207. Reuben Swartz on the mindsets and strategies of successful selling

That might have been it, but I, I was writing sales and marketing software, so I ended up doing some consulting in that area, and then I never set out to build a SaaS business, let alone A A C R M business. But I was frustrated. By my life being complicated when it came to sales and marketing, which I didn't like. And I felt like we did a lot of cool stuff and we built cool tools for our clients. And I was like, well, why can't I have cool tools to like make my life easier?

And the thing I really wanted to know at the time that was kind of driving me nuts was just, Hey, are people reading my proposals? Because that meeting to discuss it would get rescheduled and then you're in that voicemail loop from hell where it's like, Hey, just wonder if you got any questions on the proposal. And so I put together a little tool that would let me share proposals online and know if someone was reading 'em and that actually went. Amazingly great.

Uh, took five minutes to have a five minute conversation instead of back and forth for a month when who knows what would happen. And I was telling some people about this experience and they were like, well, that's really cool. Can I have that? And it sort of snowballed from there and people that said, okay, great. The end of my sales cycle is now really easy. What can I do to get people in the front of my funnel? And I didn't intend to do anything about that myself.

I was just gonna send them in the right direction. But I realized that for this tribe of people, there really wasn't a good solution. There were great solutions for e-commerce firms, great solutions for big sales teams, but not necessarily for the independent consultant tribes. So like, okay, well I'm gonna do this and then I'll be done. And then people said, Hey, this is great. I'm finally getting leads, and if I need to send 'em a proposal, that's all great.

But man, I hate the CRM stuff I have to do in between. Can you make meran. Do the CRM stuff too. And of course I said, no, the world doesn't need another crm, and I'd be the last person to create one if it did blah, blah, blah, blah. And of course I'm trying dozens of CRMs myself thinking what I need is out there. And I just never could find what I needed. And it sort of obvious to me now, but it wasn't at the time.

And finally I was like, oh, maybe I should just listen to my customers and do this. And that's kind of how I got to this crazy point. Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah. I love that you are taking a customer-centric point of view.

I think if, if a lot of us get too hung up on who we are, what our definition is as a software provider or a, or a proposal SaaS or a, you know, and, and forget that we're here to solve business problems and if we just keep our ear to the street and focus on the customer, uh, you'll, it'll take your business in interesting ways and interesting in your case that it landed on.

Crm, which is a very competitive space, and I would love to hear a little bit more about how you, how you were able to create the product in a way that was sufficiently different. Um, and then how does that map to your general philosophy on how to handle sales correspondence, whether that's over call or over email? Sure. You're right. There's so many CRMs out there and, and that's why I was sure that there would be one that I would actually enjoy using.

But what I found is the traditional CRM is for the VP of sales to keep track of the sales team. And, and I should have known that from my consulting cuz that's one of the first things we did would walk in and try to pull some reports outta the CRM and usually find that the salespeople were playing cat and mouse with a VP of sales cuz they didn't really wanna be tracked, which is a whole other story. But that's why traditional CRMs are built the way they are.

They want to track the sales rep and when it's you doing sales and marketing in your spare time, neither of which you really want to do. You don't want to feel like you're working for the tool. You want to feel like the tool is helping you stay organized and stay on top of things and getting in your way as little as possible. So that's just philosophically very different. And then, I also eventually got smart.

It took a while, but I eventually got smart about exactly who I was trying to serve and being very specific about that because when I started out, I had people asking me for this in various industries, various sizes of companies, people wanting to use it for big sales teams. And it would do what it said on the tin kind of thing.

But eventually the folks who were not independent consultants wanted me to go in a different direction that would've sort of broken that simplicity for the independent consultants and, and at one point I was like, you know, some of these larger companies, they're paying me more money, but it's kind of a pain in the neck. That's kind of what I wanted to avoid doing this enterprise type work. And I really like helping.

Sort of the past version of myself, because I was the sales and marketing consultant, I was helping these big companies, and if I may say so, doing a good job cuz we got good word of mouth, we got repeat business. But I was really struggling with my own sales and marketing and after a while I realized that I wasn't alone in this. There's reasons why we end up in that spot when you.

When you learn to consult and reasons why a lot of the traditional advice doesn't necessarily serve you very well, and I got such a kick out of being able to help other people going through that and sort of helping them make the, make the leap a lot faster instead of wandering around in the wilderness for years like I did. And so that's really what I, what I realized my mission was. So I wanted to, to stay very focused on that tribe and be the best.

Option for this tribe rather than a decent option for a whole bunch of other people. Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah, and I mean that's a good lesson for anyone out there is, you know, at the beginning it feels like you can serve everyone. Cuz functionally these things are very similar, but it's only when you start going deep on a target market do you get into the nuances of their needs and be able to.

Make something that like irks out extra inches in the ways that matter versus, you know, versus trying to paint with a broad brush and, uh, hope that it solves their pains and that it stands out. Do people even try, try your, your SA SaaS in the first place or any business? Um, in terms of your methodology, one of the things you, you talk about, uh, on your website is that you help, um, you help people win clients and stay organized without being salesy. And so what would you say like that?

Obviously that's a very, that's a very opinionated stance in a good way, uh, that that implies some kind of philosophy. How do you approach sales and how do you win business without being salesy? Sure. And first of all, I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with being salesy as long as you're doing it ethically. It's just not for me and not for a lot of us.

And I think we can all point to an experience we had where someone was being let that arch type, pushy sales rep with us, that made us feel bad. We've probably have had way more experience where somebody was helping us and doing a much more effective job of selling us, but it didn't feel like it was salesy. Kevin C. Whelan: Mm. Whether it's a doctor or a waitress or a consultant or whatever, we have these great experiences where somebody is in effect selling, but it doesn't feel like it.

It feels like they're helping us buy, and so that's a big thing of what I want to do. I want to use really strong positioning, not just for myself, but help my clients do this so that you end up talking to the right people. Who are likely to want to buy and likely to be a good fit for you, and have enough of a system in place that you don't feel any pressure to close this person if they're not the right fit.

Kevin C. Whelan: Yep. then I like to think of it as for me, uh, Bob Berg, the co-author of the Go-Giver said, Ruben, you don't hate sales. You, you hate what you mistakenly think sales is. And he's right. But for me, it's just simpler to say, I don't like sales. I like helping. So let me help. And I don't like marketing, but I like teaching and I hate networking, but I kind of like connecting with people.

So just shifting the words that I use in my own head to think about what I'm doing is really, uh, a powerful thing. And then you combine that with having really specific positioning. It's kinda like if you are the doctor who specializes in fixing shoulder injuries for. People who exercise too much or something like that, you're gonna get referred a bunch of people who exercise too much, who have shoulder problems. That's probably gonna be a good set of patients for you.

If you try to say, well I could treat your knee, I could treat your ankle, I can treat your uh, treat your stomach bug, you know, whatever. Cuz I went to med school. Then you're gonna end up with a lot of resistance and a lot of problems and you're actually gonna end up with fewer referrals cuz I'm like, who's this guy? But if you are the person for the sports shoulder, indu, indu, uh, injuries in town, you're gonna end up with a bunch of people in your waiting room.

You can talk to them, have a good diagnostic conversation where you're just trying to figure out what's going on. And then you send them, you know, it might be to the or it might be to a different specialist. It might be, do these stretches and call me in six months. Whatever that right thing to do is. That sort of mindset of the doctor versus the sales rep, I think is very powerful for folks who love serving the clients, but feel awkward with the selling.

So it's like, let's not sell anybody anything. Let's make sure we're specialized and then let's just diagnose, and the right people are gonna basically pull us through the sales cycle. Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah, that's so powerful. I love the reframing of sales to helping of, you know, marketing to educating and teaching and networking to connecting. It just changes completely how you're approaching things and how you, how you see your, your role in those capacities.

And Zig Ziglar's got a quote about being a co-buyer with their client. And, uh, meaning, you know, and that's how I see all of my work as a marketing and consultant and advisor, is I like to feel like I'm sitting on the side of my client's table and helping them make their decisions, including whether or not they should hire me and acting in their fiduciary at interests or their, you know, being an advocate before, before they even hire you.

And sort of sitting on their side and saying, okay, let's look at this challenge. What are your challenges? Let's understand them together so I can see what you're seeing, and come to some sort of conclusion to see whether we're a fit or not. Or maybe there's another way. Or a better way to solve that that doesn't involve me. And it does take a bit of confidence and you do have to, you know, be okay with losing a sale in order to serve people.

But I think if you take that mindset, you're gonna close more deals than if you see it as a transaction, someone across the table that you can take money from, uh, regardless of whether you can help them. So I love that mindset in terms of how you kind of restructured it and then specializing, you're saying is a key thing as well, is having a really core, dialed in set of skills that makes it so that the people you do help.

You can help really well, and therefore it kind of feels like an obvious fit. Probably when you're more specialized, you're seeing a knee doctor or for a knee problem, you're not seeing them for your stomach issues or what have you. And, and that makes a lot of sense as well. So really love, love that method. And so how would you encourage people to engage in a sales process and using the CRM as a tool, but what do you foresee as being kind of the evolution from okay, someone reaches out.

How do you usher someone through that sort of general process in a way that, um, in a way that helps them hire you or not as, as quickly as need be? Like what's your kind of mental model for that entire sales cycle? Let's go back to the doctor's office and think about how do you diagnose somebody, Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah. right? Like maybe the doctor has a diploma or something on the wall, but they don't spend a bunch of time talking about how awesome they are.

They're focused on understanding what's going on with you, and they know as the expert here are the, you know, it could be three, it could be 30 questions, tests, diagnostics, whatever. We have to run to figure out. What's going on? Or to figure out if you're even in my domain, and if you're listening to this, you're the expert in your domain, whatever that domain might be. So what are the questions that you need to ask?

Not just to like extract money from somebody, but to really understand their problem. And I love what you're saying about being a coyer and trying to help them figure out what the right path forward is, whether or not it's with you. And if you have the confidence that, hey, I don't need to close this person to make payroll.

Cause I've been in that situation where I'm like, oh my gosh, I finally got a referral and I better figure out how to make this work cuz I don't know how to make payroll otherwise, that's a terrible place to be in, right? Because you're trying to be ethical and, and all that. But you can feel that cloud hanging over you versus I have a whole bunch of patients in the waiting room. I'm gonna take the right time with each of them. And the right ones are going to come back to the OR with me.

And the ones that that's not the right fit for, that's totally fine cuz there's another person behind them and behind them and so on. And it's almost like if you have a, have a systematic way of doing this, it's not just you sort of convincing someone to go with you, it's them convincing you that you should work with them.

Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah. think that's one of the really powerful things that that can come outta this sort of diagnostic session, the coying collaboration, whatever you want to call it. Sometimes you, you're talking to somebody, you're like, Hey, I don't think you need this. Like, you're fine. Or, you know, why don't you just do this thing that you could go do this weekend or tomorrow, or that you could hire a Fiverr or whatever for a fraction of the cost of engaging me.

And sometimes they're gonna be like, oh my gosh, thank you. You're so right. That's great. Right? And then you have an ally, somebody who knows that you don't just try to sell them stuff And sometimes you learn, well the real issue is, blah, this thing that I didn't know how to, how to express, or wasn't ready to tell you yet cuz I thought you were just gonna try to pull money out of me. The real issue is X, Y, Z. And I heard that when X, Y, Z is going on, you know how to handle that.

Kevin C. Whelan: Right. Love that. Love that. You talked, you did mention one thing about being a, around the ethics of working with prospects that come. Through when you have to meet payroll, and yet they may or may not be a fit. I actually recently wrote on that marketing is essentially your ethical duty to be able to generate enough demand so that you can truly act in your client's best interest above your own.

Because if you're at the brink of survival and needing to meet your basic needs financially, you can't really in earnest. But their needs above your own, especially when they represent a paycheck. And that's where I think it gets into murky water. So I was trying to, you know, I'm a philosophy major, so I was trying to play, take a philosophical angle to it. Um, obviously we all have to help clients the best we can. Sometimes not every single client's gonna be right down your, your lane, but.

Most times you can help people to some extent. But just interesting you kind of mentioning that. And uh, and that ties very well into if you have a good marketing engine that is education focused, that is helpful in nature, you're going to naturally bring in some people that want your help if your help is unique and, and seems appropriate. Uh, so I just really loved that piece that you mentioned, uh, there as well. Um, I wanna talk a little bit about referrals.

So one of the things I noticed was even though I market my businesses, Significantly. I also get a lot of referrals and maybe that's to do with, they see some of my marketing and some of it's to do with, well, they heard I was good and some of it's, I keep seeing your name come up in conversation. Do you have any kind of mental model for how you either generate or handle referrals?

Whether that means incentivizing people who refer people to you or what, what makes you more likely to get referred? Do you have any thoughts on how referrals, how to basically leverage referrals and cater, cater to that, uh, in the best possible way? I have a lot of thoughts on that and we may not have time for all of them, but that was actually one of the key drivers for me saying, okay, let me listen to my customers and make this thing a crm.

Because one of the things that drove me nuts with traditional CRMs was they don't track referrals. Uh, you know, this is. A core business development activity for most consultants, and I mean obviously you can pay someone to customize Salesforce to, to do all this or whatever, but it's not like baked into the tool and I'm like, this is, this is the key thing. Let's make sure we're tracking this from the ground up. And then how can we be intentional about it?

Because I spent a long time thinking, oh, I'm, I'm doing great. I get referrals, and I didn't want to be one of those sort of sleazy. How can I help you today? Do you have any referrals for me? Do you have any repeat business for me? Kind of consulting shops and I, you can see a lot of those, but at the same time, I kind of swung the pendulum so far in the other direction that it was ridiculous. So, Here's how I think about referrals. One, we gotta have really strong positioning.

Same thing for everything we're doing with sales and marketing. The stronger you're positioning, the more work that will do for you and the less work you have to do. And I think there's a fear when you get really focused with your positioning that you're gonna get less leads and you're gonna get fewer referrals. And I would argue that the, that that's not true. It's actually the opposite, but you're definitely gonna get higher quality leads and you're much more referable.

I was on a Zoom call the other day with a bunch of consultants who were com complaining about lead gen, and I said, Hey guys, you all sound like me back in the day. And I say this with love, but none of you are referable because you all solve business problems in some vague way. Right? I can't be like, oh, you gotta talk to Kevin right now. And so let's, let's let our positioning do as much work for us as possible.

And the way I sort of worked my way around that scarcity mindset that always creeps in is like, Hey, even if I get this really hyper-focused market, I can't serve the whole thing anyway, right? I'm not Coca-Cola, but do I want sales and marketing to be easy or hard? Because I love those conversations that don't feel like selling. They just feel like collaboration or coying or whatever, and you don't even realize that, that somebody just basically asked you for a proposal.

You're like, that was awesome. I want more of that. I don't like to convince people and use objection handling and all those fancy sales techniques. Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah. right. Like, that's not for me. So let's use our positioning to make things easy, and then let's be intentional about nurturing those referral relationships. It doesn't have to be sleazy, but there are people that refer business to you that you might or might not refer business back to, but you just enjoy talking to.

How often do you talk to them in an actual conversation? And this was the thing that I just fell down on. I'm like, well, they're on my email newsletter. And there's nothing wrong with an email newsletter, assuming it's a decent newsletter, right? It's better than nothing, but it is not a replacement for actual conversations.

I was having a conversation yesterday actually, with somebody who refers a bunch of people to me and I pulled up, she's referred me, uh, 18 people in the past two months, some of whom are now paying customers. Um, she's an awesome connector. Um, But if I didn't keep track of that, it would just kind of fly in and out, like shooting stars going through the atmosphere, and then nothing comes of it. It's not just about do you meet somebody at a networking event and then follow up with a one-on-one?

That's all great, but what about the third, fourth, 10th, 20th conversation? A year later, you're gonna find the people that you enjoy talking to that enjoy talking to you. And it's not sleazy to just be organized about, Hey Kevin, we haven't spoken in months. What's new in your world? Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love, I love that.

Um, it's more funny because I wouldn't have really realized that referrals had such a big impact on my business if I didn't analyze, in retrospect, by looking back and saying, where do these people come from and what led to that? And. And then in, you know, in your case it would be what, who specifically referred me and sometimes I've forgotten, you know, which is terrible, you know, in some cases.

But, uh, that's one of the things, as marketers, as advisors, we, we track a lot of data and it helps to be able to then look back because our assumptions are sometimes generally right, but they can often astonish you just at how dramatic and like, there's always an 80 20 of some in some sort. You know, 80% of your leads come from 20% of. Of all the different channels that could possibly come, and maybe that's referrals for, for you or for most people.

Uh, so really fascinating and using a, a tool like your CRM or other CRMs to, to track that stuff. Just super value, valuable. And I love how you talked about leaning on your positioning because when people do refer you, they're making a bit of a reputa. There's a bit of a reputational risk. If, if I, if I know you can do everything, then I kind of don't know what you're good at and what you're not good at.

So it makes it very hard for me to refer you in good conscience to a client with confidence saying, this is definitely the person you wanna hire. It has to be couched with, uh, they seem to be very good at a lot of things. I think they can probably help you potentially. And that's if I'm willing to make the risk in general, you know, because you never, you didn't never really know how good someone is until you've worked with them.

Uh, so I think even your positioning saying, I specialize, I help X do y. Makes you much more, first of all, people think of you more, uh, you know, as Jonathan Stark says, the role at X moment and, uh, and then more likely to refer you with confidence saying this, this person does this all day long. I think they're gonna be a really good fit for you. So I love how you're talking about leaning on your positioning there and letting that engine drive it.

Well, it's even exponentially more powerful than that because even, even assuming you do get that referral Yes. When your positioning is weak, well, they might have referred three other people, Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah. and now you're like trying to convince somebody who's not an ideal fit that they should work with you. Meanwhile, that you've got some competitors, right?

You may not have even wanted that referral and maybe just be sucking time and energy out of you versus the people you know who have the, the pitching injuries that I know I can fix, and I'm the best doctor in town to deal with it. Send me those all day long. Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah. Yeah. What about the idea of gifting? Do you, do you have any thoughts or beliefs on whether you let you know, let's say you referred me 18 customers or clients.

I would wanna reciprocate in some way, whether that is, you know, offering some of my time. I've personally, I've sent small gifts to people who have just been completely generous. Things that are really super focused on who they are and what would benefit them, or even like chocolates or things of that nature card. What are your thoughts on, do you have any thoughts on the idea of gifting or reciprocation for referrals as a general practice?

Great question, and I think there's a, a range of answers that depend on your relationship. And ironically enough, I just published a, a episode on my podcast with Steve Zony, whose whole business is in helping you like automate gifting in this way, um, but still keeping it very personalized and so on. I think it's nice to show appreciation. So I actually have. I'm, I'm a little overdue here to, I'm supposed to have time this morning to write some thank you notes. Um, right.

So you're gonna get a thank you note for having me on your podcast, cuz I just appreciate that and I'm gonna thank a customer and I'm gonna thank the person who referred me to that customer and it's just like, it is just, One. I think it's nice to take a moment for yourself and just feel some gratitude and know that, hey, for all the chaos and stuff out there that can throw things off track. There's actually a bunch of like good forces in the universe that are.

Helping you and returning hopefully some good karma that you're putting out there. And then I love the notion, I don't do a good job with this really, but like of giving someone just a, you know, some chocolate or something, something nice that's all about them. I think there's a difference between like, Hey, I'm gonna pay you an X percent referral fee and here's, here's a chocolate thing and a nice card or a wine glass and, and a thank you note or something like that.

I think for most of us, you know, I don't mind, for example, if someone's like, Hey, Ruben, do you have an affiliate link that you can create for me? I'm like, sure. But most people don't want to jeopardize their relationships for a little bit of money. Right? I mean, maybe once they, they know you and all that, like you can establish some kind of partnership. But I, I, I think. What would you do if you wandered into this person?

Like if it was like college and, and they were down the hall from you? I try to think of, of that, um, versus, oh my gosh, everything is virtual, you know, so easy to just shoot an email to somebody. So taking the time just to do something. That recognizes and, and shows some appreciation. I'm all, I'm all for it. And from what I hear from people, they appreciate that somebody took the time to do that. Whether they can read what I write, I don't know.

My handwriting is terrible, but I know I love getting a card from somebody in the mail, right? And it's just a little personal touch in this fully quasi automated world where everyone wants to do things more efficiently, sometimes you gotta slow down and just be human to human. Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah, I actually prompts a thought about, there's a book called, um, uh, I think it's called Alchemy, by Rory Sutherland, and it may might be called some, something along those lines. He's a marketer.

He runs Ogilvy in the uk. Uh, but he talks about sometimes the, the very. Difficulty of the thing is a message. So the fact that if you take the time to write a card or whatever and put in an envelope and get the address and send it, uh, the very difficulty involved in that, like you could automate that with a, with an email or, uh, even maybe an automated message, uh, that would, that would get them the same message across, but it. You know, as, as Marshal McLuhan is the medium is the message.

And the difficulty of that is sometimes telling you that there's a value there. That it's not just like a quick sendoff, it's I took the time to do this and send it to you. And I think that's a really powerful message within a message when you do that. So I wish, I wish I was better at that. I always, it comes to the holidays and I'm always scrambling to like, Figure out whether I can send somebody some cards, you know, the holidays and it's, I want to like revert.

I wanna flip that on his head and think about how do I get more intentional with all kinds of, you know, um, thank yous, gifts, holiday greetings, whatever, and, uh, and be more intentional with the offline stuff. I think it'd be super powerful and I'm terrible at it. Really Full disclosure. And I'm not great at it really.

Uh, and I don't do the holiday stuff, and I sort of rationalize it by thinking it's kind of, I feel cheesy and I also feel like there's a deluge of, you know, happy holidays from such and such corp. Um, but I, like I. Sending a, a note to somebody when there's a, like, a good reason to, to thank them. And I literally just have a, a little slot on my calendar, blocked off every week.

And I actually invited somebody else to this meeting cuz she was saying, Hey, she loves sending, Handwritten cards, but she's not good about actually doing it. I was like, well, okay, I'm gonna invite you to my little slot. We won't talk or anything. It was just time to, to write your notes. And of course, this morning I, I was doing some tech support for my mother-in-law and that, you know, that killed my, my slot.

But I have my cards right here, out here on my desk, so Kevin C. Whelan: Gonna get it done. it's gonna happen. Kevin C. Whelan: You know, there is a lot of good karma to be had for helping your mother-in-law with tech support. I'm the defacto tech support for my extended family, not just my media family. Um, one interesting thing you're kind of talking about is this idea of sort of systemizing some of your sales, you know, biz dev, maybe even marketing.

Um, do you have a view on how much of your sales and biz dev work should be systemized versus kind of made up based on how you're feeling in the moment? Like, what is the line between ultra. Dialed in, systemized, and somewhat fluid based on your the moment. Well, I, I think it varies and one of the challenges of being a solopreneur. Is your life is gonna get thrown some curve balls and you know, having tech support session with your mother-in-law is a relatively minor curve ball.

But you know, if my whole day and my whole mental, uh, sense of peace was dependent on me following my schedule exactly, like I would never have a moment's peace. So I think we have to give ourselves a little bit of grace. But I'm a big fan of, let's use the calendar to do the things that that we say we're gonna do. Like I have a Friday afternoon slot blocked off that I create with a button in my CRM that says, catch up on overdue calls. Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah. is it perfect?

No. And in theory, there shouldn't be that slot, right? There should be no overdue calls. I should be on top of everything, but of course I'm not. And so this just gives me a little bit of slack. So go in and do that. Now there's other things for like, let's talk to partners, let's talk to prospects, let's talk to clients. All of those things I think are so important. They should be blocked off on your calendar every week, and you're gonna hopefully go on vacation and skip some of those.

Life is gonna happen and you're not gonna make it every week. But my argument as a longtime like perfectionist who didn't wanna start anything unless I had the full like optimal diagram drawn out. Is doing this, you know, let's just say 80%, 90%, even 50%, and actually doing it is so much more effective than diagramming a bunch of crap and then not actually doing it and getting lost in sort of the reactive mode of things coming at you all the time.

I think for most of us, business development is a really important part of what we're supposed to be doing, but it's often relegated to the periphery. It's like something we try to slot in, in a few spare moments, usually because we don't like it and we're trying to procrastinate around it. Versus let's set it up in a way that's actually fun.

So we actually want to do it, and we actually put it on our calendar and it's the thing we're gonna do by default, unless some curve ball comes, not the thing that only happens if there's some miracle. And you know, I'm, I have good energy and I have a few minutes and blah, blah, blah, blah. Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah. Yeah. That's the, that's how I feel. And I think you're, you're bang on by saying, you know, life is messy. Right?

And like, I have two young children, and therefore, even my perfectly planned schedule is constantly being adjusted. And, and so, uh, you can't get down on yourself if you don't get all of your system down, but it's nice to have parts of it that you, you know, for example, I have manies, like I need to create a. You know, ideally multiple pieces of content that I publish through my newsletter per week.

And as long as I've done that, I used to be daily, and I've kind of pulled back on that a little bit. Um, but I think it's important that you say, as long as I do that, then everything else sort of falls into place. And in on a sales side, it might be, you know, as long as I schedule this thing and I send a couple cards, at least I'm, I know I'm in that mode. I'll always prioritize the most important top of mind people or whomever.

And, and I think I like that idea of, have a, have a plan, but don't. Don't feel like it, don't like live by your plan. It kind of removes the fluidity of life a little bit that can make you a little more agile. Yeah, and I, I think that notion of. Let's do what we can and kind of keep, have enough of a plan that there's some momentum happening and some forward progress.

Cause I think what happens if we don't have that plan, we don't have that time blocked off on our calendar, is everything is reactive and then scrambling. And then maybe we like, oh, I'm gonna create 18 pieces of content today cuz I have a few minutes. But then you don't follow up with that appropriately and so on. So I think especially when it's just you and, you know, having kids, having a dog, having whatever else is happening in life, um, it's hard to keep all these balls in the air.

And so a lot of it is, let's figure out how to be really intentional about the, the critical ones. And again, some of this goes back to the positioning, right? If I know exactly who my. My ideal audience is I can get rid of 50, 80, 90% of the crap that I was so worried about because it doesn't actually, ma, it's not, it doesn't apply to my ideal audience. Let me instead create one thing that's really gonna resonate with them, right?

Let me post that in the one place that I know they hang out, as opposed to worrying about the 18 other places that people in adjacent markets can hang out, et cetera. Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah. Let's, uh, that was actually my next question.

If you could only focus on one thing for your business development, let's say you had one, aside from sort of having a CRM or something, but one thing that, one action you took or one category of things for biz, biz dev and you, we can call that sales and or marketing. What would that be?

What would be your one if all you could do is one thing And of course this is going to depend for different markets, but I think for me, and for a lot of the folks listening here, the one thing is to systematically talk to people. And as an introvert, I spent years avoiding that, trying to automate my way out of that. But you can't solve all these problems in your own head.

Whether it's creating a great blog post or lead magnet or figuring out who you should talk to next, or the, you know, the LinkedIn group that's gonna have a whole bunch of prospects for you, whatever it is, this happens in conversation with other people. And so one of the biggest things that I have, Been able to shift with myself is go from, let's avoid talking to people at all costs, or if necessary, force myself to talk to people.

Oh gosh, this sucks, but I'm gonna slog through it to let's set up a way that this is actually fun and interesting and energizing. And I can't tell you how different it is as an introvert to go from. I'm avoiding talking to people. I'm kind of frustrated with my sales and marketing and when I force myself to talk to people, I get that tension in my neck cuz it sucks so bad to, I spend most of my day talking to people and it's super fun.

Like, I'm not gonna say a hundred percent of the time, but like 90% of the time it's super fun because I've got things not perfectly dialed in, but dialed in enough that, you know, you and I are having a fun conversation. I like talking to you, Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah, it's directionally accurate. Like as long as you're sort of, you're plotting your way, I'll, albeit maybe not in a straight line, but you have a system that gets you in that direction. Generally, that's all you need, you know.

Yeah, I was talking to somebody yesterday who's having trouble with business development and she said she did market research, and I was like, okay, well how many people did you talk to? And she said, two or three. I'm like, okay, you, I guarantee you that you know hundreds of people. Most of whom are not in your target market, but almost all of whom know people in your target market, and you haven't spoken to any of them about this. That's why you're struggling.

Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing. It's, if you think of yourself, if you think of people as your path to opportunity, one of the things I teach is about a golden goose method, which is things like getting on someone's podcast or getting teaching, what you know, teaching that idea and serving to an audience that already exists. By aligning yourself with the person who aggregated it.

Uh, but basically using that as leverage so you can get in, get in basically open up doors with more of your target market. Um, but just generally this idea of if you think of people as the conduit to more clients, then you start to think, well, how would people, who would I need to connect with and how would I need to add value? And. In order to develop relationships that would potentially lead to business long term, cuz in absent of relationships, I don't think I'd have a business.

Just like going back to that point about a large majority, majority of my leads came through referrals, probably because those people were exposed to my marketing and maybe some of them had worked with me in the past. Um, so it's just an interesting model that if you focus on people. In your biz dev, in your marketing, but specifically and then connecting and talking to people, whether they're your peers or or non-competitive service providers who do a similar thing.

Like if you work with graphic designers and you are a strategist, talking to those graphic designers, seeing what's working, that can lead to a whole bunch of things. Cause a lot of times people just don't know. They don't know you exist. They don't know what you do. And then if you just spoke with 'em, they'd have that moment. Cause all I know someone you should speak to. And then I think naturally most self-employed people are connectors.

So. In general, we have to be, so I love that kind of framing there. Is there one book that has changed the trajectory of your business or has impacted you and led you to where you are? Is there one main book and it can, you can may say a couple if you want, but anything come to question and I, I love reading books.

Um, and, and so I should probably have a better answer for this, but one thing that really helped me at the beginning when I was starting to consult was Million Dollar Consulting by Alan Weiss. So, Who was good enough to come on sales for nerds, and we had a great chat over wine and I was like, holy crap, I can't believe I'm having wine with Alan Weiss and you know, guy who I, for all the struggles I had, they would've been exponentially worse without that book.

Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah. For me it was, uh, value-based fees, and that's what. That was the tipping point I was, as I was branching into consulting and out of running an agency, I'm like, I was reading that book, which made to me more practical sense for that pivot and transition. And then I understood, oh, I'm solving for a business problem based on the value of that business problem with the mechanics that I decide are best. Anyway, I'm totally with you.

Million Dollar Consulting by Alan Weiss is a, is a classic Last question for you. Um, you do have the podcast Sales for Nerds and, uh, and, and it's a great, great show. Uh, you have a little thing that you like to do at the beginning of every show, and that is, and you alluded to it with your conversation with Alan Weiss, is you ask, what's in your glass? Where did that come from? And, and yeah. How did that come about?

Because it, it is something that I, when we spoke originally, I'd remembered seeing a video of you talking to Alan Weiss on YouTube. Probably down at Allen Way's Rabbit Hole, and I remembered that as a trigger. A hook, if you will, which made you familiar to me very quickly. How did that little hook come to be? Well, I'd love to say it was some grand strategic plan, but it wasn't. I used to go pre covid. I would go on an annual sort of summit retreat.

Every year with some other small business owners. And we would ski during the day and then we would talk business at night and in between there was usually some drinking involved and somebody said something, I don't know if it was me or one of the other people or we were just sort of in conversation about how, you know, if we were millennials, we would just film this and put it on YouTube and figure out how to monetize it, make a whole bunch of money.

Cuz you know, we're, we're sort of a little happy and, and tipsy and talking about business and this, that and the other thing. And I, at the same time I was like, I kind of should write a book because I keep getting asked the same questions all over again and it would be a good exercise for me and hopefully valuable to other people if I could consolidate all this stuff that I've learned into a book. And then I thought, oh, that's a lot of work.

What if I had a podcast and invite some other people to come talk and share their expertise? And then what if I did it around? I'm gonna show up with a bottle of wine and we'll drink the wine and do the podcast. And I thought, that's kind of crazy. I don't know if I can do that. And I was like, well, it's my business. It's my podcast. Why can't I do that? Right? And so, of course, as an over perfectionist, I wait six months and sit on this idea until finally it was literally six months later.

I'm like, I'm so embarrassed. Like I'm doing it again. I'm overthinking it. Like I'm gonna send an email out tonight. And so, Uh, I dunno if you know Jason Cohen, he's the founder of WP Engine, where I host my website and, uh, he's done a lot of entrepreneurial things and he has a great [email protected] and just, you know, generally cool guy to talk to. Lots of good thoughts. So I sent him an email like, oh, you know, always been big fan of a SmartBear.

Um, Customer of WP Engine have this idea where, you know, I bring a bottle of wine and we talk about this, you know, would you mind this the other thing, blah, blah, blah. And he writes back like three minutes later, you had me at wine. Here's a link to my calendar. And I was like, oh, you know, that's interesting. Like there's no way I could get an hour of Jason Cohen's time if I hadn't said, here's some wine show up at his office.

We record two episodes, the sound quality's terrible and all that. Cause I didn't know what I was doing. And, but the only reason we stopped talking was cuz we ran outta wine. Uh, it was just such a great conversation and it's, it's just such a nice icebreaker and I kind of feel it. Part of what was happening at the time. Also, I felt like I was in a little bit of a rut. I was like, why can't business be fun? Let's have things be fun.

And I think that resonates with a lot of people and not everyone drinks, which is fine, but most people kind of enjoy the concept. And what I hear from listeners is they seem to enjoy the concept too. Kevin C. Whelan: Wow. I love that story is, is that audio recording with you and Jason? Still online anywhere, Yeah, I split into two episodes.

Episodes one and two of sales for Nerds are Jason and I talking business and, uh, you know, badly in need of a sound editor probably, and better microphones and all that. But I mean, he's got some great wisdom that you should totally check out. Kevin C. Whelan: I will definitely do that.

Uh, yeah, Jason runs WP Engine as he alluded to, is now billion dollar multi, I don't know how big it is, uh, exceeding a billion dollars, uh, in or valuation anyway, and doing extraordinarily well, and I'm a customer of theirs as well, so, and he's a great strategic thinker. I'll definitely go back and look at that.

One thing I, I'm gonna close on with you is that you mentioned on kind of you were over, you know, over this pattern of overthinking and being perfectionist, and I think a lot of us get held back by that. There's a quote I heard today by Daniel Priestley. He wrote a book called, uh, key Person of Influence. And so he says, prolific Beats Perfect.

And I just like this idea of optimizing for just getting a thing out, and it's gonna be, and one of the things that I firm belief is things start small and crappy. Specifically crappy, uh, not scrap, uh, and then get better over time. And you have to be willing to just sort of put out and churn out the. Turn out your thinking or your effort and then eventually polish it and refine it over time.

And, uh, I just kinda like that idea of like permission to have bad audio with a really important guest that first time and build it from there. And you've done so successfully since then. Yeah, I think and such a great point to close on because I think so many of us think that. You cannot make a mistake in anything. And obviously, you know, if you're doing heart surgery, don't make a mistake. Um, but for all the sales and marketing stuff we're doing, you're gonna make mistakes.

It's just inevitable. And sort of to, to just circle back to that example you talked about, there's something that I remember in my head where an art professor gave students a chance to be graded on one project. So, Or on a whole quantity of projects. It was a pottery class. And so a lot of people said, oh great. I only have to do one thing that's, I'm gonna save myself so much work, I'm just gonna make one awesome thing.

Well, who ended up with much better pottery at the end of the semester, it was the people who were cranking out pots every day. And then the people who tried to make the perfect pot at the end, they were kind of crappy cuz the first effort's always kind of crappy. Kevin C. Whelan: Yes. Amen. And I think is, this is especially difficult for.

I assume you, because you're a software developer and you're therefore, in my mind, quite intelligent and probably were successful in school, like, don't let me, you know, over assume here. talking. Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah, yeah. You know, super successful in all areas of life. No, but it's particularly difficult for people who are natural achievers and who are good in, say, for example, academics to make that bridge and put out a blog post that.

Might not be perfect and might be overly rigid or boring or what have you, you know, for, for folks like me, I was, as long as I got 70 and above in school, my parents didn't get mad at me.

So once I realized that I was, you know, seventies, eighties student and I was just coasting, uh, but what that taught me though was being okay with putting something up that's less than perfect and then going back and making things better and then just improving over time and really dialing in and, uh, sounds like you've kind of been. Forcing yourself to do that. Having a system, but being okay with it, being imperfect, getting it directionally accurate, and starting with crappy audio.

And then here you are today, how many podcast episodes later. I think, uh, 85 or so, and, and I've got one in the queue for you that hasn't published yet. Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah. Yeah. So that's the way, right? It's being okay with less than Perfect and then making it better over time. So this has been a really great conversation, Ruben.

I really appreciate you sharing your wisdom, and I can tell there's just so much more expertise under the cover, uh, that we haven't uncovered in our conversation. Tell us where we can learn more about the CRM and, and follow you in particular. Uh, if someone wanted to explore your ecosystem a little further, Sure, thanks. Uh, you can find more about [email protected]. That's m i m. My r n.com. And in addition to the crm, there's a bunch of lead magnets. There's a proposal template.

There's pro the proposal template that I use. Uh, there's ideas for lead magnets for your site and some other freebies that might be helpful for you. Uh, you can also catch the [email protected] or just search for sales for Nerds podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. And you can find me on LinkedIn. I don't know if I'm the only Ruben Swartz, but if there's not really that many of us, I don't think so. It should be pretty easy to find me. Kevin C. Whelan: Perfect.

Ruben, this has been a terrific conversation. Thank you so much for your time, and I look forward to seeing you on the internet. Thanks so much, Kevin. Thanks for having me. So that's it. My friends, I hope you enjoyed that podcast. Ruben is such a wealth of knowledge and definitely go check out his CRM or the fun anti CRM at Mimiran.com that's M I M I R A N.com. And yeah, there'll be notes additional to this in the, in the show notes. If you have any other followup questions, let me know.

You can always reach me on Twitter slash X at, at Kevin C. Whelan or reply to any of my emails, if you're on my mailing list and you can get direct contact to me, if you have any questions or follow up to this. As always, please share with a friend if you got some value out of this. And, uh, I really appreciate it. Head over to how to sell advice.com/membership to either get on the mailing list or join the membership. And I will hopefully see you inside. That's all for now my friends take care