Slow Down to Speed Up: Personalization Leads to Lead Conversion with Stephanie Valenti

Coming into their first time sales role, they are not getting the training that we used to back in the old school days. I got my first sales role, they shipped me off to a two week training in person with scripts. I mean learning in a group environment is not the same over zoom. When we can have distractions both all.

Around us, it's a tough one.

And I don't have a solution other than organizations. Maybe that says something. And do you invest in in person trainings again, do we bring that back?

So I mean, let's talk about this further, right? If we think about, okay, well why people don't, why don't reps pick up the phone, right. You know, there's, there's the fear of rejection, there's the belief that no one answers. So kind of how do you approach that angle of like, all right, well how do we either one help people not be afraid or well, Stephanie. Yeah, you only get one call, but do you answer it? You don't answer cold calls. So then why should I be call? So like let's talk about the reasons why people don't make calls. See if we can't give them some clarity there.

Yeah, I think you hit it. It's most of its fear and it's because if we look at, and I know this is something you're very passionate about, but if we look at sales training for new reps coming into their first time sales role, they are not getting the training that we used to back in the old school days, right. So I got my first sales role. They shipped me off to a two week training in person with scripts and role playing out loud in front of a classroom, right. Where I had to get uncomfortable with my peers. And then when I returned back to the office, I got thrown on the phone and I got set a goal and they would coach me through it. Now we didn't have the gongs of the world then, so it was in person, right. But I would be coached through and it would be like, no, pick up the phone like you're going to make this appointment, you have these dials to make today. And when you put it in a competitive environment where you're, you're competing, there's gifts, there's fun associated with it. It starts to become something that you look forward to. But I would say it's fear and lack of training and lack of management, telling people like, and holding them accountable to actually doing it. A lot of leaders are like, oh, I don't care how you get your appointments, I'll just look at it later. And then all of a sudden they're not making their meetings and you're like, well, why? Right? You always start with activity. And I think people forget that. They've forgotten that they've given too much flexibility to someone that hasn't earned the flexibility yet.

Oh, yes, y' all rewind it 10 seconds and listen to that again. Flexibility is earned. You earn flexibility, you earn the right to be able to go outside the lines from time to time. But you have to earn it. There is, there is. There's way too much of this. Well, we don't want to tell people what to do or we don't want to micromanage them. It's like. It's not micromanagement if what you're asking them to do will get them results. It is micromanagement if what you're asking them to do has nothing to do with anything. But to that point, the in person, the scripting, the repetition. But also, I like. It's funny that, that. Sit down. Your manager sat down next to you and you made 20 calls in a row.

There was.

There was none of this, like, all right, I'm gonna go hide in a corner somewhere, like, you did it. And there's so much of that that I think does need to come back in a way, because interesting enough, so I'd always run like in person teams. I think, like my largest team was just under 200 at patient pop. And, you know, then the world changed. Right. Also, and I got, you know, 170 people on five different floors and two buildings in the office all day, every day to remote. And for the most part, we didn't see much disruption. Like, we were very system based as was. So, like, things actually did pretty well. But the only metric I could not get to where it was originally, the only one, every other metric I got back or above once we were remote was ramp time. And that's me, like, with all the resources and all the training and all the things that I commit to that I. Ramp time almost doubled and I tried everything to bring it back. My SDRs went from just under 3 to just under 5. My AES went from just under 4 to up to 6, back to below. Like that in person learning. I just. I've yet to find a way to replicate it as well. Remote.

Yeah. Yeah. So hard. I mean, learning in a group environment is not the same over zoom when we can have distractions both all around us. Right. You're not learning that way. So, yeah, yeah, great points.

It's. It's A tough one.

It's a tough one. And I don't have a solution other than organizations. Maybe that says something. And do you invest in in person trainings again? Do we bring that back? I think it's worth the discussion. Probably a whole nother. Probably a whole nother podcast, Katie.

All this money that we're saving on real estate right now, like, that's what, like when I left Patreon, Pop was in like my manifesto. I was like, honestly, if I'm y', all, I take that money that we're saving from like the leases that we're getting out to, and all new hires are flown in for a week to two weeks, their first three months.

Yeah.

And they go. They're in person learning for one week to two weeks at a time, their first three months to get to that point. Because I do think it's that important for learning. I really like at this point, I've gotten to experience both. I've got a large enough sample size to know whether or not there's differences there. So now it's true. And again, those are old school training tactics that I think would apply better to the new school. Enough of this sitting behind gong and sitting behind sales loft to then listen, like, go sit next to your person. And you can do that virtually too, by the way. That's the great thing about Zoom is we get to hop on a Zoom together and you can make calls and I'm there. Like, we can do it. So I love that. All right, so first, old school personalizing. So weird that we have to call these. Old school. God. Old school personalizing. Old school picking up the phone. Let's go to this next level. I heard mailing. I heard mailing of things. What's the. What's the mail?

Stephanie, talk to me about this old school snail mail. Yeah. So we had a methodology in which when you had to make your 50 dials after you attempted that phone call, you filled out a mailer. Right. And that mailer was a greeting card. It had a catchy saying and you hand wrote something about their company, your company. So think about the personalized message. You're doing that in a mailer and letting them know that you are going to be reaching out to set a meeting. Right. So what we would do is we had followed Sandler methodology. Right. So then you use that mailer as your pattern interrupt. Right. Did you get the card I sent you? When the receptionist would stop you? Are they expecting your call? Yes, they are. You're not lying. You said you were going to be reaching out and they received your card. Right. So we would plan those and then reach out a week later from the card sent to make sure they received it, opened it, etc. But so it kind of goes into personalization, but it also goes into how are you getting creative and trying something new and giving them a reason why you are calling outside of what you're selling. And that's like, I sent you something, right? Can you respond? We do that a little bit with Sendoso now, right? We're offering gifts, the things I've been offered for a meeting. Right. Like, some of that's questionable sometimes, but. But imagine just doing a mailer, right, that's handwritten from you. I think like one of the things I begged for my. My area sales manager then was, can I please have cool pack of Sharpies so that I can write my mailers in different colors like crazy. But it worked.

Yep. Yep. I am a huge believer in direct mail. I have done it at every org, every org that I have led, every single one. And to one of the reasons why, like, I have actually found very little correlation to success of what is offered versus, like, there's two buckets there. But why I think direct mail works. You said it. And I just want to make sure people catch it. I think direct mail works well because it gives the rep a reason to call.