The Exchanges

Q How many channels should someone start with once they've identified the right, uh, candidate, the right ICP?

A I always say use all of the channels until you find out what the data will tell you to determine what the best channel is and double down there. Right. And you can look at it as a multi-channel or omni-channel approach. You know, some people, and people are different, you know, some people gravitate and resonate to email and that's their favorite Some people like being on the phone. Some people like chatting on DMS on LinkedIn. I kind of like to ask them, Hey, what's the best way to get ahold of you in my initial outreach? And then let them just determine where that is because everyone's a little bit different and then just know that. And then when you're trying to attempt or continually communicate throughout the entire sales cycle, use their preferred channel, but it's fair to ask what their preferred channel is. But that's just on a one-on-one basis. But overall, you know, most salespeople pick up the phone because they think it's a potential lead or calling them back, right? So if we're reaching out to salespeople, then we would want to use the phone more so than not. Other areas, if you're going to cybersecurity, you know, usually those people like to email, they don't even have a phone number listed anywhere. So you're going to have to kind of go towards that channel.

AI assessment note: “I always say use all of the channels until you find out what the data”

Q So let's say, for example, we're on LinkedIn, and you want to pitch me to be a guest. Obviously, that's not how it happened, but let's say you want to pitch me through LinkedIn to be a guest. What would your voice note be?

A Will be super relevant and personal. And I would be talking about your LinkedIn profile as I'm going through it. So I would, you know, reference, obviously I would be using your name. I would say, Hey, this is Gabe. And then I wouldn't be noticed. Hey, I noticed you did this and I noticed you did this. And you know, I really appreciate what you just posted here yesterday, whether it's a post about what, you know, a blog or a newsletter or even a fun post. If it's a picture of you and your family, like, Hey, love this. You know, I'm a big fan of what you're doing right now and your follower count's really impressive. Uh, so you'd be definitely an ideal fit for our podcast. Not sure if that's something you'd like to do and then leave it there. You only got a minute. So I would do that. Send it, be hyper personal, just like I'm talking to you over, you know, a beer at the bar about what you do and then see if they respond and, uh, and go from there.

AI assessment note: “I would say, Hey, this is Gabe... you'd be definitely an ideal fit”

Q So if your focus is on top of funnel, what kind of content should you be writing on LinkedIn or creating on LinkedIn if it's not text that gets people to want to reach out to you?

A So my whole mantra is calls and content, right? And so that's what I believe in. And a lot of people think content is just an inbound engine. The way we approach content is different. And I don't know if different as in normal B to B content. We decided to do this three years ago and I picked 10 people in my company and I said, hey, listen, I'm going to build a team around you with videographers and content creators and social media marketers, but you guys are going to literally, we're going to do a documentary like you would watch, you know, uh, your documentary on, on, uh, E or whatever you watch your, your, uh, your reality TV shows. And we're going to do a reality TV show, if you will, of what we do each and every day. And that's the type of content we're going to produce. And right now we're producing 250 videos and pieces of content on LinkedIn a month from just my employees. And everything we talk about is real life stuff that's happening at work and things we're dealing with and fixing and challenges. And that's the way we've approached our content and has nothing to do with a sales pitch. And what we found is that people just trust us And have social proof of, hey, who these people are. And when we do have those conversations, uh, it turns into one that we don't have to be selling as much as, you know, prescribing what we can help them with. And that's how we've approa…

AI assessment note: “we're going to do a reality TV show... of what we do each and every day.”

Q So for someone like myself, who's launched this software, Do I, like, expose my cursor screen share, where I show how a bug has appeared, and I'm trying to fix it? Like, what am I supposed to do to generate that? I mean, because the goal is cost-cutting, but also it's around, I built this thing myself, so it's building in public, but it's technical. And not.

A Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't go as technical because that's not your audience, right? So when, for instance, go back into, to Adam, like a lot of what he does is programming and technical, but his buyer is not that right. His buyer is entrepreneurs who are, you know, one to ten million dollar companies that his tool will work for in a big way. So he's figured out, okay, if that's my buyer, then I need to relate to bootstrap CEOs and founders. Who have smaller companies like me, by the way, and I'll just attract them by talking about my business. See, the best thing to do when selling is it's try to be the product of the product, right? You know, that's why we have a very robust team here. So when we're calling somebody to call, to call, to sell our cold calling services, you know, our reps who are making those calls on behalf of our company, They need to be the best in the world because they're literally a product of the product. And so try to figure out a way where you can look at who your buyer is going to be for the product and relate to those individuals by how you share your content.

AI assessment note: “I wouldn't go as technical because that's not your audience, right?”

Q How do you determine where you should be going in order to start those conversations?

A Well, you have to think about where your audience is, right? So with my company, my audience lives on LinkedIn, right? That's where they are. I talked to executive salespeople. And so we'll refine our audiences. They're sitting on LinkedIn. Uh, they're sitting in, you know, conferences, they're sitting in, uh, you know, you know, Slack channels and, and, you know, revenue communities, and that's where we want to talk to. So if your audience is sitting on Instagram, you should, you should be obviously prospecting through Instagram. If your prospect picks up the phone more so than let's say a chief technology officer, then you want to be utilizing the phone as a channel and you want to be talking people, talking to people where they live. So go where your audience is and use the channels in which is most, you know, Uh, the propensity of picking up or the propensity of responding is higher, and that's how you want to prospect.

AI assessment note: “you have to think about where your audience is, right?”