Episode 25: Highly Effective Prospecting, with Thibaut Souyris

Hi everyone, I'm Ben Wright, successful entrepreneur, corporate leader and expert sales coach to some of the most talented people our amazing planet has to offer. You're listening to the Stronger Sales Team podcast where we bring together and simplify the complex world of B2B sales management to help the millions of sales managers worldwide build, motivate and keep together highly effective sales teams. Teams who grow revenue and make their businesses actual profits along the journey. We also provide great insights and actionable steps to managing your personal health. A happy and productive year is not only better for your teams, but everyone around you. So if you're an ambitious sales leader who wants to build the highest performing and engaged teams, stronger sales Teams is right where you need to be. Welcome back to Stronger Sales Teams, the place where we provide real world and practical advice to help you develop superpowered B2B sales teams. So I've been looking forward to today. I've been following Thibu, who's our guest, for quite a few months and I really like the work he does. I love the approach he takes to prospecting and running his business. And he also happens to live in a really cool place south of France. We've just been talking about it. He's not coastal, more mountain, like about 45 minutes from the beach. So yeah, really cool way to be doing life. So what we might do is we're going to jump in and introduce Thibu Tibu Suris is his full name. Tibu's about a decade in or so now to selling technology products. So that's anything from SaaS to professional services. And now training and coaching programs is a big part of what he does. So he'll work with all types of different salespeople, SDRs, BDRs, AES and even sales leaders. Right. So you guys who are listening who are really tired of using that same repeated playbook to generate opportunities and drive new business. The world's changing and what Taboo's doing is absolutely taking advantage of that. So he's a pretty well published and broadcasted guy through podcasts like sales hacker, G2 or surf and Sales Podcast is one he's been on as well. So the stuff I like though, when I'm introducing someone is what actually makes them tick. Right. So Tibu's got a young family. He spends most of his time floating between Berlin, south of France, Switzerland, I think, and Mexico. Likes a motorbike ride. I've actually just started mountain bike riding Tibu, so we can talk about that in a minute. But also of course spending time with his family and building businesses. So, Thibau, first of all, thank you very much for taking some time. I know it's early where you are. Very grateful to have you here and welcome.

Yeah, thanks so much, Ben. Very nice intro. Really glad to be here. I'm excited to talk about prospecting. Yeah.

Yeah.

Cool.

Well, tell me about sales labs before we get into it. What is it, what do you do and how are you successful with it?

Sure. So basically what I do is I train and coach Texas people to start more conversations. And I do that in many different ways, but mostly through online training. So, you know, people can go do some videos and really get better at prospecting, mostly around LinkedIn. And the way, you know, I work is I focus on experimenting all the time. So I experiment with different kind of tactics and approach, document them. And, you know, I train sometimes, like wholesale teams, sometimes I coach individuals. But really my job is to help people book more meetings and generate pipelines. So that's really what I focus on, with a strong focus on outbound prospecting. Great.

And that is a sales leader's dream, right, to be booking more meetings, having more engagements with your prospects. So, and that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to really dive into prospecting, so we might jump straight into it. And I think a question that I'm sure you've been asked many times is, can you please tell those listening what's changed in the last three years around prospecting? So, pre Covid versus post Covid, what are the big differences that you see?

So obviously nowadays, I think people are hanging out a lot more online, you know, so a lot of people are working remote on different time zone and everything. So whenever you prospect into a company, they may not be going into a specific office at a specific time. So people are more reachable than ever. But this means that they receive a ton of cold email, cold calls, and cold LinkedIn messages, and they get really tired of it. So what's happening is now it's really hard to get replies. So before you were able to get no, no, not interested, whatever, which is good, and some yeses, obviously. But nowadays people just completely ign so you have spam folders, like spam algorithms that are putting your message in the spam folder really quickly. So it's super hard to get in touch in front of the person you want to talk to. And so what has really changed is that people were able to be pretty average in their jobs when they were prospecting before, and now they can't it's really very complicated job and initially the SDI job was an entry level job. So you would do that a few months to become an account executive and start closing deals. Nowadays you really need some specific skills and I think the job is changing drastically for that.

Yeah, and that's interesting because in the past I think prospecting would have been a lot around habits. You build your habit and you do the same thing at a repeated time and then it's about getting results. But it sounds like what you're saying is that habits, it's not just having a habit anymore. It sounds like there needs to be an amount of trial and error that's happening too.

Yeah, the thing is, a habit is always super important. Basically for me, that's 80% of your success. If you're prospecting is being able to have a prospecting system. So showing up every day, following up, finding new prospects, contacting, adding them to the sequence. But then you need to be able to test new media, new channel, you need to test your messaging, you need to kind of understand what are the people, the specific people you want to talk to, what are the problems they're having that you can potentially help with. And then build messaging, build different kind of channels media around this. And that requires to have an organization where you're going to, let's say, have an habit. Something works well, but you know that in three months it's not going to work as well. So you need to be preparing for that future where your cold outreach sequence will not work anymore.

So it's almost like prospecting is a tech tool in itself. Right. We know that tech changes really frequently, so what you're using now may be different in a few months time. So it sounds like not just about habits. What I'm hearing is it's also about being able to be agile and chop and change what you're doing. So do you have go to's yourself that you have in your habits that work really well for you? I mean, too many trade secrets, right? But we like to know a little bit about what works for our guests. What works for you?

You mean in terms of tools or.

Yeah, tools and habits and how you actually take a holistic approach, both for yourself, but probably more importantly for teams.

Yeah. So for me, what I found works really well is so you mentioned stuff about tools that are changing really quickly and nowadays it's crazy. So whenever there's a new trend like AI, everyone is going to put AI, you know, in their tool. So it's often going to be Pretty bad. So that's what I've seen lately. And things are always changing. But at heart, for me, what's really important is to understand what's the goal of your job or, you know, why you're prospering, expecting, while you're trying to book meetings. And so really, the idea is you want to go start conversations with humans, and then once you have this conversation, you're able to uncover if they have a problem you can solve. And once you're in there, you can actually align that with your solution. And that's when you have an opportunity. That's the goal. And so nowadays people forgot that. The goal is to start a conversation with as many people as you can, knowing that not all of these conversations will lead into business right away, but they will develop you. You know, you'll be able to maybe network, know other people and find people who have problems. And so that's really the idea here, and that's the kind of only constant you could say in this job is you want to go start conversations with humans. And for me, there's a few things that you need to take in account is understand human psychology. So there's a few things it doesn't change that much, so that's a good thing. And understand that if you build a habit, if you put in the work every day mechanically, there's going to be some conversation that start. And at the beginning, it's tough, it's challenging because the words you use, the people you talk to, are not the right ones. But the idea is really just focus on starting conversations to understand what people are going through, and then you can see if they have a problem you can solve. So for me, that's really what I focus on, is building this habit and then understanding how to start the conversation.

So the good news there for everyone listening, the really good news there is that having conversations hasn't changed. It's still really important. We don't, as humans, inherently think differently than what we did three or four years ago. But for me, what's definitely changed is where people hang out to start those conversations is really different because we're now blending the human experience with the digital experience. Right? The best sales teams that we work with know how to do both and they can seamlessly intertwine them together, but the neighbourhoods where they're networking and having conversations are changing. So I know that you love LinkedIn. I've seen that. And you're really good at it. 33,000 followers on LinkedIn. I mean, that's an amazing result in a short period of time now, and I know this is a very dependent answer, but in a B2B market, what do you say is the most effective prospecting channels for many businesses?

So I think it really depends who you're selling to. Obviously, you know, my dad, for example, he's managing a company that is producing packaging robots. So basically they're selling like lines to package smart sneakers and all these things. And so over there, my dad, for example, is on LinkedIn, but he never hangs out on LinkedIn, so you would need to meet him in the old traditional ways. So if you're selling to these type of people, you need to invest in this kind of, maybe more traditional ways, like trade shows and all these things. But for people who are maybe a bit younger, who are already working really a lot and hanging out on LinkedIn. So think about people in sales, HR, marketing, a lot of people in finance, in tech, and you know, all these people are on LinkedIn. Then you really want to go and, you know, use LinkedIn to start conversations with them. LinkedIn is a good way. You can use phone, you can use email. The best would be to use the three channels. But really the idea here is to go and again, focus on conversations, not trying to book a meeting. Because we have this thing called the pitch slap where people are connecting with you and directly they say, hey, I got this service, whatever. I'm sure, Ben, you receive me maybe a few every day of these things. And the problem is, thing I do personally, when I get that, I just ignore it, really. LinkedIn for me, I think is a very good channel because you can use a strategy to connect with your prospect. And then once you're connected, your first degree connection, you can send voice notes, drop videos. You can do plenty of things that are really creative that are going to catch the attention of your prospect. And so for me, that's where you.

Can find that, yeah, voice notes and videos are pretty cool. What's the most creative you've seen, Anyone you work with in terms of their approach on LinkedIn? Got anything that sticks in your memory?

So the thing is, for me, the most creative part was where, you know, I received a lot of calls, outreach, and I don't answer to a lot of it, but I received a bunch of ones that were really good. And the creative part was really around the copywriting and the message they were saying. So it was not so much a video. One was actually he sent me a prospecting video where he followed exactly the kind of blog post where I say how to Do a prospecting video. So I replied because that was really good. So that was good. But the other one recently, I got one where the subject line was like the name of this person, not my name, but the name of this person and the name of the mission to space or whatever. What is that? So I opened it because I was curious. And then this person wrote a really good message where they were making some kind of calculation on how much money I was losing by not doing something. So that was really good. That was really concrete. So for me, that's the most creative I've seen. But then, you know, trying all different kind of things. A lot of people are trying to use AI to start conversations for you, but I found that if you, let's say, have an avatar, a video avatar, it's going to be a bit strange. So I think we're still in the early stage there.

Yeah, it's really clear with AI that if you're relying on it to do anything for you completely, then I think you're playing a dangerous game. So, for example, last week I had a presentation to pitch to. Actually it was a really large business, really, really going to enjoy working with them. And I put together all the content, I wrote down everything I needed to and I just didn't want to spend the time designing out the slide. So I used, I think it was slides AI. I haven't used the Google Slide deck before. I punched in all my bang spits out a pretty nicely designed graphic piece, but it made a few summaries that I didn't quite like. So I had to get in and tweak them. And so my presentation time was probably cut from an hour, building that down to about 20 minutes. But that 20 minutes I made was critical. If I hadn't have done that, then what I put forward would have come across as very generic and I think the messaging would have been poor. The one thing I've heard you say that I really like is that the quality of your message remains critical. So it's fantastic to use all these tools. That's amazing. But if you can't get your message right when you're prospecting, then you're far less likely to succeed. So the adage around having good people in your business, so with good eq, with good iq, it really sticks. So let's just say you're on the other end and you're in a team and your prospecting is not working right. So your messaging is not working. Do you have any advice for teams, particularly sales leaders out there? What they can do to try and improve that situation.

Yeah, so I'm happy, you know, sales leaders are listening to that and the same as sales leaders because it often starts because of them. So the thing is when you, you're hiring people to prospect, you're not hiring just to put body on the problem and say, hey, now here's the sequence. We're going to write the sequence for you and you're going to just be the one sending the email. So that's actually a really good case for AI where they can actually you can show it how to work and it does the work for you. Really what you want to do is let people understand first who are the exact ideal customer profile. So for me it's like, what are the types of companies I want to go after and what are the job titles inside of these companies I want to talk to? There can be more than one. Typically we separate them, what we call ATL and btl. So above the line and below the line. And once you have a clear idea of this, you want to go and understand what are the problems of these people. And so once you get a clear idea of the type of companies, the type of job title you want to go after and what are the things they're working on, you want to go and use this message to start conversation with them. And so often what you see is people are obsessed with booking a meeting. So you go to a CFO and you're like, hey, I want to talk to you. We have a great platform, let's book a meeting. The CFO has a million things they are actually trying to solve. And so really for me is really to focus on understanding what are the problems they can potentially have and talk to that problem. And so really a good test you can do with your teams, just go and ask them to come up and say, okay, what are the people and companies we're selling to and what are their problems? And in 90% of cases people will not know anything about that. They would be like, yeah, we're selling to, you know, forward thinking companies or whatever, which means nothing. You know, it's like not really a clear thermographic or not something I can build a list with. So basically you want people to go and give you a detailed profile of the, you know, ideal customer profile and then some clear problems. And often people are just, they have no clue about the problems of a cfo. And so for me it's really going back to this groundwork, doing this groundwork and then testing your messaging.

That old saying, I'M trying to remember it now. It was wear the rubber off the soles of your shoes, right? So that was all about making sure you work hard, you do the preparation before you get in touch with customers. I don't know what the digital equivalent is going to be. Now wear the letter off your keyboard, right. You know, or run your mouse out of batteries, right? Maybe that's the answer there it is absolutely no doubt that preparation is critical. Understanding what your customers want and listening, right. Do you find that listening skills are improving with the people that you're working with over the last few years?

So nowadays, you know, we have social networks and whatever, we're able to say everything we want, we all have a voice, but we have a hard time listening to others. And so I think like listening, you know, active listening, understanding, it's something that is being lost really. And so I don't think it's something where people are really paying attention. So for me, I think it's a bit of a problem. And so that's something in my training I try to get people to really go and, you know, talk to their customers because that's really what's going to help there.

There is no substitute for it. And I mean, even in this moment here, right, Active listening is to hear your 14 month old there in the background saying hello. And as a salesperson, right, that is your chance. That's how you build a relationship, is you hear what you're saying and then you can recognize the situational aspects right around building that. We were talking about our kids who aren't that dissimilar in age at the start there. So yeah, I fundamentally do agree that it's getting harder and harder for people to listen, so messages are needing to be repeated more and more. So as a sales leader, the more you can get your team to engage in what you're doing, so to be part of what you create, the more likely it is to stick. Because as soon as you're rope delivering your messages on video, they get lost. And even, even for the same reasons we're talking now, right? Distractions in the background. So, hey, I've been keeping up a bit with your social media, you know, your posts, and I've listened to quite a few of your podcasts actually. Now you make quite a few references to ChatGPT and we've spoken a little bit about AI. Is that a big part of your life now? How does it fit into what you do? Something like a chatgpt.

Yeah. So basically what I've done is I'VE created a program called the AI Outreach System, which is a program very, I could say AI 101 for salespeople and for prospecting. And so basically I started seeing a lot on ChatGPT in January, February of this year, 2023. And I thought, okay, this is really interesting for copywriting. So everyone was talking about it for building content on LinkedIn, becoming a superstar, influencer, whatever it was, okay, this is great, but not the focus for me, but more how can you use it to be more efficient? So, for example, a big problem you see for salespeople is that there's frameworks they see. So here's a good framework template, email template you can send, but they have a hard time translating this with the problems they have. And so for me, I was like, what you can do is to feed examples to ChatGPT of what a good message looks like and then say, okay, this is a framework. This is an example of the framework. These are nine problems I have. So build me nine messages on one on each problem. And so this makes you, as you explained with the presentation, it saves you a ton of time, but then you still have to tweak and everything. But for me, I found that it's the virtual assistant that every sdr, every person actually would love to have that is directly available and in most cases for free. So for me, I think this is a very powerful tool for anyone who wants to become more productive. And so for me, I'm all about how can I make the most money with the lowest amount of work? And for an sdr, for me, I remember I was always aiming when I started my job to learn my job, understand how it works, and then find ways to actually automate it so I can, you know, deliver good results for my boss and do other things, you know, while I'm supposed to be working. And so I found that this is a really good chance for anyone to either say, okay, I'm going to do my job and delegate as much of the cumbersome and really repetitive task to an AI, and then focus on what's really making me interested. Creative stuff, maybe getting a promotion or whatever. So for me, I found that AI is really a super powerful tool. And if it's used as a productivity tool, not as something that replaces everything you're doing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Hearing that loud and clear. It's a supplement to what you do rather than a replacement. And hey, we all want to work the least we can to make the most money possible. I think that's pretty natural But I think it's also important to make sure we're doing the quality of work that's needed. Right. You said something else in there to make your manager successful. Right. Or paraphrase that. And I think that's really important that we're making sure we got those motives at heart. Okay, so let's shift a little bit to the left for a moment. Sales leaders today, what are some of the traits that you're seeing in really successful sales leaders that you work with?

For me, I think it's really understanding what motivates people. So I remember when I was in business school, I had the psychology course was super boring, by the way. But there was one thing where they were saying, you cannot create motivation. You know, people are not motivated by you or whatever. They have their own internal motivations. And so for me, it's really understanding what are the types of team members you need. So, for example, you have sales organizations. Let's focus on SDRs that are going to hire, you know, really young SDRs out of college or, you know, going to hire people who are. Who don't have much job experience. And so these people, you need to understand what motivates them. So are they looking for, you know, like, maybe meeting other people and building their own stuff? Personally, for me, you know, when I started, it was in 2015 that I got in a big sales team and everything what I wanted. I was in a new city. I wanted to meet new people my age who were going through the same thing. I met my wife over there. I made, like, lifelong friends over there. That was really important for me, and I'm so happy I went through that. But nowadays, if you ask me and say, hey, if I was working and say, hey, you need to come to the office every day, whatever, be like, no way. So for me, it's really understanding. As a sales leader, what's your team? What are the type of people who will fit really well? Are they more remote, more experienced people, more young people? And basically understand what motivates them and try to build an environment around that. And so for me, that's really the most important. And that's really a big challenge because it can be super tough. And if you think about the generation that is starting to work right now, you know, the best years of their life has been stolen because of COVID basically. So they're going through something where it's a very different generation. They have very different motivation. And again, it's about listening. What do they really care about? And how can you align around that, yeah, yeah.

So we're talking about emotional intelligence here, the modern leader. It's less about what you know, because that can be supplemented really easy and more about how you actually lead people and how you have some genuine care into what drives and motivates them. Yeah. Cool. Okay, last one right before we let you go, because I know you've got a very busy day. So for you personally, when you're out there, and we haven't spoken too much about learning, but I think it's been a bit of an underlying theme. Right. When you're prospecting, learn what works. Learn what, what doesn't work. You know, when you're a sales leader, learn about your people and what makes them tick. And then. And then when for you, when you're looking to do your own learning and improve, what are your hacks that you go to to make sure that you're staying relevant and being the best you can?

So I love learning about different things. So is it mostly around sales where I go to kind of learn my stuff or.

Yeah, well, let's go with that and see where we land.

Yeah. So, you know, depends. For example, I'm starting playing golf. I took a coach for that. Because it's way too complicated to learn by myself. Personally, my approach to learning is that I love to have a rough idea of, you know, what are the rules, how things are working, and then, you know, really experimenting myself. So personally, I learned a lot by finding interesting newsletters, but not so much only about sales, but a lot about copywriting, video editing, all different kind of things. And so for me, what I found is really interesting is on LinkedIn, you have great opportunities to discover people who teach really interesting stuff. So for me, it's really. I could give a tip to everyone listening is if you want to go and find new people or new sources for learning, just go and find people who are posting consistent content about a consistent topic. And for example, there's a guy, I don't really like the style or whatever, but he's doing like a lot of stuff around building a LinkedIn banner. And so I think this is really useful. So I look, you know, like, there's different kind of things always about LinkedIn banner and this person, they are selling like LinkedIn banner service to kind of like redo your profile. And so I found that it's really interesting to learn from people who are doing it every day. So for me, that's really what I do when I see someone's practicing every day and documenting the outcome and the process I really love that. So that's really what I do. And you can think about, let's say Justin Welch, for example. He's learning stuff on the go, documenting. And, you know, that's always really useful to see that.

Yeah. And you've got a nice LinkedIn banner, by the way. Right. You're actually driving people down into your bio to say with stats about what's going on. So, you know, that obviously works. Yeah. And I couldn't agree more. I've probably got six or eight people that are flicking me pretty regular newsletters or types of communication. Then I've probably got another 10 to 15 that I'm looking at sporadically. Right. And that changes for me as we get through a process and I learn something about it. And a LinkedIn banner isn't that important for me anymore. Then I'll unsubscribe out of that and I'll move into something else. So. So it's okay to be cyclical. Yeah.

Cool.

Okay. Well, that was fantastic. Thank you. I'm really grateful for your time today. There's some really key messages coming out of there. Right. Which is number one clearly, is prospecting's change. It's all about making sure that you're getting through to someone to get a response rather than getting nothing back. And the quality of your message is absolutely critical. Right. But some of the tools that are out there, clearly it's industry dependent. LinkedIn is obviously a big one, using AI as a supplementary tool rather than a driving tool. But more importantly, if it can make you more productive, I think I'm hearing is something that's really important to you. And the piece around sales leaders is actually getting to know your team, work out what makes them drive. Light a fire within rather than a fire underneath. I couldn't agree with that more. So. So thank you. I'm very grateful for your time, as I said today. So if we're looking to find you, I know we can go to sales labs. That's S A l e s labs.com IO so they can check you out there. Where else can they find you? Tibu.

So best place is LinkedIn where I post regularly, like every weekday. So you find me Tibos Willis on LinkedIn. I think there's only one for now. And you can hit, follow or even contact me by mentioning this podcast. And yeah, that's really where you're going to get most value and really see what I'm about every day.

Yeah. Awesome. And we'll certainly, with this podcast, when we're out, we'll have some links in there to use so that'll be easy to find you. So yeah fantastic. Well yeah, thank you again for your time and for everyone listening. Until next time. Let's keep living in a world of possibility and you'll be amazed by what you can achieve. Thanks everyone. Want to be kept up to date with any of our free materials to help you build the best sales teams possible? Well the easiest way you can do so is to follow us on your favourite social media channel. We're onger sales teams on most of them and if you DM us stronger we'll send you right back some great resources to help you build your super powered sales team. If you'd like a little more help please get in touch directly and book a free discovery call with me. I run a limited number of these sessions and they're free for my podcast listeners. I'd love to help you out. Until then, see you next week for another podcast of stronger sales team.