Slow Down to Speed Up: Personalization Leads to Lead Conversion with Stephanie Valenti
4 Jan 2023 · 38 min
Stephanie Valenti, CRO at SmartBug Media, argues that slowing down converts more leads. She recommends phone calls, direct mail, in-person canvassing weeks, and genuine personalization over spray-and-pray outreach. Hands-on training and accountability cut ramp time.
Chapters
Every company has breakdowns in their revenue process. Sure thing. Deals slip into next quarter, competitors creep in and swipe deals away at the last minute, and deals getting single threaded that don't get to power. These are just a few examples of revenue leak, but there are a ton more and they're preventing your team from reaching their sales targets. That's why I'm such a big fan of Clary's Revenue platform is the only tool that actually helps leaders take control of their revenue and thrive through any market conditions. Especially when things get tough. You can't afford to miss a single detail, but you also can't be leading by gut. Clary combines the science and the art of sales and sales leadership. So go to clary.com if you want to answer the most important question in your business. Are you going to meet beat or Miss on revenue? 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. What up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the live Better Sell Better podcast. This is your host Kevin Dorsey, AKA kd. And today we are going back to to the future. What was old is now new. What is new is now old. What is played out is now hot. What is hot is now played out. We're going to be talking about lead conversion, right? These things that we want so desperately, the things that we bug marketing for. We wish we had better leads. But then we as salespeople don't treat the leads the way they deserve to be treated. And this applies to Inbound and to Outbound. And what we've seen over the years is this drastic focus on on speed with no focus on success. Which is why I'm so excited to have Stephanie Valenti on the show with me today. She's the CRO over SmartBug Media. She's an advisor at Hatch Adventure. She's an advisor at GTM Fund. She's the dean of Sales for Pavilion. She teaches forecasting for Pavilion. She gets with the CRO School, basically she knows her stuff from an inbound and outbound lead conversion perspective. So we're going to dive in on what we should be doing to convert more leads to meetings and deals. Stephanie, welcome to the show.
Thanks, Katie, for having me. Excited to be here. I can't believe we waited this long.
I know we were joking before we started recording. I was like, how? Like, like true. Okay. True story. True story. I went back into the podcast. I was like, have I really not? Because right before I sent you the message of like it's time, I was like, what if I already did? And I forgot, like, how bad would that look? Right. So I did. So I don't know why it took us so long. We, we even got to meet in person this year, like all the things. So here we are. So let's talk about this. Right? I asked you the topic and immediately you were like, there's things that we used to do that we've gotten away from that I think are coming back. So talk to me a little bit about that as a mindset and then we're going to get tactical as we go through it.
Yeah. So, you know, it's funny, I started to think about my experience when I was an individual contributor and we don't need to talk about my age today, but I'm going to tell you, that was a really long time ago. Right. And so I think, think about what did I do to drive success. I was in business development. We didn't have BDRs back then in SDR. So you were driving it all the way to completion. Right. And then handing it over to an account manager. And I'm thinking, I, I didn't have sequences. I was sending out and I was picking up the phone and the emails I did send were all custom written by me based on the insights that I have bound. I send mailers in the mail, I sent gate crashers, I dropped off business cards and gate crashers at the reception desk. Like I did all of these old business development tactics and I had this wild success. And then as I lead people today, I'm not training them to do those things. Right. As we get into like my management career and my VP career and then even the CRO career because we've adopted these new methodologies for. But now all of a sudden people are overloaded with the amount of emails that we get that are so templatized and non personalized. We've got to try old tactics again. And so that was the thought. KD is like, where's the door knockers? Right. Where's the customization and how are we treating our leads so that they do convert the way we need to and you can't throw them in a sequence anymore. You just can't.
I just, I have said this so many times on stage and on podcasts and to own sales team. I said if all it took were templated emails to book meetings, I wouldn't need salespeople. And it's. I, I just, I don't understand why that's so hard to comprehend where we have salespeople out there just loading things up and thinking that's their job. If sending templated, you know how cheaply I can send templated emails, I don't need sales direct for that. And so I love this thought process of looking back at like, you know, what are things that used to work and how can we bring them back? So let's talk about this idea of customization and personalization first. I think that's one of the first and easiest places that people miss is truthfully, especially on inbound, which I know like is a primary focus for you, but I like literally I get hardly any personalized outbound. I never get personalized inbound meaning things I've opt in for. They're all templates. So talk about personalization and customization right now. What do you see in. What do you think needs to be done to improve this?
Yeah, you know, it's something we're talking about right now at SmartBug because we are 80, 90% inbound. Hand raisers, form fills. Right. Everything is converting into an SQL for our teams which is initial call. But we're not treating them the way that we need to. Right. Especially from a personalization standpoint. You raise your hand, I'm going to send you a vidyard. Right. This is what my team's doing right now. That's pre recorded. That talks about. Oh yeah, that talks about why us. And click the button below to schedule your initial meeting and our conversions. Okay. Right. People are getting to that initial meeting, but do they continue on from that initial meeting the way that they should? Because have we like so we can go into discovery and what that means prior. But one of the things we've been talking about is hey, you send that video and then they don't click. What's your next. Are you just doing a templatized follow up? Are you throwing them into a sequence until they say yes? That's the old way. Right? That's the old way. But on a hand raiser. Why not take A second. Why not utilize the tools that you have, such as Zoom Info, right? Why not go research the company a little bit, understand what they do. Customize a message saying, I know that you inquired. This is why I think that we should meet. Right? And then provide that simplicity of scheduling. And so those are some of the things we're talking about is slowing down to speed up our deal process is key. That's key. So those are one of the. That's one of the things that I really want us to start implementing.
Yeah, no, like one. That's one of my favorite phrases. And any of my managers listening right now would know that. Slow down to speed up, talk about that all the time. But what was interesting, right? Like, I am, you know, outbound through and through, right? I have been my whole life. But I think because of that, my inbound teams are machines because we apply the outbound methodologies to the inbound process. It's like, wait, wait, wait, wait. This person raised their hands and we don't personalize for them. That's exactly who we should. Wait, wait, wait. This person inbounded. And we don't send them a vidyard, but we do for outbound. Like, these are the. We cannot afford to miss there. And I love that idea. Like, we called it inbound to outbound too, for some of my larger orgs. Okay, one person inbounds. We're about to go outbound to the other people in that company, right? Use it as a trigger of like, there's something happening at this company. Inbound to outbound and do both at the same time. And so I think that personalization now actually, real quick, can you get tactical on what good personalization looks like? Because I do think too. People think like, oh, Stephanie, I am. It says, hey, Stephanie, I saw you're the CRO at smartbug Media. Think like. And I am. I did personalize. Can you talk just real quick about true personalization?
Yeah, yeah. So I think when I think of personalization, I go 50% person, right? Personalization is person. And then if you're selling into B2B, 50% know what company you're selling into. And you need to be able to layer those things into your reach out. So for example, I used Zoom Info as an example. We can talk even LinkedIn, right? But take that moment, go ahead and look at where did they go to school? Do you have anything in common with them? Do you have common connections in Zoom Info? How many locations do they have as an organization? What's one of their mission Statements that maybe your company also aligns to what's something fun that they posted recently that you can pull from. And integrating those into the communications is key. So, for example, if I say, hey, KD, saw you were on LinkedIn the other day, really talking about how do you speed up deal velocity in a tight economy? And I want to talk to you about how my software may be able to solve that problem for you. I saw your company's growing. They've grown blank percent year over year. Also, love to hear more about how you're doing that. Want to schedule a time to chat next week? Does Wednesday work? Right, but. But that's taking in stuff about you, stuff about your organization, layering it together and making it truly personalized.
No, I like that. I think people forget, right? Like, it's personalization, meaning only that person should be able to read it, and it makes sense. Right? So I saw your post on your website. You mentioned your CEO. That's also the thing that I think people miss with personalization is they think it has to be only about, well, what if Stephanie's not active on LinkedIn? Is their CEO active? Is there CEO? Is any executive there active? Right. Like, what are the things that are being talked about at that company? So, okay, I love that one because I do. Like, I can't wrap my head around when people. Because it just drives me nuts. So I was like, well, we can't do personalization at scale, so we just don't do it. It's like, personalization wasn't supposed to scale. It was supposed to work. And you're making it harder on yourselves when you remove it. So I think that's one old tactic that's coming back. Let's go to the next one. Right? You listed off a few there, right? You know, you mentioned getting creative, sending things in the mail, knocking on some doors. Like, what's that next Old school tactic that should become new school again.
Yeah. How about picking up the phone?
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't want. I don't want to lose all my listeners here, Stephanie. Like, okay, let's see where this is going. You mean pick up the phone like the, The. The cellular telephone? Okay, talk to me about this.
Yeah, yeah. So if I re. If I think back, I. We had call days, right? Which were our days for making appointments. They were every Thursday, and it was a day that some dreaded. And, man, I loved call day. I started my day with two Red Bulls. I got in there, I got my list going, and I was ready to Just start hitting the phones, hitting them hard and. But in these phone calls, like, you started to have such a sequence in your reach out, right? So I would make 100 dials with a goal of 15 appointments for first appointments. But then when I didn't, I'd hit them in three weeks, right. And put them in that next three week schedule. And so I'd have these buckets. So you, even when you didn't get people on the phone, you started building relationships, right. Of the funneled stuff, like, oh, it's me again. Like, are you sure you don't want to schedule a meeting this time? Right. That personalization, that fun and creativity that you would bring into it today, it's different. And I want to make sure that. I'm saying up front, this is a different environment. I was picking up a office phone that was, that was not Internet voice streaming, Right. I was dialing people in their offices, not on their cell phones. Right. And we do have advancement in technologies. But I'll tell you what, as a CRO that gets, I'm gonna say I probably get 30 emails a day of someone trying to sell me, if not sometimes upwards to 50, I maybe get one call a month. A month. So no one's picking up the phone. And I've looked in zoom info. My cell phone number's in there.
I mean, you're, you're luckier than I am. My phone's constantly being blown up and it's like. But it's, you know, it's the auto dialers. I can tell because I answer from time to time and there's that delay. Dead calls already done. When that delay is X, I already know it's from an auto. You didn't call me on purpose. You called me from a list and that's, that's it. Right. And so, 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, 70. Yeah. You only get one call, but do you answer it? You don't answer cold calls. So then why should I be calling you? So like, let's talk about the reasons why people don't make calls and see if we can't give them some clarity there.
Yeah, I think you hit it. It's Most of it's 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, 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 all 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 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 interestingly 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. All of a sudden 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 back 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. But 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 on Patient Pop, it 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, 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 with their 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. 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 you, 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 you 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. 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. 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, 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 a really 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. Something got delivered. I call like there's a reason to call. So it gives me some confidence picking up that phone. Back to your earlier point of, like, well, what? How do I pick it up? Well, they just got something to deliver to them, right?
Yeah.
And so direct mail was huge for all of my orgs, Every single one. And one of the things that we also did that I don't see anybody do is multi send direct mail. We sent more than one thing.
Oh, yeah.
To a prospect. So I have more than one reason to follow up. I've got more than one reason to make that phone call. Right. And putting things in front of them. Right. More than once. Right. And it could be cheap. One was a squishy ball for stress.
Yeah.
The next week's a Rubik's Cube for figuring things out. Right. These, they don't have to be expensive, but there are reasons. So, like, what was. Let's do this. Just as a question, what's been the best thing you've gotten via direct mail? And then what do you think has been one of the most successful things you've sent via direct mail?
Yep. So best thing that I've gotten from direct mail was from HubSpot.
Okay.
Now, it was pricier because it was a thank you, right. For being me, being a part of a group, an advisory group. But it was a tree, like a living grown tree. And it said, let's grow together. I'll take. I'll take that. That was cool. It's still alive. Like, I'm growing that thing. I'm growing that thing that I've sent. Not as cool, right? But if I, when I had said, like, gate crashers, that terminology, old school terminology, was kind of like what you're talking about with a squish ball and whatever. And we had gotten these really ugly little square cardboard boxes that had print on the outside and we could put whatever we wanted in them. Now the organization gave us branded things that were kind of lame. Right. So we would instead go out and buy Hot Wheels and like, oh, I've done so many crazy things. The Hot Wheels ones, like, I would draw on the inside of it and had said, let's speed towards savings. So corny, right? Like, so corny. But we would sit on the ground, fill out all these gate crashers, and mail them in the mail. And, man, did those work people laugh? They always sent me an email thanking me. And so just that creative, you know, that creative fun.
We could go a full hour on just direct mail alone. But shout out Andy Mackinson. Andy Maxson was the CMO at Human and Snack Nation early in my career. And we geeked out on direct mail. We sent. We literally. We would always send four, right. There'd be four cents. One point. One of our fours was actually a plastic trash can. And the letter was inside the trash can. And so the whole point was like, you were gonna throw it away anyway. So we took the first step for you.
You.
Right. You used to send big while you were out notices. So it showed up in a huge tube with a penny in it. So you're like, what is in here? You pull out this big while you were out. Notice Kevin Dorsey tried to call you about. Call back here. Like, dude, we had a blast. And that stuff worked so well. But that's too old school now, right? No, I just need to, you know, I just need to send a templated video to go through. Okay. We're checking these off. So we got personalization. Check phone, check. Mailing, check. The last one that I want to harp, not harp on, but like hear from you and then see where else you take it is. You also kind of mentioned this idea of like knocking doors, like going in person. How are you seeing that play out now in a place now where, you know, not only are more employees remote, but then who they're targeting is remote. So it's a little bit different. Where I could land an SS three years ago, I have 15 meetings lined up because they're all in the same place now. We're kind of remote. So how are you seeing kind of this. This face to face or door knocking work in a now more virtual world?
Yeah, it's interesting. You know, if I think back, very few people had inside sales jobs. You almost thought of inside sales as a lower level than outside sales. It's like where you started or it was call center almost. Right. And that is completely changed and evolved. Very few people do outside field sales anymore at all. And Covid changed that drastically. But even before that, we were getting some transition. Yeah. And so I think it's gone all the way over here. Right. Like all the way. Everyone's inside, everyone's on video. We didn't really do video when I was in outside sales. It wasn't an option. And so technology has forced that on us a bit and made that available. But I do think there's an element of in person that you can't replace with video. You just can't. And so can we still Door knock. Can I do canvassing days? Like, I used to ask if I could get in my car. I didn't have zoom info. Right. So I used to ask if I can get in my car, bring a pad of paper. This is not a joke. And write down every company I saw on the signs. Every single one. I would have pages and pages. Sometimes I'd ask my husband to drive just so I could write all of them down.
Yeah.
Now I worked for a company you could sell into any industry, any company. Right. So it was a little bit different, but every single one, pages and pages and pages. Is that helpful still, man? I mean, you can go look up exactly what your ICP is and get a list like that in the technologies that we're enabled with today. So that's where old school, maybe a little bit needs to stay in school, but I don't think in person needs to stay old school. You know, there are final pitch presentations. There are still plenty of people that go to the office multiple times a week, if not full time. And understanding if that's something that your, that your client is in office, like asking that question and pushing your leadership for a budget to be able to do final pitch in person. My guess is that your win rate might have some positive momentum from being able to do that. You really set yourself apart. And I, I am, Katie, starting to see it a little. Like, we, for the first time at SmartBug, we're in a competitive deal. And we had heard that the person we were, the other competitive agency, had flagged the client out to their office to do final pitch. And guess what? We didn't win that one.
Right? No, it's. It's huge. And I do, I think people are sleeping on it a little bit right now, like, oh, well, we're remote. We can't. And it's like, no, you're just not being creative enough. Right. You're not asking that question. You're not thinking like, is that worth a $600 flight and a $600 on hotel? Probably is, depending on this, the deal size. But also we would do city swarms. So it's also, it works very well for prospecting where, okay, we are going to fly into New York in a month and a half. So you spend a full month prospecting into Manhattan to set breakfast, lunch, breakfast, lunch, breakfast, lunch, breakfast, lunch. We would set 10 to 15 meetings for a week, easy, every time. Because like, hey, I'm only going to be in town for a week. Could I take you out to lunch, hear how you're doing things over there? Worst case scenario, you got a free lunch out of it. But I'm only here for a week. Is there any way you can squeeze me in? And we're scheduling a month out.
Yep.
We would stack an entire week and then show up three meetings a day, face to face. And that still works, right? We did this even, you know, at. At Patient Pop, where, you know, if we were in town for an event. Well, best believe that we are hitting everybody around that event.
Yes.
The prospect as well. Hey, we're going to be here. Don't know if you're going to be there, but let's grab dinner. Like, it's in person. Can still work, y'.
All.
Like, what's happened? And unfortunately, with all this focus on speed is people have gotten less creative. Everyone just does the same version. Everybody is looking for the silver bullet as opposed to how can I be different? Like, a quick tip, y', all, by the time you're starting to see it on LinkedIn, it's probably not working as well anymore. Just throw that out there as an idea of, like, by the time everyone's like, oh, this is, you know, how have you been as an intro or 27 seconds in your intro, by the time you're seeing. Seeing it there, it's time to do something different. So. So we're at 30 right now. I'm gonna give you one more. What is one more old school that you wish came back that would have an impact on inbound lead conversion. Outbound lead conversion. Like, what's one more old school. That should be new school again.
Man.
I've got. I've got one. I've got one.
If you have one, what is it?
Okay, I'll throw out one. What happened to dress and sharp?
Oh, my gosh. That is such a hot topic for me right now.
Here we go.
Oh, my gosh. So. So yes, old school. I had to wear heels. You weren't not allowed to wear heels, by the way. I don't know how right that is today, but was. Was women. We had to wear heels. You had to wear dress, slacks or dress. And you had to wear a blouse. Right. And you had to be done going in. You had to have your folio right, like, ready to take notes. Like, there was a thing you had to pull together today. I get on calls and I get. It's remote, but I'm telling you what I see. People with like ripped T shirts with stain on stains on it. I see people that don't wash their hair. People are munching on something. I've never met the salesperson before, by the way. Like, this isn't a casual conversation between friends. There is a huge amount of professionalism that's just kind of gone. And I get, I get that we are selling to humans and so we need to be human and we need to look human. You don't need a black jacket. Right. But combing your hair and brushing your teeth and not eating on a sales call or is probably some good expectations to put in place. Yeah.
Yep. Like, that's, that's one where I'm aligned with you. This is not about, you know, suiting up and blazer and, you know, power pants and all that. But, like, we're salespeople and we're professional. And I do see that as something that, you know, is missing a little bit is this idea of, like, that I need to show up. Yes, you're working from home and yes, you can work in your PJs all day long, but when you're going to be on video with a prospect, I do believe that the way you show up to that matters. You know, showing up in a hoodie, showing up in just a T shirt, showing up, you know, like, whatever. I don't know, like, no data around it, nothing around it. But I think old school, that could be new school again, is like the worst case scenario. I can't think of you. You show up dressing, you know, sharp. The person goes, no, nope, not gonna do business with you. You wore a polo. And I only do business with people in sweatshirts. Like, that's not going to be the case. But when you're sitting, especially AES, when you're pitching to executives who are older than you.
Yes.
You have to remember who you're pitching to right now. Early in the sales cycle, Stephanie shows up to. She's a prospect. She shows up to that call and she's in a hoodie and a backwards cap and whatever else. Then maybe you have a little bit more flexibility and call to, to be a little bit lighter. Yeah, but like that, that was. I was hoping that might get riled up because that was right there. What? No, to just sharp. Like, I'm sitting here, I'm. I'm in my home office right now still wearing jeans. I got my, my blazer right. Like, yes, yes, the black hat's always there. But like, I'm gonna show up for this and I just, I Think we've lost that. We did this for my sales orgs in Santa Monica at least once a month. We did tie Tuesday. I like it once a month. And, like, we. That we dressed up that day and. And funny enough. And you can actually ping some of the people that were there for it. One of my favorite days in my entire tenure at Patient Pop is we had, like, blown out our number in a quarter, and I gifted the entire team with headshots.
I love that.
I gifted the entire team with headshots. Got a professional photographer to come in that would get, like, really good. And everybody dressed up.
Yep.
And, like, just, oh, the vibe of the office that day, like, the hooting and hollering of, like, you know, people they'd never seen, like, with their hair done or dressed up, like, oh, Mikey. Like, yo. Like, it just.
Ah.
It was one of my favorite days ever because everyone was in there looking sharp. And you. Do you carry yourself a little differently. You just.
I wonder if there's not data on, like, the confidence going up and therefore your results also following. There could be something.
There it is. And there it goes both ways right there. And this is what. People get tricked all the time. There's comfort and there's confidence. You might be more comfortable in your yoga pants, your slippers and your tank top. You might be more comfortable. But when it comes to exuding confidence, that oftentimes is a different thing. Sorry, my dog's losing mine. One second. Of course he got hype. He got hype.
He got excited.
Can you hear him? I don't know.
Oh, just a little bit.
Just a little bit.
All right.
Yeah, he's being a monster. All right, so as we wrap here, right, the name of this podcast is Live Better Sell Better. Right? Because I have this weird idea that if we took better care of ourselves, if we had more confidence, if we had more energy, enthusiasm, passion in life, that the sales would also improve. What would your live better advice be for people listening?
My live better advice is at the end of the day, it's just sales. And one of the things that has made my success, when people ask me the question, like, what's made you successful? It's. I've always taken risks, always. Because at the end of the day, if you can live with the worst thing that can happen, what's the risk? Right? So that's my guidance, is take a chance, say yes, dive in, and. And that will help you live better and ultimately sell better.
I love it. And you connected the dots at the end. What are you Some sort of professional. That was smooth. That was well done. Right? It's funny, one of my mantras and one of my affirmat is there is no worst case scenario. Yeah, there is no worst case scenario. And that's something of guiding decisions. Like yes, you need to think through risks. But like the worst case rarely ever happens ever. And if it does, more often than not, we actually are pretty good at getting around it. Right. So this was phenomenal. Old school, Stephanie. Where can people find you? Where are you putting out content? How can they get more of Alenti in their life?
Yes. So I am pretty active on LinkedIn. Mostly talking about inspirational guidance, leadership, very little marketing content or anything like that from me. Just a very authentic way to connect. I am always happy to connect with people there, send me a message. I always respond personally. I don't have anyone managing it for me. So you can reach out there. In addition to that, I do put out content for smart bugs. You can always check us out on SmartBug Media if you want more inbound marketing content to learn how to grow outside of that. Very heavy, heavily involved with Pavilion. So if you are on Pavilion you can hit me up there and. And I will also personally respond, oh.
Yes, well I appreciate you. This was everything I wanted it to be and more because I'm an old soul at heart as well. So anything old school to me is still useful. I appreciate you Stephanie. This was phenomenal.
So much fun. Thanks Katie.
More from Kevin


E74: Your Agent Isn't Broken. Its Foundation Is. | Jonathan Moss, EVP Growth & Partnerships @ Experity


E73: The AI Enabling 600 Customer-Facing Reps | Lauren Hughes, VP Revenue Effectiveness @ Justworks
E68: Are You UNINVESTABLE? The New GTM Reality | Cassie Young, General Partner @ Primary Venture Partners
E67: Your Buyer's AI Is Pitching YOUR Product (Badly) | Adrian Rosenkranz, CRO @ Webflow
E64: My Team Drives 4x Revenue Per AE vs Competitors | Aviv Canaani, CRO @ Datarails
E64: My Team Drives 4x Revenue Per AE vs Competitors | Aviv Canaani, CRO @ Datarails
E63: A Product-Informed Approach for Go-To-Market (Usha Iyer: Chief Customer & Growth Officer @ Hivebright)
E62: CRO Life: from a $20B Exit, to a Hyper-Growth AI Org (Michelle Donnelly, CRO @ Crescendo)
