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MSP Mastery Podcast
Welcome to MSP Mastery Podcast, 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 Podcast
From Products to Outcomes: How MSPs Build Trust That Lasts with Moheb Moses
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Welcome to MSP Mastery 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 and peers who support them.
In this episode, we are joined by Moheb Moses, founder of Channel Dynamics, ARN ICT Hall of Fame inductee and long standing leader across the technology channel. Drawing on 42 years of experience across vendors, distributors and solution providers, Moheb brings a wealth of practical wisdom on how the channel operates and how MSPs can build stronger, more profitable businesses.
Moheb shares stories and insights from his book, Everything I Know About Selling I Learned from a Tennis Racket, exploring the fundamentals of genuine sales discipline, effective negotiation, specialisation and what it really means to be a trusted adviser.
We unpack the essential role of the channel in bridging the gap between what a vendor creates and the outcome a customer needs. Moheb explains why distributors remain one of the least understood yet most valuable tiers in the industry when leveraged for consolidation, licensing expertise, training and technical support.
The conversation also looks closely at how MSPs can stand out in a market where technology is increasingly accessible directly to the end user. Moheb explains why deep customer discovery, industry specialisation and understanding what a client defines as a win will always outperform basic product knowledge.
Here is what we covered together:
✅ The fundamental purpose of the channel: Why the channel exists to fill the gap between vendor products and customer outcomes.
✅ The true value of distribution: How distributors create efficiency through consolidation, inventory scale, licensing expertise, partner training and technical support.
✅ Treating vendors and distributors as customers: Why understanding their targets, commission structures and incentives unlocks far greater support and opportunities.
✅ Moving beyond price shopping: Why consolidating business with a preferred distributor delivers better commercial relationships, rebates and tier status.
✅ The evolution of customer expectations: Why clients now expect business insights and end to end outcomes rather than basic IT maintenance.
✅ The four levels of a trusted adviser: Why product knowledge is only the entry level, followed by understanding the problem, understanding the customer and mastering the customer’s industry.
✅ Asking better discovery questions: How staying curious and asking thoughtful questions demonstrates real expertise and builds client confidence.
✅ The used car salesperson trap: Why jumping straight to a technical solution makes clients withhold information, and why staying in discovery longer creates trust.
✅ Redefining the win win negotiation: Why true negotiation requires asking what the other side genuinely wants, rather than settling for compromise.
✅ The power of specialisation: Why trying to serve every market makes an MSP forgettable, while specialising in a vertical or niche makes you the first choice.
✅ Sharing real stories and failures: Why being transparent about mistakes and lessons learned connects far more effectively with prospects and peers than polished perfection.
✅ Using AI with human judgement: Why AI tools are brilliant for refining, amplifying and accelerating ideas, but need human experience and authenticity to truly resonate.
✅ Helping clients win with their customers: Why the most valuable MSPs focus on helping their clients deliver a superior experience to the people they serve.
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.
Learn more about Moheb Moses and Channel Dynamics, and connect with him on LinkedIn.
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The role of the channel is to fill the gap between what the vendor creates and what the customer outcome is. Anything that you can either make cheaper or more efficient by consolidating it, it becomes a role of the distributor. Your customers care more about how much you know about them than how much you know about your products. To me, the more important one is understanding what the customer's business is and what a customer's defines as a win. And that's what makes you trusted.
SPEAKER_02Welcome to MSP Mastery, the podcast for MSP owners and leaders who want to build a better MSP. I'm Jenny Clift, and alongside my longtime business and life partner Nick, we draw on our 60 plus years of combined experience to explore what's really working in thriving MSPs. 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. Here's Nick, myself, and today's special guest. Joining us today on MSP Mastery is Moheb Moses. Moheb is a name many of you will know as the founder of Channel Dynamics. For over 20 years, he has been in the corner of MSPs, vendors, and distributors, helping them navigate the complexities of the channel and build more profitable, effective businesses. His deep understanding of what makes an MSP successful was further cemented through his extensive leadership of the CompTea community, now GTIA, where he worked tirelessly to support and advance our industry. And we did have a little bit of a conversation about tirelessly. An ARN ICT Hall of Fame in DuckDee, Moheb has recently turned his four decades of expertise into his latest book, Everything I Know About Selling. I learned from a tennis racket. We're going to talk a little bit about that today. But it's a book that proves sales lessons are everywhere, even in a game of pickleball or a tin of canned duck. Moheb, welcome to MSP Mastery.
SPEAKER_00Thank you very much for having me. And thank you also for using the word tirelessly rather than a mixed suggestion of occasionally. But yes, I said enthusiastically, not occasionally.
SPEAKER_01And it's good to see you again, Mo. That's uh one thing I will say that Mohe always brought enthusiasm and energy to anything that I was involved in, and especially on the GGAA council and the stuff your your enthusiasm was really uh infectious. Motivated people to go above and beyond. So I'm really looking forward to this conversation today.
SPEAKER_02Okay. As an EOS implementer, I always start with this question Mohe, please share your personal and professional bests from the last six months.
SPEAKER_00Personal and professional. So the thing is, first this last six months, that they are the same, funnily enough, which is, as you mentioned, I wrote a book. So I've got to be careful. I'm not gonna harp on about it during this. I did happen to happen just with me, but I haven't to bring it on.
SPEAKER_02Look at that.
SPEAKER_00It was my first book, and it was about selling and being something that you know I've enjoyed doing personally and professionally, and I've just learnt a lot along the way, just the process of writing a book and publishing it and so on. So that's probably has been the highlight over the the last six months.
SPEAKER_02Nice. Nick, when are you going to write a book?
SPEAKER_00Uh I'm working on it.
SPEAKER_01I think within two years.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I thought you were going to say never.
SPEAKER_01No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00No, definitely on the agenda. Okay, so if you do decide to write a book, let me know. I have learned so much about this process. And by the way, that goes for your listeners as well. I've learned so much about this process. If anybody is thinking about doing that, I can save you hours.
SPEAKER_01I know that because they are the hours that I wasted creating like it's a really interesting segue because yeah, there are marketing organizations out there that say the book is the new business card, and you basically can sign up to a service and do probably three or four hours of interviews and they'll do it all for you. And you come out with your name on the front of a book that you have no idea what you've written about. I'm not suggesting that, and that you should do that, but yeah, I think the book idea is definitely a methodology of getting your knowledge experience and and sharing some stuff out there with potential readers and and ultimately potential customers if the topic's relevant to them. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And actually that'll be that that topic, not necessarily about the book, but I so the thing that helps you, of course, today is AI. And you can use AI to help you do this a lot. And but one of the topics that I talked about a lot is AI, in my view, great at refining your ideas and amplifying it and accelerating it. The mistake that I think a lot of people use is they delegate too much to it. And so you can delegate, if you delegate the ideas, then the whole thing it falls apart. In fact, I wrote a post about this not long ago, which is if you ask, and I use these numbers off the top of my head, but if you ask AI, for example, ChatGPT, to say, give me a random number, and it'd be interesting if you know people listening now would say just go to ChatGPT and say, give me a random number between one and a hundred, and I bet you the number is gonna be 73. Okay, and then say, give me, give me another number, and I'm gonna bet the number's 24. And say, give me another number, and I'm gonna bet it's 88. No, I may be proven completely wrong.
SPEAKER_02Everybody's gonna be in Chat GPT now going, give me a random number.
SPEAKER_00And the reason I highlight this is algorithmic, it may appear to be random, but it's not, it's algorithmic. And there's an interesting thing that I've seen. So I'm currently judging awards for the Sarah and Channel Awards, and I've seen a number of submissions come in. And I can spot the ones written by AI because they have a very similar cadence. Because while it's using your data and your words and so on, it has established what it considers the perfect structure. And the structure, and I can spot it because the opening sentence is some people do this, some people do that. Our nomination does both, and you know, and it is an opening line that it uses in the same way that 73 is its opening line for a random number. I'm definitely gonna test that later. Yeah, and so I like that to say, you know, AI can amplify what you do, and it can accelerate what you do, it can save you hours and hours of time, but it's doing that for everyone in the same way. And the only thing that differentiates you is your skill and judgment and the human aspect of it. And that's the whole this whole topic is which is what is it you bring and get AI to by the way. I use AI a lot to write my articles, and quite often it gives me this beautiful piece. And I my response is often that doesn't sound anything like me. Go back and read my last four posts and refine it.
SPEAKER_02And it's it's interesting now. I, you know, look on LinkedIn and it's the same thing. You can absolutely spot from a mile away the unedited, straight out of Chat GPT articles. And I do the same thing. I use AI to do mine, but it's always write in my style, use Australian language, those sort of things. Don't use hyphens and dashes. But you can just, it's the same structure. It's more than the words, it's a structure that comes out, and it's it's just I got to the point now where I just sort of glance through it and go, Yep, AI, move on. You can use it for polish, but don't lose the essence of who you are.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00So I didn't mean to go off on a tangent, but I couldn't help myself. It's just what I we do that all the time.
SPEAKER_02Masters of tangents. Okay, so again, as always, can I get you to introduce yourself and just share a little bit about your professional journey, how you ended up where you are now?
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean, despite my incredibly youthful good looks, I've actually been in the industry 42 years. And I've not mentioned that number often, but I can now because according to Hitchhiker's guide, it is the answer for life, the universe, and everything, right? So I've embraced that number.
SPEAKER_02And I'm actually 42 because if you have birthdays outside of your country of birth, they don't count. So I'm 42. I have been for quite a while now.
SPEAKER_00Well, I may I may well be in the industry for 42 years for many years to come. Yeah. So the first 20 years was working for vendors, distributors, solution providers, and and I worked out at that time I was that I was a channel guy. So I spent two years selling directly to the end users, but I'm a channel guy. I know how to sell through through people. I've worked for the first 15 years of my career was distribution. And by the way, I should highlight because distribution is I think the least understood tier in this industry. And yet for me, distribution is the one where you learn the most about the way the industry works, because you deal with many vendors and many partners. But that's where I learned the industry, and then I work for vendors and distributors and 20 years ago formed channel dynamics. And our goal was to help vendors be better at selling through a channel. And to do that, it's how the vendor engages with partners, but also how the partners engage with their customers. Because if partners aren't successful, vendors aren't. And if vendors aren't engaging with partners, then partners move away. That's basically been my career, and channel dynamics has been the primary business for the last 20 coming up to 22 years.
SPEAKER_02In that time with channel dynamics, what are some of the real changes that you've seen? Those sort of really profound fundamental changes that you've seen in the industry.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so it's actually really important to firstly define well, why do you need a channel? Because you could sell direct, right? So why do you why do you need a channel? And so my definition is the role of the channel is to fill the gap between what the vendor creates and what the customer outcome is. So if I give you a really silly example, so one that I use kind of is that my father decided at the age of 75 to buy his very first computer. And in his mind, it's to send email to family and friends in Egypt. Okay, so that's the outcome. Email to family and friends in Egypt. The product was a notebook that arrived in a cardboard box. See the gap? If you think about support, software, installation, training, all those things, right? Well, that gap is the role of the channel. And of course, expand that to something broader, which is, you know, a large enterprise organization trying to roll out a new CRM system and you know, whoever it is, Microsoft or SAP or whoever creating a product, there's a you know, there's a gap. It's something that's what the channel does. So that to me is you know how I define it. The problem is that the vendors and the products continue to become better and have more capability, more functionality. And so that gap starts to shrink, you know, and again, like take a really simple example. Think about backup 15 years ago. Mate, I was I was absolutely just thinking exactly that.
SPEAKER_01Like I used to have a lot of on-prem servers, and we used Veeam as a product, and it was really, really good at backing up Virtual Infrastructure. Then they added 17,000 features to it, and it became a schammozzle. And how we purchased that through a distributor, they had no clue of the product anymore. We had no clue of the product, and the end user had even less clue. So there was a big disconnect. So I get what you're saying 100%.
SPEAKER_00Well, there's actually two aspects to what you're describing. One of them is when it adds extra complexity, that's great because the channel has an opportunity to make more money. However, when it adds not extra complexity, but extra functionality, it takes away from the channel. So it can be a double-edged sword. And so the other aspect of backup, for example, to your point, you used to have to get Veeam and hardware and whatever. But also, I could argue if you've got a credit card and a Dropbox account, instant backup, right? And so there's not much the channel's adding to that piece. So it depends on whether the vendor adds something to the technology that provides a greater opportunity or a lesser opportunity. But regardless, it's still what's the gap? And if the vendor adds great functionality, that's a great price and also acquires other products, the gap shrinks. However, the other aspect is, and we've noticed this as well, is the customer's expectation has gotten bigger. So remember back in the and like and you probably would know this better than me. Remember back in the old days, a customer was happy for you to do that backup. I reckon they're not as happy with that anymore. They want a bit more, whether it's management or insight or yeah, definitely.
SPEAKER_01They're asking more. And it's really interesting. And just reflecting on the journey we had at DWM and at Otto, and I'm thinking back to maybe I should have known about channel dynamics because we had the best, and I I might get confused with this as well, with a channel, right? So as an MSP, I am the channel for a vendor to get to an end user. And then we had very, very successful relationships directly with a number of vendors, and then distribution got in the middle of that. So you had a vendor, a distributor, then the MSP, then the end user. Some of those vendors did that transition well and it added value. Some of them absolutely screwed it up and they lost a lot. Like, for example, I'm happy to share this story. Yeah, Dell. We had an excellent relationship directly with Dell. We were, I think, the top in the top five or six Dell partners in Victoria, and corporately somewhere, whatever, they decided to go down the distribution channel. And then all of a sudden, as an MSP, which is still channel, I didn't just pick Dell anymore. I picked what was in stock or what was the best price. So I went to all the other vendors. So that relationship, I think how they went to distribution, they got it wrong. Other vendors that I've dealt with that went to distribution got it right, and they actually, the distributors added value. So that maybe have a bit of a discussion around the role of the distributor and how our MSP listeners here can leverage the distributors because I see at the moment everyone treats the distributor as the evil asshole that's stopping them from doing a good deal. And there has to be a good way to deal with distributors, and it has to be a way to work with them and have that relationship you used to have with a vendor, but have it now with your distributor. And I'll be really interested to get your take on that because I I think a lot of MSPs are missing an opportunity out there to leverage the distributor to deliver a better service and actually represent their vendors better as well.
SPEAKER_00Yep. Okay, no, that's so I love that because I talked about distribution earlier, and I think it is the least understood and also the least utilized here in our channel. So just coming back to, you know, I said the channel fills the gap between the vendor and the end user. So where does distribution fit in? In that gap, anything that you can either make cheaper or more efficient by consolidating it, it becomes a role of the distributor. And so let me give you a great example: infantry. So we're going back, you know, 30 years now when that was critical. But for a vendor to own stock, it's expensive. You know, they need their own warehouse. For a partner to own stock, it's really expensive because like they've got so many products that they've got to carry. But for a distributor, because I can carry multiple vendors' products, then I can utilize my big warehouse and create efficiencies that neither of the other two tiers can have. So that's what I mean by consolidating. Now, as hardware becomes less important because technology moves and becomes more software, the vendors have to look at well, what other opportunities are there? And so one of them, for example, is understanding licensing. That was what drove a lot of distributor because Microsoft's technology was, for example, so complex, and you had to explain it to thousands of partners, but you also had to explain themes and Citrixes and, you know, blah, blah, blah. And we can go on and on, right? So again, you consolidate that.
SPEAKER_01I have to laugh and interrupt there. I I listened to a podcast on the way on the flight from Bali to Melbourne last night, and it was specifically about that MAI, right? The Microsoft AI internal models. And in their imitable way, they've got seven different models that work with different parts of their ecosystem, and nothing works across all of it. So you're 100% right, maybe it's such a complex thing, and the average user's got no clue, no hope of even understanding. The average MSP, I believe, is still struggling with that thing. So that is a great example of where the distributor can add an enormous value if they get it right.
SPEAKER_00And so then you look at other things. If we could consolidate those and make them either more efficient or less expensive, then that to me is a great role for distribution. So for example, training could be one of them, training partners. Because if you get the format right, the training becomes a very, you know, you can book rooms, you can facilitate the process, you can have learning management systems that track who's certified with what so that's technical support becomes one, especially as everybody moves to using AI agents to answer their phone calls and using chats for support. Who does the support part? I mean, so I didn't mention this, but my first role in this industry was as a tech support person for WordPerfect. Wow, it's taking me back. It was a manual, and you got a manual, and you if you didn't know how to set up, you know, your Epson printer to print a document, you rang a university graduate and you spoke to them on the phone. God, could you imagine doing that today? Like it's impossible, right? Admittedly, admittedly, back in those days, partners made 35 points margin, and so did distributors, and you could afford to, but today it makes no sense. Yeah, yeah. Um, and that's you know, I've kind of gone off the the initial question, which is what's changed, but and we'll come back to that because that's the core. So, so where where were we? We were talking about gosh, I've I've gone blank. What was I saying?
SPEAKER_01That's all right. We we have these conversations. I was asking the how can the listeners utilize the distributor component better because they they understand the vendors, they understand the customers, but I think the vendor part is still a little bit of a black art.
SPEAKER_00So the easiest way to think about distributors and actually vendors as well, is think of them as your customer. So if you think about a traditional sales model, the customer is a person that buys from you. But in our industry, that's not necessarily the case. If you I view the people supplying you as your customer, if you treat your distributor as your customer, then they will give you so let me go back a step. What does a customer do? You that you sell them your product and they pay you money. Well, with a distributor, they give you money in a different way, maybe rebates and maybe leads and maybe opportunities, maybe introductions to the vendor, or maybe support, whatever it is, but that's what they give you back. And you treat them as a customer and you give them your attention. And so the first thing is understanding, well, what is it they're trying to achieve? Now, that may seem obvious, right? That it's profit, but it's more than that. And if I can if I can give you a great example, I worked at Citrix for four years. I was the APEC sales director during its period of growth. And there was a period during that time for six months, where Citrix really wanted to be perceived as a services organization, not just product. The entire sales organization's commission schemes were changed so that any dollar of services that you sold, it went as two dollars against quota retirement. That's a good way of incentivizing people. Okay, because that was the thing. Now, if you were a sales rep working for an MSP or a VAR or whatever term you want to use, if you understood that, you knew how to get our attention. Because you'd say, look, I've got a great product opportunity and there's a strong services element. Yep, you've got my attention. Tell me more about that. I'm really, really interested. Now, the thing is, MSPs do that with their actual customers. Well, the good ones do anyway. They actually ask them questions about what do they need, what are their issues, what they're trying to solve, what does good look like, all that, all that stuff, right? Which is the discovery process before you start saying, Let me tell you how good we are. Well, it's the same thing with your distributors and your vendors. Understand what is it that they're motivated by? Is it GP? Because sometimes it is, but it's not always. So a vendor may say to a distributor, especially this happens after an acquisition. So a vendor acquires another vendor, and what they've got to do is grow that market. And so the goal is how do we grow that? Yes, I'm curious about this, but how do I grow this other piece? And they will set that as a goal for the distributors. And maybe they get extra NDF for targeting that market. It may be that they get a bit of margin, whatever it is. But if you know that that's what's important to the distributor, you look for opportunities. Because as soon as you find opportunities around that, the distributor will support you. And so that's this idea of treating them as a customer. And meaning, understand what their problems are and don't just take it at trace value, you know, scratch through the surface, well, why and how does that benefit you and what's the outcome? And like here's a great question for a distributor account manager or a vendor account manager, which is look, don't tell me the actual numbers. I don't want to know, but tell me how your commission is structured. What are you targeted on? What's your target? And where where do you get the most accelerators? And because what I want to do is help you, help you win that, view them as a as a customer and talk to them.
SPEAKER_01100% agree. And and the successful account managers that I had, in my day it was pretty much direct with vendors. We did exactly that. We we knew each other's pressure points and we worked together. And Dell's a good example because Gary was my account manager and he was he he actually helped me a lot because he had a QBR process and we would sit down and I'd help him with his QBR and he'd help me with mine with my clients. Because it was in his advantage, his benefit to have a roadmap of selling Dell product into my clients. It was my advantage to help him, so I got better rebates. exactly like it said and the whole thing works and for me my personal experience I lost that when they went to distribution I didn't have anyone in the distributor world that I had that relationship and I the transition was poor it was just like chopped off and I go whoa what happened and I lost it I lost that yeah so I think the story there guys is talk to your your your distributors because most people go through distributors now right there's not a lot of direct vendors anymore so you've got to figure it out and there is value and I actually I'll pose this question I have in your comments is I believe there is some value in picking one distributor for multiple different products rather than shopping across the street because it you get your volumes up surely the rebate system works better and it it comes back to understanding the motivation because if you get to be a gold partner you potentially you could aggregate lots of different products with that one distributor to get higher up in their status structure so you get better margins rebates yourself rather than shopping across the because it's so easy to shop everywhere now you could go anywhere like that's how Amazon exists yeah you just go in there and type in I want a laptop an i7 laptop with 512 32 gigaram and a terabyte hard drive it doesn't give a shit what vendor it is it just gives you back what's in stock and the best price and that's what we're competing with as a channel because the end users are doing actually they're not even doing that they're going to their AI agent and saying hey I need five laptops tell me what I should buy and who's got them in stock at the best price but they're not even talking to an MSP anymore. That's another whole kettle of fish we have to worry about. Sorry Jenny we'll get to one of your questions eventually.
SPEAKER_02Well I'm just going to chime in then and say so as we talked about before we started recording today, Mohe, we're heading off to Europe as you are shortly. My planning of my trip this time first time I've done this was we use Abacus AI. I went in there and said this is our trip we need to be here at the start we need to be here at the end. We don't want to be flying all around Europe where do you suggest we go and we fell in love with Portugal during COVID. We did a virtual European tour when we got into a snap lockdown. And so we're doing 11 nights I think in Portugal and it was completely planned out including where do you think we should stay in Lisbon and then in Porto where could we go in between? What about the Duro Valley? It has uh you know wine and okay well let's do that then where do you recommend we stay? So using AI to buy your computers to organize your trip, it's just become what we do now and really quickly.
SPEAKER_00And the issue for MSPs isn't the buying of the product because let's face it there's not a lot of margin in the actual buying it's the services around it. Where the danger is is not when you say which computer should I buy but more I'm thinking of setting up a CRM system in our business. How should I set it up? How should I configure it? What other products should I use in other words going beyond the purchase and saying design it and configure it and set it up for me. And that absolutely is the the risk. And that's for all service providers and and so I think specialization is going to be key where it's not that you understand your products perfectly well, although of course that's important but where you understand the market. And there's a phrase that I've used which is your customers care more about how much you know about them than how much you know about your products. And I think that's going to become more important as as we go on and and I'm just going to very quickly just jump back to something. So Nick you asked about what you should you do with distribution. And so that's that's another one thing that's really important is trying to paint a picture in their mind of an area of specialization that you have. Now most people worry that if I say I only do this that they'll miss lots of opportunities. But I believe the opposite happens. And so let me give you an example of what I mean. I'll meet an MSP or for example so I'm going to be at Edge in a couple of weeks and I'll get to meet lots of partners and I'll speak to them and I'll like to know and I'll say tell me about your business and and I'll hear something like well we are a solution provider that provides you know products but what makes us different is we focus on products people and processes to develop best of breed solutions that create great outcomes and I go okay that sounds good so who are your customers well we focus on government but also education and small to medium business and healthcare and aviation and I go okay so you do everything for everyone. And you sound like everybody else yeah and they are immediately forgettable I will have forgotten what they do within you know by the time I've gotten to the to the my next framework. Now here's what I mean by specialization. There's a partner that I knew for example I said what do you guys do? And they go well you know we focus on mainly security and storage and so on and backup but our main focus is in the creative industry. So advertising publications anything to do with that that's what we know really well. We understand your issues etc and I remember that I still remember that 20 years later right yeah I have another one that this the some MSPs will go we are a VMware provider but it's not just a VMware we do everything around it. I mean quite you know going back and you guys wouldn't Thomas Durea that's how they started they were the first guys to say we're embracing TD.
SPEAKER_01But real IT became an I Citrix so you can specialize in a technology or you can specialize in a target market and you promote that and so you're the first person they think of that's funny how they um as you get wiser like we all are now because we have much more experience we're not definitely not older we're just wiser and more experienced seasoned seasoned that's it we the terminology of the universe provides has a much bigger impact because if you don't tell somebody what you're trying to achieve what your goals dreams and ambitions are they can't possibly help you because they're not aware of what you're trying to achieve and it's the same with your distributor and your vendors if you don't tell them what you're trying to achieve in your business they have no chance of actually helping you whether they want to or not they just can't and the human psychology and the subconscious if you like my hobby you tell me I'm really trying to get a client or a meeting with the head of the AFL or one of the AFL football teams right we did this thought experiment in one of our sales teams right our our sales coach challenged us and said who's your dream client and I said oh I want to look after a you know V8 supercar team and someone else said oh I want to I want to look after the Collingwood football club we didn't ask that question before we employed that guy we really should have asked no we did not know no and found that he's he's definitely like a one-eyed Collingwood supporter anyway she said let's take that one okay so the people in this room you think about who you know who might know someone who might know someone who works there and within 15 minutes we had the contact details of a finance secretary that was best friends with Eddie McGuire's wife and everyone's gone holy shit did that just happen and say would you be comfortable contacting that person and having a yeah say hey I got this absolutely so without putting it out there that's what you wanted no one has the opportunity of giving that back to you so yeah yeah I've just learned that over the time is not to be afraid specialization is fantastic but also saying what you want to achieve is super important and even to your clients tell them what you want to achieve for your business so they can get on board with you and refer you to people that they may know. If you don't tell them anything what you're trying to achieve if you're just racing to the bottom best price then you're irrelevant to them.
SPEAKER_02They're not going to think about you at a party and Christmas party or a trip to Europe and yeah you'll be flying to Europe and you'll be sitting beside someone in first class and won't you my hobby and you'll be talking to that guy and say oh actually you you're a specialist you need a guy that does aviation fuel trading I know a guy in Adelaide that does that is his details like that's the way the world works and we need to use AI when it's appropriate but we need to keep that human element and learn how to leverage the human psychology yeah so let's step into the world of sales so this is something as we've talked about your book what do you see as a big gap with MSP owners who are usually they're great techs they've somehow or another started a business con you know consciously or a lot unconsciously how do they take that those tech skills they may run a great business and often they don't even see themselves as as a salesperson but really that's what they do. But yeah how do they kind of step into and embrace that role as as the salesperson?
SPEAKER_00So a lot of MSPs started because there were people who knew technology and they really understood it well and they could see how it helps customers and so the intent was right and that's how they got their first customers and you could trust them because they knew what they were talking about. The challenge is growing once you get beyond that aspect of it. And there's also there's a lack of sales discipline which is drilled into you if you work for a vendor you know there's cadence there's pipeline whatever and you you know you don't find that in a lot of MSPs. But what you do have if they are technical people if they come from a technical background there's pros and cons to that one of them is they tend to ask more questions because they genuinely want to solve a problem. That's the good side the negative side is as soon as they've worked it out in your head they jump straight to the problem okay let me tell you about it and depending on who they are depending on how technical they are can also have a tone that says I can't believe you're so stupid you don't know this already. But it's I say depending on how technical that that is and also sometimes the the language can go over the heads of the audience because the audience doesn't care about the technology they just care about an outcome. And so there's a few aspects to this so one of them is what I call skills and then some behavior and so let me just tackle one of the behaviors first. And actually I'm gonna use two and I'm gonna apologize for this I use this example all the time but it links into what Nick was saying and I'm sure some people will have read this in text but you know I use the example of pretend there's an orange and and two sisters you know walk into the the kitchen sorry there's an orange on the kitchen bench and two sisters walk in they start arguing about it and one girl says I want the orange and the other girl says no I want the orange and the mother walks in and sees them arguing what do you do? What do you do in that situation? They both want an orange what are you going to do? Me I would cut it in half. Yeah exactly that's what most people do they go let me cut it in half. Well let's just ask the sisters why they want the orange and because if we do one of the girls will say well I wanted a glass of orange juice and the other one would say I wanted the peel to make a fruitcake and so if you ask that question they both would have got everything they wanted. And so I wanted to come back to your point Nick about tell people what you want most people approach a negotiation with the view that I shouldn't tell you that because you'll use that against me. Whereas the most valuable thing you can do is to say what do you want to get out of this? What's that let me tell you what I want to get tell me what you want to get so the phrase win win everyone everyone says you know we focus on win-win but they never actually ask the other side well what do you want as a win and the language you hear and this is obviously and listen for it which is so we got what we wanted and they're no better off they're no worse off so it's a win-win well no it isn't they didn't win they just didn't lose that's different it's like a game of soccer or football isn't it yeah you can have a how can you play for 90 minutes and have a zero zero result you know so the thing that I'm gonna tell you is how do you get better what's the core skill is a ask more questions and there's a there's another exercise I like to use pretend you know and I and I'll just say pretend that you like doing up old cars for example you know you just like buying cars and doing them up. And now if you've got like a 1960s Mercedes and you're trying to do this thing up and you're buying parts for it if you're talking to the person you know selling you the parts who's going to tell you how to put them on and whatever you tend to tell that person as much as you can right because you think they're gonna help you. Contrast that with when you're buying the car and you're you know talking to a used car salesperson you don't you don't do the same thing do you you tell them as little as you can right if you think someone's going to help you you tell them as much as you can about your situation and you share with them a lot. If you think they're going to sell to you you tell them as little as you can you keep really quiet. And so here's the thing so I'm gonna draw a line down to I wish I had a line that I could draw down here. But your job is to stay here as long as you can before you cross over to there. What that means is when a customer says I've got a problem you go great let me make a note of that because like we may be able to help you. But before we go further let me ask you some more questions. By the way we do have to cross this line because if we don't no one gets paid but the goal is stay here longer. So you know there's a phrase that gets used in our industry a lot which I hate it but I can't think of a better one which is the trusted advisor. Okay. I hate it because everyone uses it but the reason I like it is think about what it means which is I trust you enough to take your advice that's exactly what a salesperson aspires to but we try to define it. And the difference is the level of trusted advisor and for a lot of vendors they believe if you know my product really well, you become the trusted advisor. Well no that to me is the most basic level of being a trusted advisor. To me the more important one is understanding what the customer's business is and what a customer's defines as a win. And that's what makes you trusted. And so we need to redefine that and I and I actually talk about trusted advisor actually four levels. The most basic one is product knowledge which by the way means there's some people who don't even make it on my chart because they got no idea. But the first one is you know the product and what the benefits are but to me that's the most basic one. The next one is understanding the problem the more important one is understanding the customer. And then the highest level is where you understand the industry that the customer operates in and be able to bring insights to say here is what we know about your industry and here's what you can do. And you only do that by asking more questions. And the advice I give to everyone is whichever level you're at, just go up a level and I define this and I've and I've I've written a post about it and I've written newsletters and it appears as a chapter in my book but I define what those things are and the goal is all you want to do is move up one level and that is the behavior that we talked about. When you think you've asked all enough questions just ask another couple more to see if you can get you to that that next year up.
SPEAKER_02And that comes back to what you talked about before about specializing that at DWM we really specialized in rural Victoria. So it was government it was health and utilities so water authorities. And you know Nick you knew those industries and how they worked inside out and we had a bunch of professional services as well but really that's where we specialized and I think voluntold was probably hopefully if there's nobody listening but I thought I'd attended the world's most boring conference going to an industry one, but I was incorrect. The I got sent to a local government IT managers was it conference that because you know be in the room where your audience is and you know as much as we love going to industry events that's not where your clients are.
SPEAKER_00I agree completely. You know there's a an attribute that I really spot in salespeople which is curiosity. Like they're genuine and I don't just mean because if they ask questions but they're just genuinely curious. They want to know how the industry works what makes you tick. They want to know about you and they'll and they'll ask you questions. And if you feel like you're talking to someone like that, then you respond you you share you know I come back to this being on this side of the line. Let's say for example we're at a conference and I went up to you and said hey I'm curious how much money do you make so that feels a little bit uncomfortable right exactly okay but have you ever met a financial planner within five minutes you tell him how much you make how much is worth your house is worth how much you owe in your house what your wife owns etc etc like you share everything. So I'm a little offended that we've known each other for years and you won't tell me but you'll tell a random stranger after five years. And then come back to this question of why did you do that? It's because you thought that financial planner will help you and you will share all sorts of things that without context you go well I'm not gonna tell you that yeah we talk a lot about that with the MSPs we work with that we need to help we need to understand what a win is for your client and your clients' clients because you need to be paying it forward and paying it down the line.
SPEAKER_01So if for example you look after a dentist clinic right what's the win oh sell more coke so people I I don't know I don't know what the win is probably a bad example but the win for them is a smooth experience for their patients right so that's the win. It's not having the best laptops it's not having they've got some compliance stuff but it's about the experience of that's the difference you go to as one dentist versus another one the the check-in process the the smoothness the communication that's the win so you've got to understand what the win is for that particular industry you're in and then how to help them sell to their customers. So yeah well you've got maybe you help them introduce them to an app that does the appointment you can book it on an app gives you an update what about if they told you in advance that oh the dentist is running 15 minutes late so your appointment was 930 is now at 945. How good would that be? Like doesn't isn't that the dream of every person that dreads going to a doctor or a dentist is to sit there for two hours. We had a big argument with this doctor we sat in the waiting room for an hour and a half and and the guy said well I said mate but my time's worth 500 bucks an hour. My time's worth more than yours so why do you have the right to make me wait around for an hour and a half none of my clients would ever I would never make any of my clients wait an hour and a half I value their time. So he was showing me the zero value for my time. Yeah but that's that's the challenge for us I think is to support our clients and help them win better with their clients but rather than just fixing the tech.
SPEAKER_00And actually you've made me think of something that I think people don't consider enough and that is so so if I talk about questions, you know, and obviously salespeople know how to ask questions and and so on. But if I said to somebody you know why do you ask questions and the answer is to learn about the customer you know that's the obvious answer. I think something that gets underestimated is the power of questions to demonstrate your knowledge. So taking your example I'm gonna give you two questions pretend you're that dentist for example and I'm trying to sell you some technology or whatever. Question number one so tell me what keeps you up at night? Okay. Question number two is okay so a lot of the dentists that I speak to and I've been you know their clients come in and they're just waiting and they get frustrated and they're annoyed and they you know they take it out on you. Is that an issue for you? Yeah I hate that. And I'm guessing and I'm guessing had I said what keeps you up at night they wouldn't have said oh it really keeps me up at night when customers come in and complain because they're see what I mean? And that only comes from a genuine understanding of the customer what they do the issues they face and that's from the experience you've had in working with that industry and that's what I mean by specialization.
SPEAKER_01And it's what differentiates you and it's the the sharing of the stories we had an unfortunate situation with one of our clients who their whole building burnt down the beautiful thing about that story is that's the lesson the real life lesson on how not to have on-site backups you need to have an offsite backup because their on-site backup got burnt in the fire but that was a real story and I would lead with that every single time yeah you know the old tapes well they're not fireproof they're not heat proof they're not smoke proof they're not waterproof so the safe was still there but all the tapes sitting on the ta on the floor of the safe were all melted all wet.
SPEAKER_02I think there was a stack of was it seven or eight in the middle one we managed to resurrect but the bottom ones were wet and the top ones were burnt melted.
SPEAKER_00So they've discovered something really interesting. So I've I've never been a a big social media person but probably nine months ago or whatever I decided that I was going to just do a post a week on LinkedIn and for me it was raising profile and and so on but also there was all this stuff that was in my head and you know how do I share it and it was also a vehicle for me to train an AI engine to understand how I think and how I write and and so on. Here's an interesting little thing and it ties into your little story. The posts that have been the most successful have been the ones where I've talked about where I failed. Yep and it's just an interesting thing people you know and and people want to know that so when I say here is a framework or here is a methodology or an approach you should take it sounds like I'm really smart here's what you should do. And I'm not I'm saying I did a whole lot of really stupid things and I've learned a lot of ton of stuff and I've summarized it into this and I've since learned I need to explain the mistakes that I made which led me to this conclusion and why I do this. And that's the stuff that people connect with they kind of go okay you the problem you you what you described is exactly what what I'm facing.
SPEAKER_02I might take that approach I'm gonna write down a list of all of the things that I've screwed up and my learnings from it and just yeah that'll keep me going for about five years I think I was going to say we haven't got that much time.
SPEAKER_01It's so true it's so true my home and I remember I was presenting at a conference an IT conference once or on a panel so I wasn't even me personally by myself and I was very like anxious about it. I well no who would want to listen to me and and afterwards a guy came up to me and said man that was really good that was really really good and I love hearing your stories and I go ah that's what it's about it's it's just about it's not making something up or trying to sell anything. It's just about sharing your experience and your story about you and where you are so I a hundred percent agree with that. And you've just made me think of a whole lot of tech so I've gone away from the tech tip stuff but there's a whole lot of stuff I've learned over the years about solutions that solve business problems and the right and wrong way to do it because I did it the wrong way four or five times. So I might go back and pull some stuff from the archives everyone that's listening you should be writing about your experiences where you've made mistakes or the customers made mistakes and you've worked together to solve that. They're the stories that people want to listen to 100%.
SPEAKER_00Do we come to you when David Norris talked about being breached and so yeah like that David and I don't think you'd mind me saying this David is not your most glamorous presenter and he'll admit that himself but he had that room riveted right because oh absolutely no one was thinking about what they were doing that night they were listening to his story. Yeah yeah and the post that I you know my one was I lost a $25,000 deal not because my product was bad or my pricing was wrong it was because I got greedy and lazy and it was like I know exactly why like resourced two things and and the thing was I didn't do two things that I tell people to do. So I never like I have no one to blame other than myself.
SPEAKER_02Good insight and if David's listening I'd love to have you on an episode so yeah reach out. But anyway let's wrap it at that we are as always out of time before we've run out of things to talk about. Thank you so much it was great to chat and learn a bit more about you and talk about your book.
SPEAKER_00Thank you and and interestingly a lot of the you know the examples that I talked about were from that book. And that was really me putting all these thoughts together it's it's not one big framework. It's 42 short stories coming back to that number 42 again so it's 42 short stories. I probably mentioned three or four of them subtly throughout throughout this but it's available on Amazon if anyone's interested and if you do end up reading it I'd love to I'd love to get any feedback or your thoughts. But it's been a pleasure being on your podcast and thank you very much for inviting me.
SPEAKER_02Great thanks Moh and Nick thank you as always stay warm in Melbourne. 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