https://www.listennotes.com/e/c2899fccf89f491097957b4f8c6f2216

This week on Unfuck My Startup, we brought in the Closers Closers, Kevin Dorsey, the guy who's built and scaled sales orgs to hundreds of millions in revenue to show us what's working in outbound sales today.

This is what's getting lost. I'm gonna call y'all on this. This is what's getting lost in sales is like we've lost that human side of things. We've lost that element of like, hey, let me help you. And then when someone does, or polite about it. So I will, like those are things I pay attention to of like the human side of selling. We've lost a little bit.

Yeah, well, I mean that, and that to me is like one of the best things about this. Like if I'm a seller, I kind of want to know if I'm slipping, but not when I'm practicing.

But I only power dial. I do not parallel dial. And I am very strict against that with my team. They power dial. They do not parallel dial. They are calling one to one. each time. And the beauty of power dialing is it takes the thinking out of making the dial.

And by the way, you look at the retention of the show, it's seven minutes past half hour. There wasn't a single person that dropped at 30 minutes. Why? Because everybody wants to know this.

Now.

Kevin Dorsey's coming. You are going to get the sickest sales Intel ever once he comes. But we're going to start the show how we always start the show. So it's no big deal. We're going to start the show with the pitch slap segment. So let's go over the rules of the pitch slap. Okay, so, Creighton, you got two minutes to pitch your startup to the entire 422 person audience right now, which is growing by the second. We're going to run a survey probably like a minute and a half in buy or no, yes or no with buy over 66% you get a slag box over 33% you get a t-shirt under 33% you get sent home with a pad in the back and then we're going to book you demos from the audience in our record booking demos. What's our record? Pete?

I think it's like we got 20 something for somebody. So I mean, that's a good couple of SDRs weeks right there.

So yeah, 20 something demos. I mean, who's booking 20 something demos these days? Nobody on my team.

Shoot, dude, we should pitch on our own show. We're like, we completely missed that.

All right, we should be talking about what we're building, but we refuse to.

We'll get there. At the halfway mark, I'll drop a little promo. But Creighton runs audience.io. I dropped the link right here into the chat. Everyone can pull up audience.io. As I usually do, I'm going to share my screen for just a second so everyone can see this nice website. Perfect. Whenever you're ready, my friend.

All right.

What are you working on?

Perfect.

Yeah. So this was did not know I was going to get called up from the bench. So we're going to do the best we can. We built a software platform that captures first party data. And so that would be anything from the pop up on your website to a sweepstakes that you want to run. Maybe it's a survey, a quiz or a poll. We got in about 10 years ago with some big media companies. So NBC, Fox, iHeartRadio, and we found out pretty quick that they couldn't like compliance reasons, just use a bunch of different tools.

They needed one.

Like on brand compliant system for all things data capture. So we went like full steam ahead on that and we built tools that honestly collect every piece of data for them. So anything like what I was saying before, it started out as a sweepstakes company and then we had to build a full blown survey platform and then polls and quizzes and UGC. And there's even groups like ESPN that use us for like March Madness brackets. and that kind of stuff. So our platform though, the pitch here would be, if you truly want to own your audience and know who they are, having them in a bunch of segmented tools and a bunch of different silos isn't gonna cut it. Like you need to get all of that data into one place. And usually where it gets messy is 'cause you're capturing it in 10 different platforms. And so that's where we bring it all together. So audience.io is one platform for all things data capture and engagement. and can work on WordPress, Shopify. It doesn't really matter what your site's built on.

And real quick, can you just give us like two or three examples you gave them already, but like how's a startup? Like what is it? Polls and surveys and like whatever else?

Yeah, because I mean, there has to be that like value, like transaction for first party data. So like for you guys, it's like, hey, we're going to give you this amazing content in return. We'd ask for your name, your email.

Your company, your title.

Where are you going to post that? How are you going to build it? Is it going to be on brand? And is it most importantly going to be tied to the database, the tools that you guys already use, HubSpot, et cetera? So that's where we came in is there's so many different one-off like quiz companies and polls companies and sweepstakes where we just brought it all together into one system.

Got it. How's it priced? Last thing.

Yeah, so it's priced based on the traffic that you see to your site. And so for a smaller company that's just starting up, we're just looking at it of like, all right, how big is your company? How many people are going to hit this pop up, this contest, et cetera. And so it grows with you. But it's a monthly price.

Yep.

Sweet. All right. Rock on.

29 people said yes. Heck yeah.

We're like three minutes after we asked and people are still saying demo. Maybe the pitch just took a while to sink in, Creighton. It's like, you know what? I actually do want first party data from my website.

Yeah, you have to own your own audience, man.

You can't. Yeah.

You know, hey, imagine if we could have, like, known we were gonna pitch today and it would have been even better.

So.

Yeah, we'll take it. Happy to come.

Thanks for putting. Coach.

Rock and roll. Well, thank you so much for participating in the pitch lab segment. And, yeah, the best news of that entire time we got you demos, but. Kevin Dorsey showed up. Everybody was worried. We were sitting on the edge of our seat. We got 455. We have 465 live bodies, every one of them teed up to figure out, how the fuck do I make this sales thing work, bro?

I don't know. I'm here to find out, too. You know, I was hoping you could just tell me.

We were relying on you.

This is a double catfish. This is bad. like, you know, the good oldfashioned double catfish where it's like, yeah, and I lied, and now we're here and we can't be mad about it.

So let's see how this plays out. All right, well, let's give you a little bit of an intro here. We got Kevin Dorsey on. If you haven't seen him on LinkedIn, he's the chief revenue officer finally, and a veteran who has scaled sales teams at. Is this recently IPO company Service Titan? Did they recently IPO? Is that right? Recently IPO'd Service Titan patient pop bench. He has grown several teams above several hundred salespeople, several hundred million of ARR. He's gone from beginning to full scale, all about building elite sales teams. Kevin Dorsey could not be more excited about having you on. Dude, I'm pumped, man.

I'm pumped. Trust me, I was sweating too. You know, there were storms in Austin and storms in Denver and it's raining. So I'm like running through the rain trying to get to the hotel room.

But now I'm pumped to be here, man. I appreciate you having me. Dude, and thanks for, thanks for hustling to get here. I mean, we, luckily we had that first segment to, to sort of bide our time or whatever, but we're all here now. We're happy and let's get into it. Pete, what are we talking about first?

So Kevin, something, by the way, KD, you, you like going by KD. So I'm gonna stop calling you Kevin.

Because, yeah, I mean, Kevin, Kevin is my name, so it's okay. It's just, that's a good point. This point when I'm in trouble, you know, it's like if I go to the car that, like, if you say, hey, now Kevin, Then I know it went too far and I can pull back whatever I was talking about there. So now we're on the same page. We're good.

There we go. Well, you can call me Peter at any time. I'll just think it's my mom or dad. But so something we love talking about on this show because things move so quickly, especially the world of sales, marketing, B2B SaaS, and especially in recent times, we've just seen sales change incredibly fast. So as a CRO, you're in charge of an entire sales motion, right? from the prospect, people prospecting to closing. So I really just want to start off by diving into what is working right now for finally. And maybe we start at the top of the funnel with your SDRs. Are there certain things that they're doing nowadays that maybe you weren't quite doing at ServiceTitan, a PatientPop?

So actually it's the opposite. They are doing less of what I did in the past with PatientPop and ServiceTitan and Bench. So my SDRs are 100% phone-based. they're 100% phone-based. They are booking anywhere from 17 to 25. My tops are in the high 20s demos per month over the phone only. Whereas historically, my SDRs were running the full plays themselves. They were emailing, they were socializing, they were calling, they were videoing, they were doing all the steps. My SDRs are 100% phone based now. And we handle the other channels for them, right? We handle the email for them. We handle the social for them. And that's actually the shift. So it's not even necessarily doing things that I didn't do. It's actually doing less of the things I did in the past and focusing on the one area that really, I think, separates most good sales dev orgs from the rest is can they pick up the phone? can they get somebody on and can they have a good conversation? I've been saying this for years, man. Like, if all you're doing is sending templated emails, I don't need an SDR. I don't need it. If all you're doing is sending templates, I can do that already by myself.

Right.

And so that, that's the shift, man, is my SDR is 100 phone based.

100. This is, this is very old school of you in a very great way. So I want to break up these two sections. By the way, you got some love in the chat for going 100. Yeah.

By the way, audience, who else is phone based here? We got anybody? else using the phones? Boom, boom.

All right.

People loving the phones. I have a question about this. So do you think, I have a couple questions actually. Do you think that, what's your ACV?

I have three different sales orgs, but the ACV for my outbound org is in like the 10 to 14k ACV. And then I have them a little bit on the upmarket too. We have a few like six figure deals in there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And then are they U.S. based or is it all?

They are U.S. based.

They're all in office in Boca Raton, Florida. Shout out. Yeah. So you're making that work, which is interesting because I heard for a while that like HubSpot made it work, but the world's changed. You can't make an outbound sales org work on 20K CV anymore. You are 100% declaring that is false.

So here's where everyone, I think, gets that. wrong. It's a simple math equation. It actually has nothing to do with ACV and everything to do with SDR volume.

Right?

So, for example, I had a 100 outbound team at snack Nation. Snack Nation sold snacks in a box, which is what I wanted to call it, by the way. I'm still jealous that we went like, we should have been snack in the Box. It would have been so good. See, look, marketers, you get it like, yeah, I know. the box food has so much on that. I digress.

Well, I want to. I want to start a company called Lululemon.

Oh, I'm in.

I'm in. Yoga for dudes.

Yes. So. But now here's where it was. The ACV at Snack Nation was 4, 200.

Yeah.

But my sdrs were booking 45 appointments a month. So it has nothing to do with ACB, has everything to do with SDR pipeline. volume, right? If all you can do is produce 15 opportunities per month, then yeah, you need a 20, 25 K ACV is the floor. But if my, if you're doing 15 and my stairs are doing 30, I can quite literally cut my ACV in half and it still works. So it's just a math equation. Most people got so caught on the ACV side that they never ran the full math of like, well, no, like how much does it have to produce to be successful?

Do you think the low ACV is intimidating to salespeople and sales leaders that.

Yeah, it's, it's not easy to do. You have to get a lot. You cannot do a low ACV outbound and only book 10 meetings a month. You can't. Like, you just, you cannot do that.

Right.

So that's, that's where you have to focus. Okay. But if you can do more than that, like, hell, yeah. Like, absolutely.

So I wanted. So you, they're all calling. People in office, I think that was a big change too when COVID happened. A lot of people went remote. That mobile, I mean, our iPhones are so freaking good at screening out spam calls. It's amazing. Well, not amazing for a sales team trying to call mobile numbers, but for everybody else. So you're still routing through the office, which is great. Are there specific tools? I want to talk about the email stack that you're running for them. Let's talk about the phone side. Are you using like phone burner or any of these dialers to help increase their output?

Yes. So we use, you know, we use actually we have two different dialers. Actually we're testing right now kind of comparing the metrics behind them. So like, I don't want to announce the winner yet, but we're testing two right now. But they are both power dialers, but I only power dial. I do not parallel dial. and I am very strict against that with my team. They power dial. They do not parallel dial. They are calling one to one each time. And the beauty of power dialing is it takes the thinking out of making the dial because the hard part that I think people, you know, the mental drain it takes to choose to make 200 dials is a lot. To choose to pick up, pick up that that's very draining. Whereas if you know it's just going to work through your list, people answer great, but you know who's going to answer, you have the conversation, move on to the next one. So yes, so we use a power dialer right now. We provide the leads and the research to the SDRs, right? So we have a lead enrichment process and system that we put into place there. And on the email side, similarly, it's like if people are responding or engaging things along those natures. We use a power dialer. They average anywhere from 150 to 200 dials per day. Our connect rates are in the 12 to 13 range. We're actually working with Titan X right now. Shout out Joey Gilkey. Their list are in the 20 to 25 connect rate range. And then we track our conversation rate, our conversation conversion rate all the way through the thing.

Someone just dropped in. Why no parallel dialing? I have the same. I have the same hypothesis as you, by the way, but I want to hear it from the man.

So, so I, you know, I always want to be so careful with this because I don't want to, like, f up people's, like, world here. But here's the deal.

No, that's what we do.

Okay, like, I'm gonna save space because, man, like, I just. Whatever. So here's the deal. And I have tracked this, y'all, across four different Orgs. I have tried parallel dialers at every single org that I have run because the math sounds so good. If I 3x my dials, if I 5x my dials, I should 5x my meetings. It has never worked. and here's why. For every multiple of dial increase, I've seen the same multiple decrease in conversation and conversation conversion rate.

Right?

Because when you parallel dial out almost, man, I'm getting so much. I'm getting so much trouble for this. When you parallel, I can say it. No matter what people tell you, there's a delay. No matter what people tell you, there is a delay. And so when that Prospect has to say hello twice, It kills the tone of the opener of that. So they may get you on the second time, but then also your SDR didn't know who was going to answer. And so now they are unprepared for that conversation. So the processor said, hello, hello. Hey, Adam, it's KD over at Finally, how's your Tuesday going, bro?

Right?

And so, so for every multiple up of dial, I saw the same decrease in conversation conversion rate. So it always netted out the same. But then I also felt I was burning leads because it was the conversation conversion rate that drops. And that means they actually got to chance to talk to us. But the opener on it was so bad that it messed up. And yes, you can have the trust me. I tried the pre-recorded intro because there's no, like, I tried it all. That's why I've tested it. I've gone through it. I am an advocate. I love the parallel or sorry, the power dial. I love taking the thinking out of it. I love that it can go through it, right? But it's latency and like knowing who's going to answer and being prepared for that conversation, those things drop the conversation conversion rate, then it makes it not even worth it. And I'm burning leads at that point. I'm burning through the leads and that's why.

Hey, you know what I love about your practice? It's all data driven. I remember from the first podcast you got me on, I'm like, every single thing that you say is backed up by an experiment you've done. and I really appreciate that because.

I.

Wish I was more that way. I'm kind of a gut guy.

I've grown into the science. I've always loved numbers. I've always loved that because my whole thing is numbers don't lie, sales people do. And so it's like, let me see what the numbers actually tell me. Funny enough, right y'all, literally in the Uber, on the way to the hotel, I'm in a back and forth with my VP of sales development about which dialer is going to win. And I was like, can you confidently State the connect rate was higher here? Yes, the connect rate was higher here. Cool. Did it lead to more conversations? Yes, it led to more conversations. Cool. Did it lead to more meetings? Because if it didn't lead to more meetings, they can fluff up the conversation rate and the connect rate all they want. If they didn't lead to more meetings, no. This one won through and through.

Cool.

But it's all data. I don't. I'm not messing around with gut anymore. Because also, Nathan and I have talked about this a little in the past. Gut can get you to five to ten. Science gets you to a hundred to a billion. It has to be repeatable. You have to know which levers to pull. You have to know, wait, if my connect rate is 11%, I can get that to 14%. I can hire four less SDRs over here and take that 35 Gs and put that into marketing over here. Like to scale to 100 million and a billion, you have to have the science side. Gutt and hard work can get you to 10, sometimes 20, to be honest. past that, you gotta know what the hell you're doing and you gotta be able to scale it.

Yeah, that hits pretty close to home, my man.

Yeah, we've talked.

I'm feeling pretty stuck at 20, feeling pretty stuck at 25 right now. You know, one last thing. Where's the list coming from? Is this, yeah. Who is it, right?

Like, so we use multiple providers to get the list. So, you know, we leverage Zoom info. we leverage Apollo and then we leverage TitanX with Joey Gilkey. And so we know the industries and titles we want to go after. And so we're going out and getting those. I don't need my SDRs trying to go find those things, right? That's a waste of their time. So we have a whole system there, you know, call it pseudo waterfall, but also on the phone, You actually don't need as much personalization funny enough as you do in email. Email, you need personalization to stand out because you're in an inbox full of everything. On the phone, the personalization is you're talking to a person, right? So they don't need nearly as much. It's not like I'm opening, like if I were to call you and be like, Hey, Adam, KD over at Finally, so like, you know, did you ever ride the mechanical bull at shooters while you were at Duke? That'd be such a weird opener, you know, to do, whereas in email, that's the stuff that stans out. So they need to know the company, the target, the persona, and the size of the company. That's all they actually need to know when they're calling. Email is a whole different ball game that you have to do there. Right? So, yeah, I lost track of the, oh yeah, so we provide the leads, we do enrichment, and we're actually continuing to build out, this is where our agents have started. I saw someone asking the chat, like where Agentic AI is going to play. This is where we're starting to leverage it on the research side of like that, on the personalization side for emails, we're using it. But like we'll get into this. I'm using more of the AI on like the call scoring side of things than I am on the research side of things.

I love this topic because like, I think go to market. So this probably blasphemy too, but like, you, you, you know, the reason why I think there's been so much It's like the whole very high volume out of one person, bunch of domains, all that stuff. The reason why that is so prevalent, I believe, is because it's just so much harder to email now that that's the only way the response rate is so low. That's what you have to do, right? And it just literally doesn't make sense for a human being to be doing that anymore. But it's because they've gotten better at stopping the spam, right? But I think you hear what AI should do and the first reaction was like, oh, we should have AI doing the stuff that humans were doing before. Whereas I think the people I see most excited about AI, it's all related to coaching. Let me tell you a story. I got a buddy whose wife literally wanted to divorce him. He started putting his screenshots of his tech messages into ChatGPT. told them all about her, told them all about their four relationships. She's staying at the house every night again.

You know, you could go on this whole, this whole time on, on this divorce GPT.

Yeah, exactly. But, like, this thing is a coach to make you. It's like, it's like one of the most, I think the most incredible thing about it is it allow, it allows you to separate yourself from your heuristics and your fallibility as a human and give you an objective overview of something that just happened.

Right.

It's the lack of bias and the lack of, you know, call, like, personal history there or self-motivation like, this is, you know, we, I don't want to open up this can of worms, but this is why when people, like, people only want to buy from people, it's like, no, no, they don't. I know that we, we've stopped buying from people a long time ago. People want their problem solved. They want to be heard, they want to be understood, and they want people that can teach them something. I saw someone drop it. in the chat a little bit of like, you know, providing value. Okay, Adam, you're a CEO. You've been in the game for a while. Have you ever, ever had an SDR teach you something that you didn't know about yourself, company or industry?

Probably not.

Ever. Okay, so like this is when people are talking about like value, right? I have yet to speak to an SDR. ever that has taught me something about being a better CRO, about being a better sales leader. It's almost impossible. It's not fair oftentimes for a lot of SDRs and truthfully a lot of AEs too, where most unfortunately, and this is one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in the world, is most sales reps don't even use the product they sell. So they're not the persona and they don't use it. So how can they provide value to me? They actually can do is ask good questions to make me think a little bit differently and get me into the process, but it's hard. AI knows everything about the industry. Like if y'all, y'all, if you aren't using AI with some awesome meta prompts to understand the industry trends, commonly overlooked situations, questions that don't get asked, what are the top questions about my persona on Reddit, on Quora, on Medium, on Google? Like if you're not using AI to understand the industry and the persona better, you are missing out immensely, right? Immensely, because that's the only place that you have have a chance. So it's getting wild, man. It is. And to your point, this is what makes it so hard. is you can do the right thing as an individual sending an email, yet you're still buried under 50 emails that weren't done well, that weren't done well.

Right?

Like that's, that's hard, right? To, to stand out from. This is also funny enough. Why I'm still a huge proponent of video. Huge proponent of video. Because it's, it's still like the last place for maybe six more months where, where it's like, okay, like a person actually sent this thing, right? Whereas an email is getting harder and harder to pass any sort of test of did a human write that or not. So, no, it's getting wild, man. It's getting wild.

I want to make the whole. Let's do the whole second half of this section about. I want to hear about the AI coaching some more. Let's do all that. Adam, are you gonna ask a question before we get into the next.

Yeah.

Before we go to unfuck my startup, the segment, can I just ask you, like. what is the cold call opener script that actually works?

Yes.

Like what?

What?

Because, like, I know I'm sitting here, I'm like, I just don't know what it. I have a hard time imagining something that I would react favorably to because, like, my thing is, like, the second I know that it is a pitch, I'm just like, stop. I hate you. You know, whatever.

Yep, I got you. And so I'll give some context here. I, you know, back to the data things. I have quite literally split test single words in the script. Team A, I want you using this word. Team B, I want you using this word. Which one has a higher pass through rate? So I've tracked pass through rate, opener acceptance, question ask is such and but like we've gone all those. So I give you all some context here. Like this is not me just like throwing out some ideas. These are things I've tested over hundreds of thousands of calls and thousands of reps. So the opener first is like, you know, we'll break this down. The opener starts with you got to take away the first like questions anyone has when you call them, which is who are you? Why are you calling? What the hell do you want? Right? So the opener is very, very straightforward. Hey, Adam, it's KD at Finally. Right? So I'm identifying myself right out the gate from Finally. So I'm taking the first two away. The next you have to answer, like, well, why are you calling? And so actually, I'd be very curious. I'm gonna see if y'all are even paying attention in the chat real quick. Drop a one in the chat if you've read Influence by Robert Cialdini. drop it from the chat if you have read by Robert Piel Dini. All right, let's get a change. Right. Because this what, by the way, this is a classic, y'all. This is when people ask, like, is sales an art or a science? Like, yo, it's both. They've studied this. They know what works. So one of the key takeaways in influence talks about the use of a justifier. When you use a justifier for an ask, people are anywhere from three to four times more likely to comply with the ask. Right. And they studied this even with something as offensive as cutting in line, which is in America is like the last the holy thing that we have. We disagree on politics, on religion, on sports, but lines and orange cones are sacred in America. We stand behind these things. Just to give a justifier. So justifier is like a reason for the call, but I don't do things like, so the reason for my call, we don't talk that way. So it goes, Hey Adam, this is KD over at Finally. Actually, I was just on your website. There's your justifier. I was just on your website. I was looking at your LinkedIn. I saw your most recent blog. I saw your most recent episode. Like you put some micro justifier, which also builds curiosity. Cause now you're going like, well, what did you see on my website? What did you see on my, my blog, whatever? Just like, Hey, Adam, this is KD over at Finally. Um, actually I was just on your website and I was hoping to ask a couple quick questions to see if it's even worth a larger convo. Would that be okay? You got a sec? So what we're doing there, right? So one, we are using a minimizer. I was hoping to ask a couple quick questions to see if it's even worth, right? So we're actually minimizing the ask, but also continuing to build curiosity of like to see if it's even worth a larger convo. Seeding, I'm seeding there would be a larger convo. And then you're what's called a layered question. Would that be okay? Do you gotta sec? So a layered question is when you put two questions together where the answer to the second question also answers the first question. Would that be okay? Do you gotta sec? By saying yes, you gotta sec, you're also saying yes to you can ask the questions. But then lastly, y'all, I want y'all to hear my tone on this. This is the key. This is the key. Hey, Adam, this is KD over at Finally I'm actually, I was just on your website and I was hoping to ask a couple quick questions to see if it's even worth a larger combo. Would that be okay? Do you got a sec? How would you describe my tone there?

It is very, it is not pushy. It is curious. It is interested. It is, it is. it comes across as trying to like, I could be helpful to you if you were open to it, right? But I'm not jamming this down your throat, right?

So we call it the Lost in the City tone. We got lost in the city, right? Where it's like, hey, if you were lost, and actually, you know what's hilarious, by the way, dude, Adam, we're gonna date ourselves there. I was teaching this one of my SDR classes a couple months ago and they're like, How do you get lost in the city? These kids have always had a goddamn phone. Yeah, it's so funny, right?

They've never been lost.

They already need to come up with a new tone, right? And so it's like, it's like, hey, like, you know, it's this, like, I'm lost. I'm looking for some help. Don't know if you can help me. Let's see. It's a pull tone versus a push tone. A push tone. Hey, Adam's KD over it. Finally, I know this is a cold call. You weren't expecting my call, but you have 27 seconds to see why I'm calling you today. Yeah, you're like fuck off like no, right? So that tone holds people in and then I saw someone put it in here and then so and I'll push back on this yous know, they're like, well, is it a bait and switch if it's a sales call? No, because literally what I said I was going to do I'm going to do I was hoping to ask some questions to see if it's even worth a larger convo. Would that be okay? Do you got a sec?

Right?

That intro should have anywhere from a 50 to 60% take rate, right? 50 to 60% of people is like, I mean, okay, maybe, right? And, well, I mean, Tracy, you gotta ask Adam and Pete if we're gonna turn this into a cold calling lecture or not. I can go down this whole thing.

Yeah, no, this is what, this is what we wanna know.

Okay, cool.

Everybody wants to start using the phones. We wanna go as deep as possible.

Yeah.

And by the way, you look at the retention of the show, it's seven minutes past a half hour. there wasn't a single person that dropped at 30 minutes. Why? Because everybody wants to know this. Who wants to know an audience? Tell us if you want KD to keep going deeper.

So there's a few places this will, will go. Okay. People are with me here.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

So that intro should be anywhere from a 50 to 60% take rate. So to be very clear, are people still going to hang up on you on a cold call? Yes. Are people still like, of course, right? But that intro, what I want to want, what I want you to think about is if they said no to that, what were they gonna say yes to? First of all, if you nailed the tone, permission based, double minimizer with a layered question and a curiosity builder, what were they gonna say yes to? So I'm okay with a no there, right? I'm okay with a no.

There.

But if they say no, someone nailed it. The first thing is like, because remember, they're saying no to you got a sec. Oh, my bad. When would a better chance time be to talk? Oh, my bad. We do a quick fold. Quick fold, right? Oh, my bad. When would a better time be to talk? You'll be shocked how many people to that will go. Well, I'm sorry. What is this call about? Oh, I'm back in here. like we're gonna stay in the flow versus if they say, no, no, I'm busy. Don't ever call me again. I hate you. All right, that's gonna happen.

Right?

But they say, no, I don't. Okay, when's a better time to talk? Either they're gonna give you a time, they're gonna kick you off the phone forever, or they're gonna ask you, I'm sorry, what is this call about? And that's gonna flow to the same question. So the next question in this, whether they say yes or what is this about? It's the bucket question that I teach. So the bucket question, right, is we got to lead with the problem. So the bucket question, actually, I'm gonna put y'all on the spot real quick. If you're still with me in the chat, put in the chat the top two to three problems your product solves. Put it in the chat for me real quick. What are the top two to three problems your product solves? Drop it in the chat for me. Y'all didn't know y'all are gonna have to participate in this.

I don't do webinars.

I do workshops. Let's go. Saves time, customer onboarding time, help founders, finding partners, measure impact, high traction.

Hi, Raja.

AMLS, coaching and training, recruiting time, labor costs, save money, security, predictable costs, team connections, IT solutions, get out of the house, stop working from home, software development, morale, recognition. We'll let this ride a little bit longer, but 90% of you failed this. Most of these aren't problems. Most of these are not problems. Most of these are benefits. Save time, make modernization, increase conversions, increase revenue, save on overhead, morale, identify, all those are benefits. Okay, so when you are cold called, it has to be 100% problem based. And now y'all are starting to get it. Failed payments. Stop your team from tearing each other apart. Let's not hate on Nickelback, because Nickelback was a jam. I don't care what you say. Okay. Slow takeoffs. Like, you see the shift here? Customer churn, stop over. Now y'all are getting it. So the next part that you come in from this is when someone says yes or what do you do? It sounds like this. Well, I speak with blank all day. So the first blank there is the persona. I speak with CEOs, I speak with CROs, I speak with da-da-da-da-da. Like, I speak with persona all day. They all seem to be struggling with blank, blank, blank. And Jennifer, I'm going to come back to that, by the way, on training the personality. You'll be shocked. We actually do this. not my personality, but the tone. Okay. So, hey, Adam, I mean, I speak with CEOs all day. I mean, they all seem to be struggling with high shipping costs, overpaying for maintenance services, high customer churn. I mean, does that sound like your world at all? Have you got that all figured out right now? Okay. So let me break down the psychology behind this. Okay. So first, I speak with blank all day. micro social proof. Speak with a blank all day. Speak with people like you. Second, they all seem to be struggling with. They all seem to be dealing with. They all seem to be stuck with. What this does here is it makes it safe to admit you have a problem. Because no one wants to be. If I call Pete out of the blue and say, so Pete, one of the biggest challenges facing your business right now. you're like, what? Like, I don't know you. I'm not gonna tell you that versus I speak with CEOs all day long. They all seem to be struggling blank, blank and blank. So what we're doing here by throwing out the suggestions. So I learned this from Sharon Pearson. It's my favorite course of all time on influence. Sharon Pearson, ultimate influence. She's out of Australia. I mean, just a monster in terms of that, like, psychology that she leverages. But she calls it the illusion of choice, where it's like, I mean, they all seem to be strong with this, this, this. I mean, and you're just kind of throwing it out. Like, I mean, does that sound like your world at all? Or, like, y'all already got that totally buttoned up. And that's where we have the alternative of choice with a blow up. The blow up is like, you know, most people don't have the perfect version of this. So they're doing this, right? So what this does on here and also shout out Sam McKenna. If you don't follow Sam McKenna online.

See, we've had her on a couple of times.

Okay. Because I love Sam McKenna, but also forever will have a slight grudge against her because she just nailed the show me, you know me. And I wish I would have thought of it earlier. But the show me, you know me concept. is so genius because when I say to Adam, they're dealing with churn rates, they're stuck, the sales are only coming from them, right? And it's like right there and funny enough, y'all, I just made that up. What was Adam doing when I was saying those things? I don't know if y'all caught it. What was Adam doing when I was saying those things? It's the subliminal, like, yeah.

It'S showing, taking my head.

Yeah.

Okay. right? So that, that question, what you're getting in one question is agreement to a problem, right? Agreement to a problem. Like, are you seeing those things, too? Or you already got that tightened up? Because also, before anyone jumps in, it's like, well, what if they do have it all tightened up? Then what do you have to sell them? First of all, if they don't have the problems you solve, there is nothing to sell. But then secondarily, okay? if they have solved it, you get to ask how.

How did you solve it?

Right? So that intro, right? You do the intro, then you ask the bucket question. The bucket question gets us into a problem. Then from a problem, we're going the enlightenment. Oh, tell me a little bit more about that. What are you seeing? And then most important, what is that causing for you? What is that causing? Like, is it causing long hours? Is it causing slow? Are you at a ceiling? Like, what's that causing for right now. So now in four questions on a cold call. So back to the person that was like, oh, it's a bait and switch. Not homie, it's not a bait and switch. Look at where we're at now. Okay? I got permission to ask my questions. What have I done? I've asked some questions to see whether it's worth it. And then we wrap it with what we call that might make sense. It's like, well, Adam, you know, this might make sense. dealing with blank, which is causing blank. And wait, y'all listen for my pitch. You already you paying attention for my pitch for my product? We solve that. Whoa. Whoa.

We.

We solve that. I mean, it's at least worth another conversation. And then y'all listen. This is one of the most important words on a cold call. Let's get some time together next week to dive in a little bit further. How does Thursday or Friday look for you?

Killer. Just poking those pain points until they admit and then literally your solution is nothing about even benefits, even on your pitch. We solve all those things you just agree that you have.

Oh, right. So, Adam, I don't, I don't know. It's because I love you. I have a template for this. I have a template for this. I'll share it with you. You can share it with the, the audience. Right. We could drop in the chat now for the people that made it live.

Yeah. Drop it in the chat now. Drop it in the chat now. One second. Who wants it? See, give us in the chat if you want that whole template. We're getting, we're getting a lot of.

Yeses from a lot of people that are interested in it. All right, hold on while we're doing this.

And Katie, while you're doing that, we do a section called unfuck my startup. And what we've been doing is so in the beginning, you came in for our pitch slap. That's what someone pitches the audience. What we like to do during this next section is have somebody come up who is facing a problem in the sphere of sort of your expertise. So if audience, are there any of you out there? who are trying to do phone outbound. And we already have one person saying yes, who are trying to do outbound on the phone, but you cannot make it work. Again, this is not the time to pitch your business. This is the time to get advice because, well, for lack of a better term, you want Katie and the panel to unfuck your sales. So let's let's pull. We got a few people. But Dean, did you want to pitch? because I think I know you do invalid phone numbers. Maybe you want to come up next week to pitch. Okay, cool. Let's do that. And then we're going to have let's grab. Okay, perfect. Let's grab Michael over here. Michael Liss is going to come up. He's having some some issues with his with his pitch. But while we're pulling Michael up, folks, this segment now and for the foreseeable future is actually sponsored. It's brought to you by our B2B insiders. Okay, that is our new community. so if you're a B2B founder somewhere on your journey from, you know, a few hundred K to 10 million ARR, our B2B insiders is the community for you. We do a bunch of stuff in there. We do a live event every Friday. We got a bunch of courses. We actually have an Adam bot now that was trained on over a million words of Adam's learnings. And really, most of all, this is a community so you can interact with people just like you get feedback from Founders who are doing the exact same thing. So We're not just gonna straight up sell you. We wanna give you some stuff. So Katie is all about building great sales teams. We have a lesson in our 1 to 10 million secrets course. It's all about how to build a great team. So hop over to insiders.rbdv.com, you'll get free courses and check out that lesson four of the 1 to 10 million feed, 1 to 10 million secrets course. Also, if you just wanna drop insiders into the chat and have me reach out, you can do that as well. and I believe at this point, I'm.

Gonna do this real quick though, Peaches, while we're on it. I want to say you're welcome to Eric and Peter and Tom and Jonathan, because this is also one of the things that I just want to call out of like the human side of selling. We've lost a little bit, right? Like we've come here, Adam asked to drop this. I say, you know what? Eff it. we'll drop it. I put something in there for all of y'all to go and get. There's 400 people on here, and there's four of your welcomes. This is what's getting lost. Y'all, I'm gonna call y'all on this. This is what's getting lost in sales is like, we. We've lost that human side of things. We've lost that element of, like, hey, let me help you. And then when someone does, we're polite about it, so I will. Like, those are things I pay attention.

To.

I pay attention to that. Y'all are on a free webinar with Adam and Pete and myself, and it's like, oh, we just took this thing. Like, I'm gonna call it. I'm gonna call it.

We appreciate that. Now you're getting a bunch of thank yous after calling.

Right. This is also. But we build this in relationships when you got to ask for it.

The king of influence over here, getting steering the conversation that we want. And, Katie, I also want to say, too, when you're going through your pitch, and I want people to know this, especially if people haven't done a lot of phone sales. I mean, I'm sure you have countless examples of two people saying the exact same words and some person producing, I don't know, 4X what the other person is. And it's that tone. Even when you slip in and out of your pitch, that tone is there.

And that's so Jennifer asked this about like training the personality. We practice the tone. Everyone can read. we practice the tone. So when my reps are in a room doing hundreds of repetitions, we're listening to the tone. When we're using AI role play, we're listening to the tone. Did they nail loss in the city? Did they nail a downtown? Did they nail the pizza dough? Did they nail the Scooby-Doo? Like all these are named tones. That's what we are practicing, right? Because everyone says scripts. Scripts, you know, make me sound robotic. And it's like, no, a script doesn't sound anything. Like, everyone here has seen a movie, watched a TV show, listened to a song on the radio. They were all scripted. It's our job to make it come alive. So this is what we. We practice the tone. No, no, Pete.

That was.

That was too monotone. Let's try it again. No, no, no. Okay, I need an uptone here. No, no, no. Like, we practice this. So it. It's a.

It is something, y'all, where we take this serious. Can I ask you something? Do you think that an AI scorecard can evaluate a tone successfully?

Yeah.

That's cool.

Yeah.

That's cool. Where are you doing it?

Yeah. Well, I mean that, and that to me is like one of the best things about this. Like if I'm a seller, I kind of want to know if I'm slipping, but not when I'm practicing. You know what I mean? Like I want to know, you know what I mean? Like, yeah. And that is like an incredible deal that you can just like have that thing there, you know, nudging you back on the rails or whatever, right?

Someone asked it in the chat, right? Like the, when we talk about the wiggle, right? The wiggle W-G-L-L stands for what good looks like. Like we've defined what a good tone is until you define it. AI can't help you. AI can't help you until you've defined the wiggle.

Right?

Whereas, like, I want the tonality. It should sound calm, but curious, insightful, almost unsure, but not scared. We call it the lost in the city because it's something if you were asking for help, because by using an ask for help tonality, you're more likely to pull help in. It should be a slow Cadence that pulls people versus pushes people. When I can describe that tonality, it can listen, and it can tell whether or not it's doing what it's supposed to do.

But you don't think the robot can actually do it yet?

Oh, man.

It gets you in trouble again.

Oh, man. So actually. So actually, I'll be. I'll. I'll just say this. I know Michael's sitting in the waiting room right now, like, yo, like. help me with my business. Okay, here's the deal. For outbound, no. For two reasons. One, it's almost three. One just first legality. Legality wise, like you cannot just cold call with an AI by, like, legally, you just can't. Like, you get into trouble. Secondarily, you have to identify if you were. and so if you identify, and it's like, hey, Adam, this is KD. I'm an AI cold, you know, cold.

Caller over at fight.

You're like, Deuces. Boom. Right? Because as much as people are mean to sales people, they are way worse to AI. It's wild, right? Like, that's. This is why, like, bird scooters never took off because we can't be trusted with these things. Once we know something's unsupervised, we're throwing it into the lake. So as soon as identified there, it's. It's a problem. Right. And so those are there. But in terms of tonality, it is y'all. It is. It's almost there. It's almost there. I listened to a tool last week that I think can do the entire inbound process today. Today.

Right.

Like today. And it's only gonna get better. So sorry, Michael, we have totally wasted your time.

I apologize.

Maybe this is why they didn't let me chat with the entire chat, because, like, Katie, you're not going to stay on. Topic here. I'm sorry, my dude.

It's all good. I appreciate you being here and all the tips in any case. So the first thing to mention is I don't really do much calling. I haven't really had a lot of success with it, but I'm also realizing from all of this that I don't think I was doing it right. So, you know, I would appreciate any advice and feedback that you can provide.

Yeah.

So I think the biggest advice I can provide on the phone is, is one, you do need to know your numbers, right? Where it's like you have to do a certain amount of it for it to work. You know, like if you only make 40 calls and connect rates are five percent, you're only going to talk to two people in the day. And so a lot of times people actually just aren't doing enough of it. So that's the first. It's like, you know, we got to make sure we put enough into it. to, to go there. The second is what kind of what we covered is when cold calling, it's all about the problems your prospects are facing and you need to be able to suggest those problems. Are you seeing blank? Are you seeing like, is that ring a bell at all? The best analogy I, I can give. Michael, are you in a relationship at all? Yep. Okay. So then you, you know, if you went to your partner tonight, said, what do you want to do for dinner? And you just throw, what's gonna happen? If I say, hey Michael, what do you want to do for dinner tonight? What are you gonna say?

Probably get it, I don't know, something non-specific back.

I don't know, what sounds good to you? And then it's a never ending back and forth until you go get leftovers out of the fridge. Whereas when you suggest, hey babe, what do you want to do for dinner tonight? We could go grab sushi, there's that new Italian spot we haven't been to, and we could always just, you know, order in something like, what sounds good? When you throw those out, you're gonna get an answer to it. So that's why leading with the problems to your prospect of like, so what do you sell, Michael?

So yeah, and that was something that I was going to ask because, you know, I was going to ask is it maybe it is calling and the success of calling possibly dependent on the ICP and their persona because I'm selling to a very senior ICP, like in very large top 100 retail companies who are like, you know, VPs, they're making a lot of money. They don't really have time to waste and they probably get cold calls a lot. They don't really bother with it. The type of people who have like, you know, someone managing their calendar and whatnot. And like, and so it's a small pool of people to potentially sell to small pool of leads. And so each one's quite valuable. And so I don't want to also like piss people. I've gotten a couple negative reactions and from that I got scared, you know?

Yeah.

So that, that's like, you know, if you shot a basketball and missed it, saying, I'm never going to shoot again because I missed, like, particle calling is you're going to have rejections. And we can't let the 80% take us away from the 20%. But the more specialized you're going after, the more specialized your Outreach would be. I'd be leaning in heavy on video for you. Heavy on video. okay.

Interesting.

Video also, like, we could have gone this way today, too. Video allows you to control your tone. Video allows you to be a person, but also video stands out. So, actually, Adam, Pete, I'm curious from y'all real. Just off the cuff. How many cold emails do y'all get per week? Let's just throw that. How many cold emails do y'all get per week?

Pete, Adam. Yeah. 100 more. 200.

Like, crazy amount. How many in mails do you get?

A fair amount still.

I can't even count them at this point.

How many cold calls do you get per day?

I try to block everybody. So, I mean, a lot.

Right.

So now first I want you all to notice we went from hundreds to, well, maybe five to ten per day, right? Like it drops. how many personalized videos do you get per month, Adam?

Some, but very few. Even if I don't watch them, I'm like, oh, that's interesting.

Throw a number. How many per month?

Yeah, maybe. Maybe like three. I don't know.

Yeah.

Y'all. Y'all picking up what I'm putting down here? Hundreds of cold emails per week, hundreds of in-mails per month. three videos per month, right? So the more specialized the persona, the more specialized your outreach should be. So video, the beauty of video is it also allows, I'm sorry, Aaron, I'm dude, they're never gonna bring me back. I'm gonna give it all the sauce away, okay? Like video is also multi-channel. You can send video via email. You can send video via email or sorry, LinkedIn. If it's an inbound lead, you can send it via text. Right now here, I'm going to give you all the bonus tip on video that most people get wrong on this is most people send a video and expect a response wrong. That is not the point of a video email. The point of a video email is to get watched. Video emails are not built for response. They're built for watching. and so people send a video and like, oh, no one responded to me. That's not the point of a video email, right? So this is one. Okay, send it and not expect a response. Your job's to call them after they've watched it. But second, here's the, here's the juicy tip I'll give y'all as we wrap. You send it until it gets watched. Most people send a video once and let it be. I send it until you watch it. Send it once, you didn't watch it, no response. Guess what you're getting in a few days? The same video with some different body copy. Guess what you're getting four to five days later? The same video with different body copy. So if I have a 20% click-through rate and then a 15% click-through rate and a 10% click-through rate and a 5% click-through rate, I am now getting 50 of my videos being watched. So then guess who I'm calling, Michael? Who's at the top of my list for my calls? I'm gonna make you awesome.

Right?

Like, yeah, you're calling the one who.

The one who watched the video.

Yeah, of course.

Yeah, yeah. And then you're set up. You're primed. That's perfect.

That's awesome. So there. There you go, y'all. All right, we are right. time there.

But if there's a tact, if there is a play to run right now, if you're like, I want to take a one play, an actionable play away from this call, that's the one. Michael, thank you for coming up, my friend. That's the one. Katie, I have been, I'm shocked that I'm not, my inbox isn't flooded with videos yet. I started sending videos years ago, and I'm stunned. I've sent, I haven't, you know, I've sent a few dozen out, maybe more.

I don't know. I've gotten one in my life. yeah, yeah.

It's.

It's wild. Like, y'all, like, even for, like, my side stuff, if I'm trying to generate business, I take a weekend, 700 videos. Done. Done.

That's it, man.

Adam, you're muted, my man.

Adam, you're muted.

Just first.

Just first ones.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I was gonna say Bethany from Sendspark. She can help with the video thing.

I know Bethany. I know about.

Bethany's so good.

Yeah. Cool.

KD, thank you so much. This was incredible. The audience has been thanking you, saying this is like the most valuable show that we've ever done. It's crazy. Maybe I made that up, but I'll be. It was. Dude, I was ferociously writing notes the entire time.

I think it was incredible. That was great. Just all actionable. You're a freaking just powerhouse. Sorry when you flew into Denver today. It's so rainy out here.

But are you in Denver?

I'm in here in Denver.

I'm at Hotel Teatro right now. All right.

Let me see what time I can finish it up today. All right.

How do people find you? Right here on LinkedIn? Is this the best place?

LinkedIn is my only social channel. If it weren't for that, it would be on social media. So find me on LinkedIn, y'all. Give me a follow there. If I can help anyone with this or sales leadership or anything else, just let me know.

But I appreciate y'all. KD, thank you so much, man. Thanks for taking the time and making it work.

Later, y'all. Take care.