Want to grow your MSP? What to do when your growth has stalled.

We honestly get how hard it can be to take the next step with your business. You’ve personally put a huge amount of work into building up a great MSP.

Over that time, you’ve doubtless been wearing many hats – including the sales one. And why not - after all, who knows the business better than you? Who else can speak to your prospects and customers more enthusiastically and eloquently, and with the same depth of technical understanding as you?

Ergo, you have been the natural super-salesperson. The 007 of sales.

Letting go so the business can grow

However, as with all things, there comes a time when something must give to enable growth.

Chances are, that ‘something’ is you.

Over the years, you’ve been fighting fires with fire, spreading yourself too thinly, living to work, and every other cliché you can imagine. (And sorry to say this, but chances are you probably weren’t doing everything you took on nearly as well as you imagined.)

The reality is that you can’t be all things to everyone. It’s impossible to juggle every role in the business equally well, let alone take responsibility for being the primary sales ‘hunter’ without some help.

So, when sales almost inevitably flatten out, you have some decisions to make:

1.      Recruit new hunters? Do you look for another hunter (or two) so you can step out of the role and focus on other aspects of the business? And if this is your preferred option, how do you set up that person (or team) for success from the outset – and ensure that the momentum to grow your sales snowballs rather than wanes over time?

2.      Keep on hunting? Do you retain the hunting role as you know your business best, but supplement it with the addition of a sales administrator and/or account manager? If you go in this direction, how will you ensure that they will follow your successful lead in terms of processes and approach?

To make either option work for your business requires an understanding of its current maturity and a strategic sales plan to take you into the future.

What’s the next step towards sales success?

Behind door number 1…

In my experience, many business owners assume that to grow, they need to go down path number 1 and recruit new hunters. But before you go down the recruitment rabbit hole, let’s take a quick look at the pros and cons.

While finding a new hunter for the business seems like the quickest way to free up some time, finding the right person to pick up the mantle is a tough ask.

The challenge isn’t only about sharing the powerful ‘insider’ knowledge in your head that’s needed to sell your business services (although that’s a biggie). It’s also about providing the hunter with the resources and additional skills they need to do their jobs effectively and bring deals through the door and over the line. Like communication, content, information, processes, training, automation, and other tools.

The reality is, if you are scaling from a one-man band to a larger team, the first step is not to recruit – but to create processes and start documenting all that information that you have never previously needed to put down on paper.

Which brings us to door number 2

As we mentioned before, no one knows the business better than you do.

You’ve nurtured it from the germ of an idea into the company that it is today. Which is why, in a lot of cases, it makes sense for you as the business owner to continue in the role of the hunter and keep on getting out there and landing new business.

But what about my existing customers?

The advantage of bringing in a sales administrator or account manager instead of a new hunter is that they can take the pesky and time intensive admin off your hands while you focus on the hunt.

In doing so, not only do you free up time to spend on growing your business, but you start to lay those foundations to scale. Your new recruits can take that new business that you’re bringing in, sort out all the paperwork, get them set up in the system, and start to create and document a repeatable, consistent process.

But I don’t wanna be hunting, I’m over it

We emphathise with you. But in our experience it’s not the hunting you hate; it’s actually the idea of thousands of phone calls. (Let that thought percolate for a moment.)

It’s those opportunities you missed because you forgot to return the call or make that follow up call three months later. And why did that happen? It was due to all the other busy work that comes with being the sales hunter while still running the business.

So, what do I do, then?

In our experience, the most successful business owners are present in their community. They are strategic about being part of the right networking groups and being the face of the company – while leaving the admin and efficient follow up from these activities to others.

Sound good?

If you need some guidance on getting started, Morphability can help to make your next step the right one. We’ve successfully navigated other businesses through this path to growth, and we offer both workshops and ongoing sales consulting to share our knowledge and experience.

Because putting the time in now to get it right can save a huge headache later.