Learn to look at your MSP as ordinary business owners and managers do, and you will find doing your MSP's marketing 100x easier
On Monday 16th January 1995 - yes, that's right, in the last century 🙄 - I walked through the doors of the Emap journalism training centre in Peterborough, UK - and started my first day of formal training as a newspaper reporter.
I'd already been working on a newspaper doing the job for 6 months by that time, as part of my training scheme. The role of the journalism tutors was to vigorously beat all the bad habits out of me, and turn me into a polished professional. I didn't make their job easy 🤣
But on that very first day I learnt the world's most invaluable marketing lesson:
Look at everything from the other person's point of view, never your point of view
This was how they trained a very immature 20-year-old Paul to write for the 60-year-olds who read the local newspaper. When I later became a radio presenter, this same lesson allowed 23-year-old me to create content that 40-year-old Moms would find interesting.
When you're marketing your MSP you need to do exactly the same thing.
Don't look at what you do through your eyes. You're too much of an insider. You know and understand too much.
Look at it through the eyes of an ordinary business owner or manager, who doesn't understand how technology really works (and doesn't care, anyway). To them technology is just a conduit to get the result they desire - increased productivity, happier staff, more clients and revenue, etc.
To influence what John Smith buys, you must look through John Smith's eyes.
If you can truly get in their heads and hearts and demonstrate you understand what they're thinking and feeling, they will believe you're the only MSP for them.
Let's flip over into their brains and hearts right now. Here are 3 reasons why a business owner or manager will buy from you
They have a want or a need
Wants are more exciting than needs. A need is a brain decision, and you can't upsell the brain. Needs are how Vulcans buy things.
Whereas a want is an emotional decision. Wants are how Humans buy things.
I need a new laptop... but I want a $2,000 gorgeous laptop.
I need IT support, but I want someone who is going to make my life easy.
They are confused and just want someone to do it for them
In my new home office there's a huge echo... echo... echo... which makes it useless for recording videos. I got in a specialist consultant to help me.
After he'd talked sound waves, reflecting surfaces and acoustic absorbency for 20 minutes, I banged my head repeatedly on the table and said "I just want you to fix this for me."
That's how ordinary business owners and managers feel about technology. When you talk tech to them, they lose the will to live. Your marketing and sales should focus on the benefits to them of what you do, more than how you actually do it.
They are scared and want someone to make their world safer
When we don't understand something, sometimes we fear it. This is how some of your leads and prospects feel. They know technology is central to their business and if it goes wrong they're screwed.
Your job here is to give them options to help them sleep better at night. There's always an extra redundancy measure, or cybersecurity product, right? Advise them what they could do, and don't stop them if they want to be over protected. Some people feel happier behind a door with 10 locks, even if they live in a nice neighborhood.
Social proof, in the form of testimonials, reviews and case studies, are the best way to make people feel safe. We still have the same mental programming we had 100,000 years ago when we were in the middle of the food chain. And deep down it still feels safer to do what most other people are doing.
Collect an abundance of social proof, and use it at every stage of your marketing to demonstrate you understand them, because you have already looked after dozens of other people just like them.
