How to Sell Podcast: Make How You Sell, Why You Win

Jeff Swan [00:00:00]:
This is why they say there's no such thing as bad press because even if it's bad, it gets their attention, it gets them thinking. And now if it is really off, they're thinking critically.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:00:11]:
Welcome back to another episode of the How to Sell podcast. If you're a first time listener, thank you for jumping on and checking out this podcast. If you're a long time listener, thank you very much for the support and for allowing me to have a platform to share some ideas and thoughts when it comes to the world of platform to share some ideas and thoughts when it comes to the world I'm selling. But I just wanted before we get into today's guest and before we get into today's topic, because this topic is gonna be a great topic where we're gonna break down some tactics that will help you prospect better and and generate more qualified pipeline for yourself. But before we get into it, I want you to think of the pipeline. Right? The pipeline is fundamentally 3 key stages that we as sales professionals need to be managing. We've got that top of funnel. Right? The top of funnel net new creation.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:00:51]:
It's a portion of the funnel that is absolutely critical that if we don't put things in, we have nothing to progress, which is the second stage of the funnel. Right? It's deal progression. So we create, we progress, and we ultimately close. But for many of us in sales, we aren't spending all of our time managing the pipeline. There's a whole bunch of other stuff that we have to do. And sometimes, even when you start the day with the best intentions, the intention of, right, when I start the day, I've got my prospecting list, I'm gonna go hit those target accounts that I've been researching, but then all top of that. And then you might see a Slack message, or and you're like, alright, I've got to get on top of that. And then you might see a Slack message or a Teams message or a LinkedIn message from somebody that's needing something from you.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:01:33]:
You're like, oh, okay. I've got to get that too. Then you might have someone from accounts, somebody busting your because a client that you brought in isn't getting back to them or isn't paying their bill. And then on top of all of that, you've got all the other things that are happening in the hybrid work world, things at home, could be school ringing, could be a whole variety of things. And before we know it, the best intention that we had to spend time prospecting our target list, all of a sudden, we have all these other conflicting priorities. And if you're hearing the story and going, man, that that does sound like a a day in the life, it does sound like some of the things that I have to work through, it's absolutely okay because a lot of us find ourselves in that position. But I think what's really important is that we have to be able to find the discipline to go right. There is a nonnegotiable activities that I need to work on every single day, the revenue raising activities that is pipeline creation, and that's why this month's all about pipeline creation.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:02:23]:
It's all about prospecting. And just as important it is deal progression and working on opportunities to close, we've got to be constantly be focused on filling that top of funnel, and it requires discipline. It has to be a nonnegotiable activity, and you've heard me talk about this before, the the nonnegotiable revenue raising activity, the tasks that you need to focus on to ensure that the deals that you are working on, the deals that you are trying to close, there is always a portion of those deals that just won't close. And even if we followed every step in the process, we've done everything in our power to create the business case, to get consensus, to generate a significant return on investment for our our prospects and our clients, there is always a portion of the bottom of the funnel opportunities that don't close. And that's okay when you have other opportunities coming through the funnel, and this is why we need to have a really healthy pipeline. We really need to be thinking about the time that we're allocating on creating, progressing, and closing. And as we move into different themes this year, we're gonna focus on different ways, different topics around progressing. How do you progress opportunities? How do you make sure that opportunities don't go sales? Don't become like that loaf of bread that you might have left out the bench for a few hours, and before you know it, you're like, this is not edible.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:03:36]:
You know, how do we make sure that deals don't become stale or moldy or go off, and therefore, you just can't progress them? Because pipeline health is life when it comes to selling. Just a quick interruption to let you know about a free resource that Luigi and I wanna hand over to you. This resource has helped lift close won rates to over 73% on average. Plus, you'll get our b to b sales newsletter that drops weekly where you can learn what it takes to build a repeatable sales process and creating a pipeline full of qualified deals. To get this resource, just go to Forum, or click the link in this episode and sign up today. This week's topic, we we are talking to Jeff Swan, who's an outbound sales coach, who's gonna talk about some of the tactics that he's employed, some of the tactics that he delivers with his clients to help them get more from their prospecting efforts. Because, yes, it is a challenge. Like, we can't deny that prospecting, it's not the funnest role in the world.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:04:41]:
Nobody likes to call people, get rejected, not get response, get ghosted. Impacts the way we feel about ourselves. It's not a fun process. But the reality is there are things that you can do to improve the outcomes from the activity that you put in place, and that's what this week's episode is all about. Welcome to the show, Jeff.

Jeff Swan [00:05:03]:
Hey. Thanks for having me, Luigi. Great to be here.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:05:06]:
Man. I'm really pumped. I mean, you're everywhere at the moment. Every every time I open my LinkedIn, I see a post of yours. If it's not with from your account, it's from somebody else's account. And who better to have than yourself, mate, who who is out there helping sellers find ways to turn their prospecting activities into net new opportunities. So thanks for coming on the show.

Jeff Swan [00:05:25]:
Yeah. No worries. I'm excited. It's it's prospecting month every day in my in in my world.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:05:32]:
Always be prospecting. Absolutely, mate. But before we dive deep into the topic of, you know, how sellers can really turn their prospecting activity mindset improved results from that from that time that they're investing, we'd love to learn a bit more about you and and tell us how you started in this wacky world of selling.

Jeff Swan [00:05:49]:
Yeah, for sure. So what's interesting about me is my my career started. I was really a huge artist growing up. So I wanted to be an artist, and then I and then it kind of pivoted into graphic design. And then and then I found advertising. So it was kind of like this artistic kind of method towards marketing. Okay. So I ended up going to marketing school because I liked all of those things.

Jeff Swan [00:06:11]:
And well, guess what? For some reason, I had to pay for school. Yeah. You know? Crazy, right? Like tuition, books, transportation, all that stuff. So I I ended up actually getting a sales job to put myself through school. And in 4 hours time, I'd make, I don't know, dollars 300 commission. So, I was making more than my parents were making in a day while working a part time job after school at the time. And and I would go to my marketing classes and learn all these cool things about planning, go to market strategy, and then I'd put it to practice that night.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:06:45]:
Yeah.

Jeff Swan [00:06:46]:
You know? So it just got me fired up though because I was able to rapidly become so just for your reference, anybody who's familiar with the with the company Best Buy, I I worked for the Canadian equivalent called FutureShop that was commissioned only. So we had this leaderboard, and I I found myself in the top 3 in Canada regularly as a part timer. So needless to say, I was, fired up, and I was I was just jazzed about joining this this wacky world of sales, and I've, yeah, never looked back.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:07:15]:
Man, what a cool story. And I think because, you know, I think there's a lot in in in what you've just said. Right? There's probably 2 or 3 key things. It wasn't an intentional decision to work in sales. And I think for most of us, we didn't kind of get up 1 day and have this epiphany that, you know what? I want my career. I'm gonna be a salesperson. I'm gonna be that guy that everybody you know, when you go to a party, you go, what do you do? Like, oh, you know, you kinda Yeah. Go through that sales shame of telling people what you do.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:07:42]:
Right? I think, I think our industry's come a long way since then, but you didn't really have an intentional focus to become a sales professional. And second, you actually started studying marketing, which I feel is something that every and I've I've just done a post on this this week on LinkedIn that if you're in sales, you've gotta be in marketing and vice versa. Right? Because the worlds have collided in a way like never before. Tell us a bit about how you've been able to use that marketing skill set and viewpoint in the way that you prospect and go to market.

Jeff Swan [00:08:18]:
Oh, that's a great question. I mean you referenced it at the beginning of this call, this show, right, is that I am everywhere now and I find that the people that are really good at prospecting these days think even if they're not producing content, if they're not talking on podcasts and things like that, they're they're thinking of this macro mindset instead of micro. So it it requires you kind of understand the market, the industry, the players, the factors that contribute to sales and revenue success, and really understand how to navigate the industry. Right? And so that macro sorry, the macro is like lots and micro is 1, right? So just for anybody who doesn't know. So the way that I look at it, that macro view that I have of looking forward, looking ahead of what's happening in the industry sales it really easy for me as a as a BDR, as a prospector just to be able to go out there and understand where should I go with, where should I spend my time today. And then when I'm speaking to a prospect, when I'm trying out different things, I'm leveraging tactics that were traditionally held only by the marketing department. So I'm posting videos on my LinkedIn feed. I'm sending out mass email.

Jeff Swan [00:09:25]:
And I mean, that's a whole conversation whether it should be mass or personalized, but I'm not going to get there. If I'm using a sales engagement tool, I'm selling that, sending mass emails. I'm engaging people in my content, so I'm getting people to like and share and all that stuff. So a lot of the job of a prospector now and the way people are filling their funnels, it comes from a lot of different channels and a lot of different ways rather than just picking up the phone.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:09:47]:
I appreciate you sharing that, Jeff. I think you know, if you're a 25 year old because I 1 of the things that I'm noticing, and I've noticed this for a couple of years now and it's even more apparent, you know, the rush to employ so many top of funnel people. Yeah? I mean, all these companies are getting insane amounts of investment into their business. Everyone's a unicorn. With that comes, we've gotta hire more. We've gotta hire more. Right? More sellers are coming into that top of funnel, SDR, BDR. I think there's so many freaking names for that role now, and a lot of them are kind of 1st, 2nd year out of out of uni.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:10:23]:
They don't get a lot of training, and they get thrown into the deep end of saying, hey. Talk to our most important asset, which which are our prospects. Right? Because they're the ones that are gonna help us grow our business. And they've got to figure out the calling process, the cadence, the sales engagement. They're not learning. I know that, and and I'm not trying to say, you know, this is what I did when I grew up. But that element of research that we used to have to go through when we didn't have data enrichment tools, linked in, like, we actually had to go away and and actually try to find who the right person was, what could be the reason we could reach out, like, give me a point of relevance. I think a a key step in a development process for sellers is getting missed.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:11:06]:
And then on top of that, you go, well, you've gotta now be out there, create awareness, nurture, create content. Like, it can be overwhelming for a new sales. Right? Even for even for sellers that are that are mature, like in that 30 to 40 year old range or older that have been doing things a certain way, and now they're like, I've gotta add all these other elements to the way that I prospect. Right? Yep. So talk to me about if you're in this position going, fucking, where do I start? Right? What what are some of the things that they should be doing that'll give them some immediate results from prospecting instead of chewing, you know, the whole the whole pie at the same time.

Jeff Swan [00:11:44]:
Yeah. I know. And this is this is fantastic because I was having a conversation about this with, Morgan Ingram, somebody might know him. And I was saying like, does a prospector today have to be a thought leader, like a superstar content producer? And we both agreed that no, you actually to be great at prospecting, you don't need to know that. What you need to know is, 1, who do you sell to? What problems do they have that keep them up at night in related to your solution? Okay. And I would argue, and I've I've have argued this, is I would argue you don't need to necessarily need to have product knowledge to be successful at prospecting. What you need to know is how to connect those dots. That problem that somebody has that you're talking to with the solution that you have, and you need to understand that relationship.

Jeff Swan [00:12:31]:
And then after that, once you understand that, you need to just get to it. Get it done. Just do it, like Nike sales. Is that if you focus and you choose a number that you're gonna get, every single day make 50 calls, make a 100 calls, you know, do 15 LinkedIn outreaches. I would suggest for anybody starting out, work out the math with your supervisor or your colleague, anybody at the organization that you're in that understands the metrics of performance of how to get to that bottom dollar number. And then work backwards and see how many activities you have to do a day. And once you're able to do that, and I actually have a calculator for that if everybody if anybody wants help with it. But there if you work backwards, just doing it every single day and just keep learning about the customer and asking questions and really be curious on the phones, be curious in your conversations, then all of the other stuff doesn't even matter because that will be successful for you.

Jeff Swan [00:13:28]:
Just doing it, making a habit, doing it every David, and instead of focusing on the outcome, focusing on learning, then all the other stuff just comes

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:13:38]:
from it. You know, man, there's, like, 3 or 4 things in there, right, the incremental steps that allow us to achieve a result. And I think just like an athlete, the athlete doesn't focus on the result. They focus on the things that they can control, which is the daily training, the daily, focus on eating, sleeping, all the things that they can control. And I and I just had this conversation with those, you know, training about 40, 50 SDRs. Last night Forum was midnight, but for North America and UK. And I actually flipped it. I didn't talk about anything to do with tactics because I said, actually, we've gotta get the mindset right.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:14:12]:
And I love what you're saying here because you're right. Yes. You need to know your product, but you don't need to become a product expert. You need to be an you need to get the skills that help define the problem that's sitting within our prospects, right, and really understand the use cases that they're experiencing and the outcomes that they're looking to to achieve. Because, ultimately, people don't buy what we sell. They buy the outcome we help them achieve. Right? So I absolutely love what you're saying there. So so just to summarize, go back a step and say, okay.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:14:45]:
I need to figure out the problems. Now what if I am new? How do I start to really define those problems?

Jeff Swan [00:14:50]:
I think it's really I mean, most of you let's paint the picture that you painted there and and look at the picture you painted, I say, is that most of the companies, most of the people starting out in these roles are are in companies that maybe just raised funds. They've just, really done a lot of work in developing the companies that they're with. They've done a lot of work in developing their product market fit, so understanding their customer. I was just on a call before this podcast with a founder who who was a programmer by nature by and by design. And he was telling me about how his fellow cofounder who was also an engineer programmer would do 10 before 10. It's a very normal sales tactic of get 10 people in your funnel before 10 o'clock, right? And so they used to do that. And they for the 1st year of their business, they did this by themselves, no help, no nothing. And what they learned through that process is they didn't go into it trying to sell something.

Jeff Swan [00:15:40]:
They went in it trying to understand the problems around the specific solution that they had. And so just by going in with that kind of curious mentality, you by yourself as a BDR, SDR, whatever you call it, can go in and learn really quickly just by having those conversations. But you can shortcut that is because somebody in your organization has already done this work and that's why they got the money to hire you. So I I would suggest talking to product, talking to product marketing if they have it, talk to sales, talk to some of the people that have had more of these sales conversations or more of these product conversations, and they will be able to help you understand what problems you solve better.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:16:21]:
But and you know what? This is not just for the STR BDR role, but this is for the AE that needs to self generate because we know that it's a ridiculously high number of sellers are not meeting target at the moment because they haven't got enough quality opportunity pipeline. Right? They haven't got enough coverage so that when deals slip because we know deals are gonna slip. I haven't met a seller that's had a 100% of their pipeline convert. Right? So we know they're gonna slip. We know we need pipeline coverage, and we know AEs need to be controlling their destiny by creating pipes. So I think this is awesome, you know, awesome content that you're sharing about leveraging the people around you that have been there, done that, take that knowledge, and then deliver it in a way that engages with your prospects to create a conversation. And I also love the fact that you're talking about the prospecting stage is not about selling. Right? Mhmm.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:17:12]:
It's there's gotta be a level of curiosity, and that'll lead to a conversation. So what are some of the tactics that you're seeing work really well that are enabling sellers to start conversations with their prospects?

Jeff Swan [00:17:27]:
Well, crazy enough, I mean, you know how sales goes fall full circle, right? Like not too long ago, we were talking about how email is a revelation and it's just it's crushing it, right? Then we're talking about social selling. Everybody has to have a social selling strategy. Well, from what I'm seeing from the stats is now I'm looking at actually phone is outperforming sales and social, but I like 2 to 1 across the board. So when you're looking at that, I mean, you can really look at focusing on I don't like to focus on 1 channel. I feel like if you're really going after your target audience, if you have 100 contacts you're going after, 30% of them are gonna be phone people, 30% are gonna be email, etcetera, etcetera. So use multichannel.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:18:07]:
Yep.

Jeff Swan [00:18:07]:
But what you wanna do is really focus on brushing up your cold calling sales these days because that's the area that's gonna make a huge impact on your response rates. Okay. And 1 of them there's a there's a video I did with Sales Hacker a couple a few weeks back on some of the best cold openers. So I'm not going to say that there's 1 specific way to do it because it really matters more it has more to do with your personality and selling style than it does the actual tactic. But my recommendation is to actually have a tactic and have a tactic that meets your strategy, right, like your personality and the way you speak. So, as an example, Chris Beal at Connect and Sell had mentioned 1 approach where you go into the conversation, introduce yourself. That's a that's a topic of discussion for another day as well, whether you say your name or not. Hi, I'm Jeff from Outbound SOS.

Jeff Swan [00:18:59]:
I know this is an interruption. Can I get 27 seconds of your time to tell you why I called? You know, like something simple. So that's 1 option. Another option and a conversation I had with Colin Mitchell a few weeks back when we're doing a live cold calling session and we were workshopping the following on the sword of hey, you know what, I hate cold calling just as much as you like hate receiving them. Let's talk about this, right? So growth of those tactics, the falling on the sword worked way better for Colin in our little session than the other tactic of kind of asking permission kind of thing. But I've also seen it work the opposite where the falling on the sword doesn't work, your audience doesn't pick it up, or maybe you just don't deliver it right. And then you're better off doing the permission opener. The point I'm trying to make here is that there's no 1 right way.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:19:47]:
Yeah.

Jeff Swan [00:19:47]:
But it's good to know the different ways and practice them and try them out and see what works best for you, your offer, your customer, and your position.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:19:54]:
This is awesome, Ryan. I was actually you beat me to it because I was gonna ask you about that because I've seen, you know, like, you know, that pattern interrupt is, you know, this is a cold call or you weren't expecting my call. And, look, for full transparency, they're not tactics that I when I call the c level, I actually try to use a level of personalization and relevance. And I do use my name. This is Lou from SalesIQ. This is what I've noticed. This is why I'm reaching out, so I try to have what's in it for me. This is the my narrative that I think my value hypothesis that I think you wanna hear.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:20:25]:
And then we go a little deeper by me asking a question, And then, hopefully, I can get a point of, you know, what? Let's get some time in the calendar to discuss this further to see if this is an appropriate opportunity for us. Now that's worked for me. Right? But I've also seen many of the people that I'm coaching use that pattern interrupt, and it works for them. And I what I really love about what you've just said, there's no 1 size fits all. It's your personality is very important to this because this is where the authenticity, the intonation, like, it's gotta be fit for you as an individual. Right? So I absolutely love that. And and tell us because III don't look. I'm I'm gonna try that.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:21:05]:
Somebody I I saw it. I'm actually gonna give it a go. I'm gonna give the whole, hey. This is a cold call. You probably weren't expecting this, but give me I'm gonna give it a go. Right? I can't say, I'm just gonna try it. What's the worst thing that can happen? They hang up with me. They said, no.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:21:18]:
I'm not gonna give you 27. Okay. Thanks. And and

Jeff Swan [00:21:20]:
that happens anyway. Right? If you're if you're calling, it happens anyway. You're even if you have the best stuff, you're gonna get hung up on. It's cold calling.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:21:27]:
So I'm happy I'm happy to experiment. And and and what have you found? Because I am a big fan of saying it's it's Luigi from x because I think it's important that they need to know who I'm who I am. Right? I think III personally think I'm not a big fan of saying, is now a good time to chat? Because I I believe that invites an objection to say, hey. Because we know that people have biases. They're like, no. It's never a good time. Right? Because they're always doing something. But I don't mind the patent interrupt.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:21:53]:
And can you just share with our listeners, for those that don't know what the patent interrupt is, why does the patent interrupt get people's attention?

Jeff Swan [00:22:03]:
Yeah. The reason why and I'll give you a quick story, if you don't mind, where where why Pattern Interrupt is so important. My first marketing position out of school, out of university when I graduated, was actually working at a car dealership, so an auto group. Yeah. And I remember I was merchandising cars so that it looked really pristine and clean on the lot. So all the cars were perfectly equidistant part, and they were at the right angle and all this stuff. And then 1 of the senior sales guys who was very good and constantly at the top of the leaderboard, he went out and screwed it up. He put a car this way.

Jeff Swan [00:22:37]:
And I was livid. I said, what is going on? Like, what are you doing? I was I was so upset. And he goes, Jeff, you don't understand. When the people are driving it was the 1st dealership in the auto group park. Okay. So there's like this park of a bunch of different groups. Right? So what he said is that most of the people come in here to go to another dealership. They're going to go to Toyota or Honda.

Jeff Swan [00:22:58]:
This was Volvo. Okay. Not not many people are going to Volvo. Right? So what he what he said was is that just making it different makes them look. And now they're looking at our lot because it's not this pristine perfect thing. They're looking because it's different and something's out of whack. So what it does is and and that's a lesson I've taken with my my entire career is that when you do things that are that make people think and even if it's bad,

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:23:24]:
this is

Jeff Swan [00:23:24]:
why they say there's no such thing as bad press because even if it's bad, it gets their attention, it gets them thinking. And now if it is really off, they're thinking critically. And when they're thinking critically, you actually have their brain activated. So when you're say something, they're they're thinking, they're listening. You know?

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:23:41]:
Absolute but I think, you know, just on that, and I really love this right, because you you were going into the kind of the behavioral element and the heuristics that sit behind that patent interrupt. Mhmm. What what is important? And even if you're not a content creator as a as an AE or or an SDR or any role, you can still be sharing a point of view in your world. Right? And what do I mean by that is I think not enough sellers are taking advantage of the fact that there is a way for them to to curate content, right, and develop a point of view on a particular subject. Even if they don't wanna write articles, they can share this stuff. Mhmm. And that way, when we do reach out to somebody, if the effect of that message or reach out doesn't get us an appointment in that first instance, it doesn't necessarily mean that prospect's not looking at you moving forward. I had somebody 1 year later reach out to me after a post that I've been hammering.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:24:37]:
I thought I stuffed the process up, and long behold, they're back into my funnel. And that's because I've been delivering consistent level of content on a particular topic, and it's come back another way. So so they or, you know, again, I I think that whole pattern interrupts important, that whole cold call opener. What do you do when you start the call and it completely goes wrong? You you get nervous. Your voice mindset gets a bit intonation drops. You can hear that they've kinda like, no. I'm not engaged in this. What's 1 of the best tact or the best strategies that you've used to kinda get composure and just to take control back in that process?

Jeff Swan [00:25:18]:
I think in in film, they call it breaking the 4th wall. So I've been playing this character of the salesperson trying get your attention and all these things, and I'm screwing it up. So I'm looking at the camera and I'm saying, I'm an actor. So sorry. You know, I've just lost myself. And I thank you for giving me the attention that I don't necessarily deserve right now. If if I could save this right now, here's why I'm calling. Here's what it it's about.

Jeff Swan [00:25:46]:
Is this important to you? It is good.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:25:48]:
You know what? That's really good. That's I think, you know, I don't have to go back because that's good. So you're just recognizing the fact that, you know what? I've made a mistake, and you're right. You're leading your value hypothesis is this is why I'm reaching out. And if this is something top of mind for you, we could probably should keep talking.

Jeff Swan [00:26:05]:
And I'm gonna add something that that you said. I love the what's in it for me. I love having a reason I'm contacting you and not, let's say, Rosalyn, who's the other another podcast host in your organization, right? I'm contacting Lou, not Rosalyn. And here's why I'm contacting you. It's because I think SalesIQ is more fitting for what I'm trying to sell or what I'm trying to present today as opposed to the other 1. Right? And so if you have something compelling to say if it's generic, growth. You're going to have volume and you're going to be able to reach more people and talk. But if you have a small prospect list, you are working account based or something like that, you don't necessarily have the ability to do volume.

Jeff Swan [00:26:45]:
That one's in it for me is so strong, especially when you make it real, like I was saying, and it's so powerful.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:26:53]:
So I think this is this is awesome, man. We could probably do this for hours. Right? But when when we go when we just flip it on the other side. Right? So like you said, it's more of a generic kind of reach out. And and a lot of sellers aren't doing that level of pragmatic research to mindset make each message relevant, which I would sort of I'm in the camp of I would rather do a little bit of research for each prospect because at least I can really connect my value proposition or my value hypothesis to them. But if sellers aren't doing that level of pragmatic research, what are the attributes or what are the the triggers or what are the things that they should be looking at from, when they're developing the ICP and buyer persona so that they can at least develop a message that's relevant for that particular sector and that particular persona?

Jeff Swan [00:27:43]:
It's a great question. I mean there's a lot of nuance to the answer to that. So as part of my program, I coach 1 thing called triggers and tie ins, and it really is around pre call research. So what you're describing, and I've found figured out a way to do it in under 3 minutes. I personally can do it in about 30 seconds because I practice so much, and I know exactly what to look for and where. So the the research process when you're starting like, I have 1 person in my program that took 8 hours to reach out to 25 people. Now she had 4 conversations, so it actually ended up being pretty good day for her for BDR, right? 4 conversations in a day for BDR is fantastic. It's it's pretty good.

Jeff Swan [00:28:22]:
But if she was able if she's able to take that 25 and and get that done in about an hour, hour and a half, the next thing you know, she's she can have 40 conversations in a day.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:28:30]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Swan [00:28:31]:
Right? So so I'm gonna say that there's 1 thing is that preparation means everything. If you're going to be doing pre call research, knowing exactly what to look for and where to find it on people Yeah. Is going to save you a ton of time. So just you get into the habit of, okay, if you're looking if title is really important, if, them saying a specific thing on their LinkedIn profile is really important, These are things you can actually use tools to to find. Yep. Right? Use Boolean searches.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:29:01]:
Yeah.

Jeff Swan [00:29:01]:
If right? Use Boolean searches with the specific keywords. If this is in the if this keyword is in somebody's profile, I could just make a list of all the people with this keyword and make a personalized batched outreach. Okay? Yeah. So that's the 1 side of the research, how you can speed up on the research and make it all relevant. If you're not doing research at all, if you're just creating a list, then you better make sure that list is very strong and ties specifically to the pain points you're addressing in your conversation. So make sure that in the situation I just described, you have a list of people that actually say the specific thing in their profile that you can find it quickly through a Boolean search or a tool or anything like that.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:29:48]:
Yeah.

Jeff Swan [00:29:48]:
And then make sure that what you're saying speaks specifically to that thing.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:29:52]:
Yeah. These are really good these are really good Fastuca, and I'm loving it because, you know, I'm I'm following a lot of those principles myself every day, so that's why I'm nodding. I'm like, that's what I do, man. Like, I love the bullion search. I love the Google RSS feeds. You know, when something pings, I'm like, yes. I've I've got something now to to reach out to this prospect that it's pretty much goes to me for the last 6 months. So so I absolutely love it.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:30:12]:
But but, mate, we could talk about these tactics all day, but and and I will I will put into the show notes where our listeners can find you because, you know, I follow your content pretty much daily. That's why I'm in awe, mate. I'm like, jeez. I've got I I think I'm creating enough content, and then I see you. I'm like, this guy, he just seems to be

Jeff Swan [00:30:27]:
popping up everywhere. I've gotta do more.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:30:29]:
So we will put where we can because we do a lot of things across various platforms, so we'll make sure we put in the show notes. But before we let you go, we'd love to know if our listeners wanna reach out, what's the best platform for them to con

Jeff Swan [00:30:40]:
I mean, I'm a huge fan of LinkedIn. So even if you wanna ping me on there, 1 of the challenges is that inbox is not the best to to handle. But I do promise that if you reach out to me, I will get to it. I have my unread first thing on there and I do go through my inbox. So if I haven't reached out to you, haven't responded in a week or so, just ping me again, bump it to the top, do that any thoughts, email Forum whatever, and I'll get back to you. Okay?

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:31:06]:
Well, awesome, Jeff. I just wanna say, man, like, thank you very much for the contribution you make to our our sales community because you know what? It some days, it's really difficult doing what we do, and it's great to have thought leaders like yourself publishing content that can allow sellers to be the best they can be. So thanks for coming on the Sales podcast.

Jeff Swan [00:31:25]:
Thank you so much for having