By James Anderson | September 9, 2021
If you’re debating how much your MSP needs a marketing presence, heed Matt Solomon’s word.
Solomon, CEO and founder of Channel Halo, has mentored multiple MSPs in their path to growing a dynamic marketing engine. He says marketing often plays second fiddle to the sales process, when it can actually function as a key part of sales.
Solomon, who recently moved from Kaseya/ID Agent to Channel Halo, will be speaking Monday, Nov. 1, at the MSP Summit, collocated with the Channel Partners Conference & Expo, Nov. 1-4. His talk is titled “How to Become an Authority in Your Network.”
Solomon answered a few questions from Channel Partners about MSP marketing as a preview for his session. We have edited the transcript for clarity.
Channel Partners: Many young MSPs have yet to invest in marketing staff and resources. What’s the upside to this investment? Or is this even a marketing conversation?
Matt Solomon: I recently got to hear Gary Vaynerchuk speak and he had this great quote: “Sales is just bad marketing.” We often put so much time and effort into the sales process and investing in salespeople that marketing is often the forgotten piece. What if, instead of spending all that time calling the same “D” lead who is not interested in speaking with you, you invested in highly targeted marketing campaigns that provide real value back to the prospect? Too many times we don’t look at the lost opportunity of the time/money spent trying to convert C and D leads. For a B2B company, LinkedIn ads, for example, should be a priority if done correctly. Yes, they are more expensive, but they are extremely targeted and high value. When these leads come in, they are A and B leads, which means your sales conversations will increase and your team will be focused on the right type of prospect.
Channel Halo's Matt Solomon
CP: Your session discusses becoming “that MSP” – the one that gets lots of engagement and media opportunities. Could you share of an example of how an MSP attained that status?
MS: The first person I thought of is Lisa Shorr of Secure Future Tech Solutions. Lisa and her husband Eric have been running an MSP for 23 years. As things evolved, Lisa started another company called Shorr Success, which focuses on building a personal and corporate brand. Lisa was well-known in Robin Robins’ community, and she attended a lot of industry events where she established strong relationships with vendors and media outlets. These relationships and the hard work Lisa put in began to open all kinds of opportunities for Lisa to be featured as a thought leader. She now writes articles and appears on podcasts … and she was part of several panels with me while I was at ID Agent/Kaseya, which led to her being featured in GlueTalks, which snowballed into her speaking at GlueX, one of the industry’s largest MSP events. She has now established herself as one of the go-to people for personal/corporate branding, and the amazing thing is that she can then leverage all of this for her own audience of clients/prospects for both the MSP and Shorr Success. The blueprint is there for other MSPs to find their niche.
CP: What do you hope partners will take away from this session?
MS: I share real life examples of their peers already achieving this authority in their networks so that they can truly believe it’s possible. My hope is that someone in the audience who has been sitting on the sidelines, contemplating strategies around this or is slightly scared to take the first step, will find that it’s not as hard as they built it up to be in their mind. I will give several action items anyone, including someone who is already crushing it can take to enhance what they are doing today.
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