37: Ben Sardella, Co-founder of OutboundWorks and Sales Development Thought Leader

all right cool hey everybody it's john barrows with j barrels consulting make it happen mondays thank you so much for joining us and i am psyched to be with my uh good guest and good friend of mine there we go ben sardell how's it going ben what you got up to good morning john happy patriots day after a crazy win monday yeah so for those who just listen both ben and i are huge patriot fans obviously and uh i'm gonna say i'm sorry to the rest of the nfl like i know y'all hate us um and rightfully so that wasn't that was a total touchdown i mean let me ask you but do you think that was a touchdown yeah so i was actually having an argument at the time with my friends watching it uh who are all diehard patriots fans and i was saying that's a touchdown because it broke the plane while he had control um i think the rule is absolutely crazy when you can do all these nutty things as a runner but as a receiver you have to do this like process of coming down and all of that stuff um yeah i i think it's insane that they have the rule the way they do but um we didn't break it this time at least played by one by it so what are you gonna do right exactly you know it's like i i just feel you know the tuck rule and all these different things it's like they all seem to go our way so i'll take it but i will say if i was a pittsburgh steelers fan right now i would be ripped roaring pissed off yeah yeah well there's still a couple games to play so who knows but uh yeah it's looking good lined up for the playoffs at least now cool well i appreciate let's let's not bore their audience because they'll probably shut down right after this but um but i wanted to chat with you because last week or the past couple of weeks we've had this uh you know sales thought leader of the year type of award and uh it kind of came out of nowhere right inside sales and those guys put it together and i didn't even really know i was nominated for it and um and so i wanted to talk with you today about and so for those of you don't know ben ben took first place uh you know i thought i was winning uh because i wanted to beat grant cardone and all of a sudden i thought i was sitting pretty and somebody was like not i would scroll down all the way to the bottom i see ben just kicking ass god damn it so um so i want to talk to you about about first of all how you engage with your network because i think that's important but also um thought leadership because i think i put a post out there a little while ago on linkedin to say like what does actually thought leadership mean to you and i got a whole bunch of different answers and i'm also i don't know if you i don't know if you've been noticing it but i i'm seeing a big like not a big but i'm starting to see creeps of like backlash on on quote-unquote thought leaders yeah absolutely and so i wanted like because i'm starting to see there was a while ago where sdrs were starting to get shit on all over the place like people are like all these shitty sdrs these emails are crap and that kind of toned down for a little bit and now i'm starting to see this trend of like who the hell do you think you are thought leader whatever so right talk a little bit about um kind of like when you personally i mean well actually let's start with this let why don't you kind of give us the audience a quick update on kind of where you came and then you started a couple of companies now you're at outbound work so give us that that history and then i want to back into that and say when did kind of the social selling thought leader click for you and then we'll talk about updates so give us that little background from where you're coming from yeah absolutely so i had just uh some unfortunate unfortunate sorry i had some very fortunate luck um happened to me right when i was a senior in college i went to boston university it was 2000 um i had come out to california for spring break with my roommate on a last second trip and ended up meeting his aunt and roommate who um the aunt's roommate ran sales customer success marketing and um business development at netsuite at the time oh wow but they didn't have any sales people yet they were sort of trying to figure out the model it was super early on and so i inevitably became the first sales rep at netsuite and i spent about five to six years there yeah i didn't know that i knew you were there i didn't know you were the first yeah and i had a great run i got to open the uk office there i got to open help open the toronto office and you know just had a really nice run with with doing that and um and then from there what i learned though once i saw um the equity positions of the leadership i said you know what i hate coming in from college i'm never going to be uh retire with this gig i need to go you know kind of create my own path here so that's what i went off and did and tried to get up the ladder to the vp level as quickly as i could um and um and really where the culmination of me wanting to sort of go after that thought leadership side of things um build up a con some content and brand and the entrepreneur side all came together at kiss metrics which was my first vp of sales gig um got to work with neil patel and heaton shah who are just masterminds at um you know personal brand um content generation and all of that and i was looking at what they were doing and saying great i think there's a vacuum here for sales and how could i you know kind of be a part of that and as i was doing that all of a sudden you know that vacuum got filled with so many awesome folks in the in the space and um you know i was lucky to sort of be around the you know the sales hackers and things like that as they were starting to really come to fruition yeah so so was it a conscious i mean did you kind of identify it like was it a conscious thing where you saw that vacuum and you were like you know what i'm going to start moving in that direction and i'm going to start doing this because of what patel was doing and all those other things or was it just kind of a gradual thing where you were doing it whether consciously or subconsciously like you were kind of putting stuff out there because that's just kind of who you are or did you hit a point where you were like you know what i gotta start putting stuff out there because i want people to to start following me those type of things yeah what happened was um it wasn't that i and i don't put a lot of stuff out there usually i mean i i i support putting stuff out there um with the marketing teams i run and and at data and as we had a great content engine we're doing the same at outbound works and starting to build that up but what i was doing and what i was seeing was um a lot of uh first off i was building really great teams and those teams were adopting the processes i was putting in place and so i was getting some folks to follow me from company to company as well and so i started to see that i was able to build some type of leadership uh you know awareness with those folks but then the next thing that happened was um i was starting to get asked to be an advisor and once i became an advisor at yes where was sort of the first um sort of big name as yes where kind of took off right away um as a early in the early days um you know that created some awareness about what i was doing and then some other entrepreneurs would come in and say hey can you help with our company and that just started to build up my network uh pretty significantly from there and what's your philosophy on it is it because i'll tell you mine from a context standpoint you know when i when i went off on my own with jay barrows specifically i always knew kind of like i wanted to as a sales trainer i i kind of felt like i had to start putting good content out there um because i wanted people to see the value of my content and therefore obviously buy you know this day stuff whatever um so that's why i started putting it out there but where it really struck me was when i went off on my own with jay barrows and you know i got all these people reaching out to me being like oh just give me a shit twitter handle and we'll get you like 10 000 twitter followers in a couple months or something like that and i just just inherently being like that doesn't make any sense to me like i why would i want 10 000 random ass people following me on twitter and i'm a big fan of like a gary b um mentality of look you could have 10 million followers but if you tweet something out and nobody does anything i'd rather have 10 followers and if i tweet something out or post something 10 of them engage right yeah yeah you have kind of an overarching philosophy on like like you said you don't share a lot you don't put a lot of stuff out there but you kind of have your own approach to this is there kind of a standard of the philosophy you have around social selling brand building that the audience could kind of start to take maybe pieces out for their own yeah i mean i i think if you're putting stuff out there just to put it out there and keep the frequency up it's probably not the great approach because probably not a great approach because you're really watering down what you're trying to get out there right um i think if you put it put stuff out there that actually has some meaning to it um and then you know you have some follow-on pieces to sort of continue to drive that home i think you're onto something and so what i see a lot of people doing is just right to right i've got to get out a blog post this week because it's this week and i don't have a blog post out yet and you know i i think when you start doing that um people tend to disengage at a certain point um versus if you're get once you get something out there um and it has it has some meaning to it and maybe you don't put out something for another month or another two months but once it comes out there again you'll start to see that uh you know people gravitate to that i also think it's the format right what format you pick is is kind of interesting as well so for instance we did the stories from the sales floor podcast um and not only that we kind of had a different type of format with that podcast where it wasn't just me interviewing you in a one-on-one format for 30 to 45 minutes and when that was the john barris interview podcast it was more like let me ask you a question i'm going to interview you and ask you a bunch of questions and then i'm going to make each question its own episode and that way people could consume those episodes in a way where they might not want to consume all the episodes but if they had a specific question and we had covered that question in the podcast then they were able to consume that one and it was meaningful for them so i think that matters a lot too totally i think that the there is there's that balance though between consistency and because if your audience you know if there isn't a little bit of consistency then they tend to lose right i mean one of the things i'm noticing on you know and i'll just use an easy example like snapchat right it's like if i don't if i don't and snapchat's easy because i can just get on there and be like what's up you know i'm hustling but um but if they don't see you like i see the engagement drop down like if i'm not on snapchat every single day posting something even if it's just hey what's up everybody then and if i don't post for like two weeks i come back and my views are like zero um you know blog i think so i think there is something to be said about consistency but it takes a commitment i think that's the other thing whether you know you have to commit to putting content up quality content out there in a lot of ways yep and and being somewhat you don't have to do it every thursday or every monday or something like that but it has to be something solid once a month or something like that to for your audience to kind of still be like oh there's something cool yep and then i wanted to ask you though about like original content versus curated content because do you have to be you know i think a lot of people look at social selling and brand building and stuff like oh shit i gotta write a blog or i gotta do a podcast or i gotta what's your thought process on the person that actually creates the content versus just consuming content but then putting your and i'll go back to gary v context around that content yeah i think there's you know when it comes to actual content i think i've been a much better curator really great content and then being able to make sure that gets distributed to the right folks in the right format versus me kind of being in a lab creating the next you know blog content that or you know marketing material or whatever myself i certainly have a team that i work with and i give them ideas and i say hey i'd like this concept um you know us going down this path here's some really great stuff that's been written about account-based sales development over the last six months um let's pull some things out let's see what the trends are let's pull some people let's get their opinions and let's see what's really happening here um because a lot of times those content pieces that you're seeing um there's uh you know there's ambition built behind those things right they're obviously out there trying to sell something to you right and they're going to sort of drive the story in their own way so i think it does help to have you know some folks that are curators of all of this noise that's out there i also think there's just too much out there nowadays as well you know we went from nothing to like everyone wants to you know have a format to deliver so i think that's it um i think the other thing that i see as thought leaders that i think um as i was kind of researching this too like what is a thought leader what you know all of that i mean look i was interested in winning because i want outbound works to get on the map a little bit right but at the same time i want i want some respect for you know the peers that i'm working with i just wanted to be on that list with you guys to be quite honest because that's a pretty cool group to be on with but you know but i also think what we um what we ignore sometimes is just the people that are actually out there doing the real like new um like like like breaking new barriers creating new paths to to doing things that have sort of never really been done before never really been focused on you know i'll give you an example so the previous company we started was uh was data nice and with data nice um there were a couple of companies out there that were doing things around techno graphics you know figuring out who's using what tech but we really built the story around using that information to actually prospect with it and you know changing the habits of the reps to go do that every single day and so i think when you do some of those things you're going to get recognized as a thought leader even if you're not pushing out content all the time about those types of of topics you're spot i think it's super interesting like now that i got morgan on board right like one of the reasons i brought morgan on board was because he is because you're really fucking smart how about that besides that he's a really fucking smart kid but he's also on the ground floor you know what i mean he's the one of them doing like you know he's 25 years old he's making the calls he's he's playing around with all the tools yeah i'm like dude like let's start let's start playing around with you know what i have him doing which i think is super interesting again i'm going to bring up gary because gary's like he's talking about how voice is the next frontier right of like the alexis and we're all going to have personal and i totally believe this you know going back to prospecting i believe that there's going to be a personal assistant election of next every one of our desks and i'm going to be able to be like all right you know what uh today i want to prospect into ben sardella over at outbound works and uh so alexa tell me what i should know about ben and all of a sudden it's going to be or hey i'm about to go into a negotiation um and i got i'm about to meet with a cfo to talk about you know negotiation on this big deal any tips here alexa and then a voice is going to be like well here try this and so what i'm having him doing you can actually create these streams now and it's easy and i think it's free and so i have i'm having morgan cut up like 15 20 or 30 like just tips right or like motivational things that we can plug into alexa just to see what that and that alone is putting him in a position to be like holy shit dude like 99.9 percent of people aren't touching that in sales right now and if he gets in on that early phase of it and then learns it whether it works or not it's like okay like that kid he's he's trying new shit like i'm gonna pay attention to him yeah i mean i'll tell you this there isn't a single company i've ever been at where i haven't been the number one salesperson hands down so i'm i'm not it up on works i'm the only salesperson right now but we're we're doing really well and crushing it so uh you know it's we're on pace um at data nice though i was the first sales rep and i was the number one sales rep as we were building a team i was still closing deals just to you know just to know what it was like just to get that feeling um same at kiss metrics i was the only salesperson for a while and then we started building the team around me and sort of all the way back and i think that's really really important as well that you know us as leaders um you know obviously as you get up in in your you know latter stages of your career middle stages the latter stages of your career last thing we want to do is go back and be a salesperson again and do all the tasks and stuff but what i'm what i'm disappointed in sometimes with a lot of sales leaders is they don't even sit on the floor with their salespeople trying to see what they're doing day to day or they don't listen to calls they don't coach right there in the moment at all and um it you know instead they want to play in salesforce and run forecasting numbers and all of that stuff and then they want to blame their salespeople at the end of the quarter when they didn't hit their numbers but they don't want to take responsibility for not elevating their team success to a whole nother level themselves and so you know i i think that's a really important aspect to being a thought leader is if you're too far removed from the things you're talking about i'm sorry but you just don't have any context anymore and the game changes really quickly i mean daily if i say that all the time like you know for me i always wanted to you know as a sales trainer somebody asked you know when i first got into him like i know i don't when basho first knocked on my door and said you want to be a sales star i was like no and they're like why not i was like because most sales trainers i know suck because they're either failed sales professionals or they're professional presenters and you can just tell when somebody hasn't either they haven't done it or they haven't done it in 20 years and one of the things and this is a mean thing to do but i would recommend doing it is when you sit in a training right anybody goes to like a public training or something like that i usually let the trainer do like you know a half hour intro whatever get their feet wet and then i always sit in front and i raise my hand about a half an hour and i'm like could you give me a favor could you give me an example of the last time you applied what you're about to teach us and what the result was and you'd be amazed like nine out of ten of them like deer in headlights crickets and then they almost always go to well you know i've been working with my customers today i go no no no no no no no when was the last time you and by the way you could tell me an example and you could tell me you failed miserably like the guy hung up on you or kicked you out of his office whatever just tell me in the past six months to a year that you did this and it's and it's most of them don't because it's so much easier to do this the same thing with a manager it's so much easier to tell people how to make these phone calls and do this stuff than actually do it yep do you know uh russ hurl over at google i do russ was a great customer of ours at data knives and uh that guy builds a machine and when he does it and he cracks the whip and he i wanted to hire him any team that is being run by him you can guarantee they're going to hit a certain number of call volume that he's got the results maxed out like everything yeah for sure i mean the reason i bring him up is because he i just trained his team so i'm working with him and that dude gets in every single morning and makes cold calls yeah yeah like he's running one of the big like he's running the the cloud uh portion of of google that google's looking to make their second highest revenue generating division of their entire organization it's two billion now they're looking to make it like 35 or 36 billion or something like that in the next couple years like he's hiring thousands of sales reps and that dude he's responsible for all this stuff but every morning he gets up and he makes cold calls like how can you not follow somebody like that absolutely yeah yeah how do you not want to get in before he does too and already start making phone calls if you want to move up in your career that's the other thing you know i i think uh you know some of the folks are coming up i'm i love the ambition of the younger you know generation and how they believe in you know content's important and they they want to really share this knowledge and get in the game and i i love that aspect of it but at the same time um i i do think that something's got to be said for you know being able to go and crush it yourself and actually really have results maybe you're not winning all the time but having some wins under your belt i do think is is somewhat important if you want to be considered an authority in the space you have i mean that's why so i'm going to go back to morgan like i got him so he's a he was an sdr and then an sdr manager right and i got two things i got filling the phone i got driving to close and so what he's going to be doing here in q1 is he's going to be using my training to go sell right so because he's never done full sales cycle right so he's only just set up meetings he needs to now close right because i'm not going to have him even come close to delivering the driving and close stuff until he has some stories until and i don't mean success stories i mean even some it's usually better to have unsuccessful stories right like oh my god i tried to negotiate like this and the guy straight up hung up on me or i tried to pull the you know the glenn glenn ross clothes on the guy they told me to fuck myself you know what i mean so it was like whoa but but so i'm having him do that so that he can then gain the experience but he's going to be delivering filling the funnel you know why because he's got credibility in the prospecting and the outbound stuff and so i mean and talking about credibility social selling right i mean that the reason i hired the kid is because of his personal brand and so you know the the challenge i have with when you brought it up as far as the younger generation is i do think there is like a little bit there's an eagerness right like oh i want to get out there and i want to share this stuff but if you don't have it i'll and i'll i'm going to put myself in this buggy you can you can jump in if you want to but i look at somebody who's 22 years old 23 years old telling me oh i should be doing this stuff if it's maybe if it's the social hey let me jump on a linkedin and show you how i do social selling that's where i think there's can be some quote-unquote thought leadership but if you're trying to tell me how to sell if you're trying to same thing with challenger sale it's like don't you dare pull challenger sale shit with me if you're a year into business you know what i mean right so so that's the tough balance i think of like hey you know let me share with you some stuff but i also have to have some experience doing this stuff in order for me to tell you that this is valid in any way right totally and you know i actually used your quote about the challenger sale and um in some of the things i've used before because i just love that because it's so true um yeah i mean i think that the younger generation it you know folks just coming into it i think they're really great at tactics and i love being a sponge and and learning from them at data nice gosh the sdr team we had they taught me so many new things and of course outreach and sales loft were kind of really blossoming around um the things that they were doing around sequences that i thought was you know interesting at the time and um you know just just seeing all of that i i also think by the way as thought leaders we need to continue to be lifelong learners process as well um i think when you start thinking you're a lifelong teacher rather than a learner then you're you're getting way off on the track and i think there's some there that um feel that way but yeah i totally agree with your point there as well yeah well and i got i got one more question for you that i'm i'm kind of struggling with which is i'm seeing these thought leaders i guess uh who are positioning themselves as thought leaders but for instance in social like they're not they're just posting stuff to like they've gotten to the point where and i'm going to use gary as a as a good example gary's still a great practitioner right but gary now to gary could if he wanted to just sit there and create like whatever videos he wanted to and all and people are still going to follow him because he's gary v right right i have a hard time with those people who are out there professing about social selling when and and i see them on twitter on facebook on linkedin all the time but i guess my question is is when the last time you actually sold something because of that and that's the the thing that's i'm starting to get a little bit like yeah okay when was the last time you actually somebody said hey that's interesting or you you instead of just posting out there to build your brand you actually went after i'm going after ben and i'm going to follow him on twitter i'm going to engage with some of his content because i want outbound works as a client and then you then said hey shit john yeah thanks for following me and doing all this cool stuff let's have this conversation let's sign up as a con like that are you starting to see some of that or or is that just me just being a pure just uh cynic here no i i i've actually and you know it's interesting we're starting a new podcast and one of the questions around it's around prospecting you're going to be on it by the way um one of the one of the whole season we're doing we're doing it in seasons and the first season is dedicated to prospecting and um and one of the questions is around social selling and we just had an answer from one of the folks i respect you know tremendously in the space and he's like you know social selling is all bullshit right and i'm like okay i i i don't know if i 100 prescribed to just reading it off as bullshit i think there are certain people that have learned how to do it really well and they continue to you know evangelize it and they built businesses around that and i think that's important for some folks in some places what i think is really challenging is understanding where your market is and if they're not on those social platforms then you're just wasting your time and i found that with twitter you know to be honest i i i've had like i hustled to get twitter followers uh you know i didn't buy any but i hustled to get them um you know probably three four years ago and you know what i started to find out is that no one was actually engaging on twitter right and i think we all kind of or at least i definitely went back to linkedin you know it was for me right and so and now when i engage on linkedin and actually how i got probably ahead on the votes it's because i engaged directly one-on-one and that's what i've been doing and it's a lot of work but it allows me a format to be able to do that and gives me better context for who i'm trying to engage with and why then um you know than twitter does or anything else so yeah i i'm i'm kind of in the middle on the on the social selling thing as well it hasn't really it's a it's a component it's not a end-all strategy by any means no i think the importance i kind of separate brand building from social selling because i look at brand building is super important like getting your brand out there in a very quality way the way you want to control it and sharing insights and in context content all that stuff i think that is super important and the reason i say that is because you know when we grew up we were you know we were brand loyal you know like we trusted corporate brands the microsoft's the you know the mcdonald's and like you know that type of stuff whereas this generation they don't trust corporate brands but they do trust personal brands yep and so that's why personal brands gonna be now social selling i think you have to be very clear with what you mean by that you know what as far as like i'm not going to tweet you and all of a sudden get you to sign a contract right but if i follow you on twitter i retweet you i engage with you i share add value and then i make a cold call to you so now that's warmed up and you're like oh shit this is john or i send you that email and you're like oh and so it's almost like you know again gary b is a jab jab jab right hook you know it's like okay you just want to kind of be everywhere and then when somebody's ready to make that decision the goal is to be top of mind so that's where i do not think social selling is bullshit i just think sitting there tweeting posting all day long thinking that you're gonna make it rain because of that is bullshit right yep absolutely absolutely yep cool man well we got two minutes left here i always love talking to you and uh and again i wanted to get you on here because i thought it was timely based on what happened uh last week with that thing and i wanted to give everybody on that list credit by the way because most of the people definitely deserve to be on that list absolutely then it is something more of just like a pride thing oh fuck i want to win and so congratulations i got a second but tell everybody about outbound works um and and what you're working on these days because i know like you've been super successful in building all these companies and now you're off to the races with another one so give us a little um background of what it is and then where people can go check it out because i think it's a ton of value here yeah i appreciate it so at outbound works you know we've recognized sort of a gap in the market when it comes to sdr turnover and that's just really hard to continue to drive um the set number of opportunities that you've built out of your operating plan and deliver on those when sdrs are constantly getting either promoted or you're part in ways with them because you might have mishired and so you know we're creating a consistent channel an alternate channel um we don't necessarily envision a world without sdrs by any means but what we do see is those sdrs being elevated into getting deeper from a personalization perspective focusing on more higher end target accounts um you know a group like outbound works can take over a lot of the secondary second tier type of accounts um we combine both automation and expertise to do that so you know we focus on the icp the right type of curated data to target the right contacts you got a team of expert copywriters to write sequences and then we schedule the appointments and um you know i i think we're getting to a point now where with all the sales teams that have built now sdr teams which wasn't happening a decade ago and there's just not enough talent out there to go around and there's not enough john barrows out there to go train them all so um when that happens you know we're a good channel to to drive a consistent level of ops each month um and you can find us at outboundworks.com or me uh ben sardella at on linkedin love it man yeah i actually i couldn't agree with you more i i actually just as a to to reinforce where you're going my theory on where things are going is that sdrs are going to become more and more under operations and marketing um and be more of my vision is kind of like the uh the old old school switchboard operator where they plug and play so it's like there's going to be content created and then social you know engagement pieces there and an sdr is going to be like all right i'm now going after this type of client in this industry based on these things let me pull these things together put them into a sequence let it roll and be personalized with it whereas the automation stuff can take care of like the tier three accounts the tier two accounts right absolutely and i think the other thing john you know and you're at the forefront of this but i think the time has come where we're seeing ai start to come in we're building tools around that sort of stuff it's not that the robots are completely going to take over anything like that but i do think that there's going to be you know a significant portion being automated and taken over and it's time for sdrs and the folks coming up in sales to really start focusing more on their soft skills the things that you know artificial intelligence is not going to replace um so start thinking about those things because i think if you're thinking about how to use these certain tools that keep popping up and all that stuff you're wasting your time it's going to get all automated anyways and you should really be focusing on how you build relationships how you can handle conversations and that sort of thing um with the folks that you're trying to engage with and add value to yeah i mean i think that context content thing to me is is relevant across the board right uh you know ai the way i look at is ai is going to make good sales reps great great sales reps incredible and average sales reps are relevant right if you can leverage all this and have that 20 that's that top where yes now it's empathy now it's let me ask you that insightful question based on a little bit of homework i did versus the basic bant bullshit question and then be able to take the 30 slide deck you know presentation and cut it down to the five that are most relevant to you based on that stuff that's really where sales reps are going to excel absolutely yeah awesome well always a pleasure hopefully uh hopefully i'll see you in the super bowl uh hopefully that win is the home field advantage we still got to take care of business so we got absolutely yep yep no looking ahead we've seen this happen before too many times so all right well if i don't talk to you enjoy the holidays all right you too take care yep okay so thanks for listening to the make it happen podcast make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode and if you enjoyed the show let me know by leaving a review or sharing your favorite episode with your team if you have any topics or questions you want me to cover in future episodes hit me up on social at john m barrows that's john m as in michael barrows make it happen