The Grow Show: Business Growth Stories from the Frontlines

Dial or Die: The Power of Cold Calls in Business Survival

• Scott Scully, Jeff Winters, Eric Watkins • Season 2 • Episode 43

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Think cold calling is outdated? Think again. Despite what some so-called experts on LinkedIn might say, cold calling is thriving. Here's the proof: a whopping 69% of businesses connected with their current vendors through a cold call. Plus, companies embracing cold calling are seeing a whopping 42% boost in growth. This old-school tactic is clearly a secret weapon for serious business growth, smashing the myths and exceeding expectations.

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Unknown:

All these years it says

Scott Scully:

nothing could stop me. What's up grown nation? Welcome back to the growth show. The number one resource for business growth. I'm here with my partners in growth. Eric Watkins and Jeff winners. How are you guys doing?

Eric Watkins:

Doing good feeling good. Ready to grow?

Unknown:

We got the fire today.

Eric Watkins:

Yeah, we do.

Scott Scully:

But before I think we should make some pics, ah, bugs picks we've and we've got some big college games this weekend.

Eric Watkins:

I don't condone gambling. No, no. And I would never. But if I did. My lock of the week is Washington money lie. Washington.

Jeff Winters:

The commander's Washington

Eric Watkins:

Huskies Do you hear? We're talking college football. He's an NFL guy. He doesn't understand college football. Alright, beat Oregon. There's no respect. They're coming in. They're not only going to cover the 14 point spread, which is ridiculous. They're gonna win. All right.

Scott Scully:

Oregon, Washington, you pick Washington pick Washington, Oregon, Washington.

Jeff Winters:

I also pick Washington.

Scott Scully:

I pick Oregon, which is going to totally screw things up. Right? Yeah. Neither one loss team in Washington would have to play a disaster, right? It's an absolute disaster. I'm going with Oregon. Okay. You're doing this being from Iowa. But Iowa and Michigan.

Eric Watkins:

Michigan to win the game for the people

Jeff Winters:

out there. They should know contextually. You're not historically great at choosing these.

Eric Watkins:

Sure. Yeah. This is not financial advice. No, no, no. Not fun at all. So like

Jeff Winters:

background? Yeah, not sure. Yeah, but

Scott Scully:

here Michigan's I hope I win so bad Michigan's plane would have to not take off for him to be not right about this one. Yeah, I

Jeff Winters:

think it's pretty safe. Yeah, the experts are feel like they're pretty clear cut on this. Yeah. I

Scott Scully:

would say that they're picking Michigan. Here's, I'm gonna throw one out there though. I think Iowa scores 14 points. Wow. Yeah. To write it down out there. But bet on the under Yeah, um,

Eric Watkins:

if they score 14 points and under hits, they basically won the game. Yeah. We got Alabama and Georgia.

Scott Scully:

This is a big one. And I'm going with Alabama, which will also totally screw things up. Because they're going to be in the SEC. have won loss outside of the SEC. In Texas. beat Georgia and not getting the playoff. That's gonna piss some people. I

Jeff Winters:

think. I think Scott's talking with his heart here.

Eric Watkins:

I think I think Alabama wins too. I like him. Oh, I like

Jeff Winters:

I don't think Georgia is ever going to lose again. Just ever. Those kids are

Eric Watkins:

they've won so many games.

Scott Scully:

The good news about playing Georgia is that they coached together for 10 years. Yeah, yeah. And you know, it's like, it's like his little son. Yeah. He He taught him everything that he knows they're both great coaches. But I think everybody just thinks that Georgia has a lock and they've won too many games in a row. At some point, you end up losing. And this weekend, tomorrow is one of them. So here's

Eric Watkins:

so let's just say craziness happens. I will beat Michigan, Alabama beats Georgia. Oregon, beats Washington. Texas beats Oklahoma State. You have Texas, Alabama, Ohio State, Michigan, now, Georgia, Oregon. All with one loss and you have Florida State as the only undefeated team. What what happens

Jeff Winters:

in that scenario? Who's the four best though?

Eric Watkins:

Well, you go usually into the SEC teams probably and you say Alabama, Georgia, and you probably say Oregon and then you pick Michigan or Ohio State probably Michigan because they want to actually Florida State out because that kid get hurt. If you want to do it, then it's not the fourth. You know, they're not one of the four best without Him and who did fleurs to beat? They beat LSU yeah, pretty bad. Right. And, you know, the ACC is a little weak. Yeah,

Jeff Winters:

it was good for a minute there. Yeah.

Scott Scully:

Finished with five losses, right.

Eric Watkins:

Yeah, North Carolina. sakru.

Jeff Winters:

Start with the stats. Yeah. Okay. I'm

Eric Watkins:

just he did some research before this. I hope that happens. They should have moved to the 12 team playoff earlier. And I think they should just say all right, we missed This up. We're gonna go eight teams this year, and we're gonna get the Mizzou tigers in there as well. Oh, wow.

Jeff Winters:

outside chance.

Eric Watkins:

It's funny. There's no scenario where Mizzou is the number nine team makes their way would

Jeff Winters:

you go and we should at some point get to the show, but would you go? Would you go back to like, would you go more back to what would you say? Hey, like Oregon and Washington?

Scott Scully:

No, I'd go Oregon, though. When they beat Washington.

Eric Watkins:

The committee is praying for Washington, Georgia and Michigan. And Florida State to lose. Yeah. But then I don't know if you pick Ohio State or if you pick Texas.

Jeff Winters:

You got to pick Ohio State. I mean, let me be clear on this. It's

Eric Watkins:

that's just family. Well, no, they both have huge fan bases nip

Jeff Winters:

and tuck for Yeah, the entire time. Yeah. So

Scott Scully:

you know who's not in the mix. Deion Sanders.

Eric Watkins:

Yeah, that episode didn't age. Well, I don't think you've won a game since we did it. Yeah, we

Jeff Winters:

screwed him. I

Scott Scully:

feel a little sad. I feel like he is. There gonna be a lot better next year. Oh, yeah. But anyway, rise and fall taller handles in the offseason.

Eric Watkins:

rise and fall with that set. You the more important stuff. The

Scott Scully:

LinkedIn,

Jeff Winters:

Sheriff, LinkedIn Sheriff,

Scott Scully:

the man catching all the lies, and oh my god, I gotta tell you, I've been on LinkedIn a lot this week. People are fucking liars. Like, it's worse than it's ever been. It's bad. It's bad. I'm sure you've caught some. Yeah.

Jeff Winters:

And people are continuing to poke me about people's opinions I don't think are right, Scott, you you're out there. You're doing your own version. You're not the sheriff. But you're certainly a patrol person.

Scott Scully:

Where there's so many there's so much going on that I feel like you do need a deputy. I feel like every once in a while I need to help police

Eric Watkins:

to your part, flatbed. Protect and serve.

Jeff Winters:

Scott's gonna get into so this is a double here, we're going to talk about it in the LinkedIn section as well as in the 5450 section. So we don't need to belabor it. But I think it's important from Jessica watts. And this is a person who got off LinkedIn a year ago and then came back. When I left LinkedIn a year ago, cold calling was dead. When I came back, like today, cold email was dead. But cold calling was magically resuscitated. The truth is the same today as it was then if a channel isn't performing, it's not the fault of the channel. It's the fault of your strategy.

Eric Watkins:

Nicely said I thought, truth. Truth.

Scott Scully:

Truth. Yep. I'll never forget 20 years ago when direct mail was dead, because we're in the automotive industry and motor vehicle registration information went private. And everyone's like, Oh, we're screwed. We got to stop direct, direct mail. And they just found another list right? found a different way to do direct mail. Email is different. The it's not as easy, obviously to spam people. You just have to take a different strategy. Yeah.

Jeff Winters:

That's great. I could ask questions about the podcast from time to time and often people know they see me with the Aviators on and the sheriff's cap and they go well, I get you patrol LinkedIn. But how do I do LinkedIn as a creator, what should I do? And I thought this was a nice truth from Stefan smoulders. Who writes, if you're just starting on LinkedIn, as probably a lot of our listeners are, all it takes is one to three months to start seeing some results. You don't need to post three times a day, you don't need to spend an hour a day writing you don't need to comment on 50 posts a day. You don't need to DM every single person on your connection list. LinkedIn doesn't need to be a part time job, you can still get leads with one to two hours a week, three to seven posts a week, automate connections with people who are in your buying base. Automate DMS, feature a lead magnet on your profile and write content with your target audience in mind that this was good. It makes it approachable. You don't have to spend 40 hours a week on it.

Eric Watkins:

Nicely said yeah, I'm honestly wondering how some people are even running a business with how much time they speak Spanish. It's like every comment Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding. So I truth.

Scott Scully:

I feel Yeah, truth. I do feel like with LinkedIn, it's easier and easier to see who's sending in an automated message. And it's very clear to see the person that took time to send you a specific message. So if they really targeted their audience, and they only spent you know, a few minutes a day sending a couple of messages to somebody very targeted with specific non automated messages, I think that they would have a lot of results. Since everything is automated, sure, LinkedIn.

Jeff Winters:

And now the lie, the lie, the lie, Bob, unpopular opinion, companies that deliberately focus on building company culture are usually the ones that struggle the most with company culture. get the basics right, the rest usually takes care of itself. Here's a recipe I found to be more most effective. In lieu of deliberately focusing on culture, all you have to do according to Bob, don't hire jerks, give everyone freedom and flexibility, build transparency, have hard conversations early and often. And no such thing as over communication. Basically, he's implying that if you do those five things, irrespective of how big or small your company is, you're going to have a great culture. Any true

Scott Scully:

I think if you had four to six people in a small office together, that were fired up about a mission, that you're building something together, then maybe that is the culture and you don't have to worry about it. I think when you start getting, I don't know, 50 plus, that there's just, you're more out of touch. Like you don't get to have conversations like you did when you're smaller with everybody. And then you get the telephone game going on. And stories are made up. And, you know, regardless of how important the work is that you're doing, it can go awry, if you're just not figuring out how to do things to build the culture bring people together, you know, continuing education, all that I just think it's a lie and a half. What was the best companies wouldn't do it?

Jeff Winters:

Well, and that's what I'm gonna get to what was the list? Doesn't matter?

Eric Watkins:

I just feel like the the biggest part that they're missing there is having people like, what is the purpose? Yeah. What are we all? Sorry?

Jeff Winters:

Don't hire jerks. Give everyone freedom and flexibility? be brutally transparent, have hard conversations early and often and no such thing as over communicate? Yeah.

Eric Watkins:

So I think the one of the biggest things they're missing is what is everyone there to do? Because I think you can create just a club of people. Yeah, they'd love work, they're coming in, they're hanging out. But at the end of the day, they're not learning, they're not growing, they're not moving towards something, they don't have the vision. That's great for only so long. And then, you know, it's just not going to last

Jeff Winters:

that this I don't think he's I scattered my suspicion is that he's a little bit thinking about smaller businesses. But the reason that I do this work, the reason that I pour in the time, is because that didn't say if you're a small company that says any company, and people read that shit, and they go, Oh, this is right. That's not right. Like Netflix published a many dozens of slides, culture deck, like go read about how Amazon thinks about their culture, and deliberately focuses on their culture and who they hire and how those people have to enhance the culture, it just, the culture will build itself or you will build it one of those two things will happen. And if you want the culture to be a particular way, not you're the CEO, but you the exec team, you the leadership team, you the company, you have to be very deliberate about how you do it.

Scott Scully:

Yeah, I just think about sports all the time when this comes up, and just the right programs and doing what they're doing to impact recruiting to get the best people and then you could have the very best team on the field. But without all the things to you know, get the not only the players, but the fans and involved and engaged. It's not same game. Why do you have the band? Why do you have the cheerleaders? Why do you have the videos on the board? Why do you play songs at certain time periods? Or why are you known for being tight end you or when you when you go through and tour the campus and you're hearing about the academics and you're like there's things that you have to do on purpose so that people realize it's actually there to get the best people in and get them engaged to do the good work. And I just I'm so tired of people thinking it's that easy, that you just hire good people that have a good cause and you tell them what you're trying to accomplish and it just happens. It's bullshit. It's hard work to keep people moving.

Eric Watkins:

That's the that's probably what I'm thinking about it more. That's the hardest thing is it's not easy. It go anywhere where there's a really good culture and they're doing things daily to advance the culture. It's not set it and forget it. I do these five things. That's great. That's the probably the worst lie about that message.

Unknown:

Some good ones

Jeff Winters:

not so good job, Sheriff. Good week.

Scott Scully:

Last night, I might have commented on LinkedIn and I did tag you did. So you know, take a look at that gross misrepresentation of the world out out there. We can talk about that at some point. Oh, he's coming up next week. Good luck as your deputy. If I run into somebody, I'm just gonna start tagging you, then they'll know. I just might be coming. It didn't just Jeff coming. It might be Scott and Eric coming in

Jeff Winters:

might be the deputies, you know, at this point on LinkedIn. And I don't want to belabor my section. But like at this point on LinkedIn, everybody in the title of what they do, you know, it's like, it used to just be like, I'm the CRO at abstract. But now it's on the CRO at abstract. And I'm a cat lover, and I'm a great father and like

Eric Watkins:

shouldn't I put that I do this? Yeah, you should. LinkedIn sheriff.

Jeff Winters:

Right? Just tonight is an idea. That's right.

Scott Scully:

All right. Good stuff. As always, thank you, Jeff. We're to the 50. For 50. Again, these are these are, we're rotating through the 50 things that we would put in place. Every time we started a business. These are 50 things that we think have the biggest impact on our success. This isn't theory, we didn't drag it out of textbooks. We do this shit all the time every day. I know a lot of you do as well. Some of you don't. Now, if you were to listen on LinkedIn, you definitely wouldn't be doing this topic we're going to talk about today because it's dead. Apparently, it's going away. You're screwed, right? But we're gonna talk about the cold call the cold outreach, calling somebody that you don't know, trying to get a meeting to grow your business. But I think there's a couple of important stats to talk about that people out there in the landscape just seem to ignore 69, almost 70% of people got their current vendor, because of a cold call.

Eric Watkins:

That's insane. That's a wild stuff that is wild. So 69%

Scott Scully:

are literally working with their current vendor partner, whatever it may be, because they accepted a cold call. Okay. There's something else that's pretty important. Over 40% of buyers said No, at least four times before they said yes, right. I'm attaching that to the cold call. Because not only do you need to make the cold calls, but you need to continue to call which like a good portion of the sales rep population doesn't make the next call at all. Right? So you just need this, this cold outreach process. And then this is pretty important. It's just a small little stat, I think I got it from CrunchBase. The company that makes cold calls, grow has a gross by 42%, more 42%. More. Like, that's like if there was a pill that was out there that says if you take this pill, you'll live 42% longer. Right, or if you take this pill, you are going to be in, you know, lose 42% more weight, or whatever it may be, whatever your passion would be a 42% greater chance as a football team to win your games, or your win 42% More games. If you do this should have given it's that exact. Yeah, that is the look, everything else is not predictable. You you're going to run out of referrals at some point, you can get good at asking for them. But you're not going to get as many as when you open up shop and maybe pull a couple of old customers and you're the one actually asking for referrals yourself. You're going to hang the shingle, you're going to get into it. And then you're going to try all of these things to try to drive leads to your business. None of them as predictable as, here's my customer profile. I'm going to outreach, do outreach, set meetings and talk to those people live one on one. Everybody keeps wanting to shove the cold call to the side, or the quality email for that matter. Cuz it's getting harder. It is harder. It used to take like 3.8 attempts to get somebody on the phone. It now takes eight plus it is harder. You need to do it. Emails totally changed. In the next 12 months, email screwed you, you can't do cold email outreach anymore. Bullshit, you're just going to do it differently. Right? Right. But there are channels that make sense, you've got to talk to people in your target market that you don't know, over and over again, shoving them into your pipeline, so that you actually have enough people to protect your business and to grow. The cold call is not going anywhere. It's not dead. And in fact, everything's getting so hard. Google algorithms are insane. We do it. We do all of those things here. We we create content, we spend money on Google, we do social advertising. We reach out on LinkedIn, we send direct mail, we do radio, and TV, and frickin trade shows. What works the best. The cold call, yeah, yeah, the freaking cold call now am I bias, because we actually do this for a living? Maybe I am. But we're gonna start talking about stats, I think a lot of them so that you out there, realize that you need to separate the function of setting appointments from your salespeople, at least to some point, your salespeople should always do X amount of outreach, but you need to have an SDR function. And it's unless you're sizable enough, where you're going to bring somebody in that actually knows how to manage the cold call process, and you're gonna build a department, you got to outsource the shit. You just you do. But you got to cold call or you're not going to grow. Yes, you can become a $1 million business. Yeah, maybe you can come three $4 million, you want to go to 20, you want to go to 50, you want to get to 100. You're doing the cold call. Right? You just are the big substantial companies have significant departments doing cold outreach. So I don't know what the madness is that's going on. You can't buy the 18th piece of software to double qualified the target market, so that you can get salespeople, you know, the best leads, because then you'd miss out on all of the branding. That happens when you're making phone calls, and you're leaving voicemails, and you're sending emails and doing that multi approach. You need to call a significant amount of people all the time. And I'm tired of hearing about how it's a waste of time. Why is it a waste of time? How could it ever be a waste of time leaving a message for somebody that is a decision maker at a qualified company? Right? Or? Or how's it a waste of time to find out if they're in your target market? Whether or not they should be going forward? And I'm so tired of hearing that you like I need to do so much research that I need to figure out who picks up the phone? How the fuck do you know that? Because you did a little research overseas for a couple of weeks, and they didn't pick up the phone in that time period. Are you kidding me? By the way, in our cleansing process, a big group of people that you all that are doing that would leave out come 50% of our appointments, right? And we get call ins, or they never call us back. But we call them we emailed them. We're connected on LinkedIn. And then they're freaking sales rep gets a call. Are you kidding me? And guess what decision makers change all the time. Right? Or their situation changes all the time. So they didn't pick up last week. So all of a sudden, they're not worth calling. Really. That's amateur hour. We've been doing this for 30 years. 30 years, we've been doing cold outreach. It's never going away. It's the future. I'm a little passionate about Yeah.

Eric Watkins:

Fired up. I love it the future. Yeah. See, Matt. And here's the thing about the cold call is what are you doing in marketing in general, sales, development, marketing, you are trying to get in front of a company. That's a fit for your business that you could potentially sell your services to. And you're trying to get their attention, and you're trying to build a relationship. And like you said, Scott, there's no, when you when you balance, cost, reach and relationship, the perfect medium is cold calling. And the benefit is like when people say it dies or it's dying. Great, because that just means that's less people call in when we're reaching out and talking to businesses. And so these channels are going to ebb and flow but they're never going fully away. Like you mentioned with the direct mail. I think that's a great example. I just checked my mailbox yesterday I had 10 pieces of direct mail. I don't think it's that. I think it's still going out but because

Scott Scully:

I'm moving, I'm moving and I got a direct mail piece from an effing mover, I think that's probably they probably hit me dead on I need a mover, you

Eric Watkins:

need all the channels, you know, you need all the channels. But if you really want to predict your sales, we've done it in all different ways for ourselves, and we continue to come back. The best dollars we spend in our sales enablement is cold calling there.

Scott Scully:

I'm not saying depending on budget, that you're not doing some of the other things to drive leads in. And then and then of course, that'd be your warmer call, right? They came to you. They're interested, they're asking questions, and everybody's like, warm calls, warm calls, you can't do cold calls. Well, you should absolutely have warm calls. But guess what, Google changes their algorithm and you go from getting X number of pitches one month, to half the next month, then you tweak it and you catch back up or maybe to supplement you go spend double what you were spending from a paid perspective to keep the lead volume up. You want to protect predict how many new sales meetings you're going to have. You've got to have a cold outreach part of your process, and it can never go away.

Jeff Winters:

I want to take a different angle and talk to a specific audience. The audience I want to talk to are the CEOs, the owners, the VPs of sales, the CROs who have salespeople who come to them and say, Scott, I've been doing this a long time, cold calling doesn't work. Let me run my process. Let me do what I do. I know how to do this, let me do what I do. Because I've had people I had somebody I met at Starbucks not too long ago, he said, we got this sales guy. He's telling us cold calling didn't work in our industry. And I said, That guy's fucking wrong. It works in every industry, they just don't want to do it. And I get it. There's alternatives where the alternative to I don't want to do it. I'm not saying you got to make them do it. Fine. outsource it. But don't listen to your sales. People who say cold calling doesn't work, because it does. They just don't want to do it. And you've got to resist the urge to give in on that you as a business owner, have to make difficult decisions, unpopular decisions, VP sales CRM, you have to make it difficult, unpopular decisions. And one of those decisions is you need three to four times as much pipeline as you need in revenue. If you need a million dollars in revenue this year, you need $4 million in pipeline. Simple math, how are you going to get it? How are you gonna get it? I come back into it with cold calls. How are you going to get it with somebody that goes, let me do my thing. Well, what's your thing I got a process, oh, great, you got a process. Let's do this, instead of your process, make 100 cold calls a day. Try that process.

Eric Watkins:

Here's the other part to think about with you use the stat 69% come from a cold call. So what's happening in that other 31% It's either a referral of probably somebody they know that you're probably not going to get that business or you were always going to get that business, or it's people that are you're going to be in a competitive situation, they're out shopping the market, looking at multiple people, they're going to beat you up on price. And you don't know for sure if you're going to win the deal, those leads you're getting to your website, they're not just looking at your website, I can promise you that. When you those 69%, you have the opportunity to get them really early, before they even know they're going to be buying your services. And you can build that relationship and you can learn their business and you can understand it. So when they have the realization of need, and that comes up, you're the only person right helps your profit margins. And if you just that's so it's not it's cold calling, but you got to do it right. You know, you got to build it's building relationships.

Scott Scully:

So like in the in the car business in the past, we were we were doing this right we were doing this years ago. And now the other thing is like, Whoa, I just need the perfect lead as a salesperson. So cold calling doesn't work, because that doesn't give me the perfect lead potentially. Right. So I can think about sitting out at one of the dealerships and and I was there and they're too small, right? I'm in Texas. But the guy just got to that dealership. They were small. He just came from a dealership that close that sold 400 cars a month. I was asking questions. He knew the whole market. He's like, hey, not now. But man, I really appreciate you coming out and having the conversation. Well, the owner of that dealership absolutely trusted this person and knew that they were going to grow it from the small dealership that it was that was a customer five or six months later, but I got so much like data from him because he was running some of the more significant stores. And, in fact, I got another meeting out of it. He picked up the phone, because I went out and talked to him, and called one of the dealerships he used to work at and I picked up a customer that way. Give me a break. Like, make the calls, talk to people. Build your tribe, build your network, ask questions. How could that possibly be a waste of time? Okay, it's not. You hit on it. People just don't want to do it.

Jeff Winters:

I want to do it. It's not

Eric Watkins:

easy. No,

Jeff Winters:

no, it's easy. Yeah. And nobody's saying it's fun. It can be.

Unknown:

Remember the ab roller. Remember, that's like

Jeff Winters:

Chuck Norris.

Eric Watkins:

I can. Jeff does not remember that.

Jeff Winters:

I'll tell you what will be one of my house this afternoon. All

Scott Scully:

right. You know what, okay, John swepco, who's got like an eight pack and he's older than I am RVP sales just for he's doing? He's doing frickin crunches. You know, what I mean, is that there's been so many fitness tools that have been in and out. Yeah, we're like Jeff's diets, right that he goes through all the time will come person that isn't in ridiculous shape. Does the hard work? Yep. They none of us write that. But I'm dedicated to eating the right things, drinking the right things, sleeping the right amount of time and doing the really hard work in the gym. Nobody wants to, like do that shit. Like nobody wants to do the hard stuff.

Eric Watkins:

No, everybody wants the easy way. And the best investments you make in life are in yourself. Yes. Like that's, and that's not easy. Write that down.

Jeff Winters:

I'm not in bad shape. I'm just saying. Speak for yourself. No.

Scott Scully:

I'm not saying that I'm in better shape than you are. I'm just saying. Well, you could you could if you wanted to. You could

Jeff Winters:

do that. Now it sounds like I'm

Scott Scully:

not. I'm just saying the three of us are no John swepco. And John swepco puts more grueling hours into sculpting his body than we do you get in what you are you get out what you put in. Right. You're the your your sales pipeline is the lifeline of your business period. And there's no way to fill it without cold calling.

Eric Watkins:

Well, and now the thing with John is like, he's got a he's not spending five hours in the gym every day. Like he's gotten himself to a point. He knows his routine. He knows exactly what to do. Yeah, your sales reps or STRS can do the same thing with cold calling. You just get into you get into your rhythm.

Scott Scully:

Good point. Love it. We beat the shit out of there. We didn't I mean, I'm feeling it.

Eric Watkins:

I'm kind of a big topic.

Scott Scully:

So we're gonna head over to some growth gold.

Eric Watkins:

Oh, yeah. Let me hear the pickaxe. There we go. I was going deep into the minds this week, deep into the minds. And if it goes right along with what Scott was saying, if you're if you are going to cold call, you are going to set appointments. And it's not an appointment. If it doesn't show up. Right? You got to get that person to show up. That is the key. And I went and analyzed for our sales team. We looked at 9528 meetings that we've scheduled for our sales team. 9520 How many people out there you think have scheduled 9520? People see me pat

Jeff Winters:

myself on my back? Yeah, look at you. Let's look at you. Not me, but that's my that's your number. That's that's your number. Yeah, they did it. Hell

Eric Watkins:

yeah. Hell yeah. So we looked at that. And then we took all these appointments and when they were scheduled, and by the way, we're looking at first meeting show, right, because a lot of our appointments, you know, things come up. We have to reschedule. We have to move them. But this is first meeting show, right? So we looked at day of the week and time of the day, and I just want to run you through some of the the key points here. directionally overall, avoid middle of the day. 1130 to 130. Kind of makes sense around lunchtime. People leaving for lunch. Want to go to lunch early, coming back late for lunch, missing meetings. Avoid the 1130 to 130 time slot. Avoid Tuesdays. This was something that was surprising for me. Avoid Tuesday's Wait,

Jeff Winters:

I cannot wait. I'm like so excited to talk about this. Yeah. Why do you get passionate about avoiding Tuesdays so passionate? I'm like freakishly Pat. I'm not messing around. I'm actually passionate about avoiding Tuesdays. I'm sorry. Yeah, I didn't get any preview though. I'd

Eric Watkins:

love to get Yeah, I'd love to get your your insight there on what you think the psychology is behind it. And then right here, and then nine o'clock. Eight, nine and four o'clock. best times to schedule a meeting. So like I'll give you the specifics days of the week ranked Monday Thursday for Friday, Wednesday, Tuesday. So we talked about Tuesday, the worst day. Monday is actually the best day. A lot of people are like I don't want to schedule on Monday because people are coming into the office or whatever. Monday, my theory doesn't your whole week's not thrown off, you can, you're more likely to stick to the schedule that you have. Best time to the day we talked about it, eight, 930 and four, and then actually 130 Sneaking it in. After that lunch, give them a little bit of time to get back. Top forges hottest days and timeframes like these are these really jumped Monday at 11am. So like just if you're out there and you're an SDR you're running a team, just write these damn times down and make sure they're booked before you book anything else. Monday at 11am. Thursday at 4pm. Wednesday at 4pm. Thursday at 130. And Monday at 135 Hottest times to schedule meetings. You heard it here first, you heard it here first. I mean, this is not a small sample size. This is 9000 meetings. And we're gonna run this on our partners as well. This is for our sales team. And then the worst times of the day, you're gonna go through the basket talking about the worse. We talked about from a time standpoint, over lunch, but let me give you the top four buckets to avoid Tuesdays at one o'clock Thursdays at 12 o'clock, Tuesdays at 11 o'clock and Wednesdays at three o'clock. I know I threw a lot out out there. listen back to it, write it down. Moral of the story if you if you want to keep it simple. Avoid Tuesdays, avoid 1130 to 130. And shoot for the eight, nine and four o'clock buckets throughout the week. And Friday bat. People say don't schedule meetings on Friday, everybody pushes it. Friday is better than Wednesday or Tuesday. So keep that in mind. You you.

Scott Scully:

If someone's really high transaction and doing a lot of meetings, you're not saying don't do Tuesday's period, you're just saying if you can pick. Like let's just say they're setting 10 meetings for the entire week, right? You'd pick those top five times first. Yeah. And if you're only doing 10 meetings in the entire week, you would avoid Tuesday. If you're doing 40, you wouldn't.

Eric Watkins:

The reality is people aren't very intentional with this, you know, they're just throwing out random times that come to their head but and you know, they're closing assertively and get into dates out there, typically. But like, yeah, if you can, if you can schedule in those buckets. And I think, you know, like, overall, there's probably, you know, I'm sure you can get people to show up at Tuesday at 11 o'clock, but stay out of the middle of the day. It's like that the logic behind that makes sense. And then Jeff's gonna tell us why Tuesdays make sense?

Jeff Winters:

I am but before I said before we say don't schedule on those times. That's not the way I way I think about it. So this this date is from from the team that I run. It's be really sensitive to the fact that you know, Tuesday's people are gonna show up so what are you going to do like every Tuesday? I man I got no show Tuesday. Here we go. Not not here. We're not gonna have no show Tuesday today, who didn't accept an invite? Who are we follow up calling and texting this morning? Who are we going to be really intentional and deliberate about making sure that we're sending them great collateral before the meeting, that that to me is the message not don't book book, but I mean, if you can book in the ideal zones, but if you're scheduling, ideally, your sales reps are having a number of demos day, you're not just gonna screw it take Tuesday off now be really intentional about what happens. Here's why Tuesday is a pain in the ass. And I knew this was coming. And I had not seen this particular dataset. Because it's so easy to schedule a meeting you don't want to show up to on a Tuesday. On Thursday. I don't want to central Friday. I'm out. Definitely not Monday. Screw it. Tuesday, Friday. I scheduled for Monday. I got a big weekend. Let's put that on Tuesday. Monday. Let's do Tuesday. That is why Tuesday's the throwaway day. Nobody's if you if it's Wednesday, and you go yeah, when can you meet you meet Friday? It's like hell yeah. Like I'll meet on Friday. Like, I know, I don't want to do this. But like I'm squeezing it in. So it's important to me. Thursday. It's like, you know, Friday Eve. Maybe I'll do it. There's any time I don't want to take them even Wednesday, the previous shoot, you know, what, am I gonna do it tomorrow? Yeah, scheduled on Tuesday.

Eric Watkins:

I like it. So we're gonna run this up. This is 9000 appointments. We're going to run this for 90,000 appointments, and directionally we can compare and go over but yeah, virtual meetings for sales and marketing.

Scott Scully:

All the STRS that are out in the world that are apparently doomed. Yeah, you can go share that gold

Eric Watkins:

make it easier on yourself. You know,

Jeff Winters:

actually want to have a follow up meeting with you on this. Eric, can we do 1130 on Tuesday?

Eric Watkins:

I'm actually booked. I booked I got a couple bullshit meetings.

Jeff Winters:

Yeah, get some other meetings I'm not gonna go to.

Scott Scully:

That's awesome. Well, We're calling in the right buckets. And now we've got meetings that are showing. What's your sales team doing with those?

Jeff Winters:

Good. What

Unknown:

advice do you have scheduled

Jeff Winters:

for Tuesday? Scheduled

Unknown:

now that you're on a? No, you do that. Now that you're on a Monday. sales call?

Jeff Winters:

You know, you do that Friday? What do you wanna meet that? Screw it Tuesday?

Unknown:

Well, they didn't even get me on the phone. No, nobody

Jeff Winters:

got you on the phone. Well, they did last week, but then they put a fire emoji next to your name that you pick up the phone all the time, then a bazillion people called you and then you stop picking up the phone. silliness.

Scott Scully:

I wasn't? I wasn't? Phone ready? No. Yeah.

Jeff Winters:

So. So now, we've got this amazing set of leads. You are about to meet with them ideally, on a Monday at, you know, eight o'clock per Eric's point, which I thought was great. What are you gonna do Monday at 11? Monday? What do you do with them. And I think that there are two camps of people, there are a camp of people that that for some reason, don't believe that every single sales interaction requires a visual to help people get it. And then there's a camp of people that that know that, that you do have to have a visual every time you have a sales call. And I I know now that you must have a visual I came from a world where we didn't sell with slide decks or demos, whatever slide deck live demo inside your product, whatever it is, you must have something because you have so many visual learners out there. And I want to focus on the slide presentation. Because I think people put together the slide deck and give it no thought. And I just want to share at this company, we spend hours and days and nights thinking about the slide deck and I want to talk to you about extinct there's some misconceptions. The first misconception is the slide decks gotta be four slides wrong. It does not, it does not doesn't mean you need to spend 40 minutes on every slide. But having a variety of slides is not a bad thing, our current slide deck because 15 slides in it, like it rocks and rolls and moves. Second Second thing I want to share about the slide deck. You need to change it more frequently than you think you got these companies out there that have had the same slide deck for their sales presentation for a year. Doesn't matter if it's right or wrong. The salespeople will rejuvenate, they will reinvigorate, they will rise from the ashes of giving boring, ask demos, if you just give them a new slide deck,

Eric Watkins:

keeps them on their toes Sure

Jeff Winters:

does. And you know what else, put your price on that thing. Put a range, put a per seat. Don't leave me wondering, I already didn't get the price from your website, I already didn't get the price from your person I talked to already didn't get a price from you yet. Put the damn price on that thing. I have this and have a slide deck for crying out loud. I'm a visual person.

Scott Scully:

I couldn't agree more. And for me it it it not only shows you where you're at, in the conversation for the sales rep. Right, because like for us, we have a lot of things that we need to cover. And if someone's doing it without to think about the things you need to say about data or cleansing or intro or how the assets come in, or the portal or pricing options or whatever, like to keep that all in your head and try to have a consistent flow is pretty impossible. Yep. But I also like what it does for the prospect. You kind of know where you're at in the conversation, right? Especially if you have an agenda up front. It's like, okay, here's the agenda. And now I know that I'm in this part. I know where I'm at in Jeff's presentation. But, man, what a great guide for salespeople. Okay, I've got the third slide up, I know what I need to accomplish, before I come off of it. And I'm really big on that. Each slide is I need to have it make it easier for me to get Eric to understand what it is that I'm saying on that slide, right like I need, I need to make it easier for them to understand how we put our data together. Right. I needed to get me to get Eric to to make a commitment to me that that's not his current state. And that it would solve a problem that he cares about. And then, you know, before I get off that slide, you know, I'm getting a commitment about how if that was done, my future state would be better. And if you think about each and then Another thing I should add is if in any time and explaining what's on that slide, if there's a story, you know, where you can sell above the product and make it a little bit easier to connect, then that's good. But you should build your slide deck, it should have an agenda. And then each slide, you know, along with your sales, scripting, you should say, Okay, this slide needs to make it easier for them to understand this part of the product or service helped me get commitment that this is not current state. And that if it was, I'd be better off as a business. And then I move to the next slide. And another important thing to say is, if they don't agree, don't go to the next slide. That way, you're not having all these beautiful presentations, where there's not a whole lot of interaction, you get to the end, they're like, Yeah, that was great. That's pretty interesting. Okay, yeah, call me back. Next week, we'll talk about it No, like this should be. This conversation should be chunky and not sometimes not always great. Because each slide has a purpose. And if you don't accomplish what you're trying to accomplish on that slide, then you don't go to the next slide, or the next part of your sales, conversation. That's why you have a deck, you can't do that without a deck. But a lot of people have a deck, they hand it. Well, this is the old if you're face to face, they may hand it to him. Or they maybe they send a link, or maybe they put the presentation on the website. And they're like, follow along with me. Know, you're like, on Zoom, controlling each slide, controlling the conversation. And you have a purpose on each slide. A lot of people have decks, just app decks, they don't know how to frickin use them yet.

Eric Watkins:

Yeah, the it's the whole what you're talking about where how many times have you heard some might get off a pitch like I crushed it? Oh, yeah. Oh, it was the best pitch ever. And then crickets, you never hear back from the customer. Because there was no engagement. It wasn't rough. It wasn't Rocky, it wasn't choppy in between. And you didn't get that feedback from them or that objection out. And I'll talk about the other side of it is, you know, I've bought services before where I talk to a sales rep and I have one idea of the product didn't run me through a deck, maybe didn't see a demo, just, you know, based on the the scope, and it's not a huge investment. And let's try it out. And then you get to the implementation team. It's like, what the hell is this, this is what the sales rep just told me, right? This allows us to have very good continuity, from our sales, to our implementation to our ultimate fulfillment of the product, which, if it helps your sales and helps your retention, it's probably a pretty good thing to be doing as a business.

Scott Scully:

I want to throw something out here because I feel so passionately about this. And then we can use it as a little kind of fun story or case study going forward. I love this. Like I would never, ever sell anything without a deck. And we don't usually do this, I don't usually say you should use us for this. But we're freaking good at this. And if I'm gonna brag about anything, I can build these things. To the first person that reaches out. We'll do one for free. I love that. Because then I want to talk about it. Because then I want to know how you used it. I want to talk to you about how to use it. And then we want to bring you on the show. And we want you to talk about it. I'm that confident that it's gonna change your sales process. If you do that. Let's do that. Get

Eric Watkins:

that. Get that is that one first live offer.

Jeff Winters:

I was with the will give you a slide deck but you can't let anybody on the gross show.

Eric Watkins:

Well, we'll vet them out. No, it's the first week you won't know

Jeff Winters:

we want first person that's a big deal. That's why I'm saying first

Scott Scully:

person, first person that reaches out can do error correction S C O TT at abstract M g.com. Abstract with a K, a B S T R A ktmg.com. Reach out email me directly the very first one that does, I'm doing this for free. I will work with you on it directly. I will coach you on how to use it. And then we will bring you on the show one or two months later and you can talk about how you use it and the success that you have. I love

Eric Watkins:

it. There we go. There should give out some free every time now sweet. All right. But the only thing that's better than that. No, yeah. We're here is we've arrived the last section the only thing that's better than free gifts. Thank you. Thank you. I was waiting for that trumpet. So you know we try to hit the hard hitting topics at the end of this show. And it's really what the people tune in for they took really fast forward to hear my voice at the end, not my first voice the second time they hear my voice. And they want to know, they want to know. And what they want to know specifically now is around hygiene. And I know it can be a little gross, but we're talking to a lot of business owners and sales reps who are spinning, they're getting up early. They're staying up late. They're traveling. And hygiene doesn't typically make it to the top of the list. But it's important, and people need to know the bare minimums when it comes to this. And we're talking specifically about the toothbrush. How long should you keep the same toothbrush? How long should you keep the same toothbrush? Scott, we'll start with you.

Scott Scully:

I mean, two weeks, Max,

Eric Watkins:

two weeks. That's a quick, that's a quick turnaround.

Scott Scully:

By the way, there's some people that are out there with the automatic toothbrushes or whatever, right that they plug in the heads or whatever, I hope to God they

Eric Watkins:

I see. I've seen people who don't switch those things out though. Those get nasty.

Scott Scully:

They lay it on the counter. The toothbrush turns upside down the bristles around the place where you're washing your hands. Some people are doing it in the frickin shower. Their toothbrush that's at the bottom of the shower. Who knows what they're doing in the shower. It's disgusting. We then people share, then people share who

Jeff Winters:

people share no one shares people share toothbrush. That's disgusting. Some people share producer, you share toothbrush. I have like once or regularly you go out with somebody and no I don't know. Didn't expect to be Oh

Eric Watkins:

no, it's really not though. Like would you share a toothbrush with your wife? I would Oh,

Jeff Winters:

it's disgusting. I'll share my life with her. I won't share my toothbrush whether

Unknown:

you've had your tooth for how long,

Jeff Winters:

long time? How long? I was embarrassed about this when you guys were talking about the weakness sometimes we talked about this pre show sometimes we don't this is like an organic conversation. years

Unknown:

ago. Oh my god. This

Eric Watkins:

same toothbrush. Like the same bristles? Yeah. That is discussed. I

Jeff Winters:

didn't think so until now. You're talking about it. Now? I

Eric Watkins:

am. I have the feel like I'm always in the middle between you two. I'm always in the middle mind. Easy, easy strategy. When you go on vacation. You don't bring it back. And when you're sick, you get a new one. That's it.

Jeff Winters:

I do feel I feel stupid about this one. It is now obvious, because I didn't think about it. I was like how often if changement I never think about it, it's like I got the same one. And it's it's like black too. So it's like fully black. So like you wouldn't see schmutz on it. You know? I don't know that you see bacteria or whatever the

Scott Scully:

American Dental Association recommends every three months.

Jeff Winters:

Wow, I'm way late on that. Every

Unknown:

three months have have I

Eric Watkins:

known you longer than is your toothbrush older than how long you've known me. I've

Jeff Winters:

my bristles on my toothbrush are like older than my kid.

Unknown:

Do you have a lot of calories?

Jeff Winters:

I have I think I have to I think that's genetic. I don't care what the ADA says. I think that's a genetic

Scott Scully:

or the dentist who's doing marketing and filling things that don't really care which totally happens

Jeff Winters:

no yeah, that's no no no, I and my father in law is my dentist he wouldn't even do it for free anyway so there's no incentive to give me cavities I have to but I don't feel great about my teeth. That's the question Do you

Scott Scully:

know but I like I I changed my toothbrush a lot

Jeff Winters:

about what's your floss situation?

Scott Scully:

I floss a lot. I don't floss a lot and somehow go to the dentist and like to backup I guess what you're saying? Some people get a lot of cavities. Some people don't. I go to the dentist and they tell me I'm doing a nice job flossing and I don't floss which is I don't know how that happens. But

Jeff Winters:

nice. Do you cop to it? Do you go to dinner? Sorry, sister. I'm not done.

Scott Scully:

I floss a couple of times the week before I go into the I should that by the way. That's gross. Yeah. That is Gus. But I will say and I could be on my teeth. I brushed the shit out of my teeth or beat the crap out of my brush.

Jeff Winters:

I'm telling you though, if you floss, you got food from a year ago coming up on that. Really

Scott Scully:

because I go to the dentist. I go to the dentist. Do you go to the dentist? Oh, sounds like the dentist. Okay. When I go in there, they tell me I'm doing a good job flossing. So I clearly don't have the stuff that's in

Eric Watkins:

there. If I had to argue Jeff's point, you could argue that every time you put the toothpaste on the toothbrush it actually cleans the toothbrush as well.

Jeff Winters:

I don't think you How could you possibly argue that that's idiotic? That's like the opposite of what actually happened. The sharing the toothbrush thing though, just for a second. That really makes me bristle no pun like whoa you were saving that why wasn't where do you keep disgusting, huh?

Eric Watkins:

Where do you keep your on top of his toy lockbox?

Jeff Winters:

Yeah. But it might save a very I have a clean area where I kept not not rubbing it on my shoe.

Unknown:

But as it go in something. No, it's exposed.

Jeff Winters:

Trust me, I'm gonna go home and expose to Yeah, I'm gonna burn it now. What do you do with it?

Eric Watkins:

What do you put it? You got a box? Don't you keep it in a case?

Scott Scully:

I just I have it. i For whatever reason, you know, the travel Dopp kits, whatever. I haven't buy my sink and I lay it in there.

Eric Watkins:

Yeah, but you don't you put it you don't put it in a case.

Unknown:

Yeah, should yeah, but then you should clean the case. Yeah,

Jeff Winters:

nobody wants that's why I wrap mine and toilet paper when I travel. I don't put it in and things like that. You don't do that. Do you? I'm saying what's. What's the difference?

Eric Watkins:

That's disgusting. You're we got to end this before something else comes out.

Jeff Winters:

Do you think that's gross? Seriously,

Eric Watkins:

I think that is gross. And it seems like you'd have little pieces of toilet paper all over your toothbrush and you're brushing your teeth.

Jeff Winters:

Now you don't know you're like misrepresenting physics.

Eric Watkins:

All right, yeah.

Scott Scully:

Great episode. I think we went a little long but some passionate topics or top topics we're passionate about. Remember we offered one free sales deck please take advantage of that. We can't wait to tell you what happens once our one lucky. Grow showing us using that deck out the marketplace. We love talking to you. Let's grow

Eric Watkins:

let's grow let's grow.

Unknown:

The grow show is sponsored by creative sweets. Big agency flavor bite size price.

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Eric Watkins

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Jeff Winters

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