Episode 278: David Connors, CEO and Co-Founder of The Swarm: What’s Your People Plan? The Power of Go to NETWORK.

This episode of the Sales Leadership Podcast is brought to you by Sales Leadership United. Since 2019, Sales Leadership United has grown to become the largest collection of sales leadership assets in the world. Check out salesleadershipunited.com and tap into tools used by elite sales leaders worldwide. Accelerate your leadership development, solve modern sales challenges. Use fully prepped sales meetings in your next team meeting. Thousands of hours of sales leadership materials indexed and searchable with a single click. Create your own personal sales leadership library. Head to sales leadershipunited.com and use the code Rob at signup to get a free trial on me. Hi, I'm Rob Jepsen and my mission is to help sales leaders everywhere create record setting growth in the companies they lead. I'm here to share the secrets of the world's most successful sales leaders. I don't care how big the company or how big the team. We showcase sales leaders who are taking what the market gives and then some. This show features leaders of teams who are beating their markets, winning at crazy rates and creating life changing years for the people they lead. The Sales Leadership Podcast is brought to you by Sales Leadership United, the world's largest collection of sales leadership assets. Be sure to check out the all new salesleadershipunited.com fast track your sales leadership development. Gain insights into how other sales leaders are solving challenges similar to the ones you face and tap into over 400 leadership topics, hundreds of video insights, battle tested leadership frameworks and new material that comes out every single week. Sales Leadership United is the easiest investment in yourself you'll ever make. Head to salesleadershipunited.com, use the code Rob at signup and get a free trial on me. Now get ready for some serious insights from sales leaders who are making it happen. And remember, don't worry, we got you. Hello and welcome to the Sales Leadership Podcast where high growth sales leaders share high growth practices and tactics. I am so glad to keep hearing from so many of you on just how much you've enjoyed and appreciated this last round of guests. You're right, they've been incredible. So thank you for your support of the show and thank you for all the DMS that you keep sending on just how much the show's helping your career. I hope you'll keep them coming and today, today's going to be another good one. I could not be more excited to welcome David Connors to our show. David's the co founder and CEO of the Swarm. The Swarm is a really interesting go to network platform that helps revenue organizations tap into the vast power of their extended networks and relationships so they can accelerate sales, accelerate recruiting, and accelerate fundraising. And the swarm's experiencing some rapid growth right now as they help organizations of all shapes and sizes turn to their networks and turn them into a different kind of superpower and create an unfair go to market advantage. Along the way. David's worked closely with high growth venture backed revenue organizations and he understands the pressures associated with high growth in a very acute way. He also understands why go to network is a power source that go to market organizations need to leverage. He helps organizations move away from the traditional spray and pray approach and he helps them throw away those broken, outdated playbooks and as a result, sales see better results faster. If you can't tell, I'm pretty excited for this conversation. We've never hit this topic before in five years of having the show and David is the right guy to do it with because he's helping companies all around the world lead this charge, win more, win faster by turning to go to Network first. So let's get after it. David, welcome to the Sales Leadership podcast and thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks, Rob. I am excited to be here, man.

I'm excited to have you. Why don't, why don't we get after this is, this is going to be one of those conversations, Dave, where the, the time is going to go fast, man. It happens all the time. But this is going to be one that I'm particularly confident that the time is going fast. I'm really excited you're here. Why don't you start? We have 50,000 listeners, 50,000 people that are sales leaders all around the world. Why don't you introduce yourself to these listeners, introduce the swarm and what you do for customers all around the world.

Yeah, sure. So my name's David. I'm from Melbourne, Australia originally. That's the accent.

Let's go. I love my Aussie. Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, that's right. Oi, oi, oi. That's right. There we go.

I'm one of the Aussie mafia here in the Bay Area. There's a, there's a few Aussies that have made the trek over and I've been here for about 10 years now, living in San Francisco. This is my second startup. My last one was acquired by a venture capital firm called Sequoia Capital.

And I was a little company you may have heard of. Right.

One of the, one of the smaller Sand Hill Road and had a great time building a bunch of custom tools for their team. And then, you know, The Swarm was sort of founded in a lot of that experience that I had working with Sequoia. Seeing how the fast is growing high, you know, performance teams were leveraging their network and really, you know, able to lean on the relationships of their investors, their advisors, their partners, their customers, and, you know, to, to have this unfair advantage in the market. So wanted to build a platform that really democratized that tech and allowed everyone to have that, you know, same experience. And then we've been plugging away and building ever since.

I love it. I love your story. I love where you came from. One last thing, just to introduce yourself just a little deeper to again, a pretty large base of listeners, leaders that are leading sales teams right now that right now probably scratching their head saying, huh, that sounds interesting. Can't wait to learn more about how. This might be helpful to me. Why sales, like, what made you like, turn to sales organizations? There's lots of places you could turn. You're surrounded by salespeople and sales leaders here. Uh, why'd you turn our direction?

Yeah, I mean, the, the revenue and sales function is the lifeblood of every company. Right? It's the most important department and the most important thing that's on the board's mind, the CEO's mind, every senior exec's mind. And in this market, just building a good product is not enough. You need to really have the entire revenue org aligned and kind of set up in the right way. So to be able to take that market share and to be able to distribute the product as far and wide as you can. And I think there's been some huge shifts in the market. There's big sort of trends that are crashing down. And it's just a really super interesting time to be trying to tackle a lot of these problems and pain points that revenue leaders have.

Yeah, I think you said that really well, David. And I think it's a perfect transition to what we're going to talk about. You're right. It is a super interesting time. And maybe another word that may not be as nice as interesting. It's a super noisy time. It's a really noisy time. Everybody's talking about go to market this, go to market that. Gtm like had its minute and now it's like such a buzzword. It's like, what does it even mean? All the stores are go to market. So much noise. When you approached me talking about go to network, that got my attention. Maybe we could start this conversation on some of the differences between goto market and go to network. And I Think that'll set us up for where we want to go?

Yeah, sure. So I think you got to dial the clock back, right? And think 10, 15 years ago, when the predictable revenue playbook started coming to popularity, obviously Salesforce was one of the leading kind of organizations that's the champion. That and this approach of scaling up the internal team members, SDRs, teams of AES and then arming them with these tools that got ever more sophisticated over the years. The ability to email and call all of your prospects and these, you know, power dialers as well as mass email tools were then spread far and wide, right for every sales team to use and which then increased the touch points in the prospects, inboxes and voicemails. And before you knew it, there was this, as you said, this overload of noise in every buyer's inbox. And the attention was then so hard to capture. So that's the sort of evolution of what's been happening over the last 10, 15 years. I think the go to network approach is much more focused on building authentic relationships for the long term. Moving away from this sort of transactional approach of thinking in the next, you know, weeks and months to try and close a deal and more in terms of years and even decades and long term games with long term people. And it's really having this appreciation that the network that surrounds a company I think is a lot bigger than most people realize. So it's not just your team's network and your investors network, your advisors network, but also your partners, your vendors, your suppliers, your customers, your alumni, even the candidates that you're talking to. There's so many potential relationships that you should be leveraging that almost, you know, every org that's running the traditional go to market, spray and pray playbook is, is just leaving to the wayside. There's lots of different, you know, terms to call this time. People calling it the, you know, partner led growth or nearbound or you know, a lot of these other like movements. But I think they, in my mind they all kind of get wrapped up into this goto network approach.

What a great history lesson. I, I, I think there's a lot of people that don't even know maybe where that specialized predictable revenue model with the AE SDR came from. And it was just, they do it because that was all what was always done. I, I love that you get we just went into the hot tub time machine for a minute, brother. But back I like that. And you're right, sometimes I, I tell people that I work with 2012 called and they want that sales model, slash leadership model back. You know, we're, we're 20, 24 and, and, and I love that you're saying playing long term games with long term people, that was something that I like. I'm already a half page into my notes on just your introduction. I'm really excited about this. I think that as you're right, as people started scaling the predictive dialers at first wouldn't let you do like a send all. You had to like choose who it was going to. And it worked because it was still had some personalization, some humanization, like I chose you for this. Right now it's just like send to all, send to all, send to all. And at a time where machines are becoming more and more important and we're looking at tools to equip and again, sales at scale. You hear it all the time. How do I do it at scale? At scale is the qualifier you put on everything. You're talking about being a little more human, it sounds like. Am I hearing you right?

Absolutely. Yep.

Why is that so important?

So the, you know, the importance not just of the success of the revenue or, but I think of the, the, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of the, the job and the role as a salesperson. Right. The best part of the day is talking to other people. It's not doing data entry into Salesforce or researching, you know, kind of companies in the web or doing any of that kind of stuff. So I think there's certain parts of the job that are really great for robots and for AI, you know, and I think a lot of the sort of research and repetitive tasks, these low value tasks are a good place for the robots to come and help and take some of that heavy lifting off the plate. But there's, you know, I think Mike Margaret at CRAFT says there's like there's a thousand micro activities that happen from within the sales funnel. Right. And every great full cycle, AE knows this. There's so many different activities that you need to do and there's no way that as a buyer I'm going to trust an AI with even half of those things. So I think in the, you know, where this is sort of evolving and leading to is that we'll have these AI assistants that will help do some of the repetitive low value tasks and free up salespeople to do the more enjoyable high value tasks, which is talking to other humans, being a creative problem solver and helping the buyer through their journey. And it's just a much more enjoyable role. Right. Rather than Spending my hours doing data entry in Salesforce.

Yeah, I think that's a really good, a good segue into this. So. So if we're looking at having the, the sales people do the things that a human needs to do, networking certainly seems like that would be a requirement for a human. Right. I mean, we're both chuckling and people that get the videos of this from Sales Leadership United, like, that's almost like a no duds, like a no Sherlock. But, but very few people are doing it, I think. Or they're not doing it enough, maybe. Like, what's your perspective on, on where people are in that part of the process right now?

Yeah, I think it's, it's definitely an underappreciated asset that a lot of folks have, which is their network and the relationships they've built and they've been nurturing for years and decades. And obviously, the more senior you are, the more years you've. You've had to build up your network. Now, obviously, Covid and the pandemic threw everyone through a loop and everything moved remote. And it's a lot harder to build a network remotely. Right. Kind of. These things happen in person. These things happen with, you know, increased interactions and giving value and creating value over a long period. But you have this trust, right, that exists. Have this trust. And I think that's where it comes down to in this, you know, future of sales and where does AI fit and where do humans fit? And I think in my mind it all kind of comes down to the trust. And as a, as a human, I trust other humans and I want to have another human that's accountable at the other side of the table. I'm not going to trust some AI with a six figure deal on the other side of the table. I want to have someone that's accountable to be delivering the contract that I'm talking to them about and that I'm paying them for.

I love that. I love that you want to trust. I don't trust machines. I trust humans. I think that's the currency of every relationship. Right. So I like that. So you're not saying that we don't need to scale. What you're saying is that we need to find ways to scale that allows humans to do human things. And I think that there's a lot of people that want to talk about that, but people that are figuring that out. We're still early into that game and there's still a lot of conversation around where do humans fit and where don't they fit? Maybe you could take us into that direction. Like, like, so what does that mean? This is. Talks cheap, but you're someone who's actually having a lot of success helping people do it. How do you, how do you start having humans know where they fit, but also use tools appropriately so they can, like. I think the scale thing doesn't necessarily mean that you reach more people broader out that way. I think it's that you do the other stuff faster so you can spend more time where it matters.

Yeah, there's, there's so many different things to unpack here, Rob. Like, yeah, the, there's a. There's a couple points. I'll say. One is that the, the buyer is moving more towards this journey of having 70, 80, 90% of the valuation complete before they talk to a salesperson. Right. And then at that point they want to have a creative problem solver, almost like a consultant to help them to, you know, evaluate what's the best fit given their unique circumstances and pain points. So I think one thing that salespeople can be doing today, and as a revenue leader, I've been encouraging all my, all my team to do this, is to start building trust at scale. And how do you do that?

How do you do that, Rob, is.

By, by creating content. And that's, you know, by posting on LinkedIn or on Twitter, sharing your experience and educating your prospects. And I think this is much easier for execs to do, to be honest. Exec to exec. You know, I want to learn from other folks who are, you know, at a similar position, but I think everyone from SDRs all the way, you know, to A is this is the direction that the industry is moving, that I'm seeing more and more of these playbooks where the execs create content, they build trust at scale, and then by the time the buyer enters the market, they're in that 3%, you know, the market that's actually finally ready. They are going to be top of mind, and they're the de facto number one choice. Because I've been hearing and listening, you know, to this, this guy talk about this, you know, this, this new product or this new category, and I'm warmed up to the idea. You know, I think that's sort of the direction that I see marketing and kind of B2B in particular, B2B sort of, you know, influence kind of heading. And then you're happy to talk more about, about trust beyond that.

But what are some ways that, like, when you get this wrong, it actually screws trust up? Because I Like looking at trust from both sides, like, I have strong opinions about trust. I think there are three Cs of trust. It's your trust in the character, trust in the competence. But also maybe the hardest one is trust and connection. Character is easier to figure out. Competence is, is also easier to figure out. But connection, man, you know, to know that someone gets me. And so how do people blow it with trust? I mean, if, if humanizing is important because it creates trust, what are some things that you've seen where, where we actually blow it?

So I think you're, you're, you're absolutely right. And the, the way that you can blow it is by taking this short term transactional approach and saying, for example, you know, you sign up for the swarm, you map your company's extended network, you find all of the prospective target accounts that are in your icp and then you go and run your same cold outbound playbook. And maybe just you drop the relationship holder's name in some otherwise undifferentiated spray and pray campaign, right? You then burn through all of those relationships and that trust. Then instead if you'd played it more of a slower, methodical, you know, playbook where you actually were engaging that relationship holder, they were then, you know, having that conversation with their, you know, with the trusted buyer. There was that conversation, that trust that exists between them. They're then able to be the advocate for you and they're your champion. You can then back channel, you know, all as, all the way through the funnel. It's not just top of funnel, it's all the way through. So that's where you can really run into issues with, is that running the same old playbook because it's easy and it's fast on the new go to network, you know, approach of having all of the relationships and it just, it's a bit of a mindset shift, but it's also got to come from the top, you know, and that's where it's challenging, where you got quotas, you got your board breathing down your neck, you got to hit these revenue targets and it's easy to fall back into old patterns and say, let's just try and, you know, squeeze as much as we can out of this next quarter. But that's where you got to really push back against senior leadership and against the board and say actually like the industry is moving towards this new paradigm and we're going to be at the forefront of it might take us 1, 2/4 to, you know, invest, but then beyond that, it's going to be a lot more. But even then, I think to be honest, man, I'm not seeing any slowdown in people hitting targets. In fact, you know, we're seeing folks hit 5, 10, 20x, higher conversion to meetings. You know, when you actually just lean on people, you have relationships 5 to 10x, higher win rates because as I mentioned before, you can then multithread, you know, internally, you can have multiple conversations going, you have influence, you know, connectivity to an account. So there's, there's really no slowdown. It's actually quite the opposite. But it's got to have this mindset and shift that comes from the top.

Yeah, you went there without me having to ask because I'm taking notes and I'm on page two already. And I love how you said, you know, be non transactional, more connection and trust. And so that means that we. Sounds like at first you're like, hey, be willing to slow down but you're not seeing us load. It's let's connect before we try to correct. Let's make sure that we are connected. It's funny, I'm thinking a lot about our sources right now. Like I was in a one on one with one of, with one of the leaders I coach. It's a newer person that just hired me and this person said, man, you know, I'm fueled by pressure now. That's what fuels me is pressure, pressure to perform. And I, I'm not happy and I'm not being impactful. All I'm doing is taking this guard rails that the big companies give. And I just want to make sure all the check boxes are green. I don't want any yellows, I don't want any reds. So I'm not on anybody's shit list, right? So I was like, well when was the last time you were fueled by purpose? Like what we're doing? And he's like, it's been a long time, brother. And so, and while this is happening, I just bought my son a car for his birthday. He doesn't know. Hopefully he doesn't listen to the show. For his 17th birthday he's getting a Tesla. And I was like, what battery do I get? Because he's 17 years old, I don't need to get him like the big battery. But I'm thinking about power and how is he going to power this thing? And I have people talking about what fuels my team because man, the minute you try and go back and say hey, revenue, slow down, take a chill pill, I like, that's the Fastest way for people to lose confidence in you. We have to create predictability. But what you're saying is in today's world, it's easier to create predictability by connecting to people than it is by just saying it's a numbers game and we're going to keep pushing the, the buttons on the robots. Did I read that right? Did I hear that right? Like what's your how, how again? I'm thinking of 50,000 people. I love how you said you're actually seeing power pick up because trust is a different power source.

That's right.

Okay, can you go a little one level deeper on that? That's awesome.

Yeah. I think, you know, coming back to that analogy of, of noise, right? What cuts through the noise? What's the signal that cuts through the noise? For buyers, there's a couple of things. One is actually product LED signals. So if you say, hey, so you're engaging with our product, maybe they're on a free trial, maybe they're already, you know, have a few people that are using the, the tool, you know, that's first party product LED signals. And I think that's, that's really powerful. That's not what you do. There's a bunch of other companies that do that. But then what else cuts through the noise? And a human relationship and a trust, a trusted relationship. Right. So a buyer, you know, has a friend or someone else that contacts them and says, you know, hey, we, you know, you should know about this, this new company, this new tool, this product or service that, you know, meets your needs, that's going to cut through the noise. And in terms of how we structure, you know, this maybe one other so more tangible way you can think about it is how do you define your icp, right. Your ideal customer Persona. And I think in the 1.0, when the predictable revenue movement was first getting started, it was to do with the demographic fit, right? So titles, company industry, company size, you know, and you'd sort of plug those filters into a big database and create this hit list, right. I think what then evolved into is this signal based selling. So there's signals that are merging either intent data from folks like Bombora and you know, then looking at, you know, champions moving and sort of tracking those movements. This first party data I'm talking about from product led and there's all these different signals that you can use to then, you know, really hone in on your icp. So it's not just they could be a good fit, but actually they are a great fit and they're in market and they're actively looking now. I think the third leg of that, which is what we're introducing here, is then the existing relationships to prioritize targeting, to figure out the best channel. It's not just the signals, but the best channel to engage those leads and then to be able to wrap around that org with all the relationships and connectivity and influence that your firm has. And that's, I think, has been the missing part and that's the human part that we're trying to, you know, design this playbook around for the future.

So you keep talking about playbooks. I'm guessing that if you want to be a go to network organization, sounds like you're gonna have to change the playbook because it's like the third time you've mentioned it. What, what are some of the differences that like a modern, enlightened go to network and what are some of the things that, again, we got a lot of people listening, like, what are some suggestions? How would you modify the playbook to have this be part of it?

So I think one of the first things is it's really difficult to improve what you don't measure. And having it all measured is the kind of first step and one. But, you know, the easiest way to measure it is basically to, to map, to map your network and to actually understand who is within your firm's, you know, ability to leverage. So that's not just your team and investor and advisors networks, but these are also your partners, your vendors, your customers, as I said before. And what do I mean by networks here, by the way? I'm talking about everyone's LinkedIn connections. I'm talking about email calendar connections. I'm talking about their previous colleagues. You know, there's, you know, even other networks and data sources that you can pull in, like from WhatsApp or Facebook or Twitter. But once you have all of these relationships, you're then structuring them in a way that, that you can use them, right? So figuring out, okay, I have 500,000 contacts, cool. But, you know, what do I do now?

What do I do with it? Yeah.

So then the next step is then prioritizing based on the connection strength and kind of understanding who we strongly connected to that we could be leveraging and then who's more of a weak connection that, you know, we could engage more indirectly down the line. But you want to carve out those strongest connections from the total pool of all the relationships you can tap into.

But when you're building a playbook like that, like Is there specific times do you leverage the relationship all the way through? Is it a connection tool? Is it a proof tool? Like where do you use those? Are you seeing that you need to use as, as every step or are you seeing that there are better, stronger or less strong places that this fits?

So as you said before, this is a playbook. There's all these different plays that are emerging. I think the two kind of easiest plays to understand that have the highest roi. One is find warm intro paths into my target accounts. Right. So I've got this list of a thousand target accounts that as a firm or as a salesperson I'm going after this quarter and what percentage of those do I have warm relationships into? Maybe I have 20, 30% of those. And I can then see that we're connected to the ICP through someone that, that, that is close to the firm and they have a strong trusted relationship. So that's the best play is to then go through that relationship holder, right arm them with the collateral and whatever else they need to then go to the target and share about the opportunity they get the opt in, they introduce you. And that's I'm talking about that has like a 5, 10, 20x higher conversion demanding than as a, as a salesperson if I'd gone direct to that target. So that's kind of number one is warm intros to target accounts. Second one is then pushing deals through to close by multi threading. There's, you know, I think a linear relationship with the number of conversations that are happening within the dog. The more you can multi thread to multiple folks within the org, the higher your chances that a deal is going to close. But historically it's been really hard to know what are the, you know, what is the influence of connectivity? Who can we lean on? So that's the other play is then actually pulling in all of these other folks within the, the target org that you can, you can lean on.

Yeah, your, your technology I guess helps you like identify not just who they are but why and how you start to leverage that. I'm guessing that's right.

Yeah. So using the swarm, our customers are mapping their extended network. They're scoring all those relationships with a connection strength score and then understanding what's our warm intro paths into our target accounts. Who else can we lean on for multi threading? And then there's more plays coming up like you know, job change tracking and being able to use it as you mentioned, for recruiting other folks into our team or for fundraising raising, for getting more capital into our Org or you know, lots of different other use cases you can build on top of.

That's really cool. Is this something that you would suggest to our sales leaders? This should be part of how you coach. Should we be coaching the use of the network as well?

I definitely recommend it. I think it should be part of everyone's KPIs within the org to not only have your network mapped as an individual, but then also how it plugs into the wider performance of the rest of the company. This is where you can pull in everyone at the company to help with the sales team's efforts. It shouldn't just be a siloed sales and revenue department initiative. You should be pulling in everyone everyone's relationships because maybe, hey, the head of finance might have worked with, you know, one of the, the buyers at this new, you know, this new company that's one part of your target accounts. Maybe you're investor is actually on the board of one of your target accounts and you just didn't know about before because you never thought to ask them. There's all of these relationships that exist that you can tap into. And as I mentioned before, it's like you've got to start measuring and tracking this and the easiest way to push this I think is through changing the KPIs, the OKRs of the firm.

This is a really good example of how you can choose growth over grind. I think because you're not suggesting don't work hard, you're working just as hard but now what you're doing is you're leveraging a way to stand out and differentiate. When you're using Goto network, is it maybe you can help like again I'm in this part of my as I'm thinking about this, how do leaders change? You've talked about how playbooks need to change. How do leaders need to change what is. Yeah, coach, like you said, mapping, scoring. Do we also need leaders to change in like their thinking on how we leverage relationships more than just doing like hey, I noticed that we're both alumni of X. That's, that's not the same as what you're talking about, I don't think.

No, that's right. And that's, you know, I think a short term transactional like let me just, yeah, let me just, you know, take rather than give. Right. And it's this mindset shift to trying to give and nurture and you know, help your extended network. So then when the time comes that you're making an ask that you've already delivered some value to them that you've already, you know, given them a lot of value. And then making that ask is a very light, easy thing for them to do. So I think for, for the leaders in the org, it's that mindset shift of, you know, it's not just a matter of building a list and hitting that list again and again and again. It's more like, who are these humans that are on the other side of this list? Who are these individuals? How do we as a firm know them? How can we help them? How can we provide value to them and do that at scale as you're talking about? And this is where you can prioritize your efforts based on the target accounts that you're going after. You can really increase the leverage of the firm by revealing all of those relationships. So, you know, maybe the role of sdr, the BDR becomes more on identifying these relationships and helping to support some of the senior leadership in to, to make some of these introductions and things like that. It doesn't all have to fall on the relationship holder because that's the other point that, you know, senior execs and investors are going to have the biggest networks because they've been building them and nurturing for a long time, but they're also the most time poor. Right. So as a, you know, as a senior leader, I don't have time necessarily to be going through my network whenever one of my reps wants to, you know, try and try and have a conversation with someone that I know. So that's where the heavy lifting of all this can be done, you know, both by other folks on the team, but also more and more by, you know, some of the AI automation that that's being built.

So I like this a lot. David. This is a really good insight. This is something like I will go to my grave saying that I think the most important skill for a leader to develop is the ability to coach people and help them become something better than they were. Okay? Now that skill changes like the tools change the, the way that we have to. I mean, everything changes if we're coaching. Just like you said, if you're using the playbook of 2012, you're probably behind. If you're coaching that same way, you're probably behind. Here's a couple of things that I've seen happen and I want to add what you've just said to it. I've, I've seen when I see people deal coach, one of the things that I see missing is what's the problem that we're solving it's always, you know, I see that missing, but I've also seen even more. Why is that problem matter? What's the priority that they're. That they have? You know, like Jay Z said, I got 99 problems, but your pitch ain't one. And so, and so I work hard trying to help people say, what's the priority? Yeah, problem. Okay, is it a problem? But what's the priority? Now there's a third P that I'm listening to you. Who are people that can help us there? Like, it's not. Maybe not just help us. What are the people that will give us credibility? What are the people that will help us have trust or the people that will. Because I think people will help with that competency. Trust, for sure, but also the connection. Oh, because they get this person, they're going to get me faster too. Would you say that that needs to be a component of how you coach opportunities?

Yeah, definitely. That, that, that's definitely aligned with the way I see the world and the trust that exists right within an org. As a buyer, like, I'm just gonna stick my. Stick my neck out and take this big risk of bringing on, you know, this new unproven tool. But if I have a group of people internally, we're all on the same page about it. We're all, you know, excited about it. I'm much more likely to do that. So it's, you know, moving into this new world and appreciating that the, you know, the, the human relationships matter so much and these deals don't get done on the golf course anymore. You know, we're not in that kind of world where things are, you know, kind of happen with a, with a handshake, you know, over a cocktail of a lunch. Like, I think there's obviously some great relationships and building that can be done there. But that's not all of the deal. Right. You've got to now get alignment from everyone within the org. You got to get the finance team to okay it and to sign off on it. And it's all. And I see you nodding your head along, but, you know, and I think you understand this, but there's a lot of folks who are just sort of trying to figure out what is this new way of working, what is the new playbook? Not to overuse that, but that's what we're helping to educate our customers and figure that out in real time with them as well.

Yeah, because there's going to be, depending on the size of the company, at least five probably eight, 10, maybe 12 people you got to have influence with in order to get a deal done. And, and I can see how the people plan. The people plan. What is your people plan? Matt, that's almost maybe the title for our episode. What's your people plan? We got to have a people plan for every deal. Not just the right product plan, not just the right prioritization plan. What's our people plan? And that I don't see a machine ever having the people plan. I think that that's something that the most skilled people will make sure that they never leave their people plan to chance.

Yep, absolutely. You know, I think there's that internal buying committee that needs to, that needs to be addressed. Right. And this people plan, I think is a, a great framework that to, you know, to sort of hang that on and say, who do we need to get in alignment? Who do we already have relationships with? You know, what status are they at? Maybe applying like a rag status to each of them. You know, how much, you know, how comfortable are they already with the deals and conversations? Do we need to bring them up to speed? Things like that. And I'm already seeing the best salespeople do this. You know, you see the ones who were hitting their quota consistently, constantly having these multiple conversations with everyone. They have a meeting with a prospect and they see a couple of people get added to the calendar invite. They're not just waiting around to see, you know, what they want to talk about before the meeting. They're contacting those people and say, hey, you know, so you got added. What's the, you know, one or two things you're hoping to learn? What's the priorities and pain points that you're facing that I, you know, I can make sure I help address. And having these multiple conversations, you know, independent of any of those structured live calls with the big group. Because, you know, that's where the way that these deals get done is not just on those 30, 60 minute zooms, but all the multiple threads, all the conversations. That's what we're talking about. These multi threading with, you know, within the Org.

What I like is multi threading is not a new term, but some people have turned it into a buzzword. But you are using it in a way that's very strategic. It's very strategic and something you can actually coach to. I want to ask you about one more thing. We're down to our last like eight minutes. I can't believe I told you it's gonna go fast, man. Yeah, told you it was Gonna go fast. I have to keep track of the time because I will talk to you about this forever. You used a word three times in our conversation that I would, I really want to get a take on. And then, then I'm going to give you a chance to let our listeners know how to get a hold of you and then we'll wrap. And this has been awesome. The word you've used multiple times is differentiate. Now the concept that we got to be differentiated, that is a truth that will always last in sales forever, that will never go away. How we differentiate has changed lots of ways. Why do you keep bringing up differentiate as you use this concept of humanizing and go to network, how is that a differentiator?

So there's a bunch of ways to differentiate your company, right? Through your product, through your, your brand, through your positioning, all kinds of different things. But I think what's really interesting is your in as an individual, how you differentiate is through your network, right? Your network is unique to you and you take that with you from company to company. And each company's network, the aggregation of all of its individual networks is its biggest differentiator and one of its biggest assets that helps to set it apart from all the other companies that are in its market. So I think it's this appreciation for how you can set yourself apart by the relationships that your firm has.

I think that that's a really big deal. I'm glad that we had a minute on this because I don't want to just skip over it. I think every single leader may be the most one of. I, I always get scared of that hyperbole. The most. Whatever.

Yeah.

One of the most important things for us to think about is what is our differentiation strategy? Can we be 1% better in our differentiation? Because if we can be an Apple, the, the common thing is you'd be an Apple to their orange. Well, maybe we can be a Granny Smith apple to the red apple. We just got to be the green apple to the red apple or whatever. It doesn't have to be massive somet. And sometimes when things look similar, the fact that you have a better people plan and a better people connection, that could be all the difference maker. It can make it so you're worth more. You can charge a premium. Maybe, maybe it makes it so you get selected. Maybe it makes it so you don't have to discount as much. I don't know. But differentiation is one of those things that doesn't just get you wins. It gets you speed and it gets you price protection. In my experience, do you see that the people side of differentiation makes those things hold as well?

Great summary. Yeah, kind of can't agree with you more. I think it's one of the most powerful levers that a company has that is currently not being utilized. And with even a small investment in this, it can have huge results. Both top of final conversion of meetings, the win rates, you know, I think as well as, as you mentioned, the churn rates and having, you know, better retention from customers, happier customers and having this authentic long term relationships with your customers even as they move to the next, next company.

All right, we're down to our last three. So how do people get a hold of you, man? How do they get you? I, I'm a fan of you. I, I, I'm stoked with what you're doing. How do they get more of you, David? How do they get more of the swarm? How do they connect to you? How do they learn more about what, what you're up to? How, how do you got 50,000 people? How do you help them do that?

Appreciate it man. I think LinkedIn is probably the best place. I've been trying to post more, I'm putting out more videos and you know, as we help to define what this playbook looks like, I'll be sharing that all in real time. You can also follow the swarm on LinkedIn and other socials and then if you want to try it out, we have a free trial available just on the website, the Swarm.com try it out and hit me up. I'd love to hear what you think and, and get your feedback on it. We're still a small team but we're building whatever our customers ask of us and we're, you know, we're in a really exciting time and we'll put some.

Links in the show notes, links to your LinkedIn, links to your website with the free trial, those types of things. All right, so we're, we're coming up on it. So I always like to finish an episode by giving the mic back and just say if you're going to wrap this up and put a bow on it. If you're going to put the cherry on top, right. If you're going to put the, the orange, the orange sec, the orange peel on the old fashioned, whatever it is you want to call it, right. How would you wrap this up and put a bow on it as it relates to humanizing the process and where humans matter and why it's a differentiator. Like get a final thought or two. You know, a couple minutes to wrap this thing up for a bunch of leaders who are having a great experience with you right now.

Sure. So there's huge shifts in the market and, you know, the, the move away from the existing playbook that's dominated for the past 10 to 15 years, the rise of generative AI and everything that, you know, is impacting sales teams and the tech stacks and, you know, the. The market overall, I think that ease. It's easy to feel overwhelmed and to not know what happens next. I think something that's very, you know, important for everyone to understand is that the relationships that you have personally as well as the relationships that your company has, one of your biggest differentiators and one of the biggest ways that you can ensure that you achieve success in the years and decades to come. So map your network, lean on your network, give value and to everyone and have this conversation internally with the exec, with the exec team, with the board and align that this is the direction that the industry is moving and that you as a firm want to be an early adopter and on the frontier. I've.

David, this was awesome. Kudos on what you're doing. Thanks for joining us. His name is David Connors. He's the co founder, he's the CEO of the Swarm. I recommend you check it out, see what it's about. If you can find ways to turn your networks and relationships into a competitive, differentiated, unfair advantage, you'd be crazy not to. He's helping organizations create legit, coachable, measurable people plans. And what they're doing is creating trust that fuels every metric that matters. So, David, on behalf of 50,000 people worldwide, thank you so much for joining us. I wish you the very best and we'll have to get you back on here again sometime soon.

Love it. Looking forward to part two already. Thanks again, Rob. I appreciate it.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to another. So what portion of the Sales Leadership podcast where we break down that interview and we ask ourselves, why did that conversation even matter? But first, this episode is brought to you by Sales Leadership United. Sales Leadership United continues to grow fast. I'm always blown away by how many people are checking it out, and I want to thank you for it. The purpose of Sales Leadership United is really, really simple. I just want to give you access to the largest collection of sales leadership assets in the world. Listen, I coach over 100 sales leaders. They're in big companies, they're in new companies, companies. They're in every industry. I'm talking about people that are new to leadership. And senior leaders new to companies and been with companies 30 years. Some of the most newest, most exciting leaders and some of the most seasoned, most successful leaders and everything in between. And every one of them wants new tools, new insights, new perspectives. They want to know how to build new systems. We talked about it. Today, old playbooks need to change, old approaches need to change. What are their foundations? How are you changing? How are you coaching now? How are you leading up or managing up or connecting to a totally different generation? And the number one question I get, what are other leaders like me doing to solve problems like the ones I'm facing right now? And that's why you got to go check out Sales Leadership United tools, training, techniques, perspectives that come from from the benefit that can only come from thousands of hours with leaders from all around the world. If you haven't checked out Sales Leadership United, head to sales leadership united.com use the code rob at checkout and get a free trial on me now. I really, really dug this conversation with David. I looked forward to it. I was ready for it. But it was even better than I thought. We haven't ever hit this topic of go to network before. Lots of talking about go to market, lots of talk about a lot of things and they're important. We'll never stop talking about them. But go to network is something that's really important given what's happening in the world today. I really, really like his background. David's perspective. We can all learn from it. And one of my first things I wrote down is what is your people plan? What's your people plan for how you're going to go to network, how you're going to go to the market. And I love that way of thinking about go to network versus go to market. Or maybe a better way to say it is go to network as a crucial component of your go to market. I've had a lot of people talk to me recently about the fact that predictable that that old, predictable revenue model of the 2012 early 2000s has run its course and not enough leaders are modernizing their approach to developing revenue systems. And that old system needs to change. And that's one of the challenges that we have sometimes as leaders. We just kind of do what was always done and we don't know how to build that new system. And I think that the modern revenue system needs to include a go to network component because there's no doubt that networks are a tool that aren't used strategically enough or developed intentionally enough or at least as much as they could Be listen, like if you go and do a Google search on the best whatever, like I'm helping my son start a high end mobile detailing business. I'm his investor, we bought tons of stuff and the dude needs to start making me some money. If I just did a Google search on what's the best way to do a matte finish? Because I have three matte vehicles, I'll get Google stuff that I got to sort through. But when we ask who so and so, because we have a couple of providers that we really like, when we do, when we go to that and we ask them tell us how to do a matte vehicle, boy, we do exactly what they say. So I'll take answers from the members of my network, my LinkedIn network for example, or other networks or communities that I'm part of, I'll take that over the results from a Google search every single time. It's one of the reasons people like Sales Leadership United. Instead of doing like a large generic search, you can come to Sales Leadership United. You can see what other best leaders in the world are doing around every topic you can imagine. And so that's the world that we're in right now. People trust people that more than they trust algorithms. Why? Because I know organizations work really hard to manipulate the algorithms, but the people that I know and respect don't even have to know them, but I know who they are and I respect them. Like in this mobile detailing example I gave you, I'll just go to them, I'll reach, I'll listen to them. Every time when they release something, I look at it. And that's why you need to figure out how to amplify those people who are going to help you in your network. That's got to be a strategic thing you do. And that whole concept reminds me of my personal definition of the word networking. My definition is simple. It's networking is developing relationships you can count on before you need them. Because if you only do it when you need something, it becomes far less genuine and far less powerful. So in a time where there's a rise of the machines, people, interestingly trust humans more. So use AI to do the things that don't require human intervention and then double down and prioritize your time and your energy and your creativity on those more enjoyable high value tasks where you're connecting with people and making better people connections. Because connection is one of the seven skills every leader needs to be intentional about if they want to be elite. And yes, connection is a skill. Now I'm hearing This and seeing this in every industry right now. People want the human connection. They crave it. I did a big meeting this week where a team got together for the first time in a long time. And it was a big area, it was like a massive group and they craved the interaction. I'm doing focus groups for a very large organization that every listener will know of. They've got machines talking to some of their largest customers, and they're the biggest companies in the world. And some of the target customers, I'm talking to them, interviewing them, and I'm finding out like, the things that they value because I'm going to help turn these answers into connection plans so their sales team can have a good way to connect to people. We'll help put a plan together for how do we start the conversation in a way that will give us a Runway that will create liftoff. And so as I create these connection plans to expand with enterprise class customers or win some of these big customers, I was really interested and surprised as I was showing some of the offerings that they were testing. And I was asking what's the most important part of the offering to get right? This should, should be important to each of you. The answer surprised me. She told me anything that doesn't include a rep that I can talk to is something I'm not interested in. And that sat me down for a second. As I thought about it, I instantly understood why in this world where we have a push to automate more and let people self serve more and have less touch involved, it's become actually very difficult to get someone who will actually talk to you. So I love how David emphasized trust in this discussion. People want trust. People value trust. Trust is the fuel that will make your team go. And the less personalized your process is, the harder it becomes to build trust. Trust. I've seen in many companies you earn a price premium when people have an existing relationship and there's trust. It allows you to charge more for the services or products that you provide. Because of the trust element, you don't get into these price wars where it's a race to the bottom. And that is best created when there's a human interaction. Now, I'm not saying you can't do it without that human element. I'm just saying it's a lot harder to do. And I loved how David finished our conversation when he talked about change. How you think. Change how you think as a leader and be intentional about finding those customers on the other side of that aisle. Where are they out there? What Are the. What are the new problems they face? How do they prioritize them? It reminded me of John Kaplan when he was talking about where are those people and how have the problems Chase changed And more importantly, how are they prioritized? And if there's only one thing you get from this conversation with David, it's I hope it's this. You differentiate in today's world through your network. The humans who can beat the drum for you will always be able to beat it better and differently than you can beat it yourself. This concept alone, if you can start to leverage it and implement it, will speed up your cycle time, improve your win rates and help build better, more reliable pipelines. So, David, thank you for joining me. Congrats on the success you're creating at the Swarm. You are doing some amazingly cool things and I hope every listener goes to check your you out. David's put together a special officer for offer for the listeners of our show. I want to pause on this. I hope that you take advantage of this. He put together a special offer specifically for the listeners of the sales Leadership podcast. I've got the link in the notes. Okay. In the show notes. Use that link and you're going to get a free month of the Swarm on David when you choose one of his packages. And I'm pumped with this offer and I hope you'll take him up on it. I hope each of you uses the links in the show notes to connect to David, to leverage his resources to learn more about go to network instead of just go to market. And as a result, intentionally create a more humanized experience for the people you work with. But ultimately, I hope that you can use this and your interactions with David to create more trust with the customers and prospects you engage with. Because trust always has been and always will be the currency of relationships. It is always being built or destroyed. So double down on trust. It's a fuel source that will take you places nothing else can. And then be sure to head to Sales Leadership United for video clips of this conversation with Jake and hundreds of others with David and hundreds of others of sales leaders. David has videos here you're going to want to dive into. There's going to be several videos from this episode with Dave that you're going to want to leverage as you help the members of your team change their DNA and go to network instead of just go to market. I want to finish with thanking each of you for continuing to support the show. The greatest compliment you give is when you share it with someone who needs it. Introduce them to the Sales Leadership Podcast. Leave us a review on itunes. You could support the show by checking out Sales Leadership United Head Sales leadershipunited.com and check it out and you'll be glad you did. Don't ever forget that it's our job as Sales leaders to create life changing years for the people we lead. If you liked this message, share it and then get after it. Because life is short. We got no guarantee of what comes tomorrow. Maximize your today. Be elite, Live strong and chase your passions and do your best work so you can live your best life. And don't ever forget, you got this and I got you. Have a terrific week. Thank you so much for joining the Sales Leadership Podcast, the award winning Sales Leadership Podcast for those sales leaders looking to create legendary impact to those they lead. The greatest compliment you can give is to share this show and any of your favorite episodes with your fellow sales leaders, social media followers or other communities you're part of. The Sales Leadership Podcast is brought to you by the Jepsen Performance Group. If you want to discuss discuss any of the topics discussed on the show, want to level up your leadership impact, discuss executive coaching services or even include me at an upcoming event, hit me up@robetpg.com that's rob pg.com and to those of you working to become a legendary sales leader, I salute you and wish you much success on your journey. Whenever you need someone in your corner, you know where to find me.