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In this episode of the Advanced Selling Podcast, I ask fact checker Doug about why do we celebrate only things that are divisible by five, Bill shares how his wife keeps him in line at the shooting range, and we take a LinkedIn group listener question, paraphrasing Shakespeare, to automate or not automate?
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That is the question.
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Welcome back to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales training podcast in the universe.
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I m Bill Kasky.
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Podcast history.
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I m Brian Neal.
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Yeah.
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Glad to have you here.
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If you are a newcomer and maybe haven t heard too many episodes, you can go to advancedsellingpodcast.com.
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Somewhere on that home page, you scroll down a little bit and you will find our top
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10 or 15 episodes, so that s probably a good place to start, or you can start from episode one, 13 years ago, work your way through, and in a decade, we ll catch up with you.
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It s like 15, isn t it?
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14, 15, we gotta get our exact first release date for the first episode and have a party, like some sort of thing, yeah, right?
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It was 2000, wasn t it six, 2006?
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Was it about six, so 15 years?
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13?
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No, no, yeah, 13.
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But someone tell me why we celebrate things in fives.
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Fact checker Doug, Doug Drozen, why do we celebrate things in fives?
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Why don t we celebrate our seventh anniversary?
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Why don t we celebrate our ninth anniversary or our 114th episode?
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You know what I mean?
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Why is that?
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It s weird, isn t it?
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Or zeros, fives or zeros, yeah.
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I don t know why that is.
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It s a weird thing.
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It is.
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But we are five people away from having 12,000 members of our LinkedIn group, believe it or not.
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I ve told a couple people, people say, how many people do you have?
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12,000.
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What?
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12,000?
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Are you kidding me?
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Yeah.
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12,000 people who have listened over the years, who are now a member of the LinkedIn group, and we want you to be there.
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We should give something for the $11,998, not the $12,000.
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Do you think when Reid Hoffman, who s the founder of LinkedIn, goes to his family reunion and his uncle Ed is going, so how many users you got in your thing there, Reid?
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He goes, 700 million.
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He goes, 700 million?
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Dang.
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Well, you only had 600 last time.
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That s, well.
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How many you got on that thing you made there, Reed?
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700 million?
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You don t charge for it.
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You don t charge anything for it.
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All right.
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And we have really cool stuff coming, by the way.
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Mark your calendars for June.
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June s going to be a really, really cool month for the Advanced Learning Podcast.
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A lot of cool things.
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We got some premium stuff coming your way that s going to be available, more insider stuff, and just a whole kind of refresh of the podcast.
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Lots of changes.
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Good stuff.
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Positive changes.
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Feed the listener.
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Feed them.
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Feed your spirit.
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Give them good stuff.
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It s great.
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Feed your soul.
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OK, today we re going to talk about this.
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This is a listener-inspired.
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You know what I love about this?
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We re prepping for this.
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This note actually came in at 9.39 AM on recording day.
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And here it s now 10.48 on recording day.
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And we re going to record this episode based on this LinkedIn message.
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That s beautiful.
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You know how cool that is.
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This is from Ashley, Ashley F.
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Ashley says, I love what you and Bill are doing at the ASP.
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Started listening in 2020.
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Look forward to every Monday.
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About to start a new SDR, that stands for sales development manager role, which means he s going to be a manager of a team.
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Can t wait to share this with my team.
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Please join my network, I said.
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What s up, Ash?
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Really appreciate the note.
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Hope your new gig is good.
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Let us know what you want to hear in the podcast.
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He said, OK-doke, I m going to be joining the Insiders Club.
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Very good, Ash.
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Send your people, too.
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Now he goes, Brian, I have a podcast topic for you and Bill.
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And it s great.
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This is great.
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Right out of the gate.
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I don t know.
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Let s hear it.
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Just bring something.
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Let s hear it.
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See if it s great.
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Automation in the sales process.
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That s what his question s about, automation.
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especially in the front end with SDR sales.
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Those are like cold calling people that are doing lots of behavior stuff.
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Good, bad, and the ugly.
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Where it fits in and where it shouldn t be used.
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I m struggling with automation right now.
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My team wants to automate everything.
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And I m a big believer in a personal connection.
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I m trying to get them to separate prospects into automation slash non-automation, but would love your thoughts.
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This is a very, very buzzy topic, because there are companies that are doing LinkedIn automation all over the place.
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I don t know if it s good or bad.
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We re going to talk about it.
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I have an opinion.
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Bill has one.
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So we re going to talk about how to automate your sales process.
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Should you?
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Should you?
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How should you?
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How should you not?
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OK.
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I have another example.
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Do you want to start?
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Well, I ve got one that came in.
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I was talking to a person a couple weeks ago.
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And I said, do you know someone who does x?
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Yeah.
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And this person said, not sure.
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Let me check around.
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And she then introduced me to a person who does X. And here s the email I got.
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Hey, would love to jump on a call sometime and talk to you about.
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what we do.
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X. Okay, X. Okay, doesn t matter what it is.
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Yeah.
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You ve all got that.
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Yeah.
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And I feel like, okay, that s probably the way typically we would start a conversation, but I don t have time to jump on a freaking call whenever there s a situation that we need to address or there s a brand.
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I want something from, I want something from you in advance.
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Yeah, right.
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I want you to send me a video telling me what s on the call.
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I don t mean personalize.
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I mean, you should have a place on your website that says, hey, if we do a little strategy call, here s what happens.
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And I watch it or I consume something so that when I get to that call, you ve positioned yourself, and I know whether I want to buy.
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I may buy on that call.
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But if we don t do that, now I ve got to have one call, then another call, then another call.
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And at some point, there s going to be a proposal, and then it s going to be.
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And it seems like we in sales, now, I wouldn t call that automation.
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But it s thinking through the sequence a little bit more so that you can automate the process a little bit.
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Again, that s different than what you re talking about on LinkedIn.
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But I still think that s automation.
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That s automation, for sure.
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It s being more effective with your time and the prospect s time.
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Yes.
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There s this balance, because I m an efficiency junkie.
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I love for it to be efficient.
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And I also don t like canned things.
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I think things should be personal.
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And so where in there is there a balance between those two?
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Because I don t believe that you need to write a brand new 14-page email to every single person at all.
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And I also don t think you should send the same canned email to anyone with nothing, no guidance, no headline, no agenda.
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And I would be a fan of a personalized video there, too.
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Anything.
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That could be.
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Or an audit.
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Either one.
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A link to something.
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So here s my example.
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Now, you re kind of involved in this, too.
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I m going to leave this guy s name out.
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Hi, Brian.
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Thanks for sharing tips about sales coaching practices on Maria Franzoni and James Taylor s podcast.
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Not the singer.
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Not the singer.
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That s where my mind goes.
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But go ahead.
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Listen to this.
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My 1995-96 University of Kentucky football team played against Peyton Manning, and he truly knows football strategy.
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Remember, I mentioned Peyton on the podcast.
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It was one of my answers.
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Looking forward to you.
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That is a great message.
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Personalized, given some positive feedback.
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He listened to that podcast.
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That is awesome.
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Immediate response.
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I responded to him, well, then the next day, but that s pretty immediate for me.
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Hey, Ty, thanks for the note.
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Also funny about UK, couldn t agree more.
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He actually played in this league called the NIFL, the National Indoor Football League that I refereed.
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I saw on his LinkedIn, I said, also saw you played in the NIFL.
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I actually reffed in that league for a couple of years, mostly in Cincinnati.
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Hilarious, looking forward to learning from you here.
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B, that s how I sign.
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That s nice, right?
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You with me?
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Good so far, right?
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Next message that night.
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Hi, Brian.
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Thanks for connecting.
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I was reviewing your LinkedIn profile yesterday and love what you were doing.
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I have a few ideas that would help you take your strategy to the next level.
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Brian, do you have five minutes sometime next week for a brief call?
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Best.
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And then his name.
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That was after that.
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So he s using an automation thing.
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Do you see what I m saying there?
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We had a real personal connection.
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Then I get this automated call.
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Oh, and then it went to automated.
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It went to that one after that.
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And after reviewing my LinkedIn profile, you ve got a few ideas to take my strategy to the next level?
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What are you talking about, man?
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So I just wrote his name in all caps.
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And I said, no.
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I said, no LinkedIn automation.
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Prefer to keep it real like above.
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And he said, LOL.
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OK.
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But this is the problem with these things.
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You have this great conversation.
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I would have taken a meeting with this guy.
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No questions asked if he d asked for that.
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And then I got this email automation.
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I m like, no, man, don t, don t, don t do that.
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So you knew that that was automation.
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When you read it, that s not where my mind went.
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When I read it in order, your mind didn t go there?
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Well, of course, you were more emotionally involved in the process, and so you read something in that that wasn t right.
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It just didn t fit.
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I mean, nothing about it.
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I m not saying that s right.
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I m just...
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That s not where my mind went, but you re right.
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I mean, you ve picked up on it.
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LinkedIn profile, yeah.
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Because you hadn t even talked about strategies to help you grow your business.
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Had you talked about that, that might have been a little bit better.
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Yeah.
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And if you really did review my LinkedIn strategy or my LinkedIn profile and love what I m doing and have a few ideas to help me take my strategy to the next level, what strategy are you talking about?
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My company strategy?
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My business strategy?
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You should talk to Steph about that, not me.
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If it s my LinkedIn strategy, then tell me specifically what that s about.
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It s just too vague, you know, yeah, so back to the question the original question.
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Yeah automation the automation For SDRs, of course SDRs could be doing a lot of different things.
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So I m not sure how to answer that but I do think that
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this whole LinkedIn automation or any automation.
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I know we ve had some people on who are big in automation.
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I think automation s great until it crosses the line to losing that personal flavor that we all know we love when we re on the other end.
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Yep.
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And we do love it, and we can tell, in your case, we can tell when it s just automated.
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When it pops out, yeah.
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And so I like the word, and I used it earlier, this is my giveaway.
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So I love the word efficiency better than automation, because I can be efficient and personal at the same time.
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I can t be personal and automated at the same time, it feels like to me.
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So I m a fan of doing that.
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So I want to find a way to be really efficient.
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A way to be really efficient, let s use your example earlier, which I love, which is you ve got, say, for a first call, Bill, before you talk to a VP of sales or a CEO, you want them to watch a video that you ve made.
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And it s the same video.
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And you put a little color behind that and some context around there.
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So maybe the body like, hey, looking forward to our meeting before we meet.
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Here s some things to be thinking about.
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And here s a little video.
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Take a look at that.
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And that can all be the same.
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And then above that, I m a fan of some personalization statement.
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that says, hey, I saw you play basketball in college, I did too, or yeah, it looks like we both, you know, we might ve played each other back in the day, whatever.
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Just one little sentence like that, personalized, then I can cut and paste the rest and then send that myself.
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That I m a fan of doing.
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Totally agree.
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You okay on that?
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Totally agree, yeah.
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Versus it just being this automated responder thing that comes across.
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So when someone reaches out because they might be a prospect, they might be, and
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And then you come back and say yeah, let s jump on a call.
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What s an what s another way to do that?
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That might be more efficient for everybody.
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This is not just for the salesperson but for the prospect to what s another way they could have been more efficient with that that would have fallen underneath the category of Automation or efficiency.
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Yeah of which one
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The one where, let s jump on a call.
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What s another way to have managed that process that didn t go right to a call, but the call came after I had consumed something so that I made sure that now I m looking forward to this call.
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Yes.
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I mean, I like to, and it sounds like you got connected by someone that you knew, right?
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So an instant acknowledgment of that.
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So if it s Rachel, so it s like, hey, first of all, Rachel s a master connector.
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She s so good at what she does.
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So any friend of Rachel s is a friend of mine.
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So now I m building rapport and connection.
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So you can t automate that, because that s going to be different.
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I think they did that.
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I think they did that.
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And here s the first step in our process.
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We like to hop on a discovery call before that so that you re not coming in cold and blind and whatever you want to say.
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Then here are some things that you can take a look at.
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There s a link to a podcast episode we recently did on some subject.
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Exactly.
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Here s a video.
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Exactly.
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Take a look at those two things and that will accelerate our time together.
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That s right.
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Or I put an agenda together too with some questions for you to think about.
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These are questions I m going to ask you on the discovery call.
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You guys listening, guys and gals, listen to this.
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What Brian just laid out there can be used by any of you.
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Any of you, prior to a first meeting where they don t know you, or maybe you ve talked on the phone, but you ve never met.
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Maybe it s a virtual call.
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It doesn t have to be a physical meeting.
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But where there is a stated call with stated objectives,
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It is very useful to say something like Go, uh, go listen to this episode that I did or go watch this video It could even be sending them back to a to a linkedin video that you ve done on your feature section on linkedin Hey, this is something that I thought you might like to watch prior to us getting together Even if they don t watch it, it s kind of irrelevant It s like you cared enough to send them something that was useful to them prior to this meeting that gets you
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Get you some credits.
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For sure.
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And then I love to say, I love the agenda thing.
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He ll be the flow of our meeting.
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And here are some questions I m going to be asking you, give them to you ahead of time so you can think about them so I m not catching you off guard.
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Absolutely.
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And then that s done.
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That s way better than let s hop on a call.
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And you can actually automate, not automate, but that can always be standard.
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That s cut and paste.
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It s a signature line.
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SPEAKER_00
It is.
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It s a signature line.
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SPEAKER_00
It is a sig line, correct.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you put the whole thing as a signature line.
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It s right there, all that stuff.
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Good point.
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So maybe the answer to this is, like you said, think about efficiency rather than automation.
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Redefine the word or characterize it a little bit differently.
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And then go back and say, are there some simple things that I can do that doesn t require me to buy an AI system that s just automated like a sig line?
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Like, you probably only have three or four types of inbound calls coming in.
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One s for a meeting, one s for a demo, one s for something else.
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Just have a SIG line that you can cut and paste into the copy.
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But make sure you re giving them something of value when you send it back.
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And what could be a value?
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Like you said, Brian, just something as simple as, these are the five topics we re going to talk about on this call.
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Exactly.
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Yeah, I think the other people will appreciate that more than you ll ever know.
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And it makes your job so much easier.
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Yeah.
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So efficiency over automation, keep the personalization in there.
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You can sig line the rest of it, and then there you go.
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Sig line it, brother.
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Sig line it.
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Sig.
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Sig.
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Never had a sig.
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My wife has a sig.
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Oh, does she?
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She goes to the range and she brings, and she always brings back the thing.
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What s a sig?
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Sig is a gun.
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SPEAKER_00
Oh, the Sig Sauer?
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, Sig Sauer.
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SPEAKER_00
Oh.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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Yeah, my kid had a hat.
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My kid s got a hat, a Sig Sauer.
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SPEAKER_00
I m like, where d you get that?
1
SPEAKER_00
It s a great logo.
1
SPEAKER_00
He goes, Uncle Nick.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s a great logo.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m like, what is it?
1
SPEAKER_00
He goes, it s a gun.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m like, should you be wearing that, like, to a Catholic school?
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, maybe not.
1
SPEAKER_00
Probably not.
1
SPEAKER_00
Probably not.
1
SPEAKER_00
His uncle is a sheriff s deputy, so.
1
SPEAKER_00
Oh, okay.
1
SPEAKER_00
SWAT team member.
1
SPEAKER_00
but maybe they won t go into that detail.
1
SPEAKER_01
James shoots a Sig.
1
SPEAKER_01
She shoots.
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh, that s so funny.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and she always brings home the chart to let me know.
1
SPEAKER_01
She puts it up like, you know, I got him in the heart three times.
1
SPEAKER_00
You better behave.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s right.
1
SPEAKER_00
You better behave.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s funny.
1
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
1
SPEAKER_00
We ll talk about it next time.
1
SPEAKER_00
Bye.
1
SPEAKER_00
The most awkward ending to a podcast ever.
1
SPEAKER_00
Goodbye.