Social Selling Secrets to Supercharge Your Sales with Sam McKenna - Ep. 48

TT - 048 - Sam McKenna - Full Episode
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[00:00:00]

Intro Sales Insights with Sam McKenna
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Sam McKenna: it's the basics. That's what's basically broken in sales. That's the basics. We don't do our research. We don't know how to people, we don't know how to build rapport and have a conversation. we keep seeing success with these relatively easy, relatively straightforward things that nobody will do. Why is it that so few people will just put in the actual work that converts?

Craig Rosenberg: you guys, fun fact, I'm drinking tea today

Sam Guertin: Oh.

Sam McKenna: of bourbon,

Craig Rosenberg: instead

Sam McKenna: sober today. Congrats.

Craig Rosenberg: is that an or? Is that an or? No, but I was like, I'm gonna try to make tea. And then Hailey, who I work with, she's uh, from the uk so she. Taught me how to do it. You, she was very upset that I was using the sort of the one, the hot water from the sink. 'cause it's not as hot as it should be. And then I was trained to, you warm up the, the teacup first. So you

put the hot water in, then you [00:01:00] throw it out,

Sam McKenna: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: you put the hot water in. I learned a lot. Wait, Sam, you know this. Are you a tea drinker?

Sam McKenna: No, but I know this for coffee. That's why like on the Nespresso machines, sometimes if you get their fancy ones, there's a little thing on the side and you push it, you turn the coffee cup upside down, you push it, and it, you know, sprays, piping hot water up into your ceramic cup unless you use an ember, which those things never work for me.

Um, and then your cup is warm and then you pour the stuff in. But I know that, I know that trick too. We have, we have like very hot water in our house for like, like someone's gonna sue us one day 'cause they're not gonna realize how hot it is and they'll burn

Craig Rosenberg: Right.

Sam McKenna: but I'm into the tea. I've, I've had a lot of opportunities to make inappropriate jokes so far and I'm really holding back.

But this, so this is a.

Craig Rosenberg: Why,

Sam McKenna: No,

Craig Rosenberg: why hold '

Sam McKenna: cause we're, because we're recording and I wanna keep my company alive,

Craig Rosenberg: That's a good point.

Sam McKenna: but good luck with your tea bags, Craig. [00:02:00] Good

Craig Rosenberg: yeah, I appreciate it. I

Sam McKenna: there you go. There you go.

Craig Rosenberg: oh, by the way, do you guys watch the show? Billions? Did you watch the show? Billions?

Sam McKenna: didn't, I heard good things. Yeah.

Matt Amundson: I watched it for a while up until, uh, Bobby Axelrod left and apparently came back, so

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, I,

I think that's a good call. But so Sam, the thing is, is that like. I.

do much better on the other social channel piece be besides LinkedIn when I'm wearing a hat and now I've been mixing it up. So I have today for our podcast. I have a shirt, but if you haven't watched billions, this may not work out.

I'm gonna pull this off. Hold on one sec.

Sam McKenna: I was waiting for him to say, I have a shirt on

Matt Amundson: prepared to blur the image.

Sam Guertin: Yeah.

Sam McKenna: Oh my God. I can't wait.

Matt Amundson: acts cap.

Sam McKenna: Oh yeah, that's his, that's his company, right? That's it, isn't it?

Craig Rosenberg: it, That's Bobby Axelrod's company. Yeah, but [00:03:00] of course,

hold on, let me get up higher. Sam,

Sam McKenna: Is

Craig Rosenberg: the.

other Yeah. Per, per the, uh, the comment on the pod, get, get a little higher, Craig.

Yeah, I got

Sam McKenna: I'll bring my, I'll bring my boobs on camera. You bring your, your shirt on camera. It'll be a great

Craig Rosenberg: See, Sam, you're struggling to, to keep it pg. I like this. This

is, uh,

Sam McKenna: struggling, struggling.

Craig Rosenberg: this. I, I like to see. Um, so just Sam, just so you know, the other Sam. Uh, likes to jump in and clarify with the audience what we're seeing. So Sam will, I will do Sam Gertin here, uh, for the audience. Craig's wearing a ax capital t-shirt right now, and he is showing it to everyone.

Sam McKenna: What are you gonna say for my boobs? Sam, Sam

Craig Rosenberg: oh, Sam. Oh, man.

Oh, what just happened?

Sam Guertin: I'm gonna leave that to, uh, a post-production decision.

Craig Rosenberg: We're gonna do gr we're gonna kill it on TikTok with this episode. I'm gonna say that right [00:04:00] now.

Sam McKenna: Don't,

Matt Amundson: vi

Sam McKenna: air any of this. Don't air any of this. We'll be fine.

Craig Rosenberg: oh man, man.

Um, all right, cool.

Matt Amundson: she signed the waiver, right? She signed the waiver. We're good.

Craig Rosenberg: the LI Liability waiver. Yeah.

Business liability.

Introducing Sam McKenna, Founder of SamSales Consulting
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Craig Rosenberg: So I'm, I actually, Sam, I I, I met you at when you were at on 24.

Sam McKenna: Topo. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: I was, yeah, I was Topo you were on 24. Amazing. Uh, sales leader and, um, and then, um, you went, I think to LinkedIn for a while there, and then ever since you've had your own business, is that kind of the [00:05:00] deal?

Sam McKenna: Yeah. Five, five and a half years ago. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: amazing. So here's the thing is that I was just telling Sam, not Sam Gertin, is that, um, uh, this is another case where I haven't actually talked to Sam McKenna in, call it seven years. But I feel like I have, because she's so present in my life via the social channels and thought

leadership, et cetera. So like, uh, it's, it's really cool the way this, this works now. It's like, I mean, you have built this incredible following you're go-to for so many people. Oftentimes, like the other day, Adam Robinson wrote some posts like we, what'd we call it again? Matt? Was it an ode?

Matt Amundson: Yeah, so

Craig Rosenberg: it was an ode. Yeah.

Matt Amundson: Yeah. Sam is a first, right? She's the first guest to have received an ODE to herself from a previous guest.

Craig Rosenberg: Oh, that's right.

Very well put.

Sam McKenna: That is [00:06:00] hysterical. When did you guys have Adam on?

Craig Rosenberg: Oh gosh. Like a year ago maybe.

Sam Guertin: Yeah.

Sam McKenna: that's funny. That's a, that's a good intro.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, as things were heating up between him and, uh, another

Sam McKenna: Who, who was it?

Matt Amundson: company.

Craig Rosenberg: yeah, he, the timing was in

interesting and we're like, we're like, fuck it, he's coming on.

And uh, yeah, he was, he was amazing. Also, Matt, fun fact, you did ask him if part of the reason he was so successful is 'cause he was. Tall and handsome. I don't know

if you remember that. That was

Matt Amundson: I do.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah.

Sam McKenna: how did he, how did he address it? Did he say?

Craig Rosenberg: a best practice? He blushed by the way? It was.

I

Matt Amundson: became quite bashful.

Craig Rosenberg: yeah. Yeah. He is the only time. He did talk the whole time, man, it was amazing.

Matt Amundson: He did. He did. Like I, I think he did instinctively brush his hair behind his ear.

Sam McKenna: oh, yeah. Oh, it's, that's, that's a mo. There's like a timer that pops up. Touch hair on his, uh, computer. Did you guys see the slide deck [00:07:00] he shared yesterday?

Craig Rosenberg: Oh no, I saw that. I didn't open it up. I gotta do that. Is it what? Is there some Sam says in there. Is it

all? Sam says.

Sam McKenna: no, but let me, let me ask you a question. When you guys present a deck and you go and speak somewhere, how many times does a picture of yourself show up on that deck? Intro slide? Yes. Anywhere else? Probably not. Adam's got seven, seven slides that have his face on there, and there's quotes Adam Robinson next to it.

I'm like, you can't quote yourself in your own goddamn slide bag. He's great. Don't get me wrong. I

Craig Rosenberg: yeah, yeah, yeah. No, we're allowed to make fun of people, but that does fall into Matt's like, uh, key factor for Adam's success is that he's, you know, he is a tall, handsome guy and, um, he

Sam McKenna: It's the hair. He should be in a Pantene commercial.

Matt Amundson: He does have great hair. He

has great hair.

He is, he's got a, he's got also like a great base layer tan too, you know. That's helpful.

Craig Rosenberg: yeah.

That does it.

It's good. It's good. It's Good [00:08:00] All right. So now that we're seven and a half in Sam, we,

Announcing The New Sam McKenna Award For The Best Guest
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Craig Rosenberg: we knew you would be a good guest. You already are. 'cause we try to have fun sometimes when the guest doesn't realize how much fun we have. It. It's a little weird in the start.

Um, they're very confused by some of our comments.

You jumped right in with the boobs. The, um, yeah, the, uh, making fun of other ga I love it. So, um, anyway, so everyone, this is Sam McKenna. Uh, you've seen her on LinkedIn, you've seen her mentioned, uh, she, um, is I think the thing that I like about your content. Um, you know, oftentimes people make it in thought leadership by not being specific.

They, um, just talk in generalities or in, um, they draw pictures, you know, and

like, um, I used to draw pictures all the time.

Um, but like artistic capability. but you're, you're very, you're very specific. You're willing to share. Um, you know, externally, the, the things that you know, um, you [00:09:00] know, make you successful in your own business and making other reps successful. So you're basically, you've already been funny. We're eight minutes in, we haven't talked business. Uh, number two, you have an incredible experience and you're very specific, so you might fall in the category of the perfect guest for the transaction.

Sam McKenna: Do I get a, do I get a certificate? Do I?

Craig Rosenberg: We would,

we would really like you to do that.

Um, yeah, I think so. I, we will talk about that. It could be a new promo actually. What if we did this differently? What if there was a Sam McKenna award on

the transaction for people that tried to match?

Sam McKenna: Yes. Good luck everybody, but yes, let's do it. I'm into it. Challenge extended.

Craig Rosenberg: A holy grail award. One that nobody could ever achieve.

I like this.

Sam McKenna: I feel like it's kind of

Matt Amundson: chosen wisely.

Sam McKenna: it's kind of like an MQL score though. Like mention boobs, 50 points, don't mention boobs. Two [00:10:00] points, you know,

Matt Amundson: Negative points.

Sam McKenna: points. So it's like we.

Craig Rosenberg: yeah.

Sam Guertin: It might be

a little tougher for male guests, but you know.

Matt Amundson: Well, you know, I'd like to see them try, you know, walk the tight rope,

Sam McKenna: you could be like the, uh,

A Particularly Titillating LinkedIn Controversy
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Sam McKenna: the gentleman that mentioned boobs in a LinkedIn post the other day. Did we see that?

Matt Amundson: wise.

Sam McKenna: Oh yeah. But all three of you are Googling LinkedIn post boobs right now. That's, that's gonna be a trending topic. Ta uh, uh oh

Matt Amundson: In an incognito window.

Sam Guertin: Yeah.

Sam McKenna: Don't let your boss see it. Wait, wait, wait. Yeah, it was, uh, he got, unless, unless he took it down, it went, uh, pretty viral, but for all the wrong reasons.

Craig Rosenberg: Oh my God.

Sam McKenna: Are you seeing it now?

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, there's a lot of articles on this. How did I not know?

Sam McKenna: What's the, what's the post up to?

Sam Guertin: we will, uh, have a, uh, graphic in the show with, uh, the latest numbers and everything.

Sam McKenna: Oh[00:11:00]

Matt Amundson: sure that it's not graphic.

Sam Guertin: Yes.

Sam McKenna: Graphic in every sense of the word. The picture. He, he got us a, a little, uh, a little suggestive for LinkedIn that he posted on there.

Craig Rosenberg: God.

Matt Amundson: Um,

Sam McKenna: you guys gonna edit this, by the way?

Craig Rosenberg: No,

no, actually, I mean, maybe a little bit, maybe. Um, yeah, but no that,

okay. So let's, now that we've done, now that we've already, uh, kicked off into fun stories, yes. We will be share. I'm gonna, there's so many posts about the LinkedIn boobs controversy. It's amazing.

Matt Amundson: daily mail articles about it.

Sam McKenna: I am glad I could bring some value to your life, gentlemen. You're welcome.

Craig Rosenberg: We love it. All right, so here

The Airing of Our Webinar Woes
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Craig Rosenberg: we only have really two things that we conversation start with, and the first one is, um, something Matt added at the beginning of the year.

Uh, I was gonna stop mentioning that, Matt. It's Matt's

feature enhancement. He, yeah, he requests that I [00:12:00] don't,

it is essentially like, we just wanna start with a story like, um, you know, in go to market sales story that. Is, uh, you know, it could be funny, heroic, uh, cringey, you know, whatever that might be. We just wanna start there.

You've already delivered a lot of, uh, funniness,

so, um, I'm, I'm no pressure on you to, to win the Sam McKenna Award named after you, but let's see what you got.

Sam McKenna: To make it good. I'll, I'll give you one of our, uh, our teammates, so anything that relates to go to market marketing, sales, whole nine yards.

Matt Amundson: Yep.

Sam McKenna: Uh, I'm gonna, you know what, I'm gonna give you guys two. So one are, um, you guys, uh, you guys are familiar probably like with what webinar registrations, right? So like, you know, you register for a webinar, it cookies your information if you use a half okay.

Platform, so you click on the link, you come back, you don't have to re-register. It's great. So our head of marketing was now our [00:13:00] VP of marketing. So I'll tell you, she got promoted even after this disaster of a story. And I just say it this way because we gave her a really hard time about it. She was testing the URL right before she sends out the registration reminder and she, you know, asks her to log in and she says, alright, I'm gonna log in as Dakota Tills now.

Her name is Paige Tills Dakota, that's her dog. So she logs in, she gets the confirmation, and what does she do? She gets the confirmation URL and she sends that bad boy, the cookied bad boy. Unbeknownst to her, to our entire registrant list. So a couple minutes later, start the webinar and all of a sudden Dakota tills comes in and I'm like.

And I saw, I was like, Hey Paige, and this guy comes on and he is like, hello, this is Adam. And I was like, uh, we have like 800 people in the room, like half of which are Dakota tills. She is mortified. So I have our head of creative create a custom graphic of a Zoom that's nothing but me and her dog filling all [00:14:00] of the zooms.

We frame it, we mail it to her because that's the kind of culture we have here. Second thing.

Craig Rosenberg: that I love and

Sam McKenna: oh, first time I was so close to getting President's Club, and this dates back to on 24 days where I worked for six years and sold their platform for 10. Um, I was working with Teva Pharmaceuticals and I was waiting, waiting.

It was end of the year. It was in New York for our Christmas party, ot. Our CEO was like, where is the deal? And I'm like, ah, it's coming. All nervous as can be. And then finally it comes in and they say, we're ready to give you the the contract. Are you ready? And I was like, oh my God, I can't wait. And they're like, we just need you to do one thing for us before we send it.

And I'm like, anything, my arm firstborn, what do you need? 'cause I'm going on this guiding trip and they're like, we just need you to say the name of our company correctly and working on this deal for six months, saying Tiva. Tiva like the shoes, the whole goddamn time. So a time maybe back to our trademark of Show me, you know, me.

One easy way to do that. [00:15:00] There's a great tip for you guys. Learn how to say the name of the company you're dealing with correctly. Pro tip, right there. You are welcome.

Craig Rosenberg: God. That is ama. But, but it, it, at least, there was one thing left for the close. You just had to pronounce their company

Sam McKenna: Just, just had to say Teva. I just said this on stage a couple weeks ago and a rep messaged me and he is like, I'm just about to start prospecting, and I had no idea how to say their name. You saved me and I'm like. Oh my God. Just, it's the basics. That's what's basically broken in sales. That's the basics.

We don't do our research. We don't know how to people, we don't know how to build rapport and have a conversation. You know, we ask ChatGPT I'm getting on with Craig. What should I say to him? And then I read the script. That's what we do today. We don't, we don't just know how to people.

Craig Rosenberg: By the way, I'm going to chat. GPT. What should I say to Craig? I wanna see what it says. By the way, Matt loves the go to back to basics

theme with salespeople. So I was, but Matt, you kind of poker faced [00:16:00] it. I was. I thought you were gonna come, like start cheering and all that stuff, or add that to the Sam McKenna Award or,

Matt Amundson: Did you close the deal?

Sam McKenna: I did close the deal and I got

Matt Amundson: Yes. Okay. All right. Yeah. All right. Now I'm in, I'm in.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah.

Matt Amundson: I'm

Sam McKenna: And you know what? Maybe, maybe a plug for DocuSign. When the contract finally came in, it came in like on a Friday and on Tuesday I followed up and I'm like, where's the contract? And the woman's like, I thought I would've heard you scream from DC when the contract came in. And I was like. What do you mean?

I was like, I didn't see the contract. And she's like, we sent it on Friday, and I was like losing my mind. I reach out to it. The thing was like 11 gigs or some crap like that as an attachment because there was no DocuSign back then or maybe there was and we just didn't use it. So that cost me three, four days of stressing.

But I did get it and I went to the Cayman Islands for, for my first club. Oh, yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: Oh, that's

Matt Amundson: incredible, incredible.

Craig Rosenberg: that the, the story ends with a bang of flourish as it, as it were.

That's great.

By the way, I had, you know, I was just thinking, Matt, have I [00:17:00] ever told the Guy Kawasaki webinar story on the

Transaction Not on the transaction.

Sam McKenna: let's hear it.

Craig Rosenberg: Because Sam worked it on 24. So she will, uh, have memories of this.

So the go to webinar. You know, back then, this

was a, I know it was a long time ago, but basically they used to say you cannot have more than a thousand people on the webinar. But actually, it's not that it would limit it, it's that once it goes over a thousand, the app starts to break.

Okay, this was back then.

By the way, everyone, please don't sue me. This was a long time ago. I'm sure it's fixed. So I get asked to do a webinar with Guy Kawasaki, and of course, remember back, I mean that guy, I don't know if he still does, but

Sam McKenna: It was the jam. people, people pouring in and whatever. And so I'm the moderator and um, you know, he doesn't do prep calls or anything.

Craig Rosenberg: I just come on and I'm mod, he has no idea who I am. And um, so, you know, we start to go and the thing goes, shoots way over a thousand

[00:18:00] and

I, I swear, I think people were in the back kicking people off just to try to keep the thing

from breaking. But here's what happened. It did break and what happened was it un-muted people in the audience.

Okay.

Sam McKenna: unbeknownst to

them

Craig Rosenberg: unbeknownst to them, because one of the guys that was, um, that was unmuted was a, a loud open mouth breather, who I'm not, yeah. Yeah. And I'm. I'm. pretty sure he was laying next to the speaker because it was so loud and he was so, he's breathing so heavy and he's reacting. He's going, oh yeah, Uhhuh Uhhuh. It's unreal. So I

don't know, guy. And you know, guy has, it was all for everyone who doesn't know. It was not impromptu. He had a webinar shtick that

he did, so he's going, but he thinks it's me. Okay. And so does everyone on [00:19:00] social media. So I'm dying. So this guy's going and guy keeps stopping going, you know guys, this is really annoying. Right? And um, I look on Twitter or at the time Twitter and people are like, the moderator is not on mute. Okay. Hashtag whatever, hundreds of tweets. 'cause he was a social maven So every so, and then some people picked up my name and they're like, Craig. Is on, uh, Twitter. I mean, I haven't trended ever that much on Twitter 'cause it was like Funnelholic uh, is on a webinar right now and he's not on mute. So we go through the whole thing and this guy, they can't stop his breathing.

It's unreal. Someone came into his office, they're like, Hey, what are you doing? He is like, I'm watching some webinar or whatever. It's on the thing. And guy still thinks it's me.

Sam McKenna: That's incredible. I, I hope you still get a Hey, heavy breather when you

see people on the streets.

Craig Rosenberg: Craig Heavy breather. Um, yeah, we went through the whole thing. And the other thing [00:20:00] is there's no, uh, what's it called? Like the postmortem room. Like that

was, you know, you had that in on 24.

I could have used that here because the thing ends and guy's just pissed at the end and he's just like, well, okay, thanks everyone. Bam.

Gone. I can't do anything to defend myself. I.

Sam McKenna: I.

Matt Amundson: Anything It was hilarious. So basically there's a thousand people that think I was moderating a, a webinar, left it un-muted, was breathing heavily and having conversations, also reacting to things. Guy said it was unbelievable. So anyway, that's my webinar horror story for you that, uh,

Sam McKenna: You know what though? You do. You do? What does he do these days? Is he still around?

Craig Rosenberg: I saw him and I brought it up. He goes to Coffee bar in Redwood City. I, I think I saw him there and he's like, I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm like, oh, well, thank God.

Sam McKenna: Oh, that's so, that is, thank God. It'd be great if he did remember you, if he was like, oh, I know.

Craig Rosenberg: years ago. [00:21:00] Yeah. Oh, you son of a bitch.

Sam McKenna: you son a

of a bitch

Craig Rosenberg: Why you,

Matt Amundson: We, we, uh, we need a, we need a clip of those two stories. Then we need everyone to share their webinar horror stories. 'cause I'm sure everyone has one.

Sam McKenna: Oh, especially in Covid. I mean, even if it's just a Zoom, tell us about the time that you took your laptop to a room that you shouldn't have taken it to, and then what happened? So share, share that winner with us.

Craig Rosenberg: was some incredible fails.

Matt Amundson: yes,

Sam McKenna: you need a, if you need a graphic of the Dakota Gate as we call it, you just, you just let me know.

We'll hook you up.

Craig Rosenberg: Sam,

please produce. Oh, here he

Sam Guertin: share that.

Craig Rosenberg: Uh, audience, um, just chiming in here. Sam will be providing, um, Dakota Gate

Sam Guertin: That was one time.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, it, well, uh,

Matt Amundson: was an important time.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah.

there you go. Alright, so let's get down to business. so basically Matt and I started the pod because, uh, you know, he was working with me at at scale Venture Partners and

we were, I. It was, it was [00:22:00] becoming like patently obvious that how you did go to market was changed very fast and frankly faster than a lot of people could catch up,

including we like to say like, you know, people that had been so successful had incredible runs just coming in and flailing. Um, because things changed. And so that's, for us was the impetus of the show was like, can we, 'cause we're having these conversations, trying to learn from people that had figured out kind of the new playbook. And um, and that's why, how we started the show. So we have this thing that we anchor the show around, which is, uh, what's something that the market or some things you can have multiple as long as you land the plane. Um, is, uh, you know,

Companies Suck at Solving Problems & Try to Techstack Their Way Out of Issues
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Craig Rosenberg: what are some thing or some things that the market, things they're doing right could be methodology, approach, tactics, et cetera. And they're actually wrong. And what is that and what should they be doing differently?

Sam McKenna: Okay. We have like seven hours for the podcast. Right. Because I

have a

Craig Rosenberg: well,

Sam McKenna: have a lot of, thoughts, you know. Cool. Um.

Craig Rosenberg: [00:23:00] uh, uh, we will not be doing, oh, I was helping Sam out. All right. Go ahead.

Sam McKenna: A couple of things. I think, um, it's not that we're doing methodologies incorrectly. I think we're just doing them half of the way. So, um, I know a lot of organizations that, uh, they don't, they don't know what to do. So they might be, you know, multi-billion dollar organizations. They might be in tech, they might be.

You know, still kind of on the cutting edge of things. You know, like a LinkedIn and DocuSign, that kind of stuff. And they don't know what to do next. So they throw money at problems and just say, look, look, we're doing something. So maybe they hire, you know, the team to come in and do medic training, right?

Or spend selling from the 1970s. Um, and they just say, here, here you go, right? And so we're gonna teach you how to do this. And the benefit is everybody's gonna talk about the same language. Everyone's gonna know. What an economic buyer is. Well, my thought is, sorry. Medic people print out a medic sheet, teach them [00:24:00] how to do this from a like three pager of what they should be doing, and then think about training them on how to actually succeed.

So MEDDIC will teach you, you know, find the decision maker, find the economic buyer, find the pain, spend selling, all that stuff. Cool, cool, cool. How, and I think that kind of what you said earlier, Craig, like we get people, you know, people talk, you know, kind of in theory sometimes or light, and you sound talk in a different way.

You say, here's exactly how to do it. I think that's what's different about what we teach is we're like, here's where you research. Here's what you do. Here's how you put it together. Here's what you write in the subject line. Here's the next part. We tell you exactly what to do, medium timing, everything.

And that's what people are killing to learn because they don't know what good looks like. So you can talk a lot about that. The way that we describe us is like those methodologies, bricks of your sales process. You need to know all those things. What's the mortar? We are the mortar. We bring that all together.

We teach you how to do it in a modern way, not in a. I'm a 98-year-old man who created spin selling and I read a book on LinkedIn, so [00:25:00] now I think I. Can teach your social selling. We do that that way. Other thing, I think we get wrong. Um, we buy a lot of tech and think it's gonna solve our problems, right?

Everybody's in tech consolidation these days. There's 5,000 marketing and sales platforms you need to have in order to succeed. So we buy tech that does two things as a disservice to us. One, we buy it and we have absolutely no bloody idea how to use it. I'll give you two examples. LinkedIn Sales Navigator, my beloved technology.

We buy that billion dollar business that, I don't know, 3% of us know how to actually use. So when you buy something, do you know how to use it? Do you know what to do with it? SalesLoft's, uh, SalesLoft, great example. Love them They're a wonderful partner of ours. One of the issues with adoption is that they don't have great cadences in there.

They don't have great content because nobody knows how to write it. And so we will give it to the marketers. We'll let BDRs do their own thing. The other thing with tech is I think sometimes we buy tech That's. Seems to solve a problem, but doesn't really, so I, I won't name it, but I'll give [00:26:00] you one example.

There's a technology out there that was really popular on sales, on Salesforce, on LinkedIn for some time. It teaches you how to write better emails, right? It, it looks at your emails and it rates it, well, it might say it needs to be shorter, it might need to be personalized, but what it doesn't do is say, this is a really shitty email to begin with and you shouldn't send it.

So even if I say this is what we do, we do sales training, I'd love to do sales training for you. It is gonna give me a rating on it because it's gonna tell me it's great 'cause it's short. Maybe I used Craig and your company name and something about the school you went to. Wow. Personal and give me an A for personalization.

But the email sucks. So now I'm throwing money at a problem that doesn't actually solve the problem I have. And I think that's the last thing. Back to basics and just fully aligned with Matt like. We don't know how to people, we don't know how to write, we don't know how to prospect. If we could just solve how to prospect, which you have LinkedIn Sales Navigator, that is your prospecting tool.

That's what it does. So if we could [00:27:00] teach people how to prospect. You'd be in great shape. You have a whole class of sellers who have come to the gongs of the world, the zooms of the world, disruptive tech, and they've just sat behind their desk while their calendars just fill up. So then they move somewhere else where it's like, Hey, you have a KPI to book self source three meetings a week.

And they're like, what do you mean? And they're like, what do you mean?

Matt Amundson: I, I mean, you are right about this. You are totally right about this. And it's, it's interesting 'cause I was, and very topical, I was just having this conversation with a colleague of mine and what I, we were talking about buying software and, and, and how people get stuck this tech bloat.

And for a lot of people the philosophy is, I can buy. Software or technology to solve my problem, right? Like I need to go buy, I've got a problem. I need to go find something that can solve that problem for me. The reality is you actually have to solve the problem before you buy something. If you can solve the problem before you buy something, and then what you're buying [00:28:00] is built to take that solution and scale it.

That's why you should buy something. You can't just have a problem and say, Hey, I'm gonna throw, you know, a $50,000 SaaS bill at this, or a hundred thousand dollars SaaS bill at this, and it's gonna solve it for me. It won't, it won't. It just won't.

Sam McKenna: Completely. And so we, you solve all the wrong challenges. You keep doing the things incorrectly. You frustrate your sales team, you blow millions of dollars on a medic, right? And no one actually gets anywhere. And you're like, where's the impact to pipeline? And you're like, well, we didn't teach 'em to do anything differently.

And I think also a lot of these trainings tell you what to do when you get the first date. Find the economic buyer, do all that, but. How, how do you get the first date, right? Like just start even there, right? Again, teach 'em how to prospect, teach 'em how to write. And I'll say one more thing. Uh, any of these threads we can pull on, but

How to Run the "Been awhile" B2B Prospecting Play using LinkedIn Sales Navigator
---

Sam McKenna: I don't actually think prospecting's very difficult and people at me when I say that, but.

Let me just give you a quick example. We run a play at Sam Sales, called it [00:29:00] ready for it. It's been a while. Really creative for any of you. Nickel? No. No, no. Stained. It's been a while. Enjoy. Enjoy. Um, if that's in your head now, you're welcome, but it's been a while. So what do we do? People connect with me all the time on LinkedIn, right?

I have no idea who they are. So here's what we do. We send 'em a message back. Thanks for connecting. Great to be connected. Some of the times sparks conversation, other times it's not. But if it's our core, ICP, if it's a vp, senior director at a big company, whatever it may be. In about five weeks, we'd literally add them to a list in LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

Five weeks later we go and say, Hey Matt. It's been a while since we've been connected. Hopefully you've seen some of my content. There's a shit load of stuff that we can do for you. I say a little differently than that. What do you be up for? A chop. That's it. Fish in a barrel. People are like, I do see your content.

We could use you. We'd love to talk. And I'm like, oh no shit. If you have three customers, three board members, their networks are filled with people that look just like the people you wanna sell to go and ask for referrals. Go and ask for introductions. Use their name in the subject line. It did this like in 2010 [00:30:00] in a room in a Richmond office, and just social, sell my buns off.

It's not hard. They just need to know what to do.

Craig Rosenberg: I'm gonna just say something and you guys tell me if I'm wrong. So, yeah. Besides the fact that I'm likely wrong, the odds are,

but like social

Matt Amundson: how wrong you are.

Craig Rosenberg: I know, I, I, it's, it's tough, tough crowd. Uh, social se I'm just going to, let's just do the, so

How to Use Social Selling in SaaS
---

Craig Rosenberg: social selling grew the buzz on it grew big, but. This is, I'm tying everything back together, by the way, Matt, FYI, but nobody really told people how to do it.

Um, so everyone said it. Oh, you gotta go on LinkedIn. Um, you know, and, um, even tips on like, well, you know, you like someone's post or you know, stupid, you know, not stupid. I'll quarter

it, but like just say, just telling people to do that instead of how. So social selling, it came up, but, but then we got, I think Zer distracted us. [00:31:00] 'cause all you had to do was like, send a ton of emails, you'd be fine. You didn't really need to. And now

it feels like, yeah. Now it feels like

social.

selling is imperative from a

prospecting perspective.

Sam McKenna: For, for, well, it's not even imperative, I think like you can do. I think social selling gets won a bad rap because no one un understands what it is, right? It kind of feels like this day to dusty terminology when it's really actually super, super modern and important, but because we've been saying it for so long and no one knows what to do.

It feels dated. And you know, queen of Social selling, Jill Rowley, which a name I think we probably all know, right? Really stood behind this because it was so important. But I think the missing part, right? Like it's the prospecting and things that you can do on the backend. Like you don't even need to be present on linkedin.com.

Really. You don't even need to post content, do any of that, but. Liking a post, what's that going to do? You need to know what the follow through action is. And I, again, like one of the easiest [00:32:00] opportunities out there, I'll use Guy Kawasaki as an example. I'm looking at his

Matt Amundson: that name before.

Sam McKenna: I listen, he is pretty important.

He has 3 million followers. Um, not a lot of engagement on LinkedIn, which tells you a little, maybe a little bit of a mismatch there. But anyway. I digress. Uh, last post you had two hours ago, uh, 23 likes, three comments. If you look at some of the executives that you wanna get in front of, they're not on LinkedIn.

They probably are on LinkedIn. Go look for God's sakes, do some work, but go and find them. And a really cool thing happens. They'll post three or four or 500 people will like the post. That's exciting. Seven people will comment. There is no competition for you in their posts. And if you look at the seven.

Who is it? It's the Sams of the world that report to them that are like, notice me and promote me. Or the Sams of the world that are CEOs and would be lovely. It would be lovely to have 'em spend some money with us. So go and do that. And I think people worry 'cause they don't understand the platform that if I [00:33:00] tell my reps to go and be on LinkedIn, that's all they're gonna do all day.

Great. Have them do that instead of sending shitty email after shitty email. Instead go have them show up. Use their brain wild. I know. And go and engage in the conversation with the buyers that you want them to get in front of. It blow blows my mind truly how easy it is.

Craig Rosenberg: So you would recommend, I'm just, let's, let's take a use case here. Acts Capital is the target a multi-trillion dollar hedge fund? No. Um. And you're try. And so Bobby Axelrod does his post. He gets, you know, X number of likes and five comments. Uh, we want, we're dying to get in there. They're in our ICP. So is the play to, uh, or how, how would you approach that?

Actually, I'll be more

Sam McKenna: I would drop a comment and compliment him on having the smallest little mouth that I've ever seen in my entire life, first and foremost. Right. Um, the second thing that I would do, wait, is that the, is that X capital? Is that the, [00:34:00] is that the redheaded guy? Is that from Homeland? Thank God. Okay. Making sure I wasn't talking about Paul Giamatti by

Craig Rosenberg: no. Yeah. Wait, hold on. Did Bobby Ro has a small mouth.

Sam McKenna: from Homeland.

Craig Rosenberg: do some research.

Sam McKenna: It goes, it's like an, it's like an inch wide. Like it's the, it, I don't even think it extends past his nose. It's the tiniest little thing you've ever

Matt Amundson: a defining characteristic. Yeah.

Sam McKenna: That's what she said. Um, anyway, so couple of things there. Here's the play. Here's what I would do. Um, I'm gonna give you one that I shared on Adam Robinson in case you're familiar with the name.

Um. On his podcast. And so here's what we did, right? We do something that we call

Spearfishing for B2B Leads using This Tactic on Linkedin Sales Navigator
---

Sam McKenna: Expand the Sandbox, and that's a play we run on on LinkedIn Sales Navigator. I'm give you all of our plays for free.

You expand. The sandbox is basically like spearfishing for leads, so. I wanna get into, uh, I I want to get into a bunch of people's, uh, accounts, but one of the things that I do is I subscribe to a blog that has executives on it.

Let's say it's [00:35:00] How I Sell by LinkedIn, which was one of our moves until, I think they're sunsetting it now. But, um, we would get the weekly email, whoever they were interviewing, and one week they happened to be interviewing a woman by the name of Joy Wilder. Lybeer Joy is the former Chief Revenue Officer of Equifax.

You might have heard of them, um, big deal, 25 years at SunTrust. So I'm like, we'd love to talk to her. What am I gonna do? I'm gonna pull an excerpt, I'm gonna read the blog, pull an excerpt from the blog. I'm gonna send her a connection request and be like, hello. Loved your blog. Loved your blog. Here's what stuck out about it for me.

Really resonated with this. Just wanted to stay in touch. She accepts. That's great. Does she post content? She sure does. Is it about credit reporting? It's not. It's about New York and fashion. And her daughters like she just posts normal human stuff. Imagine that. And so I go and I engage twice. And then I send her a DM and I say, Hey, love your content.

Wonder if I could bend your ear on how we could do a better job, basically in a more tactful way. Tactful way. Yeah. Um, on your better job, on your LinkedIn [00:36:00] presence, we can help expand your LinkedIn presence. Would you be up for a chat? Sent it at 11. Got a response at four and she's like, can I introduce you to my two marketing people?

Make an effort. We do this all the time. I did this with the VP of marketing at Gale at. LinkedIn, Gail. She knows about it, but went and looked on a weekend to see who was online that I was trying to target. Looked for the bubbles, the green bubbles that were filled in in my dms, in my inbox. Sent a message.

Loved your blog. Resonates exactly with what? Show me you know me and what our methodology is all about. Just wanted to say thanks. She replies what's show me. You know me, and I'm like, glad you asked. And now we do a lot of work with them We did a lot of work with them before, but good expansion opp

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Wow.

Sam McKenna: not hard.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah.

And then you, I did notice, so you do recommend that you people send communications on weekends? Is that right?

Sam McKenna: Yeah, so there's a lot of pushback on that. Um, one work-life balance, which I don't really subscribe to [00:37:00] two, um, I don't wanna bother them on the weekend. It's not like you're cold calling 'em on a weekend. Don't ever do that. Don't just don't call in general. Um, and then, uh, you're not bothering 'em. So the, the thing to think about for LinkedIn specifically, uh, HBR released this data a while back and it said, um, if you're a director plus.

Title at a company, I think of at least 500 or or more. You spend an average of 42 minutes a weekend on LinkedIn. So they're noodling around, they're researching, they're cleaning up their dms, whatever, DM 'em. Why we say the same thing for your emails. Send your first, show me, you know, me Email on Thursday or Friday.

Gong data shows that if you send it less than 48 hours, the second one, after the first one, you'll do well. So don't do 24 hours, but we say 44, like hit them up on a Saturday morning or on a Sunday night when they're prepping for the week when they're their kids' 19th baseball game and they wanna jump off a cliff, the bleacher stands right.

Um, hit them up. Then when they're not as distracted with other work stuff. It to me, [00:38:00] it's the work harder piece is great. Work smart though. Like, leave the office Friday at three o'clock. Do those two hours on a Saturday morning. Who gives a shit, right? If it means that you're gonna make another a $100k maybe it's worth it to you.

It'd be worth it to me.

Craig Rosenberg: You know, uh, I'm gonna make two points to that. Sorry, I didn't want to get too in the weeds on the weekend thing, but like it is, it does resonate with me. I used to tell people that because I was a perfect example, which is the baseball games, and Matt can attest. They are the perfect place to get a parent because

your kid can have a good baseball game and do one thing for two hours.

Sam McKenna: that's right.

Craig Rosenberg: so you're just sitting there and you're like, what the hell? mean, I was in charge of game changer. You know, the electric score card thing, which I'm sure Matt really enjoys that. I'm in charge of that. I'm even during that going on my LinkedIn. It's actually, if you take LinkedIn. Or even a cold email, [00:39:00] that's pretty good. I can't actually respond during the week.

I don't

Matt Amundson: Yeah. Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: so like I'm more likely to respond sitting there at my kid's baseball game. It's the third inning, it's 11 to nothing, and now we're putting in this picture that can't throw strikes. I'm like. Oh Lord. And so I'm on LinkedIn. Okay, second parts of that, and then I'll let you is when we, uh, Matt, when we were working together, we were launching a newsletter and he is like, send it Sunday night at five 30. And I remember the pushback. We, oh, well, no, what, what do you, you know, it's like, he's like, no, dude. It is like the ultimate conversion. So this was a marketing send and we would send it Sunday night, and we got amazing numbers better than we could ever do. And then at one point there was enough pushback where, um, the person's like, well, I'm gonna send it on a Wednesday.

I don't care. You guys are wrong. Send it on a Wednesday. The numbers are

Significantly.

worse. Um, but it's the same concept, right? They're sitting there, they open the laptop maybe Sunday [00:40:00] night, and it's a, they're a little bit more relaxed. There's not the hustle and bustle people come into your office, whatever.

And just something like that, they're more likely to open and read as well. So anyway, that's the only reason why I, I want, I went down that rabbit hole for a moment.

Sam McKenna: I

Matt Amundson: Yeah, I ran a, I ran a test, or we call them experiments now. Everything's a fucking experiment anyways, uh, way back in

Sam McKenna: in her laboratory. Go.

Matt Amundson: Yeah, way back in 2012, I ran this experiment when I was running the SDR team at Marketo, and I told them, I said. Hey, uh, you know, after you shut off for the night or for the day and you go home when you're, you know, it's 10 o'clock you're watching ESPN or you're watching whatever it is that you watch on tv, it's like pre Netflix, right?

Um, send a couple prospecting emails and see what happens. And the response rate was insane. Not only was the response rate insane, like people were like, I can't believe how hard you're working. You're sending emails at 10 o'clock at night. That's unbelievable. And I [00:41:00] was like, yeah, because they do exactly what I do, which is I get off work at six, I come home, I hang out with my family, I eat dinner.

I either get into my office or I lay in bed with my laptop and 10 o'clock I open up and like the, because the world isn't prospecting into me at that time, it's like it's a great time to, to work. And so when someone's like, Hey, I'm trying to get your attention, you're like, holy shit, that's amazing. I

Sam McKenna: I think just a, a couple of notes there. Um, I think there's an interesting, first of all, we have a newsletter every single month that goes out.

Um, and it's from, well, we have newsletters all, all the time, but we have one specifically for leaders on LinkedIn and it goes out at 7:19 PM on Sunday nights. Exact same thing. We're trying to hit you at a different time when you're less distracted. I think

Why Putting in the Work is the Way to Wow Prospects and Customers
---

Sam McKenna: the other thing is, it might be an interesting thread to pull on that we keep seeing success with these.

Relatively easy, relatively straightforward things that nobody will do. Send emails on the weekends, send emails at night, prospect at [00:42:00] night, put two comments in somebody's LinkedIn post search for buyers that are looking on LinkedIn. Why? Like why if it works, and everyone's like, whoa. When we show them that, why is it that so few people will just put in the actual work that that converts?

Isn't that strange?

Matt Amundson: I have an answer.

Sam McKenna: Oh, what is it?

Matt Amundson: Anything that you can't automate won't be done.

Sam McKenna: It sucks. That's good. I mean, you know what? Good you guys, you guys keep going after it and we'll, we'll do us and we'll clean up. Right? Like that's how I feel. It's just crazy. Ugh. Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: But, but I have a, I think this, I don't think this is a con, but so the, show me, you know, me, uh, that is, uh, you can, you auto, I guess you can automate it 'cause you could type it in chat. GPT what should I say to Craig Rosenberg and that, but that's part of what, you know, you gotta, I guess that is Matt's point.

'cause you [00:43:00] gotta put to, to really show someone you know him, you do have to put in a little bit of work. Right.

Sam McKenna: I think the people, yes, and I think the people that are gonna win a lot with, at least from an AI perspective, with sales, are going to be the ones that use AI to scale and like the efficiency of which they learn things either about the company, about the play, about whatever. You know, even when we say like, listen to the, listen to a podcast that one of your prospects is on, they're like 30 minutes.

That's a lot of time. Okay. Pull chat, GPT in, ask for three bullets, figure out what you wanna say about it. And then if they respond, then okay, all right. Shit. Now you do need to go listen to that podcast, but like you can scale that. Show me, you know me. It does require the effort, right? And people try to personalize at scale all the time, or they try to use chat GPT to do that.

But you, you, and I'm sure we're six minutes away from this changing. But you miss the emotion, right? The emotionally intelligence, the humor, the sarcasm, none of it's there. So it's like, Craig, wow, I really, your time at Topo is really impressive. And I loved topo workbooks and that was neat. Um, wanna buy our stuff?[00:44:00]

No. Right? But instead, if I say, like, I, I think I told you in the email, I still have my topo workbook. It might, no, it's, damn, it's downstairs. I should have, I should have brought it. That should have just been what I held over my face the entire time. But you, I think you, the people, like the people that make the effort right, are going to be the ones that win.

And we, we just talked about this today. Two, two references. Jeff Kel, uh, was on our podcast today and he's one of the senior vice presidents who owns the biggest division of TransUnion. I think his number's like 12 or 13 billion a year. You know, just basically what all of our numbers are. And he, he's like, I get a customized, show me your know me email.

He like referenced the, the best cookie he's ever had once, and he is like. This is available everywhere. You can find all this research on me and the disaster of a cookie tail that I told. If you send me an email about that cookie in the subject line, I'm gonna respond to that. I'm gonna ignore my p and l statements.

I'm gonna ignore everything else I'm supposed to be doing. That's in my inbox. I'm gonna look at that. Toby Carrington, who's the [00:45:00] CBDO over at Seismic, if you guys know him. He sent me a screenshot one day and he is like, I just got on a plane connected to the wifi. I have 55 0 unread emails in my inbox.

And the first one I read was a show me, you know, me email from a salesperson 'cause it stood out. It's not hard. And the brand that you build for yourself as a rep, like you're not gonna work here forever, hit your KPIs and then do the hard work yourself. And at some point you're gonna outpace your peers.

No one's gonna give a shit about your KPIs anymore 'cause you're doing so great. And then you're gonna kill it because you're doing different than the status quo. I have no passion about this, in case you guys can't tell.

Matt Amundson: It didn't seem like you did.

Sam McKenna: I mean, it's

fine. Don't talk about it yeah. Yeah. It's, um, okay. Let me, I, because we're running outta time out, all these things that I was excited about, so. Um, you know,

Why the "Show Me You Know Me" Method Works so Well for B2B Sales Reps
---

Craig Rosenberg: one thing I I noticed and I'd love to get your take on is, um, even when we do get a prospector or SDR, whatever that might [00:46:00] be, that does a great job of, uh, show me, you know, me play to get the meeting. The, the tie between that and the meeting breakdown. Um, often, so, you know, like, uh, a, a just a general example is SDR does all the work, gets the meeting sales rep comes on and starts asking band questions and delivers a demo.

Sam McKenna: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: Um, yeah. How do you, like, how do you recommend to folks that they tie back to the research they did and the communication they did that drove the meeting?

Sam McKenna: So I think whether the show me, you know, me is personal or whether it's business, um, related, I, I don't actually think you need much from that email in the discovery meeting. There was enough in there, right? That was interesting to the buyer in order for them to show up. So you don't need to say like, I realize that this part of our message really got your attention.

Forget it. What we teach, right in our perfect discovery call training is one, [00:47:00] do your research in advance. Here's what you do. Number two, here's how you form. For, um, right. Like what do you know about them? If you were making small talk at a conference instead of on a Zoom, what would you say to them? You wouldn't walk up and be like, Craig, I have a question for you about your sales process.

You would build a relationship. You do some small talk beforehand, so do that. Also read the room. 'cause some people don't wanna do that. So I think that's the note right there. And then the thing about how to start the discovery call, right in the, the better way is to simply do something like this. So we make our small talk and then we say, okay, listen.

Okay, tell you a million things about Sam Sales, how we do one, two, and three, relevant to your buyer title, persona, et cetera. But I'd love to hear about you first. Here's what I know about you guys. Did some research here, saw this acquisition here in Portco here, whatever the hell, right? But tell me about you, challenges you're facing, initiatives for the year, had overall landscape.

How can we help, if that's okay. And when I say that this is what we get your heavy breather, Craig, you'd be great at this. Um, we get a big. Big,

Craig Rosenberg: [00:48:00] me. Okay. All right. Keep going. Yeah.

Sam McKenna: big, big sigh, and then the person talks for two and three and nine minutes. They tell you basically every goddamn thing you need to know in order to sell to 'em.

This is what we're doing. We're chasing this. We were just on a customer call a few weeks ago, and the customer said. A reason we're talking to you about building our voice on LinkedIn to C-Suites is that we're at a hundred million dollars and we need to get to a billion dollars in revenue in the next three years.

And I'm like, how are you gonna do that? And they're like, not if we know. And I'm like, cool. Um, so it's not about the fact that they wanna get on LinkedIn and that this is drive, you know, brand awareness. For them, it's about the fact that they want to 10 x their revenue in three years. So what's the plan for that and how does this specifically solve for that?

That's what we don't do as reps. We ask a question, how's the weather? What interested you in taking this call? And then you say, well, we could use better presence on LinkedIn. And we're like, we got a demo for you. And then we wonder. Why the call doesn't convert. Why the [00:49:00] ghost us? Why deals are stuck at 50%.

I can tell you all this shit that's broken with your go-to market motion. It's simple. It's not rocket science and you certainly don't need 78 technologies for it. You don't need intent data. Don't yell at me. Six sense, that was just for Adam. Um, you don't need all of that stuff. You just need some basic stuff and you know, manners and know how to write a sentence properly.

Matt Amundson: They'd like you to cease and desist.

Sam McKenna: I bet they would. My mom will be so proud when I get that letter.

Craig Rosenberg: By the way,

I'm gonna, I'm gonna find the guy who was heavy breathing on the phone and let him know that, that this has ruined my reputation

Sam McKenna: so upset.

Craig Rosenberg: God dang it, okay. That, that. Um, so that, that's perfect. I have one more thing. Matt. Can I get out before we run outta time?

Matt Amundson: Let's do it.

Craig Rosenberg: So, because Matt is a CMO, so on the, what have you learned on the show?

Me, you know, me and all the work that you've done building your business that marketers [00:50:00] need to know that they're not thinking about right now?

Sam McKenna: With, show me, you know, me specifically or

Craig Rosenberg: No, no, no. I just said, I just, I mean, I do think marketers are trying to be more personalized in their work, but No, you could throw that out and just like, you know, 'cause you've done an amazing job building your business as well, and you've seen a bunch of folks out there doing things and being successful today.

Like, what could we learn from you on that?

Sam McKenna: I think we, we tend to do the same things that we've always done, um, when it comes to marketing, and I think we also get really fixated on attribution, attribution, attribution. And now what I would say is. 30% of your budget, whatever that might be, test stuff, right. Really look at the ROI from the last time you paid a hundred K to have a speaking engagement or paid 3 million bucks to show up at Salesforce.

What did you get out of it? What did you get in terms of continued exposure to those same clients and. What I would say, and this is super, super self-promotional, but get your executives on LinkedIn now before everybody [00:51:00] gets on there and it's too late, it's already getting crowded, but your competition is either there and you need to catch up or they're not, and you have a bloody competitive advantage.

So the thing I would say, take three or four execs, right? Dynamic, outgoing, tenured, long histories of success, tons of failures, all sorts of stories to tell and get them up there sharing their thought leadership. Do that plus do all the backend sales administration, the things I told you, it's been a while.

Spearfishing. Things that we can do there systematically grow their network. We do all of that for you, but I'll give you just a great use case. Why should we talk about our personal stories instead of like what it is that we can solve? You should talk about your product. You should talk about the things that you can do in a thought leadership way, right?

You should educate. There should be a point. Get people to think differently. But those human interest stories are phenomenal, like wide nets to get a ton of people to know who you are. And if you're like, everybody knows who we are, we're DuPont to create a faceless [00:52:00] brand for you, less of a faceless brand, rather.

Look at John Gray. John Gray is the COO of Blackstone. Buttoned up boring Blackstone. What does John post on LinkedIn? You guys follow him? He posts these really terrible running videos. He is holding his iPhone out. He's at like Walt Disney World and he is like, oh, heavy breather. Craig, you're be excited about this guy.

He's heavy breathing while he runs and he is like, Hey guys. Really excited to be in Orlando. I don't know. Shit gets like 3000 likes. Um, people are excited to see what he has to say while he is sweaty and running through, you know, the wilds of Mickey Mouse. That stuff really matters and it makes an impact.

But if you do it right, if you're strategic, I. I'll give you one more plug here and then I'll stop talking. Give us an exec, right? And let us have that person, and then give us your customer list. Print out your top 100 enterprise deals that you care about or whatever vertical you wanna expand in. Give us that list and [00:53:00] all the people that were involved.

We'll send a connection request from that exec to say thank you so much for partnering with us. Thank you so much for working with us. If I can ever be of help, please let me know. They will be, wow, that you reached out. Now you have a brand new subscriber to that person's content. And guess who all those people know?

People exactly like them on LinkedIn. So when they engage, which they probably will because they love you, other people will also see that engage with you. And then we'll capture those. We'll connect with 'em, we'll turn them into new subscribers instance and repeat. And before you know what, you have 111,000 followers on LinkedIn, and 90% of your inbound comes from LinkedIn. Matt, I'll send you a contract. Yeah,

Matt Amundson: Yeah, I've got money. Money to spend.

Craig Rosenberg: I what I wanna hear.

Um, let's have you guys, yeah, let's do a discovery call with Matt. Um, okay, cool. So that was a perfect, uh, mic drop at the end. I do want to mention before we get off, guys that I did type in Bobby [00:54:00] Axelrod's small mouth. Number one, Google is on Reddit. Anyone else getting annoyed by Damien Lewis's Tiny mouth, right?

Hold on. Maxim is number

two on Google.

Is

Damien Lewis's? I don't. This is 2016. Is Damien Lewis's tiny mouth? Really all that tiny question mark? Uh,

Sam McKenna: Question posed by Tiny Mouth 7 0 9.

Craig Rosenberg: Jesus crimey, the tiny mouth, uh, con, con uh, uh, controversy is incredible. Okay, so that was, see Sam, I hope you had fun. 'cause we had

fun and that's how we

Matt Amundson: That. That was amazing. That was

Sam McKenna: Thanks. You

Craig Rosenberg: that was

Sam McKenna: have really, really good time. Yeah, thanks for, thanks for having me.

Matt Amundson: Sam.

Craig Rosenberg: you offended that you need to get cut, just let Sam know. We probably won't do it, but

we'll, uh, we'll consider it. Yeah. The, uh,

the production team will consider it,

Sam McKenna: [00:55:00] You know what I mean?

Matt Amundson: we get a tiny mouth Truthers hashtag on this tiny

Sam Guertin: Oh yeah.

Sam McKenna: Have Craig Heavy breather. Hashtag we should

Craig Rosenberg: oh I'm gonna find that, uh, that webinar

Jesus. I

mean, this guy, I, I'm gonna find this guy and it's over for him. I'm

Matt Amundson: Hey, you know what? If you are that guy and you're out there, love to have you on the transaction.

Craig Rosenberg: I am gonna, oh man. Jesus.

Sam Guertin: I,

I would love to edit that. Hmm.

Sam McKenna: Oh my God.

Craig Rosenberg: All right, awesome. Well, th that was, uh, that's how we like to do it on the transaction, Sam, so it was great to see you. We're

gonna have You on again if you let us. And

Sam McKenna: Anytime.

Craig Rosenberg: okay, I'll be your customer. there. Oh,

look

at it. Let's go.

Sam McKenna: I'm gonna, [00:56:00]

Creators and Guests

Craig Rosenberg
Host
Craig Rosenberg
I help b2b companies grow revenue by enabling GTM excellence. Chief Platform Officer at Scale Venture Partners
Matt Amundson
Host
Matt Amundson
CMO, Advisor, Data-Driven Revenue Leader. Chief Marketing Officer of Census
Sam Guertin
Producer
Sam Guertin
Podcast Producer & B2B Content Marketer at Sam Guertin Productions
Social Selling Secrets to Supercharge Your Sales with Sam McKenna - Ep. 48
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