[Sales] Breaking through the status quo with Jen Allen-Knuth

There's this great quote that said being an executive is largely about deciding which fires to let burn. And what that means is every business has like a billion fires and problems and shit that doesn't go right. It's not like you're a bad executive if you don't solve for every single one of them. There's not enough time, money, budget attention in the world to do it. So executives have to make intentional trade offs. If I think our website isn't as good as it should be, but we have a massive problem with like, you know, converting deals mid stage. And I think that's where we're losing more pipeline that I'm going to let that website sit. And if you as a seller come in and say your website sucks, it's like, okay, dude, have you ever been responsible for like, all of the things that. It just makes us sound naive. But some people perceive it as like, I'm taking control of the conversation. That's not it at all. We're just being an.

Hey, Jen, thanks for joining us today on the podcast. How are you doing today?

I'm amazing. I'm talking to two very fun, brilliant women. Let's do this. Let's have a good time.

Great. We had a nice little pre podcast chat, which now I'm in the mood for a Friday. So we will kick off then in the same vein and ask you our normal question, which is what's a crazy or funny story you have from work?

I will pick one that happened on Monday of last week. It's very recent. So are y' all remote? Do you go into an office? Yeah.

No.

Okay, so I am too. I've been remote since 2015. And on Monday I discovered the dangers of working remote. Um, so I was sitting at my desk, I was typing away my cold emails and I stood up, not realizing my foot was asleep, and fell on my foot and sprained my ankle. Like, seriously sprained my ankle. And I was by myself with all of my dogs. And I realized in that moment I had my first old lady fall. Like, I don't know if you've ever seen those commercials or someone's like, I've fallen and I can't get up. That was me. And so if anybody tells you that sales is not a dangerous job, they're lying to you. It's. It's very dangerous.

Feel like you should be getting hazard pay now.

Yeah, I see. We need like risk assessments carried out in our own homes and offices to work now, I think so.

My husband was like, you did what? I was like, I know, I'm very embarrassed. My family has been relentlessly mocking me as they very well should, going so.

Hard at cold email.

That I sprained my ankle.

Yes, exactly. So I feel like it's an achievement. Thank you. Because it's fine. Thanks a lot. Yeah. So I think a lot of people in the sales industry probably know your name, but we're a little bit niche in the sense that we kind of COVID life sciences a lot. So it'd be great if you could just give us a bit of background on you and what you do and yeah.

So I was an 18 year frontline seller, not a sales manager, not a sales leader. I was someone that, like many of us, probably never saw myself going into sales. I had a college roommate who joined a company, Corporate Executive board, back in 2004 right after we graduated college. And she was like, this place is awesome. Everybody's really smart, everybody's really cool. And so I applied to be in like their event management department. And they ended up saying, I think we would be better off in sales. And I was like, I'm just happy to have a job and, you know, live in a city in D.C. and so, so I, for those 18 years moved and did a lot of different sales roles, but I never went into management because candidly, I just thought sales was always challenging, like very intellectually challenging if you do it the right way. There was always something changing about the buyer. So it was very easy for me to stick it out my last year. So I started at this company, Corporate Executive Board. It got acquired by Gartner and then I went to work in the Challenger sale division, which actually quite a few life sciences companies might know. Um, so I was selling the Challenger Sale methodology and then I created this role of chief evangelist to try to drive demand for more conversations about this Challenger Sale methodology. Went to a startup called Lavender AI in the cold email space. Stood up their Growth Marketing or Growth Community Growth function within marketing, which is my first marketing role. And then I went off on my own two years ago, just like almost exactly two years ago to start Demand Gen. And now I'm doing lots of sales kickoffs and workshops to help people get better at selling.

Yeah, I was having a conversation about the Challenger method today, actually. I think we were writing some messaging and it wasn't, it wasn't a. Wasn't aggressive enough. And I was like, can you make this like with the Challenger methodology, but aggressively?

Oh, no, no, no. It should never be aggressive. It's always one of the things companies would get wrong. They're like, we need to be jerks and we need to show you why we're wrong. I'm like, that's not. No, don't do that.

To credit, we don't gaslight our potential customer.

Oh, can you believe.

Was one of those messages that came out, like, super boring and we were like, we just wanted to make it, like, a bit more, like, provocative. But, yeah, no, I know lavender as well. I always. I just really like the company name because it just makes me. Anytime lavender's mentioned, it makes me feel really happy and soft. Lovely colors and, like, spray. Yeah, no, that's great. I know a lot of your kind of sales training content now is based around breaking through the bias status quo. And I think everyone sort of has their own picture in the head of what that is, but it'd be great to hear in kind of your own words what the bias status quo.

Yeah. So by definition, status quo is how we're solving the problem today. And it could be relevant to any problem. I like when I'm training, I like to humanize it. So the example I'll give often is, let's say you move into a new home and you get into your new home and you discover there's water leakage. And you see that, like, and you know that the paint on the walls isn't really the COVID color you like. And you don't really love the layout of the decision of the kitchen. But, like, you're not going to spend money on all of those things at once, probably because you just put a huge down payment on a house. And so what you're going to do is you're going to prioritize what you fix by the degree to which it represents a problem. So in this case, like, I'm going to fix that water damage first because that's really expensive. That only gets worse and more expensive if I let it fester. Even if I don't like the paint on the walls, even if I don't like the layout of the kitchen. So I might sit around and talk to my husband all day around, like, oh, I hate that pink color and, oh, I hate that, you know, the kitchen layout. But I'm willing to tolerate status quo because there's something else that's more important. And so if we pull that back into, like, a B2B sale, that's the issue. Like, that's the number one thing I would lose to as a seller. It wasn't like you don't have a good enough solution. It was just you have a good enough solution, but, like, what we're doing is kind of good, and there's another thing that is more important. And so once I realized how much I was losing to it, I realized, like, a big unlock in sales is actually figuring out how to preempt it instead of trying to. Objection. Handle it.

Right. I think that's a really good point. And I think when people try and approach that, they typically approach it in the wrong way. What is the kind of most common things that you see that sales reps try and do that is the wrong approach to that? I mean, you've already called me out for it today. So.

I think most of us were taught that our job in sales is to show that we have a better way. Like, we talk a lot about our value prop, and this is why this is better than what you're doing today. But I don't know if you felt this, but, like, I've had plenty of converse of customers who've looked me in the face and said, yeah, I agree with you. You do have a better way, but we're still not gonna change. And then you realize, like, oh, man, that whole mission of showing why we have a better way, showing our roi, showing our value prop, showing, like, keisa, that's only good if someone believes they need to change. But showing that we have a better solution does not make someone prioritize a problem. And so I think that's the most common thing is we go in with the wrong. I hate to say the wrong, but kind of the wrong mindset of what our job to be done is. It's not to show that we have a better way because there's tons of better ways to do things. It's actually to help them look at their own business and realize what are the negative consequences that exist as a result of how we're solving the problem today. Because execs are no different than us. Like, we're making decisions based on what we believe in the moment is the best course of action. We rarely step back and say, like, actually, was that the best course of action? And so that, I think, is what is the key to selling against status quo is you've got to get someone to believe that their current state is, like, creating so much negative consequence that it's worth all the pain of going through the change.

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. And when you're in those kind of. I guess when you get to a discovery call phase, how do you get that information out of the client in terms of trying to figure out what it is that will make them act on that and what those negative consequences are.

This is an excellent question because discovery is typically the place where we fall down. So when I was like earlier in sales, I would show up to a discovery call looking to learn, right? So tell me about this. Tell me about your priorities. Tell me what's hard. I'm. And I'm putting myself at a disadvantage because I am allowing the customer to dictate like is the problem good, bad, ugly. And I'm only ever going to probably sell to the people who've already self realized that like we need to do something. So I'm selling to the like 3% of the market who's like, yeah, I got to do something. So now what I learned is like, that's a really difficult way to get to goal, especially if you don't work for some major brand that everybody knows a lot about. So now what I realize is my goal in discovery is not to get, is not to take something to help me discover their business better. It's to come into discovery with something that helps them understand their business better. And so, so much of discovery. And when I teach this is about what you do in advance of the conversation. Like to me, discovery happens before the call and then the call is an exchange of ideas, right? Which you may be correct or you may not be. So a couple of things that I'll do, to be really specific, like if I have an upcoming discovery call on my calendar today, first thing I'm doing is I'm going to ChatGPT and I'm saying, who's the CEO or founder of this company? And what are their most recent comments on the company's growth strategy? The reason I do that is because every company exists pretty much to make money. And so if you follow the money, you can follow the objectives that get them there. So that tells me what the company is trying to do. Like are they trying to open up a new vertical? Are they trying to compete with a new competitor? Like, what is the thing that the business is doing? And then the second prompt I'll do is what would make it hard to be the title of this at this account right now? So it's going to contextualize all those things that are happening to the company? Well, what does that do to the person who I'm going to be talking to? And so then when I walk into the call, I don't have to do these like weird, awkward pleasantries. I can get to the point and say, listen, when I was Researching this conversation, it looked like the business was seeking to do this this year first and foremost. Like, where am I off? Cause I'm an outsider and I probably got something wrong. Seek to be corrected, not seek to be correct. And then once I get clarity there, then I'm moving into okay. I was thinking as a result of the business trying to do this, I imagine this thing over here might be getting harder. But again, what am I not seeing as an outsider? And so what you're doing is you're like kind of guid the customer along. We don't convince them there's a problem, but we track the conversation such that we very quickly shape their opinion around the problem today. And I think that's the really important thing is are we going in to take or are we going in to give in a discovery motion.

Nice. And I think like, so I'm quite new to sales. I've, I started my journey like less than a year ago and I have joined lots of discovery calls, just like shadowing and listening in. And I think a lot of that people come with like their, you know, pre decided questions. And it's just those sort of questions are asked every discovery call and you're getting different answers and you do guide people along. But it's like the same pre decided questions. Whereas going in, looking at like what their strategy is and actually aligning those questions to fit that specific strategy seems like a great idea. And that's just something that I actually really like had much experience of on like a lot of discovery calls in general. So yeah, that's like a new thing for me to even learn about.

And this is like, I love that you raised that point right. Because it's so easy just to get in the motion and then be like, well, that wasn't a fit. That wasn't a fit. That wasn't. It's like, but am I giving the person a reason to change? So one example is like, I'll hear people post about on LinkedIn, like, ask the question, what's it costing you to say the same? And I'm like, okay, let's just take a second. If someone asks you that, are you really gonna be like, well, it costs it, like, it's just such a canned question. And if they knew how much it was costing them, they would be doing something about it. So it's like, I think that's the danger of going in and being like, these are my questions versus going in and saying like, I'm very intellectually curious about the business's goals to do this. And I have a point of view because I've worked with other companies and I just, I think that's something we undervalue. No matter if you've been in sales for six months, a year, 20 years, you know things about how others are solving those same problems. We just don't create airspace for it in calls because we're in such a rush to be like, okay, you're a good fit for our solution. Let me show you our solution.

Yeah, I agree. And like, you don't want to go in and be like, oh, you're wasting all this money on this and wasting all that. No one wants to be told their baby is ugly. No one wants to be told that. And I think so many people go in and be like, yeah, but you're doing this wrong and you're doing this wrong and we can help you do this better. And it's like, yeah, I kind of know that. But like now you've told me that I kind of, kind of don't like you as much. And I don't really. You've got to get them to start talking about their problem in like their own words, not the words that you're trying to bring into that call. And you've been used to on a day to day basis because you're sat there in sales meetings and creating marketing content around this terminology that makes sense to you. That's not their world. And I think people get very caught up in their own words and their own phrasing or problems that they forget that. Everyone kind of sees that quite differently.

That's such a good call. Out there's this great quote. So Nate Nasrallah, who's someone who's amazing, great person to follow in sales, he did a post about this Reid Hoffman quote that said being in an executive is largely about deciding which fires to let burn. And what that means is every business has like a billion fires and problems and shit that doesn't go right. It's not like you're a bad executive if you don't solve for every single one of them. There's not enough time, money, budget, attention in the world to do it. So executive have to make intentional trade offs. If I think our website isn't as good as it should be, but we have a massive problem with like generating, you know, converting deals mid stage. And I think that's where we're losing more pipeline, then I'm going to let that website sit. And if you as a seller come in and say your website sucks, it's like okay, dude, have you ever been responsible for like all of the things? It just makes us sound naive. But some people perceive it as like, I'm taking control of the conversation. That's not it at all. We're just being an asshole. And so I think having a degree of empathy, empathy around. Why might a business tolerate an ineffective website? Like, I'm, as a founder, I get these emails all the time. Your website's missing this and it's not doing that. If someone came to me and said, it looks like you're a first time founder, it's probably challenging because there's so many things you need to do. You need to set up the structure of your business, you need to build out your marketing channel, you need to do all these things. It makes sense why sometimes the website doesn't get as much love because it's such a highly technical thing to understand. Are you open to hearing how this other founder is, did this to achieve this? And then it's like, that's such a more approachable thing because you're showing me that you understand the complexities of my job. That boosts credibility. And then you're not pitching me, you're giving me an idea. And like, that's why I'm part of Slack Ribs. That's why I'm part of communities. I'm like, I don't think I have my shit together. Help me understand what should I know that I don't. But do it in a way that feels empathetic, not critical or judgmental.

Yeah. And this is something that we've actually previously spoken about and like touched on in other podcasts and like trying to like harness the emotions in the right way and using that, like leveraging that and playing that to our advantage. It comes across as more human. And I think like automatically those cold emails, like instantly stand out and they're the ones that are remembered the most. And it's just something that like everyone knows is quite powerful. But I just don't think people use that angle often in their approach to cold outband.

Agree. There is a great quote too from the the cha. The one of the authors of the Challenger Sale, Brent Adamson, where he said, like, before you tell someone why they're wrong, first tell them why they're right. And I think that's a tenet in Outbound which is like, nobody intentionally makes a terrible decision. Everybody does their best based on the information that they have. And so the key is to make something else the enemy. Is it a market shift? Is it a tariff? Is It a talent shortage. Like what is that external fact factor that's making it harder for them to do this thing? Well, because if we can both look at the enemy and it's not me finger pointing you like you suck as a leader. We're, we're already now like in our minds working on the same side of the table and we're looking at this thing and so being accusatory, being assumptive, those things are all super counterproductive to building a great relationship.

Yeah, for sure. Unlike this is the scientist coming out in me. But like just doing a root cause analysis and essentially you know, going on the five whys, like it's not normally like that person's fault. There's those other factors that are playing a part here. Just we don't have that visibility. Let's proactively try and learn about that and help them and then if we sort of act as if we're that sort of support for them and the company, we're going to be integrated and more into like a fit for them. And I just think it's just more successful that way.

Totally agree. That makes a lot of sense. And I think like you said with the website example, it's like great to go to someone. Look, I think you're like killing it in this area. Totally understand why you're not touching this area. But let me show you how actually changing in this area could actually help you achieve the goals that you probably have as a founder of a small company, xyz, let's work together to kind of help you get to those goals. And I think a lot of the time people don't like, they deprioritize stuff because they don't see how these little things that they're not putting attention into could actually help contribute to those bigger goals that they're putting more of their time and energy into. So I think it's having more of a collaborative discussion on that and being like, let's do this together. I can support you in this, but it's going to benefit you. It's not going to like, you know, it's not going to make or break your life if you fix your website. But it's going to get you a step further to where you want to be and I want to help with that.

Totally agree. And it's like, I think the thing I neglected to understand earlier in my career is executives are big on ideas. They're less interested in products and solutions and features and benefits because think about it, it's how an executive Keeps their job. Are they, Are they consistently churning out good ideas that benefit the business? So if we frame like you just did a conversation around, I have an idea here, people are way more receptive to that than like, I want to sell you this thing when you have 30 minutes, a quick 30 minutes for me to demo it. So structuring our language around ideas, not products, help too.

Let's take a quick break from the podcast to talk about what we have going on over here. At Succession, we work with 40 plus life science sales companies to help them find more opportunities and close more deals. We provide a range of services to support your sales growth. So whether it's increasing top of funnel opportunities with done for you, lead generation in person or virtual sales training reinforced by personalized training plans, recruiting top sales talent, or just building custom AI workflows to help make your team more efficient, focus on selling. So if you're ready to transform your sales strategy, visit Succession Bio and schedule a call with Nick and I and we'll see how we could support you.

Yeah, I read something recently as well which was around like, you really need to give them evidence of where that has worked for other people and where those ideas have come good in another organization. Because I think a lot of people in those leadership roles, like an exact role, like a lot of the time their career is make or break. If they bring a bad idea to the table and it fails, like it's not the person selling it to them that is going to lose their job, it's the exec that's going to lose their job. Right. And so being able to be like, oh, we've worked with this person, we've managed to do this and made them look good in their job, but not without explicitly saying, oh yeah, that made them look great in their job in this company. So coming to them with like the anecdotal evidence of success stories, I think is really important too.

Yeah, it's so risky to make a disruptive change. Like we going back to what we were talking about with like selling better. Like we as sellers were like, why wouldn't you want the best?

Right?

I remember when I was selling Challenger and someone would be like, well, we're just going to stick with this dude, like who's worked here a thousand years and he's going to train the people. I'm like, why would you do that? It just didn't make logical sense because I wasn't factoring the fact that it's a highly emotional decision to change because buyers know buyers. Many of Them have been burned by something that was supposed to be better and then they implement it and they're like, oh, you kind of downplayed how much time it takes to change the reception of the audience who is, is impacted by this change. They're mad that they have to do something different. Maybe this didn't go as well as planned. Like the road to better is messy as hell, but we don't have to experience that as sellers. We get to sign the contract and celebrate. And so I think that your point around like social proof is in my mind more important because every executive, no matter how senior you are, no matter how tenured you are, especially right now where the world is just changing so quickly, I think everybody has this innate curiosity around like, well, what are you doing that I'm not? And what are you doing that I'm not? And like AI has just exacerbated that. So I think tap into that, right? Not in a manipulative way, but just like you see companies by proxy working with them, treating problems differently than they are. Share that. To your point, don't make it about like we helped them do it. Just be like, this company did this really cool thing. Do you want to know how they did it? Like we were a part of it. But lead with the company, make that company the hero. And I think that makes the conversation feel less like a pitch and more like, okay, this is an idea exchange.

Yeah, that's a really good point. And I think it kind of goes back to like what the status quo is. Like, everyone deals with the devil that they know. It's like you said with like the bad paint, you look at it on the wall, you hate it, but it's too risky to change it. And I think the only way to get people convinced into changing that is kind of putting it in their words and making it very centered around like what they're feeling and how it's going to improve their kind of day to day and their relationships with their colleagues that they're managing and the people that are shouting at them for their metrics and anything that it might be. But I do think a lot of people still, despite all the evidence out there, just stay focused on themselves and what they're selling. And I know like the terminology for is like we, we selling. Which is really weird because in the uk, I don't know if it's the same in the US but like wee wee is how like toddlers refer to when they go to the bathroom and everything.

It's intentional. I say that with we're wee weeing all over our prospects and like, it's the way I make it stick. And then you go back and you look and you're like, shit, I wrote I. We. Our. Our company. Our company, our company. And it's like, that is an undesirable experience. Just like a toddler wee wee ing all over you would be. So stop doing it. Nobody likes to be wee weed.

So, yeah, I think if you have that negative connotation in your head, you see your email and you're like, okay, I need to take all this out right now. So if we were to kind of summarize that in maybe the top three things that people could action right now, they're going back to their email after falling over and breaking their ankle from the sleep. For. What would the advice that you would give for people that can action right now to kind of move away from that wee wee selling to being more buyer centric.

Yep. So I'll break down exactly how I think about what goes into an email, and it's not very long. So sentence one is like, what did you see about them? And not specifically just like, I saw you went to Penn State University. That's dorky and does nothing but more so, like, what do you see that their business is trying to achieve? So, like, you know, so and so. I'll give an example. So and so the CEO spoke about the new shipyard that's opening in Portsmouth right now. All of a sudden, without saying, I was reading about your company. We're getting to the point and we're just showing them we have a reason to be there. It's something about their shipyard opening that should intentionally provoke curiosity. Well, what is it about the shipyard you want. You want some ships? Like, what are we doing here? So it's like the first line should provoke some curiosity, but should be completely about them. Kill the pleasantries. These executives are busy. It's honestly more of a signal. So, like, saw you up in a new shipyard in Portsmouth. Then the second line is what do we think might be hard as a result of the first line? So this is for. This example is for a company that sells robotic welders. Fun fact. There is a massive shortage of welders in the US so there's like 5, 400,000 open welding jobs. So now I take the idea that you've built this new shipyard. What's going to be hard? Well, how do I hire enough welders to be able to deliver on the ships that we're building for our clients? Because the Last thing a company wants is lag time between when a promised delivery comes and when an actual delivery happens. So I've got Sawyer up in this shipyard in Portsmouth. Not sure if the US welder shortage of 400,000 welders is making it harder to hire folks in that job. This company over here was weighing the pros and cons of do we build an in house welder university, which is an alternative to this solution, or do we consider robotic welders open to hearing how they landed on their idea? And so, like all I'm doing in a very short amount of time is I'm saying, first line is why am I here? Second line is what might be harder as a result of the first line. Third line is showing I have credibility because I can tell you here's typically two options that people weigh and fourth line is like, I'm not pitching you my product, I'm offering a conversation so you can hear the pros and cons of both options. And then if you want to learn more about robotic welding, sure, we can talk about that. But it's not the primary motivation for my call. And so I'm giving someone a reason to reconsider status quo in that email. And the best thing about it is we don't have to even be a hundred percent accurate because we're saying not sure if. Not sure if the shortage is making it harder. I think we sometimes hold ourselves to the standard of perfection when we're personalizing an email that we have to have everything correct and so we spend an hour writing it. And maybe they don't even look at their damn email. Like not sure if is inviting a correction. It's okay to be wrong or off. It's not okay to be generic because generic shows we haven't done our work. So offer a specific idea. The human desire is to correct. If I'm like, oh, I like your shirt, it's from, I don't know, Nordstrom. Right. If it wasn't, you'd be like, well, thanks. But it's actually this, that's like now we're already in discovery and that's a good thing. So don't be afraid of being slightly inaccurate.

Yeah, no, that's a. I'm glad you brought that up because we obviously, we work in the life sciences industry and scientists out of, I think anyone one love to learn new things. So when you position it as, you know, would you like to learn more about this? They're all for it because their job is to do research and discover new things. And two, I have never met a group of people that want to correct people more. So when you put something like no, they will reply and kind of either agree with you or correct you ever so slightly. So it's like, oh no, I'm actually not in that specific area of haematology. I'm in this specific area. You've got a response, right? The goal of Outbound is to get a response. And I think even when it's a not interested response, at least you know you, you've not hit the right person there and you don't have to keep reaching out to them. So it's a kind of win win either way.

Yes. And think about just like from a very human level. And I always go back to this because I sometimes think speed just like totally overcomplicate selling from a very human perspective. If someone you don't know walks up and asks you like a massive question like, how are you protecting your company against, you know, security threats? You're like, who even who are you? Like? And why are you here? And what do you think? I'm just going to educate you on like our entire cybersecurity strategy.

Like you might be a threat to me.

So like what's your motivation? Like that big open ended question like that. I see that all the time when I'm reviewing emails. I'm like, do you actually think someone's going to respond to that? They're like, no. It's just, it's meant to tell them where I want to take the conversation. I'm like, but don't do that. Don't use a big question no one would answer. Because what we also have to keep in mind is effort. Like to your point, the job is to get a reply. If it's a no, great. I'd rather that over no reply. But if I make it so hard to reply, I'm only making it harder for them to give me the outcome that I want. So big ugly questions like that are much harder than if I say something and then they reply to correct me.

I feel like if it's a question that I don't feel comfortable asking that person like in real life, then why would I be typing this long ass question? Like if I can't say, and it's a normal sort of thing to say, like why would we be typing it and sending it with our cool outreach? Like, I don't get it. Divya.

It's a great point. One of the things when I'm doing cold email workshops with teams is I have Them stand up and read the email out loud. And half the time people like get three sentences in. They're like, oh my God, this is awful. Like, but you thought it was good before the session. They're like, but I didn't read it. And that even just that read your email out loud and say, if I walked up to someone at a trade show and said this, would they be like, you sound like a fucking weirdo. If so, don't send that email because they're reading it in their voice, in their head.

Yeah, 100%. Like, when I first started in like inside sales like Outbound, I used to send myself emails, just be like, oh, I'm going to pretend I'm like a person that I'm reaching out to and read it. And I was like putting those tests in place to be like, would I read past the first four words of this email? Yes. Okay, good to go. If not, then no.

I love that it's like, it's so much of it just comes down to just being a normal freaking human. And stop pretending that there's this way of talking and selling or this way of writing where you have to make yourself, yourself sound smart. I had a ton of head trash early in my career because I was always selling into enterprise companies at the C level. And I went to school for like recreation and park management. Like, I'm not a genius. And so when I was starting cold email, like I was writing these very sophisticated emails and very like, you know, beautiful big words and nobody replied to them because they're like, this is boring. And it seems high effort actually toning it down. And y' all have seen this, right? Like writing at a 5th grade reading level is actually the thing for most companies that drives a ton of replies because what you're optimizing there is just for simplicity. Nobody likes someone who makes a simple idea complex. People love people who make complex ideas simple. It's the same is true in the if, if you have to use a ton of words to describe your idea, the idea it just isn't clear enough.

And also something that I learned like when I joined Succession is like from previous roles, I would have always, if there were people that was reaching out to that were like way more senior, my that would reflect in my message style. Whereas now not so much so like I don't say dear, I hope you're well etc like that because it's kind of like the psychology behind it is that you're creating this like authoritative undertone where it's like they are More than we are less than. Because we feel like we have to like, write in a certain way and change everything. When in reality, if we are at this, we're acting as if we're sort of like same level, same mindset, they're going to be more receptive to that. Right.

A thousand percent. Like, even in a subject line. Right. Like, I think about the dorky subject lines I used to send, but, like, if I, if I look at how an executive inside of my company corresponds, that's a really good teaching lesson. Right. So the example I use a lot is if my manager wanted me to update my forecast in Salesforce, they would never send a subject line that says, elevate your forecast accuracy with salesforce.com like rocket ship emoji, exclamation. They would just write a subject line that was like, update forecast. And then the email body would probably be like, jen, get it done by eob. And so I think part of it was, I just was so sheltered from how executives communicate with each other that I thought they write in these, like, you know, investor relation type styles. And then once I started observing, I'm like, I don't think I've ever seen my sales leader send an email that's longer than four sentences. And so part of it is just like looking like you understand how they communicate. When we write these long novels that tells the leader, like, you actually don't know how I think, how I write, how I correspond, so I'm less likely to pay attention.

Yeah, I think that's, that's a really good point. I think there's. You can almost draw a graph of like the length of emails and the seniority that people get because it seems like the more like they don't have time, right? They don't have time to one read lengthy emails. They don't have time to reply to lengthy emails. We had a response come in the other day from a campaign from one of our clients. And it was essentially a meeting request. And it was just like, November 27th at 12 o' clock question mark. And like, that was response to essentially, yes, I would like to get in a meeting. This is interesting to me. Whatever you've said in your email is clearly of use to me, but it was just like, get it booked in. I'm not, I'm. I haven't got time to deal with it.

Yes.

And even that, like, think of how many of us have been taught you have to make the end of your email a call to action. Are you free for a quick 30 minute call on whatever this day or this day. Like a couple things. 1, 30 minutes is not quick. It sounds like we're diminishing it. It actually makes us sound naive because 30 minutes of an executive's time is a huge ass. So kill quick. That's like minorly offensive. Unintentionally. But two executives are not stupid. We are not the first salesperson to reach out to them. The reason I like like open to hearing how they did it as a close is because if the answer is yes, they're like, yes, work with my admin or yes, send me your calendar. Like yes, when do you want to meet? Like we don't have to add three extra lines at the bottom of the email being like, are you free on this day or this day? I'd be happy to show you how we can help you. And then like the email is just so weird. I don't know, maybe I've just read too many emails and I'm like too emotional now.

I mean we've all read too many emails. We've got them, we've sent them. Like I think it's a really great call to action as well because it, it, it just puts it back on them of like what do they want, right? Like are you open to hearing it? And if they're the type of person that wants a document sent over email, some sort of pre read before a meeting or they are just, they just want to jump on a call and talk about it, but then they'll tell you how long they want that call to be. Probably because it's like 15 minutes then might be super long. They might have time for an hour if they're super interested. But having that call to action so open like that kind of on them instead of going on and I'm like, oh well, you know, if you've got the time or maybe you prefer this or whatever it might be.

I know the longest cold email I've ever read for one of my workshops was 606 words this dude. And this dude was great. Like he was like, I wrote it, I never name and shame. He was like, I wrote it, it's terrible. I didn't know what I was doing. But at the end he had two paragraphs of like a call to action to book him like time. He had his calendar link. He had like 16 different days. He had or we could do this, or maybe we could do this. And I'm like, dude, just want to.

Give him a hug.

This person. He's awesome. Such a good sport about it.

Which is cool.

I'm conscious that we are coming up on time, and I really have, like, a burning question to ask you. So obviously you started this amazing business two years ago, and as a woman starting this own business, I was just wondering if you could share and talk about some of, like, the challenges that you faced along the way and how you overcame that.

Yeah, I'll do two challenges now, even though the list is like, 2,000. Yeah.

Do you not have 15 minutes this week?

So the biggest two challenges were one, I think, negative self talk, which I think a lot of us encounter. So when I was at Challenger, I had sort of convinced myself that I am only good and in demand because I work for Challenger. And so it's like, it's Challenger that people want, not me. And as a result of that, I stayed there probably longer than I would have because I felt like if I want to book keynotes, I've got to have this big brand behind me, even though I was doing all this work to build my personal brand, brand as a subject matter, expertise. And so I think, like, one of the hard things was actually just having the courage to leave and disconnect myself from something higher and realize, like, no, I. I've actually done the work and people will hire me even though I don't work for a big firm. So I think, especially as women, sometimes we. We have a harder time, I think, selling ourselves on that than perhaps men in certain cases do. And so now when I talk to people who are like, I'm thinking about going off on my own, I never push someone that way because I think it is. I mean, you lose health insurance here. Like, it's a. It's a big risk and it's by no means easy. But if I feel like someone has a great idea and I feel like they've got the personality, like, sometimes I feel like you need that external person just to push you and tell you, like, you're jumping, but, like, you're not gonna hit the ground. So negative self talk, self doubt was one. And then the second thing is I have four step kids. I have five dogs in my house right now. I have a husband. I got married late in life. I didn't get married till I was 41. And so now I'm in this phase of life where I used to be in a phase where work was all that really mattered, right? Like Monday through Friday, I would give 100% of myself to work, and then I'd have a lot of fun on the weekends. Now it's the balancing act of how do I not feel guilty for doing what I love? How do I make sure, like, I'm treating everybody relative to, like, how important they are in my life, Friendship, family, all of that. And how do I not, like, just constantly, like, guilt myself? So, like, an example would be in sales kickoff season. I'm gone sometimes four or five days a week. And then when I come home, I feel like I've got to be super mom, super wife. So I'm like, just doing cleaning everything I can. Like, doing everything I can. And then I'm completely miserable because now I'm just like, I'm never off. And so I'm really lucky to have a partner who's like, nobody needs you to do that. Like, like, just chill out. We like you better when you're like, you can come down a little bit and then give us, you know, your all. But I think it's, it's still really hard for me of, of feeling good about, am I spending my time in the right ways? Am I giving to the people that matter to me in the ways that I want to? I, I feel like that'll always, to some degree, just be a challenge to work through.

I struggle with all of these problems, and I literally do not, I have not started up a business. So, like, all of that is super relatable, I think, for like, like, no matter what stage you are in in.

Your career in sales, it is. And I think you just gotta tell yourself, like, I'm doing my best. Like, yeah, as corny as that is, like, I'm doing my best. And be honest, if we are doing our best, right, there's absolutely been ebbs where I've been way too into work. And I realized, my gosh, I've spent like, you know, the last three days working until 8 o' clock at night. Like, that's not who you want to be. But I think as long as you're going with clarity around, like, what do I want? How do I want to show up? How do I want to show up at work? How do I want to show up with my family? And then just constantly check it and say, where am I off? But not like, and I struggle with this, but not like, telling yourself you suck because you got it wrong that week. Like, we're just gonna have weeks where we don't get it right. It's just the more important thing is to see it and reset it. But we're all imperfect.

Yeah, no, I, I, yeah, really kind of resonated with that as well. I think it's so difficult. You. We overthink a lot and I think we overthink more as women sometimes because we feel like there's this bar that we need to hit. And yeah, like there was unconscious that we're coming up on time but. But maybe just a final question then is if you were to meet yourself early in your career, thinking about all the other early career people that are out there, what is one piece of advice that you would, you can do more than one, but I'll ask for one. One piece of advice that you would give yourself. No.

And if you have like lots of other pieces of advice, please, like just DM me on LinkedIn.

Feel free.

I think I sent you a request. Just put it in.

So there we go. I'll say two quick ones. So one is stop thinking that a salesperson is a certain type of person. Meaning like there was a woman at our company that was like, never miss quota and she was a total killer. And I looked at her and I was like, well that must be what a great salesperson is. So I'm going to try to emulate her. Problem was we were like completely different people. Like, I'm super conflict averse. She was like conflict driven. She was like super outspoken and. And I was just trying to act like her. And as a result it totally flopped because it wasn't. I'm like, before I would open my mouth, I'm like, how would she say this and how would she do this? And so I was so in my head, I wasn't present. So there, there is no perfect image of what a great salesperson looks like. The best salesperson is like the one that's most authentic to you. So that would be one and then the second one would be speak up more. I think like starting sales as a 22 year old person, like I always just second guessed everything. Like, well, there must be a reason we're not doing this this way and what am I not seeing that everybody else is? And to some extent I think that's a healthy thing to think through before you start raising your hand. But I would do it so much. I would talk my idea, I would talk myself out of my idea or it would be so late now that the idea isn't even relevant to the conversation anymore. So like be very confident speaking up up and don't tell yourself it won't be a good idea. Which again, kind of sounds obvious, but I look back and there's so many points in my career, I'm like, why did you sit on that? That was actually a great idea. You just, you didn't believe that it would be.

Yeah, that, that hit me like, right, right.

I feel like there's a tear just like here because all of this applies to me. Like today as we were talking or like pre podcast so many times.

And I do feel like I've got better at it because I remember the regret of not saying things, but sitting in meetings and being like, I have this idea. And you know what the most annoying thing is sometimes is when, like, the confident man across the room, like, says the same thing first. And you're like, oh, I thought about this 20 minutes ago. Or like three days ago and you're like, oh, like. And that gives you the motivation to be like, next time, next time I'm going to make sure that it comes out. So, yeah, have that thought in your head about, like, yeah, what, what we. What would you do if the most confident. The most confident man across the room said it?

Y thing that happens is they say no or they tell you why it doesn't work, but then you learn in that moment. Okay, for next time, I need to be more considerate of thinking about this. We can't get better at something, at a skill we don't ever try. And so I, I agree with you. Like those moments where someone says it and you're like, damn it, now what am I going to be like? I had that idea. Well, why didn't you say it? I don't know.

That's a great point. There's going to be some sort of positive outcome. Even if, like, no matter what, you'll either learn from it or you've got your idea across and then the idea may be, like, discussed further.

Nice.

Exactly. That's the. Like, we just have to be so honest with ourselves around, like, especially in sales, we're picking a career where we get no more no no's more than yeses. In business, you're going to hear no to your idea more than you're going to hear yes. Like, that is not a failure. I'm trying to teach my, my son this about basketball. Like, great basketball players miss more shots than they make. And like, it's the same to be held true. But we hold ourselves to the standard of perfection, which is, like, founded in no reality whatsoever.

Wow. I love that. And I think that's a perfect way to end the podcast. Next time we'll just do the just all about dogs because sit and talk forever about dogs. But no. Thank you so much for joining us. I think we cover some really great points. And, yeah, just. Just DM us all the other tips, and we'll just fly about it over online on a Friday night.

Was that 20? How many years in? 21 years in into my career, I still have no idea what the hell I'm doing, so we're all in it together.

Well, keep your ankle safe. Thank you.

I know a few people that can run some risk assessments for your office hype. Yep.

Thanks.

It was so fun being with you. Thank you for having me on.

Thank you so much.