Sam McKenna [00:00:00]:
We’re talking to humans, even though they are buyers, right? They want to connect about their lives, their personal lives, their things that they’ve shared with you on LinkedIn. They want to know that you’ve listened to their podcast or you read an article.
Heather Cole [00:00:11]:
This is Go-To-Market Magic, the show where we talk to go-to-market leaders and visionaries about those “aha!” moments they’ve experienced and those pivotal decisions that they make, all in the name of growth.
Steve Watt [00:00:23]:
And we don’t just mean revenue growth that goes up and to the right.
Heather Cole [00:00:26]:
Although that’s nice too.
Steve Watt [00:00:28]:
Yeah, you’re right. We’re talking about how they improve their teams, their industries, their careers, and their lives, because growth isn’t quite what it used to be.
Heather Cole [00:00:37]:
I’m Heather Cole.
Steve Watt [00:00:38]:
And I’m Steve Watt.
Heather Cole [00:00:39]:
Let’s uncover some of the magic that makes it happen. Okay, Steve, who are we talking to today?
Steve Watt [00:00:47]:
Today’s go to market visionary is Sam McKenna. Hashtag Sam Sales herself. You heard her at the top of the show. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation for a long time. I’ve been following Sam on LinkedIn for years now, and I’ve learned so much from her, and I know I’m not alone. She has more than 65,000 followers, and she is constantly educating and inspiring them with really fantastic sales advice and sales leadership advice. Her company, #SamSales Consulting, scaled to multimillion dollar revenue in its 1st 24 months, and she is absolutely no stranger to challenging so many conventional ways to thinking about sales.
Heather Cole [00:01:32]:
That’s great. Let’s dive in.
Steve Watt [00:01:37]:
Welcome and tell us a little about yourself.
Sam McKenna [00:01:41]:
Hi, guys. I’m Sam McKenna. I’m the CEO of #SamSales. I am originally from Switzerland. I’ve been in enterprise sales for about 15 years. It broken a whole lot of records. I’m a big social seller, do everything around the basics of selling and sequence writing and all kinds of exciting stuff like that. Speak on global stages. And I’m the mom to two tiny little dogs, and that is me in a nutshell. Oh, I have 39 speeding tickets as well. Always. I talk about that. So in case you guys need to know, I have quite the lead foot, hence my Swiss roots, I guess. I love to drive.
Heather Cole [00:02:17]:
Wow, that’s pretty impressive. 39. That’s like, the highest number I’ve ever heard.
Sam McKenna [00:02:22]:
In a bad way, though, right? Yeah.
Steve Watt [00:02:25]:
I didn’t know we were going for a record. I thought we’d try to avoid those things, but this was a lot to learn.
Heather Cole [00:02:32]:
She said she holds a lot of records.
Steve Watt [00:02:34]:
Yes, she does. And she has a different perspective on a lot of things. I knew that she had different perspective on a lot of sales things. I didn’t know. She also had very different perspective on speed limits.
Sam McKenna [00:02:44]:
I’m not great with authority, as it turns out.
Heather Cole [00:02:48]:
Well, Sam, welcome to go-to-market magic. We usually start the podcast with a couple of really quick lightning questions. So you ready?
Sam McKenna [00:02:57]:
Yeah.
Heather Cole [00:02:58]:
Okay. So what do you consider your business superpower? And what’s your kryptonite?
Sam McKenna [00:03:03]:
A business superpower, I think is connecting with humans. I’m outgoing. I’m friendly. I’m told charismatic. I don’t think you’re allowed to say that about yourself, but I’m very bubbly and try to make people feel comfortable and my friend right away. I think EQ is a big part of that. I’ve been told that a lot, that I have a high EQ. I think my kryptonite. I’m not good at difficult conversations. I’m great at those if I am the client. I am terrible at those if you are my client or if you’re my employee. So working on that every day.
Heather Cole [00:03:36]:
I don’t think anybody is good at those difficult conversations.
Sam McKenna [00:03:42]:
I’m just even telling you, saying the words difficult conversation makes my palms sweat.
Heather Cole [00:03:48]:
Didn’t mean to stress you out.
Sam McKenna [00:03:51]:
No worries. You’re forgiven. Okay.
Heather Cole [00:03:53]:
So the next one, I think is easier. So if the money was all the same, what would be your dream job? And you can’t say what you’re doing today. You have to have something else.
Sam McKenna [00:04:02]:
I’m going to take two things. One, I would love to have Savannah Guthrie’s job, although I hear she probably makes a little bit more money than I do. And if the money were the same and it were lower, I would love to be a volunteer just to do financial literacy coaching. I am so passionate about the difference that even just a baseline education can make and, like, what a FICO score is and compound interest and things like that. I would love to do that, and I feel like it’s so rewarding because you’re teaching people something that impacts their bottom line and their success and their stress relief and everything for the future. So I think that’s probably what I’ll do when I close up shop. Finally.
Heather Cole [00:04:38]:
There you go. A retirement job in the making.
Sam McKenna [00:04:41]:
Yeah. I just want to give it away for free.
Heather Cole [00:04:44]:
There you go. So if you had, speaking of retirement, six months off to explore six different countries or six months in a remote cabin in your favorite part of the world, which would you choose? So is it the traveling to six countries or, like, hanging out in a cabin by yourself?
Sam McKenna [00:05:01]:
I was talking about this the other day. Think about the things that truly give you joy, right? If you think about those things, there seem to be far and few things that give you just immense amounts of joy. But for me, one of them is keys, a car, car 39 speeding tickets, and the open road. It truly fills my heart with joy to get to drive from one location, another, and Lore. So I would 100%, 100% take the six countries, and I would drive everywhere, everywhere I possibly could day and night. Love that. In fact, it’s what I asked for my birthday this year. To go to a place I haven’t explored yet and to get to do.
Heather Cole [00:05:39]:
That, oh, that’s fantastic. Me too. So if you were going to have lunch with any business leader today, who would you choose? And you can’t say Steve.
Sam McKenna [00:05:49]:
I was going to say that hopefully he’s listening. Adam Grant. Do we know Adam Grant?
Heather Cole [00:05:56]:
Yeah.
Sam Mckenna [00:05:57]:
I don’t know if he’s really considered a business leader, but he’s so smart. He’s brilliant and funny. He’s a diver. We just want to pick his brain for a couple hundred hours.
Heather Cole [00:06:13]:
I think he lives in Philadelphia. That’s where I’m from.
Sam McKenna [00:06:15]:
Oh.
Heather Cole [00:06:15]:
Yeah, I know. Like, big fan of him.
Sam McKenna [00:06:18]:
I have big plans to marry him, much to the chagrin of my husband and unbeknownst to his family.
Heather Cole [00:06:24]:
Well, now he knows.
Sam McKenna [00:06:25]:
We’ll see how it goes now because he’s listening. Yes.
Steve Watt [00:06:29]:
All right, enough fun and games. Let’s get down steve’s, like, let’s get down to the meat and potatoes of why you’re here. Sam, I am super happy and excited to have you here. I am a huge fan of yours. I read everything you write on LinkedIn. I learn something. I am not exaggerating. I learn something new from you, minimum once a week, usually a couple of times a week. If anyone is not following Sam on LinkedIn, that’s a huge mistake. You need to go fix that right now. What I want to talk with you about today is not just one piece of sales or one piece of sales leadership. It’s really the whole thing, which sounds like way too much to bite off in one podcast, but here’s how I think we can do it is I think there’s a traditional way to do sales, and then there’s Sam’s way. And I sincerely believe that Sam’s way is better, maybe in every regard, but at least in a whole lot of them. So how about we take a moment or a few moments and we go through the whole sales cycle, even starting before the cycle starts, and let’s compare and contrast the normal way of doing things versus your perspective. Sound good?
Sam McKenna [00:07:40]:
I love it.
Steve Watt [00:07:41]:
Okay, so before the sales cycle even starts, you’re out there building your reputation in advance. You’re building your network, you’re building relationships, you’re building trust at scale, and you coach and help others do that as well. Tell us a little bit about that and why it’s so important even before that first call.
Sam McKenna [00:08:03]:
I think one of the things that’s led to our success at Sam Sales is having that brand out there. So getting our content, like you said, on LinkedIn, making sure that we’re working with existing clients in an above and beyond way, these are all ways that your brand is built, right? It’s what people are saying about you when you’re not in the room. That’s your brand, right? Whatever you are, consistently. And so I think this is so important, how we’re sharing content, how we’re treating our clients what we’re doing to show them that we care about them, to show them that we know them, that we think about them. All of those components build a brand for you no matter what level you are in your career. So if you’re a BDR and before the sales cycle really starts, if you’re sharing content, if you’re engaging with other people, if you’re sending emails out, all things we should be doing as part of the modern sales process, what is the reputation that you’re going to get based on what it is that you’re sharing? I think this is important too, even for people who want to get started as LinkedIn creators. Right. A lot of people do it, as you and I have talked about, Steve. A lot of people do it for the likes and the engagement. So they’re posting a lot of selfies or they’re rereading things that they think are funny. And is that what you want to be known for? Give me ten likes for something really smart that I said, over 100 likes for a picture of me in a forest or something.
Steve Watt [00:09:18]:
Absolutely. And I think you have a beautiful balance of giving it away and sales, let’s say. I don’t know if that’s the right way to put it, but I think a lot of people struggle on LinkedIn. They feel like they need to always be pitching, always be closing, always be saying, hey, here’s what you need to hire me for or hire my firm for. I would say that 80% of what you do is given it away. People can actually read what you write, and they can do a better job. They don’t need to hire you. 80% and then 20% of it. You talk about your firm and you talk about what you do and who you do it for and why it makes a difference. I think for me, as a reader, you’ve got a great balance. Is that really purposeful on your part, the way you balance true education versus things that are a little more focused on your firm?
Sam McKenna [00:10:18]:
100%, I think here’s the thing that I think is also different about the way that I sell. I don’t really sell. Right. I think that we talk about, really think about how to solve challenges, whether that’s us or using somebody else when you come to us with something. And I think about the same way with LinkedIn. I’m not here to sell you. I’m here to truly help you. By helping you, I’m getting great exposure. I’m getting people to share our content far and wide on sock channels, on LinkedIn, in the comments, whatever, through DMs, and that is selling us just because our expertise is out there. Right. I’m not here to pitch and do things like that. I will say the thing that I think is interesting too. This will be the third year of Sam sales. I’ll tell you something that I’ve never mentioned. Another podcast where I’ll make seven figures, and I make seven figures, right? While carrying having an insane amount of headcount and overhead and things like that, right, for our people and our software and all that, but not by being out there and hard pitching every day. I do it by truly looking at it through the lens of, how can I help you? How can I help you succeed? How can I give you something for free that benefits you and then have you come back and say, this was amazing. It helped me. It changed my life. It changed the way I sell. Right? At that point, we can say, Fantastic. Could you give us a quote? Could you give us a testimonial? Could you introduce us to your boss? But how about I give you first and I give generously and use that as our pathway in. I do the same thing on our sales calls, which might seem totally atypical, right? On those sales calls. It’s not about me. It just isn’t right. You’ve given me time. Hopefully we’ve put together the dots that you know, that we can give you something that would help. Hopefully you’re not showing up and saying, Fly me to the moon. And I’m like, that’s not really what we do, but thanks for showing up anyway. When you do that, all I want to know is, what’s your issue? Tell us about your challenges, tell us what’s going on. What’s the overall landscape on your side? Let me help you. I hope to God that it is something that we do and that you will have budget and we’ll sign a contract and everything will be great. But if it’s not, I get immense joy from helping another person, and I think that there’s a great line. Will Aidken has this on his profile if you guys don’t follow him, he’s very funny, but his LinkedIn headline says, Trust me, I’m a salesperson. It makes me laugh every single time I read it. But I think there’s a thought of salespeople, right? Particularly entrepreneurs that are good salespeople, that the only thing that they want to do is get a dollar out of you. I hope I do, but if I don’t, the success for me is actually showing you how I can help you and getting you to say, that’s so weird. She didn’t try to square peg round hole us. She was actually honest. Now, I trust her even more, and I’m kind of ticked that I can’t hire her right now, but I’ll come back around when there’s a chance for us or when they change jobs or whatever. Let’s talk about how that builds a brand for yourself as well, right? You’re trustworthy you’re here to truly say, it’s not about me, it’s about you. And I will also say kind of going about sales in that way, both on the way that you post content on LinkedIn and then also the way you sell it earns you trust at higher levels. Right. There’s a chief legal officer that we work with. She oversees about five well, not overseas, but there’s about 5500 people at her company. And she says, I don’t recommend people. I just don’t. But I recommend you because I trust you. Right. I know that you’re going to help steer people the right way. You’re not just going to be looking for an angle to sell them. I’m going to say one more thing. I think I’m also very opportunistic and I think that that word gets a bad rap, right. That opportunistic is like angle and slimy and, you know, conniving or whatever. I’m looking for angles. I’m opportunistic for myself, but also for others. Right. So when I hear those challenges and we think about how we can help somebody, I’m putting together three and four different places that you should look to get the support you need, solve the challenges you have. And that’s really important to me too.
Steve Watt [00:14:11]:
Let’s talk about prospecting. You do a lot of work helping firms to get better at prospecting, get better at the way they leverage email and the telephone and other tools to try to open some doors. Compare and contrast for us, if you would, the conventional approach to prospecting that you see in a lot of firms and how your approach is different from that.
Sam McKenna [00:14:39]:
I think we do, we get two things really wrong when we prospect. One, and I’m sure I will get some rotten tomatoes at my house for this. We still focus on cold calling, right? Smiling and dialing 100 cold calls a day. Just go and make the dials. Oh my goodness. So number one takes, I think, eleven touches on average now to get somebody to pick up the phone and 84, 85% of those calls are blocked immediately when we get them. Why are we still doing this? Right? And when I hear that from sales leaders and they say, this is really important to me, it makes me think that they’re not a good partner for us. Because it makes me think that they don’t know what they’re doing in a modern way. They’re scared to try new things. So they just keep doing what they’ve known to always work even if it doesn’t. So they can protect their own position. If you are listening to this, and that is you, I encourage you be open and honest with your organization. I need to upscale. I need to figure out how to be a modern seller. Right. Because you’re just not going to hit your number doing things the same old way. I think the other thing that we get wrong is that we don’t focus on data. We have so much data available to us in ways that we can be smart in prospecting. I’ll give you a few just off the top of my head. Number one, proactive referrals as soon as you have a client, whether they’re part of your Customer Advisory Board case study, whether it’s somebody you signed three months ago that comes back to you as an Ae and says, this is pretty swell. We loved working with you guys, right? This is above and beyond what we expected. Our proactiveness of asking that person for a referral steve, thanks for the kind words. I’m so glad we’re above and beyond what you expected. Do you mind if I look at your LinkedIn profile and your network and send you a few names of people I would love to meet? Super smart with the data. Think about this, too. Previous peers, bosses, supervisors you had. Where have they gone? Who do they know? How can we ask them for referrals? Right? Let me look at your network and let me proactively take that into my own hands to give you some names and hope that that’s going to turn something up for me. Another thing to think about, right, is job changes. So I’ve talked about this, I don’t know, since I was a toddler. Let’s look at job changes. Who has purchased from you before? Where have they gone? Have you reached out to them? We know that an average of 6% of leads that are inbound are from previous clients who have changed jobs. Now, that’s one client who’s changed jobs, who maybe signed, went to a role that was still a fit for us and proactively reached out to us. Imagine if we reached out to the five or six or 19 people, procurement, sales, ops, et cetera, that were part of that deal. If we tracked them, if we saw where they went, and then we said, Congrats on your new job. I suspect you’re overwhelmed with stuff. We would love to meet with you in eight weeks, once you’ve gotten your arms around the business and your network internally, we would love to meet with you or somebody on your team that would be interested in talking to Sam. Sales low hanging fruit. Final thing I’ll say on prospecting where we just don’t look, open up your CRM. If you use a CRM, let’s say, like in Sightly, for instance, open up your CRM and look at your territory. Pull a close lost and close canceled report of any of your deals from twelve to 18 months ago. From six to twelve months ago. Keep working forward in time. Who are those people attached to the deals? Are they still there? Can you reignite them? Have they changed shops? Where have they gone? Are they in your territory? It’s just a massive game of Sherlock Holmes. Why in the heck would you cold call when you have so much smart data to use and you can just nerd out and just kill it with booking meetings? By being smart. I have no passion for this whatsoever.
Steve Watt [00:18:08]:
And when you do reach out, it’s time to show me you know me. Correct?
Sam McKenna [00:18:12]:
Show me you know me. Yeah. Think of this as such an easy so we’re known. We’re known for show me you know me. If this is new to you. This is not, I repeat, not personalization at scale. This is not Steve plus Sam meeting. Riveting. I know Steve’s name. Whoooo, really done my homework. This is not also, we can help Seismic right? Written in capital letters directly pulled with brackets from our CRM. It’s not that. It’s actually doing our homework on someone, right? So think about who your prospect is. Where have they worked? Who do they know? Where do they live? Where do they went to school? What’s in their about section? Anything that is on their LinkedIn profile is fair game. Now we can talk about what if they’re not on LinkedIn and we’ll get to that. But anything that’s on their profile, fair game. Put that on the subject line, right? If somebody sent me an email and said, 39 speeding tickets, Swiss Miss, Nickelodeon, Barefoot Contessa, on 24, LinkedIn your podcast with Steve, whatever, put that front and center in the subject line, I would 100% open it. And even if we can’t use you, I would find someone who can. I would give you some referrals. I would open up my network because you actually did the work that nobody else will do. So think about that. Let’s say a low hanging fruit, right? Let’s say you find somebody who worked for your great client, General Electric and now works for Seismic, right? So perhaps I would say General Electric plus hashtag samsales plus seismic. So that person’s, like, used to work there. No idea what this is. Work at seismic. Great. I’m going to open up the email, and I’ll just say GE was our client for the last 20 years. Not sure if you came across this during your tenure there, but we would love to help you here at Seismic in the same way that we’ve helped General Electric. Let me know if you’re ever up for a chat. Reference something specific, perhaps. Reference common connections you have because you’ve been smart and you’ve connected with all of your clients at General Electric and look to see the power of what you can do there. Common connections, common Alamo Matters, common hometowns things. You’re just interested in podcasts. They were on sky’s the limit. It’s not hard. And man, does the quality pay off.
Steve Watt [00:20:12]:
I’ve seen some people try to do that, but it doesn’t come through authentically. You know the game Mad Libs where you got to fill in a bunch of blanks? I’ve received prospecting emails that I swear someone is teaching them a Mad Lib format. So it’s like as the insert title and the insert former former title and a graduate of Insert University, and someone who follows Insert, two big LinkedIn influencers that they comment on, surely you need this solution or whatever, and it just drips of insincerity to me. So how do you do what you just said and make it actually seem real and not Mad Libs.
Sam McKenna [00:21:03]:
So I think one, hopefully you don’t have access to my old Mad Libs because they were full of immature jokes, and that would just not be good for my career. Second of all, I completely agree with you, right? And that’s really where personalization at scale comes into play, right? When we just have the double brackets and it’s pulling information from their profile, from something they posted about. I see you posted about show me you know me. I would love to talk to you about our It tools. What about show me you know me? How does that relate to what you’re selling? So I would say put in the effort. Now, I do think have a little bit of a contrarian point of view on the emails that go out. And my point of view is that 85% of the emails, that sequence that goes out, our value prop the case studies. We talk about how we even close the email should be pre written by experts and shameless plug. That’s one of the things that Sam Sales does. We write sequences, and we’re really good at it. But that top 15% should be a subject line that the person authentically writes as the first manual email. And then it should be that show me you know me. So how do we do that correctly? Again? Think about this, right, Steve? If I was trying to get your attention, and let’s say we were both going to be at a conference together, and I was like, okay, I’m basically going to stand outside the conference trade show floor. I’m going to wait for Steve to go by. I’m going to pretend to bump into him, and I’m going to be like, oh my God, we know each other on LinkedIn. What would I talk to you about? How would I make small talk? Right? What’s something I can come prepared to the conversation. So I’m not just kind of a bumbling, you know? I don’t know. Now, having done no research whatsoever in advance, let me think about that. How can I connect with you? Right? And it has to be authentic. It can’t be. I see you went to FSU, Sam. You want to buy our stuff? No, what about it? I see you do podcasts. They’re great. Want to buy our stuff. Which podcast? What’s great about them? What do you like? So mention something, right? What we always advocate for is talk about something. Show me, you know me. Element school, hometown, common connections, whatever. And then, so what? What about it? I see you went to FSU. I have to tell you, I went there in college once. Did the Tennessee crawl. Don’t remember it. You might not remember it either. One of my best college weekends. Whatever. Just give me something, right? Even if it’s a little bit of a white lie and you had to look up main drag in Tallahassee, Florida, right? At least connect the dots. And what I’ll tell you is, the Show Me You Know Me does not have to be business relevant. It does not have to be people are humans. You are talking to humans even though they are buyers, right? They want to connect about their lives, their personal lives, their things that they’ve shared with you on LinkedIn. They want to know that you listened to their podcast or you read an article. Let me just quickly tell you something. On our website, we have a whole section called Sam Fans of Quotes. And there’s a guy, Brian Millar, who works at TransUnion. I spoke at TransUnion in sales kickoff. They’ve been a client of ours for three years. Brian listened to the show me you know me piece. He walked out of the room, and he’s like, what a bunch of croc. He’s like, there’s no way that works. And he’s like, Let me give this a shot. So he went and he listened to a podcast that somebody had been on, had been ghosting him for six months. He put a quote of hers in the subject line, and you already know what happened. She responded in ten minutes and took the meeting. And Brian was like, what the hell happened? And we’re like, we know. Do it again. So he did it again with the other three that had done the same thing, got responses from all three. He sent an email to his leadership, and he said, I was so skeptical, and I will do whatever Sam McKenna says now. But it really works. You just have to make it authentic. One more thing. We see this also go really badly, not from a personalization at scale perspective, but just from not quite connecting the dots. So if you’re listening to this, even as a sales leader and you’re like, this seems easy enough, just know it takes some time to get it right. One of our reps wrote an email at our clients and said, baseball plus chocolate plus the name of their company. And we read the email, and he’s like, I didn’t get a response. And we’re like, well, what about baseball and chocolate? And he’s like, well, the guy lives in Miami, so I thought I might like baseball. And we’re like we’re like, Why? And he’s like, I don’t know. Because they have a baseball team. And then who doesn’t like chocolate? And I’m like, no. So it does take some time to learn and to absorb. It’s not as straightforward as it may seem.
Steve Watt [00:25:08]:
Discovery. What are we getting wrong when we get on that first call and we move into discovery mode so much?
Sam McKenna [00:25:14]:
How much time do we have for this podcast? Let’s think about a couple of things in discovery. I think when most reps have not had a good model just for what good looks like, right? Josh Brown and I have had this conversation about 100 times. What does. Good look like, how do I build rapport? Can I pick up on their background? Can I say something about what’s going on in their background? How do I kick it off the right way? So the first thing I would say is make sure there’s that framework. Second, make sure it’s a modern framework, right? If I was joining a call, let’s say the two of you were joining my call, I would ask about your poof. I would ask about this cool blanket in the background. I’d ask about the color of your mugs. I would say something about your plant and tell you how I kill all of mine. I would do something to build rapport based on your background or to mention something about what it is that I did my research on in advance, right? And also make sure to set the ambiance correctly. So we just recorded a spoof at Sam Sales where we were just like, hello, Steve, excited to talk to you. You’ve got to watch your energy. You do not need to be the overly agitated, excited, loud bird that I am, right? But just like a moderate smile to show that you are excited that the person’s there like, hello, good to see you, goes a very long way. I think the other thing that we really get wrong here is we either talk about ourselves for 28 minutes or we kick it off on the wrong in the wrong way two ways. We either start down a firing range of questions that we have that are super selfish and all about us, right? How many licenses do you have? How many employees do you have? When does your contract expire? Whatever. Are you the ultimate decision maker figuring out bant all that jazz? Or we started by saying, Steve, excited to talk to you with a flat, non excited face. Tell me a little bit about what interested you in taking this call today. I feel like that question and most reps are like, that’s what I ask, and I’m like, don’t do that anymore. I feel it’s also just condescending, like, you’re like, Steve, you’re welcome for me giving you time today, tell me about how I can help you. Right? So I think instead, if you think about it, that question, even if we ask that, it starts to figure out product issues, right? So you might say, Sam, you sell on 24th Technology, a webinar platform. We use Zoom or go to meeting or whatever. Here are issues with it. How can you solve them? That is a product issue, not a business issue. So what I really want to think about with Discovery, particularly as I get senior executives on the call, is why’d you show up here today. What are your problems? What are your business issues? What are you resolving? What are your initiatives? Right? We don’t do that at all in discovery. I find so few reps that do that. But I’ll say one thing. If you instead build some rapport, do some show me you know me, and then kick off your call by saying something like this. Steve, again, thanks for making time. Thanks for responding my email. Thanks for inbounding, thanks for whatever. I could tell you a million things about Sam sales, how we do this, this, and this. And I think about those three footholds that we mentioned. Those are things that are specific to that buyer persona. So, Steve, if you are an enablement, I’m not going to tell you about how we do I don’t know, something with it or whatever. I’m going to focus on things that I know enablement leaders are going to care about. And then I’m going to say, I could tell you a million things about #SamSales this, this, and this. But I’d love to hear about you first. I know this about Seismic. I saw this in the press. I saw you were posting about this as something that concerns you recently. But tell me about you first challenges over on landscape initiatives you have ahead of you. Love to start there, if that’s okay. So I’m starting with a few things. One, giving you some footholds about us. Number two, I’m doing show me you know me. And I’m leading with the fact that I’ve done my homework and I’m prepared. And if you want me to tell you about my insights on what you guys need, first, I can. And then the final section I’m asking for is permission. 80, 85% of the time you’re going to get a yeah. And then six, seven, nine minutes of talking. It’s magical. You are cracking that person’s head open and you’re getting everything out of there. I could talk about that for another few hours, but even just change that one thing. Change that one thing and watch how your discovery calls will change.
Heather Cole [00:29:23]:
So this obviously takes a little bit more time than coming in and showing up and throwing up. I’m sure there’s some skepticism and pushback that you may get around. This is going to elongate our sales cycle. This is going to do the opposite of what we are trying to do. What’s your response to that?
Sam McKenna [00:29:41]:
Yeah, I think this is the interesting thing, right? When we hear that or we do disco and demo on the same call, it’s a 45 minutes call, and Sam, you’re telling us we need to split that into two calls. That’s bananas, right? So much more time. Here’s what I would say, though, right? If you think about this one, if you do it the way that I just said it, it may elongate the sales cycle, but I doubt it because what you’re really going to do is you’re going to know how to sell to them, right? You’re going to know what’s important to them, what their challenges are. You’re going to be able to qualify or disqualify that call really quickly. If you do the opposite and say, here’s everything about us, and you do a top dance for 28 minutes, they’re going to be like, how’s this down? And people are going to be like, cool, yeah, this sounds really good. I’m going to take it back to our team. I’ll talk about it, and you’re going to get happiers and you’re going to put an opportunity in, and then you’re going to chase that opportunity for the next 98 years of your life. And lo and behold, it will not close. I think on the flip side, even just splitting those two calls up, right, if you think about it, if you take 30 minutes and do that proper discovery and you figure this out, what you can usually do, right? So you’ve taken 30 instead of 45 minutes now. Now the next call, we want to take another 30 minutes or 60 minutes if we’re going to go into more discovery or demo. But here’s the magical part. That first call should be your doorway into scaling the people that you’re talking to. It’s multithreading. We all know it. Or it’s what we call it at #SamSales. Double the quantity, double the quality. If I’m talking to Steve, I would love to talk to Steve all day long. I also know that Steve doesn’t make decisions in a vacuum. If he’s a good leader, right? Most people don’t. They’re asking their colleagues. There’s other buy ins and stakeholders, two, three, again, sometimes up to 20 stakeholders. So what I want to do is I want to use that discovery call as a chance to get Steve so jazzed about how we can support him. For him to say, you know what, okay, here’s what I’d love to do. I’d love to unpack a few of these things more. You’ve told me a couple of great customer stories, right, that’s gotten me my wheels cranking about how we can help you. I want to just invite two of my peers. Can you include them on the email? And then let’s figure out a time. Instead of spending 45 minutes with one person talking about myself, demoing and discovering together, I’ve now taken 30 minutes to get somebody super jazzed about us, which leads to another 30 minutes or potentially 60 with two or three people. And if you look at data, the more people you have on a call, the quicker you multithread, the higher the more exponential the percentage goes in terms of your probability of closing the deal. So elongate my sales cycle just a schmoosh maybe, but significantly up the odds that I’m going to close it. I will do that all day, every day. And I want to know, right, I want to spend 15, 2030 minutes on that call understanding what the challenges are, because I don’t want to talk about myself. I know if you need us better than you know if you need us, right? This is what we sell every day. And we hear from people just like you. So if I can figure that out, I can point you to us, hopefully, or to somebody else faster and then make better use of my time.
Steve Watt [00:32:43]:
I could go on for hours asking you about a dozen more parts of this. But as we do approach the end here, I want to tie a bow around it. You wrote recently that a lot of sales success is just good manners. That sounds way too simple, but I think I know where you’re coming from. Tell us what you mean. That really sales success comes from good old fashioned manners.
Sam McKenna [00:33:08]:
I’ll say a couple of things on the piece of cold calling that I talked about earlier, right? I say this a lot and I get a lot of pushback. I have broken all these sales records, right? I just obliterated my number. President’s Clubs, had my entire team go to President’s Club when no one ever has all that stuff. I’ve never made a single cold call in my life. I just haven’t and I never will. I think to me, it’s just bad manners. And what’s amazing to me is when I talk about this, people get the cold call, devotees get really upset with me and they’re like, but it works. Sure. For who? For you? Like, what about your buyer? When did we forget about our buyer? When did we forget about respecting their time and respecting their schedule and doing things the way that they’d like to do them? So I think in that vein, I’ll never make a cold call because the idea of me calling somebody unannounced in the middle of their day to pitch them my stuff is bonkers. I will support warm calls and triggers, right? If somebody keeps opening up my emails but they don’t respond right. I’ll even use some self deprecating humor and I’ll say my emails are either great and there’s a need, or they’re really bad and you just keep opening them to see how bad the next one’s going to be. Right? If I can make you laugh, hopefully, right? Let’s see. It worked. If I can make you laugh, hopefully, you’ll give me some time. I think about other simple things, right? Even just showing up to a discovery call, the way I said it, doing your research in advance, building rapport, bringing somebody into the conversation is good manners. We’re setting the ambiance of a party or how we greet guests, or how somebody comes up to our networking circle, right? I think that was part of my upbringing in Switzerland, was that we have a job to do in terms of carrying the conversation, right? You can’t just stand there, wait for people to ask you questions and then answer yes or no like deplorable. So I think about that in sales, and I also think about things like one of our pro moves is sending a thank you note, a handwritten thank you note. When we lose the deal, and we have reps who are just like, what? No, I lost the deal. What do I have to be thankful for? And I’m like, you got the app out. Somebody gave you time. They went through a sales cycle with you. They considered you. Right? It’s like somebody is saying, I’m going to go study with this other person, and you send a handwritten thank you note. Anyway, thank them for the time. To be clear, I would never do that. But for sales, they totally will, right? And what I love about this is I love just, like, the sophisticated, cool move that you can do, right? Like, Steve, if you and I were talking and you said, thanks, Sam, we went with one of your competitors, and I sent you a handwritten thank you note, what I’m imagining in my head is you get the thank you note, and you’re like, what the hell is this? Right? Like, I didn’t get a thank you note from the person I chose. And I’ll be like, that’s right? You didn’t. And then when things maybe don’t work out, inevitably, because you didn’t cheats choose us or you change jobs or something changes, you’ll give us a shout. You won’t go back to RFP. You won’t go to the other competitors. You’ll call us, and I’ll say one more thing. One of the things we get a lot of question about is we’ll send an email out. Someone responds, Want to deal with us? Or they want a meeting with us, and then they never respond. What do I do now? I’m just like, just following up. Just following up. Is now a better time? What do I do now? So I say, if they’ve given you a positive response and they haven’t responded after two or three times, just send them a calendar invite. Go ahead and put the meeting on their schedule, but put the meeting on their schedule two weeks from now. And the rep is like, that’s so far away. And I’m like, yes, but they are so busy that they’re not even taking the time to respond. Even just thinking about scheduling is maddening for them right now. So send them the calendar invite. We’ve got a prom move for that, too. But send them the calendar invite and say, really looking forward to our conversation. I know sometimes scheduling is half the battle. I sent you a calendar invite for two weeks from now instead. I hope that time works. Well, let me know. One, you will come across as just being a little bit more proactive, and then two, not greedy, because you’re giving them some space. You’re recognizing that they’re busy. And to me, that’s just good manners.
Steve Watt [00:37:10]:
And to be clear, because some people might have heard that to mean Sam said, just send calendar invites proactively to everyone in my CRM, everyone in my wish list. That’s not what you’re saying, because that would be really bad manners. You are saying where they have given you information. Correct?
Sam McKenna [00:37:31]:
Exactly. Once they say, we’d love to meet, send some times to work, and then you send those times, and they don’t respond. And they don’t respond, then say, thanks for the positive response. I know sometimes scheduling have to only then. We just had this come up on a training call, and a marketer said, I think, why don’t we just send calendar invites to everybody? And I said to the VP, I was like, how would that go over with you? And he’s like, that would be really bad, so please don’t do that. I will say just kind of related on the manners note, calendar links to me are just a faux PA in, outbound, and even when somebody has said yes to meeting with you, I get a lot of pushback for this too. Again, this is a very Sam sales way thing to do. But to me, I want to control the timing of the call, and I don’t want somebody to have to go to the trouble of scheduling around my stuff. Furthermore, I don’t want somebody to schedule around my internal meetings, my one on ones, my nail appointments. I never have those. Don’t worry. I don’t want somebody to schedule around that. You tell me when you’re free. What matters to me is when you are free, and I will make it work. And it is 99% of the time it works out. There’s one time where the times don’t align, and there’s nothing that could be moved, but otherwise pretty surefire way to book the meeting and just to be a little bit different and more manner centric.
Steve Watt [00:38:45]:
Sam, thank you so much. I love talking with you. I love reading everything you’re putting out there on LinkedIn. You’re a breath of fresh air in the world of sales that sometimes can be very much the opposite. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Sam McKenna [00:39:02]:
Thanks, you guys. All right, I’ll let you run.
Heather Cole [00:39:06]:
So that was a fascinating conversation. In fact, I was getting so absorbed in what she was saying, I forgot to ask questions.
Steve Watt [00:39:13]:
Yeah, I felt like Sam and I were on on such a roll. I was waiting and anticipating you jumping in, and I’m glad you did when you did. But yeah, honestly, Sam and I, I think we could just we could have kept riffing for another hour there. She’s just such a wealth of insight and experience and knowledge and really a.
Heather Cole [00:39:36]:
Really fresh perspective, and it so aligns with kind of my perspective and I think your perspective, as well as how we should be thinking about sales, but they’re really conversations. And I like the fact that she’s reiterating to us that brand is what people take away and are thinking about and saying about you when you’re not around. And it’s so important, whether we’re either online or in person, that that is is true.
Steve Watt [00:40:00]:
Absolutely. And I think a lot of people miss that. They’re they’re so focused on the mechanics of their sales process that they’re not stepping back and saying, what impression am I making? And Sam does a great job of getting out in front of that sales cycle. You talk to anyone who is even a little bit active on LinkedIn and who cares about sales, they know Sam, they know her by name, they know what she stands for, and they know that she is contributing to the sales community in a really positive way. She’s not just out there hawking her services ten times a week. She’s truly giving, she’s educating, she’s inspiring, she’s helping others. And we can all learn so much from her. And then we turn around and we refer her and we buy from her and she practices what she preaches, and I think she does a brilliant job of it.
Heather Cole [00:41:10]:
Yeah, that’s so critical. And I found, having been in sales, that it’s so much easier to be yourself than to try to be something else that you’re not. And it sounds like that’s a lot of what she’s preaching is not only I need to sell in the way that I would have a conversation. So the example that she gave us, if you were going to walk up in a conference or a social setting, networking, would you really talk the way that you talk on LinkedIn and a sales call and an email? No, of course you wouldn’t. And how do you think about that and take that context back to the way that you interact digitally?
Steve Watt [00:41:47]:
Yeah, she’s just great at being a real human being and inspiring others to do the same. I often say to salespeople, read that email, that email that you just wrote, read it out loud. Would you actually speak that way to a customer or to a prospect? You wouldn’t. You would speak very differently. So why don’t you write the way you speak? And I think you could probably take any email that Sam has ever sent or will ever send, and she could read it out loud and it would be like, yep, that’s the way she speaks. Right. It’s about being a real human. And then people don’t feel like they’re being put through a process. Instead they feel like they’re having a real conversation with a real human. Who cares? Because they are.
Heather Cole [00:42:35]:
Exactly. Now I know she’s going to get a lot of flak from people who believe that cold sales are still a very viable means to interact and to get those leads from one stage to the next. She’s always said that. She’s always been very consistent about it, and it’s what works for her. And I believe that there is no such thing as a cold call anymore. There always should be warm calls. You should always know something about the person that you are calling and what their challenges are, what their interests are. There’s no excuse not to.
Steve Watt [00:43:10]:
What I took that as. Yes, she doesn’t do and she doesn’t teach cold calling. But then she was quick to say, she will pick up the phone. She will make that call. You’ve been opening my emails, but you haven’t been responding, or I’ve seen an important trigger happening in your firm or in your world. It’s all part, I believe, of that. Show me, you know me. She will pick up the phone, she will make that call. But it’s not going to be a generic pitch. It’s going to be something that is actually going to resonate with the person on the other end.
Heather Cole [00:43:43]:
Yeah, well, that was a great one, and I loved it. And I love her catchphrase of Show Me You Know Me it just encompasses so much.
Steve Watt [00:43:49]:
Yeah, she was just posting recently that that is now officially trademarked to #SamSales. So you see others out there, I’ve seen quite a few others who will say in LinkedIn posts something about, it’s really important. You need to show me you know me. And I always kind of shake my head a little bit and think, that’s Sam’s thing, that’s not your thing. And it’s now officially trademarked. I don’t know what that really does for her, but it’s pretty cool.
Heather Cole [00:44:19]:
That’s great. Well, fantastic. If you enjoyed this episode, follow the show on YouTube or your favorite podcast app.
Steve Watt [00:44:29]:
And check out gotomarket-magic.com for show notes and resources.
