Jeremy Chen - The Art of Cold Calling: Tactics for Success

All right, before we get started here, you all know I talk a lot about AI and the pros and cons of AI and what we need to do to stay relevant in today's world. And it's all about leveraging this. Look, we have two options here. We either jump in and start figuring this stuff out or we get replaced. And I want to jump in and start figuring out, which is why I'm so excited to talk about HubSpot's new AI power tools. They have a content assistant and a chat spot that they've actually integrated into their CRM. And it talks about being a conversational virtual assistant baked into the CRM experience. And it's run on OpenAI's ChatCPT model. So it really gives you that conversational coaching that you need at every stage and wherever you are.

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And today's guest is Jeremy Chen. Now, Jeremy Chen runs his own sales organization, sales training organization, as a matter of fact, and focuses on cold calling. And I figured this would be a good opportunity. I haven't done a tactical podcast in a long time. And because cold calling is one thing that I am not seeing reps do anymore at all because they are scared to death of the phone, I thought it'd be good to get somebody who lives and dies on the phone to talk about what's working and what's not these days. So we talk about super tactical things. Look, if you're not making cold calls, but cold calling should be part of your game, this is a great episode to get tactical on. If you are making cold calls, hopefully this gives you some new ideas on things to think about.

So hopefully you enjoy this conversation and let's make it happen. Jeremy Chen, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast. How are you, my friend? Hey, listen, any day above ground is a great day. Thanks for having me. Yeah, these days, that's more true than you know. So, Jeremy, we are going to, you know, I haven't done a super tactical episode in a while here. So I'm looking forward to this conversation, specifically around cold calling, because there's a lot of talk about it and there's all sorts of AI stuff that's happening and creeping into our world here. So we're going to get super tactical with today's conversation. But before we do that, Jeremy, let's talk a little bit about, give us your background.

Talk to us about where you're coming from and what you're up to these days. Oh man, my background. Well, I started as a door-to-door salesperson for a telecom company. Worked my way up to, you know, top performer on the team. Went on to become an executive and then left there. Been on my own ever since. Founded Jeremy Chen Sales. It's doing a lot of sales enablement folks for the guys that are following me now when it comes to business development and sales process. So that's what I'm up to these days. Love it. Love it, man. So, I mean, and would you say you're special out of all the sales stuff that you do with clients and what you're doing, would you say that kind of your specialty is the cold call?

I mean, obviously, there's a lot of sales, but is it kind of for you, is it the focus on the cold calling? It is. I focus a lot on lead generation and the way I do it is through the cold call for sure, 100%. Yeah. So, you're one of those that is an advocate for it, obviously, right? Because not only do you do it, you train it and you work with your clients on it where, you know, the majority of the population right now is, fuck cold calling, right? It doesn't work. I can't get through. You know, the connect rates are abysmal. Nobody wants to talk to me. So, let's unpack that and prove us wrong here. Like what, because look, do I, I used to make $400 a week, you know, for five years of my life.

And I made a lot of money and a lot of relationships off of cold calling. And this was, but this was back in early 2000s, right? And this is when email wasn't really that big of a thing. It was a thing, but phone was still without question the number one way of communicating with people. And I think, you know, you hear a lot of people say cold calling is dead and all this other shit. And I think it is industry specific in a lot of ways. But talk to us about some of the stuff that you're seeing out there. We're going to talk to the tactics, but I want to hear from you about where you're seeing success, right? And is it with specific industries? Is it with specific people? Or is it just because you're doing it, you're seeing far better results than the people that don't?

Well, you know what? I think that it's undeniable that right now things are economy-wise are headed a little bit south. I think you're seeing a little bit of a turn in the economy for sure, if I can say that. But it just means that there's less noise to contend with, right? You got to think, we're just coming out of COVID and you touched on it. There's a ton of email going on. There's tons of ads. There's tons of this, tons of that. AI is a brand new thing. And I'm sure it's going to disrupt somebody's industry. In my opinion, there is nothing that beats calling somebody cold and saying, hey, listen, I might have something good for you. Okay. Industry agnostic. I can, you know, dial for insurance one day and put down the phone and dial for some software product the next day.

It makes no difference. You know, I'm still putting out 100, 200 calls a day and getting my, you know, anywhere between nine and sort of 22 pickups and some conversations. And I'm not here to paint a rosy picture. I mean, people still tell me to fly a kite every other day and that's fine. That's part of the game. But I still think your fastest path to revenue, your cheapest path to revenue, even if you're doing some due diligence, you want to find out about a market. What better way to pick up the phone and call somebody you don't know? So I'm doing it right now and I'm seeing success with it. All right. So, so with, I mean, cause I think one of the bigger challenges that people see is, you know, is, is just pure connect rates.

Right. Cause it's always difficult. Like, I think there's, once you have somebody on the phone, there's some tactics that we'll talk about as far as keeping them on the phone, engaging the conversation and, and, you know, and trying to, to your point, at least path resistance from a revenue standpoint. Cause you have that person right there. You don't have to go back and forth five times over email to figure this out. What are, with the 150 dials, are you using call dialers, are you using just old school from your standpoint phone and, and from a connect rate standpoint, how are you trying to optimize your connect rate? Like where are you getting those lists, where are you getting that information so that you can really make sure that it is the 10 to 15% at least pickup rate.

Right. Cause that's, what's so demoralizing is you make a hundred dials in a day and nobody even picks up the phone. So how are you addressing that part of it? Well, there's a big shift right now. And the one thing I'll tell you, and I think personally, a lot of people are making mistakes that I talk to is they think that calling people's cell phones is where it's at. I can tell you conclusively right now, I talked to the majority of my people on their extension, on their direct line at work. Right. So I call them at work and dial two, three, four, ask to speak to John and connect with John. Cell phones in my experience, and this is across sectors, right? I'm not talking about any specific sector here, but cell phones only account for 24% of my conversations, period.

So I think that people need to sort of be retrained that COVID is sort of in the background a little bit right now and people are doing business over the phone and you can connect with people on their office phone. They're picking it up right now. Do you find that when people pick up on their cell phone, they're actually more annoyed and or pissed off about the call than a regular through the dial system? It's about 60-40. It depends, you know, because somebody will answer their cell phone, they're on vacation, they're at a funeral, they're doing something that has nothing to do with work sometimes and you catch them at an awkward spot. And you do get that, you know, how'd you get my cell phone?

Why are you calling me? I think that's part of the game. I've booked appointments with those style conversations and I've booked appointments with folks that have told me, you know what? I would have never talked to you if you didn't call my cell phone. So it's about a 60-40 if I'm being honest with you. Hey, I want to take a quick minute to share with you what I'm working on these days with my new JBSales membership. It includes live monthly training delivered by me on my two signature courses, Filling the Funnel and Driving to Close. It also includes monthly workshops that I'll be running on specific skills and different tech like ChatGPT and how to leverage it in the sales process. And it gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip I've ever done.

You get all of this for $420 a year as an individual or $5,000 for teams. And as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners, if you go to www.jbarrows.com and click on the individual or team membership and use code podcast, you'll get 20% off. Let's make this happen together. Gotcha. Yeah, because I know for me, like, you know, it's funny. I love people who get mad when they pick up their cell phone and it's a cold call. It always cracks me up because it's like, dude, you knew my name didn't show up on your phone. Like, you knew this was an unknown number. You knew, like, and don't tell me you thought it was somebody else. Shut up. Like, if you thought it was somebody else, you would have had them on your phone.

So, come on. Right. And I think that's where, I think that the first five to 10 seconds of any call to me is, in a lot of ways, the most critical. Right. Because how do you get over that initial intro to, because everybody's, ah, crap, a cold call. Right. Like, that's unfortunately, you know, at least the mentality for most. So, how do you structure your calls? Right. So, when you, I mean, there's, I, we look at it from a training standpoint when we work with our clients, you know, we break down the cold call into different sections. Like, literally the first five seconds. Like, what do you say in the first five to 10 seconds? That earns you another 30 seconds, maybe, where you can tell them what you're, you know, why you're calling and those type of things.

And that 30 seconds earns you another minute or two where you can ask some questions and maybe go from there. And then that earns you the discovery call. So, we kind of look at it in those sections. How do you look at a call structure, if you will, and how do you break it down? And then let's start unpeeling each section of it, specifically that intro. Yeah. So, I mean, in the introduction, I have found it's easiest if I do what's called a pattern interrupt, where I'm just straight up up front with somebody. And it sounds probably something like this. John, I'm going to be honest. Hey, it's a sales call. And you're welcome to hang up on me or maybe give me 30 seconds and let me explain why I'm calling you.

Now, a lot of people have argued with me about why they don't love it. And that's fine. It's not for everybody. My personal take on it, my hot take on it, is, listen, I want to disqualify you in 30 seconds. It just means I can get back on the phone and talk to somebody else that I have a real shot with. Right? I'd hate to dance with somebody who's really not my dancing partner. So, you know, if they take the opportunity and listen, I make calls even this morning, I made some calls and got hung up on. That's fine by me. It absolutely is. It's part of the game. Right? So, you give them that easy out and just tell them, hey, 30 seconds, it is a cold call. Feel free to hang up. I'll explain why I'm calling, see if it's a fit.

Yeah. Nice. Yeah. I like the permission based as well. It's kind of like, you know, instead of diving right into it, I was taught early in my career, unfortunately, to, to literally just dive right in. Like, don't even let them breathe. Right? It's like, hey, Jeremy, you know, thanks for picking up. The reason I'm calling is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, and I'd love to talk to you and see if we can get some. And I tried it. It was funny. Um, you know, the company I worked for, Basho, they, that was their thing. Right? So that was their approach. And I, I remember being like, this doesn't feel right. Um, but Hey, a new training, I got to do this. Right. And I, and I actually purposely did it 100 times, 100 times.

And I got interrupted 100 times. I got a hundred people to say, I'm sorry, who is this? What do you want? Like halfway through my, ah, the reason I'm calling is that. So I like, I do like the permission based where it's like, Hey, can I get 30 seconds to wait? I'd like, I have a similar approach where I'll say, Hey, can I get 30 seconds to tell you why I'm calling before you hang up on me? Right. And I, and I, you know, assuming you want to hang up on me, but all I'm like, I said, is I just want to sell each stage. Like I want to sell in those five seconds. I'm trying to sell 30 seconds. And it was 30 seconds. I'm trying to sell two minutes. Basically. I'm not trying to sell my product or service.

I'm trying to sell the next step. So when somebody says, sure, Jeremy, now with that amount of dials that you're doing, how much of those, how many of these calls are like tailored because you know that person, you've done a little bit of homework on them and you have a very specific reason to call that person specifically versus more of a kind of relevance approach because you're calling into a certain persona and you have kind of a talk track around that persona. So what's your, what's your mix between personalization and relevance? Yeah. You know what? That's a great question. I lean towards relevance. I'm not a heavy research guy, uh, before, um, you call them. Um, and the philosophy behind that is pretty simple.

You got to remember, this is a cold call we're doing. It's not a pitch or, you know, we're not crafting a proposal to send these guys cold. Right. So, um, I would like to do all my, what I call sleuthing or digging for pain while I'm actually on the call. Right. Because half the time you do all that research up front, they don't pick up anyway. And then, you know, it's time wasted. So I just go for a relevance because I know who the persona is. I generally know two or three buttons that'll push them. And when I'm on the call, it's simple, you know, I'm digging for pain. And if I don't get anything, I'm out of there faster than they can kick me out. And they tell them that on the call. Yeah. How do you tell them that?

Like, is it like, do you set the stage with like pseudo upfront contract that says, look, I got a few questions for you here. You know, from there, it'll be pretty clear whether it makes sense for us to take the next step. Like, how do you, how do you put them at ease? Because what I find is, is if you start interrogating people, right. So you say they give you that 30 seconds and then you just dump into just like looking for pain, but it's more of an interrogation. Well, what do you do for this? And what do you do for that? What do you do for this? Like after like three or four of those questions, they're like, look, dude, could you just like, what do you got? Like, just give me your pitch.

So how do you permission based, like, say somebody says, sure, Jeremy, all right, I got 30 seconds. You caught me. Like, what do you want to talk about? Like, what's, what's the next step from there for you? So it's typically tailored to whatever demographic that I'm talking to. So as an example, I was calling into agriculture, um, this afternoon, actually. And I just simply say, Hey, been working with a bunch of farms. Here's what I'm hearing from other customers that we've served. What are you upset with? If anything, um, when it comes to X, Y, Z, ABC, right. And if they hit on something, I generally tend to flow with the conversation, right. Now there's a point in this after to your, to your question here, about three, four questions.

And I'll say, look, John, you gave me more than my 30 seconds. I want to ask you some more questions, but I'd probably take more of your time. So if you have your calendar open, I'd love to book, you know, 10, 15 minutes as a discovery. If at that point there's something I can help you with, I'll let you know. If there isn't anything, I'll be out of there faster than you can kick me out. And people genuinely, genuinely, if they're interested, like that approach because they realize that I'm valuing my time just as much as there is. You know, your prospects can tell when you're desperate. It comes across in your voice. You know, there's nothing worse than you calling up somebody and saying, Hey, please take this appointment.

And my manager's breathing down my neck. I really need this one. Yes. Right. Um, and I always tell my salespeople, I say, look, just relax. You have it all in there. Right. So, um, stick with the permission based approach and realize not everybody's going to be your customer. But when you find one, when you find one, do a great job of doing your job. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's the, the, I think the relevance factor is critical because too many reps I know, you know, for instance, I tell people all the time, like I see clients that'll do like call blitz days. You know what I mean? Where it's like, Hey, it's a cold call day today. It's like, well, let's hit the century club or whatever the hell it is.

And I always cringe on that. Cause I'm like, sorry, like there ain't enough Red Bull out there to get me hyped up for a day's worth of cold call. You know what I mean? So, but, but hours, right. I do power hours. Right. Well, I'll pick an hour and I'll just go to work. But the problem that I find with a lot of clients is when they do that power hour scenario that they bring their lists, like their reps bring their lists and their lists are typically all over the place. You know, it's like a VP of sales in this industry, a director of it in that industry of CMO in that industry. And with that approach, you're, you're almost forced to be generic. You're forced to say, tell me about your business.

You're forced to give a generic elevator pitch. So I guess how, when it comes to relevance for you, how do you prepare for relevance and, and what aspect of relevance, how deep do you go on relevance? Is it, is it, is it industry? Is it role? Is it like, how, how do you slice that up so you can be consistent with a message and have a talk track around it? Yeah. So what I'm making my calls, I'm always calling the same title, which is generally president, CEO, someone in the C level. And you've got to be careful with that to your point, because, uh, your chief marketing officer is going to have different pain points than your chief IT officer. Right. So when I'm calling down a list of a hundred, you can best believe that all of those people on there hold the CEO president, um, title.

From there, it's, uh, it's sort of generally by two things revenue. I don't really count because it, it's sort of sporadic. Um, but the other thing I really look at is head count, right? So I'm talking to companies that have at least 50 plus people. They've been around 10 plus years. They know their business really well because I find that, um, as a salesperson, the biggest thing that salespeople, um, sort of misstep on is, you know, you call some guy of a manufacturing company and you try to tell him, Hey, listen, I know how to run your company better than you do. That's a big slap in the face. Right. Yeah. So you, when you're pitching them, you gotta, you gotta be cognizant of what you're saying on the phone.

Um, and I feel that some people lose their way. Right. So those, those two are really about what I care about. And then depending on who and what I'm after, I'll look at a geography, but not so much. It really doesn't matter to me. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's the key. It's like, you don't have to know the details of my job or my day to day, but you better know enough to sound like, you know what you're talking about. You know what I mean? And so it's like, I always said to reps, you know, people ask all the time, like, how do you create urgency? Right. And, and I don't think you can, I don't think we as sales professionals can, but we can uncover it and we can drive it. And the way we do that is by aligning with priorities, right?

Like, like when your CEO stood up in the beginning of the year and said, this is what we got to do this year to be successful, successful, if I can't tie my solution, one or two of those good luck selling anything of significance. Right. But the problem is the way I used to get there was by saying dumb stuff, like, Oh, tell me about your priorities. Right. Whereas now if I'm calling into CIOs and healthcare, I'm going to do some homework. I'm going to Google or chat CVT. Hey, what are the top priorities of CIOs and healthcare right now? What are some of the big challenges that they're addressed with and, and what does their day to day life look like? Right. So I can do a little bit of business, you know, learn a little bit of business acumen.

And so now when I'm calling those people, I don't say, tell you about your priorities. I'm like, Hey, we're typically working with other CIOs and healthcare. And they're telling us that the top things that are on their plate right now are X, Y, and Z are those yours. Even if, even if they're not, it tends to open up the conversation when you show that you know them a little bit and you at least have some experience with that. So with, with that, from a messaging standpoint, are you specific to that role with your, with your message? Like, do you start with, cause it sounded like you started with, once you get that 30 seconds, it's, this is what we're doing with other people like you. Right. And so here's, and they're typically faced with these problems.

So is it a, is it a pitch and then questions or do you dive right into kind of relevant questions to see if that is a problem? And then you give them kind of your value statement. Yeah. So I generally stick to the relevance topic, you know, here's what I'm hearing in the market. Here's what previous customers in your segment have told me. Just wanted to reach out, see if you share any of the same pain points they might have. Right. Yeah. Um, and sometimes they pick up on it. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes it's a tangent. And this is the one thing, my biggest gripe with the cold call is, uh, people ask all the time, you know, what's your script? Well, how do you script a conversation with another person?

Right. Yeah. You have to have the ability to adjust on the fly. Right. So, um, to your point and to your question, I have three or four questions that are pretty generic. And as they give me more details, if they give me more details, I'll go with it. But if they don't, they want to shut down, I shut down with them. Right. There's no need to push a conversation with somebody who's not interested in talking. Right. Yeah. So I was going to say like, from a handling objection standpoint, do you handle objections or are you just like, all right, cool. No worries. You know what I mean? Like, I guess what, with that mentality of like, look, I don't want to bark up the wrong tree here, but to a certain degree, there's some points where you might want to push back a little bit because they might totally just be blowing you off without even hearing you.

So how, how do you approach objection handling when it comes to cold calling and do you just wave up the white flag as soon as it comes up or do you dig a little bit sometimes? I definitely dig, but what I tell people is we're not paid enough to handle objections, right? Because as soon as you come up with an answer, uh, your prospect is going to find like three more not to deal with you. Right. So I definitely dig. I look for pain, right? But if the guy keeps throwing, or girl keeps throwing up, you know, objection after objection and stonewalling you, I might say something to him like, Hey, listen, you said this to me, you said that to me, you said this to me. It doesn't sound like even if I had a magic wand and create your perfect ideal solution, you'd deal with me if I was a last man standing.

And some people say no, and you need to know when to fold them, right? But some people say, well, I didn't say that. And here's my actual problem. And then we can get back into conversation. So that's what I mean when you can't really script these things, right? You just have to kind of go with it. So how do you get, well, let's, cause I, trust me, I am anti-script all day long, specifically when it's a cold calling, but you know, I'm more of a structure guy, right? Like what's the structure of a call? Like what's the intros? And let me play around with some of those. What's the reason for my call? What's my call to action? But, but for, you know, brand new kids on the phone, they kind of need a script.

So how do you onboard new hires to, to get, to get used to being dynamic enough to be able to carry a conversation with just a few data inputs versus, cause I, that's where I see scripts being somewhat useful is to get somebody started, right? Like you don't know what you don't know right now. Here's a script. If they say this, go here and go there. Right. But there are very soon thereafter, I think you, you gotta make it your own, but how do you onboard people, um, or get people comfortable to the point where they can just have a conversation that isn't scripted? So me personally, I'm an advocate of this. Um, I have a Google drive that houses all types of conversations from ones I booked appointments with ones that I, you know, I got stonewiled by the gatekeeper ones that signed the phone on me, one that just wasn't a good fit.

And it's a resource library. So new hires that are going through onboarding can actually go through there and folder by folder, listen to these different style calls. By the time they're ready to get on the phone, they have good product knowledge. They have some idea. And if they're really paying attention, something in the resource library might click and they can use it in their, um, their actual talk track when they're getting on the phone. Now you've got to realize this is generally a three month process before somebody feels comfortable and nine months before they actually are consistent with the results they produce. Right. Um, if you, if you have the tenacity, if you have the guts to actually stick with it, because most people, they, they give up on the phone like three months, right?

They can't do it. They can't hack it. The rejection's too much, whatever. Um, but that's generally how I, I structure it so that people feel comfortable. They know that somebody else has made these calls and we're not just coming up with some theory and you're going to be the crash test dummy to test it for the very first time for us. That's not how it works. Yeah. Yeah. And you actually mentioned something there that I think is, is something that not enough people put enough weight to, when it comes to the value of cold calling still, because it could easily be argued, you know, in certain industries that connect rates are so bad and there's no responses. So let's not do it. But the reason I still advocate pretty strongly for it outside of, I think it, it is part of the overall contact strategy and always in, in like from a cadence standpoint, anytime I implement phone onto a cadence, it increases the overall conversion ratios.

It might not be the actual conversion ratio, but, but the other thing that I think is, is extremely valuable specifically for new sales reps is the experience of making a cold call and getting through that grind, that three month grind of afterwards being like this man, because sales is a brutal profession, right? And you have to have grit. You have to have tenacity. You have to accept the fact that 99 people out of a hundred are probably going to tell you no, and those ratios don't change much throughout your career. I mean, once you get further cycle sales, you have higher close ratios, but that top end of the funnel, the five to 8% range on that. I mean, if you think of baseball, right? If you're batting 330, you know, 300, you're going to the, you know, you're going to the all-star game and you're going to the, you know, you're an all-star, right?

Where here, if you're batting eight, right? Like if you're batting 8%, buy any car you want, you're, you're actually, right? You're doing great. But I think there's that tenacity that you have to build that grit factor. So how much do you credit that, um, in your career? Cause you went door-to-door sale in early days, which taught you a lot. Do you think your door-to-door sales experience of getting doors slammed in your face really prepared you for the cold call? Um, yes and no. You know, there was a piece of advice that somebody gave me a long time ago and I think this changed my perspective on, um, rejection and how to handle rejection. And what they told me was this, look, as a salesperson, you are an actor and you just happen to be at a Broadway play and, um, your prospect is your sort of dancing partner here and sometimes you're not a fit.

And so when five o'clock or seven o'clock or whenever rolls around and you're done for the day, um, you take off your, your play clothes, you hang them on the behind of the door and you go home. And when I got that piece of advice, it made me realize like when I get rejection, they're not rejecting Jeremy or John as a person, they're rejecting the offer because they don't know me. Right. I just walked in. I just showed up. I just called, called. They don't know me. Right. I think the number one mistake that people make is they get in the car at five o'clock when it's time to go home and then they start checking in some of the trash. Right. Oh, that guy told me no good. I'm no good. That's, you know, he's probably right.

I'm going to, you know, I'm going to quit my job tomorrow. And become a BMW mechanic. Right. So, um, I think that a lot of people, if they realize that they're actually getting a rejection to the offer and not them as a person would look at things differently and actually persevere the career. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. You can't take any of this personal. That's why, you know, it's, I always tell people like, well, the worst thing that could happen to you, the worst thing that could happen to you is to hang up on you. Like that, that's so if you can handle that, well, I'll take that back. The worst thing that can happen is if you're a total douchebag and you do something sleazy, uh, then you, that person could then call you or call your manager and be like that person, you know what I mean?

And I've done that before, quite frankly, there's no question about it. I've gotten a dirtbag sales rep to try to call and in sneaky and all these different, you know, tactics that they use to get in touch with me. And I was like, uh, and I hung up the phone with them and I called their manager immediately. And it was like, look, are you teaching your reps how to do this? Cause if you're teaching them that, then you're a dirtbag. But if you're not, I just want to get you a heads up that your sales reps, this is what they're doing. And this is degrading the profession. Cause if you take that, and this is what I want to get from you is, is this like, yes, actor. Okay. But how do you balance that with authenticity?

Because I can be an actor and I can be this, this totally different person, right? That, but, but I think authenticity really matters. So how do you balance those two? Yeah. So as an actor, all I'm saying is, look, I'm putting my emotions behind and this is truly a business conversation. I'm still me that loves the golf and loves cars and loves talking about the weather and enjoy summer and barbecuing outside and all the rest of it. Right. So it's not like I lose the element of being a human. All I'm saying is when you realize that it's simply a rejection to the offer and it really doesn't matter because you're acting anyway, as a representative of your company, five o'clock rolls around, completely forget about it.

Right. You check out and move on with your life. So, um, you know, a lot of people, you know, take that to heart and say, well, I got to be enthusiastic and everything is sunshine and rainbows. I've never seen somebody wake up and go to work like that. I mean, unless you're one out of a hundred million that really truly loves what you do and you're a Steve Jobs and you just came up with the iPhone, that's fantastic. But for the rest of us, right, that have to go to work to pay the bills because you got a mortgage and family to take care of, um, bring some of that in because it brings the realism to, Hey, listen, I'm a human too. On the other side of this phone. Yeah. And how do you, so how do you stay motivated?

Right. I mean, I think there's the, there's the, the authenticity, there's being an actor, not taking it personally, but then there's the motivation of just coming back day after day after day for this type of stuff. Right. And, and look, I don't care how mentally strong you are. There are plenty of days. And I got to imagine for you too, that you just like, Jesus, you know what I mean? Like what a brutal day and why am I doing this? And like, like what, so how do you personally stay motivated to keep this up for as many years that you have? Well, there's two things and, um, you know, talk about being real. Um, the, the one thing for me is I don't think, um, I could achieve the level of success I've achieved, uh, in any other profession.

Right. I was supposed to be an engineer. That's what I went to college for. Um, and I know some fantastic people that are engineers, but they make $80,000 and they sit in the office all day to me. That would be boring. I'd rather watch paint dry. Um, I've done some wonderful things in my career. And I attributed it all to sales. Right. And so, um, look, I'm telling my fellow salespeople out there, look, you might be having a bad day, week, month, quarter, whatever, but realize that you can turn this all around and it literally starts with the next call. Um, and as soon as you realize that, like truly internalize that you realize like everything is temporary. That guy just told me to go, go fly a kite in the middle of, uh, traffic.

Fantastic. Great. Really doesn't bother me because I'm onto the next one. And I've already forgot about what's his face. Right. So, uh, I guess the way I would sum that up is it's really an ego thing. Once you drop the ego and you really don't care about the outcome one way or another, you'll, you'll be a lot better off for it. All right. Quick break to tell you about one of my favorite podcasts on the HubSpot podcast network, which is the surf and sales podcast hosted by my good friends, Richard Harris and Scott Lease. First of all, these two are personal friends of mine and they are two of the most authentic, smart, intelligent, knowledgeable people that I've ever come across as it relates to sales.

And their podcast is fantastic. There's no fluff in this podcast. If you like my podcast, you're going to love theirs because they get right down to it. Real world stuff. And it's not just about sales. It's about mental health. It's about being an entrepreneur, growing your business, all sorts of different things that round out the business professional and the person. So I highly recommend checking out their podcast and listening to some of their new episodes. They got one with Anthony Natoli, who talks about getting off the sidelines and engaging and building your own personal brands and the right mindset for starting to build your brand. So if you're all talking about internal, you know, personal brands and thinking about that journey, you're going to want to check out that episode.

And there's a whole bunch of others that I recommend as well. So check them out. Let me know what you think. Let's make it happen. Yeah. And I think that, you know, that comes with a perspective, right? So it's like, you know, at 47 years old, I get that, right? Cause I've been there, done that. And I can, I can really look back at the success of my career and, and, and can tie a lot of it to cold calling and just, you know, whether it was the results of cold calling or, or just the act of cold calling. Right. But I, that's what I, you know, that's why all these, these new kids coming into, into sales, you know, they don't get past that hump. They, they, they, they, they don't see the results.

Right. So they don't have that context to say, Hey, you know, it's not about me. It's a, you know, so I think there's a little bit of mental toughness that they have to figure out and maybe a little bit of guidance from some people who've been there, done that, uh, which is why it always kills me when I see VPs of sales, right. When you got a VP of sales telling their reps to cold call all day long, but yet they don't even pick up cold calls. Right. Or like, and, and, or they rip people apart for making cold calls. Right. They're like, how dare you call me on my cell phone? It's like, you asshole, you're the exact one who's telling your entire team to make these exact calls. And you're not even picking it up.

Like I pick up all cold calls because I want to learn. I mean, not only like, I think it's a good way to like, okay, cool. There's some cool new shit out there. Right. But, but also like, I, I, I appreciate a cold call just like anybody else. It's like, if you get a good one, man, I'm, I'm learning from that and I'm going to apply that to, to my approach. Well, it's true. I mean, you have, unfortunately, and I've been victim of it where I've had management, um, folks who, um, never did what I did, but then tried to tell me what I, what I shouldn't be doing. And it's just like, you know, it, it falls on deaf ears. I think our message, um, is for the ones that out there that know it works. Right.

Um, and just need to get over the hump. If you think about this, um, one of the greatest basketball, if not the greatest basketball player of all time, Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. And he's still Michael Jordan. Right. So, um, I think that if people stopped living in the moment so much and realized like, Hey, you know, this is going to end in 30 seconds. Um, and I'm going to do my next one. You'd be surprised, um, how quickly you could turn things around. Yeah. Uh, a couple of tactical ones. What do you do when somebody says, uh, I love this one. Uh, I'm in a meeting right now. Right. Somebody picks up the phone and says, I'm in a meeting, which I think is a total bullshit, uh, objection because of the, you know, my mentality is like, you're not in a meeting.

Like you, you, because you're either the rudest person on the planet that just picks up random phone calls in the middle of meetings, or you picked it up and you realize it was a cold call and you didn't want to talk to me. So shut up. You're in a meeting. But what's your tactical response to somebody who's like, Oh, I'm sorry. I'm in a meeting right now. Do you just, just bail? Or do you try to kind of keep them on the phone for a little bit? Well, my mentality is, uh, I'm a little bit cheeky and I'm sort of a garbage in garbage out type guy. So, um, if somebody tells me they're in a meeting, I go, Hey, I'm in one, two, do you got 30 seconds on keeping on. Yeah. I actually, I've tried this one recently.

That actually, sometimes it works. It doesn't, but, but that's a, that's a tough one. Cause it's hard to get through that anyways, but I'll do this one. I'll be like, Oh, is the meeting that boring that you came out to pick up a random ass cold call? Cause if it is, I'm helping, I'll help you out. I'll give you an excuse to get out of that meeting. Right. And you'll hear him be like, ah, all right. Right. Cause I mean, cause I'm calling you out. Right. Cause you're like, Oh, I'm in a meeting right now. Oh man. Is it that boring that you just picked up a random ass cold call in the middle of it? Holy crap. Look, if you need an excuse to get out of this thing, man, I'll be your guy. So give me like, give me just five minutes.

I promise you, I'll get you out of that bullshit meeting. Right. And then, and yeah. And then they laugh about it and they're like, all right, you know, what do you want to talk about? So, um, what about the, uh, what about the, what about the old, uh, where'd you get my number? Like, how do you, how'd you get my number? Like, do you, do you dance around that one or do you come straight at it with exactly where you got it? Yeah. I tell them straight up, you know, I bought your phone number. I got it on Google, whatever. Um, and people are just like, you know, recently, actually the just this morning, a guy told me, really my phone number is up there. I said, yeah. And he sat there and put it into Google while I was in the phone and he goes, holy crap, it is out there.

Okay. What do you want to talk about? So, um, you know what? Honesty is the best policy. Definitely. I even tell him, I'll take them off the list too. Like, I'll be like, Hey, look, we get it through a list service and I'll name whatever the list service is. And if you want, I'll be happy to request that that list service, take your name off there. With that said, do you have five minutes so I can, you know what? And so I'll address it, but then I'll move right into like, try to, parlay that into the conversation. Right? So it's like, yep, this is where I got it. I'm happy to help you out. If you do, if you're pissed off about that, would you give me five minutes, you know, and just move into it.

And it usually I get the, yeah, all right. Cause I'm, I'm kind of like, Hey, cool. If you're, if you're that mad that your phone number is out there, I'll happily tell whatever service it is. That said, would you be open to this call? You know what? That's a great approach. I just always found it funny. Like you're a business, you're clearly operating in or at a business. Um, why be mad that, you know, your contact information is out there. It means that you're doing something correct anyway. So people that ask where you got my number from, it's like, where do you, where did you want me to get it from? Right. It's like, well, it's like the early days of LinkedIn people. You're not even early days, but still some people are like, you know, uh, what were you looking at me on LinkedIn?

Yeah, I was. And if you don't want me to, then don't put your shit on LinkedIn asshole. You know what I mean? It's just like, it's a public thing that you put your information there. Like, why would you not want me to use that information and be as relevant as possible when I make this call to you? So that's, it always cracks me up when people get mad about the fact that they're, their information's out there or their tech, your phone is like, good Lord, dude, you really live in the real world at this point. Well, hell yeah. I don't know. People just put themselves in silos and that's fine. They're not my people. And, you know, to that same point, I've had people telling me that they can't stand me, but still bought from me.

So it makes no difference to me at the end of the day. Awesome. Well, we're coming up on time here, Jeremy. Any other like small tactical things that you think are good for the audience to know about, uh, with different ideas or tips or things that you do that's a little unique that drives results for you? You know what? The one thing that I'll tell your audience, um, and whoever might pick this up along the way is remember that when you're making the cold call, you're not selling on the phone unless you're like a one call closed type company. That's fantastic. Very rare nowadays. Um, so just remember to go, go for the appointment. If they're interested, they're engaging in conversation, just ask them, Hey, listen, you know, you got some time this week.

We can pull out a calendar set up half an hour. Um, I see a lot of reps today just trying to, uh, you know, sell over the phone. Uh, they get one guy that answers the phone and they just bombard them. Right. So just remember what you're there for. Yeah. I like that. You know, I always tell people, you're not, again, you're not selling your solution. You're not selling your products. You're selling time. You're selling the next step. That's what you're selling. Right. And if you can chunk it out, even in that call, again, those first five seconds, get 30, that 30 gets two minutes, that two minutes earns that meeting. So awesome. Jeremy will tell people where you can find a little bit more information about what you're working on these days.

Hey, check me out at jeremychensales.com or, um, just the same on LinkedIn, Jeremy Chen. Uh, you can follow me there. I don't really post too much. And if I don't respond to you, I'm sorry. Marketers have ruined the platform in my opinion. But, uh, um, if you've got a real legit question, reach out to me. I'll do my best to respond. Love it. Awesome, Jeremy. I appreciate you coming on, man. It was a fun conversation. Hey, John, thanks for having me. Definitely. And everybody else out there, hopefully you picked up a couple of tactics. And if you haven't been making calls recently, get on the phones. It's, uh, it's fun. It's a good way to practice and, you know, uh, humble yourself a little bit, but also hopefully drive some business.

And because so few reps are doing it these days, it is a way for you to differentiate yourself and stand out. Um, and with that, like I tell everybody all the time, look at the, you know, these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today. Cause no matter how bad your day is going, or you think it's going, if you make somebody smile today, you know, you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all very much. And I'll see you on the other side. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did with your support and our incredible guests. We're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now. And I can't thank you enough. Now to keep the momentum going, it would mean the world to me.

If you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network. Also check out my new website at www.johnmichaelbarrows.com where you'll find even more ways to engage. There's a ton of free content and you can also get trained from me directly as an individual or for your team. Look, I'm out there selling every day, just like you are. And I'm doing my best to stay on top of all the latest trends and technology. So if you're looking to level up and you give a shit about this profession of sales, let's connect and let's make this happen together. Bye.