The world of sales has dramatically changed over the past few years, with technology making leaps and bounds as more businesses move online. With so much change, it can be challenging to determine what still works — and what doesn’t.
For any strategy to ultimately win in 2023, it has to be executed well. Whether it’s cold calling, creating authentic emails, or automating communications with AI, your sales outreach must reach the right person at the right time and place in order to succeed.
On this episode of Evolved Sales LIVE, host Jonathan Fischer sits down with a panel of sales experts — James Buckley, Kevin Hopp, and Miro Putkonen — to discuss winning sales strategies, both new and old, that work in this day and age.
Don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn for more engaging sales insights and discussions! Happy watching!
Meet James:
James Buckley is a business consultant, podcaster, and professional sales trainer. His highly regarded sales training company, JB Sales, serves dozens of globally known corporations from Google to LinkedIn. James uses his outgoing personality and sales expertise to help thousands of salespeople around the globe level up and become top performing sales professionals.
Meet Kevin:
Kevin Hopp is an outbound sales expert and podcast host. As a sales trainer, he's made it his mission to not only prove that cold calling still works in today’s economy, but he's also helped dozens of companies learn to profit from it.
Meet Miro:
Miro Putkonen is an experienced sales professional and co-founder of Epicbrief, an AI technology startup out of Finland. Epicbrief’s goal is to make human work in sales more meaningful and valuable by automating call notes, CRM syncs, client follow-up, and more.
Check out the transcription of this webinar episode below!
Jonathan Fischer: [00:00:00] Welcome back. Thanks for joining us. I'm Jonathan Fisher. Well, the last 18 months have witnessed an amazing, probably unprecedented amount of change in the world in general and in business and sales in particular. And it's been crazy, the introduction of technologies like ai, the covid based accelerated shift toward remote work, but a lot going on.
So what have we learned and what are the things that are actually working right now in sales? We're coming hard on the final quarter of the year. How can we level up our game and figure out how to finish strong? With what's actually working right now in the real world. Well, we have a fantastic panel of guests to help us talk about this here today.
Leading it off with James Buckley. Now James is known as James say what sales Buckley the guy has been a force to be reckoned with when it comes to thought leadership. Sales training, and he's helped probably literally thousands of salespeople around the globe level up their game. He's a podcast host himself and he is the chief evangelist for JB Sales.
James is also a really great friend and a fantastic guy to have on here and to know, and we're glad to have you as part of the conversation today. James Buckley. Welcome my brother.
James Buckley: Yes. Good to be here. Thank you for having me. This is exciting because I get to hang out with cool friends and drop great value for salespeople all over the place.
So if you're tuning in, [00:02:00] buckle in 'cause this is gonna be a good time.
Jonathan Fischer: Right on. Right on. And next up we've got Kevin Hopp. I mean, a lot of folks think cold calling isn't even a thing anymore, and Kevin's made his name as an absolute guru of the art and science of outbound. Cold calling. He's kind of on a mission almost to prove that it still works.
He's helped countless sales professionals and businesses learn to profit from it big time. And he's also a friend of the show. Kevin, fantastic to have you with us today. Welcome aboard.
Kevin Hopp: Thank you for having me. Last time I was here we had a lot of fun and you got James here who I, I joke, I've been following him around all week.
I was on the, the JV sales show earlier this week. So, looking forward to getting into the discussion.
Jonathan Fischer: Yeah, got a great, gotta get great crew going and to round out the crew we have with us, Miro Putkonen, who is an AI tech expert, he's one of the co-founders of the. Artificial intelligence tech startup outta Finland called Epic Brief.
And in addition to his knowledge of AI, Miro’s had some epic results in terms of his LinkedIn outreach. He's gonna be sharing some of the insights he and his team have learned in the wake of all of that. Miro, welcome to the call today. Great to have you with us.
Miro Putkonen: Thanks for having me. Guys, it's really great to be here with everyone.
I know all of you're in the us. I'm in. I'm in southern Spain right now. Completely different part of the world, but we all speak the same language. We're all here to talk about sales, so I'm really excited to get to know everyone and talk about what's working.
Jonathan Fischer: I. Right on. Well, and you are also part of the conversation, you who are listening right now in our live audience.
Now of course we customarily have a Q and A at the end of the show, but we'll do things just a little bit differently this time. If you wanna, instead of listing questions in the chat for the conversation, would you please share with us some of the things that are working. For you when it comes to business development, sales, marketing, anything regarding a growing pipeline and winning new deals, that's actually getting great results.
Would you [00:04:00] put that in the chat and we'll actually include that in the conversation probably throughout, also differently from our normal way of doing things on the show. We'll still have some q and a time at the very end but go ahead and jump in. You're here, you're part of the panel. As well.
So guys, I want to kind of open it up a little bit as we get jumping into things, we'll let our live audience start to put post some of their ideas. But maybe I could kind of, kind of enter in a little bit backwards. Like maybe we could start by talking about some of the things that people don't think are working anymore.
And maybe I'll ask you to kind of start off with an area that is not necessarily your expertise. We've had experts on in the past about it, and that is cold email or cold direct messaging on LinkedIn. So before we dive into your specific areas of expertise, let's get some general insights from you guys on that.
Is that, are these things that still have some legs? You know, yes. No, maybe. So what are your thoughts on that? Someone lead off.
James Buckley: Okay, so my opinion, yes, I'm leading off my opinion remains that these channels are probably the dominant channels. There are three that I feel are still effective and probably always will be to a degree.
Email is one. Social touches are another, and cold calling or cold cold dms. These. These things work because it's how we connect in the modern age. It's how we use 'em that's changed considerably. So like some things that don't work, as you mentioned the, I hope your, I hope all all of you are, I hope this email finds you well.
I hope this message finds you well. People bypass that. It's not valuable to them, and it kind of feels like, okay, here comes the pitch. Right? We're super sensitive to being what I call pitch slapped. Nobody likes it. And when you say things like reach, I saw that you did X, Y, and Z, it's okay to have a good trigger for outreach.
It's not okay to lead off with that trigger anymore because that's overused as an opening statement in your email and in your social game. So, What's the move? The move is to take those things, write them [00:06:00] out just as you would, and then read them out loud. Is this about you? Stop it. Go rewrite that in your email or your social touch and make it more about them.
This is very difficult to do for sellers 'cause we think we have to talk about us. That's just a quick note for those two channels. I'll let Kevin tackle the phone 'cause he's the expert in the room.
Jonathan Fischer: I love it. Yeah, it's a great, it's a great segue. Before we do that though, I mean Miro when it comes to making it about us, can AI help with that?
Can I go to ChatGPT, plug in my email and say, Hey, make this, make this less about me, or make this more about my customer. What do you think?
Miro Putkonen: Well, unfortunately, I'll give you the bad news. Unfortunately, unfortunately, there's a bunch of studies that have found that top performing sellers, when they use AI, it actually improves their performance.
But for underperforming sales reps, when they start mixing their underperformance with AI, it actually doesn't lead to good results.
So, so, so this is like, been studied by researchers who actually took like a group of sellers and then went and saw what AI would do. Mm-hmm. I don't know if you are seeing this, but I'm seeing this myself as a, as a founder and CEO of a startup.
The cold outreach that I'm receiving is just, it's just terrible. Yeah. I feel like AI could just make that terrible outreach just a little bit better, but I think if you really want to you know, make an impact with cold outreach and AI, you've gotta use your brain a little bit. I think we've got some good advice already around like how to do that, but I think if you have a good framework and then you collaborate with AI.
I think you can get some really good results that way.
Jonathan Fischer: Well, it is kind of good news for those of us who are let's, let's say sales geeks, right? We love to continue learning more about the art and the craft of selling is a skill that can continue continually be honed and crafted. Still a great investment.
It's not like AI's gonna come in and take over your [00:08:00] job. Sounds like what you're saying. Miro is you better have a good baseline. And it could make the better e even greater still. Well what about the phone? I mean, I agree with Ro. I mean, half the phone calls I get are pretty Dagg on lame. We have probably one of the world's leading experts.
Am I overstating it? Maybe. I don't know. He's one, he's definitely in my world, one of the best experts I personally know. So, Kevin, talk to us about the phone. Why does it suck so much when people call me on my phone for a business purpose and how, you know, how should we be changing that on our end of it?
Kevin Hopp: You know, interesting. We're gonna talk about this. Look at, look at what showed up on my phone just like a minute ago, right? So this is why phone is difficult, right? Google and Apple are conspiring against everybody who's trying to reach people via phone. And guess what? AI bots are calling people. That's telemarketer.
It even said the other day, my phone rang and it said survey. So I knew before I picked up the phone. Don't pick up the phone. It's a survey. Wow. On how long Until they like label it, you know, B2B salesperson. I don't know. I don't know. But the game, the game with phone and with email, you know, to James's point, it all still works.
You just gotta do the right way. Authenticity. I could not agree, James, in saying that 99% of salespeople talk about me, me, me, me, learn about all my stuff, and dah, dah, dah. It's the greatest transformative.
It's, we do this, we do this, we do this, we do this. And they're not talking enough about their prospects.
But getting people to pick up the phone is harder than ever. Right. So that is something that is new. That's kind of where I say it's, you're fighting an unfair battle if you're not using technology when it comes to phone, right? You should be.
James Buckley: There's somebody else in the room here. Ronin is in the room, and we had a great conversation about tone too.
That's something that's definitely changed about the phone as a channel. Hmm. Our confidence that we [00:10:00] exude on the phone through our voice. The smile that people can hear on the other side of the phone. These are things that make an impact with that particular channel. A downward inflection. Do you have a minute before your next meeting?
This puts you in a position of authority. Shout out Chet Holmes, the ultimate sales machine. Rest in peace, Chet Holmes. Yes, right this, this type of nuance is what is changing on all channels. All channels are changing. You can no longer make a video for one guy named Jim and then run a report in Salesforce.
First name equals gym, and then send your video to all the gyms. That's something that is not working anymore. We must personalize. We must have some signal that I did this for you, my prospect. If we don't have that early and often, most of the time it's gonna get ignored. Not all the time. If you like those 1.2% reply rates, good for you.
I'm searching for more like a five to 10% reply rate. That would be ideal given the volume that I'm sending out. Yeah, so think about it from that perspective. Everything about every channel has shifted in a direction that says, is this for me or is this just garbage that's been sent to a thousand other people?
Jonathan Fischer: Hmm. Yeah. Right on. Well, so I'm kind of hearing things that are almost, there's a tension between the two. So on the one hand, we wanna leverage technology to get the best results, and yet there's authenticity. Authenticity and individuality, and even a level of skill that as of yet still requires human involvement to attain.
How do we bring those two together guys?
Kevin Hopp: Buy software. Software. Wait, where, where are all the, the outreach and SalesLoft BDRs that are like, oh my God, you gotta buy our stuff. Yeah, yeah. Buy, buy a software platform. Throw, throw that at it. I, I think the, the technical challenge of getting directly to somebody, right? Landing in the main inbox. Getting a executive to pick up their phone.
That is such a huge challenge that cannot be [00:12:00] kind of understated that when you use technology, you're gonna up the amount of times you can actually get in front of people. And that authenticity piece doesn't really scale like it's really hard to do. So you need to be able to get as many of those chances as you can.
So that's where I, I am a huge advocate for using technology. Like you gotta be using technology if you really wanna house outbound. In particular now that I, I wanna talk, I wanna ask Miro this, right? I have been dreaming about a plugin, like, I think this is coming. I, I think it's very close because like, if you think about where we're at in technological evolution, open AI releases, ChatGPT, and the whole world like explodes, right?
And everyone's like, Oh my God. It's like a human. It does this, does this, but we're in the infancy of how we're using it to get things done in business or in, you know, our daily lives and all this stuff. And I, I heard Mark Andreessen on Joe Rogan's podcast the other day. Phenomenal episode. Mark Andreessen, you know, legendary Silicon Valley vc.
Dude. The way I, I sat there and I was like, oh shit. Like, It's not gonna take oath, but it's going to make our job so much easier. Like the pull you around. Yeah. Everywhere where you're going as a sales and allow you to contextualize what you do and what your prospect does by taking all that data, then plugging in like a very specific way to talk about it.
And I'm like, okay, cool. You still need a salesperson, those dots. But I think you don't need 20 salespeople. You don't need 20 BDRs. Don't need, you need or three. So I don't know, does that, does that plugin exist yet? Miro? Like we, we gotta get ChatGPT actually working to learn, here's my company, here's the value, here's our top five customer stories.
How do I talk about this ChatGPT, and have it just spit it out.
Miro Putkonen: Yeah, so [00:14:00] I'm not going to pitch too much epic brief here. That's not why I'm here. But I, I think, I think from a technological landscape perspective, you're right. Like ChatGPT is like a, a, you know, a Swiss Army knife for all sorts of use cases.
What what we are trying to do in our business is to build a tool. That leverages some of the good things, but is contextual to sales. We think about our tool and our, our our, like our, our roadmap is building like a companion for you. You know, one of our engineers called it more like an intern, you know, that you can that follows you around or like a, like an assistant, you know, that follows you around and helps you.
And all of these little things gets you ready for the call. Make sure you execute after the call and doing all these important little things that maybe you as a seller that take a lot of that energy that you have from your performance, right? So, I think you're gonna see a lot of tools that, that are built.
For that con it's, it's about data and building it contextually for sales. And then obviously they'll get better as people are using them. These models will improve for, specifically for sales purposes. But I'm excited because. You know, the reason why my co-founder and I started building epic Brief is 'cause we were just two sales guys tired of doing all the manual work related to sales.
And we feel like, you know, AI can just take that away from us and we can just do what we love. I. I think when people do what they love, they're so much better at what they actually do, right? So when they're preach, when they're cold calling and you're not worrying about like all these other things, you're, you're, you're, you're gonna be in your flow and then you'll stay in your flow a lot longer.
Because I remember when I was an SDR, if I could get into my flow, I then that's where I would hit. I would, I would be converting 'cause I'm in that flow state, right? But there's so many things that get you out of your flow. So I think that's what AI will do, is just [00:16:00] keep you in that, just like in that mode.
And then I think you just deliver better results.
James Buckley: I'm, I want to tack on here and say that I'm excited to move past generative AI. I think a lot of our early use cases are naturally generative. Write a 500 word article on X, y, z tell me about this industry's struggles so I can write this effective email, right?
Educate me. But when we start thinking about the way that we can leverage AI to be more intentional or to streamline a process, I think it will become more of a companion to salespeople than it currently is. I enjoy the idea of something following me around, correcting me or telling me, no, don't do that.
Do this instead. This is a better move. I think of things like lavender that are like picking up on stuff that could be improved upon in my emails, right? That stuff is really effective for salespeople, but AI is still reactive. We have to go to it. We have to do something with it, for it to spit something back at us.
I'm excited for when it jumps into the picture and says, Hey and I'm thinking like, SalesLoft's rhythm is like this, right? Hey, this thing took place. You should probably send this email. It looks kind of like this. Also add this because they said this other thing, right? Telling salespeople what to do, why to do, how to do.When to do. That's the part that I think is more exciting for me and I think will be more exciting for more frontline sales reps that are doing the job. To Kevin's point, a lot of companies right now are real recognizing the fact that we don't necessarily need 15 BDRs. We might need to yes, Nick, I agree.
I think Skynet freaks me out and I think about the Terminator movies just as much as you do. This is a necessary evil if we are to level up. It's a, it's [00:18:00] another avenue, another way to leverage something in the market that can help us get results. And if you are not focused on that, As a salesperson or a marketer in 2023, you are missing the boat in 2024, I assume.
Jonathan Fischer: Right on. Well, I, I love that the difference between being generative and being able to be more directive, that, that, that'd be, that's a powerful transition that we have yet to see. But hey, some of the cutting edge folks like our friend Miro on the call are pushing the boundaries of that. So, what else could we say about this nexus between these amazing technologies that makes some people nervous, but we all should start playing with it.
I guess that's the one takeaway, right? Get involved, start playing with it, start experimenting. What, what are some keys to get the most out of it? Now we, our, my, the best cold email expert that we could have had, wasn't able to be here today. But there are a lot of best practices that he shared on one of our previous episodes.
Chris Lee Simi is an expert on outbound email and shared about having basically burner domains you can use. Get them well seasoned and set, send 'em out to very well segmented, highly targeted lists. But that's all some good fundamentals. But that's gotta be followed up with a really great phone technique and really great outbound technique that's all coordinated.
So you've got LinkedIn outreach going on, primarily good phone based outreach to, to maximize that email based outreach to get the most this seems to be getting some great results. James, you talked about boosting it from low single digit to high single digit and that I think these would be some of the keys to put into place.
What, how would you guys riff off of that? What else could we do to get more out of a, of a well-rounded effort like that?
When it comes to phone, especially, Kevin, what would you say about, 'cause you, you know, you can have a really, a really well tuned c r m can probably flash up some of the good data that's in there. You better have your tech stack well tuned, have some of these plugins. Right. What else would you say about it?
We talked about tonality. Maybe give us a little mini. Give us a little mini course on that. Then following up on a really well targeted list with a good, well, well-designed email campaign, you know, segmented, targeted, we got some responses. [00:20:00] Take us to the next steps on the telephone.
Kevin Hopp: Sure. And it's interesting because this is actually where, this is actually where I get a lot of my work, right?
So I'm, I'm a solo consultant these days running my own business hop consulting group, and I am currently working with two businesses where they've kind of nailed email that they're doing really well there. They realized that, you know, the SDR leader, they have s d leaders, the SDR leader, that was really good at identifying, you know, how to build the email process, what tool to bring in, how to really segmented lists, loves getting into the A/B testing and does all like the, like a, it's kinda like two brain, I would argue if you're gonna do like cold or you're gonna do cold calling.
Really well. Like I way more of the talk, the talk. You gotta talk the talk. And if you don't know how to talk the talk, there's nowhere to hide. Right. When you talk about tone with cold email, thought a lot, a lot about being very sy, you know, what's the, the word's not nerdy, but like, I wanna say nerdy, like cold email nerd type dudes are, are very, very different personality types than cold call type dudes.
Right. And it, I, I. I find it's really interesting 'cause I have people coming to me that they have these humming systems that are using some sort of ai or they're, they're just doing jobs with email. But with phone teaching a rep how to talk about what you do, the business challenges and the valuable solutions is still an art form as much as it is a science.
Right. Something that as sales, like I, and people have asked me, like I, I have people, you know, in my personal life, they're like, Like, yeah. I mean, isn't like AI gonna replace salespeople? Like why do we need a salesperson, like just have an AI bot, like go out and talk to people and I'm like, look, I don't, I don't see it.
And as like a guy who's big on LinkedIn and in like the cold calling world, I've had I four or five different companies come to me in the last three, [00:22:00] four months saying, Hey, I have a AI cold calling bot. It'll replace cold callers. I want your feedback on it. I want you, I want, I wanna work with you on it.
And I one time listening to it, I'm like, it's good. But out in calls, it's not gonna be good for outbound because that litmus test, the bullshit filter is not changing. It's getting harder and harder. The bullshit filter for every executive out there is getting tighter and tighter and tighter. Yeah.
Because if you manage to get past the telemarketer thing and the spam call, then you get into their ear. We're still as human. We're still so shocked that we're getting pitched left, right and sideways on everything that an AI bot's not gonna execute a cold call for a long time. And, and if you're listen, listening out there and you're like, you're wrong, Kevin.
Put, let's put it to the test. You know, I, I cold call live every other week on the internet. Let's put your cold call bot live on the internet and see how it does. Like it's just, It'll be really, I think it will replace call center functions. Yeah. Because if someone's calling inbound or if someone called in and requested something and you just need to call them and schedule something that should be tied, but B two B cool call.
James Buckley: What does that sound like though, Kev? What does that sound like? Hi. You filled out a form. I'm calling no,
Kevin Hopp: James, to get you to the next step. Yeah, it sounds good. It sounds good. I will give it to 'em. Right? I I, no, I know it sounds better than
James Buckley: that. Sounds way better than I'm just saying. Like better. It's like, Hey, my name is, I, I feel like when I get a call and I think that it's a bot, I start saying their name.
I'm like, George. Yeah, George. Right. George. And if they're still talking and they don't stop, that's a bot, dude. I
Kevin Hopp: know, I know. But these bots can like stop. It's not a recording. It's an actual reflexive bot. So it sounds really good. It's just would any executive have time to actually go through that and book a discovery for software they've never heard of?
No, no, no. It needs to be that human element, right? Yeah. So it's not going away.
James Buckley: I wanna talk to Andrew [00:24:00] Ellenberg. Andrew Ellenberg said I wanted to fill out my Salesforce for me. You're already behind, homie. Check out win.ai w i nnn.ai or attention tech. Both of those have that capability along with many others, like taking notes and adding it to your c r m and then automatically putting out a potential follow-up template for you based on those notes in your c r m.
That's money in the bank, dude. Like, try those things out. These are all things you can try and see if they improve your efficiency, your time management, and your results, and tracking and measuring Miro, I or I have to get your opinion because you're the AI expert in the room. Attribution tracking and measuring and tying dollars to tech is the only thing that these leaders should be focused on when it comes to whether or not something is worth the investment.
In adding it to my tech stack, no.
Miro Putkonen: Yes, yes.
James Buckley: It's from the expert. I'm right. I'm right. Perfect. Again, no,
Jonathan Fischer: I think it's a great point. Yeah. If you, if you wanna riff on that, Miro? Yeah. Yeah. What else? What could be, what could be more concise than that, right? That that's where the focus belongs for sure.
Miro Putkonen: Yeah, I was, I wanted to make a point on the cold calling piece because I, it's one of my passions myself that there's a lot of humans that are worse than I think are gonna be a lot worse than the bots where you're saying like George and it's actually a George, and, and I've experienced, I don't know if you've guys have experienced this, but someone cold calls you and you're trying to interrupt them, and they're just, they just keep going.
And, and it's for me one of the things that I've, I've always, when I've been training at my own SDRs is, is I tell them what I, my principle at least is I need you to think. I really want you to be able to think independently, and especially the way I, you know, I think leaders can train this, but I, the way I've trained this is to teach them how to think under pressure is, is like, it's like when you're, you know, I'm, I'm from Finland, my wife is American, so I understand a little bit American football that you guys [00:26:00] love.
I'm sure. Aha. You know, how do you call an audible? You know, you need to understand how to. How to, how to behave under pressure. And one of the things I used to do with my SDRs is I, I, I'd take them on the walk and one of the walks was I would walk with them through the streets. Cars are coming. I would go up the escalators and I'd be like, gimme the pitch.
And if they would fail, I'd like, let's go again. And it, it's all about what you guys are talking about. The tone. Like I would just be listening out. I think what sales leaders can do is they can listen, they should have a sense of what the right tone is, and you just need to just. Make them repeat it until the tone is there.
It's, there's some simple things like nailing your value proposition and so forth, but getting that tone right and listening to another human, because I think like ultimately the, the, the, the difference between AI and like human salespeople is, is our emotional intelligence. Uh mm-hmm. How are we using that?
How are we improving that in our, in our salespeople is That's what it's about. And understanding what is being human is about thinking, not just being a bot and doing rote road. For sure. We teach people think is a, is a challenge.
Jonathan Fischer: Yeah. Muriel, so I call that you, you give your team an edge, wouldn't it?
Yeah, go ahead Kevin.
Kevin Hopp: I, I was just gonna say, so I, I have an online course that talks about cold calling and, you know, there's so much. About cold can write down and put in a course and say like, look, you should be doing this, X, Y, Z. It's like a setup. But then once you get on the phone, one of the concepts I talk about a lot is called the X factor.
That's exactly what you're talking about, Miro. It's like this, it's that added piece. It's the art form inside of the science of like outbound sales being a scientific process, that art form the ability to call an audible. The ability to talk about, like you're listening. You, you call somebody and you hear, Hey, yeah, this is Kevin.
And you hear that, that low there. Hey, sounds like I caught you in the car. Are you, are you going through [00:28:00] Mickey D's? Can I get that? The. Grish Shake. Can you get me one of those?
No Cold call script ever is gonna have that in there, but I promise you right, if you drop that line right, next time you hear someone's on the car, they're gonna say, no, no.
I, I I'm vegan, I'm not going to McDonald's. What, what? Why are you calling me? And all of a sudden, we're too humans talking to each other, right? They're you. And then they're gonna give you an honest answer because they trust that you're a real person. Right? That, that's gonna be really, really, really hard.
I don't know if. Sky will ever replace the pie. Right?
Jonathan Fischer: Yeah. Go ahead James. Get I think there's issue.
James Buckley: Hashtag you're muted. This authenticity that Kevin is describing translates the same in your emails and in your social touches and in your videos and in your marketing collateral, the things that you put out there.
Most of the time when I talk to salespeople that want to use content or they wanna create some level of digital footprint so that they can have this inbound, this influx of strangers to talk to. Make no mistake, y'all, your we're in sales. The job is to talk to strangers. It goes against everything that we think I.
That we know, because when we're little, our parents teach us. Don't talk to strangers, don't get in the van, whatever you do. And then we grow up and we become salespeople. What's the job? Talk to strangers. Don't just talk to 'em. Get in the van for the candy and the puppies, right? This is like something we have to get used to because it's we're, it goes against everything that we know.
So when we put messages out there that portray some level of vulnerability, authenticity. Genuine curiosity as John Barrows would say show me that you know, me, hashtag Sam Sales can't say that without thinking about Sam McKenna. Right? These types of touches are more meaningful than the. Scanned inbox.
I can clearly see this is automated. I can clearly see this as a template. This, there's no personalization. Anybody that's not putting somebody's [00:30:00] name in the preview of an email, you're, it is just, hey or Hi there. Yeah, stop this immediately. It does not take long for you to add the name, use the merge field from your C R m if you need to, and you're doing templates.
But if your emails begin with, Hey, there you are a dinosaur. Stop this madness immediately. Right? And start thinking about what can I say that this person is gonna scan their email, their inbox, either in the morning or after lunch. 'cause that's when we do it. We're humans, right? We scan the inbox and I want them to see it and think that that was written for me.
I should probably read that. If you are not thinking this way, you have an issue, I assure you. And go join Kevin next Tuesday for that. Kevin is an expert cold call. It's so amazing to hear him do the thing.
Jonathan Fischer: Yeah, no, legit. Just so you're clear on what that is, I mean, this is Kevin on camera making cold calls that are legit cold calls for you to watch.
Yeah. So the good, the good and bad, the ugly it, man. It's, it's a lot of fun.
Kevin Hopp: It's hard. So there's, I've, I've gone to, I've, I've been. The dms and to a number of people who are cold calling experts, and I'm like, Hey, like, I can't. I'm like, Kevin,
James Buckley: I'll do it with you.
Jonathan Fischer: That's what I'm talking about. I love it.
Let's do it. Love Kevin. I'll do it with, it's i's a bit of a game, right? Yeah. It, it's like going to the fair and you're trying to get the stuff, the animal for your kid. It's fun, right? That's how you have to look at it the most. I think it's fun.
Kevin Hopp: I think it's fun. Yeah. But I'm a sicko, right? People. So I, I, because this is, this is relevant to what we're talking about.
I had a, I almost, yeah, there, there was a, I had a second call today with an opportunity, a consulting opportunity, and I, I, my new thing that I'm talking about a lot is called calling culture. Right? I, I had to sit down and think like, you know what is not gonna get replaced by ai? What does it want their team to have?
Because they know that cold calling's not dead. They need to keep doing it, but it's getting harder. It's called, I'm, I'm calling, calling culture like this idea that like, Hey, like we can do it. We're gonna do it, do it. I'll give you [00:32:00] the tools to do it, but like it's a cultural movement inside of a company.
In this second call today with a prospective customer, the c r O says, you know, I, I think we have calling culture. The reps make the calls us here, like the look at the. But look at the, the dashboard says they're making calls. I don't understand what you mean by calling culture. And I said, calling culture means that your reps are super excited to make those calls.
Right? You, you didn't reach out to me because it's like going really well and everything is like, you know, you're nailing it, you're converting, right? He's building his, it's a c r o, building his math on, you know, one meeting set per week per s d r. And they're doing click to dial, click to call. I'm like, I can just plug in two or three things here to make this five 10 x more efficient and drive this cultural thing.
Like the reason you should AI and your quote, which is the AI tools are mostly what I recommend for cold calling that help you get into calls faster, to be clear. Not that make cold calls for you into live conversations faster, but the reason I recommend you use these, not just to go faster and have more conversations, but also what we had talked.
What about earlier here is you start building a better workday. Your, your reps are talking to more people and they're leveraging technology and they actually like their job more. So, you know, it, it, it does tie into what Mark Andreessen was saying on j r e and I'm not just gonna spoil it for you guys, but basically he laughs at Joe.
'cause Joe's all paranoid about ai. He says it's, it's a, it's a computer. It's not gonna be sentient. You think it's sentient 'cause it's doing human-like things. It's deducing things from knowledge, but it still is not human. And it won't be human. It's gonna be the greatest tool that we've ever had.
It's gonna transform the way people work. And I think that that is what sales leaders need to start thinking about is not, how can I replace salespeople with ai? Sure, you're gonna need a little bit less salespeople for sure. But, How can we use this [00:34:00] tool to make the jobs better, make someone's job better?
And that's invaluable.
Jonathan Fischer: Love it. Love it.
James Buckley: Listen, I got, I'm curious about Miros opinion on that, right. The AI expert in the room. You gotta know, like it's a, you built a tool that legit is designed to be that, that helpful hint, that helpful assistant.
Miro Putkonen: Yeah. So, so we, we look at the future of AI and sales like a ladder.
So the first step in the ladder is automation. So, you know, you talked about tools like win or attention. These are tools, and we are doing that like as a baseline of our tool is like automating c r m fields, you know, doing those admin tasks. Automating that. That's, that's the first ladder. The second ladder is needs analysis, understanding customer needs using that data to build playbooks.
If you've ever tried to build a playbook it, you know, you build a playbook, you spend months, and as soon as you release it, it's already not usable by the reps because the market moves and you look at the playbook and it's, it, it's just not relevant anymore. So, you know, automating like needs analysis and getting that into a playbook and creating live playbooks is a really, really interesting thing and use case.
So, so we've got automation needs analysis. The third level is problem solving. So you want to use AI in problem solving, so solving customers problems and collaborating with AI. And, and, and then the fourth ladder is a strategic thinking. So what we've noticed, you know, playing with tools like Chat, g p T, is that you can use them for problem solving use them for strategic thinking.
You can ask it very complex questions like, You know, build me a, a value framework. This is a very strategic sales tool to understand like from feature set all the way to the customer's strategic goals and objectives. How do you drive that conversation up the chain of the buyer? [00:36:00] Hierarchy and building a value framework.
You can ask it to build your tables and matrix tables and do very complex strategic thinking. That would take a lot of time for, for, for sellers and, and those that are doing strategy. The fifth level, which we don't believe that AI can touch because it's not conscious, is the fifth level, which is emotional.
The emotional part of sales. And so, you know, it's really interesting that we're talking about like authenticity and all these parts. These are the things that we need to focus on. Like if you had a strategy for your sales career for the next 10 years, it would be. Get better at the emotional part because AI is going to help you in everything else but the emotional part.
But the emotional part of sales is the one. That is the hardest because one of my sales trainers once upon a time talked about sales being like a, like a mirror. That, that always looks at you, you know, when you're picking up the phone, it's like a mirror that reflects you and you can choose to look at the mirror or not to look at the mirror, but the mirror is always there and it forces you to confront very.
Tough emotional questions about yourself. So the authenticity in Coco is coming, or lack thereof, is coming from something deeper from within that. You're, you're not confronting your fears of cold calling, so you're creating a mask that you're using to cold call, and that's what it sounds like. It's like, your prospecting voice, but you gotta do some deep emotional work to be more emotionally attune and do some of, and, and then leverage the humanness in, in all aspects of sales.
'cause everything else can, will ultimately get automated. Hmm,
Kevin Hopp: let, let's start talking about childhood trauma. This is, this is important. Yeah.
James Buckley: Yeah. I, I actually think childhood drama trauma plays a massive role. I think in these conversations with frontline sales reps that are so concerned with their career long [00:38:00] term, they don't see the job that they have to do in front of 'em.
So I have to stop them and ask them questions that they have no idea or even related to their success levels. I'll say something like, Hey, quick question. Are you an only child? And they're like, what? And you have to explain to them, well, The reason that you've been here for four months and you think that you should be an account executive already, and you're currently an S D R, is because you are an only child and you've spent your entire life with two people that only care about how you benefit from every situation ever.
You've never had to wait your turn. It doesn't happen for you. So you believe that you started as an S D R four or five months ago, and you're not an account executive yet, and that just pisses you off. But people with siblings have spent their entire life waiting. For their turn taking hand-me-downs, right?
Like it's a different mentality. Another question I have to ask, are both of your parents still alive? And they're like, I don't understand what this has to do with my career. It has everything to do with your career. You're so focused on that. You're not focused on the job at hand, and that's because you haven't had the volume turned down on that importance yet.
When you lose a parent or a child, suddenly everything comes into focus and you realize that the job isn't who I am. I'm made up of all these other things too. That also matter. So you're focused on that growth and that promotion and that upward mobility so hard too soon because your level of loss or trauma or drama in your life has not adjusted that view for you.
There are other things that are more important, like getting to the quota that you were given at the beginning of the year. If you think you're gonna get promoted without that piece, you're wrong.
Jonathan Fischer: Yeah. Yeah. That's some, that's some good stuff. And very current, right? I mean we, I think one of the things that maybe is a really good trend is folks are getting a little bit more aware.
What it means to function well from a mental standpoint, emotional health [00:40:00] and channeling some of the, those issues in a positive direction. So I love that. I mean, to be effective as sales leaders, it'd be, well if we're, we, you know, maybe flex, not flex, excuse me, but try to grow some skills in that area, inform ourselves.
Maybe even look at including team members specifically for that. I love that James.
James Buckley: You will never grow professionally until you're willing to grow personal.
Jonathan Fischer: Love it. I love it. And we're not talking about Hoohaw personal growth stuff and making goals and stuff like that. We're talking about snaps. The real deal, man.
Kevin Hopp: Yeah. Real fucking talk. Ooh,
Jonathan Fischer: yeah. Right on. Right on. It's okay. It's not, it's not a family show. It's okay. It's, it's a, it's for play. Well, we. Ear muffs. Well guys, we can keep going. I mean, we've, we've already, we've dropped a lot of golden nuggets. What a great team play. This has been Miro. We're gonna have to have you and maybe Anton back again to share about your viral LinkedIn campaign.
That could be a topic all, all its own, maybe on a future episode. But Kevin, before you go, man, you already dropped the link for your show every other week. How else could we put you out there for folks to learn more about what you bring, brother?
Kevin Hopp: Mostly just LinkedIn. I have this personal website.
It's kinda like an only fans girl has a link tree. I've got a professional version of it right here where you can find links to, to try out a bunch of different AI type tools for free. You can find ways to connect with me. You can find my online course. You can find a lot of different things at my personal website there, solar to slash hop or connect me on LinkedIn.
It's a great way of doing it. Thank you so much for having me on the show today. It's been really, really fun. And hope to see you guys again soon.
Jonathan Fischer: Kevin, you rock man. We'll see you soon. Yeah, take care. Thanks for being on. Cheers. Cheers. And James, my brother. You are Als as always. You've been a rockstar once again.
How can folks go a little deeper with you? I know you, you're still working with Mr. Barrows. You're doing, you got your own thing going on. You're a podcaster, man. You got too many things going on. What, what do you wanna talk about here?
James Buckley: No, you can never have too much going on. I am excited to run Full Sprint at Sell Better.
This is the daily sales show. I'm gonna go ahead and drop the link in the chat so that everyone can go and look [00:42:00] at the ones that are coming up that are relevant to you. We cover everything from prospecting to closing, to customer success, to sales leadership and career development, down to like the nitty gritties cold emails, calls to action, subject lines.
We do all kinds of stuff on the show. The first link that I put in though, the one that says Free resources. Everyone that's here right now that catches this, go get those because there are guides in there, templates in there actual like CTAs that generate response. So those are all free resources along with Devon Reed's course.
Jed Marley's course, and Jason Bay Cold Calling Course. There are some great resources in there that you guys can take advantage of, and I want you to have them as a thank you for having me on the show and being such great on
Jonathan Fischer: Jamesy Rocks. Brother, thanks for being here and bringing so much value. I'm gonna go get mine, that's for sure.
In the meantime, enjoy your weekend James. Thanks again for being here, man.
James Buckley: Talk to you soon, guys. Have a great one. Thanks again.
Jonathan Fischer: And Miro, it's been a great conversation with you too, friend. You've got a, a lot of expertise obviously in this very obviously exciting and kind of cutting edge and still developing area of artificial intelligence.
It must be exciting for you to be right on the forefront of that. Thanks for being here to share. How can folks go next level with you? You've already got thousands of people, I guess, in your waiting list. Can people still go and check out epic brief.com and join the cohort? Is that the best plan?
Miro Putkonen: Yeah, yeah, please do that.
Also follow my co-founder Anton Doki. He's posting every day So he is a great, great one to follow. Yeah, and if you, if anybody wants to have a chat about AI and sales and, and what you guys are already doing and, and testing and playing around with yeah, this is I'm a bit down the rabbit hole, maybe further down the rabbit hole than others, but others are falling in.
So come and chat with me. Let's talk, let's let's build this. This is a completely new opportunity for all of us and, and we're learning and would love to learn from, from everyone else. So, Please hit me up on, on LinkedIn and let's connect.
Jonathan Fischer: I love it. We'll keep the conversation going with you.
Thanks once again for being with us, Miro. Take care. Have a great weekend.
Miro Putkonen: Thank you.
Jonathan Fischer: And for all of you listener, thanks for [00:44:00] making the show such a great success. What a fun ride it's been. And I get to be here in this chair learning from so many wonderful people like the panel we had here today, and it's wonderful of you guys and gals in our audience as well.
If you're enjoying the content, wanna check out past episodes? Don't forget, you can go check out the podcast. Wherever you'd like to go get your podcast, whether that's on Apple iTunes, whether that's on Google or Spotify. A lot of great previous insights in areas such as how to do Expert Cold email, how things we didn't even get to today, such as how to do Effective SEO paid advertising, everything related to marketing and sales B2B, it's right here on the Evolve Sales Leader.
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