The SDR Role Is NOT a Stepping Stone | James Buckley on Cold Calling, AI & Career Growth

Yeah, good. Thank you, Mika.

Hey everybody. Hey Rahul. Hey Rahul. Everybody's looking so fresh. Let's open up. Except Supranks, because I can't see Supranks properly. You can't see me properly? Yeah, because there's no light.

Yeah.

So good to see all of you after a long while. After a while.

Good to see you too.

Yeah. The dog doesn't look so happy looking at me.

No, I think that's Bean, mate.

Hey James.

What's up squad? What are you guys doing? How are you?

Hey James.

Thank you so much for joining in.

Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.

Absolutely. I hope we have the full house, right? Okay. Looks like, yeah. All right, everybody, please, please meet James. I have a small intro I want to give for James so that you have a context of who he is and what he's going to do for all of you today. So James was my mentor when I was in SDR and now I'm bringing him to speak to the entire team. This is someone who never once told me I don't have the time. His default answer has always been, when should we do it? Anytime I needed help ever since, and I think I've known him for 9 years now, June 30th, 2017 is when I first sent him the message. Anytime I felt stuck, anytime I did not know what to do next, he was always there to show, you know, to show me the way. And here's what makes James different. He does not teach sales. He makes you feel like you matter. Okay. And if you ever speak to him, you will know that today, by the end of today, that he has this ability to make you feel like you are the most important person in the world and he will mean it. And that is a rare quality to have. And hopefully I'll have it someday. Today he is hosting a conversation with some of the best minds in sales, helping reps across the world sharpen their craft, build their real confidence. But I respect the most is this, that he never lost that one thing that actually matters, caring about people. I remember I tweeted once in 2017 that give me a few years, I have big plans inspired by, I don't know, one of the singers. I remember, I remember he was the only one who liked that post and I still have it. And he will show up early. He will back people before the result and he will make sure you stay consistent for years. The best mentor and trainer I've ever had. I present to you James Buckley.

I don't know how I could follow that, man. You wanna join on all my calls and introduce me to all of my prospects moving forward? Thank you, Rahul. That means the world to me, man. And, uh, you know, you and I have been friends for almost 10 years now. I can't believe how fast time flies. But I, I would love to start with a thank you for everybody that's joined the profession. The profession needs quality people. That's what we need. It is no longer a quantity game. It's about the time and the effort that you put into every single touch. And the key that people lose very quickly, especially when they start getting all the tools and the AI and the automation, is they lose that ability to signal to their prospect, I wrote this for you. I made this for you. This could not be for anybody else. It's for you. Once you dial that in, things become very easy. Your structures, your flows, what works for you. The pragmatic approach. That's the thing that surfaces once you start to really fall in love with the role. So thank you for that introduction. I really appreciate it. All right. So let's see what changed, areas to focus on. The career path is real. I want to tell you my story because it's probably the most relevant to you as new SDRs or training SDRs that are like, okay, how do I take this to the next level? So I started in 2014, 2015 at a little tiny company called Cirrus Insight. I was the 5th employee. They literally sat me in a room with an account executive to show me the software. This will happen to all of you. And they will say, ask lots of questions, learn a lot. That's what they'll say. For 30 days, 2 weeks, 30 days, somewhere in there, you'll sit in this room and watch this person talk to strangers and show them their solutions. And then you'll ask lots of questions and you'll feel like you're learning a lot. You're going to take a lot of notes. You might record a couple things. You might jot down some questions you asked and some answers you got. But in the end, they're going to hand you a laptop and a headset after you walk out of that room for the last time, after 2 weeks or a month, they're going to go, best of luck to you. And you have received zero sales training, zero SDR training. What you know is how that account executive sells the product. And guess what? That's not your job. Your job is not to sell. Your job is to attain interest and establish and get— attain attention and establish interest. That's all. If you think about this structure today and the rest of your career, AIDA, attention, interest, desire, action, right? That's, that's the flow. You are the AI part, the attention and interest part. The account executive you set meetings up for, they're the closer. They do the desire and action part. Keep that in mind as you move forward through your career. Now, I was in SDR for 4 years. But in that 3rd year, my SDR manager who could not catch me on the leaderboard, I mean, there was no way. My record for meetings scheduled in 1 month was 56, mostly cold calls, right? And like, that's my game. I love cold calls. I like cold email because I'm very good at it. I'm a writer, but I like cold, cold calls because I can get a lot done in a 15-second conversation, a 30-second conversation.

Right.

And I might get 6 to 7 meetings scheduled in a day with the added hour of cold calls for qualified prospects. So there's this like mathematical equation that comes to light for you as you grow into the career. Now, here's what I want you to be very cautious of. A lot of people throughout your career as an SDR, however long you're an SDR, some people are an SDR for 8 months and then they become an account executive and it's amazing. Right. Okay, great. Some people are SDRs for years. I am a lifelong SDR. And the reason for that is because I know that as a full cycle rep, which is what I am now, I have to sponsor and prospect and find and seek out at least 30 to 33% of my own pipeline. The SDR role is never going to be a stepping stone. It's never going to be a starting point. It's never going to end. There are people in this world that you'll meet that are also SDRs. Maybe they've been there a year. Maybe they've been there 6 months. Maybe they started yesterday, but they're going to say things to you like, it's cool. One day I'll be an account executive and I won't have to do this anymore. It's cool. One day I'll be the manager and then I won't have to prospect.

Right?

None of those things are true. If you're in sales and you're not prospecting, you are not in sales. You are waiting. You are biding your time until something qualified comes your way. So absorb all that you get in the SDR role, because it will serve your sales career throughout your growth. If you become a manager in the next 7 years of a team of 50, You will have 5 of that team of 50 that actually perform at a level you are satisfied with. The other 45, you will be the SDR for them, helping them along the way to get to their goals. You, the manager, the leader, the person that provides them with resources and value. So never let somebody tell you, don't worry, this is a starting point, a stepping stone, a foot in the door. SDR is just an entry role. These people are not professionals. These people are lost. They've lost the ability to see the value. You are the most important person at every company you work for as a performing SDR. You're where the first conversation happens. You're where the first piece of discovery takes place. You're where interest is established, and you are the person that put them in front of an account executive that can build momentum and pull that account over the finish line for tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars. And in some of your cases, you're going to land jobs that have average contract values in the millions. So never let someone tell you that the SDR role is minimal, low level, a starting point. It's the lifeblood of every organization. And we can talk about this for a minute because I think it's important and you're probably all seeing it. Lots of people in this world believe that AI is going to take the SDR role. Lots of people think that AI and automation is augmenting the SDR role. I can tell you from personal experience, AI is something that is amazing and it can really pour gasoline On your fire. But if you don't have enough wood, what good does that gasoline do? It burns real bright and then it fizzles out. It goes away. It dies. No more fire. You are the wood for the fire as the SDR. The people that you help, the people that you talk to, your account executives are not good at that. They're great at talking about product. They're great at talking about solutions. You are the person that's learned from Rahul and the rest of the folks that guide you along the way, how to get the attention from someone who wasn't expecting to give it to you today. And how to ask the right questions that establish interest. In solving a problem that your company, your solution can solve.

I think I kind of echo what James said about how this is actually a quite important job. I remember I used to tell my SDRs, imagine, I mean, we were running a full outbound team where account executives were kind of relying completely on the pipeline generated by my SDRs. And then SDRs used to kind of feel low about the fact that, hey, we are ultimately, you know, have the same mindset, you know, we are an SDR. I'm like, dude, you know, think about this. If you don't perform, AEs to not make their money, to not make the quota, and every company, the company shut down. So technically you are the one running the company right now. That's the kind of attitude. That's the kind of crown I want you to wear every day.

That's a real statement. If you think about companies that have gone out of business, anybody know about Toys R Us? Yeah. Gone forever. I think it resurfaced recently under some new leadership, right? There's 100 other ones, right? Uh, Joann Fabrics, right? The only reason that companies go out of business, close their doors forever and ever, is that they stopped making sales. That's the only reason. There's no other reason this person quit. Well, you can hire somebody else. You know, well, my team walked out. Well, there's a whole nother team out there waiting for you. Go find them.

Right.

The reason that they go out of business and they shut their doors forever is that no more money is coming in. And SDRs are often the leading standpoint, the leading line of offense to go and find the new revenue. It's a skillset that not a lot of people have. It's a skillset that most of the time gets Sort of swept under the rug, especially when you're worried about a pipeline, closing a pipeline, right? The thing that you're doing, managing a pipeline full of strangers that could potentially be interested in solving a problem, that's the thing. That's the patchwork. That's the stuff that's filling in those gaps. My path went like this. I was an SDR. And then 4 years later, 3 years later, that, uh, that manager came to me, the one that hired me and said, man, I got to get out of your way. I think I'm going to go move to customer success. You want to take over the team? I said, yeah, absolutely. So I took that team from 6 people to 15 people. A year and a half later, we sold that company and we were a $15 million ARR company at the time. When I started, we were at like $500,000. So like, that was massive growth in a very short period of time. And we sold that company. I moved to a company called Ringlead in 2019. I was their SDR manager right out of the gate. I had 4 reps. Within a year, we sold that company to ZoomInfo, who is now a sponsor of my show. Okay.

Join my company so that I can sell it someday.

Don't tempt me, my friend. I will fly out there and join you. So I will tell you that after we sold Zoom, uh, RingLead to ZoomInfo, I got a call from someone you might know, John Barrows. And John Barrows said, and this is what I'm quoting now, this is why this is a vehicle for you.

Okay.

As an SDR, you have a responsibility to create what I call a digital footprint. It is a digital representation of your professional self. You're going to be out there for the world to see. You got to create content That helps solidify you as a valued resource in the sales community. Notice how I did not say create content about the products you sell. I did not say create content about people buying from you or about random golf, right? Like that stuff comes later. What you have to create is something that says Pradeep Jumani is a valued resource in the sales space that I should be connected with because they can Teach me things, show me things, help me solve problems. That's the kind of content you need to be creating. What ends up happening is you create a brand. That brand can be anything you want. You might see in my name there, it says James Say What Sales Buckley. Say What Sales is my personal brand. When I started that in 2015, I was no kid, no kidding. I was holding my phone in front of my face and just telling people online what I did that day. What's up everybody? James here today. I tried this opener on my cold calls. I would say, hi, can I speak with Rahul please? with a downward inflection. I got this from Chet Holmes, Ultimate Sales Machine. You should try this out because that downward inflection makes you the position of authority. And I would put these videos out every day and I would say, #SayWhatSales. If you're a salesperson, we're the same person, right? That's my little diamond that everybody follows. Everybody likes it. I'm telling you, when I started going to events after about a year of this, people were yelling it at me from the booths. Whoa, what's up, dude? We're the same person. This brand that you decide on, that you create, is the vehicle that will carry you through your career and make more money for you than you've ever thought possible. And it's not you. That's the thing you have to realize. You're creating something that's bigger than you. It's different than you. It's outside of you. It's for them. It's for the people that connect and follow and learn and come with you on the journey. That's who it's for. So John Barrows calls me, one of the world-renowned trainers at the time. He was working with Morgan J. Ingram. Maybe you guys know these names, right? I pick up the phone. John and I had already been friends for a couple of years. He goes, man, the way you make people feel is amazing. Do you want to do it with me? So fast forward, I joined John's team. COVID-19 happens. We all get grounded. I can't train teams anymore. I can't, I can't fly around.

Right.

I'm like, dude, I'm never going to win. Right? Like life is just beating me down. I got this great job. I can't do anything with it. SDR took me this far and now this is it.

I'm done.

It's gonna, it's gonna kill me. John calls me and says, we're gonna do webinars. We're gonna do webinars. We're gonna go virtual. It's gonna be amazing. You're gonna host a couple. I hope you're okay with that. I said, yeah, I guess I could try it. To think about that now.

Is it fair enough for you to tell people who is John Barrows?

I mean, sure.

I'm not sure if everybody knows him.

Yeah, no, absolutely. So here we go. I can pull him up so we can kind of walk through.

So John Barrows is the largest followed, I think, sales trainer in the world.

Yeah, he's definitely one of them. 416,000 followers. I'm going to drop his LinkedIn in your chat so you guys can follow him, learn Learn from him. Everything this dude does is gonna set you aside from what I would refer to as an average seller. John is above average. The, the tactics that he delivers are far above average. They are standout performance moves, things that are going to definitely get attention, things that are definitely gonna resonate, and something that's gonna be unique compared to all the other things in the inbox or that they've gotten calls about today. Right? So learn from John. I learned a lot from John. And Morgan, I'll give you guys Morgan as well. Here's Morgan. Morgan J. Ingram, easily one of the most creative and nimble minds in sales today. These are the guys that I learned from over the years. When you think about companies like Salesloft, HubSpot, when you think about companies like, uh, Pleo and Guild and LinkedIn, right? These 2 guys have trained all those teams. Those are massive teams that have grown incredible revenue year over year. These 2 gentlemen are the people responsible for that growth. Highly recommend you follow them. So John calls me and he says, you make people feel amazing. Let's do it together. COVID happens. He ends up telling me that we're gonna do webinars. And from there, everything started to snowball. Our first webinar had like 10,000 people at it and we charged for it. Like $100 got you your seat at this webinar. And like 10,000 people came to this thing. So we were like, this is crazy. We did another one, like 8,000 people came. We did another one, thousands, you know, and we're like, well, we really got something here. Let's stop sponsoring. Let's stop charging people to come to this and let's do more of them. And instead, let's get companies that sell to salespeople to sponsor the show. And just like that, Sell Better was born. It didn't have the name. It didn't have the title. It didn't have the brand. It didn't have any of that. And none of it today, today, fast forward today, we're a daily show. We're live every day. We have the best reps and the best leaders come to the show and share their tactics every single day. We average between 750 and 1,000 registrants every day for the show. 30% of them are above the power line, right? If you'd have asked me in 2015 when I was handed that laptop and that headset, hey, do you think one day you'll become the host of the most popular sales show in the world with one of the best sales training companies on the planet? I would have said, absolutely not. It will never happen. But SDR got me here. Not account executive, not management, not leadership, not some crazy marketing shift where I, you know, moved over to marketing and started creating all this demand. No, picking up calls, picking up the phone, dialing phone numbers, sending cold emails to people that didn't know who I was, reaching out on social media, telling people I had something they might find interesting. That's what got me here. And it'll get you there too. So I'll pause again. That's my story. And then we'll talk about Why cold calling is an art that will never die and will always be valuable. Any questions on the path, the career, what you're actually getting started in today? Good. Good. I feel I'm being very motivating today. I feel very, very uplifted. So I hope you guys are feeling that as well.

By the way, um, you know, uh, James has done, had done one of the best talks. We, uh, we actually have this recorded, uh, by the way, uh, which is on the whole tonality on the cold calling. If you want, I mean, I'm sure James would love to probably talk about that.

I'm going to— it's hard not to talk about tone on cold call stuff for me.

No, I think, I think that's what of the brilliant talks we've had. And I think that helped my, all my, all my students a lot.

Yeah.

Cold calling is something that I hold very close to me because it was the first channel that I was given to be able to use. It was the, I wasn't allowed to send any emails in like my first month because they weren't really confident in my sales writing. And to be honest, I wasn't either. But what I ended up figuring out was that the stuff that I was saying on the cold calls could easily be a written message. So I ended up creating templates out of my calls. I would listen back to them and then I would write down what I said that got people to talk to me. And I would use those, you know, I would shift them and mold them into something that looked really good on screen. But let's talk about the cold part, call part for a second here. My average, as I said, was about 56 meetings in a month, and I got most of them through cold calls. You guys make about 50 calls a day right now. I know you're not afraid of the phone, but there are so many generic lines that we throw out there as SDRs that often get us in trouble. They, we miss opportunities because we use them. They become second nature. You say them without even thinking about them. Uh, give you a good one that I used to do when I first started and I gave it up. It's, hey, how are you today? They don't know you. They don't know who you are. They don't want to tell you how they are today. If somebody you know comes up to you and says, how are you today? You're like, hey, I'm great. How about yourself? It's a conversation. But somebody you don't know, you've never met. Hey, how are you? Super. You're like, who the fuck are you, dude? This is, this is something that calls callers. We get trained to do this. We get trained to say things like, hi, how are you today?

Right?

Don't do this. The tone that you speak with people in, especially in your first words. Is so key. I'll recommend this book. There's a YouTube video out there. It's very old. I'm dating myself. I'm 44, but it's called Chet Holmes. It's by Chet Holmes. It's called The Ultimate Sales Machine. This book is all about how to use your voice as a will to power. The best example I can give you is gatekeepers. You guys call a lot of gatekeepers. You talk to a lot of gatekeepers. Hi, how can I help you? And you're like asking for the person that you need to talk to, right? Gatekeepers, their job is to protect the person's time that they work for. That's their job. That's why they say things like, I'll put you through to their voicemail, or let me have them call you back, or can I take a message, right? Because this person is important and they don't have time to talk to you. That's their goal. Okay, fine. How do we get past the gatekeeper? Well, number one, this idea of getting past the gatekeeper is bullshit. That's a human being. That's a person just like you. Your tone when you speak to that person lets them know that. So a lot of people talk to gatekeepers and they do stuff like this. They say, hi, can I speak with Rahul please? Already this person, because of that inflection, that tone, that upward tone in your voice, that person knows this is a sales call. Not only is this a sales call, but I'm pretty sure this person doesn't have this call on their schedule because I'm looking at their schedule. So when I say Rahul is not available right now, how can I help you? The tendency is to be like, well, can you put me through to their voicemail? Or sometimes they'll volunteer that for you when you ask For them. They're not available right now, but I can put you through to their voicemail. Again, listen to my tone. Oh, hey, you know, that's great. I can leave a voicemail next time, but it would be awesome if you could just write this down for me. What's your name? And then I shut up. I guarantee you, you will be one of one for the people that actually say, what's your name, to this gatekeeper that day. Fawaz, what's up? Once you say this, they're gonna give you, they're gonna give you their name. Write it down. The next time you call, someone else might answer the phone. Last time I called, I spoke with Courtney. Who's this? Courtney's not here today. My name's John. Hey, John. Uh, listen, I'm calling for Rahul. Is Rahul available? Notice the downward inflection, right? The downward inflection gets you in a position of authority. If you say it fast when they first answer, it's even better. Because right when they answer, they're like, oh, thank you for calling Johnson& Johnson. Yeah, I'd like to speak with Howard, please. Holy shit. They're like, I'll put you right through. You feel the difference in my tone when I say it with the upward inflection? It's very lax. It's very casual. Get good at this. This changes the way people perceive what you're saying on the phone. Like, speak with Rahul right now, please. That is like, I'm not fucking around with you. You are not worth my time. I need this human. And they feel that on the phone. They go, ooh, that person is pissed. I'm just gonna put them right through. Sometimes they will put you on hold and then they'll jump on and be like, hey, John, I got a guy here. I didn't ask for his name, but he sounds pretty pissed. Should I just put him through?

Right?

I don't care what their reason is for getting me through to John. Once I get through to John, I'll be like, John, what's up? How are you today? And I'm gonna be very casual. I'm gonna be very conversational. But for the gatekeeper, I need them to feel like what I'm about to talk about is way above their head. They don't want it. So the seriousness gets me, quote, past the gatekeeper, but also I can be very kind to them at the same time. What's your name? My name's Courtney. Courtney, do you work directly for John or do you work for like lots of people in the building? Taking messages and stuff. I know I work for John. How long have you worked for John, Courtney? What's up, Jamin? I see you. Hashtag, you're muted.

Sorry about that. Yeah, no, I just had a quick question about like more of the AI gatekeepers now, which is obviously Google Screening, et cetera. That's probably the issue which I probably come across more. So I was just wondering if you would handle that, how you'd maybe approach that.

So this is like when you dial somebody and the little thing comes on and it says, please leave your name and the reason for your call, right?

Exactly that.

Yeah. So here's how I do it when I get those. James Buckley. You feel that? That's intense.

Yeah.

I want them to feel like this is urgent and I want them to feel like I mean business. And when they do finally call me back or they do decide to pick up the phone, I will often get right to that same tonality. Jamin, what's up? Thanks for calling me back. Uh, listen, I, well, I called you because you guys have just launched a new app and I think that app is geared towards salespeople. That's my entire audience. We have a great show. I'd like to get some time on your calendar. No rush, no pressure. That's not my game. What about Wednesday at 2? I saw you guys are looking to get this in front of a lot of salespeople and I want to help. Is that good for you?

Right.

And you, you feel the authoritative nature of my tone, right? I don't stutter. I don't stammer. I know exactly what they've— by using the trigger that I found for the reason for my call, where I'm telling them right away the reason I'm speaking to them. They love that. They would rather you not do the how are you thing. In most cases, that's small talk. I don't have time for that. I didn't expect this call, right? Sit in their seat, put your mind in their mind. Also, the AI ones are interesting because you can say lots of different things, right? Some people have a lot of fun with this. I'm a person that I'm, I'm very up. I, I'm a very up person. I have a lot of energy, especially in the mornings. Rahul knows this, right? Once I get going, it starts to get fun and I start to get things that are unique, right? I will sometimes say. William. Hey, I'm thinking you might go by Bill, but that's not what I saw on LinkedIn. Anyway, leaving you this, give me a shout when you get a chance. I'm not going to leave my phone number because you're not going to call me back. What I am going to do is send you an email and the subject line is going to be Purple Monkey. I'll talk to you soon.

Have a great day.

Right.

And then I send the email and it's very business, but the email subject line is Purple Monkey. And that's because I want them to go and listen to my message and search for the subject line. Purple monkey.

That's— I learned that from you. I remember that.

It's a good one. It works. You'd be amazed at how often that one works. And so many people—

I use Pink Panda though.

Yeah. Pink Panda's good. I've done yellow. I've done yellow tambourine. I've done orange ape. I've— dude, you can, you can have a lot of fun with it and people, it's unique. It's different. They don't hear it every day.

Right.

It's a pattern interrupt that happens in a voicemail.

Right.

But what you'll get is you'll get a response to your email that says, I got your voicemail. That's hysterical.

Right.

And like, You've already, you've already brought the defenses down at that point and you haven't even spoken yet.

Right?

Cold calling is also something that is the fastest way to book a new meeting. Most cold calls last between 70 and 90 seconds. If you're lucky, if you're really good at it, that's about the average length of time. So how do we get the most out of this? In my opinion, the best way to get the most out of a cold call is to have a specific structure that you follow. The introduction is often the thing that I mentioned, right? Gets the guard down. Then there's this value prop that takes place. That's usually factored into the reason for your call, right? That's the thing that you want the most is the reason for your call. From there, it's the call to action. Usually I use an upward inflection for my curiosity call to action. This might sound something like, how are you guys handling that right now? And then I shut up, right? My value prop might be something like, we're talking to a lot of teams right now, and what they're looking for is this idea of how to get in front of new customers, and that's what we've been providing through our show. Are you guys seeing a steady stream of newcomers coming into your SDR realm? What's that look like? Right? That's my call to action. It's not, can I get 15 minutes? Which is, God, just take, take, can I have 15 minutes? Can I have 30 minutes? Just take that call to action and flush it down the toilet for the rest of your life, forever and ever. Amen. You don't need it. Everybody knows it's a 15-minute or 30-minute conversation. The world over. Instead, you wanna know how they're doing something. How is almost a better call to action for a first touch. Think about that for a minute, right?

How?

They can't answer that with an interested, not interested. Yes, no. They have to think about that answer for a second. Some people, when you're on the call, they, they, they're a little bit caught off guard. They thought you were somebody else. Anybody ever have this happen? Oh, sorry. I thought you were my kid's school.

Yeah.

Well, you know, a lot of phone numbers are kind of the same. Anyway, the reason I'm calling is, and that's The reason I'm calling is, is probably the most important. Like after they say hello to me, what do I say? That you can start everything after that. Well, let me tell you the reason I'm calling.

Right.

Hey, I know I caught you off guard. I just want to tell you the reason I'm calling. Right. And I just made a mistake right there. I said the word just. Be very cautious with this. Language is so important. If we say just before we say something, whatever comes after it is diminished. I caught myself doing it right there. If you get conscious of it, you can catch yourself doing it. Just want to tell you about my app. I just want to ask you a few questions. I just want to. It's awful, right? I'm also guilty of another one, and this one you'll find yourself doing. I'd love to meet. I'd love to connect. I'd love to chat about, right? And we say these things on calls. I'd love to schedule a— of course you would, right? Yeah. I'm aware that that's your job. That's what these people are thinking when you say these things. So get really comfortable. Here's a couple of tips for you. Here's a couple things that are gonna help you really early in your cold calling practice. Stand up. Say that shit in the mirror. No headphones, no phone, no numbers, nothing. Just say what you wanna say today to your prospects when they answer the phone in the mirror. Does, do you look like you? Is your body language on point? Is, are you standing up straight? Are you confident? Does it sound like the way that you talk? If it does, you're probably doing really well. You're probably feeling good about it. You're probably seeing good results. But if you are feeling like this is off, if you're feeling like it's not quite you, practice more. Get it right. Feel like it's authentic to yourself, who you are as a person. You're gonna find that's more effective. It works better for you. It's more pragmatic. It feels more natural. Remember, you've only got 90 seconds if you're good at it. So follow that structure. Introduction, value proposition, call to action. Call to action is an interest question that you're interested in them, not are you interested in me? I'm interested in this. Can you tell me about that? Fawaz, what's up?

I was gonna ask. You said that we should kind of take away that asking for 10, 15 minutes, which is probably something I've been doing ever since I started. So if you could just like give me an example of how you would turn that into that question, that call to action into a calendar meeting.

Sure, absolutely. Uh, want to connect next week and talk out what's possible? Would you like to chat on Tuesday at 2 o'clock? I've got about 15 that I can give you. You're not asking them for 15 minutes. You're telling them you're going to give them your time. See, there are a thousand different ways. Here's a quick tip. Anytime you have a call to action that you're like, mm, I could probably make an adjustment here, go into ChatGPT, type that call to action in and tell it to give you 5 alternative phrases that mean the same thing. And then pick one that is not normal. Pick one that is different. That's the best course of action that you can take because you're never gonna do it better than AI. But AI can't do it for you. So if you're questioning something, or if you're like, Amir, I'm happy to talk to any of you. I am an open book. As Rahul said, I will give any of you my time for help. That is literally what I'm paid to do is help people like you win.

That was, that was one other CTA that I've used to turn that question that like, instead of I'd love to chat, I'd love to meet, I'd love to sort of meet you. I'd sort of just go like, hey, I'd love to set some time aside next week. But that comes after you earn the right to even ask that question.

Yeah, I was looking for the quotes. I was looking for the quotes there and then I would've been, I would've known that that's what that was. No, you're fine.

My bad.

I actually like that. Let's set aside some time next week. Very casual. That's well done. I would, I would definitely try that one, Fouad. That's a really good one. Nicely done there, Amir. The way that we phrase things is such an important thing for the way that we're being interpreted by the readers, by the listeners, by the people that we're talking to. When we phrase things like, you know, anybody ever bought a car? You guys have bought a car before, right? You're going, you're on the lot. You've got the money in your pocket. You know, you need a car, but you see the salesperson and what's your first thought? I got to get out of here before this guy tries to sell me something.

Yeah. Don't trust him.

I can't. Yeah. This person is a snake, right? They just want to sell me a car. That's how they feel when they get your cold call. That's how they feel when they read your cold email. That's how they feel when you send a connection request that basically is a pitch. They want to run away from the car salesman. before they try to sell them something. So anybody that needs help with cold call stuff, I don't care what it is, reach out to me directly. I will send you countless resources to help you become an expert cold caller, and it's all free to you. So never hesitate to reach out to me for that. Second thing I want, the next thing I want to talk about is rejection. Any questions on cold calls and the stuff that I've mentioned so far? Happy to come back to it, but I want to make sure you guys get the most out of this. And we have a couple other things I want to cover.

How many cold calls were you making a day and how many would you sort of at Advice and how many conversations would you say an SDR should aim for in a day?

That's a good question. And I think it depends on the industries that you're selling into and the personas that you're selling into. There are a couple of variables to keep in mind. For example, I sell to salespeople. Salespeople sit at their desk all day doing sales. I have them, I have a captive audience. There's nowhere for you to go. But if you sell to manufacturers, if you sell to auto, if you sell to blue collar, if you sell to construction, These people are not waiting for your call at their desk. They're not sitting in front of a monitor. So you're probably gonna have less conversations. So the variable there is who you're selling to. When it comes to how many you should aim for, as many as possible.

Okay.

You can't say I should have 20 conversations a day. Instead, what you can say is I need to make 200 calls a day and my goal is 20 conversations. Now, If you're smart, everybody look at your calendar right now and block off a cold call power hour in the morning and a cold call power hour in the afternoon. This is where you set aside those 2 hours and they are just cold call power hours. You are not going to send emails. You are not going to write to your buddy or text or jump on Instagram. None of that. It's just zeroing in on this hour and I'm going to power dial and we're going to have great conversation. You're going to use the same opener every time. You're gonna count the amount of conversations that you earn. Become a data collector. Did, was I able to schedule meetings with this call to action? I'm gonna use that call to action until it just can't work anymore. Right? So make sure you're keeping track of what works for you so that you can double down on that stuff. But I don't think there's a right answer for that. I don't have a magic number to give you because it's gonna depend on who you're selling to, the industry, and so on. But I always aim for 200 calls a day. And I typically have about 20, 20 conversations.

Mm-hmm.

And I typically schedule between 5 and 7 meetings. But keep in mind, I've been doing this for 20 Jamin, I see you.

Yeah, I just wanted to ask what value you think goes into personalizing the call, because I know we do that for emails. And I've been doing that a lot more recently, which has been earning me more time. But obviously, it's quite time consuming to do for every single call. So I just want to see where you feel that value actually lies.

Time consuming, you need AI to win for you. You can build an agent, you can do this in ChatGPT, you can do it in Claude, you can do it in Agent AI, there's 1,000 different solutions out there. What you want to do is you want to say, hey, AI solution, I'm going to drop a company's URL, And the LinkedIn URL of my decision maker in this thread. When I do that, I need the following things. I need to know, was this person featured on a podcast recently? Does this person do X, Y, or Z? I need to know these things about this company and these people. And then you just copy and paste the URL and the LinkedIn URL in that engine. And it will spit out all those informations that you've spent too much time looking for. And then you go, okay, which one do I need? Which one do I need? Ah, that's the one. And now you have your research. Create that AI engine. It's going to save you so much that you'll get so many more dials in a day because the AI will do that research for you. You won't have to do it. And if you need help with that, let me know. I'm happy to help. I've made, I build these things all the time. Amir, what's up?

Hey, James, there's just a, just a very short question I wanted to put forward. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of, there's this notion that, you know, the money is in the follow-up. There's also this notion that, you know, SDRs have to sort of detach themselves from the outcome, especially while cold calling, because rejection can hit them hard. But then most SDRs today sort of like look for that outcome. Either it's a meeting booked or they're not interested, or they just hang up on you, or they just like, whatever, ask you to bug off. How would you sort of take, how would you even approach a cold call with that mindset that, you know what, like not necessarily looking for an outcome? This could also be a follow-up that could span for the next 2, 3 months. So like my question to you is how would you go about, like, how would you approach a cold call, a cold contact? And then from there, sort of, if follow-up needs, if there is like a requirement to follow up, keep in touch, build that relationship, build that familiarity, I'm pretty sure you keep doing that. Like most people you meet, I'm sure you're going about like building that familiarity.

With them?

Like, how would you sort of even approach a cold call in the first place to get that done?

So everything comes in stages, right? If I'm going to show you my flow here, so you guys can see it, but here's the way that I do it. I don't know what you guys use. I'm a, I'm a HubSpot user. So you're going to see the HubSpot tab here. This is how I manage it.

Right.

So I have new leads. These are people that come in and I don't know anything about them yet. I have to do the research, right? Uh, and then I have interest. You can see how it moves to the right. You know, I have interest. These are people that I've established interest with, right? And then these are the meetings that I've scheduled. And then these are the meetings that have been completed. And this is where the next steps take place. You'll notice here, these all have a next step date. See that? They all have, this is the next step right here. And each one of them has a good, like, breakdown and I move them From right or left, depending on where they go. But the dates always stay intact and they always stay there. I always update those next step dates. When you look at cold calling as a— well, a lot of people are going to say these types of things to you. And these are the things you want to look out for, because these are the ones that require follow-up. I don't have time for this right now. Follow-up. Got it. Right? This isn't a priority at the moment. Got it.

Follow-up.

Not right now. Most of the objections you get on cold calls are going to fall into the not right now bucket. Not the no bucket. No and never talk to me again don't mean the same thing, right? So you gotta know that. The only words that are gonna get me to stop calling you are never fucking talk to me again. If you don't say stop talking to me, believe you will hear from me multiple times. Yeah. So in my opinion, there's a couple ways to do it and there's no, uh, you have to find the strategy that works for you. I used to write down all the names and companies of the people I needed to follow up with, and then I would just work that list every couple days. And that would be the way that I did it. But now I've set this up in HubSpot. This is so much easier. So I would, I would look at like the tech you have and find the best solution for you. That's going to prompt you to like, I have a closed lost list where people like reached out with interest, but then like blew me off or whatever. So I go back to that list all the time. Did this person leave yet? Are they still there? Like, and I follow up that way. There's 800,000 different ways that you can manage your follow-up strategy as an SDR. The one that works for you is the one that matters. So I would like look at all the different fluid ways that you can set up for yourself to manage your follow-ups. And you're going to find that when you create your own system for it, it's failproof. But if you're just going to be like, oh, I'll talk to them later. And then you don't do anything with that company that reminds you that it needs to happen. That's going to, it's going to fall through the cracks. You're probably going to forget that because you have too much that goes on throughout the day.

Let's say you're sitting on a list of about like 400-odd people. And you've trimmed that list down to about 50 people who suggested they might be interested in the next 3 to 6 months. And like, you obviously want to follow up like in the next 3, 6 months, you want to call them, but then you don't want to sound as cold as you first called with them. How would you sort of approach that conversation towards the end? Like the moment you hear, hey, follow up in 3, 6 months, that's the right timeline. How do you approach that conversation to ensure that, you know, there's some familiarity that you can piggyback on? the next time you speak with them, what sort of approach would you use there, James?

When people tell you to call back in 3 months, when people tell you to call back in 4 weeks, when people tell you to call back next quarter, these people get something from me every 2 days. Every 2 days they get something from, hey, what's up? We're doing a great show. I thought you might like to join. Please share it with your team. Hey, what's up? Last time we talked, you said you didn't have time, but I have this great resource. I thought I'd send it along. Have a great day. No ask, but every 2, 3 days they get something from, hey, what's up? This article is It's about exactly what I told you about. Read the 3rd line in the 2nd paragraph and you'll see how that applies directly to your business, right? These things keep you engaged in that window of time that they gave you. And then like your 10th time sending something to them, you might say something like, hey, looking forward to connecting next week. And they're like, are we connecting next week?

Yep.

Because, because when they tell you to call back in 3 months, that's to get you off the phone. They don't remember that they told you that. That's when you get the reply, Amir. What do you mean next week? Last time we chatted, you said 3 months and you've been reaching out like every, every, it's very clever because it plays on their brain chemistry.

I learned one more thing from James. I remember you taught me these signatures, right? Before you, before most people will actually waste their time in saying, you know, best warm regards, warm regards and all that BS. So one of the things I learned from James is in my cold email, I would, I would write something like, I'll be calling you at 2:00 PM tomorrow. And when I, when I pick up the phone and I'll be like, hey, I'm not sure if you got my email. I told you I was going to call you at 2:00 PM. So here I am. And this will be a different conversation altogether because they could— now they can't say that I was not expecting a call. Fine. But I sent you an email.

That's right.

That's right. And I love that move. I do it frequently. The other one I do is I don't end with sincerely or regards or best. I say, I'll follow up. This is like a subtle—

One more coming.

Yeah.

This is like a subtle way of being like, yo, I'm not going anywhere. Fawaz, I see your hand. Let's go.

Yeah. You mentioned earlier that, you know, in terms of the tools that you can just use like an AI tool for, you know, when you're writing emails and how you mentioned to Jamin for You, I think it was around personalizing. I just wanted to ask what specific tools do you use, AI tools for, you know, personalizing calls, emails, things of that nature? If you use a tech stack or what does that look like for you?

You just opened up Pandora's box, homie. All right. So this is my ChatGPT. I'm going to show you a few things here. So this is my fit and first touch engine. What I want to know is, is this a good company for me to go after and what should my first touch look like? So let's look at my prompt if it loads. There it is. It's a pretty lengthy thread, but I want you to see the original prompt. So there it is, right? We are going to combine a few things. When I type a URL in this chat, I want the following things. I want the size. Do they sell to the people that I can put them in front of? That's very important, right? How does, how does their product help salespeople book more meetings or close more deals? Those are the products I represent, right? What's the most relevant and recent trigger, right? When I put the URL in the company. Look at it. Hey James, here's a breakdown. This is a company size. Here's how much they make every year. Do they sell to salespeople? It gives me all of this information. And then all the way down here, I asked it to give me 3 first drafts and I give it examples of successful emails that I've written, successful calls that I've made. I give it the examples so that it knows how I write, how I speak. It will write a script for you, y'all. Let me tell you something. If you take nothing away from this, take this away from this session. The people that leverage AI to become better sellers are going to remain top performers their entire lives. The people that try to guess what the best options are will fail. You will never do it better than AI, but AI cannot do it for you.

Here's another one.

TextExpander, smaller company. Now notice right here, this is actually a really good, I'm glad we're doing this right here.

Sorry to butt in, James. Is this, is this a project that you have here or is this just a, is this a prompt on one chat or is it a project?

It's a project. I created a project called Sponsor Sales. Here's another one, right? Professional email revision. I don't care what you write. If you write an email, if you write a LinkedIn message, if you write whatever, stick it in ChatGPT and say, write this more professionally. You think you're a good writer. Trust me, I have a writing degree and I thought I was a good writer. I am not a good writer for sales. I am a good writer for fantasy. I am a good writer for high fantasy, specifically like language, elves and dwarves and shit, right? Like that's what I write. That's what I read. I have to have help to write effective sales emails because my writing is too fluffy, too colorful, too wordy. So my engine removes all that stuff. It strips it down to just the stuff that matters to my prospect. Now, don't get me wrong. I was a top performer before that because I'm very creative. But times have changed. The way people view how they use their time is very different. A couple of points here I want to cover really quick. I know we're coming up on time. I want to make sure we talk about this stuff. Rejection is data. It's not failure. That's an important thing for you to know. No and never talk to me again, as I said, don't mean the same thing. When you get a rejection, know what kind of rejection you've received. Most rejections you get on things like cold calls, they're going to be not right now objections. They're gonna be busy objections. They're gonna be not a priority objections. All those fit into the not now bucket. We have a solution. We already have something for that. Everybody thinks, oh, well, that's a dead op. No, they've, all they've done is qualify themselves further. If they already have a, a solution, they either built it in-house or they're using one of your competitors. You can win those deals. You can show them an alternative to what they currently have, especially if you can get them talking about the stuff they don't like about it. And the, the trick, here's the trick. To get them to do that, ask them what they like about it. James, you know, we work with 30 Minutes to President's Club and we're sponsoring their show. Yo, I love those guys. What's your favorite part about working with them? And they go bananas. They tell me all the things they love. I say, yeah, Armand and Nick are incredible. They do all types of good stuff. I watch all their shows. Uh, you know, what's something that you need that they kind of don't cover on the show? Well, I need, and that's where you get to step in. You get, they'll tell you, What they need. So don't think of rejection as a no, not ever. Think of a rejection as a marker. What kind of rejection did I just get? When I said, can we connect next week to take a look? And they said, I don't have the time. It'd be really easy for me to say not interested, but that's not what they said. That's a not right now. So be very aware of the type of rejections that you're getting. I wanna talk about personalization. Maybe you've heard of Sam Sales. Sam Sales was the first person I ever heard the, the phrase, show me that you know me. It was the first time I'd ever heard that and it really resonated. I was already doing it, but it was very validating to know that what I was doing mattered. Most of the time, the things that earn you a reply, and you know what, let me show you an example in real time. I did this one just a couple days ago. Uh, let's see, what was his name? Liam. There he is. Y'all, y'all love this. This is a great example.

Okay.

So we had some traction. You can see here, we had some good back and forth, right? But then it died. He canceled, he moved, it didn't go through. He rescheduled. We couldn't get him back to the table. So we kept trying, kept trying. And then I sent this. I saw your post, dude. If you guys find that your prospect is posting about stuff that you can help with, this sentence right here is probably one of the most impactful things that you can send someone because it signals immediately, I'm looking at you. I'm paying attention. When you read this email, notice how I've got social proof here. Notice how I've got a quote from him here, and then no ask. Enjoy the day. Great post. No ask. Look at the response. This is the best personalization I've received in some time. The delay occurred because, and then he gave me the reason. Then he asks, how about a collaboration? He's asking for my business at this point. And all I did was pay attention to what he put out there and tie it back. So personalization is something that doesn't take very long. But it's the most meaningful thing for your prospect. It's meaningful for you because you get responses, you get replies, you get opens, but it's meaningful for your prospect because they don't want to talk to people that aren't paying attention. That's more work mentally that they have to do for you. And that's not their job. You got to do the work. The last thing I want to talk about is consistency. I've shown you some creative stuff here. I've talked about creativity a lot, but if you are consistent, anybody go to the gym? Rahul, raise your fucking hand. Flabs to abs, baby. The thing about consistency is that with consistency, your skills sharpen. With creativity, it's a standout move. Creativity will get you the attention. That's good. You need the attention, but consistency will sharpen your sword. Consistency will make it so that every day you come in and you pump out great quality content, great quality outreach. The boring stuff is the stuff you need to use automation and AI to, to be better at, to do for you. This type of activity, this consistency I'm talking about comes with practice. As I said before, stand in the mirror, say the thing. When you do your, your power hour, use the same intro every time. Collect the data. Consistency is going to show you the pragmatic approaches that you need to be doing every day because it lands with your buyers. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk today.

Thank you.

Yeah. Rahul, anything I didn't cover?

No, I think you covered a lot. I think you've given me a lot of content which we can use. I'm not going to stop you.

I know this was recorded. Feel free to use any of this stuff. I love these conversations. This is great stuff. And you guys are awesome. Thank you for being so engaged.

Thank you. You know, this was better than I expected, man.

Well, you know, you helped me out to get prepped for it. Let me know everybody that was here and what they needed. So that always makes it a little bit of a better session. It's when I go in blind that sometimes I miss the mark. On a couple of things, but I want all of you to know this. You are the most important thing for your businesses. Never doubt that for a moment. There's no one else on the team talking to strangers. Think about that for a minute. It's an, it's a remarkable thing that we do. It's a dying art. It's something that will eventually not be needed, but until then, let's make some fucking money, right?

Yeah.

If anybody on this call needs me, know that I am a phone call, a DM, a text, a good email away. Notice now I did not say a shitty email, a good email away. So by all means, reach out to me directly. Follow me at Say What Sales on almost every platform, and if there's anything that I can do, let me know. I will always give you my time. You guys are the people that I breathe for. So thank you for being here today, and Rahul, I will do this with you anytime you need me, my friend.

Thank you so much, man. Put a comment on.

I hope you guys get out there and crush it today. Let me know if you need anything, and have a great one.

Cheers. Cheers.

Thank you.

Cheers.

Thank you.