From Fear to Fierce: Building Confidence and Mastery in Sales

All right. And yeah, we are, we are live and I want to welcome Mor Assouline to our LinkedIn Live event today. Mor is the founder of Demo to Close and he's helping B2B SaaS companies and account executives. I know I have a lot of you in my network, so I hope you're tuning in. And he's helping those companies succeed by focusing on the 3 Ps, the process, the playbooks and the people. Moore, thanks for joining me today. And I just want to say, first of all, I, I really love your sales style and it just really matches my personality, my sales style extremely well. And I think that's why it really resonates with me personally. And I've applied just so much of your advice to make myself better. Anyone out there that isn't already, definitely do yourself a favor and follow Moore. here on LinkedIn. Uh, Moir, would you share a little bit about, uh, a little bit with me about how you're not only helping those B2B SaaS companies, but also individual contributors, account executives with, uh, Demo to Close?

Yeah. Um, so I, I pretty exclusively work with SMB, um, sales teams and, and AEs. Um, for individual contributors, like just in, uh, Last 30 days, I onboarded 11 new AEs into my program, but typically their goals are to become a top performer, whether they're new to the role or new to the company, or they've been there, but they haven't been hitting the mark to be top performers. Then they wanna eventually get promoted and move up markets like mid-market enterprise. So I help them with that, but the 3 typical bottlenecks that prevent them from getting there. Is their discovery is pretty shallow. They don't know how to ask second, third layer questions without either interrogating or they just skip it entirely, or their demos are very feature heavy. And that's usually as a result of being very shallow on the discovery piece cuz you don't have enough meat to work with. And then a lot of SMB reps that deal with this, they funnily, funny enough, they call themselves like demo monkeys. And then the third Bottleneck that they typically deal with is having a disjointed sales process and they just feel like they're just throwing spaghetti at the wall. They're not really, there's nothing repeatable there. A lot of them have sales leaders and it's great, but they want to speed things up. A lot of them don't have sales leaders or they do have sales leaders, but they don't have bandwidth. So everyone has their own story, but that's typically the 3 main core problems. There's a lot of nuances in between, but that's That's what I'm saying, at least.

Okay, awesome. And thanks for telling me a little bit more about what you do. And yeah, I mean, I know one of the biggest things for me personally that I had to work on a lot in my early sales career, and I started right out of college, age of 23, and building that confidence, getting those repetitions and practice in to make myself better was extremely important. I remember the first few times where our I was, uh, this was about 18 years ago now, making those first few cold calls and doing those in-person visits, cold visits with people at hotels, at high-rise luxury condominiums in South Florida. I was so nervous. I mean, and I highly doubt people could even understand a lot of the times, people, you know, what I was trying to even say to them. I was so incredibly nervous. And you mentioned too, I mean, being Kind of in the same place. I mean, you were so scared with your first sales experience, you kind of quit it. You quit that very first day. I mean, what was really for you like that turning point? And, you know, what brought you back? And how can sales reps, how can they build that confidence after they have like a setback like that and just not be completely turned off from sales?

What brought me back was Not having a choice. I, after I quit that job, was like right at literally right after college. I'll never forget it. I eventually so my true passion at the time was copywriting. That's what I really wanted to do. So I joined the only job I could get was that sales job, and I quit because I was like it's not for me. And then I joined a travel agency to do marketing. I was a marketing manager there. But then I wanted to do real estate because everyone was doing real estate in Miami and that's where the money's at. So I joined a real estate firm and then that didn't work out. But then I joined a brokerage, Keller Williams, and their whole philosophy is like cold calling and door knocking and building reputation and staying top of mind. Luckily, I found somebody in there and that first day on the job, they had like this like intro to like orientation for a lot of the new agents. One of the agents there happened to be like an acquaintance, a friend of a friend. And I went up to him and I said, hey, I know this person, blah, blah, blah. And you know, he's like, what do you think about this cold calling thing and door knocking? I'm like, listen, I'm scared of it, but like, I guess we'll have to do it. He's like, do you want to partner up together? He's like, yeah, I was thinking the exact same thing. And so I found an accountability partner, but it was somebody that I can, you know, misery loves company. So when we ended up the next day meeting up in his building downstairs. They have like a little like conference room. And we, you know, we called only one person at a time and we were like, I would call and then he would call, I would call and he would call. And then we got very comfortable with each other and comfortable cold calling. And then we went from that to doing door knocking. And then I got very comfortable doing it. Not comfortable enough to do it on my own while he's doing it on his own for the first like few months. And then I got a part-time job at Allstate Insurance doing cold calling. And so I did like half day, like majority of the day was cold calling, door knocking for real estate. The other part of the day was cold calling for Allstate. And that just got me out of it. It got me out of the fear. And so my advice is the only way to get over your fears of anything is just do it scared. That's it. It's like, there's not gonna be a time you're not gonna get yourself at a point where you're not gonna be scared and then you'll do it. You'll just, First time around, or even the first few times, you'll just be scared. Do it scared. There's like a nice little, uh, infographic. It's like, uh, I forgot what it was like. Do you want to do it? Uh, are you scared? Uh, no. Do it. Are you scared? Yes. All right, do it scared. Like, that's all it is. Just do it.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That, that's what I did. I just did it so many times, and, you know, always still kind of, you know, you have that A little bit of nervousness in you and you're meeting somebody for the first time or talking with them for the first time on the phone. I mean, it's always gonna be there, but I mean, if you use it, I mean, to me personally, use it to make yourself better and rise to the occasion. Use that adrenaline. And I mean, did you have any specific practices or do you have any particular practices now or habits that, I mean, you're like, you know, those are, you know, mindset that I like to be in or habits that I like to have that have kind of propelled you to become more successful and, Maintain consistency?

Yeah. So I had, I mean, I started my business about 3 years ago, so I didn't really develop any mental systems like routines. And so when times were great, I got the crazy high and when it was slow or times were bad, I got the crazy lows. And that was like 3 years consistently as a founder. And if anyone has started anything on their own, they know that it's exhausting and mentally draining and you're just tapped out. And that's why a lot of people I think quit. And then I had a relatively large client paying me, you know, been with them for a year. They were on a higher tier plan and it was the right plan for them. And then we crossed the year mark and I was like, they didn't need to be on that plan anymore and we had to downgrade them. But that also meant that the MRR, like the revenue coming in really affects me. And I got into that freakout mode all over again. Like, here we go again. And I was like, this can't continue because I'm like, this is not sustainable. I can't grow a business this way, like in terms of the business model. And then in terms of my emotional state and like my mental stamina, something has to change. And I ended up Starting this new morning routine that I do. I do it every day, Monday through Friday. It takes about 20 minutes, sometimes 30 minutes if I really enjoy it and I wanna stay long on it with it. And that morning routine, I actually have it documented somewhere. It's like Tony Robbins has like this 15-minute morning routine, like it's called priming, where it's like a breathing exercise and then it's think about 3 things that you're thankful for and It's not about just thinking about it. It's visualizing it emotionally. So you can think about the time that you had a really good time and you were like, think about a time like you were laughing. You can think about it, but now I want you to actually step into that moment as if you're actually there. Like imagine like putting on a headset of VR goggles and like Avatar, like step into it. You'll emotion— you'll start probably smiling. Um, and you'll feel very similar feelings that you did at the time. And that's your brain just releasing. And your brain doesn't know the difference between imagination and reality. It really doesn't. And so it's rewiring your brain by like intentionally making decisions and intentionally thinking. So then you think about 3 different things that you're thankful for, small or big, doesn't matter. And then there's another breathing exercise and there's another piece where it's called 3 to Thrive. And it's about what are 3 things that you'd like to accomplish? But instead of thinking of them as wanting to accomplish it, imagine them actually being done. You've accomplished it. It's done. What is that now post-accomplishment feeling that you're feeling? And feel it. Close your eyes and feel it and put yourself in that moment. What are you doing? How are you thinking about it? What are you feeling? And then there's like another piece to it. So that's a— that takes about 15 minutes. And then after that, I read my— I have a journal. So I read my vision out loud. And when I read my vision out loud, I then close my eyes and I visualize the vision being done and accomplished and the emotions that I would feel. And either sometimes I get very emotional or like, I don't sound like bawling tears, but I get maybe teary-eyed or I breathe different. I feel it in my gut or I get like pumped up and I literally, I'm like, yes, like I'm very active, physically active. So I read out my vision. I read my— I got this from Lex Fridman, rules and constraints. What are things that you're not going to— that there's no point? Like, for example, my rules and constraints are I'm not going to do any work or check any emails or LinkedIn or any of that before my morning routine. That's a rule. That's a constraint. Like, I'm not going to do that. So I read my rules and constraints, and then I read through my journal. There's this thing I call More 2.0, which is if I were to reach my potential, as a person and in business, who would I actually be? How would I— what would that person think? What would they feel? What would they do? How would they behave in a day-to-day? Would they— you know, if someone's very successful, Mark 2.0, would he dress in pajamas going to work or would he get dressed in like, you know, zip-up, whatever it is? So I read that and then I visualize myself as Mark 2.0. And the idea is you take on a new persona. So actors, really good actors do this, right? Like if you watch Dark Knight with Heath Ledger, you had no idea it was Heath Ledger behind the makeup and the acting. You felt like it was a true Joker. He got into character. Similar idea. The goal is for you to get into character, but that character is you, just a future version, a better, the best version of yourself. And I get into that mindset and then I do that. That takes me about 20, 30 minutes and I, and I start my day. Uh, and you're— I'm— because I'm doing it every single day, I'm rewiring the neurons in my brain, my synapses, and it's becoming hardwired. And now I just naturally behave that way. I naturally feel that way. That's, that's a little bit of the morning routine. It's, it's absolutely phenomenal. It's helped me. It's helped a lot of, uh, the people that I work with that I've been teaching. But it's a fun exercise if you commit to it.

That's awesome. Yeah, definitely visualization. And that's something that I've done a lot in my career. I kind of work backwards before talking with the customer. And I'm imagining, you know, that deal's been signed. We have— I'm visualizing the pen to paper, that customer is signing that contract. Now let's back up from there. What are the steps you need to get a long way? So yeah, that's extremely powerful. Highly recommend that process there. And one thing too that I've done personally and when I was exclusively working on making cold calls and working on phone sales, anybody else could do this out here too. And it sounds really silly, but several times before calls during the day, just tell yourself, you know, I'm the best salesperson and that positivity Yeah, I mean, it really goes a long way on that. I mean, what are your thoughts? I mean, on boosting your positivity with like thoughts like that? I don't want to— I don't know if you're familiar with like Stuart Smalley from SNL, and, you know, he's like, good enough, I'm smart enough, doggone it, people like me type of thing.

But yeah, it's affirmations. That's a big part of it. I also have a list of affirmations that I read off of. When I'm done with exercise. So that's why I start my day with this like morning routine visualization, because I want to get myself into the state of mind. So by the time— so when I'm in that state of mind, when I transition into affirmations, I'm reading affirmations as a new person, not my old version, my 1.0.

Yeah.

I think every seller should think that way. I mean, before I go on a sales call with a prospect, I think to my— I close my eyes, I take 30 seconds, nothing, not more, 30 seconds to visualize the deal's already done. I've already been paid and now my job is just to help them. And then I tell myself like, I'm the best person to solve this job or this particular problem. If I'm cold calling, I'm gonna say the same thing. I'm the best person. I don't cold call anymore cuz thank God, like I'm getting a good amount of leads and I do outbound in other ways through LinkedIn and email, et cetera. But if I were cold calling, I would, Say to myself, yeah, I'm the best person to solve this problem. The person that I'm calling, I don't know if they have the problem. My goal is to find out if they have that problem. If they can, I'm the best person to solve it. If they can't, if they don't have that problem, it's not for me. That way I'm not attached to every lead that I call as if they are my stream of income. I don't know yet. So yeah, but yeah, I definitely do that 30-second visualization before a call. It just helps. It relieves the pressure of trying to close them. It relieves the pressure of trying to sound smart, trying to ask the right question. It gives me like the creative freedom to just, you know, if I tell you right now, John, you win, you know, you win the lottery tomorrow, $200 million, you can retire, do whatever you want. What are you gonna do? You're probably not gonna do what you're currently doing. You're probably gonna take on a passion and you're gonna do it well cuz you have the creative freedom. You don't have, you're not the constrained by limitations or fear. So doing that visualization exercise before a sales call does the same thing. It removes the constraints of, oh man, I gotta close this deal and all that pressure that comes with it. So it removes that baggage and lets you be free on the call.

Yeah, absolutely. And so, I mean, we've talked a little bit about cold calling and I know LinkedIn has gotta be a part of anybody's strategy. This day and age, if you're not using that as a channel, as a company or as a seller, you're gonna, you're gonna definitely fall behind if you're just relying on the phone and email, for example. I mean, what does that look like here in 2025? What does not only effective but good practices as far as LinkedIn outreach and successful LinkedIn practices, what do those look like here, here in 2025 for you?

Well, for me, I mean, I'm on LinkedIn all day. It's open all day. I spend a very specific time of day commenting on very specific people's posts. I, me actually creating content is like the least amount of time I spend on LinkedIn. I spend more time engaging with other people. Whether it's commenting or in the DMs chatting, that's where I spend all my time. That's where I prospect. That's where I do everything. But not every seller's prospect lives on LinkedIn or hangs out on LinkedIn. I know there are some sellers that their prospects may have a LinkedIn account, but they never log into LinkedIn. In that case, I wouldn't recommend the seller to spend their time on LinkedIn. It just doesn't make sense. If your persona does hang out on LinkedIn, they're relatively active. Then you wanna spend your time on LinkedIn. Mine does. I sell to what, CROs, CEOs, founders, and account executives and soon-to-be account executives. So yeah, they're all over LinkedIn. So I'm all over LinkedIn also.

Got it. Yeah, absolutely. And I know you're saying a lot is coming inbound for you, but for those of us that need to do cold outreach on LinkedIn, Properly? What steps would you take to be different and kind of rise above the noise and make it seem, you know, this guy, he's doing things differently than 99% of people, he's got my attention? Yeah.

So I mean, things do come inbound for me too, but I also do outbound. But the reason why they come inbound for me is because I started doing outbound. My thought as what is outbound is like me creating a post on LinkedIn is an outbound activity. Um, it's one-to-many. That's an outbound activity. Um, me commenting on somebody's, uh, post, whether it's like a prospect, that's an outbound activity. It's not necessarily like a pitch, but it's an outbound activity. So, um, I'd— again, if your prospect hangs out on LinkedIn, they're active on LinkedIn, then I would engage with their posts. If they're creating content, I would create— engage with their content. Now engaging doesn't mean like, oh, great post, or really loved your thoughts. You don't wanna be in an echo chamber. No, it's not memorable. I have people that are— I realize what they're trying to do. They're commenting on my every single post. I'm not thinking about them as like, who are you? That's so interesting. I'm not. I'm like, they're just trying to game it and trying to get my attention. I'm totally ignoring that. The only time I actually pay attention to somebody that comments on my post is if they challenge me respectively. They ask a really good question. They add Insight that I didn't know about, then I'm interested in like seeing their. I'll go visit their profile. Now think about a prospect journey as well. So if you're an AE or seller or whatever it is, and you see your prospect consistently, you're commenting on their prospect profile, on their content, and your comments are really good. It's getting them to in like think about things. They're going to visit your profile. Now if your profile also has Content that you've created, and that content talks about the problems that your prospect has and how to solve them based on your experience and customer stories, et cetera. And your profile is optimized in a way where it makes it very easy for them to either DM you or connect with you or book a call with you, then you're going to generate leads through outbound activity. So that's one way to do it. That's my opinion, the best way to do it. If you're not going to do that, if For whatever reason. I don't know why nobody would wanna do that if they had their prospects on LinkedIn. It was something I spoke today in my group with, I have a coaching program and every Friday we meet up for an hour and I was telling them Loom videos are phenomenal. I got a cold email a couple days ago and I ignored it. I ignore most of my cold emails 'cause they suck, but I do read them. So I ignored it and then I got a follow-up cold email, follow-up response to that email from the same person saying like, hey, I have a video of how we helped, da da da. Do you want me to send, can I send it over? I ignored that too. Why? Because it's like, if he had sent me the video, I probably would've watched it, but I ignored it 'cause it's like, I have to respond back. Yeah, sure. Send it over. And I'm not actively buying. I'm not actively in the market, so I'm not gonna respond back. I'm more of like, if it's easily available to me and I can just like press the, like, look at it, then I'll do it. That got me thinking from a buyer's lens, that is probably happening to a lot of prospects. Where sellers are sending emails or LinkedIn DMs like, hey, can I send over this video? And the prospect doesn't know you. So it's a little harder if the prospect, if I did know that seller and we interacted in the past and like there's some rapport, I would've probably said like, yeah, shoot it over because I knew him. But 'cause I don't know, I'm not gonna waste my time. So I was thinking, I'm like, if I'm a seller and now I'm in that position where I'm like thinking to send out a video, but I'm gonna first ask, hey, should I send you, can I send you out a video? The only reason why I won't send the video automatically is because I'm concerned the video will end up in spam in an email. But what doesn't have spam? LinkedIn. LinkedIn doesn't have a spam folder. They have a focus folder and another folder. So great. Most of the emails that come through DMs, I'm not talking about in-mails, DMs go into the focus folder and then you can choose to put it into the other folder. So what I would do is I would actually email the prospect like, hey, Just sent you a DM on LinkedIn. You know, let me know what you think, and then I'm gonna send the DM, and it's gonna be the actual video itself. And what's really awesome—it's like a video that I'll record on Loom. What's awesome about Loom is when someone clicks a video and watches it, you can—it tells you if they've watched it. So now I can actually direct them into the video that I want to send them, which would be a value add, and I get notifications that they have viewed the video. So that's how I would use it if you're doing cold. That's one way I would do it.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, video I think is a great way to rise above the noise to make yourself stand out. And there's a lot of industries too. And I mean, they see that video and I mean, they might not be in, I mean, maybe not everybody is prospecting to B2B SaaS companies or tech companies in general. They see that video and it's just really different to them. So I mean, they're They're— you're getting their attention. So I mean, that's definitely huge. And LinkedIn is a great way to do that too, because like you said, no spam or junk mail folders there. And speaking of videos, I know earlier on you mentioned discovery and those common issues that you're seeing is that they're, you know, reps are only asking that level 1 or tier 1 type of question there. Then really to get better, you gotta dig deeper, do that level 2 or level 3 type question. What do you feel are some of the most effective questions for level 2 and level 3 type questions that have pushed things further for you and have been, you know, you're kind of your go-tos at, uh, in certain deals?

Um, one of my go-to, like, I'll teach anybody, this is like, anyone can adopt this framework and apply to the calls and they'll immediately see like The prospect opening up a little bit more. When you get your first answer from a prospect about a problem, hey, we're experiencing XYZ problem and it's not that great. All you gotta do is repeat back the question, repeat back the problem that they've had, reference the problem and ask them, how do you mean? So an example of that would be like, hey prospect, when you say whatever they said, can you elaborate? How do you mean?

Yeah.

And that's just a very easy way to get 'em to get to second layer. And if you position that question properly with the right tone, with everything, that may open them up to share with you second layer, third layer, fourth layer, all the layers. But that's just an easy, easy, like, apply it tomorrow, today on a call.

Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, the language you use too, I mean, it is extremely— and how you ask that question is extremely important. You ask, you know, well, what do you mean by that? I mean, it could come out so differently. You had to be really conscious of your tone of voice. Tonality is a huge, huge part of that as well. And I mean, do you, do you do anything? I mean, I know you do with that particular question, but I mean, what are some other examples of kind of making sure you have the proper tone or tonality with certain questions? Or what are some other examples you could give us for that?

In terms of like tonality?

Correct.

Yeah, well, you have to genuinely be curious. So if you're very curious about something, your tone of voice actually goes up. It has this like upwards motion. So it's like, hey, I'm curious. No, no, no, it's upwards. And so being curious, it sometimes helps to just say that you're curious because when you say that you're curious, your tone will say that you're curious. Or for example, if I wanna ask a question that's like a little bit deeper, I may say, by the way, but I'll say it quickly, by the way. And it just makes it feel like I just thought of a question. So it keeps it more conversational. But I'm reading the room also, right? Like a lot of sellers are like, they overthink this. And the way it's funny, like I'll see sellers when they're on a sales call. And then when they hang up the sales call, they go talk to their manager or their colleague or my, or me, whatever it is, they sound completely different. They just seem more relaxed. They use different vocabulary. Why? That's just stupid. Like, just be yourself. There's no, you're not wearing a different hat. You're wearing the same hat. It's just you. And now you're just, there's no difference. And I noticed that. And so the way I sell is the way I communicate with people. If I tell somebody, You know, I have like, I have a weird question. I may ask that to a friend of mine. I have a weird, weird question. I'm gonna use that same language to a prospect. Nothing's changed. I'm the same person off the call and on the call.

Awesome. I like that. It definitely shows authenticity as well. And that's a huge piece that is missing from a lot of sales interactions here too. And I know we're running out of time here, so I just wanna thank you again. more for joining us today. And really quickly here, and I know there's a lot of younger folks that are getting in at either SDR or just starting into account executive type roles. If you could give one piece of advice to yourself back when you were 22 years old about thriving in sales, and I mean, let's do look through it with a 2025 lens. What would that one piece of advice be?

Yeah, just do it scared and do the hard stuff. That's out of all the tactics. It's like not even the tactics. A lot, a lot of the stuff that people need is more of a mindset thing, right? Because I know people that do write things on paper, but then they don't feel confident and they're— they doubt themselves and they don't perform. And I know people that are very, very confident, they don't have all the skills on paper, but they succeed. It's— it starts in the head. Um, so do it scared. Um, yeah, just do it. Just do it scared. Do the hard stuff. No one, no one is willing to do these. hard stuff. So do yourself.

Awesome advice. And, uh, thank you so much again for coming on here today, Moore, and I hope you have a great weekend. Take care.

Appreciate it. Thanks.