74: If You're a Sales Person, We're the Same Person - James Buckley

According to gong.io's research and analysis of over 2 million sales calls using their artificial intelligence platform, they found out that the top reps respond to objections with a question 54% of the time, where average reps only responded 31% of the time with a question. So that tells you, when dealing with objections, don't get flustered, don't answer them immediately, flip it back on them and give them a question. And I usually like to use what's called the clarification technique on objection handling, which is, could you tell me more about that? Could you explain to me what you mean? Because usually whatever their objection is, is a very surface layer objection. And what you need to do is dig down deeper and to find out what it really means to them.

So for instance, could you give me an example of, as comparison to what, could you explain to me how, those type of things really put you in a good position to control the dialogue a little bit more and understand the real objection so that when you answer it, it's a real answer. I used to be very reactive when it came to objection handling. I would just wait to see, okay, here's the objection, and now this is the way I'm going to deal with it. Now I am very proactive with the way I deal with objections. And one of my favorite approaches is to clarify in question, right? There's about five different objection handling techniques. There's the feel, felt, found approach, right? Totally understand how you feel about that.

Other people felt the same way what they found was. Just don't use the words feel, felt, found, please, if you're going to use that approach. I tried that when I was about 23, and I tried it out on a VP, and the first time I said, hey, I understand how you feel about that. Other people felt, as soon as the word felt came out of my mouth, he was like, look, kid, don't try the feel, felt, found approach on me, okay? So, you know, but smooth that out, right? So that's one approach. Then there's the justification approach where you actually go ahead and justify the price. Usually, it's $10,000. Whoa, well, this is why it's $10,000. Then there's the reprioritization approach, which is, look, I understand cost is an issue.

Is it more important than this? And then there's the preemptive strike where you know the objection's coming, so you use it before they do. But one of my favorites, and it's backed up by data, is the clarification approach where when they object, don't jump on it right away. Take a step back, ask a clarifying question, and take it from there, all right? Make it happen. If you enjoyed this TIFF, check out more of Gong's research at gong.io slash john. Good afternoon, everybody. This is John Barrows, J. Barrows Consulting. Hopefully, you all had a fantastic weekend. Mine was all right. This is my favorite time of year, by the way, because all my teams are playing. The Red Sox are in the playoffs.

Let's see, the Patriots are kicking back into gear. Then we got the Celtics and the Bruins kicking back in. So with all that, I am actually fired up to have our conversation today with my good friend, James Buckley. Say what, sales? James, why don't you say hi to everybody? What's happening? Hey, make it happen, community. I absolutely love this community. I get so much value out of it. I've met so many cool people. I couldn't be more honored to be on this show at the moment. Yeah, I'm psyched to have you here, James, because, first of all, I really appreciate all the engagement and all the stuff that you've been adding to the community. But why don't you give people a little background on who you are, just in case they don't know.

If they don't, they should. But where are you coming from, what you're doing these days, and then we'll get into what we're talking about today. Absolutely. So my name is James Buckley. I'm originally from Miami, Florida, but I currently live in Tennessee, and I work for a company called Cirrus Insight. What we do is integrate Salesforce with your inbox. Lots of options. It's a big competitive market out there right now. But my personal brand is what has kept me at the front of that pact. So I definitely spend a lot of time on social media. I'm active in many, many communities when it comes to sales. My claim to fame is I have a catchphrase that I say at the end of every video. I say, if you're a salesperson, we're the same person.

And that has led me down a path that I never imagined it would have, because so many salespeople have reached out to me saying they relate to me. And then I end up having conversations with them and their managers, and it just generates great conversation, which, of course, leads to great business. There we go, man. Hey, and we're going to talk about networking, because I think, you know, I used to think I was the king of networking events. But I think you've taken it over from me these days. But before we get into that, I did want to ask you, you're probably one of the, especially following you and just knowing you, you're probably one of the most positive people I've come across in a long time.

Like, no matter how bad shit seems to be going or what seems to be happening to you, you're always staying super positive. So just from kind of life standpoint-wise, man, how do you stay so positive? Like, in this profession, which is so fucking brutal, right, and we get our ass kicked so often, how do you stay so positive all the time? John, that's a great question, and I'm going to answer it with a story that I've been dying for a forum to tell that I've never told, if that's okay. It's a little bit controversial. My boss is probably going to shoot me, but I'm going to tell it anyway. Good. I come from a background of drug addiction, and I nearly died about 12 years ago in Miami. Damn. I'll spare you all the details, but my heart was the size of an NFL football, and the doctor said that he wasn't going to judge me, but if I didn't stop living the life that I was living, I could be dead at any moment, and that there's nothing that anyone would be able to do.

My heart would literally explode. Holy shit. Yeah, so two days after the doctor uttered those words to me, after a long bender, I got everything I could onto a Mayfield truck, and I moved 16 hours north to East Tennessee in the Smoky Mountains. I relapsed once when I got here, and it was the worst drug I'd ever had in my life, so I said, this is it. This is where I need to be. The rest of my natural-born life, I'm going to spend right here in the Smoky Mountains, and I did. I've been sober now for 12 years. I drink a little bit, but, you know, I've had worse habits. I'm a big whiskey fan, as we all know. If you follow me, you know. Send me whiskey. I love whiskey. I think I stay positive because if you'd have asked anyone 20 years ago where James Buckley would be, they would tell you dead or in prison.

So I wake up every day really happy to be alive. Everything else is so small to me now. I love that, man. Well, first of all, congrats for staying sober and off that shit and getting through that. That's awesome, man. I've never told that to anyone. I'm surprised that you said that. Well, hey, thanks for sharing that with us, man, because that means a lot. I mean, I think the listeners here, you know, a lot of people see, especially on social, right? People, like, all living this life or all being super positive where we all got problems, man. You know what I mean? Like, I was telling a story that I rarely tell, too. You know, somebody was asking me, John, how do you keep going? Like, what do you do to deal with the stress?

And for me, you know, I kind of joked when he said smoke weed, but that's actually not a joke. Like, that helps for me personally. But really, I told him, I go, look, you know, I've been blessed with the ability to kind of carry a lot of stress on my shoulders for some way, shape, and it doesn't really get to me. But I'll tell you, man, once a year, a wave of feeling overwhelmed hits me, and it's almost always in the shower, and it almost always hits me square in the face, and I literally crumble down, and I need to sit in the shower for like an hour or two to get my shit together and say, okay, it's not that bad. You know, it's like I can get through this, right? So we all deal with our own shit, and to have that perspective is fantastic.

There's so much there, I think, that we take for granted. As salespeople, something that is dear to me is this conversation I have with new sales reps that want to build a personal brand, because they see me out there, they see you out there, Morgan, they see Jeff Blunt, they see all these things. It's like watching ESPN, right? You see the jump, you see this great, glorious catch, and you're an eight-year-old boy, and now you think that's how football is played. So someone throws one right to you, but you think you need to jump and dive, and, you know, and I always have this conversation with people, and it always turns into a weird, like, personal conversation, because I ask questions that have nothing to do with their career or their job, and then I tie it back.

So one of the best meetings I ever had was with a young man that really wanted to be more in the limelight. He wanted the attention in his industry. He wanted his face to be the face that people think of when they think of X, Y, or Z. And I said, why haven't you started yet? And he was like, I don't know. I don't know how to start. And I said, are you an only child? And he was like, why? And I said, that's not the worst question. Are both of your parents still alive? And he was like, I don't get it. Let me explain. If you're an only child, you've spent your entire life with two people that only care about what you get out of a situation, because that's been their focus. That translates in as an adult.

So everything you put out there, you're putting out there with an expectation of receiving something back, instead of just providing free value, right? That value should be provided at no charge. But that charge is the expectation that you don't get. And you're afraid of that rejection, because you've never had it before. Fine. That's the only child syndrome. The other syndrome is, are your parents still alive? If one of them is gone, then you know what it is to lose something that can't be replaced. Well, if your parents are still alive, then, of course, you are the only concern. Your career, your wants, your needs, your desires. And you can't even see that customer, because you're so focused on your needs and your wants.

You've not experienced a loss yet that turns the volume down on everything else. There you go. Interesting, man. I love it. Yeah, I think we could have this conversation forever. So let's now get, let's get to why, because, you know, this was the kind of main driver for this conversation was networking events, right? And Dreamforce coming up. We saw each other at Dreamforce, did a couple of videos together. It was fantastic. And let's talk, I want to talk about the importance of events and to a sales rep's career. And then we'll talk about how to execute on these events. So why, I mean, how many, we were talking about this before. Tell me again how many events you've gone to in the past few years.

Sure. So I've been with Cirrus Insight for three and a half years. Dreamforce two weeks ago, Dreamforce 2018 was my 70th event for the company. Lots of different countries, lots of different cities. I don't think there's a major city in this country that I've not visited. So 70, so give or take, that's on average 2025 a year, which is bananas. And, you know, I think back in my early days, I was around that clip. And then when I talk about events, not just like the big sponsored events, but even just the events at night, right? Like where they're local here in Boston. I go to a bar, there's, you know, 50 people there, shake hands, kiss babies, right? These days, I'm a little bit more like big event focus.

I probably go out of maybe a dozen a year. Why do you go to events? Outside of the obvious to try to drive business, but why are events so important for a rep to go to? So events are good because you become a recognizable entity that's tied to a business. You become essentially the face of your organization. When you are at events consistently, you always struggle to get conversations as a salesperson. That's what we want. That's what we're after is time. When you're at an event, they're literally paid to come give you their time. That's what they paid to do. And if you didn't, then what you say to somebody makes a difference. So I'm historically noted for saying really inappropriate things at events that gather people's attention.

Like crazy. So somebody walks by me and I'm like, what's up? Got a second. And they're like, no. And my response immediately is, did your company pay you to come here and say no to everybody? Ah, nice. Right? It's three, it's, it's three, four or $5,000 sometimes to send somebody to this event. Plus the hotel, plus the fee, plus the corporate Uber charges. If you came there and you just say no to everybody, you're wasting your company's time, not mine. In fact, you're doing me a favor. I'll go talk to somebody that wants to talk to me. Try to handle the Starbucks gift card. I don't like coffee. You know, they sell other things there, right? Right. Nice. So I'm remembered. So I think, so look, and I want to break down events in a couple, because I think a lot of people look at trade shows that their company sends them to go to, which unfortunately too many reps look at as a chore and not an opportunity.

So I think there's one piece, but then, then there's literally the, you know, Google search, uh, business, social networking events in my area and just show up at a bar on a Wednesday night with a, with a light that one. So I think, well, let's split those two up. Why would you go outside of obviously trying to find business, which I personally think is the wrong reason to go to networking events, but I'd like to get your feedback on this. Why would you go to, uh, on a Wednesday night, a local bar, 20 people might show up type scenario. Why would you go to that? So I go to those regularly. Actually, I was telling you earlier, I do probably three happy hours a week. They're all at different times.

Occasionally I go from one happy hour to another and a single night I end up Ubering home, but whatever. Um, in the end, what I go for is to meet new people and then they become part of my network. And as a result, it ends up pointing back to me because someone new met me. So they tagged me in a post. Now someone they know sees that I got tagged and they go, how do you know this person? Oh, I met them last night at this event. Do you know them? I see you work with this company. I think we know each other's company. Hey, let's connect and have a conversation. Oh, I'm not free today. Well, here's my calendar. Go ahead and choose a time. I look forward to meeting up. And it all happened because I shook hands with somebody and they tagged you in some post.

Met James Buckley last night. He's such a fun guy to hang out with. Oh, 20 new connections from that one tag. Each one of them is somebody that I could be like, hey, how'd you find me? Yep. I love it. Yeah. And I think that was where, like, for me, I'll give you an example. Like early in my career, I didn't know what I didn't know. So that's why I was going to probably three to four networking groups a week. Like in the mornings, the groups, the down meeting type of thing. And then every night going, you're probably three to four a week for five years. And what I would do there is I would just shake hands, kiss babies, that type of stuff, help people out. You know, I was, I was a big, are you familiar with a B&I, Business Networking International?

I used to be a member of our local Knoxville B&I. Absolutely. There you go. I used to see my really good friends through B&I. So that was, to me, that was a fantastic intro to structured networking. And the whole, their whole concept, right, is giver's game, right? You give way more than you get, and then you'll eventually get it in return. And what, what was funny was when, you know, fast forward to my career, when I was at, when I was at Basho and then fired all of us and we had to start a company, right? Me and my other business partner, we had to start a company like overnight, right? To take advantage of this opportunity. So I was like, we needed a website. We needed an accountant. We needed payroll.

We needed all these things, right? And I was like, shit, I'll take care of this. And bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. I called all up all these people that I've developed these relationships with over the years. And I was like, hey, I need somebody, John, I'll take care of you for six months. You won't have to pay a dime. John, I'll light up your website tomorrow. Don't worry about it, John. And I got, like, I literally lit up our company in less than a week with a fully functional business and didn't pay a dime. And my, and my business partner was like, what the fuck? He's like, how did this happen? And I'm like, I don't know. I've just been kind of building these relationships over the years.

Yep. So that's obviously, I think, from anybody who's trying to build their brand and build their network, especially early on in their careers, networking events are huge. What about the practice side of networking events? Because I'll share with you this, right? Like, and how much does going to events help you over the phone, for instance? Oh, I mean, going to events over the phone, that, when you follow up after you met somebody at an event, your follow up means so much more because this person stood in front of you. And I have so many great tips. One of the things that I'm famous for, and it's hard, right? Because people want to give you their card. And that's great. I love your card. It has your email address on it.

It has your fax number. It has your office phone number. But what I really want is your cell phone number. So what I do is when you come to my booth, I say things like, Starbucks gift card, little stuffed unicorn, what can I get for you? Let's take a selfie, right? And then I take the selfie. And then I'll be like, what's your number? I'll send it to you. Nice. And then I send it to them. And I save their information. They gave me their card. I can put their company in. And then I just go through my text history. And I know who I'm reaching out to. My first email has our selfie. Hey, it was great connecting. Here's that picture I took. Here's my calendar, too. I look forward to hearing from you, right?

Sometimes I don't even ask them for time. I just say, here's my calendar. Let's connect. They're fine. They'll definitely go ahead and schedule a time without even flinching just because they met you in person. And that's totally different than even the warm call. Thanks for liking my post, right? Hey, I liked your post, guy. See, that's like, for me, I kind of break it down to statistics-wise. Here in the sense that, you know, the way that we communicate, I learned this a while ago. It's like Dr. Albert Munchizer or something or other says how we communicate as human beings, right? It's broken down to 8, 35, 57. 8% is the word. 35% is the tonality. And 57% is body language. So really over the phone, you're only dealing with 43% of the way that people communicate, right?

You got it. Bone, where in person, you're dealing with 100. So now I go to events to practice my pitch, right? Because when you shake somebody's hand and you look them dead in the eye and you say hi, and they ask you, what do you do? And you start explaining. If you start to see their eyes glaze over or them drink their beer a little bit faster than we're drinking it before, like, what do you think is happening over the phone, right? Yeah, they're probably looking at a screen. I think it was Morgan. Dude, so Morgan told me, I can't believe this statistic. Morgan told me 73% of all emails are read while they're on the phone. No shit, huh? So that means in both sides, you lose. If you're on the phone, you have to be more compelling than the email.

If you're writing an email, that email better be more compelling than who's in their ear. That is bananas. And so you're right. Like, you have to grab somebody's attention right in front of them. And to me, that translates right over the phone, right? And because, you know, like I said, from a practice standpoint, from a confidence, any rep who's trying to go from inside the field, I say go to as many networking events as you possibly can because you will get to see how people react to your message. And it's probably the best way to practice I've come across. No, I agree. I think anytime you get the opportunity to practice in person, everything else behind it improves. Absolutely. Because in person, that's the real fear.

Yeah. Right? And it's going to lie to you every time and say, you can't do this. Right. Yeah. I'll start my own network from the booth. So everybody that comes by the booth, I'll be like, where are you going to be later? Yep. Oh, I don't know. And I'll be like, well, I'm going to be here. You want to join me? Here's my number. Text me. And before I know it, wherever I'm at, there's 11, 12 people like, hey, are you still there? And they're going to meet me. And that's when we get to actually have a real conversation. Where are you from? Do you have any kids? Do you have any siblings? How do you like living wherever you live? Right? Any number of reasons for you to talk to them. And that's really all people are after.

A connection. Tons of people are going to talk to you. Very few are going to connect with you. And also follow up. So I think that there's a small key factor. I love what you do as far as the selfie, right? So my hack is I know what I'm selling when I'm at an event. I'm not selling. Like too many people get so enamored if somebody is willing to talk to them that they oversell themselves and they oversell their product, right? They ask so many questions. So there's really nothing left to talk about after the fact. That's right. No mystery. Right. So I go back to the whole AIDA thing, right? Attention, Interest, Desire, Action, and how you really, you have five to 15 seconds to get somebody's attention.

Then you have two minutes to earn their interest. And that's all I'm selling. So I say something to get your attention and then get you interested and then say, you know what, I'd love to, why don't we take a step back and talk about your situation? And look, it's a mess around here. It's super busy. You're probably not even going to remember this conversation. So, hey, why don't we schedule a call next week? You got your iPhone on you? And I, and I, like, I leave it there and I know, cause I know they have it. I'll be like, why don't you take it out? Why don't we just schedule something next week right now? And so, and I don't send one of those damn stupid messages that says it was great meeting with Dreamforce last week.

You know what I mean? Like I'm all, I got my calendar littered with meetings coming up, right? Yeah. No, it definitely gets easier when you're face-to-face to schedule a meeting. And it's funny because you can weed out the people that never had any intention in the place. And I think that's a, that's probably the biggest misconception at events. So I had a call with a company that's just starting out and they were like, this is going to be our first Dreamforce and our friend told us that you are the Dreamforce Messiah. And I was like, let's talk about it. Right? So I'm like, what's, what's your plan? Well, they didn't really have anything that was like outside of the box. They had all the standard event stuff covered.

And then she's like, let me share this doc with you. And if you could have seen the number of questions that were on this document, it wasn't bad because she really upfront admitted to me, these aren't questions we're planning on berating people with. They're just questions to have in the minds of our sales reps. And I was like, that's the best thing I've heard so far. In the time it takes you to ask 10 of these questions at Dreamforce, 200 qualified prospects go by you and they're never going to come by you again. So I always was very high touch, right? Free Starbucks. I'm notorious for the carnival yell at the booth. Free Starbucks. And people come running up to you. Scan my badge. Scan my badge.

No one wants to spend 30 minutes at your booth. If they do, they're going to let you know, show me what you got. Right? That's, that's the most important sentence you can hear while you're at the booth. The worst sentence you can say is, hang on a second. And you might think that's so simple, but people just disconnect immediately. Hang on a second. I bring everybody in. My body language is such that if I'm talking to you and I see five people over here, I will literally open up and turn and be like, don't be scared. Come on in. Let's have the conversation together. I don't bite hard. Yeah. I mean, that, that's the body language that drives me crazy when you see like three or four people huddled together and their shoulders are locked almost like just all you got to do is lift up your shoulder, open up a little bit.

And that allows one more person to walk right in there and have that conversation. So sometimes, sometimes you find that they have exactly the same setup. So you can pitch them both at the same time, get their contact information. That's great. And they'll start asking questions against each other, that type of stuff. So you're qualifying at the same time. Right? That's right. And then they start talking to each other. Love it. So, all right. So let's talk about, let's talk about how you prepare for Dreamforce, right? Because I've always said about Dreamforce specifically, and this is any event, but let's talk about Dreamforce specifically. It's my favorite quote by Mike Tyson, right? Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.

And Dreamforce is a straight up punch in the face, right? There's been times where I thought I had the best plan going and I hit the ground Monday and was like, holy shit, fuck it. I'm just going to go run around like crazy and try to do what I can. So, so how do you, what are the kind of the guts of things that you prepare for any event? Dreamforce, that after hours networking event? How do you make sure that, first of all, you're going to the right event? And second of all, how, you know, how are you preparing for that event to get the most out of it? Yeah. So I think you and Morgan discovered this, this year. But for me, I always try, I want two meetings a day outside of the event. There you go.

That gives me a break from the expo. It gives me a break from all the chaos, but it also gives me those enterprise accounts to shoot for and say, I'd like to meet while we're there. Make those worth it. Typically, they're not paid accounts. These are prospects, new business, right? I want that meeting. I want two a day while I'm at Dreamforce. The other way to do it and the best way to meet with people that are prospects, just give your cell phone number up. Just give it up and say, text me when you're at the expo. I can't tell you how many people text me, hey, I'm in front of the Metallica thing. Can you come meet with me? Yeah. You know, I told this story because I thought it was crazy. But Morgan and I did that video when I was walking into the expo center.

And I was like, this is a dangerous pair right here walking into the expo center. If you're at Dreamforce, text me at, and I put my number out there. For those of you that want to text me, it's 305-632-6005. When that happened, and I put that out there, it was about a 10-minute window that went by, and I got a text that said, hey, I would love to meet you. I'm over here by the Metallica thing. Where are you? I said, I'm on the way. I went up there. I texted him back. I said, what am I looking for? He's like, pink shirt, brown jacket, hat. British guy, older dude, awesome. Just one of the coolest people I met while I was there. Turns out he needs, potentially, thousands of seats. This happened after, what, a 32-second video with my phone number on it.

Make it easy for people to get time with you at the show. That's my best advice. If it's easy, and you're consistently telling people, meet with me, meet with me, meet with me, they will make it easy to meet with you. They'll let you know where they're at. Hey, I have a minute. Where are you? I had countless text messages that were like, where are you right now? Unfortunately, you can't meet with everybody. You can't, but at least you can make an effort, right? I think this is, it goes back to what you said there, which is goal setting, right? First of all, what's your main goal? What are your goals per day? What are your big goals for the entire conference or just the event itself? I want to meet with, the way I look at it is, I'm pretty specific, especially when I go to an after-hours event.

I figure, if I'm going to be there for an hour, call it two hours, right? Look, I'm not there to have fun or just drink a beer and have decent conversations with people because I don't have enough time to spend with my family and my friends, right? I'd rather spend those two hours. So if I'm there for two hours, I'm there. And my goal is to get, you know, let's say it's an hour, right? So that means that, and my goal is to maybe get 10 business cards and out of those 10 business cards, at least two meetings out of those, okay? So that means, and I really break it down this way. Like I got, so 60 minutes, 10 business cards, that means six minutes per conversation. And this actually helps out getting, because I'm interested in your take on how to get in and out of conversations gracefully so you can get on to the next one.

Because I think so many people get locked into conversations, good or bad, right? And they're in a shitty one and they're like, crap, I'm 30 minutes into a shitty conversation. So I time it, I'm like six minutes and I'll even set the expectation with people, hey, nice to meet you. And, you know, what do you do? What do I do? That type of thing. And look, I'm sure you're here to meet as many people as I am. And I'll ask them, hey, who else are you looking to meet here? Whether it's good or bad, I'll be like, who else are you, who are you looking to meet here? So as I go out and I meet the people that I'm looking at, if I find somebody that fits your profile, I'll send them your way. Cool. That allows me to get in and out of conversations real quick, right?

So now six minutes per conversation, I'm keeping track of that in my head that this has gone too long. Looks like there's a lot of us to talk about. We should schedule another call here next, right? So what are some of your tips and tricks on how to get in and out of conversations and how you look at meetings like that? I have so many of these. So one of the things that I do is I'll often say, well, why don't we do this? Let's schedule a call next week and we'll learn a little bit more about each other and see if there's something we can do together. Right. That's kind of vague, but it gives them that mental, this conversation is over switch in there. I'll make an introduction. If someone I know walks by, I'll be like, hey, maybe you guys should meet up.

This is so-and-so. And then I'll slowly fade away, right? Yeah. Sometimes I'll walk them around and find somebody to introduce them to. All the while we're walking and talking, you know, takes me a couple more minutes, but I can introduce them to someone. They can shake hands. And then eventually I'm like, hey, I got to get back to my booth. Come see me before you leave. Right. And you can break away. Don't be tied to the booth with that person. You don't want that person loitering around your booth. Walk them away a little bit. Have that conversation privately. Get the contact information. I'm usually really quick to be like, hey, you know what? I've got another meeting that's supposed to be coming by my booth.

So if you don't mind, I'll reach out to you next week. We'll set something up. I've actually got an email pulled up right now. I'll shoot it out to you. Choose a time, whatever works for you. It puts them on their heels a little bit in the sense that, like, I'm not going to have an hour long meeting with you here at my booth at Dreamforce. That's not going to happen. Right. But at the same time, I do want your business and I want to be able to provide value and respect that. I can't give it to you here at the booth. My focus is elsewhere. So that's a conversation. I've only had to have a handful of times because they kept coming back, kept coming back, kept coming back. That's OK. Come back.

I like that. High five every time. Right. Eventually, though, I will tell you, let's connect next week. I can't give you the attention you deserve as my client here at the booth. Love it. Cool, man. Well, in the couple of minutes we have left, what's your favorite follow-up tip? So you've prepped your meeting. You've prepped it for the event. You've set your goal. You've identified kind of at least the two real, like, tier one accounts you want to meet with each day or whatever it might be. You then go execute. You have good conversations. You get out. You lock people in. You take a selfie, that type of stuff. Events over. You've got 100 business cards in your pocket. And there's the default, hey, it was great meeting you, template email, which is marketing's job, in my opinion.

How do you sift through the bullshit, follow up with the right ones effectively, and manage your time accordingly after an event? So I have a couple of things to say in this little time we have here. The first thing is be on social and make sure those people know you're wrong before you reach out. So I will often say, met up with someone at Dreamforce and tag them. That way, when I call, totally a warm call, right? Thanks for the tag. That's the first thing they say. If you're reaching out and you just got cards from the booth and it was quick and fast-paced, call first. Automate or write emails in context of that phone call. That call is going to tell you a lot. Most people default to email.

And it's just fear. You're afraid to pick up the phone. Stop it. Nobody cares that we met at Dreamforce. Of course we met at Dreamforce. But actually, I don't even believe it. I don't even believe it these days. I don't believe any of those emails. You know why? Because I walk around with my badge and I'll get accosted by people just trying to get my fucking scan. And then I'll get all these bullshit emails. And I don't like literally just as soon as I see it was nice meeting you at Dreamforce, I delete it without even looking at who it was from because I know it's a template bullshit email. Even if it's not bullshit, even if it's not bullshit, even if I approached it, because it starts with the words, nice to meet you at Dreamforce, we are programmed to just remove that from our inbox.

In any case, the phone is so much healthier for you at Dreamforce, that's going to be so much healthier for your pipeline than any email or direct message you'll ever send. Absolutely. And actually, I've been playing around with this one. This kid caught me at Rainmaker where he and I talked about I'm still not a thousand percent bought in on video prospecting, like sending you an email with a video. Like, I see it as part of a cadence, I like it, but where I know video can be huge is the follow-up. So, for instance, what this kid did, he met me at Rainmaker, and then he knew I was on Snapchat, so he hit me up with a quick Snapchat, so face, right, because I suck with names, but I'm pretty good with faces.

But I met, you know, 150 people at Rainmaker, so he, right afterwards, hey, John, it was great meeting you, I really appreciate the conversation, I'm looking forward to following up with you. So I was like, all right, cool. Next day, he hit me with an email video. Hey, John, thanks again for your meeting. This is what we talked about, when do you want to schedule a call, and out of the 150 people I met and probably 30 or 40 vendors that were trying to pitch me on something, he was the only one I scheduled a follow-up call with. So that's how to use video the right way, in my opinion, a lot of times with events. I think if you have a specific way that you like to reach out, you should reach out using that way, and you'll be associated with it.

So in your case, you were probably super impressed that he was so video heavy. That caught your attention, right? People are usually impressed with my personal brand. So I get a lot of questions on how to build a personal brand. That is everything about why you go to events, because you want to be known for something. Be known for something in person. You can do it lots of different ways, but at the event, it's going to leave the most footprint, the biggest footprint. Love it. All right, man. Well, like I said, I think you and I could have a conversation with days here. So we're going to have to cut this one short, though, because I like it half hours. People like the podcast, kind of get in and out.

So, James, how can people follow up with you? What's, I mean, I know you dropped your cell phone number on there, but what's the best way to people kind of get engaged with you and what you're doing over on Sirius? Yeah, so I take every cold call that I get. I give my direct number out everywhere I go, 305-632-6005. You can go to SiriusInsight.com, learn about Salesforce and Inbox integration. Or you can spell that out, spell that out, please, because I think it comes across as Sirius. What's it called? Sirius, like the cloud, C-I-R-R-U-S-I-N-S-I-G-H-T, insight.com. Sirius Insight. Or you can find me on social. You can look at James Buckley, just about any channel you want to, and I promise I'll be one of the first people to pop up.

Yes, you will, and I know that's for a fact. So, James, again, thank you so much for all your engagement and all your energy and everything you do for the sales in general, my friend. I really genuinely appreciate it. Sales done right is our mantra over here. And if there's anybody I know who's doing it right, Ben, you are. So, thanks for joining. Everything you guys do affects me. I've been greatly influenced by you and Morgan for my entire career. I can't thank you guys enough for all the love you show. Love it, man. And like you said, if we're in sales, what? If you're a salesperson, we're the same person. We're the same person. Say what, sales, James Buckley. Thank you very much, my friend.

We'll see you soon. Cheers. All right, everybody. Make it happen. Cheers. Thank you. Thank you.