Dan Martell - Right Way to Build an Outbound Sales Team with Aaron @ PredictableRevenue - Escape Velocity Show #40

00:00:00.040 Sales is life skill and you need to be able to sell yourself an idea or a

00:00:03.040 product if you want to accomplish anything in life.

00:00:05.160 Admission sequence start.

00:00:07.440 Three, two, one.

00:00:18.760 Aaron, how's it going?

00:00:20.240 That's a very complex and loaded question you're asking me there, Dan.

00:00:22.840 Really, you want to start off on a tough, uh, this is a hard hitting question.

00:00:26.560 I thought this would be a tough piece.

00:00:27.640 No, no hard hitting.

00:00:29.000 Dude, you've been a staple in the SaaS space

00:00:33.840 with your books, authorship, blogging.

00:00:37.760 I know that you've, and that's one question

00:00:40.560 I want to ask about, how did you end up

00:00:42.360 co-writing the book with Jason Lemkin?

00:00:44.360 I never got the back story to that.

00:00:45.960 Oh, yeah, and the From Impossible 2 book?

00:00:47.840 Yeah.

00:00:48.460 It's like my go-to when people are like, OK,

00:00:50.460 I'm ready to scale, which I read.

00:00:52.980 That's the foundational book.

00:00:54.580 Yeah, OK.

00:00:55.280 I mean, we just updated it a couple of recently.

00:00:57.380 I saw that.

00:00:58.940 So the way it came about was, for me,

00:01:01.580 I really need partners to do things.

00:01:04.940 That's how, like I say, hey, I'm not Elon Musk,

00:01:07.820 who seems like he's got infinite motivation,

00:01:10.400 whether he does or not, I don't know.

00:01:12.200 For me, I get tired.

00:01:13.700 And we have big family.

00:01:15.500 We have nine going on 11 kids.

00:01:18.080 Got a $5 million business.

00:01:19.820 I got business, big family.

00:01:22.320 If I, and I get, I procrastinate.

00:01:24.600 I get anxious about kind of perfectionism.

00:01:25.820 OK, you're human.

00:01:26.620 Yeah, I definitely have all my faults.

00:01:28.960 So what cuts through the noise in my resistance,

00:01:32.200 my what's called just procrastination, or busyness,

00:01:36.040 is partners and deadlines.

00:01:38.260 So having a partner on something means I've got not only

00:01:41.300 someone to show up for, but also it just

00:01:42.960 makes it more enjoyable to kind of bounce ideas off of.

00:01:45.340 And then having deadlines, of course,

00:01:47.020 deadlines make the world go around.

00:01:48.340 Yeah, forcing functions.

00:01:49.800 And that was in the book.

00:01:51.260 So when I thought about, hey, it just

00:01:52.920 was time to do a new book, and it was more of a feeling.

00:01:55.440 I think sales, predictable revenue

00:01:57.180 had been out for four or five years, or I'd say four years.

00:02:01.920 I knew Jason from a few years ago.

00:02:03.400 He hadn't really, he started blogging a bit.

00:02:05.400 Just Cora, he went nuts on Cora.

00:02:07.040 Yeah, and this is, I think, before that.

00:02:08.580 But I just, I really liked his stuff.

00:02:10.360 I think I saw it on Facebook, and I reached out to him

00:02:13.200 and said, hey, would you want to do a book?

00:02:15.680 And he said, sure, basically.

00:02:18.440 So at that point, and he kind of left it up to me,

00:02:21.820 publisher or not, and I had self-published

00:02:25.080 predictable revenue.

00:02:26.080 There's pros and cons to that.

00:02:27.700 This time, I decided to try Wiley as a publisher.

00:02:30.060 There's pros and cons to that.

00:02:32.160 So we got a publisher.

00:02:34.640 And then we had deadlines.

00:02:36.660 So I think, ultimately, it's really I wanted a partner.

00:02:39.640 I really respected Jason's material.

00:02:42.000 I'd say more than anyone else in the kind of the SaaS revenue

00:02:45.240 writing space.

00:02:46.020 There's a lot of great writers.

00:02:47.940 His was just so complimentary to mine.

00:02:50.440 And again, this is before he was like Mr. Big Shot,

00:02:52.680 I think, in that way.

00:02:53.900 And yeah, it was probably, I think,

00:02:56.400 over a couple of years it took to get the book done.

00:02:58.480 OK, so start to finish, about 24 months kind of thing?

00:03:00.760 Something like that, 18 months.

00:03:02.600 I could go back, but I think with,

00:03:04.620 because there were some e-book and kind of beta

00:03:06.680 tests I started with.

00:03:07.840 So in terms of the way to do it, I like smaller steps.

00:03:10.580 Yeah, didn't you blog Predictable Revenue

00:03:12.580 for the most part?

00:03:13.220 Yeah, the two books were created differently.

00:03:15.580 So Predictable Revenue started off as a blog

00:03:18.920 when I was at Salesforce, when Salesforce actually

00:03:20.840 banned blogging, because this was back in like 2004.

00:03:23.280 Wow.

00:03:23.780 So blogging was illegal, or whatever the term was.

00:03:26.840 But I started just for myself to find my voice.

00:03:29.600 Tried some sales blogging.

00:03:30.600 I did some other things.

00:03:32.140 And then after a few years, there was all these blogs.

00:03:36.160 And I thought about doing a book.

00:03:38.620 I actually had a contract with Wiley,

00:03:41.160 which is a book publisher, when I left Salesforce.

00:03:45.540 So I got, but long story short, I got married, had kids,

00:03:49.960 had to make more money, had to publish the book,

00:03:52.180 forcing function.

00:03:53.100 Great.

00:03:53.600 Yep, so finally published the book.

00:03:55.420 Again, procrastination.

00:03:57.140 The good news is by waiting on doing it and doing consulting

00:03:59.940 and more writing and speaking, I'd crystallized the book

00:04:02.340 to be a better book than if I had done it years earlier.

00:04:04.860 So do you feel like that's your creative process

00:04:07.480 is to put it out the world, get some feedback, iterate,

00:04:10.040 try it again?

00:04:11.380 Yeah, it's kind of commit to something

00:04:13.160 and then figure how to do it.

00:04:14.360 Got it.

00:04:14.860 And honestly, we do that with kids.

00:04:17.180 Let's do an adoption, and we'll kind of fit.

00:04:19.360 Like, we have a baby we're in the process of adopting,

00:04:21.640 And do we know how we'll handle the kind of the load?

00:04:23.960 Because I don't know, you've had kids.

00:04:25.600 The baby stage is a rough one.

00:04:28.300 It's very rough.

00:04:28.920 It's very rough.

00:04:30.020 Let's just be honest about that.

00:04:31.300 OK, good.

00:04:31.920 I'm very honest.

00:04:32.520 There was a woman entrepreneur who was like, 1.00

00:04:36.640 can I swear here?

00:04:37.420 Yeah, you can swear, man. 1.00

00:04:38.960 I was like, I fucking hate babies. 0.99

00:04:40.800 Not of course, but like the woman said this. 1.00

00:04:42.700 Her, was she a mother? 0.94

00:04:44.580 Yeah, yeah.

00:04:45.180 Wow.

00:04:45.640 Yeah, because it's not so much the babies themselves

00:04:47.660 as everything around the exhaustion.

00:04:49.260 Oh, it's not sleeping, man.

00:04:51.520 I don't think people actually talk about that that much.

00:04:54.140 But once you get to 18 months, two years, two and a half years,

00:04:56.560 that magic starts.

00:04:57.280 Just becomes special.

00:04:57.900 Yeah, so much magic.

00:04:59.200 So again, let's commit to have.

00:05:00.840 We just felt important to adopt a child.

00:05:02.900 This happened before, because we've adopted four so far.

00:05:07.140 And we don't know how to pay for it, maybe.

00:05:09.580 We may not know how we're going to handle the load,

00:05:11.940 and we just figure it out.

00:05:13.060 But the book, commit to the deadline,

00:05:14.940 and then figure it out.

00:05:15.700 Work from back and forth.

00:05:16.520 Conferences.

00:05:17.260 There's so many times I've committed to doing a talk,

00:05:19.800 whether I was putting it on myself or showing up.

00:05:22.300 And I'm like, I'm not sure what I'll do.

00:05:23.800 Maybe I'll just come up with a title,

00:05:25.000 and then I'll fill it in later.

00:05:26.420 Go in the blanks.

00:05:26.960 So it's burning my bridges, burning my ships.

00:05:31.620 That works for me.

00:05:32.760 Again, it cuts to the procrastination.

00:05:34.020 You like the pressure.

00:05:35.760 I don't know if I like it, but it works.

00:05:37.380 I'm the same way.

00:05:38.160 I actually have a trick where if I'm speaking at an event,

00:05:43.020 they'll be like, hey, send us your slides two weeks prior.

00:05:45.680 And I just update the first slide of some old talk,

00:05:48.040 And I send it to essentially be the first person

00:05:50.980 to hand in their slide.

00:05:52.360 And then come the day of and be like, here are my actual slides.

00:05:55.400 They hate me for it, but at least I

00:05:57.100 feel like it's a medium ground.

00:05:58.660 Because I'm just that way.

00:06:00.160 It's like I need to do more creative things closer to when

00:06:04.480 I can get in the head space.

00:06:05.660 Is that how you are?

00:06:06.340 Yeah, I am.

00:06:06.880 Because I feel like the day before is when I'm really

00:06:09.080 thinking, and I have the most relevant, useful information

00:06:11.720 at that point.

00:06:12.700 Doing stuff too far advanced is kind of disconnected

00:06:15.160 from that event.

00:06:16.060 So yeah.

00:06:16.960 So one thing that you've written, I think it's like 2011.

00:06:20.200 I think that's where, sorry, where procrastination

00:06:22.840 actually helps sometimes.

00:06:24.060 Totally.

00:06:24.640 So it's a creative.

00:06:25.640 That's the right word.

00:06:26.560 It's really, it's like getting your timing right.

00:06:28.540 It's knowing, for me, knowing thyself

00:06:31.020 around the creative process.

00:06:33.040 I'm just, my brain's not ready to go in the place it needs

00:06:36.220 to, to produce.

00:06:37.600 Amen, brother.

00:06:38.200 Early.

00:06:39.280 You're very well known for cold emailing 2.0,

00:06:42.700 essentially a strategy that you wrote about.

00:06:44.620 I think it's 2011 or 2010 you first wrote about it?

00:06:46.860 Yeah, 2011 in the book, well, in the book, yeah.

00:06:49.480 Yeah, now on the blog.

00:06:52.600 What's changed since then?

00:06:53.800 Well, so concept for those that don't know,

00:06:56.260 from my, this is the way I've always implemented,

00:06:58.360 email the company asking who's the person in charge

00:07:01.440 of this area of the business.

00:07:02.640 They forward you off to the right person,

00:07:04.700 and then you use that kind of social credibility

00:07:06.580 to move the conversation forward.

00:07:08.380 What's changed, because man, the tool sets

00:07:11.360 have come out of the woodwork since then.

00:07:14.240 the volume, people are, everybody's

00:07:16.640 doing some kind of cadence for outbound.

00:07:18.980 You guys do this at Predictable Revenue.

00:07:21.660 What's changed in that strategy or approach?

00:07:25.820 That's a great question.

00:07:26.900 Because back in the 2000s, when I was at Salesforce,

00:07:30.840 and even 2011 and so on, there wasn't as much cold email.

00:07:35.140 And in the Predictable Revenue book,

00:07:37.640 specifically talked, like I said, using cold email

00:07:40.240 to get referrals.

00:07:41.420 Now, that's not the only technique at Salesforce

00:07:43.580 to use, but that was the most interesting and different.

00:07:47.100 So today, there's a lot more technology to do that.

00:07:52.680 There's 1,000 applications to send email and follow up

00:07:55.700 and do phone calls.

00:07:57.100 And there's sales loft and outreach are two popular ones.

00:07:59.760 There's a lot of them.

00:08:01.080 So generally, there's this kind of Uber

00:08:04.000 trend of overwhelming across the world.

00:08:06.200 There's more apps.

00:08:07.020 Every niche is crowded.

00:08:08.360 There's more channels.

00:08:09.260 There's more messages.

00:08:10.140 There's more content.

00:08:11.280 So everyone's overwhelmed in general.

00:08:14.580 So I know there's these people, if you've

00:08:17.520 heard the fact that buyers are more educated than ever.

00:08:19.900 No, they're not.

00:08:20.560 They're more confused than ever.

00:08:24.520 There used to be 500 sales apps.

00:08:25.860 Now there's 5,000.

00:08:26.760 And then a few years, it'll be 50,000.

00:08:28.960 So this overwhelm is everywhere.

00:08:30.400 There's too much email.

00:08:31.740 So the principles are the same.

00:08:33.120 Really, the predictable revenue book

00:08:34.560 and kind of the cold calling 2.0 approach

00:08:36.520 of outbound prospecting, that's the function and team

00:08:40.640 I created at salesforce.com.

00:08:43.000 It was really about having a funnel.

00:08:44.440 It's having a system, a repeatable system.

00:08:46.720 Whether it's a cold email or cold call,

00:08:48.400 it really is not the point.

00:08:50.400 It was you have a predictable way to generate leads.

00:08:53.880 And if you can do that, then you can

00:08:55.640 create predictable revenue.

00:08:57.200 So the funnel's the same.

00:08:59.060 The techniques are a little bit different,

00:09:00.680 but not that different.

00:09:02.020 What I find is that having more email,

00:09:04.360 sort of like in marketing, more content,

00:09:06.180 you just need to be more on point with who your customer is,

00:09:08.960 what they care about, and kind of understanding

00:09:10.640 the way to reach them.

00:09:12.760 We do a lot.

00:09:14.380 So PredictableRevenue.com is a company

00:09:16.680 that does outsourcing and training

00:09:17.960 all around outbound prospecting.

00:09:20.060 We do a lot around LinkedIn now.

00:09:22.220 So again, email, LinkedIn, calls.

00:09:25.740 It's like whatever works.

00:09:26.680 There's messages and there's channels.

00:09:28.140 Yeah, there's messages, there's channels.

00:09:29.360 It's like knowing your customer,

00:09:30.880 knowing the kind of messages and their problems,

00:09:33.400 and knowing the channels and be able to test those.

00:09:36.460 So now we do a lot more like projects

00:09:38.800 what we call outbound validation, kind of first projects

00:09:42.100 to hypertest 20 or 40 different kinds of message channel

00:09:46.360 target mixes to try to nail the right details

00:09:49.960 for that right customer.

00:09:51.440 Does it look more like ABM in that sense,

00:09:53.640 or account-based marketing?

00:09:54.440 No.

00:09:54.940 No?

00:09:55.440 ABM's different.

00:09:56.440 It's really more at a level around most customers

00:10:00.940 aren't specific enough around the kinds of companies that

00:10:03.400 are really the best fit, the kinds of people,

00:10:05.340 and what they really want.

00:10:06.340 And what their hook is going to be for interest.

00:10:08.400 It's like drilling a lot deeper into the psyche

00:10:12.240 of your customer.

00:10:13.800 Because most companies, it's kind of this nailing a niche,

00:10:16.440 which is really working to understand

00:10:18.840 the types of customers you've got, who needs you the most,

00:10:22.280 versus when are you a nice-to-have.

00:10:24.180 And really, again, reading the customer's minds.

00:10:26.760 What are they thinking?

00:10:27.580 What do they want?

00:10:28.580 Well, I know that some people, when it comes to marketing,

00:10:30.980 they talk about just the copy or the lexicon.

00:10:34.560 Some companies, we'll call it, they

00:10:36.300 have clients or customers.

00:10:37.460 I mean, gym membership has members, lawyers have clients, et cetera, patients if you're a doctor.

00:10:44.000 Is that what you're trying to test to figure out for that target customer?

00:10:49.660 What are the words that are going to resonate?

00:10:52.280 How does that look like?

00:10:52.980 You want there to be the, whether, again, whether it's email, phone calls, LinkedIn, whatever, you want there to be the least translation possible.

00:11:00.820 Oh, that's a good way to look at it.

00:11:01.640 So, again, if I'm cold calling a gym, I don't want to say, hey, are you trying to get more customers?

00:11:06.580 I would say, hey, you're trying to get more members, like you said.

00:11:09.640 I find, like, again, a lot of-

00:11:11.720 At least translation possible is a good way to look at it.

00:11:14.920 Yeah, because the more kind of mental work I need to translate-

00:11:16.940 Cognitive overhead, if they do.

00:11:18.480 Yeah, to understand what you're saying, the less likely I will get it.

00:11:21.420 If they don't get it, you've got no chance.

00:11:22.940 No, so let's call it email.

00:11:24.860 They have to be-

00:11:25.480 The reason that short and sweet emails work, and they do,

00:11:29.380 is because if I send a long email to you and you don't know me,

00:11:32.700 even if you do know me, and there's, like, a lot of, like I said,

00:11:35.460 or cognitive overhead, like a lot of mental work to read it.

00:11:39.300 Don't make me think.

00:11:40.640 I'm more likely to ignore it or just put it off till later.

00:11:44.100 If it's a really short email, easy to understand,

00:11:46.320 simple to answer, I'm at least more likely to respond.

00:11:50.520 And one of the reasons the referral email works,

00:11:55.220 and again, we say, hey, there's ways to send referral emails,

00:11:58.100 and there's ways to send direct emails, which is, hey,

00:12:00.720 will you take an appointment?

00:12:02.220 But the referral one works well because it's such a simple ask.

00:12:05.440 If I ask you for an appointment, that's a big ask, 20 minutes of your time.

00:12:09.000 If I ask for you to point me towards someone else, that's really simple.

00:12:11.960 Boom, you're done.

00:12:13.500 So again, it's one tool in your tool set.

00:12:15.780 It's not your only tool.

00:12:17.440 So typically, for prospectors, they want to know how to make certain kinds of phone calls.

00:12:22.520 They want to know how to send a referral email, a direct email.

00:12:26.020 LinkedIn, LinkedIn's a bit different.

00:12:28.000 So if you have a set of tools, sometimes you need a screwdriver, sometimes you need a hammer.

00:12:32.560 Yeah.

00:12:33.460 You can't have 20 tools, because then you're just

00:12:35.120 kind of overwhelmed.

00:12:35.920 But you want to get good at a half dozen or so tools.

00:12:37.660 That work for your market, and you can tweak it.

00:12:39.940 One thing that people, this is like on naming things,

00:12:44.020 do you call them, if somebody's doing outbound prospecting,

00:12:47.660 is it BDRs or SDRs in your world?

00:12:50.480 We just use SDRs, typically.

00:12:52.280 But it's confusing, because some companies call,

00:12:55.540 there's inbound SDRs, responding to inbound leads.

00:12:59.080 And again, a really common mistake

00:13:01.560 is having SDR, sales development reps,

00:13:03.380 these junior salespeople, that are juggling both responding

00:13:07.920 to inbound leads and doing outbound prospecting.

00:13:09.560 That's a no-no.

00:13:10.580 They're actually totally different jobs.

00:13:12.060 Totally different.

00:13:12.920 That at the surface looks similar because of the labels,

00:13:15.540 SDR, and they're doing leads and making calls.

00:13:17.560 Qualifying, yeah.

00:13:18.680 The jobs are completely different.

00:13:19.900 The context of those people coming in.

00:13:21.320 Totally, in the mindset.

00:13:22.700 So BDRs are common.

00:13:24.840 MDRs, market development reps.

00:13:26.280 Yeah, it's all over.

00:13:27.200 MDRs, LDRs.

00:13:28.060 Same thing, essentially.

00:13:29.280 You're helping people build top of, like, pipeline.

00:13:31.500 It's basically either prospecting for them

00:13:35.700 or kind of helping them build or fix their outbound prospectors,

00:13:40.120 which they usually call SDRs.

00:13:41.340 But the outbound, the team of dedicated outbound prospectors

00:13:45.000 make sure they actually work in a sustainable way.

00:13:47.640 And you feel like, totally, it's crazy hard.

00:13:51.440 And we've talked about this before around like ACV size.

00:13:55.420 Like when you guys take a client, what

00:13:57.720 does a perfect client look like for you guys

00:13:59.620 of predictable revenue in regards to if they look like this,

00:14:02.120 we feel we're going to be incredibly successful.

00:14:03.740 Yeah.

00:14:04.240 Well, I think usually it's kind of like if outbound is

00:14:08.400 a fit for them, then we could help them.

00:14:10.680 So it's kind of the same thing, which is if outbound,

00:14:13.120 if you have a type of customer that has,

00:14:15.980 let's call it like a lifetime value of at least $20,000.

00:14:19.520 So that ACV or ARR can look a bit different,

00:14:22.820 maybe $3,000 to $5,000 ACV, ARR.

00:14:27.580 then outbound can be a fit, especially if it's a product.

00:14:32.580 So then there's lots of ways we can help that company.

00:14:36.220 Product companies have an easier time doing outbound,

00:14:39.660 just because when you're selling a concrete thing,

00:14:42.280 it's easier for, again, mental overload.

00:14:44.080 Yeah, less translation.

00:14:45.700 There's less translation.

00:14:46.820 Oh, it's a chair.

00:14:48.160 I understand that.

00:14:48.880 I need to sit down.

00:14:49.900 It's a CRM, it's a this.

00:14:51.020 Services tend to be more vague.

00:14:52.900 Solution, because they're solution-focused.

00:14:54.160 A little more vague.

00:14:55.000 So I think if you have a services company,

00:14:56.460 doesn't mean outbound can't work.

00:14:58.380 It means that you have to try to find ways to make.

00:15:00.660 Productize it.

00:15:01.380 Productize a simple step, like a first step.

00:15:03.880 Lead generation.

00:15:05.080 Or for a lot of companies, even consumer companies,

00:15:07.300 outbound can work.

00:15:08.600 Or for sometimes B2B companies that sell to individuals.

00:15:13.140 But it's more of a channel approach.

00:15:14.640 Like insurance products or?

00:15:16.840 Yeah, or we had this customer that sold database backup

00:15:20.080 services for like $10 a month.

00:15:23.060 Really cheap.

00:15:23.780 But they had channel partners.

00:15:25.260 So they used outbound to get channel partners, VARs,

00:15:27.540 and other channel partners.

00:15:28.440 OK, so they use outbound for the partner side.

00:15:30.120 You can use outbound.

00:15:31.260 It's the same process to get partners,

00:15:32.880 the same process actually in a marketing function.

00:15:35.460 We have an outbound marketing SDR.

00:15:37.500 They do the same process to get interviews on webinars

00:15:41.200 and podcasts and blog posts.

00:15:43.040 And on the outbound channels, I mean,

00:15:44.780 LinkedIn seems to be picking up steam.

00:15:46.560 I was never a LinkedIn user.

00:15:48.360 Now it's a primary thing I do.

00:15:51.640 Strategy-wise, what can you share in regards

00:15:53.700 to like some of the lesser known things?

00:15:56.380 Like I've heard people like, you know, visiting profiles

00:15:59.380 and then you show up and you message.

00:16:01.520 And like, what's the cadence sequences

00:16:03.080 that you feel are the appropriate way to do it?

00:16:06.300 Kind of like, what's the email 2.0 or cold call?

00:16:08.760 Yeah, sure.

00:16:09.700 No, LinkedIn's been a growing part of our business.

00:16:12.640 So on our outsourcing side of the business,

00:16:14.720 there's a few, there's at least one customer I know

00:16:16.400 that does almost all of their appointments with LinkedIn.

00:16:19.800 Would it be a higher ACV customer typically for LinkedIn?

00:16:22.020 You know, it just depends on the market, honestly.

00:16:23.440 You know, depending if you're selling, if you're targeting sales professionals versus engineering, some types of markets and functions are more on LinkedIn and some aren't.

00:16:33.960 So it's kind of depending.

00:16:35.680 We can't always say, hey, is email or LinkedIn or the phone going to be a better fit for you?

00:16:41.220 Kind of have to test and try some different things.

00:16:43.920 If you have your own internal team, you want to do all three, of course.

00:16:47.180 But on LinkedIn, what we've seen, we have something called Outbound Labs, our internal kind of testing organization.

00:16:53.440 And LinkedIn tends to have a more kind of ideas,

00:16:57.440 it works better, you have more of a, hey, let's share ideas

00:17:00.440 approach.

00:17:01.440 And I think we've all gotten messages on LinkedIn,

00:17:03.440 which is this long, hey, do you need software development

00:17:06.440 services?

00:17:07.440 Do you need, it's like a pitch.

00:17:08.440 My whole inbox.

00:17:09.440 Now, yeah, right?

00:17:11.440 So what we've seen work is more of like, hey, Dan, I see

00:17:15.440 you're in the entrepreneurial space, and kind of so am I.

00:17:18.440 Would you want to get together, share ideas sometime?

00:17:20.440 It's a very kind of rough version of it.

00:17:22.440 version of it.

00:17:23.440 So that might be the connection request.

00:17:25.060 And that first follow up could be, again, short and sweet.

00:17:27.660 Could be one or two or three sentences,

00:17:30.420 just following up with a prior message.

00:17:32.240 We have a guy named Brendan who's really smart about this.

00:17:34.420 And personalize it, right?

00:17:35.400 You see something they shared.

00:17:36.340 Hey, I saw that you shared this article.

00:17:37.780 Yeah, it'd be nice.

00:17:38.280 You don't have to, though.

00:17:39.220 OK.

00:17:39.520 Yeah, I mean, so again, you're kind of looking at this.

00:17:41.460 There's, I think, a lot of experts that rightly

00:17:43.380 say you have to personalize.

00:17:45.460 But they will go too far, which is you

00:17:46.900 have to personalize everything.

00:17:48.280 And you're thinking about segments?

00:17:49.740 Yeah, so again, know your market.

00:17:52.420 There are some uber-specific markets

00:17:54.180 where you might have to personalize everything.

00:17:56.580 Personalization tends to take a lot of time.

00:17:59.400 So can you think about throughput or tools in your tool

00:18:02.740 set?

00:18:03.320 So I'm a prospector.

00:18:04.780 I need to know how to personalize an email

00:18:06.540 and link to a message, but I also

00:18:08.140 need to know how to send more of a template,

00:18:10.160 because sometimes I want to do one or the other.

00:18:13.820 Throughput would be if I spend two hours

00:18:15.660 to personalize two messages, but I get 100% response rate,

00:18:20.320 or four messages and 100% response rate,

00:18:22.540 versus if I spend two hours to send

00:18:24.220 a campaign of 100 messages, but I get a 4% response rate.

00:18:29.260 It's kind of the same throughput.

00:18:31.420 There's pros and cons to each.

00:18:33.100 If you only have 20 customers in your entire market,

00:18:35.920 versus you have 5,000.

00:18:37.480 So again, kind of basic principles

00:18:40.100 are know who your ideal customers are,

00:18:42.800 know how to test ways to reach them,

00:18:45.680 teach your team a few kind of different tools.

00:18:48.400 But the goal is not to be a robot to follow the process.

00:18:51.280 The goal is to understand, for them, who the customer is,

00:18:54.820 have a few different tools to get the information,

00:18:57.100 and to figure out if there's a fit or not,

00:18:59.220 and then move them, if there is a fit,

00:19:00.700 move them on to an appointment somehow.

00:19:02.420 And what are the, I mean, it changes in the market

00:19:05.640 from time to time.

00:19:06.380 What are some of the services for data, for building lists?

00:19:08.940 What's your approach to kind of?

00:19:10.000 I mean, the data is so crazy.

00:19:11.200 It's crazy, man.

00:19:11.800 Yeah.

00:19:12.300 That's probably the most dynamic part of the market

00:19:15.020 with things coming and going.

00:19:16.160 G2 crowd letting you know and notifications of when

00:19:18.860 organizations are looking at your profile.

00:19:20.620 Yeah, that, list sources, Zoom Info.

00:19:24.920 So it's hard to stay on top of it all.

00:19:27.200 I mean, I think we work with like 30 something

00:19:29.440 different data sources.

00:19:30.360 Wow.

00:19:30.980 Net Prospects is a top one.

00:19:33.600 Zoom Info, I think it's a popular one.

00:19:35.700 Because with Zoom Info merging or acquiring Discover Org,

00:19:39.260 that's been a popular one.

00:19:40.980 A lot of it comes to companies.

00:19:42.320 Is there a site that talks about this that somebody

00:19:44.520 could go check whenever they listen?

00:19:45.920 I actually don't know what it is.

00:19:46.880 We don't have it in public.

00:19:48.620 But I think, again, there's so many types of data sources.

00:19:50.720 And depending on the company, sometimes

00:19:52.940 like a general database works, like a ZoomInfo.

00:19:55.940 Sometimes you have a niche need.

00:19:57.660 Like there's some customer of ours that

00:19:58.940 needed to build a list of hotels in the Caribbean.

00:20:02.040 You're not going to get that off.

00:20:03.560 So there's sort of like these sources around general databases,

00:20:06.760 niche-based databases, like a VAR association,

00:20:12.860 custom list building, plug-ins.

00:20:15.360 And LinkedIn is a great source of list building.

00:20:17.460 I think I saw one that actually looks

00:20:19.260 at the job postings on Indeed to reverse

00:20:21.580 the technographic profiles.

00:20:23.020 I mean, that's crazy.

00:20:23.800 There's a bunch of tech, so it used to be Datanize.

00:20:26.600 Yeah, Datanize, I think, was doing it.

00:20:28.200 They got bought by someone.

00:20:29.040 So it's like, I want to talk to hotels in the Caribbean

00:20:31.300 that use Salesforce.

00:20:32.960 And they look at job postings to see if that's so fascinating.

00:20:36.220 So like, so much of things is you have list building

00:20:39.700 and kind of like your list strategy

00:20:41.100 can take some testing and trial.

00:20:43.080 Everyone wants it to be simple, but usually it's not.

00:20:47.020 It's usually simple to get a first list together and to start trying it.

00:20:51.240 But, yeah, there's a lot out there.

00:20:52.800 I wouldn't even pretend to be on top of it except to know there's a lot of things you might have to sort through.

00:20:58.400 Yeah.

00:20:58.800 So, like, as you're messaging, what's your strategy for, you know, maybe somebody's not in market today.

00:21:04.620 They're still a fit.

00:21:05.660 Like, how do you manage the CRM so that they don't just get taken off the list forever?

00:21:10.240 Or like, is it, you know, there's no new contact

00:21:12.980 with that prospect for three months or six months?

00:21:15.160 Or like, how do you think of that?

00:21:17.440 Yeah.

00:21:18.060 Well, so a common question is, well,

00:21:19.660 I have a marketing team, and I've got a sales team.

00:21:22.340 Who should do, how do you handle nurturing?

00:21:25.400 So marketing generally should only

00:21:27.320 market to people who've opted into the newsletter.

00:21:30.600 Sales, and that's kind of the earlier stage ones,

00:21:32.960 sales should kind of nurture, usually by kind of semi-manually, 0.53

00:21:36.880 their list of people.

00:21:38.620 And ideally, I like account-based sales, account-based outbound.

00:21:44.400 It's kind of tricky to do.

00:21:45.760 But what that looks like is if I'm a prospector or a salesperson.

00:21:49.460 Like regions?

00:21:50.280 Well, first of all, you do need territories in some way.

00:21:52.340 It's probably a different conversation.

00:21:53.920 Like I just did an onsite with a company that had 150 people in sales,

00:21:58.560 closers, field, inside, prospectors, without territories.

00:22:02.280 Whoa.

00:22:02.940 It's kind of every person for themselves. 1.00

00:22:04.480 Just go eat what you kill. 0.99

00:22:05.880 Yeah. 0.94

00:22:06.240 Yeah, and I think they knew they needed to.

00:22:10.160 That's a tough one if their culture is not.

00:22:11.860 But you need territories when you're early,

00:22:13.160 because otherwise, it's just so confusing to people

00:22:17.060 what they should work on.

00:22:18.180 When I have a territory, which really could be geographic,

00:22:20.840 industry, size, there's so many ways you can divide and conquer,

00:22:24.520 I can be much more focused.

00:22:26.160 So again, there's this trend of overwhelm.

00:22:28.380 Even your pitch.

00:22:29.140 I mean, you customize the deck.

00:22:31.800 A lot of what creates revenue growth

00:22:33.400 is bringing focus to the organization in different ways.

00:22:36.720 So that looks like type of customer.

00:22:38.380 That's a bomb drop for everybody listening.

00:22:40.600 Yeah.

00:22:41.100 Yeah, say that again, that the way you create growth is.

00:22:43.640 The way you create growth for your sales

00:22:45.820 and basically marketing and sales groups, your revenue team,

00:22:48.160 is through more focus.

00:22:49.520 So that looks like, I mean, focus

00:22:52.060 on the right kind of customer.

00:22:53.680 It's sales specialization, right?

00:22:55.160 Prospect is your prospect, close is your close,

00:22:57.300 because then they can focus on doing fewer things better.

00:23:00.860 It's with your dashboards and metrics,

00:23:02.480 focusing on the right kinds of quality and what kinds of metrics.

00:23:04.920 It's kind of like more, there's so much quantity everywhere,

00:23:07.940 like more leads, more people, more this, more that.

00:23:10.140 And what's missing a lot is that quality conversation,

00:23:13.000 quality of customer, quality of appointment

00:23:15.140 that prospector is setting up, quality of the deal.

00:23:17.980 I mean, I think in the sales world,

00:23:19.420 quality pipeline is a very kind of well-established,

00:23:22.980 but not so much like in dashboards, a quality of metrics.

00:23:26.700 Now there's so many dashboard tools and metrics,

00:23:28.760 we get this metric overwhelm.

00:23:30.140 There's like just all this clutter.

00:23:31.720 Yeah.

00:23:32.720 So again, too much stuff means how do we refocus on fewer

00:23:37.060 better things across the whole revenue cycle,

00:23:39.580 from prospecting, marketing, closing, accounts, roles,

00:23:43.760 metrics, everything.

00:23:44.720 Who do you think should be responsible for upsells

00:23:46.900 and cross-sells, say a CS or account?

00:23:50.580 Well, again, like so many things, it kind of depends.

00:23:54.300 And I like this example of this company called Guild.

00:23:56.860 And we wrote about them in the Impossible book,

00:23:58.620 in the customer success section.

00:24:00.280 I like that example because they have enterprise clients,

00:24:03.440 mid-market, and small business.

00:24:05.200 And the way they structured their comp and metric systems

00:24:08.980 for their customer success team varied by segment.

00:24:12.280 So in the customer success team, they

00:24:14.380 had executive customer success, which is basically

00:24:16.340 enterprise account management.

00:24:18.120 They were based on upselling.

00:24:19.860 So customer success owned that at that point.

00:24:23.020 In the mid-market, they had mid-market customer success.

00:24:26.500 I don't remember the term.

00:24:27.880 And they were measured on renewal rates.

00:24:30.480 And for kind of the small business section,

00:24:32.160 they were measured on usage.

00:24:34.060 So again, it's like knowing your segments,

00:24:35.680 knowing your customers, and what's

00:24:36.680 the best way to manage that group of customers, which

00:24:39.740 can vary segment to segment.

00:24:41.800 Now, most SaaS companies end up with kind of small, medium,

00:24:45.280 and large segments of some sort.

00:24:47.200 And the sales models, to some extent,

00:24:49.540 and teams vary by segment, usually end up

00:24:52.820 with small business sales, mid-market, enterprise.

00:24:55.900 And prospectors, small, mid-enterprise prospectors,

00:24:59.740 customer success, because they just

00:25:01.000 tend to be different, more complex, high volume.

00:25:04.640 But generally, I think what we recommend, too,

00:25:06.760 is there's a CRO of some type.

00:25:08.400 I've seen that more and more.

00:25:09.800 Yeah.

00:25:10.900 So ultimately, you need this whole thing

00:25:12.840 on sales and marketing alignment.

00:25:14.020 And for you and CRO, is sales marketing and CS?

00:25:17.680 Can be.

00:25:18.380 OK.

00:25:18.680 Yeah, it can be.

00:25:19.300 And it's kind of at this point, it's like,

00:25:21.220 depending on the situation of the company,

00:25:24.920 there's always one revenue leader.

00:25:29.200 Now, I think the problem happens when

00:25:30.740 you have a CEO and a VP of sales and a VP of marketing,

00:25:34.260 and the CEO doesn't see themselves as the revenue

00:25:37.640 leader in the sense of they need to be hands-on to integrate

00:25:40.700 sales marketing.

00:25:41.400 Yeah, the SLA's and all that stuff.

00:25:42.920 It should be like, hey, VP of sales, you figure it out,

00:25:44.940 VP of marketing, you figure it out,

00:25:45.940 and you guys figure it out together,

00:25:47.040 and I'll kind of check on things.

00:25:48.100 Yeah, that doesn't work.

00:25:49.180 No, no, no.

00:25:49.680 They need to be involved.

00:25:50.180 Somebody needs to drive.

00:25:50.740 Yeah, drive things together.

00:25:52.920 More common now, there's a CRO, Chief Revenue Officer,

00:25:55.380 or like a VP Revenue, which is what we had.

00:25:57.780 And then RevOps, that's coming into the mix.

00:25:59.400 Yeah, it's more common now.

00:26:00.600 But really, because you need to ensure

00:26:02.240 that there's a kind of SDR in B2B,

00:26:05.140 there's SDR teams that are helping bridge marketing

00:26:08.420 and sales, and that marketing has metrics and quota

00:26:12.360 relevant to sales.

00:26:13.860 So I've been seeing that.

00:26:14.700 That's a new fun thing, the marketing quota.

00:26:16.860 Yeah, essentially revenue quota for marketing.

00:26:19.860 Yeah, it can be a revenue quota if it's short enough,

00:26:22.100 or even a quota based on qualified leads

00:26:24.680 or qualified opportunities.

00:26:26.380 So I think a lot of companies start

00:26:28.200 with maybe a quota for new leads.

00:26:30.340 That's not really what sales cares about, so really,

00:26:32.960 or even MQLs, and not really what sales cares about.

00:26:35.720 So there's still this problem if marketing is measured

00:26:38.060 on MQLs.

00:26:38.880 Yeah, and sales wants opportunities.

00:26:40.220 Sales wants, like sales qualified leads.

00:26:42.480 So ideally, and a little bit more tricky,

00:26:44.480 but measuring marketing on sales qualified leads

00:26:46.900 generated, because that's what sales cares about.

00:26:49.280 And then you've got, theoretically, a happy marriage

00:26:53.120 at that point, because both care about the same metric.

00:26:56.560 Have you seen more of a move amongst software companies

00:27:00.520 for the mid or lower?

00:27:02.040 I heard that Slack doesn't really have quota-carrying sales

00:27:05.280 reps.

00:27:05.780 They're more like account managers,

00:27:07.040 but they're essentially doing demos,

00:27:09.000 prospecting within the customer base in a land and expand.

00:27:12.420 Yeah.

00:27:13.040 Do you think, because I mean, people have said,

00:27:16.940 your prospects are showing up with more information

00:27:19.040 than most of your SDRs or your AEs.

00:27:21.980 No, maybe.

00:27:23.000 Yeah, so I'm just wondering if, for a certain type

00:27:26.060 of company, is that something they should consider?

00:27:29.840 So first of all, let me address this,

00:27:31.480 because there's this myth that prospects are so educated.

00:27:34.160 I mentioned this.

00:27:34.800 Yeah.

00:27:35.300 Prospects are so educated, they're

00:27:36.540 showing up all this information, and yeah, a few of them do.

00:27:38.960 A few of them, there's kind of like this early adopter type.

00:27:42.800 Early adopter, visionary, they get it, right?

00:27:45.860 They'll go research.

00:27:47.300 Yeah.

00:27:47.800 And it's usually kind of lower level.

00:27:49.460 They're on YouTube crowd.

00:27:50.620 They're like.

00:27:51.160 Yeah, they're like doing all the work.

00:27:52.960 They'll read the white paper.

00:27:54.060 They'll do the free trial.

00:27:55.720 They could be engineers do that.

00:27:58.840 Sometimes there's people.

00:27:59.860 I don't know if it's like 15% of the people out there,

00:28:02.440 or 5% or 20%, but it's a minority.

00:28:05.860 Jason, in my opinion, is a minority.

00:28:08.100 Most of them, people out there, are mainstream buyers.

00:28:10.800 So for the early stage companies who

00:28:12.520 a few hundred thousand, a few million,

00:28:14.260 by definition, you're probably getting more

00:28:15.820 of the early adopter types.

00:28:17.800 Because they find you, they're like, oh, this is so cool.

00:28:20.380 I got it, referrals.

00:28:22.480 But as you grow, you run into more of the people who

00:28:25.240 they don't want to do all that.

00:28:26.380 They don't want to do the research. 1.00

00:28:27.880 It's a pain in their ass. 1.00

00:28:29.680 I'm like this. 1.00

00:28:31.140 I'm not going to read your white paper.

00:28:32.440 I would rather put in a demo request.

00:28:34.600 And for 15 minutes, you just tell me what I need to know.

00:28:36.440 Yeah, here's my world.

00:28:37.480 Tell me how you're going to make it better. 0.97

00:28:38.560 I'm not going to sort through all that crap. 0.98

00:28:39.940 You just tell me. 0.95

00:28:40.820 And I'll talk to two or three people like you.

00:28:42.920 And it's like a really quick way to educate myself

00:28:44.820 on what's out there and make a decision.

00:28:48.120 So that's how most buyers are, especially

00:28:50.400 as you get to bigger companies.

00:28:51.660 So there's still a sale that has to occur.

00:28:54.420 Yeah, you still have to sell.

00:28:57.120 A lot of it is helping clarify for the buyer,

00:28:59.280 kind of educate them in a way that is useful to them

00:29:02.720 and help them make a better decision,

00:29:04.500 ideally for your product.

00:29:05.920 But again, if your product is not a fit for them,

00:29:09.960 you should tell them.

00:29:11.280 So again, I think salespeople need

00:29:13.300 to be in this world of, ideally, kind of experts in this space.

00:29:17.960 It's probably an aspiration.

00:29:19.880 And be able to really help.

00:29:22.300 A lot of buyers need help from salespeople

00:29:24.400 to make the right decision, especially at bigger companies.

00:29:27.520 If you've been in a big company or sold to a big company,

00:29:29.620 you realize it's really hard to buy things

00:29:32.720 when you're in a big company.

00:29:33.780 There's lots of approvals and lots of people to get on board.

00:29:35.920 They need assets.

00:29:36.680 It's a whole political process.

00:29:37.820 You got to sell it internally.

00:29:38.860 Yeah, sell internally.

00:29:39.660 Security gets a sign off.

00:29:41.060 And that's a huge value for a salesperson

00:29:44.240 is to basically help a company buy something,

00:29:47.300 to make a decision.

00:29:48.380 To help them buy and make a decision.

00:29:50.940 Make a decision.

00:29:51.900 So the value of salespeople is really, really high.

00:29:56.300 Salespeople aren't going anywhere.

00:29:57.680 The nature of the job will change.

00:29:59.060 SDRs aren't going anywhere.

00:30:00.560 Because again, the more overwhelmed the world is,

00:30:02.960 the more use in one situation that salespeople are there

00:30:06.740 to help create clarity for buyers and what to do

00:30:09.600 and how to improve their business.

00:30:11.760 At the last SaaS, or I believe is the last one,

00:30:13.660 I know they dripped the videos out,

00:30:14.940 but I saw your talk about things that founders do wrong

00:30:18.560 when they build their first sales team,

00:30:19.840 or scale their sales team.

00:30:21.680 How should somebody go from founder?

00:30:24.400 Like, do you believe there's a scenario

00:30:25.900 where the founder shouldn't be selling,

00:30:27.540 if their introvert is socially awkward?

00:30:29.940 No, pretty much.

00:30:30.600 OK, cool.

00:30:31.200 So you need to learn how to sell your product.

00:30:33.340 Like, if they have a co-founder,

00:30:35.120 if there's two co-founders, and one is the business person.

00:30:37.000 But even then, the introvert should

00:30:38.320 be involved to sort of like to know.

00:30:40.960 Hear what the customer is saying.

00:30:42.520 And then how should they transition

00:30:44.420 from that founder-led sales to a more scalable process?

00:30:47.080 That's great, because we included it

00:30:48.820 in the new impossible edition, this section called.

00:30:51.520 That's what I thought, yeah.

00:30:52.380 Yeah, four phases to building your first sales team.

00:30:54.460 That was it, yeah.

00:30:55.160 What are those phases?

00:30:56.080 Because like a really common mistake.

00:30:58.280 I'm a founder.

00:30:58.980 I have a business.

00:31:00.380 I'm too busy or tired of selling.

00:31:02.060 Hire a salesperson to take over.

00:31:05.260 And usually, that doesn't work.

00:31:07.120 Because I've got the founder magic.

00:31:10.120 Also, my expectations are totally unrealistic

00:31:12.880 about how fast it'll take to ramp this person.

00:31:14.980 And unproductive, yeah.

00:31:15.820 Like, oh, in two months, they should be selling.

00:31:17.560 It might take them nine months.

00:31:18.360 And you have nothing documented.

00:31:19.260 You just drop them into that.

00:31:20.560 There's no, you're still figuring things out.

00:31:22.560 And you hired someone who worked at Salesforce,

00:31:25.720 but they never worked in a really raw startup,

00:31:29.300 because they had the Salesforce brand,

00:31:30.880 and they had all these advantages.

00:31:31.960 They followed the checklist.

00:31:32.760 Yeah, they had documentation, case studies.

00:31:34.600 And here, you have nothing.

00:31:36.160 No assets.

00:31:36.700 So I would say you want to de-risk the process.

00:31:43.400 Because if you hire the wrong person, which happens so often,

00:31:46.860 I mean, so phase zero is that CEO, founder,

00:31:52.660 is selling themselves.

00:31:55.780 Whether you're actually doing this selling

00:31:57.720 or you're involved heavily, but you

00:31:59.040 need to do that so you know how it's working, what customers

00:32:02.120 want, what they object to, what's not working.

00:32:05.200 And then, when you do hire someone in sales,

00:32:07.660 you have a bit more of a sense of pattern recognition

00:32:10.360 for what kind of person do you want.

00:32:12.400 And when they start, how would you work with them

00:32:14.320 and coach them?

00:32:15.280 So again, founders should really be involved in selling.

00:32:17.740 It's so important for the first 10 or 20 customers.

00:32:20.820 First hire would be a junior salesperson, like an SGR.

00:32:23.960 So they could be responding to inbound leads,

00:32:26.320 doing prospecting, basic handling, appointment setting,

00:32:29.200 or lower level sales things the founder doesn't want to do.

00:32:32.260 Yeah, throughput.

00:32:33.660 Yep.

00:32:34.460 So three to six months, you get that working.

00:32:36.600 OK, now you have a bit more of a stable place to hire.

00:32:40.800 Either hire a salesperson in, because now they've

00:32:43.180 got some sort of legion system, or promote that person

00:32:46.900 to selling and hire another junior person.

00:32:49.280 But the next phase is you end up with the CEO,

00:32:53.500 and then there's one SDR and a salesperson.

00:32:56.700 Then after that, another three to six months,

00:33:00.120 you have two of each, two junior people, two closers.

00:33:03.620 OK, and then a leader, typically.

00:33:05.660 It's better to bring a VP of sales on that type

00:33:08.220 once you've got a team working.

00:33:11.340 There's something there to work with.

00:33:13.900 Because they're expensive hires.

00:33:15.780 The good one's expensive hires.

00:33:17.120 Yeah.

00:33:19.120 It's rare to find someone who not only can kind of like

00:33:23.860 be the first person selling, but then build the team and lead it.

00:33:26.900 Like a player coach.

00:33:27.800 Yeah, because at different stages of the company,

00:33:30.080 different types of VPs of sales.

00:33:31.620 Totally.

00:33:32.280 There's the beginning, there's the evangelist,

00:33:33.900 which is usually like the founder.

00:33:35.520 And then from zero to a million.

00:33:37.500 And then from one to 10 million needs

00:33:38.960 someone who can try to figure out how to make it repeatable.

00:33:41.660 And then from 10 million to like 40 million, someone to scale.

00:33:45.160 Training, talent pipeline.

00:33:46.680 It's repeatable, how do we just grow it,

00:33:48.120 which is more like hiring people on territories and systems

00:33:50.980 and management and leadership.

00:33:52.920 And then 40 million plus or 100 million plus,

00:33:55.420 it's like dashboards, metrics, and it's more.

00:33:57.880 So that person evolves.

00:33:59.740 And this is from Jason Lemkin.

00:34:01.120 and a great way to interpret this.

00:34:03.900 It's just hard to get people who can go through more

00:34:05.860 than a couple of stages.

00:34:07.060 Totally.

00:34:07.800 So again, if you're going to make an expensive hire,

00:34:10.780 less risk if you have something there that's

00:34:12.520 working for them to work with.

00:34:14.580 And in the meantime, if the entrepreneur

00:34:17.200 is kind of leading the team or getting some part-time help

00:34:20.060 mentoring, the thing is you can't,

00:34:23.880 it's just so valuable to be in the trenches with the sales

00:34:26.240 team, even if you feel like you're making mistakes.

00:34:28.600 Because all of that will pay off later

00:34:30.560 in terms of knowing what to avoid, how to hire,

00:34:33.200 how to train people.

00:34:34.880 You don't waste your time that way.

00:34:36.620 The only way you can waste your time

00:34:38.000 is if you waste the learning opportunity.

00:34:40.520 That's presented.

00:34:41.380 I remember, I think it was, is it Dan Chait from Greenhouse?

00:34:43.920 I know Jason's had him speak.

00:34:45.460 But Greenhouse, anyways, I think it was Daniel Chait.

00:34:48.100 He, from New York, was talking about kind of like the lean

00:34:51.500 approach to sales development.

00:34:53.200 And same, exactly what you described, but like pods.

00:34:55.540 Like he was like, the person sits next to you

00:34:57.420 is the founder.

00:34:58.240 You guys collectively try stuff, document it.

00:35:01.540 And I just thought it was a really clear way of doing it that felt less risky, less exposed.

00:35:05.920 Yeah, you couldn't do, yeah, it's like basically agile.

00:35:08.440 Yeah, agile approach to building a sales team.

00:35:11.160 I think companies are trying to, David Skock, who's a VC at Matrix,

00:35:18.520 had this really great point that I liked, which was most companies' common mistake is they're trying to skip a step.

00:35:24.560 And he said, then the first step one is product market fit.

00:35:27.940 Step two should be finding a repeatable, predictable sales model.

00:35:32.420 Amen.

00:35:33.080 And step three is scaling.

00:35:34.660 And too many companies get product market fit.

00:35:37.520 You get your first 5, 10, 15, 20 customers, and like, let's hit it.

00:35:41.740 Let's go.

00:35:42.400 Yeah, rocket fuel.

00:35:43.540 And you don't realize how much longer it usually takes for companies to figure out, though, that interim step,

00:35:50.220 which is that repeatable, scalable, predictable sales model, lead generation and sales model.

00:35:54.220 that can take months, it could take years.

00:35:57.820 It's probably, if you're building a new sales team

00:35:59.760 from scratch, it's probably two years

00:36:02.720 to get the team, SGRs, AEs, whatever,

00:36:05.220 that team in place with the leader.

00:36:06.560 And OK, I can kind of let it go.

00:36:09.400 It's probably a couple of years.

00:36:11.140 And you never have all the kinks worked out.

00:36:14.000 And actually, the bigger it gets, the more problems there are.

00:36:16.820 But to have that team and model working in a repeatable way

00:36:20.860 and trusting the metrics, it's probably a couple of years.

00:36:24.220 Do you feel like, I remember a decade ago, 2008,

00:36:28.400 I moved to San Francisco, and I felt

00:36:29.800 like the word sales team was evil.

00:36:33.280 Sure.

00:36:33.880 Like, it's crazy.

00:36:34.700 And now it's just everybody's cool with it,

00:36:36.680 and we talk about it, and it's kind of expected.

00:36:39.220 What do you think changed?

00:36:40.540 Is it like the founder, purist about product,

00:36:43.940 that they were all like, the product should sell itself,

00:36:46.180 and now we're realizing like for a certain kind of kind of kind.

00:36:48.580 Well, still a lot of people, a lot still think that.

00:36:50.280 They still think that.

00:36:51.160 Well, I think a lot of it was people realized,

00:36:53.080 like I did when I had a company that failed.

00:36:56.640 And I don't think I had a, I don't remember

00:36:58.280 my connotation over sales.

00:36:59.320 I just thought it was like, hmm, I don't know, sales. 0.99

00:37:01.840 Like, fuck, we need to make money. 0.99

00:37:04.900 I think that's most of it, is like, that makes you money. 1.00

00:37:07.900 And companies want to make money.

00:37:10.140 So I feel like predictable revenue helped.

00:37:13.000 There's just a lot more sales knowledge,

00:37:15.040 a lot great writers on sales, and like Jason Lemkin.

00:37:17.880 So I think there's this broader recognition,

00:37:21.580 And there's so many more entrepreneurs that to be

00:37:23.920 successful, you need predictable revenue.

00:37:26.340 You need a sales model.

00:37:27.680 The sales makes you money.

00:37:29.040 And I would say sales is a life skill.

00:37:31.340 So I still find that most people have a lot of negative connotations.

00:37:35.140 There's lots of entrepreneurs, especially,

00:37:36.700 that have negative connotations with sales.

00:37:39.360 Rightly so.

00:37:40.060 I don't know.

00:37:40.560 Yeah, they've been exposed to the sleazy car deal

00:37:42.760 for salespeople.

00:37:43.460 But I think, too, so first of all,

00:37:46.180 a lot of the resistance for people in terms of, hey,

00:37:48.700 there's this dream of, I'm just going to build a product,

00:37:50.560 and people are going to love it and come buy it.

00:37:52.800 Yeah, these indie hackers, that's their dream.

00:37:55.120 And partly that's been promoted by kind of stories

00:37:59.380 about Instagram, which is like, one, it's a lottery.

00:38:04.480 There's no stories of people that it does work,

00:38:06.200 but there's also a lot of fear.

00:38:08.700 Where for a lot of people, being able to kind of like sit back

00:38:11.380 and kind of code something, write something,

00:38:12.740 and then people just buy it, it's like a very comfortable,

00:38:15.320 very safe.

00:38:16.600 And to think about going and marketing yourself

00:38:18.580 and selling yourself and your product is very scary.

00:38:21.160 Yeah, and rejecting is very threatening.

00:38:24.560 I know, I've been that way.

00:38:26.260 And realizing that to embrace selling, again,

00:38:29.920 is a life skill, where if you want to start a nonprofit,

00:38:32.920 I don't know, get a promotion.

00:38:34.020 You want to hire people.

00:38:35.340 It's like sales is life skill, and you

00:38:36.860 need to be able to sell yourself an idea or a product

00:38:39.040 if you want to accomplish anything in life.

00:38:41.060 And some of the best salespeople in history

00:38:43.040 have been like Mother Teresa, Elon Musk, John F. Kennedy.

00:38:47.060 if you look at it that way.

00:38:49.360 So sales is a life skill.

00:38:50.920 It doesn't have to be any kind of negative, manipulative.

00:38:55.300 There's nothing.

00:38:56.000 I mean, if you think about what you said earlier about just

00:38:57.860 your job is to help somebody make a decision.

00:38:59.900 The right decision for them.

00:39:02.100 If that's selling, you're just asking them the questions

00:39:05.560 they don't even know to ask themselves.

00:39:06.940 And by the way, because if you're

00:39:08.180 targeting the right kinds of customers,

00:39:09.560 hopefully the right decision for them to help them

00:39:11.600 is for them to buy your stuff.

00:39:13.160 Yeah.

00:39:14.560 If you were to start, probably buy a SaaS product today

00:39:18.840 to scale to 100 million, what would the characteristics

00:39:21.400 of that business model look like for you?

00:39:23.600 I mean, if I was going to buy a product and run it?

00:39:25.600 Yeah, you buy something instead of a million AR

00:39:27.040 and then grow it.

00:39:28.000 What would you want to, what are you looking for?

00:39:31.000 Well, the funny thing is, I feel like so many companies

00:39:34.160 that have a million to AR are missing so many opportunities

00:39:37.920 of revenue growth that it wouldn't be that hard to at least,

00:39:39.880 I don't know about 100 million, but to grow it by a lot.

00:39:41.560 What's true about the ACVs or the customer segments for you?

00:39:44.220 I'm just curious, Aaron, like, what's?

00:39:46.480 I mean, I like bigger ACVs, typically.

00:39:49.180 It's hard to build a big business out of small tools.

00:39:51.080 25K plus?

00:39:51.980 Yeah, 25K and up.

00:39:54.320 I think, too, there's a lot of, it's

00:39:56.460 hard to tell when a product is kind of like an add-on,

00:39:59.140 like a plug-in, nice to have, versus when it's like a really.

00:40:01.460 Must have.

00:40:01.980 Yeah, must have and a really useful tool that you need.

00:40:04.760 So you'd be looking more workflow tools or verticalized.

00:40:08.940 You know, the thing is, I don't think it's that hard

00:40:12.300 for if you're an investor, right?

00:40:13.580 Yeah.

00:40:14.060 And you have companies coming in who already

00:40:15.920 have a growth rate.

00:40:17.500 So those are kind of easy.

00:40:18.380 You feel like that'd be pretty easy to spot,

00:40:19.800 like if they're already growing.

00:40:21.240 The question is, if it's not already growing,

00:40:22.940 how do you spot the potential?

00:40:24.460 And I think, too, it really comes down to,

00:40:28.880 how big is the target market?

00:40:29.900 How painful is that problem you're solving?

00:40:34.260 It's kind of like the basic stuff.

00:40:35.380 Who's your customer?

00:40:36.300 How many of them, how much will they pay you?

00:40:39.420 And today, whether it's in, the thing I like about sales

00:40:42.700 and marketing is because people like to pay money

00:40:44.680 if they're going to make money.

00:40:46.700 HR is a little harder, usually.

00:40:48.940 There's a lot of great tools in HR. 0.99

00:40:50.460 Fucking HR is so hard. 0.98

00:40:51.820 Yeah, because I'm spending money, yeah. 0.99

00:40:54.860 So for me, I would look at something in the sales

00:40:57.700 and marketing, I also know that world.

00:40:59.080 Because it pulls.

00:40:59.820 Yeah, I just know it better.

00:41:02.660 So I think there's a lot of great companies.

00:41:04.580 There's a lot of opportunity.

00:41:05.660 And I think that most companies really

00:41:07.580 are missing the boat on basic sales and lead gen playbook

00:41:13.180 steps that they just don't do.

00:41:16.300 They just don't do.

00:41:17.000 Specializing sales roles, the most common mistake.

00:41:19.720 I saw a study from the bridge group that 75% of SDR teams,

00:41:23.260 again, they're expected to do, people

00:41:25.760 have to do both inbound lead response and outbound

00:41:28.260 prospecting.

00:41:29.220 Horrible no-no.

00:41:29.900 70%, wow.

00:41:30.680 75%.

00:41:31.700 Wow.

00:41:32.520 So.

00:41:33.220 Specialized.

00:41:33.860 Like ABCs.

00:41:35.820 Yeah.

00:41:36.220 Specialized.

00:41:37.040 the right way, all the way.

00:41:38.800 You go back 10 years, I don't know

00:41:40.680 how many children you had at that point, but going on 11.

00:41:43.260 OK, wow.

00:41:46.020 Zero to nine kids, and it's like six years, actually.

00:41:48.260 Yeah, so you've got the kids, you've

00:41:49.420 got the $5 million business, the consulting,

00:41:51.620 you're a thought leader in the space, the books.

00:41:53.600 Who did you need to become to be the person to do all that

00:41:57.340 today?

00:41:59.160 Well, so the cheesy answer was really

00:42:02.540 like a better person than myself, but I think it was.

00:42:05.720 What were those characteristics?

00:42:07.840 So, you know, everyone has different fears, anxieties, and doubts.

00:42:12.580 Some people it shows up in business.

00:42:14.020 Some people it shows up at home.

00:42:16.360 For me, I think I had put off things like publishing the book.

00:42:23.460 I put off.

00:42:24.920 So I think what I have learned to do is really just jump forward

00:42:29.720 and just kind of like say yes to things like more kids, more adoptions, book, business.

00:42:34.540 being okay with being busy all the time so a challenge today is I have an

00:42:41.380 overwhelming number of things I juggle like we're moving the family to

00:42:45.220 Scotland and my wife has been had a play and you know had a health challenge so

00:42:51.340 I kind of was having to run my part of the business and manage the family and

00:42:55.300 manage the money and you know so it's learning how to not balance but juggle

00:43:01.360 And for me, a lot of that's based on calendaring

00:43:04.480 and kind of doing the things that just feel the most important.

00:43:07.300 I got to be really good years ago about putting things off.

00:43:11.140 So I think one of the easiest ways to create time

00:43:14.060 is just to put stuff off.

00:43:15.700 Is that procrastinating or saying no?

00:43:17.260 That's saying no.

00:43:17.960 OK.

00:43:18.460 It can be either way, but usually it's saying no.

00:43:20.480 OK.

00:43:21.500 It's this balance where I think, on one hand,

00:43:24.220 I'm good about putting things off.

00:43:25.900 And I've been better about just trying

00:43:27.160 to get things done instantly and kind of judging what that is.

00:43:30.240 So it's kind of this weird, you want both habits.

00:43:35.140 Sometimes I got to be too good at putting things off

00:43:37.360 and not good about just doing something now.

00:43:39.460 Because my task list might just be like call lawyers.

00:43:42.280 I mean, there's just all these things.

00:43:44.080 So calendaring works for me, like a block out.

00:43:46.460 I don't go to get to the gym.

00:43:48.200 The only way I get to the gym, because for years I didn't,

00:43:51.340 is I have certain times I show up with a trainer.

00:43:54.100 Forcing function, right?

00:43:54.860 I'm hiring someone who is really good.

00:43:56.680 Pay.

00:43:57.300 It's a tax.

00:43:58.220 You don't show up, or you're accountable.

00:44:00.620 Yep, forcing functions.

00:44:02.600 So someone who really was able to jump into this world

00:44:06.060 of being super busy, and realizing

00:44:09.040 I didn't need as much downtime as I thought I needed,

00:44:15.500 not even knowing where I had anxiety or fear in life,

00:44:19.380 and being willing to overcome that.

00:44:21.400 I was afraid of being a father.

00:44:23.900 Dude, you've gone way on the other end of that.

00:44:25.960 Yeah, I know.

00:44:26.700 And part of it's like, would I be a good parent?

00:44:30.320 I didn't have as much fear of adoption.

00:44:32.320 I would have before.

00:44:33.160 So with adoption, here's an interesting example.

00:44:36.060 So getting married to my wife, she 1.00

00:44:37.860 had two kids from a prior marriage.

00:44:39.960 And I had these fears around, would I want to be a father?

00:44:43.160 Would I want to be a stepfather?

00:44:44.240 Would I be a good father?

00:44:46.500 And maybe I had to kind of be like, say yes,

00:44:51.900 and jump into I want to be married and be a father,

00:44:54.960 and just not try to get those anxieties answered ahead time,

00:44:59.020 just like be yes and just kind of go 100% in.

00:45:02.160 I never use the word step child.

00:45:04.200 It's always like my son, my daughter.

00:45:06.500 And then that was kind of like emotionally adopting them.

00:45:09.040 So by the time we talked about adopting,

00:45:11.780 I was like, yeah, I know we've pretty much

00:45:13.620 had been through it already,

00:45:14.840 not legally their parent

00:45:16.140 because there's a bio father who's still alive.

00:45:18.200 But I had a lot of my fears around adopting

00:45:20.400 already kind of be, I don't want to say vanquished

00:45:23.600 or been through that

00:45:24.900 Because what I see with a lot of people is,

00:45:26.780 there's lots of people who say, oh, yeah,

00:45:28.620 we've talked about adopting.

00:45:30.180 No, I haven't done it yet.

00:45:31.540 It's easy to talk.

00:45:33.100 Or I wouldn't want to adopt.

00:45:34.900 Because why would I want to take care of someone's child?

00:45:38.100 Or what if there's problems?

00:45:39.320 What if they're broken?

00:45:41.360 Totally valid concerns.

00:45:42.680 But on the other side of that is the value of having for us.

00:45:48.480 Incredible opportunity to learn.

00:45:49.780 Yeah, learn.

00:45:50.520 And we don't adopt for some noble cause.

00:45:53.340 It usually feels right.

00:45:54.400 But what it adds to the family is so incredible in terms of variety and great kids.

00:46:00.960 And yeah, there's challenges.

00:46:02.400 Like we adopted now, she's now three, a baby who had a, her mom was on drugs. 1.00

00:46:08.040 But she's doing great.

00:46:09.360 Are there going to be challenges in the future?

00:46:10.560 Yeah.

00:46:10.980 But it's kind of worth it.

00:46:12.140 It's kind of knowing that jumping into things 100%, it's easy to see the cost of them, like cost of time, cost of money.

00:46:20.240 It's harder to see the value of it.

00:46:21.940 Yeah.

00:46:22.100 And now I just tend to trust around moving to Edinburgh,

00:46:26.000 adopting someone else.

00:46:27.980 I can see the challenges and just trusting that by going all in,

00:46:32.340 the benefits will be there.

00:46:33.800 That's amazing.

00:46:34.380 And family, like if you, here's a, OK.

00:46:37.640 So I gave a talk first time, finally,

00:46:39.940 forced me to function, like I got to do something

00:46:41.380 with parenting, like juggling parenting money.

00:46:44.060 Finally said at the conference, I'll do one talk

00:46:47.540 if you let me do this other one.

00:46:48.740 I'll do the predictable revenue talk

00:46:50.000 if you let me do the parenting talk.

00:46:51.300 I've got this one I want to do for me.

00:46:52.520 So the title was

00:46:53.520 Growing, Building a $5 million Business

00:46:56.220 While Raising 10 Kids.

00:46:57.780 And one of the ideas I shared there

00:46:59.820 was this trade-off,

00:47:01.040 which was the idea of lots of kids

00:47:03.000 for most people would be like,

00:47:03.840 oh, so busy and so expensive,

00:47:06.100 which is totally true.

00:47:07.340 Yeah.

00:47:08.320 Hell, yes.

00:47:09.060 It's expensive, yeah.

00:47:10.460 But, and I had, let's call it a few,

00:47:12.400 I don't know, maybe a few hundred thousand dollars

00:47:13.760 in savings or so on before I got married.

00:47:15.900 I spent, I invested all of that in the family

00:47:18.200 and went into debt over the years.

00:47:20.340 These options are expensive, man, like $40,000.

00:47:24.220 And we had to move from one house to the next to the next.

00:47:27.960 We went from $2,000 a month to $3,500 to $8,500

00:47:31.520 to $17,000 a month in rent down to $12,000 a month

00:47:34.600 in just rent.

00:47:35.400 Yeah.

00:47:36.060 We spend.

00:47:36.780 Can't imagine your food bill.

00:47:38.100 No, it's $5,000 a month probably.

00:47:39.480 Easily.

00:47:39.980 Yeah.

00:47:40.680 So what's interesting is I said, OK, trading,

00:47:45.300 it's a pro and con.

00:47:46.360 I traded financial security or financial savings

00:47:49.400 for financial confidence.

00:47:51.680 By having to deal with all these financial challenges

00:47:54.080 and making money, saving money, spending money,

00:47:56.720 I had all the same fears going into debt,

00:47:58.880 just kind of like getting over that.

00:48:00.600 Like, what's the big deal?

00:48:01.500 No pressure, no diamonds.

00:48:02.300 It was an investment, right?

00:48:03.140 We weren't investing in things like it

00:48:06.080 could be a nanny or a vacation. 0.99

00:48:08.640 Learning how to manage your time better.

00:48:10.040 Yeah, so traded in financial savings

00:48:13.000 for financial confidence.

00:48:15.220 Traded abundance of time for a appreciation of time.

00:48:19.940 I wasted so much time now, and I still waste a lot,

00:48:23.860 but I have so much more of an appreciation of the time

00:48:26.160 I have because it's limited.

00:48:29.800 My wife is here.

00:48:30.820 We have a couple of days together.

00:48:31.900 It's so rare.

00:48:32.500 I was like, oh my god, it's amazing.

00:48:34.260 And I'm already sad that's going to be over soon.

00:48:36.500 So this preciousness of I waste a lot less,

00:48:40.220 whether it's money, time.

00:48:41.740 So again, it's an investment.

00:48:45.160 In other words, like letting go of, you know, growth is, sorry, comfort is the enemy of growth.

00:48:51.120 Comfort's the enemy of success.

00:48:52.720 I was comfortable, like as a single person, kind of making just enough money, kind of doing my thing.

00:48:59.100 And, yeah, I'm a lot busier.

00:49:01.480 There's more stress.

00:49:02.880 I make a lot more money, but I spend a lot more money.

00:49:06.920 And I don't go to the gym as much and so on, blah, blah, blah, but it's totally worth it.

00:49:12.280 and kind of be willing to give up

00:49:13.700 what I had for what I didn't know I would get,

00:49:16.700 but just jump into growth, do something new, go for it.

00:49:20.500 Say yes more often.

00:49:21.400 Say yes more often in bigger ways, too.

00:49:23.680 That's awesome.

00:49:24.920 Aaron, appreciate you so much for coming on.

00:49:26.920 Where can people find you online?

00:49:29.200 Go get your book.

00:49:30.060 Yeah, that's fromimpossible.com.

00:49:32.020 Yeah, fromimpossible.com.

00:49:33.020 And then for speaking, consulting, outbound prospecting,

00:49:36.880 help, predictablerevenue.com is our business.

00:49:39.400 Awesome.

00:49:39.760 Go check them out.

00:49:40.420 Aaron, thanks again.

00:49:41.160 Yeah, thanks, Dan.

00:49:41.880 Thanks for watching this episode of Escape Velocity.

00:49:45.020 Be sure to like and subscribe and leave a comment

00:49:47.900 with your biggest insight from our conversation.

00:49:50.520 Be sure to check out the next episode.

Dan Martell - November 05, 2020

Right Way to Build an Outbound Sales Team with Aaron @ PredictableRevenue - Escape Velocity Show #40

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