In this episode of MSP Founders Den, we talk about the art of using storytelling to communicate and convey an effective message. We also share important lessons we have learned through our years to improve your speech and pitch the idea to potential customers.

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"We believe if you do not measure what you're doing, you won't know if you're growing or slowly dying."

Hello guys, this is Jhovanny Rodriguez, co-founder of an MSP and a VoIP services company that sells through the channel. I am here today to talk about the art of selling and using storytelling to convey a message. One of the things I always talk about is the fact that MSPs across the country, when we meet them at conferences and other places, always come to us and tell us that they struggle with sales and marketing, and they struggle with adding revenue to their business and keeping that growth moving forward. I hope that this video blog and its content is useful, please let us know in the comments about how we're doing. 

So some of the challenges that we see in a lot of MSPs is that you have meetings with prospects and you feel that it went well, you feel that you blew it out of the park, and then you don't hear back. Or you feel that your prospects are not understanding, or underestimating what you bring to the table, and as a result of that, you're struggling with growth or you're struggling on that sales process. It's hard enough to get those leads, it's pretty bad when those leads actually don't close.

We discover in our business that the glossy PowerPoints, showing all of the widgets and bits and bites that come with the service, yes, it's a very complicated technical service that we MSPs provide because there are so many components involved. It goes from the layers of proactive management; we are looking at everything from security, to viruses, to backups, to the performance of the systems and services that need to be up and running, to the complicated ticketing systems and project management systems that we have, also, let's not forget about all the resources and vendor management.

And then as the owner of the company or some of the managers in your company, you become their IT manager, and you're looking at where is the business going and what are some of the needs. Are they acquiring somebody, and are we merging systems?

And there's all that good stuff that we do, but you know what, the next step is also important, how you decide to communicate that message of great achievements and success is also key to the success of it.

So we're going to show the best lesson that we learned over the years.

These are both while running an MSP and now as a voice provider through the channel.

• Lesson #1 - Tell Stories about your Results
  

The one thing that we have found that resonates with customers, are stories, stories about how were you able to do something for somebody that led to this result.

Whether that result was savings, whether that result was business improvements, whether you have a story about a process that used to take somebody 20 hours a month, and you were able to bring in an application or develop an application, and that led to that task taking two hours a month by one person instead of two.

Those stories would go a long way and provide potential clients with alike problems the feeling of being in the right hands. Like the story of the non-profit organization that needed to make an investment in network re-infrastructure and security, and didn't have the funds to do it, and how you found $100,000 worth of savings by redoing the internet service contract. And that allowed you to basically come in, do the savings, do some financial creativity on maybe leasing or something like that, and be able to then deliver the infrastructure that they needed but also save them money on the other end.

Those are the types of things that would resonate and that it's understandable, it hits home.

And those stories, they happen, you just need to take a look into your customers success journey. You can sort of mentally put these pieces together, or if you could write them down even better, you can create an arsenal of stories that you can deploy, depending on who you're talking to.

It might mean that you're talking to a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and you talk about those efficiencies, the financial efficiencies that you brought to the table. You might be working with an operations manager, and some of those stories need to relate to somebody that is looking for operational efficiencies, and so on with the different solutions your company provides to your clients.

This whole video, it's really about the power of the stories, to tell the customer about your approach, company culture, and how you have earned the trust and the seat at the management table at many, many clients like him, and why they trust you. Let them know how you were able to tell your existing clients when they did not need to do that project, because we could take that money and use it elsewhere.

Use stories to build situations and gain the trust and the seat at the table, and your customers will stay with you forever.