Mark Sokol from CyberFox shares Winning MSP Event Strategies

Carrie Richardson and Ian Richardson host the WIN Podcast - What's Important Now?

Serial entrepreneurs, life partners and business partners, they have successfully exited from multiple businesses (IT, call center, real estate, marketing) and they help other business owners create their own versions of success.

Ian is certified in Eagle Center For Leadership Making A Difference, Paterson StratOp, and LifePlan.

Carrie has helped create and execute successful outbound sales strategies for over 1200 technology-focused businesses including MSPs, manufacturers, distributors and SaaS firms.

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Transcript

Carrie Richardson: 0:53

Good afternoon everybody. My name is Carrie Richardson. I'm a partner at Fox and Crow Group and your host for the WIN podcast. this week on win, we're talking to people who will be exhibiting at PAX eight beyond 2025. Mark Sol from Cyber Foxes with us today. And Mark is no stranger to the managed services event circuit.

Mark Sokol: 1:14

at least in dog years, it feels like that. it feels like it anyway. Yeah, for sure. Thanks Carrie.

Carrie Richardson: 1:19

So tell us a little bit about how you prepare for an event the size of PAX eight beyond, and how you prepare your team to participate in an event the size of PAX eight. Beyond.

Mark Sokol: 1:32

For US vendors, there's such a cost in people: for sponsoring the event, for putting a booth on, for giving out swag. There's a lot of factors there. But to make the best use of our time out there it's not just the booth. It's not just, hang around the booth and handing out things. It's really all of the different opportunities to meet with sps to get to know them. And ideally they get to know a little bit about us at the other events that are going around it. The other activities that are going around it, whether it's breakfast, lunch. Dinner the happy hours that happen and things like that. And that's really what we're about is we like to get out in front and get out there. There's so many vendors that we've seen in the past that, put a, wall between the people walking by them at a booth- that's not us. We like to have fun. Because in the end this is about business and growing in this case your MSP, but it's about getting to know everyone at a personal level as best as we can. With, a hundred thousand MSPs out there, it's hard to do that. Our goal is to get to know the MSPs and offer just an opportunity to let them know how we could potentially help them in their tech stack.

Carrie Richardson: 2:46

Tell us about how Cyber Fox helps MSPs.

Mark Sokol: 2:50

the core problem we solve today is that there's a lot of software out there. QuickBooks is like the number one that's creating this problem. software is taking away the ability for an MSP to drop all of their customers, end users to what's called "least privilege". If you have an admin account and that person is an end user, that person opens up not only your customer, but obviously the MSP is at risk. Somebody taking advantage of that and then moving laterally through that organization. And the reason they can't do it a lot of times is because. All this old software, including QuickBooks, and there's others out there, Bluebeam Adobe and Sage It's still a thing. It's still out there. Maybe not in the us. And probably less so in North America, but yeah, it's still out there they wanna update and the only way to update is to have this privilege. Access. an MSP needs to take down everybody to lease privilege, but they can't because it's creating a bunch of tickets behind the scenes. Help Desk has to do that, and Help Desk goes why are we just doing updates? That's all I feel like I'm doing all day long. We eliminate that. at the point in time that let's say Sage wants that update the end user would click the button and go ahead and update. And behind the scenes we've already set the rules. The MSP has set the rules to let that process run in elevated mode, updated and then back down. To a standard user. So basically everybody really needs to be on there. You got cyber insurance now- questionnaires that are saying do you have everybody on least privilege and you need to be able to answer yes if you do and you're not, that's a whole different story. And we know insurance companies. The number one thing for them to do is not pay. So they would rather do that. So we help solve that problem for MSPs.

Carrie Richardson: 4:46

So when you are at an event like PAX eight Beyond, and you've gotta share that information quickly, rapidly, what's your best approach for attracting the attention of the attendee? And then delivering that message quickly. And what's the step after that?

Mark Sokol: 5:05

Sure. For us, we have a very clean booth overall. We give away a lot of foxes. We have stuff, foxes. We have I think three or four different sizes of stuff. Fox behind me there there's our master is a terrifying

Carrie Richardson: 5:19

A little scary. Yes. Yes. And like the Auvik Polar bear from back in the day.

Mark Sokol: 5:25

And we've been through a few of these and through these foxes and costumes and everything. So what we like to do is attract attention by things. Sometimes we have games specifically this event, we're actually doing something prior to the event kicking off. We're inviting MSPs to join us at a baseball games. I believe it's the Mets and Rockies and so we try to engage pre-event. just to get to know us because the outside of our software being simple and affordable ultimately and solves a huge problem in this case. Generally our partners say they actually like us. They like talking to us, they like being with us. We're fun. We're not, and we're also not. In the end, yes, we wanna sell our software, but it's clear in our interactions that it's more than just that. We're not just actively trying to sell because as it people and MSPs, that's the last thing. Don't call me. I'll call you when I'm ready to buy. we know that. We inform you that we have a solution that can solve the problem, and you can then solve this problem as well. So that's what we do.

Carrie Richardson: 6:31

How do you begin preparing for a pre-day event like that? Do you do some outbound calling? Is it an email campaign? how many people participate in it? how many people do you bring with you?

Mark Sokol: 6:43

yeah. It can vary. we've been fortunate enough to form relationships with other vendors in the space. So we all take on the burden of trying to invite people to these events that we've done. they're pre-event, they're not made to overstep what's happening at the Beyond event, it's a combination of our internal folks whether it's our account management team that works with partners 'cause these are open to partners. It's not just a prospect type of event for us. Our account management team, the sales team that happens to be calling and talking to anybody that, hey, if you're gonna happen to be in Denver. You can come along with us to this ball game. And then the, and then yes, we will send out an email those that we've met, that we know that are in this case, have a partnership with PAX eight. we'll send out an email or two and we'll put it out on social. all of those culminate into anywhere from. 25 to, well over close to 150 we had on a cruise ship down in Miami last year. that's about where we're at. It takes our team Here we have three in our events team that really handled all the logistics of that. and then obviously the other vendors will bring their partners and prospects as well and invite them. So very successful. And that is just essentially not even selling, that's just we're having a party basically.

Carrie Richardson: 8:05

So are you doing that so that you'll have more opportunities to interact with specific named partners, or are you hoping for. Brand new. Hey, we don't know who these guys are and they don't know who we are. Engagement,

Mark Sokol: 8:18

we're looking for all of that. the biggest way to get somebody interested in what you do is to hear from a peer. So it's open. We love our partners that come in, they talk, they say great things about us and talk about our solutions. They don't want to hear me or anybody really on our team talk about our solutions. They want to hear how we solve the problem for another MSP, It doesn't matter if we have nothing more to sell that MSP, they're a partner for the long term. That's the way we look at it and we include them as well.

Carrie Richardson: 8:46

So you've been doing this a long time. Yes. What's the best engagement you were ever able to create at an event, either with swag or an event? what's the best thing you've ever done and what's something that you did that you thought was gonna be great but fell flat?

Mark Sokol: 9:02

Ooh, that's a good one actually. Some good stories. So we're not doing it here at Beyond, but some of the larger events that we've been to we didn't invent this, but we started it at times. We've had a whole bunch of different characters. Whether there's a Star Wars theme or a Guardians of the Galaxy, and we have the different characters you can take photos with. you go locally and they have all these people that'll dress up and they're really interesting, especially in Orlando, They're not allowed to break character. So you can't even talk to them about you go to school, you in college here, they're literally playing the character. So it's really interesting But last year at an event we went with a transformer theme. I believe Transformer was having a movie out. That's probably why we picked it, the best part about ours was you'd have to go through, it's like an Etsy and you buy these costumes. So we had somebody one of our colleagues put on the costume. Between the time of ordering it, having it shipped here. Having him try it on, having him get it on there, basically he took five steps, fell down the whole thing. Fell apart last year, and the only thing I asked was, did we get that on video? Didn't even ask if he was okay. so that to some extent was a bust, in the end it's about us trying to get attention. We will have some form of mascot at times We'll bring just sometimes that. The decapitated head of our Fox and partners will go ahead and put that on, as a thing. Yeah, we're all about that but yeah, just try not to buy a, transformer from Turkey a month prior to an event. That's what I recommend.

Carrie Richardson: 10:38

I think that's good advice in any situation. Actually, I've ended up with some Halloween costumes that were questionable

Mark Sokol: 10:44

Yeah.

Carrie Richardson: 10:45

Now order your costumes well in advance. Have them fitted

Mark Sokol: 10:48

You got it? Yep.

Carrie Richardson: 10:49

What do you think has driven the most traffic to your booth? What things would you absolutely suggest trying again?

Mark Sokol: 10:56

Yeah it's really the best and you'll appreciate this as MSPs will as well. In the end, none of us have unlimited funds and there's maybe some out there that seem to have unlimited funds, but we don't. And we felt that partnering with other MSS p vendors we've done different things where. I dunno, a passport to a vacation and go around to these five vendor booths and things like that. So including our pre-event party. So those combination of things are a little bit more bootstrap, I would consider. But they're more effective than anything we've ever done by finding like-minded vendors that we think that their products are good. In line with ours, their culture is in line with ours. and being respectful in just walking around and getting those stamps as an MSP and then winning those. So those have definitely made a big impact. We think also that when we are there, if we have opportunities to do breakout sessions, those are great, but 99% of the time we do a panel. With other MSPs to talk about, cybersecurity how they're selling cybersecurity, or we will have our in-house expert here Wes Spencer, that's a part of that, does a lot of those as well. we have others on the team that will speak on our behalf really just trying to provide information to inform the MSP about opportunities for them And how to position cybersecurity within their services.

Carrie Richardson: 12:24

And so if you're gonna do a multi-vendor promotion like that, who puts together the Bingo card or the passport who takes responsibility for that?

Mark Sokol: 12:32

In our case, because we've been the initial driver of a lot of that. It ends up. Falling on our team to take care of a lot of that. We do such a great job overall at the events we do, we also bring people into Tampa. Every quarter we bring a group and educate them and partner with other vendors it's a big burden on our team, but. The number one thing an events person has to have is organization, maybe tenacity. There's probably other things, a little creativity but in the end it's about being organized. even if it's a little bit of mayhem, it's like that duck on the pond. You see that duck and little feet are going, 90 miles a minute. that's what you wanna see. You wanna see that duck on the pond, that's cool. everything's fine. And behind the scenes, a lot of work, a lot of activity to get things done, things go wrong, and no one knows because there's all been recovered. And so that's the most important thing. So yeah, we like to. especially if it's our idea and we're coming other vendors, we work together and just end to end, take care of all of that.

Carrie Richardson: 13:33

So before PAX eight, you're hosting a group of MSPs. At a baseball game, once you arrive on the floor, how do you organize a lead collection at your booth? What happens after somebody expresses interest? Do you round robin those opportunities to your team? how do you fairly distribute the leads that you collect at an event?

Mark Sokol: 13:56

Oh great question. In some ways it may not be fair. So how we are set up is by territory we have six owners which includes. The world, not just the US and Canada, and essentially a large event like this kind of spread, there's so many partners that PAX eight has that come into Denver at that time. It generally tends to work itself out. Evenly in that case. Some of the smaller events we may do local or something, then it's almost not fair 'cause yeah, just somebody driving over. But in the case of the Beyond event, we find it's been good including international at times. It's a good spread, a good mix of people that nobody on the team in any territory feels like they've been left out

Carrie Richardson: 14:45

Obviously foxes are a good swag item, but what else have you seen that people really went nuts for at an event?

Mark Sokol: 14:53

Yeah. we've tried every variation of WTF what the fox, that kind of stuff. Any version, you can use Fox in place of another word We love giving out shirts and so we'll have every size from small to, very large. we try to make sure that we have those. The interesting thing about what we've learned about shirts is that it has to actually feel soft. we've had some burlap sack shirts that were just awful and they would shrink the first time and now they're like a halter top. So we've learned we've learned that better material, it's worth spending a little bit extra money for it. 'cause people tend to wear it. one part of our solution is blocking, living off land attacks. it's a little clever pithy, block, you block him block her, right? So we try to be clever. last year we came out with a version of a sticker. I'm not a sticker person. I don't put any stickers. I don't like 'em, I don't want 'em on anything of mine. But apparently a lot of people do. So we have a version of the sticker with our logo. But we had a really clever looking a rapper fox, and last year and that was a big hit. We don't have them anymore. Those went pretty fast. So I'm sure if we were going around even at Beyond. they're gonna have that sticker on the back of their computer. The other thing we're doing just from a promotional aspect is we're actually at beyond this year, we're on the key card. we actually sponsored the key card.

Carrie Richardson: 16:20

nice.

Mark Sokol: 16:20

Everybody there is gonna see our name right? With a clever little thing. I won't give that away. but it's a clever little quirky thing I've been saying this since I've been at Cyber Fox for three years, ultimately cybersecurity? we are, serious about cybersecurity, but it doesn't mean that we have to be just serious people. it doesn't have to be one or the other. So we like to be cute. We like to be try to funny, we like, to, get somebody's attention there. And again, that goes to us. Trying to be more than just a software vendor, but a partner. Maybe at times a friend but at least a business friendly. And so that's our thing.

Carrie Richardson: 16:58

All right. Thanks Mark. It was great to catch up with you. It'll be great to see you at PAX eight beyond this year. It's been a few years since we got to hang out, so I'll look forward to, seeing what you got there this year. No hints on the key cards.

Mark Sokol: 17:13

You'll find out you check in. Alright.

Carrie Richardson: 17:15

thanks very much and we will see you in June at Pax eight Beyond.

Mark Sokol: 17:20

Thanks Carrie.