The Dumbest Sales Advice I've Seen This Week (For MSPs)

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;20;01

Speaker 1

So I've got some time to kill the other day, and I'm on Facebook, guiltily scrolling through, and I see an ad. Every sales expert is telling you the same. Like I can't help myself. So I click this ought to be good. Every expert, a sales expert is telling you the same lie. You've got to build rapport and then sell and then, you know, meanwhile, your prospects are checking their phone and you're rolling their eyes or, you know, blowing you off or whatever.

00;00;20;02 - 00;00;40;23

Speaker 1

The only thing is, you've got to buy his $37 course to know how to sell without rapport. And I see this kind of nonsense all the time. And it's really frustrating for MSB sellers because it's a based on a massive misunderstanding of what rapport is. And I want to set the record straight. Hey what's up? I'm Ray green, founder of MSP Sales Partners, where we all be MSPs and IT companies, scaler sales team.

00;00;40;23 - 00;00;56;58

Speaker 1

And one of the things that we talk about in the consultative sales process is the process of building rapport and the process of, you know, establishing the right type of relationship on the front end so that you can sell a lot of gurus like the one that I that I mentioned, have a fundamental misunderstanding over what rapport is.

00;00;56;58 - 00;01;29;35

Speaker 1

And so they think when you go in and you have small talk and you're exchanging pleasantries and you are, you know, talking about the weather or you're talking about the local football team and all the other shit that goes into that, that you're building rapport. You don't want to mistake small talk with rapport, rapport, by definition, is establishing trust, establishing credibility, establishing some sense of authentic connection that I think you can solve my problem, that I'm going to believe you when you offer me a solution, and I'm going to believe that you have my best interest when you are asking me questions.

00;01;29;35 - 00;01;52;56

Speaker 1

That is the process of rapport. And the reality is you don't get that by talking about the dogs in the pictures. You don't get that by talking about the local high school team. You might get a lot of likability, but you don't necessarily get credibility. And here's the key part I trust you to solve my problem. Trust you to have the experience, the expertise, the resources, the solution to make my pain go away and to make my problems go away.

00;01;52;56 - 00;02;11;00

Speaker 1

Because after all of the small talk, then we're going to get down to business. Because when you're selling things like my network that I work on and that my whole company and my business works on, you're selling backup solutions and you're selling protection from ransomware, you're selling cyber security. You're selling solutions that really matter to me as a business like ability only goes so far.

00;02;11;00 - 00;02;30;00

Speaker 1

It's credibility to actually do the job. And that is what rapport is based on. Do they believe that your response time when you say it's going to be fast, is actually going to be fast? Do they believe that when your techs call in, they offer to to help that they're not going to be you're speaking in jargon and pissing off your employees and acting like a holes.

00;02;30;02 - 00;02;48;10

Speaker 1

Those are the things that I need to know in order to buy your services. And the rapport that I need to do that is based on your credibility. It's based on the trust that you were going to deliver on the solutions that you say you're going to deliver. And small talk, frankly, is irrelevant. Like for a lot of people, small talk is actually annoying.

00;02;48;10 - 00;03;02;37

Speaker 1

Like I'm I'm one of them. I'm not I'm not a small talk person. It's just not my personality. It's not the way that I'm wired up, the way that I process information. So when somebody comes in and starts to spend six minutes talking to me like shit, I'm lost. Like I do not care. I want to get down to business.

00;03;02;44 - 00;03;23;23

Speaker 1

Now I know that I might be the anomaly, right? Like you may be if you're talking to my wife. She loves it. Like you're going to talk to her. And that may help, but that doesn't mean she's going to buy a serious solution from you. She will shake your hand, she will say hi, but that does not mean that she has the kind of trust and belief in you as an authority and as an expert to actually solve the problem.

00;03;23;25 - 00;03;44;31

Speaker 1

The thing about rapport in a consultative sales process is that rapport is it can be established on the front end, right? Like there are ways to establish rapport quickly, but it is not a one time event. If you're selling consultative services and you go through a process and a playbook that says build rapport, don't think that because that's step one or that step two, that that step is done like that.

00;03;44;31 - 00;04;10;01

Speaker 1

That step continues throughout the entire process. Now there's two things that I think about in terms of building rapport the right way. One is at the very onset, how do you establish the initial trust in the initial report that you need to sell? Well, you show up professionally, you show up on time, you show up prepared, you show up having done some homework on the company, and you ask questions, or you make statements that demonstrate I saw more than your family picture on the desk.

00;04;10;05 - 00;04;27;37

Speaker 1

I actually spent like 30 minutes actually looking up your company and looking up what you did and looking at the team and seeing what challenges you might have and understanding your industry and understanding the like, what this conversation was going to be about. I'm going to ask some initial questions right out of the gates that show I kind of know what I'm talking about, right?

00;04;27;37 - 00;04;46;34

Speaker 1

So I'm going to ask questions that probe and then identify proactively some of the issues that I expect that you're going to be having. If they filled out a form and you're doing this in response to something that I went through, the information that you did, that you put down, that I read the answers, that I actually gave it some thought physically, like as a like your body language, your handshake, what you're wearing.

00;04;46;34 - 00;05;06;01

Speaker 1

Don't wear a tank top like I if you're selling MSP services, don't wear a tank top. But like if you show up in your in your professional like in your in, you're confident and that's what you exude. And that's where your project, you're going to be able to build rapport. If you show up and you're kind of needy and you smell like smoke and you're, you know, looks slovenly, there's you're going to ruin your rapport.

00;05;06;01 - 00;05;25;39

Speaker 1

Small talk or not. Right? So those are the things that you can do on the onset to actually build rapport. Now the key to rapport is you've got to maintain it and you've got to build on it throughout the entire consultative sales process. Now, how do you do that? You ask really targeted questions that show, I know your business, I know your industry.

00;05;25;48 - 00;05;47;24

Speaker 1

I know your pain, I know your so I know the challenges that you're facing. So if you sell to a specific niche or an industry, make sure that your questions include software specific things, specific things about their platforms, case studies that you know from, examples of other things that you've seen, industry reports, industry trends. Can you show up and actually be a resource for them about their industry?

00;05;47;26 - 00;06;02;46

Speaker 1

If you don't specialize in that niche, that's okay. Like you have this cool tool called GPT, I called Copilot. Like, you can get in there and spend 20 minutes and say, hey, this is the company that I'm going to to meet with. This is the form that they filled out or this is the initial call that they had.

00;06;02;46 - 00;06;19;56

Speaker 1

Or even if you don't have that information, you can start to probe and identify what are the issues that they're going to be facing, what questions can I ask to demonstrate that I've got some some experience that I've, you know, that I, that I've invested my time into understanding their business. The other thing you can do is like, think about the follow up questions, right?

00;06;19;56 - 00;06;42;16

Speaker 1

Like so many people are in a rush to like go through the checklists and they're in a rush to, to like ask this guest this as this, that they're not actually listening and saying, hey, tell me about that. Like, what's that? What's the impact of that? Can you establish yourself as a resource where you're you're digging in and asking really smart, effective follow up questions, questions that maybe even make them think right, that make them sit back?

00;06;42;26 - 00;07;03;26

Speaker 1

I don't know, man. That's a really good question. If you ever hear that's a really good question and they mean it, then, you know, like you were in the process of building rapport along the same lines, like respectfully challenging some of their assumptions is another great way to build rapport. Like we we think being agreeable all the time is what's going to get us like biggest, most likable.

00;07;03;35 - 00;07;19;37

Speaker 1

It might, but doesn't make you the most credible if you want to be credible when you hear things that they say that may not be right, or there's an opportunity to respectfully challenge that, it shows that you're an expert. Like that demonstrates confidence more than anything. Now, that doesn't mean like, call out that the wrong all the time.

00;07;19;37 - 00;07;49;49

Speaker 1

It doesn't mean, you know, be disagreeable for the sake of being disagreeable. But don't be afraid to to challenge an assumption. Something like, oh no, my, you know, my my one guy down go down the hall has everything covered. Okay. Totally understand. Do you feel confident that he is on top of the cybersecurity trends and what's happening there, as well as, like, the latest in network advancements and some of the tools, like, have you guys gone into that or gone some of the conferences or and you're starting to identify like, well, maybe not, like maybe we haven't done this right.

00;07;49;49 - 00;08;06;50

Speaker 1

And those opportunities are around all over the place where you're selling IT services for you to because people don't know what you know, like you're actually the expert, you know, ten times more than almost everybody you're sitting in front of. And they're going to tell you things are not accurate. You know, they're not accurate. But do you ever call it out?

00;08;06;55 - 00;08;26;59

Speaker 1

Do you ever find like a creative, effective way to to push that back and have them think and go, oh yeah, maybe you're right. And another thing you can do is think about the world and the way that you're asking questions and having that conversation in terms of impact, not just the symptoms that they're experiencing. Right. So like the business result of that problem.

00;08;26;59 - 00;08;48;09

Speaker 1

Yeah, we have you know, slow response time has that because that affected morale. Is that affected productivity. Are there any hard costs associated with that. Like what's like from a business standpoint is that a big issue? Is that a small issue like what's what's behind what's behind the curtain on that? Right. Like, this is how the process of real rapport is built in, in a, in a process.

00;08;48;09 - 00;09;06;59

Speaker 1

It's so frustrating to me when people talk about rapport and they think it's about the weather and the, the local, you know, football team and everything else. Right, like or the family pictures. Those things are fine. Like if that's your style and charm is, you know, something that you have I don't. But if you if you have that and it works, we cool.

00;09;06;59 - 00;09;27;43

Speaker 1

But don't mistake that for rapport. And for the love of God, don't buy a $37 course from somebody that says they're going to teach you to sell without rapport, because selling without exchanging pleasantries and small talk as easy. I mean, doing it my whole life. You don't need any of that, but you absolutely need rapport. And that is why every sales expert is telling you the same.

00;09;27;43 - 00;09;50;43

Speaker 1

Why? And it's because it's not a lie. It's the truth. It's just a fundamental misunderstanding of what rapport actually is. I hope that helps. If it has subscribe to the channel, or if you want to dive into more mssp sales, resources. We have our MSP Sales toolbox at MSP Sales toolbox.com where we drop in monthly resources. We drop in playbooks, objection handling guides, different frameworks.

00;09;50;47 - 00;10;05;43

Speaker 1

Different trends on what's working in sales templates. And just go to MSP sales toolbox.com and grab that and hope to see you in the next video. Adios.