MSP Mastery: Ctrl-Alt-Deliver
Welcome to Ctrl-Alt-Deliver: MSP Mastery — the podcast for IT leaders, MSP owners, and service delivery professionals who want to elevate performance, improve processes, and stay ahead in the fast-changing managed services landscape.
MSP Mastery: Ctrl-Alt-Deliver
Winning Together: Turning Your MSP into a Growth Machine with Nicky Miklós
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Welcome to MSP Mastery: Ctrl Alt Deliver Podcast, the podcast for MSP owners and leaders who want to build a better MSP, one that actually works for them.
I am Jeni Clift, joined by my husband and long time business partner, Nick Clift. Together, we unpack what is really working in thriving MSPs, including insights from the trusted partners who support them.
In this episode, we are joined by Nicky Miklós. Nicky is a professional sales coach who has spent years helping business leaders build high performing teams and cultures. She understands the unique challenges MSPs face when trying to grow a sales engine that involves more than just the founder.
Nicky returns to MSP Mastery for a second conversation to dig deeper into the concept of making sales a team sport. We explore the transition from individual brilliance to consistent processes, the importance of leadership transparency, and how to help technical teams see that identifying a client need is simply another form of service.
Many MSPs struggle with a cowboy culture where sales are inconsistent and rely on a few high performers. We discuss how owners can introduce the structure and playbooks of the sheriff without killing the energy and personality that makes the team successful.
We also explore why sharing the business journey including goals, wins, and financials is the key to building a culture of trust where every department, from administration to the service desk, feels like they are part of the winning team.
Here is what we covered together:
✅ Redefining Sales as Service: How to coach high performing engineers to see that identifying a client problem is not salesy but an essential part of delivering great service.
✅ The Importance of Internal Education: Why a technical team cannot help a business grow if they do not know the full range of products and services the company offers.
✅ Cowboy Culture vs. The Sheriff: Why growing MSPs need to move from chaotic, individual sales efforts toward consistent, documented processes and playbooks.
✅ The Power of the Get Together: How stepping out of the day to day business for offsite strategy days allows leaders to look at the penthouse view of their growth story.
✅ Transitioning Sales Knowledge: The challenge of getting the sales process out of the founder’s head and into the business so it can be repeated and scaled.
✅ Building a High Vibing Sales Culture: Why celebrations, energy, and shared excitement are essential for maintaining momentum in a growing sales team.
✅ Leading by Example: Why owners must first understand the lay of the land and the genius already in the room before making bulk changes to the way the team works.
✅ Sales as an Inclusive Sport: Why administrative, finance, and technical departments all play a role in a successful sales outcome and should be included in the celebrations.
✅ The Value of Transparency: Why sharing sales targets and business results creates accountability and allows the team to help you achieve your goals.
✅ Reframing Financials: How to educate your team on how a business actually operates so they understand that revenue and profit are what allow the business to support them.
✅ Identifying Productivity Gains: Using technical insights to spot simple opportunities for clients such as matching screen resolutions that improve their daily work life.
✅ The Monthly and Quarterly Wrap: A tactical structure for sharing wins, learnings, and future focus points to keep the entire business aligned.
✅ The Loom Video Advantage: Why creative touchpoints and short video messages remain one of the most effective ways to stand out in a crowded market.
✅ Practicing non attachment to Outcomes: How leaders can help their teams handle lost deals by treating them as lessons and creating space for the right clients.
We created this podcast to share the real conversations and lessons we wish we had more of while running our own MSP, with practical insights from people who understand the challenges of this industry.
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Are we getting creative with our touch points? What is the thing that is going to help make you stand out in this really crowded market?
SPEAKER_01The underlying that is what sales is identifying an opportunity to help customer, a person solve a problem.
SPEAKER_04Oftentimes when I walk into businesses, they've got cowboy culture in that the salespeople are doing what they need to to get the job done. But there's no consistency. It's just all chaos, which is fine. But then the business grows to a certain point and it's less effective and efficient if everybody's off doing their own thing.
SPEAKER_03Welcome to MSP Mastery, the podcast for MSP owners and leaders who want to build a better MSP, one that actually works for them. I'm Jenny Clift, and alongside my longtime business and life partner Nick, we unpack what's really working in thriving MSPs, including insights from the trusted partners who support them. With 60 plus years of combined experience, we've seen it all, from the first break fix calls to the sophisticated MSP tools of today. We've been early adopters of the tech and the strategies that shifted our industry toward recurring revenue and long-term success. Our goal with this podcast is to share the real stories and hard-won lessons that inspire and add genuine value to our industry, helping you build a business that is both profitable and fulfilling. This is MSP Mastery, is Nick, myself, and today's special guest. And today we have a very special episode because, backed by popular demand, we're continuing our conversation with our longtime friend and former sales coach, Nikki Miklosh. We had such a great time in our last episode that we realized we had so much more to talk about when it comes to making sales a team sport. Nikki, it's so good to have you back to keep this conversation going.
SPEAKER_04Oh my goodness, I am so excited to be back. Thank you. I feel very popular.
SPEAKER_00Good to see you again, Nikki.
SPEAKER_03Okay. So, Nikki, as an EOS implementer, we always start with this one. Since we last caught up with you, please share your personal and professional best.
SPEAKER_04Oh, I would say personal is swimming training. Guys, I'm learning how to swim properly and it's amazing. And swimming is so good for everything. So that's my personal best is I feel like a professional swimmer, which I'm definitely not. And professionally, I would say I ran a growth off site with a client just a few days ago, and we got out of the business, got the ELT, three of them out of the business. And it is amazing what happens. And I know you know this, and I think this is a personal win, a professional and personal win, but great reminder to get out of the day-to-day grind. Because by having that full day, one of the favorite, my favorite statements that I heard throughout the day was this could be a crazy idea, but what if? Or this is wild, but what if, you know, like the ideas just start to flow and to be able to look at a business's growth story from the very, very early days, the very beginning, all the way to where they are now, and then project 2032 is what we were looking at. What are the future goals and some of the pathways to get there? That is amazing. And I drove home from that day, exhausted, satisfied, and just thinking this is real impact. This is the work that business owners need to be doing because it is what's going to shore up the sustainability of their future. And it's fun. And we pull funny faces at each other throughout it.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, exactly. And and I've I've been reflecting on that too, because we work with a number of clients that are EOS implementation, and the ones that embrace the two-day annual process get a much, much better result and a strategy going forward for 12 months, and the other ones that are smaller and think, oh, we can't afford two days out of the business, and they just try to cram it all into one day. You don't let those creative juices flow.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's just dawned on me that reflecting back on the clients that actually do the two days, because day one's you know, reviewing the past and lessons learned, and then you debunk all that. And then the next day is like you just said growth. What the heck are we going to do? Where are we going to go? How are we going to get there? What are the possibilities? All the crazy shit. Throw it up there. Let's distill all that back down to reality at the end of that second day. So I'm looking forward to getting to do a few of those in the next few months.
SPEAKER_04The other thing I've been reflecting on that is, and you know, we hear a lot, and this is relevant for any decision we make in business with sales teams, salespeople, you know, make decisions now that your future self will thank you for. Or also what it does is there's tough things that can come out of that room. There's there's decisions and actions that don't necessarily feel really great, but our future self, that 2030, that 2032 vision version of us in our business is going to be so thankful that we had the hard conversations, the creative thinking, and did the tough stuff now. Because if we don't do that now, it's going to be a different version of 2030, 2032. Everyone's talking about 2030 now. It's like 2030, it's very catchy, 2032.
SPEAKER_01So only four years away.
SPEAKER_04I know I know it's in Saturn, isn't it? We're so in the future already. It's insane.
SPEAKER_03And just touching on those offsites, even the room, we have a pretty long list of what that room needs to have. And one big thing is a view, a natural light, but that you can see the sky, you can see a long way away. Because if you're an internal room, your thinking becomes small because you're in a small room. I say, you know, what's your teen year vision? And you're looking at four walls. Yeah, it's so true. It actually limits your thinking. So getting off site, getting into a location that inspires you, that allows you to look out that window and really think big. It's so important.
SPEAKER_04Definitely. Yeah. It's the work that matters and it's the work that people can be too busy, like you said, to get to.
SPEAKER_03Okay. So do you want to give us just a one-minute intro for anybody who hasn't watched your previous episode? We found you was our sales coach. We we trained together as coaches back in the day in Melbourne. And if you remember, did we interview three coaches or potential sales coaches at the time?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and we picked the dodgy one.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you did. You sent us a video, I think, a Loom video, which I think was it after Yeah, it was the follow-up, the follow-up, and I thought, hey, that's really cool.
SPEAKER_01That's something different. I can relate to that. But this this lady's gonna be fun to work with.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Whereas, yeah, everyone else either didn't follow up or just sent a boring email and you sent that real lovely, exciting video.
SPEAKER_02And said, Oh, it's gonna be so cool to work with you guys, and I'm really excited about the future and all this stuff. I go, holy shit, I think I need to have some of this, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Do you know I still I still talk about that? So the Loom videos, I still use the AU. I'm gonna sniff at this part of the podcast and share it with everybody I know because I still talk about the importance and the value of doing it. And I reckon 2%, one, 2% of people, individuals or businesses actually use it. So my work is really revolved around building high performance culture, teams, sales teams, and focusing on really working with not just the sales capability in businesses, but also the sales leaders and making sure that they actually, you know, I think leadership and we touched slightly. And if you haven't listened to the podcast episode previously, make sure you go and find that because it was a goodie. And the role of sales has it's live this week. Yes, it is. It is. Yeah. Go get on to that. I'm learning so much, even listening to it again. The role of the sales person has changed so much, but so is the role of the sales leader. And we've got to be really forward thinking, like we've just talked about, around what that actually looks at like. And Jenny, we did our professional coaching together. My gosh, 10 years ago. 10 years ago? Long time. I've been in business 10 years this year. So it's pretty exciting. And even what you said there around the boring email follow-up, didn't follow up, or get creative about a different touch point, that is the stuff that I'm still talking about now and still doing. So for those of you that are listening, you know, even just taking that away and thinking, are we getting creative with our touch points? Whether it's at the very beginning of a conversation, after a conversation, what is the thing that is going to help make you stand out in this really crowded market? I mean, that was eight years ago, I can't even remember, but now it's still relevant and not many people are doing it still. Big opportunity.
SPEAKER_03Oscar has been recruiting for Morphability, and I can't remember how many hundred applications, it might have been 200 applications that they got for a cold calling role. And one sent a loom video with his application. And he was one of the handful of people that Oscar interviewed purely because of that stand out from the crowd. Yes.
SPEAKER_04How is it that it's still the same things that we were doing back then is still standing out from the crowd? I also think that there's a shift in not just in sales, but Jules and I were talking about this this morning around going back to older ways of things. You know, like I think people are starting to, and I want to get a home phone. But from a sales point of view, lumpy mail, like actually posting things out, putting it in an envelope, it's lumpy. People open and go, ooh, what's this? If we can find the addresses, I know that there's always challenges with things, but thinking about how do we go back to the more old school kind of ways. We talked last time about in-person meetings. Now we're not going to do everything in person because why would we? There's efficiencies. But where we can, or delivery in person, you know, like it's those things that make a difference these days because there's a yearning for connection and trust. Oh, trust. What can we trust these days?
SPEAKER_01I trust anything you see on the internet.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04You look at it and go, pretty sure that dog shouldn't have a fifth leap. I know, and even though it's probably real now, I'm like, nah, don't believe it. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03We've become all becoming so cynical, just don't believe anything. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so Nikki, in our last chat, we talked about sales being a team sport. But what I see is for a lot of MSP owners, the biggest hurdle is probably the check chain. Brilliant at solving problems, often terrified, particularly in Australia and New Zealand, our long-held belief of that very scary word, sales. From your experience, how do we coach a high-performing engineer to see that identifying a client need is not sales, but actually just another form of service?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think everything starts with our mindset, our beliefs, you know, everything in life. That's why we were so drawn to coaching and why the three of us have always gotten on so well because we're really big on development and growth and mindset and beliefs and any area that we want to be successful in life at, we have to start from the beginning, which is what are my thoughts, feelings, beliefs around this? How is that therefore making me feel? And then that feeling is what's going to drive the action. So if you've got a high-performing engineer, project manager, whoever it is, and they feel icky about sales, it does not matter what you say about sales, or if you don't even use the word sales, if they still have that feeling, there is always going to be a barrier. So the first thing to really think about is how are you redefining or defining what sales or the word version, service, delivery, whatever that looks like for individuals and for the team. What is the culture? You know, if you've got a say a sales team, because again, it's our history, it's our experiences that create those beliefs as well. So if they've been sold to really poorly, or if you've got a really loud, vivacious, hunting sales team, their mind might go to, I'm not going to do that. Don't expect me to do that, even though we're asking them to do something totally different. And another really good reminder is that nothing has meaning except the meaning that we give it. And so if we can take the time with those individuals to understand what does selling or sales or uncovering a need or serving, what does that actually mean to them? And then start to redefine the belief of what it is that you want them to do, i.e., have a conversation, maybe ask a couple of extra questions, or if they identify something through the work they're doing, pass it on, or maybe have a get buy-in from the client. You know, that's kind of what it comes down to. But it doesn't matter what you tell them if they believe that that is icky selling. So we've got to take the time to understand what would doing that mean to them, how comfortable are they with it? And then you can start looking at the tactics around making it a bit more comfortable for them. But if in the back of their mind, and especially I reckon, you know, this industry, once we get something in our mind, once there's a little like, nope, I'm a there's stubborn people, let's be honest. Absolutely right. And this is the only way, right? Let's just, yeah. So even more important, we meet them where they are. We get curious, we ask, we, you know, ask questions around what would it, what could it look like if, or what would you be open to, not comfortable with, because it won't be comfortable for them. Would you be open to sharing a bigger picture's perspective? And then I think as a team, we need to understand what is the team culture around sales? Is sales serving? Is sales helping? Or is sales just about the numbers? Like actually, what is the culture? And I I think about a high vibing uh sales culture, which was such a great, what definitely what you guys had. Yeah, it was about hitting targets, but more than that was about meeting people's needs, helping them, serving, delivering, and then we get to hit our targets. So be really careful about what the culture is that they're a part of and where they've come from. There's a lot in that answer. I hope that's okay.
SPEAKER_03So I've got a great idea. So what if I offer them an incentive, like they'll get a bonus or a commission out of selling something to a client? Do you think that'll work for an engineer?
SPEAKER_04I think what do they want? Like what does that make it seem more salesy? Does it make it seem more about the money? I mean, this is like the people often say referrals, you know, I'll pay somebody for a referral. I don't think that's a good idea either. We refer because we believe in a product or a service or a person and it makes it icky. Yeah. Now, in saying that, I think that is good company-wide celebrations and reward is great because we're in this together. We are a team.
SPEAKER_03But yeah, I'm particularly for engineers, they're not money-driven usually.
SPEAKER_01I'll add to that, Nikki. The engineer is selling or providing a service or help. The way I would phrase it is our purpose in life is to solve problems. So by us asking good questions of our client, keeping our eyes open, we can identify more opportunities to help the client solve some problems that they may or may not know they have. The underlying that is what sales is, is identifying an opportunity to help customer, a person solve a problem. One thing I think is really important in the MSP industry is our technical teams don't even know what products and services our company offer. You can have a guy employee as a really good service desk team, especially offshore guys, because they don't even have the ability to overhear sales conversations or get involved in the product. So there's so many people I know inside of MSPs that don't even know what the company they work for actually provides as a service or a product. So that is a very important thing is to educate your internal team. And once they realize that, oh, well, that they can join, they're smart people, like you said, they can join the dots. Oh, if we put that firewall into that customer's over there, that will solve all these tickets I've been getting for the last six months. Not even knowing that we sell firewalls, they're never going to join those dots, as an example. So I think that is a very important part of that strategy of improving the customer service skill level of your technical team because making sure they actually know what you do and what you provide and what is the actual purpose of the company, though.
SPEAKER_03Well, we had that situation once where one of our senior checks just made an off-the-cuff comment about a client who'd asked, he'd said he'd replace their entire fleet of laptops. So he sent them to the local Harvey Norman 32 laptops. And we said, Why did you do that? Why did you not tell our salespeople? And he said, Do we sell laptops?
SPEAKER_04That's such a great example. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01No, we fix them, we don't sell them.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I'm not a salesperson.
SPEAKER_04We can laugh at this. We you know, we can have a joke and a laugh about it, but it's so true that it happens so often. And sometimes it's the most obvious thing that's where it's like, oh yeah, that's actually a really good point. Do my team actually know all the ways that we are able to help? And that's another great takeaway for sure.
SPEAKER_01I guarantee if you ask your newest people in the company, do you know what products and services we offer our clients? They will all say, no idea, unless it happened to be in sale.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And even then, they probably don't know either because it takes time to That's true.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Just let everybody know. Let this be a company-wide thing. I mean, that's one of the most common questions that I ask when I start working with a client is does everybody in the business, the team, but also the business, understand and know the services and products that you provide? And I think the other thing, you know, we were talking just before about I call it the growth story, whether the origins of the business and where it's come from. You do that in the EOS off-site days. The really cool thing about reflecting on that is to your point, Nick, about the purpose of the company, is you can actually create from that your brand story, but also what you stand for. And that feeds into your purpose. And then you can choose to actually maybe bring that into the business as well. So the more that people feel like they're standing for something, that there's a reason that they're doing what they do, and particularly if it is a family business or a small business, I don't know. That's something that people can really get behind and be proud of. And that also helps them have more conversations or lean into asking more questions or getting a bit more curious with clients. It's all connected. And if we're not clear as business owners or senior leaders, how the heck are your team going to be? Like they're just not.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. And it's simple little things. Like a good example is maybe it's not so much these days, but when we're all in the office and we had hot desks, you know, or a thing, like and you go in and you put your laptop and you plug into the dock, and the screens were different, like different sizes. There was a 22-inch screen, there was a 24-inch screen, and the configuration. So it took you five minutes to figure out how to set your screens up to make it work. Like that is a productivity thing that technicians don't necessarily see that. But if you educate them, say if we had the same matching screens everywhere, I can and go from one screen to two screens, I can guarantee the productivity will go up 20 to 30 percent. And that's a way, a simple way that a salesperson is never gonna get to see what's on every single desk inside a business. Whereas the technicians will, maybe it's a bit more difficult now because we're remote, but there are still tools that tell you what's going on. And it's so frustrating when you go to try and drag something from one screen to another and it's a different size, different resolution, it goes to a different place, and you're like, what the heck is going on here? All that is a cost that we can solve through people just being aware, taking notice of the environment they're in, and saying, Hey, did you know there's a better way of doing this? And maybe it's not now, but when we when we do the next refresh, let's make sure we get new monitors in there and then sort this out for you. Little things like that.
SPEAKER_04Yep.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Now I'll get you to run us through this concept again. Last time we were talking about the cowboy culture versus the sheriff. So can you just, for those who haven't listened to your first one, what is that?
SPEAKER_04Okay, so cowboy culture is think about those pioneering Western movies that we watch, and the cowboys come into town and they're setting up and they can do whatever they want. So oftentimes when I walk into businesses, they're at a bit of a growth set point. So they've got cowboy culture in that the salespeople are doing what they need to to get the job done. But there's no consistency, there's no streamlined processes. This guy's over here doing it his his way, she's over there doing it her way, they're over there doing it's just all chaos, which is fine when you're setting up a business, when you get to a certain point in business because you just go in there, guns are blazing, and you do what you got to do. But then the business grows to a certain point where it actually doesn't make sense and it's less effective and efficient if everybody's off doing their own thing. So the sheriff comes to town and the sheriff says, right, we need some rules of the land, we need to lay some laws down. Here's the way that we're gonna do things, here's some structures, some guidelines to abide by. And oftentimes what happens is some of those cowboys or cowgirls, you know, they're like, nah, I this is not what I signed up for, which is also kind of fair enough because they've been allowed to do whatever they want to do, but then there's that whole, you gotta get on the bus and like let's go, or it's not the right culture. And there's so many, so much benefit as well to the individuals in the team when there are those playbooks and those structures and and the sheriffs kind of putting those things in place. And ideally, we want it to be that there's structure and there's guidelines and there's playbooks, but then the individuals can bring their own personality. They just, there's alignment, there's consistency. You know, we talked last time about Nick when you stepped out of sales and the process was in your head. And it's like, wow, I've got to get this out and into the business because there's so much knowledge sharing between the team. So all of a sudden, we also move away from the results. The sales results are often reliant on a few high performers in that cowboy culture. But when we've got the right playbooks and processes, then all of a sudden performance is more consistent across the team. And you can still have that high-vibing culture. You can still have fun with it. But it's just there's nowhere to hide. There's transparency over what we're doing. Cause also, let's face it, salespeople, I don't mean to generalize. But if there's a shortcut, we'll often find it.
SPEAKER_00We're taking it. We're taking it. Brickest path to the sale, you know, which is not necessarily always the best.
SPEAKER_04100%. And look, as humans, we are wide. Way, what's the shortcut? What's the efficiency? So no shade on salespeople, but we need those consistency. We need the sheriff sometimes, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Right. So the sheriff's coming to town. What's the first law or documentation they should put in place to start that transition without killing that team spirit? You don't want all the cowboys laying down their guns and heading off to somewhere else.
SPEAKER_01No, no, I disagree. I think you go bust into the saloon and you shoot the guy who's the ringleader of all the bad people and say, this is the new rule. We're starting afresh. Anyone on board? If you don't want to hear it, get out and this is where we're going for it. No money joke.
SPEAKER_03That's one way.
SPEAKER_01That would have been the 2000 version of it during that. But I've learned that's not the right way to get the best output.
SPEAKER_04And look, you can try it and you can learn your own lessons, or you can learn all of our lessons.
SPEAKER_05Correct.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So look, I reckon you bust open those saloon doors, you head up to the bar and you ask who are the cowboys in town. We've got to understand, you know, if the business has grown to a certain point, there's success there. There are things that are working really, really well. And those people that are at the coal face, like they've done a great job with what they've had as well. And oftentimes, not everyone throws a tantrum and leaves. Sometimes they throw a tantrum and get on the bus and realize it's better, or they've been waiting for it and they're ready for it, you know. So we've got to understand the genius in the room. We've got to understand what is working. So I think the starting point is understand the layer of the land, who's doing what, what is working well, what are the gaps and what's not working. And then you bring in your own perspective and thoughts, or get the support of experts to fill in those gaps. And so you're creating something together and you're collaborating together. You're building the foundations of the town together. You're identifying that shack over there is really old. We need to rip it down and start again. Or actually, this one over here, this is good. We're going to just keep building on this. And so there's this sense of empowerment. And yeah, some people still might not like it, but that's okay because you've done the right thing by the people and by the business. So that's really important to keep in mind.
SPEAKER_01I was trying to think of a good film analogy because I love kind of relating stuff back, and it just comes back to Ted Lasso. Like that's exactly what he did. He went in, he was the new sheriff in town. He just sat back and let it all happen and observed, and then slowly he put pieces in place, and the really rogue cowboys kind of left, and then they figured out their journey it then. They came back and they were part of the team. And so that yeah, I totally agree. You can't go in and make bulk changes straight away. You've got to understand what's going on and and take that genius in the room. People are in sales are there for a reason. It's a it's a tough gig if you don't like sales. So I don't think there's going to be too many people in a sales role these days that don't get it and want it. It's just their effectiveness is due to the the surrounding tools and processes around them. So yeah.
SPEAKER_03We've talked and you were with us every step of the way for those four years as our coach at DWM. But if you look back as the coach, can you think of one specific cultural aha moment or shift in behavior that you saw in our team that kind of signaled to you we'd shifted, we'd made that move from a group of individuals to a really well-oiled sales machine?
SPEAKER_04I that's an interesting question because I feel like there's not one defining moment. To me, when I reflect on that, there's things like the things that I remember are the vibe and the energy in the room when I would come down into the office. You know, everybody really lent in from the beginning. But then the more we sort of hung out and shared some of these playbooks and processes and created things together and had some fun and celebrations. It's just the vibe, it was a high-vibing sales culture. When I think about the visuals that we talked about on the wall, like everybody got around that and were pumped. I think a particular moment I do remember is when one of the team members, and it might have been Oscar or one of the team members, like when more of the team members would reach out to me to share wins, that was really the thing where I'm like, okay, we're really getting some momentum here. And I remember I was probably going, I don't know, somewhere, probably going to a pub on a Friday night or something or an event. And I recorded a video in the car on the way to the event. I'm like, yes, guys, this is actually there were a few of them. That was one, there was another one, you know, where like the video, because I was in Brisbane, you guys were in Melbourne, you know, the video excitement, there we go from the very beginning. You hit your target, you're so close. Come on, let's go, let's go, let's go. And then just that team conversation around it. So it's hard to pinpoint a moment. I think it was a progression of the little things. It's the, it's like James Clear's Atomic Habits, the analogy of that melting ice. You know, you put the ice cube and you can't really see what's happening, but you then all of a sudden the ice cube is melting because there's been these small one degree shifts happening without us even realizing and noticing. And then all of a sudden it's the visuals, it's the conversation. It's the it was really about the team when they started proactively looping me in on this was a great conversation, this was it, where this is where we're at at target. And it didn't just rely on one person. So, which really says something because if we think about it, to be two states away before COVID, this is even before we had any of this as the the norm, you know, for them to really proactively kind of include somebody outside of the office, that shows that they're really in the game in terms of celebrating that team success. And I felt like I was a part of it. So I think it's the incremental shifts, yeah. And the visuals, the conversations, and then the energy, just those DWM sales fests meant everyone was pumped for them. Well, from what I could tell anyway. Yeah. They were like, they were, you know, because they loved teams and they took something away and they applied it. And that is so important. They applied it.
SPEAKER_03And I think those sales fests, and I can't remember what how we even came up with that, but it was that sales team off site, effectively, of getting the sales team together, celebrating those wins, making that plan. Everybody was on board. And because I wanted to talk about expanding on the sales team beyond them and into the whole business. So the admin, the service desk teams, they all kind of felt part of that vibe. And I feel that that that energy just flowed around because everybody in the sales team was so excited. You absolutely played a big part of that in bringing your energy because we built that team, I think, right through the business. They weren't sales, they knew they were not in sales, but they kind of still feel part of that. What's your thoughts on that?
SPEAKER_04So we talk about sales is is a team sport, very timely, actually, as the World Cup is on. I can hear it in the background. It's just constantly on here. Sales is a team sport, right? So we automatically kind of going, my teammates, my fellow salespeople, my sales leader. But actually, we can't do what we do without the admin, without the finance, without the accounting, without the tech, without the product delivery, without marketing, without every single part of our business is involved in the sales team creating and being able to sell. And I've, you know, when I worked in corporate, I worked in a big organization, big media organization. And there was always such a huge divide between the sales team, the marketing team, it was in media advertising, and then the actual creative, you know, delivery team. And I never understood it because when we worked together, we A, provide the client a better service, but it was really like uh, well, we were too noisy for them. And I like I do get that sometimes. But to the point that there was an office that we worked in in Brisbane and Hamilton, and the ad design, they built a wall to block out our side of the business. Now, okay, we can talk about noise pollution, all of that, but aside from that, it just created a divide. So I think the lesson in this for all of us, sales, business owners, sales leaders, any any leader, it's not, it's not even sales leadership anymore. It's it's commercial leadership. You know, I think we need to look at are we involving everybody? Are we actually celebrating? Are we telling, as the business owner, senior leaders, am I going and telling, you know, Haley, the business support manager, she's my business support manager, she's on my mind, how she contributes to my success or the business's success, that it wouldn't be be it wouldn't be able without them, right? But this comes down to the culture again of inclusivity. And you guys as well are really good. It's a team sport. It's not just a sales team sport, it's a wider team sport. But it's up to the leaders in that business, whether you're hierarchically a leader or not. Everybody has a role to play to make sure that there's inclusivity, that there's sharing. I think the other tricky thing about this is sales teams often do get those incentive schemes, whereas oftentimes other people don't, even sales support often don't. So I really think if you have that in place, think about that. And how can you reward and incentivize, you know, a little bit broader, because that can also create a divide and some resentment.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I was thinking that, yeah, sharing one thing I think we did well was sharing the results, the wins and the fails. So we would always at the monthly staff meeting, we would talk about the deals that we won, the deals we're working on. It became more open knowledge of we're going with this big tender at this place, we're gonna need some help from blah, blah, blah. Rather than report at the end of the quarter, oh yeah, we we didn't meet our sales target. Everybody kind of knew the journey that we were on, and we shared a lot of that stuff. And I think that was really cool. And that especially helped when we were, let's be honest, most of our sales were account management to existing clients. We didn't add a lot of net new deals back in those days because if we had a good solid base and we were trying to bring that base up to a standard, and we did the classic identify what you what you've got and what you haven't got, make sure everybody knows what we services we provide. And that was where most of that success came from. So, yeah, sharing the journey, sharing the results, good and the bad, with the team regularly, I think it was instrumental in bringing everyone together and sharing in that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I agree. So, interesting point around that. I find that sometimes business owners, again, it's this growth. So we're going from cowboy culture to sheriff. There can be a bit of a nervousness. I don't know if you guys find this as well, but sometimes there can be a nervousness for the business owner to start being really open about things like sales targets. And, you know, there's almost this, oh, but I don't know. And there's just so much stuff that can come up around that. So I think it's important that we kind of name that to go. If you are thinking, like, oh, I don't know, that seems, do we share sales targets, et cetera? Absolutely. Yes, it feels weird and it feels awkward, but there's so much benefit, as Nick just talked about, if you can push through that. And then eventually it's just second nature to you.
SPEAKER_01It's not even it's like the universe provides for a need that you have, but it can't provide if you don't shout it from the rooftops. Like if you don't share your goals, dreams, and aspirations with people around you, they can't help you. And humans by human nature, we're designed to help. We're designed to be in a community and we're designed to the need for connection and all this kind of stuff. If you don't tell people what you're trying to achieve, and I used to tell our clients what we're trying to achieve, they go, Oh, okay, well, there's a couple of deals coming up, we'll talk about that. Because they want you to succeed too. Like, very there are adversarial relationships, which yes, there are assholes in the world and bad clients and bad operators and all that stuff. But the general majority, 99% of people, want you to be successful. They want to work with a provider that is profitable, it's going to be there tomorrow, it's going to have good staff, good systems, good processes so that they can work together. Not I never lost a client or had a difficult conversation about a price. It was always about we didn't communicate for whatever reason. The communication went to stop. That's the only reason I ever lost a client. So I don't believe business people are unreasonable, but you've got to put it out there. And if you tell, like going back to things, people don't know what you sell. I'd say in most MSPs, the junior level entry triage, receptionist, admin techs, they wouldn't even know what the turnover of the company was.
SPEAKER_05Yes.
SPEAKER_01You know, like what is wrong with people? It's not a secret. If they want to find out, they'll find out anyway. So share that.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And you've got to develop a culture of trust. And we had that at DWM. We had a lot of process we had to go through before we would share the raw numbers, like not people's salary, so the prices of each individual deal, but high level, and you need to explain how a business operates. People think you invoice something, it goes straight into your bank account and you buy a boat with it. People are not educated on how business works. You know, like you're lucky if one percent of the dollar you sell ends up in my boat. You know? And they're good businesses doing in the, you know, the average in Australia, I think, at the moment is about 4% net profit. That's EBITDA. So you've still got to deal with tax and other shit after that. So there's not a lot of boats being bought in the MSP space at the moment. You know, there are a few out there that have got it right. Maybe it's because they're playing their cards too close to their chest and they don't share enough information. So their team can't help because they don't know what you're trying to achieve. Totally. Just do more tickets. That's the most demoralizing thing on the planet. Do more tickets. Tickets come in every single day. Do more tickets is not the answer.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and for what purpose? And even what you shared there as well around losing clients because of communication. So that's really great information for an entire team and business to know what is the market saying? What are our clients saying? How are they feeling? What's working for them, what's not working for them. And also with the level of uncertainty out uncertainty out there in the world, Jenny, to what you kind of alluded to this a moment ago, people will make up stories. They're going to make up stories if we're not so open or if we don't explain things or if we don't share, they're thinking things anyway. So let's help shift that narrative.
SPEAKER_01I had a lot of angst and concern and stress about buying my Tesla in the company, right? And it was a hundred thousand dollar car. So it's a lot of our farmers that were clients had $200,000 land created at the time, but you know. Yeah. And in the end, I think it was Jenny and the CFO said, just get over yourself, Nick, go and get the bloody car, you know. And I was worried about what it would sent what message it was sent. And then we I let some of the staff drive it. And they I asked them a question, what did you think about me getting a Tesla? It's fantastic. We want to be successful like you, so we can get a Tesla.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Not, oh, you're a bloody, you're ripping me off, and you're not paying me enough, and blah blah blah. It was the complete opposite to what my fear was. And that was my limiting belief about money and bits and pieces and what value is and all that stuff. So yeah, share it. I just encourage you guys listening to share the sales team's objectives, share what you actually problem you solve, and share the company's dream, vision, and and results. Yeah, you've got to temper it and you've got to put it in a perspective so they can understand it. So you've got to do some education and explain, you know. It's like the classic way. I think we explained it was a liter of petrol. How much is a liter of petrol? And you can get these charts, they own like stuff now. And it's not a lot of that two dollars you pay for a liter of petrol goes to the government in taxes or goes to the petrol bowser. And it's like very everyone gets about 2% cut. It goes a whole lot of places, but it's a good analogy to say, well, a dollar, sell a dollar of something in an MSP, that dollar doesn't go in the owner's back pocket.
SPEAKER_03No. Gets to keep four, four cents of it if he's lucky. Yeah. Four dollars. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04A really good tactical thing that listeners can do from this is that we've sort of touched on. And I know, you know, even when we think about when the sheriff comes to town, what's one of the first things to do? The other thing is, well, one of those things would be a monthly rap or at least a quarterly wrap. So everything we just talked about, you can put in that. It's that presentation, it's a sit-down, it's the whole team or business coming together. What were the wins? What were the learns? Reflect on the last month or quarter. You know, maybe 20% of the conversation is reflecting on the last 20% uh the last month. What we said we were going to do, wins and learns. And then what's our focus for the next month or the next quarter coming up? So that's a really tactical, simple structure that you can implement right away if you're not doing that already. It is something that I did in every sales team that I led and would always continue to do for exactly all the reasons that we just spoke about. And if we've got the structure, you're more likely to be consistent with it. If monthly seems like too much, go quarterly, but quarterly is the sweet spot, like no less.
SPEAKER_03And make it easy for the rest of the business to help the sales team achieve their goals. So, you know, we had we ran autotask at DWM and we had ticket templates. So if somebody had a lead, they knew exactly what to do with that. They could pass that information onto the sales team really easily rather than, oh, I've got a lead, I don't know what to do with it. Oh, I've got more tickets, I'll just go, and it just goes in one brain cell and out another one and it's gone. But I wanted to talk about, and you touched on that at this point in what you just said, when you've got the whole team involved, you've got accountability, we ran an EOS, so we had our scorecards. But keeping everyone focused on the team wins, but preventing finger pointing or blame if a deal doesn't close, how do you get, because the sales team are often pretty good with that. You know, it's a numbers game for every nine no's, I'll get a yes, but that's not how other non-sales focused people think. So how do you sort of balance that within the rest of the team and get it into that? It's just part of the process when we don't win a deal or we lose it to somebody else, for example.
SPEAKER_04I I think we lead by example. So some people will be more sensitive to losses, even in the sales team or outside of it. You know, I think we have to practice this non-attachment. We are driven and we are focused on a target. Actually, another really good thing you can do is if you've got a revenue target, put next to it what that means in terms of number of clients that you're helping or number of tickets or number like something that's meaningful that's not just dollar driven, but it's more about impact. So when you've got your impact, so Tim Duggan talks about this impact number alongside uh revenue number. And it might even be the impact number that you're talking about with the wider business and the team. So when we're clear and we're driven and focused on that number, absolutely, but we've got to practice a non-attachment to how we get there. And so I think it comes down to the conversations and more experienced people sharing anecdotes or examples or remember that client that we lost, and then with that created the space for this brand new client that we absolutely love working with now. Or, you know, what are those real-time kind of scenarios? So as leaders, we have to lead by example. We have to be aware of how we're communicating and presenting. We touched on this last time. We could be bummed about it, but then we get back up. And we have to practice this non-attachment because just because that one deal or sale didn't come across doesn't mean that there's not a different way to get to the outcome. So, how do we share that mindset and perspective with the rest of the team? I think it comes down to how we're presenting at our monthly wraps is a really important part of that and the day-to-day conversations that we're having. And maybe if it's new for other people, check in with them and ask them what they're making this mean and then help them reframe what that could look like. Because, you know, we know, and everybody listening know that we can set a target, set a goal. We get there in a completely different way. And sometimes it's even better. Sometimes it was a harder way, but there was a reason for it. Sometimes we're surprised that we haven't got there, you know, like and we learnt a lot along the way.
SPEAKER_01We got to show some of those wounds and scars and yeah, and and I think I think another way to address that is got a team that's because it can be scary. Like, oh, we we had this deal and we didn't get it, right? I went to a competitor or they decided to buy direct from one of the vendors rather than through us. And oh my god, what does that mean? Giving statistics about the industry and showing where we are and how that's what happens in the world. Because a lot of people don't understand this, right? And that's the power of peer groups. And I was we were in a number of different peer groups, and you're comparing yourself not total numbers, not dollars and profit, it was more about percentages. But we know that if you do X amount of work, you're gonna get X amount of revenue from this type of service, and that's the benchmark good, better, best. And we were always in that good to better space because if it wasn't, I was busting my ass to get there because that was what drove me because I knew I know if and to me it's like proof is like the classic four-minute mile, right? It's impossible to run four minutes, a mile in four minutes until it's not impossible because somebody did it, right? And that's the same with everything in the world. It's impossible until it's not impossible. So it's really never, never impossible. It's just you've got to find a different way to do it. So is it possible to build an MSP from zero to ten million dollars? 100% it's possible. It's been done hundreds, thousands of times. Why can't you do it? Or what is your blocker? What is the belief structure that you can't go from here to there, or what are the things you're not doing? So getting that external proof that the industry itself does support the journey we're on, I think is another way of explaining and helping people understand where they fit in the picture.
SPEAKER_04Definitely. Okay.
SPEAKER_03Now, to wrap today's uh podcast episode, can you share one mindset shift that you would like every MSP leader to make before they finish listening to today's episode, but specifically about sharing that sales responsibility across the entire team? What would that be?
SPEAKER_04Well, I actually think the mindset shift is what we've spoken about around sharing results, wins, learns across the team. Actually, I'm gonna say two. Can I have two? You can have two. They're connected because I think the real thread and the theme, it's a theme, the thread and the theme throughout today is A, as senior leaders, business owners, stepping out of the business is really critical for the future success. So mindset shift is around don't get too busy to do that. Prioritize that. It's a must-do. And then what aligns with that is actually sharing, coming back and sharing with your team. From the offsite that I had that I did last week, which was with an MSP business, one of the things that the leaders were saying at the end were, oh my gosh, it was so good. And we get together quarterly to do a quarterly review, but it was so good to be able to also reflect on what we have done really well. I feel like we say this all the time, right? But it's worth mentioning again. It's so good to reflect on what we have done and the celebrations and the successes over the last 12 months. And I've realized, in the words of the leaders, we've got to really filter that out to the team because they're probably feeling overwhelmed, busy, all the things at different points as we are sometimes. And so the monthly wrap, the sharing your information, your wins, your learns is a way to do that, as well as, you know, we call it like that's getting on the balcony of the business. And your offsite that you guys do is getting on the penthouse. So we want to go the penthouse and we want to go the balcony. And I think if we really distill this down, it's the mindset shift around taking the time to pause, acknowledge where we've come, where we're going, and share.
SPEAKER_03And I think we did that really well. It took us a bit of time. Nick, you were pretty resistant, I think, in, or particularly about sharing the financials of the business. And I probably pushed you along unwillingly for a while, but we certainly saw the value in sharing that. And I think the tech team, it's sharing, you know, we're working on this tender, we're working on this deal, it kind of got them a little bit of excitement around if there's a new client potentially coming in or some new technology that we get to learn. So it's sort of some probably thought, oh my God, you know, more work. But it's over time they do start to get on board and look forward to having those sessions and hearing what's going on elsewhere in the business. So it from our experience, it absolutely works.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. A common thread that I see in businesses that really make this work well is also the celebrations, the team celebrations, whether it's quarterly, half-yearly, like an actual proper, or even at least annually. But it just makes such a difference in the culture. So it's all connected, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Nikki, thank you so much. So much more we could talk about. We always run out of time before we run out of conversation. But thank you for sharing your wisdom with us again today. Really enjoyed chatting.
SPEAKER_04Thank you so much for having me again. And actually, one more mindset shift. Loom videos. Get out there and send Loom videos.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's the reason Tick goes viral, isn't it? And is because it's just a short video. It doesn't take a lot of effort to do it just on your phone. It doesn't have to be produced in a studio like we're doing. It's just like, oh, hi guys. And I'm gonna send a couple of messages to people today.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, good. I love it. Okay. Nick, thank you as always.
SPEAKER_01That's all right. I'm here as the comedic relief, and uh sometimes I've actually got something smart to say, apparently.
SPEAKER_03Well, we would hope so. If this conversation hit home for you or got you thinking, head to mspmastery.blog and keep the conversation going. You'll find all our episodes there and more wisdom from the peers and partners who are shaping the future of our industry. And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. We've got plenty more great guests and stories coming your way. Until next time, this is MSP Mastery.