144: How COVID-19 Is Impacting Sales Reps Everyday With Morgan J Ingram & James Buckley

Good afternoon, everybody. This is Jon Barrows with Make It Happen Mondays. Hopefully you had a good weekend. We're going to be doing something a little different with this podcast. As you've known, if you've been listening for the past couple of months here, we're trying to stay as relevant and as topical as possible during this weird time that we're in with COVID-19. So instead of releasing some of the older, you know, some of the podcasts we had preset, we're canceling those and we're trying to do very topical things. So a couple of weeks back, myself, my CRO and my COO got on to talk about how Jay Barrows is making decisions right now, a little behind the curtains. This week, we're going to actually go to the front lines with James and Morgan, and they're going to be talking about what they're going through and what they're seeing and how they're adjusting to what's happening right now.

So hopefully you enjoy it. Again, wanted to thank our sponsors, Sales Loft, Gong, Vanilla Soft and Hippo Video. They've been incredible partners through this whole thing and are allowing us to get our content out there at a very reasonable price point and some of the free stuff as well. So please go visit them. Take a look at what they're doing. They're doing some great stuff right now. But again, hopefully you enjoy this podcast. Stay strong out there, everybody. We're going to get through this together. What's going on, everybody? Welcome to an episode of the Make It Happen Mondays podcast. John Barrows has taken a much needed day off after about eight straight hours of training. So his voice was a little bit shot.

So Morgan and I are stepping in to fill the funnel here. So let's talk about it, man. It has been a crazy last couple of weeks. I want to hear from you what your thoughts are initially, and then we can jump into some stuff that I wrote down that I think is worthy of our conversation here. Yeah, it's been nuts. I've been telling people it's been four weeks, but it's felt like four years. Like, I don't like, I just feel like every single day is a whole month in my lifetime. So that's pretty much how I've been feeling up. Probably everyone else probably feels the same way. And, you know, when it first started out, and I know we're going to dive deeper into this, I was like, oh, okay. You know, there's a virus that's going on.

I don't know how impactful it will be for everybody else, to be honest with you guys. But then, you know, as I was watching the news more, I was like, whoa, this is a big deal. And I did more research in mid-February. I knew this was going to be massive. So I was telling people that, hey, watch out for this, prepare, like bunker down. And, you know, now it's just hitting everybody left and right right now. So, you know, my initial thoughts is it's going to change the way that we go about not only our sales lives, but our lives as a whole. I think you're going to see a lot of different things that come out of this. But I think also as well, this is going to be a correction for a lot of people to either wake up and do what they need to be doing, or, you know, it's going to show or expose a certain people who weren't doing those things in the first place.

And, you know, we're all in one of those two buckets. Right. And I think it'll just be interesting and see how this all plays out. Yeah. The way it's shaken out, it's kind of a little bit alarming for a lot of folks from what I'm hearing all over the space. But I'm even I'm looking at it from even further back, like what I expected to come out of 2020 is all in the trash. Now I had this whole plan in place for how the year was going to go and how I was going to do the ramp. I started with John in December. You know, we spent that last week in Las Vegas, you know, just doing that crazy content in the studio. And I thought that was just incredible stuff that we were doing. I was like, man, this is going to be the best year of my professional career.

Enter coronavirus. And it was like taking a chess board that you had been playing. I know you're a chess guy, so you'll understand this. If you were playing a chess game with one of your best adversaries for days, months, weeks, you know how some of these games go. If you're thinking about it the right way, it could take a long time to get that strategy going. And sometimes these games last forever. But imagine a game lasting, a chess game lasting for weeks or months. And then suddenly something happens in the game that's unexpected. And you've got to take everything and just be, oh, throw it away. That's how I felt because I had worked for so long to get the opportunity to do this job. And then this thing happened.

Fortunately, you know, John is not the type to do what a lot of leaders are doing right now and just start cutting bait. He's more looking at the best way that we can approach our ecosystem and provide value to the community to get through this really tough time. And I think that was the best pivot that we could have made. We'll talk more about pivots as we move forward. But, you know, what did you think coming out of December into 2020? What was the, what was the mentality for you? Yeah. I mean, we all had goals to hit, you know, like, like yourself, like I was like, cool. Okay. This is the numbers I need to hit. I felt extremely prepared. I had done my whole plan for 2020 and I was ready. I was ready to go.

And I felt like coming out of Vegas, I feel like a lot of people were like, yo, let's go. Like we're ready now. Right. And so, you know, we spent the time at the studio, we spent the time doing the meetings, we spent the time, you know, onboarding new people. So I felt like, okay, we're, we're ready to rock and roll. But, you know, as soon as, as soon as what end of, end of February, beginning of March and sessions started to cancel, that's when, that's when I knew it was real because I had a whole two and a half, three, three weeks of APAC training, which was going to be a good bulk of business for me training and then office for the organization. And so when those started getting knocked off the map, I was like, well, okay, I don't, I got to readjust my entire strategy.

Cause that was obviously a book of revenue that we were going to get. And then once everyone else just started canceling across the board, that's when I was like, all right, just like the chessboard, I'm like, all right, like time to go find a whole new whiteboard, find a whole new strategy. And we've been able to pivot accordingly and we continuously will, but yeah, I think everyone else is probably in the same boat, had grand, grand dreams of doing certain things. And, you know, I know certain organizations are being heavily affected by that. And now they have to readdress everything moving forward based on what's happening. So it's crazy. Yeah. I, so my wife and I have had some really interesting conversations.

My wife is a business person as well. She's a ghost on social. So like people always, I mentioned my wife all the time. She's like one of my biggest professional influences ever, but my wife doesn't exist on social media. She doesn't, it's not required for her job. Like mine is right. Required to be out there and putting content together and showing, showing my face and being out there for the community. But for her, she's a behind the scenes leader. So for her, she's had a really tough time with this. And I think a lot of leaders out there are probably struggling with their emotional side because, you know, we've seen leaders in our space. It's just been heartbreaking to see them letting go of 30 people, 20 people.

Some of these people have been at the companies they work with for years, but because of this situation and how it's forced this slow down in business, a lot of folks are having to, I've heard a lot of terms and I don't like any of them, you know, trim, trim the fat, lighten up, you know, you know, slim down. There's a lot of like terms they throw around, but essentially what they're doing is they're letting people go temporarily or permanently so that they can stay in business and keep the doors open. And that for me, one of the conversations that Angie and I had was there are some businesses, some verticals, some industries that simply won't bounce back from this. And I think that that's a really valid conversation.

When you look at retail, for example, I think their primary demographic is older folks, right? People that have spent the last 15 years telling their younger generations in their lives, I don't need a smartphone. In my day, we shook hands, right? Well, that's kind of a risk that you're taking now to shake somebody's hand, right? I don't need to order from Amazon. I'll just run up to the dollar general. Well, that dollar general is probably not going to make it through this because these older folks are adopting this technology and seeing the convenience of swiping right and getting toilet paper delivered to their house. They're not going to go back to the old way. I mean, let's be honest, that is a big percentage of where retail gets its revenue from.

I think that anything storefront in general is probably going to struggle to get back to its former glory. It's pre COVID-19 glory. Yeah, it's, I think also, I think it's also just interesting as well. And, you know, as you're talking about all these things that are happening, I think a lot of industries will come, will have as a rise. Like I think e-commerce, obviously that's going to be a massive, massive thing. Social media tools are going to be on the rise. Obviously be on the lookout for, you know, Zoom, right? That's just blowing up like insanely. Like I think those are things that are happening, but I think because of everything, it's also going to move us more into a virtual world. I think a lot more people are going to be working from home.

A lot more people are going to be thinking about how can I do things virtually? Everyone will have some type of virtual offering now because of this. And I think we'll see a lot of businesses, maybe a hundred percent pivot just the virtual, just because they're like, wow, that was, that was easier on us to do. Maybe we should stay here. So I'm going to be interested to see how people come out of this. Cause I think if, let's say if it lasts until August, September, and we're in this quarantine lifestyle and we're not in the office, it's going to be hard for leadership to transition people back into an in-office setting. As much as people would like to go back there, it's, we got accustomed to the work from home.

People are going to be like, I actually work from home wasn't that bad. I don't want to commute anymore. I'd rather stay here. Right. So it's going to be interesting to see how that plays out. Yeah. You know, I couldn't agree more. I think that some people, some companies, some leaders are probably going to see a really big uptick in productivity with people working from home. I mean, let's be honest for me, when I transitioned over to working from home more often. And then permanently when, when I joined John's team, when I joined your team, what I noticed was that there's not a like legitimate, there's not an eight to five here. When you work from home, you work all the time, you're constantly connected to it.

And it becomes this work-life integration, as opposed to the work-life balance that we so often hear about. But I think that there's probably a certain segment, especially in the SAS space, that's going to realize very quickly that the overhead of having a location, the commute time, the productivity is so much of a burden that they don't need when they can have people working from home, see that strong, productive mentality shine through in the activity and the reports that they put out. And then at the same time, like this whole thing will eventually subside in, you know, in theory, hopefully the curve will flatten and everyone will start reevaluating. And I imagine an enormous population of SAS companies that are going to say, man, you know, maybe at the end of the year, we should just let this location go and have people working from home.

So do you find that that's probably a strong possibility that a lot of these physical locations of businesses in our space specifically are going to just simply disappear? Well, I mean, look different is probably a better way to say it, but the location, the physical building itself will not be needed as much because the thought process of how do I get the most out of my employees every day will, will literally be represented in the data that they're seeing because they're going to pull those activity reports. They're going to pull those results. They're going to pull that revenue. They're going to pull the number of emails sent, the number of calls made, and they're going to start seeing those numbers climb as people get more and more comfortable working from home.

And I think you're right. I think a certain percentage of employees is probably going to fight back. Did you see, I think Gartner announced that 77% of their at-home employees will remain that way permanently. Yeah. Yeah. That's so that was like the CFOs. We're talking about that. Obviously from a CFO standpoint, that's, yeah, we're saving money. I don't have to pay for, I don't have to pay for all these resources that go with bringing an employee on site, obviously there. I think what I meant by look different is I think they'll just be like one HQ just for people that maybe have to have a project or they maybe need to bring someone face-to-face for a conversation. So they have that HQ, but I think everyone else would be like, yeah, you're either working from home, but you can go to a WeWork if you want to, but for the most part, that's going to be it.

You're going to have one HQ and it's not going to be like seven locations. I think that's going to be the difference because people are going to realize now, like, yeah, we don't really need those anymore. We can work from home. We can do Zooms. We can do whatever. And then we're good from there. So that's, that's also going to be a big piece of it as well. So I think the office rental space in general is probably going to change dramatically because of this. I think they'll see an uptick in business because a lot of those physical locations are going to disappear or, you know, look different, as you said, uh, because of that, those employees are going to be looking for places to meet their face-to-face clients.

And they're going to look for those office rental spaces to be able to do that. Um, but what's the, what's the look going to be right at this point? I think our mentality, like this is changing our society because it's changing the way we think about interacting with one another. You know, I remember just six weeks ago, seeing all kinds of articles about how, uh, social media was toxic and it's sure it's not in, in, it's not encouraging us to be face-to-face. It's keeping us from actually communicating with each other properly. There was all these articles about, you know, people having like pictures of like their face being sucked into the phone. And, you know, we've probably all seen all the memes about social media being, you know, toxic for our, our, our social skills, et cetera, et cetera, what it's doing to our kids, right?

We hear all this stuff, but, but here we are six weeks later, where are all those articles now? Those like the, our perspective is completely shifted as a species, as a result of this fear of coming in contact with one another and contracting this virus. So as a result of that, I think we're going to start seeing things like, and I, I hate to use this reference in, in reference to like workspace rentals, but like imagine a plexiglass between you and your prospect. Yeah. Because you don't want to touch that person or be exposed to the virus by chance because you don't know them or where they've been or who they've been exposed to. Like, that's the mentality that I think is seeping into a lot of business people today that they're concerned about.

Um, so, so I see that shift happening. Uh, you know, the tone of the sales role in general was completely different six weeks ago. So I kind of want to get your opinion on where we were versus where we are now and how the tone of the role itself and what, how it's described is, has been changed. So I've seen, we've all seen countless posts on what do I do now? How do I, how do I prosper? How do I do this? So before I think a lot of people were going through the motions. I mean, and that we're all guilty of that at some point in time, not saying that it's excluding anyone, but we're going through the motions being like, okay, cool. I'm going through my cold calls. I'm doing my regular touching base, checking in emails.

I'm doing my template cadence, et cetera. Right. So, and then now people are like, Oh, I gotta, I gotta level up. How do I prospect and sell through it? So my whole thing is that the only, the only thing that has changed is your ICP. Everything else has remained the same. And you should, we should all be continuously thinking about how can I help this person when I prospect? Do I understand what their problems are? Do I understand what their priorities are? And then how can I tie that in? What would my research to help? That should always, we should always be doing that as sales professionals. But again, we got into the automation world of the, of the cadences that has led people to send out all these emails and do all these calls and do all these things, which led to just the templated blast that people are getting, which led to the annoyance, right?

Just based on numbers that people are trying to hit and all that's all that stuff, which I see that. But the whole thing is that now the goal is getting more personalized and going and doing that research. I mean, the three by three research, right? Three things, you know, and going about that way. I mean, also as well, you could just put a timer on yourself for 20 minutes and do that research on each account. If you know what you're looking for, should be simple enough to do in that timeframe. But that's, what's changing is we're just have to be more personalized and changing the way that we deliver that. So I'm telling people now, Hey, do more video. This is a perfect time to do video because true stories.

There's so many people just still sending out cadences and just going through the motions. If you can make a video, you're going to stand out. Now I'm not saying it's going to be a hundred percent reply rate, but you're going to get more people to interact with you than if you did the other way. Right. And all those other people that you're sending those template and messages to, it's going to make them more angry now more than ever because of the sensitive situation that we're currently in. So I'm saying everything has stayed the same for the most part in terms of how do you prospect and how you sell it. We're still trying to figure out solving problems, right? That's still there. The difference, which everyone's going to be like, Whoa, what's the difference?

I know there's a difference is just the industries you talk to, like firing out who is your buyer's buyers. Like if your buyer's buyers aren't making money, if they're not moving in the good direction, then they're not going to buy your solution. So it's thinking about what those are. I mean, those, for example, could be social media tools, e-commerce, risk management, compliance, cybersecurity. Those are industries that I know are still moving in a good direction. I'm talking to them and I'd have a clients that are in there and they're saying, Hey, we're still moving. So those are things that just to pay attention to as it stands today. Yeah, I think you're right. And I, and I also think that the number of qualified prospects that we have has dramatically decreased as a result of this thing.

Um, to, to your point, if the, if your prospects customers are not buying, there's a good chance that your prospect is not buying because they need to have revenue coming in, in order to invest in new solutions. So yes, to a degree, everything's kind of the same. We are still trying to solve problems for businesses out there as sales reps. Uh, but the number of qualified prospects has gone down dramatically. Um, and I think that at the enterprise level, especially things are so different because, and you know, there's a lot of enterprise reps out there. They only focus on the big giant companies, you know, shout out to those people because they have to work super hard to get in touch with the right folks at the right companies in the right departments.

But those companies are struggling to pivot because they're giant, big organizations with lots of locations and lots of communication points. So to make a shift in culture for those big companies, it takes a lot of effort and a lot of time on the part of the decision makers that sales reps are reaching out to and asking for that time from. So I think that for enterprise, especially it's a super high value to be extra focused on how this thing is affecting that particular business so that you're not reaching out and being tone deaf to what's happening to that business as a result of this pandemic. So what are your thoughts on the enterprise level? Because you and I have sold into enterprise for a long time now.

Have you seen that enterprises in general are kind of standoffish because they're, you know, have other priorities or they're adjusting right now and need some more time to get everyone on the same page? Yeah. So, you know, I was having a conversation with a couple people in enterprise companies and a lot of it is like you think about enterprises, like they have budgets to freeze, like they have money to consolidate. So some of them don't have to be in like, hey, let's get after it. They can be in like, hey, like, let's just hang back and watch. And also as well, the quarterly earnings, right, are coming up. So, right, like it just happened in the March. Some people are in April and we were talking about this on our last call.

And that was a huge light bulb for me because I realized that people are going to have to report their earnings, yearly earnings, quarterly earnings right now. And so what their main focus is going to be like, how can I consolidate this as much as possible? Like I'm just not spending money to make sure that we still look good to possibly get funding in the future. So those are things that are happening as well. And obviously, from the enterprise level, they could still be private, right? But obviously most of the public, but some companies could be private, depending on what you see as enterprise, because it's all different. That's why I'm saying that. Sure. The biggest thing is that I've seen a lot of people just from the enterprise level be like, nope, we're just going to hang out unless it's like mission critical and it's directly aligned with all priorities on every single function.

It's going to be like, hey, we're going to put this on pause real quick. So again, it goes back to understanding your ICP. Where should you be targeting? Who should you be talking to? If you're in the enterprise, this is a great time to reach out to your enterprise clients or people that you work with and have a roundtable discussion with them to figure out, hey, what are you guys doing? And how can I help at this time? Yeah, I think it's important to get that feedback from them about what's important to them. You know, so often, so often, I think salespeople have this tendency to pivot to what they are after too soon, you know, and there's, and there's this element. There's this element of like, hey, I'm happy to meet with you.

But, you know, to your prospects out there, like, you know, you've got to do some of the talking here. I'm not just going to like blind pitch you and hope that you jump in like, oh, wait, go back. That's definitely something that's important to me. You got to talk to me and tell me what's important to you. And then I can know whether or not we should continue the conversation or this just isn't something that we should visit right now. I want to talk a little bit about the lens because it's changed quite a bit. I think prior to this thing, everyone was kind of looking at a quarter by quarter lens. But all the leaders I'm talking to today are saying they're lucky to be able to forecast anything 30 and 60 days out.

And that's as far as they're going. And because of that, we have to operate as salespeople in that same lens. How is that affected? How do you think that's affected some people's conversations with decision makers? Yeah, it's, you got to change your top track. It's funny. So I got a call with the VP of sales. And he said the same exact thing. He was like, I have a board meeting next week, and they want me to do a whole quarterly review. And I'm like, I can't even do like a daily review. Like, I don't even know what's going on. So the new question, you know, I'm starting off my calls with, hey, you know, when I talk to VP of sales, normally I ask them what their goals and priorities are and their obstacles are for the quarter.

But honestly, what's your goals and priorities for like this week? Right. And like, and just understanding like what's happening that week, because it's a day by day thing. Right. So I can obviously talk directly to that. And so that's where we should focus on is like this week today, like what are the priorities? So things, things will get done faster. And that's when I've been able to do deals to get them to go faster or to be like, hey, this isn't a priority, reach out to me in two months, which is fine. I'm not even trying to push on that. Because there's so many things that are going on unless it was mission critical. And they told me two months, there's no reason to really push on that.

Go find the people that are ready to have a conversation and that are willing to invest there. And that's, that's what I've been doing on that end. But yeah, just really focusing on that. Hey, what's going on like this week, and then seeing how you can help. James will be great to hear. I know you were talking about how offering up them something to have a conversation with. So how are you going about that and prospecting and sales? And are you doing the same thing? Something different? I think it's different for me because I'm trying to reach out and literally ask them how this has impacted them. And I'm doing the research to sort of bring up things that I've seen when I reach out, like, hey, I saw your guys' response to COVID-19.

How's this affected your customers? Are they reaching out to you more or less? Have you seen the conversation shifting? And a lot of the VPs of sales and the CROs that I've been talking to are reaching back out to me and saying, it has affected us, but I think we're seeing a give and take. So I spoke with Beck Holland last night for a while. She calls me randomly when she has the time to talk to me. And we were talking about how their pipeline at Chorus was. And she told me that while on one hand, they had some pending deals that are now being, you know, put on hold because things are uncertain and companies want to make the right decisions. And there's a little more time to look at that now rather than just jumping in and being like, yeah, this is great.

Let's do it. They want to look at the projections and really try to narrow down whether or not they can spend at this point. So some of those deals got put on hold. But at the same time, there's this whole other cohort of people that are, and it's a big cohort of people that are just now starting to work from home and leaders that are like, I can't hear my people. I can't hear those conversations. So companies like Chorus and Gong and other organizations that are focused on work from home, I'm finding that they have a give and take model right now. They're seeing bigger deals and even, you know, normal every day, whatever your average closed deals are that are kind of going to the wayside and being like, whoa, wait a minute, we need to reassess.

We can't just move forward with this now because of everything that's happened. But then at the same time, there's this whole other constant influx of people saying, I'd love a phone call. I just started working from home. My team is now working from home. And I could really use some help with the conversation analytics and the science behind that. So I think what I'm seeing is that a lot of, first of all, if you're one of those companies whose customers have completely gone silent, you're probably not in that bucket, right? That bucket is the bucket of people that have the give and take. Other companies I've talked to have been like, yo, we don't even know if we're going to be in business in the next 60 days.

So this is not a conversation I can even have right now. And, you know, John and me and you have had many meetings now about the buckets that people sit in, you know, the world is on fire. I can't talk to you. This is the perfect time to talk to me because nothing is happening. What do you have for me that can help? Or talk to me when this whole thing is over, assuming that it will eventually be over, right? So those are the three buckets I'm tending to see in my calls and my responses that I'm getting is one of those responses. So I'm literally out there saying, which one of these is you? You know, from everything I'm researching, it seems like you might be this one, but I want to make sure I get that from you before we schedule a call.

And I'm getting a lot of people back that are like, that is me or nope, we're actually here with it. And it's funny how leaders are sort of focusing on these trends now, whereas before it was like, go, go, go. We're focused on momentum. We're focused on progress. We're focused on activity. Now they're like, okay, let's take a big step back every day and look at the big picture to find those trends. It's definitely day by day. And that has been a very interesting trend to see in my conversations. Yeah, it's, and that's, and that's, and that's the thing is that like, understanding where the trends are at, and this is advice for everybody to like, see who is saying no to you, and then seeing who is saying yes to you.

And that's something that we're working on internally right now is okay, that persona keeps telling us that we probably should stop reaching out to them. Versus this persona is willing to have the conversation. Let's do it. So that is something else I would consider for everyone else to do here is to like write down like, okay, this persona is that we're having great conversations. This persona, we're not having great conversations. It's important that way. And that'll be super helpful for you as well. Totally. And, and don't let go, uh, like my, my advice, you know, don't let go of the memory of what it was like just six weeks ago. Right. I remember when we all started to kind of look at this a little bit differently was when events started to get canceled.

Once we started seeing, you know, Rev 2020 get canceled and Facebook canceled their event and then Adobe got canceled and then sales assembly, you were actually there for sales assembly when it got canceled. So, so like when we saw that happening, I think we all kind of took a step back and was like, whoa, this is getting really serious. We need to address it as soon as possible. But the one thing I can tell you that I experienced and, you know, I didn't share a lot of where I was and what I was doing during the whole outbreak when it was getting, you know, pretty thick because I was in Hawaii, my wife and I, we had planned six months to be in Oahu with my kids. And we were there when this thing broke out and that, that first world experience turned third world pretty fast.

Uh, everything locked down, people started to leave. Um, and it was basically like having the Island to ourselves, but being unable to do a lot of the things we wanted to do. Uh, but I have a different perspective, right? Like there are worse places to be stuck and stranded than the Island of Oahu. Yeah. It could have been, could have been terrible place to be stuck maybe. But, uh, you know, I see a lot of people complaining. I see a lot of people out there that are posting about one being let go, you know, all right, put your big boy pants on, get out there and figure out what you need to do to make something happen. Right. We've all been unemployed before. We know what it is to get a job. Go get it.

Right. This is nothing new. Don't let it destroy you. Right. Well, then I also see a lot of people that are gainfully employed and working from home and they're like, I can't leave my house and it's driving me crazy. I'm stir crazy. And I read this, uh, this great article from Udonis Haslam. You know, better than anybody else that I am not a sports person, right? You're not. But, but I, but I, but I am a Miami person. So a friend of mine, my best friend, James Shand, who's a diehard Miami Heat fan, sent me this article from Udonis Haslam who played for the Miami Heat. And his perspective is a lot like mine in the sense that there are people in this world that literally live paycheck to paycheck and cannot feed their children this evening as a result of this virus.

If you're complaining because you're stuck at home, know that there are so many people out there that are worse off than you. If you're gainfully employed through this epidemic, listen, you're just working from home, you know, but you're working. Some people are unable to go home because of a situation that they have there. I saw a lady that posted a post on Facebook about how someone could DM her if they were literally living in quarantine with someone that abuses them. These are real, these are people with, that are really being affected by this virus. It's not an inconvenience as it is for people like you and me and, and John and other business professionals that are just kind of shifting their perspective.

Yeah, there might be a lull in business and there's a little bit of uncertain ground for some folks on whether or not they're going to continue to be able to work there. But dude, you have food on your table, you have a happy home to work from, and you're not afraid every day because of the people you are surrounded by at your house. So it's an unpopular opinion. I'll grant you, but it's, but it's a very, it's a very important one, I think, for us to keep perspective through this thing and realize how lucky we are to be able to make a shift, like working from home. Yeah, I always talk about this when I go to different countries and I, and I come back and people ask me like, you know, how was that trip?

And I was like, the trip was incredible because it gave me perspective. And I wish in the United States that every single person was required by the age of like 30 that you have to go to a country for like, just like a couple days, just so you can understand like what's really happening in the world. Like, I think sometimes in the United States, we don't understand what's really happening in India or really happening in the Philippines or really happening in all these other countries that I've been to. And I see just the poverty levels. I see how people are living and still having perspective and being grateful that they're alive. And we're over here complaining, oh, yeah, I have to stay in my house and I have an AC.

It's like, do you understand that people are in the streets, like trying to get by right now, can't even get a job. And there's a virus that's happening. They could die at any point in time. So I think we just don't have the right perspective sometimes. And I think we don't take the time to be grateful for what we have. That's why every single morning, I write down three things I'm grateful for. And that gives me the perspective to remain calm, relaxed, and positive because I know it could be way worse than it is right now. And every single person who's listening that has a job, you should just be massively thankful. And every single person who, hey, maybe you got let go, which is highly unfortunate.

And I feel for all those people out there that, you know, reach out to me, James, I'm probably reaching out to you and saying, hey, I don't have this opportunity anymore. You still have an opportunity to get a job because you have the internet. You have LinkedIn. You still, you had skills at a job. There's some people who are coming out who probably are about to come out of college and they can't get a job now because of what's happening. So just put everything in perspective and be grateful for the things that you have because there's some people who don't have anything at all. Yeah. And I think there's an element of humility that has to be here for everybody right now. Some people have it all, right?

But that part of it is something that we all struggle with anyway. And this has just heightened that sensitivity even more. So, you know, me, man, I'm a content guy. I probably would have had it not been for this pandemic. I probably would have posted many, many photos in Hawaii, did some content from the island, you know, talk to my audience there. But what I felt like was, you know what, dude? Nobody cares that I'm in Hawaii right now. Nobody cares. First of all, I'm not that important and I never have been. And second of all, being in Hawaii is not what people want to see right now. They don't care about that. They're concerned about their lives. And I had to be super sensitive to that. And it was very tempting.

I'm not going to lie to you. It was tempting to be, you know, what's up? Shout out from Oahu, you know, like, dude. But like coronavirus is breaking out. Like, pardon me, but fuck you being in Hawaii, right? Like, that's not, like, I don't want to talk to you, dude. Like, that's not cool. So I think that there's an element there that a lot of the folks out there are sort of teeter-tottering on. Do I share this? Do I not share this? And part of that is being tone deaf. But I will say it's overwhelmingly frustrating to hear the same things over and over. James Bodden posted about this earlier about how he's just overwhelmed with the whole empathy conversation, you know. First of all, I think Gary Vee beat the crap out of Empathy in 2017 and 2018, right?

He was the, you know, Empathy Wines. Come on. He started a company, a wine company, literally called Empathy. I have a couple bottles. Like, when you think about that, you know, we all jump on this thing, right? When this thing first broke out, everybody was sending these emails, you know, hey, COVID-19, COVID-19. And I think eventually people just started to put filters on that were like, if this email mentions COVID-19, just throw it in the trash. Just throw it. Just throw it in there. I don't want to hear it anymore. I think it was like 40. Was it 40% less reply rate or open rate according to data? Drop, yeah. Yeah, drop. Yeah, I think it was something like that. Yeah, sales loft data. I think it was Jeremy Donovan that shared, like, mentioning coronavirus in there drops your response rate dramatically.

So, you know, I took a big step back, and I didn't want to overwhelm my audience with coronavirus content. You know, I think mainstream media grabbed onto it really early, and people were just getting hammered by it. So my content actually took a little dip there, one, because I was traveling, and two, because, man, I just wanted to, like, really zero in on the type of content I wanted to put out during this pandemic, mainly because I felt like I needed to address it and not be tone deaf to it. But I didn't want to just beat the ever-loving hell out of it like everyone else had been doing. But watching it did change my perspective on how the spread was impacting the business, especially when people started losing their jobs.

If you had to put a number on it, how many people have reached out to you and asked you if you know anyone that's hiring? Tons. Tons. I mean, because I'm getting – because there's teams, like, whole SDR teams that are getting wiped off the map right now. And it's insane. And they're leaders. They're leaders, too. And the leaders, right? So it's like, hey, 20%, 30% of SDR orgs are going to be affected by this. And I think that's a very realistic number, pending, I think, again, it's going to go up until September. I mean, that's my claim on that. But I would say that, you know, right now, if you are, again, getting that complete wipe, consider other things other than tech. I think that's what a lot of people are like, oh, man, I was in tech.

But, hey, maybe there's sales in different industries, right? And, again, that's a whole new thing to learn. But it's just something to consider right now, right? That, hey, look, I did my experience in tech. Maybe it's time for me to go to e-commerce sales. I don't know. Maybe it's time to go to a different industry. Maybe you're going into the virtual events. I mean, there's different things that you can go and do. But I think it's just, like, if you have gotten that in that layoff, it's just being creative. Like, figuring out, hey, what are the top five companies I want to work for? How do I reach out to them accordingly? How do I have the right messaging? These are things that are important.

And that's what I would encourage everyone just to think about as well. Yeah, you know, I think we sometimes get really comfortable in a vertical, in an industry, and we don't think that we can step outside. Man, I've probably started a new career six times in my life. And it's interesting, right? Because, you know, look at the educational aspect. Everybody keeps talking, or, you know, I shouldn't say everybody, but I have a group of people that I'm pretty consistently hearing about. And they post about how people come out of college with educational specialties and degrees and then end up in sales, you know. And I think that there's a huge population of people that fit that bill. But what that means to me is that degree means you can learn something.

And because of that, you can take that skill, how to learn, and you can go anywhere. And you can use your experience in sales and apply those same methodologies, those same best practices, those same tactics to your new sales job. Selling, I don't know, heavy equipment, you know. You know, pick an industry. Selling educational programs, you know. Selling anything you want. You know, retail probably could use some training in how to, like, convince people that this is the thing that you need. And then also the upsell, right? I look at restaurants and I see an opportunity there because a lot of restaurant people, let's be honest, right? Restaurants don't typically lean very heavily on the phones.

But now, now, man, there's just no telling where this is going to head, right? Like, at this point, I'm imagining restaurants, big chains like Chili's and Cracker Barrel to have call centers. Hi, what can I get for you? Right? They need to learn how to have that conversation and upsell so that the restaurants can remain profitable and come back from this debacle. I don't know. Maybe it's going to go right back to normal. But even if it goes right back to normal and they open up seating area and restaurants now, there's a good chance that a lot of people are going to be really hesitant to go inside anywhere where there are large groups of people from this point until, I don't know, 20, 30. People are going to be hesitant.

I know a lot of people are saying, hey, once they uplift it, like, there's a chart out there that's like, it goes down and then it's going to go back up, right? So people are going to just be like, okay, cool. It's open again. But, like, I'm still going to be weary. And I think, yeah, I think it's going to, it'll get back to normal, but it'll look different. It'll look different for sure. I want to kind of pivot a little bit and talk directly to leaders out there because you and I talk to leaders consistently. We connect with a lot of them and they give us a lot of feedback pretty regularly. We pivoted in a big way with our meeting structure, our internal meeting structure. And we went from having Monday morning weekly meetings to having pretty much consistent five to 10 minute scrums all the time throughout every day.

I don't even think that there's a limit to the amount that we could do in a day. It's basically like a Slack message that says, hey, can we connect real quick? Here's my Zoom link. Bam. We jump on. Five minutes later, we're off the meeting, but we have an action item, right? So talk to the leaders out there that you know and talk about the leaders that you've heard from that have also changed the way that they're kind of operating internally and communicating to their teams throughout the week. Yeah. So a lot of, some people have been doing stand ups and stand out. So what they'll do is they'll do like a meeting at like 8.50, nine o'clock in the morning. And then at five, they'll be like, hey, how's everything going?

And some people have been doing like coffee breaks in the middle of the week. Some people will just have like Wednesday wind downs where they'll just like have like at five local time. They'll have just a wrap up of like what's going on at the week. Some people are having Friday closeouts, right? I think it's just important to just have a real quick sync just to make sure everyone's just good and then moving forward. But I think everyone is still trying to figure this out because some people, again, are doing it every day. Some people are doing it every other day. Some people are just doing it at the end of the week. I think you know your team. You know what's best. We've done one Monday morning meeting and that's just our standard meeting that we always had in the morning.

Right. And Wednesday and Friday are just our scrum meetings where we're just saying, hey, this is what's going on. Let's just have a quick chat. Let's just connect. And then we move forward from there. So I think it's just important this time to stay connected as much as possible because some people, again, aren't used to this work from home style. And also people aren't used to a pandemic. So that's the reason for it. I think a lot of people out here are like, oh, wow, like, you know, you should just trust your employees. Yeah, I get that. But also it's a pandemic. It's not just like we're all just working from home. That's different. It's working from home and there's a pandemic. And some people, this is like their first or second job and they just need to feel that connectivity because they haven't had a position like this before.

So I think it's just I think it's just important to take that into consideration from a leadership perspective, find ways to just have those quick meetings. So then you feel like you're connected. Yeah, so totally, man, 100 percent from a leadership to employee, to a subordinate, I guess, to a salesperson perspective. I think there's an element of forecasting in realistic terms now that wasn't wasn't really so six weeks ago. Right. Six weeks ago, man, we had one phone call with somebody and we create an opportunity and we'd be like, this call went so good. It's on my forecast. It's definitely baller. We're going to go through and leaders knew that these are happy years. Right. Leaders knew that in the back of their minds, but they didn't want to squash the momentum or the positive feelings that the reps had about the meeting, about the opportunity.

So they didn't come right out and say, hey, man, this is just happy years. It's probably not going to go the way you think. But what they did do was now fast forward six weeks, middle of the pandemic as salespeople, we have to be super realistic about what we're seeing in our pipeline and get those closed, lost opportunities lost as soon as possible so that you stop wasting the time on them. I had to have a realization with myself, all right, I'm going to go through this pipeline and be honest about what I think is really going to close. You know, shout out Chris Merrill. He was the first person to tell me, like, this is about what you know is going to close, not the lies that we tell ourselves.

For me, that was an eye opener because I was like, man, that's that's 100 percent true. Like, we can't focus on the happy years ops right now. We have to focus on the ops that want to move and do things quickly so that we can have a pipeline full of opportunities that are truly going to close and trending much more positive than what they were six weeks ago when we were like, yeah, that's a great op. This guy loves me. We're definitely going to do business together only to find out two months later, this person probably isn't even your decision maker and they need to involve eight more people, right? Some reps out there, I think, and I'm guilty of this in my first couple of years, man, we would have, I would have one phone call and I'd run into my boss's office and be like, yo, I just talked to big company name.

They're definitely going to close. This has been amazing. Yeah. You know, and, and to his credit, he was always the person that would be like, uh-huh, we'll see. You know? Yeah, exactly. I think, I think we have to take as sales, as like bottom, as like bottom salespeople, people below the power line that do sales, practitioners, we need to be honest with ourselves more than ever during this pandemic about what's trending close and what's trending maybe, and what's just me feeling like we had a good conversation. Yeah. Absolutely. I think it's the more you relate yourself with your pipeline, the better again, but this is something that should always be happening. Yeah. Right. We should always be real with the pipeline.

But again, when, when you're in sales, you, you don't want to look at an empty pipeline and be like, I don't know what I'm doing. So you want to be like, I got, I got some things in here. Like it's going to be fine. Right. So I, but now more than ever, it's, it's imperative to be real with that pipeline so that your leadership can accurately forecast. So, so for the runway of the business, right. And that's the most important thing. And also the runway for you, like you don't want to follow people that, you know, just aren't even interested. So that just, that just, that just goes into asking the, the hard questions at the end, making sure next steps are appropriate. But again, it's tough right now because it changes daily.

You know, I talked to someone last week. They were like, cool. This all sounds great. And then in the middle of the week, it's like, yeah, we just, our team just got let go. There's literally nothing you can do about that. So yes, you can ask the right questions, do the right things, but also there's just an element here where it's day by day. That's why every single day I'm like, I don't really know. You don't, you know that some deals are confident, but you also don't know because you don't know what's happening internally at an organization at any point in time. Yeah, that's true. I think I've adopted this mentality of like, how many ops can I update in a day? Yeah. You know, and it doesn't really matter what that update is.

It could be, I just sent the last email today, this afternoon, but it also could be, this person hasn't responded to my last three emails, so it's closed, lost. I will not spend any more time on it. You know, so my advice to the reps out there that are still generating pipeline and still having success in conversations is to be really diligent about what you create an op for. And don't lie to yourself like I did for many years about what's going to close. Because having a good conversation is not the same as is there a next step here. Yeah, so we're seeing some trends in conversation. What are some that you've noticed have stood out to you since this whole thing started from a day-to-day cold call slash prospecting, you know, reaching out, delivering those cold messages and trying to get new conversations started?

Do you see some trends there? I've seen a few myself. I think the biggest trend is the change in the call to action, which, again, I think a lot of this stuff is just going to be stuff I just do moving forward. Yeah, yeah. I should have been like, yeah, I should probably just do it that way. So the way of going about it is directly stating what the current problem, the prospects going through. Right now, a lot of leaders are trying to figure out motivation, inspiration, right? Those things. And then at the end, it's that call to action. So the call to action is like just very loose, right? It's like, hey, if you're open to a deeper dialogue, let's chat. If this is something that has any interest to you, let's have a conversation.

So I'm not asking for 30, 20 minutes, which, again, that just mentioning 20, 30 minutes. A lot of people, they get like, I don't know if I want to do that right now. I don't want to see a demo. But if someone's like open to learn more, like, yeah, let's chat for sure. So I've been doing a lot of that lately. And then just saying, hey, if you're not interested, it's completely cool. And people have been responding to be like, hey, I am interested to talk or, hey, great video, great message. I'm not interested, but here's when you can follow up with me. So really the changing of messaging is just I've just made it instead of a high friction call to action with asking for that time, 20, 30 minutes.

I'm making it very low friction and just saying, hey, open to learning more, open to a deeper dialogue, et cetera. And that's been helpful in the conversations I've been having in that approach. And my approach as well has been 90% videos right now, just because that medium is easier to deliver and convey my confidence, inflection, tone, humanity than any other tool right now that's out there. And so that's where I've been. That's been my biggest change is I've shifted all to video. And that's been extremely helpful for me to go to this. Morgan, what do you want to talk about before we wrap things up here? We've got about seven minutes left. Honestly, I just, I want everyone to embrace this time.

And what I mean by that is this is an opportunity for us to uplevel ourselves as sales professionals and put sales on the right track due to this realignment that I, that I think is happening in the wake up call that I talked about. And also we have a unique experience right now to put something on a resume that may never happen ever again to be like, Hey, like I've been telling SDRs, this is a time where you can be like, Hey, I prospected through COVID-19. Like I was able to sell through COVID-19. If there's like, again, obviously certain industries, it's not possible, but that story is very compelling. And that's something that I want everyone to focus on coming out of this is that all the stuff we talked about, just take those insights to figure out like, how can I maximize my time here in COVID-19 to tell the story of how a document, like how you got through this?

Because this is going to be something that's going to be in the history books, you know, our kids are going to be learning about this, right? Like as, as they, as they go on, right? Our grandkids will be talking about this. So that's, that's the biggest thing that I would tell everyone to focus on right now is figuring out how can you sell and prospect to this mess and tell that story. Yeah. You know, I never looked at it from that perspective. And I think that comment in itself is probably the hallmark of like why we do what we do, right? Changing the way that people think, but I never looked at it like that. I didn't, I didn't imagine that putting that on my resume would be useful, but, you know, for a lot of sales reps out there, being able to say that you held onto your job as a sales rep through this crisis is probably pretty powerful.

I would imagine, especially if you are, you know, trying to get on at a company that had to let people go through that, that crisis, right? Like, Hey, you know, you let 30, 40, 50 people go during this time, this epidemic, this pandemic, but I, I maintained my role as a sales professional throughout the pandemic and came out the other side, still employed at the same company. Um, I think that speaks volumes to our skills and the way that we communicate with each other. You know, one of the things that I'll say is that if you get nothing else out of this pandemic as a salesperson, change the way that you speak to others, right? So often, I think we're so focused on getting the result, the revenue, you know, the, the, the contract that we forget we're talking to another human being for a minute and we're just kind of, I don't want to say robotic in our delivery, but we're very, we're very intentional with what we're after.

And I've had to adjust myself because of this pandemic. I have a very passive touch. It's very conversational. I'm probably going to have a lot of conversations with you before I even talk about the value that I can give to your teams. Uh, there's a lot of that relationship building in my approach that I have to set aside. Now at this moment, my conversations are very, you know, true, true to form again, shout out Chris Merrill. I have this backpack full of these tools and it's going to change everything about your business for the better. And I need to know whether or not you're interested in these tools. And that is, that is a much more fruitful conversation in this sensitive time period. I think then, Hey, let's get together and spend 30 minutes getting to know each other.

You know, while that is very important that we get to know each other long-term, I think right now, right now in this scenario, leaders want to know why you're talking to them and what you can do to help them as soon as possible. So they know where to spend their time. Exactly. So I want to thank you, man. This has been great. I really appreciate it. Uh, you know, being able to sit in for John anytime is always fun for me. Yeah. Yeah. This is a good, this is a good, this is a good, good show. Yeah. If you want to be on the make it happen Mondays podcast, reach out to us. We are happy to talk to you. You can reach out anytime, uh, find us on LinkedIn, reach out to Morgan, reach out to myself, hell reach out to John.

Uh, we are, we are the type of people I think that have never met strangers in our lives. So we want to have those conversations, get you on the show, talk about, you know, the things that you're experiencing. And again, we appreciate everyone out there, uh, stay safe, be that individual that is doing the right things through this. Make sure that when you're talking to your prospects, they know that you actually care about what they do and the situation that they're currently in. And just straight up ask them, are your customers buying right now? Everything I'm seeing says yes or no. And they're going to tell you, they'll give you that information because they need the help. So be real, be concerned with them.

Morgan, what do you want to say before we sign off here? That's it. I mean, just make sure that you know what your buyers are going through and just be really thoughtful during this time and maximize as much as possible. Well, thanks everybody for coming out. We appreciate it. Join the show, leave a comment, share. Comment, like, whatever it is that you do with these things and we'll see you on the next run. Let's make it happen. All right, y'all.