GTM After Hours

Rethinking Sales Strategies with Trevor van Woerden

• Mark Bliss • Season 1 • Episode 22

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In this episode of the GTM After Hours podcast, Mark Bliss and Trevor van Woerden discuss the evolving landscape of sales and marketing, emphasizing the decline of cold outreach and the need for sales professionals to adopt a more marketing-oriented approach. They explore the importance of building authentic relationships, the role of SDRs, and the significance of storytelling in sales. Trevor shares insights on how sales reps can differentiate themselves and the value of engaging with their audience on platforms like LinkedIn. The conversation culminates in advice for new sales professionals, encouraging them to embrace their roles and focus on ethical selling.

Takeaways

  • Cold outreach is no longer effective in sales.
  • Salespeople need to adopt a marketing mindset.
  • SDRs should focus on building relationships, not just making calls.
  • Quality of outreach is more important than quantity.
  • Sales strategies must evolve with changing market dynamics.
  • Sales teams should be incentivized based on conversion rates.
  • Effective outreach requires understanding the prospect's needs.
  • Sales and marketing alignment is crucial for success.
  • Building genuine connections leads to better sales outcomes.
  • The sales process is now more relationship-based than transactional. Building relationships is more important than just closing deals.
  • Intimate dinners with plus ones can enhance networking.
  • Co-branding at events increases credibility and engagement.
  • Authentic engagement leads to meaningful connections.
  • Sales reps should share personal stories to differentiate themselves.
  • Storytelling is a powerful tool in sales strategy.
  • LinkedIn should be used for authentic engagement, not just sales pitches.
  • Sales reps need to understand their clients' needs deeply.
  • Creating a safe environment for sharing stories fosters connections.
  • Rookie sales reps should embrace their roles and stay true to themselves.

Sound Bites

  • "Cold Outreach is dead."
  • "You have to prove your worth."
  • "What if we just label that as marketing?"
  • "It's about quality, not quantity."
  • "Salespeople sell what you pay them to sell."
  • "SDRs are my favorite employees, period."
  • "You can't treat it like it was 20 years ago."
  • "You need to do more than that."
  • "That's not relational. That is a hustle."
  • "You have to watch for that."
  • "You can become the authority on it."
  • "It's a good job. It's a worthy job."
  • "Stay true to yourself. Stay true."
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Hi, and welcome to the GTM After Hours podcast. This is a really exciting one for me. As many of you know, I started my career as a sales rep and sales manager, and then became a marketer. Well, my guest today, Trevor Warden, is a sales executive who's been selling into marketers for the better part of a decade. And so I think it's going to come up with a lot of, think, really great conversations around outreach and you know, personal branding as it relates to sales reps and probably a little bit of that civil war between sales and marketing. But Trevor, it's really nice to have you. Thank you for joining me on GTM after hours. Do want to give the audience that 30,000 foot overview of kind of your background and what leads you to be on the call with me today? Yeah, absolutely, man. mean, we hit it off, gosh, I don't know, over just trying to get real, right? Out here in the LinkedIn streets. you know, that's really kind of my MO going into 2025 and has been really for the better part of my career is just how do we talk to people and how do we be authentic and not in sales mode all the time? and really only in sales mode when it's actually appropriate. So what do we do with the rest of our time? Right. So that's what I'm asking. I've been in sales now since, I don't know, 1997 or something. I've sold across multiple industries, pharmaceutical, media, software, insurance, back in media. mean, a bunch of stuff I have been with entrepreneurial as well as, as a major like fortune 20 type. organizations have seen many different types of sales organizations and comp plans and how they're structured and all of that and have succeeded in them. right now I am with Infuse and we cater to B2B technology, go to market teams by helping them fulfill on their demand generation goals and challenges. Nice. And you were also the host of the hotness unleashed show, which is fabulous show about giving props to people who deserve it, but may not get the applause that they that they do deserve. Yeah, you know, the Hotness Unleash Your Show is really fun. it for it. So we're getting into the fourth season. It starts in a week. Today's the sixth of February. It starts February 12th. And we originally the show really was truly about like, how do we talk about other people or their work in an intentional way? And what has actually evolved even more is giving the giving a platform for the guests to do that. Right. So it's, it says much about the recognition of being like being a receiver of that recognition, but there's also this action of, of doing it in a, in in a safe way, like in a way that isn't weird or threatening or otherwise, you know, it's, it's like, it's normal and it's fun and celebrated and people show up and they, know, they, do LinkedIn stuff, right? They tag, tag, tag. And that's, that's fun. Your notifications blow up and yeah, it's really cool. and, and I have been, It's been an honor to be the host of that show and to have been pushed at times to get it going again. you know, it's, know, as you know, like putting any kind of a show together on regular basis takes a lot of work. And it's, know, for me, it's a passion play. so we're just, you know, we're just putting it together. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Elijah Drown, who runs as a solo podcast creator, producer. and his business, your podcast psychic is my producer. and you know, he's been terrific. That has really, really helped. Well, I want to kick things off with the most controversial statement that you can give me. Okay, okay. longer works in sales. Cold Outreach, baby, Cold Outreach is dead. Okay, you're gonna get so many messages. I know. I know. know. I know. It's just it's and it pains my heart to say it, too. I got to tell you, man, it's it hurts because I my DNA is fully mutated. All right. I I sell marketing solutions and tactics and strategies to marketers. I think about marketing tactics and all day every day. It's it's it's in my blood. But at the same time, the DNA is still seller. Right. So I'm still revenue focused. am still charged with, with, with setting up contracts and negotiating rates and, and fulfilling on the promise and, and, you know, all the stuff, all the sales stuff. get it. And, in 2025 though, man, that, that outreach motion is, is we need to stick fork in it, put it in the ground, bury it. Done work. Dead. What's the disconnect on that? Because Outbound is typically a part of every ABM campaign as well. So like what is that broken piece that's made it to where it's dead in your opinion? Well, you know, I'm glad that you mentioned ABM because there's one of the things that's come to me that actually I was able to clarify today, believe it or not, like this morning is like, wow. OK, you know how you've got or maybe not. So there's this big movement out here, which is Apollo plus Clay plus Lead Magic or, you know, know, list cleaning. You put all these together. And you throw it in instantly, get it by a bunch of email boxes, take out all the links and send a cryptic email to the masses. OK, this cold email infrastructure. OK, OK, great. And guess what? Those those emails, they get through, they get through to the inbox. And I've been ranting about their quality of late because they're they're they're terrible. Right. They you don't know what this person is talking about. It comes from a from a funky You're a domain, right? Some weird domain that you barely recognize. They don't put anything, nothing. Like it's very fishy. And usually wrong. Like usually it's targeting me because, you know, I have worked really, really hard to obtain a senior level title. And so that means I passed a lot of filters, but I'm still an ICA, still an individual contributor. you know, that's what's real. So I get a lot of this. What's happening is that if we take that motion and you apply it to an ABM strategy, you will kill the entirety of your list except for the one deal that you got. So now what are you faced with? Maybe you got one, two deals, out of 1,000 target accounts or something, or maybe 500 accounts. Well, you just literally buried the 499 of them. because you'd spammed them to death with a bunch of junk that was poorly written, you know, cryptic, off the wall stuff. And you didn't take, you didn't demonstrate time to truly understand, you know, what their issues are and how they are, how they work and all that. if sales outreach, so that's my ABM rant, right? It's like, we have all these tools, we have all these sort of sales things that we're trying to scale. this one-to-one outreach stuff, that's not going to work on IBM because you will just literally burn your accounts down. And that model might work if you can do that. So if it might work for a transactional kind of a thing or where you're selling a $39 product or whatever and it's an impulse buy and there's already high demand in market and you're just trying to catch somebody. But for this high-end stuff like in cyber where you have experience or where I'm I like to play where you're looking at six figure contracts and up. We're not doing that. And so then the question is, if cold sales outreach is dead, what's alive? What are we going to do? What do you do when the leadership says, look, Trevor, I don't care if sales outreach is dead, you got to get some business in? Right. You got to, you got to do something all that. You got to prove your worth. Cause if you're not showing revenue and you're not showing some sort of activity, like you're actually making progress into these accounts, then see you later. Right. You're, you're, you're off the team. And that's where it gets very interesting. I think. and this kind of what I wanted to, what I wanted to dive into. and, that is like, okay, let's stick a fork in this old. So these cold sales outreach methods, which, the newest of which is this cold email infrastructure thing and say what, could work. Right. And I've been trying to say, look, what if sales actually moved, took its set? Okay. I accept that prospecting this thing called prospecting this job, this part of the job that is, you know, maybe half or maybe more, maybe a little bit less, depending on kind of where you are and what. how many accounts you have. Maybe it's zero if you're lucky, but maybe it's some part of your job. What if we just label that as marketing? What if we said, this part of my job, I am a marketer? And if I was a marketer, what would I do? How would I be? How would I go about that? How would I fill my pipeline? Or how would I create conversations? If I wasn't a salesperson, if I was a marketer, or maybe a product person, I don't know, or maybe a subject matter expert, something along those lines, but definitely not a salesperson. And so as somebody who's actually made that transition, Mark, I'm curious because you have, even if you haven't actively, consciously thought about this, you've thought about it, right? I mean, it's part of having made that transition. Yeah, I think Gary V said one time something to the effect of a sales rep has to make one creative choice every day that drives an individual deal forward. Marketers have to make a creative choice every quarter that changes the company forever. And I think what is happening, you're right. I think there's a transition that's happening. where salespeople have to act more like marketers, because it's not as transactional anymore. It's much more relationship based, your ICP is narrowing, you have more data than you've ever had access to you have more technology than you've ever had access to. And so it's kind of like you don't want to throw away your shot. And like, as as much as I'm a big music buff, and all the listeners of this podcast know that I'm a I'm a big music buff. I also truly enjoy history and it kind of reminds me of two generals General Sherman in the Civil War, he adopted total warfare. And so every single town that the army took, they burned everything behind them. Mm-hmm. There's no supplies anymore. There's nothing usable. And so then you have free construction because you got to rebuild everything even after you win. And so I feel like a lot of sales teams do that, where they're just burning through this account list sending really shitty emails. And it's about quantity, not the quality. And then even if you get the deal, you left scorcher behind you. There's nothing left. You're not even going to get them to re-sign. there's, I don't know, you've kind of ruined it. And then the other side of where I think salespeople mess up is, like general Meade, where he won and didn't follow the troops after Gettysburg. He didn't follow up. he could end of the war, but he didn't. And I think there's a, there's a timidness that exists where. They'll get the initial, the initial conversation and then progress things in, but they don't follow up enough to these prospects that are actually engaged because they're spending so much time hitting these outdated call quotas. And instead of actually trying to convert sales. And I know I'm speaking in general broad terms, but I don't know. think if people thought a little bit more like a marketer. and thought long-term and strategy, they would operate differently. Mm-hmm. I I couldn't agree more. I couldn't I mean and this is what I'm facing down right like today Right. I am I am literally I have to face this stuff down I I come back to just you know, one of the maxims that I I don't know where I picked it up But it's salespeople sell what you pay them to sell not what you tell them to sell Right, so you could tell them to sell better business tell them to sell business. It's like more likely to renew But if you pay them to sell new business And then you don't pay them to sell business that renews. They're going to sell new business. end. And if they're at 42 % of quota, which is, I don't know, that was a couple of years ago or something that was quoted as the average for reps. They're going to lie, cheat and steal to get there. Right. Cause they're hungry and they are afraid and they're seeing they're going to get laid off fired. Right. Their, their, commissions are going to get squeezed. They're, And they're going to bring a new business no matter what. And if and that that's something that we have to, you know, to look at. that's I think that's where the scorched earth reality comes from. Right. It's like, OK, he wants a new business. Great. This product does this, this, this, this, this, this, this. And it costs this. OK. Yeah. Yeah. Let's buy it. OK. Well, sorry. Well, no. OK. Too late. I got my commission. I'm out. Right. you know. the like, STR teams, so I've consistently managed STR teams for the bulk of my career. And the thing that always stands out to me, the difference between a high performing STR team and a low performing STR team is typically their over-reliance on paying for like minimum call quota thresholds and things instead of the conversion rate. Mm-hmm. Everybody has the same thing like you're paying per meeting or per SAO or whatever that is. Everybody's got some component of their comp structure that's related to that. But their secondary component, a lot of the worst teams are set up to where they are paying based on minimums on activity or things like that. When it should be conversion rate. You know, if it takes you a hundred activities to generate one SAO, we should be paying you to get that down to 10. Over the course of a year or two, yeah, you should be getting better. And so why are we not just as an industry norm, paying strs on conversion rate, and I think you could make a pretty strong argument that that should be a leading indicator for sales reps as well. You know, what is the conversion rate from sal into closed one? Yeah. And it brings up the question now that we're trying to articulate some of this flesh this out, right? So saying, OK, if cold sales outreach is dead, if we're going to operate on that as a truth for the purposes of this podcast, whether it's true or not, can whatever. purposes of your inbox after people listen to this podcast. yeah, yeah, of course, of course. Okay, but we still have SDRs and I'm going to argue and I have argued, I am on record that SDRs are my favorite employees period. Okay, they're gritty. They know more stuff than you think. Right. They're quick on their feet. They show up every day and they do really hard work. All right. Yeah, I'm also claiming that the work that they do is pointless and is ready for the guillotine. So how do we fix that? What are we going to do? What do we do with them? They're marketers, because functionally, that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to get a message into market via the phone or via a one-to-one email. So what's wrong with the message? Is it that the message is Do want to sign up for demo? Want to sign up for a demo? to meet my AE? Want to come to my webinar? Want to, know, da-da-da. I mean, not even webinar, right? I mean, that's a stretch, right? It's no, do you want a demo with my AE? Right? And the client's saying, I'll talk to your AE when I damn well feel like it. Right? Because I already know about you, and you haven't brought me anything new, and I don't know why I need to be beholden to a demo right now because... You know, yesterday I was on your website and you are B2B'd me or whatever. And I, if you found my contact and just connected that to zoom and you got a cookie on me and no, I am just gathering information about something, you know, whatever, because you had the Gartner report on your, on your site and your competitor didn't. So I came over to your site because I wanted to see that instead of, know, whatever that's whatever people do. So I guess the question is, what can SDRs be doing if they need to stop calling in and asking for demos, and if we want to think of them as marketers instead of a functional sales piece? And if they've been reporting to you, I suspect they were reporting to you as a marketing lead. I've had it in both sides of my career. But I think today in today's day and age, it works better if they're in marketing, because then you have one owner of everything up until SAO, and you have one owner of everything up until closed one. And then you have another owner on the customer success side of everything on renewals and churn and that. And so You're able to divide up a little bit easier if it's in the sales side, then you have somebody. I don't know. You have some finger pointing capability that I just don't like. I hire people who will own shit and then let them own it. And when you have SDRs that are operating in sales and then marketing owns everything up until the SAO, it's like that doesn't really jive. It allows you to say, well. Our SDR team is doing really great cold outreach, but the leads are bad. The content's bad. The data is bad, et cetera. Whereas if that lived in marketing, then the SDR's conversation is really just, okay, well, I'm struggling to get my conversion rate up. I need new content. This isn't working. And it's a very different conversation. It's much, much more. collaborative, it's softer, like it's, I don't know, I feel like it's, it's a much better setup to the type of kumbaya happiness that you're looking for. I'm with you on it. I don't mean to set a trap or bait or anything. I also believe that the SDRs are a better position in marketing because they're functionally doing a marketing role. Even if the market thinks they're doing a sales role, right? As an organization who employs or otherwise has SDRs in place, that's a marketing function. I loved, do you remember a dude, Nelson Gilead? Is that name ringing a bell? doesn't sound familiar but i can google He wrote a book, three or four years ago, maybe, about this, about the, the, the SDR, the plight of the SDR. And he just got crushed. I mean, he was just, it was, it was brutal. Like, like the market was not ready for it. it, it was, they were, they were not nice, not supportive of him. And, he really stood by and he hung in there for a while. He's kind of gone. I haven't, I don't know where he is now, but, It was an interesting point in time, and this probably would have been four or five years ago, something like that. So I haven't made all of this stuff up, right? It's like this is sort of forming over time, watching how this goes. And so if the SDR is a marketer, what could we have them do, right, instead of calling and asking if the if this poor prospect wants to have a demo. What could be more valuable? And as a full stack AE who has the SDR function in my role, so that's kind of a hybrid reality where I'm charged with going out. What it translates to is me saying, OK, I'm not going to cold dial my prospects because I know they don't like to be cold dialed, right? Maybe one or two. I could get lucky. I could. All right. But I'm going to, I'm going to do a lot more damage by getting through, to them. and not, and, and not, and I'm not being ready for that call, not knowing me maybe. Right. and, then remembering that, you know, I did that. The other thing that I don't think people realize too, is that if you do get through, You have a great propensity for creating false positives. And false positives are devastating, right? Particularly for an AE, right? Because you say, great. I can just remember this call I made. It's been a little while, but she was a caller. She's like, yeah, OK, no, it's great. And then she's got kids in the van or something. She's stopping at Starbucks. It was like chaos in her world. And I know this world, right? I live it, OK? But I got a phone and she's like, oh, okay. No, that all sounds interesting. Why don't you call me back next week? All right. And I'm like, sweet. You know, this is a great, you know, marquee account. Everything's awesome. And I'm thinking she's, she's in, she wasn't in, she wasn't in. She was trying to get me off the phone. She's being nice. Okay. And it took a really long time to, to figure that out. Right. So I went and I chased this rabbit hole that didn't go anywhere and just took up like my whole life. And again, as you get an opportunity, you roll that out. And now all of sudden that's a close loss. So that's real. And so I'm looking at this and I'm thinking, OK, I don't really want to be cold dialed. It's a risky proposition. Maybe I get lucky. But really? OK, let's set that down. And do cold email. OK, we already talked about the cold email infrastructure thing, that that's a disaster. So I can do one-to-one personalized cold email. And I do do that. I feel like I have to take that risk. But I relayed a story before we came on that shouldn't be repeated. it didn't work out. And it didn't work out. It left me with very little options. It really shut that channel down. Okay, and I think it was because that particular person in an ABM context where there isn't an unlimited number of people by definition Okay, I don't have more of that job that dude that that job title. There aren't more of that guy at that company He's it he's the guy now. He doesn't want now. I killed it. Okay, so Okay, I gotta be super careful about that So now what? Well, one of the things I'm trying to think through is, if I break down marketing, not to say marketing, it's all one big blob, because it's not lost on me that there's demand marketers, there's brand marketers, there's digital advertising marketers, there's field, there's channel, partner, there's a bunch, product. So I'm trying to take slightly like the sequential sort of breakdown approach and ask myself, OK, if I'm a product marketer, what is product doing? What is product marketing doing? Product marketing is interested in research. They're interested in product market fit, interested in things like win-loss kind of stuff. They want to know what is the real feedback from the client. You know, demand is really interested in like, we hitting the right people at the right time? You know, with the right message, like, and, they're really interested in like the data, like the conversion. know, they're a little closer to the revenue maybe. and then on it, on it goes, and what are, what components can I take out of those kinds of mindsets, those mandates and apply to whatever motion that I'm, I'm doing. And I'm in the midst of trying to figure that out. Right. Like it's my 2025 plan functionally. And here we go, right? So taking a deep breath and saying, okay, if I have to slow this thing down a little, saying, well, should I do the Hotness Unleashers show? What's that about? Well, it's about trying to, it's trying about being present. and present a perspective on LinkedIn, which is one of a kind. We don't have another LinkedIn. There's nothing else like it. And presenting a point of view on how to act and behave on it and to be approachable and to try to be, to demonstrate that the selling is not the only thing I think about. And it kind of goes on from there. that's kind of my current take, and it's kind of in development. I'm open to feedback on that and some ideation here, because I'm making it up in real time. You know, I, I don't know who who it was, so can't credit the source, but I was at a conference and somebody had mentioned that sales now has transitioned similar to how dating has changed. Now I've been with my wife for like 20 years, so been out of the game a long time, but it used to be. Yes. You saw you saw the woman at the bar. you went up, you had a conversation, butter a drink, and now you might start dating. And that's great. One off, there's your cold email right there. One off, hey, you want a demo? I love what I saw. And then we're getting married down the line. That's great. That's not how it works anymore. There's full, emotional, emotionally charged conversations that are that are happening through conversations in apps prior to that drink ever happening. You're having, you know, more research being done on you than ever before people, know, like, they're checking your they're checking your Insta, they're checking all your socials, they're googling you, you know, to find out like, is this a creep or not, like all of that. And so I think it's the same thing with with outbound anything with with sales where it's change and you can't treat it like it was 20 years ago, you have to earn the right to ask for that offer. And so if if you're trying to get somebody to a demo, what are the four things you need to do before that to get them to actually say yes, because I would argue anybody that's going to reply, Yes, I have a need from that one email with a CTA for a demo. I guarantee you they're not buying anything. They're just bored. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I I'm listening to this and I'm trying to think about some of the things that I do do and I am committed to right so I'm I'm I Do go to shows right? I do go to these events I will go to RSA's, you know RSAC here in a couple, you know three months or whatever And I will approach the booths cold and I will go up and I'll introduce myself and I'll say hey, know What are you doing for your content? You know, whatever And I find that to be effective, right, still. Well, because people are in that mindset and they've decided to be there. Yeah. Yeah. But it's it's my my little twist is the fact that it's it's me as a as a cold collar walking around to vendors who are paying to not talk to me. Right. Talk to somebody else. Yeah. But, you know, marketers, you know, that that's been I'd like to venture that that's effective because it's it's hard. Right. I think there's some recognition that it's that it's it took some real intention to do that. It's like, yeah, OK, if anybody goes to a bar anymore and sits there, well, by golly, you better go and talk to them. Right. mean, like if they're there. But to your point, they're not really they're very often like that's rare. You could go to just the bar every night and not see anybody. Well, but the flip side of that though is you can get a yes on a meetup or a party or something at a bar like, you know, check your offer. The most effective. mean, literally the most effective trade show strategy I've ever had is kind of a three part. First, do something big enough that people actually recognize your name. Otherwise, you don't exist. And they're not going to say yes to whatever your offer is. Second, your offer is not have a demo. Your offer is I'm doing this experience and I'd love you to be a part of it. And whatever that experience is, I really don't give a shit. Make it something your ICP cares about. And they will be interested in being a part of that experience. And then in your follow up, you've now earned the right to ask for the demo. But I would take it one step further in that if you've now done this experience and you had 50 people at this experience, representing like 30 accounts, figure out if there's a similar region that five of those accounts are in. And then do another in person do a roadshow strategically put where there's a handful of those. And that's where you're going to Because you're able to build these real relationships, you get the I don't know you get the thumbs up to be able to actually go into the software and by that time they've had enough enough awareness of what you do to make an informed decision and that sales cycle is going to fly as opposed to the alternative where you're like oh hey we've got this great giveaway at our booth drop by our booth and you can win and Oculus or some shit like that. I saw MacBook being given it like a MacBook Pro and I'm like, yeah, that's cool. I'd love it. But how much shit are you going to get as opposed to doing an experience and having people be a part of that experience? But anyway, I'd to get your take on that. Like how how do you see like an effective outbound campaign around like a trade show? Well, I'm thinking about this. So I went to, I got to hang out at the, so I've been to a lot of things, right? I've done a lot of things. So it's kind of a loaded question. The, The technology industry's insistence that plus ones don't exist is, I think, a drag. It is stupid. It's stupid. It's stupid. It does not does not cost you that much to allow people to bring a plus one to your event. So, that, you know, tells a story, know, just grandpa got a story. Right. Back in the day, when I was working for Merck Pharmaceuticals, we would host these dinners, right, for local physicians. would your Ford Model T? Hmm. It was. Yeah, it was a practice. It was a Ford Taurus. Uh, that's what I drove. Yeah. Uh, basically, uh, and, and it, so we, so we'd rent a restaurant or a high end restaurant, beautiful place, pay the whole nine yards, right? We'd hire a, a, a well regarded, um, research physician to come in locally, right? Fly them in, pay their pay a salary, a stipend, whatever, honorarium. They do a talk for an hour or whatever. We pay the whole dinner, the wine, and the plus ones. All right? And if they brought two, fine. Great. More than merrier. Right? And nobody checked. Nobody was worried about whether that doctor ordered two bottles of wine or none. It's like if they were there, that was the thing. And that was standard operating. procedure. I would love to see more of that in these intimate dinners, right? So it's like, look, if we're trying to build relationships with people, then how about we just open up to what that actually means, which is to not say, OK, you're going to get here on your own, and we're going to fill you up with booze and a steak, and then we're going to send you home on your own. And great. And you're going to have education material from point A to point from beginning to end. And then we expect you to sign up for a demo the next day and see it through to purchase. You need to do more than that. That is not relational. That is a hustle. That is a timeshare presentation. Well, and if you have a plus one, like if you allow for plus ones, the two things happen. Number one, more people are willing to come because if I'm if I'm at a conference and my wife has come along with me, I'm not going to go and do an additional work function after being at the booth all day. when she's just sitting in the hotel room. But I would take her to a dinner thing that is part work, but also part fun. And number two is if you sell the spouse or plus one, like if you get them on board, you now have an additional sales rep in their house. I don't think people I don't think people think of it that way. They just think, well, that's going to cost me an extra know, $200 for that person to be there. And in reality, you're like, Well, you're kind of being a little Pennywise pound foolish where you're not, you're not willing to put that extra couple hundred dollars, not only are you more likely to get that person there, but now you're more likely to close them. Is it not worth it? and you have something to talk about, How was your spouse's, your plus one's experience or what did they have to say? What did they order? Whatever it is, whatever you're talk about, whatever personal level you can relate. But it gets back to these reps at 42 % of the plan who are freaking out, right? They're not invested in the relationship because they don't get paid for that. They get paid to convert new business today, right? And so they're not thinking about that long-term thing. So to the question you asked is what were the experiences that I valued the most? There are those types of dinners where plus ones are, and we bring in somebody who isn't necessarily employed by the company, right? But is an expert in whatever the solution is. And somebody who's well-known and vetted and has some real street credibility. So it's those kinds of things that I really like. I think in terms of like what RSAC had to offer, I saw a lot of, I don't know if it's an emerging trend necessarily, but the events that I liked were ones that were co-branded with, we had multiple vendors combining forces to, or joining forces to pull off something that was pretty big and flashy. and it's more credible too, because you have multiple logos. You don't feel like you're walking into a sales pitch. Whereas if there's one logo up there and one company is putting it on, you might feel like I'm walking in like like they've got the firing squad pointed at me. Yeah, yeah. So you have to like watch for that. So that's kind of the other the other end of the spectrum of of like what you know, what did I like? I just I remember they they had an 80s cover band and there was this one guy who was dancing like he was like that one dude who goes out and dances in front of everybody. But he wasn't he was just like a guy who was happy. He was dancing. You know, it was good. And nobody joined him because it was just all a bunch of cybersecurity IT guys who were, you know, they weren't there now. Not doing that, not going to be the person. But nonetheless, that party evolved and was pretty fun. And they probably had, I don't know, if they didn't have five, it was 10 different sponsors of that thing. So I thought that was pretty cool. don't know how, but it's a brand play, right? It's not like you're going to get demos out of that. You have to have corporate support to say, yes, A, I want to be associated with these other brands. And B, how can I do that cost effectively? And knowing that me associating with them is really cool. In fact, glad I went down that road. my favorite, actually to be fair, event, my favorite event was actually hosted by Envologic at RSAC last year. And they were terrific. They had, was way down the road from Moscone, right? was out in the hinterlands, south I think. And it's kind of a little bit sketch in terms of the neighborhood and whatnot. But it was a cool venue. It was some sort of cool workspace. And they had Snowflake who was their keynote, right? Like their main presenting sponsor. I'm like, okay. So now what you've just done is you've co-opted Snowflake's brand equity and now associated that with you. Awesome. Right? I mean, we can say whatever we want about Snowflake, but the fact is that's a big tech company and they've been very successful. And now they're basically lending that brand equity to Ambalogic who is, you know, not Snowflake. You know, the food was great. gave away this book, which I still have about if you're a cybersecurity founder, you know, um, you can, you know, it's under my bed right now, but I'm not a science cybersecurity founder. So I, I've been challenged to finish it, but still I have it. You know, I remember it. It was cool. Um, the food was superb. Um, so they didn't, they didn't hold back on, you know, on, on the food. They deemphasized, uh, there was beer, think, or, know, but it wasn't like heavy, heavy cocktail drinking kind of. vibe. It was quiet enough where you could have a conversation, you know, with people. I thought it was really valuable because a lot of you go to a lot of these events, you can't, it's so loud and dark. can't talk to anybody. If you don't know somebody already, it's very difficult to strike up a conversation. yeah, the worst ones at at black hat. it's, that the bar is, is you're like walking to, to get to the convention center. And it's like all green in that like laser lights and like, you can hear that thing from a mile away. Like I can't even imagine what it's like to be inside that party. Like you're not going to be able to talk to anybody. I totally agree with you. yeah, and I might be relating to it as a senior person on this planet. Well, maybe. mean, it could be. could be. I'm going ultimately, my filter is, can I do any business here? Can I have a conversation with somebody that is somehow not just me burning off steam? Yeah, that's kind of my metric, right? So yeah, intimate dinner with a plus one, absolutely can do that. Can I go to a big, big giant party and with its co-branded and there's no expectation I'm going to turn into a lead? Yeah, okay, that's cool. Can I go to this Amvalogic thing with a co-opted brand from Snowflake? Yeah, absolutely. And I met Alex Hurtado and Alex is going to be a guest on the, she's going be my season one, season four, episode one guest on the Hotness and Leisure show. So that's how that, that's how that's evolved, right? Because she's got her own show, right? She does. And you know, we met, we... had a chance to talk about it, hit it off, that we could relate about what goes into making a live. You know that, right? Here we are. And now she's going to be on my show, and now we've got a basis for conversation that is independent of whether I'm going to buy from her she's going to buy from me. mean, oh, maybe, but OK, whatever. I just think... I think what she's doing is cool. And I thought Amulogic hosted a great party. Well, and your brand as a seller really opens the door for a lot of stuff like this. mean, I think what a lot of people are missing, we talk about like earning the right to be able to ask for the demo. A lot of that is done in that researching phase. Like if I go to, if I go to a sales reps LinkedIn profile and they haven't posted in the last six months, or all I'm seeing is the generic, some marketer wrote it in your advocate marketing. for him and you're just like, clicking to send it off posts with blogs and stuff. That's that is not going to get me to want to hop on that call. You know, it's like, Oh, well, let's let's hop on a call to do a demo. Maybe just send me a five minute video. Like, I'm cool. But but if they're able to add a perspective, you know, if they talk about what's going on in my market, if they're able to you know, share lessons learned along the way, like, I'm much more likely to have that conversation as opposed to send me a video because I think that the conversation is valuable. And you do that really well. So what, what, are, what are people missing out on, you know, the sales reps that aren't posting on LinkedIn aren't sharing their story, aren't being visible out there. What are they missing out on? What are the sales reps missing out on? think that the sales reps are missing out on the opportunity to differentiate themselves. Well, let me back up. The market in general, the leadership and sales management and GTM management wants to minionize sales. I love that word. I was kind of on this minionization ramp. for a while, right? They want sales to be a a defined cog in a system. And I think what engagement allows a sales rep to do is to be something that isn't just that, right? It isn't just reciting a script, right? Isn't just going through emotion. Isn't just, you know, hitting a KPI for the sake of it, right? There's somebody else to find. It's saying, how can I think for myself? How can I express a degree of creativity? And the seller, I mean, that's one of the things that I have, why I'm still doing this work. It's that it is creative, right? There is a lot of joy that comes out of just how do we evolve, right? How do we grow within with trying to accomplish a specific goal? So I think they miss out on that. They miss out on the opportunity to really... to experience the work in a full way, like in a way that has some meaning, that has some, where you can get invigorated, you know? And I'll be the first one to admit that I do get burnt out from, you know, I do, right? And probably a couple of times a year, it's probably the case. And it's hard, right? It happens. I know what it looks like, I know what it feels like, and I accept it. I'm not afraid of it. I just say, this is what's happening. Okay. I just need to take a little time out and take a little breather. Maybe I take some PTO just to sort of pull back for a minute, recalibrate, you know, and move forward. And I, I worry that this, that, that, that sellers who aren't letting, aren't engaging in thinking for themselves are, you know, are in and out of the profession. Right. And, and not really seeing what it's how, how much fun. it can really be to create authentic relationships and to be really useful, to solve real problems, to be involved in making meaningful differences to your employer's bottom line, to your personal income, and to your clients. They're trying to solve problems. They need something good. And if we can do that for them, then fantastic. There's a lot that is to be said for that. I love that. I also think that it allows you to be more intrinsically connected into your industry because you're engaging in those conversations and it's no longer like here's a blog. Great. You have you have this corporate blog. Somebody in marketing wrote it and it's a really great piece of content. Most sales reps 99 percent if they share it at all. are just going to share it with hey, we just released this blog on such and such. Take it that one step further and be a part of the conversation. like we released this blog. What I love about it is this. What I hate about it is this or tag somebody like tag one of your prospects. Hey, John, we were just talking about this. What do you think of blah, blah? Yeah. one. It's the same thing with email. Just do that one extra thing. Yeah, one step further. You know how many of these blog posts have no byline, right? They're just staff writer or something. And I'm like, OK, guess what? Guess what, sales rep? You can say, here's the blog post. OK, great. I can see that my marketing team wants to get this message out. OK, that's the one I'm going to comment on. And now all of sudden, you have taken a no author blog post, and you have become the authority on it. Here's what I love. Here's what I hate. Here's what your action item is. Hey, Joe, what do you think? Now you own that. And I can't even also believe that you have SDRs and AEs who are following up on gated content, right, as controversial as that is, but still there, right? Or maybe ungated content that has been cookie-tracked and you know they'd never read it. They don't know what it says, right? If you're going to follow up on an ebook download and you don't know what that paper was about, you need to go home. Right? Like you're done. Right? That's like, you're gonna time out for the day, go home, come back tomorrow when you've read it and you know what it says and you can add something to it of value. Right? that is index. Like that's a sales motion that I have zero patients for. You know, reps who don't know what, what their, what their clients are reading, what's being distributed and then following up on it as if that's going to somehow convert to a demo. Pete's sake. No. Well, and how do you turn successful demos into more successful demos? Talk about it. Talk about what was successful. Like you don't even have to name names to be like, I just got out of a demo and they asked this question, which was, I thought very enlightening. And I want to, like, I want to share that with you. You know, my friends on LinkedIn, like talk about the journey at some humanity. OK, OK. So I was on a call yesterday, a friendly call yesterday, and we're talking about this kind of similar themes. Right. And and she says to me, you know, sometimes I just like to your point, I want to watch a five minute demo. Right. And it's not because I don't like my sales rep. Right. And it's not because I, you know, whatever, it's because I don't want to have to be burdened with the with with the ask. I don't want to have to think about it in the context of whatever that rep is thinking about it in. I want to think about it in the context of whatever idea it pushes out for me in my own time. And so I can then consume this content in a safe way. And if I'm a rep, I can avail that, this mini can demo thing. And so she really wanted to see more content that was being produced by her vendors. And yet was sales doing that? No, she had to go out and find it and dig around and get it and all this. I'm like, ah, come on sales, wake up, right? Wake up. just because you're, your, your client doesn't want to take it from you when it's convenient for you on your calendar, you know, so you have an opportunity to sell your stuff. Doesn't mean you shouldn't be out there actively making it available or, or, or at least pointing them in, in, you know, in that direction. So. I'm working on that. I'm working on doing a better job with that with my current clients because I don't think I do enough, to be honest. I don't think I am proactively trying to say like, Infuse is, you know, know it's for this, but you don't know it's for this. And here's some stuff that you can consume or whatever. They're trying to get there in a way that makes sense. mean, it's all storytelling. If you're not telling a customer's story, you could at least tell your own. And you know, every one of like the top sales reps, like if I if I had my Mount Rushmore of sales reps that I worked with, every single one that I would put on that Mount Rushmore does exactly that they are always telling stories. And a lot of those stories are just about their life and experience. in the space and industry. And that's a differentiator. And frankly, that's the difference between good marketing and bad marketing is, you know, is it all about features and functionality? Or are you telling the actual stories of outcomes? Like, how do people leverage it was Keenan talks about gap selling. And, you know, it's not just enough to identify the gap, but you need to be able to show them how to cross that gap. And why your solution is the one that's going to help them like be that bridge over the gap of how they want it to be versus how things are today. And that's where people drop the ball. They drop it all the time because marketers are not taking that into account into context in their writing. Typically, because there's too many cooks in the kitchen. And one of those cooks is hyper technical and they think that everybody needs the jargon. They don't. But you you get the same thing on the sales side where it's like you're no, you're not telling the story. You're just giving the thing. And that's not going to build you relationship. It's not going to build you credibility. And it's it's not going to lead to the sale the majority of the time. So do something different. Start. Well, I'm listening. I am listening. it's funny because I'm really at this crossroads right inside of my son. It's like the sun, our sun, is like right here. So it's kind of like lean over and twist. Yeah. It's like, whoa. OK. Yeah. It's like he's laying he's laying on the couch like what's her name in Titanic. Yeah, yeah, doing that. To that end, was thinking I was thinking about this today. Like I suppose I try to I try to do the good LinkedIn thing. I'm trying to post my own story, right? Every day, some little miss it. But I'm at this crossroads of like, should I be posting about business? Things like should I be posting about my, you know, my experience with with the rotten? cold email infrastructure play right now and how that is. yesterday I talked about LinkedIn, like r slash LinkedIn on Reddit is just hates LinkedIn hates passionately. Doesn't know what to do with it. But that nobody, I mean, they've got very, little exposure. Okay. So, or, or do I just treat LinkedIn like, like Facebook circa 2010, you know, back when it was actually cool. Um, and, and, I, and on all of my friends, was like, wasn't, it wasn't just complete ads. Wasn't there were no bots. There was no, it was like real people sharing their stories about their real stuff, except the notable difference with LinkedIn 2025 is that these are people, many of, I met many, many people in real life now, um, who I know and enjoy and we have professional common ground. Right. And, and yeah, I'm a seller in this GTM. landscape, but okay, maybe you're a marketer or maybe you're a CS or product, know, somehow involved, right? But I haven't decided yet. Should I treat it like Facebook and just start telling stories about my dogs and my, you know, more of that? mean, because I've kind of dipped into it. But I don't know, mean, what's like, what do you think? I mean, it is a controversy. People are really wrestling with this thing right you don't want to you don't want to be cringe and be like, you know, I was at a wedding and here's what it taught me about B2B sales like, like, you don't you don't want to be that guy. Yeah, you know, I, although, that's cut you off because I do want to hear your point, but I do want to say I had this idea yesterday that what if I just only did that right? What the weight room thought taught me about this, what my dogs taught me about what my whatever it is anyway. Okay, go on. Sorry. I don't want to be that guy. You're right. You're right. is that that's a hilarious like mockumentary that you can put together of like 30 days of just posting cringe shit on LinkedIn. But no, I think there's a big difference between that. And telling the story of what's happening in your day to day life like you don't have to relate it to it's already related, you know, like you had a demo. What went well? Can you talk about that in a post? You had a demo. It was total shit. Why was it total shit? Maybe talk about that in a post. Maybe take, take some ownership over, you know, the, the fact that you didn't qualify well enough prior to that call. Maybe you didn't have the right technical resource on maybe you spent too much time talking about a feature that they don't care about, but like the journey is what's interesting and for so many people, there's just this worry of like, I'm not a I'm not a thought leader like these folks. And they put people up on this pedestal. And it's like, there's always a new pedestal for the people who have under 500 LinkedIn connections. They look at somebody with a thousand and who gets 10 likes on a post. They're like, wow, that's such a big pedestal. I could never do that. You know, and then then you have folks that over, you know, somehow overnight. Now, now they have 50,000 followers because they were just talking about their life. Mm-hmm. I like it. like it. I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna try that cuz I do have stories well one of my one of my in my about section I say people don't care on LinkedIn people don't care what you sell they care about how you go about selling it and and I think that that supports what you just said which is Talk about this demo that went to hell right and I have stories. I've got I mean like like I am NOT immune to getting shut down right it it happens and and and if you're in this job it you get roasted some time to time and It is cathartic it's helpful because he just like you know people are people And then your comment section is all my god, me too. Yeah. my God. I know that never happened to me because I never sold anything ever. And I, you man, I, tell stories too about this. I volunteered, for a political campaign that ultimately didn't work out, but I made cold calls, right? For this political campaign. And I, and I haven't, and I need to go back and revisit that because it, didn't want it to be the cringe. I didn't want it to be the thing that guy ruined so much of LinkedIn, you know, by doing that. That going meme but any case that what what doing what make political cold calls taught me about B2B sales, right and it taught me That I could make cold calls Right that even though and I don't make them to my market because my market hates them and I don't like creating false positives Because my market my market is really nice Right there. They're very they tend to be kind people Okay, I know this and I enjoy them They're not and I don't want to cold calm because they don't like it But I can do it for political call, right? Cuz I don't know these people right and I have an agenda and I have a script and I can call it and I can make it happen and I can engage them and and so I built a lot of confidence that that skill is still in there right and it's still something that that that you know, I could do if I you know, I can do if I if Duty calls right? It's it's it's there and and you know, to be able to say like, well, you never made a cold call. So you don't know. I know, man, I've gone door to door, you know, I've knocked on doors. Do you want to buy insurance? You know, you want to, you know, can I say some homeowners insurance? Come on. You know, I've been there. and I, and I can discern when it's not a good tactic. Right. And so I think maybe you're right. Maybe those stories, you know, out of experience are, are are would be valuable. I'll think about it. I appreciate that. Thank you for that input. I'm going to play with that. Well, and what you do extremely well, that I do want to highlight, and I know we got to wrap up the episode, but what I want to highlight that you do extremely well is you leverage your live show your podcast to expand relationships. And so many people miss that they create the corporate podcast and they just use it as a content machine. It's not a content machine. The number one reason a seller, a marketer or a b2b brand should create a podcast is to build relationships with the people in your space. It's easier to connect with a potential guest and get them on the show. And then they become a prospect than it is to try to sell them at the beginning. So I love that I love that you do that and you create this safe environment where people are are sharing these stories, you're building those relationships. And all at the same time, those relationships can and do turn into business relationships. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm excited about that. And I'm excited about it even if they don't turn into business relationships. I think because we're in the space together, right? We have this common ground of we understand. know, venture capital and private equity and these managers and these money guys are real. And we live in this, you know, and we're all trying to navigate this environment, trying to do the best thing. So yeah, I am intrinsically interested in people and in their stories who are how they're getting by, right? Like who are they looking to for inspiration and who are they wanting to get closer to? And I have thoroughly enjoyed hosting this show. know, it's up to, I've had a hundred guests now already. And... And they've called in over 300 different hotness and leasures, which is super fun. And not everybody's into it, but OK, a lot are. I have, so I appreciate that feedback, because it has been fun and something that I'm committed to continue to develop. You should and anybody listening do that. Like, mean, you don't, don't have to go and create a podcast, right? Like not every seller has to have their own podcast. So I do want to lower the bar a little bit there, but make making a point to connect with people on things that are not sales related, be a part of industry conversations. And if you don't know enough about your industry to be a part of industry conversations. learn. Because that's where the value is being able to connect with somebody, hey, I saw your comment on, you know, such and such post, it really resonated with me because of a, b and c, which by the way, AI can help you with a, and c. That is a real connection request that I have responded to. And I have connected with people that have done that. You know, it's going that extra step, we've said to this whole thing. just go the extra step. That's the difference. That's the difference. If you're cold calling and you're taking the path of least resistance, you're screwed. It ain't gonna work today's day. But if you go that extra mile, Magic. Magic magic. All right, there you go. There you go. Well said. Well, well done. Bravo. That's good. That was a good rap. All right, well, Trevor, I always end these the same way. I will pass you the mic. You get the last word, but I don't want you to talk to our audience. I want you to talk to Trevor coming into the workforce. Rookie sales guy, Trevor, had, had a little bit less gray. Mm-hmm. Substantially less. that Trevor? What would be your advice to him? I'm that you have found. I don't know to say. It has something to do with the fact, okay, I know you're wrestling with identifying yourself as a sales rep. Okay? Don't be afraid of it. It's okay. Right? It's a good job. It's a worthy job. It'll be an ethical job if you make it an ethical job. Right? Stay true to yourself. Stay true. Be intiguous. And... have faith that the work is going to, you know, it's going to provide a life that you don't regret.