When only Mike and I are thinking about cash flow, gross margins, expenses and net profits we certainly have the ability to affect them but as all of our key people start to be aware of and think about these things we see a fantastic result. In fact we see things happen that we didn’t anticipate or think about our selves.

We work to provide everyone a steak in the outcome of the financial health of the business and we talk evey week with the whole company about the companies gross margin goals and where we stand as a team.

I have pasted some cost control tips from a good e-myth article Mike forwarded to me the other day. I hope you find them helpful in controlling costs during these tough economic times.

Josh

Set a good example. Cost-reduction starts at the top. In good times and in bad, always show your employees that you are personally involved in reducing costs.

Keep yourself accountable. If you can’t hold yourself accountable, how do you expect to hold your employees accountable? Good leaders have systems in place to track and monitor the progress they make towards achieving the company’s objectives-objectives such as finding less expensive ways of doing things.

Manage your time. Don’t waste time. If you can’t manage your own time, you can’t expect your employees to manage theirs. Time wasted is a huge drain on profits. For example, if you come in late and/or leave early, if you are consistently late for appointments, or you don’t pay your taxes on time, etc, there are serious repercussions. Remember, your employees notice everything. So, consider reducing operating expenses by managing your time well. Your employees will follow.

Never abdicate control of your finances. As a business leader, you need systems in place to ensure you personally review financial information on a timely basis. Never give control of your finances to someone else.

Build a culture that values cost control. As your people begin to follow your good example, they will start to find new and more effective ways to reduce cost. Be sure to lavish them with praise and reward their efforts.

Refine your negotiating skills. If you don’t negotiate well, make refining your negotiating skills a priority. And remember, negotiating is not about “beating up’ your suppliers. Negotiating is about understanding your needs, their needs, the attendant market conditions and coming up with a win-win solution.

Perfect your recruiting and hiring process. A bad recruiting and hiring process can cost you dearly. You need to be very clear about the results you want from both processes.

The call was from a person that I really respect and trust, so I really pondered it for a bit before coming to any conclusions.

He expressed to me that he thought I should be very careful about not letting our blog posts and our references to our membership site, MSP Coach, get too “salesy”; that I don’t want to be perceived as selling to our industry.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I understand his point entirely and I know he had good intentions.  If you are offering a professional service of any sort,  you want your marketing to come across as “value-added” and educational to establish credibility.  I get it – and I practice it – both at Everon and with content on the SMBITPros blog.

The reason it touched a nerve with me is that I could hear the negativity in his voice when he mentioned that I may come across as selling.  In fact, what really gets me fired up about this whole thing, is that, for a moment, I even got negative on myself for thinking I was selling too aggressively. It was as if by selling I had done something dirty, and I needed to take a hot shower to clean myself up.

Then I came to my senses.

Negative on selling?  Not me!  I am ashamed of myself for considering for even one moment that I should have any hesitation about selling myself, my ideas, or my services.  Why?  Because I know that everything I sell comes from a good place.  I only sell something if I really believe in it, believe in its value, and will stand behind it 100%.  When  you feel that way about something, you have an obligation to sell it to anyone you think it can add value to.

Do you feel that way about your managed services?  If you don’t, you need to ask yourself why and do whatever it takes to fix it.  You should be so fired up about the services that you offer that you can’t stand it when a prospect doesn’t see the value and decides not to work with you.

Tony Robbins teaches that the person in any sales situation with the most certainty and commitment will eventually influence the other people.  That’s what sales is…having so much certainty and commitment about your products and services that your prospects “inherit” your feelings and decide to work with you over your less certain and less committed competitors.

If you believe in what you have to offer, you should be shouting about it from the rooftops.  What this world needs more than anything right now is more really good, really committed salespeople that believe in what they have to offer.

Think about it.  When was the last time you went to a retail store and had someone really try to sell you?  For the most part, you’ll find young, unmotivated salespeople (if you can call them that) that won’t even give you the time of day.  Often times you’ll find them hovering around in packs talking about what other jobs they are applying for or how bad the economy is.

When was the last time you got a follow up call or a hand-written note from a salesperson to thank you after making a purchase?

The lack of strong sales skills and salespeople that are really interested in doing their best every day is probably the #1 killer of economic productivity in this country.  What would happen if everyone that was responsible for selling every day actually tried to sell?!   We wouldn’t need the $1 trillion + stimulus package we are getting (and will eventually have to pay for).

Selling makes our economy flourish.

Selling feeds your kids.

Selling creates jobs at your company.

Nothing happens until somebody sells something, as the saying goes.

So please take notice: I will be trying to sell whenever I think it makes sense for me and for my prospect; whenever I think I can add value.  And so should you.  Let’s consider it our national duty to do our part to lift the economy by selling at every opportunity.

Mike Cooch

PS – I have found some great examples of very professional salespeople recently and will share those in my next post.

PSS – We cover sales strategies and techniques in our membership site – MSP Coach.  You can join here. 

I know a lot of our readers are going, and I hope we can connect.

It’s incredibly important to take some time each year to step back to spend some time evaluating your business, your industry, and your individual performance.  If you are in the hustle every day – just keeping up with the daily responsibilities -  you can lose sight of the big picture.  This conference is an excellent time to do that.

It’s also an excellent time to interact with your peers and pick their brains for some best practices and ideas to improve your business.  People in this industry love to help each other out, so meet a ton of people and ask a lot of questions.

If you aren’t a Connectwise partner, find another event like this and get to it!  I think Autotask probably has a similar event, and I hear that their partner community is really good.  Whatever it is, find some time to step back and take a look at things from a fresh perspective.

See you in Orlando!

MRC

PS – SHAMELESS PLUG: I’ll be on the closing panel Friday afternoon.  Come hear me and then let’s have a beer poolside after!

Josh and I have been working on a project that I’m happy to say is ready to roll.

MSP Coach is an educational site for the IT service provider community, particularly those serving small and medium sized businesses and those that are interested in developing a managed services business.

We’ve really enjoyed blogging – we learn a lot from taking the time to write about what’s in our heads, and we’ve established some great relationships with many of our readers.

But we’ve realized in the process that we have a lot to share that is difficult to capture in a blog, and that there is a real hunger for good information on our marketplace about how to grow a successful managed services business.  I say good information, because there is no shortage of information these days, but most of it is from vendors trying to sell you a product.  A lot of that information is still good, but it’s definitely biased, and it doesn’t always come from a voice with experience in this industry.

We have experience as time and materials service providers, and we have experience building a managed services practice from scratch to several million in revenue over the course of a few years.  We have a lot of valuable lessons to share – and we enjoy sharing them with the MSP community.

MSP Coach is free (for now anyway!), so we hope you sign up and take a look around.  We are just getting it started and this is a “nights and weekends” gig for us, so please be patient – more content will be added as we are able to do so.

If you have suggestions or feedback, we would love to hear from you.

MRC