These are the real questions MSP owners ask before committing to a six month engagement. Honest answers below. Nothing dodged. If you have a question that isn't here, ask it directly on a discovery call and I'll answer it the same way.
A note on how to read this page. The answers are direct. They commit to specific policies and specific guarantees. If you sign an engagement, the answers below become the engagement agreement. Nothing here is marketing language. Everything here is operational policy.
Two active engagements maximum. The buildout phase requires daily attention, and the work degrades quickly past two simultaneous clients. When my slate is full, prospects join a waitlist. This isn't a marketing constraint. It's a quality constraint.
No. Ever. If I sign an MSP in Sacramento, I will not take on another Sacramento MSP for the duration of that engagement. Your competitive intelligence, your prospect list, the playbooks we build together — none of it gets reused for a competitor in your market. This isn't a guideline. It's a hard policy, named in the engagement agreement.
For short absences (a few days), coaching pauses and resumes when I'm back. The Producer continues working the system that's already in place. For anything longer than two weeks, I extend the engagement by that duration at no additional cost. You don't pay for time I'm not delivering.
I work Central Time but cover Pacific through Eastern as a normal part of the engagement. Producer coaching calls happen during their local business hours regardless of where they are. International engagements (outside US and Canada) are evaluated case by case.
When you sign with Your Sales Energy, no competing MSP in your selling area can buy the same engagement during yours. The methodology stays in your MSP. The competitive intelligence stays in your MSP. That isn't a perk. It's the policy. It's what the price reflects.
3 to 5 hours per week for the first 90 days, mostly in the initial process and CRM work where your input is required. After month three, leadership involvement drops to about 1 to 2 hours per week for pipeline reviews and decisions that require your sign-off. The engagement is designed to take work off your plate, not add to it.
If a Producer hired during the engagement isn't working out within the first 90 days of their start date, whether they leave on their own or it becomes clear they're not going to develop into the role, I recruit and vet a replacement at no additional cost. We release the first hire back into the market and find someone better suited. The methodology accounts for the rare hiring miss, and you don't pay twice to fix it.
The foundation gets built and delivered regardless of close timing. You own the playbooks, the CRM configuration, the prospect lists, and the trained Producer. If a Producer hire isn't producing, we replace them as covered above. What I don't offer is a refund tied to specific deal close timing or ARR targets, because once the foundation is built and the Producer is in place, the variables that determine close timing (market conditions, Producer effort, deal complexity) move outside my direct control. What I do offer is honesty during the engagement. If something isn't working, I'll tell you. If the Producer needs to be replaced, we replace them. If the process needs to be adjusted, we adjust it. The engagement is sold for the work delivered and the foundation built, not for an outcome guarantee.
Honestly, the engagements I've run have all produced what they were built to produce. The work is real and the foundation lasts. The most meaningful disruption I've seen wasn't a failure of the engagement itself but something that happened after one ended. A Producer who had been performing well during the engagement and continued producing afterward was eventually recruited back by their previous employer at a comp level the MSP couldn't match without restructuring their pay plan. The engagement contract was already complete at that point. But I went back, ran the recruiting process again at no additional cost, and placed a replacement Producer. The MSP considered the original engagement a success. They're still using the foundation today, updated over the years as the business evolved. Why am I telling you this? Because you should know that even after the contractual engagement ends, I stay invested in whether the system you paid for keeps working. The work doesn't end at month six. The relationship doesn't either, even when the formal billing does.
The engagement ends with a clean handoff. You own the playbooks, the CRM configuration, the process documentation, and the Producer. I'm available for questions in the 30 days following the handoff at no additional charge. After that, ongoing support is available on a separate retainer if you want it, but most clients don't need it.
Completely. The process documentation, the playbooks, the CRM configuration, the prospect lists, the marketing collateral. All of it belongs to your MSP from day one. I don't license it. I don't claim ongoing rights. You own it because you paid for it.
$54,000 over six months reflects three things: the actual hours of work involved in a real buildout plus daily coaching, the capacity constraint of working with only two MSPs at a time, and the exclusivity guarantee that no competing MSP in your market can buy the same engagement during yours. It's intentionally not a side-hustle price, and it's intentionally below what a fractional VP of Sales would cost.
Everything required to build the foundation and place the right Producer into it: process documentation, playbook development, CRM configuration, prospect list building, recruiting and vetting (including DISC and TopGrading style interviews), six months of daily coaching, weekly pipeline reviews, and the handoff at month six. The only additional cost is your own internal tooling subscriptions (CRM seats, sales tools, lead data services) which you would pay regardless.
Three things you'll pay for directly: your CRM and sales tool subscriptions (HubSpot, Apollo, etc.), the Producer's compensation, and any travel costs if you want me on-site (most engagements run fully remote). Everything else is in the $54,000.
The engagement is structured as the $5,000 onboarding fee at signing, then $9,500 per month for the first three months and $8,000 per month for the second three months. That's the payment plan. I don't break it down further because the work has a rhythm and the payments match that rhythm.
Four kinds of MSPs aren't a fit: MSPs under $2MM in revenue (you're earlier than my ICP and need to optimize what you have before building outside sales). MSPs over $10MM (you should be hiring a VP of Sales, not engaging a fractional buildout). MSPs whose primary problem is service delivery quality, not sales (no amount of sales infrastructure fixes a delivery problem). MSPs whose leadership isn't aligned on hiring an outside salesperson (this engagement requires a real commitment, not exploration).
Sometimes. If the rep is in their first 60 days and the issue is missing foundation, we can still build it around them. If the rep has been there longer than that and isn't producing, the conversation is more nuanced. The honest answer is we should talk first to see if the engagement fits your specific situation.
HubSpot. It's the CRM I'm most comfortable with and where I work fastest because it's where I've configured the most builds. If you're on a different CRM, that's a conversation we should have on the discovery call. It's usually doable, but the price may vary because the time required to configure and master a system I work in less often is real and needs to be reflected honestly in the engagement.
Probably not for the first six month engagement. The methodology is built around US and Canadian MSP economics, hiring norms, and lead generation channels. I can have a conversation about whether your situation is the exception, but I don't want to take an engagement I'm not confident I can deliver.
If you have a question that isn't here, it's probably worth a real conversation. Book a 30 minute call and bring your questions. No pitch. No sales pressure. Just honest answers from someone who has spent twenty years inside this work.
A rep is a rep until the foundation turns them into a Producer.