157: Jeff Hoffman On The Art Of Sales

What's poppin' y'all? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Make It Happen Mondays with your host, John Barrows. This episode is brought to you by our partners, Sales Loft, Vanilla Soft, Gong, Vidyard, Owler, and Proposify. Today, we've repackaged an insightful webinar with John and his mentor, Jeff Hoffman. Jeff has been engulfed in the sales world for years, and from prospecting to negotiation to the actual close, Jeff and John chop up the truth and the lies we tell ourselves through our own sales processes. We hope you enjoy this very insightful episode. Let's tune in and make it happen. I've been doing a lot of thinking. So for those of you who don't know, Jeff, when I started my first company, Thrive Networks, I took all the trainings out there, Sandler, Miller, Hyman, Taz, all of it.

And I took this weird company and name in Boston called Basho that I had never heard of before. And I went to this shop and Jeff was doing the presentation. And I had never been so engaged, first of all, my entire career in a sales training, because most of them had sucked so hard. And I had never learned so much in such a short period of time. And so fast forward, I sell my company, I end up joining Basho as one of the senior trainers with Jeff as the lead of it, and learned quite a bit of sales from Jeff. And so, but I've always recognized that there's, and if you look at this graph here, 5%, 25%, here's my kind of philosophy. I think there's 5% of us, I always say this, that there's 5% of us in sales that are just our natural born sales professionals.

And I mean that in all the positive ways, not the sleazy style, but all the, for the right reasons. And then there's a solid 25% that are above average, that work their ass off and whatever. And then I think there's about 70% that are average or below. I put myself in the 25%. I am not a natural born sales rep. I got to work my ass off. Most people don't know this about me, but I am not typically, I'm not an extrovert. I have to force myself into being an extrovert. I swear to God, I'd rather sit in the corner of a bar with a friend talking than being in the middle talking to people. Yeah, I believe that. Actually, I know you a long time, John. I believe that. It's just not me, right? So I understand that, but I'm just not the naturally charismatic guy.

And so I've had to science sales out quite a bit. Jeff is in that 5%, in my opinion. And this isn't to kiss his ass. That is so nice. Thank you, man. What a nice thing to say. But it's genuine because I've watched you interact. I've sat in sales meetings with you and been like, what in the fuck? Shit, man. I couldn't do that if you paid me a million dollars, right? And so what I've done is I've tried to science it out so that we can repeatable process and all this other stuff. But I've realized that I've scienced it out a little bit too much, I think, and I've lost a little bit of the art. And so that's what the premise of this is, is to me to get to that about art. Because Jeff, I mean, you know this unconscious competence thing, right?

Yeah, sure. Definitely. Right? And how, for those of you who don't know, I don't know who came up with this, but you start a new job and you don't know what you don't know. So you're unconsciously incompetent. You don't know what you don't know. Then you become consciously incompetent. You know what you don't know. Then you become consciously competent. And then you move up to the unconsciously competent. I am consciously competent. I am also consciously incompetent. I know what I don't know. And I know what I know. And I know why I'm good. And I know what I'm, why I'm not great. Jeff, you tell me, you seem to be somebody that's in the unconsciously competent. Well, I think that is such a big compliment, especially from you, John.

But I prefer to think I'm a three. There's a lot of what I do is very deliberate. Okay. So I do have a lot kind of baked in muscle memory. I think we all do after, you know, with experience. And I think your point's so right on, right? It is a there's a hand and there's a brain and they both kind of work. And that brain loves the analytics and the logic and the thoughtfulness and the science and the hand likes the art and the creativity and the freedom. I'm probably a little closer to the hand side, to your point. But I do think about what I do, not to the not to the depths that I know that you teach, which is so, so amazing. And I always love seeing the scientific representation of stuff that I do kind of creatively.

So I think it's incredible match. But yeah, I'm probably in that three, four in sales. That's probably the only thing I'm in three and four on, but I'll take it. Maybe drinking. I'm in there. Maybe a few other things, but that's about it. Anything I can make money on anyway. Well, that's true. So now I'm taking this down because now I think the segue to that is exactly where I want to start with because you created Basho coming out of Akamai, started your own company, studied tons of different sales methodologies out there. One of the crowning jewels though, about Basho specifically back in the day, but still now was the YUIU Now email. And it was the personalized, right? It was doing research and it's been bastardized a lot over the past 15 years and I've watched it get bastardized.

I've watched technology try to mimic it. Could you, let's start with the essence of, first of all, where did the YUIU Now email come from? And why do you still believe in the essence and the purity of that approach and the importance of it? Not just to get results, but for, I know there's other reasons there. So could you give me that explanation? I want to talk about that and then bring it to today's world. So if you, yeah, thank you. And thanks for indulging me and giving you a little history about it. Cause it's kind of a cool beginning. It was purely luck how this came about. I, this is one of the first sales techniques I ever came up with and it was before I got into the business. So, um, you mentioned Akamai earlier before I was my last company, before I started my own company.

And, um, I was a rep there, uh, ultimately went into management. But when I was a rep there years ago, I was working on FedEx and FedEx was one of my accounts. And I'd been working on the account for, I don't know, four or five months. Um, I was pretty entrenched in a very specific user group in their, in their CTO's kind of office down in, uh, down, uh, down at FedEx's headquarters. And, um, it was, it was kind of stalling. I was at trial. They had a trial and a proof of concept, but you don't want to deal stalls and you feel the energy kind of seeping out of it. It was happening. So, um, I was getting frustrated. This is a high profile deal. My boss knew about it. My CEO knew about it and I could feel the thing slipping away and I didn't know what to do.

So anyway, I'm flying back from, uh, was that Memphis? I was flying back to Boston where I live. And, um, this was years ago and I'm reading an issue of Wired Magazine, which I'm not even sure if they make anymore, but it was a tech magazine. And I'm just flipping through it on the airplane. And sure enough, there's an article with an interview with a woman named Susan Goldner, who at the time was a senior vice president of customer service at FedEx. literally seven levels ahead of where I was like, no, I don't have no idea who this person is. Oh, there's a big wig. And she's being interviewed and wired. And the question that they asked her was, um, what is the, um, um, um, future of FedEx online?

Now remember this is late nineties. So not everyone was really up to speed on the web yet. And she said, well, you know, it's really important that people track their packages on, on go FedEx.com because it is literally fractions of a penny to do that search as opposed to calling 1-800-GO-FEDEX.com. So that's where we're moving the business. Seems pretty obvious in 2020, but back then it was pretty cutting edge. Well, my technology did help website performance. Now I will be honest, our technology would have had no impact on the dynamic search she was talking about. So I couldn't help her with her at all. But the fact that there was an article interviewing an executive at the place I was in that was stuck, caught my attention.

So without even really thinking or planning, the plane lands. Um, and again, this is a while ago. I didn't even have a cell phone on me. I had to use a pay phone and you can Google that image. I was using a pay phone in Logan and I call, uh, uh, FedEx's general number, ask for Susan Goldner's office. I, and there's noise behind me. Uh, a woman picks up the phone, Susan Goldner's office. Yes, is Susan there? No, she's not. Can I help you? And I said, well, that'd be great. I actually don't even know her, but I just got, I just left your offices four hours ago and I was reading an issue of Wired when I saw her interview. Did you see it? And then she paused and said, yeah, yeah, I've seen the interview.

I go, well, she said in it that it's really important that you move traffic from the call of 1-800-GO-FEDEX to FedEx.com. Um, and actually I'm doing a trial with a bunch of guys in your tech team. I wanted to know who I should invite on Susan's team to participate. I mean, I'm really throwing a dart here. She says, hold on. Five seconds later, this is Susan. Oh, uh, okay. Uh, no prep. I have no idea what I'm going to say. So I just repeat what I said. Hi, Susan. We'd never met. I just got out of this meeting with Joe and Phil and Tom, and I just read your article. Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. Who should I invite on your team? Since this is obviously important to you. I'm just trying to get some life into this account.

I have no real goal. She says, oh, you want to invite Don Bosick. All right. So in 1999, Don Bosick was the CTO of FedEx. Jesus. I'm selling like a 50k product and this is, woo. So, um, fast forward. I go to my next meeting. We invite Don Bosick. I go to my next meeting. I'm sitting around this table. It's the three same engineers I saw two weeks prior. The deal is still stalled. And guess what? Don Bosick walks in the room. I knew it was Don Bosick because when he walked in the room, everyone froze. Yeah. But these are like 10 levels below him. And then he looks in the room. He goes, which one of you guys is Hoffman? I'm like, mate. And he's like, oh, he sits for, I don't know, five minutes.

He had nothing to do with him. After five minutes, he was very political and very strong. He's an executive. He's like, well, it looks like you got this, you got this handled guys. And he leaves. But his presence brought so much oxygen to this sale because when Don Bosick has some interest in this sale, all of a sudden these engineers stood up straight and made this a priority. Long story short, the deal closes. Fast forward a couple of months. I'm blown away by what happened, but I didn't think of it much. My boss asked me to present what happened at FedEx to the sales order. So I did. And when I tell this part of the story, which is only a small part of it, everyone's laughing. Everyone's like, that's crazy.

And one of my buddies who's in the group says, hey, Jeff, did you ever say Akamai in any of these engagements with Susan Golder and her assistant? And I'm like, I don't think so. And then he goes, did you even say your name? Light bulb. That's when I came up with it. It has nothing to do with us. She responded to me and her assistant put me through so quickly. It had nothing to do with me. It had nothing to do with value props. It had nothing to do with my product. What it had to do with was them and the authenticity of the moment. And you're right, John, this has been lost in translation over the years. This is the element that many people who've heard why you are now from other people other than you and I don't know.

It's the tapping into the authentic moment that made me a very real person that got quick engagement. And that's really where the whole technique started from that moment. And that's kind of where I want to take this because I think, you know, it's funny when I took the training, I had a similar, I had a different progression, right? So I took the train like before and I'd be curious to kind of what you were doing before with the prospecting. I was doing your typical generic elevator pitch, blasting out a shitload of emails. It was a numbers game for me, whatever. Yeah, I was clumsy too. I mean, I had some success, but I was like everyone else. I was just kind of like banging doors hard. Yeah, exactly.

It was a pure numbers game back then. And so, because we didn't have the insights and all that stuff that we have now. Then I took your training. I was like, oh, this makes total sense. Let's do a little bit of homework, make a connection. But when we look for triggers and everybody's heard triggers, right? They open up a new office, they launch a new product, whatever that is. And I would make a connection. Oh, you open up a new office? Hey, I've worked with other companies that open up new offices. And my results went up. They definitely went way up, right? Compared to what I was used to. But then, and it took a while for it to really click. But the authenticity pieces of it is when I really started giving a shit and looking at it from a perspective of, no, when that's up, I've, I've had enough experience now to know when that happens, I know I can help, or I've at least helped other people in your scenario.

So how can you, and I want to tie this to authentic business acumen and all this other stuff, but also in today's world. Yeah. Because look, and with COVID and all this other stuff, we like, I wish we all had a half an hour to an hour to do research on every account we had before we make a phone call to them before we sent an email. Realistically, though, we're still being held to $50 a day. And whether I like it or not, and I could beat up that manager who's telling those reps to do that all day long and tell them not to, but it's the reality of where we are. So why is the, let's talk about the journey of YUI and, and, and outside of the results first, let's talk about why it's important for sales reps to really understand it.

And then let's talk about how we can actually evolve it to where we are today in this pseudo volume world of trying to crack through the noise and where we are. Sure. So, um, you know, the, the beginning of it is, um, we talk about that's authenticity of the moment. Let me back up for a second. I think where this and other sales techniques have gone awry over the last number of years is actually because of the great benefit of technology. So now as salespeople, we have the ability to do things that you and I couldn't do 20 years ago, John. I mean, we can, when it comes to scalability, when it comes to quick research, when it comes to really directed messaging and really doing research, not only on the company, but the person you're talking to truly amazing as a sales rep's dream.

Here's the challenge. You can't replicate a technique until you've mastered it. So yes, you can do this 50 times a day, but most people can't, most people can't because they haven't mastered doing it once. You see, I get the promise land is in the real world. When I have 50 dials per day as my KPI, I have to figure out a way to do why you, why now in three minutes, I get that. And today it takes me to your point, a half an hour to do a why you, why you now, how do I get from there to their frequency? You have to master this concept with lots of repetition. And then you can scale. And I think where a lot of folks struggle is they scale too fast with this. They, they're so excited about a technique that makes sense.

That's clean that I can fill out really quickly. And they see the obvious entry ramps of, oh my God, I can do a cut and paste so easily with this. Let me grab some triggers. Let me automate the, the, the trigger to the value prop. Uh, let me, uh, uh, catalog my closes. Yes to all of those things. That's very smart. But to your chart earlier on consciousness and competency, just cause you're conscious and you, uh, and you understand it doesn't mean you are competent and you can do it. So, um, what I always coach people is be really, really good at this and then scale it. So to reps who are listening that, that, that, that get our trainings and are thinking about this, you know, my advice is, look, don't boil the ocean, do your 50 dials a day, the way your boss wants you to with whatever goofy technique they gave you and whatever auto dialer you're working with.

But maybe one or two calls a day, you actually dive in and do a 30 minute work. This is, this is where you're going to learn the skill that will then trip you over to the 50 a day, which John, I can easily do 50, 60, these a days, no problem for me, nor is it for, for our staff. So it's, it, but you have to give yourself the ability to learn it. And I think that ties into my biggest thing, which is, well, not my biggest, but one of, which is, you know, somebody asked me, John, if you could go back and tell your 22 year old self something, what would it be? Right. And, um, you know, I have a few answers to that, but one of them is be more, way more proactive with my business acumen. Like I, my business acumen was a by-product of my activity.

I would just go, go, go, go, go. And I would do something stupid. Like I would go into a CEO's office. I would ask a stupid question and the CEO would say, that's a stupid question. I wouldn't, I wouldn't ask it anymore. If I had the choice, I would go back and really be more thoughtful with my business acumen. And I think this ties into that, right. Of doing that homework of actually giving a shit on that account, on that one tier one account that you really want to get into. Yeah. But then how do you make it right now? So that, because another, another layer of the why you, why you now, at least historically was you fire this all the way up to the C-suite and you get referred down. I think there's something missing here though, because I think that with the advent of LinkedIn and how, you know, how we can find out who the best person is to speak with, I think it shows a little bit of ignorance sometimes when you just go purely up to the top and say, Hey, who on your team can I talk to about this?

So where, and when is like from your approach standpoint, when reaching out to the executives, whoever, do you go after the person that you want to go after these days? Or do you go after somebody adjacent to that person and try to get referred over? Definitely the latter. I definitely do the latter. I definitely try to get parachuted into the arms of the buyer. I do not do a direct bullseye. And what I, what I always challenge people to think about is this for anyone listening, think about any deal you've ever worked on in your entire life that you started and closed. You cold called it and you closed it. Think of any deal. Ask yourself this question. Did the person who signed the PO at the end, was that the same person that I talked to on call one?

You know, the chances are zero that that's true. So we know our journey never starts with the buyer. So I don't care about starting my journey with the buyer. I'd rather use the reference, but your point's a great one because to blindly go with CXOs and ask for referrals is, if anything, it's unsophisticated and it's not going to get good response rates. But here's the example. You know, the, the, your closes are only limited to your creativity. Many, many years ago, when I started Basho and trying to get into Symantec. And one of my favorite searches is to type in an executive's name into Google and then type in dot PPT because that'll reveal a bunch of PowerPoints. The guy is uploaded. I found one for one of the heads of, of global sales at Symantec.

And by, after working my way through the EA, my close to him was because the, when I clicked on the link, it was broken. There was no PowerPoint to download. And I used a why you, why you're now on the phone. And it sounded like this. Hi Tom, we've never met before, but I was, I was doing some research on Symantec and I just came across a PowerPoint presentation that you gave to Cal IT a number of years ago called Aligning Sales and Marketing in a Global World. My name is Jeff Hoffman. I have a sales training company in Boston. That's a topic a lot of my clients care deeply about. But when I went to click on the link, it was dead. What's the easiest way I can get a copy of the deck? I'm not asking for a referral.

I'm not asking for a meeting. I'm asking him to send me his deck. That's the kind of engagement that executives will give you. So it's about being thoughtful and creative with your, with your clothes instead of just having the same hammer on the same nail. Who do I talk to? Who do I talk to? Who do I talk to? Well, so give us a way to get 15 minutes on your calendar, 15 minutes on your calendar. Like, so, but okay. So what do you do with that then? Like, okay, great. So you got the, you got the executive who said, okay, sure. You know, I'll have my assistant send you the PDF. Like, okay, now who gives a shit? Like, what do you do now? And I'll tell you what happened. I got, I got the, I got the deck and we're done.

And then I called the assistant back five minutes later. Hi, you probably don't remember me, but we were on the phone a few minutes ago. Oh yes, yes. I remember. She says already. Her voice is a little more peppy already. She's getting a little more of rapport. Rapport is not built with time. It's built with frequency. This is my second call. Although it was brief, it was pleasant. So we look for repetition frequencies way better in sales than length of time. She said, yes, I remember. I said, what does the graph on slide seven mean? Really? Hold please. Now I'm talking to Tom again. Now he's telling me, he's teaching me. And we talk about this all time teacher student. He's teaching me about his deck.

This went on for three minutes at the end of the three minutes. But you should have heard me. I was like, I don't understand. I kept on saying, I don't understand. So he kept on dumbing it down and dumbing it down. And the more he dumbed it down, the friendlier he got, and the nicer he got, because he knew I was listening to him. See, this is the stuff about authenticity I'm talking about. So when he was done teaching me about his deck, I said, that makes perfect sense. You know, we have a lot in common because I have the same perspective. In fact, one of the things we teach Tom in our sales training program is that sales and marketing have to align on the same message, or all you're going to do is confuse your customer and empower your competitor.

He said, well, that's true. I said, hey, who should I talk to at Symantec to introduce our stuff? He said, oh, that's Mark Richards out in Beaverton, Oregon. Okay. Mark Richards was the head of inside sales in Beaverton, Oregon. I knew exactly who he was. He was in my database, but I wouldn't, I didn't want to go with him directly. I wanted this. So then I said, thank you, Tom. And by the way, never spoke to Tom again, left a message for my buyer. And this is what this message sound like. Hi, Mark. We've never met before, but I just got off the phone with Tom and we were reviewing a deck from a slide presentation he gave a couple of years ago. Your name came up. What's the easiest way for us to talk later today?

I got a call back in like two minutes. Now, was that a weird, long journey to get to Mark? I guess. I think it was a fun journey personally. But I believe in patience. I believe in patience. It goes to genuine curiosity. And we've had this conversation before. I think both you and I, I think if there's, I'm not blessed with being a genius or anything like that, but I, I, for some weird reason, I'm genuinely curious. I mean, that's the purpose of this, this webinar right here is I'm, I'm trying to learn. I'm going back to school here because I'm, I'm trying to figure out how to get to that 5%, if you will. Can you teach genuine curiosity? Because that is, that is something where you saw that and you were like, holy shit, this is actually interesting.

Yes. You had in the back of your mind that this was a target account of yours and that type of stuff. But you, there was a genuine component to that. And I think that's what miss it. That's what reps are missing today is the, is the give a shit factor, the genuine curiosity, because if you fake curiosity, it's so transparent. It can be. Yeah. So how do you, there is a, there is a shortcut to being curious. Help me out. Help me out. What is it? The shortcut of being curious is not knowing something wanting and wanting to know it at a greater level than the embarrassment of not knowing it. That's what curiosity is. You know, my son, my youngest son is at the breakfast bar in our kitchen and I'm, you know, making breakfast and he's staring at the refrigerator, just eating a cereal, looking at the refrigerator.

I turn, I don't know why he's looking at it. Yeah. Finally, I say, Maxie, what, what are you doing? He goes, Dad, that a magnets work. That is the epitome of curiosity. Why? Because his curious, his question that he wanted answered was more important to him than him worrying that he looked dumb by asking. But that distinction is very hard for salespeople because of all the stupid managers who told us you got to be credible. I am the least credible person you will ever meet. And I'm really good at sales. Why? Because I'm curious, man. Curious is so more attractive than credibility, which is so boring. Well, and this is what, this is also what gets back to like, like challenger sale. I have such a hard time with challenger sale because I think for somebody like who's somebody who's consciously competent and unconsciously competent type of thing.

Okay. Challenger sales. Good. Cause you got your 10,000 hours and doing it and you can push back on. And you and I, Jeff have been in sales for, I've been in 25 years or so, a little bit more for you, but you know, we can go toe to toe with a VP of sales and say, look, dude, I, you know, let me push back on you a little bit here. And we got the credibility to do that. But a 22, 23, 25 year old kid challenger sale. Are you out of your mind? Yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't endorse it. I've never endorsed that. And this is the challenge that I see a lot of SDRs have is, or organizations in general, is that they're asking their 22 to 25 to 26 year old kids to make phone calls into CTOs, to CIOs, who, who the wants to talk to?

No, the training, by the way, the reason why I, and you have always pitched call as high as you can when you prospect is not to get to the CEO. It's to get to the CEO's admin. You see, I would rather have a live conversation with a non buyer than an email conversation with a buyer. And I know that's weird, but I would, I can, I can do things. I can learn things on a real conversation. And if I can connect with a senior seat, the higher you go in an org chart, the more likely their phone is answered by a live human. That's why I call high. It is nothing to do with air cover or you got to go to the CEO to read the 10 K. I don't do any of that stuff. I just want to have a conversation that I can use when I call the buyer.

I want to be able to say, you know, I was talking to Sheila for a while and she said, blah, blah, blah. Like, I want to say that stuff because I know my buyer is terrified of Sheila. And if I can align myself with Sheila, then I have social value. And you, and I think that's really, it's not easy because connect rates and that type of, but when you have somebody on the phone, I think you're spot on, right? But, but we are stuck in this email world right now. I mean, I'm seeing stats right now from connect and sell about how it's taking 800 dials to get 10 connects. Forget about conversations, right? That type of shit. So, so I don't need 800, I don't need 800 dials to get 10 connects. No. So, so let's table phone for a second.

Let's go to email right now because the volume of email has gone through the roof with COVID. The response rates have gone down. My answer to that is telling a story. My answer to that is, is a cadence that is not a templated bullshit cadence, but a cadence that tells a story, right? And, and, and, and uses research and maybe some persona stuff and sharing some content. But how are you cracking through that noise right now? When, if, and when you can't get on that call with that email, is it still just like that one email? Cause that's what it really, I mean, you and I know that that one email 10 years ago, man, if you spent 10 to 15 minutes, like legit putting one of these things together and fired it off, you were getting a 15 to 20% response rate.

No problem. Like with one email now, one email is like one of a billion that are in their inbox. So what's your approach now to kind of evolve? Why you, why you now in today's world with the volume of shit that we're all dealing with in the inbox stuff in an email format? We'll talk about it later. So, you know, the reason I call it why you, why you now, and, and why I gave it that name is because it's the two rhetorical questions that I'm trying to answer before I try to pick up the phone or start an email or cold call or cold email. I want to answer two questions in my head first. Why you, why am I calling you? Why am I emailing you? Not your company, you. Why did I pick you out of the 5,000 or 50,000 people at your company?

And the better my answer, the more confidence I have in my approach. So the first thing is why am I calling you? But then the bigger one, which most people miss, why am I calling you now? Why am I calling you at 1130 on a Wednesday instead of 1130 on a Friday? Why am I calling you today and not later? And if the answer to that question is, well, every Wednesday is my New Jersey day and I call farm on Wednesday afternoons, that's hardly a good answer to why you now. Everybody wants to be heard and everybody wants to believe they're a special snowflake. The trigger is one element. The value prop is another. And when I've seen lots of these over the years and I've seen some numbers decline with, with folks who haven't gone through direct training, inevitably their second sentence, that's the one about you, your value prop, the why you now inevitably that's the problem.

It's a bad value prop. It's not compelling and it doesn't explain why you're calling now and not in an hour. You see, when I was calling, I believe that the reason I got that headway with FedEx wasn't my message and it wasn't even that I was name dropping the, the article. I think it's really about the fact that I was half out of breath and the EA could hear the background of the folks at Logan when I said, I just landed and I had to call you before I got to the office. That was real. That was real and stirring. And that was the why you now part. I just left your office and I'm going back in two weeks. I got to get an answer. That, that, that element is where we have to focus in 2020 in the COVID world.

What is your why you now? Why are you calling them now? And if you can't figure out that answer, keep working because that's the answer that promotes obligation. I am obligated to return your call because of this realness as opposed to I can read this second sentence and know this was cut and pasted, which means I have no obligation to call you back, delete. And I think that's the key. Like that's what the people that I've found have the hardest problem with, like the hardest challenge with is how do you, what is that value proposition? That is why now? Because my, like, cause ultimately, I mean, I could, I could answer that question where, Hey, yeah, I'm, I'm researching you guys and I saw an article, but that article was three months ago.

So now why, why now? I mean, maybe just cause I found it now. So maybe the first question is less about how we find the best trigger or make that connection to your point on a three month old article and more about thinking, think about the last two examples I gave, right? How do I get a copy of the deck? Who should we invite off your team? Like get creative with your closes. Like quit making every close, this ridiculous call to action. That's asking for time. Yeah. I think that's a big step in the right direction saying I'm confused. Instead of saying, I see you do this. I do this. We can help. How about I see you do this and I don't understand. And see, watch what happens with your response levels.

These are human beings. There's actually data to support what you just talked about. So Gong, one of our sponsors, but one of the things I love about them is their blog and they use data driven blogs. And they, they actually analyze in the world of COVID right now, three different types of calls to action. One is the direct call to action, which is, are you free tomorrow at three o'clock? Right. The next one was the open-ended call to action. Are you, you know, when are you free for a brief call? And then the third was an interest CTA, which is, Hey, let me know if that's something you're interested in. Are you already using something like this? You know, I'm a little confused. Could you help me understand?

Whatever that was, but not like a hard call to action, more of a conversational call to action. And they found that for prospecting that the, the, the non CTA, if you will, is the highest response rate. Now in sales cycle, when you're, when you're in a sales cycle and you and I have talked, that's where the direct call to action is more important. So do you treat these, do you treat these, these cadences or whatever, like say you're, you got that one email or whatever it is, and you're following up from them. Do you treat them as a conversation? Do you treat them as a, or is it, is every single one of them a kind of a one-off thing? How do you tie them together? As far as say that, why you, I say you got a kick-ass why you, why you now you were genuinely interested in having this conversation, whatever it is.

Yeah. Don't get a response. Like, where are you going from there? Got it. Everyone from me and what I coach is a fresh one. I never try to tag along a string. That's really a game of handball where I'm just replying to myself. I think it shows low social value and it shows desperation. In my opinion, I would rather write a fresh one. All right. We definitely, we're different on this. Absolutely. Cause I tell a story, I tell a story and I want to see, I want to show you get, cause my assumption is you probably didn't even see it. And I want to show my, my progression of why I'm reaching out to you. So it's more of, so my cadence goes something to the effect of first one is, Hey man, I was on your web.

I noticed this stuff happened. We got to have a conversation or something a little softer is are you already using something like that? Whatever. Then the next one is, as I learn a little bit more about you guys, I actually noticed as I dive deeper into your organization, I actually, and I keep replying all now I changed the subject line to make it reflect the actual new reason I'm reaching out, but I keep the chain going. Cause I want to show you that I've actually been, been going after you. So why do you think social value is diminished? And actually I'm going to pause here for a second to make sure that everybody understands what social value means to you. Cause this is a very important, this is something where you and I agree, but disagree in some ways.

So I'm going to pause here for a second and then come back to that. Explain social value and why it's important to you and why it's actually the most important thing to you. And to your point, John, certainly it's just my opinion here. Social value is a term that refers to the way that we interact with people when we meet them based on uniform and language and behavior. We make assumptions about people when we meet that has to do with where we are in the hierarchy of social value. And that's a very fancy word for what it really means. Which is popularity in its essence. I don't mean it in a pejorative way. I mean popularity. Here's my thesis. Okay. I think as a sales rep, we have a lot of problems in building peer relationships with prospects.

It starts with the fact that people don't like salespeople very much, but it goes on from there. So I'm already really behind just with my own title. So social value to me is critical. So what I have to demonstrate to the prospect is this. Look, man, you're smarter than me and you're more powerful than me, more influential than me. You've gone to school for what you do and I haven't. You give speeches on your expert status and I don't. You're richer than me and you're prettier than me. You're all those things. One exception. I'm more popular than you. What do I mean by that? I mean, more people know me than know you. And I know more people than you know. I'm busier during the day than you are.

And when I'm not around, more people notice than when you're not around. Now, I don't say those words. Never. But I'm going to showcase that with every step I take, particularly early when I cold call. So the reason I don't do the string, because the string, in my opinion, would show the prospect that I'm thinking about you more than you're thinking about me. And I'm not. I am thinking about you enough to send an email, but don't be too excited, Mr. CEO. I send lots of emails, which is why whenever anyone calls me back and says, yeah, you sent me a message, something about your training or something about XYZ, I always have the same answer. Hey, oh, thanks so much for calling me back. But can you give me a moment so I can look up my notes and see what I sent you?

Which very few reps will do. Most reps are like, oh, thanks for calling me back. Because I want you to know, look, man, you're not the only ornament on my Christmas tree. I am very busy and very popular. The reason that people call me back is not my messaging. The reason why people call me back is because I work for an incredible company with great products and services. Like those are the kind of things I like to always have in there. So that's why my opinion is I'm not going to write that unilateral string. So two questions on that. Fake it till you make it. And then like to get there. And then that again, that, that kid who doesn't have that social value, how do you, how do you portray that when that's your job and everybody knows it?

You know what I mean? Like I can't realistically say it, you know, at 25 years old or whatever it is that I am busier than a senior level executive in these organizations. I challenge that. I challenge that. I think you can. That's part of fake it till you make it. If you don't think, if you're not busy, yeah, if you believe in fake it till you make it that you believe, you believe in fake it till you make it 100%. But I, I, I think the concept of fake it till you make it has morphed into this like kind of sleazy lying thing. So I do in its concept though, fake it till you make it is not, I don't want to fake it to you. I want to fake it to me. You see, here's the deal. I'm already successful, says Jeff to Jeff.

I'm already popular, says Jeff to Jeff. So I behave as I believe. Is that fake it till you make it? Of course it is. But that's the essence of confidence. It's not that I'm arrogant. It's that I just really like myself and I know I'm good at sales. So I'm not, I'm not put off at the idea that, um, that I'm more popular than you for, for reps listening, saying, how could I possibly be more pop, be more in demands than the CFO of the company? I'm, I'm working answer, get more, get more busy, like be it, just be it. There is no one busier than me. I know this. And there was no one busier than me when I was 24, when I was selling. So I've never had a problem with this. I know I'm busier. I just know I am.

I know more people. I know I do. I just know I do. That's the fake it till you make it part. Gotcha. So, all right. So let's go back to that. Cause now applying that, that social value to your email chains, to your approaches and everything else. Um, and, and let's, again, from a tactical standpoint, you know, for those reps out there who are really just like, man, I love what you guys are saying. I want that confidence. Uh, I need, I know I need to do research here, but I am being held accountable for this and I need to increase my business acumen with all that. Where do we start? Like, where do we start on that journey if they're not there? And, and, and then I want to talk about the senior reps who now are sitting in a position where you got that AE who is sitting there like fat, dumb, and happy with big relationships.

Cause I got to get, you know, go and meet you face to face and all that other stuff. And I am now sitting behind my laptop and I don't know what to do. So let's talk about the kid first. How do we start that journey to, to, to master so that we can replicate and then vice versa on the, on the AE side of the house. You know, one of the ways I start with is, you know, there's a wonderful book, John, you and I love that. I know a lot of your, your, your, your world reads, my world reads. So it's an older book. It's called, uh, influence the psychology of persuasion by Dr. Robert Cialdini. Wonderful book. Talks about the different ways we're persuaded by different behaviors. One of them is what's called the rule of scarcity.

The rule of scarcity teaches us that we value scarce resources more than, than, than abundant resources. There are thousands of more applications for aluminum than platinum, but because of plant and platinum scarcity, it has a higher value. So that we give this in a book, check it out. But that's always, I always argue the first place for the young new rep to start on the journey of that self-confidence and high social value attainment. Start with being scarce. What does that mean? Doesn't mean hard to get, doesn't mean evasive. Starts with things like, I will never respond to a response to a cold call or an inbound lead in less time than four to six hours ever. Well, that's not true. The exception would be trade shows, but everything else.

So if I get an inbound lead or a response from my cold call at 10 AM, I am not responding until the afternoon. And if I get it in the afternoon, I'm not responding until the following morning, I'm not being evasive. I'm just a little busy. Those are the kinds of things you can do as choices to start to build. That's the fake it and make it. And then guess what starts to happen? You really are that busy in the afternoon. You can't send the email to the morning. That will happen. But that's what I would advise for the folks new to sales. I didn't quite follow the other question though. So the other one is like where to start on this journey. I have all this knowledge. I have business acumen. I'm a senior AE right now and my SDRs are not filling my funnel up anymore.

Marketing is not. I used to live and die off of networking events and trade shows and going to the offices and taking people out. So I have all this knowledge. How do I start to condense this in a way that I can start to be thoughtful and authentic with my outreach to my targets at this point? Sure. So I would argue for that rep, you want to get curious about the parts of the organization you're selling to that don't directly influence your sale, but would be a beneficiary of the sale. So these are not influencers not going to help you sell, but they are people that if you did sell would actually reveal the pleasure and actually that value prop. So if that senior AE starts moving, it's a few degrees left to right to groups of the organization, they're not very comfortable in talking to because they don't normally sell to these groups.

You're selling engineering software and you're thinking about maybe reaching out to HR because there's a little bit of a connection, but you never spoke to HR people before. This is your opportunity to be that student. So when you revisit the typical buyer in your organization, you're going there with something far better than the original value prop. That second sentence is no longer, a lot of clients we have are just like you and love us for this becomes, I was talking to some of the folks on your HR team and they shared with me X. That's where this thing can really start to hum if you're a senior AE is trying to try this for the first time. And this is where this webinar came from, by the way, for everybody listening, because I was going, you know, I was doing my thing.

I was watching, you know, trying to stay up to date with new techniques, but I was running my own business and Jeff was doing a webinar and we had been trying to figure out some different strategies here at JB sales of like, Hey, we're seeing like executives just are not picking up the phones anymore. So, Hey, why don't we start with this bottom up approach? And then you, I actually listened to your webinar. It was one of the first ones I actually stopped checking my emails and actually paid attention to. And, and, and I, and you said it with Hoffman at one o'clock on Tuesdays. And I highly recommend you all go to, um, but, but it, it, you, you, you articulated it in such a way that made, I'm like, God, and it was the whole idea of really getting insights.

So we research, okay, but you can go now talk to these people at the bottom up approach to gain insights, to then have that conversation. It's called heat. You have a great way, John, of explaining above and below the power line. I think it's brilliant the way you, you, you've boiled that down to the essence of what that is. I love it. Below the power line. I'm looking for heat because heat is a new ingredient for the chili recipe in the COVID world. So what is heat? Heat is engagement, but not with you. This is what, this is my metaphor. Okay. March 23rd, U S shuts down. Most of it does. And, uh, that begins the real painful journey of COVID for many of us here in the U S when that happened, we were all left to COVID Island on COVID Island.

No one's taking a sales call. So I don't care how good you are at sales. No one's going to take your car on COVID Island. People are freaking out, but over the course of weeks and months, and now we're already in July, people are leaving COVID Island, but it's rarely tethered to title. Sometimes the executives stay at COVID Island. Sometimes they leave it sometime. But what I find is that it's easy to find those who've left COVID Island by looking for heat and social. When you see people reposting good news about their company, or we're, I'm so proud of spending my third anniversary here at my company, or look how great we're doing in this space. That indicates to me, if they do that in June, they've left COVID Island.

Can I find a bunch of those folks? They don't have to be buyers. They just have to be real. So I can start to navigate in that little world and whatever nuggets I learned from heat, that's my new second sentence. When I go above the power line. Okay. All right. Instead of me saying we have something in common, I'm saying I was, I was, you said that everything's on hold, not according to the 30 people I'm following on Twitter, like that, that kind of thing. So one more question, then I want to throw it to the audience for questions. So if you do have questions, by the way, go into the Q and a section, um, not in the chat, go into the Q and a, throw a question in there. We'll, we'll hit as many as we can here.

Um, but let's, what I find with the why you, why you now, and people are asking why you, why you now, you can look it up. It's just about doing research, right? It's about finding something and making a connection to it, a real authentic one. And then going from there short, sweet to the point, one, two scrolls on the iPhone. Um, my fun, my challenges say I'm going after mid-market. I don't usually go after a huge enterprise. I go after a somewhat mid-market, right? So I can usually find two, three things to make a connection to, right? That are, that are legit connections. I'm sure. But after the second, third one, it starts to get pretty, pretty weak, right? It starts to get like, Hey, you got a building.

So do we like, let's have a conversation. Like, like that's, it sucks. So what do you do after that second, third, the independent, in your case, independent email that doesn't necessarily tell a story? What is that third, fourth, fifth one? And how far do you go with your contact strategy, with your cadence before you give up? Yeah, great, great question. Two, two things I do and I coach, uh, others. Um, the first is, although maybe my answer on getting really good at something before you scale it isn't the greatest answer for some people of like who want to get there faster. I hear you. There are lots of things you can do to kind of mitigate the time. The easiest thing to do is to divide and conquer.

Separate the time you research from the time you execute. You'll build momentum and then, all right. And I know you teach that too. So you have, if I'm sitting at my computer and I want to sell to Caterpillar and I'm on caterpillar.com for half an hour looking for triggers and looking for executives and doing all that stuff. And I find you, John Barrows, head of sales for Caterpillar. And I want to hit you. I see a great quote in a press release. I know statistically that it's going to take three, four, five attempts to get you to respond. So I'm going to write, I'm going to find five triggers right now. And I'm going to write them all right now, even though I'm only going to send one. And no one said you had to send your best one first.

No, I actually don't think you should. No, right. So if I'm going to find three good ones and two crappy ones, I'll send the crappy ones first and then I'll send the better ones later. I just, I think it's just a question of really being thoughtful about how you want to attack it. Also by separating research and execution, that authenticity gets real because now you're going to be sending emails after you wrote them, which means you're going to forget them. So when you get responses, remember I said, you know, you have to forgive me, John. I need a minute to look at my notes because I don't remember what I sent to you. That's not bullshit. That's real because of the separation you did earlier.

That's how you get authenticity to be something you can plan to do and actually have it be real. All right. So actually, sorry, one more question, which is say there's nothing though. Say you go to some website and there ain't shit there. There's no triggers. You go to somebody's LinkedIn profile. It's piss poor. They got like five connections and they got a, you know, dumb ass. What's your approach then? So first of all, it's not a trigger about the person. It's a trigger about the company. Company. Yep. So this guy might be a loser, but there's lots of people who work there. But that being said, if I have spent X amount of time researching a prospect and found no triggers, listen to what you're saying.

I haven't found any evidence of an event that will require my services. Translation, not a qualified opportunity. I believe this. If you truly can't find a trigger, it is not qualified. Now, that being said, the best pathway a rep can make is generally the longest pathway. You heard my stories before, you know, I read you in Wired magazine. Who the hell reads that magazine? I, I, I, can I get a copy of the deck? You know, I'm researching dot PPT. If you're limiting guys, your research to the first profile page of a LinkedIn profile, I don't think you're going to find many triggers either. You got to dig, man. And digging is easy. If you're curious, that's why this is so important. If you don't give a crap, this is really hard to do.

But if you find Caterpillar interesting, and I do, then finding triggers for me has never been hard because I'm always curious about companies I'm selling to. Gotcha. All right. Cool, man. Well, look, let's, let's dive into some of these questions to see if we haven't hit too many of them. So Arthur here says, cause this is directly in line, right? If you find something in a 10 K around a company initiative, how do you use that with the why are you, why are you now? What's the guy's name? Uh, Arthur, Arthur, Arthur, Arthur. If you have an MBA, use it the way you're supposed to use it. And Arthur, if you don't have an MBA, don't use it. I do not believe in using 10 Ks unless you understand the language.

If you get the vocabulary, the syntax wrong and a financial statement in your pitch, you're going to sound dumb and no one's going to respond to you. Don't play in waters as an expert unless you are one. I know that's good. I know that's controversial because everyone loves looking at 10 Ks, but I don't have an MBA, so I don't know what EBITDA positive means. So I'm not going to mention it in my email. I'll tell you the same thing. I've, I don't think I've ever looked at, I look at the first paragraph from the CEO to see if there's something in there, but then the rest of it, I honestly don't know any of it. So I've never used 10 Ks myself. John, the reason why guys like you and me do well in our industry is because they're not full of crap.

Yeah. All right. Whenever I hear sales techniques that sound fishy to me, they are. And I, and I generally discover that the author of the technique has never sold anything before. And I think that's why you have a lot of popularity because you've earned it because you're legit because you're saying things that we all experience. And I think that's critical. Very critical. Absolutely. So Natalie says, I don't understand. So your, your response here, I don't understand. Help me to understand. Fantastic idea for attention grabbing, but it is not, but is it not a contradiction to later trying to portray that trusted advisor? So Natalie saying like, I think she thinks it's great to say, I don't understand, but how does that conflict with, we need to be trusted advisors for these businesses.

Great question. Uh, first let's break down trusted advisor. You know why people who are trusted advisors are trusted? Because they'll give advice even at their own peril. They'll tell you things you need to hear, even if it hurts the relationship. And I've never met a sales rep willing to do that. So I'm not convinced that's our goal to be trusted advisors. I don't think we have it in us to say to a customer, you shouldn't buy this. I really don't think we have it in us as an industry, but that being said, was that all the time? I've 70% of my calls and we never told a customer they shouldn't buy my stuff. I am paid for them to buy my stuff. So it's counterintuitive to my nature. See, I, I, I did, man, they can do what they want.

They're adults. I don't lie. I tell everything truthfully, but I'm not going to convince you not to buy it. Well, I'm not going to try to convince you not to buy it, but I'm going to dig for all the reasons why you shouldn't, because you're going to find those out anyway. So during my discovery, I actually, I actually try to disqualify more than qualify because I'm just layering in like, okay, what, but I'm looking for the core, what I'm ultimately looking for is a core reason why you should do this. And then I lean in with challenger sale. But as far as like the discovery and the qualification, I actually try to, you know, dig and dig and dig. And there's plenty of times where I'm like, and you know it, you've gotten a lot of referrals from me because I'm like, you know what?

I'm not good at that. Like management training. I'm not good at management training. And I'm, and I'm, I'm being flippant. Obviously if my product or service wouldn't work in the environment, I wouldn't sell it to them. But if I think it's going to work, I'm not going to convince them it might not. Oh yeah. Um, but, but getting to the heart of, was it Natalie's question? Yep. Okay. I get the, the, the idea. Like how can I live? How can I be curious and a student and ignorant and then also be someone of whose opinion matters? And I think that's a really great question. Here's how it works. I am going to be Forrest Gump on all things you. Cause I'm going to ask you so many questions that I don't understand cause I don't understand.

But when we get to the topic of me and when we get to the topic of my offering, yeah, yeah, I, I, I, there I'm credible there. I'm an expert. So you get to live in both worlds, Natalie. You get to be the student expert during discovery, the expert during proof of concept. That's what happens in the sales process. It's a great answer. All right. Uh, Gerilyn, how do you counter sales leaders? Cause I think this is that downward push that we always get, right? We all fundamentally understand quality is the answer. I should do a better job, but I'm getting my boss beat me over the head. So how do you counter sales leaders who say responding within minutes to give you the advantage over your competition from like an inbound lead?

So you said, tell them they're wrong. I don't know how to answer that. Tell them what do I do if my boss is an idiot? I don't, I got, I've had plenty of idiot bosses. Could you, could you split test this though? Could you say, I'm not chewing up my time to test the thesis that I am living and dying on. Hey boss, don't question my methods. Question my results. If I'm not hitting my numbers, you fire me, but leave me alone. That's how I usually handle managers my whole career. Yeah. I know that feels like a quick answer, but it no. Hey, well, it's just like, I know your quick answer to this one. And you and I both violently agree on this, which is if you, if you do not believe in what you sell, quit your job.

Yes. I believe that in my essence. Yes. Because do you believe that the fundamental success of sales is a genuine belief that, that what you sell it, that you believe in what you sell? Is that, is that, yeah. You are the representation of it. If, how can you be genuine if you don't even give a crap about what you're selling? Yeah. Honestly. I'm actually, I'm actually going to say that to everybody listening right now. Like if you are in a job, cause I get that all the time. I get questions, John, I'm in a job. I don't really like the products kind of shitty. You know, my boss is telling me to do this. And literally my one word answer every single time is quit. And I know it's a tough time in the economy and all that other stuff, but man, you are, you do nothing but proliferate the, the, the perception of sales reps, the negative perception of sales reps when you sell shit that you don't believe in.

The universe rewards intention. It does. So great intention usually meets with great reward. I've always found that. So if you are resolved in your dissatisfaction with where you work enough to leave that job, cause you don't believe in that product or service, that intention is so significant, you're going to find a kick-ass job quicker than you realize. I agree with that. Jeff, thank you, man. Uh, again, from, from what you've done for my career and everything else, I genuinely appreciate it. Not just that, just the friendship, obviously, that we've developed over the years. And, um, you know, and for everybody else out there, uh, you know, just, uh, hopefully you got as much value out of this as I did.

I mean, I, again, I did this for a very selfish reason. Uh, this was me going back to school and the goal here was for you to learn as much as I did through this process. And, and, you know, if you're not, if you're in my network and you're not following Jeff, I can't recommend enough, uh, to, to follow his stuff because again, that artist level, I'm constantly searching to try to get to that point. I just know I got a lot of work to do along the way. And no matter how good we get in sales, I always make the analogy to golf. You can't shoot a zero in golf. You can always get better in sales, right? So Jeff, any last words here for the audience before we take off? I mean, other than I, I'm, um, I have my own goals in life from a professionally at this stage in my career.

And the number one goal I have is to see sales elevated to the level of academic discipline it deserves. And, and John, all that you do is an author of that. And I was, I'm honored. You asked me to, to, to join with your, with your crew. And, um, and I do it at a moment's notice if you ask again, because I think that you are an authentic voice in a world with very few of them. And if sales is going to get that elevation, um, it needs a lot of us, uh, to get it, to get it there. So I want to thank you for it. Yeah, I agree. And everybody out there, just please give a shit. Please give a shit. Like Jeff just said, like this profession is the greatest profession in the world when done right. It's the worst when done wrong.

And, and we're just trying to help people do it right. And whatever right means there's, there's some core components that just mean be a good fucking person and do it for the right fucking reasons. All right. Amen, man. Amen. Awesome. Everybody. Well, again, hopefully you had a great, uh, time with this. We're going to be continuing this conversation. I'm probably going to pick up on qualification and go from there all the way through to negotiations with Jeff. We're going to create a whole series around this. Yeah. New shirt. Yeah. All that other stuff. I'm going to be wearing the same one because I got 75 of them. But, uh, but anyways, uh, thank you all so much for joining us and look, have a great day.

And I'd say this at the end of all my podcasts. Look, even if you're having a shitty day, go make somebody smile today. Cause even if you have the worst day, if you made somebody smile, you know, you had a good day and we need a little bit more of that in today's world. All right. Very cool. Happy selling guys. All right, everybody have a great one.