# Ian Richardson

Ian Richardson works with Fox & Crow Group on sales and marketing for managed service providers (MSPs), including prospecting, sales-process coaching, and software that helps teams apply and track that process.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/ian-richardson/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianalexanderrichardson
- LinkedIn followers: 4,322
- Topics: artificial-intelligence, sales, ai-in-sales, sales-enablement, sales-coaching
- Based on 17 dated posts, latest 2026-09-30

## Summary

Most useful for process-driven MSP sales content on prospecting, disqualification, and coaching.

- Best for: B2B SaaS selling sales-enablement or CRM software to MSPs for webinars.
- Not for: Consumer or lifestyle brands seeking broad reach or paid sponsorships.
- Check first: Confirm audience makeup and results from comparable webinars or coaching sessions.

### Takeaways

- Prospecting sequence: pick a buyer, research, scrub list, call, follow up, track timing.
- A six-figure endpoint deal was worth walking away from.
- Coaching should observe activity and correct it; AI should expose process.

## Main ideas

- **Run MSP sales as a process, not a set of tips**: Ian Richardson argues that MSP sales improves when it runs as a repeatable system with defined stages, metrics, and coaching checkpoints. The posts describe the MSP Sales Process™ as a method covering buyer identification, persona work, messaging, list building, calling, and pipeline tracking. They tie the method to data from more than 5 million dials and more than $100 million in MSP annual recurring revenue.
- **Prospecting is operational work: buyer, list, cadence, follow-up**: Ian Richardson treats prospecting as a managed internal process, not something a vendor can fully own. The advice covers choosing a specific buyer, using market research and customer conversations to understand problems and beliefs, writing positioning and scripts, building a list by fit criteria, scrubbing bad fits, and calling the list. They warn that list methods are all roughly 30% junk and that delegating to a lead-generation company does not mean abdicating responsibility.
- **Disqualify early; a bad-fit deal can cost more than it pays**: Ian Richardson argues that disqualification belongs at any stage of the funnel, not only at the start. A prospect that will not accept process and standards is likely to create delivery, support, and margin problems later. They frame walking away as a process decision that protects the team and the business.
- **Coaching should observe activity and correct it**: Ian Richardson argues that sales enablement should be built around what representatives actually do, not generic training alone. The posts describe a system that records repeatable activities, tracks missed steps and process drift, identifies strong or weak skills, and delivers coaching based on where a representative struggles.
- **AI matters when it exposes process, not when it replaces coaching**: Ian Richardson argues that AI fits sales coaching because AI is pattern recognition and a defined process generates patterns. The priority is to reduce manual data collection and analysis so a coach can spend more time coaching the human. The posts also connect AI use to control over data and infrastructure.
- **Channel data can triage an event list before it reaches the CRM**: Ian Richardson argues that event and channel data can help teams decide faster who needs outreach, who can go to a sales development representative, who belongs on a marketing drip, and who should be flagged as a concern before CRM import. The list is not just collected; it is analyzed.
- **White-glove support means access, alignment, and no surprise billing**: Ian Richardson argues that white-glove service is not a luxury label but a set of concrete operating choices: responsive human access, consistent account management, routine updates, coaching without extra charges, and product development steered toward representative productivity.
- **Business operations are part of the same discipline**: Several posts extend Ian Richardson’s process argument beyond sales to how the business is run. Priorities include pricing that covers inflation and staff raises, ticketing and issue tracking with categorization and RACI matrices, and infrastructure choices that protect data provenance.

## Work to read

- [A step-by-step prospecting process for MSPs](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ianalexanderrichardson_msp-process-msp-activity-7510270294226268160-Gtdl)
- [Why one MSP deal was worth walking away from](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ianalexanderrichardson_sales-channel-mspsalesprocess-activity-7495437271387578368-y3SN)
- [Building sales coaching from activity data](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ianalexanderrichardson_sales-msp-activity-7440457532269121536-B9HM)
- [Five questions for evaluating MSP lead generation](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ianalexanderrichardson_msp-leadgen-pipeline-activity-7503410619522568194-UgvV)

## Brand relationships

- **Fox & Crow Group** (disclosed_partnership)
- **Membrain** (disclosed_partnership)
- **Instinct** (disclosed_partnership)
- **Pax8** (mention)
- **OpenAI** (mention)
- **Anthropic** (mention)

## Partnerships

Ian Richardson's posts show Fox & Crow Group selling to MSPs and channel vendors, not promoting a brand-sponsorship or creator-partnership programme. The commercial offers are sales and marketing services for MSPs—fractional management, campaign design, software and support—and products including the MSP Sales Process platform, the Instinct decision intelligence platform, and a Model Context Protocol layer built with Membrain. The posts publish no sponsorship policy, rate card, media kit, audience specification for paid placements or partnership inquiry route, and none documents a brand sponsoring their own channels. Buyers considering a paid placement or co-marketing arrangement should contact Fox & Crow Group directly to ask about formats, audience data, scope, deliverables and terms.

## Alternatives

- Christina Brady: Choose Christina Brady for a general B2B revenue audience rather than MSP owners, when the goal is to diagnose revenue leaks across a stack the company already owns. Brady’s posts address companies that run an LMS, CMS, CRM and conversation-intelligence tools yet still miss quota. They argue that taking a quarter or two to fix data, lead routing, attribution and CRM adoption before adopting anything else leaves the business unprotected while reps keep making the same mistakes. That’s a stronger starting point than Richardson’s material for a webinar persuading revenue leaders to work on revenue protection alongside admin projects, or a pitch about finding risk inside live deals rather than generating new pipeline.
- Steve Radford: Choose Steve Radford when the audience is sales leaders and front-line managers at the company doing the selling, and the problem is reinforcement rather than prospecting mechanics. Radford’s posts argue that most teams have a system problem, not a training problem, and that consistency comes from shared sales language, clear behavioural expectations, consistent manager conversations and reinforcement built into the rhythm of the business. They name the constraint directly: managers already carry briefings, reporting, recruiting, onboarding and travel, which is why coaching drifts. That framing fits better than Richardson’s when the deliverable is a management-side diagnostic, a session on why one-off workshops fade, or content for the buying company’s own enablement team.
- Andrew Wright: Choose Andrew Wright when the session is about diagnosing why a sales team is missing, not installing a new prospecting routine. Wright’s posts describe listening to actual rep-buyer conversations, watching where buyers lose interest, tracking repeated objections and judging whether follow-up gives the buyer a reason to continue. They explicitly warn against diagnosing a sales problem from the numbers alone. Wright also frames the second half of the year as a response to small leaks — vague next steps, soft buyers, proposals with no decision path — rather than more activity. That fits better than Richardson’s material for a coaching workshop on call review and forecast honesty for sales leaders, or a diagnostic of an existing team rather than a webinar that hands out a prospect list and disqualification checklist.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/