1: John Takes Your Questions

John Barrows, Make It Happen Mondays. How's everybody doing today? I doubt everybody's going to be doing as awesome as I am, just mainly because the Patriots just pulled off one of the most ridiculous games in history. Not even Super Bowl history, not football history in history. If anybody watched that, I know everybody else out of New England is a Patriot hater. But you got to respect, you have to respect what they just did and what they've been doing for 15 years. And that's actually, you know, today, Make It Happen Mondays is all about like nuggets, like answering questions that people have so we can get right into some execution oriented type things, right? Hopefully I can add some value here.

But it's also to just share some nuggets and tips and ideas to just help us get better. So pretty informal, hit me up with questions. I got a tech team that's helping me out following some of these questions. But let's get going here. I mean, the thing, because I'll start it with the Patriot stuff, some learning lessons. One is just never give up. I mean, I'll have to say at halftime, I pretty much gave up. I was like, there ain't no way they're coming back from this. But then all of a sudden, you kept with it. And they just came back. And one of the posts I wrote a long time ago was about how sales is about momentum. You know, a lot of things are about momentum is like when you when things are moving in the right direction, they seem to keep moving in the right direction.

So you want to capitalize on that. But when things are moving in the wrong direction, you got to figure out a way to stop that. And in sales, that's like every deal, you know, when you have a great call with a client, call up another one because that that momentum will will carry through that enthusiasm will carry through when you're going south, when you're moving in the wrong direction, you got to stop it somehow and look for those small little things to try to move it in the other direction. Right. Obviously, last night, all the momentum was with Atlanta for almost three and a half quarters. But then you saw the calmness of Tom Brady and they kept getting these little wins. It was first downs.

They weren't trying to hit home runs or they weren't trying to get touchdowns every single throw. It was let's get a first down. Let's get out of bounds. Let's manage the clock. And they came back and they did it. So needless to say, that's really what, you know, to me, momentum is something right now, for instance, I'm on a pretty hot streak right now with sales because I keep prospecting every single day. I keep making sure that my pipeline is nice and full so that I can it can be easier for me when it comes to negotiations or discounts or anything like that, because I always say I want to put myself in a position where I want your business. I don't need your business. And that's really what puts me in a good position is constant prospecting and keeping up on that momentum probably like sales is kind of like a train, right?

It takes a while to get going and a while to slow down. I'm on that train right now, and I'm trying to help you guys get there too. So let's open it up for some questions. You know, I'll keep throwing out little nuggets and tips and things throughout this. So hopefully for those people that aren't on live right now can actually, you know, go back and get some value out of this at a later date. But I'm gonna be doing this every Monday. Let's see if I'm actually looking at myself here. I'll be doing this every Monday at 1230 East Coast time. And you know, I don't have a really huge Facebook Facebook following right now on my LinkedIn or my Facebook page because I haven't really been trying to focus on that all that much.

Um, but I think this is a new medium. I mean, for those of you who saw my post last week, it's really about trying new stuff out. I mean, I got on Snapchat probably a month ago. I'm sorry, a month ago, but probably about six months, six to nine months ago, didn't even know what it was, but heard Gary Vaynerchuk talking about it, talking about how important it was to stay up on all this stuff. And so I started using it. And it was, it ended up being a great way for me to interact with my audience and give them answers and really connect one-on-one from a coaching standpoint. And now I got like 4,000 people following me on Snapchat and still some doing some stupid stuff on there. I really don't really quite understand it, but I'm leveraging it.

Same thing with Facebook Live, right? Facebook Live is something where you start pop up on the screen probably, you know, six months ago. It's like all these people doing Facebook Live and it was cool. So let's leverage it as a medium, see if it works. Um, you know, my goal is to try to add recurring value, always trying to be add recurring value to people on a regular basis. Um, because I think if you add recurring value, then all of a sudden the relationships, the money and everything else comes with it. So this is one of my attempts at, uh, trying to add value, even though probably I'm guessing not too many people are going to get on this one. Um, cause we started promoting it, but, uh, hopefully this will snowball into yet another way, um, that we can engage and I can add value.

So I got Phillip here. Um, some, some, thanks for the question, Phillip. So Phillip asks, you know, John, if there's one piece of advice you could give to somebody, you know, you, somebody at 22 or something like that, um, in their sales career. Uh, cause I get a lot of this, a lot of people call me up, Hey John, you'd have a pretty successful career. You know, any advice now that I'm 41, which kind of sucks, but whatever. Um, my number one, if I were to really look back on it, my number one piece of advice was to, um, split test everything you do. Right. So every time you're trying something like I was just motoring through early on my career, I just, I just put my head down and I just worked and I didn't really think about, I didn't think about it too much.

Uh, I didn't know much. So all I figured is, Hey, I'm just going to work harder than everybody else. But if I thought about it with split testing and trying different things out and, and consciously taking that approach, I could have gotten a lot better, a lot faster. And when I say AB split test, I mean, you know, choose one thing and two solutions to that one thing, and then try 10 times this way, 10 times that way. So for instance, um, you know, messaging, say you're going after CMOs in the healthcare industry. Well, come up with two approaches to CMOs in the healthcare industry and make 20 phone calls to CMOs using this approach and message and 20 calls using that message. See what happens.

Emails. If you have one type of email that could go out to a group, like say a hundred people fit a certain profile. Well, you know, let's break that up into 25, 25, 25, 25, and see what happens. Which ones get the higher yield objection handling. Same thing. You know, we all get the same objections, write them down and then come up with two different approaches. And the next 10 times it comes up, deal with it this way. Next 10 times deal with it that way. That split test mentality helps me figure out things a lot faster. Um, and, and, and helps you make the job a lot more interesting too, right? Specifically if you're in inside sales, doing a lot of calls all day long. I mean, if you show up and just say, you know what, I'm going to make my 50 dials today or whatever it is, and just mow through the day, this is a, this is a brutal profession.

And within six months, you're going to want to be like, yeah, I don't want to do this anymore. But if every day you wake up and say, you know what, what do I want to work on today? How am I going to try something new? Then you can start playing around with things, right? So then it starts to become a lot more interesting. And again, you get better a lot faster. So Suzanne, thanks for joining. I'm looking for a break into some new industries. How do you prepare for a meeting pitch with a new client? It's an industry that's unfamiliar to yours. You know, do your homework, right? I think we all need to be pretty, I think right now quality over quantity is critical with where we are in the marketplace in general.

And I'm going to go back to, you know, I think a lot of us are in a dangerous spot right now in sales because we, you know, marketing automation, all that stuff is starting to move upstream super fast and consumers are just having way more access to information than they ever had before. And sales reps just keep going through the same things. They keep going through the motions, right? They, they blast out template emails, they make generic cold calls, you know, they, they ask banned questions and go through that or they press play on demos. And you know, I go through, I can't tell you how many demos on a weekly basis from sales reps trying to sell me stuff, usually to sell to my clients, right?

Sales tools and all that stuff. But, um, and I, all of them sound exactly the same. So, Hey John, thanks so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. So we're going to go through like a 30 minute demo here. And if you have any questions, uh, as we go through it, let me know. Okay. And then they, and then they press play and just drone on for the next 30 minutes, going through slide by slide by slide by slide that they, that they, they learned in bootcamp, right? That they got their badge for whoop-dee-doo. And then, you know, pause intermittently and say stuff like, Hey, um, you know, does that make sense? Does that make sense? Nobody ever says no to that question. Usually when I used to ask that question, by the way, I would be asking myself, I'd be like, does that make sense?

Cause what I just said there does, I don't really know what the hell I even said. Um, so, you know, with that, and then at the end they always go, okay, you know, I have any questions. Well, no. And almost all demos in the same way. Well, you know what, John sounds interesting. You know, why don't you send me some information and follow me in a couple of weeks or something like that. Yeah. Does that make sense? Good. It's not. Um, one of my posts of your, oh, thank you, uh, Carlos. Um, but that, that is to me so frustrating because that is content. That is not what we do as sales professionals. Like one of the things, Gary Vaynerchuk, um, who actually got me into Snapchat and got me into doing this Facebook live stuff, um, after reading his posts, you know, he talks a lot about content versus context.

You see, everybody talks about content is king, content is king, those types of things. But he said, if content, fine, if content is king, then context is God. And that got me thinking about sales versus marketing, right? Marketing is content. Sales is context. If we as sales professionals are not putting any content or context around our content, what good are we? So Susanna, going back to your question about the presentations, it's, you know, have some context around it. Ask thoughtful questions. Don't say stuff like, Hey, tell me about your priorities. I mean, look, I'm always a priority based seller. Okay. But, and the way I used to get to that was by saying, Hey, tell me about your priorities, which is, I used to get very vague answers, but now I do my homework on that, that industry, that persona, that person, and come up with questions that are like what other people's priorities are in those roles and put some context around it.

Say, Hey, one of the things I wanted to talk to you about is, you know, what are your priorities before, before we get into our demo here, you know, we're, we're typically working with CMOs in the healthcare industry who are telling us that their top priorities are X, Y, and Z right now. Walk me through a little, you know, a few of your priorities so that as I go through this demo, I can kind of pinpoint the aspects of this demo that are going to be most relevant to you. Um, you know, so another one for Suzanne, you know, join on LinkedIn groups of those people, right? Those industries that you're thinking about getting into or trying to get into not to troll for leads, but to actually, um, to, to look for, to listen to, to the questions that they're asking, the, the vocabulary that they use and try to add some value.

I mean, I, I joined in link groups, LinkedIn groups all the time and, and answer questions, um, to say, you know, try this, try that not to say, Oh, call me. Cause I can train you on that. It's just to try to add value. So one more point I'll make and then I'll move on from some more questions here, but the, you know, the ability of sales reps to have a business acumen conversation, not just speeds and feeds or not just processes or sales techniques, business acumen is a huge, huge, um, thing that I think we need to focus more on as sales professionals so we can have better business level conversations. And again, the more research you do on the people that you're reaching out to, uh, you know, not just their LinkedIn profile, but literally go type a blog post.

If you're going after CMOs in the healthcare industry, type in CMOs, healthcare industry priorities, 2017, see what comes up, read a few of those blog posts and come up with some thoughtful questions. Cause I think I don't care how experienced you are in sales. The number one thing we all got to get better in doing is asking better questions, right? And I think those questions where we dig a little bit deeper show that we've done enough homework to, to ask those questions, questions, but don't pretend like to be a thought leader when you're not. Nothing pisses me off more than kids who are, you know, trying to, you know, trying to be thought leaders when they're obviously not, they're brand new in an industry, they're brand new in a, in a segment and they're pretending like they know something.

You know, again, I'll go to Gary on this one. He said, you can't be a 22 year old life coach, right? I mean, yeah, sure. Maybe do a 10 year old kid, right? But it's the same thing with thought leader. Like you're not gonna, you just brand new into, into an industry, you're brand new into, you know, whatever you're selling. Like you're not a thought leader. So stop pretending like you are, but you can move in that direction. And when I say move in that direction, start educating yourself. So instead of checking your fantasy leagues or any of that dumb shit on, you know, in the morning, read periodicals, read stuff about people and industries and personas that you're, you're going after to learn and then translate that into your questions.

All right. So those are some, you know, some things to think about at least, um, that, uh, that could hopefully help you crack into that. But I think the more genuine curiosity you show, the better off you're going to be when it comes to cracking into new accounts, right? New, new industries and new territories. So I said, there was another one. Um, let's see, uh, let's see. Aaron, right? Yeah. Hey, what's up Aaron? How you doing? Um, thanks for joining. So what three pieces of information you must collect during the first meetings calls with a prospect? So during the qualification process, this is, um, you know, it's a big one for me again, I'm going to go back to priority based stuff. Uh, I found that two of the hardest things, hardest things to do in sales in general are going over somebody's head without pissing somebody off and, um, and creating urgency when it's seemingly not there.

Right. Cause a lot of us, it's like, yeah, this sounds good, but I got a million other priorities that I got working on right now. So why don't we just put this to the bottom of the list to me? If I can't, both of those problems going over somebody's head without pissing them off and, and creating urgency when it's seemingly not there, both get addressed with something that I try both with priorities, because if I can really understand the top priorities of the company, let's put it this way. If you can't understand the top priorities where the CEO stood up in the beginning of the year and said, these are the three things I'm trying to figure out, you know, that we as a business need to do this year to execute on our plan.

If I can't tie my solution to one or two of those, at least good luck, creating urgency, good luck, you know, going over somebody's head to have that value oriented conversation. So favorite way of going over somebody's head without pissing them off is ask them questions that they don't know the answers to. And a lot of that has to do with, you know, saying, you know, reading through priorities and, and you know, those types of things. So I can ask those types of questions because if you don't know them, that's okay. I'm not trying to embarrass you or anything, but I really need to know what those are so that, um, because you and I could waste a lot of time down here. Say, you know, say I have a solution that I'm selling to you and you're below the power line.

Well, you know, we could waste a lot of time. You could be all on in line with what, hey, John, you know, this is definitely something we should do, whatever. But as we bubble this up top to go look for budget for it, if it's not crystal clear that to that person about the value, um, connected to the priorities, then the likelihood of it happening is not high. That's why I need to know those. And by the way, I don't want to go over your head just to go over your head. Like, I want you to broker this conversation with me and I want you to be there, but I need that information. Same thing with creating urgency. Like if you can't tap into somebody's priorities and really make that connection, urgency is, I mean, the only way you can manufacture it, right?

You can manufacture with discounts and all that stuff, which is stupid. By the way, discounts, that's the saddest way of selling. Try, try to hold off on discounts as long as you possibly can. Um, but anyways, you know, so that's why those priorities are so important. And Aaron, to your question are really one of the three things it's, it's to really dig through that. Um, and again, don't just go in and tell me about your priorities, but say, Hey, you know what? I've been looking at you guys. I've been reading through your website. I noticed you're doing some really cool things here. We're also working with other people in your industry and some of the main things they're dealing with this year, moving into 2017 or X, Y, and Z, you know, could you help me understand a little bit of that?

And then again, that leads to the demo as well, because I want to do that first and then customize my demo based on those. I've always said, you know, the top three priorities, those are the ones I'm paying attention to everything else. I don't really care too much about. All right. So Aaron, if there's three things I would say, um, you know, I don't want to go to band because I think bands crap, but I think the need is the biggest factor of band, you know, do they need this and what are their priorities there? So if you could go through their priorities, timeline two is a critical one because the toughest thing about closing, by the way, um, biggest problem with closing is that we're closing on our timeline, not theirs, right?

So if you're closing on your timeline, cause you've got to hit the end of the month, end of the quarter, end of the year, whatever it is, that's the worst thing about closing. That's why we call up into the month. We've conditioned our prospects to expect that that's why they wait. And so, um, you know, I want to get, I want to get you going before that. So timeline is important for me to understand what's that critical timeline. Why do you need this in place by that certain time? Because if there is a legitimate need for that, because it fits into your priorities, then I can back, back out of it and talk about how we need to get there. And then I can push, right? We hear about challenger sale.

We hear about, you know, thought leader, those types of things. And challenger sale is really about pushing somebody to, to challenging them because you've done this a million times. They've maybe only done it once a year. So how do I push you? Well, you don't have the right to push me at all until you've dug in and understood what my priorities and what those compelling events, why I need this. But once you find that out, like legitimately, that's where you can push. That's where you can challenge. All right. So hopefully that helps. Uh, another question from Connor here, how do you differentiate between adding recurring value and wasting time on business type questions exist, uh, existing clients have, um, adding recurring value and wasting time on business type questions existing customers have?

There is a balance. I mean, I, to me, it starts with, um, tearing out your accounts. Uh, you know, everything to me, you know, if you follow on account-based marketing, account-based sales, it's, you know, everything starts with that ideal customer profile. What do they look like? And I don't mean just from a revenue standpoint or a size standpoint. I mean, the nuances there, like what technologies are they using? Who's the competition in there? All these different things, because that allows me to really kind of say, okay, here are my tier ones. Here are my tier twos. Here are my tier threes for my tier ones, existing customers, new ones. It doesn't matter. Those are the ones I'm going to take that quality approach to.

I'm going to answer questions. I'm going to, I'm going to try to engage with them at a different level, really thoughtfully. My tier twos, I'm going to practice. I'm going to kind of take a little bit more of the quantity approach to where I'll send out a whole group of emails or whatever to that persona. And my tier threes are practice. Um, you know, I used to throw my tier threes away and say, I look, I don't even watch these clients. You guys, you're bad customers anyways. But now I love them because anytime I'm trying something new, I run a list of my tier threes and I, I just try stuff, right? I puke all over myself. Who cares? As long as I'm not doing anything offensive, I can kind of do whatever I want to do.

So pricing, like if you're sick of discounting, for instance, um, and you have to practice holding your ground on discounting, well, get a bunch of tier threes in your pipeline. When the pricing conversation comes up, just be like, Hey, I just want to let you know the pricing is $20,000 and we don't discount. So I just want to make sure that we're clear with our front. See what happens. Right. You're probably going to piss a lot of, you're probably going to get people, Whoa, all right. That's way more expensive. But then those are probably not going to be good customers anyways. So the more you practice on that, the better you're going to get with delivering it to a client and you can move upstream to your tier ones or tier twos and tiers ones.

And so, you know, when you talk about wasting time on business type questions, existing clients have now, Carlos, uh, yeah. Oh, Connor. Um, Connor, could you do me a favor and just clarify for me a little bit on that one? Cause, um, you mean the questions that they have that you're trying to help them from a business standpoint and I'll answer it that way. Um, or let's see, hit next year. Yeah. Um, or are you talking about us asking them business oriented questions is what I, what I'm trying to understand. I'm going to move this up a little bit cause I'm missing out on some questions, but yeah. So I'll take both as Connor's potentially writing something there, but, um, asking business questions just to ask questions, that's, that's a waste of time.

That's a waste of everybody's time. You've got to have a reason for your question. Why are you? And that's that, there's a nugget right there, by the way, every time you ask a question, every time you come up with a question to think about, okay, you know, what am I going to ask this client during this meeting? Pretend like they're going to flip it right back on you or just assume they're going to flip it right back on you and say, why do you need to know that? And you got to have a really damn good answer. Like when I was doing, when I was doing this, uh, this training, I took this Basho training, which is what I represent now, you know, I resell now some of it and they had this perfect meeting thing where they were asking, um, questions.

So it's about asking questions at a level of industry, then the company, then the individual, then the projects, uh, then the environment, and then the clothes. And, you know, I'd never really thought about asking industry level questions, which is stuff like, you know, you talk about where the industry is headed and you use that for a higher level engagement. And the idea there is to get somebody talking, right? Get them talking about something that they are the expert in. And so I was like, all right, cool. Let me start doing this. So I wrote down my questions. I had this first meeting with a, with a CEO and I straight up, you know, I asked him this, what I thought was a really interesting question.

And midway through that question, he goes, he kind of pauses and he goes, wait a minute, why the hell do you need to know that? And I was like a deer in headlights. I was like, I don't know. Cause I want to get your temperature level up and get you talking about something that, uh, that you were the expert in. Um, I mean, that's literally what's in the back of my head when he asked me that question. I'm like, Oh shit. Uh, and now thankfully I had been in that industry in the past, so I was able to recover from it, but it hit me square in the teeth with why do you need to know that? And you gotta have a pretty damn good answer to it. So I think when about not wasting time, don't, you know, just make sure you're asking questions for the right reasons.

Um, and, and, and thoughtful reasons, you know, stuff like tell me about your business in today's world is such a dumb thing to say, or tell me about your priorities. It doesn't like, there's so much information out there. Ask contextual clients, uh, questions, remember context versus content, you know, put it, put it in some context of why you're asking that question. And that hopefully it'll help really engage there. All right. So, uh, we got another one here. I'm going after Kevin. What's up, man? Uh, so what's your approach to when you have a deal about to close, but then the prospect goes, am I, yeah, this is the whole gone dark one. Um, this one's, this one pisses me off a lot because you had a really good relationship or if you thought you did, uh, the problem is a lot of times we had happy years where we're a sales reps.

We hear what we want to hear. We don't hear what actually is going on. So first and foremost, I want to kind of say, you know, let's back up a little bit and say, how do we get to this point? Um, one of my favorite nuggets of all time, by the way, and this will tie to the, the, the approach to addressing the gone dark is what I call a summary email is one of my favorite nuggets, by the way, right? This one started highlighted. Uh, I actually have it as a template in my, uh, in my email where you and I say, you and I have a conversation today, right? It's not that I'm lying to you. Say, say you're trying to sell to me. It's not that I'm lying to you. It's just that as soon as we get off the phone, my boss comes in and changes my priorities.

Um, you know, your competition comes in and starts talking to me about something different that gets me totally off track or whatever. So now like two or three weeks later, you could be selling something that's completely irrelevant at this point. And for you to try to remind me what you and I had a conversation about two or three weeks ago, come on, give me a break. I barely remember what I said five minutes ago, forget about five days ago. All right. Um, but if you have it documented and I've confirmed it now, you got something to hold me professionally accountable. So the way it works is this, like we have a conversation and at the end of that conversation, by the way, you have to let them know it's coming because if you don't let them know it's coming, um, the response rates drop pretty low, but you say, Hey, you know what?

Thanks so much for your time. I appreciate it. Um, some next steps and action items here before I go ahead and do all that though, what I'm going to do is I'm going to briefly summarize what I was able to gain from our conversation today. And I'm going to send it over to you in a quick email. Could you do me a favor, take a look at it and email me back to let me know if it's all accurate. And if I missed anything, right? So again, you've got to let them know it's coming. And then once they email, then right after you get off the phone, take all your notes, don't write a book here, right? This isn't a chance for you to reiterate your value proposition or anything like that. This is purely to confirm what you heard from them.

So we all talk about active listening. How do you show active listening? Well, this is showing active listening. So then you say, okay, great talking to you today. Below is brief summary. I was able to gain. Please email me back to let me know if it's all accurate. And if I missed anything, bullet points, your current situation is this, your timeline is this, your priorities. Remember that question, Aaron, timeline and priorities. Those are the two key factors there. Um, and then, you know, next steps, you know, here's the other, you know, here's the competition, here's your whatever. And then next steps, you're going to do this. I'm going to do that. And I send that to you and I get a yes, John, that's accurate.

So now say you and I have a conversation where we're supposed to call talk on Friday, like kind of final decision or something like that. And Friday comes and goes and lo and behold, you don't show up, right? Well, instead of Monday, touching base, checking in, seeing all the weekend wins, watch that game. It was fantastic. Um, instead of that crap, you could just take that email and say, Hey, John, send that email back to me and say, Hey John, um, not sure what happened on Friday. What's the best way to get 10 minutes back on your calendar so we can reset expectations based on we both agreed upon here. So again, that nice way of keeping you professionally accountable, right? So now, but say you still flake, say you still don't know response.

See you later. I take that same email and I, well, I'll make probably so to say that's a Friday. We were supposed to talk Monday. I send that email Tuesday. I might call you, Hey, you still, you know, I'm not sure what happened. Let's get back on the calendar here. Wednesday. I'll take that same your typical followup, right? Like, um, Hey, you know, you're still interested, those types of things. And then probably about, I'd say, you know, in less than two weeks after a committed followup date from the client and after about four or five emails, mind you, keep taking that summary email and replying all to it so that they can see how many times you've reached out to them. And then in your fifth or sixth email after about a week and a half or so reply all to it again and just erase the original subject line and just put, did I lose you?

Question mark. And when, when they open up the email, the next thing they see is just your signature file and the other five emails. I got like a 42 for 48 positive response rate on that one. Um, it'll go out of style soon. Um, that's a technique. It kind of replaces the, uh, the stuck under a rock email. That stupid one that everybody sends out as their cadence, you know, their final breakup email with a client that says, Hey, you know, I'm trying to reach out to you for a while now. Um, could you respond one, two or three below? Let me know what's going on. And one is you're really interested. You're just super busy. Two is you're not interested in taking me off your list. Three is you're stuck under a rock and you want me to call the police or you're getting eaten by an alligator or a hippo.

I mean, right. Uh, that to me is, is cheesy bullshit sales stuff. Um, no, I'll take that back. It's not cheesy bullshit sales stuff. It's a technique that worked, um, three years ago when nobody had heard it before. Right. I mean, the first time you get that email, you're like, all right, I'm not stuck under a rock, you know, sorry, John. But the very next time you get, you get an email like that, you know, it's a technique and you'll never reply to it again. And so it's the same thing with the, did I lose you one, by the way, that's kind of this, like, you know, right now it's working, but as soon as it gets out there and everybody starts sending, did I lose you emails? It's going to be one of those things where it's like, all right, you know what?

It ain't working anymore. So try that out. See if you can get people going. Um, let's see. Oh, and Carlos, um, how quickly should we jump on a new method of outreach? Well, when you say that I'm going to, and you can put some more context there if you want, but, um, a new approach, a new method of outreach. So to me, I think you always should be trying things, but you should be consciously trying them. You know, I try to give every approach at least, uh, 50, 50 chances, right? So if I'm making cold calls, I'm going to try one approach 50 times or so, just like ideally a hundred because it, first of all, it makes the math easy. Um, but, uh, if you know, like a hundred times to say, all right, this is working.

Right. Um, and that, and that's what, from a messaging standpoint. So calls and emails, emails, it's way easier to do because you've got tons of tracking stuff, but calls is a little bit harder. I go old school with phone. Like I just keep a notepad next to my desk until one, two, three, four, five, one, two, three, four, five. Right. Um, so that's, you know, but I think you should try new stuff all the time. New, new mediums, Facebook lives, Snapchat, engage that way. Be where your audience is. I mean, the number one reason I'm on Snapchat is because the, the, the social channel with the highest engagement for kids under the age of 26 years old is Snapchat. And that's one of my largest demographics is.

So if my number one demographics, number one social media channel is Snapchat, guess who has to be on Snapchat? This fucking 41 year old dude who still has no idea what it's all about. So, um, so, you know, be everywhere. And there's your followup, Carlos, which it just seems like every time I master something, a new thing comes out, you're right, man. It does. And it's going to keep happening. Um, I mean, if you think of the iPhone, right? Like if you're not, well, mine's, I'm watching my iPhone, but if you think of anything, cars, phones, they always get better. Clients get better. They're, they're more knowledgeable about what we do. So we got to get better. You know, somebody asked me this one time in a session a while back, and I always say there's no stupid questions, but yeah, there are in some ways.

Um, he said, Hey John, you know, clients are getting smarter and they're getting better and all this other stuff. So a sales rep's like, what do we, what do we do about that? And I was like, get better. I don't know what to tell you. You know, this is, you got to keep evolving. And so, and again, Carlos, you know, that to me is what keeps it interesting. Um, because I can start to figure things out. I'm, Ooh, all right, that doesn't work anymore. Let's try something new. And that's really where I can, you know, have some fun with this job and not get too droned out. So I'm going to answer one more question. Cause it's one o'clock. Um, but, uh, Martin on which metric would you take a close, closer look besides MRR and pipeline for a sales rep, for example, look onto unique leads companies.

Yeah. Okay. So, you know, what other metrics that you can use? Um, I mean, activity level is always there. It should be there just to make sure that the effort is there. And then pipeline is obvious, but social selling is really one of the hardest things to measure. Um, you know, and actually, uh, who does a really good job with some posts on this is a sales for life. So Jamie Shanks is a friend of mine and he runs sales for life, which is all about social selling. They got some real cool eBooks and stuff about how to measure the effects of social selling, but that's a, those are good ones to bring up there. You know, if you have key target accounts, for instance, where you're doing the ABM or ABE approach, um, or ABS approach.

Okay. How many new connections have you made on there through LinkedIn in the past week? Um, how many times have you posted unique content or at least put your flavor on content in the various social channels? How many groups are you actively engaged with on a, on a weekly basis and LinkedIn? Um, you know, those are the type of things that you can start to really dissect and get nuanced around from a measurement standpoint. Cause I do fundamentally believe you have to, it's all, it's quality is what wins the day, but the quantity needs to be there as well. You know, I just, people say, Oh, just work smarter. Shut up. You gotta work hard too. You gotta work your ass off. People ask me, John, what's the secret to success?

Working your ass off. I drank my way through four years of college with my marketing degree. You know, I'm not a dumb kid, but I wasn't the brainiac out there. Right. Um, I just worked harder than everybody else. I still do the most. And that to me is what success is, is all about. So that, so that efforts, that quantity number has to be there to, to fall back on something. So we can understand what our conversion ratios are between the stages and figure out where we need to have the most help. But then as soon as that quantity layer is down, um, then it's the quality stuff. Now it's the, the additional things that you're talking about there, Martin, about, you know, what other activities are you doing?

I mean, other stuff like, you know, what, what webinars have you joined? What books have you read? Those are things I, going back to my business acumen comment, you know, that's something that's missing today. So if I'm coaching sales reps, like I'm saying, Hey, what, you know, what book and what'd you learn this month or something like that? Um, but take a look at Jamie Shanks, um, over at sales for life. And, and he's got some really cool things that you can talk about from a measurement standpoint as specifically related to social that are different than the basic, you know, MRR added to pipeline, number of activities. Here's one, a number of executives that you engage with, right? Not just below the power line, but how many times did you actually engage with executives?

That's another one I would be really interested in. Um, cool. So hopefully y'all got some value out of this. Um, again, it's first installment. So I'm going to be trying new things. I'll take all your suggestions. So if you want to hit me up on email, john at jbarrows.com, uh, or you can hit me up on Snapchat. It's John M as in Michael Barrows, all one word. Uh, same thing. That's my Twitter handle, or, you know, just, just, like I said, email me, whatever. And I, and I'm really trying to figure out how to add value on a regular basis. And hopefully this Facebook live thing, uh, at least brought some value to everybody out there. All right. So let's all make it a great day, everybody. All right.

Make it happen. Cheers. Thank you.