Session 1

So we're right, so we're live. All right. So, like I said, I'm gonna keep mind short and sweet, hopefully knock it out very quickly and get it over to you guys. I'll go from, uh, Anthony first setting the stage and then closing it with you, Keith, on why MSPs need to be thinking about doing this now more than ever. That cool? Yep. Cool. All right. All right. Counting us down five or I'll just count us down. 3, 3, 2, 1. Hey folks. Andrew Morgan here with two awesome people.

Anthony Camacho, longtime friend from PAX eight and Keith Bartol. Um, we are gonna be talking on the Black Point Command session on the 24th, 1:00 PM Eastern Standard Time about setting appointments inside sales, business development, whatever you want to talk, call your engine to get appointments. That's what we're gonna be focusing on now more than ever. Is it important, Anthony, you are literally, I think I'll put you in the top echelon of people that can set appointments.

You now lead a team. That's how good you are, uh, at PAX eight. What are, what are some of the top things that you want to get across for MSPs in terms of how to go about setting apor, uh, appointments and why it's so critical? Absolutely, Andrew, I thank you for that. Um, you know, number one, using technology, uh, to your advantage to get past the gatekeeper, to get that executive attention you're looking for, uh, number two, knowing what to say, uh, when you get that message.

And avoiding giving your customer homework so that you can drive engagements. And, and lastly, making sure that, you know, you understand your customer's journey and you don't maybe do too much on that first call. Yeah. And one thing you said offline, I just wanna put Anthony, it, it takes some time, right? To, to get in front of somebody and get an appointment fair. Absolutely. I mean, you should be trying at least seven times before you expect a response, right?

Um, I'm sure everybody on the call will understand that there's a lot of people vying for your attention. Um, and having that consistency, that persistence and going in with that expectation that it's not gonna happen on the first, second, third, fifth call. Um, but it will, if you're consistent, you're persistent and of course, polite. Yeah. Fantastic. Keith, coming to you from the MSP side, I gotta just preface everybody 'cause um, you're awesome.

Nine years ago, you're working for Dell in technology. You show up at a Gary Pika event, Gary's like, Hey, you should go and become an MSP, uh, burn the ships, quit your job, uh, nine years later, 53 employees, 12 million a ton in recurring revenue. You run a security first shop. I mean, I love what you're doing. You've really subscribed to building, you know, a business development inside sales org, uh, to set appointments and get, you know, your team in front. Why for MSPs?

Is that really critical today more than ever? Yeah, I think Andrew now more than ever, it's critical because the reinvestment that's needed in security, right? And, and adapting, we, we've gotta change as MSPs. The the bar is, is rising. Um, the security threats, uh, can't be ignored. Uh, it, it's no longer optional to level up. You've gotta level up to be relevant. And to do that, you've gotta think about cash flow. And you've gotta think about continuous growth.

Um, great people, which you'll need to be relevant, uh, and, and be a great MSP are looking at working for growing companies. And you can't just rely on referrals to come in and, uh, you can't rely on your, the companies that you have today, uh, just to keep growing and to keep doing business, to grow your company. You've gotta get new logos, um, because each client has a life cycle, right? Uh, we're seeing m and a like crazy.

I mean, we've had several, uh, amazing clients, uh, get acquired, right? They exited their company, they got acquired, they insourced it and rolled up. And so you, you've got a plan on growing and being able to backfill that revenue, uh, when you're timeline with great clients is up. Um, you gotta have good sales, uh, in, in the engine in order to achieve that. Yeah, and I would close with this, Keith. Um, if you eventually as an MSP wanna exit, speaking of which your, your best path, right?

Is to have a profitable high revenue, right? High margin business. Sure. That's constantly adding new logos, that is highly attractive to, uh, an organization seeking to buy you. Well, fantastic. Can't wait to have you guys on Wednesday, uh, in less than a week, 1:00 PM I'll put the link in the description below and look forward to seeing you both then. Take care. Sounds good. That was awesome. See, it's always one take. Look at you, look at you always off in one take.

Well, you just, you set the energy, you set the expectation, and it happens. Man, that was great from both of you. Um, I'm excited. This will be fun. Um, yeah, Keith, you'll, uh, I'm excited for you to hear Anthony. He's got like his, Anthony, can you just maybe share a little bit about, just like, I love your stuff on loss aversion. This is something that blow to me. So this is a guy that reads everything like, and applies psychology, right?

Which all sales is, uh, so, you know, gives, give this, give Keith a a little dose of that. I love it. Sure. So, um, I follow what's called the strong Method, uh, is method, um, kind of created by a private equity guy on raising money. And the reason that's important is 'cause he is selling something intangible, right? Mm-Hmm. So that's what I like to relate sales to. I find some of the best salespeople come from those industry selling financial products, insurance, that sort of deal.

And that's what we do in the MSP side, right? We're selling security, the idea of security. And so a lot of times, um, you know, when we start getting into the storytelling part of our, our, our pitch or our conversation, uh, a lot of people wanna focus on money. Hey, this is gonna save you money. This is going to protect you from a hack, right? The concept of loss aversion is that people are more motivated by avoiding loss than they are by gaining a benefit, right? Mm-Hmm.

So that's where you typically see people focus and talk about, you know, hey, you could lose money if you don't do X, but losing money is not the only thing that businesses care about. I'm sure you can relate to this, Keith, right? What about losing people? What about losing your employees? Because you don't make those investments in technology, right? What about losing your customers, right? We all worry about that. And then, well, what about losing your business entirely?

What about the integrity, the reputation of your business? And so for me, when I'm designing sales pitches, I like to focus on all four. I like to hit the human element because what it does do is drive urgency. You know, there's five prerequisites of a sale. If you've ever been to a, I got taught this at, at Char Tech, right? I went to Schiz Fest as well. But you know, in the five pre prerequisites we're like, you need a need, you need a solution. The value has to be greater than the cost.

You need authority to buy, right? Those are all, you know, bant or whatever. We get 'em normally. The hardest one though, is always the urgency. And that's what, you know, the strong pitch is designed to do is build urgency at the beginning. Because if you get to the end of a deal and someone says, Hey, I like what you're offering, call me next quarter. Call me next year. There's nowhere to go, right? You have to start from the beginning again because they see value, but not right now.

It's not a priority. And that's the biggest thing we struggle with in sales, is creating that sense of urgency and getting 'em to take action right away. Awesome. Yeah. I'm gonna have to de dig into the strong, strong method then. I've Heard, I got, I've heard of It, but I didn't know what it was, right? Like all of PIKA stuff is Sandler. And um, and that's what we've used internally is expanded beyond with Sandler, but hadn't looked at that. Yeah, it's set the frame, right?

Talk, don't talk about yourself, start a sales pitch, talking about some major change in the industry, right? Then tell the story, focusing on, if you don't do what I'm about to tell you to do, this is what happens, right? So you have to basically say, what's the negative effect of doing nothing? 'cause what most people do is they talk about the problem, hopefully, right?

They start talking about, about the problem, and then they talk about the solution and then they hang up the phone, and then the customer Googles what the alternative is, which is usually doing nothing. You know, we lose the majority of our deals to people doing nothing, right? Yeah. And so you have to get 'em on the phone and you have to address what happens if you do nothing at the beginning of your pitch before you go into solutioning, right? So that's what telling the story is all about.

Then you reveal the intrigue, you talk about the positive business outcomes that are gonna be associated with the thing, the thing I'm about to tell you about, right? Why does it matter to me, basically is what you're focusing on. And then you, you know, you nail the hook point, right? Which is, or you offer your prize, your services, your features, that sort of deal. And then that conversion, right? You nail that hook point.

And then the last part is just kind of sales etiquette, making sure you're ready to actually absorb the deal. A lot of people go and they pitch and the customer's like, okay, I'll buy it. And they're like, oh, nobody's ever said that before. Um, alright, uh, uh, can you tell me some times you have free, right? And it's like, oh, you just ruined the ending. You know, we be ready. They're like, Hey, Tuesday at two. Does that work for you? Oh, it does. Cool. All right, awesome.

We got 'em to take action quickly 'cause we were ready. So it, it's, it's a simple principle and I've been able to really, as, uh, Andrew said, I, I lead about 80 solution consultants at PAX eight, and we're really responsible for, uh, the unobvious need, right? Like, if you have a need, you say, Hey, I want Sentinel one, somebody will help you buy it, you're good to go. That's not what my team is for. My team is for, Hey, I'm curious about security. Am I doing it right?

Is there something else out there or some other way to do it better? What should I be charging? Should I follow CI IS controls? Should I follow a framework? That's what my team does. Anthony, you you made me think challenger sale, like coming up with something. So coming up with something Keith initially, like, you know, Hey Keith, you know, in the financial service, like what do you, you deal a lot with like finance, uh, healthcare or, or manufacturing, Tructure and financial services, right?

Construction engineering. Hey, have you seen the latest changes in this regulation and how's it impacting you? How are you guys addressing that? We're seeing a lot of companies struggle, blah, blah, blah. Are you, you know, are you seeing any, you know what I mean? Something you are, hey, you know, obviously, you know, we're seeing threats targeted at financial services, you know, state sponsored actors.

How, how are you guys, are you, are you leveraging anything with threat sharing communities? What are you guys doing anything, hearing anything about this? You know what I mean? Something like that where yeah, A lot, a lot of ours is hidden risk, right? Basically going like, you have hidden risks in your environment. Are you sure you really know all about those? Wouldn't it make sense to sit down half an hour and kind of talk through those?

We can share what we're seeing out there and get you thinking about the risks in your environment. And a lot of times that'll prompt to get a meeting. But yeah, it's the lead gen for our, our struggle is, is the lead generation is first, right?

And we're having to ramp up and do more marketing and say we're really new at that, that marketing and, and getting the lead generation and then the SEC on the, on the sales side and the closing side, what we're running into, and Anthony is not actually doing nothing here. Recently it has been, I'm a train wreck and I know I need to get here and this is the solution. This is DKB, but I don't wanna spend that.

So I'm gonna get 60% of the way there, go with someone that is 20 to 30% cheaper than DKB, but at least it's better than what I got today. That's what we're losing the deal to Key is because, because they're not going with your all your all in recommendation. It, it, it, it's not. And we, like, I will say in the past few months we've gotten better at trimming scope off and going, okay, I'm, you know, it's, it's not a, it's not a bronze and a gold thing like that, right?

But it, it, but it is going, okay, I'm gonna pull you over here and, um, maybe it's not going to have dark web scanning and it's not going to have huntress, it's gonna have sentinel one and, and just some, some basic, like, I'm gonna get you partway there with a, with a more basic security offering. It certainly doesn't have vulnerability management and SIM in it, but I can get you in and then I can land and expand, right?

But even there, like, even that starting point, we're, you know, we're coming in at, uh, say 175 all in seat price. They go with the 125 all in seat price guy that is, you know, is running web route, no configuration management is doing just very basic stuff. Not really VCIO, virtual captain obvious. Uh, and that basic MSP that's only had a security stack for six months, but they're cheaper. Uh, that's what we're running into.

And I, I, I think that's like, that's not a problem when we get a, a mature forward thinking prospect, like we win those. The problem is when we get one that is a dumpster fire, because they don't, they don't want to go all the way. They don't want to go 60% there and land on a cheap person. I got, sorry, I gotta jump to a one. I apologize. Um, look forward to seeing, you guys talked about This though, Keith. I really would. Yeah. I, I entertain the Conversation.

I guess that's what next week's about though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's get into this, Keith. Okay. Yeah. Good stuff. And we get the audience chiming in. Yeah. Okay. Let's bring that up. Okay. All right. Bye y'all. Bye.