#619: Active Listening to Loosen up Your Discovery Calls and First Dates | Sam McKenna | 30MPC Hall of Fame

0:00Geoffrey Colon: Sellers, cold outbound sucks for both you and your prospect. It takes an insane amount of effort, reply rates are in the tank, and you are fishing in the same pond as everybody else. I literally wrote a book on cold calling, but Sam McKenna, who's the CEO of Hashtag Sam Sales, completely changed my mind about what I thought social selling and great outbound prospecting is. Sam literally has broken 13 national sales records. She was recruited by LinkedIn because she was so good at LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and she built her business from scratch into a multimillion dollar business using exactly what she teaches in her social selling course that she built in partnership with 30MPC.

0:43Geoffrey Colon: Go to 30MPC.com forward slash Sam. Her new course teaches you how to use relationship data and your network's network to get warm introductions into your dream accounts that would never answer your cold call, respond to your cold email, or open the gift that you sent to their office. If you go to 30MPC.com forward slash Sam, we are giving away all of Sam's favorite LinkedIn sales nav reports, alerts, and scripts that you can use to break into more accounts with less effort. For the last month, everything we've dropped has been focused on Sam McKenna and social selling. And the reason for it is we're launching our social selling course with Sam in just a couple days.

1:21Geoffrey Colon: And this episode's a fun one. It was one of our first ever episodes we had with Sam. It's a throwback. I hope you enjoy it. If you want to pre-order Sam's chorus, you can do it in the show notes. But for now, on to the episode.

1:41Geoffrey Colon: Good morning, everybody, and welcome to this episode of 30 Minutes to President's Club. My name is Armand Farogue, and I'm here with my co-host, Nick Segelski. and today we have the one and only miss sam mckenna the founder the owner of sam sales nick why should people listen one of the most uncomfortable and awkward parts of sales is when you have a buyer who just won't really open up and you're on the discovery call and you can tell they're sort of uncomfortable and they won't really talk to you and it's like what are we even doing here and sam is probably better than anybody else at getting customers to open up early in your call.

2:20Geoffrey Colon: And so if you want to get your customer to share more, to open up, to smile, to enjoy spending time with you, which I know is tough for you, Armand, you may want to give this episode a listen. Oh, well, unfortunately, I'm not even going to count down because everyone's going to leave because they don't want to spend time with you. Nick, three, two, one. Goodbye, everybody. All right, Sam, welcome to the show. We start every single interview with your top three actionable takeaways. So let's get your three.

2:45Sam McKenna: Thanks for having me, you guys. All right. So So what are we going to learn today? First thing we're going to talk about is a three-step process when you book a meeting. So when you book a meeting and somebody says, we'd love to have some time with you, 12 o 'clock on Thursday sounds great. What do we do next? So first thing, always answer with gratitude. We want to make sure that before we rush to book the meeting, we say, thank you so much for your reply. Thanks for giving us the time. Invite on its way. Next thing, send that invite, but in the subject line, be really clear about what the meeting's about.

3:13Sam McKenna: It might seem obvious, but number one, put your name first. So if you get an invite from us, it's going to say hashtag Sam Sales, plus let's say Gong, and then the purpose of that first meeting, right? Initial discussion, discovery call, whatever it might be. The reason you want to do that is putting your name first lets them see your name over and over and over again. Every time they look at their calendar, it's a great lever. Third step, connect with them on LinkedIn. Make this part of your three-step process to say, thanks again for your response. Really looking forward to our meeting on Friday.

3:42Sam McKenna: thought I'd say hello and stay in touch here as well. Keep in mind that when you send that invite out and as extra people accept and the meeting gets around inside the company, you want to do the same thing and connect with those people on LinkedIn, giving that context.

3:56Geoffrey Colon: Boom. What's number two, Sam?

3:57Sam McKenna: Number two is we're probably doing our discovery calls wrong. So this is something we really focus on at Sam Sales, but I want you to think about the very first impression that you make on that discovery call, right? So number one, thinking about how you show up, you have enthusiasm, you have at least a smile on your face. But then once we've done some rapport and we've done some show me, you know me, how do we kick that call off? And what I see most people do is do this incorrectly. So they might say something like, what brought you here today? What are you interested in? Tell me a little bit about you.

4:26Sam McKenna: Instead, we want to do a really broad, open-ended question. So start with a question that might look like this. So Nick, I could tell you a million things about sand sales, a little bit about this line of business, this line of this is this line of business, but I'd love to hear from you first. I'd love to hear about your team, your challenges, overall landscape. I'd love to hear what's going on on your side first, if that's okay. And when we do that, we're not specifically adhering to exactly what they showed up for, right? Even if they filled out a contact us form, even if they've gave us information, but we're starting with a broad question that kind of cracks their head open, so to speak, and just says, why'd you show up in a super professional way?

5:01Geoffrey Colon: Sometimes I want to crack Armand's head open, but I'll skip that and let's move to number three.

5:06Sam McKenna: Number three. Okay. So let's say you go through perfect discovery. You've got the deal. You've got the pipeline. Everything's cooking. And then you find out that you lost the deal. What do you do then? So my actual tip to you is to send a thank you note when you lose the deal. Now, most reps push back and they're like, what do I have to be thankful for? I just lost the deal. Why am I sending a thank you note? But what we want to think about is that number one, we're playing the long game here. This is an amazing way to demonstrate character and demonstrate that you're a good sport. Number two, whoever that client picks, sometimes things don't work out and then they're back to the drawing board.

5:40Sam McKenna: Guess who they're going to call first? The person that had the class and sophistication to send a handwritten thank you note when they lost the deal. Next, think about when they changed jobs, right? Who are they going to call first? Again, probably you because you sent that note. And finally, just think about your competition. Who won the deal probably didn't even send a thank you note. So by you just sending one after losing the deal, you will set yourself apart to be a really great rep and somebody that they'll always want to do business with down the line.

6:06Geoffrey Colon: So Sam, I want to come back to that last piece because I think Nick is going to have to write a lot of thank you notes, but let's go all the way back to that first portion. You book the meeting. One of the things that people fail to realize is buying software is a very, very, very small part of any leader's job. And what you're doing is you're trying to reduce friction in the process. And when people look at their calendar, the first thing they're going to do is they're going to look down their calendar and they're going to find things that they can take off. And if something feels or sounds heavy in their calendar and they have 20 other one-on-ones or a board meeting or something else, your invite is going to be the first thing that goes.

6:52Geoffrey Colon: And so you're doing things to want to make it super clear what the purpose of the meeting is without making it sound salesy or heavy. So Nick, what this doesn't mean is in your purpose, you don't put discount for you, which is, I know what you usually like to put inside of invites.

7:06Sam McKenna: With a number and then they do.

7:07Geoffrey Colon: Exactly. For you. So Sam, let's say that we've booked this meeting now. And you are very big on not just throwing up a boilerplate agenda, but you have this thing called show me, you know me that you talk about a lot. So what are you doing before this meeting so that you can show up and show someone that you know them?

7:28Sam McKenna: It's interesting. I think I do something that only 5%, 7 % of reps actually do, which is a pre-call checklist for discovery. We want to make sure that we show it prepared and we've got a little bit of information that we can exchange. So even when I hear a rep that comes to a call and they say some of my hilariously favorite things like, Sam, where are you based? It's on my profile. Or Sam, what brought you to Sam Sales? Well, I started the company. That's what brought me to sand sales. They have no idea because they haven't done any research and they're just showing up. So what I would say, right, is we want to have a pre-call checklist to check out all this stuff.

8:03Sam McKenna: And then also look at what the company does. Look at things that were going on within the company, press releases, anything notable with the stock, anything that we can find out. You do not have to spend a monstrous amount of time. Take five to 10 minutes prior to a call and learn this stuff. Block an hour out if you are back-to-back at the start of your day and build a crib sheet of who you're meeting with in this information. Show up prepared because the easiest thing that we can do to not only burn credibility and executive presence is to show up on a call and say, hey, guys, where are you based?

8:34Geoffrey Colon: One of the things that I have struggled with in the past is I'm doing what you described where I've got my checklist of all of the stuff that I need to know to run an effective call. and I've got a page of notes of things that I found out about them. I know where they're based. I know how they make money. I look at all of the stuff that they're doing out there. And I almost get overwhelmed by that information. And like, how much should I be talking about that in the beginning? Because what I don't want to do is go on a eight minute monologue of here's all the things I found about you. And now there's only 22 minutes left in the call and we can't actually get to the meat and the purpose.

9:11Geoffrey Colon: And so how are you taking all of those things that you've learned and demonstrating in a succinct way that like, hey, I'm prepped for this thing.

9:20Sam McKenna: I think you think about this in the exact same way that you would prepare to meet somebody in person, like let's say for cocktails or lunch or a happy hour day. Pick one or two things that really resonate back with you or that tie back to the solution of your technology offering service, et cetera. Then the other thing to think about is then connect those dots and say like, Like, hey, Armand, I see that you're based in San Francisco. Oh my gosh, I miss it so much. I'm sure things were crazy with Dreamforce. Find something to connect with that also lets you share a little bit about yourself. I practically lived in San Francisco when I bounced back and forth by coastal for work and share some information and connect there.

9:57Sam McKenna: We're just building human interaction. We're also basically filling that two to three minutes that we used to spend meeting in the lobby, walking down the hall, and getting into a conference room. What did we talk about then? Say that same stuff here. Two or three things. Also, use your EQ. So you might have some executives that are like, yep, I live in San Francisco. And you're like, okay, this is awkward, right? They're clearly not interested in small talk. They want to get into it. So use your EQ, check that. Sometimes they'll go on and on, and that's fine. Build rapport, build a connection, have that conversation.

10:27Sam McKenna: Other times, read the room, and then move on with your life, and then jump into kicking that discovery call out correctly. All right.

10:34Geoffrey Colon: So we're going to come back to that in a hot second. But one thing that's really important to call out is, Sam, you said only 5 % to 7 % of sellers pull that research or that perspective into the first part of the call. I would actually argue 5 % to 7 % of sellers even research a call at all half of the times. The amount of calls that I've seen where someone shows up with the same exact questions every single time is ridiculous. And one thing that you are doing that is critical is buyers are attuned to this. They're expecting a sales call. And if you wait for 20 minutes into the call to show someone that you've done some research, the moment they jump on this call, they're already like, all right, here we go.

11:19Geoffrey Colon: And what you're doing is you're snapping them into an awake state where it's like, hey, this person actually took a second to look at my LinkedIn profile and do their research on me to have a productive conversation. One way that a seller did this on me recently is they jumped on the call and they were like, hey, did you see the round that Carter raised recently? And Carter was my previous company that I worked at. And so they did the extra step of research to research my background and find something relevant around that. And the first part of the call, I was like, okay, tip of the hat to you.

11:53Sam McKenna: It's so smart. And you're right. Like, think about how we do that across even emails and then also our discovery calls. We bury the lead. We bury the lead on the stuff that we already know. We bring it up later. Or sometimes we bury the lead even on referrals, right? Like, if I reach out to somebody and they're like, hey, thanks for your great email. I'm not the right person. Bill is. Tell him I sent you. And then I send that email and I send a generic email to whoever the other guy is. And I say, P.S. Bill sent me. I'm bearing the lead. Throw that front and center. Throw that in your subject line.

12:21Sam McKenna: Bill sent me plus hashtag Sam sales. He's going to be like, who the hell is this? But he's going to open up my email. So exactly the same point, right? Out of the gate strong. Do something a little bit different. Imagine that they're on these calls back to back to back evaluating vendors. Be the one vendor that sticks out in a really good way.

12:38Geoffrey Colon: Killer. So let's say that Bill has sent us. We've booked the meeting via bill with Jane. Now we're meeting with Jane. We've built some rapport with Jane. And now we need to sort of crack open the discovery call with some opening questions. How do you think about those first couple of questions after you have shown someone that you, in fact, do know them?

12:59Sam McKenna: I'll say something a little bit contrarian here that we talk about a lot, that I never set an agenda for a discovery call. I have my agenda that is in my meeting invite, but I never set it at the beginning. To me, we know what we're here to accomplish. So setting an agenda is a weird thing. It's like setting an agenda on a first date, right? Like, hey, Nick, thanks for meeting. I'm going to tell you about myself. You're going to tell me about yourself. We're going to have some wine. We're going to see how it goes. And then if we like each other, we'll have a second date. Nick's going to say, no, shoot, Sam.

13:26Sam McKenna: I don't curse. He's going to say, I know that. Why are you even doing this? So that's the one thing I would say for those of us who have grown up in the agenda setting world, get out of here. Start this call of having a conversation, right? So we've done that rapport building and that show me, you know me, and then it is time to move on to the business portion of the call. So what you will always hear Sam Sales say, what we always teach is some iteration of this. And it might be something like, so, okay, let's kick things off. I can tell you a million things about Sam Sales, about this, this, this, line of business, line of business, line of business, footholds in case you are an outbound lead and you have absolutely no idea what we do.

14:02Sam McKenna: I need to give you some idea of what we do. But I'd love to hear from you first. right? I know you guys have gone through one, two, three, show me, you know me, a recent raise, a recent layoff, a recent something, hopefully something positive. I know one, two, three, I'm not burying the lead. Here's my show me, you know me. But again, I know you guys have gone through this, but I'd love to hear from you first. Tell me about your team. Tell me about your challenges. What's your landscape like on your side, if that's okay. And it's interesting for any of you guys who also follow Doug Landis, we're good buddies.

14:29Sam McKenna: And he and I debate this because Doug's like, no, he's like, you need to come up with a narrative, a point of view, You need to launch into it. And I'm like, no, nobody cares about our point of view and our narrative. We want to hear why they showed up to the call. So we debate this actively on LinkedIn. But this to me, again, lets us say, why'd you show up? What do you need in a really broad way? And I also think we make the mistake, right, when we start these calls of getting into exactly what was filled out in the contact us form, right? I would like to hear about sequence writing. Well, okay, why do you want to hear about sequence writing?

14:59Sam McKenna: So I know part of what you want to cover is sequence writing. Tell me a little bit about your team challenges, initial initiatives you have for 2023. Maybe we could start there if that's okay. And we'll get to sequence writing. But what I'm really doing with that broad question is I'm looking for business problems, not product or situational issues. That is the way I would always start a call.

15:19Geoffrey Colon: So one of my questions is taking the conversation from they think they know what they need. So you've got this prospect you're talking to that says, our problem we need to solve is sequence writing. And in reality, there's actually probably a deeper root cause that you need to get to that ultimately you're going to solve because that's how you actually win the deal. You get a bigger deal size, you have higher win rate, etc. And so what do you do when you have a prospect who's like they're stuck on, they're sort of fixated on the sequence writing side of thing other than the way that you framed that question?

15:54Geoffrey Colon: How do you, it's said differently, how do you pull the conversation up from, hey, this isn't just sequence writing, we actually need to be talking about all these other things.

16:01Sam McKenna: I think we also struggle with this, right? Because we're nervous to feel like we're being invasive and we're asking questions we maybe haven't earned the right to ask. What I would just tell you, if that is a part that you struggle with, is remember that somebody is giving you 30 minutes of their time to make use of that time. They do not want to end this call by not having some sort of, at least lead to fixing their problem. So don't hesitate in asking these questions. When somebody comes to us and says, we need help with sequence writing, for instance, We want to know, how did we get here? How did you get here that you need help with sequence writing?

16:35Sam McKenna: So we can help you with that, no problem. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? So why are you struggling with sequence writing? Who wrote it? What are your open reads? What is even surfacing this for you and making it an issue? And again, this shows that I'm interested. I want to pull apart. I want to understand how we got here. I'm going to get more information. And even, let's say, if they're really closed off and they say, well, I don't really need to go into that. I just know I need help with it. So what can you do? Sure. No problem. So again, that person's guarded and they're basically saying, tell me that the next 27 minutes of my time spent with you is going to be worthwhile.

17:11Sam McKenna: Earn the rest of this call with me. And so I'll say, yeah, no problem. So we can help you. This is what we typically see with our clients. When our clients come to us and have sequence writing issues, it's either two things. Their open rates and their response rates are terrible, or their open rates are great and their response rates are terrible. On average, here's what open rates look like and here's what response rates look like so what i would say is let me let me pause there for a second and let you reflect on that does that sound right or is do any of those parts align with your challenges and again little little pauses little extensions of the words to let them think but i can also see them on zoom because my camera is on and i hopefully have gotten them to turn on their camera and i can see them early nodding right and i know i'm on the right track where i can see their non-verbal cues even as i'm bringing something up, like the open rates are great, response rates stink, and then I can capitalize on that.

18:02Geoffrey Colon: The nuance of what you are doing here, where you sort of drag out that question and you almost are subtly, subconsciously handing the mic over to them, where you've answered their question, you shared how you help, but you're saying, give me how you feel about this. And you're not just saying, what do you think of that? I would encourage the audience to think on your podcast player and go back 30 seconds and listen to Sam, how she says that statement is almost more important than what you are saying there. Sam, one thing that you called out earlier that I also want to reiterate is a lot of sellers are afraid to ask why questions.

18:39Geoffrey Colon: And so they end up going around and asking all these, how do you do this? How do you do that? How do you write subject lines? How do you do this? Because they're afraid to ask the reason that they showed up there in the first place. But usually the fastest track to the bottom line in a discovery call is if someone says, I want this, you just ask what prompted that need. And they will almost always answer with a story in return. And so Sam, let's say that we get to that point where maybe someone was guarded, and then you finally get them to say, okay, okay, okay. It's more the open rates than it is the reply rates, right?

19:17Geoffrey Colon: So you've at least initially diagnosed what the bottom line problem is. How do you start to weave in how you can help them in a discovery call?

19:26Sam McKenna: The magical part, right? Again, and I would encourage you, use that opener that we talked about at the beginning and see how your calls change, because this will lead to exactly what I would do next. When you get that opener, and 80, 85 % of the time, you get that person who gives you a stream of consciousness, right? They talk. You would say, number one, don't interrupt. Let them go. When they're done, a lot of times they'll apologize, which is great. They're like, oh my gosh, I'm sorry. I talked forever. And you're like, that was magical. Thank you so much. That's exactly what I needed. But what I would say, right?

19:53Sam McKenna: How do we start to tie these threads together? Whatever they gave you in that stream of consciousness, we probably pulled out two, three, nine challenges that they have that we can solve for. So think back to English class, right? We made our Roman numerals for our outlines, same exact thing here, let them finish, and then say, that was amazing. I've got a million questions. Can I go back to the first point. You talked about sequence writing. Tell me a little bit more about that. So I'm asking a question. I'm going to then wait for their answer. I'm going to ask an active listing question, which is super, super important.

20:23Sam McKenna: It's the number one thing B2B buyers want from their sellers, and we are terrible at it. And then once they give me that answer back, this is how I'm going to tie it together. I'm going to storytell. We cannot sit on a call for 30 minutes and pepper somebody with questions because at some point they're going to be like, Hey, hey, can you solve my problem? And we're like, oh, yes, of course. Sorry, I wanted to ask you more questions. So what I do is I love to weave in a story. You make me think of a customer that came to us and had the same thing. In fact, they had 1 ,200 sequences in outreach and, or cadence, whatever, in outreach.

20:56Sam McKenna: And their open rate was this. And so here's what we did. Here's how we solved a challenge. And here's the coolest thing. Like their last sequence that we wrote for them has an 80 % open rate and a 6.9 % response rate. I stop I wait for them to be like that's what we want and we're like wait a second sign here but then the cool thing that I do that I think is also kind of odd is that I pull the rug out from under them and I move on to the second point the thing that I'm trying to do is I want them to go we want that 4 ,800 times on that discovery call because if I can do that if I can get them to be like yes yes yes yes over and over again at the end of the call I'm not I'm literally going going to be painting my nails.

21:36Sam McKenna: I don't have to do anything to figure out next steps. They're going to be like, here's what we want to do to move forward. And I'm like, go on while patting my hair. And that's what we want to do. So think about that storytelling. Think about how we can move through those challenges and then earn the right to the next meeting, which should also earn the right to a multi-threaded call. As lovely as you are, Arman, I do not want to only talk to you. I want to talk to the 1 ,700 other people that are part of the decision-making circle. And I want to talk to them as fast as I possibly can because I'm really lazy and I want to get my deal done as quickly as I can.

22:04Sam McKenna: Just kidding. I'm not lazy. Think about all that stuff, right? It all weaves together.

22:08Geoffrey Colon: I might've missed it. I was spacing out for a second. What's an active listening question?

22:13Sam McKenna: Thanks, man. Yeah. All right. Active listening question. This is a great thing for you to practice at home with your kids, your spouse, your partner, your neighbor, your parents, whoever, if you are not good at it. So if I say, Nick, how was your day? And you were like, it was better than our mods because my car didn't get towed. And I'm like, cool. Why, what do you want to have for dinner? I am not asking you an active listening question because I am selfishly focused on the things that I care most about versus the information you just shared with me. So instead I say, how was your day? And you're like, oh my gosh, it was busy.

22:43Sam McKenna: I'm so glad it's over. Pass me the tequila. And I'm like, cool, what made it so busy? Did you expect it to be so busy? Is there something about this time of year that makes it bananas? I'm showing you that I'm listening. Here's the coolest part about that. NPR did a really cool segment talking about the likability factor of people. People are more likable if they ask questions. People are exponentially more likable if they ask active listening questions. And we know the buyers buy from people that they trust and that they like. And we know people are the number one thing they want is to buy from active listeners.

23:13Geoffrey Colon: Ideally, to pull this thread, if you've done some active listening, if you've had a million I want that moments with your prospect, ideally they should want you to go and get introduced to everyone else in the organization and help you get this thing for them. but we all know that it's not always that easy. So with the final questions that we have here, do you have any quick hits on how you position the multi-threading ask in a way that builds trust and makes it more likely that this person is actually going to introduce us to other people in the sales cycle?

23:44Sam McKenna: You bet. I truly see it as a failure on my end if I cannot get that whoever I've got on the call to at least double in quantity or double in quality, what we always call double the quantity, double the quality. So what I do, right, let's say at the end of the call, the person's like, this was great. Thanks for the time. And I'm like, okay, awkward. So what I'll do is again, removing that salesy language. And here's what I'll say, right? This is a great use of time. Thanks again for spending all this with us. I've got a couple of ideas. I think based on what you shared, there's a couple of different things that we can do to help you.

24:13Sam McKenna: I'd love to give you a tour of our technology service, offering product, whatever tour of our technology, show you a little bit about how it works. And then also talk about how this can specifically apply to the things you shared with me today. How does that sound? That sounds amazing. Great. So then what I want to say, right, is to say, let's think about this too. Who else would benefit from this in your organization? Do you have peers on other teams or in other lines of business or pending you seeing this and it being successful? Anybody else that you think would need to see this before deciding if we want to move forward?

24:42Sam McKenna: It's less salesy. It's more customer centric. And I'm asking who would benefit from this? You've got to have pals that have the same issues. Can you bring them onto the call? When I position it like that, right, it's like, yes, here's two or three people. Sometimes it's going to be, nope, I'm the ruler of all things and you have to go through me first and you're like, thanks, can't wait to work with you, right? It's going to happen. It's not a silver bullet. There are no silver bullets in sales, but it's a great start. I'm just going to say two things to a tour of our technology, aka I'm not going to give you a demo.

25:10Sam McKenna: I'm not going to show you a 98 slide PowerPoint deck, double snore. And then just think about how, what I said earlier, I'm going to show you around how this can specifically apply to what you shared with me today. I'm not going to give this same canned crap that I've given 19 times today. I'm going to give you something that's bespoke because I actually listen. I know your challenges and I'm going to help solve them. That should help move you along. Again, let's say that gets scheduled and other people get invited. Don't forget to send them those LinkedIn connection requests. Every single time you can connect with one person at that company, it continues to expand the visibility that you have.

25:47Sam McKenna: So if you are a mid-marketer or an enterprise seller, this is key to your success and your visibility, particularly if you post content on LinkedIn.

25:55Geoffrey Colon: So Sam, this has been a phenomenal episode. I'm really happy because Armand's going to learn some stuff for his first dates. One, he can stop setting a formal agenda at the beginning. And two, he can start using his active listening skills. So thank you for helping us with our sales best practices and helping my buddy Armand out. But we're running out of time, and we've got to move to the last question. And the last question is this. We've talked about a lot of really great things salespeople should be doing. Now we got to ask you about a shouldn't. And so the last question is, what is one bad habit that you see a lot of salespeople exhibiting that you think they need to break because it's hurting them more than it helps?

26:27Sam McKenna: How about when you send an email, you get a response that says, thanks, but no thanks, and you don't bother responding. I would say basic sales manners always respond. If you manage to get a core buyer persona in your ICP to say, thank you so much for reaching out. Now's not the right time. Be polite. Respond. and say, thank you so much for doing what I'm chasing every day, which is getting a reply. And then say, I'd be happy to stay in touch on LinkedIn. And I send you a connection request there. If things change, let me know. I see the best enterprise reps that don't do that because they're like, what am I supposed to say?

26:57Sam McKenna: They said, no, you're supposed to say thanks, man.

26:59Geoffrey Colon: Boom. Oh, I love that. Sam, thank you so much for joining us. Everybody stick around for a 60 second recap coming up soon. Your top four takeaways from this episode with Sam McKenna include number one, three steps every time you book a meeting. Send a thanks, send an invite with your name first in the subject, and then connect on LinkedIn. Number two, show a prospect that you know them in the first five minutes of a call. Try to come with a point of view based on what you found about them and don't ask them things that you can find on their LinkedIn. Number three, use typically questions when prospects are hesitant to share more with you.

27:36Geoffrey Colon: It oftentimes allows them to latch on to an answer. Lastly, number four, when you get to a problem, you can tell a story. That might sound like, oh, you make me think of a customer where XYZ was the problem, really similar to you, and ABC is what we did to solve the problem. All righty, Nick, how can people help us out here? So Sam talks about showing your prospect that you know them. And if you, listener, want to know Armand, I don't know why you'd want to do that. And Nick, of course, you might consider connecting with us on LinkedIn, because what we do is we'll often posts some of the best tips that we have learned in our years of doing 30 Minutes to President's Club on LinkedIn.

28:12Geoffrey Colon: So if you want to see some written summaries of episodes, some of our favorite takeaways, go over to LinkedIn, send us a note, and we'll see you next week on 30 Minutes to President's Club.

28:39Geoffrey Colon: Today's show is brought to you by ConsenSys, which helps your demo keep selling even when you're not in the room. Before I show a demo, I set it up like it might have to work without me. I include these three slides before I drop in. Number one, the biggest problems I learned in Discovery. Number two, how we solve those problems. And number three, a what does success look like today slide. You can steal that exact 30 MPC demo deck template powered by ConsenSys. Go check it out in the show notes. Today's show is brought to you by Pipedrive's easy-to-use and customizable CRM with built-in meeting intelligence.

29:10Geoffrey Colon: My favorite discovery question is the multiple-choice question, which sounds like, typically, when I'm talking with folks like you, they're focused on A, B, or C. Which is it for you? Now, A, B, and C have to be problems that you can solve, because that's how you steer the conversation in the direction of places you can help them. Now, Pipedrive's built-in meeting intelligence helps you focus on your follow-up question, not on scrambling to take live notes. and we built a full discovery toolkit with them free in the 30MPC closers hub. There's a link in the show notes.