The number one problem most sales people say they have is lack of pipeline. Yet, lack of pipeline is usually a symptom of other issues. The three key issues that affect lack of pipeline are having the wrong mindset, using the wrong narrative, and executing the wrong activities.
Today, I speak with LinkedIn’s most read author of B2B selling content. Tony Hughes is a sales improvement consultant and bestselling author. His new book Combo Prospecting: The Powerful One-Two Punch That Fills Your Pipeline and Wins Sales is available for pre-order and will be released in January of 2018. In our conversation, we attack the myths around prospecting and lead generation. Tony also shares some wonderful actionable tips that you can implement right away.
Episode Highlights:
- Treating predictable prospecting as a process.
- Separation of roles that actually work in large organizations.
- How sellers need to generate their own pipeline.
- Everyone in the organization needs to be prospecting and looking for referrals.
- Getting to a point where the sales process is a habit.
- After engaging with a client ask for a referral.
- Lead with why the conversation should matter and add value.
- Help, help, help and then ask.
- Ask is this email helping a prospects challenge? If no, don’t send.
- Speak to prospects at the level of a peer.
- Combo sell with phone, email, social, etc. using the right narrative.
- Buyers are interested in what is going on in their industry, provide value.
- Try to reach a range of people within an organization with the right narrative.
- More focus on customer experience and human engagement.
- Embracing technology and the way you sell. Being politely persistent.
Resources:
- Combo Prospecting: The Powerful One-Two Punch That Fills Your Pipeline and Wins Sales
- Tony Hughes on LinkedIn
- Tony’s Keynote Speaker Website
- RSVP Selling
- Tony on Twitter @rsvpselling
- Cracking The Sales Management Code : The Secrets to Measuring and Managing Sales Performance
Episode Transcript:
Marylou: Hi everyone, it’s Marylou Tyler. Today’s guest is the most read LinkedIn author on B2B selling on the planet. It’s global. This guy, Tony Hughes, is an amazing guy. I’m sure most of you have read and followed his post. I try to comment on his thought provoking, sometimes rib poking posts on LinkedIn. It’s amazing the amount of conversation that flows around you, Tony. It’s wonderful to have you on the podcast today.
The other thing I want to tell you guys is there’s a book coming out by Tony called COMBO Prospecting by AMACOM New York. It’s coming out in January 2018. Yet another book on prospecting that we all need to have in our arsenal. For today’s conversation, we’re going to talk about some of the myths around prospecting and also lead generation.
Tony has some really great views that I’d like you to just sit back, listen, and we’re going to ask you to take one or two of his wonderful tips and put them into action as soon as you hang up the phone with us today. Welcome, Tony.
Tony: Hey Marylou, it’s so great to be on the show. Thanks for having me.
Marylou: I love the fact that we can talk. I’m in Iowa, you’re in Sydney, Australia and here we are through the wonders of the internet, having a conversation about prospecting. My first question to you is besides the fact that you are the most read B2B selling person on LinkedIn on the planet, based on that, what are the questions relating to prospecting? What’s the top most thing that you hear from readers as challenges they have with prospecting?
Tony: Marylou, the thing that really sticks to me is because I blog a lot, it’s a great place to really test what topics resonate with people. I actually ask a lot of questions to my audience as well to get a sense of what really concerns people. Whether it’s online with my blogging or whether it’s me working in the real world with clients because I’m very active with organizations out there in B2B sales, the number one problem that people tell me that they have is that they just don’t have enough sales pipeline.
The thing I find really interesting about that is that the first thing is that’s just plainly not true. If people don’t have enough sales pipeline, that’s not the problem, that’s the symptom of other real things but they’re causing it which we’ll maybe talk about. They all think that they can close, they think they know how to build rapport and build relationships and do discovery. They all think they know how to sell but it’s just that they don’t have enough pipe.
The reality is if you’re going back to recourse, the thing I believe is that there’s three things that fundamentally cause the issue of not having enough pipeline. First is the wrong mindset and we can maybe explore this a little bit but it’s the wrong mindset. A lot of salespeople have just abdicated responsibility for creating their own pipe. I even see people out there saying that sales people shouldn’t be doing prospecting and creating pipe, they should just focus on selling. We may be explore that. The first thing is the wrong mindset.
The next thing I see is people have the wrong narratives, people having the wrong kinds of conversations with people. One of the problems in sales is that we get delegated down to what sounds like we deserve to be talking to so they need to really change the conversation if they want to elevate the way that they’re selling.
The third thing is that people are executing the wrong activities. Mindset, narrative, and the types of activities and the volume of activities are the three things that really cause a problem, typically, in my mind. I think it’s really yourself with your excellent book Predictable Prospecting. I’ve downloaded the book. I’ve started reading it and really enjoying it. I love your approach for treating predictable prospecting really as a process. It’s a really topical issue. It’s the number one thing that people think that they need to resolve.
Marylou: It’s interesting you say that. Again, the three areas that we’re going to talk about today are the mindset, the narrative, and activities. The other thing you mentioned very briefly is this concept of separation of roles and the fact that there’s a lot in discussion today around should salespeople prospect, close, service? Should they just do the selling and closing part?
I view this as it’s compartmentalized. Me, as a solo practitioner, I prospect, I close, I service. I am not going to grow my team. I like to service my accounts by myself. That’s really how I work. I think in the larger organizations and if you’re doing higher volume transactions, there are some ideas around separation of roles that really work.
It’s more about the fact that some salespeople are better at opening doors and some sales people are better at closing doors. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t learn these tricks to the tray and these actual ways of opening those doors because you never know when you’re going to be put in the situation where you’re on the hook to generate revenue yourself. I like the separation of role concept but it doesn’t apply to every bit.
I think that that was one of the de-services of Predictable Revenue, the book that we wrote in 2011. It’s that there is almost a mandate that you must separate the roles As soon as you can, separate those roles so that you have business developers, and you have closers, and then you have people who service accounts.
Let’s talk about this root cause, not enough pipeline. You said you hear that over and over again. If I’m sitting here as listening to this podcast and that resonated with me, how do I figure out the root cause of it by myself? If I’m really trying to figure this out, that it’s really not pipeline, it may be one of those three, lead us through how we would self diagnose ourselves to figure out where we are lacking or where the gap is.
Tony: I really love the comment you just made. You really bang on the money. I loved Predictable Revenue obviously, based on Sales Force back around the 2000 mark. The idea of getting people to specialize in roles is absolutely valid but the whole problem is that regardless of how good marketing is at creating marketing qualified leads, it may be go to an inside sales function that turns them into sales qualified. If you’ve got inside sales people that are doing out bound so they’re using a blended approach obviously but they’re getting on the phone and trying to make appointments. All the field sales people, all of that is valid.
I really agree with you. Here’s the main problem. Although those models work, no one mounted that activity gives a field salesperson enough pipeline for them to make their number each year because every organization is bumping up the sales target every year. They, in essence, reduce the territories. The number goes up 20% or 30% a year. The territory gets cut down by a third to a half.
The reality is if you got an inside sales and marketing function that’s working really well, it will never give a seller enough pipeline. They have to generate their own pipeline as well. Where I see inside sales is falling down is that if you need to elevate the conversation, if you’re selling high value solutions to a CSR style of role, you need to be able to carry the conversation with that person and you need to be able to talk about what you’re seeing with clients in terms of risk outcomes issues within their particular industry that have relevance.
The thing I find is a more junior person which is typically on the inside sales team can’t carry the conversations at that level. If you’re wanting to get, for example, to the chief financial officer of an organization, you get one shot at having that conversation securing the meeting. My view is sales people can’t abdicate responsibility. They need to work with their inside sales team to help those folks get even better at what they do. They need to be grateful for every lead they get from marketing or inside sales and that they’ve also got to be able to go and develop their own pipeline.
That’s really the key thing. They must be able to do it in a way where they avoid being delegated and they’ve got to find a way to really break through.
Marylou: It’s funny you say this because this is so real for me now with clients that I’m working with. What we’ve come up with, and by necessity is exactly what you’re talking about where the account executives, the closers, whatever you want to call the folks that are actually going to close the deals, I’m seeing more and more that they’re selecting their key accounts, some people call them dream whatever, dream 20, dream 300, whatever accounts they’re working that are in that center of that bull’s eye and those accounts are worked hyper personally sometimes with AE and the SDR working together, sometimes AE only.
They’re working those 20 to 30 accounts, something like that and hitting, hitting, hitting those accounts because they’re high revenue, they have a higher likelihood of closing so they’re targeted.
The next ring out becomes a little bit looser in terms of how much the SDR can help but they still, like you said, I heard you say this that if they’re a junior SDR, they’re not going to be able to positionally take that lead or take that account into the pipeline towards the mid, they’ll have to still be at the top. Maybe they set meetings, or maybe they’re doing a live demo, or they’re just doing a very light what we call AWAF call, are we a fit call, with one of the stakeholders and then that lead gets passed along.
Or if you’re more seasoned as an SDR, you can actually find all the stakeholders, get them to the discovery call, bring the AE in at that point and then the lead is handed off. It’s not set in cement like it used to be, at all. It has evolved and it has incorporated the concept of account based selling. What’s really funny is even in Predictable Revenue, we talked about a 3 hour 15 process which was account based selling because the SDR had that lead for 3 hours 15 minutes. 15 minute AWAF, 1 hour with single stakeholder, 2 hours trying to locate, and get to a discovery call, multiple stakeholders.
Tony: It’s a really, really good model. The reality is everybody needs to be prospecting in organization whether you’re a CFO, CEO and God forbid, an AE or a sales business development person. We all need to be prospecting all the time. We all need to be looking for referrals because obviously referrals and trigger events are the fastest path and the highest probability to a sale.
The reality in life and business is we see what we’re looking for and it just staggers me how many sales people and business people are not tuned to really be looking for referrals and listening for trigger events which give reasons to go and engage with people. That’s really part of mindset.
The first thing of mindset is personally own the responsibility of creating pipeline regardless of how good marketing or your SDRs and inside sales cross function is and time block a period of time every single day. Your book Predictable Prospecting is bringing and creating that framework but you also need the mindset where you think you know what, if I want a predictable pipeline, then I’ve got to be investing time every single day in the right activities. They’re going to create that for me. If I don’t have consistent inputs and activity levels, I’m not going to get consistent results and that’s how you avoid the horrible roller coaster ride that is most people’s lives in sales.
Marylou: Let’s say we bought into this, Tony, “Okay, I’m going to hang up this phone, I’m going to listen to this podcast, I’m going to put into my schedule, then I’m going to prospect every single day.” That is your will when you’re at that level. What we need to do is get from that sheer will to this habit. That’s what I’m really trying to get people in the mindset area to think about. I’m coming from a process perspective but I really want people to drive through sheer will and go all the way to what becomes habit.
When you get up in the morning, you already know your time blocks for the week. You’ve probably pre-planned your calls and your views of those calls and you’ve done whatever research is important for you to hyper personalize that conversation and away you go. That to me is really where we’re trying to get with all these books that we’re writing on process, is to get you to a point where you do this as habit.
Tony: It’s 100% on the money. It’s what people need to do. Habits are the things that creates results in anybody’s life, whether it’s staying fit and healthy or whether or it’s having a good, healthy pipeline and consistently delivering a number in business.
Marylou: It trumps discipline. I hear a lot of our sales colleagues talk about you need the discipline of sales. Discipline is along that journey towards habit, in my opinion. I can be disciplined. I’m an athlete. I can be disciplined to go out there and do my stuff everyday but it’s only when I get up in the morning, the natural thing to do is go work on improving my time as a runner or a biker. It’s just habit for me. I just get out there everyday because my body craves it, I love it, it makes me feel good. That’s really what prospecting should be.
It’s fun to prospect and I think a lot of people dread it but I think that’s also mindset. Putting yourself in a very positive environment, smile when you’re on the phone. There are some phone habits and things that can really warm you up and get you ready for these types of calling. It’s so much fun when you get people who say, “Thank you so much for calling me. I’m so happy you reached out to me.” It does happen.
Tony: It’s funny I was working with a large law firm and we were talking about referrals. You are so right about this habit. It’s simply developing a habit. Every time you finish an engagement with a client, simply say, “I really enjoyed working on that matter with you. Who else inside the organization should I be talking to?” It’s simply a case of having your own way of asking the question. It’s just a soft way of asking for a referral.
If you’re in a habit of doing it, a percentage of the time, they’ll say, “Hey, actually, you should be talking to Bill over in this area of the business. We’ve got an issue going on at the moment.” If you’re in the habit of asking, then you’ll get referrals. Most people are not in the habit and then they try and execute some crazy level of activity to generate referrals and it doesn’t work for them because it just needs to be a daily habit to make it work.
Marylou: You can’t wait to the 16th or the 20th of the month if you’re closing on the 28th with your pipeline. You have to be looking at it daily. I was at a conference just yesterday in San Francisco where we talked about daily metrics. Just keep aligned with your daily goals, and your adherence to goal, and your alignment to goal on a daily basis to just keep you on track because if you wait and get lazy and to the third month of the week, maybe the fourth week of the month, it’s just so stressful and there’s no need to go there.
Tony: One of my favourite books is a book written by Jason Jordan, Cracking Sales Management Code. He really talks about this issue the right way around. You can’t manage results. All you can do is manage the activities that feed into your sales objectives that then create the results. We need to be a little bit clear about what are the activities that we need to execute well if we want to achieve our objectives that then deliver revenue. That’s the initial mindset.
The second thing that I really see up there is that when people do go ahead and jump on the phone or they send an email, again, I love those email templates that you’ve got in Predictable Prospecting, but the thing is they just seem to have the wrong narrative. For me, there’s really a couple of important points to make here.
The first is that we all know that people both buy from those that they feel, that they know, like, and trust but nobody worth getting to their business from a brand new business development point of view. This is not existing relationships. This is new business development but anyone worth getting to, there is not lonely and bored and looking for a new friend. Calling people up and adopting a friendly strategy I just think paints you as a salesperson immediately and gets the call up on the wrong footing.
And then the other issue is that nobody worth getting to out there is lying awake at night hoping some sales person is going to call them the next day to tell them about the joys and wonders of their products and solutions. Leading with a strategy of trying to be someone’s friend calling saying how are you today or calling in and talking about who you are, what your company does, and how it all works, none of that matters until you’ve first anchored why the person should care about it.
The thing I see with narrative is people has got a narrative that tends to be all about them and what they’re selling instead of leading with why the conversation should matter to the other person and also really focusing on providing value in the conversation for the person. Give value, provide value well in advance so they’re considering becoming a customer.
There’s an interesting research done by Corporate Vision a few years ago and what they found was that 75% of the time, the company that wins the deal was the one that first provided education and insight for the person buying. The one that really starts to educate the person becomes the emotional favourite. That actually comes down to we have a focus on providing value well in advance so then they will become a customer and create a narrative that leads with why conversation should matter.
Marylou: That’s a great point. I’m an avid student still of copywriting. There’s a rule for persuasive copywriters that is a three one rule. It’s help, help, help, and then ask, is what they really preach. Help is adding value. One thing that one of the copywriters said to me that’s really stuck with me, I’ll share it with the audience is that when you’re crafting an email or you’re doing something correspondence wise with the prospect or stakeholder, before you hit that send button if you’re doing an email, ask yourself, is this email transforming or in some way helping a challenge that my prospect is experiencing, that I know they’re experiencing?
If you cannot answer yes wholeheartedly with your heart on that one, don’t send the email. That eliminates these just checking in emails or hey, I’ve got a great idea. You’re not going to send that email if you honestly can look at that and say will I transform my guy’s day before I hit that send button.
Tony: I really think that’s great advice. Just in line with that, the other part of this is we need to understand, if we’re elevating conversations to their real leaders of organizations that make the decisions and approve the spending, we need to talk the language of leaders and the language of business which is numbers, dollars, and percentages.
We need to be able to talk about how we think we make a material or can help them make a material impact on their KPIs, their revenue or other important metrics inside their business around net promoter scores or staff engagement, whatever those things are important to them because they just care about delivering outcomes and managing the risks. That kind of talk when you’re talking with people, that’s part of how you avoid delegation because what you want is engagement and then sponsorship and access to the organization to do a deeper level of discovery and help the client build the business case that will anchor why they should change state.
Marylou: Why change, why now, why us. I think, to your point about mindset again, when you’re writing these emails, you are that person, you are their colleague, you are their peer. It doesn’t matter that you have a role of sales, that that’s your title. When you are conversing with someone belly to belly, I like to call it, you are a peer of theirs, a colleague. You speak to them at that level. You are at that level.
I think that’s a big mindset issue that I see a lot especially since I work top of funnel, a lot of younger people are usually in that role, they’re almost afraid to have these conversations even though they know that they could help and they have at their fingertips the specificity around percent improvement or dollars saved or whatever the number are. They can say them but they don’t say them with conviction and they don’t say them with that emotional surety that will get that executive to lean in and say, “Wow, this guy really knows what they’re talking about. I need to spend five minutes with them.”
Tony: That is so true. Selling is first and foremost the transference of belief from one person to another person. People make emotional decisions. They rationalize with logic. Without being able to talk about that, you’ve got to be a true believer in the value that you offer.
Marylou: It transcends globally, too. You’re in Australia, there’s a different culture there than US but it’s still the same throughout globally, I think. Behaviour and the way we are a humans is the same throughout.
Tony: It really is. I absolutely agree with that. You got to have the right mindset, you gotta have the right narrative and talk the language of leaders in business linked with why conversations should matter is really important.
The third thing that I see, there’s a lot of people just got the wrong activity and the wrong levels of activity. One of the things I see up there which is just a scourge on sales is the rise of people just being passive. You go into a lot of sales calls today you’ll struggle to hear anybody even making a fun call. I just find it absolutely amazing. I did a keynote for Sales Force World Tour about eight weeks ago. My topic was the rise of the silent sales floors killing business. Whenever I write in my blog about the need to pick up the phone and make calls, people just go absolutely crazy.
To me, this false dichotomy that’s raging at the moment of social selling versus the phone, to me, it’s a false dichotomy because the first ever social selling tool was really the telephone and it’s not a case of social or the phone, it’s both. All of our buyers themselves face a white wall of noise. When they come to the office everyday, they’re bombarded by people trying to gain access and just opening up their email and getting to some level of close to empty inboxes. They just regard it as an impossible task.
The reality is we’ve got to adopt combinations which is what my next book is really focused on, COMBO Prospecting. We’ve got into pragmatic research and obviously platforms like LinkedIn are really important to that. We’ve got to get their cell number, we’ve got to call, leave a voicemail, send a text message, send an email, send an inmail. If we’ve got the right narrative where we’re not being seen as a sales pest, we’ve got the right narrative where we’re able to provide business value for the person, that’s the sales people.
One of the things, if you’ve got the luxury of being able to do it to it is absolutely focused on a particular vertical. If you’re able to create a narrative around the fact that you work with others in their industry and there’s some interesting trends that you’re seeing, a common set of problems, you’ve seen how a non competitive, because you don’t want them to feel like you’re taking trade secrets in someone within their industry to them because they’re worried that you’ll do that to them.
But if you’re able to say, if you’ve seen how one organization has managed to go from this state to that state as far as tangible results, if these are common issues that you’re facing, we’ll really love to have a conversation and talk about what I’m seeing within your industry. The thing is that the buyer is absolutely interested in what’s going on within their industry and what others in their industry are doing, what trends could be coming over the horizon toward them. If you can be the person that can provide that level of insight, bam, you’ve absolutely got engagement.
People shouldn’t feel like wow, am I bombarding this person? If you’ve got the right narrative, you’re helping them and you’re providing value for them. They should be grateful that you’re doing this. You shouldn’t be embarrassed that you’re determined to get through. What you want is you want to go at a range of people in an organization concurrently and you want to go with them with the right narrative where they’re being, “Wow, this person can provide value for me in a conversation and boy are they determined, so I think I should return the phone call.”
I know you’ve interviewed Jeb. He tells that story, a true story where he had a huge number of outreach. I think it was every single day he left a voicemail for a CEO for about a month and a half until the guy finally called back and that person ended up being a customer which really validated that the conversation really was a value. I know when I posted that example as a quote from Jeb in social, it had over a million reach.
I had one person write into me saying, I think they were going to hire two linebackers to beat me up for harassing somebody. I said it was Jeb, not me. I thought that was really funny. Jeb was really persistent because he knew he could help the person and he did. The person became a client and invested more than $1 million with his organization. There’s the proof that the value is there. Jeb was determined and that’s what salespeople need to do.
This whole thing of having mindset of time blocking and really make it a habit but you’ve got to have the right level of activities. If you’ve got the right narrative and the right level of activities, then you’ll definitely break through.
Marylou: I heard persistence and I remember Aaron and I when we were at Predictable Revenue, he used to always tell me because I did a lot of the outreach then, he says, “Marylou, you’re the only one person I know who is so pleasantly patient and persistent to the delightful stage.” I said that is what it takes. It really does. I love talking to people I don’t know. I love starting conversations with people I don’t know. I think that’s who we are as business development folks. We really like to get those conversations started. If we’re armed with the messaging from your new book about how to touch, when to touch, and in what rhythm to touch in, our conversion rates are going to go through the roof.
I have a story I like to tell about a client of mine who decided, “I think we’re going to send a postcard to our dream 250 accounts.” Within the sequence, they had a 10 touch sequence over 32 business days or so. The third one, they decided to send a postcard out and then they halted the sequence and followed up like in the olden days, what we used to do with the direct mail. Send a letter and then follow up with a letter.
It was novel enough. It was impactful enough. It was engaging enough. They went double digit conversion rate. Just think of how you are now able to shrink that pipeline lag by incorporating some of these strategies that worked in the olden days and still can work now instead of just doing your time blocking from 9:00 to 11:00 and wondering why things aren’t going any better.
Part of this is to be nimble, to really think about when your prospect is going to be in the office. I can remember sitting in the parking lot in New York waiting for the New York telephone COO to come to work. It was 6:30AM. I knew he would be there and I caught him in the parking lot. We have to adjust our calling time blocks as well as part of this combo effort.
Really looking forward to the new book that’s coming out. Can you give us a little flavour of how you’ve broken that book out? And is it a reference book like a how to guide or is it really just getting us more aware of some of the issues that we really need to take in and figure out where are we along the spectrum of not being able to prospect properly?
Tony: I jokingly tell people, in my writing style, I try to be the Jason Bourne meets [00:31:14]. My very first book was written as a novel so it’s very engaging emotionally and tells a story. This next book is quite different. It’s really based on the blogging I’ve done in the last two and a half years. That’s really where I’ve ideated and really refined the ideas. It’s what I call eclectically snackable, so I struggle to get that out.
The idea with it is you can flick through it and find the things that address that you may be currently facing. It really talks about what we’ve discussed today. It talks about the dangerous trains in selling. There’s a lot of people predicting doom but I do believe, probably around 20%, 30% of B2B field sales people will probably be gone within the next five years. Organizations are going to continue to spend substantial amounts of money on sales and marketing but I think the mix is going to change.
There’s going to be a big focus on how do we create great customer experience even well in advance of someone becoming a customer. Human engagement will definitely be a part of that process but expensive field sales people is some kind of magic way to go and drive sales, it’s something that’s getting tougher and tougher.
The reality is people need to change the way that they sell if they want to have a good future. They need to embrace technology as part of all of this. They really need to up their game and they need to adopt the combination of old school and new school. Marylou, you said something a couple of minutes ago that everybody listening to this should really, really pay attention to. I love that fact that you talk about just being politely persistent.
The thing is you can get all wound up and frustrated. You just accept the fact that hey, people are busy. It’s not that they’re rejecting me. They’re just being incredibly busy and I just need to be persistent. I just need to have the right narrative. I need to find the right approach. Same thing a piece of physical mail is a great thing to do because so few people do it anymore. Picking up the phone and making a call is a great thing to do today because so many people have stopped doing it. They’re sending emails and emails and doing things in social which is part of how you break through. At the end of the day, a conversation with your own voice is the way to do it.
We’re going to get to a point in the very near future where there’ll be more mobile phones per person. People have a phone for business and a phone for their personal lives. Everyone’s got their cell phone. It’s the ideal way to actually get through to them.
The thing the book does is it really talks about the things we’ve discussed. Old new school, new school, blend all these things together. Find the right combinations of outreach and come up with the right combination in how you’ll actually execute and personally own the daily cadence of creating sales pipeline. It’s the only way that you can really deliver strong predictable revenue regardless of how many leads are coming through from inside sales and marketing. There will never be enough. You’ve really got to do both.
Marylou: Focusing on those whales, those ideal accounts that you would love to have as clients. You’ll find enough to keep you busy and you’ll find enough that you can continually work on a daily basis. It is a daily habit that we’re working towards and it is persistence and the data will help you feel good about the number of context you need. Because when you’re just starting out, everyone thinks, “Oh, they don’t want to hear from me twice a week or three times a week. I’ll be in their face, I don’t want to do that.”
You don’t really have anything to substantiate that yet unless you have really strong data that you can look at and say, “Look, over the last year, with these 2,000 records, this was the cadence that worked.” If you don’t have that, you’re going to be building your own cadence and you need to test it, iterate it, move it around a bit, and you will come up with your own unique cadence that works for you over and over and over again but you’ve gotta start somewhere.
Tony: It’s so true. And really create the habit but make sure you’re in a habit of doing the right things and doing them well.
Marylou: Definitely. Tony, thank you so much for joining us. Before we leave, even though you are the most read person on LinkedIn, how do people get a hold of you if they would like to continue this conversation with you?
Tony: Thank you. They can find me in LinkedIn. There will be show notes I’m sure, where they can see that. I also have two websites. I have a website for me as a keynote speaker and it’s tonyhughes.com.au. My sales methodology website is rsvpselling.com.
Marylou: Okay. We’ll put all that in the show notes for everyone and we’ll be looking forward to the launch of your new book. Very exciting!
Tony: Thanks, Marylou. I really appreciate it.
Marylou: Enjoyed speaking with you.