Episode 167
Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week’s show includes:
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The best marketing strategy, part 3 of 3 ‘how to turn your marketing into cash’
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Keep clients for longer with technology roadmaps
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The author with a book all about other MSP’s secrets
Featured guest:
Thank you to author Mark Copeman for joining me to talk about his book of MSP’s secrets.
Mark is a director of Wingman MSP Marketing – an agency dedicated to starting conversations with prospects for IT support businesses around the world. He is also the author of the books, MSP Secrets Revealed and Helpdesk Habits, as well as being the creator of the online customer service video program, helpdeskhabits.com and more recently, Website Success 101.
Extra show notes:
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paulgreensmspmarketing.com - Talking about commercialising on marketing audiences and creating technology roadmaps, I suggest listening first to parts 1 and 2 from the last week’s episode first:
- The recommended book was Hook Point: How to Stand Out in a 3-Second World by Brendan Kane:
Transcription:
Voiceover:
Fresh every Tuesday. For MSPs around the world, this is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast.
Paul Green:
Hello, and you are very welcome back to the podcast. Here’s what we got in store for you this week.
Mark Copeman:
If you are interested in finding out tactics, techniques, ways of getting better at dealing with customers, getting better at supporting customers on the frontline and creating those relationships, then I would hope that Helpdesk Habits is for you.
Paul Green:
That’s Mark Copeman, and as part of Author’s Month, which is running throughout January, he’s joining me later on in the show to talk about the books that he’s written to help you as an MSP. In fact, he’s got a new book coming out later on this year. We’re also going to be talking about the most amazing tool that you can use to bond your clients to you for the next 5, 10, 15 years. They’re called Technology Roadmaps and I’ll tell you about them later on in the show.
Voiceover:
Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast.
Paul Green:
I know we’re a few weeks into 2023 now, but we have been going back through the basics as part of a couple of series. And in this first part of the show, we are doing the ultimate MSP marketing strategy. It’s the final part this week. So two weeks ago we talked about the first part, which was the first of the three-step strategy I recommend. That is to build multiple audiences. And then last week we talked about building a relationship with those audiences. Please go back and review those two episodes if you haven’t watched them yet, because the third part this week is about commercialising those relationships. So if you have followed my advice from last week, you’ve built some people to listen to you and you’ve built a light relationship with them through great content marketing. The final step then is commercialising it.
You see, doing all this marketing, we don’t just do it for fun, we do it because it grows our business. Because all of us have things that we want, a lifestyle we want to lead, things we want to do with our time. We need a certain amount of income to do that. And we also just want to succeed. We want more resources, more techs. We all just want more from our businesses. So that means our marketing has got to deliver. This final stage is all about taking all of the work that you’ve done in the first two stages and turning it into money. You see, people only buy when they are ready to buy. This is a core marketing problem that you have to understand, or you’ll never get any traction with it. People only buy when they are ready to buy. And the job that you’ve got is to be there in front of them at exactly that moment.
Now, that’s one of the reasons why we build these audiences, and why we build the relationship with them. Because we want people to remember you at that point, they’re ready to bite. The reality is, most people don’t, because they just… Well, put it like this, there’s too much information, there’s too much in our brains, there’s too much noise. We just don’t remember things. We can bookmark stuff, we can keep printed stuff, we can have a little mental note or write it down. But if someone sees your stuff today but isn’t ready to buy for six months, the chances of them remembering you are really quite low.
So what we can do instead is we can stack the odds in our favor. And this is done through making phone calls to prospects. Now, I’m not suggesting that we do cold calls. I know we’ve had guests on this show talking about cold calls, and personally I’m not a big fan of cold calling. Some of my guests have recommended it, that’s fine. I think if you choose to go down that route, that’s your choice. Me, I prefer slightly warm calls. So for example, if you were to phone… No, not you, I’m going to tell you who’s going to do this in a second. But if someone was to phone up your LinkedIn connections, or to phone up the people who are in your email database, or to phone up the people you send out a printed newsletter too, that would be a very smart thing to do.
The question is, who’s going to phone them? What are they going to say, and how are they going to sell the business? Well, here’s the secret. With this phone call, we are not looking to do any selling, no selling at all. And that’s kind of cool, ’cause that means we can hire someone to do this who A, can’t sell, B, hasn’t been trained to sell, doesn’t know how to sell. C, doesn’t really know about technology and D, doesn’t know anything about your business. You can teach them a little bit about technology and a little bit about business just through a few conversations. But we don’t want a hardcore salesperson. What we want is a relationship builder who is good at spotting timed opportunities.
Now, the best kind of person for this, I believe, is a back-to-work mom. So for your phone person, you shake the network of the important female in your life or if you are an important female, you shake your own network. These back-to-work moms do tend to know other back-to-work moms. You shake that network through Facebook or just through personal connections. Somewhere out there, there is a back-to-work mom. So she had a pretty good career before she had some kids. Now those kids have gone to school, maybe her confidence isn’t quite as high as it was. Maybe she doesn’t want to return to her previous job because it’s not flexible enough or it’s not fun anymore. There are lots of different reasons why.
But what you are offering her is the chance to work two to three days a week, two to three hours a day, doing work that matters. She can come into the office to do if if she wants to hang out with other adults. Sometimes that’s her primary driver. Or she can work from home and she can work flexible hours around the kids being at school. Little Johnny’s got a cold tomorrow, doesn’t go to school, it’s no problem. You just take the day off. Can you see how that kind of flexible job, that flexible arrangement is very, very desirable for some people?
So you potentially can get a back-to-work mom who’s got an enormous skill set, but you can pay them a lot less than you would pay them if you hired them for the skillset, the skillset that they used to have in their old job. What you want from them primarily is their ability to communicate well on the phone. Essentially, you want someone who loves being on the phone, and their idea of fun is just picking up the phone dial numbers and chatting to people about their favorite subject, which is of course themselves and their business. This is the perfect gig for someone, for some back-to-work mum.
And that’s what they’re doing. They’re literally phoning your audiences and they’re asking open questions. They’re asking about people’s businesses, how’s it going right now? You could take the seasonality. So for example, this time of year you might say, “Hey, I know it was a few weeks ago. Did you have a good Christmas? Have you got really good plans for this year?” I mean there’s a line you can’t go too quickly into “Tell me about your plans for the business.” The people kind of have a guard up, until you started to build a little bit of a relationship. But essentially you get them talking about their business.
And then at some point your phone mom may ask them this question, “Hey, do you guys have an IT support company right now?” I don’t advise you say technology company by the way. So we talk about being technology partners, but to ordinary people out there, we’re still IT support companies. Obviously they don’t know what an MSP is, but it’s still IT support in their head. If you say to them, do you have a technology company? That’s actually a slightly confusing question for them today. It might not be in the years ahead.
So your back to work mom might say, “Hey, do you guys have an IT support company you work with?” And they, let’s say they say yes and your back to work mom would then ask them this qualifying question and this is a cracker: “On a scale of one to 10 where one is appalling and 10 is world class, how would you rank your current IT support company?” Now if they give an answer of 10, nine or eight, they’re happy. In fact, that that’s the answer you’d want your clients to give out to in response to that question. So your back-to-work mom can end the conversation, thank them very much and give them a call in a year’s time, see if anything has changed. But there’s not an opportunity there. So if they answer seven, six or five, there’s an opportunity coming up. And in fact if it’s more down at the five level, that’s a low score.
If it’s four or below, then there’s an immediate opportunity. Because essentially that’s a level of dissatisfaction that’s so low it needs to be jumped on. So if they answer seven or below, your back-to-work mom can say something like, “Oh that’s a really low score. I mean normally when I ask people that question, the score is much higher. Can you tell me why you’ve given them that low a score?” This is the perfect follow up question. “Can you tell me why you’ve given them that low a score?”
And then the person that they’re speaking to, your back-to-work mom is speaking to, this prospect will then, if all is well, they will tell you something that their current MSP is doing wrong. Now what’s really important is that your phone mom writes this down and passes this information to you, because you can use that. Let’s say for example they say, “Oh they’re just so slow. We call them and they never call us back. And it’s just getting hold of them to tell them about problems takes ages.”
If you knew that in a sales meeting four or five weeks later, if you knew that that was their primary problem with their incumbent, wouldn’t you, without actually saying, “Hey, I know your problem is this,” wouldn’t you use that in some way? So for example, you would say, “Oh by the way, we guarantee what we do, I guarantee, in fact these are SLAs.” I don’t like SLAs, but SLAs have a value when your incumbent that you’re up against has no ability to meet SLAs. Does that make sense?
So the phone mom asks them what they’re unhappy about with their incumbents and then she moves for a close. Now remember she’s, she can’t sell, she can’t sell technology, she can’t quote it. You can’t close someone on the phone anyway. What she does is she says, “Look, is your contract up at any point in the next 12 months or when’s? When’s your contract up?” Let’s say it’s three, four months away. She says, “Look, I think it’ll be worth you having just a 15-minute conversation with you. He’s our technology strategist, and the owner of the business and he can just advise you, just ask you a few questions and advise you on some technology stuff that I can’t because I’m not a technology person.”
And then she can use the either or close. The either or is this, where she can say, “So look, Dave’s available either on Monday afternoon or Wednesday morning just for a 15-minute video call. Which will be better for you, Monday afternoon or Wednesday morning?” That’s the either or. So phone mom books you a 15-minute video call with you.
Now she could spend the week, weeks and weeks phoning people and she might only get one of these a week. But wouldn’t you just be delighted to have that video meeting, right? That’s probably more than you, that might be more than you’re doing right now. Even just one meeting a week. And we’re talking here about qualified prospects. They’re qualified because we know they’ve got an IT support company. We know that they’re unhappy with them. You may even have asked, or she may have asked on your behalf, how many staff they’ve got or how many computers. This is a really good prospect. And you know it will go well or it has gone well if the 15-minute meeting actually lasts 30 to 45 minutes. That’s when you know things are very much going your way. And this is hallelujah moment. It really is.
Because your job on that video call is to book yourself a proper sales meeting with them. Most MSPs I speak to say, “Look, if you can get me in front of a prospect, I will close the sale seven or eight times out of 10.” Most MSPs say that. That’s great. That’s what we’ve just delivered here. We’ve just delivered you a meeting with a prospect. And that is pretty much it.
Now there are other things that you can do, which we will cover off in future episodes of the podcast. In fact, we’ve talked about them in the past. Go and look up things like impact boxes and good sales proposals. But I think for now we’ll stop there, because you now have the three steps of the ultimate MSP marketing strategy. And by the way, if you have any questions on this at all, you can just drop me an email. It’s the real me at the other end. And I will reply to you, I reply to every single comment I get about this show. Just email me. Hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com.
Voiceover:
Here’s this week’s clever idea.
Paul Green:
That’s one series finished. And let’s finish a second series now, because in this part of the show we’ve been talking in the last couple of weeks about how to sell more to your existing clients. So two weeks ago we talked about the profit matrix. Last week we talked about strategic reviews. I have one final tool that makes these three perfect and it is technology roadmaps. Now, technology roadmap is actually directly linked into the strategic review. In fact, it’ll be pretty tough, pretty hard to do a technology roadmap unless you’ve done strategic reviews, because you take the answers from strategic reviews and you flow those into a technology roadmap. Which is literally a roadmap for them of their future technology, what they’re going to invest in, what they’re going to change, what the plan is.
And the software that you can use to create these, a lot of the vCCO software is pretty good at that. Or you could just put something together yourself in PowerPoint or Word. We give a template to our MSP marketing edge members just to make it easy. But the goal here is to produce a plan as far into the future as you dare look. That might be 12 months, probably more three years, maybe even five years. And based on your strategic review and what you talked about, you lay out for them where you think their technology should go, what kind of changes they should make, and where they need to invest in their business. And then you get essentially a sign-off from the client. And obviously there’s no real commitment from them. But it’s more an emotional sign-off that they’re looking at this and saying, “Yeah, this is a good plan. This is what we are planning to do over the next three years, five years, whatsoever.”
Now there are many, many advantages of a technology roadmap. The biggest advantage is you are locking your client in emotionally. I said to you right at the beginning of the podcast that this tool is a retention tool that keeps them for 5, 10, 15 years. They won’t want to leave you. They would rather sell their children than leave you, because you are literally their strategic IT planning partner. You are laying out everything that they’re going to do in the years ahead. And they will perceive not just in the noggin, but more importantly in their heart, in their emotions, they will perceive that if you go, you take away their technology plans.
Even though they’d got the document, a document is just a formalisation of what’s in your head of your ability to deliver a technology strategy. They will be more satisfied, they will feel that you are operating at a higher level. They won’t mind when the prices go up, and the retention will go through the roof. Unless of course they go bust, they get sold, or you make a massive technology screw up. And we all know that sometimes you lose clients over those, whether it’s your fault or not, it’s just the way it goes.
But the technology roadmap, you don’t overthink it. It’s simply your ability of laying out what their future technology plan should be. I’ve forgotten one of the other benefits. A benefit for them is they can plan future cash flow spend. So if they know for example, in 12 months’ time they’re getting rid of their servers, they’re transitioning over to the cloud and that’s going to cost $5,000 for the project, then they can make sure they budget that $5,000. Also, you can actually schedule that time in as well. If you know you’ve got a project, a transition project coming up in 12 months time, it’s in your diary. You can make sure you’ve got enough technical resource to implement that. So those are the three ways to upsell your clients. The profit matrix, the strategic review, and the technology roadmap. The three of them, they work together to help you generate more revenue from your existing clients while making your retention better than it’s ever been.
Voiceover:
Paul’s blatant plug. Blatant plug.
Paul Green:
So look, if you love this podcast and you love reading stuff on my website or maybe even watching stuff on YouTube, then why not invest in this? It’s the MSP Marketing Action Monthly. It’s my brand new printed newsletter, which we now ship out to MSPs all around the world. So yes, it’s a physical print newsletter. We give you digital copies as well. And the most insane bundle of bonuses that you will ever see. Best part is you don’t even have to spend any money. You can do a 30 day trial of this brand new MSP marketing action monthly. All you have to do is go to Paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action. Go and have a look now. Paulgreensmspmarketing.com/action.
Voiceover:
The big big interview.
Mark Copeman:
Hi there Paul. My name is Mark Copeman. I’m the author of two books currently, Helpdesk Habits and MSP Secrets Revealed. And on top of that, I’ve been in the channel for the last, 12 years or so. I love every moment of it. I think the IT industry is a fabulous place to be.
Paul Green:
Yes it is. And what’s particularly fabulous about it is meeting people like you, Mark. And I’m genuinely delighted to have become friends with you over the last couple of years ’cause I needed a few more friends, and also to be able to invite you back onto this podcast. You have featured before, but you’re back here as part of Authors’ Month. So we have had some epic authors as part of this special series of guest interviews, and I did want to make sure that we got an MSP-specific author in there as well. So you’ve written a couple of books and let’s focus in, first of all on Helpdesk Habits. ‘Cause I think I’m right in saying that was your first book. What was the big message of Helpdesk Habits?
Mark Copeman:
Yes, it was. And I’m not sure you should really be including me on an epic list, but I’ll go with an okay list. I’m happy with that. And everybody, so many people say to you, “Oh I want to write a book. Oh I really wish I could write a book,” and so on. And when I exited my SAS business customer thermometer in 2018, I kind of swung back in this very chair and I thought, I don’t really know what to do next. I didn’t have a plan. And so I thought, “Okay, well maybe I should write the book that I’ve always wanted to write.” And so this was born out of the previous five years or so of working with hundreds of MSPs around the world on their CSAT, on their customer service, on the customer experience. And I saw lots of common issues and thought I should address them.
And so I decided to become that first-time author. I actually loved the process for the most part, until you got through to the third edit at the end. And then I thought the thing was terrible. However, three plus years on, it continues to sell every day and it blows my mind. So it’s a proud moment. It’s a lovely moment to receive your first proof through the post. I’ll never forget that.
Paul Green:
Yes, I bet it is. And just let us, I’ve been asking some of our author guests to give us the behind the scenes of what it’s like to be an author. You sell a copy or a couple of copies of Helpdesk Habits every day. I’ve got a copy somewhere in my bookshelves here, but I’m guessing it’s about 10 pounds, 12 pounds on the cover price. How much of that, once Amazon’s have its share and the publisher, if there’s a publisher, have had their share, how much of that actually gets to you?
Mark Copeman:
Yeah, and you are making the presumption it’s only two copies a day, Paul. Some days it’s actually genuinely way more than that. And I can’t believe it. Every day is different. From memory. I think I earn about three or four pounds per book, something along those lines. And I mean, I don’t know if you want to get into the whole Amazon direct publishing thing, but it’s a tremendous way for people like me, who was never ever going to get hold of a publisher in a sensible fashion, to put something out to the world and on a very, very easy way.
Paul Green:
Oh yeah, I mean Amazon, we won’t go down that route, but Amazon has completely democratised niche publishing. ‘.Cause that’s what we’re talking about here is very niche publishing and clearly selling three copies a day is a very big thing. That was sarcasm there, so I apologise for that. So obviously Helpdesk Habits was where you got started. I know you have an enormous amount to talk about. And when it comes to habits, who should read Helpdesk Habits? Is it for service delivery managers? Is it for technicians? What level of technicians? Is it for the owners? Is it for everyone?
Mark Copeman:
I hate saying this, but probably all of the above. And I know that because that there’s an online program off the back of that, because guess what? You don’t get rich being an author, a self-published author. So the book actually formed the basis for the online program. And I know, from that, that people right across MSP businesses, across all the functions have been through that program. And we joke about the three copies a day. 25 copies were bought a couple of days ago as we sit here and record this. And I’ll never know, but I have a suspicion that somebody bought those 25 copies to give to everybody in the office. Because I know that that’s happened before. So yeah, if you are interested in finding out tactics, techniques, ways of getting better at dealing with customers, getting better at supporting customers on the frontline and creating those relationships, then I would hope that Helpdesk Habits is for you.
And I guess the thing I would tack onto that, I brought this habits word in because I’ve seen over the years, you pick up on tactics and so on. And very, very quickly you revert back to the stuff you’ve always done. And there’s some physiological reasons for that, which I absolutely won’t bore you with now unless you ask me about them. So I thought, let’s bring in the habits element, so that there is a chance therefore people take on a particular tactic or something I suggest, there’s 50 in the book, that there’s a chance that will stick over time by the use of habits and overloading that across all the different tactics and techniques which I talk about.
Paul Green:
Yeah, that’s a great observation. I’m sure Mark, that you’ve read Atomic Habits, which is a great book by James Clear. James was too busy to come on tour this month, so maybe we’ll get him on-
Mark Copeman:
He sent me instead.
Paul Green:
Yeah he did. But maybe he’ll be here for next year. But some of the things, and for every MSP listening, watching this, Atomic Habits is a must-read or a must-listen.
Mark Copeman:
The other one I throw in though along those lines is Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habits as well. Which is the first one I read. And some of the studies into a lot of this research I guess is only about 30, 40 years old. That’s when they discovered the stuff that’s going on inside the brain. And he describes all sorts of different psychological experiments and observations that he’s done his research around. It’s absolutely fascinating. So yeah, that’s what really got me into it.
Paul Green:
Yeah, no it is, it’s an utterly fascinating area, particularly where they’re looking at leveraging how we actually work, as opposed to how people thought the brain worked in a lot of the productivity advice of yesteryear as it were. Right, let’s move on to your second book. So what drove you to want to pull together what became now the first volume of MSP Secrets Revealed?
Mark Copeman:
I guess my love of the collaboration that goes on in our industry. Having come from a marketing background, if you had a customer asking two agencies to work together, both sides would sort of nod politely and then laugh behind the scenes. It’s so different in our industry. And I see competitors collaborating in the same town or city, and I think it’s a wonderful thing. And that is what inspired me, really, to write the book. I’ve always always loved listening to people talking about their war stories, explaining how they do things, which I guess is where the “secrets” word came from. And I thought, wouldn’t it be brilliant to go out to the industry? It’s cheating a little bit because I didn’t actually write every single word, but let me tell you, it’s not straightforward curating either. So it’s a combination of, I think it’s about 85 different IT professionals’ words, coupled with a sprinkling of my words around the edge and some editing as well. Obviously I didn’t need to edit your secret, Paul, ’cause it was absolutely perfect.
Paul Green:
Ah, get out. Get out. As a former professional journalist myself, it was how I made my living for 13 years, I completely agree with you. It’s harder to edit other people’s work than it is to create your own work. So I think with MSP Secrets Revealed you probably made your life hard there. But it was such an original book. Was that a 2020 book?
Mark Copeman:
Yeah, it was just as the pandemic was starting actually. And I thought it would take me maybe three months to pull together a hundred odd secrets and it took me closer to nine I think, and then another four months to edit and write it and all the rest of it. So it was way later than I thought. It didn’t matter and it was quite therapeutic, I suppose, to release it at that very, very difficult time for the world. So yeah, out it went and as a… Everybody that actually submitted a secret, I sent them a copy of the book and said thank you. I signed it as well, so unfortunately the value went down a little, but nobody seemed to mind about that. So no, it was… You got your copy there, look at that. There we go.
Paul Green:
I have, and I’ll let you into a secret, which I don’t think I’ve told you before, which is, this book MSP Secrets Revealed doesn’t only… Well, the reason it has a little place on my desk is because if I’m stuck for something to talk about in the podcast, or if I’ve got to write some content for my website and I don’t know what to talk about, I dip into this. And there’s actually, there’s three or four books, all MSP books, we’ve got Jennifer Bleam’s book there, I’ve got Nigel Moore’s book and then there’s your book. So thank you. Because even prolific content producers such as myself have days where we sit there with our head in our hands and we are thinking, “What am I going to write about?” And the answer is always to be inspired by other people.
And in fact, this is why I’m so excited. ‘Cause I’ve nearly used all of your book now, I’m so excited that you have a second edition. So I believe that as we’re sitting here now at the start of 2023, do you know how many months you are away from getting this published? Or are you still sort of stuck in editing hell with that? Oh look at that. There we go. For those of you watching on YouTube, you can see the exclusive blue cover. It’s amazing. There’s nothing inside at the moment, but it’s basically the red cover of the first edition, but it’s blue. How far into the process are you, Mark?
Mark Copeman:
So I’ve got all my secrets now. I’m in very much editing phase. And I don’t know an exact date of release yet, but I would hope that it will be three years after the first one. So if I shoot for April, I will keep my fingers crossed on that. And yeah, I can’t wait to get to number two. Because obviously if you are running out of content, Paul, I need to help you out a little bit. So hopefully you and many thousands of others will benefit from many other people’s advice, with a little sprinkling of mine put in there as well.
Paul Green:
Ah, you’re just too kind. You really are. So thank you. And do you think there’ll be a third? I realise asking an author in the middle of production hell on their second book, asking them about the third is probably the wrong question. In fact, don’t even answer that one. Don’t even answer that one.
Mark Copeman:
I don’t know. Is this your answer? I don’t know. What’s interesting is that I… There’s a change of themes. Bearing in mind the submissions for the previous one would’ve been four years previous. So I’m really enjoying the mergers and acquisitions elements to this. I felt that there will be more of that sort of stuff coming through with the industry so buoyant, so many things going on. I thought it was interesting to get people’s experiences in that space as well. So that wasn’t part of the first book and that’s absolutely going to be part of the second one.
Paul Green:
Okay. Final question, Mark, and I’m going to ask you to reveal a secret, a secret in the soon to be published book. Can you delve into… And appreciate you may need to go over to a Word document on your computer or something. But can you delve into your submissions? Go and grab one for us and give us the edited highlights of one of the secrets that’s going to be in your upcoming book.
Mark Copeman:
That is massively putting me on the spot, because I need to reach for all my bits and pieces. Can I give you one from the current one, which is a bit of a favorite of mine? Is that going to be acceptable to you?
Paul Green:
Yeah, go on then. Go on. That means you’ll have to come back onto the show next year to talk about the second one.
Mark Copeman:
There we go. I’ll keep it super brief. And it’s very, very hard to choose a favorite. But one of the things I think is so so so appropriate in our MSP world is the concept of don’t sell commodity. And I love that concept and it’s all born around the fact that you can buy a cup of coffee for a pound, for a dollar, for $5. And if you actually troll around the internet, the most expensive cup you’ll find is about a hundred bucks. And it’s essentially the same thing, but what is the difference in value? It’s the wrap that is put around the edge. It’s the customer experience element, it’s the people you’re buying it from, it’s the location, it’s all those things.
And I think in our increasingly commoditized industry, a lot of people trying to sell the same things to similar people, having that wrap around the edge and not selling the commodity, but we’re reminding yourself that people buy from people is such an important part of the equation. So yeah, that’s just one off the top of my head from episode one, but there’s plenty more gems coming in episode two.
Paul Green:
Okay Mark, thank you so much for joining me on the show yet again. I know you will be a perennial guest in the years ahead, especially if you do keep publishing these books. I also know that, as you said earlier, that being an author doesn’t pay the bills. It’s just a very nice thing to do. It’s good positioning, it’s great to get involved with lots of interesting people. What is your day job? And tell us how we can get in touch with you.
Mark Copeman:
Aside from my Helpdesk Habits program, on the first November, 2022, let’s date that correctly. Really excited to join a dedicated MSP marketing agency called Wingman MSP Marketing. I’ve been working with them for the last 12 months or so, and it was a natural partnership. So I became a shareholder, a director and employee of the team. And it’s now brilliant because I used to be solo and I’d spent a lot of time advising people and they would tell me it was great advice, Mark, but unfortunately do very little with it. And it was driving me crazy.
So I needed a team behind me to actually deliver on the crazy ideas that I come up with and the suggestions that I make for people. So yeah, if you visit Wingmanmspmarketing.com, you’ll find out all about us and a bit more about me. I even have some nice photos taken of me, Paul, so I look nearly as good as you do. But it was, there was a lot of Photoshop needed, I’m afraid.
Voiceover:
Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast, this week’s recommended book.
Brendan Kane:
Hi, my name is Brendan Kane and the book that I’m going to recommend is actually my book. And the reason I’m doing it is because we live in a world where there’s over 4 billion content creators on the planet, and it’s critical to figure out how to stand out and rise above the noise. So I’d highly recommend checking out “Hook Point: How to stand out in a 3-second world.”
Voiceover:
Coming up. Coming up next week.
Graham Allcott:
Hi, I’m Graham Allcott, author of “How to Be a Productivity Ninja,” and I’m coming up on the show next week to talk about busyness and how to create more space and deal with notifications and basically make your MSP much more productive.
Paul Green:
The platform that you are listening to this podcast on right now, or indeed watching it, please subscribe. Not only does it help you make sure you never miss an episode, but it helps me to reach more wonderful MSPs like you and I thank you for it. So as well as our interview with Graham next week continuing Authors’ month, we’re also going to be talking about invoicing. I’ve got a suggested invoice format for you that’s going to help retention rather than make your clients think, “Oh, how much are these guys charging us?” We have got a YouTube channel with tons more free content for you. Just go to youtube.com/mspmarketing and join me next Tuesday. Have a very profitable week in your MSP.
Voiceover:
Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green’s, MSP Marketing Podcast.
