Episode 22: It’s All About People
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Erick and Rich discuss why recent research suggests that AI, “junk-gun ransomware,” and massive threat volumes suggest that security services will be in high demand among SMBs for some time to come. Then their colleague Charlene, Channel Mastered’s CMO, joins in to discuss the secrets behind the industry’s best partner programs. Hint: it’s more about people than spiffs. And finally, one last thing: An Italian restaurant’s wildly successful strategy for getting customers to surrender their phones while dining.
Discussed in this episode:
Artificial Intelligence Gives Security Teams the Upper Hand, “2024 Cyberthreat Defense Report” Finds
Cheap, Independently Produced ‘Junk Gun’ Ransomware Infiltrates the Dark Web, Sophos Finds
More than Half of Generative AI Adopters Use Unapproved Tools at Work
MSP Association of America (use code “MSP10” for 10% enrollment discount)
Transcript:
Rich: [00:00:00] And three, two, one, blast off, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the MSP chat podcast, your weekly visit with two talking heads talking with you about the services, strategies, and success tips you need to make it big and manage services. My name is Rich Freeman. I am chief content officer of Channel Mastery, the organization responsible for this show.
I am joined this week by As I am every week by your other co host, Channel Masters chief strategist, my friend of many years, Erick Simpson. Erick, what was it?
Erick: It’s going great, Rich. And it’s, I feel the the excitement and the expectation. Of this quarter’s series of channel events.
We’ve got, lots of events that we always talk about on this program. We’ve got communities that we, new communities or communities that are growing and accelerating. What a great time to be an MSP, an IT service provider, a channel vendor, a distributor. What a great time to be one because of the tremendous opportunity and the maturity.
And just the, the sense of everyone being in it together. And, it’s just much different than when I, launched my MSP practice and sold it, it’s a different, it’s a different time and place. And the buyers being more savvy about managed services in general and cybersecurity and being more strategic and not for nothing but compliance having a heavy influence on what is, encouraging buyers to spend more money on cybersecurity and compliance and managed IT service and co managed IT services as a result of the pandemic and MSPs who were historically blocked.
From participating in internal IT operations because they were being seen they really were seen as a threat. Now they’re seen as partners, right? It’s just, it’s pretty special. Those that see this for what it is and the opportunity. And then some of the recent conversations which we’ve been having about the dynamic and the changing landscape.
In terms of what we’re seeing, moving more towards selling more valuable profitable services versus selling, business outcomes or resale, the great conversation we just had with Jane McBain on our last episode. It’s as I’m listening to myself, I’m like, boy.
It’s an exciting time to be in the industry and in the channel right now.
Rich: Let’s dive into our story of the week here, because that’s actually a pretty good set up. One, one of the many reasons to be excited about being in this industry right now is the opportunity, both the challenge and the opportunity around cybersecurity.
And so I’m going to run through just a series of statistics here very quickly. These are things that have come out in research in the last few weeks, and they’re going to add up, I think, to a larger trend that I just want people in our audience kind of thinking about a little bit. So let’s just start here.
There was research published just a few days ago as we record this. It’s from an organization called the CyberEdge Group. Interestingly enough, they said that for the first time in five years, they actually saw the Percentage of organizations victimized by ransomware decline from 73 percent to 64% which sounds like good news Sophos very recently published some research of its own in which they’re referring to the state of play as homeostasis.
It’s stabilized. Numbers maybe aren’t going up. They’re not so sure they’re going down either, but they also just yesterday as we’re recording this, Erick issued a threat report about something, a new phenomenon that they’re seeing with respect to ransomware that they’re calling junk gun ransomware.
I don’t quite know where that name comes from, but the idea basically is these are really cheap sort of ransomware attacks available on the ransomware as a service market. When I say really cheap, instead of the maybe. 1, 000 that people are used to paying the affiliates on the dark web. This is more like 375.
And the idea is because this is junk junkie ransomware, basically, it’s maybe not going to fool larger businesses as well as it does SMBs. The proliferation, the growth of junk gun ransomware might direct some more threat activity, ransomware threat activity in particular, to SMBs good old bread and butter ransomware, not something [00:05:00] to take your eyes off of, it’s going to continue to be a problem.
An issue for the longterm every indication suggests. But let’s talk about some other things that are going on out there. Perception point security vendor called perception point recently reported that thanks to our good friend, generative AI business email compromise attacks are up 1, 760%.
And the reasoning behind that is pretty clear. You can write much more. Convincing emails, much more informed emails with the assistance of of generative AI Salesforce recently published some research 55 percent of the people they surveyed are using unapproved generative AI tools work and 69%.
Of the people they surveyed have never received any generative AI training at all. So of course they’re using unapproved tools. They haven’t been told what is or isn’t approved, and they haven’t been given any instruction beyond that. Essentially for the safe and unsafe ways to use generative AI.
And this is pointing in, in, in the direction of this larger trend that I’m hinting at Erick, which is, yeah, ransomware is not going away and so all the stuff that you’re doing now to protect your customers from ransomware has to be an important part of security offering. But. There are new and more sophisticated threats coming on to the landscape right now, threats and opportunities around things like generative AI that also need to come into the picture for you as part of what you are offering your clients, and part of that is because if you’re not doing that, then you are leaving them exposed and If you’re not doing that, you’re also missing out on the opportunity to add value for that account and to collect more revenue from that account.
And one last little bit of research that kind of points to something else, another addition to the the services, security services stack for people to consider. Coro, another security vendor, just yesterday, as we’re recording this, published some research that said 73 percent of security professionals, and this is at companies with between 200 and 2, 000 employees, 73 percent of them say that they have missed, ignored, or failed to act on a high priority policy.
We’re Security alert. And what this is telling you basically is that the threat landscape out there is so deep with threats. Those threats are so sophisticated. There’s so much coming at even a full time security professional or an IT professional at a higher end, a larger organization. And that’s what SMB or mid market business.
Even that person who is a full time staff member for that company is having trouble keeping up with it. And what that tells you, of course, is they are going to need assistance from outsiders like you top two the two most time consuming tasks identified by these people who have missed high priority threats because there’s too much going on monitoring security platforms and vulnerability pack.
This is what. MSPs do already. And so clearly there is a co managed IT opportunity and security and a managed detection response opportunity and security. Again, larger point the stuff that you’ve been protecting clients from in the past, you’ve still got to be focused on, but take a step back, take a larger look at the security landscape out there, make sure that you are covering all of the territory that your customers need you.
To be covering and that you are selling into all the opportunities that are out there for you because that the market right now is broadening that set of opportunities.
Erick: Yeah, rich. That’s great. Great insight into what’s happening and an analysis of. These different data points and this different research that all these organizations are putting together really insightful.
And, I’m just wondering how long before we’re including in end user security awareness training offerings, like generative AI and user security awareness training, because there’s, it’s a, there’s a big gap right now. You mentioned business email compromising, shooting through the roof, 1700 plus percent of threats.
I was, I did a keynote recently for one of our clients on a live webinar, and they were talking about business email compromise. That’s before AI. Now we’re talking about business communication compromise where AI. Is being used to impersonate, people, voices, video, things like that.
And the email messaging is being much, much improved by using generative AI where before you remember rich, the old days the olden days as Jay would call it, Jay [00:10:00] McBain, where you could spot that, that phishing email a mile away because it was some. Prince from some third world nation.
Who’s got an uncle that needs, your help to get millions of dollars out of the country and just send them some money. A thing, right? Poorly structured, grammatically imperfect, just easy to spot, but effective still because it’s still kept, trapped everybody. But now we’ve got this AI that is a tool that’s supercharging the ability rich for these, criminals who ransom and extract money from folks.
So we’ve got that going on. And, the things that we thought were secure, VPN connections and things like that, now those are being hacked. So when you say, Rich, that there is a huge opportunity, I would say, not only is there a huge opportunity, probably the largest potential opportunity in history for MSPs and cybersecurity experts.
To help clients address these needs, meaning there’s a lot of business growth potential there. Yeah, just tagging in on what I introduced in my, conversation, this dovetails perfectly with kind of the opportunity that we all have right now to address these needs and then.
Compliance being the next. Frontier, everything’s going to require some compliance at some point. Right now there’s specific verticals, specific industries and things like that, that have to maintain regulatory compliance, rich, expect that to continue to expand into all other areas of business moving forward.
I think,
Rich: it’s interesting. You bring up compliance too, cause I was looking at some data just very recently in connection with something I’m writing for my blog channel, all it. And I can’t remember the exact dollar numbers, but if you look at the investment rounds, the venture capital and private equity investment rounds in security vendors in 2023, according to Richard Stein in of I.
T. Harvest. Identity and access management, which goes directly to a lot of this business email compromise stuff that we’re talking about. That was the second biggest category, and I think it was just shy of 1. 75 billion dollars worth of investment rounds in IAM vendors. The only category that placed higher on the list was GRC governance and regulatory compliance, because that is Such a giant and growing need for customers.
So the larger moral of the story, folks, is your end users need more security services than they’ve ever needed before. In order for you to take advantage of that and also do right by your customers. You’re going to have to up your game a little bit in terms of keeping up with the threat landscape and the tools out there and so on.
Make sure that you are aware of where those threats are and how to remediate them and mitigate against them. But it really is going to pay off for you. And, you’re never going to have to be you’re not going to have to operate a SOC. You’re not going to have to be a security analyst, but you are going to have to broaden your view of what’s happening out there and add some more tools and skills into your secure security arsenal there to both protect customers and take advantage of this growing opportunity in cyber security. Okay, Erick, let’s move on to your tip of the week here. We’re talking to people about digging into the opportunity and security.
You’ve got a tip about digging into your team and who those people are as a way to a different way to grow your managed services business.
Erick: Yes, Rich. And I’ve been conducting behavioral assessments, team building, helping. With hiring processes for my MSP clients for many years, I’m certified in behavioral profiling and motivators and things like that.
And, today’s stability comes fresh from an engagement I’m currently conducting with an MSP client of mine, who is really leveraging an understanding of their team in a way to improve their communications, their team, camaraderie and collaboration, and to understand how to influence their behavior through understanding how they’re wired.
As individuals and then what motivates them. And I’m going to lean on, in any behavioral system or assessment can be used to identify these traits. I just happen to leverage this because that’s what we use when we consult with clients and basically it measures for dynamics of a person’s behavior.
Behavior. And you answer 20 questions and it measures your natural and adapted behavior, right? So your natural behavior is who you are outside of work. The person that you are when you’re out doing anything that you enjoy other than being in your role at work. That’s our natural behavior.
That is truly who we are once we’re mature adults. That’s our behavior. And you’ve heard the adage, you can’t [00:15:00] teach an old dog new tricks, right? Once you’re mature, you’re pretty much, that is who you are with very little, there, there are some outliers and things that can affect that.
You’re adjusting of your natural behavior, but generally. Once you’re mature, that is who you are based upon your upbringing, your environment, your, all these influences in your life that, that make you who you are, your education, et cetera. Then there’s the subconscious behavior that we adapt our natural behavior from to do our job in the office.
So on the best case scenario, Rich, our role, our work role requires very similar behavior or natural behavior. We get the highest morale, the best performance from individuals and team members who are aligned naturally to do that thing. Someone that is a great example of someone that’s a great people person that has lots of friends and maintains relationships.
Over time, we call those kind of more people driven individuals. They do great at more people facing roles in an organization, sales roles, maybe customer service support roles, account management roles, right? Then we have folks that are on the up the opposite side of that spectrum, which they’re not the people focused individuals, but they are more of the process and task oriented individuals.
Think of project managers, think of engineers and technicians. And, there is something to that old sense, rich, when we say, Hey, there’s this, unspoken friction between the sales teams and the technical team sometimes. It’s a real thing actually, because we are completely opposite in how we behave.
So anyway. If we’re trying to improve the performance of our existing team, what we want to do is understand how they’re wired naturally, not just what we see or experience in their work role, because we could have someone that is doing a job rich that is so far outside of their comfort zone, their natural behavioral state.
They may be able to execute that for a long period of time without anyone noticing anything different. But as soon as that something happens where they are emotional or there’s something that may not even have to deal with work. It could be a personal issue, a family thing or whatever, where we now as human beings are very emotional and dealing with something personally, we tend to withdraw back into our natural behavior.
And so if I’m in the office for. A year working with my team and they see me performing at my level of performance rich and I’m, my role requires me to step outside of my comfort zone, but I can do it because I’m, I’m battle tested, right? I can do it. I can help it out. But then something happens where I.
Have something that affects me very emotionally and I would draw into my natural behavior. Then when I go into the office, because I am now behaving differently, noticeably differently to my team members, they notice, Hey, what’s wrong with Erick today? He’s behaving a little bit differently.
He’s this or that. Not that it’s in a bad way or anything like that, but people notice your behavior change. That is because I’m withdrawn into my natural state. So the guidance today, the tip of the week, which is to understand who your team is in their natural state. And is the role that they are in, are they struggling with it just outside of any outside influences or emotional influences?
Are there, is their performance erratic? That could be an early sign, Rich, that they’re in the wrong seat on the bus, because their job role is so far away from their natural behavior that they’ll, they’ll put up a good fight. They want to serve and they want to do a good job, but they just, Are struggling with it because it’s mentally fatiguing and could burn them out early So look for those early warning signs performance issues speak with your team and understand where they’re struggling and if there’s an Opportunity to shift them to a different role in the organization Or to make some adjustments that help them succeed and feel like they can succeed in their job role So You’re doing a great service for them or your organization, for their team members, for your clients.
And potentially beyond that for their family and everything. Cause they bring that stuff home with them, right? So just, be aware, talk to your team, understand where they struggle, celebrate their successes and make adjustments along the way so that you can allow them to win. Along with your organization and your team.
Rich: Yeah. It’s interesting. You’re reminding me of a book I read 20 years ago. When it [00:20:00] first came out, it was called first break all the rules, which is not a great title. It was a really great book. It it was based on this giant research study that Gallup did where they were trying to look for what are the things that define the most effective hydro organizations out there.
And that the, the most oversimplified distilled version of what they found is that the most effective organizations are the ones. That do a great job of aligning somebody’s, natural orientation to the world with the role that they’re in. So you can, you can find really smart, hardworking people who are extremely introverted.
And if you put them in a people oriented sales role, they’re really never going to do as well as they could in another role that is more suited to who they are. So you want to get the people. Persons in the sales roles. You want to get the process people in the process roles, et cetera. And that’s essentially, it’s one big part of what you’re talking about is understand who’s working for you so you can get them into the role that’s suited to their strengths and get the most out of them.
The other thing is the better you understand the people on your team, the easier it’s going to be to understand when there is something wrong. And to maybe get a feel for Why you’re noticing a difference in performance and behavior and so on it looks like this person is withdrawing back into the you know from the adaptive to the natural That tells me there must be something emotional going on in their life.
And I should probably see if I can be of any help. So yeah, I’ll sort the good reasons why being familiar with the work your people do is valuable and important, but being familiar with your people as people is also a valuable and important.
Erick: You’re absolutely right, Rich. And great way to add that extra dimension to it.
And I’ll add one additional insight to this. And when we’re doing these things, when we’re evaluating our teams and we’re getting a sense for, what can we do better? It’s not incumbent on us to change their behavior, right? It’s a losing proposition for you to try to change someone’s behavior because you’re asking them to change who they are naturally from a person.
It’s our job to adjust our approach and our awareness to And help them be more successful. So we can control the things that we can control. That’s how we behave and how we perceive things and how we act on things. And then the last piece is never to make someone wrong for doing something differently than you would do it.
That’s probably one of the biggest takeaways that I try to share with clients when I’m working with them and with teams and team building. Don’t make Erick wrong. If he’s the sales professional by not filling out that thousand point technical onboarding checklist That is you’re asking Erick to to stray way far outside of his comfort zone And to do something that he’s just not naturally wired to do instead Appreciate what Erick brings to the team bringing those relations maintaining those relationships closing sales opportunities And then meet Erick halfway and say okay if you do that piece You I see the value of that because I can never do it being the engineer now because I don’t want to talk to the people.
But what I will do is I will do that part and work together with you. So don’t make someone wrong for not doing something the way you would do because there’s no possible way that anyone could do anything the way you would do it. Not even if they’ve gone to the same training and taken the same certification exams.
This is human behavior stuff, right? So just a couple of extra things to think about, Rich.
Rich: And I promise I’ll stop going back 20 years. But once again, you’re reminding me of the point in my career where I first became a people manager. And my father gave me two pieces of advice that have stayed with me ever since.
They were both excellent. And the first was, You’re a manager now. Managing people is work. That is part of your job. Don’t look at the time you spend managing people as a diversion or distraction from your work. You’re going to be balancing management with individual contributor work, but they’re paying you to manage.
So that’s not a misuse of your time. But the other thing he said is exactly what you just said, which is that you have to make sure that you are never judging people for doing something in a way different than how you would have done it. You judge people based on the results, not the technique for getting there because everybody is different.
And so I’ll leave it there. Both of those Bits of advice from my dad were excellent. And all the advice you just shared with us, Erick, it’s excellent as well. Speaking of excellent advice, we’re going to take a quick break here. When we come back on the other side, we’re going to do something we like to do on the MSP chat podcast periodically.
We’re going to be joined by a teammate of ours from ChannelMaster, the organization that produces this show. Her name is Charlene Ignacio. She is our [00:25:00] chief marketing officer. She is an unbelievable font of knowledge, experience, and information about marketing. Even just earlier today, Erick, we were on a call with her where we casually tossed out an issue we were dealing with and without even thinking about it, she came up with three really great ideas for addressing it.
She is going to talk to us about something she wrote a blog post for us about once upon a time, which is the four questions. That every everyone can ask, every vendor, in fact, should ask to build a really great partner program. And I’m sure I’m pretty sure Erick, I have a hunch.
We’re going to get some more marketing wisdom out of Charlene as well. So folks stick around, Erick and I are going to be right back with Charlene in just a moment.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to part two MSP chat podcast, our spotlight interviews segment. Erick and I are privileged to work with some really smart, experienced, informed, interesting people at Channel Master. You have met a few of them on prior episodes of the show, if you’re a regular listener and you are about to meet another one one of our absolute favorites, she is our chief marketing officer.
Her name is Charlene Ignacio. Charlene. Welcome to the show.
Charlene: Oh, I like you, Brigade. Thank you guys. I love to be here with you. Thank you.
Rich: We have been looking forward to having this conversation with you as well. And we, Erick and I, both know you very well. For the three and a half people in our audience who maybe have not met you to this point, because next to me, Shirley next to me, no you are ahead of me in terms of being at every event in this industry.
So most of the folks who are enjoying the program right now have probably encountered you at some point, but just in case they haven’t, tell folks a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Charlene: Rich, what’s really fun every time we get to go to a show, I love to see and make new friends.
And that’s something that everyone always makes a comment about. It’s Oh, Shari’s here to make new friends and meet new people and learn about everyone. And that’s what I love to do. One of the things that I feel like we forget in business is that we’re all people. And so my goal, every single time we go to shows, every time we jump on a zoom or a webinar is to make a new friend.
And so I’m hoping that we continue that and, Channel Master is a great place to be to do that.
Rich: I think we’re going to come back to that idea about the importance of people. It’s actually a really core part of your kind of marketing philosophy. We’ve had this conversation before. But what we wanted to use this time to talk with you about is a post that you contributed to the Channel Mastered blog a little bit back about the four questions to ask.
To make a really great partner program.
Charlene: Yes.
Rich: And I’m going to introduce a fifth, because before you even get into the four questions in the blog post, you ask a really intriguing fifth question, which is what is. A partner program which is a great way to kick up, before we start talking about how to make a great one.
What is a partner program? Charlene, what is it? My, my intent behind any partner program that we build or that I’m a part of is to really make it what I consider a win to the fourth power. This is something that I’ve coined. This is a part of my presentations and invitation to speak is that we win.
Charlene: The client wins, the community wins, and the partner wins. And if all four wins happen, that means that a partner program is successful because everyone is learning how they’re going to win together and how each other contributes to that win.
Erick: So Charlene, this is a conversation that we have all too often, as and those that, that follow us. We at Channel Mastered, we specialize in Helping put channel vendors and distributors together with channel partners and the nuances of that relationship. So in that blog post that you wrote, and I’d love to just unpack this a little bit you know, kind of conversation number 12, 004 about, channel programs and partnering.
What is it that is so important and special? about partnering together to go to market. Why do people partner together?
Charlene: I think there’s many reasons why, but I think in the core approach of a partner program, Erick, and this is something we definitely talk about with our clients and with our partners at channel master is there has to be this commitment to give.
Before you ask or take and that is the core of any successful program that I’ve ever been a part of or seen us build because when you have something to contribute, when you have something, that’s going to bring value when our win because of a solution that a partner is able to leverage and we’re able to bring that to our community.
Man, [00:30:00] things happen, and I call it magic, and you guys hear this all the time from me. I’m like, can we create some magic here? And the contribution, guys, is going to always outshine any type of flair or fluffiness or any economy that anyone goes through, especially with the recent COVID and of course any future economy changes that are happening.
Partner programs that have the intent of how can I help my partner win, how can I contribute to them, always will surpass, will always exceed, and always win because both, not only the partner that’s coming in and the partner receiving, they’re able to see the value. And Erick, I think this is something common that you and I talk about with the rest of the team is don’t do the deal.
If it’s not going to be an equation of everyone winning, because that contribution, that value that I’m bringing, that’s going to solve a problem is so important to why partner programs succeed. And they’re the reason why if they’re missing. That’s the reason why they fail.
Erick: Char, you’ve used the term value a bunch of times already.
We’re just getting into today’s conversation and we, as you mentioned, when we construct, partner programs or help improve our clients, partner programs with their channel partners, there’s a very specific set of ingredients that let’s talk about the MSP channel, for instance, right now as a recovering MSP, I’ll There are some really specific value propositions that MSPs look for in a channel partner program that are distinct and different than, let’s say, resellers or agent master agent programs, all the other kind of channel partner programs we’re familiar with.
What is it that MSP partners value the most?
Charlene: Oh my gosh. I love our MSPs and of course you’re recovering. So I want to give you kudos. Everybody who’s recovering from this, I’m sure is going to agree with this and all of us who are going through it, what a journey it is. Right guys. So there’s a couple of things in my journey, whether you’re a 1 million MSP to a 25 million MSPs, the partners that they succeed with one, are in the people business.
They don’t treat an MSP as a number on the list. They don’t treat them as an equation or a revenue threshold. They’re like, how can I help this MSP partner of ours win and succeed? That’s the first ingredient that I’ve seen over time that every MSP has told me, Char, do you know why we choose them over the other person, even though they have all these bells and whistles and all this fluff is because they treat me like a person.
They talk to me, they talk with me, they’re there side by side with me, and they don’t talk at me. Another thing that I find all the time, Ericka, just came back from New York, is that partners want their businesses to succeed. So they talk about MRR, they talk about improving QBRs, they talk about how they can educate the whole team from their help desk all the way up to level, tier three technician.
They think about the business as a whole, and that is such an anchor in the CEO’s mind as they decide these partners that they bring into their stack. And then third, and this is probably where, I might get a lot of pushback from our MSPs at different stages, every partner who evolves with the MSP, who believes that whether you’re a 1 million MSP or you’re a 2 million MSP, it doesn’t matter what revenue they’re there to help you succeed because a lot of MSPs.
They get pushed back on the side because they’re like, I’m not the right size for them. And I understand that. But when they become that, those MFPs remember who wasn’t willing to take them on as a partner because they weren’t the right revenue versus, man, this has opportunity. They’re in a market we could be in.
This partner is someone we care about. They listen to their customers. They’ve got a lot of good going for them. And those are the three that I’ve heard consistently over time in this space that my, my MSP will tell me, sure, this is why we choose good partner programs.
Rich: Your blog post was built around four questions, four questions that will get you to a great partner program.
Erick has touched on two of those. Why do people partner? What do partners value most? In a partner program. And I think you’ve just, answered that question. But the blog post points to one particular thing that partners really evaluate when they’re deciding who am I going to partner with, which partner program I’m going to engage with.
And that, frankly, is revenue. And so talk a little bit about, from a, from an MSP perspective, from a vendor perspective how do you deliver on that wish, that need from the MSP help me with revenue without losing. Any of that sort of people commitment that you were talking about the human element of the program that really makes it work.
Charlene: You know Staying mr monthly reoccurring revenue or annual reoccurring revenue Those are all trigger words for my msps who go I want to pay attention to this partner [00:35:00] So when they talk about revenue, Rich, there’s a couple of things that’s really important to my MSPs. They didn’t sign up because they were in business.
They signed up to help. And so revenue is attached to their intent to help. Sometimes they help so much that they forget to raise their prices. They forget to let their partners know, Hey, we need a better price point. And so a lot of times monthly reoccurring revenue, MRR, anything attached to revenue, the MSP wants to know that one, you have a promise that you’re not going to take my customers.
A lot of MSPs experience this from partners and then that’s when they shy away from partners And I’ve got a couple of vendors that’s their promise that they promised the MSP will not take your customer The revenue that you’re making you will help you keep making it and keep making more too rich something that’s really been impacting a lot of MSPs during this M& A that’s going on it’s the M& A market in our MSP community is hot right now is helping them increase the value overall So what happens is Do they need more training?
Do they need more support? How can we help you understand how to better sell your product? What services can you do? Can we help you create sales and marketing assets behind that? So a lot of the marketing revenue that is shared like MDF funds is so helpful to our MSPs because. They didn’t start off as business owners.
They started off as technicians who said, I want to improve how we do services, IT services, technology services. And Rachel, which was really important. This last trip I took, our MSPs raised their hand and said, we want to increase our revenue. But we don’t want it to be a burden on our team because it’s a learning curve.
It’s going to cost too much friction. It takes too much time to add into our stack. And so I said to them, ask your vendor to help you ask your partner to help you train your team, help them be a better influencer to the customer, help them understand how this is going to help them make revenue from the help desk all the way to the technician.
And I can tell you this, the room full of 40 MSPs. Each one of them left with the idea of, I’m going to call my partner vendor and ask them, how can you help me improve my current business and increase my MRR? And I said, that is exactly what I want you to take away from this talk. Or else it’s not going to work for you.
You can’t undervalue yourself. And then of course, end up trying to work so hard and you’re still not making any revenue. They have to be a part of the solution. So ask your partner vendor for help.
Rich: Yeah. And it’s a great time in the industry and the history and evolution of the industry to ask that question, there’s nothing selfish or inappropriate about it.
There are more vendors than ever. That want MSP partners, and particularly if you are a successful MSP, that puts you in a very strong position, and there’s really nothing wrong with taking a little bit of advantage of that and, asking your vendors what more can you do for me than what you’re doing right now?
So that actually is a nice segue to your third question from the blog post, which is. What drives partner loyalty with respect to a partner program?
Charlene: That was the opening statement of this, MSP chat. We’re in the people business. A lot of people forget that, I have a family or Erick has goals or Rich, you want things in life.
They forget that we’re all a part of that. Like partners won’t be successful unless they see us as a whole. person. And a lot of times they expect these MSPs who are out there working their tails off, who are recovering at 3am in the morning from, a call, a tax, a help desk ticket that just didn’t get answered.
And so they forget that we’re all people and the people who get worked with and talk to and supported as people, they have a longer relationship with MSPs. And guess what happens? The MSP tells his other friends who are MSPs, Hey, you should work with this partner because they’re really they care.
They’re nice. They understand they’re not talking at you They’re not talking down to you. They’re coming up with real solutions for me when rich when I talk about the people business what I mean is at the end of the day guys It’s not a credit card that pays you It’s a person who has a problem to solve and they need your help to solve that problem And so msps You don’t need to feel like you care about them as a whole person.
Just don’t look at their shop size and say, Oh, you only have two people. Let’s not talk to you. I’ve seen that at roadshows. I have seen that in this space and it’s appalling to me that all they do is go, can I scan your badge? They don’t even get to know the person. They don’t even get to say, Hey, how are you?
What are you doing here? Or, Hey, you know what? I saw you at this other show. How’s your family doing? They all are quick to go scan your badge, and then it becomes this game of how many scan badges did you get? And I think how many people did you talk to? How many people do you actually think are going to make any success with your program because you cared about them first?
I’m a big proponent of get to know the person in front of you instead of trying to worry about all the numbers that are walking by. I promise you [00:40:00] if you had 25. Big cheerleaders in the space, telling everyone how awesome you are. Instead of worrying about the 2000, you’re never going to talk to you. I promise they will bring you the others.
You just have to treat them like the people business that you’re supposed to be in any way. So I have a real passion for that guys. You guys know that on every single call, every week, I’m like, let’s take care of our advisors. Let’s take care of our people. Take care of our client.
Erick: Charlene.
That’s so salient, can I scan your badge? That’s almost expo hulk profanity, right? Can I scan your badge? Can I scan your badge? Like we hear all the time That’s a that’s an excellent point you know you’re talking a lot about the desire to connect With channel partners as a channel vendor that wants to be a strategic part of these msp’s they’re people first focus and mentality And that is all great feedback and great guidance.
What do you say to the channel vendors and the people in inside of those vendor organizations are all about that, but for whatever reason, their organization is hard to work with by the MSP, this could be for a variety of reasons, it could be, integrations or they have to lack of automation or just.
How difficult in general it is to work with them. So why, what can vendors do first of all, realizing, talk about how important that is, that you have to have that other side of the equation figured out as well. And then what can vendors like, what are the typical things that you see that should be prioritized as these low hanging fruit table stakes things.
that make it easy for, to work with them.
Charlene: So first things first, as far as leadership, that I start off with, a lot of times leadership can be reflected in how things are and processes and systems are and a lot of times it’s leadership who can direct those efforts, because sometimes they’re far away.
I always tell my team, whoever’s closest to the work, they’re going to know the solution to our problem. And a lot of times I ask them and they say, what do you think the solution is? What do you think we could do better? How can we be a better improved, from the onboard to the demo? We’ve had partners who we’ve helped and I’m like, guys, your onboard is so difficult.
I don’t even want to do your onboard. Because it’s so chaotic, like, why can’t we streamline it with a couple of videos, a couple of warm touches, check in with me, maybe have a training portal, things that make it automated are always helpful. But Erick, one of the biggest things that I’ve seen is that we all want to be unique and different, which is totally fine.
But there are basics in the onboard process or in the partner retention strategy that need to happen. And I always say lead with the partner retention strategy first as you build out your partner program. So here’s a couple of things that I have found when I go through a mock demo and they’re demoing the solution to me and I’m like, Oh, I’m a partner.
Sometimes it’s clunky. Even the agreement, I can’t even find it. Even the price catalog. I’m like, it’s in the sea of this black hole that I can never get through. Sometimes this is really hard. The person onboarding me doesn’t know how to talk to me as a business owner. So it’s such a lift because he’s just trying to read a script and be a technician and tell me all these things.
Versus this is how this translates. This is how you’re going to do it for your customer. They may have these concerns or issues, and this is how you need to handle that in your own onboard of our solution. Sometimes this is terrible, but they don’t talk about QBRs. So some partners guys, you would be more successful if you said, Hey, do you do a QBR, do you do an assessment of your customers, because this is how you should relate this into your handling of your customer, because it’s possible to upsell or it’s possible to do more services.
But one thing that I just always go back to every single time when they’re that difficult, I always tell them, you need another set of eyes who’s not married to the problem every day, or is the problem. And you need another set of a team that has this idea that says, we know how it should go. We know how these things will work better for you.
So you can scale quickly, get to market faster, be able to penetrate what I consider this law code. Like you have, if you have competitors. Because if you can hear it from people who are experts in this space, who can help you get there, I promise you partners, you will get there faster, you will make more revenue quicker, and you will have a better retention strategy because of it.
And so of course, Channel Mastered is one of those anchors that many vendors come to because of that. But again, it’s because we’ve been there. We’ve done that. We’ve had case study after case study. Every single partner you’ve talked to who’s come to Channel Master goes, Oh, you saved me so much time.
You navigate, navigated so many things that I could have gotten myself into my own trouble. So Erick, all those things are [00:45:00] because we believe in that relationship to be successful for our MSPs if they are a better partner to them.
Erick: Is great insight, Char. And we do love working with our clients.
Now, in the best case scenario, what, these concepts can be built into a, let’s just say an early channel program that really is just being developed. Like it’s easy to Monday morning quarterback this thing and go, Oh, our channel program needs to have these businesses.
Then let’s just do it that way. And as like you, you mentioned. Vendor clients come to us because they need some course correction or tuning or someone that’s outside an objective third party that has this deep, MSP experience because we’ve been doing it for so many years.
So where, how do you communicate or how do we communicate to A vendor who’s had a program for a while and thinks it’s just working great But it’s just not performing or producing. How do you have that conversation? And if i’ll take it one step beyond char, how do we have that conversation to get the The vendor to understand that yes, we need to look at it objectively or if there’s an internal advocate that’s reached out to us How do we prepare them to?
Who have that conversation internally To get them to see it for what it is, and if it’s not working, there is a reason for that. I know this is a curve ball for you, you are the best person on our team to answer this question. So ready? Go.
Charlene: So in my previous opportunities, having been a channel chief for companies who are both national and global being a CMO capacity, I see it from multiple areas, right?
I see it from every angle. So there’s a couple of things. One, I want to measure the KPI based on where they are. And a lot of people will see, maybe they’re not getting enough retention. Maybe they’re losing retention. Maybe they’re 80%, goal hasn’t been reached in the last two quarters.
Maybe there’s a survey that’s come back and it said, Hey, this partner program isn’t working for us. We’re not happy. We’re going to be going to a competitor or, Hey, we’re just not going to buy our account manager isn’t supporting us. There’s a whole slew of reasons why, programs don’t work and don’t succeed.
Bye bye. But here’s a couple of things that I think first, they got to be willing, Erick, I don’t think any of us have ever worked with any client who comes to us begrudgingly. We don’t want to convince you. We don’t want to take you kicking and screaming. We want you to take the chance that says, I know that we can be better at this.
And what better could look like guys is two to three degrees to the right. I always preach this. I don’t say let’s make a whole entire and new program. I say, what are two or three things that we can do better? What can we master better? What can we do to improve the help desk experience or maybe our onboard process?
And look at those things siloed because it impacts the entire Organization, even the channel partner program. One big thing that’s happened a lot of times is when partner programs aren’t working, it’s because you notice that either the partners aren’t getting that touch anymore. A lot of times it’s just a quick call.
They only talk to them every quarter. They go through a checklist. They don’t really know. Some of the partner programs that I’ve heard are very successful. Is when their partner says, Hey, I heard you’re going to grow your MSP. There’s a couple of things that you’ve been saying. Let me go get a resource for you.
Here’s some things that I could do to help you. And maybe it’s not them. Maybe it’s another partner because they’re all about the ecosystem, this community that we build. Erick, there’s something that’s to be said. for the long term partner programs that are successful is because they have a human interaction.
It’s not just a call. It’s not just a big event. It’s literally, how are they managing that opportunity or that partner? And again, I always say this to you and everyone else on the team, as we continue to work with awesome vendors, we don’t want anyone who doesn’t want to be here with us. Because we want to work with those people who want to make significant changes quickly and create bigger impact in the community.
And the community will tell us all the time which partner vendors they want and who’s going to win because they are actively working with them. And of course, I’m a little biased of this and I’m a little selfish. We love innovation. We love solutions that are innovative and they’re not the same tool or, how many GRC tools there are.
Do you know how many, pen testing solutions are? Do you know how many of everything there is? It’s the companies that really work on their people to people skills, how they work on helping that business owner increase their MRR. And of course, guys, at the end of the day, When you’re talking about your partner program, start with the end in mind, right?
What is the retention? What’s going to keep them engaging with you? What’s going to keep that partner that you worked so hard to get coming back to you for more support and help? Those are the questions that partner programs that are so successful keep as a consistent, right? That’s their North Star.
That’s what they focus in on as they build their programs. And Erick, we’ve seen it, Rich, we’ve seen it across the years. Who succeeded in this space because they [00:50:00] keep that focus on how can we better. Every single day, a little bit at a time, they’re not worried about the big giant, pain point.
They’re looking at what are the small things we can do to really make a partner program successful.
Rich: Charlene the thing everybody says about you basically is she’s super smart. If only she had energy and enthusiasm I kid, of course, you have immense volumes of energy and enthusiasm.
I always draw on it anytime we talk, I always come away from a conversation. A little bit more energized than when I went into it, and no exception this time around. Obviously, people who want to learn more about you and what you do can go to the Channel Mastered website at channelmastered.
com and learn there, but you are all over the place. You’re doing many things. So where else can people learn about you? Maybe reach out to you, engage with you?
Charlene: Oh, that’s so fun. So I’d love for everyone to go and reach out to me on LinkedIn. I think that’s a great place for you to learn where, many hats are that I wear every single day.
Obviously that’s a powerful place for, to connect. I want you to You who you see here is who you meet in person, guys. I promise. I am not, purple when you meet me in person. I am still this same way in person and that’s a rule of mine that I always want to be integrity driven, authentic when you meet me online and in person that I’m there.
I also am so thankful I get to work with the MSP Association of AmEricka where many of you are a part of. And if you’re not there yet, come and join us and engage with us. There are certain codes that you can use from this. Podcasts already, MSP10, and then you can use that as our 50 percent discount off of the membership.
I want you to know that you to connect with me at work. There’s so many partners that I’d love to introduce you to so you can get to know all the good partners we work with. And then of course, Rich any event or show, you and I, Erick, we walk the halls of these shows, Freaking rebels.
We just do whatever it takes to be close to our customers to be close to our partners So come and see us guys anywhere. We are we want to be where you are So come with us and make some friends. We’d love to have a new friend
Rich: said and completely agreed charlene, thank you. So much for making some time for us.
Always a pleasure and with that folks Erick and I are gonna take a break right now We’re gonna let charlene get back to her day here But Erick and I are gonna take a quick break. When we come back to the other side, we’ll share a few final thoughts about this conversation with Charlie Ignacio.
Maybe have a little bit of fun, wrap up the show, stick around. We are going to be right back.
And welcome back to the final part of this episode of the MSP chat podcast. I said it a moment ago, Erick. It’s it’s true. It’s always a pleasure to spend some time with Charlie.
Erick: Tell you what Rich she will brighten your day no matter where you see her or speak to her. She is an endless fountain of energy and optimism and it’s infectious.
She’s He’s always looking for new friends and I think strangers or friends. She just hasn’t met yet rich and he’s just amazing force of nature and knows Marketing like nobody else is why it’s such a pleasure to have her on the channel master team.
Rich: It’s It I guess isn’t surprising at all.
I’m so glad at the beginning of the conversation. She went straight to the idea that this is all about people. It really is the sort of central part of her thinking about marketing and partnering. It’s, this is, it’s fundamentally first and foremost, it’s about people and it’s about relationships.
And it’s a really great reminder, I think for all of us. If somebody asks you or me, what are those core things that make for a successful partner program, we will point to some really legitimate and important factors, like you you gotta be multi tenant and you’ve gotta have your billing rights and you’ve gotta, provide a revenue opportunity.
All the stuff that we know really matters a lot to partners. But what Charlene reminds you of is that really where you gotta begin. Is in a genuine, a palpably genuine commitment to your partners as people. And I would submit, Erick, that if that’s really part of your culture and how you interact with your partners, you’re going to make mistakes.
Even the companies with the best intentions make mistakes, they have billing problems, they roll out something that doesn’t work well, you’re probably not going to get flamed on Reddit. very much. If you have good, strong people first relationships with your partners.
Erick: Yeah, you’re absolutely right, Rich.
And it is, again, Charlene reminds us how important that it’s the relationship first and people first. And like you said, when we’re, talking about putting together the basic building blocks of a channel program. I’ve got to admit, Rich, I’m not tracking the people component as [00:55:00] a high of a priority as Darlene reminds us it must be.
And so that’s something that, makes a lot of sense because it’s not, it’s not that you made a mistake, right? In a channel program or in anything, it’s how you address that and the better the relationships you have with your clients here, channel partners, The easier will be for them to give you the opportunity to rectify it and like you say Rich Give you the courtesy of doing it before they, burn down the whole town on Reddit.
Rich: The ven I know this is true for me. It’s probably true for you as well. That the vendors out there that MSPs are most enthusiastic about. Are the ones that are best at creating that kind of people first bond with their partners. And I won’t name names, but we can both think of companies that have done really well in the last five plus years, and they excel at really caring about their partners and demonstrating that in in everything that they do.
Erick: And in fact, Rich one particular vendor that we both know of that we can think of is that they have such a bond with their channel partners that their channel partners get worried when talk of an acquisition or something like that happens, because they think all of that goodwill and goodness is going to change.
And so it works both ways, right? So it’s interesting how important that is in terms of loyalty and, long term relationship building. And just feeling good about, representing that vendors, products and services in your stack to your clients.
Rich: Absolutely true. That is absolutely true.
And it leaves us with time, Erick, for just one last thing. This is coming to us from Italy. Now you’ve probably seen these experiments that sociologists will do now and again. They’ll go to a classroom full of students and they’ll ask, how much money do I have to pay you to part with your phone for, a day or a week or something like that?
And, it’s surprising sometimes how much money people want. To just be without their phone for some period of time a restaurant in italy in verona Italy specifically has come up with a technique that appears to be very effective at getting people to park With their phones for a little bit, at least for the span of dinner.
Now, this is a restaurant that takes socializing and human connectedness very important. They want to be a place where people enjoy one another’s company. They also take the food very seriously. And if people, are nose down on their phone, they’re not paying attention to each other, they’re not paying attention to the food, so they were looking for a way to get people to just give up the phone so that they can’t be distracted by it, and they came up with something surefire.
So here’s how it works at this restaurant. When you come in, this is all optional. They say, if you give me your phone and allow me to lock it up for you, I’m gonna hand you this key here. Only you have the key that can get you your phone back. And when your waiter comes to the table to take your order, flash that key to the waiter and you’ll get a free bottle of wine.
That’s right Erick. They’ve figured out a way to get people to part with their phones, a free bottle of wine for the table if everyone at the table here locks up their phone. And how well does this work? They have got an approximately 90 percent success rate right now with people taking advantage of of that deal.
I don’t know maybe we should all be attempting this this same model ourselves, Erick.
Erick: Yeah, I, I’m thinking, Rich I’ll just keep an extra bottle or two of wine here at the house so that, when the kids are over. I can try that and I’ll report back and let you know how it goes.
Rich: Please do. Just make sure that you, if they’re going to down a bottle of wine, take the keys along with the phone. But yeah, I’ll be curious to see if it works curious to see if it works as well on your own as it does in Verona, Italy. Apparently.
Erick: Yeah. And when I say my kids are grown.
So just saying, when I say kids, the kids are over. They’re old enough to drink wine. So there you go.
Rich: Folks that is all the time we’ve got for you this week on MSP chat. Thank you so much for joining us. We’re going to be back in a week with another episode for you. Until then, let me just point out we are both an audio and a video program.
So if you are watching the video version on YouTube, but you listen to podcasts as well, go to wherever it is, your audio podcast, look for us there. If you’re listening to the audio podcast, you didn’t know we’re on YouTube. We are. You can find us there. Go ahead, check us out. Wherever it is you encounter us, please subscribe, rate, review.
It’s going to make the show easier for other folks like yourself to discover and enjoy, and we very much appreciate it. This show is produced by the great Russ Johns, he would be happy to produce a show just like it for you. If you want to learn more about Russ and the work he does with us here at Channel Mastered, he’s part of our team.
If you just want to learn more about Channel Mastered, place to go is www. channelmastered. com. By the way, Channel Mastered has a sister [01:00:00] organization called MSP Mastered that consults with MSPs. If you want to learn more about them and the work that Erick does with MSPs through that organization. Your destination should be MSP mastered.
com. So once again, we thank you very much for joining us here. We’re going to see you in a week with another episode, folks. Until then please remember you can’t spell channel without M S P.
