Mastering the Cold Call with SaaS Sales Players Host Jesse Woodbury
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Here is the full transcript from this episode:
Jesse Woodbury (00:00:00):
You’re listening to SaaS Sales Players, I’m your host, Jesse Woodbury. I’m pleased to introduce today’s guest Chris Beall of ConnectAndSell. If you’re not familiar with ConnectAndSell, I highly recommend looking into the solution. At the high level, it helps reps streamline their cold calling, be more productive, and ultimately drive more revenue. Chris goes into a lot more detail around how it works, and how it can be implemented. Chris and I spent a lot of time today talking about some of the tips and tricks that sellers can use as they’re making their day-to-day cold calls. One big takeaway that I have that Chris pointed out was be focused on not trying to sell the full breadth of your solution on that first call. You really only have a couple of seconds to get the attention of your prospect.
Jesse Woodbury (00:00:52):
So you don’t want to try to overwhelm them with all of the different talking points around your product or solution, but rather just focus on selling to the next step. In many cases, that’s just an intro or an overview call, possibly a demo call, but that’s really the focus of every cold call. It’s just getting that next step and scheduling that next meeting. I’m very excited for the conversation, and to share that with you. So with that welcome Chris to the podcast.
Jesse Woodbury (00:01:25):
Awesome. Well, Chris it’s been a long time coming and I’ve been very aware of who you are and who ConnectAndSell is for a long time, but I’m very excited to have you on the show today.
Chris Beall (00:01:38):
It’s great to be here. This is something Jesse. Who knew it? We could finally make it happen, huh?
Jesse Woodbury (00:01:43):
Yeah. The first thing I want to ask about, I’m looking at your LinkedIn profile right now. I recognize a couple of the schools on your CV here. I’m a Sun Devil myself, and born and raised here in the area in the East Valley Mesa area. If I’m not mistaken, it looks like you might be from Arizona as well.
Chris Beall (00:02:05):
Yeah. I grew up out in North Scottsdale, but you’ve got to imagine North Scottsdale in 1957. That was the world I grew up in. So we had roads. You could even kind of have a bicycle if you were tolerant, but it was pretty much horse country. So I was raised with animals and books and not an awful lot of people.
Jesse Woodbury (00:02:28):
So my father grew up in Scottsdale for the most part. He was born in San Francisco, but his family came out to Scottsdale pretty early on. He used to talk about how where Fashion Square mall is, he used to ride his dirt bike. This would have been like 1973 or something like that. But it’s hard to believe that not that long ago in the big scheme of things, it was just desert and there was not the Scottsdale, or the Metro Phoenix as it is today.
Chris Beall (00:02:57):
Oh, it wasn’t at all. Scottsdale was most Western town. We’re in the Parada del Sol riding our horses, and no motorized conveyances allowed in that parade. I don’t know if they still do that or not, but that’s what it was like. I still got stuff going on there. My sister who is also my PR person, Shelly, you’ve met her. She lives in my parents home, when they were alive, way out Albuquerque. So anyway, yeah, I’m a desert rat, and just bought a place with my fiance down in Tucson. [crosstalk 00:03:29].
Jesse Woodbury (00:03:29):
Nice. So I’m here now too. I was in Austin for about a decade. That’s where I first heard about ConnectAndSell. I was working at a startup out in Austin. Then last year kind of right in the middle of the pandemic, my wife and I decided we’re both from here, and had been in Austin for, again, the better part of the last decade, and decided to come back. We missed the desert a little bit. So we bought a house out here, not too far from Albuquerque. We’re out in the Gilbert area. We’re enjoying being back. I don’t know if we’re here forever. It’s a big country. There’s tons of opportunity out there, but at the very least right now, we’re close to family and enjoying being in the desert again.
Chris Beall (00:04:08):
Yeah. I like having a place in the desert. I didn’t know it would ever happen, but we just bought one in February down in Green Valley. So we got that, and in sharp contrast up here in Port Townsend, Washington, we’re looking out the window right now. I can see Victoria, British Columbia over a little island that protects our Bay.
Jesse Woodbury (00:04:27):
That’s a great area too. That’s the next thing for me, is I need to get a property that’s up in some greenery. That way I can have that balance because being in the desert too long will mess with you. But it sounds like you got the best of both worlds.
Chris Beall (00:04:39):
Yeah. Well, you figure stuff out when you get old.
Jesse Woodbury (00:04:47):
So, how does a guy from the middle of the desert in Arizona in the Southwest land in the tech business, and ultimately become the CEO of a company. Tell me about that journey.
Chris Beall (00:05:01):
Well, I was a kind of an unusual kid I guess. I liked sports a lot. I did a lot of different stuff like that, but I was also kind of a math guy. I ended up going off and getting a degree ultimately after stints as a professional gambler, and rock climbing, mountaineering all over the country and stuff. Somewhere in there I finally got a degree in physics and education. It was kind of a combo. That’s what I finished up at Arizona State. Needed a job obviously. Was recruited to do some interesting things like to run the Mason Physics Lab at Los Alamos National Laboratory. But I decided, I don’t know, I was attracted towards kind of commercial stuff. I was actually attracted to education, but my high school physics teacher or high talked me out of it.
Chris Beall (00:05:50):
So I felt well. What do I know how to do that I can get into, and just kind of swim around and see what’s up? Computer programming was real natural for me. So I started programming at 68, 1968, not at the age of 68. Yeah, I went on a computer in Teaneck, New Jersey that we could access through a teletype and telephone from [inaudible 00:06:14] in Scottsdale. Same computer Bill Gates used to use apparently. So natural. I joined up with NCR back in ’79, took me forever to get through school. I started noticing something really quick, which was I would take care of a customer or I’d build some software thing or other, and the reps never seem to be able to sell it as well as I could.
Chris Beall (00:06:42):
So I just started selling my own stuff. Then one thing led to another, went to Martin Marietta and ran software education and training there, went to Bell labs, develop the Unix and C curriculum there. I then started doing startups. The thing I loved about it was I could be the CTO, but I could also go out and make the sales. I think that for me was very balanced. It’s like you were talking about the desert and the greenery, right? Working in tech to build stuff, it’s kind of like living in the desert. There’s not a lot to look at here looking at the code. Going out and selling is like being in the beautiful forest. There’s so much to look at and think about, but after a while, you start to feel a little damp. You want to dry up. So it was always kind of a balanced lifestyle for me, and it just grew on itself. So there you go.
Jesse Woodbury (00:07:37):
Wow. The juxtaposition to be able to both build things and sell them, it’s very rare. I can’t think of very many people that I’ve encountered in my career that can do both well. I can think of a few, but not very many. It’s definitely not the rule. It’s the exception. So that’s very cool that you’re able to think more technically, but also get out in an articulate way present that to the end user or the customer in a way that encourage them to purchase. Very, very cool. So connecting [crosstalk 00:08:13].
Chris Beall (00:08:16):
It’s a little different. It’s a convenience in a way. I actually think there’s a lot of really, really good sales talent that’s hiding in the technical world, but nobody ever pulls them out and trains them and says, “Hey, this is good. This is fun. This lets you see your creation in its actual form being used.” Not just like you built it and somebody else sells it. When you sell it, you’re part of how it comes to life, and it’s a lot more fun.
Jesse Woodbury (00:08:45):
Yeah I agree With that. There’s been a lot of really great technical folks that I’ve worked with over the years, especially in earlier stage startups that never get to see the end use case, or the rollout of the deployment in a way that they really can visualize or at least see an action their work. Then also tying in the business value too. That’s a missed opportunity, because I know a lot of great engineers who have no idea that this feature that they build is driving XYZ amount of revenue for an enterprise or a large organization. I think that’s, again, a travesty that’s not more embedded in the culture. Like you said, not nurtured more in especially a startup environment.
Chris Beall (00:09:27):
Absolutely. Today I had the pleasure, I was a little late for us talking because I was on with some folks who are doing a test drive of ConnectAndSell. I still sell on the front lines. I don’t just pick off the big deals or whatever. I know some CEOs, they like to kind of stay away from that. I look at it the other way. It’s a great way to get information to know what’s going on and also to know what are your sellers having to put up with? Because really bad stuff creates in companies policies and systems you have to update and all this stuff turns you into a data entry clerk instead of a sales person.
Chris Beall (00:10:02):
So I figured you stay on the front lines and you experience that stuff and it makes you mad and that’s great. You kind of fix it up, but also you get to hear stuff like one of the three owners of this company we were working with today. We do this thing called an intensive test drive, free day of production. I got on with them in the executive briefing said, “What’d you think? He said, “I talked to somebody I’ve been trying to reach for five years.”
Jesse Woodbury (00:10:28):
Wow. In one day?
Chris Beall (00:10:32):
In one push of a button actually. It’s the first person I’ve talked to, but it’s like that is gratifying and satisfying. When you build something and you’re immersed in that side of it. You’re thinking what the value is, and then it’s like, “Oh, well, here’s this other piece of value.” Which is you can get ahold of people. I’ve now seen it for awhile, but it’s not just numbers. It’s the surprise of somebody you’ve been trying to reach for five years. It was a current customer he’s been trying to reach for five years.
Jesse Woodbury (00:11:05):
Wow. So a really stale customer than an elusive one. Interesting.
Chris Beall (00:11:12):
Yeah.
Jesse Woodbury (00:11:13):
So walk us through a little bit… how’d you get the idea for ConnectAndSell and then please, this is something I forgot to mention when we were off air. But I’m all for shameless plugs. They’re not shameful at all. Please plug the solution. I’m very familiar with what it is. Unfortunately I’ve not ever had a chance to use it in production at any of the companies I’ve worked at although we’ve evaluated it a few times. Oddly enough my wife has. She’s been able to use it in an environment that she worked in. She was in a business development role for a while at a technology startup out in Austin, and used it there.
Jesse Woodbury (00:11:48):
So, I unfortunately haven’t even though I’ve stayed in the tech business longer than she has. She dropped out of the business and moved on to the healthcare industry. But I’m curious how you got the idea for it and then an overview of how it all works just for listeners. Because my understanding is it’s a really cool technology and a game changer when you’re doing outbound prospecting.
Chris Beall (00:12:09):
Yes. I didn’t come up with that at all. It was actually the invention of another person and it was invented like this. This individual was in India, and heard that some people were conformed and he wanted to call back to the states. Maybe he had a list. We always have a list. You never just have one person or takes a few seconds, and then it’s over. So he had a list and he said, “Hey, what if I print the list out into six sub lists, take them down to a table, put a telephone next to each one, and get one of my Indian employees to call, navigate the phone system. If they get the person, but only if they get the person. Don’t say a word, just hold the phone up over their head. I’ll grab it, look to see where their finger is on the list of talk to that person.
Jesse Woodbury (00:12:57):
Wow.
Chris Beall (00:13:00):
That’s how it was invented. So they said well obviously you would want to put that into software. But with the people still, so to speak around the table. It’s like there an old far side cartoon I really liked that shows two polar bears looking at an igloo. One of them says to the other, “I love these things. Crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside.” It’s like that’s what this thing is like. Is it’s crunchy on the outside. It’s got technology that does all sorts of really cool stuff, but on the inside, it has that flexibility and intelligence and ability to interact with gatekeepers and funny phone systems and all that, that only comes from humans.
Chris Beall (00:13:43):
So at this moment as we speak right now, we’ve got roughly 600 people who are navigating phone calls on behalf of other folks out there at this instant. But it’s all buffered up with technology and managed in such a way that when you’re the user, all you do is push a button. You just push a button and you wait. I’ve got somebody who works for me. Her name is Cheryl Turner. Cheryl, she goes out to the park with her three year old, and she talks to CEOs while she’s got her three-year-old on the swings at the park. Now, that’s work-life balance right there.
Jesse Woodbury (00:14:19):
That’s amazing. Wow. Walk us through again, how does it work? So the dials are kind of running or do you call them dials or it’s just sort of automating the outbound dialing piece? Then when someone does connect, Cheryl for example, can connect with that CEO and start having a dialogue and give her elevator pitch, or whatever. Is that how it works?
Chris Beall (00:14:46):
Yeah. So what Cheryl does is she pushes her daughter on the swings, she hits the button. That’s what we call it. Press the button.
Jesse Woodbury (00:14:55):
Press the button, okay.
Chris Beall (00:14:56):
So it’s just one button. The button’s just like calling an Uber. There’s not much to it. So here’s the button. She’s done, and she’s loaded her list. She’s dialed into the system that she also uses our mobile app, which is pre dialed in. But you dial in through any telephone, you’re on a conference bridge. There’s no one in there. You’re all alone. It’s quiet, a little creepy. You pick your list with your list is normally hooked up to the CRM. So at some report in Salesforce or dynamics or whatever, but it could just be a file that you loaded up.
Chris Beall (00:15:29):
Then whenever you want to talk to somebody, you just push the button and you wait. The average wait time is just around four minutes. Highly variant based on the list. Then at some point, here the system is on the inside. It’s up dialing in parallel. That every dial is managed by an expert, a dial navigation expert. What that person does is they work that dial, the dial by name directory, the IVR tree, the gatekeeper, they asked for a transfer. They do everything you would have to do, but they’re doing it in the background four or five, six at a time. So, now you’ve got the speed of parallel dialing, but you have the flexibility and intelligence of humans taking care of stuff. Then say I’m on your list. So you have a list of I don’t know what. Two people, 50 people, a thousand people, whatever. Say I’m on your list, and I’m the lucky victim, right? I’m the one who answers.
Chris Beall (00:16:25):
I answer, “This is Chris and this is what’s amazing.” I see a phone number I don’t recognize. For whatever reason I want to answer it because it’s whatever, who knows why? Why did that guide that this person was trying to reach for five years answer? Who knows? But they asked. So I answered, this is Chris. Next thing I hear is you, because you get a beep in your ear, and it pops up on the screen. It says Chris Beall CEO ConnectAndSell. Maybe some notes from our last conversation, like a little teleprompter, because we talked before, or maybe it’s a cold call and it’s just… what are you going to say? So say it’s a cold call. You’re going to say something to me like, “Hey Chris, Jesse here. Hey, I know I’m an interruption. Can I have 27 seconds to tell you why I call?” I’m going to go, “Sure, go ahead.” Then you’re going to say, well, whatever you’re going to say.
Jesse Woodbury (00:17:16):
Wow. That is really cool. Do you guys do any kind of training or enablement to teams that are rolling it out? Is that part of the implementation process is training? I’m just trying to think through… once upon a time I helped a big technology firm in the Bay Area build out a sales development team. A lot of the folks, which also comprise a lot of my listeners are folks that are new to the industry reps that maybe are a year or two out of school. They’re in their first sales job, and they’re new to the concept of cold calling. What training do you guys offer? What advice could you give someone who’s new to cold calling who might be using a tool like ConnectAndSell, or not using a tool like ConnectAndSell to make sure that they sound polished, and scripted and that the cold call is a successful one or as successful as it can be? Anything there?
Chris Beall (00:18:09):
Sure. So here’s the cheap way to do it. You go to the connected cell blog, and somewhere in there, there is an article. You can Google it up because it’s pretty popular actually. It’s called Five Sentences That’ll Change Your Life. It’s a two-part series that takes you word by word, tone by tone, how to talk to somebody in a cold call, and why you can reliably take somebody from their fear, not your fear, but their fear of you as the invisible stranger instantly to trust in seven seconds. It’s a technique that was taught to me by Chris Voss, author of Never Split the Difference. The FBI hostage negotiator, and it’s guaranteed to create trust. It does it every time if you do it right. Take seven seconds.
Chris Beall (00:18:57):
Then from that point, first of all, your mindset is different then, because you realize you’re the scary person. There’s no point in being scared because you’re the one who’s scaring them. You’re the invisible stranger. In the environment of evolution in the village, the invisible strangers people from across the river, and they paint their faces vertically. We’re civilized. We paint our faces horizontal. The things they do there, they put a bone in their nose and we know the bone goes in the ears. Everybody knows that. Yeah. So when they’re invisible, it’s nighttime. We don’t like that because when people show up at night in our village, they’re not bringing us a buzz light. They’re here to change the demographics violently. So we don’t like that. Well, you are that.
Chris Beall (00:19:46):
When you cold call somebody, you are that invisible stranger. The beauty of it is if you relieve that fear, and you show the other person you see the world through their eyes. Then you demonstrate to them that you’re competent to solve a problem that they have right now, they will trust you. The problem they have right now is real simple. They want to get away from you. They want to get off that call, but with their self-image intact. That’s it. It really learned that. Then the purpose of connecting is just to have more conversations. But we teach how to do it because otherwise, we’re just amplifying suck.
Jesse Woodbury (00:20:28):
That’s the concern I imagine you guys hear a lot, is, “Wait a minute, what if our reps aren’t good at cold calls?” What happens if we scale that up to a point where there’s 600 rings going on in a couple hours? Then we’re just going to sound awful and unprepared in the market. So it sounds like you guys have a toolkit for companies, and teams to have some frameworks there. I’m a huge fan of Chris Voss by the way. I reread his book probably about once a year just to remember everything from the calibrated questions to actually how to negotiate with my toddler.
Jesse Woodbury (00:21:03):
So there’s a lot of value there and that’s really cool that you guys use some stuff out of his playbook. Because I think it’s extremely effective as you’re negotiating, but also for the cold calls.
Chris Beall (00:21:17):
Well, yeah, cold call really is the hostage negotiation at the one data level. What’s happened is you’ve ambushed somebody and you’re now the hostage taker, but you’ve got to initiate the negotiation to resolve that situation. So it’s a very subtle thing. It’s unlike everything else in sales and anything else in sales, is the cold call. It’s the most important thing you can possibly do. So learning to do it’s important. We finally went to the next level. Now, Manny Medina, the CEO founder of Outreach years ago, he took me out. Plied me with bourbon is all I can say, because I didn’t know how to drink bourbon. So he taught me this ocean of something called bitters and stuff like that. He said, “Look, Chris, you’ve got to start up a training company or training division.”
Chris Beall (00:22:08):
I said, “I do not want to do that, man. That’s a terrible idea.” He said, “No, you got to do it, because the industry is stuck. Our users don’t know what to say on the phone.” So we finally get them that conversation that they don’t know what to say. They don’t know how to say it. I know you’re an expert on it. So you got to do something about it. Well, finally we did. So we’ve recently introduced this thing called Flight School and Flight School is a four session blitzing coach live fire experience where you make money while getting trained.
Jesse Woodbury (00:22:44):
Oh, all right. That’s interesting.
Chris Beall (00:22:47):
It’s different. You’re talking to real prospects. You’re getting coached on every conversation. It’s so precise that the first two hours, even though you do the whole conversation, you’re setting meetings, doing the whole bit, you get coached on the first seven seconds. That’s all.
Jesse Woodbury (00:23:04):
Wow. How long does the program last or the training? Is it a couple of days, couple of weeks? What have you seen?
Chris Beall (00:23:15):
So it’s four sessions, two hours each, blitz and coach. Tends to run about two weeks. Sometimes a little longer. Starts with a messaging workshop. Speaking on Austin by the way, I had a CEO in Austin. I do messaging workshops myself. I kind of came up with the idea, and it’s about an hour of which a tiny bit is their message. The rest of the psychological framework, because that’s what really counts. You’re learning how to take somebody on a journey, on emotional journey from fear to trust to curiosity to commitment to action to take them in attending the meeting. So the CEO says, “Look, I don’t want to attend your stupid messaging workshop.” I have people to do that kind of crap. I said, “Well, if you don’t want to attend, I won’t either. It’ll be really easy. We will both save our day? It’ll be great.” He says, “Oh, god, if I have to.” So he sits through the messaging workshop, and at the end I asked him what you think? He said, “Chris, I just had my admin buy a plane ticket to come up to Reno and buy you dinner tonight. I’m coming up.”
Jesse Woodbury (00:24:22):
All right. When we stop recording, I want to know which CEO this was. I don’t want you to say it on the air, but I’m really curious. I did a lot of networking in Austin. I imagine it’s someone I’m aware of at the very least, but that’s awesome. [crosstalk 00:24:34].
Chris Beall (00:24:34):
I’ll have to look them up, because we do so many of these. We do 700 test drives a year. That’s a full day of like the one we just did. I just got off today. If I were to look at the results. This is a little team, very experienced entrepreneurs, really, really something. During their test drive, which lasted two hours, 26 minutes and 30 seconds. They had as a team of five including three founders. 300,209 dials, 116 conversations, and they set seven meetings. By the way, speaking to Austin, Tony Safoian and the group at SADA, you must know those guys. SADA is Google Clouds number one partner.
Jesse Woodbury (00:25:23):
I do, yeah.
Chris Beall (00:25:26):
So, Tony had me on his podcast Cloud N Clear, and he and Billy Franz is VP of inside sales. We were talking. I said, “Tony, didn’t you guys make some money on your ConnectAndSell test drive?” He laughed. He said, yeah. Billy says, “Yeah, we made tens of millions of dollars that day.”
Jesse Woodbury (00:25:45):
Wow. From just pipeline built, but ultimately close. Wow.
Chris Beall (00:25:51):
Yeah. I don’t know. The business model is a little complicated to me. So I had to do a set creating pipeline for Google, but that was a revelation to me. It’s like, “Oh, tens of millions, okay. I guess yeah.”
Jesse Woodbury (00:26:03):
How’s that for a proof of concept, right? Is generating tens of millions in new revenue in that short of a window.
Chris Beall (00:26:13):
Yeah. It’s a lottery ticket. You don’t know what’s going to happen. This particular company today, there are seven meetings. Given their business, I think they’re going to do pretty well. I think that was about maybe 30 or 40% of all the meetings they’d set normally in a year, and happened in two hours and a half. So they’ll they’ll do pretty well. Sometimes people set no meetings in their test drive and that’s fine too. They just have a ton of conversations and that’s all right.
Jesse Woodbury (00:26:44):
In your observation, you kind of going back to how reps specifically can improve their call acumen. Whether that’s a cold call or a followup to an executive they may have had an interaction with at some point in the past, excuse me. What in your observation is some of the pitfalls that you see reps falling into, or what are some of the mistakes you see reps making on the front lines all the time as you’re working with, and coaching some of these reps?
Chris Beall (00:27:13):
Yeah. Well, number one is that they are encouraged to make a hideous mistake, which is to mention what their company does. That kills curiosity right there to say… In fact, I’ll give you an example. I’ll give you our breakthrough script that we use a ConnectAndSell for ourselves. So our breakfast script goes like this. It starts the way I had it before. Well, I know I’m an interruption. Can I have 27 seconds tell you why I call? The first part’s hard, flat, cold, throw myself under the bus. The second part is playful, curious, come along with me, I’ll solve your problem. Your problem is me, and in 27 seconds I’m gone and your self image is intact. Good deal. So you’re going to say, “Sure, go ahead.” Why not say yes to that?
Chris Beall (00:27:59):
Like, why fight me for 24 seconds over 27 seconds? So then I’m going to say Jesse, I believe we’ve discovered a breakthrough that completely eliminates the waste and the frustration that keeps your best sales reps from being effective on the phone, or even using the phone at all. The reason I reached out to you today to get 15 minutes on your calendar to share this breakthrough with you. Do you happen to have your calendar available? Now, that’s the whole script and delivered precisely like that with that tone, great things happen. Notice what wasn’t in there. I didn’t say this. Here’s how I could blow it. I believe we’ve discovered a breakthrough dialing technology that completely eliminates boom, dead, shot in the head.
Chris Beall (00:28:44):
Why? Because as soon as I say that, they’re going to say, “Wait, I got another way out of this conversation.” As soon as there’s a pause, they’re going to go, “You know what, Chris, thanks. Really appreciate the call. You know we’re set.” Now, I’m doomed because the we’re set objection is the one unanswerable objection. Marketing people will who craft your message, well, accidentally, unintentionally with all the best intentions, lure you into a trap you can’t get out of. So as a sales rep, you have to know marketing language kills cold calls a hundred percent.
Jesse Woodbury (00:29:29):
It does. Prospects can tell. It feels like a cheesy sales pitch. There’s no curiosity, because like you said, it kind of lets the cat out of the bag, and that elusiveness has gone and yeah, you killed it.
Chris Beall (00:29:43):
Oh, that’s said, the number one thing that I see reps do, well, number one is they won’t throw themselves under the bus. They just won’t. They’re uncomfortable being a bad thing whereas in fact, they are a bad thing. If I cold call you, I am a bad thing. I just have to own up to it, and then move on. There has to be a reason I did it. So that’s number one. Number two is maybe this is the number zero. They don’t really believe in the value of the meeting independently of the deal. So they’re doing it for false reasons. They’re calling in order to get you to do something that’s good for them.
Chris Beall (00:30:24):
So failure to believe in the potential value of the meeting, not the product. But the meeting as a learning experience for this human being, even if you never do business together, failing to get that belief deeply in you puts you on shaky ground when you’re calling, when you’re selling in general. Because you have to sell the meeting first. Now, so number two or three or whatever is selling the product, not the meeting.
Chris Beall (00:30:50):
You can’t sell two things at once. You just can’t. I was a fuller brush man. I would knock on the door in Phoenix. Imagine selling fuller brush in Phoenix not knowing anything about sales. I’ve just graduated from ASU. My wife’s had a miscarriage. I got to pay the medical bills. I get a job the next day selling fuller brush. I don’t know anything about doing this. So I could have knocked on the door and said, “Hey, whoever you are, I don’t even know your name. I’ve got this really cool spider spray here, blah, blah, blah.” Like really? Boom, door slammed on my face, or I could do what I did. Knock on the door, nice lady answers the door. I say, “Hi, I’m Chris Beall. I’m your new fuller brush man. I don’t know what fuller brushes.”
Chris Beall (00:31:36):
No, I’m sorry. I blew it. I had a practice back then. I’m Chris Beall, I’m your new fuller brush man. You probably don’t know what fuller brush is, I sure don’t. Then I just stand there, and eventually with their air conditioning pouring out into the street in 115 degree day, they say, “How can I help you?”
Chris Beall (00:31:59):
That’s pretty easy. How can I help you? I’d say here’s the thing is my understanding, and it may even be just a rumor as we have some products that you can’t buy in stores that are really good around the house. I don’t know if this is true or not, but if I find one or two that I really think could make a difference in your life, can I come and share them with you for five minutes? Everybody said, yes. Because I was letting them off the hook. They got to close the door. I offered a solution to the problem they had, which was me, and I went away. Then I fulfilled my promise. This is true in every cold call, you must fulfill your promise. I promise was I go do research for them.
Chris Beall (00:32:41):
So I went and did research. Then I came back with products that I sincerely believed according to my research, working with real human beings over the weekend. I got a bunch of samples and did stuff, that this had a potential to change their life. By the way, spider spray for black widows in Arizona, it does have a potential to change your life.
Jesse Woodbury (00:33:03):
I’ll have to check that out. Very interesting. It’s funny, a few years ago I made this shift to where first I was selling the… I started first selling the meeting instead of trying to just vomit the product value pitch out there in the point. However, many seconds that you have before someone hangs up the phone. It does, it does make a huge impact. So you’re dead on. I absolutely agree. It absolutely resonates as a seller that you can’t try to do too much on a cold call. You’ve got to just get them curious enough. Then like you said, solve the first problem which is you as the cold caller, and get into the air conditioned house. Then work on the next step. Not try to do too much right there on the porch. I love it.
Chris Beall (00:33:57):
Yeah. As I’ve mentioned before we got on the air, I grew up in horse country. Maybe it was on the air, I grew up in a horse country. So as a seven year old, I had to learn to ride a horse by myself. Now horses are big. They’re just like a prospect. Prospect is always bigger than you are, faster than you are, and they can kick harder than you would like them to do it. So it’s not great to try to deal with a big animal, how do you do it? My sister Wendy taught me this. She said, “Just put a small piece of carrot in each hand, and take the bridle and put it behind you, hook it to your belt. Then hold your hands about two and half, three feet apart, fist closed.” Poor horse has to make a choice.
Chris Beall (00:34:43):
The horse will be afraid of you at first. They put their ears back and they tilt their head up by the way, because horses eyes work in an interesting way. They can see detailed through the bottom of their pupils. So they put their head backs they can see you in sharp detail, because you’re a bad thing, same game. So then you approach, you wait, they calm down, their ears come forward, and then curiosity takes over and they choose a hand. Whichever hand they choose, you turn it over, they eat the carrot, you reach behind yourself, you grab the bridle, you take it up very slowly, you stroke the horses face while they’re eating the carrot. They get used to that and you’ll loop of the bridle over their ear. Then you work your way to the hard part of getting the bit in their mouth. This is to me identical to a cold call.
Chris Beall (00:35:30):
All we’re trying to do is to get him to come toward us out of curiosity, rather than chasing around, and reps, they don’t love it. They’re irresistibly drawn to chase the prospect around. You can’t catch them, you can’t catch them.
Jesse Woodbury (00:35:48):
Yeah. I wonder why that is. Why is the default? Is it just human psychology, or are we all being trained in some weird backwards way that we should be chasing instead of luring, or drawing the curiosity out? What do you think?
Chris Beall (00:36:07):
I think it’s a lack of training, and a lack of, not just training, but a lack of understanding. What is the situation you’re in, and why is it so good for you? Reps are taught be tough, be tough. That’s kind of like be tough, be macho, get up, put in the effort bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. It’s like how do you calm down, and let somebody come to you if you’re so busy doing that one more this and that. That’s like doing pushups, or something. There’s actually no upside in that. There’s the tough part and then reps are also rewarded in a funny way. They’re rewarded for results for stuff that’s right in front of them. So they’re tempted to go right at it. I call it the dog, the bone, and the chain link fence problem.
Chris Beall (00:36:54):
So if you ever had a dog, and we had 16 of them at one point. So like dogs I understand a little bit. We had a dog that if you put a bone, or a piece of meat on the other side of the chain link fence, the dog would try to push it’s nose through one of those diamonds in the fence to get to the meat, and the gate’s five feet to the right. It’s open. But the dog doesn’t get it.
Jesse Woodbury (00:37:21):
No, it’s just going straight at It. Yeah.
Chris Beall (00:37:27):
So, that’s what salespeople do and their nose gets bloody, and then they’re told be tough, be tough, be tough. It’s like a macho thing in sales about being tough and being strong and being persistent and all that. ConnectAndSell we think that’s all a little comical, because when you think about it, it’s not toughness. It’s really persistence. If you have to dial manually, I’m sorry. I’ll do something about it if I can, but you can still do it. You just have to kind of ignore it, because that’s not sales. You just go on, “Okay. This is not my sales activity, but when the conversation happens, I’ve got to be ready to be precise. I have to be precise in taking this person on an emotional journey from their fear to trust in seven seconds. I’ve got to be precise and taking them from trust to curiosity in the next 17 seconds. I have to be precise in handling the natural objections.”
Chris Beall (00:38:27):
I’m busy this, that, the other thing. I can be a little bit insistent, because I truly believe in the value. I’ve got to turn that curiosity, after I get trusting, I have to turn that curiosity. Which by the way when I said I believe we’ve discovered a breakthrough, I believe makes them listen. We is ambiguous, and we is ambiguous about people. People love to be curious about people. That’s why there’s a magazine called People Magazine. People are going right now, “Where’s prince Harry? Is he talking to the queen?” Is there anybody in the United States of America who’s life is actually affected by whether Prince Harry talks to the queen or not?
Jesse Woodbury (00:39:08):
I can’t imagine. Journalists maybe who have to write about it, but that’s about It.
Chris Beall (00:39:14):
That’s about it. But there’s a big audience of like where is Prince Harry? Did he go there to talk to the queen, and who has COVID anyway and blah, blah, blah. People are intensely curious about people. So I believe we were ambiguity have discovered this keeps you away from what I call the third grade playground. If you say this instead. It’s like, “Hey, Jesse, I’m Chris Beall. I’m with ConnectAndSell. We’ve helped companies like, and then I named some of them. What I’m saying is we’re great, therefore I’m great. What’s going to happen inside you? You’re going to say no you’re not. We’re in the third grade playground. My daddy is stronger than your daddy. No he’s not, yes he is, no he’s not, yes he is, no he’s not. Then we end up in the dirt, and we get valley fever and stuff like that and it sucks.
Chris Beall (00:40:09):
Anyway, these are the techniques and they’re really specific. This is what we teach in Flight School. We teach this stuff word by word, tone by tone, psychological emotional state by state, second by second because truly, this is like martial arts. You can say, “Oh, that person looked like they executed this move, or in fencing or something.” You can try to pretend to be a fencer, my fiance’ used to be a fencer at MIT, and the MIT fencing team. I guarantee you there’s a difference between looking like a fencer and fencing.
Chris Beall (00:40:43):
They just are not the same thing. You don’t want to look like a salesperson. You need to have the precision down for this highly athletic activity called the cold call, which opens up everything in sales. Everything in sales is different once you get trust including email. I send you an email right after a conversation, you’re going to open it. “Hey, thanks for the conversation Jesse.” What are you going to do? Ignore that email?
Jesse Woodbury (00:41:12):
Yeah. We just talked. Exactly. Very cool. I feel like I should be paying you Chris because I feel like I’m undergoing some sales training here. So this is fantastic for my audience who, again is a lot of reps who are relatively new to the industry. I’m curious, and I haven’t really been posed this question directly myself. This goes quiet against my beliefs about how to sell. But have you encountered people out there that say, “Well, cold calling is a lost art. It’s not the fastest way to get a deal done anymore.” I can imagine there’s too many people out there that are playing this trumpet. But do you guys ever run into that in your day-to-day?
Chris Beall (00:41:55):
Oh, yeah. Out on LinkedIn, cold calling is dead was incredibly popular for awhile. I had a really fun little post I put out once. It was for a funny reason. I won’t tell the whole story here. But it was frankly to try to get Mike Weinberg to pay attention. Because he uses the easy author of New Sales Simplified, one of the greatest sales books of all time. He uses the phrase, the cold calling is dead crowd rather derisively. So I couldn’t get ahold of him one way or another. Couldn’t get him to take a meeting. So I posted this little thing that just was the results of a test drive. That was it. Just raw.
Chris Beall (00:42:35):
It was on my screen, and screenshot it, threw it up in a LinkedIn post, and said, “If cold calling is dead, who got these results last Thursday. Did zombies call that CIO of Carnival Cruise Lines?” That was kind of it. Oh, no, busy executives don’t answer the phone. I must have been dreaming. That what’s called the zombies post. I think we made about $1.7 million off that post. It went viral, people going crazy, I wrote stuff all day. What was funny is some people came on, and accused me of like, “So do you run a sweat shop? Do you eat babies? What evil things do you do other than this? This is the worst.” But maybe you do some that aren’t quite as bad, but are pretty bad.
Chris Beall (00:43:24):
There’s something about cold calling. Maybe it’s the name that it’s cold. It sounds cold hearted. All it means is an unscheduled first conversation. That’s literally all it means. It’s cold. People say it all the time.
Jesse Woodbury (00:43:44):
I’d be curious to what you say to people that say, “Well, hold on we sell to… you’ve already shared some hard and fast examples just on this podcast. But I’m sure you encounter a lot of people that say, “Well, our buying demographic is the CIO or the CEO or the CMO. They don’t take cold calls, every phone conversation, or Zoom meeting that takes place with professionals like that has to be highly personalized, and we believe in prep. Something like ConnectAndSell couldn’t work, because it puts the rep right on the fly on the phone with this person. How are they supposed to present something of value if there’s no prep, or anything like that in advance?” How do you respond an objection like that? I’m sure you get it.
Chris Beall (00:44:29):
Yeah. The fact is the question number one is do senior executives answer the phone? The answer is yes, they do. Not all of them, but a lot of them. Our own team, I can share it today. Let me just take a little look see how we did today. So here’s the ConnectAndSell team, I know we’re not on video but I’ll read it off. We’ll just look at the leaderboard for today. Leaderboard ConnectAndSell team, how did we do? Let’s see. Our name starts with a C. I used to be able to write and read and then I went into sales. ConnectAndSell there I go. I got to put the glasses on.
Chris Beall (00:45:10):
Okay. So here’s our team today. Now, here’s who we’re calling, vice presidents of sales, CRO’s, and occasionally VP of marketing. But it’s all vice-president level, and companies of all sizes. So our stats today for the team are where the team is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 people today. So we have a very small team because hey, we have connected stuff. Why have a big team when you can have a small one?
Chris Beall (00:45:40):
They had a done for them by ConnectAndSell, some dials. They had two inner 70 conversations, they said 27 meetings. So 27 meetings that’s pretty bizarre. Absolute 10% on the nose conversion rate conversation and meeting. It took 34.69. They’re pretty good. They’re coached by the way, professionally. Every day they’re coached professionally, and that doesn’t mean management. Management doesn’t coach our team, a coach coaches our team. It’s like in the NFL. So dial per conversation, 34.69. Not a great dial per meeting today. That’s 346.89 per meeting. I like that number to be below 300, but I’ll take the 27 meetings.
Chris Beall (00:46:26):
Say those meetings are worth for us probably, let me rough cut four grand each. So the team roughly created about $120,000 in meetings today, and that’s whatever that was, 11 people. But if I look at any one of them, this is what’s interesting. So Crystal, here’s Crystal Lechner. She used ConnectAndSell for five hours, 12 minutes and 24 seconds calling vice-presidents only. Have sales, she had 42 conversations, three meetings set 23 followups, and when she pushed the button, she had to wait for an average of four minutes and 54 seconds.
Chris Beall (00:47:05):
Why? It’s the last day of the second quarter. So instead of waiting four minutes on average, she had to wait a little longer, because she’s calling VPs of sales. Here’s what she didn’t do. She did not dial the phone 1,210 times. That’s how many dials it took for her. How many days of dialing is that? It’s like [inaudible 00:47:27] and the bridge group. Say 42 dials a day, so that’s 30 days of dialing.
Jesse Woodbury (00:47:32):
Yes.
Chris Beall (00:47:33):
That’s 30 days of dialing. Done in five hours and 12 minutes with no effort.
Jesse Woodbury (00:47:39):
Get some severe carpal tunnel if you tried to do that many dials in one day. [crosstalk 00:47:46]-
Chris Beall (00:47:46):
Can you imagine?
Jesse Woodbury (00:47:47):
No, it’s just not possible there’s just not enough… no one could make that many hard dials a day. That’s absolutely astounding.
Chris Beall (00:47:59):
By the way, I got to give you Cheryl’s numbers. Cheryl runs our Flight School Division, I got to give you her number, because she does a different play. She does the insistence play. You’re putting gas in your car. She had one the other day. The CEO’s putting gas in his car. She only calls CEO’s and CFO’s. He says, “Cheryl, I’m putting gas in my car and it’s raining.” She says, “Fantastic, I’m a morning person. I’ll shoot you something for Thursday. We’ll move it around If we have to.”
Chris Beall (00:48:24):
He goes, “Oh, great.” Now he’s accepted a meeting. Now you can say all she should have qualified him. Trust me, the CEO of this company, it’s a Fortune 2000 company, pretty qualified to talk to. CEOs of fortune 2000 companies by definition, they’re qualified to have a 15 minute conversation with somebody, right?
Jesse Woodbury (00:48:44):
Right
Chris Beall (00:48:44):
So the question is though, well, is he going to show? Her point is who cares? This is somebody who answers their phone. So, if they don’t show, put them in the no show list, push the button, use ConnectAndSell, and talk to them again, and say, “Henry.” It’s actually just talk to them again. You don’t even have to try, because the system does the trying for you. So, she set six meetings today, by the way, on 11 conversations. 54.5% conversion. She did that in an hour and 12 minutes. 4.94 meetings per hour.
Jesse Woodbury (00:49:29):
So here’s a question from the sales ops people that might listen to the show, or the sales leadership that listens to the show. Where does the data come from that you feed into the system? Do you guys provide that or do you tend to just integrate with something like Zoom info, or DiscoverOrg or both? I guess those are the same company now. What do you suggest there just to make sure that there’s enough data to feed into the system to make that volume of dials on a given day?
Chris Beall (00:50:00):
Yeah. There’s two things to consider. So, first we love ZoomInfo, we’re partners with ZoomInfo. We think they’re tremendous. They have as current as set of good phone numbers as we’ve seen from anybody. There are some other good providers. Cognizant is good, there’s others that are good providers out there, but ZoomInfo does a great job. We actually will go up, or go ahead if somebody wants and either we will enhance a list, or we’ll generate a new list for just a test drive. Because ZoomInfo lets us do that. So that’s very kind.
Chris Beall (00:50:36):
So we like those guys. We suck data directly out of CRM systems if that’s what makes sense. It often does. So we hook right up to the Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics, HubSpot, whatever it happens to be. It’s all pre-integrated, there’s no code, it just plugs right in, and engage twirl a couple of little kind of like this field maps to this field dials, or twirling dials. You’re setting settings to get it to be configured. Then it’s all magic. At that point, whatever’s in those lists gets synchronized into ConnectAndSell. So, we don’t provide the data, but we do data consulting and we will, if you have a Zoom info account, we’ll build lists for you for free. We’re big, big believers in centralized list management. I get that a lot of people think territories make sense at the top of the funnel, we don’t get it.
Chris Beall (00:51:34):
Every technology advance in history, before you get speed, you want liquidity. You want to have something that’s more liquid that moves around more easily. So our people work off lead pools and we highly recommend it. Because there’s no… let’s face it. Giving somebody a territory at the top of the funnel has got some weird implications. They’re going to be there forever. [crosstalk 00:52:01] application.
Jesse Woodbury (00:52:04):
Just distributing your customer base. It might skew towards one coast, or you have one rep who’s having higher repetitions, and more success or more at-bats if you will. Because they happen to have the San Francisco region, or the New York region. Is that a fair assumption?
Chris Beall (00:52:23):
Right.
Jesse Woodbury (00:52:23):
Okay. Yeah, rather than doing that, it’s a lead pool that’s more distributed and gives more distribution across the whole team.
Chris Beall (00:52:33):
Exactly. So our lead pools are dynamically managed when you plug into a lead pool, and you say, “I want a session out of that lead pool.” Then you get a randomized subset of the lead pool. No cherry picking allowed. We’re not really for our own team, and we recommend this. We’re not really interested in turning over the company’s go to market strategy to sales reps. The strategy is expressed in the lists, the targeting. So why would you just say, “Hey, you’re 24 years old. Why don’t you go come up with a company’s, go to market strategy by doing some research?” What? It’s hard enough cold calling people.
Jesse Woodbury (00:53:11):
Yeah. If there were a startup that didn’t have, say access to ZoomInfo or one of those data tools, is there anything you can do for those early stage startups that may not have all the fancy expensive lead databases? What do you suggest there typically?
Chris Beall (00:53:33):
Well, you could go to LinkedIn sales navigator and combine it with lead IQ, and you can do really well there. So, that’s a little more manual, but it’s also very precise, because you get the query precision of sales navigator. Then you get the ability to turn that small subset that you’re coming up with of a hundred, 200, 300. By the way, I should have corrected this miss apprehension, which is always there. It’s perfectly natural. You don’t need a ton of leads to use ConnectAndSell.
Chris Beall (00:54:06):
My chairman, Sean McLaren, who by the way has done well in life shall we say. Just saying. He still uses ConnectAndSell. Let me see how his stats are here. Yeah, there he is. He was calling on a list of 14 people today, had two conversations, and two meetings.
Jesse Woodbury (00:54:24):
Okay. So that is. That’s an assumption I made was that you have to have a massive two, three, four, 5,000, 10,000 list. When it sounds like this could be just effective if you’re focused in on 10 people or 14 people in this case.
Chris Beall (00:54:43):
Yeah, absolutely. The idea is as a sales rep of any professional, your time is the thing you can’t get any more of your stuck. So, we’re not really going fast. In one sense, all we’re doing is compressing time. So something like say a list of 42, that would be all day according to the Bridge Group. Well, 42 with ConnectAndSell. Let me look at the numbers here today. Three hours, 41 minutes and 48 seconds accomplished 865 dials. So think 200 dials an hour roughly in this particular case. So 42 would be 15 minutes during which, by the way, you can do other work like Sheryl Turner’s other work is pushing your kid on the swings. But you should be doing something else, because you’re just waiting for a bloop in your ear.
Jesse Woodbury (00:55:34):
I think probably the most powerful aspect of it too. This is why I’ve found just doing hard, cold calls throughout different points of my career is there’s power and consistency and not to use too much of the athletic analogy. But top athletes, I think it’s been pretty well established that what makes a top athlete successful is how consistent they are in their training, in their diet, in their exercise regimen, and their practice. All of that. I think it’s the same for sales reps. Again, I know it’s an overdone analogy to compare sales reps to elite athletes, but I’ll keep going. What I’ve found is I’ve been the most consistent in my career at hitting my target earnings, and quotas and things like that when I’m consistent at the output. What I love about the product is that it it takes away the kind of alligator brain that says, “Oh, I have to go make 30 calls today. I don’t have the energy. I don’t feel good today.”
Jesse Woodbury (00:56:35):
It sounds like your customers are just pushing a button. They don’t have to have that internal debate of, “Oh, I’ve got a splitting headache. I know I’m supposed to be doing my 30 calls. I have it blocked in my calendar. I know that’s what’s going to take to be successful, and achieve my targets. But man, I’ve got a headache, stomachache, whatever it is. I’ve got a doctor’s appointment. Something that sort of disrupts the normal pattern. It sounds like you guys were moved that problem completely by just saying, “Look, push the button, still go to your doctor’s appointment. But just while you’re in the car driving there, you’re going to probably hit your daily target of cold calls.” I love that because I do think that that’s where the compounding takes place is in the consistency.
Jesse Woodbury (00:57:18):
That’s the hardest thing to overcome as a human is how to be consistent at something like cold calling and really stick to it. It’s just like dieting. It’s just like exercise, or anything else. It’s really hard to stick to something like that every single day. I struggled with that a lot, because we don’t have ConnectAndSell implemented. It is a, I need to make X number of dials per day, when to find time to do that. Especially when things are fluid. You get pulled into meetings, there’s fires to put out, there’s follow-ups to take on, there’s internal nonsense. So I think it’s really fantastic that your reps and of course your customers reps can push a button and eliminate that sort of human error and everything too.
Chris Beall (00:58:03):
Yeah. It’s really interesting because the psychology flips completely. My fiance came down with me to Austin, speaking of Austin. She runs a bit of business for a big company. About a billion dollars of business actually. She had a little bit of time when she was free to come down with me to witness a test drive with Google Cloud. I asked her at the end of the test drive, I said, “Well, what’d you think? It was 26 reps. They said 46 meetings in two hours and 18 minutes. What’d you think?” She said, “I don’t know anything about the top of the funnel. Come on, I’m at a strategic accounts.” A quarter of a billion dollars each, yeah, not a lot of pushing the button on that one. Although she’s opened her mind to some possibilities.
Chris Beall (00:58:54):
But she said, “You know what was weird is that thing that you guys do that, connection cell thing, it caused a complete cultural transformation of a team in 30 minutes with no consulting.” They were excited. They were having fun. That’s exactly what happens is this cold calling isn’t unfun. It’s actually super fun. It’s cold dialing that’s unfun.
Jesse Woodbury (00:59:20):
Right. Yeah. That’s the part that-
Chris Beall (00:59:23):
Talking to people is fun. If you’re in sales and you don’t like to talk to people, you got kind of a serious issue. You’re like a surgeon who faints at the sight of blood. It’s like, “I’m sorry, it’s fun to talk to people.” It’s really fun if you get the psychology right and you practiced. You made this point there’s you got to have the repetitions, you got to be coached. You got to be practiced. When I was a young rock climber growing up in Arizona, we were kind of self-taught, which is pretty dangerous for that sport when you think about it.
Chris Beall (00:59:58):
We took up coaching each other, and going out to the carefree Rockpile, and watching each other… Yeah, we’d watch each other bolder and give each other tips. It’s like, “Try this, try this.” There’s some weird things you can do physically rock climbing. Then there was also the question, well, kind of like how’s your mind working, what’s safe to do based on your mental state, all that. It’s good practice for business actually, but what’s in anything without the repetitions. There’s an old Russian proverb [Foreign Language 01:00:29]. I learned it from my Russian teacher in a high school in Arizona. We all studied Russian back then. It means repetition is the mother of learning. It’s true. Repetition is the mother of learning, but highly precisely coached repetition is the mother of mastery.
Chris Beall (01:00:52):
This game gets super fun. I look at, here’s a guy who works for us, Robert Arnold. Since the 1st of June, Rob has had 991 conversations and set 74 meetings. Now, is that fun?
Jesse Woodbury (01:01:08):
That sounds fun to me.
Chris Beall (01:01:10):
You bet. Now, here’s what he didn’t do. Here’s how many dials he would have had to do by hand without connecting self. 27,979 dials this month. That’s unimaginable. You would never imagine it. So he doesn’t have the frustration and the waste. He just has the opportunity to be an amazing professional SDR, BDR, or whatever you want to call him, and he is. So is Steve [Peppermints 01:01:42]. So is Terry Spencer. So these people do this for a living and they love it. Yet I can come down deeper to folks who had a little less. Here is Sean McLaren. He’s our executive chairman. I only had 323 dials, 31 conversations, and four meetings. But Sean’s meetings are worth about 20 times the rest of ours. Here’s a guy who’s is… I’m not a young guy.
Chris Beall (01:02:11):
I’m almost 67. He’s a little more mature than I am. Here’s another guy. He is a famous, famous sales guy named John Jackson. John Jackson is the inventor of what I call the blue ocean strategy of sales. So that means don’t ever compete a deal, talk to people way before they’re ready to buy. Don’t wait for the intent data to tell you, let the conversations tell you the truth. So here’s John. John was a little sick this month actually. He’s even more mature than Sean if that’s possible. So in nine hours, 41 minutes, here’s a guy who’s in, I’ll say it, he’s in his late seventies. How many SDRs do you know? Young SDRs had a thousand legitimate dials in the month of June at 74 conversations and set 19 meetings?
Jesse Woodbury (01:03:02):
Very few. Especially this time of year. Everyone’s heads on summer breaks, and travel and I highly doubt that’s common without some enhancement for sure.
Chris Beall (01:03:16):
Yeah. My little team, by the way, had 6,259 conversations with VPs of sales. It’s at 570 meetings, and this team would fit in a thimble. In Silicon valley, they would fit in a thimble. I’d be told, “You’re an idiot. This team’s so small, you must not be a real CEO. Can’t you hire people?”
Jesse Woodbury (01:03:37):
Yeah. You guys could rent a closet out in Google’s offices, or something. Google’s campus. Wow.
Chris Beall (01:03:46):
Exactly.
Jesse Woodbury (01:03:49):
Well, Chris, I know we’re coming up here on time. Any final words of wisdom you care to share with the audience? Then I’d also love to learn how folks can get in touch with you. Please feel free to share how we can best get in touch especially for anyone who’s listening that has an interest in learning more about connecting sell.
Chris Beall (01:04:08):
Sure. I’ll do the last in order. So check out my podcast, Corey, Frank and I have a podcast called Market Dominance Guys. It’s like the car guys, all one word marketdominanceguys.com. There is 80 something episodes. It’s a cookbook on market dominance using a conversation first approach. Basically, check it out. The thesis is paved the market with trust, harvest the trust over the next three or four years. It’s a different way of going about stuff. You can reach me at chris.beallatconnectandsell.com. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn. I’m easy to find. I’m the only CEO of ConnectAndSell out there. I don’t know. We’ll keep adding to that. So that’s all easy. Final thoughts are this. I’ve got a guy working with me who he actually runs our flight schools now. His name is Donny Crawford.
Chris Beall (01:05:04):
Donny Crawford had an attitude. He’s the nicest human being you’ve ever met by the way. He’s frighteningly nice. You would think he’s not in sales. He’s just like, “Really, really Donny? Are you always going to be this nice?” He just laughs. He goes, “Yeah, that’s a problem. I’m just like that.” But Donny used to go in in an interview for sales jobs. Then he would say, when I get done, I’d offer him the job. He says, “Oh, by the way, I have one condition of employment.” They’re thinking it’s going to be salary or something. What’s that? Says, “I won’t work for you unless you give me ConnectAndSell. I don’t care what the rest of the team. You get this sort of shock to look.
Chris Beall (01:05:41):
So my point is, look, you’re a sales person if you’re listening to this. If your job selling meetings and all of us, our job is selling meetings. That’s actually our number one job. The most interesting thing we do, the most valuable thing we do in our entire career, I’ve been doing this for 42 years, and I can tell you selling a meeting is the single most valuable thing you do. You turn it if into when, and that’s all of sales. Is turning it into when. See if you can figure out how to take one of our test drives, and just experience it, come to me. Because you got to find out what is it like not to be in that cage, where you can’t talk to people. Because that’s not sales.
Chris Beall (01:06:27):
Sales starts with the conversation. Learn to master the conversation, whether you get ahold of our stuff or not. If you work for a startup of some kind and they go, “Oh, I don’t have enough money for this.” Well, our test drive is actually priced pretty well for startups, free. I don’t care if it converts. I just care that people have the experience.
