Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: You're listening to b two B revenue acceleration, a podcast dedicated to helping software executives stay on the cutting edge of sales and marketing in their industry.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: Let's get into the show.
Hi, welcome to the b two B revenue acceleration podcast. I'm here today with Ballantur senor, sales trainer, sales trainer specialist. I think there was specialist in the title. He's just senior sales trainer.
[00:00:25] Speaker A: Senior sales trainer. I'm the only senior on the team here at Memory Blue, so a little distinct, but trainer nonetheless.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: So sales trainer at Memory Blue. How are you doing today, man? You good?
[00:00:37] Speaker A: I'm fantastic. It is a Friday, Ray, how are you?
[00:00:40] Speaker B: I'm cool, I'm cool. My last day in the US, back in a plane this evening in the UK tomorrow seeing the kids, probably my wife will disappear.
[00:00:48] Speaker A: Oh yeah.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: After kids, off I go. It's gonna be fun.
But today we'll be speaking about sales messaging and I thought that you are quite a specialist here at memorable and quite passionate about sales messaging. So before we go into the conversation, would you mind just giving us a little bit of background as to yourself, why you started your career, how you developed, where you are now.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: Happy to.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: It's a pleasure to be here, Ray. Thank you for having me. And where do I begin? I will start with school, university. Since I had no idea that sales would be in my future. When I was studying, I was studying creative writing.
So writing, something I did in high school, was passionate about. No idea how I would apply that. But I knew that writing is critical in any professional sense. So whether it be writing stories, a little bit of fiction, but realistic, not a fantasy guy. I know the real world that we live in. And then eventually about two years into my studies, I realized that being a starving artist, writing short stories was not the most economic way to make a living, not that I've seen plenty of people do. It wasn't my calling. And so I pivoted to the most creative business field that I knew, which was marketing. And in my final semester of school, I remember my professor saying it was a communications class. Most of your communications marketing folks, do you want to get a job in marketing out of school?
[00:02:18] Speaker B: Good luck.
[00:02:19] Speaker A: And this was a few months before COVID pandemic had happened. And you can imagine how difficult it might have been getting a job in marketing right when the pandemic hit. And the way she had phrased it to me was you might be running for coffee, you might be pushing papers for a while and again not making too much early on. Something she said stuck with me, if you want to get a job out of school right away, go into sales. And I do. I put my resume out there online, and within 24 hours, memory blue was in my inbox. I didn't know what was happening. Next thing you know, I'm hitting the phones and I spend my time working with two clients. Okay, so two part times over the course of 17 months. Traditionally, the SDR tenure, for those who aren't aware here at memory Blue is about twelve to 15. And yet I'm the crazy fool. One of them decided to stay a little bit longer. And like I said, I had two. I had one public sector. So targeting the federal government, Department of Defense, public sector, and then one commercial, a little bit more marketing, which was my background.
[00:03:20] Speaker B: Really told that. So, because when we speak to messaging, it'd be interesting to understand if you've been changing messaging or adapting messaging between commercial and B 2g.
[00:03:28] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yes.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: So you've done both commercial and business to government. Okay, cool.
[00:03:34] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:03:35] Speaker B: Excellent. And what sort of clients did you work with? Were big data, cyber.
[00:03:40] Speaker A: Big data was actually the public sector. And then I'll start with that one because that's the more traditional tech space that I worked in. It was an innovative startup where they did disruptive products. Very disruptive, never before seen or done.
[00:03:55] Speaker B: Write the best stories.
[00:03:56] Speaker A: Oh, yes. Very easy to sell. When my quantifiers were, well, they did big data analytics and they were using, I'll use the technical language, whether or not folks know GPU's graphic processing units to replace CPU's to do big analytic crunching of billions of data points.
[00:04:15] Speaker B: And so it works?
[00:04:18] Speaker A: Oh, yes, very much so. But when I was targeting the federal government, were backed by Nvidia, the number one producer of GPU's. And they hold an annual conference or some sort of competition where they'll invest in the latest and greatest in GPU hardware. Well, they won that and they got a ton of money from Nvidia. And then the intelligence community in Q Tel does their own yearly competition where the latest and greatest tech in the intelligence space gets a bunch of money if they won. And they won that too. So they had a ton of money from the commercial space, the public sector space.
[00:04:51] Speaker B: And they came to memory blue, when you tell the story.
[00:04:54] Speaker A: Oh, yes, definitely. And they came to memory blue and said, we need help selling this really cool thing. We have no idea where to start. But you got two reps, you got your DoD defense rep, and you've got your public sector rep. You'll know who to put on the meeting. And I inherited it from somebody before me who got hired out. And it was not easy. The federal government is difficult to speak with and convince, since it seemed everybody was the wrong person. Nobody wanted to tell me anything. Creating messaging was very difficult. And this was even before, this is four years ago. I've been with the company now since then and have been in the sales training space ever since.
[00:05:32] Speaker B: So 17 months of the MSDR. Yes. Did well.
[00:05:37] Speaker A: It was a different story. Very challenging. And what I mean by that is I didn't hit quota consistently for about seven or eight months early on.
[00:05:47] Speaker B: At the beginning.
[00:05:48] Speaker A: At the beginning. Because the way it works with two clients here, whatever your lower of the two quotas is, that's what your real quota is. So my, my other one was commercial marketing, which is what I studied. I booked my first ever phone call, first day, did book and occur, and everybody on my team patted me on the back and they said, you're a natural. You sound amazing. And then my teeth got kicked in in the public sector space. And it was really difficult because, and this goes into the sales messaging. I tried to make my script perfect to cater to every person, and that's not how it works. I would get hung up on over and over again. And eventually, the reason why I stuck around for so long is because I wanted to prove I was capable of doing this. I wanted to prove I was successful. And I only stuck around for my senior SDR title, which I'd already earned all the compensation and bonuses and accolades, aside from the one word on my title that said senior, senior SDR. So I can put that on my LinkedIn. And that's how long it took me to get senior SDR. Actually 16 months. And in the 17th month was when they started to promote me. And I hit my quota in two weeks. If I got them on the phone, I booked them nearly 100% of the time because that's how long it took me to master my messaging. Long time in the making. But I wouldn't be here today without all that.
[00:07:11] Speaker B: That's a great story. So let's dive into it. Right message. Big part of being successful along with data, along with the right time to go, the right medium, which may be email, phone calls.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: Yes, etc.
[00:07:28] Speaker B: Etc. So maybe we start from the top, right? But few things that I would like to cover is starting from the top. Kind of the methodology as you go through. Right. What's important, what do you need to pull from the clients or from the partner you are working with in terms of information to build your message, because, you know, even yesterday I was with one of our managing directory and delivery manager. They could receive like 45 PDF from a client. There you go. That's your training. Yes. So it'd be interesting to kind of boil down the type of checklist of what you need from the customer. Yes. And then I'd like to, among those other stuff, I'd like to also speak about how you adapt your message from a phone versus email versus LinkedIn type of approach.
But yeah, let's get going with the, with Jackitecho.
[00:08:14] Speaker A: You got it.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: I will start with the calls because honestly, to me, the way I define emails or Linkedins, any sort of written messaging is almost a form of passive income where I walk into work in the morning and an email is in my inbox saying I'd love to meet. And the only thing I like to hear from emails and LinkedIn is one of two things.
This is the date and time that we are meeting, or yes, that time works for me.
[00:08:43] Speaker B: Right.
[00:08:44] Speaker A: I have, believe me, done ten, eight, nine email long back and forths where I'm combating objections and I'm doing convincing. But the problem with emails in LinkedIn is it's a waiting game. It requires patience, and I almost have to cross my fingers and hope that you're going to respond to me. And hope did not help me hit quota more often than not when I needed it. I like certainty. I like guarantees, and the easiest way to get a guarantee is live in the heat of the moment over the phone, voice to voice. So I'll start with the phones. And honestly, everything translates the same into the messaging. You just have to be mindful that it takes a lot more time and patience. So when it comes to the phone structure, we can break it down into any space specifically that you'd like. But essentially the way we define it is of one of four stages, and then the last one I'll get to at the end. But intro and opening statement, the first 30 seconds or so explaining who you are and why you're calling. Now, that's the standard in the way the public sector works, I've learned, is a little different. They don't really care why you're calling because they get tons of calls and everybody wants to work with the government. They care more about who are you and who do you work with. Because if you don't work with anybody in the government already, well, you're wasting your time. Get out of here. It's very much proximity based where if you're working with a similar agency or department that's neighboring them. Well, that kind of gives me a foot in the door already. So I get through my intro and opening statement, who am I? Who might I be working with? Credibility is a key piece to that. So I don't get hung up on a little bit of value, and then I'm engaging in a conversation where I'm asking questions. Stage two, discovery, I believe to be the most important phase of the call and also one of the hardest because we could talk about best practices in our prospecting principals training all day long, but knowing the right questions to ask is a lot easier said than done. And then after that I've asked questions, I've taken information. Eventually I have to give something back in return. And that's where a value add sharing information comes in.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: Do you think you can ask before you annoy people on a, on a disruptive cold call because you cannot interrupt their day. So I'm sure you can't quiz them for like, you can't take them through a questionnaire of ten questions.
[00:11:09] Speaker A: Oh, yes.
[00:11:10] Speaker B: So what's the, what's the magic number? How many, how many do you think you've got in the bag? If I say, well, okay, I'm going to get on with my day.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: Great question. Well, I will say first off that it depends because what we're kind of ending with that final phase of the call is the close next steps. And then the fifth I alluded to is objections. One of the objections might be, well, I'm not going to tell you anything, any sort of pushback or I am getting annoyed. And you could annoy somebody in a very short period of time even with one question, if it is a not well framed and lackluster question.
But I believe that you need to know three things in a conversation. So I try to ask at least minimum three questions. Honestly, a real great number to aim for would be five to eight. You can push it even more than that. I was working with a client earlier this week where I helped her script out 25 to 30 plus questions. And it's not to say you're asking all those questions, but you need to be prepared. You almost, I'll put it to you this way. You can, once you have product knowledge, share value all day long. You can info dump and force prospects into submission. With product knowledge, it's a little fun when you know more than them, but it's not always the most effective way to convince people to do things and buy in. And I'm going to trust that everybody knows how to close and ask for a meeting if you were taught to.
More often than not, people close too preemptively.
[00:12:34] Speaker B: Right.
[00:12:35] Speaker A: If you can focus on that tailored reason for calling, getting through the 30 seconds and not getting hung up on, and having at least three to five questions to fall back on and get people talking after that, you have no idea what they're going to say. You can only plan for your side of the call if you're the sales rep. So I don't think there's a magic number of questions to aim for, but I want to know at least three things. So that's kind of my minimum, three questions.
[00:13:02] Speaker B: So that's the discovery. So intro, which is basically who I am, why you or people who are working within the government space, if it's government. So a bit of social proof in there, make them feel comfortable. Then you dive into discovery. And then the third part you say is objection handling. Right.
[00:13:17] Speaker A: Which you never know when objections are coming, so you need to be prepared at any moment for them.
[00:13:22] Speaker B: Yeah, we did some messaging, which is quite interesting because sometimes I think you can actually prepare for the objection. It's almost like we call it like the doors in the corridors. Imagine you've got the corridor and you've got lots of doors on each side, but you want to go and the end of it. Just how do you close all the doors? One of the techniques that I know was used is to say to someone, for example, to a prospect, I appreciate you may not have budget now. I appreciate that you may not have a project now, because what we do is very disruptive. I'm not expecting you to be sitting down thinking about a project for something disruptive. What we do is a new way to do something that you are doing in the past, so, you know, and a bit better. And so you almost kind of cut them off. You cut the objection and potentially the objection of time as well. And I say you probably would think that you don't have the time to look at it, right. So this is why I did in the next thoughts seconds to convince you. And I'm thinking, is it efficiency of people? So giving you time back from your team, or is it cost saving? What, drop the boat, you know, what's your stuff? What do you want me to go? Because there is a few avenues, but I don't have all the time in the day. Appreciate your time is valuable and you kind of close the objection before they can actually come. The most common one, of course. So that's good. And regarding the, the social proof or closing. Do you have, like, do you wait after the objection for close? Do you go for trying to close before the objection come? When do you start to say, okay, give me a meeting?
[00:14:43] Speaker A: Yes, great question. And that plays into the discovery.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: Right.
[00:14:48] Speaker A: And what I heard you referencing a little bit is almost preparing or getting ahead of objections. That's another more advanced technique that I define as hedging. Hedging objections where I'm getting ahead of it before you can even say it. That's effective if I know common objections that they're likely to say. Another example was we got it covered. If you know, on average, based on data and results, that they're already going to have a solution in place, maybe I tailor my reason around addressing that early on. Understand you might have something in place. That being said, here's my discovery. I'm asking questions, and I'm a believer in welcoming objections. I will embrace them and I would rather hear them than not. And there's different types of them. The legitimate ones tend to be buried, and you have to do discovery. So my belief is in order to truly get past objections, we need to ask questions. You need to get curious to figure out if it's true, if it's not true. And then once I've uncovered something that's related to the prospect goes back to my value add, I can force value on somebody, and I could be the most convincing person in the world. But prospects tend to care a little bit more about themselves than me, the sales rep. So it doesn't matter how much I say I need to ask questions to get them to realize or admit what's the challenge, what's the opportunity and how does it relate to them?
[00:16:10] Speaker B: Yeah, that's really interesting. What's also fascinating is the tone of the call, how the call starts, right? You've got the call that starts, and you've got, like, you exchange pleasantry. How is the weather? Oh, my God. You are in California. Just look at the news this morning. Seven foot of snow in one night. This is crazy. And, you know, the prospect follows you in that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, mate, whatever, blah, blah, blah. And you have a bit of, oh, let's go back. Do you know you can have a chat if someone says, okay, look, I'm about to get into a meeting. You've got 15 seconds, ten minutes, for real. You should buy your stuff, right? Or leave me order. Two polar opposites. How do you adapt in flight? That's what. Would you change your structure based on the openness, receptiveness of the prospect?
Would you actually, if you feel that there is exchange of pleasantries and small talk, would you go into the small talk or do you try to remove the small talk?
[00:17:04] Speaker A: I remove it. I'm a believer. And the reason I say that is because.
[00:17:09] Speaker B: After they give you what you want.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I'll give you a few reasons where pleasantries might be more effective, but I'll look at the data. I let data and numbers speak for themselves. And funny enough, we actually had a professor at the Washington State University here on the west coast in Seattle, who did a study for us on tone and pacing recently, which is the hardest form of sales messaging technique to measure talk time, conversion rates, politeness.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: I listen to the call. It's pretty fascinating.
[00:17:39] Speaker A: The first two are easy to measure, but the tone and pacing is difficult.
Their mood, how do you measure that? And she did a very thorough job of this, but noticed after studying, we did a study on 20,000 plus calls in 2022 alone. Some recent data where she found that people who used pleasantries were twice as likely to have a worse outcome on the call.
[00:18:08] Speaker B: Right.
[00:18:08] Speaker A: So, again, cultural differences aside, here in the UK, and I've listened to many calls where pleasantries are effective, maybe it's the politeness I've heard some people say, say Germany, for example, not so much. They tend to be a little bit more cut and dry.
Certainly in the US, that's the case here. So I try to avoid them unless few different circumstances arise. Like, you've spoken for 15 minutes with me. Maybe while you're checking your schedule and looking for your email to cut the awkward silence, I'll ask how your day's going. It's almost like I'm earning the right to do that. Maybe if they start with pleasantries and they ask me how my day is going, I wouldn't want to be rude and not acknowledge that. So I try to keep it short, cut to the chase, save it for another time. Or maybe if you're a warm lead, if you attended a webinar, you already know who we are. Well, of course I'll try to warm in the conversation.
But I'm a believer in cutting to the chase because I have two things I want to get out early on. It's who am I? Why am I calling? I want to get into a discovery.
[00:19:08] Speaker B: I want to pick on something you said, not because you said it, because I think it's fascinating. It's awkward silence. Right.
What do you think about silence in conversation?
[00:19:18] Speaker A: I love it.
[00:19:18] Speaker B: Exactly. Why do you love it?
[00:19:20] Speaker A: Because it's uncomfortable. And cold calls.
[00:19:24] Speaker B: Do you like your coldness?
[00:19:25] Speaker A: Well, when is it ever a good time for a cold call? Never. But if it's was a bad time and you answered well, you probably wouldn't have answered in the first place. So I'm here, you've answered. It's not the most comfortable thing in the world. And I like asking tough questions. Now, I also like asking questions that I already know the answer to because it makes it easier to steer. But when I put somebody on the spot, I mean, there's this talk I hear of the 80 20 rule. 80% prospect, 20% sales rep. And early on I hear a lot more. 80% sales rep and 20% prospect. There's the info heavy value add taking advantage. Exactly. But when prospects are talking for that long, I mean, who's really steering that conversation? So what I try to do is I pose my questions and I go on silent. I want to hear from you, I want you to be uncomfortable. And maybe that's because there's an objection they have deep within. Maybe because they've never been posed with that question before. But the minute that I fall victim to the awkwardness and cut them off or jump in because I'm uncomfortable, that's a sign of weakness on my end. I would rather put prospects on the spot, go on mute and let them think. Because them thinking and them processing is one of the small steps that it takes to get them to buy in and believe and do something about it. Like take my meeting.
[00:20:49] Speaker B: Yeah, first one.
[00:20:50] Speaker A: That's big.
[00:20:50] Speaker B: Close. Really?
[00:20:51] Speaker A: You could say that.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: Okay, cool. And I wanna, I wanna discuss call to action now. Because for me, when I get a cold call, I get a fair few of cold calls, to be honest with you, when someone cold call me. And I just hate it when they can't give me the why. Why me? Why my company? Have you done your research? I hate people who've not done their research. So I hate when there is a diner calling me, you know, when you pick up hello, hello. And then eventually hello. After three, 5 seconds, someone pick, you know it, you know, they are dating lots of people. So straight away in my mind, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna be cynical now. I'm gonna ask them what they know about me, what they know about my company, how they've researched me, and why do they believe I would need that stuff? Most of them can't sell it. I just said, well, call me back when you know that. Otherwise what's the point? You can't explain the why if you can't explain the why. Why would I even bother? Like, literally, you're gonna read the script. It's bad job. You're not doing your job properly. Right. I also find that people are either straight to the call to action or they can't really come to explain to you why you should take a meeting. Do you know what I mean? So I think there is a why you. So, Ben, I want to contact you because I understand you are a senior sales trainer in the business. As a senior sales trainer, one of the most common issue that we see are this, that, you know, and this is what our solution does. And we believe that in terms of benefits, you could get this. You could get that. Just three things in terms of benefits. Okay. What I would like to do, because, you know, solutions kind of deliver different results and outcome based on the company, based on your current setup, etcetera. My research makes me believe that we can help you, but what I would like to do is to build a business case. That's what I would like. 30 minutes of your time. Because let's not kid ourselves, we are post 2023. Everybody in companies like memory would need to have cash return on investment. And if you invest a dollar, you want to see if you're going to return it. Okay. But based on what you've got, memory, blue, that culture of recruiting, graduate, developing those graduate, moving them into the market, basically creating the sales and marketing talents of the future, I would have thought that being a sales trainer is critical. The business is investing a lot, and you guys are always trying to innovate, so that's why I picked you. Okay. That's freestyle. But then the call to action is, I want to meet with you for certain years to do a business case so you can present that to your management. And that's gonna help me to understand if it's the able to have a conversation on it together. Okay, so that's one example based on you. They just freestyle. But that is something that always people say, I want a meeting. Okay, but what do you want to do in that meeting?
So I want a meeting. Okay. With my a. With my. Okay, but what's gonna happen in that meeting? Well, I don't know. We're gonna show you a demo of the product. But why should I show them of the product if I don't understand what the product does? Why would I see it? You want to see a movie that you don't. You know, you just pick things based on what you think you like and you're with at the moment, right?
So I'd like to understand from you if there is anything that you train people or coach people from that call to action and defining also the call to action, it's relevant, it's pertinent, it's gonna help the person, maybe not to buy your stuff, but to understand why they're gonna give you the most precious things in life, which is time. Because if you give me 30 minutes, you're never going to get them back because time is over. Right? So it's the most important currency.
And I do feel, I don't think this is the case with us here because obviously we're professional. But I don't feel that lots are missing the call to action and explaining really the nature of the call to action and the why I need to give something else.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: It's a very interesting conversation and the reason why it's so important is because it's goes back to my easiest thing to do is ask for a meeting. The way I define call to action and how it relates to them, what you described is a lot of value. Here's all the value. But the reason why people might not be taking interest or caring or buying in is because it doesn't relate to them. They don't see how the value is in it. For me, using your movie example, you could sell it in the most amazing, magnificent way. The trailer looks incredible, but if I just don't like romances and rom coms, I will be bored to death all demo long. So the key question that I ask people in a call to action is this is the timing of the meeting in the prospect's best interest. Now when I asked that question, a lot of people might say, well, they agreed to the first time I proposed. They said that that date and time worked for them. It was quick and easy. We did a little bit of negotiation, but they agreed. They said yes.
That's not enough for me because they could be good liars. That's one thing that a counterfeit yes could lead to. The counterfeit yes of, oh sure, I'll take a meeting. Sure, I'll be there.
Just kidding. You'll never hear from me again. So that's just the yes to get you off the phone. The faith, the date and time is not enough for me. What I ask is this first sales reps, when is the timing in our best interest? Answer always. I need meetings today. I need them tomorrow. I needed them yesterday when I missed quota. Right. The time for meetings is always. But if I closed on every single.
[00:26:10] Speaker B: Call, when you want time, when you give time.
[00:26:14] Speaker A: That's different. And it doesn't mean anything if they agree and they don't show up, or if they sit down and they're not interested, right. You could have meetings and meetings and meetings. But if they don't go anywhere, then what was the point?
Deals, contracts, closes.
[00:26:32] Speaker B: And that's.
[00:26:32] Speaker A: So this is the question of how do you know the timings in their best interest. And this goes back to the frame of the call, the discovery, my most important part, because I need to ask questions to get prospects to realize by their answers. So that when I go for a close and a call to action, I can say this.
So prospect, since you mentioned this, that's why a meeting makes sense, rather than here's all the reasons why I think you should take this meeting. Remember, they don't care as much about me, the sales rep. They care about themselves. So I need to ask questions to get them to realize and admit what's in it for them. And that's what I'm referencing in the close.
[00:27:10] Speaker B: What do you think about free verb psychology at this stage? What I mean by that is to say, hey Ben, look, a meeting would not make sense. You should get this, that and that. So I'm not going to force you to a meeting, right. I know that you get lots of call with lots of people. People try to say get a meeting, get a meeting. That pissed me off. Right. I'm just gonna tell you, I'm gonna help you to qualify yourself out. Sound silly, but I want to do the right thing. Yeah, right. So if you're not in that situation and obviously you can make it, it's like an interview. What are your weaknesses? I am too curious, obsessively curious and stuff like that. So you can make the thing that you are saying positive in a way in terms of the reason why they shouldn't take the meeting, which kind of still put them in your net, if you will. But as a prospect, it's almost like a shock that reverse psychology and something that you would appreciate. But also it's two sides. I want to understand your perception on rehearsal psychology. Again, you're right. I think there are things that are working in some territories and not working in some other territories. The reason behind that is because if you've got a prospect in France, they may receive 50% less phone call than someone in the government b 2G business here in Washington DC doing defense or whatever. Right? So the game is being absolutely pestered. Would have a different mentality to the game. We just get a few calls then. And then, you know. But. So I want to understand the reverse psychology, because there's another aspect for me that's important, is that if, to your point, we are here to deliver quality and not quantity, we want good meetings. And I personally believe that the ratio is. You mentioned 80 20. I don't know if it's exactly 80 20, but I think you have maybe 20% of the conversation you have that are, okay, I'm interested kind of now or soon, so let's talk. But 80% of people are like, look, I just can't process that now. We've got some other stuff to do. I understand about you. I'm not closing the door, but a meeting would not make sense now. Okay.
And I want to know also what you're doing with that. So it's two things. The river psychology element. I'd like to know if you think this is useful to almost qualify out. But then the other thing, which is, I personally believe it's actually a good outcome if Ben tells me, you know what, right now we are in Q one, we're integrated with operatics. I'm doing lots of training with our team in Dallas. We're going to do some stuff with the european folks. We're bringing our things together. You know, we are a little bit against it. There's lots of things going on, and it's all moving and things.
Second half of this year, I think we're gonna be in a better place.
I think that's a positive call. I think it's a very. It's a nurturing goal. Right. But I'd like to get your views on that and potentially, how you adapt the message for the next conversation.
[00:29:53] Speaker A: Three things, no, but three things come to mind. It's okay. But no, this is all relevant because, first off, you mentioned that curiosity in an interview. That's my biggest weakness. I'm too curious that I don't like that mentality, because that's my secret weapon. I'm the most curious person in the room. I can keep questions going all day long, and that will only set me up for success. Now, you being uncomfortable with the questions? I think we kind of already touched on that. You just maybe are not used to getting asked questions like that before. That's where pausing and giving them time to digest comes into play. The other note on that is another acronym I'm a believer in. 50 50. There's nothing more natural than a 50 50 back and forth. So that's what I strive for. But there's an abcs of sales out there. I mean, we originally were called the Glengarry Glenn Ross group at one point. That's based off of the movie play long time ago. Always be closing. Coffee's for closers. You're not succeeding unless you're closing. I don't like that. I'm a believer in always being curious. Curiosity wins. And with that in mind, the philosophy of a sales rep. Well, what's our job? To book meetings and close and ask. Right.
My psychological difference in reverse psychology comes in this.
I am not here to book a meeting. The reason for my call is not to close. You, prospect. I mean, I might not say that, but if I need to, that's my mentality. I'm not here to book a meeting. I'm here for a good conversation. I'm here to see if a meeting makes sense. And the next thing you know, prospects might be saying, well, meeting, meeting. Hold your horses, prospect. Who said anything about a meeting? Calm down. My time is valuable. And now all of a sudden, the sales rep who usually gets thought of as low on the totem pole. Now I start to rise to an equal status as C suite executives. And no matter the industry, where if I can focus on having a good conversation, imagine if every prospect you called asked you for a meeting. Wouldn't that be nice? I never asked for meetings. People ask me. Makes my life a whole lot easier. I just focus on having good conversations.
[00:32:05] Speaker B: Good. Yeah. Focus on the process versus the results. Makes perfect sense.
And on the, on the nature of nurturing the conversation, having different touches with the prospect. Maybe over six months, nine months time frame. You know, you nurture those conversation until they are ready. Is that something that you coach your team to do as well? And do you see the message evolving over time? I know that there is some concept about progressive profiling. Okay, so I'm gonna ask you three questions the first time we speak, but I actually have a list of 20.
[00:32:34] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:32:34] Speaker B: Okay. So I'm gonna call you back in amounts. And I kind of agree with you.
[00:32:37] Speaker A: I cannot check in again in the months.
[00:32:40] Speaker B: It's me again. We spoke. I wanted to give you the time. I actually got one question, a couple of questions, because I'm speaking to prospects, similar situation as you, and you ask more questions, you got your progressive profiling going. Okay. Is that something that you do? Is that some, and how do you write that playbook for the right? Because that's a little bit of an art as well. Yeah. People tend to be transactional when they start in cells and don't understand. Maybe the value of planting the seeds and watering the seeds before you actually can get the fruit.
[00:33:08] Speaker A: It goes back to something we've discussed a lot during this, and that's credibility. It's doing your research and your homework and being prepared and all that sort of question.
Again, what you were just describing of if the time right now, if the timing doesn't make sense just yet, maybe there's a legitimate objection of, well, the timing isn't right. We've gone through a massive organizational structure. We have so much on our plate. Our bandwidth is limited. I'm happy to call you back. When is a better time? When is it more appropriate? See, my questions and curiosity is already kicking in, so I'll happily wait. But during that time, I'm not just waiting and doing nothing. I'm still gaining experience. I'm gaining exposure. I'm doing my research so that when I call you back, I'm even more prepared than before. I have new information.
[00:33:57] Speaker B: So why do you want to be prepared?
[00:33:59] Speaker A: Because if I'm unprepared, well, it goes back to, I like asking questions that I don't know the answer to. It's so much easier for me to steer if I can see the end of the tunnel. But the prospects, they usually can't see that. If they knew the answer already, if they saw the value and would believe they'd already be a warm lead. But we're talking about cold calls, and I got to do some convincing. And the easiest way to convince is to ask questions and use your words against you.
[00:34:24] Speaker B: Yeah. Do you know the thing about preparation? I think preparation is like conditioning. If you are an athlete, let's say you are a boxer. Now, you go on that train thinking that you're going to get absolutely whacked by the other guy. Chances are that you're going to get whacked by the other guy because you are scared. You've got reluctance. We speak about cold reluctance. People are like, well, I've got a sales team. My sales team booked 100% of their meeting via emails. Passive income, isn't it?
[00:34:49] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:34:50] Speaker B: And what's our stats here in terms of book by phone?
[00:34:54] Speaker A: Book by phone?
[00:34:55] Speaker B: Well, I think it's about 85%, roughly.
[00:34:59] Speaker A: It is a very. It's more than 50% to 60%. A very. I mean, I'd say something even maybe closer to 70, 75 plus percent of phone based outreach. And I sat in on a senior SDR presentation yesterday where one of the reps has a LinkedIn. Yeah, LinkedIn guru. She booked most of her meetings on LinkedIn she was telling me all about it.
[00:35:19] Speaker B: Yeah, very impressive.
[00:35:20] Speaker A: That is impressive. It's unique. But not every campaign and industry warrants that some of your prospects won't even be on LinkedIn. So good luck getting LinkedIn books for that.
[00:35:28] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think she's doing very well with it because of the ACP, and you need to balance both. But I think I want to come back on the point of correctness, because correctance is probably a big issue.
[00:35:39] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:35:40] Speaker B: People are scared to have a conversation and we need to understand why they are scared.
[00:35:46] Speaker A: Why is that? Well, preparation, the first thing. Yes, and I almost define it as well. There's two questions. One of the things is, do you want it? Do you care? And I like to ask people, well, how satisfied are you with your current results? The answer is, yeah, I'm satisfied, and I'm not doing good. Maybe you're not in the right space. I mean, it's not for everybody. It's not an easy job. But if you know that I need to do better, it's usually the what. The what comes first. What are you saying? If you have no idea what you're saying, of course you're going to be scared. If you don't have a what and a why. I start with that. I say, know what you are saying, and if you know the why behind it, you'll always be able to defend yourself. And that's when tone and pacing kicks in. Because if I'm breaking down calls with newer sdrs, I hear this constantly. What's the main feedback? Well, you sounded good. It was confident. It was natural and smooth. I don't really care. You could sound smooth as butter. But if you didn't book the meeting and what happened was bad.
Well, we're doing something wrong. So I focus on what are you saying, why you're saying it and how you sound will sort itself out later.
[00:36:58] Speaker B: How much of the successful outcome of a call you think is coming from the actual ISR, BDS, whatever you want to call them, like the actual sales rep. Really believing that. I guess what I'm saying is that if I call Ben, it's two mindsets. There is one mindset. I was like, fuck. Don't pick up, don't pick up. Don't pick up. Don't pick up. Because my colleague will. If you pick up, it's not good, and you pick up, okay. I go and I read my page and I'm like, I don't really believe in what I'm saying. The other ones, oh, I'm so glad to speak to you, but I've got something that's gonna change your life, I believe. Like, look, that's. It's almost like, for me, the preparation and the research, and if you convince yourself that you help someone versus just getting a meeting for the second meeting, I think you just have a better time, you know, and you have a much better chance. In fact, you could probably get, like, close to 100% each rate because you've actually spent the time understanding how your solution could help that prospect. You make some assessments based on the number of users, number of servers, number of offices, or whatever they are, to see approximately what you could save them. You already got a couple of use cases. This is what the other case is, my social proof. That's what convinced me that we can help you. And I think if we can do the saving. Unless you tell me that you don't care about $5 million, which you could, by the way, but for me, $5 million, I'm like, I need to call you to tell you, you need to be in the know that I can do that for you. Now, if that doesn't boost the needle for you, I get it, but I would be very.
[00:38:34] Speaker A: Yes. And the key word that I'll add in there is I'm a believer in non assumptive language.
[00:38:38] Speaker B: We could help you.
[00:38:39] Speaker A: What is the so non assumptive language is may not assume, assuming or believing that there is a guarantee. If I'm a sales rep, sdr Bdr, all I'm selling is a meeting right now because I'm trying to sell the opportunity, the potentiality that we might be able to help you. If I were out here guaranteeing that we can give you the exact same results as this specific use case, what are the chances that.
[00:39:07] Speaker B: I'm not saying that I think what you got is. I'm talking about social proof.
[00:39:10] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:39:11] Speaker B: I think what you need to do is, is in the preparation, if you can make some hypothesis that you then want to have a meeting to verify. Right. I think you can't call someone and know from the outside what you can save them and stuff. Right. I think that's, that's a very bad approach because you would lie to them and then they go to the meeting and realize that's over promising on the delivery. So. But it's more in the, in the format of. Look, I've done my research. I looked at that. I look at it, and that's what I believe that we need to have more time to review. Right.
[00:39:39] Speaker A: I agree with you.
[00:39:40] Speaker B: I don't think you should be. And the prospect will know their business much better than you.
[00:39:44] Speaker A: Oh, yes.
[00:39:44] Speaker B: Maybe like you make assumption about saving me millions. I mean, man, I'm working on that.
[00:39:48] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:39:48] Speaker B: So you look a little bit silly. I think if you go to 100,000. Yeah.
[00:39:52] Speaker A: And what you're saying is, based off of the conversation, what the prospects are telling you, my active listening, and it's a discovery. I'm asking, I'm learning, I'm uncovering and then diagnosing and prescribing. So I'm not going to prescribe. If you think of a doctor's office, they don't just prescribe something without doing the diagnosis. That'd be crazy. So I need to diagnose and I ask questions, and I then tailor and non assumptively say, well, based on everything you told, we might be able to do this. What's the harm in meeting? But I want to go back to your question before of what's the distribution? How often is it dependent on whether or not the sales reps believe in themselves? And if you have that confidence, I believe.
[00:40:34] Speaker B: Do you think he's believing in themselves or believing in the solution?
[00:40:37] Speaker A: Both. I mean, it starts with the person themselves, and then you got to believe in the value. The companies wouldn't be in business otherwise if they didn't have something of benefit. And if they don't, well, it won't be a matter of time. It's only a matter of time.
And guess what? That's where the competition rolls in. And it's only a matter of time until someone feasts and someone suffers from famine. But I'm a believer. I think of this bell curve where if you have 50% of the calls going positive, great outcome, very difficult and hard to navigate. There's going to be that very small distribution of, let's just look at the negative first. People who are absolute jerks, they like to play games. I'm going to reference my dad on this one. He's told me stories of how he can play mind games with people. And he'll talk with you all day long, he'll chat it up. But 20 minutes from now, he might hit you with the question, so how many other calls could you have made between the time you started talking with me and now? A little difficult to get by that. So some people, unbookable prospects, it's going to happen. The other small distribution on the other end is the unicorn. Prospects who are waiting all day, they love taking meetings, because that's just the type of people are we can't rely on those. That's not enough. So there is a 95 plus maybe percent of the time where that's the SDR if you know what to say and how to navigate it. I mean, some calls will be easier and some calls take a lot of work to get to, but it starts with the SDR and you might not do it in the first call. It might take several of them to get there. But if you can get the prospect to see the value and buy in, I think that it's only a matter of time till they eventually say yes.
[00:42:16] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. But preparation is key. I think that point. So I want to give it back to you a little bit instead of kind of driving this question. Is there anything that. We've got a bunch of different listeners, we've got people who are C suite, we've got people VP marketing, VP sales, and also a bunch of SDR videos. Now, in terms of messaging, is there any techniques, any tricks, anything that you see working better, another you want to share with us? Maybe let's start a conversation. But you would see value for audience to try something different?
[00:42:51] Speaker A: I would say honestly, not immediately, because advanced techniques. I think that I always like to make at least one book reference here. Chris Voss has never split the difference. As a hostage negotiator for the FBI, he talks tremendously and extensively about advanced techniques, labeling, the tone matching and mirroring. I mean, things like that. That takes time. It takes experience. It takes instincts. And not everybody has instincts early on. That's where practice or throwing your head into the fire, getting burned a few times and learning through trial and error comes into play. But I'm a believer that if you can master the fundamentals, getting through 30 seconds, establishing that social proof, staying curious, knowing that objections are inevitable, I'm going to welcome them. And I do need to have some sort of value that's tailored to you.
If you can focus on the fundamentals, the world is your oyster.
[00:43:49] Speaker B: That makes sense. Now, let's move quickly towards emails and LinkedIn.
How do you use that as part of your process?
What's your go to use of those things? You mentioned that as passive income. So do you believe in sequencing?
[00:44:05] Speaker A: Absolutely. It's all a process and a matter of patience. It's never one and done and it does take time. I believe that less is more.
Thinking less and doing more yielded me a lot more results. Because the worst action is inaction, right. Rather than me sitting and staring and editing and tweaking and tailoring and sending it along to my superior. And asking for their feedback is a waste of time, right? I'd rather just send it, see what happens, and then deal with the response as it comes. But in terms of an actual structure, again, less is more. I believe in really a three pronged approach.
Prospects care about themselves more than me. So I always begin. And LinkedIn is just a shorter form of email. I'll say it more in the form of an email.
You, you, you, you prospect, I will tailor it around you. My research, your background, the things that I'm noticing in the space or my past conversations, it's all about you. And that then again, leads me to me, what I'm noticing, the value that we have to offer. And then all that I've left is an assertive call to action at the end. Here's what I want. When does your calendar open up for a conversation? When I'm not catching you out of the blue, it starts with you a little bit about me.
Sharp, assertive, confident, call to action email, same thing. I mean, emails allow for more. You have to be mindful of a lot more. Like word counts using text effects, I mean, links and attachments that could get you sent to spam. But I only like to send attachments on one occasion when people ask for them. And if I'm doing a cold email, you've never asked for anything. So I will hold off on sending.
[00:45:56] Speaker B: That more information you send us. That's another pandemic. Sometimes people sending you like a bunch of information like you'll have. I'm sending some information like I've got an hour to review.
[00:46:06] Speaker A: Exactly. The other problem with that is it's.
[00:46:09] Speaker B: Actually very lazy because they should do the job of a good prospector is to, first of all, probably do the right qualification to know that you're the right person to speak to and make it very easy for you to understand why. Like, we're going back to the why? Why me? Why now? Right?
[00:46:26] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:46:27] Speaker B: And that's where I think some presumption potentially, I know you not assumptive, but I think making some hypothesis of saying, but this is, this is what I've been looking at can end the prospect to, okay, okay, well, understand what you're doing it actually, because, you know, I think when someone is calling me, the first thing that I'm trying to discover before I actually try to understand what they're about is how much research they've done. And maybe because it's the nature of me being in the business and believing in research and being annoyed when my guy is on the research, right. But I find it very rude when someone asks me for time and if not even spend more than two minutes to actually look at who I am, what I've been doing, what could be happening in my professional life at the time of speaking, and quite frankly, there's lots of information there. You just need to listen to a few of the podcasts. I know you've got AI. You could do like world tune, get the podcast, get all like five, six of them. Put that into GPT, say, summarize and tell me what you know that guy is speaking about.
[00:47:26] Speaker A: If Chad GPT could write the perfect email to send to Ray to book him in one try, well, he would be out of business.
[00:47:33] Speaker B: I don't think he would send the perfect email because it's impossible.
[00:47:35] Speaker A: There's no such thing as a perfect email.
[00:47:37] Speaker B: What he can do is to accelerate. My point with AI is that it can accelerate your research. All right, I could, look, that podcast would be, I don't know, let's say 45 minutes, an hour long. Okay. Someone could listen to that at one point to 1.5 to go a little bit quicker. We still take the time to go straight to find eventually maybe a piece in the middle. Well, I would say something that is relevant to them, or you would say, well, this is what we're doing from a training perspective. But someone who is selling lms, for example, or someone who is selling a training whatever should be and try to sell it to us, they should find this episode, they should try to understand what's going on, and they should use some of that information, right. Because it's available. The problem is that they don't even think about looking for it. Back in the days, I would look at newspaper, right? I want to speak to American Airlines, okay. Or maybe I'm just going to refer an article that I found in a newspaper at the weekend while the price of the kerosene went up. But how do you deal with it? Because you can't produce the flight. So, you know, I'm thinking maybe there is some saving conversation that you guys may have from the board recently, and that's kind of what triggered me to contact you, because that's where we help people. But I don't know. You know, let's go to the business case. But we used to look at the newspaper. Now you've got Internet, you've got podcasts. People are staking people like personal branding. And then on top of that, you've got tools that help you to digest the stuff, sum it up and give you the sentiment, give you information, and you only even need to a solution like wartime. You don't even need to listen to the podcast. You just have wartune. Put the podcast, you've got the transcript being written straight away. You take that within, summarize it and summarize the moment where they speak about operatics memory blue and what they are doing from the strategic perspective, it actually does it for you. So you've got no excuse to do your research anymore. You've got no excuse. And I think that's really something that, for me is upsetting me. When someone call you, ask you for time, and they've not done their research, it's just ridiculous.
[00:49:41] Speaker A: You're not credible.
[00:49:42] Speaker B: Well, it's also disrespectful.
Right?
[00:49:45] Speaker A: Lazy.
[00:49:46] Speaker B: Yeah, it's lazy. That's like sending the information. Figure out yourself if it's good for you or not. No, not good.
[00:49:54] Speaker A: That's where the sdRs, it goes back to them. It's on them. It's a lot of, I say, control what you can control and what we've been talking a lot about. The most critical piece, the first place I begin is you, prospect. Credibility. My research, my homework. And that's the one thing that gets removed first, I find, because it does take a lot of time and there's so many resources out there. There is no excuse. I mean, information on the web. There were tech weekly magazines where you'd have to flip through pages. Now I just click a few buttons, it's on my screen.
[00:50:26] Speaker B: That's all.
[00:50:27] Speaker A: Credibility. That's research. The other thing that comes with that, because to truly add value, it's taking the prospect and then tying it to yourself. And I want to add something to the value. That is an often misconception where people believe that the solutions sell themselves. But I mean, I don't often know.
What if there's no competitors? What if you're like me in a space where it was an innovative technology, where no one had ever heard of it before?
[00:50:54] Speaker B: I've seen some down rare.
[00:50:56] Speaker A: It's very rare, but it's way difficult. Now all of a sudden, I need to change the language that I'm speaking in. Credibility and research is always at the forefront. I will always start there. But when I talk about me and my solution, I actually change that and remove solution from the equation. Yeah, because I speak in terms of value. Value is so much more substantial. It's. We're increasing this, we are decreasing that, we're achieving or enabling you.
[00:51:27] Speaker B: And, you know, you mentioned something more, less is more, like less is better, right? So you know you've got the value and I agree with you, it's probably 95% okay. But then you've got companies like ServiceNow, Snowflake, Snowflakes Salesforce, Palo Alto Networks is a good example, parallel to networks. I remember working on that campaign and the pitch was application firewall and we can do all those things and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. People could not really get it. No, they could not get the use case. That was back in 2007. So that's really when Palo Welse network was still very much a startup back then, 2007, 2008, and they just came in Europe. So we didn't work with them in the US, but we worked with them in Europe. And I remember within a week or so we had the VP EMEA, the sales guys, look, I'm going to meetings, people don't care about blah blah. Just tell them that we're going to stop people going on Facebook the rest of the day and they can just go on Facebook at lunchtime and we can go. Because Facebook back then was mental. Everybody was on Facebook, literally, it's died down now it's TikTok. And Instagram is like false of people now technically Facebook, but Facebook, everybody was on Facebook and everybody was checking Facebook, people were speaking to each other, it was really intense and companies didn't care about much, but just getting people off Facebook to get productivity back and they would change a very simple message. People like, yeah, I want to meet with you, how do you do that? I will show you. It's very simple, you just plug it, you put the feet, you put the tape in the video and off you go. They were really selling like, okay, but that's to your point. One in a thousand solution. We still have some now been like fantastic startups who really come with something disruptive that makes sense, with proof value that is quick to ascertain, right? And those guys are selling quickly. And for those guys it's just about the jugular, about what's the real value and what's delivered. But then you've got solutions that are a little bit more complex. Like for example, for me, what's more complex at the moment still is things like Iot Internet of things, but you're not going to say to people, I'm selling captors and something that makes sense of them. Now you want to sell use case, right? So you're managing bathroom while instead of sending someone every week with a van to fill up the towels, would be useful to know actually, when someone needs to go, so you could have less people running around with a van, you reduce your carbon footprint.
[00:53:57] Speaker A: You know, there's the value.
[00:54:00] Speaker B: So you explain the use case versus what the actual technology is. Exactly. Technology is boring. The use case is the value. And that's very difficult for a BDSDR because you've got with IoT, technically, it could be a workbench, it could be this oura ring or whatever. It could be captors for the door. So you're seeing how many people are coming through. So you need to go and maintenance maintain the door, capturing the lift to know when to fix the lift, or maintain the lift before a breakdown or stuff like that. But then if you don't have to live breaking down, it's quite practical for the people living. So explaining the use case and understanding all the use case and then be able to vehicle those use case with the right people is complex. So you still have those pockets.
[00:54:40] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:54:41] Speaker B: Where you really need to do your research and almost try to come up with ideas before you engage with the prospect. Is there anything from a messaging perspective that you think I've not asked you that is critical to share? I mean, I know that went there already. I just want to make sure as we cover all your piece, because I know how passionate you are with all the different research you've done and all the people that you've helped here, is there anything that we've made that we've not touched on? We got all the fair amount of.
[00:55:07] Speaker A: Ground, I'll say challenges, things that hold people back. And I'll end with one core takeaway that I tell everyone at the end of the day, whether it be breaking down calls, because, I mean, doing call breakdowns to evaluate messaging. I mean, it's uncomfortable. It's difficult. A lot of times if you don't have much experience, especially here at our company, we have people who join, like me when I first got. You don't have any tech sales experience. I don't know the jargon. That's why knowing what the solution is doesn't mean the same as what's the value behind it? Why does it matter? So when I think of, I'll start with the not so good pitfalls of people, it's sounding scripted, reading right off the script, just taking that at face value. Then you become robotic, disingenuous, fake, maybe even deceptive. And deception in sales, not a good combination. Or just forced. I'm forcing it because that's what I'm being told to do. Personalization is critical. And that's how you come across as more of a human. That's how you come across as natural, authentic, believable, trustworthy and authentic. And you have to rely on the instincts. At a certain point I tell people, cut the script in half, get through 30 seconds and don't get hung up on. Stay curious and ask questions and then see where the conversation leads. Because there's no such thing as a perfect email. There's no such thing as a perfect call. Yeah. There's only things that you could do differently if you wanted to change the outcome.
[00:56:37] Speaker B: If you try your way, if you don't try your own way, if you think it's a number game, it is a numbers game.
[00:56:44] Speaker A: It is 100%, but I don't think it's 100% number.
[00:56:47] Speaker B: I think it's a number and quality game.
[00:56:48] Speaker A: Yeah, you're right. Actually. On that note, there is the mentality that we've been discussing. So not 100%, but the numbers got.
[00:56:55] Speaker B: The quality at scale. It can become a number game. Yes, but I think there is no point industrializing a shit message, a shitty email and say to 10,000 people to get one response. Because basically you've got 99,000, you know, whatever people, which was the rest. Yes, 100,000.
So you have 9999. People are just like thinking, God, that's gays and idiots. And one doesn't actually respond to you, but we celebrate the one that respond versus the one that don't respond. Right? So I think, I think the number game is, it makes sense if the number is driven by quality.
And I think you mentioned it. For me, for us to sum up is I want to leave that call or that human interaction having had a quality conversation. My job is not to book a meeting. My job is to have a quality conversation about my product. My solution to the prospect, have an intelligent conversation. So they've got all the elements to make a decision if they want to meet with us or not.
[00:57:50] Speaker A: And then on top of that, that's the beauty. The beauty is, first off I go in with that mentality. I'm here for a conversation. I see what happens. I let my instincts kick in. But then my question I posed earlier now, how satisfied are you with the results? If you're satisfied and you're doing great, I will see you at the next happy hour. And the first round's on me. We can celebrate each other's success, but if the answer is not, I'm not satisfied. We need to have that solution oriented. What are we going to change now? We can tweak the numbers and the data, but you got to start with the mentality of do I want it? Am I hungry enough?
All right. I've accepted that I have room to grow. What can we do differently?
[00:58:30] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. Agree with you. Very good. That was good fun, Ben. That's cool insight. So I really, really appreciate your time today.
If anyone wants to get in touch with you, what's the best way to find you? Like, if anyone. So we've got the internal people. We've got the external people. So you may have a few in town, you know, I mean, they would know you. If they are based in DC, it's difficult to miss you. But there may be some guys from our european team or some guys from our hype team that may not have as much interaction, wants to reach out to you. You may have some people that are listening, that are outside of the business, may have a team of insights. I'm seeing what they believe that they could do with a little bit of support. What's the best way to get to know?
[00:59:10] Speaker A: I'll give you three. And this is because we're talking sales. I'm prospectable just like anybody else. First things first. Email. Good luck. We get too many emails. If you're a sleuth, you'll find it. Phones. If you want to call me, call me. I get calls. Tons too. I've never actually answered any because I'm still waiting for the voicemail. So there's your secret. If you've listened long enough to this and you want to use it against me, leave me a voicemail. That's how I know you care. Otherwise, I wonder, are you just dialing away into oblivion hoping to get me? That's not how you get me. Easiest way would be LinkedIn. I have a LinkedIn profile. I'm active frequently. I'm a message away, but starts with credibility and research. Gotta prove it's LinkedIn.
I'm a simple search away. Benjamin Hunter is my name on there, and I look forward to any messages that pop in my inbox.
[01:00:02] Speaker B: Well, thank you, Ben. It was a pleasure to have you on the show.
[01:00:04] Speaker A: Likewise.
You've been listening to b two b revenue acceleration.
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