And also Happy Hallowe’en.  Here’s a picture of me and my four year old, Charlie, with Princess Tiana at Disneyworld.  Tiana is Charlie’s favorite princess.  Mine, too.  She works hard to make her dreams come true, and that’s sort of the point of this post today, so it’s fortunate that this all lined up so nicely.  Also, check out my awesome Dr. Facilier Shadow Man moustache.  Boss, right?  I know.

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So, what’s the point?

Yesterday was our third year end.  We’ve done really well here.  I’m patting everyone here on the back for another year of working our butts off. Especially Tracie Orisko – she killed it this year, adding about 700K to our top line while overseeing the launch of dozens of new clients.  Tracie started on the phone as a lead generator three years ago, and now she pretty much runs the show here.  For anyone who’s never met us, she’s also my sister.

For those who don’t know our story, we bootstrapped a little home-based telemarketing business into a much less little telemarketing business over the last three years.  Our numbers for this year will earn us a place on the Profit500.  So what?  So nothing, really.  It’s a goal I set for myself when we started the business – I wanted to be on that list.  And unless they drastically change the entry rules or 375 additional companies do better than 600% five-year growth this year, we’ll be on that list.

My point is this:  this didn’t come any easier to us than it could have come to anyone else that did what we did.  We aren’t wildly fortunate.  We didn’t strike gold.  We didn’t magically stumble into the wealthy magical underground world of MSP telemarketing.

What we did was execute.  We picked a path, and we stayed on it.  We found a niche that made sense through trial and error.  We focused on it. We rode out the hiccups, the uncertainty and the fear.  We chose one thing to do, and we did that to the exclusion of everything else.  We are an MSP telemarketing company.  We didn’t add digital marketing to our rate card when our competitors changed their models.  We stayed the course, ignored the critics, and became better at MSP telemarketing.  We don’t offer direct marketing, we don’t offer anything other than the one thing we set out to do really well.  The only thing we offer is phone based sales support programs.  And I believe we do it better than anyone else in our space.

I stay hyper-focused on telemarketing for one reason:  I truly believe that it’s the most effective route to new MSP business.  Specifically it’s the most effective route to the business you want.  And the business you want as an MSP isn’t the guy hitting your website because he hates his current IT provider and your company came up on the first page of the search.  The business you want is the guy whose trust you spent a year earning slowly and methodically – the guy who doesn’t change providers (or any solution) without giving serious thought to how it’s going to impact his business.  He doesn’t make quick and erratic choices.  He chooses your firm not because you got lucky, but because you showed him that you were indeed the correct provider for him, and you built a solid relationship.  Telemarketing begins that relationship better and faster than any other marketing methodology.

Here’s a secret I don’t keep very well, though.  I honestly don’t think it matters what method you choose.  Sure, I’m invested in you choosing telemarketing, and ideally you choose us.  The bigger decision is just choosing something, and once you’ve chosen, stick to it.  Don’t be paralyzed by decisions – all roads lead to new business when you commit.  Choose a marketing methodology, a business coach, a process, a progam – whatever it is you’re thinking about doing to grow your business this year, and then execute.  Commit to the process (and to yourself, and your partners and your employees) and let the process work the way it’s intended to.  We have some great statistics to share on the long term ROI of telemarketing, and guess what?  Your ROI after 90 days is zero, while your ROI after 18 months is over 500%.   Watching companies jump from solution to solution is incredibly frustrating for me.  When you switch providers and programs and methodologies every 90 days you just run yourself in circles while your revenue line stagnates.

There is absolutely nothing that separates me from other business owners.  I have the same hours in the day as you do.  I have access to the same tools you do.  (Well, you don’t have a Tracie, that much is true…) We’re adding almost 18,000 in MRR every month here.   We’re doing it using the following tools:

  1. Telemarketing  (our own)
  2. Blogging (content written by us)
  3. Email – Constant Contact (managed in house)
  4. Website – Vertical Axion manages our website, we highly recommend them!
  5. Webinars – GoToWebinar (guest speakers include our clients and peers)
  6. Twitter (managed in-house by Sharon)
  7. Linkedin (posting links to our blogs/newsletters/webinars)
  8. Trade Shows – we attended 2 this year, we’ll attend 2 next year.
  9. Lunch and Learns (using our own telemarketing team to invite prospects)

That’s it.  Nobody here is an “expert” marketer, nobody has a business degree.  It’s me, my sister, and my Mom who run our marketing efforts, and our call center manager Ashley Battel ensures we’re delivering on the promises we make through those marketing initiatives.  Our call team works hard to hit their goals every day.  We do the best job we can, we always make it right, and we don’t promise miracles – we promise that if you do your part and we do our part, we’ll all be successful.

Here’s to an amazing year four — and to new goals (and an insanely high number) that I hope to brag about hitting a year from today.