64: Owning Your Career with Christopher Fago

Boston. I'll be here in my hometown August 8th for the Flip My Funnel Conference. Come join me. Good afternoon or morning, everybody. This is John Barrows with Hey, Make It Happen Monday podcast. Hopefully you all had a fantastic weekend. I actually spent some time with my family. My mom and dad were in town, so I had some fun here and the weather cooperated, so I was super happy. And I'm fired up to have this conversation because I think this is a conversation that isn't being had enough. And I think we're going to have some really cool things around the SDR role and staying in it. So I would like to welcome to the show, Chris Fago. How's it going on, man? Hey, man. What's up? Glad to be here.

Super excited. Yeah. So, Chris, why don't you, just for, again, context here, give everybody a little bit of background of where you're coming from, what your role is now, and then we'll dive into stuff about SDRs. Yeah, sure. So, you and I are actually coming up on our anniversary. I don't know if you know that. I met you and Gary Vee on the same day, so you guys have been in a constant fight for my love and attention as far as content goes. And I think you usually win because I can only take Gary in small doses. Hustle, man. Hustle, hustle. Right. But super concentrated doses. So, you and I met at Rainmaker 2016 here in Atlanta, presented by Sales Loft, which I could not have needed more than anything else in my life at that time.

So, currently, a little bit about me. I'm a two-time SDR team founder. I'm kind of on my second rodeo, working on all the mistakes I learned from the first time I founded an SDR team. You know, before that, I did about four or five years in an account manager role where I was doing closing both net new and renewal. But I branched into sales development because I kind of just saw that becoming a huge, explosive need within our community. And, you know, I think that's definitely happened over the last three years. I mean, everyone's kind of doubled down on growing their inside team. And that's where I became passionate was like, how do we create the best inside team with the new technology that we have available?

Love it, man. And that's what I want to talk about today, because one of the things I read a report from the Bridge Group that really struck me. I mean, I inherently know this, but it was good to see the data around it. And it also kind of feeds into, you know, everybody seems like they're in a rush right now. And the data that Trish came out with said this, that SDRs, if they get promoted within six months to an AE role, the failure rate of that transition is around 60%. Whereas if an SDR stays in the role for 18 months before they get promoted to AE, the failure rate is like 6%. So 60 versus 6, a 10x factor if you stay a year in the role. But yet we're always seeing kids who after six months, hey, what's my next role?

What am I doing next? When am I getting promoted? And you're also seeing, to your point before we were jumping on this, recruiters calling up and saying, hey, you know, you're at the nine month mark. If you're not promoted yet, you should bail, right? You should go to that next job. You should get promoted. So, Chris, let's talk about why, first of all, why do you think everybody is in such a rush? And then why is it so important to the SDR role itself to stay in it for a little bit longer than, you know, typically people are trying to? Sure. To touch on the first one, I actually believe that, one, there's been a false perception created by recruiters. So if you're a recruiter, every day on LinkedIn, I save a screenshot of the most ridiculous promotion promises.

Honestly, the last one I saw was, I think it was six weeks. As long as you hit your numbers for six weeks, you're guaranteed promotion. Anybody can fall into that. Like, I'm sure my cat could probably figure it out. So I think there's a lot going on here. I think, like, one, like, organizations are also part of that false perception. But I don't think it's intentional. I like to call it the unintentional bait and switch of startups, which is they want to get good talent early, but they also don't know where the company is going to go in the next six months, let alone the next 18 months. So it's really hard to build a career road map. So they kind of fudge it a little. And basically, they say, look, if you come in, do all your stuff, here's what's going to happen.

Not even knowing if that's legitimately possible. And then when you go into Trish's failure rate, I think what I've kind of figured out is, so I'm in my fourth year of being an SDR, which a lot of people listening will probably think that I'm not very good at something because I haven't obtained some other made-up title that should make me feel better. But essentially, like, the way I see it is between, like, month 12 and 18, you kind of unlock this business acumen. And that business acumen allows you to know exactly what to do in every situation without even thinking. So it's almost like you're operating in your sleep. That unconsciously competent, right? Correct. Yeah, that whole, you know, you start with unconsciously incompetent.

You don't know what you don't know. Then you move to consciously incompetent. You know what you don't know. And then you move to consciously competent, which is you know what you know. And then you move into the unconsciously competent where you just do it, right? So you're saying that happens around the 12 to 18-month mark? I think so. And I think, like, as bad as this sounds, I think that the rejection actually plays part in it because you're basically, first of all, I think you or someone else told me not to say basically. So I'm going to go back to the big words, yeah, yeah. Essentially, what is happening is that rejection causes, it's a little bit of positive tough love. Too much tough love is super bad.

But you get that rejection. You say, hey, John, look, I've been here for, you know, nine months. I've never had a bad month. It took me one month to ramp. And for the last eight months, I've been crushing it. You know, I think I'm ready for the next step. I want to know what that is. And you go, honestly, we really need you to stay where you are. Like, that is a little bit of motivation that you go, okay, well, what do I need to do to get to the next step? And then you say whatever you say, even if it's not true. And then here we are. And so it allows you to go and dig deeper. Because it's like I was telling you before the call, like, when you think you've hit your limit, you're nowhere close.

And, like, you just need to double down and keep going. And I think a lot of our, you know, my generation, like you said, they want the easy route. They want to go, all right, I put in the work for nine months. Where's my prize? But really, it's like, you know, back in the 90s, this was a career, but it was like lead gen. And it was like, you know, it was in tandem with head of marketing. It wasn't some, like, launch pad. And I want to get away from that. I want that perception to stop. And I think you're, I mean, I think you're on point with this because I personally think the SDR is a little bit of a, I don't know if there's a, hold on a second, my microphone. But I think there's a perception that, again, to your point, SDR is going to be a launching pad and it's the intro to sales.

But if you think about it from a company perspective, you're telling me that you're going to, you know, spend all this money on all these tools and resources inbound and everything like that. And then the first interaction you're going to have is from some 22-year-old kid who barely even knows what your company does and is going to run a prospect through band questions and regurgitate some pitch. Like, that is not a good first impression for the company. So I actually personally think that the SDR role, if you will, is going to become its own career in the sense that SDR, SDR manager, SDR director, SDR VP, and it's going to report maybe under marketing or operations. But it's going to be a career path that way, as opposed to, oh, this is the entree into sales.

Correct. Yeah, I agree. It's a completely different skill set. Like, opening and closings, they're both valuable. There's a debate about if they're equal, but they are not the same. And that's where that promotion causes that, I think, stumble, right? You take a few – you might get that promotion, and you might have earned it based on merit, but, like, what is the organization doing to train you on your next chapter? Because it needs to be seamless, right? Essentially, if you are going to get promoted, I would say, like, at least three months before, they need to start – they'd cut your quota in half, and they need to start allowing you that flexibility to do both roles. Because, one, like, you might not even like it.

Like, I've closed before. It's great. But also, I like what I'm doing. So, you need to allow your people to fail safely. I think a few weeks ago, you had – I'm drawing a blank – Richard Harris. Yeah. And Richard was saying, like, not enough people get to fail. Yeah. Or they – no, they get to fail, but it's, like, immediate. It's, like, they fail immediately. They don't get to, like, year three. Oh, yeah. Well, that's all about just most businesses in general. They don't get past that first year, right? Because they're a startup, and, okay, and then they fail hard early, and, you know, they don't last. And it takes some – you fail a lot before you can be successful. And I think that's one of the things that people resonate with a lot of, you know, the stuff that I post out there.

Most of the stuff I post out there is stuff I've learned from failing, right? So, it's like, hey, here's an example. Don't do that because I learned it. And I don't think – to your point, I think we need to build up a little bit more of that resiliency of failure so that the big ones don't hurt as bad. So, when you don't get that promotion, it's not a life-ending, I'm going to go find another job. It's, okay, you know what? I'm going to double down on this. Right. And also, you know, going back to the SDR role in prospecting, I mean, look, I'm a close. I like closing. I love the relationship side of the house. But I will tell you right now, I mean, I train on negotiation. I train on closing.

I train on meeting execution. But there is one solution. I always tell everybody to every other problem at every other stage of the sales process, right? Negotiations, objection, handling, discounting, all that gets solved with a big, fat pipeline. Like, me personally, I don't really discount at all anymore. I mean, every once in a while, I'll – you know, if somebody is really pushing or whatever and we can come up with a creative package, I'll do it. But for the most part, I don't. And the reason is because I get a big, fat pipeline. Like, I'm booked all the way through October at this point. So if you want time on my calendar, you're paying rate card and we're going to October. And when customers push back, oh, come on, John, you're twice as expensive or whatever it is, it's like, well, good for them.

Actually, shit, good for me. You know what I mean? Like, I'll be raising my prices here because I want to put myself in a position, and I really want people to think about this coming out of this conversation with you and I, which is I want to put myself in a position where I want your business. I don't need your business. Right? Because if I want it, I sell the right way. If I need it, I do some shady shit. Right? So let me ask you, how do you stay motivated? Because I think the – I understand, and I'm going to take a step back, generational, right? You talked about your generation versus my generation. I'm 42 years old. My generation grew up in the go, go, go, like numbers game, right? It was like, hey, make – Boiler room.

Yeah, straight up boiler room, right? And so I think we're in this weird transition because my generation are now the leaders and the managers. And everybody understands that quality is the issue, right? Quality is the better approach. Like, we've got to be focused and account-based marketing and all that shit, right? But yet it's very hard to coach on quality, right? So as a default manager who doesn't get much training in general to be a manager, the one thing I can hold my reps accountable to is numbers, right? I can tell you, Chris, make 50 dials. And if you don't make 50 dials, I can run a report in Salesforce that tells me you didn't make 50 dials, and I can hit you over the head with a little stick and say, make 50 dials tomorrow.

It's easier to manage towards an equation, right? Yeah, yeah. So I actually understand why the SDRs are in a rush to get out of that role because usually it's a pure numbers game. It's here's these templates. Here's this script. Make these dials. Don't get creative and just do it, right? And I'm telling you right now, if you tell me to make 50 to 100 dials a day and my only ability is to take email templates that marketing sent me and put them into a cadence and hit play, I'm going to want to be out of that role in six months. I don't care. You know what I mean? Like, get me out of this because it sucks. So with that as an understanding of why some reps want to get, there's also the ones that are just way too impatient with their careers.

So how do you stay motivated after six months as an SDR to really hone in on that craft and really treat it as a craft that you're trying to perfect without getting overly frustrated that you're, you know, haven't been promoted in a, you know, in six months or a year? How do you do that? Yeah, yeah. So I think like two things, right? One, like your motivation has to be yours. So my motivation isn't going to work for everyone. My motivation is my wife. Everyone isn't married. But you have kids, so I know like that's probably your motivation. But I think what's important for anybody who's struggling or not sure like where to go, you know, like they feel like they hit that wall. Like you can either, I'm not saying like if things suck, like just keep going because that's not even a good, that's not good advice.

That's advice we give people, but it's not always the right advice. But it's trying to figure out like you're your own competition and only you can beat yourself, right? I think that's super important from like any sales role to understand because you're going to see, you're going to see as people in your company, maybe closing bigger deals than you. You're going to see people on your team, maybe having better months than you. But the only way you can win is to beat yourself. So when it comes to like me personally and going into those long stretches, so, you know, 12, 18 months, I'm going on, I think I'm going on like month 48 in two different industries. Like I, it's almost like some days I think about the stock market where I understand like eventually it goes down, but like how do I circumvent the inevitable, which is by trying different things, trying to beat last month.

And, you know, I think you, you talked about it the other day in an article and basically I could sum up your article in like one sentence, which is you need to do what is not asked of you. So you can, so do what is not expected. So you can do the unexpectable. I like that. Yeah. That's what I think the Morgan preaches about that a lot, right? Which is don't just do what you're supposed to do. Do extra, right? To be noticed instead of telling. And I say this to my daughter all the time, you know, the difference between ego and confidence, right? The difference between ego and confidence is ego is you tell everybody how great you are. Confidence is, you know, how great you are, right? You don't have to tell anybody.

It's the same thing we get in a promotion. Like the people who I know who get promotions faster are the ones who master their craft and go above and beyond what they're expected to do. And then get, then get told, Hey, you know, yeah, you're the, you're the guy I'm going to give you a promotion versus the ones who do what they're quote unquote supposed to do. And then say, why am I not promoted? Or when am I going to get my promotion? I know it was a fact for me as a manager, when a rep ever came to me and said, when am I going to get a promotion? Or, you know, at the very basic level, like how much vacation time do I get on the interviews? Like those are reps I wouldn't hire. And if you came to me and said, when am I going to get promoted?

I usually tacked on at least two or three months to your fucking cycle so that you've learned that you've got to know your role. And by the way, your career is going to be 40, 50 fucking years. Like you're only a year into it here. Like you're going to reach the pinnacle of your career in two years here. Good for you. Right? Yeah. I think that's funny. I think that tacks on to like the millennial instant gratification generation, which is like, and, you know, I talked to Morgan about this. Essentially, you know, I met Morgan when he started over at Terminus. And then I think like a couple months later, we both met you. And like, I will be completely transparent and humble. Like Morgan is that guy for me who I go like, what's going on?

Like, you know, I'm super successful. I want to be him. Him and I have talked about this, but that's where it's interesting because like we don't have anything remotely like in common other than our job. Like I have a wife. He's traveling. Like that's like, you know what I mean? Like we're all living these different worlds and we are all in different lanes. And that's why I think it's really tough to not kind of like get caught up in that. But kind of like you said, right, instead of, you know, the difference between ego and confidence, right? If you're confident, you just do your work for you and all your Pats people, right? Just do your job. I have to say that even though it hurts. Now I'm kicked out of Atlanta.

But essentially, like if you just have to do your job and then really be undeniable because the numbers speak for themselves, right? The hours speak for themselves. You can't be that guy who's like maybe at like 75 to 80 percent and asking for a promotion. I mean, I think there's definitely a place for B players. I also think we we mess that up way too quickly. Oh, my God. We all think we're all stars and we can only have A players. But I think if you want to get that promotion, you can't you can't ask and you just have to be undeniable. And I learned through failure. What were some of the biggest failures you've had throughout the, you know, the SDR career lifecycle, if you will, that you've learned the most from?

OK, so I think really it was just being premature in my expectations, right? Like you said, like a career. I'm 31. So, like, presumably I've got another 30 years at least. So why am I in such a hurry to do something else? And that all goes back to your circle, right? If your circle is doing things you want to do, like, that's OK. But understand that, like, one, they might be in a different industry. Two, they might be better than you. And that's a hard pill to swallow. I don't think that's what's going on with me personally. I just think that I joined a company that was pre-revenue with a handful of customers that had no idea where we were going to go in the next 12 months. And I expected different things.

We weren't, I wasn't on board. I wasn't in line with everybody else. But that was like, that's that accidental bait and switch. Yeah, so now you know what to look for, right? And you said that premature thing. And what do you use to, like, again, I want to kind of get in the mind of an SDR because I remember for me, you know, when I was 25, 26, you know, I started a company, outsourced IT. But I was just a, you know, I was the VP of sales and marketing, but it was a joke because, you know, it was 25. So, so, right, yeah, exactly. So I made those dials, right? And my motivation was very driven by a bigger purpose in the sense that I started the company. I was with some friends and we were doing this and we were all in it together, right?

I look today and I say, okay, how would I stay motivated? I mean, I think I'm a pretty, you know, individually motivated person anyways, right? And I think some people are more motivated than others based on different things, like you said, family, lifestyle, whatever it is. But I look and I say, look, if I was, I was, if I was sitting in a, in an office these days as an SDR, being told to make 50 dials, being told to send out cadences, how would I stay motivated? What are some of the things that you can share with people who are sitting in those roles, who are sitting in there and it's nine months in, they're seeing their friends get promoted. They're good, right? So it's not like they're, you know, that much worse than everybody else and they just straight up suck, but they're seeing maybe in other companies, their friends getting promoted and they're starting to get antsy.

Like, how do you stay motivated? Or what are some of the tips or things that you do that we could share with the audience here of how they stay motivated? To stick, stick with that so that they can get to that 18 months or that close to that, where they really own that role and know it inside and out. So they, they hit that unconsciously competent phase. Is there some things you can share with people? Yeah. Yeah. So first I would say like one most important thing is give everything a year, right? It's like a magazine subscription, like give it a year. Because what I keep seeing, what I see in interviews is nine months, nine months, nine months. And I'm like, okay, what's it going to take for you to get to 10 months?

And they go, probably a promotion. I'm like, oh, that's not going to happen. Like, just get that out of your head right now. And I think it's just that lack of commitment for a calendar year, because honestly, even if you're, you know, even if you're amazing, that's when good things happen to you. But good things don't happen to you when you, you hop around. And, you know, we said, I said it earlier, like, don't stay because you're unhappy, but find a way, find your own happiness and to stay motivated. Right. I actually have a list of like celebrities and like when they started. I think like the most recent one I added was Letterman. He actually was a weatherman until he was about 30. And then he moved to L.A.

Okay. So like I'm 31. Letterman was a weatherman at 30. So I still have time to be a great like late night talk show host if I wanted to. So, you know, find your motivation through your circle. Right. So maybe your friends aren't your circle. And that's a tough pill swallow. It's like, how do you cut the fat to make sure you're surrounded by people who are going through the same thing as you, but not encouraging you to lose motivation? Another thing I would say is like you talk about pipeline. Right. You want to be the best SDR you can be? Build your pipeline. So tomorrow, today's the last Monday of July and I already have stuff for September. Right. So you want to talk about how do you make your job more manageable?

Is by mastering the art of the follow-up so you can build pipeline so that come September, I'm not very stressed, right? We're going into the slow season of fall, but, you know, I'm already at like 30% of where I need to be, which means that I should actually get to like 130% that month because I have nothing else to do but tack on. Yeah, and I think if you want to think about motivation here, it's like if you're somebody who wants to be given things, okay, you're motivated differently than I am, okay? But if you don't like being handed stuff like, oh, the easy way out, if you like working for things, then the rest of your career, you never want to, and I said this earlier, right? You never want to, I never want to rely on somebody else to hit my target, right?

So even if I become an AE, senior AE, enterprise level, baller of all ballers, which I would even just, we could have an argument on that one, because you and I both agree, I think the SDR role is just as, if not more important than that senior level AE. But even if you do become, if you ever get to the point where you're like, oh, well, I didn't hit my number because I didn't get the lead from the SDR or my marketing engine didn't turn on, you get fired like that. Like, because you could be the best A player out there, but if you don't have a process to be able to fill your own funnel with stuff, the minute you miss your quota, it doesn't matter how great you are at the back end. If you can't hit your quota because you can't hunt, they're going to let you go.

And so I always looked at SDR stuff and marketing and those type of things as the icing on the cake. I want to bake my cake because I want to eat, right? Now, all the cool shit on top of it, the frosting and the strawberries and all that other stuff, like that's what the SDR brings to me. But without perfecting that in the first part of your career, you're never going to be that great at it. If you look at it as, oh, this is just something I have to do to get to the cool stuff, you're going to have a short career in sales, in my opinion, right? No, I think that's super valuable. Essentially, where I'm at now, we are channel-based, which means that everything we do has to go through the channel and on someone else's paper.

So the way I actually look at the pie for diversification standpoint is like inbound, outbound, channel, right? But then you actually can add a fourth slice, which is the regional sales managers, the account executives. So I want to be – obviously, I want to hit my goals, but I want you to look at me and say, thank you. Whatever – whether it's 5, 10, 15 meetings a month, it's like whatever you get me, this is just icing on the cake, like you said. And I think that's super important to set that precedent because if the precedent is not set that way, the relationships will be tough. Yeah, and if you're always the one who's taken and not given, man, again, like I said, even though sales is an individual sport, if you will, it's not.

It's a team sport in every way. And if you treat it as an individual sport, then again, you better be damn good. You better be damn good to be out there by yourself. But otherwise, leveraging other people and their different skills to be able to get to where you need to go, but also having an understanding of those roles. Because that's the other thing, it's like, to your point, some people just – once they get into the closer role, they're like, I don't like this as much. And they actually like management more. But if you didn't really perfect the craft as an SDR, you're never going to be a good SDR manager. And you're going to get into the field, and then you're going to be like, oh, shit, now let me go back, and now what do I do?

So it's kind of like Picasso, my favorite artist. One of the things I love about Picasso is that whatever medium he chose, he went all in on that medium, right? So if it was oils, he went for like years. He'd studied and perfected that craft, and then he moved to another – the cubism for a period, and then he moved to the blue period. And it was – he wasn't doing a little bit of a lot. He was going deep on one thing, and I couldn't recommend that more, especially as you go throughout your career because it is a building block, right? You do this, then you do this. But if you don't crush this, you're not going to be good here. So I know you posted out there a question like, hey, who's got a question, and you want to give away some gear here?

So what was one of the favorite questions you got from somebody that was on that post? Yeah, let me pull it up. So the whole thought was like, I've spoken to you a handful of times in person, but not everyone gets to speak to you, right? So I need to make this thought about me as much as it is about the people. So here's the question that I stumbled on. It's actually two. So we're going to do two things. Okay. We're going to do an extra batch. All right, cool. We're doing it live. All right, I love it. This question was by Bradley Tear, and it was, in regards to cold calling, do you have a pregame ritual that you use before you start dialing? And so I want to hear what you have to say. I'll provide my thoughts, too.

Yeah, so I see Bradley. Hey, hey, gentlemen. He's up here right now. So thanks for the question, Bradley. You know, for me, it's about getting in the right mental state, right? Because cold calling is a bitch. I do not recommend to anybody that they sprinkle cold calls throughout the day. I think that's a drastic waste of time, like making two or three phone calls, sending an email, making a phone call, writing a proposal, drastic waste of time. I call them power hours, and I don't just do power hours, like where it's just I'm calling anybody because my theory on this and my practice on this is this, is I'm just not smart enough. And I don't have enough brain capacity to call a CIO in the healthcare industry, a director of IT in the manufacturing industry, a CFO in the whatever industry, and have relevant good conversations with each of them.

With that approach going all over the place, I have to be general with my approach. I have to have a generic elevator pitch, and I have to have a generic questions and say stuff like, tell me about your priorities. But if I call every VP of sales in the SaaS industry, I can come up with a message that speaks to VPs of sales in the SaaS industry. I can come up with two or three questions that are relevant to VPs of sales in the SaaS industry, and I might even have a story to tell, like a case study or something like that. So my pregame ritual is to figure out who that persona is that I'm calling, what message I'm going to use, what questions I'm going to ask them, what objections I probably am going to face, and what are my responses, and what's the story.

And so I come up with that, and then I get my list down, I get my numbers right, so I'm not doing research throughout that call blitz, and then I stand up, kind of crack the neck a few times, I stand up when making cold calls, and then I hit the phones. And the reason for my call today is, and I hum through it, and then I go, what, when, why approach to send me information so I don't kill my momentum. So I said, what information would you like to see? When would you like to see it? And I'll usually say, is it okay if I get it to you by the end of the day? Because most people, yeah, sure, no problem. And then I hang up, activity, next call, next call. Because most people send information, hit send, feel like they did something, stretch out, walk around, whatever, and it crushes momentum.

So that's kind of my pregame ritual. And, you know, for me, it's just kind of getting hyped up a little bit, maybe hit a little Red Bull or something like that, just to get the juices flowing. But for that hour, I'm in it. So I will actually say, and this is a great piece of advice for everybody, right? I do something that, I do the opposite of what you do. I want to get that email out as fast as possible. In fact, I, this is one of those things you can template. And you got to make it, you got to, you got to make the template, and you got to make it so that you stop typing stuff, right? If you tell me you want information, obviously, I'm going to do what you just said, I'm going to say, okay, what do you want, you know, based on what we do, and based on what you do, like, it could be a variety of different things, like, what's more important to you.

But I try to get it out immediately, because I've actually seen that open rates go up, not saying, but that's what's really cool about sales is that we can both be super successful, and we can completely do different things. I'm with you, I stand up, I do the Superman pose, but you got to, like, you know, put your hands behind your back, pump out your chest, you got to feel it, you got to feel yourself. I usually have one song that I listen to, I listened to it before today, it's Britney Spears' Work Bitch, so I'm going to put that where it needs to be. But I promise you that if you listen to that before anything you do, it won't hype you up so high that no one can stop you. And then, like you said, so standing, get you a pump-up song, you know, do the Superman, and, like, do some breathing exercise, right?

Because, like you said, this isn't fun until you kind of get in the motion. Well, that's one I want to chime on real quick here, which is most people, they don't have a good approach to prospecting, and they don't have a good mentality when prospecting. So they go into it, like, I'm sorry, cold calling specifically. So they go in with this, oh, fuck, I got to make cold calls, right? And if you're not prepared, you don't have some structure to it, and you're going in with this negative, fuck, I got to make calls, your call bliss is going to suck. And you're not going to get results, and that's going to feed into the perception that phone is a waste of time. But if you go into it and say, fuck it, what's the worst thing that could happen here?

I'm going to make some phone calls. I'm going to have some fun. I'm going to walk around a little bit and enjoy myself here. That enthusiasm comes through, and usually it produces much better results. You get to find a certain, like, air and float on the air. You know, one thing I would also say is, like, not just doing these power hours and then suffocating, right? So when you're done with that hour, find, like, 10 minutes. Go outside. Like, just do nothing. Don't bring your phone. Right, walk around. Go outside and just listen to the cars passing and, you know, the birds and the bees and all that fun stuff, and don't do anything work-related. Because if you, you know, if you support two account executives, I support five.

So, like, essentially, if you don't find time to breathe, like, you will drown. And people are going to let you because we can't save everybody. So it's important to say, and this is what I always, I do, it's called the Pomodoro technique. So it's 25 minutes on, five minutes off. And, like, my computer will literally, like, lock up. It's this neat little app. I'll send you the link. But essentially, like, after the 25-minute mark, like, you can't do anything. Until the five minutes is up. Because it's telling you to not be in this go, go, go. Sometimes you've got to slow down to speed up. And especially when it comes to, like, taking care of yourself. Definitely. Because we all just go all in, and it's not great.

Trust me, man. I kind of took a page out of Gary Vee's book in the sense that my health was definitely not something that I was paying attention to for the past 10 years, give or take. I mean, I'm lucky in the sense that my frame, like, I can look good in a T-shirt, you know what I mean, for a while. But I was just a dumpster. And I'm sitting there going, like, at 42 years old, I don't have the energy to treat myself like shit anymore and still go. So I had to, you know, about six months ago say, you know what, I've got to now reprioritize and take a step back and give myself time so I can take that next step forward for my own health. Right. So now I'm trying to go to the gym. I'm trying to eat a lot healthier and those type of things.

But I have to force that in there or else I'm going to fall apart and I know it. What's the other question you got? So the other question was from, let's see, from Simon Kennedy. So Simon says, at the beginning of your sales career, what were the three things you most commonly did that you believe encouraged people to not show up to calls or to ghost you? Early in my career, I wasn't too good at that, man. People ghosted me all the time. You know, the good news was I did a lot of face-to-face selling. So I would just show up on site anyways. Even if they were trying to ghost me, I would track them down and stalk the shit out of them. Now over the phone, what I do is, because I'd say 98% of my sales are over the phone.

I said, you know, you can look this up and Lucas, if you listen, put the agenda email in there, which is, I sent an agenda the day before called a shared agenda. Looking forward to it. You know, so first of all, a meeting invite on the calendar, obvious. But I don't put the agenda on that meeting invite because nobody looks at that, right? They just hit accept. And so the day before, I'll send an email called the shared agenda and say, looking forward to our meeting tomorrow. Now, are we still on? In order to get the most out of our time together here, I put together a brief agenda. Here's two or three points, usually three. And I usually start pretty high and a little bit more specific. And then I leave bill at four, five, and six open, effectively telling you fill in the blanks.

And then if you don't respond to that, that's okay. I update the meeting invitation the morning of, and I put the agenda in there. So I put it in there as an update. So the time doesn't change. Yeah. But when the update comes, somebody's like, why is it updated? So they look in there. And that alone has reduced my no-show rates by about 50%. Yeah. And so I will say, I took that page out of your book. What I recommend is actually, it's like a meeting sandwich, right? Essentially, if you tell me you want to spend time with me, whether it's via an email or over the phone, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to send you an email. This is before I send you a calendar invite. I'm going to send you an email.

I'm going to change the subject line to our call, the date, and the time. I'm going to say, hey, John, thanks for talking to me today. Looking forward to our call on July 31st at 2 p.m. Eastern. And then I use one sentence to be like, I want to use this time to talk to you about this at your company. You'll see a calendar invite shortly. Let me know if anything changes. And I kind of took this from you from a threading perspective. And that is then, depending on how far out the call is, if it's a week, I will, like if it was next Tuesday, I would actually try to send you something relevant, maybe like Thursday or Friday or maybe Saturday, something for you to absorb pre-call. Whether it's the deck so that we can have a conversation and I don't have to read to you or something that I just might think you think, you know, something I think you'll find interesting just to say top of mind.

Then what I do 24 hours before is I send you the, you know, the confirmation. So, you know, I'll say, hey, John, just friendly reminder, confirming our call for tomorrow at 2 p.m. Eastern. Here's the Zoom, WebEx, whatever you use link. And here's the agenda. So that's where I put your shared agenda. And then the one, the last, and then what you can do is, then what you can do when it's over is you can follow up with your post-call meeting, which is, you know, you have another thing on that. It just allows the continuity. Yeah. Exactly. And that structure is important, right? To put structure, to prep for the meeting. The thing that I think is important about that summary or the agenda is to show that you've done some homework.

So it's not just a templated agenda. It actually shows you might have done a little bit of homework on their website, like a question about something that they had, you know, something that happened. Because I think the more people understand that you've actually are preparing for this meeting, so taking time to prepare for it, it's going to be a legitimate meeting. The more likely they are to show up to me. If they think it's just another sales call where they're going to ask it, ask Bant questions in a shitty demo, they'll flake on that all day, every day, which is what I do. You know, I look at my days, and I told you, you know, I usually train Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and I have Mondays and Fridays to actually have meetings with people.

And so usually Mondays and Fridays, back to back to back to back to back to back to back, literally every half an hour, right? And almost every week, I look for, I need a break. I need a 30-minute break so I can catch up on shit. And I have my whole calendar color-coded. And I look at it, and I say vendor meetings. And there's a certain color for vendor meetings. And I look at those, and I open it up. And if there's no agenda, if I don't really remember what that's for, those are almost every single time the ones I say, sorry, dude, I'm going to have to bail. Sorry for the late notice. Pick another time. And it happens over. But if I open up that agenda, and I can tell that this rep has been active sharing insights with me or whatever it is and preparing for this meeting, and there's an agenda in that meeting, and I know what we're there to talk about, I'll usually be like, oh, shit, all right.

Let me at least jump in on this to see what this guy has to say. For sure. And I think, you know, we talk about personalization all day long, so we're, you know, blue in the face. But if we're not personalizing the people that have accepted our time, that's a bigger thing. Lucas wants me to ask one more question. He's really excited about all the questions we got. So this is from Greg Freeman. Greg is overseas in the UK. His question was, what is the one thing that will keep an SDR committed and focused to the company and on growing business? So my opinion here, you're probably going to be a lot more specific with this. I'm going to take this up a notch and talk about vision and where they fit.

So I wrote a post a little while ago that said everybody needs a vision, right? If you ever want somebody to do, outside of the personally motivated people who just want to be awesome in their careers and are self-driven, if you ever want somebody to do more than what they're asked for, more than what they're asked of, you've got to give them a vision of where the company is going. Not just where they are going, but where is the business going? Are you on track for an IPO? Are you trying to sell the company or whatever it is? So leadership has to be clear on where we're going and then help you figure out where you fit in that equation. And it's this Christmas tree or upside down funnel where the vision of the business, then the VP of sales or whoever that is, what are their priorities, what is management's priorities, and where's yours, and how does that all fit in?

Because if you don't know where you fit, you'll never do them more than what you're asked for. And you'll be motivated to know that, yes, you've done yours, but it helped the team get here. That's how you get people motivated to keep showing up and doing more than what they're asked for. So I think this is the quintessential icing on the cake question that kind of goes and summarizes everything we talked about. So like my things are, it's more than one, but it all goes back to the vision, right? It's FaceTime with the CEO and the VP of sales, you know, recognition within the organization, especially if you're an SDR, like you already feel like you're the lowest rung of the ladder. So recognition, like it cannot be missed.

I don't even, it doesn't even matter if it's one time, like if a deal closes and you're missed one time, like once resentment hits, you're never going to get over that hurdle. And, you know, it sounds simple, but it's just, that's what's important to the young professionals. So kind of to your point, right? Like it's, it's actually an interesting problem that needs to be solved, which is how do you maintain that funnel, that vision funnel as you scale? Cause a lot of us are joining startups. So eventually the way it works is, you know, you might have the access to these people, but then the walls go up and then the silos happen. And then next thing, you know, to get to your CEO, you got to talk to five or six people and that's not cool.

So it's tough. And I think that's why it's incumbent upon leadership to make sure that that message is still being translated. But you as a sales rep, I think if you, so forget, let's now let's shift it from the company and their responsibility to articulate that vision, but then let's shift it to you and your vision. So I used to laugh, you know, when I used to get interviewed and be like, oh, where do you want to be in five years? You know, I thought it was a stupid question. Cause it was, oh, I want to be a manager. But now I think now at 42 years old, I've reversed my opinion on that, on that question. I think it's an extremely important question you need to ask yourself because I get kids all the time who come, Hey John, I'm frustrated.

I've been in this role, blah, blah, blah. And I'll ask him, where do you, where do you see yourself in five years? And I mean, lifestyle wise, forget about job for a second here, lifestyle wise, what kind of house do you want to live? Car, wife, kid, like what's that look like for you five years out? Okay. And most of them have no idea. And I'm like, okay, well paint that first. Paint that vision first for yourself and then back into that vision, say, okay, well, based on that, what kind of money do I need to make? And what kind of lifestyle, what kind of job do I need to have to be able to live that lifestyle? Right. And then based on that, where am I, where am I today? Because if, if where you are today, I always tell people, look, I can eat a shit sandwich for a year if you want me to, if it's going to help me get to that next level based on my plan.

Right. But if it's not going to, if I don't have a plan, then I'm just going to go from shit sandwich to shit sandwich, to shit sandwich, looking for that better tasting shit sandwich. And I'm going to be somebody who's told what to do their entire lives. And my point on this is this, is that if you are not setting goals in your career, if you are not setting goals, then somebody else is dictating the path. Plain and simple. If you're setting goals, you're dictating the path. Now you might not reach those goals, but at least you're driving towards them. And without them, how can you possibly stay motivated? Yeah. Right. So that's my thing is either the company gives you a vision so you can feel bigger part, but you as a sales rep need to say, I got to have a vision for myself because this SDR role, it's a piece of a much bigger puzzle here for me and my career.

And if I, and if I skip this step, then I'm going to build my career on a house of cards and eventually it's going to fall apart. It'll be, it'll be really volatile. Exactly. Yeah. Cool, man. Well, I think you and I could have a conversation about the SDR role forever. But we do have to go, we're like 15 minutes over, which is unusual for my usual Make It Happen Monday. So thanks for this. And, but for everybody out there, Chris, how can they find out more about you? Because I do want to, first of all, thank you for being such an active member of the Make It Happen and just the Jay Barrows community. Both Morgan and I really appreciate all the stuff you've shared and questions that you have.

And I think you're doing a great job just, you know, professing the importance of the SDR role in general and how it shouldn't just be this thing that people don't either respect or try to skip over to get to what supposedly is the cool job. So how can people figure out, you know, where to find you? What's the best way to get in touch with you? Those types of things. Yeah. Best way to get in touch with me is on LinkedIn. I try to be pretty active over there. So that would be, yeah, that'd be it. Okay. Cool. And it's Christopher, right? So it's, I know it's Chris, but it's on LinkedIn. It's Christopher, F-A-G-O, right? Correct. Yeah. For, for everyone on LinkedIn. Yeah. It's Christopher Fago.

I'm probably the only person that you'll find. So it makes it easy. Appreciate your time today. I knew we would go over. I should have, I should have given you that heads up. Nobody, nobody can talk to me for the exact amount of time they expect. Yeah, it's tough. It's like, Hey, we didn't have an agenda, right? That's why, that's part of the reason why I didn't control it. But I always love to see where the conversation goes. So thanks again so much, Chris, for this. Everybody out there listening, iTunes. We also, I'm going to promote this again. We got approved for Spotify. So we're on Spotify right now with the podcast. It's crushing it. So keep the questions coming and make it a great week.

All right. Make it happen, everybody. Thank you. Later. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.