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Welcome to Episode 259 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…

• Golden rules of MSP sales & marketing: I asked my MSP marketing Facebook group what their golden rules of sales and marketing would be, and I’ve got the highlights for you.


• 3 ways to kill your MSP’s sales: There are many mistakes MSPs make that stop them from winning new clients. Here are three that I see holding back MSPs everywhere.


• How MSPs can build self managing teams: If you have to turn up every day in order for your business to function, then you need to start paying special attention to your team and developing them. My guest explains how.


• Paul’s Personal Peer Group: Jonah in California wants to know whether to include trust badges on his MSP’s website and I have a very clear answer.

Golden rules of MSP sales & marketing

One of the best things about working in the channel is just how collaborative MSPs are, and I see this in communities all the time. I’m sure you do too. In fact, I’ve watched people who are in direct competition with each other – they literally lose clients to each other – I’ve watched them collaborate and help each other in times of need. Recently, I asked a bunch of MSPs who are in my Facebook group what their golden rules of sales and marketing would be, and I’ve got the highlights for you right here.

So I have this Facebook group, which you really should join if you’re determined to improve your marketing and get new clients for your MSP. Just go into Facebook, search for MSP marketing, but do make sure you’re looking in the group search and not in the pages search, and it is free to join. It’s also a vendor free zone, something we did about five years ago, kicking all the vendors out. The quality as you can imagine, has been much higher since because there’s no one there doing any selling. There’s just people adding value.

I asked the two and a half thousand members of my MSP Marketing Facebook group what their golden rules would be for marketing and sales, and here are some of the many replies that we received…

So I kicked off with my own, which is to never discount. I think that you should add value when you need to do a deal, but never cut your prices. Cutting prices is such a dangerous thing to do. Now, sticking with pricing, Dan Baird said it’s better to over-price rather than under-price. I agree with you there, thank you, Dan.  And Don Mangiarelli said, never disclose pricing in an email – you should always be at a sit down meeting.

Keith Nelson said, never price on commodity sales. Good, better, or best packages. Keith also dropped some more value bombs. He said, never think that you are too small for a big contract; never sell technology, sell business outcomes, enhanced with secure technical solutions; and never do a QBR on how great you are, only report on business outcomes and measurable business results. I love these, thank you very much, Keith.

Aaron Weir then dropped a comment, and Aaron always brings value to the conversation. He said, never send a contract over email, always present in person.  I completely agree with you on that, Aaron. It is a lot harder to get the meeting and to sit down with someone, but you’re much more likely to get the sale if you do it.

Okay, a few more. Rob Williams said, never over promise. Jonathan Scofield said, wherever your prospect is, there thou shall also be – it’s quite hard to talk in kind of biblical text like that. And Jeff Weight said, have a yearly price increase called out in your contract.

Now there were loads more comments with more great advice in that thread. And if I didn’t mention you this time, apologies, it really was a great thread. Do you know, I’d be interested to know though, what your golden rules would be for marketing or selling your MSP. Will you drop me an email and let me know? My email is hello@mspmarketingedge.com

3 ways to kill your MSP’s sales

Most MSPs want new clients and yet most scupper themselves in several ways. Mostly it’s through a complete lack of having a marketing system, and the keyword there is “system”. You can’t do marketing haphazardly now and again and expect to build a solid pipeline of leads and prospects.

Good marketing requires consistently implementing a small number of actions that identifies potential future clients, qualifies them so you know you want to work with them, engages with them, builds a relationship with them and puts you in front of them at the exact moment they are ready to consider buying what it is that you do.

There are many mistakes MSPs make that stop them from winning new clients. Here are three sales killers that I see holding back MSPs everywhere.

Sales killer number one is an IVR, you know what an IVR is, don’t you – when you ring up and you press one for this, press two for that. And you do know that people hate IVRs, don’t you? Rather than making your business stand out as bigger than it actually is, it just comes across as impersonal. There’s one MSP that I ring every now and again and they’ve got five options on their IVR. I’ve pressed all five buttons and each time I get through to the same first line support guy and I wonder how many potential clients just put down the phone when they hear an IVR menu. People buy from people, they hate automation that they perceive gets in their way. And just because you have a clever IVR solution in your VoIP toolkit, doesn’t really mean that you should use it.

Sales killer number two is marketing from your point of view. Most MSP’s website and marketing materials are bland and lack impact and far too often they’re created from the business’s point of view. We do this, we do that. Who cares? Now you might, but your prospects don’t. They don’t care about you. They only care about what you can do for them. So put yourself in their shoes, be them, work out their buyer persona. What do they need? What do they want? Most importantly, what do they fear?

I once helped an MSP to rewrite his homepage and his company was an education specialist here in the UK. And so we were asking the questions of what’s the average head teacher scared of? They’re scared of lost learning time, they’re scared of a bad Ofsted, which is the regulator here in the UK, and they’re scared of the school screwing up from the head teacher’s point of view. An MSP that already specialises in education and already supports, let’s say 1500 teachers is so much safer than one that doesn’t.

And we don’t need to talk about the business. We just need to look at it from the head teacher’s point of view and demonstrate that they can mitigate most of their fears with one no-brainer decision. Interestingly, by the way, thinking this way makes price just a factor in the buying decision and not the factor in the buying decision, even in the price sensitive education market.

Sales killer number three is being samey. If you go and Google IT support in your town and click on the first 10 websites that come up, regardless of whether they’re in the adverts, in the map listing or the organic listing, that doesn’t matter. You’ll notice they’re all really similar, different words, different pictures, but the same themes, the same offerings, no real clear differentiation.

And now look at your website and compare it to those other 10 websites. It’s probably the same problem. Your website probably says more of the same things that all the other guys are saying. But samey kills sales, because the people you want to talk to are an uneducated audience. They don’t know what they don’t know, so they make buying decisions at an emotional level and not using their brains. They pick an MSP that feels good to them. If your marketing is the same as everyone else’s, you’ll just be compared to everyone else and you don’t want that because then you have a one in 10 or even worse chance of engaging with them. Always better to stand out and to be different. Standing out and being different is the key to having more conversations with more of the right people.

How MSPs can build self managing teams

Featured guest: Joe Travaglione is the Founder and CEO of Future State Cyber, a forward-thinking cyber security and management consulting firm. With over twenty five years of experience in the IT and cyber security sectors, Joe specialises in helping businesses strengthen their IT infrastructures through innovative solutions that prioritise security, efficiency, and scalability. His expertise extends across leadership, managed services, and virtual CIO (vCIO) strategies, empowering clients to navigate the ever-evolving landscape of technology with confidence.

Joe is a trusted advisor for businesses looking to streamline operations, enhance cyber security measures, and implement proactive IT strategies. He has a proven track record of optimising performance for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and internal IT teams, using frameworks that emphasise efficiency and risk management. His leadership philosophy centres on collaboration, innovation, and the power of positivity, ensuring that his clients not only meet their IT goals but also exceed their long-term business objectives.

Beyond his technical expertise, Joe is passionate about empowering teams,