176: Becc Holland On Personalization At Scale

What's poppin' y'all, it's your man James Say What Sales Buckley, and you are in for a real treat in this week's episode of Make It Happen Mondays with your host, John Barrows. As always, thank you to our partners, Sales Loft, Gong, Vanilla Soft, Vidyard, Proposify, Zoom Info, Loom Cube, and Rise for making this episode possible. Today, our guest is a woman who has changed our sales community. Beck Holland, CEO and founder of Flip the Script, is with us in studio, and I could not be more stoked about this conversation. Beck never disappoints, and she's recently gone solo, and we're all impressed with the content and seemingly magical ways that Beck's tactics and approaches improve sales reps' messaging, cadences, workflows, and obviously their results as well.

She's going to be talking with John about the science behind sales messaging, the future of the SDR role itself, and her experience with relevance and personalization at scale, and how it all led up to her beginning her own entrepreneurial journey. Let's send it over to John and Beck for this extremely valuable conversation. Take it away, John. Good afternoon, everybody. This is John Barrows. Make it happen Monday. Hopefully, you had a fantastic weekend. I am super excited to have this conversation today because we have been in the same circle for quite a while now, and we take a very similar approach, but we have different opinions on a few things here, and we're going to dig into some specifics.

So, Beck Holland, CEO of Flip the Script, how are you? It always weirds me out hearing that. Right? CEO? Like, holy shit. I know. I'm like, oh, shoot. I guess I'm not saying some of the stuff I do online. It is weird. I still don't ever think of myself. Like, I remember I had this assistant once. Like, I finally last year, I was like, you know what? I need an executive assistant, right? And so, I got one. It was kind of a traditional one, and, you know, a little old school, whatever. And we went to Vegas, and my whole squad was vibing. That's where we picked up James, right? And she was treating me like I was this king. She was just like, like, if I got up to go to the bathroom, she's like, oh, John just got up.

Let's go. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. No, no, no, no, no. I go, that is not how this works. And unfortunately, I had to let her go because she was doing too much of, like, putting me on this pedestal. I'm like, nope, nope, nope. We're all on the same page here. So, it is a little get used to. But congrats on going out on your own, by the way. Thank you very much. Yeah, I'm very excited. So, for those of you who don't know, I mean, I'd be shocked if anybody listening to me doesn't know who you are. But give a little background, because you kind of have a who's who logo list here of the SaaS and the training slash SaaS slash Intel world here. So, give a little background, and then we'll get into the topic today.

Yeah, so, the TLTR of it. Hi, everyone who's watching. My name is Beck, and I have a pretty unconventional background, and I think, you know, when people look at it, they think it doesn't make sense, and I agree with them. I think, actually, I think it makes total sense. Based on where you are right now, I think it makes brilliant sense. So, yeah, tell them all about it. Yeah. So, I was in AE, I was born and raised in Texas, and was in AE for five years for two enterprise companies and an SMB company selling HVAC equipment. So, HVAC, lighting, heating, plumbing, like Little Boy. Yeah, imagine me selling to Little Boy Network back in Texas. And I'm like, I think they thought, like, I don't know if I'm buying the girls, like, Girl Scout cookies or, like, there's a lot of degrees here.

You know, but I sold projects to governmental buildings and school districts back in Texas for five years and then transitioned out to the Bay Area. And at that point, you know, the thought was, okay, I can go back into closing or I don't know what tech is. I don't know what an API is. I don't know what an SDK is. I don't know what, you know, I thought SDK, true story, stood for sales development kit. Like, whenever you started as a sales development rep, you got, like, snaps and stuff. I'm like, oh, okay. So, an SDK is something completely different if it's a piece of software. So, I'm like, and I heard the traditional knowledge of, like, okay, you don't have to know that much about your product to be able to sell.

And I'm like, no, you shouldn't necessarily share that much about your product because people don't necessarily care. They care what it matters to them in terms of impact. However, I feel like I need to know more about the ecosystem. So, I took a step back to be an SDR and I saw a difference between how I was selling as an AE, you know, and then what I was instructed to do as an SDR is, so I was 30 as an SDR in, you know, the Bay Area, which is a very, you know. Yeah, that's like, what are you doing? Like, what have you done with your career if you're joining at 30, even though now it's like, it's a great profession to get into, especially with this whole remote world we're in. Totally. And so, I was, yeah, 30 years old as an SDR.

And so, I'm like, I have a very short window here that I have to do something, you know, and I have to find the right people and et cetera. So, I started developing a litany of theories of, you know, why as an AE, for instance, I was very tailored, really knew my buyer, was all about relationship, was door to door, was in person, et cetera. And then as an SDR, it was like the wild, wild west. I was, you know, handed engagement and told it, you know, told like, okay, you need to send out 300, 500 messages per day. So, developed a litany of theories, got to run a global team for that first company and went to a sales tech vendor. And basically, you know, my idea was, I want to deploy some of these theories of what I think will help, you know, SDR teams push their numbers because we were getting decent results, but not great results of what I really wanted.

And so, I wanted to go to a sales tech vendor to essentially, you know, go to someone who is innovative enough and really value, like, some level of how you're selling, you know, is really the capital because I've been working for a product-led, you know, company that was in the MarTech space. And so, I'm like, if we do something cool here, you know, they're like, okay, that's great, but it doesn't really mean anything because, you know, they're not selling to sales people. So, went to a sales tech vendor, deployed some of those theories, had some pretty early success. And so, went to a MarTech company to see if that worked for not only sales tech, but for a different ICP, saw some pretty early success there.

And so, I started a series, an after-hours series, very, like, fight club, organic style, you know, like, okay, I had no idea how many people would show up. I remember calling my buddy beforehand and saying, like, hey, if I started a series, how many people, like, would you come? Yeah. And he's like, yeah, me and my team would come. And so, I'm like, okay, so at least I have, like, five people that will show up. You know, but I'm like, only my mom and, like, her bridge group, you know, knew who, you know, her bridge club group knew who I was. And so, I thought, like, okay, maybe people will show up. But I had the hunch of, like, you know, SDRs really want training and they're hungry for it. So, I started a series.

Within an hour, we had 600 registrations. I mean, we were hitting fire codes on the building and I think it showed validation of, like, again, you know, no one knew anything about my background, et cetera. So, it showed constant validation. So, launched out a series there, coined it, flipped the script, went on to another sales tech vendor and wanted to see if it worked there, too. And 7X our results. So, I decided just a couple months to go to LLC it and start doing it full-time. Love it. Did you, just out of curiosity, did you ever have an itch to go off on your own by any chance? Like, was there ever that entrepreneurial itch for you or did you just end up being like, I got an opportunity here.

I got to take it. When I say zero, I mean zero. Like, I sat down with Godard Abel, who's the CEO over at G2, and we were having the long conversation whenever I decided to go to Chorus of he was pushing me to be an entrepreneur. And I said, Godard, we're just different people. I said, I'm the person that likes to take someone else's idea and flush it out to execution and show you, you know, like, how the sausage is made kind of thing. Like, but I'm not the person that comes up with the vision. So, we had a three-hour, basically, conversation where he was pushing me, you know, to go to the entrepreneurial vein. But I honestly, genuinely never had the itch or desire, you know, is really this concept, you know, in these, this community, I feel like gave me the, I don't know, the privilege of their attention, the privilege of their time.

And so, I thought, you know, okay, I owe it to them, you know, to continue on with that thread because they gave me that attention. And so, I mean it when I say, like, the entrepreneurial thing is not something, not only not something I dreamed about, something that I, that was one of the things I fought all the way up until I said, okay, screw it. Like, I have to do this. Yeah, it's funny. We have a very, very similar story. Like, I never, I had it in me because I, I, I, I knew I didn't fit in corporate. Let's put it that way. Like, corporate was one of those things where it just didn't fit. And, and I, so when I got Chris, my CRO, he's the first, he's a startup guy. Like, he's a, you know, full risk taker, live on your parents' couch, eat ramen noodles type of guy.

I'm definitely not that guy. I'm a, I'm a very similar to you. I'm a second guy, right? Where you come up with the idea, I'll come in and execute the shit out of that and take it to the next level. But, but it was funny because I was similar. I was almost, I want to say forced into this situation, but I was just like, there's an opportunity here and I got to go get it. Right. Because I think it's, you know, I'm a big believer that if, if you come across stuff that works, right, because we are an uneducated profession that you got to get out there and share it with people, right. To help elevate the overall profession. So, so let's talk about that. Cause I think that leads very well into our conversation today about personalization at scale.

Yeah. Um, and what, what you and I are both doing to this industry. And I'd say that specifically, we're obviously, I think helping in a lot of ways, but I wonder if we're hurting in some ways. I don't want to dig that in, dig into that. Um, personal, first of all, could you define what, cause I don't want to get into semantics here, but could you define what it means by personalization at scale for you? Yeah. So the interesting thing I viewed personalization at scale or scale, the term scale as, okay, well, whenever we're talking about templates and relevance, no one seems to be bringing up the conversation of scale. Right. All right. So I'm like, so I took that as a marquee, you know, of like, okay, let's define scale as the average activity metric.

So, you know, bridge group, uh, you know, punts out some really great research and basically their activity metric shows that the average rep, you know, makes anywhere from, uh, 38 to 40 dials per day, you know, has been fluctuating for the last decade, but 38 to 40 dials per day. And then sending out and, uh, topo research found that they were doing 35 dials per day and, uh, the emails are hovering anywhere from 30 to 40 per day. So I defined that as scale, you know, and because I feel like the conversation about like, is this repeatable, you know, can I do this quickly? I should have the same mirrored effect, you know, in theory to relevant. So I'm defining scale as like, okay, let's take that as the, you know, the, the definition, you know, so I know like, okay, if I can hit, you know, 40 dials.

And if I can hit 30 emails, um, that essentially I have scaled, you know, what people are calling scale because they define it in their own head. It's like, okay, what I'm doing with relevance is scale. Okay. So with that 40 dials, 40 emails, how can you be personalized? Cause I, my, my theory, I'd like, this is where like Richard Harris and I got in a little bit of an argument on one of my podcasts about like templates versus scripts, right? Or I'm sorry, structure versus scripts. And I fucking hate scripts, but I love structure. Right. And I think there's a little bit of semantics in there because yes, it's a structure that you write into that turns into a script personalization and scale.

I fundamentally understand what we're trying to get accomplished here. But to me, personalization is personalization. Personalization means that this is the only email that I can send to Beck Holland, right? Because it's about you. It's about something I did research on. And that isn't something that scales. I think you can make it efficient. I think you can create some repeatable processes that you can add personalization to, but, but my fear about even the phrase personalization at scale is that it's creating this false narrative that people think that, Oh, I can click a button and send out 40 emails that are personalized, which just isn't the case. And if that was the case, artificial intelligence would do our jobs for us.

So, so how can you do what, how can you get to that number? How can you get to 30, 40, 50, 70 activities while still being personalized from your perspective? Yeah. So, um, and, and I, I agree with you. I, I couldn't agree with you more. I think people are going to like, uh, listen to this podcast waiting for us to like, you know, jab each other's eyes out. But, um, I think that we actually are just flip sides of the moderate coin. Um, but in terms of, you know, personalization is defined as anything one-to-one, like you cannot segment multiple people to it. And relevance is just, I can segment this to several people. So, you know, taking that definition, it's like relevance is defined as whatever industry vertical buyer persona, you know, any kind of, uh, thing that I can segment, you know, some permographic demographic or technographic trigger.

Um, but in terms of the actual personalization one-to-one, I mean, I did it as a practitioner out of, um, need desperation of like, okay, this isn't actually working anymore. So I am combining flavors. I have 66 essentially, um, sales plays incorporate one too many messaging, but also pile in one-to-one messaging. And I've had a number of platforms basically come to me saying like, yeah, yeah. So we can do personalization. So like Nova is a great example of that. They would say like, oh, okay, well we can pick out, you know, this person, um, is within the Bay area or, you know, like, so they're like, oh, how's the golden gate bridge? I'm like, who gives a crap? Like, I didn't build it. Like, is this actually relevant?

So to me, personalization comes down to how do you hook it into relevance and how do you make that a system? Because if you make that a system, then essentially you can get out that volume of messages. So, you know, my reps, when I first started personalizing at scale, I'm like, okay, I have to set some kind of prototype or infrastructure, not only to the message, but how do you hook it? And how do you also even tease out a personalized premise in a systematic way, you know, so that I can make it repeatable for them. But, um, I do not believe that you can, uh, not use a human for personalization premises, because essentially I'm instructing reps of like, I don't want you to call out all of these different things in terms of personalization.

I don't want you to 10, 80, 10 rule me. I want you to call out the one personalization thing that you can then hook back to your value prop. So I don't believe any kind of tech can know what your value props are deep enough and can deliver some kind of creative narrative in terms of how do you hook that to relevance? So I do not believe you can't use a human for it, but I do believe that you can scale it, especially if the definition is 40 dials of like, you know, my reps in the beginning, when I started this, I cut my reps back from a hundred emails and 50 cold calls back to 10 emails and 20 cold calls in Forex. And when I went on to my last company, you know, I leveraged sales engagement to say, there's got to be a way to speed up research.

There's got to be a way to research once there's got to be a way to store it. And once I did that and started scripting out the structure of the language and basically putting personalized premise here, this is how you hook these three parts. That's when we got to upwards of 70 dials, 30, 35 emails of like, shoot, I'm doubling your activity metric that you're doing with just relevance. And I'm doing the personalization. And that's when we pushed on first month, you know, at, at chorus, we pushed seven X the results of what they had seen before, you know, so it was like, that's what I, I'm really thinking of is like, I don't believe that you can tease out someone from the process because again, they're the ones that are coming up with the angles of like, how do I actually hook this thing?

Um, you know, within some type of structure. Um, but I, I do believe that you need a human to do that. You know, in the relevance messaging, I'm like, arguably relevance. If it's one to many only, I don't need an SDR. Right. Well, that's, that's exactly. And I think that's where I want to go with this, which is, you know, I, I believe, look, the, the Holy grail is personalization and relevance. Right. And, and when AI, Nova, uh, Shakespeare, a while back when they came out, I, I literally almost shit my pants. I'm like, Oh, like, what the fuck? Like we're all, we're all SDRs are now becoming irrelevant. Right. But they couldn't make the hook. And so the only way I'm scared of AI at this point is if the human element on the backend, because if, if somebody was smart enough and could sit on the back and think of, all right, what are all the triggers?

What's like, what, like, let's brainstorm a million different triggers that we can use to make connections to people. Cool. Now let's come up with a message for each one of those type of triggers for each one of those things and create like little, like little one snippet things and have that database. Now you can turn on AI and say, go, when you find that thing, go connect it to this thing, put them together and go, but they're not there yet. Nobody's willing to put in that effort. So that's why I'm not too worried about AI, but to your point of, you know, personalization or, well, if I continue down that track, personalization or relevance, I'll choose relevance all day long because to your point, you've golden gate.

Who gives a shit? Like I went to university of Maryland. Good for you. That buys you no points unless you can make it connected. Right. So I'll, if I could choose its relevance and this is where I'm worried is because I don't know about you. I mean, you, you, you just went off on your own, but you've been working with SDRs for a while now. And I am so frustrated with companies and reps asking for the template, asking for the perfect cadence, asking for the, whatever it is. And I keep saying like, why the fuck do I need you if you are looking for the perfect cadence? So are we with these tools and these resources, if they're used appropriately, they're fantastic, but 95% of reps don't use them to do actual personalization scale efficiency, whatever you want to call it.

They use it to crank, crank a template out, blast out 50 emails, you know, as soon as they can hit their KPIs. So are we basically teaching the machines at this point to take over our jobs? I mean, from a relevance standpoint, if it's relevance only, then you don't need a human. Nope. I agree with that. I blow everyone's mind. And so I've had a lot of people come to me and say like, well, can AI replace SDRs? And, uh, my answer always, I said, I said this once on stage and like 500 people left and I'm like how most of you are running it. Yes. That's the truth. I'm like, I can teach you all day long on how to build relevant templates. And it's like, that's one to many from my perspective, that's marketing, you know, personalization and relevance.

I'm like, well, no, because they would need to know how to hook it and how to be creative of like, I even have three parts of my hook and I'm like, okay, you have to do this within this, within this, like I'm going to give you the rules, but I'm not necessarily going to tell you how to hook this thing of like, if you pick out that I love Taylor Swift, you better be ready to justify within structure, how that ties to your product. I'm not going to tell you the rules and what it infused in my reps is a culture of, they were just constantly turning out these really creative premises that I never would have thought of. So kind of to your point, uh, because sales engagement, and this is the deepest I've, I've ever got to go, um, you know, so I'm actually really excited about this, but because sales engagement, you know, they, uh, had infused a strategy or they had not infused a strategy at all, which people by definition were going relevance only, you know, they were blasting out all of these relevant templates of like, you know, based on buyer persona industry vertical.

So they would come back to sales, engage these poor sales engagement providers. And they would ask for the data or the tips of like, what is the best subject line? What is the best, you know, length? Like, how should I lead, you know, the, the first sentence, et cetera. But instead of doing that, when I first started personalizing, I'm like, so essentially I have to build shell cadences or I have to build shell sequences, or I'm saying, these are the types of actions you're going to do. Here's the structure of what you're, you know, in part going to do. And then you have to take it from there and fill it in. So because I had that, I initially developed just a cold outbound sequence of like, okay, this is cold outbound.

I started venturing into, okay, these, these cadences and these sequences, now that they're not like just relevant sequences of like marketing ICP, they have to be based on attribution source. So I started fanning out into, this is my sequence for content downloads or webinar registrants or event attendees and pairing them like, you know, hi, John, I noticed that you download this content, but more importantly, and saying, put the personalized premise here, you know, and so it, Matt, it was like two, three, four X, these results from these marketing leads. And so I basically started fanning out in terms of the sales play that you're doing based on source. And so what that gave me was not the data of like, did this template work?

Cause most people are saying from a relevant standpoint, they're like, okay, I want to AB test, which template works best. And I'm like, cool, quick question for everyone listening without going into your computer. Can you tell me the conversion rates for your best template within your org? If you're going relevance only. And the answer 99.9% of the time is no, it was a good theory, but we aren't even looking into that. So it's like, cool. We're, we're churning personalization for some theory of something that we want that we're not even after. So I was going based on source and basically being able to retweet to my marketing team or to my sales team of like, Hey, you know, it's not that these three words work the best.

It's that content downloads by and large, we're going to see a 23% conversion rate, you know, in webinar registrants, we're going to see a 28% conversion rate. And so I'm not going to tell you to just give me blanket MQLs. I'm going to tell you to give me 500 webinar registrants. I'm going to tell you to give me, you know, a hundred whatever content downloads. So it turned it, it essentially took the inside of a purse and ripped it out from the guts, you know, of like, Hey, I'm going to give you the data on which one of these plays is working as opposed to saying which one of these templates. So it infused back to the sales engagement vendors that I've been working with of like, Hey, you know, I'm not going to, and I'm sure you've run into this and I'm going to say this and then I'll, I'll be quiet for a little while.

It's like, you know, people are going to come to you and say like, Hey, what's the best subject line? What's the best three words? You know, what's the best, you know, little hook that I should do. And then they're going to say to you like, John, well, you don't know my business, right? You don't know my industry vertical. You don't know my personas. You don't know what, you know? And I'm like, and they're telling the truth. I'm like, don't as a third party trainer. So it's like, Hey, I'm not going to tell you to say these five words. I'm not a magician. I'm going to tell you out of these 66 plays that I'm running, typically for your industry, your SMB selling to enterprise that like content downloads, executive churn, common VC, and, you know, competitors of my current clients are going to be the four plays.

I'm going to give you my language on, on a few other plays. You're asking for event attendees and, you know, whatever, mutual connections with the decision maker and, you know, outbound to the referral network of my C-suite. And it's like, I'm going to give you the plays for those, but by and large, these other plays are more effective for firms like you. So it turns it into a science game, you know, more so than an art game. And I'm like, I've, I've heard people say like, Oh, well art, you know, I want art and sales. And I'm like, well, art is defined as the expression of only for the sake of beauty. So I hope there's no art and sales. Yeah. I mean, I think the art is the creativity, right?

When people, at least when I reference it, it's, it's the, you know, the, the, the context, if you will, over that content. Right. Um, because it's there, but this, and I, I'm, trust me, I am more of a science than person than any, but, but the data is now I'm, I'm actually getting a little worried now that, you know, people are using data to, to support their own arguments as opposed to using, as, as opposed to using data as a data point to build off of. Right. Cause I get it all the time. Like you probably do. Hey John video. Like, you know, what should I do on a video? I'm like, well, wait a minute. Should you even use video? Who's your ICP? If your ICP is CISOs in enterprise, fuck no, don't use video because they don't fuck.

What CISO is going to click a, yeah. What CISO is going to click a thumbnail and be like, Oh, what's behind door number one here? No fucking way. They'll get fired. So, so, but for certain audiences, yes. But like, let's like, it's almost like, I feel like I'm, I've been preaching too much about science and now it's become this thing. It's like, Oh, that's the exact thing I should say. It's like, no, use that as a point of reference to say there is an option here. And that's what I tend to use the data as I look at it and I'm like, huh, that's kind of interesting. That's not my approach, but that's kind of interesting that, that, that is the quote unquote best. Let me now split test it against mine and see how it works.

Right. Yeah. Cause they, they are asking the, the funny thing is the consumer is asking these poor sales tech vendors of like, we want the data of what actually works. And it's like, but here's the thing to make something, the more general the data gets typically the less useful it is. You're asking for general data in terms of what are the three words. And then you're on the flip side being like, you know, Oh, well, this isn't necessarily towards my business. I'm like, well, that's problem. Number one, but I'm like, number two, best case scenario, best case scenario. We're talking correlation. Yeah. But what you're after is causation. But like, until I see someone hire a team of 150 statisticians from Stanford or Yale, like I, Billy Bean is one of my biggest influences.

And I'm like, not to burst everyone's dreams into a million pieces, but I'm like, Billy Bean was on the end of an era of like 20 Saber metricians. You know, even at the Oakland A's, there was someone who preceded him, who pushed out Saber metrics. So I'm like, Billy Bean was on the cap and he was the one that made it work on the field. And I'm like, that's why I love him to death. And I'm like, he used, you know, a regression analysis, statistical approach. And I'm like, but until I see these sales tech vendors do that, it's like, what we're asking for is causation. And to the sales tech vendor credit, you know, the big four in the space, I'm like, the amount of capital that they would have to infuse just to study the data.

And like, is everyone ready to pay for that level of statistical analysis? And I'm like, I'm interested in it. And I'm like, however, like, are you going to sit there and pay three times the list price of what you were going to pay just to get the data of how to help you? And so I'm like, Hey, you know, when I started going on source, I'm like, Hey, I'm going to tell you, you know, the source that works the best for my teams. And I will give you the language that has worked for me. And I'm going to teach you how to do that within the context of personalization, because I'm like, you asked for a low hanging silver, like a silver bullet. I'm like, to me, it's like, that's the silver bullet. It's what I see working for teams of like, people just don't focus on one-to-one anymore.

And so it's just jarring. And so they're responding, you know, I'm like, but I'm like, to these sales tech vendors credit, I'm like, do you expect them to hire 150 statisticians to analyze this data and pay double list price? The answer is no. And so they can't do that. And so best case scenario, they can give you generic correlative data that isn't causation. And so the wrong person sees that correlative data, data grabs the gun and blows their own without being like, I'm going to rip out my infrastructure because it does put an emoji in my subject line. All right, y'all. Like I said, Beck never lets us down. Her insights have been instrumental in the growth and development of some of the most successful sales tech firms in the world.

You're killing it, Beck. Keep going. As always, don't forget to send us your sales wins at james at jbarrows.com so that you can be highlighted on the show today. We're giving a big shout out to Tom Slocum of Milestone. He recently subscribed to JB sales on demand and took the filling the funnel course. The course helped Tom to understand the relationship between target customers and customer segments. He was then able to take that knowledge and create tailored messaging as a winning strategy at Milestone. The course aided him in understanding the data and using it to develop a clearer message for his prospecting. Tom's setting more meetings than ever before now using the skills that he picked up in JB sales on demand.

You too can improve your sales techniques just like Tom by heading over to on demand.jbarrows.com to subscribe today. The investments we make in ourselves are what catapult us into greatness. The results that you're after don't come without effort made to improve. And it's all there at JB sales on demand. What are you waiting for? Let's get back to Beck and John. And I look, I do think that we're going to evolve in that. And actually, I think SDRs, I think SDRs of the future are going to be those data analytic kids. I don't think there's, my personal opinion here is based on what I'm seeing. I'm seeing SDRs going to, that whole thing is, it's no longer going to be the feeder system for sales.

It could be, but I think it's going to roll much more under marketing and operations. And the skill set to be an SDR is going to be much more data analytics oriented, where they're going to use these tools, use the messaging, whatever it is, so that they can look at that data. But let's say that we do hire a data statistician to look at all this stuff. The problem with that is if, you know, data in, data out, if you do shitty data in, if everybody doesn't follow the exact same process to the exact same persona using the same message, the data is going to be fucking pointless. So I don't care what AI says. Like there's so many nuances of how people track data, look at data, that type of thing that to get to the point where you understand it for your business is really, really not that easy.

Totally. And I'm like, if you are going a statistical analysis on relevance, that essentially you're saying like, okay, these three words are the words that cause it. Let's say for a minute that we can get there. We hired the 200 statisticians and now we know the three words. Cool. I'm going to publish research on that. And Allah HubSpot, everyone is going to start doing that. And it doesn't work anymore. So I'm like, that's why I'm saying, you know, personalization, I'm like, Hey, it is, it is tougher on the rep. They got to think through a little bit of how do I hook this? But, you know, I aim to break it down in terms of structure. And I'm like, now it's, it's not a template game. It's a source game.

So like it invites in the, uh, the objectivity of which one of these plays is working best for me within each one of these structures. So I can make this data set, you know, very, very, uh, interesting and diagnosable for me. So I'm like, Hey, if you're a company, you are running one of these 66 plays. Like there are no other ones in the book. Trust me. I stayed up until 3am by even random people and calling them at like midnight. And they're like, Hey, I'm in bed with my wife. Jump back in bed later. I have a question, you know, and I'm like, I want to iron out these plays and say, like, Hey, these are all the plays you're going to run, you know, and let's start thinking about like the more interesting conversation is not did this template work and how well, because what can I do with that data?

I ran the template against my entire user base. And even if it did work well, like now, what do I run it again? Like, I can't do anything with that. So I'm like, when you incorporate that personalization, not only you see the results, but you get to get the data of like, based on approach here, content download, you know, high value MQL, website view, you know, whatever event attendee, you know, common VC, share common VC with your customer, you know, internal referral to a non, you know, non-sales hire, like which one of these plays are the best. So I can refocus, you know, for my, my reps, I'm like, you know, my last company, it was like when I was at chorus, I told them, I said, don't get in love with the structure of these sequences, meaning in terms of order, I said, love with counting because every single month at the end of the month, I was studying what's the result in ACV.

What's the conversion rate? What are the titles that are converting? And I was restructuring their, renumbering their sequences. So when they came into the day, they didn't have to worry about who, when, what play, et cetera. All they had to spend those calories on was like, what's the personalized premise that I can then hook in this email. And so we were just like shipping out these emails and just, I was spiffing them on job offers. They were getting a job offer a day of like these people being like, oh, my gosh, this is like my point, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, well, the good news is the bar is so low right now that like you can step over it. But anywho, I think you're right. It's like turning into a science as the, you know, it's the, it's the, it's the erase, you know, and, and that's, that's what I'm, I'm, I'm over, not overly concerned, but I just feel like over the next five years that we are, we're, we're, we're in this transition phase of SD, the typical, and I'm going to throw some percentages out there that probably are going to piss a lot of people off.

Well, this is, I did this one time, uh, at, um, at one of the clients or so I was speaking in front of, you know, a few hundred people, whatever. And I was telling, and then at the end, one kid raised their hand and said, Hey, John, you teach us all, you know, you teach, like we looked at your logo slide, man, you have all like all of our competitors. Right. So, and, and so seemingly you teach them all the same stuff. So how can we differentiate? And my, my answer to him was 10, 60, 30. He was like, what? I go 10, 60, 30 or 10% of you in this room. I'm going to take what I tell you to do, execute, make it your own and, and excel. Right. 60% of you are going to do something different because it makes sense and it's easy.

30% of you ain't going to do shit different. So, right. So, so the question isn't how many people can I train? The question is, is which one, which percentage do you want to be in? Right. Do you believe that? Cause, cause that's kind of, and we could use the 80, 20 rule, at least I think where I think about 80% of what sales SDRs are known for doing today is going to be irrelevant in the next five years. But the 20% that they do, where they put that context, they make those connections, they come up with those hooks. Those are the, going to be the ones that thrive and, and actually do really, really well as maybe just a full-time SDR versus having to go into enterprise AE or anything like that.

Do you think that's kind of the, those numbers flush out for you? Well, I mean, part of why I started the journey was, you know, I'd seen the stats and it's irrelevant necessarily like which status is correct. It's like, I was seeing a hovering rate of 20, 25% of SDRs were hitting quota. Okay. So I'm like, and the quotas are getting egregiously lower from what I have seen. Oh yeah. Absolutely. From, you know, at the beginning, mass loss was working. So da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. And it's like, oh, 15 appointments a month, you know, incorporating inbound, whatever. And I'm seeing that lower and lower and lower and lower. And, you know, let's assume the same hold rate of, you know, 15 appointments a month.

And from what I've seen on outbound, it's anywhere from a swing rate of, people are saying 20% conversion. What they mean is a hybrid of like, I'm like, I'm seeing anywhere from six to 12% on outbound and 30% on inbound. So we're netting around 20 and it's like, well, but we're talking outbound only on these SDRs. So if I am netting, let's say, let's wave a magic wand for a second. My shout out to our methodology that says that let's wave a magic wand and let's say that they're all hitting quota, that they're hitting 15 appointments, you know, and that they are quote unquote, you know, qualified. It's like, if you have a 6% conversion rate, the math just isn't there. So I'm like, so I was really focused on the earlier part of the equation of, I'm like, I came into the game whenever SDR is an established thing.

And I'm like, okay, so how do I maximize the impact from this concept? But I'm like, you need to look at the math, unless I'm a hyper growth company. It's like, I think hyper growth companies, sub 300 employees, they have 40% of their workforce of sales. And then it petered out after 300 because they're just trying to get the engine going. So I'm like, post 300 employees, is it worth it? Or do I want to hold my account executive accountable to this bag and just say like, hey, I'm going to pull the SDR program, but I'll lower down your quota a bit. Is the math there to just lower AE, push the SDRs into full cycle, you know, account executive roles and like, see how it works out. I'm like, it's an, I'll say this, I'm not going to be the SDR queen.

And then the SDR snow queen, like anti SDR queen on the line, people are so confused. They're not going to never go to the website again, but I'm like, is the math there? And like, I'm a data pragmat, like I'm pragmatic as they come. And I'm like, so is the math there? Let's assume again for a second that they are hitting quota and that the quota is higher to 15 appointments. Is the math there to keep them on? Or would it be smarter to shove them back into an account executive role? I'm like, look, I started as an AE and I was selling an extremely complex product, $2 million floor. I was fine. I was like handed a couple, like spin selling book, you know, calendar, medic, you know, whatever. And then I was asked to go sell.

So it's like, is the math there? And I'm like, look, I was handed this, this relative gun, you know, whenever I came to the industry, I'm like, if you're going to shoot the gun, here's the best gun you can shoot with. However, does the program make sense? Yeah. I'm not, I'm not going to unfold all my opinions, but I will, I will. Well, it's, I don't even think it has to be an opinion here, Beck. I think, I mean, I had this, I had a podcast with, with Trish, right? Because what I saw in March and April, look in a growth economy, growth economy hides a lot of warts. Cost of sale isn't that important, right? Because everybody's growing revenues. They're giddy up right down economy. People start paying attention to the numbers.

CFOs start paying attention to the numbers. And for those lazy ass SDR organizations that were not tracking their conversion ratios and metrics, their contribution to pipeline and all that other stuff, it's actually not hard math to go through. All you had to do is do that and be like, wait a minute, I'm paying what full-time OTE here to drive what type of results and how much I scare SDRs all the time. And like, I'm not, I wouldn't say I'm the king of SDRs. Like Morgan is probably that, but you know, I scare them all the time. I go, look, if I was a new VP of sales, the first thing that I would do, very first thing that I would do is I would say, Oh, let me see all your time. Let me see all the emails that are going out to our clients right now.

I want to see every one of them. And if they were all templated bullshit emails, I'd be like, shit, I'm going to save this company a shitload of money right now. I'm going to fire every SDR on the team. I'm going to go hire a marketing ops person, tweak the shit out of Marketo, Eloqua part out or whatever it is and just go to work. Like who the fuck? What's the difference? But, but the additional benefit is in a growth economy, the additional benefit of that SDR role was it was breeding your sales reps role. So it was a cheap way of getting that AE, right? It's like, I'd love to see the conversion ratio of SDRs to AEs because I know it ain't high. No. Right. So a couple more tactical things here.

Uh, you talk a lot about hooks. Yes. Talk to me about a hook. Like what's the hook? I get it. I just want to make sure the audience understands what that hook is, the connecting tissue. And what are some examples for you? Yeah. So, uh, the connecting tissue to me, and I think that that is the main, um, again, when it comes down to, um, should I, or is personalization a good strategy? It's like, well, the hook is there. So to me, I developed and started to systematize a hooking system. So I said, okay, there's two case scenarios. Either I have the prospects, actual words to hook into, like they wrote an article and I'm like, you said this line, or I don't have the, I don't have the actual words and I'm hooking on concepts.

Like, you know, whatever someone played basketball at Stanford. So in the first case scenario, if I do have their words, I'm breaking it down into three parts and basically saying, you know, the first part, you need to tie two to three words from the excerpt, rearrange them, you know, in a way that makes sense. And you should be able to bold two or three of those words and the same ones in the quote. Otherwise you haven't done that effectively. The last part of the hook. So there's three parts. First part is two to three words. Last part. I'm basically saying, and blank as a result and listing their one thing that they care about. So like SDR leaders, it's more meetings and book more meetings as a result.

And the middle part of the hook, essentially I'm stating a leading indicator that leads up to that business impact. So it'd be like, you know, like I loved your article on scaling effective teams. You know, one line that stood out to me was it all comes down to quality of messaging. What if you can ensure that all the quality of messaging was high for your reps over at Okta, that you were getting more open rates as a result. And you were, you know, getting more booked to me or getting more or increasing your open rates and booking more meetings as a result. Give me a shot Wednesday at two to unpack that, you know, how VPs of sales leverage, you know, whatever chorus to drive more conversion.

And if you're not impressed, then I promise I won't hammer you, you know, with any kind of follow-up. So it's like that hook really has three different parts of like tie the two to three words, state the leading indicator. And then for the love of God, state the one thing that they care about. And I was leading with what if you could imagine if you could, or I have an idea on how you could, but that's for if they actually, if you actually have texts, if you don't have texts, I actually think it's more advantageous because I do what I would call like laying the grips. So when you're rock climbing, anyone rock climbing who's on the line, it's like the complexity of the wall is based on how big are the grips, you know, so bigger, the grips, the easier the wall.

So I essentially, I do a lead line of like, you know, I noticed that you played basketball at Stanford and I instruct them to lead a line of like, correct me if I'm wrong. Or I'd imagine, you know, I'd imagine that being, you know, a basketball player all, you know, like a great effective basketball player all comes down to, you know, practice and film review, you know, and then going into the statement, what if you could, you know, increase the quality of your film review, call out the spots where your reps are struggling in specific and drive more close one as a result. So I get a, and the great thing about if you're hooking on concept is essentially, you can throw the grip wherever you want.

You can say, I'd imagine. So they don't, if you say, correct me if I'm wrong, the first thing they don't want to do is correct you. So I'm like, correct me if I'm wrong. And then I throw the grip exactly where I want it and then swing into it. And they're like, that's a slam dunk email. And I'm like, well, it really was a 12 foot arc soft lob calling me the queen. But that's what I really define a hook as, but that was to give really my reps. And then, you know, people who, who devour the content of like, Hey, this is what I think the components of a hook are. But to me, it's like, it's up to me or content creators or whoever to define the systemic parts of a hook. You know, I'm like, Hey, here's my idea.

Add to it, you know, help me fill it out kind of thing. But that's, that's what I was instructing reps when I think that's where those three words, two words, data says, right? Like the word imagine, like that, that's a very, that's a very visual word. It gets people to picture things. It works better with some people than others, but there's some statistics around certain phrases, certain hooks, certain connections that we can learn from, but then still make the actual connection, you know, I, I just feel like sales reps should be the last mile, right? Like let, let data do a, let, let, like, let the tools do the majority of the heavy lifting, feeding us the triggers, helping us with the insights and those types of things.

And, and maybe, maybe, maybe even just writing the fucking email, but before it goes out to that person, you need to look at it, humanize it. You know what I mean? Like that, that, that piece is so sorely missing right now. And, and so that leaves kind of my last question, when should you personalize and when should you not? And, and let's, let's make us an assumption here that we're not talking SMB. Cause I think SMB is mostly, you know, can be handled by marketing in a lot of ways, but you are a SDR, you're an AE, even you're going after mid-market, you're going after enterprise. You have, you've been told you have to have a seven to 10 touch sequence here to, to reach out because that's what data suggests.

And your boss is asking you to do it of all those seven to 10 touches or of the people that you're targeting, which ones should you personalize and which ones should you kind of automate or make just relevant if nothing else? Yeah. So, um, yeah, I feel like there's two extremely good questions in there. Um, you know, I, I think I got the reputation that they're like, she's personalization only. And I'm like, wait, time out. She came for relevance, right? Relevance wasn't working anymore. So I'm like, I just wanted to iron out the playbook, but I'm like, you need to start, start with relevance. And I'm like, no, I didn't say personalize in all cases. And I'm like, I was giving the guidebook, but there are cases where I wouldn't personalize.

So I'd say when it comes to, um, not personalizing the top cases that come to mind for me. So I, I actually view it that you, um, you should personalize for SMB mid-market and enterprise all three, you know, to me, I've just seen it dictate the volume of meetings you need to book, but the math is there that like, it's more effective to personalize within SMB. Same as enterprise. It's not like, like I'm at an SMB company and I hate you knowing who I am. And then I go to enterprise and I'm like, Oh no, but I, I have seen it be really effective within those markets. But the times that I would not personalize is number one, first and foremost, if relevance is giving you the results that you want.

There you go. If relevance only is giving you the results that you want, then turn me off. Yeah. Like why, why would you ever turn on that playbook? So I was simply giving it to people who relevance wasn't working anymore. Uh, so that's the first case. Uh, second case would be B2C, you know, of like you're selling B2C, you have to get out a certain amount of emails. You know, most people I imagine who are listening are not selling B2C, but in B2C case, I wouldn't do it. Um, in, uh, severely regulated industries of like, if you're selling from a pro, uh, provider that like simply cannot have you go off messaging because of the amount of regulation internally, then it's like, okay, well, you don't have the option.

Um, I would have normally said that you shouldn't personalize if you have a extremely offline buyer, like farmers, for instance, until I talked to a farming company a month ago and they said, actually personalization really works for us. I was like, no, I was like, incredible. So I would say, you know, a severely offline buyer. So someone who is a severely offline buyer means they're just not on LinkedIn. Now, if they're on LinkedIn and they're not active, it's like, okay, you have the about me line, you have a company line, you headline the profile line. But, uh, uh, international is another case of like, I would, uh, think about if I'm selling to an international community, a lot of international communities really like it.

Like New Zealand, EMEA, you need to know who the person is beforehand. Um, you know, but I, I would have a question mark there of if I should do it. Um, you know, if I was selling internationally, it doesn't mean no, it just means I would need to think about it. But really I would say that the biggest two examples, uh, is if you're already getting results from relevance, stick with the book, you know, and like when I'm training reps, I basically say, here's an option. If you're already at quota, don't change what you're doing. Yeah. If you're not quota, here's, here's some of the book, but I'd say the biggest one I would think about is B2C, uh, and, uh, severely regulated industries. But most of the people who listen to the content, they'll say like, Hey, well, I'm selling to whatever, uh, integration engineer, CIO.

And I'm like, still works. I have to dig a little bit more, but it's not an excuse of like the math is there that it works. So I don't know what to tell you other than you can either do it or not do it. 1063. I don't, you know, it doesn't really necessarily matter to me. It hurts my soul a little bit. If you don't, but I'm like, um, those are the cases that I, I would say like, okay, personalization is not, um, you know, the, the strategy I'm going to go with. Yeah. You know, I say the same thing. Like when people ask me, well, what about this? I'm like, I don't know. Is it working for you? They're like, yeah. I'm like, then fucking do it. Like, I like, shut my mouth. Like I hate touching base and checking in.

I've been on a personal crusade to get those out of the vocabulary of their sales professionals. But I'm like, look, if touching base and checking is making it rain for you, shut my mouth. Like, I don't fucking care. Right. People bring you on the line in consulting. Maybe this is just a, whoa. They'll be like, they're playing hardball with me. And I'm like, time out. Why am I here? Like, I love not being on Zoom. So why am I here? And I'm like, you know, I'm not trying to be a jerk. I'm just asking the question of like, hey. If I was being successful, I would never in a million years listen to anyone else. You know? Yeah. Awesome. Well, I think we got to wrap this one up. I think we could talk for another like four or five hours on these topics.

But let's do a part two on this one. But tell everybody, I know you got some cool stuff coming up with Flip My Script and you got some content that you're putting out there. So what do you want people to learn more about? If you go to flipthescript.co, if I didn't ramble enough for you on this podcast and you just want to hear more, go to flipthescript.co. I have 60 sessions up there to date, all free. All you need is a business email address, obviously, so we can email you into oblivion in our marketing database. If you go there, I have core sessions, silver bullets. I have season one that's a pilot, you know, and season two that's COVID themed. But I essentially am blitzing out quite a few free sessions, free decks.

I go super in-depth on everything from objection handling, personalization at scale, you know, cold emails, cold calls, et cetera, all the way down to process, KPI infrastructure, et cetera. So, you know, whether you're a rep or a manager, that would be a place that I would plead for people to go to. Very cool. Yeah. And then the typicals like LinkedIn and all that other stuff too, right? And just for those of you listening, it's Beck Holland, H-O-L-L-A-N-D. So go check her out on LinkedIn, on all the other platforms. But yeah, take a look at that because I've been really impressed with all the content you're putting out there for free and helping people out to, again, like try to raise this profession up a little bit and try to help those people that give a shit.

You know, because at the end of the day, you know, the people that care are the people that I'm trying to reach, right? And I know the same thing with you. The people that don't, I really don't care about. So if you're going to go through the motions and crank out those template sequences and cadences and look for that silver bullet all the time, then fucking good luck, you know, finding a new job with something else when AI comes knocking. So anyways, Beck, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. And I wish you all the luck in the world with this new venture of yours. I'm sure you're going to do fantastic. So and come back anytime. All right. Thank you very much for having me.

I had fun. All right, everybody. Well, hopefully you got some good nuggets out of this one. Hope you learned something just like I did here. Like I always say at the end of my podcast, even if you're having a shitty day, go make somebody smile today because no matter how bad your day went, if you made somebody smile, you know you had a good day. And this world needs a lot more of that these days. So thank you all very much. Have a fantastic week. Cheers. All right, y'all. If there was ever somebody to learn from when it comes to being relevant and personalized in your outreach, it's Beck Holland. Her insights and mentality are exactly what our sales community needs in order to consistently see sales success.

Don't forget to join us at ondemand.jbarrows.com to begin leveling up your sales skills as well. Want to prospect better? It's all there in filling the funnel. Want to learn to close like a pro? It's there in driving to close. Are you looking to build your personal brand and be out there creating an online presence that's relevant to your target audience? It's there in the personal branding course at JB Sales On Demand. This will change your life, change your approach, and change your results. So sign up today at ondemand.jbarrows.com. We'll see you guys next week, and until then, sell better.