#11 – Don’t Be That Guy - MSP Sales Management - Effort vs Results (Ryan Alter)

In this edition of Don’t Be That Guy on the BMK Vision Podcast, Josh Peterson and Ryan Alter name the quiet truth behind why so many MSPs plateau: the constraint is rarely “sales talent.” It’s sales management. Most owners can sell well enough to reach the first meaningful revenue milestone because the early engine is personal credibility, referrals, community presence, and the simple advantage of being the person most emotionally invested in the client’s outcome. But once the business needs repeatable demand—especially in the $1M–$3M band—the owner must stop being the hero seller and start building a system that creates consistent sales activity.

This is not an episode about hiring a charismatic closer or outsourcing the hard parts to a third party. It’s about infrastructure: setting expectations, tracking activity, separating effort from results, and creating a coaching loop where performance problems become diagnosable instead of emotional. Josh and Ryan walk through why owners keep “rehiring their first salesperson” over and over again, how the gaps between sales hires quietly kill momentum, and why the right leadership posture is not micromanagement—it’s accountability to the inputs that make success possible.

If you’re trying to scale beyond founder-led selling—without creating cultural friction between sales and service—this conversation provides a clear model for how to manage the work, protect the team, and build a sales function that can survive turnover, maintain cadence, and produce sustainable growth. And if you want to connect this sales discipline to a broader operating system for execution, make sure you review Vision.

The real sales problem: owners confuse selling with building a sales function

Founder-led selling works because it’s relational and contextual. Owners don’t need scripts to be credible. They are the story. They can translate technical nuance into business outcomes because they built the service model, understand the team’s constraints, and carry the authority of “I’m accountable for what happens after you sign.” That is an unfair advantage—and it’s exactly why the first salesperson often fails. Not because the salesperson is lazy or unethical, but because the business has not defined what “good” looks like in a way that can be executed by someone who is not the founder.

The shift is uncomfortable: you must accept that sales will not look like you. That’s not a loss of control—it’s the cost of building a scalable engine. If you want the business to grow past a plateau, the job is no longer “be great at selling.” The job is “create an environment where selling can be done repeatedly, coached objectively, and improved over time.”

A simple framework: manage sales activities, then coach outcomes

The core model in this episode is straightforward and powerful: separate effort from results. Results matter, but results are a lagging indicator. Effort is the leading indicator you can manage and coach.

• High effort + low results: keep coaching. This is usually skill, messaging, positioning, or targeting—fixable problems.
• Low effort + low results: exit quickly. This is misalignment, role fit, or accountability failure.
• Low effort + high results: investigate. Sometimes this is inbound volume doing the work, not the salesperson.

When you don’t track effort, everything becomes emotional. You like the person. You hope it improves. You keep extending the runway without knowing what’s actually happening. Tracking effort gives you a dashboard for coaching—and it prevents the slow drift into a 9–15 month “we should have made a decision six months ago” scenario.

Why MSPs keep “rehiring their first salesperson”

One of the most expensive patterns in MSP ownership is the gap: hire a salesperson, it fails, fire them (or they quit), then pause for six months to two years before trying again. That pause is not neutral. It drains pipeline, reinforces the owner’s scar tissue, and ensures the next attempt starts from a weaker position. The goal isn’t to “finally find the unicorn.” The goal is to build a system where you are never without at least one salesperson, and where the business can hire slowly—but fire quickly—based on tracked activity.

In practice, that means defining expectations before you hire: what activity counts, what cadence is required, where it’s tracked, how coaching works, and how the role ties to the salesperson’s personal goals (because motivation is easier to sustain when it’s connected to a human reason, not just a quota).

Prospecting without outsourcing the relationship

The episode draws a hard line on outsourced appointment setting for MSPs: even when the concept “makes sense,” the outcomes often disappoint because the relationship is the product. MSP services are bought on trust, belief, and perceived competence—an emotional purchase disguised as a technical one. If the earliest touches have no emotional attachment to your company’s mission, people, or reputation, the process tends to produce low-quality meetings that don’t convert into long-term clients.

The better standard is: prospecting must be real, human, and consistent. That can include phone calls, LinkedIn outreach done thoughtfully (not copy/paste spam), community presence, and proactive curiosity in everyday interactions. But regardless of channel, the management job is the same: define the required activity volume, track it, and coach the conversation quality.

Bridging sales and service without drama

The sales/service divide is not inevitable—it’s usually owner-enabled. When owners laugh at “sales messes” or tolerate service mocking sales (or vice versa), they legitimize the split. The fix starts with leadership clarity: the divide is not allowed. Then you operationalize collaboration:

• Include service representation in sales meetings (and vice versa) when it affects delivery commitments.
• Respect service capacity—route technical requests through dispatching/scheduling, not random hallway taps.
• Require service sign-off on proposals where delivery hours, scope, or constraints must be accurate.
• Coach sales to sell outcomes and constraints honestly, not “best-case delivery fantasies.”

When service helps shape the proposal, sales stops overpromising. When sales respects service time, service becomes less cynical. And when the owner enforces those behaviors consistently, collaboration becomes normal instead of political.

Implementation checklist for MSP owners

• Define your sales activity expectations (prospecting touches, first meetings, proposals, closes).
• Track activity in one system consistently (CRM/PSA)—no “private spreadsheets.”
• Review effort weekly and coach the conversation quality (not just the pipeline totals).
• Set a clear rule: low effort ends fast; high effort earns coaching time.
• Prevent gaps: commit to always having at least one salesperson once you start the function.
• Require service input on delivery hours/scope before proposals go out.

To explore related sales and growth topics, check out our guides on solving MSP profitability challenges, building scalable service infrastructure, and identifying profitable verticals for growth.

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Episode highlights

• 00:01:20 – Most MSPs get stuck at $1M–$1.5M relying on referrals and community presence.
• 00:03:10 – Repeated hiring-firing cycles stem from weak sales infrastructure.
• 00:11:50 – Manage sales activities, not people—set clear effort expectations.
• 00:24:00 – Outsourced cold calling fails due to lack of emotional connection.
• 00:35:50 – Sales is simple but hard work: consistent prospecting and trust-building.
• 00:45:40 – Track sales activities to coach effectively and diagnose problems.
• 00:52:00 – Bridge the sales-service divide through owner-led collaboration.

About the guest

Ryan Alter is a former MSP owner from Missoula, Montana, who grew his company from a one-person break/fix shop to a thriving 25-person MSP before selling it. Today, he helps MSP owners understand the financial and human dynamics of scaling service and sales teams—especially the leadership discipline required to turn sales from a personality-driven function into a repeatable system.

🌐 Connect with Ryan on LinkedIn →

Want to continue the conversation?

If you’re trying to build a sales function that can scale beyond founder-led selling—without burning out your service team or repeating the same hiring cycle—Bering McKinley can help you put the operating system in place. You can also apply to be a guest on the podcast and share what you’re seeing in the field.

👉 Apply to be on the BMK Vision Podcast
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