Michael Bazar
Early Struggles, Ineffective Marketing, Stagnant Growth – Sound Familiar?
I officially started Bazar Solutions, Inc., in 2009. I grew my business the first few years the way most IT people do: word of mouth, referrals and a little bit of cold-calling. I tried my hand at TV advertising, canvassing and other one-off marketing campaigns. Nothing stuck, and we generated few if any results from it.
Imagine telling your kids that Santa will have to skip over your house because of your choices. That was our first year in business. While I made it to the top to win the Better Your Best competition and become Technology Marketing Toolkit’s 2021 Spokesperson Of The Year, my journey to get there probably looks a lot like yours.
Suddenly You Remember What All This Is For
Business. Clients. Money. Sure, it’s all important. But when your son has a seizure, life stands still. You would instantly sacrifice ALL of it. In 2012, my oldest son, Noah, was diagnosed with occipital epilepsy. That’s where an electrical storm fires off in the back of the brain, causing seizures. I’ve never felt more helpless than holding him in my arms while counting the seconds until the ambulance arrived.
Thankfully, God has grace. Today, we believe he is fully healed without needing medication! From that moment, my little “lifestyle business” was no longer good enough. More than ever, my why became my family. I was determined to push harder than ever to give them the future they deserved!
“Shit Or Get Off The Pot!”
Now you might ask, “How do I become more intentional with my business?” For me, I was missing ACCOUNTABILITY and someone to call my excuses out as the BS they were. Enter Robin Robins. I remember calling my wife in 2017 asking her (for the hundredth time) if I should join Producers Club. She said, “Just do it already! Shit or get off the pot.”
That same year was a kick in the teeth since we lost about $350K in annual hardware sales and $15K in MRR from a couple of big clients. Fortunately, we quickly rebuilt that lost revenue the next year.
“Marketing Is Momentum”
Early in 2019, I hired a sales pro I couldn’t afford. Why? Because I couldn’t afford NOT TO. When you find talent, scoop it up! In addition to our sales phenom, my Accountability Groups and “work on the business” time have been amazing. Our margins went from a $40K loss in 2017 and down $45K in 2018 to almost $350K in PROFIT in 2020! Plus, we added nearly a MILLION DOLLARS in revenue last year during the most difficult year ever to grow any business!
I firmly believe that marketing is like a merry-go-round. It is momentum that builds over time, one PUSH at a time. All that pushing leads to an amazing amount of power. Technology Marketing Toolkit and Producers Club have FORCED me and my entire team to keep pushing and honoring my commitment to my family. Every single day.
SURVEY: Get A FREE Custom Marketing Road Map With A Program Advisor…Click Here
Here’s The ONE THING You Have All Been Looking For…
“Robin, what’s the ONE THING I can do to confidently grow my MSP?” I know Robin gets that question all the time. Well, I finally figured out the ONE THING. Commit to it, and I GUARANTEE you’ll gain the leads, the sales, the MRR dollars and the profit you’ve been craving. Heck, you might even be the next Spokesperson Of The Year and win a car!
The ONE THING is just three words: Do. The. Work. Do the marketing work and you WILL grow. Do the pricing and process work, and you WILL earn more. Do the team-building work, and you can change the lives of your employees. Push that merry-go-round, do the work, build momentum, and you will create a legacy you can be proud of. I promise.
Here’s The Work I Did To Win This Year’s Better Your Best
Before joining Producers Club, I was reactionary, got sucked into service issues and made mediocre hires. Marketing used to be a hope and a prayer. Today, we have successfully implemented MULTIPLE marketing oil wells we can simply “turn up” when we need to. Here is the marketing we regularly ran in 2020:
Signing 3 New Clients
By “Whole-Assing” Our Aspirin Campaign
I’ll never forget sitting in a Producers Club meeting when Robin asked the room: “What campaign could you immediately turn up the dial on to get more leads?” At the time, we had ZERO easily scalable campaigns. Right then and there I decided her Aspirin campaign would be our scalable campaign.
Rather than half-ass the campaign and not do the follow-up calls and e-mails, we “whole-assed” it by following Robin’s Dashboard instructions to a T. Every week we sent out 50 letters and followed-up with phone calls and e-mails through Keap. Rinse and repeat. Even with pausing this campaign as people started working from home, we still received nine leads and three new clients worth $2,400 in MRR!
How To Make Google Ads PROFITABLE
Google Ads work because they target the very prospects who are upset with their current IT services provider and are ready to make a move. But when we first started running Google Ads, we couldn’t even meet our ad spend because there weren’t enough prospects in our small town! By doing Google Ads RIGHT, we have had lots of leads that led to two new clients and over $3,500 in new MRR!
How do you do Google Ads RIGHT? First, whether it’s Robin’s Done-For-You team or someone else, PAY a Google Ads expert to manage it for you! It will drain your ad spend and your time to do it yourself. Second, make sure your Google Ads are linked to a SALES-FOCUSED landing page with a form and NOT your home page. We can account for at least two new customers this year by using this strategy.
Any Marketing Activity Can Lead To SALES!
After following Robin’s Marketing Deep Dive on Cleaning And Qualifying A Cold List, we understood how scrubbing your list would lead to better deliverability and more responsive prospects. To our surprise, it also led to new SALES! That’s right, simply by calling prospects to confirm contact information, we got an appointment with the local country club as well as a referral to a local municipality. Both leads closed for $5,700 in MRR. BOOM!
This 145-Year-Old Marketing Tool Increased Our MRR By $6,200!
For our VoIP Cross-Sell Campaign, we didn’t use any digital marketing, e-mail or even scripts. Just the good ole phone! We simply called clients who could benefit from our affordable phone service. By picking up the phone, we added 19 new VoIP customers, for a total of $6,200 in MRR!
“I Signed With You BECAUSE Of Your Newsletter”
We have been dedicated to sending out our printed newsletter to a list of 200, including top prospects and clients. As drip marketing, the newsletters keep us top-of-mind and enhance our “know, like and trust” among our target market. But they also help to CLOSE DEALS! While we’ve had several prospects tell us they appreciate our monthly printed newsletters, one specific prospect pointed out our newsletters as the reason they called! Today they’re a valuable $2,000-a-month customer!
Keap + TechTips = 2 New Clients!
Would I have won that Aston Martin if it wasn’t for Keap? Possibly not! Keap makes it a no-brainer to instantly send an e-mail blast out to 5,000 contacts, including clients, prospects…EVERYBODY!
Using Keap to send TechTip e-mails has led to several conversions of existing clients to Office365 and opened the door to multiple client upsells. Plus, we have signed two new clients as a direct result of these value-rich e-mails.
Keap made it a cinch to send an “It’s Your Lucky Day” e-mail blast on St. Patrick’s Day to sell 35 refurbished computers to our clients. Just one e-mail send and we added $16,000 in revenue.
Right-Sizing Our Clients Through Cross-Selling
This past year, we made a huge effort to “right-size” our client base. This effort started by reevaluating our existing technology and cyber security packages to ensure that they included the latest tools and that our margins were sufficient. Next, we conducted quarterly business reviews to discuss our new packages or implementing features on services they already have. We prepare a “Stoplight” report where we highlight computer replacement candidates. This enabled us to identify and replace 250 PCs for $168,750 in added revenue and 100 technology upgrades for an extra $12,500. By truly adding value to our existing clients’ technology environments, we converted three hourly customers to predictable monthly revenue of $9,200!
Herculean Online Efforts Brought In 11 New Customers!
One of our most aggressive goals for 2020 was to rebuild our ENTIRE website — including all copy, the layout and the marketing strategy — in just one quarter. Mission accomplished! As a result of our new and improved website, we can tie at least 15 leads directly related to our website marketing and SEO efforts. Even better, 11 of those leads became customers, for another $6,000 in MRR!
Steal This Cherry Marketing Tactic
When you do something unexpected and memorable for your clients, they will show their appreciation in new business and referrals! On March 14 — Pi Day (3.14) — we delivered cherry and pecan pies to ALL of our clients. Our clients loved the surprise deliveries in 2019 and this year. Sorry, no pandemic pies in 2020.
Shooting For The Shock-iest And Awe-iest Of Boxes!
We do know that our Shock-And-Awe boxes have helped open doors wider and help prospects say, “Yes!” Don’t cheap out on me here! Sending a Dixie Cup and some brochures is NOT shocking or awe-inspiring. Our attention-grabbing boxes are always hand-delivered or sent via FedEx and consist of:
- Custom boxes with our branding and logo
- Bright red RTIC Tumbler to match our brand
- Mouse pad with our logo and support information
- “I Call BS!” stickers (Bazar Solutions, obviously)
- NERDS candy (get it?)
- Custom pens with our logo
- Customer Bill of Rights, brochures, testimonial page
- And crinkle paper to fill the empty space (it makes it feel like a present!)
ANYBODY Can Do This!
Yes, I’ve had an amazing run the last few years. ANYBODY can do it. But you can’t do it alone. You need a community to help you build your team and PUSH you toward your goals.
Do the marketing. Do the sales. Do the work. By doing the work, I have added $33,000 in new MRR in 2020. I shattered our revenue goal by $600K — adding almost $1 MILLION in revenues last year. And we have experienced over 350% profit growth! Since joining Producers Club in 2017, Bazar Solutions has enjoyed 95% revenue growth, a 135% growth in MRR and a ridiculous profit growth of 976%! I am honored to be Technology Marketing Toolkit’s Spokesperson Of The Year and hope to inspire other MSPs to better their best!
