This is the Sales Gravy Podcast. I'm Jeb Blunt, best selling author of Fanatical Prospecting and Sales EQ, and I'm here to help you open more doors, close bigger deals, and rock your commission check. There are 2 types of salespeople in the world, rainmakers and rain barrels. Rain barrels sit around with their mouths to the sky hoping they'll get lucky and something will drop in. Rainmakers take control, take action, and make their own luck.
In this year's virtual sales kickoff, Mike Weinberg, Mark Hunter, Anthony Anarino, and myself dispel the myths about how opportunities are created, what salespeople really need to do to be successful, and how you can control your own destiny. On this episode, you're gonna learn the real secrets to becoming a rainmaker, how to maximize your income, and how to crush your sales number. Now here's virtual sales kickoff 2019.
This is the 2019 virtual sales kickoff, and this is the 4th annual virtual sales kickoff that you're joining right now. This is about rain barrels and rainmakers today, and it's rainmakers versus rain barrels. And we're gonna start to draw a contrast here. You know what we do on this show. If you've been here before, you know that we're going to give you practical, tactical, actionable insights and ideas.
You know we're gonna have a round robin where people are gonna get to decide what their opinions are about these things and talk about them. We'll probably have, what I'll say is, some little arguments that'll happen while we do this because that's always fun. And we're gonna talk about a number of things that you can just put to work right away because that's what we wanna give you, just pure value here. So I wanna start by dispelling the myths
about how opportunities are created. And I'm gonna go to Mike Weinberg first because if there's anyone who has strong opinions about opportunity creation you're already smiling, Mike. It's Mike Weinberg. So dispel the myths. What are people hearing that's not true that's causing them to have challenges creating new opportunities and building a pipeline? Oh, wow. How about 80% of what they're reading on LinkedIn is not true?
Right? Everything from Wackos, telling you that you should follow the lead of Kylie Jenner. Right? Because she built her net worth to a $1,000,000,000 posting selfies on Instagram. To the nonsense from people that claim to be international best selling authors telling you how dare you ever think about annoying or interrupting a buyer, that it's much better to have people running to you, a, you know, a loyal tribe of followers. It's absolutely
a mess. There are there are more myths than you can imagine. We all know this. Right? I mean, in in all of our clients, the the top producers are laser focused on creating their own opportunities. They take full responsibility for filling the top of the funnel. Anthony, you always talk about, one of the biggest issues that's is salespeople are opportunity starved.
Right? And the and the reason they're starved is because they're sitting on their butt and they're waiting, and they're commenting on LinkedIn groups, and they're they're listening to the nonsense that tells you it's inappropriate today to interrupt somebody,
which drives me crazy. Because if your if your motivation to sell is pure because you believe you have a better outcome for them and your prospect is probably stuck in some suboptimal situation, man, it's incumbent on you to prospect to do everything possible to get that meeting because you can bring them value because they need you. I'm gonna move to to Jeb Blunt because I know, I'm I may be doing this in order of the strongest feelings because, you've
got the wrong book up for this. We should have fanatical prospecting up behind you, but but you do have strong opinions about what opportunity creation means. Well, let's start with Mike said myth. The one of the greatest myths is people who call themselves international best selling authors. There's enough of those out there that I'm an international best selling author and you've written one book and your book has full reviews on it and it's ranked 2,700,000 on Amazon. I'm I'm incredulous
of all of the best selling authors. It's it's I don't even know where where to begin. And that's just like all the people that call themselves sales experts. If they if you someone calls themselves a sales expert, go check their resume, which is typically on LinkedIn. And usually, they've had one sales job They've one sales job. And I don't know how in one sales job you become an expert in sales.
Usually, that means that you sucked at your sales job and you suck so bad that they fired your ass, and now you have to go be an expert in order to try to make some sort of a living. So you need to be careful about who you're taking advice from to begin with. And it's just like I I I'm you know, I I invest my money. I don't invest my money with a financial adviser whose finances
are a disaster. I invest my money with financial advisers and lawyers and accountants who who as, you know, themselves have a high net worth and do a really good job with their money. I wanna spend my time and effort with experts who are really experts. So that's number 1. Number 2 is understanding what a rainmaker is. So we're talking about ultra high performance. Being a rainmaker means that you're delivering for your company and you're delivering for
your family and yourself. So that means that you are at the top of the ranking report. That means that every day you're crushing it. You're hitting your number. You have the trust of your leadership team. You're going to president's club. You're getting the awards. You're getting this this. You're getting the money, and you're taking home a ton of commissions to your family. And the good news is that most rainmakers,
they already know the truth. They know exactly what it takes to fill up the pipeline, and that requires them to consistently every day every day every day interrupt people. And, look, there's a ton of channels that you can do that with. You can knock on a door. You can send a smoke signal. You can use the telephone. You can use social media. It is a good medium to use. You can use text messaging. You can use networking. You can go to events. You can go to trade shows. You can
do all kinds of things. But if you look at the rainmakers in your company, the people that are making the most money, those folks are using all of the above and they're doing it relentlessly. You're getting an applause break from Mike Weinberg. Mark Hunter. Well, he here's the whole thing. Sales is not about customer service. Sales is about creating incremental opportunities, and that means you've gotta get in
the face of people. And, you know, if you've got the ability to help somebody, you have the responsibility to get in their face. You have the responsibility to interrupt them. It's not about sitting back. Well, let me just post something on social media. Let me just do all this. I'm gonna share a quick story. My daughter was telling me that she looked outside the window of her house recently. Saw a neighbor's house was on fire. Now she didn't know the neighbor. Oh oh
oh oh, I'm sorry. Well well well, let let me connect, you know. She didn't connect with them on Facebook and send them some posting. No. No. No. She called 911 and went over there and made sure those people were out of that house. If you have the ability to help somebody, it is your responsibility. And for those who sit there and say, oh, the telephone doesn't work. You know the people who say that are the ones who are afraid.
Few weeks ago, Tesla announced that they're closing their stores, you know, and they're gonna go online. And and I and I threw a little piece out on social media just to see what and and this guy where expects is, well, I hate salespeople. I hate salespeople. I wanna buy everything online. You know what the dude's job was? A sales job. Give me a break. Give me a break. I I feel like at some point I have to say,
unleash the kraken or, or angry Mark. I mean, we're starting to get, we're getting him close. Look. He's still catching his breath from that. Here's my here here's my myth. The myth that I think that's doing the most damage is that prospecting is something that's passive, reactive, that requires you to wait, and it's someone else's job to drive those opportunities to your inbox or to your phone because it's just not gonna happen, and all of us know it's
not gonna happen. So I wanna pivot from what people are being told that's harming them to what do we see as best practices. When you when you look at the salespeople and the companies that are generating not only the highest number of opportunities, enough opportunities that they're able to reach goals, but also the highest quality opportunities,
which is another category altogether. Because everyone on this group I already know, we all believe that there's a difference between a target and a lead and and that there's a huge disparity between what people think they should be focusing their time on. So, Jeff Blunt, if you were to to talk about what you see, the ultra high performer in your world, What are those companies doing? What are the best practices that allow them to over index on results?
Well, one of the the the keys to over indexing of results or being a a rainmaker is working on the right opportunities, the right time, with the right message. So for example, they segment their their their prospects out. So we we look at prospect segmentation on really 3 different planes. So one plane is, high probability. So what is the probability that right now there's a window of opportunity that would give you a high probability of moving that prospect into your pipeline?
The next segmentation is potential. So what's the potential? So we look at high probability, medium probability, low probability. We also look at high potential, medium potential, low potential. So if I have a high probability, high potential account, that's where I wanna focus my attention because that account is most likely to move into my pipeline and generate a a a big result for me. So
lots of sales, lots of commissions. And then 3rd, taking a a little page out of your playbook is when you start segmenting your your database, so your your entire prospect world, so that you're you're looking at your dream accounts, your dream clients, your dream opportunities, your conquest accounts, your targeted accounts, and then everything else. So I'll run through that real quickly. So your dream accounts, you're typically gonna have somewhere between 1025
dream accounts. These are the biggest opportunities, the highest potential opportunities in your territory, and everybody in your company should know about those. So you've got marketing behind you so you can run account based marketing against those. You can run long term pursuit plans, and you can you can do everything that you you can to get in the door. It's gonna take you a while, and you
won't sell all of them. You might sell 1 or 2 of your dream accounts a year, but they're so big that when you sell them, they propel you to the top of the ranking report. Conquest accounts are typically the deals for me, they're competitive deals. So I wanna take deals away from my competitors that have a long term impact on my
credibility. So if I if I if I say, for example, Anthony, you've got an account, and you're, you know, you're in your business and I want that account, I'm gonna align everything I can against that account so I can take it from you so I can go to other businesses and and I can tell them, hey. I took this account. In some cases, it's an account in your territory that, may have a good reputation. So if you get that from a social proof standpoint, you're able to tell
other businesses, hey. I have this particular account in my portfolio. Typically, you're gonna have around 50 to a 100 conquest accounts, not too many more than that. And, again, you can run good pursuit pursuit plans and sequences and cadences against those. And then there's targeted prospects, and these are the prospects that usually are
gonna be high potential, medium potential prospects. They're gonna fit your ideal prospect profile, and you're gonna have a group of those prospects that you're gonna be working against all the time. And these are just your bread and butter everyday prospects. And, typically, most salespeople are gonna have somewhere between 250 and a 1000 of those depending on the size of your territory. 500 and less is probably the best group
to work with. And then with that group as well, you can rank those and you can run some cadences and pursuit plans against some of those accounts. Others trying to run that type of a pursuit plan is just too much energy, too much effort. So you begin ranking all of your targeted prospects in a way that gets you in front of the right ones at the right time. And so if you just think about what I just said, becoming a rainmaker means that you have to have a systematic and methodical process for
interrupting people. It's not just let's get fired up and let's go out and knock on every single door. You You gotta have a plan. You have to have strategy. You gotta be thinking about it, and you gotta be building your messages. And then you have to use every prospecting channel that you have at your disposal to get their attention, grab their attention, and open up the door when that window of opportunity is at its peak.
I'm gonna pass this to Mark Hunter. But before I do, I just wanna say you have a little, picture of a triangle. And and what what Jeb is saying is that you're you're starting at the top of that triangle. Leads are the bottom of the triangle. The leads are at the bottom of the triangle. So when you shift your focus and go, well, leads gotta be easier, yeah, probably is easier, but it probably isn't gonna turn into anything. And let me let me just before we we move to Mark,
say say exactly what you said. And this is one of the when you start listening to these morons, on social media that are telling you not to prospect and tell you not to cold call, they totally don't get it. And because if you think about prospecting, about 20% of
your prospecting is right now. It's it's engaging prospects who have some level of familiarity with you or your company, who you've been working on, and there's a buying window open, and you're trying to engage them, set an appointment, move them into your pipeline. About 80% of your prospecting is working on all those leads and you're gathering qualifying information and you're reaching into the organization. You're identifying
stakeholders. You're beginning to build familiarity. And you're starting to use the different tools like LinkedIn, which is a fantastic tool to connect with these folks. But that's a huge portion of your prospecting is that, and some of that is a pure cold call because at some point, you gotta call people up and say hello to them. They're not gonna come to you. So when you start thinking about your prospecting at the peak, all of those calls, all of
that effort is to set the appointment. And then as you start moving down that prospecting pyramid, you're looking at how can I gather information that makes this particular prospect better, more qualified, or identifies a future buying window so that I can open the door, set the appointment at the right time? Mark, let me just jump in before you go. I wanna pick
up on something Jeb is saying. What drives me crazy is that the people online telling salespeople, gullible salespeople, that that that the the stuff they wanna hear is that prospecting doesn't work. They make cold calling into something that it's not. They it's like it's like you're calling the phone book. Like, you're being fed calls by an auto dialer, just random people calling them
at home. What what Jeb did a great job articulating is that we have to have a strategic finite list of accounts, ideal profile prospects that look and smell like people who get value from us. We're not calling the phone book. We've done the research. I love when Jeb says this. He does it all the time. You know, researching isn't prospecting. Prospecting is prospecting. We do the research on the front end. So so the people that set up, you know, this boogeyman,
that cold calling doesn't work. Well, of course, if you're calling the phone book, it doesn't work. But if you're calling a 100 or 200 strategically selected accounts that look exactly like customers who who love you and appreciate your value. That's not the same thing. Sorry, Mark. Go ahead. No. I I I think you you you hit on so many pieces there, and this is what, again, drives me nuts. First of all, let's let's put LinkedIn in a box. Not everybody is on LinkedIn.
There there are segments that are on LinkedIn. Salespeople are on LinkedIn. I've got many, many buyers that are never on a LinkedIn. So when these people are out there, you know, hey. LinkedIn is where you get all your customers. If you're selling to other salespeople, oh, gee. I guess that's what they're doing. I guess that's what they do. Here's the whole piece. The whole piece is who
am I spending my time with? And and it comes back and the whole thing is is I gotta understand the quality of what that prospect is. This is why I say too many people have prospects. No. They don't have prospects. They have suspects because they have not qualified them to the highest level of where they wanna spend their time. The most valuable asset any salesperson has is not what they sell, is not their customers, it's their own time. And the peak performers, the top the ones at the top
of the food chain, they get it. So they are focused with their time on the highest performing salespeople who are who on on the highest performing customers that are gonna yield the greatest opportunity because they know that, hey, this is a big opportunity and it fits in their timeline now. They're not sitting there. This is where so many salespeople burn themselves out prospecting. Well, they burn themselves out prospecting 2 ways because they spend all their time preparing
to prospect. I'm preparing. Oh, oh, I I set aside 2 hours to prospect. How many calls did you make? None. Because, well, I'm I'm doing research that, prospecting time is customer facing time. 2nd is they wear themselves out because they have no plan. You don't have a plan. Guess what? You are debt. You are DOA. And, you know, we're calling that out, and and we're all being point blunt blank, full throttle. And I know, Anthony, you've got some comments because, you know, eat their lunch.
What is eat their lunch all about? You need to jump in. You you need to add some comments on this. My, my comments are the targets are just far better than leads. And, I mean, when jab when I first saw his triangle, it's exactly right. And and you you start with what's going to have the highest impact on your result. And if you wanna know the best practices of organizations that we see, certainly I see, creating the most opportunities
and the highest quality opportunities together. So if you're looking at those two two factors, it's because they know who they create value for. They know the kind of companies that have the kind of problems that they can solve, and they dedicate all their time and energy into winning those. And, you know, I continually get this question, when do you give up on on a difficult prospect to win? Like, never. You don't get paid for giving
up. You ever get a commission check? Like, you worked really hard, but it didn't work out for you, but we're gonna give you some money anyway just for your effort. That's not the way that sales works. The way that sales works, you gotta win them. And look, you're gonna be prospecting anyway. I mean, what so you're like, well, this one's really hard. They've been with this company for 10 years. It's gonna be hard to win. You're
making calls anyway. I mean, what what do you care if it takes you Have we all had that experience where our best accounts took years years to wear them down? I mean, accounts that were multimillion dollar? I mean yes. And that's why they are our best accounts because it took forever. But once we captured them, we were able to hold on to them. Alright. Hang on. I gotta call time out. Everybody's fired up now. I knew and I knew when I Before you do that, let me tell you the story because Mike
said something. So last week, I get a text message from Billy Henson. Billy, if you're watching this, I'm talking about you. Billy used to work with me back in my days when I was at another company. And 18 years ago, Billy and I started pursuing this big equipment manufacturer. And 18 years later, he finally closed it. And he sent me a text message to let me know. He said, after 18 years, we finally closed this and I wanna celebrate
with you. That's how long sometimes it takes to get your dream account. Did did was Billy getting paid in the interim 18 years for his effort? He was getting a salary for 18 years. Yeah. But you don't want Billy was doing, though. I I'm sure Billy was also working other smaller customers. And and this is the whole thing, understanding how to feed how to feed the food chain. Oh, Billy's a winemaker. Billy has a Rolex on his on his arm. He's got, like, he's got them all the way up his arm.
He's been to every president's club since he started with the company. Right. Because people are the greatest salespeople in the So he's not he's closing everything. He's selling everything he can along the way. Right. And he needs to work on those big opportunities that have identified these high potential accounts in his marketplace, and he starts focusing on So he was not a prisoner of hope to that one deal. He was working all kinds of accounts at all different stages of sales cycle. And as
Mark was saying, small accounts, regular accounts. Let let me make one point on on leads and targets. When Mark was talking, this this really came to me clearly. I think one of the biggest sins in developing new business, because salespeople are doing the rain barrel thing or they wait to chase an opportunity instead of trying to create an opportunity, they end up late. They they're they're last to the opportunity.
They're late to the party. And everyone always wants to talk, I want a beautiful, warm, perfectly qualified lead. You know what happens when you have a perfectly qualified lead? That buyer is way down the path. Right? Some other your your competitors more proactive salesperson has been in there planting seeds, starting a relationship, shaping buying criteria.
What what I I think sometimes we're better off with a with a a colder target, where we go in and we play consultant and advisor and expert, and we paint a picture of a better future. We ask great questions. We tell our story, and then we're guiding them down the path to create an opportunity versus playing some other joker's game where now the buyer's dictating what they want and you show up and do your dog and
pony show and do your demo. I don't know what you think of that, but I sometimes I think we're in a strong position. Hang hang on. I've lost control. I'm calling time out. I knew this I knew this agenda was gonna get everybody going, but we have to stop for just long enough to say that we have sponsors, and we wanna thank people for for being generous enough to support us at this endeavor. And let's start with,
our friends at outreach. Io, and we're gonna talk about sequences at some point, here in the future and how important they are. But, Outreach. Io is a tremendous platform and somebody that we admire. We admire not only, the fact that they sponsored us, but as users, their their equipment, their their their software is great. The second one is ZoomInfo. ZoomInfo, if you're gonna get data, this is where to get it. I mean and and that is the end of the conversation. You don't
need to say anything else. That is where to go to get data. Another great sponsor with a a great platform and a great offering, and we appreciate them sponsoring this. And you can see so far that 2 of, the sponsors have a lot, in common with us as it pertains to cold outreach. So we have cold outreach sponsors
here too. And the last one is, our friends at Connect and Sell, And, we we love what they do, and I will just tell you, if you don't follow, Chris on on LinkedIn, you should because he continues to put up data all the time on just how effective cold outreach can be with a telephone. And, there's so much hate that follows that. Well, you didn't do this, and then what about this other thing? And the data is just unassailable. You can't argue with it. So,
thank you to our sponsors. We appreciate you helping us. Now I'm gonna call time back in, but I'm gonna try to be careful about this because I lost control of the group here with these questions. Mark, you wanted to say something then back to Jeffrey. Yeah. Real real quick. Sales managers, if if you are listening to this, and I hope you are, you gotta understand you play a role in creating
also incremental opportunities. I see too many sales managers only getting involved in the sales process, when it comes time to close a deal. I want you out there having conversations, having having dialogue because you can ask questions that salespeople can't ask. You can walk into an existing account and ask question at, and you're gonna uncover incremental opportunities with that other division they just
bought. You're you're you're gonna uncover incremental opportunities with a company that you didn't even realize they owned in another country. Sales leaders, you play a role in creating incremental opportunities. Okay. I'll get on this. Jeb Jeb Blunt, you were sort of leaning forward, maybe hovering off the ground a little bit. So I just slanting into the camera so I know you have something to say. Well, I wanna go back to what you were talking about our sponsors and and show you
how in real life we've become rainmakers. How we focus on outbound effort versus the rain barrel who has their mouth to the sky waiting for something to drop in. So I get a Google alert with my name on it, and it's got, it's an article from this big association. And the the the number 1 or the the association company of the year, there's an article about them and my name's in the article. As I read the article, they say we've had
the best year we've ever had. And one of the reasons why we have that best year is we use fanatical prospecting to help our sales team get better at prospecting. So I grabbed the article and immediately sat down my sales team and says, hey. Listen. We've got this this industry that one of their top members, in fact, the member of the year who got the award, there's a picture of them getting their trophy. They use
Fanatical Prospecting. So then we went to ZoomInfo and we went and pulled a list of all of the businesses in that particular industry that do more than $10,000,000 in sales. They gave us a fairly big list. We took that list and we loaded it into outreach.io and we created a pursuit plan against those. And then we went to connect and sell and we used those those leads in connect and sell to run an initial call campaign. So we cold called them completely out of
the blue. But because there were some familiarity with who we are, we just called them up and said, hey. Your member of the year used fanatical prospecting. Can we have a conversation with you about how we can help you? Most of them didn't answer the phone. Some of them did. We left voice message messages for the ones that didn't. Can I cancel let let it get let us get through the list really, really quickly? And then we went to a pursuit plan where we used email. We used some account
based marketing. We used some advertising against that particular list, so that was pure marketing. Then we used social media to get and connect with them, and then we ran another call campaign. And out of that call campaign of that group of of businesses, we ended up with 25 opportunities that are real, and at least 10 of those are gonna close and turn into business for us. And that 10 business is probably gonna end up being somewhere between 250 and a half a $1,000,000 in business for
us. And our entire effort in the entire process, when we really start to look at it, we probably invested, I don't know, 20 hours of work in the process. But we used all of the tools that are out there available to us to put together a targeted list and then turn that targeted list into into into qualified prospects and then turn those qualified prospects into deals. And I this is the difference between being
a rainmaker and a rain barrel. The rain barrel is sitting around going well, nobody's calling a day, and the rainmakers are out there making it happen. And they're paying attention to the signals in the marketplace and using the tools that they have available for the to to them to go in and reach out and interrupt these strangers and start a dialogue that can help those those businesses improve their their outcomes as well.
Let me, take that and pivot. And I'm gonna go first on this one because I wanna talk about, the the order in which we do things in prospecting and the sequence or the cadence of a pursuit plan. And then I wanna ask, you to share your your opinions on these things. Anthony, let me just jump in one second because I would some people probably saw me shaking my head while Jeb was talking.
It wasn't what Jeb was saying. I I was literally sitting here getting pissed off at the charlatans and the liars in our industry because Jeb just told you an incredible story. How using all methods necessary, focused around prospecting drove incredible business. And the 4 of us know this because we have real clients. Right? The top producers and all of our clients are perpetually prospecting.
I've got a little SaaS client, you know, and they do everything they can to do inbound marketing and they go to trade shows and they got white papers. You know what the truth is? 80% of their freaking deals last year were self generated by salespeople picking up the phone and creating discovery meetings on their own. So the so those of you just that that don't understand why we fight so hard online and we attack, and we're not antisocial. Social helps all of us. But it's the
morons lying to you. They're totally untethered from the truth, telling you that prospecting doesn't work. When I'm in company after company after company and so are these guys. When we see prospecting work, Jeff just told you a story how it works in his own company. So just be very careful who you listen to. And Mark Hunter says this, Mark. I mean, I I quote you all the time. It's in the first chapter of my new book.
You can't take likes to the bank. And these morons who who think they're gonna help people write an articles every day on LinkedIn, when you criticize these very sensitive, weird, Nuvo experts and say, I'm not so sure you're telling people the right thing. They always point back to how many likes their articles get as if that's the credibility thing. Like, you can and, Mark, what do you always say? You can't take? You can't take clicks and likes to the bank. Period. Boom.
Sorry. I I had to get that out because Jeb's story was just so on target. I I We are rainmakers not sitting around waiting for a rain barrel. I I just drafted a simple agenda. I thought it was gonna be a rousing conversation, and I have, no idea what kind of hell I've just unleashed, on the VSK 2019. But it will be entertaining for all of you here. I'm certain. Oh, it's believe me. It's it it's lighting up social media. I think that there's a a a method that something like outreach enables.
And for me, I I did a demo with them, and I wrote a a blog post about their their picture. I actually used a picture of their their sequence that Outreach actually uses. So talk about people believing what they believe. They actually use their own product prospect. And when they pulled the screen up, I said, whose whose account is that? And they said, that's our account. And I'm like, oh, okay. It had 20,000 companies in a campaign.
18,000 of them had already gone through the campaign, and it resulted in something like 45100 two way conversations. But the first line was an email. And I and the email garnered something like, out of 18,000 emails that were sent, maybe 45 had two way communication. So it was a very, very small number. But then they made a phone call next, and 1500 people had two way communication on the the the phone. And the first question I asked was, why didn't you just start with a
phone call? I mean, it did so much better as a first Volley. And and the person giving me the demo said, I don't know. We just always start with an email. And and I think it's kind of the world that we live in right now that people think email is prospecting, and they think that they're email prospecting. And now we've got all of Silicon Valley who's decided that we can automate prospecting by sending people emails. And on one email I got last year, somebody said, I believe I can help your
business. Click on these links to see what we do to help companies like yours. I didn't reply. A couple weeks later, I got another email, and it had the first email pasted in behind it to say, just wanna make sure you didn't miss this. And, I did miss it. I intentionally missed it, so I missed it again by hitting delete. And then I got the third one that said, you know, this is really important and blah blah blah, and I hope you go back and read these other two emails.
And I replied back and said, you should read my friend, Jeb Blunt's book, Fanatical Prospecting, because what you're doing isn't really working for you, and you might wanna take another approach. And I got an email back from the salesperson that said, I didn't even send you any emails. That all came from our chief marketing officer, and I had no idea who you were until I got your email. And and that's that's what people actually think
prospecting is. That's what we're up against in this conversation is that it doesn't require any human effort. You can just be a rain barrel and wait until somebody clicks on one of those links. And then if I would have clicked on the link, they would have said I'm an interested lead of some kind. But I think that you start with the phone because the phone gives me a chance to ask for a meeting.
And then if you say, I didn't hear enough value in trade for what you asked me for, I get a chance to have another run at it. When I send an email, you're not even there to be involved in the conversation at all. So I think that the email comes first, and you leave a voice mail, and you don't tell anybody to call you back because they're not calling you back, but you leave your phone number. You say, I followed it up with an email, and then I'm gonna try to reach out to you again next week.
And you do that a number of weeks in a row, and and you don't try to automate this, and you don't expect anybody to pick up the phone and call you back because you're trying to get them to give you their business. They're not trying to hire you. So it's incumbent upon you. And if you decide, well, I sent this and if they wanna talk to me, I'll wait for them to call back. There's no waiting in sales. There's no waiting. So for me, I think it's phone first. You can follow it up with voicemail and
email. You do that a few weeks in a row, and then after that, you can start going to LinkedIn, and you can start trying to nurture the relationship. So I wanted to say one thing about the myths. The myth is that social is for selling, and social is for nurturing. It's above the funnel. It does a lot to shape, but you're not asking for anybody. You're not asking anybody for anything when you're on social. It doesn't work that way. So I'm gonna go to, I guess I'm going to Mark first because
he can't he can't restrain himself. I I put the comment out in a blog post the other day that I said social selling is neither. It's neither social. It's neither selling. And it believe me, it it lit up unbelievably. But he here's this whole thing. People have to understand, it is the telephone. The telephone and those who are sitting there saying the telephone doesn't work are the people who are afraid. I gotta share a quick story. I had a gentleman who called me, insurance
agent. He's been in my coaching program for a long time. His son, 21 year old son, coming into the business. He says, I gotta teach him how to sell insurance over the phone. Kid was absolutely afraid. Absolutely afraid. Just got done coaching him. We were doing an hour a week and and just got done with him. And the kid is crushing it on the telephone. Don't tell me that you
can't make phone calls. This is a 21 year old kid going to college part time, crushing it on the telephone, selling insurance. Give me a break, people. Jeb Blunt. We're going, from left to right on my screen. I I hear people tell you the phone doesn't work. And, typically, my response is nobody answers a phone that doesn't ring. And then they say, well, nobody wants to be called. Right? Nobody nobody wants to take a phone call from a call
person. That is the one of the arguments from one of the Sherylton who says he's an international best selling author, and nobody's read the son of a bitch's book. Excuse my language. We're we're giving you a pass. We're giving you it's a it's mostly a family friendly show, but in this, the point that you're making, I think, you know We're emotional. We're emotional. So so then so then it people say, well, nobody wants to get a call from a salesperson. And I say, well, no shit, Sherlock.
Nobody wants to get a call from a salesperson. If people wanted to get a call from salespeople, there wouldn't be salespeople. They would all be calling you, but they're not calling you. But the reason we have rainmakers is they're interrupting people that don't wanna be interrupted because you don't wanna be interrupted and I don't wanna be interrupted. That's tough. So you gotta have a good message when you call.
Now the this this idea that the phone doesn't work, I'm gonna give you a a case study real case study out of our playbook. And this, by the way, happened 2 weeks ago. 1 of my trainers walked into a room full of 90 US army recruiters. So there's 90 recruiters in the room. These guys are calling 17 18 year olds. Okay? So the the generation that are the native, you know, tech people who none of them would ever take a phone call. This is
the myth. Right? And we walked in and my recruiter or my my trainers gives an order. You have 15 minutes to make 15 dials and set one appointment. And, of course, they start grousing. Why are we calling? Nobody answers the phone. They're you know, this is stupid. Well, why don't we send some text messages, hang out on Facebook? And the reason why we're there is because all these soldiers, these recruiters, are hanging out on Facebook. So my trainer gives the order one more
time. 15 minutes, 15 dials, one appointment, go. 15 minutes later, this battalion of military recruiters had set more appointments in 15 minutes than they had in the previous 3 weeks on the telephone. And we have them on film. Like, we we we my my camera guys are there taking a picture of them, and they're all just they can't believe that when they call people, they actually answer. But the thing is this phone right here, one more call, is with you all the time. It is
hanging on these 17 year old's hips. They sleep with their phones. I know my kids sleeps with this phone. So the phone is attached to people. So more people are answering the phone than ever before. And, oh, by the way, people are sending emails. And I'll give you one more example, Anthony, from from what you said. We have one of our software clients, a little SaaS company,
and they were going after new accounts. And they were pulling these lists off of ZoomInfo, and they were doing email campaigns to them. And it was the same thing you saw. Like, they were getting no return. In fact, they were sending, like, 8 emails in a row and nothing was happening. And I just asked the question, why aren't you just picking up the phone and calling them? Why don't we just call? And they said, well, we need to warm them up. Well, after 8
emails, you've just pissed them off. I mean, they're they're not gonna talk to you anyway because you've, you know, you've just you've you've spammed them. So we took a different tact. We got them all together, did the same thing. We took 30 minutes, and we made 30 outbound dials just as fast as we possibly could. And they were amazed at how many people they talked to, and they had a two way conversation with. And the thing is is the phone is it's so easy. You pick
up the phone. There's a person on the other end. You say hello, and now you're talking to a human. And the last time I checked, sales is human to human. It's people helping other people, and you can't do that via email, and you certainly can't do that on social media. And I don't wanna say that there's anything wrong with social media. I think LinkedIn is one of those tools that is, you know, the car, the phone, the Internet, Google, LinkedIn. I think it all fits together, CRMs.
But for someone to tell you that the phone doesn't work, they're lying to you. They're lying to you because it makes them feel uncomfortable, and they're a bunch of losers who are unwilling to pick up the phone, interrupt people, and make it rain. I just, trademarked 2 more calls. I I'm I'm gonna be even more aggressive than Jab. I mean, one more call is good, but 2 more calls is even better. I just trademarked 3 more calls. Hey. Let me can I talk about voice mail real quick?
I I just wanna I wanna pick up on where Jeff was going and what you guys started. Anyone who really prospects a lot knows this. You can be building a relationship with someone who has not yet returned your call. We earn a callback or we earn the meeting with perseverance and creativity. Right? And if you gotta keep dripping and dripping and dripping, and if you have good voice tone and you drip little value nuggets on somebody, right, good things happen. And we all have experienced this.
You leave someone 4 or 5 good messages, very often they actually will call you back. And you know how they start the the the phone call when they get back with you? What do they say? I'm sorry. I'm sorry it took me so long to respond. Thank you for your persistence. And then who's got the leverage in that conversation? Right? When you're good at this, it works. But you have to put in the effort. You have to sharpen your messaging. You have to be creative, and you gotta stick
with it. You earn the appointment by perseverance. Okay. Don't leave because we're going to our final question here. What is your very, very best single piece of advice for making 2019 your best sales year ever? Me? I'm limit I'm limiting you to 1. Your best advice. Can I split it in 2? I don't I don't know that I can stop you. So yes. I'll be really brief. It's 2 things. More strategic targeting and more time put against those strategic targets. Everyone wants to talk about all the crazy
nebulous and, you know, sales nerdy stuff. The clients that I have that have transformed their results, the people are laser focused on a strategic finite list of accounts. They could be prospects or they could be growable customers. There's a whole lot of people managing territories or books of business. They they're just doing the milk run and they babysit and they over serve. If you manage existing accounts, you gotta decide which of those are growable and spend
more time working those. Stop bringing donuts to your friends and go call on the hard customers or the non customers. That's part 1. And part 2 is take back your calendar and stop starting every day in your inbox and look into big, good corporate citizen stuff and decorate for parties. Spend time selling. Make a list and spend more time selling. You'll have a great year. You gotta get out of decorating for the holidays. That's best stuff. Jeb Blunt. In in this book, Objections is right next
to me. By the way, this is coming out of audio, in a couple of weeks. So you wanna check Audible and pick up this book. That was a gratuitous book plug, Anthony. That's my one tip. Read objections. So, in this book, I I tell the story at the very beginning of the book about a guy named Richard. This guy called me 71 times. 71 times. Now he left a lot of those were voice mail messages. He sent me a dozen emails. He talked
to everybody in my company. He stalked me on LinkedIn, but he called and called and called and called and called. I was sitting in my office, just I I had one of those rare days where I was off the road, and the phone rang. And I picked it up, and it was this guy. And I I recognized his voice. And, like, he'd been so persistent that I couldn't say to him no. Like, I couldn't I couldn't not not have a conversation with him. So I said, hey, Richard. I I got a
few minutes. Why don't you tell me what you got? Seventy one calls. The call ended with him having my credit card in his hands, and, and he, he had my business and still has my business. So my tip for you this year, if you wanna make it rain, is be persistent. One call is not enough. One touch is not enough. One email is not enough. One knock is not enough. You have to be
persistent. You have to be relentless. And the one thing that I can tell you is that people who are at the top of these companies who buy from you, they absolutely they absolutely respect relentless because they want people like you on their sales team. And when you're relentless and you're persistent, they will do business with you. I'm, not gonna plug my book like Jeb or anything like that. I'm just gonna pass
it over to Mark Hunter. That's all. Well, I'm gonna say that book objections is probably has one of the best forwards it's ever been written, but that's a separate that's a separate piece. Hey. Hey. Here's the whole thing. Some of the best advice you're ever gonna find is in your shower. Now, Anthony, you're excluded from this, but it's on that bottle of shampoo where it says rinse and repeat. Rinse. Rinse does not mean you put the
same shampoo. For the person who sends that email, gee, let me send this email to you again. Let me send it to you again. It was a stupid email. Rinse. You put new shampoo in your hair each time. You you rinse, new message, new value. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. The greatest opportunity you're gonna ever gonna have is to allow people who aren't expecting you, aren't expecting your call, to help them see and achieve what they did not think was possible. That's what being a rainmaker is all about.
Because these people are not sitting there, oh, well, gee, I need to go find this. That's what a rain barrel is. We're helping people see and achieve what they did not think was possible. That doesn't that doesn't juice you up. If that doesn't jazz you, I'm sorry. You shouldn't be in sales. That's why we're in sales, because it's about helping people. I love it. Anthony. Alright. My best piece of advice is have something good enough to trade for the time that you're asking when you're
making these cold outreach. So that means get the business acumen, get a deep understanding, go in as a trusted adviser, as consultative. And I just wanna continue to push on this idea of consultative because, again, you have the mythmakers out there telling people that it means that you're not high pressure, you're not hard sell, you ask really good questions. That's not what it means.
Consultative means you tell people how to better run their business and produce better results than they're producing now, and if you don't have the opinion as to what they should be doing and you haven't done your homework, then it's harder for you to get that meeting. So do the work to have the business acumen. Make sure you show up with something that somebody would gladly trade 30 minutes to hear from you. Okay. This is the end of VSK 2019, but don't go anywhere because this
is the after show. But Let me start, the after show by, again, saying thank you to outreach.io, our sponsor here. If you're looking at sequences, that's the place to go. If you need something to drop into outreach.io, go to our sponsor, ZoomInfo. If you want to accelerate the time it takes you to reach people on the phone, then you go to connect and sell. And, Jeb, at some point, this will be on, some platform where people can watch a replay.
If you need to listen to what Jeb described so that you know how to do this and how it works, you just go back over this ground here because it's gonna accelerate your results, dramatically. So the sequences work no matter what you use, but if you're gonna do something with a piece of software, it's outreach dot iozoominfoconnectandsell. Okay. And this concludes BSK 2019. Stay tuned for the after show.
This is the after show. Welcome to VSK 2019 behind the scenes with Mark Hunter, Jeb Blunt, and Mike Weinberg. Here we go. Okay. Now it's the after show. So now it's a free for all. Hey. This was the best VSK yet. I mean, guys I mean, I'll tell you what, terrific commentary from everybody. Loved it. I I credit the agenda. I give it all to you, all to you. You know, we look up to you, Anthony, because you you are AI. You are
artificial intelligence before there was artificial intelligence. When you start with the prompt that says dispel the myths about how opportunities are created, and and Mike Weinberg's holding up his sales truth book cover, there at the end of this, which I got to see. Can I just can I hold it up one more time? Yeah. You can hold that one more time. So Hey. Debunk the myths in in the subtitle.
Yeah. And you know what's interesting? And I, Jeb actually was referring to the same international best selling author that I I have a whole page in in in the book on that person and and his quotes because it's so disingenuous. More people will read that page than read
his book. Yeah. You you're right. I mean, it's just it's, there should be some nervous people when that book comes out because if you've been posting stuff on LinkedIn that's not true, there's a very good chance that I quoted you, and we're gonna we're gonna expose the truth. And then we're gonna give a lot of practical ways that people are creating opportunities and and becoming rainmakers and top producers. Hey. You called out Kylie Jenner really, really quickly.
I I called Kylie Jenner out because there's a social selling expert who decided that she was our role model for business to business sales. And, the the post on LinkedIn actually said something to the effect. Do you do you still not believe that social sales social selling produces real sales? Kylie Jenner increased her net worth to 900 bill $900,000,000 using social channels. You think she cold called her way to that net worth?
And I'm and I literally I mean, I want you to think of how how lost someone must be to write that. Like, are you are you gonna go to your pharmaceutical client or your defense client or your construction company client or your dealership that sells heavy equipment or my consulting firm and use her. I mean, she's the example.
Her posting selfies on Instagram is is the model we're gonna preach if I'm a digital sales transformation company and I'm out telling people this is I'm I'm writing articles telling people this is what you should do. Are you freaking kidding me? They don't even know what Instagram is. I get to see all of those 3 of your Instagrams, so I can tell you it's it's not like, Kylie Jenner, who I don't know that I would recognize if, she was in front of me. So
crazy stuff. But let's let's look at the here's the problem. The problem is that if you are a expert let's just say you've had one sales job in your life. You didn't do a very good job at that. You decided it was hard, so you decided that, hey, I'm a be an expert. Look. It's really easy to look like Brad Pitt when you're texting on the Internet in
your basement. Okay? It's really easy to, you know, hop on, you know, hop on social media, put up a bunch of memes, get a bunch of likes, people like you, and you can say, you know, I'm I'm an expert. I'm you know, this is what I do. And then you tell everybody that what you're doing, posting stuff on LinkedIn, getting a lot of attention, well, that's what salespeople should do it because that's how you're you're you see all the attention that you're getting.
And and and and I say this because if you think about, you know, me or Mark or Mike or Anthony, you know, in our small niche of sales, we're public figures. I've written 10 books. I get paid to go stand in front of audiences, give speeches, and I post things online because it creates this aura of expertise and people see me and people follow me. And I use that to draw people in so that I can go sell more of me. But on the back end, what you don't see is that I have 17 people in my company.
About 70% of those people are trainers. And I have a sales team who the the the other 30% who are on the phone, banging the phone, reaching out, calling people so that we can get those folks booked into companies and we can sell stuff. And for me as an author and a public figure in in our space, in our small space, social media is is important because I use it as an advertising, as a marketing medium, not as a specific medium. But that's it,
Jeb. It's content marketing. You're doing content marketing. But it but the thing is is that we have to we have to understand that just because I'm doing that doesn't mean that, you know You're not doing other things. Right? Industrial parts for a company or selling software or doing this or doing that, that that's gonna work for them too because it's not. I mean, you know, there's 1 or 2 people here and there that have, you know, sort of made a name for themselves online.
But even those people, it doesn't work very long. I can think of one person in particular, who, you know, had a you know, made a big splash as a social selling person who can't even keep a job because that doesn't work anymore. It doesn't work if you can't produce something. So when you hear people saying that, you have to take it in context. Yes. For that human being, they think, wow, this is what everybody should be doing because I'm getting all this attention.
But that's not the reality for most salespeople nor is the reality, and I'd love to hear your opinion on this, of telling salespeople they need to be blogging more, they need to be writing more, they need to be know. More content. Because because, like, they don't know how to do that. And and I know that there are marketers and companies everywhere. They're like they're rolling over their grave every time someone puts out content that doesn't connect with the brand.
Do you even see the two words social and selling anymore in your feed at all? I I still see it I I still see it pop up in LinkedIn posts and so forth, and it drives me. There's there's 3 to 5 people that continue to to use that that that terminology, But there's not more than that. There there's there's no more attention being paid to it. But it's but but you know what the new term is? Digital selling. They're they're calling it digital selling, and it's because social selling didn't work. So
now let's call it digital something. Hey. Let's shift gears a little bit because this is the after the show. Isn't this what outbound's all about? I mean, the 4 of us going at it. I mean, the 4 of us I mean, you know, we we blocked some time for us to have kind of the battle of the titans, and, wow, this is gonna be huge at outbound. But let's I don't wanna I don't wanna wipe I don't wanna tell people that social media is a bad thing because it's it's it LinkedIn is a it's a tremendous tool.
And it there's a lot of ways that you can use LinkedIn to create familiarity, to, connect with people, to watch what they're doing, to look for signals, but it's part of a greater system. The problem for the social sellers is they tell you only use this. Right. Don't use this. And then and then when they're called out on the carpet, they go, well, I didn't say that using the telephone isn't a good thing. You should use a telephone, but we need to warm everything up. And that's what
the rain barrels are doing. They're waiting for everything to get warmed up. So there's the perfect time when the person comes to them. So I I wanna be clear that the 4 of us are not telling you that that digital tools are not a good thing. They're brilliant. They can make life so much easier. But you as the rainmaker, you have to do the outreach. You have to be outbound. You have to go out and build your pipeline. In fact in fact, great transition. That's what outbound is about.
Right. And, Jeff, you, Jeff, you say this all the time. Every appropriate, ethical, effective means necessary. You're the one that always throws smoke signals in there. Right? But let let's let's let's be clear about the way that the argument has been made because none of us have ever said anything except omnichannel. Every every single medium available to you, everything that you can possibly do, you do it.
But the the people who have decided that social selling is a thing have have been very, very clear that the phone is not one of those choices. So you can never make cold outreach. You can never pick up the phone. You're never to interrupt another human being. They said that that's what social selling meant. For us, we've never told anybody not to use the tools or to use them well. I think, in my own opinion, I think it's all above the funnel. I think it's all nurture.
I think it's all shaping mind share. I don't think you're asking anybody for anything, so it's not prospecting for me. Because if I'm truly prospecting, I'm asking somebody for a meeting. And I'm not asking you for a meeting on Twitter, and I'm not asking you for a meeting on LinkedIn. I might nurture the relationship there. But if I'm asking you, I'm asking you on the phone because that's the greatest likelihood of me being able to gain a meeting in the first
place. So I I just wanna remember, we didn't draw a line that said, look, you can only use the phone, and none of us only use the phone. We all use the phone, and we use every other choice too. But the fact of the matter is when they framed it up that way, the reason it died and the reason it's not relevant anymore is because it did say this is now the only way to prospect, and you wait for inbound leads to come to you by talking to people online.
And you should be if you're a field salesperson, you should be going out and walking in the doors. When you go to your appointment, right, you should you should do a t call. Look to your left, look to your right, look behind you, and knock on all those doors and say hello to those folks. You know, when you're in person prospecting, it's about what you ask. Right? When you're on the telephone, it's about what you say,
but you should be doing that too. But there are morons out there telling people that you don't even have to do that anymore because people don't care about the relationship. So take all your field salespeople, the people that create relationships with your customers, just take them off the street and we'll get a a robot to do all the work for you. And the smart
companies are not buying into that. In fact, the smart companies are putting more people on the street to have human to human conversations because that's what works. This is personal. I I just had a vision of outbound 2020. It's a giant Pentecostal tent, and Jeb is gonna come out carrying snakes in both hands. Right? And, exactly. You're gonna get religion. Hey. A real quick side note. You know, we gotta do a shout out for millennials because they're doing a good thing for us in sales.
Millennials are about authenticity and transparency. How do I get that? By having the relationship, by picking up the phone and having the conversation. Authenticity and transparency. I'm not gonna get that by just posting stuff on Internet and and and waiting for things to happen. No. Can can I shift this to outbound for just a minute? Okay. I continue to get, emails and some tweets and some DMs on Twitter, from people who are trying to understand,
what happened to outbound. So, year 1, there's 4 of us. The this 4. And then year 2, there's 4 of us. And then year 3, there's 21 of us. Is that what happened? Is there 21 in in that neighborhood? And the the main stage has now got, Colleen Francis, Victor Antonio, Waldo Waldman, Jeffrey Gitomer, Andrea Waltz, and Bob Burke. That's the main that's the main stage over the first, 2 days with the 4 of us. So there's 10. 10 on the main stage. And and people
who thought, okay. That was good with 4 of us are stunned at the main stage. Is this the best main stage in the history of sales conferences? Yes. Without a doubt. Yeah. And we doubled and we doubled the number of days for the main stage and barely even increased the price. And it's all Yeah. It's it's the it's the most ridiculous value. And it's all content driven. It's not a pitch fest. Content
driven. Well, that's the that's the the question that I get from people all the time is, is this gonna be like those other conferences that I go to where, you know, there's, somebody up on the stage rambling on about their product and it's basically a veiled commercial, and then there are people in the, you know, the audience pitching everybody in the audience. And when you walk out, there's this whole pitch about, you know, some financial instrument or
or or, you know, some something else. And, and I just say no. The the the reason that outbound is different is because of that. The reason that we don't have 50 sponsors like most of the conferences do, we make our our we are able to pay for the the the the conference and and make a little bit of money,
on the on the ticket sales. And and, by the way, for everybody listening, I think it's important to say that every dime that the outbound is produced and it just it's it's kind of almost of a break in break even conference, and we do it because we love sales. But every dime of that has been used to build the next year's conference and make it bigger, rather than to put money in our pockets.
And it's not that we're not capitalist because we are stone cold capitalists, but it's because we made a decision to make an investment in the sales world and deliver real content and real training and get rid of the pitch and and change the the shape of sales conferences so that you don't have to go to some place and endure, you know, 8 hours of people throwing
commercials at you. What's, funny, I got one email from a guy who when I sent out an email about the no pitching rule when we were selling tickets because we are capitalists and we do actually sell things and we're not ashamed by selling things naturally, and he said, you just pitched me. And I said, yes. I did. But I didn't make you pay to come into a room where I could pitch you. That's the difference.
I'm pitching you. This is free for me to pitch you here because it's an email, but I didn't make you give me $599 to sit in a room and be pitched. It's a very, very different model that we're operating. I think it was go ahead, Ward. I had lunch the other day with a gentleman who just went to 2 very big events. First word out of his mouth for both of them, pitch fest pitch fest. And he was asking me about outbound. We're gonna pitch you on prospecting.
We're gonna pitch you on building a pipeline, and we're gonna pitch you on being more productive with your time. That's what you're gonna get pitched on. Mike Weinberg? Mike. Yeah. I mean, so many thoughts. Look at the people we've invited to join us. I mean, this is it's an it's just an unbelievable lineup. This week is the highlight of the year for the 4 of us. It is so much fun and so energizing, and
it's exhausting. Like, Anthony, you said this in one of your emails where you're promoting the conference. We don't hide in the back. We're not sitting in some green room. We are running around the auditorium. We're taking selfies. We're signing books. We're laughing. We're interacting with people. I mean, it it's it's it's absolutely crazy. I mean, it it
is so much fun. And I think one of the best testimonials of the value that outbound has created are the number of people that are coming back for the 3rd time. Yeah. So Don't come back to a conference. I mean, it it think about what that says, to hear from the same people again because because you didn't get value. It says it says everything you want. And I want you to know this year, we have more time because we got the 2 days. I'm bringing some fresh material that no one's ever heard
before. Right? We all have new books. So there'll be some of the tried and true things, but there's gonna be some brand new content you've never heard from us before because we wanna share with you people that are coming, and we we're pumped. And the other main stage speakers are pumped. I mean, I I I tell you what, I can't go a couple days without getting a note from whether it be Colleen or somebody, saying how much they are looking forward to it. Waldo popped me a couple notes this
week. He popped me a couple text messages. I mean, this is the sales event. And if you don't know who these people are, go out and check them out on Amazon or check them out on Google. These people crush it. Crush it. But I wanna I wanna get beyond the main stage because I think one of the things that we've we we did last year that was incredibly successful, we we're we've blown that out this year are the elite sessions.
So the elite sessions are the 3rd day to the last day, and we're gonna have 20, training sessions, 90 minute training sessions with some of the top sales trainers in the entire world. People like Lee Sauls, Jennifer Gluckow, Bernadette McClellan, Jean Mignaughton, and Sam Richter who was incredible. And you go check Sam out. You'll you'll you'll wanna go to his event. The 4 of us, and and and many, many, many more, we're gonna have these 90 minute sessions, and
there's space in between the session. We we did this intentionally so that when you get done, you don't have to go immediately to the next session. You can stick around and have a conversation with the trainer. And, and if you got questions or you wanna interact and and we see that some of these things go a little bit longer, we got James Muir, Larry Levine, Sherry Levitan. I mean, all of these people coming in.
And if you get the elite session, all of those sessions will also be recorded so that you can later on go back and watch them again so you have access to it long term. So not only do you get the 2 days of the main stage with these amazing speakers, but you also get a full day of sales training. And this, by the way, is why you wanna bring your entire team. Your entire team can come in. You can
actually bring your, you know, your company. This can be their sales kickoff, and you're gonna get a breadth of sales training and have access to it after the event that will help your team get better in 2019. In fact, this is the key to becoming rainmakers in 2019 is learning these skills that these great speakers and trainers will be teaching you. Just, one one quick thought on what you said. I wanna be clear so people understand what you just said, in in a very, very practical, tactical way.
You have to choose which sessions you go to. They're they're running at the same time. And people last year, if we got one complaint on the complaint card, it was like, why did you make me choose between seeing Jeb or seeing Shari Levitan? You made me pick, and and there's only so much room. You don't have to pick. I mean, you go to the one that you wanna go to while you're there, but you're gonna get to see the other ones. They're they're you're you're gonna have access to all of them.
So you'll get to see each one of them, and you're gonna be able to go back over that content, that you did see plus a few minutes. And there's some other goodies for for those of you that are looking at it, and now would be the time to look at it because the hotels are filling up. Elite tickets, you guys also get better seats. There's there's preferential seating. It's it's a different level of swag stuff. It's it's quite the value because you're getting 3 full days and better reserved seating.
And apparently, we're not afraid to pitch, are we? I guess we're pitching. Right? You know what, though? You know, also, though, we outgrew hotels. That's why we're now in the Georgia World Congress Center. We're in the convention center. I mean, you can't get bigger than that. But I think the whole thing because we're out in the audience all the time I mean, we we're out there beforehand. We're out there. Again, it's still gonna have that very much personable feel
all the way through. Step and repeat. Bring bring your, your cell phone. We're taking selfies, but you're talking to everybody. There's there's no place to hide. We're all gonna be right there, hanging out with you. But, Mike, I Well, wait a minute. I gotta talk to Mike for a second. So you're off. So, Mike, there is one ticket that we didn't talk about, one badge. The it's Oh. Oh. It's I'm looking for my Porsche, I think. It's at my happy place. Go ahead, Jeb.
Go ahead. It's it's the black badge, with a circle on it that says VIP. It's really special. We, on the day before the outbound conference starts, a a group of, 50 VIPs will be gathering at the Porsche Experience Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Mike, did the leg work to get this set up because he's a Porsche enthusiast. He is I think his car cost $200,000. I'll be right I'm gonna be right back. I got a prop to get for you. Hang on. That's what that's what Rainmakers do,
by the way. Rainmakers buy $200,000 cars. And so you're gonna spend an afternoon with us, in peak performance workshops and mastermind groups working together, these ultra high performers of ultra high performers. And and these are leaders and salespeople from across the globe who are coming in. Now there's just a handful of food boxes available. They will be gone, I promise you, after this webinar is over, because they always are. As soon as the VSK is over, all of the VIP tickets
are gone. So as soon as you see this, you wanna go to outboundconference.com. That's outboundconference.com and pick up your VIP ticket. You get an amazing swag bag. You get front row special seating. You get a VIP lunch. You get the VIP mastermind group and reception at the Porsche Experience Center in Atlanta. You get, you get special access to all of the speakers.
And I gotta tell you, there's nothing in the world like walking in, and you got that black badge on, and you walk to the front of the room, and it's all it's all, you know, sectioned off and nobody can get in there except for the VIPs. That's when your shoulder goes up, that's when your chin goes up, and that's when you know that you're a rainmaker when you've achieved that level. So, there are a handful of tickets left. I think there are 7. 7? I saw one yesterday.
That's so I got a call from somebody that said we left somebody off the list. I gotta go get another one. I I just wanna say this. That that Porsche Experience Center place, it's my happy place. I've been there three times. You can go drive on the track. There's a Porsche museum. And, I'll just show you guys this now. I'm going there on March 19th to pick up my new car, and, I finally kinda
custom custom ordered exactly what I wanted. And I'll be there for a whole day getting driving lessons and they make a great deal. That we're gonna have such a good time on that on that opening day of outbound with the VIPs, the workshop, the setting, the museum. Where we're having the reception is this unbelievable area. It's just gorgeous. You can watch people on the track. Some people may even go out there early and actually use the track.
Just I it's it's the best value, but I I I think there's only 7 tickets left, so move quickly. Move quickly. You know, it's cool that yeah. We got people coming from South America. I I think I sent you guys that note, that guy from Chile bought the ticket. We got South America coming. We got Asia coming. We got Australia coming. We got Europe coming. Huge. I think we have India coming now too. Yeah. That would be Asia. That would be Asia. I had my outbound suit made in Hong Kong. It's coming.
I love it. I can't wait to see that. I hope it's red. No. It's, it's it's blue and, with orange checks in it. And and you open it up, it it's it's got a orange interior, orange lining, and it says one more call in really big letters on on on the inside like a cape. Love it. The cape. The cape. I can't wait to see this. The dream coat. The dream coat. I actually went and met mister Lee who is, who is manufacturing
it. They've been sending me, videos, little video clips on, WhatsApp, of of them sewing all the pieces of my suit together. So it's been a it's been a pretty cool thing. I got a video I'll put up later on, on going there and, and meeting mister Lee and picking out the fabric. Oh, I hear about that. That sounds really cool. Really cool. Alright, John. Now at some point, we have to call an end to this. People need to get to work. We need we need salespeople to dial up. To go start dialing
and go pick up the phone. That's right. It's time to start dialing just like that. Hit the buttons. This is VSK 2019, the after show. Thank you for staying here with us. All of the links will be available to you, so when you you get a note from us, you'll have a replay if you wanna watch the replay. We'll send you to outreach. Io. We'll send you to ZoomInfo. We'll send you to Connect and Sell. We'll send you to the outbound conference. And again, last, last call here on
VIPs. These are going fast, so, get them while you can. And, thank you, gentlemen, for being here, and I look forward to seeing you in Atlanta.