Breaking Down the Prospecting Playbook with Alex Newmann

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Welcome to the live Better Sell Better podcast with your host Kevin Dorsey of Inside Sales Excellence, the number one Patreon group and YouTube channel for tech sellers and tech sales leaders where we dive in deep for tactical advice on how to book more meetings, close more deals faster, and lead sales teams to success. But we don't stop there. We also focus on the person in salesperson. We talk about mindset goals, time management and so much more. So thank you for listening and if you're interested, head on over to patreon.com InsideSalesExCexcellence now with that, grab a notepad, get ready and let's dive into the good stuff. But first, a quick shout out to today's sponsor, Vidyard. If you aren't using video in your sales process, I promise you you are leaving money on the table. I personally have been using Vidyard with my teams for years now and we use it everywh. Top of funnel to book more meetings via email and LinkedIn. Middle of funnel to improve show rates to demos, post demos to do proposals and follow up and close deals faster. Using video allows you to connect better with your prospects, bring your personality, energy and enthusiasm across every single time and they have a much more impactful and memorable experience for your buyer. So again, if you're not using video, you need to be. And if you are using using video, you should be using Vidyard. Check out vidyard@vidyard.com and with that, let's get back to the show. What up everybody?

Welcome to another episode of the live Better Sell Better podcast. This is your host, Kevin Dorsey, AKA kd and we are diving into prospecting Playbooks. Prospecting Playbooks, right. But when I think many people hear Playbook, they focus on the book part.

And not the play.

The Playbook is designed to be practice. The Playbook are the plays that you run in order to win the game. A playbook is not something you sit down and read. But so often when you look at prospecting playbooks, they only talk about the prospect, they only talk about the script. But there are so many other plays that you need to run in order to be a successful prospector. And that is why I'm so pumped to have Alex Newman on the show with me today, the founder of Newman Consulting, but he also mentors companies involved with techstars and really focuses on this prospecting playbook. So today we're going to dive into what it should have, what to focus on, but more than just scripting and email.

So hope you all Are ready to dive in.

Alex, my man, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. I'm ecstatic, man. I love talking about this stuff. This is my jam. So I'm excited to dive in.

It's dangerous and I'm a little bit nervous because the goal is always to try to keep it around 30 to 40 minutes. But like, I think we are going to struggle to keep this safe.

We'll see. I've been known to run over once or twice in my life.

Same, same. That's why.

But we're going to prevent that because.

What we always do on the show, no backstories, no fluff, we always get right into it. So right before we actually started recording, I love something that you called out, which is, you know, there's different things that go into prospecting other than just scripting and emails. And so what if you think about a playbook, what should chapter one of a prospecting playbook be?

So I think actually number one is understanding the mental game and understanding the game itself. I think so many times when we're talking about prospecting, it's what's the right message? Like what exactly the words that I use to write this email and so on and so forth. But no one tends to think about like how does this, how does my day or how does my week look like if it's a quota driven thing, like how do I set up my entire year to be able to go after and attack my quota and really just my personal goals. So I look at it from a lot of things, from the mental aspect of it, like what are going to be the highs and lows, what can I anticipate? And then a lot of it is around time management. I think in general, salespeople really, really, really struggle with time management. One of my favorite words is no. And that's something that salespeople really need to kind of embrace to be able to say, no, I am not going to do this or I'm not going to do that. And I'm going to solely focus on my top two top three priorities and go after that and understanding that holistically of your role and what you're trying to accomplish. You are not upon. You are not just a doer or a task go getter. Prospecting is the thing that is the lifeblood of a business. And without it, there is no business. There's no revenue, there's no customers, there's no nothing. So I look at it and say, whether you're an SDR or an AE or you know, whatever Sales role you want to call yourself. Prospecting has to be in your blood. It has to be understood. And it starts with the mental side of it.

And I love that call out as chapter one because it is. So much of it is a mental game. There's a few things I want to unpack there, which I actually don't think enough people do, especially as sales reps. How do you recommend someone works backwards to figure out how to get to your call? That was very subtle and it was very clear. But, like, if y' all caught it, he said, work backwards across a year on how to get to your quota. Yet everyone wakes up trying to get to their quota going, okay, I got to go forward. They never work backwards. So, like, how do you work backwards? How do you kind of figure out those numbers or that process, you know, what you're actually trying to do?

Yep. So the first thing I do is I say, I don't really care what my quota is, but let's talk about what my personal goals are. Is it to buy a house? Is it to pay off your loans? Is it to buy a car? Is it to go on a trip or an experience or whatever it is that you're trying to do? What are your personal goals that you actually care about? Because a quota is something that a company or a group of people has said, this is what I need you to do, which is great, but I'm going to blow your quota out of the water. I'm just going to pass it by as I'm going to achieve the personal goals that I want. Typically, when you see a lot of comp plans, you're going to have some kind of a kicker after you hit your quota. Some type of an accelerator that says you can make twice your commission or one and a half or whatever it is, and that's where you can really make money. The part that I see is these reps will go, oh, I want to hit quota. I have no desire to hit my quota. I want to crush my quota so far out of the water because I want to pay for my house, my second house, and my third house in cash. And so if you're only going to your quota, you're kind of doing yourself a disservice. The company's happy because they hit the goals that they want, but you're only kind of shooting yourself in the foot. So I look at it and say, help me understand what my personal goals are. Let me understand, what is it going to take in order to get there? So average deal size, number of Deals that it's going to take, not the median of the deals, the average deal size. Don't do any of this. Like I'm just going to go big fish hunting and I've been there for six months. Like understand what are the different types of deals? What type of deals are you doing? SMB, Mid market enterprise. Understand the sales cycles with that, if you are starting the year and it is February and you have a calendar year as your quota or your goals and you have an enterprise sales cycle of six months, like you better get going now because you're about to run out of room. You don't have a full year of fully selling and that's the difference between a fully ramped person and not. So I look at and say if you understand the formula of what it takes number one to hit your quota and number two to hit your goals. So I would try to put some type of quantitative number to my goals and, and work back and say what does the formula, what is the recipe and the ingredients that I need in order to hit my goals? Then I will break it down on a month by month basis and I will factor in seasonality. So if you are struggling or if you're focused on you know, holidays or the summer or you know, beginning of the year and kind of like spring breaks and things like that, like understand where your hot times and where your slow times and factor that into your year, then what does the actual conversion rates look like? If you're brand new, use what the average is inside of your company. If you've been there for a little while, understand what your conversion rates are from the top of the funnel all the way to the bottom of the funnel. And the bottom of the funnel is if you're an SDR meeting set or opportunities created. If you're a full ae, then it's all the way to the end. Understand what that formula looks like and understand those conversion rates work all the way back to what you can control. I cannot control you to buy something every single day, but I know that I can put out X number of activities, quality activities on a week to week, month to month basis. And I try to formulaically go what do I need to do that is in my control in order to hit my personal goals? And I look at that each and every single week. That's how I know that I can get myself set up to actually have any chance to achieve what I want to achieve. I'll pass by the company goals and I'll achieve what they want. But I'm going After what I want.

We literally could stop the episode right there. And that is worth everything in terms of time spent, because it's still just mind blowing to me how many people don't actually know how to get to quota. They know what they want to do, hit quota or hit their goals, but they don't know how. They never break it down. Say, all right, I need to set this many meetings, or I need to run this many demos, or I need to average this deal size to get there. So for y' all listening, if you don't actually know how to get there, you need to sit down and figure it out. Because otherwise, Alice in Wonderland, right, where she asked the cat, like, which way should I go? And he goes, where are you trying to go? She goes, well, I'm not sure. Well, then it doesn't matter.

Well, then it doesn't matter.

You can go whatever way that you want. So I love that call out. I'm glad we got to dive into kind of how to work backwards there. But I want to go another layer deeper.

Right.

So we've done that. And you mentioned time management. Right. And so can't remember where I read it, but it was a twist on it, said, there's no such thing as time management. There's only focus and energy management. I really loved that.

Right.

In terms of, like, to think about it. So, like, what is your advice to people to better manage their time, focus and energy? Because we all have the same amount of time. But there's always a big gap between, like, when people are productive versus not. So, like, what's the advice on how to do that better?

Well, so I think it starts with when you understand that formulaic way to hit your goals, then you have specific priorities that are set in order to be able to achieve those things that are inside of your control. When you break them down into a weekly or monthly basis, you can go and say, all right, those priorities need to be accomplished either weekly or monthly. What do I need to do? Those are the things that I'm going to go after I think about it. I have five, six days a week, depending on how you actually like to work. And you look at it and say, when and how long does it take me to accomplish those things? And I would put them and actually place them into my calendar. So is it something that you have to do every single day? Is it something that you can do two days of the week? And I would focus and actually schedule that into my day because that is the most important or the most important things that you need to do in order to achieve your goals. That means that you get to say no to these other things. No more LinkedIn, just bouncing around and randomly looking. No more Facebook. I'm totally guilty of being on ESPN and randomly reading something for too long. What I would do is I actually build in, like, waste my time. Like, buffer time where I actually can go read whatever I want. I'll buffer in social media time. I'll buffer in going for a walk with my wife or around the block or whatever you got to do. Like, those are the types of things that you want to put into your calendar. Inside of that, you get to say, all right, what gives me energy and what drains me? And when you look at those two things and then I look at and say, what's the type of person I am? I personally not a morning person. Like, if you want me cold calling in the morning, it's probably not going to sound that great. It's just, it doesn't come with energy. It doesn't come with that same, like, Alex jazz that I can usually bring. So I look at it and say, how can I strategically go prospect in such a way throughout my week that I can control where I'm going to get the biggest bang for my buck? I know that I have a lot of energy in the afternoon, so I'm going to call in the afternoon. Maybe I'll write my emails in the morning and I'll have them scheduled to be sent out at a specific point in time if I deem the morning the right way to do things. So I really try to control what happens throughout the week and throughout the month. So I am focusing on those top priorities and I get to say no to everything else. I know that customer calls are going to happen. I know that internal meetings are going to happen. I know that there's training and coaching and admin work and things that I have to do. Schedule that you know, all of these things that are going to happen. So there's no reason that you get to the end of the week or the end of the month and say, I had no time to prospect. Like, that is a bullshit excuse. You have deemed other things more important. That's why it doesn't get done.

I read somewhere too it said, like, never say I didn't have time. Replace it with, I chose not to. And it really starts to change how you think about, oh, I didn't have time to exercise. I didn't have time to spend with my wife. I didn't have time to spend with my Kids, when you reverse that and say I chose not to. Right.

Ooh.

Does that wake you up real quick?

Yeah, real fast.

There's some ownership there. And I chose not to. So I love that because it's so important that then you stay on task. You've used this word a few times now, already, which is so important, which is prioritize. Got to prioritize. Make sure you're focusing on the big things and getting them done. And I love that. And like, remind me if we have time at the end to talk about chronotypes. Because I learned this lesson as too, because I'm the opposite. I'm early. So what do you think? I always tried to have my teams do right away.

Early.

Early because that's how I worked and it took me a while to understand. Wait a minute.

Yep.

People operate on different waves and so we can, we'll dive into that. We don't have time for that today.

We don't have time. Yeah.

Okay, let's keep stacking kind of chapters here. So we've talked about the mental game, we've talked about working backwards, getting clarity. Now we've talked about time management. Right. So now let's assume I have those things in place. What's the next step in being a world class prospector?

Understand who the hell you're going after.

Oh, yeah.

Understand your customer. And I don't mean that your team has a Google Doc or a Google sheet and you read it or a one pager and you read it. I mean, do you actually know who the heck you're going to after? What do they think about? What do they talk about? What do they read? What do they think about on Sunday night? What is their day to day? How do they get promoted? Like go and read. Go on indeed. Or LinkedIn and read all the job descriptions of the, of the roles and the ICPs that you're going after. Read the books that they're reading. Yes. Like go where they're going and think what they're thinking. How can you possibly be helpful if you don't actually understand what they want to do? You don't understand what they deal with. You don't understand what they're trying to achieve. You don't understand when they get really excited and you don't understand what is the blockers. Understand those things. Understand the lingo. Like one of the things that Katie, you and I can talk about and we can use acronyms forever is because we're both in the same space. So we can talk about it forever. You Go talk to someone who's not in sales and they're going to go, I have no idea what you're talking about. It's the same thing when you're going in and you're selling. You have to speak their language, use their lingo. Do they. And understand their tone. What is the typical demographics? Male, female? Are they older, Are they younger? They live in the city or do they live in the suburbs? Like, what is the average amount of money that the typical role that you go after makes? Are they driving the Aston Martin or are they driving the Kia? Or maybe they don't even drive a car because they take the train to work or whatever. So I think the key is when you can truly, absolutely understand them, understand their roles. When they bang their fists against the table and say, I don't want to do this anymore and this sucks, and I hate this. Like, what is that thing? What is that thing that drives them? And it's not, I need to save 50% ROI on such and such a whatever. Like, that's such bullshit. Like, nobody talks like that. We don't talk like that. Like, that's not how it works. It's the emotional thing that they're just banging their heads against. That's what you want to understand. You understand your customers and prospecting. Literally all the doors just got swung wide open. It makes your messaging, it makes your plans, it makes your channel, it makes every single thing now attainable because you actually have an understanding of what you're trying to do.

As you were talking about this and going through it, it's like, kind of like dawned on me for a second. Just a realization is like, how much we've lost this over. I would say really, like the last 10 years, especially as we've really specialized is like used to have lifelong this and going through it, it's kind of like dawned on me for a second. Just a realization is how much we've lost this over. I would say really, like the last 10 years, especially as we've really specialized is used to have lifelong sales.