How to Protect Your Client Base, Grow Your Income, and Build Stronger Client Relationships
Literally no one knows what’s next. No business owner has certainty about the business environment in the year ahead. But that doesn’t mean you need to be ruled by fear. As an IT consultant, you are in a unique position to help your clients make the most of their technology in the months and years ahead.
Join us for an educational and entertaining webinar on how to build stronger client relationships in uncertain times. You really can strengthen client relationships when they are overwhelmed with FUD – fear, uncertainty, and doubt. As an advisor, a true consultant, and a technology professional, you can help them spend money (and save money) strategically. You can help them reach their goals, and your company will be better off for the effort.
Recorded May 2025
Grab the Handout (from the Managed Services Operations Manual, Volume 1, Front Office):
https://mspwebinar.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/ms-Operations-Manual-vol-1-front-office-36-roadmap-questionnaire.pdf
Note: While scheduled for 60 minutes, we’ll stay as long as there are questions.
One of the absolutely best things you can do for your clients is to help them. And one of the best ways to do that is to have regular, ongoing strategy meetings. I call these roadmap meetings. Some people call them QBRs, although few clients will hold them quarterly.
This webinar with help you:
- Begin “never-ending” conversations with clients and prospects
- Where roadmaps and strategic meetings fit in the sales process
- The slow sales process (a GREAT low-sales/no-sales approach to perpetual income)
- The power of being a true advisor
- Making money in a tough economy
- Taking the long view of client relationships
- Moving from “network checkup” to ongoing client relationships
- Building never-ending relationships with clients (old and new)
This webinar includes lots of handouts, and pointers to resources that will help you make the most of your ongoing strategic meetings.
Who should attend:
- Owners
- Managers
- Sales folks
- Marketing folks
- (And it wouldn’t hurt for senior technicians either. Just sayin.)
About Karl W. Palachuk
Karl W. Palachuk has been an IT Consultant since 1995 and is one of the pioneers of the managed services business model. He is the author of more than twenty books, most of which are focused on running a successful IT consulting practice.
Karl founded the Small Biz Thoughts Technology Community in 2018. He maintains four blogs, including Small Biz Thoughts and Relax Focus Succeed, and produces several podcasts, including the SMB Community Podcast and The Killing IT Podcast. In 2021, Karl founded the National Society of IT Service Providers – NSITSP.org – where he now serves on the Board of Directors and the Professional Development Committee.
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Links Mentioned
Handouts
Members of the SBT Technology Community, see Roadmap 2021: https://www.smallbizthoughts.org/member-content/technology-roadmap-2021/
(search for Roadmap)
Non-Members:
Grab the download to this webinar from
https://mspwebinar.com/client-engagement-in-an-uncertain-economy/
Other Links
Newsletter Starter Kit = https://store.smallbizthoughts.com/product/newsletter-starter-kit/
Free Webinars IT Service Providers = https://www.mspwebinar.com
Contact form = https://www.smallbizthoughts.org/contact/
SBT Technology Community = https://www.smallbizthoughts.org
Karl’s Books (and 68-Point Checklist) = https://store.smallbizthoughts.com
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Transcript of this recording:
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Alright. We have pushed the big record button, and away we go.
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So I start. I try to always start at the top of the hour mainly because it just is what it is. It was scheduled at 9. I think that meetings should go about 50 min and give people time to take a break and grab a cup of coffee or whatever before the next meeting. So.
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anyway, here we go. Welcome to client engagement in an uncertain economy how to protect your client base, grow your income and build stronger client relationships. And this is literally just spelling out stuff that a lot of you’ve heard for a while, which is
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how to have a permanent conversation with clients, how to make amazing sales, and to turn that into a long term relationship.
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and
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for those of you who don’t know me, I’m Karl Palachuk for those of you who do know me. I’m still Karl Palachuk
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and so I ran a couple of it companies and in Sacramento, California. And I’m happy to say that we had clients who stayed with us
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for 20 years, literally until either they retired or I sold the business. And
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you know the client roadmap process that I go through is a great part of that. So if you’re not connected with me, please just search for me on Linkedin or Facebook or Reddit, and I’ll be happy to connect with you
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a few notes about housekeeping.
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So
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1st of all, we’re gonna I always take questions in the in the question panel, the Q&A panel.
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So find that and queue up your questions as we go along. I’ll be happy to answer some of them as we go along, and then some I might batch until we have some opportunities. I have some slides specifically for Q, and a chat is enabled. And you know, please put any side conversations there. I will look at that after we’re done here today. But I’m going to take questions in the Q. And a panel.
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This is being recorded. It will be [email protected] along with the handouts and the transcript.
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So you’ll have complete access to it along the lines of transcripts. As a rule, we don’t allow 3rd party note takers on these webinars to come in and
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take notes, just because I think that it’s oh.
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pain in the neck, and I don’t think that people should turn off their brain and turn everything over to AI. And I’m not convinced that the people who have accumulated tens of thousands of collections of AI generated notes are ever going to look through them.
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And so whatever just a private pet peeve of mine dealing with intellectual property
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on Facebook and Linkedin, Sbt small biz thoughts is the hashtag.
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All right.
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So the recording [email protected], and if you haven’t looked around that site, that’s where I post up some of our free stuff. I do my state of the nation address I posted on that website, and I have ongoing trainings that you may wish to check out, including some great checklists and sample security training and so forth.
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So please give that a look
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another. One of my favorite AI
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pet peeves is the good enough
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graphic and the good enough content. I do use AI as a tool, but I do not use it to generate content. So some of the graphics today will be AI generated, but none of the text and none of the thought leadership.
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AI is not actually capable of thought leadership. It is very capable of repeating what it’s heard from others, and making it as bland and repetitive as possible.
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So there you go alright. So here’s what we’re up to today.
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We’re not gonna talk about the economy per se. But we’re gonna just talk about the fact that we’re you know. You may need to change your approach
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in order to get the most out of an uncertain time.
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and you know it might be the economy. It might be politics. The last time that I did a presentation about uncertainty, it was about the pandemic right? We never know what’s going to happen. But here’s what you can guarantee.
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If you’re in business for 10 or 20 or 30 years.
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you will have uncertain times. It’s not possible to go 10 years and not have periods where the stock market goes up and the stock market goes down and the stock market is uncertain, and people are worried about interest rates and people worried about whether or not their business is going to make it through the next 6 months. Right?
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Different industries have problems at different times. And so, no matter what your business is, and no matter what you do quote, unquote for a living.
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there’ll be times of uncertainty.
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and that is actually a tremendous opportunity for you. If you are a good technician, a good consultant.
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you can lock in clients for the rest of their lives.
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By the way, that you manage that relationship when they have periods of uncertainty.
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So we’re going to present a 100% client focused sales process.
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That’s also very non salesy. So for all you people who say, Oh, I don’t like sales. I don’t like to do sales. I’m not good at sales. Blah blah blah!
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We’re going to show you how to make sales without appearing to be salesy, and to actually sort of lean into the part that you enjoy most about technology, which is probably technology.
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We’re going to show you how you convert that sales process into a conversation that basically can go on forever. And the result will be not only indoctrinating your clients into the right way of doing things, but also a great, long, lasting relationship.
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And we’ll have Q&A at the end. But we’ll also have some Q. And a. From time to time in the middle. Please use the Q. And a box for that
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quick announcement before we get started. I have a new event I’m putting together on June 10th called. Ask me anything. The It edition.
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and
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just look for that at the Msp. Webinar site. If you are registered for this event you will get an email. Do not worry about it. You’ll see it, I I promise. You won’t miss it. If you are watching the recording of this, go to small business thoughts.org, slash contact and fill out the contact form and make sure and just say, Hey, put me on the list. Make sure that I don’t miss that.
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If you have ideas
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about topics or guests who you would like to have an ask me anything session with, please send me an email. You all have my email. And if you don’t, you’ll see it 47 times in this video
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in this presentation.
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All right.
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let me start with just a note on who I serve, so I serve it consultants, and well.
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the advice I give might be useful to doctors and lawyers and people who run restaurants and people who do roofing.
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That’s not who I serve. I serve it consultants.
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I grew up in the the world of technology. I love the business to business, focus of it consulting. And I love the consulting piece of that. And you know it’s critical that you have a focus and clarity on who you serve.
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because it will help your business tremendously by not trying to be all things to all people.
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If somebody comes to me and say, Oh, I got this really great thing and it’s really great for dental assistance. I’d be like, Yeah, good. Yeah. You know I’m happy for you.
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I don’t serve dental assistance, you know. I mean, not like I said they might learn something. But that’s not what I do. Okay?
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So based on my experience and the ways that I like to disseminate information. I
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love to train it consultants to be as successful as possible. That is my goal.
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And so that’s what I’m here for.
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Quick note. I’m not. Gonna I wanted to spend 20 min on that, but I can’t. So I’m just gonna say, the best time to build your mailing list and start a monthly. Newsletter was 5 years ago. But the second best time is today. And if you go to store dot small business thoughts.com. You can find my newsletter starter kit, and it’s a great investment in your business. Now.
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the 1st slide we’re gonna get into in how you do the sales process. I’m gonna skip over the Newsletter, the mailing list and all the stuff you’re gonna find. So in in lieu of 20 min on this slide.
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you have to be responsible for having a list that you go to, that you can cultivate and love and nurture for the rest of your career, because it can become your greatest
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source of leads and sales so, having said that, away we go. All right. Are you ready? Are you all ready? Everybody’s settled in. You got a cup of coffee. You’ve turned off your second monitor, you’re actually gonna pay attention.
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Excellent.
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So when there is fud fear, uncertainty, and doubt, what do clients do they
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stop? They’re literally like animals who, you know, are sensing some kind of danger.
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They don’t do anything, they freeze, they just hold still. They watch what’s going on.
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And we saw this at the beginning of the pandemic until it was clear that there was some direction on the economy.
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They stopped spending.
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They stop making new investments. They stop making changes. They stop implementing new things.
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And you may be seeing some of this right now.
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So as we’re recording this, you know, there’s all this question of what’s going on with tariffs are tariffs on or off, and what percentage? And this and that? And is it serious or not serious? And literally as of the day that we are
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recording this, the 1st ships from China that left after the tariffs went into effect, are
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landing in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and so
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a lot of your clients might be in the what is going on phase, and that means that they’re frozen.
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and they are going to need someone to talk to.
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and you may even hear them ask the question because you are a business owner. This is a business owner to business, owner. Conversation.
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What do you think is going on?
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What what do you think is happening? What do you think we can do about this right? And it’s just a it’s just a casual conversation.
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But in a world with lack of knowledge and lack of clarity.
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anyone who has a vision, and a process
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will be able to be very successful, because clients will look to you and take your advice.
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And even though many of you don’t consider yourselves great business advisors if you own a business, and you’ve existed in business for 5 years paying the bills. You’ve probably got some employees. You’re paying those bills you’re keeping the lights on. You’ve got an Internet connection that works.
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You are able to give other people advice about their business. You are doing something right? You’re probably doing many, many things right? And so your perspective is valuable. And in technology you have a unique opportunity to give a perspective that many other people cannot give.
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Now, having said all that, there’s also a handful of people who have been squirreling away their nickels and dimes, and they have money in the bank.
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And this is particularly true in areas where the technology is very expensive or in manufacturing, where somebody might just be waiting. Okay, as soon as as soon as some one of my competitors has problem, I’m gonna buy their brand new equipment at 10 cents on the dollar, or
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I’m going to go down to Long Beach, and I’m going to look for all of those odd lots of things that got imported, and nobody wanted to pay the taxes on them, and so they got sold at auction.
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I’m gonna go buy me some stuff
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that it will take me to the next level.
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Some people are just waiting because they’ve got enough money that when the economy turns south just a little bit and prices drop they can buy new equipment, and they can move their business to the next level while their competition is contracting and freezing and not doing anything.
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How do you know which of your clients has money to spend, and is ready to take a strategic leap.
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The answer is very simple.
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You ask them right.
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They may also be in an industry that is immune from the current situation right? If you were in the restaurant business at the beginning of the pandemic, you were pretty much not going to escape the bad times right? You might muscle through it, and the ones with the money in the bank muscled through it better than those without
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but this time around. Actually being in a restaurant that doesn’t have to rely too much on
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imports is probably a pretty good thing.
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But again, uncertainty and doubt, when that is, is
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defining the landscape. The handful of people, without doubt.
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are ready to spend money. They’re ready to invest in the future and guess what they need a little advice, a little help with them, looking into the future and deciding which future they’re going to build.
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Believe it or not. That could easily be you if you are a consultant, a true consultant, and not just a techno goober.
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So your challenge in all of this, 1st of all, we’re going to talk about sales. So we’re going to talk about turning prospects into clients. Then we’re going to talk about transitioning to keeping those clients onboarding them appropriately and then
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figuring out, you know who’s got the money and who doesn’t. And it’s okay. If you have clients without money, believe me, that is also an opportunity, and I’ll show you exactly what I mean by that. If you have clients who might
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seriously be going out of business in the next year.
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you can help them to survive as long as possible. You might help them escape that, and you can help them use their technology as efficiently as possible. And that is literally there’s no special skill needed.
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You know how to do that by simply following a few rules we’re going to talk about.
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And as a bonus. We’re going to put all this together in a repeatable process that you can use for the next 20 years.
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That’s a beautiful thing. Okay, okay? So
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I love to use the term roadmap right a roadmap for you and your clients, and if you go right now to the mspwebinar.com site, and you go into the promo for this presentation that you’re sitting in right now, there’ll be a link to a Pdf. You can download, which is the
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it’s the questionnaire from chapter 36 of the Manage Services Operations, manual volume, one front office stuff.
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And so, please, if you don’t have that already. Go there.
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The roadmap process is kind of your path to protecting your client base, growing your client base and retaining clients. So the downloads and I’m I’m not going to put up links here. But
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if you’re a member of the small business technology community, there’s an Update to the version that’s in the book. So just go into the community log into small business thoughts.org and search for roadmap. Search just that. One word will get you a whole bunch of resources, one of which is, you’ll see it’s labeled Roadmap 2021.
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And then, if you’re not a member of the small Business thoughts technology community. You can grab the download there and also go to the store at smallbusthoughts.com and take a look at the 68 point checklist which is free to download. Get version 3 or version 4. They’re dramatically different. But anyway, take a look at those.
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Please note I’m going to have this one link on some of the slides. I’m going to have a slide with the links at the end. So don’t worry. You’re going to get all this. You don’t have to do it right now. Don’t freak out, don’t panic, and if you ask me where to get the downloads, I’m probably going to ignore you.
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All right.
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So the roadmap process. It is a sales tool. It does all of these wonderful things. And we’re going to step through this from sales process all the way to client maintenance. Okay, so that’s our big picture from sitting down with the client and focusing on their business and the key to success is it has to be client focused. Okay?
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So
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the the 1st thing when you’re talking to prospects is that you need to be there for a purpose. You have to have a purpose. They already have a purpose.
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And you know, when when you’ve been marketing, or you’ve maybe been promoting something in your community for a long time, or talking to somebody at networking events. And one day
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they say, Hey, Karl, can you come to my office? And I want to talk to you about something
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you need to ask the question, why am I here today?
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Right. Don’t assume that your advertising got through to them. Don’t assume that they know what you do for a living right? Even if you’ve been sending them newsletters, and they’ve been going to your your trainings, or whatever. Don’t assume that just because they asked you in that they want to buy something.
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Ask them what they do want.
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Okay.
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And I’m a huge believer in what I call the slow sales process.
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So in the slow sales process, in the 1st meeting, your primary job is to shut up
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and listen to the client.
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You are in that room for a reason
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they didn’t bring you there for nothing.
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Okay, and if you don’t have a place to start the 68 point checklist is a great place to start and so there’s that. And then the questionnaire right? The 1st few
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pages of the roadmap questionnaire. Because the first, st the 1st questions are literally things like, what’s tell me about your company? Is that the primary name, or is there a parent corporation. Is this a franchise? What do you do here? How do you make money? How many years have you been in business? What are your annual sales, and a lot of times, especially people who are new to to sales.
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They think that people are like
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protective of information like, you know how their corporation is structured, or what their sales are.
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The truth is, if you take a sincere interest in their business, there’s nothing that a business owner would rather do than talk about themselves.
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Right? They want to talk about their business. They want to tell you. Oh, we’re at 6.2 million, but we’re hoping to be at 8 million by this time next year.
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Right? They literally that’s a that’s a thing that they want to tell somebody about, and they don’t get to talk to a lot of business owners.
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so you know they have no fear that you’re going to suddenly get into their business. Take up roofing and go do that for a living right? They want to tell you about why they’re cool and new and different. And they want to brag about their business. Okay?
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So the questionnaire is a place for you to fill out that information. Take notes, and, you know, sort of go through that and be able to take enough information that you can reflect it back to them
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right?
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We always use the example. You know that
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my mother doesn’t know what I do for a living right? Pretty much everybody on you on this call. If I picked up the phone and talk to your mother or father and say, what does that person do for a living? They say. Oh, well,
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She’s a nerd she does something with computers. You know, or is a business person
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right? Literally. They have no idea what you do for a living.
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Well, you can’t be that way with your clients.
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You have to be able to reflect back to them.
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This is, you know, whatever this is a business that focuses on providing these specific services. Using this right, we had a a
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doctor, a cardiologist one time that not only did he have the coolest technology, but he had an unlimited budget for technology. He had 5 line of business applications that were dedicated to his specific way of doing business, and they must never go down.
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and he will tell you at extraordinary detail why he is so much better at delivering services than his competition.
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And he was arrogant, obviously. But
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you could, if you wanted to get him to tell you every single thing about his business, because he wanted to talk about himself and his business endlessly, and all you had to do to be able to reflect that back to him and demonstrate that you understand his business is, listen and listen and listen. Okay. So you know, go through the questionnaire.
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draw out a map of what their org chart looks like, how their company is organized.
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And here’s the key to success.
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There are questions that you gotta ask about. Tell me about your industry.
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What kind of challenges does your industry face? Not just you as an individual, your industry?
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Is it bound to technology? Is it bound to imports? Is it bound to the economy, or to real estate, or to interest rates? Is it bound to a supply chain? Right?
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What’s this industry going through.
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What’s the future strategy of the industry? Right? And you literally, you can ask for, you know, on the way out, can I take one of these journals that you have laying out in your front office. Can I take one of those with me? I want to read it. I want to learn about your industry.
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because no business exists in isolation.
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They’re going through their stuff, which has to do with the personnel of the management and the owners and the investors, but they also exist in an economy within the city, within the county, within the state, within their province, within the global economy, within their industry, within your manufacturing right? Whatever it is.
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Find these things out. Okay. And you know, a great example is, what do you want to do?
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What do you want to do in your business. In the next year
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some businesses are focused on just making their stuff work, and they those are businesses that probably think of you as a technician.
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But when you start talking about okay, you want your stuff to work. But
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how can we help you to be more efficient? How can we streamline your processes? How can we help you use technology more efficiently, right? More profitably? Now you’re talking about strategy, and it might be literally as simple as look. You’ve got
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a dot matrix printer. You’ve got a color inkjet on every desktop. Can we? Please give you a work group printer? We’ll have one that’s black and white, and we’ll have one that’s color, and and everybody will have them, and they’re like, yes, they got to walk 3 more steps, but you’ll be settled on 2 printers. That’s a good long term thing. We don’t have to spend a penny today.
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and this is where you get their attention. I’m not asking you to buy anything. I’m asking you to think about the future as you go forward. Let me get you a quote for a couple of printers, and then maybe, when that money shakes loose in September, or that money is is available right before tax season or whatever.
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When the time comes, we’ll know that the long term strategy is to let these individual printers die and go to a work group printer little things like that. It might only be a few $100, and you’re not asking them to make a sale today.
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That begins a conversation where they see you as somebody who’s part of their team, helping them to be successful in the long term. And those are the kinds of things that you want to do.
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Now, your goal in this sales process is to be very different from everybody else, and I will tell you
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I’m not going to point out anybody’s names on this call, but some of you walk into a client, and you cannot wait to show them your 3 tiered price list and ask them to pick one.
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You are in that situation, selling hammers, and every problem, you see looks like a nail. And you got the hammer. Well, that is not the way to build a long term successful relationship that never ends, that literally could last 20 years.
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The way to build it is to listen and listen and listen. Reflect back to them what you heard.
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and do not try to sell your 3 tiered price list.
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I
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promise you your life will be better if you do not mention money. In the 1st meeting, even if they want to. They’re gonna say, Oh, give me an idea of what this costs. You have to be able to say
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I don’t. I don’t know what this is gonna cost, because I don’t know what you want yet. I can. I can sell you something I can’t promise. It’s a good fit that it solves any of your problems, or it’s going to do anything to provide you with a solution to why you asked me to be in the room today.
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Similarly, just because somebody brought you into the room doesn’t mean that they’re ready to buy.
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And so if you come to them with your price list and say, Buy the gold package, because, by golly, we’ll fix all your problems, and you know you’ll you’ll be patched and fixed and updated, and everything will look perfect and beautiful, and
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from now on everything is gonna be spectacular.
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Well, they don’t care.
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and those of you who lead with fear when it comes to security already, have learned this, but you cannot convince people that they are in pain.
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If you walk around and say, Oh, your your computers are so slow
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they live with them every single day. They are productive. They’re making money.
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you know, they made enough money to bring you in and talk about spending some money. So convincing them that they’re in pain is just not a good strategy if they know that they’re in pain fine, but you can’t convince them that they’re in pain.
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So your best strategy is to just
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listen and listen and listen, and listen, and take as many notes as you possibly can.
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And you know, then what you want to do is say, Okay.
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I’m what I wanna do is I wanna go back.
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consume all of this, and I want to figure out
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exactly. I want to reflect back to you and give you a report of what I heard today, and what I think are the kinds of pain points that you have that we might be able to help you with.
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and when you come back you cannot meet with anyone except a decision maker
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period period period. Absolutely and definitively.
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one of my absolutely unbreakable rules is, and some of you are now
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screaming at, at back, at the Monitor.
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You cannot control people, but you can control your process.
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If you are capable of doing it. You can hold a 1st meeting, where all you do is ask questions and listen. Take notes.
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You can go in there and not talk about money.
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You can go in there and not try to sell them a package.
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That is what you can control.
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You cannot control whether they are desperate or they are just trying to filter through people because they got a they promised their boss that they would interview 3 businesses today.
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You cannot control the client or the prospect. But here’s what you can control.
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You can say I will not meet with anybody who cannot sign a contract. I will not meet with anybody who cannot say yes.
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lot of lot of people can say No.
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but there’s only a handful of people in any company that can say yes.
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and it does no good for you to meet with an office manager who loves you, but cannot sign a contract.
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It does you no good to meet with the marketing manager who has a budget, but has to get it approved by their boss.
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Okay, you have to get to somebody who can make a decision, and you can literally say, I will bring you a report.
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There must be a decision maker in the room
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period. You can control that, and if you think about it, people say, well, but but but but but
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well, here’s the deal, the but if you do anything else, the chances are that you’re never going to hear from them again, because they’re going to look at your report. You’re not in the room to explain it.
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They’re gonna flip to the last page. They’re gonna see a dollar sign, and they’re gonna compare you to the competition.
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In other words, you don’t control what happens if you just send a report, or if you meet with somebody who cannot make a decision.
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And I know that’s difficult advice for many, many people. But it just is what it is.
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Now, again, you’re you’re gonna focus on their goals. So now you need to be saying, Okay.
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what do you want to do in the next year? Where is your business going? Do you think you’re growing or shrinking? Do you think you’re going to add people or lay some people off?
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Do you think you’re going to be buying technology in the next year, or are you gonna wait for the year after that?
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Do you have one piece of equipment that has to be replaced or moved to the cloud and then the rest are just fine, like, what? What do you think you want to do? Is there new technology coming into your industry that you have to be ready for in 18 months? Or is there a an update to your Crm system that absolutely has to be in place by the end of the year. You know what? What are the deadlines? What are the constraints of your business?
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And you know you might make some comments that are like, Oh, okay, well, that seems like a good idea. But you know, maybe not today or whatever I had a client that for years, years and years and years
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I kept telling them you have to stop trying to patch and fix and update this piece of junk Crm system, and eventually, after about 3 new servers, and realizing that you know, the upgrades were getting more and more and more expensive. Finally they said, So you keep telling us to get rid of this thing which we hate.
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but it we have it on hand, and it’s easy to just keep paying for what should we do
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right, and and eventually, at literally, after probably 7 years of telling him to move to something else, I said, well, let me bring in somebody who knows what he’s talking about right? And you know my friend Bob Nutrio. He was
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a yardy specialist, and so we came in and said, Look what you have now is great for 20 years ago. But let me introduce you to the future, and he sold them their next level of system. He didn’t take over my client. He simply helped them move to the next generation of their business, and that’s the kind of thing that when a client sees you behaving that way, they realize you are acting in their best interest. Right?
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And so in this meeting, what you need to do is be in the gathering stage collecting information so that you can give them the report.
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Now, the report that you give him is, gonna be brief but meaningful. Okay. In other words, it’s gonna say, I heard you say, you know, you’re in this business. You’re of this size. You have these challenges coming up ahead. These things have deadlines. These things would be nice, but they don’t have deadlines right? We would love to do business with you right. And now you are talking to somebody who
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is a decision maker. Okay? And so you give them that report. And you say, please consume this. Let me know if you have any questions. You have questions now. I’ll be happy to answer them. If this sounds about right, let’s talk about how we might help you.
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and then I will come back with a quote.
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So what I’m telling you is, you’re now in your second meeting, and if you are lucky, no one has mentioned money.
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part of what you have to realize is.
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they might be eager to say, What’s a price? What’s a price? What’s the price? But that’s only because money is the only thing. It’s the only language that the 2 of you have in common
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when you start talking about their business and helping their business and their strategy and their challenges, and how you can help them overcome it. Now you’ve got another thing in common, their business, not your business. Their business is the thing you have in common.
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And so when the both of you were talking about their business, they are in heaven.
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Okay? And it is much easier when you’re talking about their business to have them slow down and say, Okay, let’s let’s talk about what we can do, so that you can give me a quote.
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Okay? So the slow sales process means you’re gonna keep meeting with them.
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The chances that I go back to that slide to be different from everybody else the chances that there are even one other, but certainly not 2 or 3 or 4 other. It consultants in your area who are dedicating this much time and energy to their business is very, very slim.
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You will be nearly unique if you decide to actually focus on their business.
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All right questions before we move on.
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please put them into the Q. And a. All right, please enter those questions. I’m going to try to take all the questions we have at the end if we don’t get to them in the meantime.
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Alright! So let’s say that they finally agreed to something. They sign a deal, and now you’ve signed them up for services, whether it’s managed services or whatever
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you need to have a very successful 1st engagement. And here’s what I mean by that is, basically you want to create a job that is small, perfectly defined, very easily manageable and super successful.
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And that way.
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and it should be on site, it should be at their office. Not remote. Okay, the perfect. For me, the perfect 1st job
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is is easy. Right? We’re gonna set up our rmm, we’re gonna touch every desktop. We’re going to document what we see and what we find. We’re gonna give it a little tune up, you know, delete temporary files and
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put in patches, fixes and updates, make sure everything is up to spec hardware software updates reboot a couple of times right. And when we leave they will be guaranteed to have the antivirus you prefer the settings you prefer, and the rmm that you prefer. And now you’ve got telephony going on, you you’ve you’ve
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you’re monitoring their system, and you’re getting reports, and you’re feeding your system with their information. That’s super easy to do 15 to 30 min per desktop, and when you stand up
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their machine works a little better than it did when you sat down. And now they’re connected. They see that you’re fast efficient professional.
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You charge them exactly and precisely to the penny what you quoted them.
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Even if one of those machines turns out to be a disaster. You fix their stuff
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and you make it a successful engagement because it’s small and it’s controllable. And you can do that. Okay? And so you give them a
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pretty much guaranteed good 1st impression. If they come to you with a long list of all the things that need to get fixed. You say great. Make a list of those. Type it up. Give me enough detail. I will create a ticket for every single one of those, and we will fix your stuff. It begins today. But you’re not going to fix it today, because that’s outside the scope.
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Now, the next thing you’re gonna do is say, I want to have a thing called a client roadmap meeting.
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Oh, what is that? Well, what we’re gonna do is we’re going to. Once we start putting our hands on all of your equipment, and you know your cloud infrastructure and documenting everything. We want to sit down with you and build an ongoing process where we have a constant conversations about your technology.
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So the 1st meeting super super casual, you’re gonna tell them about your 4 tiered your 4 priority system emergencies and then, high, medium and low.
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you’re gonna show them how tickets work and kind of give them an introduction to your business. This is not bill billable. But this builds the relationship. Okay, and you’re gonna really try to, you know, get a handle on what where they’re going. And basically, now, you’re an insider. You’re sitting at the table with them as an insider looking at their business.
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The next meeting is you’re gonna say, okay. So here’s where we are from last time you’re gonna ask
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many of the same questions. My favorite question in all of this is, you know how
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how much downtime do you have, as a rule.
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because when you go back to that 1st meeting they probably have some downtime, and it happens a lot. And it’s 1 of the things that irritates them, you know, every afternoon, for no apparent reason, we get a reboot. Oh, oh, okay, well.
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after you’ve on boarded them. After you’ve started deploying your agents after everything is patched and fixed and updated. Eventually, you’re gonna keep asking that question. Every meeting, and they’re gonna start laughing like, I don’t remember the last time we had downtime
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you need those words to come out of their mouth.
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Yeah, all you have to do is say, you know, tell me about your downtime, how much downtime do you have, and how much is tolerable? And eventually it becomes a thing of the past, and they know that it’s you that made that happen. Okay.
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this is where you also start what I call indoctrination.
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and a lot of people after 20 years. There’s 25 years. People do not believe me.
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If you say it enough times, clients will begin to believe that you only sell business class equipment that it comes with a 3 year warranty, and you replace it at the end of 3 years, and it might be a little bit longer than that. But the easiest way to do this
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is you simply name the machines workstation 2025 0, 1 0, 2, 0, 3! And then, when they look back and they say, so do we have to replace all these machines? You can say, well, all those 2025. 0 something. Machines are now 3 years old or 4 years old, or whatever, it becomes much easier to get them to buy into that.
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You’re gonna start moving what you can to the cloud. Everything has to be under warranty, hardware and software have to be under warranty. Right? Use. Just the more you talk about this you, the more you indoctrinate them in your way of doing business.
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And then you really need to understand their goals like, is it their goal to grow by 10%. What can you do about that? Is it their goal to cut technology spending? If it is, you got to help them with that you cannot resist that. You need to be on the team or off the team. And if you’re on the team, that means sometimes it needs to contract in difficult times.
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Okay, this is where you could be particularly helpful. And I’ll give you just a couple of examples. So one of the biggest examples we had a client that in the the big, big, big depression 2,009, 1011,
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they sold sod. They sold front lawns and back lawns
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through home depot and directly to home builders, and when the housing market crashed, their business crashed hard
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because nobody was buying lawns to put in the front yard and backyard. In fact.
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at the time I was like, I’ll buy some lawn, you know. I will trade you a brand new front lawn that you can put in front of the house. I’m about to sell dramatically, improve curb value, and I’ll just do a trade for services. They were happy to take me up on that.
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But, more importantly, they wanted to keep as many clients or as many employees as they could, but they had to make some cutbacks, and we said, Okay.
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let’s make cutbacks strategically. What are the most important functions do you have? Let’s keep the most senior people in those. Let’s give them the best equipment old computers we’re going to wrap in plastic. We’re going to take them off of managed services. We’re going to reduce your bill a little bit, and we’re going to put those on the shelf.
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When things get better.
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you can decide whether you want to redeploy those machines or buy new ones. But in the meantime you’ve got the best technology in the hands of the people who can use it most efficiently. That goes a long ways. The other example, some of you have heard is, we had a client that did marketing
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for homes.
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and their business was hit hard, and they called and said, We need you to help, you know. Reduce our prices. And Manual said, great
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move out of your office and stop paying that ridiculous rent in Concord, California. Send everybody home. We’ll take your server. We’ll put it in the cloud. You don’t know what that means, and you know it’ll be virtualized, and you don’t know what that means, but it’ll be available to everybody every day, and it will never go down, and your people can work remotely, and we’ll show them how to be successful doing that.
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and your life will be better, and you’re going to save a bunch of money. And so they they save money. But we didn’t reduce our bill by one nickel.
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In fact, we took over their phone system, which had been on site forever.
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So you know, helping them get through. This made them long term clients who will never fire us because we are the ones who got them through all of that.
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And this becomes an ongoing process. So when you’re done with the meeting, and usually these meetings are an hour or so. You literally schedule the next meeting, and they’re they’re not going to do it in 3 months. The chances that it’s quarterly are very slim, but they will schedule it, and what I do. What we used to always do is, I would say, look.
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I have these time slots in my calendar, and if you look on my calendar and it’s available, you can schedule a meeting, so we had an admin would just call them and say, Hi, Karl would like to schedule a roadmap meeting with you guys. It’s not a sales meeting. It’s just a strategy meeting.
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When can we do that? And they would pick up time on the calendar. And basically, as soon as you finish a meeting, you schedule the next one, and it might be 6 months down the road. It might be a year down the road, but you get it on the calendar
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right? One of the easiest ways that dentists dramatically improve their revenue is, they make you set an appointment before you leave the office
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right? A good dentist will always, you know. At least, I would say a managed dentist. They might be a horrible dentist, but they’re a good business person. They will always get you a new appointment before you leave the office. Okay,
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And so this goes on forever. You have a strategy meeting. You help them fine tune many, many times. These meetings are not about sales, but what happens is
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sales happen as a result. So you go in there saying, I’m not trying to sell you anything, but we’ve got this long term strategy. Another great example is long term. Like you got this on-site backup. It is going to fail at some point. It’s going to be 7 years old. And whatever it is, a hard drive is going to fail. Technology just can’t be updated anymore. It’s going to die.
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and we can sell you another thing on site. We can sell you a Pdr that backs up to the cloud. We can sell you an all cloud option. Would you like me to get you information about those and you get them information and they make a decision
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months and maybe years before that technology dies.
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And then when it when the day comes, you say, remember, we talked about this, and you’re going to go with that Bdr that backs up to the cloud. Great, let me get you a quote on that. And I never got you a quote before, because it wasn’t particularly relevant, and I knew the technology would change right. But this way you remove the sales from potentially a very large sales process.
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And they’re happy to do it because they kind of did make this decision way back last year. Today’s the day that the stuff hits the fan right? So it’s a great ongoing conversation. All right. More questions before we go on. I know we’re running out of time here, but I will take questions if you have them.
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Come on, you guys, I’m here for you.
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Alrighty
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So in uncertain times.
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remember, we saw this slide before, you know. If they think the future is positive.
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that’s great. They’re gonna be cautious in the short term, but they’re gonna make move. If they think it’s negative, then they’re going to be cautious, and they may not make a move.
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but no matter what’s going on, they need a human being
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to talk to them about business.
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the client, your client, your current clients, are the best choice that you’ve skipped the sales process. You already got a client.
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Start the roadmap process because they already know you.
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They rely on you, and as weird as it sounds.
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We used to be called Kp enterprises. Just Kp, because my name is Karl Palachuk, and it was Kp enterprises. When I incorporated
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I decided to call it Kp enterprises. Business consulting Incorporated, and immediately
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clients started to ask me business related questions, because I now had the word business consulting
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in my name.
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and I was no more qualified than yesterday to advise them on business, but I was qualified in the sense that I had owned a business for a while. I’d grown it to the point where I thought it needed to be incorporated. And you know I had some business to business advice that I could share with them. So you know, with luck, you’re going to
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build those relationships. Now
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for those who have a very positive attitude, right? Once you help them deal with uncertainty.
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then your role becomes
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not just being an advisor, but being a true consultant, somebody who knows about their business knows what the strategies are, knows what their challenges are, understands it can reflect it back to them right? And so you become kind of a strategic advisor. And that
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really
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can be something that lasts forever and ever and ever. Okay, you’re going to help them get through the tough times, and life is going to be good. And when you go into that, especially, you know, if they’re feeling a lot of uncertainty.
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Then, you know, you say, Hey, just just I want you to know we’re gonna be fine like my company. We personally, we are your. It consultants. We’re gonna get through this.
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Okay? And we’re not going to go anywhere. And we are going to help you. So the focus is now back on the client again. How can we help you? How can we help you get through uncertain times? How can we help your business? And in good times or bad. This strategy just
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works in good times. You show up. And they say, Okay, all those machines that are going to be 4 years old this year. We’re going to replace them, because, even though you say 3, we say 4. But we can’t ignore the name on the machine right? And so building this never ending process is huge for your business. Okay? So here’s your homework
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download that questionnaire. Customize it for yourself. Obviously take off my logo, put on your logo right? Download the 68 point checklist and kind of a somewhat alternative strategy that we didn’t talk about today is going in and doing a network assessment and giving them that report right. That is a truly great way to get new clients and prospects.
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and you know, go through this process with your best client, literally start with your very best client.
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You will take their relationship to the next level, I promise you. Go through this with one client document what you go through and give me a report back. I would love to hear it
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and remember nothing but happens by itself.
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Roadmaps and strategic meetings with your clients won’t happen, especially when they are
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frustrated and fearful. They’re not going to reach out and say, Hey, let’s have a strategy session. Right? You have to initiate it. You have to start it. You have to make it happen. All right. Put your questions in. I’m going to give you a super quick reminder. June 10.th Mark that on your calendar and be available. We’re going to do that at 11 am. Pacific.
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And I’m going to put this up. Just so you can take a screenshot and and have those Urls for the handouts, whether you’re a member of the small business thoughts, technology, community or not. There’s some version of the handout that will be useful to you.
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Of course, members get all the juicy goodness and
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searching for roadmap. You’re going to find a plethora of resources there. So if you are a member, go ahead and log in and and take advantage of all that juicy goodness! I also put up the link to the newsletter starter, kit
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and and some other things. So there you go, all right. We got 2 min left.
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Somebody must have a question
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all right. Well, I’m going to get this recording up as quick as I can. We will transcribe it. You’ll find [email protected], and if you have any questions or comments in the meantime, I hope you found this useful, and with luck I will see you at the next big event.
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Thank you all for being here. Thanks for registering, and thank you for all of your support. Oh, and thanks for the hearts, and the little tooting horns and clapping and stuff.
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Thank you, Denis. Good to see you. I hope all is well with you in your world.
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All right. Thank you all. I’m going to put a stop to the recording and get it up. Get the recording up as quick as I can. Thanks all.
🙂
