Friday Happy Hour - 8/10

take some of the top moments from our friday happy hour where morgan and i answer your questions in our community live every friday and cut them up and put them together for you so hopefully you'll enjoy morgan why don't you ask that what was that question that came up again uh so we can that's a question for mike um win loss rate tracking interested to see how people track the prospect if they've been ghosted and which just seems to be the net the new no and once do you mark them as loss or you put them back in the funnel cool so what i'm going to say on this one i'll say it again is is i really do believe that you should mark it as lost right because especially if you go through the process and for those of you who haven't seen it uh probably two or three posts ago on the blog we've mapped out the exact approach to somebody following up after a qual call or after a demo where you send them your typical follow-up they ghost you you then say still interested you know could you get back to me and then did i lose you and then hey it doesn't look like this is a priority for you anymore if you go through that process and they still ghost you then yes close lost that one but what i would do as a manager here i was make sure that there was actually the category closed lost ghosted right so we can actually analyze some of those results and look back at the quarter and say how many times did that happen right because if that's constantly happening from for opportunities not just after you talk to somebody and it was a good conversation but if you legit had an opportunity there and they straight up ghosted you there's something wrong there you're either not talking to the right person or you know there's something missing in your sales process now that also means that when if that deal does come back right then you can open up a new opportunity and then again measure how many of the ghosts that i've lost turn into actual new opportunities again but what it'll also do is it'll help you understand like hey if i turn it into an opportunity again they ghosted me last time so what can i do this time to make it different so they don't ghost me again and that's where maybe you do the preemptive strike on the next one so say they come back to you six months later and say yeah sorry morgan you know what uh let's re-engage here and then they go through the process send me a proposal and all that other stuff i would actually preemptively adjust hey this time like could you do me a favor if you're not interested or if for whatever reason you got to push this for another few months could you just let me know this time because last time you kind of disappeared on me so i would absolutely close lost but close lost ghost and then reignite it once it comes back into the pipeline if it does back to the question so uh another question this was from instagram so based on your story from yesterday have you seen success with multiple reply all for cold emails rather than someone who's a warm lead and has just ghosted so a dish like thinking about instead of doing like where you're doing large email blasts for cold accounts should you do like just a new thread with a new email going after an account i'm unclear so yeah let me rephrase again so have you seen success with multiple reply all for cold cold emails for someone who's a worn lead that has just ghosted so that's the like completely like reply all file back to the entire thread or start a new message to re-engage so okay i got it um so i like replying all but because first the reason i like replying all is because i want them to see uh the other emails i've sent them right so i want i don't because because who knows depending on if you're using an email tracking tool or something like that you know they might not be getting it or whatever they might not be opening it so i like to show like hey i've been coming at you right and and so you can scroll down and see all these different messages now what i do though is uh depending on the the touch and the reason i change the subject line right so that's why again i'm going to go back to that cadence that we do when somebody goes to us i take the typical email reply all to it leave the subject line hey you're still interested in this right you know hey do you want to reschedule or something like that and then reply all erase that subject line and put still interested and then say hey could you get back to me one way or the other and then reply all to that again it's and erase that subject line and put did i lose you right so it's changing the subject line um but it's keeping the the flow now that's for when somebody goes to me when it comes to a contact strategy again same thing i can't i maintain the the email string but every new topic because we talk about having a different reason every single time every time you have a new reason i change the subject line to reflect that reason so it's like if my first one was you to about a merger and acquisition and my next one to you is about you know your growth objectives or something like that i'll keep the chain but i'll erase that subject line and say your growth objectives instead of your your merger and acquisition because i just think it feels a little weird and i also want to get credit for it without saying hey did you get my first email i just think it's a little weird to like send an email to somebody today and then four days later send another email to them like that email never happened right and they were completely disjointed as far as uh like totally different reasons like i like to tell that story and keep it connected yeah uh so i i agree the same way it's more so referencing referencing the previous email that you said but saying but adding on to that story right so like as if you're reading a book like obviously chapter one is going to be different than chapter two but you're still reading the same theme of that that actual book so that's more so how i see it so when you're sending out those messages always think about it as if you're reading a book or even watching a movie like there's different parts of it but it's all still the same thing yeah it's part of that story we gotta keep reinforcing it's the story it's the story right it's multiple touches the story so cool from calen uh question is how do you how do you how do you how do you keep track of your activity outside the crm yeah so you and i have talked about this recently um yeah um i think it so for me it's evernote and salesforce period um um you know and so i my three main apps that i work with are evernote uh outlook and salesforce yeah what i do is i track all my activities in salesforce so like as far as when i have to call somebody or when i have to follow up with whatever it is that's salesforce all day long i use my no i use evernote to take all my notes and then i use outlook to really manage the communication and i i'll bcc my emails to salesforce so they get tracked in there but every once in a while for an account that i'm actually having a a good dialogue with or that they send me some really like good information that is you know based on their sales process or something like that i'll actually uh tag that into evernote as well so i'll save that email to evernote so that when i'm in there and i'm i'm taking notes and looking at their account the next meeting i have with them i can kind of scroll through and be like oh yeah so i'm not going back into salesforce so that's my flow um but uh but yeah how do you do it so i have i have so i have evernote costello and then i'm getting more into salesforce uh those are those are like my main three and then i have i actually have a ton of sticky notes on my desk too of stuff that like maybe john's like yo you need to do this or megan's like hey you need to pay attention to this like i write it down because if i don't then i will just straight up forget and i go put it like an evernote somewhere so costello's for my qualification calls my sales calls uh evernote is for the accounts that i want to go into so when i do research into accounts i go find those triggers beforehand before i even reach out and then i'll actually put in the maybe a youtube video that i found or maybe an article or whatever just so it's all there um from a highly targeted standpoint so that i can tell a story and i don't have to keep going back to the website and keep going back to linkedin profile that actually brings up a good point i'm sorry go ahead and then and then and then salesforce you know using to follow up with the with accounts and the contacts because it's just it's it gets to be and i think this is something that even for all sdrs you know for that are out there listening like biggest thing is to understand how to use salesforce because i've definitely probably i because i have some i have a good memory but as you continuously work different opportunities and people tell you to follow up your memory is just not that good so you have to have these tasks scheduled out um and i've been very more i've been more diligent about that this this uh past month than this month and it's definitely helped me out a lot yeah i mean i quite honestly i i have a horrible memory um but i remember everything because it's in salesforce and i and and people like it's amazing how many times on a weekly basis people are like oh john hey yeah thanks for hitting me up oh oh yeah i forgot right oh man you got a good memory blah blah blah is because i have that activity set and then i look at my notes in evernote and i make a reference to that and then ping them right so you got to figure out a system you got to like whatever works for you but the more task oriented you are the more effective you're going to be yeah when you try to rely on this to remember there's no way like people wonder how i'm as productive as i am in the sense that you know i i probably you know on average uh that on average i do about i'd say 30 to 40 activities a day that i do like from in salesforce i get 200 emails a day from clients and prospects and that type of thing i manage about 30 to 40 active accounts and i prospect into accounts and there's no way i'd be able to do that without salesforce no way so one more point though to make what i used to do kind of old school stuff going back to looking for triggers like you said uh for accounts can't recommend it enough to do all your research at the same time right so if you're going to pick an account and you're going to do research on them don't just look for one thing look for five six seven things so you can tell your story and what i used to do is i used to sit up so i used to take my top 25 uh put them into a spreadsheet right so i had the company name the next column was the was the website the next column was the the person that i wanted to reach out to like the contact and then the next column was their linkedin profile right a link to their linkedin profile so those four columns and then column five six seven eight nine and ten would be uh reason one reason two reason three reason four reason five and all i would do is when i was like home chilling out sitting on the couch or something like that watching football or something dumb like i would just sit there and poke around on people's websites and i would just look for stuff i'd be like oh that's kind of cool that's kind of cool that you know that's good enough you know what i mean like not like caring like oh this is the perfect thing but just like who gives us out there's something interesting interesting interesting and i would put the triggers in each one of those fields right on each one of those columns for that account i would come in on monday i wouldn't be doing research i'd just be looking at those crafting up my stories and firing them off so that's a way to if you want to do really high quality stuff that's a that's a kind of a just a old school using spreadsheet that way to gather the information but then obviously deliver it however you're you know your crm or whatever you know you need to yeah and this will be an ongoing conversation i'm i'm doing it it's just called the evernote it's just called high quality prospecting taking like five to ten accounts going and finding those triggers and then finding the people that i need to contact with in that account and then telling the story to i'm going to tell it to each persona uh from a vp level and above and we're going to see how it all pans out but that's something that i'm trying out new and going to see how that how that works because normally i would just go very high volume but taking a different approach yeah and that's again why i love evernote too right because i might not be i might see an alert through owler or gene or you know google alerts or whatever it is that is like oh there's some cool stuff right there but i don't have time right now to think about the story or how i'm going to craft that so i'll just clip that in evernote throw it in their file and then when i have time to sit down and actually go through it then i'll be like oh cool look at all this stuff right from ryan um is asking hey what do you look for in a new sales gate besides believing in the product um i i my answer to this was managers right which is um you know it's very evident the data that all supports this that the number one reason reps anybody stays or leaves at a company is that is not leadership big you know executives it's literally the frontline manager you could work at the best company on the planet but if your frontline manager sucks you're gonna bail you're gonna you're gonna work at the worst company on the planet but if your frontline manager is there in the trenches with you grinding and is open and transparent with you then you'll stay right um so the the follow-up question on that from my comment was how do you figure that out right and this is where i i don't think enough reps do this when they're interviewing for jobs and i know i didn't when i was young i i interviewed for the position you know what i mean like i was there with my resume like okay what questions do you have for me i really didn't start interviewing them until about midway through like until i started to really kind of figure out my my game and have confidence in my game like real confidence um i never i started i was always being interviewed not interviewing them and i think that's a really critical important thing like you need to interview the company as much as they are interviewing you because this is this is look you're a a number for them at the end of the day i you know nobody likes me to hear this but you are replaceable period i remember when i was at thrive you know i had five five kids reporting to me right and i was the founder of the company you know all sorts of stuff and and i took them under the celtics game and we were having this conversation and there it was like a good guy and i forget how it came up but i said guys i just want to let you all know that like i hate to say it but we are all replaceable we have to always produce results we always have to be doing our job or we're replaceable and they started getting mad at me they were like john that's a terrible thing from a culture standpoint and i go no no you don't understand guys i'm replaceable i'm the vp of sales here i was the fifth person on board if i miss our numbers as a company if we miss our revenue numbers for two quarters in a row my friends who started this company with me will fire me and they will find somebody else to fill my gap right so they're interviewing you but understand that if you're not interviewing them you're you're you're just going to be at their whim right so that's why and also if you've got a good manager who's interviewing you first of all i know i was asked to interview with the hiring manager right you're probably going to have to go through the hr stuff first but then ask can i meet with my who would be my direct report and can i enter can i can i have a meeting with them and then come in prepared with questions nothing pisses me off more than doing an interview with a rep and me being like what questions do you have for me and they'll be like well none all right it's like okay see you later and the questions are you know so how do you develop how do you coach you know what i mean what's your philosophy on coaching how often do you coach your team but you know like your team members what are some of the coaching plans that you put in place to to see results you know what what drives you about being a manager really like literally flip the script on them and interview them um that to me will give you a really good sense of whether that manager is going to be in it with you and going to be able to really help you get to the next part of your career and and therefore stay with that company yeah i'll add to that the best best advice i got during college was you know during your interviews to interview someone else as john said but also to understand like where that leader is coming from because a job i mean especially from a from a sales or str standpoint like you're pretty much doing it's like the same thing like you're not you're going to call the people like you're going to go through sales cycle there's nothing too crazy but the thing is is like what is that leader teaching you and can they actually get you to the level that you want to go to so and if you don't think that that leader can do that then you shouldn't you shouldn't join that team regardless of what the product's doing and regardless of where the industry's at that's just my personal opinion because you're going to get frustrated and then that leader's not going to support you and also you're not going to get the guidance and development that you need that's the number one thing that i look for um if i'm going anywhere is the leadership and that's what i've always tried to identify from the get-go and i think from there the the next two things that i said were uh number two is like what's the trajectory of your career so you could be like oh i love this leader but they're like yeah so you got to be in this mission for like three years and so you need to know that and you don't understand to be like oh i'm just super excited because someone decided to actually go with me you need to understand like what's your actual career growth because you you could get in there and then be blindsided and you're like oh you forgot to ask well that's that's on you you should have asked and figured that out um and then number three is also like what how is the market working right so like is it actually a market that's going to actually grow so that the career directory can actually grow with it so for example if someone decided today cool i want to go create a crm there's a ton of crms out there so especially with salesforce being the giant it is so it's like okay that you may not go as fast as you think that you are so i think it's understanding and doing the research of where the company's going are they actually solving a problem that's like a real need like what's it you can check on linkedin how fast they're growing so those are three things that i'm looking at from a sales job because i don't want to i don't want to have a ceiling at all i don't want to be stopped by external factors like if i get stopped i want to be like yo that was me i don't get stopped because oh the you know the executive team made these decisions and now i'm sitting here in sales and i'm actually good at what i do and i can't go anywhere because of everything and it goes back to this is me going on a tangent here but it goes back to timing too and you have to understand where you need to be so that you can actually move in the right direction and it goes back to like that's why i chose termos because i knew the timing was correct i knew that there was a good market fit there was time to capitalize and if i had gone somewhere else and decided oh i want to go to the sales force and i know their trajectory would have been different like they're already established probably wouldn't be able to even create the sdr chronicle so it's just like understanding where you want to go and like how much they're going to give you and then so you can actually put your skill sets to use and you don't feel like it's a complete waste of time for you yeah yeah i mean the last two pieces i'll add to that are check glass door you know i mean like yeah last door on the feedback on on from other reps and take it for what it's you know take it as a data point not your decision factor because a lot of people who go on glass door you know they're complaining because they got fired or something like that and you know you don't know the other side of the story but the other thing is not only interviewing your managers but see if you see if they'll be open to letting you kind of have a call with a rep or two you know and and because i'd be very worried if i was going into a company um who wouldn't let me talk to my the potential hire my manager and talk to a couple of the reps to get a better understanding what a day in the life of a rep looks like i'd be very very concerned with a company that wouldn't allow that to happen just by asking that question and seeing what their feedback is on this again if i'm a hiring manager and you did that to me i'd be like okay this kid is serious about figuring this out right so i had i personally i would be impressed right and i'd want you to go talk to some of my reps i'd want you to talk to people to see what kind of a leader what kind of a manager i was the managers who are uncomfortable who are not that good and know there's dissension within the ranks they're not they're gonna be like well no that's not part of our process sorry you know we'll tell you that type of thing and that those are those are red flags to me question that lance asked in here uh can i hear our thoughts here at what point at which point does lack of sales become because of this because of the product and not the rep uh team hasn't sold anything for the past four months and we've been doing a lot of demos so we'd love to hear your thoughts that's tough uh you know there's a lot to that as far as the variables there um obviously if you haven't sold something for four months something something's wrong you know what i mean whether it's pricing or uh or yeah it's hard for me to say that four months i mean i don't know how many sales reps or or that if it was only one or two sales reps then yeah i'd probably put that on the sales rep saying yeah they kind of suck if you literally haven't sold shit in four months um but if there's you know if there's a few if there's like five six seven ten reps on that team and and nothing's closed in four months there's there's there's something fundamentally wrong with alan man um again i don't want to throw red flags out because i don't know the scenario uh and i don't want to call out you know whoever lance who asked that as far as you know giving too much detail on the company or anything like that but my gut tells me that it's just not it's it's a you know we talk a lot about the must have versus the like to have thing um it sounds to me that probably would be in the like to have category of products and um and and it really is just it's something that's cool but uh so you got to figure out a way either you're not talking to the right people that's another potential here is that those pitches those demos are all just to non-power right um so i would look at who you're presenting to it's kind of like when you and i talked right when you first got all those deals in and they were all with sdr managers but they just sat there right now from a forecast standpoint like i don't want to see anything on the forecast that doesn't have power checked off on the scorecard right because if we didn't pay attention to that you could be going all day long getting you know shit loads of deals in the pipeline that just don't don't go anywhere don't close because of that one thing so now it's almost like who gives a shit if you don't have any of those deals that are closing and then the main reason is we haven't gone to power then i want you to be as aggressive as you possibly can because it's not even worth having a conversation if power isn't engaged yeah um so i would look at that and this actually speaks to why it's so important to have a sales process right to have something that you can follow to look back at to to analyze right so that you can say we're trying these things we presented this way and we're tweaking it and we're adjusting it because without that you know you're just kind of like i don't know what's working i always say any process is better than no process right so what are the stages what are the conversion ratios between those stages what are the things that you need to make sure it happened in those stages and then letting that run and then after a couple months looking at those deals and then close loss about though you know so you got to get real analytical i guess my my big point here on on this one is you have to get real damn analytical in your sales process to be able to figure out what that problem is um so so that it's not the excuse the product just totally sucks or it's just not the right fit because i it's always both there's it's not one or the other it's a sales you know skill set and ability and process and the product if if it's not going that good but you have to get as analytical as possible i would personally if we missed four months of sales it to me it would be all hands on deck we're diving into sales force we're looking at every meeting we've had in the past four months what happened who was in those meetings what questions did you ask like what deals got put into the pipeline like i would i would stop everything and spend a three-day workshop digging into the data to figure out what that problem was yeah that that's highly alarming and if ever that happened that's exactly what we would do i mean even we even we even did that you know like you said we did that earlier on because it was like wait you have all these deals here but nothing's happening like that was power so then we made that adjustment and so now literally after every single call at the end i'm like okay like i'm gonna let you know exactly what's gonna happen next you're gonna have to go talk to your boss yep you have to talk to your boss all right so here are the things that you need to be paying attention to when you talk to your boss what else can i give you i know who you're i know who you're gonna talk to do you mean bring with the new thing we added i can bring john in if they mention that you they are familiar with you or some nature that has helped us out a ton and now we're starting to see deals move faster and we're starting to have conversations there's the cycle is starting to come shorter so i think it's understanding it probably when i'm i don't know all the the variables so it's gonna be hard for me to be for us to be like this is it but i think it definitely comes down to understanding who you're talking to on the first call and then figuring out who you need to talk to on the next call yeah that's what i've realized and then now that i'm able to pinpoint that i'm like i already know what this is going to lead to and like i know i have to talk to this person the sooner i can talk to the person the better and i think it also comes down to understanding how you need to come into the call um as well instead of being like hey we're just we're getting demos left and right but we're doing it different every single time instead of being like no this is the actual process to success yeah and and i'll give you kind of a i think as sales reps we need to be most sales reps are not detail oriented they're not analytical um we need to be more analytic especially with where technology is going and all this other stuff right like we need to be able to look at the data and and understand it and speak in that language right because i'll give you an example back when we started thrive i um i was a vp of sales i was 25 years old i was doing my thing and it was you know and i was literally working you know 17 hours a day seven days a week because we were self-funded had no money right and so like first couple years grind grind grind grind right and then all of a sudden my cfo who was again my friend from high school he would come to me at the beginning of the year at the end of the year and be like all right john we need to grow another 50 next year and i'd be like okay so how many new reps could i hire and you know that's you know 50 over last year calvin was good but now 50 on top of what we just did that year like okay and and and i'd be like so how many more reps can i hire how much budget can i get and be like oh we don't have any more budget like you just we just need to grow 50 and i would be like dude what the fuck like like how like i'm i there's no i can't work any harder than i am right now you know what i mean and it's so frustrated me because i was in this emotional world of i was working so hard i was working hard i wasn't working smart in any way shape or form right and so after that happened two years the third year i'm like i'm not having this conversation anymore because i i literally can't work any harder than i there's there's not any more hours in the day that i can work and so i started to get real analytical and i started and we talk about this in the training we need to look like executives speak excel everybody else speaks word and when i mean that like reps talk about roi and productivity when an executive talks about our eyes when am i going to see that roi productivity how much time you're going to give back to my team right so i started to be absolutely fanatical about my conversion ratios and i would measure how many calls i made on a weekly basis how many meetings i set up how many you know how many proposals went out the door how many times we got closed which clothes lost and all that stuff and i figured out my equation right an equation you've heard it plenty of times 400 dials got me eight meetings got me four proposals got me two pieces of closed business every single month and i ran that right and then we analyzed our other channels as far as marketing and seo and those type of things and so when when december came around and we were planning for the next year it was a very objective conversation because calvin was like all right john we need to grow another 50 i'd be like okay calvin that means i need two two more inside sales reps to make cold calls we need to invest another thousand dollars a month in marketing to drive these type of leads and we need to actually invest i need another 500 a month for a budget for marketing events and those type of things and be like well we don't have that kind of money john and i'd be like well then calvin i can't hit your numbers and i showed it to him i'm like look calvin for the past year i've been analyzing every single data point here and he was like oh shit okay and that now all of a sudden our conversations were very objective and very direct and it wasn't an emotional thing so that's the thing when i when i get back to is like your sales process as a sales rep i think you should be overly analytical with what you do to understand where you're wasting your time where you're not and as a as a team if your team isn't doing that man then again all hands on deck figure out those data points and go back and look at your lost opportunities go back and look at those those presentations and how they went you know that type of stuff because it's you can't make decisions uh based on limited data next question by zachary so what type of questions do you ask on a cold call so this is like the the sdr out of the blue um why don't you go with this one first what's that why don't you go with this one oh yeah um he said do you ask simple focus questions qualification questions you ask more product questions getting to think differently um this is a this is a tough question to answer because it really depends on what objection people are throwing at me it depends on how detailed i need to get from a qualification standpoint it also depends on how complex the product is so there's a lot of variables that go into this question that uh zach's asking um but for me like some questions that you know i always try to ask uh regardless of like what objection i'm going to get um if someone normally gives me an objection and let's say if it's like the let's say they like you know call me back in three months or whatever i normally ask okay you know that's great you know what's going to change between now and then and then they'll give me whatever answer and then i normally ask okay are you looking to evaluate in three months or implement in three months so that's another important question um so those are two questions i normally ask um another question i ask is if i get any objection i'm not interested i normally go hey so what are the main three projects or priorities that are on on your plate right now so then when they give me those three i can dive into one of those they normally actually go into our value prop because i wouldn't be calling for any for no reason um no but those are those are main ones that i normally ask but it really for me the questions that i ask are highly dependent upon the objection that i'm being faced uh because if no one's giving me any objections then it's going to be a little bit easier for me to to ask the appropriate questions for me to guide them down the process but again the questions that i'm going to ask is different than most people probably in the audience because what i'm selling is different yeah i think what you need to realize on a cold call is that you're not selling right well you're not selling the meeting the time that's it you're not selling your product or service you're selling next steps you're selling a meeting you're trying to prove to that person that in that very short period of time it is going to be worth them sitting down for 15 20 30 minutes with you to have a deeper dive discovery so i talk about having having go-to questions to because inevitably when somebody picks up the phone they're like i look i'm not i don't have time right now so you got to be you got to pop right yeah and and that's why i always have a couple of go-to questions based on the persona right because you want to ask different questions to different personas and the goal here is you almost want to hit them to get them like you punch them if you will to to get them to stop and think for a second and that's really you like come up with questions that are relevant to that persona that get them to think so here's an example when somebody when somebody says um when i call call and somebody's like hey john look i'm super busy right now call me back in a week i'll be like look no problem i got two questions i need two minutes of your time at the end of that you can tell me to go away right usually i get sure fine what do you got right all right fine so my first question to you is and again this is usually to a vp of sales my first question to you is what are your growth projections this year and my second question is are you 100 confident that all of your initiatives right now from a sales perspective are going to help you hit that goal and by the way i don't give a shit what the answer to the first question is i really want to care i really care about that second question but i'm setting up that second question with the first question and the point there is look i know vps of sales there's not one vp of sales out there that is overly confident in every single initiative they have right now to help them hit their quarter targets right or their yearly targets and the point of that is and i'll even preface i'll even post script it with you know the reason i ask is because if you are 100 confident that you are going to get to your goals this year with all the initiatives you have in place it's not worth us having this conversation so we can hang up now but if you're not i just want 15 minutes at a time so i can ask you a few quick questions see if it makes sense and share with you some of the stuff that we're doing with other executives like you to help them hit their goals right so so i think you do need to have some go-to questions but but base them on personas you know what i mean like enablement would be you know are you uh ever able to be proactive from an enablement standpoint are you always stuck in the reactive mode of being told what to do by vps of sales right uh do you have prospecting as part of your onboarding process and are looking for a solution to plug in so that that can be taken off your plate you know it's kind of like you again that's why going back to the icp and the persona based stuff once you know that icp and the persona based stuff and then you make cold calls into that one persona you can come up with a message to them two or three questions that are relevant to them and a story so no that's a that's a that's a that's a great one right there and and i think everyone needs to think about in um you know what i always tell people too and i just made a video on this is write down the objections that you're getting and then figure out the answers to those and the questions you need to ask towards those objections yeah that's a really really big one that is definitely beneficial yeah and it's all about focus right it's like in the problem that most people have is when they make cold calls they call anybody and everybody who's on their list they make a call to a vp of sales in a certain industry a cfo in another industry a director in this industry a manager in that industry and with that you have to be generic with your approach i'm not smart enough to be able to know how to have relevant good conversations with all these different types of people when they all pick up the phone in different ways but if i call every vp of sales in the sas industry i can get my story straight i can get my message down i can get my questions and then i go at it and i can actually you know get some momentum around doing that yeah for sure no that's that's a good point and cold calling has been a main top of the conversation for me lately like everybody just have only cold call training or just wants to talk about cold calling so it's on the rise as you talked about so yep it's part of the puzzle last question from the group here from lance we've talked about this before um any advice on deals that get stuck just just below the power line use cases property managers want the solution but the owner of the property ultimately has to say yes because they don't get involved in daily operations they're at the usual stakeholder so they're never going to fall in the decision-making process they're at the end for final approval tried empowering the champion uh by trying to send a video over to talk about the solution but hasn't worked any thoughts yeah this is like you know we talk about this a lot this is like getting over somebody's head without pissing them off is always is one of the top three challenges in sales um i think it's you know there's two types of people that are below the power line there's people who will always be below the power line you know because they like their job and they're nice and comfortable and they've been it for the past 20 years and they're not looking to make waves those people are challenging because they're not going to bring you up to the executive right um they're going to they're going to keep saying oh i'll talk to them i'll talk to them now in that case what you really need to do is i mean there's just going over their head right um but you can do it in a tactful way yeah it's challenging though because what you have to do is you have to go do some homework on the account right or or that person like the the executive that you want to get after and you have to have a separate reason to talk to that person than this person right because if you're just going over somebody's head just because they're not the decision maker and this we've talked about this before you're going to piss both people off because as a former executive you know well let's talk about here with us right like megan megan's our coo right megan um isn't the one who's the final yes we're going to make this fifty thousand dollar investment but she's the one that i trust her opinion on right so if somebody because i hired her to do that like executives delegate that's what they do they don't get involved in every decision and they trust that most of the time they trust their employees to to tell them what to do so if megan were to like say somebody was selling to megan she was going through the process whatever it is and then she just was for whatever reason was like all right never mind you know what i mean or just like slow rolling that person or ghosting them or whatever it is and then all of a sudden that rep reached out to me out of nowhere and was like hey dude uh i've been working with megan she's disappeared on me blah blah blah i'd be like dude what the you reached out to me for you know what i mean like if obviously if megan isn't responding to you then there's a reason for that like she doesn't want your shit and and now not only you're gonna piss off megan but you're gonna piss off me too right so and that's if it's the same reason now if you have a separate reason if you reach out to me and say something like hey john i've been working with megan to address your whatever needs right like these type of needs down here um as and i like this phrase right here as i learn more about your business right i actually noticed where you said this or your post you know you blogged about that or you know you were quoted in a magazine where you said this right and i wanted to reach out to you just to kind of get a better understanding from a from your visionary perspective about how some of the tactical things we're doing down here might align with where you're going can i get some time on your account to have that conversation i might not say yes to that but that is a much more respectful way of getting me engaged um and that's for somebody who's blocking now somebody who's on their way up right where you can look at their linkedin profile or something like that and you can tell that they're on their way up then you can work with that person to help them and that's why i ask questions like hey how do i make you look good right uh and and we've talked about this like preemptively addressing so this is the preemptive strike objection all day long which is hey you know what we str manager right hey um look i get it you got to roll this up to your vp i totally understand hey look i was a former str manager right man i knew a lot of times when i would come to my vp like it would be a pretty short like sorry whatever or take it down do you agree that this is the best solution like do you think that this is going to make a difference so what can we do to make sure that that doesn't happen what can we do to make sure that as you move this upstream that we both get what we're looking for here can i get in on that meeting with you do you think that would help you know what i mean so you kind of gauge it like you know it's going to happen like you know that person's going to go up there and that person's the likelihood of that person saying yes is not high so i would just preemptively address it and then the last point i'll flip it over to you is this is why i think it's so important to go top down when prospecting because if you go after the the c level right and with a message that's hey what's up you know i was doing some research and i saw this whatever it is and and who on your team can i have a conversation with about that and they refer you down to that this person well now you have an open lane to go back up if you need to and it's not out of the blue if you go bottom up and then you try to engage here when this person's not good luck right so i would look at it that way yeah um i mean such on a lot of points that you know i would i would touch on i think what it really really comes down to is just having uh just an like the primitive strike of under like like i talked about earlier at the end of the conversation to let people know like hey look like i've had this conversation before uh with other people like yourself and i know that you know the indecision maker is this so if this is something that you're it sounds like you're interested in like these are the steps we're gonna have to take um just so i so i know and then it's just important to if you can look on linkedin or whatever data you have to figure out who's actually that person is going to be the indecision maker and be like hey when can we loop them in as soon as possible um i think that's the best way to do it and then also if you know someone's saying that hey i i they have to loop this person in it's keep asking them who that is and then eventually um i know we talked about this for and i didn't have to do it but it's more so like hey look you know i've been trying to reach out trying to reach this person because i know we need to make this decision like i'm just going to let you know that i'm going to reach out to this person and to figure out what we need to do moving forward like i'm just letting you know so you can respond back if you want to and then they will respond back because then they're going to be like yeah i don't do that so yeah it's kind of like you let them know you're going to go over their head and that's the voicemail or email that i usually say which is hey you know what we've been working and this is usually if they're ghosts and you to a certain degree yeah where it's like hey look we've been working together for a while now you know based on your priorities and your timeline i haven't heard back from you if i don't hear and i say this if i don't hear back from within about 24 hours or so i'm going to go ahead and give so-and-so a call their boss and that like i said like you said that get back to usually get a pretty high response rate cool so any other uh any other questions on from the group or anything like that all the questions from the group are answered i don't i don't see anything that lucas is thinking about the the facebook so i don't know if there's anything that you just wanted to touch on but um no just uh again the the i think the we hit on a a nerve here with me which is the data right in in the analysis of the different channels and and being very data driven with your decisions you know that that post from gong really got me rethinking about uh data to support decisions yep um and how i think you know you know we need to we need to get better at it right i know we're good at it we need to be great at it and and you know this event coming up here this event season coming up here is a great opportunity for us to you know figure out those conversion ratios of the different channels because you know you could be going all in we fool ourselves a lot in the sense that we think this is working right because whatever i might have gotten a good meeting the other day or something like that and that approach but without looking at the data without like we don't really know if it's working or we don't know if something else is going to work a thousand times better than that so shifting our our resources our money our investments into different channels um that's we got to get better at that and i think sales reps in general need to get better at that as far as tracking and looking at data and understanding their own personal equation understanding where they should that and that's i will say that's what the best reps do some of them do it very uh directly in terms of they're very analytical but like the best of the best they they almost have just this innate ability to understand where to focus their time and energy knowing that this is the highest value they'll get like here's a perfect example commission plans commission plans are are if if the company's smart commission plans are meant to be exploited they're meant to be exploited there's always a gap in a commission plan okay where if you do this one thing you'll get 10x from a revenue standpoint compared to if you do all these other things the company doesn't do that by mistake they put that in there because they want you to sell that thing okay and what happens is i see b rep b and c reps right all the time complain that that these other top reps are oh it's easy for them because they're just doing this and it's like that they figured out the system they figured out they looked at the data they look at their comp plan and they say how can i make the most amount of money selling what i sell and in the least amount of effort right not that i'm lazy it's just if i can take little effort and put it here and produce results well then if i double triple quadruple my effort on that then my numbers are going to be insane so you know be data driven understand the process know your conversion ratios look at the different channels and the more you do that as a young sales rep the better you're going to be as a leader because then you can take that process and structure and apply it to other people and it's not just your gut feel about how things work or anything like that so that's what i'd probably end with here is is uh if there's anything i can recommend reps do is is get you know get data driven look at the data make decisions based on that take the emotion out of it question i guess a question right here what do you what do you do when the commission structure changes with the cfo think sales are making too much that's frustrating uh i i i personally i left xerox because of that uh we had um the the i don't know if it was the cfo i'm sure the cfo had something to do with it but they put a cap on uh deals right so any deal that was over three hundred thousand dollars you didn't get paid and you didn't get paid additional commission for the deal if it was a million dollar deal uh they they paid you commissions on three hundred thousand and i was like what and so i you know so guess what that million dollar deal that the company could have benefited from i sold three hundred thousand this quarter three hundred thousand the next quarter and you know what i mean and i manipulated the commission plan because so to me there is sometimes i think it's an expectation thing with the management to say look with commission plans are meant to change okay so sales reps need to just get the used to that you can't get pissed off every year when your quotas go up or the commission plan changes because businesses change profitability changes the investments change those type of things so you got to take your personal self out of this and understand there is a bigger picture involved here now if the excuse though is we put a commission plan in place that that aligns with our business growth goals and i just feel like sales reps are getting paid too much then fuck that cfo yeah like seriously i'd be like i would go to the cfo and could you tell me could you could you help me understand the profitability of the business here why did you put that commission plan in the first place are we losing money because of this commission plan because if we are okay i understand we all screw up you know we made you know we shifted the business or whatever it is but if it's literally just because you feel like we're getting paid too much then go fuck yourself because quite honestly the best sales reps should get paid more than every other person in the company and those need to understand that coos need to understand that engineering needs to understand that because guess what if the best sales rep is making it fucking rain guess what's happening to the rest of the business it's growing it's growing you're in your like the more you keep the and the more you cap commissions on sales reps as long as it's not hurting your bottom line in your business like to do the other stuff is the more you cap the more you're going to lose your top talent yeah so i would straight up i i i would have a very direct conversation with my probably not the cfo depending on the size of the organization i would have a very hard conversation with my my manager and my vp and saying is it really because they were just they just feel like or did they make a mistake in the previous commission plan that is actually hurting our business as an organization and not allowing us to grow yes if that's a conversation then let's have a business conversation about this help me understand as a sales rep where we can make more money and let's work together on this but i it drives because guess what the other thing that pisses me off about this is that cfos they usually have stock options so they're what if they're just looking at their salary for instance and saying oh i'm a cfo and i only get paid 200 000 but our top rep got a half a million dollars and i'm the cfo and they're just a rep and why is that happening that's a dumb ass cfo all right because if i'm a cfo and i got and i'm making 200 g's or 300 g's and our top reps making 2 million i'm going because because i know that means my stock prices and my options and and my bonus at the end of the year is going to be bananas if sales team's murdering it so yeah i just i you know that frustrates me capping commissions on sales reps that's why again that's why i left xerox i was like this like you're not gonna pay me on those deals i'm not gonna sell those deals yeah that makes zero sense yeah so so so so so so so so