137: Making Prospecting A Math Game With Ryan Reisert

Thank you to our sponsors, LeadIQ, Costello, SalesLoft, WorkRamp, and Dialpad for helping us produce this podcast. Head over to jbarrows.com slash blog for the highlights of this episode and explore resources you can use right away. Let's make it happen. Good afternoon, everybody. This is John Barrows. Make it happen Mondays. Hopefully you all had a fantastic weekend. I am here with a very interesting guest who I think I share a lot of the same mentality when it comes to sales, but we're going to figure that out as we have this conversation. So Ryan Reiser, it's over at Connect and Sell. You want to say hi to everybody? Hey, everybody. John, thank you for having me join you today. I'm super, super excited for this conversation.

Yeah, thanks for coming on board. Could you give us a little bit of background? Because sometimes I'll jump right in with guests based on the topic, but I think here your background puts some context to this one. So could you kind of walk through... You've been through a lot of sales consulting throughout your entire career. You've started a couple of sales-focused shops here. So could you kind of walk people through where you're coming from? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I have what a lot of folks in our career, you know, at least they talk about a non-traditional path into sales. I actually went to college with the idea that I was going to be a math teacher. So I was the first person in my family to go to college.

My teachers really influenced me in school to be something bigger and better. And so I thought I'd be a teacher as well. I was an athlete, liked math, thought I'd be a teacher and coach. That's what I was going to do. And so when I graduated with a math degree in 2008, it was an amazing time to get into our economy, if you remember how booming it was. Yeah, right. Perfect timing. So I come out in the financial crisis and the world's burning and somehow, you know, stumbled into not teaching. I was supposed to student teach that summer. I had some friends in college that had internships in San Francisco and I flew down to San Francisco, just fell in love with the world that is the Bay Area. I mean, that was the financial crisis.

Yeah, I saw the first Ferrari in my life parked on the side of the road like it was no big deal. Everyone's driving Porsches and I was like, this might be a good place to be. So I packed everything I owned up into my 86 Toyota 4Runner, sold everything else and drove down. And that was really it. Got on Craigslist, started looking for jobs. It was at Starbucks for a little bit, trying to pay the bills until I landed my first sales job. And, you know, I worked my way up from back then was called lead generation specialist. Now it's kind of sales development reps to sales manager or AAE to director of sales in my very first company. It was an ad tech, martech company. It was we did pay-per-click advertising back in 2008.

And that's where I really fell in love with how math and sales come together. And this idea of, you know, building business cases and the idea of ROI. I mean, it's very clear in pay-per-click advertising. That's kind of what you're selling. But I just fell in love with that concept. And after having a lot of success there, the economy started to turn around in 2010. Money was flowing back into San Francisco startup scene. And that's when I started my first company. I co-founded a sales recruiting firm in San Francisco called The Lions with one of my first sales managers. And the idea there is we were going to use data to help identify the top 25% of sellers and bring them into high-growth sales companies and find individuals like myself that came from non-traditional backgrounds, different areas, and bring them into these high-growth companies and make a difference and follow along their career.

Did that for a while. Got recruited back to my first company to become the managing director and ran the entire U.S. sales and operations. So, that was a really amazing experience in international business running the U.S. company at like 25 years old. And then I jumped into the venture-backed startup scene as a head of sales for a couple different companies, three different VC-backed companies, all have been acquired. One was Inc. 5000 when I was their sales leader. One was acquired by Unicorn when I was the VP of sales. So, it's a billion-dollar Unicorn acquisition. And then I've, you know, started two separate companies since joining Connect & Sell. One was a boot camp. So, inside sales boot camp, I sold that company to a company called Vendition, helping people learn the fundamentals of sales development and jobs at tech companies.

So, it's kind of combining my recruiting background with my sales leadership and bringing that all to the world. And then, most recently, the sales developers was spun out of a book I wrote with Rex Biverston called Outbound Sales No Fluff, helping bring a process and technology stack to high-growth companies, which transitioned into being much more of a services business. And I wasn't really, really trying to do that. And so, I stepped away in January and joined Connect & Sell. So, that's my quick background. So, a lot of hands and a lot of pots, but it looks like it's all been driven by, you know, helping sales reps to get to that next level. And, again, to your point, applying the structure and the science behind cells as opposed to kind of what a lot of people think is more of an art form.

And I want to transition with that. Like, if you were to put a number on it, I know it's a tough one, but if you were to say science versus art, it's obviously both, right? But from your experience, what do you think? Is it more science, more art? Is there a percentage you would put on them as far as, like, how you would at least look at it? So, I think I'd have to ask you, at what part of sales are you talking about? Because I think there's, you know, in the modern sales environment, we've specialized, right? So, if we think about general salesperson, you don't really see that happening as much today. I know. So, what do you, like, do you agree with that? Oh, I totally agree with it. And it actually is, I've been putting a lot of thought into this.

And I actually think the predictable revenue and the specialization has a lot of pros, right? In the sense that it helps scale organizations and that type of stuff. But I think it has some negatives, too. And the negative consequences of it are, like, you know, so you're a lot younger than I am. But when I got into sales, I was, you know, there wasn't really that model. It was, here's your territory. You got to find the business, meet with the clients and close the business, go. And the challenge with that was a lot of people got out a lot faster because they were like, I just can't do this. There's just no way, right? Where, but the benefit of that was those of us who stayed, we got to develop, we were developed as much more fully rounded sales reps a lot faster.

And I think what's happening right now with the predictable revenue model is it's stunting the growth of a lot of sales professionals to that full, well-rounded sales rep, right? Yeah. Again, do I think that's a bad thing? I don't know. Because I think now it's a lot... I mean, we were talking right before we got on as far as I think it's putting a lot more tracks in place. So reps can say, oh, they come in as an SDR and it's like, hey, I might not go to sales. I might go to operations. I might go to marketing. I might, you know, that type of stuff. So I think there's a benefit there. But I think if you were to identify the strong, well-rounded sales professional who does all of it, I think the segmentation has really stunted that growth.

So let's talk, I guess, let's talk about the traditional SDR who's, you know, making the calls and sending emails and just prospecting. And then let's talk about the quote-unquote AE, who supposedly is that well-rounded sales rep. SDR first, then AE. Sure. So I think, so this is a little controversial as well. When you think about the modern sales development function with, with the rise of, of technology and the amount of data we have, it's, it's way more science than art. And we're going to see a lot more of that. And furthermore, I would say that it's, it's, it's a lot less selling than it ever has been before. Right. I mean, it's, it's much more marketing. I mean, let's, let's be honest.

We're, we're, we're there to get some attention. We're trying to, we're trying to get that initial interest and get some attention and get a little bit of time. So the only selling is to, to persuade someone to spend their time, which is, which can be, you know, there's an argument there that that's a really difficult in today's world, right? Our time is our, our, our, our, our, is very, very valuable. And so, but other than that, it's, it's mostly science in my opinion and, and, and, and it's very numbers driven. And if you do a great job of understanding what I like to call your math of sales, other people talk about this quite a bit, you know, Chris Biel and, and, and I wrote this ebook called the math of market domination.

You can take a look at your total addressable market and you can use data to reverse engineer exactly what you need to do in terms of how many activities in general, do you need to drive to earn conversations? How many of those conversations in general, if you, if you have a slight bit of product market fit, will drive to next conversations and ultimately get into real pipeline and drive through how many opportunities need to be forecasted into, um, and ultimately down through to close. And if you know your average deal value, you can, you know, reverse engineer that into, are you going to make your number or not? Right. Um, yeah, so it's a pure numbers. I mean, I, I, I've been running my sales equation for 20 years.

You know what I mean? It's like, I knew for a fact when I was back selling it services, it took 400 dials a week to get eight meetings a month, get four proposals, get two pieces of closed business, average deal size of $3,500 a month. And I just ran that. And that was my ignorance though, with, cause I thought it was just a numbers game. Right. And I came up with kind of my elevator pitch and I just kept hammering, hammering, hammering. And it was really a time, a timely thing. Right. I just made enough phone calls where I talked to enough people where eventually that, that equation shook itself out. So, so with that, I, I think we're moving. I think you're, you're, I'm, I totally agree with you as far as the science piece of this with sales reps and the tools like connect and sell and those types of things.

Where does that leave the sales rep? Are we moving into, I get my opinions here, but are we moving back to full cycle sales and really SDRs rolling up under marketing and operations and not being the intro to sales anymore? Because they're really just more optimizing the tools and technology as opposed to actually engaging with clients. I mean, I'm seeing that for sure. You know, and I mean, the, the challenge with the, the sales development model is that a lot of organizations are trying to leverage and use it in a environment where it's never going to work simply because the math, the business math doesn't work. Right. It's not, it's not profitable. Right. You can't, you can't have that high cost rep specializing in earning a meeting.

The cost per meeting is just too high. Uh, then you have to factor in the, the AE, then you have to factor in the account management or success. And these are lower value SAS products where the competitive landscape has come in where the lifetime value of these customers is much lower than they used to be. Right. You know, the, the, the me too pops up overnight. I mean, look at the, even if you think about the battle that's happening and let's just use sales engagement, your big, you know, sales, sales loft, uh, partner, you've got outreach. These guys have raised a crap ton of money. Um, and there's, there's 30, 40, 50 others that look, look and feel just like them underneath it. Right. They're just, it's a land grab.

And so, um, because of the proliferation of capital, the ease of building technology, the iteration on these things, the models don't work the way they used to in terms of the, uh, for most organizations, you've got to really understand your business math. And that's one reason why it's failing, not that it can't work in some environments, but, you know, if you think about the technology stack and its ability to automate a lot of the manual tedious work, uh, of getting in front of the right opportunities, you know, at the right potential time. Definitely that shift in terms of let's get a more senior, uh, expert who can earn that first conversation and provide, um, you know, a more meaningful, uh, outcome for both sides in that initial conversation that the, the discovery calls always been the most important piece of, of a sales conversation always has.

But it's been so challenging to earn conversations that that's the biggest gap I'm seeing myself included. I've been, I've been, um, so, so focused on sales development for quite some time. I'm now in a full cycle role for over a decade. I've been in leadership. I've been in sales development. I'm now excited about being in a, in a closing role to be in this, you know, let's actually see this modern movement. And I can get meetings all day long because first of all, I have a weapon that allows me to have more conversations than anyone in, you know, in a short period of time. But second of all, um, there's good product market fit right now. What I'm challenged at is like, shit, how do I get back and have a really solid discovery call?

Doesn't feel so damn mechanical. And, you know, like, how do I get people actually talking about their business problems without them thinking I'm trying to pull some sort of tactic on them. Right. We've got this, everybody feels like I'm being sold to feeling and I, I deal where I'm, you know, I'm selling other salespeople. So you can't really, it's a little bit different, but man, discovery is so important and it's challenging. You know, you can't just come in with a list of questions. And I think this is that transition nicely into where that art comes in and, and the importance of, yes, there's a huge part of science and selling today. And there's a numbers game, but, you know, if you don't have that, um, uh, ability to, uh, to have conversations with people, um, to understand the flow of a discussion, you can't script that, um, that piece.

It has to flow. There's an art form here, um, where that, that's where you can separate, you know, uh, I mean, I think data today science behind stuff can get you to that 85, 90%. But if you want to be a top 10 performer, you really want to get it, you know, be the winner in more sophisticated, complex sales environments. Um, you know, that, that's so important today. And there's a loss. I think there's a, there's a big gap in terms of skillset because of that challenge of specialization and who runs discovery historically. It was SDR, the AE. And I mean, shoot, there's a, there's a big gap in the market right now. I totally agree. I mean, and I think that's the biggest challenge, right? Is, is that, and also that handoff, right?

Because, you know, I've been preaching, I preached for years of, you know, go to, go top down, go to the executive and, and get that conversation, get referred down, whatever. But, you know, I, I, and I brought this up on, on another recent podcast, my boy, Doug Landis, uh, over at Emergence, you know, we were talking about like going up to the C-suite and, you know, having a 22 year old kid, have that conversation, whatever. And I go, you know, kind of, what are your thoughts on that these days, Doug? And he was just like, dude, if you're a fucking 22 year old kid, do not call a C-suite. They, there's, there's absolutely no value that you can bring to them and they know it. So they're not going to want to have that conversation with you.

So like the transition, where do you see the best transition? If we are in this sales development world where it hands off to an AE, uh, I mean, what is kind of the, with where we are right now? I think the, the, my preference is that account-based marketing and all that other stuff shows, you know, with intent data and that type of stuff, then drives, hey, after they've done a bunch of stuff and not just scored, you know, because of Marketo or Eloqua, but because of some intent and some things that are happening in their business, here's a time to reach out to this person. And therefore the, the full cycle sales rep now takes it, makes that phone call says, hey, with, with a bunch of data that maybe SDRs and marketing and operations has given to them, but then they take that call.

It's somewhat a little bit more senior level. They have a real conversation, they add value to it and they go through it. Right. So that's kind of, I think that's the optimal and that's where things are going to go back to, um, is SDRs rolling up under marketing and operations, optimizing the hell out of the tech stack, filling, you know, opportunities, but the hand, like the people are saying, boom. Right. But with where we are right now, which is where most SAS is SDR, cold call, cold call, cold call, send email, send email, send email, get somebody who looks like a fish, smells like a fish, throw some piece of shit elevator pitch out there at them, says, we can solve your problems. And then the client either says, sure, let's talk.

And the challenge there is the rep then says, oh shit, I don't know what I'm talking about. Let me flip you over. And that's inherently frustrating. Or the SDR is good enough where they qualify, but then a problem, the problem is, and then they qualify, they flip it over to the AE and the AE then re qualifies. And it's the same conversation and the client's getting pissed because I've already had that. So that handoff is broken. So where with your experience and what you've seen and all the people that you've coached on this type of stuff, like what is that optimal level for that? And let's, let's label it as the 22, 23, 24 year old kid had some training, has some product knowledge, is not an industry expert in any way, shape or form.

Where should they draw the line? Yeah, it's, I mean, it's, it's, it's interesting because, you know, getting back to what we were talking about, I don't know if it was just before the start of the call. It's just, you know, at some point you've got to get the experience, you've got to, you've got to be able to have those reps, you have to have those at bats, but at the same time, you don't want to miss out on opportunities to, you know, drive your business forward. So a lot of organizations aren't at a, you know, they can't afford to lose those shots on, on, on opportunities, especially earlier stage companies, they're going to run out of runway if they're not able to maximize the opportunities that are in front of them.

Um, I mean, I think the, the, the conversation platforms, the recording systems like Gong and Chorus and, and, um, uh, refract these, these companies, um, offer a tremendous value to those, those folks in that space because they can now, um, do their thing, operate, uh, optimizing the stack, getting these across, but they don't have to sit on those calls with the AEs to, uh, to get the value of it. They can go and you can create a library of best case, best scenarios, um, and create those teachable moments and turn them into real, um, you know, real meaningful content that what's good is bad. And then also kind of create, um, you know, role play challenge scenarios that can help people develop.

Um, but at some point they have to get those shots on goal. Um, my personal kind of feedback to a lot of folks earlier in their career that I've worked with over the last five, so years doing the bootcamp and obviously now, um, you know, just having a network of those individuals that are trying to make that transition. Is to try to, you know, up-level their business acumen and, um, you know, not being, not in the lens of them trying to sell their product to whoever they said they were supposed to sell their product to, but to really try to understand the roles, um, that they're, they're serving. Um, and getting to the problems that those individuals have within organizations and why they, they, um, would, or would not, um, even engage in a conversation in the lens of the fact that, you know, if it's not a problem, it's not a priority and you're, you're just annoying and you need to be there in this lens of solve a problem or go away.

And so if you don't understand those problems, right, there's business problems and then there's the individuals who are responsible jobs to be done and you need to understand those jobs to be done and how it relates to the larger organization and what they're trying to accomplish. And nobody in their early twenties spends enough time getting that education, right? You don't, you don't learn that anywhere. You don't, you know, I didn't do that. I, I, I, I, I just went and ran through the playbook that was given to me. Right. Like you said, shit value proposition, cram it down their throat. We're better than, or whatever, bigger, faster, cheaper, stronger, whatever it is. But I never really stood back in when someone said that doesn't sound interesting or no, not right now.

I didn't stop and say, Hey, do you mind if I just ask you one quick question and then deliver that question in the form of whatever they, whatever that resistant was at that moment in time. So that I could better understand, is this a priority for them now or not, because I can keep saying bullshit, or I could try to understand them where they're at in terms of timing and their priorities and getting back in front of them when, when there's actually, um, the right time where, where I can get attention. Cause it's a priority that they care about. And that gap, I think is so big and I don't know where people can learn it without having, you know, a strong leadership team that helps, you know, navigate that in their development.

I think that I've always said that business acumen is one of the things that's sorely lacking in, in sales and business in general, but sales specifically. It's like, we teach them finally, it's becoming a educated profession, right? And, and, and it's also trained. So we teach them on technique. We teach them on skills. We teach them on process, but we don't teach them how to give a shit. We don't teach them like what these people actually are going through and, and, and to have empathy for the person that you're reaching out to on the other line. And I think that's, that's where it's almost like, I don't want, I'd rather replace from an onboarding standpoint, I'd rather replace product knowledge with business acumen.

Because, you know, obviously give you enough so that you can understand the product and actually speak to it. But, but if you're just coming out of school or you're just brand new in the business, like almost less is more, right? Because the more I tell you, the more you're going to want to, the more product knowledge I give you, the more you're going to want to regurgitate that because that's what you have to lean on. But if I give you a just enough product knowledge, but then had you go review some, uh, uh, job descriptions of the people, had you go interview some, some people in those roles to talk to them about a day in the life and what these people give a shit about. I think you would, I think your ramp would be exponentially faster, um, than, than what it typically is today.

Right. Oh yeah. A hundred percent. And, and I mean, the, the, the biggest challenge there is as soon as somebody gets into a situation where it's off the playbook, it's off the framework, it's off the messaging that they learned, whether it's product, whatever, they get steer in the headlights because they have that gap in business acumen. And if they get creative and there's the art piece you're talking about a little bit too, they can get creative in terms of understanding, um, you know, that individual, their role, the job to be done, but also their organization and what that organization is trying to accomplish in their go-to-market. Right. Uh, based on how your product or service serves them.

Now, um, obviously there's, uh, there's all sorts of different services and products in the B2B landscape, but we're talking in the lens of SAS, right? SAS software as a service is typically generated to go and replace some sort of, you know, manual tedious stuff that's happening today. Plus more insight faster, whatever it might be, you know, spitting out those words means nothing to somebody who is trying to get that work done today. So how do you, how do you educate yourself? That's number one. And then I think the other piece is, and this is why I'm such a big fan of, of connected. So that's why I'm working here now is that you just have to get those conversations to get there. Right. There's no textbook, there's no course, there's no training in the world.

That's going to allow you to get the, like bridge the gap from being okay at sales to being great at sales. Then by having a ton of conversations in the market and, and, and, you know, learning, getting kicked in the teeth. Right. Understanding that not everyone's ready now. In fact, those, uh, conversations and take it next, you know, continue to take it forward and develop those skill sets over time. Um, that's a big problem right now is that we're not having enough conversations early enough in our career, early enough in the job, early enough ramping, because we think we can grow fact or over-engineer into the conversation, but then we're not even ready for it. Yeah. Right. And I don't think that you can't replace that with, I mean, don't get me wrong.

I think role-playing is good, uh, but you can't replace a real live conversation with role-play. I don't care how good you script it. I mean, it's like I said, it's a good practice. Like, okay, let's get the juices flowing here. But to your point, like I need bats, I need a bats. I need to, I need to, because that, I mean, that, and that's really for me, like my business acumen, that's where it came from was it was a by-product of my activity. Right. I would go, go, go, go, go. And then like, you know, I would ask a stupid question to a CEO and the CEO would say, that's a stupid question. And I'd say, okay, I won't ask that again. You know what I mean? Like, and I just kind of learned on the fly, whereas I think we can preempt that either, A, by, by focusing on business acumen earlier.

Well, both by focusing on business acumen earlier. And then to your point, just getting more bats, like just getting, getting to have the conversation more often than, than not. Um, because I mean, the biggest thing I say, and this is why I've actually come back around on connect and sell, by the way, I used to absolutely hate the, the, the product. I used to think it was absolute crap because, because my, my perception, um, was that it just, it, it, it was spam for, uh, for phone. Right. And it, and it forced a generic approach where it was like, oh, you know, Hey, bang. All of a sudden somebody picks up, I'm going to give, regurgitate my elevator pitch, but now I actually look at it and, and if done right, if I can put in a list of, you know, just VPs of sales, for instance, like, so I can have my talk track, just a VP as a sales.

I think it's fantastic because the biggest challenge I'm seeing right now, specifically as it relates to the phone is just connect rates. Like it used to be, I think there was some, actually there's some stat that just came out, uh, outreach, uh, just put it out there with a, with a new report, um, that talked about how many touches it takes to get a one meeting. And it was 106, 106, the, their data suggests that it's 106 dials to get one good conversation that flips right to a quote, to a real qualification call. And 20, only 27% are connects. So out of the 106, so let's call it a hundred round down to a hundred 27, 20, only 27 actually pick up the phone. And of those 27, only one turns into, okay, let's have that conversation.

And that is way down from the past. It used to be, you make a hundred dials. You get, you know, at least, you know, 30, 40, 50 people who pick, you know, at least connected and then, you know, 15, 20 conversations and two to three, you know, three to four flips or something like that. Now it's the numbers are just abysmal, which is why I think so many people have given up on the phone. Yeah. Well, I'm, uh, I'm happy to hear that you're turning around on, on connect and sell. I think a lot of people in the market, uh, misunderstand the value of connect and sell, right? It is core. It's a conversation weapon. And if you, if you, if you enable it incorrectly, then it's not going to produce the way you need it to.

Yeah. Just like sales, loft or outreach, any one of those same thing, right? You turn them into spam engines and they're worthless. Yeah. But the, the, the data that you're saying right now is, is, is, is, I mean, it is way better than what, what we've seen at connect and sell. I mean, connect to sell those 50 million dials a year powers 2.6 million conversations, right? So when you look at that, that's, that's between, it's about a 4% connect rate. So you're going to get a connect, but the difference is, I think in a lot of these reported stats is that people, people identify connect with like a gatekeeper or an admin or something of that nature. We're talking about a connect with the actual name and title, the person you actually want to engage with.

So that's around three to four, maybe 5%, depending on, you know, industry and segment connect to sell, um, data shows, uh, uh, it's right around, you'll get a conversation. So, um, you know, again, around 4% or so, uh, and then of those conversations of those conversations, uh, you're doing pretty good. If you can flip, as you say around 5%, um, from cold into a, into a meeting. Um, and that's, I don't know, I have the buyer's pyramid back here. If you've followed Chet Holmes for some time, it's backed by a lot of organizations. That's pretty good because you're, you're hitting those who are buying now and those who might be open to it. Um, but yeah, I mean, uh, if you take into consideration all channels, phone is still very effective when it comes to the success rate, right?

Like five to 10% success rate is really good. When you think about what's the response rate on email, really good response rate on email at 3%, 1, 2%, you're, you're pretty static. So that's just response rate, right? That's just connect. The only reason why people use it, uh, more often than others is because you can send a lot more email than you can dial faster. Right. And, and then in terms of the conversation though, a real meaningful conversation over the phone is way more powerful than a response. Over, or, or, or, you know, uh, LinkedIn. And so there's a huge shift in the market right now of trying to figure out, you know, how do you earn more conversations and getting back to what you mentioned earlier?

And this idea of, um, um, you know, the redefining of the rules and the metrics and how do you put the more senior person in front of, uh, leads faster. Um, when you think about optimizing the stack and getting it to the conversation, now you got a more senior person having that conversation. That's the, that's the KPI we should be really caring about, right? It's not a booked meeting or a demo. And then you have this handoff process. It's how do we get a conversation started, a real meaningful conversation started with our intended target account title that is going to get us the information, build awareness and get the information we need. That's what we need to be focused on because it's more difficult than ever depending, you know, uh, and unfortunately a lot of folks are still utilizing technology incorrectly and spamming.

Right. You could use connect to Zillian correctly. You could use sales, like you use any of these tools incorrectly, and you're going to spam your addressable market and they're not going to have a very good, uh, uh, experience with your brand. Or you can use it correctly. You do a really good job of curating the organizations, the accounts that you think you can help. It's a hypothesis, you know, within those organizations who may have that problem again, hypothesis. And then it's all about getting out there and earning those conversations. Now, how do you do that and getting those conversations quickly is what's going to develop the people getting those conversations quickly is what's going to drive your math of sales, the science of your, your sales.

And it's the number one KPI that, um, that I believe we should be focusing on as modern sales organizations, but some people just undervalue that it has to be scheduled for it to be valuable. But what if I could get on the phone right now and get into a 15, 20, 30 minute, real meaningful conversation from a cold call happens all the time. But in, in other environments, it's like the rep didn't get credit for it or the wrong rep was there. Like you said, they're re-qualifying. It's a bad buying experience. Why, why do you think so many, I got my theories here, but why do you think we're still stuck in a numbers world? Like, so we just talked about science, right? Where you map out how many dials and it gets this conversation.

Right. But I think there's an over-reliance on that from right now, from a management standpoint and, and not focusing enough on the quality of the conversations. Right. So, you know, because it's easier to, for me to measure you on 50 dials a day, cause that's a number. Like if you hit 50 dials, then you hit it. If you didn't, you didn't. Right. But as far as these meaningful conversations, that's a harder thing to coach to and everything else. So why do you think we're still, even though there's account-based marketing and everybody's talking about personalization and all this other stuff. So there's a realization in the market that quality over quantity matters, but still most, and I'm talking, and forget about the, the low ACV, right?

The SMB, like that game should be volume, period. I'm sorry. Like you said it earlier. It just doesn't justify having inside sales reps, you know, paying inside sales reps or SDRs, 60, 70, 80,000, you know, 100,000 OT. Like doesn't justify if your ACV is less than 10, 15, $20,000, right? Yep. But we're still, even with the ACV at 10, 20, 50, $100,000, I'm still seeing teams being hold of very specific metrics. Why do you think that? Like, like numbers metrics. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think it's because you can, you can create a dashboard around that. And we still have a lot of leaders that sit behind spreadsheets and dashboards and that's how they're developing their team. That's how they, they, they move up to the board and they don't know how to have that conversation around what's really happening.

And I mean, I, this is just my opinion on it, but the, the reality is most, most sales leaders who are responsible for a number don't have the skillset to really get in there or that maybe even the desire to get in there and, and focus on what matters most. Which is that what's happening in the trenches and getting back to that gap, you know, how do we, how do we have real meaningful conversations from the, almost the very first engagement with our prospects after technology can do that work for us. You know, and, and, and, and, and actually move the ball forward without feeling this like fear of failure in that conversation because there's so much learning we can get from it, but nobody wants to spend that time, energy, and effort to get in there.

Well, I wouldn't say nobody, but most people, right. It's, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work to get in there. It puts, it makes you vulnerable to, to actually sit down and have a conversation about what's working, what's not working. And it just takes a lot of time. So people want to get back to the numbers and say, Hey, back when, when I did this, you know, 400 dials got me, you know, eight meetings got me the two close, you know, and, and it does, you know, you, you, you can manage towards that. I'm a big fan of that. I, I talk about it all the time. You have to have those numbers, but at the end of the day, if you're not, if you're not really focused on the outcome, which is that conversation, that, that conversation is all that matters because that's going to help you make sure that you're having the right conversations.

Make sure that you're, you're, um, you're not missing on your message. Make sure that, uh, you're learning from what's working, what's not working. And, um, I, I, I think that the, the biggest challenge right there is just getting people to understand that, um, the outcomes of this information are more important than the inputs. Um, although those men put, those inputs obviously are what we need to know, like the back of our hand in order to drive it. Right. Yeah. I got it. You've got to have that gas to fuel it, but you also can't, you know, I put it in a little pre-call notes, right? You can't set it and forget it. The, the, the, the Ron Pupil methodology is like set it and forget it. I know my, like, that's not how it works.

You've got to get in there and optimize. You've got to learn from this stuff. You've got to, you've got to do the work. And unfortunately, I think a lot of people just don't want to do it. I couldn't, because it is, it's easier to manage towards numbers and, and, and lazy. And I'm, look, I'm going to throw myself into this, into this bucket. Right. I mean, like we use gong, right? So Morgan records all his calls, qualification calls, and James Buckley just came on board with me. Right. I know one of the most high value things that I can do is listen to their calls, give coaching and, you know, and, and work with them on very specific. Hey, you said this, say it this way. You do that, do it this way.

Right. But I'm a player coach. I'm a, I'm a CEO out there running around like a chick with my head cut off doing 80 trainings a year running, you know, managing my clients. And every half hour call call that Morgan has, I have to go and review it, which means a half hour that I can't spend with a client. A half an hour that I'm, you know, whatever it is. And, you know, and I get it. These, these call intelligence tools, you know, they help me identify the specific part of the conversation, but I, I'll, I'll be square with me. Like I need the whole context. I need the whole conversation. Right. Cause I don't want to just nitpick on, oh, you just said pricing. Right. But, but maybe he crushed it earlier in the conversation and set the stage for that.

So that, yeah, the way he phrased that one thing at that one moment wasn't great, but in context, it was actually pretty good. So I, so a 30 minute call call ends up being 45 minutes out of my day. So it's, it's really a pain in the ass. So I'm, I'm, I end up being very selective. I tell Morgan, I go, look, highlight the two calls you want me to, like two of your best and two of your worst or something like that. Right. So it's not just every one of them, but you know, cause, cause you're, you're right. You know, that, that, that coaching piece is the highest value. So, cause, cause I think that's where the art form comes in. Right. I think we can science out a bunch of structure here, but then the art form comes into smoothing those conversations and, and being real and being authentic.

So let's talk for you right now. Like with you, you said it earlier, you're, you're now, you're relative, you know, you're new at Connect and Sell. You're back on the horse. You've been spending most of your time on, on, you know, the SDR side of the house qualifying. And so now you're back to full cycle sales. Um, how are you right now having a real conversation with people? Like, could you walk me through your process for that qualification call? So you don't sound like a robot. Um, but yet you still get what you need to get out of it. Yeah. I mean, I, I mentioned earlier, it's, it's a challenge for me right now because I'm, uh, I'm so focused on, um, I've been so focused on sales development and now I'm moving on, um, trying to, uh, get up to speed on the process that we have at Connect and Sell.

Um, the, the nice thing here is that, um, John C our sales leader, he's really, really good at, uh, having a really tight process. So we've got talk tracks that are about 60, 70% of what we should say, the words, phrases and sentences, as you already mentioned, that are nice and scripted for getting into, you know, when someone asks, how does it work? When somebody talks pricing, you know, that's pretty sound and tight. The art form is really around getting into discovery. There's a few things that we, we can start off with that are a bit scripted, but you can't script discovery, right? Everyone has different situations and you've got to know when to dig deeper, ask why, when to come back out, when to give, when there's questions.

And, uh, I'll tell you what, man, I'm, I'm, I'm going back, dusting off all my books, re rereading and trying to, you know, I always call myself a student of sales and I'm really trying to dig in on this right now. Um, I'm, I'm pretty bad at it, to be honest. I mean, I'm trying to get better, but, um, in my last role, uh, I was, I'm like, I was like you, um, you know, CEO selling all, all around the place, uh, uh, you know, leads are coming to me. It's a different conversation than when you're interrupting someone's day and trying to, trying to tell us compelling story. And at Connect and Sell, we're selling transformation and there's, there's certain things that, um, you've got to be able to challenge people on and, um, and get them back.

You know, you're, you're one that you already mentioned it. Hey, you used to see it one way. We got to really challenge that, that mindset around, look, that's, that's enablement. That's not Connect and Sell. Let's talk about your strategy. Let's talk about what you know needs to happen. And then let's talk about how this works, right? And, and at the end of the day, um, it's a totally different conversation than I've been used to where I've been much more consultative. People are coming to me for, um, uh, for, for knowledge. And so I can kind of get away with not being super tight with, um, the, uh, the ability to work through the conversation. So we have, um, a very sound process, right? We, everyone in the company, we have an inside sales team, but we also as, uh, SDs or AEs here at sales directors, um, we use Connect and Sell to generate meetings.

First meeting is a disco call. And so that disco call is really trying to get in and get the sales leader that we're connecting with, um, or marketing leader, whoever that persona might be to get open up, open up about their strategy and we're trying to identify, we're trying to identify really three main components. One, you know, are they actively invested in growth, right? They're not static. They're trying to grow to, do they still believe that the phone, cause some people don't, right? You got to have this belief that the phone is still very powerful. Conversations are powerful. And, um, you know, identifying if, if they'd only believe in it, they need to understand that there's conviction around the conversation is important.

And then, um, the third piece of course is, is, is the addressable market, right? Uh, Connect and Sell isn't going to be, it will work for anybody. You can have a small list and it'll still work. It's going to get you the conversations, but in order for the business case to work, you've got to have a decent addressable market. You're not selling to, you know, a hundred people a year. You've got, you've got to have enough people that you want to engage with and have conversations with that you can't manually get there yourself. And so that's really the key that I'm trying to uncover while simultaneously, um, uh, also trying to deliver this transformational talk track. So there's a lot of art, um, in that first part of it that I'm challenged with right now.

Um, and I find myself wanting to get super excited about all the things that we can do and the backstory about why I'm so excited about it. triple digit growth that, you know, and instead of getting into, you know, more about them and, um, and that's, uh, it's challenging because I know all the questions I can, I can pull them all out. You know, we all have what questions, but it's not natural. Like you, you, you might start off talking about your kids and you might start off by talking about the weather, whatever it might be. And then, then you got to make this transition into let's open up and talk real business case. And I have some ideas that I'm starting to try to throw out there about like, Hey, can we all agree?

Assumptions are the worst part in sales, right? You never want to assume, but I have this idea that like, Hey, if we're going to start this process, we could come together with a couple of assumptions or truths that we both believe in order for us to go somewhere. So you can get out some of these bullshit. Yes. Knows that we all know, and then get into real conversation. And I've been trying to test that a little bit around, Hey, I'm just assuming that these three things that I care about are, are you, is that true? Is that true? Perfect. Now let's just get into you. What's your strategy? What's your go-to-market look like? And I think that's, uh, that's helping transform the way to make it feel a little bit more comfortable, but it's challenging.

It really is challenging. You know, it's funny if science art, so I'll give you an example of something that I've, I've re reinvigorated from a technique standpoint, science that I learned early and, and I had to, I had to make it art, which, which helps from a qualification. Cause I flipped my mindset a long time ago to disqualify more than qualify. Right. My, my goal is once I'm getting on the phone with you, I'm going to ask you all the reasons why you shouldn't do business with me. Cause you're going to figure that shit out eventually. Anyways, I might as well figure it out now. Um, and that lens has actually come through in a very authentic way, just with my approach. Like, it's like, I don't know.

I don't even know if I can help you or not. You had said earlier, like if you, if your pain isn't hard enough or if your problems aren't big enough, then let's get off the phone now. Right. Cause I tell people that all the time, I don't sell you shit. I either help you achieve your goals or solve your problems. And if your goals aren't big enough and your problems aren't big enough, let's stop talking. Um, but, but I'm here to have this conversation. And, and one of the things that, you know, early on, and this proves to me why I know sales training specifically is, is 50, 50, it's 50%, the content 50% who delivers it. Because early, have you ever gone through Sandler sales training? I haven't.

No. Okay. So Sandler early on in my career, fundamentally really good stuff. Right. But they have this thing called the upfront contract, right? Which is, you know, which is, Hey, if we were to have this good conversation, would you be feel comfortable? So it's a trial close, right? Like if we were to do this, would you feel comfortable taking the next step? And I swear when the, when the, when I took the training, when I was a kid, 22, 23, you know, the way the guy delivered it was the cheesiest way I, it was literally like he was reading from a script and I felt so just like, dude. So he over-scienced the approach, which meant, which meant I was immediately turned off by it because I was like, dude, that no fucking normal human being would ever say that.

Right. Yeah. And so I discounted the, the, that for years. I was like, fuck the upfront contracts is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Okay. Yep. Recently, about two years ago, Gong put out a blog post of how, what the best reps and the average reps do and all this other stuff. And one of them was, they all use the upfront contract. And I was like, all right, well, if data go back to science, if data says this is after millions of calls, they've, they've realized that this is what the top reps do. Maybe I should revisit it. And so what I did was I went to your thing, like pointed back behind you with all the books. So I'm like, I go and revisit my Sandler's training and I read a few more blogs and I'm like, all right, now how can I take that robotic cheesy shit and make it mine and also work with Morgan and, and, and that type, because he was having a really hard time.

Like for me, it's a little bit easier. A, I've been doing this for 23 years. B, I'm the CEO of Jay Barrow's company. It's my name on the wall. So like when people are talking to me, it's like, you're the CEO. It's like, I'm going to be a lot more real with you than somebody else. Right. But Morgan's a sales rep. Morgan, you know, Morgan's a sales rep for Jay Barrow's. And we smoothed out the upfront contract. I really help address the qualification and getting real. Right. So there's the, there's the rapport, whatever you can do upfront, but then it's like, okay, cool. Look, look, do we still have 30 minutes to great, you know, here, here's a few things I want to make sure that we go over today.

Anything else you want to make sure that we hit on and look, my goal today is to figure out whether it's even worth us taking the next step. And, and at the end, I'm probably going to say yes or no on this one, but are we cool? Either way. You know what I mean? And then you just kind of take out, look, I'm not trying to sell you shit. My goal is to figure out whether it's even worth us having a deeper dive conversation on this. You up for that? Yes. And then I've almost like disarming the person with the, I ain't here to sell you shit, man. I'm here to ask you a few quick, quick questions. Share with you some of the cool shit we're doing with other companies like you and see if it's, if it's going to make a big enough difference.

Is that cool? And by smoothing that out with the art form, if you will, it's actually now been really effective in setting up and qualifying in the right way and getting people to open up real, real early. Yeah. No, I mean, I feel, I feel the same way in, in the idea that you're, you're obviously brand is massive and you have a lot more of that ability to get away with shit. Um, but I, I did get, I did get away with a lot of stuff in the last couple of roles where, you know, people are, you know, people are coming to me for some other reason. And it, it, now that I'm moving into this role where, you know, you have a sales title, right? People expect to be sold to, uh, how do you still, um, how do you get out of that and become a, uh, seen as an asset, right?

Like for me, I'm passionately, I passionately genuinely believe in connect and sell. That's why I'm here. Um, I've used it, uh, to build a couple of businesses around it. I've, I've, I've helped people use it to really accelerate their careers. I mean, if you look at folks that went through our bootcamp, connect and sell as a part of their ability to get to conversations way early. I know that use case is going to transform people's lives, right? I do believe that, but now I have a sales title and it, sometimes it just feels so, you know, so choppy and, um, and I think that that's where, uh, a lot of people get stuck. I mean, I believe, I believe passionately that that's why so many salespeople struggle because they, they're working for first and foremost companies that don't feel that much conviction behind.

Right. And then they're also stuck with maybe not even understanding the problem they're solving. Right. And then at the, at the end of the day, they still don't, they don't even have the credibility behind that themselves. So, so, you know, imagine what that conversation feels like for most people. Um, and so like, I, I think there's a lot, a lot of conversation here. I think Keenan, Keenan and gap selling is, is really bringing this to the forefront. I, I love his, his, uh, no bullshit approach as well. And, um, you know, being really loud about, um, the idea that discovery is so important. Um, but man, I'm, I'm, I'm humble enough to tell you right now, I'm, I'm not great at it when I'm not the, when it's not a conversation that's, um, that, that there's already some sort of familiarity, getting into that comfort zone has been a real challenge.

And, um, and that's where the art I think comes in quite a bit when we're talking about this, uh, science of selling, because I can, I could do the numbers all day long. I can get the meetings all day long. I can even do that. I could do that at a high enough volume to hit my number. But at the end of the day, I'm missing out on serving more people that should, should have that conversation, um, and, and, and, and help impact their business in a meaningful way. Well, also you're, you're, you're, in some cases, if you just focus on the numbers, you're, you're, you're actually hurting your addressable market because there's only so many times you can go back to them. You know what I mean? Like there's only so many voicemails.

You can leave so many emails you can send to somebody before they're like, take me off your fucking list and stop calling me. You know what I mean? So, so cool, man. Well, look again, actually my, you know, my, my analogy on, on science art actually stems from, uh, the, um, the Oakland A is like Moneyball. You ever see Moneyball, right? Yeah. What they did. Great book to read if you haven't read it. Fantastic one. Right. And, and the movie, you know, long story short, they, they over-scienced it. Right. And science got them almost all the way there. Almost. But they failed because there wasn't a couple of pieces there that they, they, you know what I mean? That they could predict in the sense of the art of what it's necessary to get over the hump.

And so what happened, Billy Bean then comes to the Red Sox, they offer him a job. He turns it down. The Red Sox then take his whole method, you know, his whole approach. And they added, uh, David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez, two artists when it came to baseball. I mean, David Ortiz is one of the most clutch hitters in baseball, in baseball history. You can't science out clutch. They just, science doesn't believe in clutch. That's right. Science, but it's a, right. So they added those two players and then they went and won the world series. And so there's that science gets you almost there, but you have to work on that art to be able to be, you know, to be able to really get to that next level of your career, right?

Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, I, I, I'm a, I'm a huge fan of, you know, science and math of sales. Um, but there's, there's a component in the, the art of sales and, and the ability to, to transition from, uh, somebody pushing products or services and having perfect timing and people can get away with that. And you can get almost there, but if you really want to be a world-class seller, you've got to get into that position where, um, you're comfortable, you're comfortable being uncomfortable and your, and your ability to kind of, you know, become clutch, you know, that I do think there's an opportunity to hone that skill still. I don't think it's, you know, nature versus nurture that you could, you can train that up.

But, and that, that again, takes repetition and, and, and at bats, as we said, so. Awesome, Ryan. Well, let's, uh, let's cut this short. Well, not short. Uh, let's cut this so that I usually try to keep this around like 45 minutes or so from the audience attention span standpoint. But, uh, what, uh, what do you want people to know about, uh, how can they find out more about you? Connect and sell hiring? Like what, what's, uh, what do you want to get out there right now? Yeah, sure. I, uh, if anyone's interested, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. It's, uh, um, I'm pretty active there. Uh, so Ryan Reisert, my LinkedIn handle is actually slash sales development representative still. It's been there for quite some time, uh, uh, for connect and sell.

I mean, we're growing, uh, as a team. So if you're world-class and want to join an awesome team, I know Jaunty is trying to build the team. Um, so reach out if you want to come be a part of a company that's prime for some transformation in the next couple of years. Uh, and then obviously if anybody is interested in continuing this types of, this types of conversations, don't hesitate to reach out, um, LinkedIn, LinkedIn with me, connect with me and, um, let's have that conversation. Love it. Awesome, Ryan. Well, I appreciate the time, my friend. Um, and everybody else, hopefully you got as much value out as this as I did and are able to go out and do some stuff a little bit differently tomorrow.

Cause the whole idea is getting a little bit better every day. So if you focus on that science and the structure, it'll put you in a position where you can learn like what aspects of your art you need to work on. All right. So with that, let everybody, like I say all the time, uh, no matter how bad your day is going, if you go home and make somebody happy or make somebody smile today, you know, had a good day. So focus on spreading a little bit of positivity out there. We all need a little bit more of that these days. So Ryan, thank you very much for coming on board, my friend. I appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for having me. No problem. And everybody else have a great day. Make it happen.

Thank y'all very much.