Collin Mitchell: AI vs. Human Touch - The Role of Technology in Sales and Communication

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Hey, everyone, welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays, where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. And today's guest is Colin Mitchell. Now, Colin is a four-time founder with three exits and is currently the VP of sales at Ledium, where they help B2B companies with their top of funnel challenges. So right up my alley. He lives in the San Francisco Bay area with his wife and four kids and also hosts one of the top sales podcasts, Sales Transformation, that you should definitely check out. And this was an easy conversation because we were definitely speaking the same language.

Both of us are kind of specialized on top of funnel stuff. And we talked about, first of all, his origin story, which I thought was fantastic and how he grew up with a single mom and didn't go to school and education and sales really wasn't an option and, but it gave him a path. And so we got really tactical on this one, talking about cold texting, how LinkedIn's basically been ruined by some of these AI bots, the role of the SDR moving forward, especially as it relates to AI and how we're moving back to full cycle sales and really reinforce the importance of personal brand and even starting your own podcast to help stand out. So take a listen to this one because it's filled with super tactical ideas and techniques and really things I think we should be thinking about as we evolve forward.

Let's make it happen. Colin Mitchell, welcome to Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. How you doing? What's up, my man? Thanks so much for having me on. Doing good. Yeah, it's going to be a, this is going to be a straight, you know, two people talking about a profession and a role that we are both neck deep in and also seeing some challenges with as far as outbound sales. But before we get there to the audience, why don't you give the audience a little background here, Colin, on where you're coming from. Specifically, like I always say, I'm moving more and more to the origin story, right? Like, so growing up, like parents, all that shit, you know, where you grow up, small town, big town, those types of things.

So see that journey. And then we'll dive into the topic and also obviously tell them what you're doing these days so that we can put some context around it. Perfect. Yeah. Uh, so I was raised by a single mom. Uh, you know, my mom raised four boys, uh, me being the eldest and mom, four boys that you shouldn't be. God bless her, man. Now, uh, different dads. So three of my brothers have different dads than, than myself, but, um, she pretty much raised the four of us on her own for the most part, did the best she could to pay the rent, keep food on the table. Um, but we, we struggled. I mean, we were, we were dirt poor, like in a way that most people probably don't understand, you know, like we lived out of motels, like we had food stamps to pay for groceries, you know, and I remember like being in middle school, being super embarrassed in the grocery store, like hoping that we wouldn't see any friends, um, you know, and so I had to get creative and, you know, find things to do as a young kid.

If I wanted, you know, new basketball shoes and stuff like that. And that was just kind of, you know, how, um, you know, I grew up and, um, you know, wasn't, wasn't great in school and didn't really have anybody telling me that school was important. Didn't have a lot of positive, like male role models in my life or anything like that. So, um, you know, as soon as I got out of high school, like that was it for me. And I just got a job, um, didn't really, you know, have any aspirations of what I want to do. I just knew that I didn't want to be poor. Like that was it. I didn't know what I want to do. Just didn't want to be broke. Didn't want to live check to check. Didn't want to struggle like I had my entire life.

Um, and so my first job was like lugging around furniture and, you know, it was, uh, I knew that, you know, that wasn't going to take me far. So, uh, eventually I got my first sales job and, you know, I had to sort of beg for the opportunity because I wasn't the like most responsible, you know, young adult. Um, and so when I got that chance, I knew that it was like literally my way out. It was like, I didn't have a bunch of opportunities. So when I got that first sales job, um, you know, I was first one into the office every single day. Um, I didn't go out and party. I was the last one to leave every single day. And I came in every Saturday and or Sunday to get my list ready for the following week and send out the proposals and work my way up as a top, you know, full cycle a pretty quickly, um, was making, you know, over, you know, 120,000 a year, which was like, for me, I felt like, man, I was gonna, you know, uh, be living the dream, which, you know, 120,000 now is like nothing.

But it's still a little from your background, man. It's huge. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, you know, didn't really know what was next. It was like, Hey, things, it seems like the next logical step is to get into sales leadership. Um, and my manager kept telling me that I was going to get a team. And frankly, I wasn't really ready for that, but they didn't have the guts to tell me that. So they just kept telling me what I wanted to hear. And so eventually I left there, uh, got a leadership position at another company, worked there for a few years. Um, and then ended up starting my first company with my wife and we grew that to 5 million in 26 months. And from there started multiple companies, had three exits.

Um, and then currently I'm the managing partner at Lidium. Love it, man. I love that because that, that is, that's kind of really for me, you know, sales, I always say is, you know, I think the greatest profession in the world when done right. And the worst one done wrong. And, you know, the college and universities these days, I think it's such a scam at this point. You know what I mean? To go in three, four, five, and don't get me wrong, quite frankly, if you pick a lane, like if you're that kid when you're in high school and you're like, I want to be a doctor, I want to be a lawyer. I want to be whatever that thing is, then absolutely. I think it's worth it. But if you're like the other 90% of people, including myself that had no idea what they wanted to do coming out of high school, sales is such an avenue.

Like one of the things I've been wanting to do is write a book, um, called this is sales for exactly your situation. Like when you get out of high school and instead of just going the path that everybody else goes with universities, like, wait a minute, wait a minute. Like maybe try this profession out for a little bit for a year or so, go make some money and then go decide what you want to go do. Right. And, and choose the education that you want. So I love that origin story, man. Appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I mean, I know it's, it's, it's, it's interesting. Cause I have four kids now, right. And there's part of me that's like, yeah, I want them to go to college and kind of get that opportunity that I never had.

But then there's also this side of me that's like, but you know, is it worth it? You know, and me and my wife are saving money every month for all four kids to go to college, which, you know, who knows what college is going to be when my kids are going to college. Um, but it's kind of that begrudgingly it's like, well, you know, maybe one or two of them don't go and maybe one, you know, decides they want to be a doctor and you know, whatever, whatever the case is. But, um, I think ultimately like selling is such a valuable skill for every human being, regardless of, of what they do. Um, and I think, uh, you know, instead of go getting, going to get a job as a young kid, you know, at the burger place or washing cars or whatever, you know, kids typically do these days, um, you know, getting some sort of just internship where, you know, you're on the phone or selling or something like that.

You just learn some, some valuable skills that will serve you well in whatever you do. Hey, I want to take a quick minute to share with you what I'm working on these days with my new JB sales membership. It includes live monthly training delivered by me on my two signature courses, filling the funnel and driving a close. It also includes monthly workshops that I'll be running on specific skills and different tech like ChatGPT and how to leverage it in the sales process. And it gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip I've ever done. You get all of this for $420 a year as an individual or $5,000 for teams. And as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners, if you go to www.jbarrows.com and click on the individual or team membership and use code podcast, you'll get 20% off.

Let's make this happen together. Yeah. And I think that's, that's why every kid that I, that does go to college, I'm like, do me a favor, just get a business minor at a bare minimum, get a business minor. It's like, you want to be an artist? Fine. Be an artist. Learn how to make money doing it, please. Right. And ideally go to a school that now has like a degree in sales. I think there's about 200 universities now where you can actually get your degree in sales. And I'm seeing some stuff, man. Like I'm going down to Bryant university, uh, cause they have this incredible sales school down there. And I sit in on some of these mock interviews and stuff like that with these kids who are like 16, 17, eight years.

I'm like, holy shit. I'm like, I would like, this kid is better than 90% of the sales professionals I've come across in my career here because they're actually teaching them the true fundamentals and teaching it as, as an actual profession, as opposed to the default profession that it's always been, which is really encouraging to me. And the interesting thing is, is like, it's, it's, it's about time, right? Because I mean, like the amount of money that people pay to go to school, to be a lawyer or a doctor, and how many salespeople make more than both lawyers and doctors. That's like, I never get into like how much money I make and those, I never obviously bring that up in conversations with random people, but like, there's been a few times where like a doctor or lawyer has been like all holier than thou about them, how smart they are and how they went to Harvard law and all this other stuff.

And, and basically try, you know, and obviously being condescending towards me and my profession. And I'll just be like, Hey, just, just quick question. What'd you W two last year, you know, with your glorious degree and inevitably it's less. Right. And I'm like, well, for my piece of shit, university of Maryland degree that I didn't have to go into debt for, um, I'm actually making twice as much as you are. So thanks for your standing up on your little high horse here, you little asshole, but just realize that you don't act like you're not as important as you think you are. Yeah. So let's give these kids. So talk about a little bit about ledium right now, because I want to transition this. Cause I think it's a great transition to a profession in sales, which is, you know, a lot of them start in that SDR BDR role that in, you know, that outbound sales role.

So talk a little bit about ledium right now, and then let's transition to what's happening in this industry and what, and with all the stuff that you're seeing right now and where it's transitioning to. Yeah. Yeah. So ledium, you know, uh, has been doing outbound for almost 10 years, Kevin and Sergey, the co-founders, I've known them super well. Um, I actually used to be a ledium customer, so they helped me scale two businesses to exit. And, you know, most of the work that we do is in B2B tech and SaaS, but obviously pretty much B2B in general is everything that we do. Um, everything from, you know, sort of outbound as a service to even inbound lead management, right. Um, inbound lead management has become something that's more and more popular for us as lots of companies are getting tons of inbound and they're not, you know, managing that speed to lead properly, not qualifying or having, you know, high paid salespeople spend a lot of time with unqualified leads.

So we sort of solve that for them. Um, and in general, that's what we do. Uh, but as far as like, what's changed, like a lot, a lot has changed, you know, um, as I'm sure you're seeing it, you know, look, three, four years ago, you could do email only campaigns and never pick up the phone and easily book 20 meetings a month for, you know, for, for a campaign. Um, but today that's just not happening. Um, email is increasingly more difficult than it's ever been. That's, I think the kind of dirty little secret that nobody wants to talk about, um, especially outbound agencies. Like they don't want to say that. Um, but the reality is, is like email just takes a lot of time to get it to work. Right.

Um, still possible. Um, you know, but there's a lot of things that we didn't, number one is everybody has more email than they want to. So there's way more competition in the inbox. Um, and then the second part is like the barrier to entry of like a sales engagement platform is so much lower, right? Used to be, you know, outrage sales loft, you know, a hundred dollars plus per user, 12 month contract, minimum seat count. Um, but now, you know, for 40 bucks, you can get a software that can send thousands of emails. Um, and so that's part of the problem and, you know, spam filters getting tighter. Um, so that's also a challenge. So you have to like scale email over time. So that's how email in general has changed, uh, where we see a lot of success is by leveraging the phone and doing it well.

Um, and, and there's a lot that goes into doing the phone. Well, right. The old, just, you know, I mean, when I first started in cold calling, it was like, Hey, you had just one script and a list of names and you smile and dial, you know, and to some extent that kind of works, but, but not as much anymore. Like if you pick up the phone and you know, somebody feels that you don't know anything about them or their business, they're going to hang up on you so fast. Uh, so, you know, a good sound phone strategy starts with the data. Like you gotta have good data. Um, and I think where a lot of people fall short is trying to rely on a single source for their data. And we could get into the who's better between zoom info and Apollo and Lucia and you name it, but they all are good and strong in certain areas and not in others.

Um, and the solution is leveraging all of them to have better coverage. Yeah. I think that's one of the things that, you know, it's the answer I, I don't have for, you know, when I do a lot of training for these reps and stuff like that, and they'll ask and and early they'll say, Hey, what about, you know, connect rates? Like, how can you help us with connect rates? I'm like, there's nothing I can do about that. You just got to get better lists, but there's also something about taking the mentality of, of those lists and then using the smile and dial approach, but to more to clean up the list than it is to actually get meetings. And if you trip over a meeting, then fantastic. Like one of the things I always used to do with my team was we'd call them database cleanup days.

And so I'd rip a list of every account in our database that fit our profile. And then I'd export it. And I didn't even, didn't even matter what territory the rep was in, I would just give them a list of names. And I would say, look, I need you to go in and start calling these and look for like, did a, did a automated teller pickup or was it a live person? You know, did you get through to a voicemail that a person talked, you know, said, hi, this is John Barrows. Thanks for calling me. Or did you just get to a, this is one 503, five up, you know, that type of thing. So as we gathered that information, it was able to allow us to get tighter and tighter and tighter on the accounts that were most likely to buy, but also most likely to pick up too.

Right. So it was like, we would take that step back, for instance, to clean up the database using manual dials and everything else, and maybe calling into, you know, working with gatekeepers to gather that information so that next week's call blitz could be that much more effective. So besides like, what are some of the things that you're doing right now to, to clean up the data, to, to really ensure outside of, because, you know, when you talk about those disparate data sources, you're, you're talking about adding more and more cost to the equation here with zoom info plus this, plus this, plus this, plus this. So how do you, you know, coach companies or yourself on, on how to not break the bank on, on the contact information, but make it so that every dial is getting better and better as you move forward and forget about the scripts for a second.

We'll talk about that, but it's that connect rate that I'm that I, because I hear you, right? Phone is the best way. I still believe phone's the best way. As long as you have something to say and you got a target, because now if you pick up, that's my quickest chance to qualify and get you in. But most people right now, most reps are just throwing their hands up saying, I made a hundred dials today. I got literally zero connects. So why the, why the should I make phone calls at this point? And, and, and I'm curious on your answer to that, but I'm also curious how you get better contact information so that those phone calls are, are worth it. Yeah. So a couple of things. Um, I mean, we use multiple data sources, but we also only call direct dials and mobiles.

So we don't call phone trees, great keepers. And depending on who your ICP is, like, maybe you can do that. Maybe you can't like, you know, if you're calling into say medical offices or something kind of hard, doctors are busy. They don't pick up their cell phones very often. Um, so you may have to deal with receptionist, office manager, gatekeeper, and so on. So obviously to put it into context, highly depends on who you're calling on. Um, and that also is going to depend on what data provider is best for you, right? Certain data providers are stronger, you know, in certain areas and so on. So, uh, the other thing is we only call direct dials and mobiles, at least for the first, you know, couple of passes on the list.

Um, and the other thing is, is we're using a parallel dialer as well. So, uh, we personally use nooks. There's other options like Aurum and many other ones that have come out. Doesn't matter, but you're simultaneously calling five people at once. So if you have good data and you have good technology, then you should have a better connect rate. And so what we see is on average, depending on who the ICP is, and this is across, you know, the many companies that we work with for every eight to 14 dials, we're having a conversation with somebody. Wow. That's pretty high connect rate right there. Cause that's rare. I mean, when you, when you say conversation, that's not with a gatekeeper, that's with somebody of substance, right?

Other than a gatekeeper. That is talking to the person that we intended to call through direct to house and mobiles. Nice. How do you deal with the mobile side of the house? Like I get this question a lot. Like what, you know, cause a lot of people get pissed off when they pick up their mobile. And I think this is a little bit of a generational thing too. Um, and a demographic thing, but you know, when somebody does like, how'd you get this number type of stuff or what do you like, do you have a specific approach to cell phones versus other stuff so that you preemptively address the potential intrusion that they might think it is? Yeah. I, so I would say that happens, but it doesn't happen as often as you would think, but you get the occasional really pissy person.

That's just like, how the heck did you get this number? Why are you calling me here? And you know, we usually just take the approach of like, Hey John, you know, Hey, totally sorry about that. But, um, is, you know, is there a better number that you'd prefer we reach you at? And then they're usually just like, Oh no, like, what is this? What are you calling for? And it can be a little bit challenging because they're already very aggressive and they're already in that like defensive, like friction zone, which is the worst place to be in a cold call. Right. And so sometimes what I think a lot of people are tempted to do is pitch. Right. And so it's best to just take a step back and say, Hey John, totally sorry.

Um, you know, this is just the number I provide, you know, I was provided, uh, is there a better number I could reach you at? And usually they'll kind of back off or they'll be like, don't ever call this number again. Or sometimes they might say, yeah, here's my, you know, office number and they'll give you that. So I think that's really the only way you can approach it. What you don't want to do is like force the conversation to happen when they're in that zone of friction, um, which can happen with anything. This is just one example of them being in a zone of friction. Totally agree. I mean, I think that's the heart of a pitch, the heart of the heart of the resistance, right? So it's, it's the more empathetic you are with what you're doing.

And that's why I always, you know, talk about like the preemptive strike, where if you know you're calling them on a cell phone, almost call it out, you know, sometimes, or at least practice different approaches to say, Hey, I know you weren't expecting my call. I'll give, I'll be real brief here or something like that. Just kind of respect the fact that what you're doing, are you on that note? Are you, are you all using text messages, right? Like cold text, just out of curiosity? No, we, we don't use cold text. Um, you know, there's just too many regulations and stuff like that where it can get, it can get a little dicey. Um, I know some people do it. I mean, I know, you know, obviously I get cold texts all the time.

Um, I don't see it work very effectively in a B2B sense. Um, B2C, you know, obviously it works or we wouldn't, we wouldn't be getting all those texts all the time, but, um, but no, we, we haven't used text at all. The only reason, the only way I would say using text would be kind of similar to the way I use voicemails now where, where like I'll leave a voicemail. And a lot of times that voicemail is to point you in a different direction, right? It's like, Hey, I just sent you this email. I sent you the same mail, whatever it is, you know, take a look at it. Let me know. It's the same thing with text. Whereas if I'm having a hard time getting in touch with somebody and I do have their cell phone number, I'll maybe send them an email and then right afterwards, text them, be like, Hey, Colin, sorry to bother you on your cell phone.

I've been trying to get in touch with you. Haven't had luck. Not sure if my stuff's getting caught in spam. If you could go just check to see if it's in there and just let me know if you're interested, I'd appreciate it. I won't text you on this line again, something like that. So it's like, basically don't even respond to me. I just wanted to see, uh, if you could go take a look at that. And that's where I haven't gotten too much, like F you take me off your list type of stuff. But I do, I don't think that we're going to, I don't know if we're going to be in the B like the, the text world of, of cold texting for B2B at all. Do you think it, do you think even with the generations coming up that it might get to a point where that is a preferred form of communication, regardless of cold?

I mean, I think it could be right. Because if email continues to get worse as it is, LinkedIn has been ruined by people, right? Like LinkedIn as a platform to build relationships and getting conversations started in a business context has become more difficult because people expect you to connect and pitch them now. Um, and B because that's just what they're used to, right? So much that now LinkedIn has got the ability where they've got the other inbox and marking people as spam in the inbox and right. So it's, it's gotten out of control. So, and if everybody starts to lean into phone and cold calling, cause it's like, man, this is the only channel that, and I have always been a fan of phone over any other channel, to be honest, because you know, if somebody doesn't reply to your email, they don't reply to your email.

It doesn't tell you a lot, but if you at least get in a conversation with somebody, you can get some real time feedback. Um, but also with, you know, younger generation of, of, of folks coming up as, and being buyers, you know, that's their preferred way to communicate, you know? And, and, and I'm a big fan of text, uh, beyond like cold, but once you're in the sales process, text is very effective, right? Yeah. Um, I've closed many deals like over text and communicating on text. And especially because, you know, emails just tend to get sometimes a little bit lost, uh, in the inbox, it can be very effective, but I could see that happening. So where do you see things? So now we, you know, add into this mess of declining response rates.

And also you mentioned, you know, LinkedIn's been ruined. It's getting even worse because, and I don't know if you saw the post I did it last week, but I, you know, it's not just in mails anymore. Like AI is coming over and automating the, the, the comments. And I had posted something on this, you know, it was a LMS, uh, you know, review site or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, oh, cool. And then, and immediately like five or six posts came on board of people I had never seen before. And they all kind of follow the exact same format. They didn't say the exact same thing, but they all follow the exact same format. So I was like, son of a bitch. So I then took that screenshot, it blocked out people's names and then said, Hey, if you're using automated LinkedIn to comment, then you stop it.

Like you're, you're, you're, I said, you're a joke. And then I had changed it because I didn't want to offend too many people. But I was like, I was like, you're, this is a ridiculous because if the whole point of LinkedIn is, is to generate relationships, is to make that impression point to show that somebody, and it's not to hard pitch. Right. And so cheating the, the, the impression, if you will, where if I can tell that that's an AI bot that is making that quote now calling, no matter what you do in the future, I don't trust you because I don't even know if it's you or not. I don't know if that email is you. I don't know if that text is you. I don't know if that voicemail is you quite frankly, because now AI is doing some pretty good stuff when it comes to voice translation and stuff like that.

So with, with the advent of AI coming at us hard, right. And just, I mean, I think effectively going to ruin a lot of forms of communication. Where does that leave the sales professional in the future? So let's talk about the transition phase that I think we're in right now. Cause I do think that the SDR role, the BDR role is in a massive transition phase right now. So how do you see AI impacting the role and therefore what are reps need to be doing now to be prepared to kind of evolve with this? Yeah. Uh, it's a good point because I mean, people are so used to seeing stuff that looks like it's written by robot now that what, I mean, something that we do, like just say in our cold emails is we intentionally do things to stand out, to show that it's written by human, right?

So an example would be, let's say we're reaching out because maybe there's a recent funding round or some sort of trigger based data point that we have. Most everybody's going to use it and be very specific with the data that they can pull off the crunch based API where we'll write it more casually and more, uh, generally rather than more specifically to show that we actually wrote it and it isn't just some merge field data point, right? So that's an example. So you're going to have to start to do more of those types of things to show out and say, Hey, this is actually written by a human and not by AI, uh, to stand out. So, so that's one thing. Um, but I think that, you know, the thing that AI is not good at is building human experience context, right?

It's not good enough there. Right. So like, let's just say, for example, um, now it could say, Hey, maybe you and I went to the same university, right? Uh, that can be built through AI and message could be written messaging could be written around that. Right. But AI can't talk about the, you know, pizza shop that everybody knows at the corner of the university that everybody went after parties to and has the best slice. Right. Like they can't do those sort of things. Right. So you've got to figure out how to build those human connection experiences into your messaging to stand out and show that, Hey, this was not just sent to you by a robot. Quick break here to mention the HubSpot podcast network and promote some of the other fantastic podcasts that are on this network, including the sales evangelist hosted by Donald Kelly.

Now, Donald interviews some of the world's best sales experts, successful sellers, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales right now. Some of the folks he's interviewed include Jeffrey Gittemer, Joe Conrath, Guy Kawasaki, and myself. We actually had a really cool conversation recently about the direction where sales is headed. Uh, some of the interesting things that are happening with AI and we got super tactical, but it also got really philosophical as well. So go listen to sales evangelist, wherever you get your podcasts, let's make it happen. It's almost like video too, right? Like I tell reps, you know, our superpower right now is the fact that we're not perfect.

Like AI is perfect, right? Cause you can actually, I can cut a video now and mail merge a video mass blast, uh, like email and all I have to, I can read the whole, like 90% of whatever the message is. And then all I have to do is say, hi, Colin. Hi, Jim. Hi, Sarah. Hi, you know, and then it merges the two together. And so when you get your email from me, it says, hi, Colin, but then it's this perfectly scripted video. I tell reps actually do one cut videos, right? So even if you screw up, literally joke about it on the video and be like, Hey Colin, you know, I wanted to send you this video, man, I'm sorry. I'm a little nervous here. This is the first video I think I've sent in a long time. You know, I'm just trying to like, look, this is what I'm going to be like a normal human being because that is what is actually a benefit now for us as humans, right?

I mean, so much so that you almost want to do that in purpose. Like, let's just say you're a master video prospector and you don't fumble or make a lot of mistakes. You may want to so that it does come off more genuine and human and real. And they don't question, is this really John sending a personalized video to me? Or is this John sending a personalized messages to a bunch of people and just inserting my name? Exactly. And that's, it's, it's even with, because I don't know if you saw that, I forget, was it air.ai? Have you seen this? I have that. If you go to, yeah, if you go to air.ai, it's a Google, it's, um, it's Apple. So it's an AI generated voice, you know, but it's a conversation, it's a full blown conversation.

And this guy calls a, or he gets a call from cold call from this group and that he had just been looking at the iPhone 14 or whatever it was. And this thing would like a British accent called him and the guy's like, look, I'm all set. And it, and it pauses and it goes, huh, look, I get it. You know, most people hate getting unsolicited calls, but can you give me a couple of minutes to, you know, just ask you a quick question? Sure. Fine. And then no joke, like talks about like financing options. So it's not $3,500 for those. Oh, it's for the, it was for the glasses. It was for the Google glass or the, I'm sorry, the iPhone glasses, whatever. And they're like 3,500 bucks. The guy's like, yeah, I'm never going to spend that kind of money.

He's like, well, and then the AI thing, well, did you realize that we have financing options where you only have to pay a certain amount a month? He's like, oh, really? I didn't know that. One thing leads to another. The guy buys the fucking phone, buys the glasses on an AI. And the only thing that I would pick up is that it took a fraction of a second too long between each response to, to give the right response. But that response was legit. And it was, it had, huh? It had jokes. It went down a certain path of a dialogue and then it actually reversed track and said, actually, nevermind. And went down a separate one. So, I mean, it had all the quote unquote mistakes in there that a lot of humans do.

And I'm sitting there, geez, like shit, man. Like how, like, again, what does that mean for us? Right. Because I do think at the front end of the funnel, there's, it's, I think it's going to get so personalized and so relevant because of the information out there about all of us. You know, the analogy I always use is, you know, the reason we hate spam is because, you know, it's, it's irrelevant. Like I, I don't like any of it. It's not necessary. But why do I like Instagram? Well, I like Instagram because I basically, I've trained that algorithm or that algorithms trained me quite frankly. And so I've liked and liked certain ads. So now every ad that I get hit by Instagram is really relevant and something I might be interested in.

Yeah. I do think that there's going to be a point where almost everything in our inbox is going to be super hyper-personalized to us. And do I really give a shit on whether that is coming from a real person or not? Quite frankly, I don't. Now, when I talk to somebody about some questions I have, I think I want to talk to a real person or I at least don't want to be duped to thinking that I'm talking to a real person because that's where it all falls apart. Yeah. But with that and with this transition that we're in, let's go back to that SDR, BDR role and how, what do you see it, call it two years out, right? Where do you see this role being? Is it from an outsourced provider like you who has optimized all this stuff or our internal org is going to be able to retain that talent, but just shift their focus in a little way?

So it's a good question. And I don't have a full crystal ball, but I can say more companies are outsourcing it that didn't used to. They're before bringing on, before expanding that team, they're looking at outsourcing as an option because a lot of people tend to think outsourcing the BDR, SDR function, it's either like an either or, it's either in-house or outsource. And a lot of times it's not. Quite frankly, most often we run in parallel with an in-house team and we support each other in many ways, right? So things that we're doing, they're using in-house and it's not necessarily in-house versus outsource. We both have a same common goal. So I see more companies outsourcing and even companies that you would think like large, large organizations, brands that we all know that have large in-house teams will still outsource for very specific projects and segmenting into new product line, new service line, new market.

There's lots of options where that does make sense. I don't think that we're going to see these huge ratios of SDR to AE like we used to. A lot of that has changed. Most AE roles now have a higher prospecting self-sourced quota than they used to. And I think that it's going to continue to stay that way. I don't think things are going to go back to how they were. I think they're going to continue to head in this direction of kind of what we're seeing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the full cycle sales is going to be going to be back in vogue quite a bit. You know, and again, I always try to take my head out of my ass when it comes to SaaS versus everybody else, right? Like once you get down that SaaS in the tech world and you're like, oh, predictable revenue and like all these, you know, you're, you know, you step one step outside of SaaS and it's sales 1985 all over again.

Right. And, and, you know, most people are still full cycle sales. Very, you know, very few mass industries have adopted the SDR BDR role, like the SaaS and the tech space has. So I think it's kind of what's old, what's new again, but then let's, let's go towards that and say, okay, relationships, right? I mean, I, people say people, they buy from people they like. That's not true. In my opinion, they buy from people they trust. Right. So I don't have to like you, but I just have to trust that you are going to, or you're at least have my interest in mind in some way, shape or form. And that what you're telling me is, is real. So with that, how do you think relationships get developed moving forward here?

Because it's not, I mean, we, we've gone well past the steak dinners and the, you know, in the golf, you know, for the past probably 10 years, I think that's been on the decline pretty significantly. So what, what is the role of a sales professional with all this other stuff being taken care of? Cause when I can get more value out of going into chat GPT and putting your company in there and asking it, what are the pros and cons of this service versus that service? And here's my needs. And could you help me out when I can get more value out of that than I can a sales rep who's going to drone through band questions and some dumb ass PowerPoint presentation. Like, why would I want to engage with a sales professional?

Like, where is the value now for us in this equation? Yeah. I mean, I think you're going to see larger deals be closed without a salesperson. Like we've already starting to see that. I mean, we see it a lot in consumer, like people buying houses without ever seeing them, uh, cars without ever driving them, like you name it. I mean, we're going to see more of that in the B2B side for sure. Um, I think that, you know, salespeople have to be more and more aware of the fact that how accessible information is, right? Like, look, I mean, there's still plenty of salespeople out there that'll tell you everything you want to hear and every bill of goods to get you to sign. Like we've, you know, all seen or dealt with our fair share of those, but, um, they're easily going to be spotted, right?

Where they could maybe get away with some of that stuff in the past. That's going to be a lot harder to do, um, with the, you know, access of knowledge that's available. Um, but I think to kind of touch on your point, like trust, right? Uh, people buy from people they trust. Uh, I agree with that. Um, I think that there's a, there's a lot of ways that you could build trust, right? One is producing content like consistently that's relevant to the people that you serve. Like that builds a tremendous amount of trust. Every single opportunity that I've gotten, you know, say from LinkedIn, um, has been way more qualified and further down the trust funnel than any other lead that I've ever received.

Um, doing things like what you and I are doing right now, going on podcasts, extremely powerful way. Uh, I actually had posted about it today about how, you know, I've closed over $2.3 million off of podcast leads. People who either came in on my podcast, heard me on a podcast and reached out. Um, and because the podcast, the reason podcasting is so powerful building trust is because, um, listeners trust the host that they listened to and it's the equivalent. If somebody, if that host brings somebody onto their show, they're kind of telling the listeners, Hey, I trust this person and it's the equivalent of a referral, right? And the problem where a lot of people go wrong with leveraging podcasting is they go with that agenda of like, Hey, I'm going to go here.

I'm going to pitch. I'm going to sell. I'm here to take from this platform. Right. And if you approach it differently of like, how can I give, how can I contribute? How can I add value? It works extremely well. Yeah. It's funny that anytime there's probably, there's only been a few, cause I do a decent amount of prep, you know, and I, you know, I do my prep and I also set very clear expectations to the person coming on the podcast. But, you know, as soon as you get into pitch mode, I'm like, okay, look, you'll have your chance at the end here. Let's stay on track. And I, there's, I have a two strike in your out rule. And like, you, you, you pitch once, fine, whatever. I get it. You might be in that mode.

Right. You pitch the second time. This, this, this interview is over. Like we're done and I'm not posting this in any way, shape or form. Right. Because again, the whole long tail of it. And that's what I think, you know, what you're hitting on is personal brand here and why I'm still beating this drum because, you know, the problem that I think the reason that most people don't follow through on their personal brand is because there is no short-term benefit to it. Like there's nothing that you're going to like come on a pod, get whatever. I mean, maybe just maybe, or post something or whatever. And somebody will say, oh, let's do business together. It is such a long-term play when it comes to brand.

But I'll tell you right now, man, my brand has literally saved my entire career in business this year. Because when the SaaS industry fell apart, right? In Q1, 95% of my clients were in the SaaS world. And so contracts stopped, you know, both sponsorships and training stuff. And, and, you know, I had my team and all this other stuff going, but I, I had to get back to work and I shook every bush and, and, and, you know, LinkedIn and all these different things and was able to generate quite a few meetings. I think I got like 70 meetings in Q1 just by, and a lot of them were because of the brand, because people remembered me, knew who I was, whatever. And without that, like most of my clients right now are, are one degree of separation, right?

Maybe two where somebody's, you know, either done my training in the past and they want to do it again, or they know somebody who did, or they've been following me for such a long time that they're like, all right, John, now we trust you. So I want to go do business with you right now because everybody else is basically full of shit. And without that personal brand that took me 15, 20 years to build, there's no way I'd be able to stay afloat right now. So how are you encouraging that balance or how do you kind of coach on that balance of short-term results, right? We got to get them, right? I mean, for, for whatever company you're working at, you got to get short-term results, but also the long-term play of your career here and, and, and making sure that you're at least spending some time building that personal brand.

How do you balance that with your organization? I think, I think, um, the thing that's important to keep in mind here and something I talk about is like priorities, right? Because it's easy for people to want to be famous on LinkedIn and chase likes and comments, but not be good at their job, right? Yeah. There's a lot of people that are full of shit on LinkedIn that, um, you know, frankly, couldn't, couldn't execute 90% of the stuff they talk about. Nope. I know that for a fact, by the way. And so I think it's, it's, it's, it's, um, you know, for people in a sales role specifically, right? Don't share stuff that you don't have direct experience with number. Right. And I think the main thing is being consistent and having a process, right?

So are you droning and scrolling through feeds and commenting and like, that's what you're spending your work day on? Or do you have a very specific where, Hey, you're running your sales calls, you're doing your prospecting and then you have a chunk of time carved out for LinkedIn, whether that's content, writing content, scheduling content. So I think a lot of it comes down to being with efficient and process, right? So if you, let's just say you want to get on a post every day type of schedule, well, have a block on Friday where you write all your content and you schedule it out and it's done, you know, got to think about it. And then maybe you have a little bit of time in the morning, a little bit of time at lunch or before or after lunch where you engage, comment, do things like that.

So you have to be intentional, um, to be consistent. And what, what happens is if you're not, you're not like actually scheduling on your calendar, then you get lost in this sort of vicious cycle of spending way more time on the platform, doing nothing productive. So I think those are the kind of key ingredients to using it, being consistent, showing up. And also, uh, I think an important thing is having proper expectations, right? Like know that you very well may not get zero business from, from this for the next six to 12 months. Um, but the thing that you can't really attribute think like credit to is how many people buy from you because you're posting valuable content and they may never comment on anything.

They may never like anything and you may never know, but you'd be surprised how many people are consuming your content that you have no idea and it impacts them somehow, some way in the, in the sales cycle. Absolutely. Or impacts them to then tell somebody else to go look, right? I mean, I think that's why, um, you know, HubSpot and inbound, right? Like they have their inbound conference and I'm pretty sure I'll, I don't know if I'd bet on it cause it wasn't too big of a, but I'm hearing the rumble is that they might change it to all bound. So instead of inbound, it's all bound. Cause that's ultimately what it's about right now. It's because all these impressions that we're leaving, right? The attribution leads to sales and marketing divide and all this.

Oh, was it an MQL and SQL? Where did it come from? Who originated it? Ultimately who gives a shit, right? We got the meeting with a qualified buyer. Like we should all be celebrating here, but everybody right now is fighting. And I think we need to take that veil off and just say, Hey, look, I don't give a shit how this meeting comes to us. Like that meeting got, because for instance, like when Morgan worked for me, he would, he would do a ton of cold calling and outbound, right? Into these target accounts. And then we'd get an inbound. And I usually got all the inbounds back then. And I would be able to look at it and say, Oh, cool. Well, this wasn't the person that Morgan was directly going after, but I would look in this Salesforce and I'd be like, Holy shit.

Like he was going after this company quite a bit. And you cannot tell me that all that work that he was doing to get into that account, didn't prompt somebody else to go tell somebody else to then come to us and they came to us their way as opposed to us forcing them through our process. And so this all bound approach, I think this is what moves towards that. Again, outbounds being a part of almost like a marketing function from a touch standpoint and an impression standpoint that leads to full cycle sales again, because again, who gives a shit where it came from? We got it. Yeah. Whether it's inbound, outbound or any of that stuff, right? Yeah. I've seen it firsthand. I mean, we had an example where we outbound it to one person and they basically told us to F off.

And then three days later, we got an inbound from somebody else on their team. Well, and I think that's what people don't understand is that they don't, that people want to communicate the way they want to communicate and when they want to communicate, right? Being forced into responding to something immediately or getting on it, even like cold calling as valuable as I think that is, it's like now I'm on the spot, right? So that's why my defenses are almost automatically up because I don't know who the hell you are. I'm not going to give you a ton of info, right? So don't try to sell me on shit right there. Educate me, ask me a few questions, whatever, but let me then go do some homework and come back to you, right?

Which is why I still don't mind when people are like, Hey, just send me information. As much as people like screw you, like that's a blow off. I actually think that's a good thing. I qualify it a little bit before I do, obviously. And I want to see, try to schedule a follow-up call on the calendar, that type of thing. But you want information before you talk to me? Yes. I will send you information before you talk to me because I wouldn't want to talk to anybody without any, a little bit of insights into what the hell I'm about to talk about. Oh yeah. And so many people try to just bulldoze through that or take it as an objection. And it's like, you know, and you do got to, Hey, are they trying to brush me off?

And you can frankly just ask, Hey John, look, look, John, I've been doing this a long time. I can handle it. Like, you know, is there something you genuinely would love to see if I were to send you some information or are you just being a nice guy and trying to get rid of me? And, and, you know, they'll tell you if you just laugh, you know, they'll say, Hey, you're like, I have no interest. I'm just trying to get you off the phone. And it's like, cool. That's a win. I don't have to call you back. Exactly. We both win. I mean, I used to say the same, almost exactly the same thing. I'd be like, look, Colin, there's really two reasons people ask me to send them information. One is they're genuinely interested and they're going to schedule a follow up call.

And we're going to take that next step. The other is they're just trying to get off the phone and be nice. Which one are you? Right. And you know, half the time I get, yeah, you know, I just, I just, I'm like, wait, cause I don't want to waste your time. I sure as shit don't want to waste mine. Thank you very much. If you ever need our websites, this have a great day. Right. And you just leave them with a smile. The thing that people forget is we're dealing with people, right. And people are highly dynamic, right. That person that's not going to, that person that's going to say, send me information because they want to get you off phone is the same person that if they saw you in public and your fly's down, they're not going to tell you.

Yeah, exactly. So let's end on this one. What are the different skills? So I think, you know, historically, especially coming into the SDR BDR, but let's talk sales in general with the advent of AI, right? There's a, there's a big argument right now to be made for just rip and replace. Like, you know what, what got us here will not get us there. So I'm going to dump my entire team, throw away basically my old tech stack and start AI native with sales reps who are to a certain degree, AI native and can leverage this stuff. So there is an argument to be made for that. So what now does a sales rep, the skills, a sales rep should be trying to, uh, improve on their own to stay relevant as we move forward here.

Yeah. I mean, I think over the course of time, um, you're going to have to see more and more of the AI powered sales rep, right? And there's going to be sales training certifications, you name it around how to leverage these tools to be better in a sales role. And, you know, it's kind of the same argument of like, Hey, let's say if you're applying for a sales job and you see this person's got X amount of followers on LinkedIn and post content and has a network and this person doesn't. And from a skill and experience standpoint, they're the same. Who are you going to hire? Well, if you see that this rep has experience leveraging AI, using that tool stack, you know, to generate business, to, you know, help them assist them in the sales cycle.

And this one doesn't, which one are you going to hire? And I think we're going to start to see more and more of that of people that have those skillsets are going to, um, be chosen over those that don't. Yeah. I'll tell you a real world example. So my daughter's 13 years old going into high school, right? Well, she's working. We're looking at high schools right now. We're going to private high schools here in Massachusetts and they're the competition's pretty fierce, right? There, I mean, Massachusetts, we have a massive amount of like really, really good public, uh, private high schools. And, um, one of the questions I'm asking to differentiate them is what's your stance on AI and how do you integrate AI into the education and there's been a couple of schools, no joke that looked great.

You know, we did the campus tour, we did the whole thing, they got all the academics, but their answer was, well, you know, we're not sure yet. And we're not letting, you know, the, you know, reps or students use it because we're not, we're unsure of its implications. And I'm like, with that answer, they got crossed off my list. Even if my daughter liked them, quite frankly, if my daughter liked the school and they have a kind of, eh, you know, we don't know what's happening with it. So we're, we really don't want people to use it yet, or they don't really have a kind of a philosophy around it about how they're going to leverage it. I tell my daughter, I'm like, no, I'm not paying for you to go to a school.

That's not going to teach you how to use the tools that inevitably are going to impact your, your, your life and your career and definitely your career. So just as important, the same thing with employees, like if you're not going to be able to answer that question of, so what, how do you use AI in your day-to-day to make you more efficient? If you can't give me a clear, articulate way that you use that moving forward, I don't think you're getting hired. No. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think so much so it's like, you know, in the interview, like, you know, breaking that down, giving specific examples, right? Just how you would of how you, you know, landed a certain logo, you know, um, it's going to be, how did you leverage AI?

You know, how are you using it on a daily basis? And the people that are kind of squiggling and well, you know, uh, they're going to get passed over. Yeah. Immediately. And I, you know, there's a lot of other stuff. I mean, there's, there's, there's, there's the traditional, and I think these things never go away, right? Grit and, you know, coachability and attitude, like, you know, business acumen, those types of things. But more and more now, like if I was hiring, uh, that, that would be one of my top three questions, which is how, what's your approach to using AI? Give me some specific examples of how you've used it to make yourself more efficient. Cause if not, you, the days of just grinding it out and working harder, those are still there.

You have to work your ass off, but if you are not leveraging this stuff, man, it's, it's going to be, it, it, you will wake up one day and you will be absolutely replaced cause the stuff will be able to do it better than you can. Yeah. Cause the whole point is you can be a lot leaner if you have a team that's proficient in using AI. Awesome. And we'll look, we're coming up on time here. So let's, uh, tell the audience a little bit more about where they can find more about you and, and what you're doing, uh, from an org standpoint, both from a client. And if you're hiring all that stuff, tell me, tell people where they can find out more info. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Uh, look, best place is to just check out our podcast sales transformation.

So from there, you can find out things about me, Ledium, we're hiring all that stuff. Um, check out sales transformation. After you write a review for, for this show here, it takes a lot to put on a good show and be consistent with it. So John, thanks for having me. Make sure you share this show with your friends. And then if you love podcasts, you can check out sales transformation. Well, man, how many, uh, how many episodes you guys going on right now? I think we're approaching 700 700. Holy shit, man. I'm up. I've been doing one a week for, you know, I think we're up on like 250 or 260 at this point. So like that, do you guys do more than one a week? Oh yeah. We're like almost daily. Oh wow.

No shit. Daily. Yeah. Nice. All right. Well, I don't have that kind of, I don't have that kind of energy, man. So good for you, but I'll, I'll definitely take a look at it and push people your way. So I appreciate you coming on here, Colin. It's been a great conversation. Thank you. All right, everybody. Hope you enjoyed the conversation and you level up a little bit here, realizing that this stuff's coming for you, whether you like it or not. And like I always say at the end of all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today. Cause no matter how bad your day is going, or you think it went, you make somebody smile today and you know, you had a good day in the world needs a lot more of that right now.

So thank you all very much. And I'll see you on the other side. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did with your support and our incredible guests. We're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now. And I can't thank you enough now to keep the momentum going. It would mean the world to me. If you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network. Also check out my new website, jbarrows.com. Well, you'll find even more ways to engage. There's a ton of free content and you can also get trained from me directly as an individual or for your team. Look, I'm out there selling every day, just like you are.

And I'm doing my best to stay on top of all the latest trends in sales and technology. So if you're looking to level up and you give a shit about this profession of sales, let's connect and make it happen together.