THE SECRET TO HAVING THE CONNECTION YOU WANT WITH CLIENTS

There's so much to learn about sales. And one of the things I'm adding to the show, the podcast, is an after show where I'm going to answer questions, uh, dig in deeper, uh, in a discussion-based, community-based approach on LinkedIn. Uh, we'll go live. I'm thinking Wednesday or Thursday, or maybe both, uh, early afternoon Eastern time, midday, uh, West Coast. And really take out the key distinctions that I'm learning through these interviews and present them back to you folks, see what you think, answer your questions, discuss the topics with you. So look forward on both my profile on LinkedIn and on the podcast company page. I'll post it on both. I'm not sure which one I will discuss it with. But if you see it and you're interested, sign up. I will record them all. They'll all be put up onto YouTube as well so that you can watch it at your convenience if that's your bag, or if you want to participate, look for those times. Probably, you know, get settled in on a time in the next week or so, seeing what works best for everybody. Not everybody, but most people. And today's interview, we've got a great guest, a podcast listener for a long time. and somebody who I've learned to connect with over on LinkedIn. But what we're going to learn today, and one of the key distinctions and the key mistakes that we make early in sales, is we put on our sales voice. We put on our sales persona. Now, there's a time and a place for being a little different. Like when I'm doing the podcast, I try and bring the energy because you're listening. I'm not talking to you in a coffee shop or at a bar. Um, kind of pumped into your ears. So I try and bring the energy a little bit up, and you're probably thinking, Brian, that's high energy, get on it. But what we have to do when we're selling and conversing and building rapport with people is kind of mirror them, their level of energy, their level of excitement, their vocabulary, and not put on our sales voice and start talking about following up and circling back. And touching base and, you know, put on the corporate talk because we think that builds rapport. But what it really does is it keeps us in that sales rep zone, much like what the dating zone or the friend zone is in dating. When people have a perspective on you, a vantage point, an opinion on you, that's tough to change. What we want is a free, open, honest, proactive communication. And in the correlation between the deals that close and the deals that don't, that is one of the elements. Because if you have that, you get early signals into where the deal is and where it's going. You get in, you get real honest coaching from your coach, your champion, about what they're up against. If you don't have that rapport, what you get is the company line. Oh, well, it's under advisement. It's in the approval process. And what that really means is stuck in somebody's email box and they don't really know why they should care and they don't care and it's never getting out of there, which we all equate to status quo, no decision. No, that's clearly not knowing how to get the deal done. And let's face it, we're in sales to get deals done. The rest of it is just activity, busywork, and skills as well to get it done. Let's get into the interview. I hope you enjoy it. He's a great guy. I'm excited.

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

Yeah, so right now I'm the EVP of Sales and Partnerships at a company called BreakTime Media, and we build digital content mostly for CPGs like General Mills, Unilever, PepsiCo, anybody that you have in your cupboard or your bathroom, they're probably a client of ours. And the content we build tends to be really interactive, like personality quizzes, videos, and then we promote it to an audience and guarantee performance against it. So been here for 8 and a half years now, which is a lifetime. And then prior to this, worked in a B2B tech marketing role at a company called TechTarget.

Yeah. And why sales for you?

You know, I think it's one of those things you fall into after college when you're like, I don't know what I want to do. Right. And you're like, do I want to be an accountant or do I want to go into sales? And I had some friends who were, you know, first-year sales reps at a company that I worked at, TechTarget, and I had to do an entrepreneurship job shadowing and I job shadowed my friend. And the next thing you knew, I walked out of the job shadow with an offer. So I was like, guess I'm doing this now. Yep.

Did it feel natural at first or was it kind of a fish out of water?

I think some of it was natural. Connecting with people, I've always been pretty good with, but I think just like anybody else, there was a ton of stuff that didn't feel natural. Anytime you go into something new, there's some troubles and you lose confidence. You're like, was this the right decision for me? So I think some things were natural and some things weren't, and you just kind of work through it.

How long did it take before you felt like you were good at it?

Uh, I don't know. I've been doing it for 13 years, so I'm still getting there.

Yeah.

Right. Uh, I think there are certain parts of your job that you're always really good at, and then there are other things that you just gotta keep working at. So I think, you know, the way I talk to my team is continuous improvement all the time. We're not perfect. We're not even close. So let's just try to get better every day. And that's honestly the, the kind of mentality that I've always taken.

And selling, you're selling to marketing people, right? That's your persona.

Correct.

Yeah. They're easy, aren't they?

They're, you know, I'll tell you, I like selling to marketers because I feel like that's how my brain works.

Is it?

Especially consumer marketing, right? I think it's cool because if you see a commercial, Brian can be like, was that good? Was that bad? Did that impact me? Does that make me want to buy the product? So I like selling to marketers because I can more so understand where they're coming from because it's in the consumer landscape. So yeah, that's good, but they also have a million options, right? So it's why us over everybody else?

And also a short attention span.

Yeah, I guess it depends on who you're talking to, but they're all super, super busy. So one of the things that we always preach is just make sure that whatever you're pitching, however you're pitching it, it's as simple as possible and it's always about what's in it for them. Why does it matter? Why do they care what you're selling?

Yeah. As opposed to what is it and how's it work?

Yeah. Those details we can get into later, but hey, what's the output that is going to end up happening here for you? Let's start there and then move backwards.

And I got to imagine CPG is obviously big companies, right?

Massive.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's not small startups, venture-backed. No, they've been around forever.

Yep.

And getting them to change or take on something new, is there a particular method that you've come up with for that or?

No. If I had a method to it that worked, I'd be multimillionaire, right? But I think the methods that we use are just showing data as to how things performed previously, whether at their organization or like organizations. And then starting in that place and then just really being really good about asking questions, understanding needs, and then coming with a solution.

Yeah. And did you come up with that or was that just trial and error or was that what the company was doing before you got there or?

Yeah, I think there's always been a part of the solution-oriented sale at BreakTime. Yeah. But I think it's just How I've been able to be successful is understanding problems and then coming with a solution, as opposed to just having a product and saying, here's what our product does, it's awesome, you need it, right? They have to understand why they need it. And if you can understand, hey, what's causing you headaches every day? And if you can alleviate some of that pain that they're having, that's usually a trigger for people to buy.

And what's the hardest part of the sale?

It's a good question. I think just getting in, you had mentioned CPGs are massive companies, right? So they're very used to doing certain things with, you know, it's kind of like recycle, refresh, let's do the same thing that we did the year before, the quarter before. So getting somebody to take time away from their day to say like, hey, you should use us as a new vendor, here's why. I know it's going to be extra effort, but it's going to pay dividends for you. So being a change agent in that respect is probably the hardest piece.

Yeah. And do they probably all use agencies too, don't they?

Yeah, that's a great point. Everybody has an agency and then usually it's 3 or 4 different agencies, some for media, some for creative, some for what's called shopper marketing, some for consumer promotion. We'll at any time be talking to 2 to 3 agencies under one CPG to get a deal done.

And did they connect you to the agency, or does the agency connect you to the prime, the real, the end customer?

Usually the, the former. So we'll start talking to the client directly. They'll say, this is really cool, you should talk to our agency. Agencies usually like to hold their cards close to the, the vest and say like, Don't, don't talk to my client. But we have found a lot of luck in showing clients what we can do and what we've done for some of their peers, and then getting that intro to the agency, which makes the agency a whole lot more susceptible to actually taking the meeting.

Yeah.

And which one's easier to sell to?

Hmm, it depends client to client, right? But the benefit to agencies is that they have multiple clients. So if something doesn't work out with One CPG, they probably have 4 others that they're like, oh, your solution is perfect for this thing that I'm working on over here. So we've had a lot of luck in getting in with agencies, them seeing the results of programming and then bringing us to different clients.

And what was your motive to get into leadership versus staying a rep?

Yeah, I think you just always want to grow. And I think once things get like a little stagnant, you want to try to figure out, hey, what's next? Like, how can I challenge myself in my career? And just decided to take on a leadership role with like 1 or 2 reps at first, and then started running the whole sales and partnership program at BreakTime. And I think the hardest part is going from an individual contributor where it's like, hey, I did all this and that's my motivation and that's what inspires me. And then flipping that to be like, I need to be inspired by other success. That's something I'm still certainly working on, but it's also once you see somebody who you've kind of groomed crush a call, get a big deal, there isn't much of a better feeling than I can remember in the past few years for sure.

Yeah. And has that kind of supplanted the kind of money motivation and individual contributor? I got this, I started with nothing and here it is.

Yeah, I think so. There's still such a high, right?

Yeah.

When you're in a room, like in a big conference room and you know, you just crushed a pitch, like there's not much to me that's better than that. I still love to be involved, but obviously seeing reps dominate too is super cool. So I don't wanna just come in here and BS you and say like, no, no, no, like I don't like to sell anymore. I just like to lead. I still like to do both. I like to have kind of that hybrid approach for sure.

Yeah, and the hybrid, it gives you a taste of both, but the context switching can be kind of schizophrenic at times, can't it?

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah, that's, that's an interesting balance, right, is when to, when to stop and let it go and when to jump in. So I'm still learning that piece for sure.

Yeah.

And what was that first year like? Was it hard or was it natural? Because, you know, some reps have that natural tendency to kind of be the team lead where others are like, yeah, I know what I'm doing, leave me alone. Yeah, I—

for me, what I realized I was not good at was explaining why I did what I did as a rep. It just kind of came natural to me, and then I realized that I needed to develop like teaching language as to, hey, here's what you're doing, here's the why behind it, here's what I did, here's why I did it. So I think the last few years I've really been focused on making sure all my reps know the why instead of just moving really fast and making changes on proposals or emails or pitches, and then all of a sudden them being like, well, why'd you do that? It worked, but, but why? And that's been a focus of mine the last couple years is making sure I'm telling them the why.

And how about like the, the performance of the job? Because you brought that up, that we're not perfect, right? Which also means you're not awful. And each call, pitch, interaction has a level of quality to it. How do you keep other people thinking that way, as opposed to, I know what I'm doing? Sure.

So one of the things that we preach is just doing absolutely everything with purpose, from prospecting to building a proposal, to making sure the— quite literally, the T's are crossed and the I's are dotted on a contract. So I think from our standpoint, everybody that we have is a full-time and full-cycle seller. So from setting their own meetings to sending contracts and managing the program. So I think just making sure your reps know that every piece of The sales cycle is super important and everything has weight as to how it's going to impact something later on. So we just try to think of do everything with purpose. How you do one thing is how you do everything and just focus on one thing at a time and move from there.

And what do you see as the difference between the very best reps you've observed? It doesn't have to be current or on your team, just in your career and the good ones, the ones that are You know, good solid players, but they're not killing it.

Yeah. So I think going back to what I said a couple seconds ago is just they do everything with purpose, right? From outreach to, you know, pitching a client, they pay attention to the details. They don't just go through the motions, right? I think everybody's had reps where they just go through the motions and you're like, hey, you need some weight behind this. You need to understand the purpose. And I think just in general, the best reps, and I'm sure you know this, they They tend to think about where to skate versus just chasing the puck.

Yeah. And when you say purpose, what does that mean to you?

So I think sometimes people just go through motions. If you're making calls, it's like, hey, I know I just need to make 20 calls today, right? But what if somebody answers? Do you know what you're going to say? Do you know when they say this, where to go from there? Do you know everything that could happen in that situation? So I think just taking a moment and just thinking, hey, what is the desired output here? And saying, I need to do everything with purpose instead of just going through the motions, because that's what's really going to impact everything is if you're prepared and if you're doing it with purpose.

Kind of both combination of thinking and caring.

Definitely. Absolutely. Yeah. The effort, the thinking, the caring, and just being overly prepared. Is incredibly important because I'm sure— I know it's happened to me, but you know, you're a rep, you're making calls, nobody's answering. All of a sudden a bigwig answers and you're not ready for it and you just want that, that 10 seconds back. And all you had to do was put a little forethought into it, take a beat and say like, okay, when he answers, when she answers, what am I going to say? And if they say this, what am I going to say? And it's amazing what forethought can do for the success of, Your business?

Because a lot of leaders think that's just innate and doesn't need any prep, any practice, any thought. It's like, um, walking, like it's just unconscious. And because I did a post on LinkedIn about this, that thinking is the most important activity that no one gives any time for. And one leader says, well, you can think all day, and if you don't do anything, Or you can do it all day and not think and get nothing. Because people look at thinking like it's, do that on your own time. When you're here, you're digging and shoveling and piling up deals. Yeah.

I mean, I would obviously side with you on that where it's, if you're not thinking before you're doing something, you could just outsource that job anywhere to anybody, right? Like anybody can do it. You have sales reps because you have a product that people need to buy. They're not just lining up at your door to buy it, right? So there's a lot that goes into making sure people know why it's there, how it makes sense, how it benefits them. And that's the job of the sales rep, right, is to make sure that every prospect possible knows what you can do for them. And it's going to be a different message for each person. So you can't just— Send the same thing and rinse and repeat. It's gotta be thought about. And when you're on a call, like the prep work that goes in beforehand is super important. The prep work that goes into building a proposal and the prep work that goes into even cold calling is, is super important. So forethought is something that we preach a lot. And then we'll also just talk to, to our reps. And one of the things that I always say is do whatever your future self is gonna be the most excited about. So think about today. If you're Brian tomorrow morning, what are you going to wish that you did? And do it now. Don't wait.

Yeah, because a lot of leaders don't think that way. They like give the KPIs, the activity drives results. And it's like, well, activity is one ingredient. You need it.

We all got to get out of bed in the morning.

Yeah.

Right. But that doesn't mean you're going to be successful in sales, especially something that's so artisanal as the communication of— especially a lot of the people that are selling in your company probably aren't marketing people by trade.

No, they're all sellers. Right. So it is— yeah, I couldn't preach enough that the thought before you do something is incredibly important. And those who think that you can just get away with making 100 calls and making sure that you have those numbers up, you know, maybe that works for some companies. I know it does not work for ours because we need to have strategic conversations. And especially these days where if email is your tool to get through to people, every marketer in the world is ignoring every email they're getting. So what are you going to do to stand out? How are you going to make it about them? How are you going to get them interested? And it's going to be, I'm not sending a rinse and repeat email to everybody. It's, hey, I thought about what Brian cares about. I researched Brian. I know his company in and out. Here's a short and sweet message that says, I know you. Here's what we can do. Here's why you care. Boom. Let's talk about it.

And that's it. That empathy, understanding what the other person cares about. Making it about them requires you to think about them.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Required reading, How to Win Friends and Influence People, at our company.

Right.

And, you know, everyone reads it, but it takes a lot to— because that's a real advanced skill, you know, that thinking like somebody else that you haven't met yet.

Definitely.

And your persona, I think, is one of the hardest. It's definitely one of the most beat up and ephemeral. You have a great conversation and things change the minute you hang up.

Hmm.

I've dealt with a lot of marketing people in the last couple of years.

Yeah.

And they've got infinite options and everything sounds great. And they always start in one direction and like a cat with a little laser toy, You know, right? Yeah, because they're always beat up.

Everyone in the company's got an opinion about their marketing, right?

Certainly.

Yeah. Have you found a particular way of developing reps?

So on our side, we have a pretty robust training program as they're coming on, and then Allowing them as we're going through and they're setting up calls to break up the calls to at first let them focus on, hey, I'm really confident in this piece, and then adding little bits into it. So they might take the upfront questions on the first ever call they set up, and then I'll take the pitch and the closing piece. And then the next time they'll take the questions and the pitch, and the next time they do all 3 of them. So It's almost like bringing up a minor league pitcher too early. We try to be very careful so that our reps can maintain confidence and learn. And then we're constantly doing just continued education, which I think is wildly important, from online trainings to watching masterclasses together. We do a book club. So every week we meet and talk about a book that one of the reps gets to choose, the new book after we finish the old one, and they lead the discussion. So— Those are ways that we're constantly training and just kind of learning new things and making sure everybody's on the same page.

Well, I like the book club thing because books come up a lot and if you read them, it's good, but if you discuss them, it's great.

Yeah. And then we make sure that people come with examples of how they used what they learned in whether it's client outreach, Interactions. Because the other thing is, you can read a book, you can discuss it, but if you don't put it into practice, nothing's changed in your life. So we want to know how you're doing with that, what you've done. Even if it's uncomfortable and it doesn't work, just try it, see what happens. And you never know, you might get something that's going to work for you the rest of your life. I know that's happened to me in a few instances, and now it's just hardwired into me based on things that I've learned and then put into practice.

And when you look into higher reps, what are the key things that you look for?

It's a good question. So we had a BDR posting and in 2 days we got 150 applications.

Wow.

Yeah. So that was, it was a lot. And then through interviews, I think a few of the things that we look for is just coachability, active listening, good questions based on what they've heard. Right. So going along with active listening, Detailed follow-up afterwards. I've noticed a lot of younger reps these days just send the most generic stuff, 2-line sentence. Hey, it was great to meet you. Would love to take next steps. Why do you want to take next steps?

What did you—

what other questions do you have? Why you? So that type of detail goes a long way.

Because a lot of hiring managers send me notes. It's like, do people not send follow-up? Emails anymore after an interview.

Man, I— there was a couple people who did a really good job on the interviews recently and then didn't send an email follow-up. And we're like, what are you doing?

Right.

What are you doing?

And that's it. And it's not just thanks for your time, great to meet you. What you stated was like, why are you interested? Why are you a great match? What did you get out of the interview? What additional questions do you have? Can you drive a next step?

Because that's what you need with clients too, right? Like, you're gonna— you want to translate that into a foreign function, right? No, no. So that'd be advice for reps is if you're looking for a job, make sure that you're, you're putting the time and a purpose behind your follow-up with that hiring manager or whoever you talk to.

And what signals do you look for as far as coachability? Is there particular questions, or do you See if it surfaces naturally? Do you look for it in the resume? Do you look for some past situations where they've been kind of on a team and coached and gotten feedback? It may not have been—

It's a good question. A lot of times what we'll do is there'll be multiple interviews with us, and we'll give them feedback on what they did well the first interview, and then have them see if they, they take that feedback and put it into action in the next interview. Or when we're giving feedback, because one of the things that we do is, all right, if you want to work for us, your final interview is going to be like, give us a pitch on what BreakTime does. And what we want is to give somebody feedback right there and then and have them be like, all right, let me do it again. Let me do it again. Let me try right now.

Yeah.

So that's, that's the ultimate is when somebody is, ready to do it. They're not scared. And they— you can see them putting feedback into place right there and then.

And that's the distinction. It's not how well they did the presentation. It's well, how well they heard the feedback, ask for the opportunity, and demonstrate that they heard it and are trying to apply it.

Yeah, that's perfectly put, Brian.

Yeah.

Where did you come up with that? Did you have that in your previous role? Did you have a mentor? Did you naturally know that the only way you can get better is to focus on getting better?

I don't think there was— it was something that we put into practice. I think we just saw some reps do it and we were impressed and we're like, everybody should be doing this. When we give feedback, the next interview, they should input that feedback. We should be able to see that. So now that's something that we certainly look for.

And have you found a lot of people just stone cold don't get it? Or they try and rationalize why they did it the other way, even worse?

Yeah, I have seen the rationalization. I remember there was a guy who spelled a few things wrong in a sample email that he sent us. And we were talking to him about it. He's like, I did that on purpose because I wanted— because I want people to know that I'm a real person, not a robot. And we're like, you're, you're emailing marketers. As soon as there's a spelling error, they're not gonna like it. So—

Yeah, they're kind of persnickety about— right, it's the look pretty department, right? It's the— by the time they put something out, it has to be perfect because that's all they do. Yeah, just put stuff out. And that rationalization Because I did a thing the other day about coachability, and it's like the opposite of coachability is rationalization, where you kind of know you did something wrong and you're trying to explain it to yourself and others why it's right.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Which is even more dangerous because now you're— you know you're wrong, but you continue anyway.

Yeah, and you can just see that type of person and how that would go with everything in their life, right? Is if you're rationalizing negative behaviors, your whole life is just going to be a stalemate of this is who I am and I'm not going to change. I'm not going to get any better.

Right.

Yeah.

The world has to adapt to me.

Yeah.

Yep.

Not a great way to be.

Not in sales.

No.

Nope. What motivates you? What's your driver, your why?

So I think that's changed a bunch over the years. If I think about just starting, it was to prove that you could do this. And then as you get into like your mid-20s and you're in a groove, it's, hey, I can make adult money and do adult things, buy houses, invest, all that fun stuff. I think early 30s, it's the flip with management and saying, Hey, I want to see others succeed. I want to teach people and then watch them flourish. And then I think now a lot of the motivation is financial in a sense, but just thinking about the future. I have 2 kids now and making sure they're secure and thinking about retiring early. So those and just never struggling with money, I think that comes into play a lot too.

And what do you look for In reps, as far as their why?

I don't think a lot of reps know their why. I think what I've— everybody says they're money motivated, right? And then you get to know them and you watch them and you see when they get excited. And with some people, it's, they get really excited over positive reinforcement and they just want that feeling of being accepted and and feeling successful. Other people are just like, hey, I want to be part of a great company with good people, and that could be their motivation. So even for me, like, figuring out my why has been hard. As I was thinking about this interview, I was like, what is it? What is it really? What do I think about the most? So I think it takes some thought.

It does.

And I think some perspective from other people to say like, hey, when have you seen me get most excited in this role? And then taking a step back and being like, wait a minute, I'm not— it's not just money. This is— I'm motivated for other reasons. And finding those reasons is really interesting.

Because if you don't have that motive, especially in sales early, when you get the failure, you hit the wall, the deal doesn't close for whatever reason, you have to be able to both recover And motivate yourself to move forward. And I've been thinking a lot about that, that caring and that emotional connection to some success in sales. If you don't have that, are you going to do the work?

Yeah, I think in, in that scenario, a lot of the time it's, it's on the manager to show the, the bright side of a failed deal and the opportunity that that is outside of just that component of your role, right? So, um, yeah, I think the motivation, the motivational factors are, are interesting going rep to rep and everybody's so different, but I do think from a managerial perspective, just making sure every rep knows that you care about them, not only as a rep, but as a person and taking interest in their life. I think that no matter what is, is universal with, with good managers is just making sure they know you care about them a bunch, not just as a revenue generator.

Because that's what they all need to see to take the feedback.

Yeah, and they need to see you taking feedback too. So a lot of times you'll ask the reps, hey, what can I do better? How can I be a better manager? What do you like? What don't you like? And then even doing like trainings with them, I feel like a lot of managers will be like, okay, you guys do this training and I'm not going to do it live with you, but If you have a manager that's in the trenches with you and they see you make a mistake or they see you try and they see you do something new and you're practicing the same things they are, to me, that's the type of manager that I would want to work for. So that's the type of manager I want to be.

And that builds the right culture.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Instead of, oh, you're not doing it my way, it's wrong. Yeah. Yeah.

Again, going back to the nobody's perfect, we're not perfect. So let's try new stuff and hopefully it works out. And If it does, great. If not, at least we tried, right?

Yeah.

And what would you say to a rep who's not sure if they want to get into sales leadership or not?

Sales leadership in particular?

Yeah. Say they're a good rep making their number, they like it, but, you know, probably the same thing you went through and everyone goes through after 5 or 10 years, you know, You know, there's a pattern there, right? You get new comp plan, new territory. So you either try and find a way of making it work or go somewhere else.

Sure.

Maybe I'll try that, man. It looks pretty cushy up there, up in the ivory tower.

Yeah, I guess I'd probably say to start thinking about the why in what you do as a rep and understand that, write it down so that When you're teaching, you know what to say and how to break it down. I think that's, as we mentioned earlier, that's one thing that I lacked when I started doing more of a leadership role is I had a difficult time explaining why. And I think if I started thinking through deals that I was running and started making notes on what happened and why it happened, why I went this direction, it would've been a whole lot easier for me to explain that to a rep in real time as I was more in that coaching role.

Cool. Hey, really appreciate your time today, Chris. Uh, where can people go to connect and follow you?

Yeah, you can just go LinkedIn, check out Chris O'Brady. Um, you can also just check out breaktimemedia.com, and I'm on there too.

Well, you're probably asking, Brian, how do I get that type of rapport with my prospects, my clients? That's my target market. Well, you could spend 5 or 10 years trying to develop it, or you could go to b2brevenue.com and sign up for Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting. Because what I do is I break down exactly from a psychological, neurological approach how 2 strangers build rapport And start to work together. And it only took me, um, a long time to build it, but it works. It's a systematic way. It's not a better pitch. It's a smarter way of connecting with a complete stranger. And how to do it online where you don't ever meet each other or see each other, but you have that rapport where they want To talk with you. Not have to. Most of us are in the have to. They want— they have to talk to us to get the transaction done. They have to talk to us because I interrupted them. They have to because I've— they happen to be dumb enough to pick up the phone. That's not how you build rapport. That's how you build an enemy. You want to build a know, like, and trust relationship, which everyone seems to agree on. With a complete stranger, and it's not going to be your pitch. It's not going to be your insight. It's not going to be your value proposition or your elevator pitch.

Why?

They don't care. How many strangers do you care about? How many strangers do you want to hear what they do and why you need their product? Um, none. And that's how they feel about us. But Wait a second. What if you like them? What if you trusted them? What if you know them? Then you like talking to them. It's an enjoyable experience because it's about us and we make it about them. Wouldn't that be nice to have? And it scales, Brian. You kidding me? I can't just do one a day? Yes, you can do tens, hundreds a day. No, wait, I might make too much money. You might. I'm sorry, I, I, I have to be honest. You may make too much money. Oh, I'm sorry. If you do make too much money, I'll be happy to help you. You can send the extra money To me, if it— if you made too much, I, I totally understand, and we're here to help you. You can keep it, up to you. But if it's too much, if it's overwhelming you, changing who you are, you can send it to us. We will happily help you out because we're 100% supportive sales training organization here. But please, I insist you keep it. Think it over. And if you still need to give it to somebody, well, we'd be happy to help you and spread it across the world in a way that would help humanity as a whole. Seriously now, we've got to have conversations to get meetings to get deals. That's where it starts. How's inbound working for you?

Right, exactly.

I don't see anyone on LinkedIn bragging about their marketing team. I listen to the marketing podcasts. I follow who they think they know, who— what they're doing as far as marketing. And let's face it, you get $100 million in venture capital, anyone could be a good marketer. You know, you just buy a bunch of ads, you hire an agency, you get a lot of noise. I'm not even sure it's good marketing. It's just a lot of it. So you get Do you get inbound every day? Do you have— you pick and choose which leads you really work on? And this is a little statistic that I got out of an SDR manager the other day. I'm really hunting down how much time they spend processing every, what they call a lead, which is really a contact. There's no intent. There's no interest. There's no curiosity about what you do. They happen to sign up for a webinar. They happen to download an ebook. They happen to do this or that that takes them from unknown to an email address. Now, what intent and interest does that person have? Maybe some, maybe there's a little curiosity, but they know they're going to get bombarded by a salesperson. So they put their Gmail account in. Or non-company information. So now we really don't even know who it is. Or maybe you do know who it is, and we stalk them all around the internet. We retarget them with ads. We've got the SDR calling them like crazy, emailing them, double tapping them. And so I went through this exercise with an SDR manager. Well, we have a policy where to call 5 times. Okay, 5 phone calls. How long does that take? Let's say it's 100% voicemail. You get 1 ringy-dingy, 2 ringy-dingies, 3 ringy-dingies, voicemail. You don't have their cell number. Let's say you have their cell number. 1 ringy-dingy. Okay, it takes at least, what, 3, 4 minutes times 5? There's 20 minutes. Let's just round it up to a half hour. And then you have to send follow-up double tap, right? You have to go to email, send the email. You got to first see, did they reply? Did they open? Let's say that's another half hour. Now we're up to an hour. And I did all the math and it's 2 to 3 hours per contact, per lead. And the conversion rate is less than 1%.

Wow.

of those leads turn into deals? 1%. So that's 99 times 3 hours. You see where I'm going here? That's a lot of time processing somebody who has zero interest. Now, now, if you inverse, if you took that 3 hours, go find somebody, I can get you a meeting there. In less than a half hour. Isn't that amazing? A real conversation. Now, it's a conversation. It's not a demo. It's not a disco call. It's a conversation. And that's where the magic happens, is when 2 people start talking. Ideas start flowing. Information is exchanged. Rapport is being built. All of a sudden, your network and their network are now connected. And magic happens. Magic. Or you can sit around processing people who have no interest. Now, what's the difference between that contact in the CRM and any other contact not in the CRM? Almost nothing. Maybe it's a little bit more targeted. Maybe they're aware of the Maybe they're even aware of your company and what you do. Maybe. So it's a little bit more than just a complete random stranger off of LinkedIn, but not much. The beauty of outbound is you choose. You decide who you want to invest your time with. You decide who you want to talk to. And that judgment of who you pick is probably better than the market picking you because they may have misinterpreted what you do, misunderstood how it works, being in the wrong market. Maybe they're looking for a job, they're a competitor. There's all kinds of, ah, you know, misintent there which takes up 3 hours of your time to process in aggregate. Over the time until they finally close out that lead. And I always wonder what would happen if people just, uh, you know, just focused on what they wanted instead of the junk that comes in. And a lot of SDR managers feel that this is great, this good training in being rejected. Be smart. Start the conversation. Get the meetings. A game changer. And I trust— trust me, I will take the extra money if there's too much for you. Okay, go to b2brevenue.com, check it out. There's a video in the show notes below that'll answer all your questions on it. There's a sample email in there on how to get your manager to pay for it. Just use that, cut and paste, copy it. If they do it, great. If they don't, pay for it yourself. Quit being cheap and lazy. It's no way to go through life.

Jesus!

If you complain about other people, complain about yourself first. That's the starting point. What do we have control over? Our time, our money. And guess what? If you are not the best investment in your life, what does that tell you? Get on it. Let's get better. Also, check out our friends at Scratchpad. If you're forced to use Salesforce, Scratchpad is the easiest, fastest, cleanest way of getting that data into it and making using Salesforce tolerable, maybe even fun. We'll see you next time. Tell a friend about the show and make sure you check out the other podcasts, Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers.

I was just going to give a bit of a testimonial, if that's all right, just to kick it off.

Just positive.

No, it is positive. It was a, yeah. Just because I started the course, I think in June of last year, 2021. I got a few more months left of access, which is good. But I feel like it's been a transformative experience in my own personal and professional life. I was able to go from a period of a low sales slump in the middle of last year in the summer and early fall, and then really was able to then come back and exceed my target By the end of the, by the end of the 4th quarter. And so the only other thing I would say is that it's also really differentiated me amongst people on the sales team in terms of focus and clarity of what's important. And now I feel really good about what I'm doing in terms of the approach of reaching out to customers and having those conversations and being focused, as opposed to just doing a lot of the other busy work on the side, like organizing resources and doing business analytics. and all this other stuff. And so it's really been a noticeable difference with our executive team at my company. And so I just want to thank you for the content and for these opportunities. And so I hope that helps if there's anybody new. It's— I'm a work in progress, but it's getting better.

Good.

Yeah.

And you're selling pretty hard stuff.