What I Told 100 MSPs About Prospects Who Don't Buy

Last month I helped judge the MSP Salesperson of the Year award. And the thing that jumped out at me wasn't the talent in the room; it was the pattern. The top finalists, the top three, were all closing at or above a 68% close rate. And this is with real volume. This isn't, "Hey, I closed one deal last year and it was a referral from my mom," right? They have actual numbers behind them and they aren't cherry-picking the deals.

Every single one of them in the top three is running the exact same process. In fact, one of those top three this year is from the same company that produced a finalist two years ago running the same process. And I'm going to share that process with you step-by-step so that you can run it too.

Quick context: I was one of a handful of judges for the MSP Salesperson of the Year at the annual boot camp event that TMT and Kaseya put on. So I got to read through a stack of really powerful essays. I'm looking at the results, I'm looking at the numbers, and these are all people that I've coached for the past year, two years, three years. The cool thing is you don't just see the numbers, but you actually hear what they believe is driving those numbers.

We get down to three finalists, and it was a really tough call. We had Roland, who added about $49,000 in MRR last year with a 76% close rate. We had Bradley, who added about $41,000 in MRR last year with a 68% close rate. And then we had Brad—not Bradley, but Brad—who closed about $47,000 in MRR last year with a 72% close rate. Now Bradley, the person who closed 41,000 with a 68% close rate, actually comes from the same company that produced a salesperson named Elon, who had similar numbers—a little bit higher MRR, but similar close rate numbers—running the exact same process that we're going to talk about.

I think that's a really important point because that means we're not talking about unicorns. We're not talking about one-offs. We're talking about processes that drive results in a repeatable way, and so repeatable that multiple people at the same company incorporating the same process replicate the results too. So now you've got four proven people, and this company that's done it more than once, and they're all following the identical process. There's got to be an underlying pattern.

If you read their essays, they tell you directly: the process drives this result. So what is it? What is the process? And keep one thing in mind: these numbers aren't just inbound referrals. This is also outbound. These are full-cycle roles where they're out there hunting, prospecting, generating new business, as well as taking the referrals and the inbounds. So they're all running the same steps across the board. Here's what it looks like.

Step one is usually a 15-minute call. Call it a qualifying call, pre-discovery call, whatever you want to call it. On that call, you're basically asking one question: Are they a good fit? You ask more questions, but you're trying to get that answer. Not, "Are they high intent?" Not, "Is the budget already approved?" Not, "Is this a layup opportunity so I don't have to actually sell it?" You're qualifying at the prospect level, not the opportunity level. You're saying, "Do we serve this market? Is there a potential opportunity here?" And if there is intent, if they're in pain, they can't stand their current provider, whatever—great. Where are they at, what's the situation, what's the pain? But fundamentally, you're asking, "Can I sell something to this person at some point?" And if yes, I want to move them through to the next stage in the process.

I'll get pushback on this because some people only want high-intent prospects. So the initial screening call is designed to say, "Are you ready to buy something?" And listen, I get it. Especially if you're a founder and you're running your own sales calls, you don't have the bandwidth to nurture every deal or do proper follow-up on a longer sales cycle. I completely get that. And if you genuinely don't have the time, and you've got enough deal flow, and you're hitting your numbers, fine. Put an intent filter on that first 15-minute call. I've been in that phase myself.

But if you do that, just know you're leaving money on the table. Because a good full-time salesperson at another company is going to say, "Okay, cool, bring me that deal. I'll move them onto the next stage. I'll have a 60-minute discovery call and I'll figure out how to unpack the pain and figure out what their challenges are and create the opportunity instead of just capturing the one that's already there." So if you put a higher filter on that first call, you are leaving money on the table, but in some cases I get it. If your goal is maximum sales, keep that in mind.

The other thing that's happening on this 15-minute call is you're gathering intel that makes discovery a lot easier for you in the next step. And you're also doing some positioning. If the same person is running that initial qualification call that also runs discovery, you use that initial call to establish some status. Establish a little bit of hard-to-get, some framing on that call so you don't show up reeking of commission breath. You qualify, you make sure you're not about to waste an hour, and you figure out how you're going to run the discovery in the next stage.

(By the way, if you want the kind of breakdowns that you can hand to your team, that's what I do every week in my newsletter. You can sign up at raysemail.com, completely free.)

Step two is the full discovery. This is where you identify their problems and their pains. Those are two different things. Problems are facts, pains are feelings. The problem is their network is buggy or their internet keeps dropping; the pain associated with that is what it's costing them. It's the frustration, the lost productivity, looking bad in front of their own clients, or looking bad on sales calls because they can't keep a good connection. So you unpack the current setup, their incumbent provider or lack of one, any budget sensitivity, what their priorities are, how they rank some of the challenges and symptoms they're feeling, what they really want out of IT, and understanding how they look at that. How they're going to measure ROI. You learn their buying process, who's deciding, how to move forward, is there any real urgency? That's the job of discovery. Get everything that you need to build a strategic proposal that's actually going to land.

Most of them also run an optional technical discovery after that. So like an assessment tool, a network scan, or an on-site evaluation, something like that. Occasionally they skip it, but in almost every single case, there's some type of technical assessment that comes after the initial discovery call.

Next step is the presentation. And all four of these salespeople are running a slide deck with a structure. It's not a 40-page quote, it's not a book, it's not a pile of legalese and contracts and bullshit that people are going to obviously say, "Hey, I've got to look at this, I've got to read it." It's the same framework on every single call. It's not the same wording every time, but it's the same framework and structure. They go in, they use their presentation to recap what they heard in discovery, recap their priorities, position themselves, explain why they're different, what's unique about them, show them any proprietary processes they have, show them what the future state is going to look like if they work with them, reduce the perceived cost of switching (addressing the pain of switching providers), and ask for the money. All of that is done in the presentation.

Then the next stage is follow-up. We'd love it if everybody signed in the meeting. That's unfortunately not the case, so then they move to follow-up. And they built what I call BAMFAM: Book A Meeting From A Meeting. You never leave any part of the sales process without booking the next event or the next call or the next meeting.

That's the process. That is the same process that all of them are running. And I'll be straight with you, this mirrors the exact process that we install at MSP Sales Partners in my business. It's what we use in our own fractional sales management. It's what they primarily run on. It's what we write into our playbooks, it's what we coach against. We're actually building a platform right now that drops AI into each step of this stage to prep for it and get coaching and feedback on it when you do run it, and then strategize for the next step.

When I look at the results of the people who are killing it, this effectively mirrors that across the board. So here's my question: If you're not getting the results that you want right now from sales, if the close rates aren't where you want them to be, if you're telling yourself this year is just harder than ever, everything's different this year, it's going to slow down... If deals are taking longer than they have in the past... just remember there are people who are kicking ass right now. There are people who are crushing it right now. The question is, what are they doing that you're not?

Because one of the ways I've won my entire career in sales has been very simple: find what people are doing that is working, replicate it, get results from it, perfect it, and then refine it. Iterate on that as you go. And that's why I'm handing this to you. To me, it's remarkably consistent across every one of these people what they're doing. And they're all putting up some very impressive numbers that almost any business owner, MSP owner, would say, "Yeah, I'd love a salesperson that could post up 40, 50k MRR added every year with 60, 70, or higher than 70% close rates." So, they're getting results. Question is, are you? If not, take this process. Hope it helps. Adios.