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

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:00:00]:
In this episode, you're gonna learn why sales automation is not always the answer, how cutting corners can kill your deals, and why you just gotta work hard to win more when it comes to sales. Dave, welcome back. You know what? It's been a while. I don't think it's been a while, but it's definitely been we've been a little bit out of sorts with our routine. It's just like I feel like I feel like I'm listening to someone that I that I coach who I've said, how's it going with prospecting? And they say, yeah. I did it this week. I didn't do it last week. I didn't do it the week before, and I'm seeing inconsistent results.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:00:38]:
I kinda feel the same way that day. We haven't been very consistent, but we've made the decision to get our podcast back on track. So welcome back, Dave, for another episode of how Luigi sells and why Dave just turns up to operationalize everything in the background.

David Fastuca [00:00:54]:
Well, you know what? You you you need someone there to that holds the fort. That's the engine of the business. Right? So you're you're the the pretty boy of the front even though that's also debatable. But, you know, habit forming, we talk about it a lot, and it is okay when you slip up. We we are not machines, we're not robots. So the good thing is is that we we noticed it, we picked ourselves up, and now we're back on track, right, which is all part of the game.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:01:21]:
And I think, you know, we we we didn't drop the ball because we weren't focused, obviously, just some projects have taken a priority, so it's gonna be great to get back to a regular routine. And, you know, I think this week's topic, Dave, it's a pretty important topic because AI has been a a big a big topic for many of us. Right? And it's something that we can't now hide from. AI is definitely here, and I use it every single day. I've become a somewhat dependent on AI. And there's so many tools that we are using on a daily basis that require AI. However, I do wanna talk about how automation whether it be AI, but how automation because automation's been around for a while, but now our ability for our sales professionals can get access to tools that can sound like it makes things easy for us, can actually be really dangerous and can harm the sales process. So that's what I wanna dive into today, into why sometimes automation is not your best friend and why you need to steer clear of certain automation tactics.

David Fastuca [00:02:27]:
This is, like, quite topical, Luigi. Do you have a story to share here? I definitely have one where I nearly, burnt a deal because of automation, but, let's, hear yours first.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:02:39]:
I've got heaps. Look, I I'm not gonna go down. I'm not gonna open up Pandora's box of how many mistakes I've made with automation with with campaigns. Right? Because I won't say the brand, but I once sent a text message to 27,000 people that I wasn't meant to when I accidentally put enroll, I was not meant to say, yes, enroll existing. It was meant to be enroll new, and all of a sudden, that text message went to the wrong people. But we've all been there. Right? And I don't I don't, wanna criticize folks that are trying to use automation. I think there's absolutely a place for automation.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:03:11]:
But where I do wanna share my thought on this is that if I look at my inbox at the moment, I look at both LinkedIn, and now LinkedIn has different inboxes. Right? You've got a spam folder now. Mhmm. You've got your emails. You've got, you know, the ones that connect with you and then they pitch. They often get into your your main primary box, and then you look at your emails. There is a scary tactic that I'm seeing over and over where people are utilizing some tools that the minute I connect with them, for example, on LinkedIn, there's a slight delay, then it'll ask me a really dumb question. And I know they say there is no such thing as a dumb question, but this is the question that I I've got about 8 of these in the last 4 weeks, Dave.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:03:59]:
It says, are you running p three recovery? Now I don't know about you, Dave. I don't know what value that offers in a DM. Like, if you're just connecting with me and then it's asking me that question. And then the the delay in the sequence, you can tell it's it's actually textbook stuff. Then it says, the next question was let let me pull it up. I can actually pull it up because it's in my it really pissed me off this one. So I do wanna I'm gonna go on a bit of a rant. Right?

David Fastuca [00:04:25]:
He's he's he's getting a bit emotional here, but I

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:04:27]:
Then it says the next question. So a day delay. What type of clients does your company usually take on? Now, the thing that pisses me off about this, Dave, is that why would you ask me that question if you can just go to my website and look at what we do? Right? Now I decided to engage, and I just simply responded

David Fastuca [00:04:51]:
Were you nice?

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:04:51]:
You can't tell by looking at our website.

David Fastuca [00:04:53]:
Oh, there you go. Okay. So okay. Yeah.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:04:55]:
Now that's triggered the sequence, which is an auto response. Here's why I'm connecting. We're looking for 3 more, and it gives me this massive dialogue. Now then I've responded and said, nice automation tool, but you probably should have a few different responded responses for different scenarios. And he hasn't responded. Now I'm gonna just send him a GIF. Right? Just for the purpose of this exercise, I'm just gonna send him a laugh out loud GIF.

David Fastuca [00:05:26]:
What about the one what about the one where you get, you know, can your business take on more customers?

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:05:31]:
But that's what he says at the bottom. You know? And it's the insult. It's and and look, they're all trying to use some of Cialdini's laws. Yeah? They're all trying to use some of the influence laws and the fear of missing out. And I got the other one, Dave. It's a growth forum, which is the 4th email. It sounds like you don't wanna take any more new clients right now. Like, you know what? Be condescending.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:05:51]:
I don't wanna go r rated or explicit on this episode, but insulting people to get a response. Yeah? Or and again, I get that some of these tactics absolutely work. Right? But the problem with these tactics, it's that you can see that it's an automated process. Many of them are using scraping tools which will say, I can see you're doing great things at Growth Foreign Proprietary Limited while you're running Growth Foreign Proprietary Limited. Now nobody sends emails like that. Yeah? And so what that's doing to the market, Dave, as a as a as a person on the receiving end, think about our buyers, they're getting smashed with all these messages. Right? And it's it's it's just creating a bigger barrier for us and for salespeople. So as much as I love automation, there's an actual art in selling, and we know the science behind how to write an email, how many words.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:06:48]:
Like, Lavender's got great data. How many words? How long should it be? Mobile friendly? All that stuff. But the art is actually giving a damn and going, you know what, I'm gonna do a little bit of research on my list. I'm gonna find if I can't find something particular that's personal or for this person, at least I can give a bit of a generic personalization for this segment of my list and talk about a problem that we help people solve, right, and some insight I can bring to the table. Like, give a damn will actually work more than any automation tool out there.

David Fastuca [00:07:24]:
Yeah. I like that. And, look, there is a lot that are coming out there. You probably see your LinkedIn profile, just being smashed by people, you know, spruiking Clay integration with RB2B or Romly, for people that are on your website. Look. The reason why people on your website then haven't converted yet is because they're not ready. By you slamming them on, saw you on my website, reaching out for blah blah blah, you're you're hitting them cold, and and that's okay to hit them cold. But like Louis said, come with a point of view.

David Fastuca [00:07:57]:
Show me that you know me, and come to me with some relevant insight for me to respond to you, because you haven't earned the right to have a conversation with me yet. You haven't earned the right to get me onto a call unless you come to the table of something valuable. Now now the the fact that I'm on your website could be that someone's asked me to check it out or I like the design or a 100 other reasons. It might not be that I'm not even close to needing your service yet, and you're putting a bit of a sour taste in my mouth just trying to hit me to get me onto a call. Right? Pardon the interruption, but I just want to let you know about a special course that Luigi and I have put together that we given away for free. It's a sales OS 5 part email course. To get access, just visit growforum.i0forward/newsletter and sign up today.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:08:46]:
And, look, I'm a big fan of these intent tools. Like, I'm a big fan of the fact that I can now see who's arriving to my website and but, again, like, from an automation perspective, just to start pushing out automated messages because they've signaled a bit of intent and now I'm gonna just hammer them with a couple of sequences, etcetera. And I'm in the camp, as much as I love automation, as much as I love AI, and some of the things that I'm seeing, it's literally blowing my mind. I'm still sitting in the zone of, you know what? I'm happy to take that intent, but I'm happy to now pick up the phone or create something a little bit of personalized personalized message. And I don't need to do volume, Dave.

David Fastuca [00:09:26]:
Mhmm. Like,

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:09:26]:
I don't need to send a 100, 200, 300, 500, sequences out to prospects based on x intent, hoping that a small portion will come back. Or slam every person. And I I I I I went through my connection request, I had like 350 and I've been just putting it off and I started accepting. And I tell you what, I'm regretful that I've started accepting now because now I'm getting, like, you know, bookkeeping, sir. I didn't even realize, and I should've gone through. It's great to virtually connect. We have proven meth methods for generating leads and growing your sales through LinkedIn, cold email, content writing, SEO, newsletters, website development, and personal branding.

David Fastuca [00:10:07]:
That's a lot. That's quite a lot.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:10:08]:
I'd love to show you how it works. Could we schedule a quick 10 minute call to discuss? Sorry, MD from I'm not gonna say what company, but I'm pretty good at generating my own leads, my man. So again, I don't mean to be disrespectful. I don't mean to come across, like, with an ego. But this is why you check the profile of the people that you're reaching out to. Yeah? It's just like me going to Cole Coleman and reaching out to Kyle, and we love Kyle, cmo@copy.ai, and saying, Kyle, I wanna teach you how you can write cold emails. Carl is one of the best out there. Right? It's insulting him.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:10:48]:
Yeah? So again, I just think sometimes we we are scraping lists thinking I can do this at scale, I can save myself time, but it's actually creating more work for you down the track. So the first key takeaway in my rant, because I'm a bit I'm ranting a bit today because, again, I've been slammed, and I was trying to go through my emails over the weekend, Dave, for growth forum, looking for an email cause I've got too many unread. I'm not like you that only has 4 emails in your inbox. I've got about 4,000. Right?

David Fastuca [00:11:15]:
Because you don't read your emails like them.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:11:18]:
No. But I can't keep up with the volume of emails that are coming in my inbox. And I'm going through them just like and it was actually identical. And somebody's sequencing tool must've they mustn't have put the the time delay in because in on Sunday, I got 3 emails. So reaching out for x. It sounds like it's not a good time. You don't want more clients. Like, that all came in, like, 5 minutes.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:11:42]:
Right? So he's again, they've used the sequencing tool, but they haven't put the gap than the time delay in the sequencing tool. So all this stuff is just blowing my mind.

David Fastuca [00:11:52]:
Oh, you're ranting here, but just just one quick favor for everyone that's listening. If you got a email list or if you're on just some random shopping website, add Louie's email address to it if he gets more emails, please. I want I want his email to have 10,000, unread emails, but, I digress. Louie, so what would you do now? Let let's get into some tactics, some takeaways on what should you do instead.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:12:15]:
Simple tactic, and for for you you you've heard me say this time and time again. It's you can absolutely use these intentials, take your list, scrape it further, filter it by people that are looking at your site, for example, or people that are looking for what you sell, and then start to take that list and filter it further. Filter it by personas. Filter it by ICP. And then start to create a bit more of a of a tailored message for that ICP and persona. Because if if you're sending people that are looking at your site, for example, or you're looking for x product, and you've got a company that's in e commerce and an accounting company, and then you're sending the same because there's intent, what's happening is that message is not resonating with either of them. Right? So use the tools that you have available to make it easier for you to create the right message. Because out of everything that we're talking about today, the thing that will help you win is you want people to feel like they're in a personalized experience that's just for them.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:13:23]:
And I've said this before time and time again, and it's gonna get, even more important as we move forward, as these AI tools, as automation gets better, because it's not gonna get worse, it's gonna keep getting better.

David Fastuca [00:13:34]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:13:35]:
Right? People want the and and Larry Levine, who's one of our great friends, incredible author, and the reason why I love, what he preaches is you've gotta sell with authenticity. And in a world of automation, in a world of it's easy to create copy and emails, etcetera, that authenticity, people will actually value that more than ever before. Right? So key tactic, if you are using intent data pools or data, platforms, or you're using, you know, like clay and all these sort of stuff that that's out there, just remember the fundamentals. Get your ICP clear, get your buyer persona defined, and make a message or create a message that's relevant to that portion of your list. And instead, you might have a 100 people on that list, try to cut it into 5 groups. And those groups make a message for each group. And then run your automation. Right? Because I'm not I'm not saying don't run automation because we run it, Dave.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:14:36]:
We're running sequences. We're running things that we know when they're coming to our website, etcetera. Yeah. We've got all that. We're just about to go really in deep with Senspark so that we can create the personalized video messages for different parts of our cadence. Right? We're doing that. We've got the AI tool running in the back to help us with our messaging, etcetera. So we are doing all of that.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:15:00]:
But, again, those principles matter more than more than anything else is the the the segmentation of your list and creating that relevant message for that portion of your list is key.

David Fastuca [00:15:12]:
Yeah. Master the fundamentals, and you'll never go wrong.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:15:15]:
Absolutely. Right? Because how you sell is a big reason to why people buy from you.

David Fastuca [00:15:21]:
Yeah. I I love this the tagline that we now got on our website. I change it every 4 minutes, but right now, it's make how you sell why you win.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:15:30]:
So, Dave, as you're listening to this, I can hear you going tick tick tick. Yep. I'm hearing what you're saying. Less automation, etcetera, etcetera. Do us a favor, jump into the show notes, and download our free course. There's a free course you can get access to right now. Just jump on it, grab it, and it's not gonna be free for too much longer. Alright? So jump on there, grab the course, get access to it, because as Dave said, the way in which approach the market, the way in which you sell matters more than anything else.