Unlocking Outbound Prospecting Success: Expert Strategies from Leslie Venetz

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So thank you for listening and if you're interested, head on over to patreon.com InsideSalesExcellence 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 talking about maybe one of my favorite topics because it is a topic that gets thrown out. It's something that's danced around. You see all the tips and trick that go out there on LinkedIn and most of it's absolutely garbage, which is outbound. How do you go and create pipeline? How do you go out and create opportunities? Outbound to me is becoming more and more like the Navy SEALs in the military where it takes a specialized person, a specialized skill on how to go do this. But here we are. It's August right now, there's only so many months left of the year. So we're going to be talking about how to do outbound to find deals that can still close this year with Leslie Vanette. She is the founder at Sales Team Builder. She is advisors at a company like Mismatch and Humanic. And Reggie, she has a conference coming up that we're going to talk about and the creator of outbound mastery, AKA she knows what she's talking about. So we are going to go deep on this. We are going to go all things outbound, but also to help your number this year. Leslie, welcome to the show.

My pleasure. KD and I already love the focus on outbound as a craft and a specialization. Like so often outbounders, particularly cold calls, kind of get the shaft or like SDRs are just the. It's an entry level role. And I'm with you. I absolutely believe to do it well, it has to be respected and treated like a craft.

And I wrote about this, this is a while ago where, like, if I could change the title, I would because so many people that do outbound, right there, sdr, sales development rep, business development rep, lead development rep, whatever, whatever. I hate that because outbounding is a skill and when we treat it like a role, people get away from it where it's like, okay, now I'm not an SDR anymore, so I don't have to outbound. It's why so many AES are struggling right now. Because they got away from it. They did it for a while, then they got away from it, now they need to do it again. So when you mentioned outbound, I'm like, yep, we're going to do this now from the very, very get go. I think it's important. Let's just define outbound real quick. When you say outbound, what do you mean by outbound? Prospecting.

Yeah. So this is a really important question because one of my biggest pet peeves on LinkedIn right now are people trying to give outbound a different name, but it's still outbound. And they're just describing outbound done well. And they're like, you don't need to outbound anymore. Do this instead. And I'm like, brah, that is still just outbound. So outbound is literally any message to somebody who is not expecting it, any type of outreach to somebody who did not ask you to contact them. That is outbound.

Yes. Now let's keep going there because I also think outbound gets confused as just cold calling. Let's start to break down all the things that go into outbound. Right, because you just mentioned there's different. There's so many ways to do it, which we're going to unpack. But we have outbound. Any message sent to anybody that's not expecting it, go a layer deeper. Now, what are the different tools that go into outbound? What are the different channels involved there?

The three primary channels that folks are using, of course, cold calling, cold email, and then social selling. And I know social selling immediately, people are going to say, well, that's not outbound. Like, that's demand, Jen. That's. They still, they don't know you. They didn't ask you to contact them. That is still cold, outbound, even within the social selling context. So those are the three primary channels. And then I think there are so many other ways we can make it fun within those channels. Maybe adding text messages into the calling, maybe adding videos into the emails, maybe adding another channel like direct mail. So it's. I, you know, I think we can create more channels and more diversity of types of outreach within the channels. But the three primary, that in the context of this combo, like what can people do today to generate leads that can close this year? Calls, email, social.

Okay, perfect. And yeah, we'll splinter that out because there's so much you can do with calls, so much you can do with email, so much you can do with social and DMS and everything. So then let's start from what everyone says, right? Outbound is hard because it's so noisy, it's so crowded. Right. Your buyers or prospects are overwhelmed. So start with the cliche question of how do you stand out with outbound? Right. How do you not get lost in the mix of all the other cold emails and all the other cold calls? I'm afraid to open my inbox right now. Right. I'm an SVP of Revenue at a SaaS company with over 500 employees. I'm getting hammered every day. How does someone stand out?

Yeah, I think maybe an unpopular take on this is that, like, sometimes your messages will get lost. And I think so often when folks write their expert opinion on outbound or they talk about outbound, it's the silver bullet way. 100% open rates. And that is so deeply unrealistic. The reason that we create sequences is because we know with 100% certainty that not every call is going to get answered. Voicemail, listen to email, open message, you know, message read. So I think like, first and foremost, level set your expectations that every single, like you should take the time to write the most perfect message for every single point of contact because they're all going to be read because you are special. That's not like, that's, that's just not true. So I like, I think that that's one really important level set. And like specifically on cold calls right now, you know, the old, like, cold calling is dead narrative. Clickbait is back. And I talk to clients weekly about, should we actually be doing cold calls? It's not very effective. But you're not expecting it to be that effective. Like you're expecting about 4 in 100 people to answer. And so, you know, like, I think people go to these channels and thinking that they're going to be able to create a email or a piece of content or a cold call script that's going to work 100% of the time. And that is not the case. So I'll start there and then I'll actually answer your question.

We were, we were going to get that.

Okay. How do you actually stand out? I think two camps on this one that I tend to fall into more often is the go deep on your segmentation within your territory so that you can write relevant value based messaging that is more scalable. The second camp is hyper personalize everything. I think that there is a place in time for both of those approaches. But where I see most people go and what isn't working is either the connect and or like the spray and pray approach or the check the box personalization approach. And I think it's important like in the context of talking about what does work to talk about what doesn't work. Because when we think about the spray and pray approach, I get so many people that push back and say, but it does work. I set three meetings, you set three meetings. You got blocked 3,000 times. Like you trashed your domain reputation. There is at least 30 people that now will make sure to never respond to any message ever. So like it works technically, right? Like it's not zero meetings. But really think about the opportunity cost of a spray and pray approach. More common or maybe not more common, but maybe more acceptable is the click like check the box personalization and tell me if you're seeing this too. But I talk to a lot of reps who are like, I don't understand. I am personalizing. But the type of personalizing they're doing is, hi Kevin, I see that you're the SVP of revenue at Benchmark. That's technically personalization, right? Like is technically a message that at least at the very youth uses some field mapping to be personalized to that individual. And not enough reps are being taught to personalize in a way that matters or even understand the distinction between personalization that feels icky to the person reading it versus personalization that feels meaningful or you're seeing that too. I feel like the head nod is.

Yeah, I mean what I talk through with people. The difference between customization and Personalization, right? Names, titles, companies are customizations, personalizations Only that person should be able to read it and it makes sense, right? Like that, that is what personalization is. Anything that's title, anything that's. That, that's not personalization, that's customization has nothing to do with anything. Whereas the personalization, it's like, hey, you know, like if I look in your background and I see like a blue ribbon on something, right? So I see a blue ribbon. I notice you have a blue ribbon in the background of one of your webinars, only you could get that message and it would make sense, right? That to me is personalization, whereas customization is just fields. And that's, that's not it. Now you mentioned something a little bit before there on the messaging of building relevant and value based messaging. Let's break that down. What does that mean? Because again, and this is why I'm pumped for this combo is like, you see this shit thrown on LinkedIn all the time, Lead with value, be relevant. And everyone's sitting there going, yeah, but how, yeah, so break that down a little bit like, because if we can break this down right, via like an email, it'll apply to your calls, apply to your social, do all that. So what is relevant and value based messaging?

Yeah, let me take the relevant piece first and then I'll talk about the value piece. So one of my favorite ways to write scalable sequences, scalable emails, because a lot of us, let's be honest, do work in environments where we have metrics to hit or where quantity still plays a part. Like not all of us are just doing key accounts or only working on million dollar deals, right? Metrics matter. The quantity piece does still play a part. So when I think about relevant messaging, Kevin, what I'm thinking about is taking my territory. Every single rep can do this. You don't need your sales manager director to teach you how to do this. You have a territory that's 200 accounts. Look in your own territory and see, okay, of those 200 accounts, 58 of them are in financial services. So you already have a mini segment. You can already start thinking about creating content that is more relevant to somebody that works in financial services. But go a layer deeper. How else can you group that 58 set of accounts? Do 12 of them have a CFO that's been in seat for less than a year? Okay, now you have 12 people who you can write one message to, but it is written to a CFO from a financial services firm who has been in seat for Less than one year. Like you're going to be able to get so much more relevant with that message without having to hyper personalize. And like often I will blend hyper personalized with relevant. But like there is a time and a place for a fully automated email. And optimizing for relevance is a way to send automated emails that still cut through the noise, that still get eyes opened. So that's, that's a favorite. It does take owner. Like you have to own your territory in a different way. You have to really build in some other layers of segmentation and then also figure out why it's going to matter differently.

I was just going to say right, because you can segment, right? And then like what's an example of relevancy? Because like people will send things like you know, say it is as a CFO at a fintech and like hey, like saw your CFO at a fintech company. Okay, again, not personalization. Like what's relevant? Like is that like a trend? Is that a news article? Should I be sending a blog? Like what makes it relevant?

I think that's a perfect segue to the value piece as well. Here's a perfect example that I would use. When I was selling to chief procurement officers, one of the things with an almost 100% degree of certainty new CPO's would do, they're like Fortune 250 CPOs. They'd go on a roadshow because CPO's are business partners and they view the rest of the organization as their customers. So when they are new and seat, they're going to go around to their different business units and build those relationships. So I had an asset that I could send as a call to value, a value based deposit. That was four CPOs who were new in SEAT at large enough organizations that I was pretty confident they were going to do the roadshow to say hey Kevin, know you're new in seat, assume you're probably about to start or in the middle of a roadshow. Let me share this really was like a four pager. Like it was, you know, pretty brief. Let me share this four page overview of what 300 other global CPOs have told us are the most important pieces to get right in those conversations. That's it. That's the entire email. And I can send that to literally anybody that meets that criteria. Right. So I can keep using the same template over and over again. So it is scalable, I can reuse it. It's relevant. Like I am really confident it's going to be relevant to that person and it's a deposit with that asset, that value based asset before I'm asking them for something which is their time reading, maybe a different type of email or to consider my product or book a meeting with me.

Awesome. I love this. Now let's keep going there though. Did you build that or who built that? Because I think sellers sometimes look oh but Leslie, I don't have a checklist like that or I don't have who. Who's responsible for building that.

So I've done both. That organization was a research organization. The product team was ace, so I didn't have to build that one. But honestly one of my most popular assets in that same job that I did build was just a word doc because it was a. It was like I'm selling business intelligence, access to research and so the calculator didn't work as well for them, but I created a word doc that was based on other members. Here's what you would expect your team to download in terms of resources and here's how much time it would take to do it in house. So it was a two page document that I put together. I think it maybe took me four hours top to bottom to like put together the rough estimates, put it in a word doc, format it and then PDF it. So like it was four hours. I used it all the time as a way to help CPOs who often still had to ask the CFO for budget or at least get like the cursory like you know, head nod to help the CFOs understand that instead of hiring a whole nother FTE, they can save the equivalent FTE time by using this resource instead of asking for it to be done in house. And I mean four hours of time probably helped me close another two or three deals a year at a 102acv.

And I was hoping to hear that that answer because it's something that I just don't see reps take seriously enough of like if I don't have it, then I don't have it versus like let me create something. And if you don't know how to create something, work with your team to create something. Like reach out to customers what would be valuable to them. Like all those things. I just wish like reps would take more ownership of like, all right, like I want to lead with value and what I like. And I hope you all picked up on this in her answer. Right? In order for something to be valuable, they need to be able to use use it. She was sending usable assets where too often Reps are like, oh, like here's a white paper, here's a webinar or a blog article that we wrote. It's not usable and if it's not usable, it can't be valuable. So I really, really like those as assets. And so then. All right, so let's do this. And you send it. You don't hear back.

Yeah. Okay. So first I need to stay on that piece of usable assets for a second because I have a super actionable tip. We're talking about things that people can start doing tomorrow to change their pipeline. Don't stop sending. If all you have are blogs, white papers, case studies, reports, don't stop sending them. But do say, Kevin, based on our last conversation, make sure you take a look at page five that answers your questions about moving your outsourced team inbound. Like, it's super, super specific. I know a buzzword that's being thrown a lot around right now is like frictionless. But if we want to talk about an application of making it as frictionless as possible to get the value you're trying to communicate, point to the one specific thing. Because no, I mean, I spent most of my career selling to C suite enterprise. Like, what a joke if I think that they have time to read. Honestly, sometimes a one pager, let alone a 20 page white paper. So it was actually a tip that I stole from the head of customer success when she was delivering value to clients to point to that one specific thing. So they're not opening a document and trying to figure out what is meant for them. You're telling them what is meant for them based on what you know to be most relevant. So when we think about that relevance to value pipeline, one tip folks can start using.

Yeah, we did. We did. Lincolnshot is what we called it, the link, but the screenshot of the part you were talking about. So they don't even have to go into the the article, right. Of like, you know, I guess this is before frictionless was the term, but it was like, hey, here's an article written on, you know, whatever, hiring sales reps. But based off your recent post, this part here is probably what might catch your interest. We just put a screenshot of that little segment right in the email or if you're using video, same idea walking them through through it and calling that part out. So you gotta tell people how to use the information that you're sending them. You can't just send the information, hope that they'll interpret it. So love that that's value based. Y' all so just hear that. Now let's flip it on the obvious. Okay. We're crafting better messaging for our emails. Right. Providing value. You sent it. Nothing. Crickets.

Yeah.

Do you send it again? Do you send something different? Like how do you approach then the follow on.

Yeah, both. Nice. All of the above.

Good.

Okay, a couple of options. Like if you see that people are opening stuff but just not responding, this would be a really good time to switch up your sequence away from those like segmented relevant. Relevant value based messaging to something hyper personalized. Like that's a perfect time to pivot out of your sequence and put in that extra work. Let's say we're not quite there yet. We. We aren't getting the click throughs. Maybe we aren't even getting opens. And you're like, oh, well I took a lot of time to make this and I'm pretty sure it's meant for this person. I'm going to do both. I use the reply function still. I mean I'll never forget like five years ago when that was groundbreaking to put an re in a message and it was like 90% open rates. But there's still a use case of.

Outbound like local presence. And local presence came out. I will never forget my first day calling with local presence. Like 10 years ago. It was the greatest cold calling day of my life. I think I spoke to 50 people in that day. Like, oh, the glory days. The glory.

True. Too true. I used, I had like an app. My company wouldn't pay for it. When that like concept came out for it was really popular. I had like a burner app on my personal cell phone to be able to do local presence. I was like, it was like 50 bucks a year or something silly like that. And I was just, yeah, I'm clearly.

Dating myself right now. I wasn't calling from a cell phone with an app on it. That local presence came through insidesales.com 12 years ago and they fight. And you were calling through the browser, through the landline. Right. So I had to bridge over to the. Oh, those were the days.

I love it. I love it was like it was a similar time. It was a similar timeline.

I didn't have an app on my phone. I need that. I needed that. Shoot.

It was the. Yeah, it was, it was the best. Okay, so we aren't getting maybe the, the opens, the clicks. We're. We're not going to just throw away a piece of content because we didn't get one reply. Like thinking about your very initial question how do we break through the clutter? You got to keep breaking through it. You don't hit the hammer once. Then you're like, oh, weird, it didn't break. Like, maybe it needs a couple cracks. So don't hesitate to use that re. Put the, you know, put the asset back in the top of their inbox. Something I Talked about on LinkedIn recently is ditching the like thoughts question mark again. It's something that worked. It was an ace technique two, three years ago, everybody found out about it. Now it just doesn't work as well as it did. But what I do still use is what are your thoughts on like, how can we make it as easy as possible to remind the decision maker who probably round filed the last message, what the value is that I'm bringing to the table? What do I want their thoughts on? So make it. Ask them a question that's relevant to them that like, they, they give a heck about. So I still think that's a good path. I use an asset twice though, like once and then in the re, and then I'm going to switch to something else. Because when we think about even within that set of like deeply segmented sort of relevant, you know, relevant outreach, there's probably still two or three topics that are most likely to catch their attention. And maybe we just didn't nail it with the first one. That's fine. Like, that's not a, that's not a big deal. You did your research, you went with the topic you were most confident on. You still have probably one or two other topics that are worth, like, we're telling an entire story in our sequence and the story isn't. This is the only thing that matters to you. The story is, I'm an expert in this space and based on that expertise here, here's the story of the three things I would matter to you. And it's also one of the more common mistakes I see people make in their outreach, Katie, is that their first email will be like, here are the top three topics that people tell me are important. Bullet point. One bullet point that's too much for one email. Make it, that's your entire sequence. Are those three bullet points that you were going to try to smash into one email that was going to go to the delete immediately. So all of the above.

Yeah. One of the, it's funny, one of the features that I have asked for the most from like the big sales engagement tools and you know, more and more I'm getting away from, from the big ones is I wanted to have a dynamic sending where if someone didn't open the first email, I want to send it again. I don't need a different email. They didn't open the first one right. And so sellers hear me here. And this, you know, now you got to get really into it. But if someone didn't open the email, you don't need a new email. They didn't see the first one. So either you can send the exact. People overthink this. You could either send the exact same email again or the exact same email which is a different subject mine or the exact same email with just a different first sentence because they never read the body of the email. So it's the email actually isn't. The problem is you didn't get the open. I've asked for that for years of like, let me like I don't need to send. I don't need eight emails in a sequence. I need to send eight emails. There's a total difference in that approach. Write three great emails. Send all of them two to three times until they get opened. Then you go to the next one. Then you go to the next one. You can reuse this shit. Y' all like don't to too often. You know, you know we're going to switch to cold calling here in a second. But I want to touch on hyper personalization. People write a hyper personalized email doesn't get open and they never send it again.

That's the same. Or even like they'll do all the work to make that hyper personalized email and they only use it in the email. They don't use it in a cold call with a voicemail. They don't use it on LinkedIn. They've done all this work and they use it on one touch. Absolutely not. If I'm starting a sequence and I'm asking somebody to hyper personalize because I believe the caliber of the prospect is worth that effort. We are doing like a call with a voicemail double tap. We're doing an re on that email. We're taking it over to LinkedIn. We're using it as a connect message. Maybe an inmail double tap. Like we are using that over and over again to make sure that the effort was worth it.

Yeah, like it's just reuse it, y'.

All.

Right, Take that little snippet, put it in the next one. Like so y' all should be saving your personalization as snippets or fields because then you can pull it into every ongoing email. The personalization is the same. It's the relevancy that needs to change. So they keep on doing that. So now we gotta flip to cold calling before we run out of time. So I wanna make sure we can dive in because cold calling's dead. Leslie Cole calling work. No one picks up the phone. How should people be approaching cold calling in a way that does actually lead to meetings and conversations?

Yeah, well, first of all, do it.

Good. We could end it right there. All right, there it is. Everybody. Leslie just says, do it. Just do it.

Just mic drop. Too often the people that are like, cold calling is dead are people that haven't done it or they like made a couple cold calls and nobody answered. And I'm like, nobody answers, y'. All. That's not it. Like, just like email, cold calling is a volume game to an extent. It's just that email is a bit easier, it's less scary. The rejection doesn't hit as hard. So cold calling, it feels like you maybe are getting lower results when you aren't actually. Because I think it's more emotional than sending an email or sending something out on LinkedIn. The pickup rates on cold calling are still insane. Like four out of a hundred cold calls. Four. That means, like if you are doing 100 cold calls a week, you should expect four pickups after that. Even if you only have like a 50 conversion rate. That's two meetings. Like SDRs that are listening to this right now. How many of you have a quota? That's like 10 meetings a month, right? Like the basic math say that, like, you can do that just from making a great cold call. Here's where I see it go really wrong. Two places. One, people make a cold call and nobody answers and they just hang up. What? Why are you not using the voicemail? And I have. We can go. We can go down that path because there's a way to use the voicemail correctly. And I think the other reason is that you have not yet identified a call opener that you feel confident with and that matters to your prospect. And I think honestly, LinkedIn influencers have a lot of like, guilt to take that we spent. Not me. I didn't do this because I cannot stand a permission based opener. It gives me the ick. But if it works for you, that's awesome. Like, do the dang thing. But we spent so much time talking about how we should open a call and how we should do it. Us. Us. I wanna, I wanna. This is what I think feels great. And we forgot to talk about what feels good for the person answering the phone. And so I like, I think it's a combination of we're not fully optimizing the phone because we're not using voicemails. We are not confident on the phone because we haven't practiced the call opener that we feel really good about. And then we haven't sense checked that call opener with some like, with does it matter? Have we actually earned the right to more time from our prospect by making it matter to them?

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, we're done here. Have a good day, folks.

Easy, simple, right? I love that your first focus is on that opener though, because it's true. And I do think a lot of permission based openers got lumped into a full set of like, this is what permission based is. Right. So what do you like to do in an opener? Right. So not permission based. Right. It's a ring ring. And I say, hello, this is Kevin. Right. Where do you like to go in that opener? Because I think a lot of the openers that people teach, they're so gimmicky that they could work, but they're so unnatural that most people can't pull them off because it feels so weird to say, hey, Leslie, this is Kevin calling from sales leadership Accelerator. This is a cold call. Want to roll the dice and see if it's worth, like, we don't talk that way. And because we don't talk that way, we can't deliver it in a way that ever sounds natural. And what people forget about pattern breaks. Yes, it's nice about a pattern break, but you can also pattern break someone off that phone immediately because you broke the pattern that you're also someone that they should talk to. Right. So how do you like to open? Right. I say, hey, hello, this is Kevin. How do you like to open? And hopefully it wasn't the do you want to roll the dice? I hope I didn't just take that away from you.

No. But it's funny when I was thinking about like the permission based opener that gives me the most ick, it is that one. And again, like, folks, if that is working for you, do it. Do well. Do like, do it. So remember all of the advice we're giving you, like, not all of it is meant for you. You can, you can test it and you can figure out what works for you based on your product, based on your icp. But the general logic of like, make it matter to your customer. And don't, don't index on things that just sound absurd because they're like the cutesy, silver, shiny bullet thing that somebody told you to do because that's, that's not going to work long term and we're looking for things that are going to actually work more than one time to get you the pipeline that you need. I do. Reason for the call. It's been my call opener for years. I've made who knows but well over a hundred thousand cold calls and I have like, I'm very good at what I do, so. So I feel confident when I give this advice. Reason for the call works for your prospects because you are telling them why they should spend more time with you. And when we think about the structure of cold calls, we have like the eight seconds, the 30 seconds and then depending who you're talking to, one to five minutes beyond that is sort of how the decision making breaks work on whether or not they hang up on you and whether or not even if they don't hang up on you, they're like typing an email and ignoring so relevant reason for the calls, really easy ones. Social proof. And even if you don't have like the referral social proof, you can say, you know, I'm working on a project with X and Y, but have those be relevant competitors or peers, people they would actually care about. Social proof is an excellent call opener. If you've done the work to hyper personalize an email, y', all, you already have it. Like just carry it over to the phone. I am calling you because like you have it. You don't need to be cute like you, you have a legitimate reason to call them. And I think when it comes to the reason for the call opener, what often stops people from using it is that they maybe lack the product confidence or the personal confidence where they believe that they actually deserve this person's time, where they believe that what they're selling truly is going to help this person. And so that's what I want you to bring to the phone. Like you are calling them because you have a way to make their lives better, be passionate, like show up with that degree of passion and that tone is going to combine with that meaningful, relevant, valuable, private, personalized, whatever reason for the call. And you're gonna get people to give you their time.

Yeah. So do you actually say like the reason for the call or is that the implied language behind the, the opening?

Sometimes I really say the reason I'm calling you or I'll often say like I wanted to give you a direct.

Call because yeah, it's, it's the similar framework on what I teach my team is like identify, justify and ask. Right so identify. Hey Leslie, you know it's Kevin from Sales Leadership Accelerator. Identify, justify. Why are you reaching out? So like I took out the actual saying of the reason folks. I was like, if it's implied but we put it there, either what was that personalization or you know, I was just on your website or you know, I saw you've been in seat for six months or I just, you know, talked actually to one of your colleagues. I was hoping to ask a couple quick questions to see if it's even worth a larger conversation. Would that be okay? I have tested hundreds of openers and that one still to this day has beat all the others because it's very natural, calm and easy to get into the conversation. Right. To go, to go through it. So okay, I like it.

I mean between the calls we've made and the calls that reps that we've managed made, we're over a million cold calls. Easy, right? Easy. So if both of us are showing up today and we're saying that the highest success rates we have seen across multiple teams and ICPs and products and sales cycles across say 15 years of selling, is being explicit about the reason for the call. Maybe not saying reason for the call, but being explicit, explicit about the value you are bringing works. I think folks should maybe jot that down. That feels important.

I've and I share this even like with my own team when they're onboarding. I have split, tested singular words in the split in the scripting, like I was hoping versus I was curious. Right? Like, are you, let me tell you, curious Performance cake. It did, right? I was curious if it'd be all right to ask versus I was hoping to ask. Right. Would you be open to asking a few questions? Versus I've split, tested singular words across my teams and documented which one had a stronger pass through rate. Like it's to that level of granularity that I've gone through in terms of scripting and practice and tweaking and how to label, how to, you know, implied intent, how to evoke, like all of it. Like that's how far I've gone down this rabbit hole before. All right, team, you're saying curious today. You're saying open today. Let's go taking those calls, putting them in. How many got yeses, how many got no's And I know which ones work, right? Like wish more people got to that level because like you can. And there's other ways to do it. There's other ways to do it, but I'm well over a million at this point and I know what works out there. So now we're starting to come up on top. We're starting to come on time, right? So we've talked about, you know, the email, we've talked about like the call, if you think about like the masterclass that you're going to be, you know, teaching soon in Tampa. What's the last piece of this? Right, so we talked about kind of relevant and value based. We talked about making that call with a strong, you know, reason for and value based opener. Let's finish out like a micro masterclass here around outbound. What else could people leave with today that would help them tomorrow?

So the other piece is definitely the LinkedIn piece. One really important point though, because I'm hoping that people will take action. They will go and they'll test these things. Don't test it for a day. That's bullshit.

Yes.

Like if you want to make an impact and really know if a new type of call opener, new type of whatever is going to work for, for you, like a week minimum, preferably a month and then you will actually know and it won't be anecdotal. So just a call to action there because that's a trap. I see people fall in, they have a tough morning and they're like, that advice is stupid. It doesn't even work. I mean, it does, we have the data, but just don't, don't fall into that trap, folks. Okay, Outbound masterclass, Me and Nikki Ivy, we're two LinkedIn top voices. You're a LinkedIn top. We love LinkedIn. But I think one of the biggest things people get wrong about LinkedIn is that they forget the social part of social selling and they skip right to the selling part of social selling. But here's the brass tacks. Most people do not have the time, the confidence, the desire to have a presence on LinkedIn. And I think to an extent we sort of do people a disservice when we're like, it's fine to start posting content. Like that's easy because that's not, that's not easy. Even showing up to comment can feel unsafe to people. So it is very, very okay to use LinkedIn as a sales tool if you use the same advice that Kevin and I just shared on emails and phone calls, which is make it matter to them. And most of the messaging I see hit my inbox on LinkedIn is I wanted to reach out. I was wondering, I, I, I, so if there was one single thing that I can tell you to be cognizant of on LinkedIn that will improve the results is to be extra hyper aware of the I to you ratio in your messaging.

I like it, I like it. And also, by the way, that applies to posting too. As a quick tip, I did this, I did this, I did this, I did this versus you should. You should. You should. You should. You base language is better than I base language as, as well. So then that's key. Funny enough, there are very large LinkedIn influencers and consultants that I'm, you know, very close with and you know, talking about like posting, I was like, y', all, you gotta remember posting is still passive. You are hoping that the right person at the right time sees the right post with the right message and is in the right place to be able to reach out to you. That is passive. That is not proactive selling. You build your social audience so you can reach out to people. I'm way more direct now, right? If I want to generate revenue, I reach out to people.

I don't make a post about it.

I reach out to people. I say, hey, I'm doing this thing, you interested? You build it up so you can reach out. And I think too many people hope that they can write posts and that they're desired. You know, prospects is going to see it and reach out and it doesn't work that way. So as we wrap here, Leslie, right, I end this almost with every time the same question, right? Because the name of this podcast is Live Better Sell Better. Because I have this weird idea, right, that if we took better care of ourselves, if we had more energy, more joy, more fulfillment, more happiness in life, that the sales would improve too. What would your live better advice be to people listening? Wow.

Well, I made a pretty fundamental shift in my own life that maybe people can take inspiration from. I work a four day work week now and I understand that that's not accessible to everybody, but it's the inspiration, not the action, folks. So what I do is on Monday. Now Monday was the day I chose to not work, which just bristles people. I now spend it doing a meditation. I journal for two to three hours and then I pull my like Oracle cards or tarot cards because that's who I am as a human. I ride my soul cycle bike, I take a midday bath and I read. I go for a walk. Like it is a day that is wholly dedicated to self work. And it's interesting how much it pisses people off that I spend a day working on myself. And it is the day of the week that I arguably work hardest. And so my call to action for people would be a reminder that self work is work. I think so often we think about self care and we just want to like go get a pedicure, like go for a walk. But don't be afraid to go deeper and put in some of the work that helps you divest from some of the super, super toxic narratives about hustling for worthiness and busyness being associated with betterness that society is shoving down your throat.

Self work tends to lead to self worth. Right? So I love that. I love that. So Leslie, this was amazing. The insights, the actionable like tidbits and tactics here. Where can people get more of you? Where are you putting out content? Word on the street is you got a little something something cooking up in November. Where can people get more Leslie in their life?

Yes, we'll find me and Nikki Ivy together in Tampa November 7th. You can just message me if you want more details, but we're doing a one day outbound master class and it, you know, I walk it like a talk. It, it has meditation, it has guided stretching, it has a mocktail combined with a bunch of just like the best of the best outbound. So I hope folks can join us there. Find me on LinkedIn. I post there every single day, A thousand days and counting. And I am also on TikTok. TikTok famous at sales tips Talk sales tips.

I haven't. You're braver than I have. I still haven't crossed that bridge yet.

But maybe someday, maybe, maybe don't do YouTube instead indexes on Google search and TikTok really still doesn't.

Yeah, yeah. I don't, I don't know. I can't. I'm just not brave enough yet. Just not. But anyway, thank you Leslie so much for your time. Best of luck. If y' all go get out to Tampa, go get all the wisdom and the life that they will be sharing there. But thanks again for everything today.

Thank you so much for having me. This was a treat. Good luck in Q4, everybody.

Hell yeah.