Whatever role you play in a sales position, there are a lot of moving parts and specific challenges involved with your unique role. Today, I talk to an account executive who has held many roles in the sales cycle and is passionate about making life for salespeople easier. We talk about his vast knowledge and lessons learned, along with how his company OppSource has developed a platform to make salespeople more productive.

Today’s guest is Andy Zehren. I met Andy by chance, but discovered that he had so much experience that he would be a perfect guest for the podcast.  Andy is an account executive for OppSource a platform that makes B2B sales prospecting and engagement easier. They help find and prioritize prospects and enable one sales rep to do the work of three with their automated touchplans.

Episode Highlights:

• How Andy has held a lot of different roles in sales and he started as an SDR.
• How each different role has had specific challenges.
• Andy works with sales people at OppSource helping them with solutions to be more productive and make their lives better.
• The importance of building relationships and challenges with automation.
• Challenges of spending too much time and energy on a small amount of accounts.
• Working smarter and hyper personalization. Average attempts at cold prospecting used to be four and now it is nine.
• Saving time using a template, but making sure that the person you are reaching out to knows that you are a person reaching out to them.
• The importance of having strong software that helps with followups.
• Making sure that sells people moving is a seamless experience for the company and the prospect.
• How OppSource simplifies the process of preparing for the sales workday using a smart technology solution.
• The importance of finding the most productive call hours.
• Having the ability to reach out to all of the decision makers and strategic selling.

Resources:

• Andy Zehren LinkedIn
• @AZehren Twitter
• OppSource
• Andy.Zehren@OppSource.com

Transcript:

Marylou: Hey everybody, it’s Marylou Tyler. A long time since we’ve been in the podcast. I’ve been taking some time off here getting ready for an MBA class I’m teaching at a local university, pretty excited about that.

Today’s guest is Andrew Zehren. I met Andy actually by chance, I’m friends with a gentleman in a company out of Minnesota and Andy can tell you more about that. We got to talking and I realized that Andy had so much experience. He’s been in roles that I think you guys are going to identify with and will resonate with you. Without further ado, I’m going to introduce Andy and then let him talk about his experiences and the sales roles that he’s been in, what’s worked, what hasn’t. At the end, we’ll put how to get a hold of him in case you guys want to continue this conversation with him. Welcome to the show, Andy.

Andrew: Thank you very much, Marylou, for having me and allowing the company I’m with, OppSource, to talk a little bit about, obviously, the company we’re with but more importantly, just about some of the challenges that I’ve had and some other sales colleagues of mine have shared with me and some of the solutions and strategies that we’ve used to help us be more effective in our job. Like Marylou mentioned to start, I’ve been doing the sales type role for several years now and has really spanned a couple different companies, both small, startup type companies to large enterprise type organizations.

I’m excited today because within those different organizations, I’ve held a lot of different roles in sales. Like a lot of people I’m sure listening, I started my career as an SDR. Working with the field based team of account executives and I was their prospector looking for opportunities to engage them on and moving through the ranks and management from an SDR team which obviously came with a great learning experience for me, managing existing accounts more on a farmer type role and also then managing a new business territory.

The reason I bring that up is each of those roles has proven to have its own specific challenges. Nonetheless if you try to do some roles where you’re doing all those responsibilities from managing a new book of business to also managing assisting customers, has some challenges that obviously go along with it. To be frank, that’s really what attracted me to join the current company I’m with which is OppSource. Not only to work with a solution that really helps you be more productive in your sales career but also just work with salespeople. It’s very common that I get calls from sales individuals or sales managers that have the exact same problems I have experienced for the past 10, 12 years and working with them on ways to make their life better and also help them sell more. Again, really excited to be here and share some of the experiences I’ve had.

Marylou: Wonderful. Let me add onto that. I just had a conversation yesterday with a small startup and they are starting to work on what I call the Whale, which also is known Account Based Selling where you’re focusing on targeted accounts, the big accounts or the desirable accounts, the accounts you want to marry, is what I call it. The people who are in those accounts that you really want to build a strong relationship with. What goes hand in hand with that is hyper personalization, you can’t necessarily put them through a sequence that’s completely automated and hope that they’re going to bubble up to the top. You’re going to have to make some effort and reaching out to them, adding value to them and making their day better because they’re talking to you.

We were struggling with that versus they also still have what I call the extended universe accounts, those accounts that are not the Whales but they still bring you good revenue for the company. I would imagine that your job revolves around that same thing, especially if you’re doing multiple roles. Can you elaborate on some of the issues that had come up with that and what steps have you taken to work within that rhythm so that your pipeline is flowing instead of gunking up at various stages?

Andrew: That’s a great question. I chuckled because it’s obviously something that has been a challenge. When you’re working on a lot of these target accounts that are larger organizations that one way or another you’re going to get in there, the challenge with that is a lot of times you spend so much energy and so much time on two, three accounts where at the end of the day when those do actually close, if you haven’t been always prospecting type mentality, you’re at the bottom of that hill. You’re experiencing a lot of peaks and valley in performance. When you’re working for a company or a sales manager, yes, they do like those large transactions but they also do expect you to be consistent when it comes to performance. Again, that’s one of the challenges. Trying to do things smarter and using technology as your friend to assist you in doing some things, and when you talk about the hyper personalization, I’m a huge proponent of that.

If you actually look at some of the studies that are out nowadays, I think it was 2006, the average attempts it took to engage with somebody cold prospecting was around four. If you look at today, that is around nine. I think a lot of that has to do with that people are getting so bombarded with just generic emails and cold calls that aren’t really making sense and social media, it’s just a lot harder to get people’s attention.

That’s something that I focus on every day, is how to be smart about that process, because I’m also a believer that success breeds success. If you have a template that you know works and captures some pain points for a specific audience, I am a fan of utilizing those, however, also making sure that those are 100% personalized to the people you’re going after. Yes, you are saving time by using a template type process but you’re also making sure through your own due diligence online or wherever you’re finding your information, that you’re making sure that person knows that there’s somebody out here, there’s a person out here that really wants to talk with you specifically for these reasons. A huge fan of trying to make sure that you are personal, so it’s relevant when you are reaching out to people but also making sure that you’re using technology as your friend.

The reason I think that’s also important and this is for some folks that may have a blended type role where they are tasked with uncovering new logos and they’re also tasked with making sure their current customers are happy so they continue to renew, a lot of that takes time as well. If you are working on these big accounts, you also run the risk of not paying attention to your base. I was always taught to protect your base. Again, using some of the solutions, OppSource is one of them out there that can allow you to be smart with technology to automate some of these things and give you reminders and when you actually need to take action. Yes, I completely agree with trying to focus on to be hyper personalized when you’re reaching out to these folks.

Marylou: Yeah. I like the idea of having that follow up technology. They envision us with spinning plates on our arms, our hands and legs and head, where we have our net new business on one hand, we have our renewals on our foot sitting around. We just have a lot of things, a lot of spinning plates that we have to address and do so in a way that’s systematic so that we’re not dropping the ball anywhere. Really you can, in my opinion, only do that with a strong piece of software that helps you with that follow up. I’ve done it with accounts, we’ve done this in Excel, it’s hilarious to watch the columns of data because we basically start at column A and then work through column whatever depending on how many touches, we physically move the people along the columns. It can be done that way but boy, when you move into software where it’s intelligent and it’s telling you the dispositions of your calls, what pain points are bubbling up to the top and resonating, how many people are clicking through to your content assets, it just lowers that stress. I can feel the Zen moment. Just a software helping me be better at my job. I’m really engaging conversation, I’m doing more selling, I have more selling time and less admin time.

Andrew: Right. I completely agree with that. It’s funny you bring that up. Over the past several years working for a couple different companies, primarily, being a prospector, I was given manual type solutions whether that’s an Excel spreadsheet or whether that’s some sort of CRM System. It’s almost like when I came to OppSource, I didn’t know what I did know. When I did meet with our leadership team and they walk me through the messaging and the product, it was pretty quick that I realized I knew there were solutions out there that could really help me do my job more effectively but until it was put in front of me and I compare that to how I was managing my current business, I really didn’t know some of the things that were out there.

When I think back to using a type of CRM technology to do the work of a prospector, it was just really inefficient in getting a solution provided that is specifically built to prospect in terms of whether it’s follow ups and completing the task at hand and moving on to the next action and not having to worry about setting a reminder for yourself. You go out on vacation, sales people obviously move territories a lot, you’re moving jobs and making sure that that’s not only a seamless experience for you, you want to make sure that’s also a very seamless experience for your prospect.

I’m sure you’ve had this experience, Marylou, where you had somebody from a company calling you and maybe you had a really good conversation with them and a couple of months later, somebody new calls you from that company and you’re starting over at ground zero. For you, as a prospect, that’s extremely discouraging. Making sure there are solutions in place, if people do move territories or move roles, that’s a really good experience for you as well. It’s something we talk a lot about here at OppSource.

Marylou: That’s nice. I don’t know if this is going to be helpful for the troops out there, but walk us through a typical day now, the day in the life with this type of an engine helping you out. For example, in Predictable Revenue, the end of the day was the time where we set our calling list for the next day. There was a lot of manual processes that we had to do in Sales Force, it was the CRM at the time, and setting tasks, this whole thing death by tasks, we all know that’s horrible, but that’s the only way that we could do that. What does it look like now when I come into the office, do I have to do some prep work before I go home to ready my calling list for the next day? Or how does that work?

Andrew: A good question, I think you may have been listening to some of my sales calls because that’s a lot of what we talk about. I know I keep talking about some of my past experiences but that’s where a lot of this comes from, a lot of the ways that I think we can do things different, that’s exactly it. If I look back, I would typically spend whatever time it might be, a half hour to an hour at the end of my day or the start of my next day just preparing, just getting a list together, coming up with my messaging, maybe writing a couple of email templates, just really trying to get myself organized. That’s one of the first areas that we start talking to people about is the time and pain associated with preparing for your work day, because we all know there is only so many hours you can actually be calling people within a day. We want to make sure during those hours, we’re using the time to the best of our ability.

That’s the first thing when I come in in the morning, none of that exists, that goes away, that’s enabled by using a smart technology solution allowing you to do that. More importantly, making sure even though your day is organized you also are attacking it in a prioritized fashion.

Again, using the solution to make sure you know who is your first call going to be, and more importantly, why is that going to be your first call. There’s a lot of different techniques that we use to allow people to do that, that I could get into if that’s of interest for anybody but making sure that they’re not only just dialling the phone, but they’re being smart with their time so they can actually work on getting people engaged in discussions. What we’ve seen using that type of technique and technology, you can actually increase the amount of connects you’re having with folks up to 9x if you do this right.

That’s the first thing that the haze of setting tasks and reminder for myself, thankfully those are gone. Just because a lot of times I even noticed that some of that would just get lost in the shuffle where I’d set reminders for a week I was on vacation or whatever it might be and a lot of those leads are some of them would actually be lost. That’s one of the advantages I get to do daily now is complete whatever I’m working on, move on to the next one, and know that the technology is smart enough to remind me when that next action needs a plaque, whether that’s an email or phone call or to go visit a customer or whatever it might be, would be the main way that we start a discussion with companies.

Marylou: That’s great. I remember working with a client in Florida who was adminning during what turned out to be their best time to call. Once I got down there, we started tracking the best time to call. I did that a lot when I worked in call centers and that was a real strong metric for us. It turned out they were doing their admin in the absolutely wrong time frame, that they should have been calling on their prospects, one persona in particular. When we swap things around, lo and behold, we were getting the connects that normally took 2 hours of our time in 45 minutes just because we shifted the time around. But we had to be cognisant of that, we had to be proactive about that, we didn’t have a system that told us, or at least gave us the guide and the path of what we’re supposed to be doing and when and with whom. That’s great, I love that.

Andrew: It’s funny that you bring that up because if you were to ask to me a year ago, “When do you think is your most productive calling hours?” I probably couldn’t tell you, to be honest with you, just because I didn’t really have some of that data up my hands. When I go into my weekly one on one with my manager, he pulls up three things. First of all, he pulls up obviously my forecast report, he wants to know what I’m working on, when it’s going to close, and for how much. He also wants to know what is pre-forecast, what things am I working through the prospecting cycle that eventually will make it to the pipeline because he’s looking for the visibility out two, three, four quarters on what his pipeline’s going to look like so he uses that as a really good barometer of what his piece is going to look like.

The last thing he pulls up is really an activity type report. That report is not meant to have a microscope on me in terms of how many calls I’m making and how many emails I’m making that absolutely is a function but the way that we use it is really more of a coaching mechanism, so I know when am I being the most productive. What hours within the day and what days of the week am I actually catching people on the phone. And then of those times, which ones am I generating opportunities. I use that report to specifically plan my week. I’ll make sure that when I see if what’s, for example, Tuesdays from 11:00AM-1:00PM is my best time to catch people, that’s when I schedule my call blocks. Again, beforehand using different systems, I couldn’t even tell you when it was, now it’s a click away. I can get that type of information to make sure I plan that week, so I’m spending my time to the best of my ability.

Marylou: Given the fact that you’re doing multiple roles, do you prospect every single day in your current role or are you, like me, I segment my prospecting because I might not at the end of the quarter, at the end of the month, is not as large as a full time prospector and plus I service all my business and my customers and also getting that new business in. I do all roles personally here as an army of one, maybe two at the most when Bob joins me on accounts. I have days of the week that I prospect based on what I know from the metrics of when is the best time for me to do so. Is yours similar or do you still, in an all role situation, still prospect daily?

Andrew: That’s a good question. The way that we’re structured a couple of things, first of all, I do have the luxury of having a sales development org that is helping set appointments and qualifying opportunities for me. But also, we’re tasked as a sales organization to have a list of target accounts, like the Whales you talked about at the start and that’s our responsibility to make sure we get into those accounts and go close business.

To answer your question, yes, I actually prospect every day. I would say there are days that we may full demo type days or we’re doing on site set legs a little bit but for the most part, yeah, it’s every day. I’m a firm believer of to always be prospecting, whether that’s you have a half hour or an hour to make sure you are reaching out to some of these accounts. The reason I think that’s a really important question, because with any type of blended role where you are wearing several different hats, when you’re charged with new business and renewing accounts, if you do get really tied up with maybe it’s a lengthy renewal type cycle or some type of expansion with the existing account, and you haven’t spent some of that time, say it takes you a couple weeks to do that, you haven’t done that prospecting, well then you’re behind.

I just think that problem just can compound and continue to grow as an issue. That’s another benefit of working for OppSource, even the ability to use this solution is even though I make it tied up with some certain activity, making sure that the rest of responsibilities aren’t falling behind. Some of that can be automated and again, even if it’s a simple as automating a task or remind me when I need to take that action, for me, it’s not only a huge time saver, it’s not also I’m not worrying about it at night. What am I missing here?

Marylou: What’s falling through the cracks?

Andrew: Exactly. It’s everyday there is some level of prospecting but also making sure we’re using technology to the best of our advantage to make sure that nothing is falling through the cracks and we’re staying on top of our business.

Marylou: It sounds like truly, you’re maximizing the return on effort in the selling conversation, in the selling situation. Also, letting technology handle the higher impacting things with less effort. On your part, let the technology do the things that it can do well and allow you to focus on the hyper personalization, the rapport building, all those personal things that the behavioural things that sales reps still need to do even though we have this technology. We’re still having conversations one to one. It’s not one to many. Once you get into that situation where you are working with a prospect and they have bubbled up to the top, you’re going to switch, I would think, for the most part, to a human to human type of conversation to take it the rest of the way through.

Andrew: Absolutely. That’s been another big change where for the most part, in a lot of the past roles I’ve had, I’m not going to say we typically hitched our wagon to one person but typically we identify a small group of people that would be involved in some sort of initiative or making a decision. What we’re seeing now, and I’d be curious to get your thoughts is gone are the days of typically one or two people, even though they may tell you they are the decision maker, typically, there is a team, it’s a consensus type sale that you’re getting a lot of different buy in from a lot of different parts of the organization on what they’re going to need and what’s going to be important to them.

You mentioned the one to one type communication which is very important and also making sure that you have full visibility into the entire account. That’s one of other big advantages and bonuses for me working for OppSource is I was usually focused more on a contact type basis in the past and moving to a true account based selling model, so you do have visibility into all the people that potentially could be involved and making sure you’re actually reaching out to all of them to find out what’s going to be important to them and what role they may take within the process. That’s something that’s been a big change for me personally, is something that we’ve seen benefit very quickly from.

Marylou: For me, 30 years in sales, it’s been there, done that. It was called strategic selling back in the day, it was called spin selling, up when I was full blown sales, I had six accounts. They were the remote bill operating companies. It took me up to $2 million for that. Yes! It was all about trying to find the people in the accounts and working each as if they all mattered. Especially if different divisions and things like that. I agree, I think, the more people that pop in, now, maybe if you’re doing just top of funnel, there are two to three, three to five folks who will get you in the door, who will [00:23:42] you to a certain point in the pipeline in a certain relative position and then if you hand off that opportunity to a quota carrying sales representative, then they’re going to probably meet more people too. Depends on how you’re structured, but definitely, even at top of funnel, we need one or more people along the way in order to get to that opportunity. We have to have those conversation assets and pieces ready to go at our fingertips and technology helps us do that better with less effort and higher impact.

Andrew: Absolutely.

Marylou: Andy, we’ve extended our time. I don’t want anyone to say, “Marylou, you always go over!” I would like you to share with our folks how to get a hold of you. Just so everybody knows, and they already know this, those listening, I will put your contact information on the podcast page, but what’s the best way to get a hold of you? If should they have any question, what you said today resonate in some way and they want more clarification from you, how do they reach you?

Andrew: First of all, if anybody is just curious about OppSource, the company here, you can go to our website, we have a lot of good collateral in terms of customer testimonials and some of the challenges we’re helping sales professional solve, that’s www.oppsource.com. And if anybody just wants to chat with me, to bounce some ideas off each other, I love learning from different sales people, that’s something I learn every day, a new technique that’s working, feel free to send me an email, that’s andy.zehren@oppsource.com. Love to hear from you.

Marylou: Wonderful. Thank you, Andy, for your time, and I will again leave your contact information on your page and we are very thankful to have had this conversation with you today. Thanks again.

Andrew: My pleasure. Thanks, Marylou.

The current trend with sales teams is moving away from generic messages and the batch and blast approach. The method that everyone’s talking about and trying to focus on now is personalization. Customized methods can be incredibly difficult for an SDR to create. My guest today is an expert at personalization for sales teams and we discuss challenges and solutions for crafting personalized emails for effective sales.

On today’s show, I am speaking with Kristina McMillan from TOPO a research and advisory firm that focuses exclusively on sales and marketing organizations. They have dedicated practices for sales, sales development, and marketing. The focus is on market research, executive advisory, and the study of high-growth organizations to understand the processes, levers, and best practices that contribute to high growth.

Episode Highlights:

• Challenges with creating personalization at scale and having a repeatable structure that allow customization.
• The four stage messaging framework research, crafting the message, 2-3 touches a week, and using technology to automate.
• Knowing what to look for in the research stage.
• The three steps to crafting a message: setup, engage, and offer.
• The importance of understanding the role of the contact person.
• The offer should draw the client into the conversation to learn how I can help them.
• Using the touch patterns together with the framework. Sequencing and cadencing.
• Touch at least two to three times a week. A frequency that builds familiarity.
• Recognition and having a multifaceted profile for contacting a client.
• The importance of telling stories or having cliffhangers and persuasive copywriting.
• How people will respond when you offer something of value to them.
• Maximizing your return on effort.

Resources:

• TOPO
• Kristina McMillan on LinkedIn
• Kristina McMillan on Twitter @Lifeiterated
• TOPO Blog
• Analyst@TOPOHQ.com

Episode transcript:

Marylou: Hi everybody. It’s Marylou Tyler. This week’s guest is Kristina McMillan. I was introduced to Kristina through a colleague of mine and I’m really excited about what we’re going to talk today about because she is, even though her title says Director of Research, she works for a company called TOPO.

She’s going to talk about a subject that’s near and dear to all of us now and she’s an expert in, which is personalization. She has a variety of expertise but since we’re kind of funnelling this into a 20-minute conversation, we decided that personalization was something near and dear to everyone’s heart. We’re all struggling with it. We don’t know really what the framework and method looks like and if there’s a system we can put into place so Kristina is going to set us straight today.

Welcome to the podcast, Kristina.

Kristina: Thank you for having me.

Marylou: Tell us first about TOPO because I pronounced it incorrectly. Tell us a little bit about that because people are like, “What?”

Kristina: Sure.

Marylou: Start there and then you can just dive right into personalization and start enlightening us and educating us about that.

Kristina: Sure, I’m happy to. TOPO is a research and advisory firm. Similar to Gartner group, although except we don’t focus on IT. We focus exclusively on sales and marketing organizations. We have dedicated practices for sales, sales development, and marketing.

What we do is we help our clients through executive advisory. We do a ton of research on the market. What we really consider to be our secret sauce is that we exclusively study high growth organizations to understand what are the different processes, levers, best practices that make them successful and really contribute to that high growth.

I’ve been with TOPO now for almost three years but my background has been largely in helping sales development and inside sales organizations lay those foundational processes and ramp their teams.

One of the questions that always comes up either in advisory or even just in passing is with all of the trends out there and sort of the shift to account based that a lot of teams are talking about, we’ve seen sort of historically everyone moving away from batch and blast and sort of generic messages to the opposite end of the spectrum, which is 100% personalization, customized messages.

The reality of it is that they’re incredibly difficult for an SDR to create. We’ve seen some amazing bright stars out there. People love to throw up those, I call them the silver bullet emails, where it’s like well of course, somebody will respond to that. It’s like the most beautifully crafted email I’ve ever seen. The trouble is really less than 10% of SDRs can create emails like that. Not because they’re not smart but it’s rare that everything organized is in a way for you to have great trigger events or five ideas of exactly how you could help that organization. It’s just too hard.

The challenge that I hear now is teams are saying, “Okay great. I like the idea of customization. It sounds really good. It sounds really meaningful to my prospects but we just can’t do it at scale.”

Now, we’re seeing that pendulum swing back to the middle a bit and teams are trying to figure out what is that recipe or that formula for doing personalization at scale. We find in working with our clients and some of the research we’re doing that it really is trying to distill it down to a formula.

We have our own formula. I’ll share. I know we’re just speaking so it’s a little hard to visualize this. But if you can think about it, what you’re trying to lay out for an SDR and a whole team is really a structure to follow that they can repeat, that allows for a level of personalization that’s still going to be meaningful to that prospect or buyer but makes it easy for me to wash, rinse, and repeat as an SDR.

You can think of it kind of in four stages. We call this our messaging framework for SDRs but I have to prepare the message. The research that I have to do upfront to figure out how I’m going to customize, there’s a certain amount of things that I need to do.

In that, the challenge that we often see is teams go, “Okay great. I go tell my SDRs to research.” But then, they spend an hour researching a prospect. Now, I have sort of two responses to that. One of which is, “Oh, is that bad?” It depends on the account. An hour on a top 10 strategic account, totally worth the time.

The second question I would ask or reaction I would have is, “Did you tell them what to look for?” Too often, I hear teams say, “I’ve given my SDRs guidance. I tell them go read the 10-K, visit the website, go check them out on LinkedIN.” I’m like, “That’s great. But picture yourself in their shoes. If they go to a 10-K, it’s a pretty lengthy document. Do they know where to look? Do they know what to look for? Do they know what they’re supposed to do with the information that they find?”

The same goes for someone’s LinkedIn profile. If I go to their LinkedIn, what am I supposed to be zeroing in on? Is it their experience? Is it the people that they know that I may also want to reach out to? What is it? Same for the company website. You can imagine how this goes on and on.

We find that with this formula in mind, you have to give guidance on how to do that preparation or that research most effectively. It might be literally go to LinkedIn and look at these three things. But the goal is for you to walk away to be able to use something from their LinkedIn profile as a setup for your conversation.

Marylou: Right.

Kristina: Or go to the company’s website and be able to describe in one to two sentences what it is that they do and use that as a way to identify our customers that might be [00:06:11]. They’re trying to answer a question or to complete an assignment, if you will, with that research as opposed to stomping around the site until they sort of feel comfortable but still can’t remember what it is that they’re supposed to know about that organization. Does that make sense?

Marylou: Makes perfect sense. I love that. You’re putting together the ingredients of a good recipe.

Kristina: Thanks. The second piece after we prepare the message, there are three steps in that second piece, which is actually crafting the message. Those three steps are the setup, the engage, and the offer.

What we look at that is anytime we reach out to someone, there’s context we have to provide. That’s the setup. That’s the why am I reaching out to you? How am I either mentioning a referral, someone we have in common, some reason as to why I’m reaching out to you now, some other methodologies like why you? Why you now? Try to position this as to what is the moment at which that I felt I had to email you now. You’re giving that context to set it up.

The engage is where we deliver that relevant message to this person. When we think of that in terms of formula, a lot of people go back to the templates. I’m going to tell them exactly what we do with the three bullet points. I may do that by vertical. That’s some level of personalization.

The problem is what we want to do is try to figure out how do I position something that might be useful to that person as a way to engage them? In my research, one of the things that I might’ve had to check off is do I understand what this person’s role is. I know that a manager of IT is different than a CIO. I should be able to go back and say, “Okay, how do I tell a story that a CIO cares about versus a manager of IT?”

IT is one of the most old tune and unfortunately, they’re some of the best at ignoring us but the point is if I can be strategic in my conversation and in how I engage with a CIO versus a manager of IT, I might be a little more tactically focused because that’s what their life is like. That’s the stuff that they’re dealing with, the fires they’re fighting, the chaos, etc.

If I can engage with them around a particular use case story that is relevant to how we helped another manager of IT in their specific vertical, I can say something along the lines of, “You know? We’re actually talking to a lot of store operations folks over at Tory Burch so I’m talking to an IT organization and a retailer. The interesting thing is they struggle with the fact that it takes three months to open a new store. Part of that is because their teams are struggling with how to collaborate on all of the different things that have to happen to get to source it up, prepare it and ready to open. Just by using our collaboration platform, we were actually able to help them reduce that store opening time from three months to three weeks.”

Now, I move into the offer. “I’d love to set you up to talk with one of my account executives around how they might be able to expand on that story for you. Do you want to dig in a little further? We have a lot of examples of how we’ve helped store operations folks at other retailers. I’d love to talk to you more about that.”

Let me tell you everything I learned about my organization as an SDR and verbally vomit on you. But rather let me see if I can draw you into conversation that provides value to you. The setup I offer, the use case stories, we do engage, and then I close with that offer.

Now, with that formula in place, I know my research is to help with that setup to be able to tell the story and then to be able to have a compelling offer. I’m able to wash, rinse, and repeat in that same structure. I’m a parent but I use the analogy of bowling. The first time you take someone bowling, if you don’t give them bumpers, it’s not going to be any fun at all. But if you give them bumpers so that the ball can actually get to the end and maybe they can knock down one pin, they’re going to get better at it and then you can start to give them a little bit more autonomy after that by taking the bumpers off.

But the bumpers help you stay in line and get to the end. That’s the same thing for an SDR. We’re giving them the structure to follow so that they can be successful. This structure is proven. We often go in and do these trainings with clients of ours and literally, the SDRs can walk out of these trainings and we get messages either later that afternoon or within the next few days, which is like I tried it and look at this response I got. It’s literally because they’re like okay, now I can think about it, what is my setup, what is my engage, and what is my offer. It just makes it a lot easier for them. Does that make sense?

Marylou: Yeah, perfect. Cool.

Kristina: I would say that the next thing that we’re seeing as teams continue to expand on this is thinking about how this framework can carry to not just the individual messages that they’re crafting, whether it be an email, whether it be a voicemail, whether it be a social touch, or even that first qualification call. But it’s how do I use all of those together.

Starting to think about, again, there is no one silver bullet email or they’re too hard to craft in this case and so, how do I use my touch pattern collectively together. Multiple emails over the course of a couple of weeks combined with multiple conversations, how do I start looking at all of those as sort of more complex setups, more stories that are unfolding over a series of emails so it might be again, using our example before, an IT manager.

I may zero in on one challenge in the first email that I sent but I may select a different challenge with a different story in the second email. My offers may change as well and so we start to think about how this has magnitudes of implications over all of the touches that an SDR might do.

Marylou: We call that sequencing and cadencing in our world. If you’re following along and trying to figure out where this fits in Predictable Prospecting, it’s definitely in the chapters on sequencing where we talk about what to say, when to say it, with whom to say it and in what modality, which is what you just said.

Kristia: Yeah.

Marylou: Perfect. That’s number three, sequencing and cadencing and how to format. Have you guys come up with some recommended patterns? I get a lot of questions about that, “How often should we send emails?” Not necessarily how long should they be in length but how long should the sequence be. Is there some research guidelines that you’re coming up with as the result of looking at the sampling of a large number of records?

Kristina: That’s a great question. There’s no hard and fast it has to be this touch on this day and there lots of data out there that we don’t provide on what is the best time to email, what is the best time to call? But what we do know is that there is a frequency that has to be bumped up. Like once a week, it’s too news letter-y for those prospects and it doesn’t stand out. It’s too easy to ignore.

Where we see most SDRs having the greatest success is two to three times a week. I am doing some touch that that prospect with remember. If I’m doing war dials or in between dials and I’m not leaving a trace, meaning I’m not leaving a voicemail, I’m not following it up with a note, we don’t count those. They’re still good to try and catch the person live of course, but of the things that they will remember, we want a frequency that starts to build familiarity but not so much that it’s stalkerish. Once a day is excessive and most people would get really, really annoyed.

However, if I did, let’s say a call and an email on Tuesday to try and see if I could get the person, and I had a very compelling message, it’s not unheard of that I may try again to reach them either the next day or Thursday. To do it again on Friday might be excessive and so that’s why we sort of say two to three. And then this unfolds over a series of anywhere from two to four weeks depending on, again, how sophisticated the overall sequence might be.

What we’re trying to do is a couple of things. We’re trying to increase it such that there’s potential recognition. The first voicemail, the first email, even maybe the second batch of those, they don’t know who you are. But once they start seeing your name rolling across their inbox a couple of times, they may not know why but they’re like, “Why does that look familiar?” We’ve all done that like, “Do I know that person or should I know that person?”

And then we know that prospects don’t historically return voicemails but a lot of them don’t get as many voicemails as we think anymore depending on the target market that that prospect’s in and so sometimes, they’ll just check them. As soon as they hear the, “Hi so and so. I’m calling from da, da, da.” That’s maybe when they hit delete but now, they’ve heard your name and your voice and so when they see that email with your name coming through, they’re like, “How do I know that name?”

Now, you can imagine if you’re getting a LinkedIn message from that person or a shoutout on Twitter. It’s creating this multifaceted profile of this person who’s trying to reach you. And so, recognition goes up such that next time you see that email come through, you’ll be like, “I wonder why this person wants to get me so much.” We find as an SDR, you’re creating that frequency, that concentration that gives you a higher likelihood of getting that response.

This is beyond my research but we’ve looked into this a lot and there’s psychology that shows that once you become more human, it’s a lot harder for people to ignore you. It’s much easier to ignore and delete messages from a stranger than it is from someone who’s familiar. You’re increasing that likelihood that again, they will actually see that highly relevant valuable message that you’re sending across.

Again, just to recap, it’s usually two to three touches, sometimes two to four is okay if you’re doing double touches like calls and emails together, per week for two to four weeks. If you’re doing very strategic account base with very high value offers, you could potentially layer in another touch or two per week, highlighting those offers because again, they’re relevant to the person and you can potentially stretch that to the full four weeks.

But after that, it’s very important. People can get fatigue if that frequency continues. That’s why the once a week for a year newsletter is very easy to ignore because you’re just used to it. It fades into the background. This concentration has to come to an end, which we talked a little bit before about the closing emails, the first time we all got that have you been eaten by alligators note, we actually thought it was funny. We’re like, “That’s pretty cool.”

But the 15th time I got it from an SDR and it wasn’t executed very well, I was like, “Okay, now I just know that it’s been widely adopted so it’s not as effective so we have to try something else.” By closing out that communication, we’re letting the person know it’s going to stop and that gives us the space to let them rest for a couple of months, depending on how we’re targeting folks. We may rest them for two to four or even six months and then come back to them and try again with more relevant use case stories and high value offers.

Marylou: I definitely am a fan of incubating, depending on the list size and whether you have the luxury to do that. Some of my clients are at top 300 accounts and that’s it so they’ve got to figure out ways to incubate but maybe they incubate by persona. But there’s definitely an incubation process where you let them rest and go to sleep and then come back later.

I’m jumping for joy and giddy over here to hear you say that two to four weeks, two to four touches, it’s like twisting the arms of my clients when I tell them, “Please, we need to do at least two a week.” And they look at me like I can’t do that.

Kristina: Then we’re spread too thin.

Marylou: We have nothing of value to be able to share with these prospects and they look at me like that’s a low blow.

Kristina: But it’s fair, right? We’ve seen them following up, circling back, checking in. It’s like, “Can we just tell another story?”

Marylou: I like to do more story. I have the circle with the red line through just checking in. I do not let my clients do that but I do love these stories and I like the cliff hangers where you’re doing email sequences much like the series of television shows where you have that cliff hanger at the end and they have to tune into the next email to find the solution to the cliff hanger.

I like a lot of the persuasive copywriting techniques that keep us engaged to utilize that in the cold streams. Even in the working status when you’ve got someone that you know they are in need of your service and you’re trying to get them to that first meeting or beyond.

Kristina: I’ll just tell a quick story of a client I had that I thought was just such a fun example. In that, it was possibly one of the most unsexy prospects that they were going after. This particular SDR, actually, we were trying to solve his challenge around personalization and he was targeting public utility managers at city water districts in the UK. We’re like, “Okay? How do we make this interesting?”

He had one use case. That was it. He says, “We have client and it’s working smashingly for them.” And we’re like, “Okay great. Let’s tell his story.” I forgot the particular name of the customer but let’s say it was John Smith at SX water district. He sent 1 email to 50 targets and he said, “We’re working with John Smith at SX whatever it was. He was struggling with this problem. There were tons of problems he was struggling with but we just highlighted this one and we actually were able to help him reduce that particular bad metric by X percent.

We’d love to just talk to you by how we might be able to do something similar for you. It was super simple but targeted story, he got a 56% response rate and 30% of them were meetings. It was on one email.

Marylou: Wow. That’s great.

Kristina: Because it just mattered to them. They were like, “You’re talking to me. You get my people. You get people just like me. I’m just like John.” It’s just that people will respond when it’s something that’s valuable to them. You can’t guarantee that 100% of the time they have that specific challenge. I often get this question from SDRs. What if I pick the wrong challenge? I’m like, “No problem.” We’re always talking about how prospects never read our emails or whatnot and now, you’re telling me that you expect every single one is going to read your email and not want to talk to you.” I’m like, “No problem.”

They’re not going to remember. Lead with another challenge story the next time. I’m like, “Just keep trying them on until you find when it resonates.” You are trying to be helpful and you’re doing so in the language that matters to these people. If you piss someone off, no problem. That’s that particular prospect, I guarantee, that will not happen across the board.

Marylou: Yes. Unless they’re carrying you out of their office, physically removing you, it’s okay to continue.

Kristina: That’s a great way to look at it.

Marylou: Well it actually happened to me back in my selling days. That’s why I can use that phrase with authority.

Kristina: There you go.

Marylou: That’s awesome. Alright, we’re on number four. We’ve got research to recap and we got some great ideas from Kristina that it’s important for you to outline what areas, even specific locations, especially if you’re a Beverly Hill company, you’re going through those gigantic documents that do give you a lot of information but you need to know where to look.

Just set up a research now. Tell us again that number, an hour for a large account, a top 10. In the book, we talked about it takes 10 to 15 minutes per what we call extended universe accounts, which are important but not as important as the top 10. What’s that range for the [00:23:02]?

Kristina: That’s a great question. I would say that it’s rare that I run into, I mean it has to be a strategic account if you’re going to spend an hour. More so what I see happening is SDRs are spending 30 minutes on what’s called normal accounts for them and that’s too much time. That’s just too much time. If we’re very specific about what they’re looking for, they should be able to execute that in three to five or five to seven minutes, depending on that account.

If I’m setting up the whole pattern, the whole sequence and I’m doing so upfront—I do see some SDRs do that such that they can set it to send on certain days—then I may spend a little bit more time making sure that I do understand their profile. I know which specific stories I want to tell and how they’re going to unfold over the two to four weeks. Then I may spend time a little bit more on that prep stage.

It should be quick and easy for me to find that because again, the whole goal is to run through the formula, wash, rinse, repeat. It should be definitely 10 minutes or less for most accounts. If you’ve got complex and/or there’s expansion opportunities where we need to know a little bit more about what we’re already doing in there, I would layer in maybe an additional 5 to 10 minutes but it should definitely be in the 5 to 10 minute range for most accounts.

Marylou: Okay. I have one client who actually has a research group that does the research for SDRs. How wonderful is that?

Kristina: If you can do that, that’s even better because then—we’ve done the same thing. We’ve told that research group exactly what to look for so we can structure that information for our SDRs so they can just take it and customize the message.

Marylou: I know. It’s so great. Now, we’re moving on to IM2, which is crafting. You’re very specific there; the set up, the engage, the offer, so we won’t dive into that one too deeply. In the book, for those of you who have read Predictable Prospecting, there’s the compel with content framework, which follows very similarly to what Kristina was talking about with set up, engaging, and offer. The difference is the offer for us is sometimes help, help, help then ask so the offer is more helping than it is asking, and some of our sequencing.

The third one was the actual sequence, which you gave us some really advice about two plus touches a week everyone. So what’s the fourth one?

Kristina: The fourth one, gosh. To us, we always look at it as you have to establish the right process. You have to help them wash, rinse, and repeat manually and then you got to find a way to automate it where you can. Technology is the fourth one to us, generally. In that, we have to figure out like you said, are there ways to make this easier and more scalable for the teams so can we have someone else do the research? Or if we know exactly what we’re looking for, can we go out there and find the data solutions vendor that can give that to us without my team having to do that, individually stomping all over the internet.

Technology will be that next piece and we know that for particularly outbound teams, who are having to do a lot of this prep, because I don’t always have something to refer to and latch onto, are there ways that I can then organize all of those touches that we want them to do, the two plus per week? The sales email, the dialling automation, the general engagement vendors are starting to blend all of these multiple touches into their platforms and they’re good but we know that teams are still struggling with the, “Great, I’ve got them all set up in my cadences and sequences and outreaches and whatever it is.”

I need to make sure that I’m thoughtful around prioritizing how to execute those because they set them up and then they find that they want a vacation for a week and they came back and they’ve got 1,000 overdue in the sequences.

Marylou: Right. Chaos.

Kristina: Yeah, chaos, so they can still execute them but making sure that we’re staying on top of what we need to do and helping them make choices around how to manage that technology.

Marylou: Really, the last one is putting in the necessary, people call it stack, people call it technology, process, but the goal is to maximize return on effort, ROE, people. That’s really where once we figure out the perfect ingredients for our perfect recipe for our perfect segment of account, then what we’re going to do to give us that rinse and repeat capability is we’re going to latch on to the technologies that will allow us to maximize return on effort. Some things still will be manual. Some things will be automated. Some accounts will run complete automation. Some accounts will run with hyper personalization.

Kristina, this has been great. I think the structure to follow for this personalization is wonderful. People are driving in their cars right now or they’re on the treadmills. I’m not sure how they listen to this podcast but how do we get off whatever we’re on and actually look up from you how we can dive into this deeper, where should we go? What tools do you have? How do we get more of you and this research that you’ve done?

Kristina: We certainly work with clients on a lot of this stuff but for anyone who’s just interested in peeking in, we do a variety of things. We have our blog where we publish some of our seminal research and some of these best practices. We also do quite a few events. It’s one of the more special things that I think TOPO does and it’s actually one of the reasons that I was intrigued to join TOPO, in that we do what we call councils, but we do them specifically, I think there’s a lot of council events and meetups and stuff out there that are great. They have panels.

I think they’re amazing resources but the one thing that always struck me as particularly interesting about TOPO councils is that we really dig in thematically to very specific problem like this one we talked about today with personalization and we do so with peers. We have a sales development council that brings sales development leaders from various sizes of teams, various stages in their careers, various evolutions of the organizations that they serve, and we bring them together and we say, “Okay, great. Let’s dive into the challenges around personalization. Let’s share in a very active way, not just networking but let’s actively share what our challenges are and how everyone in the group is addressing those.”

We usually get together, depending on the size of the event, 20 to 40 sales development leaders to talk about these types of things and I think they’re pretty darn magical. They’re a great way to meet peers but they’re just a great way to walk away with. As I think I mentioned to you before, TOPO really believes in thought leadership but we believe equally in specificity. We believe that our job is not only to sort of post these utopias of where we want you to get to in terms of personalization or the way you do outreach or whatnot, but actually trying to help you figure out the steps to get there.

One of the things that council, that we find particularly interesting is people walk away with those things that they can go do with their teams right away. It’s like, ”Okay, I understand that ideally, my team should be here but to get on the road to that, I take this very next step and then this very next step.” They feel like there’s stuff that they can go do to get closer to that ideal.

Those councils are pretty magical. We also do an annual event where we get together, sales and marketing leaders, to talk about all these kinds of things but we have a dedicated track for sales development as well as sales prospectors. We call them rep effectiveness workshops where actual reps will come and say, “Look, I want to get better at my craft. What’s the best way to do discovery? What’s the best way to do prospecting? What’s the best way to do outreach, personalization, all of these different things? And we’ll walk them reps through them.

We also do equivalence for the managers, which is like for sales development in particular, the revolving door of personnel in this team, how do I manage that? How do I have better practices and fail safes in place to protect consistency around pipeline generation? We’ll tackle things like that and we certainly present some of our research but we actually feel that there’s a lot of learning to be done from your peers.

We call them tear downs. We put peers up on stage and have them walk you through all of the trials and tribulations that they’ve gone through and how they’ve come out on the other side. It’s a great opportunity to get more visibility into that. We have that coming up in late March here in San Francisco on I believe the 20th and the 21st.

Marylou: That will be 2018.

Kristina: 2018, correct.

Marylou: This is airing now. It’s getting close to October 2017 that we’re airing this. To check out that information, you can go to Kristina’s website, go ahead and give us the location and I’ll also put this in the show notes so that people who are driving are not going to stop and try to type and write down at the same time.

Kristina: It’s www.topohq.com. And then for anyone that has any questions coming out of this, I’m always happy to answer a few questions. They can always reach out to me and my analyst team, analyst@topohq.com. And as best as we can, we can shoot out some quick answers. I can’t promise that my sales guy won’t see it so I’ll do my best to hide it from him but it is a good way to get some answers from the team.

Marylou: Very good. Thank you so much, Kristina, for attending today. This is a topic that’s going to continue to be fine tuned because as you said, the batch blast, what we used to call spray and pray, is in some areas a thing of the past, I still use it in some accounts and it depends on the size, number of records we have, and the average deal size. Segmentation is really important. But, great ideas.

Again, to recap, it is research, it was crafting the right message, sequencing those messages, and then wrapping out in a process bow around the whole thing so that you can maximize your return on effort.

Kristina, thanks again for your time.

Kristina: Thanks for having me.

There are a lot of definitions of sales enablement. What is it? How do we do it? Why does it matter? Having a process and mindset that extends across an entire organization can help enable salespeople to be successful. Still, it would help to have a clear plan and goal to get the most impact out of the enablement process.

Today, I have two guests Cory Bray and Hilmon Sorey.  Cory and Hilmon just happen to know a little bit about sales enablement. They are the authors of The Sales Enablement Playbook and they run ClozeLoop a sales enablement platform. They are based in San Francisco, and this is a fun and lively episode with two guests diving into the topic of sales enablement.

Episode Highlights:

• Cory and Hilmon share their definition of sales enablement and focusing on the prospect.
• How there isn’t a one thing silver bullet type solution to sales enablement.
• Every department needs to contribute to sales enablement.
• Having a mindset based on customer engagement where every team contributes.
• Having the customer conversation at the center of the bullseye. Then as the concentric circles move out there are other team members contributing.
• Understanding your messaging and how it relates to buyer personas.  
• Pain points and features and how they relate to customer stories.
• Issues with a disconnect between marketing and sales. Creating micro content for the salespeople.
• The three types of sales conversations: lone wolf, scripting, or finding the sweet spot of the entire team’s effort.
• Creating a playbook that allows a natural feedback loop.
• Knowledge management is about the conversations.

Resources:

• ClozeLoop
• The Sales Enablement Playbook
• Cory Bray on LinkedIn
• Hilmon Sorey on LinkedIn

Episode transcript:

Marylou: Hey, it’s Marylou Tyler. This week, we have a really interesting, I think Hilmon is the one who found me, but we have two authors, Cory Bray and Hilmon Sorey of a book called The Sales Enablement Playbook. I think when Hilmon connected to me, and I saw the title of his book, I knew that we needed to speak today. I don’t know about you guys, but I definitely have heard a plethora of definitions of what sales enablement playbook is. Cory and Hilmon wrote this book, they’re also the co-founders of ClozeLoop which is a sales enablement platform. They’re out at San Francisco. Welcome to the podcast!

Hilmon: Thanks for having us, Marylou.

Cory: Thanks a lot. We’re excited to be here.

Marylou: I just love having two people to talk to. This is really cool. I don’t know why this feels so new and fresh, but it does.

Hilmon: We’ll see if you still like it at the end.

Marylou: Indeed, indeed. Okay, tell us, in your words, what is the definition of sales enablement. What is it?

Cory: We believe that sales enablement is the concept of extending a prospect centric mindset to all departments within an organization. We spend a lot of time thinking about this and there are tons of definitions running around. It’s aligning sales and marketing, or its content, or its training, or on-boarding and all these different things but every definition that we’ve heard is either too narrow or too shallow. We started thinking about it and realized that most companies out there stated they’re customer centric. When you think about sales enablement, it’s taking that existing mindset and tweaking it a little bit to focus on the prospect.

Marylou: Okay. Does this align at all with persona development and the word ‘persona’ or are you using prospect in a different way?

Cory: We look at personas as a subset of prospect. For any organization, they might be selling three to five different personas and you can use the strategies and tactics that we outline in the playbook to be able to engage those folks at the top the funnel, for sure. That’s a component of what we’re talking about.

Hilmon: This is Hilmon, if I could chime in a little bit. A lot of what we heard in working with our customers and clients, I’ve been a management consultant for 10 years here in the Bay Area working with a lot of Silicon Valley firms and having conversation with CEOs who are trying to figure how do we dupe the bottom line, how do we enable our sales reps to have more efficacy in the marketplace which is full of a whole bunch of noise.

What we kept hearing was I’ve got a sales enablement manager, or hey I bought this sales enablement tool, or I’ve implemented an SDR Playbook. All of these things, people in the executive management were believing that each one of these little things could potentially be the silver bullet to increasing the efficacy of the sales team. When we really stop to think about it, we came to realize that where they were failing was in thinking that there was a point solution to sales enablement, that there was one little thing that they could purchase. Because the marketing is really good, Marylou. You see the same stuff that we do, right?

You buy into that and then you don’t realize that this is something that needs to be an ecosystem inside of an organization, that every department needs to be focused on how they can contribute to enabling sales to be more effective. Whether that’s the knowledge management loop in allowing products to tell sales that this is what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, persona development which ties into marketing, HR which is working on professional development and training tools, all of these things come together to “enable” a sales team to be more effective.

We do this with the mindset of looking towards how do we go about engaging with our potential customer and how does each department contribute to our ability to engage with a potential customer in a market place. That’s what we mean by a prospect subject mindset.

Marylou: Okay. I’m a visual person, I’m trying to visualize. I see the prospect in the center of a bull’s eye or the center of the ecosystem. And then shooting out from that, are you saying that all the departments who touch the prospect are contributing their know how, their expertise, their rhythms, their processes, their methods with the sole result of trying to enable the sales executives to have better conversations, to reduce the lag in the pipeline, and also be trained so that they have those conversations which are more meaningful in nature and they’re able to gently guide their prospects through the pipeline. Are all these things part of sales enablement?

Hilmon: You nailed it. I’m a visual person too, so I saw the bull’s eye. At the center of that bull’s eye is a conversation with a prospect, not even a sale. Let’s just say the conversation with the prospect and this is the sales person. Whether it’s an SDR or an AE, whatever it might be inside of your organization. The bull’s eye is that individual moving their mouth to have a conversation with the prospect.

Then if you look at the concentric circles that move out, you potentially got their manager. How is their manager enabling them to be more effective? Through training, through coaching, they’re providing tools. Then outside of that, maybe you do have someone in the organization that’s called the sales enablement professional that’s developing scripts or that’s developing tools or is managing your admin on your CRM or is providing you with some kind of marketing automation or email automation.

Outside of that, maybe there’s a greater scope that correlates to someone who is called VP of people or HR, something like that, who’s providing you with some level of training. Then outside of that, maybe you’ve got the accounting team which works to price the solution in such a way that they can appeal to the specific vertical or a persona. Or maybe even broader than that, you’ve got legal which is exploiting documents to make sure that the stuff is closing. But all of that entire bull’s eye is your organization and those concentric circles become more and more intimate. The closer you get to the customer conversation, but each department in the organization has some contribution that is making to helping a sales team to engage in. It may not be direct to your point Marylou, it may not be that, hey, from products, I’m getting this specific competitive intelligent language and I’m going to go regurgitate that when I have a conversation.

It could be more nuanced, and it could just be performing your function in such a way that you keep in mind that, gosh, this salesperson is trying to close a deal in the middle of August. Here I am at legal and if I foresaw this thing then that means it’s going have a detrimental impact on this person’s ability to close a deal this quarter. Having that kind of consciousness around sales is what we’re talking about. Again, it becomes more micro depending upon the department and its intimacy with the actual sales conversation. But you hit it on the head, I like the bull’s eye. We will put that on the cover next time.

Marylou: I like the bull’s eye for so many things. I think I overuse it but it’s very simplistic for me. It gives a couple of things, one is the focus is in the center and as you move out, depending on what you’re using it for, you’re going to either leverage existing technology, you’re going to leverage people, whatever it is, it’s not you personally who’s going to do the thing. It may be a manual to automated kind of thing. I do like the bull’s eye for that purpose. It does give that sense of as you move in, things are more concentrated, and then as you move out, you’re going to be leveraging and utilizing connections or people or technologies, or processes or whatever it is in order to be able to still have the same result but not humanizing it as much.

Hilmon: You know why else I like it? The other reason I like it is because it’s taking an external element and focusing really specific. You’re taking the arrow, that’s why the bull’s eye exists. Perhaps have a focal point. I like it, you got us from there.

Marylou: Like I said, I totally overuse it in my world, but it does have a lot of applications for what I’m doing. The people who listen to this podcast are typically business developers, people responsible for revenue generation, but also responsible for keeping the pipeline full of qualified opportunities and reducing that peek in value effect. In your book, I want to do sales enablement, I’m focusing on top of funnel, what are the three or so main points in the book that people will be able to start acting on as soon as they read your book? From a top of funnel perspective.

Cory: Yeah, totally. I think probably the first place to start is messaging and understanding not just what your messaging is but how that messaging relates to specific prior personas, and then tying that to specific product features and then finally looping in customer stories.

There’s a matrix in the book, I forgot what the chart number is. It essentially says for each buyer persona, you should know what their pain points are, what features address their specific pain points and then be able to relate those to customer stories around how companies are actually using your product in that way. I think that’s one thing that really separates the great business developers sales development for folks from the ones that aren’t that successful. They really understand what does a day in the life of my customer look like and how does the product fit into that. I think that’s the one that I’m probably most excited about.

Marylou: A lot of people have done this but I just talked to somebody this weekend who still hasn’t figured out what’s my niche, what’s my market, who are my people. Taking it one step up is that you’ve got to also define who these people are. At top of funnel, you mentioned three to five people through the sales cycle, we may only meet three or two at top of funnel before we get to a qualified opportunity, and then more people come in as the sale gets closer to close. If you’re doing all roles, you’ll have to know everything from your book. If you’re doing just prospecting, then you’re going to want to be able to focus on those people with whom you’re going to bubble up interest, get that first meeting perhaps. You may, if you’re a business developer, do some qualification where you’re getting it to the point where you can pass the baton over to your sales executive who takes it the rest of the way.

But to your point, you definitely need to have the personas defined from a sales perspective, that’s another big thing for me is sales personas are not marketing personas, necessarily. You guys talk about that and then also this messaging you talked about is really important because each of these personas that we meet and greet at top of funnel will have a very different look and feel of maybe the same pain point but the way it affects them and the challenges that they have around that pain point may be different. As well as the language they use to describe the challenge or pain may be different.

Hilmon: You hit upon something that we talked about in the book which is the differentiation between marketing and sales from a content perspective and a delivery perspective. It’s great for marketing, I’m a former marketer, so hopefully I can say this. In marketing we like to get in there, we create these great white papers and case studies and we’ve got decks, we’ve got all this stuff that’s fantastic. Often, we don’t realize that the salesperson has three to five minutes. Within those three to five minutes, if they’re not saying the right thing that uncovers the pain that that persona or role or individual you’re talking to is actually dealing with on a regular basis, you’re not going to get to that next meeting.

I don’t know if you’ve experienced this before but I think at the top of the funnel, there’s often a disconnect between marketing and sales where marketing will say, “Hey, I created all this great content, you’re not using it.” Sales will say, “You created a whole bunch of stuff that I can’t use.” This was another [00:13:19] around how do we distill that good stuff that marketing got in [00:13:23] format and make it micro content but the salesperson can actually articulate. Again, going back to this bull’s eye, in conversation, whether that conversation be email or in person or via phone, to their target prospect.

Marylou: Right. The way that we describe it in my world is marketing really is one to many. They are trying to get as many people as possible to bubble up to the top and like I kid with my dogs, if I open my eyelash in the morning, they are on the bed licking my face, it’s time to move. Just like my new activity that happens in marketing, that’s a win for marketing. For us, it’s belly to belly, it’s one to one conversation for salespeople. We have to flip the content that we get from marketing on its side, pull all those relevant pain points that are in that one piece and chunk it down into one pain point per conversation until we hit on which pain point is resonating the most.

We can use the marketing content, we love the marketing content but we really need to flip it sideways and take it and squirrel feed, as Aaron and I used to say in Predictable Revenue. Squirrel feed our prospects with one thing at a time to get their arms around. Wow, this is really more challenging and more difficult and scarier than I thought, as opposed to giving them, you could have this, that, these and those. You’re just giving them one pain point, you’re solving it and maybe you’re giving them a cliffhanger until the next pain point that they’re going to actually come against if they don’t make a decision.

Cory: Absolutely. I totally agree with that, Marylou. I think the challenge for companies is defining the we. Is the we that the individual seller as an independent person or is the we the organization. That’s really where we see the sales enablement ecosystem popping out, is that for each one of the specific conversations or specific pieces of messaging, it needs to exist but who’s going to create it? Do you want everybody doing it their own way from scratch? Do you want it being developed from a top down perspective or one person, you will do this and this is what you will say? Or do you want it to happen organically but in a way that other people can collaborate, work together and learn from what’s worked in the past? I think that’s a big challenge a lot of organizations face is that we need to have these front line people really contributing to the conversation but not starting over from scratch and doing everything their own way.

Marylou: The part about sales enablement that I think is most effective for the audience listening today is that there are three types of ways that you can have conversations. You can be a lone wolf where you’re doing your own conversations, you’re creating your own template, you’re doing your own emails, you’re doing your own scripts, you’re having your own rhythm and it’s working but the rest of the team is not taking advantage of that. Then you have this scripting approach where your management or somebody in the organization says, okay this is what we’re going to do, this is how it’s going to look, this is what you’re going to say.

But there’s a third option here, I think, which is what you guys say in the book which is really about finding that sweet spot of taking the entire team’s effort, managing that effort, taking the results of that effort, and then creating a rhythm, a cadence, a sequence that works based on the results that you’re getting from those conversations.

That is what I think sales enablement and the technology surrounding it and the methodology gives you that ability to do, is take and leverage the data pieces of tracking the conversations and allowing you to mold what those conversations are going to look like because you’re going to know from the results of previous conversations, what’s working, what’s not, how to order the pain points, what order works best for the persona with the goal in mind to reduce the lag in the pipeline and to maximize return on effort. Would you agree that your book is really focused from a sales enablement point of view to take the results of the many and create a process, a path that’s going to be more successful because you’re leveraging the data on this as well?

Cory: Yeah, absolutely. It’s all about that ecosystem that allows you to get the intelligence from all the really smart people that you hired in the organization, capture it, and then distribute it to the rest of your team. The interesting part is that’s what we wrote the book around, and it’s actually what our software product does as well.

Marylou: I know I’ve been taking more of your time. We’re ahead of our 20 minutes that I like to try to keep it to but this is such a great topic and I know there are a lot of questions that are out there. If I was getting started and I’m a manager, it doesn’t even matter the size of company but I know I’ve heard the word sales enablement because I’m listening to this podcast, I’m focusing on top of funnel, where should I begin? What would you recommend that I do when I stop listening here, what should I look at in my organization first and what kind of planning should I go through, very high level, in order to be able to start implementing a sales enablement strategy in my company?

Hilmon: I’m going to say that the first thing you’ve got to do is a buzz word right and I’m going to redefine it a little bit, but you’ve got to create a playbook for your team. By playbook, I mean something that includes your competitive differentiators and maybe identifying how you win, where does your competitors win, and where you babble and what those conversations look like. Any kind of success stories or customer evidence that you may have that the sales team could use to leverage the conversation. Being able to understand what objections you face and how you not overcome them but have conversations around those that help a prospect to evolve their thinking, kind of in a challenger sales methodology. Understanding personas, I may have said that already.

The idea though, there are lots of folks out there that create these playbooks, but here is the problem. I’m not a Game of Thrones fan but playbooks exist in dusty old libraries. Back in the day, when I was in college, we were talking about creating these business plans. The business plans have all of these SWOT analyses and executive and all these other things. They’re 50 pages long. You create this fake investment and then it sits on a shelf. It didn’t actually have any efficacy in the management of the organization, it was something that you did as an event and then it was done, you wiped your brow, you said great, now let’s go do what we’re actually going to do when we get on the floor.

When an organization needs to do now as sales manager, is begin to develop the playbook but develop it in such a way which allows for a natural feedback from your front line troop that allows your feedback loop from product or engineering, from marketing, and allows you as a manager to have dialogue and to archive the type of conversations that might be taking place in Slack right now, they might be taking place at the water cooler, but being able to harness these conversations in such a way that you can distribute them throughout the organization, the sales organization for a couple reasons. One is that there’s so much noise in the marketplace. Once one of your salespeople is keying in on something that works, everybody needs to be leveraging it.

Number two, in Silicon Valley, we’re out here dealing with these organizations that are trying to scale so quickly. They’re bringing out folks who are fresh out of college, have had notes, have had no sales experience from their background, how do you ramp these people quickly? It’s not by having them reinvent the wheel, it’s by having them learn a process that you cultivated and something that you’re working on in a continuous basis, that have a feedback loop that gets better and better and better.

Finally, there’s so much attrition. The average sales manager or executive leaves after 18 months. I’ve seen SDRs or folks around the top end to the funnel, business development reps or sales development reps, or inside sales people, those people can churn at 9-18 months. How do you continue to harness and maintain for the organization this piece of knowledge the things that some of those people who are great have uncovered in the process of doing their job inside of your organization?

If you put together the infrastructure around which you are just beginning to manage these types data inputs from a knowledge management perspective, you’ll watch that thing scale and grow exponentially by opening up the opportunity from everybody, from the sales floor down the executive suite, to be able to input into that knowledge base and everybody to get access to that and filter it. That’s the first piece. To make it [00:22:36], playbook, but not the playbook that you print out and leave on your desk, not the playbook that ends up at some kind of laminated thing that you stick your computer, but something that you’re leveraging inside of your work flow.

Marylou: So funny you bring that up about collecting dust. In my other life, I do market research reports and I remember walking into one of my client’s offices and she had 20 years of reports lined up on top of her desk. Truly, you could just see the dust settling on top of them all. I don’t know if she ever tried that.

Hilmon: That’s crazy!

Marylou: Yeah. But it’s something like ‘have to do.’ I’ve got to do employee loyalty survey every year.

Hilmon: You know what’s funny? We go into organizations all the time, Marylou. One of the first questions will be like when we begin this conversation on knowledge management, we’ll talk about the knowledge you’ve got. Have you got a playbook? One of three things happen. That’s exactly what you said, which basically walks over to the shelf and blows, the dust goes around the room and they grab something, or they start looking through Google Docs. They’re like, yeah, we had that one in here. It’s hilarious watching them as they search “play book” “playbook” “sales team strategy” and then they’ll find distant pieces of it with revisions they saw all over the place. You know the drill, you’ve had this experience before. That’s not doing it much good.

Marylou: I like the term you guys used of knowledge management because it’s really about the conversations and which conversations, with what personas, work the best, reduce the lag in the pipeline and allow us to get to close with a higher percentage. That’s what it’s all about. The old Predictable Revenue formula was really looking at the funnel itself, looking at the average deal size and then the lag time. Knowledge management is a big part of that and you’re right.

I am teaching an MBA class here in Des Moines and I’m the only instructor that’s teaching sales in an executive MBA class. People are coming out of college with really not a lot of idea about sales. I’m anomaly, I’m a novelty teaching a prospecting class. They just aren’t there, which I don’t understand why. It is what it is, so you’re right. having this type of playbook where they can come in and have whatever they need to be effective right away, just nuance seeing their conversation and getting self-esteem a little higher so that they know that they can have these conversations with the level of persona that they’re talking to and meet them where they’re at, but also be able to say, look, these are the most successful conversations that we’ve had for this persona in this order. How great would that be?

Cory: That’s it. It’s simple too. That’s the last piece, it’s just keeping everything very simple. The cool thing is that it can be complex but elegant. I think there’s a difference between complex and complicated. Some of the most advanced calculus formula are very short but it takes years to learn how to actually use them in practice. I think that you take people that have never done it before, sales enablement or developed all these things that we talked about during the show, the first result is going to be overly complicated. I think really focusing on simplicity is critical if this is going to be successful.

Marylou: The book is The Sales Enablement Playbook by Cory and Hilmon. They are out at San Francisco area, they have a company called ClozeLoop. How else can we get a hold of you guys, if we want to learn more?

Cory: We’re all over LinkedIn.

Hilmon: Not hard to find.

Marylou: It’s Cory Bray and Hilmon Sorey. Look them up on LinkedIn. Really, this has been a great conversation. Thank you both for being a part of the podcast today and I look forward to seeing how things move along with your company, moving into 2018. Thanks again.

Hilmon: Our pleasure. Thanks for having us, Marylou.

Cory: Thank you.

Starting a conversation is the first step in the sales process, and it is also a step that most salespeople would like to be more successful at. There are a lot of channels that can be used to start that all important first conversation, but today we are going to discuss an emerging channel that can generate curiosity and add that personal touch.

Today, I am speaking with Fernando Silva who is a solutions associate at Wistia which is really the same role as a sales development rep or SDR. Wistia is a professional video hosting platform that offers analytics along with video marketing tools. They also offer advanced marketing integrations for video that can help create the ultimate lead nurturing tool. I met Fernando at a conference, and I was intrigued with how he is using video to reach out and start conversations.

Episode Highlights:

• How Marylou tripled her response rates with cold video
• How Wistia targets large and small accounts but they focus on the SMB space
• Fernando works more on the inbound model of contacts who go to the website
• They use free accounts for signups, then they begin outreach with customers who fit their target personas
• SDRs reaching out and introducing themselves with video
• Researching the customer and their website and pointing out tips and suggestions in personalized video
• There is a learning curve to making great video, but Fernando can make about 30 in a 2 hour period
• Putting the word in the subject line
• Touchpoints and replies help nurture the conversation with more embedded video
• The easiest way to get started is with the Soapbox Chrome extension

Resources:

• Wistia
• Soapbox
• mourasilva.fernando@gmail.com
• fsilva@wistia.com

Episode Transcript:

Marylou: Hey everybody, it’s Marylou Tyler. Today’s guest is a gentleman from a company called Wistia. If you haven’t heard of them, make sure you look them up. I met Fernando Silva, who’s on the line with us, at a user group conference that they had in Massachusetts. I brought my kids to this conference because I wanted them to start thinking about, learning about understanding the importance of video.

                    While we were there, I was learning about how Fernando and his team are using video to start conversations in the outreach channel so I asked him to join us today and talk to us about what he’s finding in using this what I call, new channel. We have email, we have phone, we have direct mail, and now, we have video to help us start conversations. Fernando, welcome to the podcast.

Fernando: Thanks. It’s a pleasure being here with you, Marylou. I’m super excited to be able to share what we do here at Wistia and how we’re using video to outreach in our video out when our sales outreach process and try to just spark conversations and enlighten people and share some really cool information with our customers.

Marylou: Wonderful. Your title with Wistia you said is a Solutions Associate but in reality, the role that you’re performing is the role of the Sales Development Rep, the SDR. Are you working with accounts large and small? Give us a sense for what accounts you’re targeting right now and then we’ll talk about your use of video into these accounts.

Fernando: That’s a great question. We work with smaller accounts to smaller mom and pop shops all the way up to enterprise sales but what we really see that we specialize in is the SMB space. Typically, companies that have a buying process that’s more straightforward.

We’re more of a self served company if they want that option but if they want to explore further features and have a better understanding of what they would be buying, we can put them through basically the full touch of our sales process where I can have a discovery call, enlighten them on what’s possible like with video, see if it’s a good fit and then loop them in with one of our experts here depending on what their specific use case is.

Marylou: Okay. This is sounding very similar to the Predictable Revenue model where we had folks who developed the leads in this case and they became opportunities by either doing a demo or having an in depth are-we-a-fit or we call it AWAF call. Once it bubbled up to the top where it was worthy of time and resources from Wistia, in this case, you would do that handoff to an account executive that would take it the rest of the way.

Fernando: You’re right.

Marylou: Okay, tell us what is new with this video thing? I was just blown away with my results. Just to preface it with the audience who’s thinking well yeah, it’s Marylou. No. A lot of people don’t know me. I have been experimenting with cold, cold lists. I just did one last week with Nashville list. No one knows me in Nashville at all. The response rates that I got are incredible but I want you to share your whole process and what you’re seeing on average since you’re going to have a larger sampling size than I do. Take it away, Fernando.

Fernando: To start off, you mentioned that you were working with more of cold lists. Here at Wistia, we work more on the inbound model where we have people sign up for accounts or have interacted with our website. Those are the type of contacts that we focus on. Typically, as an SDR or Solutions Associate here at Wistia, we have people sign up for our free accounts. Quite significant amount of free account sign ups per month.

Depending on the criteria, if they fit the persona that we believe is the best suited customer, that’s when we begin our outreach. That’s qualified by several factors. Maybe company size, maybe type of marketing automation platform that we have in Text Stack and title and so on and so forth.

                    We get several contacts a day that sign up with an account so they are familiar with our product and our service. Maybe, they’re just curious and wants to learn a little bit more. What we do as SDRs here starting with the first attempt when reaching out to someone is introducing ourselves via video.

You mentioned that you’ve been experimenting with Soapbox, which is our quick and easy video creation tool here that’s a chrome extension where you can use webcam and screen share at the same time to create a fast and high quality personal video to a prospect that you want to use.

Starting from the first attempt, I do some research, look at that prospect’s website. If I see any actionable, basically any calls to action or anything that they could use video to improve their website design or help them achieve their goals quicker, I point out those things with my screen share after introducing myself to them as a point of contact at the company and just give them some tips and some suggestions. It’s not really a hard sell. All I’m doing is trying to help them maximize the use of video within their website if I see the potential there.

We’ve seen a lot of people who really love that approach of reaching out to them rather than just a cold email. They like, “Hey, it’s Fernando. Do you want to buy x, y, z?”

Marylou: Right. Like I said, I’ve been experimenting with it here. I’m sure people are thinking okay, wow. Personalized videos, that must take forever. Because the research alone takes some time and now, you’re actually crafting, creating and perhaps editing in some cases, a video.

                    You’re full time in this role, correct, as Solutions Associate?

Fernando: That is correct. Yes.

Marylou: Let’s pretend you had block time and you just said, okay, it’s Tuesday. It’s my video preparation day. Two hours usually is our block time to prospect, how many videos on average do you think you could create that are of good quality, that you feel great about sending to prospects?

Fernando: That’s a great question. There was definitely a learning curve for me in the beginning, coming into the video world. I wasn’t really exposed to putting myself out there so I was a little hesitant shooting videos and making sure I was saying the right thing so there was a learning curve there in the timing. It took me a little bit longer to make videos, I must admit. But after a couple of months of doing it, with the 2 hour block, I could probably make around 30 good, custom videos that features the website, edit it with call to actions with the videos custom tailored to that contact. I can make about 30 videos in a 2 hour period, highlighting what they could do.

Marylou: That’s great. You’re also highlighting what they can do so you’re also giving them some actionable results or giving them some things that they can get their arms around and actually perform and activate.

Fernando: Yes, exactly.

Marylou: Yeah. For those listening, the Predictable Revenue model, we were hoping to do 20 to 25 emails a day with an SDR that had probably two to three calls before that lead was transitioned over to a quota carrying person. What that means is with this video in the mix, it’s very doable for those of you who are thinking, “Wow. It seems a little daunting.” It’s not.

                    It’s better because you also have the ability now to get higher open rates, higher click through rates, and higher response rates, which we’ll talk about in a minute. In terms of the effort, if we think of that quadrant of I want to have the least amount of effort with the highest amount of impact, video is definitely a tool in the arsenal that you’re going to want to explore and use.

Fernando: Yes, that’s correct. Not only do you see the benefit of the increased metrics, you get a higher click through rate, a higher response rate as well and ultimately, a higher conversion rate because you’ve created that personal relationship. Right off the first email, you introduced yourself, you put a friendly face to a name. It is a real person on the other side. It’s not just an automated email being sent out to these contacts. But if someone on the other side actually providing actionable insight, that’s what makes the difference too.

Marylou: Right. You don’t need to spill all the beans but let’s talk a little bit about metrics. I haven’t hit the sampling size because if you study market research, which I’m a student of, we really need to have 384 responses or 384 click throughs before I can say with 95% confidence that my metrics are hitting the goals that I’m looking for or that they’re consistent enough.

                    But I can share with you what I’ve gotten with my small universe which is about 100 people that I sent videos to. I made two or three different flavours of the video, depending on the persona. The video went out as more of a generic video. But so far, my actual open rates are in the 48% range. My click through, the last time I checked, was about 32%. Which on average, just so you guys know what I’m looking for when I’m working with clients on regular email click throughs is 9% to 11%.

                    Right then and there, I’m tripling my output without doing anything new other than sitting down, staring into my recorder thing that’s sitting on the top of my computer.

Fernando: Your webcam.

Marylou: My webcam, yes, my recorder thing. And making sure that I’m not in my pajamas. I’m experimenting now also with duration but my video’s average is between 15 and 30 seconds long, somewhere in that range so I don’t wear people. That’s what I’ve been getting. Because this is now July, when we’re recording this, so people are on holiday, I’m getting people responding back still from what was that event, or where are you going to be or what’s this about.

Fernando: That’s cool. I think you hit it right on the nail with that. Typically, from what I see our open rates with email that not only has an email within the body but has the word video on the subject line, it’s close to 50%, which is what you said around 48% for you. Videos with an email, like you typically said, we have around 10% click through rate, maybe a little bit less.

But with the video thumbnail within the body of the email, we see an increase around 22% on that, which would be around the 35% or 33% mark that you mentioned. Your test are right in line with us even though your sample size might be a little bit smaller but it means that it is right on target with what we’ve been seeing on our end here.

Marylou: And remember guys, my list is cold. Fernando’s list, they’ve at least raised a thumbnail or a little fingernail saying I may be interested whereas with me, it’s cold in those levels of awareness that we learned in the Wistia conference. There are the unaware or the problem aware level from these cold people. They don’t know if they have a problem or they’re not really aware of who I am whereas Fernando’s are starting with perhaps a higher level of interest to begin with.

                    These are phenomenal numbers. I know we’re probably on the cusp of coming up the exponential wonderfulness and then it’s going to level up and fall flat on its face. But for right now, this video is something that if you guys are listening to this, embrace it, it’s going to really change the way that you prospect.

Fernando: Being an early adaptor with video in your outreach process will definitely be very beneficial for now because there are not a lot of people out there taking the time and effort. Being comfortable on camera to send out a personal message to a stranger definitely is something that we see as very good for outreach right now.

Marylou: The other thing too, another lesson here for everyone, as Fernando said, it took him a couple of months because he wasn’t comfortable necessarily, talking to cold people or talk talking to people he didn’t know. He wasn’t necessarily comfortable with his use of language. All of these things as an SDR, a video is going to help you get better so that when you get on the phone even, you’re going to be more polished. You’re going to be more confident. Because you’ve said this thing over and over again, this is going to be second nature. More of a habit as opposed to disciplined or sheer will to get on the phone.

                    There are other benefits to video, not just the fabulous click through and response rates. By the way, my response rates were in the double digit. They were somewhere hovering between if I had a response there, a reply back, I did one here in Des Moines, Iowa where I had a reply back and it might be because it’s Midwest, but they were in the 28% to 29% reply back, actually.

I only sent out, I think there are a total of 96. The confidence rate is really low. It could swing either way but I was trying to see if I can get people to come to an event that I was hosting. I asked them to actually reply with the reply button and say yay or nay. That was an amazing response. Bottomline is we’re just really not burning the list. If we do these types of cadences and rhythms where we include video, we don’t have to send as many things out to get the responses that we’re looking for so that our conversations and our pipeline continues to grow.

Fernando: That’s true. Just for me to ask about your experience with video, was this after one email attempt that you saw your response rate go up because of that specific video thumbnail that you set up?

Marylou: Yes.

Fernando: That’s really great.

Marylou: I did a very light, light touch. In the book, there were 6 or 10 touch sequence on cold emails. I, last minute, decided to do this and so I sent out only three emails. The first email was a video and it said video on the subject line so that was another key point that Fernando mentioned in case you missed that. We put the word video in the subject line. I put brackets around it because it seems to be a nomenclature that people are using so I tried that.

                    Then I put the person’s first name and, “Are you coming?” That was my subject line. It’s video, first name, are you coming? And then with the thumbnail of me inviting them to the event. The second email was, “Hey, did you see that first email I sent you? It’s about an event in Des Moines, Iowa. I would love for you to come. Hit reply.” The third one was, “Hey, the event is in a couple of days. I haven’t heard from you. I would love to see you there, see your smiling face IRL, in real life.” That kind of thing. We had a full house.

Fernando: Yeah. That is awesome. Similar to you, that’s exactly how I do mine. I have a longer touch cadence. We do six touches here but my first and second attempt are very similar to yours. I have the video within the body of the email. I have a video on the subject line with the contact’s first name. My second touch is a reply to that video just for them to make sure to bring that video back to their attention and for them to see that it’s a custom video that I actually made for them.

                    I mention in the body of my email saying that, “Hey, I took the time to make this video for you. It was really cool being able to explore your website and give you some ideas and some suggestions. If you missed the video the first time around, here it is again.” I see high reply rates to that because sometimes, they overlook the first email thinking it’s just a general email that people are sending out. With that reply back, I’ve seen some success there with engagement and getting a reply.

Marylou: In the world of non-video, typically, the cadence is to do an in thread reply for email number two because it is kind of common that people would miss it but the RE in the subject line for that in thread does get people to at least look at it. Even in regular email world, the in thread reply in email number two position still is a champion in terms of getting people to open. If you have something of value that you have inside the body, then click through and/or reply.

                    What else can you share with us in terms of the use of video? Is it just email one or do you embed somewhere along that six touch more generic videos or is it too much of a good thing, too much? What’s your opinion there?

Fernando: That is actually a great question. That is what I do. I do have more general videos embedded throughout my later touches. Usually coming around touch four or five, depending on what I see as beneficial for them to see. I have videos walking them through the platform with quick tips so if they want to add for example, call to action within a video or an email capture form within a video because I see that’s something that would be beneficial to them after doing some research.

I send that more generic video out but within the body of my email, I name a few actions that I’ve seen on their website and how they could use video to help them either generate more contacts or add call to action to help drive traffic to landing pages. It’s still a custom email but with more of a generic video rather than me sitting down again and making a video and walking them through how to do it, how to add certain features to our reply form.

Marylou: Very good. I can’t believe we’re almost running out of time here. What I wanted to ask you is to share with everybody, if you’re in a big company, you probably have to go through a little bit more hoops in order to start doing this, but if you’re a solo or a very brave Account Executive or SDR and want to try video, what’s the easiest way to get started?

Fernando: The easiest way to get started to make high quality videos in my opinion is just to, like I said, we have our Soapbox Chrome extension which is super easy to install. You can pull it up. It gives you some direction on how to shoot a high quality video, stare straight into your webcam, and with the screen share aspect of it as well. Within minutes, you can get going and make videos. Highly tested out making a video, sending to your colleagues, without giving them a warning so they can take a look and have the experience of what it’s like to receive a video on the other end and get things going that way.

                    What we typically recommend is just start doing it. You don’t really need to be an expert in shooting videos or to be an actor to be in front of the camera. You speak to people everyday. You have conversations everyday face to face. This is just another way of having them or personal conversation even though you don’t have the ability to see that person eye to eye at the moment. It’s cool. It’s a good tool that we’ve been working with and I highly recommend it for anyone that wants to start using video in terms of business communications in general or for their sales outreach.

Marylou: For the folks, on your page, because we’ll set up a Fernando page that people can get more information on Wistia and learn more about you, I’ll put some of my videos on there because the links for Soapbox are public links and I’ll just share with you what I look like.

Mostly, I record on Saturday mornings when the dogs are not bugging me, my kids are in college, I don’t have to make breakfast or do anything. I just sit here and do one after another. My goal, as part of my workflow, is to do about 20 videos a week because I am just one person so I don’t need to have the volume of opportunities.

But keeping that consistency up just like having this podcast, allows me to really articulate my core message as to why people should change, why now, and why me. That’s really what it’s all about. This gives you a way to practice even using this Soapbox tool, which I recommend that you guys all get. It’s fun. You need basically the webcam or your computer camera and then you can get a cheap mic, mine’s like $20 or so, and I talk into that and that’s it. You’re ready to go.

Fernando: That’s awesome. Great to see that you’re having great experience with Soapbox and making videos and that you’re seeing some really great positive results.

Marylou: Oh, yeah. I love it.

Fernando: It makes my job super exciting because that’s what I work with everyday and it’s cool to see that it’s affecting people in a positive way.

Marylou: Oh, yeah. I’m all about maximizing return on effort so when I can see that my 100 names go further, my list, basically I don’t have to keep it dormant as long because I’m not burning through it, I don’t have the issue with net new records. I just basically have a very robust and healthy list because I don’t have to tax it as much when we’re having these high converting tools that we can use.

                    Let’s wrap up by telling the audience, Fernando, how they can get a hold of you. If there are any types of educational materials, I’ll make sure that we put them on the website so they can click over to Wistia and the how to of how to get started for dummies, the 101 version which is what I needed. Tell us how to get a hold of you if people have questions and whatever else you want to share in terms of contact information.

Fernando: If you want to get a hold of me to explore a little bit more about the use of video for your sales outreach or you just want to explore on how you can use video for you business, you can reach me at my personal email. It’s mourasilva.fernando@gmail or if you want to reach me at my work email, it’s fsilva@wistia.com. I’ll be happy to help you guys get started and explore what Wistia has to offer with either Soapbox, which is our Chrome extension or our video hosting platform, in general, for more basic video hosting needs.

Marylou: Wonderful. Again everybody, I’ll put these links in Fernando’s contact information on the webpage when we announce the podcast. It’ll be all there for you. Fernando, thank you so much for your time. I’m just over the top excited about having yet another tool that we could use in our cadences, in our rhythms, in order to reach people we don’t know, and share the why behind our message.

                    The other thing about video that I love is that your enthusiasm, your passion comes just screaming through because you can’t not be excited about your product and shoot a video. It doesn’t work.

Fernando: That’s the main thing for me. Just letting your personality be showcased within a video so people actually get to know you, who you are as a person. That’s extremely effective. It makes my job more enjoyable and the other person on the other end receiving the message more enjoyable as well.

Marylou: Definitely. Thank a lot, Fernando.

Fernando: Thanks, Marylou.

Marylou: We’ll talk to you soon.

Fernando: Thanks again for the opportunity and we’ll talk later. Bye.

 

Every business from solo entrepreneurs to small business owners and people working within larger businesses need systems to create consistency, make the work easier, and achieve better results. Today, I speak with Nancy Gaines the CEO and Founder of Gain Advantages on systems and the process of creating systems to free up time and money and create opportunities for businesses of all sizes to scale.

Nancy Gaines has been advising small businesses and Fortune 100 companies on how to increase revenues through proven systems for almost two decades. She is a best-selling author and international keynote speaker. Nancy has been named in the Top 100 Productivity Experts to follow on Twitter and has a global podcast downloaded in over 70 countries. Her main focus is creating business processes with actionable steps so her clients achieve more consistency, ease, and ultimate success.

Episode Highlights:

• Nancy helps small business owners to scale
• She creates systems and processes to avoid trading hours for dollars
• Models for productivity that help us to scale
• Five systems in every business
• Following up with sales, marketing, operations, your team, and money
• Starting with systemizing your biggest pain point
• The 24 hours, 7 days and 30 day method for following up (24,7,30)
• The cold contact email method using video
• Following up with personalized cards and handwritten notes
• Customizing the cadence of follow up for different customers
• Chunking up tasks and doing similar tasks together
• Having a single focus and single task for phone time
• Working for 50 minutes and then taking a 10 minute break
• Taking time to think and ask questions about your business
• Delegating tasks that are below your pay rate

Resources:

• 100 Proven Systems You Need to Boost Results
• Nancy Gaines Website
• IBM
• Ernst & Young
• Soapbox
• Nancy Gaines Show

Episode Transcript:

Marylou: Hi everyone, it’s Marylou Tyler. This week’s guest is Nancy Gaines. Nancy is an expert among other things, we’re going to be speaking about productivity today. She is the CEO of Gain Advantages and she primarily works with small business owners. But for those of you who are listening to this podcast who are solo entrepreneurs or you are brokers, I have a lot of real estate people, you’re in that same boat, even UAEs out there who work for larger companies, you’re running your own business within the larger company.

                       What Nancy knows and what Nancy is going to share with us today really can apply to you in all facets of your business, whether you work for a large company or you are a small business owner. Welcome, Nancy, to the podcast.

Nancy: I’m so excited to be here. Thanks for having me on your show, Marylou.

Marylou: Did I say enough or would you like to elaborate on the type of work you do as far as working with small business owners or solo entrepreneurs?

Nancy: That was an amazing introduction. My background is with IBM and Ernst & Young, I used to put in technology systems to help companies be more productive. Now, I help small business owners really scale, whether they’re starting out, or they’re growing, or they’re looking to actually repeat across multiple offices, or really, really scale. I help them come up with systems and processes to do that effortlessly so they get back their time. You know what it’s like to be an entrepreneur, right?

Marylou: Definitely.

Nancy: Wearing a lot of hats and let’s try to get people so they’re not trading their hours for dollars so much.

Marylou: It’s funny you say that even though my area of expertise is top of funnel and the folks who listen to this podcast are primarily separating the sales roles out. But what’s happening with account based selling is that we are seeing more of the sales reps doing all roles just like the small business owner would do where they go out and get the business, they close the business, they service the business and then they try to grow the account.

                       Your work with the small business really does apply to those folks who are tasked from a sales role with all of those different functions. I love the fact that you said Ernst & Young because that means, to me, that you are a process guru, expert, and that you try to get and systematize as much as possible the types of work that you have or your models that you’ve put together for productivity which allows us to then scale. I heard the word scale and I heard the process piece.

                       Help us understand, from the standpoint of productivity, how do we chunk that down into a type of process?

Nancy: Great question. There’s actually five systems in every business whether you’re an employee or a small business owner. They are the sales, marketing, operations, your team, and your money. You just talked about having sales people that are doing all of it now, they need a system for each one of those functions, a follow up system. How often are they going to follow up with somebody until they get the deal?

They need a system for customer relationship, how often are they going to check in on those people to make sure they’re happy and if they’re ready for some additional services. They need a system for their team. If they do have people helping them out, how are they giving them tasks to do so that everybody is in the loop?

Everything can be systematized in your company. Probably the best advice is start with something that’s giving you the most pain, the most stress, get that systemized, put out that fire and then move on to the next fire. That way, it’s not so overwhelming.

Marylou: Yeah. Some people call it eating the elephant but I call it peeling the onion where you’re just taking little pieces off. I would like to start, because I know this is one of the biggest issues that my folks have, this concept of follow up. They’re great out the gate of getting those initial contacts set but as we know, the science and evidence based research shows that we have to be more diligent in our follow up. Can you talk to us about some of those productivity methods that you’ve come up with for the follow up piece?

Nancy: Sure, let me give you an easy formula. This is what I do whenever I go to a networking event or a conference where I’m meeting a lot of people. It’s called 24/7/30. Within 24 hours of meeting somebody because I’ve got their business card, one, I put them into my phone. I’ve got an app called Full Contact, you just take a picture of their business card and you can tag where you met them. You can put little notes, I met them at some sort of EY conference. Within 24 hours, I make sure I get them into my app and I also connect with them on LinkedIn or social media so that I can stay connected.

                       Within seven days, I send a personalized email and I’ve got a template because templates are systems, that said, “It was great meeting you at the ABC event. I’m glad we talked about…” This is where I customize it, “I would love to catch up for either in person or virtual coffee. Here’s a link to my scheduler.” A scheduler is also a system. Hopefully, they respond and we connect in person or by phone.

                       30 days, every 30 days, I reach out and find a reason to connect. It might just be liking their post on LinkedIn, or finding an article that they maybe entrusted and emailing it to them, or even picking up the phone and just saying, “Hey, how are things going since the conference?” I just continually stay up with people every 30 days. 24/7/30 is a great system for follow up.

Marylou: The other thing that I’m starting to learn about this follow up process, I’ve been testing it here locally, my contacts and some of the contacts of people listening are going to be what we call cold contacts. We haven’t had that first conversation or the ability within 24 hours to reach out. We’ve been experimenting with the use of video for that purpose.

I’m speaking at a conference coming up in Nashville, Tennessee. I utilized a list of 300 people who I have never met and then worked that 24 portion of your framework with this cold contact. Because it’s cold, instead of a warm lead, is your 7 days still 7 days or 24/7/30 or does it depend on the source of the lead that you’re getting in the follow up sequence as to when that second touches?

Nancy: I do the second touch after I’ve already met somebody. You probably need a little bit different system since that is a cold system. But I love that, I wonder how I can spin that to fit your system. You’re sending them a video of just, “Hi. I’m Marylou. Looking forward to having seeing you in my session.” What are you doing with the video?

Marylou: That’s exactly it. I’m using a free tool called ScopeBox, it links to my Gmail account. I record myself sitting at my desk and I try to keep it under 20 seconds, if I can get it under 15 seconds that would be great but I’m a little bit wordy. I record the video saying, “Hey, I’m going to be in your area on Thursday blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, speaking on this topic. I would love to meet you. I would love to see you there at this event. If you would like to go or if you’re thinking this is something that sounds great then click on this link.” Within the video is the link to sign up for the event.

Nancy: How cool is that, what a great system.

Marylou: In the subject line, I put the word video because I’m finding that, right now, today, 2017, people are going to open those emails more if they see that there is a video enclosed. My open rates are in the 60% and 70% range on a cold list, people I’ve never talked to because they’re just curious about what is this video about because it says in the subject line their first name, “Will I see you on Thursday?” and then the video.

Nancy: That is amazing, I’m going to try that technique.

Marylou: My curiosity was, since we have these different lead types in our world, we have the warm referral type leads where people we meet at executive briefings or trade shows, conferences, whatever, where we actually grab their business card. But we also have this cold channel of targeted accounts that we’re going after because we know they’re high probability of closing and they are high revenue potential for us but we don’t have that initial contact that we can rely on, that’s why I was curious of this rhythm. We can just test it, that’s the answer. We should test it to see, is it 24/3. 24 would be the first contact, the next one within three business days instead of seven.

Nancy: I would recommend building a system out of that if you haven’t already, where after the first video, you know the 60% that opened it, if you’re able to track that, which you should be able to, send them something even more enticing. I would probably do that so many days before the conference and then even the day before the conference, “Don’t forget tomorrow, I’m in room ABC at 10:00.” That’s the total system.

Marylou: I’ve been using it lately because I think that I come across on video as someone who’s very excited about what I do and most of the sales people are very excited about selling their product otherwise they wouldn’t be doing that. We’ll make the assumption that your enthusiasm and your just demure, just who you are comes across on that video that you’re going to naturally make that virtual connection a little bit easier and faster and with more curiosity for sure because the open rights and even click through rates, because I’ve been tracking the click through rates as well.

                       We try to get somewhere between 9% and 11% click through and I’m getting 48% click through right now on these videos. It’s amazing to see how that’s actually working out with the use of the video knowing that it’s probably going to be a short term thing but it’s something that everyone can benefit from, I think. There are tools out there, like I said, that free tool called ScopeBox that you can attach to your email engine and just record at your desktop.

Nancy: That is really cool.

Marylou: Let’s get back to the 24/7/30. The other thing that I see a lot that is in my mind, we need to be better at, is the 30. Is the follow up just to add value, we hear that term add value but you mentioned a couple of things that you do to pick out what you want to be saying at that 30-day mark. Tell us again, what is a list of things that are valuable that our listeners can take in and really look? You mentioned something about finding something on LinkedIn where they liked a blog post, what other things do you look for to send to somebody of value in this follow up sequence?

Nancy: I just ordered a bunch of personalized greeting cards and I don’t remember the name of this company. I have a monthly greeting card service that I use but I just ordered a bunch for every client I’ve ever had in my first three years of business with Gain Advantages. I’m going to write a personal note because I consider July customer appreciation month. My 30-day follow up for this particular month is a handwritten note that goes out in real mail, not email, to all of my customers whether they bought a book or my elite coaching program.

                       Something else I do with my monthly card subscription is I have people’s birthdays. I send them greeting cards and Christmas cards, of course. I’m a big fan of cards because that’s different than email. Calling five customers a day just to say, “How are things going?”

Marylou: I love that.

Nancy: Just pick up the phone. Now, I get voicemail, often. I leave a nice note and some people call back and some don’t but it’s just staying top of mind. It’s a great way to think of the 30, 30, 30 follow up, the 30 part of the follow up.

Marylou: All said and done in aggregate, how many of those do you do that 30-day before you say, okay, I’m going to put these folks to bed, let them rest for a while, incubate and then come back.

Nancy: That is a really good question. As I’ve grown in my business, I’ve niched down my target market. What I’m an expert at is productivity systems and scaling. Now, I know that people that aren’t quite ready for me, they don’t get the 30 after a while, maybe they’re more of quarterly follow up or even every 6 months. You have to know your people and your product and what feels right because otherwise you’ll be doing all these follow ups. If it’s not leading to new business, it may not be a good value add as you mentioned.

Marylou: Typically, again, for those listening, we sometimes change the sequence or the rhythm of the sequence which we call cadence, whether they’re an outreach meaning they’re cold to start with versus someone that we’ve had a warmer connection with. Again, the moral of the story here is to test but we do need to have follow up and a lot of people and the research is still showing that we give up way too soon. It’s 10 to 12 touches, usually, for an outreach cold program.

                       Inbound, I’m not as familiar with but I’m sure there are some number, maybe it’s 6 to 9, 7 to 10, I’m not sure. There is some number for the inbound side when people are coming into you for an inquiry versus you going out to them cold.

Nancy: Sometimes, I’ve been following up with somebody and you start to think, “Am I bugging them?” But sometimes I need reminders because I get busy and I need to get back to them and then life happens. I like it when people follow up with me because then, I can move forward. Anyway, what was your next question?

Marylou: My next question was, the follow up sequence is one area that I know that people listening to this phone call really need to get with the program and put something in, keep it simple, this whole concept of, “Don’t worry, be crappy.” Just get something in and start following a rhythm for it so that you can track your results. What’s the next area that you see with your folks that you think would be a good topic to discuss for our listeners today?

Nancy: The next topic would be theming or chunking. Basically that means doing similar tasks in one sitting versus jumping from writing an email and then picking up the phone and then going for coffee with somebody and then coming back. I’m not a brain person but what I’ve been reading is that it takes a while for your brain to ramp up when you switch tasks. The more you can do in one sitting of the similar task whether it’s writing or calling or whatever it is, it’s more efficient. That would be the second thing, is find a way to chunk your task.

                       Let me give you an example. I only meet with people in person here in Denver on Wednesdays. I schedule my networking, my Toastmasters, my coffee meetings on the same day so I can get up, put on nice clothes and drive into the city, I’m about 30 minutes away. I used to drive all over on any day of the week wasting time, wasting gas, changing between tasks. Now, I have days where I do certain things. On Mondays is when I write blogs. On Tuesdays is when I podcast. Put things together that are similar, you’ll get more done.

Marylou: That’s a great, great, great reminder for our folks. In our world we call it Time Blocking or Block Time. It’s not as advanced as what you just said but what we’re looking for is to take the phone time out of your day if you’re prospecting and chunk that into, what we’d like to see is two-hour increments, obviously some people need to work up to that.

But it’s single focus, single task because it is proven, the research shows without a doubt that the longer that you’re on the phone, the better you’re going to be, the more apt you are to handle objections with relative ease. Also, your tonality changes and gets more confident as you go along. I love the idea though of taking those other tasks like if you do write your own emails or you do create templates for your emails to sit down and have a writing session.

Typically, for something like that, do you have a sense of how long we should allow for block times for writing versus phoning versus these other tasks?

Nancy: Here’s another formula that I like, 50-10. I actually set my little timer to go off 50 minutes so at 10 to the hour, the buzzer goes off and I take a mandatory ten-minute break. It might just be walking downstairs to the kitchen and getting some water or walking down to get the mail or something even if you’re in the flow, even if you’re on fire. Take that ten-minute break and come back and you’re just going to be really, really recharged. It may be write for 50 minutes and then switch to something else, that works.

Marylou: It’s funny, there is a very famous copywriter in the 60’s, I believe. He was alive up until, I think, 1992, Eugene Schwartz. He used to put 33.33 on an old kitchen timer and sit down on his desk and write during that time frame. Once the buzzer went off, he will take a 5 to 10 minute break, he would walk around, he would walk his dog, whatever it was and then come back to his writing. He did that five times and that was his work day, that’s all he did as a copywriter.

                       He said that that allowed him, whether he’s working on multiple projects with multiple clients, that allowed him that freedom of his subconscious to work through things as he was doing these walks and the non-writing activities, he came up with ideas. He says ad nauseum for a lot of his clients because he allowed himself the time to step away and not be focused on the writing at hand.

Nancy: That’s actually another productivity technique, I call it Thinking Time. I have an hour every Friday, usually from 10:00 to 11:00 where I just think about my business. I don’t even have any electronics, just a piece of paper and a pen and I start asking myself questions, how can I grow this business? Who do I need to partner with? What could be even better? You start to get your mind thinking about this.

                       The other thing about thinking is you need to separate it from doing. Schedule time where you actually think about your business, think about your sales, whatever it is in your business that you need to work on and then do it. Because if you try to think and do, it’s shifting tasks and it’s very distracting.

Marylou: I really like this. So far we’ve learned about the ability to have a follow up sequence that’s rhythmic in nature, that you plan out over a course of time, we’re talking about time blocking and the various different methods of taking your task that you tend to multitask with and break it into single task focused events. What else can we share with our group before I have to let you go?

Nancy: Those are just some quick, low-hanging fruits for people and they’re free, of course. I’ve got a report on my website, the 100 Systems You Need To Boost Results In Your Business. It’s a great checklist, it’s only two pages that people can skim quickly. It’s at nancygaines.com/systems. It’s a great way to see what can you tweak a little bit more in your career or your business, how about that? Give them a list to go forward.

Marylou: I’ll put that actually in the show notes for our folks so that they have the ability to take that. It sounds like almost like a preflight checklist, I love checklists because that gives us the ability to really, like you said, go through one item at a time. If it resonates with you, then put that into effect.

In your experience, we’re starting to put these productivity levers into play, how long will it take for us to actually start seeing some results? What have you seen in the past, just a generic way? I try to get people to do this crawl, walk, run thing. If people are sitting and thinking, “I’m going to try some of Nancy’s things but how long is it going to take me to actually create a system that runs out of habit?”

Nancy: They will gain back at least one hour of their day. Imagine, that’s five hours a week, how nice to leave Friday afternoon at noon and have a two and a half day weekend instead of just two full days. These are things that are so easy to implement immediately that people are going to see the results. Start with chunking your time or theming or time blocking, as you called it. Do more of that and you’ll see the results and then add on then you can crawl and run and walk, like you said. It’s very easy, though.

Marylou: Very good advice. Nancy, how do people get a hold of you, we mentioned the website. What other things do you want out listeners to know about you so that they can follow up with this recording and start researching how you can help them?

Nancy: The website is nancygaines.com. I also have a podcast and I have amazing guests, you were one of them at one time, Marylou, which is awesome. But my podcast come out on Wednesday and it’s Nancy Gaines Show, you can get it at my website or on iTunes. We always have great productivity tips people can implement immediately on that.

Marylou: I think one of the main things that I’m seeing with everyone is time management is something that we’re all struggling with. To be able to have that quadrant of highly likely to get results with least amount of effort, that’s where we want to get, is the high impact, least effort to get there. It sounds like you’ve compiled a wonderful list for the audience to go out and start looking at that and putting more of their work in that quadrant instead of wasting time doing the menial things that really don’t add up to revenue which is what we’re all here for. More revenue and better clients that we love, right Nancy?

Nancy: Absolutely. I’ll leave them with one closing tip, figure out what your hourly rate is, roughly, only work at that rate or higher. Anything that costs less than your hourly rate, give to somebody else to do. This includes cleaning your house, cutting your grass, doing your laundry, shopping for groceries, only focus on those things that are your highest investees, delegate the rest.

Marylou: Sound and great advice. Nancy, thank you so much for joining us today.

Nancy: Thanks for having me on the show. Have a great day.