Daniel Priestley is a worldwide renowned entrepreneur, international speaker, and best-selling author, an expert in business growth, personal branding, and entrepreneurship. He shares his advice on how to become a key person of influence.
Daniel’s the author of several books which provide actionable strategies for entrepreneurs looking to stand out, attract opportunities, and scale. He’s helped thousands of business owners and thought leaders position themselves as industry influencers.
An Interview With Daniel Priestley
How to be Oversubscribed as an MSP
When you’re in a position where demand exceeds supply, you create rising prices and profitability, says Daniel. When the opposite is the case, there are losses and falling prices. And yet so many business owners work hard to ramp up supply.
“So every time you’re working with a client, you’re supplying something. And if you if you don’t have corresponding excess demand, you’re dropping the price without knowing it. This is why so many MSP owners get frustrated.
“They know they provide value, but they’re not profitable because they don’t have excess demand. If you only had capacity to work with 10 clients and you had 100 people lined up, you could just double your prices. But MSPs don’t think like that, so I encourage them to spend some time ramping up demand.”
How to Become a Key Person of Influence
You have to do what works, says Daniel, whatever that looks like for you. “LinkedIn recently released some statistics that said if al things are equal, a personal brand is 20 times more effective than a business brand. If you posted daily from each one, your personal brand would hit 20,000 followers while your business brand has only 1,000.
“You know there’s a critical mass of people you have to reach to be successful, you want to do it efficiently and quickly. So you have to work with human behaviour. People love people; they sign up to work with an MSP because they like the team and the founder.
“And that means that your customers have to buy into your expertise and thought leadership, and they have to trust you. To do that in a sustainable and scalable way, leverage social media so people get to know you.”
Where MSPs Should Focus Their Efforts
Of course, as a busy managed services owner, you don’t have time to try lots of different things to raise your profile and become oversubscribed. So if you only do one thing, Daniel says, then that should be publishing.
“You’re sitting on case studies, stories and examples of great work you’ve done, but you don’t tell anyone about it. And by ‘publishing’, I mean putting it out into the public domain. So often I ask MSPs what projects they’ve worked on and they say, ‘not much.’ Then I ask them to give me some examples and they have loads of amazing ones.
“You’re an expert, you know what you’re talking about and you can deliver, but you don’t tell anyone. So I suggest looking at the last five years and find something special you did. Then, talk about it step by step to show how you got the results. Repeat the process, and share these on LinkedIn and in lead magnets.”
How to use Vendor Relationships to Become a Key Person of Influence
If you work with some big name vendors, then tell people, says Daniel. “Tell them you partner with global companies. They won’t know that lots of other MSPs do too. It shows that you have some status.
“Remember that even the biggest businesses are made up of people. So when you go to conferences, make a point of talking to the people who work for these global organisations. Speak to them at exhibitor stands. Go with the intention of making the most of your partnership.
“Speak to them and ask, ‘What could I be doing that I’m not doing at the moment?’ They’ll be thrilled that you ask. They’ll have all sorts of things in their partner programme that MSPs don’t know about, so they’ll guide you to utilise them better.”
How to use a Personal Brand to Grow an MSP That Doesn’t Rely on You
Strangely enough, the more you lean into having a personal brand, the less people expect you to be the person delivering all the work. Daniel gives the example of George Clooney being the face of Nespresso Coffee:
“Nobody expects George to be in the shop when you go to buy coffee. And you don’t expect to see Richard Branson on a Virgin flight. You understand that they represent the brand. So the bigger your brand, the less involved people think you are.
“And when you talk about your business, make reference to your team as much as you can. Say ‘we’, ‘my team’ and ‘my opinions’. Educate people to expect to hear from a team member (who you present as the expert in whatever they need help with) and they’ll soon accept it.”
How You can be a Key Person of Influence as a Service Based Business
Daniel coaches and supports all kinds of businesses, including MSPs, to use the key person of influence approach to transform their business. Even if you’re service-based, it will work for you.
“I worked with a guy called Francis Rodino, who’s recently published a book called ‘Lead Machines’. He’s been running a marketing-focused MSP for a while, providing assets, systems and automations.
“By writing the book, he’s gone from word-of-mouth customers to being on stage in front of three or 400 people and building his social media following, and he gets more inbound queries than ever. He just took the knowledge he had and put it in front of people to demonstrate that he’s the expert.”
How to Connect With Daniel Priestley
- Daniel’s website
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- Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn
How to Connect With Me
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Mentioned in This Episode
- MSP community event: IT Nation Connect
- Book: Daniel Priestley: Key Person of Influence
- Book: Daniel Priestley: Oversubscribed
- Book: Daniel Priestley: Entrepreneur Revolution
- Pocast: Diary of a CEO
- Podcast: The Joe Rogan Experience
- IT management software: ConnectWise
- Marketing conference: Atomicon
- Business conference: Start Up Week
- Book: Francis Rodino: Leads Machine
- Book: Peter Thiel: Zero to One
- Book: Ray Dalio: Principles
- Book: Brent Schlender: Becoming Steve Jobs
Book: Andre Agassi: Open (autobiography) - Podcast: Peter Kujawa of ConnectWise
- MSP conference: IT Nation Evolve
- IT Nation Community Director, EMEA: Dan Scott
- Entrepreneur: Stephen Bartlett
- Author and podcast host: Jay Shetty
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Richard Tubb is one of the best-known experts within the global IT Managed Service Provider (MSP) community. He launched and sold his own MSP business before creating a leading MSP media and consultancy practice. Richard helps IT business owner’s take back control by freeing up their time and building a business that can run without them. He’s the author of the book “The IT Business Owner’s Survival Guide” and writer of the award-winning blog www.tubblog.co.uk
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