World Class Cadences and Copy with Patrica McLaren

Every company has breakdowns in their revenue process. Sure thing. Deals slip into next quarter, competitors creep in and swipe deals away at the last minute, and deals getting single threaded that don't get to power. These are just a few examples of revenue leak, but there are a ton more and they're preventing your team from reaching their sales targets. That's why I'm such a big fan of Clary's Revenue platform is the only tool that actually helps leaders take control of their revenue and thrive through any market conditions, especially when things get tough. You can't afford to miss a single detail, but you also can't be leading by gut. Clary combines the science and the art of sales and sales leadership. So go to clary.com if you want to answer the most important question in your business. Are you going to meet beat or Miss on revenue? Welcome to the live Better Sell Better podcast with your host Kevin Dorsey of Inside Sales Excellence, the number one Patreon group and YouTube channel for tech sellers and tech sales leaders, where we dive in deep for tactical advice on how to book more meetings and close more deals faster and lead sales teams to success. But we don't stop there. We also focus on the person in salesperson. We talk about mindset goals, time management and so much more. So thank you for listening and if you're interested, head on over to patreon.com 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 I hope you're buckled in for this one because this has been a topic that's been getting brought up left and right on LinkedIn online in the Patreon Group Cadences and Copywriting. Now, a couple years ago I was at Rainmaker and I got dubbed the King of Cadences and I may have actually found the queen, because who we have on Today is Patricia McLaren from Rev Shop. Now Patricia and Rev Shop are where the big boys, Outreach and Salesloft give their customers over to help build out the right cadences and the right messaging to make sure that their customers are actually getting the results that they want. Now, an additional story here is I used to write every single cadence my team's active ever used, and I've been doing that for almost a decade. Patricia has officially taken that over for me with her team and they are the only person and company I trust with the messaging which has resulted in millions of dollars in revenue and pipeline for my team. So I hope you're ready to pay attention. I hope you got your notebooks out because Patricia is going to light it up. Patricia, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. Katie. What an intro. I love it. Can you ready to rock today?

This is going to be dangerous. We already just so everyone knows, we already know we're going to do a follow up. We already know we're going to do a full webinar on this because we can only cover so much in 45 minutes. But we're going to do our very best to do it. So we're going to kick this off, right? No fluff on this. We're going to get right into it. Patricia, let's just start with an obvious question that a lot of people just don't even know. Why do you need to have cadences and sequences built out? Because a lot of companies still don't. Why do you have to have these?

Yeah. So if your team is using outreach or salesloft and you're not building out cadences and sequences, you're under utilizing that platform 100%. If you think about sales back in the day, let's think a couple of years ago, before sales engagement platforms rolled out, we had to create our own follow up. We had to put sticky notes or we had to put stuff on our calendar to follow up with people. And so much fell through the cracks. Because we're only one person, we're one sales rep. We can only do so much. Building out cadences and sequences allow you to set those touch points up ahead of time. And then when you're in the trenches and you've added people in, you're kind of on repeat mode. You can pass through a lot more people and engage at scale and it's all predetermined for you. That's the importance of really utilizing cadences and sequences. Yeah.

And I actually want to jump in there real quick to say this isn't even just about sales loft or outreach. When I say cadence, I mean just a broken down designated step by step plan. Because I remember the spreadsheet days. Day one, day two, day four, moving things across. So actually maybe we skipped the important question. How do you define what a cadence is? So like I say cadence cause I use salesloft, I've also used sequences. But when we say cadences, what do we mean for people that are listening?

Yeah, we might swipe swap between those words on this podcast. So you guys, you know, take whichever one is resonating with you. But a Cadence is really just a series of touch points that you determine ahead of time. When that could be, you know, phone calls, emails, social touches. You're figuring out the types of touch points and also the days between the touch points. How many times do you want to reach out to someone within a 30 day period or 60 day period? How many times does it really, you know, how many touch points does it actually take to get a conversation starting to book a meeting? So you're predetermining what those touch points are over a significant period of time.

Okay, and now why is that so important?

Because we've got a plan. We got to prepare. You know, this isn't just a one and done. You can't reach out to someone, send one email and say, oh, I sent an email, that person didn't get back to me. Right. You don't live in that world anymore. We're in actually a buyer's market, right? They're doing research. They do half of the job for us already before we even reach out. So we have to be strategic about our touch points. We've got to plan what we're saying. We've got to paint a story and all of the touch points have to make sense with the larger picture.

Right, got it. So next question on this though is let's start with what is the bad? Right? We're going to get a lot into the good, but let's start with some of the top mistakes you see in people's cadences and sequences. What do you see a lot of people doing that you're like, no, you have to just stop, please.

This could be an entire podcast, probably, number one, we've got to stop talking about ourselves. We see a lot of messages. Typically when we're working with the team, we say, send over what you got. Let's have a look. We'll offer suggestions and figure out, all right, where can we shift? And majority of the time, it starts with, hey, I'm so and so from this company. We do xyz. Here's three bullet points. It's all about you. It's all about you and what you can do. Where we need to flip that around. We need to talk about them. It should all be focused on them, what they're going through, how to make their lives better. So that's probably the biggest area of improvement. I think a lot of people could take that today and just look at their own messaging and say, hey, I'm seeing a lot of eyes in here, a lot of weeds in here. Let me see. I Can shift that conversation. I think the other piece is the length. If I see an email that is a paragraph, I'm like, oh, next. I don't have the time, I don't have energy. My brain isn't going to try and decipher what this whole novel of messages. I'm done. I need short and sweet to the point. Tell me what you got. You know, we've got a small real estate space there to get our point across. And that's why it's so important to plan these touch points ahead of time. Because what people are trying to shove into one email, hey, we do all this stuff. We do, you know, whatever bullet point resonates with you. We've got five different things we can do. Bam, bam, bam. But let's think about it strategically and paint a picture across a couple touch points. Let's hit them with one value prop and spread it across and paint a story instead of trying to fit it all in into one. So those are the two, I would really say common mistakes out there.

So quick, follow up on the length. You and I have actually talked about this. How much of it is length versus how much of it is format. So a paragraph can be a bad format or you could take that same paragraph and space it out. So when you say length, do you mean all long emails are bad or is it more a formatting issue to make it readable?

Yeah, that's a good question. Definitely the formatting first and foremost. So to your point, like, that's something you can test out a lot. You know, put some spaces in between, break it up. But, well, if you're, if your messaging is enticing enough and they do want to read on, the length isn't as, you know, important as the structure. But the bullet points, that's like a tall tale sign that that's a templated email. So moving away from the bullet points of saying, hey, here's value X, Y and Z, can we find 20 minutes like that, that structure, they're like, ah, this is a cold email. So moving away from that. But yeah, playing around with the formatting itself, you know, can make a big difference.

I tell my team that all the time. I was like, if it was that easy, three bullet points and ask for 20 minutes, I wouldn't need sales reps. I could just, I could email a million people and be like, oh, look at all the money coming in if it were that easy. So we have to do things the right way. So. All right, so let's shift over then to what are the types of cadences that companies should have in place. Right. Because I think a lot of people are like, okay, I built one, I built one, I've got it. Now what. What are the types of cadences that you recommend companies have in place?

That is an amazing question. And a lot of people just start with the first one, which is outbound prospecting. Right. But one of the main questions we always ask sales teams is, okay, what happens when they finish the cadence? They go into this graveyard. It's like, oh, well, oh, we put them through the original cadence and maybe marketing picks it up, but maybe they don't. Like they're in this random, like I said, this graveyard. And we're losing out on a lot of opportunities there. So number one, sure, you need an outbound cadence. You need an inbound. Also, I'm surprised at how many people don't have those for hand raisers or download content. That's your low hanging fruit. If you have a cadence, auto route it into the cadence and you're reaching out to that person in a couple minutes, you got to think about those touch points as well. So inbound and outbound for sure. But some of the cadences that we recommend having are these supplemental cadences. So having a reply cadence, when somebody replies to you, usually they're pulled right out of the cadence. And so what happens? There's a conversation started, but if I don't follow up, that's on me. Right. So if somebody responds, throwing them into a follow up cadence, and those are just like, hey, what do you think? Hey, you know, just a couple days to make sure that those don't fall through the cracks. Having a referral cadence, if somebody, if you're, if you're an org who sells into, you know, enterprise or you're trying to figure out the hierarchy of, you know, the accounts that you're going after, you probably get referrals a lot. Talk to Bob, talk to Susie. You need a referral cadence for those too. You don't want to send Suzy the same old message that you sent in the first place. So you've got to customize that.

Can you say that again real quick? Can you just say that one more time for the people?

Yeah. So if you get a referral, you don't want to throw that referral into the same cadence. Right? That generic message, you want to personalize that because you basically got a foot in the door. So it needs to be customized. Touchpoints are a little bit different. Some of the other cadences too. Closed, lost or a kickback there's a lot of reasons why sales fall through, but those shouldn't just be left to the wayside as well into a graveyard. So picking those back up, if somebody says no budget or wrong timing, whatever that looks like, put them into a cadence to make sure that you follow back up with them and see what's going on and make you know, whether it's 30 days or 60 days, whatever makes sense for your business. But having a closed loss strategy is really going to be helpful. And then that nurture cadence is so important. This top of mind cadence, so they finish. What happens when they finish your cadences? Where do they go? You can't just fall off the map, right? You need somewhere for that person to go where it's not as aggressive. You're not trying to ask for a meeting. Maybe you're just providing value and you're giving them some education about what's going on. And you're top of mind so that when they do, when they are ready, when their business needs do change, you're the first person that they think of. Because you've been top of mind, you've been a human, you've been reaching out to them. It's different than sending something from marketing automation tool like Marketo, where it's really coming from a brand, brand to person, which happens all the time. Great. But you also need to think about the person to person aspect where you're reaching out to them every once in a while for those top of mind touch points.

Well, so a lot of people that might be listening right now hear all that and go, oh my God, I don't have any of that. So outside of working with someone like you, which by the way, anyone listening, I'm telling you it's a no brainer because you just heard all the stuff you need. But say, I can't. How do I build all that? How do I sit down and say, okay, I listen to this podcast. I need a referral cadence, a nurture cadence, and a new inbound cadence. How do I get to building? Like, where do I start?

Yeah, it's tough and there's like an infinite number of possibilities in a way to build a cadence. So there's really no one size fits all answer. You got to figure out what works for you and that takes practice and you've got to test and got to keep building and refining cadence overall. But to get started, you need to figure out a couple things. One, you need to figure out your audience. You need to figure out how to segment out your cadences. So who are you reaching out to then? You've got to figure out what the goal is. What's the goal of this cadence? They're not all the same. They're not trying to go for a meeting. Right? So it's, what's the goal? Am I just trying to provide information? Am I really trying to, you know, book a meeting that's going to determine the content of your cadence? So figuring out who it's for, what it's for, and then what's the message? So what does this group care about? You know, thinking about whether you're talking to your customers about it, whether you're talking to your customer success team about it, whether you're talking to, you know, you're in the trenches, you're getting responses from your prospects all the time. What challenges are they having? What objections are they providing to you? So figuring out how to craft your message around what they care about. So coming up with some quick one liners, coming up with some content and some value props that make sense for that segment that you're building cadence about for.

So let's get into some, like, short, punchy, like, tactical questions here. Right. So I'm gonna. We're gonna look at outbound, inbound, referral, and nurture. Right. If we think about, like, the Core 4 that a company should have. So when it comes to outbound, how many recommended touches do you like to see in a cadence?

That is a great question. Again, it's gonna change a little bit depending on your industry, who you're reaching out to, but overall, it's always too short. You need at least 10 to 12 touches. Salesloft did a study. They've analyzed, like, millions of touch points and data points to come up with their average. Their average is around 16. So anywhere in the teens there. And that's again, a mixture of phone calls, a mixture of emails, a mixture of social touches. And you do want to have a full mixture, a wide variety of channels to figure out where your prospects like to be engaged with. Okay.

Any difference in number of touches for inbound or same right around anywhere from, you know, 12 to 16?

Yeah, I'd say 10 to 12 for inbound as well, mostly. And I'd say even a little bit more aggressive in terms of frequency for inbound, because these people are raising their hand. These people want to connect with you. Whereas cold prospecting, we're kind of taking shots in the dark. Right. So with inbound, we can be a little more aggressive there if they're requesting a demo or they're contacting us. Phone call. Sometimes we see two phone calls in the first day. An email, a social touch, like get it all in there early. Because timing is everything in sales. We know that. So the sooner we can get them on the phone and engage with them when it's hot, the better. So inbound, a little bit more frequent.

With those touch points and then let's jump to nurture. Right. Because that's one that a lot of people don't have. They don't think about how long should a nurture cadence be?

Yeah, so that really depends too. You'll want to get with marketing. A lot of times we get marketing teams and sales teams together in a room to talk through this. Because marketing has their own set of schedule and also their own sort of agenda, what they're sending out. So if you think about the whole customer experience or the buyer experience, whatever they're sending, we want to be slightly on par with too. Right. Like if they're getting a resource sent by marketing, let's create an outbound message to be sent around the same time about that same thing. So get with marketing on how often are they sending and what are they sending, and then you can build your touch points around that. But in terms of the frequency, whether it's once every 14 days or once a month really depends again, on your Persona. But just sparsing those out touch point a month in salesloft can do wonders.

Okay, Love it. And quick note to everyone listening around compliance. If you are taking outbound leads, putting them through a cadence and then moving them to an automated marketing sequence, you're not allowed to do that. They didn't opt into that marketing nurture cadence. And so if this is the difference, inbound you can nurture long time through marketing. But if it's just a pure outbound, technically, you're not supposed to then just load them up into marketo and let that drip because they didn't sign up for that. So this is also a way a lot of these outbound teams, you can create almost your own inbound nurture program by keeping them in a sales off day, a cadence.

Right.

And just doing the one off touches throughout. So just be smart about this. Y' all. Don't just be blasting people. Actually, I'm sorry, that was one thing that top mistakes you didn't mention. I'll mention it. Just blasting people, right? Just loading up, just loading up 500 leads, sending all of them the exact same email, and then being shocked when deliverability goes down and you start getting flagged for spam. Like, again, y', all, if it were that easy, I wouldn't need. I wouldn't need the queen of cadences. If we're that easy. Just to load up a template and email and go. So where do you find that balance between personalization and templating? Right, because have some reps spend two hours on one email and you know, like, oh, it didn't get a response back then you have other reps be like, nah, I'm just gonna. I'm gonna put it in front of a hundred people a day and see what happens. Like, how do you find that balance?

Yes, let's. I'm so glad you brought this up because I'm. I'm really passionate about this. This automation versus personalization. It's everything, you guys. And I know there are a lot of reps, like individual contributors on the call now who don't maybe create the cadences for the team. And so they feel like they have to work within these boundaries and the message has to be sort of canned based on what they're provided. So I want to touch on this. So, number one, the series of touch points that are set up, whether you do it or whether your leadership team does it, it's in there for a reason. And it's a great guideline. Okay. It's based on data. A lot of the times, like, if we're adding a certain number of touch points, they're strategically placed. So, yeah, use them. Right. And you probably have a series of automation in there as well. So some of those emails go out automatically, whereas some are manual. And you do have to personalize or customize or have your eyes on it before you send it. So it's so important to create that balance and send some of those emails automatically using the platform or, you know, using automation. And then the touch points that are manual, that's where you actually spend the time to personalize. Okay. So your first email, for example, do the homework, take a couple minutes, research your prospect, research the industry, figure out how to be a human and connect with this person. Like, how do you help them? Right. Again, we're talking all about them. We're not talking about me. I need to know about this person. I'm going to take a couple minutes to do that research. And then the following emails can go out automatically. I've done the research. My first email, first touch point, it's got to be personalized. I'll allow some wiggle room. Some of those additional touch points can go out whether I'm just providing More context or providing case study or giving them some examples. I don't need to customize every single one. Then when I do get another manual email step, it's my time to personalize again. So find the right balance there between adding some customization and automating some of the other touch points in there that don't really require, you know, a second set of eyes on there can go out. It's just, it's just a touch point, right? It's just like, hey, quick email or quick social.

And to be clear on this too, for the reps and the leaders listening, there's a difference between customization and personalization. Right. Personalization means you couldn't have sent it to another person and it made sense. That is personalization. Personalization. Stop calling these dynamic tags personalization unless you built that into your Salesforce systems. That's actually something Patricia helped us do is like, hey, we did that research where they rank or what their scan results are. We researched it. Once we load it into Salesforce now we can pull those things in automatically. But personalization means only KD or only Patricia. That email would have made sense. Customization, that's a case study. That's things there. And you should get way more specific with your customization. Off Persona, off title, off industry. Don't send a CEO the same case study you sent an end user. You need to customize those accordingly.

Yeah. And that also, if you think back about the strategy behind building a cadence, who are you going after when the message differs that much? Like let's say you're reaching out to healthcare and you're reaching out to finance. Well, you probably. They have different regulations. Like the message is probably totally different. So in that case, you can create those different talk tracks and have a separate cadence. Maybe that's where the differentiator is. Right. You're breaking out by industry. Or if it's title to Katie's point, like you're not going to reach out to CEO the same way you're going to reach out to an end user. So if that's by Persona, that's where the message differs. And break out your cadences that way. And then in that particular cadence, you can customize using those dynamic fields. But to your point, following personalization guidelines, that's got to be in there. That's what we're all craving. We can't have these canned emails where it's not personalized and we're trying to cast this wide net and say we'll catch one person with this message. No, it's got to be custom to them. The difference between customization, sure, include it into your talk track itself, but then utilize those manual steps within your cadence to really hone in on the personal touch.

And so what types of personalization do you see the most success with? Right, because that's also where, you know. And this is why I started this group and this podcast, because everywhere on LinkedIn it's like, personalize, lead with value, empathy. Right? Like, talk about them. And these poor SDRs and AES that are prospecting are like, but how, though, Right? Like, what are the types of personalization that you see actually have an impact? Is it talking about where they went to school? Is it talking about their title? Right, like, what are you seeing in terms of success out there?

Well, I have a qualms with this question only because. Oh, damn. Well, here's my honest opinion. Everybody says, like, all right, go personalize via LinkedIn. Go look at their bio or go, you know, research what school they went to. Go badgers. All right, then everybody, yeah, we're both from Wisconsin. All right, so when there's like some success out there or some tip and trick and best practice, then everybody starts doing that, right? Hey, try this subject line. And then it's the same subject line from hundreds of people doing the same thing. So I just say tread lightly on what is working out there for everybody, because within a couple weeks, it's just going to be saturated and everybody's going to be used to it. That's the new thing that we need to stand out from. So I think the best advice I can give for personalization is whatever you can find. And it doesn't take. It's a quick Google search. It's a quick dig into their posts or their activity on LinkedIn. Anything that you can find to reach a human level with them. Like reach a human connection. Because we know majority of pretty much all the decision making that we do, it starts with instinct. The instinct filled part of our brain, then emotions and then logic. So we want to trigger those first and say, ah, this is a person that I like. This is a person that makes me feel something and I can connect with. Not, oh, I noticed that you're XYZ at this company, or, oh, congrats on the tenure. Like, that's. There's no connection there with me. You know, so anything that you can find. You know, some people leave nuggets of gold on their profile. Like I put in there that I am a certified yoga teacher. And when somebody reaches out to me about Yoga. Yeah, I want to talk to them because I like talking about yoga, you know, so find those things. And they're not always on LinkedIn. You know, sometimes do just a quick search for them and look at their Twitter. A lot of people post things about their kids and don't be creepy, but bring up some things that are going to make them feel something. And that's what really makes the difference when it comes to personalization.

I hope everyone grabbed that, because when you're writing an email, if you started asking the question, what do I want them to feel because of this email? Not what I want them to know from this email. It will change your copy game forever. Because I look and this is how I also know the industry is in a tough spot. Right? So I'm pretty out there, right? I post every day on LinkedIn. I have maybe 100 podcast episodes and webinars. Like, I'm easy to find. And the lack of personalization that I get when people reach out to me shocks me. Because if they're not personalizing for someone like me, then I know they're not personalizing for anybody else out there. Like, I'm easy to find. You can Google me, you know, and it's just so sad that people aren't taking that next step to be. To be serious, right? So now. So you touched on it, you said the feel and the emotion, which I think is a good segue into copy, Right? So the cadence is, all right, here's the framework, here's the number of touches. Now we're starting to get into, like, how to write copy, good copy. So when it comes to copywriting, what are some tips you can give to people to improve their written emails? To improve their emails, right. Outside of personalization, like, how do you write good copy? And this could be a whole nother podcast, too. But I'm forcing you to condense here. I'm forcing you to make it punchy. Yeah, I'm ready.

All right. Yeah, we do a two hour workshop on this. So we don't have the time today.

You got two minutes, so let's go.

So number one, leave with that personal touch. Because if you think about whether somebody's opening their email on a mobile or if they're opening it on their browser, you've got like 15 words or something, right? 15 to 17 words. It's got to be that first personalization, like what draws them and what makes them feel something is that first line. So when you're thinking about the components of a cold email, the first line is Always that personal touch, okay? And again, it's about them. Not I was doing some research or I, you know, I did my homework and it's all about them. The second line is how you help them. How do you make their lives better? So, hey, I know this about you, right? This is happening in your life. How do I make this better? Where do I fit in here to help? Right? How do we help? The next line could be credibility, right? Why are you the girl or the guy to help them get there? Why should they listen to you? They have 100 emails in their inbox that probably say the same thing, right? We can help you increase roi. We could help you save time, we can automate. Everybody's saying that, so why you? And then the call to action. The call to action. I really want to stress everybody kind of moving away from this. Let's find 20 minutes, let's find 30 minutes to talk. That doesn't work anymore, you guys. Like, if you think about trust, right? Like people buy from people that they trust. There's no trust there. They don't even know who you are yet. In email one, you're asking them to commit to a 30 minute meeting, right? So we've got to ease into it. Like think about those call to actions in a little bit more, you know, just a progression. We're painting a story. So start small. How can you lower the risk? How can you make the ask really simple, something that they can do right away without feeling like they're committed. Something. So that's the structure that I would follow in terms of writing cold emails. One lead with that personalization. Why them? You know, what did you find? It takes 2, 3 minutes to find that connection. How can you find common ground? Line number two, how can you help them? And sometimes that's a question, right? Sometimes that's something to get them thinking about their business in a little bit different way. That's helpful as well, right? And then that third line, credibility support. Like paint a story. How do you help other people? Maybe it's a, you know, their biggest competitor. Show them how you help them. So providing that, that reputable information and support. And then that last line, call to action. What are you asking them to do?

So how did you develop or how could you. What resources are out there for people to get better at copy? Because I think it's one of the most, most underutilized skills. Also I don't think people hire for it properly. They don't know if people are good writers right before they come in. Like, how can Someone go develop better copywriting skills. What resources are out there for.

Yeah, so I developed my copywriting skills by writing a lot. Just like anything else in life. Like, you've got to practice if you want to do anything well or you want to master any skill. And I took an entire year off. I quit my job. I was in medical for a little while, quit my job, went and traveled the world. And all I did for an entire year was write cadences. And I started to develop some of these patterns and say, hey, this really works. I'm reaching out to engineers and reaching out to salespeople. Like, this is what sticks. And that helps develop the framework that we use. But if you're, you know, if you're an individual contributor or you're a sales leader and you want to help build some of those skills. Skills, you've got to do more of it, and you've got to test. One of the biggest things that, you know, I think is missing, and we're all just humans, so we all kind of fall to this mistake is like, we want instant value. We try something once and we're like, oh, that didn't work. We're gonna try something else else. We're gonna shift gears here. It's like, give it a chance. You know, like, if you're trying a strategy, be consistent with it. If you're gonna personalize via, you know, like, like we said, we're going to use a particular part of their profile. We're going to use some of their activity and try and create some personalization there. Try it across all of the people that you're personalizing for that particular step. Give it a shot and see what kinds of reactions that you're actually getting before you shift gears and try something else. So give it a chance. Test often and read about it. There are so many really great books out there that just highlight some creativity or inspire some new ideas. I've read how to Build Building a Story Brand Donald Miller. I think we've talked about that a lot. There was actually a PDF or, like, an online exercise you can do. We built it out for Patient Pop, actually figuring out, like, how do you position your prospect as the hero? It's all about them, right? How do you help them? How do you be the guide to help them get there? And so it helps kind of structure the messaging there. So I highly recommend Building a Story Brand Donald Miller also. Exactly what to say is a really great book. Anybody? Have you read that one? It's on your shelf.

Oh.

There it is, guys. Phil Jones. That's a really great one too, because it tells you why you should use certain words and then it gives you some examples. So if you're getting comfortable and you want to try and test new things out and build those skills, that can give you a couple places to start. So I'm always learning, I'm always testing, I'm always looking at what's working and not across all of our customers. And you've got to take risks to try something different because again, you've got everybody following the same best practices and trends and we've got to be the brave ones to stand out and take risks, try something new.

I love it. So I'm going to hit you with a couple of rapid fire questions here. You can give me the Yay. Nay with an explanation or not, but a few things when it comes to, like, emails. Okay, Images. Images in emails. Yay. Nay.

What are your thoughts in the middle? I'd say nay. I'd say nay up front. The deliverability. Don't put it in email. 1. Links, attachments. Don't do that in the first email. Get past the spam filters, then you can play around with it. I'd say a B. Test it if you're. I'd say nay for the. The simple fact that a lot of people have these confusing graphics or it's like really difficult to understand, but to you it makes sense. But if you throw it in an email, they don't have the context and also they're probably not going to dive into. What is this diagram really showing me? It doesn't make sense right away. It's not. It's doing a disservice rather than providing them. Oh, it's a visual. Something different.

What about video? Videos and email.

Yay.

Okay, okay.

I like video. Again, it's that human connection. People want human to human, right? And so if you're there, you can make eye contact with someone. You can, you know, feel their energy through the screen. That's huge. That makes a huge difference. And for a while, you know, I think a lot more people are incorporating video into their strategy. But for a while it was really, you know, really creative and really stood out. I think a lot of people don't include video on LinkedIn a lot. I think that one especially, you know, we're testing that with C levels and, you know, directors and above, and that one tends to do really well. LinkedIn videos.

So quick tip on video though to y' all is you do have to sell the video. So go back two years ago like, the fact there was a video was like, oh, wow, is that my name on a whiteboard? That's cool. Right? And that was all you had to do to people to watch the video. Now you have to sell the video. Why should I watch it? Because. Just because you made me a video, you gotta reverse it for a second. It also can be creepy. Subject line, I made you a video. Okay. Like, what's in this video? So sell why I should watch it. Right. Quick tip. How long should a video be?

Minute, Minute and a half.

Okay, quick. Yeah, make it quick. Make it punchy. Bit back to what she talked about earlier. Think about the emotion. What do you want them to feel from watching that video? Is it excitement? Is it curiosity? Is it fear? Is it anger? Right. Like, you can do a lot with video if you do it the right way. Okay. I was hoping she'd say yay there, because otherwise I'd be in a lot of trouble.

One thing to add. I know we're quick fire, but when you're thinking about messaging, you're thinking about how you want the person to feel. A lot of the messaging out there focuses on a business challenge and how you solve for it. And so a lot of times it's like, oh, you're probably stressed out, you're spending so much time on this. Or you're focusing on the emotion that that person feels currently, where I challenge you to think about what you want the desired outcome to be. What do you want them to feel after? Right. You could be doing this. Paint the road, show them the world of unicorns and rainbows. What is that? You want them to feel that while they're reading your email, not focusing so much on the current state. So just like you're positioning the video and making them feel something. Think about that when you're writing your copy. It's great to focus on a business challenge and how you solve for it, but what types of words, what types of adjectives are you going to use to describe the outcome? The ideal state. Not again, focusing on where they're at now. They know they know where they're at.

So actually, I was on an episode earlier with Mike Gannino, who does storytelling training, and something he said was gold. He said, you know, think about it like a movie trailer. If a movie trailer only showed you the bad. Like, if it only was like, this person's on their deathbed.

Yeah.

And then they did. They didn't even. And they didn't even give you an idea that it would give. Get better or give you an idea that there is a better future. You'd never watch the movie. So it's very similar with copy. It's like you can talk about the problems, but you gotta give them a better future too. You gotta finish it out saying, like, there might be a way out of this. Maybe we should talk. So I love that that future state is so. It's so important. So, okay, here we go. We got a few. Well, still have a lot of questions. The group was pumped for this one. They gave me way too much. So we're gonna go through these. But the first one here, I called the big three, right? So we're 40 minutes in now. Say they forget everything we've talked about. When it comes to cadences and copy. They forget everything except for three. Three things. What would be the three things that you'd want them to remember about building better cadences or writing better copy? Three things.

Number one, stop talking about yourself. Reposition your messaging. Look at it today and talk about them, how you help them, how it can make their lives better. Remove the floss. Like, you don't need an email telling them that you've emailed them multiple times. You also don't need to tell them that you tried giving them a call or that you're following up. They know that's point of this email, right? So take that out. Just start, like, why are you reaching out? Right? So no fluff. And then personalize with purpose. If you have a manual step, you know, you've got those supplemental touch points that could be going on automatically, which is great. So when it's time to actually personalize, do that with purpose. Try to, you know, reach that common ground with that person and connect with them on a human level.

Okay, I love it. So now we're going to go into the rapid fire questions from the group. These are straight from group members. One of the benefits of being in the group is you get to write some of these questions. A few of these we've touched on already. So we did touch on number of touches. So we dove into that already. This next one I really like. How do you build cadences for end users versus decision makers?

Oh, that's a great question. So you've got to think about again, like, what that person is going through and what they care about. It's different. An end user cares more about what's right in front of them and how can they get through the day and how can they move up, how can they look good and help the team, whereas maybe the decision maker cares about larger Big picture problems, saving on budget and things like that, or recruiting. So you've got to think about what that Persona cares about and then how you help their lives. How do you make them succeed or be better? And that's going to ultimately change the content of your cadence and also the calls to action. So typically, and I do think it's great to have both running. Typically, we use the individual contributor, that end user cadence, as more of an automated cadence. We don't want you spending all your time reaching out to these individual contributors. If you've got 10 minutes in the day to personalize, personalize for those decision makers, right? So think about the individual contributors cadence as kind of running in the background in some degree. And the questions that you're asking them are great to learn a little bit more about the business. Hey, tell me what's going on. Tell me what you're frustrated with. What's the structure? Like, what's your manager doing? Like, where are you struggling? And then when you have that dialogue with the individual contributors, you can use that to personalize for the decision maker and say, hey, I know this is happening in the trenches. I've talked to your team. This is what they're saying. And that personalization really hits home for them.

If that last line she gave y' all gold, if you guys started to do that, if you, like, I tell people, you go low for information, middle for insight, top for influence. If you can get the information from the low and bring it to the middle and the top, like, that'll change your cadences forever. If I got an email that said subject line, I spoke to four of your managers. First sentence, right? Like, wait, and then next line. I know that this is happening, this is happening, this is happening, this is happening. Of course I'm gonna open that email, right? Like, as opposed to these templated things that I get every single day. So please, y', all rewind. Go start doing that. Like, absolutely, start doing that. So this actually is a good kind of segue from there a little bit on that personalization. So I might be a bad example here, but, like, say someone's going after you, right? It's like, so what? Like, give me, like a five or six. Like, bullet point on what type of research I should do, right? Like, okay, research to find personalization. What are, like, the five, six places you would go or searches you would do so you could build better personalization?

Yeah, well, I'm on MySpace quite a bit, so you can probably find me there.

God damn it. What is your song? And what is your theme? That's all I want to know, right? I'm gonna go Google this. I hope, I hope you deleted it. Cause I'm gonna go find it very quickly after all this.

I'm nervous. All right. I don't know. But in all seriousness, okay, definitely start with LinkedIn. Like it's a gold mine for sure. And as I said earlier, people leave nuggets of gold in there as like human touch, you know, so look at their bios, look at their descriptions, their roles, see if you have any common connections. So you know, if somebody was connected to Katie, I'd be like, oh my God, what's up? You know, we know Katie, how do you know?

Right?

Things like that. So think about how you can reach common ground. So LinkedIn first always look at their recent posts and what they're sharing. Share it, tag them, figure out, you know, what they're interested in. And you can pull that context. Look for those. You know, I had somebody recently, she said she loved TRX or something. She. I said, oh, I love trx. And we booked a meeting up from that. So it doesn't even have to. It's just, it's common ground, people. So, so use LinkedIn, even Twitter. So what are they posting on Twitter? If you can't find something on the individual level, I always say then next to look at the company. So what is the company posting? It shows what they're focused on. What are they promoting? Looking at their. Some companies are public, they put their 10Ks out, like figuring out how the company is doing overall and then looking at industry specific information. Again, if you don't have personal, if you don't have anything on their LinkedIn, their Twitter, you don't have anything specific on the company. Look at what's happening overall. You know, with the pandemic and Covid and everything happening right now, we help a lot of teams selling into retail. Not the greatest time to reach out to businesses. Brick and mortar right now, right? So we were looking at some of the retail websites or retail blogs and talking about what's happening there. Sending notes, sending things that aren't published from your company. Okay, Obviously people think that those are skewed. Hey, here's a really interesting article that we wrote that's gonna look really great. So hey, here's an article that we didn't write. Maybe it's a list. Hey, look at what other people are doing in retail. Or look what other people doing in healthcare. And guess what? Like two of those are our customers. You wanna talk to Us like we help them get on that list. So things that aren't necessarily created by you.

I love it. I love it. This next one is a fun one. What is your take on breakup or goodbye emails? How do you finish a cadence? So we talked about a cadence. It has 16 steps. How do you finish it? Right? Do you break up and say, a, you're interested, B, you're not interested, C, you're being chased by a crocodile? Like, how do you end a cadence?

Please don't send those anymore, please. So my take on breakup emails, if you want to call them that, it's not really a true breakup because you're probably going to reach out to them anyway, right? So I would say redirect them. It's strategic, right? So if you say, hey, totally not a good time, take the pressure off of them at this point, probably sent 10 emails. So hey, all good, it's totally fine. Here's some, I've curated some resources for you. Here's some stuff that you can go and take a look at. And a lot of times people bookmark that email later, right? It's not a good time. They don't want to talk to you, but they have some information that's helpful. So what are your best performing assets? What information do you want to give them for patient pop? Give them the competitive scan, right? And then what happens there? They'll go and click on it. And then now they've raised their hand or they downloaded some piece of content and they go into an inbound cadence, right? You're sort of guiding their next move by presenting them with resources that you want them to engage with. So I say give two or three of your best practices performing resources.

Just so you all know, that was one cadence that I think Patricia built out that had the biggest impact on our org. We called it like, I don't remember, we call it like the engager cadence or the high priority cadence where it's like if someone had opened X amount of emails or clicked X amount of emails over a certain period of time, it got bumped up into a higher priority cadence, right? And so we've actually built it to a way where we have emails that are only designed to get the click. We're not even trying to get a response, just click. Because if we can get you to click now we know you're engaging now you've spin on the website and we go. So it's that sort of strategy that really goes, I mean, just miles to like to stand out and do things the right way. So okay. All right. Well, we can only cover cadences for so much now, so we're make the final shift here. And it is actually my favorite question. And I'm really excited for your answer because it's. These are things that we talk about just normally. The name of this podcast is Live Better Sell Better, focusing on the person in salesperson, not just the sales side. We just spent 45 minutes on the sales side, but I want to end with the person side. What would be your advice or tip or tactic in terms of life? Taking more. Better care of ourselves, getting more out of life, more fulfillment. What would be your Live better tip for the group?

Yeah, so I think, you know, a lot of people listening now are probably in a individual contributor role or they're a sales leader. And there's a lot of emphasis on doing things the right way or like, all right, follow, don't deviate from this talk track or follow this or do this or say it like this. And then we have like this identity crisis a little bit like, oh, I need to do this exactly this way. And so my advice to everybody to live better is to spend time in reflection, learn who you are, learn what your unique gift is to the world and apply that. You know, it's great to have these frameworks and, you know, certain things to help us and guide us. But figure out what makes you you and use that because that's what everybody's craving. That's what makes us, you know, who we are and how we contribute to the world. And so. So it's scary to learn a little bit more about who we are and learn to love and accept those weird things about ourselves. But when you start to follow those things, you sit with them, you learn with them, you learn who you are and you use those gifts and you follow them. That's when the success really comes in because you're following your true path. You can follow your true path. You're authentic in your outreach. You're authentically you. You're weird and quirky. You know, I'm. I don't know how many times you and I have been weird. Send you the Macarena, like, I don't know all kinds of weird shit. So just don't be afraid to be unique and be, you know, I think even your quote this morning, crazy odd, odd timing, but be odd. Like, that's how you are successful. So don't forget to, you know, to show your unique self and really dive in and figure out what that is for you.

I love it. And what she's referencing. So I posted actually in the group this morning, you have to be odd to be number one. It came from Dr. Seuss and what I love about it is Dr. Seuss, always with a play on words. One, one is an odd number. You have to be odd to be number one. You can't be even. But two, you have to be different. Because if you're the same as everybody else, then you can't be number one because then everybody is. So how can someone start that journey? Because it's like, all right, yeah, I need to find myself or figure out me or my unique strengths. How, how can someone start. That path of like self realization or actualization can get like too high or too fluffy. But it's like a lot of people don't know, right? They're listening, they're going, well, okay, but how do I do that? What would be a great place to start?

Well, I think it's a non negotiable thing that you need to, you know, make time for and self reflect. I don't think we spend enough time in our head. You know, we're really busy people and we're tired all day after working. We just want to turn our brain off and scroll on social media or sit down in front of the tv. But taking time every day to self reflect, for me, it's in the morning. Like I don't even look at my phone in the morning. I get up. It's non negotiable. I figure out who I am, what I'm about. Today I, I go and hike, I journal. I journal every day and then I can show up. I show up as me. I'm not showing up as what I think other people want me to be. So figure out what that is for you. If it's in the morning, great. If it's at night, at the end of the day, just take some time and self reflect. Like, what went well? What pissed you off today? Why, why did that make you so upset? What really was it or what did you really do that was awesome, made you feel great. Do more of that, Figure out what those things are. So I say, you know, non negotiable. Take some time every day for self reflection and figure out a method that works for you. It's just journaling. If it's meditating, if it's just sitting there listening to music. Like those add up. Those really add up. So take, you know, as much as we're all spending time trying to master our craft and do well in our job, like take some time just as you do for your job. Like, take time for yourself to sit with yourself and fill your own cup.

There you have it. Patricia McLaren, the Queen of cadences and self realization. I mean, we'll just start. We'll keep adding to the title there, but. Holy cow. So much value, so much info, so much inspiration. Patricia, thank you so much for this today. I'm just. I'm in awe, as usual. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Of course. As always, thanks so much, Katie. Thanks, everybody. Bye.