Friday Happy Hour Mashup

Hey listeners, thanks so much for helping us hit 100,000 downloads of Make It Happen Monday. Since it's a holiday this week in the U.S., we don't have a new episode of the podcast. So what we're going to do this week instead is 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. Thanks again and have a great week. Make it happen. So what's your perspective on the right amount? I talk a lot and we talk a lot in the training, right? Professional persistence versus annoying persistence. So what's your thoughts on that level of persistence? So this question has come up a lot lately.

I don't know what's going on, but I've seen this question like every other day now. I don't know what it is. The main thing, it depends on – first of all, it depends on what you're reaching out to because I'm probably going to be a little bit more aggressive reaching out to sales than marketing. And maybe it's IT or whatever I'm reaching out to. So that's first and foremost as I get this charger. I think another thing that you have to consider is what are your touch points and how are you doing those touch points. But I think as a common practice, I'm going to say 10 touches is how much I do. And then probably beyond that, it depends on how much they've engaged with me, how far I'm going to go.

But I also think that you have to figure out what the gauge of interest is with that person. So let's say if you sent someone four emails and you called them four times and you sent two social touches, they didn't view a single email, the phone goes straight to voicemail, and they didn't accept your personalization request, and you engage with them on Twitter and they don't say anything, I'm probably actually at that point not going to do anything with that person anymore because they're not showing any engagement. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go find another contact in that account to go talk to. Somebody's going to view my email, somebody's going to engage with me. So I think it goes back into like how much – it kind of goes into the scorecard that we talk about, but it's like on a very small level.

It's like how much are they actually engaging with you when you reach out to them and then how much are they actually like looking at what you're doing? Because if they're not doing any of that and I sent 10 things and I've done 10 touches and I've gotten nothing, I'm probably going to move on because then there's no reason for me to pursue something where no one's viewing anything. But I'm probably going to maybe ramp up my touches, ramp up a little bit of my personalization if someone has viewed seven emails that I've sent. So my thing is you have to gauge on the personas that you're reaching out to and how you're reaching out to them. But I don't think there's – I don't have a silver bullet number on how many times you should reach out and then stop.

I think it completely is based on how much engagement you're getting from that prospect, from whether you're having – whether you have Yesware, SalesLoft, Outreach, whatever you're using. Yeah, I mean, I think the only thing I'd add to that is making sure – I actually don't – I think it's 100% your ICP, right, that persona. And because that's why I don't – all the studies out there are super general as far as how many touches it takes and whatever. But it's dependent on who you're going after and what the messaging is. But the key to me to a contact strategy isn't necessarily the number of times. I do think you should probably keep it between five and ten, my humble opinion. And, you know, not necessarily – that doesn't necessarily mean what a – you know, a retweet.

I wouldn't necessarily consider it a touch. You know, I mean, I do, but I don't. So, I mean, maybe if you want to go to 15, if you're adding in the social reshares and not the direct, hey, I want to talk to you stuff. But I think the key factor of it is making sure that every single time you do reach out, there's some different reason or different point of value that you're bringing so that you're not just doing, hey, one maybe decent email about, hey, here's what we do, blah, blah, blah. And then, do you get my first email, bubbling this one up to the top, you know, blah, blah, blah. Like, don't do that. Don't do that. Right? Because that's where – that's, in my opinion, that is annoying persistence.

Yeah. Professional persistence, you can extend further because professional persistence is, hey, what about this? And have you thought about that? And, hey, let me share something with you there. And, hey, look at this. And what about that? And here's a different part of our solution, you know, in telling that story. And that's where I think you can extend it a little bit further. Jack, hey, guys. What do you all think about how many times you should follow up with a lead after they don't make the first phone appointment? I'm struggling to get people to follow through once they have shown a reasonable high level of interest. Ooh, I think I got this one. But go ahead. So, I don't think there's a set number.

I actually – I said if you go beyond five or six at that point, it's like, okay, that person is just not interested at all. But normally it goes back into John and I's teachings here. It goes back into the – are you sending them the agenda before the call? Sending them the reminder of the day of. If they – I normally wait about four minutes. So, after four minutes and they haven't shown up, I say, hey, first name, is this still a good time to chat? If not, when's the best time to reconnect? Normally when I send that message, people hop on, oh, I'm sorry, or like, oh, I was busy doing something, or like I was hopping off – whatever, it doesn't matter. They're on the call now. And after that, they don't answer.

What I normally send is the next day, I'll send an email. They're like, hey, sorry we didn't be able to connect yesterday. You probably were busy and there was a lot of things going on. When would be the next time to connect next week? If they don't answer that, I try to call them the next week. And then after that, I try to send them a LinkedIn message as well. So, that's actually what I did. Someone missed the meeting last week, didn't show up, sent an email like two days later, he didn't answer it, it bounced. And then I called, no answer, I left a voicemail. Then I sent him a LinkedIn message, found out that he's not in the company anymore and he's going to another job. So, that's why he didn't get my message.

So, I was like, all right, well, fair. And he's like, yeah, when I get to my next company, we'll have a conversation. I was like, okay. So, sometimes things happen and you just have to be, you have to be able to touch all fronts. And, you know, normally what I do is I just try to follow that procedure. And if someone just doesn't answer me, then they're not interested. However, they did take the meeting. So, that means that maybe someone in the company is interested. So, I'll just try to double down on the company again. Yeah. Do you actually have, do you still have that document I sent you as far as the follow-up procedures like the, did I, getting to the, did I lose you piece? Oh, yeah. That's like my, that's like my go-to.

Yeah. So, I think maybe we'll, could you do me a favor because I don't know where I put that, but could you send that back to me? Because what we'll do is we'll add that to the, yeah, we'll add that to the, to the link here. I want to make sure it's genericized or whatever it is so that there's nothing, you know, in there, but, but kind of that's the whole philosophy here of, you know, when somebody, so this is where that summer email. So, for those of you listening here and Lucas, if you could do me a favor, post the, my favorite nugget post, which is the summer email, because that's kind of the succession there is we have a good conversation. Like I cold call you, whatever it is, we have a decent conversation and we set up a call.

And so I summarize that call and you know, and, and after the call, Hey, great talking to you today. Here's a few things that we talked about, you know, please make sure you email me back to let me show, let me know it's all accurate. If I missed anything, then meetings Friday. Send the agenda on Thursday. Hey, I'm looking forward to our call tomorrow. Here's a few things. Like you said, they flake on Friday. Then on Monday, you take that some, you know, you do your, Hey, you're still available. You know, are you, uh, I'm not sure what happened on Friday. When do you want to reschedule this? Maybe call them on Tuesday, send them another email on Wednesday. And like that week schedule, you know, probably send that reply to that summary email two, three times, just with your typical follow-up.

Hey, you're still interested, you know, let me know what I, and then the following week, that's when you do the three strikes and you're out, which is take that email, reply all to it, put, uh, still interested in the subject line and then say, Hey, uh, you know, are you still interested? Could you let me know either way? And then this verb use is important. So I don't continue with unnecessary follow-up, letting them know you're going to be following up. And if they don't respond to that, then two days later, reply all to it, say, did I lose you in the subject line? And then nothing, right? So when you open up that email, it's just your signature file and the other five emails. And then if they don't respond to that on Friday, it looks like this isn't a priority for you anymore.

Feel free to reach back out to me, you know, when it pops up to the top of the list. So it's kind of like your typical follow-up, you know, Hey, you're still interested. And then that's week one after the flake. And then next is strike one, strike two, strike three. I'm out. Yeah. What I wouldn't do is I wouldn't say this is the last time I'll be, you know, I'll be emailing you, blah, blah, blah. Because you will. Yeah. Because it's such bullshit. Because you're going to, you're going to email that. But like, as soon as your pipeline dries up, you're going back to the well for that. Right. So. Yeah. So, you know, SVP of sales, we had a battle on the phone. Yeah. I heard that one. That was, that was crazy.

I did not expect him to go that hard on me, but. That was the dude was pushing back on ROI, right? Oh, pushing back on every single thing in the world. Like every single question was not valuable. And the conversation then wasn't valuable at all. And, you know, didn't even want to really have like a real conversation for the most part. Yeah. We talked, we talked about that one. I would think that might be worth, you know, digging into here for the group. Right. It's like, there's always going to be that person that just challenges, just a challenge. Right. Is it going to say no to everything and be the jackass? You know, and for those of you listening or, you know, during or after, you know, people talk, I've said this before, right?

Like people ask us about ROI, like what's the ROI on this? And they, it's kind of a bullshit question because all you have to do is flip it right back on them and be like, okay, well, exactly what numbers are you looking, what are your KPIs and what are the exact numbers you're looking to impact, right? Because we could slice and dice that a million different ways. It could be conversion ratios of your top tier accounts. It could be meetings with executives. It could be volume and conversion ratios. It could be deal size. Like there's 8 million ways to slice ROI. And so a lot of VPs or people, not VPs, but a lot of other people like will use that as a way to throw us off. Right. Because, you know, I almost always hear this, not always, but a lot of times hear this from an enablement or, you know, like a frontline sales manager or something like that.

They're like, oh, what's the ROI? Because they know they're probably going to be asked that question. Right. But it's like, you know, I, like I said, I always, okay, happy to share with the ROI. What exact metrics are you looking at for us to impact? Because then I'll be able to share with you, you know, the averages versus what you're doing and what are you selling? Who are you selling to? But then when they just push back and they don't give you any context for those numbers, then it's just like, all right, fine. I'll give you a number. It's 20% ROI. Does that mean something for you? You know what I mean? And so I think we, I think sales reps need to do a better job at kind of pushing back on a client and really help and understand what ROI means to them.

Right. Just like going through the motions of an ROI calculator or something like that. Right. Right. So that's essentially, if you're going to listen, that's how I got in the bout because I got asked that. And before the call for context, I always said, okay, look, this is some data that we'd like to see. But again, it was the day of the call. So I didn't, it's not, you know, I couldn't go find that data immediately. So I said, okay, I got a couple clients we can talk to you about. I got case studies, but not in that realm, exactly what you're looking for. Like I didn't have that data yet. And so I just asked, okay, look, I can give you a ton of different numbers. I can do that all day long.

But like, what do you look at the impact? So it was very generalized. Like, this is it. We should book more meetings, set it up. And I was like, great. Yeah, we can do that. And it's like, okay, so what's the ROI across the board for every single client? I'm like, okay, like forever, like almost every single one is pretty, it's pretty egregious. So I don't think I'm able to do that, but like, I can tell you numbers. And then like, essentially that's where the bout came into place. That's why it became, it became a very back and forth conversation because I was just trying to understand what exact metric they were trying to increase. But I was, but they were looking for really, really granular data, which I understand.

But at the same time, it's like, if I can't, I can't figure out exactly what you're trying to, what measurement or what type of data point you're trying to get to, then I can't answer that question. Cause then it's just going to be me throwing out numbers, which I can do, but that's just not applicable and valuable in the conversation. So that's why that bout ended up happening. And yeah, it was a very, it was a very back and forth conversation that was just crazy. Yeah. I don't know, man. Well, I'm, I'm interested, but I mean, the interesting thing to me, to me on that one is he's, he wanted to schedule another meeting, right? Yes, but he declined it the next day. So we'll see what, we'll see how this pans out.

Chip follows us, loves, loves all the stuff that we're doing. And he's got an interesting point in his career where he's trying to make a decision. All right. So he's got two offers from, from two, from two different companies. One of them, 42K base, 62K OTE, local company, selling software, whatever. And let's see, first, he'll be the first SDR on their team. Okay. So that's the scenario there. The second one is 60K base, 80 OTE, more of a verbal offer. So not necessarily like guaranteed, but you know, more of a verbal thing. Mid-market company, open Atlanta, does big data. The really respected recruiting firm is the one who referred to them. Excellent training program and invest in their employees.

Great ratings on Glassdoor. Okay. So those are the two scenarios. Now, sounds pretty obvious which ones, but he said the manager of the first one has treated him with respect throughout the entire interview process. And after I told him about my second offer, he actually congratulated me and said, while they can't match it, they would do their best on their end. And as a surprise, someone like me got that offer. So interview, the dude was like, dude, you're awesome. Manager was insane. Right. And, and very understanding, even though they couldn't match the deal. So he said, I get the feeling that I'm going to have someone who was going to fight for me, fight the good fight for me and walk in and people who have good impression regarding my background.

Second offer. I don't know if I'll be able to get the same kind of manager. Maybe I do. Maybe I don't long-term goal is he wants to eventually be an AE for a company like LinkedIn Salesforce or Box or Oracle or something like that. I'd say no one Oracle, but that's a separate story. But, but if you get there, great, please give me some feedback. So what are your thoughts on, he's got a small, you know, money to me is the least indicating, you know, you know, as far as like, yeah, how I make my decisions, but you got a small company selling into a thing with like protect like an awesome manager. It sounds like who really cares versus a little bit more of established company, higher salary, really good training, really good reviews on Glassdoor, but who knows on the manager and everybody knows that the manager makes the difference.

I mean, there's articles and articles written about people don't leave companies. They leave managers. And so what are your thoughts? Like, what would you do? So I know this guy. Don't say his name. Don't say his name. I know this guy. And we've been, I've been talking to him since like he started this job process. I just actually just responded to this email because I haven't answered. Yeah. So, but, but the answer to this, because I think this is a universal answer that I think everyone needs to consider because I get asked this question a lot and I'm, I'm probably actually make a whole video on this because I get asked a ton of, is it like, oh, say what type of job offer should I look at?

Should I look at the money? Should I look at this? Like, what's that? And I, and I think there's, there's really three things that you need to look at. Every single time that you take a job and no matter what you're going to do. And money is a part of it, but it's actually not the three that I consider. Number one is what he mentioned is the manager. So, or whoever you're reporting to. The main thing is that I, and this is me, I only listen to people that are at where I want to be at in some capacity on a, from a career standpoint. So those are the only people I really listen to. If someone gives me advice and they're not really where I want to be at, or they're not in the same field as me and it doesn't align, then I probably won't listen to them as much as someone who is doing exactly what I want to do.

So I think you need, when you look at that as like, number one, who are you going to be reporting to? And who are you going to spend your time with? Because if you are in a great company, but then your manager or leader is someone you don't align with, you're going to be very miserable and you're going to leave there pretty quickly. So I would consider that. Two is career trajectory or career growth. So when you do take, let's say, let's say the 40,000 career growth, right? And you're that first SDR. For most people, that sounds bad and it sounds like something that you don't want to do. However, that's actually could be beneficial for you. They're like, well, if you were an SDR here, you can actually be one of the first AEs.

And if you're one of the first AEs and the company grows steadily at a steady rate, you could become the one of the very first AE enterprise. And then you're selling into the enterprise. And then now you can use that skill set to go sell at a larger company. And because you have that experience, because you were there from the ground floor. So I would consider the career growth when you're going somewhere. I think also number three is you have to consider where the company is going. Because if the company is like, well, we're kind of just plateaued right now. There's not a lot of room for growth in our company. That means that you're probably going to be – it goes to career growth, but it's a little bit different.

Because that means that they may start letting people go six months from now. And then you were like, oh, this company sounded amazing. The culture is great. But you didn't ask the questions on where the company vision was and what they're trying to accomplish. And you're not asking how they're looking at other competitors and what the – where they're looking to – how many people are they looking to hire. If you don't know those answers, then you're going to get blindsided six months a year from now. And then now you don't have a job and you're doing a job search again. So those are three things that you have to consider. If you understand those three things, I think you're good. But I wouldn't just look at the money.

My only thing that I would say in this situation is ask directly to the – whoever is doing the interview process or the recruiter to figure out what exactly are they doing. We don't know exactly what they're doing. Who exactly is the manager they've been reporting to? Maybe we can have a conversation with them. Question from Emmanuel on voicemails. I think this was a pretty decent thread here as far as people's comments and stuff like that. It's a short question today. Do you still leave voicemails? It seems that nobody is listening to them. In my follow-up email, I'm starting with, I've tried to reach you, quote, dot, dot, dot, but not leaving voicemails anyway. What do you think? What's your thought process on voicemails?

So originally, I didn't like them at all. I thought they were wasting time. I think over – now, I would probably say they're – I like them, and I think they're effective. But it also really depends on where you're leaving that voicemail is what I've started to slowly realize. So if it's – yeah, so what I mean is that if you have someone's cell phone number versus their office line. Right. And it seems that people don't listen to their voicemails as much as on the cell phone as maybe their office line is what I've noticed. So a lot of people have been posting like, oh, I don't listen to any voicemails on my phone anymore because they can just – dude, they have the text option of the voicemail.

So you can just read it real quick. And so they're just like, oh, that's a sales rep. I'm not even going to listen to it. On an office line, you can't really do that. So I kind of see that the office line, direct extension, you have a better chance of it. But I still think overall, like leaving voicemails are good. It's just another touch. And, you know, any other added touch I can do, I want to do it. So that's kind of like my thought process on that. Cool. Yeah, I mean, I think voicemails, you know, it's one of those things where I don't leave voicemails because I expect callbacks, right? I leave voicemails because for one reason, and it's because my email response rates go up, right? And it's – you know, because a lot of times somebody will listen to that voicemail.

They won't want to call me back, right, because of whatever. But that will jog their memory to go and say, hey, you know what? Oh, yeah, I remember. And just on the off chance, I mean, I still go by this, which is, you know, when I joined Basho, Jeff Hoffman, his scenario was this. He goes, John, say there's two reps, right? And one rep makes 20 phone calls and leaves 20 voicemails. And so that's rep A, and then rep B makes 20 phone calls and leaves zero voicemails. What can I absolutely 100% guarantee tomorrow? That the person with voicemails is going to get at least a reply back through email? I can't guarantee that. I can guarantee that the person that doesn't leave voicemails is never – Or nothing, yeah.

Right, so I can't – the person who leaves voicemails probably won't get a callback. But I can absolutely 100% guarantee that the person that doesn't leave voicemails won't get a callback, right? So that's why I think it's just why not – you're there. Why not take the extra 20, 30 seconds as long as your voicemails are 20, 30 seconds? You know what I mean? If they're like two minutes, five minutes, yeah, don't leave those, right? But 20, 30 seconds, leave the voicemail as long as it's good. So it says taking over a territory from a bad rep. So the prior rep – so this is Lance. The prior rep in a couple of my territories bombed the crap out of people with emails and how they don't want to talk to me.

And now they don't want to talk to me because they received so many emails prior. They know who we are and they know what we do but don't want to have any conversations. So what is the best way to overcome this? Lots of good responses in the comments. So what are your thoughts on taking over on just a scorched earth territory? Yeah, so I answered this and, I mean, there's a lot of things. Now that I think about it more, there's more thoughts that came to my head. But my answer at first was send personalized notes. That can be emails or handwritten. Two is personalized videos to those people who just got scorched and, like, don't contact again and just play, hey, you know, this is me. I'm new in this territory.

I don't know who the last guy was, the last girl was. But, like, hey, here's what I want to do to provide a solution to your company and then just start that way. Or you can just ask your boss, like, hey, look, these accounts have gotten scorched. Can you pay for my travel and expenses for me to go out and meet these people so that we can, like, get on a common ground here? Because all these accounts have just been destroyed and all these accounts are saying don't ever contact us again. So I think those are three strategies that you should do. But, again, those all come back to being personalized and actually caring about what's going on. Because you putting them in another cadence that essentially is different but says the same thing, that's not going to work.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I deal with this a lot. So I actually think there's a fourth piece to this, which goes back to the personal brand building, right? Because, you know, I deal with this a lot with Salesforce and a few other clients that I work with where, you know, Salesforce turns over their territories once every six months, for crying out loud. And the reps get in there, they blast out, and they're a perfect example. Like, everybody's just sick of hearing from them. And so what I tell the reps is the perception of Salesforce is bad, you know, for that account. And I use Salesforce as the example. It could be any account. It's the perception of the business that they're sick of. They're not sick of you, okay?

And so you, as a sales rep, have to flip that around and effectively, and I know this sucks, but effectively stop selling and really focus on adding value. So, you know, the whole jab, jab, jab, right hook stuff, right, with Gary V. Like, this is where you need to get into that territory. You need to figure out what these people care about. Send those personalized emails, but not necessarily send those personalized emails to say, hey, let's talk. But send them to say, hey, here's something else you should think about based on your persona. Here's a really cool article. Here's some context around it why I think you might get value out of this to help you do your job better without even investing in us.

You know what I mean? Because it kind of happened to me when I was at – well, it didn't kind of happen. It exactly happened to me when I was at Xerox. I got brought in – you know, I worked at Black & Decker, and then I got hired at Xerox, and apparently I interviewed well. And so they put me in territory. Usually, you kind of had to get through an eight-week sales training program, and then you got put into an apprenticeship, right, with somebody else, and then you got your territory. I got my territory day one, and it was for the government sector, and it had literally been burned to the ground. I mean there was like five or six reps in three years, and so nobody trusted Xerox. And so when I came in, and luckily for me, to your point, it was face-to-face.

So for me, most of my – because it was local government, right? So almost all of them were in one building for me, Secretary of State, Treasury, those type of things. And so I was able to go, and I would go and knock on these doors, and I figured, all right, I'll get some flips here. And they were just basically like, yeah, pretty much piss off, kid. Like, we'll see another one of you in three months, right? Yeah. So I was like, shit, okay. And this is really where I learned relationship selling because I realized there was no way I was going to cram something down somebody's throat, right? I wasn't going to just close them on a copier because they just didn't trust us. And by the way, these were like big, big copier deals.

Like, I get one or two that came up on renewal, but these were like Secretary or Treasury who was cranking out thousands and million-dollar machines with Xerox, right? So all I did for six months was go – I remember going all the way up to the one Ashburton place in Boston and starting at the top floor and just shake hands, kiss babies, shake hands, kiss babies all the way down. And didn't sell anything but just try to understand and learn about these territories and about these accounts and give them whatever they needed at the time but really take almost a non-sales approach. And I almost got fired, I will say this. My boss was like, who the hell – you know, like six months I didn't have anything.

Like, I mean, I probably closed one or two, you know, small copier deals. Right. And my boss was like, who the hell – you know, I thought you were some big swing of dick. You know, I thought you were, you know, blah, blah, blah. You're so great at sales. And first of all, I'm like, first of all, who told you that? Like, I never said that. But second of all, like, shut up and let me do my fucking job because you guys have burned this territory to the ground and you brought me in to try to fix this. So you want to cycle through another sales rep here? Fine. Fire me. Eat shit. Right. And, you know, I wouldn't recommend saying that, by the way, if you're a rep. But needless to say, you know, I basically pushed off my boss a little bit.

But then after six months, what I did, because I had done such due diligence and worked with a client, I had mapped out all of their copiers and all of their offices, all their click-through rates and everything like that. And I came with a plan for each one of them. And it was like this big mapped out, hey, here's how you can save money if you flip your analog to digital and all these different things. And they were, because I had built the trust for those six months and then came back to them with a big plan that showed them their savings and everything like that, it was just taking orders. Like, it was boom. And I remember walking into my boss's office and just dumping, like, four huge orders on his desk about seven months in and being like, all right, fuck off.

Like, I told you. You know what I mean? So I think, obviously, don't say fuck off to your boss. But I think you have to have an expectation with your manager. You never want to be the rep that complains, right? You never want to be the rep that says, oh, I have a shitty territory, which is why, you know, which is why I haven't hit my targets. Yeah. I mean, even though it's true, you can't be that person. It shit happens. You know what I mean? Some people get the luck of the draw. They get a great territory. Some people get a shitty territory. I would actually rather be the rep that takes a shitty territory and turns it great than a great territory and, you know, makes it easy on me. Yeah. Because you'll learn, right?

You'll learn. And then when you do get that, I hope you don't. But if you do get that bad territory, you're not going to know how to deal with it. Yeah. Because eventually you're going to get a shitty territory in your career in sales, period. So learning how to deal with that and develop relationships. But I think the key is, is sitting down with your manager and looking at the data, looking at the facts to say, here's 15, 20 emails that I've gotten in the past week of clients saying piss off. Or looking back at the data of the past activities from the previous reps and sitting down with your manager and saying, like, I'm not complaining at all. I'm excited to tackle this challenge here. That said, we need to make sure expectations are clear here because I'm not going to be able to close, like, the likelihood of me being able to close anybody short term here is not going to be high.

So here's my strategy for attacking this territory. And my goal is to get it to this point. Are we clear on that expectation? Now, if your boss doesn't care about that and just says complete, you know, keep sending out emails and go after somebody else in the account, spam somebody else, then I'd question that boss and I'd question that company. But I think if you take that data-driven approach to it and then flip it over and stop selling and start adding value for the most part, you might be able to turn it around depending on how long you're going to be in that territory. Yes, I reach out and customize, but they connect and don't respond. So, yeah, I mean, I think it's, I think to your point, it's, hey, thanks for connecting.

You know, I used to do this. This is, before I was building my own brand, you know, Jay Barrow's brand, I used to be a lot more selective of who I let in my LinkedIn network. And what I would always do is when somebody sent to me a connection was I had a shortcut as well that said, hey, thanks for reaching out to me. Here's how I, here's how I use LinkedIn. You know, if somebody is one connected to me, I will make the introduction for you. And I expect the same from you. So, if I see somebody in your network that is, that I want to talk to, that one connected, two connected, I don't, but one connected, I will expect you to make an introduction for me. If you're willing to, if you're willing to have that type of relationship with LinkedIn and me, then I'm happy to accept.

But if you're not, I totally understand, but I'm going to respectfully decline the, you know, the, you know, that type of thing. So, I think you might be, you know, you might be able to take that and, you know, massage that a little bit to the engagement. So, when somebody says yes, you can kind of hit them back real quick and say, hey, thanks so much. The reason I wanted to reach out to you is because, you know, I've connected with a few people at your organization and, you know, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Here's one from Bob Clark. He had a good question. I like this one, which is, what's your best response to you're too expensive? What are your thoughts? Somebody's like, straight up, Morgan, you guys are way too expensive.

What is, what is too expensive mean to you? Yeah. Right. Because it's like, what, what does that mean? Because if you think about it, it's, it's your mindset of where you're currently at on what something's too expensive. Right. So, if you go to, let's just use a car, for example. If you go to the Porsche place and you don't have the money for it and you're just hanging out, you're like, oh, this is too expensive. But if, let's say, Kobe Bryant showed up at the Porsche shop, he's probably like, oh, yeah, this is, this is affordable. Like, this is not that much money to me. So, it's a different mindset. It's both, they're both, they're looking at the same price, but it's the mindset and the expectations of that person.

So, I always say like, yeah, so what does that mean? What, expensive, as in what, as in what way? Yeah. I mean, I think that's why I like phrasing it as, as compared to what, right? As compared to my competition, like, so you're going up against two or three competitors and we're comparing apples to apples here and I'm more expensive than them. As compared to how you're doing it now, well, obviously, the way you're doing it now is probably not working for you. That's why we're having this conversation. So, as compared to not doing anything, like, like, there's, like, there's a whole bunch of different ways that, like, you're too expensive could come out. And that's, that's why I actually encourage reps to write down, like, take a week and take a pen and paper.

And for an entire week, write down every objection that you get. And I mean that word for word, right? Like, not just, oh, we're too expensive, but literally, what did they say? Did they say you were too expensive? Or did they say, we don't have budget for that? Or did they say, you know, you're more expensive than, you know, how did they phrase it exactly? Because how they phrase it makes a difference on how you respond, right? And that's why the clarification approach is one of my favorites. Like, what do you mean by that? One of the things, pricing, you know, and we're, we're kind of in that space where it's like, it's, we're a premium product, right? I mean, I wouldn't say we're ultra premium.

We're not the, you know, Maserati type of stuff, but, you know, we're a legit, you know, we're a legit price in our range. And I don't apologize for it, you know, because I know the value that I bring when we do these trainings. I know the value this training does bring, right? And I can justify it based on the qualification stuff. So one of the things that I always thought was awesome was the CEO of Red Bull. This was back when like Red Bull first started up. And Red Bull was like hitting the scene. And it was the first time there was a can of something like that, that was like expensive. Yeah. Yeah. It was like, it's like 250 for a little teeny thing of Red Bull. Yeah, it's a good amount of money.

Right. And so there was an interview that I forget who was doing it, but the interview, the woman was asking the CEO of Red Bull, like, why is Red Bull so expensive? She said, you know, there's, there's, there's less liquid. You know what I mean? Are the ingredients more expensive? Like, you know, like 50 cents and you're charging 250 for less. What are you doing? And the dude straight up said, without even apologizing, he goes, how else would you know it was a premium product? And I was like, damn, that is a great, that is a great answer to that question. He's like, you know, like, so he's not pricing it based on the margin. He's saying, you know what, this is a premium product and I'm going to price it as such.

And there's something about the psychological, you know, psychology around that, you know, giving people high quality stuff at a high price. Yeah. You know, when people, here's an example, like you don't go into, um, buy a Beamer or, or a Mercedes or something like that and get all tied up in negotiations. You know what I mean? Like, I mean, I, I highly doubt they ever negotiate. No, it's just, so I bought the Tesla. Perfect example. Right. I bought the Model X. Yeah. It was, I didn't even talk to a sales rep. It was, I had to go on the website and I had to choose what packages I wanted. There was no haggling. There was no, let me go talk to my manager about this shit. Tesla's like, suck it.

This is how much it costs. And you bought it. I'm like, yup. I'm like, you know what I mean? So there's, I think the price to your point is all about perception and, and, and also what people's expectations are. Yeah. Um, that's why I think a lot of, like, I was training Tableau today or this week and, uh, you know, they have a challenge because, you know, Google, um, Google, I'm sorry, Microsoft Power BI, like Microsoft's BI tool. Yeah. Microsoft gives it away for free. So Tableau battles that all day, every day, which is why would I pay for a BI tool when Microsoft Power BI is free and I have to pay for your shit. Right. And obviously there's a lot more to Tableau stuff than, you know, what Microsoft brings to the table for that product.

Right. But it's this constant thing of, they have to keep battling it. And the same thing happened with LinkedIn. It was funny. LinkedIn, when I was training them a while back, their biggest competitor a while ago was LinkedIn. I mean, it's still kind of is right. But it's like before sales navigator and all that stuff came out, um, you could get probably 75 to 80% of what LinkedIn offered with just your free LinkedIn subscription. You know, until they came out with sales navigator and started kind of really, you know, that's when it was like, okay, I probably should pay for it. And so they were, you know, when I was training their reps, one of the biggest objections their reps had was, John, their objection is, I already have LinkedIn.

Why would I pay for it? And we kind of batted around the idea a little while for, and I was like, well, how many people currently pay for LinkedIn? Like what's the corporate, how many companies and people, that type of thing pay for LinkedIn? And he's like, they're like 30,000, we have about 30,000 customers. I'm like, well, then there's your answer. Hey, well, why would I pay for it? Why, if I can get it for free, why would I pay for, you know, the premium version of this? Well, I don't know. Why do 30,000 other people buy LinkedIn? Yeah. And the point there is just to get that person to kind of pause for a second and be like, well, shit, maybe there is something more to this. You know what I mean?

30,000 people can't be stupid. Yeah. So, you know, that's the same thing with the price. You know, I, I go, I go hard at price. So as long as your value is there, I go hard on price and don't back down too much at all. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time.