Slowing Down to Speed Up: 3 Strategies to Unblock Your Sales with Jen Allen-Knuth

Hello, hello, hello everyone and welcome back to Agency Journey. I'm your host, Kuba Graijtar and with me on the call today is Jen Allen Knuth, keynote speaker, podcast host, advisor and founder of Demand gen. Helping B2B sales and marketing teams build more pipeline when it might seem harder than ever before. Jen, I've been following you for a while. I'm so excited to have you on the show. How are you doing today, Kuba?

How could anyone be anything other than awesome after that, like high energy introduction? I am great. I'm excited to be with you.

Yeah, it just happens as soon as I hit record, it just happens by itself. Thanks for saying that, Jen. I'm so, so glad to interview you here today and have you speak to the watchers and listeners of Agency Journey. We'll dig into, you know, your expertise and whatever else sparks our curiosity here, here today. And my first question for you is something for the watchers and listeners to get to know you better before we start talking about sales and agency stuff and all of that. Jen, when you look at this year thus far, what's the most fun thing you've done this year thus far?

Well, you're going to get to know me. Real get to know me. I would tell anyone who asks that my number one passion in this life is, is dog rescue. And I've volunteered. I've done different things across the years, but we have in the last year adopted and fostered three dogs. And we've gotten really close to the organization we adopted them from. And so we spend a lot of time with them, working with them to try to raise awareness for dogs and rescue dogs and things like that. So it's not work related. But I have to say that is like my heart's love language is the time I'm spending outside of work, working on a cause that I really believe in.

Okay. Okay. So can you tell us more about like, what you find fulfilling about that? Why, why do you think that that is such a hit for you?

Yeah, I think, you know, for the past four years I've been spending a lot of time trying to build a presence on LinkedIn and obviously I launched my business and there's so much fulfillment that comes from that. Like, don't get me wrong, I love the work I do. I love spending time with sellers. This is absolutely where I was meant to be. But at the same time, I think when you grow and you start to have these amazing opportunities, you really start to reflect more on how can I give back to things that matter Right. So, yes, teaching sales tactics and talking about sales strategy matters, but at the end of the day, like, I think there's only so much you can get out of that in terms of your fulfillment. And so one of the things I really loved is now that I have a much bigger platform on LinkedIn, it gives me an opportunity to create awareness around smaller rescue organizations and create awareness around dogs that are in need. And I just think that's something that's an itch that work just can't scratch for me. So I think that's probably what it is.

Yeah, we weren't really put on this world. It doesn't feel like to sell B2B services before we. So we want to.

Yes.

So we want to leave a little bit of a deeper mark. I can certainly resonate with. With that. So last point on that before we move on is, okay, so you're a sales expert. You're talking about dog rescues. How do you usually sell people on the idea of fostering or adopting?

Yeah, so I love. I. So I grew up under sort of the challenger sale methodology. That was the organization I worked for for a long time. And one of the core tenets of that methodology is the idea of a reframe. And a reframe is basically, we as human beings operate the way we do because of a set of beliefs and assumptions that dictate our behaviors. Right. So that can come from anywhere. It could come from just like, I don't know, I assume this is the right way of doing it, or I heard someone say something before that I admired, and now I believe that. And I think in many ways, if you look at something like dog rescue, there are plenty of people out there who, for whatever reason, believe that rescue dogs are in some way shape or form flawed or like, you're not getting a perfect dog if you adopt from rescue. And so I think one of the most fun things about it is there are so many perfect dogs out there, people that, at face value, would never assume it's a rescue dog because of their beliefs and assumptions around what that means to be a rescue dog. And so every Saturday, for example, I post a different dog to my account. And I have people that will DM me all the time saying, I can't believe that's a dog that needs a home. And it's because we have this belief system that it's only the bad dogs or the, you know, injured dogs or whatever that end up in these shelters. And that just couldn't be farther from the case. So in a way I think, like, it is just as much of a sale in the sense of we are reframing how people traditionally think about, you know, a discarded animal and that's what, where I get to like blend the two things I love together.

That's awesome. Yeah, challenging the assumptions. I really, really like that. And also I wanted to mention, like, if somebody needs to run somewhere and they need to turn off the episode, don't do that before you follow Jen on LinkedIn. Her account is awesome. The content, I'm always glad to see it on my feed and I've learned a lot from it. I honestly, I should make it a point to read more of your posts and to hit the bell as well because it's always worth it. Great clips and great insights there. So go do it and we'll put it in the show notes as well. So moving on to my second question, so I would like to give you an opportunity to talk more about kind of your background, you know, what you're currently into in just a moment. But first I want to hit you with the traditional agency journey question. And here it comes. Jen, what is your number one tip for agency operators?

My number one tip is don't lead with the solution. And this is my number one tip for agency operators. It's my number and tip for traditional sellers, SAs sellers, anybody who is trying to get someone to work with them, it's the same tip. I think many of us grew up in sales believing that our job, no matter if I have a traditional sales title or not, it could be a founder, it could be anybody. My, my belief system when I started selling is I have to go out there and convince everyone that we have the absolute best solution. And of course, to some certain extent that is true. But as a result, how many of us interpret that is now I need to go tell the world how awesome I am, how great our agency is, how great the work we do is. But the problem with that is that's what most people do. Most people are out there, they go out and they talk about themselves in the hopes that maybe I'll impress this reader, this potential prospect, this customer so much that they won't be able to resist working with me. Whereas I think if you step back and look at it, we're skipping a really important step, which is if I am going to buy a solution, I first have to believe that we have a problem worth solving. And I think that is where I learned to shift my, my approach is to say first I have to relate to this person. I have to get this person to believe that I've got something insightful to share about the problem that gets them to perk up and say, okay, maybe it warrants not sticking with the way we've always done it. And so, again, I don't care if it's like you're an internal employee and you're trying to convince a coworker to do something differently. You know, at the end of the day, sales in any way, shape, or form is behavior change. Behavior change is hard because we as humans are resistant to change. So before we pitch a beautiful world of, like, what better looks like working with us, we first and foremost have to help that prospect understand if there is, in fact, a way, you know, a problem we're solving and we're solving right now.

Okay, so tell me more about what that looks like in practice. Like, what are. I'm always curious about the words. And I know that, for example, you know, crafting the right email is a big part, you know, and cold emailing in particular is a big part of, you know, of your expertise. So, like, when you're talking about not leading with the solution, focusing more on the problem instead, how does the message change? And what, you know, what. How does that conversation get started?

Yeah. So I'll use an example from when I was selling for Challenger. So Challenger was a sales methodology, a total intangible thing. It was a service offering, not like a physical product. And when I first started selling for them, my message to prospects was very much about, you know, we are the number one sales methodology in the world. We work with all of these amazing companies. Don't you want to be on our customer list, too? Here's all the reasons why we are better than any other option of sales training you could have. And what I found is I got a lot of crickets to that, because I can guarantee you our competitors were out there saying the same exact thing. Like, There are exactly 0 people in this world who talk about their business and say, we're kind of like number three. And sometimes we get it really wrong. But sometimes it. Sometimes it works. Like, nobody's saying that. We're all saying, like, we're the best and we're the number one, which is actually impossible, but we love to say it anyway. So that's how I started. I was met with cricket. So I said, I first got to get this person to believe that there's even a need to entertain the idea of a sales methodology, because the sales methodology keeps no one's lights on. Some companies have them. Some companies Don't. But some companies that don't also can do quite well. And so I recognized that, and I said, I've got to stop talking about what we do and why it's so great and all the companies that work with us. Instead, what I need to do is I need to look at that business, and I say I need to understand as an outsider, why might a business like that need to revisit the way that they sell? And so what I would do is I would look at, like, let's just say Caterpillar was in my territory for a very long time. I would look at Caterpillar and I would say, okay, traditional product organization. Now I see them introducing, like, a lot of aftermarket service offerings and AI offerings. And if I imagine what it's like to be a Caterpillar sales rep and maybe I'm selling to a farmer man, that's got to probably be a tough sell because these are really highly sophisticated technical offerings. I wonder if the technical tactical acumen of a farmer is in line with that. So now if I think about that, gosh, they probably lose a lot of those conversations because the farmer's like, yeah, okay, but that sounds really fancy. And I just want to keep doing it the way my family's always done it for decades. And so what I would do is I would go in with that hypothesis loosely held. So specific hypothesis loosely held, and seek to be corrected. So it would sound something like, you know, noticed you've recently launched an AI offering for whatever product line. As I was thinking about it, I can imagine that if my job as a salesperson has been traditionally to sell parts and machinery, and now I've been asked to sell an intangible service offering, that might be a tricky transition. So. And so company had to go through that as well. Are you open to hearing what they learned out of that experience? So I'm not talking at all about sales methodology. I'm talking and labeling a problem. I'm. I'm using unsure tonality because I don't know, I'm an outsider. And then I'm seeking for some sort of corrective motion from that prospect to say, well, actually, it's this, or actually, yeah, you are kind of. Right. Because that's what's sparking a conversation is I'm having a conversation about them and a potential problem based on the research I've done outside. So two very different conversations.

Okay, so it's. You're having this hypothesis, you're going out, you're taking it to the market, and Basically seeing whether it's a hit and if, and if it's a miss, there is that human tendency, right, to just correct the record. Now actually, you know, I'm struggling with something else right now. I don't have this problem, but I have that problem. And that gives you good feedback as well.

So one quick point on that, that's the problem with a lot of messaging is we're so generic that we. Because we want to make it possible for everybody. So if I went out and I was like, it looks like you're trying to drive growth. I can't really think of a lot of companies who aren't trying to drive growth. So the specificity of the problem, that really matters to making that work. So sorry to interrupt you.

No, no, no, no problem. I mean, I'm here to interview you after all. Okay. So one more thing I'm curious about within this call that a section, if you will, is. So it sounds like you're looking at some specific signals there when you're researching a company. And one thing that stands out kind of in the first place is that there's deep research behind this and it's a very informed outreach. Right. And that makes a huge difference and it very much stands in opposition to generic blanket spam messaging. So that's one thing I'll kind of point out. So you're looking at these signals. Could you take me through what things are you looking for? Do you run through a list of typical signals you've mentioned now? Kind of transforming company's offering or kind of modernizing it going into AI? What are some other things that you might use as a hook here as is like a signal here?

Yeah. This is a great question. I'm a, I'm a huge fan of signal based prospecting. Where I think we get tripped up is we're looking. We're often so obsessed with intent signals. Like, this person came to my website, they must want to buy what I offer. Like, I think we're going to see a shift where people stop freely going to websites because they're just like, I don't want some weird sales rep to call me just because I typed in your URL. So I am much more. I like the way that you described it. I'm much more in the camp of first I identify what is the problem that my solution is solving for. So in the example I just shared, it is, you know, maybe we are selling deals, but they're way below the margin structure we want or we're just not generating enough pipeline or we have a lot of deals stuck in the pipeline. So first I have to start with what problem. Then I make a short list of what are the signals or cues that would suggest someone might have that problem. So let's say it's pipeline generation. Well, things I might look for might be the company recently did a reduction in force and the sales team took a big hit. I might look for a new sales leader. I might look for a new cfo, a new CEO. Like, it doesn't always have to be in the function we support. There are larger cues that suggest that I might look for. Company is releasing a new product to market and that's going to change what, you know, how their sellers have always hit their goal. So it really depends on the product or the problem that we solve that dictates the signals that would tell me what might suggest trouble. And then what I'm doing is I'm writing an email for one account and then I'm taking that message and then I'm pulling back and saying, now, who else has a similar need state? So where I think, like, I've always been confused by this. Like, in my opinion, you scale stuff that works. You don't scale so that it works. You like so that the numbers make it work. Like, you find what works and then you scale that. So my, my approach is I always like writing an email, for example, for that Caterpillar email. I'd write it for that company and then I'd lift out and I'd say, okay, now who else is in manufacturing that is also offering some new service offering? And then I can get scale out of the message because I'm taking the same meat. I'm just to then tweaking the specifics of the product name that they're launching. So that's how I think about it because I do appreciate, like, we can't all take three hours to write a single email to a single prospect. But sometimes I think we just rush so fast to doing scale in the hope that the numbers pay off in our favor. And I think that's why a lot of companies are struggling candidly right now because of it.

Yeah. And I do want to ask about that as well, particularly in the agency context. And let's say that's coming up next. But I did promise and I do want to make that pit stop now here to give you an opportunity to kind of introduce yourself to the audience from more of a business perspective, so to speak. So can you share before we move on a little bit about your background, what you're into right now. More about Demand Gen. I would love for the audience to know about that.

Yeah, so I was like one of those weirdos who just loved being a sales individual contributor. Like I never wanted to move up into sales leadership. I thought sales was really challenging. I thought every year there was a different buying behavior that made it harder. And I just, I, I kind of love that because I don't think sales is something you can stay stale or stagnant in. So I was a salesperson for 18 years when I started Demand Gen last October. It was really born out of just this desire to say like, in sales particularly, I think we're often made to feel like we're just bad people and we get everything wrong and this is dead and you're doing this wrong. And I just, I wanted to change that. Like I think there are so many well intentioned people who really want to do a good job. But sales is this world where you've got 18,000 opinions on how to do any one job to be done. And it's hard, right? Like, like especially today you go on LinkedIn you could see six different totally contradictory opinions on how to write a cold email and like who's to say what's right and wrong. And so I started this business because I love seeing sellers win and I wanted to come in and not teach from a point of view of like, you should know this and you suck at this. But like here were the things I thought and believed would work and then I learned this and now here's what it taught me to do instead. So I really love coming at these sales workshops that I run with sales teams from the point of view of like, you're not stupid, you're not bad at your job, you just picked a really hard career. And let me help you make sense of some of these, these things that happen when you lose to status quo. So now I work with like mid market enterprise organizations to help train their sales teams and I'm loving it, absolutely loving it.

Right. So tell me one, I'm going to fish for something here, so to speak.

Sure.

One thing you know, throughout the journey of building Demand Gen that has surprised you the most thus far. What would you point to?

Oh, I say this to everybody who's considering going off on their own. I think to some extent all of us have a level of imposter syndrome or self doubt where we think if we leave the corporate world we're just going to fail, like fall on our face. I felt it for sure. What I was massively surprised by is how many people already had an idea in their mind of what they wanted to do with me before I ever released any offering. Like, if you go to my website, it's right now, depending on when this airs, I'm getting it redone. But it looks like a stupid PowerPoint. Like, it is not a sophisticated website. I thought I had to have like a whole suite of collateral, website, all this stuff. But what ended up happening is when I announced that I had launched the business, a lot of people said, hey, we were actually thinking about this. Could you do this? Could you do that? Could you do this? And I was like, I don't know, could I? Let me think about it. And so in many ways, when I left my last job, I did it without, like, I wasn't like ready to start my own business. I just knew I had to. And I knew that for me a forcing mechanism was like free fall. Like, just go out there, put yourself in the position. You have to figure it out. But I'm really glad I had that experience because I think a lot of us can make excuses as to why we won't do something because we're like, well, I don't have this done and this done and this done. And what I've seen is I could probably have no website and I would have zero impact on my business. And so I think for me, it's like, I'm lucky I have LinkedIn. A lot of the people that I sell to are there. But for many of us, there are channels where our customers go to learn. Spend way more time figuring out what those are, being present there. And then you can worry less about some of the other, like, semantics of a business that maybe feel bigger or harder or more expensive in the beginning.

Interesting. So you were mentioning that, you know, some people reached out to you with like an existing idea of how you might help them. I wonder if that influenced kind of your service design. I'm curious about that piece. You know, how you actually, because there's, you know, helping people with sales is, you know, a general thing. Okay, I'll just, I'm not gonna spend five minutes stating the question. So did that happen or did you have to also, how did that go?

Yeah, like in the beginning I was just doing keynote speeches at sales kickoffs and mid year kickoffs. And then I had a client who came in and was like, I'm sorry, I don't, I don't want a one hour kickoff. Like, I want a two day, a two day training. And then I was like, Dude, I don't think I have ever enjoyed sitting in a room for two days learning how to sell. Like, it's just like drinking from a fire hose. And then I was like, what if we could structure it where we do four hours and then we do monthly ongoing sessions? And so it was really like my core service offering was born out of this debate with a prospect who was like, really, really hell bent, we gotta do two days of training. And I was really hell bent, like, no way we do we have to do that. And then we ended up kind of meeting in the middle. And I don't know that I would have thought of that offering had he not kind of pushed my thinking.

So the service design was kind of collaborative between you and your prospects. I love the idea of that.

Yeah, yeah. But I didn't just say yes. Like I would have made a lot more money on a two day training, but I was like, I just don't think it's the right thing. And because I was coming at it from that angle, I think he could appreciate it. And he's like, all right, you're really thinking about the participants. Maybe I wasn't thinking so much about them, but it is kind of terrible to be locked in a room for two days. So, yeah, collaborative would be the right word for it for sure.

Yeah. It was driven from what I'm hearing, driven by empathy for like the end user or the end kind of the person benefiting from the product or service. And I think, you know, that for long term success, that's what you need to focus on. Awesome. Awesome. Okay, so where I would love to take this conversation next is to focus on a specific problem. I was looking through Reddit a few days ago and I'm on R Agency, you know, for research purposes, sometimes to promote the show as well. And there was this one thread that kind of made me feel a little bit sad, concerned. It was basically, you know, they were running a smallish agency and they said that everything is slowed way down in terms of the pipeline, in terms of the sales cycle. You know, used to be I could get on a call and basically get, you know, get it nearly signed, you know, in terms of their services. And it wasn't like a high ticket service, but get assigned on the call and now it's like stretches for months. There's layers of approvals, there's budget concerns. The language is so much more kind of conservative and risk averse, so to speak. So I'm seeing that as something that's kind of happening in the agency. Space. I think a lot of the watchers and the service can relate to that right now. And things have slowed way down. And I just wanted to kind of pick your brain on that. What to do in this sort of situation where you're seeing that you're probably panicking a little bit because this is a totally new status quo for you. How do you start kind of unraveling that problem, addressing it based on your experience? What would work to try to reverse that trend?

First of all, very first of all, I love that you do research on Reddit. Like, talk about knowing where your customers go to learn. That is, like, spot on. That's so cool you led with that. But two, I really.

You might call it an addiction to Reddit, the platform. But.

That'S okay. We all have our basis.

It pops up in between the memes.

You know, I would say I really empathize with it, right? Because when you go from a time where selling feels easy or like, your job feels kind of easy, and then it gets hard, one of the things I think it's human nature to do is then we're like, coming from a point of scarcity. So we. We rush the process because we're like, I need to find that next customer. I need to book that next deal, whatever the case may be. And that's where we get into trouble. Because anytime we rush, the process is where we end up just digging our hole even deeper. And so my advice is always, those are the moments where it feels like you have to speed up and do more, and you should probably do the exact opposite, which is slow down and do less. So one of the things that I always did as a seller, I wish I could say I did it from the start, but I didn't. But years into being a salesperson, I started looking at backwards at every quarter. And I would say, let me take all of the prospects that I worked. And some of them would be closed. One, some would be closed loss for various reasons. Some would have just ghosted and disappeared. And then I would start looking at how did I run each of those plays? Like, how did the conversation originate? Was it outbound? Was it inbound? What type of inbound was it? What did they see before working with me? And I'm doing almost like a detective analysis of the current state of all of those deals. I'm looking at who got involved, when did they get involved, what did I send them, how many conversations did I have? I mean, I'm talking, like, really in deep analysis, and then I'm lifting up And I'm looking for patterns. And what happened every time I did this is I would recognize patterns of my own behavior that were getting me into trouble. So an example pattern would be there was a quarter where I would get like the first call, the second call, and then I would. I had a terrible second to third call conversion rate. And so I looked at what was I doing in the second call. Well, the second call, I'm giving them the rundown on the solution, and then I'm arming them with here's, you know, our collateral of how we can help. And then I'm like, you know, you go socialize it and let's get the group together and we'll come back on. And then crickets. So I looked at that and I said, okay, there's gotta be a reason why they are choosing to no longer speak with me. Well, duh, it's because I've just given them the job that's mine. Go sell this solution into all these people in your business who probably have totally different opinions about what the problem is, whether we should even be looking at this. And I'm like, here's some company collateral. Buy good luck. Like, of course that's happening. But I wasn't seeing it because in aggregate, I wasn't looking at my wins and losses through that lens. And so every quarter I would do this, it would be a different set of things. And then I'd recognize, gosh, this is what I control. I control what I say and do in that second call. I don't control what they go and say and do, but I need to control what I can control. So I would say very long winded way of like, stop, look back at what's working, look back at the deals you've lost, look back at the deals that are ghosting and ask and try to do this pattern recognition for what are the consistent patterns that keep presenting themselves. Because I guarantee there is gold there that will teach you to slow down in areas where you need to.

Okay, so I got two questions related to that. It's good that I have questions.

That's your job. I think it's a hug.

It's nice. You know, these questions just pop. Yeah. Question number one is, so you mentioned you kind of recognize this problem of kind of putting it on them to sell to the rest of the group, so to speak. First of all, how did you address that? How did you change that?

Yes. So what I, what I failed to appreciate first was me and this person have had two conversations. We've talked about the problem we've talked about current state. When they share that with other people, none of those people have the context that we had. So what I. What I learned to do is to say at the end of that second call, I'm like, listen, I know you are just as excited about the potential of working together as I am. However, what I typically see is we'll hang up the call, I'll send you collateral, and then you'll share it with other people. And because we're operating in a conservative environment, someone in that dang group is going to hold up their hand and say, yeah, but we really shouldn't be spending right now because they don't have the same appreciation for the cost of the problem that you and I do. So, with your permission, what I'd like to do is let me draft an email. And in that email, I'm going to write a pitch for you to get the team together to talk about the problem. And in that call, I'm going to act not as a sales rep with a solution to sell. I'm going to act as a facilitator where I bring my experience from working with other clients who are also facing that problem. Let's say it's pipeline generation, and we're going to get the group to disagree out loud, so I'm going to ask intentional questions. So, John, over there in customer success, I bet you don't care that much about pipeline generation, so why, why would you even entertain something like this? And I'm going to get all the ugly elephants out in the room because the number one place where deals go to die is because the business group, the buying group, can't agree that this is the right problem to solve and the right problem to solve right now, especially in markets like this where everybody's financially conservative. So instead of doing, like, using that next call to do a solution demo, I'm actually backing up and saying, let's do a problem discussion. If we get to the end of that call and we have consensus that this is, in fact, a problem we're solving, well, now when I introduce the solution, they're going to be like, cool, let's see it. Because now we wholly, as a group agreed that there is a problem. So I think it meant slowing down my deal. It's always exciting to think, oh, I get the opportunity to talk about what we do in front of this group. But when you do that with people that weren't part of the conversation the entire time, I just think that's like a graveyard for our Deals. At least it was for me.

That's so cool. That's such a cool play. And I'm so glad I dug deeper here, because I can totally imagine the watchers and listeners taking this away and applying this to their own process. And it makes perfect sense in a way. It kind of reemphasizes what you mentioned at the beginning. Right. Go even deeper into making extra sure not just this one person, but the whole group understands and has this feeling of this is a problem worth solving. Also, in the language that you use, I love the, you know, what I typically see line, or this kind of, you know, here's what you're likely to like. I think it really projects expertise. You know, I've played this game so many times. Like, I can tell you your future before you even, you know, experience it yourself. I feel like this is a really strong play. And the group dynamics, okay, I know you're on my side. It's, you know, us and then another group to. To convince. So I'm really. Yeah.

It's hard to be a buyer, and I think we sometimes don't appreciate it enough. Like, we are asking someone to put their political capital on the line in environments like this where we're being told not to spend, and then they're raising their hand, being like, yeah, but I kind of want to work with this agency, and I kind of want to, like, spend some money we didn't like. That's a risky thing. And so I think anytime we can demonstrate an understanding and an appreciation of it and make that person know. My goal isn't to push you to the finish line. My goal is to make sure you look your damn best in front of this group and that it's everybody in support of solving this problem, not just you fighting the uphill battle.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like you're helping them win by introducing a change that helps everyone. I can absolutely feel that. So my second question from the group of two was you mentioned when you were doing this detective work. And I do recognize, I want to emphasize, like, the general principle, you know, slow down, look at historical data qualitatively and kind of try to uncover the story and look for the patterns each time. I understand that's, like, the main piece of advice and the main work to do for our watchers and listeners. I'm still curious, though. You mentioned when you did this, you uncovered something else each time. So this dynamic of, you know, I convinced one person, now there's the rest of the group, and, you know, how you change Your approach, we got that one down. Can you share one or two more patterns like this that you recognize and then how you address them? What else is there that might for an agency owner audience also be there for them and how to address that?

Yeah, so another big one had to do with how I handled inbound, we'll call them leads, maybe MQLs, whatever that were not raising their hand for a phone call. So I was looking at like the front end. So let's say I did a thought leadership webinar on discovery skills, right? And someone signed up, but they did, they attended, but they did not actually raise their hand to be contacted about our service offering. What I used to do is be like, hey, thanks for joining our webinar. I saw you attended and like, it seems like this must be a challenge. You must be struggling with it. Do you have 20 minutes free next week to talk about it? So I was basically being that like super aggressive. You showed me a sign of life. So now I'm gonna chase you down and hope that you want to spend time with me, which none of us enjoy being treated as like exactly zero of us like that. But I was doing it because I felt like, oh, here's a sign of life. Like we talked about before, when things are slow. Sign of life, I gotta jump all over it. So when I looked at the conversion rate of that, what I saw is it was abysmal. Like, very few people were responding to that type of outreach being like, sure, let's book time. And candidly, the ones that were, were the last people I should be talking to. They were the looky loos and the talkers. And so I recognized, okay, there's something I'm doing in that email that is wrong. And so what I did instead is I said, I've gotta, I've gotta recognize that these people are not hand raisers. They're people that are learning. And if I can get in early on their learning journey, well, now I might be able to shape how they think about the problem. And if I can shape how they think about the problem, probably they're gonna look to me when they start considering solutions. So what I did instead is I said instead of like, thanks for joining our webinar email follow up, which everybody knows what's coming after that. It's the ask for time. What I did is I said I would start in my emails with here's something we didn't cover on today's discovery webinar. And then I would include something very bite sized, not a 50 page ebook, not an hour long webinar link, nothing like that, but something bite sized that made that person feel, oh, I got something extra on a topic that I already care about. And then I would use my hypothesis to say like, hey, I noticed this thing. Not sure if that's what's driving you to look at discovery, but either way, thanks for joining. And like I made it so much less desperado and way more, hey, I'm looking at your business. I'm trying to imagine why this problem might exist. I'm trying to imagine my, you might want to be learning about it. And I want to position myself as a resource before I ever start barking up your tree to be like, talk to me about our service offering. So that was another like big one that came out of it which resulted in a lot more conversations where I was then able to have a really problem oriented conversation instead of just like a sales pitch that they frankly didn't even want.

So instead of thinking about, you know, they've got a pulse, I wonder if they'll buy. Yeah, it's more so because that's the thinking, you know, often. Right. Or at least that's how I'm seeing what you're describing. It's more in the vein of, okay, they're here to learn, why do they want to learn more about this? Kind of uncovering the deeper need for that. And then you're saying you're positioning yourself as a solution. I wonder what the follow up is after that. Let's say, you know, you, you send that message, you share this bite sized extra resource. And what might they say? They might say, I don't have this problem, but I have that problem. But you know, when they, when they tell you more, when you get that piece of information, what's the next step after that?

Yeah, so normally it will be like either someone will say, no, you're totally like, I was just curious and I had a free hour. Right. Like you, of course there are going to be some of those people, but that's good because I don't want to chase those people. So I, I love those responses because that helps me narrow the field. The responses I normally get will be something like, wow, you did your homework. And yes, we are looking at this for that reason. What else do you have? And then my response back to that will be, there's three. Like, you know, there's two or three things I'm thinking about. I can either share them in your inbox or you know, if we want to have a conversation, we can Talk about it. I, I never want to force someone to take a call with me because I myself am someone who likes to learn on my own and then have a conversation. So I think when we make our motivation, how can I help this person learn in the way that they feel most comfortable versus a motivation of how can I book a call? Our behavior, what we say and do totally changes. Now more often than not, they actually prefer the call because the people that I'm reaching out to are C level executives at mid market enterprise companies. Like they're not going to do a ton of reading. And for them in many ways it is easier if they know that the call will be valuable. But that was the purpose of the email is to show I'm not just trying to sell you something because you have a pulse. I have a hypothesis. If you're telling me I'm on the right money, then it's probably assumed that I might have some interesting things to say about it. So I'll always tease like, you know, I was working with another company, XYZ the other day and, and I can share a little bit about what they learned, but I'm always trying to position it around, let me be a conduit of what other companies have messed up, learned, got right, got wrong. Because I do think that's where executives value spending time is. I don't want to be the peer that gets it wrong. So show me what everybody else did, show me their dirty laundry and then I'll, then I'll like evaluate where I think I am in terms of a service offering.

Okay. But it all starts with identifying the problem and kind of hitting the point of that they're thinking, the prospect's thinking, okay, they understand my problem. They can actually help me with it. You know, that box needs to be ticked before the conversation continuous. I can absolutely understand that. So we don't have a lot of time left on the clock here, but I do wonder if we could do one more quick pattern from that group and then wrap up and you know, let the watchers and listeners know where to find you, et cetera. So yeah, anything. Any other patterns you've identified?

One other pattern I identified. This is a quicker one. I was only reaching out to decision makers. So like again, I sell to chief revenue officers. I was only reaching out to chief revenue officers, which is the hardest, hardest audience to reach. And I've got the least amount of information and it's the most important touch point. So I was looking at like my response rate for that and I was like it's kind of. It's pretty. That's also pretty bad. And so I said, what could I do? So that, one, I am not putting so much focus on getting to the top of the house, which I know is the hardest place to get to. But two, that when I do do that outreach, I'm more confident in my problem hypothesis. So then I looked at and I said, okay, if I'm selling to a company and they've got a CRO, and then they've got like a US and America's vp, and then they have like an EMEA vp, why don't I start reaching out, like, layers down and start testing my problem hypothesis? So this. It doesn't work all the time. Sometimes people are like, kick rocks, get lost. But oftentimes I would just be honest. I'd say, listen, I'm looking at your business and I see this news over here, and it got me thinking that this thing over here might be happening. But I also appreciate I'm a total outsider. I don't work within your four walls. I'm sure that's a lot I've missed. Can you just, like, correct me where I'm wrong? Right. And. And what I found is when I had that conversation on the phone, so sometimes it was calling sales reps, sometimes it was frontline sales managers, sometimes it was those leaders. Like, more often than not, I'd be pleasantly surprised because people, I think, in general, just appreciate thoughtfulness. Like, people are so tired of just the general mass male merges and cadences and sequences that when someone is actually saying, like, I'm on the fence with whether I'm even in the right neighborhood, it demonstrates thoughtfulness. And I think I was pleasantly surprised by how many people would correct me. And then when I went back up to the senior most, then I could say, you know, I've been having a few conversations with the team, and one of the things that really surprised me was this. And I don't have to call out names. I don't have to put anybody under the bus, but it just gave. It made me look and feel like someone who had done the work to earn their time. And I saw a much better reply rate on the back end of that.

I love that. And I wanted to draw attention and get a little bit more out of you about a particular part of this messaging where you actually acknowledge that I might be totally wrong about this. Because one way, and I've seen agencies do this in particular, is we've looked at your site, We've analyzed it with Our tool. And newsflash, your SEO sucks.

You suck.

Fix it. Yeah, exactly. Talk about the. You know, talk about the ugly baby problem, if you will.

Okay.

Because I love that. You know, I love to hear about that.

We, like, we have this idea that we have to be right and the prospect has to be wrong to earn their time. But human nature is. We don't enjoy a complete stranger walking up to us and being like, wow, you look like you can't get dressed in the morning by yourself. Like, that's insulting. It's rude. And the. The level and the seniority of people we're reaching out to, they have their jobs for a reason. They're not incompetent fools, but we treat them like that. So I call that the ugly baby syndrome, because it's like, hi, my name is Jen. I looked at your website. It was terrible. Do you want to hear some ideas on how to fix it? Like, no, I don't. Thank you. But I think what we can use is. I learned this from lavender. Um, in a cold email, when you use unsure tonality, which are phrases like not sure, if. Seems like maybe I could be off. But it's very counterintuitive because we often think great sales conversations come from being, like, really assertive. But this isn't Mad Men. Like, we aren't Don Draper. People like to be treated in a way that is respectful. And so I'm a huge fan of just saying, look, even If I did 10 hours of research on your business, I still don't see everything you see. And I do think people appreciate that, because where we come off as unintentionally naive is when we look at one piece of information, and then we conclude we've got the simple answer to a complex problem. And I think that's a mistake. I used to make a lot where I'd be like, oh, you're not growing. It's because you don't have a sales methodology. Is it. Is it? Or is it a combination of things? And so I think people appreciate just, like, leading with that. I'm an outsider. I'm not sure. But this is what it's looking like.

To me, the feeling that I get from that. And I think it leverages basic human psychology, is somebody's coming up to me on the receiving end of a message like this. Somebody comes up to me. They're not making assumptions. They're curious about me. I have an opportunity to teach them and maybe to correct the record in some respect, And I want to do this. First of all, I Like when people are curious about me, which is why I like not just interviewing, but also being interviewed just in general. You want people to find the truth, you know, and you're like a truth seeker, at least in the beginning of the conversation. So I feel that.

Yes, that's exactly. I think that's like the most perfect way of describing it. Like, we enjoy being around other people who are intellectually curious. We don't enjoy being around Know It All. So I would always suggest people look at your messaging. If you sound like a Know it all, you could be right, but you're still wrong in your delivery. So just recognize that's a very human thing, is to want to feel like a part of the conversation.

Exactly, exactly. And, you know, to tie a bow on this because unfortunately, we're almost out of time for this episode. Even though I so enjoyed this conversation. You know, one funny thing, I was preparing to record this one and I thought, okay, what might the title be? Then I thought, oh, maybe three sales mistakes that you're likely doing and how to rectify them. And then I totally forgot about that. And then the conversation brought us right back into that. We just covered, you know, three mistakes. You. My face just came back. It's stuck in my subconscious in some way. So thank you so much for sharing about that. And I think a lot of the watchers and listeners are going to be left wanting for more. So could you tell them, you know, where to find you, how to follow you, how to get more from you?

Yes, I am on LinkedIn all the time. If you go to my LinkedIn page, Jennell and Knuth, you'll see a link at the top which has a ton of free resources like recorded content like this that I've done on a lot of the topics that we talked about. So you don't have to work with me to learn my stuff. It's all out there for free. But thank you. I really, really enjoyed the conversation with you today.

This one was awesome. And if you're looking up, Jen's company is Demandgen with the J E N at the end. I always appreciate that name, so let's drop that in as well. All right, so watchers and listeners, go ahead and do that if you're listening to Agency Journey for the first time, or if you haven't yet, don't forget to follow us to subscribe on YouTube to the Zen Pilot channel. We've got not just Agency Journey episodes, but also tutorials that will help you improve your agency operations, particularly if you're using ClickUp for project management but more on that in other episodes and in other videos on our channel. You know, find us on the podcast platforms, leave us a 5 star hopefully review and all of that good stuff. And Jen, I mean like I mentioned at the beginning, long time lurker on your stuff and first time we get to have a conversation, it was just as nice as I thought it might be and then some. So thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you.

This was a blast.

Yes. Yes it was. And to you watchers and listeners, thank you for joining us here today and I hope I'll see you in the next one. Bye, bye everyone. And we'll see you. I will see you. I keep saying we. I will see you. Then I'm hitting the button. Bye everyone. See you in the next one. Bye bye. Bye bye.