Founding AE at 30 Minutes To President’s Club, Alex Murphy

0:00You know, authenticity is a crazy thing in sales. And one thing that we observe, and I have done this myself when we're teaching cold calling, one of the things that we talk about is tonality and how not to sound like a salesperson. And the funny part is that, you know, a lot of us in a corporate environment, we start to adopt this different voice and tonality and we do things and say things in a way that we would just never do with people in our everyday personal life that if our families or moms and dad or children saw and heard some of these things, they'd be like, who is that person? We just transform into a different human being.

0:46And the reason I bring this up is the guest today, Alex Murphy, he's the founding account executive at 30 Minutes to President's Club. What I really admire about Alex is that he does the exact opposite. In fact, it's literally one of his core values as a human is being his full authentic self. And it's something he's very intentional about, which I love. Before we get into this, my name is Jason. I'm CEO at Outbound Squad. You're listening to the Outbound Squad podcast. We're all about helping you turn complete strangers into paying customers. So outbound pipeline generation is the thing that we focus on.

1:24And if you have a team of account executives, let's say, and you're trying to move up market, be more outbound, rely less on inbound, maybe reduce reliance on SDRs, BDRs, that sort of stuff, you're definitely in the right place. And if you're running a BDR or SDR team, you're definitely in the right place as well. So I got a chance to meet up with Alex in person. This is for the second time. I actually meet him at Dreamforce last year and he's much taller than I thought he would be. And he's very funny. Like he's one of the most hilarious people I've ever met. And we got a chance to meet up in Austin a few weeks ago when I was there meeting with clients, doing podcast interviews.

2:03So I had him in studio. So definitely if you subscribe to us on YouTube, go check it out. Outbound Squad, Alex Murphy should get you there. But it's a great interview. you. We talked about how to show up authentically. He used to work in the White House. So he actually had an experience meeting Obama, which was really cool. He became a teacher. He got into sales in a very unorthodox, very uncommon way. We talked about personal brand and how he does that. We ran through his entire cold call approach and process. And it's just really, really great. We talked about other pipe gym plays that they do at 30 Minutes to President's Club.

2:42There's just a bunch of really awesome stuff there. So you're really going to enjoy this one. Before we get to it, I got two things for you. One of them is free. We have an outbound masterclass. I went in studio, spent around six hours recording it. It's our very best stuff. So if you like our LinkedIn content, you like this podcast, the course is packaged up really nicely to help you with really tactical ways to build pipeline through your outbound. It's cold calling, cold email, targeting LinkedIn, all of that kind of good stuff. It's free at outbound squad.com slash masterclass. So outbound squad.com slash masterclass.

3:16The other thing, if you're listening to this episode and you're like, Hey, you know, I, I would love the folks at outbound squad to help us implement some of these things. We've worked with some great brands like Shopify, zoom, rippling gong, I heart media and startups, you know, building out their first SDR teams and everywhere in between. And our promises that will help you increase qualified pipeline by 20 % or more. within 90 days. We build playbooks, we train you, we coach the managers so that they know how to reinforce it. And you walk away with an outbound methodology and common language you can use across the entire org that consistently generates pipelines.

3:53So if that's something that's interesting to you, just shoot me an email directly. Jason at outbound squad.com would be happy to chat with you. Jason at outbound squad.com. All right, let's get to the interview.

4:13it's good to jam with you man um i think that like one of the things that really um stands out to me about you is besides i get so annoyed when you post on linkedin because i'm like give me some of the engagement love on my posts you know i'm like am i not engaging with your stuff enough no not you i'm like this guy like your content's great man um like the the thing that you and the and why i think you fit in so well with the 30 npc game is it's not just like here is the tactic and like the dry step-by-step process on how to open a call or make a cold call or send a cold email or whatever it's got like it's got personality and like in in the ai world they call it taste right like you have a lot of nuanced takes around stuff and like a lot of really good taste and like how you package the thing and talk about it and how you share the stories like your personality really comes out through your content thank you yeah and i haven't seen you run a sales call i would imagine the experience is is the same where how can i inject as much of myself into this as possible so that we're having fun or whatever but we're just that where does that come from for you?

5:36And was that natural in sales for you to just bring your authentic self into it? Is that something you've had to learn? Like, where does that come from for you? First of all, thank you. Yeah. Incredibly kind. Game recognized game because I feel similarly about you. And I do think it's why, like, the first time I met Nick Segelski, 30 Minutes of President's Club, immediate chemistry. I was interviewing for, like, a fractional BDR job because I was doing a high volume BDR, and then I got promoted to AE, but really fill my own pipe, whatever. And within two minutes of getting on a call with him, it was like, oh, yeah, okay.

6:15And we're both from almost exactly the same age. I'm from Binghamton, New York. He's from Rochester, New York. Oh, yes, you guys are both from New York. It's legit. Not the city New York, but like, yeah. It's like Western New York. It might as well be Michigan, honestly. The way it feels out there, I grew up in a town of 2 ,500 people. Oh, wow. I moved to Austin when I was 17. Yeah. And have been here in Texas ever since. Yeah. Like the high school that I started at that just my senior year of high school when we moved had a thousand more students at it than the town that I grew up in. Of the entire population of the town.

6:50And so it was just like, like, oh my. Culture shock. Crazy culture shock. But there's like, Ben, I feel like I've lived a hundred lives. I feel like I have just, there's something about the adventure of the new thing that, it's a roundabout way of answering your question, but I feel like the authenticity, it's a value that I intentionally strive for and also something that I feel like my experiences have created. And so, like, I have, so it's chicken and egg. I don't really know, but, like, there's this, I really need to look this up because I quote it all the time and I may be just fabricating it entirely.

7:29I don't think I am, but if one of the Op-On Squad heroes out there could let us know, is this real? But I heard this account of this end-of-life care nurse. So her whole gig for her whole career was, like, being with people right at the end of their lives. And she heard a lot of people processing, you know, their, like, reflections on that. And there's a common thought that, like, the big regret people have is I worked too much and I didn't, like, spend enough time with my family. Yeah. And she did hear that. But her number one regret was not that it was people saying, like, I just did not live my authentic life.

8:05I didn't do the stuff that I knew was right for me for whatever reason, expectations from other people or society or limiting belief or a fear of being myself. And people get to the end of their life. And they're like, shit, that's. Yeah. I mean, I don't know what happens after we die. There's some good guests floating around. this might be this might be it brother and like yeah oh my god i i spent it doing something that wasn't authentic to me and so you know i've like been in a rock band i've worked at the white house in the obama administration i've been a public school teacher i have been on a reality tv show i have worked in a bunch of tech jobs i've been fired i've been put on a pip i've been promoted I've done the LinkedIn content creator thing.

8:53Like, yeah, that a post go viral. I've like had all these different experiences. And. It's also a lot of work. And we were talking about this a minute ago, but like I've invested a lot in like therapy and my own like work of of being my getting sober, you know, was a big part of my journey of just like, OK, this like takes work. There's some intentionality behind it, but it's like my number one value when I'm thinking of meditating in the morning or whatever. It's like I am living as best as I possibly can my authentic truth. Yeah. And that comes out. So, like, that's like the big, big, big picture.

9:30But it trickles into my day-to-day work as well. Like, it trickles into my sales calls. It trickles into my outbound when I'm making a cold call. like yeah I'm putting a lot of energy into making sure as best as I can that like I'm the same Alex in this conversation as I am at work as I am in a customer call as I am at the grocery store as I am when I'm with my daughter like I'm trying to be the same guy in all those situations as a personal value but I do think that that has like allowed me to be a successful seller as well because people pick up on that like totally we we as a species have like these really finely tuned bs detectors because you know if you go back to like pre-modern era like to survive we had to work as a group so the most valuable skill you can possibly have is understanding is this person good for my group or not like do i trust them are they going to be a producer are they lying to me are they a spy like what's what's up with this and like that's like really really hardwired stuff deep totally People know it.

10:37And they know it from like the second they pick up a cold call. So like even my cold call opener is informed by this. So it gets to that like really nitty gritty, which I know your audience probably didn't tune in to hear me talk about my philosophy of life and death. But like it does like show up in the actual sales work too. So that's about a nine minute answer to your very direct question. This is why we edit and do all of that kind of stuff. So we'll probably cut that down to about 15 seconds.

11:05so there's so much to unpack there because you know like in therapy one thing that i've been working on more prominently this year is i really started looking at like one thing i've really struggled with is making guy friends in person i have a lot of friends especially that i've met through the industry like Armand, Nick, I'm good friends with those guys, Jeff Bajor. There's a bunch of guys in the industry. None of them live near where I live. I don't get to hang out with them on a regular basis. And what I unpacked with my therapist really at the root of that was me not feeling like I can contribute value to someone as just a friend, that there has to be some other thing that I bring to the equation professionally, where I've basically put most of my self-esteem in my life into my accomplishments in being a top performer, being a business owner, being someone who makes good money, being recognized at Outbound Squad for whatever.

12:15So that's been really hard. And the reason I think this is really relevant to sales is that you mentioned cold calling. One of the first things that we talk about with tonality is this idea of corporate speak and customer service voice. And it's, the question I ask is, you know, does anyone here feel like sometimes you turn into a different human being when you're on the phone or on a sales call and everyone raises their hand? Yeah. And it's the, hey, Alex, how's, it's, you're talking like you, that's not you. And I think there's a lot of risk and probably mostly perceived risk in showing up as yourself yeah it's fucking hard enough to do in your personal life let alone when money is on the line and like your reputation at a company etc what are your thoughts on like that kind of piece on and what has your journey been and being more comfortable like having that level of vulnerability in like just being yourself and being okay with that and not taking it.

13:24And maybe you do take it personally sometimes when things don't go well, because it's the other aspect of it is like, if I get rejected, does that mean there's something wrong with me? Yeah. Even, yeah, what are your thoughts on that? I'm meeting with my therapist to discuss this very topic in about two hours. So we're on the same - Did you do the midday therapy sessions? Oh yeah. And let me tell you what, that's on my calendar. Everybody at work knows when I'm meeting with my therapist and I know when they're meeting with all their therapists. So if you're not working in an environment like that, Get out.

13:51Go find a better spot, man. This is some real shit, okay? Because in sales, like, it's exactly right. All that deep stuff, like, maybe every job is hard until, you know, it looks easy until you have to go do it. So, like, I don't want to treat us as like we're special or different or something. For me, at least in sales, it's like. Yeah, you are different, though. Well, I mean. Again, you know, meet with the therapist and about, you know, what's that, hour 59 now to talk about that exact thing. But, like. A couple of thoughts. First of all, being your authentic self in the sales contact, you're not going to get worse on the phone by just being yourself.

14:28You're not going to get worse. Like, so that's, that's one thing. Like, it's not, whatever I'm performance I'm at, if there's a fear that like, if I just show up as Alex, the same guy that I'm with my buddies playing Baldur's Gate online, cause they all live in different places too. Right. Like, can that guy show up at 6am and be with his daughter, same guy. and then at 10 a.m. start ripping some cold calls and be the same guy yeah and like that's not that is not natural for me at all like yeah i'm with you 100 like i deeply attach value to contribution and that shows up at work of course yeah sales is tricky because you got to like a literal leader board like you can literally quantify how good you have a job you're doing yeah which is tough and also, you know, approval junkies.

15:18Like, I won't speak for you. I'll label myself that way though. Like that also is appealing in sales because it's like, oh, I can get approval based on my performance. So it's like a double-edged sword, but like the work that I have done on the internal stuff is that exact thing of like, I don't need to contribute to be, my presence is valuable. yeah i am i am a unique like i am a set of clothing that the universe put on itself for a brief period of time yeah that's valuable yeah regardless of what i produce and like we're going to dinner later with a group of people yeah that is maybe the most an unstructured social gathering with people i don't know super well is maybe the most anxiety inducing thing that I can experience in my life.

16:08Really? Yes, yes. You're really putting me through my paces, but I'm going to show up because it's work. Yeah. Again, therapist and I will be discussing in about hour 57 now, but we're going to... It is real because there's no structure. There's no like, hey, here's my artifacts that I'm putting out and I can kind of hide behind this. So even with friends, I oftentimes am most comfortable if we're playing a game. I'm a dungeon master for Dungeons & Dragons. That's really nice because we're bonding, we're hanging out, but there's like a thing that I have created and provided in this space. Yeah.

16:43I've contributed something to this gathering. Yeah. So I'm good. Okay. All right. I contributed something. Like, so that's the, that's the person. I mean, that shows up in sales constantly. Yeah. But dude, it, it goes to the other big mindset thing for me, especially with Outbound, but, but the whole sales cycle is like the concept of an offering. which has been very, very helpful because like the first time I missed quota, it's my first AE gig. I was like devastated. I was, it was my first month off ramp. I had this one big deal that I had self-sourced. I kid you not. I stayed on a zoom call with this woman for three hours while she tried to chase down the various decision makers to get a signature that day.

17:29Cause it was the end of the month, whatever. Yeah. And like, I'll never do that again. first of all because that was like putting way too much emotional weight into that deal and when it didn't work which like of course of course it didn't work if i'm doing that something else is broken um devastating and the shift that i've had to have is like i am just here to offer something that is helpful to some people this is what it is um i i i'm happy to give you a perspective on why I think it might be good for you. Take it or don't like, yeah. And, and literally not with anger, take it or don't screw you.

18:06Like literally take it or don't. Yeah. I'm going to keep holding this offering out to people. And like some of them will, will take me up on it. Yeah. And you know, that's easier said than done. Cause my income rides on it. Like the bills ride on it. Like, so there's a, like a lot riding on it. Yeah. But that's why it helps to like zoom out. Just be like, hold on authentic Alex, same everywhere. if this crashes and burns tomorrow, I'll be okay. Like I'll find a way to be okay. Yeah. Because I'm me and I'll figure that out. So like, let me just put that over here and like put it in a box. My wife's a therapist.

18:42So she's constantly talking about just like, can you just like take that and like imagine a physical. Is that who you're meeting with in an hour and 50 minutes? Yeah, super healthy. She's also my therapist. She has me on a really strict regimen of like pills and supplements actually right now. So like my hair's falling out and stuff, but not super healthy and good. But she talks all the time. By the way, ultimate life hack, marry a marriage therapist because all day long she's in rooms with couples where the guy is an asshole. Yeah. And then she comes home to me and I'm all right. I look great by comparison.

19:13Her marriage usually looks great by comparison.

19:20But like she talks about put it away. Like take that thing, whatever that nagging thing is, can you just put it away? So it's a little mental exercise I do before I get on the phones, especially because that's where it like shows up. It's like, all right, that part of myself, that voice that's like, you got to get the meeting. You have to book the meeting. Your income relies on that. Can I just like physically put that in my backpack for this dial session and just here's my offering. Take it or don't. Yeah. So are you familiar with the CBT triangle, the cognitive behavioral therapy triangle? Vaguely.

19:52I feel like I'm sure I've seen it, but no. So basically it's a triangle where there's a relationship between your thoughts and your feelings, or sorry, your thoughts, your emotions and your feelings, and then your behavior. And what the triangle is supposed to show is that our feelings and emotions can influence our behavior and vice versa. Right. So if we feel anxiety, that can make us, you know, start to do stuff like this and like Twitch and like do all that other kind of stuff. if we go do something that is stressful on us that could make us feel anxiety and then there's like our thoughts and the internal narrative and the dialogue and all of that kind of stuff i've always really thought about a lot of this stuff when i was taught that through that triangle where the part that you have the least control over is your feelings and emotions and like being able to like really accept that and then it sounds like for you what you found effective is like the thoughts, the narrative piece of the triangle, like how you talk through or validate or whatever it is that you're doing there is really helpful.

20:56So let's talk about, I think of the word confidence when you're sharing your stuff, there's like this confidence. And I think you actually were talking about swagger in a LinkedIn post too, which I love that word. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that's been really big for me in my career, I was just in at a dinner yesterday. One of the guys that was there, John Jensen, JJ, what's up, man? He was the Strat and Enterprise BDR leader at Gong. OK. So Gong was like the first client that I closed that I was really nervous to do the delivery on. Sure. Because it's Gong. Don't screw it up. Yeah. Don't screw it up.

21:35It's a great logo. He had been following our content for a long time, so there was some pressure there. And it's gone. Like, if there's any sales team that's going to do things at a really high level, it's going to be them, right? So I had all of this internal thing going on, right? Damn. Yeah. It's a gauntlet. Yes. Yeah, it's a gonglet. Hey, put that in a sizzle reel, folks. Earmark that one, all right? Editing team. Yeah, very good. so one of the things that I was experiencing at that time was this like this confidence piece where I was like I was not fully confident that like I knew I was going to do a good job but I wasn't like fully confident in my ability to do that and one of the things that really helped me at that time for whatever reason Anthony Ian Arino who's been like a mentor of mine over the years uh written four five six sales books by this time I got to know him through an intro and he was just like, dude, I really like your content.

22:33Like you have a lot of great things to say. And like, I just, dude, keep up the good work. And for whatever reason you talked about validation, for whatever reason that really clicked with me because I really respect his work and stuff professionally. And that was like, when I think of confidence and like that bucket and how do I become more confident to me, that's one of the things is I think it's, and I think it's okay. I've come to the grip so that I think it's okay to have external validation be one of those pillars. I don't think you should over-index in it, but external validation from people that you really care about, whose opinions that you value, that was really big for me.

23:13Experience and, like, doing the thing and proving it to yourself, that's a really big, you know, confidence thing, right? The internal dialogue and how you talk about it, that's a really big confidence thing. Your preparation, there's all of these things that go into confidence in how you show up. And if I was to add one more like really tactical thing, a big thing for me too has been just financially, I don't worry when we try to keep a 12-month cash runway on top of any of our retirement investments of just like that's just there. In the business, it's six months of cash. So there's never like we can have a bad quarter or two and I'm not really freaking out.

23:53Huge, man. And I think the confidence thing to just kind of bring that full circle is like when you have that and when you're able to show up and not really need anything from that person and the interaction and you're okay with them saying no or being a jerk to you or saying that they don't want your service or that they don't really see the value in it. not being phased by that is it's an easy thing for us to talk to uh talk about but it's it's not an easy place to get to I don't think you know what I mean the concept and the execution are like different and for me still it goes like this you know um yeah so I just wanted your kind of commentary on and maybe confidence is not the word you use whatever word you use for that how do you think about and i love the backpack thing like take this out like how do you show up because we're going to talk about cold calling and pipe gen and we're going to talk about some of the sales call stuff like how do you do that you got a cold call block coming up in five minutes like how do you mentally prep and get yourself in that mindset where you can just show up and be yourself you know yeah it varies day by day honestly like it doesn't look the same every day from anytime i've tried to get into like a meditation practice or whatever it has to look different because if it's one set thing every day i just get bored so it looks different every day do you mind me asking do you have adhd this has been the this has been the question the last 12 months for me i do not have an adhd diagnosis yeah some might say is an oversight

25:25so probably uh probably you know but we we move the someone in my family is dealing with this and going through it and i ask because of the needing a lot of stimulation and new things this is like for someone that i'm learning with adhd because this is someone in my family is like that's an excruciating experience for someone to have to do a routine thing that is kind of boring and mundane yeah and then i decided to do a job where i have to cold call every day yeah so yeah man like like literally yeah like it is it is um there's a couple of things that i have learned that help with executing that where it's not just the concept because the concept is anybody can listen to this right now and go like yeah that's right it's different from like in an hour am i still operating on that or has it gone away that's like two totally different things so one of it is it takes just has taken a long time like it's been years and years and years of working through this stuff with professionals to get it and with family and trusted people.

26:28But there's a couple like things that click for me when you were talking about the triangle. One of my tools is when I want to remember something, I cross my fingers. So I got four things that I wanted to remember. And I just, I attached the little, so I'm going to unpack these right quick. Again, I don't have an ADHD diagnosis, but this is something when I've got a lot going on up here, it helps me to keep it all in place. So one of the tools on that cognitive behavioral triangle is move a muscle change of thought okay so helpful if i'm stuck in a this is special when someone's a jerk to me because like that's still bother it still elevates it doesn't feel good i mean yeah i can say all day long i'm part of the job let it roll off your back which is true but like it bothers me like someone has been aggressively rude to me i you know i'm gonna feel it and so move a muscle change of thought has been so helpful like literally move any muscle walk walk outside, change environment, move, like do up, do like one pushup, anything to just change it up.

27:23That's been really helpful. And the other thing has been like feelings are just information. They're not instructions. I can feel something. It is not an instruction to go act on that right now. And so in sales, it's an emotional roller coaster. It's a lot. Like you've, you've basically signed up. I have signed up to have people's assessment of my value proposition determine the money I make. That's intense. And so, like, there's going to be, you know, I mean, you know, it's like when it hits, it's like, wow, like that. Yeah. You booked that meeting. I mean, I've booked, I don't know, a thousand outbound meetings.

28:00Who knows what the number is still. Oh, my God. I get so fired up when someone's like, I'll talk to you still. Like, it just feels good. Feels great. And when that contract comes through, I mean, that's even that's even better. it's like oh my god like i'm actually i think the book in the meeting still gets me more excited interestingly enough it's so much harder yeah you think about the success rate on a cold call if you're really good it's like 15 a good point yeah it's a good point the win rate yeah you know you want to be 20 25 30 so it's the and the failure feels so much more intense on a cold call that's it for me i think at least yeah accurate uh well thank you for there you go i now understand why that feels better because it is harder it takes longer you know um the other thing that was on my mind is like your question around like confidence there's a difference I think between confidence and delusion we're in you know we sell but we're also in this like LinkedIn creator sort of space yeah and there's a lot of just like delusional like stuff that people say where it's like you you really do think you're God's gift to the world yeah at least from where I'm sitting that's what it feels like when I'm reading somebody's content not you but this whoever it is like wow you you really do believe that you are the best that ever to ever do it and i just have gotten kicked in the mouth enough times to know that that's not true for me yeah i just know it well and also you start to pick up on things where it's like okay there's a certain persona that people put on you've gotten to experience this at 30 minutes to president's club because you guys have, you know, the biggest sales podcast out there.

29:42So you're interviewing all of these people and you get to interact with them outside of these settings. And some of it is just, hey, this is what it takes to get the, or here's what they've determined at least that it takes to get the engagement that they want. Yeah. And this is something I learned directly from Nick and Armand, which is there is a huge, and this, by the way, if even if, you know, a seller is not doing any kind of content creation, but they're just selling, it's, it's true there too. There is a huge difference between attention and reputation yeah wildly different things there's a huge difference between like brand your personal brand at work or in the public space or whatever yeah and like people just look at me look at me if i wanted to go get people looking at me tomorrow i would start i would i would post um i've never met don't people kind of gasp when they see you in public though anyways i mean i mean i am just wildly famous so that's why i assume you know yeah No, it's weird because it feels like I am known in the tiniest niche on planet Earth.

30:44Really easy for something to go to your head to be like, because yes, we are statistically objectively the most listened to B2B sales podcast in the world. Yeah. Great. I go to parties and people are like, so what do you do? I'm like, oh, I work for the biggest B2B sales podcast in the world. And they're like, oh, what is it? Maybe I've heard of it. I'm like, 30 minutes to President's Club. They're like, nope, I don't know what that is. is it is it like uh is it like good hang with amy poehler is it like that i'm like kind of minus about i don't know a million lessons an episode but yeah it's it's like you know so like that to me is silly i think people put that on it's an old mr rogers quote he was talking to a kid and this kid had a big sword you know like three or four year old kid and he just like leaned over to him he was just like hey you know you're strong on the inside too and the interviewer that was hanging with him that day was like why did you say that to him and he's like well when someone walks around with that big sword like it means they usually it means they don't feel like they're strong on the inside so they got to project that on the outside and so at my best this is not 100 percent of the time but at my best when i see somebody like that or somebody is rude to me in the sales process or whatever if i can like approach that with a little compassion and just go like yeah that's what that person believes they need to do externally to solve whatever's going on in here yeah and i've been there and it's a nightmare so i like legitimately i i feel for them and and that's not 100 of the time like half the time i'm like you know that's this guy yeah literally like what an ass you know but like and and also like i'll oftentimes have both thoughts that's my knee jerk and then it's like all right hold on yeah i've trained for this what's what's in his cup that when it got bumped and it spilled out it was like nasty smelling yeah whatever that thing is, you know, like it's this thing of like, you know, someone bumps into you and you spill your coffee.

32:34You didn't spill your coffee because they bumped into you. You spilled coffee because coffee is what was in your cup. Yeah. And like, so whatever's in my cup when I'm not in this setting and I'm not in a sales cycle, that's what's going to come out when life bumps me because it will. Yeah. And so it's worth it to just fill that with the good stuff as much as possible. What I read, what I take in, I'm not on Instagram or TikTok because it just was feeding me bullshit and nastiness constantly and so it's like i i don't want that anymore like i want to read the best books in the world like i want to read like i want to commune with somebody who took the time and then the care to like take what was going on up here and in here and put it on paper i want to like have a conversation with that yeah and and with people like i want to meet and be with people where it's like we're we're giving good stuff to each other so that my cup is full of the good stuff because when life smacks me that's gonna spill out and so for the people who are spilling stuff that's really unpleasant like that's what's in their cup that fucking sucks for them dude yeah what must the inside i get emotional talking about what must the inside of your mind be like on a day-to-day basis if a call from a stranger is gonna make you cuss me out what must the inside of your brain i am sorry that that's what you're living with yeah and like that helps and then they're rude to me and i feel mad and i move a muscle and i change a thought and i try to get back into that thought pattern and i try to get back into like okay so the the warm-up for a cold call block or for a sales call the warm-up for my day or i was doing in the car outside is like i have a particular song that i like that i listen to for me what's the song it's called marigold by pine grove it's uh they have an album called marigold it's the last song it's instrumental it is you know on my uh spotify wrapped it's like like blows out all the other songs it's like why you really you are you are the top listener of this song because i just put it on it's about six minutes so i'll do two usually for me chakra meditation is really helpful yeah um but it whatever like again it needs to look different but it's like i just kind of breathe and feel my body and just like focus on like all right what are my intentions i start up here with my crown chakra like okay what's my intention i try to breathe into that part of me my intentions are three things and it's not like work specific that every day my intentions are i am deeply bonded with my family and my community yeah i am living my authentic truth yeah i am leaving this place better than i found it yeah those are the three things i'm thinking and so that's like the habit building weight training i'm in the gym i'm filling my cup with the good stuff that's that's that then we get in the sales process and that's what's going to come out i don't have to spend too much energy before a call block being like all right here's what's going on i'm making an offering because i'm doing that work outside of the the routine of the day-to-day because again i have potentially a diagnosis that could be beneficial to me that like makes it tricky to stop between tasks and take a nice ordered structure to my i'm like bang bang bang bang bang bang bang which like yeah if i can stop fighting that and just like ride that stallion then that's great i can go really far um and so like i gotta like for me it's important to do a lot of this internal stuff outside and then process it with with my therapist and process it with people that i trust and love who are wiser than me mentorship is so important yeah um yeah man and then and then when someone picks up the phone the first word out of my mouth usually i mean what i have been told is like my tonality is like my sales superpower yeah especially without bound and it's true in emails too in my written communication apparently it's showing up on linkedin which is very cool yeah uh it's like hello hey jason how's your afternoon going how you doing how you doing today like i'm genuinely like jason picked up the phone how you doing partner and like there are my own team has like a slightly different approach they advocate where you come straight in with a context so that they know what you're calling about for me what feels authentic is like, Jason, how you doing this afternoon?

36:39Yeah. And I smile while I say it. Sometimes I have to do the work to like put that on and choose it because not every day is a great day, you know, but like it's easier to do when I've been doing the prep work in the background. And then you say, well, yeah. Hi, who is this? This is Alex from a 30 minutes to president's club. Listen, it's, it is a hundred percent of cold call. I promise I'm calling you specifically because some folks on your team are following our stuff, but like it is a cold call. So if you want to hang up until they get it. Do you have 30 seconds? Yeah. That's, that is how I would say, literally, does it pass the mom test?

37:10Yeah. If I said it to my mom, and this is my favorite outbound test for a bunch of reasons. If I said it to my mom, would she be like, sound weird right now? Yeah. Who is that person? What is this thing? Like, or would she be like, I don't know the words that you're saying to my mom. My mother's a very smart woman, a published author. Like she, she's a published author and didn't go to college because she had kids young yeah she's a badass by the way that's a separate topic she's great but like she doesn't know b2b sass she doesn't know tech she doesn't know the training space so am i using words that would be like i don't know what you're saying if i am i need to change my pitch because like yeah it's gonna wash over people's brains and stuff so like this stuff it matters for it matters so much more for the stuff like outside of my day-to-day job but it matters in there too because if i'm trying to be an authentic person through and through, then I got to do it all the way, every place I operate or as best I can.

38:02I mean, tonight I'm going to be a nervous wreck, so you can give me a hug when I walk in. Have I brought something of value to these people? Do I have my cards in order? Do they like me? So let's, first off, I love the cup analogy. Yeah. It's not mine. Yeah. Game changer for me. The Buddhist thing that I've really latched on to is just like me. when I see something happen or I experience something, it's like, oh, just like me, Alex is, you know, he can have a bad day and take it out on other people sometimes. You know, I love that. Beautiful. So we got to talk about cold calling, because people are probably like, dude, give me some fucking tactics that I can use.

38:39Tactics is like, get your shit together, right? Yeah, get your life together. Just like me, bro, get your shit together, okay? And then you worry about your cold email, AI, whatever bullshit. Like, let's get yourself right first. So your opener... I love data, but the way that we extract these really large data sets, it's not like a human is listening to the nuance in each of these conversations. It's not the same nuance that you would get from, let's say, our purview where we're working with a client and we listen to a lot of recordings. And the best cold caller I've ever worked with, Lindsay, she doesn't live in Austin.

39:21she lives in Texas somewhere but she's like you're telling me not to ask how their day is going and that feels rude to me that doesn't feel like like me yeah and every single call it was hey Alex it's Lindsay how's your day gone dude and what you shared was something similar to that but I I want to dissect your opener a bit not to be like hey everyone listening to this go use that I want to just talk about like why you use that for you and why it works for you. And there are some things I think that we can extract around, hey, does this feel authentic to me? There are certain elements in there of like, I have some sort of acknowledgement around the fact that I am calling you out of the blue or randomly or that it's a cold call.

40:07There is a permission based ask in there. There are certain core fundamentals at play. But yes, let's dissect that opener and then how you cold call. because this is one of your superpowers, man. Dude, so yes. I think there's like levels, there's scaffolding to how we learn this stuff. It is totally appropriate, I think, in my experience, to start with just repeating a script that somebody else wrote. That's a great place to start. It's better than just marbles in your mouth. No one's having a good conversation if you can't even get your words straight. So totally fine to start with that. And then to your question, understand why.

40:43What's the actual thing we're trying to accomplish here? and then you can start to do like alex's version of that and then you can fine tune that and as you do alex's version you'll start to get away from some of that like data backed best practice and then you get back to it and you yeah you know it's a it's a cycle and so yeah for me if i'm gonna do 200 dials a week which i'm a full cycle ae i still sell i still i'm trying to do 200 dials a week i miss it most weeks but it's a good goal to aim for yeah um i gotta pick something that I can say 200 times a week and not sound like somebody different.

41:17Because again, in that first 10 seconds or whatever, the thing that I have to overcome, and Nick and Armand are exactly right about this when they write about it in their book, is the telemarketer stigma. I have got to overcome, this is another telemarketer. Why did I pick this up? I thought it was my doctor. I got to get over that. For me, the best way to get over that is to talk like me, not a telemarketer. and like so that's that's the very oh hey jason how you doing this afternoon like and it's nice because i don't have to like get in my head about right what's the perfect thing i say okay great like i can just get into it then inevitably they i i never get hung up on when i say i never get hung up i get hung up on all the time if i start with like hey i noticed that uh ashley and jameson on your team have downloaded our cold calling guide this is alex from 30 minutes to president of his club do you have a second for me to tell you why i'm i'm hung up on before i even get yeah because i sound like a telemarketer that was me trying to apply somebody else's script in a way that wasn't quite right for me so what i do now is i open with this because it feels right i've met really badass cold callers who are like just as people super direct and do not mind just putting it on you yeah so they open the call very differently yeah i i had a guy come on the show kate hinkle you know great young seller and he was like yeah my opener is uh hey jason i'm trying to book a meeting with you works great for him it works great for him because it's a pattern and interrupt people go yeah so yeah that's the first thing they always respond with yeah i'm doing okay who's calling some version of that yeah and then i tell them yeah hey listen this is alex you caught me it's a cold call okay uh and by the way this is not an exact script because it sounds different every time but i know the beats i gotta hit like this is totally a cold call i am calling you specifically because you've got some mention the signal for us it's usually like you've got some people on your team that are downloading our content um so i wanted to chat with you about that for a second but i know i'm calling you out of the blue do you have a second or would you like to hang up the phone normally the response to that is either super busy right now sorry i can't or yeah okay go ahead yeah neither of those by the way is the end of the call so there's a way to do both um and we've cold called together before by the way so i learned some of this from you who knows where it all came from but um you know if they say yeah what sure hit me then i'm going in with like all right cool well i'm gonna i'm gonna pitch the problem and then ask you for another round of permission okay and so it's yeah so listen um jason and nick on your team both downloaded our negotiation uh master class and so normally when i see that it's like the team is looking for some like tactical guidance on that we have an enablement training program that i thought might be of interest because it it's like 30 npc free stuff but it's way more structured and deep and we help you build playbooks that are for you that you just keep forever so i was going to tell you about that but like before i just keep going i don't even know is that even on your radar at all yeah and i'm like validating is this even a conversation you want now you know what it is so you know i'm a person not a telemarketer great check one clear you know i'm calling you because of something specific to your business yep all right i know you sam mckenna show me you know me yeah classic great think about it all the time i've cleared that gate i know something about this person's business.

44:33Here's the problem I think you might be having, which is that I'm insinuating a little bit. Like you may be, there's maybe a gap in your training right now because your reps are coming to download stuff from us. Okay. Then if you say, yeah, oh, usually at that point, now I'm going to get some info back. It's going to be like a, it's going to be like a, oh yeah, you know what? We actually are like long time winning by design customers. And like, we've been with them for five years. I don't think we're going to change at which point, like now I have some pretty good information and I can handle that.

45:00but usually that's where I'm starting to get info and like we've we've now started a conversation and I book meetings zero percent of the time when we haven't started a conversation first yeah 100 of the meetings I've ever booked in my entire life on the phone started with a conversation so I have to earn that before I can like start pitching my thing so that's the mindset shift how that actually sounds for me is what I just said but it sounds different for each person Yeah. So one of the things that I want to point out that's super, super important there is like everything about this approach and we teach something very similar is you're meeting them in their world.

45:40It's like if this is the buyer's world and this is our world and what we're selling, we're saying, hey, you know what? We're not going to try to say, hey, look at us. Like, we're really cool. Come over here and check out our thing. It's like, let's go meet them first in their world. And all of the context is added to the conversation through the language in which they talk about their problem. So that's the whole idea behind the problem proposition, which I love. The other idea around starting a conversation, I always thought of it like a treadmill, where at the gym there's these rows of treadmills and your buyer's running on the treadmill and you don't want to just be standing there talking to them.

46:14You want to hop on the treadmill next to them and get up to their speed, right? Nice. And you have some back and forth dialogue. Love that. So how do you think about handling the objections? So when someone says, gives you some sort of objection at the very top after your opener that's, you know, I'm busy, I'm heading into a meeting or whatever. How do you like to handle that one? Two kinds of objections. There's the brush off. I don't want to talk to you right now. Yeah. Objection. And then there's the I know why you're calling and who you are. And I don't think it makes sense for me to take a meeting.

46:45So the two different kind of objections. The brush off, which would be like, I'm super busy right now. I am still going to try to clear the next gate of like, I know something about your business. I'm like, here's why I'm calling you. Yeah. Because I think there's a decent chance that then we may actually have a conversation because sometimes the brush off is like legitimately, I cannot speak to you right now. Yeah. I am late to do something very important or whatever. Yeah. Most of the time it's like, I'm in the middle of something, man. Yeah. You know? So my answer to that is like, dude, totally get it.

47:15And then I'll just slip in my thing real quick. Totally get it. You had some people downloading our content on your team. So I thought our enablement thing might be right for you. I can call you back or I can like leave you alone forever. Your call. And then what do they say? That is when it starts to get fun because now we're dancing. Yeah. Oftentimes it's like, oh yeah, man. Okay. And like, I don't know. Like, I don't know. I don't haven't looked at my data recently, but like sometimes we will start a legit conversation right there because I've overcome without being a jerk. I have said, I'm totally fine.

47:48I can leave. sometimes they're like, yeah, thanks. You know, great. Okay, cool. That sucks. That feels bad. Like, oh, this person rejected me. I usually go move a muscle, change a thought at that point. But like sometimes that happens. But sometimes it's like, oh, yeah, man. Yeah, maybe we can talk about it later. Like send me an email. And then like I'm basically just going to keep trying to have a conversation with you until you explicitly tell me to go away. And there's a way to do that without being a jerk or being aggressive or abrasive. And there's like if you – there are certain data points that are super compelling in this.

48:18and it's less about the specific verbiage and it's more about, hey, statistically, the longer the call lasts, the more likely they are to book a meeting and to show up to that meeting. Right. I think the psychology also behind the brush off, we call it an instinctive objection, which is really borrowed from Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow. I don't know if you've read that or not. People keep referring it to me. I got it. I got to read it. I'll be honest. I haven't read it, but I'm very familiar with like how it. There are books like that legit where it's like, I don't really need to read this.

48:46It's like the key idea that I don't need to spend because I'm a slow reader. Four hours, five hours, 12 hours, however long it takes to read a book is system one and system two thinking. System one, the instinctive, that's I'm driving and I'm commuting into work and to the office in the morning. And I don't remember a single thing about the commute. I just was in autopilot. That is the mode that people are typically in when they answer the phone from an unknown number. System two is this calculated thinking. It's I saw a car swerve in front of me. Now I'm like engaged. I am thinking. Right. And that's the mode that we want to get the prospect into.

49:22And that shallow objection or that instinctive objection by handling it the way you do there is like you're really getting them to be like, hey, they probably didn't really hear what you said. You said it and like they heard it, I guess, but they were not listening. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. I kind of want to get the like, what? Like I want to get that. You're jogging the memory again. Oh, OK. Exactly. Yep. Um, okay. So let's say that you, uh, problem proposition you talk about and some of it relates. What's, what's your goal there in the middle of the call? Are you trying to have a little bit more of like light discovery around that?

50:00Or are you just like immediately going to ask for the meeting? Like what, what does the rest of the call typically look like for you? This has changed once I became an AE and started taking my own meetings when I was a BDR. Cause you didn't have to work the deal. Oh yeah, dude. Can you show up? Cause I got comped not on stage two qualified pipeline i got comped on did they show up at all so i'm literally just trying to get this is the glory days for bdrs dude well before i got there was literally if you got a meeting on the calendar you got paid which is nuts like that is that is if you're if you're getting comped that way as a bdr eat it up that is beautiful because it's a bad idea if you're running an org i would recommend that but like even then though actually my goal when i was a bdr was like i want to do more discovery as an ae i actually don't feel like i need to do that much.

50:44If I'm going to then hand this off to somebody as a BDR, I want to make sure it's legit because like for me, yes, I get paid if they show up, but like my own brand suffers. If I'm setting crap meetings over and over again, I'd like to like have a reputation as like giving good notes to the AE, setting them up for success. Cause I also got paid on a portion of it was closed one deals. I'd like the AE to be able to put their best foot forward. Um, and so in that situation, I might do a little more discovery as an AE, when I'm taking the call, I really am trying kind of get in and out pretty quick on these dials.

51:15Like, but it depends. Like I booked two yesterday on the phone and one was somebody where I said, Alex from 30 Minutes to President's Club, does that name ring a bell? And she was like, oh, I love you guys. Yeah. Great. I don't need it. Like I feel strong that there's enough here. I think you're going to show up to this meeting. I think we're going to have a productive discussion because you know what we're all about already. So I'm not going to be having to catch you up to speed. Yeah. The other was a guy who was like, uh, hmm. Like sort of like, I'm sorry. I don't know. I don't know what that is.

51:43So I had to do a little more education. That was a longer conversation of like, well, okay, yeah, so we're number one B2B sales podcast. We also have a bunch of sales content. Your team actually has been downloading it. You have like, and like I'll come in with some specific names and numbers and I'll do a little name drop and I'll do a little number drop. It's like 25 people at your org, you know, following us on LinkedIn. And I saw Dan, you know, downloaded our executive selling guide the other day. So, yeah, you know, I'm happy to tell you a little bit more about what we do if that sounds worth another minute of your time.

52:13and and you know he was like yeah okay go ahead and shoot and it's like well you know basically you know and then i just like quick quick quick rattle mom friendly language my mom would totally understand what i'm selling if i if i did it this way and uh and then yeah you know actually does kind of sound interesting you know and then he's hitting me with all the other stuff that i'm gonna have to deal with later of like i'm pretty far from the buying committee i don't know it's hard for me to get budget on this kind of he's hitting me with that stuff but like i'll deal with that when i deal with it like let's take it one thing at a time so no problem man yeah why don't we do this two lines i love let's chat about this when i'm not calling you out of the blue yeah just kind of my like in my sort of standard cold call package it's like that's the that's the meeting booking line is like yeah so anyway we have this thing blah blah blah any any any way you want to spend a few minutes learning about that when i'm not calling you out of the blue yeah great um i just keep coming back to that over and over again until they say no yeah um and then the other thing which i learned from you when we did that live cold calling thing in San Francisco.

53:11Okay. Worst case. This is the, this is the other beautiful thing. This is like where they selling the meeting. I was going to say when they talk about it, I guess when I talk about selling the meeting, this is what I mean. Like worst case, I can kind of show you what we have. And then you kind of have a sense of like maybe some, some of the free stuff that your reps are accessing. There's some of that stuff that you might just want to end up sharing with a team. So worst case, I can tell you about that. Yeah. Now there's a reason, irrespective of buying something from me, there's a reason for them to show up.

53:39There's some value. That can look like a bunch of different things depending on who it is, but this is your whole thing about make an offer. In a cold email, make an offer. Worst case, I can share how customer A and B kind of thought about the pros and cons here. And so that's also really, really helpful. So two questions. One, how much did you have to pay these people to agree to take a meeting with you? They each requested a pound of my own flesh and I negotiated them down using Todd Lovers, four lovers of negotiating of course coming from 30 minutes to president's club soon i negotiated them down to three-fourths of a pound of flesh there we go um but for real um once you get the agreement on a meeting how do you set up the meeting um i want to go through the nuances of like how you find a time that works and like the language that you use around that um do you ask them to accept the calendar invite live on the call do you tell them there's going to be a confirmation thing like that that part i feel is like this is where meetings you can see the difference between a rep that has like a 60 show rate versus an 80 show rate with just some of the little things on how they yeah secure next steps two thoughts on that one is if i legitimately do not believe that this is the right fit for them based on something they say in the call i don't book the meeting easier said than done especially as a bdr i didn't do this as much because i was like well maybe they show up and i do get paid on that that's what that's what it is to be a bdr As an AE, it's like, if I have to like, I'm good at getting someone to say yes to me.

55:09That means I can get false yeses. I can get people to go, yeah, sure. All right. That's fine. Yeah. Throw a dart on for second week of July. I didn't think about that. It's like a false positive. It is. It's like, you know, now I'm going to go put that in my CRM as a meeting book and I'm going to have to answer to why they didn't show up. I don't want to do that. So like, that's the first thing is always be disqualifying, always be disqualifying. And I'm always disqualifying every stage, every check. Right. So like if they've given me my goal with a substantive, you know, so that that type two thinking objection, my goal is not always to overcome that.

55:38It's like hear it and legitimately decide in my head, like, is it worth pursuing this? The guy that says, yeah, we've been a competitor for five years and our CRO is best buddies with the guy who runs that training. I'm like, yeah, you don't need our thing. This is a really good point. I want to double click on because that's going to come out in your tonality and approach. That's you thinking about the fit. Yeah, it's here's my it goes back to this. This but here's my offer. if I were holding a big fish at the fish market, here's my offer. Oh, you have two sushi rolls already. You don't need this beautiful fish that I, by the way, went and spent energy to go catch and bring into the market so I can offer it to the people who may want to have it.

56:17And then maybe they'll come back and tell their friends to come back. I'm not trying to peddle this to the first person who will pick it up from me. And I have a little self-worth like, you know, like, all right, cool. This isn't for you. That's fine, man. And you're right. It relaxes me a lot. And people pick up on that i think it relaxes them and it actually makes them more receptive to whatever the thing is that i'm i'm i'm selling so that's the like the first part to the meeting show piece but then if i've done that like internal calculation and i figured out like i think this is like a real one yeah then yes i want to send that invite if i've gotten to the point in the conversation where they've agreed to meet with me we've discussed my issue we've talked about their team I have earned the right at that point to demand another 60 seconds of their time to send them a calendar invite and make sure it gets on their calendar.

57:03I used to feel insecure about this. Oh, I'm keeping them. They already talked to me for five minutes. Whatever, man. They're big boy, big girl, big kid. They can hang up the phone if they need to hang up the phone. It's not my job to take care of them in that moment. It's my job to get my meeting. So at that point, it's just like, cool, man. Well, I don't ask. I just say. I actually have a bunch of time tomorrow afternoon and I want this thing I want this meeting as soon after the call as possible if it's today that's actually like this is this might be crazy but like at 4 p.m eastern today and I'm always trying to do it in their time zone that's another little thing but it shows it gives a little clue as to what the sales cycle is going to be like I'm going to be thinking about you yeah and going out of my way to be courteous to you so I want to be doing it in your time zone this is such a little thing reducing that friction and complexity it's like when I see people try to schedule meetings from a response to a cold email where the buyer says yes, and I'm like, you're not even going to take the time to translate the times you suggest into their time zone.

57:57Why would I spend my time talking to you? Why would I spend my money and my budget buying something for me? It goes back to the big stuff, shows up in the little stuff. If you're telling me that's how you operate, let me give you my budget. I'm going to go to my VP and say, hey, we should take a bet on these. Hell no. So for me, it's like that's that's that's basic stuff of like, all right, cool. Actually, tomorrow afternoon is pretty open. And then I'll leave tomorrow afternoon is no good. Oh, yeah. No problem. No problem. How about Friday? I think there's pressure to book the first available slot, even if it's not good for me.

58:34I've felt that a lot like, yeah, that's during my prospecting block tomorrow morning. But he said it's available. I'll just book it. Yeah. That is a subtle degradation of my own self-worth that I no longer engage in. Yeah. My prospect is valuable. That's where I make my money. Actually, I don't make it in negotiation. I make it in the prospecting block. Yeah, that's valuable. My time with my daughter. Like that is you better give me a really good reason to shift that around to take a meeting. like so there's stuff where it's like that like i'm gonna hold my calendar if it means we schedule to next tuesday so what real deals are not fragile so if this thing falls apart because we did it on next tuesday instead of tomorrow thursday fine like okay yeah i'm not gonna sweat over that because it means this was not a big enough problem for them to want to solve anyway um and so i do it there we find a time i send the invite my language around that is if you don't mind just check and make sure it comes through sometimes it gets caught in the spam filter which is true yeah so it's just like okay cool i just sent that and it's it's jason at outbound squad right on cool that should be coming through any second now do you mind just like making sure it came through okay because sometimes you just get caught in the spam foot great cool uh i see you have it awesome um you know if you accept that it'll just help me know that we're we're on for that time i'm gonna drop an agenda for the call into that invite so you'll see that a little bit later today and then uh yeah we're looking forward to chatting with you tomorrow afternoon that's great last piece depending on the vibe if they're like okay i gotta go but I end it right there.

1:00:06No problem. But I've heard you say this and it's great. If I'm getting the, if I'm getting the feeling that like I can, I can get away with one more question. I will ask, Hey, just out of curiosity, what's like the most important thing that you need to understand coming out of that call tomorrow? Yeah. And that's like, that really locks in the show rate. Cause now I know, and I'm going to, whatever they say, I'm getting them thinking about it. I've, like I said, I've lived many lives. I spent some serious time going door to door canvassing for political campaigns. Uh, so Texas, 2018 Texas Senate race.

1:00:36I was knocking on doors all the time. And they would train us on like, your job is not to convince people to vote for our candidate. If they're not voting for them, they're not voting for them. Don't sweat that. You need to get them thinking about their plan to get to the polls. So what is your plan? Which polling station are you going to? When are you going to go? I want you to actually start to imagine that world because that's going to make it way more likely that you remember this. It becomes part of your thinking about how you're going to spend your day tomorrow when I send my agenda email that's another touch of like here's what I want to talk about with you um so so I'm just like laying breadcrumbs and then if they do tell me something important what they say is second in terms of importance the most important thing is I've gotten them to think about it cool yeah great that's a win and I'm going to remember it and I'm going to put it in the invite I'm going to put it in the in the email and I'm going to put it in every single communication we have until we meet I'm going to mention that thing that you just said, whatever it is.

1:01:31Yep. I love that. Another pro tip for those that are listening or watching is I always like to make the title of the event if they mention some sort of priority or something that's important to them. So for us, it might be 3X pipeline coverage. That's going to literally be the title of the calendar event. 3X pipeline coverage, intro with Outbound Squad and XYZ Company. Drop it into the agenda. Like that stuff makes a huge difference, especially through the sales process because when someone's looking at their calendar at all the meetings that they could cancel that day yeah when they see something that is related to a top priority that's that's kind of hard to cancel or say no to or whatever stealing that and this is also why i put the agenda in there yeah because it makes it easy to add people i don't have to like if i want to oh i want to invite my my boss or i want to invite my colleague or whatever yeah it's much easier to like that person's going to immediately know what we're talking about and why exactly which also really helps them show up too so that like you're starting that multi-threading thing real early yes i love it okay so we don't have a ton of time to do like a full-on discovery master class but i am curious how you think about discovery from the point of view of i source this through a cold call and it's someone that's maybe less familiar with 30 minutes to president's club versus this one came inbound.

1:02:51Yeah. This is one of those areas where there's a perfect way to do it and there's the way that I have enough time and capacity for on a day-to-day basis and those are not the same and that bugs me. We've talked about this before. It's possible to endlessly tweak every single thing I do throughout the sales cycle. Yeah. If I do that, I'm never going to get any work done. Yeah. So, I'll tell you the real of what I do. Like, the actual what I do is I put the agenda in the calendar invite. They should have a good sense of like, what it is if i feel like they really did not know anything about us i will also include a link to like in that in that agenda i'll just be like hey here's like here's a little more about us if you want to take a look beforehand no sweat either way at times i've sent uh like a video here's a two minute video quick overview something to just kind of get them get them up to speed so that we're not spending a bunch of time in that call of just like factual what is this who are we kind of thing um first question i ask in an outbound meeting is just like so you probably get we'll have a little chit chat i usually come in with something specific to their business that i noticed i'll take a quick scan through their linkedin like y 'all just got back from barcelona p club that's awesome how was it whatever um can you backtrack real quick what are you looking for in the prep for a discovery call first first call i don't do a ton of prep i'll be honest with you okay And for me, it's because like my superpower as a seller, this goes back to knowing my authentic self, my superpower is not being the most well-researched person.

1:04:23My superpower is like you are going to feel good talking to me. We are going to have a good bond. And so that's probably an excuse for not doing as much research as I can. But like, again, there's perfect and there's real. I could spend 20 minutes researching. I could make a bunch of cold calls in that time, too. like I'm gonna probably pick the cold calls honestly so for me like the minimum viable disco prep is what does their business do like literally what are they what are they selling what do they sell to that's non-negotiable the times when I've missed that and I've had to ask somebody is like embarrassing yeah so that's clear and then usually in that first disco call try to get a sense like where do they sit in their org like what's their org chart look like I'm normally doing that during before I even start prospecting so I don't have to do a bunch more work i'll just look back at my notes all right cool they got 200 sellers and they're like the director of enablement they've got a vp and they've got some direct reports and i kind of like have that going in so i just need a rough estimate of that yeah um so i'm going in with those things and then the questions that i'm asking are not super super tailored because i think of discovery as diagnosis and prescription i think about it we armand and i constantly in our team are having in this conversation of like, we are doctors.

1:05:39Our job is not to sell something to somebody. Our job is to diagnose a problem and then prescribe a solution to that problem. And if they decide not to take their two pills and call us in the morning, like whatever, that's up to them. But like, here's a prescription for that. The prescription might be us and it might not be. I actually literally referred somebody deep in a sales cycle to you yesterday. Oh yeah. I'll tell you about that more when we're on mic. But like, there's like a legit like, oh, you don't want us, you want Jason Bay. Like, let me talk, like, let me give you, So anyway, that's a bit of a side note.

1:06:07But my point is the discovery questions that I need to diagnose are kind of the same for everybody. First thing out of my mouth is like, Jason, you probably get a bunch of cold calls and outreach and stuff. Like, why did you decide to take this call? So I just want to get land me in this situation. What is it? Sometimes the answer is like, well, you just had a really good outreach. Sometimes the answer is, you know, like I we've got a lot of fans of yours. And so I thought it would be worth the call. Sometimes it's like we are in need of a training on this skill area because we're dying. Like, you'll get you'll kind of immediately.

1:06:40I have a pretty good sense of not only this person's energy so I can, to use your analogy, get on the treadmill at the same speed as them, but also like when I kind of know where we sit. And so from there, I'm just trying to diagnose like, cool, like, what's the problem? People will situation you to death if you let them. They'll talk about their org chart and their structure. And like, I need to know what skill gaps are causing problems for your team right now. Yeah. What is it? Is it outbound? Is it discovery? Is it negotiation? Is it multi-threat? What's the issue? And then I want to dig on that a little bit.

1:07:12Okay. Like specifically what? What's like, why does this matter? Like, so for me, my discovery checklist is extremely short and simple. I'm looking for three things. Do they have a problem? That's checkbox number one. when I first was doing this, I don't do it anymore because it's memorized at this point, but I used to write it down, this little checklist before every discovery call. Do they have a problem? Do they have a problem that we can solve? Do they have a problem worth solving? Yeah. Literally problem worth solving that we can solve. If I got check, check, check, I got all I need in that first 30 minute call.

1:07:46And so the problem usually is some kind of skill area is it worth solving aka do your bosses care about this is there some business impact attached to it if we don't solve this is there a what what's wrong what's going to happen as a negative effect i'm trying to gauge like yeah is it a problem is it a prioritized problem at the high level because i know i'm going to need those executives to agree that it's a big problem in order to sell anything to you and then the last thing is can we solve it and that gets a little bit of that is me going like i think we can solve it but then i'm going to flip around and i'm going to say well here's how our program works here's what i think it might be a fit for y 'all but let's go through it and i'll do like a five to eight minute quick rattle very high level like here's what we do now you tell me i think this would work i at least think it's worth validating for reasons a b or c but based on what we said in that demo i'm gonna try to tie it back to armand calls it the pimp my ride demo which is you know pimp my ride right like hell yeah would come into West Coast Customs and they'd say, here's my car.

1:08:45By the way, I like fish. And Exhibit would be like, radical brother. And then they would put an aquarium in the back of this guy's car. They would put a whole ass aquarium in the back of his car. And then the person would come back in and say, well, hey, you said you like fish, so we put fish in the back of your car so you can look at fish while you drive. And that's my demo. That's Armand's amazing demo framework of like, okay, well, you said you're having cold email issues. So here's how we help with your cold email issues because you said that's important and here's how we solve it. I'm tying it.

1:09:15Like it's not theoretical. Here's how our program works. No. Here's how your team would use this if you did it. Here's exactly what this would look like for you. And so trying to make it real, trying to help them imagine themselves at the polling place casting their ballot. Like I want them to get into that mindset. So it sounds like there's a very similar approach to how you will approach a first-time meeting regardless of inbound or outbound. it's really more about the buyer and where they're at and less about how you sourced yeah i think that's a really important piece of context yeah 100 yeah because like inbound outbound two different channels to get you into the same river so now we're in the river together with inbound the only major difference i will take is i will ask like why did you reach out to us instead of why did you take my call yeah why'd you reach out to us i have some thoughts i'm happy to share a point of view but i just like to lay it on me brother like yeah you don't need to some people advocate people I really respect and trust.

1:10:09I know this works for them and could work for others is you come with a strong point of view. You give a quick rattle. I'm more in that camp. Like here's what I know. It depends on who you're talking to also. Sure. I tell me about this because I'm willing to change my mind on it. I mean, if I'm speaking with a VP plus, especially in sales or a CRO for the first time, I don't ask them why they took the call. Oh, OK. Yeah. So I know why they're on the call. To me, what I want to do, it's a little bit different. It's more like I want to establish credibility right away. So if I'm selling to a company that they have a thousand reps and they want to do a big rollout and they're similar to iHeartMedia, I say, hey, we recently did this thing with iHeartMedia from my understanding and the conversations with your team.

1:10:55Here's what I had picked up. Here's what I want to talk about today with you and the team. What do you want to add to that? What do you want to get? That's a little different. Yeah. But that would be the exception. I'm glad you mentioned it because I 100 % agree. The why'd you take the call is first call only. Yeah. Like once we're in a deal cycle and I've talked to your director and they've looped you in 100%. If I come in and go, oh, you know, you're vice president. This is our fourth call this sale cycle. Why'd you take the call? Like that's a bad look for me. I'm glad you pointed that out.

1:11:27Yeah. That's exactly right. Okay. So let's shift gears. um oh man we could talk so much about we'll have to just have to do another episode bro yeah yeah well that is the solution in it so um i feel like we had some really good stuff around mindset tonality and the mental preparation around cold calling we got really tactical with the cold calling objection handling we talked about that first part of the discovery process now uh all we got time left for is a couple of fun rapid fire questions oh okay let's do this I'm here for it. So these are softballs, bro. So how do you leverage AI in your day-to-day?

1:12:04And it doesn't have to be work-related necessarily. The more I use AI, the less I use it. The more I try to use it, the more I realize I could just do this shit myself. Really? Yeah. I can't tell if you're fucking with me right now. I'm serious. I'm serious. I use it for – Jen Allen Knuth has an awesome problem prompter framework, which we teach in our course on executive selling and multithreading, that I do use. That's a, that's a pre-written prompt of like, here's, um, like I have a call coming up with whatever company, give me their problem and it'll rattle. Like, here's what's going on with the business.

1:12:35So that's like a quick brief. That's kind of how I do the quick prep. Okay. So that's that. Honestly, man, I used to, I've, I've tinkered with AI doing everything from helping me prioritize accounts, finding the right signals. Are you using agents though? Or are you just doing the prompting? I'm just doing the prompting. I could do the agent thing. I could do it. But like, do you guys have Claude or what do you, what do you use Claude? Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, like I have done a full like end to end AI powered prospecting process that legitimately netted me four to six meetings a week. We just made a video about this.

1:13:07We're going to drop a video on this in the not too distant future. It can work. What I find for me, though, is like the better I understand. It's like you ever heard like if you can't explain an idea simply, you probably don't understand it well enough yourself. This is something I learned in teaching. Yeah. Yes. It's like if you can't explain it in simple language, you don't understand it. Yeah. If I can't find accounts and reach out to them very simply, I don't understand my process well enough for me. Like if I should be able to identify here's the magic bullet. Here's the here's the number one signal.

1:13:39If this is true, my odds of booking a meeting are good. It's a signal I'm going to mention. I'm going to mention it the same way every time I'm going to send a good old fashioned formatted email. It's going to have a somewhat generic problem. It's going to have a personalized PS. I'm going to rip off a bunch of those every week. And like, yeah, AI era that kind of has taken a little bit of a stigma because it's like we should be we have the tools to be more relevant and more personalized. And like there is some personalization and some relevance. But for me, it's like, yeah, but that's working.

1:14:09Yeah, that's interesting. We'll have to come back to that one. I have a bunch of ideas for you with AI. I'm sure. Here's the thing is like agents, though, you really have to use like build out agents and do like a lot of co-work. You really got to use that and build skills and things like that. The prompting back and forth is not going to be great for a lot of things. It's going to be much slower. I've done like very detailed MDs in a Claude project, which I think approximates how an agent would do it. But I'm still like, hey, run my problem prompter. Let's run the outbound sequence. OK, cool.

1:14:39Here's 10 accounts for you. It's basically like I don't know if that's different from what an agent would do. Yes, that's that's very similar. I mean, like, do we talk about discovery? I haven't written a follow up email myself. I still, I red pen. I use that analogy, red pen versus black pen. I red pen the email. The second call, we build Nate Nasralla style two-page business case. It's got business case and proposal on it. I don't write that from scratch. You know, that's like we have a skill that helps with that. It pulls the transcripts. It gets that going. And again, it's like 80%, 90 % dialed in.

1:15:15That's something that would take me an hour to do. Great point. I use it for my recaps. I'm glad you brought that up. definitely the business case i actually find me writing it as a helpful exercise yeah but i'm writing it off a template i'm not i start from zero and i use nate miss roll's template as well yeah it's the man love you nate talked about him a couple times today so far um how do you like to decompress after a long day or a work week

1:15:40well i pretty much immediately go from work to dad so that's not that's actually harder i'm switching gears into my daughter's 19 months old so it's toddler dad it's hardcore like yeah i'm getting home as quick as i can i'm logging out at like 5 30 at the latest but like i'm not leaving my wife hanging you know with solo mom duty so that's until about 8 8 30 whatever depending on how well she sleeps which god love us she's not does not sleep very well but like so my decompression i got like i got like an hour at best and honestly my brain doesn't work at the end of the day so I'll exercise I'll run throw the weighted vest on take a run outside I'll push her in the stroller try to make that like a something for her as well um so that is sometimes what's happening we are watching Love Island right now which is just delightful it's just great and like you know she's a she's a therapist and like it's super fun I mean she's she's she's really good about shutting off her therapy brain because that stuff will stay with you but it's really fun to deconstruct the like yeah I just think she doesn't really have enough confidence in herself you know Like, I think she's letting him talk to her.

1:16:45Somebody hurt her. What do you think's going on? Like, we just have so much fun. Like, sort of this, like, fake dressed up thing, whatever it is. But, like, my real decompression time is in the morning. Like, I wake up at about 5 a.m. Kind of naturally. Man, I'm building my own little app. Totally unrelated to GTM sales, any of that stuff. I'm building the book app because I just love books so much. And I feel like the current book space is kind of... It's a little vibe coding. It's a lot of... Yeah, dude, it's a lot of that stuff. it'll probably end up being useless but it's fun uh it's fun to do and like i believe in it and so like that's just like a project that's totally unrelated to work yeah that i it's like a hobbyist thing i can just tinker on that so yeah it's that or it's reading just sipping a coffee reading a book like in the morning first thing in the morning that's i love that dude yeah that's my time i look forward to coffee in the morning dude i love it first sip first couple sips nothing like it oh it's so good um last question if you were a first time account executive all over again knowing what you know now what advice would you give yourself oh that's so good you know what it goes back to something that you mentioned and we didn't talk about enough get a savings get a good it took me a long time to get here some from my own choices some just because it's expensive to live right now but like get a savings like i have a nice healthy cushion yeah i had a monster q4 big fat commission check put all of that into this is the emergency fund do not touch this is the alex missed quota uh bucket uh and like i have since missed quota a couple times matter of fact and uh i'm not sweating it i'm not freaking out it's not fun i don't love it i don't like pulling money out of that but it's way better than what it used to be which is i'm like actually panicking because i have no idea how i'm gonna pay my mortgage like exactly and that whole this whole thing we keep talking about being authentic being relaxed i have an offering take it or leave it whatever happens i'm okay is possible way harder if i actually can't pay my bills without closing a certain number of deals in this month that is a nightmare scenario so literally that's it like building that as quick as possible as as able there's you know it's the first job i've ever done where i'm making like real money yeah and i used to feel bad about that but i'm like i'm actually buying financial peace for myself and my family yeah oh my god that feels good it's i'm not used to it i grew up i've been broke forever my wife and i've been married 10 years and we've been broke for nine of them yeah that's great this is good to be like all right we're just like we got a little cushion so that's huge as soon as possible getting something like that together has been massively helpful i love that dude love that um this was awesome bro we definitely need to do a good one.

1:19:31So sick. We need to do another one. I would say we've done about 10 % of what we could talk about and have a good conversation about. Oh, yeah. There's so much that we can weave in with the psychology and like all of that kind of stuff that I think is hyper relevant. Big time. Hyper relevant. Hyper relevance. You get triggered right now. Just give me my template, man. I'm going to slot in that stuff and send those emails. So before we take off, where can people go to connect with you? Yes. You post a lot of great content that I would encourage everyone to go check out and then uh 30 minutes the president's club what are you guys up to what can people check out i don't know if you guys are hiring for any kind of roles or anything right now but let us let us know yeah man so i'm i'm now co-host of the 30 minutes the president's club podcast which is so cool yeah i've loved it for a long time to be hosting it's great so like you can get that anywhere you get a podcast that's a great spot to just get like it's very different from this covering from like a different angle super tactical like 30 minutes learn something you can use tomorrow whatever um and then like yeah just like we are we are our big thing right now is we've got this enablement program we've taken all the best stuff from six years of doing this podcast we have a course in there too on cold email your course is awesome uh you got a cold email course cold calling negotiation executive selling and multi-threading discovery sales leadership we're doing i think well you know what i'm not going to say what the next courses are because i'm probably not allowed to but there's some good stuff coming down the pipe um and so So like, you know, if anybody who's like, feel like a teen, their team needs it, that's great.

1:20:57But like, yeah, just hit me on LinkedIn because I won't shut up about that either. So you'll see it all there. You know, Alex Murphy on LinkedIn. Come on by, man. We got a fun little crew going over there.