The 5-Email System That Revives Dead Leads (MSP Edition)

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If you're fixing ad hoc one off like break, fix problems for your prospects and then they ghost

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you. After you mentioned managed services, I'm going to show you how a short, really targeted

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five email sequence can help you restart conversations by shifting their mindset, giving

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them some education, and nurturing them along the way. Without you as a salesperson having to do all

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the heavy lifting. Let's dive in. So let's coaching an MSP seller recently who had a very specific

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issue that they brought to us. And it was, you know, hey, we had this prospect, they had a server issue.

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It was a break fix problem. And we went in, we fixed it. And you know, the thought was, you know, if

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we fixed this really quickly, if we show how good our team is, if we show the quality and the

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caliber of our customer service, we will have earned the right to talk about managed services.

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So they went in there, they did their job, they fixed it. And then when they started to talk about

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managed services, crickets, they got ghosted immediately afterwards, which was really confusing

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to them because the prospect was super grateful. The initial emails were like, hey, this is awesome!

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They were quick to pay like it was. They were on top of it. They were happy and they were confused,

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right? The person that the MSP seller was confused. Why couldn't we have the conversation about

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Maynard services? And here's the thing. After you fix something, it's really important to realize,

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first of all, just the psychology that goes into that. They no longer feel any pain, right? Like they

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feel relief. Now, you know, as a as an MSP person, as an IT person, as a tech person,

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you know that pain is temporary. Well, if you're if you're just being reactive, it's just a matter of

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time before you call us back with something else. Like, you know that it's temporary. They don't. So

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what they have is full on relief. You know, they're thinking, hey, this is awesome. Like. And by the way,

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really grateful to you for fixing it. Now, what I'm not going to tell you is don't do this. Like I'm

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not going to tell you. Fixing break fix is a bad idea to move people or migrate people,

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or transition them into managed services. The last thing you want to do is have somebody call in

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with an IT problem, which means it is important. It's critical they're making some investment in

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it, right? There's some infrastructure, something going on, and you have a live person on a phone

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with a problem, with a pain. The last thing that you want to do is say, go talk to another IT

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provider, right. Like go talk to somebody else. And let's hope that they don't have a

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process or a system in place to migrate you or sell you into to managed services more effective

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than us. Right? So you don't necessarily want to do that. Taking the break fix problem is not the

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problem. It's what you do after you've solved that problem. The reality is, I've talked to hundreds of

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MSP sellers and most people will follow up once. The follow up twice, you know, was was

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just following up here. You know, we we fixed the server. We did, you know whatever it was XYZ wanted

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to have a conversation about how to prevent this in the future. You know, could we. Could we chat

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this time? Could we, you know, do an assessment? Could we do this? Could we do that? They follow up

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once or twice and they don't get a response. And so they move on and they move on because they

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know like hey, this this person is qualified like as a prospect. They're qualified. Like it's a

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business that we could we could help. Maybe they're in our industry or they're the size of

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company that we work with, or they're in our geography, like so technically they're qualified,

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but they're not ready to buy. Right. So there's no real intent in terms of managed services at the

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moment. So they they, you know, do one follow up, do two follow ups after they have fixed the problem,

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they stop following up because as a seller you don't want to be you don't want to be annoying,

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right. Like the last thing you want to do, you're like, listen, this person doesn't understand

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managed services. They don't understand what we do. They don't get the value. They're not going to

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appreciate the investment level. They're not going to appreciate the price. And it's just it's not

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worth my time as a seller to keep trying to follow up and keep badgering these people and

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keep annoying them. There's too big of a gap between where they are today and where they need

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to be for me as a seller to really pursue this. So after 1 or 2 attempts, I'm just going to I'm going

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to leave that and I'm going to I'm going to let it go with this pool of prospects. You kind of

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have two options. One is you can say, we're just going to let it go, right? Like we one, we

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only deal with high intent buyers if the opportunity, not the prospect but the

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opportunity is not qualified. Meaning good company. We could service them but there's no intent. So

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there's no actual opportunity. There's no actual deal. We're not interested in that. Right. So we're

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just going to kick the can on that. That's option one. Option two is you build a system

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that helps nurture them, that helps move them from where they are. The gap right, like that helps move

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them from where they are to where you want them to be. And most MSPs do option one by default, and

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it's because they don't have a system in place. Right. So they make that follow up. They make the

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second follow up, and they say too much effort. Like it's not the juice isn't worth the squeeze

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on this. I'm moving on. So by default you're choosing number one. Smart MSPs are choosing

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number two. And that's exactly what I advise them to do. Now, the system isn't rocket science here.

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Like, the system is a five email sequence and you can make it seven. You can make it six. Like five

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is just like a sweet spot for me, where I feel like I have enough space to, like, make a case to

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make a strong argument, to get a couple different angles, like in that argument. So that's I can I

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can help educate somebody on the process and move them from here to there. You can make it more

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emails. You can make it fewer emails. Completely up to you. I pick five like it's a good, solid, sweet

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spot for me. And you know, I say, you know, after five, six, seven emails probably you're just like,

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you know, hammering somebody. So, you know, take five emails, right? And in this specific instance, what

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you can do on a on a break fix client is create a specific sequence in your CRM and

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create five emails. The first email is something like a case study. The case study that I would

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share first is something around a customer or business who didn't think they needed an MSP,

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right? Like so. If you can capture some some testimonials or some of their own verbiage or

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some of their own wording, perfect. If not, you can, you know, paraphrase where they were at with

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things and you highlight how this particular company didn't think they needed an MSP, they

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weren't big enough, or they weren't going to be a target, or they didn't manage enough money or

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whatever vertical you're in, like, you can, you can, you can fill in the blanks. But the purpose of

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this case study is to highlight this is a company that didn't think they needed an MSP. And then

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they discovered all of these vulnerabilities that they didn't know they have. They learned about the

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exposure. They learned about the costs that are associated. If you get if you get hacked. If you

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know, you get if you're the victim of a phishing scam, if somebody interrupts the, you know, the

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invoicing system, if you're in construction. Like there's all sorts of things that you can

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highlight here and you're, you're you're basically demonstrating company. Didn't think they needed an

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MSP. Learned about their vulnerabilities, made the switch. And this is where they are now. And this is

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how things are running. Right. So that's that's email number one. Email number two is something

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around the chaos factor right. Like break fix is very reactive. It's like kind of like a hair on

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fire mentality. In fact they should know this because they just came to you with a specific

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issue with a relevant issue just like this. So it's reactive, results in a lot of firefighting,

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results in a lot of frustration from employees, results in loss, productivity results in, you know,

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client issues, results in like all of the things that, you know, are associated with a reactive

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culture and a reactive environment, and tying that back to the business impact, right? So it's

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demonstrating. It's educating. Hey. Reactive. It actually has a huge impact on your

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business. And here are some of the ways through money, through morale, through

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productivity, through, you know, money on growth. Money on costs. You know, you've got productivity

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issues. You've got morale issues. You've got all sorts of things that you can tie into, like what

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is the reactive environment versus the proactive environment and what are the benefits. The third

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email that I would send would be around the real cost that's associated with, you know, break fix

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type of environments. Okay. So you can use I'm sure you've got a ton of examples of how reactive

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it is more costly to a business than the than being proactive. Because and you know,

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this, you know that one of the biggest issues that people have when they go from break fix to to

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managed services is this feels more expensive. Can you demonstrate in an email how it's not like

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the hidden cost of a reactive IT environment, right? Like what's the cost of, you know, of of an

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outage? What's the cost of server going down? What's the cost of anything like that? What's the

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cost of what are your employees having access to your stuff and then taking your stuff? I was I was

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part I was a CEO of a company that had an employee that we terminated that had access to

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stuff. Now, this was years ago before I knew about it. So forgive me now a lot of stuff was tied to

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his personal Gmail. We had one of our our corporate dashboards that was tied to it, and he

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came in. He wiped out our corporate dashboard, like wiped it out. It was on his personal Google email.

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And this is and this was a $15 million a year company. And so I very quickly learned about the

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cost of that. All right. I've now got to hire somebody to go stop that, because he's got all the

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data and rebuild it at the same time, not to mention the opportunity cost that's happening in

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between. Right. So can you highlight something like that in an email? The fourth email may be

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something like highlighting a strategy gap between companies that are using it as an asset,

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like a strategic asset to grow and to to build the business versus people that are looking at it

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as an expense. And what are the what are the costs and the difficulties of keeping up with

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cybersecurity? What about in an evolving world where you've got, you know, AI changing how people

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are hacking your shit every single day, and new phishing scams coming out every single day, and

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the amount of money and resources and time that you invest into staying up to date and all of the

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platforms and the programs and tech that you use to invest and how trying to manage that on your

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own is asinine, right? Like it's like, can you can you create some messaging around the strategy gap

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between a company that's doing it this way versus a company that's doing it this way? Right. Like one

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is almost risk by design and one is, you know, being proactive and, you know, having the strong

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infrastructure and everything. And then, you know, maybe email number five is something like a

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disaster story. It's the flip side of the first case study. It's somebody who, you know, originally

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said, we don't need MSP stuff, right? I actually like this one for the fifth email on purpose said

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we don't need, you know, managed services. We got this. And then they came back. Right. Because they

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said, we got this. And it turned out they didn't. Right. Like something happened. It was a it was a

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breach. It was ransomware. It was a, you know, a server going out. It was a critical client issue.

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It was something that came back, bit them in the ass. And they said like, all right, gotcha. Like

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we're we're back. Like, can you share that case study? And the reason I like that when it's fifth,

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by the way, is because if you've gone through one, which is kind of like the more positive story, and

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you've gone through two and three and four and you're still not there, then you know something

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that's like the disaster story. It's not fear mongering, by the way, when it's real. Like if it's

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real, it's not fear mongering, it's responsible. It's education. It's telling people this is the

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reality that is out there today. So can you share a story where somebody you know. Originally said,

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yeah, came back and you know, and then, you know, said, okay, we're ready to go and where they are

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today. Now, when you send these emails, what you're not doing is you're not pitching like, you're not

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saying, hey, like, here's specifically why I'm making this case, by the way, book of calls that

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you can buy or shit. What you're doing is you're trying to make this email valuable and

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educational in and of itself. The way that I actually frame this for a lot of our clients is,

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can you write an email that's shareable? Right. Like, can you write an email that's so good that

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when somebody reads it, they go, huh? You know, my buddy Joe and Jane should see this too. They

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let me forward it to a couple people, like, can you write an email that is so valuable on its own

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that it's worth consuming, and they get some degree of insight. And by the way, that also

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positions you better positions you as a better like a stronger expert. Your status goes up for a

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whole lot of reasons, but you're also making deposits instead of making withdrawals. Now, it

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doesn't mean don't have something in the email that says, if you want to talk to us, you know, here,

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like don't make it difficult to to talk to you, but don't make it a sales email like it is a it

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is an educational email that is designed to say, I am teaching you this. I am sharing this with you

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as as an insight. And if you come to the conclusion that you would like to reach out, then

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you know somewhere on the email, make it super, super easy, frictionless. But don't make that the

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purpose of the email. Make the email something that I would want to forward to my friend. Now, in

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this case, with the person that we were coaching, we we installed that that sequence. Now it was it

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was like a week and a half too late. Like I like to get these things faster, but it was like a week

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and a half too late. But we installed the email. We said, let's, let's write this thing out. Let's, let's

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knock it out and let's put it into a sequence. Let's send it out about once a week is what we

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did. You could do once a week, once every other week. I'm not a huge fan of like if you're if

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you're going to fire them like sending him every other day because that just screams I'm trying to

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sell you. I'm trying to close you instead of I'm trying to educate you. I'm trying to nurture you.

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You want to remember? The goal is they're here. You're trying to get them here, right? Like. And you

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don't have to necessarily accelerate it, like, you've email's doing the work. You're going to

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push a button in your CRM and it's going to go, so what is the most effective way to get them there.

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Okay. So we sent it. Four weeks later he gets a call. It says hey, we're curious. You mentioned

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in one of the emails that they that you do security assessments. How much are those? Now we

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have an opportunity. We have taken a prospect who's qualified and turned it into an opportunity

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that is qualified. And the best part is they showed up with higher intent. They showed up with

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better education, better understanding, better knowledge, and they showed up thinking that

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he and they as a company had more credibility Because they aren't just now in the

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market. They're in the market because of them. Right. Like they had the opportunity to educate

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them and bring them there, which improves their credibility and improves their status and

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dramatically improves the likelihood of them closing that deal. Now, here's the thing. Like this

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is a five email sequence, and it's not a magic wand. It's not going to work on everybody. Right.

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Like it's you're going to have this break fix issue. You're going to create a sequence when they

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leave, when they don't, you know, respond to your first or second reach out, then you're going to

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trigger the sequence. The sequence is going to go to work at the end of the sequence, you should

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have a task that says call this person back. Right. Like after that 50 mil goes out, you know, after,

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you know, 2 or 3 days, you should have a task that's automatically generated that says, call

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this person and you should call them and you should say, hey, how's that server going? And by the

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way, you know, anything else that we can look at to ensure that that doesn't happen again and be more

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proactive about this? You know, maybe we have a free assessment something like and make your

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offer right. It's not going to work on everybody. It will work on a percentage of people though. and

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in in the MSP world a few deals meet. It makes a lot of difference in terms of revenue, so the

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small percentage is worth the effort. The kicker though, is this works on a lot of things. People

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think that content is just a top of funnel machine, right? Like that. We're supposed to publish

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content on social to get more leads. We're supposed to publish content to drive more demand.

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And that's a great use of of content, right. Like, that's I mean, we use it for, for that purpose. It's

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like and it works really well. But content is actually arguably more valuable in the

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middle and the bottom of the funnel than it is at top of the funnel, because it can be more targeted.

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It's it hits harder. The receptivity tends to be higher, the open rates tend to be higher. The and

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because, you know just a little bit about them right in this in this situation, you know what's

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keeping them from getting here. So you can create the messaging that's very targeted to do

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exactly that. And you can do this with anything, any issue that is recurring in your

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business in the sales process, if you run into price objections, price resistance frequently. Well,

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do you have a sequence that's set up to trigger in the background that helps people understand

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why cheaper is not better? So that after they tell you know that you've got information, you've got

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targeted content that's designed to help them understand why cheaper is not better. Like, do you

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get ghosted after discovery? Do you get like, whatever it is, like you can like sit down and

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name your top 3 to 5 issues and say, hey, you know what would happen if we created a

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simple sequence for each one of these things? And every time the seller ran into it did their part

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like did everything they could, just said, let's give it a shot, right? Let's push the button, let's

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let content do some of the work, and then let's give them a ring. After that, they've had a chance

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to do that. This is the exact same strategy that people are using in our SDR accelerator, our

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fractional management program to five x the results of everyone else. We dug in, we said, hey,

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what's going on? Like, what are you doing this? Oh, well, every time the SDR has a disposition, it

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triggers a certain thing. The STR is required to say which disposition it is. They're not ready

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right now. They have a current provider. They don't need it. They don't know whatever that is. And it

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triggers a very specific sequence that then goes through. Now theirs was a little bit longer. It's

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like three months and the stars calling after three months. Well, they're calling a very

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different list, I promise you, than everyone else. So this isn't just a break fix issue. This is how

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are you using content? How are you using automation? How are you using the messaging and

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strategy to sell asynchronously for you? Because the best part is, as a sales person, this is

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working for me in the background, right? Like, I'm I'm going, okay, I don't have to call every single

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week. I don't have to badger this person. I don't have to do these things. What I can do is I can

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let this do some of the work for me. And then when I call, in some cases, I'm calling a warmed

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up prospect and it will change the game for you. My recommendation? You know, name the very specific

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sticking point, right that you are you are targeting in this case break fix. Okay, so somebody

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ghosts you after breakfast. Let's name that as the problem now. All right. What are my best

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arguments for that person? Like, if I could sit down that person and say, okay, hear me out.

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Here's my argument for this and here's all my evidence for it. Like, this is the best case that

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I've got. Like, get all that together, right? So name the sticking point, get all your evidence and your

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arguments together. Then plug that in and sit down and write a five email sequence. Again,

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don't make it salesy. Make it value add. Make it educational. Make it something that they want to

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share with people. Write those emails. Then fourth, plug them into your CRM into a sequence. Make sure

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to add a task for yourself or for your salesperson to call at the end of that sequence,

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and then fifth, track it, and then sixth. I guess just repeat that whole damn thing for all of the

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major sticking points and see what happens. So I hope that helps. Really, really good way to to be

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using content in addition to using content for, you know, top of funnel lead generation, everything

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like that. And if this has been helpful, feel free to do 1 or 2 things. We've got the MSP Sales

20:28

Toolbox, which is a collection of resources, templates, playbooks, frameworks, you name it, things

20:34

that we use with clients. We drop them in periodically into the toolbox and we update that

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frequently. You can have access to that for life for free. That is at MSP Sales Toolbox. Com the

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links below as well. And then you can also join my weekly newsletter on email. The link for that is

20:51

in the description where we share more sales advice, sales tips, things like that. So, um, I will

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see you in the next video. Thanks for watching audios.