Business leaders are always on the search for faster and better, more cost effective ways to grow their companies.
In many cases, these leaders find that the best way to create a fresh edge is to become far more effective with the team and resources you already have.
What are the best ways to create improvements in sales right away?
On this episode of Evolved Sales LIVE, host Jonathan Fischer sits down with Loxo’s VP of Marketing, Sam Kuehnle, to dive into actionable steps SaaS and tech companies can take to tighten up all aspects of business development and create dramatic boosts in revenue overnight.
Don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn for more engaging sales insights and discussions! Happy watching!
Meet Sam:
With over a decade of business development experience, Sam Kuehnle (pronounced Keenly), is part of a small but elite group of young, proven players in demand generation, b2b marketing & strategy, and data analysis. He’s currently the VP of Marketing for Loxo, an automated recruiting solution.
Check out the transcription of this webinar episode below!
Jonathan Fischer 0:00
Hi. Welcome back. Thanks for joining us. I'm Jonathan Fisher. It seems like business leaders are always on the search for faster and better, more cost effective ways to grow their companies. But sometimes the best way to find a fresh edge is to become far more effective with the team and resources you already have. And here with us today to help do just that is our guest, Sam, keenly. Sam comes to us as one of these a group of younger business leaders that have come on the scene recently, who are showing the big guys how to get it done. When it comes to b2b client acquisition, he brings a decade of experience as a demand generation specialist today, he works as the VP of Marketing for tech startup Laakso. And today's conversation is going to be well, it's going to be a smorgasbord of a fresh take on proven ways, you can quickly generate a dramatic boost in sales for your tech or SAS company. And it's going to be a very wide ranging conversation. Sam, we're looking forward to that. And we're grateful to have you on the program with us today. Welcome.
Sam Kuehnle 1:02
Thank you, I'm excited to be here. This is gonna be a fun one and a great way to end the week.
Jonathan Fischer 1:07
Well, and I do love the fact that you you bring a lot of fresh insights to how to get some of the most fundamental things done in growing a company. And maybe the best place is to lay off with how did you arrive at some of the insights that you're going to be sharing with us? What's some of the different experiences you've had and what you've seen?
Sam Kuehnle 1:25
Yeah, it's a, it's been a lot of trial and error, figuring things out, and what I like to just call common sense marketing, where I'll look at something I'm doing and saying like, Does that really make sense? So I guess quick background, I grew up in a family where we've had an advertising agency for three generations. So I was kind of surrounded by the business world, but from from there, a lot of my experience before coming up with refined labs and unlocks it was in a large enterprise company running or helping with some of the demand and marketing. And I started finding myself more more doing these campaigns that I'm thinking, This isn't how I do my own research. This isn't how I go about making purchases, why am I making things different than how I think they should be done? And that's what really started to make me think like, fundamentally, does this make sense for how people are buying in today's world? Or is this an old playbook that used to work but isn't really shifting and adapting with the times?
Jonathan Fischer 2:21
Well, and yeah, that's just it, right? I mean, a lot of things are done in business, because that's the way they've been done. And the forest for trees syndrome kicks in as well. Right? It's difficult to see from the outside. So in terms of your background, in, in doing business, development of different types, you've got a digital marketing background, this whole philosophy of demand generation, which really refined labs, where he worked for several years has been sort of an innovative leader in that front. Talk to us about what you still see, you know, you've worked with different companies. So you're seeing some specific things that are, let's just say they're not getting it done very effectively. What are some of the leading mistakes that you see being made out there when it comes to client acquisition? Yeah,
Sam Kuehnle 3:03
and I will preface this, I started my career as an account development representative now. BDR. So I more than respect and understand how hard that job was to this day, I still think that's harder than what I do right now. So fully understand just how difficult it is. But, yeah, a lot of the things that I see companies doing where I've learned, is this really the best way? Or should we start trying something different is how you're going about trying to get these customers. So when you're running your marketing campaigns, when you're doing your BDR prospecting or your sales outreach, you have to think about what's the end goal, it's to get a customer, it's to get them to buy our product or service. Then when you go on the marketing side, so what I've seen is okay, well, marketing is responsible for 1000 leads a month, 10,000 leads per month, whatever it is, and it's like, well, one, compare that to the total size of your your ICP or your, your total addressable market. And you're like, Well, if I get 1000 leads per month, I'm going to run through my market and however many I'm like, that doesn't those numbers don't quite make sense. So then let's look at the definition. Well, what are these leads that marketing is responsible for and what it used to be was a lead was someone that is prepared and ready to talk to sales in the conversation. It kind of became diluted over time as these goals became larger and larger with the predictive sales model and it became okay well, a lead is now someone who's downloaded an ebook, someone who's read a white paper, someone who has attended a webinar. But all those assets are more people who are trying to either be educated about problem, pain, something that they're working towards. They're just trying to gather information and do research. So these aren't people who to go to the initial definition, like they aren't ready to talk to sales, they don't want to. So I've been thinking about that. And then you and I both know we have been trained you go to a website, you look at the top right corner, that's where you go when you want to talk to someone right buyers are very smart when they're doing the research. They know the difference between downloading white paper downloading or signing up for a webinar and then I want to talk to sales. I want to get the Free Trial. So that's where that kind of mix has come into play. And it's really started to shift like, is this the best way that we should be going about trying to get people over from the marketing and sales? Handoff?
Jonathan Fischer 5:11
Do you feel like that the the part of the issue is just sort of a cultural one inside these companies. I mean, at the end of the day, not everyone is fully staked into the company, they have a job to do. And they're actually being measured that they're getting x results, which is comes back to KPIs, we have the conversation a lot on our show, do you think that's where a lot of the misalignment comes from is just hey, I've got to show that I'm worth it in this job position, I've got it and maybe speak to that just a bit, if you would.
Sam Kuehnle 5:36
Yeah, it starts with the goals. And so that's the biggest thing is the reason that sales and marketing and then suddenly become disjointed is they're starting the leadership starting with the revenue, we need to hit this much in error this year, whatever the number is, and then by the time that that gets diluted to marketing, it says marketing is responsible for leads marketing is not responsible for pipeline marketing is not responsible for revenue. And that's where this disconnect happens is marketing is just like, alright, well, I'm gonna get my leads. And then I don't care what happens after that. So the shift that we've been making is when I've been working with different clients, customers, and what I'm doing it locks on I was I'm getting alignment from day one and saying, Our Northstar is revenue, I don't care if it takes us one lead 100 leads 100,000 leads to get to that if we are accomplishing this goal are on pace to it. That is what success looks like. I don't want you to get caught up in this like cost per lead. How low can we make it? Because what I want to look at at the end of the day is the customer acquisition cost, and is that sustainable for our company to grow. So that's where it has to come back to the the goals for marketing do need to be tied in like sales with revenue. And then this is where the whole attribution conversation comes into play. I don't know if we want to go down that rabbit hole just quite yet. But there are different metrics that we can still look at from the marketing standpoint, aside from revenue, so I can quickly touch on those if you want. Or I can stop for a second and see what you think there. Yeah, I
Jonathan Fischer 6:54
definitely do want to dive into that. But what let's let's, let's let's keep a little altitude just for a bit. Let's talk about what most business development folks are focused on in their tech or SAS company that's getting demos, right. I mean, that's really where it begins. How is that happening? Typically, or at least how are people trying to make that happen? Versus how they should be making it happen? Yeah,
Sam Kuehnle 7:17
so when I think about it from I'll do the marketing side, and then we can go into like the business development side. But the the most common way that marketing is looking for it, it's not the most effective, but how do we increase our spend? How do we lower our cost per lead? Those are usually done by widening targeting. So it's not the quality people that you want anymore, it's by pushing out different marketing materials that aren't really leads, like we said earlier. So what I usually like to look at is okay, well, if those aren't the best methods, then maybe we should put more standard creating brand awareness, but not in the sense of just get our name out there. But build trust build authority in the space so that our prospects understand like, hey, Laakso actually doesn't know what they're talking about here. They understand our pains, they are talking about different best practices that show that they have subject matter experts in there who get what we do. And so when you do that, that's how you can really help to build that that trust and authority in this space. So it's not enough to just like put an ad in front of your audience, it needs to be in the right channel, where they're spending their time needs to be something that's valuable, helpful entertaining for them. So the marketing side, that's what I've learned. And I think that it does translate pretty closely over to BDR is and I work closely with our BDR manager to look at like, what are the sequences that we're sending out? Because I know that we all get a lot of BDR outreach, and again, hardest job I've ever had. But when you go and look at some of the outreach that goes out, and you start to think like, what I read this, would I engage with this? Is this helpful to me? Or is it almost like the company is just talking about, hey, look at us look at this shiny feature, look at this, look at that, but they don't really ever connect the dots to like, what the customer or the prospect really wants or needs to get out of it. So how do you turn the conversation and make it focused about them? And then you're the guide that helps them to get to that goal?
Jonathan Fischer 9:00
Well, there's there's a lot to be said, for building trust in the brand. I mean, there's no shortage of research that will show that trust and respect is a gargantuan proportion of how people decide where, what and with whom they're going to make their purchases, particularly in business. But that brings you to a challenge, because how do you draw ROI out of an initiative that is a brand play, when you are being measured on your cost and your spend? It sounds like you've tried to grapple with that your conversations with with BDR is on on the ground as it were. So how can leaders how can the C suite actually measure ROI? Is that Is it a longer game? Can you start to draw correlations and build the case that way? Because otherwise, you're relying on just kind of your intuition. And it sounds good, right. But talk to us. Talk to us about that.
Sam Kuehnle 9:46
Yeah, it's the fun one. That's the million dollar question that I think people are trying to figure out to this day. And so that's what we were talking about, or what I was mentioning earlier about attribution and ideally, yes, that that should work but what happens with attribution platforms is you're only able to get so much information. So when we talk about attribution, that's when someone came in, you're usually seeing was it sourced by an AE? Did they attend this event? Do they sign up for a webinar? Did they come directly to our website? Do they come from SEO? Do they come from this paid social campaign. And so what that is, is that's often the last touch before they say I want to talk to sales, or before they're pushed over. What that doesn't include is what built the trust in the first place, what generated the awareness how they understood that you were authoritative in the space. And that's where a lot of this marketing awareness comes into play. So what I always like to do is I start off the conversation with the C suite. And I say, before we go into this, let's talk about the last purchase you made for the company. How would you go about it. And so you'll often start to hear well, I talked to my buddy over at this company who uses it, I checked out the pavilion group to hear what they said, I saw someone on a podcast, you know, the list goes on. And I'll start to say none of those are going to show up in this attribution platform. And these are where we're investing our time. So that's where you have to start to break out of that obsession with the quantitative data that's flowing in through all these platforms. And you have to use the common sense marketing, I was getting back here and just say, okay, like, stop being business hat for one second, and think about how do people make these purchase decisions and about the research process in today's world?
Jonathan Fischer 11:22
Well, it sounds like, what you're kind of saying is almost there's as much art as there is science and this whole this whole thing, correct? I mean, you do have to follow your intuitions. But if you'll do that you can make that case. I mean, there's no doubt about that. If you are trying to let the technology do it all. You're gonna have gaps, just like if you don't use technology effectively. Right? So it's a lot of it's about maybe effectively pairing up thinking of technology as a as a as a tool that you're still using the very human work of generating business, would you would you agree with that as well? Are folks maybe expecting too much of the technology? Is that part of it?
Sam Kuehnle 11:54
Yeah, no, I agree with that. And there still are ways you can get the data, it's just thinking about, like, when you go on from from that conversation, you're awesome. So when you finally did reach out to start the conversation, how did you do and it's usually I do it, I just went to nike.com to buy the running shoes, or I reached out directly to the CEO there who I have relationships. So I said, Okay, those are going to show up because you recognize the brand. So we'll look at things like organic brand search, paid brand search people who come directly to the website, and we'll look at that lift over time. And what we usually see if we're doing our job is that the number of those searches, the number of users that come in from that is going up to the right, because that means you're winning before Google so to speak, they're not coming in looking for what's the best X software, they're just going, Oh, laakso.co They're coming straight to our website, we aren't competing with others. So when you have that stickiness, so to speak, and in their heads, they're coming straight to you. That's where you can look at those types of metrics. And also like, are they coming to your pricing page more often? Or they're coming to the talk to sales or whatever other pages? And then that's where it gets into the metrics that I care about how many people are asking him to get a demo? How many people are actually attending those demos? And then what's turning into sales, qualified opportunities? How many are closing?
Jonathan Fischer 13:04
Well, and that sounds like when you do it, that way, you're already giving a leg up to your team on the front lines, right? If somebody, if somebody showed up to a demo, because I kind of got talked into it, it's very different from someone who they showed up looking for something.
Sam Kuehnle 13:16
Exactly. And that's why I love that first conversation with the sales leaders when they're there. Because I say, we're not going to be giving you these leads that don't want to talk to you and the people that come over, if you don't follow up with them, I'm going to follow up with you and try to figure out what's going on. Why don't you want these because these are all people who are explicitly saying they want to talk to you and we are so tight with our tight our targeting and are messaging that this is the people that you want to be having conversations with, we built this audience based on exactly who you said, buys, the reasons that they enjoy your product and everything else. So that's where we work heavily to validate like are these the right people. And that's why we start to see such a more efficient funnel, because although they might have been used to 1000 leads at the top, but only 10 opportunities in that month, I'm saying I'm gonna get you 100 leads at the top, but these people want to talk to you, you're gonna have 70 opportunities from it. So that's the difference there.
Jonathan Fischer 14:05
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Well, I mean, that's already gonna give a lot more quick wins to the team. But we made a promise to the front of the of the show here, Sam to get some quick wins to the listener. And so maybe let's go through and maybe just list a few things they could do like literally to Friday, they could come in on Monday, they can start to implement, and I'm gonna let you start off what will be the number one thing if you're going to talk to a biz dev guy or gal, and you want to make something happen right now? Where would you start?
Sam Kuehnle 14:33
Yeah. Partner with your marketing team or whoever. But think about the typical experiences, someone goes they say I want to talk to sales, they fill out a form and then they get this call the screen of death. Thanks for reaching out, we'll be in touch in 24 to 48 hours. You can't do that anymore. People are gonna go find your competitors. They're gonna go to other alternatives or you're going on the playing phone and email tag and never hear back from them with the majority. So I usually see with organizations doing Unless they're sitting at about like a 30% conversion rate of people that say they want to talk to you to just sitting on that first call. Remember, these are people who want to talk to you. And you're only getting three out of 10. Like, that doesn't make sense. So the easiest things you can do is look at things like chili Piper Calendly, like HubSpot has a schedulers, but just stick that on the form, and then pick the date and time that works for them. Like I've seen this increase the number of people that raise their hand to attending that first meeting from 30% to 70%, within a month of implementing, it's not complicated. But by giving them the power to do that, it makes a world of a difference. And just the people that do show up, because they know when it'll happen. And it's just, it's what we expect, kind of in today's culture, just having that to plan for because I know if I get a number that calls my cell phone, and it's not mine, I'm just screening and every time like it's so much harder to have those connect. So give them the power to schedule and just watch the difference between your conversion rates there.
Jonathan Fischer 15:53
I really resonated with that one. Because as a guy who interacts a lot of companies, it's shocking how few still use scheduling technology. Great, fast win number one, I'm gonna take a brief pause and remind our listening audience. Hey, we're live. Bring your questions. And you don't need to wait, go ahead and post them in chat right now. And just in a few short minutes, we're gonna veer over and get your questions answered with our expert right here right now this evening. So post those in chat, and we'll circle back shortly. So, quick win. Number one is use a scheduler, it kind of sounds like a no brainer. It's very inexpensive. But I love that it is another one, Sam, you're on a roll.
Sam Kuehnle 16:32
Oh, man, another one. Um, second part is make sure that you have the right people fielding those calls when they come in. So a lot of BDRs took the calls to vet these ebook downloads the webinars, what we've seen is when we're slimming it down from 1000 people to 100 people in a month, you can start having people with more intimate knowledge of your product or service, take those first calls. So you can use some routing rules or other things. But these are people who are much more qualified, they fit your ICP. So when you have them on that first call, be able to go into a deeper discovery, potentially a light demo, but they're ready, they want to have this conversation. And I know sometimes like I'm new to the company, I've been going and purchasing a couple of different products when I have that first call. I'm strapped for time. So the last thing I want to do is just go through and answer all the questions that I already answered before something that could have been done very quickly via email. So I want to talk to someone who I'm just like, that's hashed this out, I know what I want, show it to me make sure it works. And then let's go from there. So if you're able to do that, or whether it's just testing, like, try it out with a couple of your sales reps first, you'll often see your sales cycle goes faster, because you're able to get rid of those first couple of calls, you build the trust quicker. It's amazing how much or how far sales rep charisma and the ability to just understand quickly will help with the relationship and increasing your win rates there.
Jonathan Fischer 17:54
I do like that. As when he's worked with companies and scale Sometimes, though, you do have your organization set up in a way to screen. And it makes sense, you kind of have to have one or even two conversations before you can kind of push it through the funnel. Do you have some recommendations? If you're set up that way? Could you would you maybe have like more of a senior at like on call start to call with one? Or would you? Are you talking about maybe just restructuring your whole go to market plans with your team? What are your thoughts on that?
Sam Kuehnle 18:23
Yeah, that's it. You could try the on call if you want or since you're seeing you should be able to code or understand what was the conversion point this person ended the funnel for him? Was it an ebook? Was it a webinar, someone did videos all day, if it was the like, get a demo of talk to sales, let them go straight to sales, you know, they have that intent everything else. So you can do little levers like that if you use Salesforce or HubSpot, you can sync those forms your your operations person will know exactly what that is. And then you can just create different routing rules there to be able to make that happen. So I'm always a big proponent of experiment, test, pick out one of your if you're a large sales organization, pick out one sales team or one rep, try it out, see what happens. And then you can decide from there with your own data.
Jonathan Fischer 19:03
Well, we talk a lot about velocity of sales. And also when if you've been in business for very long, I tried to buy something and someone's going through their script. And you're you can just you can see the bullets, you could probably write your write down the bullets on their script yourself. And you're painfully going through. I think your advice comes as a refreshing suggestion. So just move a little quicker. Is that kind of where you're coming from and part?
Sam Kuehnle 19:26
Yeah, I mean, the name of the game is just how do I resolve this pain? How do I make purchasing as painless as possible? So it's a win win for everyone. The more that you're able to do that and meet them on their terms that I've only seen it work well. I think your audio cut out.
Jonathan Fischer 19:48
You're ready to move as fast as your client is and have the appropriate person. Fielding that call another way to get a quick win. Hey, keep it rolling. Sam, what's another way on Monday that a bizdev leader can get a quick win.
Sam Kuehnle 20:02
Another way to get them rolling on Monday, look at your your outbound sequences and everything else. So the simple framework, I use this for marketing, I use this with our BDR. Team, everything else is basically what I respond to this what I read this when I listen to this, so go check yourself with that. And as long as you can be honest, you'll you'll get a good sense of it. But I mean, if I go through and look at my last 10, LinkedIn, DMS, eight of them are pitches. The worst ones are the ones that say something like this. Hi, Jonathan. Smiley me again, apologies for the professional persistence, I just really think you could benefit from our product, here's a link to my calendar to grab some time. reality of that is like, Dude, this is the fifth time you reached out to me, this isn't the one that's doing the trick. This is the one that just blocked your number, and had you marked as spam. To reply within the first couple if they want to reply, like yes, I understand that. There's the other side that says, you should be polite, you should reply. But if I replied to every cold prospecting email, call it home through like, I'm not gonna have time to do my job. So that's where it's the balance and using the comment sensing the SDR side, if I haven't heard from them on the fourth one, I'm just gonna push them out to next month, because there is the I call like the burn bridge factor. So the predictable revenue model was this great thing a handful of years ago, you make 100 calls or emails, you're gonna get 10 meetings booked. That's great, right? But what happens with the other 9050 are just gonna ignore you. Again, they don't have the time 20 might reply and say they're not interested 10 are probably going to unsubscribe and block your number and then five or 10 are probably pretty pissed at you at this point, you burn the bridge with them, and are never going to become a customer. And so those aren't simple did not connect. But those are people who are now market detractors are reducing the size of your Tam. So you really have to think about, is this worth burning those bridges and everything else? Or how do we how do we accommodate with the times? Or it's just like, if people are ignoring me? How do we push them out? How do we work with the ways that they want to buy and research thing and create a relationship instead of just this like, Hey, me again? Hey, me, again, conversation that isn't going anywhere?
Jonathan Fischer 22:07
Yeah, like that? Well, if you can lose, you can lose rapport pretty quick like that you can go from a colleague to just another sales person. And that's not a good thing, unfortunately. So I like that. So so how give us a nuts and bolts on that, though. So I mean, you have usually these sequences are set up in most companies. What do you recommendations for how to actually apply what you've just said?
Sam Kuehnle 22:31
That's the fun part. Goes back to partially that mental framework, just rethink, read all your emails, what I respond to this is, it's actually helpful if I were the one being pitched here. But the other way I think about it is how do you just do better research to understand who you should be reaching out to so there is more information than ever available, especially publicly, so you can go to third party sites, G to Capterra. To understand like, who's hitting who's researching us, they have partnership opportunities where you can get that data from them. You can put scripts on your own website to see and a LinkedIn does a great job of audience tracking. If you have the cookie on on your site, you can see what are the companies that are coming to your your website, you can even drill down to certain pages. So I say to our BDRs, hey, here's 100 people that have had our website, and this week, 90 of them are within ICP, it's not going to tell you the job title or the person, but we have a very specific ICP, so we know who to reach out to from that group. This is informed it's not full intent, but you can go be more intelligent with who you're reaching out to, because they at least know who we are, if they've been on our website and everything else. So that's a that's a big thing that I would be looking at. And then the other part of it is the people who are doing the research has changed a lot in the last handful of years, too. So I have I always love the story. I come back to it. But I had a client I was working with one time. And I was on a call and they said we got a lead from a target account. But the title was too Junior. So we d queued it. I was about ready to scream. And I said you need to call them right now and see what they want because they asked for a demo. So they went back out, they reached out they had the demo, guess what they learned on that demo, it was an intern who was tasked specifically from the CEO, to do research to figure out the platform that they need to book the discovery sit on it, make sure to check the boxes and then guess who was on the next call the CEO. So that's the other big thing is look more or these accounts that are a perfect fit for our partnership that could work with us and don't get so caught up in the title being the person that's going to sign the contract on the first showing up in 10.
Jonathan Fischer 24:41
That's a great story. And you just never know if they're coming. When when when the energy is flowing this direction. You don't want to miss the opportunity.
Sam Kuehnle 24:50
Yeah, yeah. So it'll definitely cut you out. But I mean, all in all, I'd say when you're thinking about your outreach sequences, like go back to the basics you Is it focused on helping them not you. So don't talk about features, talk about, you know, pains that they're going through things that they're trying to accomplish jobs to be done framework. And the more that you can come from a consultative relationship place, not a sales pitch, you're probably going to land a little bit better. And so part of that is not expecting or asking for a call. So like we said earlier, there's nothing worse than the person who says, Here's the link to my calendar, let's talk it's like, I don't know you, you haven't earned this call or response from me yet, you need to provide me with value first, or at least let me know who you are. So I can figure out is this something that we would we would benefit from but the assumption mindset is part of I think it used to be easier to get away with, but in today's day and age to meet, and this is where I can always take everything with a grain of salt that I say this is my experience. But that starts to grind on me a little bit where I'm just like, why are you assuming, when you don't know exactly what I'm going through? I just showed up on your list. Yeah. Yeah.
Jonathan Fischer 25:57
To me, that's right up there with Hi, I'm a stranger, I've never met you how you doing today? You know, how to cold call. I'm like, you don't really care how I'm doing. You might want to I better leading in that. So yeah, love your advice on that front? Keep it work, keep it attuned to what's really happening. There's a theme that keeps recurring and what you're suggesting here, Sam, and it sounds, it sounds kind of like folks just aren't engaging with the human side of this whole thing. Like, put yourself on the other side, use your empathy, your understanding, think about if you're the buyer, how do you want to be treated Is it almost like this is the this is the SAM keenly Golden Rule approach to building a better better funnel management.
Sam Kuehnle 26:36
I mean, I'm not going to take credit for this, this has definitely been something that I think just the best companies have done. But the reason that it stands out is that 99% of your competition, are taking this approach. So if you're able to do this, you're gonna stand out so much more, you're going to be a trusted adviser. And because you, you recognize the psychology of the fact that like 98% of your market isn't actively looking to buy right this second. But they will be when they're out of their next contract when their budget cycle clears up when their next fiscal year comes around. So the goal is for you and your company, to be top of mind so that when they do, they're coming straight to you, and they're not typing in what's the best X software, but they're coming straight to your website or straight to your inbox and saying, Hey, man, got great news. We just got hired for a budget. Let's get started on this. So it's giving yourself a leg up. But it's investing in the future pipeline, not today's pipeline, but that's where that snowball get started, you're gonna have to eat it for a little for the first three months or so to build that. But that's that investment that's gonna pay off in the next 612 24 months for you.
Jonathan Fischer 27:38
Well, I love it. Well, it's been it has been as promised, it's very fast paced conversation. We've hit a lot of different areas of both marketing and sales. It's a conversation that I know a lot of our listeners would love to take further, what are some of the best ways he can do that? Sam?
Sam Kuehnle 27:52
Yeah, I'm active on LinkedIn. So if you're ever curious about my thoughts on marketing, business, b2b, anything I I'm definitely not shy to to share any thoughts there. But I also love to chat with people there. So comments, DMS, feel free to find me on there. And I'm happy to continue the conversation.
Jonathan Fischer 28:09
Okay, and that's Sam keenly, but it's spelled K UEHNL. E, to our podcast listeners, definitely jump in there and keep the conversation going. With Sam Sanders kind of guy that's happy to share the goodies regardless of the outcome for him in terms of personal business, which I love that, you know, he treats the social, social network as just that we we have the opportunity to network with other business owners. So thanks for doing that, Sam. Well, at this point, let's transition over, we're getting some questions coming in from our live audience. And we want to jump in and start to take some of those live q&a. Let's bring this one in from Dennis Hamilton. He asked a really good question, Sam, let's say you're using a sequence, what would you say is the maximum number of touch points or the time between touchpoints for a b2b sale?
Sam Kuehnle 28:56
That's a great question. Assuming that this is just kind of cold outreach, they hadn't explicitly said I want to talk to you or anything yet. depends on the complexity of the sale. You know, as enterprises is it pretty quick purchase but one, use your use your common sense and judgment there. But when I'm working with my team, they usually like to use 14 Day or 30 Day sequence sprint, so I'll say okay, day one, you know, you can you can send them a quick email or try to give them a call if you want but again, make sure you're coming from a consultative approach, not just a pitch. Couple days after I always tell him you know, go and get your you'll get your junior high creep on where find out where these people are spending their time. Most people are active on some social platform, a lot of sales, marketing recruiters, others are on LinkedIn. So I say, you know, go go find their profile, see what content they're engaging with, see what they're tweeting about. If they're on Twitter, comment on their post, tweet back, start a dialogue. And what happens is you're going to start to connect with them, you're gonna put a face to it, and they see you as someone who's adding to the column versation and you're actually providing value to them, you're not trying to pitch them right off the bat. But that's going to help give you that quick relationship to start. Do that for a bit, don't pitch them. But after you've had a little bit of back and forth, send them a connect request, please do not include a pitch in your connection request on LinkedIn. But after you've done that, for, you know, two weeks or so then you can say, hey, you know, I work with a lot of companies like yours, they said, they've been focusing on 2023 budgeting right now, here's a blog post a podcast, a video, they said was helpful sharing in case you found the same, you can start to open up the conversation that way, but the more that you just push and push with calls and emails, those are the channels that are very inundated right now. So the the ability to connect with them put a face first, and then come from just other channels that aren't being inundated and bad connections or pitches, it's going to help you stand out.
Jonathan Fischer 30:53
Yeah, I love that. I mean, it's almost, if I could summarize what I'm hearing from you here, Sam, it's almost like the quality of what you're doing is even more important than the quantity or even the frequency. Is that Is that fair?
Sam Kuehnle 31:04
Yeah. And then I mean, it's like the common sense side of it. But I know he asked her like, specific maximum number of touch points, I'd say, don't do more than three or four in a two week window, if they especially if they aren't responding, you know, to max in the first week, maybe a third one in the second week. But after that, read the room a little bit, you know, if you go go to a bar, and you talk to someone, they give you the cold shoulder the first time, the second time, the third time where you're gonna go out that fourth time like that quickly, or should you cool off a little bit?
Jonathan Fischer 31:32
Right? It there's a there's that line between persistent and creepy. So that's good stuff. Lady pullback acid. Great question here. Sam, let's bring this to the to the page. What are some funnel management strategies, you can suggest a lot, a lot of what you're talking about, is gonna require some some nuts and bolts application, can you give us a little bit more in terms of mistakes and fixes on that front?
Sam Kuehnle 31:55
Funnel management. So the biggest one that you can control is what I mentioned earlier, just give them the ability to schedule right then in there. Those are people who you don't have to, they're already coming to you and saying they want to talk right? So how do you just get more of them through your funnel to your team. Other things, there's an exercise that we're big fans of doing, we call it split the funnel. But basically, when most business executives look at their company funnel, they blend everything. So all of their leads from VDRs, all their leads from marketing sources, all their event leads everything else. But what we say is, let's start to split those up, look at the BDR funnel, look at the event. Look at the people who come from other presses down, look at the people who come from the webinar, and you'll find very different conversion rates within those. And the resources that go into them. The psychology behind them are very different. So what you'll often find is like marketing 1000 leads, only 100 of them came from the demo 900 came from webinar, but those webinars you might see it looks great up top really low cost per lead high number but only one customer at Walden. Is that effective? Is that the best use of your time. So you can start to analyze your funnel and say what is inefficient for us? Where are we spending? And then okay, if we're seeing this people who want to talk to us fun with super efficient, that's pull the resources from the inefficient side and then say, what's the psychology that lead the people to come into the wanting to talk to us and that's the brand. That's the trust that's showing you understand the space and so you have to invest in those mechanisms. But when you do, you'll start to see that funnel gets bigger, and that's where you're selling more. So that's probably the biggest one that I could think of them and would recommend.
Jonathan Fischer 33:31
Do you feel like, there there's a lot of what should we call it, slop or questionable data? In your average funnel? Just add my own follow up question to this.
Sam Kuehnle 33:46
Yeah, I mean part of it, it depends on your database, and also depends on where people are coming in. Because a lot of the slot data for marketing that I've seen are people that want the ebook, they want the white paper, but they know that behind it is going to be a sales pitch. So I personally I have spam email accounts that I use where if I want to go get this download, I know that I'm going to be linked over to the PDF right after I fill it out. I'm gonna give them a make it up email address, I've used Pizza Hut phone numbers in Washington DC before for phone numbers for them to call back on the asset at the end of the day. So where like you're pulling data again, like the people that want you to call them they're gonna give you their email their phone number because they want your call if they want the asset. They don't want you to call they're gonna go routes like I've done there.
Jonathan Fischer 34:30
Yeah, yeah. Love it. Joshua Bailey asked a good question. We'll bring up at this point, how important is humor as far as is to get way to stand out and connect in in your outreach? Talk to us about that? Yeah, if
Sam Kuehnle 34:41
it's your personality, I think so. I mean, definitely be true to yourself and don't force it but I think there's great ways of just leveraging a little bit of humor gifts go a long way in in humanizing, especially just having a little bit of fun adding some personality to things so I'm I'm always quick to add in little inflections of personality because again, that makes you stand out a little bit more it makes them see it's like, Oh, this isn't just a person reading off of a script sending a canned response. But the way that they added to this shows that this could only have come from them because of the unique way that it was written out or spoken to on the phone.
Jonathan Fischer 35:21
Well, and if some of that, does that some of that come back to your branding as well, like, I mean, you might have a more whimsical, humorous type of branding voice, as opposed to if you're a bank. I mean, most banks probably, well, there may be exceptions, but you know, something a little more staid, or more straight laced. Is that part of the equation as well? Would you say?
Sam Kuehnle 35:40
Yeah, I mean, it depends on if it's like marketing, if it's coming from the brand, or if it's you coming from an individual. So I think the humanization side of it is way more powerful that we always tell our employees or anyone sharing, like, look, we trust you to be a respectable, honest person, when you're going about showing that you're not going to go and do anything that goes over the lines you have you have common sense, right? So we let them we let them do that. And again, that will help you stand out from some of the other. So use your head and think about where that line is with with how you want to use it. But I've honestly seen it work out well, because you're standing out that much more from the five other account execs who are trying to get their attention with this very buttoned up conversation. That's just like, okay, they're, they're a commodity at that point. But you know, that Josh Joshua over there, he's actually quite funny. I like him, I want to give him the first shot before these other people.
Jonathan Fischer 36:37
Will and Joshua is pretty funny. But that's a side note. So ladies, coming back with another good question here for us. What what are some bad habits speaking of quick wins, I guess that a manager should quickly break into a team, if possible. You know, we've talked a lot about how to better use technology, how to manage funnels and build a better sales model. How about just like insurance of sheer every day, tactics that are in place? Or there's some bad habits that we see like and like right now?
Sam Kuehnle 37:06
Bad habits? Do you think it from like a BDR standpoint or a larger messaging? BDR? Well,
Jonathan Fischer 37:11
anybody anybody anybody that anybody in business development? You know, are some things have been being done for so long? It might be good if we could give a few to listener today with your team address it, you know, put in a white board. These are do nots, you know, we have some do's what are some do nots?
Sam Kuehnle 37:26
Yeah, I'd say just treating people as if they're a number, another dial or anything else you can you can hear it in their voice, you can hear it in the way that they approach the conversation where it's just like, I'm just trying to get you over the as quickly as possible. And they're just kind of like they're versus the person that's just like, I want to help you, I really want to find a way to make your business thrive. And the difference in that is one your commodity as soon as they find a competitor who sells for $1 Less, they're gonna go with that one versus this, this other company, it's like, no, they're invested in me, they want me to be successful. Now you've you've not only gained a customer, but you've gained an amplifier through to go and tell their peers about you. They're going to gladly sing your praises, share reviews, anything else. So it's this long tail effect that you don't always realize it but especially with BDR is like the energy there have been companies that have been very, very similar products. I went with the one that I enjoyed working with the sales rep and the CSM more on because I felt that they were they wanted to give it their all in making sure that I was successful. And I was able to apply the product versus just like here you go enjoy it have fun. I'm like, Cool. I know I'm not gonna get much help from them in the future. So is the time resource investment from my side worth it now? Or should I eat this next month? Switch the other one? I know that there'll be a partner for three to five years.
Jonathan Fischer 38:41
Yeah, that makes a lot of difference. I love that. Well, Sam, you did a great job. I really appreciate the value that you've given to the listener today. Thanks so much for being a fantastic guest here involved sales leader today.
Sam Kuehnle 38:53
Yeah, it's been fun. I hope everyone enjoyed it. I know I did. I love talking to people. This is how I learned as well. So keep the questions going.
Jonathan Fischer 39:01
Awesome. Well, and thank you to our audience. If you've been enjoying these, these broadcasts as much as we have here making them you can go any time and catch former guests. These these live streams, continue on as podcast episodes, go check us out. It's called the evolved sales leader. anywhere you'd like to go and get your podcasts, grab and download your favorites to listen to while you're working out. Put in some windshield time or whatever else you're doing, hey, multitasking can be effective if you use it the right way. And that's gonna do it for today. Thanks again for being on the show and making this such a success. We'll see you the next time Same time, same station signing off. Take care bye
