MSP Rockstar
From Partnership To Profit :
5 Winning Strategies For Gaining 6 New Clients In Just 14 Days
“ I felt
president and CEO of Direct
like I was behind ,” David Javaheri said . The founder of three IT startups and
IT , David was so busy that he hadn ’ t dug into penetration tests . “ I noticed how everyone was talking about doing penetration tests at all the events I was going to , and I had not done any ,” he confessed , nor did he have a vendor to do them either .
With a two-week window between projects , he decided to go for it . Initially , he put together a four-month plan . However , the campaign was so successful that he achieved a significant return on investment in just two weeks . During these two weeks , he launched a marketing campaign and did four webinars ( lowest attendance : six people ; highest attendance : over fifty companies ). “ I sold 11X more in the first two weeks than what the vendor doing the penetration tests did in an entire year !” David said .
Explore David ’ s 5 Key Strategies That Yielded Real Results
1 . Educate Prospects Before Selling Them
What made this campaign different is that David focused on creating a pool of highly qualified , educated prospects . To educate people , he created a webinar on cybersecurity insurance to show why a penetration test and other insurance criteria required for coverage were important . During the webinar , there is no hard sell . It ’ s only educational . “ I thought a lot of people probably don ’ t know about this , just like I don ’ t know a lot about it — and I ’ m an MSP owner ,” David explained . “ I also thought about what Robin Robins always says about your best prospects being your educated prospects . This led me to quickly start doing seminars to educate people on penetration tests as I was learning about them . My plan was to educate them for two months or so , then two months later , go full force and sell them after having educated them .”
2 . Create Curiosity
David compiled a well-constructed list of a hundred or so qualified prospects , primarily CEOs . He also created a landing page and postcards to market the seminar , as well as emails and a phone script to follow up after the postcards were mailed .
To lure in prospects , he created curiositybased marketing , saying “ Find out how penetration testing can provide important metrics and identify gaps in your current IT posture ” and “ Learn why cyber insurance carriers have been denying or only partially paying out 50 % of claims .” “ This is a very tempting title for a CEO that has cyber insurance ,” David explained . “ They are thinking , ‘ What do you mean ? I have cyber insurance , and they ’ re not going to pay me ?’”
3 . Partner With Qualified Vendors That Make Your Life Easier
When David started his marketing campaign , he didn ’ t have a vendor picked out to do the penetration tests yet . But he didn ’ t let that stop him from educating and selling the idea to his prospects and clients . “ While I was doing seminars ,” explains David , “ my team was evaluating vendors to see which one we wanted to go with to do the penetration tests .”
The David ultimately chose a vendor due to the following criteria :
• SOC 2 Type II Certification
• Best Security Solution award at IT Nation Connect
• Recognized as an emerging tech in Gartner ® Hype Cycle™ for security operations
• Easy to use
• They do complete penetration tests
A bonus reason was discovered while cold-calling big companies . “ It was a pleasant surprise that people knew the vendor because they ’ d been marketing penetration tests themselves for a long time ,” he said .
Typically , a security consultant does manual processes to complete a penetration test , which are timeconsuming and costly — anywhere from $ 4,000 to $ 100,000 per test . David chose a vendor that automated the manual
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