LinkedIn is the number one place for MSPs to build relationships with potential clients, and here’s how. Also this week, how your MSP can excite ANY prospect, and the Disney lesson your MSP mustn’t ignore.

Welcome to Episode 326 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge.

MSPs: Never be ignored on LinkedIn, again

For MSPs, LinkedIn is the number one place to go farming, never hunting, but farming. Slow, steady, reliable relationship building with the exact people that you want to do business with. And that means adding new connections, ideally on a daily basis. Let me give you five super smart LinkedIn connection request messages that you can swipe and use today.

Farming on LinkedIn is about slow, steady, reliable relationship building with the exact people that you want to do business with. And the good news is that LinkedIn makes this incredibly easy, if you approach it the right way. Most MSPs massively underuse it. They log in every now and again, maybe post something, maybe like something, and then they wonder why nothing really changes. They get nothing out of LinkedIn. But the real power of LinkedIn is in building your network, your connections.

Think of every connection as a tiny little seed. The more relevant seeds you plant, the more opportunities grow later.

Your job is simply to show up every day and plant a few more seeds. So how do you do that? Very simply, you search for the people you most want to do business with -business owners, managers, decision makers, in your target verticals and your target geographical areas. If you serve financial firms, go and look for accountants/CPAs, financial planners. If you specialise in manufacturing, look for operations managers, plant managers, supply chain directors. If you are local only and you just want local businesses, search by your town or your region.

And then, here’s the system… you send 10 personalised connection requests every day. Not 50, not 100, just 10. Because consistency beats volume every time. Doing something small every day is always more powerful than doing something big every now and again. So make it part of your daily routine, same time each day, same process, no emotion attached, it’s just a system. In fact, you can get other people to do this for you, maybe a member of your staff or a virtual assistant.

Now let’s talk about the connection request messages, and again, here’s where a lot of MSPs go wrong. They send the same bland, boring copy and paste connection requests that screams, I’m going to pitch you something here. But we’re not pitching remember, we’re farming, we’re starting a relationship. And that’s why you want a set of smart, simple human sounding messages that you can just rotate your way through. Today I’m going to give you five of the best, and these are the same ones that I give to my MSP Marketing Edge members. So let’s go through them.

1. The common ground message. This one is beautifully simple: Hi , it looks like we both, . I want to add you to my professional network. Now, maybe the thing that you insert is that you both live or work in the same area or maybe you’re in the same industry group or maybe you’re both fans of a particular business author or a local sports team or something like that. Humans connect through shared identity, so point out the common ground with them. They’re much more likely to accept your connection requests.

1. The local business owner message. If you target a geographic area, this one is gold: Hi , it looks like we’re both local business owners in . Should we connect to see if there’s anything we can do to help each other? People feel good supporting businesses on their doorstep, so why not use that.

1. The mutual connection message. Now this one creates instant trust: Hi . It looks like we’re both connected to , and then you add a line about how you know that person. Maybe you worked with them, maybe you met them at an event, something like that. And then finish with, I want to add you to my professional network as well. It’s borrowed credibility that makes this one work brilliantly.

1. The content admiration message. Now this one works amazingly well with people who post on LinkedIn often: Hi . I was just reading your post about and thought it was very well written. I want to add you to my professional network. Now this works because people love being recognised for something that they’ve created and it shows that you’re not just spamming them, you’ve actually read their content. And obviously you need to read their content to be able to use that.

1. The vertical joke message. This is the one that gets a smile and you tailor it to your target vertical. So here’s an example for CPAs, for an accountant: Hi , “An accountant is having a hard time sleeping. Have you tried counting sheep, a friend suggests. That’s the problem, I make a mistake and then spend three hours trying to fix it.” Sorry for the appalling joke, I just want to add you to my professional network. Now, of course you’d replace that joke with one relevant to your vertical or your niche. The key is it’s got to be light, fun and memorable because no one sends jokes in LinkedIn connection requests. And that’s a reason to do it because you’re not going to forget the person who made you smile with a LinkedIn connection request.

So those are your five messages. You can just use the same one because remember, everyone only sees them once or you could rotate them, use a different one each day. It doesn’t really matter. Just do what feels best to you. And remember, your job on LinkedIn is not to go out hunting and selling, it’s to farm. And you do that by planting connections, planting relationships and future opportunities. 10 connection requests a day, every day, makes it a system that’s going to grow plenty of future business for your MSP.

How your MSP can excite ANY prospect

To win more new clients for your MSP, you must first understand what motivates your prospects. There’s a little bit about getting inside their heads and a lot more about getting inside their hearts. The more you can connect with their wants, needs and fears, the easier it’s going to be to persuade them that your MSP is the answer to all these things. Here’s exactly how to do that.

Every business owner or manager has two sides to be influenced when making big buying decisions. First, there’s the rational mind, which is the logical Vulcan part that looks at fact and figures. And then there’s the emotional mind, the human side that responds to feelings, fears, and hopes. And we all like to think that we make decisions rationally, but no, we really don’t.

When buying something that we don’t understand, and this of course is how ordinary business owners and managers buy managed services, the emotional mind makes the decision and then it passes that decision onto the rational mind for a stamp of approval. That means around 80% of your marketing needs to speak to their heart and not their head.

Help people feel that they know you, like you and trust you… and then give their brain just a little bit of evidence to prove that you are a safe choice.

So how to do this, well if you truly want to get inside your prospect’s hearts, you must go where they go and consume what they consume. Let’s say your ideal client is Dave, the accountant, a local CPA in your town. Read what Dave reads… his trade magazines, professional websites, his industry newsletters. You might not understand some of it, and in fact, if you’re reading accountancy magazines you may slip into a coma, but you’ll soon start spotting patterns – law changes, new tech or other pressures that matter to Dave.

And then go where Dave goes… maybe he attends networking events or professional meetups. Don’t go there to pitch though, go there to talk and listen. Notice what other accountants worry about. Is it deadlines, compliance changes, losing clients to cheaper firms, recruitment headaches, offshoring? These are all emotional hooks that really, really matter to these people. The more you immerse yourself in Dave’s world, the more you’ll understand what really drives him. And then you can weave all of that into your messaging and content.

Let’s take compliance changes, which are an easy topic for an MSP to leverage. If the fear of not being compliant is a big emotional driver for Dave, then a key part of your messaging must demonstrate that you understand that compliance affects him and you understand why he wants and needs to stay in line. And you know how to use technology to ensure he never makes a mistake. That’s the emotional side of compliance dealt with. And then you could just pull together a guide too, Easy Compliance for CPAs, and maybe get a video case study of an existing CPA client on your website. That then ticks the boxes for the cognitive side of things as well.

When Dave is looking for a new MSP, if he sees all of this in your marketing, this will transcend everything that all the other MSPs are saying, because it seems really, really, really relevant to him. While everyone else is talking about technology, you are talking about eliminating his fear, and you’re talking to his heart and to his brain. And I promise you, if the timing is right for Dave, that will get you a sales meeting.

Great marketing for your MSP isn’t about