Channel Waves by StructuredWeb

Welcome to ChannelWaves, the podcast where channel

leaders share success strategies, best practices, and emerging

trends brought to you by StructuredWeb.

Here's your host, Steven Kellam.

Hey, welcome, everybody, ChannelWaves.

We appreciate everyone taking a

little bit of time today.

Today we're going to dig into trust and

we're going to talk about what it takes

for vendors to build trust with partners.

I think it's been interesting to talk about what

partners need to do to build trust with vendors.

And I think one of the key things

is what happens if it gets broken?

Now, I'm an optimist, and I'm going to

introduce you, Leslie, in just a second.

I have a feeling she's.

I know she's an optimist as well, too.

I would almost say what really cool things can

happen once trust is built the flip side

of what happened if trust is broken. So today.

Joining us in this discussion is Leslie Chiorazzi

Did I say that correctly?

Pretty good, Chiorazzi

Joining us today is Leslie Chiorazzi

And Leslie is the managing

partner of CMIT in Manhattan.

So welcome, Leslie.

Thank you so much, Steven.

Thanks for having me.

The reason I asked Leslie to do a

podcast is because when I met Leslie, I

felt like, well, I thought a couple things.

One is I thought, she's doing what

I did ten or twelve years ago.

So I'm slightly jealous maybe 15 years ago,

because running a managed service business was actually

sorry to everybody I'm working with today might

have been the coolest job I ever had. It was.

It was really cool.

So when I met Leslie I was like, okay, it's cool.

She's doing what I used to do.

And two, I felt like she was very opinionated.

And I say opinionated in a very good way.

And look, if you're going to run a managed

service business in New York, in Manhattan, I think

you have to have, what we say, strong convictions.

For sure, for sure, for sure.

We met at the Baptie conference. Right.

And you were talking about the ins and

outs of being a managed service provider. We did.

And then again at Forrester.

And one of the things Leslie was

talking about on stage was about that

trust relationship and how important that is.

As a matter of fact, what did

we end up calling this episode?

If you break.

Sorry.

If you break your trust, you're what?

Dead to me? Dead to me. Exactly.

I believe you said that on

stage, and that caught my attention.

I thought, look, in today's world, it's

so important to have that trust.

So what does that mean?

And how does that help the relationship?

So we're going to walk through that today.

But Leslie, before we jump into it, maybe you can

tell everybody just a little bit about who you are,

what you do, a little bit about your managed services.

Because in today, boy, managed services is a lot

more, can be a lot more, it can be

a lot different than what it was when I

was a managed service provider 15 years ago.

15 years ago, certainly, but a

lot's changed, but also nothing's changed.

So again, I own CMIT solutions in Manhattan.

My territory is Murray Hill.

CMIT Solutions is a franchise.

There are more than 250 locations across the

country, all providing managed, outsourced it maybe in

slightly different ways, maybe depending on the community

or the vertical they serve.

But I've been here for eight years now, and

my specialties really healthcare and nonprofit, along with hospitality

and yeah, we met at that conference.

And I get asked to speak quite a bit on

this topic around the vendor relationship to managed service providers

and how to sell to people like me.

And I think it's a really great topic.

I think that there's a lot to be, a lot to

be learned along with a lot here, because sometimes the people

who come up with the go to market strategies are very

far removed from the actual salespeople who are selling.

No, I agree.

And even 15 years ago, I ran into that.

I think as we go through this, we'll talk about

some of the goods, the bads, the indifference, some of

the things that change, some of the things that stay

the same, and I think some of the things that

we can do on both sides to make it work.

So before we dig into the trust, maybe

we can start just your take on the

relationship between a partner and a vendor.

Anyways, today, what is that relationship in your mind?

What does it need to look like?

What's the value of that?

How do you view that relationship?

Vendor, you, customer, sorry.

You know, it's a, it's a big ecosystem,

you know, albeit we need each other, the

customers need me to bring solutions to them,

to help them run and protect their business.

The partners that I work with need to bring in sales.

We need to have those relationships in order

to sell to my clients, because often they

do not have that relationship with the customer.

They're just selling to channel people.

And I think that that ecosystem

has to have quite a balance.

The vendors have to understand what I need, I

have to let them know what I need, and

we have to set equal expectations around that.

I would imagine that if I called the vendor

all the time for quotes, but never use them.

Would they rush to answer those quotes for me?

If I do business with someone who doesn't come through in

the way they told me, if the expectations they set are

not met, you know what I'm going to say.

They're likely dead to me.

So, you know, but that ecosystem can be very well fed.

There are times that I learn about something new

that I'm not even offering yet or that a

client doesn't have a need for yet.

I think a lot of vendors sometimes don't understand that

the SMB market does not ask for specific services.

They're not asking for things.

We are making recommendations based on what

we see in their infrastructure or what

they need for growth or protection.

So when they come to me and say, well, when a

customer asks for this, and I'm like, no, the customer has

never heard of that, they're not asking for that.

But it's great for me to get educated by the vendor.

So then when I see the need

somewhere, we can then apply it.

We can then work together.

But I do think there is a very special

relationship because know who you're going to go to

for what in most cases, especially if they are

doing the right thing by you. Okay.

And that can mean a lot of things, Steven. Yeah.

Well, let's start with, so how do you build that trust?

Right.

Let's take it all from a

foundational level, kind of both ways. What do you.

You've been doing this for a

little while, I would assume, right? Actually, yeah.

You've been doing this for this job

at CMIT for over eight years, right? Correct.

So it's the same thing a client looks for in me.

You're going to do business with who you like,

trust, or think are smart for the most part. Right.

They understand their product, they are available to you,

they educate, they give you fair pricing and so

forth, or they're the only one in the market.

Because I often ask vendors, especially when I'm in

a room with seven people selling the same thing.

What's your differentiator?

Why you versus the next one?

As we know, many of these

services have become a commodity.

So I can go to multiple people for

the same exact thing, so why choose them?

And I think over the years, I

have relationships with certain people that way.

Even if they move to other companies, I'm still working with

them because it's them who I have the relationship with and

who I know is going to take care of me.

In some instances, though, it's the product and you have

to take a chance on the person you work.

But at the end of the day,

we're all people working with people.

It's not like it's just about the service, because you

can likely get that replicated from many other places.

Same as I would say to my clients, why choose me?

You know, I have to make sure that I

have something to offer that makes them decide to

do business with me versus the next MSP.

I like what you said, that people do business with

people that they like, they trust and think are smart.

I think that brings it in, that

brings it into focus pretty narrowly.

I do a question for you, I've

got lots of questions for you.

The first one is, and maybe it's a little bit

different now, how many key vendors do you work with?

Back in my day I was managed service provider

and I sold somewhat similar to you, I sold to

between 50 and 400 people credits for that mid market.

And I probably had five key vendors that

made off my managed service and then I

had other commodities I could work around.

I mean, I'm curious what it's,

what it's like today for you.

Well, I would say that a bit of a difference,

being part of a franchise is a little bit more

power in the marketplace because we have, you know, there's

a lot of buying power when you have 250 owners

serving, you know, thousands of customers.

So I would say there is a vetted portion

of this that is required as a franchisee.

But unlike a Starbucks, I can bake and

sell my own brownies if I choose.

And also the stack has become that much more diverse.

MSP's aren't answering just support anymore, we're answering

connectivity, we're answering cloud movement and migration, we're

answering licensing along with security, of course, and

in some cases physical equipment.

So many I don't know that I can click off how many.

And sometimes I don't only use one VoIP

provider, one security provider, one connectivity provider.

So it's better to be more concise

and to have and grow those relationships.

But there is a lot these days that

we have to make part of our offering.

So where you might have worked with five

or eight, probably working with 15 at high

points, is that better or worse?

Depends competitively.

It depends on what?

Yeah, it depends on what.

And again, I'm looking for a differentiator in some

cases, who does this the best or who does

this the closest or well, because ultimately the trust

relationship with the client is mine.

So I have to bring in people that offer

up the right solutions for me at the right

price, I think it was easier for me.

And you can tell me what you think, because actually

people want to listen to you today and not me.

But when I only had five, it was easier

for me to build a trust because it was

just a smaller, it was just a smaller number. Right.

And so I was interacting more often with the

same group and in my size of an organization,

it was just easier with that number.

When you start to get to eight to

15 and building that trust on a regular

basis, I could see that get somewhat extended.

Okay, two part question.

I also think it'd be really cool.

Those people that you build a great trust with in

those 15, it's going to be a big differentiator because

you feel like you can rely on them versus it

being kind of like wait and see sort of stuff.

Well, I would say in certain areas, with certain solutions,

it's definitely one or two, but I don't think you

can only have one vendor for each thing.

I think that is sometimes a problem, both

from a cost perspective, from a support perspective.

Same as the reason that people don't have an

IT employee anymore and have a team outsourced, because

you need to have backup to that solution.

If someone leaves, moves, sells, their company

changes hands, you lose your account rep,

it might be time to move on.

And I've seen that happen, certainly even

in my short tenure in this business.

So I think it has its ups and its downs for sure.

But I think because we're a larger entity, we get

a lot more consistent support, too, where I know there

are many MSP's out there who get switched around constantly

depending on the, you know, the size of their business.

Yeah, we're definitely, we're definitely

running in a different world.

I wasn't a franchise world, so

I didn't have that buying power. Yeah.

Okay, so let's talk about this trust.

So what do you look for in a vendor?

What differentiates them, what makes them somebody you

trust and how do they go about it? Right.

Well, I've been fortunate that over the

last couple of years, I've been part

of kind of a women's technical organization.

So I've met a lot of channel partners through there,

and that has led to both referrals from them as

well as business to them, which has been great and

probably unheard of for the most part for women, especially

MSP's, because there's not a lot of female owned MSP's.

But I think I would say the most important thing around

the vendor relationship for me is someone who is going to

take the ball and run with it to completion.

Someone whose job I don't have to explain to them.

I sell a lot of things.

We sell one, typically, I want them to be

the expert in both delivery and support to getting

the client onboarded or educating me or my team

so that we can help support it.

Someone who is responsive, you know, and not like

next day, but really, really responsive and who cares.

I would say it's the most important thing in a client and

a vendor and an employee is you care about it a lot.

So how long does it take

you to build that relationship?

What's the Leslie trust factor, right. On this.

And, you know, it matters, right?

I'm a trust first.

Even I am a trust first.

I am not suspect of people until they make me suspect.

Okay. And maybe that's.

Maybe that's a bad, bad quality. How?

As far as forming a relationship, it's twofold.

I like what they sell and I like what they tell me

about what they sell, and then they have to prove it.

And that's the other thing is leveraging that

not in your largest client sometimes, but in

your first small client, somewhere where we can

make mistakes without a high payment.

And I'm going to find out, too.

From when you're in a franchise and there's multiple

owners, good and bad news travel really fast.

I can tell you what travels faster.

Yes, exactly.

So that's pretty interesting.

So, yeah, if it goes wrong with one of

those 250, I think everybody finds out pretty quickly.

Look, I could tell you the story

if you want to hear it.

And they are definitely dead to me.

I'm not going to mention who it is, of course. Okay.

I was going to say, you tell me your

worst story, I'll tell you my worst story.

Let's. Hold on.

I'm going to go with mine being worse. Okay. Okay.

But before we get into that and we'll come back, I

think we'll sort of wrap up with the stories because we're

going to talk about the good bad and ugly on that.

So what about the other way around?

So, you know, the vendors have to build the trust.

You're in a pretty interesting spot because you've

got 250 brethren in there that you can

go back and forth, not all.

Once again, not everybody has that.

So the vendors have to build the trust.

But what about you building the trust other way?

In your thinking of that perspective, is there a light

bulb that goes off at some point with a vendor

when they realize, hey, this company is really good and

there's huge opportunities, and they've met my criteria there.

So again, you're a little unique in that

you've got 250 people you could work with

on that, but I'm super curious.

So, Leslie, what about the other way around?

What about in today's world, the partner

proving some trust to the vendor?

What does that look like?

Today we talked a little bit about the

vendor needing to be trustworthy to the partner.

So I think something I mentioned earlier

about not asking 'zillon quotes that never

come through, not taking advantage.

I know that vendors always are asking me to go

out places and go to events and go to things.

And when you're not bringing them business, I think

after a while it gets a little, you know,

like where they either stop inviting you or kind

of looking at you sideways, that you're taking advantage

of something that you shouldn't be.

Years ago, I used to work a lot of conference tables

and, you know, javits and things like that, and we put

things out and some people would come by and just wipe

off the whole table and you'd be like, really?

I think, I'm sure that's what vendors feel

like when you come to their events and

you're not doing business with them.

But then again, it's in their best interest to

be top of mind, to be in front of

you, and to make sure that they're educating you

constantly so you can look for opportunities to partner.

So in your opinion, this trust between

the vendor and the partner, is it

getting better or is it getting worse? Right.

Is it moving in the right direction where you feel like

in the market that the alignment is getting better on that,

or is it kind of going the other way?

I don't know if it's either.

I would say there's way more competition.

I mean, I know many, many vendors, and probably

each product and service I sell, and do I

choose to just stick with one all the time,

taking care of me a certain way?

I certainly think that there is, like

I said, a great balance there.

Getting a lead from a vendor is

amazing because it almost never happens.

And sometimes I question when I go to certain events,

when it just seems to be very social, and then

all of a sudden I get a lead from a

vendor event, which is always kind of mind blowing.

And I think that's really helpful because

they want MSP's to work with them.

We become your salespeople to

sell these products and services.

We want to make sure that you're feeding us as well.

When you hear either from a customer looking at

your services or from just being out in the

marketplace that someone needs an MSP, you're likely going

to feed the people who feed you.

Yeah, I did read on your LinkedIn profile, and people can check

it out that you do like to get out and about.

I think there are some very happy photographs

that you bring out and about on your

LinkedIn profile, which is a great thing, right?

If I'm a little too social, be a great thing.

Yeah, a little too social for my own good.

But I mean, I think it's led to

the relationships that either I've gotten business from

or do business because of or with.

And I also think, you know, if you get some face time

with different people and learn a little bit about what they do

and who they are, it takes you a long way.

And we've done this both in social events, but

also in charity events, fundraising events, award nights, things

like that, where we come out for the people

that we support and support us.

I think I saw that you were a big soccer fan on that.

I thought I saw a post on that. Right?

I had a great opportunity.

Nothing better than a Yankee fan who gets

to see their brand in Yankee Stadium.

Okay, that's pretty cool.

Do you want to tell me a little bit about that?

What was that all about?

I decided now that if I do not stay working

as an MSP, that I can be a lobbyist.

It took so much work to get a bunch of

tri-state owners to kick in for this opportunity to

advertise with NYCFC and become an associate partner.

This brilliant idea comes out of the UK.

Our company called Eleven and Eleven was

looking for 30 relevant small businesses in

the area for this opportunity.

None to kind of overlap.

And they were everything from construction,

window washing, nursing homes, it.

And with that, we're at every home game, we're

up on the digital signage, on the televisions.

We get to network and socialize with each other.

It's really been a fun opportunity.

And I am a soccer fan.

I am a Yankee fan.

So it was great.

Like the first time it ever came up, I

think it was on Father's Day two years ago.

And their social channels are really.

They've highlighted me, they've done some stuff for me and

for the rest of the northeast, and it's been great.

It was kind of cool.

I would think that the vendors really like that.

You said that.

I would think, you know, if you've got.

If you've got partners who are getting out there

and connecting, I would view that from the vendor

perspective as you know, that's a great opportunity that

someone wants to go out, have connections that's going

to help me get connected.

My ultimate customer, that's a

really, really good thing.

I also think that on the side of it being,

like, fueled by women, you know, a lot of us

have really been able to lift each other up.

I'm of that age where there was only room for one.

And I worked for my mother,

who had a woman owned business.

She was an entrepreneur.

There's a lot of women in my office.

This business does not leverage

itself to that many females.

And I think that there was a

lot of backbiting when I was younger.

So when I see these women mentoring each other

and helping each other and looking for opportunities both

to socialize together, but also to work together and

learn about their products and services, that inspires me.

I also have two daughters, so I look at it for

them as well, that there'll be room for more than one.

Okay, I'm in the two daughter club, so I can have this.

I'm a feminist, and I'm in the two

daughter club, so I can add this.

I can have this conversation.

And one of the things that attracted me to you

as well, too, is I just thought, look, if there's

a woman who can run a managed service business in

New York, in Manhattan, that's freaking cool.

That's the first thing I thought about

is, like, how cool is that?

Well, when I was a managed service provider, I'm

not so sure I met a woman that was

running a managed service at that point. I know it.

I know it.

80% were men. I would say I had about 20, and that was, I

thought about 80/20 split male female back to that point.

Right?

Which is pretty good.

But I would, you know, it's like, I complain to some

of the larger vendors, I go to events, and all the

women on the main stage are marketing or HR.

They're never head of tech, they're never

head of engineering, none of that.

I think that'll change.

Here's where I think it's changing this.

We're doing total objective.

It's one thing.

I'm seeing more women in the channel, leading sales,

and it used to be in marketing, and I'm

seeing, like, two of the best sales, just people

I know in the channel right now.

And I don't actually, you know, my

dad made me colorblind, gender blind.

I don't even think about it.

So I'm just like, oh, yeah, you're great at

what you do, but I had to notice because

of my daughters and paying attention to that. Right.

I mean, just, you have to that, you know, how do you

get past, and by the way, it's very cool to do marketing.

It's very cool to do HR.

No doubt, no doubt.

Nice to see it expand out to the sales. Right.

Well, that to me is not surprising

just because I feel like women are

always leveraged in the sales opportunity.

Maybe not in the channel as much as

now, but I would love to see there

be more on the tech side, especially in

the larger companies, a little bit more representation.

You know, it is what it is.

Okay, well, you know, sound like someone who, like,

accepts it is what it is very often.

So you can say that, but I don't actually.

Yeah, it's difficult.

It's difficult to get people to, you know, go down

this track and then they have to be competitive.

So, you know, it's, you know, that's

why it lends itself where it is.

You know, I think it

will get there, especially technology.

I think part of the reason for that is this,

things were larger, heavy to carry, all those things where

now with so much more being tiny and cloud based,

there's a lot less flapping stuff.

Well, actually that changed a lot of things.

I was thinking that changed how MDF

worked, it changed how product got demonstrated.

So that's pretty fast.

Is the first time I thought about that and

how who could actually physically do the role.

That's actually a great point.

I admit I've been doing this for a while.

I never actually thought about that.

Okay.

That's actually pretty cool thought.

Okay, so gender aside, you've got the vendor and the

partner relationship, all the good things we talk about.

So what happens when a vendor breaks that and you

can tell your story and I'll tell my horror story.

Let's talk about what it happens when it breaks and

then we tell a story and then I'm interested.

Have any vendors actually won it back

or once it's broken, it's gone?

So that's a three part question.

Well, you know, I will say, in thinking about

our discussion, one of the things that I considered

was how they handle things when they go wrong.

Because as an MSP, as you'd imagine,

I often compare us to an ER. Right?

Some people are going to die.

Some people are going to leave with a limp.

Other people are going to leave perfectly fine.

We are never going to be

perfect, never going to be 100%.

It's not the nature of technology or the work we do.

So we need to set client expectations,

same as vendors need to set hours.

Here's what needs to happen to get the job done right.

We need to empower the vendor to get through the job.

If they screw up, there needs to be

an opening for them to make it right.

And that is the second part to it.

It's not just getting it right 100%

of the time because that's not real.

You know, things are going to happen.

But making sure that when you reach out to

them, whether it be on a Saturday night, when

they're off on their yacht cruise, or they are

at home on a Monday morning working remotely, that

they're responding to what's wrong, that they're answering that

ticket, that they're escalating that issue because the salesperson

often, you know, has no control over the implementation,

just like I don't.

I'm not that technical.

You know, it's on my team to get

that done, and we have to make sure

that we set the expectations of the client.

So I think it's threefold. Right.

It's doing the best job you've represented. Right.

If the vendor tells me the expectation, the report's going

to take 20 days, but it takes 80, I'm going

to be upset and so is the client, and the

client's going to be upset with me.

And if I'm passing on that trust relationship, right.

The client doesn't know who my salesperson is.

The client knows me, so everything comes back to me.

So they have to be an extension

of how I would handle things.

And that's kind of the first part to it.

Getting it right. Yay.

We're all happy. When it goes wrong.

I need to be able to reach out, and

they don't go, well, I don't handle that part.

They find the person, they escalate the issue.

They give me the home phone numbers of whoever I

need to call to make sure my client is satisfied

with what we brought in, because if that doesn't happen,

then I won't be using them again for sure.

And if they handle the problem correctly, sometimes the tool

or the service we buy is fantastic, but if the

delivery is not there, you're already put off.

Like, I shouldn't have done this.

Why did we do this? This is not good.

This is not what they told me.

We were selling to the customer and that's happened.

But I think giving them the space to make mistakes

is fine as long as they're going to handle that.

But really the best partner for me is

someone who I hand off the business to.

I tee it up for us to both

be successful and they get it done.

And if there are blips or service needed after,

they're not like, oh, that's not my part, they

actually get the rest of it done.

So it's out of my hands.

They all claim they can do it,

but not all of them will.

So what's your horror story?

Ah, this is good.

You ready for this? I'm ready. All right.

Unnamed VoIP supplier.

So I worked with a customer, a very large

client, for two rounds of demos around this.

And instead of just bringing in one vendor, I

brought in several that acted as the bar. Right.

I wanted to be the value added resource,

come in with a consultative approach and not

just like lead somebody by the hand.

It's this person, right?

So that's what I did.

I did that twice.

Never charged the client to do the

work, just acted as the consultant.

Second round, I spoke to their incumbent, who was charging them

a little bit more money than they should, started to have

a pretty good relationship with them, and talked to them about

what it would take to save the client, what we wanted

it to look like be priced at.

And they came in really well.

So I brought in two vendors to the client and

I said, we can't really pick a bad choice here.

You know, we can, but it is going to be heavier

lifts to move off this one and go to that one

where we can just save money and do all the other

things you want to do with this one.

Now, the other vendor, more famous, much bigger, and

had a lot of good tools, the clients.

So like a couple weeks before they made a

decision, I share this account with another it person.

Walk them in, and I thought, oh,

good, he's supporting me on this. This is great.

We'll do this together.

When it came down to it, they picked the larger

supplier and we started to have a battle over.

And I registered this deal.

I used the section, the vertical that I

needed to for expertise along with enterprise.

Because it was a larger deal.

I did all the right things.

Suddenly my registration was missing.

And they basically, instead of taking the position

that I had, started all paperwork, they said,

we're going to go first to ink.

Well, CEO was with the other person, the COO

was me, and the other person got the deal.

And so I will never sell that vendor

again because they could have taken the position.

They should have.

Why register a deal if you're

not going to hold that registration?

Why bother going through all these steps?

They had all the paperwork, they had all

of the messaging back and forth, and they

still let the customer decide, which is okay.

I understand their position to a certain degree,

and I think there was a lot of

untruths in the middle of that somehow.

But I said, from now on, if I ever do that

much work again, I'm going to charge the client or tell

the client, because the client also then found out, like what?

How the payouts go, which they should never have

known because I never charged them a dime. Nor would I.

But next time I would just say, if I'm going to

put in all this work to the phone system and you

don't use me, there's going to be a charge for it.

It was a lot of money, too.

The SPIF was a lot.

Here's the thing, having run, I've run the technology

side of incentives and deal registrations and all that.

That's what I've been doing for the past

15 years, since I left, being a partner.

People ask me about deal registration all the time.

There's a lot of advantages to both sides on it. Right.

Because the vendor can understand the pipeline and

the partner is supposedly protected on that.

It's so key for everything.

And when it runs well, it runs really well.

But that's just like, that's Cardinal sin number one.

If.

If you don't adhere to that,

you're, you're, you're dead to me.

That was, that was a tough burn, but

that's one of those lessons that you, you

learn hard and you don't do it again.

There's no, my perspective.

There's no coming back from that.

Yeah.

And, you know, again, I think, I don't like

to take a negative approach to these things. Right.

Brush it off. Next. What's new? What's happening?

What are we doing?

Because if you sit yourself in that space, you'll

just think everybody's a crook and everybody lies.

And, you know, I never want to be like that.

I really enjoy learning about

new products and services.

I really enjoy working with different people, especially

great people, because I've worked with many more

fantastic, helpful, educated resources than the opposite.

And, you know, I just, that was

just, you know, not a great day.

Well, now, one of the things that I

thought was interesting and when you were doing

your presentation is I found you very positive

and very upbeat and very enthusiastic.

That's why I reached out to do podcast.

But I also felt like if someone did something like that,

as you said, they were dead to you, which is what

you said on stage, what the audience repeated back to me,

which was the best part of that whole afternoon. Whoa.

Oh, absolutely.

Look, my story, I'll tell it pretty quickly.

It's very similar deal registration.

We took a vendor into a, it

was a city account, city wide account.

It was a pretty big account, and we were mid

sized partner, and we went and did all of it.

You got the whole thing going, and they

turned it over to a regional partner.

And then I found out that the salesperson

ran the deal for the vendor's spouse, worked

for that company that came in and took.

And that was a huge deal for us. Right.

For us in the hundreds and hundreds of thousands.

It was a pretty big annual deal.

And I was shell shocked.

I was like, is this for real? Same thing.

My deal, registration.

I'm not sure where I got lost and

what, and what was I going to do?

There was nothing I could do, but I was

like, you just burned that bridge so, so bad.

I also, you know, I want to put

my head on a pillow at night.

I would never have done the opposite.

The funny thing is, and the other it

person became involved, all I could think about

was, what should I give him?

Like, maybe I should give him a split.

Like, you know, I really wanted to be generous

about it and that, that really, like, burned doubly.

Yeah, yeah, I know.

And I'm the same thing.

That was not self shocking,

but, you know, he's suffering.

He's suffering the consequences of it already.

So, you know, it's like, no, you know, it's no skin.

I've, you know, long gone past it, but I

will never do business with that particular company again.

Even if the client asked, I'd

probably tell them the story. Yeah.

You know, from my perspective, it

just wasn't worth the time anymore. And same thing.

What are you going to do about it?

I just wrote it off and just moved on.

You find an alternative, it just makes the best of it.

Life's too short for that. Yep, yep. 100%.

And like I said, I, you know, I have, one of

the things that I find so interesting about VoIP is, you

know, there are many people who just use one vendor.

It's easier to do that.

You know, same dashboard if you need help.

Same this, same that.

But for me, I love VoIP as a business solution.

I love the idea that customers have certain requirements

that not every carrier can meet, along with the

fact that it's not all their own.

So maybe they have a third party contact center

or they have, and I'm still a fan of

the outsource of that, but there are so many

pieces to put together and really bring somebody something

great with the ability to grow their business because

of it, versus just picking up and saying hello

and setting up a call flow or having IVR.

There's so much more to be gained now.

And that's the part I find

so interesting in that space.

Okay, so let's wrap it up.

Listening to the partner and trusting how they

need to take in that information to be

able to do how to get educated.

It's not like, I think in some semblance, the

world with some of the videos, we've lost the

essence of what are we trying to get across?

Are we trying to just say something glitzy?

Are we actually trying to educate?

And small amounts.

I just want to add something that I was just

on a call the other day and I was working

with a VoIP provider and they have kind of hyper

care in place for the first 90 days.

And I thought a lot about that as an MSP as well.

When you first onboard a client, they need a much

more direct line from you than they do three months,

six months, a year down the road in most cases.

And I think developing that and making sure that

their initial onboard is handheld, especially with VoIP, because

VoIP applies to everything, because it's like if the

connectivity is bad, your computers might work, but your

phones will experience it, right?

They don't take up a lot of bandwidth, but

they're also super important to most people's businesses, even

if they're not using a physical phone.

So I think a bunch of handholding upfront in that kind of

space is something else I look like for in a vendor.

The fact that there's going to be support and that

I hate using that term one throat to choke.

I'd much rather have one back to

pat any day of the week.

So that's interesting that you say that. Right.

So I think a trust thing there and

the vendors is, I love that customer.

In the beginning for me, I looked at it as

like over that first 90 days, they could even make

the renewal for me and my life, for my whole

team really, really great for the next two years, or

they could make it miserable for six months.

That's 100% right. 100% right.

Two options, right.

And I was like, all you have to do is, here's the deal.

The thing that I cared most about in all my

implementations is my project manager had to get a 95%

plus CSAT rating on the setup and the installation.

That was my biggest metric because I knew, by

the way, this is 15 years ago, right?

And I knew that that was

going to make all the difference.

And I had some vendors that really

bought into that and some that didn't.

Once again, the ones that did,

they were the ones I used. Right.

Because I wanted those people to love us. Right? Yep.

You wanted the care, and they wanted the care from you.

But it also, I talk a lot

about what is the client's love language?

You know, do they need follow up?

Do they need details?

Do they need a call right back?

Or do they need you to just communicate? We're on it.

We got you.

So I think paying attention to that,

back to their expectation and their trust,

is, what do they need from you?

If you're not giving it, you're gone.

Well, see, you're dead to me. You're gone.

This is, what if I'm a vendor, this is

what I want to hear from my partner.

That's what's going to help me build trust in

my partner, is because they're actually listening to what

does that client need over that period of time?

Because we all have that same goal over that first

beginning of that 90 days to get the client in

a great space just to add to it.

Steven, part of the Forrester thing that was a big

deal to me was the fact that, again, you have

these big heads of companies at these events.

And what I hope they take from what

they see here is the fact that sometimes

the strategy doesn't match, you know, where, you

know, three layers down what it looks like.

Like we used to always say to my, an older

boss of mine, like, you're not the one in front

of the customer, so you don't get it.

This is what I'm hearing in the marketplace, and I'll

tell you the biggest thing for MSP's, to me, the

biggest shift, we might have to hide this.

You know, back in the day when you were

doing this, right, it was, it was newer.

I mean, it still had been around for a

while, but part of the relationship was the expectation

that you weren't going to be there a lot.

It wasn't a co-manage thing. They were used to.

Larry, who lives up two blocks

away, coming by whenever something broke.

And MSP was a little bit of

a larger engagement with a monthly retainer.

Now, many of the sales opportunities I come across

for requests, for proposals that I'm answering, want to

see somebody, whether it's on a monthly call, whether

it's in a quarterly meeting, whether it's a technician

that comes by, want to leave for 3 hours,

they want more engagement, they want more handholding, more

touchy feely, because everything they do is connect technology.

And even people who think they're technical don't often

want to touch anything or mess with anything.

They want help and.

Or they want a special engagement for the

VIP's in their office, things like that.

And that, to me, is the

current shift of what's happening.

So our vendors are going to have to

shift with us to more handholding, to more

being part of our actual team, in some

cases, to support clients, especially in the beginning.

And I agree.

Okay, my second nightmare story is I worked

in the winery business, and, I mean, I

had, like, really nice wines, and this whole

managed service thing was starting to come around.

And we made all these promises with our vendors, and we

went in there and we basically were telling them, we don't

need to be here to take care of you.

And we sort of missed the point that they

missed, and they expected Larry to come around.

And even though we did a great job, they let us go.

Six months later, I remember sitting in a

bar in Napa, and the general manager came

over and he's got a case of wine.

And it was like 2007 Pritchard Hill.

I mean, it was nice stuff.

And he fired me with a really nice case of wine.

He goes, look, you guys are really good.

But my owner, that's not, what? Not for him.

Not for him.

And that's the thing.

You don't figure that out.

If you don't find out what that is almost right from

the start, you're gonna find it out from a problem.

Usually, you know, I think going over

the expectations is that much more critical. That's.

I mean, RFPs are usually stacked for a specific

vendor, whether it's, you know, something regulated, where they

have to go to RFP every couple of years,

or whether, you know, Larry's daughter now has an

MSP that they know they're gonna give it to.

But you do get the parameters, and if you're

answering to them right, and you're setting a proposal,

and they said, well, you told us we were

gonna have somebody here every Tuesday from nine to

twelve, and you don't need that.

You probably don't. Pretty interesting.

I learned to ask questions a lot better after that,

and to make sure that those questions were funneled up

a lot better after that as well, too.

So that was a big if.

You're not learning from those mistakes. Dead. Yeah.

No, no, absolutely.

And my vendor wasn't very happy.

I wasn't very happy, but I

never made at mistake again.

Hey, I want to go down a track real quickly before

we wrap up that I wasn't even going to go down. Sure.

Because I'm in the platform and I'm in

demand generation business, I thought I would ask,

so how do you view MDF?

How do you view demand generation help

with co-branding of materials and information?

You're part of a big group.

Do you guys get a lot of MDF funding?

Do you get a, you know, a

through channel marketing automation platform or anything

like that to do demand generation?

So maybe I'm not

understanding the question specifically.

Are you talking about support from

the vendors that we work with?

Right, so, yeah, yeah.

So MDF market development, MDF dollars that

they give to you for marketing, digital

advertising, any sort of demand generation activities.

So the larger vendors that work with us that

like are vetted and we have to use to

support the marketing efforts of our home office, I

believe along with us, depending on our spend.

So, you know, I have thrown

like a security awareness breakfast.

The vendor, you know, that I put in

paperwork for and the vendor supported the breakfast.

I don't ask for it all that much, only

because I don't necessarily go and go down the

track of educating around one particular product.

It's usually the whole, not that they necessarily need

that, they just need to know the parameters in

order to support you, but I think it's great.

I think it's helpful.

I think that even I'm about to do.

We have our CMIT conference in November and I had asked

if I could do a session because a lot of the

time franchisee led sessions are the more popular ones.

We learned something from you and I think I'm going to

partner with a vendor in that one to be able to

benefit what I was going to talk about in the first

place, which was kind of farming your current client base.

So we're looking to put together some type

of template to help not only me, but

all of the owners across the country.

So, you know, clients, if you're doing the right

job, they want more, they're consuming more, not less.

They're not cutting your engagement.

They're saying, what else do we need?

Come in every year, tell us how old our

machines are, where there might be security gaps, should

we migrate to cloud, do we need more equipment?

Whatever it is.

And I think that lends itself to

vendors wanting to support that too, obviously.

So back to your question.

MDF is important, but a lot of franchise owners, in my

opinion, don't know it exists as far as for themselves.

Interesting.

Here's one of the interesting things for me

is I sold risk mitigation and business continuity.

I always had vendors coming to

me, look, this is traditional.

I had the traditional group of vendors back then.

It's not hard to figure out.

servers, laptop security.

It's pretty straightforward stuff.

I said I sold risk mitigation

and business continuity, and I'm back.

I'm thrilled that I'm a gold

or a platinum partner for you. And I use a backstop.

The message I was trying to get up is

your lights are always on and it's always secure.

And you could.

15 years ago, vendors didn't get that and

all the stuff they would hand me for

marketing were just about their product, right.

I do think it's getting better to the

point where I think some of them are

starting to understand how to blend that message.

And there are AI tools and things

out there that are pretty interesting.

And I'll show you one of the things that

we do that allows you to take your message

and their message and blend it together for a

quick email campaign, which is great.

It's really, really cool stuff.

You got to be able to blend it.

And it's funny, historically, through channel

marketing automation, tech platforms didn't get

a lot of partners coming in.

Because just putting your logo on

a vendor's collateral, right, not enough.

And if you can't speak well to it, like forget it.

And it's not your value prop anyways.

I kept thinking about it.

I was like, why are the vendors missing your

value prop is your relationship and everything went and

understand what that client wants, when, where and how.

Right?

So help me figure out how to do that.

And I think AI and where technology is going, pretty soon

you're going to have like a little, we call it a

marketing assistant, that you'll just sit there and you could just

ask it for collateral and it'll have all of your information

in there and it'll crown email or a landing page or

anything you want to do collateral for when you go to

one of those events and it'll blend the message and you

don't have to spend four days doing it.

I think that's pretty cool.

And I think a lot of vendors are going to start sending

that sort of stuff your way, you know, to circle back.

I was talking with a particular vendor yesterday

and they were like, well, when your clients

asked for and this and that, and I

was like, my clients don't ask for that.

They're never going to know what that is. Educate me.

Where is the opportunity? So I can look for it.

When I'm talking to clients or prospects, let me know.

Like, to me, this particular problem, this particular

company, the opportunity is if I talk to

a prospect who already has that and I

need to move it, that makes sense.

But to initiate that step, most of the customers that

we work with do not need certain things that, you

know, I don't know who's buying from them.

I am pretty sure there are larger customers

out there that 100% need what they have.

But I said, educate me.

Tell me where the opportunity is, and I'll

let you know if it's something that I

come across or it's something I'll look for.

Like, I have a client who doesn't answer phone calls.

Like, they just don't.

They get 65% of their calls.

They're losing a fortune.

I've been telling them this for the last four years,

and when I intimated that we should get a inbound,

outbound call center for them, they were like, no way.

They're used to this person answering the phone or

that person answering the phone, I said, okay.

All of a sudden, they came around.

Now they've come so far around, they're ready

for it to be an AI receptionist.

And I'm like, wait, how did we go from

Joan answering, not answering the phone to AI?

So we're still working on the opportunity.

But it is kind of funny because, you

know, want to make sure you don't miss

any calls, and voicemail is not enough.

And if you are a medical practice and a new

patient call, you don't pick up, guess what they're doing?

Calling somebody else right away.

They are not leaving a voicemail.

It's a new patient, most likely.

Okay, I will.

Look, this has been. This has been great.

I appreciate you taking all this time

to talk to me about this.

I appreciate you having me.

Last thing, if anybody wants to reach out and pick

your brain, get to know you a little bit. Oh, lord.

There's so little in my brain left, Steven.

I don't know how much they can peck at.

What's the best way?

Well, obviously, you found time to go to Forrester.

You found time to go to Baptie Channel. Focus.

So, you know, you're. And I did.

They should reach out on LinkedIn is probably the

easiest way, or, you know, certainly I can provide

a slide for Chris that you can post up

with, you know, my contact information. All right.

Well, Leslie, thank you for your time.

I really appreciate it.

Listeners, viewers, thank you for joining us.

If you have any questions, please feel reach out

to me or reach out to Leslie and go

see a NYFC soccer game next time.

Well, and more importantly, make sure you do the

right thing by your partners so that you're not

dead to them or dead to me. Wow.

That is a much better.

All right. Thank you. Appreciate it. Take care, Steven.

Talk soon.