WIN MORE CLIENTS fast using this Proven MSP Proposal Strategy
Ray guides viewers through creating two plan options and making a compelling recommendation to seal the deal. Subscribe for more insights on growing your business through effective sales techniques.
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Welcome to Repeatable Revenue, hosted by strategic growth advisor , Ray J. Green.
About Ray:
→ Former Managing Director of National Small & Midsize Business at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he doubled revenue per sale in fundraising, led the first increase in SMB membership, co-built a national Mid-Market sales channel, and more.
→ Former CEO operator for several investor groups where he led turnarounds of recently acquired small businesses.
→ Current founder of MSP Sales Partners, where we currently help IT companies scale sales: www.MSPSalesPartners.com
→ Current Sales & Sales Management Expert in Residence at the world’s largest IT business mastermind.
→ Current Managing Partner of Repeatable Revenue Ventures, where we scale B2B companies we have equity in: www.RayJGreen.com
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Transcript
Speaker 1
Hey. What's up? I'm Ray green, former sales executive turned nomad entrepreneur. I've turned around eight sales teams. I used to be managing director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and oversaw national small and mid-sized business. I've led a couple of turnarounds for private equity groups as a CEO, and for the past several years, I have coached hundreds of IT business owners and MSPs on how to close more deals with better sales processes.
::Speaker 1
And one thing that comes up over and over and over is how do I structure my proposal? Going into the proposal meeting, how do I actually structure that so that I can win more deals, stop getting ghosted and increase my EMR. And today I'm going to give you the only framework that you are going to need to structure your proposal.
::Speaker 1
So let's dive in. Now there's a couple of assumptions that I've got built into this okay. One is that you have run a proper discovery meeting. Call something where you've actually gone into what their problems are, what their pains are, and you know what those things are beyond needing to fix their infrastructure or improve their cybersecurity, whatever it is.
::Speaker 1
But that you've run this discovery and you're armed with some knowledge about what their current frustrations are. And the second is that you've run some sort of network assessment, right? Like you've plugged in something or even manually gone through looked at the network, looked at the infrastructure and have an idea of what the situation is. And third is that you've got two plans to offer your prospects in the proposal, where you'll make a recommendation on one, but you've got two that allow people to say this one or that one instead of saying yes or no, I'm assuming you've got discovery, I'm assuming you've got a network assessment, and I'm assuming that you've got two plans
::Speaker 1
in this. If that's the case, this is the only framework you need. Let's go. Where do you start in your proposal? Most people are going to open their proposal and they're going to have a title slide. And it's going to have their logo and it's going to say, this is what it's this is who this this proposals for in the very first slide is to say, so let me tell you all about me.
::Speaker 1
Let me tell you about my company. Let me tell you about our core values. Let me tell you how great we are. That is not where you start. If you are trying to run a high performance proposal, the first thing you're going to do is you're going to start with an agenda slide, okay. You're going to set the agenda for the meeting.
::Speaker 1
You're going to do this for two reasons. One is so that you can set expectations so that they can see the process they're going to go through. And they're not kind of wondering right, what's next? When am I going to hear about the money. You want to hear about the assessment work, when to hear about these other things like so you're actually just showing them for transparency and set expectations.
::Speaker 1
The second thing is you're taking control of this meeting. They want to know how much the services are going to be. They have questions in their mind, but you need to maintain control of the sales process. If you were going to close more deals, the second thing that you do after you set the agenda is you go back to that discovery meeting.
::Speaker 1
You identified. What were the problems, what were the pains, what were the frustrations? What were the gaps? What was the reason that they reached out to you in the first place? Or what was the reason that they even took your meeting in the first place? There was something. So what you're going to do is you're going to recap all of those pains, problems and frustrations.
::Speaker 1
You're going to say, last time we talked, we covered this and this and this and this and these were the challenges that you were facing. You're doing that partly to make sure that you got it right and that nothing has changed since you guys last talked. Okay. You're also doing that to basically transport them back to that time, because if you've run a proper discovery call and you've really unpacked like what the pains are and what those frustrations were, but then you had to leave, right?
::Speaker 1
Like you had to leave. You had to go do your network assessment. Maybe a week has gone by, maybe two weeks has gone by. So I'm trying to like teleport them or transport them into that time, trying to pick up momentum from where we left off, because every sale, in one way or another, every sale, even IT services, has an element of emotion to it.
::Speaker 1
So I'm trying to provoke those emotions. I'm trying to agitate those emotions, and I'm trying to remind them why they were pissed, right? Why we were talking, what the gaps were. All right. So I'm going to recap. These are the problems. These are the pains. These are the frustrations that you had last time we talked. Has anything changed?
::Speaker 1
Third thing you're going to do is you're going to share what you covered in the assessment, not the results of the assessment. Yet you're going to say this is what was in the assessment. You don't get into geek speak right? I don't make this overly technical or overly complicated. You're going to lose people. That's not the purpose of this.
::Speaker 1
The purpose of this is to essentially sell the assessment results. You're telling them, hey, we looked at the infrastructure, we looked at the servers, we looked at, you know, telecom, we looked at maintenance, we looked at what are the things that you covered in that assessment when you do that, you're highlighting? Hey, this was a robust assessment, right?
::Speaker 1
This isn't just a sales and marketing tool. This was something that we ran to identify what vulnerabilities were on your network, on your infrastructure, on your system. And I'm pre-selling what the results are going to be. Okay. So again, don't get overly technical here, but do highlight how thorough that assessment is. That lays the foundation for the next section, which is the actual assessment.
::Speaker 1
Right. Like the current state of their network, of their infrastructure, of their systems. This is where you were going to highlight what you found. It's best if you can do this visually, okay. If you have just a wall of text sitting on a PowerPoint slide, you're going to lose people. There's a lot of great tools out there that will help you, you know, put this into a good proposal format.
::Speaker 1
You know, with red, yellow, green it will give like a visual representation of what you found and what those things were. And if you have an opportunity to use those, certainly leverage those. Right. Picture's worth a thousand words. Don't go into everything that you found, because there are times, I'm sure you've done an assessment where you look at something.
::Speaker 1
It's just like, read across the board. You're going to spend the next 30 minutes diving into a bunch of technical jargon shit that they don't even fully care about or understand. Things that you probably know are really important, but they may not get. You want to highlight what were the gaps in that assessment that were relevant to their problems and their pains and their frustrations?
::Speaker 1
Now, beyond that, if there are some just egregious vulnerabilities, right, like things that are just, you know, abysmal, right? Like, okay, I've got to highlight a few of these things. Absolutely. Do that. But again, don't get too technical okay. So you're going to show them what the results are. And you got to tie it back to what they told you in the discovery call.
::Speaker 1
Then you're going to explain why those things matter to them. From a business standpoint. I as a non-technical person, as a business owner, if you tell me my server is outdated, if you tell me my computers aren't patched, okay, like I think I know why that's bad, but I don't really understand why that's bad. Why do I care?
::Speaker 1
Right? Like, what is the impact to me? What are the implications to me as a business owner? Put it in layman's language why these things matter. You've highlighted the most important parts of this assessment. Now tell me why I care. Tell me how it's going to cost me money. Tell me how it's going to frustrate my employees. Tell me how it's going to lose productivity.
::Speaker 1
Tell me how it's going to increase my expenses. Don't get lost in the technicalities of what this is. Talk to me about why I care now. What I'm going to do is show you the future state, what the future state of your system is going to look like again, visually. Ideally, if you can demonstrate we're going to flip all these red boxes to green.
::Speaker 1
I've said, this is where you are. I've said, that's why this is a problem. Now I'm showing you what the future state of working with us is going to be like. And that's why the piece in the middle, why things matter is so important. Because if you just show me red and then you just show me green intuitively again, I get it.
::Speaker 1
Like I get I should want green boxes, but I also know you're selling me something, so I don't totally get everything that you understand. So I'm not as technical as you. So I, as a business owner, I'm going to go okay okay. So you've highlighted where they are, why it matters what it's going to look like to work with you.
::Speaker 1
Now, what you want to do is you want to show them. Why is it unique to work with you? What is unique about you? Like as an MSP, one of the biggest challenges that you face is being commoditized, right? Like there's a similar tech stack. The the, the prices and the packages all feel and look kind of similar to me.
::Speaker 1
As a business owner, I'm not quite sure how to differentiate between you and the next guy or the next girl. So why should I work with you? What is unique about you? What is the unique selling proposition that you bring to the table? And I'm not talking about all the standard shit like everybody says the same thing. Like, hey, we love our customers, hey, we offer good service.
::Speaker 1
Hey, we have a, you know, we respond to tickets quickly. Not that like, what is it that you can say that you do that is unique relative to everyone else? Do you have some numbers? Right. Like maybe you have some response times, maybe you have some proprietary numbers that you're using to measure the performance of your business and your team.
::Speaker 1
Share that. Maybe you have a unique operating system within your business. Share that maybe you have a unique way of attracting great talent and bringing them in and retaining them better than all your competitors. Share that. Maybe you have an overwhelming amount of social proof and testimonials. You've got hundreds of five star Google reviews show that like, take some time to really take a step back and say, what is it that we as a service provider do that is different than everybody else?
::Speaker 1
What is our competitive advantage? What is the thing that differentiates us and makes us better? Now here's a bonus if you can tie that back to what their problems and their pains were, it'll go even further. And what I mean by that is if they say we don't like our current provider because response time sucks and you have a way of demonstrating with quantifiable proof that you do better and your response time is better.
::Speaker 1
Excellent. Because not only does it now differentiate you, they differentiate you in a way that is relevant to what they care about most. I have a video here on my channel about how to create a unique selling proposition. I encourage you to check it out if you haven't really done the homework here, because it is really, really important that at this stage your proposal doesn't just look and feel like everybody else.
::Speaker 1
Okay, so this is the time to really sell yourself and stand out and say, we are your choice. And this is exactly why, after I've shown them why why we're unique, then what I'm going to do is saying in switching is insanely easy. We have a proprietary onboarding process. I would show it visually if I could, I would name it, I would give it an acronym.
::Speaker 1
I would show like the steps one, two, three, like switching as easy as one, two, three, something along those lines. But you want something that reduces the perceived cost of switching because seen in network assessment. All right. That sucked. Understanding the implications to my business. All right. Now I'm now I'm concerned. Maybe there's some urgency there. And then what it's going to look like why you're unique.
::Speaker 1
Now one of the most common objections at that point is going to be such a pain in the ass to switch, right? I'm telling you, as a business owner, as a non-tech person, as a CEO who's made this decision, that is something that we think about. We think about the loss, productivity. We think about the disruption to the business operations.
::Speaker 1
We think about the fact that all these tech people always say it's going to be quick and easy and it takes longer. So take an opportunity, call out the fact that you've got an easy onboarding process. And by the way, if you don't have one, go create one because it is a common objection whether it's stated or not.
::Speaker 1
Now I've got two plans for you to pick from based on everything that I've learned, based on everything you told me in discovery, based on everything that we learned in the assessment, based on the action plan and the roadmap that it's going to take to get you to all those green boxes or all those high scores. We've got two plans for you.
::Speaker 1
And on that page or on that slide, you want something that is very simple. Imagine two simple columns, right. Like think about a SaaS product or something where they've got different levels and different plans and they just quite clearly show check checkmarks or XYZ or something like that. What the difference between the two plans are. Your proposal should not look like your invoice.
::Speaker 1
Okay, your invoice can be broken down into itemized charges and this and that. Don't overwhelm them with numbers. Don't create more questions than you're actually providing answers. Make it very clear these are the two plans. These are the core benefits. This is how you're covered. This is the investment level for both and Mr. and Mrs. Prospect. This is the one that I recommend for you and here's why.
::Speaker 1
Okay so you've got your two plans. You've got the recommendation. Now all you have to do is close. You move through this entire process. You've set it up with the agenda. You've gone through what their problems and pains were. You told them what you assessed. You showed them the current state. You told them why it mattered. You gave them the future state.
::Speaker 1
Told them why you were unique, made it easy to switch, presented two plans. Major recommendation. Now you have time to close. Is there any reason you wouldn't move forward today? Now it's time to sell. That's how I would structure my proposal if I was selling your services. I hope this has been helpful. If it has, subscribe to the channel for more videos on how to close more deals and grow your business, and if you have any questions, drop them below and I'll do my best to answer them all.
::Speaker 1
Audience. Love.
