Do you tend to avoid conferences, or maybe you’re a frequent flyer who already has your next MSP/Channel conference scheduled and booked?

Whatever your stance, I’m here to share key insights from the talks that left an impact at Scalecon.

What We’ll Cover in This Article:

The Best Way to Set Up a Contact Form: A little trick that could give you higher conversions.

Why You Need All 3 Options on Your MSP Website (Chat, Email, Phone): Plus, the stats on which options prospects prefer.

Owning vs. Renting Your Audience: Why building an owned audience should be your top priority for marketing and lead generation.

How to Avoid Bad Lead Magnets: Tips for ensuring lead magnets work effectively for your MSP website.

Cold Calling Isn’t Dead: Here’s how to make it work in 2024/25 and beyond.

Lock Down Your Sales

Let’s start with the standout session for me: Brian Gillette's sales talk. I’ve always leaned toward marketing and would admit to struggling with sales. But after a significant increase in sales calls over the past three months, Brian’s session on formalizing the sales process was a game-changer.

In the past, I’d meet with a prospect, send out a quote, and, if I remembered, follow up. But this lack of structure isn’t a recipe for success. A formalized process, especially in B2B, is key—and Brian absolutely nailed this.

The most valuable takeaways from his "Feel Good Sales Process":

Set an Agenda for Every Meeting: Even for the 15-minute intro call, state the agenda upfront. This keeps you in control and allows you to coach the prospect on the meeting outcome. For example, "Here’s what we’ll cover. If I think you’re a fit, we’ll schedule a discovery meeting to go more in-depth about your business."

BAMFAM (Book a Meeting from a Meeting): Inspired by Robert Gillette, this concept ensures you schedule the next call before ending the current one, avoiding the dreaded “chasing game.”

Discuss Pricing During the Discovery Call: This three-step process—intro, discovery, then quoting/service—allows you to address objections before sending the quote. During the quoting stage, Brian suggests addressing the price first, then working through the details.

I plan to test this approach myself. I’m genuinely intrigued to have Brian on our podcast to dive deeper into these tactics.

Increase Website Conversion

Nate Freedman from Tech Pro Marketing, known for his high-converting MSP websites, shared invaluable stats. One essential takeaway was always to offer multiple contact options—chat, email, and phone. Interestingly, he found that prospects almost evenly divided their preferences across these three options.

Another standout tip: collect contact information on your scheduling page *before* revealing your availability. This lets you follow up if prospects get distracted before completing the booking. Surprisingly, platforms like Calendly don’t yet include this feature as standard!

Lead Magnets

As a fan of lead magnets, I appreciated Kevin Clune from MSP Growth Hacks diving deeper into this topic. He emphasized building an *owned audience* over a rented one (like social media). An owned audience—contacts who have opted into your list—is invaluable. Using rented audiences (social media ads) to build your own CRM contact list should be a key focus.

Kevin also shared how to ensure a lead magnet is effective: create something your prospects would actually pay for. This raises the bar, challenging you to assess whether your lead magnet is genuinely valuable.

Cold Calling Is Not Dead in the MSP Space

Two speakers—Stephen from Global Data Systems and Hunter Farlough—shared insights on cold calling. Key stats stood out:

100 dials a day = 1.45 meetings set

50-60% show rate for those meetings

Hunter Farlough also pairs cold calls with direct mail, sending letters on Thursdays and calling the following Tuesday. He follows up with six weeks of calls for each prospect, then recycles them within a 3-6 month window.

The Reality of Google Ads for MSPs

Hunter Nelson from Tortoise & Hare underscored the importance of tying customer lifetime value (LTV) into Google Ads. Feeding LTV data to Google can enhance ad success.

The True Cost of Client Acquisition

Finally, Zamir from Jumpfactor provided eye-opening stats on the real cost of acquiring a lead in IT services—around $2,500. Once you know your close rate (e.g., 1 in 4), this cost becomes manageable in light of customer lifetime value.

All the talks have been recorded - I'll add them here once there up on the youtubes.

Finally - ScaleCon2025 site is now live - it's happening in Texas.