A candid conversation with Collin Cadmus

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Yeah, maybe some, because I feel like I can vibe on this. This is a good topic.

Well, because it is though, like, so we'll take this back of like people not taking their careers seriously. This is your career and especially in sales, quite literally. You can get in with no degree, you can get in with no certification and you can be making 150, 200k within 4 years. If you just took it serious.

I'd say less. Right. Like the people who really take it seriously could be there in a year.

And a half, 100% at the right company or you just get the right skill set. But it is to what you were mentioning, like the attention to detail, the seriousness of like, wait, this is my job. Like, but you know, I'll show up late or I will not dress up for an interview or I won't send a thank you note afterwards. Which again, they're not big deals. But like, come on, like, hold yourself to a higher standard here. It's insane.

I'm curious if you notice this because you deal with a lot of Entry level too, right. So I've always noticed that that's more common with the people that are coming right out of school. They kind of need like a year, maybe two and some people even longer to just mature into the real world. And I feel that some of them come out with a sense of entitlement, right. And they come into their job and I don't know if this is still going on in the COVID times. I'm not really hiring in the masses right now. I'm doing a little bit for a client. But you know, you get a different perspective. You have that perspective now. So wondering if it's changed. Like I've always noticed the people straight out of school obviously going to be more immature, they're going to feel more entitled. But not everyone, right? Not everyone. But it almost takes them a couple years to grasp on and sometimes it takes them getting fired to realize oh wow, like, like this isn't here for me, right? Like I'm here for the company, right? That's the. The business does not exist to provide a service to me, to employ me. And I think that people get that backwards often when they're coming out of school and they're doing this and you know, maybe they've been a little privileged in their life. They haven't had to really fend for themselves. And now all of a sudden you come into this place of employment who a marketed themselves to promise you all of these things. They make it sound like it's this great place and I actually think maybe we need to be a little more cautious with over promising too. But then especially for the kids coming straight out of school because they come in with these big expectations that like we are here to serve them and sure to some capacity we are if we want to develop them. But that's not really the reason all of us are here. The reason we're here is to build a business.

Right.

And so first of all it's not taught.

And what's interesting, I really want your thoughts on this right too is because a lot this, the generation coming up right now has not been preached the same ideal around like work ethic or work the way that we were and our parents, there is more talk around fulfillment and passion and things of that nature and these ideas of like, and fairness, fairness, equality like and all these things where it's like that's not actually the world that we live in, right. And it's this interesting dynamic. And actually so at Snack Nation is bringing it way back. Sean Kelly, the CEO there, you know we agreed on a lot of things. There's one area where we'd consider consistently butt heads, which is around this idea of like, you know, you have, you know, follow your passion or like, you know, you know, be passionate about what you do. And I was like, we can't keep preaching that because, like, no one's passionate about making cold calls. Nobody. And so the more times we put that in front of them, what they do is they're not looking at the overall theme of am I passionate about sales? And if I'm passionate about sales, yes, cold calling is part of it. They look at the actual individual tasks and say, am I passionate about this thing? Like, well, this doesn't. Cold calling doesn't fulfill me, so maybe I shouldn't be in sales.

Yeah, that's such a huge point. I had a video on this topic slightly the other day where I was talking about, you get asked this question in an interview, why do you want to be in sales?

Right.

And the number one thing I want to hear and sounds like maybe you agree with me, but I want to hear that you want to make a lot of money. And I don't like when people are scared to say that. And they say things like, I really love helping people and I really love building relationships. It's like, shut up. If you love that, go volunteer at a soup kitchen.

Go, go.

You can do a million other things that will fulfill you way more than interrupting people's days, trying to persuade them, trying to get them to see things through new light. Like, sure. There isn't a level of helping people in sales. Sure is not the overarching umbrella of what you are feeling every day.

And I've actually. So those are actually red flag words for me now in the interview process for my sales teams. And before people listening to this go, oh, my God, like, all right, calm down, everybody. Listen to what we're about to talk through here.

And by the way, that's why I started making videos, because I realized it's so much easier to get that point across than typing it because I type, you know, I type stuff on LinkedIn and I get heat for it. And like, I realized it's like people don't always know my personality and if I say it on a video, it comes out different. And so people are reacting a little bit more in the line with where my head was at. Yes.

And that's why I want to explain it here too, because people will take it and run with it and say, oh, listen to Katie and Colin, whatever. It's like no, hear what we're saying here. If you are actually passionate about relationships, no matter what people actually want to say, for the most part, that's not how the sales industry is built anymore. You don't get to build long lasting relationships.

Not in SaaS. Not in SaaS.

Not in SaaS.

If you get into ad sales or something, you know, my brother in law's entire career is built on his relationships with Coca Cola, with Old Spice, but not in SaaS. You're not going to do that in SaaS.

Not in SASS. And also too like that's, it's not, that's not even how the new jobs are going, right? So like the relationship sellers of old, even at the Coke ups, some of these other firms, like, it's not what they're being.

I think it's only ad sales. That's the only place I see that happening right now. And it's because it's just a tight community of people giving money to each other.

So when an SDR tells me they want to get in sales because of relationships, I already know they are going to be miserable because they are not going to be building any relationships. As let me ask you this, I'm.

Going to challenge you a little bit because I agree with you. But I think, here's the problem with simplifying it that much in the interview process is I actually think that what they said may not even be the truth. They just thought you wanted to hear it. They thought you wanted to hear someone who wants to build relationships. They thought you wanted to hear someone who wants to help people and they don't realize, like, I would rather you come in like a greedy, energetic bastard and say you want to get rich. I would rather you say that.

So I challenge the, well, we can talk the money side of it as well though. I will challenge them. If someone says that's why they want to get in relationships, right? Or helping people, it's like, okay, do you understand what this actually means though? What does relationship mean to you? Right? Because if relationship is a long lasting connection with an individual, then I will, I'll explain to them that's not really what this is. Have you thought this through? Right? Helping people? I want to help people. Okay, now are you willing to suffer to help? Are you willing to suffer to help? Right?

Are you willing to help people that don't even realize at first that you're helping them?

Are you willing to. You know, when you really want to help someone, you almost put your own self in harm's way. In order to help them. Right. If you can only help someone when you feel good or when they're being nice to you, that's very different. And so what I'm looking for in terms of why sales money is one, but we also know money doesn't actually motivate most people. We can go down this rabbit hole for a second.

Yeah, it's of course, it's the domino effect effect of what the money can bring you.

Yes. Right. But the, if the answers are the challenge, the excitement, the novelty, something new, those are answers that I'm looking for there of like, because that is what it is. Day to day, daily challenges, the excitement, those flashes in the pan. Right.

And that's why, like, that's why I would say as much as people I think are trying to push away from. I forget who posted this the other day, but you know, this concept of like we're trying to change what the, what the ideal candidate is. Right. We're almost trying to change what that looks like. And you know, and some of this sentiment, I don't want to say is all bad, but you know, there's, there's the sentiment of don't say words like crush it or rock star or this or that. And you know, it could be put off to females or to this. And I get all of that. It's probably truth to that. But I also think that if we fluff it up too much, you're really just attracting the complete wrong people for the industry. Because at the end of the day, like a lot of those old school recruiting tactics like we're looking for people are competitive, people who are athletic or that that stuff really works like it actually does attract the people who have the traits for sales. Now, that being said, I think it also excludes a lot of people probably also have those traits. And that's the problem. But it's about finding that, that right balance, I think there.

So I don't know. So this is where I can challenge back because I don't know that it does work. Right. If we look at the sales industry as a whole and we can talk SaaS or we can go outside of SaaS, there's carryover between the two. Right. We're talking about an industry where less than 60% of people actually get to their goal. You've led hundreds of reps, you've led hundreds of reps. I have led hundreds of reps. And you've looked for those profiles. How often do you actually see it carry over into the best? So this is where I Go off on sales. Yeah. The best tend to fit a type of action, right. Where like the best that are at the top, they are hyper competitive. Right? The best are hyper competitive. The majority in the rest are not. They think they are, but they're not.

They want it. They want it, but they're not willing.

Right? They're not willing. The best tend to be very money driven. Right. We're talking about the top 10%. It's the rest that aren't. And it's like we're chasing this profile. Like we're always chasing the Kobe's and the MJ's and the Jeters. We're chasing these. But that's not how the majority actually are. Right. I've hired plenty of athletes who think they were competitive. They're not competitive. They just like to win. Big difference. Hire hundreds of reps that say money is their biggest factor but you got to pull fucking teeth to get them to do anything.

I agree with you. I don't understand the why.

Yeah, like I don't understand why some of these profiles that we look for. Right. Is something that's also too. With some of these reps that like to win or are used to winning is actually why they don't do well in sales often because they don't get the daily wins and recognitions.

That's a great point. Yeah. It might be a good question to ask, you know, were you undefeated in high school or in college or you know, were you the underdog who came up earlier? Right.

You said earlier this idea of entitlement, right? And there are these people that. And by the way, it's not their fault, it's what they've been preach to do but they've been practically perfect.

Yeah, yeah. Four point everyone gets a trophy now, right? Like it wasn't like that when I was a kid. If you lost, you lost. And I went home and my dad was upset with me, you know, it wasn't like good job anyway son. It was like, you know, you could have done better on defense. You could done and like that's life to me. Right? Because that's what the real world's going to do to you when you get out there.

100%. That's what makes recognition so much trickier now is like, you know, how you recognize people and when you recognize people and well, you can't not recognize everybody but well, but at the same time it's not, it's not all the same, you know.

And getting recognition right is really hard, man. I've always erred. On the side of trying to be very fair with it. So I always made a point as a VP of sales and I learned this lesson probably early on, probably made some mistakes to get there, but made a point to always be calculated about any recognition I gave to people, particularly publicly, to try not to just do it on the fly and to actually think about it. And the reason for that was you want to make sure you don't give someone a shout out this week for something and next week someone else did the same thing and you didn't shout them out and you didn't notice it. That is the most frustrating thing for a rep when they see someone get a ton of accolades and then they go work their ass off to do the same thing and no one notices it. And that's why I've always found with, with the, you have to be very careful. Especially as the teams get big, it's very hard for VP to keep tabs on all that stuff. And sometimes we hear about some cool win and we want to shout it out in a Monday meeting. Meanwhile we're insulting the 10 other people who did the same thing and you know, they didn't know.

And so I'm a, I'm a huge fan. So I'm a, I'm a one off recognizer. So like I very rarely do like shout outs in slack to the team or shout outs like on an individual level in the team meetings my managers do that. I'm a one off. So like in my one on ones like my managers do report up, I want to know wins of their team at an individual level. What were some wins from your individuals on your teams? And then throughout that week or month I'll hit the individual up. Hey dude, I just heard this like.

Yo, great work stuff goes a long way.

And I put it there because one like I want to make sure like that they feel like that directness. But also to your other point, if I do it one week for someone publicly and then miss the next week, yep, it all gets blown up and.

Then it's a great point to let the managers help cue you in on that stuff. I used to do the same for my CEO. I used to ping him, you know, maybe once a month I'd say hey, so and so did this this month. You know, next time you walk by their desk, can you, can you mention it? And you have a CEO does that once a month around the team. That makes a big difference.

So one of the things I love to do, you know, because you've taken over A couple of big teams now too. Like, because there's also a big difference between growing your own team and taking over like a team and trying to get to know people quickly. When I came into to patient pop, right? And like, you know, took on this team, one of the things I did is I sat down with every single rep. I did a one on one with every rep. Sdr, ae, field, same, literally every rep. And then I asked them a set of questions to try to get to understand, like, what motivated them. Right? Because when you ask people, like, what motivates them, most sales reps will say money. And they're like, yeah, all right, cool. Great, cool.

You have to dig 10 layers deeper. Yeah. It's about asking why.

But one of my favorite questions to ask was around recognition, right? So I had these few questions I'd ask, like, how do you like to be recognized public or in private? And so I went through this series of either ors, right? Because if you make it too broad, people don't know. It's like, okay, would you rather be recognized in public or in private? Because there are some people that are getting embarrassed when you say both.

I think I like both.

You got to pick one. But you'll see where I'm going with this, right? Yeah, I'm narrowing them down. I need them to pick one, right? Public or private? Say, okay, public. Do you like to be recognized amongst your peers or amongst leadership? Would you rather me say, hey, SDRs, look what this SDR did? Or, hey, you know, managers, look what this SDR did. Do you want to be peers or leadership? Right. Team or executive? Would you rather be recognized amongst your team, or would you rather me say, hey, you know, Luke Travis, the CEO, example, like, man, Betty's just killing it right now. Experience or cash? Would you rather me say, hey, here's $300 for you to spend taking your significant other out tonight. I'm gonna call the restaurant and take care of it. Or, here's a $300 gift card. And then cash or tangible, here's $300. Or here's an Apple Watch worth $300. And I would ask them these series of questions to get a feel for, like, okay, how does this individual actually like to be recognized? And then I'd keep that noted, right? And then I do. I encourage my managers to do this when they get new hires and things like that. I'd like to understand these things because it is very different. Like, some people love that public shout out. I was not a public shout out. People, you texting Me and going like, yo, dude, good shit would mean way more than you saying something in front of the whole org, you know, for me, around it. Whereas other people, they need it. They're like, why? Why wasn't my face on the screen?

Yeah, I found. And it's. It's something I've never been necessarily comfortable answering if someone asked me. That's why I'm curious if you think people are always honest with that. Because I don't know that people even know the answer right off the bat. Right. Like, have you ever thought of how you like to be, you know, acknowledged or recognized? I don't know. Everyone's really thought of that. And, you know, there's definitely been times in my career where bosses have asked me that earlier. And I'm just, oh, I don't need that. I don't need that. But really, you know, it's bullshit. Like, you know, there's no way you don't feel good getting a compliment regardless of the forum. Right. And maybe one's better than the other. But, yeah, I find that sometimes the best performers try to brush it off. Like, they don't care about that stuff. I always just assume that they do because I do, you know?

Right. And that's why I like to ask the question where it's. There's not a sum. Like, do you like recognition? Right. I'm not asking that question because, you know, they.

Of course you.

I know. I know that you do. That's what I'm saying. Hey, if you had to pick between either one of these. And what's generally why I think it works. Well, is it is a pretty black and white thing if you think about which one makes you happier? Well, yeah, I guess it would be this one. All right, cool. Now, does that mean I never do the opposite? Does that mean I would never publicly shout someone out? Of course not. Does that mean I'll only. But, like, it gives me that frame of reference to say, like, okay, like, I got a pulse on this now. I wanted to make a shift here on terms of another topic. Right. Because, you know, I've riffed on this in the past before around prospecting a bit. Right. Because, like, you know, I'm a prospector for the rest of my life. I know you are a prospector for the rest of your life. And it's something we, you know, we talk about publicly a lot, too. Like, what are some of the things that you're noticing or seeing right now when it comes to prospecting that either one SDR should be doing? More of or, you know, SDR should.

Be doing less of.

And actually neither does it say SDRs, prospectors. Right. Because there's plenty of AES out there that are still prospecting now too, which props to all those people because you should never stop prospecting. But, like, what are you hearing and seeing out there?

Yeah, so I think what I'm seeing from a high level is just an abundance of overuse and misuse of automation. And I think that that's the high level, probably umbrella or trigger rather. You know, that's the first domino, I would say that's like tipping everything over. And so I, I think it goes back. It goes back, you know, a good 10, 15 years. And so I started this whole public debater or campaign, you could say, maybe a couple of years ago about, like, Aaron Ross. Predictable revenue. Sorry, that, like, that whole model is kind of dying down. And it's not that he did something wrong. It's not that it's a flawed model. And I talked to him about this right. Live on a. On a podcast. And what I think has happened is that the model that he essentially designed.

Right.

And whether you want to credit that to him or whoever at that time period, that era is when this whole model came about. And then you have companies like Salesloft and Outreach that come in to make that a bit more automated and make it easier.

Right?

And so then everyone starts doing it. It becomes the de facto. It comes the default for every startup. And there's no question that there's just an. Is too much of it now. There's too much noise, there's too much similarity. Everyone's following the same cadences. Everyone's kind of saying the same things. There's a, hey, here who I am, here's what my company does, here's my calendar link. Like, it's just, like it's not anywhere near as effective as it may have been 10 years ago, maybe even five years ago. Right. And then there's digital, that has changed. There's social that has just continued to change drastically. And so you have all these different ways to make contact with people. And so, you know, the high level of my playbook and everything that I'm putting together is to really summarize a, all the things that I think have changed, all the things that I think need to continue to change, and what you could do to kind of stay 10, 15 steps ahead of that. Right. And so a lot of it is the foundation of that is playing the long game. It's. It's actually backing A little bit away from automation and getting a little bit more. More personal with things, and it's really leveraging. Social video is a piece of it as well, which I have a lot of stuff that'll be in there. You know, it's about new ideas, things that people are not doing yet. And I think the salespeople that you are going to see win over the next five, 10 years, they're going to be the salespeople that really start to understand how to use technology. We're working from our houses, right. And little details as small as, like, my camera setup, my lighting, my audio. All of that stuff is now playing a role in your presentation. Right. And even though it probably was in the office, we were presenting over zoom for some reason, we didn't talk much about it, but, you know, then we all work from home and the presentation got 10 times worse. And, you know, so it's just all of these things are modern selling. That is the life of a modern seller. Starting to think about these different things and how you're going to put those pieces together. And I don't think that the answer of the answer to it for the next 10 years is just continuing to repeat that Sales Loft playbook or anything. And no, no, no, no. Shine on. You know, I love Sales Loft. I love all those guys, but we got to change it up. We're doing too many people doing the same thing. Bottom line.

I remember. So first I was, funny enough, I was at the first and second Rainmaker. And I remember when Salesloft announced, you know, Cadence. Right. Because a lot of people don't remember, like, their original prospect was the greatest thing ever. Getting emails and stuff off of Linked. Awesome. But then, of course, LinkedIn didn't like it that much and they rolled that. I was like, this is amazing. Right? And it was. And it was so cool. And it was about a year and a half or two years later, whereas the first time you could automate a step. And I remember the first time that I got rolled out, I was like, oh, no. Oh, yep. Like, I know everyone's super pumped on this, but oh, no, I know what this is going to do. Right? And now it is.

It's going to be fun for two years and then it's going to hit the fan. Yeah.

I mean, I tell my own reps all the time, if it was easy, if it was as easy as sending an automated templated email, guess what? I wouldn't need you. I wouldn't need salespeople if all it took was a templated automated email to book appointments. I wouldn't need a salesperson.

It's marketing. It's marketing.

So now, so let's take this here. Like, what does the salesperson bring to this tool, right? Because a fool with a tool is still a fool. So they have all these tools. How should they be bringing that person element into it? So I'm not automating. What should I be doing?

Well, there's a lot and there's not one answer to that. But I'll give you a high level, right? And then the details, we can maybe pick some and dive into them. But I think it starts with a, we got to back up and build the right relationship with marketing because that's going to play into this. If you want to be a modern prospect or a modern seller and really be effective, you have to be able to leverage the resources in your company. So problem number one, I don't know if it's number one. I'm giving an order right now that I'm making up on the spot. But problem number one, right, is that if we want to be modern sellers, we have to be able to leverage what we're getting from marketing. And there's too many companies, those teams are just operating in silos. You're not doing that right. And there's no strategy to work together. But if I have a list of, let's say I have a hundred top tier accounts that I want to get right. These are my best accounts in my territory or whatever, I've got a hundred, okay, now what I could do is I could do a little bit of research, go and zoom info, grab a couple names and contact infos, pop it into my template and click play right or click Start and, you know, wait and see what happens. Or I can say, all right, I've got this list, I'm not going to even reach out to them yet. I'm going to learn a lot about them. I'm going to strategize with marketing and I'm going to focus for the next 90 days or 30 days, whatever, right? Figure out what works for your process on creating awareness, subconscious awareness. I'm getting folks in that company, whether they're my targets or people who may work on their team. I want to create subconscious awareness about my brand before I even try to make contact, with the hope that when I do hit their inbox, they at least recognize my face, my headshot, my company, my logo, all of these things, right? And there's so many ways you can do that. It's not hard it just requires patience and strategy.

And can I jump there real quick? I just use this word because this. Because also I know you get this, and I get this. This patience. How should sales leaders be thinking about this, though? Because everything you're saying there. Yes, true. But that rep may not feel like they have the time because their leader is pressing on here. So, like, speak to us real quick. Speak to the other VPs out there real quick around how they should be thinking about this with their own teams. I don't want to breeze over that because not enough of us think this way.

Yes. Yeah. So if you want to. And again, I'm going to cover all this stuff in the playbook, so I'm glad you're validating the things I want to put in there now by asking those questions. I like that. Yes. So you need to have a process that has patience.

Right.

If your process is patient, then your expectations can be patient. And so there's a transition that I think has to happen there. You can't just flip the switch overnight and go from playing the short game to playing the long game. You need to have a process for that change. And I would say, depending on your team size and structure, it's going to be different for everyone. The way that I would have done it at Air Call or whatever, right. And we were doing a bunch of this. You start with a test team, you take a few people, you say, you guys are doing this. I'm going to pay your commission or whatever. There's some protection, however you want to set it up, and you give them that freedom to play this long game. And I was fortunate to learn this process at single platform. Very early in my career, I was hired. The product was only for restaurants. And about four months into it, the big challenge was, we need to figure out how to sell this to all different SMBs. And I got to be a part of that test team. They called it the SWAT team. And, you know, they'd give you some protection on your commission. Of course, there was a little bit of a gray area. It was like, if you're not actually working, like, you're not getting shit. But if we know you tried and the test just failed, you're still paid. And so we proved out, like, 20 different verticals, which was so much fun. Some of them failed miserably. Try selling to landscapers. Forget about it, you know, but there were others that went really well. And so I forget where I was going with that. But that is that you need to have a process that has patience, that's where I was going with that. So if you design that, then you are putting the right type of pressure on your reps, not the wrong type. That's going to be conflicting with what you're trying to achieve. And you know, from a high level, anytime you're going to switch a strategy, this requires taking a few steps back, I think in order to take more forward. And you need to be okay with that at the end of the day. But I don't think you have a choice if you want to last the next 10 years.

There we go. I just thought that was a really important call out, because it is. And also being patient and giving protection to the reps. I didn't know you were going to say that. And I think it's so important because I've done that. I'll call it a tester rep or a tester campaign. I'm going to pay you full ote. Here are the behaviors I expect. Yeah.

And by the way, I'll give you 200% of your OT if you blow this out of the fucking water.

Right? It's like, do these behaviors run this process? And if you run this process to the key, if you. Even if you don't sell a dime, even you don't book a meeting, cool. But if you do, I said the OTE is the ote. Anything above it? Yeah, go for it. Because otherwise you never actually get to test. Because if you test something new for a rep or a team, but they don't know if it's gonna work, they. You never get that.

You cannot do that. You have to have special circumstances for those teams. You have to have enormous amount of incentive for them to make it work. Right? And it's not just like, hey, you're gonna make 100% of your OT if this works. Like, look, I'm gonna pay 100% of your OT even if this fails. Because I know you're a rock star and you're gonna do everything you can either way. It's why I picked you. You have to pick the right people for this. That's the first thing. And that doesn't mean pick all your best reps. In fact, don't do that. You want a good little mix of talents in there, right? That's very important. Because otherwise you take your best rep who can do anything, right? They can sell anything, and then you try to scale that across your 20 or 30 or whatever. Good luck. But yeah, I think that's really important.

I tell my managers if I'm not sure something will Work. I'm gonna lean on my best. If I'm pretty sure it'll work, I go to the middle.

Yeah. You could start with the best to prove it's possible, and then you wanna prove it's scalable. Cause possible and scalable are two different things.

Yeah. If it's just batshit crazy idea, I'm like, okay, let me talk to a couple of my top reps here. It's like, could you pull this off? Right? And like, you test it there. But if I'm like, oh, I know this is gonna work, then I'm saying, okay, let me pick a couple in the middle, see if we can get the rest, and everyone else to do it. I think that's good. So sorry I took you off track there.

I'm gonna get back. That was a great point to add in there, because if I missed that, that might have confused people. It actually is a very good idea to start with someone who can prove it works. Because if you don't start with someone with that type of attitude, they could just kind of throw it in the trash and you lose that idea. That could have worked. That's also backs up to the same reason why, like, you don't hire one AE when you're starting your company. Right. Like hire two or three. Yeah.

Okay. And so now back to some of the prospecting. Right. So you said, like that, that personal element, being aware, which I think people have forgotten about. Like, just if people are aware of you, you already have a foot in the door. Right. If they recognize the name, if they recognize the brand, in any state, it goes there. Right. And so then we go to this next part of. Okay, so say I'm doing some of those things. Right. How do I stand out, though, when I'm prospecting you? Yeah, I'm writing good personalized emails, but it's buried under the other 30 auto emails you got from all the other sales reps. Like, what are some other ways to kind of build that awareness that I'm not just getting buried with everybody else?

Yeah. So I think it's awareness. And I'm still playing through, like, the types of words that I want to use to kind of brand, you know, these different pieces. But so there's awareness, but then there's also. This is where I'm trying to come up with the right word. There's. There's like. I don't know if clout is the word, but, you know, it's. It's not just like you're aware of them, but you kind of Think they're cool, right? Like, you've kind of like. And this is where you take to the next level. Right. Think of Drift as a great example. Right. Dave Gerhardt made Drift cool, right? You get reached out to by someone from Drift. Like, you're not just like, oh, I know that guy, Devin Reed or whoever. You're like, that's a cool brand. Like, I seen some cool stuff from him. Kind of have good vibe, right? And that is so subconscious, but it's enormous. It's absolutely enormous. And no one's doing enough. Well, I shouldn't say no one's doing enough. That there are companies that are doing plenty of that. Gong's killing it. Right. Drift has obviously done a great job there, and there's a handful of other companies. But if you're able to create some sort of atmosphere or vibe, you know, to. To your brand, and it doesn't just have to be your company, it could be you as a person. A little bit of both, that stuff helps, but that's a very small detail. Right. But I just wanted to say that it's not just the awareness that matters. It's almost. Again, I need. I need the right word for that, but it's creating not just awareness, but this sense of, like, coolness. And I kind of want to be a part of what's happening there. Right. Again, it's not.

That's a great call out, though, because no one. No one's really touching on that, I think where it is, like, there's the awareness, but there's a lot of things I'm aware of that I don't like. So just being aware, like I'm aware of you, but I don't like you.

Exactly.

Now it's even worse because now bad awareness is not.

Yeah, Bad awareness is not good. General awareness, like, neutral awareness is good. That's not bad. But it's even better if you can put that vibe where people are kind of like, that's cool, man. Like, that's just.

I want to.

I want to. I want to be a part of that in some way, shape or form. And you get that vibe from that Drift content. Right? The market that they're targeting likes that. They want to wear a Drift T shirt. They want to go to a Drift event. Right. And Gong is killing it with that stuff as well, right? Yeah. So I think those things are important, but then it really comes down into the nitty gritty, which is how we're communicating with them. The actual things that we're saying. And this is where I think things have to change drastically, but it has to be genuine. You cannot do what I'm about to say without it actually being genuine. It will not work. Okay. But this ties into playing the long game. All this stuff has to be done together. I think what I've seen work and what has worked on me as a prospect and things that I've even bought or am considering buying at the, at the time, you have to try to build and establish some sort of rapport before you get to the point of pitching anything. And that's the hardest thing in the world. Right. And I'm not going to give you the short path on this call and how to do it, but when you can do that, when you've created awareness and that cool awareness. Right. More than just, again, I need a, I need a good, come up with a good word for that.

I'm going to think about it.

Yeah, I need something to brand that. But you need that positive awareness. Maybe that's the word.

Right.

And then you need to be able to communicate with them in a very different way because you have to stand out from the sea of sameness. And so anything that you've done in the past, I would just say stop doing it. Right. If you really want to change. And this comes down to not even putting them in your cadence yet, not even sending that cold message, not making some formal introduction. I think start with the informal things. Now, this is easier for some prospects than others. If they're active on social media, you've got a big advantage. Right. If they're not, there's other ways. But let's think about the people who are active on social first, because that's the low hanging fruit, right? You start by interacting with their content. And then what do people say? Well, they don't post. Okay. Does their company post? Yeah. All right. Well, you can interact with their content. Does their CEO post? Okay, you can interact with their content.

Right.

You can start building this awareness. And so this is another key detail. If I'm targeting Kevin Dorsey, CFO at Patient Pop, or I don't know why I said cfo, but I'm targeting you. I'm targeting you.

Right.

But I know that you work around obviously this other circle of executives at Patient Pop. So I want to now, even though I maybe am not going to reach out directly to them when I get to the point of having, you know, checked off these things off the list, but I want to try to create some awareness with those folks because if Kevin happens to just bring it up or whatever, eventually, if we want Kevin to make a buying decision, he's going to bring it up, right? So, so let's try to start creating that awareness ahead of time. And this is where partnering with marketing would be very helpful if you can do that, because they can start to target their IP address, they can start to retarget them. So all of a sudden like you're this guy who maybe commented on their Twitter twice, you know, from patient pop, and then they're seeing this patient pop ad. This general awareness of this brand is starting to form over these 90 days or whatever the time period is, right? And so then if you've made some of these interactions, if you get lucky, they respond to you like, great, right? But I think you want to ease into that because what we're doing today is we're just going straight for the kill. We're going straight for that email, for that cold call. We're just like, hey, I'm a total stranger and like, I want to get married right now. Here's the ring. Click this link, right? But if we can establish some sort of subconscious rapport, and I say it's subconscious because it shouldn't seem like you're doing it for the reason that you're doing it for, for it should feel organic. And that's where people are going to.

Have to get creative.

And I have ideas, but I think what we're going to see and part of what I'm pushing in this playbook, I'm going to give examples, tactics, ideas. But what I'm learning, what I'm looking to gain out of this, it's going to be a whole community of students, right? So to be in this and we'll be sharing ideas back and forth. So the idea is this course will continue to self improve itself and we'll figure new things out as we go. But yeah, I think it comes down to summarize, right? You're playing the long game. You're not just reaching out cold, you're trying to put these leads 90 days or whatnot in advance and have a system and a process for trying to develop rapport, for trying to get them to understand the awareness. And if you start to narrow those things down now, when you get to the point of actually reaching out, hopefully if you've done this well enough, you're almost in a conversation with them without having to make a formal reach out. Right? Because if you've kind of gone back and forth on a couple comments on LinkedIn or something, you could almost just shoot them a private message. About that comment and the conversation kind of kicks itself off, right? And those are the things that work. And like, yeah, that's it. You have to try to start that conversation organically. So I would say that's sort of the, that's the end goal, right, to doing this. So that you're not just having to drop that sequence in. And it doesn't mean you're not going to do that. Right. The idea of everything that I'm putting together here is this is something that you can do for 90 days before you do everything you're already doing and see how much it helps, you know?

And I, and I love that man. Because it's something where we look at how a lot of people approach an account and this still just blows. My mind is like you're not even shooting your best shot. Like people just like shooting the shot.

Oh God, no. It's the worst shot.

It's like, wait, like that was your shot. Like that would like I'm on your list of 50 accounts and this is how you approached me, right? That's something that's just still been so mind boggling to me and it's lazy.

99% sure. That's just laziness.

Because I know for a fact, right, you were, you were a VP of sales at two high growth startups, right? I am a VP there now still. So you probably get cold emails, probably 15 to 20 a day. You are easy to find. I am easy to find. And the emails that come to me aren't personalized.

No, they're all the same. And the personalized, what people call personalization these days is not personalization first of all.

So yeah, customization, personalization. People get this wrong. Customization is to a Persona. Personalization is to a person, meaning only that person could read that email. And it makes sense.

I will see if I could take that another step further. I actually think, and this may be an exaggeration, I tend to say things like that when I try to make a point because you could probably poke holes in this. But I actually think that you can't really personalize something without knowing them personally. I don't think what you just find about someone on the Internet is personal. Generally, just generally speaking, right? Like dropping in, hey Kevin, I saw you're the VP at patient pop. Like that's my personalized statement.

No, no, no, no.

So hey Kevin, I watched that video and I saw that you have kids and you're doing this, that, that's personal.

So that when we'll go one layer deep Brian. Right. Personalized is something that that personal person has done. Right. So it's not who they are. Right. Me as a VP of Sales is not who I am as a person. That is my job. Personal is like something I wrote, something I said, something I commented on, something I contributed to, something that I built, something like something that me as a person has been involved in. And the fact that I don't get hardly any personalized emails lets me know actually how bad the state of the industry is, because I'm easy to personalize for.

Yep.

I've got years of content. You have years of content. Right. They don't even use that. So for the people that aren't super active, for the people that aren't out there, I know they're not getting any personalized action whatsoever. So. So I'm gonna flip the topic here one last time as we go through this, because you made a comment on LinkedIn a while back, and I do want to spend a little bit of time.

Are you gonna go to Manifestation?

Hell, yes, I am.

Let me. Let me add one. I was going to add one last point, but now I think I might have just lost it. That's right. Go ahead. If it comes back to me, it'll come back to me.

Okay.

You got me excited with Manifestations. I just totally lost my point.

I looked at the time. I'm like, oh, damn, we've already been going for like, 45 minutes. Like, we gotta at least get to this. Right?

Let's do it. Yeah.

You know the whole. The topic, right? The name of the podcast is Live Better Sell Better. Right? Cause I have this weird idea that if we lived a little bit better, if we took better care of ourselves, if we had more joy and energy and fulfillment in our lives, the sales side would also improve. Right?

It's Happy Selling, man. Happy Selling. It's been my favorite hashtag for 10 years, you know?

And actually, I need to say this. We're going to keep going. It sucks that Smile and Dial is now a negative thing. Everyone forgets where Smile and Dial, actually.

Is it a negative thing?

Yes, it. Do you want to go find out? Go make a post about it. Go. Go make a post about it. Like, hey, smile and dial, everybody. And just wait for what people say to that.

Maybe you might have just given me my topic for my next video.

Dude, go for it. I'd like, because this. The connotation like Smile and Dial has turned into this. Like, it's a negative thing. Like, that just means you're being a robot. Just smiling. Dial.

Where?

Where the premise was, like, because when you're smiling, they can hear that and that energy is there, right? And, like, if you sound happier on the phone, you are more likely to have a positive impact on the person you're talking to. So, anyway, I digress.

Can I add a point right there while on this? Because I think while you're on that point, people need to stop with this. You can't say this. Don't say that this means that this is bad. Shut up. Come on. Like. Like the meanings of these words. Everyone wants to twist them. This is bro culture. This is that. Like, come on. At the end of the day, like, why are you spending an ounce of energy thinking about what smile and dial means? Why? Right?

Because it makes me feel good, Colin. It makes me feel good to tear these things apart.

It's so unproductive to think about these PC terms. And, like, how should we say this now? What's the correct way to say this in sales? And look, I get it, right? There's certain things we shouldn't do and say, but talking about smile and dial, if that's offending somebody, you're wasting your time.

I would agree. So anyway, back to this here, right? So this idea about living better and selling better. I can't remember what the original post was, but you made a comment on, you know, manifest manifestation. Manifestation, you know, some quantum physics in there, too, about what is reality and what is not. Talk to me a little bit about this and how you use this in your life and how you think it could impact other people as well.

Yeah. So I will start by saying I'm by no means an expert on this. Very new to it. Have done some light reading, you can say, some Watching some videos. So if I say things wrong or incorrectly, don't hold me to it. But my general understanding of quantum physics was introduced to me by a guy named Charlie Rocket, who is a guy who started out. I'll give just a quick highlight of who this guy is. So guy who came up, you know, just hustler, grinder type person who wanted to get into managing rap stars and whatnot. He became this. I forget the guys that he managed and stuff, but they're huge names. And so he did all this. He's a very fat guy, big dude, unhealthy, had a brain tumor. Like, had all. Everything going wrong in his life. And I watched this podcast on Impaulsive, if you want to watch it. This is what introduced me to it. It's the Logan Paul podcast. It Was really good. It takes a little bit to pick up, but when you listen to this story, I think you can understand why it resonated with me. So anyway, the concept of it or. Let me finish his story, right, so he becomes 300 pounds, brain tumor, very wealthy. Like he's managing these huge hip hop artists and stuff. But he wasn't happy. And he had this dream to become a Nike athlete. Now this is a guy who's 305 pounds, really out of shape, like the least athletic person you would probably know, and has a brain tumor. And he says, I'm going to become a Nike athlete. And he starts getting into this whole manifestation thing, yada yada. Anyway, you listen to the episode. He loses the hundred some odd pounds, becomes a Nike athlete, he's sponsored by Nike, finishes. What are those, those marathon things that the Iron Man, I think it's called Iron man, something like that. He did one of those big crazy things, right? And he finished it. So anyway, point being. And then he walks you through like how he did this and how, how he made all this stuff happen. Saw manifestation of goals. And so I got fascinated by it, started reading about it, started, started trying to understand it. And so there's part of it that I think is easy to believe in, which is just this concept of like, if you believe you could do something, you can, you can do it, right? There's this momentum that gets built with positivity. But when I started to dig into the science behind it, and I'm not a scientist, like I don't really understand half of this, but some of it resonated a little bit and made some sense. And so he talked about this one test that was done. And so the concept here, I'm going to probably do a bad job explaining this, but I'm going to try. The idea, I think, of this quantum physics is that there's actually a connection between humans and our energy and what actually happens around us and to us. And what that means is that we actually have an impact on the things that come back our way, right? Again, I might be not explaining this super clearly, but here's a good example that was pretty cool. They had this experiment that was called. It was a DNA experiment that they referred to as where is it? The phantom DNA experiment. And so what they did is they took this test tube and they put light particles into it. And I don't even know what the hell that means, but light particles, essentially some sort of matter from the world, right? And they put DNA, human DNA into it. And they watch how it reacted. And the light particles, like, aligned themselves to the DNA. So it actually changed the light particles. The human DNA changed it. The fascinating thing is when they removed the human DNA, it didn't revert back. It was permanently changed. And so what that proves is that humans and our energy actually has an impact on that that is around us. And this stuff, I know to anyone who's listening to this right now, probably like Collins lost his fucking mind, right? Because it really does sound loony and crazy. And maybe it is, but I think there's enough proof in the pudding. And so when I started digging deeper, I said, let me look at some people who really, really believe in this, who've really supported. And there are so many hyper successful people. So many. And then when you look at other people who are hyper successful, what I started to notice is that even the people who are successful who maybe don't even know about this, they're doing it without knowing it.

I love this. And we could probably do a whole nother, like three hours on this because, like, it's very similar kind of dabble, kind of read. You hear about it, you hear about it. And then actually started getting more into it from a gentleman named Sam Ovens. Right. He, you know, consulting.com, and he literally in his course on consulting, has like three, four modules, like three hours worth of content on this. Right.

And talking about how did I do? Explaining it in comparison to him.

Yes, like very at the high level. Good, right. I'm saying, like, how our energies do affect the energies and matter makeup of other.

That's all I understand of it to this point. I think there's more that there's a lot more I need to read, but I put it to the test anyway. And so before we wrap up here, I'll just say, I don't know if this was manifestation at its finest, but I always have these notebooks and I have a couple of them that when I feel like I have something I really want to accomplish now after having learned this, I write it down. And the idea is that you're really bringing it into the world by writing it down. And this is loony. It's crazy, but you're. It's like taking that human DNA and putting it into those light particles I am bringing into the world by saying it and writing it. Okay. And the first time I did this was after I wrote that LinkedIn post. I said, I want to get Jason Lemkin on my podcast. I'm going to figure out how to do. I Swear to you, I can dig up the page somewhere. And I wrote it down and I sent him a cold message. And this was probably my fourth or fifth attempt, you know, over the years to. To get in touch with him. I'd been trying to do something with him for so long, and I finally said, I'm going to test this, this quantum down. I'm going to write this down. And I sent a message to Jason Lemkin. I wake up the next day. It says, let's do it.

He responded, so there's. I think the book is called Big. I think it's called Big. Magic might be wrong. I'll look it up. I'll get it for everybody. But what it talks about along these lines is that ideas are energies looking for a conduit and how most of us, an idea comes through and we. We hear it, we hear it, we think of it, but then we let it pass. We don't grab it. We don't take it out of the earth and put it down to actually make it real. And so that's why so often in life we see something and go, I had that idea. I thought about that. Right?

Yes.

Because it was in the energy, was in the space.

That's brilliant.

It was looking for a conduit who was willing to grab it, put it down and start to make it real. Right. And so Sam talks about this in his course too. And then he starts getting into the observed or unobserved. Right. How particles change when they are observed versus not.

Oh, interesting. It's almost like they know they've been grabbed onto. And this is.

This is true. It's been measured, like how particles respond while being observed versus not. And this is when you start getting into, like, reality versus not. Like, if you don't see it, does it actually exist because the particles are not being observed. If they are not being observed, we actually don't know how they behave. But then that's also why grabbing an idea, putting it down, it's now observed.

Oh, that makes so much sense. I gotta check out that book. That sounds like it's the next step for me to learning more of this.

Yeah, I got some resources for you, man. So with all this, man, as we wrap up, dude, like, where can people get more of you? Where can they find out more about this playbook? Like, when is it launching? Tell them where to go. Find this when it's real so that you can, you know, help other people grab some of this energy out and make it come to life.

Yes. So go to colancadmus.com you can add your email address to get on the list so you'll be the first person to find out when it launches. I don't have a launch date yet and the reason for that is I'm being extremely anal with perfecting it, but I'm aiming for getting it out probably by the end of the quarter. But it will be an ongoing thing. The idea here is that it's not a playbook that you just buy and then it's done. It's a course that you're joining. You pay once and then you're in for life. The more people that join, price will go up. Right. And I'm going to keep adding content to it. So idea is like once you're in modern prospecting like it's there as a resource, it will continue to have updated content and whatnot, but you pay once and then you're in. So go to concavence.com Add your email and you'll be the first to know when it's ready to go. And I'll probably give anyone on that list, I don't know, maybe I think they're going to get like early access. Right. So nobody else can get it until you're on that list. So get on that list.

Oh yeah. Well, everybody listening. Get on that list. Start grabbing the ideas. Grab the energy for us. Put them in the world. Call my man, long time coming. Glad we finally made it happen. Appreciate it.

Likewise, thank you. Likewise. We'll do it again soon on my pod.

Hell yeah, man. Later.

Take care.