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MSPs & Branding, With Lisa Shorr - Image & Brand Expert

• Kaseya

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Dan Tomaszewski has a conversation with Lisa Shorr, Image and Brand Expert - an upcoming speaker at GlueX.

Dan and Lisa discuss what perception means to your MSP, the importance of networking, and how much a dress code can impact your business.

Connect with Lisa:

Website: http://www.securefuturetech.com/
Website: http://www.shorrsuccess.com/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisashorr/
Twitter: @Lisa_Shorr

Sign up for GlueX: https://www.gluex.co/

Speaker 1:

Hello, I'm Dan Thomas Shefsky and this is the connecting it podcast.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the connecting it podcast. I'm your host, Dan Thomas Chesky. And with me today, I've got image and brand expert Lisa shore, uh, really excited to have Lisa on. She's going to be speaking at Glu X here in just a couple of weeks. And I thought this would be a great episode, uh, to kind of prep everyone a little teaser as to what's going to be what's she going to be talking about at glue X? So, Lisa, thanks for being here today.

Speaker 3:

I am so excited to be hanging out with you and thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 2:

No, I'm really excited to have you, you know, I've known you for quite some time. Uh, you know, back when I was an MSP, uh, we were in the same peer groups in that, and I think it, you got a really unique background. So why don't you introduce yourself to our listeners and just kind of give a high-level overview of who you are. And, uh, we'll kind of dive into a little bit more about what you're going to be speaking at a glue.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely. So everybody, my name is again, Lisa shore from shore success. So as an image and brand expert, that means that I work with professionals on really polishing their personal brands so that they can be the celebrities and the rock stars in their industry. So I have a unique background and why I'm here with all of you today is also, I am an MSP co-owners. So my husband founded our it business MSP secure future tech solutions 29 years ago. And I joined the scene 22 years ago. So my degree is in marketing. My background has always been in marketing and branding and my husband met me and said, Oh my, not only do I like you and think you're cute, but you can market my business. So, so that kind of entered a very interesting twist to our relationship. And for those of you out there who run your MSP with your spouse, you'll absolutely be able to relate to me and who I am, but I became an image consultant though in 2012. And that was to solve a need that I was seeing in our industry. I was doing some closet clean-outs and doing some personal styling, but the real shift came when, and we'll talk about this, Dan, but when my MSP was experiencing some really difficult, difficult, stagnant growth and analyzing some of the changes and I realized, Oh, my, we needed to take some action. And so sure success as it is now was born. And so when we can certainly talk about some of those, um, not some unfortunate experiences,

Speaker 2:

No, the thing that's really cool though. I like the story, you know, of where you come from in terms of just your background, um, you know, in the MSP space, you know, and then with your husband, you know, building a great MSP, has it been really successful, but you've just like any other MSP. You've had some bumps in the road and some things that you've learned from, um, so let's get into a couple of those and we don't want to spill the beans on everything, but I think this is something that would set up their topic. You're going to be talking about what were some of the challenges you guys faced in your MSP, um, that you kind of were able to pivot and, you know, to grow from?

Speaker 3:

So that's a great question. And I think a lot of us, when I start sharing some of these ideas, Dan, a lot of the listeners are going to be saying,[inaudible] me too. Me too. And the difference is, is we needed to take action. And so we'll talk about that, but what we were experiencing. So back then, uh, 2012, 2013, we were stuck and a lot of people will get to that million dollar Mark. They struggled to get to the million dollar Mark, and then you get to the million dollar Mark and then, Oh great. Now they were there. You got some momentum, you get to the$2 million Mark and then what happens. And so for us, we got stuck at for five years at the$2 million Mark. And we couldn't figure out why we couldn't grow, why we couldn't make that leap and why our profits were struggling all the time. So the top line number is just a vanity number, but it's really the bottom line and profitability. And that MRR number that allows us that freedom and flexibility to be able to grow your business. And so we just were like, what is going on? And so we started looking internally, we used to believe that tech skills were all we needed. We've got to make sure everybody is SonicWall certified and everybody has at minimum, a plus network plus at minimum, you know, CCNs and VMware and all of that. But when you only focus on the tech skills and you, what we did brushed under the rug. So I like to say brushed under the keyboard with all the other post-it notes, all of our soft skills and customer service issues, that's going to really create an MSP. So that will be stagnant. That's going to struggle. And so a couple of examples, Dan, if I may, that we were struggling with was we had engineers that were unkempt, so we didn't have a standardized dress code. So when we were going out on site people, weren't believing that we were a professional organization and constantly we would hear from clients, well, can you really handle our sophisticated needs? Can you really, we had to rebrand and change our corporate name because we were PC troubleshooters. And that changed quite a bit because we're now obviously a secure future tech solutions, but we needed to create that new perception, the biggest problem communication. We weren't communicating. We weren't communicating well internally, which then resulted to all kinds of things. How many of you out there listening, saying, Oh yeah, I have an engineer that I was asked not to send back because he was gruff or condescending. We were struggling with that, but we didn't want to didn't know how, and didn't want to actually acknowledge it and deal with it.

Speaker 2:

So that's, those are really good points. I think a lot of times, you know, I hear, I hear both sides of the story. Uh, cause I get to talk to so many people on it on a weekly basis. It's, it's a fun place to be, but I hear some people that are like, you know, dress code, doesn't matter. You know, people don't really, people don't really care about dress code as long as their computers are working. But I'm hearing from you that you guys experienced it firsthand in your MSP that people were like, no, like this is not what we want in our office. You know, we want professional. We want to know that the people are, are that when they come in, they're going to be professional speaking, not just dressed that they know how to, you know, emotionally, you know, emotional, intelligent intelligence when they come in and have that conversation that they're able to speak educated and have a good conversation, right?

Speaker 3:

So, Oh, a hundred percent. And you hit the nail on the head and all of that. So perception is reality. And so in our world, in our MSP sphere, everybody, we all offer relatively the same technology, some sort of a firewall solution, some sort of a cybersecurity solution, some sort of a managed solution. You might use continuum or Autotask, or, you know, whatever knock services, but there's only a select number of products and services, but what's going to set you guys apart. What will set us apart from what I call that sea of sameness. And that's our soft skills. That's thinking that about how we present ourselves when we dress up well, and I'm not saying that people have to wear a suit, Stan, you know, that those days are really, and especially in our industry,

Speaker 2:

A nice polo and dry, you know? Yeah.

Speaker 3:

Right. Anything with a collar, some ironing, you know, grooming, just showing that not only do you respect your brand and you, you know, it shows respect for your brand and it also shows your prospects or clients that you respect to the environment that you're sending the engineer into that you're not just, you can't think anymore that you're just an it guy. And that's something that we had to change our perception about. So that's when we started really looking at Oh, tech skills and closing tickets is not enough. That's going to get us so far, but that's not going to bring in the referrals. That's not going to bring in when you're at, you know, we're going to be doing a lot of, you know, a lot of networking or if you're doing trade shows, our country is starting to open up a little bit more. So we're going to be some in-person networking. We need to dust off all of those etiquette and appearance and all of those skills that we took for, you know, that we kind of put on the shelf and became more casual and really think about how do you want to be perceived by others? Critical, critical.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So, you know, I think you bring up some good points. Uh, you know, a lot of times we're in a very, you know, a lot of people are technical minded. Uh, obviously, so they're in the MSP space. It's something that's there. Um, you bring a different approach. I mean, you're in that, you've got the background in the sales and marketing. I think a lot of people struggle with the fact that, you know, they're technical, th that's that's they're, they're wired that way. That's how they operate. You know, they don't operate like a marketer. They don't operate like that. So is this something in your system that you've put together? I know you've got a really cool system that you've put together to kind of walk people through how they can, you know, take the different brand. You know, you have a brand that, um, the acronym, acronym, yeah. A brand acronym that you use. And I think, you know, you walk people through that and it's really enlightening and I don't want to spill everything cause I know you've got some cool stuff coming up, but once you go through that, it's something that even if you're wired technically, right, it's easy to digest and be able to implement in your current MSP today. And it's not a heavy lift, is it? No,

Speaker 3:

Everybody has the opportunity to make a choice. Right? And so we all have to, now it might be more difficult for people who are, who prefer to be behind a monitor and just behind the scenes to Polish their soft skills, or I call that their executive presence and executive presence means when you walk into a room, what are people saying about your, when you turn on a screen, how do you want people to perceive you? What do you want them to know? And so one of the unique skills that I bring to this industry is I'm actually trained and certified in image consulting. So I have flown all over the country for voice training, for nonverbal communication and corporate etiquette training, all of that I bring to the table. So while you guys are all getting all of the other technical training, I'm actually out there learning how to be a better coach and trainer and consultant on soft skills and customer service. So I took my years of trial and error at my tech business. Dan and I bundled it in what I thought about at the end. I was like, okay, this can't be so complicated. There's gotta be a way that I can now take what I changed and transformed in my MSP. And by the way, my MSP right now, this year is trending 41% up over last year. And last year we ended at over three,$3.4 million. And so we're trending 41% up over last year. This is all organic growth, but this shows you that it takes time. But the method that I came up with is called the brand method. And it's an acronym for our behavior. We think about our behavior. We have to think about respect, respecting your brand, respecting yourself, respecting others. Appearance is a big piece of it. Clothing and appearance matters, whether we want to agree to it or not, it matters. So, you know, you could be a jeans kind of guy. That's fine, but consider dark washed jeans that aren't ripped versus old faded out in tattered jeans. I mean, there's a difference where you can level yourself up, but appearance also includes posture. So if I was talking to you right now, Dan, and I'm kind of laying back and casual and that changes the whole, that just creates a whole new set of distractions. And we want people to focus on our message N stands for networking. So as if you're the leader, then how are you networking with prospects? But if you're an engineer and this why, this is why I make the case for the entire team to be branded and to really think about this. But if you're an engineer, you have an amazing opportunity to plant seeds and enable sales for your clients. So this is all built into my presentation at glue X, but then D is dynamic dialogue. So it's not always what we say. Although we do talk a lot about geek speak and all of that. But if you leave someone and they feel that you had an edgy tone or some sort of an attitude, then that that's the memory that they're going to have. That's the last impression that you will leave with that person. And is that how you want to be remembered is that what's going to bring in referrals is that what's going to, when you're doing prospecting and investing in marketing and you bring in leads, but then you don't have polished people on the other end to answer phones, to, you know, meet prospects. So the whole package, the brand matters. And so, yeah, so I designed a program, a whole method that packages all of what I did and at my MSP at secure future tech and put it into a digestible doable program.

Speaker 2:

And you said some of the things, and look, we've had you talk at a glue talks this year, and I know that those have gone off really successful. I've seen MSPs, literally comment in there. You know, these are the things I need to be focusing on that we're not hearing in the industry. We're not going out and seeing this at every show we go to, they're not talking about these things. Everything's always about this new security object, this new compliance, this, this, but those are the things you're talking about are things that need to be in place that can differentiate yourself. You're out there because you've said the numbers. I mean, your business has gone, you know, substantial growth. And even since, you know, the times I was in peer groups with you, you guys are, you know, exploding with growth. So, um, obviously the methods you're putting into place are working and you know, that's a big piece of it. Now, the other piece of it is your techs are delivering good service and they're, they know they're, they're capable and all of that. So, um, what,

Speaker 3:

So that 41% that I was telling you, Dan was mostly attributable attributable to my texts, helping me plant seeds. Not only did my techs plant seeds, but they've also brought in some referrals. So they recommend some of the businesses that they know, and they've become clients this year. There's two clients this year that were referrals from my employees. So when you, yeah, absolutely. And one of the big sale from this year, a huge wipe deal that we closed again, was another employee that gave the recommendation, the referral. So then we, we did a server deal the other day, and I'll be talking about this deal, cause I'll be explaining it more in the glue talks. But I had a engineer make a recommendation on a server to a client and it was a$20,000 deal that we closed. You know, it wouldn't have happened. Had my engineer not planted a trusted non sales-y seed. So, but because we talk to our engineers about this topic and because I coached them on how to say it, and we talk about customer service and we talk about tone of voice. It makes a difference. Huge difference.

Speaker 2:

No, that's really good information too. When you think about it from the, you know, if you're on a MSP here today, you've got employees they're out talking to customers, are they saying the right things? You know, are they helping, you know, plant those seeds? You know, in terms of, Hey, you know, this I'm a trusted advisor. I want to let you know, we can save your downtime or we can save your printer or your server. You know, if you guys would look at, you know, upgrading it to the appropriate one, you're going to see far greater productivity or you're going to see less downtime. So I think you've got some really cool tips you're going to be sharing. So what would you say, how long after you implemented? Cause you said in your MSP, like you had these issues and you had people coming to you, how long after you went in and you put the, you know, the uniforms in place, the grooming and like, you know, the networking and all of that. How long did it take for you to start seeing results?

Speaker 3:

To be honest, it did take it's consistent. First of all. So it didn't take probably a good year before. I really started seeing the difference from starting with low team morale, to starting to look at what our what. So when we started looking at the ROI, we had to think about, well, where, where will we see? How do you measure image? Like a lot of people say to me, well, if I can't measure it, I'm not going to invest in it. Well, I know that I can measure my, you know, my PSA and tickets and I can measure response time and I can measure, well, how the heck do you measure image? And why should I invest in it? Well, what we noticed is we were measuring our MRR growth. So when you have a team that's cohesive and you have a team that is starting to build better relationships that have a unified message. So we had to talk about messaging all across the board of who secure future tech was, what were our core values? How do you talk to our clients about these things? So all of the, one of the things that we noticed was that the MRR for our clients grew. It was so exciting to see that piece starting because we want our clients, we need our clients to that's the easiest people to sell. They already trust you. We needed to start there. So we started to watch MRR growth. That's one big measurable for image. Another big measurable is churn. So another thing we were looking at was, so another thing that prompted us is we lost this amazing client of 10 years. And I'll talk about that again and glue talks, but because it's built into my presentation, but when you're starting to hear clients tell you that it's not the tech skills as to why they're leaving you, but actually because you just never made them feel like a VIP, that's a problem. And so we started losing a few clients like that and we were like, no, don't leave us. We'll make it up to you. We'll try. But oftentimes sometimes they'll let you try and do, you know, and make up the difference. But sometimes it's not that easy and they've already made up their mind. And so we had to start measuring churn and setting a goal for churn and how low do we want it to be? And what can we afford to lose and what would be just an unacceptable number. So we started looking at churn and of course, revenue, profitable and growth for sure is another number look at. But once we started really tracking that, Dan, so when you start implementing more programs on and focusing on a lot of the soft skills and the customer service side of things, it takes not only does it take a good, I would say six months to a year to start to see evolution, but you can't stop. It has to be part of the culture has to be part of our everyday culture.

Speaker 2:

Really good. Yeah. No, it's, uh, you know, I think you said the word that we say we hear on the sales and marketing side, we're kind of the broken record of consistency. So it's nice to hear that word is coming out with, uh, with your acronym as well. I mean, it's, it's really important. Um, you know, so I don't want to give everything away. So, you know, we're kind of given that teaser, we know where we're going, so why don't we kind of wrap things up with our listeners of like, what can they expect if they attend your glue X session? You know, you talked about the brand, um, and you talked about some things you said, you're going to talk about why don't we give our listeners as I kind of like a recap here as we end, you know what they're going to hear from you and what they're going to learn, uh, when they come to your session.

Speaker 3:

So when you come to my session and thank you again, Dan, for this opportunity to share and to get people excited and to really stress to everybody, come to this talk, it's a critical discussion. I have a handout already created for you. So it's already done and you're going to learn, we're going to talk about mindset. We're going to talk about how a leader should think. And I'm going to share with you my exact process that I took to train my team. I'm going to share with you, step-by-step the handout is already designed for that, of how to train your team. What a lot of people come to me and say, Lisa, I don't know where to begin with all of this. I definitely have issues, but you know, I'm too busy. I, I can't focus on this stuff. I don't even know where to begin. And I've got to go look at my cybersecurity stack and this person's having a ransomware issue. This hard drive is full and their servers, you know, is out at end of life. And I'm asking all of you though, to think about the growth of your business, the credibility of your business, the happiness of your team and the morale internally. And so let's have a discussion. Let me help you with the starting points. Where do you begin? I will give you all of that in this talk. So I will outline it all for you in digestible way.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Lisa, I appreciate you coming on with me today and talking about this. Cause I really think it's important that people get to that. They didn't know your glue X session, uh, and learn some of these things. Even if you're thinking to yourself, Oh, this isn't for me. You should attend this. You're going to take something away that you can implement in your business. Um, glue X is May 4th through the fifth. Um, it's coming up here in just a couple of weeks. So, uh, you can still get your tickets. It's a hundred percent virtual. It's a great platform. Um, you know, I know we're gonna, you know, have a lot of interaction. I know you'll be there networking with people too virtually. So, uh, again, thank you for being on, I look forward to your session. I'll be there as well. I want to, you know, I've seen it I've mean you've talked about it so many times, but every time I love watching the reaction to people, I love seeing what, uh, you know, what someone's taken away and what they're going to go, what nugget are they going to go put into their business? Um, and I know that you're going to give a wealth of knowledge, so I appreciate you being on. And I look forward to seeing you and, uh,

Speaker 3:

I appreciate it so much, Dan, and it's fun. Being able to stay connected to you. And our industry is a small industry, right? Reputation matters. We all

Speaker 2:

Stick together and it's all, it's all about the channel working together and helping each other out. So that's what this podcast is. I mean, this is about our podcast. We decided to go weekly, still a lot of our listeners that are on here now, you know, we've gone weekly now just because there's so much information we can give to the channel on a weekly basis. So, um, again, appreciate it and to all our listeners, thank you for joining us on this episode of the connecting it podcast. You can go into the iTunes store. If you would subscribe, give us a, like, give us a five-star rating, leave us a comment. If you want to reach out to us, you know, find me on LinkedIn. Uh, let us know what topics you want to be hearing on this show. We're definitely into making sure that this is relevant to you in the, as an MSP and the channel. So until next time have a great day. Everybody

Speaker 4:

Take care, everybody.