TL;DR: This Zomentum webinar helps Managed Service Providers (MSPs) understand how to reach new clients through varied content, follow-ups, and building relationships. The hosts also share how to deal with the frustration of knockbacks in following up on new leads, and how LinkedIn can prove to be more useful a tool than first meets the eye.
How to Get 100 Leads in the next 90 Days
Hosted by Zomentum
Watch the on-demand replay of How to get 100 Leads in the next 90 Days.
Speakers:
- Shannon Murphy – Chief Marketer at Zomentum
- Dave Sutton – Managing Director of Wingman Marketing
- Paul Green – Head of Big Thinking at MSP Marketing Edge
How do I Generate New Leads?
This webinar focused on one of the main challenges MSPs face in marketing themselves. How do I generate new leads? We find ourselves asking, what is a good lead?
As a result, Paul Green suggests a good lead is someone you want to do business with.
Dave Sutton gave the opinion that good prospects are those who are facing a potential parting of ways with their current provider, and that the window of opportunity we have to market ourselves to clients in order to secure their business can begin months before their current contracts end.
The team discussed strategies for marketing in more detail for those MSPs who want to generate more new business leads, rather than rely on referrals.
The Three Steps to Marketing Success
Paul suggested referral-heavy MSPs sometimes appear to operate like the popular builder who never calls you back, and does the bare minimum to keep you happy.
Instead, good marketing relies on three steps to succeed:
- Build multiple audiences
- Cultivate relationships – with your new contacts
- Commercialise the relationship – and start reaping the benefits
Marketing to multiple audiences allows potential leads to interact with you on their terms.
Give them a range of different mediums to vary the content that you put out. Allow them the option to sign up to a weekly or monthly newsletter.
Dave was keen to emphasize the ‘Daily, Weekly, Monthly’ model so that you engaging your audience at regular intervals.
In any content that you put out, you should ensure your likeability. According to Paul, people are more likely to establish a relationship with you if you’re likeable.
Cultivating Relationships
Cultivate relationships once you have some engagement, get to know the people you reach through your marketing to learn about their current arrangements, their aspirations, and what irks them about their current IT provision.
Therefore, this is an opportunity to learn other things about them and the industries they support, too. You could find future leads that their current marketing doesn’t reach.
As a result, ensure you commercialise the relationship. From your engagement, you should already know how to sell them an MSP solution that suits their circumstances. Even if they’re not ready to commit to a business arrangement, they will be good leads to follow up on later.
Paul talked a bit more in depth about a platform where, for him, marketing strategies have proven particularly useful: LinkedIn. He described it as an “amazing resource” to find potential clients.
How MSPs can Use LinkedIn to Generate New Leads
Paul suggested that “The Three Cs” win on LinkedIn.
Connect
He cautioned that you need to use it often to get the most out of it, but that it’s a great place to research potential leads, and other leads that are closely connected. Polls are a really popular way to engage on LinkedIn at the moment.
Content
Your content on LinkedIn, as with other social media, is most valuable in the first three hours of it being posted online. Content should be varied, relevant, and easy to access to reach its peak audience. A suggestion was to make your content feel like you’re starting a conversation in order for it to better appeal.
Contact
You should follow up favourable comments and shares, approaching them with personalised messages so you don’t appear like a bot. If they’re not ready to speak to you, ask if you can schedule a time and date more convenient to them. Get them to put it in their diaries, so they’ve made time for you.
“Content is a gift” – Shannon Murphy
Generating Emergency Leads for Your MSP
When it comes to advice on ‘How to Get 100 Leads in Ninety Days’, the panel offered further advice to generate emergency leads.
Don’t be afraid to pick up the phone if your leads dry up, and set your sights a little lower if you need to. Small leads have the potential to grow.
Build a profile of these leads so that you have a database of future opportunities. This way, you have information to hand should you want to contact them further down the line.
“Sales is ugly,” says Dave Sutton. You have to cultivate positive results and be prepared for a lot of leads that come to nothing. It’s all part of the process.
If you’re expecting potential leads to call your business to find out more, you should make sure your staff are willing and able to have a conversation that says you’re thankful for them taking the time to call. You don’t want to miss out because you’re on another call or away from the office.
You can make a ‘mystery shopper’ call to your own office number, to see if your staff are able to provide excellent customer service and show interest to potential clients.
How to Deal With Nos
The amount of leads that will come to nothing can be overwhelming, especially if you’re struggling to land new clients in general.
Therefore, the advice is to keep at it, but there are ways manage the negativity you might feel after constant knockbacks.
When asking ‘How to Get 100 Leads in Ninety Days’, gamification is one way Paul deals with knock-backs. Gamification is when you reward yourself for completing challenging or boring tasks, and encourages you to get over that finishing line and get to where you need to be.
Conclusion
The panel of experts gave us some advice to finish the ‘How to Get 100 Leads in Ninety Days’ webinar.
- Dave – Structure CRM to get prospect details. Ask when they’re looking to tender again? How many users do they have? And what is their automation, cloud-based usage at the moment? Get them to open up about what niggles they have with their IT solutions
- Shannon – Marketing should be consistent and persistent. Build your contacts from lists and local registry sources
- Paul – Recommends reading ‘Unstoppable Referrals’ by Steve Gordon on how to mitigate the ‘social risk’ of a bad referral
Question and Answer
The experts opened up the floor to questions from the live audience.
Question – Any tips for getting past the gatekeeper?
In order to not appear like a cold caller, you should structure your follow-ups to reference a previous engagement. For example, “I wanted to discuss a topic we touched base on the other day…”
Question – How can we make our marketing better on social media?
Customise your content to reflect the audience you’re marketing to. Make the engagement feel less like a sales pitch.
Question – Is the hunter style door-to-door salesperson a good idea, or a bit old school?
It can work, but they need to know their stuff, and know who they’re selling to, and not come across too pushy, or it can backfire.
Question – Is making associations with other groups/industries beneficial for leads?
It can be, but you have to have something they want in return for the relationship to work, usually. One MSP specialised in solutions for a corner of the market that wasn’t well represented. They found they had many referrals among that niche thanks to the associations they made as a result.
You Might Also Be Interested In
- Podcast – Why MSPs Need to Embrace Marketing. An interview with Paul Green.
- Podcast – How To Accelerate Your MSP Sales for Business Growth. Ben Spector of Zomentum explains MSP Sales.
- Article – What are the Common Mistakes to Avoid When Marketing your MSP?
I'm a small business owner, technical writer and blogger, with 15 years experience in corporate IT. I frequently attend MSP peer groups and create content relevant to IT service providers and business owners.
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