In this episode, Eric and Jeff are joined by #GrowthGuest Jesse Ouellette. Jesse is the founder of Lead Magic, a software that reveals your anonymous website visitors, so you can convert them to customers. He also founded Agency Source, the #1 digital agency network that helps businesses instantly connect with digital agency partners. With his years of experience, Jesse is an expert in outbound strategy and a globally recognized expert in B2B sales email delivery.
Listen as Jesse, Jeff, and Eric discuss how a proactive, hands-on approach magnifies the impact of a CEO's genuine engagement. As the lines between the digital and physical realms blur, the challenge for leaders amplifies: How can they maintain authenticity in both spaces? Hear real world examples of ways our hosts have seen their colleagues expand their impact through their presence alone.
Thanks for listening!
In this episode, Eric and Jeff are joined by #GrowthGuest Jesse Ouellette. Jesse is the founder of Lead Magic, a software that reveals your anonymous website visitors, so you can convert them to customers. He also founded Agency Source, the #1 digital agency network that helps businesses instantly connect with digital agency partners. With his years of experience, Jesse is an expert in outbound strategy and a globally recognized expert in B2B sales email delivery.
Listen as Jesse, Jeff, and Eric discuss how a proactive, hands-on approach magnifies the impact of a CEO's genuine engagement. As the lines between the digital and physical realms blur, the challenge for leaders amplifies: How can they maintain authenticity in both spaces? Hear real world examples of ways our hosts have seen their colleagues expand their impact through their presence alone.
Thanks for listening!
All right. Welcome back.
Eric Watkins:Come on. Oh, is it yours? What happened? Is it you or is it me?
Unknown:This is what happens when it's just us two. We don't know who's we
Eric Watkins:don't know what we're doing.
Unknown:And we finish each other's scent sentences and sentences.
Eric Watkins:We were gonna split it up
Unknown:sentences.
Jeff Winters:All right,
Eric Watkins:go ahead. All right. Welcome back to the gross show. We are obviously missing our fearless leader Scott. Where is he at this weekend? TCU undisclosed location TCU undisclosed, but he's at TCU for a little family weekend. So I know he's gonna have a blast there. And we're gonna miss him today. But we do have a first for the new format of the girls show. And that is a special guests. Jesse will let Jessie Welcome to the show. Everybody clap it up. We got a ton of viewers out there. Yeah,
Unknown:clap it up.
Jeff Winters:Drop it in the comment. Jesse's got a huge fan. I don't want to take your take your thunder on his intro, but just got a huge following.
Eric Watkins:I mean, he's a big deal. No doubt. He's a big deal. I will say personally, Jesse and I have connected over the past couple of months. And he's just been a huge help to us in our business. And he's he's on the cutting edge. He's out there doing things with email and technology. That just about nobody is doing and we're excited to not only wrap them into the show, but dig into that a little deeper. He's taking my section today. He's taking your section mining for growth gold, we're gonna be mining for growth gold, but Jesse we're gonna be talking a little email and tech.
Jeff Winters:Can I give two other things on just please do so. Jesse is it many people claim Jesse's a guru? He is a he's a he's a legitimate guru.
Eric Watkins:Look at him, but don't blush.
Jeff Winters:And I don't want to I don't want to get your CV wrong. So correct me. But I believe you are a top voice on LinkedIn for sales. Is that accurate?
Unknown:Yeah, yeah, it was a you know, it was a surprise that it was going to happen. But that
Jeff Winters:that's like winning an Oscar.
Eric Watkins:That's a big deal.
Jeff Winters:That's a big deal.
Eric Watkins:That's a LinkedIn Oscar to LinkedIn. Oscar. Yeah, which, which is a good segue into our first section. And Jesse what we do here and I know you've listened to a couple of episodes, we have the Sheriff of LinkedIn. Pay no mind that he has no award from LinkedIn or no credibility. That's actually real. But he is the self proclaimed sheriff of LinkedIn. And he's here to make sure that we're just keeping the influencers right, like Jesse himself out there in line. So Jesse, we're gonna go through two truths, and a lie from LinkedIn.
Jeff Winters:And we're excited and by the way, me having no official standing with LinkedIn, what does that mean?
Eric Watkins:You it's just not official, but
Jeff Winters:that's like, okay, but does that mean like, people who aren't affiliated with a play can't critique it? Does that mean people who don't work at the restaurant can't say how the food tastes?
Eric Watkins:It just typically means your opinion doesn't mean much, but on this show, and today, it does well, and this is your time to shine
Jeff Winters:I am feeling the aura of Jesse's LinkedIn Sales influencer NIS. He is transferring that to me for at least one day. And we are not only going to keep what serves you in line, but we're also going to shout out those that are saying the good stuff spreading the truth. So let's start with one of our truths. Adam go yet. Instead of marketers being up in arms about gated content attribution, I wish more would focus on the single biggest source of wasted marketing dollars. Number one, blindly running ads with a call to action, get your free demo. As if it's a golden ticket to Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. A free demo. How did I get so lucky? I can't believe you aren't charging me money for having the privilege of you selling me your software or other services.
Unknown:I thought this was really funny. Up Jesse's alley.
Jeff Winters:i This to me is a great truth What a waste the call to action. Get your free demo or your free meeting or your free this. Give me a break. Jesse would say you truth are learning.
Unknown:I'm gonna go truth.
Jeff Winters:Can you can you give us a little more? It's true. And I definitely think expand on
Unknown:that. So So here, here's what I'm saying out there right now. As you know, everyone's complaining about the marketing, like the forum fills and everything there. I don't think it's that big of a deal. I like to put a little bit of a gate up in front of somebody like There's a lot of that, like no forms, just let them go crawl over your content. I mean, even if you don't like I think you should you're blocked you got to put a block up a little bit right? Like you got to ask for the sale right. And I would love to just get there you know, have them fill out that form I don't care if they put fake information in I already know it is. So it doesn't matter. Right. So what's there's no big deal there? Like I mean, that's my my take on it.
Eric Watkins:I love it. He's in the back end. He knows you're on his we already know you
Jeff Winters:already know who you are. For those of you going to his website now? He already knows. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. What do you think Eric? Free demo.
Eric Watkins:Free demo is so played out. Free assessment, free everything, like, free is just bad. Like, just stop using free. It people love free, like not paying for anything. But don't tell people it's free it immediately, I think is the new spam word. That's gonna turn everybody off. I agree with that. 100%. Yeah,
Unknown:I think you should charge for demos if you're willing to do it. You should. Yeah, there's there could be. I mean, I'm not trying to be. But there could be a play there where you might throw somebody off a little bit. Or you turn it into like a discovery call of like some sort where you're like, charging him just to learn about their problems. And then you're now like, selling them something, which is what a lot of great salespeople do.
Jeff Winters:Maybe we should do that maybe we should run a test on charging people for demos,
Eric Watkins:it's a quick way to pay for your sales enablement. Hey,
Jeff Winters:where do you get that content? Nowhere but Nowhere. Nowhere. Nowhere. But here. I am not sure if so truth Thing, Thing. Second truth. Fatherhood has brought me a fresh look on business. A year and a half ago, I proudly entered the world of fatherhood, both parenthood and business demand your time focus and energy, both of highs and lows, moments of joys and sleepless nights. Today, have you fatherhood as something that enriches the entrepreneurial experience? It wasn't always that way. As a parent, you build a legacy, you nurture, guide and shape a new life. Isn't that what we do in business too? We create we mentor and our greatest hope is that we leave a lasting impact. Who said that? I don't have the name. Ghost Rider,
Eric Watkins:Ghost Rider.
Unknown:That is our guests. That is our guest. That is a truth. Jessie, tell us the truth. Oh, come on, man. You know how it is like if you're if you have kids, definitely changes a lot about your like, does make you the commitment that you have to have and everything you know, it's just every day you have to wake up and sort of go that way. And you know, the way the way that you're the direction you're supposed to be going so but you don't know I actually didn't. I don't think Eric Do you have kids?
Eric Watkins:I know I don't have kids. He's not
Jeff Winters:going to participate in this. Gosh, just got Yeah,
Eric Watkins:I can respect it. But I have a dog. Like that's close. Yeah,
Unknown:it's a lot. It's a lot. It's a lot. It's, it's the one your buddies don't tell you about that. They just don't like usually they joke around like, you know, I saw this pressure on you but definitely changed a lot. It's the best thing to ever happen though. I mean, it's, it's great. I have a 21 year old daughter and she's doing well. So she's sleeping right now which is good.
Eric Watkins:That's good. Maybe if she wakes up, we can bring her on the show. I
Unknown:would love to be on the show.
Jeff Winters:We will do an all kids podcast. Definitely a fresh perspective on business. I think there's a lot of people that would say I have a fresh perspective on business because now I'm working for other people. I don't feel that way. But it is a fresh perspective for me in that or was a fresh perspective for me in that like how you manage your time look at your day, your week, your month your year like that that was the biggest impact for me I had to sort of change my schedule didn't have to do with my motivation but it definitely like changed my schedule increase my ability and this has tried to be patient and how to deal with volatile personalities like six and seven and eight year olds you know, those kinds of things. I think it's definitely definitely a truth and even if it weren't Jesse
Eric Watkins:yeah Jesse wrote it
Jeff Winters:and I don't want to dog him out with a lie on yeah you
Eric Watkins:he stays away for all the technical posts he grabs
Jeff Winters:me to do
Unknown:it man I had to just throw it out there you got it. Like
Jeff Winters:I want to humanize Jesse to yeah you know if you read it can seem a little wonky but this is soft spot
Eric Watkins:yeah
Unknown:yeah I leave one out there one nugget to make everybody like me
Jeff Winters:walking in a good way technical technical Yeah Ah now Jesse become the lie you don't have to agree with this my friend a lie but lie but some people out there are saying bullshit on LinkedIn and we can't have it. And by the way, Jessie does his own little patrol have
Eric Watkins:oh, yeah, he's out there.
Unknown:Oh, yeah. I'm on the comment. The sheriff havea report anything I see out there the deputy
Jeff Winters:the deputy please by the way, there are people who comment my name and posts that they think are lies, if you would begin doing that, that would make us all make us all happy and make the world and LinkedIn a safer place. So here's my line of day from matter. If you're taking Matthew says, if you're taking my advice, you're eliminating your sales and marketing departments, you're replacing them with demand gen. pipeline management, and customer success to create a unified rev ops machine. Now you have to hire heads at each department, your hiring criteria should be higher summed up by one word, quantitative. So here's my problem with this post. demand gen, okay, you get there, generates the leads, customer success. Make sure that current customers stay, they protect the back door. And then the salespeople are now I suppose, under the pipeline management heading. Give me a break. That just like that, just that drives me nuts. It is just the biggest. It's so condescending to salespeople. It's so underestimates, and under appreciates their worth in the process to boil them down to pipeline managers. That's gross. I think it's a flagrant lie. Jesse, what say you?
Unknown:Yeah, that's that's definitely a lie. I mean, I had a background. I mean, I went from enterprise software to sort of SAS founder. And it's just, I mean, it even you look, now you can look at like these plg companies, right, a lot of them have had this transition, right, we're selling a $10 product, like a spreadsheet product, and then all of a sudden, we had to layoff 27% of our workforce a couple of weeks ago. And it's all the ones who couldn't sell anything, right. So, you know, it's just a tough, I just don't see it as a viable strategy, you're gonna need your salespeople. In fact, I think you're gonna have more salespeople go over towards paid ads, actually, you're gonna have more salespeople doing demand gen type roles. And you're gonna need that, because you're gonna need to write the copy or need to get the message the offer, right? Like, all of that stuff has to work for you to get an app. I mean, let's face it, I mean, you guys know, ads are a lot harder now, right to run these ads effectively. And especially if they start to block your emails, right, you're gonna be running a lot more ads. So I think you're gonna be more salespeople. And, you know, that might not be everybody's favorite thing, but you're gonna use them in different spots in the company and the companies that figure out how to use them in the right way. It sort of transition to certain areas that maybe they're not in now. They should be. That's going to change a lot, too, I think.
Jeff Winters:Or, as Matthew says, you're going to need more pipeline managers. Yeah. See my,
Eric Watkins:my issue with it
Unknown:not good at Pipeline manager. Yeah.
Eric Watkins:My issue with this is ownership. Who owns okay, you miss your growth goal? Who owns it? Yeah. Well, they all own it. Well, no, someone has to own it. If there's not enough revenue coming in the door, who owns that number, ultimately, at the end of the day, and let's not simplify how easy I don't know what size contracts he's referring to for this business. So maybe it's very transactional. And maybe, if you have such a low price, there's some world where this could work. But if you have people signing, you know, five, six figure deals. I don't think that, you know, I think we're under appreciating what it takes to get somebody to sign those deals. But let
Jeff Winters:me just let me not let you let him off the hook. I mean, he's sort of implying if you've got success. And yeah, if you have an app Chief Revenue Officer, the lifetime value of the customer is at least enough to support some success. And that sort of leads me to believe that the transactions aren't the issue. Yep. He's trying to be provocative. And sometimes it works. Yeah, he was trying to be provocative, and we're not going to have that.
Eric Watkins:Jesse, would you have caught this one? If you're out there patrol? Yeah, you would have caught this.
Unknown:I wouldn't have. So this is one of those ones. I wouldn't have stopped the car. Although I probably would have, you know, at least, you know, you're like, Alright, I gotta take I need a minute. Hold my variant out. Yeah,
Eric Watkins:hold my beer. This guy's
Unknown:added. Now, I don't know that some of those ones. I don't even take any part in. But that one I probably would have that would have been done away. Like,
Eric Watkins:yeah, that got the attention.
Unknown:There you go. And I got video on that. Yeah.
Jeff Winters:Let me tell you some Jesse. We're lucky because you don't have to take part in all of them. And you as a community out there don't have to take part. Because we take part. That's what we
Eric Watkins:did. The sheriff is here to protect you. Back to you. The sheriff just you got a new employee. You got a deputy? Jesse. I don't know if you want to report to Jeff, but he has hired you. He has unofficially hired you. That's great. All right. So So the next section of our podcast is 50 for 50. And that's typically where our CEO, Scott comes in, and he shares here 50 things that you need to do as a business to get to $50 million. So I didn't want to steal any from his list. didn't feel right. Didn't feel right. That's just not my list. But we have to keep the sections going. We have to represent it. So I was thinking through last night, and looking back, and you know, looking at what Scott's done to be able to get us to 50 million and beyond? And what are, what are some of the things that that stood out to me most of what I came up with, is as a CEO, in a in your organization, as a founder, being present with your team? And that may seem like simple, okay, yeah, I have to run a certain meeting and talk to my team about vision. But let me give you a little fill in on what I'm talking about last Wednesday, I got a text at seven in the morning, that said, Hey, I'm going to do town hall with the whole company today. I was like, Well, typically town halls optional. And we have about 30 to 40 people there. And it's where people can show up and ask SEO questions. And he's like, No, I'm gonna do it with the whole company on four hours notice. And why did he need to do that? Because he felt like as a team, we needed to hear a message. And he needed to interact and talk with the people. He did it. So I was a little skeptical. I even told him this. I was like, on the same day, and like, where are we going to do this? He's like, I don't know, where do you think we should do it? I was like, let's do it out at the courtyard. And so we set it up, had it ready to go. It was the most incredible meeting, you know, people's faces just lighting up, they were participating, they were asking questions. And it's just, I could see how it'd be easy as a CEO or founder to hide behind your computer, and not, you know, get out in front of the people and address what's going on and let people know what you're thinking and what you're feeling. And Scott's just shown the ability throughout our the growth of our organization, that he's willing to pull up a chair. He's currently in our sales department, helping support with that team and instilling belief in that. And I just think, as a business owner, find ways to get yourself in front of your whole company as frequently as possible. Jeff would say you,
Jeff Winters:I say a few things. First of all, I think it's noteworthy that Scott and many leaders are sort of that what good degree, we call that level five leader type, which is a little more introverted, a little more introspective, don't like being in the spotlight in front of people. So I know for him and probably many others like him, it's not their natural state to want to go talk to hundreds and hundreds of people, not an excuse not to execute exactly when, and whether it's you go meet with your directors on a regular cadence, or your VPS, or your managers, your frontline employees, it is just and I know I've done it, and Jesse, you could probably relate to this too. And Eric, you too, it's very easy to stick with your team, and to move yourself into this false sense of security of like, and to justify and rationalize it, that my team, I hired them to do the job, I'm going to, we're going to talk about it, and we're going to be motivated, and they're gonna go do it. That's a miss not that they're gonna go do it. But the misses that you don't have to go talk to their team, or their direct reports, reports or all the way down to where the work is done. And I think that is as that is present. To me.
Eric Watkins:That's a great point, Jesse, you've been at some companies big and small. What do you what do you say about this?
Unknown:It's the leaders that could integrate a lot of people together that, you know, they didn't divide, you know, they can kind of bring everybody together, that was ones that people wanted to be around. That was a big that got you up in the morning, right to work with that person. And I think you got to really have that today. I mean, especially that and I think it was even a little bit of that to be set on. I'm seeing the same thing sort of happen on unit shift on like, social media and things like having a leader that is visible there, too, right. Like, there's a lot of just people who aren't even really doing that. And I think there's got to it's like, what you're not communicating by not going on there and providing your opinion. I mean, you're kind of holding back and even on a digital platform, you know, or whatever. Right. So I think that's another area that is certainly neglected. I think it's great to do the, you know, in person, I think that's always great. And then you got to really though, think about present yourself on you know, Is it real or you just literally resharing your company's same dogshit marketing that you have or ever right, like
Eric Watkins:a human Yeah.
Unknown:out there with an opinion. I mean, people want to work with people that are authentic. They don't want to people with an opinion, like you don't want to just sit there what's this person thinking all the time? Sure. Like, are they trying to kill me like right now? That's a kind of mindset of like what people are thinking right now, right? If you're not, there's something else going on? Right? So you have to be
Eric Watkins:I love what you said right there. I want to double click on it. I want to know what they're thinking like your employees at any given time, the more that they wonder what the CEO is thinking, the less secure and safe that they feel. And the the I think the less engagement they're gonna have to the business. And I think that's, if I could hit on it even like at the one simple level, Scott has never left gray area for what he's thinking and how he's feeling. And and that's a huge deal. Man. I
Jeff Winters:think using social media to talk to your own employees is something that some would scoff at. But I think Jesse brings up a great point. You can use social media whenever you want to send a message to your to your team. And irrespective of whether or not you mean to send a message to your team, what you post does send a message to your team. So one, be cognizant that that's how your team members are going to take it. And to use the channel, use the channel, if you know that that's a communication mechanism to your team, and you have hundreds or 1000s or 10s of employees that you don't talk to on a regular basis. Everybody will see that you posted on LinkedIn.
Eric Watkins:And that that's why we started this podcast that was the main reason like as a way to talk to our people and and go through, you know why we do things as a business. So good stuff all around. Scott, not here. Physically here in spirit. Yeah, but we're getting on Yeah, we're getting on. We're getting on and you know what we're getting on to mining for growth, gold, Jesse, the time everybody has been waiting for this. So let me set the stage. Finally, finally, finally, they've been waiting for this. It's why they're all tuned in. If you have been doing email marketing, at scale, and typically in an agency model, but even for your own business, you have realized a significant drop off sort of mid to late last year into this new age of what's going on. And the reason is that with the introduction of open AI chat GPT the barrier for entry to send emails is lower than it's ever been in history, which is created this just influx your email to the section. I'm about to pass, will you stop, but like
Jeff Winters:this is such a long windup the guy we don't bring him on to listen to you talk Jesse,
Eric Watkins:tell, I want you to explain to the viewers of why email has gotten so tough. And what does it take to be competitive in this market? Don't ever interrupt me and my section again, goodness gracious.
Unknown:It's, hey, by the way, I love the hell out of the fight. I think but, ya know, I think right now it's what's changed a lot is if you think about the model are out there today where your model is, let's send push send a bunch of emails at the same time. That's gonna really, really struggle in the future, right, you're gonna see even blessing this week, I even got a call from a buddy as zero around here, he actually, I won't talk about a different technology or anything. But what happened was you got on the get on and all the rest of their entire SDR team was in this new sort of status around suspension where they actually have to appeal. Now, what's funny about that is like everyone says, Oh, it's so easy sales is so easy now compared to what I was, like, you have all this stuff. But I think the technology is actually going to make it even harder, because you're starting to see some situations where Google and Microsoft are really cracking down on different things, right? So if you're sending over 50 emails a day, right, that's considered to be a high, high user, right? So then they're going to look at the engagement. And remember, in your company, there's only really, there's four types of emails, there's the corporate emails, the transactional emails, and then there's like the bulk and then there's fourth type the sales emails, and those have a, an aroma, like a probably like a diaper, right? Like there. That's a little bit low, right? Like, a lot of them get reported as spam. And if you're not there to sort of get made sure that that you're sending quality over the wire, right? Like, it's, it's just about like, do the buyers want it, the UIs are getting more tuned to actually stop people from getting those emails. They're, they're monitoring it. And when one of those big enterprises that you're emailing phones home, and tells the central central office, what's coming from your domain name, that's when things start to get bad. So you can get blocked, like, simultaneously across all of your target accounts. And they put a force field around your domain name and it's starting to happen now where there are companies now where they're looking, they're not, you know, working with agencies like yours or other ones that know that have hired and invested in email delivery. What they're doing is they're just ignoring their, their reply rates and they're just dropping to the ground. And you've got so much investment in that part of your business and your thing It's working. But what you're doing is you're using a lot of the times you're emailing these like, inbound warm leads, or you're, you're actually just calling them and it's showing up as a as a conversion. And that's not what what really this is about this is about showing that you can actually send high quality emails that get replies, right, the best way to actually get those in the inbox is to write good emails that people respond to right now, hey, if they're a little upset about it, or whatever, not interested, you're not breaking the law, long as you follow the rules. But it's just one of those things. That's changing a lot. I think it's actually getting a lot harder for salespeople. I think that, you know, a lot of people say it's getting easier, but it's not, it's really hitting harder. Because of that, right? How are salespeople going to communicate, or in the technology, I think the mighty for growth part is really, as a salesperson go learn enough about technology to be dangerous. You know, you don't have to become a developer. In fact, you can hire developers for really, there, there's ways to hire them at low cost. Plus, they give away all their code free on the internet, on GitHub. So that's another area that you could go but But anyways, that's kind of my mind for growth. Just really get out there and learn the technology, learn a little bit about it. And you know, if you find something wrong with your, your DKM record, tell your IT team, you're not sending any more emails until that thing's fixed.
Jeff Winters:Yeah. I been doing this a long time. 10 years. I will say that there's never been a moment in history when you need to be using an expert for outbound marketing, like there is today. And I just got out of a meeting. And this is took us a while to get here. We doubled reply rates month over month on hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of emails, and the amount of work that went into that, like you just can't even imagine and there's no way. Jesse, I'm interested to hear your thoughts here. Like to me, there's no way you're setting up a sales team without you just you buy a system, you put a bunch of emails and you rip it out like you are, you are years away from knowing how to do this, right?
Eric Watkins:Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah,
Unknown:it takes a special. So here's the other thing I'd say to it, it does take a special group to do it. Now what I mean by that is, you can't just have an IT person. So what happens is you'll bring in your IT team, but they're not motivated by the revenue target or whatever, right. And they're like, I just talked to somebody today, he says it department wouldn't turn out demark until the end of the year. And I'm like, that's kind of bizarre. And it's, but you know what I mean? Like, it's just one of those things that, you know, it's like if you if you get out there, and you learn it, and you build that kind of group, that growth group and that committee in your company, and you start to really focus on this as a, as a key initiative in deliverability happens in a lot of other areas, too, right? LinkedIn, obviously, you have 100 connections a week, you know, the phone obviously have to make calls with numbers at work. And you have to call people that have valid, valid phone numbers that pick up their phone. So there's a lot of areas that you can optimize around delivery and landing in the UK kind of call it the primary inbox has been my like, quote on it, but it means a lot more than just like, email, right? It's everywhere, really. And landing their relevant being there not not looking like it's a copy and paste that email. And and there's a lot of ways to design it and talk through that. So anyways, those are some of the things that I've been thinking about a lot with mining for growth for me anyways. And I've been trying to really do that and encourage other salespeople to do that. As much as I can.
Eric Watkins:So with, with email, the attractiveness of the channel was cost and scale, right, I can do it set it up for cheap, and I can get a zillion messages out to as many people as I want. And I don't need to have great success percentages, I'll still get X amount back. That's not really the case anymore. How do you how do you feel like this is gonna play out from a cost perspective into the future to run a really good email operation, because we've already seen us adjusting in our email operation, the cost that it takes now, between the tech and the team to have good emails and inboxes
Unknown:prices are going up. And here's why. It's really because of the it's the it's the function of what you're going to have to evolve. You're kind of quote unquote, IT team, right, whatever that is, right? That can be a shot, like more of like a, but they're your eyes. This is now going to make your IT team part of the revenue team truly part of that revenue team if you're, you're banking on some cold emails, right, or email in general, right? So I mean, and there's, there's so many ways to do it. And the most obvious way everyone thinks, hey, I'll just go get SendGrid or I'll get Mailgun. And I'll just blast. That'll happen for probably two days, you'll have probably decent delivery, then you're going to be done. Right? And that's what everyone tries so no, you're gonna have to send it like, you know, like humans do, right? You have to send it through your ad you're gonna have to be a human doing it. So you're gonna have to have that that set up, right? And you're gonna have to have those emails, they can't just get bursted out it, you know. And really the hardest part about it is is like, everyone's like, well, what how many should I send out per day? And the real answer to all of these questions is, well, what are you sending? And how are you sending it to? And what are they thinking of it? Right? Like, those are the questions that matter, really the engagement afterwards. And if you get you send something out, that's not going over, well, the offer sucks, it's, or it's just annoying people and you're, you know, it's even the breakup email now is starting to really cause a lot of complaints out there. So you know, it's just a lot of that stuff doesn't work anymore. And, you know, the more the faster you evolve and sort of learn a little bit about, you don't have to be you don't have to know how to do all the email delivery stuff that everyone talks about on there. But at least understand like, how your team is sending, how many they're sending, what the response rates are, how many of them are positive, how many are negative, right? That those are pretty good indicators that every I think every sales, like if I was hiring a sales leader today, and they didn't know that number, there, they definitely would not get the job. Right. So like, they have to have learned a little bit about that. Right. So I think there's a specialist role forming as well. That's the last thing I'll add there. But, you know, I'd love to hear your guys's thoughts on this. Here's,
Jeff Winters:I know, we're running long in this section. But it's this is the section is the section. Yeah. And you started off with comments. But yeah, so we're on this MIDI song with this is the section. But here's here's another thing that this leads to. Another thing that this speaks to is it's not just important, it is mandatory, that you have multi channel outreach, these agencies that are email only, or phone only or LinkedIn only. It is a matter of time. It is a matter of time. And it's a total crapshoot and I talked to companies that are looking at those agencies. And I'm like, I don't care if you use us, just don't use them. Because it can't work because of what you just said it's a total crapshoot. I guarantee you we're gonna get 20 meetings a month through email alone. Impossible. You can't do that. Can you guarantee anybody that Jessie sight unseen? Nope, no? Expert.
Unknown:Yeah. See what you got. You got to have a very, very good team and not like I wouldn't, you know, like a and just everybody that's on that team is like, I was impressed. Like, I mean, you know, I know it was hard. I think I miss, they miss the first meeting and I'm sorry. But,
Eric Watkins:you know, show me that we were no big deal. And we, we hit it off and now we're Groeschel. Yeah.
Unknown:Yeah, my point is like, you know, it's just, you got to invest in the team. They gotta have the right resources, they gotta have access to technology and experts and things like that. That are. There's not a lot on the there's a lot of these b2c delivery people, but the b2b thing because they kind of didn't want your email in the first place. That's a difference out there for that group. There's a lot of fake out there on that one.
Eric Watkins:So one last one last topic before we go to tales from sales, because I know you got some good stuff for us today. Ai, this guy knows more about AI and how it impacts marketing than anybody. I've talked to a lot of people this he is on the cutting edge of how people are using this. Where is it? My question for you, Jesse, is where do you see AI impacting marketing? Over the next year, two years? And then where do you feel like it's overhyped, where people are building too much credibility into it, and it's really not going to be all that in that area.
Unknown:The place that it's doing our that it's going to be is definitely around content, like generating that content faster and being able to pull more sources in and have more information on it and all that, where it's getting overhyped a little bit is like the, you know, taking over your sales team's job and sort of that stuff. Like, I mean, it's for anybody who's using it, you know, it's just going to make them better at their job. Like if they're, if they're, you know, everybody should be using it on sales, that doesn't really matter. You know, we're, we're using it a lot is, I just use it when, whenever I need to really, like, push out something that you would have that starting point like, what am I right here, like, what do I Okay, and then you start to make like a prompt library, and you start to do that, and then you get into the plugins, and then you know, the plugins are probably where most I think that's where you're going to get the most value right now, if you're not using the plugins, or the the sort of like the data analysis part of it where you can kind of upload sort of spreadsheets and it can become your data analyst. That's really helped like those two areas alone. Just getting those plugins and that and then I mean, we're doing a lot with the world. Registering domain names. We're doing all kinds of things with it and setting up inboxes like we're doing. We've got we've got the chat bot doing just about everything. We're that's pretty impressive, but it's just really cool as kind of evolved.
Eric Watkins:That's awesome. Tales from sales ready? Let's do it. Jesse sold.
Jeff Winters:Jessie sells he sells Look at him. Yeah, sold. Right. That was great. It sold us.
Unknown:He's good in dollar every year. You're good,
Jeff Winters:too. But I gotta tell you some Yeah. Hang on to that see buddy. Tales from sales. You now have a big pile leads Jesse's gotten you a huge pile of email leads, because he's helping you learn how to send out those emails. What are you going to do with them? And and I think today, today's topic is how are you going to both motivate your sales team from a sales compensation perspective, while still making sure that it doesn't break the bank for your company? And so I want to talk about a enthralling topic. It Like It's like, it's like a Michael Bay movie. That's how exciting of a topic this is. Stress testing your sales compensation plan.
Eric Watkins:I know Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, let that I love that. Give me an Excel.
Jeff Winters:I love it, too. I just so so here's what I see from sales leaders and business owners, they are they have resigned themselves to the fact that they are going to have very fluid and ebb and flow sales months, and therefore they're going to have ebb and flow commission months, and they're just going to deal with it. And that's going to be okay. And they're going to get to their monthly or quarterly p&l review meetings, and things are going to be totally off profitability is not going to be where they want their CAC to LTV is not going to be where they want. And they're going to be able to say, but it's alright. Because we sold a lot. It's not all right. It's not all right, your sales compensation plan should work for the business from a profit standpoint, or from a ratio standpoint, irrespective of how you perform from a sales standpoint. And so I'll give you two two thoughts here. The first is you talked about a lot of great uses for AI. To me, there's no better use for AI from in this context, than critiquing the strengths and weaknesses of a sales compensation plan, put your sales comp plan in, find the strengths, find the weaknesses, it is as accurate as it gets. And next, when you're making your sales compensation plan, you don't need your BI analysts, you don't need your finance team, I posted a video on this. And I have a model that you can use if you want it. But the key to that model is this. Take your all your salespeople, and you have to do two things. The first is you have to have a range of sales in each cell when you're doing your model. And the second is if there are any little triggers or accelerators, you have to have if formulas in each cell such that if sales goes above X, the IF formula triggers a higher commission. And then you have to randomize and watch your ratio change as sales randomizes. And that way, you can truly stress test on an extremely random basis, exactly how your company's sales performance is going to impact the bottom line. And if you figure out that it breaks your profitability model or your critical ratio, you can adjust for it. That is my plea to the sales leadership CEO owner world out there.
Eric Watkins:I think that's that's a great point. Because we've I mean, we've lived with this for years. We just live with it. Yeah, like we have. It's something recently that we've put a lot of thought and energy and effort into. But, you know, when you're you should have ratios assigned to your cost of sale and what you feel like you're going to sales sells a business and you should stay within those. And if your compensation plan doesn't align with that, then what's the point of even having ratios in the first place? Amen. You know, like it's it is a big deal. And I bet the you got to post on LinkedIn right now where you're going through, you got about 12 people that viewed it, but he's going through the spreadsheet 42
Jeff Winters:people and 56% of the people who watched the video watched all like eight minutes that's impressed
Eric Watkins:Come on. Who was the first like the My wife always always I got
Unknown:one for you What about on like, so I think we're a lot of companies are getting into trouble. They're all it's a lot of these kind of sort of SAS high growth companies that have you know, tremendous amount of VC money. And where it becomes a real problem is the fact that they have they're all saying oh, we're gonna go to the next level we're gonna go public and everything but they have to take the the entire commission as an expense but they have to do it over a spread out period of time. So if they if they you know that that's so in the SAS world, they the commission, they can't pay the salespeople as well, right like in that they I mean, they can But it hurts everything else even more because you're spreading me. I mean, it's, uh, it's deferred. Yeah. Where, you know, as companies get to like, their performance, you know, as they are getting further and further into their, their valuation, and Series C Series D, that expense gets rolled over a period of time. So they, they can't pay the sales, but they don't have the money to do it. So they're like robbing Peter to pay Paul, you know, like, it's the whole, that whole thing. That's where I saw the problem when I was working in SAS companies. For myself, I was like, wait, they can't pay us anymore. These contracts don't allow it. So that's the thing that I got really sort of like, that's what made my own Sass company is like, I didn't want to deal with that anymore.
Jeff Winters:Yeah, what Jesse's talking about here is, you're amortizing the commission over the life of the deal. That's the idea. Right? So it's, as you do that, you have a large say, on the front end, you end up selling a lot of deals, and the profitability is very high, because you're spreading out the cost of commission on those deals. However, at some point, the lines cross, especially if you stop growing, the lines really cross and you've got all of this commission that your quote unquote, paying on deals that were sold 12 months ago, and you made some assumption that this client is going to last 24 months, and they lasted 12 months. So you spread out the you know, gets into a really wonky area, when you start thinking with that.
Eric Watkins:Yeah, especially if your retention rate drops, significantly, and you're paying people on 36 months, and you're Yeah,
Jeff Winters:easy, keep it clean. Like I think there's a lesson there, I would keep keep your keep your financials as like, I get it, we all have to play within the same rules. But boy, to the extent you can sort of keep everything as current month and not amortize and capitalize a gazillion things, the easier it is to look at your actual financials.
Eric Watkins:It's great point, great point or
Unknown:logo. I think that's the stuff that really companies get in trouble on, they get in trouble on like, where they're short, a quarter of the CFO might throw out a vision, like it just, you know, a massive spiff on something and then you I mean, my goal there when I was in sales was just to break the break the bank, I wanted the whole place to fall over. Right. But But like, that's, that's right. I like that's how you're thinking about it as you're kind of coming into it. It's not what you really want. That's, that's part of the other problem, right? So but but that's kind of like some of the things that I think are interesting and changing. And I think consumption model is going to start to happen a lot more. Which, you know, that's going to create another problem for traditional sales really?
Eric Watkins:Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. What they really all tuned in for today, no doubt, this is to do or not to do. Jessie is where we go through, you know, something that may be a little controversial, and we figure out if you should do it, or you should not do it. This one speaks to me greatly today. I feel very passionate about this one I love when you're passionate about this. I am very passionate about this. And this is about pretending not to see people in public, so you don't have to talk to them. That's what we're going to talk about today. Oh, and I'm not talking about your friends. I'm talking about Billy Joe, who you went to high school with that you haven't seen in 10 years. I'm talking about your fringe friends. I'm talking about your wife's friends. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Today, is it acceptable? If you make eye contact with somebody who, you know, I'm not talking close friends? Is it acceptable to just give a slight turn of the head and pretend that you never saw him? To avoid that little like, they don't want to talk to you? You don't really want to talk to them. You just kind of feel like you have to Jesse will start with you.
Unknown:Oh, cool that like I don't have any problem with it really? Like I? I'll do it sometimes it depends on the day and the mood a little bit shy. You know, I'd say I'm, you know, I'm pretty cool that like, I don't mind just like even if somebody even if I even tried just like, you know, and then they sort of do the like, you know, back into the elevator kind of thing like,
Eric Watkins:like that sort of thing and don't mind it doesn't hurt you when you get cold shoulder.
Unknown:Really? Not really. You know? It's, I guess when you you know, you you have you're married you have a kid you're just like, there's just a lot more going on. You're like I got a lot.
Eric Watkins:I don't need anything.
Unknown:I don't need any more fights. I already have enough of them in the comment section of LinkedIn right now. You know, but I think that's what I'm dealing with right now. So I'm fine with that. I let that stuff slide right now. Like I used to take it really personal but you know now like, Please don't look at me just go away. No, I'm kidding. I
Jeff Winters:if you want to come into this section and have a really sharp opinion, and I do, and it's not pretend I feel very strongly about this. I never do that. Ever. Never. I'd never ever ever see someone and don't go say hi to them. Never. I
Eric Watkins:mean, I'm not surprised.
Jeff Winters:I never do that. I don't understand why anyone would do that. Because Because here's what I can do. Okay, maybe this is the lesson. I can keep it real. Hey, how you doing? Good. How are you? Good. Boom, I'm moving.
Eric Watkins:You do not keep it. I swear to God, I've never seen you do that I
Jeff Winters:can. I can do that. Because those are missed opportunities. You know,
Eric Watkins:give me the hose at work. You know, need somebody that? Go ahead.
Jeff Winters:You just don't know. You never know. And I never want that. I don't need that. I'm not putting that out in the universe. If I know you, Hey, how you doing? Good. How are you? Boom, I'm off. I don't need that. We don't need to know about summer camp just real quick.
Eric Watkins:But you know, there's those people that have zero awareness about that. They don't there is no quick. You're there for 30 minutes and you hear about every little detail. I'm
Jeff Winters:never I can completely wind out of a car. You know me okay. What am I going to ask you how you're doing and walk away before you answer? I have no need house into your long hands. How
Eric Watkins:about the when you're out to eat? Here's the thing where you can't control it and somebody sees you and they walk instead of the way Oh, hey, I see you're at the same place. Great. They walk over to your tape. I always walk over to the table. I know you're the guy. That's what I think's going on here. I think you're the guy you're the guy that people are like, oh shit, I hope you didn't see it. I hope you didn't see me
Jeff Winters:maybe. Do you do that? What do you do?
Eric Watkins:I'm I'm not a small talk guy. I'm avoiding it at all costs.
Jeff Winters:Here's the thing Jesse that unless I like you here's what you don't know Jesse. I mean I know you talk to her but you live in a small I don't want a small town but you live in a smaller town Correct? Smaller. I know not you Jesse I know there's 1000 people where you live yeah smaller how many people live in Boston little more than 50,000 And you were the star quarterback and you were the this and everybody knows you like that a me like nobody I want to be known come talk to me. Like you're a little different. You gotta go out like you know like Aaron Rodgers. You gotta go out like Taylor Swift. Go out incognito.
Eric Watkins:That's not the case. But different. I need people to know me. Come say hi. That's the quote. Yeah. All right. Well, Jesse, it's been a pleasure. Where can people find you if they want to look up your stuff?
Unknown:Let's go on LinkedIn. Check it out. I share a bunch of content on there. I'm always trying to get people so we get tactical advice. I hope the sheriff's approving of it all
Eric Watkins:we've been caught in a lie yet.
Jeff Winters:No Jesse's great Yes, it's got great stuff and if you want to find them post some real BS on there. He'll he'll come to you like that's a bad signal. He'll
Eric Watkins:Awesome. Well, Jesse, we really appreciate it. Jeff Good work today. Hey, hopes guys to join TCU I know he's probably tuned in right now. Let's grow up