at the tactical level, not necessarily the strategic level, because the reality is at a strategic level, at a high level, if you pick a strategy to grow your business, that is not going to work very low.

:: 15:28:08

Speaker 1

If you say we're going to rely on organic content and you start that strategy and you stick with it and you implement and iterate and test and measure and work through the dip, it will work. Outbound will work, cold email will work, paid ads will work. They all will work at a strategic level. They all will work, I promise.

:: 15:47:00

Speaker 1

I can point to somebody in your market who is doing the same thing that isn't working for them right now. It's because they've figured it out. It just means that you haven't figured it out yet. So the question is, how do you know? Am I at a dip or am I at a dead end? They're basically three questions that you that you want to ask on this.

:: 16:03:12

Speaker 1

The first is am I panicking? Right. And this happens a lot of times if you're just getting like an immediate feedback loop, right. Like this is something that I had, there was an outlay of cash. And, you know, I just spent some money, I just hire a new person. I just invested in new systems. And now I'm not seeing the results immediately.

:: 16:20:12

Speaker 1

o say, hey, I just I invested: 1020

:: 16:40:13

Speaker 1

So now I'm kind of freaking out, and I'm going to pull the plug on the entire strategy, and I'm definitely going to lose that money when you do that, by the way. But that makes it a bad time to make decisions. Clarity and good decision making comes when the pressure is down. So ask yourself like, am I panicking?

:: 16:54:26

Speaker 1

And if there's any chance that you're panicking, just pause for a minute and come back to that 24, 48, 72 hours a week later and ensure that you're not just being over reactionary. The second question that you want to ask is who am I trying to influence? And I thought this was a really good question, because if you're trying to influence one person, right, like so if you're a salesperson, for example, you're pursuing a specific strategy to get a massive account and you're trying to get through to one person and you're just running into friction everywhere, like you're not able to get through, well, the unfortunate truth of that is one person can make or

:: 17:30:10

Speaker 1

break your deal. In that case, it may make sense to say, listen like I am just on a treadmill here. No matter how much effort I'm going to invest, I'm not going to be able to move the needle because there's just one person or a very small group of people that I'm trying to influence, and I can't make progress with them.

:: 17:45:19

Speaker 1

On the other hand, if I'm trying to influence a market, I'm trying to build an audience on YouTube. If I'm trying to start an organic content strategy, if I'm trying to start something at a broader level, and I'm trying to address an entire market, the likelihood that you can't figure it out within that is all is very small.

:: 18:03:07

Speaker 1

What that probably represents is you just haven't seen the results yet. And there are new things you need to learn, their new skills. You need to develop their new process. You need to think through. And there are new tactics that you want to employ to reach the result. So if we are trying to influence is a large number of people, you probably don't necessarily need to quit very often.

:: 18:19:14

Speaker 1

What you need to do is figure it out. If you're trying to influence a very small group of people or just one person, then they do hold the cards and you may find yourself pushing up against a dead end, and that may be a sign to actually quit. And then the third question is what measurable progress am I actually making?

:: 18:34:09

Speaker 1

And this just requires being really objective, like actually sitting down and documenting, where were you 30 days ago when you started this strategy? Where were you 90 days ago? Where were you six months ago? And looking at the tangible, measurable progress that you're making along the way? No, you haven't necessarily experienced the full results or all of the returns that you're expecting from this whole initiative.

:: 18:55:02

Speaker 1

That's normal. That's fine. But can you look at this and say, you know what, we are making progress. We have if I'm if I'm starting an outbound sales team, right, I'm making my first sales hire. You know, we do have data. We didn't, you know, 30 days ago. We've got processes in the CRM. We actually have the tech setup.

:: 19:12:22

Speaker 1

We have good SOPs in place. We have a good script in place. We have, you know, maybe we don't have the the right person in the seats, but we do have all of these things in place. Or maybe we've got one person and we're looking to hire 2 or 3 more. We're not quite fully realizing all the returns that we want from this initiative over the long run, but we can point to this and say we have made tangible progress here, right?

:: 19:35:05

Speaker 1

Same thing. Take like a call email campaign. If you look at that and you break that down like all the way along the process, you may improve deliverability rates first, then you may improve open rates, then you may improve response rates, then you may improve actual conversion rates. Then you may actually see the result. So can you see some progress along the way in your process as you're going in?

:: 19:57:12

Speaker 1

If you can, you're in a dip, right? And keep going. Now you might want to try to accelerate it for sure, but giving up means giving up the progress that you've made up to now. And starting over in a new initiative means those elements of progress are lost. You're going to have to go to a new initiative, start over at the uninformed optimism.

:: 20:15:28

Speaker 1

Right. And you're going to go in and you're going to miss the pieces of progress that you've started to make towards getting the outcomes that you really want. So that's my message to you as an I.T business owner, as an MSP, anything worth doing is going to be fucking hard. And that is why there are so few businesses that are doing exceptionally well and probably getting the results that you really want from your business.

:: 20:37:10

Speaker 1

And the friction, the resistance that you're facing. It's not it's not a warning. It's a signal. Right. Like that's telling you, hey, you might actually be on the right track. So stay the course, keep learning, keep iterating, keep moving, keep progressing. And if you're feeling really stretched right now and if you're feeling like, hey, you know what? I'm starting to really question this.

:: 20:57:06

Speaker 1

Believe me, I've been there. Like, I know that exact feeling and I'm no stranger to it. Even in my own business today, it happens at every level. It's going to continue to happen. So you build the muscle and you build the scar tissue and you set the appropriate expectations with each new initiative that you go into. So not that I'm immune from it, but I now go into new things and I go, right, I know this is going to happen.

:: 21:18:01

Speaker 1

I know the psychological tricks that I've got to play on myself in order to to see this thing through. And even with that, I face the same degree of resistance. I question the same things, but I press through. It's normal to stay in the game, take action, learn from it, see what happens, repeat. And that's how it works.

:: 21:35:29

Speaker 1

So I hope this has been helpful. If it has, go ahead and like the video, help other entrepreneurs that need to hear the same message. Subscribe to the channel and if you want weekly sales tips, business growth tips for your MSP, go ahead and join my email list at the link below. And if you want access to my MSP sales toolbox, which has templates, playbooks, forecast models like you name it, we're jaw dropping stuff in there every single month.

:: 21:58:18

Speaker 1

Go ahead and drop your email into that if you're an MSP, and we'll give you access to the entire toolbox for for free for life. And in the meantime, press on, push to the depth. I'll see you on the other side.

:: 22:07:04

Unknown

Adios, love. You.