Prepare to be amazed as we venture into the mind of Jamie Marshall from Everon, an IT guru leading one of the top 50 managed IT services in the UK. Imagine building your business organically, carving a niche, and effectively leveraging technology to drive growth while sweetening the deal with chocolate brownies!
That's right, Jamie will share how these elements have been pivotal in Everon's success story. He'll reveal why focusing on regulated industries was a strategic masterstroke and how it's essential to comprehend customer buying cycles.
If you've wondered how AI technology and tools like Pipe Drive can revolutionize your business, Jamie's insights will blow your mind. He shares the game-changing role of these tools in offering critical metrics for conversion and marketing automation. Learn about Jamie's unconventional "shock and awe" approach to building strong connections with prospects.
Plus, we'll discuss Everton's innovative educational resources and calculators, including the IT energy cost calculator and the business downtime cost calculator. These tools are not just techy gimmicks; they're conversation starters that help Everon understand and better serve their clients.
In return, I will continue to bring massive value with two weekly shows, up to 3 hours per month of brilliant conversations and insights.
Monthly subscriptions start at $3 per month. At $1 per hour, that's much less than the minimum wage, but we'll take what we can at this stage of the business.
Of course, this is still free, but as an entrepreneur, the actual test of anything is if people are willing to pay for it.
If I'm adding value to you, please support me by clicking the link now.
Prepare to be amazed as we venture into the mind of Jamie Marshall from Everon, an IT guru leading one of the top 50 managed IT services in the UK. Imagine building your business organically, carving a niche, and effectively leveraging technology to drive growth while sweetening the deal with chocolate brownies!
That's right, Jamie will share how these elements have been pivotal in Everon's success story. He'll reveal why focusing on regulated industries was a strategic masterstroke and how it's essential to comprehend customer buying cycles.
If you've wondered how AI technology and tools like Pipe Drive can revolutionize your business, Jamie's insights will blow your mind. He shares the game-changing role of these tools in offering critical metrics for conversion and marketing automation. Learn about Jamie's unconventional "shock and awe" approach to building strong connections with prospects.
Plus, we'll discuss Everton's innovative educational resources and calculators, including the IT energy cost calculator and the business downtime cost calculator. These tools are not just techy gimmicks; they're conversation starters that help Everon understand and better serve their clients.
In return, I will continue to bring massive value with two weekly shows, up to 3 hours per month of brilliant conversations and insights.
Monthly subscriptions start at $3 per month. At $1 per hour, that's much less than the minimum wage, but we'll take what we can at this stage of the business.
Of course, this is still free, but as an entrepreneur, the actual test of anything is if people are willing to pay for it.
If I'm adding value to you, please support me by clicking the link now.
And hello and welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur. Today with me here, Jim James is Jamie Marshall. Now Jamie is a young entrepreneur. He's running a company called Everron in the IT services business, which is being voted one of the top 50 IT managed services companies in the UK. Jamie, welcome to the show.
[Jamie Marshall]:
Hello, thanks for having me.
[Jim James]:
Well, it's my pleasure. We're going to go to Leeds, Sunny Leeds, just sort of in the North, Northwest, do you call it Northwest or Northeast of England Leeds?
[Jamie Marshall]:
North East, probably.
[Jim James]:
Northeast. Okay. So just across from Manchester and a beautiful sunny part of the world, Leeds great soccer team.
[Jamie Marshall]:
Hehehe
[Jim James]:
And Jamie, you've been running Everon and you're joining me on the show because we're going to talk about how you've been building the Everon brand organically with your business partner. servicing B2B tech clients. So we're going to talk about how you've discovered niching and the importance of niching and building a difference. We're going to talk about your Wiener guarantee and also why you're sending people chocolate brownies across
[Jamie Marshall]:
Hehehe
[Jim James]:
town. So Jamie, we're going to learn a lot from you about how you're building a business. Plus we're going to, I think, talk a little bit about some tech like pipe drive and AI. So Jamie, welcome. Tell us a little bit about Everon and then tell us how have you been building the brand? of your tech business.
[Jamie Marshall]:
So yeah, everyone, we're a managed IT company or managed services company based in Leeds. We have clients all around the UK, but we started up north as you mentioned and then kind of expanded from there. We specialize in working with regulated industries. So that's financial, not-for-profits, legal, that kind of stuff. Um, and essentially we've been probably working as a managed service provider for good for years, um, before we realized we needed to niche down. Um, and we, yeah, we, we kind of work with brands in our own bleeds to help them, uh, kind of deliver more benefits from their technology, basically.
[Jim James]:
And Jamie, so I'm just sharing for those people that are watching and those people that are listening here, you were recognized as one of the best 50 best managed IT companies in the Channel Next awards recently. So congratulations for that.
[Jamie Marshall]:
Thank
[Jim James]:
And
[Jamie Marshall]:
you.
[Jim James]:
you've also been shortlisted for awards at the Global Business Teach Awards. Now, one of the things that comes across looking at your website is that you really know what you're doing. And you've mentioned about being in a niche and focusing. Why did you decide to niche? And what was the process? And who did you decide to niche on and why?
[Jamie Marshall]:
So yeah, we used to kind of be more of a everyone to, sorry, everything to everyone style IT company. We didn't really say no to a lot if it was tech related and it worked for us and the client, we would try and do it. The problem was we were kind of a jack of all trades and a master of none. When we kind of... were learning about our industry or we'd been in it a few years and we were kind of meeting different people in there we realized that for what we kind of wanted to do and the way we wanted to grow, regulated industry would be a better target market for us and one of the reasons in particular we chose regulated industry is because they're more tightly governed they're forced into change more often than a kind of unregulated business or industry so one of our that in itself lends itself perfectly to working within like tightly governed, regulated industries. Um, and then as a sort of happy accident, we kind of looked through our current client base and the legal sector was actually probably one of our biggest verticals already. So we already knew about some of the case management systems. We knew some of the kind of pain points and things that matter to them. Um, so we kind of just then built out on that and it's not really a case that if an ideal client, what towards us, but the one regulated industry would turn them away. But we don't actively go and seek to work with those brands, because we can do a better job or add more value for those in regulated industries.
[Jim James]:
I love that point that you make this, if like the macro market dynamic of being regulated means they have to change. Does that mean that they get a budget allocation internally, but also maybe some government fund that boosts the budget for the work that they can do with Evron?
[Jamie Marshall]:
Not necessarily. It obviously depends on the industries. So your nonprofits generally have a government grant or an income that they have to kind of spend and use in certain ways. But for a lot of the kind of legal and financial companies we work with, it's on them to decide how much spend they're going to have. We anticipate because the fines and things like that are higher for regulated companies. that people would more likely have a bigger budget to spend anyway, because they're more aware of the kind of pains that would come from data breaches or not keeping set standards. Um, so that kind of is more of a motivating factor for our client basis to, we need to keep spending, we need to keep moving forward. That kind of stuff.
[Jim James]:
Yeah, I love that. I think that's really, really smart. Now, another thing that I'm impressed by what you're doing is the insights and the resources because one of the sort of tendencies for companies to try and just promote themselves all the time, but you really seem to be focusing on education. Do you want to just tell us a little bit about your strategy because we can see on the website, for example, you've got an IT energy cost calculator and you've got a business downtime. cost calculator, for example. Do you want to just tell us about those calculators that you've built and how you use those to drive conversations with your clients?
[Jamie Marshall]:
Yeah, so, um, I mean, the, again, just before we probably start on the calculators, the ethos we have internally has been transparent and open and kind of working with someone to achieve a set goal. So educating people is already a big part of that and our culture here. Um, and the calculators came about from the, the need to show people what something would look like or would cost them without them kind of having that insight straight away. So the IT energy cost calculator, for example. Obviously we all know about the energy crisis and the kind of economies behind the energy costs over the last 12, 18 months. And what people probably didn't necessarily realize was that all the IT equipment would use a lot more energy and therefore cost people a lot more than newer IT equipment. So this idea came about of how could we kind of show people what a modern day office setup would look like using real life devices where people just putting the number of devices they have and it gives them the weekly costs. It gives them the monthly costs, the yearly costs. They can then compare that to what they're spending currently. And then they can see a deficit between obviously keeping alive these old. I T antique computers to switch into modern day equipment. Um, and again, there's, there's no kind of sales pitch around it. It was more a case of just being open and honest and having that chat about, but look, all this kind of. costs spiraling all these extra costs businesses are having not just with energy but with kind of everything at the minute. Here's a maybe a quick one for you guys use a calculator see what you can kind of do.
[Jim James]:
Yeah, I think that's fantastic. I've just used the calculate the running cost of your IT systems. And I just put in a standard, you know, configuration for an office, just with sort of 10 people in maybe. And you've shown a savings of over a thousand pounds just for the standby costs. You know, that's just the number that would be generated by things staying on overnight, right? A thousand pounds is just spent by companies. It's just bleeding, right? Like leakage from a pipe. So really, really helpful. I love that. I've not seen that before, Jamie. So I think that's really, really intuitive there to use as well. Now you've talked about the content you've got on the website. Those are calculus you've built, but you've also got a body of articles. Now you're not a huge team, I know. And also you're tech guys. So have you become? know, fantastic authors and copywriters in the spare time. Jamie, how are you getting all the content done?
[Jamie Marshall]:
No, so we work with a few kind of marketing content feeds within our industry. So that's one of the ways we help to generate some content. So some of the stuff that we produce that's really intense to create, we actually take from a marketing company that specializes to work within the IT sector. And then we sometimes use AI and things like that to kind of reimagine it or twist it to kind of make it fit. culture and values, if it's not a perfect fit. So we do a lot of that with content that's two time resource heavy for us to create internally. Some things we do obviously try, like some of the things on my LinkedIn and some of the quicker kind of content pieces we'll create, but we have basically a brand values and a culture piece that we share with anybody or we kind of run past the content we create or the content we adapt, let's say, before we put on the website. So. It has to follow that transparent, educational, being open and honest approach. We wouldn't necessarily put something out there to scare people. I know there's a lot of, is it FUD, fear, uncertainty and doom, they call it. Content, which we try and avoid doing. We want people to engage with us because they're really interested in what we're doing. And if I'm honest, our kind of goal or what we feel happens is we will show someone something. 1% of people might go out and do it themselves, but the majority of people will either not try it in the first place and just ask us to do it for them, or they'll start doing it, get stuck, and then need some help. So we're just trying to be that kind of person that's always there and available to help rather than
[Jim James]:
Right.
[Jamie Marshall]:
kind of ramming something down someone's throat.
[Jim James]:
And I can see here on your website as well, a lot of transparency, which is interesting because you've got about pricing here and you've got help desks, you've got access to two phone numbers and online chat. John, just tell us a little bit about your attitude to service because you've got your plans online, you've got the prices online, you've really made it. very transparent. Just tell us how you're doing that from, if you like, the admin side, because what most people are afraid of is, if you've got a free phone number, how do you answer after office hours, for example? Just take us through what you're doing there.
[Jamie Marshall]:
So yeah, in terms of the admin side, it is obviously hard sometimes because you get a lot of requests that we're either not aware of or we don't have agreements in place. But that kind of comes from the culture we have within the team and we have a big emphasis on documentation internally. So we have a whole system called ITGlu that manages all of our documentation. We have SOPs, standard operating procedures, pretty much everything we can. Obviously we continually developing them or there's times when a scenario will occur and we don't have a process in place for it But because we have this continuing improvement E-Force What happens is if a particular scenario occurs somebody calls up and they want something we don't have a process for we don't have an understanding of The first time we do it will document and learn it the next time that scenario happens We've got a ready-made process and yeah, they might need evolving but we're not starting from zero all the time Don't get me wrong, it is a big overhead sometimes to do that and keep people up to date in the team and things like that. But it is just the approach of being open and transparent, which fits the cultural values we have as a company that I think is important. We're completely open and honest on the website. And the pricing one was not a bone of contention, but when we first were deciding whether to do it or not, and we asked a few people, we got such. difference in opinions, some people being like, yes, 100% do it. Lots of people saying, no, don't do it. Um, and there was no clear kind of it's right or wrong. So we just went with what felt right for us as a, as a company.
[Jim James]:
Jay Marshall, you know, co-founder of Everon in Leeds. I think that's absolutely fantastic and commendable because you're removing the mystique with the...
[Jamie Marshall]:
Sorry, I can't hear you at the minute.
[Jim James]:
Can you hear me now? And Jamie, are you still there? Hello
[Jamie Marshall]:
Hiya. Can you
[Jim James]:
Yeah,
[Jamie Marshall]:
hear me?
[Jim James]:
I can hear you.
[Jamie Marshall]:
I can't hear anything you're saying, I don't think.
[Jim James]:
Okay, I can still hear you fine. Right, I can still hear you. There's some irony that we're an IT and I think you have it because mine seems to be all working just fine.
[Jamie Marshall]:
Yes, mine's back on now. Sorry, yes, definitely I need some better tech support, don't I?
[Jim James]:
Okay, I just marked this. So Jamie, that's wonderful. Now just tell us then with your on-site help desk, I would just like to ask you about that because many people struggle with that. You know, me included, I have a sales IQ embedded into my chat on my website and I have it then comes on my phone. But there's always reluctance. to have those because people are saying, well, who's going to answer it out of hours? What's your policy? Do you outsource the help desk that's on the chat on the website to someone or do you manage that yourselves and just close the doors at six o'clock?
[Jamie Marshall]:
So during office hours, it's manned by the team. Surprisingly, we don't actually get that many contacts through it. We have some other mediums that clients can use. So similar to LiveChat, but another kind of portal that they tend to use more. Outside of office hours, or outside of contracted hours for clients, we work with an outsourcing partner who have a kind of follow the SUD model. So they have the eight hours covered by somewhere in Florida, and then somewhere in New Zealand for the other eight hours. So... If we do have a client that wants 24-7 or we get inquiries outside of the office hours, it goes to those overflow teams.
[Jim James]:
Oh, that's very interesting. Do you mind if I ask who's that company?
[Jamie Marshall]:
It is a company called Uptime who are based, well the HQ is in Crawley, Townsouth.
[Jim James]:
Oh, okay, from Sussex. And they're doing Around the Sun. Isn't that interesting? Okay, it's called Uptime.
[Jamie Marshall]:
time solutions I think is the full name. Yes.
[Jim James]:
Okay, that's great. So it's always useful to know these solutions that companies and entrepreneurs like you, Jamie Marshall, have found that others can use as well. Jamie, in terms of this question that I have to ask that is always uncomfortable for people, but is there something that you found hasn't worked as you've been building the Everon brand? We've all got experiences where we've done Not sure I'd do that again. Any things that you've tried that were not as successful?
[Jamie Marshall]:
Yes, I think in the early days of us learning about marketing and sales and how we needed to kind of move outside of just the word of mouth marketing we were using at the time, we were kind of shiny, shiny approach. So we went down the route of doing some LinkedIn paperclicks, Google paperclicks, some kind of different marketing methods and strategies, but We didn't stick at any of them for really long enough for them to see a kind of benefit or a return. And we also kind of just picked one and did one at once. So our lead and buying cycle could be anywhere kind of from nine months to 12 months plus. Um, we only kind of spent six months on each different test, which was clearly never long enough for ever to generate a return. And, um, I also think that doing what we do in You're not going to get a sale from just one video or one advert that somebody's seen it's a collection of touch points and a kind of consistent been front of mind and doing the right things approach. So we were probably really naive in thinking that spending 3000 miles a month on Google ads was going to generate X in a matter of weeks. Um, and then we were probably wrong to be disappointed when it clearly didn't work. Cause it was all we were doing.
[Jim James]:
Yeah. So that you've got a couple of really interesting points in there. One is that the buying cycle of your customers needs to be a really leading factor in determining the duration of your campaign.
[Jamie Marshall]:
Yeah, I mean, back then we didn't use the sales tool we use now. So we didn't really have an idea of how long it actually was. We did know it was longer than probably most industries, but we couldn't have given you a metric like I just did. It's only since we've kind of grown and like we're a bit more developed with the systems we use that we now can give you those stats and we know how long those things take.
[Jim James]:
Jamie, what system are you using? Cause that's very helpful to understand
[Jamie Marshall]:
So we use
[Jim James]:
the analytics.
[Jamie Marshall]:
pipe drive right now for sales and our kind of pipeline. So that gives us the age of all the deals. So that's one of the reasons why we know exactly how many. It also gives us kind of metrics on how many deals we win versus lose and all those kinds of metrics around conversion. And then we use as a kind of marketing automation tool to feed the leads into that. We use a system called Force24, where I think a leads based or an often based company and they do all that. marketing automation and point scoring and lead scoring. So only when certain triggers are met or certain contacts deemed to reach certain points because either they've been on the website a few times, they've engaged with emails or some social posts, does it then go into our pipe drive system for kind of a more personal interaction.
[Jim James]:
Oh, fascinating. And it's great the way you've used technology as one would expect, actually, of course, you are in technology integration and support as well. Jamie, as an entrepreneur in your own right, how are you building your own brand?
[Jamie Marshall]:
So yeah, I kind of want to grow Jamie Marshall as the face of everyone. The way I'm going about that is to be as much of a people person as I can, to be as personable as I can across as many different mediums as I can. So one of the reasons I'm doing this podcast is to help people understand a little bit about everyone, but also to get to know me a little bit. We do a lot of kind of different... um things like I spoke at an event last week, all the content we do if it's related to people I might have a bit on there but we're kind of trying to take a really personable approach to all the marketing and everything we're doing and they because our sales cycle's so long it's about me understanding and developing relationships with prospects in the hope that when they do have an opportunity that we can participate in I'm front of mind because we've got a long established so that trust and authority I've built up will all likely be passed to everyone for them handing over their IT systems or their support.
[Jim James]:
Wonderful, Jamie. Great, great initiative there. Now, my final question is always one activity that you think really moves the needle, something a little bit different maybe than we've talked about already that you've been using forever on in leads there.
[Jamie Marshall]:
Yeah, so I guess following on from that personal touch, we have a really kind of shock and awe approach with a something we call an impact box. So we have these really nicely branded Everon boxes that we fill with a tiny bit of Everon material, so maybe 20%. But even then it's educational material, it's not sales material. And then when we find out about prospects, something really personal, we then fill the box with something related to that. So an example I can give you is. I learned about a company that I'd love to work with, just based outside of Leeds. I loved the culture and everything they were doing and really wanted to start to develop a relationship with them. And it happened that on one day, the MD of that company told a story on LinkedIn about he'd been having a interview with a potential new staff member. And his mum had seen the coffee shop he was in and sent over some brownies to his table. and he talked about how it was really embarrassing and it was supposed to be a professional thing but then his mum had sent it over to these brownies. So I googled all the different brownie shops or places by brownies and leeds, found the ones with the best reviews and filled this box full of brownies with a tiny bit of ever on material and then just a handwritten letter explaining I'd heard this story and these were supposed to be the best brownies and I'd love to basically just say hi and get to know him and... That's turned into obviously developing now a relationship with them and we're starting to work with them a little bit on one of the kind of foundations they work with. So hopefully that will eventually lead into doing something a bit more with them.
[Jim James]:
That is a sweet strategy, Jamie.
[Jamie Marshall]:
Ha ha ha!
[Jim James]:
Well done. That's a fantastic story. Thank you so much. Now, Jamie Marshall, if people want to find out more about you and everyone, where can they do that?
[Jamie Marshall]:
So obviously our website is everon.co.uk. So that's E-V-E-R-O-N.co.uk. There's actually a book of time slot with me on there. So if you wanna have 15 minutes chat, you can do that. Otherwise my email address is jamie at everon.co.uk or the numbers and all that sort of stuff are on the website or LinkedIn as well. So yeah, reach out, I'm happy to have a chat and yeah, get to know people.
[Jim James]:
Good one. And it's been wonderful to get to know you today, Jamie, really inspired by the sort of positivity and the transparency that you're leading your company with. So thank you so much for sharing that today.
[Jamie Marshall]:
No problem, thank you for having me.
[Jim James]:
Being my pleasure. Well, we've been listening to Jamie Marshall, who is the co-founder of a company called Everon, which is an IT services company. We've been learning the benefits of niching and how they've very cleverly understood that regulated industries must change and therefore they release budget for IT and compliance. So really smart way of identifying your niche. We've also, you know, learned from him about automation, which is great, but also the authenticity of education and providing information for clients rather than promotion for potential customers. So, love those messages and sure that you'll have enjoyed them also. So, if you have, please do share them with a fellow unnoticed entrepreneur. If you enjoyed the show, please do rate it on your player because it also really helps everybody to know about the show. And until we meet again, I just encourage you to keep on communicating. Thanks for listening.
