HOW TO SELL YOUR WAY AND CRUSH IT IN B2B SALES

Today's interview has a very important lesson, probably one of the best lessons that we can learn in sales, in that some of the things we need to become better at and some things we just don't need to do. And we may have either a bad habit or an annoying habit or a lack of something. The classic one is is the one we're going to be talking about today. That it's probably the dominant one in sales where we talk too much or kind of the side effects of talking too much, not listening, interrupting. It has a lot of side effects. And the interview isn't about just that. It's about how do you grow as a salesperson when you get into sales because you want to explore something new. You get sick of what you were doing and you want to become good at it. How do you do that fast? Let's get into the interview. I'll sum it up at the end. I'll also give some examples of the classic other ones that we see in all people regardless of what they do, but how they really affect us in sales because our income is based off of our effectiveness.

Here we go. Hey, Chris, thanks for joining us today. As a way of getting started, give us a little background on yourself.

Absolutely. Thanks, Brian. So I've been in sales and recruiting for about 25 years now, uh, in a couple of different markets. I started back in 1997 up in New York City and was there for about 10 years and then went south and came down to Jacksonville, Florida. And I've been here in Jacksonville for about 14 years now, all within the recruiting space, selling recruiting services on the engineering side. I was with a very, very big national firm for about 22 years and then opened up my own firm, Highlander Consultants, just a couple of years ago. Cool.

What's it like being on your own?

It's awesome. No 7:30, you know, team meetings. I get to work from home as well as going to the office whenever I want. I get to, you know, thankfully pick my own clients and go after the business that I want and make my own hours, you know, so it's great. And then of course I get to You know, keep most of the revenue, which is great.

Well, recruiting has always been, or at least when I found out about it, one of the things that I kind of always thought I could do, you know, because when I talk to salespeople, the frustration really isn't with the selling, it's with working for someone else, right? It's the BS of the company, the meetings, the admin, the reports, the silliness.

You're right. You're exactly right. And it is very, you know, recruiting is very similar to sales.

It is sales. It's a two-sided sale. It's more complex sometimes because the product or the person you're selling hasn't committed to doing anything.

That's exactly right. And, you know, you've got to, especially in an economy like right now, you've got to sell the job and the company to the candidate. Whereas, you know, in tougher times, like maybe after 9/11 or 2008, 2009, you know, you had your pick of candidates out there. Nowadays, you know, especially within the technical and the engineering space, which is where I am, it's so hard to find good quality people right now. And they are You know, the candidates are being very, very selective, you know. So you're right, it's a sale, it's a dual sales role in that you're, you know, having to sell to candidates as well as trying to sell to companies and try to land them.

And what have you learned along the way is from the sales perspective of what works? What were some of the epiphanies? Because it's also a tough sale because it's Brand? You really don't have brand. You have relationships. They either know you or don't know you.

You're exactly right. Um, I'm a big fan of the, of the KISS method, you know, just keep it simple, silly, or, you know, stupid. And, uh, I just would follow a system and, uh, heavy activity. Lots of phone calls. You know, obviously do all your, your good research on the front end. Make sure you're finding out good engineering manufacturing companies to call, and then going after the decision makers, making tons of phone calls. Obviously trying to set meetings with them, getting them out outside of the office is always key. You know, developing that relationship with them when they're not in the office, trying to get them out for meals, out-of-office type of, you know, happy hours, whatever you can do to get them away to, to get to know you a little bit better as well. And then activity, activity, activity, just keep doing it over and over and over again. Be consistent. You know, a couple of things that I think I did early on was I would call a lot of decision makers at, you know, 7 o'clock in the morning. And a lot of managers, directors, and VPs, they were at their desk and are at their desk before the gatekeepers come in, before, you know, any of their staff come in, and they're trying to get whatever work done that they need to get done. So you get them on the phone at 7:00 AM. Number one, they're surprised anybody's calling them that early, right?

Yeah.

And then number two, you've got their attention for a few minutes. Make sure it counts and find out as much information as you can to try to make that sale. And typically for me and with the way I was taught was to get that first meeting. If you know that they're going to use agencies or staffing firms, get that first meeting with them. And that was the sale at first. If you can sell them enough in that cold call to get that introductory meeting, then you are 50% of the way there. Um, and then once you get to meet them and obviously get to know them better, you know, they're not going to have needs right away. Maybe nowadays they're going to have needs right away. It's, it's crazy right now, the recruiting industry, but continually seeding them, getting them out to lunch or a meal, if you can, breakfast, lunch, dinner, whatever, on a monthly basis to continue to develop that relationship so that when they do have a need, they've got that trust in you to help them out. And then of course, the flip side is You've got the need now. Now you got to go fill it, you know, and recruit.

And because on the sales side, you could sell a great salesperson even when there wasn't a need, right? Can you do that with engineers, or is that not as flexible?

No, you can. Um, so I'll, I'll go back to even like right after 9/11, or even, you know, most recently with, with COVID and back in 2008, not many firms were hiring. And so what— and nobody wanted to meet me. They're like, Chris, I'm laying staff off left and right. What do I need to meet you for? I'll call you in another year or so. And so my sell was to them, hey, I understand. Hey, I've been through these economic downturns. You know, multiple times, as I'm sure you have as well. But we know what's going to turn, and we know that you're going to get busy again. What I'd like to do, though, is come and meet with you, figure out what you've liked before in working with vendors like myself, and what you haven't liked, so that when you do have that need, you feel that much more comfortable and confident in giving me a shot. And then that was how I would, you know, try to, you know, navigate, you know, through some of those tougher economic times.

And is the market ever close to even with supply and demand? Because it always seems way out of whack one way or the other.

You know, it, it is usually out of whack one way or the other. Usually though, like, um, so like right after, um, the dot-com and 9/11, things started to pick back up in 2003. And I think the term was cautiously optimistic back then. And then again in 2010 and 2011. And those were kind of— and then even now, 2021, firms are starting to come out of that You know, that doldrum, if you will. And that's the time for, you know, firms like mine to be striking, you know, and making sure that you're delivering and that you're ready, you know, for, you know, your firm to be coming out of, you know, this, uh, these economic, uh, issues.

And what motivates you as a seller?

Yeah, great, great question. So, um, What's always really motivated me over the years has really changed. Back when I first started selling in New York City in 1997 and '98 was I just wanted to be great at my job and wanted to earn a great bit of money, try to be successful, and continue to get promoted within the firm that I was working for. And then once I started having a family, then the big motivation for me was to take care of my wife and kids so that my wife wouldn't have to go to work and I could be the sole breadwinner and of course be a great example for my children. Now that my children are all grown up and now that I've got my own firm, I really want to try to please as many of my old clients as possible right now. And, you know, I, I'm doing the best I can at that right now. But I want to grow. And I want to move into other markets. I'm only in Jacksonville and in Tampa right now. But I want to move into other cities. So every phone call I make, every meeting I go on, I'm always keeping that, you know, in the back of my mind that, hey, what are you doing right now to help you grow, then that next office that you want to open up.

And were you always 100% commission? Uh, no.

With, uh, you know, the first firm I was with, with Aerotech, it was, um, you know, you would get a minimal salary, um, and then, uh, you know, the majority, you know, of your earnings were commission. You know, I never relied on my salary Except for 2008, which was a really tough time, and thankfully we had that salary there to help out. But the rest of, you know, the years, you don't live on your salary, you live on your commissions for sure.

Because when I was working for other people, I loved the base salary. And I've turned down some jobs I shouldn't have turned down because of base salary. And then when I went out on my own, you know, because I was always scared of that like first year, that ramp year.

Will it work?

You know, am I in over my head? Is it too early? Am I in the right space? Will I even like doing this?

Right, right.

But once you make it, you're like, that was dumb. That held me back. That did not help me. Right.

You're exactly right.

Thank you.

I started Highlander in October of 2019. And then, you know, 6 months later, COVID hits. And, you know, my wife is like, hey, man, what are you gonna do? You know? And I said, I said, we're gonna come out of this. I said, you know, I know it's a pandemic and everybody's going nuts right now, but I had faith that things were going to turn around. And thankfully here and luckily here in Florida, things opened up pretty quickly. We were pretty much just shut down for a few months, a couple of months, and I had a lot of clients that still had those needs and they came right back and said, all right, Chris, we're open. Florida's open, we're open. Go get us some engineering talent. So I And I've been crazy busy since summer of 2020.

Because when I talk to sales reps versus entrepreneurs, the difference, it's so crazy because reps, they're kind of comfortable, you know, and I go, that is killing them. Then you talk to an entrepreneur and it's like laser-focused. The questions, they're prepared, they want to get the most out of it. There's a goal and they test you and they push back. And that's why I try and coach sales reps, think like a salespreneur. Yes, you work for a company. Yes, you have a manager. Yes, you have a base salary, but you work for yourself.

Right.

And Use all your time, your focus, your energy on that, because the upside is not your base salary. The upside is, oh, I got another $5K.

Right.

Upsides on your, your OTE, on your, you know, your accelerators. And that's where all the fun is. That's where the excitement and all the gold is. It's not being a B-player, you know, scraping by to maybe make your quota.

Right.

You want to be the one crushing it. And if you think like an employee, you'll never make it.

Right.

You'll have pretty reports, you'll be the first in for the meeting, you'll bring the donuts, you're hosting the birthday parties, you're the captain of the softball team. That's fine. But that's not what's going to get you, you know, to President's Club.

That's right. No, definitely not.

Did you always have that? Did mindset? Or because recruiting is pretty close to that mindset. It's much—

Yeah, you know, and Aerotek did a really good job of instilling sort of that mindset in you. And you had constant reminders all around you. Hey, if you want to do well and succeed here, you've got to hit certain goals every year. And the goal was to get to Cancun. That was the big you know, incentive trip. And you got to see your peers hitting— it was called the contest. And you had— you got to see your peers all around you going to Cancun. And I remember the first year I was in sales and, you know, half the sales team was gone because they were in Cancun. And I'm like, that's going to be me next year. And then thankfully, You know, through all the hard work and perseverance and persistence. You know, I went to Cancun for like 15 years of my time at Aerotech. So that was always another, you know, obviously motivator. You want to be, you know, in Cancun on the beach celebrating and enjoying, you know, your wins.

And I've worked with a lot of recruiters through my career because it was always— that's how you got a job. the best jobs. And I always put energy into building a relationship with them, even if I wasn't in market, either hiring or looking. I'd point them in directions of good people that I knew who were.

Right.

And there was kind of— at the very best, they were very focused on not wasting their time. Like, they would not put a candidate in just to put a candidate in. They wouldn't send resumes just to show effort.

Right.

They'd really dig in, you know, what are you looking for? This person— and they put up the objections first. This person, you know, might need to work from home 2 days a week.

Right.

Right. Or they're— they don't like to travel, or they don't like this, but Their reputation is really good at the thing that you want. And then there were other people who would just put the parade, you know, like block off Tuesday, I'll send 10 people.

Oh geez, no way, I can't do that.

You know, the first time you're one of those 10 people, you're like, I'm never doing this again. It's like, right, yeah, it's like, uh, one of those, uh, shows on TV where you're just auditioning. Come on in. They don't, they don't read the resume. They don't know what they're looking for. They, you know, it's like, tell us about yourself. And you're like, well, that's it.

And that's horrible. Yeah, I, like you were saying initially, Brian, you know, you've got to put that time in to really understand your candidate and what they're looking for, why they want to leave, you know, their current job. And then vice versa, you need to understand that much more about your client company that you're trying to help with, you know, finding out about, hey, why is this opening open? You know, is it a revolving door over there? What's the culture like? What's the manager like? You know, what's their leadership style like? And so a lot of that homework and hard work is all done on the front end And I would rather call up a company or a target firm that I'm trying to work with to make a client. I'd rather call them and tell them, hey, I'm sorry, I don't have anybody yet. I'm not going to waste your time with, you know, just throwing something against the wall and hoping it sticks. I'm going to go back to the drawing board, continue to recruit. Hey, I've got a couple of good people that I like that I'm talking to next week. But I have nobody yet. And I let my clients know that even more so right now, just because it is so hard to find good, you know, talent. It takes, you know, what might have taken 2, 3, 4 days to find a good quality engineer takes a couple of weeks now.

Easy.

And longer, you know. So I make that, I communicate that upfront. with a lot of my firms that I'm working with.

And do you work on contract or contingency or both?

You know, so, uh, when I first started my business, I thought I was going to get a plethora of contract opportunities because that was my main focus at Aerotech. But now that I've, I've had Highlander, I've only had a few contract openings, and they've all been permanent placement. 99% of them have been permanent placement with my clients.

Yeah.

And do you care? Would you prefer the contract, or—

You know, there's pluses and minuses with, with both. Um, I think at the end of the day, there's a little bit more homework and a little bit more, um, sweat equity involved on the contract side. versus a direct placement. Um, you know, and there's also a little bit more, um, selectivity from the client on that, on the permanent side versus a contract employee. At this stage, I probably enjoy doing more permanent placement than anything.

Yeah. And when you work with younger recruiters, what do you see them doing wrong?

Um, they're impatient. They want to squeeze, uh, you know, a round peg in a square hole. Um, or that's vice versa, right? Uh, square peg in a round hole. Um, and, and I had to learn that too when I was a young rep. You know, you got to be patient, follow the system. You're going to find the right candidate. Don't, don't force it. Um, and, and of course they, they want, you know, the younger folks, they, uh, they want everything right now, um, you know, without having to put in that hard work and, and that sacrifice.

And do you focus mostly on getting an opening, getting a requisition, or let's say you had a week to do whatever you wanted? You got plenty of money coming in. It's just an experiment. Would you do it getting a placement or building a network of connections with the engineers?

It would be recruiting and making engineering connections. You know, thankfully, I've done a really good job down here in Jacksonville and New York as well. But, you know, I live and work in Jacksonville and I've been here for almost 15 years, so I've got a nice network of clients, and those needs will continue to come. It's, do you have candidates, Chris? And usually the answer is no, and I've got to go out and find them. So, uh, I, I would say since last summer, 85-90% of my time has been spent recruiting.

Because if they're out of a job, they're not going to be out of a job for long.

Right. And but then you got to ask yourself some other questions.

Why are they out of a job?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Um, and, and obviously, you know, there's— there are circumstances, you know, for, for some of these folks. Um, and I dig in on that and I look for, you know, those red flags. But for the most part, they are working and you've got to, you know, figure out how to peel them away.

And are these software engineers or different type of engineer?

Oh yeah, all different kinds. Software engineers, hardware, electrical, mechanical, manufacturing. Biomedical has been crazy from the medical device perspective. Um, it's been, it's been nuts.

And how do they like to be approached? Because they're not social butterflies, right? They're not—

You know, you would be surprised nowadays. There are still quite a few, uh, extroverted engineers out there. Um, a lot of them though, especially the, the more the millennial generation. They love for you to reach out on LinkedIn, you know, email them. Don't call them at work. A lot of them don't like that. But I would say, yeah, you know, the initial shot is, you know, trying to get them on LinkedIn or track them down electronically somehow.

Yeah. And do you see your business— do you want to be the sole proprietor, or do you want to build?

Great question. Yeah, yeah, I do want to build and, um, you know, and, and offer up not only profit sharing, but, um, you know, ownership as well. And then, you know, eventually try to sail into the sunset, uh, one of these days.

You're already there, man.

You get this— not in age, but in sun.

Right.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, you're right. You're exactly right.

A lot of people are heading there too, huh? Yes.

Oh my gosh, it's unbelievable. Um, I just read this crazy stat about Jacksonville. We had in 2010, we had 900,000 people, and then with the most recent census numbers We're at 1.6 million.

Wow.

Yeah, so that's good. It's good for, for me. Well, it's a great— yeah, it is.

It's, um, you know, it doesn't have like the huge condos that Miami does and the crowds and the blue hairs.

Um, yeah, it's got—

it doesn't— it's not just the over-80 crowd, right?

I think our average age is, uh, 35. here in Jacksonville. Much different.

And if you were to talk to, you know, the 25-year-old you, where you had all the energy but not the ability, right? What ability would you teach that person?

Um, yeah, the Probably patience and belief. Like, be patient.

Confidence, right?

Yeah, you're, you're exactly right. It'll come. It's gonna come. Just keep doing the system, and it will happen. I probably would also tell myself, go out on your own a lot sooner. Don't wait so long.

Yeah, big, probably the biggest mistake of my life.

Yeah.

And, you know, probably thought about it 20 years before I did it.

Right.

But it keeps you hyper-focused and there's nobody to blame but Mr. Me. Yeah, that's right.

Nobody to blame but yourself.

Right.

Because usually how it is, the whole time I worked for other people, there was always, oh God, my territories changed, all these things I don't have control Right. And that, you know, the comp plan being reset every year, you know, going from 15% commission to 3%.

Yep.

All of those things. It's like, you know, even now I go, I have nobody to blame but myself.

That's right.

You're exactly right. I have to do the crap I don't like. And there's so many things that are available to reps today that weren't even 10 years ago. On technology, outsourcing, all the things that we don't like to do. Reps should be crushing it now.

Oh my gosh, yeah. And, and I always hear your, um, conversation about— I think it's, uh, CoVideo. Yeah, you mentioned. So I just started using a service and it is awesome.

I love it.

Um, it's a great way to get new candidates and obviously new, new clients too. Um, so it's, it's fantastic. And, and that's that technology, you know, we didn't have 10, 15 years ago.

Right. I was talking to a CRO yesterday and just doing, you know, videos, whether it's, you know, COVID or whatever, connecting with other people. Nobody wants a commercial. No, everybody— in your business, you have the best topic in the world: their career, right?

Right.

Yeah, they all have a story. They all have a future. They all care about it like nothing else.

Exactly.

And no one wants to hear about it, right? You know, that's just for me. Doesn't want it except for you, right?

Except for me. I'll listen to you. I am listening. I am listening. Absolutely.

And on the other side, you know, the hiring manager, they want the best people and they hate wasting their time, right? Because they pick up the phone and they get an hour interview with some dolt and they're like trying to get off as soon as they can.

Oh yeah.

And you're attached to it.

Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah, Chris sent me a dud. What's, what's going on? Yeah, yeah, what are you doing, Chris?

Now, is that a big— because like engineers typically aren't great salespeople, or they may show up with the interview, well, tell me why I should take this job, as opposed to why you should hire me, right? Is there a lot of education there with—

There is. And you know what, some of them I've noticed they, uh, They have taken so much more time and care, especially some of the more new recent grads there. It's pushed upon them earlier within school and as they get closer and closer to graduation, hey, what do you— all right, you got this great degree, what are you going to do with it now? What sort of preparation are you doing, you know, to land that next you know, to land your first job. So I noticed that they practice, you know, whether it's, you know, a Zoom interview like this, or they, you know, get together with their other graduates and try to figure out, hey, what are you doing to land a job? And then of course, every university nowadays has got a career center where you've got professionals trying to help out there. recent grads as well as alumni, you know, with continuing to stay, you know, employed. But then I'll also help them too. Like, you know, I notice a lot of candidates— not a lot of candidates, but a few candidates will say those filler words like um or you know, and I'll point it out when I'm in a, you know, face-to-face with them in my office or I'm on a Teams video with them. I'll say, hey, are you open to To some constructive criticism. And who's going to say no to that? And I'll let them know, hey, you said you know about 28 times. And a lot of times they'll just say, hey, I didn't even realize that I did that.

Yeah.

And, you know, they appreciate, you know, that feedback. And then the next time I sit down with them or that I talk to them, they'll say, hey, Chris, did you notice I only said you know a few times? And I'll say, absolutely, great job, you know, and help them prepare that much more for that next interview that they have.

Here's a little hack that'll save you time. You can like record the mock interview, okay, put it into Otter, which is free, otter.ai, export the text, and then put it into Grammarly. And, and just because Grammarly will highlight all the, the mess, like, uh, you know, actually, really, all these kind of overused words that we have been inserting and no one cares or notices anymore because they're everywhere.

Right.

And then Grammarly will show it to you, and it's better than all of those conversational intelligence products.

Right. Oh, that's great. Thank you. I appreciate that. I'll take you up on that for sure.

It's free.

It's free.

But it's not you saying it. It's like— It's—

that's right. It's an authority, a site saying that to them, right?

Because the engineers, it's all AI, so they'll love that part of it, right?

Right.

Thank you.

That's awesome.

Hey, Chris, I appreciate your time today. Where can people go to, uh, learn about more about you and your business?

They could go to highlandertalent.com. And then of course, I'm on LinkedIn. You know, not just my site, but Chris McCauley. I think I'm Christopher J. McCauley on LinkedIn.

Yep.

Now, don't you wish you had somebody who would tell you that? Or do you? Do you think it would take a while to get over The pain. Everybody thinks they can handle it until they have to handle it. And I think I've had people tell me early in my career, and I didn't handle it well, and the people I've done it to didn't handle it well. The thing is, sometimes until it gets to that level of directness, of clarity, of precision, and holding you accountable and not letting you wiggle away do people really start to understand it. Now, there's this list that I've posted on LinkedIn quite often about the 10 things that require no talent. And pretty much, if you did those things, you're a decent human being. And they're just the basics of like showing up, showing up on time, showing up prepared, doing a little bit extra. Having a positive attitude, asking questions, you know, real basic things. You can search the internet. It's all over the internet. And the thing is, I bet 100% of people who read that go, yeah, I'm pretty good at that. Yeah, I got that covered. But then they're like, well, why were you late to the meeting? Oh, well, traffic. This came up.

I got a call.

Oh, I got a distraction. This thing or that thing. And I hear it all the time, especially— well, in sales, we, we tend to either be proactive or reactive, and most people are reactive. So as soon as something changes, that the fire drill goes off and they go the other way. The problem is that person that you hosed over doesn't feel very good about that. You may not think it's a big deal, but they do. When you're late, It's not you think it's a big deal, they do. When you don't follow through or you mislead or you're overly optimistic, all of these things. The fastest way of finding out what you need to do to improve is make a list of the things that annoy you, that annoy other people, and just hold yourself accountable to these things. Now, I've had one engineer who told me that, I just can't be on time. I go, yeah, you choose not to be on time. He goes, well, there's traffic. And it's like, well, you left after the time you were supposed to be here. So if there was no traffic and you flew in a plane, you would not get here on time. And it's just this people not wanting to face it, thinking it's something outside of their control. Because it requires them to change. But we all know that this is the fastest way to get better. That person is going to be limited in his career because of that mindset that he cannot possibly be on time. It's just— it's BS. I'm sorry. If you won the lottery and you had to be on time, you would be on time. You're on time for the job interview. You're on time for the first day. You just choose to be not on time when you think you can get away with it. And this is what we see in a lot of people. And salespeople are the ones that can almost never get away with this. And what it goes to is more than just the basics like showing up on time. It is listening. It is being curious. It is taking your Your time. And if you've ever been on a call with a salesperson who did not listen, did not ask questions, did not show interest or curiosity in you, what you're up against, what you're facing, that is not a conversation. That is a monologue. And it is not the exception. It's kind of the rule. Well, I work with managers all the time. And the first thing they say is babysitting. And what babysitting is, is that those basic 10 things aren't covered. And the manager expects those covered. Get those covered. Just like whatever it takes. If those things are a struggle, everything else is going to be a wall. And I don't mean to belittle anybody about this, but it's just, it's grow-up time in those things. Now, the listening and the Quiet time. Really watch the video of this interview. I think you'll get a lot out of it. And if you're struggling with how to be good at it, Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting is all about this. It's about how do you start a business conversation about what they care about and build it into something that you care about. This is a skill. Where in sales, This is a performance profession. It's how well you do it, not that you know how to do it. Everyone can learn how to do it. Very few can do it well. And that's the major difference. And once you get that mindset, the basics have to be covered, and then you have to build from there. Watch his eyes in the video. I can just tell he's still working on that listening part, and that's good because he's become really good at it. Check out the courses at b2brevenue.com. Make sure you're listening to the other podcasts, Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers, the B2B Revenue Leadership Show, and the Sales Leadership Show. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening. Here's some excerpts from a one-on-one that I did with one of the students and Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting course. Now, this person really embraced the course after a while. It took a couple of one-on-ones for him to try each step. He kind of fought it, tried to make it work within his current model. And that really didn't have this type of success. And then after he started, he started to get meetings. He started to get conversations. He started to get all the things that I was telling him about, and he started to get excited about it. He started to see the results that I tell you about, where his week was full of meetings.

Now, I'll let you hear this out.

I deleted out kind of the specifics of the steps and the tools and the approach, but they're all in the course. If you're already in it, please listen to the full one-on-ones. When you hear the success that people are having, it's not just the steps. It's the matching of the steps with the appropriate actions and pacing. And then you get people asking to talk with you, which is the goal, which is the fun. So let's listen to it and I'll sum it up at the end and Give you kind of an idea and recommendation if you want to take advantage of this.

And it's crazy. This week, this week I'm full of meetings. I was like, what's happening? And like, I what I did was I baked in like I just I very generic, and people are like, oh. Like, like, tell me more about you. Like, immediately. I have like 3, 4 meetings. Like, I already had 2 this— and, and based on the, on the, on the parameters that you suggested for me, like, oh, go after these bigger companies, X amount of employees. So then by the time I'm talking to them, I already know that, okay, they, they typically have budget. I mean, assuming LinkedIn is correct with the employee size. Some of it was was off, but it's like okay, there's still like a deal. It can it can still happen. And but yeah, I was like whoa, this is like I limited to like thirty connections a day. So then that way it's not like it doesn't go crazy because I remember one of the reps. So do about thirty a day. Like I said, like this week, like four or five meetings, and and and and they're good meetings, you know, and it's just conversations. Like say it's not about like. pitching, but it's about working them up to that point where it's like, okay, yeah, we do need to advertise.

So after teaching this for quite a while, here's the steps that you should take. Take the course once, quickly through it. Find both one-on-ones and office hours that speak to the persona that you want to talk with, whether it be the CEO, the CMO, CRO, developer, marketer, whoever it is that you want to talk to, because we break it down in gory detail. We break down the persona and what they care about, and then try each step. Try it with your friends, try it with your coworkers, and start to see the results. Now, most people will fight me on it. They'll spend the first month, 2 months, uh, trying to make the system fit into their pitchy email and cold calls. And it works a little better, but it works a whole lot better when you apply it because each step and each pause in between each step has been designed over time to be very effective. And then when you start to see the results, all of a sudden people are replying, people are asking you, people are wanting to talk with you, want to understand what you do. It's almost turning Cold outbound into warm inbound. Now, are they in market? No, no, they're not. But they're a little curious. And it's up to us. And I show you in the course, how do you build off of that? Instead of us telling everybody how great we are and hoping they can understand why they need us. And instead of them arguing about why they don't need us. Because until you have active pain, everyone's in denial. Think about going to the doctor. Okay, you kind of know you need an operation, but you're like, can I get a prescription? And the doctor's like, he has to ease you or she has to ease you into the process. Well, let's take an X-ray. Let's see what we're working with here. Oh, can I— how about just a shot? Can I just get a shot till the next time I come in? Then he flips the x-ray up on the light and he points to something. He goes, that's what we're dealing with. That doesn't heal on its own. You have to have surgery for that. He has to build up to that. Until we build up that latent pain into active pain and properly diagnose it and get people to think about what happens if they don't have that operation, they're going to avoid it at all costs. That's why the cold pitch doesn't work. You're just igniting the denial. You're not igniting interest or curiosity. It's just denial. So check out the course. Start the conversation. Get the meeting. It's all at b2brevenue.com. There's an overview video in the show notes. On my YouTube channel and on my LinkedIn profile, pretty much everywhere I am, as well as the website b2brevenue.com. Check it out if this is what you need. You know, this student, zero sales experience, but really, you know, just gobbled up this. And the people who gobble it up the fastest And the best are people who try it and get success. It has nothing to do with knowledge. It's like learning how to do a sit-up doesn't give you a 6-pack. You have to do the sit-ups. They're not fun at first, but then you get used to them and you start to like appreciating them. And then you start to get the connection between how you look and what you do. And so you start doing the things that make you look better. This is what we have. It's not just knowledge. It is applying it, taking feedback, polishing it up, and applying the system to your clients.