Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast

The best way for MSPs to delight existing clients dosen’t actually cost money… here’s 5 ways to do it. Also this week, how to turn your MSP’s success stories into 3 BIG marketing assets, and what if you sold your MSP to your employees? Welcome to Episode 332 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. 5 ways to delight your existing clients without spending a penny One of the easiest ways to grow your MSP is also one of the least talked about. And it’s this… delighting the clients you already have. And before your brain jumps to discounts and gifts and free stuff or doing more work for nothing, let me stop you right there. The best ways to delight your existing clients don’t cost money. They cost attention, they cost intention, and they cost you thinking a little bit differently about how clients experience working with you. So let me give you five examples… The first is proactively explaining what’s happening before clients feel the need to ask. So most client frustration isn’t caused by things breaking, it’s caused by uncertainty. To them, silence creates worry and worry creates friction, not good, right? So a simple update that says something like, “Hey, here’s what we’re working on for you right now, or here’s why we’re making this change and what you might notice.” Well, that can completely change how a client feels about you. They stop wondering, stop guessing, and just feel really reassured. And reassurance is hugely underrated in the channel, it really, really is. The second way to delight clients is to remember what matters to them beyond just their IT and their technology. Clients feel delighted when they feel known, not remembered as just an account number or a contract size, but they’re known as a business and especially as people. So referencing things like previous conversations or remembering a big business priority for them or acknowledging a stressful period that they’ve mentioned. None of that costs you money, but it really builds emotional loyalty between you and them. In fact, you can make clients feel like they’re in a very safe pair of hands. The third way to delight clients is to remove small annoyances that they’ve quietly learned to tolerate. Delight really comes from removing friction, not adding features. So give them clearer instructions, remove the need for them to ask follow-up questions, do better handovers, send cleaner emails, make the next steps more obvious for them. When something suddenly feels easier, clients really do notice, and they might not send you a thank you email, but if they feel it, then those feelings really add up over time. The fourth way is to tell your clients what you’ve prevented, not just what you’ve fixed. MSPs are brilliant at quietly stopping bad things from happening, but terrible at talking about it. Clients rarely know what didn’t go wrong because of you. So when you explain the risks that you’ve reduced and the issues that you’ve headed off, the problems that never really became problems, then you reinforce the immense value of what you do. You remind them why they chose you in the first place. The fifth way to delight clients without spending a penny is to make it safe for them to bring you bad news. This one is bigger than it sounds. Clients are delighted when they’re not judged, lectured, or made to feel stupid. You understand that, right? I do. Absolutely. When they feel psychologically safe and it is all about their feelings, they’re going to come to you earlier and not later. They’re going to be more honest and tell you the stupid things that they’ve done, which is good, right? They’re going to be more collaborative. In fact, they’re going to trust you more deeply. That’s exactly what we want from them. That’s the partnership that you wan...

In this podcast special we’ve joined thousands of other podcasters around the world to take part in something called Podcasthon. I’ve chosen a charity called 404 Stress Not Found, that’s aimed at helping MSPs to cope better, and here’s my guest to tell you all about it… Welcome to Episode 331 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. MSPs: How to get help if you’re struggling Featured guest: Paul Croker is an award-winning Cyber Security person with a rich background in IT that span the years and sectors. In his last corporate role was heading up the IT for a pan-European space company where Paul led the way for the UK entity spanning two sites, managing complex needs of IT for space projects with budgets and an aggressive headcount to take into account too as the business was ramping up. Paul has also setup 404 Stress Not Found CIC. A not for profit looking to tackle the mental health and resilience issues that plague the tech industry. IT and Cyber are impacted as people are burned out, stressed out and not sure which way to turn. They may not know what is happening or be able to spot the signs. 404 Stress Not Found is a safe place, at in person events and via our free online portal, you can connect with others, hangout, or ask for help, listen to others in need, or start your own journey, it’s what you need it to be. Hello and welcome to this special episode of the podcast. This week, we’ve joined together with thousands of other podcasters around the world to take part in something called Podcasthon. We’re giving up this episode to promote a charity of our choice, and you’re going to love the charity that we’ve picked. It’s called 404 Stress Not Found. It’s a new organisation that’s aimed at helping MSPs to cope better. And here’s my special guest to tell you all about it. Hello, I’m the founder of 404 Stress Not Found. My name is Paul Croker. And thanks so much for joining me on the podcast, Paul. You and I have known each other for, it must be 9, 10 years something like that, it’s been a long time. And bizarrely, and what has sort of created this special episode today is I bumped into you and your wife, Gemma, at Barcelona Airport like back in autumn/fall last year. Now we had actually both been to MSP Global, so it’s not like we were just randomly flying into Barcelona, but we had a great chat outside the airport. I was very hungover, I remember that. And you were a bit more bright-eyed and bushy-tailed than I was. I think I just had a coffee as well, which probably helped. Yes, you had. Which is a dangerous thing at two in the afternoon, but there we go. And we started talking about what you’re doing with 404 Stress Not Found, and I realised this is the perfect thing for this special episode. So let’s start right at the beginning. So just first of all, let’s find out about you. Just give us the brief version of your story in terms of the MSP that you run here in the UK. Sure, so I started a company called 18iT about five years ago now or thereabouts, off the back of exiting a pan-European space company, which is all very cool. So when we talk about rocket science, I know what that used to look like. And what we do now over here is very different. But I take those lessons and basically curate them for MSPs and people in the tech space. That’s really cool. And you can actually say it’s not rocket science because that’s what you used to do. And I do use that quote when I talk on stages. Yes. So you should, I would. I mean, I couldn’t even get into a rocket facility, let alone be a rocket scientist, but that’s pretty cool. And you founded this thing called 404 Stress Not Found. So how long has that been in your life? And we’ll exp...

Price shopping often doesn’t start with the prospect, it starts with the MSP… find out why. Also this week, why MSPs feel overwhelmed even when things are good, and clever marketing ideas from outside the channel. Welcome to Episode 330 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. Why prospects price shop MSPs (& how to end it forever) Have you ever had a prospect say no to you because they believed your MSP was just too expensive? Lots of MSPs think that prospects default to price shopping because they’re cheap, difficult, or just not serious buyers. And it’s so easy to blame the economy or your competition or how the market is right now. But here’s the uncomfortable truth… prospects usually aren’t born price shoppers… they’re trained. And more often than not, they’re trained by the MSP itself through marketing and sales behaviour that’s well-intentioned, but hits in the totally wrong way. Let me give you some examples so you can see if you are doing this by accident. I believe the problem of price shopping doesn’t start with the prospect, it starts with the MSP. In fact, it starts with the signals that you send through your marketing and your sales process, often without even realising it. Every interaction either trains a prospect to compare or it trains them to trust. And most MSPs accidentally train comparison, price comparison especially. Let me show you how. One of the biggest ways that MSPs create price shoppers is by leading with services instead of leading with outcomes. So when you talk about monitoring, patching, backups, antivirus, response times and tickets and stuff like that, you’re just listing features and that makes you look identical to every other MSP. And when things look identical, you’re just making it too difficult for the prospect to differentiate you from all the other MSPs. So the only logical way to choose is price from their point of view. You’ve taught the prospect that MSPs are interchangeable, bad, bad, bad. Another big one is quoting too early. MSPs do rush in sometimes to give a price because they want to be helpful or they want to keep momentum or they want to avoid awkward conversations. But when you give a big number before establishing value, context, and fit, you’re effectively saying this decision is mostly about cost. So the prospect does exactly what you’d expect a rational human to do… they shop around. And by the way, that’s not a reason to not have a price estimator on your website. A price estimator that gives them a rough price in seconds is good, but jumping straight from initial conversation to quote, that’s bad. You’ve got to give them a specific quote at the very end of the process when you’ve got to know them and what they’re looking for and their outcomes and whether or not you guys are a good fit. Then there’s the problem of treating every lead the same. If you have the same proposal template, the same pitch, you’re using the same language, it’s the same packages for everyone. If there’s no sense of personalisation, how can it feel relevant to your prospect? There’s no emotional anchor there. And when there’s no emotional anchor, again, price just floats to the top. MSPs also train price shoppers by apologising for their pricing. People say phrases like, “Oh, I know we’re not the cheapest…” or, “Oh, we might be a bit more expensive, but…” why would you do that? ” In fact, the moment that you say that, you have framed price as the objection, you’ve invited the prospect to challenge it, which is crazy. Another subtle one is overexplaining and justifying. When you feel the need to defend your price, line by line, then you kind of signal uncertainty and that encourages comparison. And then there’s websites. So if your web...

Most MSP owners are drowning in marketing tasks, telling themselves they’re saving money or keeping control, when in reality they’re just burning through their time. Let’s discuss how to change that. Also this week, many MSPs use AI badly for marketing, and it costs MSPs 5 figures to win a new client. Welcome to Episode 329 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. Marketing tasks MSP owners should NEVER touch You’d be mad to do all of your MSPs marketing yourself, and if that sentence annoys you a little, there’s a good chance that you are exactly the person who needs to hear it. Because most MSP owners are drowning in marketing tasks, telling themselves they’re saving money or keeping control, when in reality they’re burning the one resource they can never replace… their time. Right now, I want to talk about which marketing jobs you absolutely should outsource, which ones you must keep ownership of, and how to focus your limited time on the activities that deliver the biggest return. So let’s talk about time, because for MSP owners and managers, time is the real bottleneck. You don’t have a lack of ideas, you don’t have a lack of tools, you don’t even have a lack of willingness. What you have is too many things competing for your attention. And marketing is often the thing that’s squeezed into the cracks between the tickets, the meetings, and the client fires. The goal of marketing isn’t for you to do more, it’s for you to do less of the wrong things and more of the right things. And here’s the core principle that I want you to adopt. You should outsource anything that someone else could be trained to do well, and you should keep ownership of anything that requires judgement, direction and deep understanding of your business. Most MSPs get this completely backwards. They clinging very tightly to low value tasks and then outsource high level thinking, which is absolute madness, right? Let’s start with what you should almost always outsource. Anything repetitive. Anything admin heavy. Anything that’s process driven, things like loading social media posts, scheduling blogs, uploading videos, formatting newsletters, whether that’s email or print making, LinkedIn connection requests, cleaning lists, basic CRM updates, repurposing content, chasing webinar registrations, creating transcripts and pulling simple reports. None of those tasks that I was just mentioning require you. They just require instructions. They require an SOP. If someone can be trained to do it once, they can be trained to do it again and again and again. And every hour you spend doing those things is an hour you are not spending on strategy, leadership, relationships or growth. Now let’s talk about what you absolutely should not outsource. You should never outsource ownership of your marketing direction. You should never outsource deciding who you are targeting, what you stand for, what message you want to be known for or what success looks like. You shouldn’t outsource thinking, you shouldn’t outsource high level decision making, and you definitely should not outsource responsibility. Strategy for your marketing lives with you, direction lives with you, and accountability lives with you. Even if you have a marketing agency, a virtual assistant, a marketing assistant, or even if you have a content team, they should be executing your thinking and not replacing it. Because trust me on this, no one else in the entire world understands your MSP, your clients, your ambition, your risk tolerance, the way that you do. Many MSPs say, Oh, I haven’t got time for marketing, and what they really mean is, I don’t have time to do admin marketing tasks. But the high ROI marketing doesn’t look like admin, it looks like deciding where you want to focus. I...

People do not buy features, they buy benefits… many MSP’s know this but very few actually live it in their marketing, here’s how to change that. Also this week, is your MSP’s expertise hiding in plain sight? And how much is your MSP really worth? Welcome to Episode 328 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. The most common MSP marketing mistake There’s a basic marketing mistake that the vast majority of MSPs make. In fact, once you know what it is, you’re going to see it everywhere. It’s going to drive you crazy, you’ll see it on your website, on your LinkedIn, on your other marketing channels. But the good news is I can help you to spot it and fix it in the next five minutes. We are diving into one of the most fundamental principles in all of marketing. People do not buy features, they buy benefits. Now, every MSP has heard this, but very few actually live it in their marketing. And the reason this matters so much is because features and benefits land completely differently in our brains. A feature is normally processed logically, it engages the analytical part of the mind that loves detail but really doesn’t like to make decisions. Whereas a benefit is processed emotionally and hits the part of our heart and also the brain that drives action, that imagines outcomes, that feels relief, confidence and safety. And here’s the uncomfortable truth… All buying decisions made by ordinary business owners and managers start emotionally. People only use logic afterwards to justify what they already wanted. So features live in the logical world. Benefits live in the emotional world. When you talk about features, you are speaking to the wrong part of the brain… you’re speaking to the part of the brain that doesn’t buy. But when you talk about benefits, you’re speaking directly to the part of the brain that says yes. And this is why when MSPs proudly list their features – 24/7 monitoring, remote support, patching, ticket automation, all of that stuff – prospects kind of nod politely, but they’re kind of glazing over and they feel nothing. It’s like listing ingredients instead of actually showing the finished meal, it’s like describing the different parts of the engine rather than describing the feeling of driving the car. So benefits create pictures in people’s minds and they let the prospect imagine what life will be like when they’re working with you. And you do know that imagination is one of the strongest decision-making tools that humans possess, right? Let’s make this real. When you say “24/7 monitoring”, that’s just a mechanism, it doesn’t actually mean anything to a normal business owner. But if you say to them, Hey, we spot problems early which means fewer business disruptions, then suddenly that becomes something tangible that they can feel. They can imagine a calmer working day, systems just running and fewer surprises, and that is a benefit. When you say “remote support”, again, that’s just a mechanism. But if you say, Hey, we can fix issues really quickly without downtime and you don’t even need to wait for us to arrive, that becomes a benefit because that sends a message of speed and convenience and continuity. When you say “regular patching and updates”, they’re yawning because you’re naming a process. But if you say, Hey, look, so your security stays strong with zero effort from your team, you guys don’t have to do anything, that’s a benefit and it speaks of safety and ease and peace of mind. So features describe what something is, whereas benefits describe what something does. That’s the big difference between the two. Features force the prospect to translate what you’ve said in their brain into some kind of emotional meaning, whereas benefits you’ve alre...

Breaking into a new vertical is one of the smartest marketing decisions you can make for your MSP, here’s how to get started. Also this week, why MSPs are terrified of guarantees, and the huge AI revenue opportunity for MSPs. Welcome to Episode 327 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. No vertical for your MSP? That’s a mistake One of the smartest marketing decisions you can make for your MSP, is choosing to break into a new vertical. Because marketing to a vertical is easier, more effective, and ultimately more profitable. A lot more profitable. And a lot of MSPs want this, but they don’t know where to get started. So let’s talk right now about how to enter any vertical you like and get traction quickly and easily. Choosing to work in a vertical is like switching from a megaphone over to a sniper rifle. Most MSPs marketing sends a pretty generic message, something like, We help businesses of all sizes, any kind of business, with their IT, which is very lovely and friendly but also utterly forgettable. Vertical focus marketing says, We help dental practices eliminate downtime, secure patient records, and keep imaging systems running smoothly, and suddenly with a message like that you are relevant, you are specific, and you sound like someone who understands that exact person that you are talking to. The thing is that humans, we respond to familiarity. Prospects respond to relevance. Marketing responds to focus. When you pick a vertical, your story becomes sharper, your audience becomes easier to find, your content becomes dramatically better, your conversion rates jump, and you instantly differentiate from every generalist MSP around you. This is especially true in professions like accountants, lawyers, dentists (like I was just saying), medical clinics and manufacturers. These groups all share similar software compliance concerns, workflows, frustrations, and even buying psychology. This is marketing heaven, but how do you actually break into one? Let’s get into the practical stuff. There are three phases to entering a vertical. First, understand the vertical. Next, build the assets and the messaging. And then thirdly, build the audience. So let’s do phase one, understanding the vertical. This is kind of like the homework phase and it’s also where most MSPs skip straight ahead to the marketing and you kind of miss out on all the prep work. So please do do this bit. To break into a new vertical, you must first understand the software that they use, the regulations that they’re bound by and maybe even that they fear, and the workflows that frustrate them. You’ve got to understand the downtime disasters that could ruin their day, the KPIs that they care about, the conferences they attend, the associations that they belong to, the influencers they listen to and the language they use. If you talk their language, even just 70% of it, you instantly feel to them like your one of them. And no, you don’t need decades of experience in their vertical. You just need curiosity, a bit of research, a handful of conversations, and the ability to turn what you’ve learned, your insight, into content for them and to adapt your conversations to take all of it into account. Once you understand their world, you are ready for phase two, which is building up your assets and your messaging. And the question I always get from MSPs on this is, Paul, should I have a page on my website or should I have a whole separate website? Well, my recommendation for this is to start simple. So yes, you begin with a single vertical specific page on your main website. Don’t go building 17 new websites before you even know whether or not the vertical is going to respond to you. So your vertical page on your existing site should inc...

LinkedIn is the number one place for MSPs to build relationships with potential clients, and here’s how. Also this week, how your MSP can excite ANY prospect, and the Disney lesson your MSP mustn’t ignore. Welcome to Episode 326 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. MSPs: Never be ignored on LinkedIn, again For MSPs, LinkedIn is the number one place to go farming, never hunting, but farming. Slow, steady, reliable relationship building with the exact people that you want to do business with. And that means adding new connections, ideally on a daily basis. Let me give you five super smart LinkedIn connection request messages that you can swipe and use today. Farming on LinkedIn is about slow, steady, reliable relationship building with the exact people that you want to do business with. And the good news is that LinkedIn makes this incredibly easy, if you approach it the right way. Most MSPs massively underuse it. They log in every now and again, maybe post something, maybe like something, and then they wonder why nothing really changes. They get nothing out of LinkedIn. But the real power of LinkedIn is in building your network, your connections. Think of every connection as a tiny little seed. The more relevant seeds you plant, the more opportunities grow later. Your job is simply to show up every day and plant a few more seeds. So how do you do that? Very simply, you search for the people you most want to do business with -business owners, managers, decision makers, in your target verticals and your target geographical areas. If you serve financial firms, go and look for accountants/CPAs, financial planners. If you specialise in manufacturing, look for operations managers, plant managers, supply chain directors. If you are local only and you just want local businesses, search by your town or your region. And then, here’s the system… you send 10 personalised connection requests every day. Not 50, not 100, just 10. Because consistency beats volume every time. Doing something small every day is always more powerful than doing something big every now and again. So make it part of your daily routine, same time each day, same process, no emotion attached, it’s just a system. In fact, you can get other people to do this for you, maybe a member of your staff or a virtual assistant. Now let’s talk about the connection request messages, and again, here’s where a lot of MSPs go wrong. They send the same bland, boring copy and paste connection requests that screams, I’m going to pitch you something here. But we’re not pitching remember, we’re farming, we’re starting a relationship. And that’s why you want a set of smart, simple human sounding messages that you can just rotate your way through. Today I’m going to give you five of the best, and these are the same ones that I give to my MSP Marketing Edge members. So let’s go through them. The common ground message. This one is beautifully simple: Hi , it looks like we both, . I want to add you to my professional network. Now, maybe the thing that you insert is that you both live or work in the same area or maybe you’re in the same industry group or maybe you’re both fans of a particular business author or a local sports team or something like that. Humans connect through shared identity, so point out the common ground with them. They’re much more likely to accept your connection requests. The local business owner message. If you target a geographic area, this one is gold: Hi , it looks like we’re both local business owners in . Should we connect to see if there’s anything we can do to help each other? People feel good supporting businesses on their do...

Delighting your clients is really important to retention, so it should be systemised in every single MSP. Also this week, AI prompts for MSPs to win new clients, and this is how MSPs lose revenue. Welcome to Episode 325 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. MSPs who don’t do this, risk losing clients Insane retention for your MSP isn’t just about doing a great job for your clients, it’s also about making sure they feel really positive about you. Most MSPs have great retention by default. Sure, you’re looking after people properly, but you must also remember that for ordinary business owners and managers, switching MSPs is a distress activity. In fact, the perception is that moving to another MSP is difficult and dangerous and that’s what keeps people with you. It’s called inertia loyalty. But relying on it is a really bad strategy. Instead, here’s how to systemise going the extra mile so that your clients don’t just respect what you do. They love it. We’re really talking here about delighting your clients, but not in a haphazard way. One of the great things about owning your own business is having complete control over the experience of the customers, right? If you and I could clone ourselves, then we’d have the perfect businesses because everyone in our team would behave like us. But the reality is that no business is like that. We need other humans and other humans behave in different ways. So unless we put in place systems and train our people on the systems and then coach them to follow those systems and thrive within them day in, day out, we get haphazard performance. I think that customer service is absolutely one of those areas that could and should be systemised in every single MSP. And by customer service, I mean going the extra mile, the stuff that genuinely makes clients think, wow, these tech people are different. Because when you do that consistently and not just occasionally, you create loyalty, referrals, and a reputation that’s almost impossible for your competitors to touch. So let’s get into 10 simple but practical ways that you can go the extra mile and more importantly, how to turn each one into a repeatable system inside your business. Proactive communication. I don’t just mean the usual emails that say your ticket has been updated, but actually I mean reaching out to someone before something becomes an issue. So like a quick monthly check-in call or a short video from a technician summarising what they’re working on for them. The magic here isn’t the contact, it’s the proactive nature of it. And yes, you can systemise this with a simple CRM task. Every client gets a check-in every 30 days, no exceptions. Now obviously if you’ve dealt with some tickets with them in those 30 days, you can skip that, but if you haven’t really dealt with your clients, you haven’t sorted anything big out for them in the last 30 days, then send them a proactive video just telling them some stuff you’re doing or just checking in to say, Hi, how are you? What’s happening right now within the business? Personalised micro touches. Things like remembering their birthday. I mean, what if you got the birthday of every user at every client and you just sent them something? Just send them a card or just send them a video message from the team. I know that means a bit of work every week, but it’s a point that it really connects with them. What if you celebrated their business anniversary? What if you found out and congratulated them when they hired someone new? In fact, you are one of the first people to find out when they hire someone new, right? If they remember to tell you, although I realise most of your...

If you want more hot leads for your MSP, put a price estimator on your website. Marcus Sheridan is here to tell you why this works. Also this week, change your life (and MSP) with this daily habit, and why email is the #1 MSP marketing tool. Welcome to Episode 324 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. Why is this so controversial for MSPs? If you want more hot leads for your MSP, put a price estimator on your website. For some reason, this is one of the most controversial things in the channel, with many MSPs saying it’s impossible to give an idea of pricing before you’ve spoken to a prospect. And yet, prospects don’t want to talk to you in order to get a price. What to do? Well, I’ve got marketing expert and bestselling author, Marcus Sheridan, here right now to give you what I believe is the definitive word on this. I like to think of myself as a bit of a marketing sponge. I read almost every single business and marketing book that I can get my hands on, actually, I listen to them more these days, but I’m also constantly reviewing different ideas and different ways of doing things to keep my mental model of the best way to market your MSP fully up to date. And there was something that I added to this model years back when I read a book called They Ask You Answer by Marcus Sheridan. Have you read this? One of the big ideas in the book is the idea of transparent pricing. Marcus in that book talked extensively about radical price transparency, which means that you talk very openly about your price. You explain what drives the cost up and down, you discuss cheap versus expensive options, and you compare yourself to alternatives. You’re just trying to help people who want to buy from you, who want to switch MSPs, you’re trying to help them to understand value. And then Marcus released a book called Endless Customers last year, which was a reinvention of They Ask You Answer and kind of updated for the AI age. And he took the idea of radical price transparency and took it even further by suggesting that you put a price estimator onto your website. What’s a price estimator? It’s a tool for someone to get a rough idea of how much it costs to be a client of your MSP. This to me was so obvious that I actually negotiated a partnership with Marcus Sheridan and his business partner, Steve Auchettl, and we launched MSP Price Guide at the backend of last year. It’s an AI-driven price estimator tool that you can put onto your website and we’ve done all the hard work for you. So we’ve built templates, we’ve added in all the standard managed services, all of that kind of stuff. So you can just start your 30 day free trial and get an estimator onto your website within 10, 20 minutes or so. You can see that at msppriceguide.com. Anyway, I asked Marcus to pull together something to show you why all of this is so critical and so applicable to MSPs. Take it away, Marcus. Hello MSP community, Marcus Sheridan here. Let’s have an honest conversation about whether or not you should be considering a pricing estimator for your website. First thing that we have to understand is that 75% of all buyers today say they would prefer to have what’s known as a seller-free sales experience. In other words, we don’t hate salespeople as buyers, we just don’t want to talk to them until we are good and ready. And that was a B2B study by Gartner, by the way. And I think you would agree with that. We don’t want to talk to sales until we’re confident, comfortable, and we feel like we’re not going to make a mistake. The answer to that is give the buyer more control through what is known as self-service. Self-service are interactive tools mainly on your website that allow...

Law firms are a vertical that can be incredibly profitable for MSPs. If you want more lawyers as clients for your MSP, here’s everything you need to know. Also this week, why MSPs are working so hard, and how MSPs are losing revenue. Welcome to Episode 323 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. How to market your MSP to lawyers If you want more lawyers as clients for your MSP, here’s everything you need to know. Let’s talk about what lawyers look for in a new MSP, why they would switch, and what kind of marketing is going to grab their attention and convince them to talk to you. So law firms are a vertical that can be incredibly profitable for MSPs. And I know that sometimes lawyers can be difficult people to deal with, but if you’re confident in your service and you know that you want more professional firms that put technology at the heart of everything they do, let’s get more lawyers. In fact, I believe they’re one of the easiest verticals to market to when you know what they care about. And spoiler alert, it’s not Windows 11 and Copilot. Law firms buy IT differently from most other businesses. And the reason for this is simple. Everything they do revolves around risk. Their risk, their client’s risk, the risk of regulators breathing down their necks, and the risk of missing a deadline because Outlook decided today was a fun day not to work properly. So if you want to win lawyers, you don’t sell IT support, you sell risk reduction and professional reputation protection. Let’s talk about their biggest pain points. So first is compliance and confidentiality. Lawyers live in a world where one email sent to the wrong person can cause a catastrophe. So talk to them about secure communication systems, email encryption, MFA everywhere, data loss prevention, and of course audit trails. Second, billable time. Every minute a lawyer can’t work is literally money disappearing. So your message here is simple. We keep your fee earners earning. And then third, case management and workflow tools. Many firms still use clunky old systems or they haven’t fully adopted cloud tools yet. So show them how better tech can make caseloads smoother, faster, and more profitable. If you want your MSP to stand out, you need to stop sounding like an IT company and start sounding like someone who understands legal practices. Use their terminology – fee earners, case files, discovery, retainers, compliance obligations, client confidentiality – all words like that. Because when they hear their own world reflected back at them by a potential IT partner, they immediately think, “Ah, yeah, this one understands us.” You do need some specialised proof. Law firms don’t buy from generalists, they buy from specialists. So create a case study with a local legal firm, a landing page dedicated to IT for law firms with a short guide called something like, The seven biggest cyber risks facing law firms in 2026. And then just get a few testimonial quotes from partners or office managers. You don’t need dozens, one or two strong quotes will carry huge weight. And here’s a little marketing trick. Law firms love audit. I mean audits is basically their favourite word. So offer them something like a free 20-minute legal IT risk assessment saying something like, Is your firm compliant with your regulators cyber guidance? Find out. And this positions you as a safety first expert rather than just another IT fixer. Another smart tactic is to pick a sub niche. So don’t just market to all law firms, pick a slice. It could be family law or conveyancers or criminal defence or corporate commercial, maybe personal injury. Each of them has slightly different pressures and workflows, and the more specific you’re messagin...

Let’s explore whether giving away something for free is a good marketing tactic for your MSP. Also this week, why you must put your personality in your MSP’s marketing, and the MSP that grew from $0 to $36m in 12 years. Welcome to Episode 322 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. Is FREE a good marketing tactic for MSPs? Free. It’s a big, shiny word that always draws the attention of MSPs. No matter how much cash you’ve got, free is always an appealing proposition because if something’s free, there’s zero risk, right? So here’s a question, can you use giving away something free as a marketing tactic for your MSP? And more to the point, if you can, should you? Or does it risk devaluing what you do for people? Giving away something for free is one of the oldest playbooks in marketing. I mean, right back in the 19th century, Coca Cola was giving away free samples to promote itself. In fact, that was one of the ways that that brand became so dominant across the US. Free has always been a magic word, hasn’t it? It grabs attention, it lowers barriers, and it makes people feel like they’re getting something for nothing. In the world of B2B, and especially for MSPs, is free still a smart tactic? Or does it actually make people value you less? Before we decide, let’s be clear on something. Free doesn’t automatically mean bad. There are good kinds of free, and there are bad kinds as well. So let’s start with the good ones. When you offer free value, say a helpful guide, a webinar, a checklist, or even a 15 minute consultation, that’s a smart kind of free. It gives potential clients a taste of what you’re like to work with. They see your expertise, your communication style, and the way that you think, and that builds trust. People buy from people they trust, and small, risk-free experiences like that are a great way to earn it. But then there’s the other kind of free, the kind that feels desperate, like giving away months of support, doing unpaid audits, or fixing little things just to prove yourself. And that’s where free starts to devalue what you do. Because if you make it seem like your time, your skill, and your expertise aren’t worth paying for, why would anyone believe that they are? And here’s the tough truth. Once someone sees you as the free guy, it’s very hard to change that perception later. You’ve anchored your value at zero. So how do you walk that line? How do you use free strategically without shooting yourself in the foot? Here’s the test that I like to use. If it gives value but doesn’t cost you much time or money, then it’s “good free”. But if it costs you significant effort or replaces something you should be charging for, it’s “bad free”. So a downloadable guide that explains how to protect a business from phishing attacks, great free. But a two-hour deep dive audit of someone’s network, that’s not free, that’s a service. No pay, no play. Here’s one more thing to keep in mind. In 2026, attention is the new currency. So giving something away for free can be a brilliant marketing exchange as long as it earns you attention or trust. Thank you very much for those. But if it earns you nothing but extra work and frustration, it’s not marketing, it’s martyrdom. So is free still a good marketing tactic for an MSP? Yes, it is, but only when it’s intentional, limited, and built to lead somewhere valuable. Don’t give your time away, give away your thinking. That’s what positions you as the local IT expert and gets local business owners saying, wow, if this is what this person gives away for free, imagine what I get if I paid for it. Why you must put your personality in your MSP’s marketing Have you ever wondered what it’s like being an ordinary business owner or man...

We are continuing a three part series based on the MSP Marketing Edge 3 step system, and in this special episode we focus on the third step: Convert relationships. Welcome to Episode 321 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. Convert relationships Hello and happy New Year, and welcome to our final special episode of this podcast. We’re finishing a three part series this week. Last year, I released my book, MSP marketing: Start Here, about a 3 step lead generation system, which is trusted by hundreds and hundreds of MSPs around the world. In the first special, we looked at the first step – build audiences. Last week was the second step – grow relationships, and today, starting 2026, we’re going to do the final step – convert relationships. Let me paint a picture. You’ve built your audience, you’ve nurtured your relationships, but now what? How do you turn all of that goodwill into actually clients without feeling pushy, desperate, or salesy? Because no MSP wants to be like that. Well, that is where step three comes in – convert relationships. I like to think of this stage as harvesting, farming. You’ve spent months planting seeds – every post, every email, every conversation – and now it’s time to gently shake the tree and see what’s ready to fall out. And I say gently because good sales isn’t about pressure, it’s all about timing. Remember, business owners only switch MSPs when they are ready, not when you are ready, or you need more MRR. So your job is to make sure that when that readiness appears, when they finally get fed up with their current incumbent MSP, you are the first person that they think of. And that’s why conversion is as much about staying in touch as it is about asking for the business. There are a few practical ways to do this. The first is personal outreach, and by that I mean a phone call. But here’s the trick. It shouldn’t come from you. So I’m assuming that you are the business owner and you’ve already got a million other things to do, right? So hire someone, even if that person is part-time, to just make those calls for you. A back to work mom is great for this. Someone working two to three hours a day, two to three days a week, and you want someone warm, friendly, and curious. Their job is not to sell IT support, it’s just to have conversations on your behalf. Things like, Hey, we connected on LinkedIn a while ago, or you connected with my boss on LinkedIn a while ago. How’s business going? Something super simple like that, something human that starts and maintains and builds relationships that can turn into video calls. That’s the thing. Her job is to book a video call with you, a 10 to 15 minute video call, and then you do the hard work of turning the video call into a real sales meeting. Now, the other way that you can do this is through marketing campaigns. And I’m not talking about the one-off hit and hope campaigns that we all get tempted by or that we get from vendors, and you think, oh, this is brilliant, and you do one piece of activity and then you’re kind of upset that nothing happens from that. I’m talking about systematic outreach marketing campaigns that build on the relationship that you’re building with your prospects. So things like sending a physical letter out to a batch of prospects and then following that up with an email the next day saying, Hey, did you get my letter? And then making a friendly follow-up call later in the week. Now, this stuff is old school, but I promise you it works because most MSPs don...

We are continuing a three part series based on the MSP Marketing Edge 3 step system, and in this special episode we focus on the second step: Grow relationships. Welcome to Episode 320 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. Grow relationships Hello and welcome to another special episode of the podcast. We are continuing a three-part series this week. Earlier this year I released my book, MSP marketing: Start Here, about a 3 step lead generation system trusted by hundreds and hundreds of MSPs around the world. Last week, we looked at the first step – build audiences. Today it’s the second step – grow relationships. I want to tell you a secret about marketing that most MSPs miss. It’s not about technology. It’s not about your tools, your stack or your accreditations. It’s about trust. Because nobody’s buying from you until they trust you, and they can’t trust you until they like you, and they can’t like you until they know you. That’s why the second step, growing relationships, matters so much. Think about your own buying habits. When was the last time you hired someone for your business – a supplier, a consultant, or an agency – where you knew deep down, these are my people, this is my person. That didn’t happen because they cold called you at the right moment, right? It happened because you felt like you already knew them. Maybe you’d seen their content or you’d heard their stories or maybe laughed at their bad jokes, or maybe a friend had talked about them, or maybe you just liked their energy. You trusted them before you ever met with them. And that’s what you’re trying to create for your prospects. Growing relationships is about showing up regularly with something useful, human, consistent. And the good news is it doesn’t need to be complicated. You don’t need to become a social media influencer or hire a full-time marketing team. You just need to keep feeding your audiences with what I call edutainment – education and entertainment combined, something that teaches and makes them smile at the same time. Now, that’s your weekly email, that’s your blog on your website, that’s your LinkedIn posts which should go out every day, it’s your videos that you make or that you get in for your business. It’s not about talking tech, it’s about talking people. Business owners don’t care about patching, monitoring, or endpoint protection. They care about whether their team can get work done without tearing their hair out. They care about productivity, they care about growth, stress, risk. So talk about those things. Show them that you understand what it’s like to run a business because that’s what builds connection. One of my favorite ways to do this is through storytelling. Tell stories about your clients with permission of course, or at the very least, anonymise it. Tell them how a small tech change made someone’s life easier, about mistakes that you made early in your business and what you learned. Because stories stick and if you can make someone feel something – curiosity relief, even a little amusement – they will remember you. And the magic is that over time, these people start to feel like they know you. They see your face on LinkedIn every week. They read your newsletter over their morning coffee. They might even forward one of your emails to a colleague. They’re building a relationship with you even though you’ve never met. That’s the heart of marketing today. Asynchronous relationships. You build them slowly with every piece of content that you publish. And one day out of nowhere, that quiet relationship becomes real. Someone you’ve never spoken to sends you a message saying, Hey, do you know we’ve been following your stuff for ages, can we talk? And that’s wh...

We are kicking off a three part series based on the MSP Marketing Edge 3 step system, and in this special episode we focus on the first step: Build audiences. Welcome to Episode 319 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Build audiences Hello and welcome to a special episode of the podcast. We are kicking off a three part series this week. Earlier this year, I released my latest book, it’s called MSP marketing: Start Here, and it’s all about a 3 step lead generation system trusted by hundreds and hundreds of MSPs around the world. It’s super simple and yet incredibly powerful, and that’s by design. So starting this week, we’re doing a deep dive into it. Let me tell you what the 3 step system is, and then this week we’re going to look at the first step. I see my job as making marketing super simple for you, which is why I’ve pulled together an entire marketing strategy, a whole 3 step system into just six words. Let me tell you what they are – Build audiences. Grow relationships. Convert relationships. Super simple. But as you’re about to hear today and over the next couple of weeks, there’s a lot of detail within these three steps. This week’s special, we’re just going to focus on how you can build audiences. So let me start with the question. If I asked you right now to name 10 local business owners who would love to hear from you about their IT, could you do that? Most MSPs can’t, and that’s not a criticism, it’s just the reality of how most MSPs build their businesses. They focus on doing great work for the clients they’ve already got, which is great. They rely on word of mouth, referrals, and maybe the occasional inbound lead. Here’s the truth, if you don’t have an audience to market to, then you don’t really have a marketing engine. You’ve got luck but you haven’t got control. Building audiences is the foundation of everything else you’ll do in marketing your MSP. And yet, it’s the bit that most MSPs skip because it feels slow, it’s not sexy. You can’t post a selfie about it on LinkedIn and get a dopamine rush of likes. But when you’ve got an audience, a real audience of people who are listening to you, trust me, everything changes. Let me tell you where this hit me the hardest. Back in my first business, a marketing agency that I built up between 2005 and then sold in 2016. Back in the early days, I was desperate for predictable leads and I tried everything… one-off campaigns, buying data lists, I was spending too much on ads and some things worked a little bit, but most of these things didn’t work. And then one day I realised something painfully simple. I didn’t have an audience. I had a client base, and I had some people on my email list, but I didn’t have a community of people who wanted to hear from me. And that’s when I stopped chasing leads and started building lists. Lists of people who liked what I had to say. People who might not buy today, but who might remember me when they were ready to buy. And that’s when things really started to change in that previous business. So what does building audiences look like for you as an MSP? It’s not complicated. It’s small, deliberate habits that compound. You start by finding the right people on LinkedIn. What if you were to attempt 10 new connections every weekday? And here’s the thing, it’s not about the numbers that you build up. It’s about doing this intentionally, because you’re not connecting to just everyone, you’re connecting to the right kind of people, the people you’d like to do business with – the decision makers, the people who run businesses that match your ideal client profile. Because when your connections are right, your content really starts to land in front of the right people. And then you engage with the...

I’ve asked five people, who are both friends and MSP experts, what they think is going to happen to MSPs next year. Let’s jump straight into our experts’ predictions for what could happen in your world in 2026. Welcome to this SPECIAL Episode 318 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. 5 expert predictions for MSPs in 2026 Hello and welcome to the first of four special episodes to take us through Christmas and into 2026. And that’s actually where we’re starting, with predictions for next year. You’re going to hear predictions about the demand for cyber security, how content marketing might die as a marketing channel, a really cool idea about creating free apps as lead magnets, why you should help your clients reign in the usage of SaaS tools, why you should invest into your leadership and how to beat much bigger MSPs in your marketplace. And as you’d expect, there’s a lot of talk about AI. Hi there, it’s Jamie Warner, CEO of MSP eNerds and SAS vender, Invarosoft. So what are my predictions for 2026 in the MSP industry? Well, I’ve got a few to tell you. First one is SMB, small to medium businesses, are always going to need an IT partner. I think people have been saying for many years, our relevance won’t be there in the future. As long as you have non-technical people that don’t understand technology, we’ll always have a huge amount of business to chase and a huge amount of opportunity there for outsourced IT services and to be an IT partner for them. I think the number one trend though will always continue to be cyber security. I’m definitely noticing in my world, in the eNerds world, that new clients are always very cautious and worried about their security posture. So certainly focusing on that and ensuring that you’re following one of the best practice frameworks so that you can articulate how your service delivery will meet those cyber security requirements is going to be important. Another one, artificial intelligence, obviously it’s a huge buzzword. How do MSPs get engaged? There’s a lot of people out there trying to tell you how you can just do certain things around AI. I think firstly, let’s get the platform right as MSPs, and then of course it’s going to be the Microsoft platform with Copilot. So making sure that you are crystal clear on how Copilot works. One of the things we are doing is running webinars with the big vendors and distributors with their experts around this space. Or you could become your own expert if you like, and making sure that you are being proactive with your advice around how to actually use AI in the Microsoft Suite. It tends to be 90+% of businesses are on the Microsoft platform unless you’re purely a Google shop or the like, but ultimately that’s a really good place to start and make sure that you are best in class around. The last one that I would say, and it’s that my biggest bug bear if anyone see me talk, is just how we articulate our services when you get a new business lead. One thing that will not change in 2026 is that when clients are looking for a new IT partner, they’re essentially looking for a step up in service delivery and in the experience they get. So when you get a new lead, your only job is to convince them that your service delivery methodology is going to be a step up. And so your job is to argue the case of how you are going to deliver a service that will be best in class. So what are you going to talk about? The big things is actually explaining and visually explaining, for example, your customer experience technology, how visibly you’re going to provide them with a one pane of glass. It could be your technology business reviews actually showing them how you’re going to do a gap analysis, a traffic ligh...

The way that prospects are searching for a new MSP is changing. AI is now playing a key role in the research phase, and I’ve got three things you can do today to keep up. Also this week, discover the one action that KILLS sales for MSPs, and the mistakes you’re likely to make hiring your first sales person. Welcome to Episode 317 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. Does AI recommend your MSP? The way that prospects are searching for a new MSP is changing dramatically. The old way where people just went onto Google and did their own research is increasingly being replaced by the new way, where someone gets AI to do the research phase for them and then just validates the suggestions made. That means you need to understand what the AI insisted buying journey is and make sure your MSP has all the correct marketing resources in place. You know how for years we’ve all been obsessed with SEO, search engine optimisation. Getting your keywords right, building back links, and just ranking higher on Google. That’s been the game for years. The game’s changing again, and if you’re not watching what’s happening with AI discovery, you could slowly find your MSP disappearing from view. Let me explain. So I was recently reading a pretty cool newsletter and it was about a company called, I think it’s pronounced “Docebo”. They’re not in our world, they sell something called a learning management system, goodness knows what that is. But they’ve been quietly killing it frankly, in a new world of what’s got many different names but seems to be being called “answer engine optimisation” or AEO. You may have heard me refer to it before in videos or on the podcast as GEO, but let’s call it AEO, answer engine optimisation, from here on forward. In simple terms, this is all about being discovered inside AI tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, or Perplexity. That’s where many people now are now going to do their research. So instead of just going onto Google and typing What’s the best MSP for me or IT support near me, they’re asking ChatGPT, What’s the best IT support for a 20 person business that’s a legal practice or something like that. To use the example I was reading in the newsletter, they’re going on to ChatGPT and saying, What’s the best LMS, learning management system, for a 500 person company with a remote workforce? And if you’re not one of the companies that the AI mentions, then you don’t even get a chance. So that company I was telling you about, Docebo, they noticed this some time ago and they decided to go all in on giving AI the resources it needs to make sure they come up in that AI research. And now nearly 13% of their high intent leads, that’s a bit of a marketing term for people who actually go on to book demos, so for you a high intent lead will be someone who books a 15 minute call into your calendar. For that company, 13% of their high intent leads are now coming from AI discovery that’s gone up 400% in a year. And they’re doing this, because they’re a big business, but it’s all being powered by one person in their marketing team using the right strategy and a bit of clever AI automation. And here’s what I really found fascinating from reading this newsletter. They realise that the real battle here is no longer about generic keywords or anything like that… it’s actually about brand. So when people are using AI tools, they’ll get a recommendation and then they’ll take the brand and they’ll go onto Google and search for the brand name directly. So this company Docebo, they shifted their focus from trying to rank on Google for best LMS, which is their keyword, to making sure that more people actually knew their name, Docebo, which is a big mindset shift in your marketing. And i...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Welcome to Episode 316 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week… MSPs: Do this daily… or fall behind: Find and protect a little bit of time every day to learn something that makes you better. Because if you want your MSP to grow, you have to grow first. Turn $1 into THOUSANDS for your MSP: Let me tell you the true value of every dollar of new MRR – monthly recurring revenue – that you generate. And how one small upsell today could still be paying you in 10 years time. Why your MSP doesn’t charge higher prices: There are all sorts of psychological and emotional reasons that MSPs don’t put up their prices. My guest is an expert at pricing and positioning, and he’s going to tell you how you can name your price. The Marketing Minute: Don’t miss this simple tip to reach your dream clients. MSPs: Do this daily… or fall behind The amount of information and ideas is increasing all the time, and it’s so easy as an MSP to feel like you are falling behind. But you don’t have to be a slave to all the digital noise out there. In fact, it’s much more powerful if you block it out and instead find and protect a little bit of time every day to do this core activity. Let me tell you how to ignore the noise, what this activity is and why the world’s most successful MSPs do this every day. Let’s talk about learning. Now, wait, before you roll your eyes and think, oh Paul, I just don’t have time for training, stick with me for a second because I’m not talking about signing up for an MBA or sitting in a three day marketing seminar with bad coffee and uncomfortable chairs. I’m talking about setting aside 30 minutes a day to learn something that makes you better… as a business owner, as a leader, as a marketer, as an MSP. Half an hour, that’s it. I mean, it doesn’t sound much, but over a year, even if you’re just doing it weekdays, that’s well over a hundred hours of focused improvement. Imagine what you could learn, what you could change in that time. And the best part is, learning doesn’t have to be formal. In fact, the best kind of learning often isn’t formal. You could be listening to a business audiobook just while you’re walking the dog – that’s learning. You could be watching a great YouTube channel or listening to or watching a podcast while you’re making lunch – that’s learning too. You could go for a coffee, sit outside and actually read that book that you bought six months ago. You know, the one that’s been sitting on your desk looking at you accusingly gathering dust. All of this counts. The point isn’t what you are learning or how you are learning it, it’s that you are building a habit, a routine of small daily improvements. Because that’s how the most successful business owners think. They’re constantly upgrading themselves, not in big leaps, but in consistent steps. And as you run an MSP, there is a lot to learn. Marketing, leadership, sales, strategy, systems, time management. I mean even personal stuff like mindset or communication. Every small improvement in all of these areas has a direct effect on your business, which has a direct effect on your personal life and your earning capacity.

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Welcome to Episode 315 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week… Don’t miss out: Hot new MSP sales book: If sales is one of the biggest headaches within your MSP, then heads up, you need good advice and a solid plan… and I’ve got just the solution. The worst advice for MSPs: MSP growth strategies should vary dependant on context. Do you know which plan is right for you? Let’s find out… How an MSP built £8m of recurring revenue: Let me introduce you to an MSP owner who built his business from nothing to £8m annual recurring revenue. He reveals the marketing that’s worked the best for him and what he would do today if he was growing an MSP from stratch. The Marketing Minute: Don’t miss this simple trust building tip that’ll win you more clients. Don’t miss out: Hot new MSP sales book If sales is one of the biggest headaches within your MSP, then heads up, you need good advice and a solid plan. And of course, there’s a lot of noise out there with a lot of conflicting advice on how to improve your MSP’s sales. Let me introduce you to a true expert who has some of the best sales advice out there. How do you plug his knowledge into your MSP? Well, he’s written a brand new book, let me tell you about it, and the difference it’ll make to your MSP sales. Most MSPs I meet really don’t love selling. But here’s the thing, if you can’t sell your services confidently, you are always going to be a step behind. Now, a couple of months ago, I was lucky enough to be at ScaleCon ‘25 in New Orleans, which by the way is a fantastic city. Slightly dangerous, but it is a really, really fun city. And the event was packed with about 400 smart MSPs. So we had loads of great conversations. There were so many ideas, I got loads of ideas and I know the MSPs there got loads of ideas about marketing and growing your business. And while I was there, I bumped into a whole bunch of people that I know, some based in the UK and a lot of the people I know in the channel are in the US or Canada or other countries. So I bumped into someone I’ve only met in real life once before, but I know him really well. He’s been on my podcast a number of times. His name is Brian Gillette. And he handed me a copy of his brand new book. I did actually wonder at the time if I was one of the first people on the planet outside of his team to get hold of this book. So it’s called, and it’s got a swear word in the title and I’m not going to say the swear word but bravo to Brian for being the first person I think in the MSP space to put a swear word in the title of his book, but it’s called How to Sell a Sh*tload of Managed Services (without selling your soul). I’ve got the book here, let’s have a quick flick through. I mean, this is absolutely packed with information and advice. And Brian is an absolute true genius at MSP sales. He really understands that it’s an emotional thing more than it’s a cognitive thing. He really understands how you can connect with and engage with and influence the ordinary business owners and managers that you are sitting down and...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Welcome to Episode 314 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week… Danger! Never assume your MSP’s clients are loyal: It’s hard for MSPs to win a client, but when they do join you, they stay with you for years. But what if that retention leads to a false sense of security? The reason your MSP’s marketing is so hard: MSPs often struggle, not just with knowing what marketing to do, but also with implementing it. And yet implementation is the secret sauce. Does your MSP spend this much acquiring a new client?: My special guest is a true marketing expert and he’s very good at focusing the MSPs that he works with on two figures – the cost of acquiring a new client and their average lifetime value – and how these figures affect their marketing. The Marketing Minute: Don’t miss this game changing CRM marketing tip. Danger! Never assume your MSP’s clients are loyal As an MSP, have you been lulled into a false sense of security? It’s hard for you to win a client, but when they do join you, they stay with you for years, right? But what if that retention was not because they’re in love with your service, but because it’s such a mind blowing event for them to think about switching to another MSP, so it just feels easier to stay with you. If this hasn’t happened to you yet, are you confident that right now a client isn’t secretly looking into leaving? Here’s a simple solution to proactively work on your retention without having to do tons of extra work, and you might even generate some extra revenue along the way. Most MSPs I meet are rightly proud of how long their clients stay with them. You’ll hear them say things like, Oh yeah, we’ve still got our first ever client from 10 years ago, or, Our retention rate is 98%. And on the surface that’s brilliant, but here’s the uncomfortable truth… a lot of that so-called loyalty isn’t really loyalty at all. It’s just inertia. Your clients aren’t staying because they’re wildly in love with your service, they’re staying because it feels too hard to leave. Think about it, moving to a new MSP is a massive hassle. It’s complicated, it’s risky, and they don’t really understand all of the tech side of it anyway. So even if they’re not a hundred percent happy, it’s easier to just stick with what they’ve got. That’s called inertia loyalty. And the danger is it gives MSPs a false sense of security. You might think you’re doing a great job keeping clients happy, but the moment one of those loyal clients gets a real reason to look around, they will. Maybe a competitor reaches out at just the right time. Maybe there’s a big mistake or your main contact leaves. Suddenly that inertia disappears and the client that would never leave is gone. If this hasn’t happened to you yet, I promise it will at some point. It’s horrible. None of us wants to think about it, but it’s also a wake up call. And the way I see it, we can prevent it. So what’s the answer? Well, you can’t just hope that loyalty lasts, you’ve got to work at it. You’ve got to turn those stuck clients into bonded clients, the kind who stay because they genuinely want to. And the good news is this doesn’t take huge gestures. It’s about doing small things regularly that make your clients feel...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Welcome to Episode 313 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week… Why people don’t believe your MSP’s reviews: People trust what other people say about you more than what you say about yourself. But if all your reviews sound the same they lose their power. Why your technicians won’t sell (even to help the client): One of the most frustrating things for MSPs is when your technicians won’t recommend a service you offer when talking to clients, for fear of appearing salesy. Here’s what to do… How ordinary business owners feel about AI: Let’s talk about AI attitudes of the people that MSPs want to reach. My special guest today is an expert in AI and he’s going to tell you how ordinary business owners and managers feel about it. The Marketing Minute: Don’t miss these tips to maximise your hard work in generating new leads. Why people don’t believe your MSP’s reviews People are so skeptical these days and when they’re looking at your MSP’s reviews, if they see certain words and phrases they might not believe the reviews are true. I know this sounds crazy because it’s not like you’re selling a product on Amazon and paying for fake reviews, but the reality is not all social proof is equal. You’ve got to make sure that people say the right things about your MSP. Let’s explore how to do that, how to collect social proof that always works, and the best way to guide people on what to say without your reviews ever seeming fake. Social proof is one of the most powerful tools in your marketing toolkit. People trust what other people say about you more than what you say about yourself. But here’s the catch, if your reviews all sound the same, they lose their power. Think about it, how many times have you seen a review that says great service or would recommend or very professional, and that’s all it says? I mean, there’s nothing wrong with those comments, but when every review looks like that, they stop feeling real. “Samey” kills sales and it’s the same as social proof, because these sound like copy and paste praise and prospects just ignore them. That’s what I mean by cliches in social proof. It’s those generic lines that don’t give your potential future clients any real reason to trust you. So what works better? Detailed, story-driven reviews. And I’m going to give you an example. Instead of great IT support five stars, you want something more like, Our server went down late on a Friday afternoon. We thought the whole weekend would be lost, but within 30 minutes the IT team had us back online and they even followed up on Monday morning to make sure everything was stable. That level of care is why we’ll never use anyone else. Do you see the difference between those two reviews? The second review tells a story. It shows the problem, it shows what you did to save your client and the end result, and that’s what makes it believable and therefore powerful. So how do you actually get this kind of social proof? Well, the trick is to guide your clients. Don’t just say to them, please, can you leave us a review. Instead ask them specific questions and I’m going to give you a few examples that you can use:

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Welcome to Episode 312 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week… Why being the cheapest MSP is a bad strategy: If your marketing strategy is to be the cheapest MSP around, what you’re actually doing is setting yourself up to attract the worst clients, who create the most noise and generate the least amount of profit. The #1 all time secret of epic MSP marketing: The marketing winners aren’t smarter and don’t necessarily work harder than everyone else. They just get more of the right stuff implemented really fast. DANGER: Most MSPs have confused messaging: My special guest is an expert at making messaging simple. Your eyes are about to be opened as to how confused messaging is killing your MSP marketing efforts dead. The Marketing Minute: Don’t miss this simple email signature marketing idea that can make a big impact. Why being the cheapest MSP is a bad strategy If your marketing strategy is to be the cheapest MSP around, then you’re setting yourself up for a world of pain. Lots of MSPs do this because when you’re not very good at marketing, which most MSPs aren’t, it just seems like the easiest thing to do… offer a good service, deliver it at a good price. But what you’re actually doing is setting yourself up to attract the worst clients, who create the most noise and generate the least amount of profit. If you don’t today, have the confidence to put up your prices, to be the most expensive MSP in your marketplace, let me tell you why you owe it to your existing clients, your future clients, yourself and your family to do this. On the surface, being the cheapest MSP feels like a good idea because everyone likes a bargain, but being the cheapest is not a winning strategy. It attracts completely the wrong kind of clients. The ones who are constantly haggling, they’re always looking for shortcuts and they just don’t value what you do for them. In fact, they’ll leave the moment that someone else comes along who’s a pound or a dollar cheaper than you. And that is not really a foundation that you can build a profitable stable MSP on. So instead, you kind of want to be at the other end of the scale, the most expensive MSP in town. Now, I know that you might maybe have tensed up when I said that and you might be thinking, Me, the most expensive, no way. I don’t want to be that. I don’t want to do that. But listen, just hear me out on this. The MSPs who charge the most are often the ones who are seen as the safest choice. It kind of seems crazy, doesn’t it? But actually, higher prices signal higher value. They signal better service, they signal more stability, more reliability, and guess what? The best clients, the ones who are really serious about their businesses and protecting their businesses and growing them with a proper partner, they want that reassurance. They don’t just want to spend money on a service and spend as little as they can. They want the best quality because they want a genuine partnership from someone that offers a very high quality of service. So how do you do this? Well, there are two main approaches that you can take overt and covert. So overt is where you’re very upfront about being premium. In fact, you build your whole brand around expertise, trust, and high standards. You’re never apologising f...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Welcome to Episode 311 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week… Is your MSP wasting time on marketing?: Here’s a tactic that all pro marketers use, yet very few MSPs are even aware of. It’s going to save you time and it could even help you find a brand new client. 7 MASSIVE mistakes that stop MSPs generating leads: Most MSPs make a series of huge mistakes that hobble their lead generation. Here’s how to change that. This old MSP lead gen tactic never fails: Let’s look at an older way of finding clients for your MSP. My guest is going to explain why this still works and how you can beat the other MSPs who don’t even know that this is still a thing. The Marketing Minute: Don’t miss these two questions that will add power to your sale pitch. Is your MSP wasting time on marketing? If you want nothing more than a new client for your MSP right now, just be careful that you’re not wasting your time in the way that you go about it. Because some MSP’s marketing is a complete waste of time, often because a vital element has been missed out. Wouldn’t you love to hear about a massive time saver that all pro marketers use, yet very few MSPs are even aware of? You are going to love this because it’s going to save you time and it could even help you find a brand new client. So what I’m talking about here is repurposing content, and this of course means taking something you’ve already created, let’s say a blog post, and then you turn it into other bits of content so you get more mileage out of it. You’ve already done the hard work once, so why not squeeze every bit of value out of this? And here’s the thing, it’s something that some people frown upon, but trust me as a full-time marketer of 20 years now, it’s an essential thing to do. The only person who is consuming all of your content across all of your platforms, is you. Different people consume content in different ways. Some like reading blogs, other scroll LinkedIn, some just glance at Google when they’re looking for a new MSP. So by repurposing content, you can meet people where they already are without having to reinvent the wheel every single time. Let me give you a few practical examples of how this works. Let’s say you write a blog article about a new ransomware threat. First, you publish it on your website as a blog article, which is great because now Google can find it, it might have some SEO benefits, search engine optimisation etc. But next, you can take that exact same blog article and you can then adapt it into a LinkedIn newsletter. And that way the people who are subscribed to your LinkedIn newsletters get a notification in the feed, they also get an email copy of it as well, and it’s great for authority. You’re seen as the helpful, local, knowledgeable IT expert. Then you can take that LinkedIn newsletter and you can cut it down into a shorter version and post it on your Google business profile. Now that’s really powerful because when prospects do Google your MSP, they’ll see fresh, helpful content right there on their profile. It’s also really good for your Google Juice. In fact, I suspect that Google sees more of your Google business profile content than humans do, but ultimately, anything that helps you perform better in search results is good, right? And yo...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Welcome to Episode 310 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week… MSPs: This simple upsell generates new MRR AND boosts retention: This is something that almost every single client wants but rarely gets from their MSP… a 24/7 at-home support package. And it’s such a simple upsell. MSPs who do this win new clients faster: If you want to sell your services you have to move people from being someone you talk to mostly on LinkedIn, YouTube, and email, to being someone you talk to on the phone. MSPs: Use marketing AI like Iron Man, not Terminator: Many MSPs actually do damage to the marketing messages they’re putting out because the AI doesn’t really understand what their end goal is. My guest today is an AI marketing expert and he’s going to tell you how to get it right. The Marketing Minute: Don’t miss this quick and easy LinkedIn messaging tip. MSPs: This simple upsell generates new MRR AND boosts retention Could this be the most valuable upsell any MSP could deploy? It’s something that almost every single client wants but rarely gets from their MSP. And it not only generates new monthly recurring revenue for you but also has a huge and positive effect on retention. Let me tell you what this upsell is and an easy way you can roll it out in the next seven days. The upsell I’m talking about is an at-home support package. Now think about how most of your clients work these days. They might have an office, they might be completely remote, and of course you are already looking after their office tech, their business tech. But the reality is, as we know, people just work from anywhere these days and they also work at any times – in the evenings, on weekends, sometimes even when they’re on a vacation, on holiday. And here’s the problem, when they’re working from home out of hours and something goes wrong with their IT, they don’t have anyone to turn to, not unless they wait till Monday morning or something when you and your team are back and we all know that that must be deeply frustrating for them. We also know that you don’t want to do support in the evenings and the weekends for work-life balance. So this is a source of friction for both parties. You should be doing everything to remove friction between you and your client. This is where your at-home support package comes in… and it’s such a simple upsell. You could do a setup project perhaps by bundling a couple of things together. You could maybe have a laptop doc, a wireless keyboard, maybe do a WIFI survey for their home and install some boosters, something like that, maybe even a check in on their home security. But the real winner and the monthly recurring revenue is a 24/7 help desk. And the secret sauce to this is that you don’t have to provide that 24/7 help desk yourself. You can outsource it. There are plenty of white label providers out there who will handle those calls in the evening and at weekends for you, often under your brand. So your clients still feel like they’re talking to your MSP. You might choose to be very clear with your clients that it is an outsourced help desk, but they have access to all of your systems and you train them and you’re constantly working with them and updating them. Because no human expects another human to provide genuine 24 hour serv...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Welcome to Episode 309 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week… Do marketing you can’t automate or scale: In the early days of trying out new marketing, you can’t always jump straight to automation. Manual testing helps to figure out what marketing actually works for your MSP. MSPs: Imagine losing 17,000 connections on LinkedIn overnight: You don’t own your connections, your content or your interactions on LinkedIn… they belong to LinkedIn, you just get to borrow them. MSPs should have a combination of borrowed and owned audiences. The simple video every MSP needs to increase sales: Explainer videos are a key marketing tool and my special guest will explain how to create one and how to make sure it’s something your hottest prospects are desperate to watch. The Marketing Minute: Don’t miss this quick and easy YouTube marketing tip. Do marketing you can’t automate or scale In a world where you can automate almost anything so it can be done at any scale, here’s the strangest advice you are going to hear from me. I believe sometimes you should deliberately do marketing that will never scale up and that you can’t automate, even if that means that you personally have to sit and do a whole chunk of work. Why would I recommend this? Surely one of my jobs is to make your marketing easier. Well, yes, that’s true once you’ve figured out what marketing works, but doing marketing experiments yourself is an important part of figuring out the specific tactics that’ll work for your MSP. As business owners, you and I love things that are scalable and repeatable, right? We like processes, automation, efficiency, and yes, that’s where you want to end up with your marketing. But in the early days of trying out a new marketing channel, you can’t always jump straight to automation. And here’s why. Not all marketing works for all businesses. What works brilliantly for the MSP down the road from you might flop for you. The only way to find out what marketing actually works for your business is to test it manually in a way that doesn’t scale. For example, let’s say you want to try LinkedIn outreach, and sure, there are tools out there that’ll blast out hundreds of automated messages every week. But if you don’t yet know what message resonates with your ideal prospects, then blasting out hundreds of messages just means you’ll annoy more people faster. Instead, you’re better off writing a handful of personal connection requests every day. Try different approaches, test out different messages and see what kind of response you get. Once you know what works, then you can look at scaling or systemising it. Here’s another example, follow up emails. You might want to eventually build an automated nurture sequence inside your CRM, but before you do that, it’s worth sending a batch of personal follow-ups to prospects one by one to see which subject lines get opened, which wording gets replies. That kind of stuff. Once you know can then plug those learnings into automation and let software do the heavy lifting. And here’s my key point. Marketing is not a one size fits all game. Every market, every town, every vertical is slightly different. So in the early days of trying something new, you’ve got to be willing to roll up yo...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Welcome to Episode 308 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week… The 3 big reasons your best technicians might leave you: Surely one of the greatest fears of any MSP is that of losing one of your key technicians. Let’s explore the three big reasons why they might leave and what you can do to address those. How to turn tech newbies into your MSP’s biggest fans: If you confuse your prospects and clients with technology, it’s likely they will disengage and divert their attention elsewhere. Everything needs to be explained in the easiest possible way. Control freak? Your MSP may struggle to grow: Business owners are control freaks and often get so caught up in the details that they struggle to grow. My special guest shares how he could help you to improve your business by letting go. Paul’s Personal Peer Group: Have you ever considered starting a podcast for your MSP? Here’s a few things you should consider before you dive in… The 3 big reasons your best technicians might leave you There are many fears that MSP owners have. One of them is of course being breached, another one is running out of cash. But surely one of the greatest fears is that of losing one of your key technicians. And I’m so sorry to even bring this up, but it’s something that we do need to talk about because there are always very specific reasons why any employee leaves any business. I want to explore the three big reasons that technicians might leave you so you can address those in your MSP before something terrible happens. You’ve probably heard that people don’t quit businesses, they quit managers or owners… whoever’s managing them. Well, this is absolutely true, and in fact, studies have consistently shown that 75% of voluntary exits are due to the boss and not due to the role itself. Another survey that I found on Google show that 57% of employees left their job because of frustrations with their manager or leadership. So here are the top three specific reasons that a technician might leave your business: The first is poor management – a lack of support, micromanagement, or even bad communication. Managers who don’t coach, who don’t listen or who don’t trust their people well they drive them away. The second reason is no meaningful growth or opportunities. High performers crave challenge and progression, and without it they get bored or worse, they leave. And the third reason is feelings of being undervalued or unrecognised. If your techs aren’t getting feedback, recognition or meaningful rewards, they’ll just look for a place that gives them those things. But now for the good parts and how to flip the script and keep your top tech talent engaged, motivated, and loyal: Number one – coach them, train them, invest in them. Make development a habit, not just lip service. Training, whether you do this yourself or whether you pay for them to have training, it boosts retention massively and tailored development plans show that you’re serious about their future. Plus, if you invest in leadership, you won’t end up with accidental managers who drive people away. And of course that’s good because as you can develop managers who work for you, it’s going to be easier for you to hand over the reins for the business...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Welcome to Episode 307 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week… MSPs: Stop using this 2008 marketing tactic: Some MSPs are trying to find new clients using outdated tactics from over 20 years ago. Let’s find out which tactics are working for building your email list and lead gen right now. Why ignoring Copilot damages MSPs’ retention: Whether you love it or hate it, AI tools are here to stay and we know that Microsoft is highly committed to baking Copilot into everything. Let me tell you why. Can MSPs win clients without embracing video?: The video revolution is happening, and it’s the MSPs who are embracing it who are winning new clients faster. My special guest reveals ways for you to use video easily and also something that he’s calling, the new social SEO. Paul’s Personal Peer Group: As an MSP owner, do you struggle to let go and delegate tasks to staff or outsource? Let me tell you why it’s such an important step to growing your business. MSPs: Stop using this 2008 marketing tactic You’re not doing MySpace marketing, are you? Some MSPs are trying to find new clients using outdated tactics from over 20 years ago. Building an email list is still one of the most effective things you can do, but are you asking for email addresses in the most modern way? Let’s find out which tactics are working for building your email list and lead gen right now, and which should have died out alongside MySpace. What I’m talking about here is lead magnets. Have you heard of those? Let’s discuss what they are, why you should care, and why your approach to them might be stuck in the past. First things first, what is a lead magnet? It’s something valuable that you give away for free in exchange for someone’s contact details. And usually that’s their email address, but sometimes it’s also their phone number or other information. The whole idea is to attract the right prospects and start a relationship with them before you try and sell them anything. Now, if you think about it, no one wakes up in the morning thinking, oh, I can’t wait to fill in another contact form today. You have to give people a reason to do it, and the lead magnet is that reason. So how would you use one in your MSP? It’s simple. You put it everywhere that you prospects might come across you. So on your website, your LinkedIn, both your profile and your posts, your email signature, anywhere really, and you promote it almost like it’s a service that you offer. In fact, the more valuable it feels, the more people will download or sign up for it. And then you can follow up with useful emails that guide them towards becoming a client, whoop. Now here’s the thing. For years the go-to lead magnet has been a PDF download, something like top 10 tips for cyber security or a small Business IT checklist. And don’t get me wrong, these can still work, but let’s be honest, PDFs are a bit old hat now, right? People are drowning in files they never open, and the guide that you put hours into creating is probably sitting in someone’s downloads folder and they’ve never opened it. So what’s better these days? Well, I believe these days, interactive content wins. And one of the best examples is an engagement quiz. The kind of thing that you can build with a platform like ScoreApp. If you’ve ne...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Welcome to Episode 306 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week… Your MSP should AVOID these AI tools: If you want to be more productive, do better marketing and ultimately grow your MSP, there are AI tools you’ll definitely want to avoid. Instead, here are five AI tools that you should be using right now. Why your MSP doesn’t stand out (and how to fix that): There are thousands of MSPs to choose from, so why would people choose you? Let me share a couple of good ideas with you and see if I can give you some inspiration. All successful MSPs have this in common: The easiest way to grow your MSP is to ask someone who’s already done it. My special guest has been growing MSPs for 20 years and has some ideas waiting for you to use. Paul’s Personal Peer Group: Find out what “relevance increases results” actually means and how can it help with your MSP’s marketing. Your MSP should AVOID these AI tools It’s one thing being overwhelmed by your business and not having enough time to find new clients for your MSP, but it’s another thing being overwhelmed with the choices of AI tools that are supposed to save you time and reduce overwhelm in the first place. Have you found the options and variations of AI tools so completely bamboozling? Well, if so, you’re not on your own. If you want to be more productive, do better marketing and ultimately grow your MSP, here are five AI tools that you should be using right now. And let’s be honest, there is a lot of noise about AI and a lot of it is hype. I follow a lot of AI newsletters very carefully to keep up to date with what’s happening, which of course is a never ending and somewhat overwhelming task in itself. Now while there is a lot of talk of people trying to do amazing things, often when you dive into the amazing things that all of these new tools should be able to do, they just don’t work that way. Well, they kind of work that way, but they’re never really good enough for you to rely on them. But saying that… There are some very real and very useful tools that MSPs are already using to save time, create better marketing, and just get more done. So let me give you a shortlist of what I think are the best AI tools you should know about right now: Let’s start with the most obvious one, ChatGPT or Copilot or Perplexity or whatever your preferred tool is. And yeah, I know it’s obvious but hear me out because the trick with getting the best output from your general AI tool is giving it good input. So let’s look at content creation for example. The worst thing you could do is just say, Hey, ChatGPT, write me a blog post about backups because it’s just going to generate boring AI slop that isn’t going to bring any benefit to your MSP. So a better way to use it is to shape content that you’re already getting from trusted content providers and get the AI tool to customise it to your specific audience. Let me give you an example. We create tons of content for our MSP Marketing Edge members and increasingly a number of them are using AI tools to tailor that content to their specific audience. So for example, some have created custom GPTs, which are then trained on their ICP, sorry to use two acronyms in a row there, but as you might already know, an ICP is an ideal client profile...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Welcome to Episode 305 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week… Is on-site support a competitive advantage?: Does your MSP still provide on-site support or are you thinking that maybe you should? Your decision could affect how successful your MSP is. How to find your MSP’s next 5 clients: Let me introduce you to the concept of the Dream 100 and how it could completely change your idea of marketing forever. Is this the only way MSPs should increase profits?: When profits are down should you reduce costs or focus your time on increasing sales? My special guest is an expert at operations and she’s got a unique spin on this exact problem that you are going to want to hear. Paul’s Personal Peer Group: Do you have a live chat or instant messaging option on your MSP’s website? There’s so many options it’s hard to know the right one to choose. But I have the answer for you. Is on-site support a competitive advantage? Some MSPs do do it, some MSPs make a point of saying, no way. We’re talking about providing on-site support. Obviously back in the day it went without saying, you just did it. But in our modern, remote first world, the need for in-person on-site support has completely changed. So are you still providing it or are you thinking that maybe you should or that you never ever will again, Your decision could affect how successful your MSP is. So let’s explore your options right now. Let’s be honest, a few years ago having engineers who could turn up at a client’s office and fix something kind of felt like a major selling point, but here we are in 2025 and most businesses now are hybrid or remote, that happened very quickly. Almost everything can be fixed remotely, so is on-site support still something worth shouting about in your marketing or is it yesterday’s news? Let’s look at both sides of this. The case for on-site support being a competitive advantage, first of all. It starts with the fact that some clients love knowing that someone will actually physically come out if needed. You think about clients with manufacturing equipment, specialist hardware, or those who just feel reassured by a human coming into the office. For them, we’ll be there in person if you need us, that’s a big comfort factor. And as we know, comfort sells. And not every MSP is offering this anymore, of course, so if most of your competitors have gone fully remote you’ll be standing out as we’re local, we’re personal, we’ll come on-site. That could be a differentiator in your marketing. It’s a trust builder. It says, we are not just faceless techs in the cloud, we are real people here for you. Now let’s look on the other side, the case against on-site support being a competitive advantage. Because on the flip side, as we know, most day-to-day issues don’t need it. Clients are used to remote support now, in fact they expect you to fix things fast online, over the internet. And for many, the idea of waiting for someone to drive over and come into an office kind of feels old fashioned, it’s not special anymore. And the...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Welcome to Episode 304 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week… 3 big pricing mistakes that kill MSPs’ sales: MSPs inadvertently make these blunders with the way they price up their offering and it often kills sales. Here’s what to do about it. This video MUST be on every MSP website: Videos on your website are really important. And a testimonial is the single most important type of video that could help a prospect decide to sign a contract with you. The truth about SMS marketing for MSPs: Every single business owner has a mobile phone and yet not many MSPs are using that to their advantage. My guest is an SMS marketing expert and is going to tell us whether SMS text messaging is a viable marketing tool for MSPs. Paul’s Personal Peer Group: Do you have trust badges on your website? Find out how to use them to get the most credibility for your MSP. 3 big pricing mistakes that kill MSPs’ sales Getting new clients for your MSP is hard enough, so you should do everything you can to avoid making mistakes, right? Often I see MSPs inadvertently making blunders with the way they price up their offering. It’s a complicated subject with many traps you can get caught in. So let’s look at three common price mistakes that MSPs make that are killing sales. Let’s talk about something that makes a lot of MSPs uncomfortable… pricing. It’s not the most exciting topic, but wow, it can make or break your sales. I’ve seen so many great MSPs – really solid, technical, brilliant businesses run by brilliant people – struggling to grow simply because they’re just making the wrong moves with their pricing. So let’s fix that. These are the three big pricing mistakes that can kill your sales, and of course, how to avoid them. Mistake number one: charging too little because you’re scared of losing the deal, and this is so common. Have you done it? You’re sat in a sales meeting, the prospect starts questioning your price and suddenly you’re talking yourself down. You say that you think you can find a way to shave some money off the price by reducing the package, or maybe you can find them a discount. But by doing this, you’re kind of leaving money on the table just because you want the client to say yes. Here’s the thing though, when you undercharge, you actually scare off the best clients. They kind of think, why is this MSP so cheap? What corners are they cutting? Plus, you’re setting yourself up to resent the work later on when the numbers just don’t add up. So here’s what you should do instead… price confidently, know your value. If you’re delivering 24/7 monitoring, a great help desk and really strong security, don’t price it like you’re just fixing printers on an ad hoc basis. That’s crazy. Mistake number two: making pricing complicated. I’ve seen some MSP proposals that are like three entire pages of line items. So here’s your base support, this bit’s extra, this is going to cost you this, we forgot to include this. It’s just so confusing. And the problem is that confused people don’t buy. So what you do instead is you bundle things, you create clear packages. You could call that bronze, silver, gold. You could call it something else, it doesn’t really matter what you name it. But the point is that when it’s all put together and prospects can look at it and go, Oh, right, yeah, I see. So we’ve got this or we’ve got this, which is a bit more, or we’ve got this, which is even more, do you know...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Welcome to Episode 303 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week… How to market your MSP to accountants: Accountants are a perfect fit for MSPs. Learn how to speak their language to win over their hearts and minds to give your MSP the competitive edge. 4 huge marketing problems that damage your MSP: These marketing problems do massive amounts of damage to MSPs, and yet they’re so easy to overcome when you understand them. Are these damaging your business? Here’s what to do. MSP insider’s lessons from 18 years of marketing: If you want to grow your MSP by attracting new clients, the chances are you’re making some fundamental marketing mistakes. My guest today shares his 18 years experience working at an MSP and reveals what really moved the needle. Paul’s Personal Peer Group: Do you sometimes find that your team makes the same mistakes over and over again? Well, this is actually your problem, not theirs, and here’s a process to eliminate the problem. How to market your MSP to accountants Dream client alert. For many MSPs that target verticals or niches, they find accountants (CPAs) to be a very attractive sector. Are you targeting accountants? If not, you really need to hear this, and if you already are, then this is going to make things so much easier. Let’s deep dive into why accountants switch MSPs, what they’d want from you and how to grab their attention. Accountants are a perfect fit for MSPs. They have a business that’s dependent upon technology. They’ve got compliance and regulations, and they’re often very stable businesses with lots of recurring revenue. So imagine this, you are sitting across the table from a busy accountant and they’ve literally got piles of tax returns and spreadsheets and calls with their clients all lined up. What’s the one thing that you know that they don’t want? More hassle. And understanding that is the first step in marketing your MSP to accountants. Get inside their head and their heart and really understand what drives them and what would drive them to pick your MSP instead of someone else. Accountants live in a world of rules, a world of deadlines, a world of compliance, and a world of absolute attention to detail. They value accuracy, speed, and security above almost anything else. So if you want them to even consider working with your MSP, your messaging has got to show that you understand their world. Talk about what matters to them, not technology. Instead show them how you help them keep their client data safe, how you help them to meet deadlines without system crashes, and how you help them eliminate the panic of last minute tech issues during tax season. I mean you can literally paint them a picture, you can say, imagine your team working flat out in January (or whenever your local tax season is) and instead of the WIFI dropping in and out or your software slowing down or freezing, everything just works because in the background we’re monitoring everything, we’re fixing problems before you’re even aware of them, so you can focus on your clients and tax returns and getting things done while we are focusing on your technology. Now that’s the kind of language that really gets into someone’s heart as well as their head. And then you start to think about how to influence them and get...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Welcome to Episode 302 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week… 3 mistakes MSPs commonly make with Google: This is one of the most overlooked tools in your marketing toolbox – your Google Business Profile. Make sure you’re getting it right to get the most out of it for your MSP. Why MSPs should send personalised videos: Discover how these videos really can help to secure new clients for your MSP. And how when you open your mind to it you can spot opportunities to send them every day. What does great marketing look like in a mature MSP?: If you want to be successful, find someone who’s achieved the results that you want and copy what they do to achieve the same. And my guest this week has 26 years of MSP marketing expertise to share with you. Paul’s Personal Peer Group: Ever wanted to know your MSP’s true search position in Google? Find out how in one simple step… 3 mistakes MSPs commonly make with Google There are three mistakes that MSPs commonly make with Google. And when I say three things, I really mean four things because the first is assuming that AI is now your new focus for getting search traffic. Well, it’s not. It’s currently sending only about 1% of traffic to your website. So the focus right now still has to be doing better on Google. But why and how do you do this? What are the three other things that MSPs are getting wrong? We’re talking about one of the most overlooked tools in your marketing toolbox – your Google Business Profile. Now, before you skip this or zone out, do stick with me. Google Business Profile isn’t just for coffee shops and hair salons. Your Google Business Profile shows up when someone googles your MSP’s name or even if they just Google MSPs . Your Google Business Profile is like your digital shopfront and it can make you look trustworthy… or not, if you get it wrong. So let’s look at three common mistakes that I see MSPs making and how you can fix them quickly and easily: The first mistake is to have a boring generic business description. If your profile says something along the lines of “We offer IT support and services to businesses”, oh, you’re not alone. Loads of MSPs do this, but it’s bland and it’s costing you clicks. So here’s the fix. Speak like a human and not a robot. Use the first sentence to make it clear who you help and what problems you solve. So try something like “We help businesses worry less about IT with fast friendly support, bulletproof security and advice with zero jargon.” I mean that alone, just using that sentence instantly sets you apart from other MSPs. Mistake number two, no photos or photos from the year 2005. Did you know that businesses with photos actually get more clicks and more calls from their Google Business Profile? You don’t need to go and hire a pro photographer, just pull out your phone, grab a team photo, maybe grab some photos of your office, your vans if you’ve got vans, you could do a behind the scenes look at your setup, it could be your help desk, someone answering a phone, it could be your security dashboard with obviously the sensitive stuff blurred out. People just want to see people, they want to see who they’re dealing with. And even one new photo added like today or this week can boost engagement. If you added a n...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Welcome to Episode 301 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week… Should your MSP get HubSpot? A review: The system you use to manage marketing with your prospects has to be a good match for your MSP, otherwise you could have a very costly waste of time on your hands. So, is Hubspot the right choice for you? Free Windows 10 end of life marketing materials: Windows 10 end of life is now less than two months away and this could be a massive once a decade marketing opportunity for you. How to run your MSP by the numbers – and which to track: If I asked you about the most important marketing and growth numbers in your MSP would you know what those numbers should be? My guest works with MSPs to help them understand just this. Paul’s Personal Peer Group: Do you know what a UTM is and how it can benefit your MSP? Let me explain… Should your MSP get HubSpot? A review Whatever you do, don’t pick a CRM for your MSP until you’ve heard this, and especially if you’re looking at HubSpot. The system you use to manage marketing with your prospects has to be a good match for your business, otherwise you could have a very costly waste of time on your hands. So which is the right CRM for MSPs? Have you been considering systems like MailChimp, MailerLite, Growably from the Tech Tribe or even HubSpot? Eight months ago I switched my business to HubSpot, so let’s review it eight months on and see if I’d recommend it for your MSP. On the 14th of April 2009 I committed to my first serious CRM. It was called Infusionsoft. I know the date because I’ve still got the welcome email. Now, back then I owned a different business, actually one I sold in 2016 just before entering the channel, but even back then I knew that finding and committing to good software that sat at the heart of my marketing was critical. At the time, Infusionsoft was the hot property. In fact, I’d say it was instrumental in our success building that business. It allowed me to build up a large audience of prospects. I had 12,000 of them in that last business and using Infusionsoft I could grow a relationship with those prospects using content marketing all sent out in that CRM. And I had a telesales team whose job was to call those prospects and book them in meetings with our salespeople, and that allowed us to convert the relationships from prospects into clients. I look back now at that 2009 to 2016 period and realise that was kind of a golden time for Infusionsoft, because since then it really has gone off the boil. First, there was a focus on not just being a CRM and a marketing platform, but becoming a payment platform as well. And then the original founders left and then the new people that took over, the new management team, they rebranded it as Keap, and they created a second CRM, which seemed to do the same things as the first CRM but in a different way. And then the original founder took control again and then they tried to bring those two products together as one, and I’m not quite sure how successful that was. And then they were trying to turn themselves into an automation business, but there was no clear roadmap of what that meant or how they were going to do it, and they also massively hiked up the prices. Now I’ve been using Infusionsoft (or Keap) in the MSP Marketing Edge since day one, since we opened back in 2017, and I’ve been feeling for a while up t...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Welcome to this SPECIAL edition of the show, Episode 300, of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week I’ve got an incredible and motivating story of resilience. 700 nights of “will the business survive?” Featured guest: Colin Knox is a serial entrepreneur and seasoned executive in the MSP and SaaS space. As the CEO & co-founder of Gradient MSP, he leads the charge in transforming how managed service providers operate and grow, with a focus on automation, billing reconciliation, and revenue enablement. With multiple successful exits, over $15 million in capital raised, and a track record of building companies from startup to nine-figure enterprise value, Colin brings deep expertise in scaling businesses, fostering culture, and navigating M&A. When he’s not building businesses, you’ll find him sharing insights on branding, leadership, and the future of the channel on LinkedIn. Hello and welcome to a very special episode of the podcast as we celebrate 300 episodes. Every single Tuesday since November 2019, we have put out a brand new episode of this show, and today I have an astonishing story that you will almost not believe. It’s a feature length interview with a well-known vendor in our space who nearly lost it all a few years ago. Imagine how you’d feel if your business lost all of its available cash in one day, and you had to fire most of your staff, and this situation was so bad that it didn’t resolve itself for two years. Could you keep going? Could you push forward and still try to build something amazing? Well, that’s what my special guest did. His story is so inspiring and I’m delighted to introduce you to him right now. Hi, I’m Colin Knox, CEO and co-founder of Gradient MSP. And it’s great to have you back on the podcast, Colin. I think you were here in 2021. I say I think, that seems like so long ago, the podcast is in its sixth year now, and we’ve decided to go for at least 10 years. We’ll have to book you now to come back in like 2028 or 2029. Sounds good. So thank you for joining us again. You have joined us today to talk about something really important, which kind of affects every MSP at different stages of their business growth, and that is dealing with when things go bad. It’s the issue of resilience and we’re talking more today about mindset and how you get through problems and how you get through stuff that just seems too big to tackle. And you’ve got an amazing story to tell, which happily you are the other side of that story now, which is a great time to tell us. So before we get into that story and we talk about what the problem was and the lessons you’ve learned, just give us a sort of a brief overview of who is Colin Knox? Yeah, Colin Knox. I often refer to myself as the accidental entrepreneur. I worked at an MSP, one or a few for a number of years, and came to a place where I started to get frustrated with things. I never really had thought of or wanted to be a business owner but finally just said, nevermind, I’ll step out and try it for myself. So I stumbled into entrepreneurship worked through all of the lessons learned some of the very hard way, some an easier way of what it takes to build a business, grow a business, exit a business, and maybe sometimes foolishly start a new bu...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Welcome to Episode 299 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week… Marketing an MSP is like boiling water: Marketing your MSP is difficult. It requires a long-term strategy, not a series of one-off activities. But it will pay off for you very well with clients that stay with you for years and years. MSPs: Get a better understanding of your prospects’ pain points: You can get a better understanding of your prospects by using the “Five Why’s” framework. It’s a problem solving method developed by the founder of Toyota and I believe that you can use it in your MSP sales. How MSPs build trust, authority and credibility in the AI age: In this new world of AI some marketing tactics don’t work anymore and some are way more important than they’ve ever been. My guests reveal how you can use PR to your advantage in this new landscape. Paul’s Personal Peer Group: Do you struggle with content creation? I have a brainstorm of really great ideas for you to try. Marketing an MSP is like boiling water You must get so frustrated at how long it takes to generate leads and new clients for your MSP. And you’re not on your own there, lots of other MSPs feel the same. But imagine if there was a quick and amazing fix for this frustratingly long drawn out problem. Well, there is, and even better news, while this painful long wait for new clients will be driving your competitors insane, you can train yourself to think differently. I think one of the things that MSPs find the hardest when they really start taking their marketing seriously is just how long it takes to win a new client. Because you read stuff on the internet, don’t you, about people who set up a funnel or they have a special offer or they do this new shiny tactic and there’s always a promise that you launch something at 9 in the morning and you have your first sale by 9:30, but that’s not really how it works for managed services. Managed services are a double-edged sword in that you both benefit from and you are punished by them. Let me explain what I mean by that. On one side of the sword, it takes a very long time to win a new client, but on the other side of the sword, they pay you money every month in monthly recurring revenue and they stay for years and years and years. And it’s that lifetime value, the revenue that the client contributes to your business over the decade they stay with you, that is what you’ve got to stay focused on with your marketing. So if you are measuring your marketing by doing a little piece of activity today, like sending an email or posting a blog post or putting something on LinkedIn and you expect that is going to generate a hot lead who turns into a client tomorrow, it just doesn’t work that way. You haven’t got the right marketing mindset and that’s always going to lead to you being frustrated with your marketing. The right marketing mindset is about having a great strategy and implementing that day to day, but sticking with it until you are sick to death of it. Because at the point that you are sick to death of it, that means it’s actually just starting to cut through to the people you’re talking to. So you keep doing it and keep doing it and keep doing it, and it really does work like that. The strategy that I always recommend to MSPs is super...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Welcome to Episode 298 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week… ICP: Jargon or a powerful MSP marketing tool?: Your MSP’s Ideal Customer Profile is a clear picture of the type of business that you want more of. When you’re clear on who you are targeting, everything else becomes easier. MSPs: How to never drop a ball (no matter how busy you are): If you want to run the best MSP you can and find new clients at the same time without the fear of ever dropping the ball, you need to get this system into your life. AI is changing EVERYTHING with your MSP’s website: Websites that were perfectly optimised for Google just a few years back are now not good enough for the age of AI. My guest explains what MSP’s should be considering now and in the future. Paul’s Personal Peer Group: Ever wonder whether you should be sending promotional emails as plain text or HTML? I have a very clear answer to this… ICP: Jargon or a powerful MSP marketing tool? Just like in the tech world, marketing is full of confusing sounding acronyms. There’s your LTV, your CTR and your PPC, but while you can safely ignore those, there’s one that you must not ignore. Perhaps you’ve heard of it already. When you get this acronym right, it influences all of your MSP’s marketing and you get better results. Let’s talk about this acronym that you must be aware of and how implementing it in your MSP will help you win brand new clients. So we’re going to talk about something called an ICP, which stands for Ideal Customer Profile. And don’t worry, this isn’t going to be some kind of big scary marketing concept. It’s actually really simple and it can make a massive difference to how effective your MSP’s marketing is. So what’s an ICP? Think of it like this. If you could clone your best customer – the one who always pays on time, never complains, values what you do, and is a dream to work with – who would that be? That’s what sits at the heart of your ideal customer profile. It’s a clear picture of the type of business that you want more of. And I’m not just talking about the vague stuff like saying small businesses or anybody with computers and a wallet. I mean details like what industry they’re in, how many staff they have, where they’re based, what kind of technology they use, who makes the buying decisions, and even what headaches are they dealing with right now that you can solve? Why do you bother with all of this? Because when you are clear on who you are targeting, everything else becomes easier. Your marketing becomes sharper, your messaging really hits home. You stop wasting your time chasing leads that when never a good fit in the first place because you understand exactly who you want to work with. It’s like fishing with a rod rather than chucking a net into the sea and hoping to get a very specific kind of fish. So how do you build your ICP? Well, I suggest that you start with your current clients. Have a good look at them, analyse them. It could just be while you take the dog for a walk, you don’t need to sit down and stare at a screen for another six hours, but just think it through. Who are your best clients? Who are the ones that you wish you had 10 more of? Write down what it is that makes them great. Look for the patterns. Is it that they’re all in profe...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Welcome to Episode 297 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week… Every MSP should listen to this book: If you implement the simple ideas inside this book, it will dramatically improve your marketing – you’ll get more attention and ultimately a lot more business for your MSP. Would your MSP tackle a one off project to unlock MRR?: There is a way to warm up reluctant prospects and build a solid relationship with them, before asking them to sign a monthly recurring revenue contract with your MSP. Here’s how. This MSP looks back on his biggest marketing mistakes: If you could go back to when you started your MSP, what advice would you give yourself to avoid your biggest marketing mistakes? This is the question I asked my guest, see how his answer compares to yours. Paul’s Personal Peer Group: Are Google’s Core Web Vitals still a thing in 2025? Find out how this affects your MSP and what you should be doing about it. Every MSP should listen to this book I know I know, you want to grow your MSP, but actually you barely have enough time to stay on top of the big shows on Netflix, let alone learn how to improve your MSP’s marketing. But could you make the time if all you had to do was read or listen to just one single book? Let’s dig into a new book that if you implement the simple ideas inside, it will dramatically improve your marketing. You’ll get more attention and ultimately a lot more business for your MSP. What was your lockdown experience like? Well, some people had a terrible experience, of course, but others discovered new things about themselves. So for example, I discovered a bit of a renewed love of running which led me to doing a couple of half marathons over the years after. And actually I lost about two stone in weight, which sadly has come back now and doesn’t seem to want to go again. But also back then I fell in love with reading one more time and I got through tons of books that summer. And one book that I read for the first time ever, which I had been meaning to read for years, was a book called They Ask You Answer, written by a guy called Marcus Sheridan. And this was instantly an insane book for me and it resonated with me in every possible way. So I went away and I implemented as much of it as I could in my own business, and I kept telling the MSPs that I was working with that they should do exactly the same. And actually, I decided I had to get Marcus onto my podcast, which finally happened in January 2023. If you want to listen to that episode, Google MSP Marketing Edge and Marcus Sheridan, and you’ll find the podcast episode. It’s episode 164. Marcus was very generous with that interview and it helped to position, They Ask You Answer in ways that made it super relevant to MSPs. I tell you all of this as background as it helps to explain why I got so excited earlier this year when I heard that Marcus was releasing a new book. It’s been billed as They Ask You Answer 3.0. Version two was a bit of a refresher to the original book which came out in about 2019, whereas this new book is more than just an update, this is a reinvention for the modern age. You see, They Ask You Answer first came out in 2016, that was nine years ago, and the world has changed dramatically since then, hasn’t it? No more so than with the AI tools that we have today. And so They Ask You Answer has changed into something...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Welcome to Episode 296 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week… These emails help prospects love MSPs: It’s critical to have a series of good emails to send to prospects who are looking at your MSP for the first time. Early engagement is key for email deliverability and not being labelled as unsolicited spam. A simple way to reach senior decision makers on LinkedIn: Here’s a tried and tested LinkedIn hack to connect with the right people on LinkedIn. Remember, both decision makers and influencers are important contacts. Smart ideas to sell more to your MSP’s existing clients: Selling more to existing clients is the big opportunity and my guest tells you how to do it and how it can generate more delicious profit for your MSP. Paul’s Personal Peer Group: Do you upload PDFs to your LinkedIn personal profile? You should, the algorithm loves it. Here’s how… These emails help prospects love MSPs It’s a huge struggle. A lot of MSPs looking to grow, struggle to do effective data capture from their website, and this is an important way to build up your database of prospects. But it’s not just about getting them to fill in the form in the first place, that’s just the start of the process, the real question to ask yourself is: What do I then send them? Let me tell you some of the perfect emails to send to new prospects looking at your MSP for the first time. So tell me, do you have some form of data capture on your website? You really should. The most basic data capture is asking people to sign up for your email newsletter, which actually very few people will. A better form is to offer them something known as a lead magnet, also known as an ethical bribe, which is where you give them something in return for their email address. And this might be a guide, like a cyber security guide. Although the 2025 version of data capture that’s working really well right now is to do an interactive quiz and you allow them to build a scorecard for something. Again, something like their cyber security score would be a great way of doing that. But the data capture itself is only the start of the process. What’s critical is to have a series of good emails to send new prospects, because you can make an assumption that they may be looking for a new MSP in the future. And you need to send them content that’s going to influence them to pick you and not another MSP. So let me give you some examples, starting with the very first email you send to them. And the goal with this first email is to get them engaged with your content and either get them to click something on the email or hit reply. Why? For email deliverability. Because that sends a very clear message to their email agent that they are interested in your content and they don’t just see you as unsolicited spam. I do this with the first email in my sequence. I introduced myself and then I ask the MSP who’s reading that email to hit reply and tell me which marketing problem they’re suffering with right now. And we do get a pretty good reply rate to that. Of course, I make sure I answer every single person who replies. I do that personally, which in itself is good for engagement. It’s good for showing there’s a real human at the other end who’s listening. And of cour...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Welcome to Episode 295 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week… Ghosted? Send your MSP’s proposals in 3 ways: There are a number of things we can do to minimise proposal ghosting with prospects. Only sending it digitally risks your proposal being lost in digital noise. A free cyber security webinar outline any MSP can use: Webinars are a great way to enhance your reputation and your perceived authority as the local tech expert. Let me give you a free cyber security webinar outline that any MSP can use. Why every MSP must niche in some way: My guest and I to talk about niching and about the power of super laser focus on a very specific set of people. Find out exactly what to do and how it works. Paul’s Personal Peer Group: Confused about which social media platforms to use to market your MSP? Let me tell you my top 5 in priority order. Ghosted? Send your MSP’s proposals in 3 ways This must have happened to your MSP… proposal ghosting. You send a proposal to a hot prospect and crickets. All the conversations, all of the relationship building that you did leading up to this proposal seem to have counted for nothing. So how do we fix this? Why don’t they reply? Why can’t you get hold of them? Are there three simple things that you can do that will improve your hit rate? Absolutely, there are, and let’s get into them right now. A few years back when I was single, dark days, I was being ghosted all the time. OK, that was on Tinder and Hinge and Bumble and other platforms, but I know that you get ghosted by your prospects now they seem so hot, so ready to join you, and then you send the proposal through and they never get back to you. So you never quite understand what’s happened. Is the problem that the price isn’t right, that you didn’t display an understanding of their business? Have they changed their mind? Have they gone off to another MSP? Have they signed another contract with their incumbent MSP? Are they actually dead? I mean actually really, are they dead? And you can phone them as much as you want, but there’s no one there to answer the phone. We all have these exact thoughts when we get ghosted by prospects. The problem is not your prospects… the problem is actually you. You’ve allowed them to take some level of control of the sales process. You’ve allowed them to ghost you. I believe there’s a number of things that we can do to minimise ghosting, not in dating, but certainly with prospects. Now, let me tell you about two of those things. The first is that I think you should send all of your proposals out in three separate ways, and then the second thing I’m going to tell you about is that you should always have the next appointment in your calendar. That’s coming up in a second. Let’s first of all go into some of the details. So, how do you send your proposals now? If you’re like most MSPs, you probably just do it digitally. Maybe you use a specific piece of software or you have a proposal tool built into one of the platforms that you’re using and these kind of tools they are cool, especially as they can track who’s opening your proposals, how many times they view it, all of that kind of stuff. Or maybe you just pull a PDF together or even just an email and you just send it off to them by email. Most MSPs...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Welcome to this SPECIAL edition of the show, Episode 294, of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. I’m interviewing an ordinary business owner and he’s going to talk about why he’s unhappy with his current MSP and is thinking of switching. SPECIAL: Why this business owner will switch MSPs For MSPs looking to find new clients, this is the holy grail. It’s taken nearly 18 months to arrange this, but boy is it going to be worth it. It’s a conversation with an ordinary business owner, the type of person who might be your dream client. It’s the number one wish I hear – I’m the owner of an awesome MSP, but it’s so hard to get new clients if only I could get in their head to find out what I could do to attract them, especially if they’re currently with another MSP who they’re thinking of leaving. Well, here we go. Now I’ve agreed to keep his identity anonymous so he can be extremely open with answers to questions like, why he’s unhappy with his current MSP, what’s changed in the last few years, what he likes and dislikes about them, and why he’s thinking of switching. Oh, and most importantly, what could you offer him that would win him and keep him in your business? Welcome to this very special episode of the podcast, and I have a treat for you today. This is an idea I’ve been trying to implement for years and years because I think it’s really going to help you get an insight into what happens in the head and the heart of an ordinary business owner when they may be thinking of switching MSPs. We’re going to interview today someone who’s been a friend of mine for over 25 years, but his identity is going to be kept a complete secret. In fact, I’ve given him a false name. I’ll introduce you to him in a second. He’s with an MSP right now that was acquired sometime in the past, and as I’ve been talking to him over the last few months, I’ve realised his satisfaction levels with his incumbent MSP have been going down and down and down. They’ve done nothing wrong, it’s all just tiny little things that have chipped away and he’s now getting to that point where he might be ready to switch MSPs. Let’s see if today we can figure out how he thinks, how he feels about his MSP and what are the things that he would go looking for from another MSP. If you can understand how ordinary people think and act, the chances of you getting them to come to your MSP goes up dramatically. So let me introduce you to my friend, we’re going to call him Jason. His real name is Sean, but we’re not going to use that, we’re going to call him Jason. That’s not his real name that was just a joke. Jason, thank you so much for jumping onto the call. Obviously we don’t want to identify you because we don’t want any awkward conversations between you and your incumbent MSP. So without revealing what you do as a business or where you’re based, just give us an idea of your company. So how many staff have you got? Are you like a professional services company or a consumer driven company? Give us a bit of an overview. We are I guess a professional services company. We’re a marketing business at heart, obviously based here in the UK, and we have got staff who are employed in the UK and in the Philippines. We’ve also got contractors in the UK and the Philippines as well. Okay, so you’re spread around the globe, even if that’s just two locations, which is a pretty common setup these days I think for many businesses. Obviously this is your business, you started this, you’ve grown this over a number o...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Welcome to Episode 293 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week… What if you only had 90 days to win new clients?: Imagine you absolutely had to generate new business, FAST. Let’s explore where you should focus your time, effort and resources. 3 HUGE questions to ask about your MSP’s clients: It’s very common to hope that the awesome retention of your key clients just continues, but unless you really give them what they need and want you run the risk of losing them. This MSP’s best ideas from his 8 year podcast: My guest is a long-standing MSP owner and eight year podcaster. He’s here to share the very best things he’s learned during that time. Paul’s Personal Peer Group: You still hand out business cards, right? You definitely should, and here’s my recommendation of what should be on them. What if you only had 90 days to win new clients? Are you ready to take the MSP experiment? How would you do if you had to win a load of new clients within the next 90 days? Yes, just 90 days to find and sign up new managed service clients. The reason isn’t important, it’s a thought experiment, but does the sound of having to do that make your blood run cold? If so, let’s dig into why it’s such an important test and the real world benefits to your MSP. This is kind of based on a question I was asked on a podcast I appeared on a few months back. I can’t quite remember which one it was right now, but the host asked me if I had to start an MSP from scratch, what would I do? And I think he was waiting for me to suggest which RMM I would use and which PSA and what my tech stack would look like. But the answer I actually gave was that I would figure out all of that stuff only after I’d won some clients. I’d focus all of my time, effort and energy into creating a pipeline and then shaking that tree until some new business fell out of it. Yeah, I know I’ve mixed up my analogies there, but you see the point I’m making, right? I’ve never actually owned or run an MSP, but I’ve been a business owner for 20 years and there’s no point getting your operations ready and perfect if there are no clients to put through those operations. So let’s make that a real life question for you. Not what would you do if you started again with your MSP, but if you absolutely had to generate new business in the next 90 days, what would you do? Don’t get too hung up on the why’s about this. Just imagine you’ve lost a big client or your personal circumstances dictate that you just need more cash. The reason is not relevant. What’s more important is to talk about what you would actually do. A quick aside, if that was a real situation for you and you desperately needed more cash in the next month or so, that cash is going to come from your existing clients. There’s always more revenue and certainly high levels of profit to be made selling something to your existing clients than winning new clients. But for the purpose of this piece here, what would you do to win new clients in just 90 days? Well, let me break this down into a series of suggestions. The first of those would be actually the way that you think and the way that you act. One of the reasons that many MSPs really struggle with marketing and winning new clients is because they simply don’t...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Welcome to Episode 292 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week… Does your service desk manager really need to be a tech?: A service desk manager’s job is to make sure your MSP’s clients are delighted while freeing you up to grow the business. It’s possible that the best person for this job isn’t a technician. How your MSP can break into a new vertical: It’s easier to do marketing, find new clients, and make more money for your MSP, if you choose a vertical. Here’s how to get started. The framework MSPs can use to be more efficient: Visionary leaders are notorious for moving at such speed that they leave a trail of chaos behind them. My guest helps such visionaries put an end to operational chaos and create operational excellence in their business. Paul’s Personal Peer Group: Have you considered how your MSP would respond to a supply chain attack and what marketing actions you would take? If not, it would be a very wise idea. Does your service desk manager really need to be a tech? You may just have to tear up that job ad, and let me tell you why. We all know a service desk manager is a critical role. It’s their job to make sure the clients are delighted while freeing you up to grow the business. But whoever said that a service desk manager has to be a tech. What if there’s a different kind of person who’s much more suited to this kind of role? I really do talk to a lot of MSPs. In fact, it’s one of the most wonderful things about the work I do. I get to talk to lots of different people about lots of different things. And because of my work in my MSP Marketing Edge where we are working with 700 MSPs, I talk to people in all sorts of different circumstances. So we have startups, two businesses that have been going for 30 years. We’ve got one person bands, two businesses with 200 employees. We’ve got all of these and everything in between. But there’s one thing that I notice again and again and again, and that’s that the most successful MSPs, and let’s define successful as, the owner can do what they want to do with their life. They’ve got enough cash and they’ve got enough time, that’s success is to have that. The MSPs who are most successful are those where the owner is surrounded by a very good team who take on the burden of the work for them. Because it’s just too difficult to do everything yourself for more than a couple of years. What’s acceptable for our first few years in business gets tiring and boring as time goes on. And I’m sorry if that’s disappointing news for you because you never wanted to have staff, but it is the difference between just working for yourself and having a business that can survive and thrive without you. And of course, one of the most key hires in there is a service desk manager or change that job title to whatever is appropriate for you. But basically someone whose entire role is to keep the clients happy and make sure that the work happens as it’s supposed to. Now, different MSPs have different ways of doing this, but they all come down to the same things. You’ve got some technical resource and you’ve got customers who want things to be done, and the service desk manager sits in the middle of that making the magic happen. If you own the business and you are currently doing that as well as t...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Welcome to Episode 291 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week… They want to buy 365 direct – fight it, or accept it?: If a client wants to buy 365 direct, it’s not necessarily a bad thing… it could actually become a massive sales opportunity for your MSP. Should your MSP start a podcast?: Lots of MSPs have asked me for advice on setting up a podcast, and yes, having a podcast can be an insanely powerful marketing tool. But should you do one? Let me help you answer that question. Ask these questions to pick an MSP marketing agency: Many MSPs hate marketing and they hate agencies even more. My guest is going to tell you the specific questions you should ask a marketing agency to separate the good guys from the bad. Paul’s Personal Peer Group: Have you ever considered sending an impact box to prospects? Find out what you should include in yours. They want to buy 365 direct – fight it, or accept it? Are these clients for real? They want to switch to buying 365 directly to save a couple of bucks a month. This is a scenario most MSPs face at some point, but should you fight it, try and educate them or let them just do what they want? What if I told you this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing and could actually become a massive sales opportunity for your MSP. As someone who doesn’t personally have to deal with 365 and all the licenses and NCE and all of that, it does look to me like Microsoft has made it as hard as possible for you. That whole NCE thing is a massive pain, right? And especially if you have a client where you’ve made an annual commitment and then of course they hit you a few months in that they want to buy directly, and that just creates a headache for everybody. It’s not like 365 is a high margin item for you, but from the client’s point of view, 365 is right there at the core of their experience. Outlook and Teams and Word and Excel, these are all applications that most businesses use multiple times every single workday. So they want them to work, they want them to be productivity tools, not pains in the backside tools, and I think that’s a basic and perfectly understandable requirement of any business owner or manager today. Don’t you agree? So if someone wants to move the licenses away from you, buy direct and save themselves a couple of dollars per user per month, what should you do? I’ve asked a few MSPs this question over the last couple of weeks and some of them have said that you should just roll over and you should just take it. So invoice them for any out-of-pocket expenses caused by NCE. Make sure they know how that’s going to affect the direct support that you give them and then let them go off and buy it from elsewhere. Others have said that you should fight really hard to keep everything under your jurisdiction. Isn’t that the point of a managed service provider that you are looking after all of their technology? And that starts with the very basic help desk functions and goes right up to their technology strategy. Now if you don’t have some level of control over everything in between those two items. help desk and strategy, then surely you’re making your life harder than it needs to be and that must have an impact on the service that you can deliver to them and the s...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Welcome to Episode 290 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week… Can your MSP offer an easy first purchase?: One of the biggest MSP marketing hurdles is asking potential clients to go from nothing to a monthly recurring revenue contract. A better way is to give them an easy first purchase. Does your MSP do whatever it takes to keep clients happy?: Flexibility and initiative needs to be a culture within an MSP, not a policy. A culture of “do whatever makes technology easy for clients” would be a powerful retention weapon. Build a personal brand to build your MSP: My special guest is a personal branding expert and explains how it’s easy to build and can be incredibly profitable when you get it right. Paul’s Personal Peer Group: Ever wondered why your MSP’s marketing and sales are SOOOO slow? Let me explain and advise what you can do about it. Can your MSP offer an easy first purchase? Here’s something you know already, it’s just too darn hard to get new managed service clients. One of the biggest hurdles is that you are asking them to go from nothing straight to a monthly recurring revenue contract at the click of a finger. Surely convincing them it’s safe to start spending their money with you is easy. You just put a strong case forward and then dazzle them with the service that they’re going to be getting, yeah? If only it was that easy. So if the client finds signing a contract with you a bit scary, how do we fix that? Is there a way to make them feel happy committing to you and spending money with you? Absolutely there is, and let me tell you what it is. What we’re really talking about here is building trust. Trust is a massive currency within marketing and sales. The more trust you have, the more likely people are to sign a contract and throw themselves into your care. But the opposite of that is also the case. If you don’t have enough trust built with your leads and with your prospects, then asking them to go from no buying relationship with you straight into a managed services contract is a big ask. I know it can be done and it is done every single day, but surely we should be trying to make our lives easier. If you look at this from the point of view of the person buying, and by the way that’s always a great way to look at any of your marketing and your sales, always, always, always look at it from the other person’s point of view. So when they start looking for a new MSP or maybe even their first MSP, we call them suspects. They have their arms folded, they are suspicious of everyone they find and they are not overly impressed with anyone at all. And even if they’ve been given a warm referral from a friend or they find an MSP online that has tons of social proof, so it looks like a safe choice, they are still suspicious asking someone to trust you with their technology. And as we said, it’s a big ask. Now, they might not know what they don’t know about technology, but they do know that if you get it wrong their business is dead in the water. And this is one of the reasons why it takes so much time to build a relationship and warm up an arms folded suspect, turn them into a lead turn that lead into a prospect, that prospect into an opportunity. It takes time, it takes effort, and it’s exhausting because the risk is so big f...