The Mythical Full Cycle AE with Alexine Mudwar

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What up everybody? Welcome to another episode of Live Better Sell Better Podcast. This is your host Kevin Dorsey, AKA kd. And today we're talking full cycle. This is an unsupported demo. This is an unsupported episode. We're diving in with Alexine Mudoire on being a full cycle account executive. Now this is near and dear to my heart because anyone that's ever worked for me knows that prospecting is something all of my reps do. Whether you are an SDR or a senior account executive, everyone is responsible for generating pipeline and Alexine has been super successful with IT across industries for almost a decade now. She's done door to door, she's done SaaS, she's now a LinkedIn Top Voice Prez Club winner, top 100 sales stars and a literal ninja, which we're going to dive into a little bit here. But Alexine's here to teach us what it's like to be a full cycle ae. What she focuses on, how she balances her time and not only has she been super successful in her roles, but she also gives back. She's not a lone wolf salesperson. She's also mentoring and teaching and working to get more diverse people into the sales industry. So I'm so excited to have her here. So enough about me, it's all about her. Alexine, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Now I'm pumped. Alexine and I have been in the same circles, or call it the same squares, but our circles have never really overlapped. And so it's to finally get you on here and so we're going to dive right in. Is what people love about the show is we get right into the good stuff and we navigate from there. So let's start with this. Why should all AES prospect? And I know it's going to catch some people off guard because they're like, oh, I'm an AE now, I'm a closer. I don't have to prospect. Why do you believe all AES should be generating pipeline?

Yeah, I mean, there's a million reasons that AE should be prospecting. My personal reason, the main one is I think it's good to keep your toolbox. I think it's tightened up. I think it's good to keep your teeth sharp and just keep learning these new tactics. Because we're constantly changing the way that we're selling to folks. You know, now we're working on video, we're starting to test new methodologies. Those are changing constantly. So in order to be at the forefront of that and be up to date on things, you have to be on the front lines and testing some of these different methodologies. So I think, you know, if nothing else, just for yourself, so that you can stay at the top. You know, the cream rises to the top and the companies right now that are looking for salespeople are looking for the top of the herd. So that's why I think I would definitely focus on it.

And something you mentioned actually before we started recording is you said you just dove into a full cycle role. You didn't start as an sdr, you didn't start there. You started with having to learn how to prospect and close. How did you develop the prospecting skill? Because some of the topics you've been talking about recently are all on prospecting. You're teaching people how to get through the noise. How did you develop that skill when it wasn't specialized? Right. When you didn't spend two years just learning how to prospect, you had to prospect and close. So how did you actually get good at it.

Yeah, I mean, great question. I wish that I had like a really scientific method that worked well and I did all these great things, if I'm being honest. I picked up the phone. I mean, like one week into my first sales job, I just started cold calling. And I didn't really know what cold calling was. I didn't know what a platform was. I didn't understand what what a CRM system was. So there was a lot of methodology. When I started out in sales, I didn't even understand. All I saw was I have this KPI, this 15 to 20 demos I have to set a month, and it's staring me in the face and the only way to get there is just to get going. So rather than kind of, I probably should have done a little bit more learning up front. But rather than doing that, I just jumped in head first. And it's the same thing. I mean, I started a new job two weeks ago and I'm prospecting already. I mean, you just. For me, I like to dive in head first. I'll learn the talk track as I go. I'll get more comfortable with everything and I'll start to learn the objections. But I can't do any of that until I just start having conversations with people.

So where does that lack of fear come from? Right. Because what I'm hearing there, right, is like I just dive in. Yeah. I don't maybe know what I'm going to do, but I'm just going to go. Has that always been your style? Like just always, like jump in and figure it out as you go? Or is that something you also developed over time?

I think it's a little bit of my style. Like I was always kind of a, you know, a little bit of a different kid in terms of. My mom owned a restaurant and catering business. So I grew up in a very social setting from the time I was born, basically. I mean, she would have like these big wine tastings with 50, 60 people and I was, you know, like three, four years old. And I'd be like working the door, greeting people. So I think I just had like a little bit more of a socialized background in terms of getting comfortable talking to people. And I used to really sell in her restaurant. Like that was my first sales job is she would just try to get rid of inventory and hand me like a box of jams or a box of salsas. And then I would spend the day trying to sell that. And she'd give me like a Beanie Baby if I could sell it off. So I feel like for me, I had like a really cool introduction to sales that was a little bit of a different flavor. But I think a lot of it is my background and just being connected to people from an early age. So there's that level of comfort. So then when I think about, like outreach from there, I just think of it as I'm talking to a human being. Like, I'm not calling, you know, this celebrity. Like I'm calling, you know, like a cio or I'm calling, you know, these people are not, you know, necessarily the most famous person in their field. It's just a human being. I'm having a conversation with them and it's either going to hopefully go one of two directions and then I know by the end of that call which way it's going. So. So I think my childhood had a big part in it for sure.

So something that I've seen now more and more through the years, and it used to be something very different that I looked for is this idea of being social. A lot of salespeople believe they are very social creatures, which they are. But what that also sets up is taking rejection really hard. People love to be social, but they're not used to rejection. They're used to the butterfly. They're jumping around. They're good at making friends. They're not used to dealing with rejection. So how do you deal with rejection? Because also it's a full cycle. Ae you get both rejections. So you get the prospecting rejection, but you also get the closing rejection. Right. So how do you deal with that? I guess by, you know, I guess. Let me rephrase the question. How do you keep your mood up? How do you keep going right when you get both sides of the rejection?

Yeah. And that's a great call out. Nobody's really called that out before. It's very simple. But it's a good point. I think for me, I've been in this long enough and the fact that I started out and was just constantly getting hurled rejection from day one because I was basically had no really understanding of sales when I jumped into it. I think that kind of helped me build some calluses and I got a little more comfortable from the onset. Outside of that, I mean, for me, I don't feel like I've definitely separated myself from the experience. So it's like there's Alexine, but then there's Alexine. That gets rejected is not part of this person, just something that's going to happen. I know that it's part of the process. A lot of times, like a rejection isn't them rejecting you as a salesperson. Like, they're not saying, like, I don't like you, Alexine. I've had deals where, you know, I really thought it was going to close and I had the best relationship and then Covid hit or something. You know, there's just things out of our control sometimes. So I think if you can kind of take yourself away from that and just understand that it's part of the process, it's not ever going to be like a personal attack on you unless you're seeing a consistent trend. And then it might be, but most of the time they're rejecting something that may be outside of your control. And if they're not, if it is something that's within your control, then that's something that I need to work on, educate myself, get better at, and then I won't have that happen in the future. So I'm very educational in terms of my outlook. Like, whatever the outcome is, either it's a learning experience or a success. But even when I, like, I've had deals that I've worked for over a year and when they finally close, it's just kind of, you know, I don't have like a huge celebration. Like sometimes it's just like, all right, cool, it's done. Like, I got the deal. And that's the same way with rejection too. So I feel like I kind of try to land somewhere in the middle there so I'm not constantly flying high and then sinking low. And that ping pong effect is just the worst for salespeople.

No, it is like the way I tell, like my teams and reps, right, is prospecting. There's more rejection. Closing the rejection is more personal because you did, you put a year into it. You put six months, eight months. That has been like your baby for eight months. And then when the no comes back, it's like, oh. Whereas when you're prospecting, you get a no. You can always just make another call. You always, all right, well, I knew I was going to get that no and go through it. Now we're starting to dive into the duality of a full cycle role of all the things you have to manage. So how do you manage your time? Right. Because that's always something a lot of AES will say, well, I don't have time to prospect. I don't have time to prospect. I'm closing deals and I'm like, that's weird. I've yet to see anyone close for eight hours a day. Weird. So how do you manage your time? How do you prioritize when you're gonna prospect, which is when you're doing your follow up, when you're scheduling your demos, things like that?

Yeah, so it's a good question. My first few years in sales, I didn't manage my time. So I was up till 3 most nights doing emails and it was not healthy. So I do not recommend that method. But I was working basically like 18 to 20 hours constantly because I was so hungry and I just wanted it so bad. What I realized is that wasn't necessarily a healthy approach to it. Like I did need to. And what I realized too is there was, as you know, there was a lot of dead time in there too. So that wasn't like 18 straight hours of me working. What was happening is that there were chunks of time where I wasn't optimizing my work time and then There was the 3am where I had a really productive hour. So I was like. So I got to this point where I couldn't do those really late nights anymore and do events and teach outside of work. I had to scale it back. So I started to kind of strip out some of those dead spaces and figure out what did I actually work on today, what actually took up my time and then let me try to block that into my calendar. So I do a lot of calendar blocking. I'm actually going to do a post on this on LinkedIn today. But I do like call blocks or prospecting blocks. Tuesday is my prospecting day. It's been my prospecting day for seven plus years. I don't know if there's data that correlates to it, but in my mind there is. I call it Alexine data. So in Alexine data, Tuesday is the best prospecting day. And so I block time for most of Tuesdays I'll prospect. The new team I just joined, we actually do call blocks as a group and we do blitzes two times a week. So we'll do two hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So that fits in perfectly to my data point. And then outside of that it's just managing understanding when am I going to have demos? Maybe I have two demos a day that I need to work around those. And then I create 30 minute blocks where I need to do all my admin work too. Because that's what I think is the biggest disconnect between why people aren't prospecting is this idea that they have so much admin work As a salesperson, you and I know this. Like, we don't have that much admin work. It's like one discovery checklist or like one demo check. Like, it's not like, let's be realistic. So I try to block off, say like 30 minutes and get through my demo checklist for the day or do them at the end of the day, get them populated in the Salesforce, make my updates in Salesforce, and then I do kind of like a weekly cleanse of the system, usually on Fridays, to make sure all my tasks are in the right places. So I think I've just tightened it up a lot and been really just had like kind of a. I don't know what to call it, a come to Jesus moment with myself where I was like, I need to just figure out what I'm actually doing with my time and then strip out some of that dead space because it's not working.

It's so funny. My reps know this. I tell them it's a blessing and a curse that I was a former SDR and AE and full cycle ae. It's a blessing and a curse for you. It's a blessing because I understand. I understand. I understand the ups and downs. I've gone through it. I understand the rejection. I understand how hard it can be. But at the same time, I understand. I know how much downtime there is. I know where people cut corners. I know how much admin you have. Right. I'll have to go find it after this, but a study just recently came out, like 4,000 or 6,000 some salespeople. And the number one commonality between the top 5% was CRM data cleanliness. Like actually putting all their notes in and leveraging like the CRM. Right. So you don't have to remember all these things. And so now you'd mentioned, like, now you're also teaching. Right. So I'm gonna take this back a second. What is something you wish someone had taught you when you first started? Right. Cause, yeah, you dove right in. Yeah. You kind of figured it out as you go, but you also were spending mornings till 3 o' clock and doing a lot of things, trying to figure out what do you wish someone would have taught you when you first starting as a full cycle ae?

I mean, there's a number of things. Selfishly, I'm glad that they didn't teach me anything, if I'm being honest, because it forced me to just push through a brick wall. And by the end of my first year in sales, I was our top Sales rep at that company. And I was against like 30 salespeople at the time with the least amount of experience on the entire team. So for me, I'm super grateful that nobody taught me really anything when I started. But if I had one skill set even before starting sales, it really would have been that time management piece because it works really well in your early twenties going off of like three hours of sleep. But at this point it's not as fun to do those kind of nights, especially if I have teaching events plus speaking events plus podcast this, that and the other. It gets really heavy really fast. So I do wish I kind of would have learned some of those skills a little bit earlier on and gotten, you know, more religious about how I manage my time.

So how did you become number one? Right, so I told you earlier, as I'm gonna make you get tactical, I'm gonna make you get specific, right? So here, here's Alexine. We're back a decade. She's bright eyed, bushy tailed, first into sales, gets a full cycle role and somehow within a year beats out 29 other reps to be number one. How, how did you rise the ranks that fast?

I. Sheer inability to not succeed. Like there's nothing else. I had tunnel vision and I just wanted to be the best. And I, like, I did. I was pretty competitive at the beginning. Like it wasn't pretty at certain points and I, you know, I own that. But in other ways I was more the most competitive with myself. And this hasn't changed. Like my top competitor is Alexine. Every single time. Like that too. I'm up against in every single deal. But with that role specifically, I mean, I was doing sometimes a hundred. I have my old call records. I actually took like a couple snapshots from it. I mean, I have one showing 175plus cold calls. Like I would leave and my makeup would have melted off my face. Like, it was just crazy. So I mean, a lot of it was just this sheer inability to accept that I wasn't going to be number one. And I think, you know, it's so interesting because I was surrounded by people. Some of them had like 10 years of sales experience. And so they would tell me, you know, they kind of had this air about them sometimes and they would tell me like, I'm the top salesperson. Like, you're never gonna beat my numbers. And I was like, whatever, dude. Like, that was my attitude. Like everything was just whatever, dude. And then I just went after it. So, I mean, there isn't like a Lot of science there, but there is a lot of back work that went into it. I mean, I was constantly. If you looked at the leaderboards, you could see a direct correlation between the number of demos I was running, the number of demos I was scheduling and running myself, versus my revenue that I was bringing in. And I also hyper focused, which maybe unpopular opinion. I also hyper focused on the market I thought was good at the time. When I first started out in sales, I spent probably 20% of my time on small businesses, another 60% of my time on midsize. That was like our main customer market, and then only 20% on enterprise, whereas most of my team would spend like 80% of their time on enterprise. But that wasn't who we were selling to. So I ended up in one year closing three of our top ten largest clients for the company. But at the same point, I really wasn't focusing on that subset of the market because out of those, you know, out of that 20%, three was a really small number. So it wasn't actually like that. You know, if you look at it and really peel it back, it wasn't that great of a metric to track. So I think for me, really hyper focusing on what was the best market for us and then spending my energy there.

And I hope everyone listening, like, listens to what she did. Right. Because a lot of people will talk mindset, right? Like, I wanted it more. I'm competitive. I refuse to fail. But mindset drives behavior. And so her behaviors, she put in more activity than other people. She figured out her market. She doubled down on the place where she could be successful and didn't wait for someone else to tell her. Right? And that's what happens often is like, you know, people talk mindset all day long, but then the behaviors aren't there. Right? Every salesperson believes they're competitive, right. They all say they love to succeed. They all say they want to win. They all say they're gritty. They all say that. But the behaviors don't always match. Right. And so now we've been talking prospecting quite a bit. Let's get a little bit more tactical there, right? So it sounds like calling is like one of your favorite channels, right? I've heard cold call a lot here. Right. How do you approach. How do you approach a cold call? Right. Like, you know, you said something earlier, right? Like you're calling humans. I like the way you phrase it. They're not like a celebrity. They're not. They're not famous, you know, like, they're a Person, Right? So you're already approaching it from the mindset of person. But then how do you approach that cold call? Right? Like, what are some of your favorite tactics there?

First and foremost, calmly. I think that's the biggest disconnect for cold calls is people go into these and they're like, freaking out. And then your energy. There is energy that is emitted via voice and tonality. So it's like as soon as the person on the other end, there's a CRO that you're calling on and they're super busy, and then all of a sudden you sound stressed out. So then you just stress them out and it creates this, you know, just a fact. That's awful. So I think first and foremost, just, like, calmly, like, I like to take a deep breath, make a call, like, center myself, like, do a little moment, and then I just have a conversation. Like, there's no like. I mean, sounds silly to say. There's no like. Like, there is technique to it, obviously.

But I was gonna call you out there. I was like, you're not just having conversations.

A lot of times, like, what works well for me that I try to do is just strip away some of the fear. I think one of the biggest things that happens when we cold call is these companies feel like if I say yes to this meeting, I'm stuck with this salesperson for maybe the foreseeable three to six months. Like, they're going to be. There's going to be an onslaught of emails and onslaught of calls. Da, da, da. So I try to strip that away from step one. So a lot of times when I'm cold calling, you know, it's a very tame, like, introduction. Like, this is Alexine at this point, I may have, like, interacted with them on LinkedIn a little bit. So I'll probably, like, you know, say, I saw that you follow Kevin on LinkedIn. Like, I love his content. Here's a piece that was really interesting. Did you have a chance to read that? Like, you know, just try to find some common ground. Here's why I'm calling. Like, I do think it's fair to tell people why you're actually reaching out. Here's what my company does. Super simple. Like, I don't like to go into this whole monologue for, like, 20 minutes about it. And then really what I like to do is give people an out. I'll say, you know, I want to schedule this demo for us. I want to really take some time for us to show you what our platform is capable of. If it makes sense for you. Great. We'll continue the conversation. If not, no problem. We'll part ways amicably. And that's kind of helped me a lot with cold calling. It gives them this feeling of an out. What happens most of the time is they don't need to take that out. And I can be respectful, obviously, if it's definitely not a fit. But if I feel like it's a fit and I know that we can help their company, then I definitely stay on top of that lead, even if they tell me no. So I think, I think just kind of approaching them and giving them a little bit of leeway. So it's not like we're in a relationship. Like, it's almost like you're calling someone and you're like, in their mind, they're like, this person wants to marry me right now. Whereas I'm like, I just want to go on a date and see how it goes. And if it doesn't go well, like, I don't want to go on a second date either. So it's just taking it back a step a little bit.

So we're doing the audio right now, but if you guys just watch what Alexine did, we might have to find this clip. Something that I teach a lot. It's called being a hands up prospector. Hey, like, look, I don't want to, like, she put her hands up, she pulls back, she's like, you know, if it's not a problem, it's not a problem if it's not a good thing. And like, it's just like you give people that out. And so often what's taught in sales is this bulldog, aggressive, push for the meeting, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But they've actually, they've even studied this. If you allow someone to say no, they're actually more likely to say yes because they don't feel pressure. It's like, look, if you don't have this problem, let me know, I'll back off. Because everyone loves to talk about upfront contracts in the demo, which I'm not a fan of at all. But I love upfront contracts and prospecting. Look, if you don't struggle with this, if you don't have this problem, if this isn't even something in your world, just tell me and I'll stop. I think that's a very important thing to give people is that ouch. They don't feel feel pressured. And you mentioned too, the calm. It's actually why I'm not a huge fan of like the stand and dial, like, mindset, right? Like, you see people get. All right, all right, everyone, call time. Let's get hype. Stand up. Motion creates emotion. It's like, okay, but that doesn't actually allow us to stay calm on a call or actually amping people up before they need to do something that they need to stay calm on. A few of my best SDRs and AES ever, they prospected with their feet up. It was not standing right. It was sitting with their feet up. Because what that would allow them to do is stay in a calm, relaxed, conversational tone versus being up and all hypey as they go through things. So I love that. Calming. Now, do you have any tactics on how you calm? You said deep breath. But what are some of the things that you do to get in the right mindset before making cold calls? Because people overthink cold calls all the time, right? They think about it. They get ready. They're prepping. They're doing their admin. Okay, all right, five minutes. I'm gonna make that call. Oh, wait, what do I got? You know? You know, how do you get ready for that blitz? I think that's actually a good thing. You're doing blitzes. You have times. Tuesdays and Fridays were my days, by the way, so I love that. Tuesdays and Friday mornings, those were my prospecting, like, just gold. How do you get ready for a call blitz? How do you get ready for that prospecting Tuesday?

Yeah, so I try to tee up. So I actually still use tasks in salesforce, so I'm like. I don't know if I'm, like, a dinosaur of the CRM, you know, like, of the salesfor, but I use tasks. So what I'm doing, like, throughout the week is if I'm sending an email, say, on, like, Monday, Tuesday, I'll either throw that into my Tuesday kind of list or Thursday list so that I can do my next touch as a call. I don't do cadences that are automated a ton. If I'm being honest. That's not been my M.O. but, so first and foremost, I get organized. Like, I have, like, a certain subset of accounts I'm calling. The other thing I do that's a little bit different within my tasks, I keep pushing forward, like, my open task. So, like, whatever my open task is, every time I do an email or a call, I close that out and put in an activity history. So in my open task, I can see everything I've done. I can do this from salesforce, too. But a lot of times I'LL also put like snippets in there. Like, Kevin, like soccer has been with the company seven years, whatever. Like something simple. And that helps me a ton because I'm like, okay, here's like a key reminder. Or if I see something cool, like if they got recent funding, I'll just pop that in there too. It's like, you know, just March just got 20 million, whatever. So there's just things like that that I leave in my notes. And that way when I'm going to call, I have something to kind of work off of. So that's kind of my main one is the cr. It's just like going through my task management system. And then the other one, which this is not like scientific whatsoever. I doodle a lot when I cold call. And I remember my VP of sales in my first job, he was like, what are you doing? Like, what is that sheet of paper? That looks crazy? And I was like, I don't know. But if it gets me through like 150 calls backs back, it's something about it helps me. So I think to your point, like your reps that are kicking their feet up, I'm doodling. Like, we're all kind of like doing these things that are keeping our mind at ease. Another one is like, if you've seen those fidget toys, a lot of times I'll play around with those because those kind of keep my mind busy too. So it's just little tactics, but at the end of the day, they're all psychological. It's distracting parts of your mind so that you're not dumping 100% of your energy into that call. And it doesn't feel like it's life or death. It's just another conversation. And here your brain has something else to focus on in the interim. So that's, I think it's kind of a psychological tactic.

So much of sales, so much of life is just psychological, right? How can we put ourselves in the right mental state to do whatever it is that we need to do, right? Fidget spinners. So I'm a phone boxer, right? So I didn't sit for my calls, but like I'd be like in a phone box, like, you know, like, I'm just like walking within like my three foot square. And like, obviously you can see I talk with my hands a lot. I would throw a ball in the air while making cold calls, right? Just like something to keep it moving and grooving. So that's phenomenal. So now, real quick, I saw in your LinkedIn profile something called triple threat prospecting. So of course that catches my eye. I'm like, ooh, triple threat prospecting. Educate me. What is triple threat prospecting?

Yes. So I'm gonna say I coined it, but I probably didn't. But I'm sticking with it now because I've committed to it the last few years. So this is my way of prospecting. Again, not a ton of science here, but basically what I do whenever I'm approaching an account, I like to get more touches in quickly and try to. I'm very impatient. That's part of my ideology. And I did a call with Scott Leese actually yesterday. I mean, you know, Scott. And so we were talking about how we're both impatient and I feel the same way. But basically this is my approach to kind of using my impatientness to help me. But essentially what I do is my first, what I'll do is when I'm going to reach out to new companies. So say I want to prospect you, Kevin. So I will go to your LinkedIn. While I'm on your LinkedIn profile, I have it set so that you can see I viewed your profile. I'll pick up the phone, call your direct line. There's kind of like a 5050 shot, you know, not even 50 50, it's like a 9010 that you're not going to answer. So then I leave a voicemail and I'll say, you know, hey Kevin, this is Alexine calling. I wanted to reach out to you to discuss, you know, market research, whatever. I'm actually going to shoot you over an email here in just a moment. So keep an eye out for that. It's going to be titled XYZ and I'm looking forward to talking with you soon. And it's just like super simple. There's nothing really meaty in there. And then I'm sending that email right after that. So it's like in a two minute span, they've now seen my face, heard my voice, seen my writing. And I've also kind of pre created a little bit of rapport in that I said that I was going to send an email and I did. Where this triple threat may change is video is starting to come up. So I'm starting to play around with some video. I'm not deep enough into it to give any data points or actual tactical advice, but that may change things up too because what used to be like where I would look at their LinkedIn profile, now that might become a quick voice message or a quick video where I'm Just saying hi to you via video and then I'm trying to call and then I'm sending an email that I referenced from that LinkedIn video. So this actually may change a little bit. But the whole idea behind all of this is get them used to who I am. Because what's happened with this a lot of times is I've done like there was, for instance, several years back, there was this VP and no one had reached out to or no one had been able to reach him for like seven, eight years he'd been in our CRM system. You just like look down, it's like, like, you know, call email, call email. Nobody catches this guy. So I do my triple touch and I think I did a couple more like interactions on LinkedIn. Like I did a couple comments here and there. Like, again, nothing crazy. Like it was just like, hey, I read your article. This was a cool read. Thanks for posting it, I'm gonna share it with my team, whatever. And then what happened was when I finally caught this guy, it was like 7:30 or 8:00am I'm not a morning person, so I don't, you know, I usually prefer night calls, but I happen to call it like 7:30 or 8. And the guy picked up on the first ring and I was like, hey, this is Alexine. And he goes, I was waiting for you to call. I knew it was coming soon. And I was like, oh, ha ha. You know, And I didn't even get to talk. And the guy's like, cool. So what I'm thinking is I'm gonna have the rest of my talent acquisition team sit on this. We're gonna schedule a demo probably for next week. And I was like, spoken like this guy ran the entire call and he's their VP decision maker. Just took me through the entire process in 30 seconds. So I think that's the value of it, is we can get these prospects to get to know us without getting to know us.

It's the long game versus the short game, right? It's saying like, I was actually just on a webinar a few weeks ago. I was like, slow down. To speed up results, right? It's not about getting the demo on that first LinkedIn connection or getting the demo on that first email or that first social touch, but when you try, you hurt your long term success to be able to pull it off versus building that awareness, making them familiar with you, building some curiosity around, like, who is this Alexine? I'm seeing her name pop up, right? And you can go through all that. So Slowing down a little bit to go through it. Now I will Quick tip. Video. Love video because of what you just said. Because you can use video in all the channels, right? You can drop the video in their social, you can drop a video in email, you can even drop video in text, right? So like now that one video can also be in your triple touch, right? It can go across all of them. So I would definitely give you some advice there. Like go for it because it does, it does so much. Especially we've noticed this in Covid, right as we're recording, right? This is still that what I think happened in Covid, right? Everyone was like, you know, email responses have come down, like connect rates have come down. Where we saw an increase with video is I think because we were able to actually get our tone across. Everyone was talking about leading with empathy. I hope you're doing okay in these challenging times. But when you're writing that in an email, they can read that however they want. You can't control the tone. Whereas in video you control that tone. They can actually hear the empathy. They can actually hear like, oh, wow, Alex actually sounds like she cares. This isn't just a templated email, so definitely give it a shot. I'm curious to see how it works for you because I feel like you're probably going to crush it.

I will. Yeah, I'll let you know.

Now, you said something that caught me off guard here a little bit. You said you're very impatient, but you're also a first degree black belt in Taekwondo. So when I think martial arts, I think discipline, I think patience, I think wax on, wax off, doing one kick 10,000 times. But you're also impatient. So talk to me about that real quick because I love hiring martial arts. Martial artists and gymnasts are two of my favorite micro pockets of salespeople because they've practiced things over and over and they understand discipline, they understand different levels. So talk to me about the correlation between martial arts and sales because I think this is a very cool topic. And I'm also just, I'm curious though, like, how can you be impatient and be a first degree black belt? Like, I feel like those are very opposite ends of the spectrum.

Yeah, no, that's a fair question. Martial arts is interesting. So I don't practice as, you know, as much anymore, but I did for over a decade. I competed nationally. I was big in sparring. That was like my baby. I love sparring. So when I did competitions, that's where I had the most fun. And I don't Know if you know this about martial arts, but when you compete in these national competitions, there's usually three categories. It's sparring, breaking, and forms, which is like, where you do these long format combinations of different, like, kicks and punches, things like that, to create kind of this longer thing. That was my least favorite. So that's where the impatience comes in. I love breaking and I love sparring. Sparring more than anything because. Because I'm impatient. But the forms was my least favorite because it's something that I would have to practice. We actually had to learn all of our forms. Mirror image. So you would have to flip them and do them backwards. And once you get into, like, the ones after you get past, like, the blue belt, like, they're not. That does not get easy after that point to do them backwards. So it's funny because martial arts for me was great for my impatience because when I was actually competing in sparring, you're only competing for like three minutes. I mean, it's. You're giving it everything. And it's tough too, because you go back to back like you would. I competed at one national. There was one national competition, and I think I had to do three fights back to back. And you only get like a minute and a half in between each fight. So it was like crazy. I mean, I just did three, like, in a row. And you're just exerting so much energy. So I do think in a way, like, it was good for my impatience because I. That helped, like, me be a really good spar. But taekwondo as a whole, to your point, is like a very. In any martial arts, it's a very long process. Like, for my black belt test, and my dad's probably gonna, like, geek out. I'm definitely gonna send this to him because he was such, like, an advocate of me doing Taekwondo. But for your black belt test, I trained for an entire year for that. It was not like a. I did a couple months here. I trained for a year. And what I did was every single night before bed, I did a hundred knuckle push ups on these concrete cylinders so that my knuckles could get like, really. It gets crazy. And then I did 100 sit ups. I did 100 of each type of kick. Because when you actually, the day of, it's like a six. Mine was like a six hour test. It's not like a little like you go and like bow to someone. It's like a whole test. So it's kind of crazy to think about. And then you have to actually break a brick. That's part of the test. So you have. It's like a lot, you know, like an actual. It's not like a brick. It's like a piece of concrete and you have to break it with your hand. And so I trained for a year to get ready for that. And the funny thing is it has very little to do with strength and it's almost entirely psychological. So if you hesitate whatsoever, you can't do it. And so I think there's a lot, it relates a lot to sales because what happened was I didn't want to retake this test. I was like, I'm doing this one time and then I'm not coming. I'm not doing this test again after a year of preparation. So they always say if you don't break the brick on the first try, you're gonna have to retest. Like your hands gonna be gnarly. Like, it's not gonna happen. So I actually messed up. And I'd been training for a year for it because I hesitated as soon as I was like about to hit it. And then I messed up in my hand. I had a bruise. Nobody can see this, but it was like a 7 inch bruise. My entire, like started turning purple. It was swollen and they were like, cool, you can retest in a few weeks. And I looked at the person dead in the eyes and I was like, I'm doing it now. Like, we're going. And they were like, nobody does it the second time. I'm like, I'm doing it. I gotta get out of here. So I ended up doing it and I broke it, but not pretty whatsoever. I mean, it was not a nice bruise for several weeks.

Well, it's funny because I'm glad that you brought it back to preparing for that. Right? Because what I wrote down as you were talking is like, you know, you were talking about like the fights and the sparring and like, you know, that was like your time, like to get that impatience out. What I wrote down is you don't fight your way to a black belt. Right. You earn the black belt through years of preparing for one six minute test, right? Because how often you said the fights were like this? I use this example when I'm onboarding new reps all the time. I bring up whatever score thing, right? That test was, what did you say? Six hours?

Six hours.

Six hours, right. And a fight was how many minutes?

Three minutes.

How many fights did you do per month?

I mean, a ton.

Like, competition.

Oh, competition wise? Like not as many. Just because those are like, few and far between.

Right. So how many hours were you putting in in practice for that three minute fight?

Oh, hundreds.

That's what I wish more salespeople understood is that hours, hundreds of hours for the preparation for that three minute fight. Thousands of hours for that six hour test. And if people could grab that and bring that over into their sales careers, how much better they can get. Because we're blessed to be in a career that we can practice. We can practice this. I can't walk out and start practicing to be a nurse. I can't just stroll in and just test putting IVs in people and see how I do. I got to go to school for a long time for it and then I'm in with sales. You can come in. Your story is phenomenal. You came in no experience and now look at where you're at and also where you're going to go. I'm a fan right now. I'm a track your journey. I'm going to see how far you go. I see where this is heading. So now what I want to bring this back to real quick. So there's two final questions we're going to dive into. So the first, I call the big three, right where it's like, you know, we've been talking full cycle, we've been talking mindset and psychology a little bit here. If they forgot everything that we've been talking about, what would be the three things you'd want them to remember when it comes to being a successful full cycle ae, if they could only they forgot everything. They're like, okay, these are the three things that they walk away with. What would those three things be?

Yeah, good question. I think the first one, I don't like to always be closing thing. It's like overdone. I like always be prospecting, like always be prospecting, keep it sharp, keep it tight. And then the triple threat would be my second one. Like combine all those channels, be it social, phones, email, whatever it is, do the combo effect there, make it work. And then the last one, I think the biggest piece relating to this overall topic is control your own destiny. Stop waiting for SDRS to fill your pipeline to do the work for you. You're in control of your own destiny, you're in control of your own paycheck. So just own that and go with it.

It's the same advice I give to even my own SDRs. And then my AES who still prospect is never lose this skill because no matter where you go, if we're going head to head right you and I work at the same company. We're both AES of equal skill set. But your prospect and I'm not. You're going to beat me by miles. By miles. Because I'm sitting back waiting for pipeline from the SDRs, and you're going and getting it. Plus getting things from SDRs. If you're blessed to have SDRS on your team skill set that once you have, just take pride in it and never lose it. And it's just fun. It gets me fired up. Prospecting is something where my favorite part of the sale is the demo and close. And that's why I got good at prospecting, because the better I could get at prospecting, the more I got to do the thing that I love to do. And that was always what motivated me through. Now, the last question here is definitely my favorite. That's why I like to end with it. When it comes to learning, people are most likely to remember the start of something and the end of something. That's why we do the big three. And then this last question. The name of this podcast is Live Better Sell Better. Right? Like, focusing on the person in salesperson, because I do believe that carries over, right. The better we are living, the better we are taking care of ourselves. The better we have, like, our mindsets, the better our sales will be. So what would be your parting advice? To live better. Right? To take better care of ourselves or to get more fulfillment or to lower our stress. Like, what would be that live better advice you'd give people?

Yeah, I mean, good question. I mean, I'm sure there's so many pieces of advice. I think for me it's just like, listen to yourself. Like, figure out for me, if I'm having. If I'm in a bad mood, like, maybe I'm not picking up the phones, right? Then maybe I go for a walk and go get a coffee. Like, just listen to your body, listen to yourself, and make sure you're in the right mental place so you're not putting off some kind of feelings on a prospect that they don't deserve to take in. Just make sure you're kind of just coming in with a good attitude, that you're approaching things lightheartedly and that you're having these good conversations. So these prospects have a really good memory of you and they remember you as kind of of the fun cold call that they had today. And then just personally, just so that you can, you know, learn to really listen to yourself. Learn if you need to take breaks, especially with COVID like, if you need to take like mental health is such a big topic right now. If you need to take a day and just like breathe and reset and go meditate or go for a walk somewhere or go to the burbs, whatever, go see your family, whatever it is, like this is a really good reminder. Like life is short. Take those moments if you need to and then come back re energized and just hit it hard.

I love that. Now I'm going to do a. I don't do a lot of follow up questions to live better sell better question. But you said something there that I wanted to dive into and you may have an answer to this, you may not. I'm not trying to put you on the spot, but it just jumped in my head. How can you tell the difference between needing to reset and procrastination? Because a lot of people also will talk themselves out of doing the thing because they don't feel like it or they don't, you know, like I'm not in a good mood right now or I am too stressed to make this call. I'm trying to think how to phrase it. Do you get what I'm asking though? Because like sometimes we can also tell ourselves that story of like, you know what, it's prospecting Tuesday today. But you know, I didn't sleep well last night and you know, I'm a little bit stressed over work. Like I'm going to push it. How do you find that balance between I guess pushing through or taking the step back?

Yeah, I think that takes years to. I think it takes. I mean there's probably people that are in their first year though that know themselves better than I. For me, it took me a while to understand when am I actually like reaching kind of the end of my mental capacity like that I'm really getting emotionally exhausted and drained versus I am being lazy. For me, I know when I'm procrastinating. Like I can tell it's when I put it on my to do list. And I keep pushing it like a couple, like a couple days back and a couple days back, that's procrastination. And I like can smell it. I know when I'm doing it. For me, I know now. It took me a while, but I know now when I need to just like reset or I need to take a minute and it's when I feel both like mentally and physically drained. I think when it's like procrastination, it's like maybe just mental. It's when it's like physically affecting You. I think that's when it becomes more of a reset situation. Like, when it's everything all at once that's a little bit different. Procrastination is where it's, like, kind of in my mind, and it's, like, poking at me, but I'm trying to ignore it a few different times. But once I feel it in my bones, it's time to take a breather.

I think that's a phenomenal clarification, and I haven't heard it phrased that way. Like, procrastination is mental. Burnout is physical. You can feel it. You can feel it in your bones, in your gut, in your chest. Okay. I like that because it is because people will. You know this in the role. I know it in the role. And also leading people is like, we can start to tell ourselves that story of, like, here's why I'm not doing what I need to do. But we're not able to distinguish whether or not we're just pushing it out or we need to take that break. So, parting question. What's your favorite reset method? Right. So, you know, you do. You get to that breaking point, you're like, yo, I need to reset. What's your go to? How do you recharge the Alexene batteries?

Zero technology in nature. So I spent my whole. I won't go too deep into it, but I spent my whole childhood backpacking and rock climbing. I used to do trips for, like, three weeks at a time, like, completely off the grid, no phone. So I grew up kind of, and I would. I lived in North Carolina in the summers and would, like, do this almost every year. So for me, if I need to recharge, like, that's where I'm headed into the woods, and I'm turning my phone off. I mean, point blank. And if I really, really need a reset, then usually I will go. I do it a couple times a year. I go to North Carolina, and there's, like, an area that's heavy and backpacking, and I'll go there. And it totally just kind of feels like I'm plugging into a wall outlet, and I feel my battery just, like, boom, right up. So I think there is something to. I mean, we're all animals at the end of the day, so I think there's some kind of, you know, thing to be said there, where we are. I mean, realistically, we were supposed to be in nature, and that's where we're supposed to spend our time. So for me, that's how I reset. I just get back to nature. I try to turn my phone off and try to just kind of focus on what's around me and just get centered and then come back to. The phone's gonna be there later.

So we might have to do a follow up episode just to get your full backstory. This nationally competing first degree black belt backpacking rock climber salesperson, there was a lot to unpack there. We might have to do a follow up just to get that story. So. Absolutely amazing. Alexine, this was so good. Thank you so much. Where can people find you? Where can they get more of you? Like what are like anything you'd want to plug here at the end?

Yeah, I think for me it's just LinkedIn. I am LinkedIn maven, so connect with me on there. Message me if you have questions or testing out new methodologies. I love kind of talking back and forth with people and hearing how things are going. I have some people that are testing like video right now that have been sending me their video prospecting tests run. So, you know, I love talking to new people, I love meeting new people. And then if you are kind of starting out in sales, I teach for three different programs. One is called Rework Training, one is called Victory Lap, and the last one is called Aspireship. So if you're looking for more of like sales training resources and programs that will help you kind of level up your skill set or get you used to sales, those three programs are a great place and I'll be guest instructing for them. So see you on one of those too.

Oh, yes. Well, thank you so much for your time, your energy and your knowledge this morning. We greatly appreciate it. Until next time. Thank you so much.

Until next time. Thank you.