13% to 71% in 45 Days: A Real MSP Sales Transformation

Virtually every sales trainer is going to tell you that you improve sales with things like better attitude, or you've got to have more persistence, or you've got to implement some kind of methodology like SPIN selling, or MEDDIC, or something like that. They'll talk to you about like mindset stuff, like different closing techniques, and listen, like all those things are like they play a role, but I'm actually going to share a real-life story of what we've done with an MSP seller in the last 45 days that has been transformational.

I'm Ray Green, founder of MSP Sales Partners, I'm going to break this down for you. Now real quick, if you want frameworks behind this kind of stuff, not just the stories, that's what the weekly newsletter's for and if you want written breakdowns of things that you can actually use, you can join it at https://www.google.com/search?q=rays-email.com.

This specific instance that I'm sharing with you is a small MSP in Utah. The business owner's name is John, he came to me in December and had a situation where they were getting leads, they had sufficient lead flow, but they weren't converting. And it was very, very consistent. Like this wasn't like a, "Hey, we only got four opportunities last year and our close rate wasn't good". It was plentiful on the opportunities and the leads that were coming through the door and they were qualified and they just weren't closing, right? And his salesperson, Garrick, just closed $17,000 in MRR this month alone, right, in January. Five deals closed, the two that are pending aren't actually like losses actually, like they're still in the air, they don't have a decision made on them, so five out of seven right now, could actually go higher. And 45 days ago, the close rate was at 13% for, like I said, for the entire year.

Now, the interesting piece about this is Garrick didn't like necessarily fit like a typical salesperson profile either. Right, like John told me from the get-go, in fact, Garrick told me from the get-go, you know, his background was not professional sales, it wasn't consultative sales, it wasn't MSP sales. And if you looked at his resume, it would not have been the one that bubbled to the top if you were recruiting like a full-time closer. But they had worked together, John had him in other roles in the business and saw potential for him like to play a bigger role in the business. And his thought, his goal of what he was doing with Garrick was, "You've got to get good enough at sales to really unlock the potential that you can have in the business". And they tried some other sales training programs, a couple of them like names, like big sales names, and people by the way that I actually respect, like people that I know are good sales, have good programs, but they aren't MSP-specific. But I share that because it wasn't like they were starting from scratch, right? Like this is someone who had gone through training that I know didn't suck, but the training still didn't stick.

What changed? Like when I was talking to John about this, and sharing the wins and obviously like really excited about, you know, what was the changes that he was seeing, I asked him like directly, I said, "What do you think were the highest impact changes? When you're observing this and the changes that Garrick has made, from your perspective what has happened? What have been the highest leverage things?" because I wanted to hear it from him, like not filtered by my own bias, which I'm actually going to share after I share what he said. I'll share what I have seen in this in this but he gave me three things, and here's what he said.

His first point was, "We stopped guessing on things like value and ROI and we started asking". His exact words: "Really just asking. Like being able to articulate instead of just us trying to guess at what the value is". Like asking them that question of, "So, what is your value? How are you going to value the rate of return on this investment?" instead of just being like, "Okay, it's our job to go in and try to figure out how to show the value the best way that we can think of in our own head," right? So that's what he said.

Now what we did like as part of that coaching was we got Garrick to stop trying to be a mind reader, right? He like, we stopped doing like what most technical sales people do, which is like calculating the value in their own head based on what they think matters to the prospect. And we implemented like just start asking them, right? When you're in discovery, ask them, "What are you going to value most in IT? How are you going to be measuring ROI?" or, you know, something along the lines of, "Hey, so typically when you're when you're making investments in a business, you know, you don't want it to just be an expense. Like most things have to have some kind of ROI. If I may ask, how are you evaluating the ROI of IT or tech in your business right now? Or this being a good net benefit for for you guys? Like what's your what's your thought process and how are you looking at that and how are you measuring that?" And John called that just like a very huge deal because you you do get out of the guesswork, you start hearing how they're going to evaluate it and by the way, if they haven't stopped to think about how they're going to evaluate it, then you're actually consulting them, you're coaching them, and that adds value in the sales process because if you ask them "How are you going to evaluate the ROI of this investment that you're making? Like this is, if you hire an IT company, it's no small investment, how are you going to evaluate that?" and they haven't done that or said, "Hmm, I don't know, like how do you do that?" well now you're in the position of advising and and like I said, adding value to them in the sales process. That was point one from him.

The second point was the call reviews. He said like that was a massive change for them because they got like what they would do is they would they would submit discovery calls or proposal calls to me and I, you know, I would I would listen and give feedback and identify areas where we like, "Hey we should have pulled on that thread more, we should have gone deeper on that line of questioning here," or we would listen to the discovery and say, "Okay, let's think about how we're going to position this proposal". So again, in his words, he said the call reviews are like the number one thing. Immediate being able to say, "Okay, that's the issue, let's fix this terminology, take it from this step to this step," and that's and that's what John shared with me. So it wasn't necessarily just just role playing, not like generic training modules or, you know, "Hey watch this course," not "Hey here's a book on sales psychology" or anything like actual submitted call reviews and recordings that I could listen to and give direct feedback on, and you know, we would go in and we'd look at very specific issues and and we'd get it fixed immediately, right? So then the next one would come through, we'd make the improvement that we that we discussed on the last one and like I said John called that the number one thing, like not again, not motivation, not mindset, just like very tactical systematic review of what's actually happening and then making course corrections very objectively, very candidly, very directly, and Garrick took that feedback which I you know which is a testament to the to the salesperson.

Now the third thing John mentioned was kind of like substance over feeling. And this is a really common one in all of sales with all of salespeople frankly, and what what John said, his words: "Helping him, meaning Garrick, helping him recognize that just because he feels good about a conversation it's not just the feeling of the conversation, it's did we get everything we need in order to present the value at the end". Garrick was having these conversations that felt productive. You know, he felt like, "Hey got good rapport," you know he engaged the prospect, and he'd leave these calls and think, "Well hey that went that went pretty well." That good feeling wasn't necessarily translating into closed deals because like the good feeling about the conversation isn't the same thing as having a conversation that sets you up to actually close a deal. And a lot of "good" conversations and "I felt that that went really good," they don't go anywhere, right? That doesn't actually mean anything, like the substance wasn't necessarily there because the real question is, did you get the information that you needed? Did you uncover like the actual business impact? Did you establish the decision-making process? Or did you just have like a nice chat? So that's what John said to me his observation was on this on this transformation.

Now here's my take on it. You know, after like kind of giving this some thought and thinking like, "What have been the biggest changes that we've seen with this process and what Garrick's doing?" You know, and there were there were three specific things. Now here's here's what I saw because there's a like there's a system underneath all of this. Right, like most sales training kind of like focuses on what to say instead of what to think. Like they that's why you have so many sales trainers who will give you like, "Hey here's a new script," instead of giving you a decision-making framework. And they'll give you you know techniques instead of systems. And it's why it doesn't stick. And that's why Garrick had been through all of these other programs he was still at 13%. So we focused more on what to think than on what to say specifically, and again from my perspective, three things that that have changed that have had a huge impact.

One is, discovery isn't just a whole bunch of information gathering, right? Like so the the first thing we had to do was like reframe why you're conducting discovery in the first place. Like what is the point of the discovery call? And most MSPs from my experience treat discovery like it's a fucking checklist, right? Like like they're reading through the questions, they're capturing you know data, they're capturing information, they're getting shit that you can actually get on or from a form, right? How many employees do you have? How many workstations do you have? Like what's your backup solution? And all of those things like are they're necessary to an extent like to give an actual proposal but in terms of moving a deal forward those are not the things that you need as a salesperson with real leverage. And if that's all you need, then just send them a form. Those are like very specific you know technical questions, like "Okay how many employees do you have? 46." You don't need a human being to stand there and collect that data. You don't need a conversation for that.

You're also not there to collect ammunition that you can use later as some kind of like sales gotcha moment. A lot of sales processes will have you ask questions in discovery like, "So hey, what's the what's the cost of like an hour of downtime? Or what's your what's your average employee you know rate?" or something like that so that you can come back later in the proposal and be like, "Hey the average you know cost of downtime for you know just x number of hours is you know $42,000 and this and that and you know so clearly you got to buy this." Like that's really not consultative selling and people know what's what's happening. Right, it's too it's so transparent and you lose credibility as a salesperson, like that's just you know the the the just like collecting notes for like, "Hey I'm going to get you later on."

So what are you actually there for? What is discovery, right? It's you know you need three things: one, do you do you know what their problems are? Like what's their actual what's the circumstance? Like what's the situation? What are the actual problems? Two, what are the pains that those problems are causing them? Because problems are facts and pains are are feelings, they're emotions, and they're symptoms. So the problem is what's actually going on, the pain is is what they feel as a result of that. And then the process that they're going to use to solve them or not solve them. Right, that's how you're going to determine is that problem creating enough pain for them to want to actually solve that problem and if they if they are, if it is, then what's the process that they're going to go through to solve that?

And as as cheesy as this kind of sounds, you're there in discovery to understand your prospect's situation and what a good solution actually looks like for them. This is the thing about consultative sales, there is no script in consultative sales that works with every single prospect. It simply cannot be templated. There are frameworks, there are guides, there are things that you can use, but every situation is different which means like you've got to learn how to think about discovery and you've got to actually listen. Like really closely, like making judgment calls in the moment while you're listening about "Hey should I dig deeper here or should I move on to the next problem?" Right, like "Should I should I pull that thread some more and better understand what they're saying, why they're saying it, what's the impact, what have they tried to solve it, why hasn't it been solved so far or do I do I move on to the next one?" and you know like following the threads that matter and letting go of the ones that that don't, so that you walk away with an actual understanding of where they're at today, where they want to be tomorrow and why. What is it going to take from a service provider standpoint to actually get there? Right, and and that's what we worked with Garrick on, right? Like not just memorizing better questions, understanding what questions to ask based on what he was actually hearing. So that was one from my standpoint.

Two was, you have to practice asking for money, like you've the way that you ask for a close and the way that you ask for money matters a lot, right? And so what we did was kind of reframe how Garrick thought about money because some of the numbers that you're asking for to a lot of people seem like a lot of money. Right, if you're asking for you know $200,000 a year contract, something like that, you may have beliefs about money that change the way that you're asking for it. And it doesn't project confidence and it doesn't project comfort. So you know a lot of sales people get kind of weird when it comes time to talk to price. Like they they ask great questions, they give a great presentation, and then it when it gets down to like asking for the money, their pitch goes up and they get kind of like you can just hear it in the tone and like it's a sense of weakness and they just want to get past this point, right? And they rush through it. They you know like they're like they're apologetic about it, um or like or I've actually heard a lot so where people just avoid it entirely. "Okay well here's my presentation tell you what I get you I bet you want to think about this um let me let me let you do that and then we'll follow up," and you know we or or I've even heard people like frame it as "Well I know it sounds like a lot but" and like immediately start justifying. Like you've got to get past all that, like I I get it, asking for money to a lot of people is uncomfortable especially when you're asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars per year but like here's what I told Garrick: you've like you've got to practice it so much that it becomes boring. Like every day.

And before one sale I actually asked Garrick, I said, "Send me 10 different recordings of you going through the presentation and asking for the sale, like 10 times. Like same presentation, same close, just record yourself asking over and over and over." And I I wanted it to be so natural that he like didn't skip a beat, like no no false con like not false confidence, not but pretending to be confident, I just wanted him to get so comfortable with the wording and the verbiage and how much he was going to be asking for that he didn't project like any kind of weakness or concern or fear or any of that that a lot of times comes out when you're asking for money because when you're when you're uncomfortable asking for money, the prospect feels it. Like you project that and that makes them uncomfortable. So when you ask for it like it's the most natural thing in the world, like "Not only do I ask for this all the time, people say yes all the time and that's what you project," they have a sense of of confidence and they have a sense of calmness and that's that's where you want your buyer to be because then they're thinking a little bit more rationally too. So we practiced it until it was like muscle memory for him, you know, until Garrick could could deliver that part of the presentation in his sleep. That's not like motivational you know confidence building, it's it's just repetition. You know, it's like anything, like you got to get the reps in and it was practice, it was making an uncomfortable thing comfortable through volume.

Now the third thing from my standpoint was what we changed was that the proposal has to match what you've actually learned in discovery. Like the two things need to be very congruent. And and this is where a lot of technical sales people lose deals that they should be winning if they were listening and then applying what they heard in the discovery process directly to the proposal, and there were there were times where because I could hear what was happening in discovery and then hear what was what was you know happening in proposal or look at the presentation before it went to proposal, you know Garrick would he would do discovery, he would learn about their motivation, like ask the questions, hear it, learn it, the prospect would lay out what they saw their problems being, right? And then what they felt the pain was, and what the business impact was, they like they would get that from the prospect's perspective. Then build a proposal, but he would lead sometimes with what he thought the biggest reasons they should buy are, right?

So the prospect would say, "I want faster response time, I want you know smoother onboarding of of new employees because we're going to be scaling up our our team next year," and Garrick would go in with a proposal that led with like managing vulnerability and cybersecurity because those were legitimately big issues, things that the prospect technically should have probably cared about more like for all intents and purposes real reasons that they should buy but they weren't the reasons that the prospect wanted to buy. This is the the curse of knowledge. As experts, we forget what it's like to not know what we know, right? Like the toothpaste doesn't go back into the tube like on a lot of expertise and a lot of information. So like once you get to a point where you know something so well it's hard to unknow it. It's hard to put yourself back into the prospect's shoes where they are at. And and so we see all these problems, we know what's going to blow up on them in six months, and we know what they should be caring about, but the prospect doesn't know that yet and they're not buying based on what what you think matters, they're buying based on what they think matters. So like when you lead your proposal with something that they didn't bring up, that they didn't prioritize, that they didn't express pain of, then you're basically telling them "Hey I heard what you said but here's what you should have said, right? Here's what you should care about instead" and that doesn't close deals no matter how right you are, it doesn't matter.

And what we worked on was just you know mirroring, you know if like take what they told you, use their language, address their priorities, and then if you need to, if you need to identify other things that they didn't express, then you can expand on that. You can say, "Like hey here's where I heard, here are your your biggest motivations. Now based on our conversation what I can tell you is there's a few other things that I would recommend looking at". But that's not what you're going to lead your proposal with. And you have to earn that kind of credibility, right? Like you have to demonstrate that you actually heard that what they said before you start to introduce other problems otherwise it sounds like it just fell on you know deaf ears. And that shift alone had an impact on at least one or two of these five deals, right?

So here's what happened: like Garrick like he didn't suddenly develop like new charisma or some sales swagger, he didn't start like crushing objections with some scripted and you know really clever response that we wrote out for him, he didn't like get better at "Always Be Closing," like there wasn't anything you know in a lot of what I see in sales training. He he reframed what discovery was actually for, um you know understanding prospect's situation like not not asking questions that you could fill out in a form, he practiced asking for money until it felt natural instead of terrifying for for him. And I don't know, maybe terrifying is the wrong word but you could tell the ask for money was like an uncomfortable thing so we made that more comfortable. And then he he learned to lead his proposals with what the prospect actually cared about instead of what they thought they should they should care about.

And John could see exactly what was changing because it wasn't like this wasn't mystical, right? Like it wasn't um you know it wasn't about like finding a sales voice or what other bullshit you may hear from a lot of trainers, it was systematic, right? It was teachable, and that's why five more companies are going to be getting better IT services this month. That's why John's business is hitting its growth targets, why Garrick actually gets a Tesla for this because John gave him a challenge for for 10K MRR and Garrick's going to get a damn Tesla as a result of this, which makes me makes me very happy. So if your salespeople aren't closing at the rate that you need or that the rate that you think that they ought to, maybe it's not them, right? Maybe maybe nobody's taught them the system underneath the tactics and and maybe nobody's talked about how to think in sales because we're so focused on what to say in sales. So I hope you know what we've what we've worked with Garrick on um resonates with you and adds you know some value to to you and your your next discovery and your next proposal, your sales process. And if you want to explore this any further with with us, with me, with anyone on my team, feel free to reach out, there's some links in the in the show notes I'm sure. So thanks for listening. Hope it helps. Adios.