The 3-Role Split That Grew This MSP 30%

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;25;06

Speaker 1

The $7 million mSRP. Owner called me last week and it's close rates of taint. What is trying to determine is is it the economy? Is it tariffs. Is it you know people just worried about recession. Is it my reps. Is it the process. Like what the hell is going on. We ran our audit. And what I discovered is something that I actually see really frequently might be happening in your business right now, and it's not necessarily what you think.

00;00;25;07 - 00;00;45;15

Speaker 1

I'm going to show you today, like, why even the best reps that you may have had might actually be impeding your growth, might be contributing to lowering closed rates or flatlining or just like, you know, plateauing and not being able to to grow or scale the business the way that you want. And exactly what to do about it before it's too late.

00;00;45;16 - 00;01;07;02

Speaker 1

So as I say in this, this MSP business owner calls me, they've got a good reputation, right? Like they've been in business for a long time. They've got good Google reviews, they've got decent SEO. There's obviously like improvements that can be made in the funnel on the website and, you know, some of the marketing strategies, things like that, not perfect, but for all intents and purposes, most things were dialed in, right?

00;01;07;02 - 00;01;27;07

Speaker 1

It wasn't like they for lack of trying. And it wasn't that everything sucked across the board. So what they saw was this trend in closed rates had just been edging down over the last 12 months, and particularly in these past like six months, what they've seen as a as a fall off and they've got two reps in both reps are basically doing everything they are doing.

00;01;27;07 - 00;01;45;29

Speaker 1

They're prospecting, they're doing their lead gen, they're doing outreach, they're attending networking events, plugging all that into the CRM. They are, you know, looking to book, you know, some qualifying calls. They're running those two qualifying calls. You know, moving them to discovery calls like full discovery. And they actually kind of manage that process after they've closed that deal.

00;01;46;00 - 00;02;10;24

Speaker 1

Right. So they they have some some account management afterwards. So full cycle from beginning of the relationship to the end of the relationship. Hopefully there isn't an end to the relationship, but they are responsible for generating pipeline. They're responsible for converting that pipeline into sales. And then they are responsible for growing and retaining those clients over time. By most accounts, that sounds efficient, right?

00;02;10;24 - 00;02;32;02

Speaker 1

Like it sounds like you can if you can get one person to effectively run the entire process, which we'll, we'll we'll break down as demand generation, lead generation, prospecting, whatever you want to call it. So generating leads to converting leads and selling to account management and growth. Right. Which which is also responsible for retention. So let's assume there's there's three pieces.

00;02;32;02 - 00;02;54;00

Speaker 1

You've got one person that can do all three of those. It sounds like it's an efficient process. I understand that, but it's wrong. And what we found was one person was actually phenomenal at lead generation. What he had done is he basically mastered LinkedIn. Okay. So he had figured out between automation, could sell by chat. Didn't sound spammy.

00;02;54;00 - 00;03;24;16

Speaker 1

He was really good at starting conversations, moving people to a qualifying or discovery call and getting the conversation started. So he was a phenomenal opener. The second rep, we realized, hey, this guy is a phenomenal closer, right? He's actually he's great at taking a deal that's been given to him and finding the pain points, finding what the problems were, understanding what the buying process is like, the way that he ran discovery, the way that he presented, the way that he closed was really solid.

00;03;24;16 - 00;03;50;18

Speaker 1

So we had one person that was great at opening deals. We had one person that was great at closing deals. Frankly, neither one of them was actually terribly great at account management. In good times, you know, when when leads are flowing, when the economy doesn't feel tight, when buying cycles aren't getting extended, when decisions come quicker, when there isn't fear of recession, when there isn't, you know, debates over what happens with tariffs or whatever the hell's happening.

00;03;50;18 - 00;04;13;20

Speaker 1

Like there's always there's always something. But when things build tighter, those inefficiencies start to get exposed. Because in a market where it's basically there's a surplus and those those opportunities are flowing, there's enough to kind of hide or mask the inefficiencies of, of a sales process. But it's when competition kicks up, it's when the M&A activity kicks up.

00;04;13;20 - 00;04;34;29

Speaker 1

It's when you start losing clients because they got acquired by somebody else. In the inefficiencies in the sales process start to become killers to your process. And when you think about it, it makes sense, right? Like you can have a bunch of inefficiencies in your process, but so long as total volume makes up for it, it's fine. When volume isn't enough to supplement what's happening.

00;04;34;29 - 00;04;52;15

Speaker 1

And you've got to look at how do I optimize this process. Then you've got to look, you know, a couple layers deeper outside, looking in. This actually sounds really simple, like you've got a guy that's good at opening deals, you've got a guy that's good at closing deals. Why don't you have one? Just focus on opening deals and one, just focus on closing deals.

00;04;52;16 - 00;05;19;10

Speaker 1

It's economics. One on one specialization gets you more net output gets you more production for a whole host of reasons. Because you know, including you have the right person focused on a job all the time, you know, whereas in the system today you've got this great opener, but he's actually only using, you know, maybe a third, maybe a half of his time on the thing that he's kickass at 50% of his time is spent on something that he has only.

00;05;19;10 - 00;05;38;14

Speaker 1

Okay, well, what would happen if you let him focus 100% of his time on something that he was awesome at, and the other person who's also doing the same thing today, right? They're supposed to be out. He's supposed to be out there prospecting, and you know, opening deals and, you know, hitting LinkedIn. And who else is you know, he's kind of doing a half assed job because he isn't like doing it anyway.

00;05;38;14 - 00;06;00;26

Speaker 1

But what would happen if you just said, hey, how about number one, you just focus on opening these deals? Number two, you just focus on closing these deals from an impact standpoint to the business. You know? Well, that just seems to make sense. And and it does because, you know, at basically every economic concepts a specialization is going to net you more production.

00;06;00;26 - 00;06;20;20

Speaker 1

It's going to net you better returns. So one aspect of it is you have better people doing the thing. The other aspect of it is you have something that is far more scalable. Do you know how challenging it is to go find somebody that's good at opening deals, good at closing deals, and then good at growing your client base like somebody does.

00;06;20;20 - 00;06;36;03

Speaker 1

Good at all of those things. They really good at all of those things. What you typically end up with a somebody who's okay and all of those things, and then what they do is they kind of avoid the things that they're not great at. They focus on the things that they want to do and the things that they're better at in the real world.

00;06;36;03 - 00;06;50;26

Speaker 1

Like if you just took those people and focus them in the area that they are best at, then you are going to benefit. I mean, this is like, think about it like a team, right? Like sales is a team sport. Okay? So think about this like a team sport mentality. Your quarterback is not going to be the best receiver.

00;06;50;27 - 00;07;20;06

Speaker 1

Sure is not going to be the best lineman. But when you ask somebody to be your opener, be your closer. Be the person that's managing the account. Growing at a cow. What you're asking for is one person to play all of the roles. Obviously, like you as the owner, oftentimes you're the person that's kind of like doing everything, but if you exclude you, your first hire on the tech side, would you expect your tech one like your level one tech to also be the person that's capable of handling the higher level tech?

00;07;20;09 - 00;07;38;14

Speaker 1

Also, the person that's going to be your cybersecurity specialist also going to be like, you know, name all of these things, right? Like you'd go, nah, you know, we ought to do to make that more scalable, to de-risk it, to get better results. But we need to do is we need to specialize. The sale side is no different.

00;07;38;16 - 00;07;55;21

Speaker 1

It's just the fact that you know the tech side better and you know, the upside better. So you can see what the levels are more clearly and you can understand the benefits that are associated with specialize in those roles. But on the sales side, just because you don't understand or don't see the specialization or the effects, like that's what I see, right?

00;07;55;21 - 00;08;15;21

Speaker 1

Because I'm on the sales side of it, I go, hey, if we did over here on the sales side, what we do over here, on the upside, guess what we're going to get? We're going to de-risk the operation. Right. Because what happens in this case there were two reps okay. But what if you have one. That's full cycle all the way through and you lose that one rep.

00;08;15;22 - 00;08;35;24

Speaker 1

It's a high risk situation. And God forbid they are good at all of them. Now you're held hostage as a business owner because who's actually the most valuable person in your business? Most the person that can find the deals, convert the deals, keep the deals, grow the deals. That's the most important person in your business. So break it down to its components.

00;08;35;24 - 00;08;53;23

Speaker 1

You're going to de-risk it. You're going to make it more scalable. If you make the sale side more like the tech side, you're going to look at that and go, hey, if we need to double this, I can do that. As opposed to going and finding 2 or 3 more unicorns, crossing my fingers and hoping that they're good at all of the functions, and that on that side of the house.

00;08;53;25 - 00;09;14;15

Speaker 1

All right, you're going to get better production. You're going to get better quality outputs, just like you do on the tech side, because you have the right person doing the right job. Like if you hired the equivalent of somebody who's capable of doing everything on the tech side and said, I want you to take all level one calls, I want you to handle all the initial tickets.

00;09;14;15 - 00;09;35;09

Speaker 1

I also want you to handle everything in between. And then also when things reach a point where we would typically call on you for, you know, better advice and consulting and, you know, more strategy in the that we also want you to do that that person doesn't want to do all of that anymore. Then the person that's capable of closing deals wants to go out and make 120 phone calls a day.

00;09;35;09 - 00;09;56;14

Speaker 1

Here's what we typically structure. We say let's start with SDR. So start with BTR as ISR as whatever you want to call them. Right? Like you have one role that is responsible for catching everything that happens to be coming inbound, squeezing everything out of that. Right. Like as much as possible, and going outbound and creating some opportunities. That's putting opportunities on the table, right?

00;09;56;14 - 00;10;19;27

Speaker 1

For somebody else. The next person, the closer, is responsible for running discovery, guiding it through. If you're doing an assessment and then delivering the proposal and closing the deal and handling objections, they are responsible for converting those deals. Openers, closures. Once the deal is closed, we hand it to an account manager who is responsible for retention. So there's a customer service account management side of it, but also growth, right.

00;10;19;27 - 00;10;37;21

Speaker 1

Like they're in a sales role too. Like they are looking for opportunities to upsell. They are looking for opportunities to maximize LTV. They're certainly looking for opportunities to keep that person for the long haul. All three are sales roles. Does this work like I mean, that's the question I was get like, well, I mean, if we want to do that, like does that X, does that model actually work now?

00;10;37;24 - 00;10;58;18

Speaker 1

Like we have one that we restructured late last year. We did some some revamps in the first quarter. And now we're seeing 30% growth in that business where other people are coming to us in the market at large, by the way, is largely flat. If not declining. Okay. So we're seeing significant improvements because we have the right person in the right seat.

00;10;58;21 - 00;11;15;07

Speaker 1

We are specialized and we are able to grow more efficiently in order to hire somebody. We don't have to hire somebody that's capable of doing all three. We can more effectively hire for the specific role that we're actually hiring for. So if you're looking at it, you're saying, my close rates are dropping. Sales are just slowing in general.

00;11;15;09 - 00;11;36;12

Speaker 1

Then maybe it's not your reps. Maybe it's not even necessarily the process. Maybe it's the model. Maybe it's the underlying model that you're selling with. Do I need to specialize? Am I am I not seeing the results that I want? And is this perhaps the thing that's going to get me to the next level and to de-risk the business, make it more scalable, get better results, and position me better?

00;11;36;12 - 00;11;58;09

Speaker 1

When confidence everything returns in the economy, chances are it will. So hopefully this has been helpful for you. If it has, go ahead and subscribe to the channel. There's also an mSRP sales toolbox.com. I have just a library of resources that we're adding to every single month. Playbooks. It's, forecast models. It's guides and checklists, like just sales resources that we're creating for clients.

00;11;58;09 - 00;12;14;11

Speaker 1

Oftentimes that we just create like a template for and go ahead and drop it in the toolbox, absolutely free. If you want to subscribe to that, you'll have lifetime access and get everything as we add more stuff into it. Or you can subscribe to my email newsletter as well the links below on that. So again, hope it's been helpful and see you in the next video.

00;12;14;13 - 00;12;17;04

Speaker 1

Adios!